Fiction / Jean-Baptiste Andre

:: The Miracle ::

            Under the flam­boyán tree turn­ing from mar­malade to rust, whose late sum­mer canopy dripped a slow hail of igua­nas, Joaquin con­fessed to Maria his night­mare. In it, Joaquin was suf­fo­cat­ing as the air in his room was sucked into the black hole in the cen­ter of his palm. Joaquin felt a push at the back of his head, pulling his eyes into the dark­ness. Gasp­ing, he tried to close the hole by press­ing his hands togeth­er. Instead, his hand was pulled in and when his skin crossed the bar­ri­er from air to void he felt the ori­gin of grav­i­ty and he him­self was swal­lowed and gone. Then he would wake.

             The air hung chill and sweet from bloom­ing hibis­cus. An igua­na thumped to the ground beside them and scur­ried away. Sum­mer had end­ed abrupt­ly as it had start­ed. The two twelve year-olds hud­dled togeth­er, Maria half a head taller than Joaquin. They shared choco­late eyes and olive skin, though Maria’s black hair fell straight down to her shoul­ders where Joaquin’s lazy brown ringlets bounced above his eyebrows.

            “Show me again,” Maria demanded.

            Joaquin held out his left hand. He had sausage fin­gers, and a wide palm col­ored in patch­es of peach and pink. In the cen­ter of his palm, where mus­cu­la­ture left a soft-slop­ing val­ley, there was a hole in the shape of a per­fect cir­cle. About as wide as her thumb, when Maria rotat­ed Joaquin’s hand face down, the hole was per­fect­ly see-through. Morn­ing light bore through the fleshy cylin­der onto the grass and high, thin hair of weeds at their bare feet. Maria flipped the hand again. Palm up, the hole was rimmed with shiny pale scar tis­sue, and entire­ly black. It was the same dark­ness as the far cor­ner of Maria’s room at night.

            Maria and Joaquin shared a room that sum­mer, cousins from dif­fer­ent cor­ners of the island sent to stay with their grand­fa­ther, Doc­tor Pas­cal. Maria had begged her par­ents to let her vis­it him, des­per­ate to feel new soil between her toes. Joaquin had been sent when he snuck into a cop­per mine, land­ed on rebar, and punched a hole clean through his hand. His par­ents thought it pru­dent to allow the doc­tor in the fam­i­ly to exam­ine the pecu­liar injury.

             The doc­tor con­duct­ed tests behind doors that were closed to Maria, but Joaquin told her about them just the same. Joaquin could still move the fin­gers on his left hand with rel­a­tive ease, but was stiff when try­ing to touch his pinky to his thumb. Joaquin’s grand­fa­ther found the blood clot­ted as nor­mal and smelled no dif­fer­ent than ordi­nary blood, vicious and metal­lic. When Joaquin placed his palm down, the hole appeared like injuries the doc­tor was famil­iar with, and objects could pass through it as a tun­nel. When fac­ing up, the hole was dark, as if light itself did not pass. Objects pushed through the hole did not appear at the oth­er end and could not be pulled back out.

             While the doc­tor con­duct­ed his tests, Maria con­duct­ed hers. She pushed a stick into the dark side of Joaquin’s palm with no resis­tance. It dis­ap­peared. She pushed a stick halfway in, and tried to pull it back out. The stick end­ed at the point of con­tact with the hole, cut off in a cross sec­tion. She found that if a pen­cil was held at an angle and rotat­ed, the hole would neat­ly sharp­en the pen­cil to the finest point.

            Tonight, Maria had anoth­er test planned.

            “Stay still for a moment, you’re too rest­less,” she told Joaquin.

            “Well maybe you’re too still,” he coun­tered. “What are you try­ing, anyway?”

            “I want to see what hap­pens to my nail,” she replied.

            “Try if you want to. I’m not touch­ing it after that dream.” Joaquin stuck his palm out like a fish­ing lure, invit­ing Maria to bite.

            She gin­ger­ly grasped his wrist, and as she low­ered her fin­ger to the edge of the dark hole he jos­tled his hand. The hole missed Maria’s nail by a hair.

“Care­ful! Don’t leave it hun­gry, it’s impa­tient,” Joaquin teased.

             “Oh shush, be seri­ous now. I want to see how it reacts to liv­ing things.” Maria stead­ied Joaquin’s hand and brought her left index straight down, pre­cise like a nee­dle thread­ing a bead. The nail dipped slight­ly in and Joaquin flashed a grin. Maria jerked her hand back, and she let out a cry.

             “Ouch Joaquin! I said stay still!”

             Beads of blood spot­ted the flam­boyán tree, set­tling on it like ver­mil­lion lichen. Joaquin’s smile sagged and he went pale.

             “Your fin­ger, Maria, the tip is gone! We have to go to Grand­fa­ther, but he can’t find out it was me! He already thinks I’m a freak,” Joaquin said, pac­ing around Maria while she assessed the dam­age. She clutched her fin­ger in a red-soaked hand­ker­chief as the pain pulsed from hun­dreds of nee­dles to a burn before set­tling on a throb­bing ache she could not be sure was hers.

             Tak­ing deep breaths, Maria turned to her cousin. “Joaquin, I need you to get me some tall weeds, half a lemon, and ginger.”

             “Done – you start think­ing of an excuse for Grandfather.”

             When he returned, Maria tied the weeds tight­ly around her wrapped fin­ger. “For the bleed­ing,” she mum­bled, as the ache flared back into spikes.

“For the pain,” she con­tin­ued through a mouth­ful of gin­ger root.

             “Infec­tion,” she fin­ished, squeez­ing the lemon onto the hand­ker­chief that wrapped her fin­ger. Red fad­ed pink, and pain seared as the juice reached the open wound. Maria, grown cold, broke into a sweat.

            Joaquin eyed Maria’s fin­ger as if it were the dan­ger. “Are you alright now? Why did­n’t you just go to Grand­fa­ther? It would have been faster.”

            Maria slumped. “I’ll be fine. Heal­ing is heal­ing, no mat­ter how you do it. Good things take time. But you’re right, we should go see the doctor.”

            Their clop­ping steps echoed down the coarse brick road to their grandfather’s estate. It loomed before them, white­washed arch­es grow­ing proud­ly from stone foun­da­tions. Between the slim pil­lars, blue tiles embla­zoned with red flam­boyán flow­ers dot­ted the walls. Inside the house, it smelled of med­i­cine. Sharp met­als and alco­hols threat­ened their nos­trils. Maria craned her neck to peer down the west hall­way into the room where her grand­fa­ther con­duct­ed his tests, and Joaquin looked every­where but there. A bronze voice sum­moned them to the study.

            “You are late.” Their grand­fa­ther was a large man with a thin­ning crown of steel and sil­ver hair. His skin was like dry clay, cracks and folds set as if he was always smelling an infec­tion. He spoke to both and nei­ther of them, read­ing his jour­nal. “Chil­dren should be on hand when called. Sit. Maria, your finger.”

            “An acci­dent with a fish­ing line out­side; my fault. I wrapped it and soaked it in lime juice,” she replied.

            Joaquin nudged her and mouthed a thank you. The doc­tor did not notice.

            “A peasant’s treat­ment… but effec­tive.” He cleared his throat. “No mat­ter. Sum­mer is end­ing. It is time to think of your future. Joaquin, your injury is at most a curi­ous defor­mi­ty. You can still join my prac­tice. We will estab­lish the Pas­cal Cen­ter of Med­i­cine. I have enrolled you in the board­ing school I attend­ed at your age. You leave for the main­land the first week of fall.”

            The doc­tor clipped Joaquin’s bud­ding protests. “It is done, Joaquin. Maria, you will return to your vil­lage and your par­ents will pre­pare you for a suit­or in these com­ing years.”

            “I want to study under you, Doc­tor. Can’t I learn med­i­cine?” Maria asked.

            “Med­i­cine is a man’s field, Maria.” Doc­tor Pas­cal eyed her wrapped fin­ger. “But your wits may be use­ful. I will talk to your par­ents. Per­haps you can find a suit­or here.”

            With that, their grandfather’s eyes went back to the jour­nal. They were dis­missed with­out a word.

             The last red rays of sum­mer bled out onto the cof­fee fields as Joaquin pre­pared for his depar­ture. When Maria’s fin­ger healed, she saw her left index was cut clean a cen­time­ter short­er, like a sen­tence inter­rupt­ed. Joaquin often apol­o­gized, but she cut him off.

             “Now we know. Just be care­ful,” she said.

             In those final days, Joaquin and Maria found the oth­er chil­dren in the neigh­bor­hood would pay to see Joaquin’s strange hand, though he nev­er let any­one else close to the demonstrations.

             “I don’t want to be a doc­tor, Maria,” he con­fessed after one such show.

             “And I don’t want to stay here for­ev­er,” she replied. “But things will work out, just wait.”

             Joaquin was shipped off to the main­land the next morn­ing. After his numer­ous tests, Doc­tor Pas­cal pre­scribed his grand­son a glove to cov­er his unsight­ly disfiguration.

*

            Maria built tow­ers. She stacked the jars of herbs in the back of the phar­ma­cy, and not­ed inven­to­ry in her ledger. Her grand­fa­ther had sug­gest­ed she find an alter­na­tive when she pressed him on start­ing her own stud­ies in med­i­cine. Instead, she became an apothe­cary. Few could afford med­ical ser­vices out­side of emer­gen­cies, but knowl­edge of native plants and poul­tices were in high demand across the island. If it made enough prof­it, he would spon­sor her trip to the mainland.

            The glass jars reflect­ed back the warped light of a young woman of nine­teen, changed from the day she had first begged to work in the phar­ma­cy. Her jaw was sharp­er and she stood half a head high­er than before, but her cut fin­ger had not grown back a mil­lime­ter. Her reflec­tions stood straight for a moment, before a thump brought them falling at all angles. Maria quick­ly caught the tum­bling flasks in the hem of her dress. One slipped through the gap in her grip and the glass cracked in a spi­der­web. She whipped around to see who had slammed the door. Her eyes slid over the dusty wood shelves and found him. Sebas­t­ian, the phar­ma­cist who often stole looks at her and made promis­es to whisk her to dis­tant lands stood dumb, arms at his sides star­ing straight at Maria.

            Maria cursed the unsteady jars and her hand.

            “What is it, Sebastian?”

            “Joaquin is back. He brought a woman. You should go see him; I will cov­er the phar­ma­cy. He’s in the town square.”

            Maria set her jaw and marched out. Her steps echoed down the dusty cob­ble­stone and ruf­fled a pan­de­mo­ni­um of par­rots. Green and red crests flashed up out of sight. The white spire of the church stared down the town square, framed by col­or­ful geo­met­ric build­ings. Trees dot­ted the court­yard, and this evening the fall breeze brought chil­dren who claimed the space as theirs. Through the whirling flock of chil­dren chas­ing their ball, the smell of charred tobac­co and leather waft­ed to Maria. At the end of the trail stood Joaquin, fin­ish­ing a cig­ar with the may­or. As she approached, Maria heard Joaquin’s part­ing words.

            “And I thank God to have been blessed with this gift. I hope to share it…” He trailed off when he saw his cousin approach­ing. “Maria! How have you been? I hear the old man tricked you into fol­low­ing his practice.”

            “Joaquin, you look well.”

            Though she had grown, her head only reached his shoul­der now. Where the island years had sharp­ened her fea­tures, Joaquin had round­ed out on the main­land, his skin stretched shiny and elas­tic. His fuller fig­ure was hugged in a dark embroi­dered coat with sil­ver cuff but­tons which matched the sil­ver white glove on his left hand.

            “You seem to have hit suc­cess after aban­don­ing us,” she said.

            “I didn’t aban­don any­one. I took a chance instead of wait­ing around for one.” Joaquin picked at a thread on his coat.

Maria tried anoth­er approach. “So, who is this woman I hear you came with?”

            Joaquin smiled and his eyes glint­ed. “You must be talk­ing about my busi­ness part­ner, Elle.” The fine­ly dressed woman stood off to the side of the square, ges­tur­ing at a crowd and shak­ing her gold­en hair. The chil­dren had aban­doned their soc­cer game, rapt, and a small hand­ful of adults observed at a cau­tious dis­tance like cats around a fire.

            “We found each oth­er at board­ing school. Just like when we were chil­dren, Maria, peo­ple pay to see what I can do. We trav­el, she gath­ers the crowds, and I per­form.” Joaquin beamed.

            Maria tried to scratch an itch on her miss­ing fin­ger­tip. Joaquin went on.

            “No wed­ding ring yet? You must be near­ly twen­ty, not get­ting any younger.”

            “And you’ve got­ten fat­ter, but I’m not try­ing to make lard out of you,” she replied.

“I’ve missed your wit.” Joaquin chor­tled. “I need to speak with Grand­fa­ther, will you walk with me?”

            The two retraced famil­iar steps to their grandfather’s estate. They passed worn hous­es with tiles cracked like chipped teeth, and Maria recount­ed the fate of neigh­bors and friends well into the final chirps of the evening. Joaquin told of dif­fer­ent trees and peo­ple who talked from the back of their throat. He spoke of cities with cathe­dral libraries and hid­den gam­bling hous­es where wish­es were grant­ed. He shared his plans to take his act across the mainland.

             Steel­ing her­self, Maria turned to Joaquin. “When you go back, take me with you?” In years past it would have been an order.

            “I will, sweet cousin,” he said. “But my act needs some sup­port before it can go across the coun­try. I need your help con­vinc­ing the old man. If he invests in us we can make some real money.”

            “Won’t the show grow on its own?”

            “You won’t get where you want by wait­ing, Maria.”

            They arrived at the white­washed arch­es of their grandfather’s estate. Maria kept it tidy. Despite some stained paint and a few pil­lars that had bloat­ed with soft wood dur­ing the last hur­ri­cane sea­son, the struc­ture was near­ly unchanged. The thick canopy of the flam­boyán tree still shad­ed the rear walls of the house. They stepped in, and Maria crossed to the west hall­way to deposit her inven­to­ry list.

            “You use his exam­i­na­tion room?” Joaquin stayed a few feet out­side the entrance and gave it a sus­pi­cious glance.

            “It’s my apothe­cary office. The doc­tor doesn’t prac­tice any­more, he just over­sees the pharmacy.”

Maria led Joaquin to the study. The doc­tor sat in his chair like they had been cut from the same stone.

            “Sweet Grand­fa­ther, it makes me hap­py to see you in good health,” Joaquin said as the two entered the study.

            “Why are you here, Joaquin?” The scowl lines around his mouth cement­ed. “The last time you wrote was to aban­don my practice.”

            “It hurt me to do so, Grand­fa­ther. But I’m here to make it up with an invest­ment for the future. Just like you were fas­ci­nat­ed by my injury, so are peo­ple all around the world. I have a show, and it’s mak­ing good mon­ey. My part­ner and I want to take it across the main­land. As our main investor, you’d make a return many times over.”

            “No.” The reply came immediately.

            “You–” Joaquin choked on his words.

            “Why not?” Maria asked.

            “I am a man of med­i­cine. I will not spon­sor a freak show,” the doc­tor replied.

            “You would be miss­ing out on a big oppor­tu­ni­ty,” respond­ed Joaquin.

            “My deci­sion is made.” The doc­tor looked down at his jour­nals. The con­ver­sa­tion was over.

            Maria broke the silence. “The apothe­cary was my idea, and a good invest­ment. If this is suc­cess­ful we could still expand to estab­lish the Pas­cal Cen­ter of Medicine.”

            The doc­tor held Maria’s gaze. She pressed on.

            “At least go see the show.”

            And so it was that the doc­tor and Maria pressed against a throng of whis­per­ing adults and chat­ter­ing chil­dren lat­er that night. They sat on hay bales that poked through seams in uncom­fort­able places, so the shift­ing audi­ence was like a rest­less sea. Lanterns lit an emp­ty stage.

            “BE-HOLD,” a woman’s voice boomed off­stage. “The eleventh won­der of the world, the hand of dark­ness, the man who wields the black hole!”

            With a flour­ish, Joaquin and Elle stepped onto the stage. They both wore capes that punc­tu­at­ed their every move.

            “The HAND!” she announced, draw­ing everyone’s eyes to Joaquin. He care­ful­ly removed his sil­ver glove. “The back, a tun­nel straight through!” As she spoke, she scanned the audi­ence as if search­ing for some­one, and undid her cape. She fold­ed the thin fab­ric diag­o­nal­ly along one cor­ner, and thread­ed it through Joaquin’s palm. The audi­ence mur­mured, rapt.

