Berkeley Fiction Review, Volume 19 by Berkeley Fiction Review

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C A L I F O R N I A

B e r k e l e y

F i c t i o n

Editors John Rauschenberg

Elaine Wong

Associate Editors Marie Bao Amy Lau

Doreen Ho Alex Wedemeyer

R e v i e w

Art Editor Robin Champlin Editorial Assistants Elisha Cohn Jennifer Kung Cover Art by Christine Ambrosio Copyright 1999 by Berkeley Fiction Review The Berkeley Fiction Review is not an official publication of the Associated Students of the University of California. These stories are works of fiction and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ASUC or the University of California, Berkeley. The Berkeley Fiction Review is a non-profit publication. Inquiries, correspondence, and submissions should be sent to: Berkeley Fiction Review, c/o Eshleman Library, 201 Heller Lounge, Berkeley, CA 94720-4500. The Berkeley Fiction Review is not responsible for unsolicited material. Member of CLMP Distributed by Ubiquity, Brooklyn, New York Printed by Technical Printing Inc., Sunnyvale, California Cover art scanned by LinoText, San Francisco, California ISSN 1087-7053

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Wendy Park

Staff Shelly Aono Sarah Atlas Nathan Baker Paige Cowett Susan Graves Melinda Greene Kristina Kite Bernie Romberg Margaret Kray Joanne K. Lee Joanne S. Lee Marisa Libbon Peter Maris Scott Michels Nam Nguyen Sen Onishi Rebecca Payne Rebekah Punak Ethan M. Rogers Renada Rutmanis Tarak Shah Carlyn Sheinfeld Michael Smith Ryan Stanley Mariah Swan Jake Thomas Shelley Wang Beth Watson Sam Wu Meishya Yang Catherine Yoshimoto Amanda Zamir

Lydia Chen Pat Keller Philip Kuan Alec MacDonald Christine Noh Margaret Raimondi Stefan Shakiba Young Suh * Mark Warren

Cover Art Christine Ambrosio Illustrations Mon Thai Special thanks to George Srilabower, Daphne Young, Nikki Thompson and Grace Fujimoto for their expertise. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Committee on Student Publications, the ASUC, and the English Department.

B e r k e l e y

F i c t i o n

Editors John Rauschenberg

Elaine Wong

Associate Editors Marie Bao Amy Lau

Doreen Ho Alex Wedemeyer

R e v i e w

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Wendy Park

Lydia Chen Pat Keller Philip Kuan Alec MacDonald Christine Noh Margaret Raimondi Stefan Shakiba Young Suh * Mark Warren

A d v i s o r s

F A C U L T Y

Stephen Booth Chris Nealon

P U B L I C A T I O N S

George Stilabower

A L U M N I

Grace Fujimoto Nikki T h o m p s o n D a p h n e Young

F o r e w o r d This issue of the Berkeley Fiction Review emerged in painful, slow convulsions. That makes it better. These fifteen stories have survived the trenchant, unyielding intellectual assault of our staff members. No story was unanimously ushered in; stories that would have been blithely accepted in previous years were rejected. Our staff has never been so selective. For this we thank them. Our staff is what differentiates this issue; what remains constant is our commitment to publishing inventive fiction. To be accepted, a story had to demand attention; it often had to break some barrier of common fiction-writing sense and survive. Wed like to let the stories speak for themselves, but we can't resist crowing about a few: "The Last Unbelievable Inch Of Extra" is quite simply wonderful, a refreshing break from the dour tone of much contemporary fiction. "Away!" is stunning stylistically. "Rime Of The Sweaty Girl," "The Goatman's Wife," and "Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking" are classic BFR stories, if there is such a thing: they keep fiction new by playing with conventions. Many other stories excel in a quieter way. Everybody will find a story they enjoy in this issueâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;we can say this with surety because our staff was so diverse that nearly every taste was represented. The intelligence and hard work of our staff have reaped us other benefits. Our distribution has widened significantly, and we are far more efficient and complete in the evaluation of submissions. Finally, they were simply enjoyable to work with. In the end, however, a good staff is useless without good writers. We thank them for making BFR possible. Now we should get out of the way and let you see for yourself the results of our staff's and writers' dedication. We proudly invite you to explore BFR #19. John Rauschenberg and Elaine Wong

A d v i s o r s

F A C U L T Y

Stephen Booth Chris Nealon

P U B L I C A T I O N S

George Stilabower

A L U M N I

Grace Fujimoto Nikki T h o m p s o n D a p h n e Young

The Goatman's Wife Stephen Davenport

115

Peaches G. Davies Jandrey

126

The Last Unbelievable Inch Of Extra Troy Cook

137

Away! Susan Steinberg Apart Wayne Harrison

Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking Grant Faulkner

Rime Of The Sweaty Girl Shawna Ryan

The Splendor Of Orchids Lindsey Crittenden

A Kiss On The Forehead Josh Stevens

How To Play Contract Bridge Jenny Weisberg

Bearded Irises Candice Rowe

The Sexologist Grant Flint

Green Door Stephanie Mazow

105

Girls With Weird Names Phoebe Kitanidis

110

C o n t e n t s Swimming The Cave John Blair

The Goatman's Wife Stephen Davenport

115

Peaches G. Davies Jandrey

126

The Last Unbelievable Inch Of Extra Troy Cook

137

Away! Susan Steinberg Apart Wayne Harrison

Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking Grant Faulkner

Rime Of The Sweaty Girl Shawna Ryan

The Splendor Of Orchids Lindsey Crittenden

A Kiss On The Forehead Josh Stevens

How To Play Contract Bridge Jenny Weisberg

Bearded Irises Candice Rowe

The Sexologist Grant Flint

Green Door Stephanie Mazow

105

Girls With Weird Names Phoebe Kitanidis

110

C o n t e n t s Swimming The Cave John Blair

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J o h n Blair

he water is stained green like the limestone lip of the sinkhole, and it cuts into the skin of his bare ass where he sits, fifteen, naked, dangling his feet into the water. An orange tree leans in over the pool, roots corn out like a lens, a provocative ellipse, green oranges hard as tumors, crisp with acid. Two of the girls sit sidesaddle on the rough trunk, one with arms crossed over her breasts, feet crossed at the ankles, thighs tight together and pale, thick, the other gathered up knees to chest, heels together and tucked hard against herself. Step out into the water, don't think, he tells himself, dive, smooth elision. Suddenly breathless with the cold, tumid and thin-limbed. The girls drop from the trunk like turtles, slick as fish. The third bides her time in the weeds beyond, modest, apprehensive. She's the one, blond hair slick as cornsilk, green eyes, skin the shy blue of milk. The other two boys swim out, buddies, grinning, swim between the girls waiting for him, waiting. Deep breath, lungs, chest, bob and then duck under, water tight as a fist. Its when you shy away, you lose, he tells himself, girls' eyes watching. He pounds down against the fearful buoyant part of himself, mossgreased down to the cave, dark spot, quiet, limestone ribbed and arcing swung like a spark to another sinkhole sunken cup like a funnel. It slips around him smoothly like a foreskin, old hat, old friend, been here before, girls wide-eyed and wondering, hands darting in the water like minnows when he comes up born again and smiling. Push through, wiggle of the hips, toes jammed against the slippery I-inn.

