welcome to volume 130 (the July/August 2015 issue)
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Too Many Miles
|
Bagged!
Lisa Gray
It was two weeks after the amnesty. I was clearing out the cupboard under the stairs when I found it. Sheer terror overcame me. I knew what had happened to the last person who had one. They’d been dragged screaming from their house in a dawn raid and never been seen again. I couldn’t let that happen to me.
I had to get rid of it.
I stuffed it hastily down my bra and backed out of the cupboard, conscious of the camera in the hall, the one the government had decreed had to be fitted in every room of every house in the land. I hoped nothing was showing.
Now what? I thought.
I could stuff it in the dustbin but I knew that was useless. And dangerous. The Bin Police rifled through everything that was discarded. They’d find it and trace it back to me from the microchip on my dustbin. No there had to be some other way.
I made it look like I was doing my normal household chores while I considered my options. And my chances.
There was only one way. I had to get it out of the house.
That was going to be difficult. The curfew was on. Anyone found out walking on the streets would be “fazered” and dragged downtown. You were never the same after that. Those weapons were more and more powerful.
Then there were the gangs of real criminals, though no one ever referred to them, waiting to way-lay anyone, even the police, who were afraid of them. They were outside the law.
And where would be safe to stash it anyway?
They dragged the canal and river frequently looking for them and patrolled the beaches. Even burying it was out of the question. Specially trained sniffer dogs would track them down and DNA would trace it to you.
And then I had an idea.
The dump.
Outside the supermarket.
I’d seen it in the weeks leading up to the end of the amnesty. It had been filled with them.
But was it still there?
It had to be. There was no other option.
There was only one problem. It was out of town.
Getting out of the house was easy. I had my usual nightly bed-time shower, climbed into bed and switched off the light.
I was glad of the black-out curtains. It made it easy to slip out of bed, down the stairs and out the door.
I looked at the rusting car in the driveway. If only I’d been able to use that. I’d have got there sooner. But that was before the oil had run out.
Different days, I thought. Safer days. The only ones who were safe now were the gangs.
But this was no time to spend reflecting. Thinking was dangerous and not done now.
By anyone.
I backed into the shadow of the building as the street camera swept by me and pulled on the rubber gloves I had stashed in my pocket. I knew they hadn’t spotted me.
I removed it from my bra and started wiping it clean of any fingerprints. Now I only had the DNA to worry about.
Still, I reassured myself, if they traced it back to me, I could always say I’d handed it in during the amnesty and it must have got overlooked in the dump.
Now I just had to reach there.
It was a long way. Still, I told myself. It would be safer than in town. As if to confirm my thoughts, the sound of a police car sped past, its siren sounding sinister in the surrounding silence. There were no other cars. Bio-fuel had seen to that. No one could afford them except the police. And the gangs.
No one could afford anything.
I moved out from the security of the building and made my way along the street, darting back again into the shadows every time I spotted a camera.
So far, so good, I told myself.
I spoke too soon.
There was the sound of a dog barking.
He won’t last long, I thought.
None of them did.
I felt the sweat break out on my brow as I heard the sound of the police siren.
They’d spotted me.
It was all over!
The car swerved to a halt at the last house in the road. I’d automatically pulled back into the safety of the building. Black-helmeted officers poured out of the car and rammed the door of the house. There was screaming and yelling. Ten seconds later they emerged. The owners were bundled into the car. Along with the dog.
They wouldn’t be seen again. And the dog?
Only on a plate.
Desperate times.
But I couldn’t stand around feeling sorry.
Or I’d be dead meat.
I waited till the car had driven away then made my way out on to the out-of-town highway. If I could just get out of town, I would be safe. Although the gangs had transport, they rarely ventured away from the lucrative pickings of the city.
And there were fewer cameras.
I’d just reached the city boundary when they jumped me.
I’d been walking in the cycle lanes, darting into the undergrowth every time I spotted a camera doing its swoop, thinking at least I was safe from the Bike Gangs that haunted them. There was a booming black market in bicycles and no one was safe riding one.
“Grab her!” shouted a voice and before I knew it, four of them were down on top of me.
I felt my arm stripped of my bangle and watch and my necklace ripped from my throat. I thought of the contents of my bra.
“Let her up!” said the same voice.
Rough hands pulled me from the ground and I found myself facing an eyebrow studded youth dressed in black leather with black spiky hair. His mates, who had forced me to the ground, stood around threateningly.
“What you up to?” he said.
The long knife in his hand forced me to confess.
“Nothing,” I said feebly.
“Nothing!” he mimicked. “You don’t venture out in the curfew for nothing! Hand it over!”
He was better educated than I had first thought.
“What?” I replied.
“Whatever it is you’re carrying,” he said, waving his blade menacingly.
I knew I had to call his bluff. It was my only chance.
His mates were advancing towards me.
I stroked my throat as if I were considering his offer and plunged my hand into my bra.
“I’m going to let you have it,” I said, withdrawing it from my bra.
It worked better than I thought.
“Bloody hell!” shouted one of them.
Another one dropped to his knees.
“Please, missus, spare us. We don’t want it. If we were caught with it, it would be the end of us. Even the fences won’t take it. You can keep it! Honest! Ain’t that right, Joe?”
He turned to his leader but I didn’t wait around for his reply. I was already running across the fields, turning back only to give a threatening wave with it then stuffing it back in my bra when I was out of sight of them.
Ten minutes later I’d reached the perimeter of the supermarket car park. My eyes scanned the forecourt. Deserted. Except for one rusting, wheel-less, abandoned car. And no cameras. None were needed here. The supermarket shelves were empty. There was no food. Hadn’t been since all the grain had been used for bio-fuel.
Even from where I was standing I could see the dump.
I cursed.
I should have known it. It was padlocked.
I looked all round for something to force open the lock.
For once I loved the gangs of criminals. In their hurry to remove the wheels from the abandoned car, they’d dropped their jemmy. I picked it up and scurried over to the dump. Using all my strength, I levered open the lid. I peered inside. It was empty. I reached my hand into my bra. All I had to do was throw it in the dump and close the lid. Then I’d be safe.
Suddenly the supermarket car park was flooded with light.
“Put your hands in the air and step away from the dump!” shouted a voice.
I froze. I should have known.
I dropped it and raised my hands in the air.
There was the slow, sickening sound of footsteps behind me and I felt my arms forced downwards and backwards as the handcuffs clicked cruelly into place.
“You didn’t really think you could get away with it, did you?”
The voice was cold, merciless. He spun me round.
The black-helmeted officer looked like a bad bug from a B-rated movie.
“We always get you in the end,” he said.
His words confirmed it.
“We have our informers.”
Behind him, a safe distance away I could see Joe, his spiky hair standing out like the Statue of Liberty, silent as ever. Then he slunk off into the night. To join his mates.
The black-helmeted officer bent down and pulled it from the dump. He waved it threateningly in the air.
“You know the law,” he said.
The plastic carrier bag waved unsteadily like a flag of surrender.
“You’re bagged!”
|
untitled (November)
Donald Gaither
November:
neighbor’s Halloween pumpkin
caving in
|
The Divine Calling
Norm Hudson
He always said a prayer before he killed them. And tonight was no different. He knelt down.
“Our Father who art in heaven——————.”
The words came quickly. Easily. From years of practice.
Like his hands. They’d had practice too. And tonight they were excited.
He clasped them tighter to calm them.
They couldn’t let him down. Not tonight.
Not that they ever had. None of those other times. They’d been strong. Powerful. As they’d squeezed the life out of their victims. Pathetic, gasping victims. All the same at the end. But not at the beginning. At the beginning they were flirty. Smiling. Attractive. Like his mother. That’s why he killed them.
His prayer was finished. God was with him. He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. Strong. Powerful. He’d need that tonight. Susan Hamilton was going to be difficult. She hadn’t been at the beginning. But when he’d finished with her, there had been the angry, abusive phone calls. And the letters. Pushed through his letterbox. He hadn’t reckoned on that. The others had been easy. Through the years. Soft. Submissive. Sheeplike. Like women should be. His flock. That’s how he thought of them. But times were different. And women were different. One of his flock had strayed. And he had to bring her back into his fold. A lamb to the slaughter.
He pulled on his black leather gloves and buttoned his coat so that it covered his collar. It wouldn’t take long to reach her place. A short walk. Through the cemetery. His favourite place. They were all here. His victims. Where he felt close to them. And soon there’d be another one. To complete his mission. The last. He’d made a vow.
“You sure, angel?”
Her voice in his head. His mother’s voice. Teasing. Tempting. Tantalising. He stopped and looked down. There it was. Like it always was. A small, white feather. He picked it up and stroked the underside of his chin with it. Like his mother always had.
“You sure you don’t mind going outside.”
He remembered the way she’d stroked the feather so gently under his chin and looked at him with those beguiling, blue eyes.
“It won’t be for long.”
Her eyes had left his then and found those of her gentleman caller. And the feather had fallen down. A fallen angel. Like her.
That’s when he’d foundhis calling. His mission. And she’d been his first.
“No more,” his voice whispered to the feather as he dropped it.
Words he’d used his whole life.
But there were always more.
But not tonight. Tonight would be his last.
He’d take the short cut along the river. There’d be less chance of someone seeing him. The river was like black satin shining in the moonlight. Dark. Deep. Deathlike. A favourite haunt of suicides. He pulled his coat collar round him to keep out the damp night air and buried the thought.
The house was in darkness when he reached it. Like he expected it to be. After all she was a clean living woman. Or had been.
In bed, he thought. The bed they’d shared. That would make it easier. Cleaner. And ironic.
He glanced round. There was no one about. He tried the gate at the side of the house. Locked. A careful woman. Like himself. But not careful enough. She should have updated her burglar alarm. He glanced up at the box that he knew any burglar would steer clear of on the side of the house. It didn’t work at night. He knew that.
He climbed over the gate. It was easy to gain access. After all he was an expert at it. There was no sound from upstairs. He slid silently towards the kitchen drawer and removed the long carving knife. A forced entry. An attempted robbery. He knew she kept her handbag by the bed. He had it all planned. Still his hand tightened unusually nervously as he turned the handle of the bedroom door. He felt a sick panic in his throat. Something was wrong. He glanced at the bed. Had she stirred? No. Nothing. She was asleep like she always was. The covers pulled high over her shoulders as if in protection.
But nothing could protect her. He raised the knife in the air and plunged it deep into the covers, raising it again and again. And each time he plunged it, he said the prayer.
“Our Father who art in heaven. Our Father who art in heaven. Our Father who art in heaven.”
When his hands were done, he dropped the knife and looked at the blood spattered covers of the bed. It was done. She’d never blackmail him again. He was free.
He ransacked the bedroom drawers. And moved methodically from room to room pulling out the contents of drawers and cupboards.
But there were no letters. She must have disposed of the threatening letters he had posted through her letter-box.
Only God knew what had made him do such a foolish thing.
He stuffed a gold necklace and the rings he had found in his pocket. He’d dispose of them safely. In the river.
The sun was just rising as he made his way back along the river bank. He had no time to lose. He put his hands in his pockets and withdrew the necklace and rings he’d placed in the plastic bag. He picked up a heavy stone from the river bank and placed it in the bag then he dropped it into the river. The sun was strengthening as he reached the cemetery’s gate.
He’d always liked mornings. A new beginning. With prospects. And he was in his favourite place. And no feather. It was gone. He felt a breeze stir his cheek. He closed his eyes and gave thanks.
“Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name————————————.”
“Goodness me, Reverend, that’s a divine calling you’ve got, out and about at this time!”
The voice startled him. He opened his eyes.
It was Mrs. McGinty. The widow McGinty. But not like the others. Not soft. Not submissive. Nosey. Nit-picking. A nasty nuisance. He hadn’t been happy when she’d been made an elder.
But he didn’t see her. He only saw the feather in her hands.
“You surely don’t mind going outside,” she said. And the words hit some unseen gong in him, “in all weathers,” she added.
“The lord calls us at all times,” he said, his trembling hands letting his coat collar fall to reveal the white dog-collar.
“Ay, you’ve never said a truer word.”
She paused and looked him shrewdly in the eye.
“You’ll have heard about Mrs. Hamilton, I daresay.”
The hand that had held the knife shook slightly but imperceptibly.
Damn the woman! he thought. She’d always had her suspicions. But she couldn’t prove anything. He felt his hand steadying. The power returning. How he’d like to grasp her throat. To squeeze every last malicious mouthful out of it. But no. No more. He was finished with all that.
“Mrs. Hamilton?” he said, and her name rolled off his tongue as if it were of no consequence.
“You’ve not heard?”
Her voice was joyful. Victorious.
“Dropped dead at the postbox. Posting a letter.”
“Dead!”
He sounded shocked even to himself.
“Ay. And such a young age. I thought you’d be the first to know!”
Her voice had a touch of acidity.
“Posting a letter, you say,” he added when he’d rallied himself.
“Ay, to her sister. They say she arrived tonight and is staying at the house. It won’t be for long.”
He barely heard the words. He was watching the feather in her hand.
“I thought you might have been round to give her some comfort.”
The voice sounded mocking or was his imagination playing tricks?
His mind raced. The sister. Had it been the sister in the bed? He tried to remember if he had seen her face.
“No,” he said outwardly calmly. “I didn’t know!”
“I guess you’ll be knowing soon enough!” the old woman said.
He nodded.
He’d made a mistake. He’d killed the wrong woman. He’d meant to kill Susan Hamilton. But Susan Hamilton was already dead. He’d killed her sister!
Yes, he’d be knowing soon enough.
“I was speaking to the sister yesterday. Seems she had some letters of her sister’s for you.”
“Letters,” he repeated, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“Yes. That’s what she was posting when she dropped dead. Seems she wanted to return them to you.”
Impossible. There’d been no letters. He’d ransacked the place.
He watched the feather fall from the woman’s hand. It curled itself around his mother’s gravestone.
“She was going to bring them round to you but she gave them to me instead when I called at the house to offer my condolences.”
The woman withdrew a packet of letters from her pocket.
From where he was he could see where they’d been opened.
“’Course these are just some of them. I’ve kept the others in a safe place.”
She’d known what he’d been thinking. She’d read the letters.
“Do you mind?” he said, indicating his mother’s gravestone.
“You’d rather go outside,” she said.
He nodded.
“You sure?”
He looked at the woman. Not flirty. Not attractive. Not smiling. But just like his mother.
He picked up the feather and stroked his chin.
“I think I’ll go round and give her some comfort,” he said.
“It’s a divine calling you have, Reverend,” she said.
He opened the gate of the cemetery and took the short cut along the river. There would be less chance of someone seeing him. The river was like black satin shining in the moonlight. Dark. Deep. Deathlike.
“One more,” he said, dropping the feather into the inky blackness of the river.
It wouldn’t take him long to reach the widow McGinty’s house. He’d ransack it, find the letters and then deal with her.
He always said a prayer before he killed them. And tonight was no different. He knelt down.
“Our Father who art in heaven——————————.”
The words came quickly. Easily. From years of practice.
Like his hands. They’d had practice too. And they were excited.
He clasped them tighter to calm them.
They couldn’t let him down.
Not that they ever had. None of those other times. They’d been strong. Powerful. As they’d squeezed the life out of their victims. Pathetic, gasping victims. All the same at the end.
His prayer was finished. God was with him. He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. Strong. Powerful. He’d need that.
He rose from his knees. As he did so, the soft mud of the riverbank on which he was standing slowly sank into the river. He was up to his waist in icy water and the current was pulling him fast. He wasn’t worried. He had strong hands. Powerful hands. He would make a grab at the reeds that were growing by the side of the river.
That’s when he saw the feather. Lying. Trapped. In a slowly sinking sludge of mud at the riverside.
He tried to reach it. To rescue it. Like he’d always tried to do.
But, even as it sunk, darkened and dirty, into the slime, it teased. Tempted. Tantalised.
It won’t be long, he thought. It won’t be long.
For, as his feet gave way in the mud and he felt his head go under, he knew he’d completed his mission. His last.
“You sure, angel?”
He saw the feather sucked down and disappear.
He tried to nod but the water had entered his mouth and he felt himself choking. Choking.
No more, he thought. No more. This was the last.
But he wasn’t worried.
He’d had a divine calling.
|
Relatively
Doug Draime
Moments fall into space
or out of
space. I’m not sure
of any of this; but
why don’t the faces
of certain animals age?
Why do they live 5 times
their maturity, while we with
“dominion” hardly
live 3 times ours?
Einstein was a poet and
had more answers
than questions. He scribbled
them on
the bathroom wall and
on the back of the
Atlantic Monthly. But we, like
the baboon using shit for
for finger paints,
will be caught,
left with our smelly fingers,
not even knowing
what the real questions are.
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If Only Larry Had Known That The Stick Was A Wand
Benjamin Sabin
It just so happened that little Larry found a stick that turned out to be a wand, which had belonged to a very powerful wizard.
When he brought it home his mother—a larger woman with an affinity for flower print sun dresses—she questioned him about the stick, which was actually a wand.
“Where did you get that?” his mother said. “Don’t bring that in here. Sticks are dirty. If you bring that in here I will tan your hide.”
Larry walked into the kitchen with the stick/wand in his hand, paying no attention to his mother’s threat. He waved the wand about, casting imaginary spells on the cookie jar, the napkin holder and consequently the napkins, Dodo the cat, Reggie the dog, and whatever else caught his eye. He was having a wonderful time.
Larry had aimed the stick/wand at a porcelain rabbit—left behind from Easter almost three months ago—when his mother grabbed him by the wrist and swung him about. In little time, Larry was bent over his mother’s knee with his ass in the air, which is the universal position to have one’s hide tanned.
“I told you not to bring that filthy stick in here you little mongrel.”
Larry’s mother raised her hand and brought it down hard.
Larry tightened his grip around the stick/wand. He felt hot and wished a few bad things upon his mother, the foremost being that she was hit by a car and stopped breathing.
Again Larry’s mother brought her hand down against Larry’s ass, and then again, and again, and again until his hide was fully tanned.
The stick/wand was thrown out the back door and Larry was sent to his room with a sore ass and salt crustiness around his eyes.
|
Little Roland
Eric Burbridge
Roland Slaughter was a little guy. At birth they said he’d be a dwarf. They were amazed by age ten when he reached five feet tall where he stayed. The family affectionately called him “Little Roland.” He didn’t mind after all they smothered him with love. He was a joyful child with a heartwarming smile, an attentive look in his hazel eyes and thick black curly hair. The problem with Roland he hated animals, especially birds. They were everywhere; dogs, cats, squirrels, raccoons and those weird looking things called possums. The first rat he saw he ran screaming and refused to go outside for a week. His parents considered professional help, but Roland snapped out of it. The Slaughters were proud of him; he displayed genius by building all kinds of contraptions, especially with his erector sets. When he wanted to spend more time outside his parents were overjoyed. But, Roland wanted to fence in the backyard — an expensive undertaking. They did it, but the animals didn’t respect his privacy.
That pissed him off. He decided to poison them.
That didn’t work well enough; frustrated he stayed inside. One day at school a prankster told him to try sticking the tip of his tongue on a 9V battery. The sensation shocked Roland, but that gave him an idea.
Electrocution!
He’d fry those critters. He had to keep his research discreet; no Google searches. He got permission to stop at the library where he went to work. The theory wasn’t difficult, but he needed certain equipment. He wanted a large generator and copper wire. He didn’t receive an allowance He’d be questioned if he asked for a large sum of money. Further thought told him, start small and work your way up.
He got another bright idea; use transformers from his dad’s old Lionel train set. That was a set from the mid 50’s. He spent Saturday in the basement going through boxes that hadn’t been opened in decades. Finally he came across what he needed. And, it still worked...and it had dual power handles. Now if he could find enough copper wire and switches he’d be in good shape...he found them, assembled the parts and applied the current. It looked OK. He opened the window of his second floor bedroom. The trap was set, birds landed and nothing happened. The little things looked at him like he was crazy. That infuriated “Little Roland.” He grabbed his BB gun, but it was too late. It got away. There had to be enough power to kill it. His intelligence and cunning increased with his fascination for electricity.
He read more and found out it isn’t that easy to electrocute birds or squirrels. They have to touch something grounded. He made the necessary connections to his kill box. He changed the camouflage, put out a better grade of seed and enlarged the opening to accommodate several birds. He re-anchored it on the sill and waited. He put his fingers on the switch when a couple of sparrows landed. He threw it.
Snap, crackle and pop!
Finally, he’d done it. He rejoiced.
For months Roland killed as many birds as possible, but the other animals got to be more irritating. He built an electric net and lined a small trench. Good bye to a bunch of fur legged creatures. Several months later the cops inquired about missing pets. Roland figured Ms. McIntyre the next door neighbor reported her little Schnauzer missing. He hated her and that dog. She always hugged him. She had body odor and her breath stunk. He put his animal genocide program on hold. The authorities didn’t find him out, but his parents discovered his deadly apparatus. They requested discreet meetings with a close family friend who was a shrink. Roland resented Dr. Bernstein who came out of semi-retirement to have a chat with him. He rigged a surprise for the silver haired professional, after which he wouldn’t come back. But, the shock he got when he touched the doorknob to Roland’s room stopped his pacemaker.
Attempted murder charges scared the mess out of him.
He jumped through legal hoops until he was eighteen. But, that hardened his resolve to continue his war on animals. His intelligence and cunning increased with his fascination for electricity.
He was accepted in all the top engineering schools. And, of course, he chose MIT and the O.S.I.R. (Office of Scientific Investigation and Research) chose him.
