Robert Aquino Dollesin, The Writing

Balloon Swords

2010-06-19T12:58:00.001-07:00

Originally published in Mudluscious

They met in a park as children. It was late afternoon. His balloon sword was green, hers red. They stood opposing each other in the center of the grassy park. He charged, thrusting at her heart. She held her red balloon sword by its handle and waved it back and forth in front of her face, trying to defend herself. But using the sun behind him to his advantage, he ducked, blinding her momentarily, and his green sword struck home. Still holding her sword in one hand, she fell backward onto the grass and closed her eyes, resting her free palm on her chest and playing dead.

Years later, each time the battle was replayed without balloons, he would recall the dry heat of that summer afternoon in the park when they were still children. He recollected the chiming of a passing ice cream truck. He remembered the flitting shadow of a bird shading her pale face. And he would wonder, again and again -- how different things might have been if he hadn’t discarded his green balloon sword to drop onto his knees and see if her heart had really been pierced.

Devotion

2010-06-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

Originally Published in Ken*Again

The egg rests in your hand, its tips pinpricked, everything inside drained out. Using light strokes and thin-hair brushes, you color the delicate shell, careful not to shatter that fragility which houses nothing.

Listless in her bed, her eyes remain open, focused on a point on the ceiling. You’ve tried to reach her before, never successful.

You fill the tub with warm water and sprinkle the surface with red leaves—poinsettias. A small tribute to someone you still love.

One arm slid beneath the hollows of her knees, the other placed across the back of her shoulders, you heft and carry her to the bath, set her into the water.

The soft sponge you apply with a gentle touch. She doesn't react. She never does.

The nurses, almost always touched by your devotion, wait until the last possible moment, and then allow you a final kiss before telling you that you must leave.

Outdoors, in a rusted Rambler parked in the shade of an oak, your lover waits reading. She looks through the windshield at you and gently smiles. She no longer asks why, only agrees to drive you each first Sunday of the month. She understands, your lover does, what you still share with your wife is much deeper than just devotion.

Working 1

2010-05-26T23:06:00.001-07:00

As a young boy I dreamed of marrying Pretchy Anne,

Buttonquail
One evening while alone in the backyard of the Grandfather’s house, Carlo caught sight of Pretchy-Anne through the kitchen window. From where he sat with his back against the trunk of one of the many mango trees scattered throughout the property, he could see she was crying.

remain unseen and observe one of the Grandfather’s maids, Pretchy-Anne, through the kitchen window.

His visits to the Grandfather’s house were made less torturous by spying on Pretchy-Anne. It was, he told himself, because he loved her. Besides, he did not care so much for his judgmental cousins who lived in the huge house. Many nights while he lay alone in the dark on his bed, Carlo imagined himself all grown up and married to Pretchy-Anne.

When they were both grown up, of course.

One evening when he was a boy of eleven or twelve, Carlo caught sight of Pretchy-Anne through the kitchen window. Even though she was a year his senior, CarloFrom where he sat on the earth with his back against the trunk of one of the many mango trees scattered throughout his grandfather’s backyard he watched the light from the setting sun play over her face.

saw she was crying.

The light from the setting sun played over her face. Even from across the yard, Carlo could see she was crying.

Pretchy-Anne stood at the kitchen sink, tears streamed down her face as she stood removing buttonquail from a burlap sack brought into the house by her father.

The sultry breeze blew his long bangs

With his back against the trunk of one of the many mango trees in his grandfather’s backyard, he sighed and tried to imagine life as a gro.

and watched Pretchy-Anne from the shade of one of the many leafy mango trees that grew in his grandfather’s back yard and watched Pretchy-Anne imagined he’d grow up and marry Pretchy-Anne. I like to believe the reason the fantasy never amounted to more than a pleasant and wishful dream was because we were cousins.

Of sorts.

My parents and Pretchy-Anne’s parents were very close, and in the Philippines children of such close relations consider one another cousins.

that it was.

never be allowed to reach fruition.

The table in the yard was set with
a thick rattan stick
discrete
squeamish
The slow sweeping cone of his light

***

Buttonquail

On a sultry May afternoon my cousin, Elineta, wed her American lover. That same evening, I stood beneath a leafy mango tree in one corner of the grounds watching in silence as the guests, American and Filipino, filled the Grandfather’s immense yard for the reception.

Although Elineta’s new husband was white like me, I knew we shared nothing in common. Not only did I not grow up in America, but I struggled with the English language. So much so I often kept my mouth shut when rather than risk embarrassment.

I stood watching them
Although my cousin Elineta’s new husband was white, like me, we had nothing in common.

They held my cousin Elineta's wedding reception at the Grandfather's house.

The moment we arrived, I parted from my parents and siblings and sought out Uncle Roland's sister-in-law, Pretchy-Anne. Whenever visiting the Grandfather's house, I would spend most of my day with her. She was my age, twelve, and before tonight she had never judged me, or made me feel different. But that evening I couldn't find her.

Guests, many of whom I didn't know, crowded the large yard. Although there were lots of Filipinos -- friends of the family -- there were also a few Americans, friends of the groom, standing around the long wooden table in the center of the yard, neatly dressed in barong tagalog's.

The table was full. Laid out on banana leaves were two slaughtered hogs, countless chickens, and dishes overflowing with local foods. There was a three-tiered caked surrounded by glass bowls filled with sliced, chilled fruit.

Sampaguita flowers hung in garlands throughout the yard. I breathed in their warm, jasmine-like scent and watched a man on a wooden platform sing a romantic mariachi ballad. Behind him, three men with broad straw hats covering their heads strummed along on guitars.

Everyone seemed to be laughing. Having fun. Dancing.

Maybe if Pretchy-Anne was here, instead of watching the moon skip over the polished flagstones, I'd be dancing alongside it.

Each time I wondered where Pretchy-Anne was, I worried. Everyone I asked replied by shrugging and saying she should be here.

Once again I scanned the crowd. This time I met the gaze of the American serviceman who Elineta had married. We exchanged a long stare, after which the American smiled, brightly, then winked. Like he and I had something in common. Like we shared some fantastic secret. I flashed my most hateful scowl and whirled away.

When I ran across Eric, Pretchy-Anne's older brother, a flood of relief came over me. I asked him, "Where's your sister?"

"She'll be here later," Eric said. He blew out a mouthful of smoke and stomped his cigarette out on the ground. Although Eric was only thirteen, nobody seemed to mind that he smoked.

"But why hasn't she already come?" I asked.

"She got woke up late last night. To prepare quail."

"Quail?" I had never heard of quail. "What's that?"

Eric laughed. "Birds, of course. We hunted last night."

"Who?"

"Me and Roland."

Eric and I drifted away from the crowd. He lit another cigarette. We sat at a wooden bench along the fence, under an awning of mango laden branches.

It was dark enough now that the lights in the yard cast trembling glows. The star-shaped lanterns made of colored cellophane flashed brightly over the faces of the guests.

Still curious about quail, I asked Eric, "I don't understand. What do you do? Do you flush the birds from bushes?"

Eric shook his head and laughed again. Then he explained how he and Uncle Roland sometimes hunted quail in the surrounding countryside late at night.

While Eric swept the ground with a flashlight, Uncle Roland, armed with a narrow bamboo switch, lurked near the cone of moving light. The instant the light found a startled quail, Uncle Roland brought his weapon whooshing down on top of the bird's head. Then he quickly stooped, wrapped his fingers around the stunned bird and stuffed it into a drawstring pouch that hung from the waist of his pants.

Eric tossed his glowing cigarette butt onto the grass and then wiggled his fingers to describe the way the live quail fluttered while trapped inside the bag against Uncle Roland's thigh.

Last night they caught seven quail. It was very late when they finally got home. Roland had mounted the wooden stairs and woke Pretchy-Anne. He told her to come down to the kitchen to kill, pluck, and clean the birds, so they could freeze the birds for later eating.

"She cried the whole time she stood at the sink," Eric said, contorting his face to mock her expression. "She hates cleaning quail. She complains about being forced to do things she doesn't want to do, just because it's what the family, or anyone else, expects."

Eric stood. He patted his shirt pocket for another cigarette. "I gotta go," he said, lighting the cigarette. I watched him cross the yard, the red glow from the tip of his cigarette moving from hand to mouth in the faint light.

Sitting alone, hearing the music, smelling the food, I thought of Pretchy-Anne. Not long ago she'd told me that when she grew up she wanted, like Elineta, to marry an American. She wanted so badly to leave this dreadful country. I sometimes made-believe that I was that American whom Pretchy would marry. But was I even an American? I was white, true. Anyone could see that. But both my parents were Filipino. What did that make me? I had no idea if I could honestly claim as my country this place or that. Or, for that matter, anyplace at all.

The thought of Pretchy cleaning the birds came back to me. As I concentrated on the image of the frightened quail, I heard someone behind me say, "Oh, there you are."

It was Pretchy-Anne.

I got up off the bench, smiling, and led her across the yard to the table where the food still steamed and threw off odors that made your stomach growl in delight. As I loaded food onto a paper plate for Pretchy-Anne, I couldn't help but notice how gorgeous a girl she was. Her long creame-colored gown covered her feet. Her hair, for once, was not tied back with a rubber band, or scrunchie, or claw clip. In the warm and fragrant evening breeze the ends of her hair rose and dropped, rose and dropped.

With our plates held in front of us, we crossed the courtyard and sat back down on the same wooden bench beneath the same slightly trembling mango leaves where she'd found me. It was dark now, completely, and under the stars the music still played and couples still danced.

For a while Pretchy-Anne and I sat without speaking. Picking at our food with our fingers. Finally, to have something to talk about, I brought up the quail she'd been forced to clean.

Raising her face to grimace, Pretchy-Anne said killing things -- anything -- disgusted her. She went on to say that she probably wouldn't have minded cleaning the birds if they had already been dead. Like fish from the market, or frogs gigged in the muddy paddies and immediately gutted. But with the quail she actually had to use her bare hands to grab the birds around the neck and twist until the quail dangled limp and dead. Along with their frightened squawks and their pleading eyes the killing of the quail, Pretchy-Anne said, broke her heart.

As light from the flashing cellophane lanterns struck her face, I couldn't help but notice Pretchy-Anne looked strangely different tonight. Makeup. She wore makeup. I'd never seen her in makeup before. The red lipstick and the stuff she thickened her lashes with made her look older than twelve, made her look like a woman, which in a way, I guess, she was.

I couldn't help but wonder if the little girl with the coltish legs and scabbed knees was still inside this woman? Did the little girl disappear somewhere? Where was the child who screamed with delight each time the pink bubble blooming from between her lips exploded.

When the musicians in straw hats started another ballad, I set my plate down on the bench beside me and asked Pretchy-Anne if she wanted to dance. Without answering, she looked away to the lanterns dangling from tree branches not far from us. She rotated her paper plate in her hands. Then she turned to face me, smiled falsely, and said, "Maybe later, okay?"

Not five minutes had passed when another boy, a Filipino boy who might have been a couple years older than us, strolled up to where we were seated. He came down on his haunches and placed a hand over Pretchy-Anne's. She blushed, bit her lower lip and shook her head. But he persisted. Finally, she handed me her paper plate to hold. Before getting up she clapped her hands together, rubbing them free of crumbs. Then she let the boy lead her onto the grass, where they danced close against one another.

I sat watching Pretchy-Anne dancing on the flagstones. Her eyes were closed, the right side of her face was buried in the boy's chest. I glanced away, skyward to the stars, and couldn't help but wonder if maybe Pretchy-Anne rejected my request to dance because I was different.

Had she just been being kind to me all this time?

Then I closed my eyes and tried again to picture the quail. Tiny, barely alive. Feather-wrapped creatures that laid scattered on the kitchen counter, near the sink. The birds I imagined stared up pleading to Pretchy-Anne with their glassy eyes.

In my mind, tears swelled in Pretchy-Anne's s eyes as she wrapped her fingers around the quails necks and, one by one, put the birds out of their misery.

When I looked back to where she was dancing, I caught Pretchy-Anne staring at me. Her eyes in the moonlight appeared misted. Quickly, she turned her head.

Suddenly, I was clear about what she meant when she told me she wished the quail were dead before having to clean them.

The table in the yard was set with
a thick rattan stick
discrete
squeamish
The slow sweeping cone of his light

***

Buttonquail

They held my cousin Elineta's wedding reception at the Grandfather's house.

The moment we arrived, I parted from my parents and siblings and sought out Uncle Roland's sister-in-law, Pretchy-Anne. Whenever visiting the Grandfather's house, I would spend most of my day with her. She was my age, twelve, and before tonight she had never judged me, or made me feel different. But that evening I couldn't find her.

Guests, many of whom I didn't know, crowded the large yard. Although there were lots of Filipinos -- friends of the family -- there were also a few Americans, friends of the groom, standing around the long wooden table in the center of the yard, neatly dressed in barong tagalog's.

The table was full. Laid out on banana leaves were two slaughtered hogs, countless chickens, and dishes overflowing with local foods. There was a three-tiered caked surrounded by glass bowls filled with sliced, chilled fruit.

Sampaguita flowers hung in garlands throughout the yard. I breathed in their warm, jasmine-like scent and watched a man on a wooden platform sing a romantic mariachi ballad. Behind him, three men with broad straw hats covering their heads strummed along on guitars.

Everyone seemed to be laughing. Having fun. Dancing.

Maybe if Pretchy-Anne was here, instead of watching the moon skip over the polished flagstones, I'd be dancing alongside it.

Each time I wondered where Pretchy-Anne was, I worried. Everyone I asked replied by shrugging and saying she should be here.

Once again I scanned the crowd. This time I met the gaze of the American serviceman who Elineta had married. We exchanged a long stare, after which the American smiled, brightly, then winked. Like he and I had something in common. Like we shared some fantastic secret. I flashed my most hateful scowl and whirled away.

When I ran across Eric, Pretchy-Anne's older brother, a flood of relief came over me. I asked him, "Where's your sister?"

"She'll be here later," Eric said. He blew out a mouthful of smoke and stomped his cigarette out on the ground. Although Eric was only thirteen, nobody seemed to mind that he smoked.

"But why hasn't she already come?" I asked.

"She got woke up late last night. To prepare quail."

"Quail?" I had never heard of quail. "What's that?"

Eric laughed. "Birds, of course. We hunted last night."

"Who?"

"Me and Roland."

Eric and I drifted away from the crowd. He lit another cigarette. We sat at a wooden bench along the fence, under an awning of mango laden branches.

It was dark enough now that the lights in the yard cast trembling glows. The star-shaped lanterns made of colored cellophane flashed brightly over the faces of the guests.

Still curious about quail, I asked Eric, "I don't understand. What do you do? Do you flush the birds from bushes?"

Eric shook his head and laughed again. Then he explained how he and Uncle Roland sometimes hunted quail in the surrounding countryside late at night.

While Eric swept the ground with a flashlight, Uncle Roland, armed with a narrow bamboo switch, lurked near the cone of moving light. The instant the light found a startled quail, Uncle Roland brought his weapon whooshing down on top of the bird's head. Then he quickly stooped, wrapped his fingers around the stunned bird and stuffed it into a drawstring pouch that hung from the waist of his pants.

Eric tossed his glowing cigarette butt onto the grass and then wiggled his fingers to describe the way the live quail fluttered while trapped inside the bag against Uncle Roland's thigh.

Last night they caught seven quail. It was very late when they finally got home. Roland had mounted the wooden stairs and woke Pretchy-Anne. He told her to come down to the kitchen to kill, pluck, and clean the birds, so they could freeze the birds for later eating.

"She cried the whole time she stood at the sink," Eric said, contorting his face to mock her expression. "She hates cleaning quail. She complains about being forced to do things she doesn't want to do, just because it's what the family, or anyone else, expects."

Eric stood. He patted his shirt pocket for another cigarette. "I gotta go," he said, lighting the cigarette. I watched him cross the yard, the red glow from the tip of his cigarette moving from hand to mouth in the faint light.

Sitting alone, hearing the music, smelling the food, I thought of Pretchy-Anne. Not long ago she'd told me that when she grew up she wanted, like Elineta, to marry an American. She wanted so badly to leave this dreadful country. I sometimes made-believe that I was that American whom Pretchy would marry. But was I even an American? I was white, true. Anyone could see that. But both my parents were Filipino. What did that make me? I had no idea if I could honestly claim as my country this place or that. Or, for that matter, anyplace at all.

The thought of Pretchy cleaning the birds came back to me. As I concentrated on the image of the frightened quail, I heard someone behind me say, "Oh, there you are."

It was Pretchy-Anne.

I got up off the bench, smiling, and led her across the yard to the table where the food still steamed and threw off odors that made your stomach growl in delight. As I loaded food onto a paper plate for Pretchy-Anne, I couldn't help but notice how gorgeous a girl she was. Her long creame-colored gown covered her feet. Her hair, for once, was not tied back with a rubber band, or scrunchie, or claw clip. In the warm and fragrant evening breeze the ends of her hair rose and dropped, rose and dropped.

With our plates held in front of us, we crossed the courtyard and sat back down on the same wooden bench beneath the same slightly trembling mango leaves where she'd found me. It was dark now, completely, and under the stars the music still played and couples still danced.

For a while Pretchy-Anne and I sat without speaking. Picking at our food with our fingers. Finally, to have something to talk about, I brought up the quail she'd been forced to clean.

Raising her face to grimace, Pretchy-Anne said killing things -- anything -- disgusted her. She went on to say that she probably wouldn't have minded cleaning the birds if they had already been dead. Like fish from the market, or frogs gigged in the muddy paddies and immediately gutted. But with the quail she actually had to use her bare hands to grab the birds around the neck and twist until the quail dangled limp and dead. Along with their frightened squawks and their pleading eyes the killing of the quail, Pretchy-Anne said, broke her heart.

As light from the flashing cellophane lanterns struck her face, I couldn't help but notice Pretchy-Anne looked strangely different tonight. Makeup. She wore makeup. I'd never seen her in makeup before. The red lipstick and the stuff she thickened her lashes with made her look older than twelve, made her look like a woman, which in a way, I guess, she was.

I couldn't help but wonder if the little girl with the coltish legs and scabbed knees was still inside this woman? Did the little girl disappear somewhere? Where was the child who screamed with delight each time the pink bubble blooming from between her lips exploded.

When the musicians in straw hats started another ballad, I set my plate down on the bench beside me and asked Pretchy-Anne if she wanted to dance. Without answering, she looked away to the lanterns dangling from tree branches not far from us. She rotated her paper plate in her hands. Then she turned to face me, smiled falsely, and said, "Maybe later, okay?"

Not five minutes had passed when another boy, a Filipino boy who might have been a couple years older than us, strolled up to where we were seated. He came down on his haunches and placed a hand over Pretchy-Anne's. She blushed, bit her lower lip and shook her head. But he persisted. Finally, she handed me her paper plate to hold. Before getting up she clapped her hands together, rubbing them free of crumbs. Then she let the boy lead her onto the grass, where they danced close against one another.

I sat watching Pretchy-Anne dancing on the flagstones. Her eyes were closed, the right side of her face was buried in the boy's chest. I glanced away, skyward to the stars, and couldn't help but wonder if maybe Pretchy-Anne rejected my request to dance because I was different.

Had she just been being kind to me all this time?

Then I closed my eyes and tried again to picture the quail. Tiny, barely alive. Feather-wrapped creatures that laid scattered on the kitchen counter, near the sink. The birds I imagined stared up pleading to Pretchy-Anne with their glassy eyes.

In my mind, tears swelled in Pretchy-Anne's s eyes as she wrapped her fingers around the quails necks and, one by one, put the birds out of their misery.

When I looked back to where she was dancing, I caught Pretchy-Anne staring at me. Her eyes in the moonlight appeared misted. Quickly, she turned her head.

Suddenly, I was clear about what she meant when she told me she wished the quail were dead before having to clean them.

***
Whenever I visited the Grandfather with my parents, I sought out Pretchy-Anne. It made no difference to me that she was the daughter of one of the maids. She was my age, and when she looked at me her face never filled with disgust the way my cousins’ faces did. If she wasn’t tasked with helping her mother in the kitchen, Pretchy-Anne and I could spend the entire afternoon tromping the Grandfather’s immense property. We’d shin up trees and share a large crotch of two branches together. On our hands and knees, we’d trap shiny green beetles, face them off against until we got bored, then set them free again. Or else we’d simply pass the sweltering day beneath the shade of a large mango tree, sharing real-life stories.

Oh, it hurt all right. Not so much the fact that Karla confessed to me at the breakfast table, but more the seeping, soiling manner in which she allowed her words to spill. So piercing and unexpected was her revelation that my right hand twitched, toppling the glass of chocolate milk next to the cereal bowl. As the white linen tablecloth slowly went dark with dampness, I could neither speak, nor draw my glare away from her face.

She stood from the table. “You act surprised.” Leaning forward, she almost looked through me as she snatched a fistful of paper napkins. She tried to sop up the spilled milk.

My trembling hand fell over the top of hers, trapping it against the table. Her hand tightened into a ball, then flattened to creep free of my listless grip, leaving me palming a wad of wet napkins.

From across the room the old refrigerator’s insides buckled, its coils hummed louder. I hadn’t noticed until then that even though we were two weeks into a new month, neither of us had bothered to change the calendar on the freezer door. My left knee bounced beneath the table.

When Karla cleared her throat to speak, I glanced from the calendar to her and said, “You didn’t mean what you just said.”

She sighed. When she raised her gaze to the ceiling, the skin on her pale neck went smooth and tight. “You’re making it worse than it is,“ she said. “It’s not like I’ve tramped around, cheating on you with some workplace lover.” And now her voice broke and lifted. “I didn’t get us pregnant, did I? I’m not hooked on drugs or alcohol or gambling, am I?”

After waiting a long time for a reply that never came, she sat back down. She reached across the table and let her fingertips graze mine. “You understand, don‘t you?”

Because I thought I understood, I nodded my head. The three months we’d shared had been meaningful. In the beginning we’d both grasped for one another’s affection. At the same time we’d both agreed to be bound by nothing. The problem with love is inevitably someone in the relationship will do or say something to suggest it can’t possibly last.

Gamefolk

2009-10-08T11:10:00.001-07:00

Wanderings

Infinite

2009-10-08T10:06:00.001-07:00

Subbed to Weirdyear 10/08/09: Accepted 10/09/09
Note: Congratulations! Your piece titled Infinite has been accepted into
WEIRDYEAR and will be published on our front page on 10/23/09.

Infinite
by Robert Aquino Dollesin

Thirty-six minutes. That's how long I held my breath underwater, burrowing beneath a sheet of white sand in search of the giant razor clam. My lungs burned, but having been drawn to the sea, I knew I was on the cusp of a major discovery.

I almost exploded with joy the instant I spotted it. Mounting the hard tapered shell, I used the crowbar I'd brought to pry the enormous mollusk open, then wedged my head between the shell's edges to keep them from snapping shut. My eyes adjusted and seeing the glowing pink and soft, moist and meaty inside of the clam increased my excitement immensely. Despite not breathing, the smell of the sea tickled my nostrils. The steady hollow lapping of distant waves breaking along the nearby beach roared in my ears.

With considerable grunting and force and manipulation, I squeezed my arms past my ears and into the clam's cave-like entrance, pushing my palms upward to stretch the lips of the shell wider and wider until I finally heard a popping noise. My shoulders had penetrated the opening.

Like a tadpole, I squirmed, pressing my face toward the loosened hinges at the back of the shell while keeping my arms close against my sides until finally my torso, followed by my legs, were completely inside the cavernous chamber.

The two shells snapped shut behind me and in the pulsing darkness I tucked myself into a fetal position. Like a pillow shaping a head, the clam's soft meaty walls molded around me.

I felt myself withering, my being rapidly transforming.

My skin was shedding its hair, growing smooth and transparent. My organs were drying out. My limbs grew shorter and shorter, the digits fusing into stumps of veiny flesh. I was slowly vanishing, becoming something that never existed.

In that instant I was reminded of all the animated attempts I'd seen on television to recreate the big bang. I was floating through a blinding light, filled with the sensation of weightlessness, shattering into a million pieces to dust over everything.

Then I knew . . .

I knew that I was no longer the recognizable me that I'd been. Although tiny and insignificant, I was at the same time enormous and infinite.

Parts of me floated down like aimless motes. My essence covered the crackling autumn leaves. Other pieces of me were swept away by the breeze to swirl in the fragrance of tilting wildflowers. I became the tiniest part of the stars in the heavens, the sand on the beaches, the soil in the earth, the flares of the sun. I became microbe and mammoth, ant hill and mountain, snow and ice and rain and heat. I became sorrow and joy, achievement and failure, love and hate.

And if you look closely in the mirror, you will see that I have all at once become a part of you and me and he and she and them and each and everyone of us.

Lifting Twenty from my Sister

2009-10-08T10:04:00.001-07:00

My sister exploded when she found out I'd taken twenty dollars out of her purse and given it to a stranger. She said she knew the moment she'd agreed to let me stay with her that she'd regret it. She wanted me to go. Just leave her alone. Get out of her life. Quit dragging her down. But the stranger I gave the money to was a woman with three kids who slept in her car at the park. Every evening I'd walk by and see them eating sandwiches at a picnic table. They were down on their luck, that's all. They just needed a break.

Casino Heist

2009-10-08T10:03:00.001-07:00

From my pickup truck I watched the woman leave the casino and start across the parking lot. She looked to be about fifty, my mom's age. In her right hand swung a plastic bag with Chinese character's on it. The cloud-filled night sky and the bad lighting in the parking lot made the woman disappear and reappear. When she popped up under a light three rows away, I got out of the pickup and pulled my ski make down over my face.

When I jumped out in front of the woman, her face got all screwed up. The bag of Chinese hit the asphalt. I hadn't meant to frighten her, and it made me feel kind of bad. I just needed to replace the money I'd snatched from my sister's purse while she was asleep.

Stepping back, the woman raised her arm and wagged a curled finger in front of my masked face. "You should be ashamed of yourself," she said. "You almost stopped my heart."

"Sorry," I said. I hoped she caught the sincerity in my tone. I crouched to pick her bag up. A handful of greasy noodles and a couple soy sauce packets had spilled out. I shoved everything back into the bag, got up and handed it back to the woman. "I just need thirty bucks."

She looked inside the bag, frowned and said, "My dinner's ruined."

After apologizing again, I said, "I'm in a fix. I took some money from my sister and she doesn't know about it yet."

She glared at me for a moment. Then her face softened. "How much do you need?"

The eyeholes on my ski mask had slipped a little. I adjusted the mask and said, "Thirty bucks. I need thirty bucks"

The woman seemed to ponder it a moment before shaking her head and saying, "I don't have that much." She raised her left arm. "I have this watch, though," she said, turning her wrist so I could see the tiny face with Roman numerals. "I'll give you this watch." She brought her wrist to her mouth and started to undo the red leather band with her teeth.

"I don't want the watch," I said. She shrugged and quit unlatching the leather band.

Just then a car turned into the lane. It's headlights fell over us.

The car stopped. The driver cranked his window down. "Everything okay?"

"We're fine," the woman said. "Good luck in there."

Before he drove off, the driver smiled and said thanks. One of his taillights was out and I hoped he didn't get a ticket. He seemed like a nice guy.

"You should take your mask off," the woman said. "People might get suspicious."

"I don't want anyone to be able to identify me," I said.

"I've already seen the two tattoos on your neck," the woman said. "It wouldn't be hard to describe you, anyway." I hadn't thought about the tattoos. The squatting frog I got done in San Diego, the Aztec sun came from a small parlor in Tijuana.

The woman stuck her hand inside her bag and it came out holding a stringy noodle. "What did you use the money for?" she asked. She slurped the noodle and offered me the bag. "Want some? It's pork chow mein. I usually order orange chicken, but tonight the orange chicken looked old." When I didn't answer, she peered past my shoulder and said, "Is that your pickup?"

"Yeah," I said.

A Final Evening Out

2009-10-08T09:57:00.000-07:00

A Final Evening Out

by Robert Aquino Dollesin

Melody Campbell came home clutching a pink slip.

Her husband, Artie, looked up from his bowl of soup and said, "We'll get by."

Two months passed. The phone didn't stop ringing. The mailbox filled with bills. Artie and Melody Campbell felt like two cats trapped in a cardboard box. A small and dark and cold box. A box without breathing holes punched in the top.

Finally, one evening the Campbells sat down and examined their finances. After jotting numbers down on paper they stared across the table at each other. Big eyed and wide-mouthed. Neither spoke. In the backyard, their two pugs, Bonny and Clyde, began to howl.

Trying to keep anxiety out of his voice, Artie said, "We gotta tighten our belts." He put his elbows onto the table and rubbed his face with the balls of his palms.

"We'll work through this," Melody said. She fanned the bills out on the table and jabbed at a few of them. She suggested to Artie they could live without the country club and gym. Even the cable television and internet services could be temporarily nixed.

But as the weeks went by, the Campbells realize they hadn't sliced aggressively enough.

Artie told Melody they needed to get rid of Bonny and Clyde. The two pugs were a drain on what little money Artie's security guard job brought in. Melody shook her head. She'd had them since they were puppies. Even longer than she and Artie had been married. Artie threw his hands into the air and said, "Guess even though you're the one who lost your job, I'll get rid of the Mustang my father gave me."

Melody began to cry. Artie asked her where the pink slip for the Mustang was.

"Okay," she said. "We'll let Bonny and Clyde go."

Artie got on the phone and called Animal Control. He made arrangements for Bonny and Clyde to be picked up.

Outside, Artie held the clipboard against the side of the big truck and signed the necessary forms. Melody stood off to one side of him, chewing a fingernail. While he waited, the uniformed Animal Control agent played with his keys. He glanced at Melody and said, "Times are tough. Everyone seems to be giving their pets up these days."

Melody said, "What if no one adopts them?"

The agent shrugged. Then he grinned, and slowly dragged a finger across his throat.

