There’s no reason to call each other Tic and Tac, but we do just to keep up with that kind of childhood bond, the one formed accidently because parents put us together in rooms and in cars, bound into seatbelts and bunk beds. You’re almost always wiling to share your caramels, sticky in the white bag, sea air melting them wet. I say, “It sucks that dad’s a faggot,” and you say nothing.

I think, it’s different being the man with the gay father, and then I feel protective like a mother hippo with her calf. I want to swaddle you up from other people, the ones who have pointed at us and brought us reaching for driftwood to surf back out away from shore. You’re meager with graces, but today you say thanks, and really, I’m flattered

Sky Rats and High-Rises

These days, us out and out pigeon-haters were in real decline. No longer could you shoo away crowds of birds on benches or fire a few cap gun rounds to make your point. There were squads of angry twenty-somethings chanting at all of us pedestrians to recruit more morals for our bullshit ethics. They wore quilts stitched with phrases like, “Fine Feathered Friends” and needlepoint images of what were clearly meant to be us Upper East Side regulars draped in coats of grey-black feathers. One of the protestors even wore a macramé pigeon mask on her head, the honey-brown eye made of some kind of blown glass, big as an orange. I saw that thing in shadows before I shut my eyes at night. “You’re scaring the children,” nannies called out, pulling toddlers across Lexington and back to the safety of other streets, but they didn’t stop, and for months it went on like this. They put other birds in cages, promising to torch finches and flamingos if we didn’t let pigeons alone. Then the mayor got involved, and there were press conferences, most of them held in front of my building. I looked down when I saw a flash, and left seeds on the sill and the window open, hoping for mercy from what visitors I had left.

Crossing

We’d count to six and then toss whatever we had off the bridge, looking to ding a paint job in the crowds of cars beneath us. Mostly it was pocket stuff, a couple of coins, a matchbook, pairs of plastic army men. We notched our wins in the railing, digging lines in wood for roofs we’d hit.

My mother dressed me Friday. It wasn’t clothes to throw in. The button-down made my arms go tight, and I didn’t think I’d get distance.

“Use this,” and it was a rock. Sturdy and gray, gentle as any coin.

After I’d thrown, the perspiration didn’t come from laughter. We didn’t crouch by the trees shouting, “Asshole!” over and over, mocking what we imagined the drivers were saying below. Instead, we were still, the noise of a car-wreck fresh in our ears. Black doors bent, arms and legs peeking out windows like a dish of picked-over shrimp.

Out We Go Beachside

I dislike the buddy system, but here we are, two-by-two at the beach. A turtle is on-hand to give directions, and I watch while you swim out in the ocean, far with gumption, no hint of counting time. There are cliffs in the background; it’s a postcard view, really, and if I let myself, I can enjoy the water a little, in up to my knees, as long as we’re not both swimming. I think, what if you were to drown, the ocean no longer your neckline? You immersed, regained by water. Would I call for help? Swim out to find you? My intuition says I’d watch, curious about the numbers, how long it would take for that hand to sink, your body relaxed, loose below the waves.

~

Sophie Rosenblum’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, New Letters, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is currently finishing her first novel, which was recently a finalist in the James Jones Novel Contest. You can find links to more of her work here: www.sophierosenblum.com.

Julia knocked on the door and I answered in a pair of ratty blue jeans, holding a putter and three golf balls. She had a friend with her, a teenage boy, who did all the talking at first. He delivered a scripted speech about creation versus evolution, and read from Hebrews something that said

that every house has a builder. He said some other things. Julia was wearing a white dress that hung just below her knees. Pretty thing.She caught me looking at her ankles so I turned to the boy and asked if he had any scientific evidence to back his claims. He hesitated and looked down. Julia stepped in, tucking her strawberry blond hair behind her right ear, and asked me if I’d ever flown on an airplane.

“Yes, of course,” I said. Thinking back on it now, I probably came off like a jerk. I don’t think it changed anything, though.

“Did you know that whale flippers have a smoother drag coefficient than any plane that man has built?”

“It’s evolution, sweet.” I meant to say ‘sweetheart’ but that would have been equally offensive, I think. “But airplanes have only been around for a few hundred years. Whales have been around for a sight longer.”

“Do airplane wings evolve on their own, or were they designed?”

