We each and every one of us have something that we’ll pay good money for.  Look at me.  In Paris, I would take too much codeine.  I get migraines, you see, and I always feel one coming on, and codeine staves them off.  In Paris, you used  to be able always buy codeine from a pharmacist, and the city was so filled with hypochondriacs that there was another pharmacist almost every block.  Green crosses shining on the night streets. I liked a very light form of codeine called effervescent codeine.  This was  codeine in a tablet like Alka-Seltzer.  You put it in water.  It fizzed.  I felt like a Schwepps Ad when I drank it.

But the French changed the law.  So much has changed.  Effervescent codeine when I met Natasha—ATMs—McDonald’s in Paris—but no cell phones when I met Natasha, Nathalie.  We spent Francs not Euros.  A solidly twentieth century memory, yet not a memory for me.  More a fever-dream that happens over again.  Each and every time, I still make the same mistakes.

I am light-headed and carbonated when she first appears.  This story starts with me sitting ignorantly in a bar off the Boulevard de Sebastapol across the street from a McDonald’s.  I am nursing an Irish beer, tired and a little horny and more than a little depressed from a stroll through the red light district.  I’m from New Orleans: sin is old news to me.  The women with their breasts propped up and sticking out and with their fishnet stockings and with their rumps presented because high heels put them at a delicious tilt hardly aroused me; but I did admire the women in neat outfits, pastel linen dresses or white shirts and black suits, the women you could imagine meeting tomorrow in the line at the post office or the charcuterie.  They look like women coming home after making groceries, who have paused, absentmindedly, in front of the entrance to their apartment.  Perhaps they have forgotten their keys.

Outside the bar, there are guys doing business.  What business I’m not sure, but I can guess.  Like the song says, “If you can’t give me a dollar, give me a lousy dime.’

I know I am a poseur, looking tragically into the lights of the street and thinking about love lost but also thinking about another beer and about a restaurant named Pharamond which is not far away but is probably closed on Monday.  Anyway, I don’t even see Natasha until she is bending over the little table next to mine.  How easy it is to come near to people in these bars and yet preserve the idea of inviolable space.

She speaks to me first in French.  A murmur I do not understand.  But it makes me turn my head.

The first thing about Nathalie, Natasha, I love is her face and yet, in the way of faces, it is hard to describe.  A tiny face, really, made tinier by mounds of frizzy hair at the sides, small features, almost pointed like a fox, freckles over the arch of her thin nose, gray eyes.  I wish I had a photograph of her; she must photograph well.  She’s wearing a man’s suit coat, a little oversized, cheap, gray, shot through with iridescent threads.  On a man it’d look like crap.  On her it looks like high society.  She’s wrapped a scarf around her neck and tucked it into the coat.  A pair of dark slacks hangs off her hips so that you can’t see any hint of the legs underneath until your eyes reach her feet in their flat black shoes.  If I should learn that Natasha has worked as a model or a dancer or an actress, I will not be surprised.  She is that lovely, that stylish.  I have been in Paris almost a week, and she is the most beautiful woman I have seen.

She sits down and repeats her question.

“I don’t understand.  Je ne comprehend–”

“Allo,” she says.  Her voice is sleepy.  “Is that good beer?”

This cue I recognize.  “Would you like a sip?”

“If it is not too important to you.”

I hand her the pint.  The Guinness leaves a foam mustache that her sharp, pale tongue slowly licks off.  Her eyelids droop as if we were already intimate and had just woke up together.  I order two more beers.  We are sitting together at separate tables.

“What is your name?”

“Marshall.”  For reasons unimportant, I go by my last name.

“Marshall?”  She accents the name differently than I do: Mar-celle.  Marcel.

“What is your name?”

“Nathalie, Natasha,” she says.  “Surname Nathalie, birth-name Natasha.”

Natasha Nathalie?  OK, I’m a hick, an American from la Louisiane, but even I can tell this name makes no sense.  Natasha Nathaliesounds phoney baloney.

She’s too pretty to challenge.

“Birth-name Clay,” I say.  “Surname, Marshall.”

“Clay Marcel.”  It puzzles her; she holds the name in her mouth to see if she likes the taste.  “Clay Marcel.”

“Clay Marshall.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”  As solemn as a child, she sticks out her hand.  I shake it with as much ceremony as I can.

“Are you from Paris?”

She curls her fingers into a fist, leaving her thumb protruding.  Then she brings her hand to her mouth and sucks on the thumb.  “Since a baby,” she says.

I play the best card in my weak hand.  “I’m from New Orleans.  Nouvelle Orleans.  In Louisiana.  La Louisiane.”

Silly.  But it has inspired Parisian waiters to give me the high five and say, “My man.”  Being from Louisiana has a certain cachet around Paris.

“I’d like to go to New York and California,” she says.

By her second, my third, beer Natasha is jumpy.  She squirms in her seat.  The rapping of her fingers on the tabletop makes the ashtray rattle.  She’s making me nervous, but that’s so easy to do it doesn’t count.

“Marcel,” she says.  “I will have to go to work.”

“Now?”

“Money becomes necessary,” she said.  “Would you lie to make love to me?”

I wish I could say that she says this impishly or flirtatiously or, most unlikely, romantically.  The drooping eyelids should give a touch of seduction to this matter-of-fact proposition, but what they really reveal is that Natasha is tired and would rather not go to the trouble of standing on a corner of St. Denis if cash can be obtained more easily.

She is the most beautiful woman in Paris.  And I like her.  I can either decide not to like her, get all huffy and judgmental, or I can decide whether or not I can afford to make love–pathetic euphemism–to go to bed with her.  If I hadn’t wanted to go to bed with her, I wouldn’t have been talking to her and buying her beers.  If prostitution is corrupt, I’m already corrupted.

We discuss prices, with Natasha drawing figures on the tablecloth.  We reach an agreement.  550 francs for one hour.  8 to 9.  We will leave now, right?  I gulp my beer.

If I’d been at a party, and Natasha stood across the room from me, she’d have been too fine and elegant for me to approach.  On the street, she came to me.  I’m not very proud about this.

We walk away from the Rue St. Denis, heading north for several blocks, to a neighborhood of groceries and small hotels.  About a block from Boulevard Sebastapol she takes my arm.  A sentimental gesture?  Or she doesn’t want me to get away?

She asks, “In Paris, where do you stay?”

“In the Marais.”

I know better than to give Natasha the name of my hotel.  At least, this reticence, this reluctance, this self-serving care is what passes for knowing-better.  Even now that I regret it, I still recognize how sensible this decision was.  Just as I never told Natasha where I lived in America or gave her one of my business cards.

“Stop.”  Natasha takes off the scarf and arranges it on me.  “Do you like it?”

“What are you doing?”

“A souvenir.”

I’m too embarrassed to even say thank-you.  My mama wouldn’t be pleased, not that she’d exactly be pleased about anything in this interchange.

An unpromising door, a flight of stairs.  We interrupt a man at his supper; he has to leave his wife and three children to come to his office, open the fat register, and give us a key.  With no idea if I am renting the room for the hour or for the night, I pay him 150 francs.

Natasha gives me the keys.  It seems very important to her that I have the keys and we pretend I am taking charge.  Nonetheless, she has to lead me to the room.  The squalid love nest.

No window, hot as hell, a double bed with an orange spread and two thin pillows, a nightstand, a w.c. with a hand basin.  Natasha strips down to her black lingerie.  Scallops of black lace trim the edges of her camisole and panties.  Then she points to the nightstand, says “undress there,” and goes into the w.c.  I follow her meaning and do so: a pot-bellied, balding forty year old man with sweat caught in his dark body hair.

When Natasha comes out of the w.c., I see her beauty is even greater than I would have guessed.  Never in my life have I been about to bed a woman this beautiful.

Except….

A woman this beautiful or this thin.  Unnaturally thin.  Frighteningly thin.

Heroin addict?  No tracks, but I’m told careful junkies shoot up between their toes for just that reason.  She looks as if she’s shrivelled so far that she no longer has periods.

So I let the thinness explain the jumpiness.  I let it explain why Nathalie, Natasha is in the streets.  It explains why she is here with me.

Unrolling the condom over my penis, she is clumsy; after that, she is inept with her mouth.  While no longer an amateur, she is not yet a professional.  She is a trainee.  She has learned the theory but not the technique.  After a few seconds, she sits up straight, as if she’s forgotten something.

“What would you like?  For me to do this or to make love right away?”

“To make love.”

“How?  The woman on top or the man on top or would you like to come to me from behind?”

“The last.  I think.”  I would like her to like something.  Of course, she doesn’t.

She’s up on her hands and knees before I can reconsider.  “My rump,” she says.  “From behind.”

I crawl behind her.  Now I am on my knees too.  Natasha says, “From my rump, not in my rump.  That would hurt.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

I don’t want to hurt her.  But I do want to fuck her.  How do I know that I can do one without doing the other?  She reaches behind her and takes my penis and inserts it for me.  I like the practical touch of her fingers more than I did the efforts of her mouth.  After I start moving, my penis falls out once, but hell, that’s the nature of rear entry coitus.

“Wrong hole,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Marcel.”

But I’m a natural-born apologizer.

Her hair is held by a clasp so that I can see her thin neck.  From her shoulder to her waist, she is lightly freckled.  The curve of her buttocks is lovely, but there is very little fat on them.  I put my hands on her thighs and feel bone.

This is not very good sex.  She is too fragile.  I feel like I will break her.  The soft grunts she begins to make are not persuasive.  They are the sounds of a woman enduring something. Maybe I am clumsy and inept.  What I want to do is kiss her, cuddle her, snuggle with her under the sheets.  Things I don’t imagine you are allowed to do when you pay for sex.

At least I can see her face.

I withdraw and ask her if I can see her face.  I want her to climb atop me.  I want to cup her buttocks in my palms and lift her over me.  I want to unfasten her long hair and let it cover both her face and mine.

I want to be making love to her.  Of course, the nature of prostitution forbids that.  The longer a man takes, the more time he is wasting.  The more attention he pays to a woman’s pleasure, the more he displeases her.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“I’d like you on top.”

“I don’t understand.”

I lie down.  She grabs my penis–careful, girl–and examines the condom.  She’s looking for semen.  There’s isn’t any, which puzzles her because she thinks I’ve told her I’ve come.  Finally, she convinces herself that some liquid is trapped there.

“Quickly,” she says.  “You have not had your hour.”

“You don’t understand,” I say.

“We must buy more.  I have no more.”

Is she that unprepared a prostitute?  Or is she finding a reason to get what cannot be a very nice encounter over?

“Don’t look so sad,” she says.  “It is not the end of the world.”

We wash ourselves and get dressed, Natasha uttering little cries of encouragement throughout.  She splashes water all over the w.c.  Natasha proves once again the old truth that you can’t really look stylish unless you have clothes on.  Meanwhile, I dress reluctantly, considering and rejecting the notion of making a scene.  I figure it’s a no-win situation; besides, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on.

My coat still lies on the night stand.  Impatiently, she shakes it out and hands it to me.  After I put it on, I stuff the scarf into an outside pocket.  Natasha shakes her head pulls the scarf back out, and puts it back on me.  Then she steps back, bites her thumb, and considers me.  This consideration leads her to rearrange the scarf.

This is a lot more embarrassing than my nakedness had been.

The proprietor is standing in the doorway to his apartment.  Avoiding his eyes, I give him his keys.  Behind him, his wife is passing a plate with pastries on it to their children.

On the street, the evening light is still bright.  I put my sunglasses on.  Natasha sighs, adjusts the scarf.  Whatever picture she has in mind for me and this scarf, I kept spoiling it.

“We need des contraceptifs.”  She makes a circle with her fingers and thumbs and tilts her pelvis into it.  “Umph,” she adds.  If elephants start using condoms, you might be able to buy one the size she’s indicated.

“You flatter me.”

“I do not understand.”

Although I’ve already given her 50 francs extra, I give her 50 francs for the condoms.  Limited to a five word vocabulary, it’s hard for me to explain.  And Natasha only understands English when it’s in her interests.

She has another question as we walk along.  “Do you smoke?”  As if she’s uncertain of the English word, she mimes putting a cigarette to her lips and inhaling.

“No,” I say.  “Sorry.”

“Do you have money for smokes?”

How much can smokes be?  I pull a 200 franc note out of my jeans pocket and show her.  She is pleased.

“We will have to rent another room.  You have enough for another room?”

First we stop at a grocery.  Come on, Nathalie, Natasha, you don’t buy condoms at the grocery.  We don’t buy anything at the grocery; Natasha whispers to the proprietor and he shakes his head.  We run out as if we’re being chased.

Across the street, a pharmacy, its green cross lit.  Supplier of codeine and condoms.  This time I wait on the sidewalk.  Natasha reemerges.  As we walk along, back toward the street corner on which we met–Jesus, just about an hour ago!–she opens the package and empties it contents in her purse.  We reach the bar in which I’d sat and drunk my solitary beer.

“Now for smokes.”

“OK.”

“No, wait here.”

I wait ten minutes or twelve.  Then I peek around the door.  Of course I don’t see her–and she should be standing at the bar, buying cigarettes.  There are plenty of ways out of this bar which she could have taken and not passed by me.  Still, I walk downstairs to the toilets and telephone.  She’s not there, either.  It’s my fault, really; I gave her too much money for the cigarettes.  Lead us not into temptation.  She had no choice but to take the money and skedaddle.  200 franc for a pack of cigarettes.

The joke’s on me.  The thing to do now, Mr. Marshall, is to keep your cool.  Mr. Marcel.

I order another fine Irish beer and sit an hour.  She might come back, you know?

But she doesn’t.

When I go to bed, back at the hotel, I am holding Natasha’s scarf in my hand.  Every now and then, I lift it to my face to breathe in its smell of perfumed talcum powder.  That’s how I fall asleep that night: surrounded by Natasha’s scent.

I am not Henry Miller nor do I wish to be Henry Miller.

When I wake up the next day, I wake up angry again with Natasha.  I want to tell her, “Look, it was stupid to run off with the two hundred francs.  You could have gotten a lot more money from me without lying.”  I want to find her.

Unlike Natasha, I am in no hurry.  I will look for her in the same places we were last night, at the same time as last night.  Until then I will spend the day with my friend Debra.  This is my last day in Paris.  There is much to see.  I will look for Natasha when evening comes.

A few nights earlier I stopped for a drink in a bar very much like the American folk music bar where I used to hang out in college.  A short woman with an oversized newsboy’s cap got onto the tiny stage to sing and play accordion.  Maybe she thought the big hat, sloping over her tiny face, made her look gaminisque.

“‘Allo,” she said in a shout.

The singer was relentlessly cheerful.  Somebody must have told her some point “you have to put a song across.”  So she mugged and put songs across, including many ones ordinarily poignant, Edith Piaf songs and such.  Furthermore, she apparently only knew two chords, C and G, no doubt, and backed everything with them, no matter what the melody of the song.  Finally, she had such a tin ear that she could play inappropriate chords and not let the melody be affected by them.  In fact, it’s possible she’s actually a performance art genius.

A woman in her forties, she had talked her street vendor lover, a guy of about twenty-two, to attend the concert.  She mugged particularly at him, but he ignored her performance to try to sell necklaces to the rest of us.  He smelled bad and the necklaces were ugly.  When the patron told him to stop hustling necklaces, he went and sat in the men’s room for the duration of her set.

Suddenly, she figured out I was American, the only American in the joint, and pitched a song my way.  “Send in the Clowns.”  It wasn’t hard to imagine Edith Piaf singing “Send in the Clowns,” but the accordion chords bugged me.

“Don’t bother, they’re here.”

I applauded wildly.  She meant well.  And we were here.  We always will be.  When the tip jar came round, I’d be generous.

Parisians are sentimental about dogs, although not people.  The prostitutes in Rue St. Denis, soliciting men from doorways and pavement, often hold their dogs.  A particularly cute dog will cause the other women to gather around to ooh-and-ah.  Even Natasha, hanging on my arm as we head toward a drug deal, will stop me and insist I admire a squat, brown dog.

I find Nathalie, Natasha sitting on the sidewalk, her back rubbing a wall, where she’d left me twenty-three hours earlier.  She is shaking.  She is sick.  On a gentle summer night, she is shivering like she’s gotten cold and never will get warm again.  What is the French way of saying you’re lost?  I have lost myself.  Nathalie, Natasha, has lost herself.

I forget that I am pretending to be angry with her.  “How are you doing?”

“Not so good.”

“Here’s your scarf back.”

Without a word, she wraps it around her neck and tucks it into her coat.  For a second, she looks jaunty.

I sit down next to her.  She is not surprised to see me; nor is she very interested.  What is interesting to her is the possibility that the men talking and joking a few feet away may have crack.  She is staring at them like she was a little girl in the park yearning to play with the older children.

I say, “Do you remember me?”

“Yes.  Marcel.”  She’s a little irritated.  I sense her asking me, Why would you think I was that far gone?  Do you think I am stupid?

At least she’s now looking at me, with her eyelids half-closed and her lips trembling.  Like a model on a shoot, she carelessly brushes a strand of hair out of her face and then tidies it behind her ear.  Yesterday, it would have been the sexiest sight in the world.

Not heroin, you idiot, crack.  200 francs probably was barely enough for the smokes you offered to buy her.

I say, “I am worried about you.”

“I don’t understand.”  She’s pouting again.  She probably knows how good pouting makes her look.

“I am concerned about you.”  An American, I say this with little pseudo-French gestures and accents, as if this Pepe Le Pew imitation will make what I am saying more intelligible.  Why must we become caricatures of ourselves in times of stress?

The pout again.  But she’s not acting; she’s paying attention.  I have to remember how slow her responses must be.

I want to say, “I will help you,” but my French betrays me.  “Aidez-moi,” I tell Natasha.  “I want to aidez-moi.”

She begins speaking rapidly, but in French.  I interrupt her.  “Write it down, if you pleae.”  Today I have brought pen and paper so I can communicate with Natasha a little more efficiently.

Taking the pen and paper, she writes down 100F.   If you can’t give me a dollar, give me a lousy dime.

“No, no, no.  Two hundred francs.”

I show her her notation.  “You said one hundred francs.”

“Two hundred francs.”  She is quite definite.  This is like arguing with a child.

“Did you eat today?”

She tilts her head to the right and puffs out her cheek with her tongue as she considers this question.  It takes a long time for her to answer.  “I think so.  I have eaten aujourd’hui.  Ou hier.”  She pokes her stomach playfully.

“If I give you one hundred francs–”

“Two hundred francs.”

“–will you come back here and let me buy you supper?”

She cocks her head again.  “Why not?”

After I give her the money, Natasha rushes the little group of men hanging out on the sidewalk.  As she goes from one to the other, they all laugh at her.  Some of them act angry.  Why should she assume every black man on that corner deals?  Others are openly dismissive.  A woman joins the group and begins screaming at Natasha.  It does no good.  Natasha isn’t listening.  I am afraid that someone, the woman most likely, is going to slap her.

Before this happens, Natasha dashes back to me.  “I know where now.”  She charges down the stairs of the Metro stop.  At first I’m confused, then I figure it out.  These tunnels are fine and private places for buying-and-selling.  Parisians crowd the Metro and slow me down.  I follow Natasha, but cannot find her.

Back up the stairs, she’s waiting for me.  She demands something from me in French.  We are discussing our mutually increasing levels of incomprehension when a trim black man intervenes.  He tells me, “She wants twenty francs.”

“Twenty francs?  What for?”  I’m speaking to both of them.

“Twenty francs,” he says.

“Marcel, Marcel!”  Natasha says.  She’s stepped into traffic and is precariously crossing the street.

“I don’t know what any of this is about,” I say to the black man.  “I just want to help her.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“What’s going on?” I say.

The trim black man is not interested.

But–idiot idiot idiot–I’ve lost sight of Natasha.  The next hour and a half I spend hoping for her reappearance.  I do not quite give up but I am in despair after the first twenty minutes.

One of the most joyous moments of my life is when I hear Nathalie, Natasha, crying out my name and then see her running toward me on the sidewalk of that dirty street.  She stretches her arm as high as she can and waves to me.  Upon reaching me, she falls into my stride, and tucks her hand between my left arm and ribs, so that her long fingers rest on the sleeve of my coat right at my biceps.  You would think we were lovers reunited.

Is it so stupid of me to think that, no matter how mixed her motivation, she is happy to see me as well?

Maybe she is, because she now regards me as the solution to her night’s problem.  She walks with me almost as if she’s proud of me.  Actually, she is in a way.  I am a head taller than most of these Parisians; I’ve money in my pocket; she’s been to bed with me once and knows I don’t want to hurt her: relatively speaking, I am a catch.  She maneuvers me so that I maneuver her through the gang of crack sellers, pimps, and hangers-on.  No matter how much they jeered at her an hour ago, now they stand apart to make room for the two of us.  I may be a fool but I’m a big American fool.  My right fist is clenched.  Both Natasha and I stare into their faces as we force them back.  For this walk, which we take more slowly than necessary, we can both pretend we are stronger than the bastards.

