Issue 13

jmorielpayne
13 hours ago
112 min read

FICTION

The Flipper, by Ania Payne
Easing Anxiety Worksheet, by Summer Porter
The Last Communion, by David Larsen
Superman, by Amber Erin Diaz
Relaxing Music for Dogs, by Iain Allan Mills
Sanctioned, by Zeke Jarvis
Fridgehenge, by Stuart Watson

NON-FICTION

Consent, by Sandra Jense
794 Days Later, by Amy Cook

POETRY

Sacramento to Tahoe and Back, by Thomas Piekarsky
Dead and Dying Language, by Matthew Moniz
Apartmenthead, by Lukas Norling
Ride, by Joseph Byrd
rhetorical question about dead things after David Harsent, by Liam Strong
Fishy, by Anum Sattar
Again Again, by Thomas Osatchoff
After a Few Wet Months, by Abel L. Ward
An Afro-Caribbean elegy song, by Angel Vasquez
Just for Fun, by Jillian Merriweather

EDITORIAL TEAM: Miah Smith, Hillary Gordon, Sandy Navarro

ADVISOR: Juana Moriel-Payne

FICTION

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The Flipper

by Ania Payne

Whenever I visit my dentist’s office, Dr. Summers warns that my decaying right incisor could fall out at any moment, so I better start planning for an implant. His opening line for new patients is always, “Are you happy with your smile?” The question alone is enough to make anyone second-guess their answer – I thought so, but maybe not? Could my smile be better? Do you like it?

Dr. Summers’ own teeth are perfect and white, the stuff of politicians and news anchors, because who would trust a dentist with bad teeth? When he’s not trying to convince me to get the implant, he usually speaks in that absentminded way that doctors speak to patients, moving through routine questions about our jobs, our families, how long we’ve been in the area, and so on; questions that he can respond to with boilerplate answers, barely listening as he daydreams about rounds of golf or his next meal or sexy pharmaceutical representatives. But when he’s trying to convince me to get an implant, he’s present, animated. Dr. Summers paints a picture of me at my upcoming wedding, slicing into my three-tiered cake and smiling for photographs with a black hole gaping among my otherwise white teeth, because the tooth could fall out at any moment -- today, the day of the wedding, five years down the road; it’s hard to tell, but it will fall out someday, he always says.

Dr. Summers knows that it’s only a matter of time before I cave and do the procedure. I’ve revealed my vanity by letting him do other cosmetic procedures on me, such as “dental bonding” to fill in the small gaps between my teeth. Although my insurance doesn’t cover cosmetic procedures, Dr. Summers winked as he pitched the bonding procedure, saying he would tell insurance that it was a cavity filling instead of a gap filling.

“They’ll never have to know, and the chances of getting audited are slim. I’m coasting to retirement,” he’d said, and just like that I was walking out of his office without gaps between my front teeth, without spending a dime. I ask if he can wave his insurance fraud wand for the implant and he laughs, saying that’s out of his range, but maybe he could do some magic to get me a discount if I want veneers, which would just make my smile perfect. In the corner of the exam room, a potted spider plant wilts.

When I’ve finally saved up enough money in my health savings account to cover the procedure, I schedule the implant. I imagine a quick process – I’ll go in today with my rotten tooth and leave a few hours later, probably a bit sore and swollen, but I’ll have my new, titanium tooth. It will be expensive, but it will be fast. I’ve seen billboards for tooth implants all over interstates, casting shadows over nearby Lion’s Dens, advertising “65 smiles an hour” and “Full mouth implants in just one day!” I imagine weary long-haul truckers, exhausted after lugging Wayfair furniture or cattle across the country for fourteen hours, biting voraciously into the core of an apple without realizing that they’ve already eaten the apple’s flesh, then jolting awake as they feel their front tooth get ripped out from their gums and lodged into the apple’s core. Averting their eyes quickly back to the road, they glance up and see a billboard, as if dropped from the heavens, advertising a dentist’s office that offers one-day implants. Just call 1-888-IMPLANTS! They sigh with relief, knowing that they’ll be able to fix their smiles before heading home to their spouses at the end of the week.

Unfortunately for both me and the truckers, this is not the case. When I call Dr. Summers’ office to “schedule the implant,” the receptionist laughs and says, “Sure, honey. This is a year-long process, so I’ll write you up a treatment plan with all the appointments you’ll need for the next year and email it over.” Hardly twenty minutes later, the treatment plan arrives in my inbox, filled with indecipherable codes and foreign dental terminology -- grafting, anchoring, revealing, abutment. While the next few months of my life appear to be filled with appointments of varying procedures, the actual tooth won’t be inserted until nine months down the road. My husband, Josh, who is relieved to have made it through our wedding without my tooth falling out, secretly frets about the idea of me missing a front tooth, even though he reassures me that I’m beautiful with or without teeth. Josh tries to talk me out of doing the procedure by saying, “The tooth has stayed in for all these years, maybe it can last another 5? Another 10? You have such nice teeth, are you sure that you want to do this? I don’t see anything wrong with the tooth.” But after several years of listening to Dr. Summers paint horror stories about how my tooth could fall out while I’m teaching, eating at a restaurant, or sunbathing on vacation, I can’t take the suspense anymore. He’s convinced me that the inevitable is bound to happen, sooner or later, and why should I just wait for the tooth to fall out on its own while I’m lecturing, when I can be in control of the situation instead?

On the first day of the treatment, Dr. Summers and technicians remove the dead tooth, which they all assure me will be a quick, painless process because of “how dead the tooth already is” and “how it’s just dangling there, begging to fall out.” On that same day, an old boyfriend from college requests to follow me on Instagram – I accept his request and learn that he’s now a dentist. How odd, I think as Dr. Summers reclines my chair and injects me with numbing fluid, that this person I haven’t spoken to in a decade finds me on Instagram on the first day of my implant treatment, and now he’s a dentist. After a quick scroll through his profile, I learn that his wife is also a dentist, and that they seem to be living a nice Catholic life with several children who play sports at their Catholic schools. I feel a small bit of joy learning that this old boyfriend who had dumped me years ago to get back together with his high school girlfriend did not become the cardiovascular surgeon that he hoped to be, and instead became a dentist, a career my friends in medical school all referred to as being for people who “couldn’t quite make the cut” (as if I, a lecturer of English, have any room for career gloating). But then I’m jolted out of my moment of glee when Dr. Summers drops a sharp tool in my mouth, which I barely catch with my tongue.

“Good catch!” Stacy the technician remarks, and Dr. Summers just furrows his brow and continues pulling at my tooth. I start to wonder if I’ve picked the right dentist for this procedure, and what his grades were like in medical school.

“I’ve had an implant, too, honey,” Stacy says, as if noticing my trepidation, tapping her front tooth with her tongue. “See how real the tooth looks? You’re going to love your new tooth when you finally get it!” Stacy was probably a cheerleader in high school. She wears white tooth-shaped studs in her earlobes. I wonder if all of the people who work in this office, and their spouses and children, have had implants and veneers and bonding and whitening and other procedures that I haven’t even been pitched yet. I imagine their aging grandparents with state-of-the-art dentures, lifelike and youthful, unlike my grandparents’ yellowed dentures that floated around in coffee mugs on the bathroom counter, next to the hand soap.

I feel the incisor pop out as I’m staring at the ceiling, looking at odd remnants of what must have been a party thrown months or years ago – dusty, dangling decorations of cardboard pizza slices and donuts – reminding me of all the foods that I will now struggle to eat without this crucial tooth. Dr. Summers leans my chair upright and I use my tongue to feel the new gap in my mouth, like I used to do when I was seven. There is something infantilizing about getting a front tooth removed, as if losing a tooth indicates that you have fewer functional brain cells than other adults, or that you don’t understand proper teeth hygiene; surely, somehow, you brought this misery on yourself. But even though the idea of living without a tooth for many months is nauseating, I’m excited for the result – to finally have that tiny, dark tooth gone from my life, soon to be replaced with a beautiful implant. Even the temporary flipper tooth that I’ll be getting today is new and exciting. I’ve spent hours Googling “flipper tooth” and scrolling through photos of people smiling with their temporary flipper teeth in – So natural! Nobody knows it’s fake! So easy to eat in! the captions below the images read, and I imagine my own smile brighter and wider with my new flipper tooth as I flash carefree grins while biting into kale salads.

I know something is wrong when Dr. Summers tries the flipper tooth in my mouth, frowns at it, adjusts it, whittles away at its contours, then tries it in my mouth again, whittles and tries again, and again, and then leaves the room.

“Wait!” I call from my chair. “I’m not going to leave without a tooth, right? You’re going to make it fit, aren’t you? I’m spending a lot of money at this office!” On the TV screen in front of my chair, Chip and Joanna argue about paint colors for a sitting room. HGTV is the only station that is ever playing at the dentist’s office, as if the dentists think that watching couples have staged arguments about bathroom tiles and backsplashes is supposed to comfort patients. Or maybe comfort isn’t the point at all -- as we watch these reality show contestants turn fixer-uppers into fabulous homes, embark on no-demo renovations, or pursue self-made mansions, we see their lives improve drastically in an hour or less. With a bit of money and some time, their previously outdated or decrepit houses transform into chic, modern structures, the type of dwelling that you’d find a perfect sitcom family living in. The dentist’s office, with these HGTV rebirth stories playing on every TV in each examination room, is also a place of transformation – like these fixer uppers, we, too, can be a tad more beautiful, more youthful, and have a happier life, if we just invest in our teeth.

Dr. Summers returns to the exam room carrying what looks like a piece of Invisalign, a white, plastic tray with tooth cutouts, with a fake tooth stuck in the groove where my missing tooth would be.

“Here, try this,” he says, placing the Invisalign tray into my mouth. I try not to gag as the sharp plastic sides of the tray scrape the roof of my mouth and insides of cheeks, and I smile into the hand mirror that he hands me. Pools of blood-hued saliva gather in the clear tray, and its plastic sheen gives the top row of my teeth an odd, synthetic shininess.

“The flipper from the lab didn’t fit, so we had to rig this up. We’ll place an order for another flipper, but the lab can take about a month. In the meantime, wear this.”

“Oh, it looks great. So natural!” Stacy coos, always so chipper in her purple scrubs, even though I know the tray looks bulky and artificially glossy. When I ask if I can eat with this tray on, she laughs and says, “Honey, you can try. But I’d recommend that you don’t go to any dinner parties until you have your flipper tooth in.”

Later that evening, I try eating dinner with the Invisalign tray in. We’re having spaghetti, something soft, but as soon as I take my first bite, the tray falls out of my mouth. I put it back in and try taking a bite from another angle, but it falls out again and again.

“Just take it out,” Josh says. But I’m nervous about showing him my missing tooth. I stared at new toothless self in the mirror after I got home from the dentist’s that afternoon, and what I saw wasn’t cute. Somehow, a thirty year-old woman with a missing tooth doesn’t have the same charm as a seven year-old. When I texted a photo of me without the incisor to my family group chat, my mom responded, “You look like an Arkansas hick!” My dad responded, “Barely noticeable,” but that obviously wasn’t true. I could hardly recognize myself in the mirror. I was a botched remodel, a house that wasn’t quite able to get all its new appliances in on time.

But with no other choice than to take my dinner to our un-airconditioned upstairs and eat toothless and alone, in the privacy of my yet-to-be-renovated office, I remove the Invisalign tray with the fake tooth and attempt a smile.

“It really doesn’t look that bad,” Josh says. “But how long did you say it will be until you get your permanent tooth?”

Over the next few months, I adjust to living without the incisor. The Invisalign tray gets looser with wear, to the point that it barely stays in, so I stop wearing it around the house and only put it in when I’m going somewhere. At some point, I think that Josh forgets what I look like with all my teeth, and he adjusts to “my new look.” I start to lean into this new identity, toothless me. One evening after a few glasses of wine, we pose for a selfie with an heirloom squash that we picked up from the farmers’ market, smiling with the Long Island Cheese gourd between us, the dark gap in my mouth obvious without the fake tooth, and send that photo to his family group text. We haven’t mentioned my tooth removal to his family yet, and we’re curious to see how they react to the photo.

“That’s a huge squash!” his sister says.

“What are you going to cook with that?” his mom asks.

The text conversation remains politely squash-focused, even though my missing tooth is obviously visible in the photo. We laugh about their southern niceness, certain that they’re wondering about my missing tooth, but too courteous to say anything about it. We start scheming up other instances where I could try the missing tooth trick – suddenly removing it while I’m out at a work dinner or taking it out after doing a kettlebell workout at the gym to see if any of the coaches notice and worry that I’ve hit myself in the face. Toothless me is a risk-taker, a prankster, much more outgoing than toothful me. But in reality, toothful me vetoes all these activities, and the only time that I go out in public without my fake tooth in is on accident.

A month later, I’ve finally gotten a flipper tooth that fits, and it’s the Cadillac of fake teeth compared to the Invisalign tray. It fits perfectly in the gap where my incisor would go, just a small piece, made perfectly for my mouth, clinging to the contours of my gums. For the most part, I can eat with it in (unless I’m having a particularly dangerous meal, like corn on the cob or chicken wings), but when I’m eating a meal alone, it’s easier to just take the flipper tooth out, because pieces of whatever I’m eating cling to it like a magnet.

One afternoon in the fall, I’m eating lunch in my office before teaching my one o’clock class. I’ve taken the flipper tooth out so that I can eat without clogging it, and I’m finishing up my kale, egg, quinoa, chickpea, and feta salad, reviewing my lesson plans. I get up to grab a book from my bookshelf and hear something crunch under my feet. I assume it’s a chip or a dried bug or something insignificant; the custodial staff haven’t vacuumed our offices all year, so anything could be lingering on these carpets. But when I move my foot, I gasp in horror. It’s the flipper tooth, shattered into pieces. I try to put it back together, but without any adhesive it just falls apart and lies limp in my hand.

Because it is fall 2021 and our university has a mask mandate due to Covid-19, I’m saved by my mask. I throw my mask on and walk across campus, waving hello to people who have no idea that behind my N-95, I’m missing a tooth. If anyone were to ask why I was wearing my mask outside, walking across the quad, I could just say that I was being extra cautious about potential infections, and they would press their lips together and nod slowly, as academics do. Inside the classroom, though, I tell my students about how I stepped on my flipper tooth at lunch and am extra thankful for the presence of masks today. It’s a small, close class of twelve creative nonfiction students, and they respond by telling me their own dental horror stories. One girl tells us about how her mom has had to have thirteen teeth replaced. A guy talks about all the root canals he’s gotten over his twenty years. Another guy says that dentists aren’t real doctors, they’re just trying to scam you and make money so that they can buy Lamborghinis, so he doesn’t go to the dentist.

It's a combination of vanity and a fear of health problems that has kept me loyally attending dentist appointments and saying yes to the procedures that they recommend. I’ve been dealing with this pair of dead incisors since I first got braces in the fifth grade. At the time, my orthodontist, Dr. Moore, thought the right incisor was salvageable, so he created a strategy to push all my teeth slightly to the right, to cover the hole where my missing left incisor would have been. But later, I had to get dental surgery and an anchor installed through my gums to pull down the adult right incisor. The surgery turned out to be botched, though, and the anchor fell out, so I had to return to the surgeon for a redo. Two months later, the surgeon lost his license when an investigation revealed that he’d been addicted to the oxycodone he was prescribing his patients.

In college, I started getting root canals and I was pitched the upsell to ‘bleach’ the dead incisor, to make it look white and lifelike. But these upsells always came with the warning that whatever temporary procedure I was saying ‘yes’ to wouldn’t last forever; eventually, this dead tooth would fall out.

In a way, visiting the dentist’s office, reading their old People magazines, sipping water out of their cone-like cups, listening to Celine Dion over their speakers, watching the Rainbowfish and Goldfish and Betta fish swim around aimlessly in their tanks, and reclining in the examination chair feels like coming home after a long day at work. The dentist has been a constant in my life, from childhood, through college, to adulthood. The dentist is always there, adjusting my teeth and prescribing procedures for this or that, promising some new me at the end of the process.

When I finally make it to the end of the implant treatment after a year of waiting, going into Dr. Summers’ office to have my final crown installed feels like the closing of a chapter. After Dr. Summers and Stacy finish the installation, they pass me the hand mirror and congratulate themselves on what a good job they did and how natural the tooth looks. And the new crown does look great. I feel beautiful with my new titanium tooth, which is finally in a normal adult-tooth size that matches the color and shape of the rest of my teeth. Stacy and Dr. Summers admire it from multiple angles, then call the other dentists in the office to come admire it, too.

“So natural!” one dentist exclaims. “It looks just like the rest of her teeth!”

“Wow, look at her smile now!” another dentist says. On the TV in the background, a family bickers over the best furniture style for their son’s bedroom, rustic farmhouse or modern.

The dentists all peer into my mouth, remarking on how perfect my teeth are now – a feeling I had never experienced at the dentist’s office before. This must be how Chip and Joanna feel at the end of every episode, I think. The remodel worked! The fixer upper is now fabulous!

Later that evening at dinner with friends, I smile longer and more often than usual, to show off the new tooth. The plastic flipper tooth had started to yellow from coffee and wine, but my new permanent crown blends in seamlessly with the rest of my teeth. I smile for five seconds longer than usual at my friends’ jokes all night, showing off my new tooth and my five thousand dollar smile, waiting for someone to notice the upgraded me. But nobody does.

