ABSTRACT

ROCK N’ ROLL WILL SAVE US

by Joseph Daniel Thornton

Rock n’ Roll Will Save Us is a collection of largely fictional short stories that deal primarily with issues of identity, deception, closeted queerness, heritage and familial legacy. Music critics, ranchers, pre-vet students, and waiters are forced to occupy uncomfortable spaces through circumstance or necessity, but almost never by choice. Others must either confront their own self-deception via delusion, or deal with the implications of the deceptions of others around them. Some must confront the possibility of deceiving themselves or others. Regardless of who they are, all of them must confront themselves and live with the consequences of their actions.

ROCK N’ ROLL WILL SAVE US

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

by

Joseph D. Thornton

Miami University

Oxford, OH

2015

Advisor: Dr. Joseph R. Bates

Reader: Professor Margaret Luongo

Reader: Dr. Stefanie K. Dunning

TABLE OF CONTENTS ROCK N’ ROLL WILL SAVE US ...... 1

GOLEM ...... 17

DINNER PARTY ...... 23

HOW TO FEEL GUILTY ...... 29

FROMAGÈRE ...... 36

PUT IT AWAY ...... 44

GLENN GOULD MISTAKEN FOR GLENN GOULD ...... 53

PALPATION ...... 61

GAUDI MAKING HIS PLANS FOR THE SAGRADA FAMILIA ...... 65

A RESTAURANT ...... 67

STEVE MCGINNIS MAKES HIS APARTMENT INTO AN ELTON JOHN RETROSPECTIVE ...... 70

BRIEF HALF-TRUE INSTANCES IN THE LIFE OF MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER JAMES PATRICK THORNTON ...... 75

ii

ROCK N’ ROLL WILL SAVE US

I pulled into the parking lot at two in the morning, still slightly buzzed and reeking of alcohol, nicotine, sweat, and shame. I put the car in park and looked down at my white button- down, cursing the fact that it was half-open and buttoned the wrong way. But I was more concerned about the fact that the traces of sweat that was a mixture of my own and Javad’s. His sweat had found its way onto me at an album release party just a few hours ago. He was the lead singer of the up-and-coming local favorite band, Obnoxious Solutions, and they were releasing their sophomore album to as much fanfare as a mid-level band could dream of. I gave it a glowing review in Gluestick. I was too drunk to remember exactly how one thing led to another. It was an open bar for maybe the first two hours. I was three whiskeys in before Obnoxious Solutions even started their set, tearing through a live performance of the new album and then ending with “Light It All Up,” the single from their first album that’d gotten moderate airplay in Athens. I sat at the bar and had a fourth while they played. I’d just ordered my fifth drink when Javad walked up and put his hand on my shoulder, his long fingers almost reaching down to my chest. “You’re him, right? You’re the guy?” “Who?” “The guy from Gluestick?” “Yeah,” I said. “And you’re…?” though I knew who he was. I was surprised he knew who I was, though, and I guess flattered. My picture doesn’t appear with my column or reviews, so someone must’ve told him. And he’d read the thing, obviously. All of this made me feel flattered, and then there were those whiskeys. His arm was still around me so I had to crane my head to look at him. “You’re the guy,” he said. “I am,” I said, “I am the guy.” In the haze of booze and sweat and bodies, I’d somehow gotten backstage with him after that with our tongues wrestling. I pressed him up against the wall as he wrapped his legs around my waist.

1 I got out of the car and went up the stairs inside, almost stumbling on a couple of steps before catching myself. I put my keys in the lock and opened the door, feeling as though every tooth going into every pin sounded like a miniature explosion. I crept through my darkened apartment, not turning on any of the lights, doing my best to take my time and sidestep every creak in the floor, every potential trip-hazard, but I knew every spot where the floorboards creaked. Tasha was a light sleeper, though, so I knew that even though I could slip quietly into bed, there was a good chance that she would notice that. I stood stock-still between the door to the bathroom and the door to our bedroom, where I could make out the lump that I knew was Tasha. I wondered if I should take a shower. How long would it be before she would smell something of Javad’s on me, smell his musk, which was like citrus and cloves? I was sure that I didn’t smell like I usually do, which is that sandalwood smell of a regular Speed Stick. I closed the door to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, quietly wishing to myself that I had never come home. I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to forget about Javad's long fingers running through my thinning red hair as I pulled back on his, kissing his neck. I looked down and noticed that my hands were still visibly shaking. There was no way that I was going to play this coolly. In the shower I tried to scrub Javad away. The hot water almost scalded me. I worried that I was so hot that when I got out of the shower, no matter how much I tried, I wouldn’t be able to get myself to dry off. I was still sweating, even under the water. But was I really sweating because of the heat of the shower, or because of Javad? I watched the water rush down into our slightly clogged drain. I’d only ever felt that way about one other boy, Jordy Marsclione, when I was fourteen. Jordy wore tight pants that skaters wear that let you see everything. His bangs slightly covered his eyes. He sat in the back of Physical Science, his arm absent-mindedly slung over the back of the chair, feet out, spine slowly sliding down the back of the seat. He came there from gym, blonde hair slightly tousled, skin covered in a light mist of sweat. He was beautiful and I wanted to tell him so every time I saw him. But all I could do is sit in my chair and squirm. I never got the guts to ever say it out loud to him. I tried to turn the faucet to get the hot water to scald me, I wanted it to, but I could only feel it getting slightly hotter. The steam billowed out and fogged the windows, and after I was sure that this was as clean as I would get, I stepped out of the shower, dried myself off, and crept

2 slowly into bed in the darkness. I slid into the warm sheets. Tasha, underneath a mound of covers, stirred. I had been so paralyzed the entire time, hoping that she wouldn’t ask about why I’d taken a shower, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t talk to me, that we would just say our pleasantries and I could go to sleep. “How was it?” she sounded half-hearted, but she was also half-asleep, so there was that. “It was good,” I said. I didn’t want to sound like I’d said something too quick. I wondered how much longer I was going to keep this up. I wondered if she’d looked at the bedside clock and knew how late it really was. “I wish I could have gone,” she said. “Oh, you didn’t miss much,” I said. But I could tell that she was already asleep again; her heavy breathing returning, which made me relax. At least I was telling the truth somewhat. Like me, Tasha was already a fan of Obnoxious Solution. Tasha had been in a band as well, a Runaways cover band called Heartless Bitches. When I met her, I was just a student intern at Gluestick, and she was basically Joan Jett sans the husky voice, with more curves and tan. She’d later tell me that she suspected that she was Cherokee, but she’d never bother to see if that was true, which in my naiveté added to her mystique. She was also more self-possessed in so many more ways than I ever could be. After all, she fronted the band and used her mic stand in ways that made me ashamed to be in public, especially when she stuttered out the phrase “cherry bomb.” I was on assignment when I first saw her, covering the goings-on of Athenians altogether uninterested in the success or failure of the football team, which involved going to many house parties. My evenings usually ended up with me attempting to blend in with a crowd of other undergrads amidst a sea of full red Solo cups in a cramped room while a band played and I attempted to discreetly take notes, which was difficult to do shoulder-to-shoulder in an all-too- crowded house and not be noticed. Groups of frat brothers and their girlfriends would take turns staring at me with suspicion, as though I was some undercover reporter doing a think piece for The New Yorker, or some ambitious anthropology student trying too hard to ace his introductory course and impress the instructor. But I didn’t care. I actually got a kick out of it, standing there in my bright orange earplugs and writing it all down, even if I was drowning in a sea of sickening perfumes and colognes and slowly failing deodorants. Then I’d rush off to the library, using a key I’d swiped from my roommate who worked there to get in so I could type out my copy before the rag went to print.

3 That night, she’d spotted me sitting in a corner at the party, taking notes like I was someone important covering something serious. It was a guard I put up, a look I projected. It wasn’t just how I wanted to look but how I wanted to be seen. And instead of calling me out on it, she sat down and started talking and I was immediately taken with her, how beautiful she was—is—and how sure of herself. She had an air about her, the leather pants, the attitude, the eyebrow ring. She still has the ring, though she takes it out every morning before she goes to work as a realtor. She’d asked me for my number that night, and she was in my apartment barely a week later, sitting with one leg up on my bedroom window, the other nonchalantly descending with her foot’s ball touching the floor, smoking a post-coital clove cigarette and wearing a baggy t-shirt of mine that I’d gotten at some awful event freshman year where you’re forced to get up and tell everyone what your major was. I’d never had a woman just go for me the way that Tasha did, the way that she would pull my hair, and I gladly found my freckled face between her smooth tanned thighs. How clearly she had wanted me, how addicted I became to the smell of burning clove and her cinnamon-flavored chapstick that tasted like a better version of Big Red. That was then; now we were living together. Which made it all the worse. She’d find out what happened, I was sure of it. I turned over to my side of the bed and stared at the dresser that was across from me. I paused to listen to her breathing, to make sure she was sleeping and not waiting for me to speak again.

* * *

You didn’t ever have to lie. You could simply say only what you wanted others to hear, be what you wanted to be, make yourself into something different. It’s one credo I’d learned to live by for the longest time, back that confused teenager stuck in a small town in rural Georgia where I knew I didn’t fit in, but could never quite understand why. Even before I’d felt that first attraction for another man, or before I’d recognized it for what it meant. And it’s a lesson that they taught me: Bob Zimmerman, Gordon Sumner, Lewis Allan Reed, Patricia Lee Smith, John Anthony Gillis. All I had to do was put on the right hat at the right time, and suddenly I’d be far away. I could remake myself. I could be two people at once and still hit the right note. They did. I learned to play guitar, though I was never good enough to play anywhere but alone, but I

4 could truly listen to music, and I could truly hear it, which separated me in the best way from everyone who bopped their heads and didn’t tune into lyrics and couldn’t fully understand what it was they were listening to. My teenaged bedroom filled up with rock posters which my parents hated but tolerated, my teenaged wardrobe with rock tees, and it was like you were speaking in code. Rock and roll has always been about codes, subversion. About saying two things at once. For a few brief moments, locked in your bedroom with the volume up too loud, you could be David Bowie, skinny and aloof in glitter and glitz, and no one would think twice about what you’re really saying. You could dissect yourself and never have to worry about deceiving anyone, because you weren’t lying. You’re just some kid who is desperately trying to not fall in love with his parent’s crappy CD collection. Someone perhaps unwilling to admit in other ways that you sometimes wish you, too, could publicly mime fellatio on Mick Ronson’s guitar, and in that moment be simultaneously reviled and adored, so brazen and open. When Bowie did that, of course, he wasn’t Bowie. He was Ziggy Stardust. Twice removed from David Robert Jones, whoever that was. Where you suddenly have that unity between what you want to be and what you think you are. Instead of just keeping yourself in pieces, locked away. When I went off to the University of Georgia, I grew my hair out a little longer than I used to wear, grew out a bushy bohemian beard, and began carrying around a pad and pen with me everywhere, to write wherever and whenever I felt like it. I made sure to be seen that way, as a writer. I went into Gluestick and told them I wanted to write for them. I started attending shows and house parties that only the luminaries went to. I saw my byline in print. Then I met and fell in love with a girl who played guitar in a rock and roll band and sang out lyrics that’d make my parents squirm, a girl who loved me back and who looked at me in ways no woman had ever looked at me before, and I felt as far away from that old life as I could. We weren’t married, and hadn’t ever really discussed it, maybe because we felt we had a better arrangement, beyond all that bourgeoisie stuff, or maybe we were both afraid to talk about having more, but we moved in together and started making a life together. When Gluestick’s music critic retired I got tapped to take over his weekly column, “The Setlist,” which highlighted up-and-coming musical acts haunting the Athens scene. The job involved writing in the pithiest fashion possible, no more than a paragraph per act. As an admirer of my predecessor, I adopted his style of the first sentence introducing the band in a highly categorized way, e.g. “Satan’s Left

5 Testicle, despite what their name implies, is a band that, albeit in its infancy, has a deserved reputation as one of the more exciting Athenian oddities.” I can see why he’d write that way. With so many bands vying to be the next R.E.M. or Elf Power, one had to take up the oft- maligned task of separating the wheat from the chaff, a task I took up with a particular joy. There’s something perversely masturbatory when your opinion, however crass or catty or dismissive, somehow becomes virtual law. When I went to pick up the latest Gluestick to make sure that my copy was correct, I’d do my best to watch someone else reading my column in the Jittery Joe’s, and since my picture was never printed, I’d know they’d never recognize me. I guess I’ve always been good at hiding like that.

* * *

I woke up the next morning alone and hung-over in a haze, but the fear cut through all of that. It was a Friday, so I didn’t have to think about where Tasha was. I knew that she wasn’t going to be in. She’d be working today, showing some houses to clients. I took the cold coffee from the coffeepot and put it in the microwave. I had to write the column today at the office. But I couldn’t stop thinking about not if Tasha would find out about me and Javad but when. I was fucked and I knew it. And obviously it was not just the infidelity but with whom, and it would raise up a lot of questions I didn’t have an answer for, and never thought I’d have to. I sipped my lukewarm coffee and tried to not think about Javad (and his almost-ripped torso, the way that he was moaning as we rubbed against one another). I began to slump, and I was fairly certain I wasn’t wearing pants, and my eyes were starting to glaze over. My temples had a dull spike right through them. Thirty minutes later, I left the house, glad that I could do that and not have any sort of excuse as to why I needed to leave for Tasha. I imagined that I’d have to bullshit my way through something. “Couldn’t you just work from home?” she’d ask me. She’d have her hair in a bun, which was a relatively new style for her, and made her look completely different, revealing the oval shape of her head rather than the box shape that was suggested by the way it was usually framed with her bangs and sides.

6 “I need to go down to the office,” I would have to say, looking for any excuse to get out of there, because my face would tell her everything she needed to know, and she would probably stare at me for about a minute, which would consist of sixty seconds of me internally screaming in pain. At least her absence prevented me from actively lying to her face. I could pretend for a bit longer. I left my car at home—after I checked around it, to make sure I had both bumpers and both mirrors attached—and took the bus to Wuxtry Records, trying to lose myself in the stacks of vinyl, keeping my sunglasses on the entire time. But the store, its dingy and warm demeanor, couldn’t take away the sting that I felt as Ziggy Stardust was being played. “John, I’m Only Dancing” came on at the worst time. “John, I’m only dancing/She turns me on, but I’m only dancing.” I stumbled back out into the bleaching sunlight and wandered around, looking for any place that didn’t remind me of my and Tasha’s time together, and thereby remind me of my betrayal of her, but I couldn’t. Athens is a small town. You share everything together in a place like that (almost everything). There was nowhere I could go that wouldn’t just remind me of what I wanted to forget. I trudged into the office at Gluestick around noon, a tiny little squashed space lodged into the middle of a three story building between a dentist and a flower shop. I was greeted by a blast of heat and by Nate, my scraggly boss whose own beard I thought was getting a little out of hand, now that it threatened to overtake the collar of his Black Flag shirt. “Great party last night, right?” he said. The way he said it felt like he was winking at me, which made the bottom fall out of my stomach. He’d been there too? Did I talk to him? I couldn’t remember. Every face that wasn’t Javad’s seemed to fuse together and melt into a massive blurry face in my head. “Yeah, it was,” I said, taking off my sunglasses in such a way that it didn’t seem like I was hiding anything. “Looks like someone had some fun,” he said from his desk, almost snarky. “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes, hoping that my hangover was the only thing that he was referring to. “Too much maybe. I got a little carried away last night.” I intended this to fish for what Nate knew, if anything, but he didn’t respond. I put my hand behind my head to appear sheepish and embarrassed and tried to move to where my office usually was, amid a labyrinth of

7 walls decked out with shows from decades past for Vic Chestnutt and Olivia Tremor Control or Apples in Stereo, to lesser-known quantities like Goo Bazooka, an obscure a riot grrl band known for their proto-militant shows. I made my way to my cubicle, which Tasha would have found disgusting. Stacks of papers were piled high, some of them old copies of Rolling Stone pilfered from the UGA library, where I’d look at Lester Bangs reviews over and over again until I memorized them. My desk also had small piles of ‘zines of all sizes and shapes in small asymmetrical piles. I sat in my chair and spun it back and forth, opening my laptop and trying to look like I was doing something of consequence while I tried to look at a blank spot on the wall. Why did I go after Javad? I couldn’t figure it out. My head continued to pound as I tried to start my short write-up. They were usually only about five hundred words about the latest parties, happenings, in the features section of Gluestick, called “What You Missed Last Week.” There’d be no way to tell Athens what it had missed last night in a mere two paragraphs. My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I took it out, which only made my headache worse as the screen pulsated. I stared at the message for a minute in a dull ache. “hey, hope you’re not too hung over from last night” I started to sweat again, feeling my shirt quickly grow damp. It was clearly Javad texting me. How did he know my number again? I tried to remember, rewinding back through last night, looking for that moment where we exchanged numbers among all of the moans and splayed legs and me leaning back against a wall lightly tugging on Javad’s curly hair as it bobbed up and down. Gluestick’s offices had only one restroom with purple painted walls and really bad paper dispensers. Oftentimes there was no sensible way to dry my hands other than wipe them on my jeans. I cordoned myself off in there and looked at my phone, the screen’s glare hurting my eyes a little bit less. I tried to type it all out, but I kept hitting the backspace button and holding it until everything on the screen was blank again. “only a little.” I tried to sound ambivalent as possible. I matched his lowercase starting the sentence and matched his tone. I’d wondered if I should add ha to the end, though that seemed dismissive, or lol, which would seem like I’d had a lobotomy. I played it safe and kept my reply short, hit send, and flushed the toilet to make my ruse seem plausible. Then, as I was giving myself time to wash my hands for anyone that was listening, the phone vibrated again.

8 “I want to see you today.” There was a knock on the door. “Hey, is anyone in there?” It was Nathan’s voice muffled through the door. “Just a second,” I said. I had to type something out, so I did. To my surprise, here’s what I wrote: “okay, where and when?” I flushed again and opened the door to find Nate leaning against the wall. “You okay? You were in there for a while.” “Yeah, just the hangover,” I said. I was putting on my best performance, clutching my stomach slightly and slinking back to my cubicle. When I got there, I checked my phone again. “My place. This afternoon.” He texted me his address, a slightly off-kilter apartment complex that I used to inhabit during my days as an undergrad. I kept telling myself on the way there: You are going to go and tell him that you’re not interested. It was a one-off, a fiction. You’re straight, you’re straight as can be. I told this to myself as I sat on a bus that hurtled towards Javad’s apartment amidst a sea of undergraduates with headphones and buried in books. I wished I had something to read. In true careful-what-you-wish-for fashion, my phone buzzed again, giving me something to read. It was a text from Tasha. “You around?” I put the phone back into lock mode and slipped it into my pocket without answering her.

