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I AM NOT AN ACTRESS by Ashley Jeffalone

August 25, 2020

The man who will later steal from me is directing a short film. Today, in this moment, we’re still friends, so I pick up when he calls.

On the grounds of his apartment complex, he leads me to a Bradford pear tree, puts me underneath, and I kneel along the roots to thieve shards of glass from the green. There are other people with us, laden with cameras and lights, and they lean over me, commit my idling to film. They come close enough for me to remember their sugared breath but not their faces, not their voices—I've lost years to forgetting, and their heads are smooth and eyeless. I don't remember the mouths. My friend tells me to look off to the pond, just north, and my eyes meet the sun, and he says Smile, like you’re hearing a joke. And he’s not taken anything from me yet, so I nip the bottom of my lip. I beam. It takes effort—the tree's blossoms smell of rot.

My friend knows plenty of actresses. I'm a sociology major, not an actress, but he knows this too. I haven’t done anything like this since I was in Honors Drama, an eleven-year-old in a newsboy cap, the kind I thought thespians wore, a marker of my sincerity. My last performance was a play of sneering and stomping, my costume a black miniskirt that I let drift high across my thighs. I thought I could be sexy at eleven. I thought it could be part of my act. But I quit Drama when the pupils of other people began to petrify me, when I traded wanting to be watched for doing the watching, and after my friend wraps his shoot, I’ll never perform in this capacity again. I’m not counting the show I’ll put on for him later, to convince him that I'm unchanged after what he took. I won’t count the number of times I’ll pretend to remember anything about the dolor that will come after.

We take the afternoon to film it, my friend's wordless, plotless, montage-y thing. We want to do it in one go. My friend yanks us all from the sunshine and deposits us into his apartment, where his DVDs are strewn in a predictable mess and sweat sours the draft from his window. In the bedroom, I don a button-down, rumple it like believable sleepwear, and let them film me like that. When he gives the command, I burrow into my friend’s bed. Look confused, he says, look unsure. I find that, despite how often I feel those things, I’m not good at miming either. I mash my hands against my eyes. Squint when I rest my arms. The blankets smell like spirits and old cologne on skin, and later, when my friend steals from me, that smell will stay with me, on me, for months. I don’t know this yet. I take hard swallows of air so the camera sees I’m distressed. Someone laughs and I snap I’m not an actress. I’m giving it my best shot.

We finish in his living room, where my friend sits me on his couch. He frames me in daylight, which is risky, but worth it, he says. He calls over a man of the faceless crew, who steps into the threshold of my memory and gains an identity: scene partner. Fellow actor. Something good. I like him without trying, this man who settles beside me to murmur one-liners. I've hardly begun to laugh when my friend shoots me a look. You're breaking up in this scene. Say shitty things to each other. Improvise. It nearly sounds like pleading. I take my eyes from the man next to me, looking somewhere past the camera. I think of my mom, scorn on her mouth as she breaks dishes. I think of my dad, his knuckles, his smile. The camera rolls.

We begin, us strangers, to argue. We ad lib like we're lovers.

Him: "What the fuck were you thinking? Do you ever fucking think?"

Me: “I knew you didn’t listen. I hate you."

Him: “You’re wasting our lives. You’re wasting mine.”

Me: “Put your hands on me. What are you afraid of?”

This is what people say to each other, I know.

Parts of me begin to hurt: my arms from brandishing. My throat from constricting. My face from grinning. My friend tells me to smile less, that no one looks like that when they're mad, but every time the camera begins its capture, I laugh as I scream. My scene partner rises from the couch with each cut, leaning over me to shout. Spit on my face. Spit on my bared teeth. All the lightness from before is siphoned out by our clamor.

The room's grown so quiet. I don't know if they're still filming. There is only me and my paper tongue, my scene partner with his mouth like my mom's, his knuckles like my dad's. Perhaps, says my friend, we’ve forgotten this was acting. We've become servants to the moment, agents of emotion. My Drama teacher used to say that instants like these were the point.

Later, when the cameras make their exits and my scene partner is sent away, when my friend has robbed me blind and plied me with coffee to apologize, he'll say something similar: there wasn't much he could have done differently, really, when he was so caught up in the moment. The moment entrenched him in its webs, shackled him to its demands, and for years I’ll wonder if this is the cost of having something worth taking.

All I had wanted was to act one more time. How I longed for cameras to have been on us then.

DEAR ALISON by Stephanie Parent

August 24, 2020

I’ve used you so many times. In college application essays, you were the tragedy I experienced early in life, the loss that made me wise beyond my years and allowed books to speak to me so deeply I was determined to become a writer myself.

(I wasn’t wise beyond my years, and I never wanted to write as much as I wanted to read.)

I recycled those same essays for graduate school applications, but when I actually made it to a master’s program and depression snuck up on me like a springtime drizzle, then slammed down all at once in a summer thunderstorm, there you were again: you were the explanation for all my psychological deficiencies. Who wouldn’t believe the world was an unsafe place, a gauntlet they weren’t strong enough to handle, after someone so important had died when they were only three years old?

