ABSTRACT YOU MY HONEYBEE, I'm YOUR FUNKY BUTT by Jeremy J

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ABSTRACT

YOU MY HONEYBEE, I’M YOUR FUNKY BUTT

by Jeremy J. Miller

The following is a collection of love stories, not stories of “traditional love”—the characters often have no conception of what love is supposed to be—but of love on the fringes, or love that acknowledges the unimagined possibilities of identity. The author attempts to locate unexpected acts of love: among giants, between a disillusioned collegiate and a middle-aged fish cook, between long-lost relatives, and between a transvestite angel and her beleaguered policeman.

YOU MY HONEYBEE, I’M YOUR FUNKY BUTT

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of English

Jeremy J. Miller

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2006

Advisor ______Brian Roley

Reader ______Margaret Luongo

Reader ______Gwen Etter-Lewis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Mentor 1

The Eulogy Artist 14

Value 34

You My Honeybee, I’m Your Funky Butt 44

Remedy 58

Wrapped 72

Holding a Baby: Damage Control 90

Mouseboy the Miraculous 101

Mataviejitas: A Love Story 114

How to Publish in The New Yorker Or, The Viking 125

THE MENTOR

The last thing my mentor said to me was this: “The Cold, the lip-curling nastiness of it, never sends you a postcard before ripping into you. It will sack you with a quiver so bad you’ll want to gnaw through your leg and set fire to the stump.” She said it with as much tenderness as you’d expect a mother of three to possess, as if she were singing a lullaby while whacking you upside the head with a shovel. It was one of her most endearing qualities—abstractness, countered by the silly urge to paint a clear picture. I told her once that a genius never has to explain herself, that perhaps the real beauty of a thought is the way it floats just beyond our fingertips. She looked at me with a slow, meaty eye and told me to chop the onion, don’t cut it. I stared into the creamy-wet heart of that onion and whispered, soft as foam, I love you. * * * I was a student at a small, conservative university just north of Columbus. Change was hush-hush and carried around in sacks like fidgety weasels: the newspaper still reported on bingo night, the arts consisted of ballroom dancing and traditional performances of Shakespeare, and only recently did the campus retire its mascot, the Big Red Indian, after years of protest from Mohican Valley natives. A couple friends of mine, along with myself and a Finnish guy named Lars who made a bad habit of rubbing his cuticles along his lower lip, lobbied the administration with a spirited presentation to fund our revolutionary new publication. We had decided before entering the boardroom that Plan A was to make an appeal to logos—to reason, as cogently as we could, that the university was incomplete without a publication independent of certain ideological trappings. We made acute references to Professor Johanek (pronounced yo-NICK), who oversaw the campus newspaper with an iron fist. Quickly, we reverted to Plan B, an appeal to pathos, which meant that

we babbled about how we were disenfranchised, how we deserved a break, and couldn’t they please just lend us a used computer, maybe a room to call our headquarters? We bought an old Macintosh from a kid with acne scars and ponytail and placed it on the floor of our new office, a storage space in the basement of Barney Hall reeking of disinfectant and something like burnt flapjacks. The Hall was said to be haunted by innumerable ghosts, one of whom was Eliam Barney, a young scholar pushed down a flight of stairs by his apprentice, described as wicked, jealous, and clumsy. Barney had flailed down the steps and collided with the 7th edition of Moby Dick. The shelf then tumbled on top of him. That very copy of Moby Dick, which had grown jaundice-yellow and crisp with age, was locked away in a glass case. The case was in a library, on the third floor. Our first task as the staff of The Bullsheet was to liberate the book and publish a ransom note from an anonymous group of vigilantes calling themselves the Winged Angels. Our relationship with the Angels allowed our fan base to swell, although our pockets remained shriveled. Once a week, each of us would canvas the university for obscure copy rooms, where we illegally printed our quota of Bullsheets. Alongside news of the latest vandalism abuses, I had a running commentary in which I would assume the rhetoric of a political insurgent. One week I wrote as Gandhi and promoted Gurukula, an ancient type of school in India where pupils lived with their teachers. Another week, I was Nawal El Sadaawi in women’s prison (all-female dormitory) detailing the abuses of a patriarchal administration and arguing for a new co-ed policy. Our publication, in its pubescent stages, quickly grew beyond our means. While the demand for a new Bullsheet fattened and spilled over its belt loop, we were suffering malnutrition, subsiding on quick caffeine fixes and occasionally, aderol pills, which we bought out-of-pocket. We brushed off the lint before tipping our heads back. Forced to take drastic measures, The Bullsheet began soliciting advertisements. We lacked all business know-how. Our charges, as well as our selection of sponsors, were arbitrary. Next to the local grocer’s buy-one-get-one-free was a shaggy dog with a caption reading, “I need a groooom, ruff ruff.” The local merchants seemed even less able to market their services than we were of printing them. To keep our sanity, we offered the nearest tattoo parlor a half-page spread for free. Sometimes, we would alter pictures of produce, such as cantaloupe, so that it resembled certain areas of the human form. One late evening, while smoking away Lars’ stash of marijuana, we injected a new catchphrase into the shaggy dog’s voice box: “I sniff butts, ruff ruff.” One of our proudest moments. * * *

I was introduced to Michelle in the kitchen of a bistro called O Cintilante. The owner was a Portuguese financier with a taste for seafood. The restaurant was cradled on the Upper East Side of Columbus between a coffee shop and an abandoned schoolhouse, less than twenty minutes from campus. I had been writing reviews for over a month. In exchange for free food, I was allowed to say anything I wanted about the quality of service, the décor, and the restaurant’s previously uninvestigated connections to organized crime. I persuaded the hostess to give me a tour of the place, where, in the kitchen, I saw Michelle lopping off shrimp heads with concentrated bursts. She flicked the exoskeletons with a slender thumb, dipped the shrimp into an orange sauce, and patiently rubbed herbs into the pink flesh. She then layered the shrimp onto a crispy sheet of seaweed and steaming rice, and with a twist of the wrist, she rolled the sushi into a long cigarette. I was certainly awestruck. Throughout my meal—ginger-crusted salmon with stir-fried vegetables—I could think of nothing other than those hands, soft and dangerous. I slowly turned the salmon with my tongue, squeezed it against my pallet and wondered if she had rubbed the ginger into the fish with as much care as she prepared the shrimp. Within a week, I had done a follow-up review, applied for a busser position carting off dirty plates and discarded shells, and broke the news to my girlfriend of four months. My new occupation, I told her, was going to require my full attention. The fish were frozen with shock or heavily sedated. Their gaping mouths and cataract eyes reminded me of my first encounter with Michelle, a moment accented by its juicy texture and bold smell. I rolled up my white T-shirt sleeves over my shoulder bone and carried fresh grouper and tuna from the freezer box to the cutting board, cradled the soft bodies and laid them carefully on the oak. The flesh was a welcome cool on my skin. Before being promoted to courier, I was a hectic, clumsy busser and a picky dishwasher, mostly since I refused to use a hairnet. I wore hot-yellow rubber gloves and scrubbed with complete ingratitude. I couldn’t see Michelle beyond the tiled wall. I imagined her stained apron folded over her waist, like unbuttoned overalls. She would wipe her hands with the flap, take a deep breath and look toward the ceiling, not exhausted but in a whimsical way, as a philosopher would when dismissing an ignorant question. “Are you from around here?” I asked her. I couldn’t think of a better icebreaker, although I had previously introduced myself on all fours, poking under a shelf of spices for a slippery piece of salmon. I had said, Watch your step. I meant it with all my heart. “You could say that.”

“I’m not really familiar with the area.” She dropped three mussels in a pan along with some peri-peri pepper and waved steam toward her face. Tilting the bottom end of a gold bottle, she released a thin line of oil with a dramatic swoop of her arm. “Did you just move here or something?” she asked. “Yeah.” I hugged a pile of tuna fish. My arms were heavy and both the fish and I were sweating, showering the floor with salty goblets. The moisture soaked through my shirt and wetted my chest. “I um go to college nearby.” I added, “It’s my senior year.” “My children attend the elementary.” She dressed crab napoleon with thin slices of lemon. “Oh yeah? I have a sister…she’s in school too,” I lied. “My oldest is in fourth. She reads a lot of these horror novels—with the slime and all—I don’t think she can understand a lick of it. She doesn’t get scared or anything.” She tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Her lean shoulder muscles flexed with each drag of the blade. “No kidding, Lindsay loves to read, mysteries mostly, horror novels set in Transylvania and other stuff too. She just finished As I Lay Dying.” “What’s that?” “Oh it’s an older book, I guess, before our time.” “No kidding.” “Anyways, maybe Lindsay and…” I waited for Michelle to name her child. “…and your daughter can get together sometime.” “We’ll see.” That night, I made a sister from scratch. I began with her reading habits and added some feet—small, tan toes with a calloused heel (she hates socks, they irritate her skin). She reads Tolstoy and clears her throat as she flips each page. I added some legs and dirty knees (I have told her more than once to rub bar soap on a washcloth and scrub in circles). She has a volume of stories by Eudora Welty. Her stomach is flat and warm, a little poochy around the hips, and she likes to wear tank tops to show off her shoulder muscles. She will not wear makeup and tears through trashy novels by Anne Rice, who writes about French vampires and their lovers. Lindsay’s aquarium at home is overrun by tiny fish that juke and shimmy and dance. She smokes filtered cigarettes when no one is looking and rubs them down on brick walls. I colored in her face, traced the lines of her nose with a pen, erased, then narrowed the bridge. The face resembled a young Michelle without the fine lines of age and worried forehead, which I have come to adore. I returned to the palette several times before I fell asleep.

One night, Michelle asked me to hand her a knife. I obliged and watched her wipe it clean on her apron, then filet a fish carcass. I asked her if she could teach me to do that, and she said to grab a bucket of trout from the locker. When I came back, she told me that an older couple was celebrating a triple-bypass. They ordered grilled trout without the bones. I sliced into the belly of the trout, poked sharply through the skin and proceeded to mangle the rest. She tossed the splayed fish in the trash and wordlessly maneuvered my hand over the knife. She slid the blade under the skin, found the fatty film between the scales and the meat. My first lesson. I peeled the skin and carefully tugged on the spine and thin rib bones. * * * Lars disapproved. My writing of late had become saturated with inappropriate references to obscure modernist principles. Also troubling were the short vignettes on the texture of various saltwater fish, the hackneyed way I satirized the GOP (the vice president was a squid who shot ink at President Codfish), and the most disturbing thing of all, the point that really pushed Lars over the edge and sent him into a fit of lip-scraping cuticle rubs, was the apotheosis of my mentor. Lars scolded me with his chafed mouth, said that on top of everything else, I had adopted a smell so nauseating that he couldn’t concentrate on his environmental commentary. All this, despite the fact that on several occasions I purloined fresh shrimp for him, which he would eat whole, shell and all. I tried to ignore his comments and sunk into what had become my daily lessons. Michelle taught me to support the knife blade with my knuckles when chopping vegetables. Once, I nicked my index finger and wondered how she would help me dress the wound. I imagined her wiping the tear of blood on her apron, then kissing the irritated skin with salty lips, which would sting a little and cause my ears to warm. Instead, she tossed me a roll of paper towels and made me wear plastic gloves for the rest of the evening. At first, I was upset with her sterile demeanor; it was devoid of interest, blunt and cruel. I responded by tugging out fish spine so that fine threads of bone remained lodged in the meat. I broke a few dishes, blamed the sliminess of the fish. I even volunteered in the dish room, where I cussed at patrons who left food on their plates. It became clear that her stoicism was a lesson. I had read about mentors who refused to lavish their pupils with praise, opting instead to cut a swathe into ripe hearts, so that when healed, when the deep impressions were scabbed over and strong-as-hide, the pupils would understand just how enjoined is the mentor and her student. The thought freed me from a prison of self-pity. I came to cherish Michelle’s tough love, the way she said “wash the salmon” when what I really wanted to do was pat the crab cakes, like her. I wanted to pop a steamy flake of bass into my

mouth, then add something, anything. She was always adjusting, rethinking her vision. Unlike my writing, which, at best, was a flattering form of mimicry (I was the literary version of a cover band), I could approach Michelle and her craft. It was the touch, the feel of skin and the warmth underneath. An example: On the floor of the cooler, below shelves of fish heads packed on top of fish tails—yin and yang—to keep them from sliding off shelves to the cooler floor, I laid down to escape the thick hot air from the kitchen. We would mist the fish every so often to keep it from freezer burn. A cosmetic layer of ice lacquered the floor and crackled underfoot. Treading carefully, I rolled onto the floor and let the ice melt on the back of my neck and arms. I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to what looked like snow falling on me. Ice shavings and frost crystals floated from above and refracted light. I pinched my crunchy lashes for a better view and found a flying fish swimming the expanse of the metallic sky. “How long have you been in here?” I felt something warm on my ankle. “You’re going to catch pneumonia. Can you put your arms up?” Michelle was hovering above, reaching for me. She pulled me up (quite a maneuver considering I had fifty pounds on her), draped my arm around her shoulder, and led me into the kitchen. She sat me down on a crate and cupped her hands to my neck, just under my jaw. My ears rang and popped. “What were you doing in there?” she asked. I couldn’t speak; I shook my head. “I went in to get some fish and there you were, grinning and sprawled like a dog wanting its belly rubbed.” She pulled a crate in front of me and sat down. “Give me your hands.” She wedged my hands between her thighs and rubbed my earlobes with her thumb and forefingers. I felt sharp pricks all over my skin. She said: “When I was a girl and the snow came up to my knees, I made a snow angel in the street and nearly got flattened by a truck. I kept wondering how come I didn’t hear that truck? Maybe I did. My brother, Gerry, said I had a peculiar grin plastered on my face, as if I wouldn’t mind getting smashed.” She put my hands to her cheek to gauge the temperature. My palm burned on her face. “Truth be told, my ass was freezing and I was numb to my toes. I hated the cold, so I don’t know why I laid there all dumbstruck. I guess I was anticipating something.” I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t crazy. It’s okay to open your arms and just take it; sure, you’ll have some bruises, but if you never get cut, then how do you know you’re truly feeling

anything? I wondered, what would she do if I kissed her? Would she pull back as if stung by a bee, or nudge forward and close the gap? I felt my lips warm and rubbed them together. “My point: do what you have to, but make sure someone knows you’re sleeping with the fish before you curl up in the cooler, huh?” * * * Lars continued to comment on the slickness of my hair, the tips of which reached my shoulders. I stopped bringing shrimp to our editorial meetings. I worked at odd hours—usually in the afternoon, when our vigilantes slept after late-night tirades. Lars left sticky notes on the computer screen. The Keys Are Greasy. The notes became more daring. You ate catfish again—I can smell it! I found a memorandum tucked neatly into an envelope, taped to the monitor. I cinched the paper out of its envelope, opened the tri-fold, and read the typed script carefully: The members of The Bullsheet, a publication founded upon journalistic integrity and priding itself on professionalism, has chosen to release you from your duties as co-editor in chief. The reasons for your resignation are many, and to spare you the indignity of such meticulous disapprobation, we will sum it up as thus: you smell like cod and write like flounder. Please leave all materials in the office and place your key on the desk. I folded the memorandum and placed it on the keyboard. Waxy smudges marked where my fingers held the paper. At work that evening, I lopped off a dozen fish heads, bagged them loosely in freezer paper, and placed them in the heating vent, under the floor of The Bullsheet office. A few days later, Michelle told me about her husband. He was a short, kind man prone to bouts of laziness. He walked around the house in boxers and made grilled cheese for her three children, all young, all much too stupid to enjoy a rendezvous with Lindsay, my literate kid sister. Evidently, Michelle’s children were still oogling over Dr. Seuss and his rancid ham. I was touched that Michelle confided in me, and although my desire for her company outside the restaurant was temporarily doused, I resolved with steadfast loyalty to win her heart as a pupil. I demonstrated to Michelle that, unlike her husband, I had a sophisticated sense of cool, a chic-ness of attire that clashed mightily with our grid-iron kitchen. I stopped cramming my feet into tennis shoes; instead, I wore loafers. I hot-glued studded rubber to the bottom of my shoes to keep from slipping. I wore black slacks and an oxford with the sleeves rolled above my elbows. I had an Egyptian cotton jacket tailored and fitted with a pen and thermometer pocket, and I donned a lightweight chef’s hat that made me look like an archbishop. An artiste of Portuguese cuisine, divine creator of culinary fair.

The new threads failed to impress Michelle and made me sweat buckets. I was itchy from the coat fiber and made irritable by the odd behavior of the kitchen staff. The line cooks seemed frequently to lose their balance; they would slip into each other only to giggle and whisper nonsense. Once, a squid climbed into my chef’s hat; it lay limp in its cocoon, exhausted and frightened. On two occasions, a cod fin slipped out of a busser’s hand and slapped me on the cheek. The kitchen was slipping into chaos. I was running out of romantic material. Surely, Michelle knew that I was attracted to her. I showered her with attention, not just as a dutiful student, but as an affectionate lover anticipating a tender touch, some swift and powerful movement. I drove home one night, angry, depressed, temporarily insane and lusty. On the doorstep to my apartment, Lars sat applying Chap Stick to his lips. He curled the edge of the doormat with his shoe. His blonde hair looped sideways like a wave. I approached and he tucked in his shirt. “We miss you,” he said. “I don’t care, take your tree-hugging rhetoric to the moon, man.” “Wait. I know what we did was wrong, I mean, you dig this woman, Mindy, is it?” “Michelle.” “Right, and that’s okay, and it’s not like you have to come back to the paper or anything, though we’d like you to. I just wanted to say sorry.” His eyes were anxious. The only other time I’d seen Lars this way was at the board meeting when we pitched The Bullsheet to the administration. He had rubbed his lip so ferociously that midway through Plan A he had a rivulet of watery blood running down his chin. One of the administrators, a man with a naked gap between his pant leg and sock, had to excuse himself. He was squeamish and tended to get lightheaded at the site of broken skin. Fidgeting in front of my apartment, Lars was barely together. At any moment, I could pull a loose thread and unravel him, send him running bare-assed into the woods. “Are we done, Lars?” “Well I wanted to tell you something personal.” He gazed a few inches above my head, as if a tiny spider was sliding down its silky line toward my face. “I guess I miss you.” All kidding aside, I was touched. A man had never been so blunt with me. Pats on the back, sure. High fives. Those upward nods that say, “Dude, we’re cool, let’s me and you smoke a joint on the soccer field.” And, although I would have liked to prolong the tension between us, or drag it out till he felt ashamed to have been so vulnerable, I gushed blubbery and hugged him. We ended

up at the local pub, reminiscing about shaggy dogs and commentaries written in the guise of Nelson Mandela. Lars bought rounds of Mexican beer. I salted each bottle rim and he sipped from a glass. “The paper must be doing pretty well, huh?” “No more than before…hey, have you been to the office lately, we’ve been redecorating. No, seriously, Brenda gave us a movie poster—Night of the Living Dead.” (That was our movie, Lars’s and mine. [Cut to cemetery]: lanky zombie has presence of mind to pick up giant rock and slam it into car window. Smart zombies? Too delicious.) “So we’ve almost got it just how we want it,” Lars continued. “We stole a couple stools from the Wing Hut, nabbed a charter or two from a fraternity or sorority, whatever, it’s about done, but there’s just one thing.” “What’s that?” “There’s a foul stench, man, really skunky shit.” My throat tightened. “Um, I meant to tell you—” “We turned the entire office upside down, looked in the filing cabinet, under the rug, in the ceiling.” “Did you check in the vent by the printer?” “Yeah, we unscrewed the grate and couldn’t find anything.” “I know, you have to stick your whole arm in there and poke around the corner.” “Seriously?” “Yep, when I thought you didn’t want me around, I wrapped up some fish heads for a farewell gift.” “That’s kind of funny.” “I guess it is. I was going to feed them to some alley cat, but I felt inspired at the time. Are you gonna drink that?” Lars’s beer was getting warm, and being in a good nature, I gestured for his glass. “Oh sure, take it. I guess you probably threw the key in some river too?” “Oh no, it’s hidden away in Barney library.” “Let me guess, in the folds of Keats.” “You offend me—Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray.” I extended an arm, palm up. “He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.” “Well said, my friend. Listen, I have to be going now.” Lars stood up and flicked a creased bottle cap toward me. It clinked and tumbled over the table. “Why don’t you just finish that beer,”

he said. I bent down to pluck the cap off the floor. When I rose, Lars was gone. He had walked out of my life. I would eventually see Lars again, in art history class in the spring, but slouched in the bar, my eyes began to swell, because I knew I had just been duped. I was too numb to react, an effect of the liters of beer careening through my bloodstream and swishing in my brain. I rolled the bottle cap between thumb and forefinger and bit down on the ridge of the cap as though I were testing gold, using filled molars on the right side of my mouth. A minor setback, I concluded; I wasn’t dismayed. I recited the Wilde quote in a whisper this time and it reminded me of my purpose. It restored my faith in love. A new vigor, thick and chest filling, gave me momentum. I have to make my move, I told myself. I have weeks of preparation and am well trained. I can julienne with the best, deep fry, grill and sauté. What are you talking about? A man asked. Nothing, I told him. (I lifted my glass and gave one last toast to the fish heads.) Ordinary riches can be stolen, I told them. Real riches cannot. Here here, said the fish heads. * * * We had opened the back door to urge in a breeze, but the air inside the kitchen of O Cintilante was too rich, misting our shoulders. Michelle didn’t mind the humidity. She wore a tank top and pulled her silver-streaked hair into a tight ponytail. I had abandoned my chef’s hat and coat, opting instead for a bandana and T-shirt. Michelle and I worked side-by-side, our motion efficient and fluid. I cut the vegetables and folded them out like a deck of cards. She scooped the vegetables and dropped them in a steamer, stirred sauce with her other hand and dipped her nose over sizzling lobster. Somewhere along the night, after receiving an urgent phone call, she lost her concentration. Sauce splattered the stovetop and foamed over, causing the stove’s flames to intensify and searing the underside of her fish steaks. Her chops were ragged, and for the first time, I could hear her breathe, long windy sighs. I wanted to comfort her and had the urge to kiss her glistening shoulder. If she wasn’t looking, she might think nothing of it, just a fly careened by the wind through the open doors. “Is it hot in here to you?” she asked me. Her black tank top bunched a little above her hips, but was otherwise tight. The dip at the base of her throat collected perspiration. I slowed my pace

at the cutting board and wondered how to respond. She grabbed the flap of her apron with both hands and fanned herself. “Hot as balls, would you like me to get you some ice?” Somewhere along the transfer of thought to word I had a synaptic failure, blocked by my own foolish desire. “I mean, I could take over for awhile.” “Can you? I need to make a phone call. There’s been an accident at home.” “Oh, are you alright? Is there anything I can do?” “For now, just finish up that mango salsa and grill the salmon. I’ll be back in a moment.” She untied her apron and hung it on the wall. “You know what you’re doing.” “Yeah, I do.” How do I describe to you the gloriousness of that moment? I set right to work. I held my hand over the grill and calibrated the heat. I mixed the salsa—mango with vinegar, cucumber and tomato. I cracked my fingers and spooned a mouthful. Too sweet. I added some salt, just a pinch. I watched carefully as the flames licked the salmon flesh, made the fat ooze and bubble. Each finger of the flame was my finger. I caressed the meat, teased it and let the juices sizzle. I finished the dish, dressed it with a tuft of parsley and sent it away with the server. I was tempted to throw a jacket over my apron and slip amongst the diners. I would watch the man or woman savor my creation. Unlike my writing, I needed a reaction. I had to see my creation existing, had to know what it did to people. After a quarter hour, Michelle still hadn’t returned. I was sacked with orders. My hands, which just a moment before were seasoned and steady, had become exposed as knobby and novice. Imposters! Stupid, miserable fingers, fat and ugly and clumsy. I couldn’t think straight. The orders mixed together: fried crab and shrimp Rangoon, mashed mahi-mahi with a side of grilled potatoes. To add to the chaos, I was getting especially wicked pleasure out of imagining Michelle’s husband wedged under a tire, or better yet, made sterile by overdosing on male enhancement pills. I couldn’t help it; I was a complete wreck, full of panic, overheated, and giddy. I was about to laugh myself hysteric when Michelle returned and nudged me aside. She glanced at the order tickets. Just a glance! She made such quick order of the mess that it seemed nothing was wrong, that I knew what I was doing. Nothing was out of place. Something happened during that flurry of grace, something so painfully beautiful that it would alter the course of my life.

Michelle cut herself. Cupped the hand. Squeezed the finger—a red pearl. Here, I said, give me your hand. I wrapped her finger in the folds of my apron, and in that moment, as the red on my apron expanded into a blot, I saw how truly hurt she was. I flicked away her exoskeleton, exposed her flesh and rubbed it gently. Her finger, in my hands, made her more vulnerable than she ever thought possible. Her eyes were melancholy and sweet. I raised her hand to my lips and kissed the wound, then again. She was patient. When I released her hand, she held her finger out, as though examining it. She then walked to the sink, washed her hands with cold water and soap, and wrapped a Band-Aid around her cut. She fitted her hand with a latex glove and said this: “After I fell asleep in the snow and was nearly flattened by the truck, my brother gave me a warning. He said the Cold, the lip-curling nastiness of it, never sends you a postcard before ripping into you.” She picked up a pot of soup and swished it around. “It will sack you with a quiver so bad you’ll want to gnaw through your leg and set fire to the stump.”

THE END

THE EULOGY ARTIST

Part One

Cooper was not yet a eulogy artist, merely a eulogist. His hair, creamed flat and smoothed over a half-burned scalp, moved like a costume wig. His gestures were as cautious and awkward as a child playing with his first pup. He smelled like a camp-fire, an odor I later attributed to his boyhood accident—an absurd assumption on my part, but I could hardly be blamed for it. Cooper has always been elusive: his smells, his evolving artistry, his tortured scalp, never fully concealed and therefore eye-catching. I met Cooper at the town’s only funeral home, which was nestled next to a delicatessen. If any of us had sense, us being the guests of the funeral home, we may have considered the proximity of so much cold meat in bad taste—at least worth a chuckle—but we were preoccupied with my uncle’s passing and weary of the heat, which coated our faces like the breath of a belligerent relative. The air conditioner in the window hacked and wheezed; a thin ribbon attached to the fan flitted every few seconds and went limp, more of a brush-off, it seemed to me, than a wave goodbye. Voices hovered like a sticky fog. A baby grieved, crusty-eyed. The aroma of fresh baked bread smothered the commingled perspiration of the mourners and flirted with our hunger. Aunt Morgan wedged her eleventh tic-tac between her lips. Saturn, my cousin, picked lint from her skirt and dropped it, bombs away, by my feet. I had thought Uncle Silver was a great man, although admittedly, I had fairly indistinct standards at the time of the funeral, having since adjusted my qualifications to reflect my approximate education level and my developing understanding of history. During the funeral, I allied myself with the indignant crowd, muttering to no one in particular about Uncle Silver’s meager

arrangements: a cheap unvarnished casket, and an unattractive photo of a younger version of my uncle, shirtless, bald, and laughing next to a wax mockup of Elvis Presley in mid hip-snap. My buns toddled on the edge of the pew, a posture my aunt, two seats over, interpreted as blasé. I sat between Saturn, who had been putting money aside for sweat gland removal surgery, and a cumbersome lithograph map of Munich, Germany, held upright by Uncle Galvin. Aunt Morgan leaned forward and eyed me, cheeks caved from sucking yet another tic-tac. I sat up. Uncle Galvin (Silver’s brother) recited his version of Silver’s eulogy to me, but it sounded like the same old rant about Silver’s mother, his father’s mistress. It had been well gossiped that Uncle Silver was born in Munich, not to Galvin’s mother, a kind phlegmatic woman who cooed more often than she spoke, but to a woman with the most amazing breasts Galvin had ever seen. Aunt Morgan grunted, hands fumbling in her purse for a loose tic-tac. Galvin’s mustache, usually stiff with wax, shook and bounced with enthusiasm. “No need to pinch me, I’m not ashamed. I was in love with her breasts,” Galvin said. He looked to me for support, resting an arm atop the lithograph that separated us. “She wore these low-cut knit tops to tease me, so often bending down to hand me a hard candy.” “Dad,” Saturn whined. She fanned her underarms with a floppy pamphlet and rolled her eyes. “Just between you and me,” Uncle Galvin told me, mustachio atremble, “I would have married that woman.” Not likely, I thought, she was already married to his father. Not in the legal sense, but as an obligation to her child, Silver, who had been spoiled with so much motherly tenderness that he never once questioned his status as second-class son. Nor was he shamed when his father invited him and his mother to Thanksgiving dinner and introduced mistress and child as distant cousins who had fallen on hard times. It was a game, Uncle Silver had explained to me during one of our walks. As a young boy, he had yearned for a family. He was glad to have a cast to playact his fantasy, even if one of those cast members unashamedly stole glimpses of his mother’s cleavage. Uncle Galvin brought the lithograph to the funeral as a tribute to his brother’s German heritage, but it seemed a haughty gesture to me, a posthumous claim on the large endowment to be revealed ceremoniously during the funeral—unorthodox for a postmortem ritual, perhaps, but that was Silver’s wish. He had developed his fortune with an instinct as misunderstood as it was legendary.