O.K., so I’m as sentimental as a Parisian encountering a fluffy dog.

She leads me into the McDonald’s.  “To eat now,” she says.  Ignoring all the people in line, she walks directly to the counter and orders something.  The woman behind the counter shrugs but takes the order.  Maybe the McDonald workers know Nathalie, Natasha very well, just as do the crack sellers outside.  People in line curse at my Natasha.  She leans against the counter and smiles at me.  This is the only time I see her that she looks faded and ugly.  The next order that is delivered, she tries to grab.  It takes a minute for the customer and the counter-woman both to persuade Natasha that she isn’t being denied her order.  Then they bring her food: one hamburger, the smallest and cheapest they sell.  I am disappointed but Natasha seems pleased.  She is only eating because it is part of her deal with me.  By ordering the cheapest item, she’s saved money and kept her bargain.

It is a trick a daughter sure of her father’s love might play on him.

I escort her to a table.  Natasha tears at the hamburger like a bird picking a loaf of bread.  The idea that you’re supposed to pick the hamburger up and bite into it has been lost to her.  It takes her about thirty seconds to eat, though not taste this food.

With a toss of her head, she indicates two men kneeling on the street outside.  “Regardez-vous.  Do you see them, Marcel?  Bad characters.”

I regard them.  They sure do look like bad characters.  Bad caricatures.  Through the plate glass, they regard me back.

Natasha says, “Do you have something to write with?”

I find the pen but not the piece of paper I’d given her earlier.  I’m still slapping pockets when she frowns–precious time–and grabs a napkin.  She holds up her index finger to indicate I must be patient.  Once again, I notice how tapered her hands are; truly elegant.

Because she is writing on a napkin and has to be careful not to tear it, because she is writing in a language other than French, and, yes, because she is high, Natasha has trouble making the letters.  The first sentence reads “Can you help me?”

I nod my head, meaning I understand and I would like to help her.  I don’t know if I can.  I don’t know what she wants–it would be wonderful if she wanted help for her addiction–but I’m pretty sure she wants more money.

She smiles.  A pretty smile, or it would have been under different circumstances.  I tell myself that because I am still trying not to admit I want to fuck such a damaged human being.

Her tongue protruding, she bents over her writing.  She looks like a little girl practicing her penmanship. Again, I watch the sentence form.  “I need 300F.”

“For smoke?” I ask her.

“For smoke,” she says.

Then she writes some more.  “For 300F I can get enough for the night and we can spend the whole night together making love.”  This sentence takes a long time to write and when she is finished she is obviously proud, proud of her ability to compose such a fine English sentence and proud of her plan.

What she offers is an excellent price.  Bon marche.  400 francs would only buy you fifteen or twenty minutes with a woman working on the Rue St. Denis.

Her eyes say, how could you possibly disagree with such a fine plan?  Aren’t I clever?  Aren’t you lucky to find me and I to find you?

What do I want?  I want to make love with her the whole night.  I want to take care of her.  I want her to check into a hotel on my money and shower and sleep.  I want her to have a change of clothes.

She takes my hand.  “Je t’aimee.”

“It’s just the money,” I say.

“I am not a prostitute,” she says.  “Prostitutes will not do this.”  Natasha kisses me, first on the mouth, then in the mouth.  It is nice but unconvincing.

Nathalie, Natasha, I did not know and do not know exactly what I want for you, or what I want for us.  After some bi-lingual haggling and lots of scribbling on napkins, you in black ink and me in blue, we agreed that I would give you 300 francs.

She is happy to tell me where the nearest bank is.  Crossing the street, she leans against me.  Her perfumed smell, the smell from yesterday, is mixed with sweat and funk.  She is trembling; her body beats against me like the wing of a hummingbird.  I put my arm around her, partly to steady her, partly to keep her from jumping into traffic–she doesn’t seem to remember traffic–and partly because I want to draw her to me.

I say, “Natasha Nathalie, that’s not your real name.”

“It is.  It is.  After, I will show you my identity papers.”

While I am getting a cash advance from the money machine, Natasha guards the door.  “Oh no,” she calls to me.  “It’s that woman.  That woman is evil.”

Bad characters.  I only see a gray woman in a dirty set of clothes who lies down on the sidewalk in front of the bank.  I refuse to ask Natasha what is evil about this woman.  Instead, knowing better the whole time, I hand Natasha 300 francs and escort her back across the street.  This time, when she leans into me, her body relaxes.  It feels like I am carrying her weight.

She almost teases me.  She’s smiling in my face like we are old friends.  “Wait here, Marcel,” she says.  “I will find him.”

I wait while she goes around the corner.

She almost runs into me.

“Marcel, the man is here, and he wants cinq cents francs.”  She is screaming at me.

“How much…you said….”  I am more flustered than I should have been; in just a few seconds I will regret my feckless reaction bitterly.

“Cinq cents francs.  Not trois cents, cinq cents.”

Fine drops of spit on my face.  She is disbelieving, furious with me for not understanding cinq cents francs, for not seeing how life-and death this is.

“Two hundred more, Marcel.  I need two hundred francs.”

“You will meet me here in a few minutes?”

“Yes.  Yes yes yes.”

A white-haired man with a cynical grin watches as I hand Nathalie, Natasha another two hundred franc note.  He knows I am a fool.

I know I am a fool.

“You will come back?”

“Wait here,” Natasha says.  “Wait for me here.”

After years of trying, I have never saved anyone.  Not my mother from pain, not my father from melancholy, not wives from their husbands–even my wives from me–not the random women breaking under the burden of random heartbreak that I see in bars and restaurants and on the street and to whom I always tip my hat.

Once Natasha goes around the corner, I will never see her again.  I meant to demand her purse, the one with identity papers, so she had to come back.  I meant to follow her but her demand that I wait was so strident I hesitate.  By the time I move, like a silent film comic doing a slow-take, it is too late to catch her.

Questions I did not think to ask.  In Paris, where do you stay?  Who are your family?  Where are you friends?  How can I reach you after I leave Paris tomorrow?  Do you like me?  Who are you?

What am I left with?  The white-haired man, who sidles up to me and asks, “Are you looking for girls?”  He wants to remind me that the woman who left isn’t coming back.

You can’t punch people just for telling you the truth.  You can hate them, but you can’t punch them.

Everybody on this street seems to know my business.

After I’m too embarrassed to stand by the sinister McDonald’s any longer, I go back to the same ugly bar in which I met Natasha and I order another Irish beer.  When St. Peter betrayed Our Lord, it just as well could have been embarrassment as fear.  Embarrassment is a lukewarm fear, isn’t it?  The one God spews out of His mouth.

It’s only one day later.  Maybe not even a day.  I don’t have a word for me and Natasha but whatever it is we are, we’ve only been there about three hours.

The beer goes flat before I finish it.  The sniggering waiter brings me another which tastes like it’d been opened the winter before.  Natasha will be back in a junkie’s five minutes.

I imagine her sitting in a bedroom at the hotel–not my bedroom, no, but one convenient–freshly showered, little drops of water still caught in her hair, wearing my bathrobe.  She’s trembling a little and I’ve grabbed hold of her hands.  We are waiting for a doctor who’ll have some clear, calming medicine that he’ll put into a syringe.

Later, while she is sleeping, the doctor will say, “She will be fine, Monsieur Marcel.  But you must get her away from this place.”  As he tugs one end of his mustache, his eyes examine my face as if he is judging the worth of my character.

After an hour and a half, I feel compelled to leave the cafe.  Natasha won’t come back.  Why should she?

Why should she indeed, I ask myself, given that you have no faith in her return?  She’s asked you to wait here.

She also said five minutes.

She came back before.

She’s playing me for a fool, and without difficulty, because I am a fool.

She came back this evening.

I have spent two days trying to eat at Pharamond and finding it closed.  Instead of waiting here for Nathalie, Natasha, I should go there and eat tripe, the dish for which they are probably best-known.  It is only a few blocks away; I can dine well there and then resume looking for Natasha.  I don’t owe her anything.

Maybe I would have waited longer if the white-haired man had gone away.  But he was still there, chatting to the crack dealers.  I imagined him chatting about me and Natasha.

Pharamond is a very fine restaurant, a bistro with Belle Epoque decor, heavy, well-used cotton tablecloths, heavy, well-used cutlery.  It reminds me of Galatoire’s, one of my favorite restaurants back in New Orleans.  The maitre de seats me next to a French woman and an English man.  They are talking in English.  They are talking about health care systems throughout Europe.  They are very serious.

I order my meal, including the famous tripe.  A bus boy brings me a glass of water.  I put effervescent codeine in the glass.  Fine drops of water sprinkle my face as I lift the glass to my lips.  Unlike Natasha, I can replenish the supply of my drug at almost any pharmacist.  After I swallow, the headache goes away almost immediately.  Happy days are here again.

To English health care expert a waiter presenting a casserole on a brazier to a diner.  “That is so traditional,” she says.  “it is almost a joke.”  In a few minutes, when another waiter brings me my casserole bubbling on its brazier, I turn to her, jab my thumb into my chest, and shrug.  A huge Gallic shrug that includes a downturned mouth.  She laughs.

To my surprise, Patricia Wells’s Bistro Cooking, which does list Pharamond as one of her favorite bistros, does not include the recipe for tripe a la mode de Caen.  It is complicated enough as given in The Joy of Cooking, and surely that cookbook skipped steps.  Four kinds of tripe, one from every stomach, pigs feet and beef suet, Calvadoes–well, The Joy of Cooking permits substitution, but surely it has to be Calvadoes–cider, bouquet garni, onions, bay leaf, salt and pepper, and a really cold, slow oven.  The Joy of Cooking doesn’t require the charcoal brazier that Pharamond serves it tripe stew on, but if you ask me, a little fanfare never comes amiss.

It is a wonderful meal, this meal at Pharamond, the best meal I eat in Paris this vacation.  But I’m getting as jumpy as a crack-head, and I signal the waiter for the reckoning.

Since Pharamond is forever linked for me with Natasha, will I eat there again when I am next in Paris?  Yes.  I am sentimental about people, but ruthless when it comes to food.  Or, if you prefer, I am more sentimental about food than I am about people.

That being said, I did not do the meal justice tonight.  Because once I sat down, I was eager to be out looking for Natasha.  In fact, if it did not require the services of a waiter to free me from where I am trapped behind a table, I might have left the restaurant before I finished eating.  You will note that I skipped coffee, dessert, and a post-prandial drink.

My entre is 140 francs, my viandes 88 francs, my vins-cidre 80 francs, and my eaux minerales, 20.  Total, service compris: 328 franc.

On the one hand, Nathalie, Natasha had offered me a complete night with her for 300 francs.  On the other hand, Restaurant Pharamond actually served me the pate, the tripe, the half bottle of wine, the bottle of mineral water.

I don’t remember how much the cheapest hamburger at a Paris McDonald’s cost.

The streets of the red light district stink of piss. Searching these streets, past the women prostituting themselves and the men talking loud, I feel more weary than scared.  Being a head taller than all these French men gives me an exalted sense of invulnerability, searching for Natasha, for reasons unknown, nonetheless gives me a sense of mission.  Nobody had better mess with me.

And would you?  Would you have chosen to mess with a crazy American who stared at you as if he thought you’d kidnapped and raped the woman he loved?  Which is more or less what I did think with that part of the brain that lies below thought and nearer the heart.

How many times can you walk up and down the Rue St. Denis?

How many times do I have to?

Men come to this neighborhood in groups and when one man steps forward to engage a woman, two or three hang behind, like younger brothers.  Most of the conversations are about money; the men usually end them by abusing the women and moving on.  One group of men that roams the street is Japanese.  From what I see, I can’t tell if any of them get laid.  From what I see, none of the women are Natasha.

But Natasha does not wait for me near the McDonald’s at Boulevard Sebastapol.  Or, if she does, I cannot find her.

When I am tired, I stop in cafes and order a beer and a glass of water.  Then I take more codeine, eavesdrop on any English conversation that’s going, kill time.  Then back out among the pimps and whores and dealers–a little less steady on my feet every time.

This has gone on for hours.  It’s well after midnight.  The woman who yelled at Natasha is working now.  She seems to be Natasha’s enemy–but at least she probably knows Natasha.

“M’sieur?”

“I’m looking for Natasha Nathalie.”

“M’sieur?”

“Natasha Nathalie, do you know her?”

“M’sieur, I do not understand.”

On Rue Bondel, there is a woman my age, one of the women you would make chitchat with in the check-out line at the butcher, one who speaks good English and who is dressed demurely.  Sobbing, I lean against the wall next to her.  She exhibits mild, professional concern.

“You are looking for some girl in particular?”

“Yes.”

“Do I know her?”

“Natasha.  I don’t think she’s a regular.”

“No, if she was a regular, I’d know her.”

“Thanks anyway.”

“You know the best thing you can do?  You can go with me.  I will make you forget her.”

“No, thank you.  I am too sad.”

“I can touch you, here and here and there.  I can make love to you with my mouth.  It will be very nice.  You’ll see.”

“I am too sad.  It would be no good for either of us.”

“Too sad?  That is too sad.”

The truth is, I want to believe she can touch me here and here and there and take away my sadness.  What she offers to do should be very nice.  Any night other than tonight she could lie to me and I would bless her for her lies.

I pull out my big old railroad watch for the last time of the night.  We’re going on two in the morning.  There are new prostitutes appearing on the Rue St. Denis and tired ones retiring until tomorrow.  The blisters on my feet have popped open and the salt of my own sweat, my own lymph, and my own blood stings the wounds.  I can walk a while longer but not too much longer.

Defeated, I leave my search.  There are cabs on Sebastapol.  One takes me to the hotel.  I tip the driver all my loose change.  What else am I going to do with it?  Tomorrow I’ll be back in America.

Nathalie, Natasha, I am left without almost nothing but memory.  No photograph.  I gave you back the scarf.  I didn’t save the napkin on which you wrote “Can you help me?”  My only souvenir, a scrap of paper that, amidst all my scrawls such as “Tripe and Love,” “Kindness doesn’t keep you out of jail,” and your name, has the notation 100F in your hand.

Nathalie, Natasha, why is human life so barren of love when the human heart has too much love in it?

REID MITCHELL is a New Orleanian teaching in China. More specifically, he is a Scholar in Jiangsu Province’s 100 Foreign Talents Program, and a Professor of English at Yancheng Teachers University. He is also Consulting Editor of CHA: AN ASIAN LITERARY JOURNAL. His poems have been published by CHA, ASIA LITERARY REVIEW, IN POSSE, and elsewhere and he has a collection due out from a small press in Berlin. Way back in the 20th century, he published the novel A MAN UNDER AUTHORITY. He also had a separate career as an historian of the American Civil War.

My name is Hippo.  I wasn’t born with that name; I kind of fell into it.  Kind of how my sister fell into the name Shark Lady.  She’s eight years older than me.  Which is pretty old.  She just started college, and isn’t home most of the year.  But she comes to visit, sometimes.  Mainly, she’s only home for the summer.  I think she’ll leave for good once college is over.  That’s what she yells at mom every time she leaves, anyway.  Mom yells back that maybe she’ll leave, too, then.  I usually just sit quietly and finish my dinner.

Shark Lady didn’t always yell.  She and mom started fighting more once dad died.  But since Shark Lady’s been in college, it’s pretty quiet at home.  You see, mom’s gone most of the time, too.  Sometimes she’ll come home with a new man, but she’s mostly gone.  It’s not that bad though.  Mom always leaves a frozen dinner in the microwave for me.  And I know how to use the microwave.  And even though mom and Shark Lady are gone a lot, I still find things to do.  I read, and ride my bike, and dig up worms from the mud to try to catch minnows in the creek.  Sometimes a stray cat comes by.  He’s gray and doesn’t have a tail, but I pet him and give him part of my microwave dinner.  I even let him sleep in my bed with me.  But I haven’t named him, though.  He’s a stray, and has many places to explore.  I can’t make him stay by naming him.  He never comes by when mom’s here, but he’ll let Shark Lady scratch him behind his ears.  Shark Lady says she doesn’t like having a scraggily stray cat around, but I know better.  She loves that cat.  But even the cat isn’t enough to keep her at home longer.

* * *

It’s nearing the middle of July, but Shark Lady still hasn’t come home for the summer.  She finished her first year of college in April.  I’d ask mom where she’s at, but mom has been staying out for more than one day at a time now.  It happened slowly, with mom being gone for the whole night instead of stumbling home very early in the morning.  Then one night turned into a night and a day, then three days, then a week.  Even though she’s gone longer than a day, she still only leaves me one microwave dinner.  But there are always some cans of vegetables or soup, and I know how to use the microwave.

When a week and a half passes and mom still hasn’t come home, I decide I should probably call Shark Lady.  And I’m running low on soup.  Shark Lady picks up on the fourth ring.  There’s a lot of noise in the background, mostly loud music, but I hear people’s voices too.  Shark Lady’s sounds loud and close.  “Shit, I dropped the bottle.  Ah, dammit!  Hello?  Who’s calling?”

“Hello.  It’s me.  Are you there?  Mom hasn’t come home yet and I’m almost out of soup.”

“Wait, what?  Hippo?  Why are you calling?  Where’s mom?”  Shark Lady’s words are slurred; she sounds tired, but not really.

“Mom’s gone.  I’m almost out of soup.”

Shark Lady hiccuped.  “She left you alone?  How long’s she been gone?”

“A little over a week.  Are you drunk?  You sound like mom when she comes home late at night.  She can’t speak well then either.”

“I’m not…drunk.  Where are you?  At home?  I guess…you can’t stay home alone.”

“Are you coming home?  Can you bring some more soup?  I can make soup in the microwave.  But not in the can.  I have to put it in bowl first.  It’d be nice to see you again.”  It’s a long time before she answers.  I twirl the phone cord around my fingers.  We still have a corded phone.  I think they’re better because you can twirl the cord around your fingers.  Can’t do that with a cell phone.  “Are you still there?”

“What?  Yeah, yeah, still here.  Look, stay there.  I’ll be home soon.  But if mom comes back, call.  I don’t need to make the trip for nothing.”  I don’t think I am supposed to hear that last part.

“Okay.”  I hang up the phone and walk over to the couch to wait.

* * *

It’s a long time before I hear a car pull into our driveway.  The slam of the car door startles my sleepiness away.  Shark Lady storms up the driveway and to the front door, only she can’t go any further because I locked the door and she can’t find her key.

“Dammit, Hippo.  Open up.”

“Mom told me to never leave the door unlocked.  That way strangers can’t get in.”

“Seriously?  Come on, Hippo, open up!  I’ve got a killer headache and I’m not playing games.”

“It’s not a game.  It’s Stranger Danger,” I tell her as I open the door.  Shark Lady glares at me before she steps inside.  She walks around the house, I guess to make sure I wasn’t lying about mom being gone, then flops down on the couch, arm over her eyes.  I kneel in front of her.

“Did you bring any soup?”  I whisper close to her face.  She pushes me away.

“No.  I’ll get your soup after I nap.  Then I’ll call mom and tell her to get her ass home.  Go away and don’t bother me for an hour.”

“Okay.”  I go to the front porch and sit on the rocker, cross-legged because it’s more fun that way, and wait for Shark Lady to finish her nap.  I don’t think she needs a nap, because naps are for babies, maybe toddlers, but mom takes naps too.  Mom says that old people need naps like babies do, so I guess this means that Shark Lady is now old.  If it’s true that Shark Lady is now old, then I never want to get old.  Neither mom nor Shark Lady are fun anymore.  It must be another thing that happens when you get old.

But Shark Lady wasn’t always old and un-fun.  We used to play a lot.  She first taught me how to find worms to catch minnows in the creek.  And she was always good with words, especially when the bully girls down the block came by.  She always had a sharp comeback, and those bully girls would run away, not knowing what hit them.  That’s where she got her name, because she’s quick and sharp, like a shark.  Only she doesn’t eat her victims.  The bully girls left me alone after Shark Lady got to them.  It was nice when she was around because then I was safe.  But then she went to college, started drinking and staying out late, and I wasn’t so safe anymore.

But it’s okay.  I stay quiet in class and during recess, and I know a shortcut through the woods to get home after school so the bully girls can’t find me.  And it’s good too, because the shortcut passes by the creek, and then I can pull out my tub of worms and catch minnows.  I don’t put the minnows in my tub, though.  I let them go.  My tub is only for worms.  It’s a Country Crock butter tub.  It’s the best butter tub for holding worms.  I don’t recommend any other.

