The Hopeless Romantic “BEEP BEEP BEEP!” The alarm clock blared as Jacob hit the snooze button on his phone. He saw that he once again had no notifications from anything other than twitter and bleacher report and turned his body to the opposite side of the bed. It was empty. Nothing but an abyss of loneliness and despair, reminding him of his failed attempts of finding true love. Jacob drugged himself out of bed and walked to the bathroom with his head hung low. Reaching the bathroom, he proceeded to brush his teeth… alone. He’ll occasionally look up, wishing a feminine figure would be behind him, embracing him from the back. The one thing Jacob wants in life is a girlfriend. Someone he can call home. A person who will stick it out with him for the long term. Unfortunately for him, he can't seem to grasp that dream no matter how close he is to it.
After brushing his teeth, he heads to the living room, opens his laptop, and begins to write. Suddenly he gets a text from a girl he’s had his eyes on for a while. Samantha, 19 and goes to the same college as Jacob. Though they have been friends for years, Jacob can’t seem to shake his feelings for her. His heart starts to beat a million miles a minute, and a cold sweat starts to drip down his temple. He’s visibly shaking due to how nervous he is to talk to her. He hesitantly picks up his phone, and his nervousness becomes terror. Last night Jacob confessed his feelings for Samantha. The text reads “Hey umm. Sorry but I don't view you like that. You dated somebody I used to be friends with, and now I can never look at you the same.” Jacob eyes watered, but he doesn’t cry. He’s sunken deeper in the mindset of giving up on love. He leaves her on open and does his best to forget about his failure. His friends tell him it's okay, and it’s her lost, but he doesn't feel that way. It was his loss. His loss at true happiness. Jacob goes back to his laptop and starts to write. Still shaking, and red as a stop light in the face. Twenty minutes pass, and he seems to forget everything that happened, when Emily, 20, and doesn’t go to school texts him on snapchat. Her message read “Hey!! Good morning.” Jacob smiles as he looks at Emily's face. He’s taken back by how beautiful she is, and that this was his opportunity at a second chance with her. Jacob ruined the relationship the first time because he rushed her into it. Without realizing himself. He sends a selfie back with a message stating “Good morning big head, wyd tonight.” Jacob was ready to take this friendship to the next level. After she responds back with a message saying that she’s free tonight, Jacob musters up the courage to ask her on a date. She sent a selfie with a confused face, reluctantly answering yes or no. Jacob’s heart was now in his throat, taking this as a sign of messing up. He quickly blamed his verbiage and switched “date” with “hanging out”. Only then did she say yes. For many this is a success, but for Jacob it’s another failed attempt. She clearly didn’t want to label them as going out, as going on a date, meaning he was in the friendzone. A zone where no man ever wants to be. A zone that is like a one-way mirror. Everyone can see you making a fool of yourself, but you can only see the reflection of yourself thinking that everything is normal. Now he has a “hanging out” session on Friday, but still no one that likes him. He has other girls, such as Mariana, Shachari, and Sammy who flirts with him out of sport and deviance, but never nothing real. Day in and day out, there's never an end to his story. It’s the same cycle every day, wake up lonely, get rejected, and go to sleep lonely. The time is now one O’CLOCK pm, and it’s time for him to go to work. He works in a factory, but he can still have his phone with him. Once he starts working, putting boxes inside the back of a thirteen-panel trailer, he’s at peace. No burden of a woman to call his, no rejections, just him and work. The six hours fly by and it’s seven pm. He clocks out and heads home. Back to his empty one-bedroom apartment. He unlocks his door and jokingly says “Honey I’m home.” before getting depressed at his own joke and growing in anger and sadness. He grabs his clothes, and towel, places them on the bathroom sink, and hops in the shower. He’s fine at first until his shower thoughts blitz him. “You’re not good enough. Face it loser you'll always be friend zoned. JUST GIVE UP!” It is at that point Jacob starts to lightly sob asking the universe why him. Why did you choose him? Even under the running water, Jacob can feel tears flood down his face. Mentally defeated, he gets out the shower, puts his clothes on, and skips dinner. He heads straight to the room to lay on the bed. Still mentally exhausted, he lets out a deep loud sigh. He takes one last glance at the empty side of the bed next to him. His face turns red, and his eyes bubble up. Fighting back the pain and the tears, he just stares at the side of the bed. He wishes that one day he’ll find someone who loves him how he genuinely loves everyone. He turns his body so his back is to the empty, depressing side of the bed, and gently lays his head on his pillow and goes to sleep in tears, knowing that his prayer will never be answered.
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I See You Wear a RingHer eyes could grab you by the throat and . . .
In Spain, Ben dreamed of azure, humid skies. He had to laugh to himself at that, exclaiming aloud, “I can’t believe I’m homesick!” “¿Como?” “Eh? Oh . . . Nada, nothing important.” The bartender shrugged narrow shoulders and turned automatically to the Espresso machine when the hissing of hot air stopped. He took the two tiny cups of steaming café con leche and set them before an older couple drinking quietly at the end of the bar. Ben had noted them on entering. They had a dignity that showed through their stiff expressions. When they looked at each other, warmth leaked from the corners of their mouths and eyes despite their extreme efforts to rein it in. Ben studied them through lowered lids. The old man had a soft-looking beret that reminded Ben of movies about the French Underground during World War II. It was blue, with a small red button on the top. Watching people. Ben, curious about everything outside himself, did it a lot. Especially in a strange place like downtown Madrid. Ben swept his gaze around the room; took in his surroundings so as to commit them to memory. So that one day he could close his eyes and recall the entire scene. Potted plants hung from carved wooden hooks that seemed to grow directly out of the old, plaster walls. The ceiling hung low enough to provide a feeling of safety; not so low as to seem a cage. He tried to find the speakers that played a constant stream of low volume, classical music. But the decorator had done his or her job well. The rich gleam of well-polished and antique mahogany warmed him as much as a sunny day at home. Of course, he knew Madrid had experienced much culture in the last centuries, including this one. Still, it surprised him to see the autographed photos of famous composers and instrumentalists on the walls of this tiny, out-of-the-way coffee bar. People he thought of as faraway and isolated did indeed visit tiny establishments in Spain. Arthur Rubinstein, looking pensive and a touch imperious, stared out from his position of prominence atop all the others. Rain tap, tapped the outside picture window of El Café Soto Mesa. A desultory sprinkle that—combined with the cold, wet air—succeeded in soaking those walking outside but didn’t really count as rain. Ben tried to fool himself into believing it to be the same as one of the light tropical showers back home in Puerto Rico. He knew the illusion would shatter the moment he walked out the door, as the temperature hovered around 6º Centigrade. Sipping at his cooling café con leche, Ben, as a matter of habit, did the conversion in his head: 6 X 9/5 = 54/5 = 10.8. Add 32 to the whole thing and you get 42.8º Fahrenheit. Cold. Not cold to a New Yorker, perhaps; to a thin-blooded, transplanted California boy, Hell began with a “C” and featured snow every evening on the dot. A kind of Anti-Camelot. Ben let a not-too-covert glance slide on over to the woman who sat with demure grace on the extreme right end of the coffee bar. Though clothed in a thick, brown wool sweater, mutely colored scarf, and a bulky, ankle-length wool skirt, she radiated an air of . . . Ben searched his culture-fuddled mind for words. An air of tranquil beauty. The woman possessed a quiet self-esteem that said, “I know who and what I am and accept all.” She crooked a finger at the man behind the bar. He walked to her, leaned forward, attentive. His hands occupied themselves with towel and cups, but his eyes cried with joy at being given the legitimate excuse to focus on the woman. “¿Sí? “Déme otro, por favor.” She tapped the rim of the small coffee cup with a slender finger. The sound of her fingernail tinked in the quiet. Smoke trickled from her nose; she shooed it away with a small, two-fingered wave. As she spoke, she focused fully on the small man before her. With this attention, she granted to him a level of humanity that many in the service industry never experience. His face shone; had he a tail, he surely would have wagged it. He moved to fill her request. Another coffee. As she waited, she hummed a low snatch of a popular tune making its rounds on the radio. Her voice was velvet rubbed by a baby’s palm—punctuated by the soft clink of the cup on the tile bar. A moment spent staring at the milky brown surface. Ben’s stolen glances told him that she was narrow of face until one climbed up to the prominent cheekbones. Her pale skin looked as soft and delicate as the fragrant petal of a white rose and showed not a blemish. A Romanesque nose betrayed her heritage: strong and straight, but not too large. She had straight, black hair that swirled around her strong shoulders, stopping at the middle of her back; when she moved her head, the dark curtain fell like a slow ocean wave. Though hidden by the thickness of her sweater, the very fact that Ben could trace the curve of her breasts meant they must be substantial. Ben had never felt attracted to large-breasted women before. But something about her poise and self-acceptance, her classic, old-world beauty . . . Too bad she smokes, he mused. Not a surprise: It seemed every man, woman, and child in Spain had the habit. Ugly. His grandmother had died of cancer. Ben’s earliest memories of Gammie included waves of choking blue-grey smoke that writhed around his head, held him in a breathless embrace. He’d always hated the fucking things. He caught himself staring as she tapped a length of ash into a porcelain ashtray on the bar. He turned away, taking another internal snapshot of the moment so he could examine it later in life: Her elegant features wreathed in soft spirals of grey; the freshness of her appearance; the gray smudges that stained the otherwise spotless porcelain. In Madrid, all the faces he’d studied looked bored, as if each person had been, done, and seen it all. Her innocence, her newness combined with the elegance, poise, and self-acceptance, all her qualities made her alluring to him. He couldn’t deny the desire he felt. But he didn’t want it. Ben remembers pain, remembers rejection after rejection. As an American in Puerto Rico, he had always received attention, but rarely trust or intimacy. People there viewed him as they would a rare bird: interesting, but don’t touch. That and with the contradictory stereotypes that, 1. All an American wants is pussy; yet, 2. Americans make the best husbands. . . . On the island where he now lived, exotic beauty walked every minute, every inch, every dream, but—except for once—it had always stayed away from Ben, for all the apparent fascination he held for others. An optimist despite his failures in that department, Ben knew he wanted to meet the woman. “So why am I just sitting here on my butt, staring none-too-surreptitiously at this Castilian beauty?” “¿Como?” “¡Ai! Perdón. Ahora estoy hablando a mi mismo. No me da otra cerveza.” The bartender shrugged his famous shrug and didn’t even ask what the hell the tall American meant about serving him a beer: He was drinking coffee. A new customer sat, claiming the smaller man’s attention; the bartender turned his narrow back to Ben. He had a large mole on his neck. It looked as if it were trying to take over the man’s head. Christ! thought Ben, Talking to myself now, but out loud! He shook his head, rubbing a finger on the tiger embroidered into his jeans. The silky feel of the thread forcibly reminded him of home. The night before, he’d gone to a disco called Ubangi. Though it bore an African name, the hotspot specialized in Salsa and Merengue imported from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Pseudo-tropical decorations covered the walls and the waitresses all wore Tahitian sarongs. On entering, Ben had thought he must be crazy: he hated Merengue and Salsa! Homesickness can manifest itself in the oddest ways. All night, he’d played the wallflower, getting steadily drunker as the music screamed and pulsed. Several whores approached and he almost went with the one whose low-throated “¿Vamos?” stirred his blood through all the alcohol. But Ben had never paid for sex before. Too cheap or too afraid of what he would think of himself in the morning; whatever the reason, he had kept both his money and his dick in his pants. Ironically, he wanted that no-strings luxury of release without promise. Ben looked out the large front window and watched the rain. Watched the woman. Watched the bartender and his mole. Watched the other customers. The old couple had their heads bent together. They smiled, as if on cue; the woman laughed, but low, and glanced around to see if anyone was watching. Ben cut his eyes away so she wouldn’t catch him and then feel self-conscious. He would swear that they had turned 20 before his eyes. He watched the woman. Wanted her. Ached to feel her finely sculpted lips on his (the color of her lightly applied lipstick brightened her otherwise black and white appearance). And suspected he would never do a thing to bring about such an occurrence. Why? Only moments before, his homesickness had again twisted his guts like an ulcer. Why? Why not go ask the woman’s name? Why not see if she would answer “yes,” and the fantasy could come to life? The reason had a name and a face and breath. Mirabel. A name, a face, a lovely, throaty laugh, the memory of which made Ben’s heart ache. She was the one exception to that damnable Puerto Rican rule of look but don’t touch; the one woman—exotic and beautiful and 100% puertorriqueña—who had viewed him as a rare bird and said, “Ooh! I love birds!” Ben missed her, more than he was prepared to admit, even to himself; he’d never felt so lonely in all his life. Not when he left his parent’s house, not when he first moved to the strange and beautiful island of Puerto Rico. He missed Mirabel. He wanted this woman, here, now. Christ. Dichotomy on the fucking half shell. He touched the tiger again. Mirabel said it was her favorite animal, and that was why she had decided to sew it into his favorite pair of jeans. Now, he wondered if it weren’t some sort of thread-based spell, woven into the fabric of his being. When Ben left for his one-week vacation in Spain—gift of his brother in California (Promotion Director for a radio station, Jase claimed that the vacation giveaway contest had ended before all of the vacation prizes could be awarded. Right. But Ben was not one to refuse such a gift; he knew he would never spend that kind of money on himself.)—when Ben left, the tears had fallen, flooded both their faces like the torrential downpours that inundated the streets. He remembered thinking how much he would miss her; he remembered coming that close to canceling on the same day as the flight. For two weeks they’d fought about the trip; its mere mention could throw Mirabel into hysterics. Deliberately, Ben removed his fingers from the thread and forced himself back to the now and the here. On the shelf behind the bartender, Manuel de Falla stared out of a sepia-toned photo. The narrow chin and overlarge head made the composer look like a Warner Bros. cartoon character. When Ben had discovered the small establishment the day before—looking for a comfortable place to escape the frigid, morning air—the bar-owner’s, bleach-blonde, former wife had told Ben that de Falla had been her grandfather’s teacher. Impressive, if true. Brooding, he tried not to think of the woman behind him. The women behind him, as it were. He tried to inject into his thoughts visions of fidelity and happiness. When that didn’t work, he turned, caught her eye, smiled, registered a small thrill when she returned it with interest. Then he concentrated on not thinking about Mirabel. That didn’t work either, but his charm machine—ineffective as it usually was—seemed to be running on 10 cylinders instead of its usual 3 and a half. He probably could stop it if he wanted to. But he didn’t. Ben had always felt trapped by his desires. The veracity or falseness of his feelings could be argued: that a person created his or her own snares. More than once, in fact, Ben had held one-sided arguments with himself. He never reached any conclusive resolution, as he debated either side of the issue with equal facility. In California, Ben had had few girlfriends. Women for whom he’d felt great lust, sure, though the names of his adventures would not even fill one page of a book. Like many men, his groin wouldn’t let him just say no. So, experience he had some. . . . But a beginning does not create permanence; something always turned him away, and his adventures remained short trips into uncharted areas and never became extended explorations. Ben didn’t know whether the lack was his or theirs. That is, he hadn’t known at the time. His transfer to Puerto Rico marked the start of a small self-knowledge. If a relationship could be said to have a weather condition, he liked his hot and humid. Hot he had experienced in California; the humid he’d missed—never knowing—until his relocation. In the Caribbean, he learned that passion sizzled, a wet and fiery thing. Sweat and tears and fluids. He learned that he needed that liquid blaze—like putting hot salsa on a burrito. Women in Puerto Rico were like the island’s weather: sultry and stormy—or on the verge of—and wet; the perfect balance to his own cool, dry calm. He made the generalization with the experience of only one woman under his belt (as it were), but he felt the accuracy of it every time he turned on the local TV or heard his neighbors fight. Tears, screams, slaps. The physicality of the emotions awed and frightened him a little. Passion must boil and burn. “Think about it,” he demanded under his breath, “a cold sweat represents fear, terror. Cold tears? False, unfeeling. Cold body fluids, death.” Heat cooked. Bubbled, caused reactions. Heat could be anger; it could also be the strength of love. Yearning. Ben turned completely around on his bar stool, looked directly at the woman. Her eyes, black from ten feet away, locked with his. The heat grew in his belly. Standing, Ben moved with the stilted non-grace of desire. He left his normal timidity sitting on the stool. Non-verbal communication raced from one mind to another. Ben had felt this synchronicity of desires before and knew that he and she would be together. The knowledge of inevitability helped calm his jumping nerves. She drew a deep breath and her chest expanded minutely. The understanding in her eyes mirrored his, as he knew it would. The bar had quieted. Or Ben’s ears had put out “Do Not Disturb” signs. Separated by most of a room, they still seemed surrounded by a zone of silence, in which they stood at ground zero. Ben stepped forward once. She did as well. “What’s your name?” he asked. “¿Como?” She tilted her head and a small smile played on those sculpted, roseate lips. Her pale skin knew no wrinkles. He switched to bad Spanish and tried again, “What’s your name?” He berated himself for not taking his company-paid Spanish lessons with old Sr. Monet more seriously. She rattled out a reply in a lovely accent that softened all the ses almost to shs. Castilian Spanish sounded like the pouring of a dark, thick liqueur; Puerto Rican Spanish, a lively dance. After three years of the latter, the former struck him as refined, exotic, and beautiful . . . but incomprehensible. He understood a tenth of what she said instead of the normal fifth. From of her river of words, he fished out no more than her name: Lilliam. Ben put his hands up, palms forward, looking for all the world like a crossing guard stopping traffic. “Hold it. I know Spanish, but not that well. Not yet. I’ve lived in Puerto Rico a few years, only. You need to slow down a little for me, please.” He used his already raised hands—raised his eyebrows, as well, questioning—to gesture at one of the three tables that stood along the west wall. She nodded. He got to her chair a fraction of a second before she did and pulled it out; pushed it gently in as she sat. The scrape of the metal-capped legs on the terracotta floor echoed loudly in the small space. As she settled into place, laying her small purse on the table in front of her, Ben went to the bar and retrieved his half-full cup. He checked hers, saw that it was empty, gestured to the watching bartender that he bring another. The man smiled, knowingly (damnit), and turned to his preparations. Ben cursed himself for worrying about the expense, then erased all thoughts of money, took a deep breath, and sat across from her. He folded his hands together on the table that separated them. Its surface chilled his hands and, through the inadequate sweater that he wore, his forearms. Ben felt his brain settle into the listening-time attitude that he had quite perfected in the last few years. “Pardon me,” she began again, “I was telling you that my name is Lilliam and that your face looks quite familiar to me.” It sounded like a pickup line. And but for the fact he wanted to pickup on her, he would have believed it so. Also, it was conceivable that she had seen his face: the fortunate result of having a hobby turn lucrative. He smiled, “Could be. I made an album with a group by the name of . . .” “‘Descalzo and the Spics’! Very popular here for awhile. I’m sorry now that I didn’t buy the CD.” She laughed, and the freedom of it gave him an instant erection. “That’s OK,” he replied, “I’ll send you a copy.” “No, no,” she protested. She leaned forward in her seat until her heavy breasts rested full on the table. He didn’t think that she was wearing a bra. Her dark eyes speared him upon their arrow-sharp gaze, “I must pay.” A potent silence punctuated her unsubtle statement. It held and grew between them, expanding into a frank, protecting cushion of sexual tension. She interrupted the first breath of his reply with another laugh. He’d never heard such a sound—as if that moment of joy existed solely for her pleasure, and she reveled in it. She ended with another wrinkle to her longish nose and a small frown that revealed a tiny scar in the corner of one lip. “Isn’t ‘spic’ a derogatory term?” “Yeah. And in Puerto Rico, where I live, so’s ‘descalzo’; that’s me: I always play barefoot. Once, we got fired from a wedding gig because I refused to put on shoes. In general, the only people to run around barefoot in Puerto Rico are the homeless. I don’t know about here. We picked the name as a joke; never expected to have it be the title of our 15 minutes of fame.” He shook his head, tilted down, laughed at the floor, “‘Barefoot and the Spics,’ what a name!” The warm, earth-toned tiles couldn’t see the humor and remained blankly silent in the face of his self-amusement. He looked up in time to see Lilliam’s open smile. Oh, man! She unconsciously straightened her wind-tossed hair with a slender hand. Long fingers swam through the black waterfall that flowed down her back. “Look,” Ben began, “I don’t believe in— How do you say ‘subterfuge’ in Spanish?” “Excuse me?” When puzzled, Lilliam had a way of simultaneously tilting her head and wrinkling her nose that made her seem all of 10 years old. “Suterfuga? Suterfujo? You know, when you have a secret or hidden agenda.” He explained with his hands as well as his words, a habit he’d picked up from the arm-waving Puerto Ricans in the last three years. “Ah!” A light went on in her dark eyes, looking like a bright bulb behind a dark lampshade. “Subterfugio.” “That, yes. Anyway, I don’t believe in subterfuge or dancing around the point—” His stomach twinged, and Mirabel appeared before him with an angry, pointing finger. He paused, cleared his mind, finished, “—I want to go home with you.” He sat back in his chair. She wouldn’t refuse. He already knew. That first look. That first time that their eyes had met. She laughed. Absolutely without cruelty. The same joyous sound as before, but warmer. “Of course, yes, but what about your girlfriend? What of her?” She loosened the wrap at her neck. A long neck. The scarf settled itself in the large valley between her breasts, looking, to Ben, smug about its current resting place. A bouncer from Uruguay had been seated next to Ben on the flight to Madrid. The short, over-muscled youth had befriended Ben, informing him, re: women in Spain, “No one cares whether you’re married, single, whatever. Everyone wants the same thing.” Ben, listening with