Moving to Mangos

Moving to Mangos

Now Thursday, Audra stands again in the kitchen, taking the last green apple from the orange bowl David gifted her last year on their anniversary. Made of thin glass, the bowl takes on different hues of oranges and yellows, depending on the time of day.

They’d been sitting at their favorite table at Ambar, near the back, far from the kitchen but close enough to the street that they could watch passerby and make up stories about them. David, an artist, was forever searching for his next subject and Audra just liked to be in on his creative process. After their plates of curry and korma had been cleared away, David presented her with a black gift bag. Another nod to their shared history, the black bag served as a reminder to the first gift he’d ever offered her. Like then, this gift was a trio – three blue packages all nestled into one another, to be opened in order. That gift had been a candle, a bottle of perfume and a scarf, all items he selected for intrinsic value, but with practical application and meaning. At Ambar, Audra had grinned across the table at David, and began disassembling the gift, knowing that David’s thoughtfulness often far exceeded what she expected. He was good to her, and she knew it.

The first was a chef’s knife, steel blade sharp and glinting in the lowlight of the Indian restaurant; the second, a piece of teak wood, its color dark and rich. And when she unearthed the bowl from the bottom of the bag, the two gifts made sense. She’d leaned across the table and full on kissed him on the lips, her joy showing not just in her action, but in her eyes as well.

Without any apples, the bowl looks empty, forlorn and abandoned, much like how Audra feels. The October afternoon that will mark three years is fast approaching. Tired of eating apples, and tired of being tired, Audra pauses mid-stroke, her anniversary knife raised in the air. She doesn’t hear David rouse from bed and come into the kitchen. He’s standing in the doorway, watching her making a choice. Lately, that’s all they’ve been discussing – choices and options, which way is best and what makes sense. The resolve she had when she renewed her Officer commitment with the service has long left, and now Audra is faced with being in for another round of duty. It’s not that she minds the work, or misses civilian life, it’s that she’s always wondering what the next choice might need to be.

“Little One,” David says softly, “You know you can stop eating those apples. You’ve mourned long enough. Maybe you should switch to mangos. Bring a little sweet back into your life.”

Audra sets the knife on the teak board and turns to David. She smiles and nods. “I’ll go to the market tomorrow,” she says, leaning into him.  

Apple Pie Shine

Apple Pie Shine

It was Jimmy who was waiting for her at the bus stop outside of Berea. Jimmy who took her plastic travel bag and threw it in the trunk of his old Pontiac. Jimmy who offered her a nip from the shine flask he always carried. Jimmy who told her the way it felt to clean up warm intestines. She could have stopped him, asked him to quit talking about it until she got drunk. Raw from the bus ride and hoarse from the loss, she listened, consuming each bite like she’d been eating that apple.

The drive from the bus station took longer than she remembered. Winding hills, climbing deeper and deeper into the holler seemed small, more jagged, less beautiful. In her mind, the holler had always been a place of enchantment. Even though most folks had less than what she made in a week to live on for a month, somehow people managed to get by, learning to rely on one another, their kin, and the randomness of kindness.

“So we gonna have to pay for Mama’s plot,” Jimmy finally said after he’d explained in harrowed detail the clean-up process. His bloodshot eyes had cut across to Audra, sitting in the bench style front seat. He’d reached inside his jacket for the flask, forgetting that it was empty already.

“How much,” Audra asked.

“A lot.”

She’d anticipated this. Knew that Jimmy and Pete wouldn’t have a lick of money between the two of them, and that it would fall to her to pay for it.

At the funeral parlor, the undertaker mortician was a greasy, slick haired fat man with a charlatan voice and a bulbous nose. He’d pressed the siblings, trying to convince them that Ginny needed an expensive casket, something with lace and mother-of-pearl. If it’d been up to Pete, they would have buried Mama in a pine box and been done with it. After haggling over price and the style of casket for an hour, Audra was out all of her savings and hadn’t even been able to afford a headstone. She promised herself that she’d get one for Ginny, one day.

The funeral was sparsely attended. Everyone in town knew that Ginny was off a bit, and she’d stuck to herself for so long that anyone who used to be her friend had long since given up hope of ever getting back into her world. The last few years, Ginny would walk the woods, a collection of motley feral cats following behind her. Jimmy stayed drunk, Pete stayed silent, leaving Audra to greet the random cousins who wanted to come see what all the fuss was about. The casket remained closed, even though Ginny’s wound was in her stomach. It was easier that way; better to not see the woman’s face cold and dead.

Making Applesauce

“Honey child,” Hazel started in that deep mountain twang, “your Mama’s gone.” Audra remembers nodding, as if Hazel was standing in front of her. She could easily picture her mother’s sister in an oversized floral print house dress, loose from years of being stretched over increasingly sagging breasts, leftover stains from gravy splattering from the cast iron pan, barefoot, scraggly blonde hair in a long, thin braid.

“Okay, Auntie,” Audra replied. She managed to swallow the rest of her apple, and then stood staring at it, the phone cradled between her shoulder and her eat, one hand holding the apple and the other a knife. That would be the image she returned to every time she woke from her broken sleep to eat her apple, to fulfill the ritual that started that afternoon in October. Audra forgot to speak for a while, just stood without moving, knowing that something was going to have to change if she was ever going to escape the fate of being an old mountain woman sitting on a rotting wooden porch.

“Audra, you there?”

“I’m here,” she managed in a broken voice. “How’d she,” Audra trailed off, not wanting to ask the rest of the question.

“Your brothers are here,” Hazel said, ignoring her question. “Guess you ought to just come on home, get out of that city and back down here to where things make sense.” Hazel’s suggestion wasn’t an idea. It was an order, a demand, and the very least that Audra could do. Sense of honor, commitment, and duty to her now dead mother weighed on her. It would be easy to make up an excuse; that work was too busy, or she couldn’t get a ride, or that she just couldn’t go. But then she’d have to deal with two differing types of guilt – one for not being there and saving Ginny, and the other for not going to see her put to rest. She’d thrown the half eaten apple against the wall, the impact making applesauce on the bowed and bubbled drywall.