* * *

I sometimes get songs in my head that parallel what’s going on around me a little bit too well. My subconscious sees what’s happening, processes it, and makes a soundtrack for it. I realized sitting on the bus that my head was punctuating the ride with a baseline that took me a second to place. When I did, I wondered what it meant. It was Otis Redding’s “Can’t Turn You Loose,” the live version that he performed at the Whiskey A-Go-Go. “Can’t Turn You Loose” is a song that’s stuck in a loop, even in how it’s performed. It can’t do anything but cycle around the same horn section. The baseline is almost entirely uniform, only jumping up a half step every now and then. The vocals can’t escape the confines of the melody, and they work against the

9 song itself. Some people have told me that Otis croons, or that he was a crooner. Otis isn’t a crooner. Otis’s vocals are more of exhaustion. He sings high on the track but he really should sing lower. That’s how he got his raspy voice. It is almost exhausted when he sings the lyrics over again and again, getting frustrated with them. Getting angry at them, but still returning to the same chorus. The band will not let him go. When Otis’s plane crashed, he had just recorded his last posthumous hit “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” The song’s unusual. It opens with waves crashing on a beach before segueing into the subtle and quiet guitar riff that grounds the song. But it’s Otis’s voice, too tired and beat- down and yet cutting, that wonderful Gospel quality, that makes it sound like he’s having fits with the cigarettes that he just quit. Otis’s voice, even when it’s smooth, turns sharp, with age and conviction in it, when he sings, “Looks like nothing’s gonna change,” and then goes down before going up a few notes. It emphasizes the finality of that lyric. He’d recorded this song just days before he died. They were in a plane, going over Wisconsin, a short flight to Nashville. Ben Cauley was the only survivor. He was sleeping when he was woken up by someone else shouting out “Oh no!” Then he unbuckled his seatbelt, which is the last thing that anyone in a crashing plane would ever hope to do. It was the only reason that he was still alive. The plane plunged into the ice and fog, and he was the only one who managed to escape. Cauley tried to get back to his friends, but they were already long gone, drug down by the plane. His muscles must have threatened to give out at one point, to give in to the freezing water. The water that night was bitter. When he was rescued by a police boat, he was suffering from hypothermia. He sat there, numb and shivering with a blanket wrapped around himself, unable to go to sleep, barely able to stay awake. But not letting go, either. In my head, “Can’t Turn You Loose” looped right back around to the beginning again.

* * *

I saw the apartment complex’s name, River Trace, pulled the yellow cable, and got off. As I walked down the funky Athens hill it became clear to me that this was a nice place to be. Much nicer than I knew it to be years ago, before I was working at Gluestick. An assembly of white town-house type apartments lay before me. Javad lived at 256, which seemed to be a ways back.

10 I got to his place and knocked on his door, and he opened his door, his white teeth blinding me. “Hello again,” he said. “Hi, Javad,” I said. “It’s Don isn’t it? Come in.” He took me by the hand and led me inside. It was a fairly nice place, but sparse. The white walls weren’t adorned with anything to make them less so with the exception of a large poster of Bowie from his Ziggy Stardust years, dammit, crouched low to the ground with his foot sticking out to the side like some big cat about to pounce. “Do you want me to get you anything? I’ve got beer, or whatever you want,” he said to me quietly, and put a hand around mine. “No, I’m good. Look, Javad—” “What is it?” he said, and I tried to gently take his hand off of mine. “Still feeling rough? You look a little rough.” “No,” I said. “Or yes, actually, yes. I am feeling rough. Thing is, I can’t do this.” “What?” “I’m telling you, Javad, I can’t do this. I shouldn’t. Shouldn’t have.” His face fell. “That’s not what you sounded like last night,” he said. Then he made his voice get higher and said, imitating my nasal voice, “‘Oh please, Javad. Please let me fuck you Javad.’” I didn’t remember saying that. It didn’t sound like me. Except that it did sound like me, the way he was imitating me. And except that I had no doubt that I probably did say it. “I know. But I was also drunk. And I also already have someone.” “You’re not making any sense.” he said, walking toward me and then past me and then turning, wrapping his arms around me from behind. “You’re the one who’s not making sense,” I said, which was all I could think of to say. I pulled apart his arms, removing him from me. He bashfully scratched the back of his neck and turned his head down, like he was about to drop some big revelatory bomb on me. “Don, look, last night, when you kissed me, I wasn’t even sure that you were serious. I thought you were just drunk. But you pressed that beard into my face,” he playfully tugged at my beard, “and I thought you weren’t going to be like those other guys. You know those guys, right? Those desperate guys who just can’t handle the thought of maybe, just maybe, they aren’t living

11 the way they should?” “I don’t think that I’m that guy,” I said, and I pulled away. “Oh come on. Don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, you’re wrong?” He put his hand on me again over my shoulder and I took it. I was sweating bullets again, and I wasn’t sure of what to say. “If you didn’t feel that way about me, then why come over here?” “I don’t know.” I gripped his hand hard. I didn’t say anything else for about three minutes. I just sat there on the barstool, flanked by Javad with his hand draped over my shoulder and my hand clutching his. “I have to go,” I said. It wasn’t an answer, but it was a clear decision. I got up and started to walk out. “Fine, suit yourself,” he said as I walked out of the door to go back up to the bus stop. “But if you leave, you’re not coming back.” “That’s the idea,” I said. I turned the doorknob and rushed out. As I walked back up the winding asphalt to the bus stop, I wondered if he was following me, but I didn’t turn and look back. Part of me wished that I had, that I had tried, but I couldn’t. Not now. At the bus stop, the sun was just beginning to get fat and set, bathing everyone in a bright citrus, which made me squint and look down, hoping that I wouldn’t stick out too much. My heart was pounding. Maybe Javad was right. I boarded the bus and I could feel my chest getting tighter with each stop as the bus lurched closer and closer to where Tasha and I lived. I came back inside our shared apartment to find Tasha sitting at the dinner table, staring at her phone. My phone vibrated in my pocket as I walked in, and I didn’t have to look at it to know it was Javad again. “Hi,” I said to her. “Would you mind telling me what happened last night?” said Tasha. There was something about her voice that made it sound off, like it belonged to someone else, or I’d just never heard her sound like that before. I must have had that look on my face when I heard it, the one where my lower lip quivers and is the reason why I’m such a terrible liar. “I got a little buzzed,” I said. “Didn’t make out with anyone?” She didn’t even look at me, just looked at her phone.

12 “Specifically, with a man?” I didn’t know what she was looking at on her phone, whether a text from someone who had been there or maybe a picture sent to her from someone we both knew, a picture of two men locked in a kiss at the smelly backstage of some terrible bar, and one of those men was me. And that’s when I snapped, telling her everything in a torrent of tears and ragged sobs, collapsing onto the floor, begging for her forgiveness. I told her everything, even back to Jordy and to my teenage crush, trying my best to make sense of the events that had led us up to this moment. But even then, in my place on the floor, trying to come clean with her, I knew it was all over. I told her I’d get a hotel room for the night, give her some space, if that’s what she wanted. But that I still wanted to talk about it the next day, if she would. The next morning I left my place on the couch and poked my head into her room. But she wasn’t there. She went to stay with her parents in Savannah. And I had to find all that shit out second hand. I only found out because one of her friends from the realtor’s texted and told me what she was planning, in the most clipped way possible, and not to go over that morning. “She’s taking a week from work,” her friend’s text told me. “Got a lot to think about. Best if you stayed away.” I had nowhere to go. I checked out of the hotel room and then didn’t know what to do—I could go into the office, but it was the last place I wanted to be. I killed some time by eating lunch alone and trying not to text Tasha. I could at least be decent enough to stay away, I could give her that. I browsed a bookstore for a little bit and thought about the record store, but it would’ve just reminded me of everything. That afternoon, on an impulse, I decided to drive up to Memphis, to Wolf River Harbor. I figured that it’d be somewhere that I could go by myself and clear my head. It’s only a few hours from here, the place where Jeff Buckley drowned. Had Tasha and I stopped by this place on our road trip together last fall—we’d gone to Graceland, and I suggested we make a whole rock and roll road trip out of it by cutting across and hitting Memphis and seeing Beale Street, then the harbor where Jeff Buckley went under—Tasha would have gone along with it, I’m sure, just to make me happy. But I didn’t make her, and instead we’d driven back home and, that night, made love. Now, I listened to Grace all the way up there. It was still as beautiful as when I first listened to it, before I met Tasha, when I’d listened to it in the back of my mother’s car on my Walkman on my way to school. When I first played it for Tasha, she wasn’t a big fan. Of tragic

13 singers dying young, she was always more drawn to the self-destructive types: Cobain, Elliott Smith, Richie Edwards. Buckley wasn’t like Smith, or even Cobain. When she listened to Grace with me she complained about how polished Buckley sounds. “He doesn’t have enough of a rasp,” she said. I rolled my eyes at her. But I think she was always a bit jealous that she didn’t discover him first. Buckley’s voice soars over every other instrument and drives every song he sings. I was convinced for about a year that no one sang like him. That teenage fantasy that he was “my singer,” and only I knew about him. In the gathering dusk, against a pale orange sky, I stood on the bank of the Wolf River Harbor, having snuck past some houses. The moon dimly lit the ground where it could through a thick arrangement of trees, and it gave everything around me a weird blue tint. The river here flowed into the Mississippi until the Army Corps of Engineers dammed it up. This was close enough to where Buckley died. He had gone swimming with all of his clothes on. No one knows how long he was out there exactly. I kicked off my shoes. Mud gathered between my toes and I felt myself sink slowly into the riverbank as I looked out towards the water. A roadie was out here to see him drown. He stood on the shore. Watched Buckley’s head bob up and down, the murky water plastering his shoulder-length hair against his head so that it got into his eyes, causing him to defiantly slick it back with an arm covered by a heavily waterlogged shirt. I tried to imagine what the roadie must have seen looking out from where I stood. I read somewhere that he was holding a guitar for Jeff while he watched him swim. Would he have been I holding Buckley’s fabled Rickenbacker 360/12? I’d played one of those before. Those twelve strings always sound so full. I’d felt unclean just holding it. When you first play a 12- string, it sounds like the whole world’s opening up for the first time. I could hear the notes in- between that you never hear on six-string. My ear wasn’t ready for that kind of sound. It shook me to my core, made me tremble in my shoes at night when I thought about playing it. Or maybe the roadie was holding his Telecaster. Buckley always manipulated that sound to be harsh, resisting the country jangle Teles have. Whatever guitar he was holding, the roadie would have just turned around to grab the guitar, to keep it maybe, from being splashed by the waves of a passing tugboat coming back in to relieve its cargo, when he realized that that he didn't see or hear Jeff. Buckley would have been there not even seconds ago, laughing, fully clothed, treading water in the gathering twilight, his head wreathed by the gnats and the

14 mosquitos. He was singing "Whole Lotta Love" while that roadie remembered a time when they got really drunk together after a show. Jeff had told him how he used to listen to Zeppelin on vinyl until the grooves in the record were almost gone. One minute the roadie was looking at him, and when he turned around and looked back up Jeff was gone, save for some ripples on the surface. I waded into the water, pushed off of the muddy bottom of the lake and swam out. My clothes weighed me down, but I could keep my head above water. I felt something brush against my leg. It felt slimy, either a fish or a snake. For a moment I couldn’t move. A water moccasin could bite me right now and I wouldn’t be able to get back to shore, I’d be in such pain. Losing consciousness would be great right now. I turned over on my back and look up to the stars. As I floated in the river I began to lose track of how far away I was from shore, but I didn’t care at that point. I just wanted this river to take me somewhere, anywhere but here. I wanted my limbs to give out. I wanted to drown like Buckley did, but I couldn’t bring myself to go under and fill my lungs with water. Maybe it was an involuntary motion, but somehow my body wouldn’t let me just slip underneath the water. Someone with better intentions other than trying to commit some kind of passive suicide might have had some moment of clarity. A moment where they could actually think for once and solve all of their problems. But all I could think about was Tasha when I first met her. It was January then. She wore a black petticoat, smoking her black clove cigarette, and me watching the orange line burning down to the end. I waded back onto the shore, my feet almost getting caught in the suction of the muddy bank. I felt my jeans almost slip from my hips as I pulled myself out from the riverbank, weighed down with river water. In the car on my way home, driving in wet clothes that stunk with algae, I took my time. I wasn’t in a hurry to go back. For a moment, I thought about what I’d find when I would come back home. I could see myself going into the house and finding a large quantity of things packed and ready to be moved, with a note in a plain white envelope on the dining room table. I could picture myself, as I threw my rancid lake-waterlogged clothes into the dryer, of how I would stare at the envelope for almost an hour, trying my best to wish it away. But I knew better. After I got home, I threw my clothes in the hamper, where they hit with a wet smack, I stood there, naked, in the darkness of the kitchen and turned the light on to see that there were

15 only three boxes. But there was also an envelope on the counter. I stood naked in the kitchen for a long time. I stared at the envelope. It looked so thin, but I knew its contents would be heavy. I turned the light off. It could wait until morning. I pulled the cool covers over my naked body and thought about how Tasha used to call me in the middle of the night. She’d do it often early on when we first started dating, complaining about her neighbors. This was when we lived on the opposite sides of town. She would tell me that the neighbors were yelling at each other again, and I would tell her to call the cops if it was that bad. “I’m too scared to go to sleep,” she would say. “I know that they’re not going to kill each other, but if you heard it, you’d understand.” She put the phone up to the wall and I could faintly hear a man yelling at a woman. “I can’t do this,” she would tell me. “Can I come over?” I would always say yes. She would arrive at my front door in sweatpants, and before I would fall asleep, she’d whisper to me, “Thank you.” I’d manage to get out a half-mumble as she would lay there with her head against my chest, listening to my heartbeat in the quiet of my apartment until we both fell asleep in the darkness.

16

GOLEM

Gary went out past the backyard to the woods behind his house, rolling a shovel in a wheelbarrow. It had just rained and it was cold, but not cold enough to freeze. The yellowing pair of his old white sneakers sank into the ground with a slight squish. It was the right kind of weather to make something out of earth with. He found a good clearing, and once he had moved to the center of it, he pressed the shovel’s spade into the earth. He leaned on it, pushing it in by standing on top of the flat part of the spade. The still-wet ground obliged and gave, the flat metal sliding in. Then he began to dig. After a while, Gary looked up at the pile of mud in the wheelbarrow, then back at the hole that he had left behind. The hole was already large, but it was now getting so deep that if Gary sat in it, only his eyes would peek out over its edge. The wheelbarrow was about half-full. It was enough, or at least it seemed like enough. He covered the hole with leaves using the shovel. He put the shovel into the wheelbarrow, grabbed the handles, and lifted it up with his knees like his father had taught him to do. On the way back to the house, slightly struggling now that the wheelbarrow was filled with mud, Gary turned his slightly balding head skyward. He tried to guess how much daylight he had left. It was hard to tell, but it couldn’t be much. He had left the house at around two. That much he knew. He was sure that when he got back, Ann would still be there. There would be no dinner though, that much he knew for sure. He could count on that. Ann had stopped cooking about two weeks ago. Before, she cooked so much. Soups and stews and slow, simmering varieties of chili. He would try to help her, but she always told him no. She liked to do it by herself, she had said once to him when he had asked, smiling while she chopped some onions. Then, two weeks ago when he woke up, she was gone again. Her usual spot on the bed was slightly warm. He pulled back the sheet to get out of bed when he saw it: a small, red splotch on her side of the fitted sheet. He hadn’t asked her why she had stopped cooking. He had understood. They had been trying for a long time now. They had tried many things. It was hard to remember a time where they weren’t trying. They had been to doctors, and they had taken tests. They had done all of the

17 right things. “Sometimes these things happen,” said one doctor after looking down at his clipboard, clearly without anything further to say, “All I can tell you to do is to keep trying right now.” Ann would sit there in her gown that crinkled. And later, back in their quiet home, they would. But like clockwork, Gary would wake up to find a splotch of blood, her rummaging for something to make the bleeding stop, trying to make a harsh enough sound with her hands hitting cardboard and tearing open packaging to express her frustration. When Gary finally got back to the house he opened the garage and wheeled everything in. He walked over to the door leading into the house and reached for the switches on the wall. The fluorescents hummed to life. He wheeled the mud over to the workbench covered with a large blue plastic tarp over it, and shoveled the mud onto it. The mud made a loud, flat squish as it hit the tarp with each shovelful. The sweat that had accumulated from his palms made him grip the handle harder with each lift. Gary wished he had bought a pair of gloves when he had bought the shovel. He was sure his body would punish his hands with blisters for this indiscretion. It was only physics, friction, after all. As he lifted the last load onto the workbench, he could feel the places forming on his hands where he usually got blisters, between his thumb and forefinger, and between his ring and middle fingers. But it had been a long time since he had time to do something with his bare hands. When he was younger, before he and Ann were married, when they ate TV dinners and slept in, he had sculpted. Made so many things with his hands. Now he spent his days building brick enclosures. This project had to feel personal. A little suffering on his part would, in his mind, make it more worthwhile. On the table, the pile looked more like a craggy mountain of rock than one made of mud. Gary soon changed that after rolling up his sleeves. He pressed his hands into the mud. He flattened it, shaping it, working with it until it was warm. He wanted to get it right, or at least, the shapes right. The larger shapes were easy enough: the torso, head and shoulders were easier than the smaller appendages. Hands were troublesome things to make; the fingers emanating from the palms had to be massaged and smoothed into their shapes; their proportions had to be right. Toes were equally hard. Lips came easy though, as did the nose. He made a small cave for the mouth with his thumbs, pushing out and down until it became a space that he could fit three of his fingers into, then he coaxing the mud into the shape of lips. Gary pinched it forward from the head at the right place and smoothed when he needed to. Then the eyes. It was not necessary to