For example, when Silver’s rivals had invested in real estate, he invested in the Swatch Watch. His partners climbed aboard, their polished shoes squeaking, only after Silver had made the initial risk, and the initial fortune. Once, Silver spent half his savings buying a dozen Texas ranches to raise ostriches for slaughter. His partners claimed the heat would be too much for the ostriches, the ground too hard to bury their heads. The ostrich steaks would be tough, sinewy, and vastly inferior to steer meat. They were correct. But they hadn’t envisioned the market in Tasmania for tough, sinewy meat that wasn’t steer meat. Sitting upright, I wondered who Uncle Silver would trust to eulogize his life, and who he trusted to award the considerable endowment. Then again, I wasn’t sure trust was required of someone giving away millions to a fidgety crowd, each mourner privately estimating his or her worth in relation to Silver’s fortune. How much was a cousin worth? Twenty thousand? What about a girlfriend? I ran the figures in my head, adjusting each allotment to relative levels of affluence and need, adjusting again to frequency of phone calls, birthday greetings, and Christmas invites, finally multiplying sum (A) family hierarchy by (B) hugs and kisses. Silver never married and never had children. According to my estimation, his fourth significant girlfriend, who wasn’t present at the funeral, deserved more compensation than Galvin, mostly due to an enormous disparity in category (B). Uncle Galvin, sensing the murmur soften in the room, had stopped reminiscing about breasts and was placing his metallic map of Munich on top of the closed casket, next to the picture of Silver and Elvis. He touched his fingers to his lips and transferred the kiss to the lithograph. I prayed he’d get lockjaw. A thin young man, wearing a ratty suit with worn ankle cuffs, shuffled next to Galvin, placed three delicate fingertips on his shoulder, and whispered in his ear. The hard-of-hearing observed Galvin’s cheeks flush purple. His mustache dipped over his thin lips, and his chin crinkled. He picked up the lithograph, which looked heavier than before, probably due to the tension in Galvin’s shoulders, the way he clung to the lithograph with both arms. The man in the suit introduced himself as Cooper Mansfield. “Silver,” Cooper said, awaiting recognition from his audience, “was not born in Munich, Germany.” He thumbed a rubbery strand of hair behind his ear. “Any questions?” No one stirred.

Cooper crossed his wrists in front of his waist and timidly scanned the crowd. Adjacent to his gnawed left ear was a temple coated with slick, rippled scar tissue. The raw skin reminded me of the time my friend, Sally, grabbed the wrong end of a marshmallow stick and scalded his palm, which had swollen and deflated into a wet, crimson canvas, the creases darkened and the lifeline made more bold and savage. A few ropes of skin squirmed beside Cooper’s ear. It took me a moment to realize the ropes were veins. I glanced around. Some of the other mourners were unconsciously walking their fingertips over their scalps. One woman with ashy hair realized what she was doing and fanned her face with her idle hand, as if to call attention to the thick frizz-inducing humidity. “What?” a mourner asked. “Would you, any of you, care to ask me a question about, concerning, regarding the life and times of Mr. Silver Alfred Penny?” Cooper asked. “What?” “What is this?” “This is Mr. Penny’s funeral,” Cooper said. “You’re quite to the point, aren’t you?” “Yes,” Cooper said. “Would you like to elaborate, please?” “Yes, I’m quite to the point,” Cooper said. “Who are you?” “He’s Cooper Mansfield.” “Thank you, madam,” Cooper said. “You’re welcome.” “Why are you here?” “The late Mr. Penny requested that I deliver his eulogy. His instructions specified that I answer any questions you may have about the life and times of Mr. Silver Alfred Penny,” Cooper said. “Oh.” “Wait, what?” “Could you please explain, sir?” “The late Mr. Penny requested that—” “Who gets the money?” A few men chimed in.

“The inheritance will be awarded to Mr. Arthur and Gloria Hostetler,” Cooper explained. “If the intended recipients have passed, or are incapable or unwilling for any reason to accept the inheritance, the endowment will then be awarded to next of kin.” I slouched, burying my neck under my shirt collar and bunching my pants so that a good portion of calf was revealed. I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms. Uncle Galvin shot me a glance that said: I’ll deal with you later, bucko. “Seriously. Who are you?” “Yeah, who really gets the money?” “Mr. Arthur and Gloria Hostetler,” Cooper said. Poor guy, I thought. The crowd was getting restless. I wanted to help, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. My stomach felt like boiled dough. I looked to Saturn for a friendly nod. Instead, she sniffed her shoulder and sighed. “How much?” “Why him?” “Why the kid?” “Does anyone else get money?” “This isn’t fair.” “Where did you get that scar along your scalp?” I asked. Without hesitation, Cooper responded: “A drunk driver hit me when I was a very young boy. I had been playing along the road and was lost in a daydream.”

Part Two

I wondered at Uncle Silver’s cruel sense of humor to award the inheritance indirectly to me, the only living heir of Arthur and Gloria Hostetler. My parents had died in a motorcycle accident years ago. Uncle Silver had visited their graves with me several times. I recalled his hand supporting my neck, the way he’d cut a smile if I looked at him long enough. He had left clumsy mementos propped against their gravestones—a pincushion, an old kazoo, two spoons. I hadn’t asked him questions. No whys or why nots. No questions about his fascination with cheap noisemakers and five cent harmonicas, or why dead people would care to make a ruckus. Cooper Mansfield had endured heavy abuse at the funeral, receiving each question earnestly and honestly, even though most questions began with “shit,” progressed to “hell,” and ended in a

stalemate, as in, “Shit buddy, you say you don’t know anything, but you claim to have the answers. Does that seem right to you? No way in hell it don’t.” Most of the funeral’s guests quietly came to terms with the situation, thanks in large part to Cooper’s patient delivery. He never spoke over anyone, never interrupted a disgruntled rant about the absurdity of it all, his own lunacy, et cetera. By the end of the funeral, nearly four hours later, most of the mourners were soothed by his presence. Those who weren’t soothed left or bowed in defeat. Some of us were preoccupied with how painful it would be to get up every morning and comb thin black hair over mangled flesh. Saturn wondered aloud how a person could afford to be so vain. I wondered privately if Cooper’s hideous comb-over wasn’t for our sake, to veil our own grotesque natures, or perhaps to call attention to our own limitations. It was like watching a belly dancer and feeling guilty about our own inflexibility. Cooper’s presence was carnivalesque, but natural, like greenish ooze from a scraped knee. Cooper had scraped his knee, I learned. He had broken his pelvis. He had fractured his jaw and lacerated his scalp before it melted under the hot fender of a truck. His accident has become legendary. Those faithful to historical criticism have labeled his boyhood tragedy as the formative event of his life, the seed, if you will, of his gift to perform eulogies. Critics of this approach protest that such extreme reductivism is problematic, as if the whole of Cooper’s artistry could be reduced to mere accident. No, better to throw out cause-and- effect. Cooper, as you know, famously denounced such rationale during Senator O’Reilly’s funeral, in 1991, with his “Your Cause is Someone Else’s Effect” eulogy. Clearly, Cooper’s influences were too varied and mysterious to encapsulate him. And yet, he believed in fate. That is, he believed in suffering. * * * The best part of me, Cooper frequently said, is between my ears and around the bend. Other parts Cooper tolerated: his left ear, pink and shriveled; his toes, which cracked when climbing stairs, and his dark hair, because even if he forgot to put his nightcap on before crawling in bed, it remained parted right-to-left after sun up. Against the grain, his mother had told him. Coo- boy, she’d said, massaging his warm scalp in her lap, you’re always going against the grain. Yes, but this was only half his fault—the other half was a combination of Benny Stroud behind a wheel and Jack Daniels in his lap.

Big Benny didn’t think anyone would be crossing a county road at dusk, let alone collecting rocks that resembled zoo animals with only a half moon’s light, but that was Coo-boy, eight years old. It took one jerk of the wheel, a couple dizzy tumbles, and some vicious tearing and crunching before Cooper realized he was pinned under the truck’s fender. He felt hot metal on his chest and smelled gasoline, burnt rubber, and piss—rich and sweet and not his own. It was dark then, though not tasteless like he imagined true dark to be. In fact, it tasted awful, like warm, sour milk, but again, the taste was not his own. Cooper’s mother just about threw a fit when she saw his left eye halfway out its socket, but she fainted and saved the nurses the trouble of restraining her. The surgeons worked long hours and constantly wiped their sweaty brows with the clean part of their sleeves. One had to take a smoke break, and when he was done and buzzing, he flicked the butt in the air to see what side it would land on. He walked back into the operating room humming Johnny Cash and helped reattach what remained of Cooper’s left scalp. Benny Stroud wore a seatbelt during the accident and for that reason he died instantly, smothered by jagged metal. Cooper insisted that he attend Benny’s funeral and mumbled so through a wired jaw. It seemed natural, Cooper thought, as close as he was to Benny during those last moments, as stinky and disgusting as he had felt. A few days later, Cooper’s mother swam in her only dress, the color of grass stain on blue jeans. She had lost weight recently, but Cooper, his right eye intact, noticed his mother’s still-bulky shoulders and healthy breasts as she patted his mouth dry with a handkerchief. He hadn’t noticed before how nice his mom’s skin was, pale and soft; nor had he noticed the way her nose complimented her chin, each with a slight dimple, as if those Eskimo kisses his mother doled out were little by little wearing her face down. Cooper couldn’t reach his nose, so he tried to wiggle it. Everything made him itch, even the light material the doctors gave him to wear. Cooper’s mother wheeled her son into the funeral home. They were late for the service. When they entered the parlor, all heads were dropped and the parishioner was finishing the Lord’s Prayer: power and glory, amen. The parishioner lifted his gaze and saw something colorful and swollen in the back of the room, a thing. He hesitated to step down from the podium, but seeing Benny’s mother cry into the lapel of a faded jacket reminded him of his place. A brief pause—a lanky man in stiff jeans and a black shirt plodded to the podium. Cooper thought this guy was afraid of tripping, so deliberate he was with each step; he shifted his wiry frame from side-to-side. At the podium, he pulled a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and smacked his lips. He pushed

his lower jaw forward and squinted at a phantom brightness. He said two words, looked up, and sobbed. This man… That was it. That was Benny’s eulogy: this man. Not this man who was twenty-six years old and was born to Mrs. Francine Stroud. Not this man who once taped road kill to the school entrance as a senior prank, who thought Hinckley was only so crazy to go shooting President Reagan but absolutely nuts to do it for Jodie Foster. Benny had thought everyone was a little nuts— he fought men who were psycho and loved women who could hardly stand him. Women, he’d say, wouldn’t know a good thing if it bit em in the ass. Everyone knew Benny; no one spoke. It made Cooper itch all over, and there was nothing he could do about it. He would have moaned, but people were already filing past him like he was on display. If they were crying, they forgot why and glanced nervously at Cooper’s feverish body. It made them glad to be alive. It wasn’t exactly a good feeling: bitter sweet, sour and filling.

Part Three

Less than a decade after receiving my inheritance from Uncle Silver, I developed a taste for edible flowers, pesticide free. I garnished my afternoon sorbets with violet petals, served lavender crème brulee at dessert parties, and impressed Emporer Hirohito with my chrysanthemum stir-fry. Some say my gladiola mousse kick-started the new rage in haute cuisine. I even hired two famed horticulturists to scour the Nile for blue lotuses, used as garnish for blue martinis that were served during a soirée for Oliver Stone. No longer the rich eccentric’s poor nephew from Ohio, I had matured into a twenty-five- year-old epicure and socialite. I had been a very private boy, harboring secret ambitions, as I’m sure most underprivileged youths do, but it took surprisingly little time to awaken in my loins the insatiable thirst for personal refinement. I had somehow convinced myself that living for pleasure was more important than making an impression on others. Meanwhile, Cooper made impressions on others. Cooper had developed a reputation as a minimalist eulogist. While I wondered whether apple blossoms or English daisies accentuated the flavor of lamb puree, Cooper received requests from all over the world for his unique skills. His clientele soon consisted of the young and rich,

those who relied less on tradition, more on trend-setting and fashion. If Howard Hughes had built his famed plane during this era, we would have legions of Spruce Gooses today filled with garish techno, themed interiors, indoor waterfalls, multi-paneled televisions and the liquor of the moment. Cooper was the new Spruce Goose. Because only he could produce his peculiar effect on mourners, the rich clamored for his services, taking advantage of a relative or friend’s recent departure as opportunity for an authentic Cooper Mansfield funeral. Because I knew most of these commissioners, I was privy to Cooper’s latest performances. I attended many of Cooper’s funerals as a guest of the financier, sometimes accompanied by a young, buxom actress, sometimes arriving alone, eager to ruminate over Cooper’s newest wisdom. I found that the more attentive I was, the more I could piece together Cooper’s personal history, his own dreams and ambitions. * * * As Cooper aged, he tried desperately to be worthy of a woman’s love. He did fifty sit-ups every morning, leaning more on his right side (he was constantly in danger of getting a hernia on his left side). His teeth were straight, the empty spaces filled. His legs were strong. He had his mother’s thick thighs; the tops of each would rub together when he walked comfortably. His arms were not large, but his triceps were bulky and wrapped around tightly so that his shoulders looked defined. His neck was only slightly discolored where surgeons had applied a skin graft to the burnt parts. He still combed his hair right-to-left to cover the hairless part of his scalp. Against the grain. Cooper did not know how unattractive he was. He allowed himself to be dishonest and once in a while said hello to a fine woman. The alternative frightened Cooper more than anything. The alternative reeked and tasted of spoiled dairy. So in addition to fifty sit-ups and one hundred push-ups, he did one hundred seventy-five jumping jacks. He loved the Rocky movie with Sylvester Stallone. He too could find a shy girl…some smart, loyal girl with thick glasses and deep Italian eyes. Sometimes he would pull his sweatshirt hood over his head and jog around the block pumping the air with his fists. Once, he weaved through the isles of a pet store, not for a chew toy or fish food, but to ask a clerk questions about exotic animals. He told the clerk that her vest was colorful. Cooper was not lonely. He was an artist, so he could enjoy his solitude, sometimes. Unlike other artists, he could not lament his fate. He could not raise his voice to the howling wind and blah, blah, woes me. Cooper was not fortune’s foe—couldn’t allow it, not if he was to write eulogies for strangers. He had to be misfortune’s friend; he had to remember those who couldn’t be remembered.

He was meticulous. He began by researching the family history of the deceased, rummaging around town for a day, getting a feel for the area. He smelled smoke stacks, oak, sweat, sweet bread, old socks wedged between couch cushions, candles, barrel grease, and oftentimes, rosemary and cloves, backwoods hash. He felt the textures of clothing and scars, listened to cassette tapes, watched home videos, tasted favorite leftovers. He interviewed friends, family, paying particular attention to strangers who had unexpectedly grieved in a meaningful way. It wasn’t always easy to enter into these lives. He told stories, allowed mourners to touch his own scars and to run a finger along his forearm to show where a small piece of metal was still embedded. Trust had to be earned, and that’s the way he liked it. The mourners pitied him, but not in the same way others did. Sometimes, when Cooper performed his eulogy, the family members stood by his side. It was rehearsed. The point was never to come to terms with death, but to tell a story that was true. Because of this, Cooper was always questioning himself. Word spread about this scarred man who told stories and before long Cooper was getting requests from all sorts of mourners: devastated ones, short ones, scared ones, whole families terrified of public speaking. Most importantly, he eulogized those who were lost before their time, those whose deaths were so unexpected that their mourners were left speechless and hollow. Cooper soon had rich clients who paid handsomely. One generous shaggy-haired youngster, the founder of an Internet clothing retailer, offered a bonus: each time the crowd laughed he would pay one hundred dollars, for each audible wail he’d pay a thousand. His employees were to receive the best funeral possible. Cooper agreed on one condition: that the money was donated to charity. Most, if not all the time, Cooper performed the eulogy himself, being the only person to understand the pace at which his words could be delivered, the intonations and embellishments. Because he didn’t perform at orthodox funerals, he was allowed some creative flexibility. For the employee of the online clothing retailer, Ms. Elizabeth Ann Shoemaker, Cooper created a multimedia presentation but otherwise didn’t speak. He projected images and played the songs of Elizabeth’s favorite hip-hop artists: Chris-Cross, Montel Jordan, NWA and Eazy E. He paused the slideshow on a picture of Elizabeth at home with her niece, Samantha, a round girl who had moments before the picture was taken kicked Elizabeth in the shin. Elizabeth had hoisted Samantha up and kissed her on the lips, with her eyes open. Cooper held this image for ten minutes, receiving no one hundred dollar laughs or thousand dollar wails. Sometimes, Cooper was accused of being sentimental, and rightly so. On more than one occasion, he mocked a quavering preacher’s voice. Other times, he would tell parables that seemed

to have nothing to do with the departed. He told of the time his Grandpa Acorn took him hunting on old man McPherson’s property where the ravine—more like a giant ditch—had provided a makeshift burial ground for small creatures: coon, possum, rabbit and frogs. Cooper explored the ravine while Grandpa Acorn, with his powerful bow and scruffy snuff-stained beard, was propped in a tree. He wore an orange vest so Acorn and other hunters knew he was not a target. The mud was so thick at the bottom of the ravine that it sounded like suction cups when he lifted his feet. Cooper approached a calf, half buried in the muck. The calf’s hide was thin but unbroken, and as he sledged nearer, he saw that the calf had stepped in a trap and broken its leg. It had starved to death. Cooper was old enough to know that someone had forgotten about these traps, that there were probably more of them under the mud. He was about to turn back when he noticed a bald spot in the hide where birds had picked at the ribs of the calf. Cooper swallowed hard and approached it. He lifted a tuft of shed hair out of the mud and covered the bald spot.

Part Four

I was suffering from severe underachievement, but my therapists called it depression. I felt like my life was summed up in notes scribbled and lost, washed to a soggy pulp in pants and thrown out with the lint. My therapists recommended I resurrect a dream I had as a youth to write stories. They asked me pointed questions about my childhood, tested my intellect and emotional depth, and had me empathize with a variety of inkblots. When I humanized a pool of spilt coffee, off-the-cuff, they diagnosed me “promising” and suggested I take sabbatical in a Bohemian loft in Paris. If I wasn’t interested in romance or murder-mystery, they recommended I sojourn to Sioux City, Iowa. Here is the thrust of my early writings: to imagine I was a tiny, shrunken man in a gigantic world, a world full of thick fibers, canyon-sized cracks, and jungles of grass blades. I was obsessed with magnifying minutia and thought it so original that I daydreamed for hours, imagining savage adventures trekking through my Uncle Galvin’s arm hair, or sliding into a lily and bathing in the water collected at its basin. It wasn’t the same as Gulliver’s Travels, I reasoned, because Gulliver traversed several worlds, one of which was gigantic, and another miniaturized. My world was too stable for satire, just a normal hum-drum world hosting one super small man. I wrote little dialogue, but I developed a unique vocabulary for the exaggerated movements of my protagonist: squance (v): to run, jump, and cling to a moving object squancely (adv): to do or say something with the quality of squance

squancer (n): one who squances; a prince I showed my manuscript to the only person I could trust: my cousin, Saturn. Her sweat gland removal surgery had been a success, but, as consequence for losing her underarm glands, her body was forced to compensate by sweating profusely in other areas, namely her upper lip and scalp. After removing glands in her upper lip and scalp, she seemed to leak sweat from her toes. Soon after her next surgery, she wore absorbent gloves and eventually discarded those for absorbent shoulder pads. She would have eliminated all perspiration, but the doctors advised her to show discretion. Losing her ability to regulate body temperature could have dangerous consequences, they said, but I already thought it too late. Three days after I handed Saturn my epic, she returned a crisp, warped bundle of paper. “What’s this?” I asked, flipping through the pages and finding them clumped together. “Your novel.” “What happened to it?” She shrugged her shoulders and displayed a sponge in each of her fists. “You sponged them?” “What do you think?” She asked, rubbing her fingertips together. “All portals are closed. These babies are launch pads.” “That’s revolting,” I said. “I still love you.” “That’s comforting.” “Of course it is. Now what about my novel? What do you think?” “Kind of graphic for a children’s story.” And so ended my writing career, but all was not lost. Despite her obliteration of my manuscript, I sympathized with my cousin, not in the typical sense—my fingertips certainly weren’t perspiring heavily—but at a more basic level, where her pain became my pain. When I realized her pain wasn’t my pain, my crisis concluded and I was able to withdraw from my overworked imagination. I looked beyond myself, well past my meager vantage point, and found that Cooper was having his own crisis. * * * She asked Cooper to write a eulogy for her. He said yes, because she was beautiful, and because she believed she had a brain tumor. Her name was Cherokee, born 1974, in Westminster, California. “What’s your last name?” Cooper asked.

“No last name,” she said, scraping dead skin from under her fingernails. “Just Cherokee.” “I think everyone should have a last name. There are a lot of Cherokees, you know.” “Fine, call me Cherokee Cherokee.” “Okay, Cherokee. I like your shirt.” The shirt featured a green lagoon monster with red swimming trunks surfing the open end of a half pipe. It said: Too Rad For This Place. “Spend some time with me?” She asked. They spent an evening at her house watching reruns of The Munsters. They were reclining in the love seat when Cherokee kicked up her feet and started wiggling her small toes on Cooper’s belly. He tickled her foot and she kicked him with her heel, pouting. So he let her peel his shirt away and dig into his pants with her toes. “You have a foot thing,” he said. “No, not really,” she replied. Cooper worked up the nerve to tell Cherokee he didn’t like body piercing. She had three rings in her left ear, one in her right nostril and a nipple ring. “Do all girls look like this in California?” He asked. She jumped on his lap and they made love. It was awkward, but they tried again and by round four they began to know each other’s body. Cooper was particularly fond of Cherokee’s knees. He couldn’t see the bony part, it seemed, even when she crouched and bent the joint. Her skin there was unnaturally soft, like his was on the left side of his face. He lay in bed and placed his palm on her knee before falling into sleep. Weeks passed and Cherokee did not seek medical advice about her head. Instead, she sang off key to songs she heard on the radio. Cooper had never concentrated enough to memorize the lyrics to any song beside Elvis Presley’s “Houndog,” but that, he would admit, was a small achievement since the song consisted of three recurring lines. Now, he found himself reciting songs by The Ramones, Michael Bolton and Elton John. When Cherokee would turn up the volume inside the car and shout B-B-Benny and the Jets, Cooper would rap one hand on the dashboard and bounce in his seat. He thought about Benny Stroud during those moments, but only in passing. Cooper listened more intently now to the lovers and widows of the deceased. He held Manuel’s hand when he told Cooper how his girlfriend liked to bite ears. He cupped Katalina’s elbow as she explained her unfaithfulness. Some confessions were very explicit, but Cooper let the grievers talk about penises that curved slightly down and red-haired vaginas, about breasts that were

big or small and perfect the way they were. He learned that, like him, everyone had a favorite spot, some piece of his or her lover that was cherished and kept secret. Cooper thought that despite the secrecy, lovers were aware of these spots. He had a hunch, for example, that Cherokee liked his left eye, the one that was slightly lower and lazy. Cherokee would cup his face and kiss that eye. Cooper liked her warm lips and the way her nose ring would graze his forehead. Cooper didn’t completely understand Cherokee Cherokee; he knew he wouldn’t. She would take off for weeks at a time, return exhausted, then talk endlessly about things that normal people would find inconsequential: the abrasive noise squirrels make when mating, how hamburgers at fast food joints are injected with meat flavor to mask the soy and cardboard filler, and about her favorite animal, the sloth. She admitted that she knew next to nothing about the sloth. She just liked to say, “Sloth is as sloth does,” while picturing a gangly animal that ate too many potato chips and watched reruns of M.A.S.H. Cooper bought her a sloth beanie baby and she threw it in the trash. When Cherokee died, Cooper dreamt he was pinned under a truck, and the sour taste of hot metal coated his tongue. He had heard it over and over from the mourners he interviewed: “Just didn’t see it coming.” It blind sighted him, a tragedy, totally unexpected. Cherokee had jumped off a bridge somewhere in Utah. To make things worse, her family, whom he had never met, would not allow him to eulogize Cherokee. For the first time in Cooper’s life, he couldn’t understand his own grief. He pounded things with his fists—the wall, pillows, his own chest—and sobbed for days. His left eye became sore and red. He no longer knew how to tell his stories, how to stand in front of strange people and make them feel safe. His eulogies became more daring. He performed the eulogy for Two-Times Roy, a compulsive gambler, behind a card table that displayed a royal flush. He held eulogies in back yards, from the hood of a classic car, and in favorite chairs. After Cherokee’s death, he began wearing the clothing of the deceased—a tattered Guns-n-Roses shirt, a knit sweater, jeans that hugged his butt too tight and didn’t leave room for his round thighs. He would return to the place of death or stand on the edge of a cliff. Once, he had an actor dressed as a thug attack him mid-sentence and give the remainder of the speech. A small group of critics in San Francisco considered these performances edgy and daring, but for the most part, people were disturbed, sometimes emotionally scarred. Cooper found it increasingly difficult to get a job, and even the most faithful to his art turned their backs on him. He thought back on Benny’s funeral and pictured the wiry man in his new blue jeans and black collared shirt. He focused on that thin, sad face. Cooper licked his lips and parted his hair

neatly from right-to-left. What was it about that moment? It was certainly the shortest eulogy ever. This man, he thought. This. Man. Cooper rolled it over and over in his mind. Manthismanthisman. Over and over, until it became an audible mumble, a rhythm, a pulse.

Passage á l’acte

The tabloids will have you believe that some remote cultures bury their women and suspend their men from trees. Other cultures lay corpses out overnight to be consumed by wild dogs. One tribe sets up a ring of fire around the dead to singe the wings of evil spirits. A young boy, probably fourteen, must be especially grief stricken. His favorite uncle, whose swollen body glistens with sweat and cheap oil, and whose compost-stained feet emit a comforting stench, will catch fire, beginning with his right elbow. An enormous moth will swoop too close to the flames, ignite, and swirl into the sky, a dervish of unfocused energy, a winking star—poof! To honor his favorite uncle, the boy will cover his mouth with his shirt, crouch near the fire, and extend his sharpened knife into the embers. He will bite his shirt and cut his toe with a swift chopping motion, the same motion his uncle would have used during the boy’s sixteenth birthday to cut his nephew’s foreskin, making him a man. The boy would throw the toe into the flame and weep, not for his uncle or for the loss of his toe, but for his manhood. The tabloids reported that Cooper had retreated into obscurity, to embed himself in remote cultures and their occult funeral rites. Eager college students claimed that Cooper had rejected western culture’s privatization of the funeral rite, that he had renounced the commercialization of grief. They tacked Cooper Mansfield posters on their walls next to Che Guevara and held poetry slams in haunted dormitories. A prominent newscaster, goaded by various religious sects, reported that Cooper had developed a relationship with a Taiwanese funeral stripper, which led to diatribes on talk radio about secular and pagan rituals, accentuated with very detailed accounts of stripteases and sordid displays of sexuality. The media fixated on the story of a 73 year old Taiwanese man, who, after becoming hooked on pornography, requested that a stripper perform at his funeral. He had had cable television for less than two years. And then Cooper died. The first report leaked from Indonesia; it was confirmed by a small press in Wyoming.

The irony was thick and hard to chew: no one could eulogize Cooper Mansfield, except Cooper Mansfield. A politician suggested dispersing the ashes, but that seemed too post-modern, a symbol of man’s tragic attitude toward dominant nature. A performance artist suggested staring into a vacuous space to reenact Cooper’s final confrontation with nothingness, but residents of Atlantic City were insulted. One of the few useful ideas involved approaching Cooper as a sort of communal experience. No longer a man, Cooper became an abstraction, and some would argue loss itself. And so we spoke less of particular sites of mourning—how can you reconcile the ephemeral to a place?—and ceased our attempts at signifying loss with relics: a cat cannot be essentialized by its favorite ball of yarn; a Cooper cannot be reduced to a lacerated scalp. Before long, those closest to Cooper slipped into a melancholic lethargy. Our object of loss became our thingamabob: we forgot what we missed in who we missed. Some desperate physicians revived archaic diagnoses, such as green sickness, and recommended vigorous physical exercise. Briefly, the self-help industry merged with weight control: young and old were kickboxing to the mantra, “It all depends on me.” My stomach felt like blotted paper. Grief stricken, but not believing in grief, I could not lament Cooper’s passing. Instead, I recalled exchanges with Uncle Silver: the clackity clack of his spoons upon my knee, his fuzzy chin against my cheek, an arm reaching through the abyss after I had slipped into a swimming pool. I didn’t understand this psychic intrusion of the past, but I knew it had something to do with Cooper’s alleged death. I booked a flight to Sugarcreek, Ohio, Cooper’s hometown, and arrived the same evening with a pot of tulips, great for pies and tarts. Cooper’s house was ten miles from a brick factory, fifteen from a gas station, and two miles from Octavio’s, a Mexican bar and grille specializing in chicken-stuffed fried avocado. I stopped in for lunch. The grille was actually a small red barn hugged on all sides by elm trees. “Octavio’s” was painted in white over the open barn door. Beside the entrance, a chalkboard read: “Specializing in chicken-stuffed fried avocado.” Inside: empty, not a single patron. Heavy fans whirred and clinking glasses provided a somber percussion. I wiped dust from my Guardiani’s with a hanky and weaved through dinner tables toward the bar, tulips cradled in my left arm. The shiny, cracked upholstery on the barstools threatened to snag my pants, so I shook out my hanky and placed it under my bum. My posture had improved dramatically over the years, but I felt out of place with my knees so far

from the bar and with tulips in my lap. I set the tulips on an adjacent stool, leaned toward the bar and propped an elbow on a coaster. A bald man with broad shoulders stepped through the kitchen door and threw a towel over his shoulders. He wore a white t-shirt tucked into faded blue jeans. Uncharacteristic ensemble, I thought. And the goatee, well, I hadn’t expected that. Me: You’re dead. Bartender: I’m dead. Are those for me? Me: For your mother. Bartender: She would thank you, but she passed. Me: Oh, when? Bartender: A few years after me. Me: I’d say, you know, but obviously… Bartender: Obviously. Me [reaching for bartender’s scalp]: May I? Bartender: No, I think not. Me [retracting hand]: The tulips can be ground and mixed with raspberries. Save a few petals for garnish. Bartender: They are my mother’s tulips. Me: If the intended recipient has passed, or is incapable or unwilling for any reason to accept the tulips, they will be awarded to next of kin. Bartender: Good memory. Me: Lately, it’s been very good. Last night, I dreamt that Uncle Silver propped a kazoo against my parents’ headstone. He turned his back; I pocketed the kazoo. That evening, before I fell asleep, after Aunt Morgan kissed me goodnight, I brought the kazoo to my lips and sucked on the plastic. I couldn’t play it, didn’t like the noise it made. So I kept my lips around it. When I woke up, the kazoo was missing. Aunt Morgan had thrown it away. It had been chewed flat, she told me, utterly useless. Bartender: What happens when you lose yourself? Me: Pardon? Bartender: I know I am lost, but not what I have lost in me. I’m lovesick. Me: You’re in love? Bartender: With myself.