I wanted to answer without conceding the argument, but I knew she probably had all the angles covered. I leaned the putter against the door casing and invited them in. “I could make tea, or heat up some soup or something,” I said.

Julia motioned to the boy and they followed me in. I hadn’t noticed how much of a slob I was before that. I almost apologized, but stopped because everyone I know apologizes about their mess beforehand. The boy was carrying a maroon leather satchel and wore black shoes. I felt sorry for him. We settled on tea and I put a pot of water on. We all made introductions, Julia first, and then the boy. I can’t remember the boy’s name.

“I’m Paul,” I said.

Julia carried on about creation and nodded to the boy. The boy read scriptures on cue and did his best to keep up. I offered him a Fig Newton and after he got an approving nod from Julia, he accepted. He pulled some magazines from the satchel and set them on the table.

“Those for me?” I asked him.

“For a small donation—”

“We don’t need a donation,” Julia said.

I pulled two twenties from my pocket, change from a bar tab the night before, and put them in the boy’s hand. Julia took the bills from him and placed them on the table. “It’s too much,” she said. “And anyway we don’t need a donation. It would be better if you just read the literature.”

I told her I didn’t mind, that I’d held them up for over an hour and thought they should be duly compensated, but the words didn’t come out right. She asked if I might be interested in a bible-study, and I told her yes because I wanted to see her again. The boy recorded something on a slip of paper and thanked me for my time. Julia thanked me for the donation and put out her hand for me to shake. It seemed improper to be shaking hands after reading scripture—like I was concluding a business deal—but I was more intrigued by the thought of touching her. She wasn’t wearing any rings. Her hand was still warm from cupping her tea, and at that moment, I committed myself to her.

I spent the next day refilling the soap and change machines at the car wash and checking up on the girls at the snow cone stand. I made the bank at two. The teller, a blond in her early thirties handed me a blank deposit slip. I filled it out and told her I didn’t love her anymore. She pretended she didn’t hear me, but then, she always did that. I thought about getting a dog of some kind. Something big, lab or German shepherd, whatever would take up the most space in my house. It wasn’t loneliness that bothered me, but a lack of accountability. I needed to quit this solitary life. I needed to stay off the internet, to stop masturbating three times a day.

The pet store only had puppies, so I went to the pound and picked up a mutt that weighed ninety-five pounds. She had some Chow in her; I could tell by the black tongue. I named her Caesar, because the hair on her head resembled a crown of laurels. I dropped her off at the vet, told him to give her the works.

“She looks like she has a touch of mange, fella,” he said.

“Yeah. Just fix her up. Call me when she’s clean as a bell. Or a whistle. You know what I mean. Just call me when she’s ready.”

“Call you in a few days, fella.”

I drove home and sat in front of the computer. Just one last time, I thought, and I’d cancel my subscriptions, turn on search filters, throw away the magazines, the DVDs. I’d jog, meditate, spend more time at the driving range, and exorcise all my onanistic demons.

I finished and took a shower. I went into the kitchen to grab a snack and saw the teacups from Julia’s visit next to the sink. The teabags, looped around, hung sadly against the insides of the cups. The bottoms of the cups were stained. I tried to figure which cup was Julia’s by looking for lipstick on the rims, but of course there was no lipstick. I took all three of the teabags and set them on the counter to dry.

One thing about me: I collect—specifically, I collect artifacts from the people I’ve loved, or have tried to love. It started when my mother gave me a monogrammed handkerchief for my eighth birthday. This gift signaled a rite of passage for me; she gave me the handkerchief and said my father used to always carry one with him. He was never around, and the handkerchief somehow meant that I was the man of the house. I miss my mother—her breath on my cheek when she hugged me before school, her fingers at the top of my neck. I keep the handkerchief on a bureau next to my bed.

The first girl I kissed left me an earring, the first girl I fucked left her panties. I have a comb from this pretty thing I fell in love with in Monterrey. I have the last page of a Doris Lessing novel I took from a married woman I seduced in a bookstore in Chicago; we had sex in the bathroom, and never exchanged names. I’ve collected other things—nylons, lighters, a lock of hair once.

