Short

LITTLE ARLO by Billy Irving

July 16, 2025
When she found the babe under her woodpile, it was October and already cold on the mountain. Poor thing shivering under the logs with skin blue and veiny. Eyes bulging and pupilless. She scooped it up and swaddled it in a quilt, one long ago rendered by her own knotted hands, and took care to tuck its thin limbs into the folds of the fabric. Thin limbs that twisted like corkscrew worms. She brought the thing into her cottage to warm by the fire and watched as the heat revived it, brought presence to its eyes, a look of health returning to its cheeks. But its skin remained blue. Its skin would remain blue always.She took right away to calling it—him—Little Arlo. Though there were no discernable parts, none that she could find anyway, she felt that the babe was male. She knew men well. And boys. Had been surrounded by them in a past life, a husband and sons. Isn’t that the nature of the world? To be surrounded by a husband, and sons? Men who were always lingering in her effortful recollections, always too high. The tease of a box on a shelf edge. A husband who melted away in startlingly few years, a hoary, coughing soup. And boys. Boys who were also blue, wore blue, wooly blue that became mud caked, and blood soaked. Artillery. Amputation. Consumption. Dry eyes that stared into the sky and would ask for nothing, plucked out by crows, turned to birthing pits for insects. Push that away because here is a child, lovely and innocent. Here is a child, new and yours. Child, who are you? What do you see?Little Arlo had no interest in bread or vegetables, nor what little salted meat there was, but when she opened a jar of rhubarb jam he began to squirm. She scooped it into his triangular mouth, and he sucked the syrup down and cooed. Black tongue wagged, and she obliged, nearly half the jar, and then the boy slipped into a deep sleep. So wonderful to listen to him breathe those long breaths like that. Her own sleep did not come so easily and had not for years. Intervals of unsatisfying beinglessness punctuated by terror, faceless men in the shadows, drumbeat haunts emanating from within the dry air of her cabin. And then, the ringing of church bells, always church bells. Gentle, impossible, far.In the morning, Old Lady Murray sat on the porch and smoked and oscillated on her rocker, swaddled infant in her arms, and watched across the treeless ridge as Mr. Dalton, the postman, trotted in from the direction of Nimbus, giving a loud “Ahoy,” and a “How do you do, Mrs. Murray? I’ve brought you some preserves,” and “What is that you’ve got in your arms there?”“My new babe, Little Arlo.”“Oh? A new babe, then. Little Arlo, then. That’s—how nice I suppose.”“What did you bring me?”“Oh, just some pear and apple preserves, and some bread and—oh, but perhaps I should have a look at Little Arlo? Just to—and where did you say he came from?”“Better to not. Better to just leave the things on the stoop there. And, well I found him outside under the woodpile. He had such a chill, oh, but he’s nearly convalesced now. A terrific appetite for rhubarb jam, and I’m sure he’ll like pear. My boys, you know my boys, how they loved—my boys, oh, oh, and Mr. Dalton, just leave the things on the stoop there, thank you so dearly!”Mr. Dalton obliged, accustomed to the widow’s occasional episodes, and rested the sack of groceries on the rough boards of her porch. Then, giving a little bow, he spun around and trotted back down the mountain path, tut-tutting and shaking his head, and such a shame, really. The woman having completely lost her senses.  Changed from the pragmatic schoolteacher of his youth, that formidable manner, and always that soft generosity beneath. And, of course, remembering that day after the meeting in Appomattox, the boys marching back into town and her sons’ not among that procession of shineless eyes. And the supposed babe, just a bundle of straw? Or a bag of flour? Or maybe something, an animal, an injured opossum. I think I saw the swaddle move.

***

Sad intrigue can spread with epidemic ferocity through small mountain hamlets, especially when carried by the lips of an unabashed gossip. Consider the bed bug, whose colonies can multiply by orders of magnitude on a monthly basis.  It was in this way that, over the course of remarkably few days, Mr. Dalton had cultivated a general awareness of Little Arlos’ presence within the town of Nimbus.Gossip. Mr. Dalton felt all right about gossip. He felt that it was his employ and currency, his special talent. Gossip was a little distasteful, yes, but only a little. After all, it was gossip that enabled his charitable visits to the old woman. It was through gossip that, besides a certain prideful, self-serving generosity, shopkeeps justified the handouts they provided on her behalf. Without the extraction, and exchange of gossip, what mail, what food, what human interaction would Mrs. Murray receive? Without gossip, there might be three generations of Little Arlos living in that cabin by now. And frankly, most days there was nothing for Mr. Dalton to report. A remarkably boring person, really, just smoking and rocking in toiled remembrance. A hollowed-out woman in a hollowed-out town, drained of its youth by the undertows of war and industry. Nimbus, the unadaptive. Nimbus, monument to obsolescence. Boom and bust. Vestigial limb of a world whose new language was coal— bituminous and anthracite—was rail, land-rights, incorporation. No space for your people and their bald mountain, their total depletion of hemlock, beech, maple, chestnut, now just black shale and grey sandstone, dramatic, exposed bedrock geometries, brittle cliffs that crumbled away into angular shards, pencil lead thin.The morning was just ending as Mr. Dalton returned to Old Lady Murray’s cottage. He stood for a long time and watched as she teetered forward and back and said nothing. Just a mutual watching. He was struck by the way she held the swaddled object to her chest, her ironic resemblance to the Virgin Mary. “Well, Mrs. Murray, did Little Arlo enjoy his preserves?”“Oh yes! You should have seen him suck it all down. So quick, rabbit quick!”“I’m sure. Say, why don’t you let me hold the wee babe?”“Better to not, Mr. Dalton. He’s asleep in my arms here. Better to let a growing boy sleep, don’t you think?”Mr. Dalton climbed the first steps to the porch, leaning in close. “How about you just pull the swaddle back a bit? I’d be so pleased to have a look at him.”“Don’t come close. You’ll wake the poor thing.”There was a suggestion of embarrassment, a subtle loss of confidence appearing in the wrinkles of his forehead. “Of course, pardon me,” he said, blinking hard. “Goodbye, Mrs. Murray, and take care now. I’ll be seeing you.” Following the mountain path back towards Nimbus, Mr. Dalton crooked his neck around for one last look at the woman. He watched her release a plume of white smoke, which formed a rolling puddle of milk caught in the gentle slope of her awning. Strange mother. Blessed Mother. Recall your own mother, the lines in her face, the way her body had once seemed a landscape. Knees like mountaintops, amazed by the whiteness of the scalp where her black hair parted. Her expansive kindness, without horizon. Her resilience in the face of embarrassing, petulant torments, masculinized rage, the way she protected you with that selfsame body. A body that eroded and became wan, and then just pebbles. Just pebbles and silt. Recall how you found the stony thing that had been your mother at the kitchen table. Recall how you felt relieved.

***

After Sunday worship, during the sharing of joys and concerns, Mr. Dalton stood and reported on certain alarming developments as they pertained to the Little Arlo situation. Most congregants, those vectors of gossip, were already familiar with the story of the so-called new babe, but hearing now how the old woman still clung to the delusion, how she still cared for the mysterious swaddle of indeterminate provenance, this was certainly distressing news. Mr. Dalton listed a number of considerations, chiefly, the health threat—should the swaddle contain an animal, even the carcass of one, the widow could be at risk of injury or infection. Otherwise, say a bag of flour or object of similar inertness, she may incur emotional or spiritual harm, poor woman on the brink as it was.“What if we threw a party?” Suggested Edith Wainbridge, as she often did. If you asked Edith, a party might solve any of life’s problems. “But here, let’s throw a party to celebrate the young babe. All that drink and merrymaking, the dancing, Mrs. Murray would show us. She’d simply have to show us.”It seemed to be a good idea, a way to get many eyes on the swaddle at once. With so many well-meaning supplicants, she’d have to pass the babe around. Right away they began adorning the walls of the adjoining social hall with blue paper streamers, made last minute preparations for cold supper foods and desserts, and diluted the dregs in their liquor bottles. As for the old woman who had not stepped foot in a church since the end of the war, Mr. Dalton tasked himself with relaying the invitation. Once again, climbing the disused summit path, he found her rocking with that swaddled infant in her arms. Sun beams filtered through the trees, then the slats of the awning, then fell upon her face, where a circle of pipe smoke portrayed an almost druidic look.“Oh Arlo, won’t that be fabulous?” She said after Mr. Dalton had disappeared back over the ridgeline. “An entire party in your honor. How befitting, how deserved! My beautiful infant, my wonderful savior.” And there he was, staring at nothing in particular, sphincteric mouth clamping hard around the wooden spoon, the heap of golden apple mush.

***

It had passed well into the evening and very perceptibly the time of night when partygoers begin thinking about their own beds. Jaunty music still filled the social hall, plucked out by the fat-fingered hands of John Miller and John MacLeod, but only Edith Wainbridge, by herself, still flatfooting and stomping on the wriggling boards. The few remaining slices of cake were collapsing on the tray, and the watery liquor was very nearly finished. But still, no one had glimpsed the child, Arlo, who was completely swaddled, not a patch exposed. Nothing could breathe in a swaddle like that. There was no stink either, no reek, but a strange odor if you got close. Something botanical, almost bitter. Not entirely unpleasant.Old Lady Murray remained at the center of it all, holding court from her folding wooden chair, humored through the night by the masses. She sat and told meandering, nothing stories that rushed apart and broke, tumbled over cliffs, formed logic eddies, loops of adoration for sons whom she described with increasingly blurry distinction. And still, the kernel of her former self was present tonight, present for the first time in years. That self-sacrificing woman, teacher of a one-room schoolhouse, mother for many. Mrs. Murray, who nourished her students with stories of a world which would never be theirs. One of great kings and prophets, mathematicians, inventors. Students, who would know only the lives of soldiers, the labor of serfs. Where there were gaps in her droning recollection, partygoers took turns descending upon the old woman, asking to hold the babe, to at least have a glimpse beneath the swaddle. “Better to not.” This was her refrain, without variation. Better for his face to be hers alone. His strange features, his blue flesh. To hold his writhing body, to caress his jawless chin, the undulations of the muscles beneath. Gravel through a hopper, a meager but steady stream of attendees bade farewell and departed, hiding their frustration. Mr. Dalton paced. He noticed the spiral of the party, the unspoken, shared desire to end the night. He held onto one final gambit. It had occurred to him days ago, a means to retrieve Little Arlo, to detain and inspect the swaddled object. But a cruel means. Or at least the aesthetic of cruelty, but beneath that it was genuine, kind-hearted concern. Her wellbeing at the forefront of all things. Yes, this was Mr. Dalton’s intention, the old woman’s wellbeing. Good intentions and, in the end, a good outcome. He was counting on a good outcome. Concern for the old woman’s wellbeing. Genuine, real concern. And curiosity? The desire to know? To see? Admit it, how often you think about her all alone in that sad cottage, just memories, and cloying dreams. Phantoms are real in a place like that. You know all about phantoms, don’t you? Recall your own mother, the whispers in the wind that you can still hear. Didn’t you let your own mother down? The surrogate whom you call Old Lady Murray, the care-drive of a son transposed. To help her. To bring her back. To gawk. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You voyeur, you pervert. No, no. Genuine concern. Care. Righteous intent. These are the things that matter. These are the truths at the root of your being, the goodness there, the generosity and charity. These are the things you know to be true about yourself. You need these things to be true about yourself.The drunken music faltered now and went quiet. Mr. Dalton looked up. The crowd had thinned, only a handful of supplicants remaining, the most zealous disciples of morbid fascination. The candles flickering in their puddled, dwarfed stumps. The waning of the grey light filtering through thick window glass and the weakening definition of the clouds beyond, which had become a single, soft sheet. And Old Lady Murray, clearly on her way out, moving across the boards towards him, curtsying to the well-wishers as she went. “Mr. Dalton, I think it’s about time for me to be headed home. It’s Little Arlo, you see, the babe needs his rest. And I’m feeling a bit tired myself, to tell the truth.”“I see. Well, come then, let’s walk you back.”“Thank you, but there’s no need. We can manage.”“I insist, allow me to walk you.”“Little Arlo and I can get by on our own. Isn’t that right, wee one?”“Ah, but please just wait a second,” Mr. Dalton said. “I was thinking about the war, you see, remember the war? Yes, yes, of course. See, it just occurred to me, it just hit me suddenly, you see—and I hadn’t realized it when you asked before, all those years ago—but actually, I woke up this morning with the pang of a memory that, yes—yes, I did see your boys. I did know them. We were comrades, don’t you see?”“My boys?”“Yes, I remember them, three of them, yes? I remember that they always asked after their mother. They worried about you, Mrs. Murray, and they always said how lucky they were to be your sons.”“Oh—”“And they asked me to take care of her, should anything happen to them. And something did happen to them, didn’t it? To each of them.”“Oh, my boys. My boys—” Old Lady Murray swayed and gazed miles away, out beyond the plastered walls of the social hall. Out to where her boys might be. Three of them. She saw them face down in the mud, no bubbles blown into opaque, grey puddles. No more holding them, no more feeling the weight of their heads in her lap, comforting them on a journey to a place that did not exist. I cannot hold you. I cannot throw a party—no parties for you, ever. No weddings. Boys in their blue uniforms with shining brass buttons, their eyes which had once been the eyes of children. To hold your heads, to feel the weight of you, to see your faces again. Never. Not since their farewell waves from half-opened train car windows. Not since the plumes of black smoke, white steam shooting geyser-like from heavy, sooty locomotive wheels. The cold, awesome machinery that rotated them around and around again.The old woman took on a look of syncope and crumpled into a nearby chair, still holding Little Arlo, pulling the swaddled infant inwards. The few remaining partygoers fluttered paper fans in her face, held tins of diluted whiskey to her lips. “Oh, pass me the child,” said Edith Wainbridge, leaning in beside her. “Give Little Arlo to me, Mrs. Murray, before you drop him.” Her aching arms suddenly unburdened, the swaddled object lifted up out her lap, empty fingers curling around nothing, pale eyes held shut, wet-lidded.Edith brought the bundle up into her own chest and was surprised by the heft of the thing. Certainly not just a roll of fabric. Too heavy, it seemed, for even an opossum. She felt a definitive movement within the swaddle, a subtle throb and an occasional twitch. There was something alive in here. The remaining partygoers closed in around her, many hands outstretched, many eyes wide and searching. It struck Edith now, a stab of frightening consideration, that this may indeed be a child. And then, with haunting clarity, she noticed that she was rocking the swaddle, gently bouncing it against her clavicle. Mr. Dalton met her confused, startled eyes and held his arms out, as if the child were the sphere of Atlas, a titanic burden which he would accept without complaint. She passed—nearly tossed—the babe to him and then took a seat beside Old Lady Murray, almost as pale herself now. The onlookers shifted their focus to Mr. Dalton as he unwrapped the quilted pupa. How strange to peel back so many layers and then to keep going, the fabric growing damper, more yellowed as he approached its center. And then that smell, at once acrid and appealing, it caused a tingling in his sinuses.Outside, the early evening became dusk. Crepuscular animals stirred in the forested valleys below. But up here on the bald mountain carved up like a rotten molar, up here it was stone silent. Up here, twilight seemed to last for hours—darker than midnight, when the moon casts its image upon all things. Up here, where there was no shade. A century from now, dark nights would be rarer still, but by then, Nimbus would be a ghost. Its buildings devoured by the first pioneer species of ecological succession. The families who had nested in its once lamp-lit homes, long since dispersed and integrated into the larger cities of the region: Charleston, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Huntington, Cincinnati. The last few layers of swaddling were oil-slick and stuck to themselves, audibly peeling away from the surface beneath. Mr. Dalton was the first to see the babe, its bald, blue head, elongate and ambiguous. The sphincter of its mouth, clenching and unclenching. Its huge, dark eyes that reflected but did not blink. And arms, delicate arms. A number of thin arms, but which number? More than two. They twisted and reached, one of them winding around Mr. Dalton’s wrist, an immense strength apparent despite how slender, how gentle. “My Lord! Wha—God, what is it?”He dropped the thing to the floor with a wet thud, where it made the first sound anyone had heard from it. A sound like a puppy’s sigh, more a whimper than a whine. And then silence again. Deep silence. The small crowd of supplicants staring dumb-eyed, something breaking within each of them, something long fermenting at the center of it all, suppressed by the decades of politeness and boredom. They shrieked and pointed, some of them fainting. It was in this commotion that Old Lady Murray awoke, slowly habituating to consciousness, and then upon seeing her child on the ground, leaped up with a throaty, glottal yelp. A mother’s yelp. She dove forward and hefted the child over her shoulder, bounding out into the twilight, heavy double doors swinging shut behind her. Then just the crowd standing baffled, lingering with confused, dumb eyes, the terror of a deer on the interstate. Some of them mumbling, some of them shutting their eyes and shaking their heads.What words are there to describe that which cannot exist? Mr. Dalton was the first to capture and transform the horror—the first to reach desperately for rage. For violence.  “Get it! Devil! Get—God, stop!” his voice buzzed in a new, tinny register. “Go get her! Stop her! Devil!” He pushed through the herd and pulled an oil lamp from the wall, sprinting out after the old woman, the others following quickly behind. They armed themselves however they could, cutlery, long-handled collection baskets, heavy-bound hymnals, bottles, their own pocketknives. They ran out into the dusty streets after the old woman. Only Edith Wainbridge remained, locked to her seat.