Me: That’s narcissistic. Bartender: Even so. Me [reaches for bartender’s scalp]: I loved my uncle. I don’t think I’ll ever get over him. Bartender [slaps hand away]: You’ve never had the chance. Life interceded. Me: The inheritance. Bartender [nods] Me: But I need more time. It can’t be irreversible! Bartender: We are given one chance to mourn before it turns into nostalgia. Me [reaches for bartender’s scalp]: There must be another way! Bartender [snaps towel at hand]: Dig. Me: Dig? Bartender: Return to the original death, return to life before life, to limbo: the maternal core. Me & Bartender [in unison]: You’re afraid. Me & Bartender [in unison]: No shit. Me [long pause]: why are you hiding? Bartender: I haven’t been hiding. No one bothered to look here. Me: Please? Bartender [examines pint glass for smudges]: Two dollars. Me [hands bartender two dollars] Bartender [lowers head toward outstretched hand] Me: It feels… Bartender: Soft. Me: Soft. Bartender: Warm. Me: Warm. Bartender: Painful. Me: No. Bartender [pauses]: You’re always welcome here.

Months after this last encounter, I realized I had left my hanky at Octavio’s Mexican Bar and Grille. I’ve thought often over the years about returning for it, but I must admit: it’s gone, utterly gone.

THE END

VALUE

When I wasn’t looking at her face, she said, “I’m getting married.” I said, “Whoa,” which I now regret, but there wasn’t much I could do. My throat burned and my groin, of all things, sort of quivered and died, which made my knees buckle and my heart constrict in an odd manner, as if it could no longer pump on its own accord but had to be wrung out like a sponge.

I thought our relationship was steady, if not recovering. I spent the last of my Christmas money on this trendy cream-colored sweater. We were browsing the super center. She touched the sweater and lifted the sleeve, checking for holes in the armpit. She didn’t ask for it; I just knew. You tend to know these things after spending so much time with a person. Sometimes you get taken for granted.

Progress is measured in incremental gain. Okay, she didn’t say that exactly, it was more like “You need to reprioritize.”

Once, I rolled off the bed and chipped a tooth on the floor. When I woke up, the tip of my tongue massaged carpet, groping for leverage. I tried to flex my lips but they were tight and crusty. I removed a strand of carpet from between my teeth. She leaned over the edge of the bed. “You were having a nightmare.” I said, “Argfff,” or, I know. I knew, better than her. I ran from a knife-wielding killer through trap doors. I crawled through unlit corridors and bumped my head on walls. Finally, I leapt off the roof (I was cornered).

“Are you aware that you snore?” My eyes asked, Really? She nodded. “It’s like you’re in space.” She demonstrated by gasping and making wind noises. She propped herself on her elbows and swiveled her head slowly like a bewildered astronaut. Meanwhile, I prodded my chipped tooth with my thumb and wiped my mouth with my shirt. She didn’t ask how I felt. I told her anyways. “Argfff.” I meant to say it hurts.

She draped my father’s arm around her neck. I fell in love.

We were naked. She asked, “why do you wear that chip on your shoulder?” “Who are you?” “Excuse me?” “Who the hell are you?” She looked like she’d been socked in the gut. “I’ll tell you who you are. Your father is the CEO of the biggest bank in this town, which means you did not have to pay for college. You drive a Mustang with forty-six thousand miles. You have a credit card for emergency use only, and you use it for emergencies, only. You burn CDs on your laptop. You have dental insurance. You drive a new car—” “You already said that.” She zipped her jeans and smoothed out her shirt. Before she left my room, she sighed and shook her head. I flipped her off. “Fuck you too,” she said. My shoulder felt cold. I had the feeling that she had been touching there, mostly because she wasn’t touching there anymore.

I admitted that, yes, my priorities of late have been misdirected, and yes, I haven’t been fulfilling my end of the bargain.

The stoplights were flashing yellow and the windows were rolled down. The evening was cool and hushed, and I heard, faintly, the whir of the tires underneath the engine’s rumble. I reached over to her with my right hand and massaged the back of her neck. I wasn’t comfortable with her yet. She welcomed the touch but didn’t relax. “I really liked the movie.” “You did?” She scooted a bit and turned her shoulders. I liked the feeling of being watched as I stared at the road, which I had to do because I was driving. “Yeah, I almost got misty-eyed, you know?” She punched me in the arm. “Shut up, you hated it.” I didn’t correct her. We turned into the trailer park and I pulled alongside my father’s Chevy. “Come inside?” I opened the passenger door for her and held out my hand. She took it. I was pleased. It was not easy being a gentleman in this place. We walked around the Chevy. A beer can poked through the grass under the driver side door. It had soft creases on either side, more grip than grind. I picked up the can, shook it. It felt a little heavy on the bottom, so I tipped it and sent beer streaming onto gravel. The beer foamed and receded slowly into the cracks. She looked disgusted. The beer stunk. I no longer felt like a gentleman. I led her inside the trailer house. The television radiated blue. The volume was low, lower than my father’s moans and snickers. He was passed out, dreaming, his knees on the floor, face buried in the couch cushion. From where I was standing, I could see saliva glisten at the corner of his mouth. A bit of his mustache twinkled. There were no beer cans anywhere, as far as I could tell, but he had always been efficient. Drink to the last drop, he’d say, there’s no such thing as backwash, bunch of liberal bullshit. When Dad got drunk, everything was liberal bullshit. He’d still be grumbling as he dropped the can to the floor and squashed it with his heel. I should have been furious, but at the moment, I was thankful that it was too dark to see the worn, beer-stained blot of carpet by the kitchen where dad always picked up the flattened cans and tossed them into the garbage, never missing twice. It smelled like a middle-aged man with no woman: stale and bitter, which coincidentally smells like cushions dampened by lukewarm beer and/or a truck driver who polishes off two twelve packs as soon as he returns home, before taking the shower he’s avoided because truck stop showers are expensive and oftentimes cold.

I stepped over my father not-so-carefully and opened his bedroom door. His duffel bag was on his bed, unopened. I set it on the floor, beside the closet. When I walked out of the room, my girlfriend had Dad’s arm draped around her neck. She tried to hoist him off the ground. He was still dazed and offered only a wobbly leg for support. “Are you just going to watch or what?” she whispered. I yanked my father’s other arm around my shoulders and together, we dragged him into his bedroom, which took nearly half an hour because he was heavy. He kept forcing himself to the ground, where he slammed his forehead on the carpet and covered the back of his head with his hands, as if he were under arrest. I didn’t yet know what carpet tastes like, so I wondered what carpet tastes like. We all had our shoes on. After swinging Dad’s feet onto his bed and prying his shoes off, I shut the door and kissed my girlfriend deeply. Our teeth scraped. We went at it like athletes, our tongues tumbling, lifting and racing along gum lines. We took breathers. “This is so awful,” I managed to say between gasps. “What is?” Her eyes were closed. “This.” I snuck my hand under her shirt. Her stomach was warm and sweaty.

Re-Pry-Or-It-Eyes. She cut the word into pieces, rolled each piece into flat obelisks and wobbled them in front of my face, like “this is you.” I got the message; I felt doughy.

“Do you love him?” “Yes.”

I reassured her: No, certainly not. I did not mean to insinuate our relationship is some form of commodities exchange, and if I were, you know, to appraise the value of us, we’d be priceless, not for sale.

“Why?” “We write songs together. “He took me to a ballet.

“We go to church together.” “So now I don’t believe in God?” “Do you?” Do I? “Of course I do.”

Phone sex was difficult for me. It demanded concentration, a deep sexy voice and colorful verbs sometimes spoken forcefully (touch me now), playfully (smack my ass), and as a plea (give it to me?). I was always distracted, thinking about a pleated skirt I saw earlier swish around curvy hips. I thought about another girl’s wavy hair that reminded me of a lion’s mane; she had short fingers with orange nails. I thought about anything and anybody but my girlfriend, and even though she was describing in graphic detail her every physical gesture, I felt I had no access to her. It made me sad. Try as I might, I couldn’t imagine the sheen of her skin, the softness of her neck, her sweet exhalations, any of the things that made me weak. So when she asked me, “Are you there?” I replied with a plea. “I love you?”

We had broken up four times, and this time was going to be different. I promised her a ring: emerald cut solitaire, platinum band. I couldn’t tell her that this would be impossible on my salary. That’s like saying we’re impossible. So I bought her flowers and made love to her and we both pictured her emerald diamond fitting snugly on her finger, although I must admit, I didn’t know what an emerald looked like, just that it was the most expensive cut. She told me how expensive it would be. She repeated it. Nothing is impossible when you love someone.

“Which one will you use?” I asked her. She pulled a card from the deck, smirked, and wiggled it suggestively. I plucked the card from her fingers and recognized my own handiwork. It read: Free Massage The Works (wink wink) Redeemable: Any time

Her shoulders were intimidating, delicate things—soft and pale with light freckles. She wore a retro 80’s sweatshirt with a giant neckline that would slide off either shoulder, depending on which way the world was leaning. I felt slightly selfish just then, kneading my thumbs into her back, because I couldn’t resist biting the soft skin above her collarbone, between her neck and shoulder.

“Does he make you laugh?” “Yes.” “The way I do?” “No.” “Well?” “Well what?” “Aren’t you disappointed?”

Two weeks ago a man died. A boy, I mean. I hardly knew him. He slipped a noose around his neck and hung himself in his own dorm room. How? I’m not certain, but it frightened me. Why? Because it was such an old-time way to go, straight from those westerns I used to watch with Dad. I remember Clint Eastwood with the rope-burn around his neck, the dirty rings under his eyes and the sleeplessness of revenge. He was a tortured man. Last night, I dreamt of Clint, but he wasn’t Clint, he was this boy, and he wandered through a prairie of dry wheat, stretching his fingers along golden blades, several feet high, frayed at the tips. Clint, or the boy, was at peace, until the wind shifted and bristly kernels swirled and looped and were carried by the wind. He clawed at his throat and sunk in his fingernails. Maybe the burn around his neck itched. Maybe he changed his mind, didn’t want to carry the scar any further. I imagine it was heavy. “What does it mean?” “I don’t know,” I told her. “Dreams don’t always have to mean something. Maybe it just weirds me out? I haven’t been this close before.” “Close?” “To something so…” “Yeah?” “I don’t know.” “I wish you were here.” “Me too.”

In my mind, Clint winced and rifled crimson spit over his shoulder. He froze, left a speckle of drool on his chin. “Honey, don’t they have grief counseling there?” “What is that supposed to mean?” Clint scanned the field, Colt resting in its loop. He wiped his chin with his sleeve and walked on. “Seriously, what are you saying?”

I made coupons out of construction paper and markers: Fly me to the Moon Song by Candlelight Redeemable: at your own risk Bubbles for Deux Sponge Bath & Exfoliation Redeemable: when dirty

You are lacking momentum, they said. A quick appraisal will demonstrate an absurd decline in assets: loss of part time job, blown engine in used domestic, demonstrable increase in B.M.I., including noticeable swelling of the “spare tire.” Recommendation: sequenced sit-ups and/or crunches, and one carefully assembled Life Portfolio. The portfolio should include a curriculum vitae, education status, proof of vaccination, a ten-year plan, and a detailed list of any cosmetic procedures received in the last three months. Please list any allergies to various forms of success (we’d just like to know what we’re up against). If you have any questions, contact your nearest Life Partner. Here is our business card: Healthy Relationship Great Sex, Security, & Unrivaled Satisfaction Redeemable: At Breaking Point

I finally did it, I yelled. My cheeks were flapping wildly and my eyes watered. I hugged my knees, somersaulted a few times, and adjusted myself so that my butt was absorbing most of the resistance. Nice trick, she said. Her arms were crossed. Her blond hair whipped straight up and flickered. She wore a long skirt that sometimes wrapped and clung to her torso. It reminded me of

a bulb that has yet to bloom, or my cousin, a young, shameless girl who once stood on her hands during a wedding reception. Thank you, I replied. We had some time left before hitting the ground. I tried not to look down, mostly because I suffered from vertigo, but also because the wind was too much for me to bear. She kept gazing down, as if below were a giant baseball mit to break our fall. Her eyelids peeled back twice. You look terrible, I told her. She frowned, I think. It could have been the g-force on her lip. So what did you finally do? She asked, fumbling with her skirt. I thought about us. What? I thought about us, I repeated, enunciating carefully so that she could read my lips. She finally wadded up a good fistful of her skirt and pulled it taut around her hips. And? And I am prepared to take this relationship to the next level. She pushed her free hand toward me; her ring finger sparkled. I pretended not to notice. Listen, we’ve been through so much together, so much pain, and I recognize a big part of that, most of it, was because I couldn’t envision the future. Here’s what I offer you: I’ll apply to several publishing companies with pension plans. I’ll brush my teeth at night. I’ll master three additional languages using cassette tapes. I’ll read poetry without giving up. I promise not to laugh when you sing. I promise not to quit before you’ve climaxed. Are you frustrated! Can you hear me!? I want to commit to you! Once, I wore your panties! (This was a lie, but I don’t think she heard it) Look, we’re at the point of no return! She lost her grip on her skirt, arms floating out like exhausted wings. She must have heard that last part. There was something obvious and matter-of-fact about it, to both of us. Don’t give up! Her skirt stretched from her waist, revealing a fleshy belly button. I tried to see through the violent ripples to her face, which flashed and vanished, like careless still-frame animation. I thought she was crying, but her eyes might have been watering from the air pressure.

A loose thread poked out from under her left armpit, where the seam would be. I didn’t notice at first, but it began to slither up her shoulder, circle it, then spiral upward and fray into a pulsating web. Her left sleeve disappeared, then her right, and as the thread worked upward from her waist, she settled into a graceful pirouette, accepting the centrifuge, mastering it. She gradually began to slow; I continued to descend rapidly. Look out! She yelled down to me. A bird’s wing clipped me on the shoulder, slicing me and sending the bird, a white pigeon, rolling into the web above. More birds ricocheted off me. I balled up and covered my eyes, sometimes removing a hand to pluck a beak out of my leg or back. When I felt like I’d passed through the storm, I looked up and saw her, my best friend, my lover, hanging from a tiny string. The birds, which were now caught up in the soft web, were flapping furiously, lifting her away. I continued to fall, loose feathers keeping pace. The feathers swooshed and sashayed around, diverting my attention. When I looked back up, she was a dot in the sky.

THE END

YOU MY HONEYBEE, I’M YOUR FUNKY BUTT

1957 Cincinnati, Ohio

Tina has always been agitated by perspiration, though she has never feared it, no, has probably slapped and pinched and slammed so many slick, stinking bodies that her own skin, dark and ashy at the elbows with minor acne along her jaw, has become an amalgam of salt, bacteria, and blood that will never be cleansed. She walks the same street her mother used to walk, the same direction, too: down Coconut Street, across pavement smudged with gum and fur and littered with cigarette butts and a pair of men’s briefs, white with a grey waistband. Little tar bubbles pop from sealed cracks. Her shoes smack and grind the pavement. Her blouse clings and tickles the grooves of her back. She rolls the sleeves up to her elbow. Her forearms ripple. Her mother used to say the street was just plain dumb, lacks sense. Still does, Tina thinks. A cat claws lazily at its shoestring leash; a mutt licks the wet tread of a Chevy. A fire hydrant sits alongside a driveway, ten feet from the road. A young girl, wearing an undersized t-shirt, stares at a snail, pigeon-toed. She stomps it with her bare heel and shuffles through scorched crabgrass. “Hello,” Tina calls. The girl picks at her belly button, blinks, and returns her attention to the green goop. Tina’s mother used to walk carefully along this street, one foot in front of the other, avoiding cracks. She would sing her own jazzy rendition of “Funky Butt,” chin lifted high, eyes too, well above the heads of others, all the way home. Those were special times, Tina remembers.

Once, her mother swung the screen door wide open and leapt inside, her tremendous frame barreling through the dust. She danced the Lindy Hop in the kitchen, throwing her block hips wildly in the air. Her smile was beautiful (and scary); Tina was not used to dancing in the kitchen. They held each other. Tina’s hands were so small, or her mother’s so large, that Tina’s wrists disappeared into the massive knot of fingers between them. She recalls how warm it had seemed, her mother’s skin, and wet. Tina gasped when her feet launched off the floor. Her mother swung her round and round. When Tina finished orbiting her mother, they collapsed, sweating and panting from exertion, but laughing. Tina has not always been a giant. There was a time when her mother could swing her in circles, when her father would hoist her onto his shoulders as he hosed the lawn. Still, she has never been petite and would never in a million years call herself graceful, though she wouldn’t mind if others did. Most people would say she’s awkward and point out her bulging shoulders and thick neck. She must have walked a mile already. Her upper lip is warm and salty. Her eyebrows catch rivulets of sweat from her forehead and channel droplets into her lashes and eyes. She spots Tolstoy peddling sketches to a fidgety white man in a top hat. Tolstoy holds a hand up to shield the sun and displays his sketchpad with his other hand. Tina stands back. She doesn’t want to upset him, just bring him home. The white man adjusts his hat. He fumbles with his shirt collar and swivels his body away from the sketchpad. When he walks away, Tolstoy follows. Finally, Tolstoy lowers his hand, sighs, and walks toward Tina, calling, “Plain as day and they can’t see it. Shine, shine, baby, woo ooh, shine my baby.” “You’re silly,” she says. “Give your father some sugar.” “Uh huh.” “What?” “You look a mess.” The shoulders of his blazer have been stretched and look floppy. His hair, uncombed, has grayed along the scalp. “Are you seriously wearing those pants?” Tina asks, remembering there had been a tear in the crotch. She had meant to sew them. Her father had asked her to. “Nothing wrong with them—already cared for.” “Who?”

“None of your business.” “Come home.” “Go home yourself.” Tina doesn’t want to go home alone. Her mother has been crying for hours, heartbroken. “Please, Dad.” She usually calls him Tolstoy, his birth name, same as the Russian writer. He carries the name with pride, like an aristocrat, black prince, long-fingered artiste. When Tina says, please, he slides his right hand in his blazer pocket. “Leaving soon?” Tolstoy asks. Tina crosses her arms. “Paradise, here, don’t blame you.” “I’m not going on vacation.” She peels off her heels; he watches. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispers. “Mm hmm, likely you’re the last person on Earth needing those.” Even without heels, Tina is six inches taller than Tolstoy. “Momma says you don’t come home anymore.” “Don’t,” he affirms. “Quit looking at me like that.” “You’re crazy.” “Oh yeah? Let me see those sketches.” Tina recognizes the sketchbook: it is filled with drawings of her as a young girl. “How you selling those? Looky here, everybody: my daughter the lady wrestler. You seen her? You seen my daughter in the ring?” “You know I don’t approve.” “That don’t stop you from making a profit.” “Doesn’t.” “What?” “Doesn’t stop me from profiting, true, couple bucks here and there. Just go, sugar, Momma needs you.” “I leave tomorrow for New York City, won’t be back for some time.” Tolstoy nods. He opens his sketchbook, slides out a scratchy piece of paper, and hands it to Tina. “For your mother.” “Thanks.” “Want one? Show your girlfriends how talented your father is?”

Tina doesn’t respond. Instead, she walks down Coconut Street, barefoot, whistling “Funky Butt,” shoes dangling, her mother’s gift pinched between thumb and forefinger. She is careful not to step on cracks.

1997 Rochester, New York

Tina hasn’t been this exhausted in years. She peels her sticky tongue off her dry palate, lifts her left knee, then her right. She was told this would be a light aerobic routine, mostly stretching. She arrived early to the Y, at 7:30 a.m., to claim the back corner of the room. She stands out, not a shadow as she hoped, but a hulking figure much too large for a corner. In front of her: a swarm of bees, sweatshirts secured around waists, silver hives of hair adorned with fleece headbands, the new rage. Tina has been slow to catch on. Last week, she arrived to class wearing an old pair of syrup colored sweats, which had worn cuffs at the wrists and ankles and dark blotches around her butt and under the crooks of her arms. She had quickly determined that the outfit was too grungy for an aerobics class and had purchased an aqua colored track suit with matching headband. She considers the outfit tacky, but the headband, she likes. It reminds her of her friend, Penny, who had delighted in such ornamentals. Penny had been a ringside valet for the men’s wrestling circuit in the 50s before joining The Lady Wrestlers. She had enormous, bulbous eyes and naturally long lashes that, when extended artificially, looked like two butterflies kissing. Reach all the way up one, two, three…lift those elbows ladies. The instructor is a forty-something woman with bleach-blonde hair and tiny breasts. She pumps her arms and slaps her rump playfully. There you go, put your tush into it… Tina wraps a towel around her neck and dabs her face. She breathes deeply, closes her eyes, and places her hands on her stomach, one over the other. She is not thin—ha—has never been, but she once filled out a pine-green, stretch fit body suit quite nicely. It had been the only feminine part of her wrestling costume. She had bought a pair of long, black wrestling boots off an amateur named The Mighty Samson, a tall, thick fellow whose repertoire consisted solely of a backhand slap. She would have considered a headband.

Eyes closed, she wiggles her fingers against the tracksuit: the cotton fibers are slightly frizzy, already loosening, and she only washed it once. Twist those torsos, stretch those hammies… The bees hum and grunt and plod. A few have discarded their sweatshirts or thrown them over their shoulders. Come on ladies, chop chop… If Tina were to focus, use her legs to lift, she is pretty sure she could body slam the aerobics instructor. She would begin by stomping on her foot, bringing the heel down on the thin bone between her toes and ankle. Because there are no ropes, she will throw the woman off the wall and hope she bounces back. Queue: running clothesline. Wag finger, shake fanny, and taunt the buzzing bees. When the instructor regains consciousness, hoist her up high (she’ll be squirming like a fish) and finish her. Chop chop…

1956 Memphis, Tennessee

At the Bon Air Club, a young white boy with a Tony Curtis hairdo sings rhythm and blues and gyrates on stage. Penny begged Tina to accompany her to the swanky joint, saying she adores jazz music, but she has never been to a jazz club, particularly one with so many, well, you know, Tina. Tina stands in back, not to avoid people, but to see above the cloud of smoke hovering among the seated patrons. She taps her toe and sips on ginger ale. Someone whispers in her ear: “Good dancer, I believe, but needs some work on the vocals.” Tina peers over her shoulder at a massive chest: a pink tie tucked into a stretched suit vest. She notices the strain on the vest’s button holes. She looks up to a round, dimpled face. “Bobo,” he says. “I know you didn’t just—” “It’s my name.” He extends his hand, a lump of flesh and digits attached to a log-sized arm. “Bobo Allen.” Tina turns toward the bouncing boy on stage, who raps his palm on the pick guard of his guitar.

“I mean, I like it,” Bobo says, “but it ain’t no Big Joe.” Tiny beads of sweat tickle Tina’s upper lip. She watches two more songs before wiping her mouth as discreetly as she can with the back of her wrist. Bobo is still behind her. She feels the floorboards bend as he shifts his weight. “Ain’t that man got a funny walk,” he says. Tina turns around. “Doin’ that Ping-Pong ‘round the Southern park.” “Black man, white man, take him away,” Tina adds, “I thought I heard them say.” “Know something?” “What’s that?” “This suit here,” Bobo looks down, examines himself, “It’s a bit tight.” “You stole it from a dwarf,” Tina says. “All five-foot-ten of him.” “Know something?” “What?” “Bobo sure is a funny name.” “Sure is.”

1957 Cincinnati, Ohio

A chilly autumn: Tina and Penny spar in a makeshift boxing ring constructed haphazardly by Freddy Salazar, a former lightweight contender who years ago had attempted to run a boxing camp over the Rhine. Unfortunately for Salazar, most of the fighting already took place outside the ring, off the stained concrete floor of the gym and beyond its crumbling brick walls. Despite being abandoned, the place reeked of men: piss, sweat, and stool. Penny allows her mind to wonder to breezy Saturday evenings in San Francisco. She says, Fracas, before she breaks from Tina’s chokehold, tugs her hair, and slams her to the floor. It’s a Parisian fragrance, she says, only available in California, as far as she knows. Tina knows how to take a hit, when to flop and clutch her lower back in agony. In the ring, she is agile and athletic. Her arms are firm and her legs, which have become her trademark in the professional wrestling circuit, are long and full. She has the strength to throw Penny clear out the ring.

Tina has always been an analytic thinker, a planner, right-brained. She scripts all of her fights. Other divas—The Fabulous Moolah, Betty Grable, Betty Boucher—know only so much as who will win the bout. What distinguishes Tina Carina Williams, one-time NWA champion, is that she always knows what is coming, which allows her to avoid those awkward, sweaty embraces during a match when the wrestlers look tangled but are in fact discussing, between cries and growls, which maneuver will come first: your flying elbow or my pile driver? Tina scripts only one taunt per fight, any more would be tempting fate, especially in southern venues like Alabama and Texas. She always follows the taunting with her signature move: the Leg Press. It is simple and effective. She leaps onto her disoriented opponent and clasps her powerful legs around the woman’s waist. The opponent immediately collapses, unable to support Tina’s massive frame. Everyone knows—the crowd, announcers, especially the challenger—that once you are locked into the Leg Press, there is no hope for victory. You might as well tap out. That’s not to say that a vast majority of Kathleen’s opponents are not able to pry loose from her grasp. How it happens is unknown, a fluke, a miraculous intervention from the wrestling gods. It is always, unquestionably, a surprise, scripted perfectly. So when Tina became the first black woman to wrestle in Madison Square Garden, she was upset by The Fabulous One, to the amazement of over ten-thousand elated fans. “I’m moving to New York City,” Tina says. Penny bends at the waist, lets her hair fall toward the floor and clamps it with a rubber band. She flips her ponytail over her back and props her hands on her knees. “I’m moving—” “I heard,” Penny says. “Bobo says the Holland is renting year-round.” “I thought—” “He says it’s real nice, has a swimming pool and everything.” Penny’s shoulders slump. Her eyelids sag. Before Tina can protest, she collects her equipment: water bottle, sweatshirt, wrestling magazine. She jams a towel into her duffel bag and exits the gym. Seconds later, Tina hears a screech, a thud, screaming. She rushes outside. Penny is just outside the door, looking toward the street. Her duffel bag hangs from her shoulder.

On the street: a driver’s door, open, and a man wounded on the ground, doubled over, shielding himself from a petite woman who crouches over him and slaps at his face. The woman stands up, takes off her shoe, and swings at the man’s backside. Then, she yanks off his shoe and throws it blindly into the air. It bounces harmlessly off a windshield. She thinks about yanking off his other shoe, decides against it. She tosses her weapons in the car, slides into her seat, careful to tuck in her skirt, and drives away. “Crazy,” Penny says. The wounded man groans. He stumbles to a wall and collapses. “Maybe,” Tina says.

1961 Paris, France

Tina is a Babyface, but in the right place, the right time, some sneers and jeers, an open- handed chest slap when the referee isn’t looking, she could be a Heel. “That don’t make no sense, Jack,” Gladys says. Jack, the tour promoter, tucks a cloth napkin into his shirt and douses his cigar on a crystal bread dish, still crumby. Ceremonially, he lifts a plate to his nose—filet of steak topped with goose liver—and takes an exaggerated whiff. “This place,” he says in a heavy German accent. He is referring to Europe, the continent. He also said, “This place,” while crossing the Rio Guadalquivar in Seville, while gazing at the one- ton ivory chandelier in Prague’s Estates Theater, and after a pickpocket made off with his money clip in Amsterdam. “Where’s the catsup?” Gladys asks. Gladys “Killem” Gillem is a Heel: swaggering villain, cheater. She has been known to pull hair, elbow ribs, and when the referee isn’t looking, slap her opponent’s chest just below the throat. Jack discovered her at a carnival in Baton Rouge, where she had wrestled bears and alligators. She adjusts her black ruche velvet hat. “It don’t fit,” Gladys says. Tina shifts her legs toward Gladys and tilts the hat so that it conceals one eyebrow and half an eye. “Gladys is right,” Tina says. “It’s silly.”

“Bobo’s a Heel,” Jack says. And Bobo has made a name for himself, Tina knows. She is constantly compared to her husband. Jack shoves a large wedge of steak in his mouth. “Besides…” He munches. “It isn’t good for business, you know. It makes you look weak.” “Flying saucer,” Gladys says, giggling. She holds up a piece of brioche a tete and sinks her teeth into the bread. “Weak?” Tina asks. “All I’m saying is, everything’s ice and flame to the mark. Put anyone in the ring with The Foreigner and he’s a hero, guaranteed.” Tina wants to argue that stereotypes aren’t true, but even here, in Europe, it means something to be married to a three hundred pound black man, especially a villain who butts heads for a living. The truth is, Bobo is the gentlest man Tina knows. Two weeks earlier, Bobo had cradled her body from behind and wrapped a massive arm, thick as a leg, around her chest. Naked and slick, she listened to and felt his warm breath on her ear. A sheet was draped across their waists, a gesture of privacy neither asked for but both granted. Tina ran her fingers along the slick forearm of her husband and sank into the cool-wet mattress. “Coffee ow late,” Gladys says. Non, the waiter says, café au lait. Besides, Tina already loses like a villain, lest she incite the uneducated drunks to riot. Why bait the audience now, after she’s accepted her roll as jobber to the stars? She’s mid-card and likes it just fine. “Times are different,” Jack says. He plucks the napkin from his shirt, wipes his mouth. “Five years ago, the public wanted to see a Terrible Turk knocked around or Tosh the Jap flattened by a running clothesline. Now, they want something homegrown.” “You want to feed the fire?” Jack shrugs, scratches his nose with his thumb. “The angle never changes, so long as people remain the same. All we do is play dress up and dance around in a squared circle.” “Hell, Jack,” Gladys says, slouching in her seat. Her hat is on the table. “I’ll stick my head in a gator’s mouth and whistle Dixie, but it ain’t right you yanking on its tail.” “All I’m asking, Tina, is that you add a little swagger to your act. You’re too timid.” Tina lifts the black ruche velvet hat off the table and places it on her head. She tilts it as the Parisian women do, sighs, and sets it back down. The thing about fashion: if your heart’s not in it, you won’t pull it off.