*

I saw Julia about two weeks later, on a Friday. I was taking the dog in for some follow-up shots when I spotted Julia walking door to door in one of those creepy prefab neighborhoods. She was by herself this time, wearing the same white dress she‘d worn to my house. I parked and watched her from across the street for a few minutes. She covered four houses: three not-at-homes (she left pamphlets) and an old lady who would only speak to her through a chained door. This didn’t seem to bother her. As she was speaking to the lady she bent down and rubbed her ankle, as though she were soothing a mosquito bite.

I started my car and rolled down the window, pulled next to her as she walked on the edge of the old lady’s lawn. I said hello to her, in my gentlest voice, and she turned. She didn’t recognize me. She was frightened—I could tell; it was unmistakable. Caesar began barking from the back seat. I told her to quiet down, but this only seemed to incite her. Julia turned and walked away briskly and pulled a cell phone from her purse. I followed her in my car, yelled for her to stop. “The dog won’t bite,” I said. But she wasn’t listening. She doubled back to the old woman with the chained door and rang the bell repeatedly, slapped the wooden frame with the palm of her hand. I drove off.

*

I didn’t stop masturbating. Caesar would sit on her haunches, alert and stoic when she watched me; she never seemed to pass judgment, and I couldn’t muster up enough shame to stop.

I gave up on Julia after a week. It just wasn’t in the cards. I thought about visiting the church; there was a Kingdom Hall a few miles from my house. If I went, I would see her eventually. I tried making a Sunday meeting, but I didn’t have the guts; I made it to the parking lot and watched from my car as members of the congregation filed quietly through the front doors. The building was plain and painted white with green trim. The people were also plain, moderately dressed in suits and short-sleeved oxfords, or in plain dresses that hung past the knees. Julia walked alone. She was easy to pick out, like a tiger in the snow. I moved my seat and unbuttoned my pants. She had a hungry look—at least, at that moment, I imagined she did—and I wondered if she was satisfied with her religion. She needed me, though she didn’t know it yet. She stopped and let a man in a motorized wheelchair pass her, and said hello to a group of teenage girls before going in.

I stopped—I couldn’t have finished anyway. I buttoned my pants and loosened the knot on my tie. I would wait for her, I told myself. I could do that for us.

*

Julia came back to my house a week later. She told me she was in the neighborhood, and she wanted to check up on me, to see if I’d read the magazines she’d left. I started to apologize for the scare, but she stopped me and said she didn’t realize it was me until I said something. “You did give a scare,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been that scared.” I invited her in, and she set her purse down by the front door.

I lied and said, yes, I had read the magazines.

“It’s a wonder, isn’t it? This old world, imperfect as it is.”

“There’s a picture of paradise in one of those magazines.” I sat down on my sofa, and motioned for her to sit beside me.

“It’s real—it will be, at least.” She sat down, smoothing her dress over her knees with a practiced motion. “Our eternal reward will be a harmonious existence in the new Eden.”

“Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but wouldn’t we just tear it up again?”

“You have an inquisitive mind. There’s nothing pessimistic about that.”

“I was always that kid,” I said. “Tearing things up, I mean.”

She grabbed my hand—I didn’t expect it. She looked at me. “I don’t know God’s exact plan. No one can. But I believe it is good.”

I asked her to eat lunch with me at an Indian restaurant near my house. She let go of my hand. “No. Not today,” she said. “I came by to see if you wanted to discuss anything.”

I wanted to discuss many things with her, but didn’t have the words. Caesar was scratching at the back door, wanting to come in. “The dog. She doesn’t like it outside. I would let her in, but she’s the jealous type.”

Julia seemed tense after I said that. She suggested we look at the literature together, and I could ask her any questions I had about them.

I admitted then that I’d misplaced the magazines. “I do want to finish talking about this. Are you sure you can’t use a meal? We don’t have to eat Indian.”

“I don’t think it would be proper.”

“You’re in my house, alone, aren’t you? What could be more improper than that?”

She stood and  walked to the door,  picked up her purse, and withdrew a soft, black leather bible. “I’ll just leave this with you for now. I could set up a bible study.”

“With you?”

“Yes, and one of the elders.”   She forced a smile and handed me a memo pad and I wrote my phone number. “I’ll call and make the arrangements, then.”

I opened the door for her. “Thank you,” she said. She turned toward me to say something, but the heel of her shoe caught against the threshold and she stumbled. I caught her arm before she fell.