Melody burst into tears. She crouched down and hugged her babies, buried her face in their fur. "Can we not do this, Artie?" she begged.

Artie didn't answer. He finished up the forms and handed the clipboard back to the agent. One after another he helped the agent hoist the pugs onto the caged truck. When the dogs were safely behind the bars of the cage, the agent slammed the door shut. Both of the dogs started to whimper and Melody started to cry some more.

Artie stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. "Honey," he said, trying to comfort her. "We gotta do this."

They stood together on the sidewalk and watched the truck drive off.

During the following weeks Artie began noticing more and more foreclosed signs popping up on the front lawns of homes in the neighborhood. One evening at the dinner table he told Melody, "Sure are a lot of folks losing their homes."

They exchanged worried glances and sat quietly sipping their coffee.

On Friday of that same week, while Artie stood in front of the time clock at the security outfit he worked at, his boss came up to him and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Sorry, Artie," his boss said. He reached past Artie and snatched his time card off the rack. Then he asked for Artie's badge. "Losing lots of clients right now. Times are tough."

Instead of going straight home, Artie drove his father's Mustang around the neighborhood. He took note of all the boarded up windows, empty homes with lock boxes dangling from doorknobs. He drove through the center of town. Panhandlers hustled at every stop light. Entire families tucked back in the coved entryways of closed shops. Passing the tent city that had popped up at the edge of town, Artie grew frightened. So many people, he thought. He felt sick to his stomach.

Finally, Artie pulled into a lot full of shiny new cars. Four men in ties raced out to greet him.

"I wanna sell the Mustang," he said. All the salesmen rolled their eyes. One of them laughed and said, "Nobody's buying cars, my friend. How about trading it in?"

Artie said, "I don't need a car right now." The man shrugged, made Artie a ridiculous offer. "Take it or leave it," he said.

The offer might get him and Melody through a month, but then what? No. He passed on the offer and the men in ties all shrugged without smiling.

At dinner that night Artie couldn't eat. He pushed his food around his plate. He had to tell Melody about being laid off, but couldn't find the right words.

Melody was saying something. Artie looked up. "What?"

"Aren't you listening, honey? Is something the matter?"

"Yeah," Artie said. Then he raised his voice, "Chicken. Why do we always eat chicken? I'm sick of chicken."

Melody stared at him a moment, then got up from the table and ran into the bedroom. He didn't mean to make her cry.

Without finishing his dinner, Artie went outside and sat on the porch. The neighbors across the street were loading a U-Haul. When he went back inside, Artie found Melody lying face down in the bed. "I didn't mean to jump at you," he said. He ran his fingertips down her arm. He leaned forward and kissed her neck. "I love you," he said.

Melody rolled over and swiped her eyes. "Tell me what's wrong, Artie. What is it?"

He told her.

She closed her eyes and Artie said, "Melody. Let's go out tonight."

"Where?"

Artie answered, "Anywhere. Let's just go out."

***

Artie pulled into the gas station, got out of the Mustang and stared up at the station logo, a fat green hippo. The Hipster Fuel Mart. He shook his head. What a stupid name.

When the numbers on the gas pump window quit spinning, Artie didn't take the nozzle out right away. He kept the trigger depressed, kept jiggling it until he was sure he'd drained every drop from the hose. He tried to remember when he'd first stooped to doing that. It was just after Melody got let go from the factory.

Melody stuck her head out the window. She said, "Something wrong, Artie?"

He shook his head and smiled. How long since they'd got rid of the two pugs? he wondered. It hadn't been that long ago, had it? Maybe he'd try and get them back for Melody. If they hadn't already been put down. Artie removed the nozzle from his car and slammed it in the cradle. He put his fingertips against the cold steel of his father's Mustang.

Everything would soon be gone, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

Melody said again, "What's wrong, Artie?"

This time Artie didn't reply.

Melody stuck her head back inside the window. She crossed her arms and planted her feet on the dash. Artie stood next to the Mustang with his hands fisted on his hips. He scouted the station islands. Near the garbage he spotted a bucket of water, a red handle poking out of it. He went over to the bucket and grabbed the squeegee. He came back to the Mustang and began to scrubbing the windows. After he'd scoured the front and back windshields, Artie opened the trunk and tossed the squeegee inside. He yanked some paper towels off the dispenser and dried the windows off. Then he opened the driver's side door and slipped behind the wheel.

"What's got into you, Artie?"

Artie turned and glared at Melody without saying anything.

Melody said, "You're scaring me." Artie turned the key in the ignition and gunned the gas pedal, listening to the Mustang roar.

Melody sighed and closed her eyes. She leaned her head back against the headrest and said, "I'm scared, Artie. Really scared."

A big SUV pulled up behind the Mustang. Artie squinted into the side-view mirror. The driver behind the SUVs wheel leaned on the horn and flashed his brights.

"God Dammit!" Artie said. He opened the door and got out of the car. He walked slowly around it, pretending to examine the tires. The driver of the SUV tapped his horn again, stuck his head out the window and shouted, "Come on, buddy. Move up a little so I can get some gas."

With his fists clenched, Artie started toward the SUV.

The driver backed up in a hurry, shifted gears and shot past Artie so fast and close Artie could feel the heat of the big vehicle's engine. It screeched out of the lot and fled up the street.

Melody got out of the Mustang. She shook her head. "Let's go home, Artie."

Artie's body tingled all over. He moved within a couple inches of Melody's face. "Don't you get it?" he said. "In a few days there won't be any home for us to go to."

"You're scaring me," Melody said, wrinkling up her face.

He didn't answer. He whirled around and strode across the parking lot toward the mini-market.

"Artie, where you going?"

When he didn't answer, Melody hopped back into the car, rolled the windows up and locked the doors.

Inside the mini mart, a grinning kid stood behind the counter. Artie pressed his damp palms against his thighs. "I need to use the bathroom."

The kid smacked his gum without replying. He reached under the counter and came up holding a Pennzoil jug with a key attached. He laid the jug down next to some lighters and said, "Round back, man."

Behind the kid were some Marlboros. On sale. Buy one, get one free. Artie used to smoke Marlboros when he was a kid. "Give me one of those Marlboro specials," Artie said.

The kid snatched up two packs of the cigarettes. He slid them across the counter and punched some keys on the register. "Six bucks."

Artie's face twitched. He shook his head. "Sign says four bucks a pack."

"You're getting a deal, man," the kid said.

"But one's supposed to be free. The sign doesn't say, 'buy one, get one at half price.' It says buy one, get one free."

"Six bucks," the kid said again.

Artie took a deep breath. He tried to calm himself. He took his wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open and peeled six one-dollar bills out. He slapped the money onto the counter, smiled, and said, "Go fuck yourself, punk."

The kid shrugged, crossed his arms. He gestured with his chin to the big cardboard hippo next to the entrance. "Complain to the boss, man. I just work here."

Artie stuffed the smokes into his coat pocket. He grabbed the Pennzoil bottle off the counter. On his way out the door, he raised a fist and smashed it into the cardboard hippo's smiling face. The display toppled onto the floor and Artie stomped and stomped and stomped the stupid, finger-snapping animal's smiling face was separated from its fat green body.

The kid behind the counter picked up a telephone and said, "Oh, man. Oh, man. Now you've done it."

Artie reached into the inside of his coat, pretended to be holding a gun. The kid put the phone down and raised his arms in the air. "I didn't see shit," the kid said. "Not a fucking thing."

Shoulder against the glass, Artie pushed out the front door. He glanced back and pointed his finger at the kid. He then went around the corner of the building and unlocked the bathroom door.

Inside the bathroom he leaned against the wall a moment to try and slow his racing heart. When he'd calmed, he stood at the sink and looked at himself in the cracked mirror. Who was this distorted person staring back at him? He brought a glob of phlegm up from his throat and hawked the chunk at his reflection.

Then he saw the two rolls of toilet paper – still wrapped – on the floor next to the toilet. He smiled, picked them up and stuffed them inside his coat.

As he headed back to the Mustang, Artie tossed the Pennzoil bottle into one of the steel garbage cans next to the pumps. Hearing it thud against the bottom made him smile. When he got to the Mustang and found the driver's side door locked, he tapped the window. Melody studied his face through the glass. She shook her head. Artie slowly turned his back to her. He raised his right arm and in one quick motion, smashed the glass with his elbow. He reached in and raised the knob.

Melody screamed.

"Get out," Artie said.

She backed herself up against the passenger's side door.

In a softer tone, Artie said, "Please, Melody. Get out of the car."

For a long time Melody stared at Artie, her lower lip quivering. Finally, with tears in her eyes, Melody said, "I'm going with you. Wherever you go. Whatever it is you're going to do, I'm going with you."

Artie's eyes were wet. He reached into his coat pocket, took one of the Marlboro packs out and tossed them over the console to Melody.

Melody nodded. Still sniffling, she tore the cellophane off the pack and opened the flip-top box. She opened the glove compartment and dug some out some matches.

Artie noticed Melody's shoe prints on the dashboard. He took a roll of the toilet paper he'd stolen out of his coat and handed it to her. "Free," he said. "Didn't cost nothing."

Melody's voice broke. "What happened to us, Artie?"

"Use that toilet paper to wipe your face," Artie said. He started the Mustang and drove the vehicle out of the lot.

They got onto the highway. Artie rolled his window down, broken glass fell away from the frame. The wind felt good on his face. Without taking his gaze off the road, he said to Melody, "Fire up one of those smokes."

Melody took a Marlboro out of the pack. She bent low to screen the wind that was blowing through the Mustang. When she came back up, a puff of smoke streamed from her lips. She handed the cigarette to Artie.

He took a long drag and stared out the windshield. Then Artie laughed and some tears came to his eyes.

"Oh, Artie," Melody said. She reached over and cupped his trembling knee with her hand.

Artie jammed the gas pedal and watched the needle on the speedometer swing: Fifty - sixty -seventy -eighty. The Mustang shook. Everything under the hood rattled. Beneath the pedal, Artie could feel the hard floor.

They heard in the distance the wail of sirens.

Melody squeezed Artie's knee. She brought her hand up and plucked the cigarette from his lips. She sucked in deeply and blew the smoke out. She straightened in her seat and said,

"We ain't gonna let 'em get us, are we Artie?"

Artie leaned back and shook his head.

The Mustang was moving at just under a hundred. The crosswinds whipping in through the open windows thrashed both Artie's and Melody's hair. Paper snapped and whisked inside the Mustang.

Artie looked over at his wife. Melody was smiling, staring straight ahead out the windshield, the cigarette burning red between her tightly pressed lips.

A pebble shot up off the road, pinged against the windshield and webbed the glass.

Melody glanced over her shoulder and saw the two sedans, their lights flashing, their sirens shrieking. The police vehicles came up behind the Mustang. Melody reached across the console and dug her fingernails into Artie's arm, just above the wrist.

He grinned broadly, twisted the radio to full volume, then stomped the accelerator as far as it would go.

Home Movies

2009-10-08T01:24:00.000-07:00

Subbed to A Twist of Noir on 10/8/09 - Accepted on 10/9/09
Note: Wow! That is one weird, fucked-up family you've got there. The family
that preys together, indeed. So noir I can't even see. Excellent story. I hope to see more of your stories in the future here at ATON.

Home Movies
by Robert Aquino Dollesin

This afternoon we buried my brother Damon's first wife. After we dropped his kids off at Game World, we returned to our father's home -- the home my brother and I grew up in -- and Damon handed the tape over to our father. Then he went into the living room where, after fixing himself a strong drink, he collapsed on the sofa and began to cry.

I headed straight to the kitchen. Standing in front of the sink, I tried to scrub the soil out from beneath my fingernails. It didn't come out. If Julia, my fiance, noticed the grime caking my nails she would ask questions that I wasn't ready to answer.

My father, whose gnarled fingers were still gripping the tape my brother had given him, hobbled in after me and asked how everything went. I shrugged. "Damon damn near lost it," I said.

"He's too sensitive," my father said. He then asked how Damon's kids were taking the loss of their mother.

I turned the water off and wiped my hands on a dishtowel hanging in front of the sink. "They'll both be fine. Especially Corey. He's got our genes."

My father smiled. "I never was worried about him." He put a hand on my shoulder. "Come on. Let's set up the old movies."

I pointed at the tape in his hand. "Don't you want to watch that?"

"Not yet," he said. "Not until I'm sure Damon can handle seeing it."

In the living room, I pulled the screen down and set the old movie projector up. Damon, who was still weeping, shook his head. "I can't watch these tonight."

"Oh," my father said, smiling but stern. "But you will, Son. You will."

I shook my head at my brother's behavior. Damon must have noticed, because he said, "Just wait until you and Julia get married. Then we'll see how tough you are."

"That's enough," our father said. "Enough."

He stooped forward and sifted through the box of old films. "Ah, this is a good one." He held up one of the round steel casings and said, "How about we watch beautiful, shy Louise?" Louise was our father's third wife.

"Connie's on the same film," I said. She was his fourth wife. Not so shy, but just as beautiful as Louise.

My father laughed. "Then Louise and Connie it is."

I threaded the film into the projector. "Dim the lights, Damon," I said.

"I'm not watching," Damon repeated. He started to get up off the sofa.

"Sit down!" my father shouted. Damon sat.

I hit the lights, flicked the switch on the projector and the jittery home movie began to play against the screen.

In the film it was a Christmas morning past. A very young woman -- Louise -- stood grinning in front of a decorated tree. When the camera zoomed in on her, she raised a palm and shook her head. The camera held its distance. Louise, who still stared into the lens, bit her lower lip and clutched her pink terrycloth robe closed. Then she stooped and, using her free hand, began to gather up all the torn wrapping paper and unraveled ribbons that littered the carpet. She stuffed them into a paper Safeway bag.

The camera swept right. It passed the old console stereo our father still owned. It steadied at the foot of the winding stairway to examine a very young Damon and me as we sat on the carpet and ripped open packages of toys. In a high pile off to one side of us, brand new clothing remained untouched in boxes with cellophane windows.

The pull-down screen in front of us went snowy bright. A brief burst of static was followed by crisp images of a new day.

The same shy Louise who earlier in the film had been tidying up the living room on a Christmas morning, now stood very still against a green billowing tent. She posed smiling as if for a photograph and not a moving picture. The camera slowly withdrew to reveal a low orange sun and a serrated line of pines above the tent.

The tent then spun in place as the camera slowly circled it. For a few moments the image projected on the living room wall alternated between my father's scuffed boot toes, lifting and dipping, kicking up clouds of red dust, and beds of dead pine needles that covered the ground.

A white screen. Static again. As the reel continued to turn, the projector clicked, clicked, clicked.

Suddenly, the fractured image of someone running.

It was soon clear that the woman racing through the tree-dense forest, pine branches clutching her arms, was Louise. Each glance over her shoulder revealed an expression of mounting terror. She stumbled. Once. Again. On her third fall, she stretched out her arms to keep her face from slamming against the ground. Struggling back to her feet, she began to run again.

She veered right, momentarily disappearing behind a stand of shivering trees. Seconds later the camera swooped around the same corner.

Once again, static replaced the images on the screen.

"Do I have to watch this shit?" Damon said in the dark.

Nobody replied and I heard him begin to weep again. I almost moved to the couch to try and comfort him, but the old film started to play again.

We watched in silence as the camera moved in close to an ant bed boiling over. It followed a line of red ants as they marched across cracked earth and dead, curled leaves. In their soldierly file, the line of ants mounted the manicured fingernails of bent fingers, then trooped over a pale hand, and continued up the length of a long, slender arm.

Dipping even closer, the camera fixed long and steady on the woman's face; her wide-sprung mouth and eyes. You could hardly recognize her as Louise.

Like spring drizzle, static filled the screen again. The static gave way to a montage of a campsite, which came quickly in snapshot fashion to reveal:

Blue jays, a pair, preening their wings while perched on a low branch of a pine tree.

A large moth flitting around, then briefly landing on the trunk of a tree before winging away again.

Damon smiling for the camera, his braces flashing in the low light. He brought five wiggling fingers dripping with blood close to the lens.

A blue-bodied dragonfly carefully balanced on the bent tip of a high blade of grass.

The green tent, its folds writhing in the breeze. Then, through the tent's flap door where a flashlight laying on the canvas floor, its beam on, swung left and right, casting its glowing cone against the tent walls.

Me filling the screen, leaning back with my hands on the earth behind me, my legs dangling in a freshly dug hole.

Me and my brother standing knee-deep in a fast moving river, casting our lines against the current.

A spitted trout smoldering over a pulsing fire. Around the fire, me and my brother laughing.

Me and Damon again, covering disturbed earth with armfuls of branches and dried leaves.

The film paused, the screen went white, the reel spun. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Suddenly the scene that projected onto the screen was of the driveway of my father's suburban home. The same home we sat in now. A different woman filled the screen. Connie. Our father's fourth wife. It was a gusty day. Dry leaves caught in whirlwinds. Trees in the yard bowing. Connie's fiery red hair whipping across her grinning face as she leaned back against my father's sky blue Ford Mustang.

Damon looked over at me and snidely said, "Connie sure looks a lot like Julia, don't you think?"

I didn't reply.

"So when you guys getting married?" Damon asked.

Remaining silent, I heard my father giggle. I stared at the screen, watching Connie raise an arm. And as she shoved her hair out of her eyes and waved to the camera, it struck me that Damon was right. Julia did look an awful lot like Connie.

Momma's Collection

2009-10-08T00:32:00.002-07:00

Momma's Collection

Momma kept souls in mayonnaise jars. The kitchen cabinets and bedroom closets were stacked high with hundreds of tightly capped containers, each filled with a colorful, swirling mist.

During harvest moons, I accompanied Momma to the graveyards. While I hunkered behind a headstone, she stalked quietly, searching for misplaced souls. I remember clearly the yellow bob of Momma's flashlight, and the whoosh, whoosh of her swooping net.

After Momma died a psychic from Scobee purchased the entire collection.

Older now, and looking to capture souls like Momma did, I can't help wondering how she disposed of all that mayonnaise.

Like Braveheart

2009-10-08T00:32:00.001-07:00

Like Braveheart

If I had on a yellow dress I'd get myself up off this filthy, gum-stained floor and race past the lockers. At the end of the corridor I'd whirl around and scream out their names. Gus and Kip and Justin and all the others. Once they turned I'd raise the finger. Then I'd spin around, bend over and lift the back of my dress just like those Scottish warriors in Braveheart. Everyone watching would laugh, making those boys feel very small. But then if I was wearing a dress, it would lend truth to their insensitive taunts -- wouldn't it?

Laundry

2009-10-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

Laundry:
by Robert Aquino Dollesin

I am slumped in a scoop-shaped chair in a Seventh Avenue laundry-mat, near the entrance. A plastic cupful of quarters rests squeezed between my thighs. Ahead of me, trapped in the glass face of an industrial-sized dryer, the reflection of someone I no longer know gazes back. Beyond the reflection my clothes clink round and round and round.

Before yesterday, it was Marcie who laundered my soiled clothes. Every Sunday. It didn't matter that I'd walked out on her three months earlier. In fact, Saturday evenings she continued to phone, asking me if after church I would still be stopping by, so that she could clean and press my laundry.

I still went to church, right? Marcie needed to know.

The laundry-mat's front door opens and a blast of cold rain blows onto my face. A woman enters with a basket balanced on her hip. She hurries by without looking down, hurries to the rear of the building, where the washing machines stand side-by-side like regimented soldiers.

Why are things so different now that we no longer live together? Is it because the nothing quarrels we once had have ceased? Or perhaps, it's because neither of us make mention of past mistakes.

Harmony. That's what separation has led to. Harmony.

The door blows open and shut. I swipe drops of rain off my face with the back of my hand. I tug my knit cap low, then tuck my hands deep into the pockets of my camouflage hunting jacket.

Taco Bell. Rumbling inside me, like my laundry tumbles in the dryer. Until yesterday, Marcie prepared my meals.

Three or four times a week Marcie insisted I come home for dinner. After meeting me at the door and leading me to the dining room, she'd pull out the seat at the head of the table. A seat I rarely sat at when I still lived there. Steam rose warm off the heaped plates. My favorite foods sat on her finest china. Dinnerware so precious to Marcie, I'd never been allowed to touch them until after I'd left.

She'd sit across from me at the table, rest her tilted head in the palm of her hand and gaze. Afterward, while Marcie cleared the table, I settled back and enjoyed a cigarette.

“Can you stay a while?” Marcie always asked while she stood at the sink.

I'd nod. Then, after stubbing my cigarette out in the clay ashtray, she'd usher me to the sofa.

She'd excuse herself, disappear into the bedroom we once shared. A few minutes later she'd be back in the living room, smiling, her beautiful body visible beneath her transparent gown.

“A little jazz?” she'd say. And after my nod she would dance across the room to the stereo. The needle she'd place in the groove of an old Motown favorite – something from our past, something we'd both loved – and then the lights she'd dim.

While she sat on one end of the sofa, I sat on the other. With my eyes shut I let the haunting horns of Miles or Kenny or Chuck take me away.

When a heavyset woman removes her clothes from the dryer next to mine, the smell of fabric softener drifts my way. I hold the fragrance in my nostrils, savor its warmth and sweetness. The woman tosses her clothes into a wire cart and wheels the cart over to a green table. While she folds and stacks her clothes, the woman glances at me and says,

“Is it the rain? The rain gets me down, too.”

I shift my seat and buck my shoulders. She continues to smile brightly, but doesn't say anything else.

After I moved out, Marcie still wanted me to sleep over. Not every night, of course. Just when the feeling was right. It felt almost perfect lying with Marcie on top of the covers, neither of us uttering a word. Like young lovers, I'd suggestively brush my knuckles against her thighs. Her breaths would deepen. Then I'd pull her close against me and not let go until daylight seeped into the room through the edges of the yellow curtains.

“I still love you,” Marcie would whisper.

“And I love you more than ever,” I'd whisper back.

When I would wake in the morning I'd be greeted by a freshly laundered shirt and a breakfast fried the way I like it. In the doorway, before kissing her goodbye, we'd linger in each other's arms.

Strolling to my car, I'd glance over my shoulder and see her waiting in the doorway, a piece of my soiled clothing held in her hands, close to her nostrils.

My dryer stops spinning. I stand with my plastic cup, the coins jangling, and shuffle over to the dryer and feed more quarters into the slot.

When it roars back to life, I once again return to slump in the chair beside the door.

Marcie didn't call yesterday. It was the first Saturday since I'd left that the phone didn't ring.

All last night I tossed awake in bed. This morning I raised the phone receiver from its cradle and dialed my old home number.

When she picked up, I said, “Should I bring my laundry?”

She didn't answer.

I held the receiver close to my ear. “Marcie?”

“It's time to let go,” she said.

Still gripping the receiver, I collapsed onto the small chair next to the wall and rested my chin on my chest.

“Marcie?” I said.

“We--” I could tell she was struggling to keep her voice from breaking. “--We need to move on.”

“But I love you, Marcie.”

“Do you?”

“More than ever.”

She grew silent.

“Who,” I asked, “will do my laundry?”

After another long silence, Marcie said, “I need time to think. Can I call you in a couple hours?”

The laundry-mat's front door opens again. A man appearing spent, used up, comes inside holding a basket full of laundry in front of him. His box of Tide slides off the top of his load and hits the floor. The man curses and kicks the box.

I'd left her a message when she didn't call back, told her exactly where I'd be. That was nearly six loads ago. I stare at my sorry self in the glass and shake my cupful of quarters, wondering how much longer until my coins are exhausted.

Fairytale

2009-10-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

The music box's lid opens and through the faint light that spills over me I see Jaslene, standing in front of me with her eyes closed, breathing in the box's mahogany fragrance. But her breaths are not breaths of joy. They are breaths of sadness.

The notes of Enya's 'Fairytale' begin to play. Balanced on one foot, I begin to dance, to spin with the same slow grace of pine tips blowing in the wind. I am frozen in an Arabesque pose and my free-flowing blue taffeta dress reflects back from the oval mirror, which fills the inside of the music box's lid.

Jaslene sits on the stool in front of her desk and for a moment gazes at me, her green eyes drowning in pain and heartbreak. Then she slumps forward, laying her head on the desk and begins to cry in the middle of the afternoon.

The melody, soft and small and sweet, continues, and gradually mounts into an orchestral rainbow. I continue to dance.

Opening her eyes, staring past me, staring at her own glassy-eyed reflection in the mirror, Jaslene drags out a single word, whispers -- Fairytale.

Round and round and round and round. I continue to turn in time with the music.

She leans forward to pinch one of the music box's tiny pearl handles. A drawer slides out, and from the red velvet lining, Jaslene removes the gold band Rod had given her on the day before he departed, several months earlier. In the dim light the gold band still gleams when Jaslene turns it between her fingers.

In time with the lovely music, the round, abalone base beneath my toe-curled foot revolves, circling the inside of the box while I continue to twirl.

"Fairytale," Jaslene says again. She curls her fingers around the gold band and brings her fisted hand to her lips. The soft notes fill the room, and I dance. I always dance.

Jaslene slides off the stool, runs the fingers of her free hand through her black hair, and then she makes her way to the rain-beaded window. Each time the glass she stares out of clouds up, Jaslene raises a palm to squeak the window clear.

I dance, a hundred or more revolutions take place in the time Jaslene stands staring out the window at the gray grainy sky.

"The music," Jaslene had said when Rod had given her the music box. "I know this music."

Rod laughed. "It's from Harry Potter. Remember? You cried when you first heard it."

Her eyes had glazed up then. "We were just kids," she'd said. "How can you remember such silly things?" She had reached forward to brush an imaginary fleck of lint from the shoulder of Rod's crisp khaki uniform.

Rod had smiled, replying, "Every moment spent with you is memorable." Then his arm had moved around her waist, his palm settling in the small of her back. He added softly, sincerely, "The music is as sensitive and beautiful as you are."

Using his one free hand to pat his shirt pockets, Rod smiled, dug out the gold band and slipped it into Jaslene's hand. She clutched the ring and closed her eyes. When she opened her eyes again, Jaslene stared directly at me, her expression joyful as I danced, whirling to the music of a fairytale.

"Everything's perfect," Jaslene had said. "Just like in a fairtytale."

Rod had nodded. "Just like a fairytale."

Now, Jaslene turns from the window. I continue to dance -- round and round and round and round. Clutching her gold band, Jaslene moves to the bed and sits on the edge with her hands in her lap. A moment later she reaches for Rod's photograph on the nightstand, traces his grinning image with a fingertip.

Her sobs mount. I continue to whirl. She draws Rod's picture close her, and then she collapses on the bed.

In her grief, I can do nothing more than dance, spin round and round and round in the soft light, turning to the tender notes of a fairytale.

The Slaughtered Elephant

2009-10-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

Each time his bare feet hit the hard earth of the open savanna, the boy's ankles are covered with swirling, rust-colored dust. Sweat pours off his face, thick hot air bolts through his lungs. He races against gusts strong enough to pluck small animals. Here, whether stampeding across baked earth alongside the wildebeests, or bounding with the antelope, the boy is free from expectation.

There are no difficult choices to make, just the simplicity of basic survival. He would rather be faced with being taken down by a pride of lions than to have to choose again.

But the moment the boy spots his mother just beyond the swale of high grass, his bliss shatters. The truth of what must happen sends his spirits pummeling. Always it comes to this end, him having to choose, having to make a decision, having to lose one important faction of his world in order to save another. Some nights he finds himself traveling the galaxies, other times swimming the dark depths of the ocean. But it happens also on elevators, bridges, anywhere at all. No matter where he runs to, though, he cannot hide. His fears and insecurities find him and force him to make a choice.

Today, when he sees his mother, she is sitting at a wooden table with three men. The table is shaded under a rustling canvas canopy. Taut ropes secure the canopy to two dead acacia trees. The boy, still running, cannot help but feel the hatred as he watches one of the men lean over his mother's shoulder. The other two men, one on either side of her, are close beside her as well.

Against the drone of the wind, the boy hears his mother's clear laughter and a haunting chill vibrates through his entire body. He focuses on the silk ribbon of her hat, snapping in the wind, and then the hem of her regal gown, whipping near the earth. Each time his mother raises her hand to sip her tea, faint rays of sunlight reflect off her dainty teacup.

She laughs again, loudly. The men with her laugh, too. Their teacups clink, the sound simultaneously distant and extremely clear.

As he nears the wooden table where his mother sits, the stench of rotting flesh carried by the wind invades the boy's nostrils. Despite this stink of death, the savanna teems with life: African Crown cranes strut boldly through dry flowing grass, honking at one another. Antelopes, paused from their grazing, lean from their high cover to study their surroundings.

Out of breath, he must stop running. Breathing hard, he cups his knees with his hands. The sound of wing beats causes him to raise his face skyward. Vultures soar overhead, circling the root of the rotting smell -- an elephant carcass. Distorted by the heat shimmer, the grotesque birds swoop from the sky to rip apart the flesh of the slaughtered elephant.

He does not understand what he is seeing. Or does he?

Standing motionless on the savanna soil, the boy feels the girt of earth against his curled toes. Once again he hears laughter carry from the wooden table where his mother sits.

Soon after, as always, a long shadow slips over him. The boy whirls, stares through the glare and sees his father.

A familiar sense of foreboding tingles through the boy. How many times has this happened before?

The wind passes over the boy's father's old-man weathered face, a film of glistening sweat covers his naked body. He adjusts his grip on the spear he carries. His dove-gray eyes plead for his son's understanding.

The boy closes his eyes and draws long, deep breaths. He does not want to choose today. He wants to remain wild, like the hyenas and the big cats, running free on the savanna, where all life ends meaningful.

His father's cold hand stretches across the space between them and falls on the boy's right shoulder. "It is because I am from one world," his father says, "and your mother is from another."

