FRUITLESS SEARCH Gary Beck	WHEN THE ARCHEOLOGIST DEFROSTS ME, THE CAVE GIRL Janelle Brin	WICKED ANGELS Tobi Cogswell	PERFECT SYMMETRY Wende Crow
YET ISRAELI IN THE A.M. KJ Hannah Greenberg	DORA ASLEEP Christine Hamm	LAND O LAKE-EFFECT SNOW Roger Hecht	HAND CREAM Paul Hostovsky
PLAYING PIANO (1940) M	FACE DOWN ON THE CASINO FLOOR Peter Magliocco	RESTRAINT Peter E. Murphy	WHAT WAS I THINKING? THE TERREMOTO Alison Roh Park
OVERTAKEN BY TWILIGHT Lynne Shapiro	HERE ON ROADS Roger Singer	LAST LOOK AT JFK FROM THE AIR Paul Sohar	LONE GUNMAN J. Tarwood

FRUITLESS SEARCH

Gary Beck

I kept a vigil,

driven from  a thorny bed of sleep,

by ghostly visitant

who waved discoveries in gleaming hands.

Into the evening streets I rushed,

the calm, hazy sky and glistening lights

a seeming mockery of mysteries to come

on such a night of emanations.

I sought others,

hoping in the milling press to find

someone to share my neon appetite,

but nothing comes when sought in hunger.

How fast the streets were paced

by urgent, shuffling feet

fearing the brief expanse of night

would invite someone's fading.

Hours passed delivering the message,

unrevealed in fleeting motions.

No one left to meet in chance encounters,

no where left to go but home.

Nothing but another evening's desolation

gloating with many others,

leaving me marooned on lonely doorsteps,

unconsoled by hints of dawn.

BACK TO TOP

WHEN THE ARCHEOLOGIST DEFROSTS ME, THE CAVE-GIRL

Janelle Brin

I’ve lived on a long while in this way:  a slick strange block

of ice.  I was found, you see… 

            (by a scientist of some sort)

  I don’t even remember

being born.  But then again, I don’t remember him chipping away

at the ice, or the flash of lights from all those little eyes—appearing

on the 10 or 8 or 7 o’clock news.

 

I’m being downloaded, he says, shared by some one-hundred-thousand users.

And he smiles at this and nods and touches

me, and I smile and nod and touch him back,

and I don’t even know what my name is…

            but I know I’ve only got 42 friends

and he suggests I rewrite my profile, join some

groups that make a statement for who I am.  Who am I?

I say.

 

And he tells me to shut my robe and he leans back in his chair,

hands hidden behind his head and says—just let me take care

of YouTube and all that…           

            and now I remember—falling sideways and floating

through the air. Scrambling on all fours up a sheer smooth cliff,

the way the sun burned red in my hair.  The way he saw me suspended

there—cradled in the ice as though I’d just been born.

 

Things used to be different, I say.  Before I was discovered.

One hundred and seventeen thousand files shared? he says. 

Discovered?

– Darling,

you don’t even exist.

WICKED ANGELS

Tobi Cogswell

naked trees
fade to dawn
the dents fit
perfectly
in her palm
shiny
shiny
water cascades
insects hum
skirt lifted
to the breeze
stones
skipping the rush
the woman
picks her way
teeters
fade to black

BACK TO TOP

PERFECT SYMMETRY

Wende Crow

I have been hearing an old voice over the line,

cracked and faint and shuffling its feet. It's time

to put on my bad face, screw up my brain.

The voice is scared. It wants to be taken

out onto the snow, to fill up with cold

that sharpens, then shatters. It wants

the gravity of an icicle, the clank

on the sidewalk. It wants a pale sun

to remember me by, and to know

other sufferings.

The pain outside its window.

The voice knows me well enough

to make me bound in a panic

through the blank trees,

across the cracking ice,

the lake we both know --

beyond what I can bear to hear.

Or rather, I know this voice too well.

And from this distance, I turn. Yes, I say.

First, with my eyes

gone wrong, and then:

a shiver in my eardrum

that ripples across

to the other ear -- it takes

the whole face

to lift my upper lip

and say yes, the sky cracks too. Yes, I see

the flurry of sorrow falling out,

all white and clean,

while here below the air is still.

We lift our faces to watch it drift

down,

and yes,

it cuts us all.

BACK TO TOP

YET ISRAELI IN THE A.M.

KJ Hannah Greenberg

 

Your yawn belies a rush, not

Toward hasaha, but breakfast,

Where siblings dawdle books and chores.

Charif in the morning, per normal.

 

The hills’ blessing,

Viewed from bed, salon, or merpesset,

Spreads sweet and bedazt,

Sanctioning our daybreak.

 

My ticket punch fills,

From bus forty plus thirty-two,

Amidst seas of hats and Sefrai Tehillim,

Toilet paper sticks on a shoe.

 

The recent ones,

Can not understand, until

Touching down, at Lod;

Welcome to our “ordinary.”

BACK TO TOP

 

DORA ASLEEP

Christine Hamm

1. 

Men seated at dark desks tinker

with her dream, and in her dream

 

she turns away again from the heavy

bearded mouth, its bristles like a boot

 

black’s brush. He had been eating

oysters and garlic -- she could smell him

 

from across the garden.  Any normal girl,

he tells her, would find this kiss arousing.

 

2. 

The muskrats whisper she’s too

repressed as they tighten the brass

 

screws in the corners of her dream;

she loosens the stays of her rose-

 

colored corset, the better to reach

the water of the lake at her feet.

LAND O LAKE-EFFECT SNOW 

Roger Hecht

 

falling without wind:

machinery churning

its gears & pistons, its white exhaust

disguised in a foam of white ash

 

or when wind-blown:

a fan hidden in the wings

whips white insulation

that does not warm us 

 

at night you can hear the thud:

big fat flakes piling up

flattening under

its white weight 

 

by day a diffused light:

cloud & snow the even smear

of trees can’t penetrate

& steals the sound with it

 

it sounds just like it looks

piled on my deck:

cream cheese

 

one fat block.

BACK TO TOP

 

HAND CREAM

Paul Hostovsky

 

If you look up Messiah it says

something about being anointed.

If you look up anointed it says

something about smearing or rubbing

oil or unguents. If you look up unguents

it says they’re like ointments or salves.

Jesus Salves would be a great name

for a hand cream, I believe. And I believe

hand eczema is one of a dozen

skin diseases that got lumped together

under leprosy in the New Testament.

I believe a little hand cream everyday

goes a long way toward healing dry skin,

and if you squeeze the tube a little

too hard, and too much unguent squirts out,

you can do what Jesus did: spread

the wealth around, anoint yourself and

others, rub some on your forearms

and their forearms, on their faces and tired

necks and shoulders and backs, the whole

body of Christ. If you look up holiness

it says something about being set apart

for sanctification. If you look up sanctification

it says something about being set apart

for holiness. One hand washing the other

just like in Jesus’ day. But if you look up

salvation, surprisingly it doesn’t say anything

about salves, or Jesus, or the Messiah.

It talks about our liberation from clinging

to the world of appearances, and the illusions

of sickness, pain, and death. Our final joyful

union with ultimate reality. Really good stuff.

 

PLAYING PIANO (1940)

M (Constance Hall)

 

The Steinway says acacia,

but then it’s always been provincial

in that respect, an interminable paradox.

It says it hates the shorter, harder sounds –

stuck, poke, mug, grease, grunt, cat.

Not daring enough, not arrogant,

not even alluring. Ping pong ball?

Oh, sure – it sounds good, but what the hell

can you do with it when you’re not playing

the game? It’s too round, too neatly circular,

its composition too well rehearsed

and liable to roll right off the action.

What melody is there in that at midnight?

What would Captain Marvel say?

You know, the damn Steinway isn’t even interested.

It’s developed an unhealthy affection

for the melodeon. Want to know why?

Because most people don’t even know

what that is. And if they did,

wouldn’t they prefer Steinway to refer to it

as the small reed organ?

So much less pretentious.

A lot of people have the wrong idea

about the Steinway for just this reason.

They think it’s too overeducated

for the dining room. They naturally assume

it wouldn’t want to sit at the common

pine table. What if they’re wrong?

What if all these years, the Steinway

really only wanted an eggplant

baked in breadcrumbs? Peasant food.

Nothing fancy. Nothing over-spiced

or too ornamental. Just plain grub.

But no, Steinway is trapped over there

behind the window at Abard Piano store,

saying languorous, saying Andromeda,

saying eucalyptus. We are dispossessed

we are unbalanced, and we say humble,

the first invisible reply.

BACK TO TOP

FACE DOWN ON THE CASINO FLOOR

Peter Magliocco

there's another pimp for lost exiles

masquerading nightly on the Vegas scene,

trying to inject ectoplasm into veins

torn & bleeding from life's hard knocks

onto the boulevard glittering

multi-colored particles blinding the eye

to everything but cheap souvenirs:

postcards of cowboy Howdy thumbing heaven,

before being picked up by Mafia hitmen years ago,

when Elvis was still king, not resort casinos

with their roller coaster extravaganzas.

I comfort the bleeding inamoratas

discarded in some cruel game

to enliven mercenary trysts (beyond

the pale of ordinary thrills) hailing truly

zombie-like queens strutting with tattooed bodies,

those elimiated by American Idol for good.

one sees me here & swings her purse upwards

hitting my head, letting fly verdant doves

whose wings are fluttering dollar bills

a night wind shreds with unseen shears,

while we lose a priceless human kindness

in all the bankrupt faces.

BACK TO TOP

RESTRAINT

Peter E. Murphy

Dagwood kisses Blondie goodbye and leaves

early avoiding his daily run in with the mailman.

He is usually driven, but today he releases

his carpool to its daily jam and walks to work.

Since the heart attack, he's been exercising--

really, he's fine!--although they haven't slept

together since he left the ICU and she moved

into the guest room.

The osso buco was awful last night.

How could she forget to add the wine?

He wanted to say something, but she seemed distracted.

And when he went down for his midnight snack

they were out of prosciutto and the foccacia was stale.

Maybe she has a lover?

Herb, a recluse since Tootsie died?

Young Elmo back from the war,

uncommunicative, but deadly handsome?

Who else could she be dithering with?

Maybe it's her change of life? When he asked

if she still gets her period, she slapped him.

He was easy to please, but he knew he was boring.

When he brought up the election at breakfast,

she said Who cares? Nothing ever changes.

And even though he agrees, it was one

of their favorite topics, drinking

their fair trade coffee, reading the Times.

WHAT WAS I THINKING? THE TERREMOTO

Alison Roh Park

 

You torment me with the rooster on the roof

in its shit-spattered cage tied with bits of old T-

Shirts that catch in the wind. Over your laugh that

sounds like it's squeezing through cheesecloth

You hint at dinner or your uncle’s cockfight

somewhere near San Francisco, or was it San Miguel?

Your father with his cartoon mustache, gold-rimmed

glasses and trilling Rs checks on the rooster in the

Mornings before the sun burns off the dew. I sneak

a Hamilton with a tiny china cup of café con leche

 

On the southern part of the roof farthest from the

laundry lines, overlooking the other side of La Merced

Where the dust from motorbikes, Daewoos and shirt

factories mixes with dust from the cerros behind us.

It’s fall here, and the sun sneaks in through the

fuel emissions and fog in late morning. Everything

Is brighter here even though the only blue sky

I’ve seen was hanging over the dripping rich homes

In Miraflores. That was the only day I got to see the

Pacific, and I could smell it in the air. Later

 

When we return the empty forties from last night to the

chino around the corner, I feel shy when I ask for

Numbers and smokes, but he acts like nothing’s

special. I don’t tell you that your mother, with her

Silk-type running suit, clean white sneakers and

pearl-drop earrings, asked me to take a walk with her

After your Machita lay down for her evening nap. It

was dusk, the purple damp of a cooler night setting in.

