Fiction / David Stromberg

:: Panic ::

Well, I was sup­posed to be in Paris for a short stay, and I real­ly wasn’t try­ing to meet any­one. The com­pa­ny was con­sid­er­ing coop­er­at­ing with our French com­peti­tors, and I was the only one in the office who’d stud­ied even basic French. The idea was to meet rep­re­sen­ta­tives from dif­fer­ent depart­ments and, based on that, see how we could work togeth­er. It was my first chance to lead a project—and the French agreed—so I went. We nev­er real­ly set a time­line—and, I know it sounds crazy, but I think that’s part­ly why I end­ed up in an emer­gency room. 

As soon as I got to Paris, I called Mel—you know, my friend from busi­ness school, the one who went to work at one of the French banks and end­ed up mar­ry­ing a native Parisian—and she invit­ed me to her hol­i­day par­ty. That’s where I met Clémence. 

Mel lived in an old Parisian apart­ment over­look­ing the Bastille. Her hus­band had inher­it­ed it from one of his grand­par­ents and con­vert­ed it into a super-mod­ern Euro­pean loft.  I did­n’t know any­one except for Mel at the par­ty, and she was busy host­ing, so I spent a lot of time stand­ing in the cor­ner look­ing at the view.

Clé­mence walked by, giv­ing me this sweet apolo­getic smile. I smiled back and said, Hel­lo. She asked me, in per­fect Eng­lish, what I was doing there, and I told her. She said she knew Mel’s hus­band from high school and didn’t real­ly know any­one else there. Most of the peo­ple at the par­ty were from the cor­po­rate world, and she was an inde­pen­dent cloth­ing design­er try­ing to make a name for her­self, so she thought she’d come to net­work a lit­tle. But in the end she said she felt too shy. And that’s how we end­ed up talk­ing to each oth­er for most of the night. 

At the end of the par­ty I drunk­en­ly asked her whether I could kiss her. She said not tonight—but gave me her num­ber. I asked her whether she want­ed to come to where I was stay­ing for lunch the next day. She said she would. As we said good­bye, she had that sweet sad smile on her face again. I asked her why she was smil­ing. She said she was hap­py. I might sound mean, but my first reac­tion was a feel­ing of hor­ror, like, Oh no …  

~ 

So that was the first night. Actu­al­ly, I was so drunk that I did­n’t exact­ly remem­ber how the night ended—only that it end­ed very late. I man­aged to some­how get back to the tiny stu­dio apart­ment I was rent­ing just off the Canal Saint-Mar­tin. I woke up around ten o’clock and wasn’t even sure that what had hap­pened was real. Did I real­ly meet a woman named Clé­mence? Was she real­ly plan­ning to come over for lunch? 

So I wrote her a text message—like good morn­ing and how’re you feel­ing and do you remem­ber any­thing—and it turned out it was all real. She was com­ing over for lunch. 

Look: I couldn’t have known what would hap­pen at that moment. How strong the attach­ment would grow. I mean, how do you do that? You don’t even know that anything’s going to hap­pen at that point—you cer­tain­ly don’t know how it’s going to develop. 

All you’re think­ing as it’s hap­pen­ing is: this is inter­est­ing. Sud­den­ly you’re filled with all these feel­ings, out of nowhere, and just like that, you have an emo­tion­al life. And you just met this per­son two sec­onds ago. 

We had a nice lunch. I made mush­room-bar­ley soup with leeks and car­rots. I made us cof­fee. We talked—not as eas­i­ly as we had the night before, but still, there was some­thing nice about the awk­ward flir­ta­tion. And I guess that was the point. 

When we fin­ished she got up, and I got up, and we both kind of froze like we weren’t sure what to do next. I put my hand out toward hers, and she put hers out toward mine. We locked fin­gers light­ly and then leaned in to kiss each oth­er. It wasn’t pas­sion­ate. Just a soft, pro­longed kiss. Real­ly nice. 

She left. That should have been the end. It could have been the end. But it wasn’t.  

The next day she texted me and asked if I want­ed to come over after work—she was plan­ning on mak­ing pump­kin bisque. 

I have to tell you that she’s a very beau­ti­ful per­son. Not just physically—though I think she’d be con­sid­ered attractive—but there’s some­thing else. You can see it in how she moves: care­ful, con­sid­ered, slow. She’s got this sim­ple style—she can be for­mal and casu­al at the same time. You can tell when you see her that this is some­one special. 

So I said yes to her bisque. I went to work for meet­ings that didn’t real­ly go any­where. And then I went to her place. 

You have to under­stand, I had no idea how long I was going to be in Paris. I had noth­ing to think about oth­er than work. The com­pa­ny was pay­ing all my trav­el expens­es. There was noth­ing for me to be con­cerned about except what I was expe­ri­enc­ing at that moment. 

Clé­mence lived off the République in a tiny stu­dio where she also did her design­ing. We sat at a lit­tle bar that’d been attached to the kitch­enette and had wine and talked. It was the stan­dard get-to-know-you stuff that comes after a cou­ple of dates: where did you grow up, who are your par­ents, what made you pick your career. She told me that her dad was British and that was why she spoke Eng­lish so well. She told me about her deci­sion to switch pro­fes­sions from graph­ic to cloth­ing design. I told her that I’d always intend­ed to go to busi­ness school and work in finance. That sort of thing. 

She also told me that she’d been invit­ed to the hol­i­day par­ty because her best friend from high school—who’d died in a car acci­dent a few years ago—had been the sis­ter of my friend’s hus­band. And since her friend’s death, Clé­mence and the broth­er had become friends of sorts, and tried to see each oth­er at least once dur­ing the holidays. 

Her bisque need­ed a lit­tle salt but oth­er­wise it was good. We got through more than half of the wine bot­tle. The whole thing was very sweet. And it had this slow­ness that some­how made it feel safe. 

After­ward, we sat down on her futon bed to fin­ish the wine. You can imag­ine how that end­ed. The thing is that, on the way there, I remem­ber think­ing: go, have a nice time, and then go home. Don’t get involved in any­thing or give her the wrong idea that some­thing might be pos­si­ble between the two of you. You’re leav­ing. So don’t act like you’re not. 

But who remem­bers that sort of thing by the time you’ve shared a bot­tle of wine and are sit­ting togeth­er on a futon? And it had been a while since I’d been with any­one. There was this sweet per­son here who was open to shar­ing moment … who could remem­ber anything .…

It was real­ly nice to be with her that night. You know I don’t usu­al­ly talk this way, but it felt like some­thing deep had hap­pened, some­thing rare and spe­cial. I imag­ine there are peo­ple who can resist some­thing like that. I’m not one of them. 

~ 

So that’s how it start­ed. That first week was real­ly so easy. I’d been to Paris before but I didn’t know it well, and she showed me around all these dif­fer­ent areas that you wouldn’t see unless you were with some­one from there. Every evening after I fin­ished work I’d meet her at her stu­dio and we’d go to Belleville, to Oberkampf, to Mon­torgueil, to the Batig­nolles. It was real­ly some­thing to walk the streets of Paris with her. She seemed so at home. 

Paris in win­ter is dark and cold and dank. It’s a good time to have some­one in bed with you. That might have also con­tributed to our spend­ing so much time togeth­er. Though it wasn’t just that. We real­ly liked each other. 

One week turned into two, which turned into three. And most of that time I was with Clé­mence. A few times we went out with Mel and her hus­band, and my French col­leagues took us out once or twice. I also met some of her oth­er friends. But most­ly it was just us. We talked about our ambi­tions. I told her that I want­ed to go into prod­uct inno­va­tion, that it was a spe­cial­ized niche in the finan­cial indus­try which was hard to get into, that this was why I’d even accept­ed the French project. She told me that her inter­est in cloth­ing design had devel­oped from a poster project on pat­terns, that she was less inter­est­ed in glam­or than in using out­er pat­terns to help peo­ple become aware of their inner pat­terns. Our worlds were dif­fer­ent but they also felt some­how par­al­lel. And we were break­ing the rules of math­e­mat­ics through some kind of worm­hole that allowed us to cross paths some­where in the middle. 

But you can only do that for so long. And the trip start­ed drag­ging out. 

I’d orig­i­nal­ly booked my plane tick­ets and sub­let for a three-week trip. But work was going well, and it looked like we were actu­al­ly find­ing some com­mon lan­guage and shared goals. I sug­gest­ed that the French com­pa­ny could work with us to devel­op a new finan­cial product—conceptualize its pur­pose and gauge its mar­ket poten­tial and maybe even co-patent it—while apply­ing our coun­tries’ tax laws to pro­mote the prod­uct in our own mar­kets. The French liked the idea, but it meant com­ing up with a min­i­mal blue­print for that poten­tial prod­uct, and that’d take more time. 

I shared the good news with Clé­mence. I told her that I need­ed to quick­ly find a place to stay and asked her what areas I should con­sid­er. We’d been sleep­ing at her place half the time and at mine the oth­er half—and it did occur to me that she might think I was try­ing to insin­u­ate that she should invite me to stay with her. But real­ly I just want­ed her input on where I should look for a place. And I trust­ed her to resist the temp­ta­tion to invite me to stay with her. 

She smiled the way she had on that first night. And then she said that, if I want­ed to, I could stay with her. 

She was very cool when she said it—I remem­ber we were drink­ing wine at a bar in the Haut Marais before going to dinner—and even though I knew she might say it, I was still sur­prised. It wasn’t about sav­ing money—she knew the com­pa­ny was cov­er­ing my expens­es. And it’s not like we were mov­ing in together—because any­way I was leav­ing as soon as this part of the project was done. I didn’t under­stand why she made the sug­ges­tion. But I couldn’t ask her. I was afraid to know. 

What I felt very strong­ly was that get­ting clos­er than we already were was dan­ger­ous for us both. You don’t want to get so attached to some­one you’re going to leave. It was one thing to spend time togeth­er, to even sleep in the same bed night after night, but it was a whole oth­er thing to only have one liv­ing space. Even for a short amount of time. This was a romance, not a rela­tion­ship, and there had to be some boundaries. 

The thing is that I didn’t know how to say any of this. I’m not sure I even knew I felt this way. I just had this sense of dread. And it made me feel guilty. 

We left the bar and went to din­ner at a lit­tle gourmet restau­rant near­by. We talked about oth­er things—her recent ideas for a new col­lec­tion and the need to redesign her label—but the whole time I kept think­ing about her invi­ta­tion and what it meant. 

We went back to her place—she lived clos­er to where we’d had dinner—and on the way I tried to express my hes­i­ta­tion. I told her I appre­ci­at­ed her invi­ta­tion but that I real­ly hadn’t meant to sug­gest that. She smiled again and said she believed me and that it real­ly didn’t wor­ry her. 

As we walked, I found myself hav­ing to put my feel­ings into words that were clos­er to what I actu­al­ly felt—though I didn’t want to hurt her. I said that I was com­mit­ted to my job and intend­ed to go back as soon as I was done with the project here. She said she under­stood and that maybe there’d be some unex­pect­ed change. Maybe I’d find a way to stay at my job while also stay­ing in Paris a while longer. I told her it was unlike­ly because my job was in Amer­i­ca. She smiled and said that I was already stay­ing longer than expected. 

When we got to her place we went straight to bed and made love. It was very strange. It’s not like we were in a lov­ing mood. We were basi­cal­ly arguing—but some­how there was no out­right anger. There was con­fu­sion and there was frus­tra­tion. She had this hope that she’d revealed, and she decid­ed to hold onto it no mat­ter what I said. And I just want­ed her to hear me and to accept that I was going to leave. I think that’s what I real­ly wanted. 

But she wouldn’t. When we were done we lay in bed and talked some more. She said that she didn’t expect any­thing from me except not to pre­sume how the whole thing might end. Just to let things devel­op how­ev­er they devel­oped and to give myself room to accept what I hadn’t con­sid­ered beforehand. 

I can’t explain to you what that com­ment did to me. It’s like I could see two ver­sions of the future extend­ing out of me—one that extend­ed only from what I planned for myself and anoth­er from what was hap­pen­ing at that moment with Clémence—I saw an entire life with her in this place. I saw that poten­tial, I felt it, it entered into my heart. And then I got scared as hell. And start­ed crying. 

I was shak­ing and Clé­mence took my hand. She asked me: “What hap­pened?” I said: “I real­ized some­thing.” And I just kept cry­ing. She asked: “What is it?” It took me a few moments to catch my breath enough to say what I felt. “I always thought,” I said, almost pant­i­ng, “that I was afraid of death. But now I real­ize that I’m actu­al­ly afraid of life.” I buried my head in her arms and the tears just flowed and flowed. 

I know I’m cry­ing again, but it was very very pow­er­ful. I don’t think I’d ever faced such a deep fear in front of any­one. I’m not sure I’d ever faced one with myself. And I can tell you that it wouldn’t have hap­pened if I hadn’t trust­ed Clé­mence so deeply. That was the thing about her. You could trust her with your life. She was a deeply good per­son. How many peo­ple like that are you ever going to meet? 

So I end­ed up mov­ing into her place. I just couldn’t see myself hav­ing an expe­ri­ence like that and then walk­ing away. I fig­ured she was right. I’m here now and that’s what counts and who knows what the future will bring. I was work­ing to devel­op these ideas with the French. Things were going well. I could just as well leave when I was done—what did I need to rent some oth­er apart­ment when I could take the chance to spend some time with some­one so spe­cial? There was no need to insist on being sep­a­rat­ed from her when in all like­li­hood we were going to be sep­a­rat­ed any­way. What harm could come from being with some­one so good? 

That’s what I told myself. I had no idea then how much being with some­one good could hurt. 

~ 

Things at work were going well. I’d sug­gest­ed devel­op­ing per­son­al trav­el loans that would cre­ate direct lines of cred­it with air­lines, hotels, and car rental companies—like mort­gages or car loans that fun­nel resources from these com­pa­nies back to their con­sumers in return for inter­est. The idea was to use pro­ject­ed over­stock and can­cel­la­tions to cre­ate lim­it­ed num­bers of loans. Our com­pa­nies would work with trav­el providers in our respec­tive coun­tries to pre­pare pack­ages that min­i­mal­ly exposed them to loss while using their excess ser­vices to cre­ate debt-dri­ven income. I have to admit, even I was sur­prised that no one had done this yet. 

The French loved the idea and had me work direct­ly with their inno­va­tion department—which has been in the glob­al mar­ket much longer than ours. We set our goal at prepar­ing a pitch for the prod­uct that we could each present to trav­el providers. I report­ed the progress to my boss, and she said I could get my name on the inter­na­tion­al patent. That’s a real­ly big deal. 

Clé­mence was work­ing on her new col­lec­tion, and I helped her devel­op her own mar­ket­ing plan. She want­ed to rent a lit­tle show­room, and I helped her pre­pare a bud­get. She had some mon­ey from her par­ents that she was liv­ing from, but she also knew that she had to turn her project into a busi­ness and earn some income. I sug­gest­ed she should lim­it her goals to what she could real­is­ti­cal­ly reach—and to be patient. 

We were a work­ing cou­ple. Our days were filled with pro­fes­sion­al wor­ries, and at night we enjoyed our few tired hours togeth­er. We went out for drinks and din­ner, we watched movies, some­times her friends invit­ed us over and we went. Paris is a great place for hav­ing a sim­ple city life. It’s so beau­ti­ful that the whole expe­ri­ence is just enough by itself. 

Before I knew it I’d been in Paris for nine weeks—six of them liv­ing with Clé­mence. And at that point I also real­ized that the project was going to end soon. It was an abrupt real­iza­tion because pulling togeth­er data from dif­fer­ent indus­tries had gone slow­ly, but the analy­sis and con­struc­tion of the trav­el pack­ages went much more quick­ly. By the time I real­ized this, we were going to be done in a cou­ple of days. So just as Clé­mence and I were  get­ting into a rhythm—I had to start prepar­ing for my departure. 

Clé­mence and I were liv­ing togeth­er, so it wasn’t like I could go home and think things over. We were liv­ing in a tiny stu­dio. There was no room to think. 

The French com­pa­ny was based in Mont­par­nasse, near that big ugly tow­er, so I decid­ed to walk home to the République—which is about an hour’s walk. I left a lit­tle ear­ly, it was the begin­ning of March, so there was actu­al­ly some sun­light left in the day. I walked out and saw this beau­ti­ful street in front of me, in this mag­i­cal city, with all this activ­i­ty right there. I didn’t under­stand how I was going to leave it all. I’d only been there two months, but it felt like I’d been liv­ing there my entire life. 

I remem­ber real­ly well the route I took on that walk home. I went down the Rue de Rennes and then turned onto the Rue du Four then end­ed up on the Rue de Buci and then the Rue Saint-Andre des Arts. I remem­ber I left like this area was so touris­tic, and then I laughed because I was a tourist too. But I also felt like I was going to miss being able to just walk through here. 

I crossed the Pont Saint-Michel and saw the Notre Dame off in the distance—and it wasn’t like I was going out of my way to see these sights. It was just my walk home. And in the last rays of the after­noon sun there was just this amaz­ing warm bril­liance to the whole thing. I didn’t know what I was going to do back home with­out all this. 

And then obvi­ous­ly I real­ized that the city was the easy part—what was I going to do back home with­out Clé­mence? I loved this woman. And it made me want to cry. 

The whole rest of the way to her place I thought about the var­i­ous options that we had, and it seemed pret­ty straight­for­ward: either I stayed, or she came with me, or we did the long-dis­tance thing until one of us could join the oth­er. All we had to do was fig­ure out which of them was best for us. 

By the time I got home I was prac­ti­cal­ly excit­ed about the fact that I was leav­ing soon. It felt like this weird lim­bo that we’d been liv­ing in was actu­al­ly going to take some prac­ti­cal form. Our time togeth­er hadn’t had any struc­ture, and now we’d have a chance to give our rela­tion­ship a real frame­work. We’d just been sort of float­ing from day to day, each of us doing our thing, and being together—but there’d been no vision, no direc­tion, no plan. Now there was no way to ignore the fact that I was leav­ing, and we were actu­al­ly going to have to think about what we meant to each oth­er, and what that meant for each of us going forward. 

Well, that con­ver­sa­tion did not go as opti­misti­cal­ly as I’d imag­ined. She start­ed cry­ing. And it wasn’t like just reg­u­lar crying—I mean like the sad-that-you’re-leaving kind of crying—she was cry­ing with this deep sad­ness. Like some­one was about to die. 

“I’m alive,” I kept telling her, “and you’re alive. Why don’t we just first be grate­ful that we’re alive.” 

But she just cried and cried. We were sit­ting on the futon and she leaned into me and put her arms around my waist and just kept crying. 

I didn’t know what I should do or say. I felt guilty that she was cry­ing and I was just sit­ting there, and sud­den­ly I start­ed feel­ing this deep sadness—I don’t know how else to describe it except to say it felt elemental—and I just start­ed cry­ing too. 

In my head I told myself that I was just cry­ing to make her feel bet­ter, so she wouldn’t have to feel like she was the only one who was sad about our sep­a­ra­tion. And I was sad about the fact that I had to leave. But I was also think­ing ahead, about our next steps, about the future that we could build together. 

But as we sat on the futon, cry­ing togeth­er, all the thoughts I’d had about our future some­how start­ed to dis­ap­pear. It felt like there’d nev­er been a future and maybe not even a past. It’s like the mem­o­ries that we had of the time we spent togeth­er just evap­o­rat­ed. There was just this sense of a now that was full of the feel­ing of death. It’s like we were sit­ting right there on the futon and dying together. 

I’m not say­ing it felt like an out-of-body experience—but you know how some­times there’s no way to explain some­thing oth­er than with words that already exist? So in a way it was like an out-of-body experience. 

I squeezed her and asked her why she felt so sad. She said she hadn’t had a friend like me since her best friend who’d died. She said she loved me and I told her I loved her too. 

I tried to steer the con­ver­sa­tion toward some­thing more concrete—like our plans for the near future. I had to reserve a tick­et back and I told her it might be good if we made a plan for her to come vis­it. She’d nev­er even been to America. 

She hes­i­tat­ed. She said she want­ed to come, but that she had to work on her col­lec­tion. It was the only anchor she had, and she’d just start­ed mak­ing plans for a show­room. She couldn’t just get up and go to anoth­er coun­try. She had to think about when she could come. 

You can imag­ine my con­fu­sion. All I want­ed was for us to have some point of con­tact that we knew we’d have in the near future. And all she want­ed was to stay in Paris. I couldn’t stay—that was clear—and so sud­den­ly I saw that it meant we were break­ing up. 

When I real­ized this I start­ed cry­ing. Not for her. For myself. “I don’t want to lose you,” I said. And she said, “I don’t want to lose you either.” “So what do we do?” I asked her, cry­ing. And she said, “We try not to come to any conclusion.” 

And I just began to cry hys­ter­i­cal­ly. I mean real­ly hysterically—like with my jaw shak­ing out of control—and I couldn’t under­stand what was hap­pen­ing to my body. It was too much unknown. 

We hugged and cried and fell asleep just like that, on the futon, with­out even open­ing it up. We slept fold­ed into each oth­er all night, and in the morn­ing we woke up with our mouths sticky and our teeth unbrushed and lines of dried salt down our faces. 

We got up and cleaned up and I made us cof­fee and some­how we man­aged to make it through the morn­ing. When I left for work I didn’t even both­er chang­ing my clothes. 

That day I got an email from my boss say­ing the French com­pa­ny had updat­ed her on our progress and that she was look­ing for­ward to hear­ing more of the details when I returned. I wrote her back say­ing I was plan­ning to return by the end of the week and that I’d see her in the office first thing Mon­day morning. 

~

Clé­mence and I had two more days togeth­er. They were qui­et days—almost silent—we went out for drinks and din­ner but we didn’t talk the way we had before. She cried some­times. I didn’t cry again like I had that time, but I was sad. She was a sweet per­son and all I want­ed was to be in her presence. 

I think I was also mad that she refused to plan to come and vis­it me. I under­stood her rea­sons, but I was still mad. And I think that helped me not fall into the same sadness. 

We got through those two days, and then the time had come for me to go to the air­port. I’d ordered a taxi and it came to pick me up. We went down­stairs togeth­er and tried to say good­bye. But I could­n’t say the words. My jaw start­ed shak­ing again. You have to under­stand that I’d nev­er expe­ri­enced any­thing like that before. My body had nev­er been out of con­trol that way. 

“I don’t know what to do,” I said, hold­ing onto her. “It’s like I’m scared of leav­ing you.” “It’s all right,” she said, “I’m with you.” And I just kept hold­ing onto her while my jaw shook. “I don’t know what’s hap­pen­ing,” I said. “It’s all right,” she kept say­ing. “I’m with you.” 

She reas­sured me enough to get into the taxi. Once I was on the road I felt this shift, like trav­el­ing split you into all these dif­fer­ent parts, and you didn’t even know exact­ly who you were. I just went into this trav­el­ing mode because the whole thing just felt crazy anyway. 

I slept most of the flight back, and after I land­ed I took a cab home. When I turned my phone back on I saw an email from her that just said: “Love.” In the cab on the way back I hit reply and wrote: “So much.” Then I hit send. 

I put the phone in my pock­et and watched the road. All these build­ings, all so straight, so dif­fer­ent from Paris. Amer­i­ca was made different. 

I called up a cou­ple of friends—I called you—that was when we made our plan to meet up for a drink Wednes­day. But I didn’t make it that long. I bare­ly got through Mon­day in the office. I man­aged to update my boss on every­thing we’d accom­plished with the French com­pa­ny. And when I got home I thought about call­ing Clé­mence. But the idea of hear­ing her voice was sud­den­ly so scary that I felt the tears welling up again. It’s like I’d been infect­ed with this cry­ing dis­ease. This sadsweet feel­ing that I had no idea how to handle. 

It was around sev­en in the evening when my phone buzzed. I saw it was an email from her and I hur­ried to open it up. It said: “I don’t know how to love you and let you go.” 

I still can’t tell you why, but that sen­tence was too much for me. I start­ed hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing. I didn’t know what to do—so I called you. You didn’t answer, I fig­ured you were feed­ing the kids or putting them to bed, but I knew I had to do some­thing. I couldn’t breathe and I felt like I was going to die. So I called an ambu­lance. They picked me up and brought me to the emer­gency room. They gave me a tran­quil­iz­er. I’m feel­ing a lit­tle calmer now. 

I’ve nev­er had any­thing like this hap­pen, you know? I still don’t know what actu­al­ly hap­pened. I just don’t under­stand. I heard the words the nurse told me, it’s just a pan­ic attack, I know what each one of the words means. But I don’t under­stand what they mean togeth­er. Why attack? Why pan­ic?

 

 

 

From the writer

:: Account ::

This sto­ry is part of a cycle that con­sid­ers the ways that encoun­ters with oth­ers affect our emo­tion­al con­sti­tu­tions more deeply than we real­ize at a giv­en moment. I want­ed to record, in fic­tion­al form, the cir­cum­stances lead­ing up to our real­iz­ing some­thing has hap­pened—but when we don’t yet know what. I also want­ed to cre­ate an homage, some­times more obvi­ous than oth­ers, to how lit­er­a­ture affects us in our lives: how it enters our con­scious­ness­es and changes who we are from the inside. In this sto­ry, I turn Sylvia Plath’s “John­ny Pan­ic and the Bible of Dreams” inside out, with the voice being giv­en to a “patient” who is cop­ing with his first-ever pan­ic attack.   

From a craft per­spec­tive, in approach­ing this expe­ri­ence from the “inside,” I asked myself a rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple ques­tion: How do writ­ers con­vey events to read­ers? The pre­sumed answer to this ques­tion will almost always deter­mine the form and mode of a fic­tion­al work. No one can attempt to write any­thing with­out, con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly, apply­ing some mod­el. A lit­er­ary work is, in the end, addressed to a per­son who is meant to be reached—and in fic­tion, the per­son addressed in a lit­er­ary work is not iden­ti­cal to the one read­ing it in the real world. This is where the slip­page occurs, mark­ing the begin­ning of what I call abstract writ­ing. 

With this in mind, I want­ed to con­sid­er how sto­ry­telling is shaped by the fact that the peo­ple to whom we speak are usu­al­ly peo­ple we know—and this spe­cif­ic rela­tion between speak­er and lis­ten­er is the sto­ry­telling ele­ment that I began to abstract. When you speak to some­one you know, you don’t have time to go into every pos­si­ble detail of your sto­ry, because your time with them is lim­it­ed. You only say what’s most rel­e­vant to con­vey­ing the main events. But this kind of abstrac­tion requires read­ers to place them­selves in the shoes of some­one who is not direct­ly represented—the per­son lis­ten­ing to the narration—and to inter­po­late them­selves into the fic­tion­al world. This chal­lenges read­ers to enter into a dia­logue with the fic­tion, and to con­tin­ue it in their own lives. In this way, I invite read­ers to take part in the cre­ative project of fic­tion: to enter the sto­ry and to explore, in their own time and on their own terms, what it means to make lit­er­a­ture part of reality. 

 

David Stromberg is a writer, trans­la­tor, and lit­er­ary schol­ar. He has pub­lished fic­tion in The Woven Tale Press, Atti­cus Review, and the UK’s Ambit, non­fic­tion in The Amer­i­can Schol­ar, Lit­er­ary Mat­ters, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books, and trans­la­tions in The New York­er, Asymp­tote, and Con­junc­tions. In 2019, he pub­lished a series of per­son­al reflec­tions in Pub­lic Sem­i­nar about grow­ing up on the eth­nic and cul­tur­al mar­gins of Los Ange­les. He is the author of four car­toon col­lec­tions, includ­ing BADDIES (Melville House, 2009), and two crit­i­cal stud­ies, most recent­ly IDIOT LOVE and the Ele­ments of Inti­ma­cy (Pal­grave, 2020). He is edi­tor to the Isaac Bashe­vis Singer Lit­er­ary Trust, and an edit­ed col­lec­tion of Singer’s essays is forth­com­ing from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press. His spec­u­la­tive novel­la-length essay, A Short Inquiry into the End of the World, was pub­lished in The Mass­a­chu­setts Review’s Work­ing Titles series. 

Fiction / Ken Post

:: Fall, Buck, and Scale ::

​​Muf­fled steps, occa­sion­al grunts, and blue­ber­ry bush­es whapped against their legs, punc­tur­ing the silence. Mon­ty fol­lowed as Don pushed through brush. Nobody said a word. Heat and sweat built inside Monty’s rain gear as it rose from behind his knees, chim­neyed up through his groin toward his armpits, and vent­ed out his neck. He self-bast­ed in his rub­ber out­fit as he entered anoth­er thick­et. Every mus­cle in his body fixed on the next step he took. Per­spi­ra­tion burned his neck and stung his eyes. 

Don packed a chain­saw across one shoul­der. It bobbed up and down on his back as he marched across the uneven ground. Matt was a half-dozen steps ahead of Don, shov­ing branch­es out of his way with one hand, the oth­er hand cling­ing to an aer­i­al pho­to clad in a heavy-duty Ziploc bag. At the back, Mon­ty car­ried the .375 rifle for brown bear pro­tec­tion. He wished these guys would slow down. 

It was like a sea of leaves and a lat­tice of veg­e­ta­tion they pushed through, climbed over, or crawled under. Peri­od­i­cal­ly, a sil­ver hard­hat or a bright yel­low Helly Hansen rain coat was vis­i­ble before it dis­ap­peared back into the ver­dan­cy burst­ing forth in a for­est with over one hun­dred inch­es of rain a year. 

Mon­ty entered a small open­ing next to a trio of tow­er­ing spruce trees. Matt and Don stared at an aer­i­al photo. 

“We’re almost there,” Matt said. 

They were not lost; they knew exact­ly where they were. It start­ed with the pin­prick Matt made in the aer­i­al pho­to before they left camp. Fif­teen min­utes ear­li­er, the heli­copter had descend­ed into the clos­est muskeg to the photo’s tiny pin­hole, and they were now trav­el­ing north­east to that spot. 

“What’s ‘almost there’ mean?” asked Don. He looked at Matt with an expres­sion­less stare. Don was the faller—he cut down the trees and bucked them into six­teen foot logs. He wore an alu­minum, wide-brimmed hard­hat sit­ting low on his head, as if his head had been machined to fit it. All you could see were a few wet strands of hair with almost no trace of fore­head vis­i­ble. His gray eyes and aquiline nose gave him a sharp, pierc­ing look. 

“Five, ten min­utes, maybe.” 

Mon­ty placed the gun against a tree. “Do you guys always walk this fast?” He used the inter­lude to catch his breath. 

Matt, a sinewy six-foot-three, with a black beard car­pet­ing his face, and Don, a fire hydrant of knot­ted brawn, were the odd cou­ple of the woods. The one thing they had in com­mon was their abil­i­ty to maneu­ver across roots, ravines, down­fall, thick­ets, and stream cross­ings. How the hell can two guys be so dif­fer­ent but trav­el so quick­ly? Mon­ty was the guy with the gun, and it was all he could do to fol­low them. 

“We actu­al­ly slowed down,” Matt said, “to make it a bit eas­i­er on you.” 

“Won­der­ful.” Mon­ty had been warned when he accept­ed the For­est Ser­vice job in Sit­ka and been hand­ed his Nomex fire-retar­dant heli­copter flight cov­er­alls and a sleep­ing bag. He had bumped into a beard­ed dude on his way out the door. As he walked out, the guy asked, “Where you head­ing, cowboy?” 

“Tim­ber sale prepa­ra­tion in Gilbert Bay.” 

“Oh.” The man gri­maced. “You must have drawn the short straw. Good luck.” 

It wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly clear what the man meant, but he under­stood now that he was work­ing with Matt and Don. He was their rifle bear­er and go-fer who held the “dumb end of the tape” when Matt measured. 