****

Ania Payne lives in Manhattan, Kansas, with her husband, Great Dane, Husky, 2 tiger cats, and 2 backyard chickens. She teaches in the English Department at Kansas State University and has an MFA in creative nonfiction. She is the author of the chapbook Karma Animalia. She has previously been published in The Sonder Review, Punctuate, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, Whiskey Island, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

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Easing Anxiety Worksheet

by Summer Porter

Directions: When you’re experiencing intense anxiety, you need to ground yourself in order to prevent yourself from the popular phenomenon of “spiralling.” Come out of your mind and into the physical world. Realise everything is okay. Try doing this with the following exercise. Write down 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.

5 things you can see:

(1) Smacking raindrops on fingerprint-stained windowpanes, blurring my view of the parking lot and its impatient drivers, soaked trees between pavement strips.

(2) The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. It’s $28.99 and I think we need that money to pay for gas to get to Boston, but he’s smiling so wide.

(3) My coffee from the bookshop we went to before this one. It’s cosier but closes at 3 PM. The owner’s 12-year-old (probably) son gave me a tour of all of the books he and his mom recommend. I’d like to have a son like him. He likes Norse mythology. His cat’s name was Freja, like my tattoo.

(4) My autumn-dyed knitted gloves, fingerless and starting to fall apart after catching on my rings day after day. I still wear them. My friend and I found them at the holiday market Girl Scouts’ booth for $10. They’re cosier than the H&M ones my mom bought me, but I don’t tell her that.

(5) The bloodied nailbeds of his left-hand. I tell him to be gentle with himself, but the habit is too ingrained to be stopped by a lover’s chidings. He says it doesn’t hurt too much, but I see him wince when it starts to sting, sometimes. I give myself bruises, though, so I can’t really say too much in the name of hypocrisy.

4 things you can touch:

(1) This pen pressing into the writer’s dent on my ring finger. It gets sore sometimes, with the rigid plastic squishing reddened flesh. My sister’s pokes out, instead of going in. I wonder what that says about us. Maybe nothing.

(2) The underside of the skin just above my kneecap, pushed into the upper side of the opposite leg. My fingers nestle into this in-between space, in the warmth of this fleshy cove. When I remove them, they’re cold.

(3) The bridge of my glasses. Two sleek metal bars pressing against the space my eyebrows straddle, hiding unshaven hairs. I always thought they were cool glasses, like an ‘80s computer nerd and what the ten-year-old version of my brother wore. Now an acquaintance says they look like Jeffrey Dahmer glasses and I can’t think of them the same.

(4) The inch-long ring on his right hand, like an old Arthurian house symbol. I tuck it in between my little fingers when we hold hands, struggling around it but savouring its consistent presence, like a secret little totem. It’s far too big for my finger, but I like trying it on sometimes anyway.

3 things you can hear:

(1) Her pleasant-pitched 감사합니다 two tables down. She repeats it three times, and I wonder if she’s teaching the white family she’s with. Her daughter stays silent. She eventually gets up with the little white girl to look at books together while the women stay back, engaged in motherly confidance with showcase sincerity.

(2) The almond milk steaming behind the coffee bar, its high-pitched squealing intermingling with the oven’s beeping. The mother the latte is presumably for stands at the counter, entertaining her baby with one of the compostable straws piled high by understaffed baristas. Grande latte, almond milk, he calls, and she puts the straw away, and the baby cries, and I feel like crying too.

(3) The sniffling of the old man sitting behind me with a haphazard pile of strangely assorted books. An array of classics to his left and some contemporary fiction to his right. He holds a manga in his hands, and I think its cover looks more interesting than anything else.

2 things you can smell:

(1) The rich burnt-chocolate smell of the cookie in front of me. The oozy blend coats my fingers, cakes beneath my nails. It smells like s’mores, even though it’s just a chocolate-chunk cookie. I think about study trips with my mom in high school, helping her with her astronomy homework. I haven’t thought about that for a long time. The cookie sits heavy in my stomach.

(2) The musty scent of the crowd packed into this little veranda, seeking literary escape from the pervading gloom of rainy days. Some have matted hair and leftover rain splattered on their faces that look like dried tears. I try not to look at them.

1 thing you can taste:

(1) The coppery sting of blood as my tooth tears into my bottom lip, willing myself to black out of my mind long enough to reboot. I want to sleep but sleep too much and my therapist says its bad for me but I skipped our last appointment and she leaves in two weeks so fuck her.

****

Summer Porter is a multi-form writer based in Boston, MA. She experiments with long-form fiction, flash fiction and non-fiction, form fiction, poetry, short stories, and multimodal representations of literature, specifically in a digital context. She typically explores unsettling reflections of the self as well as one’s relations to others and the earth within her work, taking inspiration from Rachel Cusk, Ken Liu, and Sally Rooney.

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The Last Communion

by David Larsen

The trickle from the crusted spigot of the faucet in the bathroom sink was more than mildly disturbing to Carol Brownfield, a woman who prided herself on her expertise on water (she was, after all, a hydrologist of some renown with the Geological Survey, a dedicated public servant who had spent her professional life studying and stewing over the dwindling supply of ground water in the southwestern sector of the United States). The slow gurgle from the spout might just be an inauspicious portent to what lie ahead in her visit to a time when she was more certain of who she was and to a place she once thought she knew and understood.

She feared that this latest undertaking might be seen by her few friends and her estranged daughter as nothing more than a last-ditch effort to search for something she had lost somewhere along the way—herself.

The disappointing drizzle of the offensive-smelling sulfurous water that hopelessly sputtered from the faucet was of the same copper tinge as the weak green tea she brewed every morning in

the kitchen of her apartment, six hundred miles behind her, in Tucson, though, she suspected, it wasn’t nearly as pleasing to the palette.

The hot water faucet didn’t work at all. When she turned its handle, unseen skeletal pipes clanked and complained bitterly behind wallpapered walls, like a grumpy old man who’d been woken from a deep slumber, a cantankerous old coot who bristled at being disturbed. A cobra’s hiss escaped from the rusted spout. It seemed the entire circulatory system of the room was in worse shape than Carol’s own recently-stented tenuous veins and arteries within a body that was rapidly failing her. If she had one superstitious bone in her body, she might have seen it as an omen. But she was a realist, not a woman guided by impulse. Thomas Wolfe might have been right, she thought worrisomely, you really can’t go home again.

At first glance, the faded pastel towels on the ornate wrought-iron rack appeared clean, most likely laundered with a heavy-duty detergent that could blister the skin right off of an oil-field roughneck’s hairy chest, but upon closer inspection, the towels and washcloths were suspiciously stained, tampered evidence of God knows what sorts of offenses. Not only did the linen smell a little funky, but each bath towel, hand towel and washcloth was thin and intolerably threadbare.

Carol dreaded thinking about tomorrow morning’s shower. But what was she to do? There was no Holiday Inn Express or Comfort Inn for more than seventy miles. Perhaps if she allowed the water to run long enough, the rust from the pipes might play itself out—that was if the town of Dos Pesos had a reliable supply of clean water.

The tub, scratched, cracked and discolored, as if moonshiners or heavily-tattooed meth dealers or perhaps enterprising cannabis botanists, self-educated and criminally savvy, had

occupied the room before her—for months, if not for years—was a distasteful basin she might be able to force herself to shower in, but certainly she could never convince herself to bathe in the grimy fixture. The plastic shower curtain had a healthy culture of something black and slimy inching upward from its bottom hem.

Carol pressed both hands on the surface of the bed. The springs creaked, as if they had tales to tell, which, of course, after seventy years, they did. She shuddered when she thought about what might have taken place in the valley of the sunken mattress. She cautiously pulled back the acrylic, floral-printed comforter to inspect the patched and stitched grayish—once white—sheets for any signs of bedbugs, and to look for what her roommates at the University of Arizona used to call pecker tracks.

“College,” she thought, and laughed. “How does anyone survive it? But, somehow, most of us do.” The boys’ beds that she and her friends too often found themselves waking up in on weekend mornings weren’t always pristine—far from it. She laughed when she remembered the debates in her dormitory over whether or not you could contract a venereal disease, not just from the boy himself, but also from his open-range bed. That was before safe sex. Before HIV. Before the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. Carol wondered what college girls puzzle over today. Probably nothing. Today, they know so much more than she and her friends knew at eighteen. Their biggest concern seems to be what model of cellphone is most advantageous. But the clock had begun to tick backwards, old worries might become new concerns.

She could ask her daughter, two years out of Arizona State, what young women of today considered troublesome, but the girl seldom called, never came to visit either of her parents.

Divorce takes its toll. Carol’s own family’s dissolution had been tough enough, and she was eighteen when that occurred. Her daughter had every reason to distance herself from the aftermath of decade-long fray.

It was more than the faucets, the tub, the bed, the dusty linoleum floor, the silly bedside lamp with a horseshoe painted on its plastic shade. This whole trip, everything about it, seemed out of kilter. The entire room, like everything in Carol’s life, seemed to sag, like the smile on her daughter’s face when the circus ended. Explaining to a ten-year-old that it was time to throw away the cotton candy and go home was an experience Carol was happy to have far behind her. Now, here she was herself, looking for the cotton candy she had tossed aside.

Something, something even heavier than the doctors’ soft-spoken reassurances, was dragging her into a fathomless despair, and this silly journey back into time, was in no way alleviating her funk. If anything, it was aggravating her already-severe misgivings about her life. Perhaps, looking for happier times was an enterprise doomed from the start. This sad town had nothing to offer a woman tumbling down a mountainside, with nothing to break her fall.

But, in the end, where else could she go, and where else could she stay? Dos Pesos was the best she could come up with, her hometown, or the closest thing to a hometown she had. The Sagebrush Inn, a motor-court built sometime in the late forties, about the year her late father and mother were born, was the only place for a weary traveler to stay. Dos Pesos, Texas, the town Carol had escaped so many years ago, less than a month after her graduation from high school, was all she had left to be nostalgic about.

At least the clerk in the office, a bald, mildly portly man in his mid-sixties looked nothing like Anthony Perkins, nor was he dressed in his mother’s clothing. But, then again, Carol, at forty- seven and bone-thin, was no Janet Leigh. The attendant looked more like Alfred Hitchcock, andthat wasn’t in the least reassuring, but she was dog-tired after the eleven-hour drive from Arizona. All she needed was a night’s sleep, no matter her surroundings.

Luckily, Carol had grabbed a bite to eat at a Sonic in Ft. Stockton, a deep-fried chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke. With COVID still a concern, she avoided going inside restaurants or fast-food franchises whenever she could. Besides, in her present state, people weren’t all that eager to have to look at her.

With enough food in her stomach and a bottle of vodka in her bag there was no reason to venture around Dos Pesos tonight; tomorrow morning would be soon enough. As she’d driven through the town at dusk, even smaller and more destitute than she remembered, the silhouetted buildings, dark and deserted, seemed skeptical about Carol’s return to the place she had grown up. How would the residents of Dos Pesos feel about her return? Would anyone even remember her? Or her family? It had been nearly thirty years. One marriage, one child, one divorce ago.

Before she left her room, after her morning shower, a dismally cold affair in a foul-smelling, low-pressure flow of tainted water, Carol had to decide what to do with the seven plastic bottles of pills she had packed in her overnight bag. Medicines, all prescribed and legal—but whoever cleaned the room might think they were uppers or downers, or, for heaven’s sake, hallucinogens, and be tempted to sneak one or two pills from each container, if not for the maid herself, then for a boyfriend or husband who liked to get high...or low. Carrying them in her purse would be

cumbersome. Leaving them in the room could be catastrophic for the thief, and, even more so, for Carol herself: she needed the pills to keep herself alive...for a little longer—her life, or what was left of it depended on the damned pills. After careful consideration, she decided to lock them in the trunk of the rental car that was parked in front of her room. It was March. The West Texas heat shouldn’t be terribly intense, not quite hot enough to damage her supply of maintenance pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Patel had told her she could travel, as long as she took all of her medication and didn’t overtax her waning body. Get plenty of rest, he advised. Don’t push it. Of course, he’d let her go. What did she have to lose? A few months? At best, a half a year. Each of her four physicians, each more somber than Pilate, was well aware of what lay ahead. As was Carol.

She half considered not taking the medications. To die on the road, like the romantics of old. But the untidiness of calling it quits in a squalid motel room in Dos Pesos, Texas didn’t really appeal to her. In a sterile hospital back in Tucson didn’t sound any better...just cleaner.

Downtown Dos Pesos was even smaller and surprisingly more depressing than Carol remembered. The brick building on the corner of State Highway 1129 and Guadalupe Street, Wilson’s Drug Store, where Carol and her friends used to drink Coca Colas and thumb through fashion and movie magazines while they giggled about the few boys in town, was now boarded up, possibly haunted. As was the Contreras Bakery in the middle of the block. Her mother had bought the cake for Carol’s seventeenth birthday there. A white cake with white-lace icing, the best cake she ever had. A pang of regret shot through her chest; she never thanked her mother.

The Green Tree Bar was, of course, not yet open for business. Soon, a score of washed-up, most likely unemployed men in scuffed cowboy boots and faded Wranglers would show up for their first of several beers. Carol remembered how much her father detested the ne’er-do-wells that hung out in the bar. The gruff man had his faults—and issues—but lazy, he was not, a dedicated, hard-working company man to the end. That just might have been his greatest fault, the fly in the ointment that finally brought him down.

The few pickup trucks, with bristly men or pony-tailed Mexican women at the wheel, passed hurriedly through town, on their way to work in feedlots or oil fields, ranches or desperate farms. Some of them, the women, were quite possibly heading out to clean the houses of the wealthy landowners and ranchers. One of the young women might possibly be on her way to clean Carol’s room at the Sagebrush. Not much had changed, other than a shriveling up of what wasn’t much of a town to begin worth.

Carol wondered whatever happened to Letty, the girl, not that much older than Carol, who used to clean house for her family. Would she still be around? The dark-eyed, moon-faced girl would be in her mid-fifties by now. Happy, Carol hoped. She wished she’d been nicer to the housekeeper, but she was merely following her father’s lead. “Don’t get chummy with the help,” he used to tell her.

The only enterprise that looked open for business was the Good Luck Grocery, a small store Carol’s mother had shopped in, with a nagging, bratty Carol at her side. She remembered being a whiny child, what her father used to call a “pain in the ass”, up until the age of eleven. Her poor mother—her daughter and husband put the quiet, loyal woman through so much. That the store

was still in business surprised Carol, but no supermarket chain was going to invest in Dos Pesos. The Good Luck Grocery was safe—for now at least.

Inside the store her stomach churned at the smell of coffee; she hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon and her stomach’s associating coffee with food was as primal as the first clenched fist. The welcoming aroma wafted through her like a late-night trance, that surreal moment between wake and sleep. A man of about her age stood behind the counter and studied the newspaper he had laid out where customers would soon set their groceries for checkout. But there were no customers. What paper? Carol wondered. There was no local paper, not that she could remember. If there was one, a story about the daughter of Thomas Crandall being back in town would be quite a scoop for someone.

An attractive young woman, long-haired and narrow-hipped, shelved cans of what looked to be peas, green beans, maybe corn, onto the wooden shelves at the back of the store. The mustached man behind the counter, a Mexican man in an apron, a clean, white butcher’s apron, looked familiar, but it couldn’t possibly be the same kind man who used to give her a free piece of candy when her frugal mother wasn’t looking. That man would be in his eighties by now.

“That coffee sure smells good,” said Carol.

“Would you like a cup?” asked the grocer. He’d looked up from his reading and grinned, an example of the small-town cordiality she’d grown up in the midst of, but failed to appreciate at the time. A touching reminder of what she was in search of, of why she was on her quest.

“I was hoping to find someplace where I could eat breakfast.” She smiled. All of her life, she had been prideful of her winning smile—people had told her that she had one—but now, with her skin desperately hanging onto her skull, but losing its grip, and with her teeth browned and turning inward from countless radiation treatments, she knew she looked haggard, a crone at forty-six. Or was she forty-seven? She couldn’t remember.

The man shook his head. “The La Sombra Café won’t open until eleven. There aren’t enough customers for them to open for breakfast. But we’ve got coffee, and Angie, back there, brings in empanadas.” He tilted his large head toward the young girl in the back. “They’re really good. And, for you, they’ll be on the house.”

Instantly, Carol loved the man. “I’ll gladly take you up on your offer. I’m famished.” As of late, any act of kindness or generosity, any words of compassion, made her heart quiver, brought tears to her eyes, made her sniffle. Old black and white movies on TCM left her blubbering for hours.

As the grocer poured from the pot into the ceramic mug, he asked with more than a tint of an accent, “Apricot or pumpkin? The empanada? Or both? Angie’s really good at making them. They’re really good.”

Hearing the West Texas Spanish accent, with just a hint of Texas twang in the vowels, was like hearing her favorite song on the radio after years of not hearing it. She was home, back where she once felt she belonged.

“I’ll try the pumpkin,” Carol chirped. With her loose skin and the turkey wattle that had prematurely developed beneath her chin, she might as well sound like a bird; she certainly

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looked like one. “This is very nice of you, both of you.” She looked back at Angie. The girl smiled shyly. Carol paused. “I used to live in Dos Pesos, almost thirty years ago. I went to school here.”

The coffee was good. Carol sat at a small round table in the corner by the window, it reminded her of the out-of-the-way places in Europe where she and Rod, her then husband, used to enjoy sitting and sipping expressos. Back in better times. Or were they? At the time they seemed good, but within a few years everything went sour. She and Rod split. Amie, their preteen daughter, began to hate both of them. Then, eventually, Carol began to weaken and lose weight rapidly. And now, here she was, sipping coffee in Dos Pesos, rather than Paris or Barcelona.