“I’ll be on the next bus down,” Audra had said. Hazel murmured some agreement while Audra watched the apple chunks slowly start to slide down the wall, and considered making applesauce. 

Arranging her travel was easy enough. The gas station where she was working said they understood, and to take all the time she needed. Her roommates were deferential, apologetic, intrigued. None of them had had a parent die yet; it made Audra something of a celebrity in the house. She hadn’t told them that Ginny blew a hole the side of a sweet potato in her stomach with a handgun; that Pete and Jimmy had spent hours scrubbing the wooden porch and old rocking chair, trying to clean up the bits and pieces of Ginny’s inside, or that Ginny had been suffering in her mind for as long as Audra was alive. There didn’t seem to be a point in sharing any of that with them. Her roommates were just passing friends; girls she lived with and shared a bathroom with; not anyone with whom she wanted to make lasting connections.

The Greyhound station was busy at eleven at night. This is how the poor travel, Audra thought to herself as she boarded the bus, under the cover of darkness and loss. 

Deciding to Eat

(This is a four part short)

Deciding to Eat

Thoughtfully in the in-between-time of a Monday and a Tuesday, she wakes from a broken sleep to eat a green apple. It’s been her habit ever since summer days fell way to autumn nights, and it keeps her grounded. They’re not the same as the ones she could get back home, but an apple is an apple, and even if it tastes different, the ritual is the same. Pulling the teak cutting board from her wire shelf, Audra’s green PT t-shirt left over from basic catches on the edge and rips. She mutters, cursing the darkness and her clumsiness. Everyone’s always been after her to slow down. But there’s always too much to do, too many obligations to fill and people to please that she’s never really mastered how to make that happen.

The shirt is one of her last ones, left from that long thought out decision she’d made after the call that changed her life. Seems like a lifetime ago, but it’s only been three years that she’s been in, and she’s just renewed her contract for another four. This life isn’t what she expected, but the structure and clear expectations suit her. There’s little wondering what others want from her; it’s all spelled out in her briefings every week. Cutting an apple in semi-darkness, the only light coming from the open refrigerator, Audra knows she returns to the apples because they’re the last connection she shares with Ginny. The way a knife sounds slicing through the skin, the crunch of the fruit’s flesh between her teeth, the release of the juice as she mashes it to a pulp all serve to remind her daily of what she walked away from and what she now has. When she finds a soft one in the bowl, her need to bite down, to tear into life is replaced with a softer feeling, something closer to joy, something less harsh. This apple business seems like it’s been going on for too many years to count, but not enough to forget. And every season, she finds herself in the same place all over again.

It’s not that she ever wanted to say goodbye, or that she couldn’t have continued; she knew she had to, that she deserved more than what that small town nestled in the Kentucky hills could offer. Still, this season especially, leaves her homesick, remembering days that were easy and simple. Though lately, she’s having trouble plucking the individual memories from her mind; rather, she drifts between feelings, images of woods, that rocking chair where Mama always sat creaking back and forth while she worried her fingers and knit her yarn.

Aunt Hazel had been the one to make the call. Over the years, Audra has wondered why it was Hazel and not one of her brothers; maybe Jimmy and Pete were too busy making arrangements, collecting the body from the old wooden porch, picking up the pieces of her skull from the crevices, putting the gun away. They’ve never discussed it, and probably never will. Audra knew what Hazel would say before she answered the phone. Ginny was dead, and there was no way getting around that. What Audra didn’t expect was that sinking sort of feeling to wash over her. She’d been standing in the kitchen of the house she shared with two people she didn’t know, eating an apple. Mid-bite, the phone rang, and Audra took the call before she’d finished swallowing. Now, these four am apple binges are her only act of contrition she can offer a mother who was there but not her entire life. 

Balance Seeker

                As man, woman, creator and destroyer, in the eternal search for balance, Shiva’s dance never ends.  Chris stands looking at the earthen statue, considering what the description really means and wonders who gets paid to write these sorts of things.  

Turning to his left, he looks for Rosemary but she isn’t next to him.  A moment of panic sets in.  It’s his weekend to have his daughter, now five, and this is the first trip they’ve taken to the Kentucky Cultural Arts Center.  He’d intended so many weekends before this one to begin her immersion in art, but something always seemed to come up.  That something was typically a raging headache from the previous Friday night; he never set out to drink too much, but his Russian friends always found a way to encourage his vodka consumption without him realizing how much he’d actually ingested. Last night, though, he’d put a stop to the clear liquor after three shots and two eight ounce tumblers.  Igor and Sasha made fun of him for it, but Chris kept looking at the picture of his little Rose, taken at Easter in front of the Orthodox church, and that was enough. 

            Panicked, Chris considers calling out for Rosemary, but a surly looking guard sitting in the high backed chair in the corner gives him a look that suggests a loud voice wouldn’t be tolerated.  He takes one last look at Shiva, the god (or goddess, he was never sure which) and goes in search of his little girl.  A cramp in his stomach begins to spread from his right side to sit right in the middle.  They’d stopped for lunch before coming to the museum; the grease from the breaded chicken was moving through his intestines at warp speed. 

            “Daddy,” Rosemary’s small voice calls from behind the black ribboned partition separating the works of art.  “Look what I found,” she says pointing.  He follows the trail of her small finger and sees a collection of miniature wax Gypsy fingers. 

            “Rose, darling, what have I told you about running off like that, hmm?  You know you can’t just walk away.”  His voice chastising, Rosemary is crestfallen that he hasn’t said anything about the shadowbox.

            “But I didn’t go far, and look!”  She begins rocking back and forth, a side effect of the new medication her psychiatrist put her on to deal with the anxiety of a ‘broken home.’  It was a terrible thing to watch.

            Chris looks closely at the wax figurines and sees what has Rosemary so excited.  In the left hand corner of the scene is a little girl that looks strikingly like her. 

            “It’s like it’s me but it’s not!”  Her little girl voice is shrill and happy.  Thankful that he didn’t have more vodka last night, Chris tries to match his daughter’s enthusiasm.

