​That Saturday, Rali carried the book in his hand despite the potential for rain. The rains of December were prone to falling thick, swamping the city of Casablanca in minutes. But Rali went out with neither coat nor bag. So far the day was warm and sunny enough. No need to carry more than the necessary.
 
He took a bus leading from one world to another. It was a Parisian vehicle, so old that it had been withdrawn from French traffic yet was still considered viable for Morocco. The windows were cracked, the upholstery full of holes and the engine hacked up pitch smoke. The skeletal driver’s steering was psychotic. At extreme speed, they swerved and veered away from the eternal strings of seven-storey apartment blocks that overlooked the dual carriageway. These new slums stretched back like cement forests onto what had been, until recently, farmland inhabited by peasants. The bus careered across three lanes of traffic and roared through red lights. Everyone held tight, unfazed.
Rali got off at Oasis. It was one of the few remaining quarters where colonial French villas survived. Red hibiscus bursting with yellow pollen as dazzling as turmeric, purple bowers of bougainvillea, the perfume of honeysuckle and the hum of contented insects. 
He walked along five different narrow roads to reach her house. Rue des Colombes, Rue Gavarnie, Rue d’Aix, Rue Tholonet and finally, Rue Franceville. Number 91.
His age inverted.
So early to be a criminal.
From the road, Rali could see that the yellow-walled house was in disrepair. He rapped at the corroded iron door, which scraped open.
“Salam,” Rali said, to the emaciated guardian of the house.
“Walikoum Salam,” replied Kebir.
Rali started towards the front door.
“La,” grunted Kebir shaking his head and index finger.
They followed the stretch of drive around the side of the house to a small back door. The paint was peeling and a pane was cracked.
 
The garden had once been something else. A place where chic ladies, svelte as their Vogue cigarettes, bronzed themselves, chinking glasses of pastis. Where children squealed across the lawn and where summer lawn parties chattered. Now it was arun with ivy and oleander, oranges heaving at their branches. The grass was long, spike-like, parched.
Somehow, though, there was glory in the great volume of everything. It allowed the garden to enfold itself away from the world over the yellow wall, the world that crawled and spread and clattered.
Casablanca. Real city. Raucous city of fallen elegance. The city that Rali knew, for the first time since the whole mess had started, was where he should be.
 
 “Her room is this way,” said Kebir. The white-painted stairs were yellowing, chipped with time and inattention.
Four doorways left the first floor landing. They walked to the furthest, the narrowest. Kebir opened it onto a slim, creaking staircase that turned back upon itself. Rali followed.
 
“Madame Fiona’s room,” announced Kebir. He turned and was gone.
Rali entered, hesitantly.
“Ahh finally,” she said from the bed. “You turned up.”
“Am I late?” Rali stammered. He’d not expected directness. He was used to the French penchant for jabbing comments but weren’t the British evasive?
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Madame.”
“It’s fine,” she said, her English accent unmistakable. “Sit down. Did you bring a book?”
“Yes.”
She turned to him, as if turning were painful, to make the first eye contact.
Her fine white hair was drawn back symmetrically into a very long plait. She was slender-limbed, frail, with a fine nose and chin. Dressed in white and grey. Something ethereal hung about her like sweet air. Something between one thing and another, one place and another, one person and another.
“Look at that,” she said. “We’re wearing the same colours.”
Rali looked down at his grey joggers and white T shirt. The same colours. His limbs, in contrast, were dark and his hair black, chopped short. The beginnings of a beard smudged his chin. He was tall with substantial shoulders.
“Ah,” she said, eyeing the book. “Amin Maalouf. Leon l’Africain. Another book I haven’t read. If only my eyes hadn’t given up on me.”
“Yes I thought maybe… it was a good book.”
“Something we should read?”
She smiled and within her face there was a softness.
“Remember French isn’t my first language. I might need help.”
And so Rali began. Less faltering than he feared.
 
That year, the holy month of Ramadan fell during summer, and my father rarely left the house before nightfall because the people of Granada were uptight during the daytime, arguments were frequent and their dark moods were a sign of the piety, since only a man who didn’t observe the fast could maintain a smile beneath the fiery sun….”
 
“When is Ramadan this year?” she asked.
“June.”
“Ah. A summer fast.”
“Yes, this year it’s going to be hot and hard.”
“Do you do it?”
“No. I have done. Not anymore. Maybe I should.”
Rali remembered when he’d first cheated during Ramadan, aged 15, smoking joints behind a rock on the far end of the beach.
 “Read on please.”
 
I…circumcised by a barber and baptised by a pope. I have many names and many nationalities but come from nowhere. I’m the son of the road. My country is a caravan. My life is the most unexpected of crossings.
 
Rali read twenty-two pages, barely looking up. He told of the ancient Alhambra, the sharing of brimming goblets, of veiled women, of sultans and djinns. Fiona was quiet. White head upon white pillow. The window was open and the quiet breath of late afternoon swished against the eucalyptus branches that encircled the room. The only room at the top of the house, almost a tower. At each wall there was a window, a small bathroom leading off into a corner.
 
He closed the book and placed it on his lap. She was asleep. He waited. Would she awaken? For a while he listened to the movement of the air outside and of her breathing, steady, rhythmic. It was the closest thing to silence he’d heard in so long. And he felt all the scurrying pieces of his life begin to settle inside his head.
 
After a few minutes, he left.
 
*  *  *
 
When Rali got home, his mother was making a tagine of chicken, lemons and olives. The odour reigned over the house.
“How was it?”
“Good.”
“Did you read?”
“Of course I read.”
“How does she look?”
“Kind of old.”
“What about the book?”
“Dunno. I think she liked it. Said she likes travel books.”
“You’re going back on Wednesday.”
“I know.”
“The only way I can keep you on the straight and narrow.”
“Maybe.”
“And it’ll help her get better.”
Rali shrugged.
“I hope, anyway,” said his mother. “She was always good to me when I worked there.”
 
After lunch, Rali went to his room and gave into the thoughts of Hassna that had threatened reinvasion since he’d chased them away at dawn. It wasn’t the first time he’d traced back to when Hassna had made her entrance into his life.
Hassna from his street, his childhood, his classroom.
Hassna of the thick straight hair, shiny as a panther’s eyes, black as its coat, her own dark eyes sharp as spears. Hassna, the everyday neighbour, yet for so long so invisible. Hassna sobbing in a doorway when a football caught her high forehead, skipping with friends and crawling with marbles. And a few years later chewing gum with the gigglers and whisperers. Until the day that Hassna was grown up, with lipstick and pretty shoes.
Then one morning she passed before him on her way to the high school they attended, stopping and turning.
“Rali – feel like walking with me?”
“I’m not going.”
“Oh come on, don’t fuck up the year again.”
He gave in. Hassna was suddenly worth going to class with, going to school for.
They walked together, from that day, every day, for the rest of the year. And somewhere along the way, charm and captivation ran stitches between them. They began to feel their route was somehow shared, that they could see the same world. Enamourment stole in.
 
*  *  *
 
By Wednesday, the weather had changed to hot, full of illusions. Kebir was waiting at the great metal gate. He smelt of old sweat and bitter coffee. They exchanged few words. The garden had been watered and flowers slung out thick perfume.
“Take the same route,” Kebir said, and started towards the garage door.
Rali stopped and watched him, wondering where his quarters were, if the garage were actually his room. Kebir began turning the handle. But then felt Rali’s eyes and turned.
“Well go on then!” he said irritated.
Rali knew that Kebir had waited before opening the garage door.
 
 
“Ah you came back,” she said as he entered the room. She was sitting up in bed, dressed in pale blue cotton. Clean, tidy, brushed.
“Of course,” Rali said.
They smiled.
“Are we going back to the Alhambra?”
“I guess. I mean…if you’d like.”
“Well, I adore the place.”
“You've been there?”
“Ahh, have I?!” She lay back against a triangular pillow, her grey eyes alight.
“Really?”
“My husband was an archaeologist.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Yes. We adored ancient sites. The places civilisations inhabited. We went all over Africa.”
“That’s lucky,” Rali said.
“A life without travel is a poor one.” She paused. “Anyway, read.”
Rali read.
 
They moved away from annexed Granada to the Sahara. The vast Sahara. A desert crossing with the paternal uncle during the freshness of night amid the cries of jackals and the chants of turbaned Cadis.
 
“I imagine you haven’t been to the Sahara either,” she interrupted.
“No.”
He continued, knowing he was monotone. The text became laborious and his thoughts followed another path.
“Where are you thinking of?”
“I’m sorry Madame?”
“You’re somewhere else.”
He faltered. “I am.”
“Where is that?”
Rali hesitated again.
“I don’t know, Madame.”
“Where you’ve just come from, Rali? I heard you’d been away. From Morocco.”
“I was in Paris, Madame. But I ran away.”
“Why did you do that?”
Rali, generally taciturn, was surprised that he was so close to telling. But he balked.
“I’d rather not say, Madame.”
He read on, telling of the great kings, inspired poets and intrepid travellers unable to reach the destiny they believed was promised to them.
 
“Death,” said the poet, “holds life by both ends.
Old age is no closer to death than infancy.”
 
A shadow passed over their faces as their eyes locked.
“You’re closer to infancy, Rali, you know.”
“Yes,” he said. “But I don’t feel like it.”
“And I’m at the other end,” she said.
They looked at one another for a while.
“I’m tired now, Rali.”
And as she lay down, so tentatively, he saw how weak she was.
“As you wish, Madame. Do you not want me to continue with Leon L’Africain?”
But her eyes were already closed.
 
*  *  *
 
“How is Madame Fiona?” Rali’s mother asked.
She was stuffing lumpy cushions into faux-satin embroidered covers that she washed every month. They had no outside space so the washing was strung from one window to the next along the outside wall of the flat, sagging like a vast petticoat.
“Seems ok,” he replied. “Still can’t work out what’s wrong with her.”
“No, it’s a mystery,” she shook her head and battled with a large stretch of foam. “What are you reading to her?”
“Leon L’African.”
“Never heard of it,” said his mother, who’d never read a book.
 
In his room Rali took out another book. It was the first time he’d allowed himself to look at it since Paris. He turned the pages very slowly. Falling in Love and Loving, by Italian sociologist, Alberoni. He stopped at the parts Hassna had highlighted. The parts he knew by heart.
How Hassna loved reading.
“When I get into a new book it’s like discovering a new fruit,” she’d say.
How she’d chanted the words of Alberoni to him, reiterated them like incantations. He looked at the part she’d extracted for him.
“Falling in love is a process in which the other person, the one whom we have encountered and who has responded to us, overpowers us as an irresistible love object. It is this fact that compels us to rearrange everything in our life and to rethink everything, starting with our past. In truth, it is not a rethinking but a remaking. It is a rebirth.”
 
“Bitch,” Rali thought, reading it through again. “How the fuck did I believe in it?”
 
But he had believed in it, that humid June, exams nearly through, as they lay on a blanket in the wasteland near the old quarry, the endless construction of blocks of flats edging the skyline like ugly lace. Wild lavender grew rapid and tall around them. There was a burnt mattress littered with foil and tubes, remnants of the junkies. It was there that Hassna and Rali fed and concealed their mutual infatuation from everyone, most of all Hassna’s parents and team of boxing-ring brothers. And there that they laid their plans.
“Imagine,” Hassna said, black eyes vivid. “By the time you get there in, say, November…”
“October.”
“Ok, I hope. But imagine November is sure…”
“Yeah…” he said, kissing her forehead. “Carry on.”
“I’ll have a studio or something set up with all we need. Cups, dishes, towels.”
“You’re so sweet.”
“No you are.”
 
Hassna left in July.
“I’ll be with my cousins first. Helping out my aunt with the cleaning company near Clignancourt. Until college starts.”
“Your brothers will find out!”
“Don’t worry,” she’d said. “Leave it to me.”
They organised cyber cafes dates where nobody would trace them. The connection was usually too erratic for video chats but they managed to meet online and sent long emails.
She was so efficient. By the end of the September she had him a work contract fixed up at a Moroccan bakery in Barbes helping with deliveries.
“Lucky I’ve got contacts and that you’ve got that licence,” she said. “Your bike obsession turns out to be useful after all.”
Rali earned cash washing cars and sold hash on the side to speed up procedures. He needed to pay for the plane ticket and visas. It all took, as Hassna had envisaged, about five months.
How the months had trawled.
He read another part of Alberoni that they’d highlighted during that five-month wait.
“A brief separation is enough for us to realise that we receive something special and unmistakable from that person we have fallen in love with, something that we’d always been looking for and that can only come from him or her; if he or she leaves us it will be lost to us again and this time forever.”
 
*  *  *
During the following session, Leon L’African led them to Fes. The exiled Moors within the immaculate medina. The Jews and the Andalusians. Concealed debauchery and public piety. Disease and death and adventure.
“I’ve been to Fes,” he volunteered.
“Ah! That’s a place to visit. Did you take the train? I love that journey.”
“No. I went by motorbike.”
“Do you have a motorbike?”
“I had one. Well… it wasn’t mine,” he stopped for a few seconds. “I stole it.”
“Stole?” Fiona was grinning.
“Yes. I stole it and I took to the road and followed the signs to Fes.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to escape. And I love bikes.”
“Did you get caught?”
“Yes. I didn’t have insurance. The police stopped me.”
“And?”
“Well I managed to get out of it. It was my neighbour’s bike.”
“You stole from your neighbour?”
“Well, we worked it out.”
“I see.”  Then she smiled and said. “Motorbikes are a lot of fun.”
“Madame…” His shoulders dropped and he leaned back against the wall.
“Please… call me Fiona.”
“Alright. Mrs. Fiona. Can I ask you something?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What happened to your husband?”
There was a tender pause in her eyes.
“Cancer. It took him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And it may take me too, Rali.”
He fell cold, wordless.
“It’s alright, Rali. We all have to go. And anyhow, I find it so desperate trying to live without love.”
Fiona watched Rali’s face tipped towards his shoes, two vertical lines forming between his eyebrows.
“Such deep lines for such a young face,” she said. “Tell me where they come from next time.”
 “I think I’ll go now, Mrs. Fiona.”
*  *  *
The previous October, Rali had left Morocco like a miracle. Visa fixed, pockets stuffed with more money than he’d ever held. He’d arrived in Paris in the early hours and Hassna was there. They waited all night for the dawn train to Gare du Nord, huddling on the hostile ground of the platform at Paris Orly; two abandoned kittens.
 “That was so long,” he said to her. “So hard to be apart.”
For ten days, Rali accompanied the Barbes baker through the streets of Paris, learning the ropes, delivering Moroccan pastries to restaurants and caterers. Hassna hadn’t been able to find an affordable studio so they had a room in a shared house. The housemates were mostly immigrants yearning for papers. Sometimes the electricity worked. The kitchen was revolting and the bathroom stank of blocked drains. But they had their room and made it nice.
As he made his way home through the quarter of Barbes, Rali heard his own language. Shady figures collected there, selling drugs and imitation sunglasses. Every day, the atmosphere was tense and menacing, the police aggressive and suspicious. Every day, a Maghrebi was pushed up against the wall by a duo of officers, frisked and sometimes taken away. Rali looked down as he passed, avoiding gazes.
 
*  *  *
 
The next time Rali arrived at Fiona’s bedroom door, a man was there. A doctor? Fiona was sitting on the edge of the bed. He and Fiona spoke in near-whispers and she was nodding with a smile that looked at once knowing and sad. Rali hovered awkwardly, half turning to go.
“It’s alright, Rali,” she said. “You can come in.”
“I don’t want to bother…”
“Come in,” Fiona said.
She and the man finished their conversation. The man took his briefcase and left quietly, nodding at Rali.
“Could you help me to that seat,” Fiona said, her eyes skipping to the large wicker peacock-tail chair in the corner. “I feel like sitting today.”
 
Rali had never touched an older woman. His grandmothers had died together when he was a baby in a car accident. His father had been driving. Rali took Fiona’s frail forearm and she clasped her wan fingers around his wrist. With his other hand, he pushed gently under her arm and she lifted herself, diaphanous, to her feet. They crossed the room to the woven chair.
“We bought this in 1978,” she laughed. “It’s done pretty well!”
“Yes, Madame. It’s nice.”
“Now, Rali, this time let’s do some poetry.”
“Poetry?”
“Yes. Do you mind? I see you brought Leon L’Africain again.”
“I don’t know any poetry.”
“I’ve got something. Go over the mantelpiece. I think it’s there.”
Rali found the book. “Stevie Smith?”
“A favourite of mine. It’s in English I’m afraid. Find In my Dreams.”
“Alright Madame. I’m not sure I’ll be very good at…”
“Just get on with it, Rali. There’s no judgement between you and me.”
He opened the book to page 42. Fiona smiled contentedly while Rali read, with a definite accent, but fluidly all the same.
In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away, 
Whither and why I know not nor do I care. 
And the parting is sweet and the parting over is sweeter, 
And sweetest of all is the night and the rushing air. 

In my dreams they are always waving their hands and saying goodbye, 
And they give me the stirrup cup and I smile as I drink, 
I am glad the journey is set, I am glad I am going, 
I am glad, I am glad, that my friends don't know what I think. 
 
“Aren’t you glad they don’t know what we think, Rali?”
“I suppose so, Madame.”
“They really don’t know,” she added and looked through the eucalyptus branches at the window.
For a while they didn’t speak. Rali looked at the poem again, rereading it to himself. Fiona watched him.
“Do you ever write anything, Rali?”
“Not really. Well, I’ve scribbled a few things but not much.”
“Will you read something of yours next time?”
Rali swallowed.  
The silence was punctured by hooves trotting past and the call of the rag-and-bone man. Fiona’s eyes were still open.
“Don’t be too afraid to leave again,” she said.
*  *  *
November had embarked in Paris with predictable wet and gloom. In the evenings, Hassna and Rali would sit on their single mattress talking and eating unsold food from the bakery – pasties, crepes and so on. It didn’t taste like home but it was free. Occasionally they’d take a walk in the quarter where the streets were fraught with the pain, disaffection and the fear of asylum-seekers, inbetweeners. There was damp in the walls of their room, which they tried ignore by reading Alberoni.
 
This uniqueness of the other person actually increases when we fall in love. And it extends to us as well, in that our desire to be loved is caught up with our sense of being unique and even extraordinary, certainly irreplaceable anyway when we are simply being ourselves.
 
It was this uniqueness, their uniqueness, that made Paris just about bearable.
 
Until Friday 13th November, when gunmen entered a concert venue and shot more than 130 people dead, while others opened fire on cafes and restaurants. Bombers walked into the stadium during a football match. A synchronised, slick attack that rocked Paris into dread.
The city stopped. Shock. Their shared house was suddenly quiet, half-empty. Fear infected the streets. Rali felt nervous eyes follow him.
On Monday, the baker announced he would be closed for a few days. The city was in lockdown, state of emergency. But a week later, the baker said he didn’t need Rali anymore and that’s when Rali cracked. He pleaded. And when that didn’t work he lost control, bellowing and raging. And when that didn’t work, he stepped outside, desolate. He eyed the black-clad, armed officers on the street corner. He eyed the boss, whose back was turned, and he took the bike that wasn’t his and sped off in quiet, deft rage.
 
Hassna was incensed.
“You did what?” she cried.
“I took it,” he sulked.
“Are you insane? Do you want us to go to jail? Be deported?”
“Oh shut up,” he said. “What the hell did you want me to do? That cunt fired me for no reason.”
“So you….took his bike?!”
Hassna looked at Rali with a regard he’d never seen in her before. In all the faces she’d shown him
“Do you know who we are now?” her voice raised several pitches. “Do you know how we’re seen?”
“Oh for god’s sake,” he rolled his eyes and then began mimicking her. “Do you know who we are?”
That was it.
“Is it that I don’t recognise you,” she said. Her words were slow. “Or rather that I didn’t I know you before?”
 “Fuck off and leave me alone.”
 
And that’s what Hassna did. She turned and left, livid. She left and she never came back.
*  *  *
Fiona was in the garden. She sat on a plastic lounger with green cushions. There was a tint to her usually transparent cheeks. Make up. But her face was drawn, her lips thin as threads, her skeleton finely visible through ashen skin. On the small mosaic table beside her was a long glass with pink drink in it, slices of cucumber floating between the two straws.
 
“Rali!” he smiled. “Here you are. For our last session.”
“Is it, Madame?”
“Yes, Rali. And the first time I’ve been in the garden for months.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yes, very.” She took a sip of the rosy drink. “Kebir carried me down this morning. Such a pretty day. And do stop calling me Madame.”
“Yes it is. Sorry.”
“Did you bring me something you’ve written?”
“Yes, Madame. It’s not very good. I was always bad at writing.”
“Read please.”
“I just brought one passage. Quite short.”
Fiona smiled. “That’s fine Rali.”
Rali read his clumsy words, both voice and paper trembling.
She may be cruel to me, making me suffer, but because I love her and I have so much affection for her, I don’t want to make her suffer. I just want her to be happy.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Fiona. It sounds like nonsense.”
“Not at all! Carry on!”
Love shows the differences between what is separate and what is united. Love separates in order to unite. But in the end, in all human relationships, there is dissatisfaction and deception. People may laugh at what I say, but that’s how it is. For me.
 
There was a silence.
 
“Are you ready to leave again now, Rali?”
“I don’t know, Madame. I’m completely lost.”
“That’s why you need to go. You need to travel. But this time, alone.”
She looked up at the eucalyptus branches, their tongue-like leaves stroking the old yellow house, the menthol scent hanging over the garden like soft goosedown.
“I have something for you, but I can’t walk far enough. You’ll have to carry me. Kebir is out.”
And so Rali lifted the tiny woman. A bag of precious bones, brittle as a burnt biscuit.
“Towards the garage,” she said. “Careful.”
He carried her along the dusty, worn driveway. And when her long plait fell over his shoulder and down his back, he realised it wasn’t her real hair.
Rali set Fiona down and she took three tentative steps.
“Open the door, please. It’s not locked. “
Rali twisted the handle and heaved the door open. Fiona steadied herself on his arm and shuffled forwards.
She turned on the light.
“There, look.”
He looked. A motorbike.
That’s for you, Rali.”
“Is that a Triumph Bonneville?” Rali managed to pronounce, words jamming in his throat.
“It is indeed. It’s a T120TT, built in 1967.”
“A 650 cc,” Rali said, awestruck.
“That’s right. My husband and I bought it in 1975. We were in our twenties.”
Rali approached the bike like an explorer in a tomb.
“Get on,” she ordered.
The fuel tank was deep red and the seat black leather with gold logo. He climbed on, bending his body to grip the handlebars. The fenders, exhaust pipe and spokes shone, and in the round, glinting mirrors Fiona’s face beamed.
“It was on that bike that my husband and I rode through North Africa. It’s been along every stony track and sandy path.”
“I can’t take it,” Rali’s throat clasped for air and sound.
“Take it,” she said. “And go.”
They stared at each other for a few moments.
 “You have to, Rali,” said Fiona. He saw her eyes dampen. “And anyway, I have nobody to give it to. We installed a storage compartment. There’s some money in there. Enough to get you by for a few months. Spend it wisely. All the papers have been transferred into your name. It’s yours. I’m trusting you.”
“But where shall I go?”
“That, I don’t know. Maybe you’ll plan or maybe you’ll just follow the wind. Just go. And the further you go, the more you’ll understand. We’ll never know what you’re thinking. But, eventually, you will.”
Rali studied the black-faced speedometer. 130 mph.
“Now give me a ride back to my chair. I want to finish my Pimms.”
Rali helped Fiona onto the passenger seat. Her breakable fingers held at his waist as he fired the bike up and took her along the drive, back to her pink drink.
He set her down, helped her onto the green lounger.
“That was a great ride,” she laughed.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Fiona.”
“Goodbye, Rali.” She smiled, laying back her head and looking up at the eucalyptus leaves sweeping the sky like brushes on a drum.
 
 
 
END

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published five fiction collections, Life in the Temperate Zone, The Decline of Our Neighborhood, The Artist Wears Rough Clothing, Heiberg’s Twitch, and Petites Suites; a book of essays, Professors at Play; two short novels, Losses and The Derangement of Jules Torquemal;  essays, stories, and poems in a variety of scholarly and literary journals, and the novel Zublinka Among Women, awarded the Indie Book Awards first prize for fiction.  A collection of essays, The Posthumous Papers of Sidney Fein, is forthcoming.

