Lacey slowly heaved herself out of the chair and down the narrow hallway, knees cracking, one arm stretched out to her right, one hand pushing off wallpaper for momentum. “Goddamn Thursdays.” She flicked on the bathroom light and stared in the mirror. A globular face mapped not on foreign landscapes and forgotten towns, but on a lifetime of voluntary entombment and inner warfare. The outside world had been locked out a long time ago. Lacey’s borders now wedged between the snap of two deadbolts and the power switch of her TV remote. Except for Thursdays.

Lacey opened the medicine cabinet and rummaged through a smudged pink cosmetic bag. She worked red spirals into each cheek. Mascara followed in tiny, bird tracks above each eye. One smear of lipstick and the orange lips spread.

“My name is Lacey Calhoun,” she said out loud to the mirror. “I’m a housewife, mother of two beautiful boys grown up and already out of the house. My hobbies are bowling and puzzles. I love crosswords and Wheel, of course. I never miss your show, Pat.” She didn’t bring up Jeopardy.

Pat Sajak smiled and put his arm around her. “Glad to finally have you here with us, Lacey. You’re first up, so why don’t you go ahead and give that wheel a good spin.”

The audience clapped and Lacey clapped with them. She bent over the wheel; black prongs in a perfect circle reached up to meet her while the audience locked in place around her like a city. The eyes of the public were multiplying. Home viewers scattered in living rooms across the country, the world, the map!

She started to tremble, grabbed the sink and stared at her face. Makeup lay on top of her like a bad haircut. Tumors. She pulled up her white blouse and pushed on the loose skin around her stomach. Maybe she had one. She turned out the light and hurried back down the hallway. She sat by the window with her coat and purse in her lap. She searched through her purse until she felt the smooth, metallic outline of her Dale Evan’s pocketknife. She never went anywhere without it. She waited for a pale, dirty car to pull up in front of the building. She checked the door seven times on her way out. Locked.

*    *    *    *

The bowling alley was crowded. Lacey stood off to the side of the counter, let her boys say their hellos and get the shoes while people clustered, kids screeched and fat men drank beer. The orange room pulsed with orange chairs. Everything vibrated in one steady crescendo. She clutched her purse and counted twenty-one cigarette butts in an ashtray. Her older boy yelled to Lacey, “Lane number seven.” She followed him, while her other boy made the detour to the snack bar. She pressed herself into one of the glossy, cupped seats. The older boy dropped shoes in front of her. Red and blue suede. Last week’s had been green and red leather. She saw rows of shoes in separate compartments, wondered how many bowlers had worn the same pair–a whole community of crusty feet crammed into the same shoes nauseated her.

Hotdogs and bloody fries descended on a tray. A cold orange drink was secured in Lacey’s hand. Her boys were now in their twenties, but they still fought over who would go first and who would score. She took a long sip, then pulled a tattered tissue from her purse and wiped germ crud out of each shoe. Bowling balls thundered. People slid in and out of her vision. The bowling alley permeated a rank perfume of flat beer and old socks.

Lacey felt bodies around her. She froze when she looked into the menacing stare of a slumped, pale girl. Lacey watched in horror while a pink bubble the size of a brain popped slowly from the girl’s mouth on to her face. The girl stuck her tongue out at Lacey.

“The category is fear,” a man’s voice said.

“What?” Lacey said, looking around. Pat Sajak stood just beyond the girl.

“Have you forgotten us already?” Pat asked. The studio audience laughed. “We’re waiting.” Pat smiled at everyone and shrugged his shoulders.

“Sorry, Pat. Of course, I’m always ready to play.” Lacey smoothed back her hair and smiled. She forced a trembling glare back at the snarling girl while consonants rallied in her head. She knew the answer to this one.

“I’d like to solve that puzzle, Pat,” she whispered between clenched teeth.

The girl popped her gum and looked away.

“CLAUSTROPHOBIA,” Lacey yelled.

Vanna’s teeth emerged from behind glossed lips while the audience roared. Lacey labored for breath and tried not to visibly shake.

It was Lacey’s turn to bowl. One of the boys set the heavy black ball in her lap. She plugged the three holes, shaking her way into an avalanche. There was the damn audience again, and now they all looked like her ex-husband. Her red-and-blue suede shoes crept forward to the red painted stripe that marked the starting point. Dying would be much easier than this. Lacey clutched the ball to her chest and stared down at ten white pins that stood, stupidly attentive. She counted three lunging duck steps and pushed the ball off. It dropped into the gutter. She was used to that. Her boys waved their arms, yelling out directives, though she was already aware of the procedure: she would have to bowl again.

The balls were on a track in a semi-circle, eight bulging shadows, twenty-four holes. She took one from the group. The boys grabbed it from her. Not the right weight, they said. She smiled and saw them both younger inside a gold frame she kept on a shelf between books. Their arms hung low, stationed on either side of toothpick legs with frozen grins that showed every tooth. They were an exact replica of their father except for the eyes. One look in their father’s squinty, glowing eyes proved he was some kind of fanatic. Lacey had spared her boys their dad’s religious ravings. They’d been young enough to forget him. Neither boy had ever read the Bible or stepped inside a church while they were under her roof. She couldn’t control anything they did now, nor did she care to, but religion didn’t seem to be a priority for either of them and that was a comfort to her.

Their father had called himself a Christian, which she later found out meant a thief, a liar and a madman. He wailed day in and day out from the Book of Revelations about Armageddon and impending doom.

“Armageddon was an everyday occurrence when that bastard was in my home,” Lacey said to herself.

*    *    *    *

“He that overcometh shall not be touched by the second death.” Her husband looked up from his book at Lacey. “Blessed is he that watcheth. The Reverend and I were walking and I said, ‘Stop!! Can’t you smell it? There is the unwanted stench of Bethlehem here.’”

Lacey’s husband talked like a walking Bible. She set out three plates for him, the Reverend, and the drunk they’d picked up that day. She counted five russet potatoes, seven Brussels sprouts, a wing and two crusted chicken legs for each of them.

The husband rambled on, “And I said Give us oh Lord, and there he came… out of the blistered hands of the back alleys, shuffled the bent knees of the crucified.” He was always on the lookout for another prophet.

Lacey looked across at the latest Jesus-contestant, folded into his needs, as dirty and unsated as the five before him. Her husband picked them up out of the gutters. The bum’s fork and knife severed his chicken flesh and he sucked it down with half a bottle of wine. He kept one eye cast on Lacey’s husband beside him, careful to chew tragically before this dream of another man’s insanity was pulled out from under him–God be all employing.

*    *    *    *

The Christian had pledged Lacey his eternal love and a permanent spot with the group saved from Armageddon if she married him. But then, time was its own sorcerer, sealed with the blood of whole civilizations that rose up and buried themselves in the bitter song of a single hour, and one could remember almost anything if they looked back far enough.

Lacey married the Christian when she was eighteen. He was the only boy who noticed her with any interest at school. When he actually proposed he got down on one knee, raised his arms skyward and bellowed, “And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.” He was exotic and had conceptualized what no one else had ever considered. Lacey had always been an island. That alone was enough to fall in love with him at the time.

A few months into the marriage Lacey was pregnant with her first boy. Eighteen months later she had cried her way through the birth of a second boy. Shortly after that an outlined phantom of the crucifixion appeared over the marriage bed on the wall where the Christian’s wooden cross once hung. He was gone. Lacey’s money and jewelry were gone. It took a few more weeks before Lacey stopped setting a place for him at the table.

*    *    *    *

Lacey picked up another bowling ball from the revolving ring in front of her and listened for protests from her boys. They were composed for once, so she pressed her fingers into the holes. She moved up to the line, placed her feet together, swallowed three times, bent her knees, took two long steps, then froze midway to three. Another puzzle was evolving. Pat Sajak was pointing at a girl standing in the next lane scrutinizing Lacey. Lacey didn’t like being caged. She turned toward the intrusive eyes of the girl and whispered, “Why must you all circle me like a vulture?”

The girl grinned and flailed an arm in the air to let Lacey bowl first. Lacey smiled with no intention of following commands and shuffled back to the red line. She held her ground and stared ahead until she saw the girl charge past her out of the corner of her eye. She waited for Pat to announce the next category.

“Category: A person with, let me say, quite an unusual appetite.” Pat grabbed Vanna’s arm and pretended to bite her. The audience loved it.

Lacey was able to solve this puzzle with little effort. “That would be CANNIBAL, Pat.” She wobbled out another gutter ball, then hurried back to her seat.

Lacey sipped her soda and pulled the ratty tissue out of her purse again as she watched the bowlers in each of the various stages of the game. Some stood at the red line, legs together, ball up under their chin, staring down at the pins like the fingers of God. Some glided, some erupted forward, some sashayed, some puffed up like turkeys, and some were in a state of frozen suspension, one leg thrust up behind them, arms raised out to their sides, watching their balls roll them to glory. Rumbling cracks steady as the hands of a clock and every one of them grinning and clapping for themselves like they had a right to.

Just like the dim-witted Wheel contestants, groping out there like they had no concept of an alphabet–all of them drunk on the polluted waters of Greed and Vanity. No thank you, Lacey said, when her boys pleaded with her to appear on that show, swearing that she’d have made millions off Wheel by now, and maybe she would have. It was no mystery to her. The alphabet rolled in her head, filling in blanks, not that it mattered one way or another to her how many boats and vacations the rest of them racked up.

*    *    *    *

Her boys yelled, “Mom, it’s your turn!” Lacey pushed herself up out of her seat. The chain of balls stared up vaguely from the wheel until her oldest son picked one out for her and set it in her hands. He was the vigilant one. He called Lacey every day and came to visit her a few times a week with groceries. He never forgot her favorite ice cream. He had seen more than the younger one and looked afraid. She smiled at him and then slowly creaked her way to the line. She took a deep breath and thought of knocking out her ex-husband’s teeth. She let that ball fly out of her hands and smack down the alley. Pins flew in every direction. Strike! The boys clapped and rallied around her, hugging her.

“I knew you could do it, mom! Perfect. Just keep it moving like that,” the older boy said. Lacey was thankful to sit down for a break. Thursday nights were almost more than she could take, but it kept her boys happy and off her back about getting out of the apartment at any other time.

A gutter ball was like another day. Lacey drank tea all morning and watched the news, talk shows and soap operas. The horned antennae poured out a detached carnival of con men and stalkers, posers and thieves–all of them out for fame no matter what contemptible acts they had to perform. Lacey could never have been a contestant on Wheel. She wanted only to disappear.

*    *    *    *

Seven nights without sleep, Lacey’s boys stood in her bedroom door while madness raged through the room like a ravenous secret, smashing through the whispering objects, threatening to push any of them over the edge if they wandered too close.

*    *    *    *

The ball shuttled up from its tunnel below. Lacey retrieved it and moved back into her starting position with the clamor wading distances around her like a sea. The ball hurled out with the tide, and slithered into the gutter about halfway down.