We sat on a bench in a mini plaza where mosquitoes

were rousing themselves in the trees overhead. I thought

How odd that I never knew your family lived in a gated

community. Your mother took my hand and moved in.

“Please understand, my son is just a boy. Unripe,” she says

in a loose translation. That is, after all, all there is.

BACK TO TOP

OVERTAKEN BY TWILIGHT

Lynne Shapiro

 

We pull into the parking lot

the VACANCY sign fires up

Poolside view, undulating water.

Chlorine & the heat of the day

cling to the chrome ladder as

I climb into

watery freedom

accompanied by 

the descending sun.  It’s Kansas - 

or somewhere like Kansas,

the midriff of America,

where Uncle Bernie teaches me to

sink or swim.

One- time spy, shot down in ‘Nam,

drives mom and me across country

in silence

so he can listen

to the blue Studebaker’s engine.

Pool hopping, we wind our way West 

toward the coast and new lives.

At the bottom step, refreshment

turns frigid.

Jump in. Don’t be a sissy. 

Sliced in two by late afternoon water,

on tip-toe, arms splayed for balance,

I watch cars drive down Main Street,

the lights come on one by one.

I listen to my heart beat

and cows lowing

in the distance,

before I plunge.

It's August, 1961. 

BACK TO TOP

HERE ON ROADS

Roger Singer

Highways hold me like

black lovers arms,

speaking of love

at journeys hard end.

 

All roads lust me into claiming them,

not wanting me to

look back over shoulders.

 

Here on roads

I fail to see names of places

as I pass

into a valley

safe from where

I’ve been.

BACK TO TOP

LAST LOOK AT JFK FROM THE AIR

Paul Sohar

 

what if too lukewarm

what if concrete

what if nowhere in plain sight

and I forget which fork

what if

 

not there but

you know what I mean

 

what if the pilot is blind

as blind as god and can't see earth

what's happening here and what isn't

what is after eight

blue with a mean streak

and not there but here

not then but now

 

what if you can hear me

what if deaf is a noun

what if I exist

after-eight blue

what if there's no eight

no clocks

what if the unknown

is just

screwing with me

LONE GUNMAN

J. Tarwood

 

I’m a hero.  I have a gun.

 

Where my room elbows air,

streets tangle and knot.

There, there—a file of them.

Each has fancy future stuff.

but I can make them love walls

like shadows.

 

                        Dead, they still

have papers.  That’s power.

Even land’s a lock-up of words

and stamps, blacktopping

all our fathers’ bones.

 

We wrangle, we lose.

Bullets are a blessing.

 

A tank’s sure to bully soon.

One boom, maybe two,

and whatever’s left of me

 

gets good earth at last.

 

BEFORE IT CAN DISAPPEAR

Catherine Curan

She is running as fast as she can, cello held tight in one hand.

Two boys follow across the parking lot, footsteps sharp as gunshots.

Insults echo, her name made strange. “Angelos, you smell!” “Xanthippe Smelly-Angelli.”

The cello, zipped in soft cloth, the book bag slung across her shoulders, so heavy. Cold air stabbing.

Ahead of her, Our Lady of Sorrows School’s locked front entrance. To her right, a wilderness of empty soccer fields, fenced. 

Fast, reaching a side path, where she used to wait with Jocelyn, slapping out Miss Mary Mack until her fingers stung.

This late, Xanthippe sees no one. Not her friend, not her father, come with the car to speed home, blasting Led Zeppelin. Only a deserted street, houses quiet, empty seeming.

Fear flares. She runs faster, onto the lawn long as a football field, enclosed by an iron fence. The lawn must be crossed before she can reach the trees, the path to the street.

Her legs flow forward. The grass a bolt of brown, unrolling endlessly.

The cello swings hard on its handle, jerking her arm painfully, thudding against her thigh. Xanthippe pictures the bruise it will leave—purple, ugly.

Unburdened, she could outrun anyone. Not holding her cello, so clumsy to carry, her book bag, so heavy.  

The boys close behind, taunting, yelling. “Ang-elliiiiii, you’re so smelly,” whooping excitedly.

Still so far from the trees, from the path to the street.

The bell in the old clock tower tolls the half hour, four thirty.

Above her the wide sky, darkening. Wind angry in her ears. Singsong voices sounding closer: “Ang-elliiiii—Xanthippe You’re So Smelly.” Their laughter, loud in the empty air.

Xanthippe knows who is behind her—Mark Galenick and Joey Malis, the two meanest boys in the sixth grade. Boys who once stole her bag, breaking her Hello Kitty pencils and scented erasers.

Remembering, she runs faster.

Smiling, a third boy steps from the shadows among the trees. Peter Culpa, a seventh grader who was almost expelled last spring. Kids said he punched a priest.

Petros looms big-boned, his face an explosion of braces and early adolescent acne.

She screams.

The others are close behind; near enough to touch her, near enough to tug at the scarf that has all but slipped from her shoulders, and snatch it.

Panicked, Xanthippe lunges into the only open space. Lungs burning, legs weak.

The cello smacks against her side, and she clutches it closer, holds it to her body with both hands. The book bag heavy across her shoulders, the cold air that stabs.

Only one thought—escape. She sprints into the schoolyard with desperate strength.

How can they hurt her here, where she plays tag during recess, always the first girl chosen for any team, she runs so fast.

The schoolyard’s stone circle is bordered by the trees and a chain-link fence. Hugging the cello, Xanthippe slows, seeing too late what a perfect trap it makes. Nothing to help her here among the metal bike racks and child-sized stone benches used for base. No one sits inside the classrooms, their darkened windows dotted with paper snowflakes. Wind bites her fingers through worn mittens, chills her calves through cotton tights.

Xanthippe whirls in a circle, once, heart hammering. The only sounds, a far-off hum from the highway behind the fields, and her own rapid breathing.

Nothing from the boys behind her, and she feels fear, her legs weak.

The boys enter the arena unhurriedly, ringing her in a ragged circle of roving feet. 

“Can’t run so fast, now, can you, Angelli-smelly?”

“Little Xanthi-pi, pee-pee.”

“Gotcha now, Xan-thi-pee-pee.”

Her body spinning, turning as they turn, seeking the source of each sound.

Laughter, and the soft thwack of cloth on her back. Xanthippe whips around, startled, sees Joey lashing her scarf, no longer white but dirt streaked.  Laughing, his eyes narrowed. Xanthippe remembers a valentine he made for her in third grade, with a sloppy heart and a picture of Snoopy.

Hands grip the hood of her cranberry overcoat. Mark’s hands, and she jerks free, stumbling.

“C’mon, Joey,” Mark urges. “Let’s get her.”

Xanthippe turns to face him, fighting to keep fear from her voice. “Leave me alone.”

Mark’s eyes are inches from hers, his face ugly with rage. He is breathing hard. “Shut up, smelly Angelli.”

Xanthippe holds the cello like a shield, knowing she should run.

Unbidden, another impulse sparks inside her. “Stop calling me that.”

“Smelly Angelli, smelly Angelli…”

Xanthippe finds it strange to see him this close, to realize the beauty of his green-gray eyes. She knows him mostly from a distance; when he challenges the teacher, Xanthippe laughs with the class. Only once before have they been so near to each other, in the coat closet, that time they almost kissed.

Her exhausted muscles begin to buckle; the book bag, so heavy, the cello so clumsy to carry, clutched close. Xanthippe wonders why Mark wants to hurt her, when he was the one who followed her in there, grabbing her hand and trying to touch her training bra. Pushing her away afterwards like she had cooties.

“I said stop calling me that.” Her voice rings out, clear in the emptiness. “You’re the one that smells.”

Almost imperceptibly, their circle loosens. Joey and Petros laugh.

“Shut up, Angelli.” Mark steps forward.

Xanthippe dodges left, moves when he does, still holding the cello close, sidestepping a shove.

Frayed from long use, the strap on her book bag snaps. Arcing out behind her, the bag opens as it falls, freeing a shower of sheet music, a biology book.

At first she feels relief. Then horror at the thought of her belongings exposed for the amusement of these three.

The cello matters most, though, and she won’t let it go to gather anything.

The boys laugh. Petros kicks the book, sends it sliding across the pavement. He runs after it, kicking again, tearing the cover Xanthippe made from a brown paper grocery sack.

Joey grabs the book bag, swinging it by the broken strap. Then he bends to pick up a binder. “Hey, check this out! Xanthippe Loves Mark,” he reads. “Aw, how sweet. Xanthippe loves Mark. Smoochy-smoochy.” His lips smack.

 Petros gags, rolling his eyes and clutching his throat. 

“You liar! It doesn’t say that!”

“Give me that,” Mark tries to grab the folder from Joey. They struggle, calling each other loser and moron, fuck-face and ass-wipe.

Xanthippe flees. Bound for the street, straight along the chain link fence between lawn and trees. Heart hammering, hood thrown back.

Sound of a souped-up engine: her father’s Monte Carlo, rumbling. He will tell her he’s sorry but he had a flat, or ran out of cash for gas; he got caught up at rehearsal, the new bassist was really jamming; he clocked out as early as he could, but then the engine conked and he had to jump it.

She will tell him how she outran all the boys, and he will laugh.

But Mark follows fast, catching her halfway down the path, pushing, and they stumble, tangled in each other, falling.

Scarcely seconds to react, to cradle the cello close and protect it.

An arm flails, cold hands clumsy. The cello leaps free.

Her body falling, ground rushing up to her face. Crack, her forehead smacks pavement.

Then the brick-bag of Mark’s body, slamming against her back.

Whiteness blinds her vision. Pain radiates.

His body rolls off her. She hears him take three names in vain—Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Xanthippe sits up, slowly. Staring as the strip of ground slides from solidity to a slick black, shimmering. Then solid earth slides back, soft at the periphery.

Sounds of running, labored breathing. A belch, and giggles. Then silence. Thick, shifting.

“Mark, man, you all right?”

“Holy shit. Dude! Check that shit out!”

Xanthippe wonders, does not want to see. Sensations return slowly—stinging skin, scraped beneath the mittens, a finger is broken, maybe. Taste of blood in her mouth.

The boys’ silence presses the air above her, so heavy.

A street lamp buzzes high above her head, making a patchwork of shadow on the pavement. Xanthippe forces herself to stand, fight the dizzy feeling.

“What are you looking at me for?” Mark’s voice holds an odd note: uncertainty. He touches something, a dark shape, with his foot, draws back.

The others watch him, not speaking.

Their half-circle parts at her approach, three bodies retreating.

What has happened must be very bad for them to be standing apart like this, so still, waiting. A torrent of grief begins within her but she fights it back with a prayer. Not to God or his Son. To a saint who was once a girl full of faith.

Dear Cecilia, Xanthippe begins, pronouncing the name as the library book explained: Chey-cheelia. Dear Chey-cheelia, please.

Xanthippe’s mittens are ruined, ripped through; she stares blankly, tugs them off to look at the skin scraped on her palms. Calloused palms she should mind more carefully, if she will make it to Carnegie Hall one day. 

Face down, the cello lies broken-backed, its graceful neck snapped.

Her cello. An old instrument, already patched. This cello she begged her father for, the first time she brought a borrowed instrument home from school and played for him.

Xanthippe hears the soft clink of a quarter thrown into the old mason jar on her dresser, the jar she filled faithfully with loose change and unspent milk money, the jar with a silver ribbon around its glass throat, ribbon on which she had written “cello fund” in black ink. 