Matt wad­ed into a thorny devil’s club patch, their leaves yel­low-tinged and droop­ing. The saw was back on Don’s shoul­der and he dis­ap­peared into the devil’s club. Mon­ty picked up the gun and trudged on, hop­ing they arrived at the pin­prick soon. 

A few min­utes lat­er, Matt held up his hand. “Okay, I think we’re almost there.” 

Mon­ty cra­dled the rifle in his arm, mak­ing a con­scious effort to keep the muz­zle point­ed away from his part­ners. “Looks like the same stuff we’ve been walk­ing through for the last five minutes.” 

“Agree, but we have to go to the ran­dom­ly select­ed plot. Oth­er­wise, we might as well just stop at the most con­ve­nient spots, and that would mess up all the sta­tis­ti­cal sam­pling.” In For­est Ser­vice par­lance, Matt was the “scaler,” the per­son who mea­sured the trees, looked for rot, and checked the qual­i­ty of the wood. He was much more; Matt man­aged the small camp, planned the crew’s work, and was a mas­ter for­est navigator. 

“Screw the sta­tis­tics. I’m get­ting cold. Let’s go kill some trees.” Don shoul­dered the saw and start­ed off to the area Matt indicated. 

Matt kept walk­ing and looked at the trees. “Okay, this is going to be the cen­ter of the plot. Mon­ty, take this can of spray paint and shoot a dot on each tree I tell you to.” 

Mon­ty turned to look at all the trees around him. “Which tree do you want me to go to?” 

“Just start walk­ing and I’ll direct you.” 

“This one over here?” Mon­ty pat­ted the tree and paused at the base of a forty-inch diam­e­ter spruce and looked up at it. The first branch­es were thir­ty feet above the ground, and they kept going up like a giant beanstalk. Moss shroud­ed the limbs and hung sus­pend­ed in clumps. 

“Yeah, spray that one.” 

“What about that big suck­er behind it?” Don said. 

Matt eye­balled the tree. “Nah, that’s out.” 

“Spray it any­way. That’s one beau­ti­ful tree.” 

Mon­ty hes­i­tat­ed and looked back at Matt, who shook his head side­ways. “Leave it.” 

For the next ten min­utes, Mon­ty walked in a clock­wise direc­tion spray­ing trees. Sweat built up again as he made his way through devil’s club, skunk cab­bage, and blue­ber­ry brambles. 

After Mon­ty accept­ed the job offer, it occurred to him he could qui­et­ly walk off and nev­er join the crew in Gilbert Bay. Things would be okay—they would find some­body else to do the work. But he didn’t want to aban­don it. He had dis­ap­peared much of his life, an invis­i­ble pres­ence in every­one else’s sto­ry. Too shy at first to make many friends grow­ing up. Too accom­mo­dat­ing to those who didn’t deserve it. In col­lege, he moved past the uneasy first days of dorm life, try­ing to fig­ure where he fit in, but the specter of being on the edge of the stage still hovered. 

“Okay, that does it,” Matt yelled. 

“Let’s get to work,” Don said. He point­ed to the first tree he was going to cut and ges­tured for Matt and Mon­ty to stay back of him in a safe­ty zone. Don pulled the cord and the motor emit­ted a WAAAAAAAAA! that blot­ted out the rest of the world. 

Mon­ty and Matt took refuge fifty feet back, behind an old hem­lock. Don cut a large wedge in the face of the tree, and chips sprayed out in a white stream, pil­ing up rapid­ly near his feet. He set the idling saw down and ges­tured to Mon­ty. “I’m gonna let you have the plea­sure of knock­ing your first wedge out of this tree.” 

Mon­ty walked to Don, who pulled a small ax from his pack. 

“Take this and give it a whack, Mick­ey Mantle.” 

Mon­ty grabbed the ax and took a base­ball swing with the blunt ax head. A hunk of pie-shaped wood land­ed in the chip pile. 

“Nice job. We’ll make a log­ger out of you yet. Now head back there with Matt behind that tree until I’m done.” Don read­ied for the back cut and turned around to check on them before start­ing. The saw bit into the tree, eat­ing through nine inch­es of wood in less than a minute. He pulled nar­row plas­tic wedges out of his pack and drove them into the cut with the ax head. Watch­ing the top of the tree, Don pulled the saw clear and backed away. The tip­ping point of a 150-foot col­umn of wood weigh­ing forty tons, changed. It thun­dered down, smash­ing two small­er trees in half. Large branch­es thud­ded to the ground, the weight and momen­tum yank­ing the tree six feet from the stump. The final crash shat­tered limbs and shook the ground. An eerie silence fol­lowed as spruce nee­dles and stray fil­a­ments of moss fil­tered down. 

“Right on the mon­ey,” Don said. 

The limbs of the downed tree faced them, spread like giant fans. Don fired the saw up again, walked down the length of the tree, and cut them where they attached to the tree. A geyser of chips and blue exhaust. 

While the tree was limbed, Mon­ty count­ed the stump’s rings—all 397, give or take a few. The fall­en tree looked like a har­pooned whale about to have its blub­ber removed. Ahab, with his chain­saw, had limbed the tree almost to its top. Mon­ty turned away and looked off through the woods. Moments before, this was a liv­ing organ­ism pulling nutri­ents, water, and light into its bulk. His job was con­vert­ing it to two-by-fours. 

Work­ing in Alas­ka after grad­u­a­tion was a huge leap com­pared to Monty’s nor­mal incre­men­tal steps. But the offer was too good to pass up. Dur­ing his first sea­son­al stint in the woods ear­li­er in the year, he tast­ed Alas­ka: breath­tak­ing scenery, fly­ing in heli­copters, camp­ing in the depths of the wilder­ness. His last crew was a band of adven­tur­ers like a cast in an epic-scale play. He want­ed more of all of it. And he need­ed the mon­ey after an unin­sured drunk totaled his pick­up truck. At Gilbert Bay, he wasn’t sure of any of it. 

Matt looked at Mon­ty. “Our turn. Take this and work your way along the tree.” Mon­ty grabbed the end of a fifty-foot log­ging tape which unspooled from a blue alu­minum case attached to Matt’s suspenders. 

Mon­ty stum­bled and climbed over the pile of limbs until Matt yelled, “Stop! Mark it!” Mon­ty chopped a deep gash into the fis­sured bark. Halfway along the tree, Mon­ty noticed the quiet. 

Don had retreat­ed, watch­ing their work from atop the stump, large as the cof­fee table back in Monty’s home in Indi­ana. He reclined with one arm back prop­ping him up, and the oppo­site knee up. A cig­a­rette perched in his mouth as he exhaled and tilt­ed his head back like a wolf about to howl. A cloud of smoke float­ed upward into the mist and dis­si­pat­ed. He had the con­tent look of a man who just got laid.  

Matt was busy tak­ing notes and noticed Mon­ty arrive at the tree top, half a foot­ball field away. He looked in Don’s direc­tion and shout­ed, “You’re up!” 

Don flicked the nub of the cig­a­rette butt into a skunk cab­bage patch, hopped off the stump, and grabbed his saw. A few pulls and the saw rum­bled to life as Mon­ty and Matt pushed foam ear plugs in. Don cut chunks of tree out at every mark Mon­ty made. Matt inspect­ed the tree at each cut, scrib­bling in his yel­low note­book about wood defect, qual­i­ty, and volume. 

After sev­er­al more trees were cut down, Matt looked around and scratched his head with the brim of his hard hat. “I guess it’s time for lunch.” They hud­dled under a large spruce pro­vid­ing a roof over them from the mist. 

“Damn, I’m hun­gry.” Sev­er­al large plas­tic bags emerged from Don’s pack, laden with sand­wich­es, can­dy bars, apples, crack­ers, cheese, and cans of pop. 

Mon­ty and Don used the spruce as a back­rest, and Matt sat on a large root. They gob­bled their lunch­es and the talk turned to the remain­ing work. The chat­ter fad­ed, and Matt laid down in full raingear with his pack under his head. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready for a nap.” Tak­ing a cue from their boss, Mon­ty and Don stretched out as well. 

Don rolled up his chain saw chaps and used them as a pil­low. “Best part of the job.” 

 

 

Mon­ty awak­ened to a hard driz­zle. He tried to remem­ber why he need­ed to keep prov­ing him­self, and won­dered how many sea­sons it would take before Matt and Don ever thought he was any­thing oth­er than a go-fer for them. 

“Well, I guess lunch break is over,” Matt shiv­ered as the last chill from the nap passed. 

Don groped for his saw and eyed the spruce shel­ter­ing them. “You’re next,” he said to the tree. 

The cut­ting con­tin­ued until every large tree in the plot was down and denud­ed. Mon­ty count­ed twelve mas­sive trees on the ground, with sev­er­al oth­er small­er trees shat­tered, top­pled over, or oth­er­wise mashed by the behe­moths dur­ing their brief fight with grav­i­ty. The for­est floor lit­tered with cut limbs, emit­ted the pun­gent smell of fresh­ly cut spruce and hem­lock trees. The car­nage last­ed six hours, and it was too late to do anoth­er plot that day. Mon­ty sur­veyed the destruc­tion sur­round­ing him. It would take a cen­tu­ry to fill the hole in the for­est they cre­at­ed. Word­less­ly, they packed up their sod­den gear and walked out the way they came, back toward the land­ing zone. 

Not far from their pick­up point, Matt point­ed at the ground. “Check that out.” A large, steam­ing pile of bear scat lay in a mound ten feet in front of them. They fell silent know­ing the bear couldn’t be too far off. 

“Did you hear or see any­thing?” Don asked. 

“Noth­ing,” Matt answered. 

“Me nei­ther,” Mon­ty added. 

They all paused and looked around for any sign of the bear that left behind the heap of semi-digest­ed grass and berries, insert­ing an excla­ma­tion point of fear into their march. 

“Mon­ty, keep that rifle ready and your eyes peeled,” Matt said. 

“Did you remem­ber to load it?” Don asked. 

Mon­ty gave Don a wry smile. “I’m ready, the safety’s off, I have four rounds in the mag­a­zine, none in the cham­ber, and three more in my pock­et. Any­thing else?” Their sched­ule had them work­ing “ten­ners”: ten days in the woods in between four days off in Sit­ka, for the next three months. If this crap kept up, it was going to be a long season. 

 

 

On the next ten­ner they slogged along­side a swollen creek to their next plot. 

“Shit, that didn’t go as planned.” The tree Don cut tot­tered and wob­bled before dump­ing the butt end into the ground next to the stump. The top was sup­posed to clear a large spruce about a hun­dred feet away. Instead, it hung up in the spruce at a sev­en­ty-degree angle with the miss-cut spruce mak­ing a very large hypotenuse. 

“Can you cut the bot­tom and get the top to drop out?” Matt asked. “That could do it.” 

“Let’s take a clos­er look.” Don walked to the tree where the cut spruce was hanging. 

Matt and Mon­ty fol­lowed Don to the tree. Don stared up at the tree, scan­ning for some hid­den clue unlock­ing this large wood­en puzzle. 

“What do you think?” Matt said. 

“Mon­ty,” Don com­mand­ed. “Go get my saw, wedges, and ax.” 

Uncer­tain, Mon­ty looked at Matt. It didn’t look safe to cut the tree, but Don was con­fi­dent. Maybe too confident. 

“Don’t be such a wee­nie, Mon­ty,” said Don. “Get the god­damn saw.” 

Matt’s face pinched with an unchar­ac­ter­is­tic taut­ness to it, “Do you think this is a good idea?” 

Don’s plan was now appar­ent. Mon­ty real­ized Don was going to take down the stand­ing tree with the cut tree loom­ing over the top of him, hop­ing both trees came down together. 

“Just like domi­nos,” Don said. 

“The only dif­fer­ence is you die if you lose this game,” Matt added in a mea­sured tone. 

“Always with the dra­ma, Matt. I’ve done this before—don’t like to make a habit of it though. Mon­ty, go get the saw.” 

Mon­ty stayed root­ed in place, not sure how this was going to play out. The woods were silent; no thrush called, no breeze flut­tered the blue­ber­ry bush­es, no pat­ter of rain. 

“We don’t need this fuck­ing tree, Don.” 

“It is part of the plot, right? 

“Yeah, but we don’t need to take a tree with this lev­el of risk. You’re not crazy, are you?” Matt asked. 

“Maybe I am crazy, or maybe it’s a cal­cu­lat­ed risk.” 

“Well Don,” Matt said, “I don’t like your math.” 

“The tree is com­ing down; it’s part of the code.” 

“What code?” Matt asked. 

“All trees come to the ground—that’s the code.” Don gave Matt a pained look sug­gest­ing he didn’t care if Matt under­stood or not. Don looked again at Mon­ty. “Are you get­ting that saw or not?” Mon­ty went to get the saw. 

“You are crazy. You know that, don’t you? I could fire you for this, right here too.” 

“Fire away, the tree is com­ing down.” Don rum­maged in his back­pack and pulled a fist-size spool of para­chute cord out. “Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to tie one end of this cord to my sus­penders, and Matt is going to hold the oth­er end. The two of you will be behind that big hem­lock over there.” He point­ed to a shag­gy, moss-cov­ered trunk. “If you see any­thing fun­ny, pull the cord, and I’m gonna run like hell to where you are. That tree is under a shit­load of ten­sion from the one hang­ing up in it so when I start my back cut, I’m gonna real­ly let loose with the saw. It should go right over with that tree lean­ing on it.” 

Don yanked the pull cord of the saw and it roared for a sec­ond and slowed to a low-throat­ed growl. Matt and Mon­ty scur­ried to the hem­lock trail­ing the cord, the life­line to Don. Don drove the saw into the tree with a vengeance. A large wood­en chunk plunked out and fell to the ground among a pile of wood­chips. The tree hadn’t moved, but the dan­ger­ous back cut was about to begin. Don looked at the tops of the com­min­gled trees and back to Matt and Mon­ty. Matt gave a “thumbs up” and Don began the back cut as Matt fin­gered the cord in his hand. Don imme­di­ate­ly pressed the saw’s trig­ger and it ripped through the tree. There was a loud crack, but the tree appeared immov­able. The tree made a pop­ping sound and began to teeter. For anoth­er microsec­ond, Don gave the saw every­thing it had. The mass of branch­es at the top of the tree lev­ered the tree over, and Don tugged the saw from the tree and hur­ried to the big hem­lock for safe­ty. Don squint­ed at Matt who still had the cord in his hand, their eyes locked momen­tar­i­ly, and they watched the con­clu­sion of his work. 

The trees top­pled side by side in a cacoph­o­nous crash. The ground shud­dered and a Whumpf! car­ried across the for­est floor like a shock wave. Large limbs crashed to the ground near where Don stood moments before; any of them could have crushed him instant­ly. Mon­ty and Matt approached the stump, like two bystanders at a car crash. 

Don fol­lowed, streams of sweat drip­ping from under the brim of his hard­hat. Don hand­ed Matt his end of the cord. “So,” Don said, “let’s fin­ish the plot.”

 

 

Back at camp, their hair was still damp after using the propane-fired show­er. Din­ner call was not far off. The tin stove radi­at­ed warm air across the wall tent. The tang of wood smoke mixed with the funk of dry­ing, dirty pants and shirts hang­ing from nails in the wood­en tent frame. 

“So am I fired?” Don was play­ing soli­taire on a small fold­ing table, each card snap­ping on the table as he played it. His shirt was off, reveal­ing a hair­less but pow­er­ful physique. Sus­penders hung down in a loop from his pants to the floor. 

“No,” Matt answered. “I know one thing for sure, though.” 

“What’s that?” 

“You’re one crazy asshole.” 

“I’ve heard that before,” Don said as he set a king down. 

“You seem proud of that.” 

“Not proud or ashamed if you want it straight up. It’s just me. That’s the way I am.” 

Matt set an aer­i­al pho­to down, rose from his bunk and stood in front of Don. Mon­ty, not sure what was going to hap­pen, put his book aside and watched for any sign of trou­ble. If it came to that, he knew he would have no choice but to join in. Don was much short­er than Matt, but there was no way Matt’s lanky body could han­dle Don’s strength in tight quarters. 

Don played anoth­er card and looked up at Matt, stand­ing in front of him. “What?” 

“Promise you won’t pull any more shit like you did today.” 

Don looked at a card, wait­ed a few sec­onds. “Agreed.” 

Matt put out his hand and Don, still seat­ed, shook it. Matt walked back to his bunk, picked up the pho­to and stud­ied it while Don played anoth­er card. Mon­ty, wit­ness to this back­woods détente, picked up his book on the mat­tress and tried to find the place he left off. 

 

 

The rest of their ten-day tour in the woods was unevent­ful, with each pass­ing day a few less ticks of day­light. More than ever, the four days off seemed to be a pause, an exha­la­tion, every­one on the crew need­ed. The float plane swooped them away from Gilbert Bay, and forty-five min­utes lat­er it tax­ied on the lapis-col­ored water of Jamestown Bay in Sit­ka. Don, Matt, and Mon­ty and two oth­er crew mem­bers helped unload their gear from the plane and put it in a big pile of duf­fle bags, back­packs, and emp­ty fuel jugs on the dock. Don’s two large chain­saws dom­i­nat­ed the pile; he nev­er left them in the field and babied them like they were twin Stradivari. 

It was Thurs­day after­noon and Matt said to Don, “See you at 8:00 a.m. on Tues­day, right?” It was as if Matt had an unset­tling doubt about Don return­ing to the crew. 

Don placed his saws and a duf­fle in the back of a rust­ed Ford pick­up with one head­light miss­ing and opened the door of the truck. “Yup,” was all he said before the truck fish­tailed out of the park­ing lot. 

“See what I have to deal with,” Matt said. 

“How come you didn’t fire him?” Mon­ty asked. 

“Good fall­ers are in short sup­ply. Don’s one of the best. He knows it too.” 

 

 

The late Octo­ber sun­light had lit­tle effect on the chill air pool­ing around them. Don, Mon­ty, and Matt walked out from the for­est with the sound of the approach­ing heli­copter. They crouched in the open and watched it cir­cle overhead. 

The heli­copter set down in the tiny muskeg at the base of a steep hill that led up to the pre­cip­i­tous flanks of a moun­tain. Its rub­ber pon­toon floats rocked gen­tly for a few sec­onds while the rotors flashed over their heads. Eli, their beard­ed heli­copter fore­man, jumped out with his hel­met visor down, hand­ed every­one Nomex flame-resis­tant cov­er­alls, and stowed the rifle under the bench seat in the back. Don suit­ed up first so he scoot­ed into the mid­dle with his pack in his lap. Matt and Mon­ty took seats by the door latched shut by Eli. There were three hel­mets on the back seat and each of them put one on, but only two hel­mets, those of Matt and Mon­ty, could plug into the two avail­able inter­com jacks. Eli climbed in, grabbed his clip­board and did a quick load cal­cu­la­tion. He gave Kirk, the pilot, a thumbs-up they were good to go. 

The heli­copter ascend­ed slow­ly and cleared a hud­dle of short, scrub­by trees. It climbed a bit more and trem­bled, like a May­tag on spin cycle, instead of con­tin­u­ing to glide upwards. They sat there sus­pend­ed momen­tar­i­ly, but the shak­ing only got worse until it became a hard shud­der. Kirk fever­ish­ly worked the con­trols. Matt and Mon­ty looked out the win­dow know­ing some­thing was not right. A red light flashed on the con­sole, fol­lowed by a loud alarm buzzing. Small trees loomed below, and the heli­copter began a very slow descent—each pass­ing sec­ond frozen in time. 

Kirk yelled into his mic, “We’re too heavy. Throw your packs out!” 

Mon­ty and Matt opened their doors and tossed their packs out the door. Don, with the biggest pack of all, couldn’t hear with­out an inter­com hookup, and was try­ing to under­stand what they were doing. Mon­ty ripped the pack out of Don’s lap and flung it out the door. For good mea­sure, he reached under the seat and heaved the rifle out the door too. 

The heli­copter stopped its descent, flut­tered momen­tar­i­ly and slow­ly rose. Mon­ty breathed a sigh of relief. But not enough weight was shed. It lurched for­ward to anoth­er area of the muskeg. If the heli­copter set­tled into the trees, the rotors would rip off, spew­ing met­al shards. When the chop­per hit the ground like a wound­ed duck, it would flop around with an angry tur­bo-charged engine attached to it. In front of them was a wall of taller spruce the heli­copter could not clear unless some­thing rad­i­cal hap­pened. Everyone’s eyes, wide with fear, were on the trees not far below. Kirk’s right hand clung to the Cyclic stick and his left hand on the Col­lec­tive con­trol. He tried to wres­tle a mechan­i­cal beast at the lim­it of its capa­bil­i­ties, strain­ing for the last bit of lift left in the rotors. 

Mon­ty opened the door and looked down at the spots between the trees and fig­ured it couldn’t be more than twen­ty-five feet down. It was a sim­ple deci­sion. They were going to crash and pos­si­bly die unless more weight was unloaded. He unplugged his hel­met from the inter­com, stepped out on the pon­toon and jumped. As soon as he did, the heli­copter popped up in the air like a cham­pagne cork, shot out over the trees, and disappeared. 

Mon­ty sunk a foot into the cush­iony muskeg and his rub­ber boots were still stuck in the peat while he lay on his side with his stock­ing feet. He had done a parachutist’s land­ing to help absorb the shock of his fall, some­thing he had learned from a few token sky­div­ing trips in col­lege. He lay pant­i­ng, star­ing up into an azure sky, men­tal­ly check­ing if all his body parts were still there. Except for an aching ankle, he was intact. He wres­tled his boots out of the mud and put them on, stand­ing up slow­ly, sus­pi­cious of a hid­den injury. Limp­ing slight­ly, he wan­dered the muskeg retriev­ing the dis­card­ed gear. The rifle was embed­ded, bar­rel down, two feet into the mud. 

A pow­er­ful thirst and chill hit. He grabbed his water bot­tle and drank when the radio in Matt’s pack called his name. 

“Mon­ty, Mon­ty, are you okay?” Matt’s voice had a ten­sion he had not heard before. 

Mon­ty undid the pack straps and pulled the radio out. Before he could respond he got anoth­er call. 

“Mon­ty are you there?” 

“I’m a bit dazed and have a sore ankle, but I’m okay. Where are you guys?” 

“We dropped off Don, Eli, and a few items in a muskeg down the hill to light­en our load and did a quick check of the heli­copter. Every­thing seems to be work­ing good though. We’re gonna come get you ASAP.” 

Mon­ty looked around the muskeg; the trees stood like silent ghost sol­diers in a field, and he sat on Don’s pack, not car­ing what squished. His ass was already wet, but he didn’t want to sit back down on the damp, cold ground. He felt grog­gy, like the tail end of a hang­over set­tling on him. The adren­a­line rush was fad­ing, and he won­dered if he was going into shock. “How long before you get here?” 

“We’re in the air now. Should be there in five, max.” 

“I’m not going any­where, but I’m start­ing to get cold. You sure you can find this place again?” 

There was a pause and Mon­ty real­ized how fool­ish his ques­tion was. A muskeg Matt couldn’t find? There was no way that could happen—his mind was like one large aer­i­al pho­to. Matt nor­mal­ly gave a sharp retort to a chal­lenge about his abil­i­ty to recon­noi­ter, but giv­en the cir­cum­stances he said, “I don’t think I’m ever going to for­get that spot. Hang on, we’ll be there in a bit. I have blan­kets and a first aid kit too.” 

Mon­ty draped his yel­low Helly Hansen over him­self and pulled the hood up. Light slant­ed through the trees, leav­ing thawed lines across the frost. “Okay, see you in a bit.” 

The heli­copter appeared from behind a low ridge. He saw Matt point to him from inside the Plex­i­glas bub­ble as the heli­copter cut over the trees at a sharp angle. The heli­copter touched down, and Mon­ty took a step before he saw Matt hold up his hand to stop mov­ing. This time, Kirk shut the heli­copter down and nobody moved until the blades ceased turning. 

Matt approached like he was star­ing at an alien. “You okay?” 

The deci­sion hap­pened quick­ly, but the fall to the ground seemed to sus­pend him momen­tar­i­ly in the air like an out-of-body expe­ri­ence. In some ways it seemed like a dream now. “All things con­sid­ered, I guess I am.” Mon­ty reached down to pick up a pack. 

“Don’t make any sud­den move­ment; you may have some inter­nal or spinal injuries.” Matt was by his side and put an arm around Mon­ty to escort him to the helicopter. 

“I can do this. Let’s just take it slow because I think I rolled my ankle.” 

Kirk walked over to Mon­ty. “I’ve got 6,000 hours in a chop­per but nev­er had a per­son jump out of one before. You kept that ship,” Kirk ges­tured with his thumb over his shoul­der, “from going down. Damn­d­est thing I’ve ever seen.” 

It would be hard to explain to any­one. A per­son casu­al­ly steps out of a heli­copter, like drop­ping down a rab­bit hole, not know­ing how bad­ly he was going to get injured. It seemed so unheroic; five peo­ple were hit­ting the ground in a crash if one of them didn’t do some­thing. Only he, Eli, and Matt were eli­gi­ble can­di­dates since Kirk was nec­es­sary and Don was in a mid­dle seat. Monty’s door was still open from throw­ing the rifle out, so that made the deci­sion clear. Mon­ty sur­prised him­self with the ease of his decision—more a reflex than any­thing else. 

Matt ush­ered Mon­ty into the heli­copter. “Let’s head out. We can sort this out back at camp.” 

 

 

Mon­ty lay on his bunk with an ice pack on his ankle, a cup of hot cocoa steam­ing on an upturned crate next to it. Tylenol dulled the ache creep­ing into his ankle. 

Eli and Kirk, both still wear­ing their Nomex, pulled the tent flaps aside and came in. 

“So what the hell hap­pened up there?” Matt jammed anoth­er piece of wood into the stove and strad­dled a fold­ing chair backwards. 

“Eli and I have been try­ing to sort it out,” said Kirk. “Near as I can tell we were still with­in the load limit—just bare­ly. I checked Eli’s cal­cu­la­tions. And no sign of mechan­i­cal issues.” 

Eli sighed but said noth­ing. He looked addled, as if his body had stopped vibrat­ing and a qui­et thrum­ming had over­tak­en it. 

“There must have been just enough of a down­draft off that peak,” Kirk point­ed in the direc­tion of the moun­tain, “and we were so close to the hill­side it was like an invis­i­ble riv­er flow­ing that made it hard for the chop­per to gain lift.” Kirk fid­dled with a zip­per on his flight suit, open­ing and shut­ting a pock­et. “Imper­cep­ti­ble. Nev­er seen any­thing like that.” 

Mon­ty couldn’t help but think back an hour ear­li­er. He had felt that cold air, but all it did was chill them while they wait­ed for the heli­copter. He had no idea it would be such an insid­i­ous force. Would they have died? No way to tell. Maybe burned or maimed; being swathed in ban­dages and splint­ed in a crit­i­cal care ward unnerved him. 

Don sat up in his bed, mat­tress frame springs groan­ing. “That high dive you took saved us from seri­ous­ly deep shit.” 

Mon­ty was so tired he could bare­ly keep his eyes open. In his bewil­dered state it dawned on him he wasn’t sens­ing friend­ship. It wasn’t cama­raderie. As near as Mon­ty could tell, it was kin­ship. The prim­i­tive form of belong­ing to a tribe. They toiled in the dark for­est, slept in the same tent, and broke bread at the same table. Con­nect­ing all those dots didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to friend­ship. At this point, Mon­ty would take it. 

 

 

Lat­er that week Matt was look­ing through the stere­o­scope star­ing at aer­i­al pho­tos and he pushed the scope over to Mon­ty. “Check out this plot we’re going to tomor­row. What do you think is a good route?” 

It took Mon­ty a minute for his eyes to adjust to stereo vision. He saw a pos­si­ble route up a small ridge from the land­ing zone. “I think this way could work,” as he traced a line with his fin­ger for Matt. 

Matt pulled the stere­o­scope back, “That’s what I was think­ing too.” His ever-present red grease pen­cil marked the route. 

The fol­low­ing night, Don was sharp­en­ing his chain­saw on a home­made bench in their wall tent. The famil­iar zzzzzt, zzzzzt, zzzzzt of the file on the chain stopped. “Why don’t you come over here and I’ll show you the fine points of sharp­en­ing a saw. Might as well learn from a pro.” 

 

 

At the begin­ning of Novem­ber, leaves laid in bunch­es on the ground, cov­ered in the morn­ing frost. It was too dark to work more than a few hours, and camp was shut­ting down now. In the past three months they criss­crossed this val­ley dozens of times by air, and cursed their way across it on foot. 

The heli­copter rose from the muskeg for the last time. It moved faster, skim­ming over the trees and pick­ing up alti­tude. Mon­ty was between Don and Matt in the back seat, their gear lashed to the pon­toon racks. 

Mon­ty watched as the val­ley unfold­ed below, rec­og­niz­ing the creeks, ponds, and ravines. Obsta­cles to avoid, not admire. He wished he had stopped more often, soak­ing in this spe­cial place of unend­ing soli­tude. He paid par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the muskegs since the heli­copter left them there to begin the jour­ney to each plot. Many of the muskegs were named based on their shape—the Air­port because it was so large; the Catcher’s Mitt was cir­cu­lar; and the Nee­dle was so hard to find. Then there was Shit­hole, where the steam­ing bear scat stirred their fears. 

Mon­ty craned his neck, search­ing for oth­er land­marks to give con­text to the immen­si­ty of the land­scape. Rain ran in streaks across the Plex­i­glas dome of the heli­copter and once or twice, Mon­ty thought he saw a plot, but it was hard to tell since the plot was a speck among the broad expanse of green. The only tell­tale sign was the tiny clear­ing and the white of fresh­ly cut stumps vis­i­ble below. 

Don was eat­ing a Her­shey bar and hold­ing a half-eat­en apple in his oth­er hand. He noticed Mon­ty look­ing at him, stopped in mid-chew, and gave him a thumbs-up with the Her­shey bar. Matt had an aer­i­al pho­to in his hand, com­par­ing it to the real thing on his side of the heli­copter. He saw the thumbs up and glanced at Mon­ty. Matt gave a quick nod and looked back down at his photo. 

The heli­copter passed the last of the trees and was over slate-col­ored water. The val­ley was gone. 

 

 

 

From the writer

:: Account ::

I worked as a heli­copter fore­man for an Alas­ka tim­ber crew for one sea­son and want­ed to cap­ture the hard work, the cama­raderie, and the raw feel­ings that build liv­ing in very close prox­im­i­ty for weeks on end. It’s more than a tale about peo­ple since the land­scape is so awe-inspir­ing it’s almost anoth­er char­ac­ter in the sto­ry. The valley’s fate is in the hands of the tim­ber crew.

 

Orig­i­nal­ly from the sub­urbs of New Jer­sey, Ken Post worked for the For­est Ser­vice in Alas­ka for 40 years, includ­ing many sea­sons on a mil­lion-acre island with more brown (griz­zly) bears than there are peo­ple. He writes short sto­ries dur­ing the long, dark win­ters. His fic­tion has pre­vi­ous­ly appeared in Cirque, Red Fez, and Poor Yorick and is forth­com­ing in Woven Tale Press and Kansas City Voic­es. The sto­ry, “Eno­la Gay,” in Red Fez, was nom­i­nat­ed for a 2020 Push­cart Prize.

Fiction / Sunil Freeman

:: The Rope-a-Dope Gambit ::

Joy Jack­son had heard an occa­sion­al insult over the years, but nev­er “This will be quick.” She’d seen the white boy and woman as they approached, stop­ping just a few yards from her. The woman, pre­sum­ably his moth­er, said she’d be back, then some­thing about din­ner plans. The boy stared at Joy as the woman turned and walked away. Then he called back, more than loud enough for her and the dozen or more peo­ple who had gath­ered: “This will be quick.” She knew what he was think­ing, saw it in both their glances even before he spoke: Black girl play­ing chess means an easy win. The assump­tion no longer sur­prised her. But the loud con­tempt? In front of so many peo­ple? It stung. 