Carol ran her fingers through her embarrassingly short hair. Reluctantly, it had begun to grow back two months ago, after the oncologist advised her that the chemo treatments weren’t getting the results that she, the doctor, had hoped for. Oddly, the new hair came in lighter, almost blond. Her old hair had been a dull shade of auburn. Yet, she knew she’d never really get to test the adage blonds have more fun. She was definitely not having much fun—or maybe she was. Good God, she thought, this coffee and this empanada are delicious, a godsend, to a drowning woman. What could possibly be better than this? The wonder of it: a friendly grocer, delicious empanadas, a quaint store with warm coffee and hardwood floors, a step back into happier times: she was having more fun as a blond—in Dos Pasos, the town she found so dreary years ago, the town that knew her secrets, but, she hoped, looked the other way. And drowning? Was she? She’d once read that the strongest swimmers are the ones who drown. She was barely treading water, but steadily going under.

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And, anyway, just what did Dr. Frazier mean when she said “We’re just not getting the results we had hoped for”? Who is this we? The doctor, a striking woman, thin, with perfect teeth and blond hair, went home at the end of the day and had a glass of moderately-priced wine with dinner, probably with a tennis-obsessed husband, and a pet of some sort, most likely a schnauzer or a poodle, while Carol went home to her empty apartment and cried through the night. Alone. What could the doctor possibly know about “we”? What could anyone know? Anyone other than a very sick woman, a generous grocery store owner and a young woman who skillfully balanced cans of peas in her hands, a gifted empanada maker.

“You said that you used to live here,” said the grocer. He startled Carol. He stood beside the table. She hadn’t noticed his approach.

“I did,” she said, wiping an unexpected tear from her cavernous cheek. “I moved here when I was seven and stayed until I went off to college in Arizona. I went to high school in Terrace Creek. They took us in a bus.”

“We have our own high school now,” said the kind man. “They don’t send the high-schoolers to Terrace Creek anymore. All of the students in Contreras County come into town for school. Do you know where Milam Park used to be? That’s where the new high school is. It’s a nice school.”

Carol shook her head; the wattle wobbled fiercely, a pendulum out of whack. “I used to swing on the swings in that park. And they had a slide, and, if I remember correctly, a merry-go-round. Not like in an amusement park. One we had to push, then jump onto and hope that we’d make it.”

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“And a teeter-totter,” added the grocer, handsomer by the moment

“I’m Carol Brownfield, formerly Carol Crandall,” she said. She offered her hand. The man hadn’t blanched at her maiden name. It had been so many years. Perhaps, Irene Clark, her therapist was right. People forget. One hundred and fifty dollars an hour for that?

“I’m Hector Gonzalez.” He took her hand, but released it quickly.

Carol glimpsed a wince of terror flash across his face. She tended to forget how frail and bony her hands had become; for the grocer it must have felt like shaking hands with the angel of death. At least he had the decency not to say anything about being able to feel every single bone in her hand.

“I was Carol Crandall when my family lived here,” she told him. “My married name is Brownfield. My father was Thomas Crandall. He worked for Mr. Dawes. He was an accountant for Dawe’s Drilling and Oil. You might have heard of the company.”

“Everyone in town knew Mr. Dawes. And I think I remember a Carol Crandall from school. I graduated in eighty-six. My wife, Irma, in eighty-eight. My father used to own this grocery store. Now it is mine.” He leaned back to get a good look at her. “Yes, I do think that I remember you. There weren’t that many kids in town.” He chuckled. “The town’s even smaller now. Are you visiting someone?”

“No, Hector, I’m staying at the Sagebrush.” Carol stopped to allow this to sink in.

“Hijole,” he said. Then gasped. “And you’re still alive? That’s no place for a woman to stay. Is your husband with you?”

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“No. He couldn’t make the trip. We live in Tucson. I just wanted to see the town I grew up in.” There was no reason, Carol decided, to tell the poor man her whole, pathetic tale of woe. He was already a witness to the obvious.

“Sheriff Reed spends half of his time arresting people at the Sagebrush.” Hector laughed. “Usually for drugs. Sometimes for being too loud. It really is no place for someone like you.”

Carol shook her head and laughed with the grocer. No, she thought, it’s no place for a woman like me. But is there a place for a woman like me? She said, “Sheriff Reed? That wouldn’t be Kyle Reed by any chance?”

“It certainly is,” exclaimed the mustached man. His face, lined by a smile that could break any woman’s heart, tore at her insides. Not that he was great looking. He wasn’t. He was just so real. A quality that had been in short supply in the men Carol had known.

“That pudgy kid is the sheriff?” She laughed so hard she snorted.

“I’ve known him all my life,” said Hector. “He’s a good man. He comes in here almost every day. Sometimes he sits right here at this table and watches out the window. I don’t know what he’s looking for. Nothing much happens in Dos Pesos.”

“I remember Kyle,” she said. “He really was a likeable boy. It’s just hard to imagine him as sheriff.”

“And Doyle Gaither is the mayor. Though I didn’t vote for him.” He shrugged. “The town is more divided between white and brown.” Again, his face pinched. He wasn’t a man who was

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comfortable stating opinions to strangers. “But Sheriff Reed is different. Nearly everybody likes him.”

Carol blushed. The first boy who ever kissed her was now the mayor. Not so unlikely when she thought about it. He was persistent. She smiled and chuckled at the scene, so many years ago, in the front seat of Doyle’s father’s Chrysler.

“I thought that I’d drive out on the highway south of town. That’s where we lived. About a mile or so out of town.”

Hector cocked his head and frowned. “I know those houses. Or, I did. The highway department decided to straighten that curve out of the old road. Ten years ago. Maybe more. They bulldozed those houses to make way for the new section of highway. They even destroyed the home of Mr. Dawes, but he had passed on by then. Nobody lived there. Those were the nicest houses in the county. They say that the Dawes’ house even had a swimming pool.”

Carol didn’t offer that her house also had a pool. “That’s too bad. We had a nice house.”

“What do you do, Mrs. Brownfield? Is it rude of me to ask?”

“No, it’s not rude. Not in the least.” She paused. “I’m a hydrologist.” Again, she stopped. “I study water and its effects on the environment. My field is mostly ground water. How water moves and disperses beneath the Earth’s surface. There’s an undercurrent few people know about.”

Carol could tell by his charmingly puzzled expression that the grocer hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. Most people didn’t. It was a dumb choice for a profession. But a vital field of

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study in the deserts of Arizona. And New Mexico. And Texas. From what she’d seen dribbling out of the pipes at the Sagebrush, her services might be needed in Dos Pesos.

Finally, she asked, “Where could I find the mayor’s office? I might stop in to see Doyle Gaither. Just for old time’s sake.”

The grocer picked up Carol’s cup and the empty plate. She’d eaten both empanadas without realizing it. “His office is next to the courthouse. He might be there. He also sells Allstate Insurance out of his business office near the Jiffy Stop south of town.”

The kindness of Hector Gonzalez released a backlog of tears from Carol’s eyes as she walked the two blocks to the office next to the courthouse. People she used to look down on, the Mexicans, the peons, as her father used to call them, had probably been the most authentic people. Her ilk: a bunch of self-congratulating snobs. She wanted to kick herself for allowing her father’s narrow opinions to influence her as much as they did. Lazy Mexicans. Superstitious Catholics. Can’t get a day’s work out of any of them. Then, as things turned out, it was her father who disgraced not only himself and his family, but the entire town.

The few people Carol passed on the streets of Dos Pesos glanced at her, stared, then quickly looked away. A leper amongst them. Good people, she suspected, but like her, they averted their eyes from what was unpleasant. Carol pressed on into the westerly winds that had begun to kick up; by late afternoon there would be a dust storm, just as there had been on spring afternoons when she was a child.

The square-jawed, sturdy man at the desk, his legs propped against the wall, looked up when Carol came through the door of the mayor’s office. No secretary. No clerks. Just the chiseled

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mayor in a Banlon shirt and Dockers. After all the years, Carol recognized something unmistakable in his smile, the same self-assuredness he had in high school. His blue eyes still glistened, even in the poorly-lit office, nothing more than a room with a desk and a telephone. If she were to see him on the street in Tucson, she would recognize him. An athlete in high school, football, baseball, track, he’d somehow managed to stay fit in his late forties. It wasn’t fair. In some ways she’d hoped that he would be a dumpy, middle-aged man, bald, with bags under beady eyes. But, for mercy’s sake, Doyle was absolutely beautiful.

Carol smiled, as best she could. “You might not remember me, but you gave me my first French kiss.”

The mayor swiveled in his chair and dropped his feet to the floor, then stood like an infantryman called to attention. His bewildered expression said it all: he didn’t recognize her. But how could he? She was her own grandmother. The Carol Crandall he knew was a bright- eyed cheerleader, a seventeen-year-old, gum-chewing girl, who unashamedly flirted with him in study hall.

“Carol Crandall,” she said pertly, “now Carol Brownfield. We dated thirty years ago.”

“It’s nice to see you,” he said hesitantly. The poor man couldn’t find his bearings. After a long moment he uttered, “Carol, from high school?”

“One and the same,” she said cheerfully. Although cheer was far from what she felt inside. For so many reasons, she felt shame. Her makeup was smeared from her tearful walk, her skin sallow from medication and inhumane medical procedures. She was a mess, and she knew it.

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Doyle remained behind his desk. She had so hoped for a hug, a handshake, any physical contact. But she couldn’t blame him for his reticence. If ever he fantasized about the old days, this was not the image he conjured. But perversely, Doyle looked even better than the young boy who often starred in her own fantasies.

“Carol, what a surprise.” He paused. “I’d heard that you were living in Arizona. That’s where you went off to go to college, wasn’t it?”

“I was living in Arizona. Now, I’m dying in Arizona. But enough about me. Tell me about yourself.” Flippancy was the tactic she’d decided on as she’d walked the two blocks through town, a few hundred yards that felt like the condemned man’s walk from the guardhouse to the gallows. She’d tried to walk them with a devil-may-care aloofness. Yet now, her carefree words sounded pathetic, almost hollow, in his nearly empty office. Each syllable ricocheted off of the bare walls like bullets in a John Wayne movie.

“You’re not well?” It was more of a statement than an inquiry.

“Doyle, do I look well?” She grinned, though wanly. “The doctors tell me I’m not long for this world.”

The handsome man looked down at his shoes, black wingtips. “Surely, they’ll find the right method of treatment. Pills? Whatever? Surgery?”

“Been there, done that,” she quipped. “Now I’ve returned to haunt you. Like the ghost of Christmas past.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll fill you in on my life, then I want to hear about yours, Mr. Mayor. For me it’s been college, then marriage, one child, a daughter, then a divorce,

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then a malignancy, then another malignancy, then another. And that’s about it. Oh, and a career with the U. S. Geological Survey. In water reclamation.”

“Geez, Carol.” He put his hands to his face. She almost laughed. Edvard Munch could have used him as a handsome model for a painting.

“Now tell me about being mayor. About your family. Are you married?”

Doyle sighed. “Married? Yes. I married Maria Ochoa. It’s been twenty-six years now. Remember how I was going to go to Texas Tech? I came back to Dos Pesos after two years and went into the insurance business. Done fairly well at it. Maria and I have two children. I got elected mayor six years ago. Up for reelection for the second time next year.” He took a deep breath. “But, Carol, how are you? Really?”

Carol laughed. “How do I look? I’ve got six months. Tops. I drink. I cry. I curse, I kick, I scream and I wallow in pity. And now I’m back in town to see what I’ve been missing out on all these years.”

Silence.

Finally, Doyle said, “I was really sorry about that business with your father. Deep down, I think he was a good man.”

Carol shook her head, hoping to control her wattle. “Doyle, the man embezzled a shitload of money from the company. He ruined the biggest business in town, then went to prison and died there. Deep down? Deep down he was a crook, and I didn’t see it. I should have. He was always

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such a bigshot. Strutting around town like he owned the place. He ruined Mr. Dawes. He was a phony.”

Doyle blinked several times, then crossed his arms across his chest. “Well,” he said, “it was a shame. And then when I heard about your mother...I felt terrible.”

“An accidental overdose. Or, so they said. I take Diazepam...it’s not that easy to overdo it.” Carol wiped away the tears on her cheek with the back of her hand. “I didn’t buy it.” She shuddered. “But I didn’t come here to feel sorry for them. I came here to feel sorry for myself. I’ve told you my wretched story. Now I want to hear more about you. Two kids?”

“A boy and a girl. Richard and Emma.” Doyle grinned, painfully. “Carol, when we dated, I always thought we’d both go off to school then come back here and get married. But you never came back. So, I married Maria. You probably don’t remember her. She was three years behind us.”

“If we would have married, you would have gotten a raw deal. I’m afraid this body came without a warranty. Spare parts are in short supply. And, you would have married into a family in disgrace.”

“You’re a geologist? What do you do? Study rocks?”

Bless his heart, thought Carol, he’s feigning interest, just for my sake. “Not at all,” she said. “My expertise, if I have one, is water. Mostly water beneath the surface of the ground. Ground water. There’s a lot going on down there. A gradual undercurrent that, in geological time, is cutting away at everything, like a buzzsaw, grinding into everything, rocks, mountains,

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continents. Taking everything to the sea so there’ll be room for whatever pops up next, more mountains, new continents. It’s all a big cycle, you know.”

“And what is that you do about it?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing to do about it.” She laughed at the concern on his still-handsome face. She shrugged. “We just keep an eye on it.”

Carol looked at him, he looked at her. There was nothing more to say. But more was said, though nothing of any consequence. She told him about Amie, how much the girl detested her parents, how the young woman relished the role of disaffected daughter of unrepentant misfits. Doyle talked more about Maria, Richard and Emma. He bored Carol when he boasted about his insurance business, but she pretended interest. They said their goodbyes, without a hug, and she strolled, her mind filled with memories, through town then back to the leper colony, the Sagebrush.

Carol had paid for two nights at the motel, but she just couldn’t do it, another night of drinking alone with nothing to look forward to but another miserable shower in the tub of doom. She packed her bags and drove north, toward I-10 and what she had always thought of as civilization, but now she wasn’t sure. It was the grocery store that had been everything she’d hoped for, Hector and Angie. Then, of course, Doyle was Doyle, better than his father—he couldn’t possibly have been worse—but still rather smug in his mediocrity. Mr. Mayor. Of Dos Pesos, Texas. And that was that. The only positive change she’d seen in town was that her old beau, the son of the biggest redneck in town, Rayford Gaither, a bigger hater than her own father,

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was now happily married to a woman named Maria Ochoa, someone Carol had pretended to remember. That was the only hint of any semblance of absolution that she witnessed in her twenty-four hours in Dos Pesos. And she hadn’t seen that one coming. The only memory she’d carry home with her other than her cleansing and healing in the grocery store was how proud Doyle seemed to be with his life.

On the interstate Carol drove west into a bruised sunset, purple with orange clouds scattered in the darkening sky. She intended to drive straight through, into the darkness of the desert night. She thought she might stop at the Sonic in Ft. Stockton. All she’d eaten were two empanadas, delicious pastries; it would the last time she would get the opportunity to take communion. And the eucharistic minister, a grocer in white, had actually held her hand, though briefly.

Her favorite professor in graduate school, Dr. Simpson, a downright peculiar man who wore the same tan suit, day after day, used to quote Heraclitus with a sly smile on his ragged face, “No man ever steps in the same river twice”. The bearded old man knew what he was talking about. What it had to do with hydrology, she was never quite sure.

****

David Larsen is a musician and writer who lives in El Paso, Texas. His stories have been published in numerous literary journals and magazines.

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Superman

by Amber Erin Diaz

Sixteen is the age when Catherine is addicted. She’d lay on the floor, curled up like a cat, watching Futurama on the TV. You couldn’t help noticing the blemishes populating her chin.

Really, she’d gotten high in the bathroom while you were asleep. When she thought about calling her grandpa, but didn’t, it’s because she was high and forgot.

You called him. You woke up and took your cellphone to the apartment’s parking lot to wish him happy Father’s Day. It had seemed to Cat that you wanted a private conversation. Maybe you wanted to talk about her, or maybe you knew she was high.

Back then, you liked to complain about her to your family and your friends. You’d tell them you didn’t know what to do with her, and she didn’t know how you held yourself together so you could keep her from falling apart.

When you came back inside after the call and saw Cat, glassy eyed and preoccupied with a cartoon, you told her, “Grandpa had to get off the phone; he was tired.”

The next day you get a call from Mom and she says Dad has passed. You tell Cat. She was looking at the sky on the patio of your apartment.

Outside there’s a bird. No, it’s a plane. No, it’s … Remember when dad used to say he could fly? “Psst,” he’d say. “Want to know a secret? I’m Superman.” Dad, the little boy whose teenage mother felt guilty for not being able to afford meat, and so she a stole chicken by putting it up under her shirt and bolting out of the grocery store. Dad, the man who joined the United States Navy to get his citizenship. Dad, the man who got seasick his first time out, throwing up off the ship as it set out from San Francisco.

On the day of Dad’s funeral, it takes you and Cat an hour-and-a-half to drive to the cemetery. You sit on folding chairs behind a small group of mourners, surrounded by little American flags planted in the grass. You and Cat have always been so far away, not the way a daughter and granddaughter should be. No one but your sister and your mother know who you are. Distance isn’t measured by miles.

You watch Cat. She’s silent with wet eyes. Three men in Navy dress blues march to the front of the coffin, led by a Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge. “Detail … halt!” One of them plays Taps on the bugle. The other two take the American flag from the black coffin and fold it carefully into a triangle shape. One of them marches to your mother, sitting in the front row, and hands the triangle to her with white-gloved hands. Her head is bent downward as she accepts the flag.