only half an ear, had smiled in polite agreement, not really believing the young man’s statement. Then, just that morning, Ben had read a startling—to him—ad in the Classifieds: “Young, pretty, married woman seeking an older, established man for an irregular relationship. Must have own house and car.” Even for a Los Angelean, the ad struck the upside of weird. It also proved, once again, that Ben didn’t know as much as he thought; perhaps the bouncer had spoken no less than the truth. Ben, finally running out of detours, considered Lilliam’s question, Yes, what of her? What of this woman to whom you speak of love? This woman you tell yourself you love! Are your words so cheap? “I— I—” he stammered in English. Then switching to Spanish, “What makes you think I have a girlfriend?” She laughed again, still warm and bubbling. He couldn’t get enough of it. He wanted to dive into the wetness of it. Swim in the joy of it. She put a hand to her pale, slender throat and rubbed one finger there before answering. “Such a reaction! If I had not already guessed, surely I would do so now.” The bartender approached and set two of the small cups on the table; the saucers clattered against each other. As he arranged the cups to his liking, Lilliam shook a cigarette from the box on the table and removed her lighter from her purse. Ben plucked the lighter from her fingers and lit the cancer stick, thinking, What we’ll do for lust! and mentally shaking his head in wonder. Ben had not asked for another café con leche but decided that now was not the moment to object. Perhaps the little man had counted on this reluctance. Lilliam took a sip of smoke, another of coffee, sighed with pleasure, and returned the cup to its saucer, while twin, gray tendrils crept out of her nostrils. Her tongue flicked out and licked a trace of coffee from the corner of her mouth. Ready now, she answered, “I should stay quiet, but I will tell you.” She turned away for a moment, a thoughtful look on her face. When she swung around to face him again, she had a liveliness in her eyes that sent sparks flying in Ben. The strength of her gaze held him as if with tiny, powerful fingers; the world could end, now, and he wouldn’t look away from her to watch it happen. Couldn’t. “I am like your Sherlock Holmes, yes? You have read those stories? Such a cold man, but undeniably brilliant—both the character and the writer. The good Dr. Watson injects a ring of passion, as does the need of Mr. Holmes intellect. I like that: controlled wildness.” She paused and took a drag on her cigarette. Never before had he considered a woman with a cigarette sexy. Things change. “So,” she continued, “I see you wear a ring. Wide, heavy gold, and with a large stone, your birthstone? I think, yes. A sapphire. It rests comfortably on the ring finger of your right hand. It looks as if you have had it a very long time. Gift from your Mother, perhaps?” “Yes. Yes, it was: my 18th birthday. How did you know?” She shrugged; her mouth turned down in a tiny, not unhappy frown. “I didn’t, but it looks like something I would give a son, were I to have one.” With a careless twist, she removed her scarf and draped it across the high back of Ben’s chair. It was proprietary move that said quite clearly to any who witnessed, This one is mine. Ben couldn’t object to the presumption; indeed, he couldn’t stop looking at Lilliam. Drinking her in like one of the thousand daily cafés con leche he consumed. He imagined he could smell the steam rising off her, like a hot liquid in cold air. She smiled at him, so direct and so open was her expression that he felt his heart explode; his groin swell. She had perfect teeth; he wondered how she managed to keep them so white. The cigarettes couldn’t help. “To continue, then: on the little finger of your left hand, you wear a ring of silver filigree. It is delicate, such as a woman would wear. It does not strike me as something you—a masculine-appearing man—would buy. Also, though it is much smaller and would seem less intrusive than the other ring, you twist it every time you look in my eyes. It makes you uncomfortable. A gift from her.” “Well . . . maybe it is a new ring, and I’m not used to it yet.” “That is one explanation, but it does not reverberate with the sound of truth in me. And I have more still to tell.” Ben sat back in his chair, captivated now by her words as opposed to her face or body. “Your face wears the brown of many days in the sun, yet your upper-lip looks pale. So, you recently shaved a mustache. Perhaps you had grown tired of it. I, however, hate kissing a man with a mustache and know of other women who feel the same; I believe your girlfriend demanded its removal.” “Oh, for . . .” She held up her hand to quiet him. “Two more things only.” Ben caught himself fiddling with the silver ring and forced his hands apart. “Go ahead.” He felt strange, being . . . dissected by this woman—uncomfortable because of her perspicuity. Yet, she piqued his interest, without a doubt. “On the right thigh of your blue jeans someone has embroidered a tiger. Very beautiful.” “Someone did what? I don’t know that word.” She made needle and thread motions in the air, “Embroidered, sewed.” She pointed to clarify, “The tiger.” “Oh, that. So?” He almost choked on his casualness. She shrugged. Ahh, but ‘tis obvious, my dear Watson. “You are an American in your late 20s. You have an air of independence, self-sufficiency. You said that you live in Puerto Rico, but your tanned yet obviously light skin and the ease with which you butcher my beautiful language tell me that it is not because you have family there, or are from there. Men sew, just as women push noisy lawnmowers, but I am betting a woman did that.” She pointed at his crotch. The bulge there answered, Yes, a woman did this. She finished, “And, because I don’t believe you still live with your family, I don’t think it was your Mother who sewed the tiger.” Ben smiled, sure he could trip her up this time. He was beginning to enjoy this game. Lilliam put a casual hand on his thigh before he could speak. Light fingers stroked the embroidered tiger as if it were real. Ben found his voice had all but fled. Clearing his throat, he said, “Well, maybe my Mother bought the jeans, did the tiger, and sent them. FedEx.” She smiled, nodded. “Yes. Except that the material of the jeans is old and about to wear through at the knees. You have had these jeans a long time. But look at the tiger. The thread is shiny and unworn.” With the tips of her two fingers, Lilliam rubbed the tiger again, and Ben had to suppress an unexpected groan. “It feels new. Thus, I deduce a girlfriend.” Neither wanting it to end nor to give in to her deductions, Ben countered, “None of that is conclusive. Couldn’t take it to court. Everything could be explained another way.” He couldn’t think of one at the moment, but given time . . . “Besides, you said two things.” She sipped from her cup. Though her smile tried to hide behind the rim, it was unsuccessful. “You are correct. None of this is conclusive, and yes, I did mention a second reason for my knowing.” She set her cup down on the table between them and put both her hands flat on her thighs. “Well?” Lilliam studied him a moment. Her look landed on him like a physical thing. Like a soft, warm wind. Or a precious bird. He watched her contemplate, decide. “I am a witch.” # They walk, arm in arm. A kind of dance; a joy that manifests itself as movement. Minuet to miss the puddle, waltz to weave around the hurrying businessman. Their eyes too, dance. They sparkle with the music of the senses. One pair to the other, they flick, the brief, sparking radiances meshing, furnace hot. One two three. When they speak, their voices emit from deep within their chests. Bass, alto; bassoon, clarinet; cello, viola. The sky is clean and free of rain. Some of the heat the two generate must have filled the day, for it is warming now. Not warm, but warming. They walk on streets that shine, smooth as satin. An urge propels them into a doorway, where they kiss in a wild frenzy of complete abandon. Without shame, they press their groins together and writhe with desire. Lips, teeth, and tongue search a bare throat. Caress it, lick, bite, and taste it. Hands seek warmth beneath a shirt and “Oh!,” the touch of cool flesh to hot. In living these moments, they change. Twine. Join. Forever. # On the long plane ride home, Ben used the time to reflect on her first words after their long walk through the shining streets of Madrid. Spoken on the threshold of her tiny, fourth-floor apartment, they had cut through the roar of midnight traffic on Calle del Arenal far below. “I will not be responsible for your happiness or lack,” she said, breath huffing from the climb. Her eyes, lashes lowered and moist, searched his face for reaction. He opened his mouth to speak and, instead, took the key out of her hand and slotted it into the keyhole. The door squeaked a greeting to her when it opened. A haze surrounded them so that all else but they seemed at one remove from reality. Their darkness had lit the night. In the foyer of the tiny apartment, they advanced, parted, advanced. His reply, a deep breath, scrambling for oxygen after a particularly deep kiss; he gasped, “Of course not.” But these were words spoken more from common sense than belief. Unconsciously, he flexed the finger with the silver ring. She had insisted—even before leaving the Café, even before he thought to do so—that he not remove it. He gulped air again. The cold rushed down his throat and gave him enough clarity to focus on these words she deemed so important. “Of course not,” he repeated; even he could tell that he sounded like a stage manager reading the lines of an absent actor. “No,” she said, “you do not understand. My power draws you. I, as well, but my power holds you stronger than I can control. Understand that no one can hold who does not wish to be held. If you lose yourself in it—in me—you will, in a sense, fall under my spell. If this happens, it happens from your internal desires and not my own.” She buttoned and re-buttoned his shirt, seeming—for the first time that night—at a loss. Nervous. Before she turned to enter the apartment proper, she said, “Your well-being is your responsibility.” Now it was she whose words sounded scripted as opposed to lived. He followed, taking the silver ring from his finger and dropping it in his pocket with the wad of bills and jangling clump of pesetas. Her rooms smelled of cigarettes and were filled with small wooden carvings that looked like icons or idols. Black lace draped the windows, and the lights that she flicked on glowed but did not brighten. He had never looked back. They had had quite a week. He never did get to El Prado, the famous Spanish museum; the memory of Plaza Mayor on a sunny day and with the hand of someone special clasped in his would remain with him until he died. The guitar-band with folk-dancers and singers still spun and flashed and sang behind his eyes and ears. The day before he was to leave, she borrowed a car from a friend (A man. Ben had nearly bitten off his tongue from all the questions that he didn’t ask.) and took him to the arid hills of El Escorial. As they stared out at the bleak landscape, each lost in thoughts of parting, she spoke in a low voice. “Your Hemingway wrote of this place.” “Yes.” He had looked around him at the forbidding clusters of grey rocks and dry pines. Even through his shoes, the dirt felt stiff, and he could see Robert Jordan—Old Ernest’s protagonist—dying at his feet. The drive back to Madrid had been filled with desperate talk. Neither wanted to make a claim upon the other. And, yet, both recognized that what they so studiously avoided had already occurred. Too late, now. On the long plane ride home, Ben twisted the newly replaced silver ring. Around and around until he felt he must have worn a groove in his finger. Just a fling. No more. Twist. It’s not as if Mirabel and I are married. I can do what I want. “Yeah, and if you believe that, I have some prime land in Chernobyl that you might want to buy.” “Pardon?” His seatmate, a dowdy-faced Englishwoman wearing a dress blooming with large, blue flowers, took off her headphones to ask. “Oh, sorry, just talking to myself.” She replaced the headphones and chuckled at what she heard. Twist. The image of Lilliam danced onto the movie screen before him, nudging aside an overdeveloped and paid screen star. His neighbor’s movie continued being about an older woman seducing a younger man. Ben’s changed. Mesmerized, he watched. Lilliam put a hand out, whether to push him away or draw him close, he didn’t know. Mirabel appeared suddenly and turned on him burning and hateful eyes. He’d always loved her eyes. Their gentle brown gave lie to the fiery personality within. She put her hand out in imitation of Lilliam. Come. Go away. “Would you like dinner?” Ben awoke with a start and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “What?” The dream rode before him, his eyes open and awake. “Dinner, sir? We have chicken, filet mignon, and vegetable lasagna.” Airline food made him ill. On the way over, he’d made the mistake of eating breakfast. Then spent the next three hours before landing running to the bathroom every ten minutes. “Just give me some apple juice.” Besides, even the best food did not rest well on a stomach already stuffed full with guilt. The flight attendant finished setting the plastic tray on his neighbor’s tray table and presented him with the plastic facsimile of a smile she’d learned in modeling school and said, “Certainly sir.” She popped a tab on an aluminum can, poured, and, “Would you like dinner?” to the next victim in line. I have no reason for guilt. So why do I feel guilty? I have no reason for regrets. So why do I feel this wrenching ache? I have no tie to this woman. So why does each mile more feel as if I’m leaving life behind? Ben rearranged his long legs as best he could, turning a bit to get another inch or two of length; he leaned his head against the hard, cabin wall. Closing his eyes to it all, he let the constant vibration of the engines soothe him. He slept a restless sleep. The ring on his finger turned and turned. # The trip, long by any count, measured in years rather than miles. Ben felt guilt at times. And he never forgot her. Lilliam, eyes couched in a smoke of desire and cigarettes. A witch, she had said. Casting a spell. Lying back on a high feather bed with iron bedposts. All seduction and joy and passion. The tropics didn’t have a lock on hot and wet. But a spell? Sometimes he laughed. Then, one afternoon, sitting in the midday sun and drinking a Medalla, he realized that not a day had passed without some thought of her. For years not a day had gone by that some stray wisp of memory didn’t float across his consciousness. From the gasp and growl of her climax to the jasmine scent of her soft skin. He had the smoky taste of her hungry mouth on his tongue. The afternoon sun of old Madrid still blinded him. He watched her finger stroke her throat in thought. When he realized all this, he said aloud, “I’m bewitched, it’s true.” The blue water of the pool sparkled. The backyard lawn of his and Mirabel’s weekend house in Cayey glowed, so green it was. After the water company had raised the rates (making Puerto Rico’s the third most expensive water in the world), he often thought about not filling the pool, of paving over the thirsty grass. But now, those same familiar, miserly contemplations were entirely crowded out by his unexpected thoughts. Ben looked at the sky, eyes wide with wonder. Glad he was sitting, he rocked back from the sudden impact of years. Mirabel exited the kitchen through the open sliding glass window, sexy as always in tiny black bikini bottoms and no top. Her breasts bounced, and he marveled that they were as firm today as when they’d first met. Two kids and 22 years. She must be doing something right! “You said something, querido?” When alone, the two spoke a curious, private language—part Spanish, part English, part invented slang and idioms. Their kids, gone now, understood and spoke this mishmash as well, though they preferred Spanish or English exclusively; depending on the vagaries of the winds, Ben supposed. “No,” Ben answered, “just thinking out loud.” His eyes slipped over her as she put a glass of diet soda on the short table next to his recliner. Her skin, sheathed in sweat from her workout, remained as silky smooth as the day they’d first made love on the beach in Fajardo. Though the days of modeling were long behind her, she maintained the same exercise regimen. It showed. “You are so beautiful. So beautiful.” He reached out and rubbed his hand up and down her slick thigh, amazed at her ability to stay so fit. Amazed at his ability to attract such a stunning woman. A rush of desire fell straight from his thoughts, right into the crowded space of his swim trunks. He twisted his body away from his lovely, beloved wife, not wanting to confuse himself with passion. Mirabel, not noticing anything untoward, giggled like the child she would ever be and caught his hand in hers, “Ai, Papi— So you think, Gracias a Dios.” She squeezed once on his captured fingers and released a tiny sigh of contentment. “Hey! Ven conmigo. Join me in the pool?” She transferred her hold to his wrist and pulled until his arm lifted away from his body. Life and merriment all packaged in a tall drink of water who looked too glamorous to have ordinary, simple “fun.” “Thanks, no.” Retrieving his hand, he twisted the now-worn, silver ring. A thrill of guilt coursed through his body, deflating the visible sign of his arousal. He continued, “No, I think I’ll go inside. Take a nap or something.” Mirabel threw a curious look his way—a nap? At one in the afternoon? She laid the back of her hand against his forehead, examining him for fever, insanity, or unhappiness. Feeling no more heat than the bright sun, seeing nothing unusual in his green eyes, she said, “Bueno, ‘stá bien, mi vida. Que descanse.” Okay, my beloved. Rest. Turning away, she stepped to the pool’s edge and dove into the chill, blue water. Refraction stretched her already long and slender form to an impossible length. Ben watched for a moment, then stood, spun on his heel, and went inside the sliding glass doors to the master bedroom. Fan-blown air washed over his face, drying the sweat. Ben lay back on the bed and remembered. Mirabel—though an extremely perceptive woman—had never known a thing. All these years, Ben had kept hidden the feelings, the event, the memories. He couldn’t get over how simple it had been. Still was. Ben shoved a pillow up under his sweat-damp head and rolled over on his side to stare at the bright yellow and red tapestry on the wall. That obvious, Ben thought, as obvious and out there as the yellow and red in that fabric. That’s how apparent he felt his thoughts to be. Large and wide and loud. Experience told him otherwise. She never knew. Didn’t know. Would never know. Experience told him that her hot jealousy would have destroyed the both of them the moment she discovered, or even suspected, that his heart had once been in someone else’s hands. Ben never “cheated” on her again. Not physically. He’d never felt the same attraction to any other woman as he felt to Mirabel . . . or Lilliam. He avoided the advances women throw at handsome, maturing men as he would a barrier in the street. Nothing personal, just step around. He never cheated on her physically. In his mind, Lilliam danced and ran and panted and laughed and smoked and groaned with pleasure. He could see the two of them making love, Lilliam leaning over the sink and bouncing on her toes and shouting “Sí amado, sí.” The image looked as fresh today as had the reality. It and others made a porno-palace of his mind. Even when making love to Mirabel—whom he loved for realsy and truesy—the barest hint of a Lilliam-type smile would tease him in his mind. Mirabel could never know those extra bursts of passion came from her sparking his memory of another. The wind rose outside and Ben reached a long leg out to the wall switch and flipped off the overhead light with his toes. Rest his aging eyes. Rolling to his back again, he stared at the ceiling fan, chuckling, “A witch.” The fan threw his words back at him in an infinite series of sibilant whispers, “witch, witch, witch, witch . . .” His chuckle died in his throat, leaving a dry, sour taste. He was thirsty. “I forgot my damned soda by the pool.” But lethargy, inertia, memory bound him to the bed. He could not rise, could not escape. The phone rang, shattering the whickering quiet. Ben jumped a foot off the bed before leaning over to retrieve the receiver. A world flooded through eyes, ears, mouth. Powerless, Ben waited for the sensory overload to pass. After an eternity of seconds, he heard the voice. “I think you must be a witch, too.” “Pardon me?” Ben wondered if simple fantasy could create aural hallucinations. “Twenty-two years, six months, and I cannot forget you. I cannot have a normal relationship. I cannot marry. I cannot flirt. I have reached the point that I cannot even sleep with another man any longer. What in god’s name did you do to me? I even learned your dreadful language, somehow hoping you would return.” She spoke in heavily accented English. He would not have recognized her voice at all but for the smoky undertone that had never left his memory. “Good Christ, Lilliam! Lilliam?” His shout echoed off the white plaster walls of the room. Lowering his voice, he went on, “Lilliam, what are . . . ? Where did you get my . . . ?” She spoke with desperation, an urgency that both amazed and flattered him. “Ben, those things are unimportant. I must see you. I’m on the island.” After Ben had put away his guitar permanently (professionally) due to the less than lukewarm reception of his third album with “Descalzo and the Spics,” Mirabel had relaxed her attitude of constant, watchful jealousy. As the years passed, and she saw Ben happily settled into the life they made together, she put away her fears that some beautiful, young fan or business associate or secretary would take him from her. Eventually she understood—understood in her heart—the truth: he didn’t want anyone else. Ben stared at the phone in his hand, as if it had come alive. He couldn’t have been any more flabbergasted were that the case. “Here?” “I’m in the Caribe Hilton, room 1640. I will not leave here until you arrive. You must come!” He had a picture of her in his mind. As real as if they had parted just yesterday. “You’re here?” He felt stupid, repeating the question, but he still couldn’t believe it. “Here. Waiting.” Behind her words, Ben heard the theme music from Noticentro, the channel 4 news. Mirabel loved him. She trusted him. Finally and forever. He had labored for years to earn that trust. “I may be a couple of hours.” “Hours, days, I will not leave.” Her voice held in it a tired desperation that did not match the lyrics that his memory of her sang. Hanging up the phone, Ben thought long. Granted the luxury of ease, his mind concentrated on the one thing only. No mess of job or children to interfere. Mirabel though . . . Two decades Ben had spent, assiduously avoiding any situation that might give him the desire to lie. Always a victim of his own desires, Ben had reached into his very soul and turned some over-flowing nozzle to “off.” A difficult process and a long trip. Both begun on an innocent-seeming vacation; begun because of a single, impossible to repeat affair. Now the cause of all that arduous self-“improvement” had found him. He went out to the pool. Mirabel stroked from one end to the other, smooth and easy. “Honey, me voy para San Juan. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He could have shouted it from the bedroom. And perhaps that would have been better: in person, he had more opportunity to say the wrong word or use the wrong expression. He had to see her. Remind himself of what was worthwhile in his life. It was frightening how easily the lie fell from his open mouth. “¿Oh? ¿Que pasó?” She shook crystal drops, like diamonds, from her long, black hair. He was struck for the first time how like Lilliam’s it looked. How did I never notice that before? Mirabel always maintained that she looked like a skinny, pathetic dog when her hair got wet. Ben knew—and had frequently told her—she always looked as lovely as the new day. Dry or wet. He needed to answer, not stare, “Francisco wants to license one of my songs to Luis Enrique and I need to check the arrangement.” He hated how easily the lie slid from his lips. He would need to call his agent, Francisco, in case it ever came up. Francisco would—unfortunately—understand, all too well. He had always been the traditional Puerto Rican male, believing that his hormones excused the most abhorrent behavior. “When do you think you’ll return?” A drop of water slid into her eye and she gave her head a fierce shake to get it out. Her breasts floated free in the water. “Not too long, I hope. I’m making spaghetti.” She had such a lovely, throaty voice. It surfed the low mountain breezes with grace. “¿Mi vida? You okay?” He rubbed his eyes as if tired. “Yeah, yeah. Already thinking about the arrangement. Been awhile since I worked. Have to get my head back in the music. No mas que two or three hours.” His voice caught in his throat and the thought came very clearly: I may be about to ruin my life. With malice aforethought. I wonder why. “Be careful.” She pointed her finger at him and lowered the thumb like the hammer on a gun, “Be good or I’ll kill you.” The joke they’d started at the beginning of their marriage didn’t strike him as funny now. # We meet. My, how he has changed. My, how she has changed. Inside we are the same. Inside we are lovers, meeting as if for the first and 10,000th time. Standing side by side at the window and tense from top to bottom, we watch the browned children playing far below in the lowering light of the setting sun. Beach fun, sand, waves. Such thoughtless passion in them. We envy the children that. We envy them their guileless ability to be naive. # “What are you doing here?” “Hello to you, too.” “I’m sorry.” Ben turned away from the window and walked to the bed. Nothing there for him—he didn’t dare sit. He returned to his place by her at the window. The reflection that greeted him had a slight pot belly and his shirt jutted out to cover it. In the distance, far off to the right, traffic raced along the busy airport road. Wow! Ben, thought, 22 plus years and I don’t know the name of that road. He turned his thoughts back to his reflection. My mind has a potbelly too, I think, it doesn’t bend at the waist so easily. It’s not all muscular and attractive. Not so flexible as once before. “I’m sorry.” He swiveled slowly to face her. “You can understand if I’m a little shocked. I never expected to see you anywhere but my dreams.” He ran his eyes over the face that had never left his dreams. She had aged. Who hadn’t? But well, quite well. The narrow face was a bit fuller than before; shallow wrinkles gave proof of time’s passing. He looked at her hands. No ring. He hadn’t expected one, but checking was a habit as automatic as looking both ways when crossing the street. “I know. I do know,” she said, nodding her agreement. She smoothed her Renaissance-style peasant blouse with a nervous gesture, her always-pale skin hard to see against the off-white fabric. The silence came between them like a wall. Ben didn’t think he could climb it; didn’t know whether he wanted to. He stared out the window and remembered the innocence of his own children; of himself, one day long ago. Had he ever been as free as the shouting, jumping, running, trouble-making sprites below? With a loud click, the air-conditioner turned on at the same moment Lilliam began to speak. Both she and Ben jumped in surprise. Lilliam laughed first and the first chunk of tension broke away; the wall became a low fence. She had almost the same all-or-nothing laugh; it rang with the overtones of more knowledge than one would wish. He looked at her for a moment over his shoulder. A shadow lay across her face, covering some of the age, but never hiding the life within. Covertly, he watched her stroke her throat (as he remembered), thinking about what to say. His eyes moved downward. Breasts, still full and high. Waist, a little thicker than his dreams, but were they to meet for the first time today, he would want to stare and stare. She still had long, beautiful legs and her knee-length, earth-colored skirt showed them well. Her hair, now, that had changed. It was tied up and back, almost severe; no more freefalling waves of dark water. A great deal of gray showed. Her sudden laugh brought him sun-drenched days, wandering like lost children along the winding streets of Madrid. True, he thought, her outburst did not sound so free as it had, but the joy in it still gave him an erection. The last bricks in the wall between them fell away. Madrid in autumn with Lilliam. Squinting into the far past, he thought he could just see it again. He could smell the fish at the store in the corner of Plaza Mayor. He could hear the street-guitar player, as black as her former hair, and singer, as white as she, alternating between the Beatles and the blues in the Royal Park. Ben shook off the memories. Softer this time, and with something like foreknowledge, he asked, again, “What are you doing here?” When she spoke, it was with that fluid Spanish that ran through the river of his dreams rather than the English that she had used up to now. Her silence gave as much as her words. “A witch can go anywhere and be useful. So I did; I was.” She crossed, stood behind him, reached tentative arms up and wrapped them around his chest. Ben tensed but did not move away. Past rushing to trap him by his desires. The children 16 floors below became his own; a live memory of happy years spent growing and laughing and being. But he didn’t move away. Lilliam rested her cheek on his back; where it lay, a pool of warmth grew. Her words matched the rhythm of the air entering and leaving his body. She continued, making a story of her life, “Before meeting you, I had lived all my adult life in Madrid. I found it easy to be happy there; fulfilled. Men enjoyed me as much as I enjoyed them. ‘No strings,’ you Americans are so fond of saying. More than that, the life in the city kept me interested. I could always find something. Then, when you were not there.” She shook her head, leaned her forehead against the rough weave of the black linen shirt that he wore. “Everywhere I went ended up the same. I could feel happy for a few months, then a blackness that I’d read about but never before felt would enter me.” Her voice hitched, she continued, “I would move, and repeat the process. Everywhere, anywhere.” Finally, she sobbed and Ben turned within her loose embrace, honestly unsure whether that uncontrolled weeping was coming from her or his hallucinations. She had always been so self-assured, self-possessed. Sufficient unto herself, the thought of her crying over a man didn’t fit with his image of her. He wondered if, for all these years, his memory could have been faulty. Still, he put his arms around her, not knowing what else he could do that might help. The track of tears under her eyes caused a kind of heat in his own. “Everywhere I went, you weren’t. I saw a Ben-sized absence every time I turned my head; every time I got off a bus or train or plane in a new city. Finally, I had to come find you.” Locked into her sadness, Ben stood still, waiting for he knew not what. Her arms around him felt like steel bands of desperation; the terrified grip of someone going down for the third time. On his chest, the same warm pool grew. “I’m married.” Unnecessary. He cursed inside. Redundancy pissed him off, especially when it came from him. So, too, cruelty. After all her words, he was surprised that this admission/declaration/warding off didn’t push her away. Instead, her breath undid the careful ironing of his shirt. “Of course you are. And very happy too, I think.” He laughed and the years slipped away. “Okay Sherlock, is this an assumption or more of your ‘witchcraft’?” “Neither.” She stepped out of the circle of his arms and straightened her blouse. His back and torso felt the absence of her encircling arms; his chest felt the absence of her face. But he breathed easier. He could feel faithful when they didn’t touch. “Neither,” she repeated. “You wear your happiness like a shirt; a suit of armor, perhaps. Anyone can see it” She stepped to him again and ruffled his thinning, brown hair. “Is your wife a witch, as well? You are so well protected from me. From any trick or spell.” Ben frowned, sighed, inclined his head enough that she didn’t have to strain to run her strong fingers through what remained of his hair. “Protected? I’ve never forgotten you. Not a day goes by without a movie of you running through my head.” Her smile had more pain than any kind of triumph. “After you first left, I had a lover. In Paris. I felt so desperately unhappy, that I began then my odyssey to find happiness.” A stab of jealousy went through him, followed by, What claim have I? How can I feel jealousy? He ignored the question, knowing that jealousy had its own inexplicable logic. Her voice had nothing to hurt him. She wanted to tell him a thing that happened; not injure him. “We were together constantly at first, a fifth floor walk-up in Blvd. St. Germaine de Pres. Within a month, he had begun a series of casual affairs. I knew but didn’t care. We— It was so cold in Paris. Colder than Madrid. I’d never been anywhere else and I still remember waking up one June morning and thinking, How can they stand it here? So cold.” She shivered where she stood. Memory or the too-high air-conditioning, Ben didn’t know. “After a few more weeks, I saw that he cared for me in his own special way. He enjoyed being with me, but—” She shrugged, turned away, leaned herself against the wall. The air-conditioner clicked off and left them in utter silence. Even the soft rasp of her fingers rubbing her throat echoed loud in the quiet room. Ben waited, knowing she had more to say, but not knowing how to help her say it. “But, you see, I didn’t care. Not about his affairs; not about my steadily declining interest in sex; not about him. I felt so alone. Even when we were in bed together. Our apartment came with bed, sofa, gas range, but someone had moved all the furnishings from my soul. The sound of my heart beating echoed in my breast.” Her eyes turned to Ben’s and the pain surged out in waves. “When I left him, he wept. Professed his love, claimed the affairs were only to get my attention. Probably true.” “I’m not sure I understand.” Ben put a hand to her full cheek and caressed it with short, gentle strokes. She leaned into the caress and played with the floppy collar of his shirt. Finally she answered, “I am an attractive woman; this is not anything new to me. I can pick and choose among dozens of men. I don’t believe in promiscuity, but I have no doubts as to my own beauty.” “True, you—” A finger to his lips shushed him. “Don’t,” she chided, “I do not search for compliments. I want you to see what has happened to me. To my life.” Pausing, she frowned to herself, then made a correction, “what I have allowed to happen to my life. We are all, after all, responsible for our own happiness. Ironic that I was so sure it would be you who would end up hooked on the impossible drug of unfulfilled desire.” With slow steps, she moved to the small chair at the room’s dinette set. “Sit, I will order café con leche. You still enjoy this, yes?” “I need to keep it down: the heart, health, all that. But I guess one won’t hurt.” He took the chair she offered. The hard rattan dug into his back. She nodded, “This is true, one won’t hurt.” Her eyes found his as she picked up the hotel phone. One won’t hurt, but it might kill. He watched and listened to her beautiful voice as it ordered two coffees and a fruit salad with two forks. “I should thank you,” she said, picking up from her previous thoughts, “I have seen much of the world in what really was a search for and escape from you. England is a funny place, don’t you think?” The change of subject caught him unprepared, “Well . . .” She waved a hand, “So repressed on the one side. Yet, they can be as silly as the most ridiculous clown given the right chance or impetus.” She thought for a moment and nodded agreement with herself, saying, “They are an opaque people.” “True. Of most of humanity, I think.” “Oh no,” she shook her head vehemently. “You are quite mistaken about that: you Americans are so transparent and free. I envy you that. The freedom to be silly at a moment’s notice. I think we Europeans are overly-impressed by our own history. It makes us stuffy.” She took his hand from across the table. It was cold because the glass of the table was cold. In spite of that, her warmth spread through him. Such heat. It surprised him. Suddenly, he no longer knew the outcome. Driving here, he’d prepared himself to submit to his desires. In the room, his resolve had strengthened and he’d decided, No, I can’t do this. Then yes, then no. Now, he didn’t know. “Irony. How I’ve come to appreciate it. I could have any man I chose except the one I chose. He already was taken. In his shadow, all the others seemed insubstantial and empty. Soulless containers of lust and scent and deception.” A large inhalation raised her breasts into a position of prominence. With her breath, he felt breathless. An abrupt constriction gripped him around the heart and lungs, cutting off all air. He struggled to breathe, smelling the freshness of her breath as she exhaled. She must have stopped smoking, he thought, now she’s the perfect woman. “I want to,” he said, “I do. I have dreamt of this moment for 22 years. But I can’t; I came here with every intention— I thought my desire would rule me, but now I—” Stretching her arm across the small table, she shushed him again with a gentle palm. “I know. I know.” Someone next door turned on their television and the opening music from a popular novela blared through the thin walls. From the street, Ben still heard the ever-present sounds of traffic racing toward Viejo San Juan. “Yes, I know,” she repeated. Tender, so tender. The air conditioner kicked in again. The channel next door was changed to CNN. Someone in the hall dropped or kicked a room service tray. And people lived, loved, fought. This small world, bounded by four walls, this tiny universe shook from the buffeting winds of loss, regret. As tenderly, he removed her shushing hand. As tenderly, he brushed splayed fingers down her soft cheek. As tenderly, he spoke, from low in his chest and with the painful strength of truth. “Good bye Lilliam. 22 years is long enough for both of us. Too long to carry this obsession any further. Perhaps we can both grow up now; not be ruled by dreams. I think that must be what you want me to understand. It must end. Good bye now.” Tiny points of liquid light appeared in the corners of her eyes. She pressed his still-tracing hand to her cheek. “Yes. Obsessed. My love will not go away with the wave of a hand, but you are correct: It is time to close the book.” He pulled back and stood from the chair, moved across the small room to the door. His steps faltered for a moment and he began to turn. “No,” she said, her voice breaking once behind him, “good bye and no more.” He turned the knob, cold in his hand. The mechanism sounded thunderous in the quiet. Stepping through, he closed the door to her room. Softly, but firmly. He heard the faint rhythm of sobs; they matched the beat of his heart. He went to the elevator. He passed a liveried waiter. The man pushed a room-service cart set with two cups, two saucers, and a small pot with steam spiraling out. A colorful fruit salad in a cut-glass bowl completed the tableau. He stepped through the opening doors and felt more than heard them close behind him. He left. # Love is a many splendored thing. Love is never having to say you’re sorry. Love, love me do. Love makes the world go round. Love me, love my dog. . . . and in the end, love is as capricious and uncertain as life. They never saw each other again.
Deep in Superior“That’s one big lake,” remarked Doug as they drove along the northern shoreline of Superior. Doug Fitzgerald and his wife, Rita, were heading east along Highway 17 to their cottage to open up for the summer season.
“It’s a deep lake,” added Rita. “Mmhm, that it is,” agreed Doug. “So what do you think?” “It’s possible it could work. Plenty of remote areas, that’s for sure,” Rita said. “Not without risks, though, is it?” Doug warned. “You’ve already put us at risk of losing everything. This may be our only chance to get out of the mess we’re in,” Rita replied. Rita was referring to his gambling debts. What had started as a fun way to pass the time with his buddies became an all-consuming need to play to win. His few wins had just fuelled his need enough that he couldn’t make himself stop. As he was the one who paid the bills, he was able to hide the growing debt load from Rita for a long time. When he could no longer cover even the minimum payments, he had no choice but to confess to both his wife and 28 year old son. Not only was everything mortgaged to the hilt, credit cards were maxed out, and Doug owed a substantial amount to a fellow gambler who made his real money as a loan shark. “You’re right, I’m worth so much more dead than alive,” he conceded. “I wouldn’t put it that way. But the fact is, we’re facing the shame of bankruptcy and worse,” Rita reminded him. “Maybe it’s time to take the risk and gamble for our freedom.” They came to a silent agreement to go ahead with their plan. *** A couple of months after the decision had been made, Doug and Rita’s 26 foot cruiser exploded and sank deep in Lake Superior. No bodies were found. Superior, they say, doesn’t give up her dead. *** The idea came to him one day as they were driving in to work at their law office of Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald, and Son. The local radio station played an old folk song about a freighter lost to Superior. As he listened to the lyrics lamenting the deaths of the men on board the wreck, Doug thought of the wreck he had made of his own life and that of his wife and son. He thought about how he was drowning in debt. He wondered if his family would be better off if he lay at the bottom of the lake. At first, their son, Rick, offered to help bail out his parents by paying off the debts. When Doug explained the extent of the debt he had accumulated, and the amount of the interest payments alone, Rick understood the situation more clearly. Even if they took on more clients, even if they lowered their standard of living, they would be forced to sell their expensive home, the cottage, the boat, the cars, all of it. The real kicker was they would still owe a fortune on the credit cards and to Doug’s “buddy”, John. And so the three of them came to a unanimous decision - Doug would have to die. The million dollar life insurance policy would take care of the credit cards and the debt owed to John. But, Rita reasoned, two million dollars would be even better. For the next two months, Rick stockpiled non-perishable food and basic necessities, along with survival gear in the basement of his own house. He scoured the classifieds and kijiji looking for a used inflatable dinghy, then made the purchase in cash, meeting the seller on a back street. Doug, Rita, and Rick spent their weekends at their waterfront retreat in the Terrace Bay area, the same as they did every summer. Only this time, they went for long drives and hikes scouting out locations. They searched for old abandoned cabins and rock caves. When they took the Sea Ray out for a tour on the lake, they searched for the perfect spot. The weekend Doug and Rita died in the explosion, they set out from the cottage on Saturday afternoon and headed out on the lake, cruising along the coastline till nightfall. They headed out further into the lake somewhere past Marathon. Around 10 pm, they abandoned the Sea Ray and boarded the dinghy Rick had purchased for this purpose. Doug used his flashlight to send a signal toward the shore. “Over there...I see it,” Rita shouted when she saw a couple of responding flashes of light on the shore in the distance. Doug and Rita rowed across Superior toward the beacon. They had spent hours in the preceding weeks practising manoeuvering the dinghy through the rough waters. It was tougher in the dark, but Rick was on the shore, in a secluded area, guiding them to safety with a couple of flashes of light every few minutes. Once they reached shore, Rick rushed up to hug them as they stumbled out of the dinghy. “You had me worried. That took longer than I thought it would,” he said, his voice emotional. “It’s okay, we’re fine,” reassured his mom. “I’ll admit it was a bit scary out there...” That was when the boat exploded. They watched the flames and smoke billowing up in the night sky for a few minutes, then Doug said, “Let’s move.” They put on the hooded jackets and glasses Rick had brought along for them. Then Doug punched a hole in the dingy with his knife and let it deflate as they quickly made their way to Rick’s car. As they drove eastward on Highway 17, Rita expressed what they were all thinking. “Do you think it was enough to sink it? What if they find something?” she worried. “All we can do now is hope for the best,” Doug told her. “It’s too late to go back.” Rick drove carefully for the next hour, mindful of the speed limit, till he found the turnoff. Once they entered the gravel backroad, he said, “I’m going to miss you. Be careful out there. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.” Then he stopped the car and they all got out. Rita and Doug gave their son one last hug and told him they loved him before they made their way into the woods on foot. Rick headed back onto Highway 17 toward the cottage where he waited to see how it would play out. Doug and Rita walked through the darkness, with their flashlight and compass to guide them to the location they had found over a month ago. In the wilderness northeast of White River, close to a stream, was an old rundown shack that had obviously not been used for some time. This was where Rick had brought the supplies he had stockpiled over the last couple of months. This was where Doug and Rita would make their home for the next few weeks. Roughing it was a lot rougher than they had anticipated. Being used to the amenities and perks of the upper middle class, Doug and Rita were not accustomed to outdoor camping in the least. But you do what you have to do to survive. They made do with packaged and canned food without cooking. The shack provided a bit of shelter. During the cold nights, they huddled together in their sleeping bag, under the blankets. To pass the time, they read the books and played the card games Rick had left them. They didn’t dare start a fire or go for a walk, fearing they’d be seen. It was risky enough hiding out in the shack in the woods. They had no idea whether anyone was looking for them or if they were presumed drowned. For his part, Rick played the worried son. This wasn’t too difficult a role as he really was worried about them. By the time the explosion had been reported and the coast guard was able to get near enough to the flames, there was little left of the boat. The wreckage made it apparent there were no survivors. Due to the cold water, bodies usually didn’t surface. That afternoon, Rick called the police to report his parents hadn’t returned from their trip out on the lake. They were presumed killed in the explosion, although a search of the area found no signs of their bodies. Rick planned the memorial service and mourned the deaths of his parents. Then he waited for a few weeks. Luck was on their side. No one came near their hideout. After a few weeks, Rick returned to the spot where he had left his parents the night the explosion took their lives. He was relieved to find them well, although thinner and looking a little rough around the edges. Rick handed over a wad of cash and new ID’s to his parents. He drove them to The Sault, where he dropped them off close to the bus station and handed over the bus and plane tickets he had purchased online. From there, they took the bus to Toronto. Two days later, they were on a flight to Costa Rica. “We’re going to make it, aren’t we?” asked Rita, still somewhat anxious. “Lady Luck’s on our side this time,” Doug assured her. As the plane made its bumpy landing, Rita thought, “Wouldn't it be just our luck to die in a plane crash now that we’ve gotten this far.” She closed her eyes and held on tight to her armrests. A week after they had landed in Costa Rica, Doug used the new email Rick had set up for him to send a message to his son. Smooth landing. Wish you were here. *** A year later, Doug and Rita were enjoying life on their beachfront property, bought with the life insurance payout. Rick had been making regular deposits into an account set up for his parents under their new identities. “We’re living the dream,” Doug said lazily from his poolside lounger. “Except I miss him so much,” Rita said as she took another sip of wine. “So do I, so do I,” Doug told her. “It’s all my fault we’re apart.” “What’s done is done. There’s no point in placing blame. Besides, we’ll be seeing him soon,” Rita reminded him. Business was thriving at Fitzgerald Law Firm. The credit card debts had been covered by the insurance on the cards. The boat had also been insured. Rick sold his parents’ house, the cottage, and the cars, leaving him debt-free. Doug’s debt to his buddy, John, was no longer an issue. The accidental death double indemnity clause in the life insurance policy left the Fitzgerald’s four million dollars richer. Dead was better than alive. Rick was looking forward to his vacation in Costa Rica next month. As he took his new girlfriend, Kate, out on his new boat, she remarked, “It’s a large lake.” “It’s a deep lake,” added Rick. Then she realized how insensitive she was and said, “I’m sorry...I wasn't thinking.” “It’s okay. I like being on the lake. It makes me feel closer to them,” he told her. “Still, it must be hard…” she said. “Knowing they’re down there. Not having a proper burial, a cemetery to visit.” “At least, they’re not alone down there. So many lives have been lost to Superior. It’s a graveyard in its own right,” Rick mused aloud. “You’d be surprised what lies beneath the surface. “Including the body of one John Spencer, Dad’s old ‘buddy’,” thought Rick. Doug had invited John up to the cottage the night of the explosion for a test drive on board the Sea Ray. He was offering it up as partial payment for the debt he owed John. A good dose of sleeping pills in his wine glass ensured John would go down with his newly acquired boat. What goes down in Superior, stays in Superior.