​It was hardly surprising that, once he got himself elected mayor, Frank Volante would use his position to make money.  I can already imagine what our cliché-ridden local rag will say with formulaic and disingenuous shock, “he betrayed the voters to enrich himself, his family, and his cronies.”  I’ll be counted among the cronies.  Though it may be futile to dispute the label—it’s a sticky one—I’d like to point out that a crony is a pal of somebody powerful who gets special favors.  What I am is an acquaintance who got shaken down.  The public won’t much trouble with the distinction, lucky for me, the district attorney has.
            My business card reads:
     Bertram Halloran
    Heavy Equipment Broker
I remember my trip to the printers when I filled in the order form for two hundred of these cards, on heavy cream stock.  I had just taken over the business from my dear, generous, gruff, late Uncle Albert. A very young woman put out her little hand for the form.  It must have been her first job; she looked like she ought to be pondering a prom.  Smooth red hair and freckles.  Her cold formality suited her about as well as a dowager’s frock would.  Not a smile, all business.  “Next Tuesday.”
            About the business on my card I had mixed feelings; in fact, it would be fair to say that all my feelings are mixed. I didn’t care for my profession yet I liked the sound and heft of those words on the card.  Heavy is ponderous but also serious, like the cream stock of my business card.  Equipment is comprehensive, open-ended—anything large, physical, and not alive would qualify, from a jackhammer to a tractor-trailer, new, used, rented, or bartered. Broker boasts strong consonants that convey confidence and has associations with substantial people like insurance executives and ship-brokers.  Never mind the whiff of bankruptcy, the ghost of a broke broker, or a broken one.
            Few people think about the complicated and ferociously competitive market I serve.  Tooling down the highway they’ll see the yellow behemoths and whine about the delays rather than cheering the overdo maintenance or hailing the new road.  At least here in the Midwest, what they all notice is the manufacturer’s name on the scrapers, diggers, and front-loaders.  Are they American, Japanese, Korean—or, God help us, Chinese?  The idea that their highways are being smoothed by something made by Komatsu in Ishikawa rather than by dear old Caterpillar in good old Peoria upsets lots of people and infuriates plenty.  I hear about it.  “Why don’t you buy American?”  Pushed to the wall, I silence the angriest with applied pedantry.  “Caterpillar,” I say, “has fifty-one plants in the U.S. but fifty-nine overseas.  As for Komatsu, they operate facilities in Pennsylvania, Georgia, California, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Arizona.  And, for your information, they even make mining equipment in [here I pause] Peoria.  And all of these plants issue paychecks to American citizens.”  My lecturette doesn’t alter anybody’s feelings but it does give me something to say and a minim of satisfaction. At least, I figure, they’ll have to grant I[m a guy who knows his business.
            I was a year behind our future mayor in high school.  Frank Volante may have been an egoist who felt entitled to everything, but there was no denying his charisma.  He could even be sweet, the way those who are never insecure can be with those who always are.  Frank was one of those golden boys—popular, an operator, class president, starting left guard on the football squad.  As for me, I ran cross-country (not very quickly) and went in for long novels, classical music, and especially painting.  Frank’s father owned the city’s premier funeral parlor and was apparently the Rotary Club’s President-for-Life.  Volante’s Funeral Home saw off the city’s elite.  The family lived in a big Victorian house with a wide porch and about five acres of land around it.  My parents ran a sweet shop and we lived on top of it.  At one time or another, I hated Frank or envied him or admired or despised him.  As I said, all my feelings are mixed.
            Paul Parrish was my best friend in high school.  Paul liked books and art too.  I talked him into signing up for cross-country, though he was even less athletic than I was; I told him it would give us plenty of time to chat as we jogged.  We could talk Dostoyevsky and Monet.  Paul was long-limbed but slightly built; he was smart and gay.  The bullying began in kindergarten.
            The school ran an athletes’ bus that left at five-thirty, after all the various teams wound up practice.  Paul always stuck close to me while we waited for the bus, always sat beside me.  He explained it was safer than being alone.  Our friendship earned me some trouble of my own, but nothing more than some guilt-by-association name-calling.  Perhaps this was because I went on enough dates or maybe I just didn’t look as vulnerable as poor, mantis-limbed Paul.
            One dusky November afternoon, a clutch of football players decided it would be amusing to go after my friend, to beat him up. I’d love to be able to report I stood back-to-back with Paul, defended him, even took a whooping alongside him.  But the facts are that I edged away from him and there wasn’t any beating—the first because I was a coward, the second because Frank Volante deftly stopped his teammates.  “Cut it out, you oafs.”  Oafs, a word out of old fairy tales, that’s what he called them; and the brutes grinned as if it were a particular endearment.  It’s not the sort of occasion you can forget and all by itself is enough to account for my mixed feelings about Frank Volante—and myself.
            Frank went to college in the South then did some time in the family business wearing a black suit and a serious face; but everyone knew it wasn’t for him.  He was too full of life, too gregarious and fun-loving and ambitious for the undertaking life.  So, it wasn’t a surprise when he decided to run for City Council then, only two years later, take on our long-time mayor. 
            The Volante campaign followed the tried-and-true strategy of attacking the incumbent’s record, character, and length of time in office.  New Ideas, New Blood was the aggressive slogan.  He made a lot of promises and nearly daily public appearances.  Many featured his wife Elizabeth, who had gone to Smith and looked pretty, superior, and ascetic.  On weekends, Frank Junior came along.  At eight years old he’d already mastered the art of being well-behaved and looking mischievous at the same time, a real chip off the old block.  The only one of Frank’s promises he tried to keep was fixing up the city’s streets and bridges.  That’s where Charlie Zlodic came in.
            Zlodic was to be the contractor—alleged lowest bidder—but his outfit was small-time, not to mention dodgy.  He didn’t have anything like enough heavy equipment, and that’s where I came in.
            As for me, after high school I went to a university with a good fine arts program.  I wanted to be an artist.  You can imagine what my parents thought of that goal and their predictions weren’t wrong.  With my degree and my limited talent, I moved to New York City, found a place in Lower Manhattan large enough to be called a studio apartment but too small for an artist’s studio, too cold in winter, too hot in summer.  I hung out with young artists like myself, drank beer when I could afford it and learned to love bagels.  I met some interesting women; there was a serious relationship but one of us was too neurotic.  It lasted three months then failed.  Then I failed and came home despondent and defeated.  That’s when my good Uncle Albert took me in.  A more honest business card would read:
       Heavy Duty Broker
   Artist Manqué
Is there anything more slippery than the self?
            Uncle Albert taught me the heavy equipment business and that included a lesson about graft.  “Avoid it whenever you can, but don’t act surprised if it comes up.  It’s how a lot of business gets done, especially with politicians.  Sorry, but it’s just the truth.  The smaller the town, the more of it there is.  The big guys usually don’t risk it or need to.  For them, the graft’s already in the bottom lines.  Just be very, very careful.”
            The first meeting I had with Frank and Zlodic went smoothly, no problems.  It was in the mayor’s office.  Frank was all bonhomie.  He said he remembered me from high school, though I’m sure he didn’t.  He probably had somebody look me up; nevertheless, I couldn’t help feeling warm when he said it.  Zlodic I didn’t take to a bit.  He looked thuggish; his mouth reminded me of a straight razor.  A secretary brought us coffee.  Starbucks, no less.  Could I arrange for the necessary stuff on this list?  No problem, I said.  Could I give a price estimate?  Sure.  Smiles all around. Handshakes..
            The second meeting was a week later. I was summoned to a suburban diner.  Frank handled things as smoothly as you can while laying out something crooked as a bentwood rocker.
            “Charlie here’s giving me a private contribution, in consideration of the size of the contract, and, well, we both think you could do the same.  Your contract isn’t exactly tiny either.”
            They explained how it would work:  I’d up my bill to Zlodic by ten percent and he’d up his to the city by fifteen and most of the extra cash, ninety percent, would go to the mayor—for civic improvements, of course, albeit off the books.  We’d get to keep what was left over, five percent each.
            “It’s a win-win-win,” said Zlodic trying to sound jovial.  When we got up from the booth, he slapped my back.  He slapped it hard.
            What to do?  The subtext of that slap on the back wasn’t obscure. I could go to the authorities, to the D.A.’s office, and who knew what they were up to or in on?  It really was a huge contract, a colossal fees for me; but somehow this only made things worse.  I had bad dreams.  In one nightmare I was back in New York, hurling brush after brush of purple and black paint at a canvas when Uncle Albert stepped through the door.  He was wearing an undertaker’s suit.  He glanced over my shoulder, shook his head and said, “It’s crap.”  I was a mess.
            It was the D.A.’s office that came to me.  One of the assistants, Adlai (yes, after Governor Stevenson) Johnson phoned, set up a meeting in the lounge of a Ramada Inn, and told me they’d been watching Charles Zlodic for a long time.  Johnson was a youngish man, very clean-cut and with a clear message.
            “He’s done some serious things, Mr. Halloran.  I Mean violent stuff.”
            They’d also had their eye on the mayor ever since he and the D.A. got into an argument over some campaign funds.
            “I’m telling you up front, Mr. Halloran.  We’re going to indict.  We know about the kickbacks.  We know it wasn’t your idea, Bert. It’s the other two we want.  What is it the French say?  Sauve qui peut?  If you’ll testify it’ll make our job easier.  If you don’t—well. . .”  His look was precisely as hard as Zlodic’s slap on the back.
            I felt sick and had to go to the men’s room.  When I got back, Johnson capped his case for my cooperation.
            “You should know this, Bert.  Zlodic got wind of our investigation.  Yesterday, he came in and laid out the whole scheme.  A three-way.  He said it was your idea, Bert.”
            What if I’d made it in New York?  For that matter, what if I’d taken over the sweet shop, married somebody like that red-headed girl with the freckles?  What if Frank hadn’t rescued Paul that day?  What if.
            I can spill the beans, get immunized and disgraced at once.  I can take my chances in court.  Maybe the expensive lawyer Frank’s no doubt going to hire can get us all off.  I can also take the fall, which, it wouldn’t surprise me to discover, might be that lawyer’s strategy.
            I’ll probably do the right thing—though I can’t claim to know for sure what that is.  I’m already fantasizing about giving up on heavy equipment, selling the bungalow, moving away, starting fresh, maybe trying the other coast this time, taking a shot at fixing this botched and broken canvas.

Don Pedro found himself in a contemplative, melancholy state as the train rolled through the vast, brownish countryside. He had taken the ride once a year for a short 30 years now. He enjoyed its repetitiveness –- the subtler insights one discovers on the 7-hour train in late September. The trip was etched into his brain. He marveled at its consistency, envisioning the beaten-down villas and downtrodden farmers near Aranda de Duero, the straight-shot to Burgos, and finally the color and flair of Vitoria-Gasteiz -- the final sign of the film festival's proximity within the hour. Don Pedro knew every sight and stop on the journey to the San Sebastián, yet he was afraid of everything familiar to him this time around.
The flat, dull Castilian land echoed the machinations of his brain. 2 hours of sleep. 7 hours left. He usually felt that the train's pace provided just enough time to gaze out and appreciate his surroundings; it affectionately fit in with the Spanish lifestyle. Although, at first, he struggled with a 3-hour chat before, during, and after dinner, he eventually understood why the Spanish value time differently. He had accustomed himself to, and now appreciated, the dangling conversations that meander throughout the Spanish lifestyle. Today his impatience ran up his spine.
     He didn’t feel like sleeping. Aside from a yabbering elderly couple scouring around for seats, the car was scattered with silence. The British wife could hardly get a few words out in her harsh cockney accent before Don Pedro's fluent English met her broken Spanish. He listened, oddly carefully, to the two bicker-backer over the window seat. Soon enough he sat in an uncomfortably restless silence.
     He stared down the slim, black bar that vertically divided his window's quadrant. Its existence was meaningless. It cut up the window, obscured Don Pedro’s view, and provided no structural integrity; he enjoyed it. He discovered cooperative game theory between this 2-foot bar, the tannish telephone poles of the Spanish countryside, and the jagged “kak” noise his car made every few seconds against the rails. As the window bolted on at 75 km/hour, Don Pedro’s mind played its own game. He examined if, at the exact moment the train “kakked” against the rails, his little bar could perfectly obscure a telephone pole in perfect synchronicity. A tad short of the pole. Tad long. Way long. Short. Short. Long. Upon perfection, he stared out without looking at anything, with a slight smirk curving up the right side of his face. With no prior reasoning, rationale, thought, or planning, nonsensical beauty was created purely within the confines of his mind. He pondered over the purpose of a purposeless black bar, amused by the miniscule, serendipitous boundary between pure reason and absurdity.
     “Ticket, please.”
     The ticket inspector was a balding, Spanish man in his 50’s, who appeared as if he had meant to leave his job decades past. He habitually lumbered through the aisles. Like clockwork, he would walk 3 steps, swivel his head to the right, and lay out his right hand without the slightest eye contact. After stamping the right side, he would automatically shuffle his left foot around and lay out his left hand. He did this 1,366 times in one day, and had little interest in the slightest alteration.
     Despite the complete lack of personable engagement between both parties, the inspector’s visit put an end to Don Pedro’s little game. He accepted that one cannot stare at a window bar while maintaining sanity for seven hours, and so he did little more than stare vacantly at the seat in front of him. He felt sunken. His head raced as time slowed. His heart clamped inward. His shoulders locked up against his spine, and suddenly a shudder sprinted up his course, tightened back. His breathing was now audible across the aisle, his eyes widening with a manic, paced anxiety. He dashed off as he tried to run away from his head. He ripped the bathroom stall’s lock across the door, plunged into his seat, and cripplingly withered over himself. Why? Why did he have to be on this train in this state? His lifelong conversations, his decisions, his thoughts -- they had all put him here right now. His thoughts felt like trains speeding along in every direction until they all violently smashed into one another as a flurry of tightened, anxious tears burst out.
He threw water on his face, hurriedly, trying to break out of his situation. He stared, firmly, with a twisted, intense yet forlorn gaze into the mirror. As time continued to unwind, he watched his hands slowly reduce their quiver. His shoulders loosened up, his throat breathed through a full gust of air, and as the harsh stare of his big, brown eyes reduced to a gaze, he felt attached to himself once again. Consciously, he placed his hand on the door handle, exited, and walked back to his seat. After a few seconds of a tense reflection, he laid his head against the glass window.  The rough, functional quasi-pillow reflected his condition all too well.
      He wrestled himself up as the train pulled into its next station, and glanced at the master clock that towered over the train station. It was 11:48.
                                                                   ***
     That luscious, light curl of brownish-blonde hair that danced across the right side of her forehead flashed into his mind; it fell onto his shoulder as it moved, ever so slightly, back-and-forth to Elton John crooning that “this one’s for you” as the two danced as one under the Chicago Skyline. He was thrown onto the dark, glimmering blue of Lake Michigan – the Navy Pier. The entire scene seemed to be a wedding gift from the city itself, perhaps a last farewell for Peter. The two stared out onto that water the whole night, joyously ignorant of any life direction, until it turned every shade of blue. She had been in the United States for 5 months. He knew nothing else.
     “Peter?”
     She broke the aura of the evening, pondering the inconceivable, inevitable idea of an entire life together.
     “Hm?”
     “It’s 11:48. Where will we be at 11:48 in 5 years from now?”
    Tension rode through the tone of the newlywed’s words. A moment passed, as the young man locked his eyes into the water.
    “Well –- I suppose -- when that moment comes, I’ll probably say... ‘Oh wow! Look! It’s 11:48! Remember that question you asked on our honeymoon? Well we made it!’”
     He reveled in his self-aware ignorance, and she couldn’t help but smile and embrace the crazy, happy-go-lucky kid on that twilight night.   
      As the train pulled away from the station, Don Pedro asked himself why he had not seen Lake Michigan glimmer, shine, or smile for 41 years now.
                                                                   *** 
     His head had no conception of night or day. The car was rather full as he brought himself back into his immediate surroundings. Across the aisle, two younger Madrileñan girls, of about eight and ten, glowed with excitement while they battered their parents with questions. Why did the train smell funny? Did grandma have any presents for them? Which hotel are they staying at? Will grandma take them to the zoo this time? How much longer on the train? Why does it keep stopping? The girls and their parents, however, were not functioning at the same pace. As the mother closed her eyes for a half-nap, the father acceptingly turned to engage his daughters, diving into a fierce, joyful explanation of a tiger’s claws that gleefully terrified the children.
     Don Pedro’s ears perked as he picked up English a few rows behind him.
     “It lets you break out of the cycle, you know?”, said a young, rebellious voice that reminded Don Pedro of his fellow creative writing students during his DePaul years.
     Another deeper, calmer voice chimed in, speaking in a slow, reactionary manner.
     “We’ll always be in the cycle. It helps you recognize your place in the world – understand how you fit into everything that’s out there. That’s not breaking out. That’s stepping back.”
     The first voice took a purposeful, half-second pause. He spoke with a rebellious fervor.
     “We left the US for a bit because of the xenophobic, racist sexist who holds our highest office -- the vacantly-minded narcissist who ensures that our country is fucked in every imaginable way, while simultaneously guaranteeing that everyone on this train thinks we want ‘America First’ branded onto our foreheads. Yeah?”
     He continued, with a newfound motivation and momentum.
     “Exactly. We broke out. We came out here for classes for a few months. We ignored -- rejected -- everything inside our country. Acid does the same thing for the individual. It lets you realize how to pave the right way when it didn’t exist before. Escape everything around you to find what’s real.”
     “You’re escaping the real,” a third friend interrupted. He spoke with a calm assurance. “You never get out of it. You just learn to accept what’s out there.”
As Don Pedro looked back over at the sleeping children, he suddenly realized he’d been eavesdropping for the last 30 minutes. Good – the more distractions the better.
     When he gazed back out the window, a brown hare scattered across the barren plains.
                                                                    ***
     What was its name? Doña Maria convinced him to buy it after they bought their two-room apartment in Malasaña. Whenever it twiggled its jet black ears, she would giggle, turn to her husband with her serene, carefree smile. Aside from that rigid white splotch that sprinted up its forehead, black fur ran down its face and camouflaged its eyes. Its color ensured he always forgot the furball existed until illuminating the room. It was quite an odd rabbit. Many nights, after the two got home from an exhibition, gallery, or shoot in the Cascorro Factory, they would sit down for a crammed, candlelit dinner.
    They were living inside madness – la movida madrileña. Post-Franco, the young couple lived, worked, and breathed the artistic chaos that rumbled out of their neighborhood, which had never heard the words “status quo”. Their films were at the center of a skirting dash to get out everything that had been pushed deep down during El Generalisimo’s rule – sexuality, expression, and any drug you could smoke, shoot, snort or pop. It was a beautifully absurd time. The creators, the thinkers, and the doers all worked together whenever they pleased, and for the first time in a long time, everyone in Malsaña knew they were in the good old days.
    Whenever they sat down at their 4'x4' oak table that they received from the coffee shop owner down the block who never took off his bike helmet, the cage behind them would scrim, skram, and skirt; the rabbit would slash its paws and claws against the locked-door of the wire mesh cage. It would clash its teeth on the bars -- gnawing as if it had never thought of chewing its way out before this very instant. Every night, for the length of a full dinner between the young couple, it would chew past the turn of each hour. The next day it would do exactly the same thing. Don Pedro could never tell whether the rabbit forgot yesterday's attempts or whether it practiced a blind, respectful optimism.
    The day it stopped hit him like a brick. Maria had just finished on the set of Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?, and she was working through a structure for her new screenplay. They both knew it would get the truth out about the HIV epidemic, but neither of them had any idea how. Don Pedro was picking up freelance writing whenever it came to him, but Madrid's business community didn't comprehend the merit of hiring an audiovisual essayist for press releases and grant writing. During the day, he would sit, alone, in his apartment, skimming through the papers for any paragraph that would get him a few Euros. He sometimes felt that the magic dust that clouded his youth was fading.
    She came home late. As the lights flickered, frustration from a long day on set stomped through her boots. In a slow, surreal, flashing moment, they sat down and looked across the table at the person they found themselves with at 27. She brought back a margherita pizza from "Ay Mi Madre," so the two sat down in a dawdling apartment, occasionally interrupted by the opening and shuffling of the cardboard box.
    "Did you find anything today?" Her voice uncomfortably trudged along.
    "Sent an inquiry in."
   A silence sat over the room, as the two, simultaneously, existentially visited the condition of their life.
   She glanced up at the round clock that ran a minute early.
   "Peter."
   "Hm?"
   "Do you know what time it is on that clock?"
   He looked up at the clock that read 11:47. A smile at the clock moved to Maria's glowing face -- a visual reminder that gratefulness is often forgotten.
    He slowed time down. Something was off. His ears, suddenly surprised by the lack of sound from the corner of the room, drifted his focus over to their restless pet. It sat there -- in a seemingly pleasant silence. It acted as if, at a time when questions about the past, present, and future were spinning through Don Pedro's head in a manic discord, every atom in the universe had decided to unify to create this tranquil moment. The rabbit did nothing else but sit there -- accepting the present in everything that it was.
    "Maria. I love you."
                                                                        ***
The brakes screeched –- Vitoria-Gasteiz –- 3 hours left. As the train began to board, a spacy, gawky man kissed a loved one a short goodbye as she disappeared into another car. He was wearing a mauve and black button-down with floral patterns sailing out and through one another in every which way -- a coke-fueled fossil of the 80’s that belonged on Hunter S. Thompson. He wore Lennon shades that didn’t exactly fit his stretched face, yet somehow they combined with the frazzled, uncombed black hair to form a strange, post-modern creative aura. After slogging his eyeballs over the numbers and letters in the aisle, he slid into the open seat to Don Pedro's left.
     A tad more energetic, Don Pedro brought out his copy of The Road to Wigan Pier. As he began to ponder the American paradox between those who need socialism and those who approve of socialism, he drifted off with Orwell just barely within the grasp of his sliding, drowsy hand.
     “Excuse me?”
     Orwell dropped to the floor as Don Pedro startled his head up to the right. He looked over the man's composure and complexity for a few brief moments.
     “Yes?”
     He answered sternly; stress, frustration, and emptiness piled on as he re-engaged himself.
     “I apologize –- but -- I could not help but to notice your readings. You speak English, eh, completely, yes?”
     “Yes.”
     An .mp4 video was paused on the man’s laptop.
     “Is the phrase, eh, to ‘spill the beans’, something you say ... normally?”
     Don Pedro eyed the man's dark, greenish-brown pupils.
     “Spill the beans?”
     The man paused, and then spoke with more energy.
     “You see, to ‘spill the beans’, it is the subtitle for the film. Is this a normal, ah, expression for the English speaker?”
     Don Pedro shifted to the .mp4.
     “Do you ... translate films for a living?”
     The quixotic figure hunched his brow. He shifted his weight around, as if simply uncomfortable with answering questions, and reluctantly spoke.
     “No, no. I am, the director. I question how the subtitle is appropriate for the film.”
     Don Pedro focused on the man.
     “Ah - yes, yes, it is said often. Are – are you going to San Sebastián?”
     The Director twitched his eyes straight back to Don Pedro; his mind had just remembered it was still in conversation.
     “Yes, yes I am. And you are to – Bilbao?”
     “San Sebastián.”
     “Ah. Well. The film, it shows tonight and tomorrow. I will be there for answer, a few questions tomorrow, if you would like.”
     “Unfortunately I won’t be watching any films.”
     “You are visiting family?"
     “No.”
     A silence passed while the conversation carried on.
     “I'm introducing a film.”
     The director perked up, examining Don Pedro’s melancholy face with his own squirrely head.
     “Ah! It surprises me we have not met. Which is your film?”
     Don Pedro stared straight at the black bar.
     “It is not my film. It is my wife’s – Maria Visgarret.”
     The Director locked his eyes down.
     “I – I – I apologi –
     “It's ok. You couldn't have known."
     “No no no, truly I apologize. I – the chance of a person such as, ehm, myself, starting this conversation – I cannot -“
     Don Pedro sat on the Director’s words, and the Director swallowed them.
     “Thank you.”
     “I’m sorry?”
     “Thank you. You’ve helped me more than you could ever know.”
     As the heavy, bulky train doors swung open, Don Pedro felt present. He shook the man's hand and trotted off, insurmountably content with everything he would never understand.
                                                                        END
 

​One
I am running, escaping from the horror that I have left behind. There is a monster in my house, a monster covered in blood, with fangs and claws ready to bite and to kill. I run through the empty suburban streets not daring to look around, or to stop, and now behind me I can hear his footsteps, purposeful and unrelenting.
 
I wake to the stench of piss; mine or somebody else’s? For a moment I am dazed and unsure who I am. Slowly I look about me; there are two sleeping bodies close by, both covered in blankets. I think for a moment and start to come round and leave my nightmare behind. I realise that I am Samuel, although that name doesn’t feel right, but that is what people call me, and that I am in the underground car park where I live.
 
My stomach feels empty, but then it always does, even when I have something to eat I know that I will be hungry again soon. It is always there at the back of everything else; when I am talking to people, walking, begging I am always aware how hungry I am. I stir and start to realise how cold I am, and I rub my arms and legs vigorously under my blankets, trying to rub some sense into me.
 
Gripper stirs close by me and mutters to himself briefly, whilst slightly further away I can hear Johno snoring.  As usual Rosa is up and gone by this time, presumably she is at her usual spot near Covent Garden begging, stealing or talking to her friends.  I feel a little warmer now and I push off the blankets and shake them before folding them up and leaving them with the rest of my pitifully few belongings in a dark corner, and going out to face a new day.
 
The car park has been my home for, well since I can remember which is not long actually; it looks and sounds like a cave, it is grey and green and every sound that we make echoes strangely. Everywhere there is the smell of petrol and rubber whilst in our dark corner this is merged with the odour of sweat and sick. Even this early in the morning there are a few cars above us, but none will venture down here until later when the rest of the car park is full. I do not remember even how I found this place; one morning I awoke and realised that I had been here awhile and I have gradually come to accept this place as my home.
 
Rosa and Johno have been here the longest, though both are vague as to how long that is, but then time does not mean much when you are on the streets. Recently Gripper joined us, an older man who I am very fearful for, he is so vulnerable and frail and spends much of his time drinking any form of alcohol that he can get his hands on.  I am sure that he will die soon, and I hope that I do not wake to find him stiff, perhaps choked on his own vomit. Occasionally I see these, my companions when I am out and about in London, particularly Rosa and then we talk, but most days I only see them late at night when we chat between snatches of sleep.
 
Before I set out I make sure I have my book with me, tucked into the pocket of my big army coat that someone gave to me. The book is John Betjeman’s collected poems, a hardback edition which I try to keep as neat as possible and is the most precious thing that I own. I don’t know why I have it, but it has always been with me, and I seem to know the poems off by heart so that when I start to read one it as if I am reciting something from memory. The poems conjure up a different world; churches and guilt, wealth and Oxford, but somehow this consoles me, as if there is something better out there just waiting for me.
 