            “The front, an abyss!” The heads around Maria bobbed for a bet­ter view as the woman pulled out a thin stick the length of her hand and thread­ed it into the hole. The woman’s eyes pierced the audi­ence as she pushed the stick in, her fin­gers an inch away from the hole, before she let go and the last knuck­le of the stick fell back and bounced off the stage. The crowd whooped and clapped. Maria’s short­ened fin­ger throbbed, and as the lights dimmed time seemed to warp.

            In a fever dream of déjà vu, Maria watched Joaquin and his part­ner per­form a dis­tor­tion of the tests that she and Joaquin had con­duct­ed as chil­dren. Joaquin gave a hair­cut and drained a glass of water. He passed a mouse through one side of his hand, and bisect­ed it with the oth­er. Maria watched the tail drop to the floor con­nect­ed to a stump of a stom­ach.  The hind legs twitched, scoot­ing the corpse a cen­time­ter before stop­ping, leav­ing a wet, dark pud­dle. Joaquin sharp­ened a dart by rotat­ing it at an angle on the hole’s edge, and Elle threw it into an apple an audi­ence mem­ber held aloft. The peo­ple pulsed with each act, and the doc­tor sat trans­fixed next to Maria.

            Maria shout­ed with the rest of the crowd when Elle brought a rifle onto the stage.

            “Armed!” she cried. She aimed at the sky behind her and a shot echoed around the square. She reloaded the rifle as Joaquin spoke for the first time in the show. All voic­es ceased.

            “And, you can see, my gift can also stop death.” He care­ful­ly grabbed the bar­rel and aimed it at his heart, plac­ing his palm against the muzzle.

            “Armed!” cried his assistant.

            Maria closed her eyes.

             The shot rang out, and smoke drift­ed lazi­ly from the bar­rel, unaware of the mir­a­cle stand­ing unscathed before it. Joaquin took a bow, and the audi­ence erupt­ed. Even the doc­tor clapped at a mea­sured beat. Maria sensed that some­thing was try­ing to claw its way up her stomach.

            Joaquin wait­ed for the uproar to set­tle before address­ing the crowd again. “Now, for a quar­ter, any of you can be part of this act.” Mur­murs pooled in the audi­ence; some­one not­ed that it had already cost a nick­el to watch. Joaquin pressed on. “For a quar­ter, any one of you can come up, and with this mir­a­cle to stop death, I will shave your beard, I will cut your warts, I will trim your nails!” Joaquin beamed, and sud­den­ly peo­ple pushed to get in line. Maria and the doc­tor stood aside, though Maria noticed the crease that appeared in his brow when he made cal­cu­la­tions or busi­ness decisions.

            “You were right, Maria. It is a sound invest­ment,” the doc­tor would lat­er tell her. “Peo­ple pay to see miracles.”

*

            When Joaquin had per­formed his final show on the island and board­ed a ship for the main­land, Maria felt a sink­ing dread that he was already lost at sea. He did write, how­ev­er, to con­firm once he had safe­ly made it, and to inform her that his show was almost ready to take across the coun­try. He wrote two more times in as many years, once to ask for a lit­tle more mon­ey, and once to apol­o­gize. His part­ner had left the show when busi­ness was good, and the show had devolved ever since. He was sin­cere­ly sor­ry. He did not have enough mon­ey to bring Maria with him to see the main­land. He did not have enough mon­ey to pay back his grandfather.

            Soon after, her name seemed to become Poor Maria. “That Poor Maria, all of that debt and her ail­ing grand­fa­ther.” Not three years lat­er still it would become, “Poor Maria, her grand­fa­ther gone and her all alone. And the Pas­cal estate snapped up by debtors.” The apothe­cary had been her sanc­tu­ary, and even there the soft fra­grance of dried herbs was taint­ed with pity. Sebas­t­ian had become a kind com­pan­ion in the months fol­low­ing Doc­tor Pascal’s death, some­one to work along­side who saw her grit as a choice, not just as an accep­tance of hard­ship. He made gen­tle advances and helped her run the phar­ma­cy as she ran the apothe­cary. He brought her fresh Sat­ur­day ros­es and cooked her his mother’s Pal­lela. One day, he vowed, they would sell the phar­ma­cy and tour the main­land. “Mar­ry me,” he said. She did. Maria wore her wed­ding band on her right hand; she did not want a reminder of what was missing.

            Soon after the mar­riage, the promis­es of trav­el fell to hard busi­ness deci­sions. “In a few years,” Sebas­t­ian coaxed, “the phar­ma­cy will be prof­itable enough again, and we will be free of this place.” But then Sebastian’s niece was born, and a nephew, and new blood pooled and pushed the con­ver­sa­tions of leav­ing far­ther apart.

            Sebas­t­ian still brought Maria her Sat­ur­day ros­es. When Maria asked for lilies, he laughed. “Lilies couldn’t hold the depth of my love.” They danced, and made love. They set­tled into lives around each other.

            It was around that time that Maria heard again of Joaquin. He did not write, but news from the main­land spread like fleas. Cus­tomers who came in said he was found by a her­mit who had prac­ticed every reli­gion to ensure his sal­va­tion. This man believed Joaquin’s gift was the final one wor­thy of wor­ship. When the her­mit had Joaquin’s mir­a­cle fed­er­al­ly rec­og­nized, Joaquin became a mat­ter of great con­tention in the church. One Sun­day, Maria was prepar­ing plan­tains for mofon­go when Sebas­t­ian sur­prised her by get­ting up to mince the gar­lic. A raw, angry sweet­ness stung her nose as his knife thumped into the soft wood of the cut­ting board.

            “Thank you, love,” she mur­mured as she turned back to her plan­tains. She lopped the stem and head off of a plan­tain, hard green skin giv­ing way to a soft cream center.

            “What do you make of this news of Joaquin?” Sebas­t­ian asked.

            Maria cupped a plan­tain in her left hand, and ran her knife down its spine. “He only sent three let­ters. None since grandfather’s mon­ey ran out.”

            The thud­ding stopped. Sebas­t­ian scraped the gar­lic off the cut­ting board into a clay bowl with a blue glaze. He float­ed the gar­lic in olive oil, she watched it cir­cle and weave like eels.

            “What about his mir­a­cle?” he asked.

            “What about it?”

            Maria gripped the plan­tain until the peel popped, and she pried off the tough skin. The body of the plan­tain was bare, half of the flesh out, half of it still stuck in its shell.

            Sebas­t­ian began prepar­ing the onions, soak­ing them in vine­gar and salt. “Do you think he will come back here? He may have enough mon­ey to pay us,” Maria slowed beside him. “To pay you back. He owes you that much.”

             Maria ran the knife again down the plan­tain, this time down the abdomen. Along the inci­sion, she wedged her fin­ger­nail to peel back the hybrid of car­ti­lage and bark. Rigid, it dropped to the coarse cloth beneath it. She chopped the plan­tain in deci­sive strokes.

            “Joaquin owes me a fin­ger­tip,” she count­ed up the knuck­les on her short­ened fin­ger. “He could not pay me back if he want­ed to.”

            Sebas­t­ian chuck­led and hand­ed her his ingre­di­ents. “You could reach out. Just con­sid­er it.”

            Chunks spilled from the pes­tle as she mashed the plan­tains in with the gar­lic and left­over pork. They ate in silence.

            The next month, a local priest deemed it unac­cept­able that Joaquin should found a reli­gion out­side of Christ, and declared that if God grant­ed Joaquin a mir­a­cle, He could grant anoth­er. To prove him­self wor­thy, the priest stuck his palm with a tack. When no mir­a­cle ensued, the priest excom­mu­ni­cat­ed Joaquin from the con­gre­ga­tion. Con­ver­sa­tion about Joaquin was deemed blasphemous.

            This sig­naled the shift of chat­ter away from the church pews and into the rows of the phar­ma­cy. As peo­ple drift­ed to and from the apothe­cary in the back, rumors col­lect­ed around Maria like dust on the shelves. She gave more mind to the dust, but could not close her ears to the chat­ter. On the main­land, it was said, Joaquin was per­form­ing bless­ings and mak­ing holy water. Peo­ple absolved them­selves by whis­per­ing their sins into his palm, or offer­ing writ­ten accounts to be con­sumed by the void. Spir­i­tu­al men claimed his was the palm that held the tur­tle with the world atop its back, and Joaquin after was said to trav­el with a tur­tle, though some accounts said it was a tor­toise. Each sto­ry made her fin­ger flare with pain; she was sure the stump was get­ting short­er still. The tales echoed from the apothe­cary to the phar­ma­cy, and would often worm their way home in Sebastian’s ear. Sebas­t­ian would recount a rumor, and when Maria asked him to stop he claimed his faith pre­vent­ed him from engag­ing fur­ther any­ways. In their few years of mar­riage Sebastian’s piety had solid­i­fied as much as his prag­ma­tism. He now also claimed that Maria’s fan­tasies of sail­ing away were just dreams, child­ish in the face of their bud­ding family.

            Maria’s abdomen had begun to grow, and Sebas­t­ian start­ed to call the bud “their mir­a­cle.” She hat­ed the pet name, but came to believe its truth as she watched her body wage war on itself. She devoured rasp­ber­ries by moon­light but could not keep them down in the morn­ing. Her legs cramped, and her skin pol­ished from ochre to bronze.

            “I will see you at the phar­ma­cy, my love,” Sebas­t­ian said as Maria accept­ed the kiss he plant­ed on her cheek. “And I will see you not a moment too soon, my mir­a­cle,” Sebas­t­ian added as he cupped Maria’s stomach.

            “Don’t call it that,” Maria snapped.

            “Aye, all of this busi­ness with your cousin is passed, love. Let’s not talk about him any­more, it’s unholy.”

            “When our mir­a­cle is born,” Sebas­t­ian sug­gest­ed the next day, mas­sag­ing Maria’s feet, “We should close the apothe­cary. You will want to stay home with the child.”

            Maria stood up, winc­ing. “How do you know what I want?” She left him, bare­foot, col­lect­ing dirt on her soles.

*

            When Maria’s womb had grown to the size of a coconut, a hur­ri­cane and a bout of flu shook the island. Hous­es sunk like deflat­ed cakes. Wood­en pil­lars stood bare, snapped like bro­ken bones, and the flat­tened flam­boyán tree of the for­mer Pas­cal estate held its roots up in sur­ren­der to the sky. Gulls flew in an emp­ty blue while chil­dren wad­ed through islands of debris, call­ing when they found lost trea­sures. Maria walked trench­es through soft mud attend­ing the ail­ing town. The sick, clutch­ing to their mir­a­cles, made a spe­cial effort to share their news of Joaquin, and con­grat­u­late Maria on her com­ing child.

            She eased the fever of a short, bald­ing man, who promised he would build Maria a wood­en crib. He boast­ed that Joaquin had once cut his hair to the quick, and showed her the spot where hair had nev­er grown back. She mend­ed twin sis­ters, one with a bro­ken ankle and one with a sprain, who claimed Joaquin had break­fast­ed with the pope. The oth­er twin asked who would bap­tize Maria’s child. An old­er woman, whose skin was stiff and wet like she had drowned, stared at Maria with hol­low eyes. Through wheez­ing breaths, she told Maria how she had heard Joaquin was vis­it­ed by a Bud­dhist monk who believed he could achieve Nir­vana inside the void. Maria’s fin­gers flailed to make a heal­ing poul­tice as the woman con­tin­ued with her sto­ry. The monk had stuck his whole fin­ger inside the hole, and Maria nev­er heard the rest. The woman died, inter­rupt­ed. Maria returned home and held back a sob.

            “You should not do so much, my love,” Sebas­t­ian said lat­er that night. “Our mir­a­cle needs your health. We both need you.”

            “The hur­ri­cane, the flu… I don’t want to die here,” Maria replied.

            “We don’t get to choose where or when,” Sebas­t­ian said, “but you can try to avoid run­ning into it head first. You should rest.”

            “Bet­ter to run; I’m tired of being root­ed here.”

            “Non­sense, Maria. We are home.”

            Over the last months of her preg­nan­cy, Maria began squir­rel­ing away a small for­tune. She sold her jew­el­ry one piece at a time, and as her apothe­cary stores were sold she filled the jars with mon­ey. She told none of this to Sebas­t­ian, though she was sure he would not hear her if she did. She told him instead she was see­ing a doc­tor to check the health of the baby, and vis­it­ed the island’s largest port town to secure pas­sage to the main­land. Out­side the tick­et master’s office, the smell of sea spray and palms swirled in lazy loops with the frigate birds.

            Sailors near­by pre­pared a large ship for pas­sage to the main­land under an open blue sky. She watched them scur­ry like ants find­ing sug­ar as they inspect­ed sails and secured car­go. Her stom­ach kicked her rest­ing hand, and she was flushed with warmth. Over the gen­tle lap­ping of the waves, she heard them plan their brief stay in the main­land. With each inn and meal sug­gest­ed Maria’s heart reared in antic­i­pa­tion. They drift­ed in and out of gos­sip, and it did­n’t take long for the sto­ries of a strange reli­gious icon with a hole in his hand to crop up.

            Maria, used to the rumors, lis­tened with half a mind as she watched the sailors scut­tling about. Quick­ly, she real­ized these rumors were unlike those she had heard previously.

            “On the run!” one sailor shout­ed. “Peo­ple lookin’ to get their debts paid!”

            Anoth­er quick­ly jumped in. “How’d a Mes­si­ah owe mon­ey? Ain’t it con­sid­ered charity?”

         ” I ‘eard his hand been known to erase some impor­tant papers. Could be the state or big mon­ey types after ‘im,” replied the first sailor. “Either way he’s just up and disappeared.”

            The con­ver­sa­tion waned and waxed again to the tides, and Maria released a breath she hadn’t known she was hold­ing. She felt uncorked, hope and envy and rage bub­bling inside of her, foam­ing up and spilling out. She sat, count­ing her breaths, wait­ing for anoth­er sailor to dis­count the sto­ry. No objec­tion came.

*

            Maria gave birth to an earth­quake. Her daugh­ter shook bones and cracked the sky with her first cry. Maria took the shak­ing bun­dle in her arms and named her Gen­e­sis. Maria said silent good­byes to the ones that came to vis­it. In a week or two, when Maria and Gen­e­sis were strong enough to trav­el, they would leave for the mainland.

            The morn­ing of her depar­ture, Maria pre­pared bread and clothes and gath­ered her hid­den stash of mon­ey. She was cut­ting slices of cheese when there came a knock at the door. She jumped. Sebas­t­ian was not sup­posed to be home until that after­noon, by which time she would already be board­ing a ship to the main­land. She con­tin­ued slic­ing, hop­ing it was a mis­take. Any­way, Sebas­t­ian would not knock. Gen­e­sis began wail­ing from her crib as the knocks came a sec­ond time. Maria gath­ered her daugh­ter in her arms, gray eyes and an angry pink mouth star­ing at her. She answered the door.

            A deflat­ed man with blotchy skin stood out­side. Maria bare­ly rec­og­nized him, but her fin­ger flashed with pain when he spoke. “Maria, I heard you’d set­tled down here. It’s been so long. I need help.”

            “Joaquin.” His face sagged but his choco­late eyes and tou­sled hair were the same. Each indi­vid­ual fea­ture could be traced back to the Joaquin who had vis­it­ed the island near­ly a decade ago, but put togeth­er he looked dis­col­ored and worn thin. 

            “I can’t help you,” she said.

            “Maria, please. I am sor­ry I left with­out you. I am in debt and in danger.”

            Gen­e­sis con­tin­ued to cry, and Maria wor­ried peo­ple would come check in on her. She need­ed to fin­ish prepar­ing before she could leave. “Come in.”

            Joaquin was in the kitchen before Maria could close the door, eat­ing a slice of the cheese she had been cutting.

            “Leave that,” she said, and Joaquin slith­ered to the oth­er end of the kitchen. His hun­gry eyes lin­gered on her pack. Maria wrapped Gen­e­sis against her chest.

            “I need mon­ey, Maria. I’m sor­ry I have to ask.” Joaquin extend­ed a bony hand. His oth­er hand hung limp at his side, but the glove pulled her eyes.

            “No. I’ve giv­en you enough.” Maria turned and con­tin­ued to cut slices of cheese. “But for the boy you once were, I can spare a meal. Sit.”

