Berkeley Fiction Review, Volume 15 by Berkeley Fiction Review

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B e r k e l e y

F i c t i o n

University of California,

R e v i e w

Berkeley

P a t r o n s

Black Oak Books Copy Central, Bancroft Way Darin's Trucking Company T h e Musical Offering Classical Record Shop and Cafe Odyssia Caffe Bistro

Cover illustration by Jon Dalton Copyright 1996 by Berkeley Fiction Review The Berkeley Fiction Review is not an official publication of the Associated Students of the University of California. The views expressed herein are the views of the writers and not necessarily the views of the ASUC or the views of the University of California, Berkeley. The Berkeley Fiction Review is a non-profit annual publication. Submissions should be sent to 201 Heller, University of California, Berkeley, CA 947204500. The Berkeley Fiction Review is not responsible for unsolicited material. ISSN 1087-7053

Steven T. Carpenter Florence Muneno Josephine Muneno Rose Tsuyuki Lillian Young Rob and Mihwa Young

P a t r o n s

Black Oak Books Copy Central, Bancroft Way Darin's Trucking Company T h e Musical Offering Classical Record Shop and Cafe Odyssia Caffe Bistro

Steven T. Carpenter Florence Muneno Josephine Muneno Rose Tsuyuki Lillian Young Rob and Mihwa Young

C o n t e n t s

Last Stop River City

Lauren Alwan

Trading U p

Roy Glassberg

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

Sarah Odishoo

A Blur in the Crib

Kevin McCaughey

Tell M e You Ain't Mad

Doug Rennie

Feasts

Oscar Fuentes

Advice

Alana Ryan

Serendipity Burning

Alana Ryan

Free Verse

Michael Propsom

Brown and Lime Green

Martha Engber

The Island

Wyatt Bonikowski

C o n t e n t s

Last Stop River City

Lauren Alwan

Trading U p

Roy Glassberg

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

Sarah Odishoo

A Blur in the Crib

Kevin McCaughey

Tell M e You Ain't Mad

Doug Rennie

Feasts

Oscar Fuentes

Advice

Alana Ryan

Serendipity Burning

Alana Ryan

Free Verse

Michael Propsom

Brown and Lime Green

Martha Engber

The Island

Wyatt Bonikowski

One Morning in April

Craig Loomis

105

A Well-Tempered Bone Box

Gary Noland

111

Keepin 'em Out

Josh Stevens

120

What D o Minotaurs D o When N o t Killing People in Elaborate Mazes?

Alan Casey

140

A Soft Pencil

Andrew Wright

146

F o r e w o r d

T h i s past year the staff of t h e Berkeley Fiction Review embraced the dual roles of reader and writer, critic and advocate, servant and judge of short fiction. M u c h like the writer who scribbled in stolen hours , we p e e p e d at manuscript s between classes and during lectures. Just as our writers labored over the turn of a phrase, we debated in depth the craft of a piece or the honesty of its characters. And finally, with the same faith in literature that compels a writer to enclose a story, seal an envelope and lick a stamp, we have refined, bound, and packaged, in a frenzy of editing and type and art, a book. Editorial staffs run the second leg of a literary relay race, from an unblemished manuscript to the final, perfectly bound product. T h e fact that we carry someone else's work across the

One Morning in April

Craig Loomis

105

A Well-Tempered Bone Box

Gary Noland

111

Keepin 'em Out

Josh Stevens

120

What D o Minotaurs D o When N o t Killing People in Elaborate Mazes?

Alan Casey

140

A Soft Pencil

Andrew Wright

146

F o r e w o r d

finish line does, not make the victory any less sweet. Whereas writers have vision, we have a conviction in the importance of the vision we witness. Our stories provide the crucial freedom to peer, like the eyes of our cover, into the chaotic beauty of another imagination. As a journal, the Berkeley Fiction Review has nurtured this conviction through fifteen issues. It has consistently provided a forum for emerging writers and student staffs alike to flex their creative strength. However, we have changed the scope of the project with this issue. Our objective is not just to maintain a university publication, but to establish, with a quality book and our first ISSN, a national journal. In the face of severe budgetary restraints on education in general and the creative arts in particular, this is a bold position. As established university publications in recent years have faded to thinner and thinner volumes, we challenge what we see as a disturbing trend across the country. We invite our readers, as they travel through the images, absurdities, and humor of our stories, to join us in this sense of purpose.

L a u r e n Alwan

L a s t

J. Carpenter

S t o p

R i v e r

C i t y

stzsm&K

oads don't simply lead to geographic places. A road is a decision, a certain path''along precise points. I trust these decisions will take me where I need to go. Past signs that say 2000'motel rooms and Last Chance to Eat. Across a causeway over acres of dry crops and a dead expanse of creek, where spiders nest" under the rocks, signalling the dry year ahead. Past electrical towers that stand on-point in the tall grass. Beneath the delicate wires, snap-lines on a pale scrim that bathe the soft, brown hills in magnetic waves. This is the road that leads to River City, an oasis in the flat-

L a u r e n Alwan

L a s t

J. Carpenter

S t o p

R i v e r

C i t y

stzsm&K

Last Stop River City

ierkelev Fiction Review land. Visible over the next rise are the vast honeycomb rooves spread across the valley floor. Before, this was a quarter million acres of alfalfa, orange groves and dairy farms, but the fields were gradually abandoned and sold to developers who saw pristine communities growing along immaculate boulevards. They saw River City, a pastel sanctuary rising out of the loam. Now, each morning as the sun rises over the mountains, it warms the new asphalt and the clean white sidewalks. The pink stucco and red tiles glow like clifftop dwellings on the cinquaterra. In the driveways, speedboats rest on trailers. Children ride on bicycles in the circles of cul-de-sacs. T h e streets are n a m e d R i v e r s p r i n g Way and Clearwater Court.

Maybe you arrived in River City on schedule, or got there in the nick of time. Maybe you got there in spite of yourself. Or it could be that as your car rumbles over the highway and conducts the pulse of reflectors into your arms, and the bare winter light bleaches the sky and the clouds hang there like great gray stones, the highway takes you back to where the whole journey hinged.

They want to sit across from each other at the dinn e r t a b l e a n d ask e a c h other what was done that day. To place a hand on the b a c k of a b r o w n n e c k , tinged red from afternoons on the Delta. To have child r e n w h o will grow like c r o o k n e c k squash in the shadows of green leaves, to scrub the dirt off their arms a n d set their small overturned chairs upright again. This is the fountain of our spirit, the cradle of our dailiness.

You meet a boy from Newport Beach, one of a group who came north to work for a season's pass and spends the winters skiing, drinking, and taking ceramics at the junior college. You notice him at a party, still wearing his ski jacket, asleep in the arms of a girl named Goldie. His tan face is immobile, his blonde eyebrows arched and luminous, and his long fingers languorous around a pint can of beer. Your romance with him is marked by a series of sweet, transitory incidents. He plays Truth or Dare amid pyramids of empty beer cans, makes fun of the word ennui. You rummage for matches together, naked, at three in the morning, two pale specters seeking candlelight. And he skis more beautifully than anyone you have ever seen, leaning back, just the way you're not supposed to. Seamlessly, with his long legs fused, his 205s sweep in wide, measured counts over the snow, while his arms, spread like wings, trail his poles behind him. You are on the pill and never take it on schedule. W h e n your period is late, he offers to sell his rusted Fairlane to pay for an abortion. His chivalry makes you feel guilty, and you know this romance will not endure another scare with the pill. So when your period finally does arrive, you make an appointment at the health clinic where a new device is offered, free of charge.

Maybe you are o n e of the people who steps from the sidewalk to t h e cool grass, t h r o u g h t h e front door a n d safely into t h e a r m s of your c h i l d r e n .

GabrielLucero

A road is an aspiration, purposeful and direct, and River City, a future destination. Getting to it has been a major strategy of your life. At nineteen, unlike the road, you are uncertain, imprecise, and full of unformed, fervent intent. What you do know is that pregnancy will not interfere with college, travels, or romances with the boys who leave flannel shirts and packs of rolling papers on your bed.

A road is not ambiguous. It cuts across the landscape like a

Last Stop River City

Maybe you are o n e of the people who steps from the sidewalk to t h e cool grass, t h r o u g h t h e front door a n d safely into t h e a r m s of your c h i l d r e n .

GabrielLucero

A road is not ambiguous. It cuts across the landscape like a

Berkeley Fiction Review

Last Stop River City

swift incision. And in the sharp chill of a. January morning, an icy stretch of the interstate takes you to the health clinic to have an I U D inserted. You enter the squat green building determined. Determined that, when ready, you will have a man and a house surfounded by warm grass, and you will live with him to gather in the scent of your child's hands. In the examination room you unlace your boots and lay on the table. You are secure, empowered. It is only you that can take care of yourself and guide your life, not your teachers, not your parents, not your boyfriend. You set your feet into the stirrups.

Other women live with chronic inflammations, and low-level non-specific infections. Bacteria lodges in the fertile sf)ace between the filaments of the wire, causing pain, bleeding and fever. For t h e m , the device burrows in, and perforates or becomes embedded in the uterus. But you are one of the lucky women. T h e device is successful. It purrs, asleep in your membrane, designing your future. In time, it will render you as vacant and fallow as the fields surrounding River City.

With the thick layers of winter clothing peeled away at your pelvis, the nurse tells you to breathe, and then dilates your cervix: She tells you to keep breathing. You can hear the sound of hemostats on the metal tray, and outside on the road snowplows.move hulls of frozen water. Inside you, the speculum is an alien, cool and smooth. T h e nurse jars the tight aperture of the cervix, and the eontractions wind into a heated, tight coil. They break and spill over your gray wool legs, up over the corduroy skirt; across the blue ripstop of your periphery. Don't close your-eyes, they say, Sit her up a little. Your skin waxes cool and d a m p and lures strings of wet, serpentine hair to your throat. You imagine his body, a vast lakebed, covered with trails where you search for hotsprings and become lost. His skin is warm, dry sand .and his hair glitters between your fingers like yellow*embers of pine needles. You move over him like grass*fire. It's in, the nurse says, pushing away on the three-wheeled stool. She tells you to sit up slowly, that yon must have forgotten breakfast, and this made your central nervous system weak. She hands you a small paper cup of orange juice, a salted cracker. Your pejvis radiates, awash in waves. They-extend outward, crest in a high, tight curl, and then recede, to begin again. You envision h i m riding those waves in the morning sun, his board catching the curl, weaving through it. The sun pierces the wave at its peak, and he heads down the face and rides it to shore. Inside, snug against your uterus, is a small plastic butterfly, a polyfiber- wire curled around it like a cat asleep on the hearth.

T h e last time you saw your skier he was leaving for Idaho to plant trees for the summer. You follow him to a hill to sit b e n e a t h an electrical tower and watch the moon rise, and together slowly disappear into the tall grass. Nearby,- houses with windows wide-open like eyeยง watched while you were magnetized by a kiss, one that had you run, possessed, to stand at the open window and let in the lightening. In subsequent winters, whenever you carry your*skis td~ the chairlift and snap^your boots into the bindings, he is there, being poured into your body, through your skull and into your torso, arms and legs. As you float over the snow, he is a guide, the muscles in your legs, the balance in your hips. Some years pass, and you hear your skier is back -in Orange County, building houses and learning how to sky dive. He is spotted at construction sites, framing walls and cutting cocaine. You want to contact him, to tell him how, even after all this time, he is teaching you about the nuance of small, fluid movements. Before you have a chance to call him, he makes a jump over the Mojave desert, over a flat, distant world where the daylight blazes through his eyes and the plane engines rumble against his body. He jumps to be suspended in a place where time and form are still. He jumps to hear the thunder in his ears, and to fall, buoyed by the pressure of his body against the air. To trick death and gravity by the explosion of his canopy high above the desert. You never reach him. It was that day his parachute tangled and he fell through the sky with nothing to hold onto but the shrouds of the canopy. Trapped in the cradle of the harness, his body sliced through the blue light of the sky, accelerating and dragging against the invisible, inconsequential

Berkeley Fiction Review

Last Stop River City

Berkeley Fiction Review friction of air. A road, in the end, is the vestigial tracks .of our movements. On the road" to-River City there is a junction where one could change course in any direction. Restless, anxious and untethered, today you want to go in all directions at once. You want to charge ahead in grand steps, speak in broad sweeping statements, disregard focus and precision. You are unfettered and childless, your careful choices have made it so. Ahead at the horizon, the clouds against the blazing sky are bruised "with the colors of sunset. And in the chrome oval of a Peterbilt tanker, I see the reflection of my car speeding over a slab of highway, out of a bleeding sky into the third millenium, to any place I choose. Electrical towers move in procession across the valley, as if all the men I have ever known are traversing my landscape, linked to one another by a charged line that holds all my unexplainable energies and attractions. And River City is behind me. It is not an exit that I will take, but-a place seen only from a distance. As a blur from the scarred roadbed, or from the perch of a hill in a tangle of arms and grass and hair. Or glittering in the night, like a jewel box seen from an angel's precipice before hurtling to earth in the tangled cords of dreams.