Roland was intrigued with the things and different technologies the government had to offer. Virtually unlimited electrical power for him to experiment. Electrical Arc technology aroused him sexually he loved it so much. Coupled with lasers he could kill all kinds of animals and mammals. His theories were celebrated in the small community of elite scientist and engineers.
When the public hears about thousands of birds dying in places like Quebec, Utah and Arkansas, to name a few, think of people like Dr. Roland Slaughter. Doc Roland, his colleagues call him, more than likely had something to do with it.
|
Ode to the Blond at Burger King
Liam Spencer
There you were
So beautiful and young, vibrant
Fed up with bullshittery.
Your voice and eyes saying it all.
Blond, funky hair, hip and happening.
Playing the games and sick of it all.
Our eyes met. Understanding.
Seeing it all, including barriers. Untrusting.
Your blush and mine said it all.
Your words met with
Your manager’s distain.
Heavy set coworker glaringly angry.
I returned the next day.
Somehow you knew,
Even before I placed the order
Your voice smiling through
Same pressures stifle.
Weeks go by and I look for you
Getting glares from heavy women and managers
As I glare back, demanding more ketchup packets
They got to you, or so I thought.
“Here you are, sir.”
As they look on, angry.
I thought you lost interest.
I stopped going.
Then, without managers,
“HEY! My favorite customer!”
I was taken aback, but
Our eyes met deliciously again.
Delicious indeed.
I scheme for your number
To bring you a rose
To see you glow
To hold your hand
To feel your breath on my bare shoulder
You’re so beautiful.
|
How do you like it?!
Liam Spencer
It had been a while, truth be told. First had been recovery from a true heart smashing. Then there was the soul crushing worker’s comp era. Then there was learning a murderous job, followed by torturous hours that brought good paychecks. Over two and a half years wasted.
There I was, rushing to meet someone. It was our second date. There had been flirtations with various women along the way, and a “roommate” where things nearly happened, but this seemed liked it could be real.
Our first date had rules. No kissing or touching. No sex. All up front. I pay. It was far away from where I live. It went well, except for the expense. We talked and drank and ate. Then we danced. Then we made out. Then she grabbed me in all the right places. She led me to a nearby park at one in the morning.
She led me to the lookout. We didn’t look. Instead, she pulled me into her, backing until her back was against cold rails. She grabbed my hair and pulled me violently into a kiss, sucking my tongue into her mouth. We went at it full on, stopping just shy of penetration. Aggression. Beautiful.
Now was the second date. I could tell she was a little insane, but I wasn’t sure the extent. She might be deliciously insane, I thought, the best kind. Mmm.
She came to my area of the city. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing, and I was not exactly ready. My apartment was a mess. I had been working unbelievable hours, then got hurt on the job. The hours had me pile up mess in my place, and now the injury prevented much cleaning.
It’d have to do.
A long overcoat showed only face and calves. She beamed brightly, but insecurities showed. She kissed first, again sucking my tongue into her mouth, setting the tone. We walked hand in hand toward overpriced restaurant/bars common to Seattle. A man has to show he makes money to get women to take him seriously. Traps.
In checking out restaurants, there were three guys standing there asking us questions about where to get laid. They eyed her like their next meal. I glared, but tried to show good humor. The “convo” took too long. Nonetheless, we made our way, ending up at a very nice, overpriced wine bar. Within moments, she forcefully lip locked me. I was unprepared, but pleased.
She chatted with the waitress far too much, explaining where she was from, how things are in Northern California, etc. The waitress shot me a look as if she was wondering what I was doing with such a person. I smiled. Tip would be large tonight. I took the lead in selecting a bottle of wine. French, not Californian. Her eyes flashed attraction.
I sat there, my arm around her, listening to madnesses she was trying to hide. It had been so long. I longed to know the waitress though. Beautiful and gritty. Primal and true. Hard work, gifted at cutting bullshit short in pleasant ways. A pro.
After one glass, she slid my hand under her bra in full view of everyone. I pulled back.
“Coward.” She said, smiling.
“Oh well.”
We went outside to smoke. I barely got my cigarette lit before she pounced, full on. Eventually I got some distance. It was too much right there, although I thought about getting her into the alley...
“Where do you live? Around here?”
“Yeah, actually. Right around the corner.”
“Oh. Wouldn’t take you long to get home then.”
“Yeah. You know, I have a bottle of really good, aged wine at home. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. Care to share it with me?”
“Are you asking me to your place?” she beamed.
“Yes. Yes I am.”
She grabbed me in the right place, leaned in close, kissed me, and spoke in a serious tone;
“Let’s go.”
We went in the wine bar and guzzled what was left. I paid the bill, big tip included. We left hand in hand.
A half block later she interrupted our conversation.
“How much further? I need the bathroom.”
“A half block. We’re almost there.”
She was pissing while I poured two glasses. As I tried to turn on music, she exited my bathroom. She looked at me for a brief moment.
“Where’s the bedroom? I wanna see it.”
“To your right.”
She pulled her dress off, then went in. My eyes widened. I followed her on in with the glasses.
There was no need for wine. She sprawled out, ready. I stripped down and got on top of her, ready for foreplay. She wanted none of it.
“What? You’re not going to fuck me?”
Ok. Ok. I slid in. She was not all that tight. Forty three. Three fully grown kids. It was good though. Except... every time she seemed to get really excited, she moved to pull me right out. I’d reenter, and she would do it again.
Finally, I really got going. Her legs were over my shoulders, and I was pounding. Her moans grew and grew. When I was finally ready, she grabbed a handful of my beard and yanked the hair right out of my face.
“OUCH! FUCK!”
I nearly hit the ceiling.
“What? You don’t like hair pulling? How do YOU like it, huh?!”
I lost my erection, and climbed off her. My face hurt where hair once existed.
“WHAT?!! You didn’t even come when I did that?!”
“No. please don’t do that again.”
“I’m bored then. Let’s get dressed.”
“Ok.”
I was done and put off. Dating sucks.
We sat outside smoking. She sat on the steps, her legs hanging out. Her pussy was clearly visible for all to see.
“I gotta go. I am so disappointed. I mean, really.”
“Sorry but me too.”
She shot me a look. I didn’t care.
“You might wanna put panties on though. Everyone can see your pussy.”
“I didn’t wear any. It shows through with this dress.”
“Oh. Ok then.”
“Walk me to the bus. I’m sure you don’t mind. You had your dick in me a few minutes ago, right?’
“Yeah, sure, ok. Let’s get you there.”
We walked down to the bus stop. The buses weren’t running as they normally do. Delays due to budget cutbacks. She needed to get downtown to hop on the train. I needed her gone. It was late, again. The alarm clock would be merciless. Five AM. Back to hell...I mean, work. I ordered her a cab and prepaid. She glowed. We kissed. She was off.
I hobbled back to my apartment. Empty condom wrappers and empty glasses of wine. Pleasures unmet.
I opened a beer and remembered better days with someone very special. The Her was gone. I realized how much I still miss her. Still, she was gone.
Damn this dating scene. I crawled on the couch and dozed off.
It was all that was left.
|
What the hell?
Liam Spencer
Must every woman
On every dating site
Have pics with their dogs
Or nature or some guy or guys?
If they’re surrounded with guys
And dogs and nature,
What the hell would do they want
With me?
|
Who wants to be
Kelley Jean White MD
I was going away to college;
I was setting up the room;
I had acquired this boyfriend,
someone I don’t know,
pale and smooth and thin and sick;
I was trying to get the bed made up
so I could tuck him in;
I had these three half grown kittens,
beautiful and smooth,
they were bright crayon colors,
red and blue and yellow;
they kept squirming all over,
getting away, I tried to put them
on a shelf but they kept getting out;
I gathered them up
spilling over my arms that cool fur;
I pulled out this drawer;
I shut them up--
Mother--says the oldest--
the sick boy friend is John
and we are the kittens, duh--
- -No, there was more,
a great pink stuffed elephant,
I set it on the very top of the shelves,
a blue hippo,
I set it on the left top,
balanced carefully,
parts were hanging over the edges--
--Da-uh, Mom, those are your parents,
blue and pink, huh, get it--
- -No, I wouldn’t
be putting my parents up
on a shelf ; I wouldn’t shut
my children up. . .
Damn.
Who wants to be the yellow kitten?
|
The Window Over the Street
Antonio Marques
I’m agoraphobic. Since a very young age, contemplating going outside, even if just over the front door, is enough to make me sweaty and tremble in a way that I have to sit down and think happy thoughts of closed spaces. The insides of a vault is the one working for me now. Steel walls, so thick that no fire, water, wind or the scrutinies of strangers can penetrate; and just there for me to reach. Walls meant to be touched with my fingertips and caressed, much more protective than those uterine walls before I was expelled to the anguishes of the world. Yes, that’s it. Think about vaults. Think about darkness. I can’t be touched there.
Am I crazy? I don’t think so. I rather look at it as a deep psychological disorder rather than simple craziness. So much more political correct. We all have to indulge ourselves in some ways.
Because I’ve mentioned vaults, dark places only to be opened by a few, you may think I like the dark. You must assume my room, the one I still haven’t talked about, to be a dark place, full of aphotic corners and shadows reigning over it. How untrue. I like the light, the sun, the brightness. If I could, I’d have a permanent star right in the middle of the room bathing me with light at every moment. But I’m not a god, just a normal man who, by accident of fate or genes, tends not to like open spaces. I have no sun in the middle of my room. I just have a window... You might have your life, full of joys or sorrows, your family, your pony if you like, but I have a window, and this not even you can take from me.
This window is my world. I live near it, with it, and above all through it. My days are spent looking out this window and into your world, thus my preference for light - night and darkness tend to limit my view. Do you feel my eyes upon you every time you walk out your door? What about every time you get home, do you still feel me here, looking, remembering, smiling or crying with you? I don’t think so. I’m here but I’m blurred. A foggy remnant of society that is just there without a use and therefore without a cause. But that is, in the end, my cause: to be here and looking. Making you know that somehow, someone might be looking at you. The tiny little hairs on the back of your neck, do they rise when I tell you this?
But my life can’t just be looking out of the window in an Orwellian Big Brother style. And I don’t have a Thought Police to know what you are thinking. But I have a friend, a powerful ally that is always with me, within me. With this imaginary friend of mine, together, we create the lives that we will never live. Together we own you. We break your life apart and give you a new one. What do you do for a living? Accountant? Professor? Movie star? Nonsense... You are what I want you to be. You can be trash or treasure, famous or fool, miserable or magnificent. You still are what I want you to be. You live exactly as I say you live. What is more important than your life? The life I give you. Think about that.
I woke up early in the morning. While drinking my coffee some birds started singing in the old oak, one of the many oaks lining the street. Birds singing always make me smile. I can empathize with those dogs Pavlov used as I feel just like one when a bird sings, smiles instead of saliva. I glance at my window. What shall you be today?
The day woke up embraced by a light fog, not too deep to hinder my view but still one of those misty days in which the color gray is the ruler. In these early hours, with the sun just starting to pour its color palette to the east, the street is still quiet. Just a few people walk by my window on their routes to early jobs or home from their late jobs. One of them is a young mother, maybe nineteen or twenty from her looks. What catches my attention is the stroller she pushes. Everything else fades from my eyes as if a black paper has been put on the window with just a little circle cut out where the little stroller is. Blue in color, dark blue like the night that just passed. A few baby toys emerge from the depths of the blankets that cover the life I know is inside. I almost hold my breath and then... yes, there it is. A bundle of pink flesh punctured by dark eyes and a gaping mouth. That’s the life I want now.
The stroller goes far already, pushed by the mother on her way to her way, but that image is still with me. What is like to be a baby? I don’t remember it so I’ll have to recur to my friend, the one I talked about before. Being always warm, that’s what he tells me, that’s what it must be like. The body is your master. It has strange demands that must be fulfilled at once. The best part, if you are the baby, you don’t have to do it. All you have to do is cry. I am that baby now. I feel the warmth of all those baby blankets and sleep creeps over me. The sounds of the world are strange but of no concern of mine: a car passes by, a bird sings and I smile. Strange, my mind is empty of thoughts, just feelings. I want to cry my dry cry just to announce that I’m alive but the body doesn’t answer me. A baby bottle is raised just in front of my face and my body answers with satisfaction. The flavor of the liquid descending through my throat is exquisite. I’m happy. And then all I want is to sleep. No worries in my baby life, I am my own center and the center of the world. Better, I am the world for only I exist for me. When I come back into my room, to my old self, I cry. Rivulets of tears bathe my face. But behind those tears there is the smile. This is what I live for inside these walls. This was a life I owned as mine, even if just for moments, and released it back to its freedom.
I lie in bed and try to imagine happy images. What would my life have been if I wasn’t crazy? The cold sheets are no comfort but nowadays something rarely is, except my window, my true world. Time goes by...
The birds sing again and everything seems better. How wrong can I be! Everything is the same as yesterday, the same as years in the past. Except my window. A new world comes up though it every hour and as days, months and years speed by, it’s the only thing I can’t get tired of. The green wallpaper in the room is old. The four chairs surrounding the wooden table are old. I am old. But not my window. That is new at every moment. I sit again near it. Outside, the day has renewed itself. Shy sunrays make an appearance and I can see more people. The ones that went by already passed and now it’s the time of the young on their way to schools. A recollection of the baby comes to mind: what if one of this teenagers in their branded clothes and wild hair could be the baby grown? As I look at them walking, my attention is focused on a girl. Fourteen? She is a little far from the group in front, lost in her thoughts or just plainly absent from what surrounds her. I want to be her. What does a young girl feel? Confusion is what pops into my mind. Isn’t it confusion what all teenagers feel? I look more closely and I see signs of both hope and despair. Perhaps she just longs to be accepted by the group, or a hidden love for someone there is distorting the way she contemplates the world. How everything can look so pink and yet so gray. An instant makes the day: the smile of the one, a favorite song on the radio, a new pair of jeans, the taste of an ice-cream... Or a moment destroys the day: to be ignored, to be laughed at, to feel confused at what you are and what you want. You choose. What makes you happy in that moment is what you live for or what destroys you. I choose life for what it is: the pain, the confusion, the misery of everyday rarely punctuated by a defining moment of happiness. I don’t want to be her anymore. This time the tears aren’t for joy but utter agony. Signals of my deranged mind without ambition. The sun is brighter than ever on my window, almost blinding me, and turning the outside into a marvelous, joyful, awe-inspiring painting. But I am inside as I will ever be. My room is my coffin. By my own choice? By my sick mind? By my feeble self? I long to go outside and finally look at the birds that sing, see the leaves falling in these Autumn days, feel the wind blowing and drying the tears I know I would shed.
In an act of despondency I run around. A mute scream in my lungs emerges to my mouth but is arrested there. Why can’t I even scream anymore? The jar with the plastic flowers gets smashed. Broken pieces of porcelain are scattered over the dark green carpet that covers the room floor. Later I won’t even bother to pick them up. A dark corner of the room attracts me as a bee impulsively driven to a flower. I sit there, tears and more tears. But I can’t cry anymore. The fountain and reservoir have dried. Is it possible to cry dry tears? Because it’s what I’ve been crying for so long.
Minutes and hours tick away and the floor feels harder than ever. I look around the mess my room is but nothing like that matters anymore. Like a junkie is to the brownish powder, like a bee is to the flower, so am I to the window. Not what it is, but what it promises.
The sun has passed and shines its light on the other side of the house, still bright but not blinding bright anymore. The street is silent after the neighborhood rush-hour. A lone man walks his dog and pretends not to notice when the animal decides to release its overstuffed bowels in the middle of the sidewalk. Two women chat and giggle, arm in arm. One of them laughs louder when the other points at the dog or the man. An ice-cram van, jingling, parks for a few minutes at the end of the street, enough time for half a dozen kids to go home happy. A couple gets out of a car and walks against the wind that started to blow, slowly and with matching steps. Mid-thirties maybe. She befalls into the bottle-blond category, but with discreet enough clothes not to deserve a second look. He, on the other hand, imposes a full presence and might even be a bromide person but, if nothing else, the smile of confidence is enough to make me want to traverse the distance and become him. Could he be a company manager, a lawyer or even a politician? The cement-colored suit can make him be any of those and more. But I’m not interested in those details. All I want is to be him in this instant, the present, the now. The urgency makes me quivery. I can almost feel the suit covering my skin. Not almost; my window makes me feel it, the soft tissue in my arm embraced by the hands of the blond. I think I’ll be a politician, ruling the fates of the world by day and be a family man by night. Boring. I think I’ll be a politician with a twist: the blond is my lash at fun. The room where I’m going is a witty place, a stop before going back to be the family man the world sees but I never was. I am a master of deception trained only for the moments of lust and carnal liberation the far-from-pristine body in front of me promises. In her house, in her room, in her bed I’m not a family man and never wanted to be one. I’m an object no different from herself. And in the ways of an object, mechanically, we release ourselves in a mingle of passionate sweat, screams and heat. I can feel the touch, the kiss, the embrace. My skin is on fire; every nerve an explosion of messages that talk about pleasure and warmth. After all, I came here for nothing else. Dominance is the word. I have her in the ways I want, not for once thinking that she might be the one wanting my ways. Later I lie down in the sweat plastered sheets not daring to look at her. Disgust sweeps me and my dignity away, but I know I’ll come back for more, like the bee and the junkie always do. In the end, I know I always will.
Back in my room my tears are not rooted by disgust. In this room I’ve lived so many lives that disgust is a too simple feeling for me to weep for. They roll down my face because I don’t know how to express myself in any other way. And in the deepest core of definitions any emotion can be demonstrated by tears. Disgust is not what I feel but what he felt. I only educe the pleasure, the touch, the dominance. That’s why I took over his life, nothing more. When you live of emotions and to emotions all your life, you can afford to be picky and extract only those you want.
But lives grow short in this window and end in the blink of an eye. A whole life can be translated into minutes, into seconds, and be squeezed of the emotions that I’m after and discarded afterward. Remember the last orange juice you made? My window is the juicer and my life the glass that collects and keeps collecting, never quite brimming.
The sun begins to set on the horizon I can’t see. The day is almost at an end. Outside, the wind has departed to other streets, to dry some other tears. An old man, probably enjoying the last moments of light, slowly moves on the sidewalk. He, like me, also has an inseparable friend albeit a more visible one than mine: the walking stick that advances a step for each step he advances. A wool cap covers his head and ears, offering some protection from the cold air. A pale half-moon marks the imminent victory of night over day. Besides the cap, he dons typical old men’s clothes. Typical old men’s wrinkles cover his face in a fashion some would call signs of wiseness, probably being old people themselves. How many thoughts, how many memories inhabit inside the aging brain? And those memories I grab without a second thought and sketch them as mine. But the old man’s memory is faulty and so my memories are faulty: images flowing to be interrupted by gaps of emptiness that one must jump to reach the next piece of his life. He was a baby once but all I see from those times are his mother’s eyes, now my mother’s eyes, sweet eyes, shinning with exhilarating joy and smiling on their own despite the tiredness of motherhood; my first scratch on the knee from a tumble on a dirt pathway; a world of toys with their shiny buttons and squeaky sounds littering the bed and the room, and I, amongst them, creating new lives for the teddy bear or the newest action figure my father bought for my last birthday; the school, an enormous frightening place with tall monsters with glasses that screamed at you when the lesson was not studied, but that, in the end, even I managed to tame; the other school, where the beautiful brunette used to sit in front of me, and turn so slightly just to tease me with her eyes; the same school some years later, my nose broken by a group of thugs that insisted I could not be with the brunette anymore; me in an ugly rainy clouds-colored suit with a green tie that just didn’t match on my first day at the new job, feeling proud and unscarred by everything that belonged to the past; other suit and other place, the suit black, the place singing with euphoria as I heard and said the magic words that united me to the person that once used to tease me in a classroom; same colored suit with matching colored tie, as I buried her twenty two years later; the wrinkles on my face turning up in a smile as I said good-bye for the last time to everyone around the office on my retirement day; the sun setting over the city as I get out of the house, protected with my wool cap against the twilight chill and leaning on my walking stick, my companion for the last eight years, to walk around the block as the doctor prescribed; an empty window in a brick house, with a faint light coming from it and trespassing the night, victorious in the dark street, only inhibited by some letters someone wrote on the inside of the glass in a rusty ink: “To all the lives I had but could never live”. How nice.
As the blood flows freely from my wrists into the floor, staining the carpet on the corner I now sit, what flashes before my eyes is not my own life but the made-up lives I gave to others. No tears dilute the pool of blood for I’m not crying. The effort of pumping the remaining blood is too much for my heart and it begins to quit. The beatings, after the initial rush, eventually stop. In the last moment alive I look into that window and, with a smile now tattooed on my lips, read the final words that will never be heard by anyone, but are still shared in blood, by my window, to the world.
|
don’t
Janet Kuypers
1/20/15 (from the India haiku series), on twitter
don’t drink their water,
never show legs or shoulders.
or go out at night
alone
|
Tiffany’s Battle
Matthew H Emma
Six o’clock in the morning marked the seventh time I’d passed by her room since the earthquake hit the previous evening. The papers were served just before eight by a grinning twenty-something man in a Wells Fargo shirt.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Speak to your attorney,” he snarled, as he handed me a pen and strutted away seconds after I signed.
Monique, or ‘Moni,’ the nickname which I’d addressed her since infancy, didn’t have to be in school for another two hours. I entered into another sobbing fit, causing further burning and soreness to eyes that had been leaking water like a ruptured fire hose since the previous evening. Moments later, my hands trembled and I raced toward the bathroom to expel more frustration and nerves into the toilet.