            Maria passed him a cov­ered plate of arepas and Joaquin devoured them silent­ly. After his third arepa, Joaquin lift­ed his choco­late eyes. “What is the lit­tle one’s name?”

            “Gen­e­sis.”

            Joaquin laughed. “Maria and Gen­e­sis, a divine fam­i­ly – the father must be Joseph. Where are you head­ed with that pack?”

            Maria stiff­ened. “Sebas­t­ian is hard­ly divine. You were wor­shiped.” She paused. “You aban­doned me.”

           “I was a God and a fool.”

            “You were self­ish. At my expense.” She trailed off as Gen­e­sis squealed.

            “I won’t apol­o­gize for liv­ing the life I was giv­en.” Joaquin’s brown eyes hard­ened and he stared at Maria cold­ly. “There are debtors fol­low­ing me, who will find me here. I’m ask­ing for your help but they’ll just as soon col­lect my debt from fam­i­ly with­out asking.”

            Maria could her­self sink­ing fur­ther into the soil she had been stuck in her whole life. She had been born one foot in the island’s maw, and every time she had come close to leav­ing it tried to swal­low her whole. She braced her hand against the counter to cut through the dizzy­ing sen­sa­tion. She fin­ished slic­ing the cheese and stored it in the pack. Her last prepa­ra­tion done, she turned to Joaquin. “I won’t be trapped here. I’m leav­ing the island, and your debt will stay your own.”

            “So you are sneak­ing away? Genesis’s father might be very grate­ful towards the per­son who warned him…”

            “We will be long gone.”

            “Will you?” Joaquin stood and stalked a step towards Maria. The swal­low­ing sen­sa­tion was back. This time it seemed the air was being pulled down around her. “Stop,” she whispered.

Joaquin took anoth­er step.

            “Yes, cousin?” he asked, his voice drip­ping in hon­ey. “You’ve thought of anoth­er way to help me?”

            Maria paused for a long sec­ond. One arm gen­tly bounced Gen­e­sis, snug against Maria in her ban­deau. In her oth­er hand Maria clutched the cheese knife. “Please leave.”

            “What are you going to do with that? You won’t do any­thing. You think so high­ly of your­self because you suf­fer in silence. We want the same things, you know. The only dif­fer­ence is while you sit around and hope to get reward­ed for good behav­ior, I’ve nev­er stopped scrap­ping until I get what I want.”

            Joaquin lunged and reached. Frayed sil­ver threads became the last bar­ri­er between skin and obliv­ion as Joaquin’s glove closed around Maria’s arm.

“Let go!” Maria writhed, jostling Gen­e­sis in her wrap and set­ting her to wail. Joaquin held fast and tight­ened his grip.

            Maria swung her knife down, and caught the flesh below his wrist. A brack­ish red spring bub­bled up and stained the fad­ed sil­ver. Joaquin screamed, clutch­ing his mirac­u­lous hand to his chest.

            “I’m leav­ing, and you have a choice. The knife is lodged between your radius and ulna. It like­ly nicked an artery. You can take the knife out and try to catch me but you’ll cause per­ma­nent dam­age, maybe need an ampu­ta­tion. Be rid of your curse. And maybe Sebas­t­ian will pay your debt.”

            Joaquin’s eyes swelled with fear and venom.

            “Or,” Maria con­tin­ued, “choose your hand. Wait here for Sebas­t­ian, don’t move, and he will like­ly save it. Stay stuck in your past and your debt. I’m choos­ing my future.” Maria grabbed her pack and left with Gen­e­sis, Joaquin’s plead­ing sobs fad­ing behind her. She mouthed a final good­bye to her cousin and the wav­ing palms that shad­ed the streets. She spared a final glance to the cob­ble­stone square and the church that watched it. From the back of a cart she watched the town sink into the val­ley around it.

            Maria’s soft padding steps gave way to a sat­is­fy­ing clop as she walked up the gang­plank. She had not been chased or fol­lowed. The tick­et mas­ter had accept­ed her pas­sage with­out a blink. As the island reced­ed into the salty spray, Maria held Gen­e­sis close to her breast and spoke soft­ly of the trees they would see, the libraries like cathe­drals, and the lives they would live, self­ish­ly theirs.

From the writer

:: Account ::

When I was in third grade, I sharp­ened pen­cils by push­ing them into the elec­tric sharp­en­er with the palm of my hand. The spin­ning eras­er tick­led; it was my favorite class­room job. One day, I tried the trick with a pen­cil whose eras­er had been pulled or picked out, leav­ing only the thin met­al frame of the eras­er. It cut a per­fect cir­cle into my hand, and, being the dra­mat­ic lit­tle boy I was (and like­ly still am), I thought the skin in the cen­ter of my palm would uncork, spilling all of my blood until I died. I still have a scar in the cen­ter of my palm in the shape of a per­fect cir­cle. I prob­a­bly shed more tears than blood that day, but in this sto­ry I tried to tap into the feel­ing before I knew I would be fine, where the con­se­quence of injury was only lim­it­ed by my imag­i­na­tion. This sto­ry began with the ques­tion: what if I had “uncorked?”

Once I had iso­lat­ed my premise – an injury cre­ates a mag­i­cal hole in a boy’s hand – I strug­gled to find the point of view for my sto­ry. I knew I want­ed the boy to grap­ple with the allure of his gift, but I wasn’t sure where to go from there. Would it be a sto­ry of cor­rup­tion? If so, how could I show his trans­for­ma­tion over a long peri­od of time? Where I want­ed to focus on the expe­ri­ence of some­thing seem­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly impos­si­ble yet real, answer­ing these ques­tions and stick­ing to the boy’s char­ac­ter felt like it would force me to explain the impos­si­ble. These prob­lems ques­tions led me to find the final struc­ture of the sto­ry, where­in the sto­ry focus­es on an observ­er, the boy’s cousin, and their life as periph­er­al to this impos­si­ble event. The shap­ing of this sto­ry often forced me to reassess the divide between the events I want­ed to occur on paper and the feel­ings I want­ed to gen­er­ate for the read­er. Posi­tion­ing the pro­tag­o­nist as a wit­ness but not as much of an actor in the impos­si­ble ele­ments in the sto­ry allowed me to pre­serve the feel­ings that orig­i­nal­ly inspired the sto­ry: pain, fear, awe, and the uncer­tain­ty in the lim­its of reality.

Jean-Bap­tiste Andre holds a Bach­e­lors in neu­ro­science from Bow­doin Col­lege, a teach­ing degree from Relay Grad­u­ate School of Edu­ca­tion, and is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing his MFA in Fic­tion at the War­ren Wil­son Pro­gram for Writ­ers. He works as an admis­sions coun­selor and lives in Las Cruces, New Mex­i­co, where his part­ner is study­ing medicine.

Fiction / Lisa Lang

:: About Graham ::

            Klee’s phone rang just as she stepped from the car. It was her moth­er, want­i­ng to know did she buy bis­cuits from the supermarket?

            “No,” she told her. “Remem­ber, no more sugar?”

            “What did that doc­tor know?” she replied in Greek. “He should do some­thing about that breath.”

            By the time she fin­ished the call, Dami­an had tak­en their bags into the cot­tage. She gazed around at the Moon­ah trees, the grassy slope and the sand­stone cliffs, the gold­en after­noon sun pour­ing like syrup over it all. There was anoth­er cot­tage next to theirs, with the same white weath­er­board, sash win­dows and cream trim. They were coun­cil-owned, rent­ed out at low cost to artists. Soli­tude, peace, nat­ur­al beau­ty – it was every­thing you expect­ed from an artists’ retreat. But walk­ing the neat gar­den path, she felt a shim­mer of doubt. Was retreat real­ly the solu­tion to a cre­ative rut? Weren’t you just retreat­ing fur­ther into your­self, when you, in fact, were the problem?

            She found Dami­an in the first room off the cor­ri­dor, set­ting up his com­put­er mon­i­tor on a heavy­set, wood­en desk. There was a modem, twin­kling in the cor­ner, and thin­ning car­pet which smelled vague­ly of rice. Through the win­dow she could see a spindly rhodo­den­dron, and the win­dow of the sec­ond cottage.

            “Let’s hope they’re not nud­ists,” she said.

            Dami­an grunt­ed as he bent towards the pow­er socket.

            “Speak for your­self,” he said. 

            Klee found flo­ral sheets in a linen clos­et. They were vel­vety from wear, vio­lets fad­ed to mauve. Dami­an found an assort­ment of cups and glass­es in the kitchen cup­board. He poured two large gins and topped them up with warm tonic.

            “We haven’t even unpacked,” said Klee.

            “I want to go see the water, before it gets dark.”

            They set off across the grass, gin slosh­ing. From the cliff edge they saw the calm, indi­go bay, the water turn­ing clear at the shore­line. There were coloured boats with white sails, like Italy, she thought, though she’d nev­er been. She sipped her gin, tast­ed salt. Rest­ed her glass on the wood­en rail.

            A large fer­ry cut a dot­ted line, white as chalk, motor­ing toward the pier.

            Klee inhaled the sea air, its briny fresh­ness like a promise of renew­al. Dami­an looked towards the horizon.

            “Are you think­ing about Gra­ham?” she said.

            “Why do you think I’m always think­ing about Graham?”

            “Because that would be a total­ly nor­mal reaction.”

            “So if I say no, I’m not normal?”

            “Yeah, that’s exact­ly what I said.”

            They both turned at the sound of tyres on gravel. 

            “It’s the nud­ists,” he said.

            A woman dragged a roller case up the path towards the door of the sec­ond cottage.

            “Hi,” said Klee. “We’re from next door.”

            “I could hap­pi­ly die here,” said the woman. “It’s heav­en, isn’t it?” She spread her arms wide. “I’m Pamela. And that’s my son, Byron.” She ges­tured to the young man lean­ing into the boot of their car. She was around six­ty: dark curls grey­ing at the tem­ples, a large medal­lion worn over her loose, black linen smock.

            “Are you poets?” she con­tin­ued. “I indulged rather heav­i­ly dur­ing my preg­nan­cy with Byron.”

            “No, we’re – Dami­an makes video games, and I –

            “Which games?” Byron hur­ried towards them, swing­ing a duf­fel bag. “Any­thing I’d know?”

            Dami­an, of course, said nothing.

            “Heard of RTW?” said Klee, and watched his eyes grow wide. He was younger than she’d first thought, mid-twen­ties at most.

            “Are you kid­ding me? I frig­ging love RTW!”

            “And what one earth is Arty W?” Pamela tossed her head.

            “No Mum, it’s the let­ters: RTW. Round the World. It’s only like, the biggest game of the last two years.” He then explained, with a ten­der­ness and patience that sur­prised Klee, how it worked. You trav­elled round Asia and Europe col­lect­ing expe­ri­ences. Full Moon Par­ties, Glas­ton­bury, a glimpse of the Mona Lisa. You col­lect­ed as many as you could before the mon­ey ran out. If you got robbed or ripped off, the mon­ey went quick­er. But you could also top up by busk­ing or pick­ing fruit.

            His face was soft, almost yearn­ing. Pamela looked from Byron to Damian.

            “And you – what did you say – pro­grammed it?”

            “He did it all,” said Klee. “The nar­ra­tive, the pro­gram­ming – all of it.”

            “Well, that’s real­ly some­thing. I’d love to hear more, maybe over a drink?”

            “Prob­a­bly they’re here to work,’ said Byron.

            “We should let you unpack,” said Klee.

            “I have a some­what lack­lus­tre Neb­bi­o­lo,” said Pamela.

            “Come by tomor­row at eight.”

            “You can go,” said Damian.

            Klee float­ed the sheet above the mat­tress, before bend­ing to tuck it in. Dami­an opened one bed­side draw­er, then another.

             “The last thing I need is some RTW fanboy.”

            Dami­an had not made a game in over two years. Before that, he’d spent years try­ing to cre­ate a hit, some­thing to be played in lounge­rooms the world over. But he’d made RTW almost on a whim – a game of nos­tal­gia, for age­ing Gen Xers who stilled pined for a thump­ing Lon­don club, a sexy night on the beach in Barcelona, while they queued for sausages at Bun­nings. And it prob­a­bly would have been anoth­er niche game, if it wasn’t for the pan­dem­ic. The game was released just as nineties nos­tal­gia began to surge, along with case num­bers and restric­tions, its wild suc­cess sur­pris­ing everyone.

            Dami­an opened the last of the draw­ers. Klee picked up a lumpy, syn­thet­ic pillow.

            “Pamela seemed inter­est­ing. Did you see her necklace?”

            Dami­an shrugged. Klee stuffed the pil­low into a flo­ral case.

            “It was real­ly unusu­al. It had these blues and greens sort of flick­er­ing over the metal.”

            “You wan­na get drunk?” he said, clos­ing the draw­ers. “Go look at the stars?”

            Oh yes. Get drunk, look at stars and could they please talk about Graham?

            Klee slept late and rose a lit­tle worse for wear. The sun was cloud-fil­tered, pale where it seeped beneath the blinds. She wait­ed for the cof­fee to boil, savour­ing her dry mouth and wool­ly head. Maybe it’s just what they’d need­ed, a lit­tle fun. She car­ried Damian’s mug into the room where he was already at work.

            “Thanks,” he said, face blank with concentration.

            She returned to the kitchen and perched at the wood­en bench with a note­book, a pen and a glass of water. She had all the time in the world. All she had to do was cre­ate a char­ac­ter, a role that could be played by a short, olive-skinned, forty-year old woman. Not the kid sis­ter and best friend roles she’d set­tled for in her twen­ties. Not the moth­er roles of her thir­ties: serv­ing up chick­en and clean­ing toi­lets in cheesy ads. The role of a woman – sub­stan­tial and experienced.

            She felt the press­ing, almost-phys­i­cal need to check the news.

            To phone her moth­er, who may have for­got­ten to take her medication. 

            She remem­bered a swarm of ants on their back veran­da – she’d meant to lay poi­son before they left. Would they be gath­er­ing strength, march­ing into the house, embold­ened by their absence?

            What, she won­dered, made borscht taste like borscht? Was it dill? And why was she think­ing of the Rus­sians, was it because of Chekhov? If only she could chan­nel Chekhov, write one char­ac­ter as ful­ly alive as his.

            She need­ed anoth­er cof­fee. Writ­ing was exhausting.

            When she went into Damian’s room, he was star­ing out the win­dow, where Byron was cir­cling his cot­tage, arms behind his back.

            “How am I sup­posed to think, with Lord Byron out there, act­ing all Byron­ic? What’s he doing, com­pos­ing sonnets?”

            “You can ask him at our drinks tonight.” She car­ried the per­co­la­tor over to his desk and tipped cof­fee into his mug.

            “Did you write?” he said.

            “I wrote a list. Phone Mum, buy ant poi­son, look up recipe for borscht.”

            “So you already have your nar­ra­tive. Daugh­ter feeds poi­soned borscht to unsus­pect­ing Mum.”

            “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this writ­ing caper.”

            “You gave it a morn­ing. No-one can say you didn’t try.”

            “Speak­ing of try­ing, how’s the new game?”

            “It’s – lack­lus­tre. Now shut the door on your way out.”

            Klee phoned her moth­er, who com­plained about her new care worker.

            “He smells like a he-goat.”

            “Mum.”

            “I’m not say­ing he’s not nice.”

            “Well, nice is something.”

            “What am I sup­posed to do, put a peg on my nose?”

            Her Muma was a chain smok­er; she doubt­ed she could smell much at all.

            From the win­dow, she watched Pamela strid­ing down the path in bathers and a sarong. It was on the cool side for swim­ming. She had a plush tow­el thrown over one shoul­der like a jaun­ty cape.

            “You could always have anoth­er cigarette.”

            “What?”

            “Noth­ing.” 

            At quar­ter past eight they knocked on the cot­tage door. Klee held a bowl of cashews. Byron answered bare­foot, in jeans and a fad­ed t‑shirt.

            “Hi,” said Klee. “We brought snacks!”

            He ush­ered them through, his ges­tures and nod­ding head like an impres­sion of hos­pi­tal­i­ty he’d gleaned from TV.

            “Um, so here’s the couch. I think Pam’s get­ting the wine.”

            The couch was the same beige fab­ric as theirs, but draped with a soft, green throw. They sat, with Byron tak­ing the wood­en, lad­der-backed chair. Dami­an reached for a fist­ful of nuts.

            “So, are you both artists?” said Klee.