Roy Glassberg

T r a d i n g

je3&S&*.

o what did I do that was so wrong? So dumb? What? So I didn't buy a God damn warranty that Consumers said in black and white was a rip-off. Does that make me a fool? I'm not stupid. I did my homework. I had a copy of the Blue Book from the union guy where I work—that's the Lucky's warehouse off of 980 —and I also had the article from Consumers on how to trade up, how'to negotiate it, you know, so you don't get screwed (fat lot of good that did me)—and,I also did some other stuff I'm gonna tell you about in a minute; but I figure that someplace in the sky it's written in stone, big letters: THEY

Roy Glassberg

T r a d i n g

je3&S&*.

Berkeley Fiction Review

Trading Up

WIN AND YOU LOSE, and thafs it, that's the way it is, forever and a day—period. Shit! So anyway it's Tuesday, which is my day off and also the end of the m o n t h , which Consumers says is the best day to buy because these guys are trying to make their quotas. So I go on over. I don't know if you've been there, but as far as you can see, straight down from MacArthur almost to the Paramount, it's the same thing over and over: pennants flapping on strings and the little houses in the middle where the guy comes out—BUY, SELL, TRADE, E-Z TERMS , woo, woo, woo. So I pick the first one (it's gonna make a difference, right?) and the guy comes out, thick white hair, a shiny suit, and the complexion of an alcoholic that's stopped drinking for a while, and of course the big smile and the handshake. How do you do, blah, blah, blah, the weather this and that, so finally he gets around to it and says, "What can I help you with today?"

maybe •a little sweetener we could talk about, would yoii be-prepared to buy from us, today?" "Well, I'mean sure. If it's the dream deal, sure, why-not? I got- my checkbook, J got the paperwork right here," I said and patted-rnyback pocket. "Oh man, you-are-in-luck! M^ managerjust had'a baby girlyesterday. He's on cloud nine. Authorized me to sign anything. But first, are there any questions I'can answer for you about Bob?" "OK, sure,' uh, are there any problems with his stability— any difficulties making decisions'or saying no?" These were some of the questions that they listed in Consumers. "All of our personas are bench tested for "seventy-two hours, screened meticulously for any turpitude,Tetishism or phobias. Any dings get straightened out before tile unit goes out .on the lot. If we can't fix the-pro ; blem we have to disclose it. That's the* ; law, my friend." "How many years on the libido?" "Well, lets seef and he consults his book.- "WeVe g6t it listed . . . at forty-five." "Original?" He looks afrne like'I somehowJfurt'his feelings'. "As I'm sure you know, sir, California law prevents us from tampering with the libid6. T h e seals are intact;'we couldn't set it back even if" we wanted to." "But still, that's a lot of years, wouldn't you say? ^Performance is important to me." "Oh, sir: . ." He shook his head. "I'm ^afraid*there's a bit of mythology here that needs dispelling. Modern research has shown that-men are'perfectiy capable'of enjoying themselves well into their eighties. In-fact. . ? "Oh come on, don't give me-that politically correct bullshit! You"know as well as I do it slows down: "Even I . . . ." "Sir?5' ". . i have'read that many men reach their peak at eighteen or even earlier."* "Well I won't argue that, sir, but let's say we could sweeten

So I say, "Well, I'm lookin' for something that's got some earning power, you know. And low shame. Somethin' that's gonna get me where I want to go." "Is aggressiveness, the old get-up-and-go —are those virtues important to you, sir?" "Absolutely. Yes." "Well that's amazing. Just incredible! Because we've got something that just came in. This is gonna knock your socks off. Belonged to one of our own salesman, Bob. Terrific guy. Our top producer for the last two years'. There's nobody, absolutely nobody, that could say 'no' to the guy." And he gives me this little nod. "Might that be something you'd be interested in, sir?" "Well sure. I mean hey, it can't hurt to look." "And will this be a straight purchase, sir, or are yoti planning on trading yourself in?" "Well, I don't know if I'm ready to purchase, I mean, right this very second. And as far as the trade-in, thafs . . . well, that's gonna depend on the deal don't you think? So maybe we're gettin' aiittle ahead of. . . ." "But if we were able to get you exactly what you wanted at a price you could afford, and top dollar on the trade-in, and

Berkeley Fiction Review

Trading Up

Berkeley Fiction Review

Trading Up

the deal with, a little compensation. Let's say a sincerity-package—or a sensitivity package? Two h u n d r e d hours. Prime hours, sir, n ot the midnight to seven (If you'll pardon my French) 'crap'-you might find down the street. -Many women, good lookers too, prefer sincerity or sensitivity-to a youthful libido. Just look at the singles ads." "Well . . . " "So which would you be interested in,-sir, the sensitivity package or the sincerity package?" "Well I don'bknow, I hadn't uh. . . . the sensitivity package?" "A wise choice, sir. And can I give you a bit of advice??' "Absolutely." "A lot of, these sensitivity kits you find elsewhere, they look like they came from the factory, 'Made in the U.S.A.' and all like that. But a lot of tjiem are knockoffs — from Baghdad or Teheran, or from across the Pacific, if you get my drift." "Oh for God's sake!" "It's true, sir. You see the governments over there change the name of some district or other to "Usa." That's how they get away with it. If you look at ours there's periods after each of the letters —U.S.A.—that's how you can tell." "Well thanks./That's good to know. I appreciate the tip."'But while I'm saying this I'm having trouble looking-at him:' My eyes keep slipping out over the lot, trying to pick out which one is Bob. So he asks me, "Would you like to check out our idealizations? A lot of people enjoy looking at them." And I say sure. I tell you, they have really improved the 'dealizations since the -last time I was on a lot. What they used to have were just these cardboard-cut-outs like you see in the lobby of .theaters, or in video stores. And just like the cut-outs can give yo'u*a taste of what the movie's gonna be like—kinda get you stirredaip to see it—the 'dealizations do the same thing for the persona you're thinking about buying. But the way they got it now, only the cheapest items on the lot have cardboard 'dealizations. T h e rest of them-are all plastic—the same stuff they used to have in the windows of Chinese restaurants. Totally realistic—you had to stick your nose right on the glass to see if the chicken double

mushroom or whatever was real or fake. So anyway we walk out on the lot and the first 'dealization we see is this big guy standing legs apart with Kis arms around a couple of babes in mini-skirts, tight as shrink-wrap. He's got a bandanna on his head, black shades, gold earrings, gold chains, and a machine pistol in each fist, blasting away. On one of his legs he's got another babe hanging on, and on the other there's a sticker with day-glo letters: "$1600 dn, 2 mo no pay" plus that stupid government warning that they have to put on: "These figures are idealizations and may not represent . . . blah, blah, blah."'

"A repo," says the salesman, referring to the dude. T h e next 'dealization was that of a lady serving up a holiday feast. She's about to set a huge turkey, crispy brown, with cranberry, rings down on a table. G r a n d m a a n d G r a n d p a are applauding, the kids are beaming, and the husband's looking up at her adoringly, love in his eyes. Next came another family scene. (I guess they*want to keep the family stuff together.) This one has a m o t h e r a n d a father in the front, pointing and cheering for a kid whoVdepicted doing stuff in several different scenes. In the first, he's a boy scout getting a badge, in the second he's winning a race at school, in the third he's vacuuming the-ntg, arid in the last he's giving the big speech at graduation. (I guess with kids the way they are today, a lot of parents-are looking to trade up —which pissed m e off because I know my dad woulda never jdone that for me, even if that stuff had been available back then.) After*that comes this guy in a white tuxedo with a martini glass in his hand standing by a roulette table. It had rained the night before so the glass was actually full. But there was a drowned sow bug "floating in it,-which the sales guy flicked out with his thumb. And then some of the others I remember: a rock drummer banging away in a blue spotlight with babes climbing up onto the stage; a mountain man with a beard and a far-away look patting a collie with saddle bags holding beer; then a* babe with her bodice ripped open leaning backwards in the arms of a guy with

Berkeley Fiction Review

Trading Up

Berkeley Fiction Review

Trading Up

a frilly shirt and a sword; and finally, closest to the street, up on a wood platform with a sign "Special Of The Week," was this business scene. In it, a fatherly looking C E O type with a stomach and white hair is slapping a handsome guy on the back and handing him an oversized check. T h e boss' eyes are brimming with pride. T h e handsome guy has a great suit, snug, with his chest puffed out, and on the check is written, "Million Dollar Round-Table Potential." But that's not all:- leaning in through the door, watching the whole thing, is the secretary, who looks hot with her lips parted, her nipples pushing on her blouse. "Wow," I thought. "Lgotta have that! That's it! Exactly!" "That's Bob," whispers the sales guy like we're standing in a church.

me. So I'd like you to know, if Bob is too high-powered for you, if he's more than you had in mind t we've got a glut of mildmannered units sitting behind the shed I could show you." "That's OK," I said. "Nothing's perfect; I'm sure there'd be a ding here or there with them too." "Fine," he said, and.he nodded like he was proud of me. "I think you're making the right decision." But I was suddenly nervous; things were going too fast. "What kind of. guarantee do you'offer? I mean if there's a problem, or *if it turns out I'm dissatisfied with myself?" Jt was something I had to ask; I couldn't let him think I was too easy. "Well, unfortunately all of our personas are sold on an as-is basis. But we do offer optional warranties on our most dependable selections, and I'm proud to say yours does qualify. We'll run over the details in a minute. But would you mind if I had our psychometrician check you out now, sir? It only takes a minute", and it will help us to present you with our very best offer, on the trade-in "

For a minute neither of us said a word. I couldn't take my eyes off it. So finally he clears his throat and says kind of embarrassed like, "Sir, I . . . I have a bit of a favor to ask." "Yeah, an' whafs that?" I'm a little suspicious. "As I said before—earlier in our conversation—state law requires that we1 disclose any problems with a persona that can't be repaired. And I know that a sharp consumer like yourself is not going to let that pass. I bet that you've been waiting for just the right m o m e n t to surprise me with it. So as a favor . . . I mean, what I'm asking is: could we review the negatives now? Get it over with?" •

"OK, all right," he says, and he shuts his eyes like he's ashamed of what he's about to say. "First of all I have to tell you that personally I had very mixed feelings about Bob. Don't get me wrong. A great guy. But a lot of us here were uncomfortable working with him. You see he was so successful at what he did that he made the rest of us look and feel like lesser men. T h e boss was always on us. 'Why can't you be-more like Bob/ he would say. 'He could do it, w h y c a n ' t you?' There was a lot of envy, a lot of jealousy among us here on the staff. I don't know how you are, sir, bu t speaking for myself, I would feel very uncomfortable if I felt everybody I worked with wanted to be

"No problem whatsoever." "Hector!" he shouts, and out comes this fat kid wiping the remains of his lunch on his pants with.one hand while pulling a Pep Boys "diagnostic center" on a hand truck with the other. I had loaded up on some cheap psychotherapy, sixty bucks worth, just before coming over—not a permanent fix, but good enough to quiet any chattery insecurities for a day or two —and that piece of crap he had there wasn't gonna catch nothing. T h e kid,hooks me up, the whole thing takes a second, and he hands the sales guy the report. "Well," he says, shaking'his head sadly. "Looks like we've got a few problems here." "I'm sorry . . . I'm not sure . . ." "Well,-there's that business-with your little sister—maybe you've repressed it—and those odd fantasies you had about your gym coach. We can't do those kinds of repairs here in-house, and I have to tell you, sir, people worry about stuff like that: too much energy having to repress- or deny, and' there's always the danger of incipient paranoia, Even if we were to wholesale you

"Sure, go ahead. I'm not hard to get along with. Whatever's best for you."

Berkeley Fiction Review

Trading Up

"Sure, go ahead. I'm not hard to get along with. Whatever's best for you."

Trading Up

Berkelev Fiction Review to Mexico we'd still have to disclose. I'm afraid we're looking at a six to eight hundred dollar ding right there. Lets see what else we've got." He made little popping noises with his lips as he scanned down the list. "A little inadequate in humor, taste, and self-esteem," he said, "but the good news is that we don't get a lot of demand for the first two, and Hector's got a set of Leo Buscaglia tapes that can keep the third pumped up." I waited for him to continue. "So?" "Best we can do is seventy-five bucks on the trade-in." I was stunned. I guess he could read the disappointment in my eyes— and, I don't know, maybe he felt sorry for me. "Look," he said, "swear to me that you won't say a word to my manager; I'll write it up as ninety. Screw it—a hundred and ten! What with the new baby, he'll never notice." "So what does it all come to?" I asked. "The payments. . . ." "Affordable, sir. Just $ 340 a month." I couldn't think of anything. I couldn't think what to ask. All of it from Consumers, everything-gone from my mind. "And remember the sensitivity package." He was standing too close. "Two hundred prime hours." "I don't know. I need to think a bit. Let m e come back tomorrow." "I'd act fast if I were you, sir. There's no guarantee that Bob will be here when you come back. He'll be going fast in my opinion. You know how hungry most men are for success these days." T h e sun was setting. The pennants had stopped flapping. I was tired and I'm thinking to myself, "What the hell—if I go somewhere else, what's gonna happen? Are things gonna be that different?" So I said, "OK, toss in a set of listening skills and we've got a deal." "You're a sharp trader, sir," he chuckled. "Maybe we should hire you." So while I'm signing the papers, writing him a check, trying out my new aggressive handshake on Hector-all the while this is going on, he's still working on me. Do I want to purchase a warranty? yatta this, yatta that. But they said in Consumers to

forget it—it's a bad deal. Sometimes the company goes out of business and then what do you do? Or sometimes you find out later that all you're entitled to is ten hours of Reichian body work or some hocus-pocus past life bullshit —everybody's an Egyptian Pharaoh or had their head cut off in France—so I said no. But maybe I should have said yes, because I didn't get more than five blocks when I broke down — right in the middle of the intersection—stuck, inconsolable, weeping for lost love.