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Berkeley Fiction Review floor. Easy. But suddenly and all at once it is too narrow for the true breathless bulk of him. A shoulder wedges, lump of stone pressed into an elbow tight against his chest. A single cetacean grunt of surprise. He flails, twists, tries to jerk free. Nothing. And the world begins to dwindle to that gray button of light hung like the maiden moon above his head where the tunnel arches up into a pool. The others are there already, confident, waiting just for him, all of his young and unconsidered life bitten through like a tongue, flat in his mouth where his breath used to be. The depth whines in the bones behind his jaw in the small bones of his ear and the earth seems to shift to make room for him in her astricted gut. He struggles, wills himself free, commands his shoulders unjoint themselves, his tumid heart to swallow its load in one hard wrung gulp. All it would take, he knows, is just a word, the right one, to change it all, an appeal not even to God but to the possible hovering over every young life like a dream. For one instant he even believes he's free, rising, amazed, lifted on the foam of his upward breath, soaring under girls whose legs sway and part like wings, like everything he has ever wanted, desire sharp as the thin needles of water driving through his ears into the place behind his eyes where the stars crawl in their darkness. And love generous and full, sweet as mercy waiting just for him ass-bare in the rumpled grass. Lie still she tells him. Deep breath. There. Her hair slick as cornsilk, bare skin soft as moss. She holds him fiercely, elbow and shoulder skin bare and cool, eyes forever green under a sinking crescent of trees.

A w a y ! Susan Steinberg

he way to steal a car is to first become invisible and the way to become invisible is to have good concentration. It is about seeing under your skin with your inside eyes. When everything gets glittery you will slowly fade. You have to fade into nothing to steal the car. The reasons are obvious. The plan is as follows. Concentrate. Steal a car. Drive the car to New York City. Leave the car in a dark lot. Stay in New York City so you can become famous. Do not get caught doing anything corrupt or your mother will come to get you. She will touch your face when you are riding home on the bus and her hand will feel strange and cold like you are herjong lost love and there is no worse feeling. Stay in New York City for as long as you can. Remember. If you get caught doing anything corrupt you will be forced to go to school and worse is you will be held back a year. Invisibility is to be taken seriously. Chances are no one will believe what you can do. Remember it is a necessary part of self-improvement. You will need to become invisible to steal the car. You will need the car to get to New York City. New York City will make you famous. Then you will certainly be improved. To prepare for invisibility your walls and windows need to be painted black with glow in the dark stars stuck on so it looks just like outer space. Stand against your walls like another star. You have to concentrate

A w a y ! Susan Steinberg

Away!

Berkeley Fiction Review and become a part. At some point you will want to peel off the stars with a knife for important reasons. Reasons having to do with selfesteem. In the dark time before you walk to the bus stop you will see everything more clearly. Love and hate will swim across the room at you in wavy pictures. Use this time to plan. Think about how to get fame and money. When you steal the car you will be feeling more free. Then go as fast as you can to New York City. (The color of the car is irrelevant but dark is obviously better so try the black one.) Do not forget there are times when you will be quite vivid. When there are loud noises. Mirrors. Crying. In your bed at night before you are sleeping you will be only almost invisible like an x-ray or a jellyfish. Something translucent but still solid and there and you will be shimmering. You will float in and out. You will almost always be visible to yourself even when you are invisible to others. You will be able to see yourself in the mirror but it will often be a semi-transparent version of you because sometimes your face will be a thin clear layer and you will see the wall behind you. You will know you are there filling a space in the room the way you will know where all your limbs and other parts are in the dark. Stare down your worst enemies and think, you could not see me now if you wanted. Well I can tell you how I look. Very small very big very dark very bright. When you claim to be invisible your mother will take you downtown to a tall building to see the doctors. They will tempt you with soft voices. Do not cry or you will be super vivid. The doctors will ask you questions about your past and about things you could have done corrupt. Stare out the window and let your mother look into her fingernails and answer the wrong way all the questions. The doctors will sound like they are talking into microphones when they talk down to you. They will say, we can blame this and we can blame that. They will call you a Victim of Tragedy. Just stay calm. Your mother will fear the doctors. They will write things down in black notebooks. So will you. Tell them everyone steals. Do not tell 14

them you are planning to steal a car. Or that you have stolen one. Tell them you stole books and food and someone's love. Your mother will cover her face because you will insist that you are invisible. The doctors will insist that you are a Thief. Do not let their words threaten you. Your mother will be carrying on. But you will be magic. And how is that for a vast improvement? The important thing is that we are all here in this world now just being here and tolerating each other and all the rest. Some of us have survived this place! We are all spinning together and no one can stop us. We are spinning together at such a speed that we are stuck to the ground. At the same time that we are spinning we are shooting uncontrollably into the stars. Something is going to make us snap back into ourselves someday and then everything we once touched will blow apart. Invisibility is freedom! This is what to do with freedom. Steal things from stores. Steal things from your old friends. Go ahead and steal everything including lipsticks and food and eventually the car that will let you run to New York City. For practice steal another girl's love away. He would feel so good with your invisible hands touching all over his skin better than how he feels now when he has to look his girl in the eyes and lie to her. When you steal him away the girl will hate you for reasons of jealousy but you will hate her for even bigger ones. She always talked down to you. This is about freedom. You will learn all about how boys can be soft. They will still be hard but with you they will be both. (Concentrate into the glittery world. Away! You are invisible. Slip into the car unnoticed.) You have to be very careful because sometimes an alarm in a store when you steal will make you reappear and then you will be caught with things from the store in your coat pockets. You will always remain visible until your mother comes to pick you up. It is embarrassing to get caught stealing because you are not a Thief. Your mother will look 35

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Berkeley Fiction Review worn out when she comes to get you at night. Her lipstick will be smeared from putting it on under the florescent lights of the bus. At the police station you will always be very vivid in an orange chair not just visible but shockingly so. You will think, look at what I did corrupt! I'll never be anyone. But this is just practice for stealing the car which is the second step to true fame. Your mother will wait for you at the bus stop under a broken umbrella. Make yourself invisible before you get on the bus to the doctor. On the way you will think that is some mascara your mother wears. Say, you act like being invisible is a problem. Imagine your mother is nowhere. Around the doctors you have to stay calm. Their glasses will be all wrong. They will surround you and try to probe your transparent skin with hard questions. They will try to tap into your head but your head will be floating. You will be considered a Victim ofTragedy. You will be called a Thief. But you are neither. Just keep your mind set on the car. While the doctors are probing your skin you are already racing up the highway. You are changing the stations on the radio and the windows are rolled down and cool air is wrapping you up. Stay focused! You will crush New York City under your new stolen shoes by stepping down hard. It will try to drag you around by your hair but you will crush it under your new stolen shoes by stepping down hard hard until you can feel the sidewalk cracking under you. In the wet streets you will see the sky and trees and buildings and you will step down hard making them splinter and wave away and you will look down at all of this the way you never could before. You will find fame if you follow all the necessary steps. The doctors will ask you about your dreams. Your dreams will be vivid. Do not tell them everything. In your bed each night you will be flat on your back in an open glass case or on an examination table with two strong lights shining down on you and your skin will crawl and rest and crawl again. Then everything will depend on what you are dreaming and you will ordinarily dream of one of two things: outer 16

space or water. When you dream of water sometimes you will be in the ocean and someone will be there floating behind you and you will not be able to turn around to see who it is because you will be wearing heavy equipment or because there will be seaweed wrapped around your neck. Try to steal the other girl's love away. It is good practice that will give you that feeling in the hot negative space around your face. In your black room with the lamp on as dim as it will go plan things for your new life in New York City. Keep two knives flat under your mattress. A big sharp one for peeling off the stars. A thin pointy one for stealing the car. Both can protect you in case things turn bad and also expect to be hated for the wrong reasons. The important thing is that you will start to see a pattern. And no one will be able to see you. (Jam the knife into the ignition. You know how to do this.) For practice try to get on TV by prowling around the local T V stations invisibly and then suddenly appearing. Your time will come you know. True fame. Imagine the girls you hate are dancing together on the bus stop with their big radio playing on the sidewalk. Their round knees stick out in their tights. They give you dirty looks. You want to dance with them. Think. You see the underside of your skin fading. Everything is getting glittery. You are semi-transparent and now invisible. Away! and with a swing of your arms you vanish and you can dance behind the girls and with them. Dance right up in their faces. You are a good dancer. They cannot see you laughing at them. Mock them if you want. Above your heads the trees wave their thin branches and the spring snow is falling circling your heads and the sky is getting lighter. The bus whistles down the street and you float up on it together with the radio still playing but softly now. You are going to school the place that is nothing but you have a secret and you were really dancing. There are words the big ones the doctors use. Your mother will 17