            “No, Pam’s the artist, a jew­eller, actu­al­ly. I just study pro­gram­ming. I’m pret­ty much the family’s black sheep. They’re all super into the arts.”
            “Damian’s a black sheep, too,” offered Klee. “His family’s basi­cal­ly all lawyers.”

            “Com­put­ers aren’t not the arts,” said Dami­an.  “They’re just anoth­er medium.”

            “Exact­ly!” Byron half-lift­ed out of his seat. “Like your game, RTW, that’s real­ly cre­ative. I love it how in the Barcelona sec­tion, you go up the hill to the park to see all those Gaudi’s. It’s real­ly cool how you have to dodge the bag-snatch­ing dudes on motor­bikes. But those Gaudi’s – they’re so beautiful.”

            “You like the art?” said Dami­an. He wiped the salt from his hands onto the thigh of his jeans.

            “Yeah, some­times I don’t play to win, but to see what there is to see. Like that Gau­di Park, there’s all these hid­den mosaics, and the birds’ nests built into the wall.” He laughed, touched his face with his hand. “Which obvi­ous­ly you know all about. Sor­ry.”

            “No.” Dami­an was lean­ing for­ward. “That’s actu­al­ly inter­est­ing. I cre­at­ed those places to be, like, intrin­si­cal­ly reward­ing. You don’t get more points by explor­ing more – I want­ed peo­ple to hang out there because they were beau­ti­ful or what­ev­er. Sort of despite the game. But I’m not sure it worked that way.”
            “No, it total­ly does! Well, for me it does.” Byron shrugged and looked down at his feet. “For what it’s worth.”

            “I was just tan­go­ing with a very stub­born cork,” Pamela swished into the room. She wore anoth­er linen dress – pale this time – and a dif­fer­ent neck­lace, damp hair falling to her shoul­ders. She placed the bot­tle and glass­es on the side table.

            “Drinks?”

            Pam poured then sat back in the deep armchair.

            “So how did you come up with the idea for your game?”

            “Mum,” said Byron. “He prob­a­bly gets sick of talk­ing about it. It’s like if you met Leonard Cohen, and only want­ed to talk about ‘Hal­lelu­jah’.”

            “You know, I actu­al­ly did meet Leonard once?” She reached over for a hand­ful of nuts. “It was back in the eight­ies, when I was trav­el­ling around the Greek Islands. His aura was tremen­dous­ly pow­er­ful. After­ward, I could work with no stone but onyx for a whole year.” She bit down on a cashew. “I was won­der­ing if you were Greek – but the name Klee threw me off.”

            “Yes, it’s short for Kleio.”

            Pamela’s face opened into a grin.

            “I knew it! Didn’t I say she was Greek, Byron?”

            “Mm,” said Klee, rais­ing her glass to her mouth. “But Leonard Cohen – tell us more.”

            Pamela raised a sin­gle eyebrow.

            “Oh, we just sort of crossed paths for a time, you know how it is, when you travel.”

            “No,” said Byron. “My trip was can­celled when the bor­der closed, remember?”

            “Maybe if Byron blocks his ears, we’ll find out a bit more,” sug­gest­ed Dami­an, and Pamela threw back her head, her laugh rock­ing the old arm­chair on its feet.

            “Oh, she’s not hold­ing back on account of me,” said Byron, cross­ing his arms.

            “He’s right,” Pamela sat up. She poured more wine into their glass­es. “Chil­dren need to see their par­ents as ful­ly human. Do you have kids?” She placed the emp­ty bot­tle back onto the table with a sol­id clink.

            “Dami­an has a son,” said Klee. In the dis­tance, a car­go ship blew its horn, long and deep. “He hasn’t met him though.”

            “Because I didn’t know about him,” said Dami­an. “I’m going to meet him, at some point.”

            “A secret son! Tonight’s tak­ing a bit of a Poldark turn, isn’t it?” Pamela tossed the remain­ing nuts into her mouth, picked up her glass and leaned her elbows on her knees. “Do tell.”

            Dami­an frowned. He took a long swal­low of his wine. Klee cleared her throat.

            “Well, about a month ago, an old girl­friend of Damian’s got in touch and told him he has a son, and the son wants to meet him. Gra­ham.” Klee opened her palms and shrugged. “Graham’s twenty-two.”

            “That’s an awful­ly long time to keep a secret,” said Pamela. “No one noticed a lit­tle Gra­ham run­ning around, and thought to men­tion him?”

            “She moved to Hong Kong before the birth to stay with her moth­er, who’s Chi­nese. I guess she need­ed the help. When she moved back, every­one just assumed the father lived overseas.”

            Pamela laughed.

            “So you have a ful­ly-grown, Chi­nese son called Gra­ham. Isn’t that rather marvellous?”

            “But that’s messed up!” blurt­ed Byron. “To keep his own son from him.”

            “I expect she would have been fright­ened,” said Pam. “Dami­an could have stopped her going to Hong Kong, if he’d known. Legal­ly, I mean,”

            “That’s part of it,” said Klee. “She also says his fam­i­ly looked down on her for being Chi­nese, and she didn’t want her son to have the same experience.”

            “That’s not true,” said Dami­an. “They looked down on all my girl­friends equal­ly. It had noth­ing to do with Jade being Chinese.”

            Pamela brought her fin­gers to her lips and turned to her son.

            “Byron, will you go fetch the good chi­anti? I think they could use anoth­er drink.”

            “I’ll just go use the bath­room,” said Klee.

            When she stood, she felt a slight rip­ple of intox­i­ca­tion. She took a breath and made her way toward the rear of the cot­tage. She sat on the pink toi­let, star­ing at the same pink tiles and grey­ing grout as the bath­room in their cot­tage. They’d told very few peo­ple about Gra­ham, only her moth­er and Damian’s parents.

            It wasn’t so long ago they’d decid­ed against becom­ing par­ents. When Klee hit the crunch time of her late thir­ties, they’d debat­ed the pros and cons of par­ent­hood, land­ing firm­ly on the side of the cons. Then came the bush­fires. Images of black skies and flam­ing kan­ga­roos, grey-faced hol­i­day mak­ers shel­tered beneath their beach tow­els. The smoke had bare­ly cleared when the pan­dem­ic struck. It all seemed to affirm their deci­sion. Cli­mate change! Plague! Home learn­ing! And now Dami­an had become a par­ent with­out her, while insist­ing that noth­ing would change.

            Klee flushed, wor­ried she’d been gone too long.

            In the lounge, Byron had moved to the couch, where he and Dami­an peered at some­thing on Damian’s phone.

            “What is it?” She pic­tured the pho­to­graph of Gra­ham that Jade had sent: a gen­uine baby-face, smooth, round cheeks, with Damian’s crooked smile.

            “It’s a pro­to­type of my new game,” said Dami­an, with­out look­ing up. “I want Byron’s opin­ion on something.”

            Their heads were near­ly touch­ing. Byron mur­mured some­thing, and Dami­an laughed. They could have been boys, the same age, hang­ing out after school. Klee picked up a full wine glass from the table and sat in the hard-backed chair.

            “So Dami­an says you’re an actor?” Pam was stroking the pen­dant with her thumb, dark sil­ver speck­led with green and bronze, like leaves on a pond. Klee want­ed to feel its sur­face, to rub her thumb over the tex­tured metal.

            “I was. Now I most­ly work in my friend’s bookshop.”

            “Why stop?” Pamela tilt­ed her head.

            “Well, there’s only so many sequels they can make of My big fat Greek wed­ding.”

            Pamela smiled.

            “So you gave up. You’re the prac­ti­cal one, he’s the dreamer.”

            “No, I – dream.”

            “And then you wake up.” She shift­ed the cross of her legs.

            “You don’t even know me.” She imme­di­ate­ly wor­ried it was rude.

            “I know peo­ple.” She waived her hand at the couch. “I know Byron could nev­er be an artist because he wants to please every­one. I hope you’re not a peo­ple pleaser?”

            “I think – there’s a dif­fer­ence between car­ing and pleasing.”

            “Hmm.” She looked right into Klee’s eyes. Who did that? Nobody. Cer­tain­ly not now, after two years of social dis­tanc­ing. But for the first time in a long time, Klee felt entire­ly vis­i­ble. All her sad­ness and desire and wor­ry. Her fears for her mar­riage, her hopes for her work, and the enor­mous, indi­gestible fact of Gra­ham. And she knew exact­ly the kind of char­ac­ter she want­ed to write.

            Dami­an laughed again, and Byron looked like he’d won the lottery.

            “That’s it!” said Pam, bring­ing her palms togeth­er beneath her chin. She point­ed her steepled hands at Klee. “I knew it. You were in that ad. Chick­en in a tick­en, bok bok!”

            It was a small gath­er­ing, in the pri­vate room of Klee’s local bar. Dim and woody, with an open fire in one cor­ner, and a sleek white machine silent­ly fil­ter­ing the air in anoth­er. Her Mum sat in the sole, vel­veteen arm­chair, stout and smil­ing in her best jack­et. A table was laid out with mini pies and quich­es, where two of her old friends were laugh­ing with a young actor from the show. The bar­tender hand­ed her a negroni, a glow­ing orange orb to match the fire.

            “Um, sor­ry, but could I get a self­ie? For my Mum? She’s a huge fan.”

            She turned to the bar­tender in sur­prise. She’d been com­ing here for years, long before the show first aired, but he wasn’t one of the regulars.

            “Sure, OK.”

            She smiled into the phone, angling her face to the right.

            “Klee, you’re like, actu­al­ly famous!” Gra­ham bound­ed toward her, then turned his crooked grin on the bartender.

            “She’s not that glam­orous, you know. Not when you’ve seen her in uggies and pyja­ma shorts.” The bar­tender laughed, and Klee felt the rum­ble of inter­est between them, before the bar­tender began to clear emp­ty glass­es from a near­by table.

            “Oh my god, you didn’t tell me YiaYia was here!” He fold­ed him­self in half so that he could hug her Mum where she sat. YiaYia stroked the sleeve of his for­est green blaz­er with approval.

            “You look very nice,” she told him. “Very handsome.”

            “You do,” he said. “What’s this jack­et, Chanel?”

            “This very, very old. Like me,” she replied, beaming.

            “Come on! You’ve been shop­ping online again, haven’t you?”

            “No!” She gig­gled. “I wait for you.”

            Gra­ham some­times used his phone to order her things: plants and kitchen­ware most­ly, and then refused to let Klee pay him back. She reminds me of my PoPo, he would say, mean­ing his grand­ma in Hong Kong. He still couldn’t go see her – not with flights priced through the roof.

            “What are you drink­ing?” said Klee. “Order what you want, there’s mon­ey on the bar.

            “I’ll have an ouzo with YiaYia.”

            “You do know you’re not Greek, don’t you?”

            “Oh my god, you’re so annoy­ing! You’re my step-mum, and you’re Greek, so I prac­ti­cal­ly am.”

            “For­mer step-mum,” she said, soft­ly enough that it dropped beneath the oth­er bar sounds. She could final­ly think of Dami­an with­out the heart-bruis­ing pain of that first year apart, when she’d some­times sobbed into her mother’s lap like a child. It was also the first year of her TV show, Step­ping In. The one she’d writ­ten to give her­self a decent role to play, and then she’d had to play it – the hap­pi­ly mar­ried woman com­ing to terms with her husband’s new­ly dis­cov­ered adult son.

            She watched Gra­ham talk­ing to the bar­tender, their easy flir­ta­tion. Graham’s elbows on the bar, the bar­tender touch­ing bot­tles on a shelf.

            “Klee! Hap­py birthday!”

            Her friend Rose, squeez­ing her in a bearhug. She’d brought a date, and there were intro­duc­tions, and then a quick roam around to make sure every­one was com­fort­able. She didn’t have to wor­ry about the actors, those born extro­verts. But some of her friends were less outgoing.

            “Wowowow, is that me?” said Gra­ham. He was hold­ing a beer with a fan­cy label, tip­ping it toward the actor who played her step­son on the show. “I mean, I’m even hot­ter in real life than I am on screen!”

            “I can intro­duce you, if you like.”

            “No thanks.” He took a sip of his beer and pulled a face. “Even nar­cis­sists have their limits.”

            “I said meet him, you don’t have to snog him.”

            “Like he could resist.”

            They watched the actor talk­ing to Rose, his charm and self-dep­re­ca­tion evi­dent even from across the room.

            “How’s Dami­an?” she asked. She resist­ed the urge to ask about his new wife and daugh­ter. Gra­ham screwed up his face.

            “Ugh, his mid-life cri­sis is just so het­ero­nor­ma­tive, it’s embar­rass­ing. But who cares – tonight’s about you.” He reached into the pock­et of his blaz­er and pulled out a small box of cor­ru­gat­ed black card­board. “Hap­py birthday.”

            She took off the lid and saw, nes­tled in black tis­sue paper, a pen­dant. Dark sil­ver, dap­pled with green and bronze.

            “This was sooo expen­sive, you bet­ter like it,” he said. “But you can change it if you want, I kept the receipt.”

            “No.” She ran her fin­ger over the met­al. It was rougher than she’d imag­ined, almost grit­ty. An arte­fact from anoth­er life. The one where she thought her career was over and her mar­riage was strong. “It’s perfect.”

            Gra­ham touched her sleeve.

            “He actu­al­ly looks real­ly ter­ri­ble. Kind of squidgy and middle-aged.”

            “Thanks,” she said, and drew him into a hug. Then the lights went out, and Rose was walk­ing towards her with a cake, and a sin­gle, fizzing sparkler. Like a bril­liant star, or a car­toon dia­mond. If they renewed Step­ping In for a sec­ond sea­son, she could wear the pen­dant on the show. It was all still up in the air. The net­work peo­ple want­ed her on-screen hus­band to leave her for a younger woman.

           Too cliched, she’d argued. She knew what they real­ly want­ed: to bring in a hot twen­ty-some­thing to boost the rat­ings. We need a com­pli­cat­ing fac­tor, they said. Sea­son one, the com­pli­ca­tion was the son, George, but by season’s end the Step-Mum and George are get­ting along, so we need a new complication.

            Did they think she would just give in, that she was some kind of peo­ple pleas­er? That she’d sur­vived a pan­dem­ic, a divorce and her own use-by date, just to be pushed around by a bunch of suits?

            “They sold out of gluten free,” whis­pered Rose, set­ting down the glis­ten­ing choco­late cake. “Sor­ry.”

            They sang hap­py birth­day, the actors mak­ing it sound half-decent with­out quite drown­ing out her Mum’s tune­less shout. She would deal with the net­work on Mon­day. Tonight was a time to cel­e­brate, to drink negro­nis, to watch flirts in their nat­ur­al habi­tat. Who knows, she might even eat some gluten.

            Klee met with Dan and Sam from the net­work in a light-filled tim­ber café, the walls hung with hes­s­ian cof­fee sacks. It was lull time – after the morn­ing rush, but still too ear­ly for lunch. Sam was eat­ing a muf­fin, a cumu­lous of flour and berries over­spilling its paper cup. He was maybe Graham’s age, the colours of a bicep tat­too show­ing through the sheer white of his shirt. Dan was old­er than Klee, shrewd, blue eyes emerg­ing from some seri­ous under-eye bag­gage. Klee was ide­al­ly caf­feinat­ed: her words pep­py and bright, but not gushy.

            “So get this. The com­pli­cat­ing fac­tor isn’t a young woman. It’s not a love inter­est at all.” She paused to smile, hop­ing there were no lin­seeds stuck in her teeth. “No, it’s an old­er woman. Forth­right, opin­ion­at­ed, blunt. Some­one whose words can poke at the fab­ric of their mar­riage, all the fray­ing bits. But also, a per­son inter­est­ing in her own right. An artist. Maybe the one-time lover of Brett Whitely.”

            She saw the slight dim­ming of Sam’s lumi­nous face. He had no idea who Brett White­ly was.

            “Or maybe, um, Hugh Jack­man.” Which made no sense, age-wise. “I mean, a Hugh Jack­man type.”

            “I don’t mind that,” said Dan. His large fin­ger tapped the rim of his cof­fee cup. “I don’t mind that at all.”

            Klee swelled with the sense of her own com­pe­tence. She could do this, this busi­ness stuff. Not only could she act, and write, she could speak net­work speak with the best of them, too! Dan raised a fin­ger at the pass­ing wait­ress, point­ed to his emp­ty cup.

“The prob­lem isn’t the char­ac­ters,” he said. “It’s the fact you’re being sued by your ex-husband.”