]. Carpenter

Trading Up

]. Carpenter

Notes from the Flat Earth Society is there hope. If you have any doubt, look at religion, politics, sex. Satiation-the sin, the cynic, or say the sinique. You don't want anything you can get, and anything you can get isn't worth it. T h e Chinese -understood: May you get what you wish-the ineffable curse. Understand this: I may wish that you understand this, but I'don't want you to. All things being equal, you won't.

Sarah A. O d i s h o o

N o t e s F l a t

f r o m

E a r t h

t h e S o c i e t y

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Let me repeat with quiet force: I was, and^till am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy buf all the mdre seductive cast of demeanor. Exceptional virility often reflects in the subject's displayable features a" sullen and congested something that pertains to what he.has to, conceal. And this was my case. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita I. et m e say from the beginning it has been only in the futile that I find-release. Or so it has seemed to me in hopes and in beginnings. Nothing satisfies that satisfies. Only in what continues to whet the appetite, Tantalus my saint,

II. T h e university visits follow the same'routine. I am met at the airport by a bunch of college kids eager to hear whispers from the nether world-called POESIS. We crowd into one car (they had drawn lots, tossed coins, Indian wrestled, and walked over hot coals to meet the Poet-Me). I get to sit in the front seat of what was usually a yellow Volkswagen Bug with a busted muffler and three girls, wedged into the back seat, sometimes four if they were small* enough, whispering and giggling in between those long pauses before one of them would ask, "When did you start writing poetry?" "When I was too young to know it." T h e driver, usually a pockrharked, thinly bearded young man, thimas his voice, his clothes reeking of pot, sweat, and the musty odor of basements Would turn and smile knowingly at them as if he would have said the same thing. They would hold onto that quote and years later tell their husbands when they read my name in the only"poetry magazine they still subscribed to, "He was brilliant even then." Sometimes, I wouldn't be as lucky. I would get a middleaged man,'balding, wearing thin, a* Sunday poet who worked for a corporation-but who once had aspirations. Tough. He would ask ^questions too, but mostly he answered the questions in long-winded-sentences,-pausing insignificantly, squinting at me,-checking to see if I was appropriately dumbfounded by his brilliance to race to some hotel telephone to call my editor. No perks in this: he wasn't even good to, look at. Finally, I would step out of his car", stumble, feeling as I do when I leave a movie in the middle of the day, hying to get used

Sarah A. O d i s h o o

N o t e s F l a t

f r o m

E a r t h

t h e S o c i e t y

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Notes from the Flat Earth Society

Berkeley Fiction Review to the light. Wherever I was, I was lost.

I wonder. What would I have done had she said no. V. A hundred of them. I mean, I have slipped into-I like that better than "fucked"-at least one hundred. After a while they look the same, even though I know they're all different. If you do it in the dark, it's one woman. Sometimes she's in heat, other times she's not. Sometimes it's good, most times not. But you can never tell. I-mean it's not her looks. You can't tell by looks. She can't be ugly, of course. When she looks good to you, just watching her come through a doorway, the black fit of her pants curving around her hips and. down her thighs, the slight lift of her breasts and the way they sway slightly as she walks toward you, almost into you, her eyes in yours, you can almost feel her in your pupils, double, slip into the crevasse ,of your brain. T h e n inside she reaches over to her hip and undoes her slacks, lets them slip down her thighs to her ankles, still staring through you, she crosses her hands and raises them slowly as if to some kind of music in her brain, yours. Her sweater up until her breasts stretch smooth,.rosepetal ripe, her arms crossing her face and lifting her-whole torso to a cathedral height. Her thumbs inside the elastic of her pink silk panties, she runs them down her legs, one foot then the next. There. Then you notice the hair on her head and between her legs are not the same color, some closely vaulted fur, a finely curled seawashed version, a down. Is that a fall? And you feel her, not with your hands, b u t with some other part of your brain, rubbing u p against her, licking and lascivious, feejing her insides. Then you become some part of-thq very odor she exudes. You become her, she you. then you aren'tyou anymore. Now that's a cosmic orgasm.

III. Weather. Gray. Or not. T h e color of paint chipping off a weathered door. Racing the expressway, ground slipping fast underneath, to the edge. I believe the earth is flat, and going too far, I will fall off. Ask anyone. Ahead, the fence of skyscrapers keeping me away from borders, from the natural. Barriers. Tall and black, these picket fences. Nothing I can run my fingers along and closer, concrete and glass disappear top first. Lake Michigan-a moat I can't see across. Safe here,, the city, sky and water not admitted. Barred, if you will, by a profligate imagination. IV. "You are so lovely. Can I jump on you?" "What'd you say?" her slow southern drawl made four words into three. "I said, 'You are so lovely. Can I jump on you?'" "Oh," she tilted her blonde head awayjrom me, looked down my body cramped behind the steering wheel of the car I had stopped to pick her up in, then licked her upper lip in consideration, rehearsing a role she played to a standing, or should I say, rising audience. Neck slick with sweat down to the cleavage, pearjs, I swear, pearls of moisture balanced ever so lightly between her breasts, those overripe orbs glistening onyx under her Danskin leotard, waiting to fall-there's that word again-out, or be ^plucked with the tongue, or like some ancient instrument, be played tongueout-of-cheek now, earnestly, and hear a music sung low in the throat, a pearl "of some oyster's irritant, some cinder promoting/iris and spangle." Her hips broad and presumptuous, banging like a drum under mine, beating a rhythm, a method to my madness that even now beats in my head as" I lower it to hers, waiting/the climax.

In bed, well that's different. With most women, after a.couple, of times, at the most, it's a dry, and I don't use the word lightly, experience. But I guess for the first couple of.times it's worth it. A lot depends on your frame of mind.

"Yeah. I guess so," she says, not knowing she's slammed the door sjiut.

19 *

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

Berkeley Fiction Review to the light. Wherever I was, I was lost.

"Yeah. I guess so," she says, not knowing she's slammed the door sjiut.

19 *

Berkeley Fiction Review

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

VI. Ritz-Carlton. When I hear a name like Ritz-Carlton, I think of, well, the Grand Hotel with bus boys in dark uniforms and caps holding suitcases marching through a lobby the size of a football stadium, and one of them holding a card glancing at it o c c a s i o n a l l y a n d c a l l i n g in a P h i l l i p M o r r i s v o i c e , "Pagingmistersmiiiith" and turning his head from side to side for a response, with chandeliers dotting the ceiling into a hallway that goes into a mirror-infinity and women with foreign faces", broad-rimmed hats and cloches being pulled by salukis and afghans toward the massive doors while the head manager stands behind the mahogany counter with a bell and a large hotel register, resting elegantly for someone to sign, with the air punctuated by the slim chime of a request to be taken to a suite of rooms that overlooks the most beautiful face of the city imaginable where at night lights twinkle from the ground more brightly than the sky. A Pity.

pose unless you've fallen off the sphere it doesn't make sense. It happens all of a sudden. First you believe that everything is, has been, and will be terra firma under your feet, and you keep walking, ninningskippingjumping, doing cartwheels, racing like those characters in a cartoon after, something you really want but before you know it-in fact, there you are standing over the abyss-you have left ground entirely and you look down for a split second unconvinced, trying to get back to the .abutment before you p l u m m e t off into Godknowswhere and if you're lucky-damn few .at that-you can crawl back and know-know deeper than .anything else in your whole life that the world is dangerous and the edge is where you didn't expect it and will always be where you don't expect it, and when you try to tell people, they don't believe you. They scoff, mock, laugh, and if you really insist, they think you're crazy. Of course, if you're a poet, they think you are talking about poetry, and they then expect madness-that' s when they call'vou profound. What insight! How deep! But poets, they know when you say the earth is flat that you're not talking about the poem, the piece of paper. They know, if they're worth their salt, whatthey've always known, suspected. Nowhere is safe. You could fall off the edge at any moment, the invisible depth swallowing us whole, and we, we, the unfaithful, not knowing how to fly, dive darkly into our own disbelief.

VII. Take the scotch out of the suitcase, set it by the bed. Unpeel the glass like an onionskin, and pour. Turn on the TV, anything, it doesn't matter. No ice. It's cold enough in here. In these hotel rooms, I think of Humphrey Bogart, lying on the bed with scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other, the tough silent solitary type, stoic, tight-lipped, and hard-drinking. Pity.

But the damn thing is, you want to believe, have the same faith you did before you hit the edge, the same anticipation, the expectation that, yes, it's there, the earth, and you can never go too far and if you go far enough-reach, step over-that moment and all those moments before are as delicious as a blueblack plum on a hot summer day, the sun church-high in the birthdrowse of days, and the chalk-cliff pink waiting to appear with the first bite.

VIII. I don't know how I got mixed up with her. -Her eyes like quicksandâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the kind that when you struggle to get out of you sink deeper into. She was the wife of one of my students. IX. I said I believed'the world is flat. I joined a society. O n e with 4,000 members that also believe. Six hundred years have passed since C o l u m b us tried to change people's thinking, and now they're all converts. But 4,000 remain faithful; however, I sup-

X. Later, after you have had three drinks, enough to soften memories, the self-lacerating ones, the telephone rings and either a young girl's voice or the ingratiating one of the middle-

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Berkeley Fiction Review

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

X. Later, after you have had three drinks, enough to soften memories, the self-lacerating ones, the telephone rings and either a young girl's voice or the ingratiating one of the middle-

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Berkeley Fiction Review

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

aged man reminds you it's time for the ritual last supper, where at least twelve gather in your name. Time to put on the mask, ah, but which one? You know what psychoanalysis is according to some very learned psychoanalysts-a study in self-deception. Now that's a good one-a vicious circle, or sphere, the world is still round and all is well. If you wear masks and you believe them, then what is deception? If you wear masks and you know they're masks, then you're not deceiving yourself, only others. You know it, and do it for a" reason. If you don't wear any masks, they think you are crazy-the earth is flat. Humphrey Bogart to nigh t-tigh flipped and hard-drinking-hard to do both.

a strip-tease artist standing in front of you, she unveils, dances, showing you her bare essentials, and you are both aroused and arousing, and the question "how- long can I be tantalized?" How long will it take before I know I have her or I don't? And I will suffer either way, but-here in this tension between yes and no, I live ever so lightly. XIII. Things are easier when the world is flat. You-don't have to imagine that the earth bends info a curve where you don't see it. You're walking on a hard, flat, city sidewalk, and the earth looks flat, and once in a while you go down a hill, and for a few seconds you may even think, "hey, this might be the down slope of that curve those guys were talking about." But faster than you get down that curve? you're going up again, or flat, and no matter how far or where you go, it's always flat. You never once see the world as round.

XI. Eighty percent of taste is smell. That's a fact. Scientists are studying olfactory nerves and which parts of the brain work as receptors for them, but the code for how we smell is elusive, remarkably elusive. They know that olfa'ctory regions are- the parts of the brain that regulate emotions. And in lower mammals, the sense of smell is the primary thing that provides sexual arousal. So those functions, which in us are related to joy or fear, are sexual and intimately connected to our nose. So really, the most sexual part of us is the nose. T h e brain nose. Smell it? XII. T h e scent of her eyes. I suppose I knew when I first saw her that she could sniff me out. I kept my distance like a dog, she outside the fence, and I was protected. Stan was a good student, even an excellent one. They had been married for a few years'. So had I. We could make a foursome, I thought. " Covet thy neighbor's wife. That was my c o m m a n d m e n t . Coveting was fun. No pain and all the pleasure-you know, standing arm to arm, her fingers touching yours as you light her cigarette, coming up behind her in a group to remind her dinner is ready, leaning against her to whisper "what do you want to drink," and the scent of spiced apple-lingering in the back of your mouth, the slight bitter aftertaste. Wanting and not having, the thought of not-ever-having, like

But way back in the third-grade part'of your brain, you remember those books where scientists tell us that they have spent a hell of a lot of time coming to the conclusion that the earth is a sphere, round as this rubber" ball, and without ever leaving their tables arid compasses, they're telling us that" what we see is not what we get. So much of our lives we walk around seeing one thing and believing, while having faith, that is, in quite another. I don't have much. Faith, that is: Who am I going to believe-my'eyes or them? So the whore thing is simple. Flat. XIV. My mother thought I was a homosexual when I was'seventeen because I didn't have a girlfriend. I never brought any of them home. Faith runs'in a family.