Every coin from when her father drove her to the grocery store with beer bottles for recycling. All of her communion money, and more than her father should have spent on her eleventh birthday.

Inhaling a ragged breath, Xanthippe traces the cello’s broken shoulder. Blood blooms on her fingertip.

Xanthippe can feel Mark’s eyes on her. Moron Mark, who always seems to be watching her, in the halls or during recess, this boy she never talks to even though he is always in her class. This boy she kissed, kind of a little, that time in the coat closet, and another time just last week.

Mark. She can’t find the right words for him yet. For the color of his eyes, and the warmth that he kindles inside; for his inexplicable anger; his ugliness.

The others hover at the edge of her vision.

“Hey, check it out,” Petros says. “Check out Little Markie and his little girl friend making googly eyes.”

Joey begins to sing, “Markie and Xanthippe sittin’ in a treeeee, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”

Mark turns on them. “Shut up!”

“Markie an’ Xanthippe…”

“I mean it, Joey, shut up.” Mark makes a fist.

“Or what? Ya gonna—”

Mark grabs him by the collar. “Shut up, Joey, or I’ll make you.”

“Dude! I’m only kidding.”

Shards of wood scatter as she unzips the case. This cello will never be replaced.

Mark is to blame. “This is your fault.”

Joey says: “Nobody’s talking to you, Smelly Angelli.”

“Why were you chasing me? What did I ever do to you?”

Mark surveys Xanthippe, as if seeing her face for the first time. After a long moment, he speaks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. Why can’t you leave me alone?”

Mark’s face is an image of innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You were running and you fell.”

“That’s a lie and you know it—”

 “No, it isn’t.” His voice sounds soft, seductive with certainty.

“Tough luck, Smelly,” says Petros.

“Yeah.” A grin spreads over Joey’s face. “Tough luck.”

Their laughter crescendos, surrounding Xanthippe. Anger stirs inside her: anger at being chased, at running burdened, at falling hard.

Mark’s voice again, “Hey, Angelli—”

“Shut up!” She jumps up, shoving Mark so hard he stumbles. Xanthippe lunges after him. “Fuck you, Mark!” she yells, words her parents used to yell at each other, words her father won’t let Xanthippe use, “Fuck you,” punching and kicking.

Throwing up his hands to shield himself, Mark lets out a frightened laugh. “Angelli, jeez—”

He steps back, then stops, seeks the source of a sound from across the street.

Joey turns, takes off. Petros follows, unfurling Xanthippe’s scarf from around his neck.

“Somebody’s coming,” Mark says.

You liar, Xanthippe thinks. No one is coming for her, not her father, not anyone.

Shaking her off, Mark turns and runs.

“Hey, you kids,” a woman yells. “You keep it down over there or I’ll call the police.”

 

Stopping for help at Jocelyn Hart’s house was a terrible mistake, but now it is too late. The apartment is not far, Xanthippe has keys, wants to leave, but Mrs. Hart will not agree. So Xanthippe reluctantly tells her the name of the restaurant where her mother works as assistant manager: Damianos Dio, spelling out the last part, D-i-o. Flipping through a fat phone book, Mrs. Hart looks up the number, taking the phone out of the kitchen to talk privately.

Xanthippe buries shaking hands in the furry cat on her lap. Clouds of orange fur swirl beneath the chair, the round table covered with bright cloth.

 Jocelyn chips at her sparkly purple nail polish, seeming bored Xanthippe has stayed so long.

When her cell phone buzzes, she picks it up eagerly. “Hey, Stace! Yeah. No, not at all.”

Xanthippe knows this name, a girl in the drama club Jocelyn joined this year.

Jocelyn is heading out of the room, phone stuck fast to her ear. “Hold on a sec,” she unglues, briefly, turning to Xanthippe. “You can copy my homework if you want. Call me later.”

Then Xanthippe’s mother is there, ringing the bell. It sounds in a chime, eight times, and Xanthippe feels a flash of shame; no one who knows the house rings this bell.

Xanthippe clutches the cat, but he squirms free, lands neatly, retreats.

      Unlocking the door, Mrs. Hart lets Xanthippe’s mother and the cold wind in. The mothers talk a moment, Thraso in tones Xanthippe knows as her bright shiny glissando voice, reserved for impressing certain kinds of strangers.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” she says. “Like I said on the phone, three people called out sick today, we’ve got a big catering job—an engagement dinner, actually. It’s chaos.”

“Sounds busy,” says Mrs. Hart. “Xanthippe can stay here longer if you like.”

Xanthippe looks up, a sideways sneaky glance.

“No. It’s fine. I’ve got it covered,” says the bright shiny glissando voice. “Thank you.”

Angular, impatient, Thraso crosses quickly to the kitchen, moving as if the space between were a solid mass resisting.

All at once Xanthippe wants a mother like Jocelyn’s—cheerful, chubby, with two normal- sounding names. Not wearing a beaten-up black leather jacket, buttoned in a hurry; a mother people think is your sister, she’s so young.

 “Honey, I’m here now,” says Thraso’s voice. “Three people called out sick today and it’s chaos.”

Xanthippe looks at the fur swirled around her shoes. Thraso has a “no pets” rule.           

“Hey,” her mother says, holding a cold hand to Xanthippe’s chin. Cold fingers touch the cuts above her eye, across her forehead. Xanthippe feels glad they have been cleaned and anointed with antibiotic cream. They have long since stopped bleeding.

“Shit,” Thraso breathes, taking in Xanthippe’s scraped palms, swathed in Band-Aids. “You’re a mess. What the hell happened?”

“I was playing after school, and I fell,” Xanthippe tells the swirls of fur, the sun-yellow linoleum. Jocelyn’s mother does not curse.

“You fell.” Concern, shaded with disbelief. Dark eyes assess the damaged book bag, the torn mittens on the table. “Where’s your cello?”

Refrigerator hum, dishwasher’s whir. Thraso has been working late a lot lately. She might not have remembered the cello.

“I left it at school,” Xanthippe says finally.

“I hope you left it somewhere safe. That fucking thing cost a fortune.”

“I know.” Looking up, Xanthippe stares into the bottomless black at the center of her mother’s eyes. “I’m sorry you had to come get me.”

 

Outside, the engine dies. In her mind, Xanthippe did not say goodbye; she is still sitting in the warm kitchen with Jocelyn and Mrs. Hart, listening to a clock count out the seconds as they slide by. She is not here, in the front seat of her father’s car next to Thraso, feeling frozen and afraid, feeling full of rage. There is no way Xanthippe can tell Thraso about the cello, not now, not tomorrow, not the next day. She treats the cello like a burden on money and time, a waste.

Thraso’s fist jerks the key forward again but the dashboard does not light. Xanthippe listens for the engine’s growl, hears only a scratching sound, then nothing.

“C’mon,” Thraso urges, turning the key again, black boot pressing the pedal down.

Skitch, skitch, skitch, skitch, skitch, skitch. Then nothing.

“C’mon, c’mon, you piece of shit car,” Thraso says, punching the dash with her free hand, jerking the key forward another time.

“Stop doing that,” Xanthippe says, almost to herself. “You’re just flooding the engine.”            

The Monte Carlo is older than Xanthippe, but if you’re patient it mostly runs fine. If her father were here, they would already be off and driving.

“Piece of shit car!” Thraso frees the keys, crushing them in her fist, pounding the dash again.

Xanthippe looks out the window.  Rubbing a clear patch in the condensation, she watches a man walk by, head down, shoulders hunched against the cold.

“Shit!” Thraso pummels the dashboard once more, harder this time. “Piece of shit Monte Carlo. I never liked this fucking car.”

Already the place where Xanthippe pressed her palm to the glass has filled in with fog. Her hand still feels cold and she scrubs it over the scratchy wool of her coat until her skin stings.  Xanthippe couldn't say why, but she likes this feeling, and she drags her palm over the rough wool until the bleeding begins again. 

Cold seeps through her clothes, surrounding her. The scrapes on her face, on her hands, ache. She runs her tongue over two loose teeth.

“I never liked this fucking car,” Thraso repeats.

Xanthippe thinks: It’s your fault for flooding the engine.

As if from a great distance, she hears a car passing, slowing at the corner before turning. With the doors closed, the windows rolled up, every sound in the Monte Carlo seems amplified: take-out bags and fast-food trash under her feet; Thraso’s breathing. Even though it’s cold the air feels thin and stale, as if there is a limited supply they are rapidly using.

Thraso grabs her purse, clawing through it. She pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights one.

Xanthippe coughs, just a little louder than necessary. She knows better than to open her window. 

“Man, Jocelyn’s mother has gotten fat.”

This is clearly an invitation to agree. Xanthippe risks silence.

Thraso drags on the cigarette, exhales, and drags again deeply. “So are you gonna tell me now, or do I have to wait?”

“Tell you what?”

“What the hell you were doing after school today. How come you’re all banged up.”

“I told you. I fell.” Xanthippe enunciates carefully, like she would for someone stupid.

“Look, Xanthippe, I’m here now. You found a way to make me come and pick you up. So why don’t you tell me what you’ve really been up to?”

Xanthippe thinks of the cello, fights tears. With Thraso, crying gets her nowhere.

“I was playing, I told you.”

“Playing with who?”

“Some boys.”

“Why didn’t you walk home?”

“I wanted to stay with the boys.”

“What boys?”

“A whole bunch of boys. I was kissing them in the parking lot just like you used to.”

“You little brat.” Thraso tries the ignition again, and the engine sputters before failing. “You weren’t kissing any boys. The only thing you’re interested in is that cello.” 

“The only thing you’re interested in is fucking stupid Damian Dio.”

“Don’t you talk to me like that.”

The slap sounds like a loud snap. It feels like a burn, fire splashed across her face. Tears well up and she fights them back.

“You little bitch,” Thraso hisses. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Xanthippe sits very still, not touching the burn across her face.

Abruptly, Thraso cracks open the window and chucks out her cigarette, still lit.

Xanthippe imagines it rolling down the street, lighting a stray leaf, setting a fire that spreads quickly. Consuming the parked cars, the empty street. Burning the Monte Carlo, everything. Leaving only ashes behind. Ashes, then nothing.

“Piece of shit Monte Carlo,” Thraso says, cranking the window closed. “I never should have agreed to take it instead of the support he owes me.” Then a bitter laugh. “I hope he’s freezing his ass off in Chicago riding around on that stupid Harley.”

Xanthippe says nothing, staring straight ahead. She hates it when Thraso acts mean and then moves on to a new conversation like everything is OK.

“Of course,” Thraso continues, “If it wasn’t for the Monte Carlo with the big back seat I wouldn’t have my Xanthi.”

 Xanthippe knows this is the nice part, the trying-to-be-funny Thraso; knows also that this loathsome old joke is all Thraso’s going to give her instead of an apology. For the slap, for the forgotten promise to pick her up today.

With one finger Xanthippe traces a grace note on the window. She watches the edges blur and smear, then rubs out the note herself before it can disappear.

“Try starting the car again,” she says. “It’s been long enough.”

Thraso nods, but does not turn the key.

They sit for a time in silence, listening to each other breathe.

BACK TO TOP

ONCE. AGAIN.

Jenna Giannasio

You want to meet by the Brooklyn Bridge.  It has been so long since you crossed it you said.  Longer still since you’ve seen me.  It has been four years since you went to Paris.  Before you even left, you started smoking Galoises cigarettes and railing against ugly Americans, even though you are one.  I remember sitting and watching you paint through a pale haze of smoke and desire. Me, cross-legged on the futon wearing just underwear and a T-shirt.  It was the way you liked me best. Natural, without any artifice, with my scythe shaped scar peeking out from the bend where thigh meets calf.  You, wearing your favorite jeans.  The ones with the hole in the left knee from when you fell, skateboarding drunk down Twelfth Street.  (Oh how I loved girl skateboarders!) Your arms were almost bony enough to make you skinny, but the ropes of muscle in your lean midriff made it impossible to think you anything but strong. 