            “What did you say?” She felt the curved gloss of a lin­seed, wedged against her incisor.

            “You’re ex-hus­band. Dami­an. He’s suing for a share of the prof­its. Says you col­lab­o­rat­ed togeth­er on the show’s concept.”

            “No, that can’t be right. It doesn’t even sound like Damian.”

            Dan slid his phone across the table­top. Klee reluc­tant­ly picked it up. On the screen was a legal doc­u­ment. As she scrolled through the pages of legalese, she spot­ted a famil­iar name, the best friend of Damian’s Dad, a fel­low lawyer. Of course, it wasn’t like Dami­an, it was just like Damian’s fam­i­ly. She remem­bered how her for­mer father-in-law had refused to meet Gra­ham until he’d tak­en a pater­ni­ty test. Dan coughed into his hand. She watched a dol­lop of phlegm land near his thumb, and forced her­self not to recoil.

            “I can sort this out, leave it with me. It won’t be a problem.”

            She drove straight to Damian’s house. It was the same sin­gle-front­ed Vic­to­ri­an they’d lived in through­out their mar­riage, only with a clam-shell sand pit in the front yard. She stared at the bright blue plas­tic and rang the bell.

            When Dami­an came to the door, he looked much like he always had. Gra­ham had called him squidgy, and there was a cer­tain soft­ness to him, most­ly around the hips. He stood unshaven, in track­suit pants.

            “Has some­thing hap­pened?”
            “You mean, apart from you suing me?”                                                                                “Oh, that. Yeah.” He turned and she fol­lowed him down the nar­row cor­ri­dor. The bed­room door was closed, and while the house still had the musty breath of hid­den damp­ness, it was over­laid with some­thing sweet. Baby pow­der, or youth. But it was still cramped and gloomy, at least until they reached the back end, which had been trans­formed into some­thing impos­si­bly love­ly and bright. Open-plan every­thing, flow­ing seam­less­ly into a court­yard froth­ing with jas­mine. All the sev­en­ties pok­i­ness and dark nook­i­ness was gone. Gone too, was the dan­ger­ous oven that occa­sion­al­ly burst into flame, the lou­vered tim­ber pantry and orange tiling. There was an island bench, a daz­zling cof­fee machine.

            “Mac­chi­a­to?” he said.

            He picked an emp­ty pack­et of pods off the bench, then flat­tened it with his hand.

            “The thing is, Becky can’t work right now. She has post-natal depres­sion. And my last game didn’t sell. We’re in a pret­ty tight spot, to be hon­est, with the kid and all.”

            So maybe get a job? Wasn’t that the solu­tion cho­sen by mil­lions of peo­ple who also need­ed mon­ey to live?

            She thought of the sev­en years she’d worked in Rose’s book­shop. The end­less, sleepy bore­dom of Mon­day after­noon. The brood­ing boys in cardi­gans who bought Sartre and Camus. The con­de­scen­sion of mid­dle-aged men. The tantrum throw­ing chil­dren with their ner­vous, appeas­ing grand­mas. She’d thought she’d be there for­ev­er, that one day she’d be sell­ing those Camus boys Good­night Moon.

           “Let me get this right,” she said. She placed her palm on the cool, mar­ble bench­top.  “You left me for a younger woman, who you then got preg­nant. And now you’re suing me because you can’t afford to pay for the kid?”

            “Well, it sounds bad when you put it like that.”

            He rubbed a hand across his eyes, his shoul­ders slumped.
            “I bor­rowed mon­ey from my par­ents to fix this place up. Before the baby came. Becky said it wasn’t safe, and I thought I could pay it back once the game sold.” He glanced at the clock, it had just gone mid­day. “Lis­ten, do you want a beer?”

They sat in the court­yard, on stripy, padded lounge chairs. The mild air was tinged with the jas­mine that cov­ered the whole back fence. She placed her emp­ty bot­tle on the paving where it teetered on the uneven brick. They had talked, through one beer, then anoth­er, most­ly about Gra­ham. He was bare­ly talk­ing to Dami­an, had shown lit­tle inter­est in his new sister.

            “Don’t you think it’s weird that he prefers to hang out with your moth­er than me?” Damian’s fin­ger traced the ridge of moss grow­ing between two bricks.

            “Don’t wor­ry about Gra­ham. Graham’s a top kid. He’s the best.”

            “He thinks I’m a douche bag.”

            “And he doesn’t even know you’re suing me.” She smiled. “Yet.”

            She clocked the look of dry amuse­ment on his face. It was so famil­iar, so Dami­an. They’d been the best of friends.

“Tell me some­thing.” She tapped the arm of his lounger. “What’s it like being with some­one who doesn’t remem­ber the nineties?”

            An ant wan­dered onto his hand and began to climb his knuckle.

            “Fan­tas­tic. Nostalgia’s overrated.”

            She knew then that his mar­riage was in trou­ble. It was intu­ition, or the way he couldn’t joke about Becky, even for a sec­ond. She looked back into the house, at the gleam­ing oven and stove­top. It was too clean, like a film set. She shift­ed in her chair.

            “They won’t green­light the sec­ond sea­son with a law­suit hang­ing over the show. They might even can­cel it, decide it’s too hard.”

            “You could lose the show?” He frowned and picked at the label on his beer.

            “Maybe.” She shrugged. “I hope not. I’m not sure I can start again, again.”

            In the silence, she could hear a dog howl­ing. It sound­ed tru­ly bereft. Would she real­ly not be able to start again? She was only 44. But you didn’t get too many chances in tele­vi­sion. She thought about being on set, the intense cama­raderie of the actors. The sin­gu­lar, grat­i­fy­ing pride of hav­ing her very own show. And there was some­thing else, too, the way her late suc­cess made sense of her life, gave it nar­ra­tive cohe­sion, all her fail­ures mere steps on the long road to tri­umph. She reached for the strap of her hand­bag and stood. She would not cry in front of Damian.

            “I bet­ter be off,” she said. “I have to take Mum to the fruit shop.”

            “She still refus­es to buy her veg from Coles?”

            “What for I give Mr Coles all my mon­ey?”
            He laughed, and there it was, a tiny catch in the fab­ric of her heart.

            “You know, I’m not going to sue you,” he said. “But I did give you the show’s con­cept. Remem­ber that weird artist’s retreat we went on, with that kid Byron, and his Mum?”

            She wedged her bag beneath her arm and nodded.

            “You were freak­ing out about Gra­ham,” he con­tin­ued. “About being a step-Mum to a grown-up, and I said, that’s what you should write about.”

            Is that how it hap­pened? She actu­al­ly couldn’t remem­ber. Was it real­ly his idea, after all?

            “What will your par­ents say?”

            He waved a mag­nan­i­mous hand in the air.

            “They can sue Becky’s doc­tors. They gave her the wrong med­ica­tion when she went in for rhinoplasty.”

            “Ok, then. Thanks, I guess.” She stepped over the emp­ty bot­tles. “Take care.”

            “Could you um, do me a favour, though?”

            She stopped, sure he would ask her to speak to Gra­ham, to put in a good word on his behalf.

            “Becky real­ly wants a Becky char­ac­ter on the show.”

            “You want me to write Becky into my show?” She shift­ed her bag to the oth­er arm.

            “Yeah. She doesn’t like that your char­ac­ter and mine are still married.”

            She resist­ed the urge to laugh out loud.

            “Tell her it hap­pens in sea­son three.”

            She turned and walked quick­ly back through the kitchen. Only when she got to the hall­way did she allow her­self a grin. She opened the front door. The plum tree across the street was so full of blos­som it looked like a cush­ion had burst. She walked towards the car. The nud­ists, she thought. That’s what we called them. But she couldn’t for the life of her remem­ber why.

From the writer

:: Account ::

This sto­ry was writ­ten dur­ing a res­i­den­cy at the Point Nepean Nation­al Park on the south­ern tip on the Morn­ing Penin­su­la, Vic­to­ria, Aus­tralia. It was the first time I’d trav­elled since the lock­downs of 2020 and 2021. I swam with wild dol­phins and found the odd echid­na trundling across my front yard and enjoyed sun­set drinks with oth­er artists. But I was also check­ing in on my Mum, who I’m a car­er for, and every taste of free­dom was tinged with wor­ry for what she was doing and how she was cop­ing. The sto­ry was writ­ten with this dual mind­set. I was con­scious that while care­giv­ing might fea­ture in sto­ries, it wasn’t often in the back­ground, the way oth­er types of work is. I want­ed the care­giv­ing there, infus­ing the sto­ry with its anx­i­eties and plea­sures and insights, with­out being the actu­al story.

Lisa Lang is a writer from Naarm (Mel­bourne). Her nov­el, Utopi­an Man, was a win­ner of the Australian/Vogel Lit­er­ary Award. Recent sto­ries have appeared in Jake and the Four Faced Liar. She works in a library to keep her toy poo­dle, Sap­pho, rolling in mackerel.

Fiction / Sandra Marchetti

:: It’s Time for Dodger Baseball ::

            At the top of the cement steps, Rita froze. She rec­og­nized him from the poster out­side the sta­di­um. It was the man with the voice.

            “What’s wrong, Mam­ma?” Max asked.

            Rita stood with mouth agape watch­ing the man flash a smile as he hus­tled along. He was the first “offi­cial” Dodger she saw that day—after all, Rita and Max had arrived right when the gates opened. He gave a few kids’ hair a quick ruf­fle as he walked—it seemed as if his arms were per­pet­u­al­ly wav­ing. But as he was about to shoot off down the con­course, Rita locked eyes with him. She rose out of her seat, point­ing and even­tu­al­ly screech­ing. She heard her­self and real­ized she sound­ed as if she had seen a phan­tom. He looked down at her shirt and back at her eyes—it was the yel­low she and Max were wear­ing. As soon he laid eyes on them, she knew they had made a huge mis­take. Two bum­ble bees in a sea of blue. She crossed her arms over her chest. He acknowl­edged her with what seemed like an uncom­fort­able nod then picked up his already hur­ried pace, head­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion toward a secu­ri­ty guard and a con­crete col­umn back by the con­ces­sion stands—he was head­ing up to the booth.

*

            The first time she heard that voice Rita was work­ing the dial in her old ’55 Mer­cury just look­ing for a sooth­ing tune. Clean­ing rooms at the Inter­Con­ti­nen­tal was tough work and she was spent—the com­mute only added to it. It was amaz­ing how peo­ple treat­ed the suites like their own per­son­al garbage can, dumps she had to flip in under an hour for the next “four star” guest. Maybe she could find out what the weath­er would be like on Monday—her reg­u­lar day off—but instead a dull crin­kling came from the speak­ers. Rita stayed with the sta­tion as she crawled to a red light. When the coupe ahead of her stopped short, near­ly ram­ming the lead car’s bumper, she snapped alert and heard a voice say slow­ly, “Now up for the Dodgers…” It was the first Eng­lish sen­tence she real­ly under­stood all day. At the hotel, every­one talked so fast she couldn’t process it all. Rita had picked up on some words that sound­ed sim­i­lar in Ital­ian and Eng­lish, like “city,” “accept­able,” and the dread­ed “traf­fic,” but sen­tences were hard. This voice spoke so slow­ly she could almost keep pace, and best of all, only one per­son was talking.

            Rita knew about the Dodgers. Her six-year-old loved base­ball ever since com­ing to the States a year and a half ago, and he want­ed to be on the Dodger grounds crew. When he went out to help his uncle with the yard­work, he trailed the rake behind him, pre­tend­ing to redis­trib­ute dirt on the infield.

            “You’re not old enough to get a job at the sta­di­um,” she teased.

            I will be soon!” Max said. “I’m going to water green­est grass in Los Angeles.”

            Max had been to one ball­game with Uncle Ray, and after that he was a goner. The TV didn’t always work, but Max checked the box scores every morn­ing, sneak­ing in under Ray’s legs, scrap­ing his long lash­es against the paper. The neigh­bor­hood sand­lot group had adopt­ed him and some of the big­ger kids gave Max an old yel­low Pirates’ jer­sey to wear. It wasn’t exact­ly Dodger blue, but it was bet­ter than nothing.

            When the TV wasn’t on the fritz, he’d yell into the kitchen, “Mam­ma! I gio­ca­tori stan­no gio­can­do a base­ball! Drys­dale is pitch­ing!” and gig­gle. She mar­veled at his abil­i­ty to trans­late seam­less­ly between the two languages—the advan­tage of learn­ing the words as a child. 

            Rita tried repeat­ing what the man on the radio said: “Now bat­ting for the Dodgers.” Now…bat-ting for the Dodge-rrs…” It didn’t come out quite right—that “r” was hard to say—but she was able to stam­mer through it before he con­tin­ued. She couldn’t make out all the names he rat­tled off after that, though one sound­ed like her boss’, Mr. Davis. She repeat­ed it. Rita under­stood when the voice said, “Out at first!” Davis had to walk back to the bench. She loved that. 

            Rita would turn the dial toward the sta­tion to find the voice day after day. “It’s time for Dodger base­ball!” She felt a rush just hear­ing the phrase. He seemed to have a grand way of speak­ing. She liked the silences too—more time to repeat words aloud as she drove the car. She tried, “two outs in the inning,” “the sky is a beau­ti­ful deep shade of blue,” and “recov­er­ing from an arm injury.”  It was a long dri­ve on the sky-high free­way, and his voice calmed her as she gripped the wheel.

            When Rita got home, Max would ask her about the game. “I lis­tened up to the bot­tom of the fourth inning,” she would tell him. The look on his face! Rita had to laugh. Koufax had a “knee-buck­ling curve­ball” Rita report­ed. She tried to repeat the words the man had said, slow and clear, though her tongue rolled over “knee-buck­ling” a cou­ple of times.

            “You passed my test!” Max said, and laughed pulling Uncle Ray’s tran­sis­tor out from behind his back. He had been lis­ten­ing too.

In bed that night, star­ing up at the ceil­ing, she rehearsed “knee-buck­ling” and vowed to use it at work.

            The next day, Davis laughed right in Rita’s face when she remarked that the Pres­i­den­tial Suite was so dirty it was “knee-buck­ling.” He shook his head as she pushed her cart past him. Even­tu­al­ly Rita would dis­cov­er the mys­tery narrator’s name. It was an odd one. Vin. Vin Scul­ly. Like Vin­cent? She said the name out loud. Was he Catholic too? As she was sound­ing it out, a man in the next car caught her eye. He gave her a con­fused look, and Rita imme­di­ate­ly cast her eyes down­ward. She pressed the gas to inch ahead and con­tin­ued, “I’m Vin Scully…”

            His name didn’t sound like any oth­er Angeli­no, and his voice didn’t match what peo­ple from LA sound­ed like. His words were so slow, and some of the words came out dif­fer­ent­ly than how Max or Mr. Davis pro­nounced them, but she want­ed to lis­ten. Even when the game seemed to speed up, Vin was clear and direct with his sen­tences, rais­ing his tone and quick­en­ing his pace just a bit for the occa­sion. She learned “out at the plate!” was a big deal. Rita was pleased with her­self, know­ing that lis­ten­ing to base­ball was bring­ing her clos­er to Max too. 

            Rita had want­ed to be the one to take Max to his next game. Maybe if they went togeth­er, she could play the part of Mr. Scul­ly, and nar­rate the game with Max’s “col­or com­men­tary.” She need­ed to work on her Eng­lish to move up at the hotel and despite Davis’ cru­el­ty, lis­ten­ing to the games was help­ing. She flashed back to the time, sev­er­al months ago, when some cowork­ers threw her clothes out of her lock­er and stacked phone books inside, telling her to mem­o­rize them. No more. Rita’s new phras­es includ­ed: “crowd­ed park­ing lots” and “it nev­er rains here.” She used these to great effect when com­ment­ing on the weath­er and traf­fic jams near her work. Davis even noticed, say­ing “you’ve picked up a few new lines.” The night­time front desk clerk told Rita she was going to be leav­ing soon—about to get married—and Rita fig­ured that if she could start string­ing sen­tences togeth­er she might be able to inter­view for the job.

            Ray had lucked into the tick­ets for the game he brought Max to—a gift from one of his land­scap­ing cus­tomers who wasn’t going to use them. When Rita asked her broth­er how to buy a pair, he raised his eye­brows and chuck­led, “I’ve nev­er bought tick­ets before and with your Eng­lish? Good luck.” They were lucky to stay with Ray after Joe died, and she didn’t want to press him. She asked one of the bell­men at work where she need­ed to go and he told her “The box office, of course!” Rita heard about the box office on broad­casts. It was at the ballpark—1000 Elysian Park Avenue. She knew the exit for Dodger Sta­di­um, but she had nev­er got­ten off the free­way there. 