            “That’s right, sweet girl, it does look like you.  Let’s see who made this fine piece of art.”  Chris begins to read the placard aloud to Rosemary, skimming over the words he doesn’t think she’ll understand.  Engrossed in the language, he fails to sense movement behind them.  A group of armed police officers rush into the gallery, their steel-toe boots making heavy sounds as they run over the cedar floors. 

            “Outta the way, folks,” one of the men calls. 

            The surly volunteer in the corner looks up from his crossword and his face registers the fact that the police are not there on some sort of a drill.  Something has happened, or is in the process of happening.  Chris clutches Rosemary closely to him, as much to make sure she doesn’t run off somewhere as to try to protect her from an unknown evil.  The earthen Shiva statue, placidly on display across the corridor seems to be looking at him. 

            “Rosemary, stay right here with me, okay?  We’re just going to follow whatever the man tells us to do.”  His daughter’s wide eyes tax his, and he turns to the guard.

            “Everything okay, man?  What’s going on?”  The guard shrugs and looks at the police officer. 

            “No idea, but it’s probably best if you get her out to the front, okay?  You know how to get to the Atrium?”  The old man’s voice is thinly veiled with authority; Chris can tell that he’s clearly nervous about the police presence.

            “Rosemary, let’s go, okay?”  If Igor and Sasha were with him, instead of his darling young daughter, he would feel stronger.  Being the protector is hard work, and that’s probably why his marriage to Stacy failed.  He just couldn’t seem to get it together.  Rosemary tucks her hand in his, and he notices glitter nail polish on her little fingernails.  From somewhere deep in the museum, a deep boom shakes the silence and reverie of Saturday morning purveyors of art.  Rose’s grip inside his calloused hand is strong.

            “Daddy, what’s going on?”  Another explosion rocks the museum and the ground shakes.  “I’m scared.”

            Chris scoops Rosemary into his arms like he used to do when she was first born and tries to comfort her.  She wraps her arms and legs around him like a tandem parachute jumper.  He looks for the museum guard, but can’t find him.  Smoke begins to fill the gallery as he makes his way to the Atrium.  Pounding footsteps come up from behind him.

            “Outta the way, chump,” a man in mask says as he runs past.  He’s clutching something under his arm.  Chris assumes he’s just stolen a painting.  A second set of footsteps follows the first.  Without him understanding what’s going on, Rosemary is ripped from his arms. 

            “Look what I got,” the masked man calls out to his accomplice.  “Now we really got some leverage.”

            Chris bolts for the man and tries to pull Rosemary from him.  The man pistol-whips him in the chin and he falls to the ground.  Vision cloudy, he can barely make out Rosemary’s small frame.  He thinks of Shiva, creator and destroyer; there is no balance.  

Wilting Orchid

Loss colors her a summer sunset. She cries behind eyes now shaded, her grief blossoming like a flower. 

Head bowed, the receiving line moves too slowly. Ahead, waxy body lies still and unknown. 

Her black dress creases family obligations, now undone. 

Hemingway's Ode

(a six word story)

A Birthday - not meant to be shared.

Sake of Sake

Almost midnight.  An old SNL rerun is playing, the one with Christopher Walken and the cow bell.  Perched on the edge, I’m at the childhood home of the woman I’m dating.  In some affluent Kentucky suburb with a flowery sounding name, we managed to find a decent sushi place. Belly full of eel and masago. Japanese beer, far off future dreams.  After Cirque de Solei, Julie and I stopped at a hipster joint that sells overpriced margaritas.  We kissed in the rain, amber autumn glow of fading evening light making her beautiful.  Two times, I was close to saying it.   

“So I was telling my brother about you,” Corrinne begins in her Tennessee drawl, “how you speak another language, and he wondered how.  What school was it again?”  We’ve been over this.  Julie’s mom has asked me a few times about my schooling.  Tonight, she’s like a lioness, certain I’m just another hyena. 

“Did you go to college?  I mean, did you complete a degree?” She yawns.  “Maybe you’re fibbing just a bit.”   She squishes two fingers together, her mauve nail polish catching on the reflection of the flood lights. 

I stop myself from spouting something snarky, replying like Tupac did to Biggie during their feud.  This bitch.  Julie’s mama might sound sweet because she’s from the south, but she’s just a meddling woman in Ann Taylor clothes.  Sitting in front of her fake fire in her half a million dollar house, it is easy for her to judge.  I breathe in deep.  My bra feels too tight, my dress too short.  I curl my toes back and forth, slow.  She could have said anything about my fashion, career, hell, even my tattoos and I wouldn’t take it personally.  But she knows I’m finishing a graduate program.  We’ve talked about it.  Many times.  Forcing myself to remain unassuming, I mime my face mute.  Hide emotion deep in my eyes like a Bedouin burying secrets in the sand.  Julie doesn’t know how to see my secrets and Corrinne would never bother to look.

Julie is lounging on the leather sofa that stretches along the far wall of the family room.  I’ve always wondered what a family room is for.  Now I realize it’s a place where women like myself are interrogated by aging southern belles.  I swallow loudly, the taste of unfiltered sake still in my mouth.

“I started at UC,” I mumble, looking at the Persian carpet.  The patterns make swirly colors, and I don’t know if they’re moving or if I’m drunk. 

“And then?”  Corrinne falls back against the slate of the fireplace, relaxed.  Low light makes shadows dance along her face.

“And then I finished up in Iowa.”

“Iowa!  Of all places.  What’s in Iowa?”  I don’t say I completed my degrees online, my pedigree already ruined.  I’m from that side and not this.

They have an idea how I came up.  But I’ve never described the long winters, or the sound an empty corridor makes in the middle of a December day, finding a drunk passed out on cement stairs, her fingers and feet blue from the cold.  The dog farts loudly but I’m too polite to say anything.  Usually I’m proud.  Managed to complete double degrees while nursing a dying mother, working full time.  Repeatedly dropped out of high school, quit university twice.  Usually I am certain this is admirable.  Tonight, I bow in, full of shame.  This woman, this house, this expanse of wealth unnerves me. 