18 make everything exact. Putting everything in the right place was more important. The garage had lost what little light was coming through the small windows on the garage doors by the time that he was satisfied. He stepped back a final time and looked at the small boy rising out of what had once been a mountain of mud, and saw that it was good. He went to the tool cabinet and opened a drawer, finding the small rod that he had also picked out at the hardware store that had the shape of a pencil, one end beveling down into a cone. On the child’s forehead, he wrote in Hebrew emet, “truth.” Gary stepped back again and looked down at himself, at his once-grey shirt and black sweatpants, now covered with mud and dark patches of sweat, and he finally noticed the soreness in his legs, how heavy his clothes felt. They were soon wadded into a ball of salt and mud and water and then he stood naked and began moving toward the door to the kitchen. Gary moved through the basement. Should he be doing this? He had read quite a few books about these things. The rabbi in Hebrew school used to tell them of the Golem. But it was a sculpture. He wasn’t devout. He’d not been to temple in years. The air in the basement was clammy against his skin and gave him goosebumps as the soles of his bare feet shivered slightly when they touched the cool concrete floor of the basement. As Gary made his way through the living room, he saw Ann sitting on the couch with her head in her hands. She had not heard the pads of his feet, had not heard the door to the basement open and shut. He didn’t say anything to announce his presence, and trudged upstairs, his clammy feet sticking slightly to the laminate hardwood. Later that night he found himself unable to sleep in bed with his wife. Ann was next to him, sleeping. At least he thought that she was. Gary turned over to lie on his back, and he turned his head to the left to look at her, the bedsheets rustling, unchanged from two weeks ago. He thought about what was down in the basement. It wasn’t finished yet. He would have to go back down tomorrow morning and finish the project. But the weight of the mud, or at least the thought of it, still made his shoulders sore. He kept looking at the back of Ann’s head, at her shoulders. They looked taut and nervous. He wondered if he should say something to her about what was in the basement. He opened his mouth to see if he could even make a noise, but his throat was nearly dry. Earlier, when he had been eating dinner, he had thought about telling her that he still loved her. When he tried to tell her again, his face became suddenly hot and red and Gary went back to busying himself with his frozen dinner, a bowl of pasta that had recently emerged from the microwave and was still too

19 hot to eat. There wasn’t any point in saying it again, like some incantation, and so he didn’t say it all again. About how this was no one’s fault. About how unfortunate it was. There wasn’t any point to repeat it. As Gary lay in bed he thought about He rolled back over to look out from his side of the bed and closed his eyes. When Gary woke up again it was still dark, but not pitch. He wasn’t sure why he woke up, but he felt the need to look around. He sometimes woke up like this in the night, which he almost always attributed to some evolutionary holdover that he had somehow inherited when humans didn’t live in houses. It was always a feeling of something watching him, which turned out to be the cat nine times out of ten, but this time it was different. This time, when he looked around in order to placate his nerves, he saw the faint outline of a fairly short person standing in the doorway to the bedroom. Gary was frightened. He knew that he had not finished the project, knew that it was not ready. He tried to keep his hand from shaking, tried to make sure that it was steady when he turned the knob on the bedside reading lamp. What the glow of the lamp revealed made him almost shout, but Gary covered his mouth quickly with his hands as if he could gather the sound back into himself. It looked much the same as he had constructed it, only now the boy that looked to be in relief in the mud was somehow inflated and ever more three-dimensional. What he had hypothesized earlier from his books that he had read, the countless sources that he had dismissed as fiction, were suddenly, horribly true. The thing spoke, almost in a quiet and gurgling fashion, but it spoke all the same. “Father,” the thing quietly croaked, “was this wise to do?” Gary wanted to say many things at this point. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. He wanted to wake Ann and run. But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he stared into the eyes that he had fashioned just hours ago. They had a slight glow with a gentle orange light emanating from them. “Father,” the thing said again, “are you alright?” It edged towards him, walking, somehow, Gary wasn’t sure how. There were no muscles that he had made to make it walk. Yet here it was, walking, slightly tracking mud on the carpet that Ann had loved so much. Gary snapped back to reality. He quietly sprung out of bed and gathered the child’s naked body in his arms. “I’m alright,” he said. “I just wasn’t sure you were real.” “But I am real, abba,” it said to him, slightly hurt. Gary was certain that he was having a

20 dream. How else could this be happening? So he decided it was best to play along. “I know you are. I was just frightened,” he said, carrying the child back downstairs. “I was frightened too,” the clay child said, “I woke up in this dark place, alone. So I looked for you. And I found you. And I was happy.” The child was hefty; its skin hard, yet smooth, The way he had fashioned for it. Yet somehow, it quivered with something else, something that had to do with that orange glow. Somehow it was breathing. “Abba, where are we going?” it said. There was a quaver in its voice, “Why isn’t ama awake?” “She’s... she’s tired, that’s all. Let’s just get you to bed. And into some clothes.” “Thank you, abba,” the clay child said, its face crinkling into a smile. Gary smiled back. Gary went to the laundry hamper and removed some clothes. He grabbed an old Led Zeppelin shirt with Icarus on it that was outdated and slightly rank, and another pair of sweatpants that were not entirely ruined, and handed them to the child, who despite being born only hours ago, put them on. “Thank you abba,” the clay child said. “You’re welcome, son,” Gary said. He was getting oddly attached. He wished that he could somehow manipulate this to be something more exciting, but he knew what he needed to do. “Let’s put you to bed,” he said, taking the child by the hand and leading him back to the basement. He laid the clothed clay child now on the basement floor. “Abba, what is sleep?” the clay child asked. “It’s when you go to sleep,” Gary said. “Everyone does it. Your mother does it, I do it. Even bugs do it.” The clay child smiled, reassured. “So now, you have to do it too.” “Will I wake up?” the clay child asked. Somehow this gave Gary more pause than usual, but he stifled the feeling and instead gently moved his hand towards the child’s forehead, towards the emet that he had made only hours ago. It was probably the best way to end the dream. It felt somewhat more poetic than his usual dreams, which consisted of either being stalked by an unseen something in the dark or being chased by that same something through a confined space. “Yes, you will,” he said. It felt somehow incredibly bad to say something like this. To lie. He touched the forehead where the mark was, and gently rubbed away the aleph, which made met. As he rubbed away the letter, the clay child’s eyes dimmed and seemed to Gary to close.

21 The child, now inert and yet still moist, began to ooze back into its previous state when Gary had it on his workbench earlier. Gary felt his eyes well up. He wasn’t sure why this was happening, but it did feel emotional. He left the child where it was meant to be left. It was a dream, but he cleaned up his hands, which were caked with mud, in case he was sleepwalking, and then trudged back up to bed. The next morning Gary woke up and went downstairs. Ann was cooking again. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said. “It’s fine,” he said, “It’s frustrating.” “I know,” she said. He kissed her gently on her cheek. They had breakfast, and laughed together at something dumb. They knew it was, but the laughter felt good. Gary went out to the basement later, back to the sculpture that he had made. What would he do with it? Clay wasn’t his medium, so he thought it would be best to show it to Ann. But it felt inappropriate at best. It was a golem after all. A mass of clay. A shape. Not a person. But as he neared the workbench, turning on the light in the basement to show him more, he saw the child. It was clad, as he had left it, in sweatpants and a Zeppelin shirt, only now it looked rotten and melted. Gary’s eyes widened. He covered the child with the tarp. He put it in the trash. He tried to forget. But he couldn’t.

22 DINNER PARTY

So there you are, Martha, standing at the kitchen counter, so domestic, Daisy Dukes, low- cut white top, hair in a ponytail, no makeup, no bra, let’s have a look at your toenails. Martha, your toenails are disgusting, but your shoes are fabulous and hot pink, which makes us conflicted. You jammed your big toenail back into the nailbed two weeks ago when you were running to catch up to the train and you tripped and fell, that is what you had told us when we had last spoke with each other over the phone. It could all be fixed, or at least appear to be fixed, Martha, if you would just let us paint your toenails, or at the very least, have us refer you to someone who can paint them in a way that will make them decidedly less disgusting, less yellow and black and bruised. Have some caviar. We are hungry, Martha, we could almost force ourselves to eat your dog’s hindquarters, even though, Ginger, your dog, is tough and stringy and has not a great mouthfeel for us, we suspect this even though we have not tried Ginger yet, Martha. Martha, it is time to clean yourself up and make yourself look even more presentable than you already are, the bathroom awaits you, white and immaculate, just the way that you like it and in the exact way that you always have expected it to be, your soapdish, once a bowl that you ate cereal out of as a college student, is now a soapdish, Martha. The unwashed bath mat is almost two years old, nearing optimum ripeness of odor barring a few more opportunities to remember, when you enter the radio will play your song, "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," or some other obscure hit you forgot that you actually loved from maybe thirty-five years ago, you will struggle to remember it when you first enter the shower, when the water first hits against your skin and steams against the glass, but you will only recognize it when you find yourself falling in love with it, only realizing that after the first bar it is impossible to turn off the radio, to reach beyond your means and press the button, flip the switch to off, and will have to wait out the broadcast for another opportunity to do so. Martha, tend to your dog, Ginger, make it bark, frighten the cicadas that are currently surfacing in the garden, we cannot stand their buzzing, buzzing ways. Nathaniel is at once forever and nothing, Martha, we were certain that we had been good friends, he stood often where you stand, Martha, clad only in his plain slippers, with his guilty walks and his guilty face and his guilty fashion of movement, his hobbling from one foot to the other in a dance, Martha, like the class that you took in college, which Nathaniel incidentally did consider once. Martha,

23 you could have met him, had he not died of infection when he did, we were somewhat familiar with him, Martha, we were only familiar with him in the sense that he was familiar with you, which he in fact, was not. Martha, do you know a one Helga, no Helga appears in your wedding registry, or the list of invitations that you sent out to your wedding at least two years ago and which no one attended. She came knocking at our door, Martha, she was asking for you in the most plaintive and desperate way possible, dressed in her flannel pajamas, claiming to have come from next door, we remember it was cold, Martha, when we saw her, Helga, but we only remember that we were cold because we were not sweating. We are very sweaty now, Martha, if you cannot already see us sweating in the way that we are, we must use handkerchiefs to daub our heads and prevent the sweat from showing in the most unseemly places within our clothes. Helga is on the telephone, hurry up and take this receiver, Martha, hurry hurry. She has been still calling you, Martha, even though this is the wrong number to call for you, Martha. Oh, and Martha, we were wanting to tell you something else: That for all of Holy Week we were keeping watch, Martha, we were attending church every day, and then on Holy Thursday, when they put the Eucharist in the Tabernacle, did you know, Martha, that once they run out of Eucharist on Good Friday, that they can't give out anymore, Martha, because Christ has already given enough of himself that day, symbolically at least he has. We learned this while we were holding candles, and Martha, it was a wonderful thing to learn, that we didn't even have to go to Church after Holy Thursday, and we held our candle and we jumped for joy, and we were so relieved and yet afterwards in the darkness of our own basement, we felt terribly alone and yet together in our aloneness. Have a martini, Martha, drink some vodka, have some more caviar, you can never have too much, it seems overwhelming, we understand where you are coming from on this matter, how you are not wanted, Martha, how you have been thinking about ending the whole relationship with Don, we are sorry that we are talking over you, Martha, we don't mean to impose upon your suffering. But where will you go, Martha? Don will ask you this when he comes home eventually and finds out that you have gone, Martha. Martha, he will ask questions of us, questions that we do not want to answer, we are polite, Martha, and we don't want to assume anything in particular about your demeanor, Don is an entomologist after all, understanding insects more than people. Don, he is not understandable at times, his motivations for loving you a secret that he keeps within himself, along with the status of his dry-cleaning,

24 which he hasn't picked up in about two months, Martha, we understand that he is following Brood XIII, the Great Southern Brood of cicadas, this fact about him makes him interesting to us, because we don't want to assume that he can do what we are unable to do. But it is not a big deal to us what he is trying to do Martha, maybe you and Don can take up an activity with us, tomorrow we are playing doubles tennis, followed by doubles squash, and you and Don are welcome to join, unless Don is busy, as he can usually be assumed to be busy collecting specimens as they burrow upwards in order to mate and reproduce and continue to make the racket that makes us so unwell. You can go to the room we have prepared for you, Martha, underneath the stairs, it is a closet and it also doubles as a storage space for our unwanted shoes, and it was also where Janine slept before we sent her away to college. Janine, do you know of her, Martha? We certainly must have told you about her, about her hair and the way that she liked to spend hours curling it, she would tell us jokes and we would laugh and laugh even though she was an otherwise boring houseguest, an otherwise boring lecturer, an otherwise boring human being. She told us about you, Martha, about how you met her at a party that we had thrown ages ago, when you first moved in, before you were dating Don, she told us all about you, we think that she had a crush on you, that she was unfamiliar with what to do with this particular desire, and finally she said to us "I'm moving out!" from her place beneath the stairs, which made us sad, but at least we have now remembered the reasoning for why. Sometimes she still writes to us, Martha, she says that we were such prudes, we received the letter from her and a decoder ring was included, and we do not want to bore you with the other extraneous details other than that she has found some sort of happiness with which to somehow wave in our faces, she is with a man, Thom, which is an interesting name to say out loud. It sounds nothing like it should. If you could, Martha please help us down here, to the cellar, which is below where you will be living if you choose to live with us, we can get more caviar and at least some more vodka, Martha, we are here distilling our own, and we are sorry about the smell. We had a man building the cellar, Martha, and oh what a lovely man he was, only coming in on weekdays to do his work, very meticulous, very slow, but meticulous all the same, his name was Horace, and was a good person by all accounts, we read the reviews, he is certified, Horace, but he had to be whisked away to the Hamptons to work on a project, he told us, something secret, but we heard rumors it was to make flaired adjustments for the celebrities in the Hamptons, to straighten some

25 shelving that had gone terribly wrong, the wood warping, see this cedar, Martha? he was telling us that this cedar would not warp in the heat, in the humidity, and he told us that on the day that he left us, and we had to let him go, we couldn't let this opportunity pass him by, and he was so thankful. We wanted you to help us make a monument to him, you were so good when you used that wood turner that you rented for that one purpose, Martha, if you could etch something meaningful in this beam here, it would be so lovely of you to do, perhaps include some vague description of the fantastic, inscribed as such "TO DEAR HORACE, MASTER CRAFTSMAN®,” and then we might, if your work is more than satisfactory, and if your intended separation turns into a full-blown divorce, Martha, not that we would want that to happen, but we have heard you complain often enough about how difficult he is, and how it is not just Don who is difficult, but his mother is even more so, the messages that she left you on the telephone, the passive-aggressive missives and referrals about fertility tests and fertility specialists, even though Don’s genome, we have been told, is full of defective chromosomes, and we are on your side, we always have been, but we are concerned for you, Martha and we would like you to stay with us. Martha, you are trying to not scratch yourself. We know what you are trying to do, and it won't end well for you if you are going to keep up such nonsense, a few months ago we were reading your diary, and we won’t blab to anyone, when you look up our names in the dictionary under the entry “blabbermouth” we are nowhere to be found we know how you are lusting after Janine, how her breasts were such a temporary yet engrossing enticement, your skin, it is not peeling is it? You should be ashamed of yourself. Your potential lovers have situated themselves outside of the gate, we can see from the footage on the security camera that they are well-dressed and they look so snappy, some of them are wearing ascots, Martha, we haven’t seen people wear ascots as serious formal dinner wear for perhaps three generations, back then we were reading Pushkin and making pretentious statements about the status of the caviar trade, speak of the devil, let us spoon you some, we bought the spoon from the Jonathan down the road who has goats and he is just oh-so-wonderful, harvests the horns from the goats himself, this spoon is made from his prizewinner from last year, and it just makes the caviar so flavorful, so wonderful, so rich and tender with something that we thought was only in our memories. There's a lot of muttering outside and you should go see to it, and try to kill a few more cicadas, here is some pesticide, use it on them both, spray it

26 thoroughly and make sure that they all receive a hefty dose of repellant. Pass the vermouth, Martha, we thought we were running out, but we were wrong. No, the cellar not even been begun to be began at that period and time which we thought impossible, we were open to opinions before the construction of the cellar, before Horace, but we are grateful that you have come along as you have Martha, appearing to us to be in the proper attire that we would consider for such special occasions, there were some nights, leading up to our encounter today, that we had been wary of you before, we must confess this fact, Martha. We had been initially worried, Martha, that you would have a sort of, shall we say, low opinion of us, that would be the thing to say, and we do not want you to have such thoughts about us, as we are aware of the things that have happened to you, we must insist that we were merely curious about your demeanor, and you have not disappointed us in the slightest, with your attire as you had come to attend our little gathering, we were wondering, Martha, about your willingness to stay with us, as we know that this offer is still on the table, and we feel ashamed about earlier, when we tried to get you to stay with us in the room that Janine occupied under the stairs, we were certainly not wanting to ultimately place you there, as it is a very loud place to be in the house, as we are wont to go up and down the stairs every hour. Have a halibut. It also happens to be the kind of caviar that we offered to you earlier, we often play with our food afterwards, we don’t quite make puppets out of the fish heads, not as much as we were to do some avant-garde performance pieces that are sometimes incredibly lucrative. Martha we are in sore need of your help around here, surely you can spare a hand, spare a foot, spare a wood burner, we were losing our mind when you told us the story about Don, about how he took you to see Brood XIII, you told us, Martha, that you were thinking about leaving him because of the cicadas, because of the noises that they made, we cannot abide by them, and isn’t this halibut good incidentally, but the cicadas weren’t, and Don picked one up and showed you the cicada, and you thought it was harmless, and as he dropped it its wings unfurled and it rocketed towards your eye, and how it collided with your eye, and how that explained the bruise on your eye, but you do not deserve this Martha. Martha, it is better if you were to stay here and garden with us, help us kill Brood XIII, you can do it, we believe in you, believe in your low-cut blouse that is somewhat dirty, in your Daisy Dukes, you could be the thing that helps you out, or we could be the ones to save you. It doesn’t matter, Martha, how you see it, but it is important to note that the relationship is mutually

27 beneficial. Come and live with us, Martha, until the divorce is finalized. We know he is not good for you and vice versa, so why not? If the telephone should ring don’t answer it, instead, we will and you can drink to your heart’s content, have our wine, all that we ask is that you help us memorialize Horace, he was such a good man, but he is gone, and choose a new lover from the various fauna outside, perhaps Janine will stop being disappeared and perhaps she can return from her studies, hopefully less vindictive, Nathaniel, in his own strange way will stay gone, and Don will eventually become a member of the Brood, he will forget about you, and he could leave you alone and there you will be, Martha. We remember the first time that we saw you from the house next door, how we crept around and looked into your window, doing it to keep our minds sharp like we are wont to do the daily crossword, and you are only twenty-seven or is it perhaps twenty-eight and we are uncertain but we will eventually verify, Martha, have some more caviar, paint your toenails, our other neighbors were very unkind towards you and without pity and that deflated our evening when we found out through interception of their mail, but here we are, and the little dog is not entirely broken, and the suitors, male and female alike, are pushing on the gate, and it’s all your fault, Martha, all your fault with the cicadas buzzing.*

* The narrative modes employed within this particular piece borrow heavily from Donald Barthelme’s short story, “Träumerei,” which appears in Sixty Stories.