            The fol­low­ing Mon­day, she creaked the Merc off the exit ramp and parked in a lot so big she couldn’t see the end of the asphalt. After fol­low­ing a series of con­fus­ing signs, she found where tick­ets were sold. The sta­di­um looked aban­doned so ear­ly in the day. She walked up to the con­crete fortress and saw a pic­ture of a red­head­ed man with a micro­phone next to him plas­tered on one of the gigan­tic walls. Under the micro­phone was a cap­tion, “Vin Scul­ly, Dodger Broad­cast­er.” She couldn’t believe it. See­ing the red hair and blue suit—he was not as she expect­ed. His huge white teeth and grin­ning smile must have been a foot tall! Rita kept walk­ing toward the sign that said “Box Office.” The first five win­dow shades were pulled down, but the last one was half open, a slash against the mid­day sun. She gird­ed her­self to speak and with a smile announced to no one in par­tic­u­lar, “Two Dodgers tick­ets please!” and began to release the ten­sion in her shoul­ders. A hunched man in the booth pushed his head into view and looked at her quizzi­cal­ly. Rita repeat­ed, “Two Dodger tick­ets, per favore!”

            “What game, lady?” the man asked, his eyes squinting.

            She knew this feeling—she’d had enough of these con­ver­sa­tions, end­ing in total con­fu­sion and defeat. Rita looked at her Keds on the hot cement. She stum­bled and said, “I…I don’t…” He turned away, but then reap­peared and slid a lit­tle fold­ed paper under the win­dow. It had a checker­board of games list­ed on it. She looked for a game on a Mon­day, but there were bare­ly any. Going month by month, she kept look­ing and final­ly found one. She point­ed to the date on the sched­ule, and the man peered down. He pulled the tail end of the paper clos­er to his glass­es. He said “You’re gonna have to tell me—I can’t read that!” Rita balled her left fist around her purse strap and told her­self —just say it! She had heard Vin say “upcom­ing games for the Dodgers…on Tues­day the 17^th the Dodgers start a series with the Giants here at Dodger Sta­di­um at 7:15 p.m.” In his voice, it sound­ed so nat­ur­al and easy.

            Slow­ly she said, “Reds. August fif­teen. Two tickets.”

            The man laughed, “Plen­ty of good seats for that one! Where do you want to sit?”

            She hand­ed over a five-dol­lar bill, hop­ing to avoid fur­ther conversation.

            “The best that will buy you is two down the left field line,” the clerk said.

            Rita replied, “Ok,” and he reached down into his drawer.

            She slid the tick­ets in her purse and with a nod swift­ly walked away. 

*

            After Vin dis­ap­peared around the cor­ner, Rita sat back down. She couldn’t help replay­ing the encounter in her head. She had fan­ta­sized about meet­ing Mr. Scul­ly and her laugh­ing at one of his sig­na­ture lines, an exchange she could impress Davis with lat­er. That was nev­er going to hap­pen now. She tried to lis­ten to the music fill­ing the seat­ing bowl. It sound­ed like a fun­ny sort of piano. Max called it an “organ,” but she wasn’t sure if that was the right word. She knew organs were inside your body—a kid­ney, liv­er. Still, she appre­ci­at­ed the dis­trac­tion. By the end of one of the songs she could make out the cho­rus “It’s a beau­ti­ful day for a ballgame…”—and it was. Warm and breezy in the shade. She sang along under her breath. Max gig­gled while rac­ing the chalk cart that paint­ed the foul line all the way to the out­field wall. He yelled, “Jim­my! Ron! Don­ny!” when his favorites came out to take ground balls or stretch, and made sure to point each one out to Rita so she knew who was who. It was as if the sounds she had been lis­ten­ing to for weeks stirred and took on color—the bright green of the field, and the white, blue, and red of the uni­forms were crisper than Vista Vision. All the sounds had shapes teth­ered to them now. Despite tens of thou­sands of peo­ple in the seats, this place felt serene. She turned around in her seat and saw a man falling asleep, his wife fill­ing out a score­card next to him. 

            The lull end­ed when she heard some­one roar, “Does any­one here speak Ital­ian?!” The secu­ri­ty guard she saw ear­li­er was scream­ing the phrase as he charged down the third base line toward her. Huff­ing and wip­ing his brow, he kept it up: “Ital­iano? Any­one here speak Ital­ian?” Rita’s moth­er told her sto­ries about Ital­ians being tar­get­ed dur­ing the war. She got scared and sunk into her seat. Despite her best efforts to wrap up Max’s hands and keep him qui­et, he squirmed in his seat and wig­gled his arms, “Si! Si!!!” Rita squeezed her eyes shut.

            Max got the guard’s atten­tion and he start­ed climb­ing up the aisle. The guard looked at Rita and asked, “You! Do you speak Ital­ian?” He might as well have had a flash­light and a pistol.

            Rita stam­mered, “…Si… yes.”

            The lum­ber­ing man said, “Come with me! The name’s Jack—I work secu­ri­ty here at Dodger Stadium.”

            Max ran out ahead as Rita began to stand. Her brain screamed at her to sit back down.

            Jack looked at Max’s Pirate jer­sey and said, “Too bad you’re not a Dodger fan. You could be a real hero today!”

            Max piped up, “Oh we are!”

            “The boys…it was a gift…the neighborhood?”—Rita stam­mered in Jack’s direction.

            “Yeah, this is my only jer­sey, but I love Sandy, Mousey, all of ’em!” Max cried.

            Why was he look­ing for Ital­ians? Why did Max raise his hand? The best-case sce­nario was that she’d be the butt of a joke, bal­anc­ing a meat­ball on her nose. Still, the guard looked des­per­ate and grate­ful, so she con­tin­ued behind him until they approached the elevator.

            Jack asked her, “Do you know who Vin Scul­ly is?”

            Rita said, “Yes, I lis­ten to Dodger games on KFI,” repeat­ing a phrase she had heard Vin him­self say one hun­dred times and at each sta­tion break.

            “Good, good!” Jack said. “Look, Vin is stuck in there.” He point­ed at the elevator.

            “It was repaired ear­li­er today and some­thing went wrong. He’s got to broad­cast the game…” he looked down at his watch, “in less than 45 minutes!”

            She looked at him puz­zled. Jack’s words ran togeth­er like pas­sen­gers jammed into a bus, but Max saw Jack’s pan­icked expression.

            Max translated—“è bloc­ca­to nel­l’as­cen­sore e ha bisog­no del nos­tro aiu­to! Vin needs our help!”

            “Vin is trapped?” She couldn’t imag­ine the game with­out him.

            Jack spurt­ed, “If Jer­ry has to do play-by-play…the fans won’t even know who’s up to bat!”

            “But we can’t repair it…?” Rita stat­ed with a befud­dled look on her face.

            She turned around and looked back at her seat. This was total­ly bat­ty! Work on her Eng­lish, she thought. Get a pro­mo­tion, she thought. Help a stuck broad­cast­er out of an elevator?

            Jack said to Rita and Max, “He already tried pry­ing it open with his hands. And he called the shop—all the repair crews are out and won’t be able to come for hours. ‘Fino a stan­otte,’ they said. We think the kid answer­ing the emer­gency phone only speaks Italiano.”

            Jack mimed a tele­phone receiv­er when he said, “Ital­iano” and looked direct­ly at Rita.

            Max said, “L’as­sis­tente par­la solo ital­iano!” Rita got it, and nod­ded slow­ly. Vin need­ed a trans­la­tor. Maybe Max could help, she thought.

            Jack banged on the ele­va­tor door: “Vin, I got a cou­ple I‑talians out here. Ring up the ele­va­tor com­pa­ny again. Just tell them what you want to say and they’ll trans­late for the kid!” 

            “I don’t think that’s gonna work, Jack…” Vin used that same tone when he described the Dodgers ground­ing into a dou­ble play, but his voice was only a faint echo sur­round­ed by the white noise of the stadium. 

            “Just call them, Vin!” the guard pleaded.

            “Okay, fine.”

            After a peri­od of silence, Rita heard Vin on the phone. He was try­ing hard to sound patient. It was tough to make out what was hap­pen­ing, hear­ing only one gar­bled end of the con­ver­sa­tion in a lan­guage she bare­ly under­stood. Streams of peo­ple con­tin­ued to enter the park and the crowd noise thickened.

            They pressed their ears against the ele­va­tor doors. The cold met­al was actu­al­ly pleas­ant on the warm day.

            “I am Vin. Your name?” There was a silence as Vin lis­tened to the boy on the oth­er end. Then he spoke again, “Gio. OK, Gio, look. I’ve got a cou­ple of folks here who speak Italiano.”

            “You ready?” Jack asked her. She nod­ded but her flip­ping stom­ach disagreed.

            “Jack, this plan is ridicu­lous!” Vin griped from the ele­va­tor. Rita sti­fled her sigh as Jack motioned him on, even though Vin couldn’t see. They waited.

            “ I am going to speak to you in Ital­ian, Gio,” Rita heard Vin say. “Je par­le Ital­ian. I am stuck. Hold on.” he said.

            Rita thought—French? What’s he doing? Then she thought about the “Ital­ish” that got her through the first few months at the hotel. Maybe he knew some French from school or some­thing. Why not? she decided. 

            “Jack, ask them how to say ‘how do…open…doors?’” Rita heard faintly.

            “I can’t hear you Vin! Can you say that again?” Jack said.

            Vin pound­ed on the met­al and yelled, “TRANSLATE: how do I open the ele­va­tor doors?” This time, they jumped back from their lis­ten­ing perches.

            “Can you tell him how to say that?” Jack asked Rita.

            Max was sup­posed to do this, but he was look­ing off at the field instead. A long bat­ting prac­tice home run cracked in the dis­tance. So, in a soft, stac­ca­to rhythm Rita began.

            “Aiutami—ad—aprire—l’ascensore?” she said, and looked over to Jack. 

            Once Max heard her voice, he nod­ded his approval. Jack bel­lowed the line up to Vin best he could, lock­ing eyes with Rita the entire time. They heard the broad­cast­er repeat parts of the ques­tion over the phone. Jack looked on, mouth gaped in antic­i­pa­tion. Rita’s face tightened. 

            Silence for anoth­er minute. Rita thought about what she was doing there. Couldn’t Jack just call his boss? Maybe the fire depart­ment could get him out. Where was the shop’s fore­man? Her spi­ral was halt­ed by the worst sound­ing sen­tence she had ever heard Vin Scul­ly say. The first phrase sound­ed like mas­sa­cred ver­sion of “Salire sul­la ringhiera?”—the only thing that real­ly made sense. Despite his chop job, she knew its mean­ing. Gio told him that the first step was to climb up on the rail­ing around the edge of the car. 

            Rita knew what Gio want­ed Vin to do, but she need­ed Max to explain it. She called him over, but he was long gone, eyes big as lol­lipops watch­ing Lefeb­vre hit the last pitch of bat­ting prac­tice deep into the left­field bleachers.

            “What did he say?” Jack asked Rita, urgency rush­ing his words.

            “He’s going to have to climb up the rail­ing!” she blurt­ed. “You need to get up to the ceiling!”

            Ears back in posi­tion, they heard a shift in weight above, and sev­er­al groans. Vin had to try but was clear­ly still look­ing for a res­cue. Rita did her best to mim­ic the loud voice she used when call­ing Max in for dinner.

            “You have to move to the top!” She felt a bit like Vin herself—narrating the action for some­one else, paint­ing a pic­ture so they could see. Look­ing at her watch, it was past 6:30. She knew he need­ed to start the broad­cast in just a few minutes—it was now or nev­er. Rita heard an exhaust­ed sound­ing, “Gra­zie, Gio” and a dull ring, pre­sum­ably Vin hang­ing up the phone.

            Vin shout­ed, “I’m going for the rail!” but the sen­tence came out halted—a click­ing sound echoed from his mouth. Rita looked over at Jack, con­fused. He mimed drop­ping some­thing down his throat. “Luden’s Wild Cher­ry. He’s got­ta have them for his voice. Espe­cial­ly with this—today…” ges­tur­ing at the ele­va­tor. They heard Vin push his weight against the front walls of the lift and then pull his feet up with a swing­ing clunk. Rita imag­ined he might be using the crook of the phone box to get up off the floor. He slipped and they heard his weight land square on the base of the car. Rita winced. After 30 sec­onds or so, Vin tried again, and some­thing hit the ground and land­ed with a bounce, ring­ing. The phone receiv­er? That would con­firm her the­o­ry about him using emer­gency box as a step­ping stone.

            Rita thought about the ele­va­tors at the hotel. They had thin met­al handrails all along the sides of the car. She knew it would be tough to bal­ance on that. Her mind cranked on the pos­si­bil­i­ties, but it was going to be a strug­gle for one per­son to do all of this. When this hap­pened on The Dick Van Dyke Show, anoth­er man lift­ed Rob up, and he got on his shoul­ders. As the clanks died down, Rita thought about what Gio had said next. “Rimuo­vere il pan­el­lo del sof­fit­to,” per­haps? Vin had run through the words so fast, repeat­ing them right after Gio, but that seemed log­i­cal to Rita.

            She screamed at the slit between the doors, “Now you’ve got to remove the ceil­ing tile!”

            More grunt­ing from inside. They heard shuf­fling and then anoth­er crash to the floor, but this one seemed lighter.

            Vin yelled out “I knocked it out! There’s dust every­where, but I can see cables! What do I do now?”

            Rita had to tell him. “Mr. Scul­ly?” she asked. “You have to reach up in there, find the lever, and pull it!” Gio’s last instruction.

            All she heard was cough­ing. Anoth­er loud thud on the ground and pant­i­ng fol­lowed. At this point, Rita wor­ried that the cables would begin to fray. “There’s no way I can get any fur­ther!” the echo cried. “Jack, what about that crow­bar, hey?”

            He yelled between labored breaths, “I can’t get all the way up there, Jack. I need some help!” 

            Jack sighed and said, “Is there any­thing in there you can use to push through the ceiling?”

            “I can’t even get to the ceiling!”

            Jack said, “Well, you got the tile down, that’s something!”

            Rita clenched her fists. She thought about how Vin would describe this sce­nario in a game: “He reached out across his body and snagged it on a line…” She braced her­self. Vin could work alone.

            “The only oth­er thing in here is the sign, Jack. But it’s mount­ed on the wall, you know?” If it was any­thing like the one out­side the ele­va­tor on the wall next to her, Rita thought it could maybe be of use. In sig­na­ture blue script on a sin­gle piece of heavy alu­minum, “Dodgers” was engraved and behind that the logo—a base­ball shoot­ing sky­ward with a long trail of red sparks. “Sopra il offit­to tiare la leva! Use it like a bat, Vin!” As soon as the words escaped Rita, she cov­ered her mouth with her hands. She couldn’t believe she was advo­cat­ing the destruc­tion of prop­er­ty! Still, it was an emer­gency and she was asked to help. Jack looked at her and shout­ed up, “Rip it off. Go for it, man!”

            They heard Vin get on his feet and again the car start­ed to swing. Max said, “He’s try­ing to pry off the sign!” This whole thing felt wrong. Vin screamed, “Jack, tell O’Malley I’m gonna pay for this!” Jack said under his breath, “You sure will…” Only Rita heard it. The tug­ging con­tin­ued. They could tell when the met­al tangs released from the wall by the sound of Vin’s impact against the doors and the result­ing: “Ahhh!” Rita could envi­sion Vin career­ing back­ward with a wicked force, clutch­ing the sign. Jack shout­ed, “Is every­thing alright in there?” What a line! All they could hear were a few loud grunts and a thud. With their ears tuned to the doors, Rita and Max’s con­cerned looks focused on gapers who walked by slow­ly, shov­ing ker­nels of pop­corn into their open mouths. Anoth­er guard had showed up to shoo patrons away, but Rita saw he was hav­ing lit­tle suc­cess. She looked back at the sign behind her. It was a two-foot-long “X.” There must have been dozens of them around the new ball­park. They heard Vin’s ver­sion drop to the ground. At this point he need­ed to catch his breath any­way. From the pho­to in front out by the gates, he was approach­ing mid­dle age. Did he have it in him to fin­ish the job?