***

Follow her past the tavern and up the slope of the bald summit. The vision-fade of twilight, the lactic burn, the stiff and frightening arthritic pangs. Little Arlo clings to her now, blank eyes full of knowing, mouth opening and closing in mollusk fashion. “Hold onto me child, you won’t be harmed. I will not let them. Lord knows they will not lay a finger upon you.” And the jeering mob closing in behind, the cloud churning up beneath their footfalls, their mean noises. “Hold on, Little Arlo, cling tight to Momma,” her words spitting out between laborious pants. “They are the devils and you, an angel.” She rushes past her cottage and continues to the other side of the summit, where she hears faint bells ringing out in the gloaming. A soft chime and deeper, brassy harmonies.The mob gains and corners her against the mountain’s far-facing flank, just the steep valley beneath. They form a wide line and choke in, no choice for her but to descend the harsh slope. She has trouble with the steepness of it, the breakaway shale beneath her feet. Her gown catches on a pathetic hemlock fledgling and she comes down hard on her knees, cries out, but does not drop Little Arlo. She does not even flinch to catch herself, arms in a firm cradle as she tumbles end-over-end, rolling down the talus until she crashes against a sandstone boulder. A phosphene flash in her vision as something—many somethings—shatter within. The feeling of warmth beneath skin. “Help her!” Shouts Mr. Dalton, “Get away from it!” The mob clamors down the slope, shards of loose stone bunching up in mounds beneath their feet, the talus spilling down and burying her bloodied legs, pebbles bouncing up into her face. And all through the hurt, the old woman smiles at her child. Little Arlo, still unharmed. Little Arlo, still protected. “Take me to them, Little Arlo. Take me away, please, you angel, you divine thing. If my boys are somewhere, please take me to them. Please, you’ve been there, you’ve seen them, I can tell by the look in your eye. If they are nowhere, I’d rather be nowhere. But they are somewhere, aren’t they? What place is it? Tell me, is it the place where you’re from? I’m not your mother, I know that. I’m not your mother, but I could be. I could show you what it is to have a mother, to have brothers, to be held, to be worried. Please. I’m ready now.”The child does not nod, but closes his eyes, becomes a mess of limbs that stretch out and wrap themselves around the woman. Her arms and legs now bound in blue helixes. The crowd watching in gape-mouthed horror as the child encompasses and subsumes her. Kudzu on a maple tree, the union of two beings. The old woman then rises to her feet as Little Arlo stands up on her behalf, walks for her, moves each of her limbs in his own. He turns her around and sprints down the slope at a full gallop.“My God!” cries Mr. Dalton. “My Lord, God Almighty!” He has no other language for this. His ears ring, a tightness at the base of his neck, blood rushing past his temples. He’s heard stories from the war, strange lights in the night, wounded bodies that emit a green glow and are healed, but nothing like this. His head pounds and his body trembles, shaking without his permission—an angry body with a frothing mouth—the reptile inside him cursing and yelling, grieving for itself. And beneath it all, genuine concern. Genuine guilt. An expanding thought loop that would not cease until his death three years later. The distinctions of memory collapsing, subjects losing their referents. There is a gestalt that precipitates from this soup of recollection: the woman who raised him, the woman who taught him, the woman who bore God. His mouth hangs open as he cries out, “Mother!” “Little Arlo,” says Old Lady Murray, her voice weak now. “I’m ready,” and then her body goes limp inside his. She is carried down the mountain at panicked speeds, eyes closed, smiling, listening to the bells that are so much louder now. The same bells she has heard each night for the last forty years, but never so loud, never so clear as this. And something else, too, something so quiet, interpolated over the percussion. Something like the voices of young men. No words. Only meaning. Little Arlo carries the old woman into a small cave, nestled beneath a curving, gable-like syncline that is etched with glimmering veins of quartzite. Nobody watching as mother and child disappear into the mouth of the Earth. Then there is a sharp green flash and a sound like thunder. Stones break and crash down, burying the entrance. No more cave, no trace ever found.

***

Unseen by anyone out in the deep night, out in the forested isolates that pen the river in, there is a heap of refuse where the waters meet a bend and regurgitate their burden. Here, an opossum searches for her meal. It is bleak, hard winter, when the insects are buried, and berries do not fruit. She eats garbage, bones not stripped of their flesh, whatever smaller creatures have congregated here for the same purpose. She must eat well tonight. Her pouch drags against the ground, sagging under the weight of four babes. She must eat well.
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THE GROTTO by Jim Ruland

July 4, 2025

I

Seamus receives a key

“You’re in luck,” the innkeeper said. “The Grotto is available.”The innkeeper was a large man who wore suspenders, wire-rimmed glasses, and a fisherman’s cap. He looked like a builder of model ships. Seamus smiled and waited for the innkeeper to continue.“The Grotto is our most popular room. Usually booked months in advance. We had a cancellation, so it’s yours—if you want it.” “I’ll take it,” Seamus said. “What brings you to the Seaside Inn?” the man asked as Seamus filled out the registration papers. “I was in the city for a conference and decided to stay for a few days.” Seamus felt a tickle in his nose. He hoped there wasn’t a cat on the premises. “Wonderful,” the innkeeper said. “You’ll find plenty of peace and quiet here—if that’s what you’re looking for…” “Yes, yes, peace and quiet,” Seamus felt compelled to respond. “A word to the wise,” the innkeeper said as he handed over the key, an actual key with a bow in the shape of a skull, “if you decide to go exploring, stick to the path. We wouldn’t want you to fall into the sea!” “No,” Seamus said. “We wouldn’t want that.” “Let me know if you run into any trouble in The Grotto!” Seamus was a quiet man who didn’t like to be fussed over. He imagined that all weekend long he was going to have to assure the innkeeper how happy he was with his room. Seamus trudged up the narrow staircase with his suitcase, angling it to avoid banging into the bannister. Although it looked like a grand old house from the outside, there were only two rooms on the second floor. The words THE GROTTO had been painted on the door at the top of the landing. With something like foreboding, Seamus inserted the key and opened the door.  

II

Seamus contemplates a mural

It was otherwise a simple room. A bed and a dresser with a bench beneath the window. What made the room remarkable was the mural that covered all four walls and gave Seamus the impression of being in a cave. There were stalagmites painted on the baseboards and stalactites descended from the crown molding. Rock formations spread outward onto the adjoining walls. Crystals sprouted in all shapes and sizes. When Seamus closed the door it all but disappeared into the wall. Seamus was not adverse to close spaces. He lived in a small shoebox of an apartment and he had always made do with cramped quarters. He was a writer after all. He didn’t need a lot of space. All he required was his imagination.But the composition of the mural irked him. Lichen grew on the rocks, the walls seemed to gleam with condensation, and rows of bats hung from the uppermost reaches of the cavern. Everywhere he looked there was more information to absorb. His first instinct was to leave the room and go for a long walk along the cliffs, drink in the wind blowing over the waves, but Seamus was tired and hungry and soon it would be dark. He had spent the week walking all over the convention center. He had trod high-traffic carpet with baffling patterns, looking for conference rooms without numbers in hallways without names. He used to like these affairs, looked forward to them even, but each year fewer of his friends and acquaintances attended, and those that did seemed a little older, the disappointment in their faces more pronounced. Then there were the people he used to know who went out of their way to avoid him, as if the stink of his failure was contagious. Seamus kicked off his shoes, opened a granola bar (they were giving them away at the conference; he’d taken seven of them) and chewed without pleasure the dry oats and chalky fruit while staring at a section of the mural that depicted a school of black fish in a dark pool until he swore he saw one of them move.  

III

Seamus makes a discovery

Seamus woke in the middle of the night. He thought he heard a noise, a faint droning sound, and now he couldn’t get back to sleep. An incident at the conference earlier that week had been troubling Seamus, and apparently it wasn’t done with him.He’d been invited to sit on a panel called “Exploring the Edge.” The other two writers on the panel were a novelist named S.W. Sidewinder who wrote Westerns set in deep space, and Angela Danbury, a former adult film actress who’d written a series of erotic detective thrillers. Unfortunately, Danbury, whose books were wildly popular, had to cancel, and the panel was moved to a smaller room. This struck Seamus as reasonable until the young man who’d been assigned as his minder led Seamus and Sidewinder to the lobby where a shuttle waited to take them to a satellite location. “It’s not far,” the minder assured them. “This is for your comfort.”“This is a load of horse shit,” Sidewinder said. Sidewinder was right. The satellite location turned out to be a branch of the local library that had stayed open to host the event. Sidewinder became agitated when he was told the box of books he’d shipped hadn’t arrived and he stormed off in a huff. Seamus set out a small selection of his own books that he’d brought with him. Some of them were quite old and showed wear and tear from having been carted around the country, from conference to conference. In lieu of a discussion—since there were no other panelists—he read a short story from his most recent collection. No one attended the reading, but afterward, one of the ladies who worked at the library told him how much she liked the story. She asked him if he had a card. He didn’t, so he simply handed her the book, which embarrassed them both. Outside, there was no sign of his minder, just the driver, who urged him to hurry aboard because he had another run to make. On the way back to the hotel, Seamus thought of all the things he’d say to the conference administrators, but he was thunderstruck with shame over the whole sad affair and he spent the remainder of the evening sitting in his room. . Whether it was this memory or something else that stirred him he couldn’t say, but now Seamus was wide awake with little hope of going back to sleep. There it was again, the unusual noise that had roused him, only this time it seemed to be coming from underneath the bed. Seamus slowly swung his legs around and slid his feet into his slippers, which he always brought with him when he traveled. He went to the door and flipped the switch. The lights came on and the mural rose up out of the gloom—he’d forgotten all about it. He got down on all fours and looked under the bed. A white cat with icy blue eyes peered at him from a rug underneath the bed. The cat regarded him with the impertinent expression of a rich old woman who’d been caught dozing during a play. Seamus stood and opened the door. The cat stuck its head out, slowly crossed the room, and went out on to the landing. Seamus shut the door, turned off the light, and climbed back into bed. Well, that’s one mystery solved, but as soon as that thought left his head another took its place: Why was there a rug underneath the bed?  

IV

Seamus solves a mystery

The rug was small, but elaborate. If Seamus stretched out his arm, he could just barely reach its tasseled edge with the tips of his fingers. He thrust his arm under the bed until his thumb grazed the carpet and he yanked it like a stage magician performing a trick. The carpet came away but what it revealed was difficult to say. The room was just too dark.Seamus was not a large man, nor was he particularly strong, but once he set his mind to something he was determined to see it through to the end. There had been times in his life when this imperative had felt like a curse. Some mistook his commitment as bullheadedness or even a deficiency of intelligence, but the years had taught him this quality might very well be his best attribute. If he said he would do something, whether it was writing a book no one wanted, or giving a reading no one attended, he did it. No one could say Seamus had broken his word.The bed lifted easily, and before he could give much thought to what he was doing he swung the foot of the bed toward the window. The headboard protested with a squeak. There was a groove in the floorboards where the bed had been and when he ran his hands along the seam he found a place where he could grab hold of the trapdoor—for that’s what it was—and give it a quick tug. The trapdoor swung open. Seamus felt a gust of cool air, invigorating and inviting. The opening revealed a tunnel that was large enough to pass through and as soon as Seamus saw the iron ladder bolted to the stone, he knew he was going down. But that was crazy. He couldn’t go exploring secret tunnels in the middle of the night. Who did he think he was? Nancy Drew? Seamus pulled open a drawer in the nightstand and grabbed a flashlight, as if he had known it would be there. The torch felt good in his hand, solid and cool to the touch, and when he clicked the switch it sent a strong beam  across the room, illuminating the mouth of the tunnel at his feet like a spotlight.  

V

Seamus impersonates a childhood hero

The tunnel was like a well, a hole in the earth that shot straight down, a tower pulled inside out. He focused on lowering his body into the hole one rung at a time. He didn’t look down and he didn’t look up. He’d made up his mind to see where the tunnel took him. The ladder was in excellent condition, especially considering that his room was on the second floor. How did that work exactly? Was there a tube between the walls that allowed him to bypass the rest of the house somehow? Seamus didn’t know, but he saw no reason why he should stop, so down he went. The farther he descended, the stronger the scent of the ocean became. He thought he could hear wave noise and imagined he was tunneling into the cliffs that overlooked the sea. At any moment he expected to plunge his feet into an icy pool of seawater, but after several minutes of steady climbing he reached the bottom. He took the flashlight out of his pocket and shined the light. A single passageway led away from the bottom of the ladder in what he guessed was the direction of the sea. Seamus set off at once. The tunnel was narrow and curved this way and that so that he couldn’t gauge how far he had to travel to reach the end. Seamus felt certain it would be a short walk. With each step the sound of the ocean grew louder as the waves smashed on the rocks. Underneath all that noise was another sound, faint yet persistent, a droning that might be the wind whistling through these chambers of the cliff like blood moving through a body. He imagined a large undersea cave with pools of crystal clear water and chandeliers of gypsum that hung down from above. That must be why his room was called The Grotto, he reasoned. As above, so below. Seamus hurried along, pleased with where his curiosity had taken him and thrilled to discover what was around the next curve of the tunnel.When he rounded the corner, the tunnel abruptly came to an end. It wasn’t blocked off or closed up. It simply stopped. It looked to Seamus as if whoever had dug the tunnel had simply abandoned the job and gone no farther.The rough stone registered as a taunt. He wasn’t heartbroken exactly, but he was greatly disappointed. He’d tricked himself into thinking he was on a grand adventure and he’d stumbled into a dead end. How was that any different from the rest of his life?  

Interlude

“Your cat was in my room last night,” Seamus said to the innkeeper the following morning as he checked out of the inn a few days earlier than planned. After his disappointment in the tunnel, he’d decided to go home.“Cat?” the innkeeper asked. “Yes, white with—”“We don’t have a cat,” the innkeeper interrupted, looking down his nose and over the rim of his glasses. He seemed annoyed that Seamus was cutting his trip short. Seamus decided not to bring up the matter of the tunnel when he turned in his key. 

VI

Seamus receives an unexpected invitation

A week after the conference, Seamus received an email from Belinda Barnes, the vice president of a booksellers’ organization. She wanted Seamus to know that she’d read his most recent book and loved it. Would he be interested in attending a luncheon the following month? In subsequent emails Ms. Barnes explained that it was a showcase for hidden gems—books that didn’t get a lot of attention, or the right attention when they were released, despite their considerable merit. They’d have plenty of copies of his books to sign and they’d pay for his travel and accommodations. It turned out that Ms. Barnes had seen him read at the conference. In fact, she was the lady at the library to whom Seamus had given a book. She confessed that she’d been profoundly moved by his short story and couldn’t get it out of her mind. She recounted to him how the story reminded her of a dream she’d had as a little girl, a dream she’d thought about often but couldn’t recall exactly, its meaning graspable but just out of reach. Seamus’s story, she admitted, inhabited her imagination in much the same way.Seamus accepted the invitation. Even if the event fell through, as these things often did, it felt nice to be appreciated. Ms. Barnes, however, was true to her word and the luncheon was a success. The house was packed and he signed so many books he used up all the ink in his pen. Ms. Barnes introduced him to representatives from other regions who wanted Seamus to read at their luncheons, dinners, and galas. The next morning, an agent called offering to represent him. Then another the following afternoon, and two more the day after that. This is strange, Seamus thought, but he met with the agents and ate shrimp cocktail every day for a week. One of the agents, a young woman who was an acquaintance of Ms. Barnes, had read many of his books, including some that were long out of print. She laid out a plan for reacquiring the rights to his work and reissuing them as a series.Seamus gave her the green light and it was done. His books appeared in actual bookstores. He had money in his bank account again. He flew in airplanes. He bought new shoes. Once a month he allowed himself to shop at the expensive new grocery store down the block instead of taking the bus to the market he’d been going to all his life. When his books came out, they were written about in magazines and newspapers and he received charming letters from readers all over the world. After all these years of eking out an existence as an underground writer, his stories had finally found their audience—although it felt like the other way around. His newfound fame, such as it was, introduced a host of new headaches that revolved around trying to be in as many places in as little time as possible, but even that wasn’t entirely awful. People were mostly nice and his fellow travelers told him interesting stories. The odd rude flight attendant or indifferent concierge reassured Seamus it wasn’t all a wonderful dream.  

VII

Success at last

A few years later, Seamus found himself back in the city on the coast where the conference that changed his life had been held. He was wrapping up a multi-city book tour for a new collection of stories. When his publicist presented the itinerary, Seamus requested an extra day at the end of the tour to rest up and he impulsively booked a night in The Grotto at the Seaside Inn. He hadn’t given the inn much thought during the tour, but now it was all he could think about. His career had undergone such a swift and sudden change that he’d scarcely had time to reflect on how unusual that night in The Grotto had been, creeping along the secret subterranean passage like a detective in an adventure book. Had that actually happened? Seamus was certain it had. He recalled the way the stone looked damp in the glare of the electric light but when he brushed his fingers against the rough-hewn rock it was cold and dry. The rich smell of the tunnel was both bracing and fecund, an ancient reminder of the things that stirred in the briny deep. And there was that sound, mechanical in its persistence, but when he remembered his room at the inn was located on the second floor, he doubted himself all over again.  