After placing the Aladdin bowl filled with Froot Loops and a glass of orange juice on the Kitchen table at seven, I drifted to my room and threw on a black Vera Wang suit, some rouge and mascara. At twenty to eight, Bruno, our family’s chauffeur arrived to transport Moni to St. John’s Preparatory Elementary School on East Fifty-Third.
“Bye Mommy,” she said, as the burlesque thirty-two-year-old, adorned in a suit and typical chauffeur’s hat, stood in the doorway petting our two-year-old Belgian Shepherd, Kiki.
I clutched Moni for several seconds, before straightening the black jacket of her school uniform with the red and white school crest emblazoned in its upper left corner. Soon thereafter, I lumbered into the hallway, locked the door, rode the elevator to the parking garage, landed in my Mercedes and auto-piloted it to Chase Bank at the corner of Eighth and Forty-First. A half-hour into the workday, I picked up the phone and dialed extension three four seven.
“Yep,” said Pete, my top assistant manager.
“Got a minute?” I asked.
Within seconds, he was in my office. I wiped my eyes.
“Wow,” bellowed the portly, five ten, red faced Irishman with green eyes. “Look like hell. What’s up?”
“Gotta get out of here,” I said, as I snared a lukewarm, half-full bottle of Dasani and popped a valium. “The ex’s at it again.”
He stepped over and patted my left shoulder.
“Go,” he said, as he pointed his right thumb towards the door.
“You’re the best,” I said.
As I hit the pavement, I texted Sigrid.
“Got a few?” I asked. “Need to meet ASAP. Serious crap’s going down.”
“Not now,” she answered right away. “In meeting. Can talk at lunch. One o’clock at our usual place.”
I headed home and changed into jeans and a Syracuse Field Hockey t-shirt. In the hour prior to leaving for Central Park’s Loeb Boathouse, I huffed a quarter-pack of Camels. After arriving at twelve thirty, I nabbed our table by the lake and ordered an appletini for myself and pear Schnapps on the rocks for her. At one minute to one, her slender frame hovered over me donning a navy blue business suit and sporting the new, short blonde haircut she’d received at some point during the two weeks since we’d last been together.
“Could use one about now,” she said, as she pointed at her drink, grabbed the glass and downed a sip.
She leaned forward, pecked my cheek and slinked into her seat.
“It’s Thom,” I said, as I wept. “He wants Moni.”
The tears spouted again and my peepers burned to the point it felt like lava streaming out of them.
“Taking me to court,” I managed to babble. “Got the papers last night.”
She folded her arms and wrinkled her forehead.
“I know,” she muttered, as she focused her attention on anything or anyone but me. “And I’m sure you’re hoping I’ll offer free legal counsel.”
“Excuse me,” I said, while slanting towards the table’s edge. “Hoping you’ll offer support.”
I positioned my face in my hands, but glimpsed up a few seconds hence.
“What’s with the attitude?” I asked, as I threw out my arms. “Oh, and how the hell do you know?”
“He called me last night,” she said, in a stern tone as she ran her palms up and down her cheeks. “Also mentioned something else.”
Her face morphed into a hue of red resembling cinnamon.
“Like?” I asked, as my entire body trembled.
We had many arguments over the years, but this was the first time I’d seen her either squint her eyes or grind her teeth during one of them.
“That you still hadn’t declined his umpteenth proposal til last month,” she snapped.
She exhaled with such force it knocked a string of paper that once contained a straw onto the surrounding ground.
“Know this isn’t the best time, but we’re officially over now,” she remarked. “And this time it’s permanent.”
“What?” I asked, after swallowing hard enough to cause a sharp pain in my upper chest. “Why?”
I buried the remainder of my drink, slammed the glass down and thrashed my hand against the front end of the table.
“You can’t be that stupid,” she responded, as a single tear inched down her right cheek.
I casted my seat back without thinking. It was fortunate the table behind us was unoccupied. However, several diners pored over me.
“Don’t start this shit again,” I shrieked, as I stormed to the bar.
The bartender held up two fingers and I was soon replenished with a couple fresh adult beverages. I returned and set the glasses down. As I gazed at her, she fixated on the table.
“I professed our love,” I said, as I clutched her right hand. “What more do you expect?”
“Way more than you’ve given,” she fired back.
I gripped her hand tighter. She jerked it away in one quick motion.
“For six years,” she continued. “I tolerated seeing the two of you splattered across Page Six, attending your galas and official appearances to please Mommy and live up to high society’s standards. You’re either in or out, but can’t stand in the doorway. Not with me anymore.”
Her cries progressed to sobs. Despite the display of emotion, she still managed to direct more hisses and eye squints my direction.
“Good luck,” she said, as she brushed the tears away with both thumbs. “Give Moni my love.”
She arose and sauntered off without offering the slightest glance back. I remained at the bar for an additional two hours. Three mineral waters, ten cigs and two valiums later, I trudged home. Moni returned at a quarter to four. To maintain a sense of normalcy, I ordered pizza and threw in “The Little Mermaid,” which we watched until she fell asleep. I slogged into bed at ten and experienced another crying spell, before texting Mom at eleven.
“Please meet with me tomorrow,” I said. “Need to talk.”
A half-hour elapsed.
“Fine,” she responded. “Stop by Vada’s at noon.”
At a quarter-past twelve the following day, I arrived at the West Village spa. Mom’s athletic build was disguised by a white, cloth bathrobe and laid out on a massage table. She saw me and jolted her head in the other direction, causing a lock of her salt and pepper hair to fall across her forehead.
“Sorry to interrupt your relaxation time,” I said. “Know how important that is to you.”
She lifted her hand and waved, but wouldn’t face me.
“You know?” I asked, as I possessed a folding chair to the left of the table.
She flipped on her back.
“The whole damn Upper East Side does,” she said, as she grimaced and bit her lip.
“What am I gonna do?” I asked, having great difficulty be stilling a pair of quaking legs.
“Don’t know,” she said. “And, to be honest, don’t care.”
“I know you don’t,” I said, in a resigned manner after squatting down.
She popped up. I followed suit and seized her wrist.
“Let go,” she instructed. “I’ll have security throw you out.”
I retreated.
“I don’t understand, you, this, any of it,” she shouted. “You’ve done these things forever. Then come the consequences. And then it’s never your fault. Enough. Your father, I and your sisters can’t and won’t deal with it anymore.”
I smacked my hand against a sink countertop.
“Stop,” I screamed. “I can’t change.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she yelled. “Stop using that as a crutch. I mean, come on. Can you really blame him? You lied to everyone for as long as you could get away with it.”
I covered my eyes, ran to the bathroom and kicked the door shut. For several minutes, I gasped, while seated atop a cold, off-white commode.
“You’ll have to figure it out,” her ingratiating Bronx-accent echoed through the partition. “We’re not getting involved. You jumped into this trench and you’ll have to swim out. That’s it.”
I reemerged after fifteen minutes, presented her with the middle finger of my right hand, staggered past and departed. She put her head down, laughed and shook her head.
At two o’clock, I arrived home, raised the phone’s receiver and heard a beeping dial tone. The one new message was from Aimee Cantrelle, Producer for Francoise Mercier, one of Luxembourg’s most well-known television presenters.
“Bonjour Countess,” she said. “Francoise’s coming to New York tomorrow and would like to schedule an interview. The public’s dying to hear your side.”
As an automated female voice asked me whether to save or delete, the doorbell chimed. With neck curved and an AT & T portable attached to my right ear, I answered to find a heavy set woman wearing green slacks, a white sweatshirt and a tan jacket with a badge pinned to its lower left corner, standing in front of me.
“Countess Tiffany Vonyckx?” she asked, as she placed a clipboard under her right shoulder, removed the identification card and inched it towards my face. “Esperanza Garcia of the New York City Department of Child Protective Services.”
“And?” I inquired, as my heart raced faster than Eddie Merckx cycling through the French countryside in a leg of the Tour. .
“We’ve received a complaint of possible child endangerment,” she answered. “May I come in?”
I nodded and backtracked a few strides. She marched inside, flipped over a few papers and perused the living room.
“Who the f, I mean heck did this?” I said, coming to the fast realization now was the time to watch my words and temper. “Perhaps my ex, Duke Thomas of Luxembourg?”
“The tip was anonymous mam,” she said, not changing the blank, serious facial expression one might notice on a competitor in the World Series of Poker.
I cracked my knuckles and hissed.
“Could you please give me a second?” I asked.
She glanced up.
“Just gonna look around,” she said. “Should only take about twenty minutes.”
I snatched a Louis Vuitton travel bag off the kitchen’s center island, tromped onto the terrace, snatched a fresh pack of Camels out of a side pocket and tossed one in my mouth. After sucking away every particle of tobacco there was, I set both hands on the balcony.
“Aah,” I yelled.
Twenty-five minutes and four butts later, I ventured inside. Garcia stood in the center of the living room offering a half-smile.
“May I ask what the nature of this claim was?” I said, as my arterial pulses bounded.
“Not at liberty to discuss specifics,” she said. “Don’t worry though. Everything checked out fine. Please understand we’re obligated to investigate.”
“Understood,” I said, breathing easier, as I escorted her to the door and shut it the nanosecond she stepped into the hallway.
A few minutes later, I called my younger sister Brigitte, who agreed to pick Moni up from school and watch her for a few days. Thom struck the first several blows. I so desired to retaliate in the form of a blitzkrieg, but settled down enough to formulate a sensible attack strategy. Any emotional reaction might cost me Moni and I couldn’t and wouldn’t risk that. Though getting revenge on Thom was also a goal, I knew I had to be sensible.
“No you won’t,” I said, as I hurled one of Moni’s Nerf balls across the room. “Come on Tiff. Use that brain.”
I proceeded to the living room closet, removed an Everlast bag, hung it up and spent several hours punching, kicking and thinking. One of my black belt inspired crescent kicks connected so well the red sack tumbled down, which caused a bottle to tumble from the top shelf of an adjacent curio cabinet and partially shatter. Upon further investigation, I discovered the casualty was a 750-milliliter Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge. I peered at it for about a minute and smiled.
“Got ya,” I bellowed, as I raced out of the apartment.
After waiting for ten minutes, I gave up on the elevator and darted down several flights of stairs to the garage. I remembered the car’s trunk was filled with a cigar box and another dozen or so depleted bottles of whiskey. After placing the items into a grime-laden, grey, gym bag, I moseyed back to the aging Otis’s door, pushed the button and hummed. About a quarter-hour later, I was back upstairs and decided to phone Contrelle back.
“Glad you called,” she said, after one-and-a-half rings.
“Can she do it tomorrow?” I asked.
“The sooner the better,” she said.
“Great,” I replied. “You’ll find me sitting on the Strawberry Fields benches in Central Park, not far from the IMAGINE landmark, at noon.”
“She’ll be there,” she said.
That morning, I departed at eleven, dressed in ripped jeans and a New York Giants t-shirt. Mercier, a five ten, thirty-five year old, former model with shoulder length blonde hair, who was dressed in a green Versace suit, swaggered in at a quarter to noon.
“Appreciate this Contessa,” she said, as Jacques, her raven-haired, brown-eyed sound/camera man, affixed a microphone to the top left side of my shirt. “Love the casual look.”
“Not here to parade down the red carpet,” I said, with quite a bit of attitude.
“French or English?” she asked, as her smile dissipated.
I gulped a few sips from a twenty-ounce Dasani.
“English,” I declared.
“We’re on in three,” she said. “I’ll give the intro and then we’ll begin.”
The camera lights shined. As she greeted and prepped viewers in French, I shut my eyes, expelled air from my lungs, picked up the bag and positioned it in the center of the green bench I’d occupied. Jacques spun the Toyo 45 AII field apparatus in our direction.
“Ready?” she asked, as she gripped my left hand.
I raised my right thumb and made The Sign of the Cross for the first time in several years.
“His Highness has made a number of allegations against you,” she said. “You’re reaction?”
I chugged more water. My pulse jumped.
“To which one in particular?” I asked.
“Well, let’s start with his opinion you’re unfit to raise a child,” she said.
I squirmed and put my hands together. The force of my heartbeat strengthened. Sweat beads accumulated on my forehead.
“Interesting,” I said, as I released a burst of nervous laughter. “A month ago, he sent me a card saying how great a mother I am. Got it at home and will gladly send it to you.”
Francoise’s eyes wandered. Three drunk men barged onto the set, waved and gyrated before the camera. As I stood up, she raised her right hand. Jacques shooed the intruders away.
“Oy, that’s New York for you,” she said. “Nous reviendrons prochainement.”
Jacques flicked a switch and the bright lights diminished. I stretched and punched my left palm with a right-handed fist three times. Francoise laid a hand on my left shoulder.
“Didn’t think it’d be this hard,” I said, as I returned to my seat.
“Doing fine,” she responded.
During the three minute break, I ignited a Camel and inhaled three healthy drags.
“Back on in a minute,” she announced, as three NYPD officers confronted a group of tourists attempting to peek in.
The curtain lifted again.
“How do you respond to questions about your lifestyle?” she asked.
“The bigger question should be about how he plans to be a solid, single father, given his,” I snapped back.
“Oh?” she asked, as she snapped her head back.
I unzipped the duffel bag and first removed the damaged flask.
“What’s that?” she wondered, as she glanced downward.
I held it up.
“Bring the camera closer,” I ordered, while I waved my hand forward like a parking lot attendant guiding a driver into a tight spot.
Jacques obeyed.
“You remember, don’t you Thom?” I asked, as I glared into the camera. “The many times you’d down shot after shot in my den while your daughter slept a few rooms down the hall. In here are another dozen or so different liquors he guzzled during our last six months together. ”
Francoise edged forward and grinned.
“You’re making quite a serious counter-claim,” she said.
“Not a claim,” I snarled. “Pure fact, and he knows it.”
I lifted my south end upward for two seconds, rested down, reached into the bag, sifted through its contents and snatched the Cohiba Esplendido box. Francoise’s eyes fixated on it. Jacques zoned in.
“Expensive stogies,” she said.
“Been a long time since a cigar came out of here,” I said. “Inside lies a straw, razor blade and cocaine residue with his fingerprints all over it. His dealer sold him out and he dumped it on me one very late night about four months ago. The police might be interested in this.”
Francoise tilted her head.
“I see you’ve channeled your inner Muhammed Ali,” she said. “This should be one hell of a fight.”
I smiled. She inched her chair closer to mine.
“One final question,” she said. “Think any of this’s your fault?”
My skin felt flushed. I clenched my fists and exhaled.
“A little,” I said. “I admit I was a bit dishonest about who and what I truly am. Still, he didn’t have to use our daughter as revenge. He’s cost me a lot already, but won’t take her. My attorney’s name’s Leslie Frazier. Her number’s (212)-787-2238. Let the New York Family Court decide who’s the deviant.”
They cut away again. I leaped to my feet. Francoise and I kissed each other’s cheeks before I sauntered off. Before landing on West Sixty-First, my iPhone chimed, indicating a text. It was Frazier.
“He already called,” she said. “Agreed to court proceedings. I’ll get this going.”
“Checkmate,” or so I thought.
While leaving work the following Wednesday, my cell vibrated. Again, it was Frazier.
“What’s happening?” I asked, as I approached the parking lot.
“Court date’s set for next Friday,” she said. “His attorney said he only wants visitation rights.”
I activated the phone’s speaker mechanism, while unlocking and entering the car.
“Got no problem with that,” I said.
A several second pause ensued. It was obvious that wasn’t all.
“Okay,” I said, respiring. “What else?”
“There’s one other thing,” she answered, as she took more time between each word.
I tossed the Samsung Galaxy on the passenger seat and sipped some water.
“Well?” I asked.
She cleared her throat.
“He’s requesting you bring Moni,” she said.
I blasted the steering wheel with my left hand.
“What for?” I asked, as I gulped the remains of the tiny Poland Springs container and chucked it over my left shoulder.
“Relax,” she said.
I stomped a pair of Christian Louboutin heels against the floor with such strength, they both broke, forcing me to remove the six inchers.
“You’ll come across as more compassionate and fair in everyone’s eyes,” she said.
I barreled my right elbow into the left side of the front passenger seat.
“Not seeing how,” I responded.
She cleared her throat again, but at a louder volume.
“Who knows when he’ll get to see her again,” she said. “I know you’re mad, but give him a few minutes. Promise Moni won’t have to be in the courtroom.”
“Trusting your judgment,” I said, as I ignited the V8 engine, shifted into reverse and manned the gas with a right foot covered only by blue nylon.
“I’m glad,” she laughed. “I’ll email exact details when I get them.”
I ended the call and skidded off.
The week-and-a-half leading up to that morning flew by without incident.
“Do I have to wear this stupid white dress?” Moni asked, as she struggled to slide into the Stella McCartney child line creation.
“Haven’t seen your father in a few months,” I said, from the living room, as I fired up a Camel. “So, yes.”
When she emerged, I combed her light brown locks.
“Hurry up with those Froot Loops,” I said. “Need to leave in a half-hour.”
Court proceedings were set to begin at eleven. Bruno arrived at ten. Moni finished her breakfast a few minutes thereafter.
“Hey Bruno,” she said, as she jumped into his arms.
He offered a bright smile and returned her to solid ground.
“Grabbing my book,” she said, as she skipped towards her room.
I motioned him over, while brushing ashes off a brown Vera Wang suit.
“You mind sticking around?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he responded.
I popped another Camel into my mouth, gaited across the rug and eyed him.
“Just in case,” I said.
“Sure,” he responded.
We arrived at the Seventh Avenue Courthouse at forty-three minutes after ten. I clutched Moni’s hand as we entered. Frazier greeted us.
“Made it,” I told the forty-seven-year-old blonde in grey pants and a white shirt.
“They pushed it back to eleven-thirty,” she said. “Um. He’s already here. Want to let Moni see him?”
I didn’t, either then or ever, but relented.
“Fine,” I sneered.
We reached a side office where the six two, brown-haired, blue-eyed Royal adorned in a black Armani suit appeared.
“Papa,” Moni yelled, as she sprinted towards him.
Thom scooped her up and kissed her cheek. With my head lowered, I witnessed the scene from several feet away. Thom placed Moni down and she scooted a few feet to my left.
“Can’t you at least be pleasant?” he asked, as he lurched over and tapped my left shoulder.
I jolted back as Moni ran into an office. When glimpsing up, I noticed he had bloodshot eyes, quaking hands, was sweating and snorted repeatedly, like someone suffering from a cold or allergy.
“You’re repulsive,” I snarled. “High again. What kind of man are you?”
I whirled around and attempted to step off. He snatched my right arm and dragged me towards him.
“You’re hurting me,” I said.
“That makes us even,” he said, as a streak of blood trickled out of his left nostril.
I slinked back, minced away backwards and studied him.
“Now,” he bellowed. “With your permission, I’d like to see my daughter for a second or two.”
He stumbled toward the office. Frazier reappeared. Eager to get Thom out of my sight, I joined her.
“Still have a few minutes,” she said. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
I was crying.
“What’d he do?” she asked.
I threw my hands up.
“Forget it,” I said, while brushing away the tears. “Just want to get this over with.”
The elevator brought us to the cafeteria, one floor up.
“Anything you want to discuss?” Frazier asked, as I sunk into a chipped, orange chair.
My nerves prevented me from sitting down.
“Gonna wait by the courtroom,” I said, as I leaped back up. “See ya downstairs.”
I hastened towards the elevator, which dinged as soon as I tapped the button. When the doors parted, I was met by Gregory Turner, Thom’s lawyer.
“Seen your ex?” the obese, balding sixty-nine-year-old asked.
“With my daughter in the lounge,” I answered.
He closed his eyes, sunk his head and shook it three times.
“Not for the last fifteen minutes,” he said. “Been texting over and over. No response.”
My heart thwacked. I anticipated Thom would try something, but didn’t expect him to resort to kidnapping.
“He took her,” I shouted, as a violent wave of nausea set in.
Turner tried to place his right hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t jump to...,” he said.
“Get away from me,” I interrupted, as I made a fist with my right hand and swung it at him. “Couldn’t you see how high he was?”
He sighed and retreated.
“I’ll notify security,” he said, as he wandered off.
“You do that,” I yelled. “Fuck.”
I descended to my knees and sobbed.
“Moni,” I screamed.
A few minutes later, a large party of security personnel scurried throughout each floor of the building, before checking stairwells. Frazier whisked out of the elevator and ran towards me. Despite quivering legs, I stumbled to my feet. She gripped my right hand.
“Shouldn’t have let him near her,” I said, as all four limbs now quaked non-stop. “God knows how much coke he vacuumed into his skull. What’ve I done?”
She slumped back and leaned against a wall. I pulled my curly, brown hair with enough oomph to pluck a few strands out.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “Shouldn’t have agreed to let Moni be here.”
“No,” I said, in a resigned tone. “It’s mine. In every way. If anything happens to her.”
Following a half-hour search, it was concluded neither Thom nor Moni were anywhere inside. As Frazier accompanied me to the lounge, my phone vibrated. I removed it from a green Michael Kors handbag and noticed it was a text sent from Thom’s cell.
“Meet me you know where,” the message said. “Moni’s fine. Come alone. I stress that last part.”
I bounced up and charged into the hall.
“Where’re you going?” Frazier asked. “Was it him?”
“To a certain place and yes,” I responded. “I’ll fill you in when I can.”
She chased after me.
“What should I tell everyone?” she asked.
“The truth,” I said. “Something I’ve never been able to do.”
While racing out, I almost tripped. I kicked off a pair of four-inch heels and carried them in my left hand as I bolted towards Bruno’s silver Lincoln Continental. After flinging open the rear right passenger side door, I vaulted inside and landed sideways on the black leather seat.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, as he placed a plastic bottle of Pepsi into a cup holder. “Where’s Moni?”