I kept on using you, all throughout my twenties, in and out of therapy and half-formed career goals and dead-end jobs. You were the reason I couldn’t be a responsible adult, couldn’t make something of myself. I had spent the first two decades of my life trying to please my parents, to make up for your death, to keep them from worrying about me. I was always ahead on homework and ready for every test, never chugged a beer or smoked a joint. Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude. I had to run out of steam eventually, right?

Now, in my thirties, I’m still using you. You’re the ghost haunting my every decision, my every regret with your stale, back-of-the-closet smell. I’m wringing you out like an old washcloth, the one I used to mop up the mess of my subconscious. I’m eking out every musty drop in the hopes you’ll yield emotional resonance. Or at the very least, provide some justification for the stupid choices I made. For all the money I spent, the good jobs I stopped looking for, the resumes so half-assed I might as well have ripped them up and let the pieces float off like tumbleweeds.

I really am a shitty sister, aren’t I? For someone who lived less than two months, who never developed a personality, someone who was born when I was too young to remember you, I certainly have put a lot of pressure on you. How much worse would it be if you had lived?

(Hey, I said I was shitty.)

I’m angry with you for coming to our world so briefly, arriving with the first soft snow flurries of December, and melting away before spring could even arrive. I’m angry you left me with the knowledge of how fragile life is, and how people can go on living with a part of their souls tucked away behind the winter coats. I’m angry at my parents for never talking about you. Maybe if there had been a funeral I could remember, a grave I could visit, a picture on a wall, I wouldn’t have to carry you inside me like a thousand buttercups that never opened, yellow hearts that withered on some March morning when the frost returned.

You died because you stopped breathing, when you were six weeks old, a few months after I turned three.

I’m not sure I ever learned how to breathe.

SITTING ALONE by D.T. ROBBINS

August 23, 2020

I had a dream about you. I sat in a pew that only had enough room for two people. Its red velvet had faded, its wooden frame splintered.

Someone played piano, sang a song for you, about you. The congregation sent up a crescendo of angel voices, enveloping the atmosphere, like a child wrapped around her father’s leg.

And me? I lost it. I bawled, wailed.

I’d saved that seat next to me for you, but you never came.

The dream-song, a melody I’d never heard before, stayed in my ears after I woke. I considered whether or not to remove the guitar from my wall, excavating the song’s chord structure from my sleep. The tears I wept, hollow-chested and heavy-limbed, cascaded into reality, like watching the ripped remains of matter spewing from the other side of a black hole. Because the truth is, I fucking miss you.

You were the whole of my youth, my adolescence. I would pray like you said to, you would stir my soul with mystery and revelation, wisdom and understanding. The elders prayed over me at 13. Never look to man, they said, because man would always disappoint me. Keep my eyes on you and you alone. They said the devil would shoot fiery arrows at me my whole life, but you’d protect me.

And the devil did speak. From pulpits he decried the extent of your grace and compassion. And I, if I truly believed, was to revile and denounce so-called abominations that the world fell victim to. Despite your freedom, I put on chains. He criticized the expectation of your power and presence. Miracles became blasphemous. Mystery was ignorance. You were the light, but I only saw darkness.

He spoke from behind the desks of those who said they knew you better, were closer to you. As if my relationship with you was a thing to be measured and scrutinized like the subject of a clinical trial. Charisma was favored over personal experience. Could I preach a three-point sermon? Was the inflection in my voice enough to evoke an emotional response? How many bodies could I bring into the room? When was the last time I jerked off? Who was I fantasizing about? Did I touch her before she wore a ring? Was I drinking in public or at home? Did I cause someone to stumble with my secret sins?

My questioning and challenging their teaching, the methodology, blacklisted me. It seems as though you’re a flash in the pan, they told me. This isn’t working out, they said. You’re not a strong enough spiritual leader, she said. Whatever the hell that even meant.

The devil’s voice grew louder, silencing yours. I quit listening to you both. I chose my own voice. Of my anger, my disappointment and disillusionment. You became a distant memory, a nightmare, a gravesite.

I watched as those who believed they knew you better ended up knowing nothing of you and even less of themselves. Their egos crucified their missions. They vacated their callings, falling from their pedestals. Some by choice, others by force. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t find some restitution in it. One friend, who stood witness to my eventual dismissal of faith, said to me, You were the one they said would go nowhere and do nothing, look where you’re at now, how well you’re doing! And where the fuck are they? Their names are forgotten, reputations buried. Maybe I’m wrong for that. Maybe you reap what you sow. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

But now I can’t shake that song, that dream. I keep seeing that seat I saved for you. I keep wondering if you’ll show. If you’ll remember me like I remember you from the days of my innocence. If you’ll remember my innocence at all. If you’ll remember my voice the way I remember yours. Or if it’s too late. If I’ve become like that pew, faded and splintered.

The seat belongs to you and, whether I like it or not, no one else is capable of occupying that space.