28 HOW TO FEEL GUILTY

First, when you are small, do something awful. It’s best if you’re stupid enough at an early age to do something grossly irresponsible. Scare your sister off of a short ledge so that she falls and breaks her arm. In the aftermath, instead of helping her, run away and hide. Or while wrestling with your sister, as you are wont to do, accidentally dislocate her shoulder and feel nothing as you watch her arm go limp. Unprovoked acts of violence are highly recommended at a young age so that at fourteen you can retroactively self-diagnose as a sociopath. When you are fourteen, forget about the laundry that you left in the washer overnight. In the morning, when your mother calls loudly for you by your first and middle names, run to her as though she is having a heart attack. “Daniel Thomas!” she yells. Your middle name is the trump card in your mother’s arsenal. She is not to be trifled with. Your wears scrubs printed with amusing patterns of cats while she blasts people with radiation in order to take pictures of their insides. Enter the laundry room. It is small and cramped. Your mother shoves a white school uniform polo shirt in your face so that it hovers just under your nose. “Smell,” she says. Inhale. The odor of the small amount of damp mildew is enough to activate your gag reflex. Let it remind you of sour milk. “This is what happens when they go sour,” she says to you. Her lips tighten into a thin, pinkish line. “Don’t let it happen again.” Apologize profusely. Tell her you won’t. A few weeks later, let it happen again, only this time your mother doesn’t know. As you listen to the water rush into the tumbler a second time, feel the thrill of getting away with something dampened by your acute sense of shame. Hold your guilt inside yourself like the earth holds a seed. Water it with your anxieties until it sprouts. Attend parochial high school to expedite the process. Once you discover how to pleasure yourself, ask yourself, “Am I going to Hell?” each time you ejaculate. Ask this question of yourself when you wake up from intense dreams to a torrent of semen jettisoning from you in an awful sticky flood of shame in order to maximize the possibility of eternal damnation. Think about talking to the school counselor about your anxieties. When you finally decide to talk to her, enter her office to find out that the counselor has been fired and replaced with a nun directly from Vatican City. Never go there again. At

29 night, subconsciously dream of your shame manifesting itself as every unspoken word, every masturbatory fantasy, every forgotten errand. Two years later, go to confession. Enter the booth. Kneel and confess your sins. Do not confess about your chronic masturbatory habits, your inopportune erections, the fact that you like boys and girls. Instead, make something else up to feel guilty about. Pause in the right places in your speech to indicate an incredibly spotty memory. Tell him that you fought with your sister yet again, which is true. You threatened to kick her out of your moving car, which is also true, but it is something that you say on the regular, an empty threat. Use the skills you’ve recently learned in acting class and strive for an Oscar-winning performance. Watch the priest’s silhouetted face nod like a metronome through the lattice screen as if he doesn’t even hear you. Go through the motions when he absolves you. Keep your head bowed low to show your humility. As you exit the confessional, feel relieved. Five minutes later, feel your familiar sense of dread return. In junior year during English class, become preoccupied with the scent of your shirt instead of the intricacies of a prose translation of “The Dream of the Rood.” Mom and Dad read a version of this story to you when you were small and couldn't turn the pages. Fake a nervous tick that will allow you to smell the collar of your shirt, a white polo that stains easily. Breathe deeply and then cough. Decide that your shirt is still sour even though your mother hasn’t chided you about it. During his lecture, Mr. Lancet singles you out and demands to have the obvious symbolism of the poem explained. He has a drooping face and a bad case of scoliosis. “Or are you more interested in your shirt than in this class?” he says. Sigh wearily. Prove that you were paying attention. Resolve to at least look the part of a student. Two years later, find yourself go to college. At first, be undecided about your major. During your first week there, decide to stop masturbating. Pitch it to yourself as a challenge, rather than penance. Fold after a week. Give up in the communal shower stalls early on a Saturday morning as the rest of your hallmates sleep. Keep your head bowed because you are taller than the shower stall so no one can see the ridiculous faces you make. In the aftermath, clean yourself up with thoroughly as if you are disposing of a body, double and triple checking your efforts. Make sure it all goes down the drain. Decide to major in theatre. At college, date a few women. Date one for two years. Get serious about the relationship. In a late night melodramatic confessional, tell her that you like boys too. Hear the silent

30 background noise on her end of the line. Decide as a couple that you are both going to “work through this.” A few months later, call her while you’re home and standing on the back porch. Get into an argument with her over nothing that will lead to her breaking off the relationship. Let her break up with you for reasons other than that you like boys and girls. Let her sad voice that shrieks over the phone break up with you over broken appointments, missed anniversaries, misplaced keys, and bad dates at nice restaurants. Graduate from college with a minor in Theatre. A year after college, have a threesome on a whim. It is an easy thing to do, though actually going through with it requires a copious amount of alcohol. Go to a party, having not seen any of your college friends in almost a year. Drunkenly encounter one of your classmates as he emerges from the bathroom. He is skinnier than you will ever be. You’ve felt the tension between the two of you all night, as you have had nearly half of the bourbon that you brought over earlier. The first move comes easy to him. Let him kiss you first. Notice the electric feeling between the two of you, the quiet sound of his stubble rubbing against yours. Press your body against his in the hallway when you kiss him back. Feel the indecision of your uncertain hands before they wrapping around his waist and shoulders. Return to the living room together and end up cavorting with the party’s hostess, a redhead who can drink you under the table and has been interested in you for a while. Later on, join them in the master bedroom. Become enthralled by your six wandering hands, your three wandering mouths, the pleasurable friction your bodies make in the dark. Feel the mood turn when your hostess, in an attempt to spice things up, demand that you have your way with him. Though you are inebriated, as you stumble to find his legs, feel him touch, then grip your chest hair in a way that screams to you, “not now.” Instead, fake it with some coordinated and mimed thrusting. Your hostess attempts to watch in the near darkness from the other side of the bed, the faint outline of her fire engine-red hair backlit from the light coming from underneath the door. Wake up the next morning, naked and sandwiched between the two of them. Over the next few weeks, have vivid and intense conversations with the boy you slept with at the party. He is affectionate, and very loving. As you read his texts, feel your face flush. At night when you are in bed, imagine he is the pillow that you hold tightly against you. Try to recreate his warmth, his steadiness. Dream about the moment that he touched your face the morning after and looked into your eyes. After a few weeks, feel the weight of something resembling a sinking rock within your stomach. Pick up the phone when he calls you a few

31 weeks later, wanting to come over to your house for the weekend. Become frightened of what will happen. Admit to him your parents don’t know about you. Tell him that you have to maintain this facade. Tell him three hours is too far for him to drive to see you. Tell him that it won’t work out. In your bed at night, lie down and regret. A few months later, find yourself working in a hotel. You applied and admitted during the interview that you know nothing about waiting tables, but somehow you got the job. Your boss is young and incredibly German. He is tall and lanky and from Cologne, ready and willing to schmooze at any given moment. He has enough money for a suit, but never bothers to get it tailored to fit his gangly frame. He looks like a man who is starving himself to death. Learn from him. Pretend to hang on his every word. He talks fast and mispronounces words, yet is very exacting. In your mind, allow yourself to be amused when he pronounces the “w” in swordfish. “Where are the forks?” he asks, jabbing his fingers here and there at missing silverware on the tables. “Dan and me are almost done,” your co-worker will say, a lanky Venezuelan with a terrible lisp. Follow the Venezuelan’s lead. Stick the forks in unbearably hot water and continue to polish them furiously, trying in vain to keep up with your co-worker, who is inhumanly fast. He is better at this than you and always will be. Two weeks later, join a dating site in order to alleviate loneliness. Fill out the questionnaire. Revise your profile many times. Agonize over every detail. Write lengthy addenda to arbitrary questions concerning potential relationship dealbreakers to showcase your nuance. Curse the fact there are no pictures of you to use that are current that are of just you by yourself. After hours of hemming and hawing, choose a picture where you are standing between your mother and your sister in Times Square. Crop it so that the only your image remains as a large, slender rectangle. This one at least looks interesting. Look at potential matches. Be harsh. Be as picky as Goldilocks. Declare yourself as bisexual on your profile. When you converse with women, notice the conversation go nowhere beyond pleasantries. Three weeks later the German with the ill-fitting suit will present you with various plates as a test of your mastery of menu memorization. Describe the dishes using your extensive vocabulary which allows for maximum bullshitting. That night, come home from your to find a message from someone on the dating website. Bill is somewhat comely, but he looks safe. He

32 has a paunch, a half donut of fat protruding from his stomach. Not like the other men who solicit you in the night, buff and risky. He has gauges in his ears. He seems edgy, yet friendly. As you build a rapport, find that you both like the same things. Feel a timid tingle of excitement when your phone vibrates in your pocket with a message from him. Interpret it as a signal that you are interesting; you are needed; you are attractive. He enjoys film like you do, but your tastes clash. Indulge him anyway. Go over to his house to watch Suspiria the next weekend. It’s not as great as he says it is. Be unimpressed in the plot mechanics of a poorly dubbed Italian horror film. But at least let the extravagant color schemes hold your attention. As the movie ends, feel his hairy leg brush against yours as he moves in to kiss you. “You’re fucking hot,” he whispers in a low nasal growl, his breath hot in your ear. Admire his tattoos. His record collection. He has more contemporary albums than you. He has Kid A on vinyl. As the first ten inch disk plays, make out with him. Fool around with him. He tells you all of the nicest things, which you listen to as he whispers them under his breath in your ear as you spoon together in his bed. No one has been this nice to you in a while. As you lay there together in bed, become afraid that you will fall for him, afraid that post-ejaculatory doses of oxytocin will make you too emotionally invested. Be honest when he asks you questions about your past. He has slept with women too, but he says he didn’t like it. Listen to him scoff at you with total incredulity as you respond that you did, and still do. “Once you have sex with a guy, you’ll never go back,” he says. Tell him you’ll think about it, but not to get his hopes up. Turn him down when he offers to top you. Listen to him beg and plead. Tell him you’d like to do everything but that right now. Resolve to be aloof, but be a gracious guest when you leave. A week later at your job, notice that you are doing well. Impress guest after guest with your well-rehearsed knowledge of tonight’s dishes. Tonight, you are working the private dining room. Tonight, your clients, as always, are important. People who can order hundreds of dollars of wine in an eyeblink. Tonight’s guests are the Pescatellis, intrepid Mediterranean tourists, voracious carnivores. Tell them about the beef carpaccio drizzled with truffle oil and their eyes go wide with bloodlust. Tell them about the special twenty-two ounce ribeye steak, bone-in, that will be served cooked to order with broccolini upon a bed of sweet potato gratin. When they ask about the sweet potato gratin, express enthusiasm. Describe the gratin, composed of thinly sliced sweet and Idaho potatoes, layered and baked with cream and Parmesan cheese. Omit the fact that

33 within one serving of the sweet potato gratin lies an entire daily recommended amount of calories. Smile, but not too much. Be enthusiastic. Make them feel important. Listen to their stories about Sicily. Indulge them. Believe that you enjoy their company, if only for a moment. It’s what you are there for. Collect the check only after they have left the restaurant. Do not open it until you have left the service floor. Do not be surprised about the over twenty percent tip that is left by the balding Pescatelli patriarch. Quietly pocket it. Attend to another table in much the same manner. Notice that they are all the same. Golfers with too much time on their hands; CEOs with clients to wine and dine; Men in mid-life crises with wives to impress. Notice they are all the same. Do what you are always advised to do: Smile and nod. Take the money. Rinse and repeat. When dinner rush is over, after the sous chef is finished speaking machine-gun-speed instructions to the Malaysian line cooks, after all of the money has been counted, passed from hand to filthy hand to yours, the phone in your pocket vibrates. It’s Bill, but he isn’t flirting with you this time. Only two words glow from the screen of your phone, “Come over.” Arrive at Bill’s door. Knock. Feel another buzz in your pocket. Look at your phone. “I’m in here,” glows his text, “door’s unlocked.” Enter and lock the door behind you. He is in the bedroom. He lies on his bed shirtless, his great pale paunch exposed. Undress and lie next to him. He wears only pale blue boxer briefs, though these are easily dispatched with. As your head lightly bobs up and down, begin to think that tonight might end in some kind of satisfying intimacy. When he makes it clear that he wants more, tell him you don’t have a condom. You had conveniently forgotten earlier on your way there. It is a valid excuse. But he doesn’t budge. “A condom is terrible though,” he says, pleading in his, nasally whine, “more friction.” Bill is partially right. But you know better. Still refuse. But after you see his face adopt a decidedly pouty look, feel obligated to at least try. His eyes narrow and his mouth curls upwards into a smile. “After the first time it gets better. Try to relax,” he says. But after his stubby member crosses your threshold, become skeptical. Still, close your eyes and touch his chest in way that feels affirmative.

34 “Try to relax,” he says again, failing to soothe you. Make your pained moans sound affirmative. His belly slaps against your legs, making a soft sound of skin-against-skin that is sickening. Feel like you will ejaculate even though you are not hard. With secret hatred, spurt it out onto his sheets. “Goddamnit,” he snaps. Feel a sense of relief followed by emptiness when he exits you. Decide that this is a good thing as he gathers up his bedsheets in frustration. Apologize, but feel no remorse. “It’s not a problem, it’s just a pet peeve of mine” he says, the sheets now gathered against his pale and naked body, even though his furrowed brow and slightly clenched teeth say otherwise. Realize this is your chance to escape. Keep your face down and low as you put on your dirty uniform again. Meekly say goodnight and half-run out the door. In your car, take the long way home. Get on the interstate. Miss the fastest exit home. Neil Young blares through your car stereo, but you are not listening to it. Hear it only faintly in the background, even though you can feel the sound against your body. As you zoom down the highway, think about the laundry. Keep your eyes on the road, but sniff the collar of your shirt. Sour again, now tinged with his musk. When you get home, try to make a quiet entrance. Park outside in order to avoid opening the loud motorized garage door. Do not slam the middle door when closing it. Go upstairs and enter your mother’s room. “I’m home,” you say. She turns over, half-asleep, her eyes still closed. “Your clothes went sour in the washer,” she says as though she is an automaton delivering a pre-recorded message. Feel your spine recede into itself Re-wash the clothes, now having pressed the “fresh hold” button on the washing machine. Go to your room. Strip off your clothes. Get into bed. Turn out the light. Stare into one of the blades of the ceiling fan until the grain of wood engulfs your vision. Hold the pillows close to your chest, and think about him, the first one. How he could be here, holding you in the darkness. Put your hand where his curly hair would be. Run your fingers through it. Imagine the weight of his head as it rests against your sternum. Feel his arms and legs wrap around yours, becoming two entwined and pasty freckled figures. Realize that he isn’t there.

35 FROMAGÈRE

1. It's when I'm at a dinner party that it happens. I am working. I'm serving food, like I always do, but I'm also in charge of being a sommelier of cheeses. I can identify maybe 24 different cheeses without employing the use of a palate cleanser. Sometimes people ask me what kind of cheese that they are eating. Tonight they are eating Manchego cheese. Specifically, they are eating a cheese called El Greco Manchego, and everyone is enjoying it.

2. There is a man there who is short and squat. He has blonde hair and a pudgy face that borders too much on the infantile rather than the simply fat. He asks me about the cheese El Greco Manchego. I give him the usual answer as always, quoting directly from The Food Lover's Companion. "It is Spain's most famous cheese, so named because it originally was made only from the milk of Manchego sheep that grazed the famous plains of La Mancha. It's sometimes called the cheese of Don Quixote because Cervantes mentions it in his novel named for the roaming delusional knight of La Mancha. It is a rich and golden semi-hard cheese with a slightly piquant flavor."

3. The man is incredibly impressed and awestruck, giddily clapping his hands almost like a small toddler, only with a larger frame. And more girth. This is not how most people react when I explain to them the various cheeses that they are sampling. They typically run the gamut from nonplussed to totally enthused. I have never seen a grown man clap his hands like that.

4. It is only later that night that I figure out that I was speaking to none other than the Emperor himself. He is much shorter than I remember from his pictures in appearances at state-sanctioned events. I am not overly fond of what is to come, as the Emperor, as we know, is wont to change his mind, and frequently. There was the rumor that those who had been chosen to make cheese were already dead, but I don’t want to believe that. I am worried, but I shrug it all off and decide to go to sleep instead.

5. Later on I receive a phone call while we are preparing to have yet another dinner at yet another function. They all blend together so well I have a large amount of trouble remembering who the

36 event is exactly for. The headwaiter is holding the phone for me when I arrive, and he looks positively pallid. He hands me the phone, and I can tell by the moisture left on the handset's handle that holds the earpiece and the microphone together that his palms are sweaty. His palms usually only become sweaty at the thought of the Emperor, or even the Emperor’s spouse. I say hello into the earpiece.

6. It is the Emperor. He is still raving about the description of the cheese that I had given to him last night. I can feel the vibration of his voice as it thunders through the handset. I feel as though the Emperor is not well. He has not been well ever since he had come back from The War. We have all been forbidden to talk about The War in his presence. Any mention of The War will have us thrown in the dungeon, or even worse. No one knows what the phrase "or even worse" means, but they are certain that it is worse than the dungeon, which is already bad. The Emperor screeches at me through the phone that I am to come to his court immediately. I am dumbfounded and very much afraid. Uncertain if he will kill me, I tell him that I will be there.

7. I hang up the phone. I tremble. I am unsure of what to think. What do I do now? There is no choice. I must go and make cheese, even though I don’t know how. I tell the headwaiter what has transpired. He hugs me tightly, and after we stop embracing, I can feel two very large wet spots where his hands had been. I catch a glimpse of his hands and they are positively glistening with sweat, dripping down his soaking palms. Droplets of sweat threaten to create hand-sweat puddles on the floor. While still embracing him long and I tell him that he should maybe wear gloves. His eyes grow wide as he tells me that he wishes that I didn’t have to leave, and then he hugs me again. When we finish embracing, my shirt is completely soaked through. There is a limo waiting for me outside already, as the Emperor has told me there would be. I get in and I am driven to the palace, where I do not have the opportunity to talk to the driver. Nothing needs to be said.