She had arrived at noon, an hour before the game was to begin. She liked to take in the sounds and rhythms of the city, clear her mind, and drift into an almost med­i­ta­tive tran­quil­i­ty before find­ing the sharp focus she’d soon bring to the chess­board. As good for­tune would have it, the orga­niz­ers had decid­ed to play a few games at Dupont Cir­cle when ren­o­va­tions had tem­porar­i­ly shut the old school build­ing. The place was a mec­ca for chess lovers, in the heart of the city just a mile from the White House. It was a per­fect blue sky Sat­ur­day right on the cusp of autumn, her favorite season. 

A steady stream of peo­ple wan­dered through the park. Tourists peered at guide books and snapped pic­tures. Dozens of peo­ple lis­tened to head­phones, read books, talked with friends, or just relaxed on bench­es that cir­cled the foun­tain. Far­ther back, almost to the road, a drum­mer played shift­ing rhyth­mic pat­terns on his array of plas­tic buck­ets. Pigeons flocked to the foun­tain or wad­dled around look­ing for stray crumbs of crois­sants, muffins, any­thing. Squir­rels in trees looked war­i­ly at two unleashed dogs. 

Joy had been there a week before after find­ing Mikhail Botvinnik’s One Hun­dred Select­ed Games just off the Cir­cle at Sec­ond Sto­ry Books. She spent the after­noon study­ing analy­ses of games from the 1920s into the ’40s by a world cham­pi­on who once taught future grand­mas­ters like Kas­parov and Kar­pov. Botvin­nik had an engag­ing writ­ing style and he gen­er­ous­ly shared his reflec­tions on games with Alekhine, Capa­blan­ca, and oth­er leg­endary play­ers who had been his con­tem­po­raries. This alone was worth the price of a used paper­back, but his book offered much more than a win­dow into that dis­tant era. Botvin­nik deep­ened her under­stand­ing of the Ruy Lopez, Sicil­ian Defense, Queen’s Gam­bit Declined, and sev­er­al oth­er open­ings. She played some of them often; oth­ers she planned to try some day. 

Read­ing Botvin­nik, Joy felt con­nect­ed across decades and con­ti­nents to an enor­mous com­mu­ni­ty, part of which had gath­ered right there in the city park. She saw class­mates, her old­er broth­er Bri­an, some fam­i­ly friends who had come to show sup­port, and a mix of acquain­tances and strangers. Curios­i­ty had attract­ed new­com­ers. They had heard the buzz about the shy, unas­sum­ing girl who was crush­ing most of her oppo­nents, even beat­ing some high­ly ranked adults. 

~

Peo­ple who got to know Joy saw her as an intro­vert, a qui­et 13-year-old who did well in school, knew the staff at the pub­lic library, and was rarely seen with­out a book or two. Bri­an, a senior who played tenor sax at Duke Elling­ton School of the Arts, had always been the out­go­ing child, pop­u­lar in and out of school. He’d gone from clar­inet to sax five years before. The switch, when it hap­pened, seemed pre­or­dained, as if he’d grown into his true self. He loved the instru­ment, prac­tic­ing for hours and study­ing tran­scribed John Coltrane, Son­ny Rollins, and Wayne Short­er solos. 

Some evenings he sat in with the old pros on jazz nights at West­min­ster Pres­by­ter­ian. A pianist, after learn­ing who she was, told her: “Your brother’s going places if he keeps at it like this.” That was the night Bri­an took a big solo on Charles Mingus’s “Bet­ter Get Hit In Your Soul.” The band was on fire, breath­ing life into the Bib­li­cal psalm’s com­mand­ment. They made a joy­ful noise that rocked the chapel, wash­ing away, at least for a while, what­ev­er wor­ries need­ed to be gone. 

Joy kept a low pro­file, hap­py to leave the spot­light to Bri­an. Intro­vert. The word, once applied, felt just right. She liked the image it con­jured of a per­son com­fort­able with soli­tude; she wore it well. Bran­don and Grace Jack­son had seen their chil­dren grow in dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent paths, each find­ing a tem­pera­ment that fit nat­u­ral­ly. “I think you might enjoy chess,” her father had said on her ninth birth­day. She was imme­di­ate­ly hooked by a sense of mys­tery, the won­der of hav­ing such an ancient game right there in their home. Soon she was drawn to the com­plex lines of attack and defense, the many open­ings and tac­tics to study. 

She loved the way her breath slowed, how stray thoughts dis­ap­peared as her focus on the chess­board sharp­ened, how she could feel her pulse beat­ing as she planned an attack, then watched the metic­u­lous­ly plot­ted sequence of moves fall into place. She knew all too well the jolt of adren­a­line when—too late!—she detect­ed an unavoid­able knight fork. Her heart pound­ed as she nav­i­gat­ed around obsta­cles to push a pawn to the end rank where it would become a queen. 

Some­times it felt like she was glid­ing, a con­trolled con­fi­dence smooth as the Smokey Robin­son songs her par­ents loved. Oth­er times, a jum­bled mess. All this pow­er­ful ener­gy was dri­ven and con­trolled by her mind. It was a bit addic­tive. As Joy gained con­fi­dence, she began to read about the great play­ers and their his­toric games. New worlds opened for her to explore. Chess had become an inex­haustible gift with ever greater rewards the more she learned. 

She joined the youth chess league a year after those first games with her father. Word began to spread about the girl whose well con­cealed traps caught even advanced play­ers by sur­prise. At home, she now con­sis­tent­ly beat him. Her moth­er did lit­tle to hide her amuse­ment at this turn of events. “Who’s win­ning?” she’d ask, tak­ing a break from grad­ing high school writ­ing assign­ments. He’d sigh, then offer a word­less grunt. It became a run­ning joke, with Brian’s sax more often than not wail­ing coun­ter­point from his bed­room upstairs. 

The Jack­son fam­i­ly roots in the city ran deep. Their ances­tors on both sides had come up from Raleigh, North Car­oli­na in the lat­ter part of the 19th cen­tu­ry. Brandon’s father had been friends with Mar­i­on Bar­ry since the days of Pride, Inc. That was a decade before Barry’s reign began as “May­or for Life.” Long before all that went down went down. The nation’s cap­i­tal had been known as Choco­late City, at times more than 70% Black, back in the day. Neigh­bors knew each oth­er, shared a com­mon his­to­ry, and cre­at­ed a home-grown cul­ture in close-knit com­mu­ni­ties that had forged tight bonds under the painful weight of legal segregation. 

Bran­don attend­ed Dun­bar High School and went on to Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, ulti­mate­ly grad­u­at­ing from the law school. He had worked in labor law almost twen­ty years. It pro­vid­ed a com­fort­able home life when com­bined with Grace’s job teach­ing Eng­lish to seniors at Dun­bar. Not near­ly as lucra­tive as cor­po­rate law, but more than enough. He was, as Grace liked to say, one of the good lawyers. 

Bran­don had imag­ined Joy would take to chess, sensed she’d be good at it, but had not antic­i­pat­ed what was hap­pen­ing. They enjoyed their games togeth­er, but both knew it was time to find more chal­leng­ing oppo­nents. Word quick­ly spread through the grapevine that Bran­don and Grace Jack­son were seek­ing chess play­ers for their daugh­ter. They soon learned about James Gilmore. 

~

They looked online after hear­ing his name a third time. The Google search brought up arti­cles in neigh­bor­hood news­pa­pers, a fea­ture in Chess Life, mag­a­zine of the U.S. Chess Fed­er­a­tion, seg­ments on local PBS and NBC TV chan­nels, and an item in the Sun­day Wash­ing­ton Post magazine. 

James Gilmore was a Black man, about 50 years old, who lived and played chess at Dupont Cir­cle, pock­et­ing $5, $10, or more for a game or short les­son. It had been sev­er­al years since he last had a per­ma­nent address. Lessons with James often con­sist­ed of him patient­ly ana­lyz­ing the game that had just tran­spired, show­ing crest­fall­en oppo­nents just how and why they lost. Many drove or Metro’d in from the sub­urbs, oth­ers from every quad­rant of the city. He even played a few ambas­sadors, vis­it­ing dig­ni­taries, and embassy work­ers from around the globe. 

James had range. To max­i­mize his income, he spe­cial­ized in “blitz” games that last­ed no more than 10 min­utes. Dupont Cir­cle was home to a sub­cul­ture of chess hus­tlers who could beat almost any­one. James was sim­ply the best. Unlike the oth­ers, he also played clas­sic tour­na­ment-lev­el chess in cities along the east coast. Over the years he had won two tour­na­ments and he always fin­ished among the final­ists. Even high­ly ranked play­ers who avoid­ed the live­ly Dupont Cir­cle chess scene acknowl­edged that James Gilmore was one of the best in the entire metro area. 

Grace and Bran­don read the arti­cles and watched James play and phi­los­o­phize on YouTube videos. One warm April day they board­ed the Metro with Joy, des­tined for Dupont Cir­cle. He saw them join the small crowd that had gath­ered to watch as he dis­patched one oppo­nent after the oth­er. He fin­ished a sec­ond blitz game, then beck­oned them. 

“We can for­get about the game clock,” he said, sur­pris­ing almost every­one. “Let’s just play.” He com­pli­ment­ed her best moves. He stopped the game when she made a mis­take. “Are you sure you want to do that? If you move there, I’ll do this,” play­ing out the next few moves. They played and talked for more than an hour. Chess talk, then rem­i­nis­cence with her par­ents about the North Car­oli­na roots they all shared, rel­a­tives who nev­er moved north, then more chess. All the while a small crowd of impa­tient cus­tomers wait­ed for their chance to play. 

James refused their mon­ey when it came time to leave. “Nah, that’s alright. I’ve real­ly enjoyed this. I hope y’all will come back.” The Jack­sons intend­ed to revis­it the issue of pay­ment at a lat­er date, but they knew to defer to him on that first vis­it. They were on his turf. Though it was nev­er spo­ken, they all under­stood that James had passed a test that after­noon, as had Joy and her parents. 

The next week she returned with her moth­er. Instead of cash, Mrs. Jack­son brought a gen­er­ous por­tion of the sweet pota­to pie they had dis­cussed at their first meet­ing, the recipe her moth­er taught her long ago. Mrs. Jackson’s sweet pota­to pie was an offer he did not refuse. 

Joy’s par­ents didn’t accom­pa­ny her the fol­low­ing week. Bri­an was eager to check out the chess guy he’d been hear­ing about. He brought his sax to try street busk­ing after her ses­sion with James. They’d enjoy the after­noon togeth­er, sib­ling time out in the city. James spent almost an hour with her, stop­ping to explain a few moves as he had done before. 

Bri­an saw his sis­ter in a new light that after­noon. James clear­ly was the star, but peo­ple noticed how he shift­ed gears for her. How his quick stac­ca­to pat­ter gave way to a slow­er, more reflec­tive side they had nev­er seen. The buzz spread­ing through Dupont chess cir­cles had become: “Oh my God. He stopped the clock.” It was usu­al­ly fol­lowed by: “Who is she?” Anoint­ed by James Gilmore, Brian’s shy lit­tle sis­ter was becom­ing a celebri­ty on Dupont Circle. 

“I’m sor­ry. My par­ents asked me to do this.” Joy hand­ed James a $20 bill at the end of their last game. “They said they pay for music lessons, so it’s not right for you not to get at least some pay­ment when­ev­er we play.” 

“If they insist,” James accept­ed the mon­ey. “But please be sure to let your moth­er know how much I enjoyed her sweet pota­to pie. That was …” he paused, search­ing for a word. “I believe that was the best sweet pota­to pie I’ve ever had.” 

“Should I tell her you’d like more?”

“Just tell her I liked it. Tell her I liked it a whole lot.” He said it to both of them like the words were music. Said it with a smile, so it was as if they were all in on a secret. James’s future def­i­nite­ly held the promise of more sweet pota­to pie. 

Joy was relieved to have the ques­tion of mon­ey resolved. She had been ner­vous all day in antic­i­pa­tion of the con­ver­sa­tion. “Well, I should be get­ting back to work. Good luck with the music. I’ll enjoy it while I play these guys.” James turned to face his new oppo­nent. Joy and Bri­an found an open grassy area set back from the cen­tral foun­tain but near one of the side­walks that bisect­ed the cir­cle. Bri­an put a dona­tion box on the ground, assem­bled his instru­ment, and began to play. He cleared just over $60 in two hours. 

~

Joy vis­it­ed James almost every week after that, some­times with Bri­an, some­times with her moth­er or father. Every now and then they all arrived togeth­er to enjoy the chess and hear Bri­an play. 

The pow­er dynam­ics that ruled most aspects of city life held no sway at James’s small cor­ner of the Cir­cle. Some oppo­nents came with no expec­ta­tion of win­ning. They only want­ed to enhance their bohemi­an hip­ster cred by play­ing the famous chess guy at Dupont Cir­cle. For them, even a loss was a win. It was proof of authen­tic­i­ty, a prized nugget of per­son­al infor­ma­tion to slip into con­ver­sa­tion at a par­ty or on a date. He enjoyed those games. They were upbeat, albeit lop­sided, win-win encoun­ters where every­one left feel­ing happy. 

Oth­er oppo­nents assumed their pro­fes­sion­al cre­den­tials (although not in chess), their grav­i­tas, and their supe­ri­or grad­u­ate degrees would give them the advan­tage over a slick chess hus­tler. He enjoyed teach­ing them a les­son. Some of them nev­er got over the con­fu­sion, return­ing over and over. After his sec­ond defeat, one such man looked, for all the world, like he thought there was a glitch in the uni­verse. As if he had stum­bled onto some quan­tum physics mys­tery, a por­tal to oth­er dimen­sions, right there on Dupont Cir­cle. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the sim­ple fact that James was a much bet­ter chess player. 

One after­noon Bri­an watched as Joy and James set­tled into a leisure­ly game and les­son. He first asked about their par­ents, then how they were doing in school. They even­tu­al­ly start­ed to play chess. As usu­al, a few peo­ple were wait­ing for their chance to play against him. James kept no sched­ule, had no appoint­ment cal­en­dar. He chose how to spend his time just as freely as he decid­ed his moves. 

“We’re all wait­ing here and you’re giv­ing her all this extra time. It’s not fair.” 

The obser­va­tion that “life is unfair” lands with spe­cial author­i­ty when deliv­ered by a man who has no known street address. James had been on the los­ing side of “life is unfair” for much of his life. That wasn’t the only rea­son he loved chess, but it played a part. He rec­og­nized the absur­di­ty of the moment as he spoke the words. The young man knew he had blun­dered. The rest of the group turned on him with eye rolls, glares, a “hey man, shut up” fol­lowed by “bad move, bro.” That set off waves of mock­ing laughter. 

James turned away, leav­ing him to pon­der the error of his ways. Smil­ing, he asked Joy: “What do you think? Life is unfair. Isn’t it?” 

In all fair­ness, Joy and Bri­an were sur­round­ed by mate­r­i­al com­fort, lov­ing par­ents, music, chess, books, and home cook­ing. Still, they both had been fol­lowed by pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards in stores. Their par­ents had giv­en them “the talk,” the painful con­ver­sa­tion about how best to avoid get­ting killed by trig­ger-hap­py cops. 

Bri­an and his friends had been stopped twice in the so-called “jump outs,” plain­clothes police jump­ing out of unmarked cars to stop and frisk folks who were just mind­ing their own busi­ness. The peo­ple accost­ed always hap­pened to be Black. The chief of police claimed the jump outs had end­ed long ago, but local news reporters found more than a dozen neigh­bor­hood kids who claimed to see them all the time. 

Whom to believe, a bunch of chil­dren, some still in ele­men­tary school, or the chief of police in the nation’s cap­i­tal? She spoke again to reporters when the evi­dence became over­whelm­ing. Peo­ple across the city eas­i­ly saw through her attempt at dam­age con­trol. The para­phrased gist of it: Oh, you mean those actions the chil­dren were talk­ing about? Our vice squad some­times does engage in law enforce­ment activ­i­ties that could appear to be sim­i­lar. But like I’ve already said, we no longer do jump outs. We dis­con­tin­ued the prac­tice sev­er­al years ago.  

Dri­ving while Black. Walk­ing while Black. Breath­ing while Black. 

“Yes,” Joy agreed with James, “life is unfair.” 

The sto­ry of “Bad move, bro,” and “Life is unfair” was repeat­ed dozens of times over the next few weeks, seal­ing its place in the shared com­mon lore, the real people’s his­to­ry of Dupont Circle. 

~

“This will be quick.” The arro­gant sneer from a kid who looked to be her age. Voice like a slap to the face. The charged silence held for a long moment. Maybe three sec­onds, maybe four. Her friends flinched. Some looked to her, con­cerned. She tensed, lock­ing down the jolt of rage. She would not show him anger or pain. 

Bri­an broke the silence: “We’ll see about that.” His voice com­mand­ed atten­tion, not shout­ing like the boy, but loud enough for all to hear. 

Watch­ing it unfold, keep­ing a tight hold on her emo­tions, Joy thought it played out like a taut scene in a gang­ster movie. The fool­ish boy had lost the instant Bri­an spoke. Thank God he was there, and that her par­ents did not have to see it. Undoubt­ed­ly they would hear. The thought almost broke her. She blocked it from her mind. This was not the time. 

Bri­an shot her a glance that turned into a sly smile, like they were shar­ing a joke. All eyes were on them. Then he looked straight at the boy. He wait­ed two beats—perfect timing—and said: “This might be real quick.” He put the accent on “real,” stretch­ing it out long and slow. Like what a sax­o­phone might do with a cher­ished turn of a phrase. He smiled, then laughed. 

Peo­ple began to chuck­le in antic­i­pa­tion; bursts of snort laugh­ter sound­ed from the back of the crowd. Most every­one under­stood that what­ev­er hap­pened next, peo­ple would talk about this after­noon for years to come. 

Watch­ing the boy, who looked rat­tled, Joy thought of the old joke. Some peo­ple make things hap­pen. Oth­ers watch things hap­pen. And some peo­ple say: “What hap­pened?” Bri­an had saved the day and set the stage. She was about to make some­thing happen. 

She want­ed to smack him down so fast he wouldn’t know what hap­pened. Throw it right back. “That was quick.” She guessed he knew to avoid the Scholar’s Mate, the clas­sic four-move humil­i­a­tion play­ers suf­fer when they learn the game. It’s a suck­er punch check­mate con­struct­ed with queen and bish­op. Los­ing to the Scholar’s Mate is a rite of pas­sage; few vic­tims fall twice. Her father beat her once with the Scholar’s Mate four years ago. “You’ll win some and you’ll lose some,” he con­soled her. “One day you’ll beat me.” 

As Joy saw how her broth­er owned the moment, con­found­ing the boy with a deflec­tion of bad ener­gy that played out almost like Tai Chi, her own impulse turned. She would act as if she bare­ly under­stood the pieces, let alone forks, dis­cov­ered checks, pins, and the intri­cate chore­og­ra­phy of bish­op and knight check­mates. She would par­ry his attacks, gauge his skill lev­el, and cal­i­brate her response. She would drag it out. Make it slow. He would strug­gle to con­trol the game, grow ever more con­fused, then final­ly under­stand what was happening. 

~

“We wear the mask,” Paul Lau­rence Dun­bar wrote in 1895 of life as a Black Amer­i­can. His open­ing stanza: 

          We wear the mask that grins and lies,  
          It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—  
          This debt we pay to human guile;  
          With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, 
          And mouth with myriad subtleties.

 

~

Play­ing the white pieces, the boy moved his king’s pawn for­ward two squares. She respond­ed in kind. Then each moved one knight, fol­lowed by the oth­er. She appeared to be mim­ic­k­ing him as the Four Knights Game took shape. It’s a per­fect­ly descrip­tive name, four knights poised around two cen­ter pawns, each side mir­rored by the oth­er, from which to proceed. 

She eas­i­ly blocked his clum­sy attacks, main­tain­ing crit­i­cal defens­es but oth­er­wise let­ting her pieces wan­der the chess­board as if they were out for a leisure­ly Sat­ur­day after­noon stroll. Point­less moves that did lit­tle more than take up time. All the while she play­act­ed like some­one unfa­mil­iar with the game. She grew dis­tract­ed, smiled as if remem­ber­ing some old joke. Some­thing her moth­er said that made her laugh. Some­times she stared at the board, eye­brows scrunched up as if in con­fu­sion. Strik­ing that pose, she looked as if she had nev­er played chess, as if she couldn’t fath­om how to proceed. 

Some in the crowd were con­fused. Whis­pered queries were met with shrugged respons­es that said: “No clue.” Was this the same girl they’d heard about, the one who dom­i­nat­ed her oppo­nents? What the hell was going on? Some wan­dered off toward the tra­di­tion­al Boli­vian group that had start­ed to assem­ble. Gui­tars and flutes played haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful songs from the Andes. Joy closed her eyes to enjoy it, her mind seem­ing­ly miles away. The chess crowd thinned out as a few more opt­ed for music or sim­ply left to get on with the day. Oth­ers took their cue from Bri­an, who smiled as if he knew exact­ly what was up. 

Just then James joined the group, nod­ding a silent greet­ing to Joy, Bri­an, and a few oth­ers. They quick­ly made room for him at the front. His arrival set off a rip­ple of hushed mur­murs, whis­pers of “Oh my God,” and “That’s him. That’s the guy.” Nudges, glances, raised eye­brows. Even those who’d nev­er heard his name caught the new charge in the air. James was here. He scanned the board, puz­zled by the bizarre sto­ry it hint­ed at. He knew how good she was. He shot her a quizzi­cal glance. Her smile car­ried just a trace of a wink. He half whis­pered to him­self, “Well all right,” and stood back to watch what would happen. 

~

“Nev­er let them tell you he was just a smil­ing Black man, a great box­er, and every­one loved him.” Grace Jack­son had been on a mis­sion to counter the white­wash­ing of Black his­to­ry ever since sit­ting through yet anoth­er bland mid-Jan­u­ary pro­gram cel­e­brat­ing the I Have a Dream speech. Approved speak­ers nev­er talked about the last two years of Dr. King’s life. Peo­ple knew bet­ter than to recall him denounc­ing the war in Viet­nam, con­demn­ing “the great­est pur­vey­or of vio­lence in the world today: my own gov­ern­ment.” The speech at River­side Church on April 4, 1967, exact­ly one year before that ter­ri­ble day in Memphis. 

Ali was anoth­er coura­geous icon whose con­tro­ver­sial past was rarely men­tioned. Grace showed Joy and Bri­an pic­tures of him stand­ing tri­umphant­ly over Son­ny Lis­ton. So fero­cious. So young. The news film of him refus­ing to fight in Viet­nam. The sum­mit  meet­ing of Black ath­letes step­ping for­ward to sup­port him. Bill Rus­sell, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jab­bar, known as Lew Alcin­dor back then, Washington’s own Bob­by Mitchell, and oth­ers. The years he could not box. 

They watched When We Were Kings, the doc­u­men­tary about the “Rum­ble in the Jun­gle” between Ali and George Fore­man. Grace described how Ali’s stature had grown beyond all imag­in­ing in the years of exile from the ring. After refus­ing the draft and pay­ing a price for his stand, he was admired around the globe. Joy could bare­ly watch the fight. She winced at the bru­tal body blows as he leaned against the ropes, tak­ing the punch­es. She mar­veled at his steady flow of insults through it all. “They told me you could punch, George. That all you got?” Fore­man, enraged and exhaust­ed, swing­ing wild­ly before Ali stunned him, stunned the whole world. The eighth round knock­out punch. 

~

Joy set­tled into a defen­sive game, a chess­board rope-a-dope, minus the pun­ish­ing bat­ter­ing. The insults were silent, but vis­i­ble enough for James, Bri­an, and oth­ers to see. Even the boy might even­tu­al­ly under­stand. He strug­gled to gain the elu­sive advan­tage he assumed was his for the taking. 

Joy allowed him to cap­ture a few pieces but was care­ful to grad­u­al­ly win back more. She left a bish­op unde­fend­ed just to observe his preda­to­ry glee. She looked shocked when he greed­i­ly seized it. She planned a knight fork, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly attack­ing his king and a rook. Then she pre­tend­ed not to notice the well-placed trap for two slow min­utes before gasp­ing with sur­prised delight as she took the rook it yield­ed. She almost laughed at the thought of how des­per­ate­ly he must have hoped she wouldn’t see it. How he must won­der why his game couldn’t gain trac­tion, why he was floun­der­ing against this girl who looked so clue­less and non­cha­lant. They trad­ed queens. 

The game had stretched on for more than an hour, rolling along on a stream of mean­ing­less moves. It was time to end things. Joy had enjoyed watch­ing him fid­get. She could sense him shift­ing first from con­fu­sion to annoy­ance, then con­cern and dis­be­lief, which final­ly gave way to pan­ic. The boy’s posi­tion was hope­less. He was down to one rook, one bish­op, and two pawns com­pared to her four pawns, two rooks, a bish­op and knight. A com­mand­ing lead. That was when he sur­veyed the board, put on a cocky smile, and deliv­ered the sec­ond worst insult of the day: “Draw?” 

“Draw” was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She didn’t even try to sti­fle the laugh. “Nah. That’s all right. It’s all good.” James cleared his throat loud­ly when she start­ed to move a pawn toward the end of the board. She would not look at him. She advanced the pawn three times to become a queen. Next, the boy was forced to move his king when she checked it with her new queen. That’s when he lost his lone rook, sud­den­ly exposed on the same long diag­o­nal. Soon only his king remained. 

Onlook­ers didn’t need to know chess the­o­ry, clas­sic end­ings, or tac­tics to under­stand what the chess­board showed. Didn’t have to know the dif­fer­ences between kings, queens, and knights. Didn’t need to watch online super­stars like Mau­rice Ash­ley, Tania Sachdev, or the Botez sis­ters. The rout was obvi­ous to every­one but the woman who had just joined them, walk­ing at a fast clip. She stormed to the front shout­ing: “We’re going to be late.” 

She scanned the chess­board, then looked at the boy. “Just check­mate her already. We’re run­ning late.” The laugh­ter star­tled her. She looked from the crowd back to the boy, then glared at Joy. She stared at the board again. Ever so grad­u­al­ly, embar­rass­ing­ly slow­ly, the woman began to under­stand that the white king did not belong to the Black girl. Her mouth still open, she fell silent. 

Joy had locked a fixed stare on the board, refus­ing all eye con­tact after declin­ing the draw. She picked up her next pawn and moved it for­ward. James cleared his throat even more emphat­i­cal­ly. The boy’s king was reduced to aim­less doomed moves. He appeared to be par­a­lyzed except when phys­i­cal­ly mov­ing it. Just anoth­er wood­push­er stum­bling toward defeat. He did not know how to resign to a Black girl who should have lost long ago. 

Joy final­ly glanced at James. He shook his head almost imper­cep­ti­bly, a beseech­ing look. He whis­pered two word­less syl­la­bles: “uh uh.” No. James knew all about chess play­ers who need­ed to learn some humil­i­ty. He under­stood that the boy deserved a whup­ping, and Joy had just deliv­ered one. Now it was time to end it with a check­mate. This was not Judit Pol­gar teach­ing Gar­ry Kas­parov a les­son and exor­cis­ing (most of) his sex­ism. This was not Phiona Mute­si, “Queen of Katwe,” rep­re­sent­ing Ugan­da at inter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments. This had become a slaughter. 

Trapped by his own pride, the boy refused to resign, so Joy would have to fin­ish it on the board. She want­ed to crush him, want­ed anoth­er queen. Maybe three queens. She want­ed to make his king run around the board. But when she looked to James, he shook his head. Anoth­er queen would be overkill. Joy sighed, shrugged her shoul­ders, and con­ced­ed to his request. With a queen and two rooks, she didn’t even need to herd the hap­less king to the side of the board. One rook on each side locked it on a sin­gle nar­row file. She made the king walk one step in that cor­ri­dor of shame. She end­ed it with her queen. 

 

 

 

From the writer

:: Account ::

I played a lot of chess in my ear­ly teens, usu­al­ly at the Boys Club in Sil­ver Spring, Mary­land, a sub­urb of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. I wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly tal­ent­ed, but thor­ough­ly enjoyed the game. About 25 or so years ago I read about a very tal­ent­ed Black girl in her ear­ly teens. One day an oppo­nent took one look at her and told his moth­er the game would be over quick­ly. The girl, appalled by the racist insult, decid­ed to beat him slow­ly. I imag­ined the ensu­ing game would have played out in a very cin­e­mat­ic way. That one game, with back­ground sto­ries, the play­ers’ fam­i­ly lives, etc., could have eas­i­ly been a full-length fea­ture movie. Mak­ing a movie wasn’t an option, but the inci­dent also seemed ide­al­ly suit­ed for a short story. 

I’m not Black, but did feel a con­nec­tion to the girl, just not by my lim­it­ed skill at chess. My moth­er was from India, and my father was a white Amer­i­can. That’s a whole oth­er sto­ry about young vol­un­teers meet­ing at the Kuruk­shetra refugee camp in the time of India’s inde­pen­dence and par­ti­tion. I’m often mis­tak­en for Mid­dle East­ern. On sev­er­al occa­sions Ira­ni­ans have assumed I speak Farsi. 

I’ve had severe anky­los­ing spondyli­tis, a form of arthri­tis, since my teens, and walk with a cane. Between hav­ing a vis­i­ble dis­abil­i­ty and being eth­ni­cal­ly “oth­er,” I’m well acquaint­ed with microag­gres­sions. Some peo­ple assume I must be stu­pid, or a ter­ror­ist. It’s annoy­ing, and on rare occa­sions it’s fright­en­ing. Undoubt­ed­ly some per­son­al expe­ri­ence came into play at the thought of a right­ful­ly angry girl crush­ing and humil­i­at­ing her racist opponent. 

Sev­er­al years ago I learned about Tom Mur­phy, the man James Gilmore is loose­ly based on. I want­ed to hon­or peo­ple of extra­or­di­nary tal­ent who con­tribute a lot to the vibrant life of a com­mu­ni­ty. It felt like James should play a sig­nif­i­cant role in Joy’s chess life. It was impor­tant that her par­ents and broth­er should rec­og­nize his gifts and find a con­nec­tion, across class lines, with him. It also was nat­ur­al to bring local and nation­al his­to­ry, cul­ture, and pol­i­tics into the sto­ry. I always pic­tured Dupont Cir­cle as the set­ting, so decid­ed the fic­tion­al old build­ing would be closed for renovation. 

Watch­ing the Queen’s Gam­bit series made me revis­it and final­ly try to write the sto­ry. I was born in 1955, so was at the peak of my chess phase in 1968 when the series end­ed. It hit a lot of chords, recon­nect­ed me with a pow­er­ful and (most­ly) joy­ful time in my life, and rekin­dled my love of chess. 

 

Sunil Free­man’s essays have appeared in Del­mar­va Review, Gar­goyle, Wash­ing­ton­ian, Jag­gery, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. He has pub­lished poems in sev­er­al jour­nals and antholo­gies, includ­ing Delaware Poet­ry Review, Min­imus, Gar­goyle, Kiss the Sky: Fic­tion & Poet­ry Star­ring Jimi Hen­drix, and Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Wash­ing­ton, D.C. He has pub­lished one poet­ry col­lec­tion, That Would Explain the Vio­lin­ist (Gut Punch Press, 1993), and a chap­book, Sur­re­al Free­dom Blues (Argonne Hotel Press, 1999).