VIII

Trouble in the grotto

After he checked into his room, Seamus peered under the bed: the cat was gone, but the rug was still there. As he moved the bed and opened the trapdoor, all his doubts deserted him. He grabbed the flashlight from the drawer and checked to see if it worked. He breathed in the familiar scent of the ocean and scampered down the ladder with the joy of a boy returning to a childhood haunt after a long time away. Seamus didn’t understand this compulsion to descend into the tunnel again, but he’d learned long ago to trust his instruments, and down he went.At the bottom of the ladder, Seamus clicked on the light and shined it down the passageway. Everything was exactly the way he remembered it. The pungent sea air, the rumble of the waves, the cold rough stone—it all filled him with happiness—but after walking for several minutes the flashlight flickered and so did his confidence. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Shouldn’t he have reached the end of the tunnel by now? The air seemed colder and the distant rumble was now a roar. The walls were damp to the touch and when he shined the light at his feet he discovered he was standing in a shallow puddle. Had the tunnel lengthened in his absence? The tunnel took a sharp turn. As he went around the bend he beheld a widening of the shaft and realized he was standing in the mouth of a vast cave. The mural in his room was an exact replica of the cavern. The sound of bats and birds wheeling overhead filled the air and water trickled from a dozen hidden places. Great mounds of rock rose from the water and columns of stone dripped from the upper vaults. In some places, the two came together, dividing the cave into compartments. Most of what he could see of the grotto’s floor was covered in pools of clear water inhabited by tiny black fish.On the other side of the cavern walls the ocean thundered and he could detect a faint droning. Seamus shined the light around but he couldn’t locate the source of the sound. Seamus thought he caught a flicker of movement in the center of the grotto where a formation resembled a creature that crouched like a cat, but as he moved closer he realized it was just a rock, and the sound that blended into the background and sat in the forefront of his mind went up the slightest sliver of an octave. Seamus turned around but he could no longer discern the entrance to the tunnel. The droning grew louder, a difference so subtle he could almost talk himself into believing he was imagining it. Seawater lapped at his feet and the white foam filled his shoes as the water in the grotto began to rise. He frantically searched the folds in the rock for the entrance to the tunnel but it simply wasn’t there, like a riddle he couldn’t solve. The water rose past his knees and then his waist, and the cold water dispelled the faint hope that he was dreaming, that this was all a product of his imagination.Seamus thought how different his life had been the last time he ventured down the tunnel and how much better it was now. What if all the success he’d enjoyed since then wasn’t luck that had transformed his old life but a different life that he’d somehow stumbled into? What if there wasn’t a single tunnel beneath the Seaside Inn but many and each of them led to an alternate future? Seamus felt as though he’d wandered into one of his stories, and if that was the case he knew without having to be told that everything would be different when he went back to his room because he wouldn’t be returning to his new life, the life he’d always wanted, but venturing into an altogether different future.The water was at his neck now and lifted him off his feet. The grotto filled with wave noise and sea spray and the loud booming of unseen forces. As he slipped beneath the waves the droning stopped as if a great machine had been switched off.
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THE LAST GREAT NORTH AMERICAN HOCKEY TEAM by Eric Subpar

July 2, 2025
I awake on a Saturday. It is my birthday. All my friends are here. My wife is telling me about the preseason. Kevin is still coming. Don't blow out the candles until Kevin arrives. I won't, dear. Her father tells me about the Los Angeles Kings. I unwrap a Los Angeles Kings jersey. I’m a fan of the L.A Kings. My son asks if we can throw the puck around a bit outside after the party. That'd be great, son. My wife's father asks me about the roster. Think we got a shot this year? That rookie's a phenom. Sure as hell is. The candles burn, and Kevin arrives. Hello. My wife embraces Kevin. My son embraces Kevin. I embrace Kevin. I am jealous of Kevin. His ability to enter a room. He tells me to make a wish and I make a wish and I blow out the candles. Tell us what you wished for, Dad! Can't or it won't come true. We all laugh. I bet you wished for something like this. Kevin hands me a present. No bigger than my hand. I open the present. Season tickets for the Los Angeles Kings. For you and the whole family, Kevin says. My wish has come true. I wake up on the first day of the season. Time for the hockey game. I pull on my gift jersey. I help my son into his jersey. My wife puts on a Kings sweater. It fits tightly. I drive to the hockey game. My son sings the Canadian National Anthem. Do you think the Kings got a shot this year? We got a rookie. Do you think the other teams think their rookie is a real phenom? I try not to think about it. But it's our rookie who is a real phenom. First class potential, right? Right, son. I feel bad for the other teams. Me too.Great seats. Kevin spared no expense. He's quite a friend, isn't he? The best. Right near the penalty box. But our guys won't spend too much time there. Not our guys. During the American anthem, the players of the Los Angeles Kings and the players of the away team stand at attention. This is the first time I lay eyes on the rookie. His hair is styled in a rolling black mullet. He has a thick beard. His smile lights up a room. He has bright green tape on his stick. Hank Bang. Number 11. That's the rookie. I see someone in the crowd holding up a sign, Will You Marry Me, Hank?! A bit premature, I think. But I don't tell anyone. The puck is dropped. The Los Angeles Kings are dressed in all black uniforms. The other team in white. Nobody scores across the first couple of lines, but their play is exhilarating. Hypnotic. As though sourced from a dream. I smile. I bang on the glass with my fists. My son waves an inflatable noise maker and bashes it against another inflatable noise maker. Then Bang's line enters the ice. The rookie on the fourth line. Right Wing. The Center passes the puck along the edge of the ice, but Bang is laid out by the opposing Defense Man. Slow to get up. Following the action, Bang returns a hellish hit upon the opposing Center cutting through the middle. The Defense Man, the Bruiser throws down his gloves. Bang follows suit and the two tussle, before Bang unceremoniously levels his fist across the Bruiser's jaw and sends him to the ice. I howl in delight. Bang is ushered to the penalty box and I've never felt closer to God. After his five penalty minutes are up, the game is all Hank Bang, laying hits and scoring goals. Ending his first NHL game with eight points. A rookie record. The Los Angeles Kings Have Found Their Star all the papers say. On my drive home, I am ecstatic. Excitement pulses through me like electricity. I sense my son loves me more. So does my wife. Revelatory. This is one of the greatest days of my life, and I can't wait for the next game, my fingers fidgeting over the pages of the book I read to my son just before bed. With such a tremendous initial outing, I expect even better from the rookie phenom as his skills grow. The sky is the limit. First Class potential.The days fly by. I again awaken on game day, buzzing with excitement. I put on my jersey. I help my son. My wife wears her sweater. We drive. They wear their black jerseys again. The other team in whites, but different whites, or perhaps the same whites with different accent colors. The puck is dropped and our team scores ten goals to the opposing team’s two and they win another one. Two and Oh. Helluva a start to the season. Exhilarating. Bang is awarded First Star again. He records his first hat trick. And is already appearing in the radio sports chatter for the Calder Trophy, the award awarded to the most phenomenal rookie each year. A bit premature, wouldn't you say? I don't know, my wife answers. Kevin seems to think he has a shot. When did you see Kevin? The day after the last game. After work. I told you. I don't remember, I say. Well, it was a busy week. I carry my son's sleeping body in from the car. Poor guy. Tuckered out.By the end of the first month of the season, Hank Bang is a front runner for the Calder. Bang is also starting Right Wing for the Los Angeles Kings, who have yet to record a loss. My team is like an extension of me. They are winning. I am happy. I couldn't be happier, in fact. When the zamboni runs its circles, I try to think of what could make me happier, and that makes me sad, but then my son arrives with the popcorn and the Los Angeles Kings return to the ice to lay down another thrashing.For weeks, the same. The Los Angeles Kings in their black uniforms. The other team in their uniforms. A walloping ensues. Hank Bang leads the league in minutes played, goals, assists, penalties, plus/minus, hits, penalty minutes, short handed goals, power play goals, hat tricks, fights, and blocked shots. He's a real phenom for sure, dad. Sure is, son. Say where'd your Mom run off to? Don't you remember, Dad? She had her dinner tonight with Kevin. Oh yes. He's a real pal. The best a dad could have, ain't that right? Think they'll win tonight, son? If the Goalie stays true. Can't outscore Bang though. On the car ride home, I listen to sports radio. Hank Bang is a generational talent, they say. A bit premature, I tell my son but my son is asleep. He should win the Calder.  At home, my wife isn’t there. Dinner must have gone late with Kevin. He’s a real talker. And a hell of a listener to boot. I tuck my son into his bed. I ask if he wants me to read to him but he shakes his head no. And before I know it, it is already the NHL playoffs. The Los Angeles Kings exited the regular season without a single loss. Top of their division. Top of the league. Eighty-Two and Oh. Forty-one of those wins, I was present for. Never missed a single home game. The team has broken every statistical team record, while Hank Bang has broken every individual record. Two hundred more goals than the previous record. A plus/minus above 500. I am so proud of him. I wear his jersey to every game. I feel instrumental to his success. My jersey makes a contribution. I turn to ask my son if he thinks they will win the Stanley Cup, but his seat is empty. Oh, that’s correct. He didn't come with me to the game. He must have had a prior engagement. Season tickets are a full-time commitment. Not for the faint of heart. Not everyone can love the Los Angeles Kings like I love the Los Angeles Kings. Not everyone can love Hank Bang.The Los Angeles Kings have won their first playoff game. A real shellackin', sports radio called it. I drive home faster than the speed limit to share with my family. The excitement. But my family is not home. My family hasn't been home since I left for the game. When was the last time they were? They’re missing an all-time season. Sports radio says the playoffs are another beast entirely, but the Los Angeles Kings beat their opponent handedly. Perhaps, this round's opponent just isn’t up to snuff. But there must be a challenging opponent coming up, right? The beast awaits. I begin to wonder what the other playoff rounds look like. I turn on the tv. It is a game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning players are dressed all in white. The same uniforms he'd seen them play in, but the Montreal Canadiens, to my shock, are not wearing their usual white uniforms with red and blue flourishes, but instead their entire uniforms are made up of that garish red and blue. It hurts my eyes to see. I watch the game, nonetheless. The Montreal Canadiens’ Center scores a goal. The camera zooms around the arena and settles on a trio of celebrating fans. They look strangely familiar, and as I stare longer at the family, I recognize them to be my son, my wife, and Kevin. All three in garish red Canadiens gear. I am upset. I go to bed. The Los Angeles Kings have made it to the Stanley Cup. I admit I was doubtful, but I knew we had a phenom for a rookie. And Hank Bang is absolutely that. The other team in the Finals are the Montreal Canadiens. I hope to see my family attend the game. But they only attend the home games when their team wears that red and blue. I almost vomit. But the Montreal Canadiens aren't a good team. Same as the other teams. No match for the Los Angeles Kings. No match for Hank Bang. The Los Angeles Kings win the first three games of the series by a wide margin, but the final game of the season is in Montreal. I watch the game on TV. Sure enough, my wife and my son and Kevin are at the game. My son in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My wife in a Montreal Canadiens sweater. Kevin in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My son banging red and blue inflatable noise makers. How can they not see that it is in fact the Los Angeles Kings that is the greatest North American hockey team of all time? How can they smile and laugh rooting for the Montreal Canadiens when the Los Angeles Kings will clearly win the game? A travesty. I feel good watching the Los Angeles Kings demolish the Montreal Canadiens. The Kings, led by Hank Bang slice agile lines across the ice, lay a succession of glass-rattling hits along the boards, and unleash a firestorm of shots upon the opposing goalie. Pure domination. Never even close. And as the players celebrate, I look in the crowd for my wife and my son. I want to see the distraught look on their faces. A look they never would have had if they’d stayed loyal to the Los Angeles Kings. But they aren't present. They must have driven to their home already. A different home than the one I sit in, watching the game on the television. Still, I await their arrival. Perhaps, now that the season is over, I can figure out where it all went wrong. But when I check the mailbox, I find an envelope from Kevin. Inside are tickets to the upcoming season of Los Angeles Kings hockey. Another season. I can't imagine what improvements the rookie phenom will make in his sophomore season. How much better could it get?
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A LIVING SOMETHING by David Nutt

June 30, 2025
My wife looms at the ledge of the bed. The cold meat of my brain, freezer-burned with slumber, is still in defrost mode. Meanwhile, my wife has already risen, showered, powdered, dressed, breakfasted, read the morning news, cried about the morning news, genuflected and regurgitated, and undressed again. Now she stands naked in the middle of the room, like an unflappable art-class model, waiting for her indolent husband to get up and do something meaningful, and maybe felonious, with his life. I can’t fake it anymore. I get up and go to the closet, where we keep the new suit piled atop the canoe cushions we used at four months, the pillows we passed off as five.I try to chirp the theme music from some public-television programming—the kind of children’s show that takes place in a psychotropically colorful wonderland populated by ragged hand-puppets and a smattering of adult actors, always in supporting roles, who teach sensible, low-impact morality lessons while struggling to beat back the melancholy tide of time. I whistle three trilling notes. My wife interrupts me with a dejected sigh of her own and reaches ceilingward. “Just strap the fucking thing on,” she says.I glide the foam mold over her upper body, negotiating its blunt juts and bony angles, her knuckled spine, the curled shrimp of her ribcage. She resembles a famished insect sliding into its shell. Sure, she could do it herself, but it’s the collaboration she needs. A co-conspirator. Someone to share the secret and blame, and maybe, too, some kind of vestigial love. I double-knot the flesh-colored straps and tuck the washing-instructions tag inside the hollow bowl of her armpit. “How do I look?” she asks, draping a floral-print maternity shroud atop the big belly. The shroud is sized extra-large to create a bit of ambiguity about the duration.“Like six months,” I say, a little too hesitantly.My wife fixes herself in the mirror and turns smoothly, like a showroom automobile on a rotating stage, something too glossy to believe, let alone buy. Her face empties. The lower lip starts to jiggle. “I look like I’m nine months,” she says. “I’m ready to rupture.” Me, I am doing my usual hangdog grovel, the one look in my repertoire I do not have to falsify or embellish. “They only had the one size in stock. You still appear ravishing to poor cretins like me.”She takes my loose face in her hands and lifts it, me, to the light. Semi-sweetly, she says, “Who are you fucking kidding?”“There is literally a shell of ice around my brain. If you give me a few minutes to thaw—”“We are so hopeless,” she says.I lie: “I don’t think that at all.”She releases me but holds to her reflection, glaring hard at the boyish hips, the vitamin-deficient skinny and pall. “You’re going to be late for work.”“I’m not going to work.”“You’re still going to be late,” she says.

***

That first slothful winter: I sat in my car, the heat low, the radio off, depriving myself of the commuter life’s few amenities—in lieu of legitimate penance, I suppose—while the car sat in one undistinguished parking lot after another. I wasn’t looking very diligently. I just stared at the slabs of opaque frost my breath left on the windshield. How spectacular, the things the body did when nobody was paying attention, when nobody cared. Instead of music or talk radio, I listened to the clamor of my shivering organs and somatic departments, tabulating the chattiest offenders. Curdled fluids, tired fibers, damaged loins. All my spooky nooks were gossiping about me. I etched my initials in the frosted glass, X’d them out, then wrote different initials. When I returned home at the end of the day, my wife was on the couch, beta-testing a new breed of pout, one that combined compassionate disappointment with compassionate disgust.“What happened?” she asked. “Huh?”“You’re limping.” “My leg got crampy from sitting all day in the car.”“You were in the car? How can you get one when you’re sitting in the car?”The television was muted, flickering in the dark. I tried to flutter my eyelids to synchronize with the strobe. All any of us want, I guess, is an allegiance with something. Even something inane.“It’s like an arctic expedition out there,” I said, peeling off my itchy mittens and wool scarf and false beard. “They’re bundled up and getting pushed in strollers, or they’re leashed up and dragging their parents across the frozen tundra. I’m not fast enough to chase sled dogs. I can’t loaf around the stores like those do-gooders from the Salvation Army.”Her pout solidified, aged, fossilized. I could count the gloomy pocks and cragged ridges now imprinted across her frozen tundra. So many ancient, incredulous creases.“The office called,” she said.“What did you tell them?”“I told them there were complications. I said the doctor sent us to the hospital, and the hospital was sending us to a specialist.”“That’s smart.”“I feel like we’re the stupidest people alive.”“That, too,” I said.I left my goulashes in a puddle of muck by the door, and I joined my wife on the couch. She was watching her wildlife program again. This episode featured a pride of lions gorging on a buffet of eviscerated zebra carcasses. Black-white-red stripes striated the screen like an experimental test pattern. Our clandestine panics and emergencies seemed to be articulated so purely in the wobble. The most unnerving part was the lack of sound. All that ferocious churning, the lazy and thoughtless carnage, zero repentance, not a single groan or complaint or scream of thanks. I turned to my wife and tried to find her face in the dithering half-light. Her lips were stained brownish, as if she had been feasting on chocolate mousse. Better than the wallpaper. She was balancing a mug of hot cocoa on the stuffed koala that was bulging out of her sweatpants—the second of her stomachs. The hand towels kept slipping out.I laid a hand in her lap.“Please don’t touch me,” she said.I nodded. “Because of the complications. We’re going to see the specialist. We are living the role. Just like those TV lions with their talent agents and SAG cards and publicists.”“You should ice that leg.”“I’ve had enough ice for one day. Can I get you anything?”“Yes,” she said. “Please get off the couch.”  “What else?”“Go out.”“Where?”“Try another parking lot. Maybe an elementary school or playground or pediatrician’s office. If you stay here, we’ll never get pregnant.”

