ISSUE #149: Samuel Cole, Elisabeth Fuchsia, Emperor X

Photograph by Elisabeth Fuchsia

GIGI AND LUANN
​b​y Samuel Cole

Before this round of sobriety, I was seriously contemplating how to snort my mother’s cellulite, figuring we’d both benefit from the process. Colors had lost all excitement. Seasons had become a series of black and white John Virtue paintings. Days, months, and years had blended into an amalgam of seismic coddiwomple and race course immovability. Party-fun, my kind of fun, craves continuation even when the brain, suffering from actual starvation, begins to lose its mind, its reality, and its two little girls. I’ve always been attracted to desperation. And White China cocaine. Black Tar, too. And booze. All trademarks. All heads. All right. Open vein: insert fairytale. My mother gave up on me years ago. My father died of alcohol poisoning when I was nine. My attorney moved to Barbados, and my parole officer promulgated two options: straight-and-narrow rehabilitation or prison-cell recidivism. For once, I chose temperance over temperament. For me. For Mom. For Dad. For my two little girls. For my exhausting ex-wife. Drink coffee. Stay wired on caffeine. Document the journey in a pocket size journal— I’m on the last page— a gift from Eric, my sponsor/accountability buddy, the strongest voice of influence I’ve ever known. In case I do relapse, at least I can retrace some of the steps I did climb. Step six: We’re entirely ready to have God remove all defects of character. Booyah, if that isn’t me.

Issue #149 soundtrack: Emperor X “Allahu Akbar”

Every morning, I swim a few laps in the Uptown Gym pool— scholarships are offered to the clientele of the Promise Heart Sober House, my and 19 others' slow-track-back-to-civility living situation. Eric says submersion, even with chlorine, helps detoxify maladaptive behavior. After the swim, I walk across the street and order a large caramel latte at the Starbucks inside Target Greatland. Eric says isolation is deterioration’s fondest aspiration. Being alone, he says, like Benzodiazepine, masturbation, and video games, can become a replacement addiction if one isn’t careful. I hate, and love, that he’s been clean for 12 years. He’s forgotten that abstinence to an addict often activates the compulsion to avoid it. Every month I add another shot of espresso. I’m at five. I want to be at six. Eric says seven is God’s magic number. So seven it is. I quit cigarettes, too. All or nothing this time. I can be a bit of an asshole sober. I’ve thanked Eric a billion times for the journal, in which I’ve written a personal mission statement: Stay clean, be kind, and strike up a meaningful conversation with someone new every day. Eric believes meaningful conversation advances a mindfulness narrative. Fucking optimist. He’s handsome, has bundles of hair, works in marketing, and drives a cappuccino-colored BMW. I’m on government assistance with thinning hair, no job prospects, and three pairs of Guinness flip-flops—it’s called osmosis. Keep up.

I spot two teen girls sitting at a red table, slurping strawberry Frappuccinos and giggling about whatever teen girls find funny, probably me. I name the chunky girl Gigi, huge boobs like my Aunt Gigi, and not that I know any, the other girl looks exactly like LuAnn. God, I miss my little girls.

“What can get ya?” Bob, my favorite dead-eye barista, asks.

“Large caramel latte with seven shots please.”

“Seven?” He sounds impressed, holding up as many fingers. “Feeling dangerous today, are we?”

“You have no idea.”

“If you can stand it, you can do it,” he says.

“That used to be my life mantra.”

“Used to? What is it now?”

“Isn’t the weather great today? The birds are singing. The sky’s so open and blue. I sure can’t get enough of days like today, no siree bob.” I talk loud, trying to say normal things that normal people say to a barista. I’m about as normal as a goat without legs. Eric calls us Moment Men, says our troubles begin and end with life’s harshest drug— impulsivity. I have a hard time imagining him stealing his grandmother’s pearls to buy heroin or breaking a cop’s jaw during an arrest for a fourth DUI. He, however, didn’t seem a bit surprised when I told him about an attempt to outrun the cops— blood alcohol level at 0.22, 14 points over the legal limit— driving 105 MPH down Jolsen Road, smashing headfirst into the back of a Sedan, injuring two teen girls who were waiting for a red stoplight to turn green. Eric says an admission of guilt exhumes from rock-bottom collapse first-rate forgiveness. I hope he’s right. He also recommended I title the last page of the journal CLARITY and then wait with expectancy for revelation to reveal itself. He tries so hard to be helpful. What I really need is a mind reader who can rewrite my code and turn me into salient sustainability. Eric says a life devoid of wishes is already dead. Maybe he’s right. Maybe he does get it. I add eight Splenda to the latte and take a seat at the red table beside Gigi and LuAnn. Bring on some meaningful conversation, bitches. I dare you.

“This place is super creepy today.” LuAnn stands, glaring at me for a second before facing Gigi. “I need to get going anyway. My mom’s on her broomstick again about me cleaning my room.”

“Be nice.” Gigi stands. “For real.”

I set the journal on the table and twirl a pen between my fingers, a task designed to prove that I have both the skill and determination to accomplish the task. Eric calls it control-based fidgeting. So what if it is?

LuAnn walks away, disappearing through the electric doors. Gigi lingers. “Cool trick. You a magician or something?”

I stop twirling the pen and set it atop the journal which I slide up, up, up, and away. Go away. But she doesn’t move, ogling the journal and the pen. Fourteen. Ten. Eight. I also like to count backwards, and never in order, another way of conciliating a severe social anxiety disorder. I quit Effexor, too. Eric doesn’t know this. Neither does my doc. Eighty-eight. Three. Four-hundred and six. She steps back. Not nearly far enough. Six-thousand. Eleven. Nine-hundred and fifty-nine. “I’ve definitely been under a few spells in my life.”

“So you believe in the supernatural?”

Nosey little chubster. “Like palm reading and tarot card stuff?”

“Palm reading is for amateurs," she says, "and tarot cards, like fortune cookies, offer silly ambiguity.”

Articulate little bitch. “Do you believe in the supernatural?”

“I’m a mind reader.”

“Really? Are you any good?”

“Did you hear about that school teacher in Lansing who sold research papers to students for profit?”

“No.”

“Called it,” she snaps. “And that was two months before my paper-trail investigation had even started. I knew that teacher was up to something sinister. I could feel in my senses, keeping after class C and D students who never turned in a research paper a day in their life. And all of sudden they’re A students.” She laughs an unfunny laugh. “No, I don’t think so. Not on my intellect.”

“What happened to them?”

“What do you think happened? They were found guilty and punished because failure gets what failure does.”

Damn. She’s harsh. “How much do you charge for a reading?”

She sits across and pulls from a yellow purse a thick, pink notebook. “Ten bucks for 15 minutes and one dollar for every minute after that.” She opens the notebook. “You got ten bucks?”

I remove from my wallet the 10 dollar bill Eric gave me for an emergency—cash, to be spent on something spontaneous and useful: something unexpected, besides narcotics, that generates joy. I wonder if my little girls have their own thick, pink notebooks. And if so, what, if anything, have they written about me? So many months away. So many failures. So much for being a hands-on dad. Or a positive influence. Or their, or anyone’s, hero. I slap the 10 dollar bill on the table. “I’m in.”

“I’m Sarah by the way.” She turns a page and writes on the top the date, time, and place. Her handwriting, similar to her voice, is a combination of uphill highs and traceable lows. “I don’t do height and weight and age stuff. What I do is observe, ask, process, and offer insight based on germane findings. Are you ready?”

“Insight away.”

“What’s your name?”

“Greg.” I straighten my posture. Eric says good posture conveys the impression of active involvement. He needs to stop reading so many self-help books. And I need to find out what this mind reader chick knows. Or doesn’t. Hmm.

She writes Greg, followed by a question mark. “Mindreader-dot-com says a name reveals what sort of storm percolates within. Typically, the shorter the name, the bigger the cyclone.”

“Actually, my name’s Peaches Honey Blossom Trixie Belle Tiger Lily.”

She laughs. “Good one. Greg.”

“I have to ask, why mind reading and not cheerleading or lifeguarding?”

She studies my face, similar to the way my little girls stare with fascination at the mop-top mannequins at the mall. “Your skin tone reminds me of the color of beer my dad drinks.” She pops her lips. “You ever heard of Duvel?”

“I have.” Wonderful. Now I’m being compared to beer.

“You ever drank it?”

“Yup.”

“Is it good?”

“It’s not my favorite, but yeah it’s pretty good.”

“What happened to your teeth? Why are they all chipped and yellow?”

I cover with a hand my mouth. “My dentist does meth.”

“That’s not true,” she says. “What happened to your eyes?”

Fifteen. Ninety-nine. Four. “What do you mean?”

“You have sad eyes. Why are they so sad?”

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me?”

“My dad’s eyes are sad, sadder now that his mom, my grandma, died. Did someone close to you recently die?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Might that someone...” she pauses, staring at my trembling, dry-from-chlorine hands, “be a part of you?”

OMG. “Mindreader-dot-com is no joke, is it?”

We sit quiet for a short time. Now that her voice is off, I suddenly want it back on. Perhaps she is a mind reader. Perhaps she is clairvoyant. Perhaps she does know the whereabouts of this clarity I seek.

“You have children, don’t you?”

“I do. Two girls named Robin and Roxanne who live with their mother, my ex-wife, in Milwaukee. They’re 12 and 13.”

“I have a sister, too. Her name’s Melia. She just turned 10.”

“Is she a mind reader?”

“She’s a cheerleader and a lifeguard.”

“Really?”

“No.” She smiles. “But she is an all-time brat.”

“That’s too bad.”

“What’s wrong with your hands? Why are they so dry and shaky?”

I set my hands on the table. Eric says transparency, even shaky transparency, is healthier than opacity. “I swim in the morning, and the chlorine hates my skin.”

“My dad's hands shake a lot, too. I think it’s partly because my mom calls him a huge disappointment. But I also think it’s because he drinks too much Duvel.” She scribbles Duvel in the notebook. “My hunch is that you also drink Duvel. Maybe not exactly Duvel, but something within its family.” She stares at my coffee cup. “I also sense that you’re not drinking Duvel these days, drinking instead a substitute liquid to help meet your need for oral, mental, and physical satisfaction.”