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Berkeley Fiction Review

the lockers. Pretend you have long pretty claws for tearing out eyes that look at you wrong. No one deserves to know you. To look at you. To touch your hair. Remember. When you are famous none of this will matter. Keep your eyes clear and cold blue when you let the sun pour into them from the second floor windows. Try to concentrate even though it is so loud. Even though your arms and legs are flashing orange. You were never the brightest star of the whole school so let your walls send you somewhere. Stand up against your walls and belong there. Float there like a star and peel the rest off for many important reasons having to do with victory.

whisper them into her fists. When the words come up stare out the window of the office. Stare into traffic and let the cars run over your eyes. The doctors will talk. You will sigh and cough. Your mother's face will shatter into a thousand pieces. Try to understand the true meaning of the big words and how they taste metallic. They are about pleading. Please I need a cigarette! That is a true understanding. Please don't hurt me! You will make yourself laugh. Don't anybody else leave me! You will laugh until your side hurrs. (The car starts with a shake.)

Remember. Do not cry because it feels better to be in the shadows anyway and there is nothing worth crying about.

Everyone has always wanted to be locked in a grocery store when it closes at night. This is everyone's biggest fantasy to be locked in the grocery store with the food all there. Do this for practice. Eat whatever you want! Sit in the corner of the bakery eating a cake. Expect that the guard will find you. Expect him to point a gun at you and yell. Expect to become super visible. The guard will call the police. The police will call your mother. Your mother will be mad at you because you do have food in the house. You always have plenty of food even a cake from the same grocery store. This is only practice.

(Just slide out of the parking space like the car is yours.) Take a ride downtown on the bus with all the strangers moving at the same fast speed together. You need to prowl for the car to steal. The bus driver will look at you through his mirror until you disappear. He will own you. Let him hurl you out there at the speed of light with his red eyes glued to the rearview. Let him hurl you and the others through the city like you are on a rocket traveling at the speed of light. Go faster faster faster! There will always be that orange-gray sky out the window. The rain will always whip the moving windows. Prowl around the X movies. Sit next to men and touch their coats and whisper into their warm necks without them seeing you. Take twenties out of their pockets. Steal batteries and tapes from the radio stores. Eat in fancy restaurants alone or join strangers at their tables. They will not know that you are there. You will go â&#x20AC;˘home and dream. You will slide off the examination table and turn out the two bright lights. You will step out the nearest window and you will fly in a silver suit with a big round helmet and you will know that if the helmet were to fall off you would breathe in tar. Whole galaxies will spin around themselves and black holes will try to suck you in and the air will be old ink. You will hold the helmet tight at your neck while asteroids and comets sail past your head. You will learn the secret to flying in loops so they will not hit you. If you were to

Picture yourself kicking giant holes in New York City. Taking the fastest elevators to the tops of tall hotels. Riding the express trains with your face pressed to the windows. The city will try to lose you in a swirling rush of importance but you will be right there emerging from a manhole on a quiet tree-lined street. Be strong and you will go further than you thought you ever would. School is the place that is nothing. You float through the halls there as if you are nothing too. It is the place where the winter sun shines through the windows and cuts you into dusty pieces "where you are scrutinized until your skeleton flashes nervously in your hands. You will always have to be visible at school because it is so loud there. You will earn a reputation at school for being wild and not from doing something bad. You were never the star of anything at school. Brush past everyone in the halls like a sleek and sexy cat. Make your skin purr. Rub against

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Berkeley Fiction Review

Remember. Do not cry because it feels better to be in the shadows anyway and there is nothing worth crying about.

Berkeley Fiction Review turn around you would see your house behind you floating like a moon. You have always been many different people the one to you and the one to everyone else. The true one and the one in your dreams. But soon you will be just one person. You will notice the car you want parked behind the movies one night when you are prowling and invisible. There are always cars behind the movies. Trust me. You will find the one with the unlocked doors and the easy ignition. They will only find you because of a mix up. So be careful because like almost everyone you are not perfect. Remember. You used to slam your fingers shut in your locker door to feel something hot. You never drank at bars. You never danced with a gtoup of boys who were crowding you. There were never eyes and hands all over you. You never felt beautiful. And to think. Soon. (You are really moving.) You never knew how it was to have someone's hands in your back pockets in the halls at school so you will steal someone to see. When you do you will feel a temporary current in the space between both your heads. Something like a charge. There will be something like a charge and your head will feel full of ice water. Your insides will try to fly away. From down on the bathroom floor the lines of clouds out the window will look like a ribcage. Planes will float through the sky as boats swimming sailing sinking away into the lines of clouds. The bathroom floor will swallow you up. There will be something like a charge and then he will disappear and you will disappear. Your mother will say, she's having a hard time. The doctors will say to you, would you care to talk about this? They will try to trick answers out of you. Have a good laugh right then at their serious faces. 20

Away! (This is about becoming invisible and famous but first it is about staying awake all night.)New York City has a reputation for being wild but it cannot hurt you unless you let it. You will wave it away in the wet streets. You will climb over cars and buses and trains and stores. Trust me. You will tear bricks out of buildings. You will steal money and slash tires and paint your name on walls and under bridges. If you go through the bridge past the tallest building in New York City you will find a big lucky star painted next to it for you to become famous. New York City will try to murder you. It will offer you ways to disappear but by then you will already know how to do it by yourself. The doctors will say, but we can see you. You will look at your mother. She will look out the window into traffic. Do not let them break you down! You never walked to the bus stop practically running it was still so freezing cold out with every step step step your ankles made of solid ice and the words shaking loose from your mouth until you were laughing so hard at nothing. In bed you will turn out the two bright lights and you will swim deep underwater and there will be flowers growing and slowly swaying when you move past and millions of rows of little houses made of rocks and shells with tiny windows. You will be invisible at the doctor's office with your mother. One two three four and you will be gone! They will all be a litde jealous. You will be asked to speak and your notebook will be floating in the air across from them because no one can see you the person who is holding it. No eye contact will be made because your eyes are gone. They will think you are incredibly powerful and they will say things to one another as if you are not there. You will know then that you are good enough to steal the car.

Berkeley Fiction Review

You could make a mistake. If the alarm goes off you will certainly be vivid! If the alarm goes off do not be tempted by the expensive sunglasses on the front seat. Leave them where they are. Do not hurry if your knife slips and falls from nervousness. Slowly pick up the knife and walk away gradually making yourself disappear by concentrating hard.