“Thom,” I said, attempting to catch my breath. “Thom took her.”
Bruno turned pale and his eyes welled with tears.
“Oh Dear God” he said.
I placed a hand on his left shoulder.
“Listen to me,” I retorted, in a dictatorial voice. “They’re in Bryant Park. Drop me off in the area, park out of sight and contact the police.”
I gagged and dry heaved several times.
“However,” I continued. “It’s important you tell them to maintain their distance. Thom made that point very clear. He’s high and desperate. Til Moni’s safe, he’s the boss.”
Bruno did his best Mario Andretti imitation it and motored to Fifth and Thirty-Eighth within ten minutes. I slid my heels back on.
“Stop,” I ordered. “I’ll hoof it from here.”
I darted out and rapped on his window.
“Remember what I told you,” I said. “I’ll contact you directly ASAP.”
A single tear streaked down his left cheek. I squeezed his right hand.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll be driving her to school til she goes to college.”
My legs grew heavy and tremulous as I lumbered towards the benches near The Park’s Le Carrousel. However, when I saw Moni smiling on the middle of the three black resting spots, my pulse let up a bit. Thom was sitting next to her, but facing in the opposite direction. Scores of people marched by. I plodded over and settled down on the cement adjacent to Moni. She giggled when I embraced her. He veered around.
“You okay?” I asked Moni.
She smiled. I noticed an empty, cylindrical vile on the grass below the bench.
“Papa’s acting weird,” she said.
“I know,” I said, as he sprung to his feet and paced in circles.
Bystanders leered at him. Thom’s face was dripping wet and both hands quivered from inside his jacket, which forced him to drop two blood-tinged tissues from his pocket. He approached, halted, glanced around and grabbed my arm.
“What do you want?” I asked.
His head made violent, involuntary jerking motions.
“For you and everyone else to bear witness,” he shouted, as he leaped atop the last bench.
“To what?” I wondered.
He sobbed and yanked what seemed to be another container of cocaine from inside his coat.
“The last act of a broken man,” he said.
I vaulted up and tried to approach him.
“Sit down,” he bellowed.
I obeyed and dragged Moni towards me. He loped down. At this point, hundreds pored over the scene. The Merry-Go-Round ceased.
“This man’s my ex,” I shouted after pouncing onto the middle bench. “He’s high and could be dangerous. Keep your distance please.”
Thom inched towards the bench, viewed me for several seconds and pointed downward. I heeded the warning.
“Sure you got some people on the way or hiding somewhere,” he said, shoving me in the direction of the far left bench.
I stayed silent. He hopped onto the middle bench.
“I’ll tell you what people,” he screamed.
Whispers and laughter could be heard.
“To prove I’m more distraught lover than monster,” he said, as he grinned. “Gonna let my daughter go.”
I released a humongous burst of air.
“Thank you Lord,” I muttered to myself.
The most important objective was met. Round one to me.
“Ten minutes,” he whispered. “No one approaches and you stay put.”
He unsealed the glass holder and snorted half its contents. An older, heavyset African-American woman wept. I snared my phone and texted Bruno:
“He’s letting Moni go,” I typed. “At Carousel, pull up to street, let her in and leave fast. Got less than ten.”
Within three minutes, I heard tires skidding along Fortieth. I surrendered to my knees and grabbed Moni.
“Bruno’s down there,” I said. “Go with him now. Papa’s sick and Mommy needs to help him.”
I was grateful not to get an argument, but she eyed me while zig-zagging backwards until reaching the car. Bruno sped off. Sirens wailed.
“Uh oh,” Thom shouted. “We’d better jump ahead. You and the esteemed Countess all gonna watch me bleed to death.”
I ascended. He ingested more blow and flailed his arms. Blood poured from his nostrils like raging rapids. Several women screamed. From the corner of my eye, I saw a group of NYPD officers moving in from the right. Thom’s attention was to the left. As I closed in, he brandished a butcher knife and put it to his throat. Though angry enough to kill Thom, I was determined to prevent him from killing himself.
“Stay away you damn dyke,” he ordered.
I dropped to the grass and opened my arms as if I wanted to embrace him.
“Please,” I begged. “I’ll listen. I owe you at least that much. You’re right to blame me. For everything.”
He staggered off the bench and slinked to the ground beside me. The police drew closer. I held him with my left hand and placed the right one up. The police caught the hint, but so did he.
“Who the fuck you gesturing to?” he asked, as he whirled around.
The cops zoomed in. Thom grabbed the knife and positioned its tip a few inches from his abdomen. I tried to wrestle it away, but he squeezed my wrist. I held my grip and, as he tried to flip me over, was able to knee his groin and disable him enough to where both drugs and knife were propelled airborne and fell on a patch of dirt several feet from the original line of scrimmage. He recovered and attempted to reclaim the lost items, but I was able to kick them beyond his reach. At last, New York’s finest took command. Thom was apprehended, cuffed and taken into custody.
For the next ninety minutes, the middle bench and I were inseparable and the seven Camels I huffed and two Valiums I ingested did little to be still a pair of hands that quivered like the San Andreas Fault during a Northern California earthquake. Around three o’clock, Bruno drove me to a Midtown NYPD precinct where I was reunited with Moni. I gave her a bear hug and bawled for several minutes.
“Tiff,” Tiff,” a faint, female voice called out.
I glimpsed up and noticed it was Frazier. She peered at me for at least thirty seconds.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to say a word.”
She smiled.
“Well,” she exhaled. “For the record and whatever it’s worth, his visitation rights have been suspended indefinitely. They’re sending him back to Luxembourg. His parents are putting him in rehab, which’ll be followed by several months in a psych ward.”
“Man, what’d I do?” I asked.
I spotted an unoccupied corner of the station, retired to it and squatted down for a brief moment.
“Sorry Thom,” I whispered to myself.
I turned around and stood erect. Moni gazed at me. I threw open my arms. She sprinted over, jumped up and we embraced.
“Is Papa okay?” she asked. “Why was he acting so funny?”
“Don’t be too upset with him,” I said, as I tightened my grip on her. “He got mad because of something Mommy did.”
She glimpsed up.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t understand yet,” I said. “Someday, I’ll explain. Ready to go home?”
She nodded, as her green peepers closed. Forty minutes later, I put her to bed inside the comfort of our apartment. Bruno insisted on spending the night on our living room sofa. At nine o’clock, I retired to my bedroom. As I hopped into bed, Kiki joined me. At ten, the landline chimed. The caller ID revealed it to be Mercier. I answered.
“Countess?” she asked.
I put the phone on speaker.
“I’m here,” I said. “Luckily.”
She cleared her throat.
“Um,” she said. “I’m truly calling to find out how you’re doing?
“I survived,” I said. “And it’s fine. I know that’s not the only reason.”
A few seconds of silence ensued.
“I, I know it’s not fair to ask you for it now,” she stuttered. “But, would you be willing to do another interview when you’re ready?”
I sat up. For some reason, perhaps that I was still in shock, I was in the mood to talk.
“Sure,” I said.
“In parting,” she said. “Could I sneak one quick question in?”
“Yep,” I said.
“What would you say you learned from this ordeal?” she asked.
I didn’t hesitate.
“I could sum it up in four words,” I said.
“What would they be?” she asked.
I stood up and chugged some Dasani.
“The value of honesty,” I said.
|
Deserters and Independents
David Hernandez
An App for Iphone wallpaper
helped the writer to look for poetry designs
he could send to a poetry magazine.
It helped him find a tree surrounded by other trees,
and a cavern home to scorpions and spiders,
ways to express his loneliness.
It didn’t know he wanted to create a poem
of a motorist carrying his injured left arm.
He tried to show him
a wolf in the arctic
and a snake in the desert,
his two favorite regions,
which kill anyone that comes to visit.
Yet, the writer wants to let people to know,
he is trying to be different.
|
Fly, Little Birdie
Jennifer Green
Their bodies were falling from the cloudless sky like an unholy rain.
If she stopped on Vesey and turned her face up to the burning sky, the devil would have blessed her with his tears. But she can’t stop. Instead she runs, Vesey to Broadway and then north. North until...don’t inhale...them. That jarring thought nearly sends her legs out from under her.
Just keep running, Birdie.
She runs six miles a day so this is not necessarily difficult, but finding an easy pace when every cell screams out to stop, when the lungs drink in panic instead of air, when the throat tightens to resist ingesting more of them, that easy pace is a pipe dream.
Finally, at Reade, she cuts right and drops to her knees. To do what? To pray to the God she gave up years ago? She sags against a glass storefront, but the ash cloud finds her. It works its way over top of the building, around it, and if she imagines hard enough, it even percolates up through the pavement.
Their bodies were falling...
Finally, the cloud settles on her like a thick, wet blanket on a hot August day. It blurs her vision, erases all sound. She wonders what new and terrible world will greet her when it finally lifts. The only thing she can hear is the blood rushing around in her head and her heart beating in her ears. The silence around her is obnoxious. Cities have no business being this quiet.
Tim’s voice begins to cut through the hazy muck. It is soft at first but it gets louder as the pounding in her head begins to ease. He’s calling her name. It’s definitely him. It’s that unmistakable high-pitched lilt that took her forever to get used to. The only thing that saved him was male arousal dropping that aggravating falsetto a few octaves. She opens her mouth to laugh at this but snaps it shut when acrid grit coats her tongue. Her stomach lurches and she fights the urge to gag.
“I didn’t call you,” he says from somewhere in the ether. She knows this, but the awful truth is...Dear God, it was raining bodies.
The cold, hard truth that dances in her head like the macabre vapor that envelopes her now is that she hates him.
***
What are you thinking just before you fall asleep?
Tim stirred in her bed, murmuring something about the trees in Rockland. He got this far away look on his face whenever he told her about the way the trees crowded together so thick you’d never know a rocky drop-off lurks just on the other side. “You could push your way through that brush but never see the water until you’re practically in it. You could hear it of course, but see it? Not until it’s too late,” he said once. He said the trees in Maine seemed to hide the ocean away like a dark secret. He promised her that there was nothing like that coastline anywhere else in the world. She hasn’t been many places, so she had to take his word for it.
He swore he would take her to Rockland, of course, but they would have to wait until the divorce was finalized. Everything with him was always after the divorce. We’ll go to Turks and Caicos after the divorce. I’ll make a reservation at Manje after the divorce. At first she thought this was quaint. He was talking about them in the future tense and that had to mean he was serious. But the longer she waited for this mythical After to show up, the more grays she had to cover, the more lines she counted on her face.
He awakened as she left the bathroom, pulling up her running shorts.
“It’s early,” he said in a voice that swirled with sleep.
“That’s the point,” she said and sat on the edge of the bed. A purple dawn was just beginning to burn the eastern sky and it blazed a pale stream of light through the window. It wasn’t enough to see by but Birdie managed to find her favorite pair of socks in the top drawer. Those hot pink ankle socks had a thin cuff with zig zag stitching which gave them an unmistakable feel, like running her fingers over tightly braided hair. The heels of both socks were so emaciated though, and she knew their days were numbered. Her heart sank at the thought as she slipped on her old faithfuls.
“My little early Birdie,” Tim said and rolled over. He never could understand her crippling desire to run in the wee hours of the morning. She figured not many people did. The only ones who understood were the ones who nodded or smiled as they ran past each other in the burgeoning daylight. They never felt compelled to speak. There was no need for that. They simply knew why the other was there and that was simply enough.
Birdie pulled open another drawer and her hands immediately went to the shirt that lay on top. She had placed it there the night before so she knew it was the right one. The hazards of living in a New York studio apartment are many, one of which is not being able to turn on a light out of fear of waking your sleeping companion. But Birdie managed just fine. Running at dawn had honed her eyesight and given her the ability to see all manner of things in such low light.
She finished dressing and went to the door.
“Jakey, the trees,” Tim said just before sleep overtook him and Birdie slipped into the welcoming embrace of the waking city.
***
She found her cruising speed early and lengthened her stride. Normally that didn’t happen until sometime around Battery Park but today, she was clearly in the favor of the running gods. The air was crisp and hinted at the coming season. Dawn was now a technicolor show of pinks and blues and oranges. She breathed it in, the delightful air energized every cell. She had passed more than a dozen others already. Days like this brought even the weekend warriors out of their hidey holes for a weekday jaunt.
On Henry Street, she waved to Mister Lin and his brother Chuy as they keyed the lock to the restaurant’s front door. She’s certain their food is the best Chinese food in the world. She’s never been to China, but she thinks their food is at least as good as anything you can get over there. Mister Lin is tall and lean and Chuy is short and fat. Mister Lin speaks near perfect English and Chuy stutters and grunts his way through short sentences in some kind of Chinese-English hybrid language. The two brothers could not be more different, yet they’ve managed to figure out how to work side by side through a large expanse of their adult lives. Their brains have probably merged synapses by now so they can easily read each other’s thoughts. She’s certain if you cut off the arm of one, the other is bound to howl in pain.
She wondered how often Tim dreamed of Jake. Tim told her more about the way the trees looked that day rather than address the grim details of the event. Trauma has a way of muting us, she supposed.
“He couldn’t see the ocean through the trees,” is all Tim said about it. They were young when it happened and children don’t possess enough good sense to be truly worried about what they can’t see through the trees on a glorious summer day.
Tim never talked much about Jake at all, which she found odd. Distressing, actually. The only time he really talked about him was in his sleep. It’s like Jake never existed. But she had glimpsed a picture of the two brothers once, so she knew Jake had been real at one point. The photograph was in Tim’s wallet which was open in his hands that night a few months ago at Mister Lin’s. Tim had just pulled out his Amex and handed it to the waitress when Mister Lin slammed a fist down on the empty table next to the kitchen door. He was talking with Chuy and Chuy had obviously said the wrong thing. Birdie was afraid they would come to blows but then Chuy said something that Mister Lin found hilarious. They were brothers in good standing once again.
Tim watched the whole thing with a curious expression on his face. Birdie couldn’t identify it. Was it amusement? Curiosity? Anger? There was a flash of something, just underneath it. Barely perceptible, but she caught it. The corners of his mouth twitched the way they sometimes did when something unpleasant invaded his senses. He had a death grip on his wallet and this drew her eye down. The faded snapshot revealed the two boys standing next to a sporty looking Schwinn, one on either side of it. Tim, the older and thus taller one, wore a menacing grimace on his face. His expression touched off a chill in her lower spine. Her eyes traveled to the younger Jake. He was beaming. His smile took over his whole face. Maybe the bike was his and Tim was forced to give up his baseball practice to teach him? Yes, that was the reason for Tim’s sour expression. Nothing more.
That’s what Birdie was telling herself when Tim realized she was staring at the photograph. He closed the wallet in a hurry and nodded toward Mister Lin and Chuy. “Wonder how often they think about killing each other?” Tim’s expression told her he was quite serious. Birdie was an only child and had no grasp of the petty annoyances wrought by siblings. She imagined they vacillated between apocalyptic and good-natured joshing. Sometimes she wondered what she was missing.
“Probably not as often as you think,” she said with a smile. Tim didn’t smile back.
Market Street dumped her out onto FDR Drive, between the two bridges. Soon, the sun would rise and glint off the East River and the steel and glass monoliths around it, sending blinding sheets of light into the clear sky. She forgot her sunglasses but thought if she hurried she could reach Battery Park and head north before the sun had a chance to do its damage.
At the Brooklyn Bridge, with dawn still curling itself around the edges of horizon, Birdie decided today was the day. The only way she would know her future was to ask the man with the crystal ball.
***
“Now?” Tim asked. He poured a second cup of coffee - her coffee, the expensive kind from Whole Foods, and it was in her pot, the expensive digital one she ordered online. She resisted the urge to take inventory and tally up how much of her food he had consumed during his three-day sleep over.
Instead, Birdie pulled her wet hair up into a ponytail and secured it with the elastic that was around her wrist. She noticed more hair in the drain cover after her shower, a reminder that she’s lived half her life and the next half is about as clear as her head the day after this year’s St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl. Tim lured her into that one. He somehow managed to convince her they could drink like they were barely a blush above twenty-one, but that experience taught them a very important, vomit-soaked lesson that forty is not the new twenty, despite media reports.
She was so caught up in her thoughts she didn’t hear his question. She blinked a few times as she watched him drink her coffee. “Yes now.” A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation told her he’s drunk $532.17 worth of coffee today.
“I’m going to be late,” he said. Just put it on my tab, Birdie, he would say to her request for repayment.
“It’s not even eight,” she said and nodded toward the clock on the microwave. “Have you even asked Julia for a divorce yet?”
“I told you, when the time is right, we’ll move forward with this,” he said in a tone that sounded more like he was trying to convince himself.
She popped open the freezer door and took out a breakfast burrito. Tim frowned.
“We have oatmeal.” He moved to the cabinet and took down the box of rolled oats. She looked at him, unblinking, as she unwrapped the frozen hunk of food. He shook his head.
“I bought the oatmeal for you. I bought this for me,” she said and swiped a paper towel off the roll, wrapped it around the burrito and tossed it into the micro.
“That stuff will kill you,” he said under his breath. Tim believed processed food to be evidence for the existence of the devil, a point of much contention between them. Grocery shopping now was an extreme exercise in patience, not to mention expense. It was like shopping for a baby. Everything had to be fresh. Frozen fruit and veggies were fine, but it had to be consumed within two weeks. If they lingered much beyond that, he was convinced the nutritional value of the food would mysteriously disappear. And the cooking. Good God, she has never done so much cooking in her life. But he somehow managed to make exceptions for those restaurants he liked, despite her teasing that he was probably being served something that came out of a can or a box while being charged triple for that privilege.
“So when are you going to file the papers? You’ve been saying the same thing for a year now.” She kept her eyes fixed on the spinning plate of food in the micro. He surprised her when he wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed her neck.
“Soon. I promise,” he whispered. She shivered as he spoke the words right into her ear. “But I am going to be late.”
“I’m tired of ‘soon’,” she said, not really caring if he was late today, or tomorrow, or next week. “It’s either today or never.”
He swiped his keys off the hook by the door and stopped, his hand on the knob. “Are you giving me an ultimatum?”
“Looks like.” Watch that food go round and round, she thought. Round and round. The counter told her she had twenty more seconds to go. Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen.
Tim exhaled sharply. “Not exactly good timing, Birdie.”
“It never is with you, is it?” Sixteen, fifteen.
The silence told her he might be considering her offer. Or figuring out an escape plan. “There’s stuff going on with Julia. I can’t get into it now.”
“That’s not all.” Thirteen, twelve.
“What now?” His voice turned sour and his tone reminded her of the way a parent might sound after a day spent at the zoo, carting around a gaggle of fighting, whining five year olds.
Nine, eight, seven. “How did Jake die?” Six, five.
She pulled her gaze off her food and squared it on Tim, who had turned a ghastly shade of white. Four, three.
“Why do you want to know that?” His voice was low and she barely heard him over the hum of the microwave.
Two.
“No secrets anymore. You hide him away like he’s just that.”
One.
He left without saying anything. The last she saw of him was the back of his head with its ring of thinning hair that would probably have him considering a hair transplant in five years. His slacks hung loosely around his buttocks, a testament to the weight loss that began when they started dating.
It was like he had been disappearing the whole time they had been together.
***
It was a trek from her apartment down to the Financial District, but the day was too nice and her mood too sour to go underground. She hoped the walk would let her cool off. She needed time to plan her attack. What exactly are you going to say to him, in the middle of his office, in front of all his co-workers? She mulled this over, crossed to Henry Street and stepped into a patch of bright sunshine that she was no longer in the mood for.
By now, there were amazing smells coming from Mister Lin’s and she decided she would eat there every night this week. She almost stopped in just to see if they had any dumplings ready yet. Her breakfast burrito had come and gone in her stomach, and she needed something to keep her going. Keep her strength up and steel her nerves. Don’t you lose your nerve. This is too important.
At Oliver, she turned right. Delivery trucks thundered by, shaking the ground beneath her. The sidewalks were thick with morning commuters. Tim always took a cab to work, a habit she found both ridiculous and unnecessary. She often thought he missed the point of living in this city.
She passed a woman with an “I Voted” sticker on the lapel of her suit jacket. You can vote for Bloomberg after you tell Tim to fuck off, she thought. Or maybe you should vote first. Nothing funnier than a red-faced, screaming woman raising hell 95 floors above the earth with a declaration on her shirt that she’s just performed her patriotic duty. Yes, that’s right. I delayed my crazy long enough to vote, so what are you looking at?
She arrived at Church Street much sooner than she expected. She slowed her pace. She fought the urge to turn and run. It was her nature to run.
“Fly away, little Birdie,” Tim liked to say before she left for the starting line of a 10K race. It was his way of wishing her good luck. It was a nick name she hated but he loved. He thought he was so clever when he came up with it.
But I’m not your Birdie. That isn’t even my name.
I will start with that, she thought just as the sound pricked her ears. It was background noise at first, but at Park Place she looked up into the perfect cerulean sky. She only glimpsed snippets of the aluminum bird between the buildings.
It’s too close.
***
The only thing she could do was count, up from the sky lobby, 78th floor. But the 78th floor was blotted out by smoke. She used her memory to find it instead. Seventy-eight, seventy- nine, eighty. All the way up to ninety-five.
You told me you loved me on 9th Avenue between 43rd and 44th. The rain had just stopped and you stood under the green neon sign and said you loved me. You looked young in that light.
She stood there and watched, cell phone in hand. It didn’t ring.
She didn’t run until she had to.
***
“I didn’t call you, Birdie,” the amorphous Tim says again.
“You called Julia,”“ she says aloud. The dust stabs her eyes like a thousand knives and they tear up like mad in an effort to rid themselves of the foreign matter. Of them. Him. “Why would you call me? I was never real to you, was I?”