It is cold and I just keep walking. Once out on the street and away from the car park I try not to retrace my previous journeys, that would be foolish, and London is a large city and there are plenty of new places to go and to beg. My shoes are the worst thing; they look quite chic, well they did once, but they are now old and very uncomfortable so that I stumble along in agony, an agony almost as strong as my hunger. The shoes offer no protection when I walk through puddles or in the mud, so that when I get back at night my socks are wet and stained with dirt and blood.
 
I like to walk by the Thames and look out along the river, imagining what is out there. I want to leave London, leave England, get on a boat, and travel to some distant country but I just don’t know how I could do this. Gripper lived abroad, he told me of his travels in the Middle East but when I asked him how he got there he confesses not to remembering. I imagine guiding a small boat down a river, a boat with a large white sail, the sun hot and yellow, and there in the distance are fishermen hauling in fish, absorbed in their work. I am on my own and free so that if anyone finds me I can sail away to a harbour, safe.
 
I find a spot and for a few hours try to beg, but I get no money, not even food. Later I see an older woman wearing jeans and a duffel coat, she reminds me of someone, although I am not sure who, but I feel compelled to follow her, and anyway it is something to do. My mind is full of these half-remembered pictures which send me off here and there trying to capture what it is that I have forgotten. She walks fast and determinedly perhaps sensing that she is being followed, but I stay a couple of paces behind her just wanting a glance of her face which might help me to discover something. She walks into a small café, and as I have no money I wait close by, sitting on a damp bench.
 
When I come to myself it is getting dark and the café is closed; the woman must have left some time ago. So often I realise I have been in a trance and that hours have gone by; this is dangerous, I could be picked up and taken way, unresisting. I find a small park and sit on another damp bench. I have not eaten all day and so after awhile I go to a shelter I know where they give you food and don’t ask questions.
 
I sit on my mattress unable to sleep. Johno has found lots of newspapers and earlier he and Rosa sat reading them. I grab a pile and start to look through them. Sometimes when I am looking through old newspapers I see something, there is a flash and my mind briefly works before closing down again. This time I see a photograph of a woman and a boy, he looks like me, or as I would have looked three or four years ago. He has a happy smile and looks well-cared for. I start to feel upset and shut the newspaper without reading any of it, and then I put it on top of my damp mattress and soon I fall asleep.
 
I hear moaning and there is something in my hand that I cannot let go of. I feel fear inside me, there is somebody that I am frightened of and I need to hide from him. There is blood on me and I start to cry. I wake up feeling wet, at first I think it is the damp, but then I realise that I have wet myself. I take off my trousers and pants and hang them to dry and then shivering I cover myself in my blanket and watch the shadows.
 
There is a grey car that somebody has left overnight, I look at it and think of getting in it and driving. But I am not sure that I can drive. Gripper says that he can drive, that he used to have a fancy car, and for a moment I have a vision of us driving off somewhere, beers in our hands and music playing, but I doubt Gripper could drive anywhere now, that he could not even start a car.
 
Rosa gets up, slowly and quietly and disengages herself from Johno. They are lovers although they barely talk to each other. She told me that she was once a housewife and had a fancy house and a child, but things went wrong and in the end she just left. Her accent is Scottish, but she won’t tell me where she is from, or why she left. Johnno looks after her, he used to be in the army and nobody would mess with him. I hope that if they came for me one night that he would protect me too, but I don’t think that he would. You have to be selfish in this world, and to look the other way.
 
Rosa feels my eyes on her and she gives me a smile. There is still something pretty about her even though she is skinny and unkempt. I can imagine her wearing expensive clothes and a stylish haircut, she would be one of the people you see on the street who won’t give you any money because they think you will spend it on drink. There is only a small space between normal and us, and it is so easy to go from one to the other, well in the downward direction. Rosa turns her back on me as she alters her clothing and then I hear her eating something, chocolate probably. She is a good thief and it is chocolate that she likes to steal. She will leave some for Johnno, by the time that he eats it she will be long gone.
 
“Kind o’er the kinderbank leans my Myfanway,/ White o’er the play-pen the sheen of her dress,/ Fresh from the bathroom and soft in the nursery/ Soap-scented fingers I long to caress.”
 
I found some money, I don’t remember how. I just became aware that it was in my pocket solid and damp, so I went to a McDonald’s and bought a burger and a milkshake, I ate it so quickly that I had no time to taste it, but for a moment I felt warm inside and satisfied. Suddenly there is a man sitting next to me wearing a uniform.
“Hello friend” he says, “you look hungry.”
I nod, I distrust all people but people in uniforms most of all. He looks elderly and he is not a policeman. He disappears for a few moments and then returns with two packets of fries and pushes one over to me. I resist for a few moments then start eating.
 
“Have you anywhere to sleep?”
I nod.
“Where?” I just look at him.
“I am sorted” I tell him at last. I must smell terribly, after all I wet my trousers (was it last night?) and have I been out in the rain all day so that I am very damp. I have been thrown out of libraries and another McDonald’s because of the way I smell, although the young woman who threw me out of the MacDonald’s did give me some more food and as she did so, kissed me on the cheek.
“You look lost” the man tells me.
“I am lost. I don’t know who I am. I have nightmares.” Then to change the subject I show him my book of poems.
“John Betjeman” he smiles approvingly and then he recites the lines about Joan Hunter Dunn playing tennis in the noonday sun.
 
“Come with me.” The man tells me. “I won’t hurt you and I will try to help you”, his eyes are grey and they look kind. I notice that he looks tired and it might for that reason I say yes. Should I go back to the car park? But the only thing I need are my clothes which I am wearing and my book. I should say goodbye to Rosa and the two men, but who knows what time they will be back. I finish off the fries although I am feeling sick, and then I set off with this man who I don’t know, but who for some reason I trust.
 
 
Two
It is the singing that I like best in chapel on Sundays. Many of the hymns I recognise: “Amazing Grace”, “Our God reigns”, “Make me a channel of your peace”, although I am not sure where from, perhaps I used to go to church in my previous life. I sing along gustily, singing a hymn of thanks to God, but also to the Salvation Army and to Phil who rescued me and who has given me hope.
 
I had seen members of the Salvation Army on occasion when I was on the streets, or half-noticed them, part of the background to my struggles to survive, but I had not spoken to them as they made me scared.  Phil says that perhaps I was not ready yet and that God had put him in the right place when I was. When I went back to the chapel with Phil that night I was shaking, wondering whether I should run back to the car park, to my friends. I could have easily, but something kept me walking.
 
They found me an older lady to live with, Betty Gray and then to my surprise they found me a job working in a Tesco. I could not remember my name, I was just known as Sam, but Phil sorted it out; got me a National Insurance number and a surname. I even got a bank account. I wondered who the real Samuel Phoenix was, perhaps one day he would come to collect my identity and money, but for the moment that was me.
 
The job was not difficult, going through the frozen food section and deciding what needed replenishing, and then down into the basement and into the big cavernous freezers and loading boxes of food onto a big trolley and bringing them up. At first I worked with a lady called Wendy, a little younger than me and very abrasive, but once they realised I was doing my job well and was honest they trusted me to work on my own. The only problem was my lips, the cold in the freezer made them peel, but I did not mind and one of my colleagues gave me a stick of lip salve which helped.
 
“I did wonder if you would come back that first day.” My manager Liz told me during my first supervision, “many of you brought by the Sally Army don’t.” She sniffed slightly, she smelt of mint and was pretty although rather skinny for my taste. “But you have done well, you don’t talk much, but that doesn’t matter. Continue to work hard and you could certainly get promoted. Well done Sam.”
 
I do not really want promotion, I had only been there a few months and already I was getting a little bored. Yes I am proud that I have maintained this job, that I get there on time, have never phoned in sick, that the other staff regard me as one of themselves, but I miss the excitement of the streets, and I feel a little trapped, that there is no way to escape. But this is a start and somewhere I feel safe. But then it might all come crashing down; some days I walk in and expect them to ask who I am, what am I doing in the staff area and then to telephone the police, whilst the staff look at me uncomprehendingly.
 
In the staff room they question me, so I put down my book of poetry and try to respond without giving the game away that I am not one of them.
“What football team do you support?”
“Forest” I reply surprisingly myself, who are they? Forest? But it seems to pass muster.
“Are you from Nottingham then?”
I shake my head, “I just like them.”
Then there follows a conversation about someone called Brian Clough who I gather is their manager and Teddy Sheringham who plays for them. I just nod and ask questions in turn so that my ignorance lies hidden. Some of the lads tease me in a good-natured way if Forest, my team, have done badly, and I try to follow their results so I can join in these conversations. Perhaps when they play one of the London teams I will go and watch them, it would be something to tell the lads at work.
 
I dream of a woman, an older woman with thick black hair and glasses. She is holding me, and I can feel her large breasts against me. “Andrew” she calls, “Andrew”, but that is not my name, and I am feeling smothered and scared. I wake up my heart is beating fast, and I am hot. I have wet myself again. I slowly get up, unusually I have remembered where I am. I hope that I have not woken up Betty with my nightmare.
 
Betty is a kind woman and one who does not talk much. We often watch television together barely speaking, and she never asks me anything more personal than what I fancy for dinner or whether I am warm enough. I am very grateful for this undemanding love but then I suspect that she has done this before and knows what people like me want and need. She has two sons, both of whom visit most weeks and treat me with respect and kindness when we bump into each other.
 
I gather up my sheets and pyjamas and as quietly as I can I walk down the stairs and put them in the washing machine. The house smells of air freshener and pot pourri; I hope that the smell of urine and sweat does not spoil things. It is three o’clock in the morning and I stay up reading some John Betjeman.
“Now with the bells through the apple bloom,/ Sunday-ly sounding/ And the prayers of the nuns in their chapel gloom/ Us all surrounding.”
Later I put on the washing and then have a shower. I eat some toast and go to work, just another man in the South London suburbs on his way to earn his crust.
 
“Do you want us to get in touch with your parents?”
Phil is in his office sitting in front of an overloaded desk, he looks as he usually does, tired as if almost overwhelmed with all the misery that he sees around him.
“No” I tell him. When I think of parents nothing comes up. Are they somewhere in Nottingham? But I have no desire to see them. I shiver slightly and blackness swoops down upon me.
“It is okay” says Phil, “don’t cry.” And he finds me a cup of tea, strong and black.
 
There is a service every Sunday morning in the chapel. It is quite a distance from where Betty lives but I don’t mind the walk. Different people from the Salvation Army lead the service, quite often it is Phil, and when he preaches he speaks quietly as if it is just you and him in the chapel. This morning the windows are open which is fortunate because many of the people smell, a few months ago I would not have noticed it, but now with my respectability has come fastidiousness and whilst I often talk to those being helped who have come in, swap tales and laugh at their jokes, I do not feel the same as them, I have become something better and I pity these people.
 
“You seem happy.” Phil says to me after the service, he had not lead today, but even so he had been surrounded by people afterwards, but he had looked at me, so I knew that he wanted me to wait for him.
I shrug, but at the moment I do feel happy, I have eaten and feel full and more importantly I know that I will eat again once I get home and this evening and the next day and so on.
“Yes, and I am very grateful.”
“You don’t have to be grateful, I am grateful to you for letting us help. I still remember you in that MacDonald’s so unhappy.” He smiled in fond remembrance. “Do you still have those nightmares?”
I nod, although they are less scary on a Sunday morning than when I face them at night and wake up wet and crying.
 
“Have you tried prayer?” he asks. The room feels warm despite the window being open and it is small or seems that way because of all the books, boxes and other junk that litter it. I can smell Phil, a whiff of aftershave or perhaps it is holiness.
“I try, sometimes when I am in bed at night, I try and I read that bible you gave me but I feel as if there is something blocking me.”
“God’s grace is open to all” Phil tells me, “no matter what you have done.”
There is a chair next to me and Phil comes over sits in it and bows his head.
“Please pray with me.”
 
I bow my head as Phil speaks.
“Dear father, please help this our brother Sam. We thank you that he is safe now and with people who care for him. Please show him the way to you in your infinite mercy. Show him that whatever he has done that your arms are open just waiting to receive him into your embrace.”
Phil then recited the Lord’s Prayer and after he had done he squeezed my shoulder.
“Thank you” I said, and I was grateful to him, grateful for trying, but there were no waiting arms for me. I felt that I was the same person that I had done a few moments before; I did not feel bliss or a sense of grace and love, nothing at all. I walked out of the chapel and said goodbye to a few people. Curiously I felt let down by Phil, perhaps I had discovered that he was human, that he could not help me with everything, that he could not save my soul.
 
I am putting items in the freezers at Tesco, bags of chips which we are always running short of. It is hot and I long to be outside going for a run on Clapham Common or maybe just along the streets. Still an hour to go, but I am happy. The job is quite physical which I like and I had a rather flirty chat with Marie a girl who works in the bakery. Perhaps I should ask her out somewhere, although I am not sure what Betty would say if I brought a girl back.
 
“Excuse me”, the problem with this job is that you are always being interrupted by members of the public asking where something or other is. There is a young man looking at me, well-groomed with smart jeans and a shirt with an understated flowery design.
“Do you know where the lentils are?” he asks, and then he does a double take, “its Andrew isn’t it? What are you doing in London?”
I look at him, not knowing what to say. Do I know him? I don’t think so, but so much is a blank. He continues to look at me, and suddenly his look changes, and he looks very scared indeed.
“It is okay mate, it can’t be…. Someone I used to know.” He hurries off and out of the shop.
 
I dream that I am going home, to a house with red bricks and a small garden at the front. I am glad to be there, I have been away for such a long time. The door is ajar and I push it open. I feel scared as I look in the dining room which is laid for dinner and the downstairs toilet. I know there is something in the kitchen so I go upstairs to avoid it, I look at my bedroom with rows of books including my John Betjeman poems. There is a room next to mine, I open the door, it is dark and there is a creature in there, and I am overwhelmed with terror. I wake up and rush to the toilet and am sick and sick again, and then I howl. The bathroom window is open, and through it I can see the stars, and I continue to howl, not knowing why I am doing it or why I feel so desperate.
 
 
Three
It is similar to being on the streets; always looking, being aware, noticing anything that is not right. But now I have a rifle and armour and I am on the side of law and order, well that is the theory, but I am not sure that I feel any safer.
 
I went into the army recruiting office one day, just a whim really. I did not tell anyone, not anybody at Tesco and not even Phil, especially not Phil. They accepted me and I left Phil a note and was gone. I needed to leave, meeting that bloke in Tesco had scared me, I was getting too comfortable, and when you get comfortable then you are vulnerable, and I felt that I had got all I needed from the Salvation Army.
 
Yes I did miss Betty and I still think of Phil on occasion, but I have learned to let go of people and to forget them. Once I left the streets I rarely though of Rosa and the other two, never went to try to find them, they were the past and now so is Phil and his friends, no doubt he is helping somebody else find their way in life and has forgotten me.
 
Within a few months I was fully trained and then I was posted here to Northern Ireland. I became friends with my fellow soldiers; they were a tough lot, did not give much away, but we were loyal to each other and when large numbers of the population hate you and want to kill you they are precisely who you want on your side. I do not tell them much about myself, but I have constructed a personality of sorts which I can hide behind.
 
For a long time after I joined the army my dreams started to fade. I was so tired with all the training that perhaps I forgot them as soon as I was awake. I would stagger onto my bunk at night, try to read a poem and next moment I would be being woken up the morning light glaring into our dormitory, and some jumped-up officer shouting at us. I loved tiring myself out and learning how to survive. Only once after we did hand-to-hand fighting did I dream; I dreamed I was fighting, punching out at someone who refused to surrender, and then there was that name being called “Andrew, Andrew”. Fortunately we changed our own bed linen so nobody knew what had happened.
 
And now we are in Belfast, in Ulster marching the streets or driving in our armoured vehicles, watching the people on either side of us, knowing that someone could be planning to kill us; fire a gun, toss a bomb. I do not want my last moments to be lying on the ground surrounded by jeering mobs who can think of nothing better than kicking and spitting at a dying English soldier. I am scared much of the time, but then fear can be healthy.
 
I see a woman as we drive along; she is walking slowly towards us and as we get closer she catches my eye. She looks about forty; it is October and cold and she is wearing a green army coat as if mocking our uniform. I cannot read her expression but as I continue to look at her she raises her hand and like a child playing pretends to shoot me, I feel like joining in the game and returning her fire with my finger, or my rifle….   We drive past her and I continue to scan the streets, but the woman stays in my bed, and I hope that I will see her again, although I am not if I would love her or kill her.
 
“Had I kissed and drawn you to me,/ Had you yielded warm for cold,/ What a power had pounded through me/ As I stroked your streaming gold!”
 
There is a house I recognise in front of me and I am walking towards it. As I go through the door there is that same woman I saw today, she is making a cup of tea, and she smiles at me as nervously I sit down, and there is someone else there, but I cannot seem them properly.
“Is it poisoned?” I ask her, and then I throw it at her, the cup crashes to the floor, “stop trying to kill me,” I shout.
I hear her weep and walk up to my room and lie on my bed. Then I look out of the window but there is just blackness and suddenly I realise that everything around me is black, that I cannot see anything. I start to scream.
 
We are told to go to a house, it is in one of the Catholic areas of the cities; the house is part of a terrace and there is graffiti on it; “IRA”, “informers” and other words that I cannot read. I am with Matt, an older man.
“What are we doing here?” I ask feeling nervous. There are dribs of people about and most of them are looking at us hostile and mocking. Angel and Simon are close behind us, but I do not feel safe. We walk in, the door is open and there are members of the RUC there.
“Sorry” one of them says, “it isn’t nice but we need back-up”.
 
I can smell blood. The hallway is narrow and dark and the constable leads us to the back of the house, the floor is covered in muddy footprints and I feel guilty about adding to them. We walk into the dining room and in front of us there are four people sat round a table with something red on their clothes. It is a mother, father and two boys, the two boys and their father’s heads are bowed as if in prayer, but the mother is looking straight at me, her eyes brown and sightless.
 
I was on day release from the unit; my dreams had stopped and when my mum and my brother Danny had visited I had been calm and polite.
“Andrew if you start to worry, just ring me” my consultant said as he drove me to my home on the outskirts of Nottingham. There was the house from my dreams, I walked towards it and opened the door, my consultant watched me step in and hug my mother, and then I heard him drive away, he was going to pick me up that evening.
 
I followed my mother into the kitchen and there was Danny, we sat around the kitchen table just a normal family having tea.  Danny was scared, I could tell and so was my mother but less so. We drank tea and ate Battenberg cake, my favourite. The kitchen smelt as it usually did of disinfectant and there were the same pictures on the walls; one of me and one of Danny, but the one of Danny was bigger. He did public speaking and there were a couple of certificates he had won, one of which he must have received whilst I was away.
 
“We are glad you are home” said the woman pretending to be my mother, and Danny nodded but not meaning it.
They watched me eat the cake and drink the tea, I knew that this was a mistake, this visit, that nothing had changed.
“It tastes funny” I said, after realising I had not said anything for awhile, and I stood up. Danny ran upstairs as he had been told to whenever I got upset.
 
“Poison” I said, “poison”. The woman ran for the telephone, but I had the knife I had stolen from the kitchens, and brought with me in case something happened, and I caught her before she could ring anyone, pulled her down onto the floor, and then I stabbed her over and again, something that I had wanted to do since I could remember. She had stopped making any noise and lay in front of me still solid and hateful. I wiped the knife on her dress, her best one that she must have worn especially for my visit. I felt calmer for a few moments and relieved that I had done what I needed to do. But I knew that I could not stop now, so I went upstairs for Danny.
 
I remember running out of the garden I must have grabbed a book of poetry before I fled, because there it was in my hand.  And then nothing, until I woke up in that underground carpark smelling piss and sick and trying to remember what my name was.
 
My rifle is in my hand and I am sweating. I look at the people around me, the living and the dead, and realise that I am weeping. I push Matt aside and run out into the open where the air is clear and fresh and where I feel free. There are still plenty of people outside the house and they look at me and laugh as I stagger out and start to run whilst behind me I hear my name being called, fading into the grey Belfast sky.
 
At first I just run, to escape the house and my memories, but soon I start heading towards the docks, they are nearby and there will be boats from all over the world and perhaps someone will let me come aboard and take me to where I wish to go, somewhere safe and hidden, somewhere faraway, a harbour.  

Susandale’s poems and fiction are on WestWard Quarterly, Mad Swirl, Penman Review, The Voices Project, and Jerry Jazz Musician. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. Two published chapbooks, The Spaces Among Spaces from languageandculture.org, and Bending the Spaces of Time from Barometric Pressure have been on the internet. 