SELFIE
Roger flashed his identification at Ann’s mother, who, having finished her exercise routine, mixed a blueberry-strawberry smoothie in a blender in the kitchen. “Where is she?” Roger demanded. “Where is she? Who do you think you are, bursting into my house?” Roger thrust his police identification card and shiny badge into Ms. Wang’s line of sight. Ann’s mother often spent hours on her face, smooth, pale, unblemished, applying moisturizers, creams, powders, and lotions, massaging her wrinkles and facial muscles, plucking hairs from her nostrils and eyebrows, depilating above her lips, scrubbing the skin, cleansing the pores. “You’re with the narcissism squad?” Having completed a workout on her treadmill and stationary bicycle and then with kettlebell weights in front of a large wide screen television, she wore fashionable, stretchy skin tight athleisure, yoga pants, and a form fitting tank top made from a fabric that easily absorbed perspiration. After she examined the photo identification and pushed away the paperwork, the warrants, Ann’s mother realized this wasn’t a prank, practical joke, mistake, or misunderstanding. When she collapsed in the chair, trembling, Roger was surprised at her reaction. Wang shook violently, but, since she seemed fit, he felt concerned as he contemplated her reaction. Worried he needed to summon an ambulance, he asked Ann’s mother if she required medical attention. Saying she would be all right, she shook her head when he asked her again. “Where’s Ann?” “She should be in her bedroom.” Ms. Wang motioned down the hallway to the bedroom when he again asked her daughter’s whereabouts. When she asked Roger if she could stand, he joked he wasn’t about to shoot her, but he realized he needed to remember how intimidating he could look. Then, worried he might be falling into a trap, he allowed Ann’s mother to lead him down the hallway. “You have to understand. She was an influencer—” “Ma’am, influencers were banned during the final wave of the last viral pandemic, after they were linked to super-spreader events.” “I understand, but she did amass over forty thousand followers on social media. Internet fame can be an intoxicating.” “Ma’am, the warrant mentions pornography offenses, production and distribution, third degree. You do understand the severity of those charges under the new modesty code, even if she was a young offender.” “Yes, I’m sorry. I warned her about posting selfies a few months ago. I was under the impression she stopped. She said she deactivated her social media account and was studying for her college admissions exams.” “I have a warrant for her arrest, Ms. Wang. The rap sheet mentions intimate images, nudity, minors, age of consent.” “But she’s of age—oh, my God.” Ann’s mother started to sob as she collapsed on the sofa in the hallway. Fearing she might resist or refuse to cooperate, Roger asked her help, explaining parents or friends oftentimes persuaded suspects to surrender, encouraging them to adopt a cooperative stance towards law enforcement, to avoid stricter sentencing and obstruction of justice charges. Knocking on Ann’s bedroom door, Ms. Wang nervously said there was a gentleman to see her. Ann gazed through the peephole in the door and, despite the fact his image was distorted by the fisheye lens, from social media she recognized the cop—the dude she nicknamed Roger Dodger. Her friend Nicky said he saved her life, when she called into the distress line. He persuaded her not to take her own life by overdosing on tranquilizers and antidepressants and slicing her wrists in a bathtub overflowing with warm water. She said she ended up conversing with him so long from the bathtub she wound up with pruney skin and cellulitis. Nicky insisted on knowing his name, being friends with him, and following him on social media so she could speak with him again when she next called into the distress line. She claimed he helped her find purpose and meaning in life. As soon as Ann heard that phrase, she knew that Nicky, who liked to cut herself, slice the flesh on her arms and thighs with sharp knives, must have had epiphany. In fact, instead of threatening to kill herself or show up at school with a machete or hunting knife, or even her father’s hunting rifle or shotgun, she talked about pursing a career as a model and a photographer. Somehow, Roger Dodger managed to persuade her she possessed skills and aptitudes—that she could succeed if she applied herself. Then, when she texted him photos, selfies she took of herself in her swimsuit on the beach, he blocked her on every social media account he used, including CareerNet. When Ann saw his face through the peephole, enlarged and distorted by the fisheye lens, she realized the police were pursuing narcissism charges, and she needed to escape. She turned on loud rap music on her laptop computer and the gangster rap from the YouTube music video boomed through the stereo speakers behind her bedroom door, which she already locked since her mother never showed sufficient respect for her privacy. When mother tried to open the door, she discovered the lock was solidly engaged. Ann urged her mother to go away, but Ms. Wang warned her to open the door for the police. Ann increased the volume on her laptop computer, so the rap music boomed loud. Gunfire burst from the overdubs on the soundtrack, booming realistically through portable wireless stereo speakers. Roger charged into her bedroom, smashing through the locked door, with a kick from his boot. He lunged into the bedroom just as Ann, in a tank top, short shorts, and puffy poop emoji slippers, smashed the double pane glass for her bedroom with the five-pound kettlebell weight, and fled through the broken storm window. “A runner,” mutter Roger, who couldn’t remember the last time a suspect fled. Usually, the perps came out of their desktop computer or laptop in their bedroom with their hands raised, sometimes even holding the offending smartphone, the instrument of their troubles, tightly clenched in their grip. Roger charged down the hallway, leaving Ann’s mom screaming, as he raced out the back door, which he slammed loudly, surprising her Mom with his agility, which she hadn’t expected in a mature man, since she had only memories of her father, confined to a wheelchair. Ms. Wang never expected she would see a middle-aged man run so fast. He ran through the backyard and through the back alley, chasing after Ann as she raced through her suburban neighbourhood for several blocks. Then he turned back on foot and, since he had an idea where Ann might be headed, the scene of some of her past crimes and misdemeanours and selfies, he followed behind her in an unmarked police cruiser. Through the front window shield, he saw her dash across the parking lot of shopping mall and run across concrete parking curbs into the Trillium Coffee, where she worked. In Trillium Coffee, she took numerous offending selfies and videos. In a bikini or short skorts and a homemade cropped top, she produced clips and pictures of herself demonstrating the best techniques to make fresh, delicious cappuccinos, lattes, espresso, iced teas, and frappe coffees, which helped her increase and amass a following on social media in the tens of thousands. Her viewership grew everyday. Roger pulled up to the drive thru, parked the cruiser, blocking the laneway and an exit to the parking lot, a small parking lot bounded by yellow and black bollards bordering a massive larger parking lot for the shopping mall, and hurried into the Trillium Coffee. “Where is she?” Roger shouted. The barista, in his Trillium Coffee uniform, at the cash register, suddenly motioned to the back kitchen. Roger stepped gingerly down the corridor and, while Ann could hear him, she waited, on the other side of the double doors, beside the refrigerator, hiding. When Roger stepped through the door to the kitchen, Anna sprayed his eyes with a blast, an explosion of mist from the nozzle of a bottled oven cleaner. Blinded momentarily, Roger writhed in agony and anger, as he fled through the kitchen and hallway. Wiping his eyes with crumpled paper towel, his vision still blurred, he stepped outside the restaurant. He found no sign of her in the parking lot, huge, and empty. He thought there was no way plausible or feasible she could have run that far so fast and circled the squat square Trillium Coffee building. Then he came across a dumpster at the back. He saw beneath the lid of the dumpster, her puffy poop emoji slippers peeping through the gap between the crushed disposable coffee cups and donut boxes and food waste and coffee grinds and the closed lip of the dumpster. He crept up to the dumpster, removed his taser from his holster, and aimed at her as he opened the lid. Like a trapped animal desperate for freedom, she leapt from the dumpster, overflowing with garbage. She leapt too quickly for Roger to aim at her and shoot his taser. In the ensuing struggle, in which he managed to cling to the armhole on my tank top, she managed to free herself from his grip and regain her freedom. She even managed to seize control of his taser. She fired the taser and the two barbed darts punctured his skin and stuck to him. As she released some of the conducted energy, she screamed, spitting, “Pervert!” Roger writhed in agony from the taser shot. She dropped the weapon and ran back across the parking lot in her puffy poop emoji slippers. When he recovered from the blow, and shocks, she chased him across the vast parking lot of the shopping mall. Her puffy poop emoji slippers came loose, as she, her soles bleeding from broken beer bottle glass scattered across the asphalt, continued running bare foot. Chasing after her, he managed to close the gap between them to a few meters. When he noticed her skinny legs, the muscles and tendons in her thighs and calves and bleeding bare feet, he feared he couldn’t run any further, without suffering chest pains and potentially a heart attack. Still, he leapt, surprising her with his agility and speed, tackling her to the asphalt. He pressed her head against the pavement, as he restrained and handcuffed her, while she cursed, swore, and spit. At five foot five inches, he estimated she was less than one hundred pounds. He thought that, aside from whatever issues were already afflicting her, including this extraordinary effort to resist arrest, she must suffer an eating disorder. Despite his shouted warnings of further charges for assaulting a peace officer and obstructing justice, she continued to fight furiously, scratching, punching, flailing. He dragged her to her feet and informed her she was under arrest for criminal narcissism charges, posting selfies to social media. She screamed about oppression of her freedom of speech and spit in his face, calling him a pervert. He escorted her, kicking, screaming, back across the parking lot. When he reached Trillium Coffee, exasperated, gasping for breath, he threw her back into the dumpster. He sat on the lid, and then called for backup. After waiting for over an hour, during which nobody responded to his repeated calls for assistance, he realized he would have to take the wild, volatile young woman on his own. He drove the cruiser to the precinct. When he arrived with her wrists in handcuffs and her ankles in zip ties, she was still belligerent and hostile. Roger gave her his jacket, far too large, urging her to protect her modesty and she tried to kick and throw the outerwear back at him, but couldn’t because of her restraints. He expressed amazement the precinct was empty. No officer helped process her arrest, no jail guard apprehended Ann to properly imprison her and monitor her. The cadet, leaving the precinct as Roger arrived, said most officers responded to a call to disperse a massive party in violation of social distancing guidelines for the pandemic lockdown, during the latest waves of surging infections, and Roger nodded warily. He processed Ann and led her to the cell. When he observed no jail guard or prison matron in the detention facility, he should have been cautious. Then he left her in the cell and brought her a long sleeve shirt and pants, without a belt, again urging her to protect her modesty. He also left a paperback Russian novel, his personal favorite, Crime and Punishment, for her to read. He even forgotten the stubby pencil in middle of the novel, to mark the page, where he last left off, despite having read the novel several times already. He returned to his desk to catch up on paperwork. When he went for coffee at the percolator, he heard a choking sound, an animalistic gagging and gurgling, and furious kicking. He hurried to the holding cell area and found her dangling from the long sleeve shirt, which he had given her and which she fashioned into a noose, a hang rope, and fastened to a bar of the jail cell, from which she dangled. Roger cut her down and sliced through the knotted rope around her neck. He initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitation, as he used his walkie-talkie to call the ambulance. By the time the ambulance arrived at the precinct, the detention facility was crowded with officers. The paramedics brought her into the hospital emergency department within minutes of their arrival, but the attending casualty officer indicated any intervention wouldn’t make a difference. With few healthy vital signs, essentially brain dead, Ann remained on life support. Before interviews with homicide detectives, part of the investigation, which lasted several hours, he removed the novel he had given her from the jail cell, despite the fact he realized the paperback might be evidence. Crestfallen and heartbroken, he returned home to his midtown apartment late at night, having racked up over a dozen hours of overtime, to the dismay of the commanding officer. Having returned home to his condominium, he discovered Ann wrote a note inside the front cover of Crime and Punishment, when the stubby pencil fell from the pocketbook. He again expressed amazement at himself for his carelessness with the girl. He could barely decipher her handwriting, but he saw she had scrawled a note to the effect that if she couldn’t have her freedom to be herself, if she couldn’t have the liberty to express herself, especially on social media, if she was going to be treated like a depraved criminal because she was a content creator and social media influencer, she didn’t want to live anymore. After he read the message, he tore off the cover, ripped it to shreds, and burned the note in the kitchen sink. Feeling ashamed and culpable at her death. He sat down at his desktop computer, opened the word processor, composed a letter of resignation, cut, and pasted the letter into an email, and sent the email to his commanding officer. He took a tranquilizer, gulping the tablet with a cup of cold coffee he reheated in the microwave oven. As he lay in bed, he continued to brood over Ann, a teenager who resisted arrested like no previous suspect he ever arrested or detained. He thought of the ghastly image of her, sagging from the sleeve of the oversized long-sleeved t-shirt he insisted she wear, which she fashioned into a rope, and the chaotic scene at the hospital emergency department as the doctors, nurses, and paramedics struggled to revive and resuscitate her. He feared her parents would decide to disconnect her life support in the intensive care unit of the hospital. After he took another titrated dose of sleep medication and a tablet for anxiety, he finally managed to fall asleep on the sofa, beside his desk and computer. When he first awoke it was to a sense of dread, feeling his career was doomed. Then he awoke to the sound of the cordless telephone ringing repeatedly. He thought for a moment he might be in the middle of a dream, but he realized that all these awful events had occurred. He listened for the voicemail to answer the phone call and record any message, but heard nothing. The supervisor was probably trying to reach him after he sent the email earlier in the day, so he answered the telephone instead of risking insubordination. The superintendent summoned him to his favorite Starbucks coffeehouse at King and Yonge Street downtown. The superintendent said he needed a debriefing. They needed to discuss administrative and personnel issues—the bright future of his promising career at the Toronto Police Service. That could only mean he had received his letter of resignation and read the email. Roger rode the subway train to the spacious café. He didn’t see what choice he had even if he made his resignation effective immediately. In full dress uniform, the superintendent, having returned from a press conference at police headquarters on College Street, where he showed off laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, external hard drivers, thumb drives, memory sticks and cards, seized from banned influencers, greeted him with a backslap. His immaculate appearance, pressed uniform, fine grooming, and older handsome appearance usually left Roger feeling inferior and intimidated. When the superintendent saw how downfallen Roger appeared, he pursed his lips, frowned sympathetically, and gave him a hug. They sat down with their gourmet coffees and biscotti, a treat the commander insisted on paying for with his own credit card. “These things happen to all our officers, Constable, at one point or another.” “Yeah, I think that’s a fair assumption.” “Assumption? It’s a fact.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” “Don’t yeah, yeah me, Constable. You’re the oldest recruit I ever hired. You can’t just go quitting on me. In fact, you’re the oldest recruit the whole city police department ever hired. It would reflect badly on me, on us, the department, for you to depart abruptly.” Roger stood up and snatched a few sugar packets and creamers for his coffee, even though he preferred his coffee black, with no sugar or sweetener. “You know when I hired you, I had your complete social media profile and activity in my files. I thought: why is this mature man looking at these young women’s profiles.” “I think I explained that during my job interview and screening: I worked as a volunteer counsellor at a suicide prevention and distress call-in centre. Often young women would call in and insist on having my name and knowing me personally. They would offer their names as a matter of routine, even though I insisted on anonymity. They even sent me invitations to join their circle of friends and acquaintances on social media. It became very difficult to separate work and volunteer activity from my personal life.” “This isn’t an inquisition or an interrogation, Constable. No one is questioning your work as a volunteer or your integrity. I just can’t understand why you’d undergo the rigorous screening process, and then walk away from the position and a promising career, especially when I warned you there’d be setbacks—days like these. And I mention these relationships you managed to establish because I thought you were the perfect candidate for the narcissism squad.” Roger normally would have answered promptly, but his experience as a police officer taught him the value of restraint, refraining, silence. He sipped his coffee and wiped his eyes, which started to water from irritation. “Anyway, when I was first looking at your application—should I hire this older guy—I noticed this pattern. You were friends with these young women—smart, good looking—but you were single. I thought this an interesting pattern of behavior and you had an unusual character, one useful in law enforcement. I thought this former economist or data scientist—” “I was a graduate student in Canadian economic history, writing my master’s thesis on the history of interest rates during the twentieth century as they related to Toronto stock exchange valuations.” “But you were a financial wizard. A member of the police commission said you were his financial advisor at a wealth management firm.” “That was before my early mid-life crisis.” “Yes, the early mid-life crisis, which precedes the mid-mid-life crisis, which hits hardest before the late-mid-life crisis, which makes you realize it only keeps getting better since you needn’t worry about paying for the kid’s college tuition anymore.” “Fortunately, I don’t have a wife or children, but you forgot about the house or condo down payments.” “Anyway, I noticed all the young people with whom you’re friends—” “Since they’re mostly from school and social media, I don’t think you’d call them real friends.” “Still, you had a gift for establishing rapport with a younger crowd, so I thought you were an ideal recruit for the narcissism squad.” “I think at one point so did I.” “And I noticed you had no selfies—not a single selfie, not even from an authorized portrait photographer, or from the grandfather clause phase. Most mature men and women your age keep some flattering selfies on their social media profile under the grandfather clause, but not you, not a single selfie.” “I don’t photograph well. I’m not photogenic.” “That’s not what I hear from the ladies at police headquarters or the precinct or the narcissists you’ve arrested–silver fox is what I hear.” “Pig or pervert is the insult I hear most often.” “When you’re arresting suspects. You shouldn’t sell yourself short.” “No, I think it’s a fact.” “You’re ignoring reality. Then there’s the fact you didn’t even have a smartphone.” “I was an academic, a scholar—well, not even that, but a graduate student—I didn’t need a smart phone. When you hired me, though, you made me get a smartphone.” “We need to keep in touch and constant communications with our officers, if necessary.” “I understand.” “Then you can understand sometimes suspects commit suicide.” “Yes. But not on my watch.” “Forget about it. There’s already been a preliminary investigation and you’ve been exonerated.” “Not in my mind.” “I want you to see the police psychologist.” He handed Roger the business card for the police psychologist and picked up his smartphone and scrolled through his list of contacts, the glow from the screen lighting his spiked silver hair and pale fleshy face, which received regular treatments for wrinkles with Botox, thinking he could call him that very minute. “Human resources will set up an appointment, so I’ll just get you their email and telephone number—” “It doesn’t matter. I think I’m returning to studying interest rates.” “You mean playing the market.” “I was never a day trader, I was an investor, and the interests of my clients always came first.” “Your city police service needs you.” “I need to obtain my master’s degree.” Roger took out his smartphone, held the device in front of his face, so he could see himself on the screen, as if he was viewing his reflection for the first time in a mirror, and adjusted the smartphone so it framed his head and shoulders for a self-portrait. The commanding officer saw him assuming a classic selfie pose. “Constable, don’t, posting a selfie to social media is an automatic suspension–one of the few firing offenses. You know the severity of the infraction.” Roger tried to take a selfie, but he pressed the wrong button and then held his smartphone close, for a closer look, as he tried to figure out the smartphone camera controls and shutter. He set the self-timer for ten seconds and put the camera settings in burst mode, and, as he psyched himself, nervously attempting to relax to pose for a photogenic self-portrait, to capture an unblurred portrait, the camera took a series of a dozen pictures in a second and automatically selected an image it thought best. “Constable! You know as a police officer few things can get you fired: taking and posties selfies will.” Having moved from his side of the dark stained table, Roger stood alongside his commanding officer. He held the smartphone-camera in front of them with his extended arm. Having given himself a crash course in operating the smartphone camera, he figured he was close to understanding selfies, an art, in and of itself. He moved close to the commander, even pressing his face against the captain’s smooth-shaven cheek, which smelled freshly clean, with a musky scent from cologne and aftershave. Then Roger decided to throw caution aside—for Ann’s sake—and pecked the superintendent on the cheek as he stared at the camera phone lens. There was an audible shutter noise from the smartphone as Roger pressed the shutter button and snapped the selfie, which he uploaded to his social media account. He made the snapshot his profile picture, replacing the portrait of the cartoon character Wiley E. Coyote, while his commanding officer gasped, rubbed his smooth glistening brow, and shook his head in resignation.