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XV. There are two kinds of women: the kind who want to worship you and the kind you want to worship. They're never the same woman. These are two distinct types. T h e kind who want tonvorship>you have no mCmbry at all;

Berkeley Fiction Review

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

â&#x20AC;˘

Berkeley Fiction Review

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

the kind you want to worship have a tyrannical memory. - I mean, women who are looking for someone to worship are on the'prowl, nervous, jittery, anxious to please, ready to spend, make all kinds of concessions. Their eyes have the vague wandering look they get in-a supermarket: they rest on something they think they would like to buy, but once they have put it in their cart, they're looking again. That's what I mean about memory.

lophane. You can see right through it, knowing all the time that the cream oozing out between the yellow cake ovals is ersatz cream, and the cake tastes like a kitchen sponge. As soon as ydu've licked the last pearl of lard from your finger, your stomach has stopped growling but you're still hungry, and the oily taste in your mouth remains until you've taken a swig^ of machine coffee with non-dairy creamer to clear out the bookworm taste. In fact, I suppose junk food i& just that-a bookish idea of food. Think about'it. Junk food is an idea-an abstraction to fill the mouth. Eating words-Twinkies, Oreos, O-Ke-Do-Ke's, Doritos, Ho-Ho's. If yoli say them, they don't stay long on the tip of your tongue. They fill up your mouth with vowels, spaces, then you swallow, and they've evaporated.

T h e ones you worship? They seem to be unaware of you or anybody in the room, but .a kind of 360 degree vision knows you're there and can avoid you. It's off-putting and attractive at the same time. In fact, it seems that's just the mystery-how they can arouse opposite feelings in you and sustain them. W h e n they do talk to you, they fully engage you as if the room were between the arcs your bodies make leaning toward each other. They.look either at your eyes or lips^ neither of which is comfortable. In fact, both disturb. They seem not to want any-more than this, and much more. They're the Gold Cards-you buy, b u t t h e y have it on record what they gave you, and whether they collect it or not, you know-you are in debt to them. There's only one way to pay. "You must change your life," Rilke said. Otherwise, you go bankrupt. Oh, you can't worship more than one of these women at a time. You'd end up blowing your brains out. Madonna and whore is too simple a classification. Angel legs: one foot firmly in the heavens, the other infirmly on earth, and the man lying face up between those legs-all he wants above him and no way to get the word to her thafs on the tip of his tongue. No easy task-the metaphor. Well, you have to like the image, after all. There is a danger. It could happen.that you would end up worshipping the worshipper. That's a man's tragedy. He's reduced to rubble. He worries about her memory: if she's going to remember to come home, to meet him at the comer outdoor cafe, in her bedroom. Out.of sight, out of love. Swann got caught in the lover's shopping mall: he devoured her and like junk food, she didn't satisfy. He stayed hungry. It's all in the eel-

Swann knew it all along. He was getting what he saw. She satisfied his bookish hunger, but his stomach still growled.

XVI. There's something comforting about anything wrapped in plastic. It's all man-made. Look at the ingredients: chemicals. I suppose they could even say, "Nothing Natural." There's nothing mysterious about what's in it. Nature has a way of keeping secrets. I mean, what is photosynthesis anyway? It makes plants green. They can 'tell you how, but you can never get the why. You never see it, I mean, the motherlode of sap turning water to wine and pouring its juice into those self-publicizing leaves. With plastic, well, it's the only product that nature didn't put her motherly fingers into. And notice, Mother Nature can't destroy it either. Plastic is here' to stay. Even if everything else goes. Now that's hope-immortality. After all, in nature, everything that's created is destroyed or self-destructs. But not plastic. Plastic is American. There's nothing that can't be made, replicated, duplicated, or reproduced in plastic. Look around: bags, bottles, corks, canisters, carpets, canapes, dressers, dolls, doilies, forks, spoons, knives, grass, flowers, birds, ice, cars, tables, chairs, bombs. Name it, its double is in plastic. There's a certain reassurance in knowing that some things

Berkeley Fiction Review

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

Swann knew it all along. He was getting what he saw. She satisfied his bookish hunger, but his stomach still growled.

Berkeley Fiction Review

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

are known quantities, we know what's in them, how they are made, and that they can be counted on-the certainty of sameness. In women who worship you, there's a mediocrity. They look alike, that look of ersatz affection, admiration, Jhe long stares, the crumpled defeated look, the gypsy despair. It's quite winning, really. I like mediocrity. With mediocrity, you're always at your best. T h e problem is it doesn't last long, either for her or for you. I suppose it has to do with memory. I don't have much. Memory, that is. I don't remember one woman from the next. T h e ones I do remember, I try to forget. They were begetters. Like Eve. You know, they bore more problems than the rib that conceived them. A whole unspeakable history. Was it worth it? No. A most emphatic no. Adam, I'm sure, would have agreed.

All the duties and convenience of marriage and crimes and laws of it take over, rule with* the inexhaustible fund of situations. And soon, you are Mr. Hyde again, hiding and hating her and yourself, and out on the prowl, looking for another reflection.

T h e problem with worshippers: mechanical, boredom. At first, there's the high, of course, of finding someone who looks into your eyes and sees someone you didn't know was there, or if you even suspected that the resplendent being existed, few had discovered him. Now, in the eyes of this new creature, you see yourself reflected authentically. i It's as if one ordinary morning you awoke, stumbled into the bathroom, and accidentally caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Instead of the afflicted, jaded, r u m p l e d image you expected to see with dried spittle outlining one side of your chin and hair oily and slicked down on one side with ,the other side electrified and standing upright and at attention, -you see a transformed image-a kind of Jekyll and Hyde in reverse. That image of yourself you have entertained since adolescence, full of vitality, kind of mystical, glowing, radiantly alive, looks back at you. You are undone. This New Creature has given,you back to yourself, has seen you as you truly are. It's hard being a narcissist-so few. mirrors reflect adequately.

XVII. That's why you need to worship a woman. Worshipping, that's poetic self-deception par excellence. Worshipping is a study in futility. Happy love has no history or literature. When love is fatal, doomed, frowned upon, that's when romance is elevated. Poets delight in the arousal of the sense-not their consummation. Thafs a fundamental fact, as Tantalus is my saint. By idealizing our lust, we satisfy our desire to escape-escape from that everyday mechanical background of our lives. Then adultery becomes a most remarkable occupation, one we are obsessed by. Coveting the sole commandment. Look at our literature: what would happen to writing without adultery? In any case, ifs not so much adultery as thinking about adultery. That's another fact. Look around. All the ill-assorted couples, t h e disappointed, deceived, rebellious, p r e o c c u p i e d ; shameless, and unfaithful, in remorse or terror, looking for and delighting in the disquiet of temptation, the secret rendezvous, the escapes. What dbes all this have to do with worshipping a woman? We hanker after unhappiness, and a woman, one whom you can worship, usually doesn't care if you're a live doornail or a dead lizard. You've* always -suspected the difference didn't matter-that your life has been so meaningless and inconsequential, so paltry and squalid, that no one in her right mind would give you the time of day. You know you have never been seen because there is literally nothing of worth to see. A woman who recognizes this and doesn't squash you like a disgusting beetle is worthy of worship.

But all too soon, probably after a couple of weeks in bed and out, something happens. Routine. Fights. About whether you should shave, cut your hair, what shirt you should wear, why she's watching you while you read, who should make dinner.

XIX. She was different. I know, everyone says that. But she had a seductive intelligence. She was good enough to look at, but

Berkeley Fiction Review

Notes from the Flat Earth Society

XIX. She was different. I know, everyone says that. But she had a seductive intelligence. She was good enough to look at, but

Berkeley Fiction Review after a while, I would want to tell her things, want to hear what she saw, see how her face would light up when she saw me. Even though a dozen people were in the room, I would be the only one. I r e m e m b e r when she read the article I had written on Auden's "The Mirror and the Sea," and the way she took the pages in her hands, nestling in the corner of my couch, tucking her bare feet u n d e r the cushion. Resting the pages on her knees, she cupped her body toward the storm of words, soaked and slippery, and she disappeared. When she finally looked up at me, fire-hearted, obliterating thought like a kiss, the sharpsweet plumsmooth hot-to-bite skin under my nose, I knew then that I got what I wished for. XX. T h e y took m e to o n e of those dimly lit restaurants with upholstered captain's chairs and paintings of the Coliseum and the Parthenon. Everyone nervously asking the (.maskable with voices raised razorblade-sharp as if a team of interns had been asked to dissect the poet's throat. A blonde was chosen to sit next to me. Dessert, I supposed. Older, she had a face that looked as if she went right from adolescence to middle age without a transition, wrinkles under the eyes, furrows in the brow, tight-lipped and hard-drinking. My just desserts? She leans over and asks, "What do you want to drink?" Everything changes once you see the world flat as a page. Everything.

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Kevin M c C a u g h e y .

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ad La Verre's sister gave birth to a baby, and the baby was to be named in his honor. Little Pad. It made .his heart jounce. There was a catch though. His sister, who was eccentric and capricious, insisted that Pad make the journey from Denver to St. Louis for the christening or the child would be named after Pizarro, the Spanish explorer. Pad La Verre was hot much of an explorer himself. He did not even own a car and was flat broke. But he was a great believer in the goodness of the human heart and he determined to try

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Berkeley Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

his thumb at hitchhiking. Hitchhiking, he had heard, was an art, and he was certain that a young man of twenty, with wavy hair and a puerile complexion, would be artful enough to speedily land a seat in an air-conditioned and sporty vehicle. His nephew's christening was to take place on Sunday, and to be safe, he hit the road on Thursday morning. He positioned himself at the on-ramps of Highway 70 with nothing but seven dollars, a can of chewing tobacco, and some pistachios in his pockets. By Friday evening, however, he was still in western Kansas. He spent that night at the edge of a field just off the highway. T h e sibilant swish of eighteen wheelers cutting the air lulled him to sleep and provided a soundtrack for a dream he had of Little Pad. Nothing moved in the dream. He saw one of those old tinny black-and-white photos, a daguerreotype. There was a black crib with a baby inside, but the baby was such a blur, a chemical smear, that Pad could make out no detail of its features.

stool at the counter. It was an old-fashioned "cafe, homey and comfortable, with booths up against the windows and stools at the counter, and an overhe'ad ceiling fan that churned the greasy air. A white-haired woman with -penciled-on eyebrows poured him coffee without asking, then went about her business, serving a broad-bac'ked trucker a few stools down. T h e trucker had-his finger on the page of a-large book on the counter before,him. ,When the waitress returned, she drew a pad and pencil from her apron and said, "What can I get you, honey?"

He hiked for a ways along Highway 70 until he came upon a truck stop. There was a cafe, a gas station, and a convenience store. T h e name of the cafe ,was Coffee. Attached to s the roof was a giant plywood facsimile of a coffee cup, ; with a gray swirl of plywood steam rising from it. Below, in smartly slanted letters; it said, "Piping Hot!" Pad had eaten nothing but pistachios and a lip full of tobacco in the last forty-eight hours, and so Defore Jie hit the road he decided to treat himself to a coffee and a couple slices of toasted wheat with jelly. The thought of food made his tongue tremble. He pushed through the door of Coffee and straddled a swivel

T h e waitress had a name tag pinned to her uniform. It said "Spyglass". * "That's a nice name," Pad said. "Oh that," she said, tapping the tag with her pencil. "It's a very c o m m on Christian name in this part of Kansas." Pad ordered his toast. Spyglass scribbled on' her ticket. She smiled and turned around and stuck the ticket onto the carousel behind her. Halfway through his second cup of coffee, Pad began t a feel warm inside, and the caffeine buzzed through his veins like sweet electricity. Though he was by nature reserved, the coffee inspired his voice, and when the woman gave him a refill he said, "I'm hitchhiking. It's my first time." "Wonderful thing, hitchhiking," she said. She leaned on her elbows and looked over Pad's head dreamily. "Have you ever hitched?" he asked. "Sure. There was a time when we all did. All my family anyhow. On Sundays all six of us would hitch together out to the pond for picnic and swimming. We had a car, but it wasn't the sameâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;driving. Know what I mean?" Pad nodded "out of politeness. Just then a fearsome noise came from the throat of the trucker. He raised his coffee mug and drank the entire cup down. Then he lowered his head back to the book. " D o n ' t mind him," Spyglass said. "Tiger's a cynic." She pushed away from the counter and asked Pad where he was headed to.

In the morning, despite the strangeness of the dream, Pad La Verre felt rested and chipper and crawled out of his irrigation ditch. He stretched his arms over his head, bent over, touched his toes, then, hands on his hips, puffed up his chest with a lung full of early morning, north-Kansas air. There would be no threat of rain today. It was one of those bright and cloudless April days when the sky looks especially low, as though it were stretched elastically from horizon to horizon.