8. I am here at the palace. It lives up to its name. It towers above the rest of the city, its opulence unforgettable. Towers sometimes burst into clouds on dreary days. There are many rooms, it seems, as I am being herded through the palace as though I were a nobleman, though I am not a nobleman and I find the treatment to be really off-putting. The palace is built so that you never forget that this is the Emperor’s palace. There are also many strange rooms that I am led through,

37 such as a room entirely dedicated to clocks, another room following that which has a grass floor, and another room filled entirely with manure, which we all wade through with boots that were provided to us. The smell is awful.

9. We finally meet the Emperor in the throne room, where I am forbidden to stand fewer than 100 feet from him, so that he looks like a tiny fat person, which he is a tiny fat person, but he’s not microscopic. He is sitting in an opulent chair that is gilded. He looks important. He is still fatter than I remember, his gut so rotund that it jiggles when he speaks. He also seems to have trouble fitting in his clothes.

10. He speaks to me about the cheese. He has many complaints about my predecessors. He doesn’t actually want Manchego, though, as he complains about the firmness and the hardness of the cheese. I know this to be a fallacy, because it is supposed to be hard. I think that perhaps those who had made cheese before me were making parmesan rather than Manchego. The Emperor is still talking. He is talking to me about the Manchego. He is telling me how sharp the cheese should be, and how hard the cheese should be once it is presented to him, but I am more focused on the fact that I have no experience making cheese. I notice that he is inching his way closer to me in his very ornate chair, hopping forward. It makes a terrible noise and the Emperor becomes impossible to comprehend over the acrimonious squeaking of pink marble on wood, with the pressure that only the Emperor with his magnificent girth can provide. I want to hop back to maintain the distance between us, but I am held by my two escorts and I cannot escape. One of them whispers in my ear “you shouldn’t inch back.” I obey. I want to go home. But I know that I cannot go home. The Emperor tells me of all the other servants that had died failing to produce the Manchego. He tells me their names: Giles, Winston, Wilfred, Manfred, Shelia, Marcus, Anthony, Mary, Emily, Mary II, Audra, Gus, Catherine, Katherine, Emily, Madeline, Madison, and Vicky, the most recent casualty.

11. After explaining about his problem with making cheese, The Emperor shows me the room where he keeps the sheep. He owns a herd of Manchego sheep and blares classical music at them to soothe them. They live in his bedchambers, and they smell horrible. Their malnourished bodies make their eyes seem incredibly large, their wool, thin and patchy. I tell the Emperor that the sheep are malnourished, and that we should put them out to pasture. He becomes paranoid.

38 “If I am to put them outside, they might be stolen.” He sounds more manic now. I tell him we can put them close to the palace, but that they need not be in his bedchamber. “But I have grown to like the smell,” he says. He finally relents after some gentle pestering. I think that perhaps I can do this, but I am unsure.

12. It is two weeks later and I am still not sure of what to do. The Emperor has given me guards to watch over the sheep and me as we have made a fenced-in pasture. The Emperor watches me from his balcony as I milk the sheep, sometimes manically demanding his cheese. There is one man who I can really trust. His name is Lord Bradford, and he works with me on making the cheese. He does not say much, and is rumored to be a mute, but he is helpful enough. Now that the sheep are healthy it is imperative that we begin to milk them. They look much more content, though Lord Bradford and I have some difficulty getting the milk, as sheep are prone to running away from us. We have to corner them, which can sometimes make the milk unsuitable. But we succeed after four hours, covered in sweat, holding at least 2 gallons of sheep’s milk. From there, my process of making the cheese is uncertain. I don’t know what to do, until Lord Bradford pulls out a copy of The Economist and hands me a recipe.

13. I have adapted the recipe, and my process for making the cheese is as follows:

i. In a stockpot, over medium heat, warm milk to 86 degrees. Think about the Emperor and the fates of your 26 predecessors. Think about what will happen if you fail. Sweat, get a towel and sweat some more. Lord Bradford cannot help you, as he is an illiterate mute. Think about how you got this job. Think about how you are performing some insane action for an insane monarch under duress, how you can never escape. Begin to despair.

ii. In a separate bowl, dissolve the calcium chloride in 1/4 cup of water while Lord Bradford watches patiently. It looks like he is thinking of something but you know that he isn’t thinking of anything. Even though he is someone who reads, and was assigned to help you out, he is practically a mute robot that only does what he’s told and reads the same issue of The Economist over and over again. Trust him, but do not trust him. Regret your career choice as a waiter. Regret ever running into the Emperor. Quietly despair that you

39 did not recognize your Emperor and proceeded to tell him about the Manchego that you were serving that night. iii. In a separate bowl, dissolve the mesophilic culture in ¼ cup water and stir this mixture into the calcium chloride water mixture. Think about how much more useful this cheese would have been had you been evil and decided to poison it. Think about how magnificent your head would look like on a spike. Reconsider the notion of your head being upon a spike. Notice that there are a lot of bowls and that you’re going to need to tell Lord Bradford to retrieve more. Recant every single dissident thought that you just had, because you fear for your life and you are afraid of committing a thought crime, which is forbidden. Continue to despair as being utterly hopeless is the only way to make good cheese. There is no way out, and you’re not really sure if you’re ready for political martyrdom. Thank Lord Bradford for bringing you more bowls. Continue to regret telling the Emperor about the Manchego. Begin to lament that you didn’t tell him about how you don’t know how to make cheese in the first place, that you were just a waiter. iv. Add the thermophilic B culture to the calcium chloride/mesophilic culture mixture, stir to combine. Put it all together and make it all the same thing. This mixture is the culture water. You really didn’t want to have a culture so you made it up. You don’t even know if these instructions will be of any use to you. Threaten within your mind to give up. Threaten to not give up. Hem and haw for a little while longer. Begin to hate the Emperor, seethe as he looks down upon you from the tower. Get angrier. Have angry sex with the servant-girl that looks at you funnily after you’ve made sure that she’s very interested in you. She is turned on by cheese, so you talk to her like you’re going to make cheese for her instead of the Emperor, which makes her shudder in your arms. For a novice cheesemaker, you can sure know your way verbally around the topic of cheese. Afterwards, you wish that you could make cheese for her and eat it off of her stomach. But you cannot, because the cheese is for the Emperor, and you would most certainly be beheaded for your insolence. Return to seething, though a little more relaxed.

v. Add the culture water to the warmed milk, gently stir to combine, and cover. Let this mixture sit undisturbed for 45 minutes, to ripen. While you let it sit, plot your escape.

40 Then shoot down every possible plan for escape. Consider one more plan that involves a pot of boiling water to pour on one of the guards that watches you make the cheese. Consider hiding as a sheep and disappearing into the sheep herd. The Emperor can certainly mistake you for a sheep, as he has in previous weeks mistaken you for a duck. There is no reason for why he mistakes you for a duck. They are probably the same reasons that he thinks you are a great cheesemaker. He is fat and his eyesight is poor, yet despite being fat and nearly blind he has the ultimate authority over whether you are a sheep or not. Regroup, because you have more work to do before your inevitable psychological breakdown. Consider requesting a therapist. Consider your requisition for a therapist to be denied.

vi. While waiting for the mixture to ripen, dissolve the lipase powder in 1/4 cup water and let stand for 20 minutes. Add the lipase mixture to the cultured milk after it’s ripened, and gently stir for 1 minute to combine. Wonder how you got these instructions, how they were passed to you secretly by Lord Bradford. Look at the sheep and think about how much happier they are now than when they were confined to the Emperor’s bedchambers. Take solace in the fact that you found instructions. Suppose that you were meant to find the instructions. Try to think differently. Become uncertain that this is the way to make the cheese, and that you will suffer the same fate as the others. Stare at the cheese. Remember: A watched pot never boils. Try to look away from the cheese.

vii. Dissolve the rennet in1/4 cup water, add to the cultured milk, and gently stir for 1 minute. Cover this mixture and let it sit undisturbed, keeping the mixture at 86 degrees. Try to distract yourself. Read. Read the instructions again, as it’s the only thing that you have to read anymore. All of the literature got taken away when they found your manifesto that you had written on your left calf. It concerned how you would need to stage a coup. Laugh about that, because it is funny. Laugh because it may be the only way to survive. Look at the cloth sitting on top of the bowl. Notice how the pattern never changes. Notice how you are changing. Ponder. Fume. viii. When curd has formed (approximately 1 hour in), break the curds into small rice-size pieces by stirring it with a whisk. Try to gain some sort of catharsis from it. Imagine

41 you’re grinding the Emperor’s face into little pieces. Try to not be too violent, as you are being observed by guards. Continue until finished, and then lightly stab the bowl and imagine that it’s the Emperor’s face as payback for being roped into doing something that you didn’t know how to do in the first place.

ix. Slowly heat the curds to 104 degrees, at a rate of 2 degrees every five minutes (total heating process will take about 45 minutes). Stir the curds occasionally and gently to prevent clumping. Wonder about your predecessors. Did they also die doing this? What did they try to do before someone wrote some instructions down? Lord Bradford will not tell you if you ask him, primarily because he is a mute. It is said that he suffered a traumatic incident as a child, but no one seems to know what exactly. It’s all kept intentionally vague. You wonder what happened to them. The Emperor said that they were to be put in the dungeon, but the servants that bring materials to the place where you make cheese tell you otherwise.

x. Let the curds sit for 5 minutes. Pour off the excess whey. Don’t despair. High spirits are the way through this. Don’t underestimate the power of a good joke.

xi. Dampen and wring out a piece of cheesecloth big enough to double line the container of your cheese press. If the Emperor comes, explain that you are busy.

xii. Pour your curds into the cheese press container (lined with cloth) and press down with approximately 15 pounds of pressure for 15 minutes. xiii. Remove the cheese from the press container, turn the cheese over, place it back in the container, and repeat press. xiv. Repeat once more, flipping the cheese over and applying 15 pounds of pressure for 15 minutes.

xv. Turn the cheese over, place back in container and press with 33 pounds of pressure for 6 hours. xvi. Remove the cheese from the cheesecloth and place it in a salt brine for 6 hours at 50 to 55 degrees. Rotate the cheese every hour to promote even rind development.

42 xvii. Remove the cheese from the brine, pat it dry, and place it on a clean surface. Age the cheese for one week at 50 to 55 degrees and 80 to 85 percent humidity, rotating the cheese once per day. Any mold spots that appear can be scrubbed off with nylon-bristled produce scrub brush and vinegar. xviii. When surface possesses a dry rind, rub the cheese with olive oil and let it age for at least 1 month. The outside will periodically need to be re-brushed with a thin coating of olive oil.

xix. Receive accolades from the Emperor. Find that, because of your skill as an artisan, you have been appointed to make this cheese for the Emperor for the rest of your life.

xx. Consider poisons, an elaborate ruse, hiding in one of the sheep’s carcasses and being carried to freedom. Consider mutiny, spreading seditious propaganda through coded messages carved into the sides of cheeses to incite rebellion among the commoners. Consider the high price of mastering an art you had no intention of mastering. Consider Vicky.

xxi. Repeat steps one through nineteen.

43 PUT IT AWAY

The bedroom was still pitch when Alice Lee was woke on a Sunday to a soft knock on her door. Without opening her eyes, she flopped her hand in the direction of her nightstand and managed to find the lamp switch. The light glared through her thin pupils in an orange haze as she struggled to not rush her eyes adjusting from such a quick change of light. After two seconds, she opened them to see the outline of her son standing in her open doorframe. Jacob? she said, her voice more tired than irritated, Why do you have your boots on in the house? Jake lowered his head on hearing her groggy but sharp words cut. Sorry ma, he said, It’s Buck. Alice became very cold despite being under thick covers. What’s wrong with him? His leg, Jake said. He said the words hushed, almost muffled, then remembered what she’d asked of him just then and bent over and leaned on the frame, grabbing the heel to work off one boot. Goddamnit, she said. Her muscle memory took over as she flung off the covers and threw on an old long-sleeved shirt over the t-shirt that she was already wearing. It was thick and green and ragged like so many others. No matter how many times they got washed they still seemed to stink of sweat and shit. She wasn’t sure what the weather was outside but she remembered that she didn’t hear the rain as she put on a pair of jeans, then socks. She looked back at the door. Jake was still standing there, both boots in his right hand. Well, come on, she said. Jake said nothing and walked with her to the basement, with no sass. It worried her. It was Jake’s way to sass, and for her to snap back. But she didn’t say anything as they walked together to the basement. Under fluorescent lights of the basement that smelled of barley and hay and cigarette smoke she tugged on her boots, a pair of shitkickers that felt like they had too much give in the upper when she used pull tabs and pulled on her tan Carhartt. As she opened the basement door and walked across the gravel driveway, following Jake in the pinkish early dawn, the sky dotted with purple clouds, she thought about asking him what exactly was wrong with Buck. She’d won many races with him. Put enough of her winnings away, and pooled it with her father’s money to buy this patch out here. She knew he was an Arabian, but he didn’t have any papers back when she’d bought him with Ed. Whatever

44 he was, she quite frankly wasn’t entirely sure. But he had the build for it. Now he was a teaching horse, and she was going to lose him. She was sure of it. Back then they were young. She was twenty-two. He was barely two years old. Their relationship had gotten off to a rocky start. The first time she tried to get close to him, he reared back on his hind legs. You sure you wanna ride something that doesn’t like you? Ed had said. He was leaning against a fence post, smoking. Ed had just come back from the Gulf war. They had been dating two years and Alice was sure he was going to propose soon. They convinced the owner to let her have a ride. As Alice led him out by the bridle to the muddy arena, Ed tried to dampen her expectations. What do you want me to ride? Something old and flabby? How’s that gonna win us anything? She adjusted the bridle, and Buck twitched his head in slight irritation. At least pick a horse that’s gonna be nice to you, at least. Alice looked back at him. She smiled and got into the saddle. I’ll be fine, she said. And she was right. She shivered against the cold and pulled her Carhartt together and fiddled with the zipper without looking at it. Her breath came out in puffs of steam as it hit the air and she snorted out one last damnit under her breath before the zipper caught on and drew the jacket together. They drew near the barn, the ground slightly giving underfoot, but not enough to make that suction sound that Alice hated. The barn door was still open and she could feel the warm air inside, a mixture of hay and wood chips and shit and piss. Inside the barn Alice saw Buck’s head, which used to greet her all excited, dipping up and down, wagging leg threatening to paw, didn’t move. Under the light of the dim bulb she peered over the stall, her hand reaching out to slightly touch his nose. The wound was in his front leg and bleeding. She couldn’t tell where it was exactly. His leg was facing away from her, but she could see blood trickling down the leg. Christ, she said. Her shoulders jutted up to her chin as she leaned against the stall door. She was tempted to panic, to wonder how this could happen to Buck, but she quickly stifled that notion. It wouldn’t do her any good.

45 How is he? Jake asked. Bad, she said. How bad? Real bad, she said. See if you can’t bandage him for now. Like I showed you before. Okay, but what then? he said. I gotta call the vet. See what she says. She trudged on back to the house and into the basement. She took off her boots and went inside the house. She went into the kitchen where the phone was on the counter. The phone flashed a number one. Alice knew who it was from. Ed had called her the night before last, drunk. It was the same kind of message that he’d left before. He howled and moaned and groaned about he would never drink again, how sorry he was. Again. She didn’t want to listen to it, but it Best to get it over with now. The message clicked and cracked. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t hide how much he’d drink as he ranted and slurred and moaned. It was pathetic. She pressed fast-forward and erased it. She tried Edith, but all she got was the answering machine. She tried to be polite in leaving a message, and hung up, mashing the phone’s . Christ, she hissed. She stood there for a while, leaning against the counter with the phone in her hand. Alice played with the antennae, pulling it out and pushing it in. After a minute, she opened a drawer and grabbed her Camels from the junk drawer and walked out to the front porch. It was still chilly. The pink above had given way to a much lighter blue-orange. It couldn’t be later than around six. She lit the Camel and took a pull, the orange line descending towards her lips before she blew out the smoke and punched in the number, wishing the nicotine would kick in faster. Stockon residence, the voice mumbled, half-asleep. Bill, she said. Alice? he said, that you? Bill sounded more awake now. Yeah, she said, I don’t mean to wake you, but I don’t know who else to call. It’s an emergency. Yeah? What happened? Bill’s voice dropped its garbled and sounded more at attention. It’s Buck, she said. His leg’s bleeding. I’m not sure for how long it’s been bleeding, and I’m not sure where Edith is. It’s Sunday, Bill—It’s Buck.

46 A long pause left only white noise on the other end. Fine, he said, I’ll be over. How soon? An hour? Not any sooner? That’s the soonest I can be. Just make sure you have everything. I will. Alice hung up the phone and went back inside. She went back to her bedroom. In her bedroom, she pulled open the top drawer of her dresser. She pulled out the pistol, a small snub- nosed silver revolver, from beneath an assortment of underwear and socks. It’d been months since she’d practiced with it. She placed the gun on top of the dresser and rummaged around, pulling out the box. She took out the rounds, pushed out the hinge on the chamber, and loaded the gun. If Bill didn’t bring what he needed, she’d have to do it, and she’d have to do it right. She’d never liked using it, but her daddy willed it to her saying that she would need it and to keep it clean. She finished loading the sixth round into the chamber and put the gun back into the pocket of her Carhartt and went back to the basement. She pulled her boots back on, and walked outside. She lit another cigarette and stood there and puffed, blowing the smoke out of her flared nostrils. She looked at her watch. It was six. Thirty more minutes and he’d be here. She threw her cigarette onto the gravel driveway and put it out with her right foot and kicked some gravel over it, and went back to the barn. Jake was finishing up with Buck, gingerly wrapping the leg like she’d taught him. Not too loose and not too tight. Alice quietly leaned up against the post. Looking up from his work, Jake looked back up at her. When’s she coming? He pulled a pair of small scissors from his back pocket and trimmed off the extra amount of bandage. I tried to get around where it’s bleeding, but it might still fall off if he moves around too much. I think that’s the best we’re going to get right now. Edith can’t come. Then who’s coming? Bill.