***

Springtime delivers its own silver platter of ripe disappointments. I spend my mornings loitering on a half-acre of grim, sun-scalded blacktop outside one of five Discount Utopias in the tri-county region. I avoid the popular supermarkets because their parking lots are populated by squads of embittered teenagers in dirty khakis and too-large smocks who tend the shopping-cart corrals and pretend to look competent. Discount Utopia has no such extravagance. The clientele is a mix of whiskered retirees living on fixed incomes and young unwed women who cannot possibly bear the thankless burden of motherhood alone. Best of all, management is too miserly to refurbish the outdoor sodium lamps or install security cameras. This rankles me as a citizen and potential customer, but as a needy, skulky father-to-be, I am content to exploit the lapse.I never venture into actual stores. Sadly, I no longer have the disposable income to make superficial purchases that justify my public sharking. My wife and I live off the dividends of her dead parents’ stock portfolio, which is not as robust as it used to be. I can barely afford to put gas in the car that I can barely afford to lease or insure. I’ve been on alleged paternity leave at work so long, I don’t think I have a job anymore. I also don’t think I have the chutzpah to call up my company’s HR hotline and ask if I can have my old position back, or maybe get a different position, or at least pay the office a perfunctory visit and box up my things. It’s midday. I’m hunched at my car’s front left tire, pretending to fix a flat. Occasionally I stand up and sulk around, scratching at the cheap nylon wig that hugs my head. Nobody stops for me. Nobody offers any help. Certainly no Good Samaritans with small, fledgling Samaritans in tow.After a while, I notice a bagboy with an unflattering flattop and a face of pusillanimous acne, lingering at the corner of the building. He’s sneaking a cigarette on his lunch break. I imagine this violates some stodgy corporate protocol, but I am probably not the best person to lodge a complaint with his shift supervisor. Maybe this makes us allies of a sort? Maybe not. The young guy coolly observes my helplessness charade, his lank fame leaned against the brick wall like a bracket too loosely screwed, his sloughy potato face leaking smoke. The kid’s dawdling makes me nervous, and I decide I better flee. I kick the tire a few times. I shrug like it’s no big deal. But I can’t find the keys to my car. I’ve misplaced them. When I glance up again, the kid has flicked the butt and is wiping the ash off his apron as he strolls over. He wants to give me a few helpful pointers.“That tire isn’t flat.”“Thanks,” I say.“Look at that tread. You’ve barely driven on it.” He has a particular gloat in his voice, but there is something uncertain in his expression, a weird fissure or breach. His eyeballs are skittering in their sockets.“Anything else?” I ask.He scans the expanse of the parking lot, formulating some special notion behind those rootless eyes. He sidles up next to me. “I get it,” he whispers. “Pretending your car is busted and you’re stranded here, so some lusty lady will pick you up, take you home, and serve you a dish of piping-hot poon. It’s a good shtick.”He winks at me.“You’ve got the wrong idea,” I say. “I have a wife.”“That’s cool, man. Did you skeez up on her in a parking lot, too?”The kid flashes a nervous smile. He tries another wink.“Stop winking at me,” I say. “You look diseased.”He slouches against the adjacent car, a station wagon with more rust than paint, and fusses his nametag: Karl. Maybe this is just me, but I find something greatly destabilizing about spelling Karl with a K. He lights another cigarette and tries to smoke in stoic solitude. I can tell the hypotheticals are niggling him.“I met my wonderful heterosexual wife,” I explain, “in one of those comedy improv classes that were all the rage a few years ago. The point had been impressed upon me by several colleagues and supervisors that such a class might help me burnish my social skills, which apparently needed a whole lot of burnishing. I had big dreams of being a normal human being.”“Did it help? The class?”“Of course not. But I met a strange, pretty, shy woman who was just as lonely as me, and just as unfunny, and we started a hopeless, laughless life together.”“My folks met in Al-Anon—” “I’m unspooling a narrative here, Karl-with-a-K.” The seventeen-year-old gives a stiff nod, worldly and resolute, as if bluffing knowledge is the same thing as knowledge itself. Maybe that’s true, and this bagboy career is but a springboard to some loftier trade, like bagel slicer or latte flunky. Either way, he hasn’t traded the agony of adolescence for the agony of adulthood just yet, and those sour teen years bring a wisdom and pain of their own. We’d all do well to heed the lessons of the Karl-with-a-Ks of the republic. They will be the ones, after all, who will usher us into assisted living facilities, ladle out our pills and morphine drips, and launch our ghastly ashes into space.“The narrative?” he says, urging me on.I tell him she wanted a child more than anything, probably more than she wanted a husband. But there was a minor problem. I’d already had the procedure done.I point to my groin.“You got circumscribed?”“Yes,” I say, grinning. “Circumscribed. Exactly.”It had been an extreme course of action, perhaps, but I had been a pitiful bachelor for so long. The loneliness may have deranged me. I wasted most of my twenties and early thirties going to craft fairs, yoga retreats, prochoice rallies, anywhere single women might congregate and need companionship. But they must’ve smelled the desperate pheromones wafting off me, and they stayed away. I thought I’d be alone forever and that’s what I deserved. The vasectomy was a form of revenge against myself. Then I met this sweet woman who suffered a crippling sadness and believed that having children would fix the terrible, broken thing inside her. I didn’t want to disappoint this woman. I didn’t want to lose her. I acted as if everything was fine. Maybe a miracle would stumble along and save me. It had happened already, my meeting her. Maybe it could happen again.The kid rubs his haircut, so short and unforgiving, I can tabulate the dents in his scalp. He also has this weird cauliflowered ear that seems a consequence of some barbaric junior varsity sport.“They can reattach them,” he says.“Huh?”I look down. He’s doing the groin point, the unseemliness of which is now apparent to me.“I wasn’t castrated, Karl. I’m not livestock.”He nods evenly. “Science.”“Anyway I already tried that. There was this dodgy surgeon in a strip mall. I should’ve found someone more reputable, someone with steady hands who wasn’t quivering on gin. This hack was all I could afford. He hacked me up, all right. Now the machinery is totally kaput. I didn’t tell my wife about that, either. What could I say?”I catch him side-eyeing the store entrance. His interest is flagging, but I’m not ready to let him leave. This confession stuff is invigorating. Unfortunately, I can’t speak this way to my wife. Her brittle constitution just couldn’t handle it. Ergo, I need to purge every last ounce of honesty from my system before I get anywhere near hearth and home.“It’s strenuous work, pretending you want a child,” I tell him. “You don’t happen to have any younger siblings or cousins, do you?”The kid chuckles and gives his patchy skull one final rub, then traipses off, back to the store, before I can grab him and wrestle him into the trunk.I locate my car keys, glinting, on the ground. Maybe I have a gaping hole in my pocket, the same size and shape, roughly, of the gaping holes in my head and loins and life. Maybe all of me is one large rupture, too tatty and moist to ever be stitched back together. I grab the ring of keys and—I don’t know why—I pitch them overhand, with mild fury, at a nearby car, not realizing the car isn’t empty. Some haggard guy pops up from the backseat, where he was evidently napping. Is he homeless? Jobless? Familyless? Is he an unfortunate guy or a lucky guy? What are the odds he’s a disgraced genital surgeon looking to redeem himself with a little pro-bono work?I shrug and meekly wave. Then I do my funny, joggy walk of shame to fetch the keys from underneath a battered hatchback. I notice this vehicle is also occupied: an old dowager wielding a pair of scissors, clipping coupons from the local pennysaver. I check another car, and another, and another. Dozens of people are sitting in dozens of vehicles, their postures cramped, their faces vacant, everyone waiting for some miracle or accident or statistical fluke to restore order and comprehension to their day. In the last car, I see a glazy, hunched shape in a rainbow-striped shirt and corduroy dungarees, tiny and alone. I scrunch closer. But it isn’t an abandoned child. It’s a CPR doll that some sadistic prankster has buckled into the backseat. The molded-plastic face looks a thousand years old. The decal eyes gaze back at me, an expression of blank, readymade oblivion—and the awful joy of it.I hustle home.

***

My wife is in our bedroom with four years’ worth of funeral wear spread flat on the bed. I’m not sure what she’s trying to tell me, standing there, silently reviewing all that mournful black. I’m in the doorway with a wine-in-a-box that I’ve been ferrying around in the boot of our car for months. Neither my wife nor I drink. Honestly, we don’t do much of anything aside from bicker and grieve the loss of a future that was never ours to claim. Now she’s afraid of leaving the house, and I’m afraid of her fear. I sometimes wonder how it would look on TV, a wife who likes to play dress-up to baffle her biology, confuse her uterus, into fertility, and a husband who lurks the world’s loneliest parking lots, too cowardly to steal children he doesn’t really want. I don’t know if we’re living a harmless sitcom or one of those vulgar true-crime shows.It’s late evening. Despite a fine selection of morbid clothing, my wife is still wearing her cheetah-spotted bathrobe. No preggers suit, no plush belly. She gives me this tolerant yet terrorized look. There’s a great frenzy of eyelash involved. “What’s going on?” I ask. “Nothing.”“Honey? Baby?”“Don’t call me that.”“Tell me,” I say, trying not to stutter the words. “Is this…another miscarriage?”My wife folds her arms and ekes out a low moan. Near the baseboard behind the bed, where she thinks I won’t bother to look, is a strip of pink sirloinish paint that resembles a living organ, a living something, where the wallpaper has been finagled and peeled away. My emaciated wife is secretly stripping the house bare and cramming it down her digestive tract. Then she vomits up the chewed chunks, along with her meals, her sadness, her spite. I have heard that pica is a risk for pregnant women, but their disconsolate impostors, too? Perhaps there is a special degrading flavor in wallpaper that we all long to taste. Here’s another fear: The more our little prenatal ruse gets drawn out, the sicker and weaker my wife grows, so I must prolong the ruse, if only to protect her from reality, making her even sicker, weaker, etc. The destructive urge? I understand that. It’s the cleanup that confounds me. We bury another bedraggled bath towel in the backyard, and we start again.

***

This morning belongs to a field trip of senior citizens who are bused in from a retirement enclave outside of town. I watch their leisurely parade across the blacktop with their twinkling wheelchairs and chrome walkers, a coagulated mudslide of tweed, pilled flannel, garish polyester. By lunchtime, the housewives arrive in their shapeless muumuus and defeated sweatpants, and several hours after that, the five o’clock business crowd, i.e., my people, their neckties loosened, shirttails untucked, trailing their usual draft of smothered despair. In between the clusters, I spot several truant teenagers, a few runty, genderless individuals of ambiguous age. No children, though. The daylong sun is cooking me into my vehicle’s upholstery, and in a fit of heat-infused delirium, I fantasize about grabbing one of the old folks, lashing it like a Douglas fir to my rooftop, and speeding home. Maybe I could fasten a pink bow around the senior’s skull and make it shout “Mommy!” as I drag the poor thing kicking and crying through the front door. Then, I don’t know, maybe I reward it with a lollipop or pension or something?Eventually, I get so restless I climb out. I walk around the car. I walk around the lot. I walk all the way into the store. I know I should sidestep the one-way mirrors and hidden cameras and loss-prevention experts masquerading as incognito shoppers, but I’m just too tired for any more subterfuge. Assorted customers amble in the aisles, aloof and distracted, trying to desperately suppress their pitiable dreams long deferred, the cravings and nostalgias and wry hopes that have both buttressed and doomed their lives, and mine. I don’t encounter any abandoned carts or deserted offspring. These people have watched too many news programs. They’ve seen too many horror movies. Right now, their children are safely at home, locked in the basement with electronic monitors clamped on their ankles, GPS chips imbedded behind their golden smiles.Then, as I’m standing in the party-supply aisle, mired in reverie, I’m nearly T-boned by a woman navigating an overloaded cart. She grumbles an apology, and I step out of the way, whereupon I notice, rather helplessly, the child slotted in the cart’s foldout seat. I feign interest in a rack of crepe streamers and bend around to get a better look. What I see mortifies me. The toddler has a face so mean and crumpled—red meaty cheeks, wet chin jutting—so utterly judgmental, I could almost be staring at a picture of myself.I’m already sorry it is happening: I clench up, set my feet, rear back, and I smack the child so hard it tumbles sideward into a bin of holiday tinsel. The shouting is instantaneous. They tackle me from all sides. Customers, shelf stockers, managers, cashiers, custodians, the lone security guard waddling out of the restroom with his pants half-hitched. The entire world descends upon the party aisle—upon me, screaming, too, at the bottom of the heap—and everyone begins pulling me apart, ligament by ligament, broken piece by broken piece, and I feel like finally, finally I must have done something right.
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ORCAS, or LIFE & ART & MAGIC & BEAUTY by Aaron Burch

June 25, 2025
My buddy Pilot comes to visit. Says it’ll do him good to get out of town for a couple days—new scenery, change of pace, leave the normal life problems and complications and stresses behind. But also we’ve been wanting and meaning to hang out for a while. The new scenery and change of pace and leaving behind of life’s problems and complications and stresses are all bonus. Icing on the cake, cherry on top. All that. It’s sunny out, blue skies, warm. It is beautiful, in that way that can feel unique and special to the Pacific Northwest.  We make pizzas. I got Lili a pizza oven a couple Christmases ago, which means I got us a pizza oven a couple Christmases ago; we’ve made pizza once, sometimes twice a week, every week since. Mostly for ourselves, but also when entertaining. When friends come to town and we replace life’s problems and complications and stresses with food and ease and friendship.Pilot raves about the pizza, and we say we know, because we’ve gotten good at making pizza and we know it. Still. When he raves about it, it makes us proud. We eat and drink and share stories and volley compliments back and forth and round and round.Making food for your friends. Sharing time with loved ones. Beautiful, warm, sunny, Pacific Northwest blue sky days. Getting good at something. Sharing that thing with others. Friends giving you honest, proud compliments. Friends, in general. Gifts, all. Life can be gifts, all the way down, when you let it be.Lili asks Pilot how his summer has been so far, and he says he’s been writing a lot. Lili knows that, because Pilot’s been sending me new stories as he’s been writing them, and I keep telling her about them, but she nods and tells him that’s great.I can’t publish any of them cause they’re all about my divorce, Pilot says. But it's all that's coming out right now, he says.I remember that, I say. Meaning, getting divorced. Meaning, it being all I could think or talk about. They’re really great, I say. Each is more fun and stupid and inventive than the last, I say. As a compliment to Pilot and also to Lili, though she knows. I’ve said that to her before, too. We have a few more beers, and tell some more stories, about writing and divorce, about friendship and food, about life and art. 

***

The next day, we have a lazy morning. In the afternoon, we walk down to the waterfront for happy hour. Oysters and tuna tartar and beef skewers and pineapple shrimp and cocktails. It’s happy hour, so everything is discounted, but we’re on the waterfront and so everything is expensive. We complain about the prices, while ordering more than we can eat and second and third rounds of drinks. We each agree when someone else says how beautiful the day is; we each, when it is our turn, say how wonderful life can be. Full and a little tipsy, we walk along the waterfront and Pilot says he really wants to see an orca. Do you think we’ll see an orca? he says. How magical would it be if we see an orca? he says. I guess it isn’t really orca season, is it? he says. I kinda feel like it would solve all my problems and complications and stresses and be magical if we get to see an orca, he says. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen an orca here along this waterfront. It feels both like I have and haven’t. It feels both impossible and likely. I tell Pilot we’ve seen a few seals swimming around in the water and that always feels special. He asks if there’s sea lions here too, and I say I think there are but I can’t remember for sure. We don’t see an orca.We don’t see any seals or sea lions either. It’s ok. We go out for tiki drinks, and we share more stories and we re-share the same stories we’ve already shared and we recap everything from earlier in the day, and the night before. Lili is giggling her drunk giggle and Pilot is glowing like he doesn’t have a care in the world and my face is warm like I probably got a little too much sun.At our table inside the tiki bar, we’re on an island, or in a boat, or under water. Maybe all three. We’re pirates and sailors and explorers and mermaids and mermen and sea captains. We order another round. We cheers orcas.The walk and the day and our lives and the the view of the water and the sun on our faces and the tiki bar and sharing stories and sharing meals and getting drinks together and escaping our lives for a couple of days and friendship—ours, specifically, but also just friendship, in general— and getting to tourguide a friend around somewhere you love? Gifts. Magic! There can be magic anywhere—everywhere—if you know where to look. That isn’t really what this story is about though.

***

Revisiting this story months after first writing it, I’m unsure what it really is about. I’m unsure if I knew at the time, when I first wrote it, and have since forgotten; or maybe I was always unsure and I wrote that sentence as something of a reminder to figure it out at some point during revisions; or maybe I was unsure, but I was ok with that, and I wrote the sentence just because I liked the sound and feel and idea of it.I’m leaving it now.I like the sound and feel and idea of it.And what it’s really about isn’t really up to me, anyway. That’s for you. To decide, or to decide that it isn’t up to you either and that it doesn’t really matter.That’s ok, too.