Berkeley Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

Berkeley-Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

"I'm trying to make it to St. Louis tonight." "Pretty city," she said. T h e trucker licked his finger and made a production of flipping the page in his oversized tome. "I'm an uncle," Pad said. "The kid is getting christened. They named him after me." As soon as he spoke these words, a vision struck him, a cold wave down his back.'He*saw himself in a photograph, dark and grainy and a little out of focus. He was bending over a stroller to pick up a child, but the child's mouth was open in fear. "And what name might you go by?" the woman asked. Pad did not answer. He felt out of breath, as if he'd been underwater. "What's your name, sugar?" "Pad," he said. "That's a good name," she said, running her pencil behind her ear. "Do you think I'll make it to St. Louis tonight?" "You still got a ways to go. But it's early and you look like a clean kid. I don't see why you won't." "It's really important to me, since they named him after me." "Now that is something." She touched his arm lightly with her long white fingers, then whispered, as though they shared a secret, "Wouldn't it be something if the *kid ended up naming his son Pad, too?" "That would," he said. "I got a niece with my name, but like I said, there's so many of us around these "parts that who can say?" Pad La Verre paid the good waitress and rose from his stool. T h e fat trucker had turned his head and was staring at Pad, chin o n his shoulder. Pad gave him a friendly' nod, b u t the trucker said, "You ain't gonna make it." "You hush, Tiger," Spyglass said. The woman placed her elephant-skin elbows on the counter and leaned towards Pad selfimportantly. "Don't mind Tiger. He's got no faith. Too many books scurrying 'round.his thick head. You ought to use a sign." "You mean write 'St. Louis' on a big piece of cardboard?"

"You could do that. But I think a picture would do you m u c h better. Pictures attract people like flies to the dead. Know what I mean? You could draw that big arch they got in St. Louis. A picture paints a thousand words,-they say." "Give m e a thousand words any day," the trucker said, and he made a face, then dipped his head back into his big book. Spyglass scowled at him, then .patted Pad's-hand encouragingly. She went to the back room and fetched Pad a'large cardboard box. "You'll have to walk oyer to the convenience sto,re for pens and what not," she said. "Get a. move on now, or you'll never make Carcasonne." "St. Louis," he corrected. "It's a metaphof," she said. "My ass," said Tiger Baldwin.

Pad left the cafe and walked along the parking lot to the Quick Stop. To his left cars and trucks buzzed along Highway 70. H e - h a d five dollars and a little bit of change, and only enough tobacco for about .two Wads. He bought-a thick black marker, a ball point, a pack of razor blades s a n e could cut the box neatly, a Twinkie, and aÂťsmall carton of strawberry-flavored milk to share with the first kind driver to give him a lift. Outside the shop-he made himself comfortable a t a picnic table. He took a razor and cut one" side away from the box. T h e n he began to outline S T LOUIS with ball-point. He didn't feel confident enough to draw a picture, and though Spyglass appeared to be very wise, Pad wasn't convinced a picture or symbol would be all that effective. A combination' of lettering and picture would suffice. He drew a pretty bad arch. He couldn't give it any oomph. It looked like an upside down U. He tried to shade it, to give it dimension, but t the$e shady squiggles only, made it look like it was in need of a shave. T h e cars that left the diner, service, station, and convenience mart drove, by him slowly. T h e drivers took a good look at the sign. They seemed to be very curious. He saw a station wagon

Berkeley-Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

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Berkeley Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

approach, a man driving, a woman in the passenger seat, and a brood of children horsing around in the back. T h e woman tapped on her husband's shoulder and the wagon slowed to a stop, went into reverse, and backed up. Pad grabbed his gear and ran toward the car. T h e woman rolled down her window. "What is that?" she said. "It's the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis." "Oh," she said. "I thought it was a handle." "A handle?" Pad said. "A handle for what?" "I don't know," she said. "Maybe a suitcase handle." "Why would I draw a handle?" She closed her mouth tight, in a way that admonished him. "I have no idea," she said, a little haughtily. Then she turned to the driver and said, "Robert..." And the car drove away down the ramp. Pad followed it with his eyes, watched it merge with the traffic, belching gray smoke from its exhaustpipe. He set down his gear, all but the sign, and attempted to reevaluate it. It didn't look like a handle any more that it looked like the St. Louis arch. But the sign had not been a complete failure. He'd had a nibble. He'd inspired curiosity. And so he decided to stick with this general design, only improving upon it a little. Sitting cross-legged o n the grass, his sign in his lap, h e sketched. He reinforced the arch, and although it still looked like an -upside down U, it gave the impression of being structurally sturdier than before. As he was reinforcing, Spyglass emerged from the cafe. She stepped lightly in her sneakers and thick nylons. Tiger "Baldwin walked alongside her, hunched forward a little. He had a tattoo on his arm. There was a skillful depiction of a bearded man, his arm reaching out to touch the hand of a smaller and naked man. Pad thought this was interesting: a tattoo of two arms on your arm. A thermos dangled from one of Tiger Baldwin's big fingers. "Let's see what you got there," Spyglass said. "Oh." She turned her head. She backed off a few steps and put her hand on her chin.

"The arch," she said, "is just floating on a brown cardboard sea." She took the sign-from.Pad and held it at arm's length. "Why don't you put some buildings below, so everyone will know it's the St. Louis skyline?" Tiger Baldwin kicked at a loose pebble and shook his head. "Shit" he said. Tie unscrewed the lid of the thermos, and steam snaked .into, the cool air. He drank down a mouthful of coffee. "Don't you think so?" Spyglass said. "Tiger?" "He ain't gonna make it" Tiger said. "Tiger, be supportive." "I like your tattoo," Pad said. Tiger Baldwin eyed Pad suspiciously. "I did that myself," he said. Pad was impressed. "It's wonderful." Tiger nodded. "I used dyes made from colored crayons and silk worms and poked myself with a knitting needle. My arm swelled uÂŁ like a balloon. Like Popeye's arm." "That's something," Pad said. Spyglass said they had better leave him alone if he was ever going to get a lift. Tiger coughed and slurped his coffee, and they turned to go. Pad went to work on the buildings. These were fairly easy to draw, being not much more than differently sized boxes. It was simple to make them look three-dimensional too. He just shads ed the lines on one side of the buildings with his black marker. All he had to do was picture where the sun was and what its light was doing. A few- cars passed as he was improving his sign, but Pad did not worry. With ftps new approach, he was sure all the drivers would know what he meant and be glad to give him a lift, possibly all the way to his sister's door, where he would rush to the nursery, fling the doors open, and embrace his Little Pad. T h e n another startling snapshot appeared in Pad's mind. He saw the child, young Pad. There was white everywhere. But the baby's face was blue, and all around him a vast field of brilliant snow. Light streamed in from all directions, piercing light, but no color, except on the baby's puffy and horribly blue cheeks.

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Berkeley Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

Berkeley Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

W h e n the image faded, he found that he was holding his strawberry milk. He had no recollection of picking it up. He opened it and poured it over St. Louis, and the pink smear of the city was the color of baby flesh. A car slammed its brakes imfront of Pad. It was a new Ford, a rental car, Pad could see. Two men stepped to and came directly towards him. They wore white tuxedo coats and black ties, and their shoes were shining. Pad asked them if they were headed to St. Louis. O n e of them, a thin fellow with a wisp of a mustache and a cigarette in his mouth, stepped up and removed his sunglasses. He said, in a high-pitched English accent, "Is that a F u n n y Pinky Monkey you've got there?" "Excuse me?" Pad said. "We're talking about your picture," said Mustache. Stubby Beard took a few steps towards him, and in. a voice meant to be calm, said, "No .trouble, all right?" And then, without warning, Beard was upon him, wrenching the sign- from Pad and flinging it to Mustache, and in two lightening strokes, driving a fist into Pad's stomach and an elbow into his larynx. Pad dropped to his knees. "All right," Beard said. "Now we can talk." He wiped his palms on his slacks. Pad drew his hand across his bloodied mouth. "Don't mess about," said Beard. There was a m o m e n t of silence. "We're interested, all right?" "Okay," Pad said with uncertainty. "All right." "How much do you want to give up for it? We'll take sixty quid, hang it up in Jimmy's living room for you. Great deal of exposure, that." "I'd like a lift to S t Louis. I'm going to be an uncle. They've named the kid â&#x20AC;&#x201D; " "All right then. Give us twenty quid and we'll lean it against the wall outside the pub. But that's the best we can do, you ungrateful bastard." "Ah, forget it, Alex" said Mustache. "He's a snob. He's not Pinky at all." T h e thin one glared at Pad. "And all along I

thought you were Pinky." "Let's go then," the other said. "Leave the bastard alone. C o m e on then." Both headed for the passenger seat, and Beard said, "Oh, bloody hell," and walked around to the driver's side of the car. T h e car sped off, and Pad saw Mustache mouth something indecipherable. It was clear to- Pad that the current state of his sign was not satisfactory.- T h e sign was not communicating what he wanted.* In fact, what it was communicating had to be pretty strange. So he set about changing it. He knelt over the sign, and it looked drab. There was bright blood on his hand, where he had drawn it across his bleeding nose, and he wiped this across the St. Louis skyline. It smeared and a gave a pleasing effect, a fiery comet which proclaimed the urgency of his mission. It was a half hour before the next car, a small red Fiat, pulled away from the parking l o t A woman was driving. She was alone. Tad smiled at her, and the car slowed'down-almost involuntarily, it seemed. The woman's eyes focused on the sign, and the .corners of her mouth quivered, an expression of fear spreading across her face. She accelerated and veered to her left, away from Pad and his sign, ^o.that two of her wheels ran off the macadam and churned up dust.

Something funny was going on. More cars passed. Optimistic Pad was growing despondent:' If he didn't get a ride before nightfall, he knew he would not get* a ride at all, and his nephew would be named Juan Pizarro. He opened his can of tobacco and got a nice gob going in his lower lip. Perhaps he could draw-Little Pad's face on the sign, and t h e n the h u m a n interest of his p r e d i c a m e n t would draw Samaritan drivers to him by the-dozens. He worked with the black pen, and drew an oval for a face. He thought about eyes and nose and ears and tried to put them in their proper spots. W h e n cars, growled by he didn't care. Once he'd finished Little Pad's face they would beg to give him a lift. But the black pen was .static and dull. He could not bring

Berkeley Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

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Berkeley Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

the pink face to life. It lacked definition. Frustrated, he tore his Twinkie from its wrapper arid smeared it across the oval face, the arch, the skyline. Now there was some color, some white with the red and black, some dimension. He dabbed the creamy filling on the eyes and nose. From his mouth he extracted his tobacco goo and spreadit over Little Pad's scalp, making a thin layer of brown baby-fuzz hair.

cator, a flea-craft carrier. His work rubbed me the wrong way." Yet on that day, moments after Tiger's rig had trundled off down Highway 70, and as the paramedics lifted the gurney.into the ambulance,- Pad's-blood coloring the white sheets that lay over him, a crowd gathered. Bystandersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;truckers, vacationing families, farmers, commuters â&#x20AC;&#x201D;formed a Circle around his body. A police officer rested Pad's sign above the hook of his own belt, like a beer vender holding a tray, and peered into it thoughtfully. Another officer gazed over his shoulder.

Now there was a hint of life, and Pad felt dizzy. He did not know what he was,doing. Overwhelmed, he tore off his green Tshirt and threw it on the ground, and this became part of the picture too. With the dripping sign above him, he did a bare-chested d a n c e , the D a n c e of the Namesake Uncle. And motorists whirred by, astounded, wet-eyed, frightened.

Perhaps Tiger Baldwin'had had too much coffee (Spyglass the waitress would, in an article in the Non-Representational Review,., credit him twenty-three cups). Perhaps it was just an accident, or some destructive form of anti-hero-worship. But Pad La Verre's broken body lay on the entrance ramp of a Kansas truck stop. Tiger Baldwin was apprehended in Newport, Kentucky, one week later. When asked why he hadn't bothered to stop after running the boy down, he replied, mysteriously: "The guy was a pip-squeak, a picaroon, a hapless weasel, a forni-

"Wild stuff," the first one said.' "Yeah, mighty turbulent" A trucker in a Peterbilt cap and holding a Styrofoam cup in his hand, said, "You get one good'look'at that picture and you can tell the guy was heading to hell in a hand basket." The'officers nodded, still brboding over the picture. Others joined the crowd. "But you can also see," the trucker went on, "that the guy had something. Something fiery and real." "You're-right there," said a salesman from Kansas City. "No fucking doubt," said a mescaline addict from Tulsa. "Yes, sir," said a mannequin from Fresno. " M m m m m , " others agreed. "It's a gift that* don't come around but once in a hunnerd years," an old, withered farmer said, after spitting. "Poor damn fella." (Pad La Verre's sister would later see a reproduction of the sign in the St. Louis Herald, and proclaim, with some finality: "I now prefer the name Cortez") Two miles away the ambulance was speeding along the interstate. Pad was not quite dead. He had tubes in his nose and in his arms, and he was dying, but he didn't care. If that crowd of good folk outside Coffee cafe could see what he saw, in living Technicolor motion, they too would feel no sorrow, only joy. For Pad La Verre is an old man, refined, the facial creases of a satisfied life around his mouth and a Cary Grant scarf at his neck. A loved and honored man captured on seventy-millimeter celluloid. He smiles contentedly into the camera. His name-

An eighteen-wheeler pulled away from the cafe. It had been there all day long. It picked up speed while Pad danced and waved his sign above his head. T h e rig rolled to a stop in front of him, the engine rumbling and menacing. Behind the wheel of the rig hovered the large head of Tiger Baldwin. T h e truck started up again, slowly. T h e gears shifted and the rig came forward. It seemed to be moving as slowly as a vehicle could go, and it was moving right towards him. The silver grill reflected' the sunlight and Pad was blinded. He could not move, nor did he want to. He held onto his sign, clutching-it in white bloodless hands. And the silver grew brighter, hotter, and the grind and crank and thunder of the truck came slowly upon him.