It’s starting to be Fall, so I don’t know how many more times I’ll be able to go to the creek.  The minnows don’t like to come out when it’s too cold, and the worms don’t squiggle as much.  But that’s okay.  When it’s fully Fall, I’ll go out and catch leaves.  Shark Lady thinks that catching leaves is stupid, but I think it’s fun.  She’d enjoy it if she gave it a chance.  It’s pretty easy too.  You go out to the woods and watch the trees.  When a leaf begins to fall, you run over and catch it before it hits the ground.  Mom used to catch leaves with me before she became old and napped all day.

Shark Lady groans from inside and I hear the couch creak as she gets up.  She bustles around in the kitchen some before she joins me on the porch.  Pulling up another chair, Shark Lady sits, but doesn’t sit cross-legged because she’s not as fun as me.

“Did you make me soup?”  She has a mug in her hands, so maybe she has.

“Gosh, stop asking about the damn soup already.  How long did you say mom’s been gone?”

“A little more than a week.  I only ask about the soup because I want some.”

“Soup later.  Did she leave a note, say where she was going?”

“Nope.  Just left with some guy.”

“Typical.”  Shark Lady sighs and runs a hand through her hair.  She takes a sip from her mug and stares off down the yard.  I’ve caught her doing that a lot lately.  Staring off into space, I mean, not sipping from her mug.  Whenever she comes home from college, she and mom usually argue, then Shark Lady sits and stares.  I try to make myself scarce whenever they’re in a room together.

“All right.”  Shark Lady drains her mug.  “Let me get a shower and do some searching.”

“What are you searching for?”

“A phone number or address of whatever man she’s with now, I guess.”

“I thought you were going to call her and tell her to get her ass home.”

Shark Lady squints at me.  “I need more coffee.”  I follow her as she goes back inside to pour herself another cup.  She takes a long drink, then smacks her lips together and grabs the phone, punching in mom’s cell phone number.  I jump as I hear a ringing coming from down the hall.  Shark Lady gives me a quizzical look as we head towards the sound.  I push mom’s bedroom door open to find her phone lying on her nightstand.  The shrill ringing stops as Shark Lady hangs up.

“Well, shit.”

“Now what?”

Shark Lady rubs her eyes.  “First, I need a shower.  Then let’s get you some soup.  Then, after that, I’ll try to figure out where mom went.”

* * *

I sit on the couch and watch TV while I wait for Shark Lady to finish.  I don’t watch TV much, but sometimes it seems like a good idea.  Today there was a marathon of some ghost hunting show on.  Sometimes I like to pretend that things like ghosts could be real.  That there are things beyond our control or understanding, but that they’re good things.  Not like mom’s thing with men.  That’s not a good thing, and it is beyond my understanding.  But ghosts are good things.  They’re not scary, they’re just invisible.  Sometimes I pretend I’m invisible like a ghost.

I hear the shower turn off and Shark Lady rummaging around.  I shut off the TV and walk down the hall.  Shark Lady comes out of her room, toweling off her hair.

“Come on, let’s get you fed.”

In the kitchen, she pulls out the next to last can of tomato soup and puts it on the stove to heat.  She still hasn’t gone to the store to get more yet.  Her damp hair leaves spots on her shoulders as she leans against the counter.  I kick my feet against the rungs of my chair.

“Now what?”

Shark Lady sighs and crosses her arms.  “Well, you said mom’s been gone a week right?  She never called you or anything?”

“Nope.”

The soup starts to boil.  Shark Lady grabs a bowl and spoons some into it for me.  Mom used to get my soup for me, before she left.  Even when Shark Lady was living at home, she never got my soup for me.

“All right.  I suppose I could file a missing person’s report.  But she’s probably not far.  Might be best just to ask around town.”

I slurp some soup.  “Okay.  Let me get a jacket.”

“Oh, no.  No.  You’re not coming.”  Shark Lady goes to the living room and grabs her keys.  “You stay right here and wait for me to get back.”  She opens the door.

I run to the living room with my jacket.  “No!  You’re not leaving me here.  Mom said she’d come back and she hasn’t.  You’re not leaving me too.”

Shark Lady stops and stares at me.  “Ugh.  Fine, all right?  Fine.  Get in the car.”

I sprint past her before she changes her mind.  Shark Lady sighs and slams the front door.  She stares at me again as she gets in the car.

“Let’s get something straight,” she says as she points a finger at my face.  “You can come with me but you stay in the car.  Once we figure out where mom went, we’ll figure out what to do with you.”

“Once we figure out where mom went, we’re going to go get her and bring her home.”

“Maybe.”

“No, we are.  She has to come home so she can look after me and you can go back to school.”

“I don’t think she wants to come home, Hippo.  She’s never been gone this long before.”

“She’ll come home.  I know she will.  She wouldn’t leave me forever.”

Shark Lady shakes her head as she cranks the engine and backs our Jeep down the driveway.

* * *

The first place we stop at is the bar.  Shark Lady says there’s really no reason to check anyplace else.  She pulls into the parking lot, cuts the engine, and turns towards me again.

“Stay put.”  She points to my seat and gives me a look.  I put my hands up in surrender.  She climbs out and walks into the bar.  I suppose it’s not too crusty of a bar, but I haven’t seen very many bars to compare.  But if I could drink, I wouldn’t drink here.  I think I would go someplace classier, like a five-star restaurant.  But mom seemed to like this bar.  I think it’s called Joe’s, but the paint on the sign has faded, so I can’t really tell.  It could also be called Moe’s or Boe’s, maybe Foe’s.  Joe’s seems like the best choice though.

An older man in a green jacket enters the faded red door, but Shark Lady still hasn’t come back out yet.  I lock and unlock the door while I wait.  I like the sound.  Clouds start to move over the sun, but still Shark Lady hasn’t come back out.  I know that clouds don’t mean that it’s nighttime, but it still gets darker and I’d rather that Shark Lady would hurry up.  Dark-time and bars don’t mix well.  At least, they didn’t for mom.  Dark-time and bars made her stay out all night and never come home.  Before the last time, mom would come back home in the day-time, pat my head before I left for school, and fall down on the couch or her bed to sleep.  I don’t like this bar.  It keeps my mom away from me.

The faded red door opens again and Shark Lady finally steps back out.  She slams the Jeep door with a huff and puts a hand over her eyes.

“She’s not there, is she?”

“Of course not.  What made you think she would be?  But she was there.  ‘Bout a week ago was the last time Bill saw her.”

Bill’s the bartender.  He’s nice.  He gives me cookies when mom brings me to do her drinking.  He also drives us home sometimes when mom can’t walk straight.

“Does he know where she went?  So we can go find her and you can go back to college?”

“It’s summer, Hippo.  I don’t have to go back just yet.”  She sighs and stares out the window.  “Bill said she left with some man.  Talked about going downstate for a couple of weeks.  Apparently, this man has a cabin, or something, in Pine Ridge.  God!  Damn!  Stupid!”  Shark Lady slams the steering wheel with each word.  “How could she do this to me?  Huh?  Leave me here with you?  We had an agreement.  During school she was to watch you.  Dammit.”

I think Shark Lady is talking to herself now.  I hope she is, because I don’t want her to say those things to me.  Those words don’t make me feel too good.  I kind of want to make Shark Lady feel better, but I’m not sure if I really do.  I gently put my hand on her arm.  “Okay, let’s just go find mom so you don’t have to watch me anymore.”

“Dammit, Hippo, that’s not what I meant.  Ah, never mind.  Come on, let’s go home.”

* * *

The stray cat greets us at the door.  He purrs as Shark Lady scratches him behind his ears.  I pat him on the head, but don’t talk to Shark Lady as I go inside.  She hurt my feelings, so I don’t have to talk to her right now.  That’s not my rule; Shark Lady taught it to me.  She said that when the bully girls hurt my feelings that I don’t have to talk to them.  I think the rule works here, too.

I go sit on our couch and look out the window while Shark Lady goes to her room.  The stray cat is sitting outside on the window sill, staring at me.  I stare back, but I can’t win.  You should never get into a staring contest with a cat.  They don’t blink, and you will never win.  I think they must be aliens.

Shark Lady comes into the living room and tosses a duffle bag at my feet.

“Come on, Hippo.  Pack up.”

“Where’re we going?”

“To that cabin in Pine Ridge or whatever.  It’s a two day drive and I can’t leave you alone.”  Shark Lady pulls her hair back into a pony tail.  “So I guess you’re coming.  Go pack some clothes, toothbrush.  Stuff you need for two or three days.”

“All right.”  I swing my feet down off the couch and pad to my room.  I don’t grab much, not just because we’ll only be gone for a couple days, but because I don’t have a lot.  Of course I bring some clothes and my toothbrush, but I don’t think Shark Lady would like it if I brought my tub of worms.  She thinks they’re slimy.  I leave them behind, they’ll be okay for a couple of days, and grab my lucky buckeye instead.  I found it on the ground a couple of summers ago.  I suppose it was lying near a buckeye tree, but that particular tree didn’t look any different from the trees around it, and I don’t know different tree species anyway.  I also don’t know why they call it a “buckeye.”  It looks nothing like a buck, or an eye.  Either way, it’s lucky, so I’m bringing it.

Shark Lady’s waiting in the living room, all ready to go.  “You ready, then?  Come on, let’s go.”  She opens the door and ushers me out.  The gray cat is on the window sill, so I pick him up.

“What are you doing, Hippo?  Put it down and let’s go.”

“He’s coming with us.”  I squeeze the cat tighter as I walk to the car.

“No, it’s not.  Put it down.”

“You can’t make me.  I’m taking him, he’s coming with us.  He makes me feel better.”

Shark Lady squeezes her eyes shut and sighs.  She stares at the cat, but he doesn’t blink.

“Fine.  But if it runs away or gets run over, don’t come crying to me.”

See?  Cats always win.

* * *

We’ve been driving for an hour, I think.  The gray cat is sitting on my lap in the front seat.  He’s been there the whole time.  Well, I guess it hasn’t been that long to say “the whole time,” but it seems like the right way to describe it.  He’s very calm for a cat in a car.  They say that cats don’t really like being inside of cars.  I guess they were wrong about this cat.  I scratch him behind the ears; he likes that.  I think all cats like that.

“Why did you bring that thing?”

“He’s not a thing.  He’s a cat.”

“He’s mangy.  Probably has fleas that you’ll catch.  Then I’ll have to get you fumigated.”

“You don’t fumigate people for fleas.  I would need a flea bath.”

“Yes, that’s much better.”

“You would need a flea bath too, Shark Lady. Since you’re sitting in the car with me and the fleas.”

“For goodness sake, we don’t even know if the thing has fleas.  Drop it, Hippo.”

“You brought it up.”

Shark Lady scowls at me.  The clouds are still out, so it’s still dark, but it’s definitely nighttime now.  A very dark nighttime.  I like clouds in the daytime; they make nice patterns in the sky and are fluffy to watch.  I don’t like the clouds so much at nighttime.  Sometimes the clouds would come at nighttime when mom was away and the house would get very dark.  You can’t see very well in the dark.  Especially when there are shadows.  Shadows are dark as well, so they are experts at hiding in the nighttime. When mom was away in the cloudy dark, the shadows came out to play.  They tried to get in the front door and my bedroom window.  So I would turn on every light in the house to keep the dark and shadows out, to lock them outside where they couldn’t get me.  Since Shark Lady is here now, maybe she’ll stay after we find mom so I won’t have to be alone when the cloudy dark comes.  Because I’m pretty sure that once we find mom, she will still go out at night and leave me soup for the microwave.

“All right.  We’re stopping here for the night.”  Shark Lady puts on her blinker and pulls into a motel.  It’s one of those small roadside places, the ones you always see on TV that has wood paneling in the rooms and bed bugs.  Only this one probably doesn’t have bed bugs.  Maybe the cat could eat them.  I know cats hunt things, things usually bigger than bed bugs, but maybe the gray cat would want a little snack.  I’ll have to ask him.

“Do you think the cat will eat the bed bugs?”

“There’re no bed bugs Hippo.”

“But look at this place, Shark Lady.  It looks like the Bates Motel.”

“You’re too young for the Bates Motel.”

“I’m not too young!  I’ve seen the movie.”

“Fine, whatever.  Stay in the car, I’m going to check in.”  Shark Lady gets out and slams the door.  Right away she yanks it open again.  “Lock the door, Hippo!”

“Geez!”  I push the lock button and hug the gray cat a little tighter.  He squirms against my chest, probably because I’m squeezing him, but I think he can get over that right now.  There’s only one other car in the lot, a beat up pick-up truck that no longer has any color to it.  I suppose it could be called rust-colored, but the truck would have to be in one piece for it to have a color.  It’s just rust and four wheels.  I jump as something shakes our car.

“Hippo!  Open up!”  Shark Lady’s wrenching on the door handle.  I hit the lock button, but the door doesn’t open.

“You have to let go of the door.”

“Hippo, open this door right now.”

“I’m trying, but you have to let go of the door.  You’re the one who told me to lock it!”

Shark Lady sighs as she rests her head on the window.  “Hippo, I’m letting go of the door.  Unlock it.”

I look at the button, but then reach over and pull on the driver’s door lock.  At least it will open this way.  Shark Lady rushes inside.  “Geez, Hippo.  I tell you to lock the door to keep creep and weirdos out, not to keep me from getting back in!”

“I was just doing what you told me.”  The gray cat stops trying to get away and starts purring.  I stroke his head to keep my eyes dry.  Shark Lady pounds the steering wheel.

“Aw, Hippo.  Come on, grab your bags and let’s get inside.  We both need some rest.”

* * *

The room has one bed with a floral print comforter, a TV, and a bathroom with a yellow tub.  I don’t really want to share the bed with Shark Lady right now, but I can put the gray cat between us as a barrier.  Cats make great barriers because when they are sleeping, they are impossible to move.  I think they get heavy on purpose.  So he should work to keep her on her side of the bed, away from me.  If not, the gray cat can bite her.  I climb on the bed and set the gray cat down next to me.

“Uh uh, Hippo.  Cat off the bed.”

“No.  I want him on the bed, so he stays.”

“Come on, Hippo.  I don’t want to sleep with a cat.  Off the bed.”

“Well, I don’t want to sleep with you!  Maybe you should get off the bed!”  I draw my knees to my chest and stare out the window.  I don’t want Shark Lady to see me right now.  I wish I was back home so I could run to my bedroom and hide under the covers.  I would hide there when Shark Lady and mom had an argument.  They couldn’t see me under the covers, so I would be safe from their words.  But I can’t do that here, because Shark Lady would still see me, and I haven’t checked to see if there are bed bugs yet.  The gray cat doesn’t seem to be hunting anything, so maybe there aren’t any, but maybe he just doesn’t feel like hunting yet.

The bed shifts as Shark Lady sits next to me.  I try to scooch away, but the headboard stops me.  Shark Lady pulls up one knee and rests her chin on it.  “Look, Hippo.  I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that you still yelled.”

“I know.  I’m sorry, okay?”

“No, not yet.”

Shark Lady looks sideways at me.  “What do you mean not yet?”

“It’s not okay yet.  That’s what I mean.”

“Fine.  Whatever.”  Shark Lady throws her hands in the air and gets up.  “I’m getting a shower.  You do what you want.”  Shark Lady walks into the bathroom and slams the door.  I reach for the gray cat, but he flattens his ears and gives me a sideways look, too.  I think maybe he wants me to leave him alone.  It’s dark outside, but I kind of want to be somewhere else, so I go out anyway.  Shark Lady wouldn’t like me to go outside by myself when it’s dark, but I don’t care what she would like anymore.  I grab a key card before I go out, and I make sure the door doesn’t slam.  I don’t want Shark Lady to hear and have her interrupt my quiet time.

The moon is almost fully risen as I make my way to the Jeep.  The doors are locked, so I can’t get inside.  Well, I suppose I could go back to the room and get the Jeep keys, but that means being in the same room as Shark Lady.  I go to the back of the Jeep and crawl up the bumper to the roof.  It’s flat enough, since our Jeep doesn’t have a roof rack, and a good place to sit.  Up here, I’m invisible.  People don’t usually look at the roof of cars, so I’m pretty well hidden.  Hidden in plain sight.  I want to lie down, but the roof is pretty cold; I stay sitting instead.

Shark Lady didn’t used to be so mean.  When she was younger, we would have fun together.  She would still fight with mom, but she would come find me afterward and explain that I shouldn’t worry about it.  That she and mom were just having growing pains and that it will be okay soon.  She used to make me feel better.  But then she changed.  I think it’s because she went to college.  Shark Lady wasn’t around anymore when mom went to her bad place.  I was alone then, and I didn’t know what to do.  Hiding under the covers helped a bit, but I would still hear mom stumbling about the house, running into the couch, knocking plates off of the china cabinet.  Shark Lady stopped protecting me.

The moon is fully up.  It’s really bright tonight, big and full.  The whole parking lot is lit up.  Not that the parking lot in moonlight is very pretty.  But there are some night creatures out.  I can hear peepers, even though I can’t see the pond they must be singing in.  Across the road there’s some guy shambling along.  He’s too far away and it’s too dark for me to tell if he’s drunk or just walking.  I can’t really tell what he looks like because he’s not walking under a streetlight.  I can tell that he’s tall, but just about everyone is taller than me.  Everyone except babies, and toddlers, I suppose.  Okay, and midgets.  Maybe if I asked him to go stand under the streetlight I would be able to see him better, but that would be Stranger Danger, so I should just be quiet.

The man crosses the street and walks towards me.  The light from the motel sign shows me that he has some gray in his hair even though he doesn’t look that much older than Shark Lady.  I think about climbing down and going back into the room, but it’s still not okay with Shark Lady yet, so I stay seated and stare the prematurely gray-haired man down as he stops in front of me.

“You shouldn’t be out here at night, by yourself.”  The prematurely gray-haired man puts his hands in his jean pockets and looks up at me.

I cross my arms.  “I’m not by myself.  You can leave now.”

“Why are you sitting up there, anyway?”

“Why are you standing down there?”

The prematurely gray-haired man looks up and down the street and scratches his head.  “Well, I was walking down the street, then I saw you sitting there alone, so I came over.”

I put my chin in my hands and look down at him.  “That’s a pretty good answer.  What’s your name?”

“Why do you want to know my name?”

“Isn’t that how polite conversation starts when people don’t know each other?  We can’t really have a polite conversation without knowing each other’s names.  Well, if you were a cat, or maybe a dog, we could have a conversation.  I’m not sure if it would be polite though, because I don’t know if that matters to cats and dogs.”

“Hmm, I think cats and dogs would like polite conversation as much as anyone.  And I would think that they all have names, we just don’t always know them, so cats and dogs make exceptions for those of us who are ignorant.”  He scratches his nose and looks down the street.

I uncross my legs and swing them against the rear window.  “I have a gray cat, you know.  But actually he’s not my cat.  He’s a stray cat that I brought along with us.  He hasn’t told me his name yet.”

“When the time is right, I’m sure he will.”

I hear a door click open behind me and Shark Lady strides out to the Jeep.

“Hippo!  What the hell are you doing?  I get out of the shower and find you gone.  That is not okay!”  Her hair is hanging wet around her shoulders and her arms are crossed in front of her chest.  That means she’s really mad.  She stares at me a moment longer, then turns to the prematurely gray-haired man.  “And who the hell are you?”

The prematurely gray-haired man rubs the back of his neck and looks sheepishly at the ground.  “My name’s Chris.  We were just talking.”

Shark Lady’s eyes go wide.  “It’s almost midnight and you decide that it’s okay to walk up to a little girl and talk to her?  What the hell is wrong with you?”  Some spittle flies into Chris’s face as Shark Lady continues to shout.  “What kind of pervert are you?  Geez!  Hippo!”  She turns to me.  “Get down from there right now and get inside!”

I cross my arms and pout.  “I don’t want to.  And you shouldn’t be yelling at Chris; he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Hippo, I’m not going to tell you again.  Get.  Down.  Now.”  Shark Lady’s foot is tapping a staccato on the ground.  Now she’s really mad.

“Hey, look, I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”  Chris has his hands up and is slowly backing away.

Shark Lady rounds on him, her wet hair curtaining around her.  “Why are you still here?”

“Hey, family business.  I get it.  I’m gone.”  Chris turns to leave, but pauses after a step and looks back at Shark Lady.  “I know it’s none of my business, but maybe you shouldn’t leave your kid sister alone.”

“Get out of here!”  Shark Lady grabs my hand and pulls me down off of the Jeep.  I wave bye to Chris as she hauls me inside the motel room and slams the door.