“I didn’t know what was real,” he says. He sounds farther away now, like he’s talking over his shoulder.
“But do you now?”
“Yes.” A pause. Then, “Jake’s here.”
“Good,” she says as the strength finally returns to her legs. She pushes herself up and looks down. She wears the dust like a new outfit. It clings to every inch of her body, suffocating her with the weight of its ingredients.
“I can see the trees now. Can hear the ocean, too. I want to see the ocean.”
Sun light begins to peak through the execrable cloud.
“Birdie, you there?” He’s deeper in that forest now. He sounds winded, like he’s running. She can see him in her mind’s eye, twiggy legs, flat butt and thinning hair hauling through the underbrush.
“Yeah.” She attempts to rid herself of the dust but it doesn’t seem to want to leave her.
“The trees look just how I remembered.” Deeper still. Almost gone.
“Watch out for that drop-off,” she says. Legs shaking, she takes the first tentative steps toward home. “You know those trees hide a nasty secret.”
|
choice
Janet Kuypers
1/19/15 (1/20/15 IST, from the India haiku series), on twitter
our only choice is
to destroy ourselves. it’s our
choice. and so we do
|
Juror Number Six
Bob Strother
Tanner’s elbows rested on the desk, hands fisted under his chin as he read the morning Post’s headline: Acquitted Man Arrested in Second Deadly Shooting. He sighed, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a perverse sense of satisfaction. The man who’d been arrested, Dewayne Lamont, had been set free by a jury only one week earlier. His latest victim was the ex-girlfriend who had dropped the dime on him in the earlier case. The case Tanner prosecuted. The case Tanner lost.
Connie, his secretary, set a cup of coffee down on Tanner’s desk and glanced at the headline. “You told them so,” she said.
Tanner met her gaze. “Thanks. I’d of felt like a jerk saying that myself.”
“Take it easy on yourself. You did all you could.” On her way out of the room, Connie said, “And, speaking of jerks, don’t take everything your ex-girlfriend says to heart.”
He looked up again, but she was gone. Tanner’s mood, already glum, slipped further into the abyss. Yvonne, his lover for the past year, had recently dumped him for a stock broker with a waterfront condo on the Eastern Shore and a new Mercedes SLK. 0 for two, he thought.
He was still brooding later that afternoon when Connie buzzed him on the intercom.
“I have a Jessica Whatley on line two,” she said.
Jessica Whatley. The name rang a distant bell, but Tanner couldn’t place it. He picked up the phone and pressed the blinking button. “Jeff Tanner.”
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I just finished reading the newspaper story. I wanted you to know how sorry I am about our decision.”
Then it hit him. A week earlier he had requested the jury be polled. He’d wanted the jurors to realize what they’d done, wanted them to feel individually responsible for what he knew was a miscarriage of justice.
“Are you still there?” the voice asked.
“Yes.”
“I was juror number six.”
He remembered her now, mid-thirties, short blonde hair, wearing a simple blue dress with a gold pin at the neckline. She’d lifted her head defiantly, brown eyes boring into his. “Not guilty,” she said, and nodded for emphasis.
“It’s not necessary for you to apologize, Ms. Whatley.” The damage has already been done.
“But it is,” she said. “I just feel terrible. I want you to know we only reached our verdict after careful consideration. I’d like to explain further.”
Tanner picked up a pencil and tapped it on his legal pad. “You’ve already explained, Ms. Whatley. Thanks for calling. I appreciate it.”
“I meant ... in person.”
“Well...” There was a long silence on the line while Tanner debated with himself. He was still nursing some anger, but her apparent sincerity was nibbling at the edges of it.
“C’mon,” she said. “Couldn’t we meet for a drink later today, or a cup of coffee? Really, I feel I owe you something.”
“I guess a drink would be okay.” He checked the wall clock. “I’m through here at five.”
“How about Jason’s?” she said. “Over on Connecticut? I can be there by six.”
“All right,” he said, “I’ll meet you there.”
And he would’ve had he not been called for a conference with the District Attorney. When the meeting was over, he checked his watch. It was six-forty. “Shit,” he said, and looked up the number of the bar.
“Is a Jessica Whatley there?” he asked when the bartender answered.
“I’ll check.” When the man came back on the line, he said, “No one here by that name now. But if she’s a hot-looking blonde, I think she left about fifteen minutes ago.”
He debated letting it go; he didn’t owe the woman anything, after all. But the bartender was right about her being good-looking. And it had been a while since he’d been out with a woman.
Tanner looked up her number online, but when he tried it, got a recorded voice telling him the phone was no longer in service. Finally, he called the courthouse, found a night clerk he knew, and was able to finagle the juror’s home address.
He could have walked—it was only ten blocks from the courthouse, but the wind was up and it was spitting snow, so he hailed a cab and arrived at the address, a four-story brownstone, shortly after seven. The directory showed a J. Whatley in 209. He walked up one flight of stairs, found the apartment, and knocked on the door.
Seconds later, the lock tumblers turned, the night chain rattled into place, and one brown eye peered at him through the crack. “Yes?”
“It’s me, Jeff Tanner,” he said. “I wanted to apologize for missing you at the bar.”
“I waited half an hour,” she said. “I thought you’d changed your mind.”
“It was a last minute meeting, the District Attorney’s office. It’s my fault; I don’t usually do this sort of thing. I would have called before coming by but your phone is ...”
“I had the landline taken out,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to get a cell, but I’m afraid I’m kind of disorganized that way. How’d you find me?”
He grinned. “I have friends in high places.”
She slipped the chain off the door and grinned back at him. “Well, you’re here; you want to come in?”
The apartment was furnished sparsely, but charming nonetheless. Gas logs glowed in a small fireplace, with recessed lighting over the mantle.
“I haven’t really shopped for groceries,” she said, “but I could make some fondue, if you’d like.”
“That’d be great.”
They had cheese fondue and wine in front of the fire. She apologized again for herself and the rest of the jury, but the wine, the ambiance, and her presence combined to ameliorate any residual feelings he may have had about the case. After strawberries and cream for dessert, she poured two brandies and touched her glass to his. “This is fun, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said.
And he meant it.
Tanner spent the next two days at a legal conference in Baltimore, alternating his thoughts between prosecutorial issues and Jessica. He wondered if he shouldn’t have tried hitting on her. A nice looking woman, living alone, soft lighting, drinking wine and brandy, maybe she’d expected him to hit on her. The trouble was ... well, she wasn’t Yvonne; that was the trouble.
The one sexual experience he’d had since Yvonne dumped him had been with a woman he’d met at a bar. They’d both gotten pretty drunk, and she’d taken him back to her apartment. Afterward, he’d gone home and lain awake half the night thinking of Yvonne.
Give it up, Tanner told himself. Yvonne was gone. Jessica could be a new beginning.
After arriving back in DC, Tanner stopped off at a deli and bought a bottle of good French wine. He got a taxi to Jessica’s apartment, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and knocked on the door of 209. He waited a few seconds, then knocked again.
A faint voice came from within. “Yes?”
“It’s me, Jeff Tanner.”
“Oh,” she said. “Wait just a second, please.”
He heard footsteps approaching and the door opened a crack, the night chain stopping it. Through the narrow opening, Jeff saw her face, tousled hair, a glimpse of naked flesh.
“I was ... uh, taking a nap,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay; it’s just that ... uh ...”
She turned away for a moment, then looked back at him. It’s just that there’s someone here with me, her eyes said. I was in bed with someone, and it’s just a very inconvenient time for you to come knocking on my door. It’s just—hit the road, Jack.
“Well, I...” He kept looking at her eyes, hoping maybe he was reading them wrong, but the night chain stayed on the door. “Well, I’ll see you another time, okay?”
“Jeff,” she said, “I’m really sorry. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting you, you know?”
Tanner shook his head. “No, it’s my fault. Again. My mistake. Goodnight, Jessica.”
“Goodnight,” she replied.
He turned away, heard the door closing behind him and the small, oiled click of the tumblers falling into place. “I’m really on a roll,” he said softly to the deserted landing. “First it was Yvonne, then the Lamont case, and now this.”
He descended the staircase still carrying the bottle of French wine. He turned right on the sidewalk and headed for the subway station. At the corner, he spied a derelict huddled in a shadowed doorway. Tanner stopped and handed him the paper bag containing the wine. A crooked grin stole across the old man’s face, exposing a row of rotten, jagged teeth.
“Thank you, sir,” the man said. “A splendid vintage, I’m sure.”
Tanner was halfway across the intersection when the bum yelled out, “Hey, dude! ’Dis bottle don’t have no screw top. How I supposed to open ’dis?”
Tanner continued walking. And that, he mused, makes O for four.
|
cover
Janet Kuypers
1/19/15 (from the India haiku series), on twitter
cover shoulders, legs
women are second class, so
cover your spirit
|
Sit with Me
Joseph Walters
Francis had answered when his brother called—Hello?
Robbie had said—“Hey, France. It’s me.” Then he waited. “Please. Don’t hang up yet.”
Francis drank and listened to him. He chimed in when he had to, but kept on drinking. He even drank now at the office kitchen table, gin in a coffee mug, hand on a forehead, like a live heart in his palm. This solution, painful as it was, silenced a past he could not soberly control; it backed memories into quiet corners, dazed his pain into a static inebriation.
Someone walked into the kitchen, and Francis looked up slowly. Bernice, the office receptionist, stalked in through the doorway and curled her back like the crescent of an aging spoon. Francis smiled at her. He stared at a chair before him and kicked it forward from beneath the table.
She looked behind him, above him almost, and continued on.
He lowered his coffee mug back down onto the table and saw, from the tops of his eyes, Bernice stopped a few feet ahead, tapping her shoe, clearing her throat, and nodding suggestively behind him.
He sipped his drink again—the gin dabbed only with the color of cola—and turned around: Outlined figures blurred like pixels on the back wall. He blinked three times—“Francis, I can hear you breathing,” Robbie had said—and found himself staring at an empty coffee pot and a sign on it which read, “You finish it. You fill it. All right?” He turned back around.
Bernice had her arms crossed. She tapped her shoe louder.
He turned to the Coffeemaker, tilted his head and scratched it. Then he saw the clock on the microwave and breathed. It showed six minutes past four, so he turned to smile at her.
But her back faced him. She was heading out of the door.
“Almost there, sweetie!” to try to lighten her mood.
But she was gone.
Francis arrived at his desk and fell back into his rolling chair. He slid his hands through his thick, black hair, pulling the ripples in his forehead taut—“I wanted to say I was sorry, France. Really. I mean it this time”—and his desk phone rang; the clatter bounced uninvited off his skull. He rolled forward, tapped a button on the phone a few times, and listened, with satisfaction, to the ring fading softly.
Ed, in the cubicle beside him, heard the change in volume and turned around. “Damn, when’d you get here? What you been doin, man? You been gone for a while.”
Francis glared back and nodded at a picture of Ed’s wife on the wall. “That’s what, buddy.”
Ed laughed. “At least somebody damn gets to” and gazed longingly at the photo. His wife’s long brown hair drew curled down her breasts; her small frame held tight in a thin, black tube top; and her smile stretched large and kind across her face. Ed sighed with exaggeration, and a silence followed—Francis had coughed into the phone—then, “You wanna go out tonight, man?” Ed asked. “I wouldn’t mind a drink.”
“Absolutely. Yeah, yeah we can do that.” Francis stood and walked toward him. He revealed a shining flask from his pocket on the way, and Ed smiled and looked around. He knelt beside Ed’s chair and filled his mug to the halfway point; but, as he pulled his arm back down—Robbie had said, “I’m sorry”—, the back of his hand brushed against Ed’s knee. Francis backed away nervously. “What’s goin’ on, huh? Somethin’ botherin’ ya?” Francis asked.
Ed said, “Yeah. Sit with me, will ya?” Francis crouched onto the rug, and Ed leaned forward. “Me and Baby been gettin’ along pretty bad as of late, Frank.” Ed surveyed the cubicle, grabbed a pen from the floor, then added, “Not like me and her talk about it, it’s just—I can feel it, ya know? That change that everybody’s afraid of. I think we caught it.”
“Hey, sorry, man, but, uhh—” Francis paused.
Ed had coughed; he spit liquor down his shirt like rain. He stashed his mug between his pant legs and wiped blindly with his tie, waving and smiling distracted over Francis’s shoulder.
Francis gazed back. “Hey Boone, whattaya know, boss?” He lifted his mug and nodded toward the man staring from the middle of the aisle. He turned again. “Sorry, Ed, keep talkin, will ya? It’s good. I mean—you talkin and all, it’ll help. I know it will. When—”
“I been thinkin,” Ed began, “everything we ever say to each other is about someone else, ya know? That’s all we talk about, how we get along and all; it’s not always the good stuff we say, either. I’m startin’ to really get tired of it.”
“Yeah, okay, well, uh—”
“It’s just—it’s the same old shit, ya know?” Francis nodded and swigged. “That’s all we got goin’ for us. We never talk about anything, me and Baby. Nothin’ that’s good anyway. Nothin’ that pops into our heads; all we ever do is retell and retell what shit we did today and what happened to somebody we knew yesterday. We’re talkin’ to a stranger we don’t have any real words for—but, Frank, that’s the thing, I know we got ‘em. I still think ‘em, that’s for sure.”
There was silence. A brief gap: you done? “Ed, now,” Francis began, awaiting another interjection. “I, uhh, I don’t see the hurt in tryin’ that honest stuff—talkin to each other truthfully and all that?—it’ll work as long as ya both agree in not hittin each other, no?” Ed flushed into a spontaneous scarlet and glared down. “And, uhh, hey, how ‘bout gettin the drinks more expensive than usual? Ya gotta do that sometimes, ya—”
“Me and Baby don’t hit each other; where the hell d’you get a thing like that from, huh?” Ed asked.
“I, uhh, I didn’t. I just—”
“I’m headin back to work, Frank.” He turned to his desk. “You should do the same.”
Francis stood. He looked back on his way. “Hey, look, sorry, man.”
Ed cradled his head with a hammock of interlocked fingers; he slumped low, sent long, deep breaths into the flurry of dejection now released, now free, above his head.
Francis got back to his desk—“I’m sorry for what I did, Francis. I swear I am. I didn’t know what I was doing”—and his phone rang.
He answered this time.
Francis walked to the street from the bus shelter and gazed over a line of beeping cars for the Septa. He pulled out his flask and began shaking it next to his ear: Feeble dregs splashed inside. He inched the container back—thinking he’d save it for a more pressing occasion—but stopped; the traffic blared ahead; the sounds triggered memories of his boisterous childhood to start to replay before him, forcing a slow tilt to his mouth and the censors of his mind to disorient—Okay, Francis replied—the exactness of the scene.
When he turned back toward the bench, a child and his father were behind the heavy-tempered glass. The boy paced before the man’s tall, gangly legs, and the man’s fingers were wrapped around the boy’s shirt collar. Dad let go for a moment—to yawn—and the boy lifted his gaze to Francis, who was watching him.
Francis smiled. He crouched, covered his face with his large, thin hands, and opened them quickly, flapping, like saloon shutter doors in a breeze, over and back again, as his face emitted a silly, gay expression each time it surfaced.
The boy looked up to his father, indifferent to the stranger’s goofy disposition, and dropped a single tear from his cheek. He said something to him—something which Francis couldn’t quite hear, behind the blaring of car horns—and the father looked down at him. He pulled his son’s arm sharply forward and smacked him on his cheek. Francis heard him say, “Men don’t cry; buck up, will ya?”
The boy closed his eyes and looked to the ground.
Francis turned and sat on the empty bus-stop bench. He removed the cap from his flask—“I wunna do this for mom, kid. She needs it. Please?”—drank, and continued through his memories.
The bus arrived—Okay—and Francis found a seat next to a teenager, one who, he thought, quite resembled his younger self. He laid his briefcase onto the floor—“Hey, how ‘bout you come over then?” Robbie had asked—and glanced first at his watch. He puffed his cheeks, trying desperately to distort the reflection off his domed plastic timer—Robbie—and then he sat down.
He felt something protruding beneath him. The teenager’s oversized leather jacket had found its way under his thigh. He looked at the boy: His eyes opened and closed in an apparent exhaustion. An Eiffel Tower was stitched onto his sleeve, below a phrase in, what Francis assumed to be, French. Francis proceeded to move the leather off his leg, but halted, noting, just then, how comfortable the boy looked, his eyes closing, his chest lifting and falling against his seat.
So Francis grabbed onto his shoulder.
The young man’s eyes opened. “Hey. Uhhh...Can I, can I help you?” the kid asked.
“I’m sorry, brother.” Francis shook his head—Stop—and then released his grip. “That jacket looks like it’s swallowing you. There’s no way it’s warm enough.”
“Thanks, but, uh, do, do something else, all right? I’m fine here. It works fine.”
“You don’t gotta be nervous now. I’m not gonna hurt you or anything, kid. I just—I remember when I used to have that. Back in college. That jacket, I mean. You there yet?”
“No.” The young man slouched in his seat. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes.
“I miss it. Really do. Used to have fun back then, let me tell ya.” The bus radio turned on. “Leather was a big damn hit. You got the right idea.” Francis drew his flask from his pocket and put it next to their seats. He whispered and leaned close to the boy, keeping his eye on the others’ quiet preoccupations, “Hey, hey, France, how ‘bout a little drink, huh? Yeah?” Their legs touched.
The young man replied, “No, no I’m good,” and leaned away.
Francis bumped against his arm. “C’mon, now, kid.” The leather felt warm. He grazed up and down on the side of the jacket vacantly, remembering the comfort he had forgotten, the couch, the basement, and then the change: He said, “Don’t be such a puss,” like Robbie had done, before he touched him again.
The young man said nothing.
“You look like you could be my little brother, I swear. What should I call you? France?”
“Will you stop? Jeeez.” The young man glared at Francis and scurried off to the back of the bus.
Francis looked in the rear view mirror—“What? What is it? What’d I do this time, huh?”
He picked his briefcase from the floor and filled the open seat with it. He laid his head on the latches and closed his eyes. The kid passed him in three blocks. Francis grabbed at his jacket on the way, “Hey, I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t mean anything. Really, I’m sorry. I swear I am. I just, I didn’t know who I was for a second. You know?”
Francis walked into his apartment and pulled his door shut with a click. A patient, sheathing silence dropped, layered onto his suit like falling dust. He slid his hand into his coat pocket—Not now, Robbie. Not yet—and pulled out his flask. After draining the last few sips onto his tongue, he dropped the steel to the floor and plodded his drunken feet atop the creaking floorboards to the kitchen.
He opened a cabinet door and pulled out two glasses, knowing, full well, that one would not be enough. He placed them both at a spot beside the sink, flipped on the faucet (to wash his hands), and brown spurts splashed onto his unclean dishes. He thrust the handle back quickly, crouched for the bottle of whisky from under the sink, and then lifted. He poured the glasses at medium height—“Come awn,” Francis heard again. “I don’t wunna wait anymore, brother”—and then walked them over to the couch.
He sat in front of the broken television, and the phone rang beside him. He held his breath. Then, “Hello?”
“Hiiii, Francis.”
He exhaled. “Hey, ma.”
“Hey, Francis, I’ve been thinkin’ about you.”
“Yeah, ma? That’s nice.”
“Yeah!” she proclaimed. “I had a good day today. Everything was real good. I’m startin’ to make friends here.”
“That’s good, ma. You take your pills?”
“Hey, Francis, how was your day?”
“It was good, ma. Had a good—”
“I had a good one too, Francis.”
He heard her try and stand. He pictured her pale-as-paper cheeks redden. “You okay, ma? It’s okay.”
“I get real nervous when I’m here, Robbie.”
“It’s Francis, ma,” he said. “Stay seated though; it’s okay. You take your pills?”
“Yeah, I did. They’re always so nice, Francis. They make sure I take ‘em. You know your mother’s gettin’ old?”
“No way, ma.”
“I talked to Robbie yesterday. He said he called you.”
“Yeah.”
“You two make up?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, but I’d like you to, Francis. Think about it. I ain’t gonna be here forever ya know.”
“Don’t say that, ma.”
She breathed. “How’s it been?”
“Still hearin him. Bad dreams and all too.”
“Oh, France, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Yeah,” Francis said, “It’s okay. But, ma, can we talk about Dad? I kinda feel like talkin today if you’re up to it.”
“Robbie never meant to confuse you or hurt you or anything. He just had stuff goin on, you know that.”
“Not about him, ma. I don’t want that.”
“Yet?”
“Maybe, ma.”
“You’re strong, Francis. You can. And I know it.”
He took a swig. He looked around the empty, yellow room.
“And Daddy was too, ya know, for a bit. He was strong; like you when he was your age. And I met him when I was older, so, don’t worry, a girl’ll come. And you’ll make her as happy as I was.”
“Can we focus on Dad more, ma? We talk about girls every day.”
“Oh, honey, okay. I’m sorry. You know I’m gettin’ old.”
“Nah, ma.”
“Dad—aw, but, Dad wasn’t that nice to you, was he, Francis?”
“But it might help, ma. Talkin about it.”
“Yeah, it does sometimes, doesn’t it? I remember when me and your dad went to talkin stuff. Always helped me. I would go on and on about everything, and Dad would just sit there and sulk and act like he didn’t have anything to say. But he did. And he never got anything from it.”
“Not everything though; right, ma?”
“Sorry, France. Yeah.”
Francis swigged. “Can you keep goin? About Dad? I’d like to hear more.”