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Berkeley Fiction Review

A Blur in the Crib

Berkeley Fiction Review sake, Young Pad, now middle-aged with a gentle, face much like Pad's own, approaches from off-camera and takes his hand. "You mean everything to me, Uncle," he says. Then,YoungYoung Pad, the great nephew, steps forward, in his arms a newborn, adorned in a liquidey white robe. "You mean everything to me, dear Great Uncle, and so we have n a m e d the child Young Young Young Pad." T h e n Pad La Verre Senior Senior Senior, with a sideways turn and a sweep of his left arm, invites the camera, which dollies forward, past that outstretched arm, info the calm lushness of miles of rolling meadow. "We have named- them all after you," a voice says, with some echoey reverb effects, "in a land where no one wears a Spanish conquistador helmet." T h e camera dollies (slowly at first, then gaining speed) to show a long row of baby carriage? (then pulls back for a sweeping panorama): the carriages continue in an unbroken line, down the slope of the meadow abloom with wildflowers, up a hillock and out of sight, only to reappear on a further hill, and a further hill, finally to be blotted out in the distance by the round, orange sun.

Doug Rennie

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t's not how dark it was-inside or the beery, smoky fog that you r e m e m b e r most, bu t that rattlesnake all coiled up behind the glass. Push the button at the side of the case and h e ' d b u z z like h e l l . T h o s e rattles w o u l d shake a n d z z z z z z z z z z z z z z as l o n g as you k e p t t h e b u t t o n d o w n . Snakes-any kind-just scared the crap out of you and the first time you saw thi^ one, a big fat copper-colored tube, you didn't know about the hidden button. The case, all lit up inside, was over in the" corner next to the machine where for a dime you could shoot at metal bears. It laid there real still, so you natural-

Doug Rennie

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Berkeley Fiction Review

Tell Me You .Ain't Mad

ly thought it was a fake or a stuffed one, just like the heads of the deer and elk that looked down from the walls. Your dad pointed the case out to you right after you walked through the door. Glasses clinked and voices hummed and Fats D o m i n o singing "Blueberry Hill" came out of the juke box across the room. This here was one damn rare snake, Lenny, one of a kind, he said, that's why it's in that lit-up box. So's you can't miss it. Its eyes are blue, see, damn strange since most snakes' eyes are black like that king snake we caught fishing last summer, remember? Go on, he said, get up real close and have a look and don't worry none 'cause you can see it ain't real, well, not alive anyways. Then he pushed the button when your face was pressed up against the glass and you screamed and j u m p e d back and d a m n e d near peed your pants: Your dad laughed so hard he had to sit down. He stomped his foot on the floor and pointed at the doorbell-like button on the side of the case wired up to the stuffed snake's rattles. Laughed and slapped his hand on his oily jeans and pointed at you. O h God, I got you, son. O h , did I get you!

tryin' hard not to smile but he-ain't gonna make it, your-dad said, grinning and rolling his forehead back and forth on yours real gentle. C o m e on now, son, come on. Tell me you ain't mad. You held out for a few seconds/the n you laughed and jumped up and" put your arms around his neck and buried your face in his chest and breathed the sweat and cigarette smell'ln" his dirty t-shirt. OK, dad, you said, sure, but only if-you make a muscle for me. So he pumped his arm up round and hafd as a baseball with the veins wriggling like little worms-under the sunburned skin and three women sitting at a table close by smoking cigarettes whistled and some â&#x20AC;˘ men clapped. Your dad just turned and did a little bow and your mom shook her head. O h Dwight,- she said. Then your dad said, come on now, let's see about that root beer, and he ran a rough hand over your hair and then the,two of you walked toward the bar, your little hand inside his big one.

Everyone who was at the bar a n d sitting at the tables laughed too, women with hair piled high on their heads and rough-looking men with big bellies. Your mom didn't laugh, t h o u g h . She just w h a c k e d your dad on the arm and said, Dwight that's just plain mean, you scared him half to death. But she was having a hard time keeping up that frown. Your heart p o u n d e d in your head and* now your ears felt hot, too. You looked down at the floor and backed away from your dad and pushed his hands away when he tried to touch you. But he picked you up anyway and tossed you in the air and caught you when you came down and said, you ain't sore at me, Lenny? Tell me you ain't mad and your ol' dad he'll get you a root beer and a bag of them peanuts, too. Come on, son, come on now, please, he said, letting you go and liolding his hands together in front of him like he was a beggar. Your dad did this kind of stuff all the time. Tricked you. Embarrassed you. Made you look dumb. He didn't mean any harm, you thought. He loved you, you were sure of that, you just didn't trust'him sometimes. He's

They were always drinking. Half-full bottles of Seagrams, of Four-Roses, and lots of empties, too,-were albover the place in the kitchen and living room at home. Theirfavorite place to drink was the Cold Springs Tavern just outside of town, up towards the hills.'They'd head up there every Sunday morning, Saturdays too, except in the winter when there was ice all over the roads. They'd get there just about noon. You'd get in trouble or hurt yourself if they left you alone, your mom said, and your dad nodded, so they put you in the back seat and took you along. Most times U n c l e Roy a n d Aunt Billie and cousin Wesley would be there, too. You liked going there. The first few times anyway. You'd set off the rattlesnake, grinning bigger than a yawn whe"n you pushed the button. You'd ask your, mom for nickels to put in the jukebox (play "Your Cheatin' Heart" will you Lenny) or ydur dad for dimes so you could shoot the*bear. It was some kind of electric ray-gun rifle that shot out a little stream of light, and you had to hit a glass circle about the size of a dime -on the shoulder of black-iron bears that moved in a straight line in front of you. If you hit the circle, the bear roared and stoqd on his hind legs and" fell oyer and another" hundred

Berkeley Fiction Review

Tell Me You .Ain't Mad

Berkeley Fiction Review

Tell Me You Ain't Mad

points rang up. If you got two. thousand points in a minute, you got a free game. You won one, at least one, every time you went. That's a boy, your dad would say and put his hand on y o u r shoulder, that's a boy. You're a regular dead-eye, son. Hey, Roy, Lenny won him another free game, whadya think of that? he'd holler, and your uncle would raise his beer glass up in the air. T h e n your dad would pat you again, and go back to the. table and kiss your mpm on the neck or jab one of the big-bellied men on the arm and duck down like a boxer and punch away at the air and they'd all start laughing again.

burger and it smelled good sizzling on the grill behind the counter, but when he handed it to you there was watery blood over the plate and the'bun's edges were pink with it, so you pushed it away. What's the matter? your m o m said, and you shook your head and told-her that it was all bloody and she said, silly thafs rfot blood, it's just the juices, go on now'and take a bite. So you closed your eyes arid did and it tasted all wet coppery, like when you cut your finger and sucked the blood off. You almost threw up. Your dad just laughed and messed up your uair and said, that's ok, son, I don't like mine movin' on the plate either.

T h e Cold Springs Tavern, with its wood sides beat all to hell by the weather, had been there in the exact same spot since right after World War I (your dad told you almost every time he got drunk). Inside, thea place was so dark that you couldn't hardly see anything if it weren't for the lights coming out of the jukebox and the bear hunting machine and the electric plastic signs with beer names on them-Acme, Falstaff, Hamms-that hung behind the bar and on the walls and sort of glowed. Some had clocks on them and some had thermometers and others had little lit-up plastic tubes that water bubbled in. But it was still like n i g h t i n s i d e a n d it took you almost a minute, just like in a movie theater, before you could really see anything. Men and women sat at the bar and at the tables tha t filled the. room. T h e y drank and smoked a n d l a u g h e d and all of t h e m , it seemed, knew your dad. Hi, Dwight. Dwight, you old dog! C o m e on over h e r e , D w i g h t . W h a t c h a d r i n k i n , Dwight ? D w i g h t , you a n d E d n a park it h e r e with us for a while. Sometimes the men would stand up and nod and hitch their belts and shake hands with your dad or the women would say something about his shoulders ahd your mom would say, look all you want, but no one touches 'em but .me, ain't that right sweetie? and they'd- all laugh and say, that's right, you tell 'em, Edna.

You couldn't stay inside very long because of all the smoke that made you cough and burned your eyes. So you set off the rattlesnake a few times and shot the bear and drank a Nehi Grape and then headed outside, out behind' the tavern where' there was a creek you never found the end of, and your mom called out over her shoulder, you be careful now, Lenny, you* hear me? Wesley, why don't you go with him and make^sure he don't wander' too far. Cousin Wesley, was two years older and a lot bigger, but he was really dumb and you didn'f understand exactly why your-mom felt that you'd be safer with him around.

That's how you r e m e m b e r t h e tavern. A sour-smelling, happy sort of place. T h e first time you went there, the snaketrick time, your mom said, you hungry, Lenny, has your tummy settled down yet? And she told Mel in the back to fry up a ham-

You always wore your P.F. Flyers with the bottoms like rubber suction cups so you could move up the creek by humping along the rocks to the spot a few hundred feet upstream where the water branched off into three deep, shaded pools with huge boulders like walls all around them. You knew you could stay there until you heard your mom call, Lenny, time to go, come on back here. Time to go. You loved catching frogs, some green like leaves some almost-black, and all of them rubbery and slick. You'd catch t h e m and giggle when they'd wiggle and croak and pop'their eyes out like they were plugged into something a n d you'd make faces back at t h e m and move them through the water while you made speedboat noises and then toss them back in. O n e Sunday you saw a raccoon and he saw you, too, and the two of you just sat staring at each other for minutes. T h e n you started to stand up, real slow like your dad had said to, and the raccoon turned and trotted back into the

Berkeley Fiction Review

Tell Me You Ain't Mad

Berkeley Fiction Review

Tell Me You Ain't Mad

woods. It was on that same day, the raccoon Sunday, that Wesley wandered down to your spot How you doin' Len? he said and you said, fine, caught me two frogs already and he said, well, I'm gonna mash me one, I hate them things.- T h e n he picked up a big rock and started walking around, moving his head slowly from side to side like some giant lizard in one of those stupid Japanese horror movies. You said, why do you want to do that? They don't hurt you none, you'd better not, Wesley, I mean it, you'd better not. But he just laughed and kept walking around the pool tossing the rock from one hand to the other. After a minute or so he stopped and his eyes closed halfway and his tongue slid out ÂŠf the corner of his mouth. A few feet from where he stood sat a little yellow-green frog in a narrow strip of s u n l i g h t , its c h e s t puffing in a n d o u t t h e way t h e y do. Goddammit, don't Wesley, don't you dare, you craphead, but he didn't even look up, he just dropped the rock on the frog. Thunk. You ran straight at him and he turned and just started to open his mouth when you landed on him punching as hard and fast as you could, pounding his face and throat and screaming and crying, you bastard, you goddammned dumb stupid sonofabitch craphead. Your fists weren't very big, but you hit him so many times that blood squirted out his nose and it got all foamy red on his teeth and he didn't even try to hit you back, he just covered up his face. Finally, he threw you off onto the muddy bank and started running back to the tavern crying Dad! Dad!

dad grabbed his wrist Didn't do anything else, just grabbed it and held it, held it hard. You could tell because the skin around your dad's knuckles was almost white and his hand and Roy's wrist were shaking like mad. Leggo my arm, Dwight, goddamn you're hurtin' it, Roy said, but your dad just held on and the muscles in his arm looked ready to explode. T h e n he pulled your uncle toward him until their faces almost touched. Roy, you touch my boy again, ever, and I'll break your God damn arm. I swear. I'll break it like a piece of lattice right between your wrist and your elbow. Don't you think for minute I won't, you hear? You were close enough to touch them, you remember clear as if it all happened an hpur ago, and you still could barely hear your dad's voice. Then he nodded, just one time, and Roy looked down at the ground and your dad let go of his wrist and Roy started rubbing it. Didn't mean no harm, Dwight, just thought the boy needed a lesson, that's all, he said and turned back toward ..the tavern. Your dad's chest was moving in and out, fast like a frog's,'as he watched your uncle walk off. Then he looked down at you and ran his hand across your face where Roy had slapped it. Looks like you'll live, he said. He took a deep breath and held it a while before letting it out long and slow. C o m e on, son, let's-go,down by the creek a while and sit, you and me. You reached'up and grabbed his arm with both of your hands and you still remember how hot the skin felt.