I can’t speak. Or move. Crippled by insight. From a pubescent. I finish the coffee and hand-smash the cup as if it were a can of Duvel. “You’re good.”

“I also sense that someone, probably more than one person, has called you a disappointment.”

My stomach turns sour, as do a million neuron synapses exploding like bombs throughout my body, jolting me closer to the many names I’ve been called over the years: disappointment, drunkard, druggie, cheat, selfish, jerk, tool, liar, lost, weirdo, dry, super creepy. The part of my brain that craves addiction ignites, causing my salivary glands to want to go out and find as much instant relief as possible. Stay ardent, Greg. Breathe. Eight. Two. Ten-thousand. Eric says it’s best to forgive (and try to forget) the name calling. He says name calling, even nice names, is a risky exercise because it denotes branding, and branding is a risky exercise because it denotes leaving an everlasting imprint, and leaving an everlasting imprint is a risky exercise because it denotes leaving a scar, which is a wound, which is a cut, which is a trigger, which is a symptom, which is a genetic factor, which is the start, and end, to it all. I understand, though not completely. I believe names have their place, even bad names, clear reminders of the proximity between past mistakes, present struggles, and future authenticity. I want authenticity. My mom wants authenticity. My little girls deserve, and need, authenticity. I grab the journal and offer it to Gigi. “You don’t have to read my mind anymore, not if you have this.” Eric says the most reconciling thing a recovering addict can do to accelerate healing is to give away a most cherished possession, especially one that holds significant meaning. “Everything about me, good and bad, is in it.”

“That I didn’t see coming,” she says, sticking the 10 dollar bill, the journal, and the pink notebook into her purse, hiding my saddest hurts, cruelest blunders, and loftiest hopes. “You're sure you’re ready to give it away?”

“I wasn’t sure until right now.”

“How long have been sober?”

“Four months, three weeks, and two days.”

“Do your little girls know about your problem?”

“They do.”

“Did you tell them yourself?”

“I wasn’t sober enough to tell them, so unfortunately they had to hear it from their mother.”

“Do you think they would have liked it if you’d have been the one to tell them?”

“I think regular dads want their girls to see them as the truth and not as a lie.”

“My mom says my dad drinks because he hates himself. Do you hate yourself?”

“Sometimes.”

“How can you hate yourself when you have two girls who love you?”

“That’s a really good question.”

“Do you hate yourself today, like right now?”

“Not as much.”

She sighs. “I want to ask my dad if he’s got a drinking problem, but I’m afraid of what he might say. I mean, what if he is? Then what will I do?”

“Love him and tell him so him every day.”

“How can I tell if he needs treatment?”

“Maybe you should read his mind.”

“I can’t mind read my parents. Maybe I’m too close, or maybe they’re too far away. But whatever the reason, I have no idea what’s going on with them.”

“Then all you can do is your very best. That’s all any of us can do.”

“It was nice to meet you, Greg.” She lifts the 10 dollar bill from the purse. “Keep it. Buy something for your girls. And keep swimming. Maybe one of us will become a lifeguard after all.”

“I can do that.” Can I? “It was nice to meet you, too, Gigi. I mean, Sarah.”

“Did you say Gigi?”

Damn it. “When I first saw you and your friend, I named you Gigi and her LuAnn.”

“Why Gigi?”

“You know, Gigi Lichtenstein, the top model mind reader from Paris who isn’t afraid to stop and talk to strangers.”

“You want to know the name we gave to you?”

Not at all. Three. Two. One. “Sure.”

“It’s not bad, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Name away.”

She laughs. “Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb.” Leaving me with a heart that can drop, surge, and skip after all. Please God, whoever he is, just let him be sober.

Samuel Cole lives in Woodbury, MN, where he finds work in special event/development management. He’s a poet, flash fiction geek, and political essayist enthusiast. His work has appeared in many literary journals, and his first poetry collection, Bereft and the Same-Sex Heart, was published in October 2016 by Pski’s Porch Publishing. His second book, Bloodwork, a collection of short stories, will be published in May/June 2017. He is also an award-winning card maker and scrapbooker. For more, visit samuel-cole.com.

Elisabeth Fuchsia takes pictures of things that she likes and does other stuff, too. For more, visit elisabethfuchsia.com.

Emperor X is Chad Matheny, who has been performing live and releasing recorded music since 1998. His work previously appeared in Storychord Issue #20, and he performed at Storychord's 50th Issue Birthday Party in 2012 in New York City. Matheny lives in Berlin, where he helps operate Donau115, a small venue central to the Neukoelln neighborhood's booming experimental jazz scene, and volunteers as a music technology instructor with German NGO GSBTB in a program focused on supporting young refugees. For more, visit emperorx.net.

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ISSUE #147: Lindsey Baker, Alexis Wheeler, Jon Shina

Art by Alexis Wheeler

MY LIFE NOW
​b​y Lindsey Baker

The restaurant was like this: rain or sun, we opened every day at 11 a.m. and closed at 11 p.m. I was there most mornings at ten with a cup of burned coffee, crumbs from a pop-tart pimpling the skin around my mouth, flipping chairs off tables and filling the shakers with salt and pixels of pepper. I didn’t mind the work, and I didn’t even get bored. When I was there and we were busy, I sometimes forgot that I could never see Ed again.

Issue #147 soundtrack: Jon Shina “Discovering the New”

The general manager, Mark, was an older man with a bad hip, and he hobbled around the restaurant like a wind-up toy, stopping to reset himself occasionally with a glass of warm Sprite. He was cruel if he didn’t like you, but he liked me. I reminded him of his daughter, he told me once. She lived in Montana with her husband and two kids and flew down every other year for Christmas. I liked Mark because he cared about the restaurant and because sometimes he asked me how I was doing, waiting for a response that sounded real.

Here’s what I did when I missed Ed and I wasn’t at the restaurant: I worked with clay. I made little sculptures that looked like people and animals. Not that I had any training or was a professional or anything. I only liked the way the clay felt in my hands, wet and dry at the same time, the dry heat of the oven as I baked each new piece. I watched television while I worked, laughing along with recorded episodes of talk shows, booing with an audience as if I were there.

Sometimes when my coworkers asked me about myself I would lie and say I was working at the restaurant to put myself through school. I got a late start, I’d say. Nursing, I’d say. I thought it made me sound selfless, like the good Catholic woman my father wanted me to be. He used to read Mother Theresa’s biography out loud to me before I went to bed so that I dreamt of Calcutta, of oozing sores and pulled teeth.

My apartment was up the road from the restaurant. The complex was nestled between two strip malls, one with a Hooters and an Olive Garden and one with a tattoo shop and a Goodwill. My roommate Rebecca worked during the day as a receptionist at a dentist’s office and came home smelling like floss. She went out for long stretches of time at night by herself, never mentioning anything to me, coming home in the early morning hours. I lied and told her that I was from Texas and she believed me.

“Things really are bigger there, right?” she said, holding a corner of my newly-purchased mattress, helping me wedge it into my room. It was the only real piece of furniture I had. “The dentist is from San Antonio and he’s big all over.”

I was young enough to start over after the divorce, or that’s what everyone told me. I quit my job as an executive assistant to a prim woman at a nonprofit, the days spent scheduling her flights to places I never went. I picked Roswell, Georgia, one night when I couldn’t sleep. The restaurant was the first place to call me for an interview, and I took it, throwing myself hopefully into it, like a new diet.

* * * * *
Another thing I did when I missed Ed: I had sex with one of my coworkers named Jeremy. He had a concaved sternum and thin legs, but he smelled good and he always helped me run my food out to my tables, even when I didn’t ask.

Jeremy and I were closing together one night, and the last customer, a regular who sat at the bar sucking Diet Cokes, left. We moved to start stacking the chairs on the tables.

“You live around here?” he asked.

“Yes. Appletree Apartments?”

“No way,” he smiled, breathing heavy from lifting the chairs. “I live there, too.”

I invited him in that night because I was feeling sad, and I didn’t want to face all my untouched mounds of clay. Rebecca would be out late again, only the crash of her keys on the kitchen counter when she got home in the morning before she left for work.

“Mind if I smoke in here?” he asked.

I couldn’t remember if Rebecca was okay with smoking or not, so I just said sure. Jeremy pulled out a grinder and a bag of weed.

“Do you smoke?”

“No.” I used to, I almost added. Ed and I would get high and play Mario Kart for hours, tangled together on the floor under the television, laughing when we failed. Now I didn’t like how everything felt like it was too far away when I was high, like light and air were bugs crawling up on the ceiling.

“Man. That’s good because I spend a lot of money on weed. I started smoking it in high school. Wow,” he laughed, packing a bowl. He had a wart on one of his fingers. “High school was almost fifteen years ago for me now. I bet if I put all that money together, I would have something big. A boat or a house.”

“Maybe so.” I was sitting on the couch next to him and trying to look at the room as he might. Ed kept most of my things in the divorce, and I let him, so almost all the furniture in the apartment was Rebecca’s except for a coffee table I found at the Goodwill. It was cheap particle board, but it had these pretty Asian-looking golden flowers blooming on the legs. “But do you want a boat?”

He considered, holding the smoke in. “Sure,” he said, “who doesn’t want a boat?”

* * * * *
Sometimes while we had sex he kissed my wrists softly. He slept over a few times, but mostly he would pack up his work apron and his weed and head back to his place afterwards. I was pleased with this arrangement because it felt like I was doing something, that I was moving forward in some way. My sister threatened to come visit me often in our weekly phone calls, and if she ever actually did, at least I would have this to prove that I was trying.

Rebecca told me that Jeremy slept with basically everyone in the complex. It was a rare Sunday morning where we were both home, and I decided to make breakfast for her.

I was scrambling eggs when she told me. “Basically everyone?”

Her eyes were swollen, and she was holding up spoons that she froze every night for this purpose. Her robe was open a little, and I could almost see a nipple. It felt like I was back in college, cooking in the community kitchen with my roommate, Marcy, using pans with grease left over from the meals of strangers.

“Mmm. Everyone says so. He’s fucking gross. I don’t know why you want to date him anyways.” She took the spoons off to look at her reflection in the toaster. “Find a man that has money and a real job, something in finance.” We hadn’t spoken this much since I had to ask for her help with my mattress.