The Scallops of Rye Bay4.30 on the rough, that’s what she said…where is she, she should be here by now…
It’s all a rough now, she could be anywhere on these overgrown greens. But all he sees are dark shadows of the night and the faint menacing glow of the burnt-out power station jutting out to sea in the distance. Turning around, he takes the full brunt of driving rain and westerly wind. On Fairlight hill, the blurry sight of the red light on the coastguard mast seems to flicker. Directly below him, under the dunes, the harbour lights flash green and red along the river’s edge. Upstream, the town is in blackness, the power cut for days now. Where is she? He understands her need for secrecy, they all have secrets, but it’s always him that has to wait, get soaked or frozen to the bone, while waiting for her to slip out under cover of the night. He stares at the old clubhouse: that’s where she lives. Is she there? She’d moved in, commandeered the place once it was obvious that no one would ever play golf again. He knows he can’t knock, and sometimes when the weather or the waiting gets too much, his resolve weakens, forcing him to leave. Hanging on, pacing the greens, he sees a lantern swing in an unseen hand as it leaves the clubhouse. A minute later, he hears the sound of an old diesel turning, spluttering, before starting up. Tyres crunching on the gravel road, the truck slowly drives away; it no longer has any headlights. With her husband gone, she’s straight out onto the greens. ‘Inspector French…’ Shouting over the blustery wind, knowing no one else in their right mind will be around, she wanders across the greens towards the sea. Hearing but not seeing her, he heads towards the house. They pass each other, she ending at the dunes, he near the house. Damn, this always happens and he reluctantly gives a flash of his torch. Feeling like a fugitive, he smiles; after all, they are all fugitives. ‘There you are,’ she exclaims, slightly out of breath. Staring, trying to make out each other’s features in the dark: her messy black hair blowing with the wind, and he with an unkempt beard. Both are thin, as any others left alive in the Zone. It’s better in the dark, he thinks: hiding, not seeing, not showing. ‘He’ll be back at sunrise, preparing the boat for tonight, that’s not much time.’ There’s never enough time for this; besides, her husband’s always preparing the boat and always back by sunrise, everybody is. Grabbing his hand, she hurries them to the clubhouse. It’s even darker in the house. It reeks of fish. Wasting no time, he pushes her back into a tattered armchair, one he knows well, one they had always used when things were good. That was a year or more ago. He can’t remember exactly, before the lockdown and before the power station blew. Now they are cursed, creatures of the night. It’s better in the dark. Half-undressed, he sits at the kitchen table. It’s cold. No one has heating anymore and the only hot water for bathing comes from a once a week shower session at the old swimming pool. That’s if the power works; it’s less frequent these days. He starts to dress, his warm body quickly cooling. He can make out her pale body, legs hunched up, still in the chair. ‘Aren’t you cold?’ ‘After that!’ Her features start to become visible and he looks out the window to the east. A light sliver on the horizon, cutting the night sky, tells him to move. ‘The light, he’ll be back soon and I don’t want to get sick,’ he blurts out. ‘Or have a fight…do you have anything?’ From his sodden coat pocket, he takes a small metal box. ‘Here, help you sleep.’ ‘And forget…’ The growl of the diesel sends him to the back door and out onto the greens. She had said that she had something for him: important information. It would have to wait. She shouts after him: ‘Later, at the church…’ He’d thoughtlessly lost track of time in the clubhouse and now, as the dark beneath his feet starts turning green, he begins to run. Two minutes later, as he opens the harbour office door, the sun sparkles off the river. He slams the door shut. The blinds are down, moving gently with the wind as it pushes through broken window seals. Soft light flickers through the room, but it’s safe enough. In the semi-darkness he changes, hanging up his soaking clothes to dry. This two storey box is home: high enough to be out of reach from flooding tides and out the way enough to be secure. Not that security is an issue anymore…but there was time. He glances at the desk under the lookout windows. Covered in dust, his police gun lies there. He hasn’t picked it up in half a year. It feels a life away, but he can never shake what had really happened. * * * A virus happened, tearing through the country, battering communities. There had been a lockdown, each area keeping to itself. Containment seemed to work. Out of a population of nine thousand, Rye had about a hundred deaths. At the time it seemed a lot, but nothing compared to what came next. As head of the local police, his job became easy: crime almost disappeared. But then, due to lack of manpower or just incompetence, the aging nuclear power station at Dungeness had a small explosion. It flared bright for a day and night before suddenly reducing to an iridescent glow that has never gone away. As the wind blew in from the west, it was said that little radiation fell on Rye. This false sense of safety was soon cut short. Four days later, people started dropping like flies. Radiation and the virus didn’t mix together well, unless it’s to wipe out an entire population. Rye became toxic. It had been chaos. Paranoid of some super-virus developing, the military cordoned off the area with barbed wire. Armed patrols, in full radiation protection gear, shot anyone leaving, and there were many. Shops were looted and some smartarse sabotaged the sluice gates along the rivers Rother, Brede and Tillingham, jamming them open, thinking that if the marshes were flooded, any radiation would soon be washed out to sea and things return to lockdown normal. After some heavy rainfall, the first big high tide pushed through the sluice gates, flooding the entire marsh and lower town; even the railroad was underwater, the level rising to within an inch of the platform edge. In fact, only the small town on the hill, cut off as a small island, and a few high points like the clubhouse and the harbour office stayed dry. It had made matters worse not better. Infuriated authorities even ordered dogs and sheep wandering out of the Zone to be shot. Day and night, he’d heard gunfire. Inspector French remembers his staff, all good people: dead by the end of the second week. The authorities had quickly put him in charge. Now that the power station was down and irreparable, they promised to reroute the supply and deliver food. Insisting on a head count first, he’d lied, telling them two thousand, maybe more. He didn’t know the number, maybe five hundred, maybe less. Rye was desperate, some people having been murdered for a can of beans looted from the flooded supermarket by the station. As an official figure, he had been blamed and accused: somehow this was his fault. After a gang of locals threatened him, he feared a witch hunt and barricaded himself in the police station. Pulling the blinds, he hunkered down with a gun and few supplies. The promised food drop never materialised and his radio soon went flat. When his food was finished, hunger and panic forced him to venture out. The town was deserted. The receding tides had left bodies everywhere. The place stank and rats were rife. Daylight had an odd other-worldly hue, a yellow glow that made him sick and dizzy, sending him back to the station. That night, he tried again. He needed to charge the radio – but how? Visibly holding the gun to show moving shadows in the night he was armed, he tried starting the police cars in the yard. They had all been flooded out, batteries dead. He cautiously wandered into town, uphill where the water hadn’t reached. Trying every car door, he found one open, keys in ignition. There were no bodies here, they must have been moved, and the road was clear. Someone had taken charge and that scared him. One man, if he were still alive, knew everyone and everything, but it was risky. Desperation drove him on, across the bridge where some minutes later he stopped outside the clubhouse. Just do it, he thought, and was soon banging on the door. Hillary’s husband answered. Inspector French saw her silhouette standing in the room. Although dark, he sensed her blushing. ‘French, what do you want? I hear you’ve been hiding from the lynch mob.’ He stood looking at the man whose name he had now forgotten but still frightened the living daylights out of him. He had a reputation. Hillary’s husband looked down at the dark shape of the gun clasped tight in French’s hand. ‘Like that, is it…?’ ‘No, no…It’s not safe, can I come in?’ He felt pathetic. Hillary stepped forward. ‘Of course, are you hungry?’ He nodded. ‘Scallops and seaweed, help yourself.’ ‘You eat sea-food, isn’t it full of radiation…they let you fish?’ ‘Not glowing in the dark yet, besides, those other things didn’t kill us…been eating them for weeks, up to you. Coastguard dropped flashing buoys three miles out, signage reading: “Boats passing beyond this point will be destroyed.” It’s not a big area, but big enough for the three boats still working… saw a boat blown clean out the water, pushing its luck. Fool.’ Hillary’s husband struck a match, the flare momentarily lighting up the room. He lit a candle on the table. French avoided looking at Hillary and focused on her husband. In the flickering light, as shadows danced across his scary face, French noticed that he had a glow: not of radiation but of health. ‘You don’t look so good French, you succumbing?’ Without thinking, he picked up a plate of food and started eating. Hillary’s husband gestured to the armchair. It felt so wrong, but to avoid suspicion he sat down anyway, glancing at Hillary who quickly turned away. The seat was warm and he immediately stood back up. ‘I need power for the radio,’ he urgently blurted out through a mouthful of food. ‘Can you get us food, electric?’ ‘Do my best.’ ‘The harbour lights use wind and solar, got that working. Why not stay at the harbour office, it’s empty. Be safe there, you can a get small amount of power from the console and water from a well we sunk out back.’ ‘Who’s been cleaning up the town?’ ‘People, got their patches, not safe for the likes of you, not now, and before you ask, we all feel funny in the daylight…we’re relying on you.’ * * * And that’s how he’d arrived at the harbour office, soon learning that he was a very ex-police inspector, his very existence depending on securing food and power and the grace of Hillary’s husband. With the radio charged, that’s exactly what he did. Food was regular but the power intermittent. By greatly exaggerating population numbers, he’d managed to horde a huge amount of food, storing it in the church at the very top of town. Now, with numbers dwindling, there only being around a hundred people left, no one is interested in Inspector French anymore; well, only one but that’s still a secret. Today is a food drop day, or rather tomorrow morning dead of night. The authorities sensibly insisting the drops take place in total darkness. They too had learned to stay far away from the local light. He wakes before the alarm; it’s not yet dusk. He opens a tin of mixed beans and tears off a piece of smoked fish. With all the driftwood floating in from sea, the fishermen had made a smokery behind the jetty, a stone’s throw from the harbour office. Dipping the fish into the can of beans, he licks it clean and takes a bite while watching the orange glow of the winter sunset fade around the edges of the window blinds. They are grey by the time he’s finished and near black when he grabs his coat to leave. At first, being out all night seemed wrong, against nature itself. But now he craves it, even gladly suffering the howling winds of winter. The long summer days had been intolerable. He had spent most of them at the abandoned leisure centre, mindlessly exercising behind blacked-out windows in the gym, or, before it broke, cooking in the sauna. He’d never known such boredom, and nothing brought relief. Now, in the dead of winter, he rarely wastes a precious moment of the night indoors…unless he’s spending it with Hillary. The waxing moon illuminates the jetty. The hum and rattle of the boats below tells him that they’re ready for work, just waiting for the tide to rise. They always go together, staying close, as their radios and phones no longer work and the life boat’s long been without a crew. Here, a year ago, the moon showed bodies floating out to sea. Leaving the river and flashing harbour lights, he mounts a bike and slowly cycles through the inky night. On the road, behind the high barbed wire fence to his right, is the distant glow of the power station. Dismounting, he leaves the bike under the old stone archway. Walking up the potholed road towards the church, he turns left, passing his favourite coffee shop. It’s now a ruin: its bay side-windows completely demolished where he had once misjudged the corner, driving the tractor clean inside. Outside the old town hall, the dark shape of the huge tractor with its high-sided farm trailer stands where he had left it. An engineer, who got stuck in town, keeps it going. It even has some working lights. Skirting around the tractor, he enters the passage to the church. He stops. In the dim moonlight, he checks his watch. In front of him, the church door is ajar. Candlelight flickers from inside. In the soft wind, he hears an owl and then the loud clang of the church clock bell. Looking up towards the clock, it’s far too dark to read the time. But he knows it’s seven. The vicar still winds this ancient time piece, fastidiously taking care of it. Rye time is Church time. They all rely on it, and he adjusts his watch. Inside the church, the wind makes shadows dance. He pulls the door. It closes with a thud. The wind stops and the candles settle down. The vicar sits facing the door. He’s always there and Inspector French is never late. The vicar, once serene, is now a troubled man, no longer having any words for comfort. He’d once told French that he wished he’d perished when the power station blew. French had offered him a biscuit then, as he didn’t know what else to do. In the stillness, looking across the shadowed church into the vicar’s deep black eyes, he asks: ‘Does all bode well?’ The vicar deliberately waits before replying: ‘As well as can be expected…Inspector French.’ This is their weekly ritual, one that’s never varied, near a year. Next to the vicar is a small table. On it sits two cups of steaming tea. When the power’s down, the vicar collects wood from the high tide mark to boil a kettle somewhere out the back. French sits down and drinks his tea. The vicar studies him before asking: ‘Will you have help tonight?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I too would like some local help but the flock seems rather thin these days.’ French smirks. ‘Mrs. Johnson’s all alone. Sure she’d gladly help you out.’ ‘You think?’ ‘Yes vicar, I think you should invite her for a very long cup of tea. I’ll suggest it when I see her next.’ ‘I’d be grateful.’ What you mean vicar is that you’ll keep your mouth shut about me and Hillary, French momentarily fumes. He gets up. All the pews have been removed and the church is crammed full of boxes and crates. Even with the vicar’s thoughtful care, there’s hardly any space. Picking up a burning candle, he walks to the tower door. Inside, he takes a pair of binoculars hanging on a nail in the wall, placing them around his neck. He ascends the tiny twisting stairway to the clock room. The vicar has made a bed up here; the whirring of the clock and harsh clanging of the clock bell must give solace, but he doubts Mrs. Johnson will feel the same. Climbing a vertical wooden ladder, he enters the bell house. Covered in bat dung, the bells haven’t rung in ages. No one goes to sermons anymore, gets married or, oddly, has children; even the dead don’t come as they are tossed over the bridge into a fast receding tide. They only come for food. Carefully placing the candle on the floor, he walks past the bells, climbs the steep wooden steps and pushes open the small parapet door. Once a week, up here outside the bell house, he surveys the terrain. At first, the authorities had wanted to know what was going on in Rye. He had told the truth: affliction, flooding and despair, or the odd body, obviously murdered, lying in a street. Nothing could be done and they soon stopped asking. But he hasn’t stopped these weekly checks; it gives meaning to his life, pretending to be a policeman once again. The wind is soft and cold. He pulls his woollen hat down over his chilly ears. The walkway goes all around the parapet. He starts with the harbour, its lights flashing all along the river. Out at sea, the three boats trawl along the nearby shore; they too have lights. He turns, focusing the binoculars on the power station: the hot glow never changing. Walking along the east wall, he stops to survey the hill at Wittersham. The garrison there organise food drops using a long barge moored on the military canal. Usually he can see the barge lights and a glimmer of the garrison stationed on the hill. Tonight there’s nothing, it’s all pitch black, except for moonlight, shimmering on the flooded marsh. Perplexed, French quickly moves to the other side of the bell tower to survey the hills at Udimore and Winchelsea. There should be lights of other garrisons up there, but there aren’t. Worried, he hurries back down to the church. He feels panic coming and finds himself staring blankly at the vicar. ‘Seen a ghost, old boy, must be a ton of them round here. I’ll put the kettle on, have a biscuit.’ The vicar disappears. Unable to think, French paces the church. Calming down, he rifles through a box and grabs a pack of biscuits. When the vicar returns, French is sitting by the table. He‘s eaten half the packet. ‘Chocolate cookies, only the best for the Inspector.’ ‘It’s not like we’re short.’ He wants to tell the vicar about the lights, but it might be nothing, just a power outage. But that wouldn’t explain the barge though; its lights, powered by the engine, are always on during his weekly parapet watch. They don’t talk. French checks his watch; there’re some hours before the food collection. Finishing his tea, he stands up. He needs to move; besides, he’s just heard the tractor start. He looks at the vicar sitting on the chair in his large overcoat, woollen hat pulled down tight over his head. For a moment, they stare at each other and then the vicar points. French follows the direction of the finger. It points to a cross, just visible in the flickering shadows. ‘It shouldn’t be a cross you know, but a scallop.’ French waits for more. Nothing comes. As he leaves the church, the vicar calls out: ‘I’d be terribly grateful.’ Outside the church, the engineer is inspecting the tractor with his flashlight. Batteries are scarce and carefully rationed. ‘Be good for tonight, don’t worry.’ The engineer smiles and French nods, feigning his own smile. He’s never worried, it’s always good. The whole town worships this tractor and he’s its priest. He walks around to the back of church, startling a few sheep sitting on the grass. Sheep are everywhere, even on the golf course where they keep the grass and weeds quite short. No one eats the sheep, they are full of radiation. He laughs aloud at that thought. It seems that daylight doesn’t trouble them. Everyone now lives in the town, except for him, the fishermen and Hillary of course. It‘s safe from floods and, although most people are solitary, there’s a sense of belonging; the last hundred holding out for some pipe-dream rescue day. Many of the houses have been ransacked, doors hanging off their hinges, windows smashed. The few untouched are lived in. French wanders through the streets, stopping outside the Mermaid Inn. It wasn’t looted as the owner had fired his shotgun at anyone coming close. He’s gone now and its sole occupant is sitting on the entrance steps. She strokes a black cat, its eyes shining in the moonlight. He can’t quite believe how good she looks. ‘Mrs. Johnson, the vicar’s invited you for tea.’ She looks shocked. ‘Tea? He’s half way round the bend that one.’ ‘Just saying…could do with,’ he pauses, thinks a moment but doesn’t continue. She and the cat both stare at him. Feeling awkward, he leaves. There, he’s done what he’d been asked. Halfway round the bend, yes, that quite the perfect tag. He stops at Strand Quay. It’s full of wrecked boats, some still tethered to their moorings. He thinks about his mother and her fine house in Spain. Is she still alive or had the virus got her and the house a total wreck? Not wanting to think about such things, he keeps walking around the town. A few people greet him but he doesn’t stop. By the time he’s back at the tractor, his anxiety has waned. The engineer’s gone and Hillary is waiting. ‘Got some biscuits and the vicar made a flask of tea.’ ‘Did he say anything strange?’ ‘Only the best for The Inspector, is that so strange?’ Hillary is smiling but French knows if they don’t take care, trouble’s coming. He checks the time; the clock bell will soon clang 12. It’s time to go. Once out of town, along the Military road, she snuggles close to him. The bright headlights illuminate the flooded road. She turns the radio on. It hisses loudly, joining the din of engine hum and wheels splashing water. ‘Not that song again,’ French laughs. Laughing too, she turns it off. Radios had long stopped receiving signals. The authorities had seen to that. Maybe good news from the outside world would result in Rye hysteria and mass breakout. He doesn’t know, but he does know that they are lepers, living in their radioactive colony with no chance of escape. On the road ahead are concrete blocks. Behind the blocks, the perimeter fence glints in the tractor’s lights. This is as far as anyone can go. He turns right, slowly crossing the river bridge over Scots Float sluice gate. The sluice is jammed open, damaged by the sabotage. He reverses the tractor, the trailer level with the slipway, a steep ramp that was used for launching boats. They leave the tractor and stand on the bridge, arm in arm, looking up the river, waiting for the barge. It’s due soon and it’s never late. The first time he’d picked up food, he’d tried talking to the soldiers on the barge. Although suited up in radiation suits and respirators, he knew they could hear him and he’d hoped they would shout back. But the soldier at the front had warned him off, raising his rifle, squarely aiming at his chest. He never tried again. All alone, that first time had been hell. The barge has a crane to unload the crates and boxes on the slipway, or, if the slipway is under water, the river bank. Loading the trailer by hand, he’d had to labour hard. Not managing to get back in time, the morning light flooded the tractor cab at the entrance to the town. A dreadful feeling overcame him and he lost control, smashing through the cafe front. Falling out the cab, he’d crawled behind the counter, miserably hiding in the shadows for the day. Since then, Hillary always comes along. It’s one o’clock. No sign of the barge. ‘Did you radio in my medicine?’ ‘Sure, you really need that stuff?’ ‘It’s Frank, he scares me. It’s difficult, you and me.’ So that’s his name, French remembers now. They watch the river, the moonlight sparkling off the still high tide. He checks his watch. They’re late. The night is cold and crisp, the wind having dropped some time ago. After thirty minutes, he fetches the radio from the cab. There’s no answer. He changes channel; nothing. Eventually they hear a voice. It goes dead again. ‘You hear that?’ ‘A cry for help, something…’ French looks at the small dinghy sitting upright in the trailer. He has it just in case the river breaks its banks and completely floods the road below. That had happened once and he’d been forced to use it, abandoning the tractor until the next low tide at night. Hillary senses what’s in his mind, then feels dread when he asks the question: ‘Shall we risk it?’ ‘They’ll shoot on sight.’ ‘The motor’s fast and the barge slow. If we see its light, we’ll turn and scarper back.’ The dinghy slides down the slipway and splashes in the water. They look into each other’s eyes. ‘It’s risky.’ ‘I know.’ As he pulls the starter cord, their hearts beat with fear. The whirring motor breaks the silence; anyone around can hear that, he thinks. If only he’d brought his gun. Out of the Zone the air feels cold and fresh; it bites their faces. Savouring the new air, it helps to ease their tension. Not speaking, they focus on the way ahead, the dinghy gently bumping on the moonlit river. Leaving the river, they turn into the canal through a dismantled lock. Way ahead, they see the sombre shape of the moored barge. ‘I don’t like this,’ whispers Hillary. Neither does French, but he doesn’t say, just puts a finger to his lips. He cuts the motor, silently drifting in towards the barge. Scraping along its edge the dinghy comes to a stop. They climb aboard. Standing in the darkest shadows behind the wheel house, they wait. Not a sound or any sign of life. The barge is loaded for the drop. ‘Let’s look around a bit,’ he says softly. There’s nothing on the barge except boxes. In the moonlight, across the road, a guard house shows. Behind that is a track leading up to the garrison on hill. Hillary pulls his arm. ‘I’m not going up that hill.’ ‘No chance of that, just the guard house, let’s make it quick.’ He grabs her hand. On the road lie two dead soldiers. The guard house door is open. They hear choking. French picks up one of the soldier’s rifle and peers inside. Unable to see much, he takes his flashlight and illuminates the room. A soldier’s lying on the floor, head propped up against a wall, a radio in his hand; he’s vomited, bathed in sweat and gasping for breath. ‘He’s got the virus, just look at him, won’t last the night,’ Hillary whispers to French’s ear. ‘Leave him. Let’s take some food and go.’ He’s about to leave when she stands in his way and stops him. ‘Going to tell you last night,’ Hillary exclaims, suddenly unconcerned about making noise. ‘Do you ever feel ill or out of sorts?’ Puzzled, French shakes his head. ‘Only ones left alive are those who ate the scallops last February, don’t you see, they’re a cure.’ ‘I only ate them once.’ ‘Vicar worked it out, thinks the radiation and the virus got into the scallops and…’ ‘Made a super virus, which we’re full of now?’ ‘Something…it’s the season, might save his life.’ He looks at the dying soldier. ‘There’s only way to find out – grab his feet.’ Cold wind rushes over them as the dinghy moves along the river towards the town. Over the whirr of the motor, the wretched rasping of the soldier’s breath distracts them. French speaks: ‘If the virus doesn’t get him before the night’s out, radiation will.’ With the tide receding fast, the river’s low. They look across and up to the shadow of the tractor, now high up on the riverbank. ‘Tide’s too low, never get him up the jetty ladder,’ Hillary says. ‘Damn, never thought of that.’ ‘Can’t use the slipway in town, I need to get the scallops from the clubhouse, besides…he’s a soldier.’ She’s right, he thinks; the town would surly lynch him. Briefly imagining a depraved medieval ritual behind the church, he then recalls his own lucky escape from the hands of an angry mob. On the edge of town, before the rail bridge, French realises that soon the whole of Rye will hear the dinghy. The dinghy means no food drop: questions will be asked. But first he needs to hide the soldier. Full of apprehension, they don’t speak until arriving at harbour jetty, two miles further downstream. French looks at the vertical ladder of the jetty: it must be twenty feet from the water to the top. Pulling alongside the harbour master’s boat, Hillary ties the dinghy tight. The engineer had decided to keep this boat running; he too needing purpose in his life. But no one’s ever used it. Heaving and pushing, they get the soldier on the deck. The rough handling stirs him. Panicking, he makes a failed attempt to stand. Shaking on the deck, blurred eyes staring into space, he tries to speak before falling limp again. ‘Delirious, near the end,’ French mumbles, turning towards Hillary. But she’s already up the ladder. Leaving the soldier, French enters the wheelhouse and goes below. He closes all the porthole shutters. Back on deck, the moonlight shows the rifle lying in the dinghy. Not wanting to rouse suspicion, he leans over the side and grabs it. He slings it in the cabin. Standing in the wheel house to abate the cold, he notices the lights are out on the Fairlight coastguard mast. He has to tell the town’s people the truth about the food drop but has no idea what to do about the soldier. ‘Here, let’s get started.’ Hillary stands at the wheelhouse door, holding a bowl full of scallops. They look at the soldier, motionless, his failing breath weaker by the minute. ‘He’ll never get them down.’ Hillary has an idea. They prop the soldier up against the side of the boat. With one hand, French holds the soldier; with the other, he holds the man’s jaw and opens his mouth. Flattening down the man’s tongue with her fingers, Hillary forces small pieces of scallop down his throat. Soon crammed full, his airway blocked, she quickly realises his shallow breathing’s stopped. ‘He can’t swallow, we’re killing him,’ she says. French shrugs, resigned. ‘Wake him up, do something!’ Hillary yells. French violently shakes the soldier before pulling a box of matches from his pocket. He strikes a match and holds the flame close to the soldier’s little finger. There’s a dreadful gurgle followed by a tiny gasp. French slaps the soldier hard while Hillary repeats the feeding process. A small throat reflux takes some scallop down. ‘How many is that now?’ ‘About four pieces, how many did you eat last year?’ ‘The whole bowl of course, near starved.’ With daylight coming soon, they hastily move the soldier down into the cabin. French leaves his torch in the soldier’s hand and writes a note, sticking it to the inside of the door: “You’re safe. Don’t go out in daylight and keep silent. Back later.” He locks the door. ‘I’ll tell Frank the barge didn’t show and nothing from the radio. That’s all.’ He nods and they embrace. He watches her hurry across the greens in the last shadows of the night. Looking to the east, the stars are fading, the night sky turning blue. He picks up the bowl of scallops and climbs the ladder. On his quick dash back to the harbour office, he hears a noise. Is that the soldier retching? There’s no way he can find out now. Dog tired and needing rest, he stares at the scallops sitting on the console. What if the vicar’s right? With a mixture of hunger, hope and superstition, he eats the lot. He wakes to a loud banging on the door. Spooked, French sits bolt upright. He hears his name. Hillary stands there, distraught. In the morning twilight, he glimpses her black eye before she flings her arms around him. As he holds her, he looks out the open door and up the river at the flashing harbour lights. ‘Mrs. Johnson slapped the vicar’s face, said it was your fault. Told on us, how could he?’ Good for Mrs. Johnson, that bastard needed slapping, French fumes. ‘Frank’s so angry, the only reason they haven’t come for you is because of that.’ She points towards the gun, hidden in the darkness. He has visions of his own demise on a funeral pyre behind the church. ‘We need to leave. The roads are blocked and the only way out is by boat. You know how to handle a boat, yes?’ ‘I’m a fisherman’s wife!’ Hillary leaves to collect a few belongings and French rapidly dresses, stuffing the gun in his coat pocket before heading to the boat. In the high tide, it’s only a few ladder rungs to the boat. He jumps on deck. He’s never shot his gun outside of training and knows he doesn’t have that killer instinct. Standing in the wheelhouse, studying the boat’s control panel in the faint moonlight, he can’t even switch it on. Come on Hillary, you’re needed here. And then he sees the cabin door. It feels too much to deal with right now but he turns the lock anyway, pulling the door wide open. The torch turns on, shining directly in his eyes. The rifle’s red spotter light clearly on his chest. ‘Don’t shoot, I gave you medicine, brought you here,’ French desperately blurts out. There’s a terrifying pause before the spotter light turns off. French’s heart beats hard. ‘It’s safe, come on.’ French slowly backs away. He’s dealing with a soldier whose orders are to shoot anyone from Rye on sight. The soldier appears, following French onto the deck, the rifle still pointing at his chest. French raises his hands. The torch turns off. As the soldier adjusts to the darkness, he asks: ‘Where am I?’ ‘In the Zone.’ ‘Rye, the radiation will kill me, I’m not safe.’ There’s total shock in the soldier’s voice. ‘The medicine cures that too.’ ‘Medicine?’ ‘You had the last dose,’ French says, trying to get the soldier to lower his gun. Frank could be here any minute. The soldier sits down on a box and lays the rifle across his legs, finger still around the trigger. ‘Is it safe for us out there?’ French points towards the sea. ‘Safe? No one’s there, all dead, I think.’ French studies the soldier. He can’t be more than twenty and now looks fit and well. There’s no time for questions but French needs to know: ‘What happened…changed?’ ‘Rye happened. You made a super-virus, wiped out the entire country, world, I don’t know…’ He shakes his head and, with a lost look of fear, looks up at French. ‘Am I cured?’ French feels he’s already wasted too much time. ‘Some dangerous men are coming for me, we need to get to sea. You’re a soldier, stay out of sight.’ He points to the cabin door and then ascends the ladder. Hillary is there with two large bags. ‘He’s awake, in the cabin, be nice, his finger’s still on the trigger.’ At the top of the harbour office stairs, he shouts over: ‘Be a minute, start the engine, I’ll dig out some of the harbour master’s sunglasses.’ Stuffing bags with anything useful that quickly comes to hand, French hears the roar of diesel trucks racing on the road. He knows some of them have headlights. Too nervous to stuff the last bag, he leaves it, hurrying down the stairs, trying to ignore the sound of his impending doom. But he’s too late. The trucks skid to a halt, headlights illuminating the jetty. Before he reaches the ladder, Frank’s voice bellows out: ‘Stop or I’ll shoot.’ Knowing they have shotguns, he stops and turns. Dazzled by the lights, he can just make out four trucks and the shadowed shapes of men. The sound of the boat is two big strides and a leap away. He would never make it. Standing there, holding a bag in each hand, his gun’s out of reach in his pocket. It wouldn’t be much use anyway, not against this lot. ‘Thought I wouldn’t find out, you rat, she may be a scrawny good for nothing but she’s still my wife. Got plans for you French. Vicar wants to see you up behind the church.’ Frank moves closer to him. So this is how it ends: Guy Fawkes behind the church. Dazed and resigned, he doesn’t hear what’s said, but sees it clearly: the red spotter light cutting through the night. It stops at Frank’s chest. Frank looks down. The soldier orders French to get on board. Throwing his bags on deck, he downs the ladder and unties the mooring ropes. The soldier, on the wheelhouse roof, shouts to Hillary. She leaves the jetty, steering the boat fast towards the river mouth. Slowing the boat to bounce across the sand-bar surf at the harbour’s mouth, Hillary turns to look back: no one’s followed them along the riverbank track and there’s not a boat in sight. The soldier drops down on deck. All he wants to know is if he’s cured, and all French needs, is to know that the morning light is safe. Both convinced, they join Hillary at the helm. ‘Says we can see the sunrise.’ ‘Anywhere special in mind?’ Hillary asks. Perplexed, French stares into the darkness, then at Hillary. She meets his gaze and bursts out laughing.