* * *

This motel doesn’t have a continental breakfast, so we pack our bags and leave in search of food.  I didn’t speak to Shark Lady at all last night.  I think this has been the longest I’ve purposely not spoken to her.  She didn’t try to speak to me, either, so I guess we’re even.  Shark Lady woke up this morning, tossed my bag to me, and started packing her duffel.  She barely glanced at me, and she definitely did not speak.  She ushered me out the door, and we left.  Now we are back on the highway, and I can only assume that we are looking for breakfast.  I know getting to Pine Ridge and finding mom is the priority, but I think the most recent priority is breakfast.  The next priority can be finding mom.  Not that I don’t want to find her, but I don’t think we are any closer than we were yesterday, so stopping for breakfast shouldn’t delay us for long.

The car weaves its way up a hill; it seems the higher we go, the less falling-leaved trees line the road.  Instead, there are more of the pointy-leaved trees.  I know that trees aren’t really called falling-leaved and pointy-leaved, but I don’t know real tree names, so I’d rather call them falling-leaved and pointy-leaved.  I’m pretty sure that the pointy-leaved trees means that we are constantly going higher.  They say that the higher you get the less air there is.  But there are many trees and birds up here, so there must be enough air for us, too.

Shark Lady still hasn’t looked at me.  She’s gripping the steering wheel with both hands at ten and two, like bad things will happen if she lets go.  I wonder what she’s afraid of.

“We’ll find mom, you know.”

“Uh huh.”  She doesn’t look away from the road.

“You still want to find mom, don’t you?”

“Hippo, stop talking.”

I look down at my hands in my lap.  Shark Lady is in a bad place.  I don’t want her to be in a bad place.

“Why did you yell at Chris?”

Shark Lady closes her eyes.  “Hippo, please be quiet.”

“He wasn’t doing anything wrong.  We were just talking.  I know Stranger Danger, and he didn’t seem that dangerous for a stranger.”

Shark Lady pounds the steering wheel.  “Dammit, Hippo!  You snuck out of the hotel room while I was showering, at night.  You didn’t take the room card with you.  Anything could have happened to you!  Don’t you get it, Hippo?  If something had happened to you…”  She runs her hand through her hair, then reaches over and gives my knee a pat.  I don’t know what that is supposed to mean.  Sure, we’re sisters, but Shark Lady has never been, well, affectionate.

“But I did take the room card with me.”

“That’s not the point.  You left without telling me.”

“I think that is a point, but okay, I won’t leave without telling you anymore.”

“That’s all I ask,” Shark Lady sighs.

I turn to look behind us.  We’ve climbed pretty high and this being a two-lane road, there aren’t many houses.  Or places to eat.

“Are we going to stop for breakfast?  I don’t see any restaurants, but maybe we could find some bird eggs or something.”

“Why would we look for bird eggs, Hippo?”

“Because there’s no restaurants on this road.  The motel didn’t have any breakfast and you didn’t stop in town and if you look behind us you’ll see that it looks the same as ahead of us and I don’t see breakfast anywhere.  There’s plenty of birds up here, so there’s bound to be a nest, and we could get some eggs, and maybe use a lighter to cook them ….”

“Gosh, Hippo!  We’re not going to eat wild bird eggs!  I have some granola bars in my backpack; they’re behind the seat if you’re so hungry.”

I turn to stare her straight in the eye.  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”  Shark Lady rolls her eyes and reaches for her backpack.

“Ten and two, Shark Lady.”

Shark Lady thrusts the backpack at me and rolls her eyes again.  “Just eat the granola.”

* * *

After a few hours we’ve climbed so high that even the birds have gone.  Which is weird, because birds like the sky, so they should still be here.  Maybe they haven’t gone, but are just flying someplace else.  Shark Lady turns off onto a dirt road and we begin to wind our way through trees so close that I could roll down the window and touch them.

“Hippo, what are you doing?”

“I’m just trying to touch the trees.”

“Not while we’re moving!  Come on, you have to be smarter than that!”

“I just wanted to touch the trees,” I grumble as I pull my hand back in.  “Are we there yet?”

“Just about.  This should be the driveway to the Pine Ridge cabin.”

“Should be?”

“It is the driveway.”

“Okay.  Hold on.”  He’s not on the floor by my feet.  I crane my neck to check the back seat.  He’s not there either.  He’s not on Shark Lady’s lap.  “We have to go back!”

“What?  We’re almost there, Hippo.  I’m not missing the opportunity to drag mom’s ass back home.”

“He’s missing!”

“The cat?”

“Yes!  He was at the hotel, but he’s not in the car!”

“I’m sure he’s fine Hippo.  He wasn’t your cat anyway.  He had enough and probably left.”

“No, we had a connection!  He probably went for breakfast, like we should have and when we didn’t show up, he got scared and went back to the room, only we weren’t there!”

“Hippo, he’ll be fine.  He’s just a cat.”

“He was my friend.”

“Yeah, well I’m your sister, surely I’m more important that the cat.”

“The cat didn’t yell at me.”

Shark Lady runs her hand through her hair.  “Hippo, I said I was sorry.”

We reach the end of the dirt road, where a cabin comes into view.  It looks like a regular cabin, I suppose.  I’ve never seen a cabin in person before, but I’ve seen one on TV.  And this is mostly what they look like on TV.  It’s of course made of wood, with wood walls and a wood roof.  It has a small wooden porch.  It’s basically a big block of wood that someone could live in.  Shark Lady rolls to a stop a few feet away from a sign that says “Pine Ridge.”  I didn’t think houses needed their names posted outside, but maybe it’s a cabin thing.

“Okay.”

Shark Lady takes the key out of the ignition, and opens the door.  “Okay, what?”

“Okay you’re sorry.”  I get out as well, take a step towards the porch, then stop.  “I don’t think we should go in.”

Shark Lady has her hand on the door knob when she turns around.  She pinches the bridge of her nose.  I’ve seen mom do that when she’s trying to pretend her headache will go away by pinching her nose.  “Why not?  Why shouldn’t we go into the cabin?”

“I just don’t think we should go in.”  I look down at the ground while I rub my arm.  “It doesn’t feel right.”  I’m not sure why I said that.  I’m fairly certain that a place can’t feel right or wrong, but somehow this one definitely feels wrong.  Like the shadows came out to play in the day-time.

Striding down the porch steps, Shark Lady rushes to me and grabs my arms.  “Hippo, listen to me.  We need to go in there.  Bill at the bar said that she came here with some guy.  Which means that she might still be here.  Look, her car is parked beside the cabin.”  I crane my neck and see that Shark Lady is right.  Mom’s red sedan is parked beside the cabin.  Shark Lady puts her hand to my cheek.  “Listen.  You know that mom and I don’t get along very well.  You know that I love you, but I am not ready to raise a kid on my own.  I’m sorry, but you know that’s true.  In a month and a half, I’ll have to go back to college.  I need to make sure that mom gets her shit together before then so that someone is around to take care of you.”

“You could take care of me.  Or I could take care of myself,” I mumble, avoiding Shark Lady’s eyes.

Shark Lady sighs and stands up.  “Yeah, well, no to both.  Look, you can stand out here if you want, but I’m going into the cabin now.”

I grab her hand before she reaches the steps.  “What about the man?”

“What man?”

“The one mom left with.”

Shark Lady pulls her hand away and pauses with one foot on the steps.  “He’s going to get an earful from me, that’s what’s gonna happen.”

Shark Lady marches up the steps and right into the cabin.  She doesn’t even knock.  I start to follow, but stop before the first step.  I put my right foot out, then draw it back.  I try my left foot, but it doesn’t want to go either.  Mom’s red sedan is a bit dusty; it could use a bath.  Her tennis shoes are under the bench on the porch.  Why wouldn’t she bring her shoes inside?  They don’t look that dirty.  And I don’t see any men’s shoes.  Through the open door I see Shark Lady walk away from the back room, a weird look on her face.  It’s kind of scrunched up and nauseated.  She stops when she sees me at the steps, her hand halfway to pinching her nose.  My feet start up the steps.

“Hippo, stay.”  I reach the door.  “Hippo, stay outside!”  I push past Shark Lady into the back room.  Shark Lady wraps me in a hug from behind.  “Hippo, I’m so sorry.”  I cling to her as she drags me out of the room, my eyes never leaving mom’s face.

* * *

Shark Lady can’t convince me to look at her.  I sit in the Jeep, looking at my lap, wishing the gray cat was here to help stop the tears.  It’s been a few hours.  The cops have come, and so has the dead people examiner.  I think they call them coroners.  They said she had a heart attack.  There’s no sign of the man mom came with.  Maybe there never was a man.  She could’ve ditched him somewhere.  I think that mom liked to be alone once she finished fooling around.  But she always came home afterward, to make me food, and to tell me to do my homework.  She never had a heart attack before.  She never planned on not coming home before.

The police cars and ambulance pull away as Shark Lady climbs back in the Jeep.

“Now what?”

“What do you mean, Hippo?”

“We found mom.  Now, what do we do?  Mom’s not going to come home, and you’re going to go back to college.  What do we do?”  I look down at my feet as I run my hand across my eyes.  “Mom’s not coming home anymore.”

Shark Lady stares down at her lap, where she’s rubbing the car key with her thumb.  “No, Hippo.  She’s not coming home anymore.”  Shark Lady sighs, running her hand through her hair.  She reaches over and gives me a sideways hug.  “Come on.”  Shark Lady starts the engine, and the Jeep roars to life.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going home.”

“Are you going to stay this time?”

Shark Lady aims the Jeep down the dirt road and eases us onto the blacktop.

“Yeah.”

“And you’ll make me soup?”

“I’ll make you more than just soup.”

“Frozen TV dinners?”

“And even take out.”

I look over and smile at Shark Lady and she smiles back.

“Okay.”

“Okay what, Hippo?”

“You can come stay with me.”

“I didn’t need your permission, Hippo.”

“Can we stop at that motel and get the cat?”

“Geez, Hippo!  Will you forget about that cat?”

“You can’t stay with me unless you promise that we stop and look for the cat.”

Shark Lady throws her hands up in the air.  “Fine!  We’ll stop to look for the cat!  Happy now?”

“Very much.”­

* * *

My name is Hippo.  I wasn’t born with that name; I kind of fell into it.  Just like my sister fell into the name Shark Lady.  She’s eight years older than me, which is pretty old.  Shark Lady goes to college, but she lives at home now.  Since mom died, Shark Lady hasn’t talked about moving out once she’s done with college.  She makes me food, and helps me with homework, and still frightens the bully girls when they follow me home.  She evens pets the gray cat behind the ears, and he lets her.

I sometimes go into mom’s room and sit on her bed.  Shark Lady comes and sits with me.  She hugs me and I hug her back.  On those days, she rubs my back and tells me that everything will be okay, even though mom’s gone.  I know she’s right.  I know everything will continue to be okay.  The gray cat told me so.  He also finally told me his name, but I promised I’d keep it a secret.

Abby is a 2013 graduate of Northland College with a BA in Writing.  This is her first publication.

A hushed cradle on the fog-bone sea,
pulled out
in tides,
away from a shore it has never set foot on.

The sea reaches up.
Wind-formed fingers reach endless, useless –
reaching up to hear, to hold;
hold the cotton-webbed echoes of when the sky loved her,
hold them to her cheek,
everything simple, everything soft.

Brown seaweed rushes through her grey body,
broken ships and spars and cleats and line and rigging fall in the forgetting deep;
death does his shuddered work.
She pulls as strongly as she can – weakly –
her fingers and arms and heartbeat crash on the cradle,
she needs to hold, to hear –
The hushed cradle rocks in the screaming sea.

–

Amber flows through a keyhole,
pierces the sawdust and cigarette smoke,
finds a man with wine-dark eyes
holding birchwood, shaping it with chisel and hammer.
He releases form from the wood as he runs his calloused hands over it, finding curves
where there were none before,
and woodchips
tremble,
tremble,
fall.

He breathes in the wood’s body as he releases it into form,
and stares at what he now holds,
a cradle made of birch.

–

When the sun would fall to its knees and the light became blue and dark,
the sea would rise as the sky would fall
and gasp each other
with a sad – angry – ecstasy and clamor.
Struggled moans and
broken pages
of what holds the stars
and moon
would fall away
they would kick off the night’s blanket –
their damp breath pulled close around instead.

The wind from the sky’s fingers spoke ships across her body,
and the sand gave her thighs something to rest on as his mouth traced the outlines of her mouth, her chest, her stomach, and then lips met lips and his open tongue flut-tered in the flood –

One night, the sky did not meet her rising.
All love must come to this, she told herself,
every bloom carries a trailing,
knocking rotting.

But now, as she looks up at the cradle –
she looks up and sees the sky empty.
He was not torn, he was not taken.
He left.
Salt floods again to her beaches; she dissolves between the fragments.

And the hushed cradle rocks in the empty sea.

–

The old man sits in a barroom
full of people drinking patiently,
he hastily stuffs his eyes into his stained jacket pocket –
the pocket like a curtain falling over them and

But they were once wine-dark and handsome.

He sits, arthritis mixing his words,
a mouth filled with dusty lips,
ears candled by straining through the silence,
a shaking stool
and shaking hands,
another drunk going with wet lips and hairy pits to dementia.

But he was once and handsome.

The crying, laughing lord of a ruined city,
since he lost the cradle.
He still wonders where it went, its nameless paths that – maybe – he had taken too,
if it too was carried to a burning river,
if it too held on to things it never needed,
if it too was carried by rage from the fallen things it should have held on to,
if it too let its blood dance silver beneath the moonlight,
if it too-

He picks his broken head up off the bar,
finishes his drink and walks out into the night,
wine-dark and handsome,

under the unnoticed stars.

–

The hushed cradle

holds the edges of the shore
and the enormous sky.

A stretching boy
finds his footing in the
reflected stars on the wet sand

and walks into the heaving forest.

R. P. O’Donnell was born in 1992 and raised in a Boston suburb. He attended Bucknell University and graduated with a BA in English. Rob has lived in most of the states – longest in Iowa, Colorado and Texas. He has worked as a garbageman, in an ER, on a magazine, for a nomadic yard-sale salesman; he has now moved permanently to a small fishing village in West Cork. The Irish Examiner recently published his first feature article.

Labyrinth

There are no minotaurs here.
The tunnle drops a quarter mile.
A plummage of salt in the earth
opens mythically downward.

Spiraling 178 miles long.
There are churches
and saints being born.
The cave is full of beseechment.

An expanse that held evil-
that has been filled
with seven centuries of corpses.
Every one perfectly preserved.

A shrine to Delphi.
A place to place our terror.
A maze of amazement.
The excavated on our table.

Today tourist walk its turns.
It is safe to reflect on horror.
Appropriate to say prayers to a princess.
Marvel at how the grey salt becomes clear.

Beyond the organized tour
the history still rages.
The mine calls to a missing Minotaur.
The salt goes uncollected.

Southward Running Shadow

1

Because the sky keeps turning to ash
we walk drained to the smoking area.
I dust the cafe several times a day
but the destruction still accumulates.

What else to do
as the storm drives down
to where my daughter lives?

The threat that my grandfather fought
was one half of a battle.
The flag that he was buried with
returned and joined those who he fought.
He didn’t win a war.

I haven’t slept in a garage in months.
The police are seizing the fray.
Each day becomes more volcanic.

I await a tide.
I drag a beach fire to the challenge.
I dare someone to stop this.

We hold mobs of compassion.
We ram ash covered arms into hope.
We flood with correct now.
We faith in forward.

2

An apogee 750 miles high.
It hangs eclipse between earth and moon.
It is a stitch, out and back in.

The five minute thrust,
a cut from gravity. A needle
to space. The totality of return.

Tests are executed. Results feared.
My friend lives in the local blast zones.
Back at home we’re too busy drowning to help.

It keeps getting hotter here.
In the west we’ve been smoke training.
Some of us will have to live.

I’ve been saying plague prayers over flames.
I’m calling locust. I’m calling jellyfish.
The toads turn to blood so everyone calms down.

We sit together with the threat
of a vaporization stitch work.
These needles are pointed everywhere.

Traveling for two minutes at four miles a second,
the target is quick,
I hope to be in the inner cloud.

A horror of promise of peace.
For once we’ll be all together
watching the air turn to fire.

3

Topping the tank.
He’s driving from Ohio.
An event within a series of events.

The pathway curves south.
There are collisions and obscuring figures.
A fester of finality.

These dead things
pulled from the ground, refined,
they require us to place something in return.

The man of soldiering age
goes soulless to battle.
His intention is to sackcloth the sun.

Excitement as a hot coal in the throat.
There will be a crossing in space.
People prepare for a momentary mass migration.

An event within a series of events.
Although it is well mapped
there are still eclipse deniers.

Outside the totality zone cites stop.
All citizens gaze up through dark lenses.
These are the events that stop wars.

A burning for totality
with the secret faith
that the darkness is transformation.

Driving headlong into 10:20 am PST,
there is eerie everywhere.
A questioning of light the rest of the day.

Within the chain of events
comes the promise of an invigoration
of a collision that longs to last a score.

(page five of nine for southward)

These are the new mechanics.
No longer a slide by. No momentary shadow.
These pistons beat into other pistons.

The engines froth.
The exhaust sneers.
The moon accelerates.

In the desert last night
a city became a battleground.
The friction becoming flame.

We know not to look at the naked sun.
An event within an event.
We’re still waiting for the shadow to pass.

4

The summer was stabbed open
on a light rail train in Portland.
The warmth drawing a pale spectacle from the ground.
The year started with a gun shot in Red Square.

They are showing up everywhere.
They’re in cars. They’re in hats.
They hold office and the ears of officers.
They’re carrying pepper spray and shields.

A plague of drunken rats.
The stink of sun warmed shit.
They gnaw my eyes while I sleep.
They hide in plain sight during the day.

The herald demons who sing end.
Desperate, they don’t think
that the sky has enough smoke in it.
They go hunting through hurricanes.

“Salvation through extinction,”
shouted from a car
barreling towards a mass of people.

5

These final gifts
from the summer rage
before it passes to a vengeful fall.
Birthed from winter violence
and the despair of spring.

The right eye passed over Texas
bringing a litter of explosions.
Water is evil in this arrangement.

The left eye is looking for Florida.
It sees to everything.
The wind tells false psalms.

The flaming tongue that is Montana.
Our homes are burning or drowning.
We live on a long on fire in the ocean.

Storms keep birthing in the sea.
When will one pass over
my daughter in Virginia?

The rumors of fall are everywhere.
No one can tell what it will exact.
These are the days of broken records.

In cafes and bars there is acceptance
that the conclusion is coming.
The conversation isn’t even whispered.

Saint Kinga of Poland

Before they came to take her from her home
she cast the burdened engagement ring
into the Marmures salt mine.

This is a time of miracles and arranged marriages.
Her wedding was ordained and necessary.
An affair filled with chastity.

Along ribbons of salt
the ring travels to Wieliczka.
A miner breaks it free from a crystal.

A sign that you would die trying to forget.
This was the beginning of your ascension.
A title of princess to be rejected.

A saint will rise from this salt.
She towers 331 feet underground.
She holds charity for even those beneath the earth.

700 years after her death
she was brought to the hall of the saints.
Her name continues to change.

Jeremy Springsteed is a barista living in Seattle. He was one of the founders of the Breadline Performance Series and is one of the organizers of the Chain Letter Performance Series. His work has been published in Raven Chronicles, Mantis, Make It True- Poetry From Cascadia, The Paragon Press, and forthcoming work in Pidgeonholes and Pageboy.

All the stars and planets arose from mist. There’s a cigarette, there’s a dusky room, a massive counter, a coffee maker, there are wooden tables and snow-white tablecloths, there are photographs on the walls, reflexes in window panes, colourful bottles, then again there is bright light from the street, there’s a grey gate, a chestnut tree casting a shadow on the tables, there are people, rose shrubs behind a wall, there are slabs of uneven paving, there’s a signboard and, in the middle of this scene, there is Agnieszka.

She sits on a chair placed in the doorway, at the border of two worlds, squints her eyes in the sun, runs her fingers along tissue paper and lights the cigarette. Smoke fills her lungs, redness the space under her eyelids.

Her guts feel as if tied into a knot; maybe a portion of nicotine will help them untangle. The length of time since she has seen Iwona is much greater than the span of their short but intense acquaintance. She practically stopped thinking of her: their mutual friends have become too distant to remind her about her existence. Only sometimes, although ever less often, Iwona haunts her like a spectre in her dreams.

In these dreams the analytical chemistry lab, where they spent hundreds of hours together as first-year students, is as large as a supermarket. Drenched in a yellow glow, it makes her think of a labyrinth, where rows of laboratory tables form never-ending aisles, the smell of acetone permeates the air while broken tiles flash underneath the wheels of the trolley she pushes. Eventually, around some corner, she happens upon Iwona, the way you might come across an annoying neighbour at your local supermarket, and starts a casual talk. She usually shoots envious glances at Iwona’s trolley, which — unlike Agnieszka’s empty one — is more often than not filled with laboratory glassware: flasks, graduated cylinders, desiccators, beakers. In one of these dreams, from a pocket of her lab coat, Iwona took out a Petri dish filled with fruit drops, took off the lid and asked her to try one. Agnieszka wanted to say no, but only looked at the bright face drenched in yellow light, at the thin neck, at the enormous, always anxious eyes, and, with weird longing, extended her hand. She wonders if these dreams are now going to stop.