            “Did he say what side the lever was on?” Vin asked.

            Rita snapped alert. With her hands clasped around her mouth, she shout­ed, “To the right!” before she could even think about it. Is that what Gio said? It had become a game of tele­phone at this point, and she wasn’t sure. Peo­ple were always telling Rita that the key to learn­ing Eng­lish was con­fi­dence. Vin said that about ballplay­ers look­ing to improve their bat­ting aver­age as well. This was the time to try. 

            “OK, I’m going back up!”

            They heard grunt­ing again. At this point, it was ten min­utes until first pitch.

            Jack got on the walkie-talkie and told some­one, “We’re work­ing on get­ting him out. Get Jer­ry ready to go on!”

            Once they heard a bewil­dered “10/4,” Jack pushed the radio back onto his belt. Jack could envi­sion sweaty Jer­ry, pac­ing upstairs.

            Rita whis­pered to Jack while mim­ing, “He should hold the ‘s’ at the end of ‘Dodgers’ like a knob and use the rest to swing with!”

            Jack called up, “Why don’t you try hold­ing the nar­row end of the sign like a bat, Vin? Just swing the hell out of it!”

            The trio could make out a pant­i­ng consent.

            They lis­tened to the famil­iar sounds of Vin start­ing the whole pro­ce­dure over again. Rita could envi­sion Vin hold­ing the Dodger plac­ard in his right hand, its comet trail dan­gling. The scene remind­ed her of a James Bond movie. He yelled “I’m going for it!!” Then came the bashing—the unmis­tak­able sound of a long met­al plate hit­ting any­thing and every­thing above the tiles. They felt the sides of the car knock­ing into the shaft and debris falling.

            Vin screamed, “I haven’t hit any­thing yet!” He seemed to be search­ing for his bal­ance. They braced for a thud but it didn’t come.

            Rita encour­aged, “un’al­tra vol­ta!” and then quick­ly the trans­la­tion, hit­ting her­self on the fore­head as she yelled up: “One more go!” She remem­bered her hus­band Joe whis­per­ing that to her right before her final inhale and push at Max’s birth.

            “I’m going in!” Vin shout­ed. Sud­den­ly, they heard that Vin had made contact—the clash of two met­als meet­ing. Max and Rita locked widened eyes and then looked over to Jack. She said a prayer that the sign wouldn’t snap. They heard a grunt through clenched teeth. The alu­minum whizzed off the iron bar and land­ed with a clunk. Did the sign fall into the shaft? Had the lever moved at all? If not, Vin was cooked. Rita thought about her tiny cab­in with Max and Joe on the boat. Stuffy and hot, Vin must have been exhaust­ed in there. Just then they heard a slide and a squeal. Final­ly, “krr-shunk.” The car jerked and began what sound­ed like a slow sink. “It’s hap­pen­ing!” she thought. But the doors didn’t crack imme­di­ate­ly. Was it a false alarm? In her pan­icked hope, she got up from the ground and smoothed her hair and skirt. The doors opened into the set­ting sun. Vin flashed a smile and she smiled right back.

 * 

            In the shade down the third base line, she felt the breeze in her hair and adjust­ed her well-worn blue cap. It was a long game, but the Dodgers were good this year and she was ready for anoth­er stretch run. Gib­son had just made his Dodger debut and Her­shis­er was hav­ing a sea­son for the ages. Cy Young-wor­thy. She put aside her score­card and looked down on the field for Max. If she wasn’t quick, she’d miss him. The grounds crew was an ever-present abstrac­tion mark­ing time in a base­ball game—appearing at planned inter­vals, trawl­ing their rakes behind, then sud­den­ly gone. She rose out of her seat and waved, but he didn’t see her. Rita turned to Ray and smiled. She hadn’t seen her broth­er since she’d got­ten the posi­tion at the con­sulate, but was glad they were able to cel­e­brate his 50^th togeth­er. As the sev­enth inning began, she raised the radio to her ear. Rita heard the famil­iar voice men­tion St. Joseph’s Day, and her sens­es perked. “Jeff Hamil­ton was born on March 19^th,” Vin said. He went on, “You know, I owe a debt to the Ital­ian peo­ple…” She straight­ened up a bit and thought back to before she got her dream job, before Max grad­u­at­ed from high school, before she even got her pro­mo­tion at the hotel, to when a few yards from here, she had saved the day. Vin con­tin­ued, “Did I tell you about the time…?” She closed her eyes in the fad­ing sun­light to lis­ten to the sto­ry one more time.

From the writer

:: Account ::

“It’s Time for Dodger Base­ball” was writ­ten on a dare. As a poet, I had nev­er writ­ten a full-length short sto­ry and an edi­tor asked me to try it. This was such a chal­lenge for me because my full-length col­lec­tions of poet­ry are about the same length as this one sto­ry. I wrote a piece that reflect­ed my family’s immi­grant expe­ri­ence, the expe­ri­ence of the stu­dents I tutored in Eng­lish lan­guage con­ver­sa­tion cir­cles in my day job work­ing at a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, and the sus­pense­ful Alfred Hitch­cock thrillers I loved. Still, it wasn’t quite right upon my hun­dreds of “read alouds.” I met up with a fic­tion writer I admired, Matthew Thomas Meade, who taught me how to write dia­log and a thing or two about “in medias res” plot chronol­o­gy, which helped the whole thing click into place. Thanks to him for doing a favor for this poet.

San­dra Mar­che­t­ti is the 2023 win­ner of The Twin Bill Book Prize for Best Base­ball Poet­ry Book of the Year. She is the author of three full-length col­lec­tions of poet­ry, DIORAMA, forth­com­ing from Stephen F. Austin State Uni­ver­si­ty Press (2025), Aisle 228 (SFA Press, 2023), and Con­flu­ence (Sun­dress Pub­li­ca­tions, 2015). Sandy is also the author of four chap­books of poet­ry and lyric essays. Her poet­ry and essays appear wide­ly in Mid-Amer­i­can Review, Black­bird, Eco­tone, South­west Review, Sub­trop­ics, and else­where. She is Poet­ry Edi­tor Emeri­ta at Riv­er Styx Mag­a­zine. Sandy earned an MFA in Cre­ative Writing—Poetry from George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty and now serves as the Assis­tant Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­m­ic Sup­port at Harp­er Col­lege in Chicagoland. This is her first pub­lished short story.

Fiction / Ben Nunn

:: I Need To Write, So Here Goes. ::

            I have always lived in a box. And so has she. Our box­es are made of wood and they aren’t tall enough for us to stand in, but we can sit criss-cross-apple­sauce or lie on our sides. In the win­ter, spi­ders will often tuck them­selves into the cor­ners. They sit in their lit­tle webs and wait out the cold. On the wood­en floor, I can see the sub­tle impres­sion of where I sleep. It’s a small, faint oval.

            There is a rec­tan­gu­lar slit in both of our box­es, about the size of my two fists. Through it, I can see her box and she can see mine. It’s always been that way.

            The chasm between our box­es is just a bit longer than two out­stretched, reach­ing arms. In the spring, lush grass­es and tiny pur­ple flow­ers spread across it. It’s a tan waste­land of dead grass in the sum­mer, an ocean of orange and brown leaves in the autumn, and a gen­tle storm of snow in the win­ter until the spring melts it away. Every cycle of sea­sons it is like this.

            Food grows from our box­es’ wood­en ceil­ings. It begins each morn­ing as lit­tle green hairs, wisps of vines sprout­ing above our heads, always a mys­tery what it will grow into. And grow it does, excep­tion­al­ly quick. By the time the sun is halfway through the sky, fruits or pota­toes or sliv­ers of bread are dan­gling at our eyes. She likes to show off what­ev­er she gets. Her eyes will bright­en, and she’ll stick out her pear, or a hand­ful of dough­nut holes through her slit. I’ll laugh and show her mine.

            Along with new food, every morn­ing a new object appears in our box. Always in the back-left cor­ner. What­ev­er I get that day (a hand­bag, a heart pin, alu­minum foil, an emp­ty pill bot­tle) I will place in the cor­ner at night and the next morn­ing a new item replaces it. Same for her, of course. The stick of coal I’m using now came today, and I’m hunched over using my wood­en walls to write this on. I am thank­ful for this lit­tle piece of coal. I need to explain this strange feel­ing to myself, to wrap my head around every­thing. I’ll get there.

            I’m not sure what she’s doing as I’m writ­ing this; I chose the wall left of the slit so that I couldn’t see her and she couldn’t see me. Most days (most days before Yes­ter­day that is) we would just stare at each oth­er. Her eyes are wide and brown and full of curios­i­ty, always glis­ten­ing in the sun (even in cloudy weath­er, there is a mag­ic there). The slit frames them so per­fect­ly, two brown plan­ets trapped in that lit­tle win­dow. When I look at her she doesn’t look away; when she looks, I can’t.

            In the days before Yes­ter­day, I would imag­ine what her shoul­ders or her knees were like beyond that slit win­dow. Were her legs scrunched up like mine were? Her hair was often what I thought about more than any­thing else. She had shown me once, on the Per­fect Day.

            It was weeks ago, in the begin­ning of win­ter. It had been snowing.

            The box had giv­en us both coats to wear that day. That moment alone makes me want to believe in some­thing divine. We were cozy, pulling tight­ly on our coats, just lazi­ly observ­ing each oth­er’s eyes. Then, and I still don’t know why, she had moved a brown stream of her hair through her fin­gers and let it tum­ble out of the slit. It fell in a wavy sort of way, loose yet com­posed. It had a shine of oil. Snowflakes would land in it, and melt into brown lushness.

            She could only fit one eye through the open­ing along with her hair. I crossed my legs, rest­ed my fore­head against the wall, and just stared out. I felt com­plete. It’s dis­tress­ing to think about this now, but it was Per­fect then.

            That was a while ago. We would look out towards each oth­er, find­ing the other’s eyes through the snow, but less often after that day. It had only got­ten cold­er, and we didn’t get any more coats. I had only enough ener­gy to shiv­er in the far cor­ner of my box, mess­ing idly with what­ev­er object I received that day. I’m a bit ashamed but while wait­ing the cold days away I thought about lit­tle else but her. I wish I knew what she was think­ing right now.

            It was snow­ing Yes­ter­day when every­thing changed, but I can’t talk about that yet.

            I think I have to explain the Crea­ture Day. There is a con­nec­tion there that I have to understand.

            The Crea­ture Day was months ago, dur­ing autumn. I had wok­en up to a new sound. It was a sub­tle crunch­ing of leaves, soft­er than hail, loud­er than a squir­rel. We had seen plen­ty of squir­rels in our time, me and her. We’d watch them find an acorn and gal­lant­ly hop away to hide it. They were too qui­et to ever wake me like this.

            I peeked through my slit. The morn­ing out­side was still blue, bare­ly warm­ing up. She was already awake, star­ing intense­ly at our new com­pan­ion. Birds would land, squawk, and fly away. A whole world of insects and bugs would accom­pa­ny us through­out the sea­sons. We even saw a fox once. This thing, this hulk­ing crea­ture, was noth­ing like that. It was mas­sive and yet had a frail majesty to it. Atop its head was a crown of antlers much larg­er than any deer we had seen before. I had to get on my stom­ach and peer up through the slit just to see the top of it. It had come from the for­est to our right and was in our clear­ing nestling its head through the leaves.

            She stared at it and I did too. It didn’t care about our box­es or our stares. It just brushed its way around the leaves, care­ful­ly bend­ing its giant frame down to nib­ble at the grass under­neath. I snuck my eyes away from the crea­ture for a moment and focused on hers. She did the same. We were both in this realm of pure won­der togeth­er. It was just the two of us, com­plete­ly ensnared by this beau­ti­ful creature.

            That was the Crea­ture Day. I think it’s impor­tant to what hap­pened Yes­ter­day because it was the com­plete oppo­site feel­ing. Yes­ter­day we were again ensnared, but it was by hor­ror instead of won­der, a red rope instead of a creature.

            Yes­ter­day, it was snow­ing, but it was warmer than usu­al. That morn­ing my new object appeared; it looked like a toy. There was an orange han­dle that you could squeeze and at the end of a short rod was the head of a green ani­mal that I did­n’t rec­og­nize. When I squeezed the han­dle, the ani­mal’s mouth shut. Open, shut, open, shut. I care­ful­ly maneu­vered it through the slit to show her. We’d often do this, mere­ly out of curios­i­ty. Open, shut, open, shut. Her eyes were amused, watch­ing. I don’t think she knew the ani­mal either.

            I was ner­vous to do it; I didn’t often play the fool. Yet, when some lazy snowflakes float­ed down between us, I swooped my lit­tle green ani­mal at them. I squeezed the han­dle and the ani­mal ate a snowflake. Quick­ly I looked over to see, and thank­ful­ly, I saw her eyes full of excite­ment. I did it again. Then again, swing­ing my lit­tle ani­mal all over the sky between us, catch­ing snow to her amusement.

            I didn’t want to push my luck so I even­tu­al­ly tucked my toy back inside my box. When I did, her eyes dis­ap­peared for a moment before return­ing. Then, from her box’s slit, her fin­gers dan­gled out her object of the day: a thin red rope. It is because of this rope that I am writ­ing, it is why I feel this strange way.

            It was long and apple-red. It was prob­a­bly as long as I am tall, maybe longer.

            I think because I was so play­ful, she want­ed to rec­i­p­ro­cate. Her wrists were bare­ly able to fit through the slit, yet, in that same jol­ly spir­it, she was able to sling that rope around and around and around. It flung snow from the ground and smacked snowflakes in the air. I gig­gled. It was­n’t fun­ny per se, but I don’t think some­thing needs to be fun­ny to laugh.

            It felt like anoth­er Per­fect Day.

            Then it hap­pened. She swung the rope in such a way, with such force, that the tip of it, the frayed red hairs, touched the out­side of my box. It stayed there, in the snow, limp. Some­thing in my stom­ach began to churn. It took me only a few sec­onds to under­stand, star­ing at the red rope that was graz­ing my box, the rope that began way over in her fin­gers: we were touch­ing! We were touching.

            There had always been a chasm between us and now there was a bridge.

            All the time I spent imag­in­ing her, shiv­er­ing in my box, star­ing at the spi­ders in my cor­ners, seemed to lead to this. I think that’s why I have this feel­ing. It’s in my chest. It’s some­thing angry, some­thing frag­ile. It’s her.

            I’m not sure what that means, but it felt right to write. I have to keep going.

            It got worse, and it’s my fault. It’s entire­ly my fault.

            My arms are much thin­ner than hers and can reach through the slit fur­ther, almost until my shoul­der.  I could reach the rope down on the snow if I want­ed to.

            I had want­ed to and I wish I hadn’t.

            I stuck my fin­gers out first. I avoid­ed her eyes. My fore­arm was then out into the frigid air. My shoul­der was jam­ming against the slit, my out­stretched fin­gers twirling around the frayed ends of the rope below. But I was able to grab it, and with a sud­den ter­ror, I lift­ed the red rope off the snow and into the air.

            My heart is nor­mal­ly quite calm in my chest, but I remem­ber it slam­ming, rup­tur­ing with a for­eign feel­ing as I stared down the length of the rope. My fin­gers, our fin­gers, hold­ing up the long red rope in a taut line. I fol­lowed it with my eyes until I met hers. Her beau­ti­ful brown eyes were full of fear. Where the Crea­ture was a mag­i­cal con­nec­tion between us, that rope was a hor­rid, all-too-real one.

            I remem­ber think­ing: I could pull on the rope. This red-hot feel­ing want­ed to pull, to get clos­er, to see how the brown of her eyes melt­ed into the black of her pupils, to see if she had the same lit­tle rash­es across her skin as I do, to reach out and feel her hair…

            At the same moment, I want­ed to cry. I felt it change. The mag­ic of our lit­tle world was gone; I could pull her and she could pull me.

            What was she think­ing at that moment? I would have giv­en up my dai­ly objects for­ev­er just to know. But I think I know, and that’s why I feel this way right now.

            She dropped the rope first, and I imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed. It fell onto the snow, dead, and out of reach from both of us. She van­ished inside of her box.

            I felt child­ish. Every­thing before that moment was igno­rant inno­cence. Of course, we would nev­er live our whole lives with­out fac­ing each oth­er, real­ly fac­ing each oth­er. But that bridge has been burned for­ev­er and I’m going to rot. I’m going to rot away alone! I’m going crazy. Why did it feel so hor­ren­dous­ly wrong to hold that rope, to think about pulling her closer?