KRISTINA She survived World War II ravages in Germany and found employment as an office worker in Berlin after the War. Tall and attractive, with brown hair and eyes, she was a dedicated worker struggling to rebuild a shattered life. Then Pan American Airways came recruiting, and Kristina began a new life as a stewardess.
Based in New York after her training, she flew throughout Europe and other eastern parts of the world before transferring to San Francisco, where I met Kristina. I found her amiable and good-natured, a person of quiet dignity with a keen sense of humor and a ready smile, but I noticed that it was just a soft chuckle when she laughed. I never heard her let loose with a knee-slapping, good belly laugh. She bought her first car after moving to California, and it took a while to learn some of the driving rules. One evening, still in uniform after a long flight, she headed home on San Francisco’s Bayshore Freeway. Glancing up, she noticed a vehicle with flashing red lights following her. Other cars were racing past her, and she mistook the flashing lights as a request to speed up, which she did. The lights remained close behind. So she sped up again but couldn’t lose her pursuer. Then she heard a siren and a voice ordering her to pull over and stop. Kristina obeyed. “Where are you going?” asked the police officer as he examined her license. “Home,” she said. “I just got off work.” He was all business. “What’s the hurry?” “I thought you wanted me to speed up because I was driving too slow.” “No. I wanted you to stop. Your tail light is out,” the officer said. Kristina noticed the officer was trying not to smile. He examined her license a few more moments. “Okay,” he said. “But, consider this a warning. You need to pull over and stop when you see a car with flashing red lights behind you.” Breathing a sigh of relief, she thanked the officer and drove home, keeping up with the traffic. Kristina was older than me, but she was my ideal crewmate, and we became good friends. Neither of us was an avid shopper or partygoer during layovers, preferring to find different adventures whenever our flight schedules matched. She was a recent vegetarian and always hungry. Her Pan Am navigator fiancé, on the other hand, liked his steaks barely dead. Theirs would not be a marriage made in heaven. But, I digress. Honolulu was the jumping-off point for destinations east and south, including the Philippine Islands and Singapore, and a routine layover point unless Kristina was on the crew. During one layover, we took an early morning flight to the Big Island of Hawaii, rented a jeep, and drove out to see the destruction of its reawakened volcano. We stood on newly hardened black lava flows, awe-struck at the red-hot lava continuing to explode skyward. Gazing upon the remains of a half-buried village left in its wake, we wondered about the people who could no longer call the destroyed land home. How had they escaped? Where had they gone? We could only speculate. To temper the realization of how helpless humans are in the path of nature's fury, we detoured to Black Sands Beach, a shoreline formed of ancient decomposed eruptions. We located some fallen coconuts, broke the shells with tools found in our rented jeep, and liberated their milky sweetness. Back at our Waikiki hotel, we watched the ceremonial burying of the luau pigs and called it a day; we needed our rest for an early morning departure and the next day’s long flight east. We spent part of one day during a Singapore layover visiting an Indian astrologer. After consulting his books and charts, he foretold our lives in uncanny detail. How could he know my boyfriend was a businessman and Kristina’s fiancé was not a vegetarian? How could his books and graphs so accurately describe our aspirations and goals? We were semi-converted star chart believers when we left to explore Johor, a state in the neighboring country of Malaysia. Returning to the hotel, heat fatigued and footsore after a long day, we found a message slipped under our room door. “We are two British Royal Navy midshipmen inviting you out to dinner this evening. Let the front desk know when you get in, and we will come to pick you up.” We decided to ignore the invitation and, shoes off and feet up, settled back to relax. An insistent knocking at the door brought Kristina out of her chair to see who dared disturb our moment of respite. It was the midshipmen extending their invitation in person. “Thank you very much,” Kristina told them, “but we’ve been out all day, and we’re tired.” “Come on,” they urged. “It will be fun. We promise.” “We’re just going to call it a day,” she said, shutting the door. She sighed and returned to her feet up position. “We’re not leaving until you change your minds,” they called from the hallway. “We’ll just wait out here while you get ready.” Thinking they would give up and go away, we ignored them. Several minutes later, we heard, “Are you ready yet?” Kristina thanked them through the door, again declining. More time passed, and then we heard, “We’re still out here. Waiting.” “They aren’t going away,” Kristina said. “We might as well give up.” So, with renewed energy after our brief rest, she opened the door. “Okay,” she said. “We were going out for dinner later, anyway.” “Great!” Two civilian-clad midshipmen looked pleased with their delayed success. As we walked the Singapore streets on our way to the restaurant, one plebe regaled us with how he was an aspiring writer destined for discovery as the next Hemingway. Whenever passing any reflective surface, the other stopped to inspect himself, smoothing his hair, straightening his collar, checking his teeth, or just admiring his image. Peeking sideways at me, Kristina tried to hide her smile at the pair’s unfettered pomposity. The midshipmen ordered hearty meals of beef, and I chose the local fare as recommended by the waiter. To the surprise of our new British friends, Kristina stuck to her fruits and vegetables, with a little cheese and a boiled egg thrown in for good measure. They seemed to think that dinner without a big helping of meat was not a meal. But, overall, it was a pleasant evening, even a bit amusing at times, and we were happy with our decision to accompany two strangers out for a night on the town of Singapore. Some layovers were typical tourist undertakings. On a polar trip to London, we had a layover in Montreal. We toured the city, viewed the St. Lawrence Seaway, attended a powwow on the Mohawk Reservation, and visited Mount Royal in a horse-drawn carriage, just like ordinary tourists would do. The return flight was more interesting as we headed back to Montreal. After we finished the tourist meal service, the cabin attendants drifted back to the rear galley, and the conversation turned to Kristina’s pre-Pan Am life. “What was it like living in Germany during the War?” one asked. “What do you think?” she said. “It was War! Everything was bombed into oblivion. I couldn’t even prove I was German when it ended.” She didn’t comment on how the damage she had seen from a reawakened volcano paled compared to what humankind can inflict upon itself. She didn’t tell them the War had claimed her husband, and she didn’t reveal that the bombings which destroyed her official documents had also taken the life of her infant son. “How could you get this job without documentation?” “My family had some photos and records, and some teachers remembered me. I wasn’t the only one who needed to be recreated. Sometimes they just believed us.” “Did you ever kill anyone?” “Yes.” “Really?” they chorused, stunned at the idea of being in the presence of a killer. “Of course,” Kristina affirmed. “It was war.” “How?” gasped one horrified stewardess. In a wordless demonstration, Kristina assumed a weapon-holding position and rotated an imaginary rifle from side to side, complete with ‘rat-a-tat-tat’ sound effects. As four jaws dropped, she quickly changed the subject. During a Manila layover, we rafted upriver to Pagsanjan Falls. The water was low, and our guides had to muscle the heavy wooden canoe over exposed rocks in the shallower parts of the river while we sat not so comfortable as they paddled us forward over smoother sections of the water. We watched natives husking coconuts by hand, preparing them for market. Kristina spied a woman concealed by a wall of palm fronds as she washed clothes in the river. At the end of the upstream ride, we swam in a pool dug by falling water and explored the cave behind the waterfall before canoeing back down the rapids. Downstream was a rip-roaring ride and a much easier trip for our native guides. We rocked back to Manila on a crowded local bus, the only Caucasians on board, and surrounded by an assortment of chickens, animals, and market goods. A local man engaged us in conversation as the bus chugged along. “See the dogs over there?” he said in heavily accented English, nodding his head towards a sizeable open-weave basket. Two mongrel dogs huddled inside. “Yes, why are they kept like that?” “To sell in market for food.” “They’re going to eat them?” Kristina asked. “Yes. And that man,” he said, nodding again in the direction of his subject. “He sells his baluts in market.” “Baluts?” “Yes, baluts,” he said. Seeing Kristina’s questioning look, he added, “Baby ducks. Cooked in shell. You want try?” We passed; that was too much adventure for either of us. On another Manila layover, we flew to Baguio, the Philippine mountain summer capital. We checked into the Baguio Hotel, planning to do some serious touring of indigenous villages the next day. But, a rowdy party in the room next to ours raged through the night, making sleep impossible. To no avail, we called the front desk twice, begging for noise relief. By 2:00 AM, Kristina had reached her limit and phoned the front desk for the third time. In a strong German accent and with great authority, she declared, “If the noise doesn’t stop immediately, I am going to blow this place to bits!” I cringed, knowing the Philippine police would show up momentarily and haul us off to jail for threatening a terrorist act. The ensuing scandal would get us fired. But it worked. No police showed up at our door, and the next day we visited the local hot springs, a woodcarving village, and the indigenous markets. It was always good to see Kristina’s name on the crew list because I knew it meant a new adventure waited just over the horizon. My hungry vegetarian friend with the steak-loving fiancé was still embracing life’s fleeting moments in her most optimistic way when I left the airline. Many years have passed since then, but I always fondly remember Kristina and our many escapades in recalling my Pan Am days. I hope she never gives up on meeting life on her terms.
Billy LuckBilly Luck’s bones rearranged themselves on the bus headed out of Gibsonton for the Tampa train station. He looked out the window, away from his trailer, all rusted, awnin torn, bricks holdin down tarp over a portion of the roof, lookin like other junkyard leftovers from his carnival days.
The bus passed an old train car that jailed tigers, vines growin through it, a giant planter. Gibsonton was a has-been like him, still some carnies left but most dead, or dyin, or just plain up and left, like his good friend Daisy, the most beautiful woman his eyes ever seen, a midget, but perfect, no matter. Now Billy’s friends all had bodies from the shoulders up: Judge Judy, and that good-lookin gal on The People’s Court. He always took to smart, in-your-face broads—don’t take no shit type--like Daisy, who called, askin him to come see her in Miami, cause she was dyin. What a foul mouthed little mother she been, tough, had to be, no taller than three feet, perfect proportion, and a great pick-pocket, long as people was sittin down. She been with the Gerling since nineteen fifty, five years after Billy started workin the carnival, a legend, Daisy was. He figured since she git religion, and was close to dyin, that she wanted to talk bout that night sixty-five years gone, somethin they never spoke bout, but it was there, danglin, an untouchable. So’s Billy wondered if she got that on her mind, bein religious and all. The bus turned the corner and he saw the corpse of a high-striker. The black numbers erodin, the bell tarnished and hangin on by a bolt. He chuckled to himself at how the marks showed off for their ladies when they took the hammer and slammed it on the lever--suckers, all of em, not knowin that life in the midway was rigged. Billy’s memories weathered inside his head like peelin wallpaper. The old days with freaks and geeks and nights where it was so damn excitin, pickin up, settin down, movin on and on until the midway was in sight and stakes hammered, where people in scanty towns ran out to watch, hopin to catch sight of the merry-go-round or the Ferris wheel settin up, maybe glimpse a hoochie-coochie babe runnin between trailers. Billy resented the fake imitation of amusement parks nowadays, though he was glad few had animals. In his day, he’d done seen too much bad done to the beasts, Billy done seen too much cruelty, period. Drivin along the Hillsborough River, Billy pictured Daisy as she was when he first seen her. What separated her from other midgets wasn’t just her womanly child looks but her husky voice, almost like a norm and she could sing, too. That’s what saved her when she got caught stealin at Ringlings and had to work peepshows in the basements of tenements on the lower east side. Bein a midget wasn’t freak enough she was told by the boss, “What talents do ya got?” The curtain would open and Daisy would sing, struttin her little body on the platform while doin a striptease. Her singin saved her from fuckin God-knows-what, which she wasn’t above doin. Daisy’d do whatever to survive. She come across all innocent same as one of them dolls in the window at Woolworth’s, but if you looked long enough, you’d see lots a smarts and a cellar-full a hurts. It was her husband, Jack, who told Billy this, who saw her in the slums and brought her to Gerling’s Traveling Carnival of Fun. Billy’s clean flowered shirt stuck to the back of the vinyl seat like loose skin bout to pare off. He used to love the humid muggy days, but now it made him tired, like standin in line for hell. Most of the time he resisted goin down the road of the pity-pot. It reminded him of liquor. It went down real good in the moment but the more you drink the more blurred your vision for any good comin your way. He knew that from his daddy, the meanest son-of-a-bitch to walk the earth. The bus traveled up the I-75, crossed the river and stopped in Progress Village pickin up several black men who looked as parched and worn as Billy now felt, then the bus sped north, where there was as many as four lanes. Billy sat up. He liked the breeze stealin in through the window, how it reminded him of that time his daddy got a job drivin a bread truck and took Billy along, that was the year before his brother died from havin his innards cut from the saw. They tried to stuff em back in, but Jimmy passed. Only time he ever seen his daddy cry, why, for a moment it ripped him apart, his Daddy’s sadness, so like his own. He blamed Billy, though he was nowheres near the sawmill. Jimmy just plum forgit to put on the safety belt. Thinkin bout his older brother always brought on the blues, how Billy missed him. The way Jimmy throwed himself on top of him and his mama when his daddy felt like beatin em. The night Jimmy passed, his daddy got wasted and told Billy he’d a wished it was him that died instead. He was drunk, but Billy knowed he was tellin the truth. At fifteen, he packed a bag and hitched a ride from Montgomery to Birmingham, decided to change his last name from Lock to Luck, cause God knows he needed some and joinin the carnival seemed a good pick. He carried his hurt deep, like Daisy’s, guess that was one reason he took to her so. He peered through the grimy pane as the bus pulled into the station. His hand reached for the back of the seat in front of him, his heart pumpin, an adventure, no matter, and Daisy lay waitin, just for him. Everyone but Billy stood. The driver left the bus, and Billy watched as he opened the side panel and took out the suitcases. When the last person left, he ambled down the aisle. The driver waited for him and offered a hand. “I ain’t that old, I can git down myself.” “Don’t want you to fall and sue us, young fella.” Billy laughed. His dentures dropped. He pushed them up with his tongue, remindin him that his kisser was as fake as his hip and stepped off the bus. “I’ve never seen a suitcase this old,” the man said, handin Billy the luggage. “Had it since the sixties, before you was born, I bet.” Billy took the leather handle and felt the moist exchange of sweat. “You have a good day, sir.” “Goin to Miami, I am. On a way to see a friend.” The man already climbed up the steps of the bus, leavin Billy talkin to himself. He shuffled toward the train station, with the closeness of the Hillsborough Bay; Billy caught a breeze, rufflin his straggly white hairs under the straw hat. His sense of smell worked just fine as he breathed in the sharp crude from the cargo rigs mixed with the bay. A woman held the door for him as he headed toward her. “Thank you, ma’am. Fine day, ain’t it?” He pointed his index finger to the brim of his hat and winked. She smiled and hurried on. Air conditionin stung the sweat on his body. Billy shivered. “My God,” he whispered as he gazed around. The place was beautiful with long wooden benches, ferns growin in large pots at the end of each row. The last time he’d been here the place was fallin apart. But now, wrought-iron gates, wall lanterns, the floor so shiny looked like you could take a dip in it, so much light from all the glass windows it seemed the sun had eyes just for the station. He shuffled cross the depot and out the door to the number 235 train. Climbin aboard the Amtrak, Billy strained as he stretched for the handrail and tightened his grip round the metal. The steps were damn far apart for a man his age, but he made it. Course it knocked the air clean outta him. It was stupid to act like he was younger than his years, he couldn’t hide the hearin-aid behind his ear, the bum leg with the dummy hip, the missin lower teeth his tongue liked to suck, or the skinny ropes of white hair once blond and thick as a Fuller Brush mop. But he ain’t gonna turn into a mark where’s he trusted someone else to tell him what was up, no, Billy thought as he put on his glasses and matched his ticket with the seat number. All he wanted right now was to be able to walk on his own and see his friend without fallin down. He found his seat by the window, four chairs two on either side with a table between em. Not sure if he could lift his suitcase to the luggage rack without seemin lame, besides, someone might steal it, so’s Billy set it next to him on the empty chair. He took off his hat and put it on the table. He’d never get use to people rollin their suitcases. His been a friend for years, made of wood and leather, like him gouged with character, the handle worn from his grasp of luggin it from midway to midway. A man put his bag on the rack above where Billy sat. “Want me to put your suitcase up?” he asked. Billy marked him as a businessman; suit, tie, bag strapped cross his shoulder, late thirties, nothin stand-out bout him cept for the flashy watch, gold and turquoise ring, and a ruby stud in his ear that made him look ridiculous. Somethin bout him seemed familiar. “Naw, thanks though.” He sat cross from Billy, next to the window. Another guy stood lookin down at him from the aisle. “You’re going to have to move your suitcase. This is my seat,” a man said, holdin up his ticket. “I’ll get it.” The guy grabbed Billy’s case, lifted the luggage and shoved it onto the rack. The fella was closer to Billy’s age than the guy with the ruby and this side of obese. When he took his seat, Billy smelled Bengay. He pulled down the armrest so’s the guy’s fat would stay on his own side. The train began to rock. The conductor welcomed the people aboard the Amtrak then Billy experienced the thrill of movin. The wheels forward motion caused him to lurch toward the table. He stared out the window as the air-conditionin blasted through the vents, just like old times, like watchin a movie, it was, lots of overgrown shrubs and cast-offs as rusted and troubled as his own trailer. Metal stuff with graffiti sprayed on it. Crap didn’t make no sense. Billy wasn’t great at spellin, he’d made it no farther than the fifth grade, but what he saw out the window was nothin but young man’s rage who don’t care whether it make sense or not, just wanna leave somethin of themselves, like a dog pissin on tires. As the train picked up speed the cool air faded, cheap-trick, made the customer think they git their money’s worth, then