Fear. The boy remembers his mother's fears -- the nights long ago when he and his mother roamed the dark streets together; he, clinging to her long swishing gown. Long nights spent either searching for his father, or trying to escape him. Recalling the pain and confusion, the oby remains motionless on the savanna until he feels the smooth wooden handle of his father's spear being pressed against his palms. Sweat drips off his hair and runs down the side of face. He hears his father say, "Like this, like this." He feels his father's hand take hold his fingers and guide them around the wooden handle of the spear.

There was a time when he would have done anything for the sound of that voice; a time when he would have given his life for the touch of his father's hand. And there was a time when he did take a life for his father's affection.

Now his father crouches beside him and turns the boy so that his left shoulder juts in the direction of the table where his mother laughs with her men. The men she is with are always different, yet always there. Always. The boy allows his father to raise his limp arms, position them rigid, and lock them at the elbows.

"Remember that day, don't you?" his father says. "I came home, found you alone. Remember what we found out, together? Remember what we had to do?"

The boy opens his eyes and sees a clothesline tied between two trees. Damp clothes pinned to the line flap and writhe in the wind. Like vibrant ghosts, the deep colors of the fabric rise and fall, rise and fall. Two sheets part and the boy's mother appears from between them. Behind her, a faceless man.

Now his mother raises her face from the table and scans the savanna. She knows they are here again. The men with her move away from the table. She stands, leaving her teacup on the table, and begins to trudge through the wavering hot air toward the boy and his father. Halfway across the grass, she stops to mourn the slaughtered elephant.

The boy tightens his grip on his father's spear. He lunges forward without moving his feet, thrusting the spear, hearing the stone spearhead slice the air. he knows what he must do. He knows the instant the spearhead pierces his mother's flesh the elephant will rise again.

A New Day

2009-10-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

Subbed to Foundling Review on 10/07/09 -- Rejected on 10/08/09
Note: This was close but not quite there. It lacked something, a barb or a hook.

***

A New Day
by Robert Aquino Dollesin

When she let it all out on the apartment building rooftop, I decided to do the honorable thing. Help her make the right decision. Love would come later. It always did, right?

"That what you want?" Kippy said. The wind punched her hair across her face, billowed the folds of her windbreaker. "Listen to yourself, Layne. Is that what you really want?"

I stared down at the toes of my Converse high tops. "Look," I said, "does caring have to be a bad thing?"

Kippy stepped away from the rail. "What about love?" she asked.

Our conversation ground to a halt then. If I knew she was going to fall in love, I never would have climbed into bed with her. I looked over the rail. Trails of blurred tail and headlights from moving vehicles. It was a long drop and everything looked so small.

Kippy said, "Your silence says a lot."

"I didn't force you," I said.

"Oh, I begged for it. That it, Layne?" Then she added, "It's okay if you don't love me. I guess all I ever wanted in the first place was for you to like me."

"Look," I said, trying to keep annoyance out of my tone. "I do love you. Okay?"

She laughed. "We don't have to."

"I want to."

Kippy, she looked directly into my eyes then, and said, "Please don't say those things if you don't mean them. Once upon a time ago my dad said those same things to my mom. They got married for all the wrong reasons. Had more kids. Bought a house. Thought they could slip into the dream. Then one day they both woke up realizing how big a mistake they'd made." Kippy laughed. "Funny. The love they never had went away."

When I didn't answer, Kippy said, "One day you'll wake up and won't be able to get out of bed. Just like my dad."

She stopped talking, but kept studying my face. Then she clutched a handful of her skirt and said, "If we do this, Layne, I don't want that to happen to us."

I crossed the roof and took her hands into mine. I said, "No, Kippy. It won't."

Kippy said, "Promise?"

"Promise," I said.

***

I wake, look at the clock on the nightstand. 7:08 in the AM. No different than yesterday. Kippy's already up, getting the kids ready for school. I smell bacon, hear the clatter of dishes, the kids stomping and shouting downstairs. I'm feeling empty, used up, and don't want to get out of bed. I could do with a day away from the office. A week. A year. A lifetime. I could just lie under the covers forever, pushing aside these feelings of nothingness that stream through every vein in my body. Push them away. Far away.

Shutting my eyes again, I burrow in against the pillow.

But I can't stay here, can I?

I throw the rumpled sheets off and climb out of bed, still thinking, you can't embrace life when you have a wife and kids, a house and job. All the things Kippy said we'd have. Same as her folks.

Halfway to the bathroom I overhear one of the kids downstairs say, "Don't forget to keep your promise, Mommy." Then Kippy, she answers, "I always keep my promises."

My knees wobble. I whirl around and stumble back to bed. I try to push aside all the reasons I've given myself for leaving. I had a life before Kippy screwed it up for me. I deserve that life back.

When the kids are out the door and off to school the house grows quiet.

A little later -- I'm not sure how long -- Kippy, she comes up the stairs to check on me. "Hurry up," she says, annoyed to find me still laying in bed. "Get up or you'll be late." She bends forward to yank the sheet off me.

I grab Kippy's arms, just above the wrists, and pull her down onto the mattress beside me.

"Stop. Would you." she says, frowning, slapping at my right hand. My free hand travels up past Kippy's breasts to her neck. The fingers splay. Her throat nestles perfectly in the webbed crotch between thumb and pointer.

Then, Kippy yanks free of my grip. In a simultaneously aggravated and desperate tone, she says, "Come on, Layne. You gotta get out of bed and go to work."

I keep my gaze on her face. Suddenly her eyes grow big. She shakes her head. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

A few moments of silence pass. "What?" Kippy says. "What?" Then, it must strike Kippy the same way it just struck me. She crumbles against me and begins to cry.

All these years she's finally understanding. Me, I'm finally getting it, too.

"Why are we here?" Kippy says.

"I made a mistake, didn't I? I mean, we both did."

"We can't change the past, Layne."

"But we can change the future."

Kippy, shaking her head, says, "I'm so tired of pretending everything's perfect when it's not."

"Then let's quit pretending," I say.

"Throw it all away?" Kippy says, staring up at me. "Including me and the kids?"

"That's the last thing I want to do," I say.

"Meaning?"

I pull Kippy close against me. Her hands travel over my back. Her breaths are warm against my throat. This morning I'm going to stay right here in bed with her beside me. Maybe even fix the things that were broken. Maybe even find a way to keep from breaking a promise I made a long, long time ago.

Epiphany of Sanbourne 4216

2009-10-04T12:37:00.000-07:00

Sanborne 4216 had been watching the Arabs huddled at a table in a dark corner of the tavern. He rolled his shirtsleeve up and set the timer for the implant to blow in three minutes. Then he sat back and continued to observe his supposed targets.

His technicians had not programmed Sanborne 4216 to react emotionally, so he was confused feeling his heartbeat increase when someone began to sing a piercing rendition of Jeff Buckley's ‘Hallelujah.' All throughout his body of flesh and metal, muscle and wire, the circuits began firing and the blood began flowing with unusual quickness.

The motors in his neck ground and whirred as he sought out the source of the gospel. His head swiveled incrementally -- left, left, left, up, up . . .

Then he saw her on the stage. The woman's face was lit up by the blue glow of the lights above her. Beneath a black scarf, her long brown hair hung down past her narrow shoulders. Her eyes were closed.

The tavern had quieted, everyone sat listening to the woman sing ‘Hallelujah.' Sanborne 4216 felt his insides tighten. Impossible. His programming did not allow such feelings. The woman on stage opened her eyes and stared directly at him. Perspiration formed on his forehead. Again, impossible. The woman closed her eyes once more and leaned into the microphone.

He suddenly realized it wasn't the Arabs that Control had sent him in to destroy. Sanborne 4216 got up in a desperate panic, and was halfway to the exit when he heard the sharp click of the implant inside him snap into place.

Screen Dreams

2009-10-04T12:35:00.002-07:00

He enters the train terminal first, crossing the floor with his suitcase. Just in case. Moments later, also lugging a suitcase, she pushes through the front doors, stands beneath the arrivals and departures board and scans the bustle for someone she’s never met.

He spots her, or so he believes it is her, and slowly approaches.

“Taylor?” she asks, when he stops directly in front of her. He does not look like ‘her Taylor.‘ The up-and-down motion of his head causes the skin on his neck to jiggle.

“Marisol?” She is considerably older, he thinks, than her photographs had suggested. She certainly was not demure, or petite. Her hair being neither long, nor black.

They both set their suitcases on the floor to shake hands. Neither of them wears a wedding ring, both have noticed. She perceives his grip to be weak, he considers her hand plump.

After a moment of awkward silence the couple release each other’s hand. She checks her watch. “I can’t stay long,” she says. “You know, the old man might get suspicious.”

Clearing his throat, he replies. “I should be going in a bit, too –.” He smiles, weakly, and she does the same. “– before the wife starts worrying.”

Side by side at a small bar, the couple have a drink. Neither, though, says much. Funny, he thinks, how easily conversation had flowed online. Crazy, she figures, to somehow grasp for affection from someone you’d never really met.

They finish their drinks, both of them slip off their stools and heft their suitcases. Together, almost as a couple would, they walk out the terminal doors. Before going their separate ways, they once again exchange weak smiles.

Taking separate routes home, both he and she are struck by a sad awareness. Their months of netplay had been more of a lie than the world they hoped to escape. And both of them now know — he, while he climbs into a cab, and she, while staring out the bus window — it is impossible to change with such ease the lives they are destined to live.

No longer, he thinks, leaning back on the bench seat and crossing his ankles, can he be called ‘Johnnylonely.” She, with her forehead pressed against the window, thinks about her own screen name ‘Carolneeds.” She’d have to discard that now that things didn’t work out.

These small changes, however, would have to be handled more carefully than the larger change they had hoped to make by meeting tonight. As would the incomplete lives they would continue to live, lives which had led them to search out one another in the first place.

A Well Planned Abduction

2009-10-04T12:35:00.001-07:00

2:45 in the afternoon and Kiko lifts the corner of the thin, daisy-patterned curtain. An instant later the young girl comes into view. She skips along the sidewalk. Her blue skirt lifting and dropping, lifting and dropping, her too-heavy backpack stretching her white button-down blouse taut over the immature curves of her budding breasts.

Kiko knows this girl. In fact, he prides himself on knowing everything about her. Just twelve, the child is called Marcella. 4703 Phoebe Drive, the green house shaded by the three tall magnolias. Her two younger brothers, Edwin and Anthony, call her Tita. Her parents work during the day, her father stooping in the asparagus fields and her mother housekeeping at the Holiday Inn. Until five o’clock each afternoon Marcella and her brothers are home, alone.

But Kiko also knows that on Wednesday evenings Marcella’s parents board a bus, which takes them to the Indian Casino, where they remain until midnight. Wednesday. Two days from now. That’s when Kiko intends to abduct this child.

He watches Marcella skip past his window, watches her continue along the sidewalk on her way to the green house at the end of the block, watches her -- and smiles. He knows everything he needs to know about this girl in order to have her. Everything.

***

Just after nine o’clock on Wednesday evening, Kiko crouches in the shadow of one of the three towering magnolias at 4703 Phoebe Drive. Through a curtainless window, he sees the light. It is a grainy, shifting intensity of color and brightness which flashes from a television inside the house. Now and again one of the younger boys call out to their older sister, call out to Tita Marcella and ask her for something or another.

He waits, patiently. He has, after all, until midnight.

10 PM. Quietly, Kiko emerges from brushy shadows and creeps across the yard to the window. A dry twig cracks underfoot. Kiko freezes. His heart climbs into his throat. Only when he is sure no one is rushing to the window to investigate, does he proceed again, cursing his carelessness.

At the window he peers through the glass. The two boys haven’t spoken a word for over an hour. They must have gone to bed. He spots Marcella. Still awake, she lies on the sofa in front of the blaring television. The child’s attentions are on a book she holds above her face. Her long, black hair falls over her shoulder and her sun browned legs, sticking out from the hem of her pink nightgown, are crossed at the ankles.

Kiko licks his lips and presses his forehead against the glass, which quickly clouds from his hot, hot breaths. When Marcella rises to her elbows and glances toward the window, Kiko drops beneath the sill. Had she seen him? He blots his sticky palms on his pant legs and once again his heart gallops.

For a long time he remains crouched with his back against the home’s aluminum siding. An uncontrollable shiver grips his entire body. Had she seen him? He wonders this again. Does she know he’s been watching? Does she know he’s been waiting? Maintaining a low stoop, Kiko hurries around the house to the backyard, where he finds a window jarred. He is elated. He places his palms beneath the metal frame and begins to raise the window. The window groans. Again Kiko freezes.

After waiting a few minutes he lifts the window the rest of the way up and throws a leg over the sill, climbing into the house. It is Marcella’s parents bedroom. Kiko knows this. The sudden recollection that he knows everything gives him an incredible boost of confidence. He pads across the room to the door, and from the door into the hallway, where he follows the pulsing glow of light coming from the living room.

Trying to control his breathing, trying to calm his anxiety, trying to ease his excitement, Kiko braces himself, his back against the wall and counts backward from ten. Then, when his breathing slows, he pokes his head around the corner.

Nothing. No one. Only a television. Where had she gone?

A wisp of cold air tingles the back of Kiko’s neck. He slowly pulls his head back, turns around and finds himself staring directly in Marcella’s eyes. Green eyes. Green glowing eyes. The child grins.

Kiko opens his mouth to scream, but cannot. The child’s cold hands blanket his white knuckles. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Marcella says. “I’ve been planning this for a long time.”

The tiniest moan escapes Kiko’s throat.

Marcella opens her mouth, wide, baring large teeth.

With his mouth still open, Kiko’s eyes roll into the back of his head. Every inch of his body begins to quake. From his gaping mouth a charcoal colored vapor begins to curl out. The mist swirls, round and round and Marcella rounds her lips. She draws the stream of dark fog into her mouth and slowly, Kiko shrivels, shrivels, shrivels into a mound of dust.

Marcella presses her lips together. For a long time she stares at the dust on the carpet at her feet before finally smiling. She heads to the kitchen for a foxtail and dustpan.

Whirling around inside Marcella, are the memories and thoughts of Kiko. Marcella giggles, thinking how funny it is that this man, even now inside of her, still believes he knows everything.

Small Differences

2009-10-04T12:27:00.001-07:00

Saturday afternoon and Mia's not saying anything. She's sunk back in the passenger seat, head back, arms crossed, blonde hair whipping in the crosswind that streams through our open windows. With her brown eyes hidden behind her Brittney shades, I'm not even sure if she's awake.

Just outside of Fresno I exit the highway and blow past crowded gas stations and fast food joints. About a quarter mile down the road, beyond these rickety apartment buildings, there's this shabby convenience store; windows pasted with cardboard signs that advertise beer and cigarettes. I ease off the gas and swing into the lot, bump through the potholes and nose up to a stop in front of the store.

After I kill the engine, I step out of the car. "Be right back," I say to Mia. "Need anything?"

No reply, just a shift in her seat and a turn of her head. She stares off in the direction of the apartment buildings on the other side of the chain-link fence, and rakes her wind-thrashed hair with her fingers. I head on into the shop. I need to grab a bottle of something, anything, to quell my pounding head.

It's dim inside the shop. There's one customer, some trailer-type woman standing in front of the counter. This foreign music, part chant, part cabaret, spills from some unseen speaker. But the music doesn't drown out the humming freezers and the bottles that rattle inside of them. There's this stink, too. A sick mix of sun-heated bananas, stale cigarettes and spilled beer, which just hangs heavy in every inch of the store. I look out the window, between the cardboard signs, through the buzzing flies, and see Mia baking in the parking lot, her bare feet now propped up on the dash.

"Help you," the Indian clerk says, his voice raspy. His customer, the woman, snaps a glance at me over her shoulder.

All morning since pulling out of Los Angeles, except for one quick fuel and bathroom pause before we hauled up over the Grapevine, I've been bent over the steering wheel. I'm suddenly in no hurry to resume that position.

"I can wait," I say, gesturing toward the woman ahead of me. "Go on and help your customer."

The woman turns back to the counter. The Indian sighs when he sees her lift a paper bag, grasp it by the bottom and spills a boatload of pennies onto the counter. The woman gives me another glance over her shoulder, at the same instant yanking down the frayed hem of her denim shorts. Then she thumbs up the strap of her faded halter top and turns back to face the clerk. "How much for the bread again?" she says.

His hands folded, the clerk studies his customer, seems to contemplate how many pennies she has. After a moment, he answers, "Four dollars and forty-two."

"That sounds like a lot."

I shake my head, watch the Indian raise his arms into the air. He says to the woman, "Okay me you go other place."

With a thin finger the woman begins to push her coins across the counter, one after another, past the loaf of bread. She counts out loud, "one, two, three . . . "

I twist my neck and look out the window again. In the Mustang Mia now has her sunglasses pushed back on her head. Her eyes are shut. Damn, I think, I've loved her since we were kids. I can't stand the thought that this could be it for us. After all these years.

"eighteen, nineteen, twenty . . . "

A couple of mottled, scrappy dogs trot through the parking lot. Noses against the blacktop, they slurp up scraps as they head over to where my car is parked. They sniff at the back tires. One of the dogs lifts a leg and sprays. I can't help but shake my head. It's been one of those days. The dogs bounce away, disappear up the sidewalk.

When I hear the Indian clears his throat, I turn my head back around. He's got a finger tapping against his temple. The woman with all the pennies has stopped counting. She's now looking up, running her fingers through her hair. "You're confusing me," she says. "What was I at?".

Scowling, shaking his head, breathing deeply, the clerk says, "Sixty-one. Sixty-one cents"

She starts again: "sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four . . . "

The whole trip had been a disaster. On Wednesday I'd proposed to Mia, the trip to Los Angeles was supposed to have been a celebration. But I couldn't deal with the idiots, who one after another, hit on Mia. And the way she flaunted herself, well that didn't help either. I'd gone off on her, expressing myself honestly, for her being so flirtatious. She claimed I embarrassed her in public, one time too many.

Last night while having dinner in a Japanese restaurant, Mia handed me back the engagement ring. Under the chandelier, she revealed how she really felt about our upcoming marriage. Yeah, she still loved me. Always had, probably always would. So she claimed, anyway. But she also came straight out and said she couldn't deal with my insecurities, couldn't imagine herself spending the rest of her life with a man who blew up over the smallest things.

Thinking about it later, I concluded Mia was probably right. Changing who I was, well that was something I had no idea how to go about. It'd been a problem I'd had my whole life. Back when I was a kid I'd never got much, so everything I earned I clung to. I'd worked hard to better myself, to break free of the crap life I was born into. Mia knows that. She grew up in it, too. So maybe she's been going through her own little phase of 'life is grand' -- who knows? But that doesn't change the fact that she's a little too flirty at times, nor does it change the fact that I'm a little too jealous.

"I forgot where I was again." The woman in front of me taps her fingers against the wooden counter and stares up at the ceiling.

"Two dollar and six."

Before she continues, she glances at me over her shoulder, apologizing without saying. She's got clouded eyes and a smile that begs for attention - from a dentist.

"Two dollar and six," the Indian says again. He takes up a carton of Marlboros, begins to fish out the red packages and slot the rack above him

The woman tugs again the slipped strap of her halter top. She goes on: "seven, eight,. . ." The coins scrape as they glide across the counter and become part of a growing mountain of pennies. "twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one . . . "

The bell above the door jangles. Hearing the distinct clip of heels against the tile floor, I know who it is without turning. I catch a strong whiff of Mia's perfume and feel her firm hand settle in the small of my back.

"That's three dollars, right?" the woman at the counter asks the Indian.

"Two ninety-six," he snaps back. I open my mouth and narrow my eyes. I should say something. How can someone cop such a nasty attitude over four lousy pennies. Such a small difference.

The Indian looks past me to Mia and nods with a smile. With one curved hand he scoops a handful of pennies into his other hand, and then drops them into a box beneath the counter. "Two ninety-six," he says again, calmer now, while he fills his fist with a handful of coins.

The woman resumes counting. My skin tingles when through the thin shirt I'm wearing, Mia's fingertips travel up my back. She brings her mouth to my ear, "I was out of line last night," she whispers, "I'm really sorry."

I don't answer. Instead, I count silently with the woman at the counter; seventy-eight, seventy-nine . . . I clear my throat and continue. Eighty-one, eighty-two . . . There are no words, just an inner voice that counts along, breaking all the same.

"I think I was at sixteen," the woman at the counter says. She glances over her shoulder at me at me and Mia, as if she's searching for confirmation. "Wasn't it sixteen?"

"No. It was Four dollars and one," the Indian claims. He bends over the counter. "Four dollars and one. Why you like to cheat me?"

The woman shakes her head. "I'm sure it was four-sixteen, wasn't it?"

Mia whispers into my ear again, her warm breath dusting my lobe. "We have to promise each other that we'll try to deal with our small differences." She presses her palm tight against my back and lowers her head onto my shoulder. The scent of her hair floods my nostrils.

"You're the one cheating me," the woman at the counter says. "I know it was four sixteen."

The clerk snaps his wrist twice, giving the woman the 'go away' gesture. He smirks. "I keep bread. You don't go back here my store." He crouches behind the counter, comes up with the box of pennies and slams the box down beside the bread. He grabs handfuls of pennies off the counter, those that have been counted, those that haven't, and dumps them into the box.

"How much is the bread?" Mia suddenly says, floating past me toward the counter.

The Indian looks up and smiles. "Four forty-two."

Mia's pocketbook snaps open. She places a ten dollar bill in front of the clerk. "I'd like to pay for it," Mia says. Then she adds, glancing back at me. "Oh, and a bottle of aspirin, right?"

The woman at the counter, a foot shorter than Mia, has raised her head to look at her benefactor. She tugs her halter top's slid strap again..

The clerk whirls around, scans a shelf against the wall with a finger, looking for the aspirin.

I clear my throat. "Tell you what, we don't need aspirin. Go ahead and give the ten bucks to this woman."

The woman whips her head around, eyes wide. She tries to stammer out her thanks, but Mia touches her arm and says, "It's our pleasure. We know where you're coming from."

Two steps later Mia's at my side. She takes my elbow and urges me toward the door. When I pull the door open, the air outdoors blows warm across my face. Mia squeezes my hand. Somehow I know I've begun to chip away at the insecurities that have always plagued me.

Before the door closes completely, I can't help but smile when I hear the woman at the counter say, "No, no. I want to keep the ten dollar bill. I'll pay for the bread with these pennies."

Slots

2009-10-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

The wife's name was Lourdes, and she sat leaning forward with
her bony behind perched on the edge of the stool. She cursed
loudly and pounded the glass face of the quarter slot machine.
The husband, Maurice, stood behind her kneading her
shoulders. He said, "Getting late, dear. Maybe we should think
about going back to the room." Maurice had experienced more
than his share of flashing lights and whirring noises. He'd had
enough of the stale smoke and complimentary coffees for one
night.
Lourdes smacked the machine again, this time with the flat
of her palm. She whipped her head around, glared at her husband
and said, "Go away, will you? You've been bringing me lousy
luck all night." She shrugged free of her husband's hands and
twisted back around to give the machine's handle another yank.
She was like this sometimes. Especially when things weren't
going her way. Oftentimes, her already uncaring demeanor
toward Maurice eroded into outright ugliness. Tonight, however,
she was as bad as Maurice could remember, obviously deciding
to settle in for the long haul to try to recover the money she'd
already lost.

"Come on, Lourdes," Maurice pleaded. "Let's go to the
room."
Without turning to face him, Lourdes said, "I'm not walking
away from a machine that's ready to pay." Behind the glass in
front of her the symbols skidded to a stop.
Lourdes gave a tiny, clenched-teeth squeal and slapped the
machine again. She frowned over her shoulder and said, "Why
are you still here?"
Why indeed, Maurice wondered. All these years and she'd
been the same uncaring, insensitive Loudes. A woman who
cared only about herself. He glanced down at his shoes and
sighed. Ten years of marriage to a woman like Lourdes hadn’t
been easy. Although he'd tried to overlook her selfishness, it was
getting to the point where he couldn't ignore the mounting
thoughts of leaving her. But again and again he asked himself,
just how does a man up and leave someone he once loved more
than anything? How do you give up all the invested years? He
may not have been the happiest man in the world, but he figured
he was content. He had a job, owned a home, ate three meals
a day. What more could a man want? Love? Perhaps. But was it
worth the trouble of chasing down such a desire?
Maurice heard an odd, choking noise and raised his head.
Lourdes? Where was she? Her seat in front of the slot machine
was empty. He broke out in a sweat. His hands began to tremble.
It was then he caught a coiling wisp of gray smoke in front of the
machine. Slowly, the smoke streamed through the machine's coin
catch. On the carpet at the foot of the empty stool rested
Lourdes's little red sandals.
He crept forward and placed a palm on the empty cushion.
The seat was warm, the vinyl impression of his wife's butt rose
beneath his hand. What should he do? He combed the crowded
casino for one of the red-blazered attendants. But of course, like
police officers at a crime scene, there were none to be found. He
stared at the line of blinking buttons on the slot machine Lourdes
had been abusing. There was a red button with the word 'HELP'
printed on it. Maurice went to press the button, thinking maybe
that would bring someone over.
With his finger hovering above the 'HELP' button, Maurice
noticed Loude's forty dollars worth of unused credits. Almost
instinctively, he drew his hand away from the button. He thought
a minute, then reached up and grabbed the handle with his
sweaty palm. He glanced around furtively to make sure no one
was paying attention, then he yanked the handle toward him and
watched the wheels spin.
When the wheels came to a halt, Maurice stared long and
hard. He couldn't believe what he was seeing.
On the centerline behind the glass, one of Lourdes’s hands
rested between two red cherries. He knew the hand belonged to
Lourdes's, because the fingernails were painted that gaudy purple
she liked. He backed away from the slot machine and stared in
horror as the fingers on the hand began to wiggle, as if to say,
“Hey, look at me.” The purple fingernails tapped the inside of
the glass.
Lourdes?
Maurice took a step closer and rapped his knuckles against
the glass.
With his knees bouncing like crazy, he pulled the handle
again.
This time when the wheels quit spinning, one of Lourdes’s
feet was lined up to the right of a pair of golden bells. While
Maurice stared, a grin grew on his face. The bare foot reared
back and kicked the glass hard. Maurice quickly gave the handle
another tug, and when the wheels rolled to a stop, both of
Lourdes’s brown eyes gazed back at him from behind the glass.
A fat genie sat to the left of the eyes. Without the rest of
Lourdes's bronzed face to complement her eyes, it was apparent
to Maurice just how thick a coat of mascara covered Lourdes’s
lashes. He tilted his head and studied the centerline, letting his
eyes wander from left to right, from right to left, watching his
wife’s eyes blink open and closed in rapid succession. Finally,
Lourdes's eyes narrowed into murderous slits.
Maurice gave the wheel another spin and laughed out loud.
Poor Lourdes. Her eyes grew wide before whirling away. One
flew upward, the other plunged down. The wheel snapped to
a stop and just his luck, staring at Maurice from dead center was
Lourdes’s big mouth. One of her ears, a dangling feather earring
still attached, rested on the right of her big mouth. A lucky
number 7 was bold on the left.
The lips flapped up and down, opening and closing. The toowhite
teeth appeared and disappeared, as did Lourdes’s
quivering tonsils. Maurice was sure she was spewing on about
being inside the machine, but for once in his life he didn’t have
to hear a thing she said. Bringing his mouth close to the glass,
Maurice whispered,
“It's over between us, dear.”
Lourdes's lips continued to flap. Maurice grabbed the handle
but before pulling it, he leaned an ear against the glass.
Lourdes said, “Get me --”
Maurice spun the wheel again.
Foot, cherry, bell. Nose, knee, a lucky number 7. Two ears
and a fisted hand. It went that way a while, always the winning
combination of genies or bells or cherries were ruined by one of
Lourdes’s body parts.
The credits plummeted. It occurred to Maurice that this
machine would never pay off. He punched the cash-out button
and watched the ticket spit out the slot. He closed his eyes and
tried to remember what it was like to be happily married and
intimate. But the only image he got inside his head was one of
Lourdes screaming at him for one reason or another. He slid over
to the stool in front of the next machine and, after feeding the
ticket, he yanked the handle.
And there it was. His luck had changed. Three fat genies all
in a row. A hundred and thirty bucks. Maurice fanned his face
with his fingers. This has to be a sign, he thought. He printed his
winning ticket and got up from the stool. A muffled scream rose
from the slot machine that had swallowed his wife. Should he
call for help? The more he thought about it, the more he could
see it didn’t matter one way or the other. He didn’t feel that same
constraint he’d felt before tonight. He felt suddenly free. He felt
as though life was suddenly endless and limitless.
When he heard Lourdes scream again, Maurice smiled. He
pocketed his winning ticket, twisted the ring off his finger and
dropped it clinking into the ashtray next to the machine.

Under The Aztec Sun

2009-10-04T12:18:00.000-07:00

Under the Aztec Sun

As he slowly regained consciousness, Martinez felt he was dreaming. Confined in a small dark space, he was being jostled up and down. It took several minutes for his head to clear, but once it did he was able to identify the steady humming noise as that of an automobile engine. In the dark he tried to stretch his legs, only to realize that someone had him hogtied.

Maria? He pictured his wife, Maria. God, why couldn’t he think straight? Straining to recall what had happened, Martinez drew a blank. He’d been angry with Maria. But angry about what? Each surfacing image was unclear. Like fragments of a faded photograph or puzzling scenes of a movie incorrectly stitched together.

Realizing he was in the trunk of a moving car was easy. Figuring out how he got there was not. He breathed in the hot musty air. Was he inside Maria’s Pinto. Wait. The Pinto was a hatchback. No trunk. By the roughness of the ride he easily determined the driver was speeding down some unpaved road. But headed where?

The bumping suddenly halted, the engine quieted. Martinez heard the driver’s side door being slammed shut. Footsteps crunched over gravel. Someone fumbled with a key. And then the trunk flew open and Martinez closed his eyes against the blinding sunlight. When he opened them again, he recognized the Indian blanket he sometimes spread out on park grass so Maria could sit without staining her clothes. He was in his own trunk. But who was outside? Martinez squinted, but only saw mottled colors floating against a dark silhouette. Maria? No. The silhouette belonged to a man. A large man.