Away!

in loops and feel very free but hours later you will wake up in your bed. And then what-

Remember. You are not the one who is crazy and trouble. The doctors will prescribe pills for you even though you feel fine. They will use the biggest words to make you less than them. They will loan you books that you will not read. Take the pills if you want. They will make your dreams even more vivid. Ask the doctors, what about the big bang though. We are suffering from that. We are all spinning at the same speed being hurled out into space waiting to snap back into ourselves. Say to a stranger on the bus, you will snap back too you know! To the girls in the tenth grade to the doctors to your mother to your brother. Say, you cannot see me but right now I am looking okay. Trust me. Love and hate will fly through your bedroom. You will leave the car in a dark lot if you do things right. When you are ready peel the stars off your walls with a knife. You, will not need them anymore. You will be the only star and you are ready. When your mother comes into your room without knocking pretend to be sleeping. She will say, what happened to the stars. You will feel translucent. Your insides will be trying to fly away. Your mother will quietly touch your back and keep her hand there until you start to feel tired. Concentrate! (You like the way the seat feels. It is soft. The radio. Turn it on. Roll down the windows a little. Take it out to the highway. Look. No other cars are in sight. You are really moving. Forget about your mother. Her hand is not really there you have to think.) If you are not careful you will make a ttemendous mistake. If you are not careful you will fall asleep and dream of outer space. You will fly 22

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in loops and feel very free but hours later you will wake up in your bed. And then what-

Apart

A p a r t W a y n e Harrison

n the fifteenth-floor suite Raymond dropped the suitcases before a pair of tall windows and threw wide the heavy pinch-pleated curtains. He paused for what seemed the first time all morning, staring into glass so meticulously polished that his image was deep and flawless. This is where the money goes, he thought, the lofty rates. Into detail. Cumulus clouds over Highway 70 were low and brown, as though the mess of slush and road sand had somehow gotten into them. "You can just make out Chiefs' stadium," he said and stepped to the side for his wife to join him. "The Truman Complex, isn't that what it's called?" Margaret sat on the edge of the bed and pushed her purse strap off her shoulder. "A six-hour drive and I'm wiped out," she said. Her eyes swept over the salmon-colored wallpaper until she found a small refrigerator with a liquor list hanging from its door handle. "Over seven hours," he said. "What can I make you?" "A vodka and tonic sounds nice," she said. She picked up the remote control and turned on the television. Raymond found two octagonal glasses over the refrigerator and began mixing drinks. Across from him Donahue asked a panel guest to share her story. The camera closed on an emaciated woman in a loose gray tunic. Her eyes were glassed and swollen, and after drawing an expansive breath that seemed, for the moment, to embolden her, she recounred the details of a blood transfusion. When she finally couldn't go on for crying another guest told of a dental surgeon who had chosen not to wear protective gloves. 24

Raymond wanted to say to his wife, You see? Someone's always got it worse. This is how we live. Things could always be worse. Margaret absently received the drink. "The great tragedies happen to the innocent," she said. "Do you believe that, Raymond? When the innocent are robbed of all their promise. Its different for the other ones, the hookers or the junkies...." Her eyes grew wide and she touched three fingers to the hollow at the base of her throat. "When did I get so cynical?" "It's probably the same for everyone," he said, working to keep the mood light. This was their vacation. "That's what I would think, anyway. But I know what you mean." Margaret clicked off the television and the sudden quiet left Raymond standing awkwardly by the bed. He slid in against the headboard beside Margaret and they kicked off their shoes. In the bureau mirror they watched themselves, like castaways on the vast island of mattress wide as it was long. Ten months before she'd cut her hair down to a pageboy, deep auburn hair that curled inward and butted flush against her neck. With time he grew fond of the new look, the way her face took on a healthy roundness, and now it seemed to illustrate his trust that she would fully recover after the operationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that the surgeons would get all of it out. Raymond took a long drink of his scotch and ticked his tongue after. "You're far away," he said. "Where are you right now?" Margaret stared a second longer at a peach-framed tulip garden then turned and held Raymond's eyes. Her look was intense yet vague, and what Raymond meant as a lovers' nudge he could see might reduce her to tears. "Rock bottom doesn't mean the very bottom," she said, her voice unsure, almost questioning. "There are days you can think of that are bad, even horrible, but then there's something past that. There's the bottom you know you can't even imagine." She pulled her cardigan sweater urgently across, one side overlapping the other. "Goddamn this," she said," Just goddamn this." She pinched her eyes closed as if against something she didn't want to see. He set his glass down and reached across her shoulders. Her muscles were narrow and rigid under the layers of fabric, and he massaged lightly. "I want you to breathe now. Breathe through it." After a few moments her head rolled forward and he worked the vertebrae. He could feel her 25

Apart

A p a r t W a y n e Harrison

Berkeley Fiction Review loosen. "We're just going to be strong," he said, "no different than we've always done. We're going to be strong together." Margaret reached back and placed her hands on top of his. He didn't know whether this meant to stop talking or stop massaging. He stopped both. She turned to him and when she smiled his heart lifted. "I think I need to be like that," she said. "When it comes I mean." She set her glass on the nightstand. "And you put up with it until you can't anymore. Keep me in line then," she said. "Nobody's dying around here." "There's a deal," he said, and when Margaret began opening her sweater and the blouse beneath it Raymond lifted himself easily off the bed. She had been shy with her body these past weeks, and now the moment seemed a frail one. He considered the spread curtains, the neighboring Missouri Mutual insurance building whose highest windows were level with theirs. "Leave them," Margaret said, flinging her sweater triumphantly to the floor. "They're all strangers anyway." T h e sounds of Margaret's sleep brought Raymond a certain satisfaction, though he suspected it was more out of her weariness and the drink than their lovemaking. He touched one of her breasts in a way that wouldn't wake her, and tried to imagine how they would be together later on. As she curled under a flannel sheet with her face turned away from him, he went to the recliner by the windows. Things were going to change for them, he thought. As soon as he met his quota this quarter he would relocate to a home office where they could take a house in a suburb, and he wouldn't be on the road anymore. Though Margaret had never complained about his sales trips, he knew they'd spent too much time apart. Looking over the suite now, he recalled the single he had shared with Alison a year earlier as being much cheaper. There was an enormous bathroom, almost the size of the room itself, with uncountable square tiles whose caulking was chipped and mildewed, and a shower without a tub. â&#x20AC;˘ Alison was a heavy-set woman who favored gaudy sequined dresses, and she talked about astronomy and psychology, things he didn't like or understand. But she took charge of the marketing presentation, a crowd of seven hundred half-drunken representatives, with a show of confidence that moved him. When the slide projector malfunctioned she turned on the lights and pointed at people to stand, on the spot, 26

Apart and recount last year's modified sales. In their room she squeezed Raymond s cock between her breasts and told him to think of her when he went home to his wife. She said fantasizing was the life-blood of marriage. Now he remembered the still heat of the motel room (they never stayed long enough for the rattling air conditioner to make a dent in the stale humidity), the shine-of Alison's face, the salt of her skin. He had ended the brief relationship with a phone call, and that same day confessed to Margaret. It would have eaten away at himâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;at their marriageâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not to tell her, and he thought she could handle the knowing. It was a trouble to work through and put behind them. The television startled him. Margaret flipped the channels until she found a documentary on Bengal tigers. She set the remote beside her and tucked her hand under the pillow. "Did you have any dreams?" he said. Margaret looked at Raymond in a way that unnerved him, as though he were an unexpected stranger or intruder. She squinted at the light from the window where the sun had come out and closed her eyes. "No dreams for me," she said. "The best thing about naps is you wake up to the rest of a day left," Raymond said. "It's like coming out of a matinee." Margaret pushed herself out of bed languidly and picked her clothes off the floor. She carried them into the bathroom and pulled the door closed behind her. There was a metallic click and the sound of the knob tried and released. Raymond settled himself against a rush of bitterness, the thing he'd felt lately after seeing his wife defeated. He looked at the television, where a gazelle leapt over a tall scratch of dead brush, and imagined himself and Margaret somehow dropped in the fury of Indian jungle, hacking through the shrub, rifle slings taut along their backs. He thought of people clawing around death every day, their minds trained to deal with only present dangers. Will our well dry up? Do we eat tomorrow? Margaret was dressed when she came out of the bathroom. She tilted her head to replace an earring. "Don't be too upset with me, honey," she said. "But I think I might like to go back home." She sat.on the edge of the bed and folded her hands in her lap. "Bengals are the ones that mate for life, aren't they?" she said. 27