Agnieszka doesn’t get to finish her smoke as a familiar white van rolls into the narrow Meisels Street and parks nearby. When Władek, a tall fortyish blond man in a T-shirt stretched over his big muscles and prominent belly, stands in the pub’s doorway, Agnieszka’s already waiting behind the bar. Good morning, ah, good morning, how’s it going, oh, fine, thank you. She engages as she always does in a delightful small talk, jokes as if nothing has happened, since nothing’s really happened, collects a clanking box with her small hands, signs a document, pays out money and says goodbye.

She puts a couple of hairpins in her bright hair and gets back to her place: where the dark interior of the pub ends and Kraków begins, trapped in the warm May air as if in amber, full of cars glistening in the sun and sluggish pigeons and dossers and café tables and groups of tourists claiming, still shyly, the streets of the Kazimierz district. With a shaky hand, she lights another cigarette; the unpleasant thought comes back like a toothache.

It was an accident like many others. One of Poznań’s city buses drove up to a stop and let out a few passengers, Iwona among them. A teen drunk driver was apparently in too much of a hurry to stop behind the bus and decided to overtake it. Iwona, ignoring a cry of warning, perhaps listening to music from her player, walked onto the zebra crossing to meet the bonnet of the hurtling vehicle.

Agnieszka read this all in a group email from a long unseen classmate. The funeral is set for Monday. Maybe she should go? She gets up from the chair and stands against the bright background of the street. Perhaps she’ll still manage to find a replacement; she just needs to phone her boss. She promises herself she’ll finish off the cigarette and arrange it.

+

The building holding the lab drenched in yellow light was an equally gloomy yellow from the outside. It reminded Agnieszka of the prison building in Kalisz, while its multipartite windows, massive doors, red plates by the entrance and high walls topped with an attic only magnified this overwhelming impression. She entered a gloomy lobby and took a turn into a dark corridor: the smell of chemicals, a swarm of students, some of them in lab coats, dust in the air, a girl with a burnt face, rows of doors. Finally, she found the entrance to the lab, surrounded by a noisy group of terrified nineteen-year-olds putting on a brave front. She said “hi”, cracked some joke, she’d always been good at breaking the ice. As she continued talking about nothing, a petite female figure standing to the side caught her attention.

Iwona leaned against the wall, looking at a point on the floor. Her black hair was tied in a ponytail, her face frostily pale. In her straight, crossed arms, she held a large briefcase sheathed with black rubber, with a round orange spot in the middle ineptly imitating the shape of a basketball and, slightly better, its texture full of tiny rubber projections. Iwona raised her eyes and their gazes fleetingly met.

+

Agnieszka’s eyeballs register a fuzzy blue shape approaching her in slow motion: in the dead-end part of Meisels Street, under a completely blurred signpost of a kebab shop, level with the equally unfocused umbrellas of a beer garden.

The coloured human shape, sharper with each second, lazily manoeuvres between parked cars, touches the back of its neck in a familiar gesture, and when it reaches Corpus Christi Street, Agnieszka’s poor sight finally allows her to recognise the prominent hips, bright complexion and thick-framed glasses of Joanna, who waves hello with a smile, wearing an airy, knee-length blue dress, with a linen bag on her shoulder.

Not waiting for her friend, Agnieszka hides in the cool interior. She pours beer into a tall glass (for Joanna), then into a cup (for herself); sounds of conversations in foreign languages come from the street; a middle-aged man, perhaps a Brit, stops in the doorway to examine the place (she greets him with a smile), but thankfully carries on. When Agnieszka gives Joanna the beer at the very doorstep, she only laughs and kisses Agnieszka on the cheek before taking the first, greedy gulp. Agnieszka’s mind flashes with images of blood-soaked asphalt, the caved-in bonnet of a car, bright street lights, Iwona’s deformed body.

+

A tram went by with a tremble over a flyover stretched above their heads, while Poznańska Street, with a roar, weaved into a crossroads with streets named after Libelt, Roosevelt and Pułaski. They sat on a scarp, piles of Xeroxed lecture notes tucked under their butts, the smell of earth mingling with the smell of car fumes, a clayey stretch in front of them blocked with parked cars and covered in a layer of November snow. Iwona handed Agnieszka a bottle of cheap wine; her hand was red with cold.

She remembers the pattern on her coat: wetlands full of reeds meant to ensure camouflage to those hunting waterfowl, and the way she smoked: in a manly manner, holding a Lucky Strike between her forefinger and thumb. The wine was disgusting and quickly got to Agnieszka’s head, her hand getting cold from holding the heavy bottle, while she kept telling Iwona about her flatmate, Tomasz, a friend from her secondary school years, whom she enjoyed living with, she couldn’t complain, but sometimes he just fucking lost it and threw a tantrum for no good reason. Once he yelled at her for squeezing toothpaste out of the middle of the tube instead of its end, another time for missing a spot while cleaning the bathtub. Good he’d finally found a job, in a nearby supermarket, otherwise they would argue all the time.

They sat so close she could see the smooth movement of Iwona’s chest as she breathed in smoke-filled air. From this distance, she could see the green irises of her restless eyes were densely covered with brown spots. Iwona complained about her lawyer father and doctor mother, who forced her to apply to study medicine, and when she didn’t get in, sent her to study chemistry to plug gaps in her knowledge before next year’s exams. In reality, she wanted to study literature, dreamed of becoming a writer, but when she told this to her mother, she just laughed her out of court, only to keep repeating this as a good joke at family functions.

It was their little ritual. They quickly realised, unlike the rest of the first-year students, that there was usually little point attending lectures when you could have a much more pleasant time talking and drinking cheap wine in Poznań’s ugliest nooks. Had Agnieszka at that time at least suspected what her emerging affection for Iwona was, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen into it completely defenceless as if into the treacherous depths of a seemingly quiet river.

+

Agnieszka refills the emptied glass with beer and gets back to Joanna, who sits on a short stool at the opposite side of the entrance, talking for a good half hour about her ex, Łukasz, whom she dumped several months ago. He texted her again, reiterating the same list of confessions, demands and complaints. How could she leave him in such a moment, he didn’t even come back from hospital, she finds his life worthless, she just has to come back to him, they’ll make things work again, she’ll see, it’ll be like their first months together, he promises to take his meds and, to start things off, maybe they’ll go to the mountains or somewhere, or maybe just have a beer together, she can’t leave him like that.

Once in a while, Joanna’s monologue is interrupted by customers, thankfully few at this time: a dolled-up lady nearing her forties asking for a latte, but please without milk, or a twenty-year-old Spaniard, who — clearly at a loss for Polish or English words to ask for a toilet — forms his hand into a pistol, puts it near his fly and starts making swaying motions with his hips. Joanna drinks her second beer while Agnieszka listens — full of understanding and empathy, but at the same time sensing an ever thicker, invisible wall separating them. She can’t imagine the funeral or meeting her classmates: all of them graduated, some of them surely married. In her mind’s eyes, she sees a sun-bathed cemetery and crowds of people, always attracted by a young person’s death, surrounding — no doubt — the grieving parents, sister, maybe Tomasz.

A client comes in. Agnieszka, reluctantly, puts out a barely started cigarette against the wall, hides it where the dossers of Kazimierz wouldn’t find it and returns behind the counter. While making coffee, she looks at Joanna sitting against the luminous background and writing something sadly on her phone. The coffee machine produces a loud hiss, particles of dust form constellations in the air, the client, an elderly German, looks for change in his wallet, while Agnieszka wonders wistfully when exactly her relationship with Joanna became so asymmetrical.

She suddenly thinks of Kinga (memories of long-unseen friends are like ghosts of the dead), with a strange certainty she could tell her everything. Perhaps it’s just an illusion. They haven’t seen each other in years, with Kinga now living in Barcelona with her husband, texting her a few sentences once every few months: about her new job, their new flat in Eixample, another failed attempt at IVF. For an instant, Agnieszka is back again in a dark staircase in that tenement house in Poznań’s Jeżyce district, at that party during which Kinga, having miscalculated the distance and her own dimensions, broke a window in the attic with her own arse, and — a moment later — at one of dozens of private English lessons with Kinga, which faded in her memory into one never-ending lesson, during which, smoking cigarettes (it was then when the addiction really set in), they talked in a foreign language about increasingly intimate matters: Kinga about her boyfriend, who’d gone abroad and dumped her a week later through a text message, and Agnieszka about her toxic relationship with Tomasz and Iwona. After the lessons, they would watch TV series.

Joanna, as if having overheard her thought, becomes all ears herself. Through her grimy glasses, she intently watches Agnieszka talk about her girlfriend, not-girlfriend, whom she’s been dating, not-dating for several weeks. It seems Paulina isn’t really a lesbian, maybe not even bi. Just another girl who wants to experiment, treating Agnieszka like a lab animal. She doesn’t know why she keeps doing this.

In her head, a network of Kalisz’s cobbled and asphalted streets unfolds, with red roofs and churches rising above them, the Planty Park unrolling like a rug, the Prosna River spilling in a lazy ribbon, bridges stretching over the river and its ducts. In her thoughts, she strolls once again past Łazienna Street’s piss-stenching doorways (the culture centre in front of her, the greenness of the dark park behind it), shyly steps into the glow of round street lamps in Kadecka Street, only to walk down the stairs into one of Kalisz’s pubs a moment later. She hopes she’ll find Tomasz there, surrounded by his popular friends.

It’s funny that while in Kalisz she never met Joanna, who — one year senior to Agnieszka — attended a nearby secondary school, walked the same streets, made appointments with friends in the same spot near the town hall, partied in the same few bars. Joanna, however, proved smarter and fulfilled her life-long dream of studying in Kraków right away, whereas Agnieszka, although having dreamt about the same thing, gave in to her parents’ suggestions that she studied in the much closer Poznań.

+

Even lines of white powder disappeared in a barrel formed by a rolled-up banknote. Silver, Tomasz’s band mate, tucked a strand of long bright hair behind his ear while leaning over a desk. Then it was Iwona’s turn. Agnieszka watched her friend take the roll in her thin, milky-white hand with fake confidence, repeat Silver’s gesture by moving the fingers of her other hand over her ear (completely unnecessarily — her dark hair was as always tied in a ponytail) and snort another line of amphetamine.

They were in Agnieszka’s narrow room. Most of the plywood desk was occupied by a CRT display monitor and — now tucked away to the side — keyboard and computer mouse; posters of von Trier’s and Almodóvar’s films taken from magazines hung on the wall covered with dingy wallpaper; a small divan bed stood next to a wall unit from the communist era. The blocks of flats of the night-time Under the Lime Trees Estate stretched outside the window, with a chain of amber-coloured lights wrapped around a plastic Christmas tree reflected in the pane. From behind the wall came pounding music interlaced with a hubbub of conversations and occasional cries.

Iwona handed Agnieszka the banknote (their fingertips touched for an eyeblink), so she — with similarly fake aplomb — brought one of its ends to her nose, leaned down and quickly inhaled drug-filled air. The powder stung from the inside, the soft lining of her nasal cavity suddenly thickened. Silver, with a debit card, formed the last, frail line and, before snorting it, sent Agnieszka a wink.

They opened the door, stormed into the loud entrance hall and then — sniffing a bit too ostentatiously — to Tomasz’s even louder bedroom (much bigger than Agnieszka’s cubbyhole) where the main part of the New Year’s Eve party took place. Inside the four long-unpainted walls and surrounded by dilapidated furniture were a few chemistry students, some friends from Kalisz, a decanter with cheap wine standing on a dirty coffee table and Tomasz sitting in a shabby red armchair in the corner.

He’d always inspired respect in her, which she once took for erotic fascination. Almost two metres tall with dark bushy eyebrows separated by a small clump, a prominent jaw and hair cut a millimetre long, perhaps to distract from his hairline, which was deeply receding for his age. When he saw them, he sprung up, with a sweeping movement took out a wallet from his combats, and — from inside the wallet — a few banknotes he handed to Silver, telling him to take a walk to the off-licence, ’cause they’re running out of booze, maybe let Agnieszka take him there so that he wouldn’t get lost. A black vest exposed Tomasz’s muscular arms and dark hair sprouting from his armpits while the smell of expensive cologne and male sweat hung around him. Before they went out, Agnieszka noticed how Iwona’s wide open eyes traced his massive silhouette.

The night was freezing cold, snowless, the sky over Poznań illuminated by occasional fireworks. As they walked to the off-license, Silver talked about the band he fronted, Phosphorescence, about how long they’d been looking for a drummer to replace Tomasz, that Agnieszka must say hello next time she was in Kalisz, maybe they’d be giving a concert, that he fucking loved her hairstyle, where had she learned to pin up her hair like this, that it was too bad they hadn’t got to know each other better before she’d moved to Poznań.

When they came back to the cramped ground-floor flat, Silver asked her a question. She didn’t reply. In the small, windowless kitchen, where Agnieszka chased away cockroaches when she turned on the light each morning, on a laminated worktop sat Iwona, her thin thighs wrapped around Tomasz’s hips. He kissed her voraciously, sinking his big hands into her black, suddenly loose hair.

Agnieszka stood still for a moment, feeling a hot wave running up her trunk and hitting her face, her heart pounding inside her chest, or maybe it was the speed, she wasn’t sure how speed was supposed to work, she replied something nonsensical to Silver and finally, carrying plastic bags filled to the brim, walked to the big room. She put the bags on the table (a greedy thicket of hands immediately sunk inside them to take out cans and bottles) and cautiously sat down in the shabby armchair. She felt as if submerging underwater, the air in her lungs resonating to the rhythm of the loud music. Silver asked if everything was okay. She ignored him, her eyes following Tomasz and Iwona, who were just walking through the entrance hall to lock themselves inside Agnieszka’s bedroom.

Minutes added up, turning to hours. The guests finally left. Silver, completely sloshed, threw himself on the bed, still managing to mumble out an unambiguous invitation before falling into a heavy sleep, while Agnieszka drank another of a series of who knows how many beers, unable to stop thinking of what was happening behind the locked door. She didn’t sleep a wink that night.

Something that was supposed to be a one-night stand soon transformed into a relationship. Iwona, despite her parents’ protests, moved out from her family villa in the district of Grunwald to settle with Tomasz in his room, wall-to-wall with Agnieszka, started working at the same supermarket, and soon the spring came. She wonders whether their relationship has survived; is Tomasz now mourning his tragically deceased girlfriend?

+ +

There’s the varnished counter top, afternoon light, a silent hubbub of conversations coming from the adjacent room, Jakub’s loud laugher, his strong wrists, a beer-filled glass on the counter, figures looking down from photos on the walls, there’s a flash of a passing car, mournful music from the speakers, a client at the bar, the pounding of the heart, the smell of brewed coffee, the rustle of a crumpled receipt, there are people on the street, there are pigeons, Agnieszka’s stealthy glances at her phone.

Jakub popped in just for a moment as he was supposed to have dinner with his girlfriend Oda, but she pissed him off through a text, so he decided he deserves a beer to cool down. Or two. Agnieszka laughs, lifts Jakub’s glass to wipe the counter beneath it and glances back at the phone’s screen.

Paulina doesn’t text back, even though she texted her some two hours ago, before Joanna left. Agnieszka tries not to think of it, instead listening to Jakub’s story about a translation, which has been a real pain, it’s literally been haunting him in his dreams. Since he moved with Oda to Kraków last summer, they’ve been working practically all the time. They could’ve stayed in Poznań just as easily, as they are glued to their laptops most of the time anyway.

For some reason, she doesn’t tell Jakub about Iwona’s death either. Maybe it’s because she has too many conflicting feelings? Or maybe she’s ashamed of this strange indifference? On the other hand, what would she say exactly? After so many years, Iwona is a complete stranger (though strangers usually don’t haunt us in our dreams).

A series of images runs through Agnieszka’s mind: a November afternoon when a soaking-wet Jakub sat in front of the bar for the first time, their futile attempts to find mutual friends in Poznań, his complaining about his years-long relationship with Oda; the first cigarettes smoked with Grzegorz in the park in Kalisz (Jakub has always reminded her of Grzegorz), their trips to the Baltic Sea with friends from secondary school, the murmur of the sea waking her every morning. Finally, one of the many nights in the flat in Under the Lime Trees Estate when Agnieszka lay powerless on the floor of her room, weeping spasmodically.

Warm evening air came in through a window left ajar, carrying the smell of trees and street dust as, from behind the wall, came the unduly loud moaning of Tomasz, who was shagging Iwona as he did every night. Agnieszka, not getting up from the carpet, reached out for her phone lying on the bed and texted Grzegorz. The message was short: that she was fed up, that she didn’t know whether she could bear this any longer. He called her right away, even though he was already in England, to reassure her with a stoned voice sweet like a fruit drop that everything was going to be fine; he said he loved her; he promised they will laugh at it in a couple of years.

Grzegorz left for the UK after he didn’t get into college. He quickly met a girl, who persuaded him into staying. Together they discovered the colourful world of psychoactive substances. He sent Agnieszka ever weirder emails about his psychedelic experiences, sex on drugs, heightened senses or a telepathic connection with his friends, which he allegedly established on mushrooms. One night, at some festival, he and his girlfriend took a couple of pills too many and both ended up believing in Jesus.

Now Grzegorz is a Baptist and dreams of becoming a pastor. Agnieszka no longer shares everything with him: in her messages she doesn’t mention his failed relationships with subsequent girls, afraid that he, now an ardent Christian, would have only one diagnosis. They see each other usually once a year, around Christmas, and every time it is strangely good. As if they weren’t separated by years of occasional meetings, Jesus, Agnieszka’s orientation; as if they were by the sea again and woke up to its swoosh.

A queue suddenly forms in front of the bar, making further conversation impossible. Jakub finishes his second beer, says he’s almost late anyway and, having blown a kiss at her friend, walks out to the street. Agnieszka keeps serving clients, spitting out all the pleases and thank yous like a machine, preparing coffees and cocktails, moving apple pie from a platter onto plates. She keeps glancing at her phone behind the counter.

+

Tomasz yelled at the doorway of Agnieszka’s cramped room, telling her to get up. She rose drowsily from the bed and walked towards the entrance hall, from where puzzling squelching sounds were coming (her eyelids sticky from sleep, retinas receiving a blurred image). She stopped in the doorway, speechless.

The small entrance hall was being engulfed in rising water, which — heavy with food scraps and faeces — flowed out from the bathroom, luckily bypassing, apparently a bit elevated, Agnieszka’s room, and carrying Q-tips, pieces of dental floss and sodden tampons into the windowless kitchen and Iwona and Tomasz’s bedroom. A second passed before Agnieszka’s somnolent mind realised the flood originated from a clogged toilet, which spewed out water flushed from the toilets of the floors above, with all the blessings: discarded food, excrement, personal care items.

For a moment, she stared at Tomasz, who — wearing only boxer shorts, in complete silence — gathered water in a bucket and poured it into the bathtub. His once muscular belly was now covered with fat accumulated during their everyday sessions of watching TV, his head was a mess of long uncut hair. If it hadn’t been for his rubber boots, the torrent would’ve reached his ankles. Iwona wasn’t home. Tomasz must have sent her to get help, or maybe she was working a morning shift. Too tired to ask questions, Agnieszka just put on the Wellingtons waiting for her in the doorway, reached for another bucket and entered the flooded hall.

Several weeks after the deluge in the two-bedroom flat, Agnieszka came back home from a lone visit to a cinema only to find herself in the middle of an unannounced party. The sounds of primitive music coming from the block could be heard from a good twenty metres away. She entered the building and walked down a dirty corridor, accompanied by the ever-louder dance beat and merciless wailing.

As she pushed the knob, the musical rumble hit her ears. Two open doors appeared before her eyes: the right one to Agnieszka’s dim, smoke-filled bedroom, with two young men having cigarettes inside, and the left one to Tomasz and Iwona’s bright room, now filled with people Agnieszka didn’t know. One of them — a thirty-year-old blonde woman with pink highlights — stared into a computer screen, holding the shaft of a wooden spoon near her screaming mouth.

Agnieszka greeted everyone (barely noticed by Tomasz and Iwona), and then, since what else could she do, went to a shop to get a few beers and joined this questionably entertaining get-together. Leaning against a chest of drawers in the corner, she watched in astonishment as Iwona laughed with the rest at the increasingly crass jokes, only to grab the wooden spoon like a microphone and yelp out some song by Madonna. It grew louder by the hour. Ever more often, the primitive jokes gave way to completely inarticulate growls until finally some neighbour showed mercy and called the police.