You got up and took off after him, but you slipped'all over the place and fell and by the time you goHo the grass behind the tavern Uncle Roy and y o u r dad were walking toward the creek and Aunt Billie was back aways, wiping Wesley's face with a Kleenex while he blubbered and pointed down toward you, yelling over and over, I didn't do nothin'. Uncle Roy walked right toward you. fust what in Holy Hell do you think you're doin'? he screamed, and when he,was right in front of you he slapped you hard right on the face, so hard it made your eyes water and you almost fell over and your face felt like it was on fire. He started to pull his hand back to hit you again when your

Berkeley Fiction Review

Tell Me You Ain't Mad

Feasts of some pond; became apelike, erect, gained reason (to distinguish him from other, less erect species â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a disputable fact), became MAN-like (whilst retaining many simian traits), developed diseases, vaccines, irrational fears, psychoanalysis, sent apes to space, then MAN, quit smoking, installed air-bags in cars, ate lots of bran, and still died. Now, clean-shaven gorillas miss the Cold War, Coke in bottles, milk m bottles, war w,ith honor, and many other things^ their orangutan cousins generally don't regard as worth thinking about (so they don't.) Somewhere'between Plato and ; American Gladiators, in a moment of p'eep personal significance, I, Gabriel, happened. T h e Cave

Oscar F u e n t e s

F e a s t s

Surprised to find that he had not been bound or shackled, but had only assumed so, the cave-dweller turned around and rested his sore back against the wall. And now the maker of the shadows was staring at.him, a bloated, red-cheeked face showing annoyance. Tentativery.with a circular motion of his index finger, the shadowmaker asked: "Turn around?" With some difficulty, the cave-dweller stood. He shook his head. Asylum

ASS&gZt*,

With bleary, bloodshot, beat-up eyes, my landlord, Lenny, comes to collect the rent, which I don*t have. Through a-noxious cloud of vodka, a smile makes his leathery face wrinkle up.

here -are many versions of this story, depending on who is tellirjg it and what that person has to gain; You can edit a lot of shit out and despite the missing love, hate, sex, blood, romance, gore, wisdom, backstabbing and other minor details lost either to time or some monk's ulterior ink, it'll still make sense.

"It's* O.K., main!" he says. "Were one big fucking happy family here!"

Sort of.

He fgils to see the misery inherent in his assertion. "I'll tell you what, man," he says, his eyes as blue as the morning sky outside is* grey. "I'll give you a week. You've got a week/' "Oh," I lie, "no problem,, Give me a couple of days. In fact, I've got a-gig coming up."

This is the story so far: Once, a very long, long time ago, a scaly MAN crawled out 48

"What you need is a job, man," Lenny says. Hard to argue 49

Oscar F u e n t e s

F e a s t s

ASS&gZt*,

With bleary, bloodshot, beat-up eyes, my landlord, Lenny, comes to collect the rent, which I don*t have. Through a-noxious cloud of vodka, a smile makes his leathery face wrinkle up.

"It's* O.K., main!" he says. "Were one big fucking happy family here!"

Sort of.

This is the story so far: Once, a very long, long time ago, a scaly MAN crawled out 48

"What you need is a job, man," Lenny says. Hard to argue 49

Berkeley Fiction Review

Feasts

with-that logic. "See, you've got your eggs in too many baskets, Gabe. I mean," he continues, head moving from side*to side, "you're a musician, you're a writer, you're...well, what are you?"

I think about this seriously.."Well, it's only Costa Mesa. In any case, you should liken it to Sarajevo. It would be modern of you." Lenny looks at me funny and heads for the stairs. T h e termite-ridden terrace groans under our weight. "Anyway," he,says, "we'll take care of ya, man!"

"Well," I say, "neither, according to some." He laughs, a merry cackle filtered through too many cigarettes. "I'll work with ya, man!" He nods. "Jesus H!" he cries, taking one look into my living room. There are clothes strewn about, hiding the newspapers which hide the notebooks which hide the stained rug (which, I fear, will cost me my deposit). Lenny says, "You bury a body in here?" "Of course," I say. "Now I'm gonna have to kill you too." He turns to me, a paternal tiand on my shoulder, looking like a gentle u n c l e who might m o o n l i g h t in cheesy Vegas lounges. "I was worryin', man. Wondering how you were getting along without your woman and all." -A sharp nod assesses me. "You look sick." I picture the face in the mirror, in the morning, staring back at me. I almost laugh. "Well, I haven't been feeling too hot, lately. To be honest. T h e mean reds, you know?" "What?" "It's like the blues...only worse." Lenny comes intoxicatingly closer. "Don't fucking brood about it, man! I mean, there's worse things than your woman leaving ya!" He guides me to the door and a panoramic.view of the complex; a driveway snakes in from the street, flanked by the apartments, shrouded in shrubbery. M y o w n second story cave is partially shielded from the factories and mini-malls and cement by a two story tree which sheds about a million purple, pinky-finger-sized flowers a day. I don't know the name of the tree, t>ut I do know how those little purple flower's stick to the bottom of your shoe and stain your rug. "Look!" Lenny says, pointing meaningfully beyond the complex. I look. By the pool, a black cat is stalking a fat duck who is floating peacefully on the water, unaware of the danger. "It's turning into fucking Beirut out there, Gabe."

My Neighbor Hates Women "Your w o m a n left you?" Bob, my neighbor, asks. " T h e bitch." I smile, uncomfortably. I want to hit him, even though he's a pretty nice guy and, on top of that, my neighbor. And he has asked me up for food, a rare treat. So I smile as Bob runs his hand through his hair, long like rnine but blond and short on top, so short it sticks straight up, stiff, punkish. All in all, the kind of haircut given by bitter, drunken relatives. "What happened?" I blink, shrug. "I'm not sure." "She's screwing somebody else." "I...no. I don't think so." Bob sits up on the couch and slaps his own knees. "You just changed, then," he says. "Shit! I need a beer. Got any beer at your pad?" I shake my head,. "I feel like I had the rug pulled out from under me," I say, and feel pathetic. "I don't know which way is up, really." "That's O.K.," Bob3says, heading for the kitchen. "I've still got a couple of brews." His apartment, I notice, is exactly like mine, except that it is clutter-free. Sports trophies, a pair of skis, and a photo of Bob skiing adorn one wall, a sleek, black, modern entertainment center another. A fat, dead, stuffed duck sits inside the chimney. "Change is good, bro!" Bob says, coming back. He hands me a beer. "People, they don't wanna change, Gabe. They resist

Berkeley Fiction Review

Feasts

with-that logic. "See, you've got your eggs in too many baskets, Gabe. I mean," he continues, head moving from side*to side, "you're a musician, you're a writer, you're...well, what are you?"

Berkeley Fiction Review change. But how else they gonna learn anything?" 1 want to ask him about the duck in the chimney. "Now, personally," he continues, "I hate women. I think they're all fucking insane..." At that moment a woman, whom I gather Bob must hate, appears from the bedroom, wearing a purple bathrobe and a look which says she stayed up way too late. Bob smiles, unconvincingly. "Gabe, this is my girlfriend." "Camille," she growls at him. "Pleasure," I say. "Bob s told me a lot about you." "I bet." Bob plops down on him. "Beast," she says, pers something in her widen. She giggles and

the couch and pulls Camille down with and takes the beer from him. Bob whisear, looking at me, and Camille's eyes they both look at me.

I still want to ask Bob about the duck in the chimney. Symposium On my living room floor great minds have gathered. "He is the eldest of Gods," Socrates says. Miles Davis interrupts, "I get so sick about it, man, I can't even pick up my horn." I tried to join in, earlier, b ut was silenced by some nasty looks. So I sulked off to the kitchen with a cup of dark, bitter coffee and an open ear, trying to glean some insight through eavesdropping. "Sometimes, boys," Bukowski says, "you get so lonely it just fucking makes sense " He's cranky that I don't have anything stronger than coffee. "Everyone," Sartre says, "can be free. No?" He's supposed to be cheering me up. " T h e lover," Socrates is intent on proving, "has a nature 52

Feasts more divine and more worthy of worship." T h e comment fails to cut through the masochistic blanket of gloom. Miles hangs his head. Bukowski groans. A derisive laugh from Sartre. T h e whole evening is shot. They Play The Slow Empire Waltz "See our new neighbor?" Bob, my neighbor who hates women, especially Camille, who just left him, is at my door. It is much too early in the morning arid Bob has woken me from a perfectly dreadful nightmare â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I am stranded at the top of a beautiful building, a spiralling Ode-to Man-'straight out-of Gaudi. BeloW, the city is completely deserted, inspiring a horrible melancholy in me. I cry and I can't get down because there is no way down. And now Bob is at my door, with beer on his breath and red in his eyes. It occurs to me to ask him what he wants. And there's the question of that duck. But Bob sidesteps m e and settles comfortably on the couch. He and Lenny, it turns out, are forming a band, and he wants pie to dust off my guitar and join them. "You know," he-says, " L e n n y t h e r e , well, h'e's a former Disneyland musician. Hey, got any brews?" "I really should buy some beer," I say, looking at my guitar. It leans dejectedly on the wall, between the tremor cracks and the plastic plant, and it's missing the D string, which I clipped off one night after trying, unsuccessfully, to emulate Andres Segovia. T h e D got it because jt was always out of tune. "Want some coffee?" Bob heads for the door and I realize I'm thinking of the new neighbor, the Granola. I want to fuck her. But her boyfriend is a blond, short-haired Rastafarian who looks mean. He probably hates women. "Fuck!" Bob's foot has just made a rather large hoje on my rotting front terrace. "Better get Lenny over here, man. You've 53

the couch and pulls Camille down with and takes the beer from him. Bob whisear, looking at me, and Camille's eyes they both look at me.

Berkeley Fiction Review

Feasts

got a mean termite problem. Now, personally, I hate fucking termites!"

Behind her the grey afternoon sky promises sun and rain, but delivers nothing but the in-between.

"I don't know," I whine. "I've been kinda sick and I don't even have a D string, you know?"

"Holly," I say, and feel a smile stretch across my face. "Come in!"

"So get better," Bob sighs, as t h o u g h this should have occurred to m e long ago. "And buy a friggin' D string, babe!"

We kiss, politely. I want to devour her mouth, her smell, her eyes. She shakes her head at the sad sight that is my living room. "Jesus Christ, Gabriel!" she says, walking over to my keyboard. It's an old Oberh'eim and it's gotpersonaliry, battle scars in the. form of five broken keys -hastily Super-Glued back on. Holly plays on two of these and they admit defeat and break *>ff again.

"I'll see. Yeah. All right" "O.K.!" Bob says, pleased we're finally getting somewhere. He starts bounding down the stairs. "And bring your guitar and your D string down on Friday." I look at him blankly and wonder what I've gotten myself into. "To the party, babe!" he says. "We'll all be there!" Lamb I am stumbling out to the parking lot, dizzy because rice only passes as nutrition for a little while. From the door of the Granola wafts Bob Marley and the smell of pot u n d e r the incense. "Don't worry," I sing along, softly, "about a thing..." A sudden rumbling and the door flies open and I Jiear the boyfriend scream: "So what if I fucking did, bitch?" She runs out, barefoot, redhaired, crying, and the door slams shut b e h i n d her as she runs down the stairs. Her eyes are swollen. She looks young and scared. "Are you O.K.?" I ask, idiotically. Don't let the bastard get you down. She nods, curtly, and runs out to- a green Volvo parked out on the street. I realize, a little embarrassed, that I still want to flick her.. Holly Open the door and there she is, divine yet also a dove dropping A-bombs over ponds where cute little unsuspecting ducks bathe in their own shit, and feed on moldy pieces of bread. i

Holly laughs (lovely). She holds her hand in front of her mouth, as though,to cover the smile,-but her eyes are smiling. Sorry? "Ah, hell," I say, laughing, "who needs an A and an E anyway?" "So it's O.K.?" "It's O.K." I follow her gaze. "Gonna clean my'place?"^ joke. She's sfaying!' "I'm not gonna clean your place, Gabriel. I'm not your mother." With that she plops' familiarly down on the sofa. I try not to stare, but what's the point? She can read my mind and predict my words, my thoughts even, like lovers can after so much time. "I'm writing a song for you," I say. "And I'll finish it someday....I swear." "You know what I'd like to hear,, Gabriel?" she smiles. "My song." She lets her hair down and it is the most beautiful, curly hair I've ever seen. Again. "Of course, you didn't actually write it for me, but...you did dedicate it to me, so it's O.K." "You know you inspired it," I say. "Except I can't play it. I'm missing the D string," I explain. "The song's in D." "Some things never change,"Gabriel." "Well...I could transpose it," I offer, misunderstanding.