r Berkeley' Fiction Review Raymond got out of the chair, glancing at the television as he walked across the room. "I'm not sure," he said. "I think lions do, but tigers I'm not sure." He stopped a few feet before her. "Is that what you want?" She nodded slowly. "It's just up and down," she said. "I used to flush a cold out of my system in a few days. Now it feels like 1 broke a promise to myself." Still sitting, she opened her arms, in the way of a child who wants to be lifted, and Raymond knelt before his wife. She leaned heavily on him and he rooted his knees into the carpet. A dull pain settled in his back and then went away, so he could keep her there. Her cheek moved against his shoulder and he felt her swallow. "Hold me," she said. "Just hold onto me, Raymond." There were things he knew he could say to her then, reassurances, and the quiet that settled over them seemed to have its own positive meaning, though he couldn't recall an exact moment in their seven years of marriage when they had come to be this way with each other. They ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. O n an ivory grand across from rhem, the piano man played a set of jazz, softly, with the top closed. When the champagne arrived, Raymond made a show of inspecting the label and approving with a wave of his fingers. He asked if they could charge to their room, then asked if they could charge to someone else's room. Margaret shook her head as if she didn't know what to do with him. Three acorn-shaped chandeliers spread generous golden light over the restaurant, a spacious single room that Raymond imagined was variably rearranged for business conventions. Behind the piano a raised hardwood bar held a different, dimmer light, and he watched two women, a red-head and a brunette, sitting on bar stools, drinking lavender drinks. As they dabbed their cigarettes to their lips, blew fine jets over each other's heads, Raymond remembered all his years of smoking. He liked the brand label of the cigarettes, in radiant green letters: Now. It was a name of motivation. He gave them up for Margaret. Think of every pack you don't smoke as twenty hours on your life, she liked to say. Time you can have with me. "You're not eating." "Oh, I'm eating," Margaret said. "This is a dish that should be savored half a fork at a time." She sliced off a delicate bit of flounder in 28

Apart demonstration, and the tines disappeared between the lipstick. When she lifted her glass Raymond tapped it with his. To a beautiful woman and the years to come, he said. After the toast Margaret set her glass back and looked down at the table. She was quiet for a moment too long, and Raymond felt something sinking inside him. "One more bad thought, and then I'll let it go," she said. "How bad?" "Remember when they made me fill out that form before the tests? They asked me what options I would choose before I knew for sure?" "In case you couldn't decide later." "Well, I'm just thinking now that if surgery doesn't take care of it they might give me more forms." She hesitated. "Promise you won't let me pick chemo, okay?" "I cant promise you that, Margaret. What if it's the only way?" She set her fork down and it tinked against her plate. "They say the worst thing is the vomiting, the'way it makes you hate food. Your body associates the vomiting with what you eat instead of the treatment." "We'll just cross that bridge when we come to it," Raymond said and took her hand. He rubbed the dry crease of her palm. "Now that's it, okay? No more bad thoughts." One of the women at the bar laughed loudly, a hoarse shout of a laugh that drew the attention of couples at nearby tables. Raymond saw her lower her hands from over her head as if she'd been performing an exotic dance. "They're in high spirits," Margaret said. She squeezed his hand once before letting go. "I was thinking about a swim after dinner," she said. "You don't want to go downtown?" "Let's save that for another night," she said. "Tonight we should get to know our hotel better." She went back to her food more earnestly than before. As Raymond watched Margaret sort through and choose mouthfuls on her plate he remembered telling her of his affair with Alison. It was a Sunday and they'd just sat down to a breakfast of pancakes and bacon. He began as far back as he could, the sales meeting in Chicago, the lunch, and later a drink after the meeting. Margaret had stared at him blankly until he finished. 29

Berkeley Fiction Review "I have a question if you're through," she had said. "I'm completely through, honey. What is it?" "Do you love her?" "It wasn't love," he had said, and there was a small exhilaration in the honesty of those words. "It was the power she had over everyone. Nothing more than that. Nothing real." She set her fork down, and its handle sank into a puddle of syrup. "I think I believe you," she said. She wiped her mouth once with her napkin, and Raymond was certain she was going to leave, but to where and for how long he had no idea. She stood from rheir breakfast table and took the car keys off the hook. Raymond bargained that letting her go to think it through without his apologies would be the best thing. At the door she stopped as if in response to him calling her back. She lifted the braid off her back and considered it. "Maybe I should cut this off," she said, and dropped the hair as if it were already detached. She left the kitchen, then the house, and didn't return until after dark. "One thing I've always loved is walking around a hotel barefoot," Margaret said. In their swimsuits they stepped along vacuum lines in the plush hallway carpet, under golden light fixtures and past humming ice machines. Margaret had always been faithful to early morning nautilus rooms, and in the lobby, as Raymond watched the weary eyes of male travelers take in this womanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;sipping an iced drink, smiling carelesslyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he remembered how easy it was falling in love with her. The Hawaiian Room was windowed like a greenhouse, the air warm as a breath and sharp with chlorine. Four palm trees rose from blond pine planters, spreading their bushy fronds like lattice work along slanted panes of glass that joined in a dome over an octagonal hot tub. Behind the pool, Spanish floor tiles curved along flagstone-bordered islands of sand where arthritic Joshua trees and flowering cacti grew despite the humidity. The pool was kidney-shaped and large enough for a small diving board. It was nearing nine o'clock, and they had the place to themselves. Margaret set her drink down, draped her towel over a lounge chair, and dove in. Raymond followed, right through her ripple and bubbles. He met her at the bottom, passing a hand through her weightless bouquet of hair. For a moment there was only the urgency of wanting his wife, 30

Apart and he kissed her in the silent squeeze of the water, closing his eyes to know the cool and warm seam of their bodies pressing. Margaret broke from him, and he rose behind her kicking feet to the surface, where the first sound he heard was laughter. "I ran out of air," she said, throwing her arms over the cement edge. Raymond swam to the diving board and gripped a hand along its front lip. Margaret turned and looked across the water. She waited, pushing her hair back like a cloth of silk. "That was a feeling I could get used to," she said and smiled, or had been smiling and now only closed her mouth. "Like an adrenaline high," Raymond said. He looked past Margaret to where the windows were frosted in the corners, their fragile width holding out the cold world beyond the glass. He began one-handed pull-ups on the board. "I could run a marathon." He held himself, watching his feet arcing slowly upward in the water. "You know, we've still got those two weeks in May," he said. "I'm thinking maybe Orlando, or even the Keys again." When he looked back at Margaret her face had suddenly become vacant. There was a light blush to her skin he hadn't noticed a moment before. "So the world can see a cancer survivor in a bikini," she said. "Don't bother taking it back. I don't want you to be walking on eggshells around me. In fact, just don't say anything right now." She swam to where the shallow end began, and without looking back, she'walked to the steps at the back of the pool. In the hot tub Margaret reclined wirh her eyes closed in a storm of foam and bubbles, and Raymond settled quietly between two jets across from her. He craned back over the cool ceramic of the tub, giving Margaret whatever time she needed. Above them, the moon hung cold and bone white. Thete was something he remembered about the stars forming Cassiopeia's Chair, something Alison had once told him. "Was she pretty, Raymond?" Margaret said. Her eyes were open now, soft pink from the chlorine, and she stared at that very same moon. "Was who?" he said, at once confused and angry, as if shed gained access to his thoughts. As if suddenly she had that power. She had turned her face away. "I told you I didn't find her attractive," he said. "We agreed we wouldn't bring it up anymore." "I'm just wondering now if you found something to love in her," she said and looked at him finally. "Maybe something you didn't even 31