            I’m los­ing my con­trol, my lan­guage. Spew­ing like this doesn’t help me any. Let me regain composure.

            That was Yes­ter­day and that feel­ing has­n’t left me. Nei­ther has the rope. It didn’t dis­ap­pear this morn­ing like the objects always do; that scar­let line across the snow was still there when I woke up. My ani­mal toy, care­ful­ly placed in the back left cor­ner, was gone and this coal had arrived.

            The morn­ing had just become orange when I looked out­side; the slit in her box was dark and vacant. Her box seemed some­how clos­er than it had been.

            I say ‘woke up’ but I nev­er real­ly went to sleep. I kept imag­in­ing all night what it would be like if we didn’t let go, if we pulled each oth­er togeth­er. Per­haps I would have pulled a lit­tle clos­er, then she would have, then me, then her until our box­es were pressed against each other.

            Would she have hat­ed me once she real­ly saw my eyes, my face? Would she shrink away into the cor­ner of her box and I into mine?

            Or would we have, I don’t know. I won­der what her fin­gers feel like. That’s a thought I’ve nev­er had before and now I can’t get it out of my mind. She got a lit­tle bot­tle of skin cream a few sea­sons ago. I think she used it. I bet her fin­gers would feel soft.

            I’m on my stom­ach right now, writ­ing in the final mar­gin of this wall. I hope she can’t see me. I need to take a break and switch walls, my wrist hurts, my chest hurts. I’ll start again soon

.

*

            She still has not shown her eyes today. I look after almost every sen­tence, and each time I regret it. My chest feels like an emp­ty box. I keep say­ing chest but I mean heart, I think. She has a box in my heart and it’s vacant and full of cold spiders.

            The world taunts me. A blue­ber­ry muf­fin has grown for me today. I plucked it from the ceil­ing vines and its sweet smell was nau­se­at­ing. She nev­er told me those were her favorites but I knew. I know what the sparkle in her eyes meant on the days when she showed me a blue­ber­ry muf­fin out of her lit­tle win­dow. I don’t want to eat it.

            I began writ­ing so that I may hope­ful­ly under­stand myself bet­ter, to put words to this swirling feel­ing. And I know what it is. It’s just her. It always has been. It’s half of my heart, my soul writhing in regret for not pulling on that rope, to get clos­er. It’s the oth­er half in a com­plete spi­ral of ter­ror and anger over what I have ruined, of what could have been.  I thought under­stand­ing would give me peace, but I, wait-

            There she is!

            What I just watched has made this wal­low­ing despair worse. Her wide wrist, moments ago, stuck out through her slit, her fin­gers reach­ing for the rope below. She was painful­ly far away. She could not reach the rope as I had done ear­li­er. Her wrist snaked back inside her box, defeated.

            I feel defeat­ed! I’m scratch­ing my skin with my left hand as I write with my right. It’s a ter­ri­ble habit that I thought I left behind. She will nev­er get anoth­er item as long as the rope lays out­side her box. And that is because of me.

            I just tried to reach for it too. My fin­gers could scrape the snow, but the rope had bent away from me when I dropped it. Anoth­er inch and maybe I could have grabbed it, then some­how tossed it back to her.

But I couldn’t and she didn’t look.

            I miss the days, the beau­ti­ful days of just watch­ing each oth­er. I’m hun­gry, I’m starv­ing but I will not eat this cursed muf­fin. I don’t even know why I am writ­ing this; it will all be gone by tomor­row morn­ing. I don’t have the ener­gy any­more to write or think and I’m tear­ing at my skin and my chest is shak­ing in piti­ful breaths.

             The Crea­ture and her hair on Per­fect day is all I want to think about, but it feels wrong to, it feels gross. It’s near­ly night­fall now and the coal is just a peb­ble between my thumb and fin­ger. I think I feel worse than before. This has not helped me. Per­haps what­ev­er I get tomor­row will.

From the writer

:: Account ::

            I love love. It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly human thing and impos­si­ble to prop­er­ly define. As I began to write this sto­ry, I was begin­ning a new rela­tion­ship, and strug­gling with what love feels like. Should love be an obses­sion? At what cost, then? Is it wrong for love to be so man­ic and with­out rea­son? And what does it feel like to not be feel­ing the right things? I didn’t find these answers, but the man in the box is my explo­ration. I want­ed to block out every­thing in our world and put this man and his feel­ings in the sim­plest set­ting pos­si­ble. Per­haps then his inse­cu­ri­ties (which of course were my own) could find space to feel them­selves out.

            I didn’t want to “solve” this prob­lem with­in this sto­ry. Being in a rela­tion­ship is not always a table on four steady legs, but is more a long and uncer­tain process. I wished to cap­ture just a glimpse of that process between the man and woman and no more!

Ben Nunn is a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, study­ing film and cre­ative writ­ing. He’s worked under best­selling authors who’ve taught him to write suc­cinct­ly and pow­er­ful­ly. He enjoys focus­ing his sto­ries on the absurd and the outcast.

Fiction / Ada Pelonia

:: The Dead Talks ::

It’s a sui­cide, the whis­pers say. Bystanders mur­mur, ‘What a waste—’ of tal­ent, of intel­lect, of a son. The eldest of five sib­lings, he is the fam­i­ly’s pride. The rope wrapped around the tree’s branch by the back­yard sets a tell­tale sign. The police think it’s a sui­cide, too. But the signs of bruis­ing on his arms and grip marks on his face per­mit a deep­er probe.

The offi­cer says he’d been dead for six hours. The roost­ers have crowed ear­li­er, now squawk­ing relent­less­ly by their feet. His moth­er says noth­ing but sobs at the confirmation.

“My son would nev­er do that, offi­cer,” his father says in a brood­ing voice before tak­ing a puff from his cig­a­rette and spit­ting his phlegm on the ground. “My son’s an archi­tect, you know? Peo­ple can get jeal­ous. Some­one else must have done this.”

The police stay mum, mere­ly nod­ding. They ask per­mis­sion to check the house, and his father leads them in.

“My son’s room is on the left.” His father points at a door. Out­side are his sib­lings, their sullen eyes blood­shot red. His father notices and clench­es his fists.

“Get them out of here,” his father orders. His moth­er scram­bles from behind, stag­ger­ing as she holds their clam­my hands and leads them to the kitchen.

The offi­cer enters, ask­ing the oth­er to take pho­tographs. A draft­ing table sits in the cor­ner of his room with blank trac­ing papers strewn on top. Crum­pled Post-it notes brim­ming on his trash bin with rigid let­ter­ing of the word “ideas” fol­lowed by ellipses. Emp­ty draw­ing stor­age tubes are stacked beside it.

His lug­gage has been left open on his bed with a few fold­ed shirts inside and heaps of clothes around it. Under­neath are two torn air­line tick­ets. The offi­cer takes them, soot cin­ders leav­ing traces on his gloved hands. He jots these in his pock­et note­book and places them in plastic.

They check his cab­i­nets: pen­cils, tri­an­gu­lar scales, Cop­ic mark­ers, lin­er pens, and a pile of sketch­books. The offi­cer asks the oth­er to flip through the pages, seek­ing a let­ter. They find noth­ing but house and infra­struc­ture sketch­es, cutouts of hous­es from mag­a­zines on the right with his ver­sion on the left. His draw­ings had scrib­bles on them, the traces of ball­point pen leav­ing marks from behind.

The police leaf through the pages of his sketch­books until they open the last one from years back. A suite of poems penned in flow­ing cal­lig­ra­phy swirls on the paper. Every page offers stan­za after stan­za of poet­ry, all with “For David” inscribed under each title. Wedged between the last few pages was a filled-out MFA appli­ca­tion form from a uni­ver­si­ty abroad.

They take the sketch­book inside anoth­er plas­tic evi­dence bag. The offi­cer paus­es, note­book and pen in hand, and asks who David is, this person’s rela­tion­ship with him, and if his father thinks this cer­tain David may know some­thing behind his death.

“He’s just a friend, offi­cer. I can assure you that lad can’t hit any­one to save his life.”

His father snorts, shak­ing his head. The police exchange glances, their eyes prob­ing for more. But the offi­cers set­tle with assur­ing his father that they’ll give him the autop­sy report when it’s done. They say they’ll return after a few days before tak­ing their leave.

Upon sit­ting, a cup of black cof­fee has already been served at the table. His father is about to drink it when thun­der­ing knocks clash at their door.

“It’s prob­a­bly David—” his sis­ter tries to stand, but the scald­ing cof­fee drench­es her first. She stum­bles, her lips quiv­er­ing. His moth­er grabs a tow­el, her shak­ing hands wip­ing the spillage. His father heaves, fists clenched on the table’s edges. Like gears click­ing in their respec­tive places, the table turns qui­et, and they let the inces­sant knock­ing rever­ber­ate in their ears.

From the writer

:: Account ::

 This sto­ry takes cues from a scene in “Move to Heav­en” where one of the char­ac­ters said: “There comes a moment when you begin to see what the deceased want­ed to say and the thoughts they want­ed to share.” It comes with com­mon sense that the dead don’t talk and they nev­er will. But I firm­ly believe in humans’ capac­i­ty to present their lives, the way they’ve lived (or not), which tran­scends beyond death and speaks to the liv­ing. Be it the pile of jour­nals on their bed­side table, a jar of pen­nies in every cup­board, their wal­lets filled with bus tick­ets and can­dy wrap­pers, or the trin­kets they left behind in the nook and cran­ny of the house—every nuance brings the deceased back to the liv­ing, shar­ing a sto­ry or two that’d elic­it stom­ach-turn­ing laughs or wrench­ing pain of woes, a kind of after­life that begs to be understood.

Ada Pelo­nia (she/her) is a jour­nal­ism grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of San­to Tomas. Her work has appeared or is forth­com­ing in HAD, Eunoia Review, Gone Lawn, and The Account, among oth­ers. She has been nom­i­nat­ed for Best Microfic­tion 2021. Find her at adapelonia.weebly.com or on Insta­gram @_adawrites.

Fiction / Bryan Price

:: I’d rather be hang gliding::

I’m on a bus between Mexico City and Puebla. It smells like rain. Everything’s green and I
wonder what it’s like to deliver ice. I try to imagine a great many things on this long stretch of 
highway. I try to imagine, for instance, what it’s like to live in each house I see. I spend hours 
in each one. I go through their cookware and eating utensils. I turn on their televisions and
watch the news. I realize that newscasters are the same everywhere. I try on all the shoes that 
fit me and wear interestingly patterned shirts. Shirts I would never wear in real life. I wear a 
woman’s corduroy dress that maroon color of a bloodstain and look at the world from a 
balcony. I look down at my hands and someone has painted my fingernails blue. I touch fabric 
and record albums, try on a multitude of jewelry (including tiaras), enter a closet where there 
are only skeins of yarn. I find a store of knives and instead of thinking about butchery or the 
 slaughterhouse I imagine someone fashioning windchimes out of wood. Not a master 
craftsman but someone just curious about the physics of sound. I peer into children’s rooms 
and marvel at the toys. I touch their bedspreads and look for shirts with frogs on them. I water 
potted geraniums and touch (very lightly) the spines of a cactus, which I don’t know the name 
of. I think of all the things I don’t know the names of. All the plants and insects and animals 
and chemicals, like the ones used to treat diaper rash. I look at cars, into their engines, and
inhale the smell of gasoline and motor oil. I run my finger along bicycle chains and chainsaw 
chains and tractor tires. I handle hammers, screwdrivers, hacksaws, chisels, planes, and 
monkey wrenches, but only to test their heft. I sleep in their beds and smell sweetness on every 
pillow. It’s the fabric softener, isn’t it, I say to the woman lying next to me. She nods and I
kiss her forehead. I don’t know who she is but I want to live in her gaze forever. I sit at their 
tables reading their newspapers and magazines, impressed with how quickly I’ve picked up the 
Spanish language. I light their cigarettes with a lighter that someone has covered in aquamarine
sequins. I could have chosen a zippo with a boot embossed on it or a plain yellow one more 
the color of butter than egg yolk. I smoke with my hand out the window so as not to stain 
their existence. There is ice cold beer in the refrigerator and a cake with pink frosting. I help
myself to these things and leave a note that says, I owe everything to you, including my life. 
Thank you for sustaining me in such trying times. May God bless this house forever. After an 
hour or so of reading, I say the words jaguar, cricket, butterfly. I touch a finger to my lips to 
shush myself. There is a movie playing on the bus that is unfamiliar to me. It concerns children 
and animals. It takes place in the jungle. The man in front of us wears a purple cowboy hat. 
Affixed in its black band is a yellow and gray feather with a spray of red. He tells us he works
as a jukebox repairman in and around the city of Amarillo, Texas. I tell him I didn’t know 
there were still juke boxes and he says, you just don’t know where to look. I feel wounded by 
this comment, or at the very least reproached for my ignorance. I look at his hands and think 
about all the intricate work those hands are responsible for, the electronic housings they have 
entered into so that the people in and around Amarillo, Texas may continue to dance. His wife
is from Puebla and they are visiting her family who continue to keep horses. They have two 
young children who, for some reason, remind me of the ocean. Of looking at the ocean. The
ocean is not something that should be taken lightly. For some uncountable number of years 
the ocean portended death. Not just random death, but certain death. If you look at maps of 
the world from these times they are unconscionably small and over the oceans you see Hades
and his three-headed dog depicted. These children though have nothing to do with that. It’s
all in my head. I beat myself up for having seen no ruins. I saw no ancient cities and my spirit
won’t forgive me. I saw no temples to the God of War or the God of Water. I saw no amount 
of stone smoothed by thousands of years of worshipful touch. My spirit will never forgive me
until I let time lay its hands on me, until I see something at least twice as old as The Hall of 
Bulls. Later in another life or a future life (a life that is behind me now) I will tour other ruins 
with other women and attend different churches. Ones not as concerned with the spectacle 
of Christ’s return. In the halls of these other churches (if I can call them halls) I’ll be able to 
swear off hard drugs and see no more levitating cats. I’ll manage to placate what others (though 
not me) call their demons. My life will become as smooth as a piece of paper and I will drink 
green tea with my meals. When I learn to drive again I will follow a car with a bumper sticker 
that reads, I’d Rather be Hang Gliding, and think about how this means that driving is tedious 
but necessary. But now I’m on a bus between Mexico City and Puebla. I’ve seen no ruins and 
have imagined the interiors of a thousand houses. There is a black Nissan waiting for us. I 
share a cigarette with the driver whose name is Eric. He takes us to a hotel right off the Zócalo 
where there is a truck driving around with a caged tiger on its trailer. It must be, I say to you, 
an advertisement for the zoo.

From the writer

:: Account ::

Some­times it’s hard for me to dis­tin­guish between dreams and mem­o­ries. I do remem­ber tak­ing a bus from Mex­i­co City to Puebla. This must have been 2006 or 2007. We flew into Mex­i­co City and hung around for a while and then took a bus to Puebla and then took a bus back to Mex­i­co City to fly home. There was a film being shown on that bus but I don’t recall it being about chil­dren or a jun­gle (maybe I was think­ing of Juman­ji, but who knows). I think I was try­ing to get at the idea of a per­son chang­ing over time (in terms of reli­gious con­ver­sion or reli­gious con­ver­sion as metaphor). That per­son on that bus is no longer me. That per­son who rode that bus with anoth­er per­son no longer lives with that per­son; doesn’t share dreams or expe­ri­ences with that per­son. And that per­son who didn’t see ruins no longer exists. The thing about juke­box­es is there because I like old media and old tech­nol­o­gy. I like the idea that some of us cast away old things and oth­er peo­ple keep try­ing to make them work. There was a caged tiger on the back of a flatbed truck and a black Nis­san taxi. The idea of the title came from see­ing a license plate hold­er that said I’d Rather be Bowhunt­ing, but I changed it to hang glid­ing because hang glid­ing seems nicer, more ano­dyne, less vio­lent. All the stuff about imag­in­ing what people’s hous­es are like is my attempt to dis­ap­pear which I guess is what writ­ing is sometimes.

Bryan D. Price is the author of A Plea for Sec­u­lar Gods: Ele­gies (What Books, 2023) His sto­ries and poems have appeared or are forth­com­ing in Noon Annu­al, New Let­ters, The Glac­i­er, Boule­vard, and else­where. He lives in San Diego, California.