Still unable to make out the shadowy figure, Martinez cleared his parched throat and said, “Who the hell are you? What the hell do you want?”

A solemn, low-pitched voice answered, “I’m the man whose life you destroyed.”

The big man slowly eased into focus. Martinez watched him pull a white handkerchief from an inside pocket of his black coat and wipe his pockmarked face. His hair was tucked beneath a tilted fedora. Behind the man, Saguaro cactuses stood apart at irregular distances with their limbs held up like scarecrows guarding an endless stretch of baked red earth.

“I don’t know you,” Martinez said, feeling dampness under his arms. He tried, but was unable to squirm free of his restraints.

Maria. Something about Maria filled his mind. A Taco Bell on Sepulveda. It grew clear. He remembered now that he had caught her coming out of the restaurant with another man. But it wasn’t this man who stood outside the trunk, was it? No. The man with Maria was much younger, much thinner. But who was that man with Maria? More importantly, who was this man in front of him?

The big man turned his back to Martinez and raised an arm. He removed his fedora and swiped a forearm across his forehead. For a long time he stared into the thick emptiness of the desert. When he finally turned around to face Martinez again, the man said, “It was my daughter’s fifteenth birthday.”

Martinez closed his eyes and tried to draw out the memory of this man. Nothing. All he could recollect was Maria. She and her companion had sat down beside each other at a patio table. They laughed and touched fingertips under the shade of a large green-and-white umbrella.

Martinez remembered the hurt he felt when seeing his wife with another man. The physical pain in his chest. The turning in his stomach. The wobbling of his legs. All that rushed back. But the man outside. Martinez had no recollection of him.

“She was all I had,” the big man said. He turned back around to face Martinez and slowly leaned his head into the trunk, so close that Martinez could smell the alcohol on the man’s breath.

“Who are you?” Martinez said.

The man pulled away and said, “I am a man with nothing left to live for."

“Oh, God,” Martinez murmured.

The big man shook his head. “You remember now, don’t you?”

Martinez remembered.

While he’d sat watching from his car, Maria had leaned into her companion. They kissed. Martinez had gripped the steering wheel. His vision blurred. He recalled with clarity how he reached beneath the seat and felt the cold steel of the pistol. Then everything happened quickly. He pointed the weapon out the window and kept squeezing the trigger until the magazine was empty. Maria was on the ground. Her lover, too. But it was the table behind Maria and her lover. That was where he’d seen him. Martinez’s eyes widened. “God. I didn’t mean to hurt your daughter.”

The big man closed his eyes and raised his head to face the blistering sun. He breathed in deeply as if he needed his lungs to hold every bit of the desert air. His eyes welled. Red flecks were visible on his pulsing neck and his twitching nose.

Closing his eyes again, Martinez replayed the final moment in the Taco Bell parking lot. The big man was weeping, holding his daughter in his arms. Then when the man spotted Martinez, he had carefully laid his child onto the ground. When the man got to his feet and started across the lot, Martinez squeezed the trigger. But the weapon had been empty. He could still hear the hollow clicks. He had tried to restart his car. Then the big man was upon him. Nothing after that.

“Don’t kill me,” Martinez said.

The big man shook his head. “I’m not going to kill you.”

Relieved, Martinez sighed.

Once again the big man raised his face to the sky. “The Aztec sun will take us both.” He then turned and started across the earth. Martinez screamed, but the man continued on until he reached the nearest Saguaro. There he sat and closed his eyes. While Martinez screamed, the big man removed his cap and set it in his lap.

Personal Business

2009-10-04T12:15:00.000-07:00

Personal Business

Gil. Talk about a pancake. Guy finds out his wife’s getting hammered by a coworker and what’s the first thing he does? He calls me up to ask if he should apologize for neglecting her.

“Sure,” I say. “Buy her some roses, too. Hell, why not go all out and bring home a stone.”

“I’m serious,” Gil says. “She went outside the marriage because I never made time for her.”

So naturally, I want to know -- since he’s got a handle on his wife’s affair -- why he’s wasting his dime on me.

“I want Trixie’s lover offed,” he says.

“I don’t do domestic disputes.” Sure, I’m in the business of leveling the playing field, but I don’t get involved with domestics. Too crazy. Too unpredictable. Too emotional.

“But we’re practically brothers,” Gil says.

“If I do it for you . . . word gets out and next thing you know every jellybean whose wife spins a fling starts wanting a personal favor. It’s not good business to get involved in personal shit.”

Gil, after pausing on the phone for a few moments, says, “I’d do it for you.”

I shut my eyes and shake my head. “Would you?”

“You know I would.”

God damn pancake. Forced my fucking hand. “So you’re saying you’d off yourself for me.

“When Gil doesn’t answer right away, I can almost feel his fear bolting right through the phone line. What’d he think? That I didn’t know?

Charlotte, loafing on the living-room sofa, turns down the volume on the television. Good. She needs to hear this, too.

Gil finally breaks his silence, speaks: “I’m not sure I get what you’re saying.”

I try real hard to keep anger out of my tone. “So I’m what, Gil? A sap? You don‘t think I know you’ve been banging Charlotte?”

Charlotte glances up, wide-eyed. I narrow my eyes, can almost see beads of sweat bubbling up on her forehead.

“It’s not like that. I mean --” But Gil’s brain is spinning faster than he can slap the sentences together.

Charlotte’s still staring. She’s scratching an elbow and blinking a lot.

“I have to get going,” Gil says. In the earpiece, his voice is quavering.

“No.” I reply. “Not yet. Besides, Charlotte wants to say good-bye to you.”

On the sofa, Charlotte stiffens. Her eyes grow even rounder.

“Come on, Ricardo,” Gil says. “Let’s you and I talk about this.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing. Talking.” I raise my free hand, point to Charlotte, curl my finger to call her over. “Hold on. She’s coming.”

Charlotte shakes her head.“Oh. I guess she doesn’t want to talk right now. Too bad.” Then I tell Gil, whose breathing has grown quick, that Charlotte’s not going to say goodbye after all.”

“Come on, Ricardo,” Gil says again. “Don’t do anything hasty.”

I wait a minute before answering. Then I say, “You’re right Gil. Let me try your approach.”

Gil doesn’t say anything. Charlotte doesn’t move.

Still holding the phone, I address Charlotte, saying “Babe. Sorry I neglected to find time for you.” I reach inside my coat, withdraw my revolver, thumb the hammer back.

“Not like this,” Charlotte says, real soft. “Please, Ricky, not like this.”

“What’re you doing?” Gil says, his voice in a desperate panic. “What are you doing, Ricardo?”

I squeeze the trigger. Charlotte falls back into the coffee table. Shit crashes everywhere. I breathe in the sulfuric odor and place the revolver on the kitchen counter. Then I raise the receiver to my mouth, say to Gil, “No. Your way didn’t work so well. My way didn‘t either, but what the hell.”

The phone on the other end crashes down into its cradle. I go over to the sofa and sit down, grab the remote and start searching channels. Charlotte’s on top of the collapsed coffee table, a forearm over her face. The bullet entered her throat. Blood is still containing, arterial spray littering the whole damned place.

I check my watch. Gil. What a fucking pancake. He won’t be hard to find. Some pancakes -- they just don’t have the sense to listen. After all, I did try to convince him getting involved with domestic strife was too emotional.

***

BIO: Robert Aquino Dollesin was still a kid when he left the Philippines. He now resides in Sacramento, where he writes now and again. Among numerous other venues, some of his work can be found on Storyglossia, Nossa Morte, Big Stupid Review, and forthcoming in Thug Lit.

And we were talking about death again . . .

2009-10-03T11:38:00.001-07:00

And we were talking about death again.

Eternal Grains of Sand

2009-10-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

Subbed on 10/3/09 to Smokelong Quarterly

***

Eternal Grains of Sand

Grainy red twilight streamed through the billowing kitchen curtains of an Ohio farmhouse.

Standing in front of the sideboard, a young housewife blotted her palms on her apron. She then reached out and wrapped her fingers around an egg-timer. She flipped the egg-timer over and watched with awe as fine yellow grains trickled through the egg-timer's cinched center.

On a secluded beach in the Indian Ocean a team of artists gathered at the base of a mound of yellow sand that had drizzled down from the heavens. Working together, the determined artists molded the sand into a huge block. Once their huge block of sand had been moistened with frothy seawater, the artists began to painstakingly sculpt. Armed with bottomless buckets, high pillars were formed. Crafting additional blocks of sand in the same manner, the artists erected the four ornate walls of an ancient temple.

The temple was shaded by wide-canopied, fruit-bearing trees. Then colorful birds and screaming monkeys and creeping mammals were brought in to fill the sky above the trees and the crotches of the trees themselves and the earth beneath the trees and the hollows beneath the earth. Metallic-armored insects were released to provide glint and buzz to the silent nights. Stars and a moon were tossed into the air to sparkle the black sky.

Satisfied with the world they'd put together, the artists stepped into the temple they'd created and began to etch a smaller block of sand into a low round table.

Once finished, the artists departed the temple and disappeared like vapor into the misty forest.

For a long time, time stood still. Vines tangled the walls and the pillars of the temple. Gnarled roots of the trees the artists had planted grew up out of the earth around the temple. The insects and animals multiplied, evolved into different creatures.

Then one night a monk robed in orange appeared from a gap between the trees that surrounded the temple. The shadows of the leaves of the trees shivered on the monk's pale and solemn face.

Slowly, he made his way over the earth and entered the temple. Stooping over the low table that the artists had built, the monk began to chant. He removed his chakpu from inside his robe and tapped it over the low table, releasing a flow of red sand. The sand dripping from the chakpu changed colors. Orange and blue and yellow. Working throughout the night, the monk tapped out a brilliant rainbow; circle encircling circle encircling circle.

His work complete, the monk departed the temple and disappeared into the same surrounding forest in which the artists had gone.

Inside the temple, on top of the low table, in the rainbow's vibrant red center – its eye -- a young Ohio housewife stood in the glow of the grainy red twilight streaming in through the billowing curtains of her kitchen window and blotted her palms on her apron. She then reached out and wrapped her fingers around an egg-timer.

Characters

2009-10-03T09:30:00.001-07:00

Characters

Robert on Sunday felt them wriggling beneath his skin, contorting their bodies in an attempt to burst free. They sucked from within, their outlines swelling each time they drew breath. The suckered pads of their palms pressed outward, and they altered their shapes inside him.

They rose and swirled like soap bubbles. Their colors leaped through Robert's veins, leaving a milky trail. And their textures – like colored-paper streamers – whipped against his organs.

From very far away they pleaded, revealed themselves.

Allison, eating her hand. Montague, his undulating skin rippling with color. Beverlyn, murky water rising in her coffin. Boston Joe, his body reshaping itself like clay.

They blew warm breaths against the inside of Robert's eyelids, they dug the marrow from his bones with curved fingernails.

They materialized from smoky vapors and shattered mirrors. They melted on his tongue. Their odors pounced on him. Like bugspray, like cook grease, like strawberry-scented candles. They popped like kindling, batted the screens like insects, wailed like patrol cars.

“Tell my tale,” they begged.

So Robert picked up his pen. But when he began to write . . .

. . . they faded away.

Sores

2009-10-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

Sores --

The red, dime-sized rosettes first appeared on the back of my neck. Next day they'd spread to my shoulders. Got to itching so bad I couldn't put a shirt on. By that second night the tiny blisters covered every inch of my body. The slightest movement caused scores of them to burst, leaving oozing wounds. Hardly able to move, I grabbed the phone, called Rachel, told her to come straight over.

She got in using the key under the mat. She came into the bedroom. You in here, Petey?

I'm In bed.

She hit the lights. Catching sight of me she brought her hands to her mouth. You gotta be kidding me. She crossed the room, sat on the edge of the bed. She asked, Can I touch? I nodded. Rachel gently ran her fingertips over the sores. Then she shed her clothes, pressed herself against me. Whispering in my ear, she asked, How long until I'm infected?

I told her the bumps had spread wildfire-quick. She smiled. I gotta call Jenna.

You'll be sorry, I said, feeling milky liquid ooze from the rashes.

Why?

You know soon as people know you got something, they want a piece, too.

Arm in the Wall

2009-10-03T09:26:00.001-07:00

The Arm in the Wall #22

In the one room apartment I rented after my wife walked out on me, there is an arm sticking out of the wall next to the sunburst clock. Most of the time the arm just dangles quietly from the wall. But once in a while it will raise itself up and wave to me. Glad for the company, I wave back.

Sometimes I wonder if there is more to the arm in the wall than just an arm. I mean, if I chipped away at the stucco would I discover an attached torso, legs, a head? On very rainy days I’m tempted to take up an ice pick and go at it. But then I begin to remember my wife, how content I was before I realized there was more to her than two ample breasts and a moist vagina.

I think I’ll just continue sitting here, enjoying the fact that the arm is still just an arm.

Cliff Divers

2009-10-03T09:24:00.002-07:00

Cliff Divers

This evening, while standing behind the ropes on the banks of a deep-water river, we stared up, shielded our eyes from the sun, and watched a young Mexican boy balance himself on the edge of a cliff. The young boy swung his arms back, then sprung off the edge. The moment he cleared the jagged jutting rocks, the boy straightened his arms and legs. The boy dived through the air gracefully and hit the water in perfect form, leaving only the tiniest ripple. When the boy’s head popped out of the water a loud applause erupted from the surrounding crowd.

I looked over at my wife. She was thrilled, smiling in a way I hadn’t seen her smile in a long time. She had her hands clasped in front of her chest, her lower lip was clamped between her teeth and her eyes flashed with joy. It gave me such pleasure to see her like that again. So much pleasure I even considered scaling that cliff myself, and leaping off the edge.

I didn’t of course. That would have been silly. Besides, we’d been plunging for a long time and hadn’t yet hit the water. So instead of leaping from the cliff, I seized my wife by her wrists and drew her close against me. I kissed her and for the first time in many months she kissed me back. “Maybe,” I said. “it’s time to put it behind us. Maybe it’s time to return to the hotel and try again.”

Money and Envy

2009-10-03T09:24:00.001-07:00

Money and Envy

Mostly, their arguments involved money. They had so much money it was laughable to think they could possibly exhaust it during their lifetimes. No matter how much of their money they spent or gave away, it always seemed to flow back - the sum even greater than before. Sometimes they’d fret all night, worrying about all the money they had. How could they possibly get rid of it?

On short trips through town, from behind the tinted windows of their chauffeured, stretch limo, they would watch the less fortunate with envy, wishing they could somehow have just a taste of that world.

On more than one occasion they attempted to slip into the fantastic world of the person down-in-the-dumps. After spending a whole evening tattering their fine clothing, they’d show up at a food bank, shuffle to the end of the line, where they’d inch along for hours in hopes of receiving a free, dry turkey dinner. It was wonderful bliss being among the smelly residents of skid row. Inevitably, though, someone would notice his argyle socks under the frayed hems of his doctored trousers. Or else they’d spot the sterling silver cigarette filter she stuffed the bent butts she’d picked from ashtrays into. Posers, they’d be called -- fakes. They’d be laughed out of line, shooed away by toothless vagrants; dirty hands would clap in loud applause at the revelation of their phoniness.

They tried sleeping on park benches, but even the pigeons perched above them laughed and refused to bombard them with their moist droppings. They dropped beneath city bridges, where on top of cardboard or in the dust, they tried to make themselves as uncomfortable as possible. Someone, however, always showed up with caviar in silver bowls, perfectly charred rib-eye steaks and the finest vintage wine.

They sloshed through the muddy earth at the city landfill. Like the poor and destitute they so envied, they used sharpened sticks to poke the trash, hoping to come up with something rotten and disgusting to eat or wear or sell. But as luck would have it, the booty at the end of their sticks was either fabulous jewelry, fantastic furs, or briefcases of money itself.

After a time they gave up on their dream and accepted that life wasn’t fair. Some people are destined -- almost chosen -- to live miserable and hungry and down trodden. And since nothing they did seemed to diminish them, they would simply have to be content with the great amount of money they had, and try their best not to envy those with much less.

Celeste

2009-10-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

Celeste: 353 WC

The knuckles on Celeste’s fingers were larger than the mouth of the aspirin bottle, so she had to use tweezers to get the cotton out. She poured all the pills into the toilet, stuffed the empty plastic bottle into her mouth and ground it flat with her teeth. She swallowed the bottle, then removed two additional bottles from the medicine cabinet and followed the same procedure.

Finally she came to bed, naked and ready. Celeste smiled, showing her steel teeth. She set her left hand with its enormous knuckles on my chest and said, “My headache’s gone away.”

So we did it, and afterward I turned out the light and laid on top of the covers feeling guilty. Celeste had not wanted to have sex, but I had insisted.

In the morning she couldn’t get out of bed. Her forehead was as hot as an orange skillet. Every inch of her body quivered, and during the night her already large knuckles had swollen to the size of golf balls.

I went into the bathroom and soaked a small towel with cold water. The wet towel hissed when I ran it over Celeste’s burning skin.

I picked up the phone and dialed 911. It tore me up watching the paramedics work over my wife’s naked body. She was so self-conscious that if she’d had a drop of awareness, she would have wept in shame at having her body exposed.

They loaded her onto a gurney, wheeled her out to the ambulance and rushed her to the hospital. At 11:42 in the morning Celeste was pronounced dead.

A couple months after the funeral a friend encouraged me to join a singles club. At the club gatherings I met dozens of big-knuckled, steel-teethed women. All of them as self-conscious about their flaws as my deceased wife had been. While each of these subsequent relationships resulted in satisfying sex, I soon came to realize how special a woman Celeste was.

As ashamed as she was of her steel teeth and overlarge knuckles, Celeste never denied me the pleasure of making love to her with the lights on.

Runners

2009-10-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

Runners:

The runners sprouted up when I was eleven. First one came out on the inside of my right wrist. A couple days later one burst through the skin on the nape of my neck. Then, in quick succession, two of them broke out within hours of one another, one on each of my hips.

They developed in a matter of weeks, and except for the fact that they were no larger than a maple leaf, the runners physically resembled me in every way. Each of them had red curly hair, green eyes, and thick pouty lips. Each even possessed the purple birthmark that blemishes my right shoulder. Initially they lacked individual personalities. When I was sad, the runners were also sad. If I was in a good mood, the same emotion filled their faces.

But over time they became their own entities, parasitic and dependent perhaps, but still their own persons. We became best friends, the runners and I. We often competed in board games, sat on the sofa watching television, or read novels together in the comfort of our bed.

At school and other public places, I learned to hide them by wearing bulky button-up shirts, of which I kept the sleeves tugged to the center of my palms and always wore the collar up. For a long time nobody noticed that I had four miniature clones of myself dangling from various parts of my body.

Then one day, Charlie Benzinger, a boy known for having a cruel streak, saw me in the corridor and said, “Hey, Moron. Why you always walking around with the cuffs of your sleeves in your hands?”

I tried to ignore Charlie, tried to hurry past him, but he reached out and took a handful of my right shirtsleeve from behind. I went one way, he tugged the other. Neither of us slacked until the shirt tore.

Charlie‘s eyes grew big. “Holy crap,” he said, letting the material he was holding drop to the tiled floor. “What the fuck you got growing on you, Moron?” I tried to adjust my shirt to hide the exposed runner on my wrist. But it was too late. A small silent crowd had started to gather and Charlie, who was still shaking his head, said, “I always knew you were a freak.”

I didn’t say anything, just stared at my sneakers. Both of the runners on my hips and the one on the back of my neck kept perfectly motionless under the fabric of my shirt. The one on my wrist, however, having been exposed, stretched the rubbery connective membrane as far as he could and tried to hide in my palm.

Charlie took a couple steps toward me. Although I wanted to bolt, my legs refused to cooperate. Sensing my fear, the runner on my palm began to cry. I closed my hand. Charlie reached out and used his big fingers to pry open my smaller ones. The runner crouched. Charlie snatched it, wrapping his fingers around him like he was a rolling pin. Then Charlie yanked, hard. The tiny runner screamed. I felt a burning sensation erupt from my palm as Charlie pulled once more and ripped the runner free.

Charlie held the struggling runner up. He slowly turned around and showed the gasping crowd, which had by this time swelled in number. “Look,” Charlie said, “It’s a miniature moron.” Nobody laughed. Everyone remained silent. Then the runner, blood pouring from the hollow of his back where the membrane had been torn, leaned forward and clamped into one of Charlie’s fingers with his tiny teeth.

Charlie screamed, opening his hand. “God damn moron!“ he shouted. The runner hopped out of Charlie’s hand and with his arms held out at his sides, floated to the floor like a propeller pod. Then, searching for safety, he began to race toward me. But in an instant Charlie’s foot came down on top of it. I turned my head as the brittle bones crunched.

I felt my lips tremble. I lowered my head and ran at Charlie, ramming the top of my skull into his midsection, knocking him to the ground. I stomped at his teeth. Through tears, I could see blood spill from his mouth. I dropped to my knees and pummeled him with both fists. One of the teachers had come out of her classroom. She pushed through the crowd and grabbed me beneath the arms, pulling me off of Charlie and slamming me against the lockers. Other teacher’s appeared, quickly bringing order to the crowded corridor. When I looked down and saw him, the runner Charlie had stomped, squirming on the tiles; broken and still trying still to make his way over to me, I pushed myself off the lockers, closed my eyes and stomped him myself.

That was the last day I attended Sunnybrook Middle School. When my father came and picked me up from the principal’s office, he showed no signs of being angry. In the car he said, “Why didn’t you tell me you had runners?”

“I thought you’d think I was weird,” I replied.

“Why would you think that?”

I shrugged and looked out the window, saw my reflection and thought about the runner that now lay dead in a cigar box in the Science room.

At home, I locked myself in the bathroom and although I cried through the whole procedure, I decided I had to get rid of them. After reaching behind my head and pulling on the one at the back of my neck, I decided to stuff cotton in my ears so I wouldn’t have to hear them scream. When I felt the skin beneath it give way, I closed my eyes, dropped it into the toilet and flushed, keeping my eyes shut until the roar of the toilet had subsided.

Then I did the same with the ones on my hips.

Later, at the dinner table, my father told me that I was in fact a runner myself, pulled from his left ankle when he was nine and nurtured in pristine soil for several months before developing a personality of my own.

I thought he was lying. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it over his right shoulder, revealing a purple birthmark identical to mine. He buttoned back up and asked, “Did you ever wonder why you didn’t have a mother?”

When I told him what I’d done in the bathroom, my father was disappointed but not angry. He rolled up his left shirtsleeve to the elbow and showed me two raised rosette scars. He explained that my gaping wounds would smooth out in a few weeks to remind me that my runners had been real.

It happened exactly as my father said it would. A few weeks later the wounds scarred over. I mourned for months afterward, missing them dearly.

I am sixteen now, and last night a tiny red bump appeared on the meaty flesh of my left thigh. Lying in bed I feel the slightest movement beneath the bump.

I’m not quite sure how I should react.

An Incident at the Ice Rink

2009-10-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Subbed to Mudlucious on 10/10/09

***

A Pink Evening at the Ice Rink
by Robert Aquino Dollesin

The woman skating ahead of me slipped and struck her head on the ice. I scraped to a stop and dropped down beside her. A pool of pink blood was beginning to blossom on the ice around her head. She was unconscious. Her face contorting, her limbs twitching. Before long other skaters crowded around. Some older guy who claimed to be a doctor took charge, started to bark out instructions. He told some of those who'd gathered around what to do -- what to get. He swung his arms to clear the crowd away so he’d have room to work.

But I couldn’t move.

My gaze was fixed on the sweat running off the woman’s face. Her open mouth. Her closed, but flickering eyelids. The snapping joints of her arms and legs.

The man who'd taken charge shouted at me. “Grab her feet, dammit! Keep them steady.”

When I didn’t move, the gray-haired man slammed a fist on the ice and said, “Do it!”

I blinked. Everything was dreamlike, hazy.

I got myself positioned between the woman’s feet and held her ankles through her pink woolen socks to keep the heels of her skates from pounding the ice. My hands slid down to the tops of her white shoes, keeping them in the crotch between my thumbs and forefingers, keeping the razor sharp blades tight against the ice.

Everything was happening quickly. Panic. Distorted voices hollering back and forth. People skating past. Shadows falling over me. The nervous voice of a woman over the speakers, trying to calm everyone down.

I held fast to the downed woman's feet, determined to do everything I could to help.

I felt her feet shake in my grip. I held tighter, pushed down harder. The blades slipped, sliding, bringing me with her knees up and close to her bottom. The knees drew apart.

In the hysteria of the moment I held my breath, then furtively peered up under the woman's pink skirt and sneaked a glimpse at her panties. Like her skirt. Like her socks. Her panties were pink. They were sheen, her pale skin and dark pubic hair were visible beneath them. Everything exposed except for the triple knitted square that concealed her most private part.

“She’s not going to make it,:” someone shouted. “God damn it. She’s not going to make it.”

The doctor started pounding his fists on the woman’s chest. People screamed frantically. She went limp in my grip. The doctor sighed.

"She's gone," he said. "You can let go now."

But I couldn't unwrap my fingers from her shoes, no more than I could pull my leer away from the pink panties underneath her skirt.

Even the doctor peeled my fingers one by one from the woman's shoes, I kept thinking -- Pink. Pale pink. Wide bit of thin pink fabric separating the pink waistband from the elastic leg holes that dug into the dead woman's pink thighs.

Relief

2009-10-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

Relief --

I wipe the condensation off the glass and stare at the sidewalk in front of the burnt remains of the house. The night is bright and I can hear Melanie’s soft, delicate voice carried by the breeze from the hollowed out shell of her two-story house. My skin crawls and an icy tingle travels up my spine. Even after releasing the curtain, the hairs on my arms and neck remain stiff.

I slam the door behind me and cross the street, where I lean against the mailbox and wait. The house creaks open and from nowhere Melanie appears with her dogs.

Directly in front of me now, the dogs whine, tuck their tails and tug at the ends of their leashes, trying to pull Melanie away from me.

“Is someone there?” Melanie calls out.

I wish I’d noticed movement behind the curtain before pouring the gasoline and lighting the match. I know truth might bring relief.

The headlights of a car hit me from behind. “Oh, God,” Melanie says. The same headlights hit her and the dogs, shattering them into mist.

In my bedroom, looking again out the window, I see their unrelieved silhouettes, pacing in front of the house.

Fat Elvis

2009-10-03T09:18:00.001-07:00

Fat Elvis --

My mother is at the stove frying up breakfast when my father comes out of their bedroom dressed all spiffy. He’s about to drive two hours to attend his thirty year high school reunion. There’s been tension in the house over the past few days. Apparently, my father feels he should go to the reunion without my mother.

“You don’t know those people,” he’d argued. “You’ll feel awkward and out of place. And you being uncomfortable will keep me from having fun.”

“I never said I wanted to go.” My mother pushed past him into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

He looked over at me then, my father did, and shrugged.

Now, standing in the kitchen, he’s got on these black polyester trousers that are too tight in the rear. The straight hems barely reach his black loafers. Beneath a white blazer with silver buttons that I‘m sure he can‘t close, he’s wearing a yellow shirt with ruffles, the two buttons nearest the neck undone, the wispy gray hairs on his chest visible.

My mother turns from the stove. She lays her spatula down on the counter and wipes her hands on her apron. “You’re not going dressed like that, are you?”

“What?” My father tries to raise his arms, but the tight blazer keeps them below his shoulders.. “What’s wrong with this?”

“Well, nothing if it was still 1978.”

He smiles and spins around. “This is how they remember me. Cool Elvis Addams.”

“Cool Elvis Addams doesn’t exist anymore.”

“He does today. Elvis Addams is back in town.” He does a silly shoulder shuck and drums the air in front of him with his fisted hands.

“You’re going to make a fool of yourself.” My mother crosses the kitchen and takes the right sleeve of his blazer. “Come on. Let’s get you changed into something at least a little respectable.”

He yanks free. “Not a chance. Cool Elvis Addams is baaaack.” He brushes some imaginary dust off one shoulder.

“Yeah,” my mother says. She turns and heads back to the stove. “Maybe she’ll throw her panties at you.”

My father doesn’t say anything. He runs his fingers through his thickly-gelled hair and positions a clump of it in front of his left eye. He clears his throat. “I gotta get going.”

“Have fun,” my mother says, not turning from the stove.

The front door closes behind him and my mother turns the knob on the stove to the off position. She goes over to the window and pushes the curtain aside. “Elvis,” she mumbles. “Fat Elvis.”

“Fat Elvis?” I ask, coming over to stand beside her. “Who’s fat Elvis? Dad?”

My mother lets the curtain drop. She looks over at me and grins. Her grin broadens. Something crazy‘s running through her head. Something real crazy. I ask her again, “Who’s fat Elvis?“

She keeps on grinning, knowing something, but not saying .

Bull Story

2009-10-03T09:16:00.002-07:00

Bull Story

She blew a mouthful of smoke into my face, sat forward on her seat and asked, “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?”

I stared at the label on the beer bottle -- a blue bull -- and pondered the question. I’d done lots of crazy things in my life: eaten live crabs, skateboarded nude across a church rooftop on a Sunday, walked into a bank wearing a George W. Bush rubber mask. Lots of crazy things. A whole slew of nutty experiences flitted through my mind. Then, still staring at the blue label on the bottle, I remembered the bull.

Setting my beer on the counter, I grinned and said, “I once fought a bull.”

“Like in Spain? Wearing a cape and holding one of those rapier things?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

Smiling like Heath Ledger in the Batman movie, she said, “Fought a bull, huh? Tell me about it.”

***

It was a summer evening and one of the neighborhood girls, Joan, and I were walking alongside a sweet smelling meadow. She pointed past the barb wire fence and said, “Look at that poor old bull.”