Berkeley Fiction Review know about." Raymond leaned over the deck and spun back the spa timer. The warerjets instantly quit their pulsing and he felt disoriented, as though it should have been a gradual thing. "I don't know what I can do," he said. "Tell me what I can do." Margaret sank a little lower, and for a moment there was only the sound of water rippling. Raymond began to speak again and she said, "Even when you have energy there's this little voice that says it's not real. They're taking a piece of me away, Raymond, a piece that I'll never have back. And what then? You won't be any different. What do I have to believe in then?" "Didn't the doctor say the main thing was to keep your spirits up? Didn't he say there are plenty of casesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" "Are you going to be sick with me, Raymond?" He knew then that there was nothing he could say to help her. She raised her arms and turned them, looking lovingly upon the pale inner skin before dropping them back into the water. "I am a strong woman," she said. Raymond climbed out of the tub. Stopping on the deck he began to turn back, but it was better not to, better to walk away from it. And he understood then that they had learned all the ways to hurt each other so that now it came without trying. He picked up his towel and dabbed it to his face. When he lifted his eyes he was looking at their drink glasses, side by side, sweating on a plastic table. In the room he dried and dressed then sat on the edge of the unmade bed. He looked at his suitcase, the old airport tags still tied to its handle. Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh. The cities all gelled together in his mind. Margaret's suitcase was much newer, bulky, hunter green flower patterns. After a while he lay back on the pillow, but as soon as he did his heart quickened. He couldn't think through what he was feeling, so he said aloud, "I love my wife. I am in love." H e stood from the bed and paced. "We love each other. She is my wife and I love her." But something felt hollow about it, as though he were ironing out a sales pitch. He looked in the mirror and said just the word love, and finally he gave that up. Raymond waited for a bartender. The restaurant had diminished to 32

Apart only a few couples nibbling lavish desserts. The piano player was on break. "You look to me like you're far too long without a drink." It took Raymond a moment to realize what the woman had said was addressed to him. In way of answer he tilted his head, recognizing her as the one laughing earlier. He ordered a Dewer's and soda and took the stool next to her. The woman lit a cigarette and turned it to see that the tip burned evenly. She was attractive in a sudden way, straight hair black as gloss paint, a dullness to her skin that suggested covering make-up. She made no further effort to talk with him. Through leaded windows behind the bar Raymond could see the lobby where Margaret would pass from the poolroom. The piano player left the bar with a pint of beer in his hand, and the woman beside Raymond swiveled to watch him. In profile her nose dipped down and her small chin rhrust slightly upward, as though they wanted to touch somewhere in front of her mouth. It gave her a kind of manliness that wasn't noticeable straight-on. Raymond wondered what became of her red-head friend, if they'd arrived together or just met that night. She was his age or a few years older, and Raymond felt a sadness for her as she waited so attentively on the first notes of dinner music. When the piano came to life the din of bar conversations dropped off and gradually reformed a few decibels softer. As she turned back to take her drink, the woman glanced at Raymond, who was still watching the side of her face. Her look seemed one of pleasant surprise to find him secretly paying her attention. She nodded to Raymond for some reason he didn't know, which made him think she might be a little drunk. "Genevieve," she said, "but Genie works better for some people." Raymond asked for a cigarette, which she patted out against her wrist and lit for him. The smoke tingled under Raymond's tongue, sharp and invigorating, like a black cup of coffee after a sleepless night. He bought her a fresh drink and she thanked him. "You have a pretty wife," Genevieve said. "I think she's probably worth all that expensive champagne." She pulled the drink close and looked into its scarlet liquid as if it were precious to her. "Right now 33

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Berkeley Fiction Review

Raymond could see the distinct muscular rise of her breasts, nipples beginning to stand, and lower, the peach of a fading tan against milky skin. At the rim of the board she stared in concentration over the still surface of water. Her arms spread wing-like from her waist in the fashion of one beginning a swan dive, her knees bowed slightly, a moment from springing. And he felt then, that his love had always been somehow insufficient and that what was happening to them right now was the result of a way that Margaret had grown without him. Raymond started around the men and the desk manager took hold of his elbow. The grip was hard and painful. In his face Raymond saw the deep creases of years spent smiling at strangers, but now he offered pale, seamed lips, steady black eyes. It was clear he had become Margarets defender. "I'm her husband," Raymond said, breaking the man's hold. He picked up her towel off the cement and stepped onto the diving board. "I'm here," he said. She turned slowly. Her drying hair matted against her cheeks and forehead. A single bead of water ran from a shining end down the white cushion of her breast. He held the towel open. "I'm here." When Margaret looked at him, he knew all at once the mistake he'd made by leaving her there. In her face he saw courage and resolve. "This doesn't mean anything to me, Raymond," she said. "This is how anyone would be." She turned and dove into the water. Her foot kicked once before she was completely under.

you're here and you're buying me a drink and we're having nice talk. I won't ask for more than that." "Are you married?" Raymond said. "Not at presenr," she said, with a smile that revealed two neat rows of small teeth. "Twice previously. To a contractor, and believe it or not, to a cop. The second was worse than the first, and I quit while I was behind." She pulled from her cigarette and the smoke exited her lungs in a brief white feather. Genevieve became talkative and sullen, and occasionally she reached across the bar and patted the top of Raymonds hand. She told him that her husband used to bring her out to the scenes of terrible car accidents. Once she fainted and he left her along the side of the road where any number of awful things could have befallen her. He said she didn't have backbone or compassion. He said she disgusted him. Genevieve let out a long sigh when she was through and Raymond wanted to hold her. He wanted her to know that he understood. "So here I am," she said, and her smile was different from before. "A little frayed from the wear, but I'm still standing." She leaned closer to him. "Isn't that the way a song goes? That's my song. You'll hear it sometime, Ray, and you'll remember Genie's song." "I will," Raymond said, snubbing out his cigarette. Through the leaded windows a man appeared from a corridor and called something across the distance of lobby. The desk manager looked at the man, then at the phone, and he left his station. Raymond realized they were headed for the pool, and as he got to his feet the stool kicked out and Genevieve caught it just before it toppled. He tried to leave money on the bar but she pushed it back to him. "Tm not staying here, anyway," she said. As she laid a light hand on his shoulder, he knew that she was lying now and that she hadn't been lying before, and he felt a small connection broken between them. She pulled her hand away and turned back to the piano. By the time he reached the Hawaiian Room three hotel personnel, men in black vests and bow ties, were along the side of the pool. They were gathered in a loose triangle, still and quiet, at a timid distance from the diving board. Margaret had taken off her swimsuit, its neon pieces wavering at a far corner of the pool away from where she was looking. In profile

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Berkeley Fiction Review

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K l eter: I can't sleep. Psychiatrist: How many people do you have in your family? Peter: Six. I'm an addictive person. So. Would Valium help? Psychiatrist: What does your father do? Peter: He's a tough man. He could've been a pioneer. He could've been a boxer. I drink beers to get to sleep, but now the beers don't work. I come from a happy family; rbere's nothing wrong wirh my family. Psychiatrist: When you think of your life, do you feel you're a success? Peter: I'd like to have energy. I'd like to sleep eight hours a night. The over-the-counter drugs, they make me feel weird. Psychiatrist: So, you only have sleeping problems? Peter: When I was a child, I thought I would live a happy life. I thought I would make a lot of money. There's some chemical in me—it's my metabolism; I'm different. I have too much energy. If I could sleep maybe. I should go to the country, lie in a field, touch green grass, smell. I wonder if Valium would help? 37

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Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking

Berkeley Fiction Review

"You'll be President someday," Peter's grandmother told him when he was a boy. Sometimes, even now, especially when he is in the shower, he imagines himself on the campaign trail, wearing a solid blue shirt and red tie, pounding his fist, speaking to America: The economy will grow; Til restore faith in the American economy; jobs will be created; people will be happy; consumer faith and consumer enthusiasm will rise. He thinks of the Benson and Hedges advertisement: young, handsome people eating breakfast in a tiled kitchen, laughing, smoking, dressed casually. He wants to drive a car out into the country for the weekends and attend Knicks games dressed in a soft camel hair overcoat. He wants to occasionally smoke a large Cuban cigar after dinner and read the newspaper at brunch with a tall, slender woman by his side. He has thought about politics. He has thought about God. He's a young, good-looking man, a lawyer in New York City.