“I don’t want to date him.”

“Okay, don’t.” She poured herself a cup of coffee, unwrapping a straw from my server apron so the coffee wouldn’t stain her teeth, and then poured another one for me. I was touched more than I should have been. Maybe Rebecca and I could be friends. “And don’t let him smoke in here anymore. It smells putrid.”

* * * * *
Sometimes when the restaurant was slow, Mark pulled up pictures of mountains on his phone. He was a rock climber when he was young and his hip wasn’t so bad, and he reminded me of this frequently. I looked at the mountains with their crooked points, their millions of dimples, and tried to imagine a young Mark pulling himself up them, sweating with ropes tangled around his hips. I tried to imagine his ex-wife watching him from below, how afterwards they would make love in tents by the fire.

Mark knew about Jeremy, and even though he never said anything, I think he was disappointed in me. Sometimes I caught him looking at me while I rang things in on the computer, while I twisted my hair into a bun, his lips set in a thin line. One day I showed him pictures of my clay sculptures on my phone. There was an orange old lady holding a cane in one hand, the other hand clutching her back at the base of her spine. Another was a small fish, its scales green and blue.

“Can I have that?” he asked. He pointed to it again, and then used his fingers to zoom in on the screen. “Reminds me of this fish I caught. My uncle used to take me out on lake Peigneur when I was a kid. Before it got drained by those miners.” I promised him I would give it to him, and he looked pleased.

* * * * *
That night I watched television while I wrapped the fish up in some pretty orange paper. I printed off a blurb from the internet about how fish are symbols of prosperity and fortune, how in some cultures fish are used in healing ceremonies. I wrote in cursive, Mark-- For your hip! Love, Alexa.

I was thinking about how when you’re a kid, you can only imagine yourself dying young. Being old seems like an impossible reality, irreconcilable with who you are. Then, at a certain age, you start to wish for it. Daydream about it. How calm you must be in old age, how sure of yourself and the world. The way things happen no longer seeming random. Without letting myself think about it, I dialed Ed’s number on my cell phone. It rang once, and I hung up. I waited until another commercial break interrupted the movie I was watching, something about Wall Street, and I dialed it again, this time waiting while it rang and rang.

“Hello?” It was Ed. He sounded tired, and I wondered if that meant he wasn’t sleeping well. I bit a swollen part of my lip, hard, until tears gathered in my eyes. I didn’t know what to say. I hung up and tucked my phone into the drawer of my Goodwill table, tracing a petal on one of the golden flowers.

I couldn’t pay attention to the movie, so I turned it off and put on my uniform for the morning because I didn’t want to dirty any of the clothes tucked in my closet, things I hadn’t worn since I unpacked. I grabbed Mark’s package too, careful not to crease the delicate paper.

The night was cool and damp. Every other street light was dark, leaving the parking lot patched in yellow. Jeremy’s car was there, but I didn’t feel like seeing him, like smiling along with his stoner philosophy. He could talk about the way shadows worked for hours. About how we knew more about space than we did the ocean.

My car smelled like old French fries, and I decided that I would go get some food. That seemed like a normal enough task. There was a diner a mile away that I passed when I got groceries, and I thought they might have milkshakes. A man on the radio was talking about a mattress sale, 40% off, financing options, memory foam that would never forget the contours of your spine.

I met Ed through Marcy at a housewarming party after college. Marcy gave a toast at our wedding, something sentimental and raunchy, something that made my father shake his head. Later I found her throwing up in the bathroom, Ed’s brother holding her hair and whispering into her ear. That was one of the last times I saw her. Ed was quiet and nerdy-looking at the party, but he was handsome and kind, and I let him touch my breasts in our host’s upstairs guest bedroom. He closed his eyes while he did it, leaning in to kiss me and then leaning back, studying the shape like a blind person, learning.

The lighting in the diner was terrible, and it made me feel old. I sat in a booth, placing the little orange package of the fish on the table by the sugar after checking to make sure the table wasn’t sticky. I wasn’t sure why I brought the package in with me, but it felt nice having it there. It gave me a sense of purpose, like I might be meeting someone. It wasn’t too late yet, and the tell-tale slump of drunkness was missing from the rest of the customers. There was a couple sitting together on the same side of one booth, taking turns dipping fries to ketchup. The server wasn’t in a cheesy diner dress or anything like that, just nice jeans and a t-shirt and red sneakers.

“Do you like the burgers?” I asked.

She looked at me, shrugged. “The meat isn’t great, to be honest. I like the grilled cheese.”

“Grilled cheese, please. And a vanilla milkshake.”

She walked off to the back somewhere, and I felt very awkward without my phone to occupy me. It was still tucked into the Goodwill table. I wondered if Ed called back. The number was new and only my sister had it. I thought about giving it to some of my old friends, but I didn’t know what I could say to them, how I could possibly chart out the details of my life now.

If I had my phone, I might have looked up pictures of mountains so I could talk to Mark about them. I was thinking about getting into climbing myself, couldn’t resist the draw of pulling myself up and up, of sweating everything I had ever done out of me.

The door alarm sounded out, and a girl walked in. Short black dress, tall plastic heels, dark makeup messied around eyes and lips. She was blonde. It was almost a costume. She sat in a booth facing me, but she didn’t make eye contact. Her thighs squeaked against the seat as she pulled out her phone, hunched over it and the table, sniffled a little. When the server came over to take her order, she ordered a cup of coffee and a plate of fries. I noted that her eyes didn’t move very much when she talked. How she said thank you without smiling. She moved her hair back, and I saw a bruise on her neck, old and brown like the skin of a banana. I could see her bra through her dress.

I wondered where Rebecca went at night. There weren’t very many places around Roswell where you could go late, except for one dark and damp Mexican club in the middle of a strip mall, next to a Title Max that never seemed to close. I pictured her there with the girl in the next booth, pictured them dancing together, passing a Corona back and forth and taking sips, the easy sharing of close friendship. How they would laugh together and check their lipstick in the single bathroom stall, how the men might track their movements across the sticky room.

I got up and went over to the girl. I wanted to talk to someone.

“Excuse me,” I said. The girl didn’t hear me at first. She was reading bubbles of text messages, monologues so long they went out of the reaches of the screen.

“Hi,” I said, trying to make myself sound young. I couldn’t remember how to do this, how to branch across to another woman, how to initiate friendship.

She looked up at me.

“Hi,” she said. Her voice had the same dead chill as it did when she spoke with the waitress. Her hair was loose and willowish around her face and I realized she was far younger than I had thought, one of those girls who bloomed early and fast.

“I was wondering if I could borrow your phone to make a quick call. I lost mine,” I said, the lie coming to me simply, “I was at a rest stop off 400 a while back and someone took it from the bathroom counter. I need to call my husband and let him know I’ll be there soon.” I thought she might invite me to sit down. She kept looking blankly at me. “I don’t want him to worry,” I added.

The server brought my milkshake and my food over to where I was sitting and looked questioningly at me, and then at the girl. “Are you moving, or?”

“She’s just borrowing my phone,” the girl said quickly. She handed her phone to me, the case thick and jelly and pink.

“Thanks.” I went back to my booth. The girl’s phone was unlocked, and I pulled up the screen to dial. I didn’t know who to call. I thought about calling Marcy in Virginia and reminding her of those nights we spent sitting on the roof of our dorm sharing a blanket and a cigarette. Instead, I went to the screen with the girl’s recent calls and found someone named Lover embellished with several pink and blue hearts, someone the girl called a lot. I put the phone up to my ear and listened to the ring, for the third time that night, and inhaled sharply at the sound of the man’s voice.

“Hello,” the voicemail greeting said, his voice smoky-sounding, “you’ve reached Dante. Leave a message.”

I waited in the silence after the beep for a minute before I said, “Hi, it’s me.” I looked up to see if the girl was listening and she was, watching me closely, an eye of caution. “Just wanted to let you know I’ll be home soon.” I imagined there was someone listening on the other side. “I love you, babe,” I said, and hung up.

I got up and passed the phone back to the girl, smiling brightly down at her. “Thanks, I mean it. He gets so worried if he doesn’t hear from me.” She looked blankly back at me. “You know how that goes, I’m sure.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“Thanks again. I really appreciate it. Let me buy you your food.” I could tell I was pushing too hard, that becoming friends with this young girl was already an impossibility. I tried, instead, to give her a motherly look. “I insist.”

The girl looked dully at me and then back down to her phone. “That’s okay. It’s cheap anyways.” I wondered if Dante, the girl’s Lover, had listened to the voicemail yet. I wondered if he knew the girl well enough to tell our voices apart, and decided he had to.

I went to the counter and asked the server for a box and a to-go cup for my milkshake. After piling the food into the Styrofoam, careful to wipe the grease off my hands, I pulled out two twenties and put one on my table and one on the girl’s. “Thanks again, sugar,” I said, as if that was how I talked all the time. I grabbed the orange package and stepped out into the night. The street was mostly empty, spread out in either direction like a lightless desert highway, the trees still and stiff like cacti. Maybe I’d ask Mark to take me out to dinner tomorrow, after the morning shift, somewhere easy and bright, somewhere people his age went. I’d present him with the package and the little green and blue fish and he would smile, with tears in his eyes, remembering the way things used to be.

Lindsey Baker lives and writes in Atlanta, GA. Her work has previously appeared in The Molotov Cocktail and Blood Moon Rising Magazine.

Alexis Wheeler is an abstract artist living in New York State. Alexis has spent the last 25 years working as a hairdresser, and has been the owner of Crown Salon in New York City for the past 8 years. Her work with clients in the salon is about helping them bring their inner selves to outer expression, using a combination of texture, intuition, artistic technique, and connection. This process informs all of her other creative endeavors. When working in a visual art form, Alexis is relating to her internal space and the tools that inspire her: shapes, forms, colors, as well as repetitive patterns found in nature. In this way, she is following intuition, creating work that resonates with the universal quality of emotions and memories. For more, visit awheelerart.com or follow her on Instagram.

Jon Shina used to live in Brooklyn, and now lives in the hippie woods of western Massachusetts. He is of Iraqi decent and is extremely depressed these days. Jon Shina has played shows for over a decade (playing in China and Thailand as well as all over the USA). He has done many things with VICE over the years, and he even wrote record reviews for the magazine. Jon wants to make everyone feel ALL the emotions when they listen to his music. You can find more of his work at: jonshina.bandcamp.com.