Over an afternoon glass of wine last week, my best friend Micah told me that Julie isn’t the one.  Pretentious, she called her.  Advantaged, she said.  Not for me is what she didn’t say.  I have a pattern, looking for women who have just a bit of grit above a polished enamel of white privilege. 

Julie sits up.  “You know, I’ve never heard you speak a block of Farsi.  Say something.”

I look around, considering.  Poetry comes to mind.   I settle on a rhyme about a tortoise and a hare.  They won’t understand the implication as I rattle off the words in sing-song.  The tortoise can never compare herself to the hare because they’re different creatures.  One is fast, the other slow, but both end up at the same finish line.  Guttural t sounds and rolling r’s has never felt so good.  My tongue is thick.

Julie yips, applauds me and then hiccups.  Corrinne looks on, nonplussed.  Three bottles of sake was more than enough, but we brought one back.  She reaches for her little glass full of milky wine.  Julie lives with her mama, pretty young thing not sure what she wants to do when she hits thirty, when she’s forced to grow up.  She’s comfortable, living an existence that’s almost real life, but not quite.  Don’t blame her; would if I could, but there has never been the time.

I want to leave.  To get in my expensive car and drive back to my lopsided flat near the university.  But the sake.  The damn sake. Can’t risk not being safe for the sake of my pride.  I fake smile and look at deep blue wall, pretending I’m somewhere else.

“So then you’ve been working in restaurants ever since?  Not using your degree?”

I can’t stop myself, and cut her off.  “Degrees.  Double majored.”  That has to stand for something!  But this is a woman from Oak Ridge.  Her family worked on the Manhattan project.  Now her daughter is working on a woman from the projects.  Not quite full circle, but comical. 

“Right,” Corrinne replies, voice dripping with condescending fervor. 

I’m boiling.  As much from Corrinne as from the realization that for all the pieces of paper I manage to earn, the growing numbers in my bank accounts, my passport stamps, I’ll always just be another kid from the ghetto trying to pass herself off as one of them.  Why the fuck do I want to be one of them in the first place?  Even I don’t understand.

Walking 275

Walking 275

           

            “Do you see that,” Mary asks me, pointing through the cloudy plexi-glass window behind the cash register.  It’s Tuesday morning and our truck delivery has just arrived.  It’s my least favorite day to work, but as the assistant manager of the Shell station, I have to be here to make sure that everything we ordered arrives as it should.  The items we stock on our shelves – motor oil, bags of potato chips, candy bars and chewing tobacco, among others, come in green plastic totes that always remind me of the old school recycling bins from my old neighborhood. 

            This gas station is in the suburbs, which means I don’t know anyone, which means I’ve taken the liberty of reinventing myself once again.  I’ve been working here part time for the last eighteen months, evenings mostly, and every Sunday except that one I called off when we had the Christmas house party.  It’s a reasonable gig, and helps pad my wallet.  My other job is peddling second hand designer clothes at a resale shop up the road.  It’s tedious, but I get a good discount, which helps to fund my obsession with fashion.  It’s hard living hood rich.

            I look out the window as well as I can between the rows of cigarettes and advertisements for beer prices.  There’s a man with a pack walking up the exit ramp from interstate 275.  I can barely make out his face, but from what I can tell, he looks tired.

            “What, you mean that dude right there,” I ask nodding my chin toward the man’s frame.

            “No I mean the giant snake coming out of the gas pump.”  Mary has a way of being a bitch without intending.  It used to get to me, but now, I take it in stride.

            “Maybe his car broke down or something,” I respond and return to checking in the order.  A good Polish Catholic girl, Mary has six kids, all under the age of ten.  She’s tired and worn and it shows when she smiles.  Her upper front teeth are decayed and rotting, so when she does smile, she always puts her hand over her mouth.  She’s ashamed of the life she lives, but she shouldn’t be.

            Mary continues to stare as I continue to work.  This is the sort of relationship we have. 

            “Shawna, look, he’s crossing the street to come over here.” 

            I don’t know why Mary is so excited.  This is a gas station, not a fancy spa.  We see all types of people coming in here, though most are the yuppies that live in the area.  There are the Russians of course, who work for Sasha doing roofing work.  Most of them are illegal and we pretend we don’t know.

            “So?”  I know I sound terse.  I’m tired. 

            “Well, what do you think his story is?”  Mary usually isn’t so concerned with anyone who comes in; she’s usually cut and dry, earning her a reputation with our customers of being no-nonsense.

            “Mary, why do I care?  And can you stop looking out that window to help me unload this order?  This shit isn’t going to magically go on the shelves.”  I’m her superior, and I rarely pull rank, but I’m annoyed.

            Sighing, Mary leaves her stool from behind the counter and comes to help me.  Two aisles over, she starts stocking big name chips and humming an old Gram Parson’s song.  I know the melody but don’t join in because I want to remain pissed off.

            The door chimes and we both look up, assuming we know who is going to walk in.

            Instead of the man with the pack, it’s Miss Dee, the retired alcoholic who lives in the condos behind the store. 

            “Hi girls,” she calls from the doorway.  “Just here for my apple juice.”  Miss Dee told me once that her husband Glen has no idea that she drinks.  I resisted laughing in her face because I knew it would hurt her.  When she comes for her Foster’s in the oil cans, she always buys a bottle of apple juice.  She shoves the beer deep in her satchel of a purse and walks out with the juice.  If Glen doesn’t know she drinks after forty years of marriage, then I have no faith in humanity.

            Miss Dee walks to the beer cooler and pulls out two cans.  “How you doin, Mary,” she asks as Mary screams and runs out into the parking lot.  I look up from the candy aisle to see the man with the pack lying on the broken asphalt near pump number four.  I drop the box of Twix bars I was holding and run outside.

            “Shawna, I watched it, I saw the whole thing.  He was crossing the street and looked like he was out of breath, and then he got here, and just fell on the ground.” 

            I look at the man as he slowly turns ashen.  His skin is grey.