The very same night, she made a scene with Tomasz. She shouted out that she was sick of how he treated her, that she lived there as well, that she couldn’t stand him bossing her around any longer. After a brief quarrel, she slammed the door to her bedroom and, with weird relief, fell sleep.

+

The barmaid who is supposed to do the evening shift is several minutes late. Not waiting for her, Agnieszka pours herself the first beer. Looking at the foaming contents of the glass, she has a vision she is swimming downstream in a river, deep under the surface of the greenish water. Surrounded by water plants, she slowly loses her clothes, and shiny scales — one by one — erupt on her skin, while the water, completely soundlessly, enters her lungs.

When the barmaid finally storms into the pub with an apologetic smile, holding an armful of paper shopping bags, Agnieszka walks out from behind the bar and lets some distant friends invite her to their table.

She listens to Ala’s story, intertwined with her fiancé Marek’s interjections, about preparations for their wedding on one of the barges on the Vistula River and about the honeymoon they are going to spend in the Balkans. She drinks beer after beer, tells jokes and anecdotes about the pub’s clientele, glancing at the phone less and less often until she completely resigns herself to its silence. The alcohol finally relaxes the knot in her guts, slightly slows down her heartbeat, almost enabling her to forget about the yellow laboratory, the nightmarish corners of Poznań, the paper-thin wall, the taste of cheap wine, the flood engulfing the flat, the parallel lines of powder, the unexpected death on the zebra crossing.

+

The brick-red flame meant calcium. Agnieszka took away a wire loop from above a gas burner and noted down the result in a protocol. Lamps, hanging from the ceiling, cast a yellow, unhealthy glow on the laboratory worktops, lab coats, faces, papers. A row of burners on each table gushed out flames, colouring the thicket of laboratory glassware: flasks, test tubes, burettes, with fiery reflexes.

Agnieszka’s eyes involuntarily gravitated towards the other end of the room, where a dainty figure in a white coat stood leaning above a blue flame. Iwona’s recently cut hair was barely past her ears and the collar of an elegant purple blouse stuck out from the coat. As if sensing her gaze, she turned back to glance at Agnieszka with her big green eyes — without a trace of the former friendliness.

Since the quarrel, Agnieszka hadn’t seen Tomasz even once. Mostly because she avoided staying in the flat like the plague, and when she was there, Tomasz and Iwona bunkered down in their room. Luckily, it was May, as sunny as now, so she spent hours in the meadows by the Warta River, burning her lungs away with one cigarette after another.

She saw Iwona mainly during classes and could tell she was piqued; probably because she was now alone with Tomasz’s tantrums. Maybe it was Iwona’s cold gaze that filled Agnieszka with a sudden urge to ditch her studies without waiting for the end of term, move her modest belongings to Kinga’s, take the earliest train to Kraków, rent any room she could find there, find whatever job she could. When she lit a cigarette after classes at the feet of the gloomily yellow building, she was almost certain of her decision.

+

It’s night time and Agnieszka crosses Dietl Street at a diagonal. She wobbles as she walks, nearing the roadway, then again towards the lawn, feeling a pleasant buzz of alcohol in her head. She has the most absurd feeling that Kinga and Grzegorz, her private saints, watch her every step from their distant countries.

As she reaches the bridge, she looks at the Vistula River, all bathed in pale light; at a hot-air balloon crouched right next to the opposite bank; at the Forum hotel in the background, covered as it usually is with a huge advertisement. A drunken man pisses through the rail into the river, the murmur of sluggish cars comes from the roundabout, a rivery smell hangs in the air.

Several minutes later Agnieszka is already in her flat in the district of Dębniki. She turns on the light, tosses the keys on top of a shelf in a lilac entrance hall, takes off her shoes and walks into the quiet bedroom. As if curious, she looks at the reflection of her slight figure in a dark window, while taking the pins out of her hair and letting it softly fall on her back and shoulders. Too tired to climb the mezzanine, she curls up in a ball on a sofa in the corner, where she slowly, down to the last thought, sinks into sleep. Let the light be on.

+ + +

The cremation furnace opens its mouth, revealing the inside full of flames. Mourners watch as Iwona’s body, in a wooden package, slowly moves towards the light. Once the coffin is inside, tongues of fire hesitantly start to lick its oak wood surface. The hair melts, clothes are reduced to ashes.

The infernal heat breaks complex organic structures into fragments. Proteins, carbohydrates, fats, nucleic acids — all about Iwona — turn into coal and water.

The ashes stay obedient in the depths of the furnace, but the water molecules go higher. In the form of vapour they escape through a tall chimney. Bypassing filters, they mix with the air. They enter the sky over Poznań. Hang a moment over the sun-drenched Old Town, only to be driven by air currents above the Warta River, follow its course for an instant, flash over the shamelessly green Cytadela Park, creep over the landscape of the Winogrady district filled with blocks of flats. Stay for a second above Under the Lime Trees Estate. Soar higher, gather into clouds, let the winds take them over the vastness of fields and forests, over trunk roads and lakes, over factory chimneys and shopping malls of various towns and cities, finally reach Kraków and fall with an unexpected rain on the districts of Dębniki, Podgórze, Kazimierz, on a lone figure walking home from work, her eyes fixed on the suddenly cloudy sky.

Łukasz Drobnik’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in Quarterly West, Lighthouse, Bare Fiction, The Gravity of the Thing, SHARKPACK Annual, The Chaffin Journal, Cartridge Lit, and elsewhere. He has written two novellas in his native Polish, “Nocturine” and “Cunninghamella” (Forma, 2011). An English version of “Nocturine” is forthcoming in 2019 from Fathom Books.

Website: www.drobnik.co; Twitter: @drobnik; Facebook: @drobnik.books; Instagram: ldrobnik

I rotate the toothpick inside my mouth, staring at the jar holding a dried gold poppy wrapped around the Chuckwalla lizard skull I found for my wife. She told my daughter it was her favorite one. My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in three days.

#

“Daddy, look!” my daughter urges, pointing at the smiley face she has created from a pile of salt she poured out on the table.

“That’s nice, sweetie, but you need to wipe that up before our waitress comes back,” I say. She leans her head back and puffs out her cheeks to blow the salt at me.

I raise a brow and take the toothpick out of my mouth. She giggles, cups her hands around the pile, and transfers it onto my coffee saucer in small bundles.

“Daddy, did mommy ever go to bed last night?” she asks. She pulls the saucer in front of her.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you asking mommy why she was having trouble sleeping last night.”

“Oh, uh…“ I pause, uncertain of how to explain this, “mommy isn’t always tired when she tries to go to bed.”

“Oh. So, did you sing her a lullaby?” She licks the salt off of her thumb.

I meet her big brown eyes after a few silent seconds and hang my bottom lip open in an attempt to form a response.

“No, she …needed some quiet time to relax.”

“But you stayed with her, right?”

I take a sip of my coffee and shake my head.

“No, she asked to be alone for a bit.”

“Why would she want to be alone?” she asks, confused. I purse my lips, realizing I don’t quite understand, myself.

“I’m not sure, Allison. Mommy has been confusing daddy lately, and I told her that.”

“Oh.” She begins twisting the button on her yellow dress and looks down as I take another sip of my coffee. I smile weakly.

I pull the saucer back over toward me and blow the salt onto her. She shrieks with delight and tries to kick me under the table, but her legs are too short.

“Sir, please don’t do that,” the waitress says flatly, carrying two plates in one hand and a coffee pitcher in the other.

“Sorry about that,” I try catching her with my contrite eyes. “Just trying to make my daughter laugh.”

She glances at Allison, who is stifling a snicker. I lay the toothpick on the edge of my new breakfast plate and unwrap my silverware.

“Setting a good example?” the waitress mocks, refilling my cup.

“Always,” I retort, chomping on a piece of toast.

#

I pick my tooth with a rattlesnake bone I found on my wife’s studio floor. She had plans to put the rattlesnake skull inside one of her jars, but it shattered at the touch of her delicate fingers. She had carried it in a velour pouch all the way back from the campgrounds, but it didn’t survive two minutes in her own arms. Her eyes grew wet when I entered the space to see the new creation. She never cleaned up the bones. She said she felt like a terrible person for destroying something so beautiful. I told her she was beautiful while I cradled her head close to my chest.

My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in four days. She’s carrying a Polaroid of her mother around in her pocket that she won’t show me.

#

“We should do something nice for mommy since she didn’t come with us,” my daughter suggests.

“Like what, sweetie?”

I watch Allison’s reflection in the rearview mirror and read into her ideas as they come.

“Chocolates?” she says, licking a line of dried maple syrup along her wrist. She looks out the window for a minute and turns back to me. “Flowers?”

“That’s a good idea. Mommy could put them in her studio space and let them inspire her,” I say, “but what inspires mommy the most?”

“Skulls!” my daughter shrieks.

“Where can we go to try to find her a nice skull?”

“She can have mine!” she offers.

I laugh. “But your head will turn to jelly if we take out your skull. It’ll look like this.” I lift my head to the mirror and rapidly shake my cheeks with my tongue hanging out.

She giggles and kicks the back of my seat.

“Eww, no!”

“Well, since you don’t want to look like that, where can we go to find a non-human skull?” I ask.

Face still contorted by her hands, she turns to the window and presses her face against it. She draws a cockeyed heart into the condensation from her warm breath.

“I don’t know,” she mumbles into the glass. She blows over the imperfect heart to draw a new one.

“Well, how about the trail?” I sense that she is tired of my guessing games.

“The one where I lost my sandal?”

“Yeah, where the gold poppies grow.”

“Sure, let’s go there. I’m not wearing sandals today,” she informs me, pointing her slip-ons at my face.

#

The light pouring into her studio this morning is too bright. Her underused Polaroid camera is casting a glare on the rows of jars resting on the heavy shelf. There are twenty-three jars.

I pick up the jar containing a Mourning Dove skull and red rocks from the trail. This one never seemed complete to me. When I asked her why she didn’t include flowers, she said she didn’t want it to be too beautiful. There was nothing about the dove’s skull to suggest abnormal beauty to me. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to tell it from the other doves’ skulls if she had not labeled it. Now, I understand even less. There’s nothing beautiful about Mourning.

My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in five days. She thinks I killed her mother.

#

“Why does mommy like skulls, daddy?” my daughter asks. It’s a fair question.

“Well, mommy really likes nature. And symmetry. I guess she thinks the symmetry of bones and skulls is really beautiful,” I say, recalling the first time we slept in the same bed. She told me my body was very symmetrical as she trailed her kisses from my forehead down to my midsection. That’s how I knew I wanted to see her again.

“Sim-uh-tree?”

“Yep. It’s when things are even on both sides. Look.” I divide my face into two parts with my hand. “See how on each side I have one eye, one cheek, one ear, one eyebrow, and half of a mouth and a nose? That’s symmetry.”

“Sim-uh-tree,” she says again, getting used to the new word. She picks up a stick taller than she is and snaps it in half with her foot.

“Here’s a walking stick, daddy.” She offers me the larger half.

“Thank you, sweetie,” I say. I bend my knee at a hard angle and position the stick to become my new leg.

“Alright, let’s go!” I exclaim, hobbling a few steps on the peg leg.

She shakes her head at my incompetence and puts her hands on her hips.

“You gotta use your arms.” Dramatically, she steps uphill with the help of the walking stick.

I smile. “Oh, I see.”

#

There’s a small ring of rust on the lid of the jar hosting the horned toad skull and gumweed. The toad’s jaw is separated. I never noticed that. My wife did a good job of concealing it.

Allison must’ve rushed to the balcony at the same time I did. The difference is that she approached it from the ground, and I went out onto the balcony to see her horrified face three stories below me. Allison lingered on the patio for a moment, glancing back and forth between her mother’s body on the cement and my own body towering above it. I watched her run to the farthest edge of our garden. The blood on her toes faded into the coarse red earth. She stopped only to retrieve a Polaroid that must’ve flown from my wife’s pocket when she fell.

My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in six days. How can I ever explain what she saw?

#

I smile and take the toothpick out of my mouth as I shift a jagged rock out of its crevice. Perfect.

“Sweetheart, will you do me a favor and pick some of the poppies for mommy?” I ask my daughter.

“But I thought we decided not to give her flowers?”

“I think they’d pair nicely with this skull I just found.” I hold the tiny reptilian skull out to her with cupped hands.

“Ooh what is it, daddy?”

“I honestly don’t know, sweetie,” I tell her, swaddling the skull in my sweaty bandana, “but mommy will.”

“Yay, my turn!” She pivots and takes off into the field of poppies.

Her lemon dress ruffles the heads of the flowers, and she further disturbs them with her tiny fingertips. She moves like she was born in this meadow. Were it not for the auburn hair she got from her mother, she would disappear completely into it.

She returns with an uneven bouquet and thrusts them into my face for inspection.

“Do you see any bugs, daddy?”

I pretend to inspect them very closely, pausing with wide eyes at the center bloom.

“Oh, yes I do,” I caution. I pull my sunglasses to the bridge of my nose and raise my eyebrows.

“Really? Where?” She lowers the bouquet back to her eye level and folds down the largest petal.

“Right…there!” My index finger finds her bellybutton. I scoop her up by the waist and swing her around until the squealing subsides.

#

I’ll never know why my wife fell. She’d worked on that balcony garden for years. And as I rotate the jar holding her tropical milkweed blooms and a kit fox skull, I understand even less.

The jar offers a hollow echo as I place it back on the shelf. Allison is watching me from outside, but she doesn’t think I can see her. She looks back and forth between the window and her Polaroid.

When the police reasoned through my wife’s fall, Allison wasn’t listening. She was rocking back and forth on the ground, refusing to make eye contact with any of the people on our property. Including me.

I feel like a stranger. I’ve forgotten how to be a father, but it’s only because I don’t know how to be a mother.

I roll a slim rattlesnake bone underneath my forefinger, wishing it was strong enough to slide between my teeth without breaking. A rogue tear lubricates the rotating bone.

My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in seven days.

#

“Daddy, why didn’t mommy come with us today?” Allison asks as she hugs the bouquet of poppies close to her chest.

“She wanted to work on her art, sweetie. She told us that before we left.”

“But she wasn’t working on her art. She was just crying.”

I frown, raising my head to the rearview mirror. “When was she crying?”

“Right before we left. I was walking in the garden, and I looked into the window and saw her crying.” Allison takes a flower from the bouquet and puts it behind her ear. Her eyes meet mine in the mirror.

“Why didn’t you tell me, sweetheart?”

“Because she noticed me and did this,” she puts a finger to her lips in a shushing motion.

I frown again, realizing that my wife must’ve still been upset by our discussion last night.

“Well, I’m glad you’re telling me now, sweetie. It’s always important for you to tell me things you notice about the people we love,” I tell her.

I start feeling guilty about not reconciling with my wife sooner. “Why don’t we skip the grocery store and get these flowers home to mommy before they wilt?”

She nods in agreement. I press a little harder on the gas pedal.

#

The gravel does little to hide my footsteps as I approach my daughter in the garden. She quickly slips the Polaroid back inside her pocket and turns her gaze to the ground.

One hand makes its way to my chest and the other drapes over her sunburned shoulder. She doesn’t move my arm. That’s a good sign.

“Allison, you haven’t spoken to me since she died,” I say bluntly. She offers no reaction.

“Allison, are you afraid of me?”

Silence.

“Allison, do you think I killed her?”

A short inhale.

“Allison, please, do you think I pushed her off that balcony?” I ask with a tightening grip on her shoulder. She continues looking straight at the ground, rapidly chewing on her chapped bottom lip.

“Allison!” I cry, crouching down to the ground and grasping her arms tighter than I should. “Allison, look at me!”

Her welling eyes meet mine. I hold my gaze for a full minute before she answers with an indisputable shake of her head. Gaging my reprieve, her eyes immediately give in to the downpour of fresh tears. Her dormant vocal chords sputter to life and purge seven days of repressed wailing. I wrap my arms around her small frame, bury my fingers inside her unkempt locks, and surrender.

#

“Mommy’s not crying anymore. She was just taking some pictures of herself,” my daughter tells me as I finish clearing all the trash out of the car, “and she said she’s surprised we’re home so early.”

“Well, that’s great. What did she think about our gifts to her?” I ask.

“She was so excited! She said the skull is her favorite ever!” She exclaims, tucking her hair behind her ear to show off the flower wilting over it.

“Hey, great. Now, it’s my turn to go see mommy, so just make sure you don’t go past the saguaro if you’re staying outside.”

“Okay, I won’t,” she promises. She skips through the garden to the saguaro and offers me a playful glance as she hops past it. I smile, and she hops back, crouching to investigate a bug resting in her shadow.

I slide through the front door.

“Honey?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Honey?”

Nothing.

I take the stairs to her studio on the second floor. She’s not there, but a candle still burns on the window sill. Lemon and basil notes permeate the space, cutting the familiar harshness of the freshly-boiled bones. She must’ve assembled the skull’s new home in under five minutes.

I blow out the candle and tenderly pick up the newest jar still resting on her workspace. In a moment of rushed assemblance, the poppy protruding from the left eye socket is sliding down the muslin-wrapped ethafoam throne under the skull. The unbuffered paper lining the bottom is wrinkled in the imagined corners of the spherical container. Everything about the display suggests imbalance. But the skull is perfect. Clean, discernible lines, straight rows of tiny reptilian teeth, not a crack in sight. Symmetry.

I lift the jar, squinting to read the new label tacked on the bottom.

“Sauromalus ater. Common Chuckwalla lizard.” Nothing too special. Why would this be her favorite?

“Honey?” I call louder this time.

Still no answer.

I hold the railing as I climb the stairs to the third floor, hoping to find that she was just having trouble hearing me from her balcony garden.

I have no trouble hearing her scream.

#

My daughter holds my hand as we gaze together at the exterior of our empty house. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to get her to speak to me.

“Accidents happen, sweetie,” I assure her. It’s the only place to start. It’s the only thought I have left. It’s the only thing that makes sense anymore.

She grips tighter to the Polaroid of her mother cushioned in the thick velour of her pocket.

Glancing up at the third-story balcony, she clicks her tongue impatiently and shakes her head. I turn my eyes to the ground.

I pick up a bone splinter beside the saguaro and pluck my teeth to mimic her tongue.

“I wouldn’t do that, daddy,” she says flatly, pushing all of her sticky fingers through her hair.

Shock sets in. Her voice sounds different. Aged, tired. But wonderfully familiar. I want to celebrate her return, but I fear she won’t say another word if I acknowledge it.

Gently, I lower myself to the ground, squatting to see her swollen eyes. I remove the bone splinter from my mouth and place it in the center of my palm. Then, I direct my hand beneath her chin and take a deep breath.

“Why not, sweetie?”

She produces the photograph from her pocket and runs a dirty finger over her mother’s blank expression. The over-handled portrait finds its way to my open hand, and her cracking lips find my open ears:

“I saw that break from mommy’s arm after she jumped.”

#

I run a cold finger over my wife’s lifeless expression. I place the Polaroid inside the velour-lined jar beside the bone splinter. And I read the hand-written note on the back once more.

I will not be destroying something beautiful. I am imbalanced. But please tell me if my skull is symmetrical.

A tag adheres itself nicely to the bottom, proudly displaying my response in smearing black ink.

It wasn’t.

I close the lid and place it beside the other glaring jars on the shelf.

I roll the toothpick under my front row of teeth with my tongue, staring at the dried brown poppy petals coating the bottom of the neighboring jar. The lizard’s skull has shifted on its muslin bedding and forfeited its symmetry. My wife told my daughter is was her favorite skull. I doubt that would be true anymore.

My daughter hasn’t spoken to me again in three days.

Jamie is an Ohio-Bred, Chicago based short fiction writer with a taste for the unsettling. Her work has appeared in the March 2018 issue of The Write Launch and the July 2018 Issue of Burnt Pine. She is currently working as a naturalist and plans to pursue a PhD in cultural anthropology. In her spare time, she enjoys a writing workshop, dance classes, and whispering sweet nothings to her potted plants.

Lester didn’t want to sound paranoid or anything, but the odds were at least two-to-one that Danny from across the street was snatching his mail. He was well aware of how paranoid-sounding “I don’t want to sound paranoid” actually sounded, which was very.

Leave it to Life, finding a way to screw him when the only thing people could really agree on these days was that there couldn’t possibly be a worse time than now, now, now to have vanishing mail. SimplySend™ finished their trial period for the PerfectGuess initiative a month back. Today was the day it was rolling out to the public at large, meaning there should be at least one package at the door, but what do you know…

So there’s Lester, standing on his partly darkened front step in the shade of a monstrously deep-rooted white oak, scowling at Danny’s made to order ranch, praying the foundation will pass the meanness of his glare along to the homeowner. He’s sporting clothes quietly a year and a half out of fashion, shaggy, inaccurate hair, and a smile made subtly sad by slanted, tawny teeth.