Lacey ignored Pat Sajak and the audience this time. She counted fourteen steps back to her seat and watched her boys bowl. There was an ease about them that depressed her. She made no claim to a mother’s pride in genes (they carried so little of hers), but to watch them suck down beer and jab at each other with the same competitive idiocy over french fries or scores disturbed her. She smiled and clapped loudly for them, though, careful to remind them that crazy mothers didn’t go out Thursdays to bowl. This was a sacrifice she had to make. Between four gutter balls, she counted seventy-two bowlers over thirty lanes. It was hard to keep track. Bowlers lumbered off in continuous corpulent waves for snacks or beer.

Lacey looked up at the expanse of an industrial ceiling. A bowling alley was as perfect a setting for the final battle between good and evil as any. The ceiling dangled fluorescent bars strung in blinding rows of long, treacherous tubes. Lacey looked over the wretched faces around her and felt Armageddon start to pulse down.

*    *    *    *

Darkness descended into a hail of hands. Lacey was seven again and her Uncle was raping her in the back of the kitchen pantry. He shuddered a cry to God and clamped into the throbbing pain of her body. She screamed, but her voice swallowed itself like a prayer. She was devoured and slain by the dark of the sun until everything was dead. Her dolls were dead. Her friends were dead. Even her parents were dead. She, alone, stood a graveless body by the endless coming of her seventh year.

*    *    *    *

Lacey’s youngest son grabbed her elbow and pulled her up slowly. As the ball settled into her arms, she clutched it while the heads of heretics and sinners rolled down the bowling alleys along the periphery of vision. Her boy maneuvered her to the right side of the line, and she watched his arm swing back and forth and listened to him tell her, “Slowly, Mom, you can do it, nice and smooth.” He hugged her and left her alone with his advice. She forced a smile and stumbled forward, counting her threes, then swung the ball with both hands. Pat Sajak parted his legs and the ball rolled between them.

“Category: A state you can find Vanna in quite often.” Pat chuckled. Vanna smiled and slapped him on the shoulder.

Lacey’s crawling ball took down four pins. The boys shouted and clapped with the audience. One of the boys scratched a number onto the long, white score sheet stretched out in front of him, while the other prepared her for her next ball.

Her lips buried themselves. She dragged another tissue from her purse and blotted her forehead.

“CATATONIC,” she whispered.

The audience roared its approval. Lacey wrung the tissue around her fingers. She knew what was about to come. Multitudes reached out to grab her from behind television screens, from inside living rooms–the army continued to grow.

*    *    *    *

From out of the dark angles crawled the uncle instead, who wrenched Lacey back into the pantry, flooding in the blind directions of the clock with the shifting heresy of his swallowing hands. She was seven years old. She went rigid as a wax doll, and a voice yelled, “Hide us. Hide us from the face of Him.”

Again, the ball was burdened in Lacey’s trembling arms, and she was led to the line with a son’s voice in her ear, “It’s okay, Mom, just do your best.” She saw spots in front of her eyes. She flung the ball away and returned to her seat before it slammed into the gutter.

*    *    *    *

Her uncle’s wind gusted over the voices that leaked from the windows of houses that propped up the block. Her house was just another yellow blot on the game board that nestled like a tumor in the private shade of its quiet inhabitants when her mother was home, cutting vegetables and humming anonymous tunes and Lacey was peeling potatoes and dropping dead white lumps into a bowl and the pantry door spread open in front of them with the mocking yawn of another day as though nothing ever happened in there. Rows of canned beans, tomatoes, jars of sauces and jams looked out from their proper places with the indifference of family.

*    *    *    *

“Category: I’ve been working this job for how many years? Some days Lacey and I feel like we’re traveling down the same path, don’t we, Lacey?” Pat commiserated with Lacey while the audience laughed.

They’d committed Lacey once. Dying was easier than crazy. Either way she knew where she was headed. Maybe a tumor would buy her seclusion. Another puzzle solved. Conceal the conflict, counter the course.

“CONDEMNED.”

*    *    *    *

On the third floor of this house the Uncle lived with an Aunt, while below them open rooms gaped like mouths in an unlocked labyrinth of lethal doorways resounding with the shatter of loose keys from the Uncle’s pockets, and Lacey sat on her bed rocking while the door slowly opened, and from out of this widening gap stood her two boys instead with the neighbors, waiting for her to parade insanity like she was some spectacle, but she’d kept her mouth shut, wiped her eyes. Let them spy on their own families. She would cooperate with the sons; go to the doctors, take the pills. She saw the conspiracy. Keep this one to herself and move them in another direction.

*    *    *    *

Lacey counted one hundred twenty orange seats, twenty-three bald men, added six points to her score.

A rumpled man lowered himself into a seat across from her clutching a Styrofoam tub with nachos running yellow over the sides, while a conveyor of chips drilled into his mouth in rapid succession.

*    *    *    *

Every Sunday came up on Lacey like a noose when the Uncle and Aunt descended for supper and barricaded themselves with Lacey and her parents around a centerpiece of carved pork roast or lamb. Glass bowls circled it, moving hand to hand–mashed potatoes, green beans, fruit salad and beets. The stench of crusted meat was so powerful it was able to stretch its grisly fingers into the shuddering grasp of the following day. The Uncle sat directly across from Lacey, tucked tightly into his suit, black and buttoned as the law. He stuttered out his shaky opinions with eyes that lowered and trembled. Her parents would smile and nod, encouraging him, while the hacked centerpiece long dead, but strangely honorable in its bones, sat back and looked on in silence.

*    *    *    *

It was the tenth frame. The final battle had arrived. Lacey sagged in her chair and counted bodies again. She calculated around eighty people now. The man with the nachos picked at the soggy remains of his sinking ship with a thorough and disheartened yellow finger. The boys argued over scores, one yelling that the other had cheated. Lacey stared into the face of a man no saner than the zealot she’d married. He leered back at her while he sucked down his beer. Lacey grimaced at the two eyes that turned up at the corners in a smug, flattened face. “What the hell are you waiting for?” she hissed. “Armageddon is no more than a rerun, playing itself over and over again every day of your life.”

The boys started bowling again.

Pat Sajak called out the final category. “Dear Lacey, it’s the only way to survive. It’s the story of our existence.”

Lacey rooted through her purse until she felt the cold, smooth curve of her Dale Evans pocketknife. She opened it easily and slid its dulled blade across her wrist. She never pushed too deep–just enough for the promised seal from God. The Christian always cut her on the forehead, but she couldn’t do that. She touched the scar above her eyes. It was one of the few things he had left behind.

The man in front of her guzzled the rest of his beer and talked to himself with nothing over his scuttling eyebrows but a desolate layer of skin. “No one’s saving you, you bastard,” she whispered as she got up and moved toward him. She grabbed his neck, took the blade and slid it across his forehead. Someone grabbed her from behind as she shut her eyes hissing, “Hide us. Hide us from the face of Him.”

*    *    *    *

Lacey’s Uncle rampaged again from the smoldering furnace of time, attacking her with the fury of scorpions. His fingers drove into her shoulders. She barreled her vision through the pantry prison into a pickle jar that blazed in front of her. Blood trickled metallically off her distant tongue while she breathed the same prayer to God. “Make me invisible. Help me escape. Make me invisible. Help me escape.” But this time God was actually listening. The jaws of this cavern she was dragged into while the parents were out lifted like a great boulder. Light swung in like a crazed sickle. The Uncle was dragged off Lacey with his pants still chained to his ankles and a fury of thick, dull fists raged their assault upon him. A violent gust swelled up massively from out of her mother and with the primal immediacy of a thunderous God, down cracked an iron blunt shovel over the bloody skull of the sinking, stumbling Uncle while everything around Lacey went black.

*    *    *    *

Lacey opened her eyes to her boys’ faces hovering above her. The younger boy was blotting her forehead with a wet napkin, while the older one was wrapping her bleeding wrist and talking to security. The man Lacey cut got away with only a minor scrape, but was screaming about pressing charges as his group ushered him out.

Lacey didn’t hear him. She listened to the bowling balls rumble over wooden planks and the habitual massacre of exploding pins. One son pressed a paper cup to her lips. She took a long bubbling gulp of another orange drink, wiped the dripping water from her forehead, and forced a withered smile at her boys. Terror whispered from their sad, sharp eyes as the security guard questioned her. A small pool of strangers fed on this public display and shifted impatiently from foot to foot, waiting for her to supply them with more. She drained the last of the drink and looked at a frightened son on either side of her clutching his beer and Pat Sajak, who stood grinning behind them.

Pat put his hands together and pointed at her. “Can you solve that puzzle, Lacey?”

One son crouched down in front of her and began to unlace and remove her bowling shoes, while the other whispered of doctors and pills. Vanna waved an arm and smiled, glittering off to one side of ten blank white squares that strained to be revealed.

“That Christian’s Bible was worn down flat as a bald tire, but it still never got him anywhere.” Lacey put a tapping finger to her temple. “Here’s your Armageddon.” She looked up at Pat. “I’m ready to solve that puzzle.”

“COMPLIANCE.”

Vanna turned the letters over with nothing less than professional ease, and Lacey clapped her hands together in a brief, solitary celebration of another bowling night overcome. The audience dissolved again with the circular compliance of a weekly communion. One of her boys grabbed her hand and pulled her up, while the other wrapped her in her coat and got her purse. She waded cautiously between them through a rolling sea of six demented moustaches, four vagrant beards, and a pair of pencil-scratch eyebrows shelving shoes at the counter.

*    *    *    *

It was ten-thirty. Lacey snapped the dead bolt and checked the door seven times. Locked. She watched out the window for a pale, dirty car to drive off and then shuffled back to the kitchen for ice cream. She’d swallowed the pills, finished a meal, and tomorrow she would go to the doctor. Let it be cancer this time. She clutched her bowl of ice cream and made her way slowly toward the recliner. She sat in the dark and stared out the window.

Points of light, fixed stars, the moon a glowing consonant, a celestial C. She pushed up her shirt and slid her hand back and forth over her protruding stomach. She could see the week ahead of her much clearer from this side of Thursday. Shoes dropped. The recliner lurched back, and one hand groped over the end table for the remote.

—

Meg Tuite

Meg Tuite’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including Berkeley Fiction Review, 34th Parallel, Monkeybicycle, Hawaii Review, and Boston Literary Magazine. She is the fiction editor of The Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press. Her novel, Domestic Apparition (2011), is now available through San Francisco Bay Press (sanfranciscobaypress.com). She has a monthly column, “Exquisite Quartet,” for Used Furniture Review. Her blog is megtuite.wordpress.com.

A talking woman was on the screen but they couldn’t hear what she was saying because Delores had turned the sound down. The woman’s hair was like a bubble that encased her head, with a large curl exactly in the center of her forehead.

“I think her hair is terribly cute,” Ed said. “Maybe you could fix yours that way.”

“She’s a whore,” Delores said. “I’d rather die than look like her.”

“I wonder how she gets that curl to stay just so,” Ed said. “It must be glued in place.”

The woman on the TV stood up and moved to a microphone and waited for the band to play an intro and then she began singing. She opened her mouth all the way until you could see saliva and the fillings in her back teeth.