            “Miss Dee, call 911,” I yell over my shoulder, leaning down to the man.  It’s not summer, and the air is cool, but beads of sweat crest his dark hairline.  He reeks like he hasn’t had a shower in weeks.  Mary stands, towering over his body, unsure what to do.

            I smack his face a few times on the right cheek.  “Hey man, wake up,” I loudly say to him.  He doesn’t respond.

            “Look, he moved a finger,” Mary proclaims, as if it means he’s going to live.

            I look more closely at his face and find something familiar in the shape of his brow, the crest of the vermillion border of his lips.  His eyelids begin to flutter, and I realize Mary might be more perceptive than I am.  She has six kids after all and is probably used to crisis moments.  All I have is a fish who doesn’t create many high tension moments.

            Miss Dee comes out to stand next to Mary.  Glen gets out of the car and together, the four of us form a circle around the man lying supine on the ground. 

            “Take his pack off,” Glen commands.  I’ve never heard him speak and am surprised at the authority in his voice.

            Mary and I begin to remove his pack and a gnawing feeling of something I can’t place begins chewing at the base of my neck.  The guy looks like someone I know, or at least, I think he does.  I can’t tell because I can’t see his eyes.  And everyone knows that the eyes show the true nature of a person.  We struggle with the stained canvas pack, but finally remove it from him.  He looks more comfortable once it’s off of his back. 

            I hear the ambulance in the distance.  I haven’t looked up to see if there’s anyone in the store, so it could have easily been robbed blind by those snotty suburb kids who always try to use fake id’s to buy beer.  I don’t care.  As the ambulance pulls into the gas station lot, the man begins to murmur.  When I hear his voice, I realize who he is.

            The EMS team approaches cautiously but with authority.

            “Anyone know who he is, or how he got here,” a pudgy balding forty-something man asks us.  Miss Dee and Glen look at one another, then to me and Mary.  They shrug their shoulders and Mary shakes her head.  I nod.

            “I do.  I know who he is.  His name is Willy and he’s my cousin.”

It Has to Be

Dear You,

Remember that night last summer? We were slightly drunk on high gravity beer – you more so than me, and we were sitting on my back stoop. You ordered pizza. It was Cheat Day and we were enjoying stepping away from the rigors of training and eating clean. You rolled a joint and donned my school sweatshirt, pushing the white fabric to the middle of your forearms. I never told you often enough how much I loved your hands, and forearms. They were exquisite; the fingers long and slender, the palms calloused in all the right places, your forearms sinewy and strong. I miss those forearms.

In between noshing on the pizza and smoking the joint, I told you a story about a past life; expanding on my fear of fire and high piles of wood. Now stoned, and still drunk, you leaned back, letting yourself fall onto the concrete step. It was the freest I’d ever seen you.

Months later, at the start of autumn, we were standing in my kitchen sipping the leftover stash of whiskey from your dead father. We made pecan pie and ate grocery story sushi. Bought tickets to the circus and dreamed of a future together. On my sofa, we fell asleep in the arms of one another.

The wheels were already in motion that night, but I didn’t know it then. I wish I would have been more open with you; I wish I’d told you things about my life that would have made you want to stay. Chasing dreams is a novel pursuit though, and I couldn’t hold you.

I saw you one more time before the crash. It wasn’t Saturday, but we ate like it was. Carob bites, dark chocolate, and that fine Murray’s Brother’s cheese. I stood like a pelican in the kitchen of your family home. Thought for sure we were only taking a pause, and that it wouldn’t be forever. I know I didn’t tell you I love you, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even kiss you goodbye.

As I drove off to look for my own truth, I imagine you gathered the rest of your books, pages of words you’d carefully written, the long lines of words you’d strung together and committed to memory, and packed them along with your threadbare trousers into the hatchback of your Nissian. I picture you squinting into the sun, forgetting like usual that your Aviators were on top of your head. You probably touched the mezuzah one last time and kissed your fingers for fortune.

You didn’t see the truck as you turned off of your street onto Montgomery. I have to believe that. I have to believe the moment of impact was swift, that you had no time to register what was happening. I want to think you didn’t stop singing.

Always,

Me

Shisha Tragedy

My hands are full of strawberry flavored shisha, three coals, a piece of foil and a bottle of water.  The man at the shop insisted I buy their brand of distilled water, but now I’m sure anything would’ve worked just fine. 

“How long has it been since we’ve shared a hookah, Kate?”

Julie’s words cut. She’s right.

“Seems like ages since it’s just been you and me.  You’re always wanting to entertain, to have guests and events and themes.” 

She doesn’t understand my need to entertain comes not from wanting distance with her but from needing to pretend like I have connection with others. I pretend not to notice and start preparing the pipe.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a dinner party for just us, Julie.  Probably the last one was when we had the superhero themed buffet.  You remember that?  Neither of us told each other what we were going to wear and we both ended up as the Scarlet Avenger!  How fun was that night?”

A sidelong glance to Julie shows me that she’s started crying again, but this time with more measure and control.  I stop preparing the hookah and put my arm around her.

“Honey, what’s wrong?  Just tell me what’s going on so I know how to help you.  We’ve been through enough, you know you can tell me anything.”

“Tom told me he’s gay.”

Five words, six if you’re counting the contraction of the word is; either way, the totality of the statement is more impacting than I anticipated. I resist the urge to reel back. I’d been expecting Julie to say Tom had an affair, or had been fired. But gay? Tom?

“How could Tom be gay?” It’s a silly sounding question, and I know it. I don’t know what to do with my hands. Julie has tucked herself into a ball. We’re sitting on the floor of my house like we’re back in college. I pack the hookah, trying to be useful. The coal catches and begins to burn well. An ember glow in the center of the brass chamber, it looks like an all-knowing eye. I offer the first hit to Julie. She inhales, long and slow, and the water bubbles in the base of the pipe.  I watch the coal grow brighter and brighter. As she exhales, Julie coughs. The cough turns into another sob and before I know it, she’s outright balling again.

“How the hell should I know? You don’t think I’ve been asking myself that all fucking day?”

I know she doesn’t mean to sound like a bitch, but that’s all I can think. I nod encouraging her to continue, because I know if I open my mouth, I’m going to say something rude.