I wanted her to have twisted her ankle so I could scoop her into my arms, place her gently on the couch, and massage her swollen ligaments. Later we would lament how short our lives were, and she would offer herself to me without hesitation. I would promise her the impossible, and she would believe me, and we would grow old and die together, and that would be our story. Instead, she thanked me and left.

*

The bible studies appeared to go well. I played my part. Julia and a man she called Brother Walker met me at my house on Wednesdays at around six. We started off with a book about family life, and then one on creation. I began attending congregational meetings, and gave enough pretense to sit next to Julia during those meetings. I told them I was shy. I became her charge, so to speak; she was responsible for bringing me to the fold. I bought new suits—nothing too shiny. I was the embodiment of brotherly love, on the verge of baptism.

They sang songs at that church, and Julia shared her hymnbook with me and I would place my hand at the small of her back—a subtle gesture; one that could be mistaken for honorable communion. Predictably, she would smile and hold the hymnbook closer. Her hair smelled like almonds.

We went on for months. I went through all this for Julia. I believe I was able to feign piety because I didn’t take any stock in any of it. And Julia gave me signs—small indications that she might be interested in something other than my soul. She would habitually touch my hand when we were speaking—an unintentional caress followed by a wonderfully awkward withdrawal. Propriety can be a lovely prison.

One Sunday, after a church meeting, she invited me to go door-to-door with her. This was a mighty step. It was irregular; I was not baptized, and was unqualified to preach. I didn’t complain. Julia rationalized it by saying that I would just observe as she followed through with promising leads.

I drove her to a run-down apartment complex at the edge of town. The complex was in a poor neighborhood bordering the industrial district. I parked next door, in the lot of a burned-out concrete structure with two huge banana trees in front. It was quiet and the lot was sandy and interspersed with weeds. “You’ve come here by yourself?” I asked.

“Not this neighborhood. I worked it with one of the Sydney twins almost a month ago.” Julia knocked on the door and stepped back. “I like to check up on this guy every once in a while.”

There was a shuffle and what sounded like an iron skillet falling against the floor. Julia knocked again. “Frank takes a while to come to the door.” She pointed at her ear and whispered, “hard of hearing. He was a gunnery sergeant in the Vietnam Conflict.”

The way she spoke really killed me. She knew it all. I wanted to grab her and shake her. I wanted to pull her close to me and kiss her. The door was opened by a short pink man in cargo pants and a white sleeveless shirt. He smiled at Julia. “Who are you?” he asked me.

“He’s a friend,” Julia said.

“I don’t like him,” the guy said, staring at me. He turned, leaving the door open. “Come in, anyway.”

We followed him into the house. “Let’s talk in the kitchen.” The hallway was covered in musty red carpet and cluttered with car parts. The kitchen was no better; dirty dishes, mold, trash overflowing. He had covered the refrigerator in obituary clippings.

He offered coffee. Julia declined and I accepted. “There’s a kettle,” he said. “Folgers in the cabinet to the right.”

I put the water on to boil. Julia asked him if he’d read the book she left for him on her last visit. Frank said yes, and left the kitchen. Julia pulled a small red book with gold lettering from her purse. It was entitled, You Can Live Forever in a Paradise on Earth. I had seen the book before. Frank walked back into the kitchen with his own dog-eared copy and sat down beside Julia.

“What did you think of it?”

Frank looked at Julia and adjusted his hearing aid. Julia repeated herself. “Did you like it,” she said.

“Yes, yes—it’s appealing.” He turned to a picture of an edenic garden filled with docile people and docile animals. “Lambs and lions. Unnatural, but appealing.”

“It only seems unnatural because we are accustomed to living in a world of sin. But no one will want for anything, man or animal, and there will be no reason for transgression.”

“Everyone transgresses,” Frank said. His voice had a roughness too it, like he was always gargling. I imagined him laying face up in a jungle, his hand covering the bullet holes in his throat, and him trying to calculate the luck he’d been granted. But he didn’t have any scars I could see. The kettle whistled and I looked in the cabinet for coffee.

“He said that we have all transgressed. Past tense. After Armageddon, Jehovah will relieve us of our sins.”

I made two cups of coffee. “Do you take it black, Frank?”

“I don’t want any coffee,” he said.