Fiction / Amanda J. Bradley

:: Angry Queens ::

Maya fin­gered a long string of wood­en beads, won­der­ing if she’d ever actu­al­ly wear them back in New York. Are they exot­ic but earthy or just cheap and tacky? Near her in the stall of the open-air mar­ket, Sadie hag­gled with an old­er Jamaican woman, who was ample, with a green and red scarf scoop­ing up her braid­ed hair, gray­ing at the temples. 

“I’ll give you five dol­lars for all three.” 

“No, woman. Five dol­lars for one. That’s a good price.” 

“For three or I’ll walk,” Sadie said. Maya could tell she meant it. Upper East Side. Nan­nies. Sum­mers in the south of France. Sadie had more mon­ey than God. This trip to Jamaica was slum­ming it for her. Sadie’s job entailed some sort of phil­an­thropic some­thing or oth­er she chose to do. Although Maya had known her since col­lege, she had yet to fig­ure out which insane­ly wealthy Amer­i­can fam­i­ly Sadie was a twig on a branch of, although she knew it was one of them. It made Maya a lit­tle sick to her stom­ach to hear her friend insist­ing on three beau­ti­ful­ly hand­craft­ed wood­en trop­i­cal fish for half the price of one, so Maya put the beads back and turned around to face them. 

“You about ready?” Maya asked. 

“Yes,” Sadie said too clear­ly, accen­tu­at­ing the s with a hiss, and then looked at the woman ped­dling wares to give her one last oppor­tu­ni­ty to take her offer. 

“Five for two,” the woman said, sweep­ing her eyes over Sadie from head to foot in a slow, delib­er­ate way, a half-dis­guised sneer in her gaze. Sadie pursed her eyes, one hand on her hip. 

“That’s very gen­er­ous,” Maya said to her friend. 

“Fine. You dri­ve a hard bar­gain.” Sadie dug through her purse then flipped a five-dol­lar bill out of it, stick­ing it out at the woman with her thin, white, gold-ban­gled arm. The woman took it, tucked it into a pouch around her waist, and hand­ed the fish to Sadie. 

“I would like a bag.” 

“No bag.” The woman ambled around so that her back was fac­ing Sadie to arrange items on the shelves where she’d removed the two fish. 

“I’m hun­gry,” Maya said, pulling Sadie away from the mar­ket. “Let’s find some­thing to eat. Do you want to return to that café we went to yesterday?” 

Sadie was still fum­bling with stuff­ing the fish in her purse, but man­aged to focus long enough to respond, “Let’s try some­where new.” 

“Okay. Head to the strip?” 

“Yes. That’s good.” The two women adjust­ed their strides to walk toward the heart of Mon­tego Bay. Back in New York, men tend­ed to gawk at Sadie more. She was tall, extreme­ly thin, her mus­cles light­ly toned, with a small nose, big eyes, and flaw­less peach skin. Her hair looked healthy and swingy and ranged through­out the year from blonde to light auburn, depend­ing on Sadie’s mood at the salon. Sadie took advan­tage of the perks of her mon­ey and had a per­son­al train­er, a per­son­al chef, a pri­vate hour of swim­ming at the pool in their build­ing. By con­trast, Maya felt pudgy and mot­tled and brown. 

But here in Jamaica, both women had noticed Maya got most of the male atten­tion. Jamaican men whis­tled at Maya, served Maya’s drink first at the restau­rants; all winks and nods went in Maya’s direc­tion. After a man had approached Maya as she and Sadie sat perched on stools sip­ping pineap­ple juice and coconut rum, the bar­tender had told her, “We love the light brown ladies here. Where you from?” Maya was from Queens, but her par­ents were both Filipino. 

As Maya and Sadie strolled to find a place for din­ner, the men they passed whis­tled at Maya, made grand ges­tures in her direc­tion with their hands as if she were a celebri­ty or roy­al­ty, blew kiss­es her way. Sadie didn’t mind; she was rarely fazed by much of any­thing. Maya did not want the atten­tion. She cast her eyes down­ward, their advances mak­ing her uncom­fort­able and wary. She was relieved when the women final­ly took a seat at an out­door table of a restau­rant on the main drag. Maya ordered a Red Stripe, Sadie a daiquiri, and the women relaxed into the ear­ly evening heat. 

“What is Tom doing while you are away?” Maya asked her friend. Maya knew Tom the same way she knew Sadie: they’d all gone to a small north­east­ern lib­er­al arts col­lege togeth­er over a decade ago. Maya had been in love with Tom since the night they’d some­how end­ed up cou­pled as a team for a dance marathon. They’d danced all night, tak­ing turns reviv­ing each oth­er when one or the other’s ener­gy flagged, and they’d won ear­ly the next morn­ing when the last rival cou­ple final­ly con­ced­ed defeat. Maya and Tom had gone to break­fast togeth­er at a din­er near cam­pus. He’d been such a gen­tle­man, giv­ing her his jack­et on the walk across cam­pus into town, offer­ing to pay. Sadie had no idea Maya loved Tom, but Sadie was obliv­i­ous that way. 

“Work­ing, as usu­al. He prob­a­bly won’t notice I’m gone unless the kids remind him.” Maya knew this was patent­ly false. She saw how Tom looked at Sadie when they all went to brunch or din­ner or a muse­um or con­cert. Maya usu­al­ly brought her broth­er or a friend from work to these out­ings so she would feel less like a third wheel. “When are you going to let me set you up with some­one to date?” 

“I am hap­py with my life, I’ve told you,” Maya said. “I do not need some belch­ing, snor­ing man to clean up after and cook for. I like my job and my independence.” 

“How can you like that job? It sounds so depress­ing. I mean, how can you leave it at work instead of cry­ing into your wine every night? Those help­less peo­ple in their dingy apart­ments! How do you stand it?” Sadie’s dis­dain for Maya’s social work clients was the one thing about her friend that real­ly made her bris­tle. Maya under­stood that Tom adored Sadie, so she for­gave that Sadie had won the man. Maya did not cov­et her friend’s wealth; she’d always felt mon­ey was a lit­tle wicked. Maya was grow­ing accus­tomed to the fact that she would prob­a­bly not have chil­dren, so she did not begrudge Sadie’s bright-eyed, sandy-haired brood. But her friend’s dis­dain for her clients real­ly angered Maya. 

“Not every­one was born into a world of oppor­tu­ni­ty, Sadie. Have you no compassion?” 

“I do have com­pas­sion. That’s why I’m ask­ing how you don’t cry your­self to sleep at night with so much sad­ness and pover­ty in your face all day,” Sadie protested. 

“Ignor­ing the prob­lem is not the way to fix it.” 

“I don’t ignore it. I give a great deal to caus­es that aim to end poverty.” 

“You keep your dis­tance from it, though. You don’t under­stand the dai­ly strug­gles, the sys­tems and cycles of abuse in place.” 

“Caus­es need workers—people like you, but they also need funds from peo­ple like me.” 

“Well, then get off my back about how I can stand it if you think it’s a worth­while job.” 

“Done.” Sadie said, turn­ing her eyes toward the dis­tant hori­zon behind Maya’s head. It was a famil­iar pose of hers and often made Maya think of an angry queen. A great rum­ble of engine noise clam­bered into hear­ing range and con­tin­ued to grow loud­er. Every­one on the patio adjust­ed their line of sight to see where the rack­et was com­ing from. A series of what appeared to be mil­i­tary Jeeps round­ed the cor­ner at much too high a speed for the small­ish road, and mus­cu­lar black men with long dreads secured back, ban­doliers of bul­lets hung like sash­es across their chests, and enor­mous black auto­mat­ic rifles in their hands clung to the bars of the Jeeps pre­car­i­ous­ly. One, two, three, four Jeeps trucked their way around the cor­ner and down the way, stern faces of the men aboard not even glanc­ing at the tourists ogling them from the restaurant’s patio. 

“Well, that was a sight to behold!” Sadie said, the rare gleam of excite­ment in her eye. 

“I won­der where they are going. What is the gov­ern­ment like here? Is there a mil­i­tary action under­way? Should we have researched more what the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion is right now?” Maya’s ques­tions tum­bled out rapidly. 

“I’m sure it’s noth­ing,” Sadie said. “They are prob­a­bly just going from here to there, and that’s how they do it—with style.” Maya admired her friend’s non­cha­lance. She used to inter­pret it as brav­ery but late­ly had begun to under­stand it was gen­uine indif­fer­ence. Maya felt she would be hap­pi­er if she could siphon off just a tiny bit of Sadie’s lack of con­cern for dan­ger or suf­fer­ing or the ills of the world; Sadie had enough to spare. “Are you fin­ished with your din­ner? We should scoot if we’re going to catch the sun­set from the beach.” Maya began rum­mag­ing around in her purse, and Sadie added, “I set­tled up for us when I went to the restroom.” 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Maya said. She real­ly hat­ed how often Sadie picked up the tab, even though it made sense for her to and even though Sadie could not care less about pay­ing for her friend. 

“Let’s go,” Sadie said, ris­ing from the table. 

Maya and Sadie had hap­pened to be on the beach as the sun went down their first night in Jamaica. The sight had been so spec­tac­u­lar that they decid­ed to make a point of wit­ness­ing the sun­set from the beach every night they were there. Now they bus­tled back along the sandy road toward the beach near their hotel to make it in time. They plopped in the sand sev­er­al yards from a cabana serv­ing drinks and play­ing reg­gae from loud­speak­ers; a breeze blew in off the water. The sun sat perched in the sky, a giant pink orb. Sec­onds lat­er, the orb had dropped to straight ahead, rest­ing on the hori­zon, a tor­rent of bright orange and pink, cast­ing a laven­der pall over the ocean, and then mere sec­onds lat­er, it was a half cres­cent, a bare­ly vis­i­ble sliv­er and then gone. It couldn’t have tak­en more than a minute for the sun to dis­ap­pear in one swift motion, drop­ping the friends into twi­light. It sim­ply fell out of the sky. Watch­ing it, Maya felt her breath catch at how quick­ly beau­ty could dis­ap­pear, just like that. She glanced at Sadie’s pro­file, and won­dered if she were think­ing, too, all the usu­al schlock about how quick­ly life pass­es, and how we are left with only the fleet­ing mem­o­ries of the spec­tac­u­lar events that make up our lives until we, too, cease to exist. Prob­a­bly not. She’s prob­a­bly think­ing, “Well, that was pret­ty.”  

“Well, that was pret­ty,” Sadie said. Maya was dread­ing going to bed because every night Sadie had been sneak­ing out of their hotel room once she thought Maya was asleep. Maya then would read her book and slap her face against the pil­low in frus­tra­tion and shift posi­tions repeat­ed­ly, wor­ry­ing about her friend before she final­ly man­aged to sleep. Where did she go? What was she doing? Was she safe? To try to tire her friend out tonight, Maya sug­gest­ed they go danc­ing at a club. She knew from the many wed­ding recep­tions they’d attend­ed togeth­er that this would mean Maya sip­ping drinks at the bar, grown self-con­scious since her dance marathon days, and Sadie danc­ing lav­ish­ly for many hours, but Maya liked the idea of wear­ing her friend out tonight and get­ting a fuller night’s sleep her­self. “Let’s have one more drink then hit the hay,” Sadie said. 

Maya’s face was turned toward the win­dow on her pil­low, away from Sadie’s bed. She was secret­ly plot­ting to fol­low her friend tonight to see where she went out of sheer curios­i­ty. After some time of still­ness had passed, Maya heard Sadie slip out of bed and wan­der over to peek at Maya, who kept her eyes closed, lis­ten­ing. She heard Sadie dress and apply lip­stick, brush her hair in the bath­room, then slip out the door. As soon as she was gone, Maya threw on jeans and a pair of ten­nis shoes, grabbed her key card and wal­let, and snuck out behind her friend. She decid­ed to take the three flights of stairs, fig­ur­ing Sadie took the ele­va­tor, and Maya rushed down them as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, know­ing she was a minute or so behind Sadie. As Maya exit­ed the hotel and stepped out into the fresh ocean breeze, she quick­ly glanced at the beach direct­ly across from the hotel. No signs of Sadie. There was only one direc­tion down the one street with any nightlife, so Maya quick­ly scanned for signs of Sadie’s slim fig­ure and spot­ted her friend’s long stride head­ing toward the nightlife. 

Maya clam­bered down the steps and fol­lowed Sadie at a dis­tance, ready to side­step into the shad­owy palm trees lin­ing the street if her friend glanced back. But she nev­er did. Sadie sud­den­ly dart­ed across the street, wav­ing at some­one. Maya fol­lowed the direc­tion of her wave with her eyes and saw two young men out­side anoth­er hotel who appeared to be wait­ing for her near the lob­by. One of the men was tall with long, dark hair and was cov­ered in tat­toos. He wore ripped jeans and a con­cert t‑shirt with the sleeves cut out. He had some kind of leath­ery-look­ing black thing around his neck. The oth­er man was short­er, prep­pi­er. His hair was cut short and remind­ed Maya of Matt Damon in The Tal­ent­ed Mr. Rip­ley. He wore a pink polo shirt and kha­ki shorts with brown san­dals under mus­cu­lar calves. They were clear­ly togeth­er, but by appear­ances had noth­ing in com­mon. Maya won­dered if they were prostitutes. 

Sadie strode up the steps, put her arms out, one hand touch­ing each guy, and pulled them through the door of the lob­by. Maya crossed the street to see into the lob­by bet­ter. She watched the three of them enter an ele­va­tor. Maya remained where she was and wait­ed, con­sid­er­ing what to do. Soon, she heard a light swoosh sound above her and looked up to see Sadie and the tat­tooed guy step­ping out onto the patio of a hotel room. They were all over each oth­er, and he was remov­ing Sadie’s shirt. Maya turned away and swiveled to head back toward the hotel. 

As she walked, Maya tried to iden­ti­fy what it was she was feel­ing. All she could think of was Tom’s face as he set­tled his jack­et around her shoul­ders after they’d won the marathon, how he’d lis­tened so intent­ly as Maya had explained at the din­er why it had been so impor­tant to her to win the mon­ey for their char­i­ty of choice. Her father had been suf­fer­ing ALS then, before he’d died, and she had want­ed to raise mon­ey for ALS research. Tom had been so shocked to hear about her dad, so sym­pa­thet­ic. He’d asked her to tell him about her father and what their rela­tion­ship was like, what her fond­est mem­o­ries from child­hood were of him. He had real­ly listened. 

But the next time she and Tom were togeth­er, it had been like noth­ing ever hap­pened. Tom nev­er men­tioned Maya’s father to her again, nev­er asked how he was, didn’t even know when he died. The sud­den epiphany dawned on Maya as she walked the ocean­side street that Tom and Sadie real­ly were per­fect for each oth­er. Nei­ther of them cared about much of any­thing. Maya sus­pect­ed if she told Tom about Sadie and the tat­tooed man, he would lis­ten intent­ly and then act as if the con­ver­sa­tion had nev­er hap­pened. It would not eat away at him or cor­rode their rela­tion­ship or change any­thing whatsoever. 

Maya neared the hotel and decid­ed to go sit on the beach for a while before return­ing to the room. The cabana was closed now, and not many peo­ple were around at all. A cou­ple walked togeth­er down by the water, some peo­ple were milling about up by the hotel, but Maya felt more alone than she had in days, in years maybe. She found a spot by sim­ply stop­ping when it occurred to her to, and she sit­u­at­ed her­self on the soft sand. The world is ugly. Beau­ty is painful because the world is ugly, not just because beau­ty fades. Maya crossed her ankles and leaned back on her stretched arms. She dropped her head back to view the cas­cades of stars in the black sky. 

A tall man in shorts and a Hawai­ian shirt seemed to appear next to her out of nowhere and asked if he might sit. Maya found she could not care less whether the man sat next to her or didn’t, whether he kept walk­ing or she said yes or no, whether he smiled at her or spoke to her, or if she went back inside. She gazed up at the man blankly. He sat down. 

“Where you from?” he asked. “You are beautiful.” 

“New York,” she replied. Maya laid back in the sand, and the man leaned down next to her. She closed her eyes. He stuck his tongue in her ear. She didn’t care. 

 

 

 

From the writer

:: Account ::

Jamaica Kincaid’s book A Small Place, about colo­nial­ism and white tourism to her home coun­try of Antigua, was very much in my mind as I wrote this sto­ry. I first read that book long after I had made trips to the Bahamas and Jamaica, and it was eye-open­ing to me. I want­ed to show through a sto­ry the per­ni­cious­ness of wealthy white priv­i­lege, which is why the sto­ry opens with the well-to-do Sadie hag­gling rude­ly with a Jamaican arti­san. Maya is the more relat­able and lik­able char­ac­ter, but by the end of the sto­ry feels over­whelmed by Sadie’s and Tom’s non­cha­lance as peo­ple who have the priv­i­lege of not hav­ing to care about much. When Maya wit­ness­es Sadie’s mis­treat­ment of Tom with the oth­er men in Jamaica, Maya has an epiphany that Tom real­ly wouldn’t care that much any­way. This breaks Maya. 

More gen­er­al­ly, I am inter­est­ed in the bru­tal­i­ty of the world: inequal­i­ty, unfair­ness, vio­lence. I want­ed a sense of that bru­tal­i­ty high­light­ed in the sto­ry, too, and set in con­trast with the world’s beauty. 

 

Aman­da J. Bradley has pub­lished three poet­ry col­lec­tions with NYQ Books: Queen Kong (2017), Oz at Night (2011), and Hints and Alle­ga­tions (2009) and has pub­lished fic­tion, essays, and poems wide­ly in antholo­gies and lit­er­ary mag­a­zines such as Pater­son Lit­er­ary Review, Chi­ron Review, Lips, Rat­tle, The New York Quar­ter­ly, Kin, The Ner­vous Break­down, Apric­i­ty Mag­a­zine, and Gar­goyle. She lives in Bea­con, New York, and her web­site can be found at www.amandajbradley.com.

Fiction / Rachele Salvini

 

:: Unremarkable ::

My first remark­able moment in Lon­don involved wit­ness­ing a cat beat­ing the shit out of a fox right in front of my new flat. I knew Gior­gio would like the sto­ry, but I didn’t call him. I didn’t even take a pic­ture for him. 

I didn’t live in the out­skirts of the city—I rent­ed a tiny room in an alley in Strat­ford, just a few steps away from the tube sta­tion, the Strat­ford Shop­ping Cen­tre, and the West Ham Sta­di­um. Not exact­ly a place where I expect­ed to see such an inter­est­ing dis­play of wildlife. But I came from a town on the west coast of Italy, and I didn’t know shit. I was one of the many Ital­ians leav­ing good weath­er, espres­so, and lasagna behind to try to find some luck in London. 

Gior­gio was still in Italy. We hadn’t actu­al­ly decid­ed if we were break­ing up or not; it was more of an open-end­ed exper­i­ment. He didn’t want to come to Lon­don with me, and we didn’t like the idea of being long-dis­tance indef­i­nite­ly, but nei­ther of us had the guts to break up. 

We had met in col­lege, years before. We had fall­en in love though we didn’t want to. 

*

Gior­gio and I were hap­py togeth­er, him study­ing cin­e­ma, me study­ing lit­er­a­ture. We talked about art and music, and we laughed all the time. We went to Frankie’s, our favorite dive bar in town, which was open only from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. We drank gin and ton­ics and kissed in front of every­one and danced like every­one was watch­ing us because of how radi­ant­ly in love we were. Then, by day, we would go to the sea­side; by night, when we didn’t go out, we hid in his grand­par­ents’ garage, watched movies, made love, and smoked dope. We had bought a small bed from a thrift store for ten euros. We just want­ed to hide. We didn’t care about bed bugs. 

For three years, all that had been enough. Then, after grad­u­a­tion, our lives had to start. We weren’t spe­cial: peo­ple moved to oth­er places all the time and faced the deci­sion of what to do with their rela­tion­ships. Ital­ians were mov­ing all around Europe, espe­cial­ly grad­u­ates with human­i­ties degrees, some­what deeply under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed even in a coun­try that had built its fame on art. Gior­gio spent his days lying on the couch, watch­ing TV and send­ing resumes around, but no one would call. I want­ed to work in pub­lish­ing. Lon­don seemed the right place to be, but he wasn’t ready to come. 

“We’ll see,” Gior­gio said, and kissed me good-bye. 

*

Wit­ness­ing the cat beat­ing up the fox seemed a remark­able moment—more than when I saw Mil­len­ni­um Bridge for the first time—because it made me real­ize how much I didn’t know about Lon­don. The cat growled and bare­ly moved, its ears back. When­ev­er the fox made any move­ment, either to dab or leave, the cat would stalk for­ward and sink its claws in the scrawny fur of the fox. I stood there, just look­ing at them. They seemed uncon­cerned by my pres­ence. I didn’t know fox­es would let humans so close. I didn’t know cats could beat the shit out of foxes. 

At some point I even won­dered if I was just hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. It seemed like­ly, on the day I had start­ed my job as a barista at Caf­fè Nero, a cof­fee shop chain. After my first shift, I had gone to get gro­ceries, try­ing not to fall into the easy trap of buy­ing Ital­ian pre-cooked meals that remind­ed me of home from the pic­ture on the wrap­ping but would remind me that I actu­al­ly wasn’t home as soon as I’d try a spoonful. 

As I watched the cat and the fox in silence, I thought of a remark­able moment in Italy—Giorgio and I were walk­ing on the sea­side. I was wear­ing a blouse, but a crisp breeze came sud­den­ly from the ocean and made my hands crawl up my sleeves. Gior­gio was telling me about Lon­don, giv­ing me all his rea­sons for not com­ing with me. He was sure that Brex­it was going to hap­pen, and the smug British ass­holes would kick us all out. Lon­don, he said—as if he knew—was turn­ing into a Euro­pean copy of New York City, the geo­graph­i­cal embod­i­ment of cap­i­tal­ism. He went on and on, keep­ing his eyes on the ocean; the wind didn’t seem to both­er him at all. His hands dan­gled slight­ly at every step he took. I told him I just real­ly want­ed to work in pub­lish­ing. I told him that I wasn’t sure Brex­it was going to hap­pen, and I didn’t know what it would entail either. I didn’t know how Gior­gio could be so sure about a whole country’s atti­tude toward econ­o­my pacts, immi­gra­tion reg­u­la­tions, and so on. I also didn’t know why Brits would want to kick oth­er fel­low Euro­peans out. I didn’t know why any­one would want to kick any­one out. 

But Gior­gio went on, telling me that he’d rather stay home with peo­ple he loved and save mon­ey in order to move to a bet­ter place in the future, and even­tu­al­ly have a bet­ter life. “You don’t have to hate your life to have a career,” he said. I imme­di­ate­ly knew that I would remem­ber that line as remark­able. “Maybe,” I replied, shiv­er­ing. An unre­mark­able answer. 

*

When I saw the cat and the fox, I had bare­ly slept in days, haunt­ed by the thoughts of leav­ing home, my moth­er, and, of course, Giorgio—only to find a lousy job as a barista at Caf­fé Nero in Pic­cadil­ly Circus. 

Maybe Gior­gio was right. That morn­ing I had served an end­less amount of watered-down cof­fees to British yup­pies who filled their mouths with Ital­ian words—ven­ti, grande, mac­chi­a­to, espres­so, cap­puc­ci­no—but couldn’t pro­nounce any of them. They com­plained about my cof­fee: too bit­ter. I smiled back and made their cof­fee again in less than two min­utes, under the gelid eyes of a spot­ty British assis­tant man­ag­er. I bit my inner cheeks, my gaze buried in the grates of the huge cof­fee machine, try­ing to hold on to the mem­o­ry of wak­ing up to the smell of my mother’s espres­so. She pre­pared it in ten min­utes, with a sim­ple cof­fee mak­er. No fan­cy machines: she just placed a tiny met­al per­co­la­tor on the old-ass stove. She had taught me how to switch on the gas and use a match to start the ring of blue fire. Extreme­ly dan­ger­ous, yet total­ly worth it. It was our secret; I felt like the prim­i­tive man dis­cov­er­ing fire. 

I real­ly thought about tex­ting Gior­gio to tell him about my first shift or the cat beat­ing up the fox. Even­tu­al­ly, the fox ran away. I dragged my gro­ceries upstairs, pant­i­ng and try­ing to ignore the smell of piss on the stairs and the bones of fried chick­en wings aban­doned on the steps. 

*

Gior­gio called me the morn­ing of June 23, 2016. I had been in Lon­don for a month, and Brex­it debates were all over the news. Peo­ple couldn’t stop won­der­ing if Britain was actu­al­ly going to leave the EU. The ques­tion was, in a way, per­son­al. I won­der what those British yup­pies who com­plained about my bit­ter cof­fee thought. They would glad­ly trav­el to Italy in the sum­mer and drink our espres­sos, sit in our bars in front of the sea­side, sigh with sat­is­fac­tion and say how great our weath­er was, how cheap every­thing was. Then they’d go back home and vote against or for leav­ing us behind. 

Still, for some rea­son, I didn’t feel like Brex­it was per­son­al at all. I kept mak­ing cof­fees, and mak­ing them again if they came back, “too bit­ter.” I learned Eng­lish, sent out my resume, and hoped for some­thing bet­ter to come. Gior­gio kept say­ing that he was “look­ing around.” I wasn’t sure what he meant. 

Then, that morn­ing in June, he called. I was sleep­ing, but he sound­ed excit­ed. It was the first time he called me before I was up. I usu­al­ly got up ear­ly in the morn­ing to go to work and cov­er the 6 a.m. shift at the cof­fee shop. “Hey. What’s up?” I asked, my voice raspy. 

“I’m at Frankie’s with the guys,” he said, the accent from our home­town sound­ing estranged to me. I could hear the chaos in the background—the music, and the hys­ter­i­cal laugh­ter of Frankie’s drunk­en crowd. They weren’t done danc­ing, even though the sun was prob­a­bly up. “Guess what,” Gior­gio went on. 

I threw my legs out from under the duvet. It was cold. Out of the win­dow, London’s sky was white, as every morn­ing. “What?”  

“Brex­it fuck­ing hap­pened,” Gior­gio cried, enthralled. “I told you so!” 

I was sur­prised. I had felt so bom­bard­ed with head­lines, ques­tions and unso­licit­ed opin­ions for a whole month that I had for­got­ten when the ref­er­en­dum was actu­al­ly going to hap­pen. The days were all the same. 

Gior­gio laughed. I didn’t under­stand the fun part of it. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of Brex­it was one of the rea­sons why he had decid­ed not to come to Lon­don in the first place. 

“They vot­ed Leave?” I asked. I glanced out of the win­dow again. I could see only the neon lights of the Strat­ford Shop­ping Cen­tre pierc­ing the fog in the distance. 

“Yeah! Crazy, right?” he went on. “But I knew it. Remem­ber? I pre­dict­ed this shit.” I heard some­one yell in the back­ground but couldn’t work out what they said. 

“We were mak­ing bets last night,” Gior­gio went on. His voice was shak­ing with enthu­si­asm, but maybe he was just drunk. “The man­ag­er at Frankie’s orga­nized a Brex­it-themed drink­ing game, and I won five shots of tequi­la. It was so fun. Hope­ful­ly you’ll be back here the night of the Amer­i­can elec­tion. If Don­ald Trump wins, I swear the world will fuck­ing col­lapse.” I heard him take a drag from his cig­a­rette. “You have to be here. We’ll have so much fun, like the old times. Oh—wait—someone just brought pizza.” 

I heard some muf­fled sounds in the phone, and I pic­tured him stag­ger­ing drunk­en­ly to go get his slice of pizza. 

I pulled my phone from my ear and looked at the time. My alarm would go off soon. 

“I don’t think I’ll be there for the Amer­i­can elec­tion,” I said. 

“What?” Gior­gio asked, his mouth full of pizza. 

I saw my face in the reflec­tion of the win­dow. I looked like shit even before start­ing the day, my skin blotchy, my hair a bit greasy. I tried to imag­ine my mother’s espres­so, the blue ring of fire on the stove, the smell of burnt match­es, and then the scent of cof­fee creep­ing up the stairs. 

Instead, for some rea­son, I thought that this was anoth­er remark­able moment, like the time the ocean wind made my hands crawl up my sleeves, like when I saw the cat beat­ing the shit out of the fox in front of my flat. 

“Why are you so hap­py?” I asked. 

There was a silence. 

“What do you mean?” Gior­gio asked after a while. He wasn’t chew­ing his piz­za anymore. 

I looked at my feet on the cold tiled floor of my room. The wrap­ping of some pre-cooked ravi­o­li stood out from my trash can. I felt a pang of dis­gust, like I was going to be sick, but didn’t talk. I wasn’t sure I knew what I want­ed to say. 

“What do you mean?” Gior­gio asked again. 

My phone alarm went off, pierc­ing my ear. I dis­abled it. I still didn’t have an answer for Gior­gio. Why are you so hap­py, I repeat­ed in my head. 

“Why am I so hap­py about Brex­it?” he asked. 

Anoth­er pang of dis­gust. “Maybe,” I said. 

An unre­mark­able answer. I hung up. I got up and walked to the kitchen to shove a cup of instant cof­fee in the microwave.

 

 

 

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

I wrote this sto­ry as a response to my expe­ri­ence liv­ing in Lon­don dur­ing the Brex­it cam­paign. At the time I was also involved in a painful long-dis­tance rela­tion­ship, like the nar­ra­tor of this sto­ry. While this is fic­tion, many scenes are drawn from my per­son­al expe­ri­ence: I remem­ber see­ing a cat beat­ing the shit out of a dog in front of my dirty-ass apart­ment in Strat­ford; I also remem­bered all the times my ex called from Italy when he was hav­ing fun with his friends, while I was lone­ly and mis­er­able, work­ing hard to get some­where. Most­ly, I want­ed my sto­ry to be about young Euro­pean immi­grants head­ing to the Unit­ed King­dom; I want­ed to write about the hopes and dreams of the ones who look for luck some­where far from home and have to nego­ti­ate their depar­ture with their ties with their home. While my expe­ri­ence was not as trau­mat­ic as the one of refugees, it did affect me great­ly. The polit­i­cal back­ground of this sto­ry is obvi­ous­ly the Brex­it cam­paign, which I regard as one of the first steps toward the storm of crazi­ness that the past few years have been. 

 

Rachele Salvi­ni is an Ital­ian woman based in the U.S., where she’s doing a PhD in Eng­lish and Cre­ative Writ­ing at Okla­homa State Uni­ver­si­ty. She spent most of her life in Italy, and she writes in both Eng­lish and Ital­ian. Her work in Eng­lish has been pub­lished or is forth­com­ing in Prime Num­ber Mag­a­zine, Nec­es­sary Fic­tion, Taka­he Mag­a­zine, Sage­brush Review, BULL, and oth­ers. She’s also a trans­la­tor, and her trans­la­tion work has appeared or is forth­com­ing in sev­er­al lit­er­ary jour­nals, includ­ing Lunch Tick­et. 

Fiction / Paul Negri

 

:: A Secret Service ::

Pres­i­dent Lin­coln is more silent than usu­al today. Now it is true that he has not spo­ken a word dur­ing the whole time of our incar­cer­a­tion here. But there are oth­er ways of being silent besides not speak­ing, and it is in this oth­er way that he is silent today. They’ve put him in a wheel­chair and rolled him in front of the TV in the day room. The sound on the TV is off, so it too is silent.  The only oth­er inmate in the room is the old man they call George (I don’t know what his real name is). George is talk­ing to him­self, but silently. 

It is in this kind of silence that I receive my instruc­tions. Chief Wood, the head of the Secret Ser­vice, is a man of few but com­pelling words. When the Chief speaks, you know what you must do. 

I glance at the door to the day room. Gre­go­ry, one of the reg­u­lar atten­dants, is stand­ing in the door­way. He is feign­ing inat­ten­tion. I wait. Wait­ing is a skill of mine. There is per­haps no one in the Ser­vice who can wait so well as I can. Wait and watch. Eter­nal vig­i­lance, it has been tru­ly said, is the price of liberty. 