I turned and saw the pitiful animal. It was a weak-shouldered thing, head bent down, face in the high dry grass. I picked up a rock and pelted its flank. Raising its head, the bull switched its tail and gave a snort. It continued to work its jaws in a side-to-side manner, chewing a mouthful of dry grass.

“Why’d you do that?” Joan asked. “The poor thing wasn’t harming anyone.”

“Bulls are vicious,” I said. “Like scorpions.” I snagged a branch off the ground and tossed it over the barb wire fence. “I’m going to fight it.”

Joan laughed. “I hope it kills you.” But when I positioned my hands between the barbs, raising one wire and lowering another, she said, “Don‘t be stupid.”

I stooped and got myself between the wires and into the meadow. I picked up my branch and watched Joan frown. After I’d taken several steps toward the bull, she said, “You better get out of there right now before you get yourself killed.”

Clicking my tongue to get the bull’s attention, I cautiously advanced with my weapon. The bull didn’t move. It stood in the same place it had been when I blasted it with the rock, still gazing at me, still switching its tail, still working its jaws.

Fifteen yards or so before reaching the bull, I turned to Joan and said, “This old thing is ready for the belt factory.”

Joan’s eyes got big. Her mouth opened and she raised an arm and started jabbing the air. I whirled and caught the bull slowly approaching. Holding my branch in front of me, I said, “Come on you old bull. Show me your stuff.”

***

“You’re full of crap,” the woman said. She shook her head and lit a fresh cigarette off the one she’d been smoking.

“I have a scar to prove it,” I said, reaching for the top button of my shirt. I unbuttoned the top button. The woman crushed out the shorter of her two cigarettes and said, “I don‘t want to see your wound. Go ahead and finish your story.”

***

The bull bent its front right knee and dragged the hoof against the earth, bringing up dust. It’s nostrils flared.

“Get out of there!” Joan cried out from the other side of the fence.

I remained poised with my branch. The bull charged with its head lowered, pounding the earth with its hooves. Just at the point when the bull could have driven one of its horns into me, I stepped aside and as it flew past I whacked it on its big rear end with my branch. It skidded to a stop and slowly came round to face me. Once again the bull worked its front foot against the ground. Its moist nostrils flared much more rapidly than prior to its initial charge. Snorting, the bull rushed me again.

I attempted to repeat my maneuver, but this time I was not quick enough. As I stepped aside, the bull’s horn tore the left side of my shirt and ripped into the flesh above my left hip. I dropped the stick, bent over and grimaced in pain. The bull, now several yards past me, screeched to a halt.

It came around, narrowed its eyes, and as it prepared another attack steam came out of its nostrils.

This time when it rushed me, even with blood soaking my shirt and Joan screaming her lungs out, I managed to step aside in time and avoid the bull’s passing horns. Before it could get itself turned around I swept up behind it and wrapped my right arm around its neck. I tightened my grip, leaning back, lifting the bull’s front legs off the ground. In an attempt to free itself, the bull kicked at my kneecaps with its back legs, narrowly missing. I squeezed the bull’s thick neck even tighter. Finally, after flailing a bit the bull lost consciousness and went limp in my arms.

Somehow, wounded as I was, I managed to make it out of the meadow and with Joan’s help, stagger home. At the hospital, where I stayed for nearly two weeks before being released, I was stitched up and told how lucky I was not to have been killed.

***

The woman lit another cigarette and gestured to the barkeep for another beer. “That’s the biggest shit story I’d ever heard,” she said. She shook her head and added, “I was being serious when I asked you what the craziest thing was you’d ever done.” She blew another puff of smoke into my face and looked past my shoulder. We passed a moment in silence. Then her beer came and she got up with it and strode past me to the other end of the bar, where she sat down between two young men.

I downed the remaining beer in my bottle and paid my tab. Walking past the woman on my way to the bathroom, I heard her say to the two men, “That’s the guy. What a liar he is.” They both laughed.

In the bathroom I stood in front of the mirror and unbuttoned my shirt. I took it off and turned, raising my left arm above my head so I could see my left side in the mirror. I stared at the scar the bull had left me. Five of the scar’s nine inches stuck out of the beltline of my jeans, raised and thick and shiny. I stared a long time at the scar and wondered if instead of trying to impress the woman with my story about the bull, I should have told her about the fifteen mini-bottles of Jack I once downed during a two hour flight. No. She probably wouldn’t have believed that, either.

***
This is a good story-a-day effort. It still feels like a first draft, there's scope for polishing, but the underlying story is there and works fine. I enjoyed it.

I think because of the way you provide the setting, which is minimal, it's not immediately clear that there's no real relationship between these two. This is just some woman in a bar, and tired of his story she moves off and sits with two other guys. Maybe it just needs something small in the opening to establish that more clearly.

I thought the opening exchange, prior to the start of the bull tale, was a bit baggy. I wasn't sure you needed the second paragraph at all, and the dialogue could lose a couple of lines as it only serves to set the scene and introduce the bull tale. Also, I don't know how Heath Ledger smiled in Batman so that reference was lost on me.

I turned and saw the pitiful animal. It was a weak-shouldered thing, head bent down, face in the high dry grass. I picked up a rock and pelted its flank. Raising its head, the bull switched its tail and gave a snort. It continued to work its jaws in a side-to-side manner, chewing a mouthful of dry grass.

In the above, I would consider dropping the first sentence. Pitiful comes from the description that follows (might need a tweak), so you're kind of telling then showing the same thing, and it's taken as read that you've seen it to describe it. So opening it with 'It was a weak-shouldered thing...' works fine, I think.

Clicking my tongue to get the bull’s attention, I cautiously advanced with my weapon.

I think during revision there's an opportunity to go back over word choices and find more effective combinations. You've got the story down just fine. Here, 'cautiously advanced' sounds a little formal, but maybe that's just me. There are other phrases, too, that made me feel similarly. And 'with my weapon' is okay but not particularly visual. Something along the lines of 'I clicked my tongue to alert the bull and crept forward with the branch raised.' Not that you need to use those exact words, it's the idea I'm trying to convey.

“I don‘t want to see your wound. Go ahead and finish your story.”

I don't think it's a big deal, but sometimes you can cut quite a bit from dialogue and make it more effective. Here, I'd consider reducing this to:

"Finish your story."

It conveys that she doesn't want to see the scar, and, I think, her attitude towards his tale.

“Get out of there!” Joan cried out from the other side of the fence.

A little bit of spoonfeeding the reader here, as we know Joan is the other side of the fence. I think removing the extra words increases the pace.

I remained poised with my branch. The bull charged with its head lowered, pounding the earth with its hooves.

The first sentence here is also spoonfeeding a little, and I think going straight from Joan crying out to the bull charging is more effective. Pounding the earth with its hooves is a bit of a cliche, I think. Not a big deal, but maybe you don't need anything at all there or maybe there's an original alternative.

Just at the point when the bull could have driven one of its horns into me, I stepped aside and as it flew past I whacked it on its big rear end with my branch. It skidded to a stop and slowly came round to face me. Once again the bull worked its front foot against the ground. Its moist nostrils flared much more rapidly than prior to its initial charge. Snorting, the bull rushed me again.

It feels too wordy in places, where perhaps you're trying to be too precise. For example, everything up to the first comma could be replaced by the simple, "At the last moment" or similar. What you have is perhaps more graphic and visual, but it feels too wordy to me. I also note that each time you avoid the bull you use 'step' or 'stepped' aside. In particular with the final usage, I think you need an alternative. Stepped is quite sedate. It sounds okay the first time, but I think as you up the ante, this guy needs to do something more than step. Also too wordy, for me at least, is 'Its moist nostrils flared much more rapidly than prior to its initial charge'. Consider, for example, "it's nostrils flared rapidly". Moist at this point is unnecessary, maybe you want moist the first usage where you're creating the image, whereas here we have the image and you're giving us the action. Rapidly probably does enough to convey that it's more than the first time.

I attempted to repeat my maneuver, but this time I was not quick enough. As I stepped aside, the bull’s horn tore the left side of my shirt and ripped into the flesh above my left hip. I dropped the stick, bent over and grimaced in pain. The bull, now several yards past me, screeched to a halt.

Here's some more formal language, in the first sentence, with 'attempted to repeat my maneuver'. Perhaps you can avoid that line at all and just have, "I was too slow", but either way it's about language choice, and I think as written it sounds too formal (but hey, a lot depends on we come from in making that judgement, it's not by any means black and white). I wasn't keen on the bull screeching to a halt either. Maybe because it's been used a lot, a bit of a cliche, but with mechanical things such as cars. I'd consider looking for an original alternative more applicable to a bull.

This time when it rushed me, even with blood soaking my shirt and Joan screaming her lungs out, I managed to step aside in time and avoid the bull’s passing horns.

Here, I think you really need something more than step. He's got blood spreading across his shirt, probably running down his body. Joan is screaming her lungs out. This guy should be throwing himself out of the way. I also think 'passing horns' is too plain and perhaps passive. Something more consistent with a large mammal with potentially lethal appendages bearing down on you is appropriate. I think the language here has to match the action and at the moment it's too weak.

In an attempt to free itself, the bull kicked at my kneecaps with its back legs, narrowly missing.

I think phrases like, "In an attempt to free itself" are not only spoonfeeding, they slow the story down unnecessarily. Much better, in my opinion, is to cut it and go with the bull kicking at his kneecaps. On that note, kicking at is quite weak. Something like lashing out or similar might be worth considering.

The ending goes where you want it to, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. An alternative, not necessary but possible, is to have her insist at the end on seeing his scar after telling him she thinks the story is bullshit, and him not doing so then going into the bathroom and examining it. Not necessarily any better, but I can see this woman at the end of the story wanting to see the scar.

Usual caveat, many of the comments are about how I might write this. You're under no obligation to accept them.

Cheers,
Rob

Something Different about my Wife

2009-10-03T09:16:00.001-07:00

Something Different About My Wife --

My wife came home last night without her beautiful green eyes. She slipped out of her coat, draped it on the arm of the sofa and sat down. For a long time she sat across from me, keeping her hands in her lap and not saying a word. I tried to pretend I didn’t notice her eyes were gone, but the deep empty sockets on her face kept catching the light that came in through the window.

She leaned forward, grabbed my pack of Marlboros off the coffee table, shook one out and lit it. Then she slumped back on the sofa and crossed her legs.

Finally, I broke the silence by asking her how her day went.

She answered in an angry tone, saying, “I see you didn’t bother mowing the lawn today.”

I was tempted to ask how she knew the grass hadn’t been cut. But just then she drew on the butt of her cigarette. After a second a cloud of blue smoke streamed out of her empty eye sockets.

“You didn’t cook dinner either, did you? Did you get anything at all done today?”

I wanted to tell her I replaced the broken shoestrings on my Converse high tops and even thought about going outdoors for a walk. I wanted to tell her that I finally got rid of the spider that had spun its web and planted itself in the corner of the bathroom window. I wanted to tell her that I obliterated the line of ants moving back and forth from the crack on the kitchen wall. But seeing her without eyes made it difficult for me to keep any of my thoughts from fragmenting.

Wanting to get to the bottom of things, I shrugged and said, “There’s something different about you today.”

The eyebrow above her empty right socket arched. The corners of her red lips turned upward and with this new smile she raised a hand to her frizzy red hair, tilted her head so her profile was to me and shook the red hair out. I noticed it was shorter than it was yesterday and almost said something, but she opened her mouth and asked me, “Do you like it?”

I shook my head. “Actually,“ I said, “it’s kind of scary. I’m scared of things like that. Scared like I am when I’m sitting in the dentist‘s chair.”

Her smile faded. She hit the cigarette again, and again she blew the smoke out through her sockets.

“You’re an ass,” she said. “A lazy, insensitive ass.” She leaned forward and crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray on the coffee table. Then she got up, grabbing her coat off the arm of the sofa. She put it on. “I’m going out,” she said. “Maybe even find someone who appreciates me.“

“I don’t understand,” I said.

She glanced back once, burning a hole in me with those deep black sockets. Then she headed out.

Caterpillers

2009-10-03T09:15:00.001-07:00

Caterpillars

The lights are off in the house. The toaster doesn’t work. Neither does the television. My wife is furious, standing over me while I lie on my side on the sofa, blaming me for the electricity being turned off, calling me irresponsible for not having mailed the check.

I sit up on the sofa, tuck my legs up and try and explain. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, apparently not wanting to hear it.

“And here it comes,” she says. “Another lame excuse.”

“I did write the check,” I tell her. “I wrote it and even stuffed it in the envelope. But when I went to lick the gluey flap, I cut my tongue.”

I stick my bandaged tongue out of my mouth and my wife looks at her fingernails. “Thee,” I say, my tongue still protruding out between my lips.

She looks up from her nails and says, “So you slit your god damned tongue. What does that have to do with us being in the dark?”

“My tongue was bleeding like crazy,” I say. “Really bleeding.”

She sighs and heads across the room, sits down on the big wing chair by the window and buries her face in her hands. “Why?” she says. “Why? Why? Why?”

“I went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror to look at my tongue. You won’t believe what happened when I stuck my tongue out.”

“No I won’t,” she says, leaning forward in her chair. “I don’t believe anything you say.”

“These caterpillars started to climb out of the cut,” I tell her. “They crept out of my mouth and dropped into the sink, crawled over the tile and filled the toilet and the tub. I couldn‘t squish them fast enough.”

My wife shakes her head and studies her nails again.

“They kept coming out. More and more of them. Tons of them. So many that they made a big blooping noise as they filed the house. I squished them with my bare feet. Green goo everywhere. Hell. I had to put this bandage on my tongue just to slow down the flow.”

My wife looks up from her nails. “So just tell me what you did with the money,” she says.

“Caterpillar pellets,” I say. “I had to buy tons of caterpillar pellets to kill all those creepy things. And bandages. I had to buy bandages.” I stick my tongue out again. “Thee.”

“Do you have any idea how much I hate you when you lie?”

“I’m not lying. I swear.”

“Okay, Mister Truthful. Take the bandage off. I want to see those caterpillars for myself.”

For a long time I sit staring at my wife from across the room. Finally, I say, “You sure?”

“Take it off. Right now.”

I stick my tongue out and slowly unwrap the bandage.

“I knew you were lying,” she says. “There’re no caterpillars.”

Just then, I feel the cut on my tongue tingle. My tongue begins to quiver and I with my mouth open as wide as I can get it, I grip the arm of the sofa with both hands. They begin to come out of the slit. Butterflies. Clouds of butterflies. Orange and yellow and blue. Leaving my mouth in a steady stream, rising to the ceiling, darting across the room, perching on furniture.

“I knew you were a liar,” my wife says. “Caterpillars my ass.”

Fortune Cookie

2009-10-03T09:14:00.001-07:00

Fortune Cookie

In the Chinese restaurant, Pauline halved her cookie, read her fate and blushed.

Jay smiled. “Good news, isn’t it?”

Pauline closed her eyes and nodded. When Jay persisted, Pauline revealed her fortune, relating it to a test she’d self-administered earlier that morning.

Jay shook his head and grew silent. He suddenly remembered an early appointment he’d scheduled the following morning. Pauline understood.

At home, Pauline boiled an egg. She broke the brittle shell away and dug her thumbs into the rubbery flesh until it slid off the yolk. The perfect ball blurred and Pauline squeezed it into a powdery yellow pulp.

Pinup

2009-10-03T09:13:00.001-07:00

Pinup

The yellowed pinup had been torn out of an old advertising calendar. Johnson’s Machine Shop. October 1959. More than a year before I was born. My mother on her knees, posing with her left side to the camera, chest up and out as she leans back with her palms resting in the sand behind her. The photograph shows her in a black one-piece swimsuit. A single red rose sprouts from her upswept hair. Artfully blurred behind her, frothy ocean waves strike the beach.

For a long time I stare at the woman in the pinup and try to imagine her the day the photograph had been taken. In October of 1959 she would have been eighteen with her whole life ahead of her. Was she as happy as the photograph suggests? Or did she even then -- as I vividly recall -- spend her evenings sitting quietly beside the window. I study her features in the calendar photograph. A strange and unfamiliar playful expression fills my mother’s youthful face. Her dark hair and dark eyes are perfect. Her red-lacquered lips are perfect.

Raising my eyes from the calendar, I glance across the room at my mother’s squat urn on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. By closing my eyes I try to recover an image of her in her final days. But my mind’s photograph of my mother in her later years fragments and refuses to remain inside my head. The calendar picture, the pinup of the unfamiliar smiling woman who kneels in the sand is the only image that fills the space in my mind.

A prickle on the nape of my neck tells me my mother’s watching me now. And she’s pleased. Pleased that while scavenging through boxes of her things in the garage, I managed to discover a part of her she'd never shared.

The One

2009-10-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

The One

Two topless Japanese women wearing red bikini bottoms passed in front of where Cook and I were leaning back on the beach with our elbows in the sand. They both looked down at us and smiled. When I returned their smiles, the two women burst out giggling for no reason at all before they moved on without looking back.

I turned and looked at Cook. Sipping from his can of lemonade, he shook his head and let out a whispery sigh that seemed to rise from the depths of his diaphragm.

“Not them?” I asked, looking at Cook’s toes.

He shook his head again. Then he eyes grew big. He gestured in the direction of the water with his chin. Turning my head, I watched the blonde step out of the frothy shallows. Also topless, the blonde was thumbing at the hems of her drenched, lime-colored bikini bottom. She pushed her soaked hair out of her face and glistening beads of seawater rolled over her body and caught the sunlight just so.

“Her?”

Again, I glanced at Cook’s toes then watched him shake his head.

For a time we continued to study an endless stream of topless women, sculptured and natural, who mostly paraded the shoreline in pairs. We sat back in the sand and drank our lemonades while woman after woman strode, wagged, or raced across the gritty ground before us. But glimpsing Cook’s toes, I knew he hadn‘t yet discovered the right woman.

I sat up, crossed my legs, scooped a handful of sand and spent a few minutes transferring it from one palm to the other. Cook remained with his elbows resting in the sand and his knees pointed skyward. Every now and then a woman would pass with her lotion-slicked backside and Cook would trail her with his gaze. But not once did he give any indication of having found the right woman

Then, just when the sun hung in the sky at its highest point, I raised a hand to my eyes to shield the glare and saw her approaching. I looked over at Cook. He was already staring. Above the woman’s gray jogging pants she had on a thick copper-colored wool sweater, the ends of the sleeves clutched in her fists. She trudged past through the sand with her eyes kept on the pointed toes of her western boots. Wrapped around the woman’s waist and knotted at her hip was a green army blanket. The blanket hung to her ankles.

She walked ahead of us and not a curve was visible beneath the heavy fabric that covered her. She sat down facing the ocean. The breeze whipped the back ends of her black hair from one wool-covered shoulder to the other. Feeling my insides lighten, I turned to Cook and said, “It‘s her, isn‘t it?”

Cook didn’t reply. His eyes were moist, his mouth was open and his toes were curled. I knew that this was the one, and it suddenly troubled me that Cook too, was struck by the woman. But my heart bottomed out when I turned back to the woman and realized I was too late. In the moment I had glanced at Cook, the woman was being approached by most every man on the beach.

The Note

2009-10-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

The Note

At a little after four in the morning I carefully turned the doorknob and stepped into the house. A light was on in the kitchen. Closing the door behind me, I followed the light and found my wife asleep with her head on the table. There was an empty bottle of Smirnoff and a spiral notebook on the table. Eyelids flickering, she held in her right hand a pen. Leaning over her, I read the one word she’d written in red ink on the open page of the notebook -- Sorry.

I did not know whether or not to shake her awake, announcing my presence and offering to help her upstairs to bed. I spent a confused moment wondering whether or not to heft her from where she sat sleeping and carry her up the steps myself. But in my state my coordination was questionable and I dreaded the thought of dropping her. I stared a long time at the word she’d scribbled in the notebook. Sorry.

Bending forward, I kissed her on the forehead, then slowly retreated out of the kitchen and toward the front door, where I carefully turned the knob and stepped outside. Charcoal gray already tainted the darkness in the distant horizon. The sun would not be far behind. Not sure what to do next, I reached into my front trouser pocket and removed my keys. I stared at my car on the curb, then walked across the lawn and hopped into the car, turned the key and clicked on the radio. I sat a while behind the wheel.

Four or five songs later, I climbed back out of the car and headed to the house.

This time, I thought, I would create a great deal of noise when entering the house. I‘d slam the door she behind me and shout out her name several times before going to the kitchen. If this didn’t rouse her, I would shake her awake, pretending not to see the note she’d written. And I’d let her choose whether or not to climb the stairs and accompany me to bed.

Tilt

2009-10-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

Tilt

In the midst of a deep sleep, I am disturbed by a distant rumbling. I open my eyes. Am I caught up in a dream? The rumble amplifies into a murderous roar and I feel myself rolling toward the edge of the bed. A panic sets in as I claw at pillows and covers in an attempt keep myself from falling off the bed. But everything is tilting. Tilting. Tilting.

I hit the carpeted floor and roll until I am flush against one of the bedroom walls.. Instinct brings me into a fetal position as I hear the enormous bed creak and watch it begin to slide toward me. Even with the room slowly tilting, I am relieved when I realize that the bed’s weight is keeping all four of its legs on the ground. But as the room continues to tilt, the side of the bed furthest from me rises off the carpet. The mattress and pillows and covers tumble off and fly through the air toward me. Although there are no jagged or hard edges, when the mattress lands on top of me its tremendous weight knocks the air out of my lungs.

Protected by the mattress I can still hear the room’s furnishings flying and crashing into one another. What is happening? After a seemingly endless duration, the tilting finally stops. The crashing noises are replaced by grinding and groaning as items previously airborne settle into their new positions.

Smothered beneath the heavy mattress, I am blanketed by the opposing, complex feelings of fear and security, confusion and understanding. Should I creep out and embrace the changes that have just occurred? Or should I remain in the dark beneath the crushing weight of the mattress where for the moment I am safe?
***
I agree with Ian, it does have an allegorical feel, and the lack of explanation gives it strength. I was hooked very quickly.

A panic sets in as I claw at pillows and covers in an attempt keep myself from falling off the bed.

In the above I think you can drop 'A panic sets in' as the panic is obvious from the actions, with the clawing at pillows and covers. Maybe you can afford to drop 'off the bed' at the end of the sentence too, but it's trivial.

Instinct brings me into a fetal position as I hear the enormous bed creak and watch it begin to slide toward me.

To me, the fetal position has to come after the creak and the sliding bed as it's a reaction to it. I would also drop 'I hear' as it's obvious given the viewpoint that if there's a creak then he heard it, and the same can be said for watching the bed sliding. I might write this:

The enormous bed creaks and slides towards me. Instinct brings me into a fetal position.

Even with the room slowly tilting, I am relieved when I realize that the bed’s weight is keeping all four of its legs on the ground.

The opening phrase, 'Even with the room slowly tilting' is probably redundant here. I'm probably as picky about people realizing as I am about them hearing and watching, which may just be me, but here you could get away with:

To my relief the bed's weight is keeping all four of its legs on the ground.

But as the room continues to tilt, the side of the bed furthest from me rises off the carpet.

Here I think the continued tilting has value, in contrast to earlier.

The mattress and pillows and covers tumble off and fly through the air toward me. Although there are no jagged or hard edges, when the mattress lands on top of me its tremendous weight knocks the air out of my lungs.

I don't think you need to mention the lack of jagged or hard edges, and can let the weight of the mattress convey what you're after. For example:

The mattress and pillows and covers fly through the air toward me. The tremendous weight of the mattress knocks the air out of my lungs.

Another great and imaginative little flash.

Witches

2009-10-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

Witches--

After having read Charles’s letter a dozen times, Melody laid it on the dining table, shuffled into the kitchen and found a knife. With Charles’s words still playing in her mind, she started up the steps to the attic. Along with making it clear the marriage was over, he’d implied it was Melody’s fault.

“I thought you were different from the other women in your family,” Charles had written in bold letters. “But I was wrong.”

In the attic, Melody couldn’t ignore the heaviness she felt. Still gripping the knife, she knelt in front of an old trunk. Stale air filled her nostrils when she lifted the heavy lid. She combed through the contents until she found the treasured doll her sisters had gifted her before the wedding. Holding it close against her, Melody began to weep.

The doll -- a handmade miniature of Charles -- had been stuffed with his hair clippings, collected by Melody herself. It was family tradition.

Melody sat chanting -- doll in one hand, knife in the other. After an hour she began to slice.

Days later Melody’s sisters found her with her wrists savaged, the intact doll and bloody knife on the floor beside her.

Bullet Head

2009-10-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

Bullet Head

She cupped it in her hand and said it looked like a little bullet head, and then she began to laugh. Obviously, she was in a ‘let’s make fun of each other’ mood, so I removed my glasses, laid my book down and told her that hers reminded me of a boxer’s swollen lips after a fifteen-round bout.

She quit laughing and turned away from me.

I scootched up behind her, took hold of her arm just above the wrist and said, “Hey. I’m just teasing.”

“What about my tits?” she said. “What do they remind you of?”

“They’re fantastic.”

“How fantastic?”

I rolled her onto her back, buried my face in her breasts. “Intoxicating,” I said.

“But not as intoxicating as they used to be, right?”

“More,” I replied.

“Liar,“ she said. After a moment she swiped her wet eyes with the back of her hand and said, “I hate getting old.”

I resorted to cliché, “You’re only as old as you feel.” I closed my eyes, listened to her cry. Finally, I said, “Maybe I should savage you like there‘s no tomorrow.”

She smiled.. “Sure. Let’s wake up that little bullet head, get your money’s worth for once.”

One Final Cocktail

2009-10-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

One Final Cocktail --

Without a shirt, Roger’s belly sagged almost to the hems of his shorts. Trudging through the sand, he swiped sweat off his forehead. This was the life: rustling palms, pounding surf, grass-skirted girls shaking their lei-covered breasts.

Here, Roger was free of real-life and real-wife. With what he’d embezzled he intended to spend the rest of his days basking under the sun. Evenings he’d sit on the beach and listen to the soothing strum of ukuleles. Best of all, Roger envisioned himself with girls half his age.

Gasping for breath, Roger veered away from the ocean to a tiki bar. His enormous ass spilled off a thatch-shaded stool. His drink came in a pineapple-shaped glass. The barmaid, a beautiful bronzed woman smelling of coconuts, also brought Roger a damp rag to wipe himself off.

Roger removed the tiny parasol from his glass and spun it between his fingers. Life was good. Last night he sat in a wedge of moonlight and feasted on roast suckling. He’d eaten so much two buttons snapped off his palm-patterned shirt.

Something seized Roger. His mouth opened. He fell off his stool onto the sand. Minutes later Roger was dead -- happy as a pig.

Never

2009-10-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

Never

Kelsey entered the coffee shop and approached the stage. He stared a long time at the man reciting poetry into a microphone. When the poet grinned, Kelsey reached into his coat, withdrew a pistol and fired one shot into the poet’s forehead.

In the panic that followed, Kelsey climbed the stage and crawled to the dying poet. With his hands and knees in a blossoming pool of blood, he rested his head on the poet’s chest. He heard the world in a new way as if through a conch shell: doves, leaves, traffic, laughter, crying, footsteps -- all the common sounds echoing like he’d never experienced before.

He squeezed one of the poet’s hands, the poet squeezed back. In the whirls Kelsey felt temperatures and textures and emotions. So much he‘d never felt.

The poet gasped. Kelsey watched blood froth from the man’s lips. He gazed into his eyes. There was light and color and mist and depth like Kelsey had never seen in all the time he’d been alive.

Then there was nothing.

Kelsey found his pistol. He smiled, brought it to his right temple and fired.

For those who cared, there would never be reason or explanation. Never.

Green Eggs and Flaubert

2009-10-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

Untitled --

***

Eva was under a tree reading Flaubert. I approached and expressed my sympathy for poor Charles, how he was dragged down by Emma’s delusional dreams.

Eva’s eyes lit up. “You’ve read this?”

“Four times.”

I lit a joint, held it out to her.

Eva stared at the joint in my hand. She blinked a few times. I nodded for her to take it and asked what she thought about Hugo, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner.

After the second joint, I thrust my tongue down Eva’s throat and groped her breasts.

She pushed off. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

The fourth joint brought about a more receptive Eva. She allowed me to kiss her gently, cup one of her breasts as long as I promised not to squeeze.

We went over to my place.

We passed another joint back and forth. She didn’t resist when I grabbed her blouse at the waist and raised it over her up-stretched arms.

“A tragedy, Emma’s life,” Eva said.

I kissed her nipple.

Eva pushed me away, sat back in the bed and began to read Madame Bovary out loud.

Green Eggs and Ham, I thought. I needed to find a Green Eggs and Ham girl.

Mannequin

2009-10-03T08:59:00.002-07:00

Untitled --

He found her in the alley behind Mervyns and brought her home to his loft apartment, which overlooked the cemetery.

After laying her down on a mattress beneath the open window, he sponged her smudged body clean.

In the blotchy dusk, her eyes -- glowing red as a cardinal’s crest -- frightened him.

So he went to the sink, and underneath it found his rusted tool box. The hinges groaned when he lifted the lid.

Beside her again, he whispered, “Be still.”

Carefully, he positioned his hammer over an ice pick and began to tap out her eyes.

The cavities were filled with peppermint candies, the red swirls reminding him of an ad he’d seen on the back cover of one of his comic books.

He straddled her, leaned forward and licked her forehead. Then he ran his tongue over her minty eyes.

When she didn’t respond, he struck her. Still, she remained motionless.

His big hands groped, the calloused fingers wandering over her breasts, her hips, inside her thighs. In the darkness, his breathing intensified.

He wept when it became clear that, anatomically, it would be impossible to love her.

At the window he stared out at the cemetery.

Oh Bring Me Home Sister

2009-10-03T08:59:00.001-07:00

***

Oh, Bring Me Home Sister!