​     Pogy’s Trailer Court, flanked with a grocery store on one side and a dairy queen on the other___ sat behind a major highway: Routes 6&2. There were five streets in Pogy’s with ten trailers per street: Karen’s trailer was the second on the second street. And in the back-est room of Karen’s hump-back abode, David was stretched out on a narrow bed with his elbows propped up to read. But he left Melville’s Moby Dick* when he heard Veronica’s Harley zooming into Pogy‘s whose entry was heralded by a sign that read, ‘Only Pogy’s Residnts Alowed. All Others Will Be Toad Away. That Means You.’
            Veronica, the only girl that David knew who owned her own Harley, also sported creepy fingernails out to here and filed to sharp points. Painted purple, Veronica’s nails added to her fearsome MO. All the girls and most of the boys in Pogy’s moved out of Veronica’s way and quickly when she roared by. Though only five feet tall and weighing a mere ninety-five pounds, Veronica carried a mighty reputation for kicking ass.  
            Soon after Veronica va-voomed over to her trailer four streets over, David heard a car swerve in. Looking out the window by his bed, he saw the Donalds’ car pull up alongside his.’  He held his breath until eek, their car braked to a stop.
            ‘What the hell, they’ve pulled up to the wrong trailer: Karen’s.’
            Though he waited for the Donald’s to drive over to their trailer; it wasn’t going to happen. They sat in their car for a full thirty minutes before they realized that they were parked by the wrong trailer. David heard Mr. Donald and the Missus mumbling slurred confusions.  
            ‘Now, their car is starting up again.’  Closing his eyes in petition, he prayed, ‘Sweet Jesus, don’t let them hit my car, or ram into Karen’s trailer.’
            Slowly opening his eyes, he looked out the window to witness the Donalds’ car: this time swerving away from Karen’s trailer with tires squealing. But when they backed up to change directions,  they hit a section of rolled-up fencing. After driving over it, they pulled over to their trailer, the one next to Karen’s. 
            ‘Alleluia, they made it, but, whoops, they left their headlights on, even as they are stumbling up the steps to their trailer.’
            Though the Donalds were not yet aware and wouldn’t be until Monday, when they were ready for work, not only was their battery dead, but the fencing they drove over punctured holes in their tires.
            Watching the Donald’s heading to their trailer door with stumbling steps, David thought,’ may the Lord be praised. Tonight, the Donald’s have miraculously made it home: I hope without maiming or annihilating any who may have been in their blurred path. It is, after all, Saturday night., and on Saturday nights, barring at Pogy’s is a time-honored ritual, as sacred to Pogy’ folk, as Sunday church is to Christians.’  
            Meanwhile, the twins in the room next to David’s, had finally settled down. ‘Their eternal, perpetual, perennial coughs are coming fewer now. After two straight hours of coughing, the kids have hacked out everything but their brains,’ David thought before he heard Rick stumble to the toilet. A steady stream of urine splashed, but Rick, being too worn out from the twins’ coughing to flush,  sleep-walked his way back to his cot, pushed snug up to the baby bed the twins shared.
            ‘The twins need a room and beds of their own and I need to be gone, and so, as soon as I put together two more checks from Forces training, I will be exiting,’ David thought with a smug assurance that he carried around with him like a lucky stone in his pocket. A necessity, really. If he didn’t believe in his soon-to-be departure, he would be unable to get out of bed in the mornings.
            Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly. ‘This is the best I can hope for at Pogy’s: Pogy’s on Saturday night has, at last, mellowed out.’
            He set his wind-up alarm for 7am. ’Tomorrow being Sunday, I’m heading to training again. And  so it’s time to leave the leviathan spouting while he heads menacingly toward the Pequod.’
            He shut off the pages of  Moby Dick,*  and pulled down a torn shade on the window by his bed. Pulling the covers around his shoulders, as if to shield himself from Pogy’s, Saturday night revelry, David thought, ‘and hope when I sleep tonight, I don’t fall into another one of my ghastly night-mares. Faces of the unknown close in on me, walls rise around me. Horrors all! My dreams tell me to vacate, like I did last summer when I split, as in out. Most nights, I slept on the beach. Sometimes I drank coffee at an all-night diner then drove around until I ran out of gas. I was away from Karen’s crybaby face, away from the pullout table sticky with cereal and curdled milk, and away from my half-brothers: Rick, and the twins.
            The twins being part Cherokee, part White Horse, they are a part of me. I see myself in those two tots: eyes too big for their faces, ears too big for their heads, and half smiles that flicker around without settling. I’ll leave before they grow into those awkward parts, as I am in the process of doing. If I stay until they fit their faces, I will be a part of them, thus a part of Karen, and I’ll be beyond escape from the walls of this trailer that hold s me prisoner.’
            A new sound emerging, footsteps coming from around the back of the trailer: clumsy, faltering, and coming closer. ‘A raccoon getting in the garbage can, or one of Karen’s jealous boyfriends checking up on her?’
            Cursing, stumbling, bumping into things. “Be quiet, don’t wake the kids.”   
            Pushing the torn shade aside, David looked out to see Karen weaving towards the trailer. ‘Oh no, not again;’ he despaired.‘Karen is loaded to nth. There’s shadows behind her: slurring speech, too. Someone is with her; he’s stumbling,also, but who is he? Whoops!‘ 
            Quickly, he dropped the shade. ‘They are directly outside my window and both careening towards the trailer door.’  
            Falling back on the pillows, he waited with clenched fists, ‘both are blind are with 80 proof. Will Karen and her swain manage to climb the steps and make it inside the trailer?’
            Hearing the trailer door open, he held his breath. ‘The door is squeaking open, but I fear closing it will be beyond their abilities. Consequently, it will be left open to let in every creeping, crawling, flying, toxic critter at Pogy’s, and that includes Karen and her night’s lay.’      
            After lowering his feet to the floor, David padded down the narrow hallway with the intention of closing the outside door, but he stopped cold. ‘Karen’s yet weaving back and forth in the room with the open door. And, oh no, she has the worst of the lot with her; she has Sonny in tow. Oh, no, not Sonny!’
His hand flew to his forehead. ‘Both of them are lurching towards her bedroom while holding on to each other and to the furniture for support.’
            In rapid movements, David stepped back into the hallway to hide in the walls’ shadows even while he estimated Karen’s companion: ‘Ah-hh, Karen’s tonight’s one-night-er is Sonny, the weathered cowpoke from a row over. Though deep furrows line his pocked face, and his sagging body is held together by blue tendons that wind around his tattooed arms and bony legs, his legs with knees the size of golf balls___ there’s plenty of notches on Sonny’s belt; he’s a babe magnet for the thirty-forty-something group in Pogy’s.’
            David caught his breath and held it tight inside his chest. ’Worse yet, Sonny is married and his
betrothed, Dottie, is suspicious, vicious, and only one row over. No doubt, she’s waiting for her magnet man to appear. A standing joke at Pogy’s: Dotty trying to keep tabs on her wayward hubby.’
            Back to his bed David padded with light steps, ’what if, at this very moment, Dotty is quizzing herself, ‘where is my Sonny-Boy?’
            He rolled over on his stomach and banged his fists on the pillow. ‘Why Sonny?’ he moaned to the gods of fate. ‘She said she was going to Eddie’s and Eddie’s is crawling with Karen’s specialties, those flannel shirts under Texas hats. At Eddie’s, there’s three cowpokes for every cow-gal. On their Harleys and in their pick-ups, they roar into the red-neck palace to sock ‘em away until loaded enough to blow their balls with fists flying at any provocation … say, if another flannel shirt winks at their night’s pick-up, or if a cowpoke sits in his bar stool when they get up to boogie. And at Eddie’s, it’s a rodeo, rustling boogie: Texas hats on their heads, the cowboys lean over their feet and shake their shoulders. Now and then, a sexy shake of their hips. Seldom, if ever, do they even move their spurred boots.
Why Sonny, I ask you again, you: you, the gods of fate. Most of Eddie’s cowpokes are without mates like Sonny’s, Dottie ... a quadrate, sturdy, brawlen’ babe, she won’t hang back for a minute on “taking care of any little sluts gonna’ be dicking around with my Sonny-Boy.”
            Both his teeth and fists clenched tight when David heard Sonny and Karen bumping and humping around in Karen’s bedroom. Unclenching his fists, David tried holding a pillow over his head and ears to shut them off, but the pillow was too small, and the trailer’s walls too thin, and too close to silence the spurious activities coming from Karen’s bedroom.
            David so itched to knock their gloopy heads together to deaden the drunken tittering, the hiccups, and the slurred titillations: the most pernicious being, “Sugar Pie, you’re so darn young and purty’, I can’t believe you’re letting old Sonny love you like I’m doen’.”
            David balled his fists and held them closed tight to keep him from scrunching Sonny-Boy. ’I’d knock Sonny around absolutely if it wasn’t ear popping. But a fist fight would switch on Rick and the coughing twins to their mother‘s sordid life.
Yea, and then the commotion of me and Sonny duking it out would waken Pogy’s , a-hem, upstanding citizens. They’d fly on over here and within minutes they’d be joining in the yelling and the rumbling. Sure enough, they’d put the finishing touch on another Saturday night at Pogy’s. Worst of all, the rumbling would be noisy enough to compass Dottie from one row over. She’d be seething and snorting over here to Karen’s trailer. And then would occur some stupendous moments for the whole trailer park to witness.’
            Thus and so, David determined to keep the rage inside his stomach where he felt it flashing and zinging around like fireworks on the fourth.  ‘How much longer will it be before Karen and her conquest clock in to a finish? Or maybe, just maybe, Sonny will flash on his bartender, wifey. Why, say, that would be excellent!’
            When the remote possibility presented itself, David sat straight up in bed. ‘Yea, what if Sonny remembers through his eighty-proof fog, that not only does Dottie tend bar, but she doubles as a bouncer at a saloon on the East Side. Then he’d be scared out of his pants, or in Sonny’s case, he’d be scared into his pants. Why yes, he’d be so scared, he’d be his way out, and over a row to Dottie.’
            Yet sitting up motionless in bed with his feet hanging over the edge, David continued to hold-his-breath hope that Sonny would be scared into his pants. To hold himself in bed, he monitored the time until he heard Sonny’s feet dragging across Karen’s bedroom floor.
            ‘At last!’
            A muddy snort before Karen’s bedroom door slid open. Clump – clump: Sonny, bumping along the furniture fell back into the sofa, and stayed collapsed within the cushions of cigarette holes and diaper stains. Slurred curses followed the booms and the bangs that propelled Sonny out of the sofa. Thick, heavy footsteps slugged toward the yet-open door; David heard him fall against it. Sonny cursing: David balling his fists, and the trailer’ door swinging back and forth.
            At long last, David heard Sonny stumble down the outside steps. After taking a deep breath, he unclenched his fists. Peeking under the shade, he saw Sonny weaving past his bedroom window.
He thought. ‘Oh thank-you, Lord, for small favors; Sonny’s managed to climb into his blue jeans. T-shirt clad with Texas hat on his head, and carrying his flannel shirt, he limps along with …’ David’s head fell forward. ‘Oh no, Sonny’s spurred boots are on the wrong feet.’
            He collapsed into laughter. ’A pretty comical scenario: Sonny’s feet pointed in alien angles: the right to the left and the left to the right.’
            Impromptu, under the street light, Sonny zipped his fly.
            Chuckling, David continued to watch Sonny stumbling along with his boots on the wrong feet. Weaving back and forth, pausing, and starting again to stumble along, Sonny braked his legs to a wobbly stop. Shifting from one foot to the other, Sonny was trying to figure out what foot was responsible for
his lack of balance.
            ‘A new drama unfolds,’ David predicted.
            And as Sonny was struggling to right his weaving stand, he lost his balance.  His corded arms flailed about when he spiraled to fall down into the gravel “What the hell!” Sonny whooped. “Gawd-damn and shit,” he bellowed upon landing.
            His legs pummeled in circles: his arms jabbed the air when Sonny struggled to stand. Shakily, he rose in a weaving way.
            David thought, ‘like a snake being charmed out of a swami’s basket.’
            Sonny managed to stay upright, but only for a minute or two, only to fall again into the gravel. This time, he sat for a long time with shaky fingers clutching his head. ”Where the fuck am I goen’ anyhow?” he asked himself aloud.
            He scratched his head. “I’ll light up a smoke and think about it,“ David heard him say.
            But not only did Sonny forget where he was headed, but Sonny couldn’t remember where his cigarettes were. He sat in the gravel with a confounded look on his face. At last, he snapped his fingers. “Ah-ha!”
           Remembering where, Sonny reached up to unroll a pack of Lucky Strikes from his t-shirt sleeve. Inside the cigarette pack’s cellophane wrap was tucked a pack of matches. Smiling gingerly, Sonny poked a cigarette between his lips, lit a match, and cupped his hand around the cigarette for lighting. But after puffing only a drag or two, he snuffed out the smoke with a tidy grind into the stones. He tossed the butt behind him.
            David figured, ‘Sonny’s smoke must not be that tasty. Or maybe it is not so fun taking a smoke break in the gravel.’
            Suddenly before Sonny loomed a mental image of Dottie. David could tell that it was Dottie who
popped into Sonny’s mind. Sonny was looking straight ahead like he was seeing a ghost. He glanced at his watch, but the time was fuzzy coming through eighty-proof. Sonny knocked his wrist with quick jabs and his head with his knuckles.
David figured that Sonny was trying to drive focus into his fuzzy mind.
            Sonny looked again - “Three-forty,“ David heard him say. “Why, the old gal ought to be sawing logs ‘bout now.“ 
            Straining to lift his leg, Sonny managed to hoist it up to his chest. But when he jerked off one of his wayward boots, again, he lost his balance. With a loud “Shui-it!,” Sonny fell over backwards into the gravel. He laid there for a long time.  
            David moaned in exasperation. ‘What if Sonny can’t get up? What if Dottie comes a barreling around the corner?’ 
            But miraculously, Sonny came to with a “Fuck!”
            Sitting straight up like Lazarus come back from the dead, he bent to pull off his other boot. It was  with a mighty effort that Sonny weaved himself upwards to a wobbly stand. This time he managed to stay upright before he wobbled onwards.
            ‘Oh no, Sonny’s clean forgot his boots and his flannel shirt, too. He’s left them lying in the gravel, as he zigzags along barefoot, one row over.’
            The next day, before the crack of dawn when a quiet hangover hung over Sunday’s trailer park, David recouped Sonny’s boots and shirt. He shoved them into Pogy’s, community burning barrel, and  while the flames were blazing away last night’s evidence with the rancid odors of cloth and leather smoking up Pogy’s, David headed back to the trailer. He was more than ready to square off with Karen. He pushed the trailer door open to the flies and mosquitoes that flew in last night, and stayed to buzz around the kitchen. They seemed to be everywhere, sizzling on the screens, crawling across the sticky table, and flying around the cupboards, even as Karen stood numb at the table. Beside her paralyzed presence tottered the twins who had crawled out of their crib, and were crying beside their mother with runny noses, dirty diapers hanging low, and both babes holding up empty bottles to be filled.
            “Hey Karen, you wanna’ trade a vertical Sonny for Dottie on your back?” David demanded.
            Karen rubbed her eyes, somnolent, focusing on nothing, and staring into space with the void vacancy of an eighty-proof hangover.
            Watching her, David thought, ‘she sees no one and nothing else, but herself.’
            In a braying voice, she said, “Something about Sonny reminds me of your daddy, Davey.”
            Enraged, David said, “You have the gall to say that to me, Karen?”
            He dropped his head to an in-your-face proximity: so close that Karen fell back. He was so incensed, so utterly furious that his words could not travel beyond a whisper. “I am not Davey to you, Karen, and you better hold faith that Sonny-boy is not White Horse. There’s not enough room in this trailer for a fly, another fly, much less another set of twins.”
            Yowling, Karen began to recite her old crucifixions.
            David thought, ‘here we go again: ‘snowed under, desertions, married lovers, jealous boyfriends, my unfaithful father/ slash her cheating man, murdered in a bar. Caged-up, beaten down, her youth spent ... all that drivel.’ 
            David snarled like the cornered creature he felt himself to be. “Don’t peg yourself on my account, Karen. You are nothing to me, I mean less than nothing, and soon as I scrape together enough cash for a deposit on an apartment, I am out of here: out, completely and forever. And damn, if I’m not getting closer to exit time.” 
             That’s what he said, even as he knew what would follow. She sighed, she cried, she sniffled, she sobbed. The twins joined Karen in her chorus of sloppy, sordid misery to awaken Rick, who then padded barefoot from his cot to the hallway between the kitchen and the bedroom. Standing quiet in his raggedy blue pajamas, he rubbed his sleepy eyes open.
            David turned away in disgust, ‘revolting: Karen’s sniveling and play-acting at being tapped out. Verbatim the scenes when she told White Horse about her pregnancy with the twins.’
            He thought further, ’I have got to move on: absolutely on!’  
            Stomping out the door, he headed for his car to drive to the Rieger Hotel for Forces’ Training: classes and physical workouts, of which neither Karen, nor anyone else in his acquaintance, were aware.
            The Priest who comforted him when his father, White Horse, was murdered, had a childhood friend high up in Special Forces. Knowing how David wanted to escape his life with Karen in the trailer, he helped David secure the position as a trainee. David was more than eminently qualified: secretive, in need of escape, intelligent, and had no one holding him here: David, a half-breed orphan, more than fit the position of a Secret Service recruit.    
            Though languages came easy to David, judo and defense he dreaded, and Sunday was defense.
            With Moby Dick in hand, he thought, ‘I’ll be early for training, but what the hell? I’ll read until it’s time to gear up for defense. Anything beats being here.’ 
 

​Rick Edelstein was born and ill-bred on the streets of the Bronx. His initial writing was stage plays off-Broadway in NYC. When he moved to the golden marshmallow (Hollywood) he cut his teeth writing and directing multi-TV episodes of “Starsky & Hutch,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Chicago,” “Alfred Hitchcock,” et al. He also wrote screenplays, including one with Richard Pryor, “The M’Butu Affair” and a book for a London musical, “Fernando’s Folly.” His latest evolution has been prose with many published short stories and novellas, including, “Bodega,” “Manchester Arms,” “America Speaks,” “Women Go on,” “This is Only Dangerous,” “Aggressive Ignorance,” “Buy the Noise,” and “The Morning After the Night.” He writes every day as he is imbued with the Judeo-Christian ethic, “A man has to earn his day.” Writing atones.

Sometimes talking to you makes me feel like I’m whispering to the deaf.
‘Cause we disagree is no reason to insult me. Come on, the man is ignorant. And to make
matters worse thinks he’s smart. If you ask me he looks like man with legs dogs like to pee on.
Give it a rest, some people are born with less. Can’t blame him for a genealogical inherited trait.
Aggressive ignorance is not an inherited trait.
He must have come in with an over-abundance of lack.
He’s a human aberration.
Sounds like the beginning a rap. Come on, you can’t blame the dude for being born with a serious defect. Accept it.
I am not ready to accept aggressive stupidity particularly when he declares shit is so when it is obviously a fabrication to gratify his ego.
Jung’s rule: Can’t change anything unless you accept it. It’s fate, baby.
I hate, deplore, detest that word, fate. How about destiny, karma? Lets people off the hook when they do some dastardly deed. Oh don’t blame me it’s my karma, fate intervened, it’s my destiny from a previous life, I had no choice. Makes me bilious.
Bilious, dastardly, you’re on a roll. You’ve been watching those old English movies again haven’t you?
He keeps doing what he’s doing to our country, and yes, to quote a movie I saw last night, a dude in a pompous accent dropped something about...to this nation’s honor...
Nation? Jung reverb: A nation is a big, blind worm, has no honor.
We’re in the midst of a tsunami drowning in mediocrity and everybody nods like well-trained seals to say the least.
I’m sure you got one to say the most.
We’re being serenaded into a state of ennui while our foundation is crumbling. Wake the fuck up, this stupid, delusional man is hazardous to our health and well-being.
Oh come on, you’re exaggerating on the side of your prejudices.
On top of that, he’s a bigot.
Everyone who has an opinion about someone else is a bigot.
You’re really going to let him off the hook that easy?
Well, one thing leads to another and before you know it, you come up empty.
Sometimes one thing doesn’t lead to another.
 What does that mean?
 One thing could be just left whistling in the wind to wither.
You got to stop with those late night foreign flics.
Can’t fall asleep without ‘em. The man is an assassin!
You’re hangin’ by a thread. Assassin. Who has he killed lately?
You’ll see. When he feels too much pressure, too much judgment, when his narcissistic chasm isn’t being fed with approval goodies, he’ll get us into a war...but until then...well, how about assassin of the spirit.
Nice ring to it. Assassin of the spirit. I like it.
I’m talking real shit and you’re relishing a turn of words. Complacency leads to complicity.
Hey, man, stupidity has a shelf life. You’re over-reacting. He’s infantile.
And you don’t think giving an infant power is perilous? He is beyond corrupt, leading a non-functioning government which...
The government is functioning just as the cabal intends.
Hello! Cabal? You had to dig deep into the chasm’s treasures of dark fantasies for that one. Give me surcease with your cabalities.
Ingest this you disbeliever: Regardless of who is the president, minister, dictator, supreme leader, behind every revered figure-head is a cabal, a group of sinister, puppet-masters, industrialist billionaire power-brokers who determine policies and actions of...
Sound like you’ve been hanging out with Oliver Stone.
My favorite Oliver Stone quote: “Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy.” Totally relevant today don’t you think?
I think I may have killed a man.
Talk about a non-sequitur metaphor. I never met a for I liked. I’ll stop now.
You think I’m messing with you?
No issue, man. With you the game’s always on.
I’m telling you that I think I killed a dude.
What did you do, metaphor him to death?
Today. In the park. This morning. Well it was closer to noon.
You and your dark fantasies play better behind a few tokes maybe but I am stone cold not-stoned so change the subject for sanity’s sake.
I mean it. Not a fantasy. Thunderous reality.
Last month you told me that you were robbed of two hundred dollars and then you found two yards on your desk at home.
I was sitting on the bench. You know the one near the statue of somebody I never heard of but pigeons sure did. Are you listening?
With a jaundiced eye.
You don’t listen with an eye.
What time is it?
I’m telling you about the possibility of a lethal action and you want to know the time?
Movie starts at four thirty-five.
They play ten, fifteen minutes of ads and...
Ain’t that the shit. Enough ads on TV so I keep the mute button at hand but I pay my hard earned money for a flic and have to be bombarded with coke ads.
You’re not even curious about what happened to me and that over-weight must have been 289 if a pound. He was hard-wired enough not to care about anything as he came at me with one hand out for a donation, that’s what he said, donation...and the other hand balled up in a fist hungry for a face to smash into fragments or maybe do a major readjust on my cranium. He whispered in a phlegm-filled voice gurgling in his throat...are you listening?
You have my rapt attention, bro’.
Do you want to hear what he said or not?
Don’t leave a brother hanging. Roll on.
He said which hand, he said. Which hand? One of which was open for a donation and I mean a lot more than a dollar and the other balled into a fist with the intention of rearranging facial structure.
This is so good I hope you’re not bullshitting. I’m hooked. What happened? What did you do, or not do?
I was so intimidated that in order not give into fear I just shot up, kicked him in balls, he fell down and I was so stoked I kicked him in his head a few times screaming something about how fucking dare you and then ran and ran until I couldn’t catch my breath. I stopped, turned around and in the distance, far, I think I saw his maple-syrupped obese body lying near the bench.
Maple syrup...without pancakes?
Or maybe it was a shadow. I didn’t bother to check, believe me.
I don’t.
You don’t what?
Believe you.
I’m telling my boy about a life-death incident, apodictic.
Apo whose dick?
Apodictic. Absolute certainty. Just don’t be  casting aspersions on my tale of relevance. I thought you had my back.
Remember Tuesday a week?
Not really. What happened then?
You said your rent check bounced and the landlord was going to evict you from your crib.
Yeah, well, I thought that was, you know, I mean, a guy can forget.
You were never going to be evicted.
I thought I was! Isn’t that enough?
French saying something like, honi soit qui mal  y pense. It means something sort of he who thinks evil is evil or whatever.
The only thing I like about the French is their fries.
You haven’t taken your meds today have you?
I hate them. They make me drowsy.
Just for the first twenty-two minutes.
How do you know that?
You told me.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it.
What it are you talking about?
Life.
Worth it? No choice.
Sure there is. I can always off myself.
And miss all the fun?
You call this existence fun?
Mos def.
Name three things.
Pussy. Pussy. And pussy.
Smart ass.
I like a smart ass, too.
But then it’s all over.
What is?
Sex. I mean I like it. A lot. But sometimes it’s a lot of work.
Work? You talking about hookers, or the politically correct word, sex-workers?
No, I’m talking about...I mean when I was in my teens...we’d get it on without any thought and that was more than enough. Sex was great then.
But now?
Now with the me-too’s and harassment and all the celebrities being busted...hitting on a woman is dangerous and even then let’s say it’s consensual...
Nowadays you better get a signed agreement.
Amen to that. And you better make sure she comes, has the big O, for some women it takes a lot of work, you know what I’m saying?
Yeah, I do. It’s sad. I mean sex used to be just instinct but now sex has moved from the groin to the head.
I’d rather give head than get it. I love the taste of a woman’s pussy, but even then, I mean that woman I met in Jimmy’s...
She was tight. I remember, you scored and nodded to me when you two walked out. I knew my boy would be doing the flesh ‘n bones in favored time.
Yeah and she was totally into it. So when we ended up naked on the couch, we were so hot never got to bed, so then, man it was steaming, I started to go down on her that’s when she made a crack, oh you’re a muff driver, she said.
Muff driver.
Did I say driver? She said diver. I don’t like to talk during sex, it destroys the entire purpose.
Sex is sex...what kinda’ purpose?
That’s my point. Sex is my escape valve. Leaving my mind which is like a hamster never stopping on that not-so-merry-go-round circular job, or is it a guinea pig?
Is that a real question because you are missing the subject.
The purpose of sex is to disappear the world, which includes excessive verbosity, you know what I’m saying?
Oh yeah, okay, I got it.
So when a woman talks like a TV commentator telling you about the move you just made...
I hate that shit. I mean like I saw the play, I know the game, I can replay if I want or even slo mo, so why detail a great move into obvious banal and prosaic words.
Destroys the purpose.
What purpose?
Or how about those how-to books and stuff I’ve seen on talk shows...you know, talk about sex, tell your partner what you like.
That’s doesn’t work for you?
Again it moves into a verbalizing talk talk talk symposium and here comes the fucking world again. Or rather unfucking world debilitating sex into a rational event to be dealt with like paying the rent on time.
Well, sometimes what we feel, what I want to do with a woman doesn’t always...I mean like I like to fuck a woman from the back.
In the butt hole?
No, in the pussy, but I like her bent over and me pounding her butt with my dick in her juicy pussy. It’s a great feeling, you know what I’m saying.
Yeah, not my preferred, I’m for other positions myself.
Whose telling the story around here?
You got it bro’. Slip it on through.
Okay, so get this. One particular woman, when I suggested she get on her knees, ‘cause I am a considerate lover in bed mind you, not scraping her knees, no question about it, get on your knees, baby...you know what she did?
She acquiesced not to ruin a good freak-on.
In your dreams.
What did she do? I mean getting on her knees, especially on a soft bed seems to be a requirement of the moment I would say.
She said, and get this, hot and heavy ready to do the major in-and-outs, she said and I quote, I don’t do gymnastic sex.
Talk about a cold shower!
Ain’t that a pisser!
So what did you?
I did the missionary and then the required cuddling which I abhor but you know.
Oh yeah, the obligated rhetorical responses.   Did you like it? Was I okay? And you better answer in superlatives times ten.
She wanted to watch a movie which meant sleeping over but I did not feel that kind of bliss if you know what I’m saying although she played ignorant.
Ignorant ain’t always bliss.
Tell me about it.
    So what did you say, do?
    I made up some shit about having to get up very early, like six a.m. and I sent her home in a cab. I paid.
    It’s all a dance, ain’t it.
    Sometimes I wish I was a kid again and didn’t know everything I know. We lost the ability to be surprised. Everything’s out in the open. You do this, I do that, we do these together, you ask this, I answer that. It’s like we’ve been drenched in sterilized information. Somedays I feel like resigning from the dance and just get into porn. I never disappoint myself and don’t have to talk afterwards. Annihilate the me-and-you-baby.
Uhmmm hmmm.
Hello! Anybody home? You’ve disappeared on me.
    Yeah, sorry, I was tripping.
    Want to make this a two way street?
    Two way street?
    Tripping on what, how, where, when, you know, a regular conversation like I was talking and you were listening but apparently that’s just not happening. What’s going on? You’re somewhere else.
    Oh, okay. Although I’m a...how can I say it...okay, I’m not sure how you’ll react to...nah, let it go.
    Too late for that. Talk to me bro’, you know I got your back. What’s messing with you?
    Okay, may as well because eventually...I know this may freak you out, you know your cousin Denise?
    Of course I know my cousin. Knew her since she was a kid. What is she now, seventeen.
    Nineteen. Next month.
    How do you know that?
    Don’t do a mutant on me but...well Denise and me, we’re an item.
    Denise and...what are you saying, she’s a kid and you’re...
    Ten years older...
    Twelve. You had your birthday bash at Jimmy’s last month remember. Jesus, yeah, Denise was there, but I didn’t know you two were...you been fucking?
    Like I said, we’re an item.
    Ain’t that a kick in the ass. I never would have suspected. She is built pretty great isn’t she.
    Pretty. Yes. Great. Yes.
    So you two, huh?
    Uhmm hmmm.
    How long this been going on?
    Maybe three four months, five maybe.
    She’s my first cousin you know.
I know.
My Aunt Katherine’s daughter. You and Denise. Who woulda’ thunk!
We got a good thing going.
All right. I guess. I mean, I never woulda’ suspected, I mean, I always thought of her as a kid and you, well, you’re a grown up dude, a full-on adult and Denise, I mean, you’re in your thirties already.
Just started. Besides, chronological age is not an issue for us.
You don’t think it should be?
Do you?
Well I don’t know, I mean, maybe, yes, because, Denise! Jesus fucking Christ she’s always been a kid, my Aunt Katey’s kid, I never see her as, you know, you don’t think of your relatives in a sexual way, you know what I’m saying? You two are fucking right?
Like I said...
An item, yeah. A rose by any other name and shit. Denise. Hmmm...I always liked her body but I thought I was a dirty old man to have such thoughts about my cuz but you know I pushed ‘em aside never thinking that my bud, my ace-boy would be doing my...hmmm...you and Denise. So how is it?
Good.
Just good?
Yeah, we’re good. We get along great. She makes me laugh, a lot?
Laugh. I never did see that side of her. Makes you laugh. Ain’t that a kick.
We like the same movies, and I’ll bet you didn’t know this, she’s a great cook.
She’s cooking for you?
Sometimes, yeah. Particularly pasta.
I love pasta.
I know.
How do you know?
Denise told me.
But she never cooked pasta for me. We’d always eat out at Mario’s with her mother. Three of us enjoying pasta, you know, never cooked for me, she didn’t.
Well, maybe some time, maybe.
So it’s serious you and Denise? I mean she cooks, Denise, Aunt Katey’s kid cooks, whew and what did you say, oh yeah, if you two are laughing together a lot, that’s serious ain’t it?
Laughing, serious, oxymoron.
What did you call me?
Not you. Laughing serious, contradiction. Oxymoron.
Not so much a contradiction. When a man and a woman...a woman...I always thought of Denise as a kid, when a male and female laugh a lot together, they’re serious, no contradiction. You and Denise, hmmm, never woulda’ connected those dots. So tell me more.
Not much more to tell. We’re great, we enjoy each other...
Like the same movies and laugh yeah I know. But I want details.
Details?
She’s my cuz, come on.
You’re talking like an old fashioned dude challenging your kid’s suitor or something.
Hey, she’s what, how many years younger than you, yeah I know she’s built great, you said she’s nineteen right, so I’m entitled as her older not distant-cousin to know things, right?
You’re not her father, man, lighten up.
Okay okay...just tell me this...I mean we’ve been talking about sex all day...I mean, okay, after all she’s kin, so tell me, is she good?
Good? In what way?
You know what I’m saying.
I think I do and I’m not all that cool getting down with information that is personal and private.
Hey we’ve been talking beyond personal private shit all day. Come on, bro’, does she get on her knees, does she like, you know the entire whole everything kinda’ action? I got a right to know, after all she’s my Aunt Katherine’s daughter, my first cuz, who just so happens to have a great body which of course you also noticed but now, it’s beyond notice ain’t it?
You’re going over the line.
What fucking line?
You’re being...hey, me and Denise are an item, let’s leave at that.
Leave it at that? Did she ever tell you I saw her naked?
Yes, when she got infected or something with a hundred and four temperature, she was what maybe twelve, thirteen if a day and you and your aunt gave her ice cold baths and alcohol rubs until the temperature came down to almost normal by the time the doctor came who said you did exactly what he would recommend. She thinks you saved her life.
She said that?
Yeah.
Even then she was built real good, particularly for a kid, what fourteen I think.
She says twelve or thirteen the most.
I mean...so you and my cuz are doing it...never would’ve suspected.
She thinks a lot of you. Admires.
Admires me?
Yeah...she said you saved her life with that ice cold bath.
And alcohol rub On her entire body.
She loves you, you know. You’re her favorite relative.
Relative. Hmmm. Cousin, yeah, that’s a relative, sure.
Everything cool?
Yeah, cool, sure. And well, I love her, too, after all, she’s kin, family, you know what I’m saying?
Yeah, sure.
So you better not, well, we talk a lot about women and our...what I’m trying to say...when you save somebody’s life, well that’s an indelible mark, you know what I’m saying?
Like I said she has nothing but great feelings for you.
You and Denise, huh?
Yeah, we got a good thing going.
Well, all right then but...listen...Denise, she’s special, got a place in my heart, even with that great body, so you better be treating her good, what I’m saying is, don’t be doing anything that hurts her because Denise, even with that great body, well, she’s family.
Hey, man, I’m not saying we’re going to get married or anything, it’s just we got a...
A good thing going, yeah. Make sure it stays that way.