***

The next day Pilot returns home, and Lili and I take the ferry to one of the nearby islands. She’s never been on a ferry before, and I’m reminded how special it can be to experience something with someone for their first time. The ferry ride is fun and cool, and the views are beautiful, and it all feels a little like make-believe. And then watching all of that through Lili’s eyes, reflected on her face and in her smile and radiating out from her whole body, makes everything even many-fold times true. On the island, we drive along the coast and comment on the tide being so low. We walk through a farmers market; we eat lunch and have a drink; we walk through the downtown like tourists to whom everything is new and discoverable and anything is possible. We drive across the island to a park and we go on a hike through the woods and then we walk along the beach. We see a sign about local sea animals. The sign tells us about the seals and sea lions and porpoises and orcas in these waters. The sign places them on a scale of how frequent they can be seen, from common to occasional to seldom. We drive back across the island and get another drink and another meal. We drive along the coast going the other way and comment on the tide now being so high. Magic! we say. Magic! we both believe, in this moment, even if not in others. 

***

In that previous draft of this story, Pilot was Kevin. Because the stuff in this story that actually happened, happened with my buddy Kevin, when he came to visit.I’m unsure why the change.When I first wrote this story, I was in the middle of a burst of writing. Every few days, and sometimes every day, I’d write a new short story, inspired by something Kevin, or our other friend D.T., texted to our groupchat. I’d copy and paste it into a Google doc and use it as a springboard into another 600-1800 word piece of autofiction about us, and writing, and friendship, and telling stories and life and seeing art and magic and beauty everywhere you look. D.T. texted that he needed a break from life, and so I wrote a story about a guy quitting his job and driving around the country, visiting friends and meeting strangers, buying a boat and learning how to sail, becoming a follower of different religions and denouncing others, all looking for meaning and for purpose. Kevin texted that divorce was like God sawing off parts of your body, and so I wrote a story about God telling a woman to saw off her partner’s limbs, adding in narrative references to the story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. God didn’t tell the woman in my story to sacrifice her partner, only to saw off his limbs, and also He didn’t stop her at the last minute like He did with Abraham. When I told my girlfriend about that one, I expected her to make fun of me for writing story after story after story after story where Kevin and D.T. keep popping up, but instead she glommed onto the surreal body horror part. Which surprised me, because normally she looked at me like what the fuck are you talking about? when I described one of my more surreal or speculative stories, but also because I’d forgotten that was even what the story was about. I’d gotten so distracted by how Kevin and D.T. keep popping up in them. She told me she used to have this idea for a story about someone cutting off their skin so it would grow back healthier and blemish free.I could write that story! I said, and went and got my laptop and opened up a blank Google doc and started typing. In the story, the narrator cuts off his skin so it will grow back healthier and blemish free. He works from home and orders delivery and never leaves the house, waiting to reenter the world as a whole new version of himself. But his skin never grows back. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to make of this miscalculation. Doesn't have any idea how to make sense of this world at all, now that he thinks about it. He has an idea. He sits down and writes a story and when he gets stuck, these two characters, his friends, Kevin and D.T., appear out of nowhere in the story and tell him what to do next, or they do something funny, or they say some non sequitur that doesn’t literally tell him what to do next and isn’t technically funny, but it makes him laugh and gives him an idea for how to proceed. He finishes the story and sends it to the Kevin and D.T. in his story.I sent the story to the Kevin and D.T. in my actual life.Is this your whole thing now? D.T. texted.I like it, Kevin texted. I didn’t say I didn’t like it, D.T. texted.I like it, too, I texted. They’re fun. I keep trying to write something fun and stupid and inventive, I texted. But every story just keeps ending up being earnest and nostalgic and open-hearted.But that’s fun and stupid and inventive, too, Kevin texted. That’s just your version. I wrote the bonkers version and yours is just a little happier and like you had a good day, he texted.Are they just dumb and repetitive though? I texted.They feel like iterations, but not really repetitive, Kevin texted.And so what if they are repetitive, D.T. texted.The so what and also the word iterations gave me another idea and I wrote a story about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story. I lost track of how many levels or layers of story-within-a-story it was. I told my girlfriend about the story, describing the story itself and also my writing it, and how I sent it to Kevin and D.T. and they said it was earnest and nostalgic and open-hearted, and how that surprised me. I told her about how writing is weird, how you’ll have one idea and start writing it, but then it will become something else without you meaning it to, sometimes without you even realizing it, and she looked at me like I was stupid.She knew all that.I’d told her some version of that a million times.I kept writing stories like this. I didn’t know what to do with them; they felt too meta for anyone else to care, but they were so fun and Kevin and D.T. said they were fun and when I told my girlfriend I finished another and described it to her she’d roll her eyes and look at me like you’re so dumb or like what the fuck are you talking about? but also she’d say it sounded fun, and she’d laugh, and it would light up her face and the room and our lives and the world and God would smile down on us and say, Aaron, that one was even more fun and stupid and inventive than your last, and also even more earnest and open-hearted.And then, time passed, and I revisited these stories. This story. I again feared it was dumb and repetitive, but I also liked the idea of it being in conversation with some others I’d written. So I changed Kevin to Pilot.Pilot is the name I sometimes use for a best friend character in my stories. The Pilot character is usually a fictionalized version of one of my friends, though not any one of them specifically. It rotates. Sometimes it's  an amalgamation. It’s never my friend who is a pilot, though. That would feel too on the nose. In the last story I wrote about a character inspired by my friend who is a pilot, his name was Matt. That isn’t his name, though it is the name of another of my friends. My friend Matt has appeared in a couple essays I’ve written, but I don’t think ever a fiction, so I’ve never changed his name to anything. He made an appearance in a piece of fiction by my ex that was kind of about me, and she changed his name to Luke. He jokes about that sometimes. But then, I couldn’t help myself, so now there’s all these sections that are still and again about Kevin and D.T.It is kind of dumb, and repetitive. Or iterative. And I don’t know what it’s “about.” But it feels fun. And just might be the bonkers story I’d been chasing. Though maybe even just thinking that means it’s actually the most earnest and nostalgic and open-hearted. It’s the most everything. Which is maybe what the story is about. Fun and stupid and inventive, or earnest and nostalgic and open-hearted, every story seemed to be about how, every now and then, if you’re paying attention, if you’re open to it, the whole world can be about anything and everything. 

***

On the ferry ride home from the island, Lili and I go to the top deck and watch the island recede behind us. The sun is starting to set and it’s bouncing off the water and everything is lit up in gold. There’s a whale off the right of the ferry, a voice alerts us over a loudspeaker. Everyone on the ferry runs to the right side of the boat, hoping to see the orca. My girlfriend gets there first. I saw it! she says. I saw the whale!We’re all staring at the water, staring into the sun bouncing off the water, looking around, looking for a quick glimpse of something to prove that magic is real.I see something in the water. It submerges, surfaces a little further away, then submerges again. A seal or sea lion, probably; a fin of a porpoise, possibly; an orca, maybe even. I keep watching and watching and watching and watching and watching but don’t see anything else. I wonder if Lili saw the same thing I did, or something else. I wonder if she saw the orca and I missed it, or if she saw a seal or sea lion but wanted it to be a whale and so believed it was, or if I saw a whale but am too doubtful and so believed it wasn’t. The same voice over the loudspeaker now tells us that we are almost to shore and to return to our vehicles. Our trip and our journey and our day is almost over.But first I close my eyes. I feel the sun on my face and the crisp air on my skin. I’m silent and still and unthinking.I open my eyes and see an orca, and then another, and another, and another, and another. They’re everywhere. Cresting, submerging, spraying water up through their blowholes, swimming all around us. I watch and I smile and I laugh.I close my eyes again, and when I open them, the whales are gone. Just like that. We return below deck and get in our car and wait to be told when it is our turn to exit the ferry, back to the mainland, back to our normal lives. 
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HIS BODY by Amy DeBellis

June 16, 2025
We’re brushing our teeth side by side at the sink, like we do every night, when I see it. A spot of bright red on my husband’s face, peeking through the bangs that have been out of fashion for years, but which he refuses to grow out because I adore them. It’s no bigger than the tip of my pinky. But it’s definitely not a pimple. It’s flat and even and there are ripples in the skin around it, like the imprint left by a tiny elephant’s foot.I get less than a second’s glimpse before my husband bends over the sink, spits out toothpaste, rinses with water. Then he turns and heads for bed. I’m still brushing, brushing, brushing. Still thinking about the spot. Hazily I wonder if, given enough time, the repeated motion of the toothbrush would eventually grind my teeth clean away. The news has been calling it SL-29. The SL stands for Spot Lesions: they resemble flesh peeled off in a perfect circle to reveal the raw redness of the meat underneath. Except they never heal. They never go away. Instead, they spread all over the body. The spots are often itchy, and weep a strange fluid—sometimes clear, sometimes yellow, sometimes black—that doctors have still not been able to identify. Sometimes they crust, like herpes sores, and then the pain is said to be immense.A better name for the disease would probably be something to do with pox, but that word would alarm the population, and the most important thing with any disease outbreak now is to avoid any alarm. After all, we saw what happened with the “Covid Crazies” and their masks, their stockpiling, the way they wanted to stay inside all day and sacrifice the economy for their delusions. The Vice President referred to them as “Gollums” the other day, and his fanbase (which regrettably overlaps significantly with the Lord of the Rings fanbase) praised him on social media with an avalanche of memes. The administration loves SL-29. It’s sexually transmitted, so what better punishment for the whores and sluts and single mothers than to have our loose morals branded on our faces forever? There are even rumors that the official SL title doesn’t stand for Spot Lesion at all, but for Scarlet Letter. Most people call them the Scarlet Spots. I finally rinse my mouth and head to bed. My tongue feels cold from toothpaste, a heavy slug resting against the slick backs of my teeth. My husband, facing away from me, seems to already be asleep, but that’s impossible. He never drifts off this quickly. Does he know I’ve seen his spot? Has he even seen it? Of course he has. For all the grief he gives me about admiring myself in the mirror so much, he could never miss something so striking. It really is scarlet. As I get into bed, he continues to breathe slowly and deeply. The steady rhythm remains uninterrupted even as I fluff my pillow and lay down, as though he truly is asleep. But he could be faking it. He could be praying I fall asleep without asking anything. But they don’t fucking disappear, my love, I think, clenching my jaw as I glare at his shape in the darkness. Are you going to shellac your bangs to your forehead? Use foundation so I never, ever see?And what about when the spots start spreading? What then? Yes, the only trouble with the spots is that men get them too. That’s why SL-29 is at the top of every STD screening test. Before chlamydia, HIV, gonorrhea, and everything else that can, in some way, be managed or treated or cured. 

***

In the middle of the night, when I’m sure he really is asleep, I creep to the bathroom. I close the door quietly, flick on the lights, and examine every inch of my body. I have to use a hand mirror for the more hidden spots, but after a while, I conclude that my skin is SL-29 free. For now, at least.  My mouth tastes rank, like I’ve been licking the floor and my own armpits. I go back to bed and try to sleep but my dreams are hallucinogenic, liquid, slipping through my brain like slick poisoned water.

***

Monday morning. Subway car rattling uptown, my sleep-blurred eyes, that odd gnawing hunger that always comes with not getting enough sleep. I brushed my teeth before leaving—alone, this time; my husband goes to work an hour later than I do—but my breath is stale inside my mask. I’m one of the few who still wear them, and my husband would be ashamed of me if he saw, ashamed and angry enough to shout, but he’s not here right now. Just a few other early-morning commuters, still mostly mired in the fog of recollected dreams, who couldn’t clearly give two fucks about my mask. Across from my seat, there’s an ad: “One night with Venus, a lifetime of SL-29.” Next to the bubbly words is a cartoon of an embarrassed man, face covered in red spots. I wonder how many people will catch the centuries-old reference to syphilis.  When the subway gets to my stop, I stand up and walk past the sign, glancing at it one last time. Now that I’m closer, I can see the vandalism I would’ve caught earlier if the vandal had the presence of mind to use a Sharpie instead of a pencil. The word Venus has been crossed out in thin, barely-visible graphite. And above it, scratched deep into the shiny plastic, as if he could already tell that the pencil wasn’t going to be sufficiently discernible: A WHORE. 

***

As soon as I sit down at my desk, the fogginess leaves me. It’s a sudden, destabilizing rush, like coming down out of the clouds on an airplane at night. Suddenly you’re seeing civilization spread out below you in all of its greedy, multiplied glory: city lights glittering like insect shells, spangling clear across the globe like earthbound stars. At least my resting bitch face comes in handy today. I’m left in peace as I boot up my monitor, open my email, scroll through my new tasks for the day. I don’t actually read any of it. Instead, I’m thinking of my husband. His way of saying “Only with you” when I ask him to do something he doesn’t really want to do—clean the bathroom, sign petitions, scrub the crusted stovetop. It’s true that there’s some romance in the teamwork, in both of us bettering our living space side by side. Once, we made eye contact over our flooded bathroom floor, flashed each other twin grossed-out grins: We’re in this together.The way he promised, using almost the same language, that he’d always be mine. It was just after he proposed, and he was holding my hands carefully. Like they were birds, hollow-boned and nervous, that might at any moment fly away. Most men make a big deal out of a woman being theirs and only theirs, but my husband seemed to find the idea of him being mine equally scintillating. At the time, I found it touching. Now I wonder if it was something he read online. One of those tricks guaranteed to lower the female guard. I think of my husband’s wide, toothy, childish smile. His complexion is so pale that even his teeth, which are actually fairly white, look yellow. Soon the spots will cover his entire face, astonishingly bright on his skin—not melting into one another like confluent smallpox, but just barely managing not to touch. So that each spot preserves its own perfect roundness. Almost as though it’s intentional. I once saw an interview where a doctor squinted at a patient’s face and pronounced them “the most perfect circles I have ever seen in nature.” He even took photographs, and other people measured the circles, confirmed that they were indeed mathematically perfect. “The good news is it’s not fatal,” the doctor said as he concluded the interview. “The bad news is it’s not fatal,” I muttered to myself, watching, because the suicides were rising by then and have continued to increase ever since. What the fuck do I do now?I check my wrists and forearms again. I fight the urge to march to the bathroom and strip down in a stall, twist until my body is covered in sweat and I’ve pulled a muscle in my back from trying to see every inch of my skin. I can’t panic. Panic won’t make any of this any better. According to the guidelines, the disease is 80% transmissible before any spots appear—that’s why we need expensive SL-29 STD tests, rather than a simple strip search. But once a spot has appeared, that person’s transmission rate climbs to 100%. Anyone they have intercourse with will get the disease too. And once a spot has appeared on someone you’ve been having sex with, you have forty-eight hours to see whether they’ve infected you during their asymptomatic phase. Forty-eight hours from last night. I just need to make it till Tuesday night, and I’ll know. For better or worse. And then I can…then I can…At this point my brain stops. Like a webpage that won’t load. I simply can’t think of what I’m going to do after the forty-eight hours is up. Almost with relief, I recognize another problem: I can’t know how long that spot has been there. Was it there the day before yesterday? I can’t be sure—I barely glanced at my husband all day on Saturday, preferring instead to read and separate myself from him and his video games, the way he cursed at the screen whenever he made a mistake. A flat red spot hiding behind his bangs would have been easy to miss. And of course there’s the question of how he got it. Where he got it. Who gave it to him. Only with you. I feel like I’m breathing through a rolled-up piece of paper. A hollow plastic cylinder. A straw. The ad from the subway flashes back into my mind. The slogan, the humiliated cartoon man, the crossed-out Venus. And then that other word, etched into the plastic, with such determination and fury, like a scar. Earlier, I thought of the vandal as a man. Now I no longer do. 