Gre­go­ry final­ly deserts his post, although I know it will be only momen­tar­i­ly. I cross the room quick­ly and pull a fold­ing chair clos­er to the Pres­i­dent. I whis­per, “New direc­tive from the Chief, sir. He respect­ful­ly requests that we fore­stall any action. The time is not right. But soon. Very soon, I’m sure.” 

Pres­i­dent Lin­coln con­tin­ues to stare at the TV. His great crag­gy face, now beard­less (yes, they shaved him, the bas­tards), betrays no hint of dis­ap­point­ment or dis­cour­age­ment. Those dark, deep eyes have seen enough, I imag­ine, to endow him with the patience of the ages. 

“Ben.” 

Gre­go­ry is back and with a sin­gle word demol­ish­es the gold­en silence. He stands in the door­way, arms fold­ed across his chest, eyes hard on me. But you are too late, Gre­go­ry. I have deliv­ered my message. 

“Now you leave Arthur alone. Leave him be.” 

Arthur. That’s what they call Mr. Lin­coln. Just as they call me Ben. They think that by sim­ply nam­ing us, they can con­trol who we are. They are not as smart as they think. I have always lived under pseu­do­nyms, and Ben is fine with me. I know who I am and they do not. And work­ing for the Secret Ser­vice, it is crit­i­cal I keep it that way. 

I return to my chair by the win­dow, plac­ing just enough dis­tance between the Pres­i­dent and me to sat­is­fy Gre­go­ry yet per­mit me to spring into action and inter­pose myself between Mr. Lin­coln and what­ev­er might threat­en him—knife, bul­let, or those sub­tler means of assas­si­na­tion employed by our cap­tors in their relent­less attempt to destroy who we are. Rest assured, Mr. Pres­i­dent, there will be no door pushed open, no dag­ger, no shot fired, no one leap­ing onto the stage shout­ing of tyrants to a con­fused audi­ence. Not this time. Not on my watch. 

Inmates file into the room. Bin­go must be over. Bin­go is one of our keep­ers’ most insid­i­ous weapons. They use it to implant direc­tives, using a numer­i­cal code, in the minds of the inmates. A remark­ably sim­ple but effec­tive strat­e­gy. Once those numer­i­cal codes are implant­ed, the inmates are as help­less as babies wrapped tight in swad­dling clothes. Along with the inmates comes one of Gregory’s con­fed­er­ates. They have so lit­tle regard for our capa­bil­i­ties that only two guards are thought nec­es­sary to keep more than a dozen of us in check. Bingo! 

Of what wars these poor pris­on­ers are, I do not know. It is sad that they have all sur­vived the strug­gle only to end up here, ware­housed and main­tained, stored out of sight and out of mind by the true ene­my, one they nev­er even knew they were fight­ing. My mis­sion neces­si­tates that I keep a dis­creet dis­tance from these men, engag­ing them just enough to gath­er infor­ma­tion that might prove use­ful to the Ser­vice or aid me in my pro­tec­tion of the Pres­i­dent. I think most of them pose no threat, although threat can come out of a clear blue sky and calm sea. That I’ve learned. But there are a few men who bear care­ful watch­ing. And watch them I do. 

I cir­cle the room, my usu­al route, sub­tle as a shad­ow, blend­ing into my sur­round­ings, bare­ly notice­able, look­ing here, lis­ten­ing there, pass­ing by Pres­i­dent Lin­coln with every com­plet­ed cir­cuit. Noth­ing unusu­al to report, Chief Wood. The Pres­i­dent is safe, for the moment. I am doing my duty. Yes, it is some­thing to be proud of. Thank you, sir. You are too kind.

 * 

Gre­go­ry deposits me in the office of Major Wirz for my week­ly inter­ro­ga­tion. I’m not absolute­ly sure it’s Hein­rich Wirz, the mon­ster of Ander­son­ville, exter­mi­na­tor of Union pris­on­ers. He now goes under the absurd­ly innocu­ous name Dr. Jack Horner. Lit­tle Jack, indeed. He is almost as skilled at con­ceal­ing his iden­ti­ty as I am at con­ceal­ing mine. We are even­ly matched. But I have the advan­tage. I have Chief Wood. I don’t know who whis­pers in Major Wirz’s ear. 

Wirz is a very aver­age-look­ing man, not tall, nor short; nei­ther fat nor thin; bland fea­tures, a face you could for­get while look­ing at it. That, of course, is part of his pow­er. I must admit I have a grudg­ing admi­ra­tion for it. I sit quite still in the com­fort­able chair before his desk. The seat and arms are padded. Yes, I sit in a padded chair. 

Wirz—or Dr. Horner as I must call him—looks up from the file he has been writ­ing in and smiles. “You look well today, Ben.” 

“Thank you, Dr. Horner. I am well.” 

“Are you sleep­ing bet­ter? Those dreams that were both­er­ing you, are you still hav­ing them?” 

“Why, no,” I say. “I’ve been hav­ing rather pleas­ant dreams now. I believe that med­ica­tion you’re mak­ing me take has worked like a charm.” 

Dr. Horner leans back in his chair and looks at me in silence for a long moment. He is a man of long looks. “That med­ica­tion should not actu­al­ly be affect­ing your dreams.” 

“Well, an unex­pect­ed side ben­e­fit then,” I say. Damn. I must be careful. 

“Can you tell me a bit about these pleas­ant dreams?” 

Can you tell me about your dreams, Major Wirz? Do the breath­ing skele­tons of starved pris­on­ers wrap their boney arms around you? 

“Ben?” 

“I’ve been dream­ing of the ocean,” I tell him, quick­ly impro­vis­ing. “A love­ly day at the shore.” 

“The ocean? Do you remem­ber the last time you were by the ocean?” 

“It was quite a while ago. It was very nice.” Care­ful now, care­ful. The dev­il is, as they say, in the details. “I love swim­ming in the ocean. I’m quite a strong swim­mer, you know.” 

“Yes, I know,” says Dr. Horner. “And the last time you were at the beach. Were you alone?” 

I know what he wants me to say. He wants me to say I was with the wife they have invent­ed for me. Ben’s wife. But the name is some­thing I can’t recall. “Do you mind if I shut the win­dow, Dr. Horner?” I say, stalling for time. 

“I’ll shut it for you,” he says, gets up and goes to the window. 

The name, damn it, the name, Ben’s wife. Dr. Horner sits back down. “Was any­one with you at the beach that last time?” 

“Yes. My wife. Elsie.” 

“Ellie?” says Dr. Horner. 

“That’s what I said. Ellie.” 

He nods. “Any­one else?” 

“Well, there were lots of peo­ple there. It was a love­ly day.” 

“Didn’t you tell me you always went ear­ly in the morn­ing? When there were few peo­ple there?” 

“I think you’re right. That morn­ing there were few peo­ple there.” It’s like walk­ing a tightrope over an abyss. One slip and I’m gone. 

“Did you swim that day?” 

“Of course. The ocean was warm and calm. Per­fect for swimming.” 

“And did Elsie swim with you?” 

“Ellie,” I say. Got you, Wirz. Got him, Chief Wood. 

“That’s what I said. Ellie.” Dr. Horner makes a note in the file. 

I must remain calm. Rea­son­able. They need to believe that I believe them. That I think I am this man Ben. If they believe I am Ben, then they will nev­er know who I real­ly am, the man who pro­tects the Pres­i­dent, and who always will. Sic sem­per. 

“Is there any­one else in this dream of the ocean? I mean any­one you know.” 

“Why, yes,” I say. Let’s give the good doc­tor some­thing to think about. “You’re there.” 

“Me?” 

“Yes. But it’s odd, Dr. Horner. You’re in a uni­form. Not very appro­pri­ate for the beach.” I watch his eyes. He doesn’t blink. He is good. But I am better. 

He leans back in his chair and smiles. “A uni­form? Like a policeman?” 

“No. Like—a sol­dier. An offi­cer. Why, you look like a major.” 

“I believe you’re play­ing with me, Ben,” says Dr. Horner. “I’m not real­ly in your dreams, am I?” 

I say noth­ing. Per­haps I’ve gone too far. Wirz is a dan­ger­ous man— 

“I was think­ing of your grand­chil­dren, Ben. The twins.” 

“Oh, yes. Lit­tle angels,” I bluff. This is some­thing new. They want Ben to have grand­chil­dren. My God, I’m get­ting tired. How can I keep up with them? I need a moment, a moment to think.… 

“Would you like a glass of water?” 

For God’s sake, Chief, tell me what to do. But no. There is too much noise. I’m sweat­ing. Wirz shut the win­dow to take the air away. What’s next, bright lights in my eyes? 

“They were four this year. Am I right?” 

I hear a great rush­ing sound, like waves crash­ing in my head. Before I can stop myself, I’m out of my chair. I stand at attention. 

“All right, Ben. Let’s leave it at that for today. Ben?” 

“Lit­tle angels,” I tell Dr. Horner. The twins … 

He takes hold of my wrist and glances at his watch. “I’m going to try a change in your med­ica­tion. It may upset your stom­ach a lit­tle. But just at first. Is that all right?” 

I nod. I’m afraid to speak. I may blurt out some­thing I shouldn’t. I bite down on my tongue. 

Dr. Horner stands and goes to the door. “Gre­go­ry?”

Gre­go­ry comes in and stands behind him. “I’d like Ben to stay in his room for a bit. Per­haps a day or two. We’ll be try­ing a new med­ica­tion.” He turns to me. “I’ve fin­ished your book, Ben,” he says. “I enjoyed it very much. I’m not one for his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, but you have a way of bring­ing the char­ac­ters to life. The scene with Lee and Grant at Appo­mat­tox Court House—well, I felt like I was there.” 

“Thank you,” I say. So the man Ben has writ­ten a book. If that’s who they want me to be, I hope at least it’s a good one. 

*

The two days con­fined to my cell were almost unbear­able. Not for any depri­va­tion to myself but for the jeop­ardy in which I placed Pres­i­dent Lin­coln. My only con­so­la­tion was that the blan­ket­ing silence of that time alone gave Chief Wood ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to keep me informed and chide me, more gen­tly that I deserved, for my ill-advised thrust and par­ry with Major Wirz. And yes, he is indeed Major Wirz. The Chief has con­firmed it. 

My first action this morn­ing was to slip unno­ticed into the President’s cell. Not only did I find him unharmed and rest­ing peace­ful­ly in his bed, but his beard has actu­al­ly begun to grow back. He’s look­ing more like him­self. He looked at me and said noth­ing. His admirable restraint is a qual­i­ty I would do well to emu­late. With the faintest of smiles and a nod of his head, he indi­cat­ed his appre­ci­a­tion of my ser­vice to him. I think he feels safe. And I intend to keep him that way. If I must be this man Ben to oper­ate most effec­tive­ly in that regard, then Ben I shall be. At least until I have full intel­li­gence of our cap­tors’ inten­tions. It is a hard thing to be some­one you’re not. Who doesn’t want to sim­ply be him­self? With the excep­tion, per­haps, of you, Major Wirz. 

I sit in the gar­den and wait for Ben’s so-called wife to appear. Ellie. I must remem­ber the name. She’s work­ing for them, of course. And yet her heart doesn’t seem in it. I think she’s unhap­py with her work. Her efforts to make me into Ben, so ardent­ly desired by her supe­ri­ors, have been spot­ty at best. She seems so dis­cour­aged. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if at some point some­one else shows up pre­tend­ing to be Ben’s wife and we start all over. 

The gar­den is not real­ly a gar­den; that’s sim­ply what it is called. There are some met­al bench­es and a few pot­ted plants, and a small lawn sur­round­ed by a flag­stone walk. In the mid­dle of the lawn is a stone foun­tain, two lit­tle angels rid­ing the back of a dol­phin. Water slow­ly runs from the dolphin’s mouth as if leak­ing from a drowned thing. The largest part of the so-called gar­den is a con­crete square with met­al tables and chairs. A few inmates are sit­ting at the tables with their pre­sumed fam­i­lies. I sit on the bench oppo­site the win­dow to Pres­i­dent Lincoln’s cell. I keep my eye on the window. 

“Ben.” It’s the woman called Ellie. Gre­go­ry is with her. 

“You have a nice vis­it now,” says Gre­go­ry, and they exchange a know­ing look. 

Ellie sits down on the bench next to me. “How are you feel­ing today, Ben?” 

“Quite well, Ellie,” I say, and smile the way I think some­one named Ben might smile. 

Ellie puts her hand­bag on the bench next to her. The mini-micro­phone in her bag is acti­vat­ed by con­tact with the met­al bench. Elec­tro­mag­net­ic, the Chief explained. That’s fine. They will hear what they want to hear and what I want them to hear. They will hear Ben talk­ing to Ellie. 

“Dr. Horner tells me you had a bad day,” says Ellie. “So he put you on some­thing new. Has that helped?” 

“Oh, yes. I’m feel­ing much better.” 

“You’re look­ing bet­ter,” she says and smiles, but only for a sec­ond. The smile droops. She looks exhaust­ed. There are rings under her red-rimmed eyes. She plain­ly doesn’t sleep well. She must have been a very pret­ty woman once. But now she is fad­ed, like an old pho­to­graph. Still, she doesn’t seem a bad sort. What would make a woman like her work for them? I can only imag­ine. But mine is not to rea­son why, is it, Chief Wood? 

“Julie and Kei­th are back from Paris. I think it did them a world of good. Julie may go back to work next month.” 

“Good,” I say. “We all need our work, don’t we?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to go back to work? Back to your writing?” 

Care­ful now. “It’s some­thing to consider.” 

She puts her hand on my arm. “Don’t you want to be well?” 

“Doesn’t every­one?” I say. 

Ellie takes her hand away. “Why are you star­ing at that win­dow? Is that your room?” 

“No. My room has no win­dow.” As if she didn’t know. 

“Look at me. Please.” 

I look at her. 

“No one is blam­ing you. Not Julie or Kei­th. Not me.” 

I nod. The strain of keep­ing my eyes on Ellie and the effort of main­tain­ing my Ben-like smile is wear­ing me down. My head is begin­ning to ache. Ellie stares hard at me. What does she want? If only I had your wis­dom, Mr. Pres­i­dent. We sit in silence for what seems like a long time. 

“All right. They do blame you. But for God’s sake, Ben, give them time. And stop blam­ing your­self. You looked away. You were care­less. For just a few min­utes. And it took them. That heart­less ocean. Or a mon­strous God.” Ellie is crying. 

What a strange script they have her recite. There are appar­ent­ly grave con­se­quences to being Ben. No won­der they want me so bad­ly to be him. They’d have me then and even­tu­al­ly the Pres­i­dent too. “I think vis­it­ing time is over,” I say. I’ve got to check on Mr. Lincoln. 

“We just sat down,” she says and dries her eyes. 

“They have strict rules here. And I want to coop­er­ate. The rules are for my own good.” Lis­ten­ing, Dr. Horner? 

Ellie’s dis­tressed. She’s not get­ting what they want. Per­haps she’ll be pun­ished. God knows—monstrous God, she said?—they’re capa­ble of any­thing. She takes my face in her hands. Her hands are warm. “Be hon­est with me. Do you know who I am? Do you know who you are?” 

“You’re Ellie,” I say, try­ing to speak down toward her hand­bag, so they can hear me loud and clear. “My wife. And I’m Ben. Who else could I be?” 

There is such anguish in her face. Per­haps I am wrong. Per­haps she doesn’t work for them. Could she, too, be work­ing for the Service?

*

Word has final­ly come. My silent orders from Chief Wood. I’m to affect the President’s escape today. It can’t come soon enough for me. For the past few weeks I’ve found it more and more dif­fi­cult to keep up the cha­rade of being the man Ben. Major Wirz is very sus­pi­cious. At our last ses­sion he told me the worst thing I could do was to humor him; it would be bad for him and worse for me. With his frus­tra­tion, his own façade is crum­bling. His speech is begin­ning to have a slight Swiss accent, yes, the accent of his home­land, some­thing notice­able only to my trained ear. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if he starts sprout­ing a beard next and don­ning his Con­fed­er­ate uni­form out­right. Well, with the help of God and Chief Wood, the Pres­i­dent and I will not be here to see it. 

The plan is sim­plic­i­ty itself. It depends just on being in the right place at the right time and pay­ing close atten­tion. So much in life depends on that, Ellie. The Pres­i­dent is in his wheel­chair before the TV in the day­room, as usu­al. I am sit­ting in my chair by the win­dow, as usu­al. Gre­go­ry has led every­one except George to the game room to be inoc­u­lat­ed with Bin­go, as usu­al, leav­ing us alone with the blond atten­dant Tyrone. In a few min­utes Tyrone will dis­ap­pear to smoke a cig­a­rette, as he does every morn­ing when Gre­go­ry is out of sight. 

“Keep an eye on Arthur, will you, Ben? I’ll be back in five,” says Tyrone. “And you be good now, George,” he adds and works his lips silent­ly in deri­sive imitation. 

“Sure, Tyrone,” I say casu­al­ly, yawn­ing for good mea­sure to impress him with how ordi­nary a day it is. George takes no notice and con­tin­ues to silent­ly talk to him­self. And Tyrone is gone. 

I move swift­ly. I take the President’s wheel­chair and maneu­ver it to the door. I glance at George, who stops silent­ly speak­ing and waves good­bye. I know I can count on him to do noth­ing. It’s a quick roll down the hall to the unlocked doors to the garden. 

The skies are over­cast and heavy with the threat of rain. I wheel Mr. Lin­coln past the table and chairs to the lawn, along the path, past the foun­tain and around the cor­ner of the build­ing, out of sight. The Pres­i­dent turns in his chair and looks up at me. “Everything’s going accord­ing to plan,” I tell him. “Chief Wood will explain it all when we see him.” The Pres­i­dent makes no protest. He is no stranger to tak­ing risks for freedom’s sake. 

I push the Pres­i­dent up the grassy knoll to the park­ing lot and wheel him to the far side. The ques­tion is, where will they land? The Chief said I’d know it when I saw it. I scan the streets beyond the park­ing lot, and sure enough I spot it. Of course. The cir­cu­lar clear­ing in the mid­dle of the round­about, a large con­crete island with a flag­pole in the mid­dle and a big Amer­i­can flag wav­ing in the high wind. It couldn’t be plainer. 

We cross the lot and go down the ramp to the side­walk. Cars and trucks are cir­cling the round­about at vary­ing speeds. They slow down and speed up unpre­dictably. There’s no pedes­tri­an walk to the island. I stand and watch the cars go round and round until I have to look away. Now is the time to trust Chief Wood. Yes, sir. I do believe. If I don’t believe in you, what is left? I step off into the street. 

Cars stop. Some speed by. Some swerve away from us. They honk, but whether they’re for or against us I can­not tell. Some­one is shout­ing. I walk with my gaze straight ahead now, focused, see­ing and hear­ing every­thing. We get to the island just as a yel­low car com­ing around the curve comes so close I feel its speed graze my back. I fall hard against the wheel­chair and the Pres­i­dent rolls rapid­ly for­ward. I lunge with all my strength and catch the wheel­chair just enough to slow it down before I fall. The Pres­i­dent stops inch­es from the curb and the onslaught of the man­ic traf­fic. I’ve banged my knees bad­ly and scraped my hands bloody, but I strug­gle up, breath­ing hard, and rush to him. He grasps my hand. He is all right. He is safe. I have saved him. 

Over­head, out of the heavy sky choked with clouds thick as smoke, over and above the hiss of the hard rain falling and the blare of horns and wail of sirens and the roar of waves and the shouts of the police rush­ing to the island toward the Amer­i­can flag that is always fly­ing and the peo­ple on the beach run­ning in pan­ic and scream­ing and the blood boil­ing loud­ly in my ears, over the din I hear it, the sound, the sound of the heli­copter, with its great blades slic­ing the thick air, spin­ning and swoop­ing down from the sky to take us away, home, out of dan­ger, to the only safe place.… 

* 

Ellie and Dr. Horner stand at the foot of the bed and talk in whis­pers. I pre­tend to be asleep. It’s the only pre­tense I can man­age right now. I am too tired to do any­thing else. There is pain in my ban­daged knees. I go over things again and again in my mind. Why did the Chief abort the mis­sion? Was it my fault? Did I do some­thing wrong? I have a ter­ri­ble feel­ing I’ve done some­thing hor­ri­bly wrong. The Chief has not said a word to me since we were brought back. Not a sin­gle word. 

Ellie sits at the foot of the bed and watch­es me. She will fold me up into this man they call Ben and put me in Horner’s pock­et. And I will nev­er be seen again. 

I watch her through half-closed eyes. She pulls a chair to the head of the bed. “I know you’re awake,” she says. 

I say nothing. 

She sits in silence and con­tin­ues to watch me. Then she gets up and shuts the door. She pulls the chair even clos­er and leans over me. “All right. I can’t do this any­more. I know you’re not Ben.” 

I open my eyes and look at her. She seems sad beyond mea­sure. What have they done to her? 

“They want you to be Ben and they want me to help make you Ben. But you are not Ben, are you?” 

I want to tell her, but I can’t. I cloak myself in silence. 

“If I were you, I would not want to be Ben either. Not any­more. So I will not help them any­more. Do you under­stand? I will leave and not come back and you just be who you real­ly are, no mat­ter how much they try to make you some­one else.” 

Per­haps she is a friend after all. Perhaps. 

“Can you just tell me some­thing?” She paus­es and takes a deep breath that seems to pain her. “What is your name? I promise I will nev­er tell any­one else. Can you just give me that?” 

There is some­thing in her eyes, some­thing I think I can trust. “I don’t have a name,” I tell her. I can’t help it. For­give me, Chief. “In the Secret Ser­vice, we have only code names.” 

Her eyes widen and a tear falls like a big drop of rain. “A code name?” 

I nod and take her hand. 

“What is your code name, then?” 

“Rip­tide. The Chief calls me Riptide.” 

The woman called Ellie drops her head on the bed and cries. “But please,” I whis­per, “tell this to no one. It’s as secret as secret can be.” After a while she lifts her head, dries her eyes, gets up, kiss­es my fore­head, and leaves. I sup­pose I will nev­er know who she real­ly is. I lie as still and as silent as I can. I close my eyes and lis­ten to the silence for a long time. When I open my eyes the lights are out, but stand­ing at the foot of my bed is Mr. Lin­coln. I can see him plain­ly in the dark. 

“Mr. Pres­i­dent. You’re all right. You can walk.” 

The Pres­i­dent smiles. 

“Chief Wood has said noth­ing to me since they brought us back here.” 

The Pres­i­dent nods. 

“What are we going to do, Mis­ter Lincoln?” 

“We are going to lis­ten,” says the Pres­i­dent, “to the bet­ter angels of our nature.” 

 

From the writer

:: Account ::

Not long ago, I read a sto­ry in the news about a man who acci­dent­ly dropped his baby grand­daugh­ter off the rail­ing of a cruise ship. He was hold­ing her before a pan­el, which he mis­tak­en­ly thought had glass before it. It did not. The lit­tle girl fell to her death. The child’s parents—including the man’s own daugh­ter and oth­er fam­i­ly members—were present. 

Among the peren­ni­al ques­tions about the human con­di­tion that intrigue and dis­turb me is this: how does one bear the unbear­able? How do ordi­nary peo­ple, imbued with the extra­or­di­nary sense and sen­si­bil­i­ty of our kind, the fac­ul­ty of ful­ly know­ing and appre­ci­at­ing all we do and the con­se­quences, sur­vive the guilt and unfath­omable pain of hav­ing com­mit­ted an act, even if ful­ly acci­den­tal, with such dread con­se­quences as the death of that baby girl? Does one live or die? And if one lives, how? 

Paul Negri is the edi­tor of a dozen lit­er­ary antholo­gies from Dover Pub­li­ca­tions. He was twice award­ed the gold medal for fic­tion in the William Faulkn­er – William Wis­dom Writ­ing Com­pe­ti­tion. His sto­ries have appeared in The Penn Review, Flash Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, Pif Mag­a­zine, Jel­ly­fish Review, and more than 50 oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. He lives in Clifton, New Jersey. 

Fiction / Reshmi Hebbar

 

:: Do Not Be Afraid ::

The snow had fall­en two days ear­li­er. If it fell again tonight, Pallavi’s moth­er might try and get every­one to stay until Christ­mas Eve. But then again, if Pallavi stuck to her deci­sion and told her par­ents, they might make her leave. She imag­ined being ban­ished from her child­hood home, a place she wasn’t keen now to arrive at any­way. She pic­tured dri­ving back to Bloom­field in the black night, the white flakes falling every­where or still packed on the ground, the voice of regret hiss­ing in her mind instead of the voice of urgency. As she head­ed east around the city, the salt­ed roads and still fresh lay­ers of white pre­sent­ed a sense of order she was reluc­tant to dis­rupt. Tell them! the whoosh­ing of the high­way seemed to entreat. Pallavi gripped the steer­ing wheel and con­sid­ered con­tra­dic­to­ry pos­si­bil­i­ties: noth­ing she could say would get her thrown out into the cold; she would be fine out there any­way. Like an unex­pect­ed charge of sero­tonin surg­ing through her brain, she remem­bered again events from the night before, Alex’s lips flut­ter­ing against her neck. 

When she pulled into the dri­ve­way, Pallavi was struck, as she always seemed to be now, by the mod­esty of the struc­ture her par­ents had tak­en care of so deter­mined­ly, repaint­ing the sid­ing with crisp white coats, adding a side door to the front-fac­ing garage, call­ing arborists to pre­vent the elm tree in the front yard from dying in the pass­ing blights. Her rel­a­tives in India might no longer be impressed by the size of the house, at least not in the same way they would have been when it was being built in the late sev­en­ties, when her moth­er used to send pho­tos to Hyder­abad and Ban­ga­lore of Pallavi and her broth­ers tod­dling around on the linoleum in the kitchen. Even if its promise now seemed dat­ed, its colo­nial style, the snow in the yard, and the sur­viv­ing tree—these spotlit a steady­ing truth, one that her par­ents would nev­er own up to: they belonged to this place now more than the old one. 

If they could only admit this, Pallavi felt, her life would be easier. 

“Pal­lu, set small­er plates for Samir and Maya. Give them plas­tic cups instead of glass. Chil­dren are always spilling.” Her moth­er often con­clud­ed instruc­tions with a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for giv­ing them. Pallavi could have remind­ed her that she was not unfa­mil­iar with the habits of kids just because she didn’t have any of her own. But she was feel­ing grate­ful for her mother’s fran­tic host­ess ener­gy, which always sup­plant­ed the space for any­body else to come out and say what was tru­ly on their mind. It was per­verse and per­haps anoth­er para­dox to con­tend with: her moth­er would be so busy enter­tain­ing that any­thing Pallavi want­ed to tell her would have to wait; the quick­er Pallavi was at per­form­ing these tasks, the more time there would be left for sit­ting every­body down and hav­ing a prop­er talk. In the mean­time, these flash­backs to Alex’s hands and lips, the quick dop­ing jolts that she treat­ed her­self to around the house now were like shak­ing a present not yet meant to be opened. She did not deserve to remem­ber any­thing until she told them. 

Pallavi’s eldest brother’s fam­i­ly arrived in Mon­roeville an hour lat­er, her niece and nephew drag­ging snow in from the yard onto the engi­neered hard­wood her par­ents had installed in the foy­er. They demand­ed soda when she was pour­ing them some juice. It had dis­mayed Samir to see hock­ey on the tele­vi­sion instead of Nickelodeon. 

“Pal­lu, use the rags from the laun­dry room—not the kitchen—to clean up the snow, and turn on this Dis­ney or what­ev­er for Samir in our bedroom.” 

Every­one in the Red­dy fam­i­ly, includ­ing Pallavi’s sis­ter-in-law, would have known not to take a rag from the kitchen to wipe up the floor. 

In the small mir­ror her par­ents had hung by the front door, Pallavi caught sight of her flushed face and felt relief. She wasn’t twelve years old but a grown woman over thir­ty-five who could pass for thir­ty. Alex hadn’t just been flat­ter­ing her; her skin was indeed bright and youth­ful. There hadn’t been a need for lines or games, just the imme­di­ate igni­tion when Alex had pro­nounced her name so per­fect­ly, the grat­i­tude Pallavi had felt then warm­ing her low­er back, her pelvis, her toes, until it felt nec­es­sary lat­er to deox­i­dize the heat they were gen­er­at­ing at their table in the mood-lit bistro. 

“The Christ­mas tree looks great, Amma,” Pallavi’s old­er broth­er, Ravi, called now to their moth­er as he passed the liv­ing room. “When’s Arjun get­ting here?” 

“Arjun had to work half day today,” their moth­er answered from the kitchen. “We’ll open the presents after din­ner. You brought all the children’s gifts from home, right?” 

Ravi halt­ed at the entry to the den and gave Pallavi a look. She want­ed to raise an eye­brow back at him—she was clean­ing up after his kids. 

“Amma, you know that San­ta brings their gifts,” Ravi told the top of Pallavi’s head. “He won’t show up until they’re in bed at home tomor­row night.” 

Ravi’s wife, Kavya, emerged now from the pow­der room. 

“Leave that, Pallavi,” she said, tak­ing the rag from her hands. 

“Kavya, my mother’s ask­ing why we didn’t bring the kids’ presents.”

Pallavi watched Kavya bend to the floor and ignore this remark. She was curi­ous about the ten­sile qual­i­ty of her brother’s mar­riage. Per­haps Pallavi felt this way towards any tra­di­tion­al rela­tion­ship between adults of her gen­er­a­tion, the kind that involved pri­vate skir­mish­es about trips to the gro­cery store and in-laws. The type that would not have required her to lean up and whis­per in a hot moment into Alex’s ear, or any person’s she real­ly want­ed to date, that she didn’t feel com­fort­able in the open, so could they please take this inside? 

“Tell her you’re on call, no?” Kavya mur­mured final­ly, stand­ing up with the rag curled in her fist like a rosette. 

They all turned at the foot­steps, the famil­iar beat of Pallavi’s moth­er in her rub­ber flip-flops. 

“What is this, Ravi? Kavya nev­er did San­ta and what-all in India when she was a child. Is it okay with her that you are not even stay­ing here one night this week?” 

The ten­sion of this moment dis­tract­ed Pallavi from the two parts appre­hen­sion and one part resolve that had been turn­ing to acid inside her since she’d arrived. 

“I’m on call, Amma. Start­ing at mid­night tonight,” Ravi tested. 

Look at you, Pallavi want­ed to say. Instead, she took the rag back from Kavya and went to hang it up in the laun­dry room before her moth­er could ask her to. The evening was still wide open; there were still many chances left. 

Her father was on the car­pet of the den try­ing to set up the stereo. 

“Come, Pallavi. I’m look­ing for the Vasund­hara Devi record. You’ll sing lat­er, no?” 

The room’s wood pan­el­ing had been paint­ed over in light gray, a col­or their moth­er dis­liked but their father claimed would help with resale when­ev­er the time became necessary. 

“Appa, I haven’t tak­en lessons in twen­ty years. I don’t do that stuff any­more.” Pallavi wished her response could have con­veyed more than it did, and that her father, instead of reply­ing with the words she felt cer­tain he would use in a moment, would stop root­ing around the cab­i­net for aux­il­iary cables and come out and say what had been obvi­ous for too long. For as long as her par­ents had been updat­ing the house, and plan­ning for retire­ment, and find­ing Ravi a wife, and then wor­ry­ing about Pallavi and her oth­er broth­er, Arjun, for­ward­ing on emails, week after week, with descrip­tions of peo­ple who would be the per­fect mates for them, sent from peo­ple who knew oth­er peo­ple look­ing for per­fec­tion. She wished her father would put down the wires and take a hard look at her. Then he would be able to answer: of course you don’t. 