“It’d help if you’d turn up the sound,” Ed said. “Then we could know what she’s singing about.”

“I don’t want to hear that whore,” Delores said.

“How do you know she’s a whore?”

“Just look at her!”

Ed picked up the newspaper and looked at the TV listings, leaning forward to read by the light of the TV.

“There’s a beauty pageant on at 9,” he said. “Do you want to watch that?”

“Why would I want to watch a bunch of skinny whores parading across a stage in bathing suits? They look completely stupid.”

Ed flipped channels until he stopped on an old western. He always liked westerns. A bunch of cowboys were riding furiously in a cloud of dust across the floor of the desert. “Here’s something good,” he said.

“They look like a bunch of whores to me.”

“They’re all men! How can men be whores?”

She snorted, forcing cigarette smoke out her nose. “If I have to tell you that,” she said, “you don’t need to know!”

She switched channels until she came to a movie musical in which a man was tap dancing in front of a backdrop of a beach with palm trees. He was playing a ukulele and singing while a woman wearing a grass skirt did a hula dance all around him.

“Oh, how I hate anything with dancing in it,” Delores groaned. “Just look at those fools! Did you ever see anybody look so silly in all your life?”

“Maybe they wouldn’t look so silly if you would turn up the sound so we could hear what’s going on,” Ed said.

“Why would I want to hear that crap? Just look at that silly whore shake her hips! She ought to be ashamed of herself. And look at that man! I always did hate tap dancing! How could anybody think that kind of dancing is cute?”

“Everybody’s got their own tastes,” Ed said.

“Well, thank goodness I don’t have a taste for crap like that!”

She changed channels again and stopped on a horror movie.

“Oh, would you just look at that?” she said. “That silly whore is just sitting there. The monster is two feet behind her and she doesn’t even know he’s there. Is she deaf or something? If there was a monster anywhere in the house, don’t you think you’d know about it? How stupid can people be?”

“Maybe her senses are dulled,” Ed said. “Maybe she’s a nurse and she just came off a long and difficult night shift.”

The woman, realizing the monster was behind her, jumped up and turned and faced him. At first she thought it was her boyfriend playing a trick on her, but when she realized it was the monster she raised both of her fists to her face and opened her mouth all the way and screamed. Then she fainted and the monster picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the house and across the lawn and into the woods.

“Ha ha!” Delores said. “That silly whore is getting just what she deserves. Anybody as silly as she is deserves to be carried off by the monster.”

“Turn the sound up so we can see what the monster does to her,” Ed said.

“I don’t want to hear that crap! I can’t stand it!”

“I like it,” Ed said.

The monster carried the still-unconscious woman to his lair deep in the woods. Her hair had turned white in the two minutes since she had first seen him. He took her into a room that looked like a dungeon and just as he started to put her limp body on a table she regained consciousness and started screaming again and hitting his chest with her fists. He threw her down and locked her in while she was still screaming and pulling at her hair.

“I hope he kills her,” Delores said, lighting another cigarette.

When the woman’s boyfriend discovered she had been abducted, he rounded up about two hundred men from the countryside. Carrying axes and guns and lighted torches, the angry mob set off through the town to go to the monster’s lair to rescue the woman. Leading them was the stalwart young boyfriend, looking dashing in cape and fedora.

While Ed and Delores had been watching, they were unaware of what was going on outside. A thunderstorm had developed and announced itself with a deafening clap and a brilliant flash. In a moment, rain and wind were lashing the house.

Just as Ed started to turn up the sound on the TV, the electricity went off and they were plunged into darkness.

“I’ll light some candles,” Ed said.

“Don’t bother,” Delores said. “I’m going to bed. I’ve seen enough crap for one night.”

When they were in bed, Delores, unable to sleep, lay and listened to the wind and the rain, punctuated by thunder that shook the house to its foundation.

“What if the electricity doesn’t come back on right away?” Delores asked.

“We’ll eat cold food,” Ed said.

“No, I don’t mean that. What if we’re not able to watch TV? What do people do when they can’t watch TV?”

“Count their blessings.”

“Ed?”

“What?”

“Did you lock the back door?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Will you go and check?”

“No. I will not go and check. I don’t much care if the back door is locked or not.”

“Well, I don’t much care, either, then.”

She rolled over on her side and covered up her head. She thought she would go to sleep right away, but the thought of the back door being left unlocked was vaguely disquieting and kept her from surrendering herself to sleep. What if somebody came in to rob the house? That wasn’t very likely—she and Ed had nothing of real value; anybody wanting to rob houses would be sure to pick one with a more promising outward appearance.

She heard a thump in the kitchen and looked over at Ed to see if he heard it too; he didn’t move so he was obviously asleep, a lifeless lump underneath a pile of blankets. When she heard the thump again, she knew she’d better get up to investigate, but the bed was so warm and comfortable she couldn’t bring herself to swing her legs over the side and put her feet on the cold floor and walk all that way into the kitchen in the dark and find that the back door was locked after all.

With a flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder she awoke, not realizing she had been asleep. She looked at the ceiling in confusion and then turned her head toward the doorway to the bedroom and saw standing there a seven-foot-tall monster with massive shoulders. She was unable to see the monster’s face, but she knew he was looking right at her. He approached the bed and picked her up as easily as if she had been a rag doll.

He carried her out of the house into the rain and, although she still couldn’t see his face, he seemed strangely familiar in a way she wouldn’t have been able to explain. She didn’t struggle but found herself clinging to the lapel of his jacket. She nestled into his arms and, except for the rain pelting her in the face, she was quite comfortable.

She didn’t know where the monster was taking her or why, but it didn’t seem to matter. She only wanted to get out of the rain. Chances were very good that he wouldn’t kill her and when he got what he wanted—whatever that was—he would probably let her go.

If she lived through the ordeal and made it back home, she would have a story to tell. She would be in demand for the first time in her life. Newspapers and magazines and, most of all, TV, would want her to tell them what it had been like to be carried off by the monster. She would be the woman with the bubble hairdo opening her mouth as wide as if would go to sing a song for an appreciative studio audience. She would sing either Bye, Bye, Blackbird or The Sunny Side of the Street, exactly as she had always wanted to. And when she finished her song and took her bows, people would have tears in their eyes—tears of love—only for her.

—

Allen Kopp

Allen Kopp lives in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, with his two cats, Tuffy and Cody. His fiction has appeared in several publications including Skive magazine, Midwest Literary Magazine, Superstition Review, Black Lantern Publishing, A Twist of Noir, Abandoned Towers magazine, Bartleby-Snopes, The Legendary, Danse Macabre magazine, Best Genre Short Stories Anthology #1, Berg Gasse 19, ISFN Publishing, and Santa Fe Writers’ Project Journal.

That had been the start of it, Tom’s first words after he trudged up the driveway, his oily John Deere cap pulled so low over his forehead that shadow hid his face. He thrust his hands into his pockets and settled back on his heels. From the wooden rocker, Dusty shook his head.

“Nope. Working late.” He leaned sideways to spit over the rail. “Should be home around seven.”

Tom pulled off his cap. Deep grooves lined his cheeks. He stomped his feet as if to knock mud off his boots. “How’s the knee?”

Dusty rubbed his right leg. “Comes and goes.”

“How much longer you outta work?”

“Benefits end next month. Guess I’ll find something then.”

“Not much construction around.”

“Nope.”

“I might could use a hand around the farm. Barn needs a roof, so forth.”

Dusty fought to extinguish the tiny ember smoldering in his gut. “I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks.”

He listened to the rocker creak beneath his weight. Tom kicked at a pebble, cleared his throat. “Need to talk to you, Dusty.”

“Thought we were talking.”

Tom looked over his shoulder toward the empty ribbon of road. Beyond it, the blue smudge of mountains shimmered in the haze. “You and Hannah, how’re you doing?”

“Excuse me?”

“Aw, hell. I’m sorry, Dusty. That didn’t come out right.” Tom yanked his cap onto his head, kicked again at the ground.

Dusty stood up. He winced at the pop in his knee. The rocker swung against the backs of his thighs. He hobbled to the top step. “Tom?”

“Look, Dusty. You n’ me, we go way back. Right?”
Dusty’s heart thumped against the wall of his chest.

“And anything I tell you, you know I’m just telling you on that account. If it was me, I’d want that. A friend, I mean. To tell me.”

“Tell me what, Tom?” Dusty’s voice sounded far away, distant as the mountains.

“Was up in Bartonsville yesterday. Had to pick up a new gasket. For the tractor. Was five by the time I finished.” He glanced over his shoulder. “So I called Margie to say I’d stop for some dinner at Jake’s. You know the place, Jake’s?” A pause for the confirming nod. “Well, when I got there, I looked over the bar and saw Hannah.”

“Hannah?”

“She was with some tall fella.” Tom slid his hat off his head. “They looked friendly.”

Dusty squeezed his arms around his chest. His fingers were iron bars against his ribs. “How do you mean?”

Tom raised his right hand as if taking an oath. “Look, it was probably nothing. They were old friends or something. It’s just they were sitting awful close. And he kissed her. Once. That I saw. So I left, and I thought about it all night, and I figured I had to come tell you.” He slapped his hat against his leg. “I’m sorry, Dusty. Maybe you should talk to her.”

Dusty felt a quiver behind his knees. “Thanks, Tom.” Voice from the mountains. Tom nodded. Turned. His feet crunched over the driveway’s crushed stones. Dusty watched until he reached the road.

Later, inside, Dusty stood at the bay window. The sky had turned a featureless gray. He squeezed his arms over his chest, felt his biceps bulge against his hands. The willow tree at the end of their driveway, a dark outline in the fading light, shivered in the breeze. The effect was liquid, tree turned fountain.

He heard a loon’s faint call, muted by the glass. Looked back over his shoulder to the dark corner where the end table stood. Beside it, the shadowy bulk of the armchair. He crossed the room and dragged the chair to the window, fell into the sagging cushion and pressed his forehead against the glass. He exhaled, watched the foggy circle appear and then fade like melting ice.

A sudden gust of wind whistled through the eaves. The willow tree swayed hard to one side. Dark spray of its branches. Dusty imagined himself lying beneath them, shutting his eyes as the branches whispered over his skin. Across the glittering stretch of road, the mountains had vanished entirely into the oncoming folds of night.

This was not his life. None of it—not the house, not the tree, not the road or the mountains or the traitor knee that even now throbbed with its low and menacing voice. This was a life hijacked, a life forced from its tracks more than a decade ago. One single moment when everything changed, one instant framed by sound, screeching breaks, thick metal crunch. By words: “You’ll never play again.” The surgeon’s pale and narrow face, his silver-framed glasses and jutting chin. “You’ll walk, in time. But your knee will be weak for the rest of your life.” And so, instead of in Miami or San Francisco or Washington, he’d wound up home. Home to classmates who had never left, who had read about him in papers and bragged to strangers in bars about being there as Dusty Bilden grew up. Home to a construction job that had further damaged his knee. Home to Hannah.

He breathed, watched the condensation bloom and melt. Checked his watch. Seven-thirty.