***

My husband gets home an hour after me. His bangs are perfectly in place, and he’s smiling: his teeth the color of weak chamomile tea, his lips stretched and rubbery. “I got your favorite,” he says, holding aloft some bags from the nearby Korean restaurant. “Excited?”I blink at him. Does he think that he can use bibimbap and glass noodles to, what, bribe me to stay with him? That, supposing I’m clean, I’ll willingly let him infect me so that we can be  scarlet-lettered together? Ha. Only with you, babe, right? Red circles clustering on our faces and then trailing down across our bodies, so bright we can’t cover them even with the thickest foundation. Maybe he’s even dreaming that I’ll come with him to live in one of the communities where the SL-29 social outcasts live as shut-ins: spending their worst days soaking in cool water, spending all the other days hiding behind thick curtains. Only venturing outside in the darkness, like suicidal, hideous vampires. I almost laugh at the idea. He takes my sardonic grin as a sign of pleasure. “I knew you’d be! It’s always better when it’s a surprise, right?”“Oh yeah, definitely,” I say, trying not to let the sarcasm seep too deeply into my voice. “Surprises are always better.”  Only twenty-four more hours to go, I think. And it’s now that I decide. If I don’t have any spots on my body by tomorrow night, I’ll get out. I’ll tell everyone the truth and leave him to pick up the pieces by himself. It doesn’t matter that I can’t divorce him—I’ll run. And if I do have a spot on my body by tomorrow night….But the thought of that turns my guts into snakes. It makes my head so heavy that that I have to bow over, gripping it in my hands, and the next thing I hear from my husband, coming close and speaking in a voice that I could swear is more fearful than it ought to be: “Is everything okay?”In bed, he reaches for me. “Sorry, babe, not tonight,” I say, trying to sound as regretful as possible. “My stomach’s cramping…I think it’s from eating too much spicy food.”“But you love spicy food.” His hand is on my waist, stroking gently but insistently. I fight the urge to jerk away from him. “Yeah, but I’m not used to it anymore. We haven’t gotten from that place in a while. Or any of my favorite restaurants, for that matter,” I add, unable to keep the resentment out of my voice. “We’ve mostly just been eating the bland American food you seem to constantly crave.” In the silence that follows this, I hold my breath, letting it live high and shallow in my nostrils and the tops of my lungs. But, finally: “Huh, okay.” I can hear the shrug in his voice. I never rebuff his sexual advances unless I’m on my period or have a migraine, but he just moves to the other side of the bed.  My body relaxes in relief. At the same time my mind spirals, trying to determine whether he’s given up so easily because he knows he already infected me last week, or because he thinks he’ll have another chance tomorrow.I want to ask Who was she? Was she hot? Did she refuse a test, or did you just not care enough to even ask for one?I want to ask Was it worth a lifetime of spots marring your whole body? Flesh pepperoni peeking out all over your cheese-curd-colored skin, skin the color of milk gone sour, skin like that of a corpse just before it stiffens and turns blue?But I don’t want to make him angry. Ever since the Domestic Violence shelters have all been closed down. Ever since the Domestic Assault hotline has been disconnected. Ever since calling the cops on your husband is the quickest way to get yourself dragged down to the station for “inciting the violence” yourself. Ever since new, privately funded studies came out showing that women are indeed the more emotional sex and that their manipulation can easily be used to paint good men as “abusive.” Ever since no-fault divorce was eliminated. Ever since. Ever since. Ever since. Ever since the dawn of fucking time because men have always been physically stronger than women and always will be. 

***

In the end, I don’t even have to wait forty-eight hours. The spot is there on the back of my knee when I go to the bathroom the next morning, peeking out at me like a knowing eye. I stare at it like I’m waiting for it to wink. Heat unfurls across my body—a panicked rush of blood, a silent roar. My vision goes black at the corners, as though smoke is closing in, and I curl forward over my knees, muffling my wail in my hands. A crazy idea flashes through my mind: cut my leg off. But that wouldn’t work, not even if I took it off at the hip. The disease has already spread throughout my body. It’s like mold: glimpsing a little bit on the surface only means that the roots have long since claimed what’s underneath. There’s no stopping it now. The panic gives me tunnel vision, and I’m standing up now, staring into the bathroom mirror, staring at my face which is now unblemished but which will soon—who can say how soon—show a spot. Maybe with me, the disease will creep upwards. My husband’s will progress downwards, and mine will follow the reverse course. We’ll fit together perfectly.I turn the shower on full blast and scream into a towel. Swallowed up by the terrycloth, it’s more vibration than sound, and it shudders through me, shakes my arms and legs until I’m a trembling strand in the corner of the bathroom, looking towards the door with wild eyes, praying he didn’t hear anything. Because…because…Why? Why the fuck not?To get my answer, as I always have, I need the clarity that comes with pain. So I step into the shower. I gasp; the cold is a physical force, ripping the air from my lungs. Needles of icy water rain down on me, shocking, splintering me into a million particles like television static. A numb buzzing in my brain. Pain, pain, pain—And then, clarity. I slam the shower closed, panting and trembling. The facts are simple, clear as ice as they march out before me: He fucked someone recently. He got SL-29 from her. He returned home. By now he’s sure, by now he must be sure, that he is infected. He hasn’t told me. I’m infected too. Probably from when we fucked on Thursday or Friday. I’m in the same boat as him. We’re in this together. But it’s not a boat I’ve joined willingly. It’s a boat he’s dragged me into, without my knowledge or consent, a boat that could bind us together for a lifetime. If he were more possessive, I’d even suspect he’s done this deliberately, binding me to him so I can never escape. But he’s not like that. He’s never been possessive. And he loves himself far too much to ever destroy his appearance just to have me by his side for the rest of our lives. I clench my fists on the shower wall and get myself back to the row of facts. Okay: yes, I am infected too. I skip to the next one before my legs can start shaking again, quickly, onto the next fact: he needs to be punished. My husband can do so much to me. He can cheat on me. He can put his hands on me as many times as he wants—smack me across the face for speaking in the wrong tone of voice, pinch my lip between his sharp nails as a punishment for accidentally stepping on his foot—as long as there are fewer than two witnesses. He can stop me from voting. He can even impregnate me and force me to keep the baby (although what other option would I even have? a coat hanger? a handful of toxic weeds?). Although, in his defense, he has never done that last. He doesn’t want children either. It was one of the things we agreed on at the very beginning, one of the things that bound us together in a world where other couples were constantly fighting and breaking up over the issue. We simply looked at each other and said, “Nope.” Smirking, like we were in on some grand inside joke. A secret held like a jewel between the two of us. Funny how it’s always the wives who are paraded like a spectacle for bringing the Scarlet Spots into their homes. Sluts infecting their unsuspecting husbands. Funny how it’s never, ever the other way around. I think again of the ad on the subway. The original saying was One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury: a phrase intended to sway young men away from prostitutes, because syphilis was treated with mercury in those days. But what about the phrases to sway young women away from the Johns who would later pass that disfiguring disease onto them? Those phrases did not exist. They never do.I step out of the shower stall, run the shower hot for a few minutes, and then emerge from the bathroom. Using my weakest voice, I tell my husband I’m coming down with a cold. “I just took a steaming hot shower,” I say mournfully. “I think I’ll take it easy in bed today.”He gives me a sympathetic nod and tells me to feel better. Before he leaves, I notice another spot, just below his chin. He turns away from me quickly, not wanting me to see. I want to tell him that I already know. But that would ruin the surprise. And surprises are always best, aren’t they, love?

***

As soon as I hear the elevator doors close in the hallway, I fly into action. I have to get everything set up perfectly by the time he comes home. As I walk to first one hardware shop and then the next, and then a chemist’s shop, and then a kitchen-wares shop, I try to let my thoughts wander. But they don’t want to wander. They keep coming around to tonight’s plan, like a fierce, certain arrow. And I smile. I keep smiling even as I’m aware of that spot on the back of my knee, that barely perceptible itch. What’ll happen tonight, what I’ll turn my husband into…it’s almost enough to make the infection worth it. Almost. I spend the rest of the day setting things up. He’s only got two red spots, but I can add a few more: early ones, surprise ones. Maybe I’ll take some things away, too. I think again of why I didn’t want to make him angry when we lay in bed that night. Yes, on the whole, men have always been physically stronger than women and always will be. But that’s assuming no other factors have been introduced to alter the equation. And a sedated man bound to a bed, tied in five-point restraints like they use at the hospitals for hysterical women—well, all his strength will be useless. As useless as the nipples on his chest. Maybe I’ll start with those. No one’s coming to help him. After all, the Domestic Assault hotline has been disconnected. Tonight it’s his body on the bed. And—finally—my choice.
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WHAT I DID FOR LOVE by Catherine Spino

June 9, 2025
I can’t remember his name so I will give him one. Devin. He was 32, blonde, sun kissed, and standing on a dock in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were but if I had to guess, they were blue. I hit “heart” and a few hours later, I felt his “heart” back vibrate against my jeans. It was December 2014 and I was 21. Back then, the OKCupid app was clunky and I always gave out my cell because texting was easier. I gave Devin my number and his texts came in green on my iPhone 5. He tried calling me immediately after and I rejected the call. “Can’t talk now, what’s up?” “Oh, sorry. Just wanted to say hi.”I ignored this and went about my day, already forgetting him.The next time he calls, he calls three times in a row at 9:45pm while I’m cramming for a Bio Anth final in the Philosophy building with two other girls. I pick up on the third, frustrated and already bored. I tell him I’m studying for a final in a flat tone and don’t run with any of the small talk he’s making. Eventually he says, “You know, I was excited to get to know you but I didn’t think you’d be such a bitch.” His words are like a dental drill buzzing too close to my pink gums.I immediately stop breathing, faced with a challenge. I liked challenges, holding my hand over fire to see how long I could last until the burned flesh was too much. I liked stretching my endurance. I was young then, what an excuse.I forgot what I said next, but my voice changed. I remember thinking of a kitten before its first time getting its claws trimmed, unwieldy and meaningless. I petted him with my voice, pressed my hand to its nose for familiarity. Devin told me he worked in entertainment, lived in Jersey but went often to New York for events and premieres. I told him I was an actor and director finishing up college. I told him where I went to school and thought about joining him for premieres. He asked me what I was into sexually, a conversation I was privy to having. Nothing scared me about sex anymore after I lost my virginity in London the year before. Out of all the questions he asked me, the only one I remember is did I like having things stuck up my ass. I forget what I answered but it probably wasn’t the truth. “I wish I could meet you tonight”, his voice like gravel. “I’d love to pick you up and see you in person.” I told him I had to study for my final and he proposed to see me after I was done the next day for coffee before I went home for break. But we kept talking, and at one point, he called me from a different number. A work phone. Devin demanded nudes a couple hours later. I sent him a couple I took weeks ago in the daylight, light pouring into my room as I faced my Macbook, my bottom half covered with my Marimekko duvet but my top exposed, an indie sleeze Rokeby Venus. My nipple piercing on my right breast twinkled as my pupils focused on the spot to the bottom right of my laptop’s digital eye. I remember feeling beautiful, classy, powerful when I took those, thinking they were a gift. Devin responded immediately that these were old photos and that he was insulted that I didn't send him something new. “I want you to go back to your dorm and send me 30 photos of yourself in 15 minutes.”So I did. I sucked myself in, contorted my body and began clicking my iPhone camera. I sent him 30 and he asked to Facetime me. I said yes. I never thought I could say no or ask for photos in return. I don’t know whether I say this to prove I wasn’t asking for this or because I can’t objectively look back at this anymore.He Facetimed me and I answered on my computer. His screen was black, I could not see his face. He told me he turned off all the lights and was too lazy to turn them on. I vaguely remember he said he had a cat or two. Did I see them? I can’t remember. I can’t remember how it happened but I was laid back on my twin sized dorm mattress, pressing my cheap red marbled bullet vibrator from Spencer’s Gifts to my clit, fake moaning but trying to make it real. My eyes were fixed on the high cracked ceiling, avoiding the square of darkness on my laptop but more importantly ignoring my body reflected back to me, a form that felt so foreign and weak to me. I had a pit in my stomach that could’ve been sexual shame but felt coarser than that. I tried to ignore it. Devin’s voice was in my ear as I faked the build of an orgasm. Right before the false peak, he said, “now shove it up your ass.” I didn’t do it. By that point it was 3am and my exam was in five hours. He agreed he’d see me after for coffee and I went to bed with a sour stomach.I woke up and took my exam, running on acidic coffee and adrenaline. I remember passing my friend Carina in the dorms, pink and giddy because I found someone cool. We both always talked about our boy troubles at our small liberal arts school. I remember I imagined I was glowing telling her the news, like a drop of dew on a leaf. Once I realized I had nothing packed, I called Devin and asked if we could reschedule coffee for when I returned in the spring semester. He hung up immediately and five minutes later, I received five texts from an unknown number—his other number I forgot to save. All five texts were photos of a man I didn’t know—a brunette with a dark goatee who looked about 250 pounds. Photos of him standing with friends outside, his arm wrapped around a woman’s waist in a bar, him wearing those wrap around glasses dads wore. Another text came in. “I knew you wouldn’t like me because of how I looked.”I can’t remember how my body felt when I got all of these texts. I called one of his numbers back, I can’t remember which. I could tell I was on speaker phone and asked him what this all meant. “I have a medical condition where I look the way I do but I’m going to have surgery in a couple months. I wanted to find a person who could see beyond what I look like now so that when I look different, I know they will be with me because of who I am.” I pictured a fucked up version of Beauty and the Beast, my childhood VHS tape warped in the sun, all the cartoons twisted. I couldn’t understand why I felt conflicted. He kept talking.“Well, I’m already on my way to your college.” “What?”I only then recognized the fact that his voice sounded slightly farther away, in a tunnel. He was on speaker phone. I imagined his chubby hands on his steering wheel, every minute a couple feet closer to me.“I’m getting off at your exit now, it’s too late for me to turn around.”That’s when I remember how my body felt. It felt like glass.I thought it would be easier to handle all of this on my own. I didn’t think to get campus police involved or anyone else. Devin had my nudes. It felt like I had already signed over my rights and my body and there was nothing I could do. I told him where to go after he passed through the entrance, campus police probably waved him in without looking up from their phones. His black minivan circling the campus like a vulture over a bunny with a broken leg, too stunned to move. He pulled into the small parking lot of my dorm building. It was one of the older buildings on campus and the 4th floor was supposedly haunted by a girl who jumped out the window because some boy broke her heart. He got out of his van as I stood on the gravel. He had the same wrap around sunglasses, red adidas shorts that hit right at his knee, and adidas slides. I didn’t look at his toes for too long. My plan was to say hello and send him on his way. But once his soft, sweaty flesh enveloped me, he said, “I thought I’d get to see your dorm.”I remember walking him up to the second floor of the dorm, my shoes pressing into the grey carpeting, thinking “I have a loud scream, I have a loud scream.” Because even though I knew this wouldn’t end well, I thought I could handle it. Devin sat on my bed, his flesh resting on the same Marimekko bedding in the photo I sent that he hated.I buzzed around the room packing. He wouldn’t stop talking. About New York, about events, about how he worked on Lord of the Rings—a fact I checked on IMDB later and his name wasn’t listed on any of the projects. As he kept going on, I kept checking the clock, seeing time constrict as my Dad drove closer and closer to me. At one point, I remember telling him he needed to leave, that I didn’t want my father to meet him like this. He asked me to sit on the bed with him, my worn stuffed elephant as the only witness as he said, “I’m not leaving until you kiss me.”I wish I had taken the time to think, to slow down, to pause time. To rewind, to enter this dorm room as I am now, to grab my hand and run screaming down my hall. Knocking on doors until someone came out. I picture this now and my screams are silent. She lets go of my hand because no one comes out, no one hears me, and she returns to her dorm room, sits down, and kisses him.I have never felt my body shake as violently as it did then. Every muscle in me was alive, knocking against my skin like bees in a hive of flesh. I pulled away and remember seeing this booger, this gleaming moist pea green lump of rejected bacteria hanging from his right nostril and being disgusted. “I could tell you wanted more.” He said with a grin.He left shortly after because I said my dad was nearby. I forget if I kissed him again, and my dad arrived 30 minutes later with my sister in tow. We packed the car and drove back to Rhode Island. Right before my dad came, Devin called me again on speaker phone. “I know your dad wasn’t almost there. Don’t you ever lie to me again.”That night, I went to the 99 with my high school friends. After three five dollar margaritas, I told them numbly that I was catfished. I told the story like it was a joke, looking for laughs along the way. Three of my guy friends looked stunned, one of them saying, “Christ, are you alright?”The only thing that comes back clearly is what my only girlfriend said, “Are you sure you didn’t do anything enticing?”I called my therapist the next day and told her what happened. “I need you to block both of his numbers. This man has done this before, he has a story and a system to manipulate women.” she said. “Once you return to school, you need to report this to campus police.”But I didn’t heed this advice. I thought I could fix this. I texted him a couple days later and explained to him that I really couldn’t get into anything serious with my senior thesis coming up in the spring. It really wasn’t him or his looks (or his lie), it was all me.What came next was a large paragraph, jumbled and clearly voice to text, but the one thing that stands like a monument in my mind was that “he didn’t want to be my friend he would find a way to fuck me he would.” I blocked both of his numbers. I deleted my OKCupid account and never redownload it.I told some of my good friends what happened to me when I returned in the spring semester, always when I was drunk or stoned. I figured it was a good party trick, like my nipple piercing—something initially painful that turns into a cheap novelty. There was something about seeing people react to the story. How they laughed at the term “catfish” and then their faces shifted and landed in a place of concern. I watched this happen time and time again, hoping that concern would rub off on me. It never did. I graduated in May 2015, age 22. I packed up my parents' car and stayed in a hotel with my best friend for our last night in Jersey. “The Graduate” was on TV, Katherine Ross in her wedding gown and Dustin Hoffman staring straight ahead into a world we never see. It is now February 2017. I have forgotten about Devin. I live in Brooklyn and work as an executive receptionist for a luxury real estate company. I get a text from an unknown number around 3pm, nothing atypical as a girl who goes on a lot of first and only dates. “Hey beautiful.” “Who is this?” “Devin.”“Sorry I don’t know of a Devin.” “From December 2014.”Just as my brain made the connection, I received a photo of myself. Nude from the tip of my breasts up, a small smile painted on my face. My eyes locked with the digital eye of my phone.Another text. “I just wanted to see if this girl was still single.”I can’t remember how I thought of it but I texted back, “So sorry! I think you have the wrong number! Best of luck finding her.” And blocked the number. All I can remember was sitting in a packed L train during rush hour, feeling like I was being hunted, that he saw me hiding in Brooklyn. He knew where I was at every moment. I called both my Providence based therapist and my new New York based therapist as I walked home in the park. One said she was impressed by my text to him and the other said this had nothing to do with me, that this was some indication that he was flailing and reaching out to older situations. I pictured him in some basement in his same red adidas shorts and adidas slides, a single booger hanging from his nostril, the only light coming from a laptop as he shot off messages like bullets from a sniper rifle into the void. “You could be in Africa for all he knows.” I tried to believe that as I struggled to find sleep that night.Devin never tried to contact me again. I grew up thinking that love could be served up on a spoon or a knife, but it was love just the same. I had no concept of what negging was, what manipulation could look like, the idea of revenge porn was just whispers and nothing legitimate. For years I looked back and thought what an incredible idiot I was. How I got out by the skin of my teeth. How it really wasn’t that bad, all he did was kiss me in a small dorm I invited him into. How I should’ve known better. I retold this story countless times and I guess I was waiting for someone to ask why I did what I did so I could finally say that I did it for love.
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CITY DESK by Michael McSweeney