We lived that way for a time.  You with paint brushes and endless palettes and me with pens every color but blue and piles of notebooks that were never completely filled.  We smoked good pot and Camel lights and sometimes you would cook for me.  Fanciful things involving sour melon and smoked oysters.  Life was giddy and heady and we were young and full of the moment.  Then one day, you were offered the chance to study with some obscure painter in France and we both agreed you should go.  The decision to stay four years without me, however, was one you made on your own.  But now you are back.  And I am meeting you at the bridge. I take a deep breath, say a little prayer, and walk out my front door.

Last night I had such trouble sleeping.  I twisted in my sheets, restless. Anxious.  Tendrils of sleep wound around me, but proved just a momentary tease.  In a state of half consciousness, I dreamt of you. In the dream, I was walking down the hall of my high school.  To the left were endless rows of cold gray lockers.  To the right of me, a rushing flow of people with which I was trying to keep up. And you.  You were a still point in all that movement.  I didn’t realize it was you, at first.  But something seemed…familiar.  I went back to where I thought you stood.  And there you were.  You wore a knowing smile on your face and a ridiculous pink bow in your hair.  I laughed.  And then, in that hall, it was just us.  Twin still points with a whole world dashing around us. Incongruent angles everywhere.  But we were perfect symmetry.  We were like that from the first.  Anchored in the certainty of each other.  The world was around us.  But we were not a part of it.  In this dream, all of that was tangible.  I reached for you, though the hurricane of legs and arms and eyes.  I came so close.  And then I woke up.  My hair was damp, and my heart racing.  I always wake like this, when I dream of you.  But last night.  Last night I could calm myself. Because I knew that today the fact of your leaving was being replaced by your coming back. 

Before I reach the intersection of Tillary Street and Boerum Place, I am already seeking you out.  I squint through the yellow glare and spot you.  You are perpendicular to me, on the far side of the street and I can see you’ve changed your hair.  Shorter and eggplant-shiny, it throws me off for a moment.  But your slouch is familiar.  One hand in the right pocket of your jeans, the other shading your eyes as you stare up the block.  Looking the wrong way for me. Your stance is relaxed as can be, listing a bit to the right.  But I notice you are tapping your heel.  I wonder if I am still the only one who knows that means you are nervous.  For the tenth time today, I find myself speculating about what this meeting holds.

I think of the first time you kissed me.  We had just met a week earlier and I can’t now recall what facilitated your presence in my tiny Chelsea apartment that night.  I do remember being so nervous.  Flitting around the kitchen.  Heart racing.  I was eating an apple just to give myself something to do.  You had walked over to where I stood, in the kitchen.  And you said:

“Is that a Granny Smith?”
“It is.”
“I love how they taste.  Just tart enough to make them interesting.”

You had been looking right in my eyes.  I remember that I felt faint from having you so close.  Then you took the apple from my hand and, never taking your eyes from mine, bit into it, leaned in and kissed me.  When you pulled away, I could barely speak above a whisper.
   
“Sweet. They’re sweet too”, I’d said, the taste of apple lingering in my mouth, from yours. 
   

That kiss is what goes through my head when you finally look at me.  The turn of your head is quick.  As though you’ve heard me speak.  For a moment we just look.  Traffic buzzes by in a cacophonous rush.  The orange Don’t Walk light is taking forever to change.  It so reminds me of my dream that I dig my nails into my palm.  It hurts.  So.  Here you really are. I tuck some unruly strands behind my ear.  Can you see my nerves?  I am hyper aware of this blue, perfect day.  Of the sky with earnest wisps of white lazing their way to who knows where. The sun is strong, but the air is cool. There is a Jehovah’s Witness from the nearby Watchtower building peddling sweet potato pies.  It is just another weekend day in Brooklyn.  Except you are part of it. 
 
The light finally changes.  You look alert and your eyes don’t leave me as I cross the street.  I narrowly avoid twisting my ankle in a pothole.  You shove your hands into your pockets.  I straighten the lapel of my worn denim jacket.  You rock back and forth a bit, from ball of foot to heel.  We fidget.  Breathe.  And then.  I am standing in front of you.
We look at each other for a moment.

“Been a while”, you say.
 
“It has.”
   
You reach your hand out and put it on the back of my neck.  Such an old, intimate gesture.  I notice you nails are bitten down.  With a gentle, sure tug, you pull me into you.  Your hand is warm on my neck.  One thumb caresses the nape.  My head fits easily into the spot it loves best, under your chin, ear over your heart.  My arms circle your torso, so narrow I can wrap you up completely.  And your free arm goes around my waist, holding on.  I breathe in deep.  You smell of amber and citrus.  The familiarity of it makes my head spin and I am grateful that we are holding on to each other.

I pull back first. But without letting go.  Clearing my throat and gesturing back and forth between us,  I say:

 “This is so…”
 
  “I know.  It is. “
  
“What are you doing back here, Liz?” I didn’t mean for it to come out quite that abruptly.  My plan was to just let things flow.  Not ask the obvious.  But the question comes before   I can close my mouth to stop it.  We search each other’s eyes.  There are no answers there. And one is not forthcoming from you.  Instead, you unwrap my arms and take my hand, giving my neck one last gentle squeeze.

“Come on, Molly.  Let’s walk the bridge.”
 
It is crazy and comforting all at once, the slight warm weight of your hand in mine.  I think I just assumed I might never feel it again.  For a while we just walk.  We are like a four-legged animal.  My inside leg moves in tandem with your outside one.  It’s not conscious.  Just perennial with us, that kind of movement.  

We’ve barely set foot on the bridge and already my brain chases after what waits on the other side. There is no plan except for this walk.  And it is a perfect day for it.  The sun spills gold onto the glittering spires of the Empire State Building.  That topaz brilliance is reflected in the windows of every midtown building.  The downtown skyline is still dominated by the negative space once occupied by the Twin Towers. But the sky looks hopeful anyway.  Today sparkles with color – sharp, defined, a bit over-bright.
 
Silently, earnestly, I take focused stock of small details.  There is a sailboat whispering through the water, ripples gently following.  A jogger in a bright red tracksuit whips by.  The steel bolts that keep the bridge from collapsing are monster caricatures of their smaller counterparts.  I notice dirt on the toes of my new sneakers.
 
“So you still do that”, you say, snapping me back to my frayed nerves.
 “I’m sorry?”
 “That intense observation. When you are nervous.”
  “Oh.  Yes.  Was I?”  Of course I was.  And of course, you notice.  How could I forget that you know all these little secrets?

We stop for a moment, lean on the rail, and look out over the water.  I fish into a pocket for cigarettes.  They are stale.  From a year ago, when I quit.  I’d left them in a kitchen drawer in case of emergency.  This qualifies.  I need something to do.  Something to distract me. I light it, take a deep drag, exhale a blue plume and then pass it to you without looking.

“Why did you come back?”, I ask again.  It’s easier to ask when I’m not facing you.
You sigh, releasing a ribbon of smoke.  “It was just…done.  I was just done.  With Paris.  Or maybe Paris was done with me.  Besides, I speak terrible French. Also…”
 
“Don’t, Liz. Don’t you dare.”
 
And you don’t.  You don’t tell me that part of the reason you left Paris is because I am not there.  It would be an insult, rather than a comfort, to hear it.  I hate that we both know I will always wait for you.  You don’t speak of thickly accented lovers with lithe bodies and quick mouths.  The ones who ultimately could not erase me from you.  The foolish thinking.  I am spared it.  But I know. 
 
I have had lovers too, since you’ve been gone.  Of course I have.  My fatuousness stops short of wanting me to be completely solitary.  I’m too selfish for that.   So are some  girls.  Smart and funny and not you.  There was even a silly boy or two, just for some variety.  They were, each of them, just filler.  Good people, but mostly empty of promise.  I think for a moment of telling you about them.  I want you to know I have not simply been pining in desolation.  I want you to hurt.

I finish the cigarette and flick it over the railing in a shower of wayward sparks. 
 
“Can we please keep walking?” I ask.  Without waiting for a response, I turn, knowing you will follow.  The thing about us is that we are both equally tangled up with each other.  Perhaps I am the one who waits.  But you are the one who always comes back.

“So tell me about Paris”.  I really do want to know.  I love the way you tell a story.  And I want to push past this heaviness we feel.
 
“It is…loud.  And French.  And I mean that whatever vision you have in your head of it, the stereotype?  It is those things.  These French women?  I have no idea how they stay thin.  It’s café au lait with whole milk and croissants all day long.  I got SO lost all the time.  With my lousy accent, no one was patient enough to listen to me ask for directions.  Oh, but the art.  The ART! Molly, I swear, there are parts of Paris where bohemia is still the social and cultural standard.”

Your face lights up as you talk about your adventures.  Hands gesticulating wildly.  Those vivid facial expressions of yours transform the geometry of your face.  I listen less to your stories than I do to the lilt of your voice.  It’s been so long since I’ve heard impassioned, happy discourse from you.  At one point, you take my hand and gesture with that too. 

And I wonder, again, what will happen once the bridge has been crossed.

BACK TO TOP

THE MORAL FABRIC OF OUR COMPANY

Matthew McGevna

                       

           While his father slept, Ryan Bennett cast his eyes over a swarm of words across his kitchen table. The back pages of Newsday, the Walter Press, Pennysaver, were fanned over a tablescape of one empty tea cup and a plastic sugar bowl. He hovered over the pages, half listening to the kettle groaning louder by the minute on the range behind him. He was clutching a black pen. Steady. Determined. More like a knife, really, than a pen. Help Wanted, he read at the top of each long column. Newfield, Tarrinton, West Saybrook. All too far away. His car would never make it. Book binder. He’d left books behind him last year when he graduated high school. Salesman, salesman, salesman. Couldn’t convince anybody of anything. He’d be back at the kitchen table in no time.

            He dropped his pen and moved toward the gas stove. He watched the vapors rise from under the kettle as the flame licked with little blue tongues from the black grid. There was a whole scientific explanation for the process. He tried to think of it. Mr. Bartelli’s boring physical science lecture. The range is potential energy. Or is it kinetic? Molecules start moving faster due to the heat. Boiling temperature for water is like…a thousand degrees Calculus. Something very near to that. Steam rises, fills the space until it can’t fill no more. Displacement? It escapes through the hole, which whistles.

            There was a whole scientific explanation for the whistling, and how it happens, but that was lost. Mr. Bartelli probably worked very hard, but it was all lost.

            “Never trust explanations,” Ryan’s father once said to him when his mother tried to describe her initial attraction to him. “They’re only meant to shut a person up. You can get by in life just fine without them.”

            Cliff Bennett said all sorts of things. “The trick to life is to avoid the things that will kill you. Like airplanes. Swear you’ll never go on an airplane,” he’d say. Ryan would swear just to please him.

            On becoming a cop: “Small minded people who actually memorize rules for a living.”

On college: “More explanations, only this time they charge you for it. Total waste of money.”

            It had become clear to Ryan long ago, that being home was like church: you’re sitting there expecting something to happen, and the only good that comes of it is the empty plate of satisfaction that you did something others told you was right.

            Ryan’s mother would be home soon. Eileen Bennett would be standing in the front room with that awful nylon jacket from the bus company and her pocketbook would quietly peel off her shoulder and land with a smack on the pressed cardboard sub-floor.