And then, finally. Splash of headlights on the road, the ghostly cast of willow branches over glass. Dusty hurried to the kitchen. He flicked on the light and pressed his palms against the counter. Eyed the cutting board, the toaster, the thick block of knives. A brief rattle of keys in the front door, the soft creak of hinges. Then Hannah’s voice, bell-like, an echo of the cheerleader she’d once been: “Dusty? I’m home!”

His voice, gravelly in return: “I’m here.”

Her heels clicked over the parquet flooring he’d installed after her months of complaints about peeling linoleum. “Why didn’t you turn on the porch light? Is everything okay?”

“Just forgot,” he said. Did not turn. “Get all your work done?”

Two small taps as she toed off her shoes. Soft shuffling as she crossed the floor in her hose. Her small hands spread against his back. “Almost. Had to revise some reports Ron needed. I’ll finish up the last bits tomorrow.” Slight pressure from her fingers urged him around. Dusty slid his hands into his pockets, turned to look down at her still-youthful face, those brown, deer-like eyes. The fruity scent of her shampoo—something citrus—filled his nostrils. His eyes caught a sharp gold stab of light off her watch. Her birthday present from him, what? Six years ago? Seven?

“You’re working late a lot.” His voice sounded fake, like some actor speaking lines on a dim and distant stage. “You need to be careful. He might start taking advantage.”

Hannah laughed. She swatted him across the chest. “Yeah, Ron. Taking advantage.” She stood on her tiptoes to peck a light kiss on the corner of his mouth. “I need a shower. Wanna order pizza?”

Dusty felt ice creep up his throat. His stomach felt solid. He nodded. “Sure.”

Hannah undid the clasp that held up her thick tresses. She shook out her hair with both hands, and the familiar motion slid home a sharp knife of grief. She bent to retrieve her shoes, then hesitated at the door. “Honey? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Dusty said. Then: “Tom came by today.”

“Oh?” One eyebrow raised, a thin arching line. “Anything interesting?”

“You know Tom. You sure everything’s OK?”

Hannah’s eyes slipped shut. “Honey? Please? Could we try to have a nice evening?”

“I always try.”

Hannah set her shoes on the counter. She shook her head. “No. You don’t. It’s like the doctor says. You have to think positive, baby.”

Dusty nodded.

“Will you order?”

Dusty nodded. Hannah walked out. He listened to the steady wooden creaks as she ascended the stairs. To the soft click of the bedroom door. A few minutes later, at the groan of pipes overhead, he returned to the living room and retrieved the gun from the end table.

Overhead, the faint whine of the hair drier. Dusty sat at the kitchen table and twirled the gun. He thought about that day he’d left. His words to Hannah. A long distance relationship won’t work. You’ll meet some other guy. I know you will. What he’d meant: I’m leaving, you’re not.

The doorbell rang. He hid the gun beneath the sink, behind the mop bucket, and shuffled to the front door. By the time he had the pie in the kitchen, Hannah had come downstairs. She wore her blue terrycloth robe tied loosely around her waist. “Smells good,” she said. She slid into one of the sagging wicker chairs.

They ate a while in silence. Dusty chewed mechanically through one tasteless slice, then another. Hannah flipped through the day’s mail. Halfway on her third trip through the pile, she sighed. She dropped her slice onto the cardboard box with a wet splat. “Dusty, are you going to tell me what’s going on? Or do I need to guess?”

Dusty chewed. “Nothing’s going on.”

Hannah rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand. Dusty wondered if she might be close to crying. “You’re working late a lot, is all,” he said.

“We talked about this. It’s a law office. There are late days.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be working there.”

“Oh my God. Are we here again?” Hannah’s eyes, wide and unblinking. She stood up and stomped to the sink. Dusty felt a moment of stupid panic, but she only turned to face him. “You know your disability isn’t enough for us. You know that. And it’s not going to last forever. We talked about this.”

“I know what we talked about.”

“Well, I’m working late again tomorrow. So you might as well go and get all pissy about that, too.”

“You have to work late again tomorrow?”

“Yes, I do. Ron needs me at a meeting. With some new clients. In Matlinburg. It’s at four, so we’ll probably just grab dinner there. I’ll be home around eight or nine.”

“Eight or nine.”

“Yeah, Dusty. Eight or nine.”

“And what if I say no? What if I say you can’t?”

Her face hardened. Dusty heard each second’s tick from the sun-shaped clock over the door. He wondered if he’d said too much, gone too far. He listened to her feet stomp up the stairs, to the bedroom door slam. He shoved away the pizza box. It slid across the table, scattered the stacked mail, fell upside down onto the floor. Sauce exploded across the shiny fake wood.

She was asleep when he finally went up. In the silvery light, he could just make out her curved form beneath the flimsy bedsheet. He crept into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. Listened to her breathe.

Ten years. The thought it, a wasteland of time like trackless sand in a desert. His life, unlived. Childless. His lip curled at the thought. Hannah’s own traitorous body, the miscarriage so severe the doctor had warned off any further attempts. She had wanted to adopt, to fly off to China or some such nonsense and bring home a baby at any price, but to what purpose? It would not have been his child. Another false note in a false life.

Tired. He felt bone tired, more exhausted than he’d ever been. He padded barefoot to the bathroom, brushed his teeth in the dark. Slipped beneath the covers and slid close enough to her that his arm grazed the swell of her thigh. She did not stir. His weariness seeped from him as though through a sieve. He lay awake until the soft gray of morning filled the room.

*

He left the house early, as the first slants of sun set Tom’s cornfields ablaze with gold light. Hannah had still slept when he rose to shower, though she’d been awake after, as he pulled on his jeans and flannel shirt, his work boots and heavy belt. He watched in their dresser mirror as she sat up. The sheet puddled in her lap. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Work.”

“What about your knee?”

“It’s all right.” He bent his knee to demonstrate. She couldn’t hear the pops. “Got that new development going up on the south side. I can get a few hours there.”

“But your disability check. You’re not supposed to be working.”

“I’ll worry about that later.”

“Dusty…”

“I’m going.”

Hannah lay back. She pulled the sheet to her chin. “I’ll grab some breakfast on the way,” Dusty said. “I’ll see you tonight. What’d you say, nine?”

Hannah’s eyes stayed on the ceiling. “Eight or nine.”

He drove his aging Chevy to the north side of town, to the lonesome trailer with peeling yellow paint that was Artie Strong’s Hertz dealership. It opened at eight; by eight-thirty Dusty was driving again, this time a cramped beige compact that cost almost sixty dollars. By quarter to nine, he’d arrived at the cracked and potholed Hardees’s lot that lay across the street from the strip mall. The green awning of Ronald Koernig, Esq., hung between an iron-barred pawnshop and a red-curtained Chinese restaurant.

Ron arrived at nine. He drove a spotless silver Lexus. Probably washed it every day. Dusty watched him unfold his tall, lanky frame from the car, watched him adjust the gold-rimmed glasses that perched high on the bridge of his beak-like nose. Minutes later, Hannah arrived. She parked her rusty Honda in the space beside Ron’s car. Dusty slid low in his seat, bent into the steering wheel. When he dared peek over the dashboard, Hannah had vanished inside.

Hours passed. The inactivity gnawed at Dusty. A steady stream of images floated, like exploding bubbles of acid, to the surface of his mind. Hannah, undressed, lying back on a desk. Hannah, smiling, lifting the hem of her skirt. Hannah, flushed, a man’s fingers wrapped in her hair. Dusty forced himself to wait, to ignore the churning bile in his stomach, the fluttery tightness in his chest.

At two-thirty they emerged. Side by side, they crossed the parking lot. Hannah shook her head. Smiled. Ron dropped his hand on her shoulder. He opened the passenger door of his Lexus and waited as she sat inside. Dusty turned the key. The engine sputtered to life. The Lexus rolled across the parking lot, turned onto the street. Dusty followed. Careful to keep his distance. He drove out west on Highway 40, the direction of Matlinburg, and he felt a small glimmer of hope. But halfway there the Lexus turned into the gravel parking lot of a small roadside motel. A low, L-shaped building. Red tile roof. Anonymous green doors. Dusty pulled to the side of the road, cut the engine. He clenched the steering wheel. Knuckles, white. He watched Ron walk to the office door, watched Hannah stand in the parking lot and shake out her hair. Watched Ron walk to her, glinting key in hand. Watched them embrace, watched Ron’s hands roam her back. Watched them kiss in the doorway. Watched the door swing shut.

Dusty drove home.

A car passed out on the road. Its headlights swept over the asphalt, and Dusty felt a small thrill of adrenaline in his veins. But the car drove on past the house, as had the others before it. The red squares of its taillights vanished from view. Dusty checked his watch for the hundredth time. Eight thirty-eight. He pressed his forehead against the glass, felt its coolness on his skin. He watched his breath appear and melt. The willow tree flowed in the breeze.

The room’s silence felt alive. Above it only the noise of the house itself: quiet creaks and earthy moans, wood settling into itself. He used the windowsill to push to his feet, winced at the pop in his knee. Metallic weight shifted against his thigh. He dug into his pocket and ran his fingers over the gun’s crosshatched grip. It seemed ridiculously small in his hand, a toy. A relic from his past. How long since he’d even thought of it? Ten years? More? His father’s gun. The one he’d stolen from the safe the day after he’d come home, the day after his release from those long weeks of physical therapy. After the matter of his future gameplay had been settled once and for all. That evening much like this one, wind blowing toward the mountains, carrying with it the faintest trace of coming rain. Dusty had loaded the gun and carried it out to the carport, had sat for an hour with his back to the thin aluminum wall. Ashamed at how his body trembled. He had pressed the barrel against his temple, curled his finger around the stiff trigger. Pulled with the barest hint of force. Felt the stiff, mechanical resistance. Pulled harder, then harder still. His eyes shut, he had pictured a linesman crouched, tense and ready to explode into action. But then a noise inside, a light in the kitchen. His fumbling to hide the gun behind his back. Just needed some air, Ma. Couldn’t sleep. And Hannah had come to visit the next day. When his father died, Dusty had taken the gun. But he’d hidden it. Put it away to be forever forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.

But nothing worked that way. In the end, the gun had been no more truly disappeared than the mountains outside. Shrouded now by the cloak of night, they would be there come sunrise.

A stronger gust of wind shook the house, startled Dusty from his thoughts. He crossed the living room to the front door. Outside, on the porch, he filled his lungs with cool night air. He stepped down to the driveway. His feet crunched over gravel. At the road, he peered in the direction of town. Nothing, only the distant glow of Tom’s house, yellow windows in the night. The willow tree swished. Dusty faced it, studied its infinite movement. He stepped beneath it, reached up to pluck the elastic energy of the nearest branch. A live wire pinched between his fingers. It twisted and pulled as if it wanted escape. Dusty walked further beneath the tree, stared up into its cascading height and saw there no sky, no stars, only the watery spray of dark against dark.