I leaned against the counter and sipped the coffee while they debated. This went on for a while. Frank reminisced about his dead wife and asked questions about the resurrection. He got emotional and Julia reached for his hand, like she had reached for mine so many times.

I finished my coffee and placed the cup in the sink. I tried to tune them out. I took Frank’s cup and poured the coffee out, rinsed it. I don’t know why, but I began washing the dishes. I took off my coat and rolled up my sleeves. I filled the pots with water to soak, and began scrubbing the plates. Julia and Frank seemed engrossed in one another. I laid a towel on the counter to the right of the sink and spread the silverware on it to dry. I scrubbed and rinsed.

I finished and told Julia that I would wait in the car, that she should take all the time she needed. I told Frank goodbye as I folded my coat over my arm. Julia said she would only be a moment longer.

*

The sun was bright and my eyes were having trouble adjusting on the drive back. She kept rephrasing the same question. “What happened back there? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just out of it. I’m going home to take a nap. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll go with you.”

There it was. The sun, the moon and the stars had, all at once, fallen into my lap. It didn’t matter how we got there or what it meant or what might or might not happen. I drove slower. I didn’t want the ride to end.

I had trouble putting the key into the lock when we got there.  She took the key from me and inserted it into the deadbolt lock, but the door swung open before she turned the key. Julia looked at me and pulled out her cell phone. “We need the police.”

The doorjamb was broken; someone had kicked in the door. Immediately I saw that they stole my laptop, my television and my DVD player. The entertainment center was broken; they had been in a hurry to get out. The mess reminded me of Frank’s place. Fucking Frank.

“Don’t you have a dog?” Julia asked.

I’d forgotten about Caesar. I called for her and heard her scratching against the bathroom door. I let her out and noticed her nose was bloody. She licked my hands and brushed against me. Julia finished talking to the police and came inside. I expected her to say something about God’s wisdom, and how “this old system of things” wouldn’t last, but she didn’t. She put her arms around me and cried. I think, at that moment, she would have let me kiss her.

 *

Caesar was skittish after that. She wouldn’t eat. I brought her back to the vet and asked him if there was anything to be done. He gave me some tranquilizers and said to baby her for a few days. I let her ride around with me when I checked on the carwashes and the snow-cone stand. She would put her face directly in front of the vents and I would turn the air conditioner on full-blast. I was busy; I’d let the carwashes go to hell when I was chasing after Julia, and I found out one of my girls at the snow-cone stand had quit three days before. This gave me an excuse not to attend the meetings with Julia, at least for a while.

I think she knew I wouldn’t be back. Frank, the gunnery sergeant, had shown me up. He had potential I would never have. Belief, faith—call it what you will. I don’t know why this mattered so much, or why it mattered to me, but that’s as close to an explanation as I’m able to get—at least I knew it mattered.

I set up an interview with a replacement girl for the snow-cone stand. I met with her and gave her a quick rundown: how to mix syrups, how to lift big blocks of ice, how to up-sell.

She unnerved me a little; I could tell from the start there was something off about her. But she had smooth fair skin and a good body, so I was inclined to let her have the job.

“I’m an extrovert,” she declared.

“I can tell.”

“You know that song, Putting on the Ritz? You know, the one from the eighties? I love that song.” She pushed back her dark rimmed glasses. “Last year, when I got my first car, I drove from Mobile to San Diego and listened to that song the whole time.”

I didn’t know what one thing had to do with the other, and I thought about firing her on the spot, but she pulled me to her and kissed me. I didn’t have time to react. She unbuttoned my shirt and then my pants. “Wait.” I said. “Let me close the shade and lock the door.” She wouldn’t stop though, and I ejaculated on her knee. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long time—”

“This has never happened to you, I know.”

I handed her a stack of napkins and checked on Caesar through the window. The girl said thanks and left. I’d forgotten her name, or if she had given me one. My luck, she would come back a week later, demanding money because she was underage and had my semen all over her blue jeans. Fuck it, she could have the stand. I’m finished with it.

*

Julia came by the house a few times, but I wouldn‘t answer the door. She called and left messages that stepped on my heart. She was worried about me, she said. “I missed you, again,” she said. Her voice was softer than usual, genuinely affectionate—even longing. I saved all her messages and keep the tape in a cigar box with three tea bags. I still listen to the tapes and I think she liked me, maybe she was even thinking about marriage. I was a viable mate, in her eyes, but I wasn’t the man she thought I was.