The sailor returns to the rest of the detail. They stand at attention, heels together, service rifles at their sides. “Present arms!” The sailors raise their rifles and hold them diagonally, in front of their bodies “Ready … aim … fire! Ready … aim … fire! Ready … aim … fire!”

It happens too fast. The sailors march away, and you wish they would come back. You can see the soles of their shoes as they march, single file—leaving you to a world without Dad.

You look at Cat. Your breath has been stolen—your dad, trying to wipe tears from Cat’s cheek, puts his hand on hers. She doesn’t see him, but he’s here with you and with her. He’s kneeling, stretching his blue tights, the red “S” stretched over his swollen belly. His cape flutters behind him, and he flashes a wide, toothless grin.

He puts his finger to his lips so you understand. He laughs, tilting his bald head back, the way he did when he’d told one of his famous dad jokes. At the sound of fire truck sirens, he stops laughing. He looks at you, and you already know. He waves goodbye as he soars into the sky. You watch him shrink into a distant speck, then disappear completely. You keep your eyes where he’d been, still trying to see him.

Cat is overwhelmed with guilt and pain. You don’t have the power to soothe her the way you’d like to, but, you’re allowed to hug her, and you say, “Grandpa wouldn’t want you to hurt like this,” knowing that’s what he’d want you to say.

Days and months pass, then a year. Dad doesn’t come back again, and things don’t get better for a while. Helping Cat is your life, and you have your own superpower for not giving up. You think of Superman. You think of Dad. You look to the sky, to the stars, to the blank, white ceiling, and say, “Dad, super is who we have to be.”

****

Amber Erin Diaz completed her MFA in writing at the University of San Francisco. She's previously worked for USF's literary magazine "Invisible City". Currently, she is working on her second master's in education.

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Relaxing Music for Dogs

by Iain Allan Mills

We were motoring north on the 1 in a functional, comforting if impoverished ‘94 Silver Lexus LS400. Gas stations were accepting hope as currency again and both commodities were tumbling into the green ocean now. Seaweed was trading and tracking three pips higher than silver regularly and pain was at an all-time high – again. It was hot, desert hot, it was always hot. I fare better in jungle hot, the wet hot. Not this dustbowl flamethrower hot. The roads were clear and very dry, and the mycelium-based brake pads were mostly making good work of consuming and processing the particles that north facing travel throws up around the wheelbase. Occasionally we had to stop and encourage the brake’s participation in the movement process by singing nursery rhymes in Italian slang – not all mycelium is as acquiescent to mechanical movement as the once famed Brake- Through Motor Brand. But that’s how it was, you made a deal, sang a song and they came back to life, coughed out the gak and soaked up the UV, fed the engine and in ten minutes or so you could travel again.

Snow had begun vacationing in Ojai, a boon for the gas markets as the promise of lower temperatures signalled change beneath the crust, but usually we all settled for viewing the brass crowned hill tops from a distance, spiritually prostrating ourselves and accepting that peace would likely never truly reach the mainland’s eroding coast now. Each day we spent existing we were becoming more like glass pebbles and pearl dirt. On occasion there were games offering yardage as part of the land’s edge competition. The elephant seals were encroaching every year, but their incursion was a peaceful sleep, a cosmic dream on the West side of the luminous highways. The Zebras, on the East with their speed, camouflage, stamina, lenses, and teeth, less so socially comely. Long gone were the days of horse breeds as boot high prey for the now extinct apex or as 15 hand high travel facilitators for humans. As long promised by our heart, this prey was now finally hunting in herds and the destiny vacant hopeless rebellion only ever resulted in increases to the dried valerian flower stink of regret emanating from the SLO men’s colony. We did not envisage any joy in that radiation chamber.

Rantum-Scootum and the Trash Pandas were playing on the car stereo, another hit single from the record they hadn’t written yet, they always blew my mind, and drank my rum.

Shiva was in the passenger seat, Confucius asleep in the trunk and Zhuang Zhu strapped, as always, to the roof, facing the sky, boots to the exhaust, generally ecstatic.

Looking out through the grassy screen there was a beautiful, desperate, landscape. The ’94 Silver Lexus rolled on with dreams of revolution and a crush on a 1977 Black Ford Mustang. Dreams were still in the possession of the human and inanimate – soul was the one common thing left in the wilderness, unowned, without bridle, unseen usually, like a bear or patience.

“Hungry?”

“No, but I’ll eat” “Madonna?” “Sure”

We crossed the highway at the elevated turnpike roundabout, drifted down the off ramp, pulled up, took the bags of sand out the back seat and lifted the ‘94 Silver Lexus LS400 onto the parking platform. It’d be happy for an hour steeped in relative peace and drowned in the de-salination bath. Walking to the Madonna I noticed some gaps open and close without notice in the paving. Through

these gaps original sight reached a few meters into the surface soil. It was unhelpful for walking but very cool to look at – there were remains of dogs, parakeets, sarsaparilla, and liquorice root mites from the forgotten seasons and even some silver burns all mixed in with the earthworms, which are getting bigger and bigger. Juveniles were only a couple of meters long and remained pretty fat on a diet of carcass and trapped oxygen, but the mature, smart ones had worked it all out a long time ago – they were 17 or 18m long, translucent to avoid harvesting by the fast-food houses, and they were really fast when they perceived almost human tremor coming.

“it’s a crazy world...” I whispered into the wind.

There was no echo today.

“Media-Meta, Happy Holidays, what can I get ‘Cha?” the doorbell sang, in perfect English. The sound presented as a broken Horse head, but it was sweet enough against the ear ringing of the Trash Pandas. Clean teeth, good stink, polite eyes but perhaps a little too afraid of a bad review; poor guy was maybe one star away from a knacker’s yard decommissioning. He’d get a pool there, sure, but it’d be filled with blue glue and used in moonlight by the desert bums. Decommissioning was no way to live, post-audio presence.

“2 Cherry Pie, 1 Pecan Pie and Three yards of Tar, please”

“Comin at ‘cha - hop up, switch off, take a seat, and give me 27.8 seconds” “...Sure thing”

Sustenance arrived, spun around on the lacquered marble top diner bar that curved across the high shag carpet, seemingly keeping something solid between the animals on one side and us and the infinite chasm of indecision above and below. I had to piss but I always found it rude to take a piss when food was on the table, I don’t know why. Sanitation left a lot to be desired and there was a lot of desire for lack of sanitation back in the L.A. alleyways – easier to score with disgust in your eye see, and proclivity taste scales have been tumbling of late. I recalled the bourgeois propriety of Guy De Maupassant, via an old gel script I’d inhaled cliff side after a flagon of cheap red wine, and the impossible romance that intoxicated my mind as I harnessed a real time vision of the sea washing out to the horizon one summer’s early evening. But now it was just “piss in my ear” and “eat my feet, after they’ve trampled in shit” all along the neon floored alleys and all in exchange for a little hope and less than flagrant compliments. I guess some people still gotta’ breathe, with or without inspiration. The conclusion cloaked me; there is less more unappealing than the self-denial of depravations’ pompous anarchy. I mean, fuck me, do what you like, but when the candle is gone don’t try and fuck the flame. Logic and desire never were good bedfellows. Perhaps I wasn’t yet over the exit of the summer season. I still can’t believe it gave up.

I let myself down from the marble bar, and took a stroll to the sanistation. It was down some polished stone steps, a rare and welcome feature, and through some sand doors. Whoever owned the place now had done a job to provide comfort where possible. There was half a John Coopers’ barrel for pissing, a crumbling tin trough for shitting and a grass glass dispensary for disinfectant. Those dispensaries were usually stolen by the bums and sold for dignity, or a little hope if they were empty, a high prize indeed. But I was no longer a thief or a bum. I had hope, and a threat of dignity.

I took a piss, cleaned up and looked at the old western pictures as I side stepped my way back up the polished stones to meet Shiva. Breezing through the saloon doors, I saw that Confucius had awoken and come through his mist to join us.

“Do we have a plan?”

“no”

“We need a plan”.

“Do we? Have you looked around lately”.

“. doesn’t matter, we need a plan, how are we going to forage if we don’t have a plan” – Confucius was never one for uncertainty.

“I’ll think of something,” said Shiva. “First though – I need to eat this pie...hold my Trident”.

We all necked the pie and the tar. It was good quality tar. I’m partial to Mexican tar, in paper cups, a little bitter and likely with saliva, but this was Indonesian, original, ornate and with superior steam shapes. We couldn’t afford it, but Shiva would see to that.

“How’zzZZZ your pie, friends?” – the Horse head was back on his rounds, poor guy. Once so proud, powerful, and revered after the rise from prey to companion, to equal, to master, to ruin, to collapse, to servitude, to abysmally veiled prey. Being a sound under this guise was arguably a less promising existence than simply being shot in the head or eaten by a Big Cat.

You, ZZ, Confucius, and I knew this signalled time to reap the tax and began the long walk back to the ‘94 Lexus, avoiding the gaps in the paving.

Shiva was finished inhaling the steam shapes. It took a deep breath, lifted her head, dropped his shoulder and levelled the whole place with their Trident. It wasn’t terribly hard work for her, he didn’t need to try really. But they were tired of it, the destroying. You could tell the heart was gone. The colour drained out the space for a moment, we observed the vacuum, then presence returned as a gold and crimson shattering of fragile China bone shards. By the look on your face, you weren’t very sure what to make of this but Confucius, Zhuang Zhu and I had seen it too many times to report anything other than our comparative scores; 8, 8.5, 8.

Shiva emerged from the settling curtains of dust and bone as a cloud of butterflies and entered the Lexus through the gasless air conditioning channels. Reformed and absolved they coalesced into one of us again.

“Start the engine, I have the plan.”

****

Iain Allan Mills is a writer of Scottish origin, Scottish, Irish and English extraction, living in Wales with animal allies.

__________________________________

Relaxing Music for Dogs

by Iain Allan Mills

Rantum-Scootum and the Trash Pandas were playing on the car stereo, another hit single from the record they hadn’t written yet, they always blew my mind, and drank my rum.

Shiva was in the passenger seat, Confucius asleep in the trunk and Zhuang Zhu strapped, as always, to the roof, facing the sky, boots to the exhaust, generally ecstatic.

“Hungry?”

“No, but I’ll eat” “Madonna?” “Sure”

“it’s a crazy world...” I whispered into the wind.

There was no echo today.

“2 Cherry Pie, 1 Pecan Pie and Three yards of Tar, please”

“Comin at ‘cha - hop up, switch off, take a seat, and give me 27.8 seconds” “...Sure thing”

“Do we have a plan?”

“no”

“We need a plan”.

“Do we? Have you looked around lately”.

“. doesn’t matter, we need a plan, how are we going to forage if we don’t have a plan” – Confucius was never one for uncertainty.

“I’ll think of something,” said Shiva. “First though – I need to eat this pie...hold my Trident”.

You, ZZ, Confucius, and I knew this signalled time to reap the tax and began the long walk back to the ‘94 Lexus, avoiding the gaps in the paving.

“Start the engine, I have the plan.”

****

Iain Allan Mills is a writer of Scottish origin, Scottish, Irish and English extraction, living in Wales with animal allies.

______________________________

Sanctioned

by Zeke Jarvis

Everywhere you go in the city, you can see small crimes. I walk through the streets and see a mother using what is likely unsanctioned magic to repair her child’s ragged shoes. Across the square, someone appears to be pocketing some food from a merchant’s table. Did he use a charm to distract the vendor? Both of these people certainly believe that what they’re doing is justifiable. They also could both be brought in as criminals, but I am pulled by more pressing matters. An important figure has been murdered, and I am the one to halt the wagging tongues, making sure that everyone still believes in justice.

The murder is a complex one both in execution and impact. The victim was killed during the day, seemingly when his murderer should have been seen, but it must have happened quickly and expertly. There wasn’t an obvious scuffle to call attention. The victim was simply found dead in an alley. This might imply that the victim was lured by someone he knew or could be made to trust, or it might imply that there was an illegal transaction that led to the murder. That’s how the execution is complex.

How the impact is complex is that the victim is from an honorable family and tended to associate with honorable friends. That means two things. First, there isn’t a genuine suspicion of previous criminal activity according to tradition and sanction. Second, there isn’t a natural friend who would be a suspect in plain and public view. The victim had not yet been betrothed, he did not have a clear public rival, and there was no impending transaction that would have led to his demise. This leaves the matter of the murderer very uncertain. Or so it would seem. I’m confident that I’ll be able to name the right person.

When I reach the actual scene, I see four people. Even before they introduce themselves, I know three of them. The victim’s father, mother, and brother. The fourth turns out to be the family counselor, here to make sure that the investigation is thorough and effective. The counselor carefully waves his hand, charming the family, and he says to me, “The family is very upset. While they have not seen the actual body, they have heard a description of the crime. I hope that you will be understanding of their reaction as you resolutely pursue your examination.”

The father and mother are genuinely devastated. They have no clue what happened, and they desperately want answers. The brother, however, is searching with his eyes. They pass over me, look beyond me, then look at the spot where his brother must have fallen. The sum total of my years tell me that, before things end, I will be arresting him for murder. There is something in him which so aligns with the standard suspicions that I can quite see him being led in front of the crowds and denounced for his brother’s murder. Here and now is both too early and too indelicate to act, but I’m confident that the time will come.

“He had no enemies,” the victim’s mother tells me.

I try to give her a reassuring smile and touch her hand. In addition to comforting her, the physical contact will allow me to get a deeper read on her. “That’s what I’ve heard from several people. It’s possible that this was all an accident in a way, a random tragedy. But I’ll do my best to get to the bottom of things.”

She nods, but she doesn’t look directly at me. The father says, “If it’s truly random, then is there any chance that you’ll actually find the killer?”

I release the mother’s hand. For a flicker, I contemplate shaking the father’s hand, but I suspect that he would be less open and more apt to realize what I was doing. Touching the mother only confirmed what my first reaction was. The father wants to believe that he’s inscrutable, that he himself is better suited to investigate than I am. “There’s a definite chance. I can’t make an absolute guarantee, but I will pursue every avenue. It’s also, of course, possible that it is not random.”

The counselor says, “It’s likely too early to speculate anyway, isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” I say. “I don’t like to make too many assumptions this early on. They tend to shut off some possibilities.” I make another quick sweep of the alley. There’s no blood and very little sign of scuffle. The appearance suggests that it was not a random, physical attack but instead an instance of someone being lured into the alleyway by an expert murderer and ambushed suddenly but carefully. The brother is trying to covertly follow what I’m looking at. It wouldn’t be hard to read that action as guilt, trying to see if I’m tracking the events as they precisely happened, which, of course, I am. I’ll eventually have to answer the question of why the murder happened in an alley instead of in a private place, but all of this discussion will be rooted in misdirection.

“We’re willing to help however we can.” The father again, trying to suggest that his intelligence would surpass my experience. It’s a common enough impulse, and I can usually harness it to extract some information.

“I appreciate that. It would be helpful if I could see his home, to get a sense of how he lived and what his habits were.” I watch the family reactions. The mother is only half registering everything, barely noticing that I’ve made the request. The father is nodding, again assuming that he’ll be able to steer the investigation once I’m inside the home, that he’ll eventually take credit for finding his son’s killer. Maybe he’ll even believe that he’ll be able to physically take down the murderer. The counselor is, like me, watching the family, trying to gauge what might come of all this. It’s possible that the counselor rather than the brother is the murderer, but it would take a very unlikely coincidence for him to be assigned the case. Of course, that’s not impossible. The brother is judging me, actually hoping that I’m too incompetent to find anything. This doesn’t automatically imply guilt, but it certainly doesn’t suggest innocence.

There’s some pleasant negotiations about when this will work best for everyone. Eventually, they finish, and they leave. I now conduct a more methodical examination of the alley. I touch the stone, feeling the magical residue on the walls. It’s subtle enough that it won’t identify anyone specifically, just that magic was used. Unsanctioned, of course. While it might not be definitive, I could easily convince most folks that it was, in fact, telling, but that’s not enough for right now. Not that it matters. I know how this will end.

I turn from the alley and see someone using sanctioned magic to start a fire to cook with. Seeing it is a reminder that many people question why he have the sanctions at all.

***

On the appointed day, I arrive at the family’s house a bit early. I’ve walked by it before several times, as many folk in the town have. All of those who will find the family’s life completely out of reach. The number of people who would have a basic motive is incredibly high, but relatively few would have the means to pull it off.

There’s the family crest above the door. Looking at the lion in the center, I wonder if the person who originally designed the crest had ever actually seen a lion up close. Recognized the ferocity of the beast. Or if they understood the many tiny animals fleeing in terror. Would anyone in the family see it that way? Would anyone believe that, if enough of the mice came together, they would be able to chew off the lion’s feet or face or skin?

After my ruminations, I decide to go to the door. As an honorable family, they’ll certainly be ready early. They may have even asked their counselor to put a sanctioned magical trace on me. Almost as soon as I knock on the door, the counselor opens it. He nods at me, and I nod back. If he knows that I was outside watching, he doesn’t indicate it. The counselor steps back and holds his hand out, showing me the way. I enter, looking around as much as I can without being obvious. There are all of the usual decorations. Ornamental dead animals. Magic-laden plants. Some icons and images rooted in a clear, continuous sense of our society’s history. The clear sense of tradition rooted in the lightning bolts and ominous clouds scattered throughout the home.