1964 New York City, New York

Lucy and her friend, Rita Mae, are checking out this luscious Latino named Eduardo, who slides a comb into his back pocket before accepting a bottle of whiskey from his buddy. They watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down. They hold hands and pinch each other. Dare you. No dare you. They giggle. Lucy and her friend, Rita Mae, are at a graduation party at Holy Cross Lyceum on 43rd Street, where boys and girls huddle around a record player and listen to Cassius Clay sing “The Gang’s All Here.” Rico, a chunky underclassman wearing striped pants and sporting a Beatles hairdo, snivels into his shoulder (gross) and asks the girls what they are looking at. Nothing, they say. Geeze, Rico, what do you think? Rico won’t say it, but he thinks they’re looking at Eduardo’s ass. Lucy flirts with Eduardo. She asks if he has ever ridden a motorcycle and does he have a car and tells him about this one time she kissed a guy on the hood of his T-bird, but it wasn’t the first date—she doesn’t do that, let’s be clear. Eduardo looks over his shoulder, like, hello, but it’s only his buddy holding out the bottle. No thanks, man. By the time he turns around, Rita Mae has hooked Lucy’s arm and whisked her away. He watches the girls speed-walk and wind through the crowd. Remembering the bottle, he turns to his buddy and punches his arm: gimme here. Outside, Rico calls to the girls: where you going? Don’t worry about it (geeze)! Lucy and her friend, Rita Mae, find a payphone and hold the receiver so that both girls hear Lucy’s mother on the other end. Momma, please, we want some Chinese food. Back by midnight, promise, yes, we both do. Thank you! On the way to Cheng’s Buffet Lucy walks bow-legged like a man and combs her hair with Eduardo’s comb. Rita Mae laughs but all she wants to do is run her finger along the teeth of the comb. They haven’t discussed who will keep it. Rita Mae would like to put it in her jewelry box for safe keeping. It’s 1:30 a.m. and Rita Mae searches the wreckage in her palm for her fifth fortune, burrowing with her forefinger and pushing shards of cookie over the edge. True gold fears no fire. What a waste. She’s looking for foresight, not insight. Something like: The comb will be yours. Eduardo will love you. Too bad fortunes are never longer than one sentence. Hey look, Lucy says. It’s Aunt Mary’s friend, the professional wrestler. Lucy waves at a tall woman across the street.

Lucy and her friend, Rita Mae, chat with the professional wrestler, who smokes near the bright entrance of the Holland Hotel and tugs the waistband of an oversized sweatshirt down her bare legs. What’s that smell? Rita Mae asks. The lady wrestler tosses the cigarette butt over her shoulder. Late night swim, she says. You can do that? Sure, sure, the health center is twenty-four seven. I need a new bathing suit, Lucy admits. Lucy would give the comb to her friend, Rita Mae, if Rita hadn’t spent half the night eyeing it. I mean, geeze, girl. Yeah, Aunt Mary’s doing fine. Three boys are a lot to handle. And the way she kept smashing those fortune cookies! Still, Rita had been the one to pick Eduardo’s pocket. Plus, Lucy’s had the comb all night. Did you hear something? Rita Mae, are you sleeping? Aunt Mary’s friend, the professional wrestler, nearly tackles Lucy. She wraps her up and pushes her toward the entrance of the hotel. Be still, she says. Stay down, she says. Lucy twists her neck and wiggles her shoulders. Aunt Mary’s friend wants to suffocate her. Lucy finally glimpses Rita Mae resting on the ground, but by now, she is too breathless to scream for her friend, whose neck is bloodied and gaping and, somewhat, not even there.

1962 Lexington, Kentucky

Mildred Burke squats in her corner, hands gripping the top ropes, stretching her lat muscles. Her red costume, cut like a bathing suit, tenses over her broad back. A zipper traces her spine. She stands up, lunges into a stretch and massages her hamstring with her palm. The pores of her pantyhose widen. She winks at the crowd and adjusts her red boots, zipping down, zipping up. Her ponytail is taut, and her face, lacquered with rouge, lipstick and eyeliner, looks glamorous to a man fourteen rows back, but to Tina, who rolls her shoulders in the opposite corner, it looks downright clownish. Tina wears a pine-green stretch-suit that hugs her hips, along with panty hose and lace-up boots courtesy The Mighty Samson. Her hair is short and rounded. She slaps her bicep and grimaces. Burke, a seasoned veteran and longtime champion of the New England division, recently lost her title to June Byers, a low-brow high-breasted toots who doesn’t deserve the belt. According to league rules, it will be several months before Burke can secure a rematch. Tina is the first obstacle on her return to the top.

At first, everything goes smoothly for Tina: backhand followed by a flying leg kick, rebound with a boot-stomp and elbow drop off the corner beam. Burke is poised to lose, or to win, depending on what you know. Ten minutes into the match, Tina lifts Burke’s 5’6” frame for a body slam, extra careful to release her to the floor, as opposed to throwing her. She taunts the crowd, climbs the ropes and dodges a cup of red beer, the cheap special for evening bouts. Whaddayaknow, she yells, bunch of bums. She spies Burke out of the corner of her eye, dizzy, teetering on her heels, ignorant to the imminent and as yet unbreakable finisher, wink, wink, of her opponent. Tina blows a kiss to the crowd. She speeds toward Burke and leaps off the floorboard feet-first, but just before she clamps her legs, Burke spins sideways and sends Tina crashing on her hind end. The crowd roars. Tina, not foreseeing the swerve, lands awkwardly on her left wrist and tears a tendon. Seconds later, Burke soars off the top rope, somersaults in the air, and lands belly-first on Tina’s chest, knocking the wind out of her. Tina gasps and reaches, nowhere, anywhere, for aid, but Burke, playing the hero, slaps her hand away and twists Tina into a reverse leg lock. Tina’s cries are not audible. Her face streams with sweat; salty tributaries sting her eyes and fog her vision. She would tap out if Burke hadn’t wrenched her good hand behind her back. This isn’t scripted, Tina thinks. This is not how it’s supposed to go. Then, teeth clenched, she remembers: there is no script. Whatever script she’s been performing all these years has been generated by her own advantage, by overpowering and outsmarting her smaller opponents, sheer force of will. In a panic, she bucks Burke off her back and stumbles to her feet. A camera flash pops and crackles. She feels give in the floorboard, and with help from the springs underneath soars once again into the air. This time she connects and tugs Burke violently to the floor—thwack, Burke’s forehead breaks the fall. Tina squeezes her legs, feels abs tighten desperately between her thighs. Burke screams. Someone throws a beer mug into the ring, trailed by a stream of spittle. It strikes Tina on the temple; she does not relent. She doesn’t notice Burke’s arm flailing and smacking the floor. There’s no tap out, no give. Soon, the referee and two other men pry Tina’s legs off her opponent. She is too exhausted to do it herself. Late that evening, in the locker room, Tina lies on a bench, towel cradling her nape, ice-bag pressed to wrist, afraid to exit the arena alone.

1997 Rochester, New York

Tina needs a rest. Tina is going to have a heart attack, good Lord. The aerobics instructor scares the piss out of her. Those wild limbs, pumping and jabbing in every direction. That red face, full of fury and invoking terror. It’s a different terror than she had reserved for Bobo, much worse, it seems, as she spins her arms in large and small circles and fights the ache in her joints. Bobo had been intimidating, not because he was six-foot-ten and three hundred pounds, but because, simply, he wasn’t awed by her. Tina had dated large men before Bobo; they had been bearish, their touch stony and clumsy. Her late husband was gentle; his baritone voice tended to soften in the middle of a thought. Mercy, Lord, no more. Strike this devil-child down and send her bouncing to aerobics Hell. Okay, Tina gives. She’s going to sit by the window and take a breather. She watches the hive at work, bums jiggling. She curses the instructor’s tight body. She pulls at her shirt and fans her chest. The light inside seems artificial to her. She turns to the window and peers through the smudgy glass, through the grayish drizzle. Is that her heart she feels settling? Is that a stray dog outside, lapping gutter water? When were gutters invented, anyway? Have her lungs shrunken? Will she ever catch her breath? Why is she staring at a gutter? The dog, right. This angle, this line of sight, reminds her of the sniper shooting years ago. Lucy and her friend had been gloating, some foolish dare, a comb displayed. The poor child had gone into shock; it was all Tina could do to restrain her, even though Tina was twice her size. The sniper was never brought to justice. Humph, what was justice? —is, she means. Tina imagines how lonely it must be, perched, target sighted, whistling on a lonely parapet. Heads aplenty. Did we all look the same, easy pickings? Or did the shooter spy in Rita Mae some tenuous connection, a lonesomeness rivaling his own? No, Tina thinks, he used a bullet, now an arrow. She blames her father for these romantic thoughts. He has always been hopeful, however inappropriate.

THE END

REMEDY

I love my mother, I tell him. I hope he believes me, because I’m paying him all the money I have, five hundred dollars, to kill her. I take another swig of wild cherry slurpee and cringe. Type: brainfreeze. I double click on “Mr. Brain Freeze,” decide it’s not what I’m looking for (no need for a frozen beverage technician), and exit. I try “The Brainfreeze Phenomenon” and again am disappointed to find an unsparing blurb about the underground funk revolution. Another click, blah, blah, and another, until I discover a website with animated stickmen clutching their pulsating Popsicle heads:

When cold stuff (like popsicles, ice cream or slushies) touches the roof of your mouth it can set off a nerve reaction (in the spheno-palantine ganglion, to be precise) that causes the blood vessels in your brain to swell.

I take a moment to assess the information, munch on more crushed ice, and casually nod my head in confirmation. I recall this boy named Turtle, a round-backed child with no neck who used to wedge things up his nose. He had bulbous nostrils that flared near anything remotely insertable. Perched atop the monkey bars, my friends and I watched dumbfounded as Turtle shoved an orange Popsicle up his nasal cavity. He didn’t shiver or contort. Instead, he picked up shiny pebbles and set them back down, delicately and with precision, while orange juice drizzled from his other nostril onto his lips. Location? Type: 240 pinsky ave. apart 113, seventh floor across from Squid.

“Squid” is the mural I see when I look out my window at home. Psychedelic fish swim in and around purple tentacles, against aqua coated cement. It is some architecture student’s attempt at urban renewal, meant to distract or inspire street bums, possibly to calm the electric nerve of the borough, you know, offer this soothing mirage so that we all, yo-ho, go on our merry way. But, you see, this squid has got like eight tentacles, eight arms, and as soon as the paint dried, some tough guys sprayed these weapons—colts, glocks, man, I’m talking bazookas with shells flying—onto the ends of each tentacle. Squid went commando, and now protects what used to be a two-story Laundromat, which was converted into a meth lab, and now is sort of both. Mom says I lack focus. Booby, she says, you’ve got to concentrate on your future. So I close my eyes and she squeezes my fingers. Now imagine yourself, she says, imagine you are in the future—forget this place—it’s your future. What are you doing with yourself, huh Booby? Huh? Who are you? Who do you love? Oh mom, I think, this is so bad. First, I imagine myself in these new Ecko digs, right, like new jeans and a hot jacket with a fur-lined hood. I’m strolling down our street—so high? Okay, then it suddenly gets hot, radiant, and I’m naked—whoosh. I can’t think, so I cup my balls and cry. When mom comes rushing to me, which isn’t very likely considering she’s been bedridden for two years, all I want to do is punch her in the face. And I’m so careful: I don’t want to miss her face, and in this, my vision of the future, I see myself furrow my brow, bite my lip, and jab, jab her face to mush. When I’m done glimpsing into my future, my mom draws back her hand, saying, “Muffin, you have clammy hands (from your father).” I walk away, shamed, to buy my mother another cactus. Our two-room apartment is prickly. We have short, stumpy cacti, purple and green ones; some are juicy looking. I buy them out of guilt. It’s like a reminder: don’t imagine punching your mom in the face. I add: you fucker. I figure I need to chide myself now and again, because it really is disappointing. I don’t want to hurt my mother. I just want her dead. When I hand her the cactus, she always asks me, “What are you thinking?” “Dreaming, Ma…” She snorts. “That’s what I figured.” I’m jolted back to the present by a bloop from the computer. Change clinks in cupped palms, fingertips thud; I smell amaretto and Irish cream and again hear the thin man three computers over with an unkempt mustache grunt at his tiny window of porn.

Time of extermination? I’m beginning to think this hitman doesn’t care about my feelings, or else he would ask why I want my mother dead, at least why I love her. I decide to cut him some slack since we’re talking in code. It was his idea to pose as a pest control agent, which immediately struck me as awkward— give me some credit—but I play along. Type: smother the cockroach…be TENDER. Okay, so any fool could notice I’m talking about a mercy killing. Plus, I’m having second thoughts about calling my mom a cockroach. I’ve worked three jobs over four months to hire this person, whoever he is. Has to be a he, right? I’ve temped at a steel mill cutting rebar, sprayed red and yellow gunk off chicken with a pressure hose, and as of right now, I scoop round balls of Smurf-blue ice cream for children at a carnival three blocks over. I stash most of the money in a sock. The rest I keep in my pocket in case I see the jacket from my dream, the one with the oversized zipper and fur-lined hood. Time of extermination??? I’m starting to second-guess this arrangement. Type: two in afternoon…tender!!! User signs off and it is done. I just bought my mother a one-way trip out of here. Before I log out of the computer, a plainclothes staff member with a bright button over her left breast taps the mustachioed porn-browser on the shoulder. Louder than necessary, she says, “Excuse me sir, we don’t allow smut in this establishment.” The guy freezes, then grunts like, whaaaa? No smut here. He doesn’t even turn around, continues to mindlessly move his mouse in little circles. The woman with the button then nods at something…the front counter, and the guy’s computer immediately flashes to a black screen with white letters that read, “Thanks for using our product, come again.” The skinny man goes on twitching his wrist and swiveling his hand, and the mouse goes round and round, chasing its little tail. * * * Ricky is a Puerto Rican who can’t speak a lick of his native language. He’s offered to help me kill my mother. I’ve told him that I’m not killing my mom, very smug-like, cause someone else is killing her. Besides, I question Ricky’s intentions, because as far as I can tell, he doesn’t like my mom, kind of gets irritated by her. “Chris, you shouldn’t be so timid,” he tells me. “Your mom, man, she’s got this whole other spell on you, like she’s got a remote see.” He holds his hands together with thumbs up. “She

presses this button, that means you’re on your knees; she presses this button, you’re kicking yourself in the balls, right? Shit, and you press this one, oh hell, that’s overdrive, you’re fucking rubbing her feet.” “You know she has bad feet.” “I don’t care if her feet taste like strawberries, it’s gross.” He makes a face like he’s gagging. We’re cutting through this abandoned lot, under an elevated highway, between pillars tattooed with faded graffiti. The highway inclines up, slightly, so that headlights project a path to outer space. I imagine cars and trucks gliding off the edge, the inertia of their hind ends forcing them to nose dive to the ground or flip upside down. Phoomp, sizzle, and smoke curls upward and billows out not-too-thick cause I want to see through it to the next car and the next car. Iron sandwich. “Let’s sit, eh?” We sit. “Let me ask you something…why didn’t you go to my game?” Ricky asks. “Man, I told you.” “Right, and see, that’s exactly what I’m saying. You knew about the game for what? A month, at least. Then you can’t come because your mom gets this cramp in her arm—she says ‘a stroke’?” “Brain aneurysm.” “Whatever, the point is you still haven’t seen me on the court.” I stare between my legs at the crabgrass poking through the cement. I pluck a few strands. “Look,” I say, “I’m sorry.” He sighs, knowing I’m sincere. “Fuck, man.” We sit for a long time, thinking. It’s what we do. Ricky is in white Pumas, dark Silver Tab jeans and a vintage Randal Cunningham jersey, green and white. He’s got a gut, so the belly of the jersey is taut and sometimes catches the reflection of the nearby streetlamp. I’m wearing acorn- colored New Balance, jeans, and two white tees, ironed smooth. I listen to the rumble of mufflers and whir of cars passing overhead, think I feel vibrations too, but I’m also shaking my leg. “Okay.” He stands up, tugs his jean cuff around his shoe. “So it’s second quarter? This tall kid, they call him B.J.? He’s a real athlete, jumps a mile high, great hand-eye coordination and his awareness, man, he once threaded the ball between two defenders right to his buddy—oh, I’ve seen

him play—but in this game, he goes in for this monster jam and this other guy undercuts him. B.J. does a back flip in the air and lands right on his face, and so I’m like ‘oh shit here we go,’ cause I know this means war. Except when I whistle all B.J. does is stand up, brush himself off, and walk to the free throw line. “Strangest thing, right? “Well halftime comes, and I’m watching them, making sure they don’t pull anything. I let them know it, too, I mean that whistle is glued to my lips. “Rest of the game goes smooth—I couldn’t have called more than four fouls, either side, and it’s a good game, two-point differential practically the whole time. Ten seconds left in the game and the other team, they have this shooter, who, guess what, is the same guy that undercuts B.J. earlier. Ten seconds left and this guy soars for a jump shot. Out of nowhere comes B.J. like a f-ing hawk and devours that ball, straight sends that shit back toward the other hoop. “Swear to God that whistle just falls out of my mouth. “Game’s tied, and the seconds are ticking away. Nine…eight…and B.J. starts trotting to the ball like he’s just hit a homerun…seven…six…just him, no one else is moving…five…four…three…he palms that ball, takes a step…two…one…and powers it through the hoop. It was so silent in that gym, seriously, we heard the rim hit his wrist, twang, and then, kerchunk, the rim coiling back. “It was like, geeze, I don’t know, we all knew this was going to happen. They were just waiting for it, even me, like inside—” Ricky pats his chest. “—I knew I wouldn’t have to use that whistle, you know?” Ricky reaches down and adjusts his pant leg again. He looks me in the eye: “You get it?” Sort of; I shrug. His eyes are pleading, which makes him look much younger than thirty-two, more like my age. “All I’m saying is that your mom is going to die sooner than later, we both know it, it’ll just happen. “But if you need my help, you know, I’m there for you man. “I mean I’ll kill her.” * * * “Honey, baby, I think my hair is falling out.” “No, mom, you’re pulling it out. Do something with your hands, will you?” “Give me a cactus?”

“Okay. Which?” “The one with the yellow flower on the tip…thanks Honey-bear.” She shouldn’t have to live like this, lying on the sofa, a knit blanket tucked around her waist and legs, small cactus cradled in her lap. Two small oxygen tanks sit upright under the coffee table, in case of a smoke-induced asthma attack, except she hasn’t smoked since ‘79 when this Italiano with a huge face—talking elephantitis of the head, ears like flapjacks—sat on the curb in front of the Laundromat sharing a cigarette with his pug. For weeks, Momma watched the dog lick the ash off a joint from her perch three stories up, across the street. There was its little taffy tongue: in-out-in- out, slurp, in-out. There, also, were the man’s ears, losing their fight with gravity. There was his glistening upper lip. See those whiskers? See that nose like a heel of a foot? There, again, see the dog lay down? Mom saw the man flick his cigarette in the gutter and stroll away, shoulders slumped, because there on the curb, like a child’s discarded lollipop, was the dog’s little tongue. There it was. Clarity, Ma once told me, isn’t about choice. It’s about knowing nothing will ever be the same. I said wow, Ma, too many meds today. Seriously, she said, when you witness something, really witness it, what choice do you have? It’s a force booby, a real force, like you touch a pricker and it’s gonna hurt you—right?—well looking is like knowing without the pain, but it’s still there, always and always and always there. You just know, you know? Now rub my feet, booby, will you? I think I did, too; that is, I think I rubbed her feet. “Booby,” Ma says to me all wrapped up on the couch. “Give me your hand. I’m feeling weak.” I give her my hand. She coughs and wipes her chin with the back of her other hand, as if phlegm had spilled over her lips. “Mom, you’re gaining weight I think.” She snorts and I notice how loose she’s become. Her veins look florescent blue and move independent of her skin. Her face is a collection of creases with eyes and a nose. She relaxes her grip on my fingers and I touch her forehead. “You hear me? I said you’re looking healthy and stuff.” “I’m bloated.” There’s no way she could be bloated, she’s so thin. I remember when she was a full woman, with pink, puckered lips and heavy breasts. Her face was so round I couldn’t see the cheekbones.

“Mom? Can we watch the video again?” She gestures toward the television with her eyes. She opens her mouth to cough but nothing comes out: habit. I slide the video in and sit back on my heels, knowing what she’ll say before she says it. She doesn’t watch anymore, just listens for audio cues. “Your father was a handsome man.” First: this man appearing on the screen is seven feet tall, four hundred twenty-five pounds. He is not my father. He’s wearing gigantic overalls with one strap unbuttoned, revealing a massive, hairless breast paler than cereal milk. He lumbers up to the camera to announce in a southern twang his betrothal to Miss Glory Hollendale (my mother). The show is WWF Main Event. Twenty years ago, mom married this wrestler, Uncle Elmer, on live television. I remember Elmer, just a little. He died four months after the marriage. The doctors said he had a weak heart, which is what happens to giants. Their bodies grow and grow and the heart carries the burden. Until it doesn’t. My favorite part: Jesse “the body” Ventura, wearing outrageous winged shades, a pink spandex cutoff and tiger-striped tights, is playing the antagonist. He grips the mic, turns slightly so that we can see his arm flex, then blurts in his gruff voice: “Romance and wrestling don’t mix.” He’ll repeat the mantra throughout the show, even challenge Elmer to a fight, which of course doesn’t happen because it’s Elmer’s wedding day, so Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant—before they were sworn enemies—chase Ventura off, allowing the guests to enjoy the ho-down during which a pig roasts over an open spigot, a real spigot, always a wonder to me since the reception is inside a television studio. “Stop daydreaming,” Mom tells me. She lifts her middle finger toward the television. To Ventura, she says, “Dipshit.” The picture flickers and distorts into a zigzag, then returns to normal—a scratch in the tape. Fast forward through three bouts, including one between Macho Man and Bam Bam Bigelo, to the wedding song: ba dumm de dum, ba dumm de dum…and Elmer waits in the ring with his hillbilly “cousins,” his tag team partners, each wearing black bow ties dwarfed by ridiculously thick necks. Mom is walking down the isle, between two sections of howling fans. She’s gorgeous. I mean, not to get weird, but I’d seriously consider, you know, if I weren’t her son, ‘cause she’s glowing in her gown, gleaming, with this glossy smile that could smother the world. Behind me, mom snorts. On television: two cousins lift the rope for mom, as ceremoniously as spandex-clad hillbillies are able. Mom is so elegant, though, she makes them feel good. I can tell by their smiles. A

microphone descends from the ceiling, black wire marking its progress, to a real preacher inside the ring, I mean I hope he’s ordained ‘cause he’s wearing the whole getup and is pretty scrawny. Elmer is nervous, his face stiff and dripping. The preacher begins, “We are here today,” before mom can grab Elmer’s hand; her fingers stretch hopefully but Elmer’s are self-consciously knotted into a fist. They stand side-by-side and when Elmer is asked he nods ‘I do.’ Now, because I’ve watched this video so much and studied trajectories in my own self-schooled way, I know where the whiskey bottle is launched: row seven, thirteen seats over from the guy in the green polo. Just as mom declares, “I do,” the bottle soars into the ring, trailed by spittle, and clonks her on the head. Mom doesn’t flinch; she smiles. Man and wife are pronounced and embrace awkwardly (mom is almost two feet shorter), then on to the ho-down where Ventura will continue to antagonize with his scripted whining and bitching, even though a whiskey bottle has provided all the verification he’ll need. Like he says, romance and wrestling don’t mix. I wait for mom to cry, because that’s what she does at this point during the video. I sit on my heels, waiting to hear about my father, who isn’t actually my father, but closer to the real thing because mom has long since infiltrated my imagination. She doesn’t cry and says nothing of my father, his clammy hands. Instead, she begins to cackle, some huffing, then a sort of wail interspersed with ha-ha. I am frightened and off my heels. She has never laughed before, not like this. I watch her face stretch, the creases smooth. She’s in pain, I think, but then I’m not sure, because she hasn’t laughed in so long. She might hurt. I’m sympathizing with her; I can’t help it. I bellow and before long we’re straining, our necks in funny positions, feeding off each other’s silly noises. I am struck with the overwhelming urge to punch her in the gut. “Mom,” I blurt, still laughing. “Do you want another cactus?” * * * The day of: sunny with thin, skid mark clouds. On the streets, people bark into cell phones and tires screech. I smell something foreign but undistinguishable, Chinese or Italian. A dark boy swerves against the tide of lunch goers on his skateboard, an old-school CD player attached to his hip. A warm breeze flushes my face, or perhaps I’m feeling shame, I don’t know. I’m walking to the Y, where Ricky referees for a community youth league or a group of at risk men—both full of guys on parole. I figure I’m pulling a seven-ten split here, two pins with one ball. I’ll finally see Ricky do his thing, and I’ll create a full-proof alibi. I’ve rehearsed for this: Where were you between the

hours of noon and five-thirty? Watching my boy do his thing, that’s where. Sometimes I laugh. I can’t help making stupid faces in the mirror. Before I enter, I smell the gym and feel its humidity. Windows are cranked open from the inside; outside, iron bars shield the glass and remind ball players what it feels like to be locked up. Ricky told me that, a while back, some kids broke into the gym trying to play a game of pickup. Now, no one can break out. I take a seat on the third row of these carved-up bleachers, look around. I’m the only spectator except for this Latina woman and her toddler son, who runs like a bull into his mother’s thigh. She catches the runt, tickles his sides, and allows him to teeter-totter on her leg. A short black man with cornrows and a slow crossover keeps looking their way—watch me, he beckons, watch. They don’t. I follow the game half-heartedly, lean back, and daydream. We’re in an arena, Ricky and I, and we’re watching this fight take place between B.J., I think it’s him, and this other nameless ball player. It’s a pay-per-view bout, and Ricky and I are lucky enough to be in the first row, for once. We chow down on pizza and shoot each other these looks, like yeah, we know who’s going to win, I mean, the other guy doesn’t have a name. Just like that Ricky vanishes—poof!—and a preacher appears inside the ring, except something is off, you know, besides the Ordained being there. Something flashes on the preacher’s neck, and I see, well I understand that it’s a whistle and that this is no preacher. It’s Ricky. I wave, like, what the hell? He waves back all gleeful then lifts one arm, takes a deep breath and blows the whistle—sounds like a car horn. I look down for a split second, I’m talking fractions, see that I’m wearing tiger-striped pants, and look up to see my mother in her wedding dress. Hey Ricky, I mumble, what am I doing in the ring? Ma? I hear, no, I understand that she’s called The Squeeze Machine, which isn’t a bad name all things considered, and before I can wonder what my wrestling name is she’s coming at me arms wide like she’ll bear hug me to death. I step aside, like, bring it on bitch, then slap myself because my mom is most definitely not a bitch, and my distraction allows her to wrap her arms around me. She squeezes; my lungs are fire. It’s not air I need, just water, and I notice how dry and desperate the world is. Then I wake up and realize, oh shit, Ricky is not here. He’s not at the Y. I run home and tug at my shirt in frustration. What was I thinking? I hired the Orkin Man to kill my mother, got his add from an x-rated chat-room. Why’d I tell Ricky everything? He’s probably there, right now, trying to kill Ma before the Orkin Man even arrives. Free of charge, man, nice n’ easy. Then it’s like I finally wake up. I’m huffing and puffing and questioning my own

judgment. What if the Orkin Man isn’t an exterminator? I mean, what if he is an FBI agent posing as an exterminator? What if this guy is a psycho killer who eats rats and likes to torture his victims? Worst yet, what if he or Ricky takes the envelope I put under mom’s pillow and leaves. I’m out five hundred and mom…well, she won’t be dead. By the time I climb the stairs to our apartment, skipping every other step, I’m imagining a green fog hovering in the living room. A man wearing a white suit and protective mask is spraying gas from a thin mosquito-like nozzle. No breath left. My throat’s full of razors. I turn the handle and thrust the door open with my shoulder, but it stops halfway. An arm wraps around the door and yanks me inside, and before I can flinch a hand has smothered my mouth. It’s Ricky. He has a finger to his lips: shush. My look says, yeah right man, I’m malfunctioning here with your hand on my mouth. He leads me carefully into the kitchen, and I give him this look, like ‘so what?’ He points to the floor. A man is facedown on the tile with a knife in his back. Then it happens: clarity. It’s sweet and baby blue and I float off the floor exactly three inches. This is the moment where I could float through the walls and over the edge. No packing necessary. Away from my body, from this knife-stuck man on the floor who smells like cologne— that stupid sonofabitch wears cologne to Ma’s mercy killing? I’ll kill him—away from Ricky and Ma and all these prickers. I want to laugh or cry but all I can do is backhand Ricky in the face. I guess mom was asleep, because she snorts, clears her throat, snorts again and says, “Booby, is that you?” “Yeah mom, me and Ricky over here, in the kitchen.” “What’s going on in there? Hello Ricky.” “Hi Glory.” I look at Ricky real hard, like shut your mouth. In my head, I add: you fucker. “Mom, can I get you something, you hungry?” “I’m too exhausted to eat right now, but thank you for asking.” “Okay, well don’t mind us. We’re grabbing a bite and heading over to the Y.” Ricky’s says ‘good one’ with his eyes. I inspect the body at my feet. Tan work pants, dark boots, blue pullover jacket. A white man with loose, curly black hair, strands of gray, medium build. He could be our handyman, for all I knew. We’ve been calling him for months about a water leak in the ceiling. I notice a bulge near the

corpse’s lower back, peel back the jacket and lift out a pair of leather gloves. A real hitman. I’m sort of in awe. “What time?” I whisper. Ricky turns around and looks at the microwave. “It says two thirty-five.” “No, what time did you get here?” “Oh right. I wanted to be early, you know, catch the guy before the act, tell him it’s taken care of, ‘cause, you know, I figure it’s better to keep it in the family…” He lets that sink in, and it does. I’m touched. “And so I know there’s time to spare, and I just couldn’t do it on an empty stomach, but the line at the hotdog stand, Freddy’s, right? The line’s so fucking long and I just can’t run on empty and I get here at a little after two. Now my stomach’s reeling from swallowing that dog whole, but I’m like, what the hell? I tip-toe inside and think, if I could only find some club soda—by the way, you’re out—but I go to look in the kitchen and this mother…” Ricky points to the floor. “…he’s got his head in the fridge and is messing with your stuff. Same as me, I guess, empty stomach and all, but I freak out and know it’s kill or be killed, cause these types like their identities to remain secret.” He looks down, again; we both do. A real hitman. “Go on.” “Yeah, okay, so I see the knife in your sink, sneak up behind him and wham.” His voice fizzles out. He’s lost in thought, and I’m trying to remember when I last used a knife. I gesture for Ricky to stay with the body, to watch it in case it comes back to life. I walk to the window and gaze out at Squid. I glance around the frightened fish, avoid the bazooka, and for the first time, I notice how bald the octopus is, how two-dimensional. The tentacles are smooth, which isn’t right, is it? Aren’t they supposed to have suckers, like suction cups? I turn toward Ricky for support on this. He’s still foggy-eyed. Yeah, I’m positive. They forgot the suction cups, and really, it’s the details that matter. Without those suckers, Squid is going to fall right off that wall. It’s already happening, bit by bit. A dog barks and mom is aroused. She sighs, waits a moment, and hacks up a spleen. What is it this time? Pneumonia? Gonorrhea? Two months ago, she caught SARS. Never mind that she hasn’t been near an Asian child in years, that only three people on our entire continent have been diagnosed. Another bark followed by more hacking. “Mom,” I told her, “please hush. I need to think.” My voice is a bit fierce, I admit.