“I guess there were signs. Maybe there weren’t. I don’t know.” Julie’s voice is deadpan.

Now it’s my turn to taste the strawberry flavored shisha. I’d seen the signs since they started dating our junior year at U of M, and I never said a damn thing. Twenty years later, I’m wishing I had. 

Astro

         

           In Old Town Square, she poses for a photo.  February is cold in Colorado, even colder in the Czech Republic.  Her second trip to Prague, the first in winter.  Her skin is porcelain, white alabaster that blends with her fur coat.  Dark hair covers one shoulder, her own scarf.  Hands clutched behind her back as if she’s waiting.  She wears no smile, eyes ominous, sad.  Morning light gives rise in distant archways.  In dark pants, white coat, white skin and dark hair, she is the quintessential enigma, dichotomy at the finest.

            Her eyes gives away her truth.  In them, she shows the pain of morning.  It was earlier that he threw the earrings at her, velvet box making a thud on the carpeted floor of the hostel.  She’d seen the earrings a month earlier, sitting on the mantle in his room.  He is a hustler, always out to make a dollar, no matter the cost.  She knew the earrings should be for her, but when he didn’t gift them, but gifted a trip to Praha instead, she started to question.  Little moments pinpricked together – him going to the gym in jeans and loafers, the scent of his Polo cologne so thick that she couldn’t sleep, the increasingly difficult to decipher lists of who owes what, the closet with the pot suddenly locked.  She knew he was cheating, chose to bat an eye and shelve the pain for a later date. 

            So she called him on it.  Asked about the diamond brilliance she was sure belonged to her.  Fuck all, she’d earned it.  He knew it, and she did too.  Late night licks, the phone always going off; he took risks, but so did she – carting duffle bags of bullshit over state lines in her rotting American car, that charge when they were young and impressionable; she gave him her self, her truth, her moment in time.  Damn well that she expect a little sparkle at the end of the road. 

            And that’s the thing, they were at the end of the road.  It had been nine long years of his hustle and grind, her wading through trying to make a way in the world.  Enough of enough.  She’d asked him, during their first burn-through-money trip to Europe to stop hustling.  They were in Spain, walking up some steep hill after a filling lunch of beer and sandwiches.  He said he would when he banked a hundred thousand.  That number come and gone finds her standing in Old Town Square, still trying to hang on to the strongest love she’s known this life.

            He carried her, and that’s the thing.  Saw her through the transition from sub-blue to white collar, believed in her craft and helped her come out the other side, whole.  She owes it to him, she thinks, standing in the cold, to pose for another photo.  Never mind whatever self she gave to him, the years, the worry, the wondering.  Her eyes beguile the truth in her heart.  

Mourning, Morning

Mourning, Morning

Ding.

            The sound rouses her.

            Disoriented, she throws her arm to the lift, searching for Julie.

            The space unoccupied, it takes a moment to remember.

That fight.

Julie’s eye blossoming black.

Renee’s hand stinging.

Those Samsonite suitcases they’d registered for.

The front door slamming.

            Now, a text from Vincent.

            Are you feeling alright?  Never in bed this late. 

The grandson of her strange neighbor next door was sweet and obviously interested. 

The message was from seven. It was going on eight.

            I just woke up. 

            Renee doesn’t know what else to reply. 

Mario’s thoughtfulness leaves her feeling sticky. 

The phone screen glows bright, though the darkest part of mourning has long passed. 

Her therapist told her these kinds of days would happen. 

Really, This?

What the fuck does she want with me now? And why here of all places?

This is what Zak repeated to himself as he approached the old stone steps of the church.

Patrick told him two days ago last Wednesday that Callie would be waiting in the last pew, on the right. Zak had been wondering why she’d be sitting on the right and not the left. Women always sat on the left. Thinking it was some kind of puzzle that he had to figure out, Zak briefly considered asking Sister Mary Francis about the tradition. But knowing that would draw the Sister into a long conversation that he’d zone out of anyway, he’s resorted to just thinking about it.

The network of paths and hedges that had led Zak McKinley to be walking up the steps of Saint Michael’s church in the middle of the afternoon was fantastic really, when he considered it. Following in the tradition of his three older brothers, Zak had joined the Air Force right out of high school. Back for his first trip home since Basic, he found that his city had changed and was the same all at once. Moving and traveling behind the past and into the future he was carving for himself was hard enough; learning that Callie wanted to see him just complicated things more.

In their junior year of high school, Zak and Callie hooked up a few times. After one particularly sloppy performance at a house party, Callie became pregnant. She told Zak immediately and together they decided to terminate the pregnancy. Or at least, Callie decided and Zak paid. He’d been an asshole and didn’t go with her to Planned Parenthood. Didn’t even go see her after, preferring instead to pretend like nothing had happened. Callie didn’t return to school after that, and Zak didn’t bother to find out why.

Opening the door to Saint Ambrose’s, the familiarity of the church greeted him like a stern great aunt. Imposing, reproachful and stoic, but maternal in a side-glance sort of way. After dipping his finger in the holy water and genuflecting in front of the cross, more out of habit and obligation than true belief, Zak scanned the old wooden pews for Callie. He found her sitting at the far end of a pew near the front of the nave. Huffing and wishing he was anywhere but in Saint Michaels, Zak walked quickly toward her. Callie turned to watch him, leaning back as she did so. Seated next to her was a small child.

She waited for Zak to reach the pew before speaking.

“Zak, this is your son, Michael.”

That One Question

(a six word story)

Can love ever really be enough?

Can I Lift Her Up?

There was something about her that was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I’m pretty sure I’d never seen her before, even though I’m here just about every day. Her walk wasn’t particularly remarkable, and neither was her face. I noticed her in the parking lot. Long arms shaped like straws, bending at the shoulders. Legs stretched out one by one, each taking her a step closer to her addiction. Cheekbones jutted underneath her RayBans. Even from my distance, I saw the bones in her hands. The scoop of her tank-top revealed pale flesh and vertebrae protruding like individual bowties. Nikes on her feet looked like clown shoes, so disproportionate were they to the rest of her body. In a word – frail. She walked on ahead and I gathered my things. Checked my email, sent a few messages, popped a piece of gum in my mouth and then headed in.