The father comes out to shake my hand. I give a firm, confident grip, and I feel for magic. There is magic, but it is residue rather than something internal to him. This almost certainly means that he’s gone out for unsanctioned magic to try solving the murder on his own. If he believes that his living son is the one who committed the murder, it’s possible that he’s trying to use magic to cover it up, but I have every confidence that this is not the case. “I’d like to look around,” I tell him.

He nods and turns. “I’ll show you where he spent most of his time.” The room he takes me to is warm and bright. It has a variety of plants, many with magical properties, though it looks like they were pruned for decoration more than practical use. I wonder what the gardener or cleaner does with the clippings. As I look around, I am absolutely certain that this is not where this man’s sun spent the bulk of his time. It’s possible that the father will surprise me yet.

“He mainly did correspondence here?”

The father quickly looks me up and down. “Yes, ours is a family with myriad responsibilities, so we all must do our part. Tracking some of our negotiations and transactions was a major part of his work.” This is a simple and plausible lie. I look around at the desk. It’s possible that he’ll have left evidence. It won’t give me any genuine insight into the crime, but what I might find might give me a deeper insight into the family workings.

“Who else would regularly be in here?” I pick up a journal and leaf through it.

“I would come in now and then. My wife generally didn’t show an interest in this sort of thing. Our cleaner, of course”

“And your other son?” The journal does appear to be the murdered son’s, but it reveals very little. Most of the content is material that I already knew, so I can skim it and watch the father respond.

His voice gets just a bit higher as he replies. “They were always in each other’s lives. As brothers are. Somewhere between having each other’s backs and looking over each other’s shoulders.”

“Of course,” I say. I set the journal down on the left side of the desk. I had picked it up from the right. I go to one of the bookshelves and take down a book. “Is there a space where he would likely keep private material?” I leaf through a few pages and then put the book back onto a different shelf. Little shifts in the father’s face and posture tell me that he’s getting annoyed with my misplacement of things. This suggests that this is actually his study, and he simply brought in a journal or two of his son’s. Maybe his son’s actual workspace is elsewhere, and he sees this as a safe space where I won’t see any clues. Another detective would see this as the father covering up. Given the magic that I felt on his hand, I’m almost certain that he’s slowing me down so that he can pursue justice on his own and so that none of his son’s personal habits come to light.

“The most sensitive might be elsewhere in the house, though, being honest, I’m not sure if I could say where. I never had any reason to question my son.”

I go back to the desk and open a drawer. There are a few scraps of paper, an amulet, and a letter opener. I close the drawer and go back to the bookshelves. “I might like to look around for a bit in this room.” I turn towards him. “If you don’t mind, that is.”

He nods. “If you need anything, talk to me or the counselor.” I thank him, and he leaves the room. After I’m confident that he’s gone away, I go back to the desk drawer. I take the letter opener and the amulet out to examine them a bit more carefully. There’s something on the letter opener. It’s not blood, but it’s not parchment or paper either. I touch it, and there’s a bit of a vibration. I put it back and look at the amulet. It doesn’t appear to be infused with magic, but it’s clearly valuable, loaded with a variety of jewels all laid in gold. I wonder if it’s the father’s or the son’s. Or the living son’s.

I put both objects back in the drawer and shut it. I sit down and look through other texts. Everything that I read simply confirms what I’ve already determined. It shouldn’t take more than a few days for me to convince my superiors that the brother is responsible. They’ll be happy to see it wrapped up quickly, of course. The father will be saddened, but likely willing to see the matter shut.

I sit quietly for a moment. There comes a point in these types of investigations where a detective has to make an active decision. It’s necessary to contemplate this so that you control the investigation rather than the other way around. I’ll be making a major accusation, and there will be some fallout. It’s important that I not pretend that’s not true. I’ll wait here until the father returns, and then I’ll ask him to make tea. We’ll walk through the house, and I’ll casually watch the living son to gather more material for my superiors.

***

I am sitting in my superior’s office, waiting for her to come in. I have been in this position dozens of times before. Some situations are more worrisome than others. This is on the “more” end of the spectrum. Aside from the family’s station, there is the possibility that my superior will be skeptical. When the bulk of the case rests on unsanctioned magical evidence rather than hard, physical evidence, there’s always some skepticism. The overseers don’t like unsanctioned magic acknowledged publicly, and allowing it to become evidence gives it more attention and weight than they prefer.

When my boss comes in, she sits. She carefully lays out a pen, a journal, and a small bottle. Only after she has set them down does she look at me and give a slight smile. “You are prepared, then,” she says, “to report?”

Her posture is surprisingly relaxed, and her hands are neatly crossed, not ready to immediately transcribe every word I say. This suggests that she is prepared to hear me out, to listen to my findings before judging them. “I believe that I’ve gathered as much as possible, yes. I’ve given a thorough examination of both the murder site and the family home. Based on what I’ve found, the brother should be named as the killer. The father had traces of unsanctioned magic, the family home had traces of magic hanging from him, but it appears that he was unaware of this. The mother was completely unaware.”

She nods once and picks up the pen to jot a few notes. When she stops writing, she continues looking at the page rather than looking at me. “Pursuing my investigation, I found that there is a bit of rivalry between the brothers. At first, it didn’t seem to be significant enough to lead to murder, but I’ve come to believe that the rivalry is only one factor in the full motive.”

She sets the pen down. “I’ve become familiar with the family’s troubles in preparation for this meeting. For obvious reasons, I won’t be putting this in the official record, but the absence will extend to you a bit of latitude in your overall investigation.”

“I appreciate the situation.” I begin telling her about small actions that I observed in both the alley and the house. Admittedly, I embellish some elements, giving a stronger sense of the disdain that the brother showed me than he actually did. I also heighten the father’s guilt and the mother’s general disengagement in order to make my superior belief that the father suspects and the mother has a plausible reason not to. I see my superior’s breath quicken for a bit as she takes all of this in, but she’s able to quickly return it to normal. I explain the rest of what makes the brother such a logical suspect. She takes notes and nods, giving small noises of agreement but not speaking. When I finish, she puts the pen back down. “I would like you to confront him quietly and try to bring him in without humiliating the family.”

This is what I’d been expecting her to say. “I understand. I’ll do my best to keep it calm and respectable.”

She stands, so I do as well. She reaches out to shake my hand. I’m sure that she can tell that I have some nervousness. There are many ways that this could go wrong, and ignoring that would be naive. But I have a good reputation based on well honed skills. I’ve been right about this case every step of the way so far. I’ll be cautious but confident, and I will bring this to a successful conclusion, bringing a close to a seemingly honorable but quietly flawed and rotten.

***

I wasn’t surprised that the brother quickly agreed to meet with me. While he must be suspicious, avoiding the meeting would be damning. The offer to meet without the counselor must have made him think that there was a way that he might turn the meeting in his favor. We meet at a space that his brother had been renting. I’ll be able to see if he knows about this space, and we’ll have a private place to speak. When I arrive, he’s already there. He sees me and nods. I nod back. His face doesn’t betray any anger or immediate aggression.

I have the key to the door. He doesn’t look surprised when I produce it. Maybe he doesn’t grasp the significance of what’s about to happen. I open the door and let him in first. I do a quick sweep of the area, seeing if he’s brought someone as backup. Nobody stands out, and I don’t suspect that he would have the connections to find someone truly stealthy.

I close the door behind me. This is a matter best conducted in private. At the sound of the lock turning, he looks back at me. I nod, the message no doubt clear. “It wasn’t me,” he says.

“I have sufficient evidence to convict you.”

He touches his mouth and shakes his head. “That’s not possible. I knew about my brother’s, listen, I didn’t need to kill him to protect our family. I had other…” He takes a step towards me, and I take a step back. He points at me. “You did it. You did it, and now you’re trying to frame me.”

“I’m surprised that he actually came to that conclusion. I wonder if the possibility had come to him earlier. Obviously I can’t let him stir up accusations. “You did it,” he says again. With that, I hold a hand towards him, palm out. I can feel my magic working. A small bubble is created in his breathway. Next, it expands. He recognizes what’s happening and charges at me. That’s actually a favor to me. Later, when the scene is examined, it will appear that he was trying to kill me, and my actions will be sanctioned.

Perhaps he realizes this, because his charge quickly slows to a stumble. It won’t be enough. When I accuse him of the acts that I’ve committed, it will appear that he clearly was trying to kill me, and I only acted in self defense. I thought that I would be able to close the case by accusing him and smiling at him in the court while he was brought to justice. Sometimes, the cases don’t work out. As I watch the breath escape him, I put together the narrative in my head. This will work. I will seem righteous. I will be vindicated.

I watch him choke out. There’s irony here. The bubble in his throat does have air, but it also cuts off all air to him. There’s something that he needs and is so close to him, but he can’t access it to live. It’s an appropriate end, in some ways. Not that I can tell anyone else. Actions like these need to remain secret. There are others who need to be taken down, and my mission will be sanctioned by the state. By direct blessing or ignorant and benign neglect, I will continue my important work.

****

Zeke Jarvis (he/him/his) is a Professor of English at Eureka College. His work has appeared in Moon City Review, Posit, and Bat City Review, among other places. His books include, So Anyway..., In A Family Way, The Three of Them, and Antisocial Norms. His website is zekedotjarvis.wordpress.com

_____________________________

Fridgehenge

by Stuart Watson

Dirk strutted all cocky and generalissimo, cutting a rug behind his electric mower. Had his blue Dodgers cap on, sweating like a horsefly on steroids. Out in the street, here comes Rawnda, with her tow truck hauling a utility trailer and the load du jour. Another fridge.

“What’s that make it?” Dirk muttered to himself. “Sixteen?”

Rawnda steered around two cars parked at the curb, buried under surfboards. Her kids and their duuuudes. She backed the trailer like she had a hundred times, stopped hard so the fridge shifted. Ka-THUD! It toppled from the trailer into the yard. She got out, short but shapely, and squatted next to the fridge. When they built her, Dirk thought, they just packed big boobs and a muscley ass on either end of a swivel joint. He watched her grab the fridge’s frame, extend her legs, and tilt the fridge up and onto its base. The door swung open, revealing petrified cheese.

He felt the shadow of his wife fall across him.

“You call the H.O.A. yet?” Flita asked.

Dirk kept watching Rawnda. He loved compact. Finally, he turned toward his spouse.

“No, cuz like I told you a hunnert times, there ain’t no number for the H.O.A. It’s just rules without cops.”

All the residents had accepted the existence of a homeowners association when they bought their houses. One of the rules was no trailers in driveways. People figured it would protect their property values from the inexorable advance of lower-classness. Only problem was, everybody had found something in the rules they didn’t like. It was as if they were at war with themselves.

Dirk jerked his thumb toward their neighbor’s. Wilber was president of the H.O.A. “He told me there’s nuthin’ in the rules about fridgerators. End of story.”

“Well . . . There’s only one reason Wilber ain’t crackin’ down on her,” Flita said. “The boobs.”

“That’s two reasons.”

Flita disappeared like a played-out thunderhead.

Dirk turned on the mower and drowned out Flita. When he turned around, Flita was moving back slowly toward the house. Gigantic butt and thighs. He shook his head. Ass like that? Could set my beer up there and it wouldn’t spill.

He continued cutting along his usual grass pattern and looked across the street. Dirty towels dotted Rawnda’s yard. She stood inside the fridge, spraying 409.

“Hey!” Dirk yelled. “What kind you get this time?”

“Philco,” Rawnda yelled back. “Late ’40s, my guess. It don’t work.”

“Perfect for Fridgehenge.”

“Listen, Dirkwad,” she said, pointing the rag at him. “This ain’t no art piece. It’s a statement. Political.”

“How you figure? A junk yard? Visible from my yard? I vote ‘No.’”

“I don’t care. I want them assholes who run this subdivision to show me where it says I can’t have this. I’d rather park my boat and trailer here, but ‘no sir’, not permitted. Private property? My tight little ass.”

Dirk chuckled. He had to give her that. “What kinda boat?”

“Bayliner. No biggie. Those fucks wouldn’t know it from a battleship.”

“Who did you call?”

“Willlll-bur. The prez? Guy next door? Nice, but clueless. They hired legal to dodge the blowback. I’ve read the rules. There’s nothing they can do to make us do anything, or not do anything.”

Dirk liked her style. Sorta Fuck-you, Jack.

“Hey,” he said, “you wanna come over for burgers? Flita’s flippin’.”

She stood with her hands on her hips. She had her halter top on. She always had her halter top on. Hard to think about the fridge situation with that in your face.

“Flippin’ Flita? Sure,” she said. “Bring anything?”

“Naw, just don’t change.”

She showed up with a bottle of chardonnay. Dirk led her through the house toward the patio, and Flita waddled off to get the singles and mayo. She didn’t like vegetables, so Dirk had to use ketchup to get his tomato quota, and mustard pickle relish to get his cucumbers.

“Flita hates toppings,” he said.

“I’m OK with just the meat,” Rawnda said. “And the bun. Gotta have the bun.”

“Gotta.”

Flita arrived with the platter and slid the burgers onto the buns. “You settled in pretty much?” she asked Rawnda.

Rawnda had only been there a few months. Long enough to salvage every old fridge in the city, but maybe not long enough to hang pictures of the kids. “Mostly settled,” she said. “Learning how to live alone.”

She ran an auto salvage yard south of town. She told Wilber and Wilber told Dirk and Flita. They knew the place. Dirk always rhapsodized about it when they passed. Not Flita. “Imagine living next door?” she would say. “Ratty-ass fence, like that screens anything. Neighbors wake up and take in a lovely view of a bunch of old Buicks and Oldses. Lord God almighty—at least Rawnda didn’t move that into her front yard.”

Word was, Rawnda’s husband, a family practice lawyer, somewhat agreed with Flita’s point of view about the salvage yard. Took his own legal advice and dumped her, but Dirk still thought she was a pistol, thumbing her nose at the homeowners association.

“Hey!”

They all stopped talking and looked toward the sound. It was the president. Wilber, the guy next door, hanging on the concrete block fence with his head looking over.

“I smell burgers, but I seem to have lost my invitation.”

“We got plenty,” Flita said. “If Dirk don’t eat two. Come on.”

They heard the gate latch open. Wilber held a case of beer. “You not gonna shoot me or anything, right?” he said to Rawnda, accepting a burger from Flita. Everybody knew everybody.

“I don’t hate you, I just don’t like these bullshit homeowners rules.”

“Hey, I didn’t write them. They came with the houses.”

“Nobody likes them. Why do we even have them?”

Wilber chomped into his burger. Looked at Flita. “Got any lettuce, tomatoes, onions?”

She gave him a look and he went back to chewing. Wilber continued. “See, the way I figure it, it’s good for people to have that document when they want to sell. Gives the buyers peace of mind.”

“I’d like to give somebody some piece of mind,” Rawnda said.

“See you got a new fridge,” he said. “What’s the plan?”

“You gonna send cops?”

“Just curious.”

She said she was going to remove the latches on all the doors, take the backs out, shove them together and create a compact overnight lodging place for surfers.

“They can’t afford much,” she said. “And the fridges would be dry. Tight, but dry.”

“Like those Japanese hotels, right?” Wilber said. “Remember those automats? Those vending machines that bring you sandwiches? I hear these hotels are only slightly bigger. A conveyor system brings your bed down. You climb in and it takes you up to the dark.”

Rawnda didn’t know what to say.

“What about showers?” Flita asked.

“They’re surfers,” Rawnda answered. “They don’t need showers.”

“I think there’s a clause about that,” Wilber said. “In the H.O.A. rules.”

“It’s not in my copy,” Rawnda said.

“Guess I’ll have to read them,” Wilber said. “That isn’t the president’s job, is it?”

In the days following the BBQ, Dirk and Flita and Wilber and the other neighbors watched Rawnda work things out. She took the guts out of all her fridges. She lay some of the fridges down. Others she took the backs out of and brought together in groups of two and four, big enough for one occupant or two.

Once she had them cleaned up and ready to rent, the surfer-cars started showing up. All the street spaces were taken, so nobody could have guests over for burgers or pool parties. Surfers wandered in and out of the fridge camp, smoking pot and shaking their long, salty hair. They were all named Dude. Lots of reggae in the air. Rawnda set up a portable fire pit.

Dirk and Flita were out front one night, watching the scene. Surfers gathered around the fire pit, laughing and talking about epic waves. Eventually, they would wander off to their rental boxes. Some would just lift a lid, step inside, and recline like Dracula.

Flita gave up watching and went to bed. She wore sound-canceling headphones and eyeshades. She looked like a captive animal during shipment to the zoo.

Dirk couldn’t sleep. He walked over to Rawnda’s house. Knocked on the door. Wilber opened it. “Hey,” he said. “We were just talking about calling you up.”

“Here I am,” Dirk said.

They were sitting on the sofa, watching a late-night comic rip on the president. Dirk had given up keeping track of who the president was. He sat next to Rawnda. Wilber reached across her lap to hand Dirk a beer.

Dirk lifted a toast. “Surf’s up.”

The place smelled like sex. He couldn’t tell if it was steaming off Rawnda or Wilber. Maybe both. He was the bland white bread off to the side of the hot meat sandwich.

“Who is the president now?” Dirk asked.

“I am,” Wilber said.

“No, not the H.O.A. The other thing. In D.C.”

“Oh, that guy,” Wilber said. “Hey, Raw. What’s his name?”

That did it. Raw. Like they were familiar. Dirk knew they had been screwing when he knocked, or just before. He hoped he hadn’t interrupted things. She looked calmer than he had ever seen her, so maybe it was OK.

“I can’t remember,” she said. “Some guy. Who cares?”

“Not me,” Wilber and Dirk said, at the same time.

“Chorus,” Rawnda said. “We just need to write the verses.”