I’ve been sitting here for so long.

I hate sitting alone.

ILLUMINATION by Audra Kerr Brown

August 22, 2020

Three weeks after her miscarriage, Guinevere fell in love with the lightbulb. A 40-watt incandescent globe from the dining room wall sconce. She removed the lampshade in order to stare at the glow of its tungsten filaments, the bare harp sitting above the bulb as a halo.

You are beautiful, Guinevere would say. Absolutely beautiful.

The light had an electrical heartbeat, a faint buzzing, as if bees were trapped inside.

She liked to unscrew the bulb from its socket, marvel at how perfectly it fit in her palm. How warm it felt. How round, how small.

OBIT by Jesse Salvo

August 21, 2020

Published Wed, Jan 13, 11:53 p.m. ET

Jersey City, NJ

This item is dedicated to the living memory of David Graff, a friend of this paper, who passed away this week in a manner very much unexpected to those who knew him well. David, who died Thursday, was born in Michigan to a family of middle income, attended the University of Chicago under dubious circumstances, failed out under less dubious ones, spent two years writing grants for legal nonprofits, discovered no dignity in the work, detested labor, detested snobbery, moved back to Detroit, fell in love, became engaged, took a job cleaning churches, saw the engagement end badly, saw his only love end badly, quit the churches, bought an outbound ticket, spent nearly five years living reckless across the ocean, did steady, unlucrative work in Morocco, bought a dog, gained a small reputation and a byline, broke his foot in Cambodia, got in over his head, saw a child dismembered by a landmine, acted badly and was jailed in Chile, elected finally to come home, took a job in Sioux City, detested phoniness, detested “small talk”, got a girl pregnant, paid for the abortion, buried the dog, quit drinking, broke three stories, learned to live with regret, moved to a major national publication, lived comfortably for two years, disdained politeness, disdained bosses, was bought out and left the paper, was hired and bought out again, cobbled together a National Magazine Award and a mortgage, had a heart attack, pivoted briefly to video, relapsed a year and got sober again, was contacted by and met with the abortion he’d thought he’d helped pay for, moved to New York City for work, got laid off again, sold the mortgage at a loss, reached out to his life’s only love, garnered no response, caught a job with a small paper writing obituaries, always was a joyful presence around the office, never was a burden to anyone, proved unable to shake a childhood loneliness, retired to his apartment one evening, wrote a small note in the parlance of his trade, drank a bottle of bleach sometime just before midnight, sat very still in his chair, thought briefly of all the words we use to explain a life, attained a sort of peace, and regretted only the bad parts.

WHEN THE FIRST HUSBAND DIES YOUNG by Dan Brotzel

August 20, 2020

When your first husband dies young, you feel shock, you feel sick. You hurt, you bruise, you ache, you sting. You feel nothing at all but also everything, way too much. Reality has been swept from under you. There’s a big hole, a gap, where your life should be. Nothing makes sense. You’re trapped in a nightmare that can’t possibly be yours. Everything is panic, anxiety.

You keep running up against the hope that this is all an illusion, that soon you’ll be able to get your head round it, feel differently about it, send it away. You keep thinking you’re in a bad dream, or maybe even just a dream of a dream of a bad dream. You tell yourself you’ll unravel it all eventually and get back to normal.

When the first husband dies young, you feel like your future’s been stolen. You feel like you’ve entered on a chapter that wasn’t even supposed to be there in your book. You had a life, you had a roadmap, you had dreams. You had a sense of where things might go, a direction of travel. You had the shared destiny of each other.

He painted pictures of the future. He had it all scoped out. The vision–a lot of it came from him. But you went along with it. There was a certain muscularity to his mapping out of things. You liked this, at first. It involved you and only you, it made you feel that you’d been specially selected. You were part of a plan. You existed for something, for someone. Now he is gone, and you’re not sure where you are either.

When the first husband dies young, you notice how keen everyone else is to grieve on your behalf. From the outside it’s a story they can really get their heads around, a formulaic film plot: love’s young dream crushed, the brave one taken too young, a future stolen. To them, it all seems so clear, what’s happened and how bad it all is, where it all begins and ends. Whereas for you, it’s just a mess, it’s not even a feeling, it’s just a color that’s drained from the world. You wouldn’t even know where to start, how to define it, what box to put it in. You are the box.

People seem so taken with the exquisite agony of it all, they keep telling you how they feel your pain. But how can you? you think. I don’t even know how to feel it myself.

When the first husband dies young, you find that people have a part for you to play: the inconsolable young widow. And they want you to play it forever. They love it. They want you to wear black–well not literally, at least not all of them. They want you to turn your existence into a living shrine. They want you to relate everything you say to some cherished moment with him. They want your every action to have meaning only when held up against the lens of his tragedy, your tragedy.

They like you tragic, they like the look.

When the first husband dies young, you’re not thinking about moving on. But slowly you start to see that you’re suspended now in a solution of suffering, floating like a dissected rabbit in a formaldehyde tank for the world to pity. It’s a fate worse than death, you hear yourself think. Maybe you don’t want to be anything else right now, but you’d like to know you could try if you wanted. Otherwise you might as well be dead too.