~

Colter Cruthirds recently received his doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi. His work has appeared in Burnt Bridge Review, Dew on the Kudzu, and other places of good repute. He lives in Hattiesburg with his wife, two daughters, and Kurt Russell (the dog, not the actor).

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The man behind her said, “Let me ask you a question,” but she didn’t turn to see what the question would be.  Something about what he said bothered her—it was the way he put it.  She was out of sorts today, but, nevertheless, what he said was not the same as asking, “Can I ask you something?” Or saying, “Excuse me, I’ve been wondering…” She thought about the sound of the man’s voice as she watched the woman in front of her scan cans of chicken broth.  This was the self-checkout line, the one she liked because it required little human interaction.  This man had said, “Let me ask you a question.” His voice was not small or sleepy or full of doubt.  It was brisk and firm.  He sounded like he had an answer already.

The grocery store had not worked out for her today.  The feeling she wanted had not come through and there was no pleasure in it.   The quiet store in the middle of the morning.  The world seeming full of bright things and odd things, things to be devoured.  There were shiny eggplants more black than purple.  There were jars of exotic jam she had never tasted: ginger preserves, key lime marmalade. Dewberry jelly.  But the thought of white toast did not make her imagine jam on the end of a knife.  She had a list of things she needed.  Yogurt, garlic, anchovy paste.  She crossed out the items on her list with a pen that she’d found in her handbag and she did not stop to read the labels on bottles of wine.  She did not look to see if someone had invented a new flavor of pop tart, or check to see if Bon Ami was in stock again.  No elderly gentleman came by and spoke to her in a foreign language about the best ways to prepare brown rice, about the longest roads back to the beginning.   Nothing spoke to her, not the man stocking Coca Cola products or the woman laughing at birthday cards in the aisle beside the bread.  There was no soap on sale.  “Let me ask you something,” she said to the man behind her, but only in her head.  It might have been a biting question about politics, the rights of all mankind.  About how, if you’re going to ask permission, you should make the question mark sound with your voice.  “I have a question for you,” she thought and she watched the woman in front of her answer her cell phone, pressing it between her ear and her shoulder to free both her hands for scanning.  A box of Rice Krispies and two bags of fruit flavored marshmallows.  A thin plastic bag full of poblano peppers.  Would fruit flavored marshmallows make good Rice Krispie treats?  Excuse me, sir?  Do you know something you can tell me?  I think I have a question for you?  Would you mind terribly if I let you ask me a question?

The other day her brother had called her on the telephone, told her about Hemingway’s six word story. She did not believe that it was true: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”  The imagination, she understood, was supposed to move forward, build its own story out of the words provided.  But there was no story there.  Either the baby died, before or after birth, or it went around shoeless until its feet grew bigger.  There was nothing much to say.  Not with such an anonymous baby.  “Excuse me,” the man said now.  This time she turned to face him, but she didn’t say what she had planned.  Let me tell you something, mister.  The man looked like other people she had met. He looked like he knew a foreign language, like he had stuffed individual mushrooms into the pockets of his coat.  She stood still, watching the movement of his mouth, tiny like quivering.  She smiled at the man, then, without even meaning to, and listened for what might come next.

~

Elizabeth Wagner studied fiction at the Center for Writers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

The mailman delivers the package on Tuesday. I rip open the small white Fed-ex envelope and a clear zip-lock sandwich bag falls out from between two pieces of cardboard. Inside is the necklace—a large metal cutout of two fists side by side with pinkies extended. “Too much rock for one hand.” It hangs from a cheap metal chain. 

Doyle used to make the gesture when he mocked my taste in music, much heavier and grittier than his. He liked more complex stuff—“musicians’ bands” he’d call them, unable to resist an opportunity to play the pedant. I just liked rock. White Stripes. Old Guns N’ Roses even. Fourteen year old boy music. Why not?

Doyle always laughed when he made the two-fist gesture, but it stopped being funny after the first time.

Still, the necklace is the first attention I’ve had from him in years. When I pick it up and feel its cool weight in my hand, I feel a prickly sensation, like I’m being stalked. How does Doyle even know where I live? Silly. It takes two seconds to track someone down on the internet, at least someone normal, like me.