While I’m thinking and mom’s lips are gaping cough-less, like a fish, I head to the fridge and pull out a slice of bologna. I pick off the plastic rim with my teeth, open the window and toss the greasy meat out. The barking stops. “Don’t worry.” “You talking to me, booby?” “No ma, yes.” “Worry about what?” “Ma, you know the neighbor’s cat?” “Who, Patty?” “Yeah, the lazy white one with those scratch marks on its belly?” “Uh hnh.” “It died.” “Oh goodness, are you sure?” “Yes,” Richard says from the kitchen. I can’t believe this guy. But I think: family. Mom looks heartbroken, which makes me feel bad for lying, but it’s also really sweet. I crawl on my knees and squeeze her fingers. “What I need to know is, what do we do with it?” “What, is it here?” she asks. I love her, I really do. “Nah, it’s in the hallway.” I add, “It’s curled up, real peaceful.” “Oh, that’ll tear Sandra up. Do me a favor, Honey, don’t let her see it?” Mom looks over my shoulder, and I know Ricky is leaning behind me. His belly grazes the back of my head. “Okay ma, but what should I do with the body?” “Well I suppose you can throw her away, but don’t let the manager see you. He’ll throw a fit.” Ricky grunts and starts to walk away, toward the body. I catch his shirttail with the hook of my finger. “Ma, Ricky wants to say something to you.” He tugs but my fingers dig in. “Yeah, Glory, I just wanted to say…you look great, I mean better than usual, like, your hair is nice.” I release his shirt.

We wait till nightfall and when no one is looking, sneak into the trash closet, cram the hitman in the chute and listen for a thud six stories below. We hear it. Before Ricky goes home, I

kiss his cheek. Don’t worry, I tell him. I think: family. Inside the apartment, I scrub the floor in circles. Wax on, I tell myself, wax off. When I’m done scrubbing, I toss the red-stained washcloths—seven total—in a plastic bag. I carry the bag to the trash closet. Someone else’s trash is sitting next to the chute, so I unwind the knot, drop my little bag inside the big one, and sit on the large bag to squeeze all the air out of it. Then down the chute. I return to the apartment, twist the lock and wedge myself in front of my mother on the couch. Because I’m cold, I drape her arm over my shoulder and sink my heels under her shins. She is so peaceful when she sleeps. Her breath warms the back of my neck and gives me a rhythm with which to fall asleep. The truth is, I love my mother, couldn’t kill her if I tried. Before I dream, I promise myself to hire another hitman.

THE END

WRAPPED

When Parker was five years old he was killed, and now, at 34, Parker feels cheated. He can’t remember anything about his death. Was it ugly? Did it hurt? Were his toes cold? A little known secret: upon bedtime, Parker wraps himself by snatching a wad from one end of his blanket and quickly rolling himself sideways like a cigarette, mindful to suck in his gut. Sometimes, Parker’s toes poke out of the blanket. They squirm naked and helpless, two precocious bulbs unable to cope with the elements, which are surprisingly numerous for a modest townhouse. The Elements, from least- to-most threatening: mites, spiders, aliens, curious burglars, and air-conditioning. Girls too, but one never knows how to fit them in. Parker began reworking his list this evening, before the sidelong tumble, before tilting his head back to brush his molars, even before taking off his socks. Girls are confusing, he concludes. Not so with curious burglars, who would undoubtedly investigate exposed flesh for no other reason than its peculiar shape and softness. Parker is convinced that given the opportunity, a burglar would snatch the toe off his foot. Splendid nub! It is a little known secret that Parker actually anticipates the tug, the twisting, the frustrated ratcheting of his toe from its socket. Unfortunately, the frigid blast from the air conditioner always numbs his fantasy. What can he do? If he doesn’t turn up the AC, he would turn to smoldering embers inside his cotton wrap. Then puff, puff, no more Parker. Reluctantly, he curls his toes under the blanket. Lately, Parker has been attempting to recover repressed memories by wrapping himself snuggly in a blanket and squeezing his eyes shut. He squeezes so hard that he can feel the pressure on his eyeball and the thin skin of his lids wrinkle. Then he counts backward from five, four, three, and so on until he’s at the point of conception. Parker is not a therapist, but if he had one, he would

imagine the doctor recommending to Dig Deep, which Parker hopes to accomplish through self- hypnosis. He recalls reading about a middle-aged Canadian woman who recovered her former self, an exotic performance artist, only to develop a split personality. At any moment, she would transform from a small town bank teller to a seductive belly dancer. Parker knows that hypnotic recovery is dangerous. His mom, Leanne tells him that it’s best not to dillydally with the beyond. To Leanne, metaphysics is as useful as breeding lizards. In fact, whenever she caught Parker, as a boy, with that peculiar blank stare of his, she’d say, “Stop breeding lizards and help me wash dishes,” which may explain his early fixation with dishwater, the primordial soup of the gecko. Now Parker wonders: what if the beyond is inside a person? Parker imagines his mother shrug her bulky shoulders. Got me there, she says. He hates that this is all it takes for his mother to concede. There was a time Leanne wouldn’t budge for anything. When Parker was twelve, she argued with Parker’s barber about whether long or short hair causes acne. The barber was so frazzled he accidentally clipped a bald spot into the back of Parker’s head. Leanne paid for the service, saying she should know better than to butt heads with an amateur. It was nearly a month ago that Parker had déjà vu. He called Leanne from his office—a rare occurrence since he had become a partner at his architecture firm—and explained that on his drive to work, a tractor-trailer blared its goosy horn at him. Goosy? she asked. Yes, a very loud goose, and he was overcome with a gloom so profound and unnerving that it just had to connect. Parker, don’t you remember? she asked. Remember? …Your daddy? Of course Parker knew his father. He was probably sitting at home in creased boxers scratching his hairless belly just above the Technicolor tattoo of a topless vixen. He was likely stroking his beagle’s neck as it chewed on a leather ear and watching reruns of Bonanza between sips of light beer. Parker was fond of this vision. It made him feel safe to imagine the sweaty ring the beer can leaves on the coffee table; the gnarled corners of the table where Xavier, his beagle, had teethed on as a puppy; the sweet mixture of wet paw, sweaty pit, and apple-cinnamon potpourri that mother wished would consume both paw and pit. He remembers his dad arbitrarily thrusting his hand between the cushions of the black vinyl couch, bugging his eyes out, and fishing out a California Angels baseball card. They couldn’t figure out whom it belonged to, nor could they recall much about Wally Joyner, the first basemen brandished on the card. Parker and his dad were both fans of the Cleveland Indians, who because they were so lousy required few checkups every season

to see how far out of the pennant race they’d fallen. Parker held on to the card anyways. It was a treasure, a thrill. Part of him felt that he was snubbing his team for this ballplayer with womanly hips, tousled hair and buckled knees, but perhaps what excited him the most was betraying himself, his own allegiance to things. That’s Cooter, his mother said. Yeah, I know. Cooter’s not your daddy. Parker didn’t think it likely his mother has that sort of humor, so she must have been serious, which confused him momentarily and ushered on the collapse of time and space. Then he smelled coffee and recognized that he must have looked exactly how his assistant was looking at him then. Are you alright? Yes, he said. Yes what? (His mother) She had been waiting patiently on the line but now sounded agitated by her son’s lack of concentration. Parker excused his assistant and listened to his mother for the first time in years. The guilt didn’t distract him this time because the story his mother cautiously unraveled had to do with Parker’s present state of mind. No, his very existence. In a tone used for children who forget to put the toilet seat down, Parker’s mom explained how she met Parker’s father at a military base in Sacramento and had a love child, which, interpreted, means they were strung out and not prepared to support anyone but themselves. So, they threw out the grass, moved to Ohio, and acquired low payin jobs. He became a cross-country truck driver. She sold car insurance. When Parker was five, the vice president of the trucking company called Leanne at work to tell her that her husband’s breaks went out while descending a mountain in Kentucky. He had “done the right thing” by swerving into an emergency sand- barricade, but as everyone knows, such precautions are intended to save everyone but the driver. The truck careened over the edge and bounced down the mountainside until it exploded. His name was Reginald Stevens…Reggie. Parker didn’t know what to focus on: the visual of a bouncing semi, which seemed awkward and toylike, the impatience in Leanne’s voice, as if she were reciting a worn anecdote, the fact that everyone knows precautions don’t work (Parker doesn’t know), or that she saved Reggie’s name for last. Was she angry at Parker? At Reginald? The only humanity he could detect in this story was the throaty way she whispered “Reggie.”

And then there was this revelation that his bloodline had been spliced incorrectly. He’d been living with, what, faulty wiring?! But this didn’t so much infuriate him as it made him long for Cooter and build up a defense so impenetrable, you’d think Cooter had taken his couch to Fort Ticonderoga and set up camp. He couldn’t help but think abstractly. His father was a hippy truck driver who…exploded! He was the truck. Cooter is the couch. Parker barely heard his mother say, how could you forget, before he hung up the phone. Nausea crept down his shoulders and into his chest. He looked at his hands, traced the green veins under pale skin from knuckle to forearm to bicep, as if it’d lead him deep into a cavern where he could scream and his assistant would go about her business. But no, he already screamed, because there she was with that look on her face, this time backed up by similarly crinkled faces. O’ the spectacular yaw of desperation. Since the revelation, Parker’s felt incomplete. He’s guessing it’s something chromosomal. He considers himself sane and emotionally adjusted, which, he figures, is not in spite of his social ineptitude but resulting from. Right now, with his eyes clamped shut, his mouth twisted and toes wiggling, he thinks about repressed and suppressed memories and wonders which one he’s actually digging up. Even if his mother never told him about his father—she claims she has—he thinks he should remember something about the man. He loves Cooter, considers him his real dad, but he figures it’s his obligation to make like Houdini and disappear into his inner self, to at least uncover something essential or genetic about his biological father. In time, he’ll ask Leanne about Reggie. What did he smell like? Did he ever hoist Parker onto his shoulders, as Cooter did? Was he a romantic, crooning ballads for Leanne? He’d like to know if his biological father liked lima beans. Parker loves lima beans. In time, he thinks. In time he’ll figure out why there are no pictures, why the secrets? Or worse, did he forget? For now, he needs sensory detail, some physical proof, a touch remembered that makes Reggie more than a name, a summary or an abstract. He doesn’t want to ask, who was my father? He knows, has to, because he knew, and such knowledge, even if he was only five years old, need only be reawakened or relived. So he indulges his senses in hopes that he’ll trigger something. He drags his bare soles over carpet, sniffs a new brand of aftershave during each trip to the store, and rubs his chin to gauge prickliness. He listens to classic rock and eats lemon with and without salt. So far, all that’s been confirmed is that his carpet is worn, Elvis is still the King, and he most definitely prefers lemon in his tea. Parker’s back is itching. He’s still trapped in his blanket. He shrugs his shoulders to create friction. When that doesn’t work, he worms his way to the edge of the bed and tumbles to the floor. This is insane. No wonder Parker’s coworkers are worried about him. At first, he’d been flattered

by their attention, but perhaps that was the wrong reaction. Perhaps they think he’s a screamer, the kind you meet on New York subways. Some have told Parker it’s healthy to release tension. One colleague gave him a homemade stress-ball, a purple fist-sized balloon filled with detergent. An intern gave him a Playboy. It’s clear they think he’s going to flip out. Parker regards himself as responsible, prides himself on his diligence and productive work habits, but last week, he showed up to work with a sock in his briefcase. Even more disturbing: he wasn’t certain the sock belonged to him. Most coworkers would excuse such occurrences to absentmindedness, normally a valid response, but this is Parker. Spontaneous outbursts take tickets and are left reading Highlights in the lobby. Parker opens his eyes. This digging is getting nowhere. The soil’s too hard; the shovel bounces off the ground and vibrates all the way up the handle. Admittedly, it’s tough to Dig with your arms pinned to your chest. It’s also frustrating, especially as Parker thinks of Natalie, the blue- haired intern who gave him the Playboy. He imagines her nose ring, a ruby stud, and the way she slurs the middle of her sentences together, curving her mouth slyly. Maybe Parker doesn’t listen carefully enough. When he hears, “Do you need-a-thy I’m goa tooth-a-deli,” it actually sounds like, “Do you need anything”—pause—“I’m going to the deli.” Perhaps he’s been calling her Nat not because she insisted upon it, but because he didn’t hear the second half of her name. He’s often distracted by her hair, the different shades of blue cut short and ruffled up in back. All of a sudden, Parker is feeling very warm. What did he do with the Playboy? Threw it away, of course. Not at first. At first, he kept it in his magazine basket with Architectural Digest and Newsweek. If he was working late, he’d discreetly slip it out and read the articles. He persuades himself that the magazine has journalistic integrity, that the pictures compliment the text, not vice versa. If anyone were to ask what he did with the magazine, he’d tell the person that the investigative piece on the neo-mafia was fascinating. He’d have never guessed the mafia’s connection to the shoe industry, that sneakers have been linked to elevated gang violence, as well as tax evasion. Even now, he’s avoiding the awful truth: he likes Nat. Really, really likes her, despite his suspicion that the nudie mag was a joke and not the tender gesture he had hoped for. Parker feels a series of sharp pangs in his chest, a woodpecker trapped inside his ribcage. He’s almost foolish enough to think they are heart pangs, but he suspects it’s indigestion. He holds his breath and stares at the curtains in their early morning glow. Soon, he feels pulpy, his innards barely contained by the thin blanket. He exhales. What if he were to unravel? What if his whole life went splat, or kaboom? He’d prefer kaboom, because thus far, his life has been a series of

spills, wiped up and discarded. He thinks this is what it must have felt like to die, and for a brief, selfish moment, he envies his father.

The Repo Man is Coming, says the alarm, The Repo Man is Coming. The Repo—bleep. Jamie scratches his crotch, considers smashing the alarm clock with his fist, reconsiders, parts his gooey eyes, licks his lips, and scratches, again. His knuckles graze something soft and cold. He tilts his head left and feels his brains maneuver like a yolk sac about to burst. He groans. His larynx vibrates with tension. He groans louder, hoping to wake Rose, owner of the butt Jamie is grazing. He gives it a pinch. “Ow!” Rose whines. She doesn’t budge. “Woman,” he grunts, loosening some phlegm. “Woman, you need to giddouta here fore I get up.” “Man—you’re already up.” She flings her right arm behind her, grabs Jamie’s thin wrist, drops it, twists and maneuvers over both her body and his so that Jamie can feel her warm belly on his chest, clamps his other wrist, attempts to fall back into position with arm in tow, only to lose grip and whimper empty-handed because there’s no way in hell Jamie’s going to move. “Why don’t you spoon with me?” She asks, implying why-not-ever. She’s the Queen of why-not-ever, Jamie thinks, focusing his attention on her back dimples. Those dimples—it’s what started this whole mess, her sneaking into his trailer at night, wearing panties and her enormous Tazmanian Devil shirt that reaches just above her knees. Two months ago, she was riding her bicycle through the trailer park in jean shorts and a pale blue tube-top. Jamie was working on the Buick, as usual, this time patching up the exhaust manifold with quick-dry flame-retardant stucco. Gray goop was smeared over his chest and fingers. Rose must have circled him five times in ten minutes—he could hear the sealant on the pavement pop under her wheels. On the sixth revolution, he turned around and caught sight of the gap between her shirt and shorts. On the seventh revolution, she stopped and listened to Jamie explain in exhaustive detail the technicalities he never learned but improvises fairly well. Now, Jamie thumbs those smooth impressions in her back, trying not to stiffen, because then he’ll have to move and his brains will certainly ooze out his ears. He hoists himself up, puts his hands on his knees, and wonders why he’s up here instead of down there.

“Git up, we don’t need your mother throwing a hissy.” “I don’t wanna. Can’t we just stay in and have a lazy day?” “Agin? Help me out, Rosey. You miss another day of school they’ll start inquirin n’ shit.” “Why don’t you call in like I told you?” Why-not-ever? “Why’s my head hurt? Why’s my car a piece-a-shit? Why’s you gotta give me hell all the friggin time?” She rolls onto her back and smirks. “Cause you like it.” He tosses a giant-sized shirt at her face and gets dressed. Later, he hears the bus roar and then fade, and as he walks toward the supermarket sipping his last beer, he wonders what will happen in a few months when Rose graduates. How long will their friendship last when she realizes how little energy he exerts during the day. Will she work? He’s not so lucky. Not that he would blame her for lounging around all day in her jammies. It’s just that he can’t afford to feed anyone without a whole lot more daring and ingenuity. Deep in thought, he shuffles through shaggy grass along the berm of the highway, eyeing the traffic that passes him and flipping off any cocksucker who looks at him the wrong way. Two cocksuckers, he counts. At the supermarket, he picks out a box of rollups and reads the nutritional information until the coast is clear. With his back turned to the lone camera in the market, he pries open the cardboard lip and slides two rollups into his right pocket. Inside the pocket, he maneuvers a gummy sheet from its plastic wrapper, wads it, and pops it in his mouth. He knows the dairy isle is a trap, but he walks there anyways. He tends to loiter too long by the milk, absorbing as much of the cool air as possible while listening to the sputtering of the freezers. Recently, he was caught off-guard by a grocer while caressing his forehead with a pint of orange juice. He bought the juice and mixed it with beer, only to discover the idea was flawed, but he drank anyways, telling himself that he would gradually become more health conscious. The eggs are not cracked. They are in fine condition. Jamie drops three, four, five eggs into his left pocket. He thinks about French toast and smacks his lips, then grabs a small package of bacon and shoves it down his pants. It feels good, but now he has to move quickly. He grabs a cup of ramen, rips open the paper lid, and starts munching the swirly noodles. He glides to the beer isle, lifts the price tag off the watery Regal Lite and pastes it to his favorite domestic, then scours the check-out lanes for a fresh face, finally settling on the greasy kid with the red ponytail and freckles, the one Jamie knows must be some Viking warlord in disguise, the type that slogs through the

workday until retreating to his mom’s basement to play videogames in which he ravages townspeople and their thatched roof cottages. Jamie haphazardly plops the beer on the counter. “Five seventy-five and fifty for the noodles,” says the Viking. “Par-don-eh moi?” Crunch-crunch goes the noodles. “Sir, this is the second time you’ve come through here with those—the noodles sir—yeah, those.” “Is that so? Well darned it, I only got six dollars.” Jamie pats his shirt and pants. “What you say we trade a cold one for the ray-men here?” The Viking raises his eyebrow, sighs. “Don’t worry about it—that’ll be five seventy five.” * * * On the way home, Jamie tosses the noodles into the ditch and guzzles a beer. He needs to hide the Buick. The Repo Guys nearly snatched it a few days ago, but Jamie had locked the license plates in the trunk. Still, they know it’s the one they’re looking for—baby blue Rivera with rust- bubbles and a cracked rearview mirror—it’s just a matter of time before they tow it to the fairgrounds and auction it off. Problem is, he can’t get the car started. He’ll have to push it to Tuffy’s house, five trailers down. It’s going to be one hell of a time convincing Stella, Tuffy’s wife, to stash the Buick under their canopy. Stella built that makeshift awning—rippled sheet metal extending from the house, propped up by a couple four-by-fours—after months of demanding that Tuffy do it. She had cut out coupons for plastic furniture and had visions of late afternoons sipping sun tea and listening to cicadas. Tuffy didn’t share the vision, mostly because, as he puts it, he doesn’t care for fine-her living. He parked his Geo under the canopy before Stella could put away his tools or set the tea jar on the windowpane. Tuffy has balls, no doubt. But for how long? One time he snapped Stella’s bra to impress his buddies and Stella went ape-shit on him. All he could do was grab her wrists before she smashed his face with her fists. Improvising, she lunged headfirst at him and bit off a chunk of his bottom lip. The emergency meds were able to reattach it. Now Tuffy grows a goatee to cover up the scar. Hooooooonk! Some kid in a red Pontiac blares his horn at Jamie, who quickly downs the last of his suds, mashes the can on his thigh and rifles it at the car’s backside. It lands twenty feet behind the car, well out of range. “Stupid punk-ass mothafuggin bastard! Come on back ere ya fugger!” Jamie wipes his mouth on his sleeve. One thing he hates in this world is punk-ass

mothafuggers. Some time he’d like to act for the whole of humanity and cold-cock one of them in the jaw. While said shithead rubs his jaw, Jamie would crack him in his solar plexus, at which point, out of breath and seized with rage, the bastard would fling his cell phone at Jamie’s face, but Jamie is stealthy, a fucking ninja, and with one deft movement he would catch the phone midair and pound it into Shithead’s face until both teeth and miniature phone parts were lodged in his cheeks. Jamie continues choreographing the demise of the young kid in the Pontiac until he accidentally steps on something firm hidden amongst overgrown blades of grass. Jamie stoops to one knee—a feather. Or a foot-sized board shaped like a feather, and blue. Jamie turns it over like a Faberge egg, eyeing the fine indentations made to resemble the individual bristles of a feather. He stands up as bacon slips through the waistband of his boxers, and he notices how warm his groin has become. He carries the board with him as he walks home, partly because he’s curious, partly to hide the slimy yolk stain on his pants where he mashed the can.

III

As Parker sits uncomfortably wedged between two senior partners each wearing identical blue-gray worsted suits, poking at some type of curry, trying to forget he’s the reason everyone’s gathered at this trendy restaurant with its tenebrous lighting, slinking as best he can away from the flicker of the candelabrum at the center of the table, he thinks of his mentor, who received uncountable awards for his designs, so many that he often forgot which design was being recognized, whether it had been contracted and built. Alfred Altman, a stern, fuzzy man too absorbed in his landscapes to clip his nose hairs, a man Parker had considered a genius, who even after his death a few years back had received posthumous awards for his contribution to—well to community, to culture, to humanity itself. Tonight, Parker’s coworkers celebrate his and Alfred’s collaboration—a design for a house Parker never imagined would get built. Many of Alfred’s concoctions couldn’t be built without the help of an engineering mastermind, but to this day, investors all over the world place bids on his designs. Bids! All because the Dalai Lama had kneeled at the terrace of a garden Alfred designed, a garden inspired by the Sukhavativyuha Sutra, actually a transformed junkyard in Ohio, and said, “I could find peace here.” Alfred, a trained landscape architect, was thereafter receiving commissions to revamp entire districts in Baltimore, to build skyscrapers in Singapore, even to design an aesthetically pleasing pipeline for Alaska.

“Parker, you’ve hardly said a peep all evening,” says the suit to the left, Michael Jones, a barrel-chested graphic designer who evidently used to be a lineman for some third-tier private school, although Parker can’t imagine a lineman ever saying peep. “I was telling Sherry how Alfred came up with the idea for the roof at the Wexley Estate.” Parker wanted to correct him (the roof was his idea), but he was curious. “Go ahead,” Parker prods. “Well I was telling her about Al’s trip to the Himalayas, you know, how he almost lost his toes scaling the glacier, what’s-its-name?” “I don’t think glaciers have names,” Sherry says. She is obviously amused. Her hand hasn’t left the stem of her wine glass for the last ten minutes. “No, this one had a name I think, but forget it, what matters is Al slips down this really steep embankment, and he’s thrusting his pick into the ice, I mean he’s frenzied, hammering like he’s got no tomorrow, cause maybe he doesn’t. He’s headed straight for the edge of this cliff—thirty feet, twenty, ten, five and whoosh! Off he goes!” Mike flashes Sherry a smile. “Then he feels like he’s split in two, his stomach is burning.” He picks the napkin off his lap and pulls it taut. “Ends up he’s tied to his partner. The rope saves his life.” “Oh dear,” Sherry says. She takes her hand off her glass and places it concernedly on her lips. “Yeah, but maybe it’s the best thing to happen to ol’ Alfie, cause he opens his eyes and swear, to, God he sees Heaven, or that’s what he says. He’s dangling there looking down at a canyon of ice, all these jagged precipices that would cut you from looking at them, and he’s in awe. “Then he hears something, like an ocean—” Mike cups his hand around his ear. Oh Jesus, Parker thinks, a seashell? “No it’s a roar, but it quiets down right? Then it starts again, bells? Again, voices bouncing, whistling, hushes? Eventually he realizes that it’s Cunu at the other end of the rope yelling for him. “Cunu means ‘baby’ in Tibetan, but this guy’s huge. He’s got a scar running down the back of his neck. “Anyways, Al realizes those sounds he’s hearing is actually this, uh, this celestial music, and it’s all coming from the jagged ice below him, so he designs the roof for the Wexley Estate to do the same thing—to be an instrument.” What a bunch of malarkey, Parker thinks. The truth is that Parker doesn’t know where the idea came from. Alfred had asked him that very question before crumpling up Parker’s original

rendering—where’d this come from?—as if Parker had traveled to some remote village carnival and brought back a snapshot of the original man-goat. Only much later, when Alfred was overrun by commissions, did he extend his shaky hand to Parker’s shoulder and ask, “Still have that roof of yours?” The question still has Parker wondering, where did it come from? “Parker, isn’t that right?” “Excuse me?” “Al had five wives.” “Um yeah, I think so.” Parker drank too much wine. Now he has to sit through this bullshit until his fingertips stop tingling. He thinks about the Wexley Estate and cringes. In three months, rich socialites will be in his house eating dinner, putting the spoiled princess to bed, congratulating each other for purchasing an Altman home, one of a kind. Pretentious, all of it. The roof, as described earlier this evening, at the awards ceremony: The roof, a modern marvel, consists of metal sheets of various thicknesses slanting, flaring and curving at dangerous and daring angles, so that even a casual breeze will ricochet and bounce and curl like a fine slice of cheese. When rain falls on the diverse landing pads, it creates a chorus of sound, a pattering, flowing, dripping orchestration as unique as each rainfall, as chaotic or synchronized as the listener would care to hear. The percussion is unique to each room. In the den: a sweet fullness, like a brisk stream. In the kitchen: a furious, jazzy rapping. In the children’s room: a steady whisking, like a lullaby. The pride of the house is the living room, where all the water is channeled into a cascading water wall made of brick (similar to the jungle room at Graceland). At the base of the wall is a small pool surrounded by various houseplants and flowers. Frolicking in the pool is a generous supply of goldfish. Parker wonders if Mike wrote the presentation speech. Words like frolicking and jazzy are almost as striking as peep. And it’s just like Mike to call the roof a marvel, especially before they’ve made the final adjustments. They will forever be making final adjustments, Parker thinks. He lifts his wine glass—adjustments—and swallows—forever. And Ever. With a kick of the feet Parker pushes his chair back, stands up, excuses himself, and exits the restaurant, but not before removing the napkin dangling from his belt loop, that he hands to the maitre d’. * * * On the drive home Parker calls Leanne. He feels like a teenager again, lonely and needing reassurance from the one person who should know him. Despite the iridescence of his halogen

headlights, the assaulting neon shine that causes oncoming cars to flash him, he feels as though the darkness will swallow him. He wonders if he’s too old to say mommy. “Hi, mom.” “Parker?” “Yeah.” “Why are you calling so late?” Parker hangs up, has to—he might cry. It’s what he does when everything feels bigger than him. He’s like the Ice Man, frozen in a glacier that has over the course of ten thousand years annihilated everything he knows. He’s watching this happen, slowly, and he can’t move. If scientists were to discover his body perfectly preserved, and thaw it, they’d trace it back to an era: Atomic Age? Post Modern? Post Ozone? They would trace Parker back to a culture, to a civilization, even track his migration. They could pinpoint his race, if they cared so much. But Parker still wouldn’t know where he comes from, even if he were cloned and asked himself objectively. Thonk! He hit something. Something fleshy. Parker smells hot rubber. The windshield is juicy. He couldn’t have hit anyone. He would have noticed a human. Whoa, dude, too much wine. Get out of the car; look around. Anyone? Nope. Under the car? Nothing. The ditch, the road, the sky. But wait: the sky. Is it really snowing? Not in July. He picks something off his shirt. Feather.