When the first husband dies young, you quickly realize that you can never really say anything to anyone to suggest that things were ever less than perfect. Yet there are little things you start to remember, little niggles and judgments and tensions and frictions, things you don’t have in your life now.

Sometimes, when in-laws or relatives or friends of the deceased sing the praises of your late husband, you don’t quite recognize him. Or, when they call to mind a famous evening or memorable event with him, you recall something extra that they never saw: the row you had before the party, the resentment you carried all night, the savage alcoholic catch in his voice, the sullen resentful slurs, the punitive silences–yours and his–on the drive home. So now you have to nod and smile past your memory, as everyone looks to you to validate theirs.

When the first husband dies young, you find you can put clothes on and not have to wait for the inevitable assessment of your outfit. You can make a spontaneous plan to see someone that evening and not have to explain who they are and how you know them, or what time you’ll be back. You can do nothing–you don’t even have to say that you don’t feel like doing anything–you can just not do anything. You can mooch, you can putter, you can forget to get dressed or do your hair. You can browse Netflix or arrange your wardrobe or read a book or flick through some crappy celeb mag or plant some herbs out on the balcony or spend three hours making an onion soup, with some disposable plastic pop turned up loud that he would have hated.

There are occasions, on your own, never to be said to anyone else, in the darkest corners of the night or the quietest folds of a solitary day, when you dare to think that you prefer it like this.

When the first husband dies young, you realize he didn’t like you very much. It’s not really his fault; he probably didn't like himself very much either. (His dad was no different.) He was, to use a phrase that he loved, “a man of the world,” whereas, you–poor sweet, dear you–you were so naive and hopeless that you needed saving from yourself. You had to have things explained to you, he explained–which was handy, because he liked nothing more than to explain things. He knew stuff, he was clever, and he was capable in many ways. But there was a price.

He liked everything his way. He knew what was best for you, much better than you ever could. He expected your tastes to be his tastes. He expected you to defer to him in the big decisions–he didn’t want you to go back to college, didn’t want you to carry on with that job, let alone go for that promotion. He was happy to go along with you being you, so far as that didn’t conflict with you being his. But he wasn’t really very kind and, contrary to all his assumptions, he wasn’t very funny.

You realize that you were afraid of him. You thank God that you never had any kids.

When the first husband dies young, you blame yourself. You survived him, and now–with no right of reply–you judge him. But you know you never wished him dead; you had this silly optimistic belief that everything would right itself in the end, that you would both find a way back to the early days when everything was perfect and hopeful.

When the first husband dies young, you find one day you are free to think your own thoughts and free to stop worrying about how others expect you to be. And you see at last your first husband’s great gift to you: the realization that there need never be a second.

SAN ANTONIO by Saul Lemerond

August 19, 2020

The piglet was pink, but not the regular pink that you expect piglets to be. This was the sort of glowing, warm pink that only exists in Disney movies. God, the little animal was so cute Yancy wanted to squeeze the thing to death. Wanted to squeeze it ‘til its head popped off its precious little body.

Yancy’s friends Tim and John think this too. He is so lucky, they think as they stand beside him wishing they could also have one. They’d all been on their way to the Riverwalk but now no longer care.

Yancy reaches out a hand and pets the piglet on its snout, which offers a high-pitched oink. This is right. Rightly right. He names the piglet Normand. Normand smiles. Normand’s smile is a demon’s smile. There is an air of danger about Normand, which only makes Yancy desire him more.

Yancy picks up Normand, thinking, My mother will like this piglet.

He looks over to his friend Tim who is tall and reminds Yancy of the bronze cowboys on the Riverwalk, the Briscoe. Stetson hatted. Rugged and loving life. There is a piglet that has appeared at his feet.

John, who is dashingly handsome and reminds Yancy of a younger version of himself, also looks down to find one.

This is strange. Yes, they admit that, but, their libidos are excited. They know a good thing when they see it, and they brace themselves, psychically, for what promises to be a considerable amount of sexual attention. Yancy looks at Tim. Tim looks at Yancy. They smile at one another. The attention, it seems, is already here.

How beauteous these piglets are. Oh, brave new world, Tim thinks, that has such creatures in it.

They take pictures and record videos of the piglets and post this on their many profiles. Tim names his piglet Worthington. Worthington, like Normand, has the grin of a hungry hobgoblin.

***

Yancy’s mother is a starchy woman who likes index funds, has a drooping heart, an aching soul, and a mood in constant need of cheering. Her name is Mildred.

“What a cute little piglet!” Mildred shouts when she sees Normand. She tries, very hard, to hide her jealousy which is a very ugly part of her that she rarely acknowledges.

Oh, and will you look at that. Mildred didn’t notice at first, but she has a piglet standing next to her as well, sniffing at her fern-green flats.