“Anjaathae Nee Vaa,” her father sang. “Anjaathae Nee Vaa. It is your her­itage, Pallavi.”  

Alex had asked about Car­nat­ic music on their date, and Pallavi had found that, when she was with the right kind of per­son, she could be elo­quent about things she had tak­en for granted. 

“That sounds amaz­ing. I’d love to hear it some­time,” Alex had gushed, del­i­cate­ly fork­ing up a last bite of floun­der from its but­tery skin. “I wish I came from some­where else! All I had was mid­dle school glee club.” 

Pallavi had want­ed to say that she’d been in glee club too. That she and Alex weren’t as dif­fer­ent as you’d expect. But maybe it wasn’t true. For most peo­ple, the date wouldn’t have been as big of a step as it had been for her. 

When the whole fam­i­ly had final­ly assem­bled for din­ner, her moth­er asked how Pallavi’s search for a mar­riage “prospect” had been going. “Are you find­ing any­one interesting?” 

Pallavi felt embar­rassed in front of the kids. 

“Yeah. Sure. There’re some.” 

“Well, what are their names?” 

Pallavi’s twin broth­er, Arjun, reached across the table and asked Samir to pass him the pani puris, pre­tend­ing after­ward to fum­ble with the bowl so that the boy gasped and gig­gled. Pallavi knew what her broth­er was try­ing to do. She took a breath. 

“One’s name is Alex. We actu­al­ly went out last night,” she said, glanc­ing around the table as if she were delight­ed to have been asked. She did not look at her mother. 

“Alex?” her father said. “So, not an Indian?” 

“No.” Tech­ni­cal­ly not a lie, Pallavi told her­self, and inhaled again. Adren­a­line began to pool inside her. 

“What about the two or three boys which Rad­ha Auntie’s sis­ter sent us the con­tact info for?” 

“Those nev­er worked out.” Pallavi kept chew­ing care­ful­ly, even after she had swal­lowed her puri. Arjun was look­ing at her, but the moment had passed. Now didn’t feel like the right time after all. 

“What do you mean nev­er worked out? Did you call them?” 

“Amma—” 

“Did you guys catch Cros­by in the Pen­guins game last week? Jesus—” 

“Arjun, wait … ” 

“You know, Mom,” Kavya was speak­ing. Kavya almost nev­er spoke. “Even in India these days, girls are wait­ing until their thir­ties to set­tle down. My col­lege friends and all.” 

Pallavi felt grate­ful to Kavya—the girl was always nice to her, even if she seemed devoid of a real per­son­al­i­ty. But her sister-in-law’s point would count for lit­tle giv­en that Kavya was three years younger than her. It also didn’t fail to net­tle Pallavi, as it always did, that Kavya, the only younger per­son at the table who had not grown up in Amer­i­ca, could call their moth­er “Mom” while they could not. 

“Pallavi is thir­ty-sev­en years old,” her moth­er rebutted. 

“Hey, so am I!” Arjun widened his eyes until Samir and Maya smiled. 

“That’s old!” Samir marveled. 

“Not as old as your dad,” Pallavi retort­ed, fill­ing up anoth­er puri to stuff her mouth with. 

“Aw, come on. I’m only forty-two, guys!” Ravi grinned around the table. 

“You are not old,” her moth­er said, and of course every­one knew what she meant. These words might have pushed open again the win­dow for telling them, but Pallavi did not jump at the chance. Instead, she stole anoth­er peek at the mem­o­ry of Alex’s hand on her neck as they had wait­ed for the valet. Not old, not too old! she want­ed to shout across the table now. 

“After din­ner,” her father was offer­ing into the brief silence that fol­lowed her mother’s pro­nounce­ment, “Pallavi will enter­tain us with some old fash­ioned music. You’ll like it, kids, I promise.” 

“Appa—” Pallavi began. 

“I want us to watch Bend It Like Beck­ham!” Samir cried. 

“Okay, okay. No prob­lem. We’ll see after that.” 

“Every­body rinse your plates prop­er­ly before putting them in the dish­wash­er. They don’t get clean oth­er­wise,” her moth­er said when she could com­mand atten­tion again. 

“Anjaathae Nee Vaa,” her father sang as the dish­es were being gath­ered. “Anjaathae Nee Vaa,” he con­tin­ued as Pallavi grabbed the broom before she could be told to sweep up under the din­ing table. “Anjaathae Nee Vaa,” he trilled as he was adjust­ing the wiring in the media cab­i­net, unplug­ging con­nec­tions to the stereo’s receiv­er and hook­ing them up instead to the video input. 

Anjaathae Nee Vaa. In Tamil, which was not her par­ents’ moth­er tongue, the phrase meant “Do not be afraid.” The song was about a woman who tried to talk to com­mon birds—pigeons, doves—to coax them into trust­ing her to hold them for a moment before releas­ing them into the sky. 

Her par­ents’ taste in music had always been sur­pris­ing­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic. They’d not allowed them­selves to get caught up in debates about which South Indi­an lan­guage had the best songs, or which lan­guage Pallavi should take lessons in. They had nev­er mind­ed the cas­settes being blast­ed from Ravi’s room upstairs, or the head­phones Arjun took to wear­ing when the twins were teens, or the semi-rit­u­al­ized way Pallavi had record­ed and then con­sumed music videos on Sat­ur­days, the intense­ly monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships she’d main­tained with artists for months at a time: Belin­da Carlisle, Deb­bie Gib­son, Mari­ah Carey. 

“Anjaathae Nee Vaa,” her father was singing as they all filed into the den, Kavya refus­ing to sit on the sofa, and Pallavi’s moth­er rush­ing to pick up glass­es that had been left out of the dish­wash­er, the chil­dren claim­ing most of the space, Samir tak­ing imag­i­nary shots at an imag­i­nary goal. 

“What is his obses­sion with this movie?” Pallavi asked as a way to qui­et her­self. The voice inside her was get­ting shrill. 

“He’s obsessed with the actress who plays Jesmin­der,” Ravi joked. “He loves that scene when she takes off in her soc­cer shorts and kicks all those boys’ butts.” 

Pallavi’s moth­er said nothing. 

“I love the soc­cer!” Samir protested. 

“I love the wed­ding!” lit­tle Maya joined in. 

“It sounds like you remem­ber the movie so well that we don’t have to watch it,” Pallav­i’s father tried, his fin­ger ready on the remote. He seemed so hope­ful. What would it do to her par­ents, this thing inside her, to peo­ple with such sim­ple though par­tic­u­lar needs—a daugh­ter who would sing clas­si­cal music, and chil­dren who would find part­ners who shared their “her­itage”?  

Her moth­er said noth­ing. Pallavi felt like a bird in a com­pound, torn between the offer of ready food and the safe­ty of flight. 

“I don’t know why they set this movie in Eng­land instead of Amer­i­ca,” Arjun put in from the armchair. 

“That’s where Beck­ham is, genius.” Ravi’s crit­i­cisms of Arjun had got­ten milder over the years. 

“I know, but they could have picked a dif­fer­ent sport, dif­fer­ent ath­letes, and done it here, right? We have kids going through those issues here.” 

“Shhh!” Samir urged them. But Pallavi knew what her twin had been try­ing to do. 

“This is the movie with the kid who … you know. The Sikh girl’s friend?” Her moth­er sur­prised them all with her wav­ery tone. 

“Which friend, Ammam­ma?” Samir asked eager­ly. “You mean Jules? The girl who brings Jess onto the team? She has short hair and is real­ly good?” 

Pallavi real­ized then what was the rea­son behind Samir’s infat­u­a­tion with the film. She’d always been able to detect those loose ends of attrac­tion that peo­ple tried to hide. She might have said some­thing now, but she didn’t want to embar­rass her nephew. Her nerves were reflux­ing again because she felt cer­tain her moth­er wasn’t ask­ing about Keira Knightley’s character. 

“Not that one, sweet­ie.” Pallavi’s moth­er looked away from her grand­chil­dren to their par­ents. “The oth­er friend. The Sikh boy whom the girl’s par­ents want her to get engaged to. Should the chil­dren be watch­ing this?” 

Pallavi felt a strange relief bub­ble up through the dread roil­ing in her. Wasn’t this the per­fect moment, then? 

“You mean because that kid isn’t straight?” Ravi brushed the thought aside with a wave. “The movie is about soc­cer and Indi­an cul­ture, Amma. Come on.” 

“Don’t you think it can give chil­dren ideas though?” 

“What kind of ideas, Amma?” This was Arjun again, and Pallavi’s instinct was to shoot him a look that said “take it easy,” a habit devel­oped through their short­hand of qui­et, if not direct, resis­tance. Where was the voice inside her head now? Where were her words? Why was she let­ting the oth­ers do the talk­ing for her? 

“Ideas like it is okay to be … you know.” 

“Gay?” Arjun asked. 

“Arjun, stop shout­ing,” their father said. 

“Why aren’t you ask­ing whether it’s wrong for the movie to be pro­mot­ing Sikhism then?” Arjun went on. “I mean there are Sikhs every­where. Look at them. So many.” 

“Arjun, will you just shut up?” Ravi snapped. 

“Dad­dy, we’re not sup­posed to say that!” Maya whimpered. 

“You’re right, sweet­heart. Every­one be quiet.” 

“I think it’s impor­tant for kids to be exposed to as many lifestyles as pos­si­ble,” Pallavi spoke into the fresh silence. 

“What lifestyle?” her moth­er demand­ed. “They are immi­grants liv­ing in Lon­don, and the par­ents are so igno­rant. So tra­di­tion­al. This is not Indi­an cul­ture, I say.” 

Her mother’s anger always man­aged to take Pallavi by sur­prise. Inside her mind, the voice and the words had flut­tered away, but she reached now to find them, prepar­ing for cer­tain failure. 

“Indi­an cul­ture has changed, Amma. There are new­er immi­grants. And more gay peo­ple. All over the world.” 

Sure­ly this was all that need­ed to be said. Sure­ly she’d said it all? 

“Maybe things like that hap­pen in those com­mu­ni­ties over there, but it doesn’t hap­pen in ours,” her moth­er insisted. 

“How do you know that though, Amma?” Arjun asked now. For all the emo­tion flap­ping inside her, Pallavi could not decide whether she want­ed him to go on. “How do you know what it was like for all of us?” 

“I’m just say­ing,” her moth­er said, her voice ris­ing as if try­ing to be heard over a crowd­ed room, “that all of this being what­ev­er you want is just a fashion.” 

Arjun’s eye­brows were lift­ed, but Pallavi looked away. She knew what she was sup­posed to say next, that she was sup­posed to ask her moth­er what she meant about being fash­ion­able, and that Arjun would like­ly join her in skew­er­ing their mother’s flim­sy points against the wall of their shared under­stand­ing of the real world. But she had reg­is­tered the tini­est hint of ter­ror in her mother’s voice. 

“It’s not fash­ion, Amma,” Pallavi said slow­ly. “It’s not some­thing to be afraid of.” 

“Why we had to pick this movie instead of some­thing about Christ­mas, I don’t know!” her moth­er answered and stared fierce­ly at the television. 

“Anjaathae Nee Vaa,” her father sang soft­ly, tilt­ing his head at Pallavi. 

“You’re ruin­ing it!” Samir stood up shout­ing. He grabbed the remote from the floor and jacked the vol­ume up ten decibels. 

“You have to turn it down, Samir, so the oth­ers can talk,” Kavya said. 

“I want to go home.” The boy piv­ot­ed sud­den­ly, the remote con­trol held at his chest like a handgun. 

Pallavi’s father was the first to react. “Don’t say that, Samir. We are all togeth­er here. It’s Christmas.” 

“It’s Christ­mas Eve Eve!” Maya chant­ed, and Pallavi could not tell whether she shared her brother’s frus­tra­tion. “Santa’s com­ing on Christmas!” 

“San­ta can come here, too,” Pallavi’s moth­er posit­ed. The expres­sion on her face now was one of unmasked panic. 

“No he can’t, because we live in Sewick­ley,” Samir replied. “We need to leave milk and cook­ies out for him.” 

“We can do that here. We have milk and cook­ies from the store.” 

“Today’s not Christmas!!” 

Samir’s fury seemed phys­i­o­log­i­cal, emo­tion cat­alyzed by a dif­fer­ent crea­ture, or par­a­site, forc­ing its way out of his body. Kavya jumped up from the floor. 

“Tell your Ammam­ma you are sor­ry for shout­ing, Samir. Right now. Be a good boy.” 

“I’m sor­ry.” 

“Mom, it looks like we should go. Some­thing must have hap­pened to his stom­ach, or maybe he needs bet­ter sleep tonight. But we should go. I’m sorry.” 

Pallavi’s moth­er said noth­ing, and over her father’s protests, Pallavi could hear Ravi detail­ing their sched­ules, offer­ing a fam­i­ly din­ner at his house in two days. Peo­ple need­ed to get some rest, he said. And he was on call anyway. 

“Well, I’m going to go, too. I’ll catch you guys lat­er.” Arjun stood up and pulled his keys from his pocket. 

“You can­not go back to Lewis­burg now, Arjun.” Their father was incred­u­lous. “You’ll get there in the mid­dle of the night.” 

Arjun laughed. “Appa, it’ll be fine. I can text you when I arrive. I was always going to leave late.” 

“Nobody wants to stay here any­more. Every­body wants to leave.” 

Their mother’s words were the truest ones Pallavi had ever heard her say. They sound­ed so strange, so purged of judg­ment. Pallavi thought of the song her father want­ed her to sing, about the woman lur­ing the birds to her hands, the clar­i­on firm­ness as she sang in the for­eign lan­guage: do not be afraid. 

“Maybe you can take some time and think about why that is, Amma,” Arjun sug­gest­ed loud­ly, mov­ing his bulky body into the foyer. 

“What are you say­ing, Arjun? Do you real­ize what you’re saying?” 

Pallavi’s father had the old warn­ing in his voice, the rare thorni­ness from when the boys’ fights became too phys­i­cal when they were young, or when Pallavi overt­ly dis­obeyed their moth­er, the prick­ly tim­bre of final author­i­ty. She looked at his face as he rose from his chair. He appeared, so faint­ly that one could miss it, lost. 

“You should have just sang like I asked, Pallavi,” her father said, his stature seem­ing so small in the room he’d proud­ly maintained. 

“Leave her alone, Appa. It’s not her fault. You guys need to let her talk to you any­way. We should all leave,” Arjun fin­ished, open­ing up the front door. “I love you all, but I’m tak­ing off.”

A part of Pallavi want­ed to laugh now at her brother’s pre­sump­tion. She sensed that she had a right to be angry at him for rush­ing her, for manip­u­lat­ing the moment like this. 

“What does he mean let her talk to you?” Pallavi’s moth­er asked her. The fear was still spum­ing in her face. “Do you want to leave now too?” 

There were deep­er ways to hurt her par­ents, Pallavi real­ized, than what she had failed to tell them her whole life. There were more dev­as­tat­ing things they were fright­ened of than real­iz­ing the truth about any one of their chil­dren. And all the oth­er emo­tions that blind­ed peo­ple, like out­rage and resent­ment, weren’t they also just excus­es for peo­ple who want­ed to fly off and be left alone in the first place? She of all peo­ple knew that it was hard­er to stay put and sing. 

Pallavi opened up her mouth and closed her eyes. “That’s not it. Alex is a woman. I’m gay,” she began and noticed that when she opened her eyes again they were still stand­ing there in the half-emp­ty den. “But I don’t want to leave.” 
 

 

 

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

Pallavi Red­dy, the hero­ine of “Do Not Be Afraid,” is one of four women fea­tured in sto­ries I’ve been work­ing on for almost a year, ever since I got the idea to take my mem­o­ry of attend­ing Hin­du tem­ple camp in Penn­syl­va­nia when I was a kid and using it as a means to con­nect dif­fer­ent adult com­ing-of-age nar­ra­tives of char­ac­ters from the same cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty who first met as teens. Though my own expe­ri­ences were dif­fer­ent from Pallavi’s chal­lenges as a queer South Asian girl grow­ing up in the 1980s, I found myself enriched by writ­ing sto­ries from her per­spec­tive of com­pound­ed iso­la­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly when I set her life in a part of the coun­try that I did not know but had been drawn to while attend­ing camp as a child. That is, writ­ing about her allowed me to imag­ine and cre­ate a sense of belong­ing to a par­tic­u­lar Indi­an com­mu­ni­ty I did not have real access to while also test­ing the lim­its of its abil­i­ty to be social­ly accept­ing from with­in. After writ­ing and pub­lish­ing a first sto­ry about Pallavi as a teenag­er, I real­ized that I wasn’t fin­ished with her fam­i­ly. I sensed a poet­ic poten­tial in her adult repres­sion and real­ized that she deserved her own sto­ry about com­ing out to her fam­i­ly as a les­bian in her late thir­ties; it offered a unique way to explore the theme of mid­dle-age regrets and the onset of mid-life iden­ti­ty crises. Both are key con­nec­tive themes with­in my larg­er man­u­script of more sto­ries of which this piece of fic­tion is a part. 

The rhythm car­ry­ing the nar­ra­tive for­ward (my rep­e­ti­tion of a spe­cif­ic line two-thirds of the way into the sto­ry) was inspired by my watch­ing a black and white YouTube video of the South Indi­an clas­si­cal song from which “Do Not Be Afraid” ulti­mate­ly got its title, a song, as Pallavi tells us, about a woman try­ing to hold birds in her hands. Hav­ing nev­er heard the song before, I felt almost heart­bro­ken by my lack of expo­sure to it and my hav­ing tak­en for grant­ed such a rich cul­tur­al her­itage when I was younger and my par­ents were keen to make it known to me. Birds as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of women’s restrict­ed self-empow­er­ment is an old trope; I want­ed to repur­pose it as a sym­bol for par­ent­ing as well. Not only is Pallavi strug­gling like a bird to be brave and “sing” her truth, but her par­ents are also wrestling with the nec­es­sary les­son of learn­ing how to let their chil­dren go. The trans­la­tion of the title from its orig­i­nal Tamil helped me to crys­tal­ize the idea that Pallavi’s abil­i­ty to speak up and come out to her par­ents rests on her real­iz­ing that her fear is sim­i­lar to their own. Once she does, she is able to see their human­i­ty instead of just their author­i­ty, one of many lessons essen­tial to “grow­ing up” as an adult. 

 

Resh­mi Heb­bar pub­lish­es aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly about women’s mul­ti­cul­tur­al and immi­grant nar­ra­tives. She has pub­lished non­fic­tion at Slate, fic­tion at Funic­u­lar Mag­a­zine, and has fic­tion forth­com­ing at West Trade Review. She is an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Oglethor­pe Uni­ver­si­ty, where she pro­duces an ongo­ing pod­cast fic­tion­al­iz­ing the expe­ri­ences of South Asian immi­grants and their chil­dren. She lives out­side of Atlanta with her hus­band and two daughters. 

Fiction / Jessica Alexander

 

:: The First Act ::

The dra­mat­ic thrust had all but been enact­ed. It lacked only a third or sec­ond act. 

The Count­ess had come and promised to come back. Lau­ra sat, list­less­ly embroi­der­ing in a nook by the win­dow. It was so many years ago, Lau­ra told her­self, and it nev­er was a love affair. It lacked even a sec­ond act. She sus­pect­ed the Count­ess was a liar. She sus­pect­ed the Count­ess was dead or dying some­where. It felt unfin­ished. If there’d been even a sec­ond act, she’d know what to call it. So, one morn­ing, when the girl float­ed along the walled gar­dens, Lau­ra stood and gasped. There was a moat and a draw­bridge and a stone foun­tain. They’d sat by the foun­tain in the first act. Her knit­ting nee­dles clat­tered to the ground. A ghost! she thought. The Count­ess has come back!

The girl, for her part, stopped amidst the fra­grant lilacs. Her shoul­ders clutched as if she had been struck. There was the slab of stone where she sat so many years ago, but she could not remem­ber what for or why she had returned there. She did not love it, and the mute and stu­pid stone, it did not love her either. Still the foun­tain soft­ly gur­gled. The water was the kind of blue that makes you think of dream­ing. I have been here before, she was think­ing. It makes you want to give your mind away. To trade it in for some­thing sweet­er, some­thing kinder. Some­where a bird chirped, and she almost loved it, almost thought that’s what love is: how the air held her to itself. She stood very still beside the foun­tain. The sound was clear. The light was clean. The sun dipped behind some clouds. She stood there. A ter­ri­ble trick! She looked over the edge of her strange body as if it were a precipice, and longed to fling her­self for­ev­er over it. It was a ter­ri­ble trick to be held here. She did not want it. 

That’s how Lau­ra found her, so still beside the stone, like she might fling her­self into the moat. “Wait—” Lau­ra said, but on see­ing the girl’s face, she sprang back. Was this the Count­ess? She looked dif­fer­ent. Maybe younger. The Count­ess did not seem to know her. 

“Are you a ghost?” she asked. 

The girl said she did not know. 

“Come clos­er,” Lau­ra said. Though she knew it was a hor­ri­ble trick to coax a dead girl into her soli­tude, she want­ed to. She want­ed this girl for her com­pan­ion. But ghosts, she thought, are such fatal­ists. They do not like tricks, and yet— 

Had Lau­ra said that aloud? Like an indig­nant cat, the girl gath­ered her­self. It isn’t true, she thought. I haven’t any preferences. 

Lau­ra, of course, con­ced­ed. How could she know a thing about this strange being? So, she told her­self, and yet she was cer­tain it was an argu­ment they’d long been hav­ing. The grass, the branch­es, the foun­tain. Let me invent this. She’d make her remem­ber. Yes, it is all a trick but it will get inside you, she was think­ing. I will put it all inside you again. Is it hor­ri­ble for me to curate a memory—to call it loving—and like a balm or a berry I’ll press it through your rough lips. Because, admit it, you’ve been starved, are starv­ing. The sky! Just look at it. How every day the air feels like a day you’ve lived already. And what are you then? Just some­thing briefly hold­ing it, forc­ing it all to go on exist­ing. How utter­ly unre­al­is­tic it is to want any of this, and yet— 

“I want to show you some­thing,” Lau­ra said. 

How could any­one be like this, the girl was mar­veling. Was mad, so mad, so ven­omous. Her hard eyes, her con­tempt, her impas­sive mouth. I’m noth­ing like her! I’m noth­ing. How can any­one know enough to say so much? Say, I am like this? Con­fess. How can any­one say: I am like this. This hap­pened. Then this. Now I am like this. It’s remark­able, real­ly, she was think­ing, what some could say! They sit. They sigh. They say, Look at the sky. And you look at the sky. They force your eyes. Your mind. They get inside you. They say, I want an apple. And so you want an apple too. You want some sol­id thing inside you, an idea. It is not enough to touch the tree, the grass, where you sit and laugh. You must car­ry it all away with you if you want to be some­body too. Some­one must make you want something—they will put an image in your head and it can­not hold or con­sole you. And if they are some­one like this woman, Lau­ra, you are wait­ing. You are hold­ing your breath. And you are won­der­ing: what will she make me want next? It’s like trad­ing your­self in for a sto­ry, and so, you’ll nev­er be sure whether the sto­ry was any sweet­er or kinder than you were. Mean­while, the sky is on the brink of mean­ing some­thing. It’s all too hor­rif­ic. A hor­ri­ble trick! You want a fog­gy city. You want some­how to be smoth­ered in fog or a fond mem­o­ry of some­thing long ago. A city. Call it Venice. No, not Venice. Maybe Bath. Call it Bath. 

The girl remem­bered a vil­lage: the build­ings were grand and bro­ken. Some­where some­one else was wait­ing for her, and she was try­ing to get back to her. Did she ever get back there? She didn’t think so. That’s how all the sto­ries go, isn’t it? And the girl was won­der­ing, who put that sto­ry inside of her, and did she want it there? How, now, she won­dered, would she ever rid her­self of it, this ter­ri­ble bereave­ment? Was it even hers? 

Mean­while, time was passing. 

I will invent you, Lau­ra was think­ing. I have felt this way, Lau­ra was think­ing. I have felt this way. Before you came, I felt this way. Like the clouds felt heavy and they pressed some­thing out of me. Like I might drown in sky. Like all day I sigh. Like I can’t tell if the air in my chest is too much or if I can­not get enough. 

And then, the girl told her­self: I won’t be sad because you say so. I won’t be so suggestible. 

Some­where on a tree limb a bird chirped. “Do you like the sound of that? I like the sound of birds in the morn­ing. I like the morn­ing. We have such won­der­ful birds here. I like the light. I like the way it creeps in slow­ly, glow­ing. I want to show you some­thing,” Lau­ra said. 

How does one come to know this about them­selves? How does one come to know they like the sound of birds? To have a thing to show some­one? To say: look? And then you turn your eyes just like they want you to. Why? Because you are a fool. 

“What’s wrong,” Lau­ra was ask­ing her. 

It had nev­er occurred to the girl to say any of these things. And what hap­pened when one said it, when Lau­ra said “what nice birds” was that she want­ed the earth to swal­low the birds. To swal­low her. Why should she want this, she won­dered. Because this girl made her want and she want­ed wrong! When Lau­ra said she loved this time of day, the singing birds, the sky, which was almost pur­ple, she want­ed to impale her­self on a tree limb or a fence—she want­ed to nev­er leave it, to curl up and die inside a sweet­ness she would nev­er learn to trust. The girl felt ner­vous. Tell your­self a sto­ry. Look, the sky you loved has changed already. Tell it. Tell it quick. Before it all changes again. But when she watched her­self talk, when she tried to bring her­self into being, she seemed to push her­self fur­ther and fur­ther away from what she’d aimed at, some vital glow­ing thing, some­thing else. What was it? Why was this woman hold­ing her hand and lead­ing her on and on through the tall grass, toward the house. She ought to be leav­ing now. 

For Laura’s part, she found the girl very odd. She was noth­ing like the Count­ess. She knew noth­ing. So, Lau­ra had to tell the sto­ry all over again, to start from the begin­ning. Still she liked her. How strange and pret­ty she was with such wilder­ness in her wild hair and her face all bronze from stand­ing in the sun. Her voice was rough and pleas­ing. So stern and sad and seri­ous. It was a joy to stand in the grass and look at her. She thought she was a ghost. “Are you a ghost?” she said. 

The girl said she did not know. 

“You remind me of some­one,” Lau­ra was telling her. “There is a woman who vis­it­ed so many years ago. You remind me of her. You look iden­ti­cal. Only you are so dif­fer­ent. So wild and shy. I have the woman’s por­trait inside. Would you like to see it?” 

“Yes,” the girl said. But she did not believe it. Not real­ly. Not yet. It was a trick. The way the sun felt. The way this woman wanted—what? To make her want. To make her say it. “Yes, I want to see it.” 

It is a trick, Lau­ra was think­ing, and you are a fatal­ist. How could she pos­si­bly know this, she won­dered. Because all the sto­ries have been told. She want­ed to tell her this, they’re all tricks, you know, and yet— 

She did not know how to make the argu­ment. It was self­ish. She want­ed a com­pan­ion. She liked this girl who spooked so easy like a bird. Like an injured bird, she thought, I will care for her. 

Then, sud­den­ly, the girl remem­bered some­thing: the fra­grant lilacs that bloomed two weeks each spring, the walled kitchen gar­dens, the shrub­beries, the park­land, the poplars and the pear trees. 

She shut her eyes and braced her­self for a hard slap. 

Because this world, she thought, who wants it? 

Every­one. What­ev­er it is. Every­one wants this so bad they’d claw their own heads off to keep them­selves from want­i­ng it. 

Would you like to see it? 

See what? 

A por­trait of your­self. Come. I want to give you this. An expe­ri­ence. To carve a shape in your mind the size of myself, and if there is such a thing as betray­al, I will betray you, because you are not me. But come out of the sun. I want to show you something. 

The girl held her­self at the edge of the foun­tain. She did not know what else to do. Hadn’t this already hap­pened? Why am I here again? She was won­der­ing. Have I left some­thing undone?

 

 

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

I kept hav­ing this dream about a woman I knew. 

Let’s call her Car­ol. The last time I saw her was in high school, which was, to be hon­est, a very long time ago. The dream is set in a wrecked city that’s full of red light and fog. And I’m look­ing for her. I ask a bar­tender, “Where’s Car­ol?” He points across a smoky room at some­one, and there is noth­ing famil­iar about her. Still, the bar­tender is not wrong, that’s Car­ol, and I’m will­ing to accept it, though, admit­ted­ly, I’m dis­ap­point­ed. Like all the urgency just swirled down the drain of this dream. I don’t know Car­ol anymore. 

I haven’t seen her since high school, and in my wak­ing life I have no desire to speak with her. And so, this long­ing, like many, total­ly baf­fles me. I can’t help that. At night I’m wan­der­ing through the ruins of my mem­o­ry, want­i­ng bad­ly to tell Car­ol something. 

A bar in win­ter was the last place I actu­al­ly saw Car­ol. She sat on a stool and I sat on a stool across the room. And she looked at me with this very styl­ized hatred. It was high school. We were too young to be there. She didn’t want to say hel­lo. It was clear. It was no big deal, or was she jok­ing? Her sense of humor was won­der­ful and bru­tal. So, I thought about say­ing hi to Car­ol, but then she’d left, and that was the last time I saw her. It wasn’t a big deal, in part, because it took a decade to decide that was the last time. And the dis­cov­ery, by then, felt like stum­bling into my present, hold­ing a rel­ic, like a VHS, which is obvi­ous­ly just so use­less now. Still, I dream about it. What could I pos­si­bly have to tell Carol? 

When you’re young it’s like that. You have this rich inner life, and maybe a friend equal­ly invest­ed in per­form­ing it. Two years pass, and, maybe, you imag­ine all that has noth­ing to do with the peo­ple you’re becom­ing. I liked Car­ol. In high school, I liked the Bron­tës, too, and all through col­lege I’d look back on that fact and feel baf­fled by it. I loved Char­lotte Bron­të in par­tic­u­lar. I loved espe­cial­ly Vil­lette, which tells of Lucy Snow, who, after an unspec­i­fied fam­i­ly dis­as­ter, leaves Eng­land for the fic­tion­al French-speak­ing city of Vil­lette, where she teach­es at a girl’s school. And so, in the nov­el there is a world which reflects the severe finan­cial, social, and pro­fes­sion­al lim­i­ta­tions imposed on sin­gle women liv­ing in the Vic­to­ri­an era, and then this wild exces­sive coun­ter­part and counter-tem­po­ral­i­ty to that world, where Lucy Snow has this super­sen­su­al inner life, rich with desires whose objects all dis­solve inside these very elab­o­rate metaphors. And it’s odd because nar­ra­tive usu­al­ly needs such erot­ic props. A home, in the Vic­to­ri­an nov­el, is usu­al­ly one such ves­sel. And Lucy Snowe hasn’t got one. She says, “To be home­sick, one must have a home, which I have not.” It wasn’t, to me, a sim­ple dis­avow­al but a tes­ta­ment to the illeg­i­bil­i­ty of her loss and her long­ing evinced by the false author­i­ty of def­i­n­i­tion. I mean, she’s wrong, right? One must pos­sess a home to long for it? But she’s exclud­ed and home­sick for anoth­er world. And so this nar­ra­tive sleight of hand, this self-defense, which dis­avows emo­tion by negat­ing its objects, seems also to expand the hori­zon of her long­ing. So, there’s nev­er an object, and yet the nov­el is so erot­i­cal­ly charged! I know peo­ple dis­agree. I’ve read essays about it. There is an object, they say—its name is Paul. Well, I, for one, could nev­er state with clar­i­ty what in this world exact­ly Lucy wanted—and still the nov­el erupt­ed, at every turn, with rabid and wound­ed wanting. 