A slap on Peters desk. A stack of documents. Peter looks up: Dan. His gray hair sticks up like fine wire bristles and crow's feet surround small squinting eyes. "The original Walker docs came from Morton yesterday. He doesn't stand a chance," Dan says, chuckling. "This will wrap it up, huh?" Peter asks. Dan shakes his head. "Walker is a worm. Worms squirm. I'm going to call him up, squeeze him a little." Dan arrives at the office every day at eight o'clock. He owns a cabin in the Berkshires, and after winning a big case, he always buys his secretary jewelry. When Peter likes a man, he wants to be like the man, to absorb himself into the qualities that make the man attractive. When Peter likes women, he wants to own them, to make them admire him. The cream in his coffee swirls up, then mixes, and the black liquid turns to tan. Peter arrived at the office at ten and told the head receptionist that the subway car had broken down. He didn't sleep last night. He stares at the crisp cuff of his shirt, a starched blue Armani. A rabbit gets chased by a cat, he thinks. The rabbit is almost caught, almost killed. Still, the rabbit can sleep at night. Peter's jaw clenches. His mouth pinches. His hands sweat.

Psychiatrist: What do you think of when I say life? Peter: I hate people who waste time. They don't see the importance of things, the way that things build. Psychiatrist: How can you visualize escape? Peter: There are so many words in my head. Psychiatrist: What do you think when I say the word death? Peter: Every problem can be solved.

1:00. Only six more hours. A board creaks into the silence. The pumping of his heart rings into the mattress; it skips a beat, thumps rwice against his chest. 2:15.1 must be getting sleepy. Gene Kelly dances and sings on the TV. The sheets slide off the corners when he turns to the other side of bed. Maria, the new secretary, speaks with a thick Brooklyn accent: he is lifting her on the desk, pushing up her skirt while her lips part, glistening with red lipstick. 3:05. His breath whistles through his nose. Four more hours.

"Really, you can't sleep?" Nan says. "Why can't you sleep? Is something wrong?" Nan stabs a piece of lettuce with her fork. A crumb sticks to the side of her mouth, and it annoys him, but he doesn't say anything about it. She lived on the same dormitory floor their freshman year at Dartmouth. She was chubby then, and even though she's lost weight now, her face is still round and full. She had a crush on him that wore into a close friendshipâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;she became his sidekick. She listened when he was tense about an exam, and she gave thoughtful, pained advice when he had a problem with a girlfriend. "Nothing is wrong. I can't think of anything that is wrong. Everything is perfect." 39

Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking

Berkeley Fiction Review

Berkeley Fiction Review "Something must be wrong." "Nothing is wrong. Nothing is bothering me." "You should take a hot bath and have a massage." "I've tried that; it doesn't work." "You should try warm milk." "I've tried that." "Are you sure nothing is bothering you? I bet that something is bothering you." "Everything in my life is really perfect. I can't imagine changing one thing in my life." Nan has a turned-up nose and soft, happy blue eyes. Most people who meet her would imagine her as one of the ones who seldom experience any of the tiresome vagaries of pain. Once they were both drunk and they started kissing and then they had sex. Quick, drunk sex. He woke up before her the next morning and got dressed. He never said anything about it, and although she seemed like she wanted to talk, she didn't say anything either. He could sleep with her now if he wanted to. He had chocolate sent to her office last week—just so that he could feel charming—and she called him on the phone to thank him, speaking breathlessly and effusively. He has felt like touching her at times, putting his arm around her as they walk on the sidewalk, but when she talks, her words pull against him—he can't stand her relentless wanting, her pathetic aspiration of love. "Well, I don't have any problems sleeping," she says. "I just put my head on the pillow and conk, I'm out. My problem is that I just can't get up in the morning. Maybe I have chronic fatigue syndrome." "Why don't we go to a movie tonight," he says, realizing that he's actually thinking about after the movie. Her apartment is fluffy with pillows, flowered and clean. Her breasts stand upright in her business suit, and as she pushes a strand of hair away from her face, he tries to see her arching her back in ecstasy, pushing her hands against his shoulders.

Psychiatrist: Do you talk to anyone about your feelings? 40

Sleeping And Not Steeping And Waking Peter: I remember the feelings I used to have, and they were different. I don't like to masturbate anymore. I'm very bored with masturbation. Psychiatrisr: Fear is the emotion behind narcolepsy. Anger is rhe emotion behind insomnia. Are you depressed? Peter: Everywhere I look there are people, so many people in the world. It seems to me that there are too many people in the world. Psychiatrist: There is always an identifiable cause at the root of a problem. Perer: I've never felt one with a place. I don't know how to get inside. Psychiatrist: Cause and effect. Have you ever told your parents that you love them?

Double espresso. Peter sits at a table on the upper floor of a sedate cafe around the corner from the law office. Sweeping ferns hang in rhe window, purple lilacs bloom on each table, and Pachelbel's Canon somberly plays. His head buzzes with an odd, alert farigue; his brain charges out of his head and then falls into languor. You lie down, he thinks, close your eyes, and then you go unconscious, you go to sleep. You just fall off, your head goes somewhere else, and then you dream, for hours and hours, as long as a normal work day. "I finally feel like a human being," a woman next to him says, her blue eyes opening up wide. Her body fits neatly into a well-cut, blue business suit. "I sat on a beach for a week and thought of nothing but getting an even tan." "I envy you," her friend says. He looks over the ledge at a couple who sit at a table next to the window. The woman has taken off her business jacket, and Peter can see the silhouette of her body from the light shining through her white blouse. Her arms, gangly in an elegant way. He can see the thin straps of her bra. Her cheeks smooth, fleshy. She raises her hand as she speaks to the man, so typical in his black suit, and Peter notices the white, 41

Psychiatrist: Do you talk to anyone about your feelings? 40

Berkeley Fiction Review rounded tips of her fingernails. A gold necklace. Gold earrings. Everything seemed accidental, but of course it wasn't. He planned to get drunk, but since Nan didn't plan to get drunk, it all seemed spontaneous. Peter moved over and kissed her (she stuck her tongue in his mouth, he stuck his tongue in her mouth, the kiss was sloppy, but warm, reassuring), then laid on top of her, kissed her neck, her ear lobes, held her tightly, rubbed against her. The couch was big and puffy; it seemed ro surround them. The woman takes a small jar of Vaseline from her black leather purse and rubs it on her lips. She takes out a pocket mirror and carefully looks at herself as she moves the lipstick around her mouth. Peter notices her thin, orderly bra. She scratches her side, moving the sheer white blouse up and down. The slenderness, rhe sleekness of the woman's lower back. Nan kissed him goodbye this morning, looking at him warmly and expectantly, as if they had finally arrived someplace. He tried not to be brusque, but he was. He kept thinking of how thick her calves were and the way she tipped slightly when she walked. He wishes that he could talk to her now though. He would try to give her her pretty world.