47 Jake didn’t say anything and tried to busy himself with the horse’s leg again, looking over his handiwork. He’ll be here in thirty. Why don’t you go eat breakfast? I’ll stay here with him. Okay. Jake stood up and made for the door, trudging out back to the house. Alice moved closer to Buck, his leg bent, the weight the other legs were forced to bear causing them to slightly tremor. She opened the stall and walked up to him, moving to the bad leg and offering her shoulder, but he wouldn’t take it. C’mon Buck, she said. Now’s a good a time as any. He relented after a few minutes and she felt some of Buck’s weight press into her. You were always stubborn anyway, she said, trying to not think about the “X” she’d have to make and shoot through on Buck’s head if it came down to it. Don’t think too hard about it, her daddy’s voice had said to her when he taught her how. Why? Shouldn’t I be thinking about it? No, at least not that hard. Her daddy was gruff and chewed tobacco when he was working outside so her motherwouldn’t find out, which he spat out sometimes to the ground as he spoke. If you think too hard about it, they’ll know. You’re kiddin’. I’m not. They can tell, honey. They know what you’re thinking. If you’re nervous, they’ll know and they’ll get nervous too. It’s kinder to them and you if you don’t think about it. Now shoot. She raised the gun at the beer can and fired. The revolver let out a crack and the can flew back and so did her arm. That’s my girl. Don’t let it kick you too hard, hear? Alice let Buck lean on her for a little while longer. She’d done this before, with other horses, but all of those were the clichés about being able to deal better with other people’s dying animals instead of your own, that she wouldn’t know until it finally happened to her. She pushed her heels against the soft wood chips and felt herself slightly sink underneath the creature’s weight. She wasn’t sure for how much longer she could do this for. Just as Alice’s shoulder was about to give out, she heard the crunch of gravel and rubber on the driveway. Sure as hell sounded like him.

48 Okay buddy, I’ll be back, she said, removing her shoulder. Buck gingerly put his foot down reflexively, then buckled it again. She walked out of the barn back towards the gate, where she saw a small white Chevy and a balding man emerging from it. She walked over and waved. Thanks again for coming, Bill. It’s fine, he said. He wore an old red flannel and jeans, and his breath too steamed against the air in the gathering sunlight. She offered him a cigarette. Jake stood in the doorway to the garage, pulling his boots back on. No thanks, trying to quit, he said. She put the offering to her lips and lit it and puffed hard, hoping the nicotine would be some kind of prophylactic. He turned to Jake. Hi there, fella. It’s Jake, ain’t it? Yessir, he said. Well, let’s go see, he said. They all went back to the barn together. Bill poked his head into the stall and looked at Buck, and then at his leg. Fine job you did, wrapping it up. He gestured towards the bright blue bandaging, which blood was slowly seeping through. You do that Alice? No I didn’t, she said. Good job, son, he said. He turned back to the leg. How long’s he been like this? Since this morning, Jake said. Has he been able to put any weight on it? I don’t think so, sir. He stared for a moment longer, then moved back to Alice. It doesn’t look good, he said. What do we need to do? Let’s step outside, Alice. All of us. They went back outside. Bill rubbed his forehead with his fingers. I’m pretty sure that his leg’s broke. Christ, she said. Alice looked at the barn a bit longer. Jake busied himself with looking at his shoes. I’ve got what’s needed to put him down, if you’re wanting that, said Bill. Alice closed her eyes hard and bit the inside of her lower lip.

49 Okay, she said. But you need to think about disposal too, said Bill, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. Alice stepped back, not looking at him when she did it. I can take the carcass off your hands. For how much? Let’s just chalk this one up as a favor. I brought the trailer bed here for a reason. Brought someone else to help out. Okay. Jake, stay with Buck a bit? Yes ma’am. Alice and Bill went back towards the house. Bill went inside. Alice stayed out and lit another cigarette. He came back outside just when she had smoked it down to the filter, his shoulders seeming a little more heavy than usual. Shit. She flicked the butt to the ground and stepped on it and twisted it with her boot. So, he said, with a little hesitation, do you wanna do it now? She sighed harshly. Bill, you know how much that damn horse means to me. He turned to her Then you know he’d be beggin’ for it if he could. It’s cruel, Alice. He moved towards her again for emphasis, and she backed away and leaned against the brick of the house Sorry, she said, I just need to be alone. Easy. He backed off again. I know he meant a lot to you, but that horse needs to be put out of his misery. Alright she said. He is coming though, your friend? Yeah, he is. Alright then. She grabbed two leads and halter from the garage. When she came back out, Bill had a case with him, and they went back to the barn to get Buck. She put the lead on his head and led him while Bill let the weight of the horse push on him as she led him outside. Once they got to the pasture, Jake was there and he stood there and looked at them again. Jake, go back to the driveway, she said. You sure? Jake, you need to watch for the man who’s coming. He turned away and walked back towards the driveway.

50 Okay. Bill opened up his case and took out the syringe and the drugs. You done this before? He’ll collapse, and we’ll try to make it gentle. Just do it, dammit. And yes, I have done this before. I just wanna get it over with. The gun was burning a hole in the pocket of her jacket and she thought about just pulling it out and shooting Buck, but she sighed and tried to make herself relax again. I’m trying to do this right, Alice, calm down. He knocked the needle and pressed the plunger down so it squirted out a little fluid. You distract ‘im, alright? She stroked Buck’s head with her hand and did her best to keep her face straight. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. She didn’t want the horse to look worried, to feel what she was feeling. He stuck the horse with the sedative and the horse’s legs started to lock. Alice stepped back and grabbed the rope and Bill did too, and they guided the horse’s body to the ground, the heft of bone and muscle tipping over. Together they gently lowered the head to the grass, where it rested and bent the blades back, eyes half-cocked and looking dull. She knelt down and patted the head, stroked his neck as he drifted off, while Bill stood there and bit his lower lip from the inside. She stood up and they looked at each other and they said nothing. They left the horse as soon as they heard the crunch of gravel, coming back to the driveway through the heavy red metal gate. Bill went back to his truck to get a tarp. Jake came back out of the house again, moving towards the pasture. The sun was bright and Alice had forgotten her watch but it couldn’t be more than past ten. She opened the gate and let the truck drive on through. Bill pulled his truck close to the horse, dragging the open trailer bed behind him. Jake, Alice, this is Ted. They said their hellos and then laid the tarp out next to the carcass. They lifted Buck’s carcass on in sections. All three of them gathered around each segment of his lifeless form and liftted it, digging their heels into the grass and dirt. After the carcass was on the tarp they drug it all onto the large flat trailer that had a full ramp. There wasn’t a lot of pointing or talking. They dug in their heels and thirty minutes later, the carcass was on the trailer. Bill used the rest of the tarp to cover it up and then used long, thick straps to tie it down.

51 They all clambered into the truck, Alice and Bill in the cab and Jake in the truckbed, and slowly made their way back to the driveway. They reached the driveway and stopped and got out. Jake went back into the house and left Bill and Alice there on the gravel. Thanks, said Alice. Don’t mention it, Bill said. I think I’ll take you up on that cigarette. She handed him one and lit it for him and pulled out one for herself. I know I’m trying to quit, but I need this. Probably the only thing keeping me okay right now. Alice— What? He switched the cigarette to his left hand and scratched the back of his head with his right, unintentionally drawing attention to his fading hairline. If you want to, and I’m not saying that you have to by any means, but, after I get this taken care of, I thought it would be nice if you and Jake let me take you both out to dinner sometime. My treat. She cocked her head to one side and took a long drag staring at him and said nothing. It doesn’t have to be now, he said, but it’d be nice to, y’know, catch up? She kept her head in the same position it had been, still staring and saying nothing. She blew another puff of smoke into the air. Bill, I know you want to be nice, but I think you should go. She stared straight at him when she said it, and reached in her pocket for the gun, just to see if it was still there. He took the hint. Alright he said. He got in the truck and drove it up the hill, the horse’s carcass in tow. She threw her cigarette down, and put it out with her boot as he drove away.

52 GLENN GOULD MISTAKEN FOR GLENN GOULD

G. Reading Sheet Music

The muscles in his face twitch over and over again in an irritated fashion, someone who is lost in the music. He is looking at Bach's F major invention for the 2,234th time in his life. His eyebrows are presto, while his fingertapping is distinctly a high allegro, about 130-140bpm. This is the proven tempo. It is the best tempo. He is away from the piano. It is approximately twenty- five feet away from him. But he is thinking about the piano. He is thinking about the hammers hitting the strings, how much damper pedal he should use. Should he sustain here, with the middle pedal at measure 43, or use the pedal on the left to bring the hammers closer to the strings, muffling the sound no matter how hard he strikes the keys? He goes through the various artistic iterations of the piece, what choices he can make. This is his 64th iteration of Bach's Invention in F major. He reads the piece, occasionally getting up and pacing around, all while looking at the sheet music. Bach is comforting. Bach is order. Bach is perfection. It becomes apparent that there is not enough light. He fumbles for the lamp's switch in the dimness. He is very serious. He wishes the B flat would go away. He thinks it is a troublesome note. It is not a useful note to him. It is a note in-between notes. He also knows that B flat is also A sharp. He thinks it’s frivolous that the same note must have two different names. In his world, he would remake the piano. But he is unfortunately a performer and a composer, not an instrument-maker. He dejectedly strides over to the piano. It is a cherry upright Baldwin, which is his least favorite piano. He places the music onto the stand and then begins to play without thinking, relying entirely on muscle memory and emotion.

G. As Described by His Manager and His Mother

1: “He was always an isolated individual, but I think that he is becoming more so now that he feels that his livelihood is being threatened. Don’t ask me why. He did not have many childhood friends growing up. He was an unusual man, but most unusual men who are considered geniuses are going to be loners. They’re not going to really open up to anyone.”

53 2: “G. was always my special boy. I sometimes believe that I weaned him too early, but his doctor insisted that it would build character. Whenever he calls me he is always being irritable. I sometimes have to listen to drivel, but I ask him to play the piano and he does, just like I taught him.” 3: “G. was also too smart for his own good. He’d never go to bed when he was told, mainly because I couldn’t get him off of the damn piano. I sometimes threatened him for undermining me. I was fearsome to him, and scolded him in French frequently. But when he played, he would always play so well. I taught him mostly myself before I had to get a teacher. I placed his hands on the keyboard and pushed each finger down on each key. We started off with Hanon exercises, and then moved up from there.”

G. Trying to Describe Bach to a Young Pianist who Does Not Like Bach at a Gala

“Look, I wanted to talk to you... Yes, it's important that you would not like to play Bach... I think that you would enjoy playing Bach if you do not like to... yes, the technique is strenuous, I am certain of that, but it is a necessary evil if you’re going to get any good... “I will tell you a secret: I did not like playing Bach when I was your age. This is normal. It is as normal as a passing cold. You will get over it. Keep your fingers on the keyboard. The only time you should ever remove your fingers is to eat. That is the key to winning. Run to your mother now, and one word: PRACTICE!”

A Nightmare

Too much pounding on the keys. Crushed on all sides by dirty, dirty people. Naked. Cold. Hospitals. Adult diapers. Hospice care. Mr. K. admonishing him for his unkempt fingernails at the age of five. Broken piano strings. Broken promises. Failed trills.

54 Cold nights. Cold hands. A gash above the left-knuckle, an infected hangnail, a finger in a car door.

G. at a Bar

He is at another crowded function. He is unsure of what kind of function that it is. Perhaps it is a Gala. But he isn’t exactly sure. All he can be sure of is that at functions, there are always people in suits and dresses, and they are always holding cocktails. This function is no different. He takes a look around and wonders if they would recognize him when he was called to the fore and made to perform again. He takes another sip of his drink, even though he doesn’t like drinking liquor. He would rather have beer. But there’s the review of his concert, two weeks ago. Bernstein made his comments and the feeble-minded music critic at the Times, that gluttonous shape of a man with his fat fingers click-clacked on his typewriter a screed, wrote that Leonard was throwing him under the bus, that Leonard had, according to someone else in the orchestra, had confessed that G. had been a terror to work with. He drinks again thinking of it and the vodka burns his throat on its way down. He makes his way back to the bar, his head bowed and low. He grabs a stool at the right end of the bar, waves the bartender over, asks for a gin and tonic. He looks to his left He sees a man that looks strangely familiar at the opposite end of the bar, sitting with his head bowed. The man who seems to look like him is nursing his beer, his index finger tracing the rim of the glass. The glass is long and spindly, much like G.'s. He is frightened, but curious. He has never met anyone who is like this. But at the same time, he wishes to approach the stranger who has ordered a Guinness. He goes over to the other side of the bar, and takes an empty stool next to the stranger. The stranger turns to face him.

They Have a Conversation

“Hello,” G. says, hand outstretched. “Hello, I’m a big fan.” “Do I know you?” “I think you do. Our names are the same.”

55 “So are our faces.” “Well, in a way, we do. Your nose is more pointed though.” “I’m proud of it.”

G. and His Attitude toward Romantic-Era Composers

“I never played any of the Romantics into adulthood. They were all simpering lunatics. Especially Schumann, but what else can you expect from a man who threw himself into the Rhine while afflicted with a terrible case of syphilis?” “If there was one composer that I did like of any of them, it was Schumann’s wife. At least she had the good sense to burn the pieces he composed in madness.”

G.'s Doppelganger Relating to Glenn Gould

“My name is Glenn Gould, but you are nicer than me. We are similar, but we are different. For example, I had a nicer mother than yours, but I turned out to be a worse kid. Unlike you, I never learned from my mother. I taught myself how to play the piano. And I am proficient, but not as proficient as you are. “I hope that you don't find it annoying that I have been unintentionally riding your coattails for all of this time. I simply get mistaken for you so often that it’s become my only way of making a living. I wonder if it would ever be possible to meet next week, perhaps in a more private place. I am always frustrated in these public places. I am often mistaken for you. I want to be my own person. I am Glenn Gould. You are also Glenn Gould. We are different, but even I am unsure as to how. I suggest we compare playing styles.”

G. on His Attitude toward Tempo Rubato

“It is very easy for tempo rubato to be misunderstood. As such, I am of the opinion, and I am not alone on this, that we should do away with tempo rubato. When you are playing a particular piece, such as one of Bach’s Cantatas, would you, any of you, slow it down at any point for any reason? What purpose would that serve to the music? In a piece such as Bach’s

56 why in God’s name would you want to emphasize anything when every note is important? When the hands answer each other and converse, when they speak to each other and caress each other’s phrases? Tempo rubato is for those pianists who are unwilling to commit themselves fully to the absolute precision needed to play something worthwhile.”

G. and Glenn Compare Their Methods

1. My stool that I use to play the piano measures to approximately 17 3/4 inches. 2. Mine is 17 1/3 inches. Shorter than yours, Mr. Gould. 1. I use my stool to pull down on the piano keys. 2. I pull myself up to the keyboard. 1. I mumble the melody sometimes. It helps me guide my hands. 2. I mumble the countermelody. It misdirects my hands to their proper place on the keyboard. 1. I tap the keyboard. 2. I pound it. 1. I mostly carry on fantastic conversations with myself. 2. I converse with my friends: My left and right hands.

At A Restaurant They Speak to the Wait Staff in Unison—

"Duck a l’orange.” “The house Cabernet Sauvignon” “Delicious.” “The chocolate soufflé.” “Thank you.”

They Interview Each Other

G: Well, Mr. Gould, we know that we are similar. Our names are similar; our facial features are quite similar, even our professions are uncannily similar. But I hope that we are going to talk about music in this interview. Do you have your recorder at the ready?

57 G: As a matter of fact, I do have my recorder ready. In fact, I am recording you now as you have spoken to me. I find it hilarious that we enjoy tape recording. G: Yes (mild laughter), that is true. Our hobbies are even the same. Instead of my first question being about music, does this interview make you nervous? G: Yes (mild laughter), this interview does make me nervous. In fact, it makes me so nervous. How do we know who is who? Are we both each other? G: This is a good question, Mr. Gould, but we must first record for the sake of posterity our views on music. How do we view music differently? G: I believe that music is more of a moral exercise than a dictatorial one. The artist today is far too totalitarian. G: But isn't that necessary today? The audience craves instruction. They do not wish to collaborate. They are content to be passive. They are meant to be just receptacles for the artist's view. For example: If you and I were each to play Bach's Invention in D minor, at varying tempo speeds, wouldn't we be instructing the audience in different fashions? G: Yes, but we are playing the same piece, and our artistic objective is the same: To play the piece the way that we intend to play it to convey certain truths to the audience and for the audience to either affirm or deny their preexisting notions about Bach. G: I would agree with that (slight chuckle), but we must realize that when we perform, we are enacting musical thoughts and iterations of those particular musical thoughts at a particular moment or place or time. We are still bound by context. G: Yes (slight chuckle), context binds us to the Promethean rock of temporal limitations. This is why I am a sincere believer in broadcasting and will cease to continue to play on April 22nd, 1964. G: Why would you discontinue performing, Mr. Gould? G: Well, Mr. Gould, I would have to say that it is primarily because of the limitations of live performance. Also, your use of the word "discontinue," gives me another reason to dislike live performances. There are too many limitations. One cannot achieve perfection in a performance environment. G: But in those limitations there isn’t there freedom? G: Perhaps, but I enjoy the limitations of recording. G: Yes, but isn’t recording a packaged product?

58 G: And I love those handicaps, the chief one being perfection. G: Perfection? G: The time to perfect sounds. Their shapes, their hearing. My interpretations and no one else's. It would be a zero-sum game. You can do that now with the new technology. G: Then why perform? G: Because it is expected. No modern composer is ever going to not perform. G: This is true. (PAUSE) I do have a proposition though. G: Yes?

G. Mistaken for Glenn Gould

APRIL 22 1964 -- They are sitting together backstage, one shabbily dressed in a worn out overcoat, his driver's cap off to one side of his head, revealing one of his widow's peaks. He says that he is cold. The other is dressed in a nice blue pinstripe suit with a bright red paisley tie, not because he desires it, but because it is expected of him. They are sitting across from each other, and they can hear the buzzing of the crowd on the other side of the curtain. A stagehand is awaiting one of them to rise from his seat, emerge to the crowd, and play. “You go,” says the shabby one. “Are you sure?” says the other with a crisp shirt. “Yes.” “I don't want to ride your coattails, Mr. G—” “You aren’t,” he claps him gently on the shoulder. “You have no idea what this means to me,” says the shabbily-dressed one. “This will be the greatest concert that I have yet to play.” He then embraces G. for a moment, his dirty clothes threatening to smudge the crisp perfection of G.'s freshly pressed suit. He then goes past the curtain's threshold to wild but reserved applause. G. suspects perhaps that was so because of his shabby appearance. He pictures the crowd outside, not knowing if they are supposed to applaud for the shabbily dressed one striding towards the piano. They only applaud when he begins to play. G. stands behind the curtain, hearing the preludes and the fugues. His playing is slightly different than his. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t him that is playing. G. Tries to restrain himself from thinking about the inaccuracies,

59 however slight they might be. He tries to distract himself with other things. He wishes that he had brought earplugs. He wonders if perhaps, he could teach that one out there how to properly play this particular fugue in C minor, how to properly navigate this arpeggio that he is performing now, with a little too much hesitation in measure 72. He does not play with as much precision, but at least he is convincing. At least he can relax now, knowing that never again will a fat-fingered man from the Times will type out some screed. He wonders what the other one looks like out there. He wonders if he has made the right decision. There is something that he misses out there. After the concert, the shabbily-dressed one emerges from front to backstage, a bouquet in hand. The stagehand, an old man who is noticed by few, walks up to him and shakes his hand. “Mr. Gould,” he says. “That was your finest performance yet.” “Thank you,” he replies. “Would you take these? I have no need for them.”