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ISSUE #143: Joe Worthen, Derek Bowman, Mail The Horse

Art by Derek Bowman

WAITRESS
by Joe Worthen

The waitress is on a hard couch with the SEO expert, and it’s late and something is burning. The waitress has a braid that has been eroded almost past recognition by a double shift. The braid has got to be examined up close to even seem like a braid. The braid is on the way out.

Issue #143 soundtrack: Mail The Horse “Magnolia”

The SEO expert leans in and says in a gentle monotone:

“Let’s party all night and for the rest of our lives.” And the SEO expert has got breath that seems too hot, and the waitress says: “Oh my god.”

Someone walks into the room with a tiny burned pizza on a plate. He looks up from the pizza to the waitress with an expression of grief. He looks to the SEO expert and almost says something but doesn’t. He takes the pizza outside to probably throw it away in the dumpster, but the waitress imagines him burying it under a starlit line of poplar trees. The whole apartment is filled with smoke.

The SEO expert says:

“This scene is bringing me down.”

“Well, I’ve got work tomorrow,” the waitress says. The waitress has shifts like traffic all through her week. Every day. Always washing her black apron and her three black shirts and pulling them out of the machine in a warm black wad.

“I know a place.”

“All right,” the waitress says. “For a while.”

* * * * *
The waitress has got an attitude that is pretty shit but has two beautiful, long-term hopes that sustain her. And her face is pretty, though her body is small and featureless, which is fine because she feels like she can be added to any setting, any situation, without changing it in any noticeable way. The waitress is always approaching tables and blending in to the conversation, taking orders and fading out. This process is invisible and surgical. The waitress does take notes on a pad because, to be honest, the waitress has got a memory that is pretty shit because she can never remember more than two things at once, especially wine orders.

The SEO expert comes back from the bathroom.

“You walk weird,” the waitress tells the SEO expert.

“Everyone knows me by my swagger. Let me tell you about the particularities of my walk. I step with my right foot and bob twice, double-time, my head and my leg too, they both bounce real slight. Then I step with my left foot smooth, no bob. I developed this swagger over a week in September in 2004. I was eighteen. People see my walk now, and they know me. Even from a distance. Even in silhouette, they know I’m coming.” The SEO expert continues to walk in place without diminishing or accenting his swagger, and then he sits down and looks for a moment as if he’s about to cry.

The waitress receives her drink, which is well tequila with no further instructions. The SEO expert gets a glass of water and some cocktail with a name. The waitress closes her eyes and sees the black wad floating in a void, slowly rotating like something very large or like something very small.

* * * * *
The waitress feels like she’s come a long way over her lifetime but has no proof and no sequence of sentences or stories that bring people over to her perspective. The response is always unspoken, but she knows it reads like: If you came so far, how are you still here?

This apartment is real claustrophobic going on size alone, and there are also three dudes in there also who have been talking about a website. One of them gets up and puts Blade 2 in the DVD player. One of them passes the waitress a bong. She accepts the bong, but it seems like way too much to handle for getting a little high. She doesn’t know whether to pass it or not, so she holds it and does nothing. She would like to, if possible, take it outside and bury it under a starlit line of poplar trees.

The SEO expert takes it.

“Puff puff pass, daywalker.” He blows out a cloud of smoke and whispers: “But do you mind if we watch this? I haven’t seen it in like three years. And there is a lot to appreciate, if you give it a chance.”

“I don’t want to watch Blade 2. I think that’s normal and I shouldn’t have to defend myself,” says the waitress, quiet and direct.

They watch all of Blade 2. The waitress is always surprised and delighted when Wesley Snipes hisses at someone. The waitress never hits the bong, but she breathes so much uncirculated weed air that by the end of Blade 2 she is feeling pretty lifted. Then they put in Blade for context.

“I’ve got work tomorrow,” says the waitress.

* * * * *
They’ve got really nice bourbon here; the waitress knows the names of most of them. But she orders house tequila. The bartender, who is wearing a black vest and bow tie, pours it slow, with his chin tilted slightly away in reproach. There are oil paintings of dogs at staggered heights on all walls.

The SEO expert says: “In a lot of ways, I’m just trying to fuck whoever. But it comes from a good place because I’m actually lonely.” He smokes and smokes and smokes until his pack is gone, and then he complains in slow, aimless whorls that begin with cigarettes and spiral into numerous other areas of dissatisfaction. The waitress thinks about telling him about her two hopes. The waitress thinks about telling him one of her hopes and holding the other one back. She wonders if she ever had a third hope that she forgot like some old woman’s Moscato order.

The SEO’s glass of water is at that point that gives the waitress anxiety, just under half full, where she wouldn’t be sure whether to refill it or not. It could be too late or too soon.

* * * * *
The waitress doesn’t feel drunk, and she worries that she will never fully understand anything. Like the world is always eclipsed by the body, and she’ll never see anything but a luminous outline of herself and have to live by this small light. Maybe even her body is eclipsed. Maybe this eclipse is caused by the black wad. The black wad that she cleans and dries every day. The black wad that knows her shape. The bar here is underground, and the bartender tells the SEO expert that it used to be a bank.

“The vault is now a lounge,” the bartender says.

“Do you guys need any SEO work done?” asks the SEO expert. “I’m trying to get a pool of clients together, and I think this place is pretty cool.”

“I don’t have the authority to commit to anything,” the bartender says.

“Maybe I’ll leave my card,” the SEO expert says, but he doesn’t produce it. Instead he says to the waitress: “Did you know that I did SEO for one of the Spice Girls? It’s something. A woman like that pretty much optimizes herself for Google.” The SEO expert delivers this line with a lot of troubled intimacy, and the waitress wonders for the first time if he’s a virgin.

“Aren’t you going to drink some more of that water?” The waitress looks at the SEO experts glass, which is just under half full. He doesn’t drink any of it, though he looks at it for a little while.

“This scene is sort of bringing me down,” the SEO expert says. The waitress looks at her clear, glossed nails.

* * * * *
The waitress does a little bit of cocaine in the bathroom and looks in the mirror. The braid is totally gone. That much is for certain. There was a point when she was young and the school bus picked her up early, when it was still dark, and took her into the city. The school bus drove her by an empty field where there was nothing but a line of starlit poplar trees. She doesn’t want to think too deeply about this memory because she’s afraid of what she’s buried in it.

“They measure the alcohol here,” the SEO expert says. “They got machines on all the bottles that give you an exact pour. In the future, they will have a big device that makes all the cocktails and is full of tubes and rubber apertures and gaskets,” says the SEO expert. Like this is a simple fact.

“No one wants to get drunk off the efforts of a machine,” says the waitress. There is a long pause here. The waitress realizes they might have been to this bar already. The layout is familiar, but all of the details seem new. The waitress realizes she will never be sure. The waitress is struck by a faint nausea that could maybe be the end of her small high.

“Do you want something to happen?” the SEO expert asks and looks into her eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

“I want something to happen. With us.”

“Oh my god,” the waitress says. She doesn’t like to explicitly talk about this sort of thing. She shrugs. The SEO expert kisses the waitress. His mouth is very warm, and he doesn’t touch her except to put one had on the back of her neck. But they stop and don’t begin to kiss again. The waitress checks the time on her phone.

“I have work tomorrow,” says the waitress. The SEO expert tells her it’s still early, though it’s late, and the waitress is reassured.

Joe Worthen is a writer from South Carolina. He spends most of his time sleeping and drinking cherry lime-aid on the porch. Other stories, interviews, comics, and news can be found via his website mezacht.com.

Derek Bowman is an artist based in Greenville, South Carolina. He attended Savannah College of Art and Design where he received an M.Arch. He dotes on Bayern Munich, MMOs, ancient warfare, and his young son. Out of research, for him, comes inspiration, and he is continually intrigued through learning. For more, visit derekboman.com.

Mail The Horse is a five piece that was born in a basement apartment known affectionately as the Gates Motel on Gates Avenue in Bushwick. The band has been playing the kind of rock and roll that makes lady-mullets stand on end since 2010. For more, visit mailthehorse.com, stream or purchase tracks on Bandcamp, and follow them on Facebook.

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ISSUE #140: Donald Edem Quist, Tracy Kerdman, twenty-three

Painting by Tracy Kerdman

A SELFISH INVENTION
by ​Donald Edem Quist

DaYana drops the butt of her cigarette into a dingy embankment of snow lining the cracked sidewalk leading to her residence hall. She exhales a final exasperated cloud of wet gray smoke and watches the vapors scatter in the frigid air. Glancing down at the beige stub steaming on the packed ice, DaYana considers the contribution she has made to the billion pounds of non-biodegradable cigarette ends that become toxic trash each year. DaYana folds her arms and shivers against a sudden chill slipping under her hooded pea coat and over her shaved head. She curses herself for breaking her promise to quit smoking, then curses herself for choosing to attend graduate school in New England. Shuffling quickly up the steps to the front lobby of her dorm, she chides herself for not being asleep, for coming out into the cold, and for fretting negative workshop feedback.

Issue #140 soundtrack: twenty-three “The Firm and the Yielding Displace Each Other”

DaYana pulls open one of the heavy steel commercial doors. She stomps her feet on the large entrance mats, but the squeak of her damp boots still echoes against the rubber tiles of the stairwell. Climbing to the third level, she decides to abandon the revisions she’s made over the last few hours. She forms a plan: she will use the bathroom and then head to her room to go to bed. She’ll snooze through the morning craft lectures and wake in the afternoon with fresh eyes and hopefully a better perspective on her piece and the “cultural incongruities” which her workshop leader and cohorts claim make the story feel less capital-A-authentic.

She arrives at her floor and pauses in the doorway. Darkness shrouds the halls—part of the college’s initiative to conserve energy. The only light emanates from the glowing red emergency exit sign mounted above her.

“Authentic,” DaYana says aloud to no one, letting the word linger in the quiet shadows as she slinks through the black towards the direction of the communal lavatories.

Pushing through the swinging bathroom door, DaYana squints against the harsh florescence. She recites silently the opening lines of her story.