slight them, like he used to do out on the bally. Can’t dupe a con, Billy thought smilin to himself. He felt like talkin so’s he took out a quarter from his shirt pocket and rolled it cross his knobby knuckles. Not with the skill like in the old days but a conversation piece, no matter. Sure enough, the young man cross from him raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Where did you learn that?” “Worked the carnival for over half a century.” “What did you do?” “A talker, mostly.” The guy frowned. “A barker?” “People don’t know nothin call us that. That’s some watch ya got there,” Billy said. “My husband bought it for me.” Billy grinned, it never took him long to git used to the freaks, like Jamie, the half man, half woman, and Angelo, with his twin’s arms and legs comin outta his gut, but it would take some time for him to git accustomed to a man callin his partner, a husband. “Oh,” Billy said. “Guy’s got good taste. You look familiar.” The man unzipped his bag and took out his computer. “I’m a reporter for WSFL. Maybe you’ve seen me on TV.” “That’s where,” Billy said. “Boy, do I got stories to tell you.” But Billy read people like a canvas banner hangin in front of a sideshow. This guy was through talkin. He put his coin away. He woulda enjoyed answerin questions. He often played the interview game, pretendin someone like Lesley Stahl asked him questions on 60 Minutes and him talkin bout his life. He imagined microphones, and lights spread all around as he sat center stage for the world to hear his story. He woulda even enjoyed a conversation with Ben Gay, but he was too busy gawkin at his phone. People ignorin him did have its advantages, like stealin butter and Hershey bars in the grocery store, snatchin things in the bank, like pens and paper tablets, sometimes right under the nose of the tellers, just to show em. So what if they caught him. Billy sunk in his seat thinkin that the reporter cross from him woulda jumped through dog-hoops to interview him if he knowed what Billy had done out past the midway on that sweltering August night back in nineteen fifty. That night, he remembered the marks had all left. But somethin nagged at him, call it sixth sense, or maybe it was that new guy who strutted into town, and took a job with the carnival, sold popcorn, cleaned up the tiger and monkey cages and the johns, jobs he did when he first joined. Billy didn’t like him from the git-go. One day he caught him stickin his cigarette into Tuffi. Tuffi reared on her hind legs, her trunk swingin wild. He knocked the new fella to the ground, told him if he ever caught him doin that again he’d make him real sorry. Well, bout two weeks later, he saw him kickin the freak, Stumpy. Billy done did what he promised. He slugged the guy so hard he doubled and rolled on the ground, moanin. Billy thought that’d be it until the guy git up and come after him swingin and givin him a black eye. Mason was his name, mean, as cruel as Billy’s daddy. That night, Billy went from tent to tent lookin inside, makin sure no one was there. He recalled checkin under the stage where the kids used to hide so’s they could look up the costumes of the hoochie-coochie girls and how the sawdust would have to be scattered real nice like in the mornin, he could smell it now, how it always reminded him of his brother. The trailers had their lights on. He heard laughter, people talking; ice cubes clinkin into glasses, fiddle music comin out of a radio, like any other, cept it was hotter than most, sultry, the kinda night Billy wished he had a woman to keep him company. He was down at the end of the midway, near the draped cage where the monkeys was cooped. The sun been gone for a couple of hours, and it was like openin night for the stars, millions of em. He recalled takin in the wonder of it, magic, real magic, where the night was brushed by the stroke of a master. Billy began to hike. In those days, he had so much sex surgin through his twenty-year-old body, some nights he just had to walk it off. Till the day he died he’d remember the moon, wide and plump, near full, the crickets loud as he headed north toward an empty field and beyond that the woods, tree branches rustlin, spiky against a dark blue sky. Billy breathed in the air, thick with the long leaf pine. He was thinkin bout his ma, feelin blue bout leavin her behind with the devil. Billy kept walkin. His shirt drenched in sweat. He wished he had a smoke, but he kept goin, crossin the brink of the woods. He was gonna jack-off when somethin sounded. He stopped. An animal? Yeah. A moan cut off. No. Not an animal. Somethin muffled. A cry. Human. Billy led with his toes feelin for twigs and dried leaves, like huntin with his daddy. He moved toward the moan. The hairs on his body sprung up. From the light of the moon, he saw somethin white swipe back and forth cross the ground. The hunched form of a man. The cries. Billy crept forward. Listenin. Strainin his eyes so’s to make sure. Mason held Daisy’s face to the dirt, rapin her from behind. Her tiny fists battered the ground. Her little body struggled under his. He sneaked up on Mason as he pumped away, groanin like a pig, loud enough so’s to make it easy for Billy to come up behind him and wrap his strong young fingers round his neck and squeeze. Mason grabbed at his hands. Billy felt his nails gouge his skin. Blood spewed wet and sticky, but Billy put all six-foot, two-hundred pounds into stranglin him. Sweat ran down his chin and fell on Mason’s head, Billy felt it roll off the backs of his fingers, but so tight was his hold it never got the chance to threaten his grip. With the wrong this man done to Daisy, Billy’s hands made sure Mason never do it again. He held on, even when he felt life surrender. Then, Billy rolled him on his side with Mason’s little pecker exposed. “Let me!” He remembered Daisy demandin. Pullin down her dress she done give him a kick to the nuts and then one to the face and spat on him. She looked up at Billy, hair all tangled, nose bleedin and said, “You ever say a word about this, I’ll kill you myself.” From that day on, as long as they traveled together, no one would hurt her. Billy stared out the window, passin the North bound Silver Star, long fences of hedges, warehouses. He nodded. The conductor garbled somethin bout Winter Haven. The forward movement, the click-clackin over the rails, relivin that night with Daisy and him bein eighty-five years old--Billy slipped into darkness. *** He stood with his suitcase gazin at the green home with yellow shutters, and window boxes crammed with geraniums. Its wide porch with four pillars featured a swing where as many as three people could dangle their old swollen legs. House looked to be well over a hundred years old. Daisy and Jack invested well. Freaks always made more money than norms, at least till the sixties before it become incorrect, but midgets and dwarfs worked on, cause they wasn’t too scary lookin. The home with a rail leadin up to the veranda reminded him of all the times he passed by in trucks and trains thankful he never had to settle down in one place, made life hard for the wives, cept for Alice, who divorced him cause he was still married to Betty. And kids? Well, he ain’t sure how many he done fathered. None never showed up on his doorstep, course he never had a doorstep, till ’05, the year they made him retire. He trudged up the walkway. It'd be three years since he last seen his girl. He come down for Jack’s funeral and what a spectacle it turned into, musta been more ex-carnies and circus folk there than in Gibtown; fire-eaters, sword swallowers, even a Wallenda showed up, tights an all. But Jack was no ordinary midget. He was a magician, an entertainer, a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz, so charmin he could con a con and how he loved shootin craps. Billy chuckled, just thinkin bout his friend Jack. Sure enough, Billy’s pants sagged in the butt and his shirt forced its way out of his belt. If only he could turn back into that tall blond stud with light blue eyes that drove women loco. Ah shit, least he was alive and not in some sick home like Daisy. He held onto the railin and shuffled up the porch steps. Billy tucked in his shirttails, he unstuck his hat from his sweaty head and steered a comb over his damp scanty hairs. He rang the bell. A black woman opened the door dressed in white pants and a lime-green jacket. “Why, you must be Mr. Luck.” “That’s me, Billy.” “I’m Geneva.” “How’s Daisy?” “Well, Miss Daisy is having a rough day, but seeing you will lift her spirits.” Billy wondered. She was a tightfisted little mother, always lecturin him on savin his dough. Comin down for her funeral woulda been enough money spent. But callin him before and spendin more bucks to come down after she died? Musta had somethin to do with that night, and gitten religion an all. “Leave your suitcase and hat here in the lobby. Ruben will take it up.” Billy stepped into a foyer with a tall potted palm tree next to a narrow table. There was a stairway in front of him and on either side the ground floor fanned out to where he couldn’t see no more, just the fronds of palm trees wavin from the air-conditionin. The place seem all spick-and-span. “We have your room ready for you. It’s on the third floor.” “Hope I don’t have to walk up no steps.” “Lord have mercy! You wouldn’t find me walking up three flights of stairs. No, Mr. Luck, we had an elevator put in years ago.” “I’d like to see Daisy, right soon. An call me, Billy.” “Sure, Mr. Billy.” He smiled at Geneva callin him Mr. Billy. “We’re going to have dinner in couple of hours. Would you like to join us in the dining room?” “That sounds right nice, ma’am.” “Let’s go see Miss Daisy.” Billy followed Geneva past the stairway. The house seemed bigger on the inside. He passed a room where people watched TV with a piano off to the side, and several white-haired ladies sat on a couch. Three old geezers played cards at a table, lookin like waxworks they did, till one of em eyed Billy--the scrape of emptiness passin between em. “How sick is she?” Billy asked. “She’s had hospice this morning. She ate some and that’s a good sign.” “How long she gonna live?” “Months, maybe weeks.” “Can ya fix her with chemo?” “Mr. Billy,” Geneva said, pausing at the doorway, “Miss Daisy refuses to have any more chemo.” “She got tubes and needles in her?” “No. We’re keeping her as comfortable as we can. She’s a spirited soul.” “She always been stubborn. Her sickness got anythin to do with her bein little?” “Not that I know of. But she’s eighty, that’s a long life.” “Don't seem long enough even when you’s ancient like me,” Billy mumbled. He followed Geneva though a courtyard with hangin ferns the size of bushes and flower beds, all kinds, roses, pansies, other plants and colors he didn’t know the names of, all of em shootin toward the sky. A fountain splashed down into a small pool. Billy wiped his upper lip with his handkerchief. “My that water looks invitin,” he said. “We have a pool. Guest are allowed to swim. If you’d like.” “Oh I don’t look so good in trunks.” Billy chuckled. “Used to,” he added. “Well, if you change your mind we have bathing suits for our guests.” “Don’t think so,” he said. Billy tried to keep up so’s not to look feeble. Geneva stopped at a door, knocked and inched it open. “Miss Daisy, Mr. Luck is here.” Geneva pushed the door open for Billy to enter. A sweet sickly smell like hamburger goin bad greeted him as he took a step inside. He’d been so eager to see her but sometimes emotions made him feel lost, runnin blind into nowhere. Through the cracked door he saw a child’s dresser with pictures on it, a kid’s table and a small chair. “You okay, Mr. Billy?” “Oh, I git all sorts of tummy problems.” He went into the room. There on a child’s bed he saw his old friend, tiny, scrunched and shriveled, her white-blonde hair thin and dull. She looked at him. Not movin no further, he stood in the middle of the room wonderin what to say, what to do, how to bring cheer to his friend who was dyin. He turned to Geneva. “I wanna be alone with her.” Geneva nodded and closed the door. Billy swallowed containin his sorrow. He felt that sudden grab that never left him alone when in Daisy’s presence, it wedded him to her like no other woman ever done. But he never seen her lookin so bad. She always wore make-up, fixed her hair, a real looker, presentin herself like a lady. “You look swell, Daisy.” Course bullshit was like breathin for Billy. “Liar,” she rasped. “Ah, you gonna be okay. Bet you just layin there sick-like cause you want me to feel sorry for ya.” His jokin fell flat. “Everyone treatin you good? Geneva looks to be a right nice colored gal.” “African American,” Daisy said. “I forgit. Use black most of the time. Miss talkin on the phone but git your letters. You git my postcards?” She nodded toward the dresser. “I keep yours too,” he said glancin round the room that was good size even for a norm. The window with open curtains let in light, and she had a small patio with a little chair and table right outside her room. Everythin was make-do for her. The bathroom door was half closed and he wondered if that too was re-done. “There’s something,” the effort to talk took her breath. “Oh, I know you git religion and all,” Billy said, raisin his palms up. “You gonna preach, well I ain’t interested.” Daisy scowled. “Well, can’t be just a good-bye. You too practical for that. So’s if you lookin for me to ask forgiveness for what I done to Mason or somethin, I ain’t gonna do it.” Daisy rolled her eyes. “Stupid, old goat.” Billy turned his right ear toward her. “Whatchu say?” She shook her head. He’d seen that same scorn in her eyes when she thought he or Jack said somethin dumb. “I heard ya.” He felt his cheeks burn. He done read her wrong, bet she never give that night another thought. Daisy moved on, while it tailed him the rest of his life. Billy blew troubled air through his mouth. He was angry at himself, lettin Daisy know that night lived with him right up to now. “Took a portion of my social security check to come down to see ya, so’s whatchu want?” She struggled to sit up. Billy come over to help but she shooshed him away. “Open the top dresser drawer,” she said in a weak voice. “There’s an envelope--for you, under the garments.” “You want me to poke around in your girlie things?” “Go on.” Billy shuffled over to the dresser and crouched down first on one knee then the other. He saw pictures of Jack as a young man, another of Daisy lookin gorgeous in a black dress. He picked up one of the three of them together taken back in the seventies. “Look at us then,” he said, turnin to Daisy. “That was taken the day Abner’s magic trick backfired and the dove done flown out of his fly.” Haha, haha. Billy laughed hard bringin his butt down on the heels of his tennis shoes. He glanced over at Daisy, who smiled back at him. “We seen some funny things in our time, huh, girl?” She nodded. “The drawer,” she said in breathy voice. Billy jiggled it open. He saw her nighties, the sheer see-through fabric. Didn’t seem right him goin through her personals, he never so much as touched Daisy, she bein special and all. He put his hand under her clothes feelin the feminine softness till he reached the envelope. He pulled it out and shut the drawer. Billy labored as he pushed off from the dresser to git to his feet. Once standin, he spread his legs apart to balance himself, he took his glasses from his pocket, put them on and opened the envelope. He found a paper. It looked all serious with a picture of a funeral home and a payment made for $8,500. He never liked showin how ignorant he was, and that defect git him into trouble sometimes, so’s he picked up symbols to help him along. He studied the words and pictures he knew, three plots, one taken. He looked at Daisy. She done wanted him buried with her and Jack. It touched him, she wantin him near her. “I coulda used the money it took to buy this.” “You would have wasted it on whores.” “Hell, nowadays thinkin bout a roof that don’t leak turns me on more than a long legged hooker.” Billy took off his glasses. “So’s that why you called for me to come?” “I want you buried with Jack and me.” “That’s mighty nice, girl,” he said. “Just thought the county would come take my ole body and cremate me or somethin. Didn’t give it no thought.” He stuck the paper in his back pocket. “Never did git use to livin in one place even after ten years. Guess when we die, we don’t have much choice. Glad I’ll be with friends, least my ole bones an all.” He went to the chair by her bed and sat down. “I hate bein old. Live in my memories I do, cause that’s where I feel safe.” He stared down at his hands, hands that once could do anythin. He kept his eyes lowered, feelin blue, sad for the way life turned on Daisy. “Least you git religion,” he said, lookin up. Her eyes roamed his face. “Daisy? You okay?” “I always believed,” she whispered. “I just never talked about it.” “Well, you full of surprises. I never knowed that. Never heard you say peep bout God till you git sick.” Billy chuckled. “You didn’t live like no Christian, stealin and all.” “God forgave me.” Billy figured if God was in the business of judgin he wasn’t worth glorifyin. “The bathroom. Cabinet.” Daisy sighed. “There's a brown bottle. Bring it to me.” “What is it?” he asked. “Medicine.” “Want me to git Geneva?” “No.” “What kinda medicine?” “Morphine.” “Geneva give you the right dose.” “Not the dose I want.” He crossed his arms and tilted his head back squintin at her. “Whatchu askin me is a big deal.” “If I could get it I would.” She winced. He hobbled to the slidin door where he looked out on the lawn with the plastic pink flamingoes and alligator steppin stones. He gazed past the hedges, where he could see through the leaves to the pool beyond. He looked back at her. “I ain’t takin your life.” “I’m not asking you to.” She slumped further into the pillows. “What your maker think bout this?” “God doesn’t want me to suffer.” “We don’t know nothin till we die,” Billy said. She stared at the bathroom, her lower lip juttin, gave him the silent treatment, she did. He looked out the window thinkin bout what Daisy wanted. He saw dashes of white and printed bathing suits, people goin for a swim. He raised his hand to the curtain and pulled it all the way back as if some kinda wisdom was out there waitin, just for him. Billy scratched his arm. He raked his neck. His whole body crawled with sadness. “Oh girl, I know you feelin bad.” He shuffled to the side of the bed. He bent so close to Daisy he smelled the rot comin off her. “You been my family. My little sister.” Billy sniffed. “Think I’m gitten a cold from all the air condition.” “It’s a brown bottle,” she said. “Bring it.” “Geneva gonna know I git it for you.” “She won’t. It’s time, Billy.” Her voice sounded tinny, like comin through a pipe, it did. Through the years he denied her nothin, the only woman who could make him walk through fire and feel privileged to do it. He felt Daisy watchin as he crossed to the bathroom. He went inside. It was a place for norms, even the john. Billy opened the cabinet door and saw several brown bottles, two, with paper round the neck. He took the open one and went back to Daisy. “You done planned this all along, you little con.” But Billy couldn’t be mad, just mystified at the way he was fated to this woman. “Give me the bottle,” she whispered. “And hand me my juice.” Billy saw the glass on her nightstand and give it to her. She poured the medicine. She swished the morphine round and drank. “Put it back.” Billy set the glass on the stand, returned to the bathroom and did as Daisy said. He shut the cabinet door and glimpsed his reflection, turnin away so’s not to remember the moment. Grabbin the doorknob to steady himself, he took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. He limped back to the chair. He moved it as close to the bed with him still able to sit. “Thank you, Billy.” Seemed his whole life got stuck in his throat. He cleared it. Coughed. “Ah girl,” he said. “I didn’t do me no favor. Who do I got now?” He reached for her tiny hand. Her frail fingers slid through his. Like a bird, she was, flying over the carnival with the merry-go-round music blarin, the Ferris wheel turnin, the people all happy cause they feelin free, in one hand they eatin cotton candy, the other holdin the hand of a sweetheart. He let go of Daisy. Billy done feel like his life folded, where his heart was ground into sawdust and just blowed away leaving him alone on the midway.
WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCEHessler's pitch to Levenson was intriguing. “You and I have a chance to make a series of one-hour documentaries about new medical breakthroughs,” he announced. “Diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, asthma, then who knows what else.”