            They had planned to re-carpet the entire living room, leading into the front room, which others might call a “foyer,” but people in Walter didn’t—save Derek Huxton—Nick’s best friend who lived across the street. Derek would take the train into Manhattan and buy a “Holex” watch on Canal Street—then go home and use a pen to change the “H” in “Holex” to an “R.” Ryan’s mother called Derek “hoity-toity.” His father called him a fuck head.

            So the front room was to get carpeting when Ryan’s father finally got a job at the nearby hospital. But he lost the job for insubordination, and the carpet his mother had imagined all those months got rolled right back up in her mind. Eileen had jumped the gun and tore up the old rug, in expectation of the new. That was a long time ago, and Eileen once told Ryan that something about it was supposed to be funny.  

            She comes in every day from work as a school bus driver and lets that bag slide down off the nylon coat with a zip and plunk—onto the bare sub-floor of the front room. Ryan sometimes sees the look on her face, when he’s sitting in the kitchen, and his father is snoring away on the couch. She looks surprised sometimes, and Ryan wonders if she doesn’t look surprised because she’d been praying on her way up the porch and when she gets inside it didn’t work because everybody’s still there. Her husband: passed out in his glorious underwear and oversized t-shirt. Her son: fixing tea and looking dumbstruck in the kitchen. Nixon, the dog: making half-leaps knowing the wallop he’ll get if he should make the full leap and pin his sharp paws on her thighs. Half Shepherd, quarter Lab, eighth Lapso Apso, eighth Beagle, two sixteenths dead from joy-riders too busy to hit the brakes. Of course he always goes for broke. Eventually, he leaps, and hopes for a different outcome that never happens. His mother would wail him one, as if the dog was not a stray picked up on the roadside by her husband, but her husband himself.

            She would be home soon, Ryan thought, and scrutinizing the circles he’d made in the ads. “Gas station? Isn’t that dangerous? Cashier? Can you do math? You can’t do math. Can you?”

            The world crumbles. And nobody around him scrambles for glue.

            Ryan folded over the papers in disgust. As if sensing his disgust, Nixon trotted over to enrich it. He got himself into a staring contest with Ryan. It went for too long, and Ryan hadn’t done anything to better Nixon’s life—no pat on the head—no doggy treat—so he barked. It echoed through the carpet-less house and Ryan’s father started awake.

            His white hair was matted against his face and pointing upward like Gumby when he turned his head to look at Ryan. Then he slowly sank back behind the arm of the couch and mumbled, “Feed that asshole.”

            “He’s not hungry; he just wants to break balls,” Ryan said.

            “I was talking to the dog.” he heard his father laugh from beyond the arm of the couch. Then silence. He was back asleep.

 

            It didn’t last long. His mother walked in and Nixon frantically gathered his paws under him and scuttled across the floor. She told him not to fucken dare, at the same time Cliff awoke and started saying: “What? What happens? What’s all this?”

            Eileen Bennett stared across the house at Ryan. She asked him what the matter was, a question she always asked, just before the pocketbook went zzzzzip-flop, onto the floor. There was never anything the matter.

            In the kitchen she immediately laid eyes on the papers and knew what he was up to. She asked him to put tea on, but the pot was almost boiling. Cliff had managed to his feet and was standing in the kitchen doorway. He started singing: “Give me a kiss to build a dream on.” Ryan put on his jacket and left the house.

 

            At Sunny Times Deli, Ryan watched Antonio slice the turkey through the glass partition. Derek once said the partition was called a sneeze-guard, and Ryan nearly gagged his food.

            It hurt his back, stooping to watch Antonio slice the meat through the glass partition. But he watched because Derek had made him paranoid.

            By the time Ryan got his sandwich and left, it was well after 4 p.m. and he looked down Turnbull Road. He saw Derek coming with his schoolbag slung over his shoulder.

            He was in his usual mood. He never paid anyone in Walter any mind. He’d even told Ryan that his only interest in Walter was getting Ryan out of it. When Derek approached, it was right after Ryan had eyed some girls as they passed. Derek called him a dirty old man.

            “What’s your problem?” Ryan asked.

            “Ogling high school girls,” he replied.

            “I’m a year out of high school.”

            “You’re an old man. Why are you out here?” Lemme guess…your parents started fighting.” Ryan was silent. “Or fucking. Your parents started fighting or fucking. Or both.”

            Ryan had learned to ignore him sometimes.

            “How’s the job search coming?” he asked. Ryan shrugged. They had begun to walk back home together. “Why don’t you apply at Baxter’s?”

            Ryan rolled his eyes. Baxter’s was a place where you needed to take a loan out to buy a shirt. And when you were from Walter, the employees would eye you up and down and ask you if you could be “helped.” He’d rather not suffer the indignity.

            “I have other offers,” was all he said.

            “Like where?”

            “Different places,” he said.

            “Putting diapers on piss clams?”

            “Different places.”

            “Okay,” Derek said. But Ryan knew he didn’t believe him.

            “Antonio just offered me a job.” Derek looked at him with shock.

            “Doing what? Putting diapers on piss clams?”

            “He has a lot of customers who need things from the top shelves.” Derek waited for the rest.

            “And?”

            “He needs someone who can get stuff down for them.”

            “So your job title is gonna be…Tall Guy Who Gets High Stuff Down for People.”

            Ryan broke eye contact with his friend. “Dude, seriously, you need to apply at Baxter’s.” Ryan knew the conversation would eventually happen. Derek had been working at Baxter’s for the last year and always bragged about what he was making, his employee discount, the time Caroline Kennedy asked him if they had a certain dress in black. He somehow felt he’d been rescued from Walter by nature of his job, and he’d been bringing up these anecdotes ever since. He kept pushing the job at Baxter’s as a life-changer. It would open his eyes. Ryan didn’t want his eyes opened. He wanted a carpet in his house. He wanted a decent car. He wanted to keep a job he could handle. Not like his last job, in construction, which he could barely tolerate. Up and down ladders, lifting rafters and walls for homes he’d never afford to live in. Ryan lasted six months. His hands could barely open from cramps. His father told him it was honest work, but he’d also said there was no such thing as honest work. When Ryan called in sick one day and then quit, his mother cried. His father applauded.

But construction was the only job that paid well enough to make it almost worth it. It ate away at Ryan for a long time that he’d quit that job. That he couldn’t hack it. He’d even noticed the disappointment from his mother—who’d treated him differently after that. Questioning every job offer he circled. Turning down his offers to bag the garbage, or take down the dilapidated dog house that Nixon never used.

            She’d never say as much; she’d phrase it in ways Ryan could believe, like the dog house wasn’t hurting anybody.

            Since then he’d kicked around the house, trying to keep the property clean, straightening pictures on the wall, if nothing else. But every time he saw his mother walk through the front door with that look on her face, and his father wandering in from wherever he was all day, he’d start rounding up the local papers again.

            “Do I have to kiss rich-people ass?” Ryan finally said.

Derek looked at him for a while and then said, “Tell your dad that helping someone is not kissing anyone’s ass.”

            Ryan jammed a hand into his pocket and held his sandwich tighter to his chest. Derek was a year younger than Ryan. Still a senior in high school, but it always seemed as if Derek was Ryan’s elder. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but it was.

            As they rounded the corner of Moheegan Street, where they both lived, Ryan watched Derek pull an envelope from one of his books, take out a wad of dollars and fives, peel off about 30 dollars and put it in his pocket. He counted the rest, made a little mark on the chart that was printed on the envelope, and then licked it sealed. Ryan watched him put away the wad, and he frowned.

            “You make all that at Baxter’s?” he asked. Derek smirked.

            “Naw, this is extra. Candy money. From the Rotary Club. They send us around selling candy.”

            “Ain’t that supposed to go to the Rotary Club?”

            “It does.”

            “All of it?”

            “Don’t be an idiot, Ryan, nothing goes to anything completely.”

            “I don’t even know what that means.”

            “Just to keep the Rotary Club going it cost them at least twenty-three hundred dollars. Mr. Belson gets a stipend to be the advisor; where do you think that stipend comes from?”

            “You mean his salary?”

            “No, his salary is his salary. He gets a stipend on top of that.” Derek gave his friend an odd look. “It’s a one lump sum of money that you get at the end of something. Mr. Belson comes into the room every week, collects our envelopes. Counts the money, sticks it in another envelope. Yells at the kids whose envelopes are light because they’re eating more than they’re selling, and then leaves. And for that he gets a little over twenty-three hundred after taxes. He does jack shit and collects a check. On top of his salary, so don’t tell me the Rotary Club is gettin’ robbed by me. I outsell every single one of those dickheads in that club, even after I take my cut.”

            “How do you know what Belson makes?”

            “How do I know what Belson makes;” Derek repeated to the sky. “I saw the budget in the secretary’s drawer a few months ago.”

            “The drawer was just open like that?”

            “Yeah,” Derek said, and then looked at the ground a little. He could feel Ryan’s look. “What, you never looked to see what your teachers were up to?”

            “No.”

            Derek shook his head and then adjusted his bag. “That’s why you never realize how bad you’re getting fucked all the time. I know everybody’s salaries.”

            “You’re gonna get caught one day.”

            “And? They don’t throw people in jail for knowing things, Ryan.”

             “That’s what you think,” Ryan mumbled. He noticed Derek’s glare.

            “Tell your dad, they don’t throw people in jail for knowing things.”

 

            Main Street, Williamstown is at the bottom of a long, descending hill. In the fall, at the top of the hill, Williamstown is a postcard. The WWI Memorial Arch overlooks the bay to the south. The great lawn in front of the arch seems always dotted with picnic blankets and teenagers chasing each other around the large fountain in the center. To the north: the Winslow Museum—a red brick structure set back from the sidewalk by a retaining wall blanketed with ivy. The Williamstown Public Library is adjacent to the museum—identical in color, architecture, and setback, because both the museum and the library were once the humble home of Nathaniel Winslow and his heirs. A loyalist family—exonerated after the revolution. Now everything is named after them. The last of the Winslows was Katherine “Kitty” Winslow, who has graced the entrance to the family grounds, just behind the museum, since 1975.

            At the far end of town John the Baptist Lutheran Church rises like a needle between the north and south sides of Winslow Street, which is dotted with boutiques and cafés.  Eloquence, Vive’, La Casa Roja, Une bebe’ café.  All lined up along the street in near-perfect straightness. The only break from its consistency is the small bistro table outside Une bebe’ where diners in white sweaters sip Café Americano and stare at the red leaves above them.

            Each tree in the village is dedicated to someone or another. The Stuart Family. In memory of Constance B. Clementine. Martin Bloomberg.

            Every so many feet a wooden bench, also named after people, is placed at the edge of the sidewalk. The last bench is dedicated to Doctor Noah Ginsberg, and sits smack in front of the last store on Winslow Street. Baxter’s clothing store.

            Baxter’s was the one store Ryan had not visited for a job, and after pacing in front of the store six times, he sat down on Dr. Ginsberg’s bench and stared at the black awning. By then he’d walked into every store in Williamstown.

            Armando’s liquor store wasn’t hiring. Vesuvius wanted experienced wait staff. Her’s was hiring, but Her’s and Ryan both agreed: a male employee working at a lingerie shop was not desirable. The book store wanted someone knowledgeable about books. Before he knew it, he’d applied for one job—at Dexey’s stationery store. A manager with bifocals and a tremendous belly breathed heavily as he looked over the application before he finally said: “We’ll call you if anything opens up.” Ryan knew to go elsewhere.

            Elsewhere meant Baxter’s. Baxter’s meant getting the ceremonial once over. It meant tucking in your shirt, like that meant something, and it meant—perhaps worst of all—being an employee of Derek Huxton. But he took a deep breath, rose from Dr. Ginsberg’s bench, and walked under the black awning into Baxter’s.