The hardships and joys of labor make a solid symphony. Leo knew this. If you hear one of the others tell you they predicted Leo’s betrayal, do not listen. The truth: Leo worked hard, and the company rewarded him. He started at 17 in raw materials plant 6/20. He moved on to the assembly line in factory five. By 25, he had become a tester on the third shift, a very comfortable…

DaYana nearly stumbles as the tip of one of her insulated steel-toed snow boots hits a body curled on the restroom floor.

DaYana hops over the figure. Her drowsy brain struggles to process the scene. She stands for several seconds, scanning the mass before squatting down to examine. DaYana reaches out a hand and shakes the snoring carcass. The body wakes, coughing and sputtering.

“Phillip Dawkins?” DaYana hears herself say.

The distinguished visiting faculty nods. “You’re a woman?”

“Yes,” DaYana says.

“What are you doing in the men’s room?”

“All the bathrooms in this dorm are gender-neutral.”

Phillip Dawkins blinks slowly. “Jesus Christ.”

DaYana can hear the audible clicks and creeks from the old man’s bones as Dawkins sits up with a groan. He scans the restroom and asks, “Do you know what happened to the young lady that was here a moment ago?”

“No.”

“You sure? She was just here. A girl. Her breasts are substantial but not gratuitous, you know? Falling from her chest but not drooping, they tug at her clavicle, creating pockets deep enough to carry sips of water between her collarbones and her long, elegant neck?”

“No. Sorry.”

“But you know who I mean, right? She’s perfect. She’s got a celestial nose, the tip turned up slightly, like her face was built to point to the heavens.”

DaYana claps her palms together. “Okay. I’m done with this. I've got to pee.”

She stands and walks to the furthest stall.

After relieving her swollen bladder, she emerges to find Dawkins swaying on his feet and gripping the sides of a sink to balance himself.

DaYana leaves a basin between them as she washes her hands.

“There was a party this evening over in faculty housing,” Dawkins explains. “Someone was kind enough to share their barrel-aged gin. As things cooled over there, I thought to cross that frozen tundra of a campus in search for warmer jubilation. That’s when I discovered that striking young woman in one of the downstairs common rooms taking shots of champagne, if you can believe it.” Dawkins’ hacking laugh is a piercing bark against the bathroom’s porcelain surfaces. He pauses suddenly to glance across the room again. “Where did she go?”

“I don’t know,” DaYana says, shaking her hands to dry them.

She moves around Dawkins to exit the room, but he calls after her. “You’re Diana, correct?”

“DaYana, like DAY and ANNA.” She turns to face him. “I’m in your specialized workshop. You critiqued me earlier today, well, yesterday.”

Dawkins squints and nods. “That’s correct. I liked your story’s premise. Chinese factory worker dies trying to build a teleportation machine with smuggled parts from a microwave oven assembly line. It’s interesting enough.”

“Really? Because during workshop you said my piece was ‘static, colorful static.’ Then I just had to sit there while you asked other students to rewrite my opening and read their alternative versions with you interrupting them every few lines to say, ‘Do you see what they did there, Diana?’ It was pretty awful.”

“Does criticism of your work offend you? If you hope to be a better writer, you’ll have to be open to a little feedback.”

“Hey. I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. I’m open to constructive criticism. That’s not what that was. I mean, you barely said anything about my story beyond the first page, just vague assertions about how some of the cultural aspects of the narrative didn’t feel believable.”

DaYana pulls back her hood. She runs her cold hands across her buzzed scalp, yawns and shakes her head. “I’m going to bed. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Dawkins wobbles closer. “I apologize if you perceived my guidance as less than thorough. I can tell you exactly how you can improve, Diana. If you aren’t too tired, we can even discuss your fiction now, while your prose is still relatively fresh in my mind.”

DaYana studies the crystalized drool at the corner of Dawkins’ mouth, leading to a thin, matted line of hair across part of his bushy, grey beard. His red, vein-streaked, eyes shake rapidly behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

“Okay. Sure.”

“Great. Might I trouble you for a cigarette? The nicotine does help me think.”

“How do you know I smoke?”

Dawkins narrows his eyes. “You have a gross compulsion to nibble the skin around your fingernails. I’ve noticed you do this during workshop. You’re even doing it now. This betrays an oral fixation or sexual frustration, and although I’m not entirely prepared to exclude the possibility that you might be starved for intercourse, you’re wearing a coat and boots, your face is red, and you obviously just came in from the cold. The only thing that would compel a person to venture out into below freezing temperatures this late at night is a vice.”

“Fair enough,” DaYana says, pulling her fingers away from her mouth. “But if you were just able to figure out I just came inside, why would I go back out there?”

“We won’t be long. We’ll smoke quickly-- imbue our lungs with warm tobacco and return indoors to talk about your writing.”

DaYana senses the tug of sleep behind her pupils, but her extremities surge with excitement.

“Fine," she relents.

Dawkins beams, removing his hands from the edges of the sink and stumbling to the restroom door.

Peering out into the hallway, Dawkins gasps. “Who vanished the light?” he asks.

DaYana strides next to him. She removes her smartphone from her coat and taps on a flashlight application. The pair moves to the stairs.

“Diana, do you think that young woman resides on this floor?”

“We should try to keep our voices down. People are sleeping.”

“Should we go in search for her? Should we attempt to wake her?”

“No.”

On the stairs, Dawkins’ caution surprises DaYana. He turns his body sideways, both hands white-knuckled on the railing. Dawkins continues to chat about the girl he met earlier and dubs her his “Missing Muse.”

“She reminds me very much of my first wife who was a dancer, trained in classical and interpretive, not a stripper or anything of the sort, although we did meet in a dive bar. HA!”

Again, Dawkins expels his explosive, biting laugh, filling the stairwell with the cracking phlegm in his throat and chest. He prattles without interruption until they reach the first floor and exit the building.

DaYana unbuttons her coat and reaches into the breast pocket to remove a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She offers both to Dawkins.

“Aren’t you going to smoke too?” he asks.

“I’m trying to quit.”

“Ah, so am I,” Dawkins says. He pulls a cigarette from the package, places it between his lips. He lights the cigarette, breathes deeply, and exhales. “My current wife, she couldn’t be much older than you. How old are you?”

Bouncing on the balls of her feet to generate heat, DaYana replies, “25.”

“Yes, a year younger than my wife. My new bride nonplused my youngest daughter, who just turned 30. However, my spouse makes me relatively happy and keeps me young. She sincerely worries about my health and nags me to stop drinking and smoking, but breaking bad habits is difficult for men of a certain age. When I was younger, everyone smoked, at least during social occasions. We were neither fully aware, nor particularly concerned, with the physical or environmental impacts of our guilty pleasures. Did you know cigarette butts are not degradable? Huge environmental and economic burden.”

“Yes,” DaYana replies.

“It’s quite terrible. My daughter gave me one of those e-cigarette devices for my birthday last year, but it isn’t the same.”

DaYana can feel the cold slice her lips and slap her bare skin.

“Maybe you can give me your thoughts on my writing right now, just a brief overview? Big things you noticed, and then we can talk more in-depth another time.”

Dawkins stares up to the cloudy sky. When he eventually returns DaYana’s gaze, he says, “Yes, of course. But first, before I forget, I have two suggestions for you if you’d really like to quit smoking. The first, chew cinnamon sticks. It helps sate the oral cravings, and it smells great. Number two, get yourself a boyfriend that will hold you accountable, Diana.”

“My girlfriend usually makes sure I don’t smoke. I’ll look into the cinnamon sticks.”

Dawkins’ stare widens. “Oh, I apologize. I suppose looking at you, I should have guessed you were homosexual, right?”

DaYana bites her bottom lip, resisting the urge to rip the joking smirk from Dawkins’ face.

“And about my writing?”

Dawkins readjusts his stance.

“Right, well…” And suddenly he is collapsing.

DaYana bends quickly to hook her arms around his torso, but his right knee clacks loud against the icy sidewalk.

“Shit. Shit. Sir, are you okay?”

Dawkins turns his face away from DaYana’s belly.

“Getting older is a series of indignities, Diana.”

DaYana bears most of Dawkins’ weight as he climbs back onto his feet. He pulls DaYana under his right arm. She becomes a crutch.

“Do you need to see a doctor? That sounded pretty bad.”

“At my age, impacts like this are common. I only need to get of my legs for a while.”

“Can you make it back upstairs?”

“I think its best I retreat to my own quarters. We can talk there if you like, and I will undoubtedly need your aid trekking across the campus quad. My lodgings are accessible from the street, handi-capable the president informed me, which I initially felt reluctant to accept but now am very grateful I did.”

DaYana glances across the snowy lawn. She can see the lights of the faculty residence hall, but the expanse, glowing under floodlights perched at the edge of the building facades, looks vast. In the quiet stillness, DaYana imagines that only she and Dawkins inhabit the entire campus.

She guides their first steps. They wobble before finding a rhythm.

To the crunch of packed snow under feet and Dawkins’ wheezing breath, DaYana lets her mind drift to her story…

… Leo’s work ethic is what we had most admired. When the bells ring through the factory at 11 a.m., Leo often stayed behind at his station. We would return to the dormitories for lunch while he stood eating over a machine or conveyor belt. Leo’s hard work provided him opportunities to steal from the company, pocketing spare pieces, parts, and defective products for his selfish inventions. Dawkins tries to interject an anecdote about surviving Minnesota winters as a child and urinating his name into snow. DaYana ignores him. Since Leo’s death, we found many of his contraptions hoarded in the closet of his dormitory. Despite his work ethic, Leo never understood that mature people might not always do what they want, but always what they must do. This may explain many of his peculiarities. He never sent money home to his family and never showed an interest in marrying. Leo didn’t speak much, but when he did, he spoke of places he had never visited and destinations he longed to see.

DaYana is pushing though the door to Dawkins’ residence. She reaches intuitively for a light switch, flips it on, and navigates Dawkins across the carpet. She seats him by the window on one of two matching wooden chairs, parked beneath a half-circle kitchen table.

“Thank you,” he says.

DaYana replies, “It’s really late. I’m going to go back and go to bed. You should sleep, too.” She expels a final exasperated cough and turns to leave.