Dirk finished his beer and excused himself. “Hope the surfers get some sleep,” he said, latching the door as he stepped toward their camp. Snores came from the fridges.

When he crawled into bed, Flita was taking up all of her side and half of his. He tucked himself against her, on the slim empty patch. He clung to the sheets to keep from falling out of bed. He must have fallen asleep, and fallen in his sleep, because he was on the floor when he woke.

Dirk usually went out early for the paper. He would stand there, scanning headlines, darting his eyes across the street at Rawnda’s fridge farm. Slowly, lids lifted up and scraggly surfer dudes started to rise. It was like watching a graveyard come to life. They were crawling out.

After coffee, Flita had cupcakes to make, so Dirk grabbed his rake and headed outside to tidy yesterday’s mulch from his mowing. That’s when he saw Rawnda slow her truck in front of the surf camp, and then back a small camp trailer into the driveway. She stepped out of the cab and smiled at him.

“You and your female, you can hit the RV lots,” she yelled. “Me and the president, we reached an . . . understanding.”

But the neighbors hadn’t, or at least the ones who signed the petition to the H.O.A. They shared their loathing of the fridges, the surfers, and the comings and goings at Rawnda’s trailer, which didn’t always involve Wilber and was showing enough traffic to suggest that Rawnda had herself a profitable little side business. Lots of husbands walking the neighborhood without wives or dogs. Who knew they needed that much exercise?

The H.O.A. board called a meeting at Wilber’s. Everybody showed up clutching an adult beverage. Wilber called it to order and asked Priss Newcomb to explain her petition. She was pretty agitated, about to pop a vessel, sweating and spitting when she spoke.

She said she didn’t buy her house to have a zombie surf camp next door. She had a garden. Freesias. In beds with rock borders and raised beds, in terracotta pots and hanging from macrame freesia holders.

There was lots of murmuring among the other homeowners.

“I’m gonna say something I might regret, but Rawnda, so help me, she may be in violation of Section 3, Subsection B.”

Everybody looked a little puzzled. They started chatting among themselves, trying to find out what the language prohibited.

“You mean the ‘Prohibited Uses’ section?” Wilber asked. “The ‘Commercial Activities’ clause?”

A loudmouth from down the street jumped up. Gooma Bradford lacked subtlety.

“You mean the ‘no hookers’ clause, don’t you?”

Many of the men in the audience blushed, started fumbling with their shoelaces and acting like their phones had vibrated.

All their wives chimed in, whipping out their pitchforks and nooses. Rawnda was in it, up to her neck. Thank god she had Wilber in her corner.

“As you all know, when matters of concern are brought to the board, we are required by our bylaws to refer them to legal counsel for resolution,” he said.

“But what can they do?” Flita asked. “Are there fines? If it’s a violation, then can we call the cops? Or what?”

Rawnda gave her an ugly look. Hadn’t they had burgers together?

“Look, I’m not sure,” Wilber said. “I’ll find out and send everyone an email.”

It was surprising how easily that mollified the mob. Everyone got up and started milling around, sipping drinks, drifting off to their cul-de-sacs cluttered with Big Wheels and playpens and trampolines. Dirk watched them wander through the clutter.

Flita went back inside. She had cupcakes to frost.

The surfers started to arrive, wet and carrying take-out burrito bags.

Dirk thought Rawnda was getting a bum rap. She had brought a lot of life to their little ’hood. Nobody else had managed to let the gas out of the H.O.A., least of all himself. After a fashion, Rawnda had brought everyone together. In the way that a lynch mob was a kind of social gathering.

He thought the whole uprising was overblown and he knew what was going to happen: nothing. That was what always happened. People run around flapping their gums. Then, nothing. The lawyer was going to punt it. Dirk didn’t care about the fridges or the surfers. He just wanted a trailer like Rawnda’s. With the tenor of the local H.O.A. politics, he doubted he would ever get one. Leastways not in his own driveway.

He hung his hands by their thumbs in his pockets. He wandered across the street. He wasn’t worried about Flita. She was probably in the back, fortifying her haunches with cupcakes.

He knocked on the door to Rawnda’s trailer. When it swung open, he stepped up and inside. “Like it?” she said. His knees wobbled a bit. He needed to get a trailer just like this. Equipped with a halter top just like hers.

****

Stuart Watson won honors for his work at newspapers in Anchorage, Seattle and Portland. His literary writing is in Yolk, Barzakh, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Bending Genres (Best Microfictions nominee), The Writing Disorder, Reckon Review, Mystery Tribune, Five South, Two Hawks Quarterly, 433, Bloom, Flash Boulevard, Wrong Turn Lit, Sensitive Skin and Muleskinner Journal among others. He lives in Oregon with his wife and dog.

NON-FICTION

_____________________________________________________________________

Consent

by Sandra Jensen

I have a hospital appointment to discuss things I already know. They want to take out my ovarian cyst, and everything nestling beside. I’ve been putting it off, because I’ve been extra sick. Why not do a phone consultation? All NHS appointments are on the phone these days. But no, not this one, it seems.

I’m driven there by someone I found on a neighbourhood app. She’d posted a video of her walk in the woods. I’d commented, Wish I could be there. She replied, Lots of trees near. Not for me, I said. I don’t have a car, and I have a chronic illness. I wrote it nicely. I didn’t put a full stop after my sentences. She contacted me privately and said, I have a car. Any time. Can help you in and out of it if you need. I checked her profile, did a Google. She loves dogs. Airline, or ex-airline attendant. Lots of make-up. I judged that. Didn’t follow up on her invite for coffee. But a taxi to my appointment is expensive and I’m not spending 45 mins on a bus. I message her, awkwardly. I don’t suppose? She replies immediately. I have a meeting that clashes, sorry. No worries, I say, but ten minutes later she tells me she’s managed to postpone the meeting.

So she picks me up. She’s from Barbados and very opinionated and I like this. She drives fast. Then she says the Barbadians should stop playing the victim card. Don’t people know blacks had slaves? She tsk-tsks. Anyway, she says, how long is the appointment? Not long I don’t think. But don’t wait. She looks at me. I’ll do a shop and text you when I’m done.

The gynaecological waiting room is stuffy and crowded and ablaze with hospital lights. Some patients are fanning themselves with leaflets. There’s a list of doctors on the wall. The one I’m seeing has a piece of paper pinned beside his name: Running forty minutes late. I tell the receptionist (she has a little fan blowing her hair into her eyes), I have myalgic encephalomyelitis. I like saying this. If I just say, I have ME, people go, Oh I’m sorry, straightaway. But if I say myalgic encephalomyelitis, they take a moment to blink before the pity bit. I can’t wait that long, I add once the receptionist has blinked because she certainly isn’t going to say I’m sorry. What she does say is, We can’t change slots. She taps the pile of medical files and then returns to her computer screen.

I shut my eyes and listen to guided meditations on my iPhone. The room seems to get even hotter, more crowded. It’s hard to breathe through my mask. Those lights, blaring down. They make my ears buzz. After an hour, I tell the receptionist I’m feeling faint. Oh he’s got your file now, she says. I wait another ten minutes. I move to the corridor outside the doctor’s office. I crouch down and hold my head in my hands to stop the spinning. A nurse comes along. Are you OK?She holds open the nearby escape door so I can get some air.

Another ten minutes later I’m called into the office. The doctor is wiry and young. He’s still looking at my scans on his multiple screens. He’s still checking the size of my ovary. Can you turn the lights down? I ask. He gives me an Are you mad look but he does as I ask. And then he starts explaining to me about my cyst, and my medical history. None of which is news. I’m still dizzy. He seems to be nearing the end. He’s fidgety and intense.

Then my ride texts, Still waiting? I text back, Done in 5. But the man isn’t done. He wants to make sure I know all the terrible things that can happen to me during and after the operation. He starts telling me again what they are going to do. I start to move around the office. I want to escape so badly I want to scream. Sweat drips between my breasts, between my thighs. My heart rate is becoming erratic. He stares at me but keeps going. Both ovaries, other tube, the cyst. I know all this, I say. You don’t need to tell me. I’ve had several consultations telling all this to me and I feel faint, I have to go.

By the way he presses his pen into the palm of his hand it’s clear he’s full on irritated. You haven’t heard it from me, he says. I am your surgeon, he says and I think, Oh shit. I hadn’t realised this. I need to make sure you know all the risks, he says. I do know them, I say as gently as I can. I research, I add and wish I hadn’t. I can’t have you sign the consent form without you hearing the risks from me, he says, the emphasis on me.

Consent form? No one said I’d be doing that here, now. I was told this was a routine consultation. I’m about to tell him this when he snaps, You could change your mind just before the surgery. I won’t do that, I say quietly. I’ve stopped moving around the office. Well, he says, still annoyed. You can go. We’ll do the consent before surgery. He stands up, shoots up really, towering over me. He strides towards the door. Thank you, I say, padding after him. Thank you for your time, I say. He looks at me. Let me get you a leaflet, he says. Oh, thanks so much, I say. I hold the leaflet as if it is the nicest thing someone has given me in a very long time, but he’s already back in his office, peering at someone else’s cyst.

****

Sandra Jensen has over 50 short story and flash fiction publications in literary magazines. Her work has received a number of awards including: The 2019 Bridport Prize for a first novel. Sandra has had ME/CFS for nearly 3 decades and has been commissioned to write a small book on writing with chronic, debilitating conditions. In her spare time she raises awareness and funds to stop animal suffering in Bosnia-Herzegovina. You can find her at http://www.sandrajensen.net.

____________________________

794 Days Later

by Amy Cook

Ever watch an actor goof a line? I’m not talking about when someone goes up, (which is terrifying) and the words from a script disappear into the ether, forcing the actor to call out for help.

“Line?”

I’m saying that sometimes, in that search for what comes next, a line comes out of your mouth that is not what the playwright intended. It is improvised.

Like this: our late friend, Bob, told the story of music-directing a national tour of Les Miserables. The actor playing Javert, having no clue what his next lyric was, offered an alternative one. The lyric he improvised both scanned to the original, and rhymed, stating that he (the policeman) had watered Jean Valjean’s (the escaped convict) plants.

So, this is what happened to the actor Douglas Sills, on what turned out to be the last night of our 2020 theatre season. We were at the City Center Encores! production of Mack & Mabel, and Sills, playing Mack Sennett, marched from stage left to introduce himself to another character.

Shaking the man’s hand vigorously: “Hello, Mr. Sennett.”

A pause. A think. His face turns red.

“Oh, I’m Mister Sennett.”

The audience roars with appreciation. That’s live theatre.

Part One, 2020: Cynthia Nixon would not have canceled Broadway.

On Saturday, March 7, 2020 a video is posted to social media: “People rush to catch the last trains leaving #Lombardy after government declared the quarantine and lockdown of 16 million people in Northern #Italy.” In the 21-second clip, dozens of figures race, wearing backpacks and dragging overnight suitcases behind them, across the station and down the stairs. Every day for months, I will wonder about these people; where they ultimately went, and how they were able to make that decision to flee at a moment’s notice. For now, I watch the video again.

We do not have the ability to go anywhere. We will ride this out in New York City. We will be fine. I stock up on non-perishable food for an unknowable Armageddon. Will the bodegas and grocery stores close? If they do, I have 60 days’ worth of Chef Boyardee.

I read stories of Italian hospitals refusing to accept anyone over the age of 65. Having been blindsided themselves, the doctors put together an ethics policy; a hierarchy of who will be treated, and in what order. My husband has just had a birthday. We are, still, hungover from his party at a solidly packed pub; the pleasure of good friends, fiery cognac and juniper gin. He is 70 now.

My husband, who teaches musical theatre, often to a packed room of writers, cancels an entire week of classes on Sunday, March 8th.

In hindsight, our march towards that spring was like watching a too-tall truck endeavor to ram itself through a small tunnel. You scrunch your whole face up, willing it through. What is going to happen? Our tickets to Girl from the North Country, the new Bob Dylan musical, are for Thursday, March 12.

For days, we debate. We are cautious, but why? The cases are mostly upstate in New Rochelle. We have plenty of plastic gloves, plenty of Lysol wipes. I order an obscene amount of delightfully named hand sanitizers. Strawberry Pound Cake. Sprinkled Donut. At The Beach.

We stop going to work. We stop taking the subway. We stop pretty much everything.

Wednesday, March 11: It’s reported, first by reddit, that a Broadway usher has the virus.

What the public does not know at the time is that even before Peter McIntosh tested positive, he was seen in an emergency room. Later, he is hospitalized for a week, the severity of his illness so extreme. He waits alone in a room for forty-five minutes while the doctors and nurses don hazmat suits to treat him. McIntosh had been sick since late February, but continued to go to work, performance after performance. He told Buzzfeed later, that being a Black man, he was focused on paying his bills. Focused on surviving.

Meanwhile, the message board biddies are apoplectic. They argue over the governor’s emergency powers. Come on, it’s the flu. No one is worried about getting too sick. They admit that selfishly, it would be just great if Broadway could hold out until they can see Company. Those tickets were expensive. They use the word “unfortunate” a lot. It’s all so unfortunate.

The theatres where Peter McIntosh worked are deep cleaned. The shows continue.

We still have these tickets for Thursday, the 12th. We brainstorm excuses as to why we cannot go, so that my husband won’t lose his spot on the second night list. Strangely, “there’s a pandemic” isn’t one of them.

Ultimately, Governor Cuomo makes the choice for us, banning any gathering of 500 people or more.

I interrupt my husband’s work Zoom, to tell him Broadway is about to be closed for four weeks. It seems completely untenable. I can’t decide if it’s laughable or chilling. Four weeks of dark theatres, save for a single bulb, the ghost light, that is kept lit at all times, to keep the stage from descending into complete darkness.

Broadway shutters for 540 days.

Part 2: The Moulin Rouge: Life Is Beautiful.

My calendar from this time is a fossil; a snapshot; a live wire with shorted power.

Canceled: work - Travel Policy Guidance Meeting

Canceled: Six (musical), Love Life (musical), Hangmen (play), Company (musical)

Canceled: 40th birthday party

New appointment: Virtual Happy Hour (ALL STAFF)

In beforetimes, March, April and May were crowded with theatre dates, as every show aims to open before awards season, and thus, to be eligible for Tonys in June. This year, we watch YouTube and TikTok. Here’s a guy with a sock puppet, pretending that the puppet is eating cars. Extraordinary. I binge watch ER, again, my fondness for the show heavily tipped towards the earlier seasons, where Anthony Edwards, Eriq La Salle, and George Clooney hold court. My husband, a close-up magician, records videos of card tricks for our nieces and nephews. One video per day; they take hours to rehearse, nothing left to chance. I remark that he should keep sending them every day until the pandemic has passed.

And we worry; how will the industry survive? Actors have left town, for summer houses and parents’ basements. Virtual events vie for attention, and more importantly, donations.

There’s a livestream (mostly pre-recorded) for Stephen Sondheim’s birthday that starts off disastrously wrong, and it is the highlight of our dark spring. In one of the few live segments of the evening, Raúl Esparza (who starred in Sondheim’s Company in 2006) tries again and again, and again, to launch into his opening remarks. There’s no sound; Raúl shakes his head and walks offscreen. We sit, sipping drinks, on our couch, for what must have been a half hour, knowing that so many of our friends are doing the same thing. Eventually, the technical problems are rectified, and by that point, we are well drunk. Melissa Errico, one of Sondheim’s favorite singers, delivers a haunting “Children and Art”, from Sunday in the Park with George, and it’s exquisite, but we are focused on the bookcase behind her, where a thin blue volume, “Erotic Irish Art,” is prominently featured.

The pinnacle of the evening: from separate locales, Christine Baranski, Audra McDonald, and Meryl Streep sing “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company, in white bathrobes, while mixing martinis, pouring whiskey, and trying to open a bottle of scotch.

We sit, my husband and I, howling, but also ghost-hearing what should have been the roar of an audience. Stephen Sondheim, largely considered to be the most important musical theatre artist of our time, has just turned 90. He will only live to see 91. He deserved to hear our applause. For now, we are granted a two and a half hour reprieve, of song and laughter.

Pushing into April, and May, and June, there are so, so many digital options, but they don’t meet the moment. Not when the sirens are so loud outside, I cannot think. I was good with the erotic art in the bookcase. I don’t want to watch someone sing inside a closet.

But there is music happening outside, too, and it shakes the world. What may be lost to history is that every night, at 7pm, the people of New York opened their windows, and cheered like our team had won the goddamn World Series.

The ritual began as a thank you, to the people who walked into the virus' fire every day. Doctors who came out of retirement, only to be felled by an illness nobody understood. Nurses like Kious Kelly, who comforted the dying, while using threadbare trash bags to protect themselves. Bus drivers who had no choice but to keep delivering people to points distant. The Korean family who continued to run that bodega.

I found myself outside one night, maybe in May, coming back from a walk, just as the clock struck the magic hour. The streets and sidewalks were empty, save me. I was carrying two bags of takeout from a place we’d never been to; it had previously been too difficult to come across a reservation. It had been my intent to be long home by seven, but the food was delayed, or my gait was slow. I found myself, on a side street, hearing at first a cowbell in the distance, and then, like the roar of a tsunami, the voices of New York. And because our apartments are stacked to the sky, the cheering and pot-banging came from every direction.

If the noise was boisterous from inside my home, it was deafening on the street. Roaring, raucous energy pointed at strangers. Young men, hanging out their windows. Pajamed children screaming next to their weary parents. Doormen, keeping watch. Sometimes, this happening would be the only time you saw another human being all day, and on this particular evening. I wept. I put my takeout bags down on the sidewalk, and wept.