           

            Derek was very proud of him. He’d been snooping through drawers again, and found Ryan’s application. He’d scanned it to make sure Ryan hadn’t screwed anything up, and then moved it to the top of the pile.

            When he knocked on Ryan’s door, he gave him the high five and could hardly contain himself. He even stepped into the house, which he never did, because he was allergic to something in it. He always suspected the dog.

            Derek even ventured into the kitchen. He looked around as if everything was out of order. Shortly after, he started to sniffle, and rubbed his eyes.

            “If they give you a call later on it means you’ll have to go back,” he said, sniffling.

            “If my car makes it a second time,” Ryan replied, and grabbed two mugs from the counter before he put on the tea.

            “Oh, don’t fuck around,” Derek said, and sniffed again. “If they call, you gotta go back.”

            Ryan mumbled something about the Gestapo. Derek didn’t hear it, but he didn’t like the tone.

            “Don’t be a numbnuts. You get this job you’ll be working with me.” He sneezed loudly. Nixon, who’d been lying on the kitchen floor, unnoticed, sprang from his spot near the oven and fled into the living room. Derek followed him with his eyes and shook his head at it.

            “Put that thing to sleep,” he said.

            “I’ll put you to sleep,” Ryan’s father suddenly barked. He’d appeared where Nixon had just fled without any forewarning. Derek locked eyes with him, but said nothing. Cliff eased into the kitchen and looked at his son. Derek let out another sneeze, throwing his face violently forward into cupped hands.

            “They let you out of the house without your hazmat suit again?” Cliff said.

Derek ignored him. “Somethin’ in this house,” he said.

            “You’ve been saying that since you were a little kid,” Cliff replied.

            “Somethin’s been in this house since I was a little kid. Probably the dog.”

            “Of course it’s the dog; why do you think we keep him around?” Cliff answered. Derek ignored him again, and Cliff looked at his son. “Anyway, what are you guy’s doing; this is what you do all day? Why don’t youse do nothin’?”

            “I’m making tea,” Ryan said, sounding wounded.

            “Sorry, Derek, we’re out of PMS tea,” Cliff replied. Hearing the rim shot in his head, he seemed quite pleased with himself, especially when Derek answered with a loud sneeze and a sniff. “Where you been all day?” Cliff asked. Ryan glared back.

            “Where you been?”

            “I’m your father, that’s none of your business.”

            “Ryan’s getting a job at Baxter’s,” Derek said, after rubbing his eyes clear of tears. Cliff took the news like a quick jab. He hadn’t even the chance to get his gloves up. He looked in the corner where Ryan was standing with a kitchen towel thrown over his shoulder.

            “Well,” Cliff said after some time. “Well that figures.”

            “I didn’t get the job yet. I applied for the job. I applied for a million jobs.”

            “Are they gonna make you think what they do is important? They gonna make you wear funny hats and teach you how to smile?”

            “What are you talking about?” Derek asked, just before he threw his face into his hands with another sneeze. “He’s gonna fold clothes.” Another sneeze. “He’s gonna iron the stock that comes in.”

            “Like a hotel chambermaid,” Cliff said.

            “And he’s gonnna make some money. You got something against money?”
            “I just don’t understand why you can’t make money like a man,” Cliff said to Ryan. “Why didn’t you stay at the construction place?”

            “Because we’re not immigrants anymore,” Derek said.

            “You hated it when I worked at the construction place,” Ryan answered.

            “That doesn’t mean I’d want you to go into Snootyville and stuff rich women’s fat asses into Chino’s.”

            “There’s nothing wrong with working at Baxter’s,” Derek said, “I work at Baxter’s.”

            “Which is exactly what’s wrong with it.”

            Ryan could hear the water heating up in the kettle, and he turned to look at it. He knew Derek had a smart mouth, and would argue with anybody—even if they were 30 years older than him.

            “Why is it wrong, because I try to better myself?”

            “Because you try to be something you’re not. The two of you are a couple kids from Walter, not heirs to the Winslow family, alright. Be who you are.”

            “Which is what?”

            “Nothing special.” The whistle on the kettle began to sing to Ryan.

            “You know, lots of parents would tell their kids that they are special,” Derek said. “My father tells me I can be whoever I want to be.”

            “So your father is as full of shit as you are, that doesn’t surprise me. Let me tell you something, buddy boy, I’m wise to you, okay, I got eyes and ears, my friend. You don’t think I’ve seen you steal change out of the neighbors’ cars? You don’t think I know it was you who hit Mr. Candido’s dog with that rock that killed him? Not one month ago I was at the deli and you came in. You didn’t see me cause I was in the back, but I seen you, and I seen when Antonio turned, you reached over the counter and grabbed a handful of money. You don’t think I see right through you?”

            The kettle began to scream when Derek asked Cliff what his problem was. All he’d done was help his Ryan get a job.

            “You’re a snake, that’s what. A fink who’ll do whatever to make a buck, and you’re a bad influence on my son.” Cliff glared at Ryan, who was so frozen in his feet; he let the kettle scream. “You’re not stealing from people are you, Ryan?” Cliff asked.

            “This is the first time I’m hearing of it,” Ryan answered. And it was. He looked over at Derek, who seemed completely detached from the conversation. His cheeks had swollen slightly, and his eyes looked like slits when he sneezed again.

            “I gotta get out of here, there’s somethin’ in this house, and it’s driving me nuts. I’ll talk to you later, Ryan.” Derek slid past Cliff. Then he turned back and told Ryan to call him if Baxter’s calls.

            “They’re not calling me,” he said. “The woman just chucked my application in a drawer.”

            “They’ll call you,” Derek yelled back, as he stormed for the front door and pulled it open like a prison break.

            “They’re not calling,” Ryan yelled.

 

            They called. Just a few hours after his father had his little moment in the kitchen, the phone rang and it was Baxter’s asking him to come back for an interview. His mother sipped her tea in a sort of dream delight the likes of which Ryan had never seen before. He told her to relax, it was only an interview, but she shrugged.

            “If you get the job, you should treat yourself to something nice,” she said. Cliff was gone. He was in a rage over the neighbors, the Scarrapellis, feeding Nixon scraps of leftover lasagna. He was pacing in and out of the house explaining to anyone who would listen, that a dog was a carnivore, and was not genetically prepared for pasta, sauce, and ricotta cheese. Ryan asked if that was the case, why Nixon had eaten it. His father told him that the dog was many things, but it wasn’t rude. He started screaming that it wasn’t the Scarrapelli’s responsibility to feed him, and then he left the house for a long time. That left Ryan and his mother alone at the table, which they preferred.

            “If I get this job, the first thing I’m buying is the carpeting,” he said. But she told him not to waste his money on that—that they’d be alright. “What? Like dad is gonna take care of it?” Ryan asked.

            “Probably not,” she said. “Maybe the carpet will be like scarlet ribbons, you know?” Ryan asked her what the hell she was talking about. It was a song, she said.

            “You don’t know that song Scarlet Ribbons? Everybody knows that song,” she said. “It’s about a parent who hears their daughter in the room praying to God for a pair of scarlet ribbons, but the parent can’t get them for her. And the parent is all broken hearted about it. But then in the middle of the night the parent goes to check on the little girl and sees the scarlet ribbons she prayed for just lying there somehow.”

            “God sent her some ribbons?” Ryan asked—his voice mixed with boredom and frustration.

            “The song doesn’t say. All it says is that the parent will never know how they got there. So maybe the carpet will be my scarlet ribbons.”

            “You’re an idiot,” Ryan said. His mother laughed and said she knew.

            Later that night, she pulled out an old suit his father used to wear, back when he wore suits. It fit, somewhat, but Ryan would have to keep his arms at his sides because the sleeves came up above his wrist bone, and he’d have to tuck his legs under the interview desk, because when he sat, the cuffs rose to his shins. It was a brown suit, with a yellow spotted tie, and the knot was so thick it practically covered Ryan’s entire collar. But it was a suit nonetheless, and Ryan had every intention of wearing it, had he not popped over to Derek’s house before he went on the interview.

            Derek looked him over and dissolved into laughter. He took him into the house and opened his closet doors. He pulled a baby blue shirt from the hanger, a black tie, and a navy blue pin-striped suit. Ryan went into the bathroom and got into it. When he came out, his dad’s suit was balled up in his arms. Derek took the ball away.

            “Now you don’t look like you’re ready for your 1981 porno shoot,” David said, as he showed him the door.

            Wriggling in a chair in the back of the store, Ryan rehearsed his answers until a girl named Julie emerged from a back room carrying a clip-board and pen. She looked very grown up, but he could tell she was younger than him.

            She took long strides toward Ryan, thrust out her hand and gripped Ryan’s firmly. They went back into the room she had emerged from. There were metal shelves against every wall, and a small desk with two chairs on opposite sides. Ryan sat down and looked around. A lot of boxes. The walls were white.

He almost missed Julie’s most important question, which was why he wanted to be a part of the Baxter’s family. For a second he thought she’d asked about his real family. But he stumbled through an answer that seemed to please her. Then he really started to fly through the questions. He even cracked a self-deprecating joke. Julie laughed. It was like they were having a cappuccino at Un Bebe.

            Then she handed over the clip-board and gave Ryan the pen she’d been absent-mindedly pushing up and down since the conversation started. He glanced down at the clip-board and saw some multiple-choice questions.

            “What’s this?” he asked.

            “It’s not as scary as it looks, it’s actually sort of a personality test,” Julie answered. “You’ll take a couple minutes to answer those questions and then you can go back out and find me.”

            “Personality test?”

            “Sort of. The values assessment questionnaire is really just an added way for Baxter’s to determine if potential employees are aligned with the moral fabric of our company.”

            Ryan could tell she’d rehearsed that line, and smiled to himself just as he noticed for the first time, the top of the form which read: Baxter’s Values Assessment Questionnaire.

            “Just answer those questions honestly and you should have no problems,” she added, rising from her chair. She put a reassuring hand on Ryan’s shoulder and then vanished from the room.

 

            True or false. I think it is okay to lie, so long as it keeps me from suffering disciplinary action. False, he circled.

            I think it is important to always be honest with the customer. True.

            If I were to discover that I’d given too little change back to a customer, I would warn the customer before he or she left the store. True

            If a non-customer, or unsightly character were to enter the store, how long would you allow the individual to stay? A) 0 minutes. B) 5 minutes. C) 20 minutes. D) Until the individual left on his or her own.  B, five minutes, he circled.

            If a fellow employee was hungry, but didn’t have any money for lunch, how much money would you allow him or her to take from the register so long as they promised to return it the following day? A) 5 dollars. B) 10 dollars. C) 50 dollars. D) I would never allow it. A, five dollars.

            How many times would you allow a fellow employee to borrow money from the register? A) Twice. B) Never. C) Once. D) An endless number of times, so long as they returned it promptly. Everyone gets caught short at least once, Ryan thought. C: once, he circled.

            Ryan feared he was taking too long, thinking out all of the scenarios—especially after Julie knocked on the door and asked him if he was okay. He rifled through the final questions. He would report an employee for taking home merchandise without paying. He didn’t think it was acceptable to call in sick if he wasn’t really sick. He believed it was important to always be on time, and not to overextend allotted break-time, even if it meant not getting to the bank or pharmacy that day.

            The relationship ended abruptly, Ryan noticed. He and Julie had seemed so comfortable, so familiar. But the moment he found her, organizing the sizes on the new shipment of Cashmere cardigans, she grabbed the clip-board, told him it was nice meeting him, and escorted him swiftly through the door. Before he knew it, he was staring at Dr. Ginsberg’s bench again.