An engine in the distance. Dusty sat down. The ground was hard beneath him, lumpy and uneven with rocks and roots. He lay back and stared up into the shifting dark. A yellow splash of light moved over him, the tree, the ground beyond. Dusty lay still. He breathed with the wind as Hannah’s car ground up the driveway. The engine stopped. The door creaked open. Dusty heard two light steps on the stones, heard heels thump over the porch. Heard her faint voice in the foyer: “Dusty?”

Dusty shut his eyes. He could picture it now, the foyer light clicking on. Hannah would hang her keys on the hook, shake out her hair, check her makeup in the hallway mirror. Would walk up the stairs, her head tilted as she listened for any trace of sound from the bedroom. She would walk to the door, ease it open while whispering his name.

The wind breathed through the trailing branches. Dusty breathed with it. Metallic resistance against his finger. Dusty pulled, pulled, pulled against it. Pulled toward that single moment, that sharp crack against the cadence of the night. Toward the mountains, and the silence, and the breeze.

—

Pete Pazmino

Pete Pazmino is a graduate of the MA in Writing (fiction) program at Johns Hopkins University. His work has previously been published in Monkeybicycle, JMWW, Menda City Review, A Cappella Zoo, You Must Be This Tall to Ride, and elsewhere, and his short story “Crawl” is forthcoming in The Meadowland Review. He was a finalist in both the 2007 fiction contest hosted by the Black Warrior Review and the 2006 competition hosted by the Iowa Review, and was nominated for the 2009 storySouth Million Writers Award. He blogs, occasionally, at www.petepazmino.com, and lives and writes in Manassas, VA.

I have to ask him: So how did they get you out there? To California? How did they move you 3,000 miles? How, in fact, did they get you out of this place? Down the pine-scented hall and out that front door? I lay it out there and all he does is nudge his straw, the striped plastic one that bends at the neck. It’s fallen on his tray. Too bad he can’t manipulate it anymore. Those fingers haven’t had that kind of precision in years. Not that I’ve ever specifically noticed until just now, nor would I dare say it aloud. I’m thinking about tapping it back into his vanilla drink, but I’ll leave that to those who are paid to bear that honesty. I pay them good money to deal with the intimacies of his deterioration. He’s lost his interest in his lunch anyway. I ask again: What was the mode of transport?

“I couldn’t tell you. I fell asleep after the Jewish services downstairs to find Mass in full swing on that TV hanging over there. I missed the homily and was out again before Communion.Next thing I remember, I’m in San Francisco and Uncle Jim is there. He was making vanilla sundaes and waiting for Bianca. She can be late, he said. No kidding, I told him. I waited for her for every minute of our marriage, and now I’ve been waiting for twenty years alone. Jim’s ridiculous, anyway; he knows I like desserts more than I should, but he keeps making them for me. There was a lot of hubbub and party preparation, so there was no one I could ask about how I got out to the coast. I didn’t want to be in the way. And, frankly, I was more concerned about whether my wife would be long at the salon.”

The guy can smile, put on a happy face, but this transcontinental jaunt must’ve killed him. It must still be killing him. He hasn’t gotten a decent shave in at least a week, it looks like. Those little gray hairs are creeping down his neck. Being clean-shaven and presentable is important to him, even at this age. Even as a kid, I never saw a trace of hair on that face. If they thought it so important for him to make this trip, to some birthday party in California, couldn’t they at least have shaved him? If he went out there mangy, that alone would be tearing him up. But, the prospect of Bianca, dangling his wife just out of reach—that’s like offering a rabbit to a greyhound. Look at him. The physical strain alone. Muscle atrophy and ossified joints—I bet they had to crack him before they put him on the elevator. He’s laughing the whole thing off. Just pluck a guy’s wife out of thin air and throw them together. Or make him think that’s going to happen. That ain’t easy. Not by any stretch. So I ask him again: What kind of flight? Charter or commercial?

“I don’t know. I did see the rabbi on the way out the door, though. He told me to enjoy myself. I think he’s the best of the whole gang. He’s sharp, and he treats me like I am too. That priest’s a royal S.O.B. That’s why I have to rely on the TV for God. Out West I met a minister. Presbyterian. Uncle Jim was there, and he’s a convert. Not when he got married, but ten years later. Aunt Laurel (who you never met), she was from the Midwest, so she was Protestant. Jim hasn’t stopped going to her church since she died, every week. If I had more time out West, I would have gone with him. But I had to get back.”

The guy knows every man of every cloth; what the hell can I do for him? What could I give him? What is the perfect gift? It’s the least I owe him.

“After the vanilla sundaes, they hung up bunting. I wanted to help, but I’m in no shape to be climbing up stepladders. These fingers couldn’t even fold a decent napkin. So I waited outside in the sun. It’s different out there in California. California shines more like Japan, or Wake Island, at least. It feels good, better than the patio at this place. But that was the tough part of my trip. Across the parking lot I saw your father.”

Hold on. Goddammit. This is too fucking much. Bianca’s his. But this one’s ours. Or maybe mine. I’ve got to do something. Those prickly little hairs are crawling down his neck. And he’s got patches on his cheeks, patches that never had a chance to grow before my father was gone. There’s only one thing I can give him: a hot shave. A hot shave from an aging barber. There’s nothing so curative, so decadent, so healingsoothingwarmgratefulright. Nothing so appropriate. I ask him what my father was doing out in California.

“He was getting out of his car. It looked like he was coming in, to the birthday party. He held up his hand, as if I should wait a moment. Then he disappeared behind the building. That’s when Uncle Jim (he was throwing the party) pushed me back inside. He reminded me that Bianca was on her way from her hair appointment. I don’t know if he even believed me when I told him I had seen Little Gerald, your father, out there. He was standing there, towering over his car, smoking a cigarette. It was unmistakable. Things are clear in that California light. The filters in the sky are more complete. Like above the water, off the coast of Asia. It was Little Gerald. No one stands that high. I could smell him clear across the blacktop. But I went back inside and waited for my wife.”

I would call an attendant over right now if I wasn’t worried about leaving him alone, even for two minutes. What if these incompetents decide another field trip is in order while I’m gone? If I could just grab one of these attendants—by the wrist—he would get a mouthful. Did they know my father would be out West when they sent the old man on this trip? Look at him. The smile and the glassy eyes (leaking enough mucus to fill a trough). He keeps saying ‘Little Gerald’; that had to be a punch in the gut. Don’t they need a waiver before they pull this shit? Before they take him outside? Into the open air? No one asked me to sign a waiver. Did they charter him a private flight? Who’s going to be billed for that? Did they even think to get a priest to bless him before he left? And not that usual stiff.

“I was glad that I saw the rabbi on the way out. His rites suited me nicely. Especially considering I didn’t know how far I’d be traveling. You always want to be blessed before you step out into the open air. Outside: that’s where everything happens. Out in California, I spent hours inside, waiting for that birthday party to begin. And not a blessed thing happened. Bianca never showed up, and Little Gerald never made it inside. But I know it was him I saw out there. I asked one of the men hired to hang the bunting if he’d push me back outside. He did, during his next coffee break.”

I thought the flight was bad enough, but this back-and-forth business with his wife and his son seems downright sadistic. I thought they had a staff of doctors, head doctors to oversee these things, to ensure that his life is without shock; I pay highly educated professionals to keep him inside. They fucked up and now I’ve got to make it up to him. I don’t pay them because I have money to burn; it’s because I understand the dangers of the outside. I live out there. I know the outside threatens the infirm, my infirm. An encounter with the past is likely, pretty much inevitable, if you let the guy fly all the way across the country. He ran headlong into the past, and amazingly he’s still sitting here—intact. Whatever plane they flew him on must have passed its safety inspection with flying colors.

“He was still out there smoking a cigarette, your father. He never turned toward me, and these lungs didn’t have the capacity to call him over. I stomped my feet, but all he did was cough a little and clean something out of his ear with his pinkie. I thoughtabout rolling over to him, but it used to be him who pushed me. There was a grassy hill that went down from the parking lot, and that’s the direction in which he walked away. I saw his head pause for a moment; I thought he might come back. And then he’d see me sitting there, out in broad daylight, waiting for him. But his crown disappeared and Uncle Jim came back out to get me. He said the party was starting and Bianca would arrive any minute. He looked over at the green hill nervously and I said, Why?

Why what?, he laughed.”

I would have been too nervous to eat cake. He can’t even sip down his vanilla nutrition supplement. It’s like we violated a contract. We, as a family. And they went straight to the top to punish us all. They struck at the patriarch. And he won’t give them the pleasure of squirming. Won’t give God the pleasure; God is who he attributes these things to. He just sits there and wipes the mucus out of his eyes and smiles about his free trip to California. Couldn’t they have at least made him presentable? Just given him a shave?

“The cake was frosted with chocolate. Chocolate is usually too rich for me. They offered me a slice but I wanted to make sure some was left for Bianca. She loved rich—even cloying—desserts. They ate the whole cake and I sat beside the final slice. I kept watch and guarded it until the last balloon was deflated. Then they came to take me home. Bianca had never arrived to eat her cake. I told them to wait, to give me five minutes. And I shoveled it down. I shoveled down that sweet chocolate cake in a manner so enthusiastic and disgusting. And then we left.”

I have to ask him. I want to forget this detail, but I can’t risk the temptation. I ask him definitively. Did you see my father again?

“The parking lot was empty. The road was empty. It was clear of familiar faces all the way to the airport.”

I stand right up and push him. We go straight out the doors, and I don’t check once to see if an attendant is watching. We hit the open air and he gasps, necessarily. I stop to button his sweater before we rush to the parking lot. As we leave, I know I’ve exposed him, I’ve done the same thing as those incompetents who sent him on a trip to the coast.

* * *

They came in nervously. Really, the young one, the grandson, was nervous. The old man didn’t know what was what. He was laughing, actually. He kept asking if he was going back to California. Apparently, he knew some folks out West. He said he’d had enough vanilla ice cream, though. It didn’t look like the barber was offering desserts.

The kid closed the blinds on the front door behind him, as the welcome bells still tinkled. The barber stopped to take in the sight: the skinny kid, peeking out at the street he’d left behind, scratching his unshaven cheeks, and his old grandfather, sitting snug in his wheelchair, smiling at the bottles of Barbasol. The kid asked for a hot shave. One for him and one for his grandfather. “Do you still do hot shaves?” he asked. “The old-fashioned kind?”

The barber laughed. “Is my funny-looking pole still spinning?”

The kid couldn’t decide who should go first. Finally, he sat in the chair. His grandfather looked out the covered window and laughed. He said that he had no idea that his wife and son had been living out on the West Coast. “Some facts are more shocking than a battlefield,” he said.

The barber shaved the grandson’s face with swiftness and precision. He traced his jawline with the soft metal edge of the razor, then brushed it up and down his cheeks. He stayed silent, let his customer meditate. But the kid couldn’t relax. His muscles twitched each time his grandfather muttered something or laughed. He even sat straight up a few times, mid-shave. It was whenever squeaky brakes eased a car to a stop on the street outside. The barber kept his head down and let him settle back, then set back to work. Still with swiftness and precision. He ran his fingertips all over the kid’s scalp then placed hot towel after hot towel on every bald and reddening patch of his neck and face. Talcum applied, the kid jumped up, nervous as the moment he entered the shop, and pushed the old man over to the chair.