“He just hated himself so much for doin’ it, Francis—sendin’ Robbie there. And then when he found out that that stuff didn’t work, doesn’t work, and Robbie came home again, he was so damn worried and broken all the time that he—” short, quick breaths enveloped the receiver—“I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry.” She stopped. “I say that too much, don’t I?”
“It’s okay,” he answered. “You’re fine. I love you. Keep—”
“I went to the movies today, France.”
“Aw, you wanna stop then?”
“What’s that, France?” she asked. “Aw, aw, I’m losin it, again, aren’t I?”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I think I gotta go though. I’m not feelin that good.”
“You sure, France? I love you. We can keep talkin’ if you want.”
“Nah, ma, it’s okay. I’m just, I’m gonna let you go.”
“Just feel better, France. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Okay, ma. Don’t worry. It won’t. I promise.”
Francis placed the phone gently back onto the receiver. He put his head in his hands; evocative remains—“I was twelve, kid. Get over it”—banged slowly on his eardrums.
Francis sat on the fire escape rail and rocked. He held one thin drink in his hand; the other, half-full glass sat beside him. He looked down and saw people walking home from work, or from a flight, he presumed, as leather bags rolled on the cracked cement—“Just let it go.”
Francis swigged. He closed in quickly to the bottom of his glass. The liquor falling into his stomach drowned a buoying censor with the final stage of his intoxication, and the streets turned quiet. The scene went exact.
A young boy and his father appeared on the sidewalk. He dragged the son by the forearm and jerked him quickly forward. “Let’s go, Francis! Come aahn!” After Francis took the final sip, the figures below turned static; they faded and brightened again like the reception from a swaying antenna. The picture had strengthened. “Why couldn’t you a been quiet, huh?” Dad asked.
The young boy cried silently.
“Stop!” He pulled young Francis’s arm forward and towered over him. “Stop fucking crying!” Dad drew his arm back and whipped his fingers against the boy’s face. “Men don’t do that.”
Francis gripped the metal railing with both hands and leaned forward. His chest tilted, angled a quarter of the way to the sidewalk; his heels wedged in between the gaps of vertical, twisting bars; gravity pushed down. He held tight.
“France, look at me,” His dad said.
“Call me Francis, okay?”
“Just tell me it didn’t happen.”
He paused. “I’m sorry.”
Francis picked the second whisky off the railing—he heard Robbie’s voice again, “Will you say somethin already? Please?”
The dad nodded from below. He let go of his son and walked forward without him.
And the boy looked up at Francis who spun the glass in his palm. He saw Robbie in its reflection and felt cold. He pulled the glass to his tilted chest and closed his eyes and breathed.
He dropped the glass from his fingers, listening, finally, “It looks like the couch is swallowing you, France. Here, let me—” before it shattered.
The liquor had splashed warm against the boy’s upturned face. The figures vanished. And the voice stopped.
Francis walked in through his window, over to his bed, and sat down. He looked in the mirror and to the spot beside him, where it was empty.
He closed his eyes and lay back—Maybe later. Yeah?—Click.
“2, Frank?” asked the bartender.
“Nah,” Francis said, “Nah, just one today.”
Boone and his wife, Theresa, walked through the front door. Francis headed straight toward them, gripping his glass and smiling; but the couple looked busier than usual, discussing something of a clearly stern importance, so Francis walked past them. He felt Boone’s eyes on his back as he pushed open the door, but his name was never called; so he just kept walking.
When outside, Francis found he didn’t have much to do. He didn’t smoke, really, and his drink was now empty. He had to wait to come back in, too, to let them finish; so he bent over the rail and listened to traffic, and then silence: with its irritation banging gongs in his skull.
After about five minutes he walked inside. Boone and his wife were quiet again. He leaned over the bar. “Two Jack and Cokes and a Lemon Drop,” waving a twenty dollar bill at the man in black, “Please?”
He turned, scooted next to Boone, and placed the Jack and Cokes in front of himself and Boone’s wife and the Lemon Drop before Boone. “Hey, Booner. You like these ones, don’t you, you fruit?” He nudged against his boss’s shoulder with his own.
Boone laughed, staring at his wife. “You here alone, again, Frank?”
“Yeah.” Francis smiled. “Eddie said he was comin, but he’s as late as always, you know him. I got a feeling he ain’t gonna be here, but I am either way, ya know?” He swigged. “I’m good on my word and on my own. Ain’t I, Boone?”
“Yeah, Frank.”
With an outstretched arm Theresa grabbed the Lemon Drop and slid it to her own side of the table. “Frank, you ever get a girlfriend? You’re a handsome man, and you never got one on these Fridays.”
“Don’t worry,” Francis said. “I’m fine. Really. Makin attempts just isn’t the first thing on my mind right now, ya know?”
“Maybe she could help though,” she said.
“You want food, Frank?”
“Nah. Thank you.”
They sat in silence. Francis scanned the room: where no one played pool, some people spoke, some, and one man sat alone at the bar. Francis drank with him.
He gazed around again; and a woman smiled at him.
He grinned at Theresa, stood, waved goodbye to his friends, and walked toward the woman.
She wore a black dress that used to fit. She had long lines of gray in her black hair, and he hunched over the stool beside her. He could feel her eyes on the side of his face, as he motioned, “2,” to the bartender.
Francis took them, placed one before her and brought the other to his lips.
She drank then too.
He had told Helen earlier on the phone that the disagreement was his fault. That he was sorry. Really. That she should come over if she could. Please. If she could.
He was talking to his mom when she walked in.
“Francis, a girlfriend?! That’s wonderful! I’m so happy for you. What’s her name? Is it Marie?”
“Me too, ma. No, no, it’s not Marie, I’m sorry; she is a little like you though. You’d like her, I think you really would. It’s Helen, ma. Her name’s Helen.” Helen got out two glasses from the kitchen cabinet. “And she just walked in here, so I think I gotta go, okay? I gotta run.”
“I love you. Be safe,” Ma said.
“I love you too.”
He went into the kitchen. Francis and Helen talked for a while. He caught up with what he’d missed throughout her week. Then he said, “Thanks for comin. I, uhh, I think I needed this.”
“What’s been on your mind?” Her voice was soft. “I heard it on the phone, too.”
“Can we sit?” He asked.
She took his hand.
He led her over to the couch and cleared a pillow for her, a spot for her.
She sat down.
And he stood beside the coffee table. “I do care about you. I mean, last week, I uhh—” Francis stopped. He breathed. “I didn’t mean what I said, did you know that? You really shouldn’t listen to me. I’m bad at talkin’ a lot of the time—but I—I would never hurt you. I just didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to, ya know? So I let it out. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does. It’s okay, Francis. I get that.”
He rubbed his forearm. “I don’t wanna lose what we got, Helen.”
She inched forward. “Francis...” Her knee bumped against her glass, and spilt liquor down her naked shin. “Ah, shit,” she muttered and stood. “Aw, damnit, I’m sorry, Francis. Here, I’ll—”
He ran into the kitchen and brought a towel with him.
She said, “I’m sorry, jeez, I’m—”.
Francis kneeled onto the floor and blotted the liquor dry.
“Hey—”
Francis looked up.
She sat again. “You don’t have anything to worry about you know.”
He smiled at her, silent. “Can I say somethin?” he asked, standing. “It’s kinda been on my mind, me not talkin about it.”
She patted the seat next to her on the couch. “Is it Robbie?”
“Yeah.” He walked over. “Yeah, it’s about him.”
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imprisoned / ignorance
Janet Kuypers
1/21/15 (from the India haiku series), on twitter
I am imprisoned
on earth’s dirty side, due to
their ignorance
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A Tale of Two Sammys
Steve Slavin
When we were maybe 8 or 9 years old, we would happily spread stories about people we knew from the neighborhood. It didn’t matter whether or not they were actually true, just as long as we thought they were funny. Their names would become punch lines to jokes, or sometimes serve as insults or put-downs we would apply to each other.
Every kid on our block knew “the crazy lady” and “the drunken super.” The poor “crazy lady” would walk by almost scowling to herself. Once she rushed by and looked even more worried than usual. There were fire engines in front of her building and lots of black smoke billowing out. I felt bad for her, and maybe just began to realize that I’d feel the same way if my building caught afire. Maybe she had a really crappy life, and that’s why she always looked so unhappy.
“The drunken super” was a very serious alcoholic. Often in the evening we would hear him singing at the top of his lungs. In those days, apartment house furnaces were fueled by coal. One afternoon, when we heard shoveling sounds coming from his basement, my friend Bob guessed that “the drunken super” must be shoveling his bottles of liquor.
Then there was “Sarge,” a nice looking guy with slicked back hair. He had been in an army sergeant in World War II, and the story we heard was that he was shell-shocked. He lived on the first floor of our apartment house and would sometimes sit by the window. He always wore a tank top khaki-colored undershirt, and he was usually quite affable. But then, sometimes we’d hear him yelling at somebody. The only problem was that Sarge lived alone.
Still, the weirdest person on the block was Sammy. We heard that he was a genius – with an IQ over 200. But he could not, or would not speak. His father had died suddenly when Sammy was 3 or 4, and that was when he stopped talking.
Sammy lived in a private house in the middle of the block. He was usually outside in the late afternoon, but his mother kept the driveway gate locked, so no one could get in, and Sammy couldn’t get out. They also had a big black German Shepard who would bark if any kid tried climbing over the gate.
We’d say hello to Sammy, and he would nod or wave. If we were playing stick ball or punch ball and the ball bounced into Sammy’s driveway, he’d return it to us. When George, the ice cream man, came around on his motor scooter, we would buy ice cream for Sammy. But he never told us whether he liked chocolate or vanilla, a cone or a pop, or anything else.
We wondered if he could actually be a genius if he never talked. In fact, some of the kids down the block called him a retard. Still, he was really sweet, and who knows what was going on in his head?
Then there was the other Sammy. A guy in his early twenties, he sometimes hung out in front of his house. He was a little strange looking. He had what looked like one continuous eye brow, he was kind of stooped over, and he seemed a little depressed. No one ever saw him smile. Sometimes after we walked by him, we’d speculate about whether someday they would have to come to take him away.
Then one day we all found out the truth about Sammy. His mother told her best friend that when Sammy was an infant, one of his testicles never descended. Why she decided to disclose this very private information, no one knows. But she supposedly said to her friend, “I’m telling you this in the strictest of confidence. I know I can trust you: you’re my best friend.”
Within 10 minutes this startling piece of news had travelled all the way up and down Kings Highway, and by nightfall, there was no one in the entire neighborhood who had not heard that poor Sammy had just one ball.
Kids being kids, when we’d walk by his house, who could resist holding up one finger. Not that we ever did when he was outside. But surely he knew that we knew. And if anything, he looked even sadder.
Well, time passes, and kids grow up. We were now in our late twenties, and Bob, Larry and I got together for our monthly boys’ night out.
“Did you hear what happened to Sammy?” asked Bob.
As Larry and I looked at him questioningly, we each raised an index finger.
“No, not that Sammy! I meant the other Sammy.”
“Oh no!” said Larry. Did something happen to him? Did he die?”
“He was such a sweet guy,” I added.
“I guess you guys didn’t hear the news” said Bob.
“News? What news?” we both blurted out.
“OK, first things first. A couple of years ago Sammy snapped out of it. Just like that, he started talking, and he became completely normal – at least for him.”
“So he wasn’t really retarded after all,” I said.
“Retarded? Retarded! The guy turned out to be a fucking genius!”
“Yeah,” said Larry, “remember they used to say he had a 200 IQ?”
“200?” asked Bob. “Try 300!”
“What are you leading up to, Bob?” I asked.
“Are you guys ready for this? Sammy invented some kind of sex pill. It’s supposed to be 10 times as powerful as Viagra. “
“Hey, I gotta get some of those pills,” said Larry.
“Actually, they’re already on the market.”
“And they work as advertised?” I asked.
“Guys, let me put it this way. You remember the other Sammy?”
Immediately, Larry and I both raised our index fingers.
“Well, I heard that even he has a smile on his face.”
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Eleanor Leonne Bennett Bio (20150720)
Eleanor Leonne Bennett is an internationally award winning artist of almost fifty awards. She was the CIWEM Young Environmental Photographer of the Year in 2013. Eleanor’s photography has been published in British Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Her work has been displayed around the world consistently for six years since the age of thirteen. This year (2015) she has done the anthology cover for the incredibly popular Austin International Poetry Festival. She is also featured in Schiffer’s “Contemporary Wildlife Art” published this Spring. She is an art editor for multiple international publications.
www.eleanorleonnebennett.com
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Too Many Miles
David Haight
The twin mattress was crammed against the wall beneath a shelf stuffed with pictures. Next to the bed was a desk, a litter box in place of a chair, and a dusty elliptical machine. The sound of the television and the morning show her mother had forced her (then with more vigor brother Dylan) to watch growing up echoed up through the vents. The voices were harsh and hard to follow. There was a banging of cabinet doors. The smell of cat piss was unbearable. Miss Otis, her Grandmother Loretta’s cat was dirty, shit besides the litter box and hissed at everyone, batting its tiny white paws at your ankles. She refused to get rid of it. She knew how to love the unlovable, like Deborah, like me, Emma thought. There was a hesitant, apologetic knock. The door opened slowly.
“Emma?” It was Deborah, sent up by her grandmother, taking a sip from an oversized coffee mug that despite being French Roast was unable to cover the smell of cat piss. Deborah had gotten knocked up by Loretta’s oldest son Martin when she was barely out of high school. He packed up and split town twenty some years ago. She was devastated. She took his old room in Loretta’s house and never left. That’s probably what they think I’m going to do, Emma thought. Left my baby with my mother and drove away only to turn up here. “Don’t you have to get ready for work?”
Emma grunted and waved Deborah out. She sat up. On the wall opposite the bed was a black dresser lined with dozens of photographs: her grandfather in his marine uniform as a young man, her uncles and aunts and cousins at picnics, sporting events, graduations, beneath Christmas trees, wedding pictures all modeling outdated fashions and hairstyles. Her family was the exception. Those photos stopped the year her father left and were identical: her mother, Dylan perched on her hip, barking orders, at her father who was mugging for the camera, younger versions of herself, her face triangular and beaming, staring merciless at her, making it hard to stand up. It felt like a shrine to a family that died in some horrible way, in a car crash or house fire. There was none of her stepfather Jack, whom everyone in the family with the exception of her mother and brother loathed. She had begged to stay at Eric’s (a boyfriend of sorts) but his parents, who had always disapproved of her, refused. Before hopping in the shower she stole one last glance at her dad, hoisting her above his head.
“There’s the most beautiful granddaughter in the world,” Loretta said the minute she saw her. “How did you sleep?” she asked, waddling over to her, brushing the hair out of her eyes. She smelled of coffee and piousness.
“Fine,” she said pushing her away. She poured herself a cup of coffee, pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it. Loretta frowned. “You got that filthy habit from your mother.”
“Can you not make a big deal about everything?” she asked blowing a long cloud of white smoke at her. She stole a glance at the television on the kitchen counter. “One year that stupid show came to East River and mom dragged Jack-”
“Don’t say his name.”
“at three-thirty in the morning to O’Hara’s where they plopped on the front walkway to get a glimpse of that faggot host. She had had a few belts so she didn’t even see him when he walked by. Jack snagged him by the shoulder, and introduced him to mom,” she said unable to hide pride in her stepfather’s actions. It was a story her mother told often especially after she’d been drinking. She caught herself. “He was always pushy, would have kicked me out of the house at fifteen if he could have.”
“That’s right,” Loretta said with righteous indignation. “I knew he was trouble the minute I laid eyes on him, sat there staring at Dad and me like he was better than us. Better than us. I knew what he wanted. He wanted your mother. Not you kids. Not us. He was a son of a bitch. Cared only about himself and his worthless books.”
“I’ve been talking to Deborah this morning,” she continued nodding at Deborah as if pointing out a new painting on the wall Emma had missed, “and we have no doubt that we can get Rain back.” Emma sighed. “She’s your daughter and your mother has no claim. After what that son of a bitch did to you and your mother. Just thinking about it,” she paused and gazed to the heavens for strength. “I won’t let my great granddaughter be raised in that environment. I will use every resource I have left.”
“Grandma!”
“If she is still with Jack then we can use his history of domestic abuse-” Deborah began logically, piercing Loretta’s bombastic rhetoric.
“Beat the crap out of her is what he did,” she said making the sign of the cross. Deborah did the same.
“-and get Rain back here without a hitch. The main thing is, um, we know how impulsive your mother can be,” Deborah said slowly. She appeared reluctant to go on. Emma stared her down.
“What are you trying to say? Spit it out for fucks sake. Is there anything to eat?” she asked turning towards the kitchen.
“What’s she trying to say dear, is we know how volatile your relationship is with your mother, so it would be best for you to... not engage with her. Do you understand what we’re saying?” she asked bringing her a piece of toast a perfect square piece of butter floating in its center.
Emma groaned. “You’re saying to stay the fuck away from her.”
“The language,” Loretta said with a grimace. “A pretty girl like you shouldn’t talk like that. But yes. We don’t want her taking Dylan and Rain and disappearing. Bow your head.”
“She won’t pull precious Dylan from that fancy high school. It’s a piece of toast,” she said holding it up.
“And you should be thankful for it.”
Emma bowed her head with a barely concealed smirk. Loretta and Deborah followed suit.
“Bless us our Lord,” Loretta began. Emma mouthed the words rolling her eyes letting her tongue dangle from her mouth.
“Amen,” they all concluded.
“This is all your father’s fault.”
“Can we not talk about him?” she asked taking another drag from her cigarette.
“If he hadn’t left with that whore none of this would have happened. And after all the money I gave him and your mother.”
“Grandma!” Emma shouted, slamming her coffee cup on the table a pool of brown coffee settling next to it. “That’s not true,” she whispered. Her grandmother had a way of manipulating the facts, taking a sliver of truth, magnifying and calcifying it, divorcing it from all context. It was one of the reasons her mother hated her.
“Who leaves his wife and children after twelve years?”
When her parents divorced her father moved out of state and returned twice; both times asked only to see Dylan. No one knew why. He was loaded into the car like a prized Pony. Eight hours later she watched as her mother and Jack pulled into the driveway unloading an endless parade of gifts. She raced to the front door, nearly yanking it off its frame. “What did he get me?” she screamed. Jack shook his head, “Nothing.” She slammed and locked the door. It was a sting she still felt.
“He came to see Dylan but not his beautiful daughter, his first born; everyone knows your first born is special.” Deborah frowned. This made Emma feel better and worse. Her grandmother had that ability. “I hope he rots in hell for what he did to his family. Pushing his wife into the arms of that devil.”
“Did he ever hit you?”
“No,” she screeched. The closer Jack and Dylan became the more heinous Jack grew in Loretta’s imagination until she became convinced that Jack, who had struck Cassidy before, had also hit Emma. He hadn’t. Emma had never seen Jack hit her mother. She had seen the results but never any of their epic blowouts. It was the only mercy either of them had ever shown.
“Why did you leave her?” Deborah asked.
“I know you mean well but you don’t know what it’s like over there,” Loretta said with a forced smile. “I’m sure she had good reason with those two maniacs.”
“I know enough,” Deborah said having picked Emma and Rain up deep into the night on more than one occasion.
“Didn’t you hear me? They are maniacs. He once went after her with a rock.”
“Actually she went after him with a rock,” Emma said. “A real big one. Split his head open like a melon,” she laughed exposing chewed up bits of toast. “It was forgotten about by the next morning, the two of them cuddling beneath a blanket on the couch, holding hands, nursing their hangovers together, smiling and speaking sweetly to one another. She would get a new bandage for his head once it was soaked through. By the end of the day the garbage can was full pink and cherry bandages like the molted skins of snakes.”
“It’s toxic.” Loretta said. “I’m just glad you came here.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Emma said, taking a slurp from her cup, setting it over the spilled bit of coffee.
“Then isn’t it too toxic for an infant?” she asked never having understood why Emma chose to live with her mother and stepfather and put herself and her child in the line of that hateful fire.
“Who was there for you when the father of your child walked out on you?” Loretta hissed.
“That was your first born that did that,” Deborah barked back, unafraid.
“And we need to be there for Emma.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Emma said but Loretta wasn’t listening, never listened to anyone who contradicted her, never listened to anyone but herself and God which were interchangeable.
“What we need to focus on is getting Rain back safe and sound and away from that monster.”
“You’ve always had a blind spot for her,” Deborah said. “It doesn’t help her.”
“Somebody has to love her. She was abandoned by her father and all but abandoned by her mother.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Emma said playfully swirling her finger on her plate licking up the crumbs.
“I’m not going to talk about this in my house,” Loretta said ending the conversation. Everyone was silent. Loretta refilled Emma’s coffee. Deborah was critical of her reflection in the compact mirror.
“I don’t know why I left her,” Emma said, mashing out her cigarette on the plate. She only knew that one morning she woke up and felt worn out, like a car with too many miles still expected to go from one coast to the other. “I need to go to work, are you ready?” she asked Deborah. She nodded, got up, tossed the compact in her purse, which she threw over her shoulder. Emma finished her coffee, set the cup upside down in the sink, patted Miss Otis on the head, which batted at her shoe and followed Deborah to the car.
She arrived at work twenty minutes late. She was excited, she had been working as a salesperson at Assorted Memories, a small jewelry making company, exactly three months and qualified for medical benefits. She didn’t know anything about custom jewelry or how to sell it. The HR director, who she had only talked to the day she was hired greeted her and invited to her office on the floor above. Once there Emma pointed to the silver framed pictures, “Are you a newlywed?” Startled, the woman nodded. Emma was informed that she hadn’t expanded their territory into the southwest and was being let go. “You can gather your things and leave.” Adding, “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay this job sucked anyway. And you look better in the pictures.”