 

            When Ryan pulled into his driveway, he noticed a strange, blue Toyota there. Ryan had Derek’s jacket slung over his left shoulder, and he looked across the street at the soft glowing lights of his friend’s house, before he opened the front door.

            When he stepped inside, he saw his father sitting in the small chair he never usually sat at. His mother was sitting on the couch next to a strange woman. The woman had red hair, pulled up in a bun. She was wearing the same hideous jacket Ryan’s mother wore everyday. Eileen introduced her son to Mrs. Kullen. Mrs. Kullen worked at the bus company with her, and had driven Eileen home.

            “My car wouldn’t start when I went out to it today,” Eileen said. Ryan threw Derek’s jacket over the nearest chair in the living room.

            “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he said.

            “When it rains it pours,” she said to Mrs. Kullen, who nodded, and told her that’s what she’d been trying to tell her on the way to the house.

            “Mrs. Kullen is religious,” Eileen explained. “She tries with me.” Eileen smiled weakly and glanced over at Cliff.

            “What are we going to do about the car?” Ryan asked his mother. She told him they’d think of something. Then Nixon came trotting in, and when he set his eyes on the stranger, he immediately darted for her. The jumping rules surely couldn’t have applied to her, so Nixon leaped up greedily. She giggled and tried to keep her face away from his searching tongue.

            “Aw this one’s a friendly puppy, isn’t he? Yes, he’s a friendly puppy. Yes he is,” she said. “What’s this one’s name? What’s this puppy’s name?” she chirped, and searched his neck until she was able to turn his collar up. Mrs. Kullen read the tag and made a wry face. “Oh,” she said, and nudged the dog away, as though the tag was his fault. “Can’t say I approve of that.”

            Nixon leaped over to Ryan, who managed to grab his new collar. It read: “Not Your Fucken Dog.”

            “We’ve been having problems with the neighbors feeding him,” Cliff said to Mrs. Kullen. She nodded slightly and looked at her folded hands. That was when she noticed the floor.

            “Getting new carpets?” she asked. All three Bennetts kept silent. Mrs. Kullen nodded again. Then she sat quietly until she finally broke the moment by standing up. She offered to drive Eileen until she could get her situation figured out. When she left, Eileen turned and looked at Cliff, who had rolled Nixon over on his back and was letting him bite his fist.

            “Why do you always have to embarrass us?” she asked. 

“Your embarrassment and your friends, are meaningless, Eileen,” he said. Ryan threw Derek’s jacket back over his shoulder and went across the street.

 

“You’re an idiot,” Derek said, the moment he heard Ryan’s response to the values questionnaire. “You failed the test, Ryan. Tell me you’re joking” Ryan looked perplexed. “Zero dollars,” Derek continued. “The answer is zero dollars. That’s how much you allow your co-workers to dip from the drawer.”

“But it said the co-worker would put it right back,” Ryan protested.

“And if it weren’t for gullible dickheads like you I guess there’d be no such thing as an inside job, would there? Zero dollars.”

“That thing said he would put it back.”

“They don’t give a shit. And then you said you’d let a dirty, smelly, homeless douche hang out in the store for five minutes?!”

“If he’s cold and shivering?”

“Do you have any idea how long five minutes is in retail time?”

“What if it’s a she, and she’s freezing to death?”

“What if it’s a she, and she’s freezing to death?” Derek mocked. “Zero minutes.”

“Not for a second? If he’s cold?”

“Fuck him. Fuck his cold. Zero minutes. Jesus, how could you blow this? Never mind, only you could blow it, it’s who you are.”

“Wait a second, it was two questions for Christ’s sake.”

“Dude, you failed the test; they’re not gonna hire you now, forget it. Get stuff down for people at Antonio’s deli.”

“That’s not…that can’t be,” Ryan said, smiling sort of.

“You’re gonna get a phone call tonight, Ryan, a recorded message that says we’ve decided on a more qualified candidate.”

“Because of two questions,” Ryan said.

“When are you gonna grow up, dude?”

“You got a human being freezing to death, and…”

“When are you gonna get rid of these invisible people you defend all the time? I vouched for you, and you fucked me.”

“Vouched for me?”

“I got you into that interview,” Derek said. “I can just picture the jokes I’m gonna hear now.”

“She told me to answer honestly and I’d be fine.”

“And you answered honestly, like a dipshit. I vouched for a guy who says he’ll let people dip from the drawer and let homeless people run around.”

“Not run around. Don’t say it like that. Not run around.”

Silence fell upon the two and Ryan thought it a good time to hand over his jacket. Then he said he’d give him the rest of the suit tomorrow.

“I was gonna let you keep it,” Derek said. “You know, I hate to say this, but I think you wanted to bomb this interview.”

“What are you talking about?”
            “It’s impossible for you to know this little about life. You let your dad get his stupid ideas into your head. You deliberately blew the interview because you bought your dad’s cool-man, dirtbag-loving, hippie bullshit.”

“You know what, leave my dad out of this,” Ryan said.

“We’re trying to make some moves here, and your head is in nowhereland.”

“I’m not trying to make moves, it was just a job.”

“Well if you’re not making moves, you’re an idiot.”

“I don’t have to listen to this, I’m outta here,” Ryan said. He turned and shoved Derek’s screen door open. “Everyone’s right, you are a hoity little snob,” he added. Derek stepped out onto the porch to follow after him.

“The funny thing is you and the rest of Walter are poor enough to think that’s an insult.” Ryan was walking away when Derek yelled, “Enjoy unemployment, Cliff, I mean Ryan!”

“Fuck you!” Ryan yelled.

“Get it out now, you won’t be allowed to say that when you’re slicing my Ham Cappy!”

 

Ryan was back at the kitchen table, stewing. Though he knew Derek would be knocking on his door in a day or two, he had a good mind to go smash him. His mother wanted to know all the details, but he told her not to get her hopes up. When she pressed he told her about the questions. She threw her hands up.

“They’re gonna love you, trust me,” she said. Then she insisted that he not spend a red cent on their carpet—his money was his to spend how he wanted. He said okay. Then Ryan’s father appeared in the doorway and she got up to leave. Her TV show was on. When she got up, Cliff did a tap dance for her—a little two-step, he said, a little soft-shoe. Then he put his hand over his chest.

“Still ticking,” he said. “Ticking away.” She squeezed past him. He watched her disappear into the cushions of the living room couch. “Do you know what she said to me after you left?” he asked Ryan. “Because of that church lady and the dog and all? She said, ‘go somewhere and die.’ Can you believe your mother said that?”

Cliff sat down at the table beside his son. “Naturally I didn’t listen to her.” Ryan reluctantly dragged the newspapers he’d stacked in a pile closer to him. But he went no further. Cliff noticed. “I have a clean bill of health,” he said. “Did you ever know that?”

Ryan shook his head. They sat for a while, until Cliff asked for the comics. Ryan pulled the pages out and handed them over. Cliff shredded the comics horizontally while his son watched.

“It’s funnier when you mix up the comic strips,” Cliff explained, shoving the torn pieces over to his son. “See. At Apartment 3G, Blondie gets off the phone when she hears the doorbell. She answers the door…but now it looks like Ziggy is standing in her doorway.” Cliff looked delighted at first, until he looked at his son and sobered. “I mean it’s not always funny.”

They returned to silence until the phone rang, like Derek had predicted. And like he predicted, it was the recorded message. They were going with another candidate. Cliff was nodding the whole time the voice droned through its whole spiel. Ryan squinted through the kitchen to see if his mother had heard it. She hadn’t.

“Some of my greatest moments in life came when I was out of a job,” Cliff said. Ryan was shaking his head, torn between thoughts of Derek’s final words, thoughts of the rapport he must have imagined with Julie, thoughts of the whole stupidity of it. Two questions.
            He nearly pounded on the table, but knew it would stop just short of changing anything, and for that he wanted to pound it even more.

“There’s work and then there’s work, you know?” his father said to him. He played around with the orders of his comic strips. Ryan ran his fingers through his hair and Cliff noticed. He looked down at his comic. Then up at Ryan. “Wanna hear something funny that happened today?” he asked.

“No, not really,” Ryan said. He let his hands drop to his lap. He thumbed around with his stack of papers.

“You wanna hear that Baxter’s did you a huge favor?” Ryan shook his head. Another moment fell between them. “You want me to go somewhere and die?” Ryan ran his fingers through his hair again.

“No,” he said.

“No what?”

“I don’t want you to die,” Ryan answered, dryly.

“Good man,” Cliff said. He reached over and patted Ryan on his shoulder. When his hand came off, Ryan still felt it on him. After some silence Cliff said, “I can’t be gotten rid of anyway. You know that? I can’t die. You know what I’m saying?” Ryan looked at him for the first time. His father was nodding at him.

“Everybody dies,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, but not really. I’m always there for you. Understand? You never have to worry. I know you do a lot of worrying for us, but you shouldn’t. I’ll always be around,” he said. “Forget that stupid message, forget that place. There’s work and then there’s work.” Cliff put his hand on his son’s shoulder again and rocked him in his chair for a moment. “Even after I’m dead,” he continued. “I’m gonna be around for a long time.”

BACK TO TOP

Who Killed Horace Mann?

Matt Morello

 

     They told me never to accept candy from students, since vengeful little bastards were spiking soft chocolates with ecstasy before offering this happy goodness to unsuspecting substitute teachers. Much of Monday morning was therefore spent scanning hallways for pierced, jaded teens that might offer such a sunny confection. I even left my coffee cup plainly visible in an empty teachers’ lounge with the door wide open. Nothing. Ironically, last month, two sophomores in New Jersey died from smoking rabbit weed, a green, spiked plant that grows wild in swampy areas. Jesus, in high school we used to mix rabbit weed with librium, smoke it until our throats bled, and then chase the burn with Yago Sangria. Instead of daily S and M sessions with these smarmy videojunkies, a better occupation would be traveling through the tri-state area teaching teenagers how not to overdose, sort of a community outreach for addled ravers and post-modern pubescents.

     Period 3, English class. English was my college major. People used to ask, “What are you going to do with an English major?” My usual bit of bile was, “Become a shepherd.” Prancing through verdant pastures while sodomizing sheep would be immensely preferable to substitute teaching. Certainly Miss Dickhead’s junior English class could hardly wait to scrawl profanities on some To Kill a Mockingbird ditto.

     “Wear a tie, kids will respect that.” You want to know what they respect? People with piles of money and lots of hot ass, not educators who give homework or tell them what to do, especially if that person looks like the bastard child of Robert Crumb, assigns Act One of The Crucible, and wears a tie celebrating “The Menagerie” episode of Star Trek.

     During college, my less prurient fantasies involved enraptured students who passionately argued Jungian archetypes in pre-Christian Eliot. My mythical classroom was a short jaunt from the manse grounds, which had been neatly converted into a one-bedroom mission style apartment. Evenings would include dinners with young female colleagues and an occasional brandy with the Old Boys’ Club.

     “Say, Morello- excellent questioning technique regarding Whitman’s Calamus poems.”

     “Thank you, Dr. Freep. I find that if you initially place students upon a proper pedagogical path, their cognitive leaps will invariably lead to journeys of discovery.”

     “Inspired! More Armanac?”

     Miss Dickhead’s classroom quietly sat across from Oceanside High School’s Language Arts Office, formerly called the English Department until one day some college professors decided to save Western Literature from Westerners. The heavily varnished door was slightly opened, and morning sunlight shone upon rows of beige formica desks, lined like infants in an abandoned nursery.

     Faded blue construction paper hung from chipped corkboards along with the usual icons- Shakespeare, Poe, and Twain- authors whose words could change lives, now lost among a stagnant fen of entitled brats and dying dreams. “English Sucks” was already emblazoned on the chalkboard, a rallying slogan of disenfranchised empowerment. As they skittered into class, denim smelling of morning joints wildly mixed with strawberry body spray. Lupine howling at the moon and cherry-red squeals of happiness shot through room 386. The bitch was absent.