Berkeley Fiction Review

Feasts

got a mean termite problem. Now, personally, I hate fucking termites!"

Behind her the grey afternoon sky promises sun and rain, but delivers nothing but the in-between.

"I don't know," I whine. "I've been kinda sick and I don't even have a D string, you know?"

"Holly," I say, and feel a smile stretch across my face. "Come in!"

"So get better," Bob sighs, as t h o u g h this should have occurred to m e long ago. "And buy a friggin' D string, babe!"

Berkeley Fiction Review "Gabe," she sighs, "I'm going away on a trip." Visions'of t a n n e d Brazilian gigolos swim before my eyes. " B u t I've been...worried about you. Don't look like that, Gabe. It'll be good for us. You'll see! We need to grow apart...individually, from each other." "We need to grow apart from each other?" "Oh, Gabe!" she says, rising. "You know what I mean. You do, don't you?" She opens the door and I want to scream 'don't go!', and let my mind succumb to my already defeated pride. "I guess," she says, "I need to know that you're all right." Her look says pity. "I'm fine," I lie, as best I can, which is not much. "Oh, Holly! I miss you so much!" "I miss you too, Gabe," she says, softly. But the epiphany has come too soon for her. Her eyes avoid mine. Holly is not much into losing control of herself, which is something I admire, in a way. "1 just don't know what's going on with us right now." She leans closer and we kiss. Her lips are warm, moist, and hers, but I still feel cheated. There are moments that don't live up to their history, that are robbed of their dignity by the mundane â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the ticking of the clock or the laundry on the floo.r. Holly leaves and I'm left only with my own mess, with the grey creeping in through the blinds and the oppressive silence. "I love you," I tell the door. Treatment Your skin crawls for intimacy, stretches taut over your body then slips off, searching for that curious sympathy of touch. Oppressed by the coming dusk, I grab my notebook and venture outside onto sidewalks crowded by isolated fences. I meet Sid at Kafka's, a coffeehouse hidden behind a hardware store on Nineteenth. Sid heard I "lost it" and so he's worried. "Are you O.K.?" he asks. "I mean, you know you can call me up, anytime, if you need me." "I know."

Feasts Sid seems relieved. "Good " he says, leaning back and assessing our surroundings. We are sitting pear the back by the bookcase from which all,the Kafka books were stolen. On the, wall to our left is a painting of a huge, dark brown cockroach. "You like this place," Sid snorts, looking uncomfortable in his white polo shirt and blue slacks. "Damn artsy-fartsy bunch of socialist kneejerk liberals! Like you, Gabriel!"'' "Deviant perverts, Sid. Boy," I marvel, "you are so American! Still, you'd make a great character in a story,, provided I could round you out. Give you sdme depth, you know?" "You're a dick, Gabriel." "I miss her." Sid nods. "But look at it this way: You're free! You're a Mexican, after all. You're supposed to want to sleep with anything that moves." "Ever the pragmatist, aren't you?" I tap my fingers on the table top with its coffee stains and hastily scribbled bad poetry. "Let's go grab a drink." "I can't," Sid says, cracking up. "Gpt a date." "You are vicious, Sid. Spot me a^twenty." After Sid leaves I Tele'ase my thoughts as aborted scribblings. I'm drawn into conversation with the old Cambodian man who owns the place. "I see much suffering," he tells me. "Many people I see suffering. For their ideas, their...for nothing! My family, my friends...and when I can," he says. "When I can I'd like to send for my family. To come here..." His hands tap the enamel surface of the counter and travel up to His chest, pointedly. "Here." Suddenly his eyes travel past me and to the world outside. I turn and see a bright yellow taxi pull up out front, "the driver unceremoniously helps a legless man out of the cab, depositing him on the curb like some kid who's lost intereshin a toy. T h e people sitting in the patio, like gleeful kids at a circus, pretend not to stare or ogle the skinny, bearded man. "He can'fstay here," the old Cambodian says to me. "Its bad

56 L A

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Feasts

Berkeley Fiction Review for business." In the warm air, my skin tingles in anticipation as I walk to the liquor1 store to spend Sid's money on all the beer I can ill afford. Honest I Do Fall out of bed and Ah! Is Spring in the air? Bird fugues and counterfugues, sonatas and symphonies, dance through the air. Sympathetic tree branches let them rest weary wings while the sun warms their backs. Birdsongs dissolve into unintelligible cacophony, the sun causes cancer, and merciless winds blow birds onto the fenders of uncaring cars which get blown into the ditch off the 10 freeway. And what about those poor worms? All the fucking notebooks scattered across the floor, filled with thoughts that no longer need to be hidden, have begun to assume the creeping anonymity of their surroundings. These thoughts have nowhere to go and I feel something in me — something central — crack. In a panic I slither to the pen, heavy as a broadsword, and just as deadly. Dearest diary, for you have mutated into one, I think I will give you a name, like Kitty or Minny or something. Who do you want to be? I wish I could find a clean notebook. No offense. Cliches rush through my head in soapbox screaming neon and...they make sense. O n the stereo, even the James Cotton Blues Band sounds too fucking cheery. "Don't you know that I Jove you? Honest I do!" Shut the fuck up.

blue sky and an ambitious, skinny tree branch reaching upward. Illuminated by the sunlight, flecks of dust float peacefully downward, swaying from side to side like angels waltzing. It is a hypnotizing dance,.tempting,me, reminding me of that childhood ability to just let a moment engulf me completely in* its own secret tranquility. In this .reverie, staring up at the ceiling, the window, and the world outside, I notice it. T h e ceiling is high, and it is easy to overlook this web, enshrouding a corner, which has doubled in size since the last time I dusted. T h e spider (I have dubbed her Penelope, or Penny, for short) is at the center of the web, fed or feeding^ and inert. I admire her delicate, intricate patterns and wonder if the web will envelope me, if I let it. If it will trap me. Threads Slip outside and I'm caught in-the sun's glare like an animal. Lenny is walking towards me and I'm reminded thatd've done nothing — nothing ,— aboirtthat "rent" thing, except to drink it. But most of him seems -very far away, and he's forgotten how to walk. "Olga left me," he states. I don't know what to say. I always liked Olga.'She was always watering the shrubbery with a long green hose on sunny days when shrubbery seems full of life. "She went back to Spain." We stand there for a while, saying nothing. "All r i g h t / he says, presently, resigned. "All right," I mimic, and we each unravel towards our destinations. O n the way out for cigarettes and the classified section I pass by the Granola's apartment. I observe shades drawn against the late morning sun, hear stereos and" televisions turned up too loud to drown out arguments and loneliness.

The Web Through the window on the high wall I can finally see the 58

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The Web Through the window on the high wall I can finally see the 58

Berkeley Fiction Review Bared Sunbathing after noon, Nina, an aging stripper, winks at me as I pass the pool". It doesn't turn me on. "Hey, Gabriel," she says, "will we see you at the party?" Her tone seems desperate. She has varicose veins and her short-cropped hair is dyed a taxi cab yellow. Her eyes are light blue, almost white, and they fail to hide disappointment. Smiling vaguely, I give her the thumbs up sign and go on upstairs to my cave, yielding to its umbilical pull. I open the door and the first sight that greets me is the huge Budweiser sticker which adorns the door of the incredibly ugly, faded yellow refrigerator Lenny loaned me, disregarding the fact that I have no food to put in it. I can't keep the disappointment off my face, b ut Lenny is taking care of me, like he promised. So I put the cereal, milk, and cheap, watery American beer in the fridge, then pace, alternately staring at the neglected guitar, at the classifieds section lying on the floor, and the picture of Holly on the wall. F r u s t r a t e d , I draw my shades against the l e e r i n g s u n . Through my peephole I watch the faces gathering poolside and at once they, too, become anonymous, faceless. Work is over and their gestures are too grand, if tired; they wave and flap their arms through the air as though to ward off spirits or to affirm, at least to themselves, that they are still alive; their voices rise competitively and speak only of what is not wrong. They will all be there, at week's end, at the party. Up close, I wonder, will my own arms swing about, will my:voice be too loud?

Feasts which, of course, means we keep turning up. An hour ago, we were ready to kill each other. Jeff keeps smoking too many cigarettes between songs and his voice is cracking. His guitar is going out of tune and it's good that he wears those Sunglasses when we play or .he'd scare the audience. Otto is pjssed off because he sold his good sax, the alto, and he's stuck with this tenor sax that sounds like it was abused by some high school marching band, which, as it turns out, it was. So he keeps turning to us, telling us in his heavy Austrian accent (like mine, it surfaces under stress) to "stop making all these fucking mistakes! Moron's!" I try to stop making all these fucking mistakes but sometimes my fingers catch in the holes where the keys sho'uld be. But then something happens. T h a t i s , we get lost in the music, in the trance, and we Forget we're supposed to hate each other. We are almost "painfully aware of each' other's presence, and of the fact that it's the music 'that has prevented many a broken nose. And just then, I look up and notice Holly3, sitting alone at a table near the back. We get d o n e with Miles' "So What?" and the audience applauds, reluctantly,.and falls to quiet, hushed tones. I approach Holly and get a terrible feeling that something is going to happen. I don't know if it's good or bad, and that only makes it worse. Still, Holly's nearness makes me forget it all quickly enough. "And how," I say, taking her hand, "is my Irish rose?" It's corny but she smiles and motions for me to take a seat I do so, kissing, her hand."You look tired, Gabe."

Equinox

I run a hand through my hair.'"It's been a really, really long day," I say. "Still, it's nice to see you."

We are playing- at Kafka's, me and Jeff and Otto. T h e audience, perhaps sensing that we haven't practiced or even spoken to each other for over a month, is in a playfully competitive mood; their voices rise in mob hysteria every time we turn up

"Well...I'm leaving tomorrow, for my trip," she says. "So I thought I'd come over and say goodbye."

"Goodbye?" I say, chuckling nervously. "You're not leaving

Equinox

I run a hand through my hair.'"It's been a really, really long day," I say. "Still, it's nice to see you."

"Well...I'm leaving tomorrow, for my trip," she says. "So I thought I'd come over and say goodbye."

"Goodbye?" I say, chuckling nervously. "You're not leaving

Feasts

Berkeley Fiction Review for good, are you?" I picture my hand tracing the curved outline of her back. I used to lie awake, some nights, just watching her while she slept. "Oh," she says, "I'll be back." She looks down and sees her coffee cup is empty. "How are things, Gabe?"

cute, pathetically so, labrador puppy wags its-tail at her and she, picturing the sensitive loner, leans-closer, breasts warm and sensuous on my forearm. I feel her hippies stiffen through the fabric. "I thought you were a poet," says she. "You look like a poet." "Should I sit at the end of the bar, then?"

Her tone is guarded. -I wonder what answer she wants to hear.

She doesn't'get it, as the perfectly vacant look she.gives me explains. Still, she is pretty, so I buy us both some Drambuie.

"Let's go down to 'Durty Molly's'," I suggest. "I could go for a Guinness or few."

"What the fuck is in this?" she cries, eyes filling up' with revulsed tears. "Gasoline?"

"I can't," she says, shakes her head. "How are you, Gabe?" "I have mean termites," I say, "and my neighbor keeps a dead duck inside his chimney. Does that answer your question?" She nods, thanking me with her eyes. I start to wonder if it really is better this way, without the raw, naked emotions, without the collisions. Without resolution. But then Hollv is rising, once more, to leave. Leaning over, she touches my face and kisses me, briefly. I don't move. "I'll see you," Holly says. "Yeah." I don't need to say anything else. She knows. It's going to be a long, long night. Napkin At 'Durty Molly's' the band plays "Waltzing Mathilda" while the Guinness nurses me back from my dulled state of nerves. A pretty girl with a short black skirt and knee-high white stockings looks at me and smiles. She has long, black hair which'is very straight, and big, expressive, brown eyes.

"You were supposed to sip it," I explain. "Another?" She looks at me. "Are you from Ireland?" "Worse," I say. "Mexico." "Well," she says, "you look Irish! Dark hair, pale skin...and you have an accent!" "The Mexicans are the Irish of North America," I proclaim. After all, she's intent on proving I'm not who I say I am. "Canadians, of course, are the Scottish," I continue. "And obviously America is the Imperial power, right? Like father, like son. But...what about Wales?" She looks at me like I've lost my mind. "Maybe our own California?" I muse. But then I shut up cause the girl, Heather-from-Detroit, wants me to spend the money I should be saving for rent on some Jose Cuervo. So I buy its'both some more Drambuie. Substitute

She wants to know-what I'm writing about. Conversation from the bar drifts over, surreal.

Erotic groping and fumbling turns erratic, then Jiigh camp. We stumble over the piles of books, over each other, as we fall to the bed. I dim the light by throwing my .shirt over the lamp. Heather-from-Detroit wants me to turn it off altogether.

"I hope you like dogs",an Englishman is telling some poor American girl, "cause my dog is my best "friend."-

Have I spent the whole night trying to find something that reminded me of her?'

I grab another napkin and quickly draw a picture of a dog; a 62