May 14, 2025
Last spring the county newspaper paid me $200 to write about local dreams. I interviewed a man whose job it was to cycle out the books from the little lending library in the center of town. We met at a diner nobody liked and was always empty but stayed in business as such diners often do. He told me he mostly dreamed about colors. Yellow in spring, green in winter, purple in autumn. Summer heat made the man's legs swell and he didn't want to talk about what he saw those nights. He seemed uneasy about the approaching season. As we spoke my smartphone gathered time beside undercooked bacon. Recording a voice I'd listen to speak these words once and never again. This is the nature of the news and the people who write it. We fill our notes with memories and chronicle a world that grew so fast it forgot how to stop and remember.I ask the man if he believes in dream analysis, and he tells me when he sleeps on his back he sees faces in the colors. People he met when he served jury duty in Greenfield three years before. I don't know their names or anything about them, he told me. The day aged through the pollen-painted window. Buzzards circled above the bridge across the river to the rust-lined highway to Boston. The man fingered the bacon on his plate. Oh, he said. We sent a boy to jail for murder. Outside the diner the man asked me if I'd put him in my story. I told him it's up to my editor. I didn't know if that was true but when I don't know something I appeal to some faceless power. We shook hands and he asked me what I dream about. I told him reporters should never become part of the story. He laughed and said, No, really. Tell me.I told him when I dream about the places I used to live, they look nothing like those places, but in the dream it's all real and true, that I know those places like I do the people I've loved. Every place in my dreams has a road leading north. I thank him for his time. You're from around here, he said. Not really, I said.The man got in his car and backed into a fire hydrant. Water gushed like blood from a torn-off thumb. Then he turned the car around and gunned it against the hydrant. His engine sobbed. I took pictures with my phone but they were all blurred, out of focus, smeared with light. Faces filled the windows around us, some I knew, faces angry and entertained, faces of why now, of not this again, of I get it, man, I really fucking do.    

&

 The paper assigned me to cover a recent wave of carjackings. Not the carburetor thefts. They told me that was a different beat, and that we'd talk about pay when I had something good.As I waited at the light on Avenue E one morning a woman opened my passenger door, flashed a ten-dollar utility knife, and told me to drive.Where? I asked.South, she said. I gassed it. A pollen-clouded patrol car was parked outside the gun store at the intersection. A cop, leaning against the door, didn't look up from his phone.  We left town. Drove past restaurants, gas stations, farms. All for sale. The butterfly sanctuary was closed for repairs. Further south a line of cars waited to park at a brewery. Food trucks belched steam and a couple locked arms on the grass. I nearly collided with the car ahead of us.Watch it, said the woman.Sorry, I said.The woman told me to take the highway. We inched through Sunday construction. Men clustered by potholes and idle machines. I wondered if any of them looked inside my car and confused us for husband and wife. I told her this.Don't say that, she said. She checked her phone and was on the verge of tears.Her directions were more forceful now. The ramp past Deerfield, left, right, left. Take it slow down this street. Look for a truck with no bumper. Apple red.The same, the woman said. The same.She was out of the car before I parked. The woman sprinted, slipped and shouted up the angled drive and flung open the garage door. Two men fucked on a yoga mat, free weights and kettlebells and gym clothes abandoned around them. A radio spewed dad rock on a chair. The woman grabbed one of the men by the hair and tugged. The men broke apart, their passion fissioned to sweat and rage. I see you, the woman screamed at one of the men. He didn't seem angry or shocked. Calm, almost, as if this was expected, predicted, even welcome. No one said anything. Just frozen acknowledgement, where no words suffice to explain how the resolution of tension causes both pleasure and pain. Then the woman shoved me back to the car. Pushing tears back into her eyes as she moved. Drive, she whispered. South I drove again. Small mountains rose as if the world was teething. We approached the tallest, one I'd climbed before blind-drunk on a snowy, lonely night. I hooked an observation road and shot past hikers too weary for the steep rock path. My legs ached from the long sit. At the peak we got out and gazed across the valley and the towns and the curves of the green-brown Connecticut River.I dreamed about this, said the woman.What do you mean? I asked.I saw my husband. Driving there. I felt how happy he was. How that garage felt more like home than ours.How did the dream end? I asked. The woman rocked back and forth, hands in her pockets.Like this, she said. What do you mean? I asked.I forced you to drive at knifepoint. When we arrived I forgot my knife in the car. My husband chose someone else. Then we drove up this mountain. Then I woke up.We said nothing for a while. A prop plane flew above us in a circle and then turned north, against the wind.Then the woman said, The way my husband felt. That love inside him. That deep, physical love. I'll never forget.Then she said, I don't have any money.We drove back to town under a rose-gold sky. There are no sunsets anywhere like those in western Massachusetts. I wondered if I had the right to tell this story, or if everything was off the record, or whether these things even matter when you're a witness against your will. As we turned onto Avenue E the woman pressed her knife against my neck. Wallet, she said. Then, more softly, she said, Please.She took thirty bucks and a gas station gift card and the picture of my nephew, then tossed the wallet in my lap and stepped out into the street.  

&

 The paper laid me off on the fifth of July. In June we covered bridge repair delays, unaffordable homes, church fires, community musicals, childhood illiteracy. Covered births, deaths and arrests. Covered sickness, hope and happiness. We covered the war, and then they shut us down. Some private equity barons out in Boston coveted the land beneath our office. I had an hour to clear the city desk I shared with three other journalists. One week's severance. Benefits 'til the end of the month.I asked my editor what to do with my half-finished story about a man who'd drowned in the river. He was a local, an institution, a bellwether figure. Sought your change outside the sandwich shop. Bought milk and bread from the communist theater group on the corner of Avenue G. Once, he told me a story about being a judo champion in California and as he spoke he hand-chopped the air and winced and bore his teeth, but he seemed proud to remember those moves. Ben. Ben Armstrong. I'd written his name on a notepad and circled it in red ink.Forget it, my editor told me. We were close in the way you become when you deal with the constant mess of private lives, because that's what local news is, a constant mess bursting into public, ordered and shaped by writers and publishers. But I knew next to nothing about him, his family, what he wanted, how he saw himself, here, at the end. But it was too late to ask. I watched him slide a half-dozen reams of untouched paper into his backpack and step nervously out into the light on the sidewalk outside our office.  On the bathroom wall I wrote in permanent marker The News Was Here. Then I pissed, didn't flush, and left with some notebooks and pens.At home, I caught up on my drinking. Shouted at hummingbirds. Built a castle of beer cans on the back porch and staggered through its walls before a midweek thunderstorm could blow it down. Mostly I slept. My blanket gathered cat hair as I moved from bed to floor to couch like some forgotten, guilt-soaked king. I wondered whether the stories I told really mattered. If they changed the world or changed someone's mind. If any sort of story matters when a story must make noise, provoke, and never repeat.My mother, a man's voice said from beside the couch one day. It was the man from the diner. He gripped his legs with thick, red hands. Like many men who lived in town, he seemed on the verge of explosion. His eyes darted between the brown houseplants on the windowsills.Then he said, That's who I see in the summer when I sleep. That's not a color, I said.She is, he said. Like this. The man pinched his arm and then held it close to me. His arm shook and a small spot bloomed red then purple-brown. The ease of his bruise scared me and I wanted to tell someone about it.I loved her but she, well, you know, said the man. The man's arm kept shaking.Then the man said, Someone can love you and still do terrible things. Like nobody taught them how to do it right.Yeah, I said.I rolled over and listened as the man watched me and breathed. Am I asleep? the man asked.I think I am, I said.No, said the man. I'm asleep. And I really don't want to be. I want to wake up.I turned back toward him and then said, Sometimes when I want to wake up I open my eyes as wide as they'll go. Sometimes if I do it enough I can break through the sleep and escape.The man tried it. The valleys beneath his eyes turned the color of plums. He used his fingers to stretch the skin like he was trying to release air from inside his head.It's not working, he said.I'm sorry. Am I dead? Did I die in my sleep? I don't know.Please wake me up. Please. Please!Alright, I said.I threw off the covers and gripped the man by the shoulders. We made eye contact. Blue ones. The sky in spring.Ready? I asked.Yeah.I shoved him. As he fell backwards the man grabbed my face. I lost my balance and we tumbled together in darkness. I don't know if I hit the ground. Don't remember. All of a sudden I was awake, alone, in my blanket, and that was all. I sat up. I had nowhere to be. No stories to sell. I closed my eyes.What remained was a burst of relief. Like a bath of liquid gold. But it wasn't my relief. In half-awake clarity I knew that the man had escaped from the dream. His dream or mine, I wasn't sure. But he was free, somewhere out there, even if it meant returning to whichever hell had inspired the dream to begin with. I wanted, desperately, for the man's happiness to be my own.
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Wonder Meadow by David Hayden

May 2, 2025
The night trees were blue by the Wensum. Eels seethed in a ditch. In the flint wall of a garden a door trembled. A green man sat naked on the riverbank, his feet in the water, head nodding, vines and tendrils ran down his chest. A swan guzzled between his legs, blood flowed down his mossy thighs. Twitching and jiggling, burning ropes suspended from the boughs of a hawthorn tree. Across a playing field the cathedral rose, all spire, dissolving sour yellow into the sky, drifting towards the moon.Cakes were scattered in the mud by the Watergate. The girl guides were elsewhere, in bed. The guides’ carers were in bed also. Or sitting at a kitchen table with a mug of malted milk staring at their reflection in the black glass of a garden door.A walking stick, made from a shark’s backbone, floated down the river. A leprous-white hand attached. And to the hand, an arm, a body. Lids flickered; eyes opened; large, luminous green. The man was a watcher. Watching himself looking out for others to whom he could attach his gaze.Andrea tucked the hospital gown into the waistband of her jeans. She sang a song of her own making. She smiled, which made her think of teeth, her teeth, and she smiled again, broader this time. A plaster covered the puncture mark in her left hand. The hand was sore, and several of the fingers were numb at their tips. She stopped and looked at her hand, fearing, for a moment, that it would become another thing, shears or claws or jaws, or another’s. Another’s perfect hand, unscarred, cold and steady with silver fingernails and dry palms. Andrea wanted to be sure that she would not change any more than was necessary.Men came down the path. Three men. One stared, eyes out of his head. One sang and leered. One walked with a swinging stride, hands in pockets, his face two tiny eyes, a red gash of wet lips. Three men taking possession of the night.Andrea knew the moment they noticed her from the thickening of the air in her throat, from the return of pain to her left shoulder, from the sudden heaviness of her boots, the stickiness of their soles. The men called. They told her what they thought she was. They told her what they wanted to do. They told her what they were going to do.Andrea stood still in the middle of the path. The river slowed and stopped. The river speeded up. The men came closer, growing smaller all the while. Andrea reached into the gown pocket and took out a gross anatomy knife. The men came on, their sounds more distant, their forms shrinking away. The handle was plastic, lemon yellow and warm. Andrea drew long lines where they might have been. The air parted with a sucking sound, again and again. The men whispered in the grass; they had not passed but they were gone.She tossed the knife into the river, wet before it hit the water, picked up her tune and followed the way towards the road. The trees shivered as she passed. Canaries with glass beaks fussed and chittered in the air a few feet above and behind. Andrea reached in her pocket and found the knife. Safe.Wavering orange light was visible through the trees, cries drifted with the smoke from Lollards Pit across the river. The path warped to her left, ran through a wicket, past a cottage and out before a tower. The Cow Tower. The place she would meet her friend Judith. Andrea walked on but could not see her. She passed round the tower to a tall iron gate and looked through. On a green silk divan reclined a large woman in a great fur coat.‘Aren’t you terrible hot, Judy?’‘I like to be cosy, don’t you know, old girl. You’re looking less than marvellous, if I might say. You made it here all right?’‘A little local difficulty. Nothing to speak of, darling. How did you get in there?’‘The ladies from the Adam and Eve carried me over. Would you believe it? Big girls the lot of them. My kind.’‘It’s been quite some time since last orders, Judy.’‘A long dry season, my friend, makes kindling of us all.’Judith reached over and switched on a tall standard lamp. Yellow light projected upwards, illuminating the canaries that swirled above where the upper floors used to be, making their beaks sparkle.‘How should I…’‘Just give a good firm shove, love.’The gate moved, shifting a mound of dried leaves forward with a hush. Andrea looked up and around. A dark circle of blue, the sky, a ring of gun ports, another of arrow loops, pellitory and red valerian grew in effusions on every welcoming surface.‘The armchair is for you, sweetie. You must be exhausted after your troubles. No one was less deserving of troubles than you, dearest. Curse the deserving, the bastards.’‘You wouldn’t have a cup of tea, would you?’‘Haven’t I flask? And a hamper too? You’re starved, of course.’Andrea took a melamine willow-pattern plate out of the basket and raided the same for gala pie, potato salad with chives, for asparagus spears sopping with butter, for sweet tomato chutney, for a salad of endives, marigold leaves, watercress and sorrel soured with vinegar. She was a long time eating and all the while Judith watched her contentedly, pulling from time to time on the pipe of a port sipper glass. Andrea poured herself a mug of tea and settled back in the armchair.‘Did you tell them at the hospital before you left? That you were going to leave?’‘I did not.’‘Might they look for you?’‘I suppose they might. But I’m here, aren’t I? Where they aren’t. And I haven’t done anything wrong.’‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’Andrea took a fat gulp of tea.‘Have I done something wrong, Judy?’‘You haven’t done anything wrong, my love. Not a thing.’‘Only to myself.’‘Only to yourself.’‘What did I do that for Judy?’‘You know why, honeybear.’‘I can take care of myself now.’‘You should.’‘Do you love me, Judy?’‘I do.’Judith patted the silk heavily raising a small cloud of dust out of the horsehair. Andrea dropped the mug and rose, the plate fell on the stones, she approached the sofa, Judith opened her coat and her arms and embraced Andrea, enfolding her, pulling her close, stroking her hair. Scents of parma violet, of turpentine, of chypre, of wet slate, of old leather, of smoking peat. As Andrea began to fall asleep Judith reached out and turned off the lamp. Judith could feel the knife through the gown.Andrea woke, blinking, alone on the divan, swaddled in fur. Six girls in brown and yellow uniforms crowded around the gate, gazing down at her, their faces bright, shiny and serious.‘She’s awake.’‘We can see that…’‘Would you like a cake, lady?’‘Shutup…’All but one of the girls laughed. The one who had offered the cake.‘Cake for breakfast?’ said Andrea.The girls danced, singing: ‘Cake for breakfast! Cake for breakfast!’Andrea walked, smiling, to the gate. The unsmiling girl pressed an open pink toffee tin forward. It was crowded with fairy cakes, each topped with a thick, vermicular swirl of buttercream and a scattering of blue and yellow sugar stars.‘Take one…’Andrea took one.‘Take another.’She took another.‘Thank you,’ said Andrea.‘Bye! Bye!’ said five of the girls, and they skipped off.The unsmiler stood still. She returned the lid to the tin.‘We’re picking up rubbish today. Along the river.’‘Oh…that sounds…’The girl interrupted her with a solar, yellow-toothed smile. She held the cake tin up at a distance from her uniform and marched away.Andrea shuffled off the fur. She stood looking up to the new sun and raised an arm to protect her face from a shower of hard bright objects; birdless glass beaks. Andrea squeezed through the narrow gate gap, turned back to the river. She walked down Ferry Lane towards Tombland.A lone horse passed by slowly, pulling an empty cart. In the shadowed window of a house was a rocking horse with a mouth too large for its head and ivory slabs for teeth, as if it had not quite finished eating a piano.The lane sank and river water flowed rapidly along the deep channel. Andrea stepped to one side and a large boat with a tall mast under a single sail came on, one man fore and another aft, throwing, pushing and pulling on long poles.Roped together on deck were two vast pieces of roughly dressed creamy limestone. The water flowed back to the river and the channel filled in.Andrea stopped next to a gate in a black iron fence. A sign read: Browne’s Meadow. She stepped in and onto the large bituminous rectangle of a car park bounded by red brick walls and, beyond these, by willows and sallows that nodded and soughed in a soft breeze. A fine, many-handed chestnut roan stood at the centre, its haunches facing her, its tail flicked as she approached. She made a wide circle round to face the horse, which she patted and then embraced around the neck. The ground became soft under her soles. The cars were sheep. The tarmac was grass and sweet briar, bramble and mulberry, whortle-berry and holly, juniper and gorse, cornelian and hazel; bilberries, redcurrants, gooseberries, dog’s mercury, barberries and bittersweet grew in random profusion. Andrea released the horse’s head and it plodded into the distance.Andrea sat in the wonder meadow. She felt the similitude of her limbs to the various parts of nature surrounding and thought of how she might be joined to them more completely, more fruitfully. Her skin was bark to her. Her body south-facing always, a spirit searching for union, for extension, for vegetable tranquillity; unpractised in green ways, in rootedness, but sapful, exalted and germinal. She might, with the aid of an artful incision, grow atop a hawthorn, or an alder, an oak or a hawthorn, or entwine herself for life within a gorse bush, a thousand shining yellow eyes, spiny green fingers, tough branched arms, scenting the air by day and night.Memory is an arsonist, setting fires cell-deep at ungovernable intervals of time and space. Lights go on, searching out pain. The hands of another. The mother voice, singing to block out the noise. Titanic laughter and with it confusion. Clouds, white, grey striations, disposed across the eye. The folded heron in the reed bed, the river drifting deeply, its world mirroring still. Judy sat on the orange plastic seats in casualty. And again, Judy waiting on the orange plastic seats in casualty. And later, Judy waiting on the green plastic seating in casualty. For Andrea to return, clean and swathed.It might be the deep chill damp of the earth rising or her body warmth sinking into the meadow but there is a gradual cooling, a dimming, an extinguishing. For the first time since memory began these hard fires, their successions, their wasting, their consummations, their miseries, go down and out and mindsmoke drifts, drifts away. The dark, at last, is light.The suffering blue of the sky called her back from the green, the hard tar and grit beneath her gown; a sheep, a car, beeping its horn.Andrea stood and brushed herself down. The driver spoke some sour words out of their window and reversed to park. Out in the lane Andrea headed for the cathedral close through a crowd of grinning, blue-uniformed boys. She sat on a bench and looked up at the pink-tinged spire, at a falcon stood distantly on the air aside its uppermost taper.‘When I rise,’ she said. ‘I shall be free.’
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TOOTH by Joe Johnson