   The headache has lasted nineteen days.
   Nineteen days. Charlotte can count every one of them. It had started the day after she'd spiked her Coke a little too vigorously and stumbled into the pond at the company picnic: an insidious little pressure behind her eyes and above her upper teeth. Sinuses, she'd thought, the consequence of snorting out a noseful of stinking, muddy water. It had taken two days to get the gritty feeling out of her mouth and the eye-watering bouquet of algae and catfish out of her nasal cavities.
By then, she'd realized it wasn't her sinuses.
                                                                     ***
    Migraine. That's been the consensus, over the last seventeen days, of two general practitioners and a neurologist. Charlotte's inclined to agree with them; she doesn't have the throat-quivering nausea, not yet, but the auras are there, little flecks and zags of color that flit in and out of the edges of her vision like UFOs, eluding her most concentrated efforts to focus on them, jiggling and dancing with every throb between her temples. The pain's there too, rasping at the backs of her eyeballs, thrumming between her teeth, jackhammering the inside of her skull so hard she expects to blow out bone dust with every breath. The doctors' solutions had been bed rest, Tylenol, and time; Charlotte's boss had watched her zombie-shuffle into work, glazed and tight-jawed, right up until yesterday and had suggested a week off instead. That suits Charlotte fine: it lets her sit home in constant dark and slug down the pain with booze and the oxycodone left over from last year's dental surgery. Not the wisest combination, she knows, but it's the only thing yet that's even taken the edge off.
   Charlotte lolls in her overstuffed recliner, her third extra-tall double-strength rum and Coke close at hand, waiting for the pill she'd sucked down to kick in. The late-night news program is the only thing she's found that isn't too bright or too loud; she's got the volume low, just enough to pick up, to occupy the one sliver of her brain that isn't threatening to explode from her ears. Even now, at midnight, with all the blinds closed and all the lights off, she can only squint in agony at the screen for a second before giving up and closing her eyes.
   "Now for an update. Medical researchers believe they may have found a parasite responsible for the nation's recent outbreak of drowning deaths. Some of the footage you're about to see may be disturbing to some viewers."
   Charlotte slits one puffy eye open, then the other. The news anchor is a bottle blonde with a weary gaze, and her voice has pitched up with urgency. Nearly two hundred people have drowned across the country in a month, all of them seemingly accidents, all baffling. There'd been talk about it at the office three weeks ago, when the number had been a few dozen, rumors and jokes about some secret cult urging its members to suicide in pools and bathtubs; she'd even had a few barbs thrown her own way after the pond incident, suggesting she circle her backyard pool with a padlocked fence just in case God or aliens gave her the urge. The scene switches to a bearded bald man, Dr. Something-or-other, wearing a lab coat over his suit in a book-crammed office, and Charlotte tries to focus.
   "Surgeons have extracted worms from the brains of some recent victims." His voice is flat with practice, and the scene cuts away, to the shore of a lake. Somewhere in Tennessee, if Charlotte's cramping brain reads the caption right. The voiceover continues: "The specimens haven't yet been positively identified, but there are early signs that they may be a species closely related to Spinochordodes tellinii, a hairworm known to cause similar behavior in ..."
   Charlotte tunes him out. Her gaze is on the scene, eyes open wide now: a man in a green  T-shirt and purple shorts lies leaking on the ground, recently dredged up, circled by emergency personnel. His face is a smeared slate blur, the concealing effect growing into a pixelated muddle of bruise tints as the camera zooms in; but the blur doesn't cover the sand, caked like packed brown sugar in his sodden blond hair, or the blackish trail of lumpy blood that has drooled from his left ear. Charlotte stares, momentarily fascinated, as the blood continues to ooze.
   "...not yet sure how this animal has evolved to infect humans, or how infestation begins. However, reports from victims' family members suggests symptoms ..."
   On the screen, someone is shaking out a white sheet over the drowned man's body. The camera shifts away, but not before Charlotte catches sight of a military-style boot, so shiny it reflects the red crawl of the ambulance lights.
   "... dizziness, stiffness, lack of coordination ... behavioral changes in the presence of water ..."
   Between the boot and the body, partially obscured, is a long, thin creature that lies coiled in a heap: the unnamed parasitic worm, Charlotte supposes, though it's like nothing she's ever seen. No worm could be this slender, an overcooked strand of brown spaghettini sauced with blood and black flecks. It squirms visibly, and the sight makes her sore brain twinge in sympathy.  A blue-gloved hand swoops into the scene, bundling the worm into a clear plastic bag. Charlotte's eyes ache, her vision joggling momentarily. She blinks hard, seeing spots, and drinks off her rum and Coke.
   She needs more Coke. Grimacing, Charlotte eases out of the recliner, leftover ice rattling in her glass as she sways. She starts jerkily toward the TV, then remembers she'll need its light to grope her way round the kitchen--thank God for open floor plans when you're too drunk to navigate properly.
   At the refrigerator, dull warmth begins at the top of Charlotte's head and paints its way down the inside of her skull. Her stomach does a little flip and her jaw relaxes; finally, finally, the oxycodone has made its appearance and she can forego the rum. She pours her soda with shaking hands, trying not to weep from sheer relief.
   Back in her recliner, fresh drink at the ready and television still droning low, Charlotte falls asleep.
                                                                     ***
   Charlotte awakens to three realizations.
   The first is that there's light seeping through the blinds, cool and grey as though the sun's gone into hiding, and that the television screen is frozen in a garish striped test pattern. Both are still far too bright for her liking, and she scowls as her eyelids snap immediately into the squint she's worn for nearly three weeks. The second is that opening her eyes has roused the pain again, a more frenetic throb than last night, one that vibrates her eardrums and crackles along her jawbone under her teeth; reflexively, she grinds her molars.
   The third is that she's madly thirsty.
   Charlotte fumbles for the glass of Coke she'd poured up earlier. The tumbler slips through her fingers and she snatches at it, but it thuds on the floor. She sits up, groaning at the stiffness in her neck, and looks over the side of the recliner; the heavy glass is intact, but there's nothing on the carpet beneath it, not a spill, not a droplet, not a fragment of melting ice. She hadn't even sipped at it before she'd fallen asleep, she's mostly positive of that. Now it's empty and she doesn't remember drinking it.
   "God." The word comes out thick, and Charlotte gingerly rubs her hands over her face, wincing when she gently prods her eyelids. Her tongue feels glued to the roof of her mouth, prying loose only with effort, slipping over the foul sour-sweetness coating her teeth. Suddenly her thirst is a knot in her gut, twisting and raw. Water. She needs water.
   Charlotte gets to her feet clumsily, nearly pitching to the floor as she gropes to pick up her glass. Getting the tumbler in one hand, and holding the back of her head with the other, she totters into the kitchen, away from the rainbow stare of the TV. In the dimness she scrabbles for the tap and swallows saliva. The aura's not elusive now; it streaks her vision, bloody red and dazzling.
   Water. Cold. It slops over her hand as she wrestles the glass under the faucet. Her brain squirms in her skull, a live thing all its own, a pulsating mess of knife-edge pain. She drinks with her eyes closed, and the red streaks elongate and snap, turning white, becoming stars that cast off sparks with every swallow. She fills and empties the glass six times, only stopping when her stomach threatens to rebel, but it's not enough.
   It's not enough. Her brain is on fire; she can feel the fever slithering through its shell of protective membranes. Her tongue is a swollen sponge, her throat a desert, her skin a withered root aching for moisture. She drops the glass into the sink. More. She needs more.
   The pool.
   Charlotte lurches toward the sliding doors that open into her backyard. There's a fence--isn't there a fence? No, that was a joke, a joke. She works the lock with graceless hands, frustration welling from her arid throat in a croaking wail, until the door bursts open and she collapses onto the lawn.
   Dazed, she lies there a second; it's barely daylight and the grey is comfortable. But the grass is wet and her tormented nerves shriek, waterwaterwater. Charlotte drags herself upright, takes three steps toward the pool and falls again, her vision swarming with whirling sparks, pressure building in her skull as though her brain's begging to be let out. A swim. That's all she needs. Just a swim, and she'll feel better.
   Weeping, blinded, she begins to crawl.
 
                                                                # # #

​He wasn’t prepared for such a sensation. Luther’s bayonet met the wool of the boy’s blue overcoat gently at first, just a kiss. As momentum pushed the steel further, a soft pop resonated through his musket’s stock, and then met no more resistance. The boy’s guts were soft, the blade moved in without objection, and slid out softly, lubricated with blood and bile.
Will couldn’t avoid the strike in time, and the man’s blade tore through his abdomen. The pain overwhelmed him, yet he could still reach for his knife. As the man in grey wrenched out the slick steel, Will fell forward onto him, his knife entering the man’s chest. The blade hit a rib, then shuddered past it, burying itself in his lung like a key into a padlock.
They both fell to the ground. The noises around them went dull and sharp cracks of musket fire and chest-shaking reverberations of cannon were beaten out by their own pain. Blood was pouring from the boy’s belly. The man’s breaths were short. He coughed, expelling a handful of fluid onto the bright green grass next to his face.
 
………………………………………………………
Luther stomped down on the small hills of soaked clay. The uncompromising Virginia sun molested his shoulders, burning and hardening his skin. He sighed, looked up at the sky and spread his oily hair back from his forehead.
“What’s the time?” he called to the worker at the kiln’s fire. The man stood watching the flames for most of the day. Luther envied him.
“Nearly one in the afternoon. You best keep mixing before Sampson sees you loafing around.”
Luther felt a sting on his arm and glanced down. A mosquito suckled on a wrinkle of skin below his palm. There were so many of the pests he didn’t bother to swat at them anymore. He tried to ignore the smell of the burning brick as well, but couldn’t. The stench soaked into his clothes and hair, and maybe even his skin.
Instead, he thought of his wife. Luther often thought of love. There had been maybe two things he truly loved in his life. One was his wife, Rose. She was a beautiful woman, soft skin, auburn hair, and a smile unlike any he had seen when they met at fifteen years old. His parents were against the match though, his father was an important politician and Rose’s family was far beneath them.
Luther’s other love was an idea. The idea of his little boy or girl smiling up at him and calling him Father. He remembered the night this love was destroyed far too clearly.
…
Luther’s feet were sore, and his legs swollen with strain. His first week at the kiln was difficult. The worst of it were the bugs, he thought the smoke from the drying brick would keep the mosquitos at bay, but for all he could tell it attracted them.
He now followed a spindly trail through the fields, barefoot and stinking of hard work, reaching up to grab a handful of leaves from the maple saplings that peppered the path’s edge beside him. His boots hung by their laces across his back, and they knocked together each time he stepped. All he wanted was to see his wife, to make sure she was feeling alright, to comfort her.
Rose came from a god-fearing southern family, from a father who would not react well to news of their coming child. Luther didn’t need the formal word of some priest to tell him Rose was his wife, and although he had proposed to her only a month ago, he considered it finished.
            “Rose!” He called. Luther could just see the gray beech of the cabin’s walls through the wheat seeds.
            “Rose!” He called again as he came closer to the small house. He thought she must be at the river. Luther’s arm throbbed with pain just from reaching for the latch. He fumbled with the iron hook for a few seconds before he smelled it. Luther stopped trying for the latch. He thought it smelled something like Venison drying and hardening on a gusty, winter night. He turned around and saw Rose lying face-up, staring up at the clouds. This ephemeral vision of his wife gave him such happiness. Luther walked over to Rose, now looking past her to the James River and the hills just over the opposite bank. The smell grew strong as he came up to her body.
Luther looked down at the grass. Such a deep green. Almost blue.
Rose’s eyes were wide open, a thick stream of blood and froth spilled from her mouth. Blood stained the earth beneath her legs. Luther stared at her body for a long time. He didn’t cry.
When he was finished, Luther didn’t run to town and call for help, he didn’t lie down next to her and sob, and he didn’t walk to the shed to fetch a shovel. Luther walked down towards the river, the last thing his wife had seen before she murdered their child, and lay on his back in the water, watching the hawks and eagles glide over him. Every few minutes one would dive down into the current and return with either a splash of water or a writhing fish. One of them caught a snake.
…
 
 
 
 
Will watched the Eiders bob with the rolling waves, losing sight of the small birds every time they dropped behind one of the larger whitecaps, or disappeared beyond one of the many outcrops of rocks. Nantucket’s Harbor fidgeted with activity. Small boats rowed out to larger Whaling vessels that had just returned, completely avoiding the bar, something the sailors in town were grateful to hear.
He hadn’t seen his father since he was a small child. His mother told him he had been arrested for some bar fight, and then died in prison. None of this really mattered to Will though, he couldn’t remember anything about the man. He would have to make his way down to the piers soon. Will was eleven now, and made some extra money for his mother by bringing messages from weary sailors to their families in town. Often, he would lie when it came time to report poor news to the sailors from their long-missed families, just to ensure his payment.
That night, Will returned home to an empty house. He sat waiting for hours for his mother to come home before deciding to make the dangerous walk to the governor’s mansion. The town had yet to adopt new oils for their street lamps, and so the night turned the alleys and side streets into havens for pickpockets and thieves. As he neared the north of town, he began to hear shouts, and a few people here and there curiously poked their heads outside of doors and windows. Will hastened his stride.
The moon was waning thin, but something lit the sky. There was a great burst of light ahead of him, and more people were walking alongside, eagerly searching for the source.
The mansion’s fire attacked his face and he couldn’t look directly into it. The flames roasted his skin, his eyelids drooped, and the fat of his cheeks felt like rising dough. Down another street, there were men rushing around and people in their night clothes sobbing. Will moved towards them.
One of the nurses recognized him. She must’ve been a friend of his mother’s. Like his mother, many other women served the governor as his failed him.  The woman wore a modest nightgown, its white hem had turned sooty and wet in the night. She took Will’s hand and pulled him to the center of the commotion. A woman lied in the grass.
Her face was covered in a black mask of grime, her dress in tatters. Will could hear her breathe each breath. They were scratchy and labored, as if sand had lined her throat. Her eyes looked melted shut, and her hair had been burned off, leaving her scalp a raw and bloody knob.
Will sat there, sobbing for his mother. He collapsed onto her and his wails echoed over the sounds of the fire which still burned with a hunger behind them. Will sat back for a moment and saw the people around him. “Go away!” he yelled. “For God’s sake get out of here!”
The people glanced. One man kept a sympathetic stare. This man was clean. No blood marred his night clothes. Will stood, “Look away!” The man didn’t turn his gaze from the mangled body next to the boy. “YOU BASTARD!” Will charged at the man and collided with his legs. The man in the clean nightgown fell, his face met the mud and ash of the street. Will grabbed his neck, and began to howl incoherent curses in his face. He would be punished for being here, for seeing his mother like this.
The man grabbed at Will’s hands and pried them loose. He tossed the boy aside and walked away, leaving him to scamper back to his mother, sliding through the filth without taking to his feet. He reached her and placed his cheek on her breast.
 His mother’s hand gripped his. She held him and squeezed with what must have been all her strength. Then, her grip loosened, and Will lay across her stomach until the morning.
 
 
 
 
One late February afternoon in 1864, Luther lay down on his straw mattress and listened to the water bubble over the fireplace. He didn’t want to get up.  A strong breeze pushed in underneath the door and over his feet. He climbed underneath a woolen blanket and closed his eyes. A puff of smoke escaped into the cabin as the wind died, and he coughed. The smell reminded him far too much of the kiln, a place he never wanted to think about, especially not at home. The small cloud somehow filled the corners of the cabin, and he got up to open the door and let some of the smoke escape.
Just before he reached the threshold, a gentle rap against the thick oak door surprised him. Luther released the latch and greeted the stranger. He wore a confederate’s uniform, or what passed for one in the struggling army the south had put together.
“Luther Goodwell?” The man asked.
“Yes”
“I’m here to deliver your conscription notice, sir,” the man said.
Luther lifted the parchment from the man’s outstretched hand. He began to read it.
Sir, Take notice that you have been deemed liable to serve military duty…
“Draftees are to report to town hall tomorrow at noon for further instruction.” The man turned and strode away before Luther could even look up at him. He pressed the door shut and sat down by the fire. Ashes spilled out from the hearth and onto the planks of wood that passed for a floor.
Luther heard of neighboring cities losing their men and boys to serve Davis and the “Old man,” but he figured he would let things play out, as he had done since Rose left him. He placed the notice on top of the soft, glowing coals, took the pot from the fireplace, and returned to his mattress. Come morning, Luther collected some clothing, a blanket, hunting knife and the flintlock rifle that lay against the wall, and walked to town, his mind empty and following orders.
 
 
 
 
“Name.” The man behind the makeshift pine table barked up at Will. It took him a moment to realize the officer was asking him a question.
“William, Sir.”
 “Age.”
“Eighteen, sir.” Will said.
The man looked up at him. “You’ll need your father’s consent William.”
“Yes sir.”
Will gave a shove to the old fisherman who waited in line with him. The sailor kept one hand in his pocket, playing with the coins Will had traded for his time and transport from Nantucket. Hyannis’ bay shimmered and shuffled behind the drafting booth, and Will lost focus in the waves that trickled in through the harbor’s bluff. The bay’s lighthouse was taller than most at home, but will already missed the familiar, simple construction of Brant Point’s tower. Even the gulls sounded strange here, louder and wary of folks walking by. At home, they would hop right up to you, eating the crumbs off your jacket.
Back home, everyone knew of Will’s father and how his mother had passed. How she burned. No one on the island would let him even stand in line at an enlistment booth. Without his encouragement or consent, he had become the island’s property, with all its residents his custodians. He stayed in different homes each month, and everyone offered their help and pity. Will hated every moment of it.
The war had all but ended the island’s sole source of income, devastating the whaling fleet as the Union Navy bought out more and more ships to help serve their blockades in the south. Captains couldn’t justify letting their ships rot in the harbor, and one by one they gave in, sending their ships to the union.
The fisherman leaned forward without a word and scribbled his mark next to the officer’s finger.  The officer nodded. “Meet here tomorrow morning for your assignment,” the officer looked over Will’s shoulder, ushering him away from the table. Will walked away and looked out to the ocean at the sliver of black that marked Nantucket’s shores. He smiled.
 
 
 
 
 
“You see a ghost in them weeds?” An old bearded man had fallen back to walk with Luther. He didn’t answer. “We all got somewhere else we want t’be my friend. Don’t mean you can’t enjoy the company of some like-minded boys while you’re here. Why don’t you come and walk with us?”
            He couldn’t see the bearded fellow’s mouth beneath the whiskers, but something under there moved as he spoke. Luther smiled and shook his head, dismissing the bearded man and his invitation. He didn’t need the company. 
            Shouts echoed along the mountains as the herd of men pushed through saddles and knolls, over creeks and through rivers. For weeks, Luther spoke to himself often, mostly cursing his luck. His luck and his love - they had both left him weak.
            Once, Luther had wanted to be great. Not successful, not rich, famous, or even happy. He wanted greatness. He wanted to be known throughout the country, looked up to by young boys and girls. This was before he met his wife, before he was cast out of his privileged home. Now, he wanted only to reach the next bend in the trail, and after that… He didn’t mind much what would happen after that. It would be dealt with after the bend.
 
Will thought of his mother each night as he covered himself with a scratchy wool blanket. The enemy was camped over the hill to the south, just a few minutes’ walk. He could hear the southerners and their deep, hollow laughter through the night. They sounded much like the men huddled around the fire next to him. Eventually sleep did find him, but it was thin, and he dreamt of nothing.
 
 
 
Luther stood up straight, trying to hide his fear. He kept his eyes forward. The soldier ahead of him made no attempt to hide the dark streak of urine that now seeped down the inside of his trousers. The heat from the stain left a vapor in the autumn air. This soldier had a reason to be afraid. He probably left behind parents, a wife, maybe even children. This soldier meant something to the world. Luther wasn’t sure what he feared, but it was dreadful. There was no surviving this. Were he to live on past this hill, past the fields around it, another would come. Another fight would come next month, and then again, and he would fall there. He would fall and not get back on his feet. And when he died, there would be nothing but black. Even in death he would be alone.
 
 
“FIRE!” Will’s finger bent around his trigger. He closed his eyes, looked away, and immediately grabbed for the powder horn at his waist. Just as he began to pour the black sand down the barrel of his rifle, another officer’s voice cut through the din.
“Fix bayonets!” Will cut himself on the steel of his blade as he secured it.
 
           
Luther fired and began to reload. The Yankees were storming down the hill, and the soldiers around him prepared to meet the push. He ran forward until he was mere feet away from the enemy. He closed his eyes and steadied his rifle in front of him. He wasn’t prepared for such a sensation.
 
 
 
……….
 
 
Luther was silent, calm. He placed his hand over the hole in his chest. Next to him, the boy screamed for his mother. He sat up and stared at the child for a few moments, not sure of what to do next. He was past the bend.
 Luther coughed, and more blood dribbled over his chin and chest. The boy continued to call out with a voice so empty and strained, his lower half a mess of colors and wet.
            Luther crawled over to him. He sat behind him and propped him up against his chest. The boy lost his breath and stopped screaming. He looked up at Luther, his eyes a scorching red.
            “Will you help me find her?” the boy asked, barely audible through his snifflling.
            Luther looked at the boy, his mouth parted, and he shut his eyes hard. A tear found it’s way through the wrinkled folds above his nose. “My mother. Will you help me?”
 
            Luther stared forward at the piles of writhing bodies around him, trying to hold off the bubbling blood that filled his lungs. He nodded, and held the boy until the end. 
 