“But we haven’t spoke about your writing yet.”

“It’s okay. Maybe tomorrow.”

“No, I’m a man of my word. Look, Diana, do me a favor and go into the kitchenette over there. You’ll find some plastic cups and a bottle of highland single malt scotch whiskey, Aberlour 18. Pour one for yourself. You’ve earned it.”

DaYana wants to tell him that she thinks he’s had enough libations, but she complies. She returns to Dawkins with the half-empty bottle and two clear disposable cups. She pours him an inch and less for herself. Dawkins toasts his missing muse and takes a long sip.

DaYana follows. The alcohol warms her cold chest. She chokes at the taste.

“I first tasted scotch when I was your age. My agent sent me a bottle after I signed the deal for my first novel.”

“I didn’t realize you were so young when you wrote The Native Threat.”

“I presume you’ve read it.”

“It’s my favorite.”

“Your favorite book I’ve written.”

DaYana takes another sip from her glass and winces. “Actually, my favorite book, period.”

“In our time together, I never perceived you to be an admirer of my work, Diana.”

“I was really excited to join your workshop.”

She avoids eye contact but can sense Dawkins’ focus.

“I feel I’ve gotten to know you well, Diana, and I can be forthcoming with you. Based on your name and background, I can assume you are familiar with Charles Marlowe’s Tales of River and the work of Benjuan and Lupope.”

DaYana squirms in her seat.

“Hemingway said, ‘From all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation, but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive.’”

“Write what you know.”

“Precisely! Readers are starved for ethnic stories, but why not write about your own people? It seems you would want to follow in that literary tradition, to speak on your people’s experience.”

“And what if I don’t have anything to say about my people’s experience?”

“Well, you surely have something to say about that perspective.”

“Okay. What if I want to say something else, explore viewpoints beyond my own? Should I assume you’ve always written what you know? You have personal experience among warring colonies in distant galaxies?”

“You appear to be getting emotional. If you have been offended, that is not my intention. I'm only trying to give you sound advice. Like any industry, there are expectations. When it comes to writing and publishing, readers want to know the author has authority. They might expect someone like me to write a literary science-fiction novel, whereas most readers would expect you to write about your own culture. I'm not saying it's right, but it's true. I didn't invent these expectations; they predate me. So, of course when you decide to pen genre-bending short fiction featuring Chinese characters, it immediately raises questions about authenticity.”

DaYana sucks her teeth.

“Diana, if you look at the most famous works of literary fiction, the books that become canon, they are firmly rooted in the author’s own life experience.”

DaYana gulps the rest of her scotch. She clears her throat and says, “Fuck canon. I’ve never been a fan of classics. What about stories that defy convention? What about authors that challenge themselves to write about what they aren’t familiar with in hopes of learning and sharing more about the world?”

“Plenty of authors try to inhabit another’s skin through writing, and it most always fails.”

“And that’s a reason not to try?”

“You wanted to know how to improve your writing, how to be a successful author. That is why you are here. That is why you are talking to me. I’m telling you, as someone who has been at this for over three decades, a simple story based in your own personal experience is what to do. Play the race-culture-lifestyle-cards you’ve been dealt. A gay, immigrant, woman of color; that’s a literary jackpot! You should be able to secure an agent with minimal effort if you just stick to the basics and write what you know.”

“If I looked like you, would we even be having this conversation? I could pretty much write about whatever, wherever, whomever I wanted and not have to worry about never getting published, right?”

“Yes. Again, I didn’t set these precedents. But, yes. I could write your story, and it might be more widely embraced coming from me. However, I’m sure there would be some backlash from censor-happy social justice warriors online. If you do a Chinese factory worker story, it is empathy. If I do it, it is cultural appropriation.”

DaYana grins. “Must be difficult for you, knowing that if you fail in your portrayal of another group or race, you might have to hear their criticisms.”

“But isn’t that why you’ve grown so defensive, because I’m giving you criticism?”

“I don’t think that what this is.”

Dawkins downs the rest of his drink. “Okay,” he says, “your story’s protagonist needs to have a clearer sense of longing. The narrator explains that—what’s his name, Leo? —Leo likes to talk about places he’s never seen, but that needs to be more specific. Where does he want to go? The reader needs to understand what attracts him to other places. Don’t expect the reader to assume that Leo feels unfulfilled in his life and would be happier in another place. Why? That needs to be explained.”

Dawkins pauses to belch and scratch his beard.

“And the voice of your narrator, Leo’s comrade, needs to have more condemnation. Even if Leo were dead, the narrator would feel anger, even more so because Leo died radiating himself with a machine that was bound to bomb. And there would definitely be consequences for the rest of the workers because of Leo’s actions. The narrator’s life would be upturned when the factory introduced stricter regulations. The narrator should sound at least a little inconvenienced. Change the tone, or switch to a distant third person if you want more freedom in point of view.”

Dawkins rocks softly in his seat.

“Thank you,” DaYana says, nodding. “Seriously, that’s all very helpful.”

Dawkins tips his glass at DaYana for a refill. She pours, and he continues.

“I was like you. I think all beginning writers are like you. You want to defy expectations. You want to make something new, but readers don’t like new, not really. Flannery O’Connor said, ‘Endings have to be surprising but inevitable.’ Like my last book, for example. It was predictable, nothing new, but clever enough to become a critical and commercial success. It met expectations. The truth is, I can barely stand to do readings of that novel in public. However, I had a multi-book deal to fulfill and a family to support. At a certain point in every career, even yours if you stick with it, a storyteller must decide whether they intend to live on what they write. Once you’ve done that, you must then accept the fact that the unexpected doesn’t sell.”

Dawkins finishes the liquor in his glass. He reaches for the neck of the bottle. DaYana snatches the scotch from the table and stands.

“You should sleep. So should I.”

DaYana returns the scotch to the kitchen area and then moves to exit the apartment.

“Perhaps you could stay for one more drink?”

“I’m tired. Maybe another time.”

“I’ve enjoyed our intimate salon. You’re decent company. Are you sure you have to leave?”

“Good night, sir.” DaYana pulls open the door, and the cold rushes over her.

“Diana, what do you think happened to my missing muse?”

Turning around to face Dawkins, DaYana lingers in the doorway.

“I think she’s somewhere sleeping,” DaYana says.

Dawkins nods. “Did you read my last book?”

“I did. I’ve read all your books.”

Dawkins’ chest swells. “What did you think?”

“I thought you could have done better.”

Dawkins leans back in his chair. He gazes up at the ceiling.

“Sometimes I feel like that opening line to Ellison’s Invisible Man. I'm turning into some kind of phantasm. I'm vanishing, but when I try to sit down and write about it, I bore myself.”

“Maybe you should try writing for other ghosts.”

DaYana closes the door behind her as she leaves. Outside, it has begun to snow.

She buries her hands in the pockets of her coat. As she trudges across the campus to her residence hall, DaYana contemplates how to incorporate some of Dawkins' feedback. She thinks about his adamant recommendations and the basics of plot: a character, different but not unlike herself, moving from conscious into subconscious, from life to death to life again, on a journey from order to chaos to retrieve some great boon or personal insight. DaYana wonders if a good story can strive for innovation and still carry depth. She considers the possibilities of defying convention and bending form and becoming successful without having to follow a restrictive template or parade herself as other.

Maybe instead of dying predictably in a failed attempt to build a quantum teleportation device with pilfered microwave oven components, Leo succeeds in his experimentation.

Will this revision make Leo’s story less authentic and therefore less marketable?

“Maybe,” DaYana says to herself, “I won’t be for sale.”

Wind blows fat flakes of snow across her face. Squinting through the precipitation, DaYana can almost see Leo in his navy coveralls… He stood beside an unkempt gravestone on a white hill overlooking building 6/20, the raw material processing center where he started working as a teenager after his parents had died.

Seconds earlier, Leo had been tinkering with his device in the closet of his dormitory and then an invisible hand had reached through his belly, gripped his spine, and pulled him forward through space to here, now.

For several minutes, kneeling in the snow to closely examine the columns on the headstone, Leo struggled to comprehend his own name etched in granite between the dates of his own birth and death. Rereading his home province on the top of the stone, Leo began to realize the significance of his invention. His mortality had never felt more apparent and also irrelevant.

Leo smiled, contemplating how the pursuit of something unfamiliar revealed a discovery greater than anything he could have anticipated.

And DaYana, finally on her way to dream, grins, too, against the barren New England chill.

Donald Edem Quist is author of the short story collection Let Me Make You a Sandwich and the nonfiction collection Harbors. His work has appeared in North American Review, The Rumpus, Puerto del Sol, Hunger Mountain, J Journal, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Cleaver, Knee-Jerk, The Adroit Journal, Pithead Chapel, Numéro Cinq, The Nervous Breakdown, Slag Glass City, Publishers Weekly and other print and online publications. He is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, runner-up for the Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize and a winner of the E.L. Doctorow and Peter Matthiessen Authors Competition from the Writers’ Workshop of Asheville. He is creator of the web project PAST TEN, co-host of the Poet in Bangkok podcast, and serves as Fiction Editor for Atlas and Alice. He received a fellowship from Kimbilio Fiction and earned his MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Find him online at iamdonaldquist.com.

Tracy Kerdman is a painter based in New York, NY. She graduated with a BA in Studio Art from the College of Charleston in 2009 and studied at the National Academy Museum and School in New York. The execution of her work is direct and strong, yet the figures are fragile and vulnerable. The pleasure of painting coexists with the uncomfortable nature of the subject. The viewer is haunted yet delighted. Tracy has exhibited in museums and galleries across the U.S., Canada and Germany. For more, visit tkerdman.com.

twenty-three is the moniker of percussionist Andy Kivela. He began the project in 2003 as a way to experiment with electronic music, soundscapes, and loops of ambient sound. The project has evolved into a way for him to experiment with Brian Eno's ideas of Generative Music as well as Erik Satie's "Furniture Music." The offshoot group, 23 Ensemble, began in 2009 as a vehicle for free expression of musical ideas in the vein of the free jazz loft scene of the 70s and 80s. He lives in Easthampton, Mass., with his partner, Nikki Beck, and their pug, Lexi. For more, visit collapsiblecatrecords.bandcamp.com.