“Where did this little guy come from?” Mildred asks. “This is the cutest thing I have ever seen in my adult life. I will name him Weatherford. It looks like a Weatherford, don’t you think?” She, like Yancy and his friends, is also excited about the attention this will afford her, sexual and otherwise.

Mildred sends a picture of Weatherford to her friend, Francene. Francene sends Mildred a picture of her piglet, Hamlet. Hamlet, like Weatherford, is adorable yet also menacing.

It’s a profoundly joyous time, and they make sure to post this on their many profiles.

There are many questions about where the piglets came from and why they are here. These questions seem important but not as important as, say, actually having a piglet. The piglets are a mystery to be sure. Everyone agrees. They will investigate, of course. Of course they will. Later.

Then the message: Arbuckle just ate John!

Yancy looks at his phone and wonders if this is a typo. If instead of ate, they meant @. ‘@John!’ makes more sense than ‘ate John’, but no. A photo is shared with a little adorable Arbuckle chewing on John’s foot, still in its classic western boot.

Everyone at John’s funeral who doesn’t have a piglet finds a piglet there. They are dangerous, these piglets, it cannot be denied, if only slightly, which just adds to their titillation. The funeral is like most funerals only more so in that it serves as both a celebration of life and a fracture in their interpersonal happiness along with flowers, drinks, and old friends.

The occasion is emotionally wrought. Everyone loves their piglet, but at the same time, they do not know if they can trust them. Tim looks at Yancy. Yancy looks at Tim. The death of their good friend has brought them closer than ever.

During the funeral, Hamlet attacks Yancy’s mother’s friend, Francene.

At first, Hamlet leaps up to Francene’s neck and takes a fleshy chunk out of her neck, right around where the carotid artery probably is.

The other piglets, seeing this, jump aboard this flesh lunch wagon and take what they can get. Muscle, bone, tendons, and teeth. When they are finished, there is nothing left. Everyone posts this on their many personal profiles.

Mildred takes out her phone and reports this to several organizations who make it their business to keep data on such things.

It seems to the mourners as if time stops and the whole scene freezes in tableau.

Yancy looks at Tim. Tim looks back. Suspended between them is an aerosol of terror, disgust, and desire.

The horror sharpens slowly, like the point of an icicle in early springtime, then everything begins to move again.

Tim pukes in the large clay pot of a Ficus benjamina. Several others join him. Many fear they will be eaten next. They inspect their piglets who oink at them dismissively, so dangerous and yet so cute.

***

Later, when they are still alive and uneaten, it becomes clear to everyone that their piglets will either eat them or they won’t.

Yancy could not get rid of Normand even if he wanted to. He puts him in a box outside at night and finds the piglet in his bed moments later. He leaves him hundreds of miles away in the Chihuahuan Desert and returns home to find Normand waiting on his porch.

Yancy sits down and reflects on these uncertain times. He wonders if he is in love with Tim. Tim does not wonder. Tim knows.

The two of them sit and drink coffee together.

“I want that piglet!” A voice shouts. It is strange to Yancy and Tim. People do not care that the piglets are dangerous. People, it seems, have complicated relationships with danger.

Yancy and Tim hold Worthington and Normand close. Across the street, there’s a group of people with no piglets and a single man who has one.

Yancy and Tim think there might be violence. You never can tell these days.

A drove of piglets runs up from off of E. César E. Chávez Blvd. Now, there are exactly enough piglets for everyone. Tim kneels down in front of Yancy.

Yancy calls his mother, Mildred, to see if she is still alive and unchewed.

Her smiling face appears on his phone with Weatherford in the background.

He is adorable. The threat of him, Yancy thinks, somehow adds to his appeal. He tells his mother that Tim has proposed. Life is too short, he says. He wants a Texas wedding.

Across the street, one of the new piglet owners is being devoured by his adoptive little pink package of joy.

Several of the other piglets join in on the meat buffet and blood sprays everywhere. The shock and smell of the wet, naked viscera send several observers to vomit into the gutter lining their side of the street.

Yancy turns his phone around so that his mother can watch. Mildred sends this information to the appropriate data collection agencies, then she congratulates Yancy and Tim. What a good couple they make.

The drift of piglets lets out a long whine. High pitched, like a host of porcine cicadas.

Tim records all of this on his phone, livestreaming to followers with similar interests.

Oh, how cute, they’re singing, Yancy thinks. Is there no end to their precious benefits?

These are interesting times. Uncertain, yes—destabilizing and frightening, of course—but interesting to be sure.

Another piglet begins to eat its new keeper. It starts at the leg. The screams that follow are uncanny.

“Yancy,” Mildred says, and Yancy turns his phone to face his mother. “I’m so happy,” she says, “for you, and that my Weatherford is a kind and gentle creature.”

“My Normand, too,” Yancy says, lifting the singing piglet up to nuzzle his neck. He is happy to be with Tim and Worthington.

“I cannot believe how many people have joined my livestream.”

“We should take one of those Lollipop carriages downtown.”

The gutter runs thick with retch and gore.