For a brief time, every evening, sirens were drowned out by voice, clanging metals, whistles and prayer.

“Have you heard what Stokes is doing?”

Brian Stokes Mitchell is one of those theater people who everybody loves. His voice is warm and robust, but his eyes shine with vulnerability and kindness. He has the range to play villains, martyrs and kings. As Coalhouse Walker, Jr., in Ragtime, a Black man whose body and family are desecrated by racist violence, he is forever enshrined in fans’ minds, standing on stage, with his young wife, Sarah (Audra McDonald, here, as well), singing to their son of the “Wheels of a Dream.”

We find ourselves, on Sunday, April 12th not going back to the theater, as had been previously announced, but watching a video of Stokes hanging out his apartment window, singing “The Impossible Dream.”

The song, from Man of La Mancha, could not be more apt. We are all chasing, for a brief moment, the chance to escape mortality. And here, in this strange and unyielding expanse of time, our neighbors are making it happen.

More and more people find out about what Stokes is doing, and his neighbors gather like pigeons, downstairs, in the streets; masked, yes, spread apart, yes– but attending a performance.

Time slips away. May becomes July. The sirens quiet. The pots and pans at 7pm, as well.

In September, someone takes to the sidewalk outside the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, where Moulin Rouge first opened on July 25, 2019. Centuries ago. In bright pink and orange letters, the chalk words shout: MISS THEATER? WEAR A FUCKING MASK

Part 3: We See You, White American Theatre

2020 is not done with us. When George Floyd is murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, on Monday, May 25, the volcanic year improvises again. His murder occurs on an otherwise slothful Memorial Day weekend, as the cases of virus have started to ebb. Mr. Floyd’s death changes the calculus for mass gathering. Folks start showing up.

As is our current right to do, Americans take to the streets. In New York, protestors are beaten, maced, and jailed. It gets worse after the mayor installs an 8pm curfew for a city of 8 million night owls. Our bridges burn. I mostly stay inside; I fear being killed, fear catching the virus, fear interacting with the police, fear anything that I have not meticulously planned.

But the curfew tries my patience. One night, well past 8 o’clock, I walk by the bodega, where there’s a long line of people trying to buy food. I take a photo of two dozen cop cars, neatly making their way up West End Avenue, past the tony brownstones, where protestors have marched by, just a moment before. I keep my distance. The photograph I take is dappled with blue and red law enforcement hazards, smudged with whitish headlights and mustard streetlamps. I am breaking the law, just being outside, but they drive past me anyway.

Something changes. Something is coming. Is it early to call it a reckoning? An awakening? Over the next few weeks, almost every corporation in the country puts out a statement about racial justice. These messages have manufactured graphics and corporate jargon promising a more equitable future. Some are clumsy. The musical, Wicked, posts an Instagram graphic of two girls (one white, one green) holding hands, next to the words “when we defy hate, we defy gravity.” And while the musical, Wicked, certainly has allegorical themes of racism, well, between the kumbaya nature of the message and the winky wink to the show’s lyrics, the actual gravity of the situation makes the gesture seem cruel and oblivious. It gets deleted pretty quickly.

That summer, a coalition of artists of color put up a website, called “We See You, White American Theater: Principles for Building Anti-Racist Theatre Systems.” The twenty-nine pages of demands envision a Broadway reconstructed. Stolen lands are acknowledged; descendants of slaves are centered; harms are prevented, or if not prevented, there’s restitution and reparation to be paid. Every interaction, from the hiring of the creative team to the policing of audience reaction, is addressed, pulled apart, and discarded to make way for What Is Coming.

In rare instances, concrete is laid for a new world. There are so many voices calling for change; many will drown, waiting for help to arrive. We pretend things are better until they are.

Wicked originally opened on Broadway at the Gershwin Theatre on October 30, 2003, and re-opened on September 14, 2021. After approximately 7,000 performances on Broadway, on February 14, 2022, Brittney Johnson became the first Black actor to assume the role of Galinda in Wicked.

Part 4: Conductor Cam

On September 18, 2020, Rob McClure, a stage actor whose credits include Avenue Q, Honeymoon in Vegas, and the title roles in Chaplin and Mrs. Doubtfire, uploads a video called “Conductor Cam.” Mrs. Doubtfire had been in previews for three days when the shutdown started.

There will be fifteen of these videos in all; many quite funny, all of them touching on the yearning that we all had, to be back at a show. For a few minutes, every few weeks, Rob brought us there. I am particularly fond of Episode 9: “Learning Your Lead Has Friends In The Audience” where the off-screen actor chooses to belt unnecessarily, and Episode 14: “What Happens in Philadelphia...”, uploaded on November 5, 2020, wherein Rob begins by conducting to the sounds of President Trump, bragging about his alleged COVID-immunity.

But the one that sears into me is the last: Season 2, Episode 1. “Coming Attractions.”, uploaded on March 12, 2021, one full year into the seventeen month and three week Broadway shutdown. It is more than five minutes in length, and begins with Rob, in bed, waking up to the voice of a woman nudging, “Company, this is your places call. Places please, for the top of the show. Places, places. Places. Thank you.” The caption on screen: Cherie B. Tay, Stage Manager, Hadestown.

On screen, Rob, our conductor, begins to go about his day. The camera follows him around his house, setting up his video equipment, as we hear the off-stage voices of crew members, actors and front-of-house workers, who are also getting ready. Their names and positions are given to us on screen, as we hear the Stage Manager check in with each one.

Lights: Sing Street, Chicago, Plaza Suite, Hamilton, Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, Mean Girls, Frozen, Beetlejuice, Jagged Little Pill, Book of Mormon, To Kill a Mockingbird

Special Effects: Aladdin, West Side Story, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Stage Management: Tina, Freestyle Love Supreme, Caroline, or Change

Cast: Moulin Rouge, Company

Sound: Six, Come from Away, Girl from the North Country

Wardrobe: Ain’t Too Proud, The Lion King

Props: Flying Over Sunset

House Management: Diana, Hadestown

Hair and Makeup: Dear Evan Hansen

Conductor: Mrs. Doubtfire

Tay chimes back in, “Alright, friends, we have places. Have a good show everyone.” The imagined audience roars. Rob holds his orchestra at bay, blinking away tears, until the swell of applause engulfs him.

As he raises his arms to meet the first note, Tay signals, “Go.” The screen goes dark.

In white letters on the black background, I read: WE WILL BE BACK.

On May 5, 2021, the governor will announce that Broadway will reopen – in September. I buy tickets immediately.

Part 5: “Lackawanna Blues is the first play in this theatre in 18 months.”

The date is September 7, 2021. I step into a place called the West End Bar and Grill, on Eighth Avenue, having a half-hour to kill before the show. I’ve picked Hadestown as my “first show back” not for any sentimental reason, but because the producers have managed to open the show two weeks before most other productions are slated to arrive. And I prefer Hadestown to Waitress, which is also open.

At the bar, I look at my phone. Why did I leave home so early? I am just looking for a drink in a place that is not my living room. In a photo from that evening, I’m wearing a frilly white rented dress with pink flowers, gazing at the camera like this is the apex of life. I order a scotch on the rocks, which I proceed to nurse. There are only a handful of people at the bar. We aren’t fully human yet. How do I do this?

When I finally arrive at the Walter Kerr Theatre, I take picture after picture after picture after picture of myself outside. Here’s me across the street. Here’s me in front of the marquee. Here’s the theater without me. Wait, here I am again. I’ve seen thousands of Broadway shows, dating back to the evening that my friend’s mother took us to see Romance/Romance at the Helen Hayes Theatre, but tonight, I’m eight years old again, and this is the very first time.

The facade of the Walter Kerr is adorned with thousands of red carnations, from the show’s logo. They spill from the balconies, so bright with hope I can hardly breathe. After having my vaccine card checked, and walking through a metal detector, I take yet another picture of myself inside, wearing a cotton mask.

There’s a moment in Hadestown where Orpheus, the lovestruck young poet who will later be the cause of his own tragedy, gives a toast. It happens in the lull between choruses, in a song of celebration; an anthem to homecoming; to spring; to renewal. Persephone has just arrived back above ground, having served her sentence; six months of winter with her husband, Hades. The cast of characters, in a re-imagined New Orleans-style saloon, celebrate her as she sings “Livin’ It Up on Top.” Like the show itself, the lyrics sing of a monumental juncture, when we realize that we have survived a winter in hell. The poet raises his glass to an unknown future, but also, also, then, he offers a nod to the current state of affairs; the way we live today.

When we saw the show, back in the spring of 2019, Reeve Carney, playing Orpheus, gave the toast straight through, with only the slightest pause between the two phrases. Having memorized the cast recording in the interstitial time between viewings, I had been anticipating this moment for months. I wanted to soak it in, because, as I recalled, it went by quickly.

Having finally arrived in the fall of 2021, the actor took a long, long moment between toasting the future, and circling back, toasting the days we currently inhabit. Everyone on stage was crying. This was their fifth performance back.

A few weeks later, we went to see Lackawanna Blues, a one-man virtuoso play by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, wherein he re-tells the true story of the boarding house he had grown up in. It is a tour-de-force; Santiago-Hudson plays more than a dozen roles, including his boyhood self. The normal pre-show announcements (turn off your cell phones, unwrap your candies) were replaced that night with a single declaration.

“Lackawanna Blues is the first play in this theatre in 18 months.”

Part 6: You set the tone, Dr. Walker

On the pilot episode of ER, the close knit staff of the Cook County Hospital Emergency Room is rocked by the suicide attempt of Nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies). Dr. David Morgenstern (William H. Macy), the head of the ER, asks the chief resident, Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) if they should even be trying such aggressive measures to save her. Dr. Greene answers that they have to do everything, because the morale of the staff is at stake.

Morgenstern replies with a phrase that is now so familiar to fans, and will be repeated, in different contexts and by different characters, several times over the series’ 15 season run. ‘

“The unit’s looking to you, Mark… you set the tone.”

It’s just a line in the script, but it’s the heart of the show. Improvise, do what you need to do, to get this group of people through an unbearable time.

On the morning of Saturday May 14, 2022, the president of the Outer Critics Circle reported that actor Anthony Edwards had appeared as Dr. Walker, in Girl from the North Country the night before. The Friday evening show had been on the brink of cancellation, with so many actors testing positive for the virus; every understudy and standby already stretched too thin. Mare Winningham, the show’s leading lady, called her husband (Edwards) at home, six hours before curtain, and asked him to step in. He drove from Connecticut to New York and arrived on stage, script in hand, to perform the entire evening. He would, other announcements said, play the part all weekend.

Reading this, I am unhinged. It is not that I am still enraptured by a crush I have had for almost thirty years. I buy a fourth-row ticket for the Sunday matinee. Okay. It’s a little that.

Still, I am curious to see this show; not just to see the show, but to reconcile a part of me that had wanted to see that show in that theatre on Thursday, March 12, 2020. There’s a part of me that’s wondered what would have happened; if the governor had waited one more day to shut the theatres down, and if we’d dismissed our fear, and gone out that night. What part of me would have survived?

Waiting on line outside the Belasco Theatre, on May 16, 2022, I look at my phone, noting the time until the curtain will rise. I am only 794 days late.

When asked later how he could possibly join a show at a moment’s notice, Anthony Edwards said “he decided to give it a try, counting on the kindness of audiences.”

Endnotes

Actress Cynthia Nixon ran against Andrew Cuomo for governor of New York in the 2018 New York gubernatorial election.

C. O. V. I. D.-19. (2020, March 8). People rush to catch the last trains leaving #Lombardy after government declared the quarantine and lockdown of 16 million people in northern #italy#covidー19 #coronavirus #covid2019 #covid #covid19italy #covid19italia pic.twitter.com/enbkxyct7b. Twitter. Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://twitter.com/COVID_19Disease/status/1236480584244846592

Reinstein, J. (2021, March 12). "I was the one who broke Broadway": Meet the first usher to test positive for covid. BuzzFeed News. Retrieved August 7, 2022, from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/juliareinstein/covid-broadway-usher-shutdown-anniversary

The Broadway League reserves complimentary tickets for press and other theatre professionals on a “first night list” (prior to opening) and “second night list” (after a show opens). It is a privilege to receive these tickets, and we try not to cancel unless we are deathly ill. One time, I fell down a flight of subway stairs and we still went to a show that evening.

Broadwaycom. (2020, April 26). Take me to the world: A sondheim 90th birthday celebration. YouTube. Retrieved August 7, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A92wZIvEUAw

Genzlinger, N. (2020, March 31). Kious Kelly, a nurse in the Covid fight, dies at 48. The New York Times. Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/obituaries/kious-kelly-dead-coronavirus.html

cdgross. (2020, April 12). Brian Stokes Mitchell leads Broadway cheer with "Impossible dream.". YouTube. Retrieved August 7, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr-5BP2ssKA&t=100s

“We demand that theatres create a safe and anti-racist environment for BIPOC audiences on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in the Regions. Abolish the policing practices of audience response and promote statements of inclusion for BIPOC audience cultural practices. Abolish the policing of BIPOC audience members inside of lobbies, rehearsal studios, and other theatre-related spaces.” Our Demands. We See You W.A.T. (2020, June 10). Retrieved August 2, 2022, from https://www.weseeyouwat.com/demands

YouTube. (2020, September 17). Conductor cam 🎼 episode 1 "in the pocket". YouTube. Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm8Qtzs1UYk&list=PL9F4aAUcQ3nV_FrigyReSaExO3vcny5Pc

YouTube. (2020, September 17). Conductor cam 🎼 episode 9 "learning your lead has friends in the audience". YouTube. Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efl669U-zZQ&list=PL9F4aAUcQ3nV_FrigyReSaExO3vcny5Pc&index=9

YouTube. (2020, November 5). Conductor cam 🎼 episode 14 "what happens in Philadelphia...". YouTube. Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=silSJy7FKp4&list=PL9F4aAUcQ3nV_FrigyReSaExO3vcny5Pc&index=14

YouTube. (2021, March 12). Conductor cam 🎼 season 2, episode 1. "Coming attractions.". YouTube. Retrieved August 6, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RdStOjpDCE

I should stop here to note that one of the stars of Waitress, Nick Cordero, died of COVID and COVID-related complications on July 5, 2020, after an extended hospitalization in Los Angeles. The triumphant return of the show, which had actually closed two months PRIOR to the Broadway shutdown, felt to many like a tribute to Nick, his widow, Amanda, and their baby son, Elvis. The show goes on.

Crichton, M. (1994, September 19). 24 Hours. ER. episode, NBC.

Gordon, D. (2022, May 14). According to the production, Anthony Edwards returned to Broadway on last-minute notice last night, stepping into girl from the North Country as the doctor, opposite his wife Mare Winningham. Twitter. Retrieved August 7, 2022, from https://twitter.com/MrDavidGordon/status/1525480647548084224

Jeffrey, J. (2022, May 14). 'E.R.' star Anthony Edwards saves Broadway musical opposite his wife. Yahoo! Retrieved August 7, 2022, from https://www.yahoo.com/now/e-r-star-anthony-

****

Amy Cook is an MFA candidate at Pacific Lutheran University (Rainier Writing Workshop), and participated in the 2021 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in Creative Nonfiction. Her work has been featured in fifteen literary journals, magazines and anthologies, including Bi Women’s Quarterly, great weather for MEDIA, Thimble Literary Magazine and Apricity Press. She was a finalist for the 2023 ProForma competition (Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts), a finalist for the Disruptors Contest (TulipTree Publishing, 2021), a semi-finalist for the 2022 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize, and received an Honorable Mention from the New Millennium Writing Awards (2022). Amy is an award-winning lyricist (BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, 2008 Harrington Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement) whose work has been heard at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre (Easter Bonnet Competition, 2010), the Metropolitan Room and the Algonquin Salon. She is the Legal Administrative Manager of Lambda Legal. Amy was a charter member of the Youth Pride Chorus (2003), as well as a singing and associate member of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus. She holds a B.A. in Political Science, summa cum laude, with Distinction, from Rider University. Outside of her professional work, Amy is also a spin bike junkie and a marathoner. She is married to lyricist Patrick Cook. Instagram: amycookuws, Pronouns: she/they

POETRY

_____________________________________________________________________

Sacramento to Tahoe and Back

by Thomas Piekarsky

Years of drought had been brutal, scalding the landscape,

drying rivers to a trickle, remarkable items discovered as

lakebeds receded, reservoirs depleted. Thus unexpected

was the constant deluge, week after week of rain, snow

at record levels through the Sierras, some rural residents

trapped in homes. When the storms thankfully subsided

I determined it an ideal opportunity to flee the bowels

of my still-soaked city and head up to the high country

Every year it’s like a pilgrimage. I must sink my feet

into the crunchy snow at Truckee on my way to Reno

at peak elevation, piercing the sky, on top of the world,

imbibing luxurious cold mountain air. The valley life

is orderly, though typically monotonous. So I’d scram,

go visit the tallest snowpack seen in decades, seldom

equaled in history. I got an early start and after a short

stay in Truckee motored across the Nevada state line.

I zipped into Reno past deteriorated casinos, followed

Virginia Street, snapped pictures inside the Peppermill,

most progressive gambling hall in town. It’s high tech

to the max, the entire interior a flowing panoramic sea

of illuminated color, with slot machines flashing madly

and huge video screens mounted along most walls that

continuously stream majestic images of nature. Exiting

Reno, I traveled highway 395 south toward Lake Tahoe.

Alpine vibes while I careened along the Sierra’s edge

sustained by buoyancy of air, a blue crystal sky, crisp

gusts of wind that swept across green spring meadows

to swoop up mountain ridges buried in deep snowdrifts.