I don’t tell Mark about the necklace. But what I do do is pull up the band Acme on YouTube as though I’m just looking around, and then I casually tell Mark, hey, wow, I used to date the new bass player. I can smell Mark as he pauses behind me at the computer. He’s a fireman. His job makes him stink, of sweat, diesel fuel and, when he’s lucky, of smoke. He’s never heard of Doyle before. I wait for a reaction.

We watch the band play a smooth, bland alt-country song, the lead singer earnest with a regular-guy voice. Doyle is off to the side playing bass, head low. His body jerks a little as he keeps time, and his overly-styled shag haircut flutters. It’s bizarre to see him, older now, but right there on stage. Acme is a longtime college radio darling, famous, and it’s a big deal to be in the band.

“Those guys?” Mark says finally. “Yeah, I’ve heard them before. Pretty dickless.”

Mark and I hate bands like Acme, with their easy, jangly melodies and smooth-guy blazers over untucked button-down shirts over black jeans. The hip dad look. “Subaru Outback easy listening,” Marks says.

But still. I dated the bass player.

Mark wanders away, unfazed. He’s hungry and wonders when we’re having dinner.

I’m not going to actually wear the necklace, even though it’s tempting. It would be an ironic addition to my usual yoga pants cardigan sweater patterned scarves. But I’m sure there’s nickel in the metal and it would raise angry red welts around my neck.

And I can’t wear it if I don’t know what it means. I’m not sure whether it’s flattering or insulting. One the one hand, he’s thinking of me. So it could say hey you, I know I’m a big rock star now but I still remember how much fun it was.

Or it could say there you are. Still. I’m a big rock star now and I’ll bet you still listen to crap.

I am happy for Doyle, I am. Seventeen years playing small bands all over the country, and he’s finally hit the big-time. He’s been recognized for his musicianly mastery. It’s good.

There is no note in the package, no mention of Doyle on the invoice. The stealth thing is him all over. I put the necklace back in the zip-lock baggie and stuff it in the back of the junk drawer in the kitchen where it glows like psychic kryptonite. Mark has no idea. He goes in the drawer to get a scissors. He goes in the drawer to put the scissors back. There’s a message in there to me from Doyle and Mark is just oblivious.

The next day our marriage has a fragile feel. After all, it’s been invaded. That night I dream that Mark leaves me. “I’ve figured out the length of you,” his dream self says. We are played out. Isn’t it obvious?

In real life I don’t think Mark takes me for granted, and I know that dreams are often the opposite of reality. He hasn’t figured me out at all. I have a rich, complicated past and Doyle still thinks of me.

But on Thursday when I take the necklace out of the drawer, I know it’s meant to menace. If Doyle just wanted to check in, he could have sent a card or drawn a little cartoon like he used to do, like the ones on Acme’s website. The ugly, cheap necklace is pointed and harsh. It says you are the same. You are all you’ll ever be. I know I should just throw it out, but I put it back in the drawer. Maybe I need the reproach. Maybe I need to think about things.

On Friday I get the email. Subject: Whoa, hey. Wrong order. The email goes on to tell me that the ebay sender mixed up the vintage Beastie Boys t-shirt I’d ordered for Mark’s birthday with the “too much rock for one hand” necklace. If I’ll just pack it up and send it back, the sender will set it straight.

~

Julie Odell has published short fiction in the Berkeley Fiction Review, the Crab Creek Review, Philadelphia Stories, and elsewhere. She was a 2004 MacDowell Colony fellow and has recorded personal commentary for NPR. She is at work on a novel.

He had been watching her for four years—watering her plants, grooming her plants.   First in grad school, then when they moved in together in Cambridge, and later in their first house as a newly married couple with house plants.  It had taken years for him to credit:  to observe, to suspect, to hypothesize about, and finally to believe.

Her plants—their plants he’d thought at first—sat on pedestals, long benches, and gleaming wooden foot stools in front of windows sodden with sunlight.  Numerous trips to the local flea market, an old drive-in still showing first-run movies, had produced this odd assortment of plant stands.