DARLING by Suzanne Grove

August 18, 2020

We were fifteen, our bodies slick with baby oil, as we tanned on her lawn in old beach chairs rusting at the edges. I was pouring flavored sugar down my throat when Julia told me the devil seduced my parents. The candy’s raspberry tang hit my soft palate, and I coughed a fine blue dust that tasted like medicine.

I knew her parents were evangelicals or born again or fundamentalists, all words I could say but didn’t understand. Her father wore jeans to church. The faded denim Wranglers rode high up his waist and tugged at his crotch. His leather belt with a fat buckle was two-toned, gold and silver with a vacant-eyed Longhorn steer carved into the middle. He was an alcoholic until Jesus saved him, or that’s what people said. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. I spent a lot of time thinking about that belt.

My parents were getting a divorce.

“It’s the devil.” Julia removed the wrapping from a package of single-slice cheese. “My father said so.”

The waxy yellow square melted as she nibbled on it. We were starving. We were always starving at Julia’s house. Her mother had a pork shoulder locked away in the pressure cooker, but the refrigerator was nearly empty. A jug of iced tea and container of potato salad. Some salami and the cheese. A box of her mother’s Pinot Grigio dripping onto the glass shelf.

“Let’s go to my house,” I said. It was July, the middle of a stagnant afternoon in Ohio, gnats floating around our faces and flies landing on our forearms and toes, rubbing their legs together with no sense of urgency.

“Can’t,” Julia said. “Not allowed.”

I ripped open two more paper straws of the candy, felt my mouth go hot and dry. Julia slid off her chair to take a drink of hose water. She was lean, all pale limbs with a pointy chin and something sly glinting at the edges of her eyes. I left without saying goodbye.

My mother had already moved to Massachusetts, where she had a new apartment on Beacon Street near Boston Common and a new husband named Rob. I was supposed to fly there at the end of August and start school at a private academy. Until then, I belonged to my dad, who worked as a prep cook at a nice restaurant in Toledo. He came home exhausted and reeking of the lemons and limes he sliced for the bar.

I didn’t agree with Julia’s father. Even at fifteen, I noticed a new weightlessness to my parents’ interactions, a buoyancy that arrived after they’d decided to separate. I could hear dad chuckling during his calls with my mother, a beer warming in his hand. He spoke kindly to her. They seemed happy again.

On the following Friday, Julia and I went to the pool. I rolled a beach towel and change of clothes into my backpack, zipped away all the accessories of womanhood I’d wanted until they arrived: tampons and pain killers; deodorant and blemish cream that burned my skin. We kicked and dove until our bodies ached with sun and sore muscles. We shared heaps of French fries Julia soaked in salt and vinegar. I phoned my dad to tell him I’d be spending the night as we walked back to Julia’s house. Our flip-flops kicked up dust from the gravel that hurt the soles of our feet.

Julia told me she loved me.

“As a friend,” she said. We were propped up against her twin bed, reading the movie times in the newspaper. Her parents didn’t allow television in the bedroom. “You’re the only person I can stand.”

Later, when I came back from her kitchen with two fudge pops and potato chips, she was leaning awkwardly against her closet. She kept chewing on her cheek and scrunching her toes together. I moved past her to fetch the pajamas in my backpack. Despite the heat, we opened the windows in her bedroom and watched pixelated movies on my phone using the neighbor’s Wi-Fi. We let the insects sing us to sleep.

On Saturday my father knocked on the bathroom door. I was going to a matinee with Julia. A horror film.

But my father canceled my plans.

“You’re coming with me, kiddo.” His arms were crossed, thick and hairy in a white t-shirt. He’d recently shaved. “Get dressed for the track.”

All of dad’s friends were gamblers. On weekends, they brunched and played twenty-one and bet on the horses at the casino two counties away. He’d never taken me with him until that humid afternoon, sweat pooling in the creases of my elbows.

“I don’t think you’re ready for Boston,” he said. His friends were luxuriating in the air-conditioning, but my father sat me down on the outdoor bleachers, the aluminum scorching my thighs. Everything reeked of manure and alcohol. “Tell me these are some sort of prescription I don’t know about.”

From his pocket he pulled a bag with four blue pills inside.

“I found them in your backpack,” he said.

They weren’t mine, but I knew immediately how they’d fallen into my possession.

An hour later, circling the food court, we saw Julia’s father. He was eating a hot dog, drinking from a plastic cup of clear liquid. Two limes. I told dad about Mr. Richardson’s comment. About the devil and the divorce.

“The man’s a hypocrite.” He moved his face like he might laugh, but didn’t.

On my way to the bathroom, Mr. Richardson found me. He called me darling and told me to forget about seeing him. For Julia’s sake. I thought about his daughter telling me she loved me, and imagined her slim fingers fidgeting inside my backpack.

“Are we clear?” Mr. Richardson asked.

He was wearing his belt buckle.

From his neck lifted the sweet smell of sweat, and booze.

In that slim, carpeted hallway, a swirl of blue patterns spiraling beneath me, Mr. Richardson leaned his body toward me, shifted to take a step.