As good as it sounded, for Levenson there was a catch. Though Dr. Barry Hessler, chief medical expert for a local L.A. TV station's news department, continually referred to Levenson as one of his nearest and dearest friends, the feeling was far from mutual. Due to Hessler's tendency, even on his better days, to be full of himself, snide, and overbearing, Levenson tried to restrict time spent together to an occasional coffee or lunch, with work or family matters serving as his go-to excuses. “Tell me you're on-board,” irrepressible Hessler urged when he called Levenson again the next day. “Think of the good we can do,” Hessler texted the following day. “We can make a difference!” Hessler exclaimed upon barging into Levenson's editing room the day after that. “What's your hesitation?” “How many assistants have you been through this year?” Levenson asked. “What's that got to do with anything?” “And how long do line producers usually stay?” “What's your point?” demanded Hessler. “Are you easy to work with? Or fun?” “With you, bubbala, it'll be different. You I respect.” After discussing the offer with his wife once their kids were in bed, Levenson strolled into the den to reflect. The upside, as Hessler pointed out, was that the films might indeed make a difference, which was not true of Levenson's two most recent efforts, which he considered amusing despite a nagging sense that they were little more than fluff. Also there was the fact that commissioned documentaries provided entry into realms to which Levernson would never otherwise have access. Plus, if Hessler's words were true, there was the chance for something elusive due to the vicissitudes of the movie business: continuity. A series of documentaries would provide a welcome respite, creatively and financially, to a path that Levenson, only half-in-jest, termed ad hoc and often in hock. Early the next morning, having tossed and turned much of the night, Levenson ambled into the kitchen as his wife was making breakfast for their son and daughter. “Will you be mad if I say yes?” he asked Judy. “Only if you drag me to dinner with him.” “You consider him that bad?” “Worse,” said Judy. “But I understand your reasons.” “And approve?” Judy pondered for a moment, then nodded. Instead of reaching out to Hessler, Levenson waited for the call he knew would come sooner rather than later. “So?” wondered Hessler while Levenson was reading the sports section. “Tell me how you see things working,” Levenson responded. “You and me, bubbala. The terrible twosome.” “With who doing what?” “It'll be a team effort.” “Too vague.” “You don't trust me?” asked a wounded-sounding Hessler. “I prefer when things are defined.” “Tell me how you see it.” “You produce, I direct,” stated Levenson. “You drive a hard bargain.” “All in the hope of clarity.” “And if my feelings are hurt?” Hessler asked, affecting a whiny tone. “You'll get over it.” On his first official day on-board, Levenson was given a desk in the team's production office in Burbank, then introduced to Daisy Chan, who would serve as his assistant. Additional get-acquainted sessions followed, first with Pete Rumsey, their film editor, then with a cameraman named Jose Fernandez. “Now I need a favor,” Hessler stated. “Uh-oh,” teased Levenson. “Somebody doesn't trust me.” “Blame me?” “Since these films will technically be under the aegis of the News Department,” stated Hessler, “we need to meet with the guy who runs it.” “So why's that a favor?” “Bill Guthrie can be brusque, dismissive, and short-tempered.” “Which means?” asked Levenson. “Let me do all the talking.” As the two members of the new production team approached Guthrie's suite, Hessler turned to Levenson. “Remember, I do the talking.” Moments later, one of Guthrie's assistants led them into the boss's inner sanctum. Before Hessler could introduce his new colleague, Bill Guthrie strode toward Levenson and, to Hessler's amazement, gave him a hug. “Good to have somebody intelligent around here at last,” said Guthrie. “You and Judy coming to Harold and Dorothy's for Thanksgiving?” Levenson nodded. “Judy's planning on making her Indian pudding.” “My favorite sinful dessert,” exclaimed Guthrie. “Sally's thinking candied yams, so forget lo-carb. Let's talk shop. Which disease or medical disaster is first?” “Diabetes,” offered Hessler, eager to get a word in. Guthrie immediately faced Levenson. “You okay with that?” “It gives us a chance to address the epidemic caused by childhood obesity,” replied Levenson. “That'll help sell it to the O & O's,” commented Guthrie. “The Owned and Operated stations within the network,” interjected Hessler. “He didn't just fall off the turnip truck,” snarled Guthrie, referring to Levenson. “Plus we can deal with the breakthroughs using stem cells,” Levenson added. “Sounds good to me,” said Guthrie. “And I can have it next week?” “Why not tomorrow?” joked Levenson. “Take whatever time you need,” assured them. “But hopefully not too much.” “Why didn't you tell me you knew him?” demanded Hessler once he and Levenson stepped into the hallway. “And miss the look on your face?” “Know what this means?” “Tell me.” “I just lost most of my leverage.” “I thought we're in this together,” said Levenson. “Well –” “So,” mused Hessler as he and Levenson lunched on ersatz Mexican food in the commissary. “I guess it's time to decide who we want to go after, and when we'll start shooting interviews.” “Not exactly,” countered Levenson. “Am I missing something?” wondered Hessler after picking at his burrito. “You'll set up the people, I'll do the interviews.” “But –” “Should we define producer? Then director?” “Still –” “Clarity, remember?” Frowning, Hessler took a sip of iced tea before speaking. “As for stem cell therapy, I've got a problem.” “Please don't say religious scruples.” “The only things I worship,” said Hessler with a smile, “are sex and money, and not in that order. Ever seen people who've had stem cell therapy?” “Why?” “They're anything but photogenic.” When Levenson sighed, Hessler leaned forward. “What's that mean?” “Is this a medical documentary or a fashion shoot?” “You've got to understand the News Department.” “No, I don't. This isn't a segment on the 7 O'Clock News.” Hessler frowned. “So what do you see as my role on-screen?” “You'll do the intro and, to coin a term, the outro.” “Not serve as an expert?” “This is supposed to be the first of several, right?” Hessler nodded. “Every educational series needs what I would call a presenter,” Levenson continued. “David Attenborough on those British history shows, or Walt Disney once-upon-a-time. You'll prep the public for what they're about to see, then wrap up with helpful suggestions and advice. Hessler cogitated momentarily, then smiled. “I like it.” That afternoon, with Daisy taking notes, Levenson explained to Hessler the areas for which interviews were required. The first need, as he saw it, was a physician who could express the differences between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes, plus the health problems associated with each. Next, an expert or two to describe the ever-increasing crisis caused by juvenile obesity. Additionally, Levenson wanted someone to explain the role nutrition could play in combating the epidemic. Then a couple of scientists or physicians who could articulate the breakthroughs thanks to new stem cell therapies. “That's quite a list,” said Hessler, shaking his head. “And there'll be more. We also need people suffering from the different types of diabetes, plus some who've benefited from stem cells.” “Do I have to soak you in Lysol?” became a running joke in the Levenson household each time Levenson returned home after working with Hessler. Then one evening, while the kids were watching TV, Judy changed from playful to serious. “How's it going really?” “It's going.” “And Hessler?” “A pussycat.” “Honest?” Levenson shrugged. “Now you can tell one.” “When do you start shooting?” “We've got two days of interviews beginning tomorrow, then a couple of days off before we shoot some more.” “And you-know-who's actually behaving?” “For now,” sighed Levenson. Day One of filming took place at Children's Hospital in Hollywood, where Levenson's first on-camera interview was with Dr. Hannah Rose. “Though we won't hear or see me, this'll be a conversation between the two of us,” Levenson expressed, as he would do before subsequent interviews. “If you have a false start, or if something's not coming out the way you want, just stop, then start over. Okay?” “Sounds good,” said Dr. Rose, a silver-haired woman who eloquently explained the differences between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes once filming began, then detailed the disease's frightening rise among teens and pre-teens. Next came a session with a nutritionist, Eve Havanki, whose assessment was even more chilling. “Imagine a kid in the 'hood or the barrio, living with a single mother working long hours, or maybe two jobs,” she said on-camera. “First, there's no Whole Foods in their neighborhood. And even if there were, there's no way the mom could afford their prices. Plus, by the time she gets home, she's exhausted. Meanwhile, because the streets are unsafe, the kid spends non-school time watching TV, where all that's peddled is junk food and worse food. So what's not only cheap and easy, but also palatable to the kid? Fast food laden with salt, sugar, and fat. The kid balloons, which means getting teased, making sports and other activities even less likely. Then comes diabetes, and the kid's destiny is set.” After a non-fast food lunch with Jose and Daisy, two more successful interviews followed, then Levenson thanked his crew members for their assistance. “Headed back to the office?” Daisy wondered. “Nah,” said Levenson. “You'll text Jose and me tomorrow's itinerary?” “Absolutely.” “Okay if I say something that maybe I shouldn't?” asked Jose. “Anything said stays between us,” Levenson assured him. “Things went a whole lot smoother without His Majesty.” “You've worked with him before?” “And have the scars to prove it.” When, during his drive home to Santa Monica, a call came in from Hessler, Levenson considered ignoring it, then reluctantly answered. “Didn't want to see my handsome face?” Hessler promptly inquired. “How honest an answer do you want?” “Will I see you tomorrow before you head out?” “No way I'm fighting traffic only to turn around once I get there.” “And if I tell you I miss you?” asked Hessler. “Somehow life will go on.” “Jose was fine?” asked Hessler. “And the people you interviewed?” “All excellent.” “Call if you need me,” said Hessler. “Just keep setting up the interviews.” The second day of filming yielded four consecutive diabetes sufferers, each in a different age group, and each coping with the disease in a different way. After wrapping the last one, Levenson treated Jose and Daisy to frozen yogurt, then addressed the cameraman. “See you Monday?” “You bet,” answered Jose. Then Levenson turned to Daisy. “And I'll see you tomorrow morning.” “Happy with the stuff?” she asked. “I think we're off to an excellent start.” “Me, too,” added Jose. “You're taking too much time!” Hessler griped the next morning when Levenson walked into the production office. “What're you talking about?” “I watched the two days of interviews. What's all the blah-blah-blah before you get down to business?” “It's called establishing a rapport.” “Rapport, my ass! It should be bang, bang, bang!” To Hessler's astonishment, Levenson turned and headed for the door. “What in hell you doing?” he demanded. “Stepping outside to give you a chance to speak normally when I reenter.” Hessler watched Levenson do as promised, then spoke again. “Why the schmoozing even during the interview?” “The camera loves personalities,” Levenson explained. “That's what I'm trying to bring out.” Hessler gritted his teeth. “I know this shit really well.” “Oh yeah?” replied Levenson. “So do I.” Hessler glared for a moment, then took a deep breath. “What I'd like you to do now is sit and watch the interviews, notating the sound bytes we'll use.” “I'm eager to see footage –” “Good –” “But as for notating –” “Yeah?” “Not a chance,” said Levenson. “Because?” “It's too early in the process.” “Look,” insisted Hessler, “the way I'm accustomed to working –” “Is not the way I'm accustomed to.” Hessler grimaced. “I've got to prep my first news segment for the day.” Daisy watched Hessler storm out, then turned to Levenson. “Somebody doesn't like not having his way.” “I noticed,” said Levenson. The welcomed absence of tension thanks to Hessler making himself scarce continued into the next afternoon. Everything changed, however, when he barged into the office at 4 PM. “How's this?” Hessler asked Levenson. “Our first victim tomorrow is a friend of mine who'll probably be more comfortable if I do the interview. That okay?” “If I say no?” “Pretty please?” Levenson reflected for a moment, then shrugged. “You got one and only one.” It wasn't hard to glean from their body language that neither Jose nor Daisy was tickled to see Hessler arrive at their first stop the next morning. With Levenson shooting them a Let's get it over with look, they prepped the lighting and microphone for the interview with an epidemiologist named Marvin Karp. Availing himself of no preliminary chit-chat, Hessler promptly launched into what seemed more like an interrogation than the kind of back-and-forth Levenson favored. “Give me a one sentence definition of diabetes,” Hessler demanded right away. “Hmm,” said Dr. Karp, gathering his thoughts. “Diabetes is a disease in which the body’s ability to produce or respond to the hormone insulin is impaired, resulting in abnormal metabolism of carbohydrates plus elevated levels of glucose in the blood and urine.” “Can you just say, 'Diabetes is a disease in which blood sugar skyrockets?'” asked Hessler. “Technically,” replied Dr. Karp, “that's not true.” “But it'll play on TV,” urged Hessler, causing Levenson, Daisy, and Jose to cringe. Girding himself, Dr. Karp repeated Hessler's words in a monotone. To Levenson's chagrin, the rest of the interview went even further downhill from there. “Pretty great, huh?” gloated Hessler when, while Jose and Daisy were gathering gear, he and Levenson stepped out of Dr. Karp's building. “I got every fucking sound byte I wanted.” “And it'll be a miracle if even one is usable.” Hessler stopped in his tracks, looking as though Levenson had informed him that the earth was flat, or that God was a sea monster. “I got great motherfucking content,” he hissed. “From a guy who looked like he was in a hostage situation.” “You're being harsh,” said Hessler. “No, honest. The poor guy sounded like he was under duress.” “Know how many interviews I've done?” “And what do I do for a living? It's not the same as when you need is a quick byte for one of your segments.” Once he and his team were finished with the interviews that followed Hessler's departure, Levenson drove to Burbank instead of heading home. “Ready to admit you're wrong?” Hessler asked belligerently as Levenson entered to production office. “About?” “My interview with Karp. I looked at it three times, and it's great.” “So now you're an award-winning documentarian? Or have you graduated to full-fledged auteur a la Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, and Godard?” “Not funny.” “At least we agree on something.” To Hessler's surprise, Levenson turned and started for the door. “Where you going?” he asked. “Back to reality.” “Will I see you tomorrow?” “Why do you need me,” answered Levenson, “when you've got everything covered?” Levenson didn't bother answering the call that came from Hessler while he was driving home. Nor the one that evening. Nor the calls, texts, and emails with which he was bombarded when he stayed home the next day, Friday. Saturday more attempts came in, including some via Facetime and What's App. Levenson's stonewalling continued until Sunday noon, when the doorbell rang. “A present for you,” an Uber Eats driver informed Judy, who answered, handing her a platter of bagels, lox, and cream cheese, plus an iced bottle of Champagne. I apologize! said the note, signed by Barry Hessler. “I didn't realize how tough you were,” Hessler acknowledged when Levenson stepped into the production office on Monday morning. “Guess who grew up in Jersey.” “Okay, Jersey boy. To show how much I care, you and I have a date at noon.” “For?” “You'll see.” “And my stem cell patient?” asked Levenson. “Somebody's determined to have his way.” “It's not about me,” replied Levenson. “It's about the film.” As Hessler unlocked the door to his 718 Cayman S at 11:30, he heard Levenson chuckle. “What's so funny?” he asked. “Nothing.” “C'mon –” “What's the difference between a porcupine and a Porsche?” “Tell me,” said Hessler. “With a porcupine, the pricks are on the outside.” Choosing not to respond, Hessler unlocked the door, then off they drove. Silence reigned until they entered a part of East Hollywood known as Thai Town. “Where we going?” Levenson asked. “You'll see,” replied Hessler, who turned a corner, then pulled up in front of a bungalow advertising “Thai Massage.” “Please tell me you're kidding,” Levenson groaned. “What's wrong with a little fun? Especially when it's on me.” After scanning the block, Levenson faced Hessler. “You go ahead.” “What about you?” “I'm going across the street for some panang curry at that restaurant.” “Boychik,” said Hessler as they were driving back to the production office, “you don't know what you're missing.” “I'll live,” replied Levenson. “Some day you've got to come with me to Thailand. The girls are cute, sweet, and above all nice and young.” “I'll go the same time I get signed by the Lakers. But about getting me someone who had stem cell –” “Not gonna let that go, huh?” “Not a chance,” said Levenson. Three days later, Hessler shook his head when Levenson stepped into the production office. “Didn't I warn you about stem cell people? The guy you interviewed looks like he spent time in a concentration camp.” “Which is why I made it a two-person interview with his daughter, who's gorgeous.” “I wouldn't go that far.” “Because she's not fifteen-years-old and Thai?” “Cheap shot,” grumbled Hessler. “What in hell does it add?” “Hope. And emotion. You don't think people'll respond when the guy – Jerry – says, 'This gave me a kind of life I never thought I'd have again.'?” “Still –” “Still, my ass! And when the daughter says, 'To me it's a miracle!'?” “You don't give up,” Hessler sneered. “And anyway, I don't think Guthrie'll like it.” “What if I tell you he loves it?” “You showed it to him?” “He popped by the editing bay while Pete Rumsey and I were looking at it.” “You're making me look bad,” whined Hessler. “Bullshit! In Guthrie's eyes this makes you a hero. Now do you want to keep feeling sorry for yourself, or are you ready to hear my ideas for the intro and outro?” Anticipating difficulties, Levenson saved the Hessler segments for the last day of the shoot. But instead of the assertiveness he feared, what Hessler displayed was abundant nervousness. Like a kid preparing for a first date, Hessler fretted about which jacket to wear, then which tie. Next came uncertainty about his hair and makeup. Fearing that in the state he was in, Hessler would be tongue-tied, Levenson led him to a quiet nook. “When's your next trip to Thailand?” he asked. “Whenever we finish this fucking thing,” Hessler grunted. “Why?” “Just wondering. Bangkok?” “Bangkok first, then Phuket. But how come you're suddenly curious?” “Really want to know?” “Sure.” “This is called establishing a rapport.” “You motherfucker!” said Hessler with a rare laugh. “Let's do it.” To put the editor's mind at peace, Levenson gave him orders. “Not if, but when Hessler sticks his nose in and starts asking for changes,” he told Pete Rumsey, “put it on me, not you.” “By?” asked Rumsey. “Saying you've got to run any change by the director.” “And if he balks?” “Tell him I'll steal the footage and kick his ass.” After griping incessantly about his inability to add what he called input, Hessler did an about-face when, after showing a cut to the head of the News Department, Bill Guthrie gushed. “Wow!” he shouted. “You really like it?” asked Hessler. “It's a fucking monster! Know how great that moment is when the stem cell guy talks about giving him a new life? That's money. And when the pretty daughter calls it a miracle? Viewers'll go apeshit!” Hessler took a moment to process Guthrie's words, then put an arm around Levenson. “Now you see why I brought him in,” Hessler affirmed with a grin. On the night the documentary was scheduled to air, Levenson turned down Hessler's invitation to a viewing party so as to watch at home with Judy and their kids. Thanks to the glow from favorable reviews, plus strong Neilson ratings, a date was set for Levenson, Hessler, and Bill Guthrie to discuss their next offering. That meeting was torpedoed due to an explosive news report on a Sunday evening. According to the bombshell, an acclaimed physician at a local news station had been busted for receiving and disseminating kiddie porn. “Holy shit!” shouted Judy when she heard, causing her kids to giggle. “Mom!” screamed six-year-old Amy. “Dirty word!” yelled five-year-old Kenny. Instantly, Judy faced her husband. “Did you know?” Levenson, who had never mentioned Hessler's proclivities, shook his head. “No way.” When, at an award dinner four months later, Levenson accepted a Golden Mic Award for Best Network Documentary, the producer – Dr. Barry Hessler – was conspicuous in his absence. Though Levenson segued into a documentary about the Latinization of the boxing, both in the ring and in the stands, gone forever was any chance for the continuity he had been promised in what was meant to be a series of medical films. Michael is a lawyer and a storyteller, or perhaps the other way around. Geezers The good in me is not outweighed by the bad, but is diminished by my self-absorption. I’m working on it same as your working on your issues, so you know how that’s going.
On the plus side, I give to charity. When the local public TV station does a pledge drive featuring sixties rock stars, I make a donation. Public TV wants me to help keep the music alive and I want to. I am so overwhelmed by the present offering its version of the past that no matter how imperfect the song is sung, I reach for my credit card. I make at least a modest donation because I’d feel like a thief of good intentions if I didn’t. On the down side, I’m judgmental. Watching the audience is seeing misshapen bodies move in a way only they would call dancing, perhaps believing that grooving to fifty-year-old music restores youth if only for a while. I see that audience as old and gray and wrinkled like a balled up piece of paper. Harmed by age, in attendance at a costume party going as someone no one wants to be, and the performers are the same. Their time, and voice, long gone. All that remains is their lack of inhibition. What are they doing listening to my music? How do they know Peter and Gordon? Or Chad and Jeremy? The Yardbirds. The Zombies. That's my music, not my grandpa's. The audience affects me like some residents did at my dad's nursing home. I feel sad for what they became. Many had dribble travelling slowly from lips to jaw, many in wheelchairs, and many waiting for their ungrateful, inconvenienced, children to visit during the weekends. My dad is in heaven. I have fond memories, because he was my dad. He wasn't all that engaged, parenting wise, but he is half the reason I am here, and that's good enough for me. My dad had a wicked temper, (I have one too) but oddly had patience when it came to driving lessons. "Given that upcoming highway divider,” he said, “I would steer left.” My dad supported his family, watched TV, and let my mom do the raising. He did what he understood he was supposed to. I have no complaints. He was underappreciated. Sometimes that’s how it is being a parent. Between working with my uncle at the restaurant, (my uncle loved himself more than anyone else could) and my mother (a saint, but my parents didn't get along) he had no place to let off steam. Still, he lived ninety-three years. As a kid, I remember watching him shave, and wanting to do the same. And when I did, I got bumps on my neck so I've had a beard since I was seventeen. That was only fifty-two years ago. I remember my first gray hair at age thirty-five and I thought, "How distinguished." But ten years later, I purchased my first Just for Men beard dye. My girlfriend said I should. I remember having a twenty six inch waist and being okay at tennis. Those are things of the past. I remember my heart attack as if it were yesterday because it more or less was. All's well that ends well. It’s pretty obvious even to me that what I don't like about the Geezers is that they look old. Like an altogether different species of human, and I know I’m one of them. I never saw it coming. I want my wrinkles to go away. I want my hair back. I want to be too trim for Hawaiian shirts. I want to start over, this time no smoking. And I’ll be nice to all the women I done wrong. I know none of that’s going to happen. But at least I'm some years away from a nursing home. I'm going to continue donating to public television. Got to keep the music alive. I’m doing it for myself, and the seniors who cannot reach for their wallets. I want the music of my day to be at the nursing home when I am. It will be playing in the background. I’ll be thinking about the woman I knew. (Not that I didn’t love my wife even after the divorce.) And that will serve as distraction enough when my children visit just to stay in the will. And given what they have in store, it will be worth the wait. When my time comes, I will be able to look back and say I was a good father. The benefit I conferred was my absence, choosing to bring justice to those marginally injured in accidents, and harmed by breaches of contract too large for small claims court but not so large that a working knowledge of contract law was required to fight them. I had poor clients, people who could hardly afford a lawyer, and they had me as their champion, and what really made me successful was the lawyers on the other side usually found my cases too small to fight. Not worth the cost of litigation is how they put it. How I put it, to my clients at least, was that I beat those other lawyers into submission. It’s what I do. As to my children, whose birthday parties, and graduations, and in the case of my eldest daughter, whose wedding, actually not the wedding, the first of her two weddings, I missed, I’m sure they understood the law is a harsh mistress. If not, I may be unappreciated during my life, but that should change at the reading of the will. No matter if I’m not appreciated until then. No matter if I never feel appreciated. That morning, or afternoon, or evening in my lawyer’s office, everything will change. There, surrounded by dark wood paneling will be my ex, and my two sons and daughter, each dressed in their Sunday best. David F. Becker, my colleague, did the writing, and will be doing the reading of his own work. The occasion will be reminiscent of my life, that is, another festive occasion I was unable to attend. Sam Wayne is an aspiring creative writer from Wilmington, Delaware. Sam is grateful for the opportunity to share this story with the readers of the Scarlet Leaf Review, and he hopes you enjoy reading his work as much as he enjoyed writing it. EmbersIf it were not for the perpetual layer of fog, God himself could look down from his heavenly orbit to see his reflection in the stillness of the lake. If I were a gambling man, I would bet that, like the rest of us, there are times God looks down upon his image and grows troubled by what he sees.
Jack Frost’s eyes flicker with the first indication of life since the last snow melted in early April. His towering physique begins to unlock from months of slumber, giving him the proper vantage point to look over the island with his opportunistic eyes and salivating lips. As his fists unfold, the outwards motion of his fingers propel gusts of chilling wind through the trees. The inhalation of these gales extracts a terrible tithing from the inhabitants of our island. Soon, his nails will embed themselves into the dirt as he pulls himself up from his midsummer-induced ether. From there, he will whisper winter into existence out of his moribund breath. The weather epitomizes the dialectics of the Autumn. Brisk afternoons deepen into winter twilights. Fortunately, this evening has afforded me the opportunity to sit by a fire and watch the sun’s curtain call over the scenic tree line. The sun involuntarily sets off a cascade of ombré fireworks into the sky as it attempts to rest for the evening. I wonder if the sun ever gazes woefully upon the moon, yearning for isolated introspection. I would suspect that, when the feelings of peaceful solitude are molested and ransacked by the slightest inkling of loneliness, the sun would beg for the undivided attention that was previously given unsolicited. As the embers begin to cool, I gather water from the lake to add a sense of finality to the dying fire. In the brief moment before the steel rim of the bucket violently disturbs the water, I catch a glimpse of myself in the lake and a moment of deja vu comes over me. A deep, sharp breath gives life to memories once twisted and suffocated under the weight of subconscious’ repression.A traveler once visited this island and left me with a pain that knows not of resolution, but only the harrowing burden of regret. Her body was, at first, the libation that enticed me, but I knew nothing of real inebriation until I knew her mind and experienced her personality that enveloped me in comfort and protection. Her spirit was too free to ever enjoy life on this island. I feared she would grow bored of this place, of me, so I did not intervene in the expansion of her life. I remember desperately clutching on to every second that her face remained recognizable as her family’s boat departed from the dock, sputtering across the waters. The dimples that once sat atop the corners of her lips vanished as her smile became more lax and less confident with each hop of the boat. Eventually, all I saw was the dull, yellow jacket that protected her from the splashing waters while cradling her loving face. As she got too far from view, my eyes followed the last trail of ripples cascading off the end of her boat back to the shore. Her eyes mimicked the lake in color and in function: their enormity too great for my comprehension and possession. I knew, at that moment, I would never again know the loving intensity of swimming in the warm embrace of her serenity. Eventually, my sight fell to the water, and all I was left with was my own reflection. For many summer afternoons after that, when the warming breezes made visiting the lake enticing to those on the mainland, I sat and watched the boats go by, hoping once again to see that dull, yellow jacket in the distance. With each passing day, it grew more apparent that her return was a hope that would remain unfulfilled. Eventually, my life went on, but never forward. She took her final form as a spirit, idealized, but never experienced. The face of the young man my mind no longer recognizes is replaced in the water by the old man attempting to survive this autumn night. I slash through my image with the steel bucket, toss the water over the fire and begin gathering wood to fuel my warmth indoors. The bitterness in the air has caused the bark to loosen its hug on the wood. The bark will disintegrate and return to the Earth, but the wood will endure the long process of growing dry and weak without the embrace it once felt. Sympathy is the power source that fuels the swing of the axe that breaks the lumber. |
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