Tab cracks the bathroom window just enough to avoid suffocating Boogie, who is uncharacteristically sedate for a Pekingese with braids so hideous only a former roller derby champion could be proud. Tab was the 1983 runner-up in the young women’s division. Between lazy drags of Marijuana, she rubs Boogie’s ears and thoughtfully recounts how her signature maneuver—the Rolling Split—knocked the crowd off its feet. Can you picture it? She asks Jamie. No way, he thinks. He glances subconsciously at her thick ankles, then at the pooch nestled in her

lap, finally resting on her pensive, sun-damaged face. There’s one appropriate response at a moment like this: “That’s somethin else,” he says. She nods approvingly and passes the joint to Jamie, who sits Indian style on her pink bathroom mat. She adjusts herself on the toilet seat, nudging the flush lever, almost knocking off a pot of Marijuana from the adjacent counter. Boogie somehow remains undisturbed. Jamie doesn’t know how to say what he needs to say. He stalls with an impressive drag. He holds it in his lungs and lets it leak out the corners of his mouth. “Tab, we’ve known each other a few years, so I’ll just come clean with it.” “Give it here.” She holds her hand out. He’s confused for a moment, then realizes she’s motioning for the joint. He wonders if he should start over. “You’ve always been generous and kind, so I’ll give it to you straight. I’m seeing Rose.” She folds her hands on Boogie. “There ain’t no way in hell she’s not having this baby.” “Huh?” “You heard me.” “No, no, she’s not pregnant for Pete’s sake. She wants to move in with me.” She grunts, coughs, clears her throat. She crosses her left leg over her right, sandwiching Boogie between doughy thighs. Jamie stares at a dripping tree-limb framed by the window, listens to the rain tap-dance on the ceiling and brings his attention back to Tab and her oversized tongue swishing from cheek-to-cheek like a giant gumball. He knows that look. She’s thinking, winding her way back from solution to conflict, reaction to action, as if every problem in her life could vanish by staying one step ahead of it. Never impelled by hunger, she cooks, then registers that she must have needed tator tot casserole in some essential, intuitive way. In this manner, she places faith in her convictions. If her advice to Jamie was to keep the baby, then there’s a darn good reason to do so. “Well fuckin damn it to hell, she’s almost out of school,” Tab says. This is what Jamie feared: the wrath of frustration. He knew this problem would tie her mind in knots. He also understood that she’d probably reject it outright, thereby tossing his anxiety overboard into the fiery lakes where it could sizzle and pop and feed off his digestive juices. “You have any of that tator casserole left?” Jamie asks. Boogie’s ribbons are loosening and she’s beginning to groan. If Jamie doesn’t attempt to change the subject, Boogie may get squeezed to death by thigh-meat. But if he doesn’t enlist Tab’s help, he’ll have to sacrifice his lonesome ritual:

allowing the tub to clog, farting under the blanket, eating over the sink, whacking off in the kitchen. To a man with so much to lose, nothing could be as frightening as a change in routine. Normally, he’d have told his girlfriend to take a hike, but he’s not so sure he doesn’t love Rosie. He leaves Tab and her tongue in the bathroom and considers how crisp and exotic is the word “redecorate.” * * * Jamie swore he’d never do this. He promised himself that when push comes to shove, he’d fall to the floor and hug his knees. But here he is, with Rosie, buying condoms at the grocery. Tab had Rosie promise to go on the pill, but for some reason unbeknownst to Jamie, the pill doesn’t kick in for at least a month. Rosie is gleeful. She says they should “practice safe sex.” She repeats the mantra in colorful pitch. Jamie wonders how much practice it takes to achieve maximum safety, if it’s really so difficult as to require training. Minutes ago, Rosie guided him to the produce isle and dangled a banana playfully in front of his face. It had been a prop in some school demonstration, she told him. She and her girlfriend had been embarrassed in front of her entire class—it took them five attempts to fit it right. Fit it? He asked. You know, she said, and maneuvered the banana between the ring made by her forefinger and thumb. Jamie is watching Rosie scan the shiny boxes in front of her. He stands two feet behind her. He smells her hair, which is full and brown and wavy. It smells like some flowery shampoo, or fruit. He can’t wait to ask her: Which flower? Which fruit? She’ll make him guess, force him to lean in close and feel those locks graze his face. “Baby, which one?” “I dunno.” He can’t wait. He hunches and places his chin on her shoulders, feigns interest. She leans back, wraps her arm around his neck and scratches the back of his scalp. He inhales the clean fragrance and is grateful. “What’s spermicide?” Rosie asks. “I dunno, read the box or somethin.” She reads. No longer aroused, Jamie saunters to the beer isle for his Regal-priced domestic. On his way back to Rosie, Jamie spots a scruffy stranger in the hygiene section twisting the cap off an aftershave bottle. Jacket draped over his right arm, the man drops his nose to the rim of the bottle, stands erect, waves fumes upward, then drops his nose again as if his arm were too heavy to lift to his face. Jamie’s not one to pry in a supermarket—he’s usually the one hiding something— but this guy is sniffing hard. Jamie can see nostrils flare from fifteen feet away. “Try it on,” Jamie suggests.

Startled, the stranger twists the cap back on and returns the cool-colored bottle to the shelf. Jamie approaches and looks at the label. Invigorate your senses, it suggests. “I have,” says the stranger. “I’ve tried every one at least twice.” “Why the hell’d you do that?” Jamie could have phrased that better, but what the fuck? The supermarket’s no place for pleasantries. “Trying to remember which one’s my dad’s favorite. I think he used to have one.” He picks up a can of shaving gel, places it gently in his palm and turns it with his other hand. “You have a favorite?” Jamie points to the can. “This? Oh nah, I use an electric razor.” “Not lately.” “Excuse me?” Jamie strokes his chin. Parker imitates. “Good luck bud,” Jamie says; he waves. Parker imitates. He finds Rosie with the same perturbed look on her face. Her nose is slightly crinkled with soft dimples above her eyebrows. She’s crossed her arms and is rubbing her elbows. “Why don’t you take these-here spirits.” Jamie extends the beer. “I’ll take care of the ‘nana- jackets.” “You sure?” “Hell yes.” He pinches her butt. She walks away, and he wonders how it will feel to be wrapped up.

Parker is driving to the Wexley Estate at 1:15 a.m. It is raining. He thinks of a poem he read in college about an Eskimo who baits a polar bear with a whittled bone dressed in lard. The bear consumes the bone and is pierced from within. The Eskimo tracks the bear and avoids starving by eating its bloody shit. When the bear dies, he cuts the hide open and submerges himself in the warm carcass, where he hibernates and reemerges half man, half bear. Parker doesn’t have a carcass to dive in. He can’t trace his father’s footsteps or jump off a cliff, not that he’s especially anxious to bounce down a mountainside, but he’d give anything to embrace his father as the Eskimo embraced

the bear. He wishes he died with his father—he didn’t, and he feels a vital part of him has been killed off. Second Wish: To go back to college, where his biggest and most legitimate concern was passing his thesis examination, or paying his bills, or the possibility of never getting laid. If he returned to college, he’d party more often, play beer pong, corn-hole and flip-cup, all the games that seemed juvenile and out of reach. He would revive his original thesis, the one his mentor, Alfred, said was “overwhelmingly unimportant.” Parker wonders now if he betrayed himself, for it was his love of themed buildings that drew him to architecture in the first place. When Parker was a young boy, Cooter had escorted him inside a Giant Blue Goose. It had a long, slender neck and a sleek, orange bill. Its eyes were focused on a higher plane, the tips of trees perhaps. The body was full and wide with enough room inside to peddle eggs and other produce. He enjoyed the egg seller’s stories, especially when he explained why the giant goose was sitting on an empty lot in the middle of rural Ohio. The story begins: One year a struggling farmer traded his cow for ten geese and was so depressed about his situation that he let them roam freely, never minding to feed them. After six months, the geese failed to produce a single egg. He slaughtered nine geese and was about to slaughter the last when it squirmed out of his fingers. The farmer placed his bloodied ax on the table and followed the goose until he came upon several pebbles. He looked closer—eggs. The goose climbed atop the mound of egg, ruffled itself and sank into it. There was no way this one goose could nurse all of these, the farmer thought. But he sympathized with the goose, having two young ones himself. He let it sit. He gave it scraps of cabbage and toast from his own dinner so that the goose fattened as he thinned. Eventually, the goose became so large that it swallowed the man. Now, people search the goose’s belly for remnants of the old farmer. The goose is no longer there. The building was torn down years ago. Parker wishes he could lie down inside the goose and listen to the voice of years past. Another wasted wish, and now he’s all out. He drives a half mile down the illuminated Wexley drive, parks near the four-car Wexley garage, and enters through the sliding door. He is here to listen to the Wexley roof, his roof. Not bothering to turn on the lights, he ambles into the living room, pausing at the pond to chase goldfish with his toes. He sits down and immerses his entire left foot in the pond. He leans back until he feels carpet fibers tickle his ear. He listens to the rain swoosh overhead. It taps and plops. It pours. It giggles.

Giggles? Parker sits up. He looks left, right. He stands up and hops one-footed to the light switch, careful not to drip on the carpet. With the new light emerge naked people. One man. One woman. The woman scrambles behind the young man, who tries desperately not to seem afraid. His pecker dwindles rapidly. Parker recognizes the woman’s hair—it is blue and fluffed in back. “Parker?” Nat asks. “Yeah?” “Do you mind?” Parker steps outside. He sits on the front steps. On her way out, Nat kisses Parker on the temple. Parker walks back inside and takes off his remaining shoe and sock. He sits on the living room floor. He lies down. Parker can finally let his toes breathe.

THE END

HOLDING a BABY: DAMAGE CONTROL

Day Seven (of seven)

Daniel talked to his father for the first time in twenty years. “I burped Casey,” he said. “He spit up on my shoulder.” It might have been the way he said it, the way he leaned on the words, as if on a chair with patched and uncertain fractures, but his father’s reply struck Daniel as the only answer that could make sense. “Yes,” his father said. Daniel pressed the receiver to his ear. His father’s voice was cautious and full of copper. They talked about the weather in Groom, Texas. They remembered a crusty stretch of road with a lopsided water tower and a three-hundred foot cross, its cheap metal frame humping the breeze and steaming after rainfall. Daniel, thoughts like spray, wondered how many years it had taken for his dad to swallow so many pennies. Daniel promised to send pictures of his wife and son, and his dogs too, if he’d like.

Day Five

Daniel had no reservations or preconceptions about feminism. It existed, like history exists, like molecules exist. Sometimes, when he let his focus go and the edges of things melted into each other, when little white particles buzzed and clung and yielded soothingly to warm breath, he imagined that these microscopic tingling dots were atoms, or barely visible clusters of atoms, and for a short while big things made sense, or more appropriately, he sensed that they could make sense, and he was satisfied that they—that feminism—existed, that he existed with it, and that his vision wasn’t so bad that he needed to guess what is right in front of him: a laundry basket, one tiny sock draped over its lip, a floppy bubble where a soft baby heel will go and go again.

He abandoned the laundry basket on the sofa to spelunk in the attic through creased boxes. Under a weak yellow glow, he flipped through an old copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, page fifty-two. He found, alongside text like any other text, a scribble in caps—“women”—as if that explained it all. It was the best he could do: find a passage that seemed to acknowledge something about the mystery of women, that so-called feminine mystique, and label it in hopes that it either empowered or oppressed; or, by blind luck, he’d find what his awkward, bearded professor once described as “the very stuff that disrupts our binary thinking, that makes gender arbitrary, that [cough] castrates the phallus.” Daniel had taken one course outside of his technical curriculum at college. That was six years ago, long enough to forget all but a few faces, soon enough to recall the wonder of a young, thirty-ish Tajik teaching Marxist and feminist theories to a class dominated by men. He recalled Professor Olimov’s accent, the syllabic plodding of Russian dialect garnished with the upward inflection of a British boarding education. “My pupils,” Olimov always began, “how is it with you?” It was as hip as a boogie boarder saying “gnarly wave chaps”—so, modishly hip, enough hip for guys like Daniel, and for Monique, Shelby, and Kathleen, the three women enrolled in the course. Daniel had a sense that after his professor had finished kissing his students eyelids with his words, he rode home on a bicycle and cut his dog’s tail for fear that it would destroy his houseplants. Back in the living room, Daniel folded tiny shirts and soft, tiny pants, every so often lifting a bit of cloth to his face to smell the baby on it. Kathleen had one of the few faces Daniel remembered; it had seemed perpetually amused: high, thin eyebrows arched noncommittally, a long mouth and prominent nose that rivaled his own. She had worn her eyeglasses below her line of vision so that she was always raising her chin and revealing a slender neck. Maybe it wasn’t slender. Maybe it just wasn’t Professor Olimov’s ropey neck, or maybe the fascination was that her eyes had refused to cower from Olimov’s furry unibrow. Kathleen had been the only woman whom Daniel courted with any real enthusiasm; still, it had been a klutzy courtship, amateurish in more ways than one. He placed folded notes in Kathleen’s school mailbox, careful to crease the ridges with his thumbnail and to seal them with scotch tape. He tapped her shoulder to get her attention. He left pencil shavings on his sleeve in case she needed the time, to playact the intellectual daydreamer with the nice watch. When none of this worked, Daniel called his mother, Nerissa, who told him with complete seriousness (and she was rarely completely serious) to buy his crush some flowers. “What real woman wouldn’t love a stargazer lily?” To

Daniel, it had sounded like a statement, a matter of fact, and on a Tuesday afternoon he propped a half dozen carnations against the crook of Kathleen’s doorframe, no identification, and scrammed. It was on the way home that he had seen Kathleen tossing a football on the lawn of a fraternity house. A few boys, shirtless, digging toes into grass, caught and threw with one hand and clung to their beer with the other. Kathleen used two hands to catch. She shuffled side-to-side to receive the ball with her chest. She put too much weight on her lead foot when she threw. It was clear that she had had instruction, not from these guys, but from someone older and without patience. Daniel had labeled her a possible wife, as he usually did within the first moments of meeting a girl. His head still throbbed from placing the carnations at Kathleen’s door. When the football bounced his way, he was wondering if she would think the flowers weird or wildly romantic. He picked up the ball, placed three fingers on the stitches, and lobbed a spiral to this girl, not yet his wife, a clumsy and beautiful quarterback. He has never owned up to the flowers he left on her doorstep, probably his best achievement as a courter. After folding Casey’s clothes, Daniel updated his website, an online retail shop named “Shop Till You Drop the Putt” that bought and sold used golf equipment and moderately rare golf memorabilia, such as an old time holster signed by Chi Chi Rodriguez. Daniel had never actually seen the holster, or any of his merchandise for that matter. He considered himself more of a scavenger than a salesman, taking requests and finding the best deal on the net. Sometimes he fancied himself a personal detective, like Humphrey Bogart, with long, agile fingers and sad, mocking eyes, who said, “I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble,” as he rolled a slim. Daniel wished he could have held Chi Chi’s holster and smelled its cracked leather. He would have passed it on to his son, on Casey’s ninth or twenty-third birthday. Kathleen would be home soon, Daniel thought. She’ll have picked Casey up from daycare, and if Daniel was worth anything as a husband or a father, he will have prepared their dinner. * * * Daniel was adding chorizo to a bouncy pot of chili when Kathleen kissed him on the shoulder. Casey tried to grab the kiss, waving his little fingers at Kathleen’s mouth. She dipped her face over the pot with Casey saddled on her hip, a towel draped over her left shoulder. “What’s for dinner?” she asked. “Chili con spicy,” Daniel said. He pinched Casey’s toes and mimicked a befuddled polar bear, one of the several faces he used to make Casey laugh. Kathleen scooped Casey off her hip and extended him to Daniel, hesitated, then lifted him higher, legs dangling, to consider his underside.

“Needs a change,” she said. When Kathleen returned sans baby and towel, Daniel kissed her ear and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Where’s Casey?” he asked. “In his playpen,” she said, dislodging herself. “We had an accident at work today.” “What do you mean?” “I mean an accident—Miguel spilled fryer grease on his arm.” “Who’s Miguel?” “You know Miguel. He’s the thin guy with the watery hair—I think Terry has a crush on him.” “Watery?” Daniel flicked his eyes at the stovetop: the chili boiled and spat red juice on the rim of the pot. “Miguel’s always dipping his comb under the faucet, says he’s taming his hair.” Kathleen twirled the towel, then took it in both hands and twisted it into a tight spiral. “Anyways, he burned himself and his arm welted up. It wasn’t long before the burns started to ooze— looked like it was attacked by slugs. “I washed his arm with peroxide and placed some antibacterial cream on it, wrapped it in gauze, you know, and told him to go to the hospital just in case. He asks me, ‘Will I be paid for that?’ And of course I tell him the truth: no Miguel, sorry. So he wraps his apron around his waist and walks back to the fry station, totally fearless, ningún miedo.” “I don’t get it.” “He said, ‘mis muchachas necesitan los zapatos nuevos.’ He has two girls.” “Is he old enough to have girls?” “I didn’t know there was a standard. He’s twenty-two.” Daniel imagined Miguel’s watery hair leak behind his ear and down his neck. He considered Kathleen’s hair, which was so like his mother’s: dark, impossibly straight, shoulder-length. Daniel had always been uncomfortable with the theory that the woman you marry is another version of your mother. He didn’t want his wife to be a physical replica of Nerissa. In Kathleen, he had avoided his mother’s sharp chin, her frenetic lips, eyes that could metastasize at any moment and that threatened to consume with an extravagant and sincere detachment. Nerissa was either hot or cold, and each one could burn. Kathleen, meanwhile, was steady and pleasant. Still, Daniel was grateful for his wife’s hair.

Kathleen pulled her hair back with her left hand, dipped a spoon into the pot and cautiously slurped some chili. “Did I tell you my brother emailed me?” Daniel asked. “I think so,” Kathleen said. She tugged on Daniel’s sleeve and gestured for his hands. “They’re always warm.” She thumbed his palm. “Have you washed?” Daniel pulled his hands back. She was constantly testing him: Had he disinfected the bathroom? Had he washed Casey’s sheets with baby detergent? Didn’t he know that Paula’s baby developed eczema because her husband had forgotten to switch the blankets? It seemed to Daniel that he was never alone with Casey. He had been working at home for weeks, and still, Kathleen insisted Casey attend daycare. It’s the best in the city, Kathleen had assured him; three-quarters of the children develop advanced analytic and motor skills. Plus, they smile more often and are nurtured through the contentious stages of social development by a staff of certified caretakers. They go to school for this stuff, she had told him. But she had failed to mention that all but one of the caretakers was a woman. Daniel didn’t know when, or why, he began to doubt himself, but he had developed a fear of babies. Not “ew, gross, get-it-away” type of fear, more like a heady reservation, an anxiety about the thousands of ways he could hurt a baby without even trying. Steam rose from the pot and licked the microwave above the stove. “I had a dream last night that you fell into a lake,” Daniel said, “like you did when you were a girl. I know it’s my imagination, my mind playing tricks, but in my dream you’re an ice cube.” “I haven’t been ice skating since I was eight.” “I know.” The microwave fogged and dripped with moisture. It looked smudgier than before, especially around the handle and the keys, and on the window: a small handprint faintly outlined. Whenever Kathleen heated oatmeal, she lifted Casey so he could watch the bowl spin in the microwave. Daniel stared at the handprint on the microwave and remembered when he was nine years old and Nerissa left him in the supermarket parking lot. Try to behave, she’d said, I’ll be right out. From inside the car, he had watched her thumb her purse strap over her shoulder and wiggle a cart from the mouth of another. She placed her purse in the child seat and smoothed her dress before parting the electronic door. Daniel had been bored and uncomfortable—his legs stuck to the vinyl and slurped when he lifted them. It was ninety-something degrees and the window roller was too

hot to touch. A puppy barked in the adjacent car. Daniel pressed his lips against the glass and blew furiously, puffing his cheeks like a blowfish. The pup yelped and panted. It licked its nose and pawed at the glass, little gold paws with pink flesh. Daniel was amused but soon felt tired. He leaned his head away from the sunlight and slept. When Daniel had awoken, his tongue was a dry sponge scraping for moisture; he couldn’t feel the gap where he had recently lost a tooth. He opened the door, recoiling from the brightness, and noticed how heavy the air was in the car, how light and breezy the air outside. It felt cool against his damp backside. He recalled that there had been a puppy in the car next to him, and peering through the window, using hand-goggles to shield the glare, he saw that the puppy was napping on its side, hind legs curled. Daniel hadn’t noticed the ribs before, how taut the skin around the bone, as if the pup’s chest had deflated. He hadn’t noticed the grayish tongue; in fact, he had thought it was much pinker than that. He tapped on the windshield. Tap tap, he said, wake up little guy. But the puppy slept on, even after Nerissa had loaded the trunk with groceries, well after Daniel guessed the puppy wasn’t napping. Nerissa must have guessed the same. On the drive home, she didn’t complain about the smudges on the window. “Daniel,” Kathleen said. “Did you doze off?” He lifted his head off her lap. “You said your brother emailed you. What did he say?”

Day One

Daniel screened his calls, because he rarely has the choice in who he speaks to and how he speaks to them. When his mother called, and she called often, he listened to half the message before deleting it. Once, Kathleen called from the daycare to tell Daniel her car had broken down. Daniel heard Casey gurgle near the receiver. He recorded the message in full and then called his wife back. Today, he received a curious message from a man in California: Hello, my name is Kelvin Page. I think I’m your half brother on my dad’s side. His name is Albert. Um, he doesn’t know I’m calling you. If you have any information, please feel free to contact me at ------. It’s long distance… Daniel replayed the message four or five times. He chewed his lower lip and tapped his foot. He settled an outstanding request for an electric caddie, then marched to the kitchen, flapped the refrigerator door absentmindedly until the fridge flickered and groaned, carried a beer to his desk,

carried it back to the kitchen, abandoned the beer on the counter and returned to his desk. He grabbed the mouse and raced the cursor across the computer screen in mesmerizing zigzags. He called Nerissa. “No,” he told her, “it’s not a medical condition.” “Are you sure it’s not psychological?” “It’s not abnormal. Other people have trouble handling babies.” “Trust me, it’s not normal.” “So can you?” “What?” “Can you watch Casey while I take Kathleen to the dentist? I want to give her all my attention after she gets her teeth pulled.” “I will, but you should offer more of that attention to your son.” “I know, Mom.” “Good, just so you know. I wouldn’t feel right if you didn’t.” Later, Daniel scrubbed the grooves of the bathtub. He disinfected the toilet bowl and fished out fine strands of hair from the sink. If he loved his son, he wondered, why couldn’t he hold him? Why was it so difficult to change his diaper or burp him? Sometimes he’d wiggle Casey’s toes and make faces: an anteater, a constipated pirate, a plucked duck, and his favorite, a candied yam. But he couldn’t pick Casey up. The biggest failure of his life was that he hadn’t cradled his son in his arms and kissed him, not for over four months. If his life ended today, Micah would think his dad a clown, or worse, a clown miming a clown miming a candied yam. Daniel wondered if some of his quirks could be accounted for by this brother who had materialized so awkwardly, like keys wedged between cushions, or a sock, crusty and cowering in the laundry room. A random thought: Daniel considered his snobbishness about yogurt, how he sniggered at cheap brands, at the way each scoop was rigid and globular, its center of gravity, like jell-o, somewhere outside Utah. The cheap brands his wife bought tasted like vanilla, no matter the flavor: berry, apricot, cherry cordial. Occasionally, a kiwi seed or the faint graze of lemon startled him. His yogurt fixation was merely a quirk, but Daniel never had a brother, so for all he knew, he and this guy were as similar in their peculiarities as Siegfried and Roy, hopefully less so. Daniel hadn’t seen his father for over twenty years, since he was six. The memories he had maintained were two-dimensional: a tattoo, a birthday card smudged with fingerprints, the Virgin

Mary on a pancake. During those first years, when Daniel couldn’t understand the absence in his life, he could still smell his father’s aftershave, blended sometimes with the fumes at a gas pump. He heard his dad at a Boy Scout rally, cheering for his pinewood derby car, and saw him at the supermarket holding an oddly shaped cantaloupe. Many fathers had since laid claim to his life, including a defense lawyer, an obstetrician, and two accountants. He had been a Nguyen, a Hostetler, and a Morganti, until, at eighteen years old, he reclaimed his original name, despite Nerissa’s disapproval. It wasn’t that he disliked his stepfathers. Some of them were genuinely kind. One had taken him to a baseball game and had used his bare hands to catch a foul ball, which Daniel accepted and eventually lost in a game of catch. Another had let him assist with a birth. He had felt important in the oversized scrubs, although he was discomfited by the mother, a huge, grimacing lady with frizzy brown hair who squeezed Daniel’s boyish hands, not from pain, she’d confessed, but from excitement.

Day Two

Yesterday, Daniel talked to his half brother, a twenty-five year old grad student studying creative writing at a university in California. They had talked more about baseball than writing, but his brother had promised to email a story so Daniel would know “how his brain works.” Daniel learned that his father was a truck driver, but “not your typical truck driver,” no potbelly, no tangled beard flecked with salami and salt.

Day Four

Daniel finished “Dooms of Love,” a slow paced story with a cynical narrator who ruminates about life’s inconsistencies while rubbing a killer whale at the zoo. It was based on a true story. “This is love,” says the narrator, “to rub each other and hope afterwards to smell it on our hands.” Daniel couldn’t explain what bothered him about the story. He just knew it left a lingering impression, a stinging odor, like the scent of the ocean in the groove above his upper lip.

Day Six

Daniel flipped through a magazine at the dentist’s office, past the clothing ads and rakish models until he found an illustration of a sad, glistening killer whale. He read the accompanying article, a “real life love story.” A whale and its trainer had been separated after a hurricane ravaged the coastline and caused the tank wall at Super Sea Land to collapse. The whale had been flown to a temporary facility in Los Angeles without its trainer, who had remained behind to rescue stranded families that couldn’t find or afford transportation out of the small peninsula. He had stolen a commercial bus, picked up as many stragglers as he could, and drove them one hundred miles to a shelter, only to be arrested as soon as he arrived. While the trainer was jail bound, the whale’s already declining health worsened, causing a public upheaval for the trainer’s release. Their reunion was covered live by CNN. Daniel remembered the story but hadn’t followed it—it was enough that he was aware of it. He thought about “Dooms of Love,” his brother’s story, and rushed out of the dentist’s office to prop a hand on an alley wall. He vomited chili with mangled chunks of sausage and wondered at his inability to chew his food properly. That reaction he understood. He had a stomach-flu, maybe a virus. At worst, he had developed food poisoning from the chili. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and propped his back against the wall, well away from the splatter, and debated whether to tell his wife. Again, his mind wondered to “Dooms of Love,” that awful story. Had his brother ripped it from the headlines? So what? Weren’t we all just absorbing the world and trying to make sense of it? Still, Daniel recalled Professor Olimov’s lectures about plagiarism. Olimov had warned: imitation will get you expelled, however cheap and contrived. There was a fine line between mimicry and full blown deception, and Daniel wondered where his supposed brother stood on that slippery slope. He returned to the dentist’s office, still nauseous. When Kathleen walked into the lobby, escorted at the elbow by a nurse with immaculate teeth, Daniel joked how silly she looked, like a flummoxed hippopotamus. Casey would be thrilled, he told her. Kathleen tried to smile, but her lower face was numb, and her jaw had already begun to swell.

Day Three (a memory)

Daniel was eleven years old when Nerissa left him with her boyfriend, a solid man in faded jeans, boots, and a tucked Fleetwood Mac T-shirt. Nerissa had no intention of marrying this guy,

Daniel could tell. Daniel liked the way he’d leaned against a doorframe, examining the gunk under his nails, the way he’d sit wide-legged and cross his hands behind his head, and how he’d rather watch Bonanza than pay attention to an eleven year old boy, because honestly, boys were as interesting as crud on a shoe. Daniel grabbed his butterfly net from his room and headed for the front door. His friend, Sylvia, had caught two swallowtails yesterday in the abandoned barley field behind the elementary school. “Where do you think you’re going?” Fleetwood said. Daniel showed him the net. “Come here a minute.” Fleetwood examined the net, twirling it around like a gas station hotdog. He stood up with a grunt and ambled past the screen door, to the patio. He considered the net once more, then slammed it against the cement floor of the patio, stomping it afterwards for emphasis. “What?” Daniel whispered. “Where’s your tools?” Fleetwood asked. Daniel probably shrugged, although his shoulders felt heavy. “No matter. Better this way.” With Daniel’s help, Fleetwood gathered a discouraging pile of string, masking tape, Elmer’s glue, and a beer another guy had left in the back of the fridge. After an hour of fumbling, Fleetwood had Daniel test the net by swinging it back and forth in the living room. “Careful,” he told Daniel. “Look out for the television.” It held strong enough, although Daniel noticed a slight bend where the handle had splintered. Daniel appreciated that one hour with his mother’s boyfriend, mostly because Fleetwood had felt no obligation toward the boy. He didn’t have to show Daniel how to break and mend a butterfly net, nor should he have. No, there was time to kill, and someone to kill it with.