He took his grandfather by one arm and the barber took the other. The kid shook him off. He wanted his grandfather to rely on him alone.

The old man settled into the barber’s chair and smiled at his scruffy face in the mirror. He touched his gray stubble and looked at his grandson. “How long has it been?”

“Too long,” the kid said. “They haven’t been watching you as closely as they should.”

The barber set to work, the same soft razor gliding over the same red jaw. The old man sighed and his eyes half-closed. His grandson watched closely, standing hardly a foot away. Watching the barber’s manner, swift and precise, he forgot the world beyond the blinds, the one that conspired against him and his grandfather, the one that moved them against their will.

—

John Dermot Woods

John Dermot Woods is the author of the novel, The Complete Collection of people, places & things (BlazeVOX, 2009). His stories and comics have appeared in many journals, including The Indiana Review, Hobart, American Letters & Commentary, Salt Hill, and 3rd Bed. His comic chapbook, The Remains, is forthcoming from Doublecross Press. He edits the arts quarterly Action,Yes and organizes the online reading series Apostrophe Cast. More information can be found atwww.johndermotwoods.com

I remember his body, the drops beaded across his pale belly, the dark hair plastered in web-trails across his chest, how he tousled his gray head with a towel; how he leaned over me, close and warm, to pat smooth an overturned pail of sand. We shrieked with laughter when he tossed us into the waves, the chill water that stung our eyes and left our bodies gritty with salt.  Afterward we wrapped ourselves in towels and walked to the concession stand, where he bought us red and blue slushes in paper cones.

At the end of the day, when the sun was low, he packed up our sun-lotion and sandwich wrappers and told us it was time to go. But I was never ready to leave; I didn’t want the day to end.  So I ran, laughing, a tall shadow across the sand, and plunged into the cold water, taunting him to come and pull me out, to drag me home.  I believed I would be able, always, to grasp his strong hand just as a wave came plummeting down on us.  I can still see him there, blurry above the water-line, a distant golden figure coming closer; I can see what he meant when he promised that even without his arm under my belly to hold me, I could stay afloat.

Hank Feldman looks nothing like my father. Daddy was a tall man with dark eyes and broad shoulders who never got old. Hank is tiny, at least 70, hunched and wrinkled. His eyes are a vacant, wintry blue. He sits quietly in the window seat as I shove my duffel into the overhead and collapse into my place on the aisle. He waits a few moments, until I fasten my seatbelt, lean my head back and close my eyes, before tapping my shoulder.

I am tired, but agree to give Hank my seat when he explains he will need to rise repeatedly to use the restroom during our two-hour flight from Chicago to Boston. I like to be near the window, anyway, to look down on clouds.

When we are settled into our places he asks, “Are you coming or going?”

“Coming,” I reply, resigning myself to a few moments of small talk. “Coming home.” I will tell him I live in Boston, that I am a piano teacher, that I grew up on the north shore of Massachusetts. I will not tell him this was my first visit to Chicago, or that the so-called specialists at the hospital there can’t help me.

But he asks nothing else. He tells me he lives in a small Illinois town called Palwaukee, and is going to his granddaughter’s high school graduation. “She’s off to college,” he says, his voice wavering. “I can’t believe it.”

During the safety demonstration Hank watches, alert and interested, as the flight attendants explain how to breathe, how to float, how to escape in case the plane should catch fire or plummet from the sky. I look out the window to the paved runway, where men in brightly colored jumpsuits are scurrying about, as if searching for something.

“You know what?” he asks, as the plane lifts into the air. “Things have changed since I flew myself. I was a crop duster in the sixties.”

I am half-listening, thinking instead about the oncologist I’d met the day before, the experimental treatments, waiting lists, the unpredictable nature of what lay ahead.

“It’s different technology,” Hank continues. “It’s all done with computers.”

Out the window the ground spirals away from us, dissolving into atmosphere. I close my eyes, in awe of this technology, of the miracle that carries me 30,000 feet into the sky; of the measurements these pilots make, using instruments of time and wind.

“Flight attendants, prepare for landing.”

I wake to lights below; they blur and waver as though I’m peering through the glass at the iridescence on a sea floor. Hank shuffles down the aisle, and returns to his seat beside me.

When he smiles, I notice his face droops on one side—the effect of a stroke, perhaps. I hadn’t seen it before, as that side was turned away from me. His pale eyes are cloudy behind their glasses. He says, “You, know, the worst thing about getting old is the surprise. You’re just surprised all the time by what your body does to you!”

I laugh as politely as I can. Not knowing how to respond, I say, “Well, I think you look great.”

“That’s nice of you,” he says. “Don’t listen to me, anyway. You’re young and beautiful. You have a lot to look forward to.”

The lights in the cabin shut off, then, and a bodiless voice intones, Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve begun our final descent. I turn to the window and feel myself floating, submerged in a futuristic womb, staring not into the sockets of my eyeless reflection but out to the night silence. The plane circles Boston Harbor where a peninsula juts like a crooked finger. Around it the blackness of the harbor joins the blackness of the sky, and I try to imagine Hank and I are adrift in space, ageless and untouchable.

But Earth ascends; the world comes back to us. Now I can make out illuminated stadiums, lawns lined with streetlamps, freeways of white headlights streaming in one direction, red taillights in the other. As the plane lowers billboards and office buildings glow into focus. Hank says it’s nothing like when he landed in the cornfields of Waukegan Illinois, where two rows of light were the only thing marking the solitary runway from surrounding darkness. It was like landing in a jungle, or an African plain, he says; some wild, undiscovered country. Even now, as an old man, he feels the same slight tensing of his muscles, the same inner steadying of himself, as if he grips the yoke in his own age-mottled hands and prepares to touch down.

You’re taught where to focus when you land, he says; to look ahead at the horizon and the end of the runway, rather than down at the ground. I have spent my recent life afraid to think of what is coming; able only to glance back, occasionally, at the receding landscape of places I’ve been. I wonder if my father can still see me; if he would even recognize me now. It seems a lifetime has passed since I knew him. But maybe that’s better. I like to think he remembers me as the child, sun-warmed and laughing, who learned how to swim at Good Harbor Beach.

Now I press my forehead to the glass, watching the pavement below whiz past like a gray river, and my breath catches in anticipation. “This is it,” Hank says. Reaching for the armrest between us, he accidentally touches my arm, and for a moment I feel his fingers cold against my skin. We sit watching, waiting, knowing at any moment we’ll feel the lurch and rumble of the plane’s wheels touching ground—that always surprising jolt of reconnection.

—

Meaghan Mulholland

Meaghan Mulholland’s writing has appeared in The Colorado Review and Southwest Airlines’ Spirit Magazine, among other publications, and her writing awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy.  She worked for several years at National Geographic and is currently hard at work on a novel set in Sicily while completing her MFA in Fiction at the University of Arkansas. To learn more about Meaghan’s writing, visit her website at meaghanmulholland.com.

“Open the window, Tavi,” Donato calls out as he shapes the fade. The client’s shoulders react: Relief is near.

Tavi opens the window because the fan isn’t working. The shears, the clippers, the lathering machine will be all the music this afternoon. The boom box isn’t working, either. The television hasn’t worked in years and stares blankly from the corner of the room. It’s the shop’s only useless mirror, although Tavi can see the bright window’s miniature version on the screen, his stick-thin body bending down to let the airplanes in.

“Let the airplanes in,” his father says at home, meaning “Open the window.” Both at home and at work, opening the window lets in the same noise. Home is less than a block away. LaGuardia not far from the neighborhood. The neighborhood right under the path each airplane takes to the landing strip.

Tavi wants to greet the first airplane, but then Donato says, “How’s that?” And the client answers, “That’s fine. Thanks, man.” Another buzz cut completed, another wipe across the chair damp with sweat.

“Tavi,” Donato says, pointing to the seat.

Tavi rushes over, reaching for the rag stuffed into his back pocket. From the corner of his eye, he catches the brief exchange of money, the handshake, the client posing in front of the mirror one last time before he heads outside to charm the world.

“Come-mierda,” Donato says when he pockets the money. It means the tip is low.

Donato yanks the boom box cord out of the socket and wraps it around his hand like a bandage. “I’m going to get this piece of crap fixed,” he says.

“What about the fan?” Tavi asks, and then immediately regrets it.

Donato glares at him. “Just keep the window open,” he says. “I’ll be right back. If a client comes, sit him down on the goddamn chair. Coño.”

Donato walks off with the boom box beneath one arm, the other reaches for the cigarettes. Tavi sticks his head out the window and watches him turn the corner. On hot summer days like this no one’s out on the streets and men are least likely to come in for a cut.

Across the way, the old woman with a wrap around her head props a pillow on the sill and leans on it. She’s keeping watch over the street as well. For one brief moment she makes eye contact with Tavi, but quickly moves on. She has seen him as many times as he’s seen her. Nothing new here.

Tavi wishes his father could do the same at home. The reason Tavi lets the airplanes in is because his father can’t come out. The wheelchair’s too heavy for him to maneuver, so he sits in the kitchen with enough food on the table to get him through the day, until Tavi comes home to take him to the toilet. It’s like taking care of a cat that will look after itself for extended periods of time. The small television on the counter keeps him entertained, even though most of the time his father just dozes off. In case of an emergency, the phone’s within reach; the shop’s number on speed dial. If it weren’t for the back pain he’d rather stay in bed all day.

If it weren’t for the stroke, Tavi’s father might still be cutting hair at his old shop instead of sending Tavi over just to get his son out of sight. But Tavi takes his job seriously anyway. It’s the only place he ever gets to go.

The shop door opens and a man walks in. “Are you available?” he asks.

Tavi’s too stunned to speak.

“Okay,” the man says to himself. “Are you all right, buddy?”

Men are not supposed to be this beautiful. Or rather, beautiful men don’t come into Donato’s shop. Usually kids with acne, multiple piercings, and tattoos on their napes. Usually old men with weak dentures, who have been coming in for so many years they still remember the previous barber, Tavi’s father, and ask about him. Usually the random man in his forties, like the one who was just here, who walks in on impulse. But not men like this with perfect lips and perfect skin, the cheekbones and eyebrows perfectly matched and even. Tavi runs his tongue along his crooked set of teeth.

“Donato will be right back,” Tavi says, shaken out of his spell.

The perfect man nods his head.

“You can take a seat,” he says, motioning to the barber’s chair.

The perfect man nods his head again and sits down. He considers himself on the mirror and then notices Tavi staring. He turns around. “Octavio,” he says, holding out his hand.

“Yes,” Tavi says, extending his own hand. “But everybody calls me Tavi.” He’s embarrassed suddenly that he’s still carrying around the nickname the old men gave him when Tavi was the unfortunate son of the barber who lost his wife when his son was only 5 years old.

“That’s funny,” the perfect man says. “I meant, my name’s Octavio. But I guess yours is too. What a coincidence, right?”