April 30, 2025
The itch begins in the jawbone under the gums. I can’t get to it with a finger or tongue or backscratcher. Have to let it itch, like watching a fly you can’t swat tickle your forearm. It’s happened before. Happens more these days. Nothing shows up on x-rays, and now dental insurance is all used up.The tooth itches as the boss talks. He’s wearing a suit on casual Friday. It’s gray and fits him in the shoulders but not the belly, so he leaves it unbuttoned. The blue striped tie hangs over his belt. It’s like he’s guest-hosting a nineties talk show. The boss scans the room as he talks, and it’s like he’s looking right at you. He makes that passing sort of eye contact of CEOs and preachers. The way experts do during their TedTalk on the secret history of statistics. You know the talk: This message will change your life.The office is desks and phones, like in old movies. Phones on every desk, desks in every cubicle. Phones now ring in the background because the boss has gathered us to stand by a long table—a hundred of us, the whole floor, in a semi-circle. The table is in front of the west windows overlooking the city. On the table sits a vase. In the vase, an orchid. By the orchid is a box. The boss is in front of the table. He raises his arms in symmetry. He learned this somewhere, probably the same boss school that taught ambiguous eye contact and said to give bad news on Friday afternoon. The boss, we all know, is about to lay half of us off. Year-end is the time of “tough” choices. Boss school must have taught him, Make sure to look like this hurts you too; you did everything you could.Right then, the itch itches, just at the bottom of the molar. Those roots go down into the bone. The boss is saying something about Hannibal crossing the Himalayas on elephants. He’s going to quote the Dali Lama. Put money on it.Speaking of the Dali Lama, four summers ago, on my two-week vacation, I was in India on overcrowded sidewalks. A bike courier blazed by in his cotton shorts and glasses and no-helmet, just pumping. He turned past a truck, then around a car, then hopped onto the sidewalk. But a pigeon, swear to God—didn’t even know India had pigeons—plopped down in front of him. Pigeon, gray and blue and clueless, stalled right in the path between the bicyclist, a bus in the road, and a fire hydrant.Instincts took over: Bicyclist turned, missed the bus but rammed into the hydrant. The bicyclist was going as fast as the cars were supposed to be going, so when he fell off the bike, his body flew car-speed. The pigeon didn’t flinch. Just waddled along while the bike bounced into the road and went under the bus tires, as the bicyclist soared overhead, like, yes, a bird, but landed like an egg. Rammed his unhelmeted head into a bench. The crowd swarmed the bicyclist. He was laid flat out, maybe breathing. All I remember is a tooth on the sidewalk. A whole tooth, the big molar. It’s like a wicked iceberg—the top half is rounded and blunt, but beneath that flat top a root system runs sharp and long, like those Italian horn pendants disco dancers used to wear. The bicyclist’s molar was speared with two points. Those points, when not being knocked out, stick in the bone beneath the gums.That’s where the itch is: in the bone, at the tips of those points at the end of the molar. Not a strong itch, just an unreachable one. But it goes on long enough—boss talks about how proud he is of what we’ve all accomplished “together” (arms raised like an Olympian)—and the idea of finding pliers and pulling the thing out seems reasonable.“…over the Himalayas,” says the boss. Himalayas? Hannibal crossed the Alps.While the boss is riding mastodons up Everest, here in the room, across the circle of employees gathered near the west windows overlooking the city, standing beside the boss, one of the secretaries, Shannon or Shelly-something, sneezes. And that slows the boss. The boss says “Bless you” like a priest. The sneeze, though, sparks an idea: Fake a cough. In the cough, maybe with my mouth covered, I could stick my thumb inside and wiggle the tooth. A wiggle usually makes the itch stop. Except the boss is the center, like the sun, of a half circle, and we’re in orbit around him, but also directly across from our current (and future-former) coworkers. So maybe a push against the cheek. The right hand comes up slowly. Don’t draw attention. Move like the room has motion detectors. Then a test—just a quick scratch of the neck, like maybe the heater kicked on and the breeze set off the small hairs. Nothing to notice. Take your time. The boss isn’t going to stop until he’s scaled Mount Kanchenjunga.No one turns. They’re all still focused on the boss. No one watches the fingernails scratch the side of my throat—up, down, small circle. The scratch takes focus off the tooth, but not all. Like a mosquito has somehow gotten inside. That moment when the mosquito is in the vein, before it pulls out and the brain says, “Kill it.” But by the time you notice a mosquito, it’s already got your blood, and left its spit.Boss pauses. This is the emotional climax. He says something about Nepal, and you know that he practiced this in front of a mirror. He’s got a ring on his finger. He practiced this for his wife. I assume he’s straight. It’s something about the suit, the off-the-shelf that doesn’t fit. He said to his wife, “How does this sound?” and he raised his arms and rehearsed, “The real test of character comes not in victory but in loss.” She said, “It’s great.” She asked if they had anything going on Sunday because an old college friend was in town and wanted to go for lunch. The boss said, “Sounds fine.”Then my knuckle pushes against the cheek, and it does nothing. The cheek is condoms. There’s no way to get to the itch without going in. But the sneezing secretary is looking across now. She knows who the boss means when he says, “and even in hardship.” For the boss she typed up all the emails and attachments waiting in our inboxes, ran the names by HR. She’s probably screwing Boss. His “Bless you” was too concerned. Boss probably tested his speech on both wife and mistress. He’s that kind, like Hannibal: too much man for one woman. Leaves his seed in every town he conquers. Or maybe I’m thinking of Genghis Khan.So, the thing to do is bring the other arm across the chest, to support the arm raised to the cheek, to tilt the head in the look of serious concentration: the dreamy co-ed in that Indiana Jones movie. The secretary is scanning the circle now. She looks past me. Doesn’t make eye contact. Maybe that means I’m not getting laid off. Or that I am. Once the secretary’s gaze returns to the boss, I push in again. Hard. And the push helps. It’s a dull pain. Cheek smushed into all the teeth. And the pain feels good. Push harder. The itch is still there, but the cheek, the inside mashed against the jaw, helps. The cheek warms like a fever.The boss pauses. He drops his arms. Puts them into his pockets and billows the edges of his suit jacket up and out. He stares at the ground. This is the point when all of us, fired and unfired, are supposed to feel for him. His Sophie’s Choice. This is when he talks about the American spirit after 9/11.It’s a stupid job anyway. Lay me off. Let me go. Terrible dental.The boss has his hands in his pockets, like a sign to do the same—lower my arms. Uncross. Unclench. And as soon as the cheek pain settles away, the itch comes back stronger. The tingle, like centipede feet. Inside the jaw, at the pointy tips of the molars in the bone. You would kill to fly unhelmeted and head-first into a bus bench. You would kill for pliers.And you can’t believe it, but that’s what the boss has. He pulls them from his pants pocket. One of those Swiss Army knives. No, a Leatherman. They don’t let you take those things on planes anymore. Someone would hijack a Delta with a Leatherman: “Take me to Cuba. I have a bottle opener.” With his Leatherman in hand, the boss reaches back toward a box on the table by the orchid in a vase. The box is sealed, so the boss needs the Leatherman to clip the straps on the box. Everyone is looking at the box. They all want to know what’s in the box. But I’m following the Leatherman with the knife out, with the pliers tucked inside.The boss sets the Leatherman on the table. The secretary watches the boss lovingly, excited about the box.The boss smiles. From the box, straps clipped, he pulls out a trophy. A real trophy, like they used to give in bowling leagues in those days when men wore Italian horn pendants and took knives on planes. He’s talking about the trophy, about Bill in Engineering, and forty years of service.Bill walks through the middle of the half-circle to the boss. The boss is all smiles. Couldn’t be prouder if Bill were his own father. Forty years of devotion. And there’s no way to replace that much knowledge and skill. No way to replace Bill. The company won’t be the same without him. But the boss and his secretary will make do. They’ll probably both get bonuses for replacing Bill with two part-timers in India.So then I step behind the circle and walk the perimeter because everyone is watching Bill get his trophy, even the secretary. Secretary most of all. The secretary seems really glad Bill is leaving. She says, “What are you going to do with your free time?” Bill grips the trophy and shrugs. And I’m closer now, side-step by side-step.The Leatherman waits on the table by the vase. Almost there. Jenny in accounting turns back, but not before I’m past her. Eyes forward, Jenny.Bill says he’s looking forward to time with the grandkids. What else is he going to say? That he’s planning to leave his wife. That he has a one-way ticket to Las Vegas. Gonna blow twenty-grand on legal prostitutes who smile when he asks for a birthday special.Now I’m at the table, behind the secretary, and the secretary has a good rear for someone who sits as much as secretaries sit. It’s just an observation. I don’t mean anything by it, but it is a surprise. How she lives at a desk, but she’s tight as a gymnast. It’s impressive. Just that kind of discipline.The tooth pulses now. Dull throbs, like a strobe light. And maybe it’s the movement, shuffling my way behind the half-circle, the blood pulsing. It’s pushing now. The boss says, “Let’s give Bill a hand.” The applause is my shot. So I press past, behind the secretary’s behind, reach across the table. My forearm grazes the orchid vase. It wobbles. I pluck the Leatherman. Pull it back smooth and quick as the boss says, “Bill, we’re going to miss you.” Orchid vase teeters. Vase does a spin like a coin settling—heads, tails. Vase stops.Bill takes his final walk back across the circle. Don’t worry, Bill. You aren’t the only one going home today. At least you get a trophy.And I’m back out, careful to slide the tool into my pocket, holding it with my left hand so it doesn’t slip and cut through the fabric. Moving step by step around the outside, past Jenny in accounting. Jenny’s not looking, but she steps back and closes the gap between me and the wall, and it’s her or the wall, and I plow into Jenny. Watch where you’re going, Jenny.Jenny teeters. She stumbles into the accountants, but I press on—didn’t even nick my thigh with the knife. The boss says, “On a serious note.” He’s at the end, and I’m back where I started. The boss pauses because the accountants are mumbling, and Jenny is straightening her shirt. The boss backs it up and tries again. “On a serious note,” he says. He says he’s done everything he can. He says, “But it’s like the Dalia Lama said, ‘If a problem cannot be solved there is no use worrying about it.’”He has a point there. When the pink slip comes my way, I can’t control that. The secretary waves her arms to get our attention. Good arms. Secretary is thirty-five, maybe forty, and goes sleeveless. She invites everyone to join in the break room. There’s cake for Bill. Cake for the lot of us who have emails waiting in our inboxes: instructions for What’s Next on our own journeys across our personal Himalayas.Then the circle collapses, splits into a hundred points all shuffling back to cubicles or to the break room, some patting Bill on his shoulders, Bill with his trophy on his way to claim his cake. The itch might go away with cake, the chewing. At least then, if I stick a fork in my mouth, no one cares. And I could cut the cake with the Leatherman, with the knife edge pressed against my thigh. But the cubicle first. The email, the merciful email.Back at the desk, the itch slows. I’m in my own cubicle, surrounded by a portrait of the 2001 Seattle Mariners, Taylor Swift bobblehead from a niece. I set the Leatherman on the desk. Close the blade. It’s the pliers I want.The computer screen wakes. It knows I’m back and has messages for me. The computer talks with other computers and already knows what the other computers know. Computers are gossips. From the other cubicles come the first sighs and oh-shits and thank-gods. The murmur like a hive. No one uses the office phones on their desks. They pull out their personal cells to call home. “Honey, I got bad news.” Some whimpers. Some sniffles. And I don’t know if the cries come from the people laid off or those left behind.My computer is slow. I’ve been asking for a new one since Halloween. The inbox is buried under windows. And by the time I get to it, there’s nothing. During that whole boss-talk, I missed six emails about invoices, but nothing like “it saddens me” or “we thank you for your service.” And the tooth pulses again. The Leatherman goes back in my pocket, and I head to the breakroom because at least there’s cake and maybe that will help. Maybe there’s ice cream with the cake and that can numb everything. Sometimes when this happens, I get a glass of crushed ice from the breakroom fridge dispenser and pinch the ice between cheek and gum like chew. The dentist says that’s no good. He says, “Have you tried B-complex vitamins?” Yes, and peppermint tea bags and hydrogen peroxide and Anbesol.Bill is by the microwave and flanked by other engineers. Bill’s happy, which is odd because no one’s ever happy. Yes, sometimes people are pleasant or amused, but never happy. And how the hell did Bill make it forty years—and is that the secret: that if you can give the company four decades, you get to be happy. In thirty-four years, I’ll grin like a piñata.No ice cream. And the cake doesn’t help. It’s white and over-sugared with supermarket raspberry jam for filling. The chocolate frosting is dry as plaster, but the breakroom fills with chatter about how good the cake is. Jenny in accounting says, “The cake is great.” You know nothing about cake, Jenny.I’m standing by the cake and Bill comes over for a second slice. He doesn’t want a whole piece. “Just a sliver,” he says, and I’m standing at the table by the cake, and Bill’s looking for a knife.“I have a knife,” I say, and pull from my pocket. “Great Leatherman,” says Bill. But he doesn’t take it.So I ask him, “What’s the secret?” Bill grins but won’t tell. Then the itch comes back like an allergy. And I know how rude this looks, but, on Monday, Bill will be in Vegas pouring massage oil on hookers, so I just do it. I set the Leatherman down by the cake and reach my hand inside and wiggle the tooth. My hand comes out pulling a string of spit—like I’m a basset hound.“Itch?” says Bill. He smiles like one of those wise Cherokee in every western movie. “Yes,” he says, “there’s a secret.” Bill sets down his plate. He moves his hands to his mouth. He flinches, pinches around, and draws from between his lips. Out, in his glistening hand, comes his top dentures. Bill smiles like a railroad tramp, all gums. And his face falls saggy. But happy saggy. Then tilts his head, puts the plate back in, bites down, and restores his face.He says, “Pliers don’t work. I know a guy who can get you forceps. And lidocaine.” Then Bill says he’s changed his mind and takes the full slice. He grabs a piece with his hand and sets it on his plate, then licks the raspberry jam from his fingers. “Here,” I say, and lift the Leatherman to Bill once more. “Congratulations,” I say. But Bill says he already has all the Leathermans he needs and walks back to the guys from Engineering with his full slice of cake.The Leatherman is perfectly designed. A knife and a saw and pliers all in one working unit. The knife for cutting cake. The pliers for pulling teeth. And maybe Bill is wrong about pliers. Only one way to find out. And maybe the company that makes the Leatherman is hiring, needs a good accounts guy. Probably that company has amazing dental. I could leave, at least after the Christmas bonus—no sense going before then. And the tooth isn’t itching now. And if the itch comes back, I know how to handle it. If it gets too bad, I have the pliers to rip that thing out or can get lidocaine from Bill’s dealer. I’ll take action. It’s like the Dalai Lama says, “Happiness comes from your own actions.” Or maybe it was Hannibal or Genghis Kahn. Either way, isn’t being happy what it’s all about.
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