     Sacred moments exist in teenagers’ lives when Dame Fortune, replete with teased hair and black pumps, smiles upon these captives of Stygian suburbanaity and grants unchained reprieves into pleasure’s kingdom. Such revelry occurs when parents have reservations at the new downtown bistro, enabling Johnny to smoke pot downstairs while donning his sister’s underwear. This gleeful irreverence continues when spray painting “Principal Resnick Is A Dick” on the brick wall outside of the boys’ gym. Today, Fortune’s grin gaped upon a particular English class when their real teacher slept late, leaving Mr. Fuckhead as proxy.

     “Here’s the deal, kids, finish this ditto in forty minutes. Your teacher is going to grade it. Any questions?”

     “That’s shit. This bitch never grades a fuckin’ thing.”

     “Yea. Why do we have to do this shit?” Silver lips pouting beneath frosted hair stared through sullen eyes.

     “All right. You can work on something else, anything, just stay busy and keep it down.” This was the usual bargain that generally worked. Last week, however, it went horribly wrong. Some vicious little fucker stabbed his friend’s eye with a disposable Bic pen. Amidst a cascade of overturning desks, a silver-plated Zippo ignited Ramones-styled hair, adding cornea gouging and immolation to the list of “Shit They Didn’t Teach You In College.” Like Gawain, a substitute teacher must always expect the unexpected.

     “Ew! You blew him?” I knew that our cease-fire wouldn’t last. Subs develop an ability to size up a group of teenagers in less than ten seconds, and I had a feeling that the tart with machine-ripped jeans and dyed blue hair would eventually initiate testosterone time. Naturally, two girls discussing blowjobs sent the class into hormonal fury.

     “Did you swallow, or spit?” shouted a sweaty simian kid donning a Pantera T- shirt. This would soon spread like wildfire if left unchallenged.

     “Back to work! Let’s go! You’re teacher is grading this!”

     “We told you, she doesn’t grade anything! The old bitch is half-dead! She doesn’t even know our fuckin’ names yet and it’s November!” Laughter like a drunken nightclub audience filled the room. Half an hour left with this fueled bunch of assholes. Doctoral study was a logical escape route from this Inferno. Getting a PhD is the academic equivalent of running away to the circus. If you write a best seller, you’re Johnny Eck, or maybe even Tom Thumb; if you don’t, you’re a shit-sweeper or the geek, but you’ll always have a home as you traverse obscure little colleges all over the Midwest.

     This whole gig is clearly karmic justice for my perverse behavior as a teenager. One particularly cloudless Friday, a group of us ran to Vinny’s house where we ransacked his parents’ porno collection. It was in the back of their walk-in closet, and contained a 16mm reel of brown-robed monks plowing a nun, some hardcore Swedish mags, and two Seka films. Although Vinny wasn’t exactly valedictorian material, he soon reached the application stage of Bloom’s Taxonomy as he stealthily approached Miss Steiner’s bile-yellow Dodge Dart. Steiner taught algebra repeater math, technically known as Algebra Two, affectionately known as Miss Frankensteiner’s Fuck-ups.

     “Jesus Christ! Vinny! What the hell are you doing?”

     “Yea, baby! Suck... it…Steiner!” With a cascading Parthian volley on the pitted chrome door handle, Vinny Prestianni, thereafter known as “One Shot,” yanked his way into Valley Stream Central High School folklore.

     During a lull in the classroom storm, a curious hand shot up near cream-colored signs explaining common writing errors. A look of sincere puzzlement behind greasy bangs beckoned my burgeoning inner Dewey. Here was a chance to bring forth new life in this beautiful baby with a poet’s soul. I leaned in closely, showing young Phadrus that my wisdom awaited.

     “Mr. Morello, do you get stoned?”

     Amidst insidious chortling, visions of a thesis deconstructing moustaches in Dickens’ novels floated through my throbbing brain.

     “No comment.”

     The dismissal bell clanged throughout silent hallways, initiating a Pavlovian flinging of tattered books into knapsacks. Voices quickly twittered about a new kid from Wyoming (I heard his great-grandfather was Billy the Kid), Amanda’s hideous denim skirt (Did her mom wear it to Marsha Brady’s last party?) and dozens of other crucially important topics, which, after all, is why students attend school in the first place.

     Overhead, florescent tubes coolly hummed laughter at my vain efforts toward even the most basic store-minding pedagogy. I felt a nagging need to take back the classroom, an arena where I won every fight. In college, feminists who bandied terms like “phallagocentric hegemony” were reduced to scullery wenches. Politically correct comparative literature majors who dared argue the literary importance of Medieval Latino Poets were soon reading Hunter Thompson and Iceberg Slim. I could stalk any English classroom with the prowess of Beowulf, yet today, a band of Concerta-popping monsters tore off my arm and nailed it above the door of room 386.

     But this wasn’t my home. I was merely Teacher X’s Friday afternoon stuntman, ready to blow his sixty dollars pay on chicken chow fun, Jack Daniel’s, and some besotted skank at The Back Door, a local dive that made Mos Eisley Spaceport look like the Algonquin. In the relative safety of my’82 Mustang, a rotting flivver living off the name of its gallant predecessors, I lit a meager but welcome joint, and considered an English teaching job in September. A nearby high school offered me a position for the upcoming school year, which was my only prospect for a real job.

     En route to my cruddy little cave, I decided to call Martin Van Buren High School and accept their offer before some freshly scrubbed, theory-spouting tart snatched it, leaving me with a clam digger or barback gig for the fall. It was nearly 3:00pm, and I had two hours for marinating in an existential stew before gaining enlightenment at happy hour.

     Stately Morello Manor still remained a disaster after Wednesday night’s soiree, so remnants and dregs lay about my studio apartment. Cases of Miller empties, Gino’s Pizza boxes, and about two dozen red plastic cups filled with varying levels of rotgut remained. The whole mess looked like a Soho gallery installation piece titled “Suburbanality #1.” Missing were an 80 lb. NYU philosophy major, originally from Sandusky, putting my creation into a socio-political context, accompanied by a Long Island chick with a tribal tattoo who recently christened herself, “Sequoia.”

     Resolving to absolutely clean later, I called about the job.

    “Peter Goldfien, English Department.”

    “Mr. Goldfien, this is Matt Morello.” I tried keeping my voice steady and professional, but my inflections were like those of a kid explaining why a funny-smelling purple wizard statue was found in the back of his closet.

     “Matt, I’m glad that you called.” He didn’t actually sound glad, but it sounded better than, “Matt, if you’re holding out for more money, go jump off a fucking bridge.”

     Goldfien continued, “I really need a decision regarding the upcoming school year. Several excellent candidates are ready to commit, so I need an answer.”

     “Mr. Goldfien, I’d definitely like to teach at Van Buren in the fall.” Who the fuck was I kidding? The only thing I was definite about was my need for pot and rent money, but sounding reasonably intelligent and self-assured did get me this far.

     “I had a feeling that you’d accept the offer. Great! Stop by my office on Monday at 9:30 to finish some paperwork. You can also choose books for your sophomore classes.”

Jesus, slow down, man. Boo Radley and Holden Caulfield aren’t going anywhere.

     “Sounds good. See you then. Thanks again, Mr. Goldfien.”

     “You got it. See you Monday.”

     This moment happened a bit more quickly than anticipated, so I sat down with a McSorley’s and thought about next fall. I knew the literature, I was an asshole teenager six years ago, and there was an old briefcase somewhere in my father’s basement. Not bad. I had nothing to wear, therefore a trip to the Gap was in order where I’d buy whatever was on the headless mannequins.

      Records were getting scarce. Everybody owned iPods, and most recording companies stopped vinyl production altogether. Warm sounds from records always upstaged the cold sterility of any MP3, an innovation which, like its users, lacked any transcendent highs or suicidal lows. Rubber Soul on the Capitol rainbow label was more relaxing than watching Bob Ross paint an enchanted forest, and when I cautiously placed the needle upon side one, an instant cascade of tangible memory calmed my splintered nerves. Happy Jack Daniels and music from my teen years shunted me back a few years when my biggest problem was which snack cake I should procure at 7-11 after an evening of Thai stick.

      Actually, until about ten minutes ago, that was still my biggest problem.

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FEHER HALAKKAL VAN TELE AZ EBOLT György Faludy Fehér halakkal van tele az égbolt s valószínutlen a realitás. Rémálmot látok. Átszólsz a szomszédból: „Ne félj! Az álmok értéke vitás.”     A nagy fényességben testedbol semmi sem látszik többé. Mondjad, hogy lehet hivalgás nélkül, férfimód viselni e boldogságot? Ülj a fellegek alá, mellém. A tenger széle kék lett a rot sziklák tövén. Oly szép az élet! De akkor is, ha elporladt a szám: kariatíd! orangyal! te vigyázol reám. Örökös telihold világol lábaid két földbeszúrt pallosán. (Fowey, 1967)

THE SKY IS SWARMING (S.59) Translated from Hungarian by Paul Sohar The sky is swarming with silvery fish, and I begin to doubt my own reality. It’s a nightmare! “Dreams are worthless,” from the next room you call out to me. You’ve turned into blinding brightness, melting the details of your body. Tell me, how can I, a mere mortal man, bear so much happiness? Come down from the clouds and sit near by, with me. The hem of the sea turned blue beneath the ruddy rocks. Beauty touched by life! But even when I’m lifeless dust and through, you, caryatid, my angel, you’ll stand on guard for me. An eternal full moon shines on your legs planted like swords into sand.   (Fowey, England, 1967)

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PËR PAK VËMENDJE Luljeta Lleshanaku   Vajza ime qesh me mënyrën se si unë i zgjedh veshjet në stilin fëminor të “Wonderland”, me mënyrën se si unë i mbaj flokët, të kapur gjithmonë me një karficë në njërën anë- ajo vajza me çorape të bardhë mbi kolovajzë që pret me nervozizëm dikë t’i japë shtytjen fillestare. Të tjerët qeshin me mënyrën se si unë eci, apo të fjeturit përmbys, apo të ngrënit me një dorë, sikurse unë qeshja me time më kur ajo vinte në mbledhjen e prindërve në shkollë, me flokë ende të lagur nga banja, mbetjet e kafesë anës gojës me rrobat e saj të gjëra, çorapet e trashë të gomuar dhe jakat e dala mode, që kufizonin një nuskë të zverdhur nga dielli në gjoks.   Dhe ja, ku jemi, unë dhe ajo si dy planet e një oborri -njëri para dhe tjetri prapa shtëpisë. Të dyja duke kërkuar pak vëmendje në mënyra të ndryshme: ajo, si rufaitë, duke luajtur një shfaqje sakrifice me shtiza nën lëkurë dhe unë duke zhubravitur mbështjellësen prej alumini të çokollatës.

FOR ATTENTION Translated from Albanian by Henri Israeli My daughter laughs at how I choose which clothes to wear at how I keep my hair pinned to one side like a little girl in white stockings waiting anxiously for someone to push her swing. Others laugh at how I walk or sleep on my stomach, or eat with one hand…. I too laughed at my mother how she came to the teacher conference with her hair still wet coffee stains on the corners of her lips her dumpy clothes, thick gnarled stockings, an old fashioned necklace with an amulet turned yellow from sunlight.   And today, here we are, she and I, like two sides of the same yard— one in the front, the other in the rear. We seek attention differently, she and I: she like a dervish sticking pins under her skin and I crumpling the wrapper of a chocolate.

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