 
 

FRANCES KOZIAR is the author of the teen fantasy "The War of the Shard", nominated for iUniverse's Editor's Choice Award, and is seeking an agent for a diverse new adult fantasy novel. She has 10+ publications in literary magazines, including in Yarn Magazine, Gathering Storm Magazine, and up and coming in the Passed Note. She is an Aztec archaeologist and anthropologist and lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Author website: https://franceskoziar.wixsite.com/author

    Cinderella hovered just out of sight of the guards, back in the safety of the market crowds. She looked up at the castle again. It was amazing that something that looked so beautiful, its stones glimmering in the afternoon light, could be so close to the bustle of the market and the lonely tragedy of her life.
What are you doing, Madella? her father asked, amusement tingeing his voice.
She didn’t answer, but started walking. She walked steadily, neither too slow nor too fast, her eyes on the ground where she knew to keep them. Hiding, as she often did, in plain sight.
            No one stopped her at the outer gates, but as she followed a servant through a small metal side door of the castle, she was asked,
            “What are you bringing?”
            She stopped, glancing at the soldier before lowering her eyes. “Bolts of cloth for the seamstress,” she answered.
            He flicked up a corner of the cover she had over the basket to keep the cloth clean and grunted, letting her though.
            And just like that, she was in. To infiltrate a castle, it seemed, all you needed to do was wear rags and a dirty face, and play the part.
            She hadn’t planned what she would do once she was inside. She wasn’t even sure why she was there, except that an anxious, restless despair ached in her chest, and the castle, like much of the world, didn’t seem real from her cold attic window. Maybe she was mad. Or maybe she just wanted something, anything, to change.
            She wandered the hallways, admiring the architecture and the tapestries, thinking that her father would have liked the castle.
            Be careful, Cinderella, warned the kindly butcher from the market. You know this isn’t a dream.
            But she felt apathetic and reckless, and went upstairs. On a floor she knew she couldn’t explain her way to safety from, a young maid suddenly rounded the corner in front of her with unshed tears in her eyes.
            “Are you all right?” she asked the girl, who looked thirteen.
          The girl startled like a faun as she nearly barrelled into Cinderella. “I can’t be lightin’ the prince’s fire. The queen just gone and went mad at me for not tendin’ it and then the prince gone and went mad at me for disturbin’ him and now them fire’s still dying.”
            “It’s okay, here,” Cinderella offered, taking the girl’s coal scuttle from her. “I will do it. I am Cinders-ella,” she said with a smile, as if her name were only a joke.
The girls eyes got even wider. “Will you, miss? He’ll be yellin’ at you too.”
               “I’ll be fine. Go,” she urged gently, and the girl ran off.
           It wasn’t hard to find the prince’s room around the corner. There were two guards stationed outside the doors, for one.
            “I am here to tend the fire,” she said to them, setting down her basket of cloth.
             “What’s that?” one of them asked.
            “Bolts of cloth for the seamstress,” she repeated, “I did not have the chance—” But he was already waving her through with one hand as he reached for the basket with the other.
          And so, without quite knowing how it had happened, Cinderella found herself in the prince’s chambers. She didn’t see the prince at first. She saw a high arching ceiling, tall rounded windows of clear glass, and a warm colourful rug on the stone floor. There was a door to another room to the right: perhaps the bedroom. This room was grander than anything she knew of course, but still it reminded her of her father somehow, of their house when it had been home, and of a past that was only a fairytale.
       “What are you doing here?” a voice demanded from a corner beside the furthest window. In the light she couldn’t see him clearly. “I do not want a fire.”
        When Cinderella ignored him, remembering the girl’s words that the queen had ordered it, the prince snorted. “Do you want to marry me?” he asked bitterly, incomprehensibly, and again Cinderella said nothing as she knelt by the fire. He sounded like she did, when she was really talking to someone who wasn’t there. The fire was struggling but not out, and she used the fire fork to adjust the coals. The thick metal fireback was engraved with an image of the castle.
           “Answer me,” the prince muttered, surprising her.
          She stood up and turned to him, smoothing her skirts and looking at his white, pearl-studded shoes.
            “Any woman would be honoured to marry you, Your Royal Highness.”
           He snorted, and turned away.
        She had seen the crown prince once in the distance, but never this one, the younger of the two. He looked young, twenty-two she had been told, and was no taller than she was. Not particularly handsome but not hard to look at, with a neatly trimmed beard and steady, deep brown eyes that were now turned toward his window.
            “I did not mean to offend you, Your Royal Highness,” she murmured.
           He turned back toward her. “It is not you who has offended me,” he answered opaquely. “What is your name?”
           “Cinderella, Your Royal Highness,” she answered with a curtsey.
           “Like cinders from a fire?”
           “I make a lot of fires,” she answered with a small, humourless smile.
           “What is your real name?” he asked, looking curious now, rather than angry.
         “It is my real name now,” she answered. Madella, her father’s nickname for her birth name of Madeleine, had been a young nobleman’s daughter, educated and just about to come out into the world of marriage and social functions, with a father who was her only family and her best friend. She was not Madella.
          “You may finish tending the fire,” offered the prince, watching her as she did so.
          “Who gave you that?” he asked when she stood again, pointing to her wrist.  She tugged her sleeve down when she saw the bruise, but he was waiting for an answer.
             “My stepmother, Your Royal Highness.”
             “Did you deserve it?”
             She looked him in the eyes. “Never.”
          A moment of silence, in which she realized she shouldn’t have spoken to the prince in such a way, in which she realized, with well-conditioned fear, the danger she would be in from her stepmother if she were somehow watching this, and then the prince said,
             “I am sorry.”
            “I must go, Your Royal Highness,” she said, reverting her eyes to his shoes and dipping another curtsey.
          “Of course,” he said, watching her sadly. She picked up the coal scuttle and left.
          It’s okay, Madella, her father said comfortingly, as he had when she was young. But it wasn’t. It never was.
                                                                #
         When she reached her father’s manor, her stepmother and sisters were arriving home. She had finished early at the market—it was why everything had happened—but she still should have arrived home before them. She slipped around the back.
         She hung the basket over her shoulder and climbed the old garden trellis on the back wall as quietly as she could. She slipped in the second floor window, raced up the stairs to deposit the cloth in her attic, and came down to greet her family.
          “Cinderella,” remarked her stepmother, in the tone of voice one reserved for being reminded of unpleasant things. “I hope supper is almost ready.”
             “I was just about to start it, madam,” she said, dipping a shallow curtsey.
          “So it is late.” Lady Jeanne was tall and fair, with a round friendly face and heartless eyes. Today she wore the emerald gown that Cinderella had finished last week.
           Supper was not late: this was the usual time for starting it. “I picked up the cloth for your new dresses,” Cinderella offered.
         “Does that make supper not late?” Jeanne asked, one lip curling up in a mocking smile.
          Charlotte, the older and bolder of her two step-sisters, laughed. “You also have to fix my dress, Cinder-face,” she taunted, and yanked at one of her sleeves until the seam tore. Marie watched quietly with a half-smile.
         “Now, Charlotte,” her mother admonished lightly, affectionately, as Cinderella retreated to the kitchen.
           She took a deep breath once she was there, resting her back against the door. They wouldn’t follow her here.
              She built up the kitchen fire and started preparing her family’s meal.
       Are you all right? her father asked. She couldn’t answer, but she saw his sympathetic eyes.
             How was the market?
          “I finished early,” she told him in a whisper. “I went to the castle and met the younger prince.”
            A prince! Wow! An exciting day for sure. What did you think of him?
       Cinderella smiled a little, remembering her father’s enthusiasm for new experiences. Lady Jeanne had been the last of those.
      “He is not what I imagined. Quite ordinary in a way, but kind. Sad about something. It was strange for him to even notice me, as a servant.”
          Did you tell him who you were?
          She looked at her father sadly, and the image faded into reality. She focussed on cooking.
            “Who am I?” she asked bitterly. “I know who I was.”
             I’m sorry, murmured her father.
         He had never said those words, but then, he had died so soon after the marriage that he’d dismissed Charlotte’s antics as her “settling in”. Lady Jeanne had always taken care to treat Cinderella well around her father, and her father was too blinded by his new infatuation to listen to truth.
           What happened to him? asked the kindly butcher from the market.
         But she just shook her head, not wanting to speak of the past today. Instead she thought of her visit to the castle, and held on to it, as a fleeting break from her nightmare.
           The servant’s bell rang impatiently just as Cinderella was leaving the kitchen to carry the platters upstairs. They’d had real servants when her father had lived—a cook, two maids, and a groundskeeper—but Lady Jeanne had dismissed them all.
She had eyed Cinderella’s simple dress up and down. “My daughters will not look like that. We need proper clothing,” she had said, “and since we cannot afford any with all these staff,” she said, dismissing them with a wave of her elegant hand, “we will dismiss them, and you will take over. I am sure you are familiar with what needs to be done around here, and will do your part in this time of grief.”
           A period that never ended, as far as Cinderella’s work went, and a grief that the woman had expressed very little of. At first Cinderella thought the chores would be shared with her stepsisters, but when she found that wasn’t the case and had fought back, she had learned very quickly how little power she had.
         She had had a couple friends in the village and one boy that she’d fancied herself in love with, but when she told them how her new family was, they hadn’t believe her. One had dismissed her problems as regular family squabbles that would pass with time, another had actually been angry with her for slandering her family and complaining, and the boy had thought her words just a product of her grief over her father’s death. It had only helped push them all away, and under Lady Jeanne’s care none of her friendships had lasted long. With the servants gone there were no witnesses, and as an unmarried woman she couldn’t just leave.
        After delivering the food to her family, Cinderella tended the fires, tidied her sisters’ bedroom, and fed her stepmother’s cat. She didn’t eat anything herself, not yet. It wasn’t worth the risk.
       “And what are you doing?” Jeanne had asked, appearing suddenly in the kitchen.
          “I am eating here, so as not to disturb you,” she had replied, phrasing it as if she were trying to please Jeanne, and not thwart her.
         “You will not eat until we are finished.” Jeanne had smiled, as if Cinderella was an amusingly confused child. “We do not want to waste food. It makes sense if you eat our leftovers. In the meantime, the flower bed outside is a mess.”
          Lady Jeanne controlled everything: the food, the money, the rules of the house. Cinderella had gone without supper half a dozen times, and had gone without food for three days once. Charlotte had been given the happy duty of watching to make sure she didn’t sneak any, to be replaced by Marie only when she got bored. More than once her stepmother had dragged her by the arm hard enough to bruise, as the prince had seen, and more times than she could count she had been ordered to do chores that didn’t need to be done, or hadn’t until someone had made it so. She was constantly listening for footsteps and looking over her shoulder when people weren’t around, and hiding in plain sight—her eyes on the ground, her steps silent, her hands quick to work—when they were.
       The prince, ha, Cinderella thought as she collected the dinner plates. That memory already seemed distant and unlikely. Would you marry me? he had asked. What would have happened if she’d said yes? Probably he’d throw her out for being crazy. He hadn’t been talking to her, not really.
         Yes, she thought. She would have said yes. Anything to get out of this place, to be a real person again. And if the prince proved to be like her stepmother or like Charlotte, then she would escape him too, somehow. Someday she would get out of here. It was her mantra, her promise, her spark of light in the darkness. Someday, things would be different.
         There wasn’t much food left for her to eat, but she relished it, eating slowly on the floor by the fire. She didn’t care for the cinders that darkened her clothing—they were her namesake now, what more harm could they do?
          She was still hungry when she finished, but she closed her eyes and wished it away.
            Why don’t they leave you more? asked the dairymaid from the market.
          “She thinks I am too fat,” whispered Cinderella, looking up at the ceiling. “Only one and two sizes larger than her daughters, but they are thin and I am fat.” She laughed bitterly. “If anything, it only made it worse when she started giving me less. I do not even know how they got rid of the food. The cat? I made more and more, but so little came back.”
        She heard a footstep at the top of the stairs and stood up quickly, but no one came.
           “Mother, look!” Charlotte had cried when she’d found her talking to herself. “She is even loonier than we thought! Who are you talking to, Cinder-lies?”
         But she was always talking to someone, these days. Sometimes it took everything she had not to speak aloud when they were near, not to let her fantasies blind her. Five years had passed since her father had died; five years had passed since she’d lost her friends and anyone to talk to. And after five years of isolation, one had to talk to the people in their head. There was no other way for her to face the void; no other way to handle her life.
           Usually she spoke to her father, but sometimes she spoke to the butcher or the dairymaid who smiled at her when she purchased their wares. They seemed like kind people from afar. And it was far easier to create someone in your head, to have conversations with people who you already knew a little bit, rather than inventing them entirely. She’d tried that too, of course.
        The sparrows had been her friends for a while. They would come when she called, swooping down and landing on her palm, looking for food. She had spent time with them every day until Marie had found her. That’s when they’d bought the cat.
            The servants’ bell rang and Cinderella headed for her sisters’ room.
       “Finally,” Charlotte exclaimed, exasperated. “You still have not mended my sleeve, and I want to wear that dress to the party at the LaMontagne’s in two days. Here it is.”
          She tossed Cinderella the pink dress she had torn as she’d walked in the door. A thousand comebacks slid through her mind, from the verbal--Oh, too bad, and walk away. Or, You will have to tell them you threw a tantrum. Or And I suppose you want them to think you are well behaved--to the actions: ripping the other sleeve to match; losing or burning the dress; or fixing it but tucking in the waist so the dress no longer fit.
        But she wouldn’t do any of them. She had purposely ruined Charlotte’s dress last year—making a rather large hole around the buttocks that she hadn’t noticed till Marie had shrieked—and it had resulted in a dizzying slap from Jeanne and the destruction of all of her clothing except for the ragged dress and apron she now wore every day, and her mother’s old pink dress which Charlotte had claimed in retribution. Some days it felt worth it, but some days it just made her tired to think of fighting back. She had enough problems without trying.
          Cinderella had mended that dress and another for Jeanne before she retired for the night, sleeping only after the others were in bed. She resisted the usual urge to collapse and pass out instantly, but instead sat on her mattress on the attic floor, and hummed her father’s lullaby under her breath, as she did most nights.
 “Sleep Madella, my darling, love
Sleep and dream away,
The wonders you’ll see and the wonder you’ll be
In that far off world for a day,
Sleep my daughter, my darling, love
Sleep then wake again
Because tomorrow’s a day for the two of us
To laugh and begin again
             “Good night, father.”
Be brave,
            “And be kind.”
—And remember
           “The time!”
           She saw his laughing sternness and imagined him sit on the edge of her bed as she slid under the covers, imagined that her muscles weren’t sore or her stomach rumbling. But the fantasy faded as a memory took over, worn with five years of passing.
“Be careful and come home.”
“I will, I promise. Take care of your sisters and your mother. Do not go too crazy while I am gone. I will be back before you know it. And I will bring presents.”
        A wink, a hug, and he was off. She hadn’t really believed it, till the body came home, and even then sometimes it felt like he was just away, or just needed to be found.
       She might have lain awake crying, but she never had the time for that anymore. Instead, she fell asleep clinging to the faded image of her father riding away and promising to come back.
                                                                        #
        From the window, Cinderella watched the carriage with her stepmother and stepsisters in it ride away, and then she carried her sewing to the back of the house. She had to start a new dress today for Marie’s fifteenth birthday in a couple weeks. Last year she’d been allowed to garden on this day, and the year before to work on the roof, and Cinderella looked longingly at the beautiful May day outside. This year she “couldn’t be trusted”. She never felt as trapped as when she wasn’t allowed out beneath the sky.
            It was Le Jour de la Fleur, the day that young men gave young women roses, and that’s why she had been ordered to stay inside. They didn’t want any men to “pity” her and feel they “had to” give her a rose, was how Charlotte had put it. Her stepmother had phrased it differently. She didn’t want Cinderella trying to “manipulate” the young men with her “lies”. It stung, even though she knew it was ridiculous. Three years ago she’d been given her first rose—if her father’s as a child didn’t count—by two different men. One was a young man in the market whom she hadn’t seen before, perhaps just passing through. He had been dressed in clean clothes and had a kind smile. He’d given her the rose with a wink, and then blushed as if he’d embarrassed himself, before walking quickly away. The other was a brown skinned man dressed as a castle servant. He’d given her his rose with a sad look on his face that at first she thought was truly pity, before he walked off with the same expression on his face. She wondered if he’d lost the girl he’d really wanted to give it to.
       Charlotte had only received one rose that year, her first. Most of the girls receiving flowers were between 16 and 20, and that year Cinderella had been turning 17 and Charlotte was only 14—young to receive any—but Charlotte hadn’t taken that into account. Instead, Cinderella took the blame for how her two flowers ruined Charlotte’s one. Or as Charlotte and Lady Jeanne put it: she was punished for conniving to ruin her sister’s first Le Jour de La Fleur.
         She had been made to go apologize the next day to the two men who had given her flowers “out of pity” or “because of her lies”, but had been unable to find either. She hated lying, and vividly remembered the mud her stepmother had made her eat when she’d been caught lying at 15 (when she’d said the reason she didn’t get the exactly correct shade of cloth for Charlotte had been because the vendor didn’t have it), but she’d lied that day. She told them she had found the men and apologized, and feeling generous and genuinely sorry for spoiling Charlotte’s first flower, she had added that one of the men had said that the flower was actually for Charlotte and wanted Cinderella to give it to her.
         “Of course it was,” Charlotte had sneered, or tried to, but she had been happy.
       Cinderella sat in a window alcove looking out over their back lawn. The yard was small—as she had to maintain it alone—with a small herb and vegetable garden to one side, and a forest flanking them on two. She looked up at the bright blue sky. The sky was a constant, painful source of hope. It had always been there looking exactly the same, even in the time Before.
       On sunny spring days like this, her father had used to take her walking, pointing out the plants around them. It was a love he had shared with her mother, who had known enough about herbs and healing that the townsfolk came to her for remedies. Her mother had died, along with her newborn sister, when Cinderella was four. All she remembered of her mother was that she had been kind, and that she had made her father laugh a lot.
        You look just like her, her father said again. The same golden brown hair and blue eyes. And you have her spirit.
          Cinderella looked sadly at the image of her father seated across from her. “What would she do with all of this?” she asked him, waving at the house, at her life. He understood.
         She would keep going, her father said gravely, compassionately, lovingly, just as you are. She would remember what matters, and who she wanted to be. She would remember to be kind, and be smart, and never give up hope. She would remember that there are always things to love in this world.
           Cinderella pricked her finger with the needle as tears blurred her vision.
         It was midday when a rider-less horse broke out of the forest at a canter. With only a moment’s hesitation and sting of worry that her stepmother would come home hours early, Cinderella raced out and caught the distressed horse, stepping aside as it reared up and kicked, and then pulling it down and calming it.
          “Easy girl,” she said gently. Owned, tamed, distressed, and trying to escape, the horse reminded her of herself.
       “Hey,” called a man from the trees. His skin was brown and he was dressed like one of the servants of the castle, the ones who wore the navy blue uniform. He stumbled once on his way to her, and Cinderella guessed he’d been drinking.
         “That’s my horse,” he explained needlessly, barely looking at her. But she saw the shine in his eyes. That was what made her recognize him, even before she saw the crushed rose in his hand. It was the same man who’d given her a rose three years ago, and he still looked just as sad.
            “Are you all right?” Cinderella asked, handing him the horse’s reins.
         “He could have trampled you,” the man said. He looked to be in his mid twenties.
             “I know horses,” she said. She had had her own, once.
          “Do you?” he asked, turning his broken eyes fully on her. Interest sparked some life into them, but she could tell he still barely saw her.
           “Do you need any help?” Cinderella asked.
          The man swung up into the saddle and ran a hand through his hair, his eyes, for a moment, looking out at the forest with despair. “No.”
       He turned the horse around. “Yes.” He looked back at her. The misery and kindness in his eyes would have broken her heart if it hadn’t already broken a long time ago. “Take this.”
          He tossed her the rose.
                                                                          #
         She should have thrown it out immediately or buried it, but she couldn’t. The man had been too sad. She didn’t regret her choice as she walked toward the castle at dusk, though she didn’t look forward to what she was about to do. She had placed the rose on her bed in the attic, and her stepmother, on one of her surprise sweeps of her room, had found it.
     “After dinner,” she had said quietly, with a calmness that had frightened Cinderella, “take this back to the man who gave it to you. If Charlotte finds out, then you may eat this flower, and nothing else this week.”
         She knew better than to lie this time. She wouldn’t put it past her stepmother to have her followed.
      For the second time in one week, Cinderella found the castle looming up before her. She went to the stables first because the man had ridden a horse.
       Tell him you are a servant, and tell him he should have given it to someone else. Tell him you apologize for deceiving him.
           The first man she encountered in the stables, brushing down a horse, was the dark skinned man she sought. That’s when she realized he was a groom.
          “Excuse me,” she said.
         The man came out of the stall with a frown, a weary despair still lingering on his brow. “The girl who caught my horse,” he said by way of greeting.
          Cinderella offered his rose to him. “I must return this to you. I am sorry.”
        But the man didn’t take it. He looked at the rose like it was poisoned, then looked up at her with incomprehension. “Why?”
      “I am to tell you—” she couldn’t just say it straight “—that I am a servant and should not have deceived you. That this rose should have been for someone else.”
        The man still looked at the rose, studying it now as if it were the one speaking to him. “You are right; I should have given it to someone else.”
      Cinderella winced, but he took the rose at last. She turned to go.
    “I meant,” the man stumbled, “that I wanted to give it to someone else but couldn’t. I didn’t mean that you didn’t deserve one. Who made you say that?” he asked.
        “My stepmother,” she answered honestly before she could catch herself.
         “Is she here?”
        “No,” Cinderella replied, but she looked over her shoulder as if she might have missed her. She always felt like she were there, watching.
           “Then why didn’t you defy her?”
       Cinderella stared at him, the words biting deep. She had, but he hadn’t noticed. He didn’t understand what it was to not be free, to not be safe.
          “It is not that simple,” she said. “Good day.”
           “Wait! Forgive me. I’m not normally such a brute. It’s been a bad day.”
           No worse than usual, she thought.
          “You do not intend to walk back alone in the dark?”
         The shadows were gathering fast. Cinderella looked out of the stable, and knew her stepmother had wanted this. A woman walking alone at night was in very real danger, but Lady Jeanne would have no empathy for her, no matter what happened. “Yes I do.”
         She strode out into the night, gathering her courage and sharpening her gaze, but after a few minutes the groom rode out after her, a spare horse beside him. “Do you know how to ride?”
      She took the offer before she could come up with a reason to refuse, and the old familiar feeling of pulling herself up into the saddle gave her a surge of bittersweet joy.
       They rode to her manor in silence. She pulled her horse to a stop when they were at a safe distance, just out of sight of her stepmother’s assuredly watching eyes.
         “You live here, in that manor?” the groom asked, surprised.
       She dismounted and glanced at him. Had he not noticed?
       “I…wasn’t paying attention earlier. But a man used to live here—did you know him? Vicomte Jehan du Chateau. He taught me how to ride.”
      Cinderella just watched him, wanting him to stop and wanting him to keep going. She’d barely heard her father’s name since he’d died. The groom saw something of her expression in the darkness.
      “Did you work for him?” And then more softly, daringly, “You aren’t his daughter?”
        “Thank you for escorting me back,” said Cinderella cordially. She handed him the reins.
        “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “He was a good man. He found me crying in the woods once as a boy and let me ride on his horse. I owe him a lot. He saw everything as an adventure.”
         “He did,” Cinderella replied, her voice breaking. “Good night, Mr. Groom.”
         “Pierre,” he replied.
        Cinderella nodded without giving a name in reply. The groom would have said more but she turned away.
      A flash of memory burned, flaring, and dying out like a slip of paper. She remembered the boy who had ridden her father’s horse. She remembered being jealous and demanding that her father teach her too, though she had only been six years old. She remembered that years later her father had given her her own horse for her 14th birthday. Her last birthday with him.
       With nothing in her mind but the ashes of her childhood, Cinderella’s feet took her back to the nightmare that had once been a home.
                                                                      #
       As she did every morning, Cinderella set aside her gloom and got to work. If she stopped she would never keep going.
        It was her 20th birthday, but Jeanne didn’t know. Cinderella knew this, because if Jeanne had, she would have made a concerted effort to ruin it every year. As it was, the day began in an ordinary way.
        “And buy a new necklace for me,” ordered Charlotte as she walked by. “I need one to go with my blue dress for LaMontagne’s tonight. A gold chain, perhaps.”
   “Pearls would go better,” countered Lady Jeanne, turning to Cinderella. “Remember the herring for our dinner with the Beaumont’s. Do not get cod. And buy a few apples. And do not forget the flour, or the usual things.”
       Cinderella memorized everything. A couple years back she had accidentally run out of mending thread, and Jeanne had made her unravel her own dress to suffice for her oversight. Another year, when she had forgotten to buy the materials to mend Charlotte’s ornate and studded stomacher for her birthday, she had been locked out of the house until she did; which, as the market had closed, meant she spent the night shivering in the old stable.
      When Cinderella was free, she breathed more easily. She heard the market long before she reached it.
       She had only just bought Charlotte’s new necklace and had turned back into the throng when she felt a hand on her arm. It took her a moment to recognize the girl, but she remembered the wide eyes.
       “Miss Cinderella? That’s you, right? I’ve been looking all over for you because them young prince gone and sent me and I looked through the castle first but no one was knowin’ your name—I mean, people always forget my name too, I’m Anne, but—and I gone and got yelled at for not doing nothin’ but then I told them.”
       Cinderella was dragging her into a clearer area near the fountain and dais in the centre of the market. “Who sent you?” she asked.
      “The prince. He went and asked about you and I said I met you once but he said none of them other serving girls knew your name at all and he askin’, he said he wanted you to light his fire.”
      Cinderella was sure he didn’t need any help with his fire, and she was surprised that he even remembered her name. Though curious, she refused.
         “I have shopping to do,” she said with a shake of head. “I cannot see him now.”
        The girl blinked in surprise. Perhaps she never considered that anyone, much less a girl in rags, might refuse the young prince, but crossing the prince seemed the lesser of two evils to Cinderella.
         “He—he said that if you couldn’t be comin’ that I could do whatever it is you need to do I can go and make your purchases, miss.”
        Cinderella gently detached the girl’s still-clinging hand from her arm. “They are very important,” she said kindly. “I should make them myself.”
      “He also said,” the girl persisted stubbornly, “that you might be sayin’ that and want someone older to go be doin’ it. He said there’s another servant that can be doin’ them for you. ‘Cause he wants you to tend his fire, miss.”
     Cinderella looked over her shoulder, but of course her stepmother wasn’t there and she didn’t know who might be her inadvertent spies. She sighed.
     “I will talk to this other servant,” she conceded, but a real fear rose up in her. She didn’t have extra time and she couldn’t afford mistakes.
     Cinderella didn’t realize what was about to happen until they stepped inside the stables and she saw him. Pierre recognized her—she saw it in his eyes—but he said nothing about it as Anne explained in her rushed and disjointed way that he was to handle her purchases, on the prince’s request.
     His friendly gaze became heavy at the mention of the prince and his order, but his expression was kindly when he turned to Cinderella.
     “What would you like me to buy?”
    Still feeling that this was a bad idea, she gave him the money and very specific instructions about what to buy. On her request, he repeated them back to her.
       “Your stepmother’s orders?” he asked softly. She turned away.
       “I will be back soon,” she said, and marched off, Anne running in her wake, to speak to the prince.
                                                                         #
       She found him just as she’d left him two days before, as if he were a statue frozen in place, looking out the window with a disheartened gaze.
        “Your Royal Highness,” she said by way of introduction, curtseying when he spun around.
        The prince smiled before he caught himself. “Cinderella. I need someone to make my fire.”
       Cinderella waited a moment to see if there was more, before she said, “With all due respect, Your Royal Highness, I have other duties to attend to. I must get back to the market. Anne, I am sure, is capable of making a fire.”
       Anne, standing anxiously beside her, was looking down at her own feet, her knees bent in a sustained half curtsey.
     Cinderella glanced up at the prince when he didn’t reply, knowing her words had been enough to warrant a punishment, but the prince’s gaze was gentle and sad.
     “You are right,” he said softly when their eyes met. “That was petty. I am being selfish. I am used to ordering people around and they usually do not mind. Forgive me. It would please me if you stayed for a few minutes, but if you are too busy, you may go.”
       He expected her to go, she knew, as he turned back to the window. Cinderella gestured for Anne to tend the fire and waited for him to speak to her, but the prince said nothing, still gazing out his window. When Anne stood, finished, Cinderella gestured with her head toward the door, and with one frightened glance at the prince, Anne left.
     Cinderella almost apologized for her rebuke, but she was right. A faded image of her father raising an eyebrow in amused exasperation flickered before her eyes.
      “I hate glass,” the prince said at last.
       When he said no more, she asked, “Why?”
       “Look at it,” he said with a half-hearted wave of his hand toward the window, as if it answered his question. “It shows me the outside world. It shows me that market of yours, those free, carefree people. It shows me that world, but…” He stepped forward and placed his hand against the glass. “But at the same time it holds me back, holds me in, and keeps that world from me. It is as much a barrier as a wall, but it lies.”
       “Does it?” she asked. “What would a prison be without windows? Windows are the only thing that give you hope. It is a painful hope,” she conceded, stepping forward so she could share some of the view, “but perhaps all hope is. And hope is the only thing that keeps you going when you are not free, as some of us down there are not.”
      “You see it as a false hope then?” he asked, turning to her.
     “I cannot believe it is false,” she said, looking out the tall broad windows herself now. “If I believed that, what is the point of anything? Glass is a hopeful thing. It lets you remember the outside world when you are captured. It lets you remember the good in the world and the past, even if it would be easier not to.”
     He turned from her and they stared out the window in silence for a long moment.
      “Thank you,” he said.
     “What is wrong, Your Royal Highness?”
   He smiled mirthlessly and glanced at her. “No one asks a prince that.” But he looked out again and surprised her again with an answer. “I am in love.”
     Cautiously she asked, “Would not anyone wish to marry a prince?”
     “Would you?” he asked.
     Cinderella wondered if she had just been proposed to by a prince twice in one week. “There are many reasons to marry someone,” she answered evasively. “Money, independence, affection, alliances, rank, youthful stupidity.”
          “And which sway you?”
      “Escape.” She answered immediately, and then paused. Marriage had never been possible under her stepmother’s rule; she had never considered what she would look for if her father were still alive. “And I suppose after that I would want someone who respected me.”
        A pause. “Perhaps we are alike, then.”
      He said no more to her and didn’t seem to notice as she took her leave and returned to the marketplace.
                                                                         #
        Her life returned to normal, if it had ever changed, and a month passed without Cinderella hearing another word about the prince, much less from him.
      It was toward the end of June when the town crier bellowed out the announcement from the platform beside the market fountain. Excitement hummed in the air, mounting with each word. It was hard to resist, even knowing the news didn’t apply to her.
      “There is to be a ball in the castle,” the crier shouted, “to celebrate the engagement of our new King Louis to the Spanish princess, as well as his acceptance of his new position of king and sole ruler of France that has ended the long and prosperous regency of our beloved queen. All those of the rank or family of duke, marquis and comte are invited to the castle in a fortnight’s time, as well as any and all young and marriageable women and their escorts who are of noble blood. For the rest, a banquet will be distributed here, so that you may all rejoice on this happy occasion. Long live the crown!”
      Everyone was talking at once, gossiping and planning, the excitement disrupting the normal bustle of the day. Though, like all of them, she had known of the engagement and the end of the queen’s regency, she had never expected a ball like this. To invite all noble marriageable women to the castle at once was an incredible undertaking and could only mean one thing: the queen was seeking a wife for her younger son.
        The news preceded her, and Cinderella arrived home to an uproar caused solely by three people. Charlotte’s dresses were scattered about the living room as she ran upstairs, brought another down, and tossed it away for not being good enough. Marie wasn’t running around, but her voice was just as loud as Charlotte’s.
“What about this one, mother? Do you think this one will do?”
     And Lady Jeanne was presiding over the ruckus as supreme judge, the same energy lighting her eyes into a calculating and determined fire.
       “Of course not, Marie. That style is from last year. Not that one Charlotte—you look too dark in it. You have nothing to match that, Marie. Charlotte, you must think of the whole outfit! You have nothing suitable. Only two weeks!”
      Cinderella stood blinking in the doorway, her spirits still lifted, knowing that in a moment she would lose her part in this excitement and would be put to work. For one moment she enjoyed that this day was different from all the others. When her father had married Lady Jeanne, she remembered hoping for this: that she would be part of something, and maybe, that she would find friends in them.
       “Cinderella!” said Lady Jeanne with a rare relief in her voice, “You will have to make a new dress for Charlotte for the ball.”
       “What about me?” Marie asked indignantly, as Charlotte started listing off ideas for dresses.
        “Oh, what about you?” Charlotte asked her sister. “I am the eldest, so I have priority in wooing men. And it will take all of those two weeks for Cinderella to make me a dress nice enough for the prince.”
        “Charlotte is right,” said Lady Jeanne, and before Marie could protest, she added, “Cinderella just made you a new dress for your birthday. You may wear that or you may borrow any of Charlotte’s dresses. You need to look your best too. Charlotte is seventeen—a perfect age to marry the prince—but you are fifteen now. Perhaps we can find you a marquis or a duke. You can look very pretty when you don’t pout.”
        Marie’s expression was now a comical mix of pleasure and pouting. Cinderella agreed with the complement: Marie was actually prettier than Charlotte, but Charlotte had more energy and knew how to flirt and hold a man’s eye. Still, her stepmother’s aspirations were very high. Every noblewoman in the kingdom would be there. Except one.
       “May I wear this one?” Marie asked, holding up one of Charlotte’s discarded dresses. It was Cinderella’s mother’s dress. Pink with ruffles at the wrists. Her father had kept it for her. Cinderella choked on her words and began tending the living room fire.