Tavi freezes again. Octavio and Octavio, like the matching pairs on a domino tile. Tavi, with the scent of tonic and disinfectant; Octavio with the scent of cologne as strong as solid wood, his skin taut and glowing with the pores of an athlete.

“When’s your birthday?” Tavi asks.

“What?” Octavio says. He lets out an uncertain laugh, but then adds, “July 12.”

“Mine’s on July 21,” Tavi says. His eyes widen.

“And what does that mean, that’s we’re like twins or something? Crazy.”

Before Tavi can explain what it means, Donato comes back, excited to have a client waiting on the chair. He comes up to shake Octavio’s hand and swats Tavi away. “Give the man some breathing room, will you, Tavi? Sorry about that, muchacho.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Octavio says. “We were just shooting the shit. It turns out we have the same name, and that we’re born in the same month. I think we’re twins separated at birth or something.”

Both men burst out laughing. Tavi reddens. But then Donato says, “Tavi, go dig out some more neck strips, will you? I’m running low.” The business at hand continues.

Some clients shut their eyes during a cut, others keep a close eye on the barber’s job, and still others let their eyes lock on any movement they can catch through the mirror, except those who come in wearing glasses. Those men are usually near sighted and stare helplessly into space. Octavio is the eyes-shut type, though he keeps a conversation going with Donato the entire time.

“So do you think De la Hoya’s really going to hang up the gloves for good, or is he bullshitting again?”

“Who knows? Well, he can always go back to that singing career he put on hold.”

“Coño, I hope not!” Donato says, and they laugh.

Tavi suspects Octavio keeps his eyes shut because he’s getting looked at. Octavio is the perfect man; he should be used to it. The shape of his head is perfect. His hairline is perfect, the backs of his ears—beautiful, symmetrical ears, not alien looking appendages like on most men—perfect. Every once in a while Octavio opens his eyes and notices Tavi. This excites Tavi, getting noticed by the perfect man.

“Tavi,” Donato says, waving him over.

And then an airplane coming in stops Tavi in his tracks and he rushes back to the window. The magic of the engine cuts through the sky loud and long. It will not be ignored.

“He’s never been on one. Can you believe it?” Donato tells Octavio. “Thirty-five years old and never been on one.”

Octavio doesn’t respond, though he probably understands the code. Donato’s telling him that Tavi isn’t like normal men. Even if Octavio has never been on a plane either, it’s not the same as Tavi never being on a plane. Perhaps Octavio never goes anywhere by choice, but Tavi, he never will.

“Tavi, go get me some water from Chong’s, will you?” Donato says. Tavi is devastated that he has to leave on an errand. To Chong’s, of all places, where the pace is slow and where hardly anyone hurries in or out.

Reluctantly, Tavi takes the five-dollar bill from Donato and walks out into the heat, away from Octavio. He glances back one last time and sees the perfect man sitting there, becoming more perfect still each time the razor caresses the surface of his perfect scalp.

Out on the sidewalk he considers walking faster, but the heat’s holding him down. The old woman looking out the window follows him with her eyes all the way to the corner. Chong’s.

When he was younger, Chong worked the register himself, but then he grew old, and then he died and then the bodega was sold to the Koreans, but everyone still calls it Chong’s. The Koreans don’t care. They didn’t even bother to change the name on the sign over the awning.

“Go get me a pack of cigarettes from Chong’s,” his father used to say. “Go get a beer for Emilio.” And Chong would hand over the cigarettes and beer to little Tavi without any money changing hands.

Tavi’s father would take care of the debt eventually.

That was a different time, when kids could be entrusted with chores like those. When a man like Emilio could sit on the extra chair all day and everyone knew he wasn’t waiting in line for a cut. If he ever needed a cut, Tavi’s father simply walked over and clipped the sideburns, which were the only parts that grew anymore. Now Emilio was dead, and so was Chong.

Tavi walks in and out of the bodega, heads back to the shop, but by the time he steps inside, Octavio’s gone. Tavi stands there with his armpits damps, a row of salty beads over his lip, which he sucks into his mouth. The crumpled cape over the chair looks like a cocoon that has just released its butterfly. Tavi has the urge to hold it, smell the ghost of the perfection that has walked away.

“Here’s your water,” Tavi says, begrudgingly.

Donato takes the water with one hand. With the other, he slaps Tavi across the face.

It takes a minute for Tavi to orient himself again.

“What are you, a pato?” Donato says.

For a second this confuses Tavi. He hasn’t heard the word in a while. Puerto Ricans say pato. They mean maricón, what his father would say, because he’s Mexican. “Maricón! Puto, mama-huevo!” every time Tavi had to bathe him.

Pato: quack-quack. Fag, the kids say.

“Why did you keep staring at that guy? You were making him nervous. He’ll never come around here again,” Donato says.

The severity of the statement sinks in. Octavio will never be back. He has lost his perfect double. It stings more than the slap across the face.

“Go home and check in on your father,” Donato commands.

Tavi wobbles out of the shop and heads left. The old woman across the way is also gone. The window gapes out onto the street like a toothless mouth.

When he enters the house, Tavi expects to see his father asleep, but he’s wide awake for a change.

“What did you do this time?” his father says without turning away from the television screen.

Tavi doesn’t need to answer. It doesn’t matter. It’s just another day he has disappointed his father.

“All this shit on the news,” his father says. “Makes me want to roll the chair to the middle of the street and be done with it.”

Tavi turns off the television, clears the table and without having to ask he guides his father’s chair to the bathroom, where he will help him onto the toilet and wipe him clean after he’s done. When Tavi gets closer to his father, the odor of urine and rancid breath assaults his nose, kills the last traces of Octavio’s scent.

Tavi’s father wants scrambled eggs for dinner. He’s limited to soft foods now that most of his teeth are gone. When he still had a full set and the paralysis was new, Tavi’s father bemoaned the fact that he never taught Tavi how to cook, that he spent most of the evenings swatting his son out of the kitchen. For many years afterward, Tavi taught himself through trial and error. Mostly error, which his father threw off his plate for Tavi to clean.

“Put more mayonnaise on it,” his father says as soon as Tavi places the plate in front of him.

“Cholesterol, Papa,” Tavi says.

His father reaches down to the plate, and then splatters a handful of scrambled egg at Tavi. He started doing this when he could no longer spit.

Tavi lets the egg run down his shirt as he sits to eat.

“Anything exciting down at the shop,” his father asks, taking a spoonful of egg.

“The boom box broke,” Tavi offers.

“Goddamn Donato,” his father says. “He pushes the buttons too hard.”

They eat in silence after that. His father chews with his mouth open and licks his lips clean when he’s done. He then belches, farts, and belches again before slumping down on his seat like a deflated balloon.

“I wonder if Emilio’s coming over to play dominoes,” his father says. “Goddamn Donato, the boom box.” He’s sleepy. He becomes disoriented when he’s sleepy. Tavi rolls him over to the bedroom.

His father’s body feels weightless now. Or maybe Tavi has done this so many times that it’s like breathing, no effort at all. He lifts him up to the bed, stretches his legs out and pulls off his sweatpants. The underwear is slightly soiled, but Tavi will wait until tomorrow to change him, just in case he wets the bed.

Tavi expects his father will play dominoes in his dreams, resurrecting his old playing buddies—Emilio, Rorro, Santi, and sometimes Chong, who used to live a few doors down. All of them reaching into the center of the table to mix the tiles, the sound of bone striking bone. The sound of bone scratching wood as they claimed their playing pieces. And then the faces pairing up, the domino snake coming together inch by inch. But now the domino box sits neglected like a closed coffin, buried in a drawer somewhere, because Tavi’s father is the only player left.

Back in the day they stayed up until midnight or until someone’s wife sent a death threat of “get back home or else” to one of the players—whichever came last. They all had sons, but none was interested in coming over to play with Tavi. They all had daughters and all of them were afraid of him. Loco Tavi, Looney Tavi, Lelo Tavi. So he sat around mostly, just watching the game, startled whenever one of the men slapped a tile onto the surface too hard.

Once in a while one of the men would take pity on him and hand him a dollar, tell him to go buy himself a candy bar. But as soon as Tavi grew too old for candy bars the old men ignored him, except when they needed him to fetch a beer from the fridge.

Since Tavi can remember, his life has been constrained to this block. Even the school, where he flunked three times and was able to drop out as a 16-year-old eighth-grader, was less than a block away. The only time he ever moved beyond the block was when his father had the stroke, and Tavi had to sit in the hospital waiting room until his buddies arrived.

That night was also the only time he didn’t sleep at home. He slept at Emilio’s house, in his son’s room. Donato was kind then, embracing him in the dark while Tavi cried for his father. And then, years later, when Donato took over the shop, Donato stopped loving him. A decade of lovelessness.

Tavi pulls the covers over his father and backs out of the room, closing the door. He goes all over the house and closes every window. It’s time to keep the airplanes out. What a surprise then, when he gets to the south window facing the back street that the young people own when the day ends. It’s Octavio, standing under the streetlight with two kids in front of him.

When Octavio suddenly looks back, Tavi blushes but doesn’t hide. Octavio motions to his cohorts, who turn around and snicker.

“Hey, Tavi!” the black kid says. “Come here.”

Tavi’s body spasms. In all these years of watching the young men congregate he has never been invited. He has been teased, whistled at, and a few times they threw rocks or empty beer bottles in his direction, but never this.

The other kid, Santi’s grandson, waves. “Come here!” he commands.

More snickering. Octavio smiles his perfect smile, his teeth sparkle like jewels.

Tavi looks over at his father’s bedroom. The door is shut. The old paralytic is out and won’t wake up, even if he pisses on himself. Suddenly his heart starts to beat faster. He’ll go outside and join the guys.

Something new moves through his body, as if he’s pumping different blood. It pushes him out the front door that much quicker, and before he realizes it he’s standing a few feet away from Octavio and the two kids.

Octavio nods. Tavi recognizes this nod. It is friendly, it is beautiful. He gets closer.

“Hey, Tavi,” Octavio says. “I didn’t get to say good-bye earlier.”

“Good-bye,” Tavi says, and the kids laugh, Santi’s grandson covering his mouth with his hand.

“Yeah,” Octavio says. “Anyway, I was talking to Darryl and Manny here, and we were thinking about going on a little trip.”

“To Brooklyn?” Tavi says. The kids mock him, but Octavio protects Tavi, shushes them.

“Actually, to the islands,” Octavio says. “Ever been to the islands? To the D.R.?”

Tavi shakes his head. His father only longed for Mexico, a country he left long before Tavi was born, and which he never returned to.

“You want to come along?” Octavio says. “We’re flying there.”

Tavi’s struck numb by the magnitude of the moment. Not only might he leave the block, he might even leave the country. By plane. But it’s the possibility of keeping Octavio’s company that overwhelms him the most. This is too much for him. He feels as if he’s just gotten slapped across the face again. He stumbles a little and this only incites more laughter.

“I have to go home now,” Tavi says.