And so, I was think­ing about spec­tral desire, and I want­ed to write a nov­el, a spec­u­la­tive, par­o­d­ic, and goth­ic melo­dra­ma. Of course, there’d need to be a ghost, and the ghost is real­ly dis­cur­sive, pre­oc­cu­pied with negat­ing the world and her desire for it, which is to say, she’s real­ly angry. And I want­ed it to end when a woman seduces the ghost back to liv­ing or at least she attempts to do so for what can only be very self­ish rea­sons and I’m almost fin­ished and this is how my melo­dra­ma ends.

 

Jes­si­ca Alexan­der’s sto­ry col­lec­tion, Dear Ene­my, was the win­ning man­u­script in the 2016 Subito Prose Con­test, as judged by Selah Sater­strom. Her fic­tion has been pub­lished in jour­nals such as Fence, Black War­rior Review, PANK, Den­ver Quar­ter­ly, The Col­lag­ist, and DIAGRAM. She lives in Louisiana, where she teach­es cre­ative writ­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Fiction / Emily Yin

 

:: All My Girls ::

Claire tells you not to wor­ry, she’d just been mak­ing tea. Sarah’s hair falls limply, just past her shoul­ders, like a sheet of cloth. Liv recites Mayakovsky in a chapel, scat­ter­ing the night with each unsteady line. Claire sends pic­tures of her burned palms. Liv smirks at your wide-eyed rev­er­ence, says your favorite line com­pares the stars in the sky to flecks of spit. Sarah sits with arms unspooled, gaze pinned firm­ly on some dis­tant place. She doesn’t squirm or look away when the teacher lobs a ques­tion at her, only shrugs, and that’s that. Sarah—oh, Sarah. You’re nobody but she’s untouched, untouch­able. You start to con­struct a mythol­o­gy around her: all the kids falling away from her like the sea at low tide, her eyes flick­er­ing, how the flame nev­er dies.

You weren’t meant to be frail, you and Claire; as high school­ers you’d net­ted one grim vic­to­ry after anoth­er, unstop­pable, an A here and an acco­lade there. Dis­played such promise, had so lit­tle time to feel. Or maybe you’d got­ten it all wrong, reversed the direc­tion of causal­i­ty. Maybe numb­ness came first and ambi­tion sim­ply fol­lowed; ambi­tion, your only ram­part in a shape­less world. The thought plagues you like a phan­tom pain. Claire, guard­ed but not unkind. Liv, brash but aching­ly earnest. Sarah, pli­ant and unafraid. Hadn’t you sensed it all those years ago? It’s always the brit­tle that break.

*

You orbit Sarah war­i­ly at recess, too proud for over­tures. The heat is unremit­ting. A record high, the anchor­men say. All the oth­er kids take turns on the wood­en slide, its rollers clack­ing like your mother’s aba­cus. You kick peb­bles around, wait­ing for the heat to break. But Sarah, she’s some­thing else. Sits cross-legged in the shade, lac­ing and unlac­ing the web of yarn between her hands. Some­times she glances up, quick­ly, and begins anew. She’s per­form­ing for some­one, you real­ize. She’s per­form­ing for you. One day you gath­er your courage and walk up to the ledge on which she’s perched. What is that?

Her gaze flicks to the yarn and then your face. Cat’s cra­dle, she final­ly replies, words clipped and clear. Want to play? And so it goes: pass­ing the loop of string back and forth day after day, your small, bony fin­gers col­lid­ing with hers. At first you bare­ly talk. You’re afraid of say­ing the wrong thing, offend­ing her as yet unknown sen­si­bil­i­ties, and so you smile, shy­ly, when­ev­er your eyes meet. Her first real words to you are an accu­sa­tion. Why are you here?

Why? Dumb­struck, you find your­self echo­ing her words.

I can see you look­ing over at them dur­ing recess. After class, too. Her words are mat­ter-of-fact and devoid of con­tempt. You want to join in when they make their jokes; you open your mouth but nev­er speak.

It’s… You grope for the right words. I don’t know. They go too fast—you cut your­self off, look at her implor­ing­ly. She stares, refus­ing to fill in your blanks. I don’t know, you par­rot, painful­ly aware of the ver­bal tic clut­ter­ing your speech. It’s just that, by the time I think of some­thing clever, they’ve already start­ed on anoth­er top­ic. So I’m always too late.

She shoots you an inde­ci­pher­able look. In that ago­niz­ing moment, it dawns on you that Sarah does not, will not, can­not under­stand, Sarah with her self-rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and infi­nite tran­quil­i­ty. How do you do it? You want to ask. How do you stop car­ing so much all the time? But then she’s say­ing it’s okay, it’s okay, and you’re exhal­ing shak­i­ly, feel­ing inex­plic­a­bly lighter.

*

Sarah is not the humor­less girl you thought she was. Your admis­sion strips her of that arti­fi­cial grav­i­ty and you’re girls again, imp­ish and fun. You start tak­ing the bus to her house after school, spend hours in her base­ment play­ing make-believe. Yes­ter­day you were sophis­ti­cat­ed French girls in a Parisian cafe, sip­ping wine and nib­bling mac­arons. Tomor­row you’ll be wealthy heiress­es, the day after pen­sive pau­pers. Some­times, for no rea­son at all, you look at her and feel a strange con­stric­tion in your chest. Years lat­er, when you start to notice boys, you will call this longing.

You play duets, too, she on the sax­o­phone and you on the flute, mid­dling at best alone, down­right ter­ri­ble togeth­er. When you tire of the cacoph­o­ny, you clam­ber up the stairs and col­lab­o­rate on a fan­ta­sy nov­el which becomes more elab­o­rate with each pass­ing week. Your par­ents, dis­mis­sive at first, start to peer over your shoul­ders. When they read the first draft, a sheaf of papers one-hun­dred-odd pages long, they exchange glances. Not bad, they say. Not bad at all. Sud­den­ly the par­ents, both yours and hers, are invest­ed in your part­ner­ship. They talk over the pos­si­bil­i­ties at the din­ner table and on the phone. Sarah’s aunt works in the pub­lish­ing busi­ness; her moth­er said it might be worth a shot to send it over, see what they make of it. Or: the girls could be excel­lent bridge partners—I’ve nev­er seen two peo­ple so in sync. Per­haps, per­haps, per­haps. It is the sum­mer of 2009. Every­one speaks in hypo­thet­i­cals, but it all seems so inevitable. And then she’s gone.

*

The tests results have come back nor­mal; the gas­troen­terol­o­gist found no cause for your abdom­i­nal pain. In oth­er words, you have a clean bill of health. Claire lis­tens, impas­sive, as you relay this to her. Are you okay? She asks at last. For a moment you won­der if she heard any­thing you said, but then you under­stand. Yeah, thanks for ask­ing. Your eyes burn a lit­tle. The truth is that you’re still afraid. You’ve amassed so much fear in the past few months—where can you set it down? And how can you be fine if the pain’s still there? But Claire doesn’t ask again.

The two of you sit in the parked car. You’re not quite sure why you’ve con­fid­ed in her. You were part­ners in chem lab, then friends as a mat­ter of course, but con­ver­sa­tions had always revolved around exams and after-school clubs, care­ful­ly skirt­ing the red zone of your inte­ri­or­i­ties. You think back to that thaw­ing between you and Sarah, how it had been pre­cip­i­tat­ed by one dis­clo­sure, and feel a spark of hope. But your pre­mo­ni­tion is wrong. You con­tin­ue to pass each oth­er in the halls, wave, and move onto the next class; con­tin­ue to quiz each oth­er on lim­its and synec­doches; con­tin­ue to labor tire­less­ly over home­work and grades. And so the days pass.

*

Livia calls your name in a girl­ish voice, names her bike for you. You have her in your con­tacts as col­or­blind and con­sci­en­tious, a jab at her rigid black-and-white sense of moral­i­ty. She stoops to pick up lit­ter mid-curse, mocks your ter­ri­ble sense of direc­tion but defends you vicious­ly. Those who’ve han­dled you like shards of bro­ken glass all your life gape in amaze­ment. Some­times she pelts her words with too much force, but you nev­er par­ry. Before, you think, you were untouch­able. It was a lone­ly thing to be. You know Livia’s a real one when you ask her for a pic­ture and she drops to the pave­ment in the flam­ing Bei­jing heat. Won’t let you for­get it either. Remem­ber, I’d burn my knees for you, she says, and you know it’s true.

*

You haven’t talked to Sarah in years. She becomes a sym­bol of your child­hood hap­pi­ness, a stan­dard against which all oth­ers are mea­sured and found want­i­ng. When you’re sad, you trace the long course of your friend­ship to its very end: cat’s cra­dle, the nov­el, fight­ing to the point of laugh­ter, laugh­ing to the point of tears, all those sum­mers play­ing tag, long legs scis­sor­ing in flight and hands out­stretched, shame­less excuse to touch and be touched, that quick­en­ing of pos­si­bil­i­ty, the U‑Haul on her dri­ve­way, the solemn good­bye, first love, the hard­est break.

*

Claire attends col­lege one thou­sand miles away. In spite of the phys­i­cal dis­tance, or per­haps because of it, the dis­tance between you has col­lapsed. You send songs to each oth­er when words fail; over the months, the con­cate­nat­ed lyrics write a kind of shared his­to­ry. You tell her about whit­tling down the hours in a local book­store, slip­ping through unlocked cam­pus build­ings at night, how the burn­ing in your gut had eased and then van­ished alto­geth­er. She talks often about being sad; you make all the right nois­es but sel­dom wor­ry. The girl is inde­struc­tible. Livia, on the oth­er hand, always seems to be on the cusp of splin­ter­ing. She ago­nizes over hypo­thet­i­cals, spams your phone five, ten, twen­ty times at once.

“I don’t know” becomes your trade­mark refrain. Of course you have your ideas, but you think of omis­sion as a form of mer­cy. Easy to for­feit your opin­ion instead of sub­ject­ing it to Livia’s anx­ious dis­sec­tion. Hard to stand by mute­ly as she cuts her­self, over and over, on the ser­rat­ed edge of hope. And yet the alter­na­tive is unthink­able. I don’t know, you say when she asks if he’d ever cared. I don’t know. You’ve seen the type, earnest but oh so care­less, the type for whom ten­der­ness does not equate to love. If you were a bet­ter friend you’d warn her, per­haps. But you don’t know for sure. And, more self­ish­ly: you can’t risk her shoot­ing the mes­sen­ger, can’t lose your best and dear­est friend. It scares you how much you need her. Cir­cling each oth­er on the dance floor, how she push­es the hair from her eyes, her face irra­di­at­ed by strobe lights stream­ing down like rain. And then you reach for each other’s hands, two school chil­dren play­ing Ring Around the Rosie, spin­ning, pock­et full of posies, light and sound and time sink­ing into the ecsta­t­ic dark, dis­man­tling you in the best way, ash­es, ash­es, a con­tin­u­ous descent, but you nev­er fall.

*

It’s over. Heart­bro­ken, Livia wants to put her head in your lap. Some­times you recoil vio­lent­ly, won­der what it is you’re so afraid of. Oth­er times you acqui­esce, pull her in almost vio­lent­ly, whis­per the words to a poem you’d once read: I wish I could cut off your pain like hair (but all I real­ly want to do is comb it). You know this is a pro­sa­ic pain, one she will emerge from large­ly unscathed, but you ache with a pecu­liar ten­der­ness. A few days from now, Claire will scald her hands and call it an acci­dent. You’ll phone Livia, try to beat back the shock waves with ques­tions for which she has no answer. Why do I feel so strange­ly detached? Shouldn’t I feel more? Shouldn’t I feel less? How can words be so dev­as­tat­ing­ly impotent?

She’ll receive you, stut­ter­ing out your help­less­ness, as a priest at con­fes­sion. In the span between your words, the truth you might nev­er say: I need­ed you, Sarah. Was so, so alone before I met you, Claire. Thought myself unknow­able till you knew me, Liv. How I care for you, and you, and you. You close your eyes, hear Livia’s shal­low breath­ing over the line. You know I’d burn my knees for you, she says. You envy her this cer­tain­ty. Imag­ine a cam­era flash, a white-faced Claire, a tub, the Bei­jing heat. Liv, you say. Liv. The words crack open the sound­less night, more promise than revelation.

 

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

This piece is a ret­ro­spec­tive on my girl­hood. I’ve been think­ing a lot late­ly about the emo­tion­al toll of intimacy—not just the pet­ty spats and well-worn rit­u­als of ado­les­cence (nav­i­gat­ing first love and rift, envy, aca­d­e­m­ic stress, the social tur­bu­lence of high school, etc.) but also the cost of car­ing, of tak­ing on bur­dens that—once assumed—can nev­er again be put down or for­got­ten; fear of code­pen­den­cy; that pecu­liar blur­ring between love and vio­lence; and how, despite all this, there can be no oth­er way of living.

 

Emi­ly Yin is a junior study­ing com­put­er sci­ence at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. Her writ­ing has been rec­og­nized by the UK Poet­ry Soci­ety and the Alliance for Young Artists and Writ­ers. She cur­rent­ly serves as a poet­ry edi­tor at Nas­sau Lit­er­ary Review. Her work is pub­lished in Indi­ana Review Online, Glass: A Jour­nal of Poet­ry, Pit­head Chapel, decomP mag­a­zinE, and Con­no­ta­tion Press, among others.

Fiction / Anne McGouran

 

:: Venice, 1595 ::

In spite of all my efforts, the Doge’s trot­ters are fit to appear along­side the dwarves and amputees he brings out at court enter­tain­ments. There’s a gouty pouch on his left foot that resem­bles a sixth toe. No mat­ter how I pumice and cau­ter­ize, his bunions resem­ble over­ripe figs.

“Pieri­no,” he sighs, “when I’m dead they’ll all gloat: ‘We sure squeezed the last drop out of Doge Grimani.’”

“Do not dis­tress your­self, Most Serene Prince. I’ll pre­pare a chamomile poul­tice with­out delay.”  (I might have to rethink those draw­string thongs—maybe invent some kind of toggle.)

When­ev­er I come up with a new treat­ment, the Doge pats my head and calls me his “clever young wor­thy,” which puts me on a rung just below his Per­sian wolfhounds. Most days he’s eas­i­ly pleased—a tot of mosca­to, some rice and peas, relief from those cracked heels and jaun­diced toe­nails, pro­tec­tion from his grasp­ing wife.

Nowa­days Her Lady­ship has to be fer­ried around in a sedan chair by four por­taseggette till she can walk unaid­ed in her 27-inch cork-platforms—the lat­est fash­ion from Moor­ish Spain. Last week, two ladies-in-wait­ing came to me with over­stretched ankles. “The Dog­a­res­sa sends us on bogus errands then fines us for tar­di­ness,” Fausti­na whis­pered. “She’s got stumpy legs and a grimy yel­low neck under that fan­cy ruff.” While I made up spe­cial heel padding, the ladies took turns swivel­ing on the fan­cy new stool with a move­able seat I won at dice.

At least the cam­paign to erect a stat­ue of the Doge is going well. Guess all his well-placed elec­tion gifts didn’t hurt. A goc­cia a goc­cia s’in­ca­va la pietra. (Drop by drop one wears away the stone.) He was pleased with the long-toed cor­rec­tive shoes I fash­ioned for his audi­ence with the Per­sian Ambas­sador. I sewed a goatskin upper onto a leather sole, turned it inside out to con­ceal the seam. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the old boy tripped while descend­ing the Giants’ Stair­case, the Dog­a­res­sa glar­ing at him from out of those pink slits.

When I learned the Dogaressa’s coro­na­tion will set the old boy back 144,000 ducats, I sent a mes­sage to Fausti­na. “Wouldn’t Her Seren­i­ty like a pair of winged plat­form san­dals to com­ple­ment her tow­er­ing head­dress?” I scraped bronze gild­ing off an old mir­ror and blend­ed it with mar­ble dust and sand to resem­ble wings. The soft padding con­forms to the shape of the Dogaressa’s foot, but the genius part is the under­lay­er. Trace amounts of ground viper, dung, and mer­cury will slow­ly leach into her sen­si­tive soles. She won’t be alle­mand­ing with her courtiers any time soon. Like we corn-cut­ters always say, “Pain comes on horse­back but goes away on foot.”

I’d best nip over to Manin’s Print Shop before he gets to work on my call­ing card. My first choice was “Piero Cafisi: Expert in the Erad­i­ca­tion of Painful Corns, Stone Bruis­ing, and Cuta­neous Excres­cences,” but I’ve set­tled on “Renowned Spe­cial­ist in Indel­i­cate Foot Conditions.”

 

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

Three years ago I became fas­ci­nat­ed with the Dog­a­res­sa, the Venet­ian Doge’s offi­cial spouse. Out of the thir­ty-five Dog­a­res­sas, I decid­ed to research Dog­a­res­sa Morosi­na Morisi­ni-Gri­mani, whose extrav­a­gant coro­na­tion was the last on record in Renais­sance Venice. I won­dered if she had any polit­i­cal influence.

Mean­while, my hus­band and I booked a two-week get­away in New York City. Our guest house (accord­ing to their web­site) con­tained part of an Ital­ian Renais­sance library that once belonged to the Duke of Urbino. I got it in my head that the Duke of Urbino was Morosi­na Morosini’s hus­band. At the local ref­er­ence library I pho­to­copied floor plans of a 14th cen­tu­ry ducal palace, includ­ing its elab­o­rate ceil­ing medal­lion. When we final­ly checked into the House of the Redeemer, I rushed down­stairs to the sto­ried library clutch­ing my pho­to­copies. I gazed up at the vault­ed ceil­ing only to dis­cov­er that the medal­lions didn’t match. A his­to­ri­an lat­er clar­i­fied that the library actu­al­ly belonged to Fed­eri­co da Mon­te­fel­tro. My bad.

I aban­doned my Dog­a­res­sa sto­ry and began to think about the lives of min­ions at the Venet­ian court. I reread Eliz­a­beth Janeway’s Pow­ers of the Weak: “a wise mis­trust of the pow­er­ful and a will­ing­ness to exer­cise dis­sent” is nec­es­sary if the weak are to rule their own lives. I thought about gos­sip as a weapon of the weak. The fic­tion­al char­ac­ter of Piero Cafisi emerged after I read an orthotics brochure which said that “corn-cut­ters” pre­dat­ed podiatrists.

 

Anne McGouran’s sto­ries and essays appear or are forth­com­ing in Cleaver, Cut­bank, The Smart Set, Mslex­ia, Queen’s Quar­ter­ly, Orca, Switch­grass Review, and Gar­goyle Mag­a­zine. She lives in Colling­wood, Ontario where she has devel­oped a fas­ci­na­tion with ice huts and orchard ladders.

Fiction / Rachel Levy

 

:: Severin ::

I.

Sev­erin is a char­ac­ter in a nov­el. He is a Gali­cian gen­tle­man and landown­er. He is thir­ty years old, a smok­er. He is sex­u­al­ly inex­pe­ri­enced. He craves eggs, soft-boiled, and likes to press his face against stat­ues. He likes stat­ues. He loves fur. He dab­bles in poet­ry and sci­ence. He col­lects ani­mal skele­tons, stuffed birds, and plas­tic cats. He does not want to be hanged by a woman, so he trains women. He rests his chin in his hands. His hands are del­i­cate­ly veined. Accord­ing to his neigh­bors, Sev­erin is dan­ger­ous and odd. He has zero friends, unless you count the nar­ra­tor of the book. Sev­erin and the nar­ra­tor are best friends. They smoke cig­a­rettes at Severin’s estate. They talk about lit­er­a­ture, domes­tic vio­lence, and the fig­ure of the cru­el woman. The cru­el woman ambles roughshod over the grass­es in the art­works of wealthy het­ero­sex­u­als of Euro­pean descent. Sev­erin con­fess­es to the nar­ra­tor. Once he used sci­ence to bring the cru­el woman to life. Like the wife in the block­buster film Bride of Franken­stein (1935), the cru­el woman was ill-suit­ed for love.

For exam­ple: The cru­el woman chains Sev­erin to a thick wood­en rod. Then she orders a man of Greek descent to engage Severin’s body in a whip­ping with­out Severin’s con­sent. In addi­tion, she breaks up with Sev­erin while his body is still attached to the thick wood­en rod. She refus­es to have pen­e­tra­tive sex with Sev­erin. No, they nev­er have pen­e­tra­tive sex. The absence of pen­e­tra­tive sex is demor­al­iz­ing to Sev­erin, and yet it helps him to devel­op a polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion which posi­tions him favor­ably on the job mar­ket. I will elaborate.

“What doesn’t kill you births a more vir­u­lent strain of your kind,” writes Friedrich Wil­helm Niet­zsche. Niet­zsche is a Ger­man bach­e­lor who rejects the com­pan­ion­ship of peo­ple, pre­fer­ring an assort­ment of hand-held fire­works and domes­tic tools, such as sparklers and a ham­mer. He is famous for his vir­ginal mus­tache. You aren’t allowed to touch it! Oh, Niet­zsche. While Sev­erin is attached to the thick wood­en rod, he is over­whelmed and close to death on account of the man of Greek descent who is whip­ping his body. Fast for­ward a few days, and Sev­erin is on hol­i­day in Rome tap­ping the virtues of socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus to process the trau­mat­ic roman­tic expe­ri­ence. In short, Sev­erin endures. He per­se­veres like Queen Mab and push­es the hazel­nut car­riage of day labor­ers through the har­row­ing tun­nel of the absence of maid­en­hood, dip­ping into the fam­i­ly cof­fers to buy him­self a ration of the most exquis­ite cocaine. Lat­er, in the heat of an Ital­ian night­club, Sev­erin snatch­es a neon glow­stick from a les­bian! Then he is danc­ing. Sev­erin dances to express his sense of humil­i­a­tion and loss. It isn’t long before Severin’s danc­ing draws the atten­tion of a well-con­nect­ed group. In a qui­et vel­vet cor­ner, nes­tled in the rear of the night­club, the group plies Sev­erin with liquor and a flight of hens stuffed with sur­pris­ing fla­vor com­bos like cheese and nuts. Sev­erin swears the group to secre­cy. Then he shows them the blue­prints for orga­niz­ing soci­ety along strict hier­ar­chi­cal lines. They decide to get brunch after. The morn­ing is dewy and bright, veined with sil­ver tor­rents. It’s beau­ti­ful! My god. It’s beau­ti­ful. Sev­erin is cry­ing now. He is slob­ber­ing. He’s chok­ing a lit­tle. It’s just so. So. Beau­ti­ful. He com­mits right then and there to join the fight for men’s rights. In due time, he inher­its his father’s estate. That’s how Sev­erin evolves into the polit­i­cal per­sona we know and love today.

Sev­erin owns clas­si­cal paint­ings. Sev­erin owns impor­tant books. Sev­erin owns top-qual­i­ty cig­a­rettes. There’s also a silk-clad thingy, plump in a bodice, walk­ing on stilt­ed doe’s legs through­out the cor­ri­dors of Severin’s estate. The silk-clad thingy car­ries a plat­ter of boiled eggs and meats. As not­ed above, Sev­erin is an active par­tic­i­pant in the men’s rights move­ment. The author uses plain lan­guage to com­mu­ni­cate Severin’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the fig­ure of the tyrant on both a per­son­al and polit­i­cal lev­el. For these rea­sons and oth­ers, the naïve read­er might be tempt­ed to con­clude: “Well, there you have it! Severin’s a tyrant. This is a tyran­ni­cal book!” But the com­plex­i­ty of the text threat­ens oth­er­wise. For exam­ple, when the silk-clad thingy presents the plat­ter of boiled eggs and meats, Sev­erin reacts in an unex­pect­ed man­ner. He is over­come by anguish because the eggs are not cooked to his lik­ing. The eggs are hard-boiled, but Sev­erin prefers soft-boiled eggs. His pref­er­ence for the soft-boiled egg sub­verts the log­ic of tyranny.

I will elaborate.

Through­out the his­to­ry of the West, tyrants have pre­ferred to asso­ciate them­selves with hard objects. Since there is no rea­son to assume this pref­er­ence does not extend to eggs, the read­er spec­u­lates that it is the nat­ur­al ten­den­cy of the tyrant to choose the hard-boiled egg over the soft-boiled egg. If Sev­erin were actu­al­ly a tyrant, then he would have wel­comed the hard-boiled egg into the sen­si­tive inner-mouth space of his head. Sev­erin does not wel­come the hard-boiled egg into the sen­si­tive inner-mouth space of his head.

The author of the book out­fits Severin’s sen­si­tive inner-mouth space with the trap­pings of a bachelor’s boudoir. The boudoir is lined from floor to ceil­ing in the rich­est pink vel­vet. Ever since read­ing the book, I have caught myself sali­vat­ing at the thought of spend­ing the after­noon in Severin’s mouth. One day in the future, after I’ve put in my time and ascend­ed some of the rungs, I hope to take an entire week­end. I’ll bring along a nov­el, plus sev­er­al of my col­leagues and friends! We’ll dis­course on lit­er­a­ture, ethics, and the nec­es­sary exclu­sion of some groups from the pub­lic sphere. Unable to pre­vent our hands from caress­ing the walls, we’ll wipe our fin­gers on the thick pink sur­face. Then the room will begin to vibrate, and a deep-throat­ed purring will fill up our ears.

In addi­tion, and it goes with­out say­ing, the tyrant’s pref­er­ence for the hard­ness of hard-boiled eggs, and for hard objects in gen­er­al, evokes the turgid­i­ty of the phal­lus when it is erect. This thrilling detail con­nects to a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion held by tyrants the world over: the dis­avow­al of cas­tra­tion. The tyrant does not under­stand that he is cas­trat­ed. But what about Sev­erin? Does Sev­erin under­stand that he is cas­trat­ed? Sev­erin absolute­ly under­stands that he is cas­trat­ed! For exam­ple, before Sev­erin real­izes he must devel­op a method for train­ing women in order to pre­vent women from hang­ing him, he takes orders from a woman. For this rea­son and many oth­ers, Sev­erin is not your typ­i­cal tyrant. Sev­erin is a good person.

Grant­ed, this book is a com­pli­cat­ed book due to the fas­cist over­tones. Sev­erin open­ly lays claim to tyran­ny. Sev­erin sup­ports his claim to tyran­ny via action. In one scene, for exam­ple, Sev­erin threat­ens the silk-clad thingy with domes­tic vio­lence because the eggs have not been cooked to his lik­ing, but every­body knows that in the old­en days Europe was unseem­ly. The Sov­er­eign put peo­ple to death. He didn’t under­stand that he was cas­trat­ed. Before cast­ing judge­ment, I ask that you con­sid­er the fol­low­ing: Has Sev­erin ever tried to con­ceal his unsa­vory polit­i­cal com­mit­ments from the read­er? No, Sev­erin has not. In fact, Sev­erin has always been incred­i­bly open and hon­est about the most trou­bling facets of his per­son­al­i­ty. His forth­right­ness is com­mend­able in and of itself. In return, we owe Sev­erin a sim­i­lar debt to honesty.

Let us strive to be hon­est. It feels good to be honest.

II.

Hon­est­ly, my mem­o­ries of Sev­erin are grim. I didn’t like him. We met as grad­u­ate stu­dents in a mid­dling cre­ative writ­ing pro­gram out west. The school no longer exists. It was cheap­ly affixed to the side of a moun­tain. Weak­ened by drought and fire, it even­tu­al­ly suc­cumbed to grav­i­ty and was qui­et­ly shed like a scab. Nobody noticed it was gone.

Sev­erin was a ter­ri­ble writer and an emo­tion­al­ly manip­u­la­tive per­son­al­i­ty. High on phi­los­o­phy and art, he could reor­ga­nize the world just by glanc­ing at it. I still remem­ber how much it hurt to get caught up in his line of sight. I had to go and lie down. If I acci­den­tal­ly sat across from him in a sem­i­nar or work­shop, then I’d be knocked out for days. “Influen­za,” I said. I was always say­ing that. I couldn’t stand him, and yet we were friends. That’s how friend­ship worked in school. Then it was over. Sev­erin and I fell out of touch. The school fell off the moun­tain. Yeah, I’ve thought about reach­ing out. Because I wish I could tell him that the whole time we were friends, I was busy despis­ing, him. Sev­erin, I despised you and every­thing you stood for. I’m sor­ry about that. The truth is, and I know this now, I despised myself. I despised the sight of me, and you wouldn’t allow me to turn away, you nev­er allowed me to turn away, and so I was in tremen­dous pain pret­ty much all of the time. I was a per­son caught in the throes of pain. I’m not like that any­more, Sev­erin. I’ve matured. I’ve learned to empathize with your point of view. I’ve even incor­po­rat­ed your pub­li­ca­tions into my teach­ing and schol­ar­ship. I’ve tapped your book like a keg, Sev­erin, and fun­neled its life force straight into my career. Thank you, Sev­erin, for giv­ing life to my career! Thank you for giv­ing life to my career! Thank you, Sev­erin! Thank you!

Okay. To be hon­est. To be total­ly and com­plete­ly. Hon­est. For a minute I thought we could be friends, real friends. Sev­erin and I, we had a lot in com­mon. What hap­pened was he caught me in the act. Past mid­night. Star­ry sky. Dark, dry air. Cold. Out west. High up on the side of a moun­tain. In the cen­ter of cam­pus, on the lawn of the admis­sions build­ing, there’s a stat­ue of a beau­ti­ful woman ringed by ever­greens. She’s one of the wives of the founder of the state reli­gion, the first wife or the main wife, and I’d wrapped her, beau­ti­ful stat­ue, head to toe, in toi­let paper that I stole from the stu­dent union.

You have to under­stand. I’ve always been drawn to the wife in Bride of Franken­stein. But before she’s opened. When her body and her head and her face are wrapped up in gauze. Gift for a mon­ster. I want her or I want to be her or I’m already who she is but I don’t like being me so I’ll wait it out. I’ll just wait and see. What’s underneath.

Yeah, so. I’d wrapped the stat­ue of the founder of the state religion’s wife in toi­let paper, and I was, you know. Wor­ship­ping her. I was wait­ing. Wait­ing to see. Show me. Show me. I pressed my face against the paper cov­er­ing her skirt. Show me. That’s when Sev­erin intrud­ed, his arms full of furs.

“You like stat­ues,” he said.

Why lie. At a time like this. “I do.”

“You wrap them in toi­let paper.”

“Yes.”

“That’s queer.”

“Yes.”

“You’re queer.”

“Yes.”

“I like stat­ues, too,” he said. “I drape them in furs.”

“I see. You’re also queer?” 

“I am.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“We must stick togeth­er,” he said.

“Okay.”

He took me back to his place.

Kind of a shit­ty place. There were room­mates. Every­where. But what­ev­er. They were already asleep. Some cats, too. I don’t like cats. It’s okay. We’d worked out a plan. First, we’d both take off our clothes. Next, I’d drape myself in furs and Sev­erin would wrap him­self in toi­let paper. Then we’d just. I don’t know. See what hap­pened. We had a six-pack. A six-pack. He had some cig­a­rettes. I like cig­a­rettes. So. Let’s see. We’ll just wait and see. Where the night takes us.

Sev­erin hand­ed me an ermine stole and a sheep­skin muff. He pushed me into the bath­room. Closed the door. I was alone. Bath­room was a lit­tle shit­ty. No. Yes. Shit streak­ing the seat of the toi­let. Shit rim­ming the tub. Shit on the mir­ror. Shit stain­ing the grout of the tile. Hairs col­lect­ing along a streak of shit. Pok­ing right up to God like aspara­gus. Okay. Here I am. What is a stole and what is a muff? I know what I look like. I’ve looked plen­ty of times. It’s fine. Some­one should look like this. Some­one should’ve looked like this. What the fuck. Do you want to know? Do you want to know what a per­son looks like? When they are wear­ing a stole and a muff? I already told you. I despised the sight. I got low. Then I got low. I was sit­ting on the floor. Like Bar­bie. Legs straight out. What did they want? My atten­tion. No, I don’t want to hold them. Sev­erin was talk­ing. He was explain­ing how to care for his cats.