I didn't know what to say or where to move, so I just kept looking at his belt. The steer would not to return my gaze, its empty eyes refusing to bear witness.

HEAVENLY LAKE by Kristen Loesch

August 17, 2020

It might be June, or it might be July. I can no longer keep track of the days. It’s that halfway point of a Hong Kong summer, when the heat turns everything soupy. The days and nights run together, and the usual strictures of time and space begin to crumble. How long have I been with my British boyfriend? Long enough for him to have bought a new camera. He’s an avid photographer, one who’s always itching for a worthy subject to capture. One day he finds one: Let’s go off the beaten track, to Xinjiang, China’s westernmost province, to a remote lake called Tianchi, he says. He tells me what Tianchi means, but the way he pronounces it, it means something else. I don’t correct him. Maybe he knows my own tongue better than me. Maybe that’s why he often speaks for me.

My boyfriend hopes that Tianchi is so high in the mountains that nobody can breathe up there, that there won’t be any tourists. He dislikes an audience, and he never takes pictures of people with his expensive cameras, though he’s taken plenty of me. I am slightly less of a person than other people. One evening I tell him I’ve heard about a recent flare-up of violence in Xinjiang between members of its two main ethnic groups, Uyghurs and Han Chinese. Riots are breaking out. If things get bad, military will be called in. My boyfriend laughs. Maybe I’m being funny. Nothing to worry about, he says, and he should know. He wears suits to work and keeps Bloomberg blaring as he showers; he’s up-to-date. I like history and old houses. He is firmly in the present, while I am half in the past. Maybe I am his shadow. Maybe I should just stay close.

On our way to Xinjiang we have a layover in Guangdong. My boyfriend corners another couple to ask directions and they struggle to respond in English. I finally step in to help. I’m sorry, sometimes I forget that I have a voice, I say, and they smile. I’m being funny again. They warn us not to travel to Xinjiang, but when I translate this message for my boyfriend, he shakes it off like light rain. My parents ring my mobile as we wait for our connecting flight. Come home, please, don’t go with him, they beg me. I ask if they’ve heard about the unrest, the riots. They have not. The humidity in the airport is high. I lean my head on my boyfriend’s shoulder, feeling sweaty, slippery. Maybe I am melting into him. Maybe I am disappearing.

We land in Xinjiang’s capital city. We take a taxi to the hotel. Large groups of men prowl the streets, armed with bats and clubs and what look like chair legs. At the entrance to our hotel the staff is standing guard. We eat in the restaurant and I overhear guests at the next table whispering that there’s no Internet access, that the phone lines will be cut off. The food is buffet-style. Mostly noodles. The chef is busy guarding one of the doors with a knife. Later my boyfriend takes pictures from our room, panoramas of a suddenly silent city. Outside, it remains quiet for days and days, but inside, it is loud: The television volume on high. The shouting. The cursing. The breaking. And other times, his laughing. Maybe I’m just too funny. Maybe it is all my fault.

At last the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army roll into town. A curfew is imposed. Our lockdown ends. My boyfriend hates the idea of martial law, but I don’t mind. I don’t know what I’d do if I were completely free anyway. In fact, I can’t even remember what life was like before everything went quiet. My boyfriend and I make our way up to Tianchi, but there are plenty of tourists, large groups snapping pictures and hats flying off in the wind and old men hawking bottled water. My boyfriend is so frustrated that he cracks his own camera lens, but I’m glad we came. The lake is clear as a mirror. There are no waves, not even a ripple. But this is only what people can see; there must be life beneath. I tell myself that maybe later it will show on the surface.

PENNY-UP by Daniel Fraser

August 16, 2020

On Tuesday afternoons I would go down to the garages with Sam and Jason to throw coins at a wall. Derek would come and bring a twelve-pack or a slab and we'd stay there past dark. Penny-up can't be explained, you just have to play it. Like life. The summers were the best. Big sun falling behind the tower block, kids running under the washing lines, screaming and fighting on the open grass, the chimneys and smoke-blackened brick stretching back into the hills, and us with nothing to do but roll.

“Watch me,” said Derek. We watched him land a soft rebound. It was warm, muggy. The sky was swirls of grey and milk, somewhere far off crept little bits of blue.

“Not bad, not bad,” said Jason. I told Derek he might make the championships.

We called it rolling but really it's a flick. You throw just like a decision but here it's not heads or tails, win or lose—it's all how well you handle the distance.

I cracked open a beer, listening to air escape. That sound like sea being sucked beneath a stone. Foam curled out above the mouth. I drank.

“Did you see that horror film?” said Derek, “the one with all the cameras.”

“I did,” I said, “I like anything where people are being watched.”

“Is there a film where everyone is Michael Caine?” said Jason, “I want to see that.” He wiped his hands on his overalls.

“Guy Ritchie doesn't make those anymore,” said Sam. Sam sliced his flick wide—“fuck it.”