THE END

100

MOUSEBOY the MIRACULOUS

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They called me “Boys,” grownups did, as if I had two heads, two pulses, an extra mouth just over my shoulder, fat bottom lip, a bulbous nose, nostrils that flared when I was afraid. As if, when I was seven years old, I drank too much milk and permanently mangled my toenails, causing them to resemble a warped fence the color of chicken skin. As if I had a seed-shaped notch in my forehead from when my cousin, after finding an abandoned golf club in the woods, mimicked the stroke of his favorite ballplayer just as I was bending down to tie my laces. Sometimes, when I would extend my hands for dinner, Mom plopped two helpings of food on my plate, then winked because she lathered the rice with extra ketchup. Other times, I was sent to my room for no apparent reason, only to learn that I had done my math homework on the waxy leaves of a houseplant, or that I had eaten out of the ice cream box, again. Shouldn’t I know better than to eat ice cream with a fork? Doesn’t it leave the ice cream looking raked-over, irrigated? It seemed like I was living a double life, no, like for every movement, every utterance, an echo trailed behind, pleading for attention. For my part, I refused to grant the confirmation it so desperately desired, even when it would tug on its earlobe (a sign, I had come to learn, that meant “help”). One day, the echo followed me home on an old county road. It dragged its feet across gravel, stopping so often to mimic my frustration and rifle loose snot at its feet. It was the day we forgot our jackets, and we were cold. It wasn’t my fault, I told myself; he started it. It was the day my father came home early. I could smell him from the hallway, where I crouched and picked at a weak patch of wall by the carpet. I used one of my mother’s steak knives to chisel discretely at the chalky board. Weeks before, Mom had told The Boys that cutlery was for cutting food, not for sawing the excess string off a baseball mitt, certainly not for chopping dragon flies in half in order to test our

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theory of spontaneous regeneration. Better a fly than our fingers, we told her. That one scared her. She dumped all the knives in a grocery bag and tucked them behind a vase on top of the fridge. Not that I held it against her, but she should have known better than to hide things from us, if not because our curiosity had led us to touch or poke every nook of the house, then because we were persistent, pausing only for pee breaks and a peanut butter and syrup sandwich. During our many scavenger hunts, we found marine fatigues boxed up in a closet, two candy bars in my mother’s nightstand, a half-used tube of Krazy glue under the kitchen sink, and a dirty magazine under my parents’ bed. Before flipping through its glossy pages, we rubbed our syrupy hands on the carpet. “You think they’ll dust for fingerprints?” Mouseboy asked. “Good question,” I said. “Only if they call the police.” We both knew better than that, but just in case, we cut out the three pages we touched, as close to the spine as the scissors would allow. Even this detail, the care we took to extract the nudes, which to us were merely crude and anomalous, not yet thrilling, made us prickly with excitement. We were double agents. We were Navy Seals. We were what the United States of the New World Order counted on to safeguard its secrets. We were Mouseboy, my big brother (only by a year), and me, a no-nonsense radical prepared to sacrifice his playtime, even his pristine collection of baseball cards, for the betterment of the world (pay attention, Hollywood, we deserved movie contracts with a special clause for unlimited pizza and video games). It was my brother’s idea to stash our goods in the wall, through an opening no bigger than a dime, an idea, I will add, inspired by his latest flight into superhero fantasy: Mouseboy the Miraculous, master of the maze, blessed with x-ray vision and the dubious talent of self-grooming. My brother had already begun to lick his blond arm hairs in one direction. He had also altered his diet to incorporate massive quantities of shredded cheese (leftover from burrito dinners). In my own way, I had tried to convince Mouseboy that he was dabbling in a worn trope, that his character was hackneyed and boring: “I’m tired of stepping on your cheese, Kaka Face.” “Can’t help it,” Mouseboy said, dipping his chin along his chest to lick his knuckles. His arms were miniaturized; full-size hands poked out of bunched sleeves. I peeled a shred of cheese from my bare heel and held it to his face. He winced, recognized his tactical error and scampered across the living room (his elbows were trapped inside his sweatshirt). I tackled him and wrestled him onto his back. Before I could shove the cheese into his mouth, mom hoisted me off.

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“Boys,” she said. “Go to your room.” She spoke solely to me; Mouseboy wasn’t listening. “Boys.” Mom didn’t bother to lift her gaze from the carpet, where our horseplay must have left an impression, a ruffling of carpet fibers. She wore a black dress with blue sunflowers, which told me she had had another job interview at an insurance agency. The way she pinched the bridge of her nose told me it had not gone well. Mouseboy crept out the back door. Mom and I listened to the hinges whimper, the hush of the knob turning, and the click of the lock. Mom ushered me to my room. I didn’t have the heart to flee, as Mouseboy did. I laid in bed, a pillow draped across my face, thinking about a recent debate over Mouseboy’s parentage. He was my mom’s son, no doubt about that. The nose gave it away, all round and bulging with cartilage, just like my mother’s. He seemed to have my father’s build: big chest, small shoulders, thick hair, but not the face, the characteristic chin, the eyes—slightly upturned—like mine. Dad told me I looked like his uncle, a funny man who, before passing years ago, was wheelchair-bound with shrapnel embedded near his spine. I was the fruit of his loins, he told me. Mouseboy, on the other hand, didn’t resemble any of my father’s relatives—proof, said my father, especially when drinking, that Mouseboy is not his son, but the son of Emil, my mother’s first husband. One weekend night, after Dad returned from the road, Mouseboy and I were interrupted by my parents’ shouts. We had been playing Mario Brothers on our small black & white television, stomping on mushroom-shaped dwarves and shooting fireballs from our meaty plumber fists, when we overheard Mom yelp. Mouseboy was the first to run to the kitchen. I followed and saw my father, wobbly and furious, grasping my mother’s forearm. Mom didn’t seem scared, even with Dad’s beard inches from her face. The beard, dark and scruffy with blond streaks around the chin, gave my dad a fierceness that his short, stocky frame wouldn’t otherwise allow, although now, my mom’s refusal to be intimidated made the beard seem comical. I almost laughed. Mouseboy didn’t like what he was seeing, or didn’t want to bear witness to anything further. He turned abruptly and fled, cheeks scrunched and nostrils flared. I turned back toward my parents. Dad’s eyes were clinched shut. He gave Mom a bear-hug and lifted. They swayed and she yelped, again, but this time I could see, behind a curtain of sashaying hair, she was smiling. They were dancing in their own, clumsy sort of way. Mouseboy, I whispered, oh Mr. Mouse the Miraculous? It was too late. Mouseboy had gone into hiding, somewhere within the walls, invisible to mine mortal eyes.

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Mom and Dad eventually caught on that Mouseboy was no mere boy. He had the power of elusion, a power Mouseboy attributed to his “slippery-slick fur.” He had the ability to pick at and nibble on food left unsealed. Once, Mom forgot to cover a chocolate chip cheesecake she had made for a PTA meeting, and my brother took one of his almost imperceptible mouse-bites out of the center of the pie. It was never the bite that gave him away, but the prints he left behind: little chocolate smudges on the plate, or a trail of chocolate chips leading to a crack in the wall; his secret lair, he claimed, was behind the wall. Boys, Mom would bellow, pick up your mess. She knew better than to think it my mess, didn’t she? I understood that this was her way of making amends for all the scrutiny into Mouseboy’s origins, by linking this evasive hero, this super-rodent, to me. I understood, but I didn’t think it fair to be implicated in Mouseboy’s private escapades. I began to resent my brother. Even when Mom told me that Mouseboy was feeling rejected, that his superhero fantasy was likely a reaction to her and Dad’s arguments, I became intensely jealous. No one cared to ask what I was thinking. No one tried to unlock the mysteries of my mind, say, for example, my recent discovery that Katie Renee, a long-time arch nemesis of mine, pincher of flesh, puller of neck hair, had told a girlfriend, who told me, that I was “cute.” Of course, I wasn’t going to fall for it, no way Jose, but there were good reasons to inquire further into this confession, least of which was a critical understanding of the opposite sex, that foolish clique. There would be no choice but to cross-examine, during which there would be name-calling and toe-stomping. The only thing more mysterious than my brother’s disappearances was the erratic behavior of girls, which was quite scary when I thought about it, and I did think about it, in my room, shifting the pillow so that the cool side was draped against my face. Despite our frequent tussles, our fist-throwing and insults, Mouseboy and I had always been a team, one-of-a-kind. Our slight discrepancy in age—one year— had confirmed that, regardless of appearance, we were the same inside. Until the day my father, wet-lipped and spirited, flipped through family photo albums and noticed that Mouseboy’s peculiar features, the lack of chin, the large ears, were not characteristic of the family gene pool. When Dad drank, his logic became a rapid fire succession of cause and effect: A: Mouseboy doesn’t look like Dad. B: Dad is not Mouseboy’s father. C: Mouseboy is a bastard mongrel, the offspring of a Swede dietician. D: Mom prefers Swedish dieticians, not bearded truck drivers. E: Mom can kiss Dad’s ass. F: (optional) The whole Swedish nation can kiss Dad’s fat, nutritious ass.

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I must have fallen asleep with the pillow on my face. I awoke to the sound of little feet thumping across my forehead, like muffled raindrops. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The darkness ascended, slowly, like a flying saucer preparing for warp speed. Skinny fingers floated into view and wiggled hello. Mouseboy put one of these fingers to his lips. “Let’s go.” We escaped, slippery-slick, into the night. Barefoot, I followed Mouseboy through wet grass, over a lazily coiled water hose, to the shed we had helped Dad build, a boxy thing patched together with scraps of plywood, painted, per Mom’s request, a deep blue to match the house, which matched the interior décor and Mom’s favorite dishware. Mouseboy opened the shed door; it creaked with tension. He vanished into the gloom, beyond the moonlight, which cast an eerie glow to sinister shapes, transforming the hose I had nearly stepped on into a trembling snake. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Look.” “Where?” He emerged from the darkness, extending his arms in my direction. I held his wrist to steady him and pivoted to take advantage of the moonlight. I looked into Mouseboy’s eye pores, those little pools of black. The small scar on his forehead beamed: flat, dry, and radiant. I looked at his hands. He held a mousetrap, a tray of thick, sludgy glue, and a tiny mouse writhing in the muck. “You know him?” I asked. He may have nodded. About an inch behind the mouse, a thin slice of something, skin perhaps, glistened. I moved my face closer and noticed the discoloration of the mouse’s belly, or what belly that remained exposed, not quite submerged in the grainy glue. A month before, Dad had placed a glue trap in the attic. He funneled a tiny pile of birdseed onto the middle of the trap, a trick he picked up from a coworker. Now, the seeds were half-embedded in the slop, with a few sprinkled across the mouse’s matted hair, one half-obscuring its left eye. “They’re like jewelry,” Mouseboy said. “Little rhinestones.” “Why didn’t Mom throw it away?” “We can’t kill him.” He pulled an eyedropper from his pocket and held it near the mouse’s face. “See?” Two days later, as we stepped off the school bus, Mouseboy sucker-punched me in the gut. I dropped my book bag in the driveway and chased him, enraged that he would punch me in front

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of the other kids. I caught up to him as he was fumbling with his key, trying to unlock the front door. I put him in a full nelson and threatened to bang his head on the porch. “You killed him!” “No I didn’t—Mom found it when she was looking for the plant food.” It was a lie, of course, and he knew it. A week later, before Dad came home early to find me grinding a hole in the hallway wall, before I understood how trifling embarrassment is in the grand scheme of things, Mouseboy sat at the kitchen table practicing his scales, one “do” to the other, rising and falling in enthusiasm, not in pitch. He seemed to have forgotten all about the assassination (mercy-killing) of his tortured pet. His only preoccupation was singing in the school choir during the afternoon’s recital. It was a bit odd for him to be practicing so genuinely, I considered. He usually stood in the back with me as we lip-synched “The Sound of Music” and roared the accompanying “A-wimoweh” to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” But there he was, pale and sweaty at the kitchen table. My mom pressed a wet cloth to his forehead and attempted to soothe him. “You don’t have to do this.” “I want to.” “Are you sure?” Mouseboy nodded. “Remember,” Mom said, “if you change your mind before the performance, just tug on your ear like this—there you go—I’ll come get you. We’ll make something up, okay?” “You can’t,” I interjected. “That’s not fair.” It had become my stock response of late, and I knew I was wearing it thin, but Holy Moly, the universal scales of justice had been tipped in favor of Mouseboy, and if no one else was going to object, then I would be forced to throw the grandest hissy-fit of them all. Before I could do so, Mom was headed out the door, her voice trailing behind. “Boys, don’t forget your coats.” Mouseboy already had his on. In my hurry, I forgot my cap and belt. A half hour later, Mouseboy and I were at our assigned spots on the riser, and I had a glorious view of Katie Renee, three levels down. Katie Renee, I thought, Katie Ra Clay, Katie Parfait, Katie Shoe Face, Slatey Moo Chase, Rate-a-Poo Taste. She leaned into her girlfriend, a blonde girl with freckly arms. They turned my way. I bugged my eyes out, which hurled them into a giggling fit. Advantage: me. The lights dimmed and the instructor told us to take our places. I

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nudged Mouseboy with my knee, urging him to stand up. He had been moping since we arrived at the school auditorium. The curtains chugged and screeched apart. A crowd of shadowy heads hushed each other and lolled expectantly in front of us. Enter a C-note and the hills were alive. Mouseboy and I mimed our part, he with astonishing gusto. At points, he would open his palms to the heavens and raise his arms, just like the gospel singers we saw on television, the kind who were ravaged by the Holy Spirit. After the hills weren’t so lively, I shot Mouseboy a familiar look, meaning, “Cool it, Turd-munch.” He seemed to understand. At this point, the students adjusted so that the bass section, including me and Mouseboy, were in plain view. This was our cue to pick our masks off the platform below us, masks that, Mr. Longberger said, would make the performance more authentic. So each bass, in the name of authenticity, strapped on nearly identical Lion King masks, distinguished only by each singer’s choice of crayon color. I chose orange, for obvious reasons. Mouseboy colored his gray with red whiskers. At the signal, we began our sing-song: A-wimoweh A-wimoweh. Then we heard gasps from the crowd sprinkled with half-muffled chuckles. Since the bass section, our section, was the center of attention, so it took me a moment to guess that something went terribly askew around me. I looked over my shoulder, down toward ground level, half-expecting Mouseboy to be sprawled on the floor. I slipped the rubber band that had secured the mask from behind my head and caught Katie Renee’s horrified eyes, which, as soon as they connected with mine, immediately dipped below my face. I understood: Mouseboy had pantsed me. He had yanked my too-large slacks down to my ankles with uncanny stealth and fled before I could do anything about it. In reality, it took a few seconds from the initial crime to recognize my shame, another half- second to pull up my trousers, and another fifteen seconds to track down my brother in the hallway and sock him in the ear. I hardly landed a decent blow before the vice principal, accompanied by Mom, yanked us apart. Mom apologized, clutched our shirts so that the collars cut off our breath, and pushed us out the exit doors She made one seething remark: “You’re walking home—get moving.” The minivan nearly peeled out while exiting the school parking lot. Mouseboy and I flashed each other our respective This-Is-Your-Fault faces. We began the three-mile walk home, unkempt and disillusioned. I tensed my right fist to let Mouseboy know I was in no mood to speak to him. The air was dung fresh, ushered by an unsympathetic breeze that made the cow stalls seem closer than they appeared. I pulled my undershirt over my nose. Mouseboy pulled his shirt over his nose. Behind me, he dragged his feet, leaving swoops in the gravel. We had cut through a farm and

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were now following a back road where Dad would sometimes let us steer his pickup as he pressed the accelerator. We approached a flattened carcass: road kill. Judging by the fur and shape of its paw, it was a raccoon, or formerly was, and had been the equivalent size of a cat, not fully grown but big enough to leave a lingering impression on unsuspecting pedestrians. I hurtled over the carcass, clearing it by three feet. Mouseboy hurtled over the carcass, clearing it by three feet, six inches. I hiked my pants up. Mouseboy hiked his pants up. I continued to walk devoid of flair or nuance, aware that Mouseboy was parodying my every movement. A mini-van approached, and for one satisfying moment, Mouseboy broke from his mime routine and, I could only guess, was attempting to telekinetically transform this sleek, maroon minivan into Mom’s rusted navy-blue Dodge Caravan. He couldn’t work his magic, but the vehicle slowed and stopped beside us. A window hummed down and a round-faced lady with dramatic eye- shadow and wispy upturned hair thrust her face out the window. “Do you boys need a ride?” Her voice was naturally rough, a smoker’s voice, slightly sweetened into a tone she reserved for children. I looked at Mouseboy, who looked at me. “Where do you live?” No answer. “Here—” She opened her door, stepped out in a butter- colored dress, high-shoulders, and pulled back the sliding passenger door. Inside slouched the blonde girl with freckled arms that Katie Renee had conspired with, and two older boys, presumably her brothers. The boys grinned. The girl frowned. “No thank you,” I blurted. The lady propped a hand on a generous hip. “Okay,” she said, “but perhaps you should get your little brother.” I swiveled around and saw Mouseboy creeping through the trees, into the brush. I took one step into the culvert, toward the woods, and hesitated. I knew I should run after my brother, lest we waste precious time and lose all daylight, but something bugged me. I turned back in time to see the lady climb into her seat and shut her door. “He’s my big brother,” I yelled, and before she could jut her face through the window, I sprinted into the woods. “Mouseboy,” I called. “Come on, it’s getting cold out here.” I hadn’t noticed it on the road, but under the trees, shielded from the light, I shivered violently. We had forgotten our coats at school, too busy I suppose getting noosed and pulled into the parking lot.

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“Come on,” I said, weaker than before. “I’m going to tell Mom.” “Go ahead.” What a defiant little butt-head. I vowed, then and there, that when I found Mouseboy, I’d give him the worst Indian burn this town had ever seen. I heard a faint snap, twigs straining under weight carefully placed. I followed the sound, and as I was closing the distance, my brother bolted from hiding toward the road. I ran after him, but in no moment at all, he vanished. The silence broke with a scream. “What is it?” “Over here.” “Well?” Mouseboy was on his butt, hugging his left knee to his chest. He uncovered the wound: a bloody cut, not drastic, just a laceration, some heavy scratches, torn jeans. “Can you get up?” “I think so.” I offered my hand, reluctantly. I had missed my chance to get him back, but you can’t kick a Mouseboy when he’s down, especially when he’ll receive a guaranteed ripping from a mother who just barely spared the money for his new pair of slacks. I slung his arm over my shoulder and half dragged him to the road. He continued to limp along the berm, until a car passed with its headlights on, then he lengthened his stride and pumped his elbows determinedly, like me. We had less than a mile to walk. We could see stars behind us twinkling against a bruised sky. In front of us, the sky was a fading lion-orange. Just ahead: the Wentsworth farm, where Wentsworth Senior had already begun to hang his holiday lights. My mind drifted to Thanksgiving Vacation, two weeks away, not soon enough. A truck approached from the gloom behind us and rumbled to a stop. “Your lights are out,” I said. “Oops,” he said. He flicked the headlights on and the difference was enough to make Mouseboy jump behind me. “You boys lost?” His voice was aged, though not yet settled into its deepness. The emphasis he placed on “lost,” along with a leaning gesture toward the passenger window, made the man seem concerned, almost artificially so. I tilted my head to get a better view. He was a thick man: his silhouette filled most of the space between the seat and the steering wheel. A small portion

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of his face reflected a soft green glow emanating from his dashboard, enough glow to see he had a big forehead and closely cropped sideburns. “Nope, not lost.” “Need a ride?” I shook my head, referred to my brother. To my surprise, Mouseboy didn’t confirm my response. His arms were now tucked into his shirt; his hands jutted from his shoulders: the familiar Mouseboy pose, this time, probably instigated by the cold. “And what are you supposed to be? A mouse?” Mouseboy’s ears rose. A chill studded my flesh. “That’s a clever trick, little mouse. Sure you don’t need a ride? Don’t want your Mom worrying, do we?” We? I thought, no, there is no we. I looked toward the Wentsworth home. One lazy yellow light colored the living room window. The porch light was off, probably to conserve energy for the Holidays. Mouseboy shrugged his shoulders. “No thank you,” I said. “How bout you, son?” “I said no thank you.” “Well shit boy, don’t get huffy with me. Don’t you see your brother’s freezing his—his tail off?” The man stretched toward the passenger door and with a grunt flung it open. “Get in.” Mouseboy fixed his gaze on me as he propped one leg onto the side bar and hoisted himself into the truck. A morbid thought, but at the moment, one could fit a couple checker pieces into my brother’s nostrils, they were so wide and accepting. “What’re you doing?” I asked Mouseboy. “Are you coming or not?” The shadowy figure behind the wheel maneuvered and peered over his shoulder. “I don’t have all day.” Mouseboy was beginning to lose definition. The lion-colored sky had turned violet. The entire canopy was sparkling. I tried to find his eyes, but they had sunk into his face. He lifted his arm and tugged softly on his ear. “Well hell, then, shut the door.” More emphatically, Mouseboy pulled his earlobe. “Shut it.” The voice was alarmingly cool, devoid of tenderness, just like a schoolteacher’s before the meter stick cracks the chalkboard.

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The pickup seemed to roll away of its own accord, and I knew, via super-powered telepathy, or just plain common sense, that Mouseboy the Miraculous was tugging his ear for all he was worth. Tugging for me to move. I felt nauseous. Acid rose into my esophagus and tickled my nasal cavity. I doubled over and dry-heaved into the culvert. My chest ached. My hands were grimy. I ran home, hoisting my pants all the way. I was afraid to approach our front door. I hid behind the Caravan. Our porch light, swarmed by punchdrunk insects—beetles, moths, dobsonflies—illuminated the front yard. Crickets chirped. Every few seconds, my mother’s face bounced into window-view; a string, taut and shaky, would suddenly yank her away. Just like paddle ball. It took three more exchanges to gather that Mom was on the phone, inquiring about The Boys. Finally, she stepped onto the porch, waved away the insects, and lit a cigarette. She smoothed her hair. Again, I dry-heaved. “Who is that? Is that you? Boys?” My cover was blown. I ran to the porch steps, wanting desperately to hug Mom, but I stopped before climbing the stairs. I’m not sure why, but I wanted her to come to me. “Do you know how worried I’ve been?” The cigarette remained pinched between her forefinger and thumb. She sighed. A lung’s-worth of smoke hovered above the staircase, filling the void. “I mean for God’s sake.” She raised the cigarette to her face—“Where’s your brother?”—and took a quick drag. “Nick, where’s your brother? “Nick.” Four hours later, I set to scraping at a hole in the hallway wall with Mom’s steak knife. I worked the serrated edge against the circumference of the hole, not wanting the gap to be too big, just enough to fit two fingers in and to fish out the stolen goods my brother and I had stashed. After nearly an hour, I was able to comfortably pry a roll out of the wall. I unwound the picture on the floor. Whatever it was, or had been, now looked like Swiss cheese. Something had chewed tiny holes in it. I held the picture up to the light: not a naked woman, thank God. Instead, it was a picture of Mouseboy at the zoo, in shorts and a tank top, hoisted on Dad’s shoulders, with Mom’s arms slung around Dad’s waist. I remembered the picture because I had snapped it with a disposable camera.

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I smelled something thick and musky, a heavy scent, smoky. I placed the picture under my nose. It smelled funkier, bitter, a locker room. I looked up. My father had come home early. He stood over me, peering down his massive, unwashed chin. He rarely had the time to shower on the road. I knew his scent well. “Where’s your brother, Nick?” My grip weakened: I dropped the photo. “Where’s your brother?” He kicked me, first in the thigh, then under the arm. I braced myself. “Where’s your God-damn brother?” The next thing I knew, Dad was on his knees. My arms were draped around his neck. He bawled into my scalp, fussing my hair. I peered over his shoulder, and I swear to this day that I saw a little mouse emerge from that hole in the wall. In its mouth was a piece of cheese, perhaps a toenail, crescent shaped, the color of chicken skin. After swallowing the nail completely, it snagged the picture, rolled it with its little paws, and dragged it back into the wall.

THE END

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MATAVIEJITAS: A LOVE STORY

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THE WAY I SEE IT

Mr. Ruiz is on the news. He says, “We thought she was homosexual, because of the strength she had.” Whatever, Elsa says, Mr. Ruiz doesn’t know his ass from his— She’s always doing that! Always talking shit and biting off the end of her sentences, pretending like she’s chewing on something but we all know she’s licking the lipstick off her horse teeth. Crazy bitch is always getting stuff on her chompers—personally, I’d say they’re cumbersome but fuckit what do I know—and I won’t bother to tell you the other substances she’s frequently wiping off her teeth with the tip of her finger: dainty-like as a woman should, of course of course. Actually, changed my mind (just-like-that geeze I’m so spontaneous love me for it): Other Substances She Frequently Wipes Off Her Teeth With the Bottom of Her Finger 1. cocaine 2. chocolate 3. semen Mix all three together and you got a special kind of shake if you catch my drift not many people do. My friends say I’m complicated but not so not so I’m actually just elevated up, up, and when I look down I see chins wet and mouths gaping cause I’m flapping my three pairs of angel wings and scattering little heavenly droplets of moisture for those mouths to catch. My name is Djuna of the following residence: a lovely no seraphic apartment complex in Los Angeles where I

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barely have room to spread my three pairs of wings there’s so many trannies strutting about all proud and gorgeous. Lo quiero as Elsa would say, but being Portuguese in the head (from my mom’s side) and Brazilian in the legs, I say something along the lines of “This place will do.” Then Elsa imitates as she typically does and says this-place-will-do but not like me, poor thing can’t mock my delicious language my undulating tongue. Stop it will you just stop it, I say. I don’t want to look at your teeth anymore. Is it off? Elsa smiles wide and I can see little bristles at the corners of her mouth. It’s off way off so fucking off now stop distracting me I’m watching this locals news this channel five so let me watch it. Mr. Ruiz the police officer is a handsome man if dull and stupid. His cheekbones are soft or so it seems because when he frowns they sink into his face. His jaw line is nice and sharp and that muscle under the ear sometimes bulges so fidgety and fickle is the face of Mr. Ruiz Handsome. What bothers you Mr. Handsome why do your cheekbones hide from me? Come out and play little ones, perhaps they’re shy and why wouldn’t they be, ahem, because the reporter i.e. microphone holder-upper is really giving it to him poor him. Mr. Ruiz says, “[But] she ran like a man.” How beautiful for Mr. Ruiz to rhyme a forgotten art and so spontaneous! She ran like a man he says she ran like Eh Man. She (Anne) Lick a Man you naughty brute. Fucker! Elsa says, sneering at the television. She is not a man a man a man. Amen, I say. Amen all together (3 times). Poor Mr. Ruiz so dull he doesn’t understand that a woman is just a woman through and through like a vagina is a whole vagina or sometimes a penis. I want to swoop down and pick up Mr. Ruiz in the folds of my wings and brush his cheekbones with my plumes and kiss those thin lips and sniff just behind his ears. I want to protect him from Elsa and from phallus malice mic. the the the The woman with the vagina the whole vagina is The Little Old Lady Killer not an old (adj.) killer (adj.) lady (noun) but a killer of little old women who are sometimes not so little I hope. Why are old women always little? Probably not literally little always but sometimes always vulnerable meaning defense-less when a Little Old Lady Killer takes a pair of stockings a scarf a hosiery a ponytail and strangles the little old lady to death and beyond. “I never

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used my hands,” Mataviejitas tells us, breasts tucked behind an orange jumpsuit. (The fact is she did not use her hands to squeeze their necks. That’s the fact, de facto, oh like common sense.) Elsa’s upper lip trembles and good thing her mascara deluxe is smudge-free. She is pissed to use a lower form of language, you know, sometimes to shit is more apropos than to dispatch as Mom taught me to say a roll of tissue in her hand. It’s just that Elsa loves being a transvestite and carries a card wherever she goes and these Mexican police (Poor Mr. Ruiz!) rounded up dozens of Mexico City locals hoping against hope that The Old Lady Killer a.k.a. Mataviejitas was hiding out and stashing his sex his penis under a skirt. I don’t want to know how they were going to find him amongst that crowd when “he” is a “her” and doesn’t have a pecker tucked between his legs but an entirely whole vagina. I know you know but just to clarify a whole vagina is not a pecker most of the time and especially in this case, though in this case the Vagina ran like a man: without finesse and without that typical vaginal sashay. Would you take a look at that, Elsa says, enamored. Usually when she says this some artificial skank without her training wheels is strutting like oo la la down the catwalk in the apartment’s courtyard wearing way too much makeup (and we love makeup truly but not so much it was a bit too resplendent). Last evening, skank kept lightly tapping her cheeks, her chin, her nose with her fingertips hoping the face would stay on but an earflap tumbled to the concrete and Missy that ticklish weirdo scooped up the flake and tasted it with the tip of her tongue. I had to admit it was spontaneous and that’s why I like Missy. I take a look at that, that being archival footage of Mataviejitas the luchadora wearing some stretch fit costume in a squared circle and tossing ladies over her shoulder and pulling hair and stomping some kneecap vigorously. The reporter/mic-man says Mataviejitas, the Little Old Lady Killer, used to be nicknamed “The Silent Lady:” una enmascarada, a professional wrestler who wears a mask. Geeze, I say, how many names does this Vagina have? Elsa’s reply: What do you expect she is a wrestler, a performer. She’s not so different from you and me— [here is where I should object but I won’t I’m a good listener] —I mean look at us you won’t even take your wings out unless you smell crotch and I have to sleep with my lashes under my pillow to remind me to dream what I want to dream. You’re so vulgar, I blurt.

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And isn’t everything vulgar? The life of people stripped of their masks? Where are our relieving features, Djuna? Men wear wife-beaters and women wear their boobs up high, but this Silent Lady arrives tip-toeing and welcome circus to town because it’s not so easy any more to recognize the act or the actress. You know she’s a mother? Yeah more than once and probably a whole bunch abandoned. Couldn’t tell? That’s because to you everyone has a penis, everyone has a vagina, but we poor mortals are a race consumed with the superficial—with this skin and that genitalia, on that face and in this slot—but you, you darling angel, have your wings those fabulous six wings and instead of putting out forest fires you’re holed up here with me and all of us. I say, you are having one hellacious meltdown honey. Save some of that shit for me you greedy bitch. So we laugh and secretly I’m scared because I don’t want to lose my friend who is teetering. She’s always asking about my wings: where did they come from and why me and why not her. No it’s not jealousy (shame!) but she tells me often her hot breath misting my ear: I am the gifted one the enlightened one these tits my ethos this cerebellum lifting—no elevating—to these depths of height. What can I do? I just shrug. I say I know my sweet my friend I really do only I know full well there’s something more that she won’t ask and I won’t tell because memories are so lonesome a mother sobbing her milk refused. I suggest going to see the fortune teller because that always cheers us up and it’s a simple walk across the courtyard. Plus, it’s an excuse to let my wings out—oh! my wings have been so cramped these days, all those fine hollow bones aching and matted feathers on my sweaty back, which is now probably thermal its so humid under my matted feathers and probably not good for my skin according to Cosmo. Things Not Good For My Skin According To Cosmo 1. sun exposure 2. makeup 3. nails Yeah, believe it. According to this M.D. from the University of Phoenix nails are laced with bacteria particularly if your nails are long like mine. Cosmo knows I like to scratch myself when my feathers get dry but now I exfoliate with a special brush for only 9.99. 4. three pairs of wings

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Long story short: now I have good skin I mean luxurious skin and Elsa and I are getting dressed for our public. She puts on an auburn wig with these silky tendrils crisscrossing down her back and over her shoulder. She wears anklets these wonderful golden anklets and her legs aren’t Brazilian like mine but they could squeeze a man that’s for sure. Her blouse is kind of yesterday—doesn’t she know shoulders are back?—but it’s cut low at the chest to reveal her thick clavicle and designer

honkers. I love those honkers and go honk honk on them all the time it’s our little joke. She is looking good, Real Good, but I’m not jealous I haven’t even let my wings out yet. Right now I’m massaging my lips with gloss and painting my nails Mazda green. Sure, it’s ornamental but part of the whole package. I can’t help it: I’m thinking of Mr. Ruiz and yes, Elsa I’m sniffing his crotch but if that’s how my wings unfold then so be it.