They had been married for two years when he first became curious.  How diligently she plucked off old leaves, inspected them for mites, mixed drops of dark fertilizer into their broth.  She hovered, swooped, and sometimes knelt before them as she watered their soil.  For one of their anniversaries he bought her a copper watering can, its long spout a perfect curve, capable of safely snaking in among the leaves to reach the carefully cultivated earth.

Then the day came when something, what?, made him realize that the leaves on a Christmas cactus had begun to droop alarmingly.  Their link-like stems were limp, green arcs, a green that verged on brown.  He went to the door of her study to suggest that he might water the plants for her, but she said oh no and assured him she was keeping an eye on them.  They were really just fine.  Besides he had better things to do with his time.

Did he?  He supposed he did and returned to his own study where he was putting the finishing touches to a paper on the political ramifications of eighteenth century British cartoons.

The day came, though, when he was sure.  He put on his glasses and peered down one row of plants and then another, stooped over two low benches, poked his finger into the soil of a ficus tree.  Dry.  The plants were almost dead—or in various stages of dying.  When he summoned his wife to see what he saw, she said, “Darling, they’ll be fine.  Don’t give these plants another thought.”

And then she moved into action:  water, fertilizer, pruning, dusting, petting, sunlight.  It was somehow familiar:  how generous her glee had seemed at first, before he understood her parsimony.  Children?  Perhaps it was why he never wanted a child.  It is why she is no longer his wife.

~

Pamela Painter is the author of three story collections, Getting to Know the Weather, which won the GLCA Award for First Fiction and was reprinted as a Classic Contemporary by Carnegie Mellon, The Long and Short of It, and Wouldn’t You Like to Know. She is also the co-author of What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, now in its third edition. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, Ploughshares, Smokelong Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Mid-American Review, and Quick Fiction, among others. She has won three Pushcart Prizes and Agni Review’s The John Cheever Award for Fiction. She teaches at Emerson College.

Hello there, I say, and you’re stunned, so stunned you don’t say anything back, you just stare, stare open-mouthed and silent like I’m a ghost. And okay, all right: that’s what I am. People eventually stop calling when calls are not returned. The reflection in the mirror starts to look like someone else—or no one at all.

The afternoon had been stumbling right along. Running errands. Coffee. Other muted distractions. I leaned into the city wind and continued walking. Then you: in line at the same corner store, getting change for a parking meter. Me: entering through the door in a practiced rush, head trained downward by habit, remembering milk, toilet paper, eggs, then looking up, seeing you, and stopping, equally stunned, immediately thinking back, as our eyes met and then parted, to one of our last conversations, the time you said, You don’t even know yourself. How can you possibly know me?

I could have missed you, turned right instead of left, chosen a different store at a different time, slept in, had lunch late instead of early, anything. But everything went the way it was supposed to. Every decision of the day led me to this moment, led me to you. Don’t these things usually happen for a reason?

Now you’re putting your change in your purse, the coins finding solace in there. I don’t think there’s anyone else in the store. We don’t know what to do with our hands.

I say: It’s been a while. A really long while. I can’t remember when.

You ask: How long? How long do you think, exactly?

True, you always did like precision, the euphoria of the finite. Living in the same city I thought it would’ve happened sooner. But no. Not until now. And you are the same but different. You look more fully revealed. You look more … you. I, on the other hand, look less and less like me, becoming someone else in the slow, semi-tragic fade of the years.

A long time, I say. Ten, twelve years?

Longer, you say. Longer.

~

Andrew Roe lives in Oceanside, California. His fiction has appeared in Tin House, One Story, The Sun, Glimmer Train, The Cincinnati Review and other publications. He keeps a sporadic blog at andrewroe.blogspot.com.

The photograph is scuffed. She is perfect and visible. There is a horse tangled in her hair. It will be two years yet before it escapes. She doesn’t know, though she is smiling out to you from within the picture’s pool, she doesn’t know yet whether next week she’ll have grown or shrunk by twenty feet, but she knows size is always shifting, and she knows light makes image possible. If the mind is a moonlit room. A wall, a door, a dresser. Your favorite shirt draped over her chair. One half of the room, cut away diagonally. The room’s other half weighed down by black corners, floor nearly tilting.
~
Michael Dwayne Smith is a community college teacher. He’s not quite old enough to have been at Woodstock, despite what students say about his ponytail, and currently lives in a small California desert town with his wife and son and many animals.