We grew up in a place no one ever never really leaves. None of us broke the mold either, slowly aging into versions of our fathers. Toned down and diluted into something we could bear. Jason and his dad landscaped gardens for rival firms operated by two half-brothers. Derek was a lifeguard with a wrestling ring in his back garden made from broken gym equipment. His Dad looked like Bill Oddie but was some kind of karate grandmaster. Me and Sam worked removals, furniture mostly. Both of our dads went missing, so we knew about taking stuff away. We moved furniture from one place to another, room to room or town to town. With work distance didn't matter, only care. We were good. Sam could drive a van and I could judge the width of an object just by looking.

The light was paler now. Some kids were shouting, calling out a cheat. Jason made two in a row and took the pot.

“Who is this man?” said Jason, looking round, grinning, pointing at himself. An imaginary crowd roared. Derek kicked at rough edges of the tarmac. I cracked open another beer, feeling happy and small, like an insect, embedded safely in some forgotten fabric, left to chew its little square of dust. That's the good feeling, the penny-up feeling, like one small glory is just enough. Some people don't get it. I brought Amy down once. She stayed twelve minutes and told me to meet her in the pub. Amy had a hole in her throat from birth and we'd been in love for nearly as long—same street, same school. She ignored the game and shuffled inside her coat. The valley was colder then. Her hair caught up with brown leaves blowing from a sycamore outside the cinema.

“It's just throwing time away,” she said, sipping bitter. I made a joke about time being money. She looked at her hand and kissed my arm and told me on Tuesdays not to call her before nine.

Derek looked at a pigeon and said the word “sandwich.” He pulled a sandwich from inside his coat. After three bites he got distracted and dropped the sandwich. I imagined the bread growing legs and crawling up the tower into the sky. I'd already sold the script for Spider Sandwich and started shooting by the time someone said, “you're up.” I flicked a scrape right down the wall; it ended millimeters from the edge. A winner.

“Sick,” said Sam. We bumped cans in celebration. Just then I was king of penny-up, grandmaster, lord of the garages. Sam got a hip flask of whiskey from the van and we swigged it, shoulder to shoulder, the liquid warm and burning in a way that didn't need to last.

Sam's been living with me for four years. Our brick house is an end terrace rented from someone else's aunt. Three rooms under a low slate roof: separate bedrooms, and a downstairs that's just one big space. In the garden, old paving stones frame a swimming pool of lawn. “We can grow things here,” Sam said early on, but neither of us ever really did. Most nights, Amy would come round and I'd cook dinner. The first few times Sam told me she was frosty until we discovered Helicopter Police. Amy liked anything with cops that fly. Once we found a channel with repeats and watched it for six hours straight. The police would fly around and shout and look down on people doing criminal things.

“Night vision,” Amy said when everything turned green.

“Oh fuck,” said Sam, “run!” They ran. The cops read out confusing radio signals and codes. It didn't seem to make much difference, they just flew hard into the night. Sometimes the camera was black and white, sometimes it was red.

“Heat sensors,” said Amy, “they're done for.” She dipped a chip in mayonnaise and shuffled forward in her seat. Everyone cheered when the criminals got away.

It was close to sunset. Clouds were glowing low behind the empty mills and scattered clumps of wood.

“I want to meet someone,” said Derek, “a girlfriend.”

“You need to be more romantic,” said Sam, he flipped a coin and caught it, then wrote poetry on the air. He picked imaginary roses and gave the wrapped bouquet to Jason.

“I'm romantic,” said Derek. Derek opened a can, a puff of lager fizz hissed into his face. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. Derek kicked off the next round, betting high and almost making it. Sam took it in the end, on the last roll. Derek smiled and shivered and leaned against a garage door, the metal bending inward, before popping out without a dent. Even after, when he was injecting, Derek still made Tuesday though his hands were mostly too shaky to win by then.

Dark was scrolling through the hills. Derek looked at his watch, his neck woozy and soft. He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a new roll of coins.

“No more for me,” I said, “I'm quitting while I'm ahead.” Derek looked away toward the wall. Sam drank up and burped and crushed the empty can into his hand.

“Ready to go?” he said.

“Yeah,” I told him. We hugged Jason and Derek in turn.

“Got a full house in the morning,” said Sam, turning. I nodded and followed on behind. We got to the van door, and I heard Derek shouting, “Practice round, practice round!” We drove home, stopping to pick up frozen bags of fish fingers and nuggets, leaving Jason and Derek in the thickened moonlight, Jason shouting over the garages, “Come on then, just us two now.”

I called Amy. She picked up and told me about her day. “Nuggets,” I said.

“Police Helicopters,” she said. Behind me, Sam said, “You know it,” and started making siren sounds. A wind ruffled through the van, we hung our mouths out of the window like dogs. I smoked while Sam drove. The van climbed above the factories and the old estate. Summer fog came and covered up the stars. The rest of the week stretched out ahead of us. It didn't matter. Just then nothing was big and frightening: the world was just a web of tiny movements, round lumps shifting, bumping into things, moving closer or further away.