“Okay,” Octavio says. “But think about it. It’s a weekend trip. Meet us here tomorrow by 6 if you want to come along.” Octavio stretches his hand out and Tavi takes it. It’s the perfect arm and the perfect hand. Octavio is the perfect man. Tavi walks back to the house, euphoric. Not even the cackling from Darryl and Manny can bring him down. When he gets home he immediately runs to the back window. Octavio’s still there with the two kids. It’s not his imagination, it’s real. The invitation’s real. Even when they don’t turn around to look at him the rest of the time they stand under the streetlight, he believes it happened.

When Octavio and the kids walk away eventually, Tavi feels the pang of abandonment, so he lies down on his bed and presses his fists to his chest. This is how he coped during recess all those years, when no one would ask him to play, when he wanted to play but was denied entry into the circle of friends. The only time he stood at the center was when those circles of laughter were circles of ridicule: Loco Tavi, Looney Tavi, Lelo Tavi.

Tavi rolls over on his fists, giving his back to the memory hovering above him. Octavio will protect him. Octavio will stop the teasing. Octavio will bring out the Octavio in Tavi. A familiar stirring in his pants makes him grind his hips into the mattress.

Tavi still feels high the next morning as he dresses his father and props him up on the wheelchair. He hums while cooking breakfast.

“What the hell happened to you last night?” his father asks. “Did you finally get laid?”

“Actually,” Tavi says. “I got invited to the D.R.”

His father laughs. “You? You don’t even know where the fuck that is. Or what the fuck that is. Who invited you?”

Tavi shakes his head proudly. “A friend.”

“You have a friend?” his father says. “I see. What’s his name, Rockefeller? Rockefeller’s taking you to the D.R. on his private jet? Is that it?”

“Say what you will, Papa, I’m going.”

His father’s mouth drops. “What the—you’re completely out of your mind. I know you’re stupid but you can’t be this stupid. How the hell do you think that’s possible? You’ve never even been on a plane before. You’ll have a heart attack before it even takes off. Do you realize how terrible it is to ride an airplane?”

Tavi stops in his tracks. He hadn’t considered that point. “What does it feel like?” he asks.

“It’s like getting shot through a cannon,” Tavi’s father says. “And you better pray that the plane doesn’t splatter you all over the runway when it lands.”

A chill runs through Tavi’s veins, but he refuses to let his fear show.

“Do-do-do you want some more eggs for breakfast, Pa-pa-pa?” he says in a dry voice.

“No,” Tavi’s father says. “I don’t want you to be late to the shop. You go on and yank this nonsense out of your head. You’ll get hurt.”

Tavi shakes nervously the rest of the morning: at home while he’s setting his father’s lunch and adjusting the television; at work while he’s cleaning combs and shaking the neck dusters.

“What’s the matter with you?” Donato says. “Open the window, will you? Before it starts to get hot in here again.”

But Tavi doesn’t want to let the airplanes in. So he hesitates.

“Open the goddamn window, coño!”

When Tavi opens the window, the noise of a plane flying overhead floods into the room, knocking him down.

“Carajo, what has gotten into you this morning? Are you on drugs?” Donato nudges Tavi up with his foot. “Get up before someone comes in and sees you lying there like a tecato.”

Tavi stands up and stares down at his feet.

“What’s the matter with you, huh?”

Tavi rubs his eyes. The gesture softens Donato a bit, so he asks again, lowering his voice this time: “What’s going on, Tavi? Someone’s been mean to you?”

Tavi shakes his head.

“Then what? Come on, let’s have it. I don’t have all day.”

“What does it feel like to fly?”

Donato furrows his brow, and then just as quickly he stretches it open in amusement. “Now who would be cruel enough to put something like that in your head?” he says. “No use worrying about something that’s never going to happen, Tavi. No use worrying about it.” Donato shakes the capes off and begins to fold them.

“Does it feel like getting shot out of a cannon?” Tavi persists.

Donato rolls his eyes. “All right. If I tell you, will you promise not to bother me the rest of the day?”

Tavi nods.

Donato sighs. “Well,” he says. “It tickles the stomach a little bit, especially the first time around. But it’s just like riding in the backseat of a car going fast.”

“Like on a bus?” Tavi says.

“Faster,” Donato says. “Like maybe an ambulance. It’s bulky but it gets somewhere fast. And it’s safe because nothing gets in the way.”

“And how about when it lands?” Tavi asks.

“Just like coming to a red light with plenty of warning. No surprises there either. There. Are you happy?”

Tavi nods.

“Good, now get to putting all these things away, I’m going to get a cup of coffee.”

For the rest of the day Tavi’s satisfied with Donato’s answers. But a strange sensation still gnaws at him about why his father would want to keep him from going on a trip. And then it dawns on him: because Tavi takes care of him. If Tavi leaves, who will take father to the bathroom? Who will make his eggs in the morning?

The day goes by quickly for a change. Tavi keeps to himself, which pleases Donato, and all the while as he sweeps hair and wipes off razors, Tavi comes up with the perfect plan to fly away to the D.R. with Octavio, the perfect man. The plan is this: to leave someone in charge of Papa for the weekend. He’s got it all figured out.

When 5 o‘clock rolls around, Tavi doesn’t even bother saying anything as he walks out of the shop before closing time, and neither does Donato ask for an explanation.

“You’re home early again?” his father says as soon as Tavi comes in. “Don’t let me find out you’re getting in Donato’s way. If he stops paying you, you stop eating.”

Tavi rolls his eyes.

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, faggot. I’m still your father.”

Tavi grabs his father’s wheelchair and jerks it away from the table.

“What the—”

“You’re going on a little trip too, Papa,” Tavi says.

“A trip? Where? Where are you taking me? Let go of me,” his father says, flinging his arms back. Tavi dodges the knuckles. When they get to the bed, Tavi’s father tries to resist even more. “It’s too early for bed! It’s too early for bed!” he protests. But Tavi doesn’t put his father to bed. He brings his father’s body down on the floor.

“You’re crazy! Someone, help! Help!”

Tavi bends down and covers his father’s mouth. “Quiet, old man,” he says. “Look. You let me go on this trip or I will never come back—and then who’s going to wipe your ass?”

The threat calms his father down.

“Where are you going? What are you going to do with me?”

“I told you, I’m going to the D.R. for the weekend. And you’re going to the hospital.”

“The hospital? No, don’t send me to the hospital. They’re mean to me there. They won’t take good care of me there.”

“Just for the weekend, Papa,” Tavi says. “I promise.”

“Please! Please!” Tavi’s father begs, letting go of tears this time.

“Stop it!” Tavi says. “You owe me, Papa. You owe me good, and you know it. Don’t think I don’t know about the money you get from the government.”

“And how else am I supposed to take care of you?” his father stammers. “Your mother abandoned us, you know. Drunk herself to death. Even drank when you were still inside of her, which is why you were born a retard.”

“I’m not a retard, Papa,” Tavi says. “It’s because you never let me go anywhere.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” his father says. “Where do you want to go?”

“To the D.R.”

“Don’t be an idiot! Pick me up!” His father bangs his fists against the floor. “Can’t you see someone’s playing a joke on you?”

“No one’s playing a joke on me!” Tavi says. “Shut up!” Tavi raises his hand and his father covers his head in protection.

“Now you just lie there,” Tavi says. “It’s my turn to enjoy some time with my friends. So you better keep your mouth shut for a change. You better not tell the ambulance people that I put you on the floor. Tell them that you fell, that I’m out of town. I’ll come to the hospital and pick you up when I return. Will you do that for me, Papa, just this time, pretty please?”

After a brief silence, Tavi’s father closes his eyes and nods in resignation. Tavi leaves him there, the door propped open so that the paramedics can see him right away as they come in. He then goes to his room and packs a few items—an extra pair of shorts, a shirt and socks. His toothbrush. And then he goes over to the cupboard beneath the sink and pulls out his father’s cash box. He spills everything into the backpack. If this is going to be the only time, it might as well be a good time. He already sees himself in the D.R., wherever that is, standing underneath the streetlight that pours over Octavio like a rain of gold. And Tavi will be the envy of all the other kids on the island.

Next, the call. He clears his throat, picks up the phone and dials 9-1-1.

“Hello,” he says in the raspiest voice he can muster. “I’ve fallen off the bed. I need help, por favor.”

The dispatcher asks him to confirm the home address. Yes, that’s correct.

“And please hurry,” Tavi pleads.

His father keeps his head toward the open bedroom door and simply watches wide-eyed as Tavi runs back and forth.

“The ambulance will be here soon,” Tavi says. “Remember: play sick.”

Tavi looks at the clock. It’s still early. He steps out of the house and is about to run to the back street to meet up with Octavio, when suddenly a pang of guilt stops him. Perhaps he should wait for the ambulance to show up, to make sure he sees the paramedics take his father away to safety. He scurries over to the side of the house. By the time he presses his body against the wall, the ambulance sirens announce its arrival.

Unlike what he’s seen on television, there doesn’t seem to be much of a rush here. The paramedics take their time walking up the steps and walking in. Minutes later, Tavi’s heart stops when he actually sees the gurney get rolled out of the house, his father strapped tightly to the metal frame, an oxygen mask over his mouth. His father looks more frail among the able bodies that surround him. Tavi thinks his father spots him as he’s hoisted up into the ambulance, so he jerks back. No, he couldn’t have seen him, not that far away. The lifting of his hand, the twitching of his fingers, just so, could have meant he was waving good-bye to the house, not to his son, who was standing just out of reach.

Tavi looks around for signs of Octavio and nothing. It’s already 6 o’clock. Two minutes pass, then another two. That’s when he spots Manny, Santi’s grandson, walking out of his house. This is it, he thinks, but then Manny starts to bounce a basketball on the sidewalk. And then his cell phone rings and he sits down on the steps, both feet rolling the ball as if he’s got nowhere else to be.

Tavi attempts to wave at him, to let him know that he’s waiting, that he’s made it, but Manny doesn’t see him. Tavi’s afraid to yell because the ambulance is still parked in front. And then Manny goes back into the house, leaving the ball to roll on its own for a few seconds before it stops cold at the fence. It simply sits there and will likely stay there all evening, motionless and without life. Empty house, empty street, and Tavi the lonely black line on la cajita, the domino with the two expansive blanks. Another minute passes, then another.

Suddenly everything speeds up: the closing of the ambulance doors, the paramedics climbing back into the cabin, the driving away. And that’s when Tavi hears it: an airplane flying above him, a harsh, invasive noise that collapses the entire sky on top of him. That’s his airplane. He missed it. Octavio has gone off to the D.R. by himself. And now his father, too, is flying off without him.

The siren cries out again and this disorients Tavi. It’s like another slap on the face and all he can do is run out and chase the ambulance down the street, calling out, “Papa! Papa! Papa!” while the old woman, who leans on her comfortable pillow on the sill, shakes her head as she goes along for the ride.

—–

Rigoberto Gonzalez

Rigoberto González is the author of eight books, most recently of the young adult novel, The Mariposa Club, and a story collection, Men without Bliss. The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, winner of the American Book Award, and The Poetry Center Book Award, he writes a Latino book column for the El Paso Times of Texas. He is contributing editor for Poets and Writers Magazine, on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers—Newark, State University of New Jersey.