       “That is too old,” said Lady Jeanne. “The one from your birthday was quite pretty. Or perhaps Charlotte’s green one, to bring out your eyes.”
    Marie was looking through Charlotte’s scattered dresses and Charlotte was looking at fabrics and there was a moment of silence. Cinderella’s mouth was dry, but she swallowed. It wouldn’t work, but she had to try.
     “If it is old anyway, perhaps I could borrow it for the ball?” Cinderella asked, turning.
     Marie was busy holding the green dress up in front of her, but Charlotte and Lady Jeanne stared at her as if she were insane, and compared to the previous clamour, the room was sharply silent.
        “Since they have asked,” she continued timidly, “for all women of noble birth to attend the ball.”
         “And you think that includes you?” asked Charlotte incredulously.
       Lady Jeanne was eyeing her shrewdly. “You are too fat to fit in any of Charlotte’s dresses,” she said coldly and matter-of-factly. “Or Marie’s, for that matter. All you have is a dress of rags. You would shame our family.”
       Cinderella felt a twinge in her chest, uncertain whether she had just been included in the “our”. She hated that she would still care—those dreams had died with her father when she was fourteen. They were almost embarrassing now, embarrassing for being a child’s daydream.
        “My mother’s dress would fit,” she said. When Lady Jeanne’s eyes sparked she realized she had walked into her trap. Her stepmother knew that dress would fit, and without adjusting any of the others, she knew it was the only one that would.
         “Marie, bring that dress here,” said her stepmother.
        Marie looked confused, and clutched the green dress more tightly.
     “Not that one,” her stepmother admonished. “The one that used to belong to Cinderella’s mother.”
        Her stepmother had set the scene. Everyone was watching, and she was the lead actress.
     “This dress is rather old,” she said, bunching it up in her hands. “And it is important for noblewomen to look our best. We have no more need for it.”
She tossed it into the fire.
       A cry escaped her as Cinderella flew to the fire. She snatched the fabric, but as she moved to step back and yank it free from the flames, she was shoved from behind.
        She stumbled into the fireplace. She fit inside—it was a large living room hearth—but she was crouched down to waist height. Her stepmother’s arms were wide, blocking the exit.
         “Let me out!” Cinderella cried desperately, the heat of the fireplace burning her skin instantly, coals scorching her shoes.
     “Not until you leave the dress,” her stepmother said calmly, as if she weren’t insane, resisting with surprising strength as Cinderella tried to push past her. Charlotte stood behind her with an uncertain smile on her face.
       Cinderella dropped the dress. Her feet were in incredible pain, her hair singing, her skin crisping in the heat. She pushed out, but again her stepmother stopped her.
     “And apologize for thinking you could go to the ball with us or that you could borrow anything of Charlotte’s.”
“I’m sorry!” Cinderella cried, and her stepmother moved aside. She barrelled into the living room. But flames clung to her.
      “Outside!” her stepmother ordered, and she went. She ran out to the garden and rolled in the dirt, across the plants she had tended, and was surprised to find someone batting her with a throw. When the flames were out, Cinderella saw that it was Marie. Her stepsister returned inside quickly, and Cinderella saw her stepmother watching from doorway. She shut the door between them.
        Cinderella stood and ran. She headed for the forest, unable to stop her tears. She ran till she reached the tiny pebbled creek that ran through it. She splashed the cool water on her face before stepping into it and crouching, covering herself as much as she could. Burns spotted her dress and her hair was fried at the end. Her skin burned. She sat on her butt, letting her feet rest in the flow of the creek. They ached and were already starting to blister. The water ran across her stomach.
      She was gasping, breathing faster and faster and yet felt she was taking nothing in. How could she keep living with her stepmother? How could she keep going? No one knew. No one could see how Jeanne really was.
      Cinderella gasped, her hands over her mouth, tears streaming down her face. She hadn’t even cared. Her stepmother hadn’t bothered to put out the fire. Cinderella wasn’t worth even that much.
     It was a long time before her breathing began to steady. Cinderella still sat in the creek, the water gurgling indifferently around her. The sun reached the forest floor in patches of gold, and Cinderella looked up at where it made the leaves glow bright green.
       She could stay here. She could sit until she died. Sit until there was no difference between her and this forest. Every hour that passed was another hour of work she would be forced to do when she returned, but she couldn’t go back now. She couldn’t pretend nothing had happened. It had. They would act like it was normal, like Cinderella was crazy and they were sane, but it had happened. All of it. She couldn’t forget, couldn’t lose herself. And she couldn’t stand it. Why was she still going?
     An image of her father appeared before her, kneeling on the bank of the creek and offering his hand, but she shook her head and made herself see that she was alone. She was always alone. He had died five and a half years ago. Maybe she should have died then too.
     But she pulled her knees up to her chest, her breath still ragged, and wrapped her arms around them. She bowed her head and hugged herself tightly, trying to remind herself of the love she had once known and the good she had once seen in the world, and trying to give herself the comfort that no one else would.
      Easy now, she said to herself, as if speaking to that horse. It will be okay. There is a point. It is possible to have something good come after so much bad.
    Her burns weren’t serious. Her feet would take days to heal and she would need to cut her hair, but the rest of her burns were mild and wouldn’t blister. Her skin felt dry and half-cooked.
     She tore a strip off of the bottom of her dress and tore it in two before wrapping each of her feet. The sole had burnt through completely in parts of each shoe. She stood and walked through the trees, wishing she could just walk out of her life and away.
    She heard voices and stopped. She felt so alone that they seemed out of place. She hesitated, not wanting to see anyone, and yet they drew her. They were lowered, speaking quickly and earnestly.
   She slipped quietly through the trees until she was quite near them, but they didn’t hear her approach. Pierre, She knew immediately. The man he spoke to took longer to recognize.
     “What can I do?” the man asked despairingly. “There is nothing we can do.”
      “There is always something we can do,” said Pierre fervently. “If it matters.”
     “Of course it matters,” said the man Cinderella recognized with a jolt as the prince. He clasped hands tenderly with the groom. “You are the only thing keeping me going. But she will never let us be.”
     “Do we need permission?” Pierre asked, but his eyes were equally troubled.
     I should have given it to someone else. I wanted to give it to someone else, but I couldn’t, he had said.
    I am in love, the prince had said forlornly, as if naming a death sentence.
Suddenly, shockingly, everything made sense.
     And then the queen stepped from the trees, thin and tough in a dress of green. “Philippe,” was all she said, addressing her son. But her eyes burned holes through Pierre, and the hand that had been dropped like lightning.
      “Mother,” began Philippe, but he had nothing to say.
    “I suspected you had a lover,” said the queen, “and I suspected the ball would flush her out, but I never…” she trailed off, staring hard at Pierre.
    “Your Majesty,” Cinderella said politely, stepping from where she hid. She knew she had never looked worse—burnt, soaked and in rags—but she wanted to save them. She wanted to save them because no one could save her.
     “Who are you?” asked the queen sharply.
   “Forgive me,” said Cinderella, looking at the queen’s feet. “I do not wish for you to draw the wrong conclusions.” A vague enough sentence that it was hardly a lie. She felt the eyes of Pierre and the prince.
    “You are his lover,” remarked the queen with evident relief. Her voice hardened. “So your lover is a servant girl. That explains things.”
    Cinderella glanced quickly at the prince, who seemed shocked but didn’t deny the claim, and saw that Pierre was staring at her hard, thoughts whirling behind his eyes.
      “Why are you wet? And burnt.”
     “It was hard to get here,” Cinderella answered honestly.
     “Well,” said the queen, turning from her as an only a queen can turn from a peasant. “We can deal with this. We will find you a noblewoman at the ball, and you will marry her.”
     “I have no wish to marry anyone else,” said the prince, finding his voice at last. “I love her.”
   And though she knew it was an act, something in her welled up at those words. In this moment, they stood together.
      “Love!” his mother exclaimed. “Love is for unmarried people, and the mistresses of married ones. It does not come in to the marriage of the prince. Your brother has never even met his fiancé.”
     “Nonetheless, I have no wish to marry.”
    “You will marry, and you will not marry a servant.”
     “Excuse me, Your Majesty,” Cinderella interrupted.
  The queen blinked at her in surprise, a well-groomed eyebrow rising at her audacity.
       “I am not a servant girl. I am of noble blood.”
     She felt the scrutiny. She felt every tear, every stain, every burn on her dress. She felt the rags tied around her feet, the fuzzy ends of her hair. But the queen saved her an explanation.
      “This is how you have been meeting in secret. By disguising yourself as a servant,” she concluded. “Who are you, then?”
       “I am Lady Madeleine, daughter of the late Vicomte, Jehan du Chateau.”
    The queen was watching her thoughtfully. “This was his viscounty,” she murmured. “You’re not a baroness at least,” she added.
     “Good,” she said, surprising Cinderella with a small smile in her frank face. “If you can dress like that and still speak to me, then you are not vain. And you are smart.
“Convince me,” she said sternly, her gaze meeting Cinderella’s levelly. “I will see you at the ball.”
    With one pointed stare at her son, and sparing only a passing glance for his groom, the queen left.
    They listened to the fading of her footsteps, and then stood in silence.
    “You lied to the queen,” was the first thing the prince said, though there was only worry in his voice.
    “She is the daughter of the late Vicomte,” Pierre said, stepping forward.
    “You know each other?”
    “He gave me your rose,” she said, “on Le Jour de La Fleur.”
  The two men were looking at each other now, and suddenly they embraced, hugging each other tightly. “I am sorry,” they each said at once.
   “You are a Vicomte’s daughter?” the prince asked her, when he finally tore his eyes from Pierre.
     She didn’t want to answer. She didn’t want to acknowledge what she had once had, when everything about her showed that she had lost it.
     “Yes,” answered Pierre, saving her. “Her father taught me to ride, as a boy. He was kind and full of life.” He watched her with compassion.
    “I am sorry,” murmured the prince, but he was frowning. “Why are you like this then?” he asked, waving to her dress. “It is not for me,” he said, his features tweaking into the closest thing to a smile that she’d seen on his face.
       “Your stepmother?” Pierre asked.
       She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. She looked away.
     “You mentioned her,” said the prince. Then suddenly, as if seeing her anew. “Why are you burnt? Why are you wet?”
     “A lesson,” Cinderella said, tears welling in her eyes again, her breathing destabilizing, but she didn’t drop her gaze. “She pushed me into the fire.”
      In that one moment she felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Pierre and the prince both looked at her with compassion and heartbreak in their eyes—as well as a validating measure of shock and horror—and for a moment, she felt that they were like her.
      A long moment passed, but they didn’t make her explain.
    “Cinderella—Lady Madeleine, we have a predicament,” said the prince with unusual energy, for once not seeming burdened by life. “My mother thinks you are my lover.”
       “I wanted to help you,” she explained quickly and earnestly. “I am sorry, I could think of nothing else.”
   “You wanted to help me,” repeated the prince with a light in his eyes that she didn’t understand. And then, for the third time: “Would you also like to marry me?”
     Cinderella blinked in surprise, looked at Pierre and then back at the prince. He meant it this time. She opened her mouth but had nothing to say.
       “Do you think that could work?” Pierre asked the prince. They were both facing each other again, with such passion and such devotion that Cinderella felt for them.
       “It could,” murmured the prince daringly, and smiles tugged on both of their lips.
      For a moment she thought she glimpsed who they might have been, or who they could be, once the strain of their relationship was lifted. Pierre had cheery spirit, a quick mind and a strong capacity to love, while the prince had a simple openness and honesty to him. Both seemed to have a boyish playfulness to them, when they were free to express it.
       Freedom, she mused. Maybe the hope of freedom, or some part of it, was what connected them all.
     They sat in a circle and spoke to each other, at once discovering each other as strangers, and unearthing a connection between them that already seemed to be there. They argued and debated plan after plan—for the ball, the proposal, the queen, the aftermath—and Cinderella could hardly believe it. Here she sat, a beggar by all but her word and her father’s memory, speaking of marriage to a prince, and of love to new friends.
       When she left, there was still reason enough to worry and enough misery in her home to tamper her cheer upon returning, but she felt different inside. Something new and frighteningly hopeful bubbled inside of her, and she wondered if it was possible that there was a power greater than her stepmother’s in which she could trust. They had, after all, constructed a plan. Out of the ashes and the toil of their lives, they would create a fairy tale.
                                                                #
        She had hardly slept, but Cinderella woke on the morning of the ball with no lack of energy. Her body hummed with excitement and fear. This was stupid. Hope was stupid. Defying her stepmother was stupid. What would her next punishment be?
         She bumped into a vase and nearly broke it, and burnt Charlotte’s breakfast. Her stepmother’s eyes burned holes through her. She wouldn’t do this.
        This is impossible, she had said.
        Everything is impossible, said the prince.
       Nothing’s impossible, said Pierre, but this is crazy.
        Everything is crazy, the prince had echoed. And though he had been speaking affectionately, his words seemed fitting now, on the morning of the ball.
     She had no end of things to do, so she focussed on preparing Marie and Charlotte. Charlotte’s new dress was a brilliant red with white trimmings, and Cinderella felt a twinge of pride when she put it on. Her hands ached from two weeks of sewing, but it was the nicest dress she had ever made. Marie had decided to wear the pink and mauve flowered dress that Cinderella had made for her birthday, and Lady Jeanne would wear her emerald green one.
       Cinderella did and redid their hair, helped them into the dresses they had chosen, then into many other dresses, then back into the first ones, and helped them match jewellery with their dresses and their Colombina masks. She was on her feet all day running errands and doing chores. She let herself forget her plans. She would help them prepare: that was all.
      When it was finally early evening and they were preparing to go, Lady Jeanne gave her more chores than she could possible do. It was hard to even remember them all—dusting, sweeping, washing, weeding, tidying, cleaning the fireplaces, and more besides. When they finally left, their hired carriage carrying them toward the castle, Cinderella got to work. She decided to start on the weeding before the light faded. She threw herself into the working, hoping it would make hers forget the feeling of loss that pierced her as she watched them go, and the sick worry when she thought of the arrangements she had made with the prince.
        Honesty will have to be the most important thing, the prince had said. If you have lovers, tell me. If you are mad at me, tell me. If you are going to run away and conspire with other princes in the forest, tell me. I will be jealous. Cinderella had smiled.
       The prince’s wildest plan had been for her to arrive in a carriage shaped like a pumpkin.
      A pumpkin? she and Pierre had exclaimed together.
     The prince had shrugged. No matter what it is or how you look, when you are my fiancé they will copy you.
     Fiancé. Her, the fiancé of a prince. It was impossible. Her hands ached from sewing. She was kneeling in dirt and it caked her fingernails. She had one burnt dress of rags. The prince had been crazy even to speak to her. And Pierre had just been too kind.
    As she finished the weeding and went back inside, she heard the hoofbeats of horses. She closed the door firmly behind her, listening with dread. The hoofbeats stopped. She closed her eyes. What had she done?
     Flames singed her feet and her skin burned. Her stepmother pushed her back in. Only Marie had stopped the flames.
     A knock at the door. Cinderella stared at it without moving, but then it opened anyway.
     A strongly-built woman with beautiful brown skin stood in the doorway carrying a chest, with two maids behind her.
       “Who are you?” Cinderella asked.
       “Your fairy godmother,” the woman replied wryly, stepping boldly inside. “I’m here to get you to that ball. They’re taking the chores,” she said, nodding over her shoulder at the other girls. The maids had been Cinderella’s idea. Now they took away an excuse.
    “I’m Catherine, the prince’s seamstress. You must be Lady Madeleine.”
    “What would you like me to do, my lady?” one of the girls asked. The “my lady” stunned Cinderella. It was like going back in time and forward to a future that had never happened.
    Cinderella found herself telling them. It took long minutes and a brief tour of the house for her to explain everything to them, and the moment the girls got to work she turned to woman.
      “I do not think I should go,” she said.
     “Nonsense,” said the seamstress firmly but kindly. “I have brought you a dress which should be suitable. I’ll have to tweak it once you get it on. I also have the mask. A volto, prince’s orders.”
     She had placed the chest she carried on the ground, and now opened it, removing a box of  sewing instruments, and then a mask. Cinderella’s mouth opened.
   The volto was a full face mask that was normally all white, with a fake mouth at the bottom. This one had a glittering golden spiral that curved up around one eye and down onto the opposite cheek. Her sisters had worn Colombinas—a new style of decorated mask favoured by the vain who only wanted to cover half their faces.  But this mask would hold up even to theirs for its beauty.
     “Don’t gawk at that,” said the seamstress. “Here is the dress.” And she held up the most beautiful dress Cinderella had ever seen. It looked like it had been sewn from pure gold, and glittered with precious stones.
     “I cannot,” Cinderella said quickly. “I should stay here. I am not a wealthy woman, as that dress would have me appear.”
      Catherine fixed her with a steady eye, and then reached into the chest one more time. She lifted out a pair of shoes.
     They were gold too, but had hundreds of clear stones covering their surface that Cinderella couldn’t identify. She reached out to touch one. It was smooth, as if worn by water, and wasn’t cold like stone.
    “Glass,” said Catherine. “The prince requested it specifically. He said it meant something to you two.”
       Glass. Hope.
      Cinderella took the shoes as if taking a heavy mantle onto her shoulders. She had to go. She had to try. No matter what she suffered, she had to take this chance. It might be the only one she ever got.
            A knock came at the door and only the seamstress’ quick reflexes stopped the shoes from hitting the floor as Cinderella dropped them. Cinderella went to answer it.
            A neighbour from down the road stood there, an old woman she had seen from time to time.
            “Cinderella,” she said. “Your mother told me you were ill tonight. She wanted me to check up on you. How are you feeling?”
            “I was just about to retire early for the night. Thank you for dropping by.”
            “I can make you some hot tea or soup before you sleep. It will help.”
            “I am exhausted,” Cinderella said firmly. “I really must decline. But thank you so much for your offer.”
            She shut the door. And waited. The woman left.
            The seamstress was watching her with a question in her eyes.
            “A spy for my stepmother,” she said. But she couldn’t stop.
            The seamstress dressed her, pinned parts of the dress and murmured about letting out other parts, and undressed her again. While Cinderella bathed with the help of the girls, the seamstress touched up the dress.
            It felt like a dream. In little over an hour from when the seamstress had arrived, Cinderella was ready to go. An elegant carriage rode up as if it had been waiting for her. The coachman dismounted and opened the carriage door for her. It was Pierre.
            “You look stunning,” he said as he offered her his hand. Somehow, that hand reassured her enough to step up. They were friends. That was what this was about. Their team: her, Pierre and the prince. She had to believe it was possible.
            It wasn’t a long ride to the castle, and when they arrived Cinderella wished it would take longer.
            “You are late,” said Pierre as she stepped down from the carriage. “Few will notice you enter.” He winked; it was part of the plan. “But,” he added, “they will notice you on the dance floor.”
            “Because I will dance with the prince.”
            “Because you look like a princess.”
            When Cinderella hesitated, he added quietly, “It’s almost enough to make me consider women.”
            It shouldn’t have, but it made her blush, and Pierre prodded her forward with a wide grin. She climbed the steps to the castle alone, feeling the watching eyes of the male servants who lined the steps. Each step felt harder than the last. Each step increased her fear that her stepmother would discover her. With each step she knew that, for better or worse, she couldn’t turn back.
            The dancing had begun. The prince was easy to find—she only had to follow nearly everyone’s eyes to the young man in the middle of the floor, the only one without a mask apart from his brother, mother and the princess on the dais—but her stepmother was harder. She wouldn’t be recognized—she wore a volto and clothing her stepmother had never seen—but still, the sight of her stepmother shocked fear into her heart. She was making introductions with the higher marriageable noblemen, all the while keeping one eye on the prince on the dance floor.
            The moment Cinderella approached the dance floor she was petitioned for a dance. She accepted, taking her place opposite the middle-aged comte in a line of dancers, as the 1-2-3 of the menuet began.
       She needed the warm-up. She had forgotten much of what she had once known, but as she danced, as she remembered her love and natural talent for dancing, the steps came back to her. She caught the prince’s eye a couple couples over, dancing with Charlotte now, and missed a step.
      When the menuet changed to a gavotte, the prince didn’t reach her. There were too many women there creating a barricade, and Cinderella danced the steady four rhythm of the gavotte with a young marquis. There were many more women than men at the ball, and they stood along the sides of the great hall like brightly coloured birds, all a picture of beauty.
      The prince reached her in time for the beginning of the next dance, a slow sarabande. Everyone’s eyes were on them as they began.
        “Your Royal Highness.”
         “My lady.”
          They stepped into the dance.
        “There are so many people,” Cinderella murmured nervously when they came together.
     “You will get used to it. They do not really see us,” said Philippe as they each turned in a circle to the slow proper rhythm of the strings.
       “What do they see?” she asked later.
        “A prince of France dancing with a beautiful lady whom they are worried he will marry.”
        Cinderella laughed.
        “Now they’re angry,” said Philippe, but he was smiling.
       After another minute, he said, “You look stunning tonight. To many, that matters more than rank.”
       “To many,” Cinderella echoed.
       “My mother’s different,” he said, his eyes dancing.
       “You do not seem worried.”
       “Should I be?” He smiled. “Perhaps you will make me the happiest of men.”
       She smiled, then sobered. She spied Charlotte on the edge of the dance floor, watching her with evident jealousy.
      “Perhaps you will make me the happiest of women,” Cinderella returned, almost too quietly to be heard over the music, as the dance ended.
       “I will free you,” he murmured, following her gaze.
        “I will cover for you,” she teased.
        Women were slipping closer again, but the prince asked her loudly for a second dance. Cinderella heard the murmurs, and raised an eyebrow at him, keeping her smile down.
        “It would be an honour, Your Royal Highness,” she accepted with a curtsey.
        The next dance was a pavane, a processual dance and slow allemande where the dancers held hands as they crossed the room in a wide sweep. Cinderella clasped the prince’s warm hand in hers. The band began, and she took three steps and balanced on one foot, and then took another three steps forward.
       “I am not worried,” he said, “because you are the right choice. My mother will see that. She will see your kindness, your bravery, your ability to solve problems that is superior to mine.” His eyes twinkled at the latter. “She is watching now.”
         “We are crazy,” said Cinderella.
           “Yes.”
        She smiled. Her body quivered with nerves in the sea of bright lights, music, and watching eyes.
          “Do you like your shoes?” he asked.
           “It is hard to hope,” she returned seriously.
         “You said so yourself: hope is always painful, but it is also very powerful. The hope of Cinderella, the hope of the hidden Lady Madeleine, might move kingdoms.”
        “I just want it to move my mattress,” she returned wryly, and now it was the prince’s turn to laugh. There was no escaping the eyes, so Cinderella ceased to watch them.
         “And the heart of a certain stable boy,” she added.
       The prince’s dark brown eyes caught hers, tenderly grateful. In that moment she felt it again: their connection, their team, their cause.
       Philippe only stopped dancing with her to dance with a few duchesses, and a few women who it would have been rude or unbelievable to avoid entirely, but he and Cinderella danced most of the night.
       Toward midnight, with flushed cheeks and a happy heart, Cinderella excused herself to enact the next part of their plan. But as soon as she left the floor she encountered her stepmother.
     “Good evening, Your Grace,” her stepmother said formally, giving her the honorific for a duchess in what Cinderella guessed was an attempt to learn her rank.
     “Good evening, my lady,” she replied in a higher pitched voice than usual, fear lancing through her chest.
        “Your beauty seems to have caught the attention of the prince,” her stepmother said frankly, yet sounding kindly. A few other women now hovered nearby.
      “He has been very kind to me,” Cinderella returned, and moved off with the barest of curtsies. She had to wait another dance before she felt the weight of her stepmother’s gaze lift for a moment, and then she fled the castle. She moved quickly, stumbling as she left one of her shoes on the steps, and continuing on with only one slipper and one stocking. Once home, she would give the rest of her outfit to the maids to take away with them.
         She didn’t anticipate the hail of the queen. “Lady Madeleine.”
       Cinderella spun around. She returned quickly to the queen, standing in the door with her guards a careful distance away, lest she speak her name again. Her stepmother could not find out she was here.
         “Your Majesty,” she replied with a deep curtsey. “Forgive my haste.”
        “Where are you going?”
       Excuses she had planned for others died on her tongue when faced with the queen. The queen would know a lie if she heard one.
       “I am not of high rank,” Cinderella replied honestly. “And I have those near me who would wish me ruin. As such, the prince and I thought that perhaps my identity should be kept a secret, until—or if, by your leave—we might be engaged.”
     The queen eyed her up and down with the same dark brown eyes as her son.  “Why do you really want to marry my son? For the crown, the castle, or his money?”
         “None of those, Your Majesty. I care little for such things. I mean, they would be a luxury I could appreciate, though also a responsibility, but I wish to marry him because he is good and respects me. And because I do not wish to live with those I live with.”
      Thoughts flew behind the queen’s shrewd eyes, flickering in the lamp-lit darkness.
      “And how do you deal with responsibility?” she asked after a moment’s silence.
     “I have run and cared for a household single-handedly since I was fifteen. I have learned to never stop because of discouragement. I have learned to learn quickly, and learn well. I would learn to handle whatever tasks were laid on my shoulders.” Cinderella didn’t know why she wanted the queen’s approval and not just her permission, but she did, and she spoke in earnest.
       “You are an odd one,” remarked the queen, but not unkindly. “How did you two plan on revealing your identity?”
      “I was to leave my slipper, and he will find me with it. He will say I never gave him my name; all he knows is my voice and appearance.”
      “Every girl in the kingdom would want to try it on.”
     “He will be looking for people who look like me; he will only allow a few to try it. It is something the people will appreciate.”
       The queen exhaled sharply in what might have been a laugh. “A fairy tale.”
      “Yes.”
       “And what if it fits someone else?”
       “It will not fit my stepsisters—their feet are too small—and they are the only ones who matter in this.”
      The queen studied her again. “You must tell me more of your family.”
       “Another day, I hope,” Cinderella replied, looking behind the queen at the grand open doors to the ball. She didn’t see her stepmother, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. “When I am safe.” The words were torn from deep within her chest without her leave.
      “When you are safe then,” the queen echoed, surprising her. “I appreciate your honesty. It is a rare thing among young women looking for marriage, particularly those who chase my son. But you are the first he has fallen for, and the first that has made him laugh as he did this evening, so there must be something different about you. I would appreciate a daughter-in-law with a sensible head on her shoulders; I had begun to think it too much to ask for.
         She picked up Cinderella’s discarded glass slipper and turned away from her. “You are dismissed. I believe you have somewhere to be?” she offered. “I could not quite catch you in time.”
     “Thank you, Your Majesty.” Cinderella dipped a curtsey with a half-smile, and then turned and darted away.
                                                              #
       Cinderella slipped into the woods, her hands still soft and dirty from gardening. Her stepmother and stepsisters were out, and the forest always made her feel less alone.
       Have you ever been in love? Marie had asked her in a moment of solitude that morning, her manner betraying her heart.
       Once, years ago, Cinderella had offered. It was around the time her father had died, and he had abandoned her like the others as Lady Jeanne had taken over.  What is his name?
I do not—I mean, I should not. I am not sure that I am in love: he was just very kind to me. We danced at the ball. Mother was focussed on Charlotte and we had a lot of time to talk.  He said he is looking for a wife. I should not speak so. Mother wanted a marquis; he was a comte.
And you are the daughter-in-law of a Viscomte and the daughter of a baroness. You would marry up to marry a comte.
You do not understand. Mother will not see it that way. I should not listen to you. You are poor and used to being poor. I must do my best to marry well.
Cinderella ignored the slight. You might be surprised. If you bring him around she will probably approve.
And if she does not?
If he asks you to marry him, you do not need Mother’s permission to say yes.
           Marie had blinked in surprise, then shaken her head and walked away.
      Cinderella could barely remember living a life so normal as Marie’s: having crushes, thinking of marriage, wearing nice clothes…not being afraid. Five years seemed like half her life, and the first half was like a storybook. The first half had contained people, and family, and love, and hopes. In the first half she had been taught what home meant, what safety meant, what goodness was. For the second half, she was just doing her best to remember them.
       She would never find a man living her life as her stepmother’s prisoner, and she would never escape any other way. What if the prince changed his mind? She would have to go back to living despite all hope, to questioning why she still thought that life was worth living, that the world had beautiful things in it to love.
She stepped over the glittering brook, but turned a different way than the day she had found the prince and Pierre together. She came to a familiar boulder, and sat on top. She put her head in her hands.
       Madella, her father said gently, but she ignored him. He was gone, and nothing was the same as it had been when he was alive.
       Sometimes the gloom came, and there was little she could do about it. Some mornings it took so much effort just to get out of bed, to decide to keep going. As if, just as her mind were between worlds, half the time spent with the dead or non-existent, so too was her body, hovering between worlds, unsure whether to live. She had no escape plan and yet held on to the dream of escape. Maybe she was foolish for getting up every day, for doing the chores, for trying to survive when there was so little to survive for, but she did. Every day she kept going, and every day she hoped that someday she would think it had all been worth it.
       “Madeleine? Cinderella?” It was Pierre.
        Cinderella looked around but no one else was with him.
       “I didn’t see you in the square for the announcement. The prince is off searching for the owner of the shoe.”  His voice lilted uncertainly, in what would have been shared laughter on another day.
         “Good,” she said, because he expected a response.
         “What happened?”
      “Nothing,” she said. And it was mostly true. Nothing but what had happened every day for five and a half years. She woke up alone. She talked to herself. She forgot a little more what “normal” meant. She doubted, feared, despaired.
        “The prince is a good man,” he said, sitting on the edge of the boulder beside her. “He would not betray you or abandon you. And neither will I.”
          “I was trying to save you,” she reminded him, unable to hold his kind gaze.
      “And in doing that, you have saved all of us. This was your doing; your resilience.”
      “I am so tired,” she said, though he did much to dispel that. A conversation with a real person was more than enough to make her happy nowadays.
       “It is an impressively small thing for what you’ve been through these past years. Other people would died. Or maybe thrown their stepmother into the fire.” He smiled, but she couldn’t.
         “Three against one,” she reminded him.
        “Poison?” he suggested brightly.
        She laughed.
        After a minute, she asked, “If I marry the prince…”
        “When.”
        “My stepmother might…I do not know. She is unpredictable.”
     “She can’t reach you in the palace. She’d be thrown in the dungeons or executed for even trying. Actually…” he said with an expression of mock seriousness. “Perhaps we could encourage her…”
      Cinderella smiled, then looked away. The summer forest shimmered with all colours of green and grey and brown. She would be safe after the engagement; they had discussed her stepmother in the woods that day, and the prince had decided on a guard until the wedding, not officially for her stepmother of course. But how safe she was and how safe she felt were two different things. She wasn’t sure she knew what “safe” felt like anymore.
      “What about the queen?” Cinderella asked, remembering how she’d told her about her stepmother.
       “The queen likes you,” Pierre said, and Cinderella spun her head toward him.
       “Really?”
    “Philippe says she’s been strangely cheery, half the time complaining about logistics—some related to you, some not—and half the time talking about the future and grandchildren and how glad she is that Philippe finally came to his senses.”
        Cinderella smiled. “Or lost them completely.”
      Pierre smiled. “I don’t know. I ruined him, I think. He lost his senses with me, but he regained them with you.”
      “He suggested a carriage made out of a pumpkin with me.”
       Pierre laughed. “As I said. The prince, with his senses.”
    Cinderella grinned. When Pierre offered his hand she took it with trepidation, gratitude and wonder in her heart. He gave her hand a squeeze.
                                                              #
      “Run upstairs, Cinder-rags,” ordered Charlotte when Cinderella lingered too long following Marie’s announcement. Cinderella wasn’t sure why Marie had been outside to be the first one to spot the prince’s entourage coming down the road, but she had a couple guesses. She obediently went upstairs, but found a window that overlooked the road.
      She could hear Lady Jeanne reprimanding Marie for not wearing her best dress, as they’d planned. They were all in the living room pretending to be idle, Charlotte with needlework in hand.
    The prince’s company came into sight, stopping in front of the manor, and Cinderella was filled with doubt. How could he choose her over so many other women? What if he fell for Charlotte’s charm, Marie’s beauty, or Jeanne’s tricks? She felt so small, so brave, so stupid. She was a girl dressed in rags, staring out a window at a prince, with the same hope that any girl dressed in rags would have. But then she pressed her palm to the glass, as the prince had done once. If this was being a fool, then she chose to be a fool.
      The prince was announced downstairs. Cinderella was hardly breathing, her heart pounding in her chest. Her stepfamily introduced themselves. She crept to the top of the stairs. If she went down, if her stepmother saw her and if the prince didn’t take her…but he would. He was her friend, and soon, they would marry. They were a team.
      She bit her lip as she heard the shoe announced, and Charlotte’s demand to try it on, accompanied by a string of lies about the golden dress she had worn at the ball. She might have smiled if she wasn’t so afraid. The prince’s daring, his youthful dreaming, had created this part of the plan, and she knew, somehow, that it would have made her father smile.
     She crept down the stairs as Charlotte protested that she had been wearing thicker stockings at the ball, extra padding around her feet to make the shoes more comfortable for dancing, but Cinderella knew it was clear that her feet were several sizes too small—Charlotte had made fun of Cinderella’s large feet more than once.
     When Jeanne suggested Marie try the shoe next, Marie said honestly that she hadn’t danced with the prince at the ball, so there was no point in her trying it on. Cinderella could only imagine her stepmother’s shocked fury at the remark.
       “Are there any other young ladies in this house?” asked the prince as Cinderella stepped down from the stairs.
    “I am, Your Royal Highness,” Cinderella replied, overriding her stepmother. The prince turned his dark brown eyes on her, and she held back a smile of nervous happiness. She avoided the livid fury of her stepmother’s gaze. For once, this wasn’t about her. For once, Cinderella would have her own power.
     “Is it you?” he asked softly, playing his part. Cinderella smiled and lowered her eyes.
       “Perhaps we should see?” she suggested coyly.
     “She is a servant girl,” Lady Jeanne lied loudly, as the man with the glass shoe came over. But only Cinderella heard her, her heart too conditioned by years of torment to not.
     Cinderella slipped her foot into the shoe and of course it fit perfectly.
      The prince smiled. “What is your name, my lady?”
       “Lady Madeleine. I am the daughter of the late Vicomte Jehan du Chateau.”
       “And would you, Lady Madeleine, be the daughter-in-law of the queen?”
     “Cinderella,” Lady Jeanne began, somewhat desperately, and this time Cinderella did look at her, and smiled.
       “Stepmother?”
       But her stepmother only stared and fumed and wondered, her mouth slightly apart. And Cinderella knew she couldn’t touch her now.
      “It would be the greatest honour, Your Royal Highness,” she replied to Philippe, grinning back at him as his eyes danced with laughter.
​