Exiting the building she crossed the street, sat on a bench next to the man-made lake the ducks ignored and called her mother.
“I just got fired.”
“And?”
She could feel her mother’s disappointment compounding by the second.
“When are you going to grow up? Start taking responsibility for things?”
She didn’t know and was scared to death. She never wanted to grow up.
“No answer per usual.” Her mother was disgusted. “Do you have anything to say, are you even worried about your child or how you’re going to support her?” was the last thing she heard before the line went dead.
“Bitch,” she said to the empty line. She attempted to call Eric but he didn’t answer. Where was he? Why wasn’t he answering? He always answered when she called. He was probably seeing that slut Anne again. Didn’t he realize she had an asymmetrical face? She repeatedly called her therapist who repeatedly failed to answer, slipped off her high heels and walked the five miles to the 1200 Club. She didn’t have any money but started drinking anyway, White Russians. Around three-thirty a haggard looking man in his forties wandered in ordered a whiskey and coke and stared at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He bristled with the kind of kinetic energy that barely camouflaged some inner trauma. I should know. He’s either been fired like me or his wife split. If it’s the former drinks and the ladder drinks and sex. She chuckled. “Rough day?” she asked sliding up next to him.
“Don’t waste your time on me,” he said returning to the mirror.
She leaned on his shoulder and caught his eyes in his reflection. He turned her way. Now I have him.
“Give it up,” she said. He threw her a puzzled look. “You’re in a bar in the middle of the day. Unless you’re a pro which you’re not something happened. And to break the ice I’ll go first, a month ago I abandoned my child with my mom and I got fired today.”
“My wife left.”
Drinks and sex, she thought. A bet’s a bet
“What are you doing about it?” he asked, as if he were begging for help.
“This currently,” she said lifting her glass. “I’m seeing a therapist, against my will. Mainly I sit on his lumpy couch and stare at him. He has a square shaped face. Always wears brown. Why do all therapists dress like communists? That’s beside the point,” she said waging her finger. “That’s all he would do. Wag his finger and tell me I have low self-esteem. Well, that seems clear,” she said taking a long pull from her glass once again getting comfortable on the bar stool.
“Do you believe in soul mates?” he asked sadly. What a loser, she thought.
“We chat about that too. I pepper questions at him: how do you recognize your soul mate? Does everyone get a soul mate? Is it like opposites fitting together like yin and yang? Sometimes it got too esoteric. What if your soul mate was born in a different part of the world or a different century? What did that mean for your happiness? Things like that were interesting but rarely helpful. He reminded me this was not why I had come to therapy. You sought out help because of your issues with your father, he would say.”
They drank for hours. She teased a twenty out of his wallet and filled the jukebox with music. They got drunk and laughed and swapped war stories. “What could you know, you’re a baby?” he asked more than once the whiskey catching up with him. He had an edge when he drank too much whiskey.
Once when the bartender wasn’t looking she snatched his right hand and shoved it under her shirt and onto her bare breast and he found himself coughing out, “I want to make love to you.” She took his head between her hands (his hand was still on her breast) and said, “Nu-uh. It’s not that. And no, your wife wasn’t your soul mate.”
“What could you possibly know that?”
“Because you’re sitting here with me,” she said, “probably having a better time. And I’m not a baby.” The bartender had caught on by now. They ended up in the backseat of his car her pants pushed down but still clinging to one leg (in case the cops come she whispered, he liked that) frantically having sex. He sweated profusely and apologized for it nearly as much. After they picked up an armies worth of Chinese food and crashed at his house.
The next morning he staggered down the stairs to find the sun pointing its fingers at the razor thin scratches running along the surface of his exquisite hard wood floors. It all came back. They burst through the front door pawing at one another. She snatched a container of Chinese food from him, placed the thin handle in her mouth and danced her way backwards across the floor, drawing him forward with her index finger. He followed. She discarded her purse and he his suit coat on their way into the kitchen, where a pool of noodles, lay scattered in the sink. She sloppily fed him from chopsticks. The scratches in the dining room were replaced by Swiss-cheese divots in the carpeted stairs that led upstairs, where his tie was hanging languidly over the railing and their clothes slept like exhausted dogs outside the bedroom.
Emma was already up. He could see her spaghetti-thin legs dangling from the roof, swaying nervously. He cracked the patio door and poked his head outside, peering up at her. She stared awkwardly down at him, coffee mug in her hands and smiled ironically.
“Your fire pit looks horrible.”
Shooting a glance at the hole in the ground and the rusting iron insert wedged uncomfortably into it, he thought about the day Tiffany left and not knowing what to do bought the iron insert and shoveled until he thought he was having a heart attack. “It’s not pretty but it works.” Emma shrugged. “I’m going to go change,” he said. Emma shrugged again. He put on a fresh set of clothes then headed into the den, through the window and took a seat at Emma’s side. She had just left another voicemail for Eric. She sat staring into the distance, smoking a cigarette.
“You’re not getting weird about last night are you?” she asked frowning at him.
“A little but nothing for you to worry about.”
With the exception of her nose which was large and inelegant she was the twin of her mother. Withdrawing the cigarette and rolling it between her index finger and thumb she said without looking at James, “I stole them from my mother. When I was a teenager. I would steal packs of cigarettes from my mother. I didn’t do it intending to smoke. I just wanted to piss her off. Besides Jack, my stepfather, there was nothing she loved more than her cigarettes. Nothing. Eventually I started smoking them. Big surprise. You ever smoke?” She finally looked at him.
“Not really. When I drink sometimes. Should I throw a couple of steaks on the grill and make some eggs or do you just want to go out?”
“I need to sleep not that I’ll be able to,” she said. “But the sun’s nice. Look up there,” she said pointing to the power line and the hawk resting on top of it three yards over.
“We get them all the time. Their natural habitat is gone. They have nowhere else to go.”
He threw a couple of streaks on the grill. It smelled good, reassuring. He was sprinkling salt on them. She was about to let him off the hook for last night when the doorbell rang. She stood up and walked over the roof and peered down at the blue pickup truck in the driveway. “It’s my kid brother.” He was unable to hide his fear that he was being drawn into a family drama he had no interest in. She climbed down from the roof. “Fuck you,” she said to him as she opened the door.
“How’d you track me here?” she asked, leaning out the doorway, glancing over his shoulder. “Is mom with you because if she is-” He cut her off with the wave off his hand.
“You need to come and get Rain,” he said. “I’m not kidding Emma”
James watched in fascination at this tall thin boy with the face of an angelic child.
“Why don’t you go play Hot Crossed Buns with Jack? He is back isn’t he?” Dylan just stared at her. “God you make me sick.”
An expression of disbelief fell across Dylan’s face. “That’s what you say. Your child is at home and that’s what you’re going to say to me. To mom?” He did an about face got in his blue pickup, backed out of the driveway and screeched away. She shut the door.
“Hot Crossed Buns?”
“Jack, my stepfather, played saxophone so naturally Dylan wanted to play. One day I came home after five days. I had run away. Anyway I walk in and there they are playing together, in harmony you could say. With all the bad stuff that happened in that house that one wasn’t the worst but it hurt. What do you care, right?” she said, yanking her hair back into a ponytail keeping it in place with a rubber band she pulled from her back pocket.
“Listen, I’m sorry, and-”
“Save it,” she said. “Let me shower. The only thing I’ll ever ask from you again is a ride.” He didn’t argue.
She arrived at her grandmother’s. No one was home. Thank god. She desperately needed to talk with Eric. He was still ignoring her. He wanted to know if she would love him again. He wanted to know if he was the father. It was only a few days after her birthday, the first birthday after her father had left. The check he mailed to her bounced. That was when she knew things had really changed, that he hadn’t just moved. She taped it to the inside of her locker, a burning beacon of hatred. Eric, whose locker was next to hers and who had a thin mustache covering up a constellation of acne, saw it. That’s when it all started. A few days later she opened her locker to find a postcard with a daisy, hand drawn in crayon, in muted colors and above it the words, also in crayon, and talk about the weather. Even at the thirteen she found it beautiful. She pictured them having a small little house in the city with a tiny little garden and a dog they would take for frequent walks. They had a favorite coffee shop and bookstore. They would have a baby girl their dog would be protective about. Sometimes she let him kiss her sometimes more. She crawled to the twin mattress. The room smelled. She fell asleep.
A few hours later her phone rang. She surged to her purse. It was Eric. He wanted to see her. She dug through her grandmother’s dresser drawers until she found forty bucks. Then she went to her secret hiding spot in the back of her closet, snatched another fifty and despite the buzzing she felt in her head she fished the few turds out of the litter box and walked them like extracted bullets into the toilet, snatching the much larger pile next to it with a paper towel and flushing it. There, she thought convincing herself easily. Now we’re even. Closing the door behind her she left and sat on the shoulder of the highway waiting for Eric.
Emma entered the car slowly, as if she were a nervous hitchhiker. She shut the door and stared out the passenger window. They drove.
“What? Aren’t you talking to me?” he asked leaning forward trying to catch her eyes. “Hello?”
“I’ve been calling you for days,” Emma said, her head whipping at him. “You haven’t answered or called me back once. I could have been laying in a ditch for all you care.” While you were screwing Anne, she thought.
“It’s good to see you,” he added after they had driven a few minutes. “What’s been going on? I’m sure things are crazy as usual.”
“I want to go see my dad if that’s all right with you.” She added, “I lost my job.”
“Jesus what happened?” He pulled through a McDonalds and ordered them two large Cokes.
She took a long drink. “That tastes great.” He liked making her happy. She shrugged. “I’m just a loser.”
He reached over and rubbed her shoulder. “What really happened?”
“They said I couldn’t expand their southwest territory or some bullshit. It’s not like they trained me. Anytime I asked for help they basically told me to go fuck myself. Maybe it was true. I hated it anyway. I’m just no good at anything.” Before he could contradict her she went on. “It’s not just that. I don’t like anything. There’s nothing I want to do for eight hours every day. I already know what you’re going to say that I should find something I like well enough to do every day. But who wants to live that way?”
“But you have Rain now?”
“Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain. Why is everything always about her?”
“She’s your daughter.”
“No, what you want to know is if she’s our daughter.”
“That doesn’t matter.” But it did. “What matters is that she’s taken care of properly.”
“Why do you think I took the job in the first place? I took it for the medical insurance.”
“I could make you get a DNA test.” He was glaring at the road. He wanted to glare at her but he was afraid. He was afraid of her.
Emma opened the car door and struggled to unfasten her seatbelt. Eric’s right arm pushed her hard against the seat. The wind howled. Her large Coke collided with the window and dropped to the floor. She pounded his shoulder with her left arm. He eased the car over to the side of the road. She kept pounding his shoulder and face. Looking down at her shirt she brushed away the spilled soda, opened and shut the door and signaled for him to drive. He started the car up again. Neither spoke. It was their usual routine.
Eventually they passed the tall gates of St. Mark’s cemetery. It seemed more barren than usual with the last of the leaves having fallen off the trees and the milky greyness of the sky. They headed, hand in hand toward the back, where her father’s gravestone sat on the top of a little hill. They stood for a long time without saying anything.
“Didn’t we make it one time in here?” Emma asked.
“You know we did,” he answered. “We did lots of crazy shit in here. Remember when they buried that sixteen year old that was killed in a car crash?”
“Simonson,” Emma said. “Michael Simonson. The only reason we checked out his tomb was because of that notebook hanging from the cross in that purple plastic container.”
“It looked so strange dangling from the arm of the cross. People would visit his grave and write messages to him.”
“We couldn’t wait for the new entries.”
“Christ you pretended you were one of his friends. You even wished him a happy eighteenth birthday. It’s not funny,” Eric said.
“It’s a little funny.” She rubbed the corner of her father’s tomb with the toe of her shoe. “He just left and never came back,” she said without emotion. “I used to tell myself that our family was perfect before that, before the divorce, Jack and all that. But like most memories it was a lie.” She reached back into the past that wasn’t anymore and into the future that she would never have. She lit a cigarette. “Everyone thought it was adorable that I was daddy’s girl. They didn’t realize it was a response to Dylan and my mom. All my life my greatest fear was that my mom loved Dylan more than me. When my dad left I was devastated. I would lie in my bed at night asking him why he didn’t take me. But I already knew why.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid-”
“It wasn’t anything I did,” she began.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” he said thinking he had finally gotten through to her after so many years. “For, well forever,” he added.
“It was being born. (His shoulders dropped.) I was a mistake. My parents never would have gotten married. My mother made it clear that her marriage was the greatest mistake of her life. She was resentful about it and furious at my dad for finally splitting (something she never had the courage to do by the way).”
“She stayed together for her family. For you.”
“Bullshit. She’s weak. She threw her life away on something she didn’t want and that makes me sick.”
“What should she have done?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Aborted me and gone on with her life.” She started to soundlessly cry. “My dad tires of us, finds someone else and splits. My mom finds Jack and has the family she always wanted. Even Dylan is happy. Everyone is happy and I’m left out in the cold because I was never wanted in the first place. That’s why she loves Dylan and not me.” Eric made a face. “Don’t you see? You think you’re so smart. She chose to have him.” She wiped her eyes and nose and wandered over to another grave picked up a fresh bouquet of flowers and laid them on her father’s grave. She was silent.
“Remember that summer my family went to Florence? We went to see Michelangelo’s David,” Eric began, in that thoughtful way he had. “We waited in line for like two hours. Everyone was tired and crabby but excited. We were about to turn the corner into the hall where he stands so majestically when my stepsister-”
“The older one?”
“Yeah, Maria, who had been suspiciously quiet put her hand on my forearm and says that she’s frightened.”
“Scared? Of a statue? Another weak woman,” she spit out.
He continued, “She was white. I thought she was going to faint.” Emma made a face. “I found out later that there were only two things she wanted to do before she died: to raise a family and see David.” She made a questioning face as if to ask: what gives? “She wasn’t prepared for it yet. She couldn’t even go in. We would get close to the hall and she would roll out of my grip. I had to walk her out. I already know what you’re going to say she gets all the way there, halfway around the world and wimps out? Stupid, right?”
She squatted down, and brushed dirt away from her father’s name. “It’s not stupid. She’s exactly like me. It was easier when he was dead. I was able to blame Jack or mom, even Dylan. But he’s not. He’s out there right now not giving a rat’s ass about me.” Standing back up she pointed down at the tomb. “I don’t know who this is,” she said with a soft chuckle. “My dad lives in Philadelphia.”
“When you asked me for money to go to Philadelphia to meet his mom?”
“It was to see him,” she said wiping tears from her eyes. “At least I tried to. I got outside of his apartment and waited. For hours. He came and I couldn’t. He came out again and I still couldn’t. I just flew home.” She took a breath.
He glanced around the cemetery before turning back and locking eyes with her. “Is Rain mine or not?”
And there it is. The only reason you bother with me anymore, she thought.
“I don’t know. Honestly. I was out with Amy and Chris. I was mad at, well, everything. Some guys were buying us shots.” She paused, for a long time. “I woke up the next morning, sore and with no memory of the night before. He didn’t even drive me home. I don’t know if it’s yours.”
Neither spoke. Finally Eric took a deep breath, one that it turned out he had been waiting to take for a long time. Emma wasn’t sure if he was going to scream at her or simply walk away and out of her life. For the first time she was afraid of what he might do.
“Wanna go slash his tires?” Eric asked.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
They dashed to the car. They sat staring out the windshield at the mute grey tombstones.
“How long have you known?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
She threw an icy glare at him.
“Come on Emma,” he said with a dark smirk. “The years don’t match up. You’re not as clever as you think you are.” After a moment he added, “You were lucky there was someone with the same name for Christ sake.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything?” she asked, prepared to get angry at him.
“Stop,” he said, running his hand over her face.
She felt foolish and tiny and sad.
“Did you at least get to see it?” she finally asked.
“What?” he asked puzzled.
“David.”
He nodded. “Later. A few days later.”
“Did Maria?”
He shook his head no.
“How was it?”
“Perfect.”
Emma smiled. He did, reluctantly.
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unless
Janet Kuypers
1/19/15 (from the India haiku series), on twitter
feel warmth from the sun
touching legs, shoulders, your skin
unless you’re woman
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There’s A Leopard In The Garage
Jonathan Payne
“There’s a leopard in the garage,” says Nicky, slamming the front door behind him. He flings his school bag into the closet under the stairs.
“What did you say?” calls his father from the kitchen, over the sound of coffee percolating. Leonard Allcott Jr., known to most as Lenny.
Nicky heads over towards kitchen, raising his voice. “I said there’s a leopard in the garage.”
“OK, very funny.”
“I’m serious!”
“Hold on, what are we talking about?”
“I’m talking about a leopard. An actual leopard. You know, like in the zoo. Except this one’s not in the zoo; it’s in the garage.”
“What, right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw it’s ass squeezing under the door, after mom’s car went in.”
Lenny drops his cup onto the tiled kitchen floor, where it shatters into pieces. Nicky hops out of the way. Lenny says, “What!? Your mother is in there with it!?”
“Think so.”
“Fuck me, Nicky! Why didn’t you say something!?”
Lenny heads full pelt along the corridor and into the utility room. Nicky races behind him.
Lenny reaches the internal garage door just as Theresa Brown Allcott, known to everyone as Terri, steps through it with a wide grin and an armful of shopping bags.
Her grin swiftly morphs into a grimace. “Leonard!” she says, as Lenny pulls her by the shoulders from the doorway and into the advancing Nicky. He slams the door behind her and locks it with both bolts.
Terri and Nicky land in a heap on the floor of the utility room.
“Lenny, what the hell!?” says Terri. “What’s going on!?”
“Oh God; I’m sorry,” says Lenny, helping them both up. “Nicky says there’s a leopard in the garage.”
“A leopard? How can there be a leopard? I didn’t see anything.”
“Thank God for that,” says Lenny, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Nicky saw its ass squeezing under the door as your car went in.”
“Oh, come on, Nicky. Are you sure?” asks Terri. “It’s probably just Buster.”
Lenny rolls his eyes and turns to Nicky. “Of course, you probably just saw Buster.”
“I don’t think so,” says Nicky, “because what’s left of Buster is spread all over the Spencers’ front yard.”
“What the fu...” says Lenny, before heading to the front window of the living room. The others follow.
Sure enough, right there in the Spencer’s front yard are the grisly remains of something. A mangled and bloodied torso, right in the middle of the lawn. Next to it lies a severed leg and, next to that. something smaller and difficult to distinguish, maybe an ear.
“Oh my God.” Terri puts both hands over her mouth. Lenny worries that she’s about to hurl.
“You see,” says Nicky, “that looks like Buster.”
“Yes, it does,” agrees Lenny.
Terri runs into the kitchen, arriving just in time to vomit into the sink. Lenny and Nicky hang back in the living room, to give her some space.
Lenny runs his hands through his hair, wondering what to do next. The question is answered for him by the sound of a distant siren.
“Stay with your mother,” says Lenny, and heads outside.
Brian Spencer is standing by his fence, hands on hips, his face like thunder.
Roger and Dorothy from opposite the Spencers are heading across the street. About half way across they spot the remains of Buster. Dorothy buries her head in Roger’s shoulder.
Clive Sampford, two doors down from Roger and Dorothy, is spreading his collection of orange cones across the road to stop traffic from going past the scene of the crime.
Now one siren has become two, maybe three. And they’re much closer. The sounds twist and phase in the early evening breeze.
Colin and Michelle, the young couple next door to the Allcotts at the other side, arrive home in their station wagon. They leave the car in the driveway and head over in Lenny’s direction.
Nicky’s older sister, Connie, appears around the corner carrying her school bag over her shoulder, with a group of girlfriends. They slow down as they approach the Spencers’ front yard. One of Connie’s friends curses then spits her gum into the street.
Old Mr. Simpson, opposite the Allcotts, appears on his porch and takes a seat on one of the rocking chairs, as if preparing to watch a show.
A couple of unidentified neighbors from further along the street are walking past and stop to survey the scene.
Another neighbor stops his SUV short of Clive Sampford’s orange cones and strolls over to take a look.
It occurs to Lenny that he’s never seen so many of his neighbors in one place before. He reaches Brian Spencer and is about to say something, but is drowned out by the arrival of the first police car.
Everyone stops and turns to watch the black and white Chevy take the corner with a squeal before it stops abruptly, just short of the Spencers’, outside the Etheringtons’. The Etheringtons are on a cruise somewhere in the Caribbean.
Two officers emerge and march purposefully in the direction of Lenny and Brian. They don’t introduce themselves, but the taller one’s badge says Allinson; the shorter one’s badge says Krepsch.
“Are you Mr. Spencer?” Officer Allinson asks Lenny.
“No, he is,” says Lenny, pointing to Brian.
Allinson turns to Brian. “Can you tell me what’s happened here?”
Brian shrugs and gestures towards the grisly remains spread across the lawn. “Search me. I just stepped into the yard and found this. He was called Buster. Golden Labrador. We’ve had him nearly seven years.”
Lenny realizes that they are surrounded by a growing circle of most of his close neighbors. He leans into the two officers so that he can speak quietly. “My son saw a wild animal.”
“What did you say?” asks Krepsch, pushing his ear lobe in Lenny’s direction.
“My son thinks he saw a wild animal. It went into our garage.” He points out the garage.
“What sort of wild animal?” asks Allinson, sounding skeptical.
“I don’t know,” says Lenny. “He thinks it’s a leopard.”
“A leopard?” asks Krepsch, too loudly.
“What did he say?” calls one of the neighbors.
Allinson looks around at the growing group of onlookers. “Folks! I need you to back off a little, please. Please step back onto the sidewalk, so we can talk to these two gentlemen.”