On the weight floor, I forgot about her. Forgot about the world, really. Concentrated on engaging my core, sending my hips and ass parallel to the floor, and pulling up with my glutes. Deadlift Sunday. Determined to make a personal best, I remained present. Ground my shoeless feet down as the rest of me lifted up. I needed to be in the moment. Immediate. Decisive with my actions. One sixty five came up and went down too easily. I added another twenty pounds. Went to rechalk my hands. Looked up as I was tapping off the excess and saw her again.

Struggling on the Smith Machine with an empty bar, I watched her try to complete one rep. The Smith Machine was doing most of the work, all she had to do was bend her body the right way, and the bar would move on it’s own. Even that seemed like a challenge. I stood there staring at her while I caught my breath. Let my CNS reset. Chasing a personal record isn’t for the faint. I needed to be mentally and physically ready and available. I also had to keep watching her, remembering what that once felt like. 

Those long arms I’d noticed in the parking lot were gripping the barbell as though the forty five pound weight was enough to crush her. The pallor of her skin, ashen look under her eyes. The straw quality of her hair. If I’d been close enough, I bet her nails were brittle. Anorexic.

I recognized her because I used to know her. I used to be her. Forty five pounds cresting across my back would have been too much for me too. Her legs, completely undefined – forget training her glutes. No amount of squats in the world would ever build her booty without her feeding her body. Looking down at my own legs, covered in chalk dust and a deadlifting bruises, I marveled at the change.

I knew I couldn’t save her, at least not without knowing her. But maybe I could set an example. Be something for her that would help her snap out of it. Likely not, though it doesn’t hurt to try. She reset the bar on the Smith Machine and glanced my way. She looked so tired. Undernourished, exhausted, her body was eating itself from the inside out. My stomach rumbled – almost time for my fourth meal of the day. I nodded to her, trying to let her know that I understand the struggle. Approached my bar. Dug my feet into the ground and bent down. Reverse grip, left hand facing out, right hand facing in. Aligned my hips, and lifted up. One eight five came up and went down eight times.

Finished with my set, I casually glanced over to where she’d been standing. She was gone. An hour and a half later, I’d see her on the stair stepper, slowly climbing one step after another, her mind consumed with the madness of trying to be thin.

Washing Expectations

Summer wanted to keep her safe. Away from the kind of harm and injury that her little sister would experience all too soon. She made it her mission to preserve that sort of life that would keep Annie innocent. Something to maintain her childhood as long as possible. She tried, at first, to secure the same sorts of rituals their mother had performed. Sunday breakfast with fresh biscuits, front creases in Annie’s school trousers, laundry nights on Tuesdays. After a few months, the routine became too much. The weight of pretend mama life, along with her own wifely obligations to Tommy started to unravel even her best interests.

“Annie, we have to do something about this,” Summer said one night. The two were at Oakley laundromat, Annie sitting on top of one of the beat up washing machines, kicking her legs back and forth as if she were on a swing.

“About what, sis,” Annie asked. Missing her front tooth, her childhood freckles not yet gone, almost red hair in one long braid down her back, Annie was set to enter the third grade in the fall.

“I talked to Aunt Rita,” Summer tried to say casually.

“NO.” Annie hopped off of the washer. Summer turned toward her, knowing that the only way to shelter Annie would be to send her away. After talking it over with Tommy for weeks, Summer knew this was the only way.

Grabbing Annie by the shoulders, Summer knew the loss of their mother was shaping Annie in ways she couldn’t see. “Pebbles,” Summer started, knowing their mothers’ nickname for Annie would trigger something  in the small frail girl, “You know this is the only way. I can’t save us both. I have to save you.”

Annie collapsed into Summer, gripping her waist and sobbing. “I don’t want to,” they both said at the same time.

A Shot of Truth

“I’m the only person who can get lost twice in the same day,” Mabel tells me. Her blue eyes lock into mind for a flash, until she remembers where we are and they shift away. The sun’s almost gone down, and the promise of a full bellied moon is on the horizon. “It’s the fucking city, I can’t understand the streets.”

“Don’t worry about it girl,” I tell her. “We have to wait until he gets here anyway, so what’s the rush?” I sit back in my chair, the old wood creaking against my frame. A greasy shot of vodka is on the café table right where the waiter left it an hour ago. Prague is best in summer, but in late autumn, it gets sad and lonely. At least I had Mabel this time.  I’ve never been one to teach, but I know my time is coming up. Better to have someone trained and ready than to leave all this work to fizzle off. Having her on the job won’t make it any easier, but at least it makes for conversation between the long hours. Having her

She blew into her coffee cup, sending steam toward me like an ocean liner set on a fatal course.

“This really is your first time, isn’t it?”

“Is it that obvious,” she asks, scrunching her face so that she looked like a Maine Coon cat.

“Well. You’re pretty green. But you’ll have to do. Central wouldn’t send you if you weren’t ready.” Really, this girl looked far from ready. But I’m the experienced one, so I have to lead. I pull out my phone, tapping the screen with my first finger, pulling up a document and a photo.

“This is the guy,” I tell Mabel as I hand her the phone. “I know you’ve been briefed, but we should review everything again. No chances and all that.” Mabel studies the photo, then looks up and behind me onto the street. Back to the photo.

“You know this is the same guy out there, right,” she asks, using my phone like a pointer.

“What? Who?” Panic rises in my voice. I half turn in my hair, grabbing the shot of vodka with me in one motion. Downing it, I scan the pedestrians for the target. “I don’t see him.”

“Not on the street,” Mabel says. “There, on the bus stop. The advertisement.”

I study my phone.

“Who is he,” I ask. Suddenly I feel old. There’s no reason I should have missed that detail; it should be me with this kind of intel, not Mabel. I twirl the shot of vodka around in my hand, weighing the option of taking it.

“Viktor, his face is all over the city. Haven’t you noticed? He’s just a composite image; computer generated. The man doesn’t exist.”  