What?

His cats. He told me to watch his cats. Over Christ­mas break. Hel­lo. Keep up.

Pay atten­tion.

“Give them food and water,” he said. “More impor­tant­ly, get to know them. Spend time with them. That’s cru­cial. For­get to feed them, and they’ll sur­vive. For­get to touch them? They’ll fuck­ing die.”

That can’t be right.

Okay. This is Severin’s bed­room. The win­dow was frosty. Frost is beau­ti­ful. Frost is beau­ti­ful. I need to throw up. I need­ed to throw up. Christ­mas gifts, every­where. Sev­erin had been shop­ping. Now he was tak­ing his time. Pack­ing a bag. He was gonna miss his flight. Then there was that cat at my feet. Roost­ing on an open mag­a­zine. Pink. It was pink. I didn’t know you could get them that way.

“Which one is sick? Deleuze?”

I didn’t say that. Please. I didn’t. Is that what he calls his cat? I shouldn’t have come here. I should nev­er have come. I need­ed to throw up. I need­ed to throw up. I need­ed to. I had a knife. Okay, I had a knife. I had a knife. I hat­ed when think­ing hap­pened like this and I could see myself on the out­side. I hat­ed that. She was hold­ing the knife, and then, I see, she cut a gash in her throat. She stood over the cat, the pink cat, just to bleed on it for a minute. She just bled on it? Yeah. Soon she was gonna drop. She was gonna drop. She was gonna drop. Don’t let her drop on the cat. It was pink. The cat. But why was it pink? I don’t know! Stag­gered. She stag­gered. She dart­ed for the book­case. She was look­ing for the book he liked the best. Which one did he like the best? The one where they slan­der the trees. They hat­ed trees, Deleuze and Guat­tari. Ass­holes. She tore a page from the book, crum­pled it up and fed the blos­som to the gash in her neck. She didn’t throw up. I nev­er threw up. It’s like I didn’t get how to do it. Do you understand?

Talk­ing. Sev­erin was talk­ing. He said the cats aren’t called Deleuze and Guat­tari, not any­more. He renamed them. He renamed his cats. Yeah, he was always doing that. Giv­ing them new names. 

“Why?”

Sev­erin shrugged. He sat down on the edge of the bed, crossed one leg over the oth­er. What was he wear­ing? Indoor soc­cer shoes? I want a pair. I want­ed a pair.

“Just tell me which one gets medicine.”

“The pink one.”

The pink one. The pink one. No.

No, no, no.

“What do you mean, no?” he said.

I mean, who has a pink cat?

I mean, no.

No, no, no, no.

“Look,” said Sev­erin. Then he was up again, orbit­ing the bed­room. He was col­lect­ing the Christ­mas gifts in a gigan­tic paper bag. “It’s been a long day. I shopped. I wrapped. I packed. I’m about to fly across the coun­try.” He stopped at the foot of the bed, hoist­ed a duf­fel over his shoul­der. “And now I need to explain the con­cept of a joke to you?”

She couldn’t get a read on his face. I couldn’t see it either. The sky was a snake. It sloughed off the skin of the sun. Dark. It was dark.

III.

Now for a review of the lit­er­a­ture. Some peo­ple argue that this book is a trans­gres­sive book because it fea­tures Sev­erin. Sev­erin is a cas­trat­ed mem­ber of the rul­ing class and an aspir­ing poet with an impos­si­ble desire for sub­mis­sion. Oth­er peo­ple argue that this book is a sub­ver­sive book because it fea­tures Sev­erin. Sev­erin is a cas­trat­ed mem­ber of the eco­nom­ic elite and an aspir­ing poet with a para­dox­i­cal dream to end cap­i­tal­ism. Plus, there are sev­er­al per­sua­sive argu­ments that call for label­ing this book a queer book due to the super­abun­dance of fur gar­ments, which are gay. My take on the sit­u­a­tion is rad­i­cal. I believe it is wrong to argue about books. Even though I spend Christ­mases with con­ser­v­a­tive col­leagues and keep in touch with an elder­ly men­tor who still sub­scribes to the impos­si­ble dream of a white eth­nos­tate, I believe that each and every mem­ber of the depart­ment is free to choose a lit­er­ary her­itage; I choose to join in the strug­gle to pre­serve the rights of the most impor­tant books of Euro­pean civilization.

Ever since the dawn of the birth of the French per­son Roland Barthes, we have under­stood the col­lege class­room to be an amphithe­ater for bear­ing wit­ness to plea­sure. Barthes worked hard in the pub­lic sphere to devise a reper­toire of ges­tures for tes­ti­fy­ing to plea­sure with­out expli­cat­ing the text. He man­aged to con­duct his life’s work in silence. Total silence. It was impor­tant that Barthes stay qui­et. He didn’t want to spook the jouis­sance. The jouis­sance is skit­tish. It darts like a doe into berry bush­es. Some­times, at school, we coax the doe to the cen­ter of our circle.

Thanks to Barthes’ hard work, we’ve devel­oped a cer­e­mo­ny for gath­er­ing ’round, open­ing our books, and point­ing at plea­sures that can nei­ther be described nor ver­i­fied. What does this mean? I will tell you what it means. It means the unspeak­able qual­i­ty of our ped­a­gogy is the con­di­tion for a rad­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al faith. Stud­ies have shown that TAs of faith lead health­i­er, hap­pi­er, more inte­grat­ed lives. They’re able to make do on their stipends, with a lit­tle some­thing left­over for the week­end. They out­per­form their peers on the job mar­ket. When they com­pose the for­ma­tion of the sacred cir­cle with their bod­ies at school, the plea­sure touch­es friends touch­ing books list­ed on the syl­labus, rein­forc­ing the mis­sion of the university.

High up. The sky is a snake: it sloughs off the skin of the sun. Dark. It’s dark. In the once-vibrant city of Cher­nobyl, the snow is falling. We must be care­ful, vig­i­lant, and ten­der. Because there are schol­ars who set traps in the snow and the berry bushes.

They aren’t real­ly scholars.

They aren’t even readers.

They are bull­ish fur traders whose thick thighs rub snag­gles into off-brand stock­ings! Ambling roughshod over mass graves of frost-bit­ten grass­es! Spook­ing the plea­sure, which leaps like a doe, to impale its soft, soft self on the crys­talline edges of the berry branches—dead! She’s dead! Dead. Dead. Dead.

Sev­erin lights a cigarette.

The nar­ra­tor lights a cig­a­rette. The nar­ra­tor perus­es Severin’s col­lec­tion of ani­mal skele­tons, mil­i­tary hard­ware, and plas­tic cats. Oh, Severin!

Accord­ing to the details of his biog­ra­phy, Sev­erin belongs to the rul­ing class. But what about the nar­ra­tor? Who is the nar­ra­tor of the book? Well, the narrator’s sta­tus is ambigu­ous. He employs a valet to grab hold of his arm whilst he is sleep­ing. The valet whis­pers the word “Hegel” into the narrator’s ears. The inti­ma­cy of the ges­ture sug­gests that these two men are cut from sim­i­lar cloths. If they are not, then we are def­i­nite­ly deal­ing with a class-trai­tor sit­u­a­tion, which is incred­i­bly thrilling and admirable. The nar­ra­tor and his valet are not bio­log­i­cal broth­ers, and yet they man­age to coex­ist in a quiv­er­ing jel­ly dome called “broth­er­hood.” There­fore, struc­tural­ly, the nar­ra­tor and his valet are broth­ers. They are brothers.

Let us pan out.

Sev­erin, the nar­ra­tor, the valet, and the read­er each occu­py dif­fer­ent posi­tions along the socioe­co­nom­ic spec­trum. Despite these unfor­tu­nate mate­r­i­al cir­cum­stances, they have all uploaded them­selves into the exact same tra­di­tion of arts and let­ters. Theirs is the sort of mixed cama­raderie that gar­ners harsh jeers from the mem­bers of the old­er gen­er­a­tions. But is it not true that the most impor­tant books dis­rupt the laws of bour­geois decorum?

Sev­erin laughs. He lights the cigarette.

The nar­ra­tor laughs. He lights the cigarette.

When the silk-clad thingy presents the plat­ter of boiled eggs and meats, Sev­erin dis­cov­ers that the eggs have not been cooked to his lik­ing, and he sub­jects the silk-clad thingy to the threat of domes­tic vio­lence. The silk-clad thingy flees like a freaked robot on bent doe’s legs. That’s the cue for Sev­erin and the nar­ra­tor to con­tin­ue their conversation.

Okay. No more pretense.

We are friends, yes?

Then allow me to touch you where you need to be touched.

You are a per­son deserv­ing of your life.

I’ll say it again.

You are a per­son deserv­ing of your life.

There was once some­thing sharp and damnable resid­ing in the folds of your per­son­hood, but it’s been lov­ing­ly rewrit­ten or redact­ed at school. Wish it well. Let it go.

Today is the day you sub­mit your dissertation.

You’re doing what’s right, seek­ing gain­ful employ­ment. It goes with­out say­ing that you’ve suf­fered and per­se­vered. The strug­gle was real, but it helped you to devel­op a polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion which will grant you a favor­able posi­tion on the job market.

I will elaborate.

You haven’t hurt anyone.

You haven’t hurt anyone.

You have want­ed, and your want­i­ng makes you pre­cious, but you have not tak­en what you want by force. You haven’t hurt anyone.

You are a peach.

You’re a lamb mosey­ing home on pointy lit­tle feet!

Munch­ing clovers.

Mov­ing slowly.

You can afford to move so slowly.

Because it feels good to be you.

You’re home­ly and hospitable.

You’re inhab­it­able.

You feel good.

You feel so good.

This feels good.

Come. Now is the time to act. Let us not look back on this day and won­der why our eyes were con­tent to be sep­a­rat­ed, stuck in their own jel­lied heads. Lonely.

This feels so good.

Forg­ing thick­er bonds.

Build­ing bet­ter bod­ies for whis­per­ing the word “Hegel.”

For shar­ing the word “Hegel.”

Whilst sleep­ing.

Don’t wor­ry, you haven’t for­got­ten how to sleep.

You’re sleep­ing now.

The sky is a snake. It sloughs off the skin of the sun.

Dark.

The way is dark.

Dry air.

High up.

Ringed by evergreens.

Qui­et. Be quiet.

Come to us on your hands.

Use your fin­gers to find it.

The pin­hole, the puncture.

Grac­ing the skin of the birth­day balloon.

That rides on the night of the sky tucked deep deep inside, deep inside the fold of your lit­tle lone­ly lit­tle lone­ly life.

Let it go.

The scream­ing.

It is the sound of the starter.

On its cue, on its cue.

Let us.

Let us let us let us shed our flesh and shed our flesh and and and pool our resources.

Fig. 1. Bride of Franken­stein. Direct­ed by James Whale. 1935. Screen­shot by the author.

 

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

This sto­ry is a satire of lit­er­ary schol­ar­ship. A fic­tion­al essay about Venus in Furs. I draft­ed it while I was in grad school because I want­ed to fig­ure out why they were ask­ing me to inter­pret overt­ly reac­tionary works of lit­er­a­ture through the­o­ret­i­cal frame­works that claim (when tak­en at face val­ue) to sub­vert, decon­struct, or queer struc­tures of pow­er. Much of the schol­ar­ship on Venus in Furs exem­pli­fies that con­tra­dic­tion. Exudes a pathet­ic ener­gy that’s bor­der­line hagio­graph­ic. Casts Sev­erin as the patron saint of sub­ver­sion. Claims he har­bors a rad­i­cal desire to under­mine every­thing from het­eropa­tri­archy to cap­i­tal­ism itself. Part of my dis­com­fort had to do with the hypocrisy of affirm­ing the anti-cap­i­tal­ist pose of a pro­fes­sion that was active­ly con­tribut­ing to my exploita­tion and immis­er­a­tion. It’s dis­hon­est. Dumb. I don’t like to be dumb. I don’t like to hurt myself. Hate it more when my will­ing­ness to do so is praised. Also, the schol­ars’ ver­sion of Sev­erin is just wrong. It’s noth­ing like Masoch’s ver­sion. You should read Venus in Furs. I read Venus in Furs, obses­sive­ly, for the same rea­son I read Eich­mann in Jerusalem. It’s obvi­ous. Why does it have to be so obvi­ous? That’s why it feels humil­i­at­ing. To adopt the schol­ar­ly pose. It’s too obvi­ous. Masoch’s Sev­erin is a proud mem­ber of the eco­nom­ic elite. He’s an avowed sup­port­er of men’s rights, a con­nois­seur of Euro­pean cul­ture, a dis­grun­tled incel. Throw in the fact that most of Venus in Furs con­sists of Sev­er­in’s man­i­festo, which fix­ates on the degrad­ed sta­tus of the straight white guy, and there you have it: Severin’s a TERRORIST. And I’m a satirist. I’m a satirist, hard­core. Some­times I wor­ry that I haven’t spo­ken gen­uine­ly about any­thing, myself includ­ed, in years. But then I ban­ish the thought. Writ­ing this account has been dif­fi­cult. This is my sev­en­teenth attempt. I’m try­ing. I am. So. I draft­ed this stu­pid sto­ry, a grotesque par­o­dy of fas­cist schol­ar­ship. Then I didn’t know what to do. With myself. I don’t know what to do with myself. I was dis­il­lu­sioned with it, my fic­tion. It was dead, lack­ing in stakes. I need­ed to revise. I sat down to revise. I had YouTube stream­ing in the back­ground (aca­d­e­m­ic pre­sen­ta­tions on masochism) because I was hop­ing I’d hear some­thing I’d want to lam­poon. I heard this one thing. I end­ed up tak­ing it seri­ous­ly. How does the philoso­pher put his body where his pen is? I decid­ed to give it a try, to put my body in the way of the sto­ry while I was writ­ing it. It meant tak­ing masochism seri­ous­ly. Which felt like a big deal. Because I’m a sadist. But I took it seri­ous­ly. Used my pain to craft a nar­ra­tive. To fab­ri­cate an aes­thet­ic. I gave my stu­pid sto­ry a wound. That’s part II of my sto­ry, the wound. The mate­r­i­al. I want­ed to make it vis­i­ble. You don’t have to like it. Hon­est­ly. You don’t.

 

Rachel Levy is a found­ing edi­tor of Dregi­nald mag­a­zine and the author of A Book So Red (Cake­train, 2015). Short fic­tions appear in Atti­cus Review, Black War­rior Review, DIAGRAM, Fence, Tar­pau­lin Sky, West­ern Human­i­ties Review, and oth­ers. The recip­i­ent of an NEA Fel­low­ship in Prose, Levy is cur­rent­ly an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish and Cre­ative Writ­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary Wash­ing­ton in Fred­er­icks­burg, Virginia.

Fiction / Christine C. Heuner

:: A Once-Safe Place ::

The first time I came to his house, it was 1981, late spring. I was sell­ing Girl Scout cook­ies. Back then, it was accept­able to sell door-to-door, par­ent­less. I and my friend Sarah, who loved to read even more than I did, had cov­ered three blocks of small ranch-style homes before arriv­ing at his house, coral col­ored with white shut­ters. The lawn had just been mowed; the gray­ish, fuzzy chaff of expelled grass streaked the weak green beneath it. Long sprays of grass shot out from the bases of lawn chairs and walk­way lights. Weeds lit­tered the planter, the plants over­grown, brown­ing at the edges.

It was Sarah’s turn to ask about the cook­ies (I’d solicit­ed the pre­vi­ous block), but as soon as the man opened the door, she said, “We’re sell­ing cook­ies, the mint is the most pop­u­lar, and can I use your bathroom?”

The man fixed upon her the light­est green eyes I’d ever seen and raised an eye­brow either in hes­i­ta­tion or sur­prise. “Sure. If you real­ly need to. It’s down the hall.”

I stood at the door, sweat­ing so bad­ly my shirt was stuck to my back. I could feel the chilled air behind him.

“It’s a hot one today,” he said. “Do you want to come in for some water?”

I shook my head. “No, thank you.”

“Maybe juice?”

I denied him again. I might have won­dered if, some­where inside the house, he had a wife, chil­dren. It seemed so quiet.

I should have asked him to buy cook­ies, but I felt inept with­out Sarah beside me. Plus, I’m an awful sales­per­son when I have to pawn off a prod­uct I don’t believe in. The cook­ies were noth­ing spe­cial. They were too expen­sive, some peo­ple said. I also took every­thing per­son­al­ly, so when some­one said no to the cook­ies, I thought it was because I was ugly.

I felt him look­ing at me as if wait­ing for me to speak. He had light skin, the kind that burns eas­i­ly, and his lips were a deep pink, almost as if he were wear­ing lip­stick. He had a mus­tache so slight it looked like a shadow.

“So, are you going to sell me cook­ies?” he asked.

“Why? Do you want to buy some?”

He shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

I turned to my clip­board, picked up the pen, and start­ed to read the fla­vors. He stopped me after Do-si-dos. “Just pick out three box­es for me; dif­fer­ent fla­vors,” he said, not impatiently.

“Don’t you have a favorite?” I asked.

“I’m not much for cook­ies,” he said. “I usu­al­ly like cake.”

“Me too,” I said. “If we had to sell pound cake, I’d win an award.”

*

I went back a week or so lat­er, alone, to deliv­er the cook­ies. I was in charge of two of the blocks where we’d sold them. I had sold so many box­es I made two trips, clat­ter­ing my brother’s old wag­on down the side­walks, sweat­ing in that Flori­da heat so sti­fling it shim­mered and craft­ed mirages on the black­top. It must have been a hun­dred degrees that day because when I arrived at his house and he asked me if I want­ed water, I said yes.

We sat at his round table in the gold­en­rod kitchen. The sun was bright and hurt my eyes. He had a pear-shaped crys­tal sus­pend­ed from a piece of twine over the sink. The sun shot through it, splash­ing cir­cu­lar rain­bows on the floor.

The air con­di­tion­er was heav­en­ly at first, but then I felt too cold.

I drank down the glass of water, packed with ice cubes, quick­ly; he refilled it.

“You want some­thing to eat?” he asked.

“Like what?” I asked. I wasn’t hun­gry but was curi­ous about what he’d offer me. He had scrawny arms and legs with a small paunch. His light yel­low Izod shirt was tucked into pants with an elas­tic waistband.

He list­ed for me all kinds of snacks. He added, “I guess we could have cook­ies, but you don’t like them.”

His recall­ing this detail from our first meet­ing sur­prised me. He also remem­bered that I liked pound cake and he told me he had some. “I have this lemon sauce I put on it. I make it myself. It won’t take long.”

I told him I had to go. My Taga­longs were prob­a­bly melt­ing out­side in the heat.

“What do you like to do?” he asked even though I was stand­ing and mak­ing my way to the door. “I mean, besides Girl Scouts.”

He stood up, too. His shoes were the kind old peo­ple wear with the thick soles and chunky laces. I must’ve won­dered how old he was, but I had no sense of people’s ages. Any­one over twen­ty fit into that amor­phous realm of an adult.

“I hate Girl Scouts. My mom makes me go.”

He smiled at that, rais­ing the left cor­ner of his mouth. I noticed his mus­tache again, so slight a nap­kin might erase it.

“What do you like, then?”

I liked to play with my dolls, build hous­es for them with blocks, read and write sto­ries, watch TV, dance alone in my room. I sought any­thing that took me out of myself. At age eleven, I knew it would be baby­ish to admit that I played with toys, so I told him I liked to read.

He smiled, both cor­ners of his mouth raised. He had a slight dim­ple on one cheek. His teeth were all uneven and one was dark­er than the others.

“I love to read,” he said. “I have hun­dreds of books. You want to see?”

I did, but I told him I real­ly had to go. My cook­ies were melt­ing, and my par­ents would be wor­ried about me.

He said okay; before I left, he said, “We haven’t been prop­er­ly intro­duced. I’m James, but my friends call me Jim. Call me Jim.”

“I’m Jen­ny.” He reached out his hand and I shook it. He had a tight grip, a quick clutch that held me and quick­ly let go.

*

Not long after that, just before school let out for the sum­mer, I end­ed up at his house again. I hadn’t intend­ed to go there, but my aunt for­got to pick me up at my bus stop. I stood at the cor­ner for almost an hour, fear­ful she’d show up and I wouldn’t be there. I was going to walk the six blocks back to my house when a car pulled up, big and brown, long as a boat.

The pas­sen­ger win­dow rolled down and Jim leaned over. “Hey,” he said. “Jen­ny. What are you doing here?”

I told him what had hap­pened. He told me he’d take me home; I said I could walk, but he insist­ed. I got inside the car, its wel­com­ing cool­ness, and put on my seatbelt.

“It’s smart you wear your seat­belt,” he said. “Though I assure you I’m a safe driver.”

“My mom works with lawyers,” I said. “They have court cas­es with peo­ple in car crash­es. She tells me sto­ries that scare me.”

“Well, that’s not very nice.”

I’d nev­er thought of my moth­er as being any­thing but nice. I was a lit­tle annoyed at him then.

“I’ve just been to the library,” he said, ges­tur­ing toward the back­seat where three thick books were stacked on one seat like a pas­sen­ger. “You sure you don’t want to come and see my books? Maybe have a snack?”

For some rea­son I don’t under­stand even today, I said yes.

He had an entire room filled with books, stuffed in those wall-to-wall book­shelves with very lit­tle space for more. A love seat in the mid­dle of the room made me feel small, sit­ting in the cen­ter of all that majesty: the palette of col­ors, font shapes and sizes on the thick or thin, new or worn spines. The plas­tic blinds on the tall, nar­row win­dow emit­ted a weak light. He turned the wand on the blinds and dust-flecked light entered the room. The car­pet was pea-green with gray balls of dust gath­ered at the edges of the book­shelves. It smelled like an old library and I loved that.

“Take what­ev­er you want,” he said. He turned to one shelf. “Let’s see. You might like this one.”

He hand­ed me a book with a group­ing of girls gath­ered around a piano on the cov­er. The black spine read: Lit­tle Women.

“Take it with you,” he said. “Let me know what you think.”

With­in a few pages, I rec­og­nized that I was in the pres­ence of genius. Sweet Val­ley High and Judy Blume books, my usu­al fare, were a snack com­pared to the meal Alcott spread before me. I read the book over Memo­r­i­al Day week­end. My moth­er made me come out of my room, and I resent­ed her for it. “Come up for air,” she said. “You’re like a hermit.”

She asked what I was read­ing, and I showed it to her.

“For school?” she asked.

I told her yes. Even though I didn’t feel odd about going to Jim’s house, I knew she wouldn’t approve of it.

I went there again after I fin­ished the book, knocked brazen­ly on the door one day after school.

“Do you have any­thing else for me to read?” I asked. “I loved this one.”

We sat at his kitchen table eat­ing pound cake with lemon sauce, the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of tang and sweet. He’d just giv­en me anoth­er book, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird. I want­ed to go home and read it but didn’t want to be rude, so I sat with him, squirm­ing a lit­tle in my chair as I fin­ished my cake.

“You prob­a­bly do well in school,” he said.

“Math’s a killer. I’m good in English.”

“I’m good in math,” he said. “I could help you.”

I con­sid­ered this. We had a math final the fol­low­ing week. I had a C in the class. I was hop­ing for hon­or roll, but it wasn’t look­ing good.

“I’m also flu­ent in Span­ish,” he said. “I bet you didn’t expect that. I used to trans­late for the FBI.”

I didn’t know what the FBI was but pre­tend­ed to be impressed.

“You want me to say some­thing in Span­ish?” he asked as if I’d nev­er heard Span­ish before. We lived in South Flori­da not Wyoming.

“Sure.”

“Tu eres muy boni­ta y inteligente y simpática.”

The fix­i­ty of his gaze con­firmed that he was speak­ing about me. I told him I had to go home; he told me to come by Tues­day after three if I want­ed help with tutor­ing. My par­ents told me I could get the Nikes with the rain­bow swoosh if I made hon­or roll, so I went back. He helped me with long divi­sion. We ate Ring Dings and shared an orange to make our snack healthy.

At five o’clock, he told me I should prob­a­bly get home, that my par­ents would be wor­ried about me. I told him that they came home late. My old­er broth­er was in high school and stayed after school every day for sports, so I was only respon­si­ble for myself. No one arrived home until after six, usually.

“You must get lone­some,” he said, try­ing to catch my eye. I wouldn’t look at him. “I know I get lone­some.”

“I like to read,” I said. “That pass­es the time.”

He didn’t ask me if I had friends, and I was grate­ful not to have to report that I only had two: Sarah and Michelle.

“Do you want to see some­thing?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure and told him so.

“It’s okay,” he said, reach­ing for my hand. “Come with me.”

It didn’t occur to me not to take his hand. One action seemed to fol­low the oth­er in a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion. I was not scared.

I fol­lowed him to the part of the house I’d nev­er been in, a hall­way off the liv­ing room. In one of the rooms in that hall­way, two couch­es of dark fab­ric clut­tered the space, ensconced with side tables cov­ered with doilies and match­ing flow­ered lamps. It smelled vague­ly of oranges in the ear­ly stage of rot.

He dis­ap­peared into a clos­et and returned with a dress, white lace with a shiny belt adorned with a clus­ter of three tiny roses.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

I did. It looked like my size.

“You can have it if you want. Try it on first.”

I had no idea how I’d explain such a gift to my par­ents. Last week, he’d giv­en me a rhine­stone bracelet my moth­er asked about. I lied and told her Sarah gave it to me.

“For no rea­son?” she asked.

I said not really.

“Well, that’s a fan­cy gift for no reason.”

In the dark room, I held the dress up to my tor­so and asked, “You bought this for me?”

“Not exact­ly. It was my daughter’s.”

“You have a daughter?”

He nod­ded, a quick shake. “She’s gone now. That’s all I want to say about her, okay?”

I agreed by nodding.

“Why don’t you try it on?” he asked.

I couldn’t deny him. The bath­room was pink every­thing except for the toi­let, which was white. I imag­ined that he’d once lived in this house with his daugh­ter and maybe a wife, too.

The dress wasn’t as white as it had seemed in the room’s dull light. A slight yel­low patch stained the dress just below the belt, and it smelled musty. It fit, though, and when I came out of the bath­room his eyes widened. 

“You look so pret­ty,” he said. “You should take it home, wear it to one of your school dances.”

I didn’t tell him that the dress was more of a First Com­mu­nion vari­ety and that we didn’t have school dances.

He came toward me and touched me on the shoulder.

I stood there, my under­arms start­ing to itch—the dress wasn’t as good a fit as I thought—and to sweat. The room was warmer than the rest of the house.

“Are you okay?” he asked, remov­ing his hand from my shoul­der and star­ing at me.

I told him I need­ed to get home and thanked him for the dress. I wore it home, the sweat mak­ing it more and more itchy. I hid it in my clos­et toward the back so my moth­er wouldn’t find it.

*

I some­how got a B in math and made the hon­or roll. I wore my new Nikes to Jim’s house. I vis­it­ed him once a week or so once school let out. I went to sum­mer camp for a few weeks, which I hat­ed except the days we went to the movies. I tried to con­vince my moth­er that I was too old to attend camp, but she told me I need­ed struc­ture to my day and to “get out and enjoy the weath­er,” but the weath­er was so hot we near­ly wilt­ed on the play­ground and couldn’t take much more than an hour outdoors.

At Jim’s house, I would prac­tice my math for at least a half hour. He con­vinced me that it would help me make hon­or roll next year, sev­enth grade, and that meant gifts.

Jim bought me gifts, too, those that I could eas­i­ly hide or pass off as bequeathed from a friend. I even made up a friend, Leslie, inspired by Bridge to Ter­abithia, who liked giv­ing me things. I told my moth­er that she gave me the tiny hoop ear­rings with the dan­g­ly hearts and the Guess t‑shirt with the inter­wo­ven hearts. I asked Jim how he knew Guess was “in.” He squint­ed his eyes—his expres­sion of confusion—and said that he hadn’t looked at the brand at all. He just thought I’d like the hearts.

And all the books he loaned me? I got them from the library of course. My par­ents didn’t notice that the call num­bers weren’t taped onto their spines and they weren’t cov­ered in plastic.

I didn’t tell any­one about Jim since there was no rea­son to, and I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to go over there if I did. He was my secret friend, some­one who I didn’t have to talk to very much. Some days, I’d just sit in his library room and read. I’d take a break for cake or Cream­si­cles. We ate a lot of straw­ber­ries, too, to be healthy. He said I need­ed my vitamins.

*

And then in July, Adam Walsh, six years old, went miss­ing from a Sears not ten miles from my house. My moth­er didn’t like that mall, so we didn’t go there often, but my Gram­mie took me there some­times; she liked the Woolworth’s, which she called the “five-and-dime.”

They found Adam’s body in a canal. Headless.

My par­ents bare­ly watched the news but did so on this occa­sion, care­less that I took in the grue­some­ness of this real­i­ty. A reporter claimed that most chil­dren are abduct­ed not by strangers but by some­one they know.

“Great,” my moth­er said, near tears. “Now we can’t trust our neighbors.”

*

The next time I went to Jim’s, he pre­sent­ed me with anoth­er gift: a bathing suit, elec­tric blue with one neon pink stripe from shoulder-to-hip.

“Try it on,” he said. “See if it fits. This looks like your size.”

It was a per­fect fit. I want­ed to change back into my clothes, but knew he’d want to see me in the suit.

I put on my shorts over the suit and came out of the bathroom.

“It fits,” I said.

“Take off the shorts,” he said. “I want to see how it looks on you.”

I felt dizzy. “I need to go home,” I said.

He came toward me and put his hand on my head. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Why are you crying?”

“Are you going to hurt me?” I asked, snot drip­ping from my nose. “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

I imag­ined myself in a canal: bloat­ed like a dead frog; headless.

He looked at me, squint­ing as if to see me bet­ter, to under­stand this new girl I’d become. “No, Jen­ny, I’m not going to hurt you. Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice thick. “I just need to go.” I pushed past him and ran out of his house. I ran the three blocks home, my san­dals smack­ing against the concrete.

*

That was the last time I saw Jim. I threw out the bathing suit and the dress, pushed them to the bot­tom of the garbage bin. I still wore the Guess t‑shirt and jew­el­ry he gave me, though. After all, they came from Leslie, my invis­i­ble friend.

Today, fif­teen years lat­er, all of the gifts Jim gave me are gone save the rhine­stone bracelet whose stones have fall­en out. I keep the bracelet and loose stones in a bag­gie in my jew­el­ry armoire. The med­ley of col­ored gems reminds me of the sus­pend­ed crys­tal in his kitchen, how it caught the after­noon light, the dots of rain­bow splayed across the floor like con­fet­ti. He turned the crys­tal for me, spin­ning it, so I could see the span­gles dance.

 

From the writer

:: Account ::

I came to this sto­ry through a reflec­tion upon the vio­lence against chil­dren and young adults that occurred at dif­fer­ent points in my life. I am a Flori­da native and grew up in the after­math of Adam Walsh’s mur­der, which occurred less than ten miles from my home. I also attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da a year after ser­i­al killer Dan­ny Rolling claimed five stu­dents’ lives. In writ­ing this sto­ry, I want­ed to con­sid­er how the media’s pub­lic­i­ty of vio­lence affects the psy­che of a child, exac­er­bat­ing her fear of attack and death at the hands of some­one she once con­sid­ered an ally.

 

Chris­tine C. Heuner has been teach­ing high school Eng­lish for over 19 years. She lives with her hus­band, in-laws, and two chil­dren in New Jer­sey. Her work has appeared in Philadel­phia Sto­ries, The Write Launch, Flash Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, and oth­ers. In 2011, she self-pub­lished Con­fes­sions, a book of short stories.