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ISSUE #136: Wynne Hungerford, Aliene de Souza Howell, Dweller on the Threshold

Art by Aliene de Souza Howell

THE REWARD COMES NEXT
by Wynne Hungerford

Something’s going on in the shimmering green country––by invitation only.

What: A large (but not fat) Englishman has built a service-dog training facility, and the first batch of dogs have just completed the year-long training program. The inaugural Open House will include a tour of the facility, demonstrations of the dogs’ tricks & skills, and a hot dog cookout on the freshly-cut lawn, spreading for acres in mock watermelon stripes.

Issue #136 soundtrack: Dweller on the Threshold “Barnfire”

Where: The Rush Foundation Headquarters, a blinding union of glass and steel. Follow the red-tailed hawk to a gate guarded by two marble Greyhounds, go up the mile-long driveway of crushed white pebble.

When: Saturday, 10 A.M. thru 6 P.M.

It’s Saturday.

The last of the morning dew has evaporated.

Cars snake down the mile-long driveway. So do short-buses and handicapped vans. The elite visitors are entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and socialites. They’re the nieces and nephews of senators, the children of big oil. They live part of the year in cottages, villas, and chateaus. They collect yachts, lighthouses, and small islands. They’ve got that Bahamian Bronze look from weekend trips to Nassau, where they dine at a world-class restaurant playfully named Sweet Plantain and go out on the dock after their after-dinner cocktails and climb aboard a vessel named Babel and ascend the Captain’s lookout, one by one, where the beautiful black ocean renders them speechless. The rich are invited so they will be impressed and donate money to the foundation and it’s the rich who come up the hill first.

Next, the disabled. The disabled are invited so that they may meet the service dog of their dreams. Look at His fine work: multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, polio, muscular dystrophy, paralysis, severe retardation, PTSD. Bulging eyes, hands curled into claws, bibs soaked with drool. They get out of their busses and vans slowly, painfully, and chug up the wheelchair-accessible ramp.

The Englishman stands in the open doorway, arms open. He greets everyone with equal charm, shaking hands, kissing hands, squeezing hands. His heart beats faster when he sees a couple approaching, a paraplegic man in a top-shelf electric wheelchair that could have easily cost ten-grand and his very blond, spiritually attuned wife. “Attuned” as in she wears braided leather sandals and a jade Buddha pendant around her neck. The paraplegic is what you’d call an anomaly because he’s rich and he’s a paraplegic and he happens to be married to the Englishman’s ex-wife. The woman with crystals in her pocket, she’s the ex-wife.

God, how he loved her.

She says, “What a wonderful day, Rush.”

The paraplegic says, “Yes, Rush, you have such a generous heart.”

The Englishman runs a hand through his flop of graying hair. His tweed suit feels a tad too small. He could use a little more room to breathe. He says, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

He built this place for his ex-wife and her new husband, who was a former downhill ski champion. You can look at his angular face––of Scandinavian ancestry, almost certainly––and imagine how dangerously blue his eyes would’ve looked against the snow and how his wind-chapped cheeks would have burned the color of a baboon’s ass at the finish-line. His face is long and his nose is the slightest bit crooked, enough to be sexy, like, Oh, you broke it boxing in college? Did it hurt? What makes a man sexy is often what causes his undoing. While skiing in small-town Montana for pleasure, there had been an avalanche that swept him up and pinned him against a tree with a broken back. This kind of thing happens, just not to you or me. So, he’s a paraplegic at this point, the legs are useless, and he’s propped against the trunk of an enormous pine tree with only his head above the snow. A few hours go by and a rescue dog appears, leaping through the snow, coming toward him like an angel with chopped-liver breath.

The Englishman made everyone think he was building the facility out of respect for his ex-wife’s new husband, to give him another dog, to give back to the disabled community in an underserved region. An article in the Greenville News went on and on about it: “Mr. Rush is a saving grace, etc.” That isn’t the whole story, of course.

There’s a bad, bad bitch in the kennels.

The head trainer, Constance Milton, is down there with all of the dogs. She puts bandanas on each of them. She keeps abreast of the latest literature and recently read an article suggesting that a dog wearing either a) clothing or b) jewelry is considered “Very Cute,” while that same dog in its natural state would only be considered regular “Cute.” The dogs wear their bandanas proudly and don’t mind them, all except one. Constance knows that Tilly, a little wheat-colored retriever, will hate the bandana. From the time Tilly arrived at the facility as a puppy, it was clear that she did not have the appropriate temperament of a service dog. She was impatient, hyperactive, and aggressive.

The chicken incident, for example. In the gymnasium during training one day, all of the copper and cornsilk retrievers were lined up for a lesson. They panted and looked at three plastic cat carriers in the middle of the gym. Constance and her assistant trainer walked along the formation of dogs like generals before battle, urging the troops to hold steady.

Looking into each pair of wet eyes, they said, “Stay down.”

The trainers knelt, opened the doors to the cat carriers, and whispered, “Come on, it’s okay.” The dogs waited. From the dark holds came tiny scratches and chirps. Little adolescent chickens hopped out and pecked along the floor, avoiding the dogs at first and then coming closer and weaving among them. The dogs raised their heads and sniffed. Somebody whined. All stayed down except for small-pawed Tilly, who snapped and caught a chicken by the wing. The bird screamed and flapped, but Tilly only bit down harder and closer to the small-breasted body. She trotted away from the group, into the farthest corner of the gym, head lowered. The assistant trainer jogged over, ordering, “Drop it,” in a firm voice. When Tilly finally eased up, the chicken ran across the floor, neck outstretched, beak wide open, tongue erect.

Later, the assistant trainer said, “What are we going to do about Tilly?”

“What do you mean?” Constance asked, feigning ignorance.

“She’s too excitable for this work.”

“We don’t give up on dogs,” Constance said. “We never give up.”

Constance knew the plan all along: Give Tilly to the paraplegic.

She had once asked the Englishman, “What do you want to happen?”

“Oh,” he said, playing with his cufflinks and imagining the cripple’s dying breath. “I’d quite like his throat to be torn out.”

Constance went along with the plan because she thought there’d be something in it for her down the road. The way you train a dog is through positive reinforcement. When a dog successfully completes a task, you give the dog a treat or praise. People are the same way. What would be Constance’s reward? She thought that maybe the Englishman would love her or marry her or at least make love to her in his office suite. There were leather couches up there, beautiful soft buttery leather couches.

Constance opens the door and steps into Tilly’s kennel. She says, “Are you ready, girl?” and Tilly snaps the bandana into her vicious little mouth, head slinging side to side, saliva flying. She can smell all of the visitors piled into the lobby for the Open House, the physical sickness of the disabled and the mental sickness of the rich, and she wants nothing to do with it because a dog can smell the truth. Tilly knows something is up, has known all along, and she’s pissed. She’d rather be anywhere than this kennel. This is bullshit, she growls through sparkling teeth. I want to roam. I want to live independently. I want to kill rabbits. I want to fuck a wolf.

Tilly steps forward, lips pulled back, nose trembling like a big wet blackberry. Tilly is looking everywhere. Tilly is assessing the situation. When the human’s guard is down, she will bolt out of the kennel and down the hall. She will paw open the emergency exit door and make haste across the rolling green hills. She will dive into the woods and find her pleasure there.

While the Englishman has had a plan for Tilly all along, she has been working on her own plan, the common plan, the most ancient plan there is––

Escape.

Wynne Hungerford has published work in Epoch, The Talking River Review, The Tulane Review, The South Carolina Review, and the Weekly Rumpus, among other places. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Florida.

Aliene de Souza Howell is a Queens-based artist who was born and raised in Nashville, TN. In her work, animal and object hybrids strip the specificity of human features to bring the focus to gesture and movement, animals and inanimate objects functioning as metaphor for human interactions with each other, the objects we use, and the natural world. Howell received her B.F.A from Guilford College and her MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art. She also worked as muralist and educator with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. She recently completed a post-graduate fellowship, was critiqued by Steve Martin, and exhibited in New York City, Germany and Ireland. She is in many esteemed collections including Naomi Watts and Leiv Schreiber, Francie Bishop Good and Howard Tullman. For more, visit alienedesouzahowell.com.

Dweller on the Threshold is a music project comprised of Northeast punk dignitaries and longtime friends Eric Gagne (Footings, Redwing Blackbird, Death To Tyrants), Randy Patrick (The Toll, Death To Tyrants), Andrew Skelly (Kindling, Ampere), Jason St. Claire (Sweet John Bloom, Daniel Striped Tiger), and Sean Yeaton (Parquet Courts, Daniel Striped Tiger). The group has been making records together in their spare time as Dweller On The Threshold since 2010 despite being separated by thousands of miles and other full-time projects. For more, visit the band on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.

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ISSUE #133: Jennifer Ahlquist, L.K. James, Zigtebra

Illustration by L.K. James

REPOTTED
by Jennifer Ahlquist

I found my brother again at the garden center. I was sure I’d imagined his voice, just over my shoulder in line for the register. He’d only been dead six weeks and I’d read that things like that could happen. Auditory hallucinations. But then it came again – Paul’s growl, unmistakable and very close. Becca, it said. I swiveled, bumping into pansies and tomato vines around me with the unwieldy fern in my arms that Dr. Chakiryan said might help bring life back into the apartment. I thought this was a poor choice of words, or maybe an apt one because he also said that we find the meaning we want to in what other people tell us. Ben hadn’t come with me, so I couldn’t ask him if he heard it, too. He’d said he couldn’t take any more paid time off after the funeral since it was his girlfriend’s bereavement, not his. Again I heard it, practically on top of me. Becca.

Issue #133 soundtrack: Zigtebra “Where Have You Gone?”

Paul? I whispered. The fern in my arms rustled. Paul? I looked down.

Hi, Paul said, waving his frond.

The woman behind me pressed her flat of flowers against my back to tell me the next register was open.

Shhhh, Paul said, don’t freak.

I started to protest when they wrapped Paul’s roots too tightly in burlap, but he waved again to shush me up.

Beautiful plant, the cashier said, really a home-maker.

Thank you, I gushed, and clutched my brother to me across the counter.