WET HONEYS LAUGHING OUT LOUD AND SWIMMING LISTLESSLY

I tell the girls that I feel modest today and they all laugh because I’m wearing my suede cowgirl skirt lined with frills and with an embroidered star on each cheek. Yippee kai-yay bitches you lovely horde of skanks and I can tell from their lovely pouts that I’m totally unexpected like I just walked in snorting some coochie (oh I could I could)(((no really I can’t NOT EVER betray Mr. Ruiz my handsome my beau!))). Look there’s Missy oh Missy Sweets she’s dipping her little toes into the pool and here’s a new one I think it suits her: coquette. Missy, I say, you coquette you brat and her soft blue eyes twinkle in the radiant afternoon a wind a god’s breath shifting my frills playfully—

Bare were her knees, and knots her garment bind; Loose was her hair and wantoned in the wind.

You make us bleed, they say, you sock us in the face you poetess and the s hovers in the air giving usssssss all a lift. Look there’s Magica. Tanya stoops low, thong riding high, to hug Magica who is in the pool and thank heavens (only one heaven please I’m monotheistic in the afternoon) makeup these days is waterproof I insist upon it. I blow a kiss at Magica because in the end I’m old- fashioned and no angel stoops. Andryusha pronounced ahn-DRYU-shah pats my stars my heinie and I kiss her on the lips because I didn’t see it coming. She is Russian and I am Portuguese and she

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has more color than me because that sneak she tans out here most weekdays. I say “turn around” like I’m inspecting her curves but I’m searching for red lines on her thighs and back and aha! Ahn- DRYU-shah, I smell it you whore! (Coconuts) I told you 1. sun exposure is not good for your skin it’s so naturally pale and look the tanning lotion makes your shoulders freckle up. She says, I do it because you worry and I like you to think about me—zap!—my mind drifts to the angular hedges surrounding the courtyard and suddenly I’m naked but for my knee-high boots and I straddle those hedges and ride them round-and-round till my ass is green and my lemony fingertips sprinkle sour leaves gold leaves. Still got it, I say. I say it in my head because outside my head is frigid with predictability and if there’s one thing I’m not is a fucking sitcom. I laugh out loud and mist the air and Ahn-DRYU-shah asks what’s so funny and I say if only you knew and kiss her cheek and she sort of nibbles on my ear. She’s okay in my book because I’d never expect a Russian to nibble. Cola’s behind me. I know because she smells like chlorine and honeysuckle—it’s this homemade soap her boy-toy gave her. Boy-toy’s grandparents make soap and grow gourds and sometimes (I’m daydreaming now) they sip sun-brewed tea on a veranda the dust cloaking their calves. Oh you poor thing, I say. I hear a faint wheeze. Cola lays her sweet swollen cheek against my palm and whimpers like a puppy because she just had her wisdom teeth removed okay yanked the hell out. We hug lightly and I hear her tongue slurp the grooves of her empty gum sockets. She looks down at her flat chest very hairless but still flat if not sloping (she’s skinny). This is the first step, I tell her. Listen: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever; Its loveliness increases: it will never Pass into nothingness…

Djuna, they croon, you fascinate us. You sing and our veins throb like poison. I’m lifted off the earth my toenails skidding but softly I sink into myself because I see past the cherubic swelling of Cola’s face. What’s wrong Cola-Cola? Oh nothing. No I will not accept that I will not. Tell me. She tells me: Well during your ballad I saw an archangel flap its pigeon wings and descend onto the pavement here this very pavement by the pool by my feet you feel it? It’s so hot to touch and the archangel melted and oozed off the feathers and the feathers flitted upward and away in a jetstream. The archangel spoke to me before it melted. It spoke this: Cola you bitch you will Never Pass. And then this pit in my stomach like nothing I’ve ever felt actual Nothingness and I’m scared I will sink inside it.

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My response: Cola baby this is my role this is what I do, I say. I stretch all six of my wings and there’s some cracking and popping because hey I’m not sprightly anymore. I flap my wings once and the scent of warm caramel wafts over my friends and sticks to their lips. They close their eyes and breathe deeply. One-by-one they approach my wings and if they are hopeful and not intimidated they kiss my feathers and caress them and puckered out they take naps on foldout chairs by the deep end of the pool. Then like a renegade blood clot I am remorseful. A sharp prick and I’m nauseous. Am I losing air? I’m deflating, I scream. The women, aroused from slumber, stare horrified like I’m a basketball and they had their hopes set on a pickup game. I’m no basketball, I yell, what’s going on? I turn around and there is Elsa fleeing—short frenzied steps—with her skirt taut. Elsa, I call, Butterfly? She waves an arm above her head frantically side-to-side. In her hand is a glowing feather. Baby how could you? I ask. She attempts to elevate and hops two-footed off the ground. Each time she comes down hard on her ankles and finally—snap!—her heel breaks and she tumbles into the prickly hedge. Her wig snags—she abandons it and hobbles away, stopping to kick off her high-heels and pausing just briefly to look my way and share a pain so thrilling so carnal that I know it will lead her all the way to Mexico City, to The Silent Mataviejitas. I feel a trickle down my backside. On the pavement: a deep red spot sizzles. Inside my head this is what I say: From state to state the spirit walks; And these are but the shatter’d stalks, Or ruin’d chrysalis of one.

ASUNCIÓN

Yes and yes and yes and yes and yes and oh, I will not orgasm today. Something is wrong with my texture. I feel infected. I cough phlegm into a familiar hand. Asunción the fortune teller wipes my mouth with a soft cloth, clicks her tongue and speaks beyond me: “What do I look like?” she asks. —Mumbles and huffs— “The question is not rhetorical. What do you think of my neck, you women? What? It’s loose, is it? Precisely why my voice is so soft and why it floats like a snowflake. Why? Because there is space in this neck, here, touch it. Don’t try to kiss my neck you weirdoes. Just touch. Ah, you see? And here, touch my hip. That hip is seventy nine years old and you would never guess it.

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No, you wouldn’t. Trust me, you wouldn’t. Now here, pull on my arm. It’s okay, I won’t fall apart—ouch! I said pull not dismember you brute. Pretty elastic, eh? Oh don’t worry, it will eventually stop, just inertia, ladies, one day you’ll feel it to. But I get ahead of myself. You want to know about your friend Djuna. She is beautiful is she not? What? She’s bleeding? No kidding. What do I look like? Yes, this time it was rhetorical, couldn’t you tell? I see she’s bleeding and, don’t tell me—I said DON’T—I know what you have come for. It’s my talent, my gift. You want to know if Djuna will stop bleeding. Don’t look so horrified, you girls. Your mascara will run. Oh, I forgot, one of Djuna’s innumerable gifts: waterproof makeup. You girls sit outside all day and bake like loaves, all full of yeast. And you dip and waddle in the pool with your backstrokes and breaststrokes. And yet, you’re lovely all of you. No, I’m not being facetious. Yes, I mean it. Especially you, yeah, you with the bob. Such cherubic cheeks you have. Oh now, don’t be silly ladies. No one need be jealous. Now stop bickering—Oh! For goodness sake!—you, your chest is plenteous. Spectacular, honey, it means spectacular. And you, such lovely eye lashes. You, are those real? I thought so. You, I can’t even notice your Adam’s apple. Stop, you’re kidding me, you can get those removed now? And you, you are a good person, I can tell. What? That’s two compliments for one person? Settle down, you ninnies. It didn’t count anyways: she could be a serial killer for all I know. Yes, indeed, what about Djuna? This I will tell you: she’ll be fine, but—” —gasps— “Oh can you blame a little old lady for grand staging? It’s not so often I have an audience as glamorous, as expectant. I was saying, she will be fine, but her wings are caput. Afraid so. Well, I’m no doctor, but I have a sense about these things. Take a look for yourselves. That path of bloody feathers leading into my house, yeah, under your pretty feet, where do you think that came from? I like my turkey now and then, but hey, those aren’t turkey feathers. Turkey feathers don’t smell like warm caramel. There’s nothing you can do. Please, stop crying, it’s not the end of the world, just your world. Aren’t you being a tich selfish? If I had a remedy, wouldn’t I have given it to her by now? The answer is yes, you bunch of ungratefuls. Look at that poor creature: so pure, so immaculate. What do I mean by that? You don’t know? Go home, she needs her rest. Let her have her rest.”

FADO UNDER HEAVEN

A memory approaches, a lion licking its chomps. Djuna

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convulses and shivers. This remembering, narrated by her mother: You had your father’s thick legs, his long arms and broad back. He came home in November and taught you how to throw a baseball, but the snow frosted your shoulders, and your fingers were too stiff to grip the ball. He left before you could unfurl yourself, while you were still blowing air into the cave of your palm. “Can I go sledding later?” you asked. I poured your father’s beer into the sink and dropped the can to the floor. “No,” I said, “there’s not enough snow.” You crushed the can with your bare foot and cut your toe on the tab. I pointed toward the bathroom. Back then, the Band Aids were in the medicine cabinet. Years passed. When you wore bracelets to school, Sandra, who had said you were cute, called you a sissy. That spring, you tried to steal a skirt. Before mall security called me, they ordered you to wear the skirt over your jeans and snapped a Polaroid. Don’t come back, they said. We know what you look like. And then: I caught you in my room, shirtless, rubbing my lotion on your elbows and knees. Elbows are meant to be rough, and knees are meant to be dirty. My own hands were chapped from work. I draped my coat over the arm of the couch and called for you. The bathroom light was on, and the curling iron was plugged in. I caught you in my room. You were rubbing lotion on your elbows. When I returned from the bathroom with the curling iron, you were rubbing lotion on your knees. It smelled expensive, like lavender. Your back looked soft. Before you pushed me away, before you slapped my wrists, I pressed the iron between your shoulder blades and sung in a high, shrill voice: Elbows are meant to be rough, and knees are meant to be dirty. My own hands are chapped from work.

THE SKIN BURSTS

How fast the world drips into emptiness. The pool is hollow and the trees shed nightly, the wind is no longer a comfort, and the grass is scorched and sharp. For two weeks I’ve been holed up in Asuncion’s apartment, feverish and sweaty. She feeds me peppered soup and stuffed olives, rubs my feet, and sings to me about fado. I think:

A spreading laurel stood, The grace and ornament of all the wood.

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Meanwhile, her soft voice, like snowflakes: When you sing you forget the pain in your life. I am from Lisbon and I understand fado. It’s like a slow waltz that calms your heart, and it’s as cold as the snow of the road… It’s like a poet that you don’t understand. Like a poem, like praying for our sins.

At nighttime, I dream of my piconero, my poor, handsome Mr. Ruiz. We fly together, he clutching my shoulders. My wings elevate us to dangerous heights. The cold stings my eyes and seals my tear ducts. When we run out of breath, we fall. I wake up and grumble at the mess I have become. No makeup. No lingerie. My wings are reduced to stubs, pathetic skeletal twitching. I wonder if Tanya ever made it to Mexico City and what flight she took to get there. I wonder if Mataviejitas will love her. I hope so; I have to believe it. I hoist myself onto my feet using Asuncion’s walking stick. Her house smells like fabric softener and leaves a residue on the tongue. I’m only slightly attached to it. I limp out the door. I am three stories up, looking into the courtyard; I climb the railing bar- by-bar. Balancing myself on the top bar, I open my arms and imagine Mr. Ruiz. You are beautiful, I tell him. You are my reason, simply. I flap my wing-stumps furiously and lunge off the railing. I probably fall to certain injury, but inside my head (you’re going to love this), I ascend into the golden California sky, through the smog, beyond the whir and tremble of machinery, above all I know, and with every flap, my skin is no longer skin, feathers sprout from my breast and from my groin, and mid-air I have the most sensational orgasm of my life.

THE END

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HOW to PUBLISH in THE NEW YORKER Or, THE VIKING

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Begin with a hero, sensitive as a lambskin condom, and kill him. Kill him dead. Make his head cave in until blood, bone, and brain spurt and hemorrhage onto the page. Never miss a chance to use the word hemorrhage. Most people don’t know how to spell hemorrhage. They will be surprised you know how to spell hemorrhage. Its sound echoes its sense, like “mackerel” or “shit- for-brains.” Not so with “noiseless!” If you were to look up the etymology of hemorrhage—no need, I’ve done it—you will find that the term emerged in the 17th century to much acclaim: commoners were said to hemorrhage when bludgeoned with a mallet. This is only partially true. More often, commoners merely oozed. They were a thick lot, bred from barrel-chested Vikings, noses like sun-dried rawhide, notched by the blunt edge of an ax. Don’t write about Vikings. The New Yorker will not publish a story about a Viking, unless the Viking is internally conflicted, possibly with an obscure neurosis, like the unexplainable desire to sit on the laps of the elderly, which isn’t so much obscure as it is comforting. At some point, you must agree, even you have daydreamed about sinking into the yielding flesh of an elder. Here’s my tip: make the Viking wear a starched polo shirt, and if someone asks, say the notches in his nose are acne scars. This way, your Viking will be vulnerable, which is good, because you will have ample opportunity to push him off an embankment and watch his head implode. If you are not malicious—in which case, shame on you—then you should at the very least avoid clichés. For instance, do not bludgeon your hero with a mallet. These days, we use ceramic. If you find this too messy, have a zombie do your dirty work. The last time I checked, however, The New Yorker does not publish stories about zombies, unless that zombie has ideas, in which case he’s a politician. Wait for the perfect moment to kill your hero. The perfect moment is unexpected, not impossibly unexpected, like a celibate monk rotting with syphilis, more like a twitchy gecko slick

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with neon slime. If the slime starts to bubble, you will have gone too far. Then you will have entered into the department of the obvious, which is not a department, in fact, but a lounge with a cigarette dispenser where an obese man wearing pants three sizes too small stoops clumsily to pick up a fallen lighter. Don’t make your hero fat. Most people do not want to sympathize with a rotund person. What? Rules are made to be broken? I’m biased against the metabolically challenged? Okay. You are an idiot. If you must insist, give your fat hero a sense of humor, or don’t, make him a chef. Make him boisterous. When he tips his chin over the sauce and raises the ladle to his lips, bash him with a rolling pin. Then taste the sauce. It’s fairly delicious. Your fat Viking with acne should abuse at least one substance. Insects are not a substance—smoosh them. Alcohol is a substance, but it will only take you so far: to the drive-thru, where Stella sits on her stool, toes grazing worn asphalt. Stella is not worth your time. She digs grime from under her nails. She dyes her hair platinum blonde, careful not to get the roots. Her lips are thin and mauve. Despite my warning, your Viking will pay her anyways, and after she changes his ten dollar bill, before she hands your Viking his lite beer, she hesitates. She says, “Hope you have a gratifying day.” Gratifying? Yes. It’s very sexy, much too sexy for your Viking, who catches Stella gawking at his nose. He wants to say something like, “I am Hrethric, son of Unferth the Halfdane, only living warrior of the Waegmundings, swept away by fate to battle the barrow-dweller, ravenous terror-monger.” He wants to explain how his nose, spear-gored, battle-tested, was notched by the mighty Hrunting, sword of the famed Dane, dragon-slayer, shepherd. Instead, he says, “Adolescence was particularly harsh for me.” Stella’s neck loosens; her face bobs up, down. It is certain that your Viking has a condition. You’ve heard doctors conspiring on the elevator. They whisper, “Infirmity,” behind palms. Not that they think you are a lip reader. Who are you? Maybe they forgot to brush their teeth. Forget it. It doesn’t matter. What matters is this: give your Viking some backbone. Or, have him ingest another substance, say two tablespoons of freshly ground nutmeg. In five hours, he’ll go bonkers. If that doesn’t satisfy you, give him a shot of stramonium (jimsonweed). Originally, it was a type of horse medicine. Now, it is reserved for homeopathic medicine, as well as your Viking. A warning: Don’t have your Viking sniff gasoline. Aside from being too refined for a Viking, it has been done, as they say, by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who is pompous. Seriously, who uses their middle name? Substances will move your plot. If it weren’t for substances, your self-loathing Viking would lean over the sink and munch potato chips for forty-five minutes. He’s not being pensive or wistful. He’s not nestled into a reverie or solving complex equations. He’s asking, why me? He’s asking

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you. Don’t tell him. No man wants to know his skull will collapse. Instead, saturate his veins with toxins. Spill some pills down his esophagus. Blur the senses until his forearm smells like poultry tastes, until the fragrance of barley thickens on the tongue. Check his pulse. Ask him to describe to you, in vivid detail, what grotesque images flash before his mind. Flash him the image of a paper cut. Observe his response. If he doesn’t cringe, introduce him to El Greco’s “Laocoon.” Ask him if he recognizes a pattern, a resemblance to his dreams. Ask him if this painting pleases him. Maybe it does. Maybe he’s never been so enthralled by limbs. So what? You can do whatever you want. It’s the fifth hour, and the nutmeg is starting to kick in. Before your Viking sobers up, switch point of view. Tell the story from another perspective. This is usually bad form in a short story, but your hero is doped up, so, technically, and I mean figuratively speaking, you can get away with anything. Tell the story from the perspective of a misfired bullet, a slothful tapeworm, or better yet, sex personified (his name is Ralph). Make Ralph cynical. As he narrates your Viking’s fantasy, he’ll stop abruptly, swivel toward your hero, and say, “You’re doing it all wrong.” Ralph will grab Stella’s hand and guide her behind the cash register of the drive-thru, into the cooler. She will scrape frost from the walls. He will puncture aluminum cans, which will fizz and coat the cooler floor with a sticky residue. Afterwards, as they’re munching on Cow Tales and sipping malt beverages, he’ll dump her. Why? Because he doesn’t believe in contemporary love—this subliminal manifestation, this pathos of the groin. Ralph, naked but for his silver-tipped tube socks, will prop a matted leg on a pallet of Smirnoff and recount a time when love was nothing more than mechanical pleasure, fleshes conspiring, the ebb and flow of genitalia. At this point, Ralph will pump his loins in no specific direction, overwhelmed by his own rationale. The Viking, who will have witnessed everything through the crack in the freezer door, would have interjected, if it weren’t for Ralph’s uninhibited libido. He would have told Ralph about the time when he took Asta, his common-law, to Northumbria for Holiday: It was golden, that paradise, beyond the thick plumage of smoke, the plundered peoples, the splintered knarrs sinking in the treacherous blue fjord. Asta, with mauve lips and scuffed knuckles, clung to my neck, tireless, plucky. Amongst the rolling hills and misty drizzle, it was just we two, flanks atremble—what was that, Ralph? Fleshes conspiring—yes, yes, the ropy hair, the crusty lips, oh the ravage, the bulk of it all. To this, Stella would have curled her numb toes under her frosty bum and hugged herself. She would have felt the cool metal on her back and shuddered, knowing and longing for the Viking’s warm, furry belly. Who is this man in the freezer door, weaving massive bouquets of mist with his breath? Who is this hefty thane with a nose like a deformed potato, this affected hero with the inconspicuous slouch? Stella would never have been so

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frozen with desire, not since seventh grade pre-algebra class when she fantasized about what her teacher, Mr. Spurgeon, must have been like at age thirteen. Still so flinty? So consumed by formula and design? The thought that Mr. Spurgeon had once labored over his algebra had made Stella’s thighs shudder, and now, curled on the floor of the freezer, in the presence of a Viking and his libertine narrator (still thrusting his pelvis absentmindedly), she fears that the shudder will consume her. The next week, your Viking will smell like the warm underside of a walrus that has intentionally rolled onto a seagull and suffocated it. Your Viking will be blubbery and depressed, like you, because your writing teacher—that snoot who rolls up his ankle cuffs and grinds pistachios during workshop—will have told you to write what you know. You would have protested. You would have said, “But I’ve been locked in a freezer before.” He would have replied: “Yes, but not for three weeks. Not with a Viking, a perv, and a Stella. It’s inconceivable—worse yet, it’s completely improper.” Improper? Nothing hardens your bowels more than the suggestion that you are somehow “improper,” you, who always places your napkin on your lap before picking up a fork, who frequently doubles over in agony because you would rather not pass gas in front of anything with an olfactory sense. You will need to settle down. You will have completely misinterpreted your teacher. When he tells you to “write what you know,” he really means, “I am completely beyond you, and I really have no practical advice for an emotionally stunted collegian who drinks bottom shelf zinfandel, whose fantasies are nothing more than drive-thru shenanigans frosted by half-assed Norse mythology.” I told you. The New Yorker doesn’t publish freezer fantasies, especially if you freeze your characters to death in the midst of a heated imbroglio. I, for one, was certain that Ralph was going to pummel your Viking with a chilled bottle of Glen Ellen’s finest. But this is your story. I can’t write it for you. I can only help you get your Viking off the couch and into the world, because that’s what The New Yorker is interested in: the world, as it yields to your Viking, as it blankets him and fibrillates like a parachutist’s jumpsuit. Some call this social realism. No one knows exactly what social realism is, but it has something to do with writing what you know, which is what people say when they think they know more than you. The trick is to bend this idea of knowledge, stretch it until the sleeves swallow your hands, until knowledge is something more than knowing a certain wine is bold, with a hint of oak. Oh dear, now you know. I have a chip on my shoulder. I grew up in a trailer park with

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my aunt, who smoked reefers in the bathroom and stained the walls dirty yellow. This made my flannels reek. Occasionally, I’d catch a buzz from the noxious fumes. But that’s what I know. As for your Viking, go ahead and send him to the bathroom. A cold shower will invigorate him, but be mindful of the time—you don’t want him thinking about Stella. She is nothing but trouble. Your Viking’s tendons have been sore from jogging. He wore pajamas for the first time. He donated his bearskins to the Salvation Army. He ate processed cheese spread and licked the sticky surplus off his mighty blade. He thinks often of snacks—Fritos, soda, salami—and more of poetry, not just the poetry of words, but of movement, of flexiture, of mannish gesture and roguish scent. Your Viking is getting his life together, thanks no doubt to the pep talk you gave him. You told him, baby steps. He misunderstood, and then embarrassed you by taking eleven minutes to walk out of the bathroom. No, you said, develop good habits. For emphasis, you prodded his belly with your forefinger. You told him to live a little. You took away his gas-soaked rag, knowing full well he’ll resent you for it, but it’s for his own good, you told him, someday he’ll understand—maybe not now, or five months from now, and probably not ever, who are you kidding? Aegir the ocean god invited your Viking to a party. Yesterday, after Aegir refilled the water dispenser at the office, almost dropping the plastic tub on your Viking’s berserker boots, he told your Viking about a fraternity house under the sea, near the island Hlesey. The floors of the house are paved with gold and the ale is brewed fresh in a large kettle. Your Viking doesn’t like to drink in public. The last time, he drank way too much beer and pillaged a neighbor’s victory garden. When the police took his mug shot, his pants were smeared with tomato juice, and his beard was lathered in foam and pocked with bits of cabbage. Plus, your Viking knows the party will attract volvas, those cat-skinned maidens who like to talk-talk-talk about the wind and stars and parenting. Then there are the valkyries, who, if prompted, will gnaw on your Viking’s ear and never return his calls. No, he’s wasted half his life chasing mother-types and vixens that couldn’t roast a pig on an open spigot. Last evening, your Viking chewed on some laffa-root, drove his pickup to the drive-thru, and somehow convinced Stella that the party would be hipper than the local bowling alley. He also let it slip that Ralph would be there; although, he’s not sure if this is true since Ralph was promoted last week (he was transferred to the Amsterdam branch to assist Erik the Red with millennial conversions).

When your Viking and Stella arrive at the party, mugs collide in salute, two sturdy warriors bump craniums, a half-eaten turkey leg careens across the living room, and Sally from accounting

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immediately tries to gnaw on your Viking’s ear. Stella punches Sally’s chin, then wraps herself around your Viking’s arm. This pleases your Viking, but it will not please The New Yorker, which doesn’t buy into conflict that is so easily resolved, or even resolvable. Conflict, you see, must lurk around corners and under coffee tables. Conflict must be suspect, like a grinning ex-principal whose knees are exposed. Conflict, plot-mover, character-builder, must bother your Viking and make him react accordingly. Thus, when Conflict enters the room dressed in a striped Ralph Lauren shirt and navy blue corduroys, your Viking braces himself for the worst. Conflict’s name is Loki, and he knows your Viking likes to sit on his grandmother’s lap. He’s going to tell everyone, unless your Viking challenges him to a drink-off. Your Viking knows it’s the only way to protect his honor, and his grandmother’s. “Stella, I must challenge my foe to a mead-contest. Don’t fear, I will meet you at the grub hall, past the wan-faced and weak-of-limb.” Stella shrugs her shoulders, scoots toward the snack table and nibbles on a leg of lamb. After the first eleven rounds, Loki’s eyes are heavy-lidded, minutely veined, but his hand is steady, his gaze fixed and full of purpose. After gulping a brew, he stretches his puny chest and grunts in a strange, pious way. He bellows thinly veiled threats in eddic verse: “Lo, we have heard the honor of this Speardane, Who grew up under the clouds, won glory of men, Till all his enemies sitting around him, Saw him propped upon a whale’s lap and gave Him fitting tribute. O’ what a waste!” Your Viking wrinkles his forehead. He shatters a mug over his skull and beats his chest. “Talking, talking, spinning drivel from frail lips—you domesticated heifer—I will teach you the honor of a Speardane. I will spit on your bones.” Loki sticks his tongue out, vibrates his lips and makes his spit rumble. Onlookers gasp. Surprisingly, your Viking doesn’t pile-drive Loki’s head into the floor. Instead, he freezes. He glares at Stella across the room. She is sitting on her heels, gazing up at a furry-browed oaf wearing tan shorts and strumming an acoustic guitar. Your Viking recognizes this man as Ralph, sex personified. Your Viking thrusts a meaty finger at him. “You!” Ralph halts mid-strum. He removes a pick from behind his ear and flicks it at your Viking, who is standing three bull’s lengths away. Your Viking flinches and hopes nobody noticed.

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“Erik the Red let me take a short holiday,” Ralph says. “I couldn’t miss this.” “Ho,” says your Viking. He planned to say something else; instead, he stomps Aegir’s golden floor. The gold peels and curls. “Temper tantrum,” someone says. “Geeze,” Loki says, “it’s paint?” He looks at your Vikings boots, which are flecked with gold. The crowd turns toward Aegir, Aegir with blond locks and cleft chin, god of the sea and renowned host. He shrugs it off. “Whaddaya whaddaya?” Aegir says. “Play your music,” your Viking orders Ralph. “ I will show you how to serenade woman- folk.” Ralph raps the strings and the sound is thunder. Stella sits Indian-style. Her chin tilts toward your Viking’s flushed face. “Sure, if sword could venge Such cruel wrong, Evil times would wait Ralph, sex-god. That dysfunctional lover Were I strong to slay, 'Gainst him and his whores Battling would I go.

But I in no wise Boast, as I wean Strength that may strive From Stella’s sweet gaze.” You know what I think? I think The New Yorker doesn’t publish sentimental fumier. But what does it matter? Stella seems to be enamored by your Viking. She catapults off the floor and kisses your Viking’s nose, that gargantuan schnozzle. The gesture is so tender that for a brief moment, your Viking lets his guard down. He thinks again of Asta’s scuffed knuckles, recalls the time when his grandmother rocked him on her lap, and the walrus, that blubbery beast, and the poor seagull underneath. He hears a dull clunk. He feels his mind drip. His vision runs like wet mascara. His

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toes tingle. Does he have toes? He can’t see. He has a headache. His hand moves to his scalp. Uh oh. Someone forgot to inflate his head all the way. Now it won’t bounce. Accident, terrible accident, and before the darkness seeps into his brain, you insert a conspicuously-timed flashback into the narrative, somewhere between death and complete death (trust me, it’s not cheating— everyone knows time becomes sludgy at death, like fruit shifting in half-formed gelatin). This is what your Viking thinks in his last wheeze of life: Years ago, before Your Viking’s nose sloped indifferently toward the ironclad sterns at Oseberg, before cradling his first boar’s head in vociferous regret, he and his fair complexioned playmates happened along a steer’s carcass, which rested politely in a ditch, sidewise, legs crossed. It seemed to your Viking that the poor beast had made a run for it through the cornfields only to confront, across the dirt road, a glossy metropolis: the harsh angles of a super grocery, the putting and whirring of sickly machinery, and smoke too oily and rank to be natural. So the steer had lowered its haunches and died peacefully, content in this space, and free. The other boys shied from the carcass, poked it with sticks, threw rocks at it, but the Viking, recognizing opportunity, plunged his arm into the fetid wet cavern of the cow’s belly and pulled a shiny swollen sac through its soft skin. He pierced the sac with a strong, industrious thumbnail and splayed the contents along the edge of the road. He swished through the goop, fingered slimy particles atop the road’s hard, dusty surface. Amidst the goulash, he found, plucked, and brandished a golden ring (The truth is, the ring already belonged to your Viking. He had slipped it among the belly’s contents, a trick he had learned from his father, who had learned from his father, and so on, a rudimentary magic promoting the belief that, man or beast, the stomach is blessed, as it signifies life, or more appropriately, how one lived, which probably resulted from the famines plaguing your Viking’s ancestors, which coincidentally set them to plundering). Your Viking’s companions, caught between disgust and awe, eyed the ring contemptuously, as if it, not he, had disturbed their sense of decorum (although they had avowed, as young boys, to disrupt all decorum, their own disturbances were merely in jest, a youthful rite they fancied and had learned by imitating boys hardly older than they). The boys ripped the ring from your Viking’s wet fingers and stole away chuckling. Your Viking did not chase. Despite himself, or despite his sense of himself, he mourned the loss of the ring, which he knew was only a prop, but it struck him, as he slid his thumb and forefinger together, feeling the slime’s minute gristly friction, that magic is a very curious thing, and love, also, very curious.

THE END

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