The neighbors shuffle backwards and begin to chat among themselves.
A couple more cars are now stopping at the traffic cones. A second police car pulls up, followed by an ambulance.
“Where’s your son now, sir?” Allinson asks Lenny.
“In the house,” says Lenny.
Allinson turns to Krepsch. “You go with this gentleman to talk to his son. I’ll stay here and take a statement from Mr. Spencer.”
Lenny takes Krepsch inside. Terri is in the kitchen, cleaning up after herself. Nicky is sitting on the sofa, just staring into space. He’s making no attempt to watch all the commotion outside.
“Nicky,” says Lenny, “can you tell the officer what you saw, please?”
“Sure,” says Nicky, calmly, not moving his gaze towards Krepsch. “It was a leopard. No doubt about it. Saw its ass squeeze under the garage door just as mom’s car went in.”
“Did you see it attack the dog?” asks Krepsch, sitting down on an armchair in an attempt to get into Nicky’s line of sight.
“Nope. Just saw it’s ass heading into the garage,” says Nicky.
Krepsch stands up again and turns back to Lenny. “And you’ve secured all the doors?”
“Yes,” says Lenny. “Whatever it is, it can’t go anywhere.”
“Can I see?” asks Krepsch.
Lenny leads him briskly to the utility room.
Krepsch puts his ear to the door for a second. Then he checks that the door is locked. “OK, let’s get everyone out of the house until we know it’s safe.”
Lenny fetches Terri and Nicky and they follow Krepsch outside.
Now there are even more neighbors massing on the sidewalk. They are chatting amongst themselves; animated but respectful.
More sirens in the distance. And the first sign of an evening chill in the air.
The newly-arrived police officers are busily cordoning off both the Allcotts’ house and the Spencers’ house with yellow and black striped tape.
Krespch escorts the Allcotts onto the sidewalk.
Allinson turns to address the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen! Please stay behind this tape. For your own safety, I need you to keep back.”
“What’s going on?” shouts an unidentified neighbor from the back of the crowd.
Allinson looks reluctant to speak. “We believe there is a wild animal of some kind trapped in this garage.” And he gestures towards the Allcotts’ house. A murmur goes through the crowd. “Everyone is safe if you stay back. We’ve called for animal control. They’ll be here soon.”
“What kind of wild animal?” shouts someone else.
“We don’t know,” says Allinson, “maybe a leopard.”
“How can it be a leopard?” shouts the same guy. “The nearest zoo’s in the city. Is it a leopard that can drive a truck?” Nervous laughter ripples through the crowd.
“OK, folks, simmer down, please,” says Allinson. “We’ll find out what it is when animal control arrives.” He steps along the street to make a phone call.
Lenny turns to Terri, “You OK?”
“Sure,” says Terri, but at the same time she gestures towards Nicky and pulls a face. Nicky is smiling absently and staring along the street. Lenny shrugs.
Krepsch approaches them. As he does so, Lenny has a thought. A terrible thought. Perhaps worse even than the possibility of a wild animal in the garage.
“Officer,” Lenny says to Krepsch, “is it OK with you if I lock the house up? It won’t take me a second.”
Krepsch looks around and says, “OK. But don’t go near the garage. And be quick.”
Lenny nods and jogs down the driveway into the house. He closes the front door behind him, takes a deep breath and runs his hand through his hair. He heads over to the closet under the stairs and pauses before opening the door.
Gingerly, Lenny picks up Nicky’s school bag and looks inside. He takes out a huge science textbook and flings it back into the closet. Likewise with a graphing calculator.
Then he sees what he had hoped not to see. Lenny reaches carefully into the bag and pulls out the wood axe that’s supposed to be in the shed. As he lifts it by the handle, something begins to fall from the blade. It is blood, and dog hair.
Lenny takes the axe into the kitchen, cleans it quickly in the sink, then washes his hands. He steps out of the back door, takes a quick look around, and hangs the axe up on a nail in the woodshed. Then he heads back through the house and out into the front yard, straightening his hair as he goes.
The crowd on the sidewalk, now bigger than ever, is making way for the arrival of a large van marked with the words Animal Control. Some of the people spill through the police tape into the Allcotts’ front yard.
As he approaches them, Lenny raises his hands. “Hey, folks! Keep back, please. There’s a leopard in the garage.”
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Jonathan Payne Bio
Jonathan Payne is a British writer based in Washington DC. He writes literary thrillers, noir and magical realism. His first novel, The Shores, tells the story of a bombing incident at a New England beach resort. His short stories are published at QuarterReads and Beyond Imagination. Follow him at jonpayne.org and @jon7payne.
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The Idiot
Jeffrey Penn May
I am an idiot, but then you don’t have to be smart to get down on yourself, do you? Anybody can do it. Just ask my friend Harold who is just a kid but has an old man’s name and thinks because of his name he should know more than the rest of us. Which of course he doesn’t. And of course I need to tell you about him, otherwise why would I bother with this nonsense, trying to write it down. It’s important. But then why would you bother believing anyone who calls themselves an idiot. Well, okay, I’ll get you there. Look around you now. I’ll bet everyone nearby is an idiot. I’ll bet that if you are alone, you are still in the presence of an idiot.
So I’m here just trying to write the nonsense about Harold because he is important – maybe the ugliest kid I’ve ever met who doesn’t have a grotesque disfigurement or obvious genetic malformation. Although genetics has something to do with it, I think, because he was, and still is, short, face like a troll, or Smurf, small clubby hands, squinty short legs, hunched back, and like his name, he seemed older than he was. He had just turned fourteen, and he had chin stubble on his double chin and glistening spittle. And his squat body seemed perpetually tense, ready to explode, or snap back like a breaking spring. A tight wire, he was. And here is his important story...
I was his principal. My job was to help him. I was the idiot in control. But his story overwhelmed me, broke me, chewed me up and spit me out even though I knew he was crazy and I was not.
Still, looking into my own mirror afterward, I saw a shattered man, a man who had more than enough of the Harolds of the world. And I smashed the mirror and I stared at the blood streaming down my arm.
Fuck it. Here is Harold’s story, and I’m an idiot. He was a mentally and emotionally challenged kid who wanted, he once told me, among other things, to fuck his mother, but only after he carved his name with a piece of glass into her neck and painted her tits with her blood. I said, So why do you think you feel this way, Harold. And he said, Just kidding. I told him we create our own realities.
I had only to watch the evening news, as I often did – cable was best – to know that Harold’s story could be or become real. Ratings are important, and so is Harold’s story.
Why he told me then, I don’t know. Maybe because it was 100 degrees, and the AC was struggling. Even though my office is below street level and, therefore, theoretically cooler, it often felt humid and suffocating. He sat hunched over in a plastic chair, beady black eyes. Never, could I tell you if he was looking at me or listening to me, or even if he had any shred of understanding.
— Hello Harold.
— Hello Mr. Maze.
— Why did you want to see me?
— Today, Mr. Maze, I need to call you Jerry. Can I do that?
— No.
— I need you to be my best friend Jerry. Just today. I promise. Never with the others around.
— Okay, for now, if that’s what you need.
— Hey, Jerry, what’s up?
— Not much, you?
— No! No! Don’t answer me! Just listen!
— Okay.
— Hey, Jerry, what’s up? Nothing you say? Well look, you mother fucker, nothing can’t be only up. Nothing is up, down, and up your ass.
I suppose I should warn you that I got queasy. This would be a good place to stop, and delete this forever from your mind before it weasels its way in.
— So Jerry, I have something to tell you because I’m an idiot but you don’t have to be smart to get down on yourself. Anybody can do it, and anybody can do what I’ve done. Do you want to know?
I nodded, careful of course not to say anything and interrupt his... what? Cognitive dissonance? I’d have to look it up again in the manual... the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.
— I’ve had busy nights Jerry; that’s why I’ve been so sleepy lately. It has nothing to do with medication. It’s because I’ve been staying up late every night and I’ve been out all afternoon, and evenings, doing my work.
I smiled, and he must have thought I smirked.
— Fuck you! Dickhead. Jerk. So last Wednesday, that’s when I rode away on my banana bike... It’s one of those really cool old ones that you had when you were a kid. My mom was watching TV. I told her bye but she never heard me so I rode and rode on my banana bike all the way to the big gully.
— The River Des Peres?
I wanted to give his bizarre setting a basis in reality. It’s a technique I’ve used with some success before.
Harold nodded, close-lipped smile, and I braced for foul language, but he spoke softly, methodically.
— I found a cat in the gully. I tied it down with brown radio cord. From a broken clock radio. I tied the cat onto a shopping cart. The cat clawed my arms.
I remembered Harold coming into school with those marks and initially I thought it a suicide attempt. Then I theorized it was a fake attempt.
— I wrapped the cord tight around the cat’s hind legs, tying it to the cart. Then I found a paint bucket and filled it with rainwater. I held the cat’s furry little head in the scummy water.
At this point, I got sick, my stomach bloated nauseous and I was dizzy. Harold sat back and put his stubby hands behind his head. His story is important, but I can’t write it exactly as he told me. He went on of course and told me all about torturing the cat. When he described the cat’s broken legs dangling over the side of the grocery cart, and said how disappointed he was at its death, I thought it was the end of his story. I tried not to, even whispered stop, stop, stop, but I thought about my wife, divorced for five years, and my daughter, twenty-two, who loved her own cat, Boo. I blinked, grit my teeth, and Harold smiled.
— And then Jerry, I rode my bike home and my mom was asleep. I mean really asleep because I put my sleeping pills in her wine. I spread cat blood on her tiny bare tits too little for me to suck on. I washed her and massaged those little tits and she smiled. I think she was having a good dream, maybe about my dad, but he’s dead now because he got cancer, but really I killed him because ever since I was five I started sprinkling mercury into his oatmeal.
Harold kept talking, chatty, listing horrible deeds and claiming to have detonated bombs, blaming them on Muslims, raped little boys and blaming it on priests, much of which I knew was not true. The cat and his mom might be true, but this other litany of horrific deeds was the evening news. As I sat stone-faced, Harold frowned and squirmed and leaned forward.
I said, it’s time. I wanted him to go away. He pouted and folded his stubby arms across his small chest.
— No, I’m not finished. You will know when we are finished Jerry. You will know.
— How will I know, Harold?
— Fuck you! You will know!
— Okay, Harold, but move it along.
— Jerry, I have a story you need to hear. It’s important.
— I thought you’d already told me.
— No, no, no!
— So tell me already.
— Last night I went to your house and fucked your wife.
Despite the initial revulsion, I knew I had him, caught him in a lie. My wife and I are divorced. She doesn’t live with me anymore. I felt smug about it too.
— Yes, Jerry, I know. You are divorced. She and I met at your house and we fucked, her long legs wrapped around my head...
— Okay, that’s enough.
— Oh, so Jerry, you think I’m ugly, too ugly for your wife? To ugly for my mom? Well, I am. You are right. But listen. I rode my banana bike to your wife’s apartment. I rang her doorbell. I ran inside, right between her long legs, feeling positive feelings about being so fuckin’ short. Then I took out my mom’s butcher knife and stabbed her in the back, then I put her body into a sleeping bag and carried her back to your place and did it there. You ever do a dead person?
Of course he was lying. My wife had put on a few pounds while we were married and, although she’d lost some of it since the divorce, there was no way Harold could carry her on his bike. Still, I made a note – check for bloodstains.
— Jerry? You don’t believe me, do you? Well, it’s all true. So is what I did to your daughter.
Of course, another lie. Of course. My daughter was at least 100 miles away, in politics, the election a month away.
Why was I still listening to him? My job was to “help” the Harolds. That’s why. Sure, his story was awful. But there were others with awful stories and some I may have helped. Was Harold worse? My job was to listen and help, figure out a way to make Harold a somewhat normal, productive member of society. He could be medicated. It was my job.
— Jerry, didn’t you know your daughter was visiting your wife? After I took your wife to your place, I came back and spent some quality time with your daughter.
Harold smiled broadly, teeth slanting outward, spaces between them, nothing appealing about him; he seemed the happiest I’d ever seen him. Ah ha, of course, I thought, he’s like everyone else. He just wants attention. Like all the others. But who had the time to give a kid like Harold “attention”? His mom? And dad was dead, perhaps from Harold’s mercury. And how could Harold ever be “normal”?
I’m an idiot, I thought, discovering what I already knew, the simplistic “he just wants attention” solution. Giving him attention was no answer.
— Jerry, your daughter loves me. We’re getting married. Call her now, she’ll tell you. After what I did to her, she is begging me to marry her.
— Okay Harold, that’s enough, we’re finished with this.
— My dick is huge and she loves it in her mouth.
— I said we were finished.
— She chokes on my juice.
— Shut up! You little jerk!
— She begs for it up her ass.
— Shut the fuck up about my daughter.
I looked though my office window, but my secretary’s desk was vacant.
—Calm down Jerry...By the way, your daughter’s new tattoo is nice.
I gripped the phone.
— A beautiful blue butterfly. It’s on her right thigh.
Harold stood, his body squashed and distorted, more than when he came into my office. He twisted the doorknob. I called the police. No way he was going to return to class. No way he’d ever come back to my school. He needed to be hospitalized... immediately.
When the ambulance came, Harold was grinning ear to ear, slanted spaced teeth, black beady eyes staring at me, his mother hovering over him and screaming foul names at me.
After I talked to the police, telling them about the possibility of Harold torturing cats and molesting little boys, I called my ex-wife, left a message; my daughter’s cell also went to voicemail.
I went home and searched for the bloodstains. Watching the news, which I normally enjoy, made me sick. Finally, I spoke with my daughter who was bubbling with pre-election enthusiasm and excitement, and I asked about her tattoo. A beautiful red, white, and blue butterfly, she said, right thigh. It was really cool, she said. Lots of us, she said, are getting them. A show, she said, of support.
My wife called and we had a terse conversation. She had just come back from the gym.
I didn’t tell my wife, or my daughter, anything about Harold, although obviously I did ask a few dumb, cryptic questions, and sounded like the idiot that I was and still am.
When I saw myself in the mirror, I did what all idiots do. I smashed the reflection, blood flowing onto my hands.
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Steel
John K. Graham
I think it’s true
that you didn’t forget...
because you never knew
what the ancients said
we begin life as Stoics
but end as Epicureans
our lives soft mosaics
lacking a blade of steel
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Hungry Surf
G. A. Scheinoha
Depression sets in
around the elbows, toes
and thighs;
the various phases
when the tides
ebb and rise.
But how do you stop
those breakers from washing,
sloshing, chipping away
behind the eyes?
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He cries & curses as they drive away
Fritz Hamilton
He bowls consistently down the
gutter/ the pins barely move at all/ his
language stays in the gutter/ he drinks
shots & beers until he can barely stand/ he
falls cursing on the alley/ others
hope he leaves soon to clear the
way for them to play/ he challenges the
crowd to fight but no longer can he stand/ the
police arrive & cuff him/ he starts to weep/ they
take him to the wagon & shove him in. They
drive him two blocks & ask to see his money or
get taken to the lockup. They uncuff him &
he reaches into his pocket for his wallet. Humbly
he removes some bills from it. The cops ask for
more. He gives them the rest. They put him
on a bench. He cries & curses as they drive away.
People ignore him until someone gives him busfare.
The bus arrives, & he gets on with everybody else
They drive on. He doesn’t know where they’re going,
but he hopes it’s where he finds his car. A child across
the aisle looks at him & says hi.
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In hospital
Fritz Hamilton
In hospital with
wires buttons in a
room marked xxxxdeath &
stuffy air that can’t be breathed &
windows that can’t be raised or
shut & songs of
dying death everywhere wired
to my brain &
blood draining in
cold drops into the catacomb to
comb by silver hair that
falls like drones/ phone booths
locked to keep the corpse
standing inside/ until the
bones crumble into
dust exploding derisively as
outside the birds sing
sadly as their beak experience as
Maslow rots carelessly in the adjoining
booth too dead to care,
Artimidorous . . .
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Putin wants a return to the cold war
Fritz Hamilton
Putin wants a return to the cold war,
even if the next step is into the hot, when
all boots on the ground are into the fire &
the world burns up to
leave us in ashes, but
Putin doesn’t care as long as
Russia is restored to
where he thinks it once
was before it was
cut up according to it’s nature, &
Putin want its denatured to
revive the Russian hegemony, which
today is most maniacal, but
Putin wants to turn back the clock as
if he could & only a
madman would, but he’ll still try as
only a madman would ask why, &
there are enuf of those/ yes,
there are plenty of those
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The homeless live outside to die
Fritz Hamilton
The homeless live outside to die to
prove they never existed to
purify our ranks &
allow us to smell less rank &
evil & to make us less guilty like
the Nazis cleaned up the Aryans in
the ovens by eliminating the Jews/ now
in America we can do it too/ if
not so viciously, at
least as efficiently/, & then we
can be whole & good, because we’ve
done like the virtuous should/ we’ve
erased the problem/ it was just a
hobgoblin which now doesn’t exist, thank the
good Lord/ yes
thank the good Lord
|
on the back
of a touring bike
Janet Kuypers
9/26/14
I’m not a biker bitch.
I know I’ve gone 155
on his ZX11...
I know I rode
(by choice, mind you)
for I don’t know how many miles
at night in the pouring rain
on the back of his cycle,
and I’ve been told
that initiates me
into some unwritten club
as an official biker.
(don’t ask me about the clutch,
or actually driving a motorcycle,
but apparently I’m an official biker.)
But one sunny summer day
riding on the back of his touring bike,
some pissy little car
cut right in front of us
knocking us into oncoming traffic
(yes, there were cars
driving straight towards us,
we almost crashed)
so they could cut off a motorcycle
to get to the left turn lane first.
Well,
since they forced us into oncoming traffic,
we were forced into that left turn lane too,
so we stopped at the light
right behind them,
and the bike rider
swung his leg
(while I sat at the back)
and told me to wait there
as I watched him walk toward that car.
And I was thinking,
wait,
he left me
on a running motorcycle,
I don’t know how
to make this thing move,
and what is he doing?
So I watched him
(wait, I have to first
let you know,
he’s like six foot four,
he’s a double black belt Marine,
he’s an
imposing looking man)
So I watched him
walk to the driver’s side
of the car that cut us off, then knock
repeatedly
with almost enough force
to shatter that window
before he started
yelling
at whoever was driving that car.
I couldn’t hear if the driver
was yelling back;
I only heard
him screaming
that they could have killed us.
and they should watch for motorcycles.
And you know,
I can’t really remember
the details of what he said,
I had a motorcycle helmet on,
it was just a little freaky to watch
before he walked back
before the light changed.
And I was still in stunned mode,
but when that light did change,
that car then tried
to hit us again,
so I pushed with my hand
against the car
and he put his foot to the car
(like our limbs would block a car,
but cut us some slack,
it was instinct,
what were we supposed to do),
and the car
started then chasing us.
Apparently after we took turns
through a random subdivision,
the driver apparently
got tired of the driving taunts
and decided enough was enough
and left us alone.
Not a half hour later,
there was a knock on my door.
I opened my front door
to find a cop
asking for the motorcycle driver
by his full name.
I asked him to wait.
I told that motorcycle driver
and all six foot four of him
came to the front door —
but when he did,
the cop asked him who he was,
he confirmed his name
and then he asked him
if it would be okay
is he sat on the stoop
(because being so tall,
he didn’t want to look
imposing to the cop).
He did his best to rationally explain
what happened.
The cop then asked
if he pounded on the glass,
but he wanted the cop to understand
that the driver was the instigator.
But then the cop said
the driver of the Pontiac Sunfire
had said that the motorcycle driver yelled,
“Get out of the car you nigger cunt
so I can kick your ass!”
Which stunned my motorcycle driver,
so he responded, “Excuse me?!?
There was a woman driving the car?
I didn’t know that.”
And the cop said, wait a minute,
you were pounding on the car,
you had to see...
And he said yes, he knocked on the window,
but the driver never rolled down the window,
and he suggested to cop
look at those windows,
which were so heavily tinted
the he couldn’t see into the car.
The cop said he didn’t notice that.
Then took some notes.
I think the cop realized
that this motorcycle driver
was far to aware of his surroundings
to get in trouble with the cops.
The cop then told him
that the woman wants to press charges.
The cop then asked him,
“What would you like to do?”
Then he responded,
“As far as I am concerned,
it’s over, nobody got hurt,
everything is settled.
But if she wants to press charges, fine.
I would like to press charges
of assault with a deadly weapon
and attempted murder.
Ask her if she wants to continue.”
(Because what she did was a felony,
he also suggested to check her car
for his boot print and my hand print
in self-defense, and he reminded the cop
to check the tinting on her windows.)
The cop then said
there are a lot of crazy people out there,
and suggested
that the driver
could have had a gun...
But then the cop left,
and we never heard from the cop again.
I don’t know
what the lesson is from this.
To not succumb to road rage,
to see motorcycles,
I don’t know.
But I have to admit, from sitting
on the back of a touring bike,
it was kind of cool to see
a man defend our collective safety
by fighting a car
with his bare hands.
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Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (2010-2015, and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the three collection books from 2004: Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the shutterfly ISSN# cc& hardcover art book life, in color, Post-Apocalyptic, Burn Through Me, Under the Sea (photo book), the Periodic Table of Poetry, a year long Journey, Bon Voyage!, and the mini books Part of my Pain, Let me See you Stripped, Say Nothing, Give me the News, when you Dream tonight, Rape, Sexism, Life & Death (with some Slovak poetry translations), Twitterati, and 100 Haikus, that coincided with the June 2014 release of the two poetry collection books Partial Nudity and Revealed.
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