* * * * *
We drove home in silence. He draped a frond out the passenger side window and we both listened to the breeze whip through the car. That was one of my favorite things about Paul – the way we could be quiet together. It’s what made us good friends and better roommates, and what had united us against the loud, untidy lives of our parents. Once, we spent the whole drive from Indianapolis back to Mamaroneck in total silence just to give them the spooks. They didn’t fight for a week after that. When they divorced mercifully a few years later, Paul took me to the driving range while the movers ferried our stuff to Mom and Darrell’s new place the next county over. He liked it better there than at the mini golf course. Too messy, too many noisy families. Thwack! Thwack! Our hits rang out and the dimpled balls raced each other into the turf. We didn’t know how to golf. We said nothing but we felt better. I felt better. Dr. Chakiryan said I need to stop using “we” when I talk about Paul.

* * * * *
At home, I had to grab Paul’s stalk with both hands to wrestle him into the pot. He wasn’t very large, but the weight of his roots surprised me.

I’m sorry it’s just terra cotta, I said.

You know I’m not picky about my pot.

He rustled, so I laughed, too. I put him in the sunniest window and grabbed a couple of beers. I stuck the long neck of one bottle upside down in Paul’s soil and sank into the couch.

Thanks, said Paul, I’m sick of water.

We air-toasted to being alone together again.

* * * * *
I skipped lunch with Ben the next day, said I was finally sorting Paul’s stuff. I held things up and Paul said yes, keep it, or no, I don’t need a toothbrush anymore. We kept all the vinyl because we could still listen to them together. I remembered reading somewhere that music helped plants to grow.

I’m sure he would have been glad to see these put to good use, the Vietnam Vets donation guy told me when he came to pick up Paul’s clothes.

Well, they don’t fit me, I said, and he smiled at me like Darrell had when he brought Mom over to the apartment after the burial. A toothless smear of well-intended pity. Darrell and Ben had sat in our secondhand armchairs drinking iced tea and watching football like it was Thanksgiving instead of a funeral. I didn’t even know we got the sports channels.

Ben, it means so much to Darrell and me that you were a pall bearer today.

Mom’s voice was thick but didn’t falter. She hadn’t removed her ridiculous black hat with its bird-cage netting and clutched a black silk bag in her lap. I could see the tag poking out of the top. She’d probably return it later, and I hoped she’d only get store credit.

It was so special to see everyone who loved him, all his most important people, there together for him.

I left them in the living room and got in bed. Mom ushered Darrell away from the game and out the door without saying goodbye. Dr. Chakiryan said that my non-confrontational attitude was why I hadn’t gone to the funeral.

Limited to his terra cotta pot, Paul talked more than he ever had with legs. Things I barely noticed him doing as a person became the subjects of lengthy tutorials. The filter on the air conditioner had to be cleaned, the couch cushions rotated, the glue traps reset under the oven. The prickly fuzz on his stems bristled whenever I didn’t follow instructions quite right. An internet search told me they were called rhizomes. I wanted to know everything about him. I learned how much sun he needed and not to over-water. He walked me through setting the right rpm on the record player, taught me how to make his perfect pan-fried quesadillas (low heat, patience), and finally explained how to get the TV to sync up with the DVD player so we could re-watch Ingmar Bergman movies until I passed out on the sofa.

Are you asleep, Paul? I asked once, after Through a Glass Darkly.

I don’t think I can, he answered.

I didn’t sleep much that night either, and when I did, I dreamt of a terrible spider crouched in Paul’s leaves. I dusted him in the morning in spite of his protests, just to be sure.

* * * * *
Before we became roommates, I’d visited him in his first and only year at college. He took me to a house party where I wore a skirt Mom didn’t know I owned and got drunk fast on vodka mixed with Kool-Aid powder. When one of his friends offered me a bump from the crook of his thumb, Paul swatted the guy’s hand away. He handed him a ten for the spilled coke and practically frog-marched me back to his dorm. We ordered a pizza and Paul made me sleep on my side. He didn’t tell me off ever, but the next night at the next party he tallied my whiskey punches in pen on his arm. I was never as good at keeping track of him as he was of me. He’d gotten in the habit of staying away overnight while he was using, and I was so used to the quiet that it took more than a day for me to find his body. I’d made breakfast, done the dishes, slept in a bedroom that shared a wall with his. I hadn’t even gone in to see him, I just wanted to borrow his headphones.

Oh Bec, Ben had said when I called him from the hospital. Honey, please don’t tell me you’re surprised.

And then I was ashamed of both of us.

When the 24-pack of beers ran out, I invited Ben over. I hadn’t gone back to work yet so cash was running low, and besides, I was beginning to miss my boyfriend. I told Paul that he was coming over and the leaves at his crown drooped.

Couldn’t you just pick something up? he asked.

We hadn’t had anybody else over all week, not counting the Vietnam Vets guy.

C’mon, just the two of us.

I tied the sleeves of a blue flannel shirt I’d held onto around his pot, to help him feel more like himself. The doorbell rang.

I’m not ready, Paul said. Brrrong went the doorbell again.

You look awesome, Paul, I said.

Ben’s a prick, said Paul.

Hey pretty, said Ben when I answered the door. He took a bottle of whiskey out of his bag and gave it a little shake. I grabbed two glasses and a turkey baster from the kitchen while Ben dropped his stuff in the living room.

Are you making something?

He watched as I tipped a generous pour into each glass, and stuck the baster into the fifth of Johnnie Walker, sucking liquor into the rubber bulb. I handed Ben a glass and shoved the long tube of the baster into Paul’s dirt. I hoped he’d loosen up soon.

Do you want to watch a movie? I asked neither of them in particular.

Ben swallowed whatever he had been preparing to say. I picked Paul’s favorite Bergman, Fanny and Alexander. He hadn’t said a word since Ben came in. The apartment got too hot, even with the windows open. Paul’s smallest leaves were looking spindly, and sweat condensed where my back pressed against the sofa cushions. Life got worse for Fanny and Alexander, despite their well-meaning family. Ben was bored. The turkey baster was only half full.

It was always like this when the three of us hung out – which had been rare. Ben and Paul rooted themselves in opposite corners while I tried to bridge the space between them. I couldn’t blame Ben. He didn’t know he was ignoring Paul because I hadn’t told him anything yet. I felt the room grow more oxygenated as Paul completed his vegetal respiration furiously in the corner. I refused to speak for him. He’d been so forthcoming all week, I resented guessing at his thoughts. I hated him sitting there like an impotent chaperone. He could have tried. He could have asked for help.

Ben’s hand slid from my knee to my thigh, and upwards still until it found the Y of my jeans. I stiffened, Paul swayed in the corner. I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose. Dr. Chakiryan’s voice counted in my head. In for seven. Hold for five. Out for nine. Ben’s lips found my neck, my collarbone, my earlobe. We hadn’t had sex since Paul died.

Maybe we should go to your room? Ben asked from deep in his throat.

No, I said, and pulled his face back towards mine.

I pushed my tongue past his teeth and leaned into the cushions, arching my back so he could slide a hand around to unhook my bra. Paul said nothing. I pulled Ben’s shirt over his head, and he grinned. He reached for my breasts with both hands, his mouth a hard line. I turned my head to offer him my neck and saw Paul, perfectly still by the open window despite the breeze. We had never seen each other naked. His leaves were curling in on themselves, and I knew he’d have to say something soon. I stared, daring him.

Jesus, the blinds, said Ben.

He stood, red-faced, a hand outstretched to move Paul from the window sill.

Don’t touch him!

We stood facing each other in the cramped, too-hot room.

Him? I watched the confusion settle across his face.

I think I fell in love with him because I always knew what he was thinking. I wished I didn’t now. The quiet in the room was heavy. I felt it settle at the bottom of my lungs like cold air.

You okay, Bec? Ben asked, his hand resting on the edge of Paul’s pot.

My stomach felt too full of whatever vomit is when it’s still inside you. The Johnnie Walker made my skin too hot. They stood there not seeing each other, and I didn’t want them to. I didn’t want to be seen by them, either.

You should go, I said, grabbing my shirt from the sofa. I have an early session with Dr. Chakiryan.

I’m sorry, Becca, Ben said.

He kissed me on the forehead and left the whiskey as he went.

Paul was still quiet. I called out to him as soon as the door was closed, but he didn’t answer. I was still sweating and felt dizzy.

Paul, are you still…?

Paul didn’t stir. I got down on the floor next to him, my cheek on the rim of his pot. I stuck my fingers in the dirt and dug and dug and dug for his roots, twisting my fingers through them until they turned purple. The rest of the whiskey trickled out of the baster and made my hands and face muddy.

Paul, I’m sorry.

I tugged at the flannel, tipping soil into my lap while I held him. I petted his fronds and kissed the tiny, woolly leaves.

Paul, I’m sorry.

I spread his dirt across my legs, rubbed it into my arms. I buried my head in the fullness of his leaves. We stayed like that until early morning when I woke up in a puddle of booze and dirt with broken fern fronds in my hair.

I rewrapped Paul, now turning yellow and brittle at his edges, in the burlap from the garden center and carried him outside to watch while I dug in the shared lot behind the apartment building. He stayed silent, stretched his leaves and turned toward the sun. The sun felt good on my face, too. I nestled him down into the fresh hole, packed him in with topsoil. He looked much bigger out in the yard than he had in the apartment. I knelt in close to pat down the earth around his stalk.

Thanks, Becca, I thought I heard him whisper.

I said nothing. I wiped my hands on the blue flannel tied around my waist, and went back inside for the watering can.

Jennifer Ahlquist ​is a Philadelphia-based writer with a background in theater and social media marketing. A recent transplant from NYC, she is currently working towards completing a collection of very short fiction.

L.K. James is an artist making books, comics, and other things in Portland, OR. For more, visit lkjames.com or follow the artist on Instagram.

Zigtebra is Zebra (Emily Rose) and Tiger (Joseph). They are half-siblings who met in Chicago in 2010 while performing in the Pure Magical Love dance troop. Armed with a cassette of collected songs ("The Pink Line"), they set off across America on a summer road trip/tour. When they returned to Chicago they locked themselves up at Observatory Studios and recorded new material for their first studio album "The Brave," which released October 2014 in limited white vinyl from FPE Records. For more, visit the band on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, or on zigtebra.com.

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