The real tragic thing about Danny and his newly embarked upon life of crime was that Lester really thought he had Cool Neighbor potential. That was back when Les moved in, oh, 2009? eight-ish years ago? But Danny went and got himself married, thoroughly domesticated. Like, maybe they could’ve traded off throwing legendary parties?

After the wedding incident, all Lester got from Danny was: Hey, Les, the reason you have so many woodpeckers going to town on your stucco is because you might have a tiny insect problem in that siding of yours and Want the number for my exterminator?

Not a chance, Danny.

He didn’t come around much anymore, though, not even to tell Lester he needed to get the concrete at the top of his driveway raised because it was a falling hazard, which, until recently, had been the guy’s pastime of choice. Did Danny not know that bachelors and their pads don’t worry for one second about concrete discrepancies or ornithological damage or building codes?

It had something to do with Danny’s wife getting sick. “We’ll do everything we can to make you as comfortable as possible” type sick, if Lester remembered right. And that was sad. It really was. There was something about Mary’s headaches being so cripplingly severe that even the tinciest pecking noise from across the street made her vomit in spasms? Or that she was very wobbly and unsure of foot from the steroids and the neuropathy and Danny was afraid she might fall and really hurt herself if she had to rush over to Lester’s for help with her PICC Line while Danny was stuck at work waiting to make the switch to part-time, which he couldn’t do straight away because of health benefits or coverage overlaps or something like that?

Lester felt he’d been nice enough to volunteer himself with a casual: If you need anything, and I mean anything. More than upstanding, compared to a lot of people, probably. But that was just a nicety you said. Danny was the one who took it seriously, the nut. How would Danny feel if he asked a stranger “How are you?” and they actually took it to mean what it meant and ended up spilling the contents of their sad little heartbroken guts? But Lester knew an offer like his couldn’t really be swallowed back, not once it was out there, unfortunately for him.

As an At Home Consultant, Lester was close to always at home, spending his time consulting various companies and small businesses that needed consultation. He helped Paw Prints Pet Boutique––official Trademark pending––change their slogan from Four Legs or Two, Here for You, to Four Legs or Two, We’re Here for You.It wasn’t world-saving labor, but it was good honest work that needed good honest doing, so why not do it good and honestly from the memorized comfort of home?

Mary never came by, and thank God for that, because Lester was overwhelmingly occupied following any and all rumors, updates, and wild blogger speculation about the PerfectGuess initiative he could electronically locate. SimplySend™ couldn’t mess up if they tried.

Their ConnectingHearts program from last year? Talk about wow. Lester still had every photo and testimonial they’d promotionally slipped into his orders. The only one he hadn’t gotten was Marquez from El Salvador, but that was basically the golden ticket, so he didn’t feel too bad.

All along the mantel in the sadly lit den were pictures and their accompanying blurbs about young Andes Mountain villagers or Southeast Asian floodplainers who were beyond grateful at the opportunity to scrape out a wage––and of a superbly ethical sort! The passages were so heartfelt, their sentiments so incomprehensibly tear-provoking, that Lester couldn’t bear to even think about hesitating when it came time to click COMPLETE ORDER. That’s what earned him the “Credit Card Ninja” achievement badge on his SimplySend™ profile. Those flawlessly elegant testimonial-writers needed help, and even if it wasn’t perfect help, well, nothing’s perfect, and some help is absolutely always better than none. That’s the SimplySend™ magic: save the whole world and still get whatever you want the second you want it.

So, yes, Lester was ticked to the extreme about not getting the chance to wet his toes on the day of PerfectGuess’ grand unveiling. If Danny thought having a sick wife meant he could hijack whatever mail he wanted then he’d really come to a sad point in his life, and what he needed more than anything was a big fat serving of pity rolled out on an immaculate stainless-steel cart by none other than maître d’ of sentiments Lester. He had all the sympathy in the world, all of it, but the planet can’t stop when your wife gets sick, Danny. Wish it could, wish that everyone could chip in to foot the probably heavily zeroed medical bills and so on, but, call me cruel if you want, that’s not the way the cloth is cut.

Because when Lester’s parents split up on his fifteenth birthday, and shortly after––as in two days––his dad ran off with a textbook floozy barmaid and his mom dropped it all and hitchhiked West and ended up joining a commune twenty miles east of Portland, who was there but Grandpa? And when Poppy got sick, probably way sicker than Mary, sure, people helped for a while, teachers and neighbors and that, but they didn’t keep with it. And who could blame them? Everyone’s helping-timer runs out sooner or later, so, let that be a lesson to you, Danny and Mary and anyone else who thinks a kind hand will stay outstretched forever.

The solution to the thievery, though, was simple enough: a mirror. The problem was Lester couldn’t well order one, obviously, so he actually had to go, in his car, outside, to a hardware store, where he figured they’d have one? And they did. And the employee wasn’t at all shocked or paralyzed to see an in-the-flesh customer. And Lester was damn near apoplectic at the fact that there wasn’t just one, but many real breathing humans also buying real, un-picture-attached things. And not a one realized they weren’t helping anybody.

Danny was in a rough patch. These were hard times. He’d be the first to admit it. Potholes were numerous and menacing on this current stretch of Life’s lonesome toll-road. And he really did feel bad about jacking Lester’s mail. But Mary just loved seeing those smiling pictures of the dirt-faced kids in each package, doing their God-only-knows best; he didn’t know why and yes frankly he didn’t care, but there wasn’t half an inch in the budget for orders of his own, not with the home health nurse who started coming around last week. Isn’t there a story about a guy stealing food to feed his family? Was he any different?

Lester didn’t deserve it; that’s why Danny had been waiting for him to take a trip or go on a date or for God’s sake leave the house for two minutes so he could return the orders minus photos. Lester had a big enough heart to offer a blank check of neighborliness. Sure, he’s a little too fake-driven; a little overexcited; a little too stuck-at-twenty-three; puts a little too much trust in that hairpiece––plus there’s that self-convinced smile.

But Lester would understand if Danny could just sit him down and give him the whole, unedited scoop on Mary and how much good it does her reading those blurbs and seeing those pictures. Lester would get it. Poor Mary. Danny didn’t have enough space to worry about Lester and Mary––so Mary it is.

He used to love Mary like the world was ending. Danny knew it was important to remember things like that on the days when love felt drained from the house, which was most days, lately. He used to hate going to concerts with her, back when she could, because Mary was the kind of pretty you didn’t want to bring to a show; there was always this chance that the long-haired front-man would ask her backstage after the second encore, and you’d be left standing in general admission, just hoping for the best.

How is it possible for somebody to get so sick? That’s the ten-trillion-dollar question Danny’s been waiting on an answer to. They’d had plans, so many of them. They still make them, plans, because the psychiatrist the doctors made them see when the diagnosis came up terminal said, “Keep planning. It’s good for both of you.” So they did. They made plans and plans and plans, each one without eye contact.

That’s what makes the mail thing so tiny, so incredibly miniscule that Danny would like to see Lester try to get peeved about it, that way he could show him his sick dying shell of a soulmate and say, Think you have problems now? Take a look at my problems. They’re the only problems in the world and you can choke on it you fat fucking fuck if you think I won’t gouge your fat fucking eyes out over a package.

Mirror = installed. Is Danny slick enough to outsmart his own reflection? Doubtful. It’s a standing mirror: set-up was easy as one, two, lean it straight up against the back wall of the hallway outside his home office and move the old end-table by the front door for a clear and unobstructed view. Lester didn’t have any plans at missing PerfectGuess, where SimplySend™ sends things you didn’t realized you needed until they arrived. It was about the sexiest idea Lester ever heard.

The plan to catch Danny in the act was second sexiest. On his way back from the hardware store, Lester parked a good three blocks away and came in stealthily through the back door to keep the house strategically vacant-looking. There were looks from sidewalk passersby, what with the mirror under his arm. People checked themselves out in it, right there on the street, as if they didn’t know the mirror was to catch a glimpse of others and not oneself. Geez.

Lester checked the AnticipatedDesires tab on his profile––a PerfectGuess package was due this afternoon. He beamed like a supercharged lighthouse.

He also couldn’t have hoped for a better view from the mirror. Through glass side-paneling bordering the front door, which Lester cleaned last night during the prep stage of the operation, there was total viewing-power. Danny didn’t stand a chance.

Okay, the glass was still a bit cloudy, but there’d be no mistaking a body coming up the walk, if indeed Danny came to the house that way and not all sleuth-like, which would present a major problem.

But holy oh good lord there was someone coming. Just like that, the mirror manning its post for barely five minutes. A figure, definitely absolutely a human one, carrying something tall out in front? Like a stack of something, maybe?

Lester licked his chops and said “Here we go” with reasonable euphoria as he made for the door, back to the mirror, not looking at it.

No chance Lester’s home. For the first time in a good two weeks, Danny watched his blindingly orange Jetta peel out of the driveway.

He waited thirty minutes, then another, then one more because Mary was having a slight episode. It’s been two days exactly since she smiled last. It’s been two days exactly since a package was on Lester’s doorstep. There still wasn’t any, so no moral quandaries this afternoon. Just set these dated boxes down at the door and the conscience goes clear.

Lester was bound to think of it as some processing error, some erroneous trip-up in the tracking code, or confirmation info, or hell even in the address. But voila, it finally got sorted out and there’s everything that’s owed, which admittedly is a lot, because Danny had them stacked in front of himself and looked like an off-duty UPS man going for some sort of record. He watched his feet to see where he was going.

One step up. Bend over. Set the packages down with a gentle…

Oh, Christ. Lester. There he was. Christ. Right there in the doorway with his flared-out temples and a crazy smile sharper than the sharpest thing he’d ever seen and set to ultra-overdrive. Oh, God.

“Whatcha got there, Danny?” Lester said.

Danny couldn’t speak. Mail is federal crime, that’s what he’d always heard. Was Lester going to call this in? No. Not a chance. Lester knew about Mary. Danny thought about reaching for a lie: Oh these all came today. All at once, can you believe that? Must’ve been some processing snafu, and to top it off they drop ‘em at the wrong house. I tell ya. No, Les, I think they actually came open?

But, “Lester, hang on,” was all Danny could siphon out.

“I could have you arrested. I should. My sister’s married to a great lawyer.”

“Lester, really, it’s an easy explanation.” Danny wasn’t doing too admirably in the fight against stammering. His heart was going like an artillery barrage. Oh, God, he was going to have to kill Lester. That’s right. Kill him right now. Kill him and hide his body in the basement so nobody’d know he was gone, at least for long enough to get his story straight. Maybe the orders would keep coming. He would kill Lester so Mary could smile. But he knew he couldn’t so fast it made him feel pathetic that he even thought himself capable. He wished he could, kill Lester, but no.

“It’s Mary, Lester. It’s Mary. She’s in it bad right now.”

“Oh, Mary’s the one stealing my mail? You animal. You sick individual. You steal my personal property, then blame it on your sick wife? This world, man, wow. This world isn’t what it used to be.”

“Lester, no. Jesus.”

But before Danny could plead his case, a noise started fizzing above them. A hollow buzzing, as if sped-up and sounding in a tight stone tunnel, but thick, drawn out and staticy and loud enough that the pair looked at the vaguely blue sky, scanning for landmarks of reality as if convinced they were both dreaming the disturbance in unison. Then, with a blurry cloud hung straight overhead, a rigid brown outline appeared, brown beyond comprehension, idyllic and perfect, descending beneath an imperceptible canopy that could be discerned only because the neat clean fat lettering stenciled on the unseen top and sides was made visible by the fineness of the translucent cloth subjected to the sweet warm daylight. Slowly they watched it slink down, like an angel but better or at least more exhilarating because it was in no rush to made landfall, in no hurry or desperate urgency to seek anybody’s repentance, just floating there in the aimless air like a child’s last words until it grew too large and overt to focus on and landed perfectly between them, truly perfectly because the tips of their confrontational toes would have brushed the serene packaging if they moved even half an inch forward; and the lacey white fabric, guider of the deliverance, collapsed and smothered a lucky swath of smooth green grass.

The PerfectGuess logo was clear, just beneath an OPEN IMMEDIATELY warning where the FRAGILE caution might have normally been seen. Lester squatted, and, taking his parcel in hand, began to peel back the transparent packing tape, ignoring Danny not like he didn’t exist but like he never existed in the first place. Inside was nothing but photos, photos and blurbs on top of one another like bricks in a tower for which there is no plan to stop construction. Light catapulted off the glossy pictures as if meant to evoke some ancient emotion on a skillfully set stage. At least a hundred. New ones too, brand new––Lester’s face was too electrified for them to be familiar. Danny hiked himself up on his toes and for the first time looked and saw what Lester saw, and his heart exploded like a bomb built to blow up the universe at the thought of all of Mary’s smiles. “Lester. Les,” Danny said. There were tears forming around the horizons of his eyes, but by the time he wiped them away, Lester was back inside, deadbolt latched. Danny rang the bell, then again, then screamed and screamed and screamed and rang it again and again but Lester didn’t seem like he’s coming to the door, just standing there, probably, in his own unobserved reflection.

John Darcy is an Army veteran, currently enrolled at Edgewood College, a small liberal arts school in Madison, WI.

On Black Friday, I waited by the window for my brother. I’d just taken off my jacket and begun unbuttoning my shirt, shoes off, belt unbuckled. My book on common law was waiting for me on the nightstand across from my wife who had her scrubs on and the television turned down low. That was our agreement when I studied in the living room and she watched her medical dramas.

She bit her nails. The clicking sound it made imbued an element of time to my waiting. I checked my watch again and pulled back the blinds to see if he was here yet.

“Is this about the mashed potatoes?” my wife asked.

“I’m sure he knows you didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Do you really think he’s taking you to a jazz club?”

Her eyes were fixed on the screen; this was the part of the show where the doctors misdiagnosed the patient. I wondered if my wife absorbed anything from this. Would she arrive at her shift and feign shock when the doctor declared it brain cancer and not bone?

“I don’t know. Where else would he be taking me?” I asked her.

“I don’t like jazz, really, I never have.”

“Why not?”

She shook her head, her focus on the drama hypnotic. Blurry lights glimmered on the wet surface of her eyes. She was on her left thumb now, another loud click.

“It won’t be long,” I said. “Just a few beers and a show.”

“Who’s playing?”

“Never heard of them before. I’m not sure Riley has, either.”

“Like I said, I don’t think your brother listens to jazz. He’s not the type.”

From the living room table, my phone vibrated. It slid across the wood and nearly dropped off when my wife caught it and handed it to me.

“It’s him,” she said.

I took the phone.

I’m here, the message read.

I told my wife I’d be back.

Riley was parked across the street from our apartment complex, the engine running. He had the heater on and the basketball game playing in the background. I got in and just as the silence settled over us, Riley reached out and turned the volume up a little more.

“Whose car is this?” I asked.

“My neighbor, Ms. Brooks,” he said. “Nice lady.”

“Sheray thinks this is about the mashed potatoes.” I shifted my weight.

Riley tried to smirk.

“I had dinner at Mom’s earlier.”

“I heard. Leftovers.”

“That’s right.” He nodded.

We rode under the streetlights and over wet roads. The ground glimmered in little golden flakes like a lake of wet stars in the darkness. Riley drove slowly, hesitantly. His eyes darted from the volume control, to the navigation system, at the street signs, and then all over again. Once I saw a full cycle, the pattern emerged, and I knew Riley was going through mental motions, one movement after another, back to the beginning. His lips moved. It was involuntary. He was mouthing thoughts, things that couldn’t be put into words. It was a metaphysical valve. The same way that Riley used to poke holes in our mother’s oak tree out back and whisper his secrets into them.

I worried when he got like that.

There was a single empty parking spot outside the club. I’d never been on this street before, an array of small shops and restaurants, a dreamy reflection of Main Street. False gas lamps illuminated the walkways, and cobble stoned streets ran west to east. Small crowds walked between the bars and clubs, all of them laughing.

Orange light fell through the windshield, scattered in, and distorted the texture of Riley’s skin. His eyes were wide, following the people outside. I waited with him. The game still played on the radio and we were comfortably up.

“Are your buddies waiting for us inside?” I asked.

Riley shook his head and pulled the emergency brake, snapped out of his trance. “No. No, this is the first time I’ve been, to be honest.”

A purple and green glow hung over the front door like a plume of steam from a manhole cover. I looked up at the neon sign above the entrance. The Spanish Moss. You could already hear the music inside, faint, but there. I wasn’t sure until that moment that Riley was really taking me to a jazz club. For some reason, that reassurance failed to calm me.

I’d known Riley since he was a nameless child in my mother’s arms, but I’d never known him to be a jazz person. I assumed he was into whatever was on the radio. Even when we were kids, he never struck me as the type to look backwards for any kind of inspiration or lesson, only forward, if he was looking at all. And with a nervous twitch. Perhaps, it was my fault for never stopping to listen.

The inside was dimly lit, only a few scarce candles, and iron casted framework with yellow burning lamplight over the bar. The air was humid and thick, the smell of fast-moving sweat.

Past the bar and lounge areas, towards the back, there was a velvet curtain hanging over a doorway to another, deeper room. The music rose from that place, getting clearer in my mind. Like a pitcher of sangria, it had a substance to it, a flavor that made me want to know where it was coming from and how it was made. I smacked my lips, curious to see behind the curtain.

The price posted just outside read this second room read, $30 each.

Riley absently checked each of his pockets before finding his wallet in the back left of his jeans. There wasn’t much between the leather flaps.  I could have paid. In fact, I had enough for the both of us, but I was in a frugal state of mind. Especially after Thanksgiving and the impending fear of Christmas just around the corner. With law school and Sheray’s 12-hour shifts, I couldn’t afford to spend money on things like this. Just life and what we needed to hold onto it.

My brother looked around nervously.

“Let’s sit at the bar,” I said. “I can watch the game and you can still listen.”

He nodded. Music was music after all, for the ears and not the eyes. But I knew listening from the bar somehow wouldn’t be the same, that we were missing a crucial element that would lessen the effect of coming here. I remained curious. As we sat down, my eyes stayed on the velvet curtains. I barely heard the bartender speak. Riley ordered a stout and I mumbled that I’d have the same. From time to time, I could hear the song melt and rebuild, some things remained, but others had changed. A different instrument took over, and I sensed a wave crash over the crowd inside.

Was it possible that something magical was happening in there?

The trance took over. My imagination ran wild speculating what kind of marvelous thing was taking place just beyond that thin curtain. I saw flurry of colors spraying the room; greens, reds, yellows, blues, all flying about chaotically, but if you paid attention, if you knew what to look for, there was reason in the chaos.

A woman pulled the curtain back and went to the bar to fix a cocktail. I studied her, sure that she was somehow different than us. Maybe it was the lighting.

I looked over and saw that Riley had a similar distraction on his face, only more comfortable with it, familiar. The dim colors of the bar fell onto his skin and blended.

“What kind of jazz do you like?” I had to yell.

He shrugged. “I don’t really know much about it.”

“You just listen to it.”

“Yeah. It’s very meditative.”

Meditative. What an interesting word for it. Sheray liked to mediate. She had an app on her phone for it and I would come home late from studying to find her sitting on the living room floor with her head phones in. Her back was straight, her brows furrowed. Her whole body was perfectly still, and then she was out of it. And yet, when Riley spoke of jazz being meditative, I knew he meant something else. Sheray’s knowledge of meditation, like mine, was derived solely from things properly labeled as such.

There was a tired inevitability about jazz, a tragedy stuck in a loop. It was beautiful, though. I was beginning to feel that. The music pricked my mind, but with that curtain, I knew I would never understand it. Fire clinging to the end of a wick.

“Really, I thought the mashed potatoes were good,” I said over the saxophone.

Riley finished his beer and held his hand up for another. When the woman brought it back, he held his fingers over the mouth of the glass like a spider over a frothy pond. He watched the neon lights dance in and out of the still shadows. He looked like he might be waiting for something to happen, something to emerge from the reflection in the dark amber pool.

“I did,” I said.

He smiled.

“If I had known it was thirty bucks I wouldn’t have brought you.” He nodded towards the velvet curtains. “I don’t know a lot about jazz, but I know it’s something worth seeing for yourself. And it’s not like I wanted to learn to play, or study it, or even know who I’m listening to when it’s on. I just wanted to come here and see it.”

“I would have liked to see it too,” I said.

Riley hunched over like a sigh.

“I was going to come here alone. I always planned to, but then I thought about you and I didn’t want you worrying about me. Next time, though, I’ll come by myself and I’ll get a table in there and watch the whole show, beginning to end.”

“Mom appreciates the potatoes. The special ones you made her.”

“It’s really not that hard to do them that way.”