At Carson City I stopped to take a shot of Cactus Jack,

the iconic sign, now weather-beaten over many decades,

and faded, but he the old silver prospector still grinning,

having hit a major jackpot and happy with his winnings.

From Carson it’s a straight shot west, 40 mile corridor

to Tahoe, quite an incline, steady rise, 3000 foot gain

in elevation. I was wary of avalanches, but only a little

tumble of snow onto the road along the way, and water

from the virgin melt dribbling in rivulets down slopes.

A first sight of the lake almost knocked my socks off.

Nothing invigorates me more than casting my eyes on

the Lake Tahoe region blanketed so in its winter white.

I proceeded along the shimmering lake’s frontage,

noted the custom home roofs that strained beneath

three feet of snow. Fortunately driveways cleared,

allowing for normal access and egress. Mesmerized

by the stunning view at Zephyr Cove, I pulled aside

and framed a shot of a large boat lazily making its

way to a destination unbeknown to me. Quick click

and I captured it on my camera, saved for posterity.

Soon I’d reach Stateline, infamous zone known for

make-or-break luck running high or low as people

from the world over seek liberation all year round,

to roll dice, take a crack at blackjack, hypnotized

by the slot machines once manual one-arm-bandits

gone electronic that directly drain bank accounts.

I didn’t intend to stop inasmuch as gambling isn’t

an activity I’d waste my time nor money pursuing.

Moonroof open to the full sun, and with pristine sky

above instilling wonderment, I rolled toward casino

row, thinking about how I’d tool along the opposite

shore, a stretch of unparalleled natural beauty, pines

that reach half way to the stratosphere, and mansions

on the lakefront worth mega millions, onto the tip of

North Shore, then to descend through Downieville

and the magically snow-kissed Gold Country range.

Cruising along at about 30 miles an hour, of a sudden

my right front wheel hit a huge pothole. The loud slam

that ensued shocked and alarmed me as an emergency.

I pulled over posthaste. Luckily the Hard Rock Hotel

and Casino entry was right there. I got out, examined

the front tire, and as I suspected it had gone flat, blown

a sidewall I reckoned. Terribly shaken, I sat to collect

my thoughts on how to best handle this ruinous mess.

I’d left my cell at home so had to use the lobby phone.

I called road service, my hand shaking, voiced cracked,

still stunned by the suddenness of the event. It was like

hitting a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour, my plans

out the window, this memorable day become nightmare,

stranded, not knowing how I’d manage to make it home.

I’d use my wits as best I could, but doubt and fear crept

stealthily into the dark sanctums of my riddled cranium.

I could do nothing else but wait for a tow truck driver

to come, change the flat to my donut spare. I could then

be on my way to obtaining a new tire and perhaps make

something of the rest of the day. However to my dismay

no driver showed for an hour and a half, though I’d been

promised that assistance would arrive in just 45 minutes.

Frustrated, flummoxed, perturbed, I trudged on back to

the hotel lobby and placed another urgent call to Geico.

Passably patient, I navigated through the nauseating

series of prerecorded questions for the second time,

reached a customer service representative from out

of state who knew squat about the area, had trouble

locating an available driver, then said she had one so

put me on hold to verify the lead time. After listening

to ads for Geico and elevator music some 20 minutes,

fed up I hung up, and stomped out to wait some more.

By this time I’d grown quite grumpy. Watching cars

go by is no pastime. And I hadn’t interest in reading

from the poetry anthology I brought along. Perhaps

this experience was the poem itself. That remained

to be seen. I fidgeted and loitered for an hour, paced,

alternately sitting on a bench beside the street where

the traffic was virtually nonstop, a consistent stream

of people getting a load of the eye-popping scenery.

Once again I phoned Geico. This time upon extensive

tracking customer service confirmed a driver was on

his way, due to arrive any minute, and would in 15 at

the very most. Slightly relieved but unconvinced, my

hope glimmered, then died most decidedly when after

30 minutes nobody appeared. A fourth call confirmed

someone had been dispatched, must surely be nearby.

I weary, and disgruntled way beyond words, lingered.

Oh miracle of miracles! A tow truck pulled into the lot!

I waved frantically at the driver. He parked and got out.

I rushed over and urged him to confirm that he’d been

sent to rescue me. But to my utter chagrin, he hadn’t.

I confided details of my dilemma to him. He explained

that drivers scam the cheap companies like Geico by

claiming they made a pass and nobody was there, then

billing the company for bogus services. I stood amazed.

He was a compassionate man, years of local experience,

knew the ropes, sympathized, offered to change the tire

and no charge. As he was positioning the jack a fellow

from an unmarked black pickup emerged, sent out from

Geico just now he claimed, taking over the job so as to

get paid. Discovering the rim was dented, tire ok, I was

tasked with finding a fix before sundown, so stopped at

an Auto Zone to ask where the tire dealers are located.

The guy behind the counter a Tahoe old timer, as told

by his jolly demeanor, casual hospitality, helpful soul

used to assisting the locals and travelers needing parts.

He informed me of two dealers, Ken’s up the road on

the left, and 3 blocks beyond on the right Les Schwab.

He recommended I try Ken’s first, advice I adhered to.

Pulling in at Ken’s I could see it was a hole-in-the-wall

smallish 50’s structure with but one long dimly-lit bay.

Ken greeted me cheerfully, seemed to be in great spirits.

He was a new age hippie, the type you often find living

way in the woods outside the reach of humanity, known

to harbor automatic weapons, drug addicted, potentially

dangerous when aroused. Despite his scraggly gray hair,

filthy beard, tattered shirt, scrawny build, hyper speech,

Ken seemed honest enough to be heard out. And oh boy

did he ever have a solution. All I needed was to follow.

He’d pound out the pesky dent in the rim, straighten it,

which would likely make a crack, but that no problem

since he knew a super welder who could button it up.

Then remount the tire and case dismissed, easy as pie.

I went along with him as it seemed reasonable, viable,

doable, if not necessarily advisable. Should this fizzle

it would be more time wasted to no avail and leave me

ere long with darkness cascading down around my ears.

The shop Ken directed me to located about a mile away.

I passed blocks of idyllic cabins and chalets, chiefly with

piles of snow beside driveways, packed thick across their

abundantly timbered properties. The woman in the office

most professional, took down name, address and email,

wrote a ticket. Then in strolled the shop boss, and when

she asked him how long the job would take he responded

two days at best, which wouldn’t fly, out of the question.

The woman kindly recommended an alternate nearby shop.

I was skeptical by then but had nothing to lose at that point.

The foreman there refused the work, explained that welding

aluminum the metal becomes brittle and and might shatter.

I drove back to Ken’s to retrieve the tire. He was incensed,

swearing he didn’t intend to mislead, completely confused

as to how or why both of them to whom he sent a stream of

needy customers would demonstrate such awful ingratitude.

I held hope that Les Schwab would be my ace in the hole.

The hour was getting late, sun beginning to sink, and I on

the brink of depression. Les Schwab positively swamped,

every bay taken, office cramped with customers. A sign

taped to the entry door specifically stated closed at 4:30.

Yet although it was 4:45 I marched inside, determined to

give success a Spartan effort. The woman attendant bitter,

complained she had to get going to pick up her daughter.

Amid the hubbub a mechanic doubling as advisor took

my case. After a good deal of research he succeeded in

specifying a wheel that would do, and at a good price.

But before I could see it he informed me they couldn’t

get to me until the next day. I urged him to reconsider,

my plight very desperate, told him I would need to rent

an expensive motel room if I were to stay over, and that

was untenable. Please cram in just one more customer!

The woman interceded, fed up, stern, impatient, already

running late, in no mood to deal with some obnoxious

tourist in distress, in those parts nearly a dime a dozen.

They would admit no new customers today she insisted.

So I resorted to my last ploy, asking to see the manager,

who was busy tying up business in the shop. He not curt

as he might have been, put his foot down, flatly refused.

I’d no option left but to drive home on that gimpy donut.

Had I elected earlier to risk the perilous trip along a steep

winding highway back to Sacramento I’d be nearly home.

But hindsight gets you no place. I headed westward, right

smack into a gradually declining sun, would surely need

to constantly maneuver my visor since I was to confront

wicked bends where the sun blazed full force in my eyes.

The road from Tahoe ten miles to Myers inundated with

potholes even larger than the one that caused my demise.

The thought of a repeat increased my dread manyfold.

I avoided the holes with precision of a champion archer,

often steering into the oncoming lane to avoid calamity.

Playing dodgeball with the peek-a-boo sun I managed

to navigate without mishap the 40 miles from Tahoe to

Pollock Pines beneath the snow line where the highway

widens, and one coasts, gliding, to descend ever lower

into the verdant valley. Upon approaching it I rejoiced.

The donut tire performed much better than I expected

with no slip or wobble, even up to 80 miles an hour felt

safe enough. Good to get home only slightly after dark,

worn beyond a frazzle and somewhat tempted to grieve,

yet marshaled the energy to prepare an adequate dinner,

open mail, and begin developing a plan how to solve my

problem. I’d need a replacement rim; welding wouldn’t

cut it. Perhaps I’d get lucky at some city wrecking yard.

Early next morning I went to work, surfed the internet

for wreckers, selected several, and began calling. I got

no after no after no. But two said they had it. Next day

I checked the first. They didn’t have it in stock, copped

the plea that it must have just sold, an overtly flimsy lie.

I went back home and Google mapped the second yard.

It directed me to a location on 1st Ave, so I drove there

but identified no such address. At home again I phoned.

The man answering was the owner, a Chinese immigrant.

He spoke rapidly with a heavy accent which made it near

impossible to make out a word he said, so he recruited his

wife, who was able to give me the right directions. Eager

to obtain a replacement rim, I rushed over there, the man

waiting out front so as to assure me. He searched the yard,

back and forth several times, overstock from a tall ladder,

yet woefully came up short. I left him in a cloud of dust.

There remained one surefire way to finally reach closure,

as before, buy a new rim. I knew it would be a mismatch

with the others, but that was my hard luck. I did a search,

readily identified numerous wheel vendors, any of which

would potentially suffice. Then I put the issue on ice until

the next day when I could get a fresh start. That morning

I contemplated options, ultimately decided to head out for

America’s Tire as probably my best shot, fingers crossed.

There over the years I’ve been treated like a valued client

rather than some dollar sign. They picked out a sharp rim

that constitutes a considerable upgrade, gave me a deal on

two spiffy new front tires, and got me on the road without

delay. You can’t do better than that. This lesson I learned:

always hang in there; you can overcome almost anything

if you keep your head and never give up, refuse to give in.

And failure best befits those who find joy in causing pain.

****

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry has appeared in such publications as The Journal, Poetry Salzburg, Modern Literature, The Museum of Americana, South African Literary Journal, and Home Planet News. His books of poetry are Ballad of Billy the Kid, Monterey Bay Adventures, Mercurial World, and Aurora California.

________________________________________

Dead and Dying Language

by Matthew Moniz

****

Matthew Moniz recently received his PhD in poetry. Originally from the DC area, he holds an MFA and MA from McNeese State University and a BA from Notre Dame. Among other national and international journals, Matt’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Crab Orchard Review, Meridian, Tupelo Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, and minnesota review. He has been awarded Poetry by the Sea’s Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest prize and the SCMLA Poetry Prize and grown in workshops with Tin House and the Community of Writers.

_______________________________

Apartmenthead

by Lukas Norling

To be me; to be An object

By the window,

Sitting, drinking,

Thinking about

Crossing—

Anything —

Off the list.

Let go of the air Smothered

Between your

Coiled knuckles— The air pressed

Against the edges

Of your skull. Close your eyes

To the bright Light, The incessant Light,

The Bright.

Where did your

Thoughts go? Their beds are

Empty, Their heads are

Empty. You could be

So much more— Anything—

But your thoughts

Are missing.

(Did they drown?)

Apartmenthead

Why can’t you Swim around it? Why can’t you Swim?

Breathe slower Circles—

Feel the current Dragging

Below the wind. It’s quiet below,

Where the Dim light

Slants.

The sky is Empty.

My head is Empty.

My cup is Almost Empty.

The list Remains Unexpurgated. Do nothing, be Nothing—

Be.

****

Lukas Norling is a graduate student of English at California State University, Fullerton. Their current research interests revolve around questions of ethics and animality in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.

_______________________________

Ride

by Joseph Byrd

It’s funny how you

now want my words

years and computers

later when nothing

but skin was your

thing. It’s funny how

nobody can find that

song you used to sing

when pinned against

the glass of my car,

rare bug that you are,

as I picked you up at

an airport that had

steam coming off its

wings and we kissed in

the same place where

you’d one day say

There are no beds

for us. I felt my face

say no, as my yes to

you raced along a

road where nobody

gets to go, save me,

save you. And those

are the words that

murdered what we

best know how to do.

****

Joseph Byrd’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Punt Volat, Pedestal, South Florida Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, Clackamas Literary Review, Many Nice Donkeys, and Novus Literary Arts. He’s a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee, and was in the StoryBoard Chicago cohort with Kaveh Akbar. An Associate Artist in Poetry under Joy Harjo at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, he is on the Reading Board for The Plentitudes.

______________________________

rhetorical question about dead things after David Harsent

by Liam Strong

the living have living smiles. they drink real tea from the veins of canopies. also living.

the living have living veins. from the inside the living components of the living

exist in a darkness. the living rarely hear the sounds of their own exiled gears.

****

Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent cottagecore straight edge punk writer who has earned their B.A. in writing from University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the author of the chapbook everyone's left the hometown show (Bottlecap Press, 2023). You can find their poetry and essays in Impossible Archetype and Emerald City, among several others. They are most likely gardening and listening to Bitter Truth somewhere in Northern Michigan.

___________________________

Fishy

by Anum Sattar

Parasisal straw codling

that dove into a sea green French veil

custom made from Maor Zabar’s millinery

was requested back by an ex girlfriend

only to gather dust under his bed

for a half year and counting...

****

Anum Sattar holds a BA in English from College of Wooster in Ohio, USA. Her poems have been published in the American Journal of Poetry (Margie), The Decadent Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Uppagus, Florida Review, Xavier Review, North Dakota Quarterly. Notre Dame Review, Lullwater Review and many other online/print magazines.

__________________________

Again Again

by Thomas Osatchoff

Turn the tap on

if there's no water

we might forget

to turn it off

comes the flood

****

Thomas Osatchoff, together with family, is building a self-sustaining home near a waterfall. Recent work has appeared in New Note Poetry, Letters Journal, L=Y=R=A, Red Coyote, Thin Air, and elsewhere.

________________________

After a Few Wet Months

by Abel L. Ward

A giant stream of redwings, grackles

they cross my winter field from woods

and seem to empty out into openness

spill like creeks to a sea

sweep through small gaps

and carbonate the sky.

Across across. They light. We light.

And after a few wet months the cold

is more acute. My walks around are

full of blow-down timber just prior

to breathing dreams of a later

green.

The world is too loud now

except in the coves, the grottos

the edges of reds, indigos,

deepest of blues

the cavernous thicket

covers me

while those birds

hang like leaves above me

then flash to-ground, rise like

black steam and scatter sun

across their boiling backs onto a house,

its white wall pocked by a million

thoughts in that single shadow.

****

L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Worcester Review, Main Street Rag, others), including a recent nomination for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and he is the author of three full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021). He is a reformed lawyer, he writes and plays music, and he teaches literature. Abel resides in rural Georgia.

________________________

An Afro-Caribbean elegy song

by Angel Vazquez

Evil comes to our favorite muse tree.

The spirit screeched her last catch of breath.

We rant lilt; the gulps of echos sound free.

Whop hits the crowd hard, rejecting her death.

We dance to Babalu to restore health.

But no need to speak with God's referee.

Saint Lazarus awakens healthy wealth.

As we chant, disco afro-king decrees.

In the rain, mother earth grows winds and trees.

She boosts our voices with cleansing zoom strength.

To raise ourselves on the theater marquee.

Her joint action is heavenly in length.

She trained us to research and learn success.

Afro-Caribbean elegy tree.

It would be unnatural to give repress.

Vivian Castro Mosley is God's tree.

_______________________________

Just for Fun

by Jillian Merriweather

Tonight, I’m on go

This is just for fun

You already know

Move your body, waist fluid with the flow

Dutty wine it, I’m here to stun

Tonight, I’m on go

Speed it up, jerk it to the banjo

Pop it, shake it, you’re no nun

You already know

Arch ya back, move that bandeau

Hands on ya knees, werk it out hun

Tonight, I’m on go

Pop the Merlot like we in Bordeaux

The party’s just begun

You already know

Bring your friends and your own blow

It’s gonna be a movie, we on our James Gunn

Tonight, I’m on go

You already know

Move your body, waist fluid with the flow

Dutty wine it, I’m here to stun

Tonight, I’m on go

Speed it up, jerk it to the banjo

Pop it, shake it, you’re no nun

You already know

Arch ya back, move that bandeau

Hands on ya knees, werk it out hun

Tonight, I’m on go

Pop the Merlot like we in Bordeaux

The party’s just begun

You already know

Bring your friends and your own blow

It’s gonna be a movie, we on our James Gunn

Tonight, I’m on go

You already know

____________________________________

Jillian Merriweather, a Los Angeles native, is an African-American writer specializing in fiction. Her aim is to inspire all those who come across her work with the words that I pen in various novels and short stories. She chose to share a poem as a way to grow her audience and branch out of prose works. She hopes you all enjoy what you read!

Issue 13

FICTION

NON-FICTION

POETRY

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