​It was an ovenlike day as sun was emitting flaming rays .Atmosphere was hemmed in by silence and peace was rife in all directions owing to intense torridness .Birds had lost their chirping and open beaks wereunable to hold their functioning.They seemed to have forgotten their natural activities scilicet preening,contest for new nests and fluctuation from one place to another.All schools were shut down for the safety of children and they were not making capital out of the opportunity to play any game under the canopy that been bestowed upon though it was under some crucial circumstances.Ravi and Vishal were sitting beneath margosa tree and were discussing how to be emancipated from overflowing situation.Vishal devised a plan to go on picnic spot in hilly area to avoid close atmosphere.Ravi laughing to himself consented to his proposal as animate smile was evidence of inward delight.They planned to go at Mandi situated circa one hundred miles far off their village and the day was fixed for falling out.

In the wee hours of morning they embarked journey on shanks mare,from village to bus stand,that was nigh through indirect beaten path by crossing fields.The tourist bus already arrived and the driver(Pritam) eagerly waiting for the couple viewed the twosome from window mirror with guess that they would be passengers and starting the bus approached to them by mitigating the distance as his certitude proved true as they began to rush lest bus driver should forget to accompany them. Both subsuming among others settled themselves without a hitch since many seats were empty, maybe they were to be occupied by subsequent enlistees.In the way many outlandish scenes usurped their soul for stay and they induced Pritam to have a stop transiently.To mollify the fatigue of his jaded body,he consented to their proposal with affirmative nod.After a short period of rest all passengers speedily occupied their seats but Vishal and Ravi remained busy with their camera capturing lively scenes of Nature.Pritam tooted horn continuously, they stretched forth  their steps so lazily to wit, they had no intention to get their original destination.So slowly they entered in, it seemed to Pritam that they had unwillingly left place and were peeping rearward until the bus extracted everything from their sight.He said that Vishal’s habits had very many similarity with that of his father as Pritam and his father were childhood friends.He had to leave his study from
college time because of adverse circumstances as his father passed away and financial condition plagued, on account of that he adopted the profession of a driver to pull the cab of family’s expenses. Or else he would have been an officer in government job like his father.He also recalled that days when they both were on a trip to Nanital and his father always lagged behind as he was not immune to heavenly charm of Nature. He went into details that his father before marriage proposed that he would do his best to bring his would-be child in the field of medical science. Next station Palampur came, it was a small city on zeninth surrounded by fetching lowland shrubs. On seeing panoramic beauty Vishal evinced his desire for adopting the profession of an artist,Pritam began to laugh and himself impressed by beautiful scene stopping bus said that he would like to light his cigarette.But then Ravi urged Vishal to take their meal to appease the badgering hunger and after that they would discuss the issue of photography.Both friends pounced upon their favourite dishes in such a manner as they were hunger perturbed from many days.Some new passengers were admitted in they took up their seats, driver came and possessed his seat and asked everyone to take their water bottles ,snacks, cold drinks because bus would not stop until the destination comes. Ravi leaving his seat went rearward portion of bus and engaged himself in bountiful talks with passengers and made everyone laugh with humorous talks while Vishal kept himself busy, sitting beside Pritam,in heart to heart talks.What with single lane road,Pritam not putting aside his foot from brake gave some jerks to passengers sometimes overtaking other four wheelers on circle shape road.Some were happy with sudden shocks but Vishal was all hung-up lest it should bash against some tree, motor car or some monkey crossing the road untimely.But Pritam overtopped his angst by giving a good example of his chops. After drawn-out spell bus arrived at final destination.That ambience surmounted old projects and sometime notions.Passengers jumped from bus like an alleged prisoners.Former atmosphere was subdued as it was neither hot nor cold.Having reached there they breathed again and moved everywhere as their penchant allowed.Ravi handed over the camera to other visitant asking that they be imprisoned together in photographs.Ravi hugging him with single arm faced many photographs, Vishal also following the same pattern had good photographs.They were embracing each other in such a manner as they were going to be departed.Vishal expounded his views by telling that his heart would never allow him to leave that place.

The place where they were standing like a piece of land in majestic ocean but in reality it was exceedingly swell portion of land situated on pinnacle beset by beautiful valleys fraught with shadowy trees.Though it was noon but in coolness it was like an evening time.They lunched in the restaurant made of woods and after that, on
the either side of open lawn there was a small open sale of some branded items useful in daily routine that do not clash when someone visits one or two shops for general purposes.Vishal purchased some gifts for fair-haired ones,especially ring and glitering necklace for his girl friend and lockets and bracelets for others. And they moved further to see swarm as they were readying for swimming race competition Ravi being a good swimmer joined them and stood second while Vishal lagged behind among others as his no leaning towards that game.After that singing competition was held,albeit Ravi was not a good singer but banking upon his previous success he entertained other visitants with regional songs full of pleasure but then Vishal was content with single old bollywood song.

Last game of the day was horse riding competition,but both of them had no capability as it was for them a new thing they had to stand among others as spectators. And clapped on their successes encouraging them and gifted their own delight in participants' pleasure.Evening was
coming on and sun was going down as darkness was overpowering the daylight inchmeal.Tables were brought out by waiters to open lawn and they were positioning them systematically.Everyone stopped his physical exertions and came to tables for night meal.Pritam joined them and asked what about the trip, swell beyond the limit; answer came in unison.Some were discussing that they would move further picnic spot tomorrow,that was few miles ahead from that place.Ravi and Vishal insisted Pritam to proceed ahead with others as it would not make much difference,though that was their final destination.Pritam proposed that he would think about it tomorrow,it seemed to them that he would not curtail their joy.They took their food with other friends and shared all activities of trip from beginning to end.After that the couple scampered off into bedroom that was already booked in the hotel when they entered in.Jaded bodies betrayed them to talk with each other and bedded down losing consciousness.Before sleeping vishal soliloquised that heart had evidenced to dwell there permanently.


Next day when they awoke minor clouds gave a mistakable hint of sudden rainfall with some pieces of ice.Bent for next off trip ended in mist. After short spell descending came to halt.Cold wind was blowing and climate was changing into winter season.Both friends never asked themselves that they would face such dilemma on the trip as they were wearing half sleeves t-shirts.After sometime, weather showed up  its natural color.Sun  began to peep through clouds and tourists set out on open lawn.Swarm present there discussed  the issue of football match. Ground was begirded with beautiful valleys.Interested figures participated  forming two pools.Ravi and Vishal in the match were on either side.Match began and a few figures took interest as spectators.Somewhen with long hits football arrived into bushes and successfully achieved. Yet match was in interesting state that in between long hit sent it in the wrong direction.After general search it was guessed that with tips and rolling it ran into downward direction as it was invisible to eyesight.The path was topsy turvey to reach desired place.Vishal yessed that it was quite easy for him as in village he was adroit in ascending sky-high trees.Others said they would be eagerly waiting for his arrival.The place where he was to barge in was not visible from that point.He was making progress inchmeal. At last Vishal approached there  with some supports without facing much obstruction.Having arrived there, at first he saw here and there and his sight stationed on dark black thing under shadowy trees at some distance.It looked like a blanket, he thought perhaps someone left it with remissness.With care free mind, he moved further and in nearby bush he began to comb for the lost thing.When he was searching, out of a clear sky a bear attacked him from behind as he was not sentient of the fact that dark black thing that was laying was a bear.His shrill cries sounded beyond the horizon saying, blanket didn't leave him as he judged in contest.When bodies harked his painful voices, they said loudly , what happened, "are you o.k"? But no reply came.Ravi off the bat approached Pritam and told the entire matter.He rushed towards unforseen place.Tourists present there ran to incidental place from where they felt accessibility.Constables present there with their guns stepped towards vertical line and other wights accompanied .After reaching there they made a search for a missing man.But they found him nowhere.A large group was probing here and there for gone man. When they moved further they saw the stamps of wild animal's feet and it became plain as day that wild animal attacked when he got downward direction .They found fresh fragments of human body and Ravi found his shoe and bracelet wet with blood.Ravi burst into tears kneeling on the ground.Canine loyalty and prolonged stalwartness towards each other ended forever. Pritam’s eyes drooled like a running brook what face he could show to his father who had seen high dreams for his son before his marriage.Mirthful trip finished up in misadventure.Pritam and Ravi were not daring to return without Vishal.His words were echoing-'Heart would never allow to leave that place.