High grass centered the road, scraping the underside of Uncle Chuck’s Chevy. Out the rear window a cloud of clay-colored dust trailed.

Ahead, distorted by the heat shimmer, a red-and-white schoolhouse loomed on the prairie.

Uncle Chuck parked in the cross-tipped shadow of the steeple. He caught me in the rearview. “C’mon, boy. Let’s get you some religion.”

Right. Like that‘d bring them back.

We sat up front. The preacher’s drone slowed everything down.

Baking and drenched, I stood. Nobody stopped me. Halfway to the exit a lyrical "hummmmm" rose from the choir.

I spun. A heavyset woman draped in purple opened her mouth, sang, “Oh, bring him home.”

The choir chimed in. A sea of swaying violet. “Oh, Low-o-ordy.”

The heavyset woman screamed, “NOW COME ON HOME!”

Everyone stood, began a rhythmic clapping. The choir continued, “Oh, Low-o-ordy.”

Then the heavyset woman, still singing, spread her arms wide as Christ on the crucifix.

I tried to stiffen, tried to resist. But slowly -- my knees bent, my fingers snapped, my lips fluttered.

The heavyset woman nodded.

I raised my face to the ceiling, felt my mouth unhinge, felt the building tremble as I sang out, “OH, YEAH I‘M HOME.”

Height Lines

2009-10-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

Sandoval drank alone with the television on. His ex-wife had called earlier to scold him, demanding to know if he was proud of himself for raising their daughter to make a fool of herself on television. He taped the ESPN segment his wife had complained about and watched it over and over.

In the clip, Sherri wore nothing but a pair of mirrored sunglasses and a skimpy green bikini. She moved over the sand with other girls to smack a volleyball back and forth over a net.

Sandoval felt heat on his face watching Sherri leap into the air, her breasts nearly flopping free of the sparse fabric that contained them. He winced each time the camera zoomed in on his daughter’s backside while she unknowingly tugged at the lower lines of her tiny bikini bottom.

After pouring himself another drink, Sandoval rewound the tape and watched it again. When the camera panned a crowd of ogling college boys, he felt his stomach clench and shut the television off.

All around the house were little signs of Sherri’s personality. The crayon sketches held to the refrigerator by Disney character magnets. Her weathered baseball glove tucked on the bottom shelf of the pine bookcase next to the Silverstein book with the worn cover. How many times had Sherri begged him to read those humorous poems out loud? On the laundry room door there were seventeen faded height lines. Sandoval tried remembering each time he stood in front of her and ran the marker over her head. So many changes. And not all good, either. It had not been easy raising his daughter mostly on his own.

Still staring at the height lines on the laundry room door, he realized those seventeen slash marks represented achievements and failures. Both his and his daughter’s. Measurements he’d had to make alone. No, he had no reason to be ashamed. Proud of their accomplishments, he suddenly wondered who Sherri’s mother – absent throughout most of her daughter’s childhood – thought she was attempting to measure Sherri now? Moreover, Sandoval thought, what gave her the right to measure him?

Dakota Street

2009-10-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

She solicited him from an upstairs window. He climbed the weathered steps, left his boots baking outside her door. When he tried to describe his loneliness, she shook her head and raised a finger to his lips. His visits grew frequent. Her modest desires and simple dreams enlightened him. Family and friends noted his happiness. “Dakota Street,” he revealed, when pressed for details. But their collective scorn shamed him into abandoning her. With rain came nights of sleepless lamentation. Come spring he returned clutching an armful of roses, only to discover shoes – not his – resting outside her door.

Balloon Swords

2009-10-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

They met in a park as children. It was late afternoon. His balloon sword was green, hers red. They stood opposing each other in the center of the grassy park. He charged, thrusting at her heart. She held her red balloon sword by its handle and waved it back and forth in front of her face, trying to defend herself. But using the sun behind him to his advantage, he ducked, blinding her momentarily, and his green sword struck home. Still holding her sword in one hand, she fell backward onto the grass and closed her eyes, resting her free palm on her chest and playing dead.

Years later, each time the battle was replayed without balloons, he would recall the dry heat of that summer afternoon in the park when they were still children. He recollected the chiming of a passing ice cream truck. He remembered the flitting shadow of a bird shading her pale face. And he would wonder, again and again -- how different things might have been if he hadn’t discarded his green balloon sword to drop onto his knees and see if her heart had really been pierced.

Jackpot

2009-10-01T08:01:00.000-07:00

Doreen fed the slot machine another nickel, and then she pulled the handle and watched the wheels spin. She clapped as one, two, three genies lined up, all in a row. While the coins cascaded into the tray, Doreen's husband returned. He leaned forward with his mouth against her ear, revealing how much he'd lost at the poker tables. For a moment Doreen sat open-mouthed, unbelieving, and then she scrambled off her stool, fanned her flush face with her fingers and screamed. The woman sitting beside Doreen elbowed her companion, whispering, Seven lousy bucks and that woman's peeing her pants?

Bagged

2009-10-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

After I nearly strangled my twin brother Michael for lying to my girlfriend (for telling her he was me), our parents restricted me to the house for a month. Two days before my sentence ended Michael came in from the meadow, his fingers wrapped around the knot of a plastic bag with something snapping inside of it. He crossed the room, sat on the sofa beside me and held his catch in front of his face. I saw clearly the square mouth and hair-thin legs of the green grasshopper as it pounced against the bag’s clear surface again and again in an effort to escape. Michael flicked the bag with a finger, further exciting his victim, and then looked over at me and said, "That girlfriend of yours, Margaret Connelly, sure has a soft handful underneath her blouse." I clenched my fists and drew it back to clobber my brother, but Michael shot the plastic bag up between us, and said, "Careful... a lot can happen with Margaret during the next month."

Signs at Intersections

2009-10-01T07:57:00.000-07:00

Last night I was smoking a cigarette on my front porch when the woman who lives with her husband and four children in the house next to mine stormed out her front door carrying a suitcase. Her husband called after her, his arms held out in front of him as if he was expecting her to fall into them. She did not turn around. When she reached her Toyota she shoved the suitcase into the trunk, and then she hopped in behind the steering wheel, slamming the door behind her. After screeching out of the sloped driveway, she sped past my house.

I turned and looked at her husband standing in the doorway, the four children crowded in shadows behind him.

But the wife did not get farther than the stop sign on the corner. By the dreadful sound her tires made when they locked against the pavement I was sure an accident had occurred. I watched her husband and children race to the corner where they hung about the driver’s side window for a long time. Finally, the woman’s family stepped back and the Toyota inched into the intersection, looped around and returned home.

I found the whole incident puzzling.

This morning after she kissed her husband off to work, and helped the kids onto the school bus, I flicked my cigarette away and approached her. Even though we only shared a loose acquaintance with one another I asked her about her short-lived escape.

She looked at me and blinked several times. Her pale face colored, an almost riffling, cuttlefish effect.

“If I’m being too nosy—“ I began to say when she did not offer an explanation.

Shaking her head and smiling, she said, “No. That’s not it.“

I stood waiting expectantly. She stared down the street in the direction of the stop sign and said, “Have you ever done something you wished you hadn’t?”

Although I couldn’t think of anything specific, I nodded and said, “Of course.”

She went on and added, “We all make mistakes. Do things without thinking and sometimes those things lead us to do other things, thinking we can fix them. Also, without thinking.”

I shrugged. I could tell she could tell I was not understanding.

Before whirling to reenter her house, she looked one final time at the stop sign on the corner. “Sometimes the most unlikely signs,” she said, “force us to stop and see things clearly.”

Devotion

2009-10-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

The egg rests in your hand, its tips pinpricked, everything inside drained out. Using light strokes and thin-hair brushes, you color the delicate shell, careful not to shatter that fragility which houses nothing..

Listless in her bed, her eyes remain open, focused on a point on the ceiling. You’ve tried to reach her before, never successful.

You fill the tub with warm water and litter the surface with red leaves—poinsettias. A small tribute to someone you still love.

Hefting her, one arm slid beneath the hollow of her knees, the other wrapped across the back of her shoulders, you bring her to the bath, set her in the water.

Soft sponge applied with a gentle touch. She doesn’t react. She never does.

The nurses, sometimes touched by your devotion, wait until the last possible moment, and then allow you a final kiss before asking you to leave.

Outside, in a rusting Rambler parked under an oak, your lover waits reading. She doesn’t ask why anymore, only agrees to drive you every first Sunday of the month. She understands, your lover does, what you share with your wife is much deeper than just devotion.

Celebration

2009-10-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

On television throngs of people dance in the streets of every major city
in the world. Outside my window, drunk party-goers do the same.
Seemingly, the celebration unites the universe.
I lean out the window and spin my tin noisemaker, holding its ridged
crank loosely in my fist. The rubber bands that keep my shiny, foil cap on my
head dig into my neck each time I shout, ‘Happy Fucking New Year.’
High-pitched shrieks fill the clear frigid sky. Next come deafening
explosions, each culminating in a wonderful display of colour. The smell of
spent fireworks permeates the crisp air.
I think about Jayne and sincerely hope she is celebrating this
monumental evening. I wonder if she's moved forward, found someone to
replace me tonight, or is she alone with her dog in some ratty apartment.
Realizing I am dwelling too much now, I pull the window shut and
go to the sofa. I fill my glass, then grab a handful of popcorn from the bowl
on the coffee table.
‘Happy Fucking New Year,’ I say, raising the glass.
My Labrador, Tag, responds by thumping his tail twice on the carpet
before resting his snout on his forepaws.

One Dance with a Stranger

2009-10-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Did I ever mention before we married I danced with a stranger? In my
arms, I pretended she was you.
Afterward, over frothy coffees in a cafe, we laughed and teased, but
didn't reveal our real names.
While she was asleep in the musty hotel room, I stared amazed at
how much her slack mouth and flickering eyelids reminded me of you.
Swathed under dim light, her breasts were exactly as I believed yours must
surely look and feel like. Beneath my palm, her firm yet soft shoulder felt no
different than the way yours felt that day on the beach when I spun you
around and kissed you for the first time.
I kissed the stranger on the forehead and whispered, ‘I love you.’
Her eyes opened. She smiled, then rolled onto her side and rested her
head against my chest.
Our hands sought out the smalls of each other's backs.
If you're wondering why I'm confessing this now, tonight, it's because
the light shining behind you is just right. And the rain hitting the leaves
outdoors is just so. And despite everything, tonight you remind me more than ever of the stranger I once danced with.

Custody

2009-10-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

It was his weekend with the kid, so Friday after work Jayar stopped by the
store and bought a toy car.
Next day, when Jayar gave his boy the car, the kid wrapped his arms
around him and said, ‘This is the bestest thing, Pop.’
Jayar went to the fridge. He carried a six-pack to the sofa and sat.
Sipping his beer, he was hypnotized by the way the kid, down on all fours,
played quietly.
By the time Jayar popped the tab of his fourth beer, though, the boy
was on his feet, racing the car over a shelf that held Jayar's collection of
porcelain clowns.
‘Careful,’ Jayar slurred.
But the kid wasn't listening. He guided the car like a bowling ball into
the clowns, toppling them.
Picking up a full can of beer, Jayar stood. He hurled it, barely missing
his son. ‘Better not have broke one of my clowns!’
The boy gave Jayar the finger.
In a flash, Jayar had his son's collar. He drew his fist back.
The kid smirked. ‘Mom hoped you'd do this.’
Later at the pizza parlour, the kid said, ‘Next week I want a new
video game.’

Scratches

2009-10-01T07:49:00.001-07:00

Donny got himself slid between the wood and the glass of his mother's
dining table. Afraid to move for fear of scratching the oak, he
remained there for years. The sun baked his face, and at nights he shut his
eyes to make the frightening noises disappear.
Whenever his mother cleaned the glass, Donny's back teeth tingled.
Flies with spindly twitching forelegs and buzzing gossamer wings frequently
landed in front of Donny's flattened face.
He learned to recognize the time of the year by the designs on the
bottom of the dishes his family ate out of. Numbers stamped in blue meant
the Noritake china had been removed and set on the table for the holiday.
Yellow daisies lapping over porcelain rims meant it was just a regular meal.
Sometimes, straw paper plate holders were slid over Donny's face.
Hot dogs? Chilli?
Often, muffled conversation accompanied the family's meals. His
parents, brothers, and sisters sometimes cried when they spoke of Donny.
They'd never forgotten their missing brother.
Weeping himself, Donny wanted to scream, ‘I'm here beneath the
glass!’
But of course, Donny knew if he opened his mouth he might scratch
the wood surface of his mother's prized table.

The Coat

2009-10-01T07:46:00.001-07:00

He enters the bedroom and smells a faint trace of breast milk and talcum powder. From the mobile above the crib, plastic circus animals clack against one another. His wife is tucked into the window alcove, staring out at the rain. Her face is lit by the yellow glow of the tasseled lamp beside her. She has on the same faded housedress she's been wearing for days.

He crosses the room, stands before her, and says, "I have to go back to work this morning."

She doesn't turn from watching the rain fall outside the window. He reaches for her, but she draws away, wraps her arms around her knees and says, "I'm sorry I didn't come down to make your breakfast."

"I don't have much of an appetite, anyway."

"I'm sorry I didn't come down to help you on with your coat."

His coat? He remembers it's still downstairs, draped over the kitchen chair where he left it yesterday when he didn't go out. "The coat's not important," he says.

Several moments pass before she snaps her head up to stare at him, her eyes big in the glow of the lamp. "What are you saying?" she says. "It's important to me." She raises her hands and shakes her head, as if lost. "Helping you on with your coat is important to me."

The rain continues to tick against the window. He knows he can't leave the house yet, not for another few days.

Moth-er

2009-10-01T07:41:00.000-07:00

When she comes
home like this, like some
gray moth that
flitters under the spill of
yellow light, her fluttering
image hurled onto the walls

She is suddenly transformed into
a creature so unpredictable --
-- so menacing that
me, being the weak and
helpless and starving
gecko I am, had better
unsuck my toes from the
ceiling and skitter into
the shadows.

Sebastian

2009-10-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

Sebastian By Robert Aquino Dollesin
It was my fourteen-year-old brother, Sebastian, who discovered the robin’s nest. But it was me, who would each morning go outdoors to the clothesline to check the chicks. They were three, featherless with ever-open mouths. Sometimes I’d sit in the shade of the cherry tree and watch the mother robin’s head emerge from the post. Then she’d launch herself skyward and the chicks would chirp frantically during those moments of abandonment. That spring the robins became my passion. One morning I caught Sebastian standing on a chair with a hand inside the clothesline post. “If you touch them,” I warned, “their mother will refuse to care for them.” Scowling, Sebastian removed his hand and returned to the flowers he grew alongside the fence. I waited a moment longer before turning to return to the house. Before I’d slid the screen door open, Sebastian asked, “Why do you care about a couple of filthy baby birds, anyway?” I didn’t say anything. The following morning I came out to see the robin’s and found Sebastian -- once again standing on the chair. This time he had snaked a garden hose into the mouth of the post. “What are you doing?” I shouted. Sebastian turned his head to face me. He winked. The chicks gushed out the opposite end. Later, as I packed the dead robins into a shoebox, I caught Sebastian in the corner of my eye approaching. “Let me help you,” he said. “Don’t you dare touch them,” I snapped. While the mother robin perched on a telephone wire above, I buried her babies under a patch of bare earth.
***
In the summer of my sixteenth year, when Sebastian was fifteen, he came home one evening carrying two Siamese kittens he had rescued from the SPCA. “Orphans. Like us,” Sebastian said. “Found beneath a porch while their mother lay dead in the street, not twenty feet away.” Twice daily I brought a bowl of warm milk out and watched the mewing kitties slurp it up. When the second bowl of milk was finished, I’d spend the remainder of the afternoon playing with the frisky charcoal-white kittens. Sebastian, sometimes down on all fours tending his flower garden -- watched me. Several weeks passed and the kittens were more curious, frequently venturing from the cardboard box I’d fashioned into a makeshift pen. Apparently, the two kittens had found their way to Sebastian’s garden and had
been caught rooting my brother’s zinnia seedlings. He had bludgeoned them with his rusted shovel, transforming the two kittens into a bloody mass of fur and flesh. When I came out he tried to explain, “They were destroying my flowers.” Without answering him, I scooped up the limp kittens from Sebastian’s flowerbed. “Why?” I begged to know. “Why can’t I love anything without you destroying it?” Sebastian blinked a few times. “Don’t forget that I’m the one who found them.” He held out his shovel for me to use. I slapped it out of his hand.
***
This morning I made a phone call and a mob of detectives, their guns drawn, stomped through Sebastian’s garden, trampling his prized magnolias before storming the little blue house where my brother lived. I sat watching from my car across the street, crying. The authorities brought in a bulldozer and dug my sister-in-law, Monica, out of a shallow grave beneath Sebastian’s bed of blooming roses. The sight of Sebastian being escorted in cuffs sent all at the same time waves of shame and guilt and relief crashing through me. Sebastian glanced over the roof of the police cruiser and caught me staring. For a long time we exchanged stares. Then I started the engine and watched an officer help my brother into the back seat of the cruiser. He slid across the bench seat and grinned at me out the window, shaking his head knowingly.

Geisha

2009-09-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

Courtland glanced at the clock on the wall above the buzzing beer coolers.He should have been closed half an hour earlier, and at home relaxing in front of the television. Two regular customers, however, were still in the store.

He stood behind the counter with his arms folded. Already his chronic headache was beginning. Turning toward the entrance, he looked at Lyric, the stripper who stood at the lottery counter. She was leaned forward, rubbing a ticket with a fingernail.He fixed his gaze on the lower curves of her ass, visible beneath the hems of her Daisy-Dukes, and watched them jiggle.

Courtland turned away and looked past the potato chip display to his other customer. The man Courtland called “the Veteran” stood in front of the magazines. He’d gotten used to seeing the Veteran near closing time. If it had been anyone else flipping through the porn magazines, he would have enforced the “NO READING” sign, but the Veteran was turning out to be a good paying customer, someone who never left without first buying a six-pack of Cobra and at least one smut magazine.

***

Lyric blew ashy powder off the ticket she was scratching. Another loser. Why did she bother? When the bell above the door jangled, she glanced up and saw the woman enter the store. It must be some kind of joke, she thought. The new customer wore a red silk kimono patterned with winding streams and bending willows. The woman stood a moment just inside the door, and then she shuffled past Lyric toward the checkout. Her straw sandals hished against the tiles, her white-powdered face glowed under the lights.

Lyric kept her gaze on the geisha. She remembered her lottery tickets and turned to resume her scratching.

***

As soon as Courtland turned his head and saw the woman in the kimono, a wave of alarm bolted through him. “Uh, uh,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t be in here.” He’d heard stories involving costumed criminals who robbed liquor stores and sometimes even murdered the proprietor. He considered himself careful and, not willing to take any chances, he reached beneath the counter and placed a finger above the button which would bring the police.

The woman in the kimono stopped several feet before reaching the counter. Her lips moved as if she was seeking the right word. Finally, the geisha said, “Me need call Japan. Like buy phone card, please.”

***

Lyric shot a look over her shoulder when she heard the woman speak. She smiled, thinking the clipped English sounded cute— sincere. She looked past the geisha and saw Court’s nervous reaction. “Come on, Court,” she said. “Woman just wants a phone card.”

When she noticed Court’s gray eyes fixed on her breasts, Lyric smiled, raised a hand and brushed a nipple with her fingers.

***

At the back of the store, the man whose friends called him “Apache” glanced up from the magazine he’d been skimming and into the security mirror. Something was going on at the front of the store, near the counter. The owner of the store was talking in an anxious tone. Apache wasted no time slipping a hand inside his green army jacket. He gripped the handle of his pistol. For over two weeks he’d been scoping out this place. Finally, the moment he’d been waiting for was at hand.

He started toward the counter.

***

Courtland sighed. His instincts were pinging, telling him to simply announce to everyone it was closing time.

“Come on, Court,” Lyric said. “Woman just wants a phone card.”

God damn Lyric. He watched her graze one of her breasts, watched the nipple harden beneath the thin blouse she wore. Then Court removed his finger from where it hovered above the emergency button beneath the counter. He whirled, scanned the phone cards hanging on the wall. “What do you need? Will a twenty-five dollar card do?”

He heard the little woman’s high-pitched voice. “Hai,“ she said. Courtland unclipped one of the phone cards. He turned back around just in time to catch sight of the Veteran hurrying toward him, one hand jammed inside his coat. Courtland dropped the card.

***

It was nice Court decided to help the little Japanese woman, Lyric thought. She scratched her ticket. Her heart raced as she saw a third one-hundred-dollar symbol come into view. She screamed, raising the winning ticket into the air and spinning around to show Court.

A deafening sound made her drop the ticket. She saw the Japanese woman crouched low, covering her mouth with both hands. Then she noticed the guy who always bought smut standing in front of the counter, a smoking pistol in his hand. Court, on the other side of the counter, was sliding down the wall.

***

Apache had not intended to fire, but when the bitch screamed, his finger reacted independently. Now the store owner was blasted back and slipping to the floor with his eyes wide open.

“Fuck,” Apache said.

***

Lyric opened her mouth to scream again, but stopped when the gunman turned to face her. A crazy expression fixed his face. “Shout again,” he said, “and I’ll make you dead.” Lyric raised her arms above her head and said nothing.

***

Think, Apache, think. He glanced from the lottery-player to the stupid-looking woman dressed in a kimono, who began to nod her head, again and again.

“Quit fucking moving!” Apache said.

The Japanese woman nodded again, and said, “Hai.”

“Move one more time I’ll kill you.” He thumbed the gun’s hammer back.

***

“Listen, please,” Lyric begged the woman in the kimono. She looked at the woman cowering on the floor, then she looked at the gunman, pleading. “Don’t hurt her. She doesn’t understand you.”

“Hai,” the woman replied.

Another resounding explosion brought Lyric’s hands to her ears. Canned food flew from a shelf, clanked onto the floor. The Japanese woman squeezed herself into a fetal position and laid with her head on the tiles.

“I told you not to fucking move,” the gunman said.

“Hai,” the Japanese woman answered from the floor where she lay.

***

Apache, out of breath, turned to Lyric and said, “I don’t want to hurt anyone else. I’m going around the counter and emptying the register. If anyone—” His grim stare went from Lyric to the woman in the kimono and back to Lyric. “—if anyone moves, I’ll kill you both. And I don‘t want to do that.”

When neither of the women replied, he went around the counter, stepped over the shop owner’s body, and punched the keys on the register until it opened.

***

The Japanese woman gazed directly at Lyric and smiled. Then she raised a finger to her lips, indicating to Lyric she should remain silent.

Lyric watched her slip a tiny hand under the wide Obi belt that secured her kimono. Still smiling at Lyric, the geisha withdrew a pistol.

While the gunman stuffed money into a plastic merchandise bag, the Japanese woman slipped off her sandals. She very slowly got to her feet and crept over to the counter.

The man stuffing the bag full of money glanced up. His eyes grew wide.

“Die, motherfucker,” the geisha said.

***

Apache looked up and saw the powdered face. He noticed the glint of her weapon. He never felt the bullet strike his forehead.

***

Lyric screamed. The Japanese woman turned to her and shouted, “Quiet!”

Lyric did as she was instructed and watched the little woman raise high the hem of her kimono and hop the counter. The geisha snatched the bag of money that the robber had filled. She climbed back onto Lyric’s side of the counter and headed for the door.

“What are you doing?” Lyric asked.

The geisha stopped. She pulled a wooden clip from her bunned hair and shook it out.

“What are you doing?” Lyric said again.

The geisha raised her pistol. “Did you win anything?”

Lyric nodded.

The Japanese woman smiled. “I’ll take that, too,” she said, and pressed the pistol against Lyric‘s throat.

Birthday Girl

2009-09-30T14:08:00.001-07:00

He cannot focus on the television. Bursts of images and flashes of color only serve to illuminate the plate on the coffee table in front of him. There sits her wedge of uneaten cake, a slice of chocolate, one letter of her name ribboned in red glaze. Her fork sprouts up from a scarred yellow flower like a lilting weed. On the plate beside the cake is a shallow puddle of what earlier in the day had been a firm scoop of vanilla ice cream, her favorite. Now, crumbs of chocolate float on puddle’s creamy surface.

He shuts his eyes. In the colors that dance against his eyelids, he pictures her coming out of the hotel room.

How often during these last hours had he cursed himself for not having had more restraint? Too often; and now he curses himself again.

Her birthday only comes along once a year. They did not share this special day the previous year. In fact, during eleven years of marriage he can clearly recall two heartbreaking occasions in which she celebrated her birthday with another man.

She should have hurled the plate of cake and ice cream. It would have jerked him into the reality of where these arguments always lead, into the reality he finds himself in now, into a reality he still doesn’t know if he should accept. The only thing he is certain of is that if it were him, he would have flung the plate.

Pushing himself up from the sofa, he clicks the remote, shutting off the television. The gray of dusk seeps into the living room through the thin yellow curtains. In this dim quiet he stares at the curved legs of the coffee table, listening. The rain has stopped, but the wind continues its violent whip. Gust after lashing gust thrashes the broad-leafed banana trees planted near the windows, throwing their soft flesh and torn leaves against the glass.

He starts for the door, feeling the cold floor shudder beneath his feet with each labored step.

Having been conditioned to hide his feelings and hold back his words, he wishes now he hadn’t reacted so impulsively. But he was hurt. And this afternoon, her insensitive actions had been too much.

The phone had rung, and when she picked it up she began a conversation with one of her ex-lovers. He sat slowly chewing his cake while his ears burned. He could not believe she couldn’t just slam the receiver down into its cradle. All her promises and tears and begging. For what?

Having been there the moment they emerged from the hotel room together, having watched her fish for explanations, and then, after she’d been unable to find a convincing one, having watched her climb into her ex-lover’s car so that he could drive her home— well, until this afternoon none of that mattered anymore. The latest of her affairs was months behind them, old news, forgotten like all her other lovers.

The new life they’d promised to share, their fresh and faithful and forgiving life, was progressing fruitfully. That’s what he’d convinced himself every time the image of her and her lovers would materialize inside his head. Through tears, she’d explained to him that after having been swept away this last time for nearly a year, she’d come to realize, as the biblical saw states, after losing herself, she had found herself.

But he always wondered if she’d found herself with him— or had she found herself with the memories of her ex-lovers?

Still, she begged his forgiveness, and as he always had in the past, he gave it. Considering it simply another painful episode which would forever be seared into the walls of his mind. Like every episode before, it would only be a matter of time before one of them would bring the incident back up to the surface.

“Why?” he asks, weeks after her last affair.

“It just happened.”

“Sure,” he replies. “It always just happens.”

“Why won’t you let it go?”

“So you can do it again?”

“I only continue to do it because you refuse to let it go. You refuse to give us a chance.”

“I need to know. Is it me? Is it you?”

From where he sits across from her, he watches her flip through her magazine, avoiding his gaze and shaking her head.

“Why?” he persists.

Finally, she snaps. “You really need to know, do you?”

Now he is the one who sits silent, waiting.

“Here—” she begins to say, their eyes locked as he leans forward on the edge of the sofa. After taking a deep breath and wringing her hands, she continues, “Here was a man who willing to listen. How simple and special a thing it is to be listened to. How whole someone feels when another person actually hears you, when another person is actually interested in something you have to say. Can’t you understand?” She pauses, long, and when she resumes speaking her voice is hushed, breaking, “Can’t you somehow be that someone for me?”

And he thought he had become that someone for her. They began as young lovers did. Everything fresh, everything new, everything wonderful. Months of bliss. Two people in love.

Who could have possibly imagined how quickly, on a birthday, something so beautiful can grow into something so ugly?

Speaking to her ex-lover this afternoon on the telephone, she made no attempt to keep her voice hushed. It may have been emotionless and flat of tone, but it certainly wasn’t rude or arrogant like he would have liked it to be. She didn’t laugh, didn’t sound as if she longed or missed, didn’t say she loved her ex-lover. But she didn’t hang up on him either. After she gently replaced the receiver, she came to the sofa and snuggled beside him, her husband, and rested her head on his chest. When he asked, she insisted the call was nothing.

But she realized how bothered he was by the call, and she went on to defend herself by arguing that she had no control over her ex-lovers calling. How many times had she begged him to change the phone number? Hadn’t she even agreed to move away, somewhere far, anywhere in the world where she would never by choice or chance have the opportunity to cross paths with her ex-lovers again?

She ran her fingertips up his arm, whispered her apologies, and only when he didn’t respond to her affections did she finally sigh, straighten up and shake her head before leaning forward to pick up her wedge of birthday cake.

With her fingers inches from the plate, he spurted, “What the fuck did he want?”

She gazed at him, saying nothing.

He speared his slice of cake with his fork. “Did he remind you how the two of you spent your last birthday?”

Then, after a prolonged silence, he added, “Did he want some cake, too?”

She twisted to respond, flicks of anger distorting her face. “What is it I have to do to make things right?”

This is the point, he thinks now, when he would have hurled the cake.

It takes great effort to pull the front door shut behind him, with the wind blowing as hard as it is. He would have raised that plate and slammed it against the wall or the television or the person responsible for his pain. That’s what he would have done.

But she didn’t do that. Instead, she fell forward unto his lap, quivering and afraid, almost crying. She squeezed his thigh and when he continued to eat his cake she began to pound a fist against his thigh, again and again and again. All the while repeating the words, “I hate you . . . I hate you . . . I hate you.”

Now, while he stands on the porch staring up and down the dark street, the wind bites at his exposed face and ankles. It whips his bathrobe against his skin. He knots the belt, tugs the collar up and lets himself dip down onto the cold concrete steps. Across the pavement the streetlamp casts a halo of faint yellow light. Raindrops falling from the eaves, tap, tap, tap onto the banana leaves that bend in front of the windows. The grassy odors of nearby meadows blow in and curl around him as he tries to will his wife home.