60

PALPATION

We’ve been learning about cows in our pre-vet class. Ruminants. We learned about their stomachs, cleaned and squeezed their swollen teats, and even consumed their flesh. Today’s class is a bit of a field trip. We meet in a very muddy enclosure when the sky is overcast and there’s a hint of a light mist over the greens and browns and grays of the pasture that lay before us. We gather underneath the metal roof of the open part of the complex where they milk the cows. Today, says Dr. O, you’ll we’re preg-checking. Getting really intimate with your filet mignon. He has a knack for making bad puns. If he wasn’t wearing a polo shirt he could easily be mistaken for a farmer, and not a doctor. We’ve already gone over what to do. We put on gloves that come up to our shoulders and stand together. The animal is restrained, its legs against the fence. I don’t know why I raise my hand first, but I do. Maybe I’m curious. Someone squeezes some lube out of a large tube and onto my gloved hand. I can feel its sliminess on the glove, the sound of lube and latex making a slight crinkling sound. I walk up to the cow and start to have second thoughts about being first. I almost forget what to do. The assistant shows me again how to shape my hands, making her fingers come together with her thumb, her glove making a plasticine crinkle when she does it. Just push, she says. Be gentle, but steady with her. The cow raises her hoof and stamps it firm back into the ground, the wet earth giving into and then surrounding her hoof. Get close, she tells me. She can still kick. But I want to be kicked. At least, some part of me does, and it’s because it’s been a few days since I’ve talked to Carla. We stopped talking when I couldn’t make up my mind about whether we wanted to live together or not. We’ve been dating for two years, and we’d been getting along just fine like that, I thought, even if she had her place and I had mine and we lived in different towns. I’m committed, I truly am, in my way. But Carla thinks the only way to show commitment is to share everything—a life, a place. She thinks that I only care about myself, that

61 I’m afraid to get too close, let my guard down. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just need to be sure, is all, I told her. I just need some time. Then take it, she said. Take all the time in the world. Then she hung up. All I want to do right now is tell her how this feels. How strange it is, how it feels to be touching something alive and unfinished. To show her I obviously care about others, not just myself. And, in terms of getting close, surely my arm up this tight hole says something about that, too. Push, the assistant tells me, and so I push into the cow’s rectum. My fingers go in first, and I see why. There’s much more give in the center. How hard should I push? Gently, she says. But be firm. Try not to tear anything. It’s all smooth muscle, remember? Already the cow is fighting me, her sphincter squeezing me hard, letting me know I’m unwelcome. My arm feels like it’s in an automated blood pressure cuffs at the pharmacy. I can feel shit that’s about to come out pushing against my hand as it tries to work its way around my fingers. Eventually hot shit squeezes out and steams against the air. You might have to come back out of her to clear the rectum, the TA says. I pull back but not all the way and make a shovel shape with my hand and guide the feces out of her. It’s more liquid this time. When it’s done splatting against the mud I go back in again. My gloved arm is already sweating on the inside. Inside she feels like a furnace. She tries to fight me again for maybe a few seconds more. When she moos I feel her vibrate. She starts to relaxes again as the assistant coos, reassures her. I’m up to my elbow now. I look over at the lab assistant. What now? I ask. Find the cervix, she says. There’s a way to press down. After some searching I find the cervix. I was expecting something similar to the diagram Dr. O uses in class, a great gaping hole, but visual depictions of cow innards aren’t really useful at this point. Instead it’s like a very loose slot. I push down, and my arm slides in further until my shoulder’s almost flush against the Jersey’s rectangular backside. It doesn’t take long to find the uterine horn. This is what I’ve been looking for. It feels the way we were told: a fairly large sac. I sweep my hand over it, gently picking it up, feeling the calf inside pulse and wriggle. It’s

62 about the size of a small cat, but it can move. I think about how small it is right now. How the only things it can do is shiver and wriggle. How one day it’ll be as big as the thing that I’m inside of right now. She must have seen my face light up. Do you feel it? she says. Yeah, I do, I tell her as my hand runs gently over the sac. How far along is she? the TA asks, making my eyes snap back into focus. She’s got to have only three months left, I tell her. The assistant’s face lights up and breaks into a wider smile. The cow’s sphincter pulses in tight clenches, trying to push back my arm in vain. I’ve never broken a bone, but it feels like it’s my last chance to make a graceful exit. I slowly pull my arm out of her, feeling the sweat underneath my shit-covered glove. The cow’s raises her hoof, and places it back down lightly. She’s antsy, unable to turn her head and know that we’re not through with her. The rest of us go in, one after the other. Halfway through she moos, loud and indifferent. Dr. O praises us on not tearing tissue, about how gentle we were. He seems to nod towards me, like I’d guided the rest of us to the same conclusion. That night I call Carla and tell her I have something to say, then I tell her all about how warm that calf felt, the legs and the head I could gently bounce like a small basketball. Even over the phone I can hear her cringing, so I stop talking. What’s wrong? I ask. It’s gross, for one, she says. That’s what’s wrong. Is that what you wanted to tell me, a gross story? No, I say. I just thought you’d appreciate it. Did you want to say anything else? Anything else to me at all, about anything? I press the phone hard against my head and I feel very cornered. Don’t you want to talk about this more? Before we really decide? I say. I lean back in my chair, pressing my feet against the desk and letting the back of the chair rest against my bed in my dorm. I think we’ve talked enough about this, she says. I gave you more than enough time to decide. Carla let that answer hang in the hazy white noise for a few seconds that stretched out. She let out a long sigh. Are you smoking again? I say. I thought you said you’d quit.

63 Goodbye Tommy, she says. My phone gives out a short beep, and then nothing. I leave her so many voicemails until I can’t anymore about how sorry I am and how I hope that we can patch things up. Later on that night I drive the forty minutes to the town she lives in, hoping to catch her, but the windows of her apartment are dark, and I should have known better.

64 GAUDI MAKING HIS PLANS FOR THE SAGRADA FAMILIA

Gaudi is frustrated with his plaster. He can’t get the shape of the spire right. He doesn’t like how this spire over here, which is supposed to represent the apostle Paul, is lopsided. He doesn’t understand how, even when he is making these towers in the dead of winter by hand, his hands are freezing. They should not be wobbly, but the spires are still failing to not lean and wobble, to lean and wobble so flippantly back and to the left. Maybe that is the way that God wants it, he thinks. Maybe he should chisel forward and to the right? Maybe that’s it. He had drawn the initial plans rather well. He wrote in the marginalia about the tower of Babel as he sketched out the cathedral. Reading it for the one-thousandth-one-hundred-and- ninetieth time, he summarizes the fable. Tries to decipher its meaning. Rolls it around in his mouth for a bit, pretending it is a gumball. He is pretty sure that, while gum balls do not exist yet they exist in his mind. Somehow those two words, through no fault of their own, have collided together to form a compound word: gumball. He doesn't want to be one of those people who designs a church and then just abandons it. He wants to oversee it from start to finish, and it will be done because he wants to tell the story of God, not the story of people building an inane tower. He tries to chisel forward and to the right, but the tower goes back to the way that it was, leaning back and to the left. He guesses St. Paul will have to be crooked for now. But he doesn’t even know what God thinks. How can he know what God thinks? But he wants to make sure. He tries to make the tower one more time. He knows that he really should make a mold of this tower, that maybe there should be an assistant there that would help him hold things steady. These are things that a reasonable person would do. But Gaudi is an unreasonable man. He is not about to hand off this task to some mere neophyte who would just make these angular things, yet another lifeless building. Dead Pillars. No colors. He hates that maxim. Function follows form. Or does form follow function? He's not even sure anymore. Gaudi is drawing. How should he hide the transmission tower, where he will communicate with God? He is trying to draw the wire that will descend down from the main spire into the crypt. It is two in the morning, and he has not slept in two days. But his hands don't shake with anxiety. His eyes are steady. He is in a trance. He has never had a mystical experience, which makes him incredibly bitter to the idea that he would even have one. Why

65 should he have one? He is a heathen, unloved by so many, overlooked, overrated, underrated. But definitely overlooked. He’s well-aware of how overlooked he is. His friends think he takes religion too seriously, but honestly, it’s they who don’t take religion seriously enough. How can his friends show such little concern with their own eternal souls, with their own states of grace? He turns his attention to the spire again. His mother always told him that lightening is liable to strike tall buildings. Perhaps it can strike the topcross in which he has drawn a hidden copper rod, to be revealed only when it is connected to the coffin. But honestly, could this really work? Even when he was very small, he often thought that the soul, when it had done something that was wholly untoward, would stay in the body until the Last Judgement. And even though when he had his knuckles thoroughly rapped by the nun that would bring down God's punishment, there was always something in that thought that he had liked, even when he had tried to commit a heresy, engage in apostasy, he was certain what he believed was not a sin. And so he had kept it buried within him, for so long until finally, in his plans, he was finally going to be free. This would atone for his sinfulness. This building would give him the mystical experience that he deserved. And then his soul would commune with God. Someone has to get in touch with God, and St. Peter's Basilica isn't "vertical enough" in his words. He always thought it was horribly short anyways, he thinks to himself as he scribbles away at what people will call a “Gothic Monstrosity,” long after he is dead. They'll think he's crazy, but he won't be crazy when he finally gets to phone home. He resumes scribbling furiously.

66 A RESTAURANT

The management has entrusted you, their most loyal, yet hapless employee, to prepare for the arrival of the millionaires this evening. They come from many different places, but all come by invitation through sealed envelopes delivered by secret postmen whose work will never see the light of day. Their presence has been requested at the behest of the management, so that management may attempt to wine and dine and feed and bleed like the many slaughtered pieces of cattle carcass that occupy the large cooler. The secret postmen, under cover of night, slipped the black envelopes with postage too complex for a commoner to understand into boxes and slots, underneath the doors of luxurious presidential suites, and into the most elusive corners of domains that humanity occupies, even those most desolate areas of the map where we dare not venture beyond. The guests have only arrived last night. They have arrived by car and jet and helicopter, by boat and secret passages known only to those who can afford to know, their baggage in tow on the bellhop's cart, their toiletries carefully arranged by someone else on the counters of their rooms, their suits and pantsuits and skirts and heels and patent leather-soled shoes exquisitely kept new and pressed for them in the night by souls whose names are unmentionable, those seldom seen hands that engage in endlessly complicated task with a sort of effortlessness and desperate elegance. Only hands whose owners have been trained so meticulously, so wonderfully that they occasionally find themselves waking up, asleep in the night, continuing in their sleep, forever pressing, forever ironing, banishing the creases that they have been trained to be incensed at, straightening every object in sight, bringing order to every corner of their confined and eternally cramped universe. The finished and pressed clothes appear silently in the closets of the millionaires, as if they were willed there in the night through means currently unexplainable to the ill-informed, drooling troglodytes who occupy their spaces down below, those unwashed unworthy masses unfit for manners or even the notion of placement of the fork and knife. And the millionaires will awaken from sound sleeping in their beds, made of the choicest feathers from birds heretofore unnamed for propriety's sake, and slide from their silken sheets to find that their livery is as it was when they received it from their tailors. They will place the clothes onto their bodies and become exhilarated at the feel of the fabrics brushing against their skin, which is groomed and exfoliated in their sleep by our prodigious and dutiful squad of trained lice who

67 have been trained to eat away every dead cell so that the skin of the millionaires looks as fresh as they had emerged from the womb only moments ago. When evening comes, these temporary denizens will emerge from their quarters, from their massage parlors, from their impractical faux-military reenactments performed in flooded stadiums for no one's amusement but their own, they will come, arrive in the lobby and stand upon the sigil carved by the laser in the granite. Only when all have been gathered and at the appointed time which is determined by the angle of the sun and how it hits the great crystal chandelier overhead will the sigil begin to gently corkscrew ever downwards towards their destination. Once they have reached their appointed floor, after their platform has stopped moving and after their wrinkled skin has ceased contorting itself into shapes connoting surprise or a state of flabbergast, they are lead down a long stretch of hall, only dimly lit and illuminated by soft burning bulbs of light. As they are lead down the winding and narrow hallway, they bottleneck and form a single file line. Some of them walk more carefully than others, putting their hands out so they can touch someone else without falling down, or worse yet, scuffing the others' shoes. The one in the front, a man in a suit that is much like the others, a suit of a solid, yet bold color or a particular hue of gold, will suddenly sniff the air, his nostrils having been exquisitely prepared the night before to absorb and discern the alchemical flavors that await him. He notices that the air is fresh, and his mouth salivates and he licks his lips with delight. he carefully turns his head and whispers to the one behind him dressed in greenish hues that are somewhat indiscernible. The whisper travels, passed from mouth to ear to mouth to ear, all down the line in succinct fashion as they continue to move forward, the fabrics of their dresses quietly rustle in the darkness, making a small feathering sound that whistles through the rest of the line as they are carefully guided to their tables by those dependable servants, who pull out chairs in the dim glow of restaurant lights, who serve them baked scallops by spooning them into their mouths which hang open like those of small infantile birds. The silverware, being of some ordinary and extraordinary construction is easy enough to operate, but the precision with which the scallop should be lifted into the open mouth is not quite an unextraordinary feat. The management, in their infinite yet infantile wisdom, will send for the man who will discuss with them the terms of their invitations. He will discuss what the objectives, the aims, the reasons for the secrecy, for the secret postmen and the unspeakable professionals who live in the

68 walls, and he will explain to them the specifications of the product. There will be a slideshow of the product, and then, course after course of meals after meal, only then will they be sufficiently fattened, and only then must you lead them back to the platform from their tables, hands on shoulders in one long and unholy chain as they all, fat and happy, plod behind you towards the corkscrewing platform and then to their beds. You will only sleep in your bed, which is located in a place that no one but you and the management are aware of, until the morning, when you must pick up the phone, and go on to better things.

69 STEVE MCGINNIS MAKES HIS APARTMENT INTO AN ELTON JOHN RETROSPECTIVE

You, Steve, with your balding head that looks like a lonely island in the middle of the ocean; you who are in your mid-to-late twenties whose brown hair sports the same haircut as you did in high school, are someone who is profoundly pathetic, and that’s why Chloe left you in the first place. And it’s not that you were pathetic because you were abusive. You didn’t cheat on her; you never did anything to damage the relationship. But you didn’t improve it either. In your own way, you kept your life in a holding pattern, like in those fantasy novels that you read, where characters spend thousands of pages dicking around before they do anything of consequence. But unlike those fantasy novels, there’s no payoff for waiting around. Do you remember what Chloe said to you? She tried to tell you in so many ways. First she tried to be aggressive. “What the hell are you listening to Elton John for again?” she would ask you, as you cranked up Captain Fantastic in the car on the way to visit her parents for the sixteenth time. “Nothing is happening here,” she said, and then she left the apartment. She had been framed in the doorway and you thought it was so artful that if you were a decent enough photographer you’d take a picture of her in her small black dress. But now she’s gone. She didn’t blame you, your hairy legs, your embarrassing patchwork of pubic hair, or some other abhorrent cosmetic condition. It was really nothing about you. But that’s what it exactly was too. Nothing. Because when you get right down to it, you’re not an interesting guy, Steve. You’ve been the same since you were eighteen. Left to your own devices, you’d make what you call a “Steve’s Sandwich” of mayo, ham and Swiss on white every single day for lunch. Face it, Steve, you suck. That’s because you have no concept of boredom, Steve. You have not one iota of even being “bored” in any sense of the word. Even standing still is, for you, an activity, meant to be completed within a specifically set and regimented timetable. Chloe also got tired of listening to your Elton John albums over and over again. You refused to buy any of the new ones, insisting that the best of Elton John’s music existed during the late sixties to the eighties.

70 And so, in your pathetic loneliness which looks to be unceasing, you’ve decided that there is only one way that you are going to cope with her walking out on you. You’re going to turn your apartment into an Elton John retrospective. It’s a bad idea, Steve. Making your apartment into a tribute to one musical artist who hasn’t made a relevant album since the 1980s, yet has still remained relevant and compelling as a live performer, isn’t the choicest of ideas. You considered other options, like getting a job that required you to leave your apartment, but you love coding from home. You don’t have to interact with any human being, those dirty things that breathe and take up air and space around you and trigger your latent agoraphobia at a moment’s notice. You would have done this if you had an appreciation for David Bowie, but David Bowie is something that your now ex-girlfriend loved along with you. And that mutual love reminds you of her, and when you are reminded of her, you get sick to your stomach and you vomit. And you vomit because you have feelings. Feelings that can only be extinguished through the purging of your stomach via a process that reeks of disgust and malcontent, you insert your finger to activate your gag reflex and vomit as you kneel before your toilet as though it is a throne. You draw up the beginnings for the plan on a slightly used napkin that you had in your pocket from the bagel place that you go to for breakfast every morning to order your favorite bagel sandwich, which is a sliced everything bagel with avocado, Swiss, and ham. You live above the bagel place, which Chloe always hated. She used the work, “slopfest” to describe how she felt about it, which offended you. But now that Chloe is gone, the bagel has come back to you like an old friend to fill the void within you. But even this assemblage of preserved animal carcass and various consistencies of fruit and plant matter cannot satiate the emptiness inside you. The sketches that you make are rough and jagged, more suggestive than actual planning sketches, which makes you wish that you had done a better job in art class and learned to draw a straight line for once in your life. You decide to learn how to draw one. It takes you quite a few hours, but you eventually master the art of drawing a straight line. You aren’t wearing your watch to exactly measure how much time, but you have noticed the movement of the sun from east to west and the change in the crowd coming in, growing more drunken as day turns to night.