I turn back toward Mabel.

“That’s not possible.”

“Well that’s the truth,” she replies blandly. Setting down the ceramic cup, I know the moment is coming before she says it. “You know, don’t you?” The sincerity in her voice seems real, but I can’t tell if she’s being honest, or if her candor is another of her well-honed skills, like pretending to be lost.
She's damn right I know. All the missed details, the marks adding up in my file. I'm getting too old; too much of a liability. I should have seen this coming; never should have agreed to meet the new young agent in a cafe in the middle of Prague. There's no escaping, and even if there were, I wouldn't try it. No point in trying to allude the truth that's been there all along. 
"I hope you're a good shot, at least," I tell her.
"I'll let you go out to the alley," she muses, ignoring the jibe.
Downing the shot of vodka, I let the flavors twirl in my tongue. If I'm going to be killed, I may as well have booze on my break. "Fuck it," I say as I push back my seat from the table. "Let's get this done."

Abandoned

It wasn’t so much that she abandoned him or renounced with her disappearance the time they’d vested that bothered Rick. Or that Megan discarded him and Jukes, the boxer-collie mix they’d rescued together from the pound. It was that she’d deserted him. Ceased in her support, casting him aside like last week’s recycling.

Sure, Megan had always lacked inhibition. Restraint was a word that the woman didn’t know. But it was her recklessness, that fierce drive to see a sunny tomorrow, that drew him to her in the first place. Those late nights they’d spent, staying up talking, dreaming, drinking, knowing each of them had responsibilities the next day. Her pick-up-and-go trips she’d planned on a whim; that sense of adventure that seemed to follow her even when she was doing something boring like selecting produce from the Saturday market. Megan breathed impulsiveness. She knew how to live.

Worn-out and spent, Rick decided he’d tired of trying to figure out how to live. Bending down, he traced a dirt stained finger along the colony of single celled organisms, wondering how many worlds he’d just shattered. He laughed at the irony and jumped into the river.

A Fairy Koan

Rabbit wants to go to the city so that she can be a dancer.  All her life, she’s dreamed of pirouetting on stage in a fancy lace tutu.  Rabbit’s stepmother Hare tells her that their kind can’t be dancers.  Rabbit wants to believe in herself, but Hare’s words revolve in her mind.  One morning, Hare catches Rabbit dancing in the shadows cast by the sun.  Hare chases Rabbit into the forest.  Rabbit is faster than Hare and quickly escapes.  She gets lost and roams until nightfall.  Rabbit burrows in to an old tree and sleeps deeply. 

            The next morning, the clouds are dark and heavy with the threat of rain.  Rabbit decides she’s not going back to face Hare.  It begins to rain, soaking Rabbit’s coat and matting her fur.  She doubts herself and her dream.  Just when she’s ready to turn around, she finds the road to the city.  The sun breaks through the clouds, and an image of Grandmother Cottontail enters Rabbit’s mind.  Grandmother used to whisper stories of famous dancers to Rabbit, encouraging her to be who she wanted to be.  Rabbit keeps on.  On the road, Rabbit meets Lizard.  He stands tall and tells her that he is a wizard.  She tells Lizard that she is on the way to the city to become a dancer. 

            Lizard says, “Rabbit, I will grant you the wish of being a dancer.  But first, you must answer a riddle.  I will give you four chances to answer.”

            Rabbit’s tail thumps as she quickly accepts Lizard’s proposal. 

            “This is an easy one,” Lizard says.  “The bridge flows, but the water is motionless.  Why is this?”

            Rabbit blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.  “Because the water is frozen?”

            Lizard shakes his head no.

            “Because it is a miracle?” Lizard crosses his arms no.  Rabbit knows that Lizard is a powerful wizard, so takes her time thinking.  “Because there is no water?”

            “You’re on the right track.”  Rabbit knows Lizard wants her to succeed.

            She takes a deep breath and sees herself dancing, her feet laced into pretty shoes.  Then she understands the riddle.           “Because I’m leaning over the bridge!” 

            “You are what you think you are, Rabbit.  Never forget that.  You are correct.  Close your eyes and when you open them, you will be dancing on a stage in the city.”  

Redki Gora

Redki Gora

They crafted the sort of intimacy that suggested they’d never return to who they were before – that sort of all at once and not quite complete thrill that’s sometimes found on Friday’s. Struck on a secret in a hotel corridor, his quick head duck out of a door frame landed on the chatoyant brown of her eye as she stood like always in the middle, blue dress and red hair, looking like an American flag, standing still. She trailed her past like a kitten on a leash, unruly and unforgiving. He remembered.

A lifetime ago, they built a tree house, when he was an orangutan, and she a black eagle. He churned sweet ice cream for her from vanilla beans and mangoes; she showed him how to be spicy sweet. 

Tongues trailed and truth spawned, shared between the two like county fair cotton candy. He smelled like home when he came for her. She heaped her form under gypsy quilts and charms, decorating her  body in ornaments and the kinds of trinkets he might light. His shoulders sunburned; her fingers left imprints of reds and pinks, her own sunrise, on his skin. They spun opposing colors into the same flavor, two not-strangers, marked and distanced, but sewn together. She remembered.

Early afternoons and even later nights bent to whims of carnal associations. Coastlines and obligations left to move like boulders in their path. They traveled between the full leaf trees, making melody rhythmic. Flying foxes and sun bears crunched against the forgotten jungle floor. He caught her skin and bit down. Hard. She winced, grinned, remembering and forgetting everything in the moment. Separated over incarnations, she knew his eyes before she knew what to call him. He saw her magic before she showed herself in moonlight.

Seven isn’t a magic number. It leaves a longing that will only find an end in the next rebirth. No stones exchanges, promises made, names given. They let the candle light flame out, one Sunday in May, knowing the passing connection, fancied and gussied, will last for another time round. They leave one another knowing the moment was taken. Tattoo lines and colors memorized, those seven days of selfless knowledge moved between zest and zeal. On the ground, she looks up at the rare passing of clouds and sees a mountain in the distance.