Almost always after the arguments, this is the moment she comes out onto the porch and sits—as he sits now—on the top step.

Usually, he lets her stew, but never leaves her alone too long before he steps out the door to sit beside her. She never turns to look at him during that moment. She instead drops her forehead, presses it against her bouncing knees.

He apologizes then, and pulls her into him, promising he will let go of the past, promising to move forward. But today, her birthday, she is not here on the porch to receive his apologies.

He pats his bathrobe pockets, his hands starting at the right breast, then dropping to the sides, not even knowing what he’s looking for. He lets the wind ravage him while he waits on the porch listening to the banana leaves hiss as they try to resist the wind.

For a long time he gazes at the empty curb in front of the driveway where her car usually sits. He thinks perhaps it’s all for the better if she doesn’t come home.

But the truth is, sadly, she always comes home. And they always find a way to move past these episodes, step beyond these troubles. Always.

Once again he visualizes the wedge of cake. He would have hurled it.

The Temporary Now

2009-09-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

We're spinning circles, Faith and I. Couple of nobodies going round and round, headed nowhere quick. I ain't sure how we've managed to make do these past few months. But today, standing in the cold and the wet, future don't look so bright. I know I ain't supposed to think on the future. I'm supposed to put my worry on getting through today. Last night we slept where we scored. Burned and crashed. We do that a lot. When we got up this morning the rain was already coming down. We haven't eaten yet. Way things are going might be a while before we do. Only a few generous arms have come out open car windows. Seven, eight bucks. Maybe. Lot of coin. Hardly no one with any extra to spare. While I hang back by the scrubweed and hold the cardboard sign up, Faith, she works the cars that wait on the light. She raps her knuckles against the wet windows. "Spare some change," she says.

Most folks ignore, stare straight ahead. Sometimes they'll scowl. Occasionally, a finger'll be raised. One guy, when the light went green, he rolled his window down and spat in Faith's face. Get a fucking job, fucking crack-slut, he shouted. Faith got her hands in the window, got hold of his collar, but she was thrown back when he jammed the gas and sped off. She's tough, though. Not easily bothered. Faith, see, she's all about the now. She believes today is the only mattering day. Folks who worry on the future, or dwell about the past, Faith says, got their heads wrapped around the world the wrong way.

When the light goes green again the lane clears. I make mention of how bad the rain's getting. I even stop holding the sign out in front of me. Use it instead to keep myself from getting too drenched. Faith, she palms her damp red hair off her face, shrugs, and says, We got much bread left? When I don't answer, she says, Yeah, that's what I thought. She looks down at herself, at her breasts, the tight pullover she's got on -- wet and clinging. She pulls the fabric out, then tugs downward, letting the shirt snap back, grabbing, forming. Flaunting the goods. That's what she calls it. Gets desperate like this sometimes. Desperate in an ugly kind of way.

A month or so back when we'd caught enough coin to get a room, I asked her why. Why she stoops. She got uptight, mad, said, Why do you give a shit? Besides, she went on, it's all temporary, anyway. All this shit's temporary. I said, Maybe I care about you. Maybe I wanna make life with you. Faith said, Talk that way again and you're on your own. Last thing I need, she said, is a bunch of happy-happy, joy-joy crap. But she didn't mean it. She was putting on a mask, playing tough. I knew that. She no more wanted to be alone than I did. That night I lay on the bed in the dark and listened to her struggle to keep her sobs inside. That's Faith for you. It's all temporary. So she claims. Love. Life. The things she has to do. In my arms in the morning, she whispered, Let's do it, Donny. Let's kick this shit and anchor down to a real address. Get real jobs. Live real lives.

I got out of bed. Parted the curtains and let the sunlight sweep over the room. Felt different for a minute. Warm and bright. Real and secure. Been a long time since I felt that way. But it didn't take long for those hopeful vibes to become temporary. Like always, there was the reality of the now to deal with.

Light changes again and the cars stop line up. Faith leans over the lead car, peers into the driver's side window. She gives the guy behind the wheel an eyeful of the goods. The window cranks down. Help a lady out, Faith says to the driver. The driver, older guy, suit and tie type, probably says back, What's in it for me? Cardboard sign I'm hefting above my head sags heavy with rain. Even before she glances back, I know Faith's getting into the car with the guy. It's warm in there. No rain. No wind. No past, no future. Some pretty music. The temporary now.

Glancing back at me, she nods. I nod back and watch her open the door. She hops in, shuts the door and gnaws on her bottom lip the way she does when she wants you to think she don't care about nothing. We'll hook up tonight. After. We always do. The car drives off, its tires send a splash of water off the pavement onto my jeans. Ankles to cuffs drenched. What's new? I move up alongside the lane, drop my sign in front of me, try and shake some of the water off. They ain't looking my way though. These drivers. It's like they know I ain't quite whole. Like they know something's missing. Like they know Faith ain't here. Later, if things go right, we'll eat good, maybe even get a room.

It guilts me sometimes, letting Faith do what she does to keep us going. I wish things could be different. I wish I could find a way to make all this crap disappear. But I really gotta stop dreaming. If I've learned anything from Faith, I've learned not to count on things being too different from one day to the next. Life don't work that way. Not unless through some miracle you strike it big. Hit the mother-lode. Sometimes I think that happened to me when Faith came along. But right here, right now, with cars splashing past and the rain pounding down, I can almost hear Faith's voice. She's saying, Don't dwell, don't hope. Most people's dreams don't pan out.

Still, I'm hopeful she's right about this all being one of those temporary things.

Spoons

2009-09-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

Allison is up on her elbows, awake again. Her eyelids flicker and she feels the cool breeze blowing in through the open window. The full moon bleeds bright through the glass, throwing shadows of shuddering leaves onto her bedroom wall. But it’s the noise — the grinding from the kitchen — that has Allison shaking her head.

She scoots into a sitting position, presses her back against the headboard and carefully listens to the clinking. She tucks her hair behind her ears and concentrates. The sound from the kitchen becomes clearer. Tap, tap, tap. A spoon. She’s sure of it.

A moment later Allison hears another spoon join the first. This time it’s a tinkling against glass. Then another and another and another until it is clear a full blast session of musical noisemaking is taking place. Spoons rapping against glassware, creating different tones. Spoons banging beat after beat inside the porcelain sink. Spoons drumming out a soulful rhythm as they brush and clash against copper pots and steel pans.

Allison, this time more determined than ever to catch them in the act, quietly slips out from under the covers. She swings off the bed, throws a robe around her shoulders and tiptoes toward the kitchen. The musical discord is out of control — spoons knocking the windows, spoons snapping the wooden cabinetry, and spoons steel-slapping the dining room table. Advancing through the house, Allison remains as noiseless and stealthy as she possibly can.

When she reaches the fringe of the kitchen, she raises her hand and glides it along the wall until she feels the light switch under her palm. She keeps her breath in and flips the switch up.

But they are very clever, these spoons. As soon as light spills over them they freeze in mid-air. Allison, having stepped into the kitchen, stares in disbelief at the suspended spoons, which are angled this way and that, floating at different levels. In the reflective surfaces of all those spoons, Allison’s startled reflection stares back at her.

She takes a deep breath, tells herself to remain calm. She shuffles over the linoleum, this moment stooping, that moment up on her toe tips, but always she is snatching spoons out of the air. When all the spoons have been gathered, Allison stows them in the drawer they had sneaked out of. She fastens the plastic safety latch so they can’t escape again.

Relieved and ready for some real rest, Allison shuts the light off and starts back to her bedroom. Halfway across the house she hears the creak of a drawer opening. Then, the swelling up of a new noise from the kitchen. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickle up. As with the spoons, this sound is rhythmic. But it is not a tap, tap, tap. This time Allison hears a scrape, scrape, scrape. The knives?

Then suddenly the forks, those silly, trouble-making forks, begin to rattle noisily inside their confinement — as if daring Allison, daring her to return to the kitchen and collect the knives.

Cafe Lost

2009-09-30T13:46:00.001-07:00

Three days of downpour has paused, although the wind still funnels down the boulevard. Noel makes his way along the sidewalk, his hands pocketed, his face damp from the warm drizzle, which trembles in the air like static on a screen. He’s been waiting for the weather to change, waiting for the skies to clear, so he can leave his apartment and visit her again.

The streets are filled with renewed activity. Shopkeepers once again tend to their shops, most of which have been shuttered during the storm.

Noel turns off the boulevard into a quiet alleyway. This is where he usually finds her. He steps over simmering puddles, his shoes scraping against wet gravel.

Halfway through the alley he spots her sitting at a table, shielded from the sprinkles by an awning, which writhes in the wind. This, Noel knows, is her favorite café. In fact, it’s the only café where Noel has ever seen her. His anxiety mounts; his shoes sink a little deeper into the ground as he increases his pace.

When he reaches the table, Noel slips into the chair opposite her. “Hello, you,” he says. “It’s been over a week since I’ve seen you.”

Of course she does not reply, but that doesn’t matter; Noel is still pleased to have found her again. “How is your day going?” he asks.

She stares across the table, fixing her gaze on something beyond where Noel sits with his back to the street. She tilts her head and manages a smile, although it’s there only for an instant.

“I knew I’d find you here,” Noel says. When she lowers her head, he pretends that her moist eyes, a deeper green than he remembers, simply can’t hold his gaze. While she looks down at her long fingers on the table, Noel wonders what thoughts dance through her mind, why it is she laments.

Noel leans forward, rests his elbows on the table, cups his chin in his hands. He wishes she could say something, anything.

“Last night,” Noel begins, “I couldn’t stop thinking of you while I listened to the rain.” When she doesn’t reply, Noel persuades himself his words are drowned, lost in the drizzle that raps against the awning, carried away by the sighing wind.

“I’m glad the rain stopped,” he says, reaching across the table, lightly brushing her hand with his. She sighs, a hush that slips from her throat. Her arms, Noel notices, begin to prickle. She closes her eyelids and pulls her hand out from under Noel’s, and then she slumps back in her chair.

Damp leaves skitter on the brick wall along the sidewalk behind her, becoming part of a whirling heap of orange gathering near the café entrance. Patrons push through the doors, in and out, their umbrellas rising, or collapsing. But they never pay attention to the couple seated out front in the rain. They never do.

From where he sits, Noel watches her open her eyes and gaze skyward where, for a long time, she searches for something Noel wishes he could identify . Finally, she straightens in her seat and lifts her glass to her lips. When she replaces the drink in front of her, Noel studies the smoothness of her fingers as they trace the rim of the glass. She raises a hand and runs a fingertip beneath her eyes. He can’t help wondering why she weeps.

Noel extends his arm to wipe her tears away and his fingers pass through her face, as through a vapor of breath.

“What happened?” he asks, settling back in his chair. “Why are you here?”

Of course she doesn’t answer.

Noel steeples his fingers in front of his face and tries to blow warmth onto his frigid hands. She reaches into her lap and raises her handbag onto the table. She snaps the bag open. Her hand disappears for an instant, before reappearing with a tissue. She uses the tissue to dab at the moisture beneath her eyes, smearing her mascara. She sniffs loudly and crumples the tissue, lets it fall onto the table next to her glass. Then, while she tries to force a smile, her thumb rises and brushes aside the loose strands of hair, which are pasted to her forehead.

After she finishes her drink, she stares through Noel and into the quiet street. He turns his head and follows her gaze. The rain begins to fall, again. Under the neon stabbing the street, puddles ripple and spill over onto the gravel alley.

When she buries her face in her hands, Noel says, “I have to go now, but I’ll be back. I promise I’ll be back.” He rises from his chair and moves past her to the café entrance. When he reaches the door, he stops to look at the reflections arrested in the plate glass window.

As is always the case, reflected in the glass there is only rain and an empty table, which shudders outside Café Lost.

Loss Amplified

2009-09-30T12:34:00.001-07:00

Across the gravel alleyway outside my window my mother spends the nights forgetting. Chips are counted. I hear the clack of mahjong bricks being fingered and stacked and raked over the cluttered tops of padded tables. I listen for her voice: her laughter, her chronic cough, her occasional smoky sigh, and when these familiar sounds drift lazily into my bedroom through the torn mesh screen with the mosquitoes, I hold my pillow close. It's not difficult imagining her coin-calloused fingers fanning thick dust and smoke from her face. Captured in my mind is the image of a sweaty amber bottle of San Miguel beer, my mother's ragged fingers wrapped around it, raising it to her dry lips.

Come daybreak my mother staggers home across the alleyway, kicking up dust. Exhausted, she drops onto the straw mat beneath the electric fan, where she pretends to sleep, pretends she is alone. Her closed eyelids twitch to stay off the deep slumber that will surely bring my father back. In this state of half-awareness, the quickness of her hands startle houseflies that buzz her pasty skin and thread her uncombed hair.

Shadows lengthen along the floor and up the walls. My mother rises to prepare our meal. Over bowls of rice and vegetables we exchange emotionless glances, addressing without words one another's emptiness. The mask of loss and pain has never faded from her face. After showering and dressing, my mother's coarse lips press against my forehead, always followed by the whispered promise that tomorrow, always tomorrow – she will move from the hazy past into the future. She will find a way to heal herself. But not until tomorrow.

Spoon Face Julia

2009-09-30T12:33:00.001-07:00

Because Julia Farley's face was concave we made her our buddy.

On Saturdays, after H.R. Puffnstuff, the guys and I would bang on the Farley's door and ask Julia's mother if her daughter could play outside for a couple hours. Of course, Mrs. Farley always agreed, even offered us brownies if we returned our spoon-faced friend by noon.

We laid Julia down on her back, lugged the garden hose over. One of the guys always poked a couple straws into her nostrils so she could breathe. Sometimes we released a dozen guppies, watched them swim the shallows of Julia's sunken face. Other times we whistled stray dogs over and encouraged them to lap up the water.

In the playground, we'd grip Julia by her ankles and use her face to shovel for treasure in the sand beneath the swings. Near noon we took turns, resting our elbows in Julia's sunken face while watching planes trail overhead.

But something sad happened about the time Julia's face filled out. Her breasts and butt filled out, too. Older boys began to drop by the Farley home.

We truly did miss Julia Farley's company; duck-lipped Donna Dixon was nowhere near as willing or fun.

Dragonfly

2009-09-30T12:32:00.001-07:00

In the park, Jenny’s father used newspaper to make her a kite. I asked my mother to do the same. Instead, she stalked the hedges, walking alongside them until she spotted a blue dragonfly. She positioned her fingers above the insect while it rested. In one quick motion she snatched it by its wings.

I watched its tail curl and its spindly forelegs claw the air as my mother looped thread around its thick neck. Then she placed the wooden spool into my hand. “Here. Fly this.”

Jenny dropped her kite and stared in awe as my dragonfly buzzed skyward. She begged me to let her try. But since I have no father to craft old newspapers into boats or hats or kites, I ignored Jenny and maneuvered the dragonfly with pride.

Inevitably, though, the dragonfly’s head popped off and the thread slackened. Jenny laughed, picked her kite up off the grass, and ran with it across the lawn. I reeled the thread in and sat on the grass. While pinching apart the dragonfly’s tail, I listened to the paper tail of Jenny’s kite flap in the breeze and watched my mother laugh with yet another strange man.

Buckethead

2009-09-30T12:31:00.001-07:00

Marty got home from work and found the Great Dane puppy inside the house with its snout stuck in a metal bucket. While the dog ran blindly around the living room, clanking against furniture and toppling flowerpots, Marty's two daughters sat cross legged on the carpet in front of the television playing their video games. Marty exploded. He told the children to shut the damn television off, get up off their butts and get the the pail off the poor dog's face. His eldest daughter, Rosemary, took hold of the dog's tail. Little Natalie wrapped her skinny arms around the silver pail attached to the dog's snout. At the same time, the two girls both held on tight, closed their eyes, and tugged.

And that, Marty explained to the Animal Control officer, is how Buckethead, the tailless Great Dane he was surrendering, got its name.

Finding Freddy

2009-09-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

Freddy, the kid who lives in the house four doors from mine, has club hands. His fused fingers are folded inward into permanent fists.

Sometimes -- all the time, really -- we consider his oddity and allow special concessions. When we play Red Light, Green Light, we pretend not to see him or the extra step he sneaks when everyone else freezes. We make believe he’s invisible when playing Dodge Ball, never pelting him. And in Hide-n-Seek, we always ignore him.

Yesterday, on Freddy’s porch, we were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. Of course we always came up scissors, so his permanent rock could crush us.

Freddy’s mother noticed, and when he went to the bathroom, she confronted us. “It does more harm than good to treat him special.”

So today, playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, our paper palms shrouded his fist. After shuffling in Red Light, Green Light, he was sent to sit on the curb. Playing Dodge Ball, I hurled the ball so hard it blasted his head and left a purple bruise on his face.

It occurred to me while playing Hide-n-Seek that Freddy’s mother was right. Every time we dragged him from his hiding place, he screamed joyfully.

A Recurrent Dream

2009-09-30T12:26:00.001-07:00

At the breakfast table, Nestor’s wife breaks the news, revealing to him that the company she works for has scheduled yet another business trip for her to attend. She claims the seminar, which will be held seven-hundred-miles away in New York City, is necessary for the advancement of her career.

From across the table, Nestor stares down at his eggs and says, “When?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Funny how these meetings always seem to pop up with little notice.”

“They were only able—” his wife begins to say, her voice trailing off when Nestor shakes his head.

Looking up from his plate, Nestor says in an anxious tone, “I dreamt it again last night.”

Once again he is referring to his recurrent dream, a fabricated nightmare in which his wife bends over him while he sleeps, and with a deceitful smile painted across her face, she uses a threaded needle to sew his eyelids shut.

Nestor’s wife doesn’t reply. Avoiding her husband’s glare, she picks at her eggs. In the silence, only the tines of the fork can be heard as they clink against her porcelain plate.

After several moments, Nestor says, “It’s true, isn’t it? My dream has meaning, doesn’t it?”

Nestor’s wife releases her fork, letting it fall onto the plate. Without replying, she climbs out of her seat and hurries from the room.

When her footsteps on the wooden floor have faded, Nestor smiles. He resumes eating his breakfast, satisfied that his ploy has put his wife on the defensive. As is always the case, Nestor knows she will be too upset during her trip to wonder what he is doing—and with whom.

Penny

2009-09-30T12:23:00.000-07:00

Penny

In Sarah's Citrus Heights apartment, we are all very drunk when the girl I'm thinking
of breaking it off with, Penny, begins to rattle off her past experiences with some
of the boys who'd entered and left her life. There was, she says, Jacob, the boy
she met years earlier in church and who had cried when Rocky Balboa was defeated
by Apollo Creed in the first movie. "Such sentiment," Penny says, looking over
everyone in the room and raising her beer bottle in front of her face.

I try to get her to stop, to relax and enjoy this small gathering of old friends.
But from where she sits across the room from me, Penny just gives me a hard look
and goes on with her mantra.

Then, she says, there was Louis, the Spanish boy who wooed her in high school.
She remembers and describes his slick accent, how he had spoken when he called her
at home to apologize for coaxing her into the alleyway behind the movie theatre
which was next to what is now the big Sam's Club on Greenback. Louis had made rough
love to her on top of a flattened empty cardboard box. Penny opens her eyes wide
and tells everyone how the moon shone behind Louis's head and while he continually
thrust himself against her, she stared at the big RCA letters on a box leaning against
the brick theatre wall.

Our hostess, Sarah, gets and goes to the kitchen. She calls out, asking who wants
another beer. Penny raises her arm and I tell her she's had enough. When Sarah
returns with a tray full of bottles, Penny removes not one, but two beers from the
tray. She then raises her arm and gives me the finger. Everyone in the room gets
a good laugh out of that.

Penny then brings up Carl and Craig, the two brothers who lived behind Sunrise Mall,
how they'd sandwiched her in the back seat of their father's parked car and from
either side of her worked their hands -- all four of them -- over her body. But
Carl and Craig's mother came out of the house and crossed the lawn without any of
them hearing her to discover them in the back see of the car. She had stuck her
face close to Penny's and threatened that if she ever saw Penny around her sons
again, she would phone Penny's mother and let her know how slutty Penny was.

The way Penny uses her hands to demonstrate and the way her face crumples and tightens
and the way the words slur from her lips has everyone in the room roaring with laughter.
Everyone except for me. Then she looks across the coffee table at me and says out
loud that it won't be long before I am included in her litany of lost lovers.

This brings about another round of laughter in the room.

Even Penny can not keep herself from laughing. She laughs so hard she frequently
has to swipe at her moist eyes with the blooming sleeve of her pink blouse.

Wet Market

2009-09-30T12:22:00.001-07:00

***

Wet Market

Across a flyblown plywood counter a young boy stands next to a flaming barrel. The boy reaches into a deep porcelain basin and removes a tiny green frog. He carefully threads the frog through its mouth onto a wooden skewer. As the frog is slid down the skewer, its webbed feet reach for something to cling to, its rear legs kick backward like a desperate swimmer. The boy glances at me and grins, showing me a mouth of small teeth. He wipes his hand on his frayed t-shirt and removes another frog from the basin. He repeats the skewering process. After four frogs have been impaled, the boy winks at me. And then he holds the skewer over the fire that dances above the barrel. As they blacken the frogs pop loudly. The boy skillfully spins the skewer with his fingers, setting off a scattering of black ash and red ember.

He takes the skewer off the flame and hands it over the counter to my mother.

"Anak, ko," my mother says, holding the frogs in front of my face. "Try this. It's crispy like pork skin."

I shake my head no. "But we are not so poor, are we?"

She laughs. When she tries to force me anyway, I turn my head to heave.

***
Possible Edits

Staring at me from its bed of ice

We reached the market, flyblown and teeming with traffic.

***

Original version published in elimae: http://www.elimae.com/2009/09/Lamplight.html

Underneath the Lamplight

2009-09-30T12:19:00.001-07:00

***

Lamplight

That night I am riding in a jeepney with my mother, returning to the base from the Grandfather's house. When the jeepney stalls in a snarl of traffic, I glance out the window. There are two women underneath a flickering streetlamp. They are jabbing their hands into the glow of light, wrapping their fingers around something, and then quickly stuffing that same something into green-tinted Coca-Cola bottles.

I nudge my mother. "What are they doing?"

She follows my gaze and replies, "They are catching crickets drawn to the light."

"But why?"

"Anak, ko," my mother says, meaning 'My child'. "Of course it is because they are very poor."

***

Possible Edits

We reached MacArthur Boulevard, brightly lit and teeming with traffic.

***

Original version published in elimae: http://www.elimae.com/2009/09/Lamplight.html

Fried Plantain

2009-09-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

Still humming, my father slices the plantains. He drops them into a hot skillet.
"I won't forgive her," I say.
My father says nothing. He transfers the browned slices onto a plate and asks me to flatten them.
I position the slices between sheets of wax paper and slide them under a drinking glass. Leaning hard against the glass's rim, I squash the fruit flat, squeeze the oil out.
My father stops humming. "Gentler, child."
"I hate plantain." My eyes burn. "First bitter, then rotten."
He shakes his head and sits beside me, touching my wrist. "Not rotten." He pulls me close, whispering, "More mature. Sweeter. Softer."

Shoeshine

2009-09-30T11:50:00.001-07:00

I sat back in the bamboo chair and placed my boot on the young girl's ratty shoeshine box. She sat cross-legged on the sidewalk and without looking up, she began to brush the toe of the boot. I watched her dip a dirty cloth into a rusted can of black Kiwi polish, then carefully use the cloth to buff. When she was done she stared up at me and said in clipped English, "Finished. Other shoe please."

It was a poor job. Scuff marks were still present and there was virtually no shine whatsoever on the leather, so I told her so.

Her eyes welled up.

Later that evening I found a real shoeshine person who used spit and a light touch to bring my leather boots to a brilliant luster that caught the bright lights and the flashing colors of the surrounding neon.

"Ten pesos," the shoeshine guy said, holding out his hand. I gave it to him and shook my head. It was the first day I'd ever spent fifty pesos having my boots shined.

Nodder

2009-09-30T11:48:00.001-07:00

While browsing a souvenir shop in the airport, the man who'd crossed an ocean to marry encouraged his new bride, a woman he'd selected from photographs in a catalog, to assist him in choosing a gift to bring home to his mother. Anyone paying attention to this couple could see they were not yet in sync with one another, nor were they completely comfortable in each other's presence. The man and the woman made their way along the souvenir-filled shelves. He led, she followed. Occasionally, he stopped and picked an item up, asking her what she thought. Because she always nodded, he very gently took her hands in his and told her that he did not expect her to agree with everything he said. Still, each time he asked her opinion regarding a snow globe or metal trinket replicating some well-known local landmark, she smiled and nodded. If he placed a printed t-shirt or baseball cap in her hands, she smiled and nodded.

Toward the rear of the shop they stopped in front of a display of wooden figurines. Most of them depicted native people in traditional attire. The man and his new wife stared a long time at one particular figurine—a carved native woman wrapped in a native dress. Held in front of the wooden woman was a straw basket filled with local fruit. When he took it from the shelf the figurine's head shivered on its coil and began to bob, up and down, up and down.

He turned to face his wife, and when he saw her staring down at the new shoes he'd bought her, he replaced the carving back on the shelf.

"No," he said. "I don't like it either. Let's see if we can't find a keychain instead."

Saving Angel

2009-09-30T11:46:00.001-07:00

Bruce can’t quit laughing. It’s not that he thinks everything is funny, he just can’t control himself.

Sitting on the toilet, he leans forward, covers his eyes with his balls of his palms and squeezes his knees together. He laughs again. The serious faction of Bruce’s mind struggles with the silly side, which for the moment holds the strings to his emotions. Bruce, aware that this conflict takes place in his brain, doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to laugh anymore, but he can’t help it.

When Bruce finally does manages to stop laughing, he slurs out, “This is serious shit.”

His cheeks expand, like some squirrel who'd gathered a cheekful of nuts. Behind Bruce's sealed lips a mouthful of suspended laughter whirls round, ready to spill out again.

Then it happens; Bruce opens his mouth and the laughter begins again.

Maybe it’s all a dream. This also crosses Bruce‘s mind. Maybe his wife, Angel, isn’t really lying dead in the living-room. Is she? Or is his mind offering up false possiblilities. Again, the serious side of his mind interjects into his thought train, telling Bruce to wake up, get a grip -- this is no fucking dream.

Bruce closes his eyes, thinking maybe he can shut reality out, or bring it back. His mind, though, spins reels of images: Angel, big, big Angel, shuffling along the sidewalk, complaining of her swollen aching ankles. Angel staring at her feet, trying to ignore the taunts of the neighborhood children. Angel begging Bruce to save her, take her away from all of this.

Then Angel slips away from Bruce’s thoughts, Maurice steps into them.

Maurice standing in the doorway. Maurice. White Maurice.

“Yo, Man,” Bruce says out loud, his voice hollow in the bathroom. “What it be, ma man?” This time when Bruce laughs, there is no interruption from his voice of reason. After all, pale-ass Maurice acting like some ghetto gangster really is funny.

Maurice hadn’t lied when he’d told Bruce the dope was high-grade, the best that could be had.

“This shit’ll take the pain away,” Maurice, slinging his black slang, had said. “You gonna know what heaven be all about when this shit starts swimmin’ through you veins.”

Bruce recalls snatching the bag of dried herb from Maurice’s hand and squeezing it.

He remembers working the kinks out of his neck while Maurice kept on. Bruce had gestured over his shoulder then, over to where Angel sat slumped on the sofa, looking at TV.

“But will it work on her?” Bruce had asked.

“Man . . . “ This is how Maurice had answered, peering past Bruce. “This shit don’t care how big you is.“

“But will it, though?”

Maurice raised an arm, touched his sunglasses for a moment before pushing them up on top of his stringy dreadlocks. He leaned in, Maurice did, putting his face close to Bruce’s, and said, “Maurice don’t peddle the cheap shit you fools be scorin’ out in the projects.”

“So her body, as large as it is, will absorb it then?”

Maurice smiled, flashing his gold tooth. “Maurice be all about quality. He gots himself a reputation to keep.”

“I’m not saying you don’t,“ Bruce replied. “I’m just saying not everything works for Angel. You know, on account of her being so --”

“You gets what you pays for, friend.” Maurice snatched the bag of weed from Bruce, flipped it into the air and caught it again when it came back down.

“It has to work.” Bruce said. “It has to be good enough to stop Angel’s pain.”

Maurice, lowering his shades back over his eyes, had replied. “You gots my guarantee.”

In the bathroom, Bruce shuts his eyes and laughs again. Fucking Maurice.

When he opens his eyes, Bruce tries to focus on the shower curtain ahead of him. The sharp smell of plastic materializes. Is the smell in his nostrils real, or is it his brain playing tricks again? Bruce likes that smell. He also likes how the blue flowers that decorate the shower curtain repeat, the pattern mottling the plastic. He used to sit on the toilet, when the curtain was new, and watch Angel shower behind those blue flowers.

But Bruce’s mind can’t sustain the sensation; the newness fades away, transforms in front of his eyes. He grimaces upon seeing how nasty and yellow the shower curtain really is. The only odor filling Bruce’s nostrils now is what he’s pushing out of himself into the toilet.

“My Angel in the garden on a rainy day.” When Bruce hears the words spill from his mouth, he starts to laugh again.

There are thick lines of mildew caked in the accordianed folds of the shower curtain. Bruce thinks they look like bars. He raises his arms in front of him, pretends to grip and shake the imaginary bars. He says, “Let me out. Let me out of here.“

Bruce becomes aware of a noise in the bathroom, and as he focuses on it, the noise amplifies. Click-hiss, CLICK-Hiss, CLICK-HISS. While he sits motionless on the toilet, Bruce stares up at the vent in the ceiling, wishing he could see the slow spinning fan. CLICK-HISS, CLICK-HISS, CLICK-HISS.