I set my glass down and watched Riley as he took another sip, so calm.

Suddenly I was young again, with Riley and my Mother, at a restaurant downtown celebrating my latest report card. The waiter came by to take out orders and my mother told him that she was lactose intolerant. Riley’s nose flared and he set his menu down. When the waiter left, he asked, “Mom, what’s so special about being tolerant of lactose?”

Lactose and tolerant.

He’d misunderstood. My mother howled for what seemed like hours. Neither of us knew what to do. We hadn’t seen her laugh like that since before our dad had died and we didn’t want to interrupt the moment, so we waited. She eventually pressed her hand on her chest to catch her breath; her face was flushed bright red in the candlelight.

Our mother never corrected Riley. She let him go on thinking that was the way the world worked. To him, lactose was something our mother was, and she needed to tell people that she was tolerant, that she was aware of her affliction. That’s right, bukcko, you heard me, I’m lactose and I’m damn proud of it. I think she liked her son thinking of her that way. The affliction of being lactose, according to Riley, was that our mother was completely useless outside of a kitchen. So when she went out to eat, being the kind woman that she was, she told the waiters that she was lactose and tolerant, and what she meant was, I understand you pain, I’m the same way. It gets better.

There was always so much more love in Riley’s version of things.

Just like Santa or the Easter Bunny, it was hard to say when he finally realized that it was a simple weakness to dairy, but even then, he never seemed to shake off the truth he’d made in his own head.

I don’t know why I mentioned the potatoes at that moment as the jazz swelled from the other room. The potatoes kept coming up to the surface and I felt outside of myself in the thick, dark trance of that place. Riley was watching the basketball game now. The lead had grown and we were running out the clock. He was on his third beer and every time he brought the glass up to his mouth, I saw him glance at the velvet curtains. He was calm and in control, a look I’d seen on him more and more lately and it bothered me. Like something about all of this was just a TV show to him.

My wife used to say we were just two different kinds of people.

The show inside was almost over, so we had a few more beers and stayed to the end of the game just to watch the celebration. I picked up the tab. It was my way of thanking Riley for bringing me here, whatever reason that was, and because for the first time in my life, I thought I understood why people might crowd together in the dark and watch a bunch of people bang, poke, prod, and blow things until something good happened.

“To be honest, I didn’t really care what they said about the potatoes,” Riley said as he started the car.

I waited for the heat to come on.

“They were good, Riley. Sheray didn’t mean anything by it.”

I only wish I’d had more of something else.

That was what Sheray said over Thanksgiving.

It was the night before, and as it neared an end, most of us around the table were leaning back and letting our stomachs pop out. Riley was towards the back, smiling the way he did when he was younger, serving himself another helping of his potatoes. He must have had three of four that night.

My Uncle Todd was at the head of the table, a big guy with rough hair carpeting his forearms. He twirled his fork around in his mashed potatoes, and then he’d scoop up a mouthful, turn the fork over, and watch it plop back down on his plate. Then his eyes fell on Riley.

“Say, Sheray,” he said.

My wife looked up, nervously. She was normally quiet during dinner.

“What did you think of Riley’s potatoes?” he asked her, grinning. A few of my other uncles perked their heads up with similar grins, their eyes darting around at each other.

I should have known what was happening, but I’d been lulled into a false sense of peace. It was too late. Riley’s posture was already sinking. He hadn’t been to a family dinner in years and I’d thought they would have gone easy on him that night, maybe leave him alone. That was my mistake. I found myself longing for the days when we were younger and we ate at a cousin’s table far away from the adults, a barrier between Riley and my uncles, one my mother had made right around the time Riley dropped out of college.

“I only wish I’d had more of something else,” she said.

That sent my uncle into a fit of howling laughter, pounding the table. So loud and violent that the candle in the center almost went out. The others joined in. Riley chuckled a little, but he ignored them for the most part and kept eating. My mother insisted the potatoes were good and Sheray did her best to retrace her steps and explain. But the damage was done.

I watched Riley later that night, sitting by himself in the living room watching the football game. He was calm, almost smiling to himself. His mind was somewhere else and I felt awful.

“I’m not upset about the potatoes. They were a little dry, but I thought they tasted fine,” he said in the car.

We were driving on the backroads that snaked through the hillside. It was darker here on the other side. The streetlights came less frequently and the hollow streets between them grew longer and longer. Riley barely slowed at the stop signs.

“It’s not about that, really. I mean, it’s not like I threw a bunch of things together and presto, there it is. I followed a recipe.”

“I know that,” I said.

“I followed the instructions like you’re supposed to. What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing. Sheray was only making a joke.”

“I know. But,” he frowned. “She must have known, and they’re only potatoes. It’s everything after. I mean, look at us, we’re talking about potatoes.  Why do we have to be talking about potatoes?”

He laughed.

I laughed.

We were nearing home. I was beginning to recognize our old neighborhood, even at night, as inebriated as I was. I turned the postgame off and let the silence fill the empty spaces of the car.

“They weren’t even potaoes,” Riley said.

I sat up. “What do you mean?”

“It was cauliflower. I found them when I was looking for a dairy-free recipe for mom.”

“And no one noticed?”

He shook his head.

That time I really laughed. I slapped the dashboard, warm tears streaming down my cheeks, my stomach ripping apart as the world outside blurred. Riley only smiled. He was always like that. No matter how funny something was, he only sat back and smiled. He enjoyed the laughter more than anything else. And in was in those moments, when he made other people laugh, and I saw him smiling to himself, that I let the haunting fear creep in. The fear that he was a better person that I’d ever be. He knew something about life I couldn’t get my head around.

“You know,” I said, catching my breath, “I had no idea. I’m thinking back and I can’t remember how they tasted.”

“They were good. The leftovers are at mom’s.”

“So then let’s go.”

“Really?”

I nodded.

Riley headed to the kitchen and I stumbled down the pitch black hallway to Mom’s room. She was sitting up in her bed watching the highlights from the game. I kissed her cheek and told her I’d been out with Riley. She told me to brush my teeth and get some sleep.

I thanked her and she said, “Riley is so sweet, isn’t he? Making special mashed potatoes just for us.”

“Sure is.”

I could smell the roasted garlic from the microwave. Riley was setting our bowls down across from each other on the table. I grabbed us some spoons from the drawer and poured myself a glass of water. Riley turned the radio on. He flipped the dial though the channels, Spanish, static, rap, jazz, rock, static, postgame.

“Stop,” I said.

He paused on the postgame.

“No,” I said. “A few more back.”

He went back to the jazz station just as a piano solo came on.

“Yeah, leave it there.”

We didn’t speak. All you could hear was the florescent lights humming overhead and the jazz playing softly on our dad’s old radio. I slopped spoonfuls of Riley’ mashed cauliflower into my mouth. It burned at first, but it got better. I mixed it around as runny chucks dripped down the sides of my mouth. I was ravenous, like I hadn’t eaten all day. It brought me back to the empty hunger I had as a child. In those days Riley and I would make a pact to starve ourselves until Thanksgiving dinner.

I kept shoveling the mashed cauliflower down my mouth trying to feed the appetite, to feel that way again, but I couldn’t.

The song on the radio faded out as I licked the spoon.

Riley leaned back and patted his stomach with a happy sigh.

I’d have to go back to my apartment soon, to Sheray, to my studying, and as Riley sat back with that smile, I knew he’d be going back to that jazz club, as many times as he wanted.

“I’m going to have some more,” he said. “What about you?”

“I think just the one was enough for me.”

Justice McPherson received a B.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. He also holds an A.A. in psychology from the College of San Mateo. He’s worked as a script consultant and as an FX assistant on location. While living in Honolulu, Justice conducted neurological research at the Queens Hospital and currently writes for a travel magazine. A Stephen F. Crane finalist, his works have appeared in the HCE Review, the Labyrinth, and Your Impossible Voice.

I.
The cusp of a dark beyond
Sightless and afraid; the white, bulbous grubs from their safety snatched
And thrust into an air too rich to breathe,
Choking on the sweetness, dizzy from the buoyancy
Each twist and turn only pushes the boundaries further.

All around, our fears manifest,
Pulling at us with talons, ripping at our flesh with razored beaks,
Our thoughts untenable, threads of vapor to catch the air
Simply tremble and pray to our idols, mumble words held deep in the flesh
Retreat into ourselves
Resonate with unfelt pain until the pain brings blood,
We weep.

The darkness thickens.
It is weight, to push against, resistance, substance,
It brings unforeseen focus,
We are more, there is more,
there is something other than ourselves and the crippled thoughts we’ve woven.

Each step deeper is a lifetime, a moment,
a drawn out breath that aches in our lungs
and if only we hadn’t lived in the smokestacks, breathing in the embers
of the dead, the dying,
the dreams swarming thick like mites on a humid day
we might have stretched our ribs a little further.

This space, place
too grand for our simple minds to cope,
the threshold between one room and the next,
solid, carved with skill
and laid with care, love
to await the day when the one that is loved can be carried across
and the world within can be nurtured; to flourish.

II.
I called across the gulf and waited,
silence replied,
a sucking silence, drawing in the words
funneled into the core of the chasm,
compressed into little more than half utterances,
to be snuffed out and forgotten.

The fibers of my thoughts lifted,
shocked into being and enticed away,
with promises of flight, of a corporeal form within which to nestle,
to become part of,
to sing within and be listened to, respected.

I stood,
no more than a sentinel to a dying age,
buying at the vapid threads that floated across my retina
feeling the thrill of wholeness for moments grander than fleeting
clutching at them again once the feelings were robbed from me
by self centered, sanctimonious, arseholes on soapboxes
desperate to hear their own voices
as they claimed the world was sick
the sickness was us
and the cure was happiness.

I’ll give you happiness,
can’t you see my brands?

III.
From well back it can’t be seen
more a notion in a careless mind,
a thought erupting, a thin skin pressing against the surface
of a gray pool of hot mud
until pulled too tight and rupturing,
leaving the hollow of its life.

A fiction told and retold
losing shape and wearing thin
patched from stray bark used to shore up the lives
of those with grand ideas
until the notion is a warped and fetid thing,
sold and resold,
patched and re-patched,
by limpid minds globbing onto some semblance of a higher cause.

And from this view we see the world and proclaim it new
we look beyond to the potentiality of our accumulated breaths
start to measure ours against yours, yours against mine
until the self is an overriding cause
put before, placed above, worth more;
after all, the breath I breathe is sweater.
Prove me wrong.

IV.
I danced in the shadow of a single star
all the more bright in a blanket of black,
I found its name and called out
waiting impatiently for a reply.
When nothing came I turned away.

I lamented the skies of my youth,
counting satellites as I lay in the grass,
I tilted to be in unison with the slanted milky way
and held my breath between sudden streaks of ancient deaths.

One day I awoke with the sun,
and set one foot in front of the other.
Each step saw a pin prick of light disappear,
until all that was left was this single star
which continues to ignore my imploring calls.

It was me that turned off, closed my eyes, stopped shining,
it was me that no longer sought more,
the shadows deepened, grew heavy, weighed me down,
until my feet were as high as I could see.

Each expectation was for the countenance of death,
however old, however long misplaced,
to appear for the briefest of moments
as it bled its way across the sky.

V.
I saw it for a curtain,
I took it for a wall,
undulating and impenetrable, heavy with the weight of time.

It trembled as I stepped nearer, I took it for fear,
I laughed and felt bold, I reached out.

It were as if a sea of leaves had settled
slumbered and begun to stir,
my footsteps the cause of their rousing.

Indecision, I froze,
They pulsed, wings beating,
agitation folding in on itself.

My laughter a ripple in its ocean of memories,
my footsteps the beating of a single, tiny heart.

I would be lost, swallowed,
gone for all certainty…

…it stopped; sudden and complete.

I felt it listen to my footsteps in retreat.

VI.
why you, why us, why sad, why harried,
why lost when you are always somewhere,
why born when you are always gone.

VII.
The wind took me up,
embraced me,
carried me over a lattice work of lives.

Woven within each eddy were fragments, echoes, remembrances,
keepsakes for a lonely heart.

It wanted me, I knew it almost at once,
a consort, companion, a plaything,
my definition lost within its boundless embrace.

It sang,
an amalgam of sweet/sour,
hard/soft,
forged/gifted/bestowed.

Prisoner/archangel.

I rose and fell with giant breaths,
carried with the scent of blossoms into my pores,
suffused with the stench of rot.

I drank from the insides of clouds
feasting on the threads that bound daylight to the earth.

Then in the long rays of a dying sun,
as it consumed the horizon with sharp intent,
I lost the final hints of form, was burnt up and ceased to care.

VIII.
It is a thousand eyes, perhaps more
dark and full of hate,
it doesn’t want us here,
we must go back.

We have trodden ground proven strong,
we have grown crops, raised children,
we are part of the land, it is ours, our sweat has given us liberties.

We have made bargains.

It is the demon of our dreams,
set to tear our flesh, devour our souls, turn us on one another,
it doesn’t want us here,
we must turn back.

We were happy once,
we can be so again,
we just have to find it,
somewhere back there in the past,
where we tamed the world, crafted it, molded it into manageable, harmless quotations.

We have made bargains.

It is the clawing in the darkness,
the scratching at the walls,
the whispers full of menace only we can hear.
It lurks there, bloated and full of envy
for what we’ve made, for what we have.

We cannot go, we mustn’t go,
those who dare are in league,
sent to lure us toward our end.

We should strike first.
It is the only way to protect ourselves.

We’ve made bargains.

IX.
There was a clock on the mantle of the house we lived in
when I was old enough to remember,
though not tall enough to reach.

It was white washed brick hidden behind layers of soot
that left my fingertips black.

As I lay in bed some mornings
I would hear the scraping of the small iron shovel
as it collected the ashes,
depositing them into a steel bucket.

I’ve tried replicating that sound but its never the same,
when you’re the one doing the scraping.

The sound of metal on stone brings me comfort,
but I could never get used to the sound of the ticks of the clock
amplified through the mantel,
until they reverberated though the emptiness of my dreams.

X.
Now I ain’t no dandy but I likes to look presentable
so I’m in the mirror checking things out when the taxi arrives.

I get to the bar just on 2am
and I sit myself down and order a few drinks
then wonder why the sun’s out when it’s still 2am.

Sure enough the world starts to spin and I feel like I might chuck
so I hold on, focusing on the green square of the pool table
until everything rights and i’m ready for another round.

It’s still 2 am and there’s a game on,
I buy a few more rounds, cheer and throw insults
but by the end i’m sitting pretty because my team’s come out on top
and I buy the bar a round and make a few more friends (can never have too many at 2am)
so when I get up to go they call me back down
saying it’s their turn to buy.

I can’t pass up an offer like that so they slide on over
and we toast to our team and a few hours later, just on 2am, we are still at it,
though a few have tapped out, jobs and wives and more shit excuses.

When I look up i’m alone, the clock reads 2am
how the time flies.

Some joker tries switching on the news
but I let him know in no uncertain terms that we’ll not be having that,
not when there’s glasses to be emptied and times to be had.
He starts getting lippy,
so I clock him one and before I know it i’m sitting on the curb
and take it as my cue to leave.

When I wake up I have fragments of the night before
and figure I did myself proud
and then I have one of them spells,
like planets aligning or some such shit,
seeing it a clear as day what my tombstone will read,
2am closing on a hell of a night.

XI.
There was silence when I woke and in it there were currents,
flows of air, of mists, of moods and insurrections out of keeping with the norm.

I stood and pulled the curtains wide,
heeding not my state.

There, baked in the fledgling rays of a newly birthed day,
were fossilized sighs from the distant past,

were tears turned gold as they fell,
were looks, expressions frozen forever in horror, shock, sadness, resignation.

Floating like tissue, fighting against the will to fall.
Given claws they would have shed the membrane that keeps other worlds at bay

summoning waterfalls of broken lives to pool beneath my window,
a rising tide, an ocean of deceit, a wave-crested master of erosion.

XII.
Poor me, poor me
I’ve broken my knee,
There’s blood, oh the pain
Just there, can’t you see?

Poor me, poor me,
I’ve not been given enough
This life is unfair,
The treatment too rough,

My pillows aren’t soft,
My blanket’s too think,
And last night’s foie gras
I’m sure made me sick.

Poor me, poor me,
I have it tough, can’t you see.
The champagne has warmed,
The coffee is cold
And despite the many face lifts,
There are signs that i’m old.

Poor me, poor me,
This wound on my knee
It’s a chasm, a vacuum,
Just there, can’t you see?

XIII.
I have hope,
it might be a strange thing to say
in this day and age,
but I have hope.

I was rummaging through old things, as you do
and found this speck, unsure what it was
or why I might have kept it.

Seeing no point in throwing it away
I rewrapped it in the pages of a faded newspaper
with advertisements for nylons
and those beautiful, green refrigerators
with the handles that angled out
when you pulled on them.

I’d fancy one of those if they still made them
but anyway, as I was saying,
I have hope,
it may be a speck
but I have hope none-the-less.

XIV.
At my fingertips worlds turn and yearn to be set free,
to wander the winds of whim to the furthest reaches of thought.

Touching on the realms of gods, gestated in the vacuum of knowledge
where the dizziness of our boundaries had us grasping at straws

with the hopes of finding stability, feeding us a sense of control
building the egos that rule like gods, filled with hate and distrust.

XV.
The stories my mama told me
as I burrowed into the crook of her arm
were of faraway places
with faces not unlike ours
but the places, the cities, the towns
were magical lattice-works of beauty.

Those people, they smiled
inner smiles that made their faces glow
and were happy to show their inner glows
to those they passed
even if they didn’t know them.

It all seemed so magical
those faraway places
with a story for every man, woman and child.

Some stories were easy,
of laughter and love,
some stories were hard
but somehow there was always a hand,
a stranger or a friend,
a grandmother or a teacher
that offered words of tangible advice.

Nothing cryptic but solid and sincere.

There was something all those stories,
all those faraway places, had in common
although I didn’t notice at the time.

All those faraway places,
no matter how big, teeming, gleaming cities,
or small, clutches of timid farmsteads,
they all lived close to, within sight of,
or right on the edge of
a threshold where all those people
dared not go.

XVI.
We walked,
Took what we could carry
Looking deep into the horizon
We walked.

We bedded rough
But we were tough,
Foraged on the way,
Laughed on the way,
Died on the way,
We walked.

We were driven.
Felt the need,
To stretch our worlds
Seek out the new
We walked.

The land, the sun, the air
Had forged us.
Had been our mother
Our savior,
Our all,
We still walked.

Strong was the need.

We were of the same flesh,
Our burning, beating hearts
Knew the tongue and the whispers
Of skin, of kin,
Of the dirt in our veins,
We still walked.

We walked,
Toward setting sun and rising moon,
Toward northern mountains
And eastern seas,
We followed rivers and ranges
And migrating fowl,
We followed the stars
And a scent in the air.

We walked,
Looking for home.

We stopped.

We settled
Beside rivers, lakes, oceans,
Where food was thick
Where living was hard,
Where nothing grew
But we felt safe.
We settled.

We grew, we changed, we adapted,
The sun couldn’t find us,
So we changed,
Food sang with different tunes,
So we changed.
Experiences, soils, set of the wind,
Needed new tongues, new ways of being,
So we changed.

We changed,
But in us,
Deep where the heart bled,
In the beats and the songs
That had made us so very long ago,
We were the same.

We might call ourselves by different names,
Letting the arrogance of difference fill our sails.
We might sing different tunes and make different choices,
Walk different roads and are shaped by our differences
But deep where the heart song bleeds
We will always and forever
Be the same.

And there,
On the other side,
Beyond the reach of your stupidity,
The heart songs sing.

But here,
Where notions of foreign,
And skin and words filled with hate and difference,
Still chart your path,
Sending you backward with each step,
The other side will remain out of reach.

The recent past has taught us,
Borders are manufactured restraint,
To limit the world so our egos might flourish.
Borders on thinking, borders on action,
Borders on where we set our feet,
All serve to give us places in which we can feel strong, important,
Giving us some semblance of control, order,
Giving us a platform on which we can preach
The greatness of our chosen path.

So we preach and we howl and we kill,
Babies burnt alive to show the world that we are better,
We claw, we grab, we destroy,
Taking the breath from another’s lungs
The innocence from another’s heart,
All the things we have no right to,
All because our egos have married our ignorance.

The price for a single beating heart
and a mind that wills the body to move,
capable of all, limitless, exciting, unpredictable,
is more money than all the gods combined every made.

Craig McGeady is from Greymouth, New Zealand and lives with his wife and two daughters in Xuzhou, China. His writing runs the gamut of length and form thanks to a homeroom teacher with a penchant for Michael Moorcock. He has poems published or forthcoming in The Garfield Lake Review, The Wild Word, The Cicada’s Cry, The Remembered Arts Journal and Genre: Urban Arts.