71 You go back up to your apartment and transfer the drawings to proper paper. You look at the paper and then superimpose your plans onto the walls of your apartment, drawing on the walls. You create a Kickstarter for your latest project, and people give you money for it. In the night, anonymous donations come in from far and wide, into the gaping mouth of Kickstarter and into your wallet. Your donors are anonymous, and they wish to remain so. You scratch your head on the border of your widow’s peak and your actual hair and wish that you had enough hair to justify this project to yourself. You quit your job and now, with a newer, better source of income, throw yourself into the construction of the museum at full-throttle. As you begin to modify your apartment without the permission of your landlord you begin, unwittingly of course, to slowly gnaw at the vestiges of your psyche as you move from wall to wall, using a flat pencil to crudely draw schematics for each exhibit. The entrance will be a commemoration of Elton John’s earlier work, his appearance in the film Tommy looping, a replica of the pinball machine that Elton John’s character operates by keyboard. Your inbox is flooded with requests and donations from Elton John superfans. They exist, like you, and you accept their gifts. The pinball machine from Tommy, or at least a replica of it, arrives in your apartment, the deliverymen heave the cartoonishly large crate up the stairwell. They drag it through your door and leave after you sign the papers. Weeks pass and more packages arrive. Gaudy pianos covered with various glitters and gimmicks, transparent and glossy black and matte finishes, upright, grands, and baby grands, they all come to your home until you feel as though you have to consolidate your collection. You develop a working relationship with the deliverymen who frequent the stairs to your apartment, their workboots with their familiar treads are now forever familiar to you, so much so that you hear them even when they are no longer there as you sleep in your now-cramped apartment. You call others for help in assembling your exhibition of Elton John memorabilia. They are on the internet and are eager to help you assemble your exhibits. You clamber over the memorabilia, the pianos creaking, and Steve, you open the door to find a few people standing outside who are not the deliverymen with their mustaches and their grunting. Instead they are adorned in polo shirts and pasty skin. They are inexperienced with tools, and you, Steve, must

72 teach them, and they are quick learners. At night you do not know whether they sleep. Or bathe. Or even eat. They seem to operate as though they have no need. After a month has passed, the exhibition is open. It’s a semi-gala affair in the small town in which you live, where you are surrounded by people. You try to not think about it all that much, that you are trying to think about something else that isn’t Elton John. You next invite Elton John to come down to your retrospective, which already is the talk of the city. You send this email while you’re drunk and having had way too much to drink. When you sent it, it was after the hours of the museum, after you realized that you needed to expand while you considered expanding to make your little hovel slash museum slash personal live-in- landfill of kitsch. You call the landlord, Steve, and tell him of your plans to buy up more rooms. Your landlord is an elderly gentleman who is somewhat negotiable. A few more months have passed and you’ve bought up most of the memorabilia. The local newspaper wants to interview you and you acquiesce to them. You live in a small and nosy town and you think that you could have kept this secret to yourself? They want. They take your picture, and you think to yourself of how ridiculous you look in your bedraggled state. You sweat profusely, and you aren’t even sure that you’re really even a person anymore. They want to know why you’re doing it. They incessantly ask you why you even wanted to make an Elton John retrospective. You don’t answer their questions, but what you do end up doing is getting drunk and singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” but you honestly don’t know why, Steve. Maybe it’s because of how she left you. Maybe it’s because you know that she’ll never come back. You think about how you can’t really get away from her. But you don’t tell them any of that when they ask. No Steve, you don’t even get drunk. You tell them what they want to hear, that you’re a big fan of Elton John and that you’ve always loved his music, and that converting your place into a gallery for an artist is the thing that you’ve always dreamed of doing. You lie through your teeth and after they have left you look at this collage of kitsch and crap and you sigh and you wonder how you’re going to ever put it all together and what your real plans are. You never thought it through Steve, and all you’re left with now is just this stuff. You lay down on the piano and you try to keep from crying, but you’re uncertain of what you’re going to do. And you think about Chloe, about what she would want you to do, about how she would probably say something to the effect of, “Stop wasting your life,” which is helpful advice, Steve, but it’s not specific. You are like a Scantron, Steve,

73 you need someone to input in the proper form and then and only then will you truly understand yourself, then and only then will you know what to do. Instead now, Steve, you will collect, and now, Steve, you will be lonely.

74 BRIEF HALF-TRUE INSTANCES IN THE LIFE OF MY GREAT-GREAT- GREAT-GRANDFATHER JAMES PATRICK THORNTON

James Patrick Thornton is born into squalor. Or at least, that’s what his father tells him, perhaps to keep him humble. By the time he is two they had moved into a proper house, and there were at least a room for the children to sleep in. The fifth of six children, he is born on August the 22nd, 1835 in Creggan, County Louth, Ireland. When he is born, the midwife smacks his buttocks while holding up upside down in order to make sure that he is alive. Placental fluid shakes from his body as he receives the vibrating energy of the slap, which causes him to feel pain, which causes him to cry. It is hot. Humid. All of the windows of the bedroom are open. The first few nights his father sleeps in their cramped living room. The midwife later remarks that he is a willful child, having to be wrapped tightly in order to get him to stop squirming. James’s forehead is high. His head is much larger than that of the other children. His hair, while not red outright, is a bright fiery brown accompanied by his square jaw. His nose is sharp and angular, a right triangle with a rounded point between piercing grey eyes. When he is young his grandmother sits him on his knee. She tells him about Lugh of the Long Arm, and how he knocked out Balor’s evil eye that could kill with a glimpse with only a rock and a sling. “You have eyes just like Lugh,” she says. His father and mother disapprove. “Too much time spent on stories, mother,” his father says, “yer fillin’ his head with empty dreams. He needs to learn the fields mother, not some fairy tales.” “But John,” says his mother, scolding him in Gaelic so that James can’t quite understand, “Don’t you think little James ought to learn some? Your father would appreciate it he were here, and I’d certainly not hear you complainin’ about no fairy tales. It’s his heritage.” James never forgets that he has eyes like Lugh, and eyes his right arm eagerly. In his spare time he plays with a slingshot, trying to knock birds off of fenceposts. Once, he succeeds, knocking a bird to its death in a puff of feathers. He starts thinking that maybe those legends his grandmother told him aren’t so far off after all. When he is 10, he gets into a fight with Willie Cork, one of the protestant boys in the town. Willie’s father is an Orange Man. He parades through the Catholic side of town on Orange Day, and they parade there every year. It’s a reminder. James knocks out Willie’s tooth for

75 calling him a “dirty fucking mick,” James’s knuckle is pained, and he ends up with a shiner underneath his left eye. When his father comes to get him from school, he tells him to be quiet after he slaps him on the cheek a few times. There is whiskey on his breath. “Don’t ever make me come down here again, or hand to God, I’ll skin you,” he says James obeys. Weeks later, Willie finds the Cork’s Orange Order flag in smoldering tatters on his doorstep. Willie never says another unkind word to James. The potatoes become more and more scarce. Less and less is on the plates when it is time to eat. One night, only buttered bread. Tensions grow in the house. Stomachs rumble at night. James is nearly 20. Most of his sisters are married off. But he still has to share a bed with his brother Philip. Philip snores. They both have strong jaws like their father. Next year, everyone’s eyes are sunken. Everyone is hungrier. They hear about ships going to Liverpool. There’s a lot of squabbling. James’s father dies around this time. They bury him, their bodies struggling with working the earth; their clothes hang off malnourished frames. Their belts are tight so they won’t feel hungry. As he sweats in the heat, head swimming in the dense air, James knows if they do not leave, they’ll die. Without potatoes, they won’t make rent, and if they can’t pay their landlords, they’ll starve. They arrive in Liverpool six months later, stowed away on a ship. It is cramped, and James sometimes finds it hard to breathe. Even when he is old, he will still be afraid of tight spaces, of cramming his tall frame into small confines. Not being able to move. James and Philip know they can’t last long. Their mother is very sick, and they have to carry her to the church, where a priest gives them room for the next two weeks. Despite their efforts, their mother dies three weeks later. They aren’t sure why, but for the previous two weeks her breathing had been heavy, as though leaving Ireland had finally triggered her decline. They lay her to rest in the churchyard, but in a pauper’s grave, along with 10 others, as the priest blesses the corpses. Later that night, James and Philip go back out to the grave, and quietly sing a song their grandmother taught them in Gaelic, its title long forgotten, but the song being about the soul leaving the body to God. James weeps a bit and Philip offers him his shoulder as they sing, Philip being the steadier singer as James’s voice cracks occasionally as he tries to hold back sobs. They want to go home, but they know that they can’t, so they try to find work in the city. James and Philip haven’t found work. They are desperate, and don’t want to stay. Others who are staying in the church until they find work are also talking. James and Philip whisper to

76 each other in Gaelic during the night so that they won’t be understood. All of those knocks that their father gave them on the head whenever they spoke English in the house were paying off. All of them are grumbling about not being able to find work. The merchants also charge the Irish double, so they’re never any more full than they were. Then there’s talk of America. Surely it has to be slightly better there, some of them say. A few months later, James and Philip are on the Cora Linn as it pulls out of Liverpool in 1854. He is going to America because the potatoes back home are going bad. There’s nothing to eat back home. It is cold, but at least he is going elsewhere. The potatoes won’t grow, but they treat Irish like dogs here. People are starving, and he is not one to starve. He’s seen too many sunken eyes, too many viciously growling stomachs. He waves goodbye. He thinks he sees his mother in the crowd of Irish well-wishers. He wants to yell across the bow to say goodbye to her, but he knows that she is dead. 100 years later her name will be lost to history. He will die while thinking about her name. His sons will never know who their grandmother was, because he forgot. He looks at his right arm and clenches his fist, thinking about Lugh. Their voyage is fair. Sometimes the Atlantic treats them rough. Waves threaten to crash over the bow and pitch the ship this way and that. James and Philip get sick over the bow during rough seas. Philip almost falls overboard as he violently and reluctantly wretches their his meager breakfast into the ocean. James grabs his belt with his right arm and pulls him back to the other side. Afterwards, Philip is shaking, his back pressed against the wall of his quarters, praying to St. Michael for at least thirty minutes before he downs a sailor’s grog that James stole earlier that morning. Secretly, James thanks Lugh for his right arm. After a month of sea, they finally pull into Boston Harbor. There are protestors, telling them to go back home and starve. They wonder if they’ve only traded one oppression for another. But it isn’t England at least. Food is cheaper. They can at least find somewhere to sleep. From Boston they move to Alton, Illinois, where they find menial work. They make only fifty cents per hour, helping to lay down train tracks. It is backbreaking work. Sometimes they lay down twenty ties a day, sometimes thirty. They despise it. Sometimes Philip and James curse their superiors behind their backs in Gaelic. Their father would have been proud if he could only see them, he would be smiling at them. “I taught you well,” James imagines him saying to them.

77 He meets Louisa Pottgen on November 4th 1867. They met at church. He adores her necklace and couldn’t stop staring at it. It’s an intricate necklace that dips down beneath her shirt in that subtlety suggestive way that is the only acceptable way to be suggestive at the church in Illinois. She often wears black. Their first words to each other consist of jokes about their fathers. “If I was thirteen, da would’ve beaten me for ooglin’ your pretty face,” he says, blushing. Lousia giggles. “When I was thirteen, my da would have locked me up in a tower, but then he would have had to help ma with the house.” James laughs, and they get lost in each other’s eyes. Louisa’s are so green that they reminded James of home. They marry and have one child. Louisa wants to stay, but James wants to go out west. They eventually move. From Alton they move to what will be known as Hubbard, Nebraska, in August of 1860. They build a house. Her nose sometimes turns red when a tornado is about to form. This occasionally saves them in one instance from a tornado as it passes near their field. While they are outside, he notices Louisa’s nose, bright as a beet, and hurries her inside, though in all honesty, he should have known by then that a cyclone was coming. He can smell it in the unusually warm December air. The tornado is terrifying. It looks to James like a pillar briefly binding heaven and Earth, reminding him vaguely of something he used to read in his bible when he was a boy. Maybe it was the book of Exodus? He can’t remember. All he can feel is sheer terror. That and the teachers rapping his knuckles with a thick, supple reed whenever he’d spoke Gaelic in class instead of English. He watches as the tornado churns the earth. It is a sound that he is still adjusting to. He’s heard gunshots, curses that have made his skin crawl. He’s even had a man pull a knife on him while he was in Illinois, although Philip was there to come up behind him and give him a swift thwack on the upside of his head. He has heard talk of war, the papers talk about John Brown. There is talk of conscription. He hopes he can avoid the draft, though he is certain he can avoid it if he’s homesteading, and has even thought about getting Louisa to break his leg and make him ineligible for the draft. But nothing can compare to the churning that he can hear as he gathers his family inside of the cellar and closes the door behind him, but not without catching one last glimpse of the cyclone. He sees it twisting in the wind, winding like thin and deadly rope against the black sky as he closes the doors to the cellar and bolts it shut from the inside.

78 Around December eighteenth, hours before the first snowfall, James goes out drinking. It’s nearly Christmas, and all the men are out drinking to avoid their wives and children. He is thankful that he didn’t have to go to war unlike some of these unfortunate souls. Some have broken legs, missing arms and limbs, and he can tell by the way they hobble whether they have prosthetics on or not. Sometimes there are eyepatches in the bars. Veterans are heading west, or trying to homestead here. He is three whiskies in when he sees the first fight break out. He doesn’t know them, and he knows he should keep away, but he can’t and joins in. In the ensuing scuffle between the three men, one pulls away a tuft of his beard, but James manages to keep his face largely undamaged as he flails and breaks another’s nose. The man slumps to the floor unconscious. The other backs away in horror. He drinks three more beers and becomes very drunk, barely managing to stand. He stumbles out of the saloon, barely able to even get to his cart and horse, but he does, pulling himself up in the most undignified manner. The snow is already coming down heavily, and he drunkenly whips the reins. The horse, a mare, starts off towards home. He wakes up hours later, covered in snow, still drunk, now cold, but home. He doesn’t know how the mare did it, but he gets her inside the stable, and stumbles into the house, not caring how much noise he makes. Three years later James will be dead. It’s a hot August day in 1885 and his sons Edward and Henry are out to get lumber for another barn that James wants to build out back. His wife hates the idea. “It’ll be the death of you,” she says, her stern face scrunching up like it does when she is certain of something. She usually scrunches it up when she’s talking about the weather, and she’s usually right. But in this case, she is not talking about the weather, and so she is half-right. Edward and Henry come back much later than expected. By his pocket watch, about three hours late. In the meantime, he has been splitting wood with his axe, and he’s exhausted. He’s losing daylight, even though it’s summer, and it shouldn’t take long to assemble at least the foundation. But James is a creature of habit and punctuality. His religion made sure of that. He knows this is the best week to work on this. He is furious. He asks them what they have been doing, getting up in their faces, sputtering, his spit falling like a fine mist on the boys’ faces, mixing with their sweat. Then he smells the beer on Edward’s breath. He undoes his belt and folds it the way his father used to because he can swing it twice as fast and not get tired. The boys want to run away, but they can’t, because they know better than

79 to run from their father. As he beats them, he thinks briefly about testing them, to test their dedication to him. He thinks briefly about Bricriu’s feast, the story his grandmother told him about Cuchulain. How Cuchulain bested the other Ulster heroes by beheading the giant, who held his own disembodied head aloft and demanded that Cuchulain be there the next night so that he could remove the Ulster hero’s head in kind. He loved that story too. But he knows that he needs to put aside such mischief, and unfortunately that he is not a giant, so he cannot be beheaded and hold his own head aloft in a Celtic game of chicken. After his anger expires, or exhaustion, whichever comes first when one beats their offspring with a spry leather belt, he tells them that they had better start unloading the lumber. But in his anger, he forgets that he is exhausted from splitting logs for the winter fire. As he angrily undoes the straps holding the lumber in on the left side of the overloaded cart, the lumber tumbles down and hits him hard in the chest. He can’t work anymore, and the doctor tells the family that he may never walk, but James is stubborn and proves the doctor wrong by walking three weeks later. But something isn’t right. He doesn’t feel well, he tells Louisa and the children. Maybe he should lie down. His spine, it hurts so much. He tries praying to St. Jude, St. Patrick, but his prayers seems to fall on deaf ears. He dies, his last thoughts being of his grandmother and how he should have taught Gaelic to his sons. He should have taught them the song for the dead. He is buried by his sons in the cemetery. “Such a willful man,” Louisa says as they bury him. Edward and Henry do it while Philip looks on, humming the tune his grandmother taught him. But then there are parts of the story, as handed down to me, that don't always seem to reconcile with the facts. Stories I’ve always taken as true, and repeated as being true, but when you look deeper you start to wonder if true means what you thought it did. In my apartment I flip through a red binder, looking at photocopied faces of my relatives. I look at their faces and think that they are much like mine, except that they are from a distant time where they aren’t allowed to smile in photographs. They had to stand still for almost a half hour before they could even capture their faces and put them to paper. I’m looking for myself in them, but the more I look the more distant they seem. Everything is secondhand, and this dry family history isn’t what I thought it was.

80 I go and call my father and ask him questions about our family, to which I get only vague answers and allusions, some verbal shrugs and sighs.

“Son, I don’t know what else I can tell you other than that he died. From what I don’t know “But the dates don’t line up right. Did he die of his injuries right then, or years later?” I continue to stare at the screen of a distant relative, who’s found evidence that James Patrick

Thornton might not have died in a farming accident after all, or at least, if that was the result, it wasn’t until years later.

“Joseph, I don’t know. I’m not a medium!” he says, his voice becoming high pitched just like mine does when I’m frustrated, his Southern drawl hitting and dragging out every vowel.

“Alright, well, thanks Dad. I’m sorry, I just want to get this figured out.” I lean back in my chair.

“You may not,” Dad says, sounding out of breath.

“I know, but it’s worth a shot. What are you doing? You sounded out of breath at the start there.”

“Your mother and I are laying the flagstone for the pool,” I picture my father, gloved and shirtless and in a yellow bathing suit and worn yellowing sneakers with an old baseball cap on his head and sunglasses, his back slightly freckled and tanned by the sun.

“Didn’t mom tell you not to do that?”

“Yeah, but I’m not shelling out more money for the landscaping people to come out here again.” I sigh and push my hair back out of my eyes.

“Dad, Leah and I are worried that you’ll hurt yourself if you—”

“Naw, your mother’s out here, I’ll be fine.”

“Alright, well, goodbye,” I say.

81 “Bye,” my dad says.

I hang up my phone and look back at the binder on my desk. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. I close the binder and sit and try to look somewhere, anywhere else for a few minutes before opening it again, staring into photographs of dead faces.

82