Angels go to heaven, don’t they? Is she in heaven now? She can’t be teased in heaven. She can’t be laughed at, treated like a freak. It’s not her fault she’s so large. Glands? Heredity? Her mother was big, too. As were her two sisters. Big and fat and sad and alone. At least Angel had Bruce, someone who loved her despite her size. Right? Of course he loved her. Didn’t he? He wasn’t ashamed of her. Was he? The fact that he'd lied to himself, told himself he could do much better -- that wasn't real. Was it? He loved her enough to help her pain go away, didn’t he? He loved her enough to save her, right?

Bruce turns his head and looks at the sink. On the counter, Angel’s pet goldfish floats in a bowl of green water. It gulps, gulps, gulps for air. Bruce opens and closes his mouth, rhythmically mimicking the dying fish.

He pats his shirt pocket, feeling for the remaining marijuana. He reaches into the pocket and pulls out the joint. It’s as thick as Angel’s thumb. Bruce jams the joint between his lips. This one is also laced with roach poison. “My ticket out.” Bruce says, still staring at the goldfish.

They’d smoked everything except the two laced fingers. Those they’d saved until Maurice's good stuff had kicked in.

When Angel told Bruce she was ready, he lit hers up for her. He watched her squeeze her eyelids shut as she drew on it. He watched the slow burning paper curl away between Angel’s trembling fingers. “My ticket out,” Bruce says again. He holds his gaze on the goldfish, as if waiting for a reply.

After wiping, after flushing, Bruce yanks up his sweatpants and starts for the closed bathroom door. His feet tingle, numb against the tiles. Bruce’s knees wobble and, to avoid crashing to the floor, he takes a giant stride and grasps the doorknob. The knob wriggles in his hand and the door flies open. Bruce glances at the goldfish again, wonders how long it’ll suffer before it dies.

Everything in the living-room has that frosted window distortion. Blurs - fuzzy splotches of color. He doesn’t look directly at Angel, doesn’t want to. Instead he sits with his back against the sofa, Angel's huge yellow dress in his peripheral vision. He doesn’t want to see her lying dead, sprawled out on the carpet.

While trying to grasp if this whole night has been some kind of joke, Bruce starts laughing again.

But this time the laughter is different - milder. Bruce sniffs up the moisture beneath his nostrils and rubs his red eyes. His eyes focus and he sees Angel’s drawing on the wall, a train sketched in grease. Lead car rushing, remaining cars slithering behind, snakelike, shrinking, shrinking, shrinking until the caboose is just a fleck of grease. Angel drew that for Bruce - two birthdays ago.

He tries to turn his head, tries to pull his gaze from the train. He can’t, though. Suddenly, tendrils of smoke rise from the train’s engine, Bruce presses his back against the sofa. The train bursts off the wall, spits from its frame, rushes directly toward him.

He raises an arm to shield his face. After a moment Bruce lowers his arm and starts to laugh. Damn Maurice. You weren’t lying about this shit.

“Toot-toot,” Bruce says, cocking a fisted hand up and down. “Chug-a-chug-a-toot-toot.”

The realization of the absurd mind-play taking place in his head keeps Bruce laughing. The awareness that Angel lies dead beside him makes Bruce question himself. He did it for her, right? Why does it all seem so funny?

His laughter mounts and Bruce feels his eyes leak. He rolls onto his side, right into Angel, where he suddenly sobers. He still refuses to look at her. Instead, Bruce squeezes his eyelids so tight that colors mottle against them. Then, laughing and weeping at the same time, Bruce plants a palm against the sharp pain stinging his side.

He wants to take control of himself. He hates this feeling of being half-aware, hates how he understands what’s happening. Fuck you Maurice.

Finally, Bruce, with his eyes still shut, raises a trembling hand and finds one of Angel’s thick thighs.

Angel stirs, a murmur escapes her throat.

Startled at this sudden movement, Bruce snaps his eyes snap open. He holds his breath, bites down on his lower lip, not realizing he’s drawn blood. He turns his head, slowly, and studies Angel’s motionless face. He shifts his stare, his gaze traveling all the way down Angel’s three-hundred-eighty pound body lying on the carpet beside him. Scanning up again, he notices the gentle rise and fall of her chest.

She’s not gone.

Everything except the final two joints; it should have been enough to drop an elephant. That’s what they’d smoked, that’s what Maurice staked his reputation on. Then, when she no longer felt pain, Bruce gave her the laced joint, watched her smoke it.

Damn you, Maurice. She’s not gone. The events of the night spin through Bruce’s mind. Snapshots, images. Bruce and Angel making love, twice. Angel wanting to wear her yellow dress, Bruce helping her into it. Nibbling on cold pizza, the TV running while they smoked, while they fucked, while they laughed, while they cried. Then, Angel falling onto the carpet where she lies now, unmoving, eyes open, lips slightly parted.

She was supposed to be gone.

“This is the last time you’ll cry,” he’d promised her. “Soon it’ll be over, the pain won’t be there anymore.”

Bruce, close against Angel now, pushes aside her blonde mess of hair. He rests his head on her heavy breasts.

Faster and longer. Fuck you, Maurice. This shit’ll get you there faster, keep you there longer. Faster and longer.

Bruce buries his face deeper into Angel’s breast, breathes her in. How long is longer? His fingers run through the dry nest of Angel’s hair. He presses down, feels her skull against the tips of his fingers.

Closing his eyes, Bruce hears every sound in the room. Everything. All to the beat of Angel’s heart. The wind chanting in through the cracks in the window. The fluorescent lights buzzing in the kitchen.

A comical pair. What a ridiculous pair. Look how fat she is. Fat ass. Tub-o-lard. Shame. Hey, hey, hey.

What the fuck do they know? They couldn’t even begin to be aware of how caring a person Angel was. It wasn’t her fault she was so large. He did love her. He really did, didn't he?

Bruce lowers his hand from Angel’s hair, blankets her nose, feels her shallow breaths warm against his palm. If he presses down hard enough, he knows, he could stop her breathing. He does press. But not able to maintain it, Bruce pulls his hand back.

Bruce whispers into Angel’s ear. “Don’t fight. Let it take you.”

His hand drifts automatically, a mind of its own, moving down from her mouth, over her breasts, her hips, before finally resting on one of Angel’s knees.

“I always love you,” Bruce whispers. He watches his hand crawl up Angel’s thigh, disappear. He feels the fabric of her yellow dress against his knuckles, the bumps of her thigh under his palm. Up, up, up until he finds what he’s searching for. Bruce works his fingers. But Angel’s so far gone, so teetering on the edge, she doesn’t stir.

Bruce’s finger's slip out of her, his hand slips out from under her dress. He scoots himself into a sitting position with his back against the sofa. He stares at the train on the wall. He raises his fingers in front of his face, wiggles them, and then brings them to his nostrils, lowers them to his mouth.

Make my pain go away. I don‘t want to live anymore. Make my pain go away. Show me you love me. Save me.

“You gets what you pays for,” Maurice had said. Longer faster reputation elephants Fuck you, Maurice. Fuck you.

The instants are all at once invading Bruce’s mind. Cheap wine, cold pizza, expensive dope, lovemaking on the floor, in the bed, music spilling from the stereo, TV blaring, the odor of the burning herb, the feel of Angel in his arms, dying goldfish, new curtain, roaring train.

Angel moans again.

Her eyelids flutter and a trickle of brown liquid leaks from her lips, rolling down her cheek. She begins to tremble, convulse violently. A choking noise escapes her throat.

Bruce buries his face in his hands. Fuck you, Maurice.

He climbs on top of Angel, positions himself below her breasts, feels the stretch in his groin as he straddles her immense body.

Make my pain go away. Save me.

Bruce stares up at the ceiling. He feels his thumbs touch and he leans all his weight forward into his hands, into his fingers. He presses down, harder, harder, harder, his shoulders rolling forward to add just a little bit more until finally her throat collapses in his hands.

Bruce rolls off Angel onto the floor. He gasps for air. His hand moves to touch Angel’s bosom. The pulse he feels is his own, racing from his heart to his fingertips.

Dawn is already spilling gray through the windows when Bruce finally leaves his wife‘s side.

Bruce closes the bathroom door behind him. The goldfish floats - lifeless. He picks up the bowl, cold in his hands, and pours its contents into the toilet. He flushes and watches the goldfish caught in the whirl before being sucked down the pipes.

Then Bruce pulls down his sweatpants and sits on the toilet. After digging his laced joint and his lighter out of his shirt pocket, Bruce stares at the shower curtain ahead of him and begins to laugh.

Secrets

2009-09-30T11:44:00.001-07:00

One minute me and Bernie got our attentions on the game, next Bernie says to me, Watch this, man. He snaps his fingers and his old lady, Heidi, who’d been at the dining table reading, raises her head. Hey, baby girl, Bernie says. My buddy here’s been staring at your tits. Nah, man, I say, shaking my head. He’s playing.

Heidi, she frowns and says, Don’t do this, Bernie. He points the neck of his beer bottle her way and says, My buddy says you look good. I feel the blood rushing to my head. Heidi lays her book facedown on the table, weaves her fingers together and stares at them. Bernie says, Get undressed already. Show my buddy the goods. Heidi shakes her head. That’s mean, Bernie. Hurtful.

I empty my bottle and get up, brush my pants off. I should go, I say. Bernie takes hold my shirt sleeve, says, Ever have a secret you feel you can’t live with, man? Heidi starts up, but sits back down. How much longer you gonna torture me, Bernie? she says. I yank free of Bernie’s grip. Knock it off, I say. I didn’t do nothing with her.

Bernie gets on his feet, drives his palms into my chest, shoving me backward. Get the fuck out of my house, he says. I see you man, he says. Who you really are. Heidi screams from across the room, Leave him alone, Bernie. Bernie says, Was I talking to you, bitch!

Look, Bernie, I say. Calm down, man. Take it easy. Bernie shoves me again, Why the fuck are you still here? He grabs my collar. Heidi bolts across the room, pulls Bernie off me, screaming, Bernie, stop.

Then Bernie starts laughing. He swipes at his eyes and keeps laughing. Finally, he drops back onto the sofa. Me and Heidi exchange a quick look. Bernie, still laughing, says, You should see the look on your face, man.

The Specialist

2009-09-30T11:42:00.001-07:00

After work, Charles usually finds himself drinking alone at the Pelican Club. Until the band begins playing just before nine, the place is pretty much blue-collar. Stiffs having one with friends after a shift at one of the nearby mills, factories, or warehouses. Charles tries to keep to himself, but once recognized, he becomes the subject of lewd jokes and curious queries, which continue until he finally pays his bill and leaves. What do they know, these men who either smell of sawdust, or have oil-stained hands. What do they understand of women's pains? Nothing. "There he is," one of them might say out loud, "the guy with all the pussy." Or else, after having had a few drinks, a group of burly, ball-capped machinists might come by and ask, "How about a sniff of them hands, buddy?" Charles smiles it off, nursing his rum and coke. The bartender, a fat, one-armed veteran named Higgs, will always intervene, saying, "Leave the man alone. Somebody has to do the job." How would they like it, Charles thinks, if they had to see women in pain day in, day out? They think its funny, doing what he does, having to see these poor women with either their knees up and apart, or their legs hanging over the edges of the paper-covered table while the technique is performed. Steady relationships don't come easy for Charles. Conversation always leans toward work, and inevitably, an explosive jealousy will consume the woman. Even this Charles finds difficult to understand. Can't these women see the importance of his work? Still, they sooner or later begin to question the physical characteristics of other women, and not only request, but demand comparison. "After a while," he'll say, "all vaginas look alike." He hates to see the clients he's treated in public. The discomfort of their relationship, no matter how professional, hangs over the chance meetings. Of course, despite the wonderful results, the pain still lingers in these women's minds. Sometimes they shut their eyes, pant their way through it. Other times they curse, screaming at him while the performs the delicate procedure. "Calm down. Breathe deeply. It'll all be over in no time." These are the stock lines he uses to appease them. Some women, mostly first-timers, stiffen up during the process. Embarrassing accidents have occurred, requiring paper changes in mid-procedure. But those who'd been through it before, they just close their eyes and let it happen. Charles hates the fear he witnesses in the women's eyes, hates how they put their trust in him, hates knowing that he can do little to reduce the pain that comes before the joyful finish. They alleviate their fears by laughing or gnawing their lower lip or staring at the spackling on the ceiling. They make faces, rolling their eyes or pouting their lips. Sometimes they request— and of course, Charles allows— a loved one to sit beside them and hold their hand. Sometimes they'll talk while he works, ramble on about unrelated subjects: some movie they've recently seen, a book they might be reading, why they are going to this extreme, doing this, and how they honestly believe that by having it removed their lives will improve. He used to lie to them, telling them the procedure was completely painless. But he could not sleep, sometimes for days, after seeing that look of betrayal glazed over their eyes when he finally snapped his gloves off. "Higgs," he says to the bartender, shaking the ice cubes round his glass. "Refill, hey." Higgs comes over, tops the glass off. "Must've been a rough one," the bartender says. Charles sips from his glass and shakes his head. When he sets his drink on the bar, he says, "This girl today couldn't have been more than sixteen." "Getting younger, are they?" "She screamed, cried. And when it was over she asked for her cell-phone and called her boyfriend. 'It's done,' she told him. 'Are you happy?' When she heard his reply she cried with joy." "Crazy world," Higgs says. "Not like when I was young. If a girl didn't like what she'd been dealt, too bad. She'd just have to live with it." Charles feels a tap on his shoulder, glances back to see a young man standing an arm's length away. The man clears his throat and says, "My girl wants... I mean, we want... I hear you do..." Charles nods, reaches into his pocket and removes a stack of business cards. "Call and make an appointment," he says, handing the young man one of the cards. "Is it painful? I mean, will she be able to deal with it?" Charles nods. "Both." He looks at the kid, thinking the boy can't be more than seventeen. They are coming in younger than ever. The kid smiles. "She wants me to do it to," he says. Charles nods. The trend is becoming more frequent. Over the past year, men too, have been desiring a full Brazilian waxing.

Entanglements

2009-09-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

The rain fell and the spinning tires of passing cars threw spray from the pavement onto my jeans. A dark, low-to-the-ground vehicle sped past, then slowed ahead of me

and veered onto the shoulder. Its trouble lights started to flash. I looped the straps of my backpack through my arms and shrugged it into place. Trotting across the gravel to the waiting car, I was thankful someone had finally stopped.

Chrome letters above the license plate spelled out the word SPYDER. It was a tiny two-seater, black, and when the passenger's side window slid down I peered inside and saw a woman about my age behind the wheel. Her face was lit up by the green glow of the instrument panel. The wipers groaned as they arced, continuing to scrape rain off the cracked windshield.

The driver tilted her head. She smiled and said, "You're drenched." When I didn't reply right away, she added, "Where you headed?"

I shoved a clump of wet hair out of my face and tried to blink the rain out of my eyes. "I guess I'm just on the move," I said.

"Running?" she asked.

I felt my stomach clench and looked the woman over. Her blonde hair was an uncombed mess of stringy silk and she had mascara stains under her eyes. She wore gray sweats, the shirt hooded and the pants baggy. "Yeah," I said. "I guess I'm running."

The automatic lock released. The woman said, "Hop in and we can run together. Maybe grab something to eat down the road."

When I tugged on the handle and opened the door, she bent over and used her right arm to sweep fast food wrappers and empty cigarette packs off the passenger's seat onto the floor. She straightened, glancing at me. There was something needy in the way she grinned. Alarm bells pounded in my head. It was too similar to the relationship I'd just escaped.

Just then, bright headlights from an oncoming car hit the cracked windshield and cast floating web patterns across the woman's face.

I slammed the door without getting in. Shaking my head, I smiled and said, "Hope you don't get offended if I pass on the ride."

She laughed. "You're not afraid of me, are you?"

While I backed away in the rain, I nodded and reminded myself the weather couldn't stay bad forever. The woman behind the wheel said nothing, only kept her eyes on me, never once blinking.

Winter Pride

2009-09-30T11:34:00.001-07:00

Tanya Berdoff is trudging back and forth through the snow in front of my house. A straw hat shields her face and Christmas lights flash all over her body. Other than that she isn't wearing a thing.

When Tanya notices me watching, she stops pacing and faces my window. Her steaming breath rises skyward and she is shivering, almost convulsively. Her pale, puppy-dog-ear breasts, and her heavy thighs wobble beneath the myriad of colors and shapes coming off the lights strung around her.

Across the street, the Berdoff's porch light flicks on and the front door opens. Henry Berdoff steps outdoors and lights a cigarette.

"Beat that, you fucking pork chop!" Henry shouts from his porch.

I let the curtain fall and turn away from the window.

My wife, Myra, who'd been lying in bed, puts her magazine down and looks my way. "What's going on out there, Roy?"

"They're pissed," I reply.

Myra comes up on her elbows, her magazine drops onto the carpet. "What's their problem now?" When I don't answer, Myra climbs out of bed and joins me at the window.

I pull aside the curtain. Across the street, Tanya's broad blinking backside is moving past the life-sized, mechanical Santa Clause on the Berdoff's front lawn. When she reaches the porch, Henry kisses her.

Myra says, "That crazy woman just has to be freezing."

We watch Henry crouch, reach past his wife and unplug a cord. Tanya's lights flicker off. Under the blotchy porch light, Tanya slowly spins herself free of the cord she's wrapped in. Henry comes to his feet and flicks his cigarette toward our house. Both he and Tanya give me and Myra a not so neighborly gesture. Then they both disappear through their front door.

Myra and I stay standing at the window, silent, staring at the Berdoff's mechanical Santa as he waves his arm and bends at the waist. Finally, I let the curtain fall and put my arms around Myra, pull her close against me.

After a moment, I say softly into her ear, "Myra?"

She pulls her head off my chest, looks up, glaring. Her head moves side to side.

"Myra? Please, Myra?"

She jerks out of my arms, retreats, backing toward the bed. "Not a chance," she says, jabbing her finger in the air between us. "First thing in the morning your ass is on the roof and every one of those reindeer are coming down."

Just That Quick

2009-09-30T11:28:00.001-07:00

I tell this guy sitting next to me at the bar that I'm all used up. I'm emptied out. Don't know if I wanna go on, I say. Don't know if I can. Like me, he claims to be rutted in ways he doesn't understand. He takes long moments to ponder what he wants to say. Finally, he claps me on the back and says, Buddy, not a damn thing lasts forever. Knowing he's right, I say, Well, I'm on the way out, anyway. Me too, he says. Me too. After taking a long sip from my glass, I say, Even the sun eventually burns out. He nods and we quit talking. In the silence that follows he plays with the olive floating on top of his drink. Then he stares at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He knocks back what's left of his drink, glances at his watch and says, Guess this is it, man. Gotta go. Don't go, I say. It's early yet. Stay. Let's try and drink off whatever's eating us up inside. Why? he says. What's the point? It don't work that way, buddy, he says, shaking his head. Wish it did. He slides off his stool and uses his unsteady hands to smooth the wrinkles from his shirt, his trousers. Really, he says, looking up, smiling, It's time to go. He puts a hand out. I take it, squeeze hard. See you there, I say. Doubt it, he says, gripping my hand back. Don't think it works that way, either. With his hands stuffed inside his coat pockets, he crosses the room to the exit. When the door shuts behind him something hits me. Just that quick.

Years earlier, my high school science teacher, Mr. Bolton, was found in his garage, dead behind the wheel of his Ford Escort, the engine still running. Day earlier he'd stood before the class in front of the chalkboard. He told us that some forty-three trillion miles away, maybe on the edge of the Centaurus constellation, or maybe in the center of some other cold dark spot in the vast emptiness of life, a star is dying, burning out. Hell, Mr. Bolton said, it might this very second be fizzling out. Might this very second be sputtering out the last of its fire. But of course we won't know this. Years will have to pass before anyone on this planet knows the star has died. Then one night the sky will have one less flicker. Even then, chances are the star's existence won't be missed.

I tried to think then about what Mr. Bolton was saying, but still had my sister's champagne-colored cat on my mind. That morning I found it lifeless on the road and tossed it into the trash. My sister thought it ran away. Gone is gone, right? Who needs to know how it left? Or why? When a few years later my father passed, we all saw that coming. The moment it happened my mother's own flame started to fizzle. I can still see her sitting on the living room carpet, listening while the needle rode the grooves of the Procul Harum record she played over and over. She once told me there was something meaningful in the lyrics of the haunting song 'A Whiter Shade of Pale.' The old man's gone, I told her. You don't gotta cry no more.

Like old picture slides flashing on a white screen, my world comes into focus in a discordant kind of way. Nothing lasts forever.

And now, while I trace the rim of my empty glass with a trembling finger, I think, What does it matter that I got no idea what life's all about? Every day stars flame out all around me. Other stars go on shining. So what? I raise my arm for another drink and while the bartender pours, I study the swirls and try real hard to pick the substance out, to push the fat aside, to grasp what it is -- exactly -- everyone, including myself, is trying to figure out.

Texas Chili

2009-09-30T11:27:00.001-07:00

This morning my wife got word her first husband died. She celebrated, whipping up a serious batch of Texas chili. Real sirloin and no red beans. Fantastic. But while cooking she used so much onion and chili powder and cayenne pepper she needed a box of tissue right beside her.

Grapefruit

2009-09-30T11:25:00.001-07:00

My wife screams that we’ll have to move again if I don’t put it behind us and find work soon. The second time in six months. Once these kinds of arguments begin they never seem to end. The blame volleys back and forth until hurtful words finally reduce us to something smaller than we already are. So instead of replying I go outdoors and sit on the front porch. On the opposite side of the closed door my wife still shouts. The sun has already come up behind the houses across the street. Looking down past my bare feet to the bottom of the steps, I notice the red clay pot and my wife’s tiny grapefruit tree that grows inside of it. The leaves have yellowed. A single grapefruit bows one of the sickly branches. I have an urge to walk down the steps and pluck that grapefruit off the branch, peel away its coarse skin, thumb it in half and break it apart into segments. Then I‘d like to grind each of those segments between my teeth and swallow the bitter bites. But I don’t do that. Instead, I remain seated at the top of the steps, staring down at the tree, wondering how long before the branch finally breaks from the weight of the fruit.

Butterflies and Broken Horses

2009-09-30T11:24:00.001-07:00

At the kitchen island, Keller used his charcoal pencil to add the finishing touches to his butterfly sketch. He brought the picture close to his face and studied it, an expression of displeasure filling his eyes. Then from the television, a black-and-white nine-inch model sitting on the counter in front of him, came the grieving voice of a woman.

The woman on the television said, “She went to the carousel, saying she wanted to free the horses.”

The words brought Keller’s careful attention to the grainy picture. He released his hold on the butterfly sketch, letting it float to the floor. He reached forward and tweaked a small knob on the front of the television, hoping to clear the snowy image and get rid of the black horizontal lines that climbed steadily from the bottom of the screen.

For several moments his attempts to clear the picture were unsuccessful, so he reached up and worked the antenna, shifted it in one direction and the static crackled out of the speaker. He moved the rabbit-ears again. This time the picture improved slightly and Keller could make out on the screen a tearful woman standing before a large gathering of reporters.

He leaned in close, tilting his head.

The image of the woman’s face grew to fill the screen. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, raised her face to the sky. When her mouth opened again she seemed to Keller to be addressing only him.

“Please,” she pleaded, her voice breaking, her composure collapsing. She stared directly at Keller and said, “Please. Daniela is all I have in the world. Don’t hurt my baby.”

Keller yanked the television’s plug from the wall and slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder.

The young girl sat curled in the corner of the room. She was trembling, her bound hands held in front of her face as if she was expecting to be struck.

“Daniela,” Keller said, his hoarse whisper floating across the room.

The child’s chin rose. She shook her tangled blonde hair off her pale, smudged face and, wide-eyed, she sucked in her lower lip and shifted her bottom on the floor. Keller’s eyes grew wide as the fringe of the young girl’s yolk-yellow dress traveled up her skinny thighs.

Keller continued to stare. The girl moistened her lips.

He tilted his head even further, his right ear almost resting on his right shoulder.

In a frightened, mouse-like tone, the words spilled off the child’s tongue: “I wanna’ go home.”

For a long time Keller seemed to be considering her request. But he finally slipped off his stool and shook his head.

Keller rolled back his upper lip, revealing large, stained teeth. He raised an arm and fluttered his fingers. “Butterfly,” he said. “Daniela. Butterfly.”

She wept and screamed and pleaded and kicked her heels into the wooden floor. Keller brought his big hands up to his head and covered his ears. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth. Shaking his head violently, he stomped the floor and shouted. “Stop!”

But she wouldn’t quit fussing. Her crying swelled to hysterical howls. Keller pounded a fist on the counter and watched the girl pull herself into an ever tighter ball, listened to her crying shrivel to a pulsing sob.

“Butterflies,” Keller said again, raising his face to the ceiling. He went around the island and into the kitchen. “Free the horses.”

There were two rusted Folgers cans on the windowsill above the sink. Keller took one down and pried off the plastic lid. Several gray moths streamed out of the can, hovered a moment before flitting up toward the bulb, which glowed and dangled loosely from the ceiling. Keller watched his moths circle the light. He peered back into the can, reached in and used his fingertips to rub the chalky residue.

He slid the first Folgers can aside and took the second one down from the windowsill. He peeled back several inches of the lid. There were more moths in this can, and Keller watched them with amazement as they crept up the metal inside, slipped through the opening and perched on the rim of the lid. One after the other, the moths launched themselves, floated momentarily in front of Keller’s face before folding their wings and ascending into the light.

Keller let the second coffee can clank onto the floor and he spun around. The child stared at him.

He reached up and opened a cabinet, found a can of chicken soup and brought it down to the counter. The metal lid groaned when Keller pulled back the ring. He dug a filthy spoon out of the sink and turned to face the girl.

Step by shuffling step, Keller approached. His big shadow fell over her as he crouched in front of her, tilting his head. She squirmed, drew back until her spine was tight against the wall.

Keller scooped a spoonful of soup from the can. He placed it in front of the girl’s quivering lips. “Eat,” he said.

Eyes welling, the girl’s tongue darted between her lips, but she did not take the soup.

“Eat,” Keller repeated. “Butterfly must eat.” He edged the spoon against her lips. She recoiled, her head snapping backward, banging the wall behind her and the spoon fell to the floor.

Keller struck her with his open hand. She cried out.

He retrieved the spoon and dipped it into the can. He brought it up filled with soup and once again placed it against her lips.

This time she opened her mouth and took in the soup. Her throat rose and fell as she forced down the food. Her tiny lips trembled. Her knees, Keller could see, shook too.

After eating about a third of the soup, she turned her head, refusing any further offering.

Keller put down the can and raked the girl’s hair with his fingers. He pressed down on her head with his fingertips and felt her heart pounding beneath her scalp.

“Set the horses free?” Keller whispered.

The girl didn’t answer.

“Free. Daniela free horses.”

She bit her lip and nodded her head.

He reached forward and loosened the restraint around the girl’s wrists.

“Come,” he said, rising out of his crouch.

Silent and compliant, she got to her feet and the cord fell to the floor. Keller took her tiny hand and led her toward the front door.

Outside in the cool evening air, Keller started toward the path that cut through the woods.

“I’m going home?” the girl asked.

Keller stopped. He gazed at the child with a puzzled expression. The wind blew her yellow dress, the fabric’s movement lulling in the wedge of moonlight they stood in. He listened and heard the rustle of leaves, the creak of branches. He thought about all the butterflies he‘d possessed, how he had set them free in the woods.

“Free,” Keller said.

“Home?” the girl said, starting to snivel.

“Yes,” Keller nodded, smiling. “Home.”

Her eyes got big and a light, tight-lipped smile formed on her face. “I’m going home?”

Keller nodded. “After we free the horses.”

He sucked in the darkness and looked into the sky at the dippers. He gently squeezed the small, smooth hand blanketed by his large, coarse palm.

She squeezed his hand back. “Thank you,” she said.

When Keller started to walk again, the child skipped at his side, kicking up dust from the gravel path.

The mouth of the woods came into view and Keller paused again to gaze up at the bright dippers. “When butterfly done,” Keller said, pointing to the sky with his one free hand. “You fly to the light.”

Bad Milk

2009-09-30T11:23:00.001-07:00

Bad Milk

In the kitchen, Mom twists the cap off a fresh jug of milk. She fills a glass and after taking a sip, she screws her face up and says, “Milk’s gone sour.”

Dad rattles his newspaper, turns the page without answering.

“You need to bring it back to the grocery store and get a refund,” Mom says. When Dad flips the newspaper to the next page, Mom adds, “You hear me? You even listening?”

Finally, Dad lays the paper down on the table and says, “If you think it’s sour, you take it back.”

Holding the milk jug in one hand and the filled glass in the other, Mom stomps across the kitchen and holds the glass in the air in front of Dad’s face. “Drink it and tell me it isn’t sour.”

They stare at each other. Dad’s bottom lip twitches.

“I never said it wasn’t sour,” Dad says.

Mom stays stern. “Drink it!”

He takes the glass from her hand and brings it to his nose, sniffs it. Then, keeping his face stone expressionless, Dad empties the glass in three gulps. Mom sets the jug on the table. “If you can stomach bad milk,” she says, “then you can finish it.” She whirls and heads back to the stove, where she slides a pan over the burner and turns the knob.

While the bacon sizzles, Mom keeps rambling. She scolds Dad about the rusted Rambler sitting in the driveway. “Keeps breaking down,” Mom says, “and he still refuses to get rid of it.” Mom brings up Dad’s wardrobe. “I can’t believe he wears those frayed and faded clothes in public.” Mom even mentions the dog. “Humane thing would be to have the old fleabag put down,” she says. “But that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Pretending things you keep around are still of use.”

For a few minutes Dad stares down at his hands on the table. They’re trembling. He raises his head and gazes a long time at Mom’s back while she’s bent over the stove. Then Dad picks the jug of milk up. He refills the glass and empties it. He does this again and again, pours and sips, pours and sips, until finally, the jug is empty.