"We're going to burn the fucker," Dan says. "We're going to roast him." "Yes, I think we've got him." "We've got him by the balls," Dan says. "I pointed my finger at him and I told him we're not afraid to go to court, because you know what," I said, "we've got your ass and you're too stupid to know it." "He can't get away now." "This is what it's about," Dan says. "We smelled him out. Our hard work. Our productivity. Our genius. We smelled him out, we've got him cornered, and now we only have to aim carefully, to kill, but not to ruin the meat." "I'll stay late tonight, do some research on that lien. Everything's going to be airtighr." "Let me tell you something. One win builds on itself, it brings security, confidence, aplombâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they win projects, clients can see it in 42

Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking your eye, women can see it in your eye, people want you to protect them. And you have to win enough so that a loss can only be a small dent, like an accident." Words and feelings don't have history or future for Dan, and Peter marvels at his purposefulness. He can slap Peter's back, then call him a pansy. "We need more from you," Dan had said just moments ago in Peter's quarterly performance review. Peter didn't understand; he was working sixty or seventy hours a week. "Don't tell me you're going to do the best you can do. That's an excuse for failure. Tell me that you're going to do it. That's it. That's all. Succeed," Dan said. A winner doesn't see the limit, doesn't realize that a limit is there. Peter picks up a pencil, reaches for a legal pad, and opens the law book. HOLMES, T H E C O M M O N LAW (1881) Possession To gain possession, then, a man must stand in a certain physical relation to the object and to the rest of the world, and must have a certain intent. These relations and this intent are the facts of which we are in search. The physical relation to others is simply a relarion of manifested power coextensive with the intent, and will need to have but little said about it when the nature of the intent is settled.

Endless apartments, banks, stone, stillnessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a brief moment in the battle when thrust meets thrust, currents held in a pause. He comes to the fifties, behind the great hotels. Old important clients, opera tickets, dinners in apartments with divorced hostesses, old tapestries covering hardwood floors. Papers blow, newspapers, packages of cigarettes, a flyer advertising a march through Harlem. He's never been to Harlem. A huge bus roars past. He feels carefree, the scarf around his neck, the open topcoat. Someday he will see his name mentioned in an article in the New York Times. The wind blows into his face. He lives in the most famous city in the world. A New Yorker, it means something. 1928 is

Berkeley Fiction Review carved in the cornerstone of a building. Peter runs his hand over the cold stone and thinks of the progress of the world, the pavement and architecture, the great men of histoty. He crosses the street to a jewelry shop, where a girl with fine blonde hair lays things out in the window. She wears white gloves and arranges the pieces with great care. Their eyes meet and she's holding a gold necklace. Peter thinks of the excitement he felt when his family drove to the city when he was a boy. They drove from upstate New York every December to go Christmas shopping, then again in the spring. Peter would wake up the day that they were going to leave and kick his legs under the covers in anticipation. All of the bigness, the sounds, the importance of the city. He finds himself at Times Square, where he stops, sits on a bench and stares at a prostitute. She wears a tight miniskirt and a fake fur jacket, but she doesn't look like the prostitutes in the movies. She doesn't smile. She shivers. He walks by her and their eyes meet. "Hello," he says. "Would you like to go on a date?" she asks. She looks him in the eye, giving no tenderness. He is amazed that the transaction can be so simple. The Arab man has no expression on his face as he hands over the room key. Peter pulls the blanket back and there is a single black pubic hair on the white sheet. Her hair is dyed blonde, frizzy and dry. Her lips are flooded with red lipstick. He asks her to brush her hair back, put it in a ponytail, and wipe off her lipstick. Her breasts are large, stretching out the nylon fabric of her top. She doesn't look like a drug addict. He can not tell how young she is. He does not want to fuck because of AIDS. A hand job is fifty bucks. He asks if he can rub his dick between her breasts, ten bucks extra, she says, twenty if he comes in her face. It feels nice for a moment, her warm skin, but then he looks at her and she looks disinterested. She washes her hands in the sink. He wonders where she comes from, if she likes living in the city. She said that her name was Mary. "Do you sleep?" he asks. "What?" "Do you sleep at night?" She screws up her face. "I sleep in the day." 44

Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking He thinks about taking her shopping, making her beautiful. She could be beautiful. "Will you sleep with me? I just want to sleep." ' T h a t will be extra." "Yes." She lies on the bed next to him and puts her arm around him. His eyes are closed, but he can feel her eyes open and staring. Her weight next to him lulls him to sleep. That's all that it is, he thinks, weight.

Peter: My hearr beats too fast, I have heart palpitations, there are pains everywhere in my chest. Psychiatrist: Have you been taking the prescription? Peter: Its side effect is orgasmic dysfunction. It is difficult to meet people. I met this woman at a party, she worked at Goldman Sachs; she had blonde hair. Psychiatrist: What do you picture yourself doing ten years from now? Peter: I want to be playing tennis. I want to be drinking mineral water. When I was a boy, I couldn't sleep one nighr, rhe Exorcist was on TV, my mother rubbed my back, her hand going around in a circle, rubbing around and around, around and around. She's proud of me now. Psychiatrist: You should take deep breaths when you can't sleep, you should take a hot bath, exercise. Peter: I used to believe in God. I believed that the world would be destroyed by fire. I wanted to be good so that I would be one of the few to go to heaven. I knew that I would be one of the ones to go to heaven.

Two pills out of the small, plastic bottle stuffed with cotton. Two white solid powders containing sleep. He pops the pills into his mouth. One sticks in his throat and he takes another swig of water. "Do not 45

Berkeley Fiction Review exceed recommended dosage," he reads. "May cause dizziness or sleeplessness." The chemicals flow through his blood, flow into his brain, and he imagines that the pills contain a not quite adequately tested ingredientâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;his body will seize up from sleep, a stroke, an aneurysm, and he won't be1 able to move his left side.

"One person's ceiling is another persons floor," Dan said. "Show me what you can give us. Show me how you give more." "It would be nice if you could come home for Thanksgiving," his father said. "For your morher." He can't remember if Nan said that she loved him. Who can argue with more? Give me, give me, give me. Give me some more. His arm aches with the weight of his briefcase. He notices a black man walking past the steps to his apartment, a black man with a baseball cap on his head. Peter clenches the keys in his pocket and places one key between his first and second fingers. He takes both hands out of his pockets, walks boldly, and stares ahead as if he is the aggressor. If the black man makes a move, it will only take one punch to the face, and the key will gouge his cheek. Peter imagines the black man taking out a sharpened screwdriver, and Peter slaps it out of his hand, kicks him in the balls, and punches him in the stomach. The black man is on the ground. Peter's teeth are clenched like Clint Eastwood's, and he speaks in a tough whisper. "You've got to learn a lesson. You shouldn't hurt people. You'd better learn a lesson. I'm going to teach you a lesson. If you hurt people, sometimes they hurt you back. Do you hear me? You'd better learn a lesson. You should go back to school. You should get a job. I could hurt you right now. I could jab that fucking screwdriver right up your ass. Do you hear me?" They walk by each other without the exchange of a glance.

David Letterman is over.

One should not sleep late one should establish a regular sleep schedule if 46

Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking one sleeps late, then one will have to go to bed late but if one wakes up early, then one can go to bed early new insights into patterns of sleep have come from studies with the ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH but no researcher can yet say precisely what sleep "is," similarly, the immature adult with stomach troubles who requires special feeding and attention by his wife may unconsciously be forcing her to give him a kind of mothering that he never grew up enough to do without brain waves of hundreds of experimental subjects show that we fall asleep in four stages and awake in reverse order a fatal dose is ten to twenty times the normal dose all the directions for the structure and functioning of our bodies are contained in our chromosomes which contains our genes these are molecules and parts of molecules and there are complexities and unknowns one must not arbitrarily assume such illnesses to be neurotic but seek professional diagnosis

"We've got to file those pleadings today," Dan says, angrily. Some men inspire fear in other menâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they're born with that capacity. Peter wants to marshal his confidence, make it coexistent with each of his gestures. He sits on the toilet, to escape the office. Words and images pass through his head again and again. I am a gifted person. He listens to men walk in and out of the restroom, the sounds of belches, brisk footsteps, diarrhea, hand washing. When he reads the words in the law books, it seems as if they won't go into his head. "I've been working hard," he tells himself. "I deserve to win this. I should win this." He rubs his face and flushes the toilet.

A thought becomes a thing the thing sticks in your head bounces around stores don't close not in a society in which mothers work do you actively seek out humor in your lift and spend some time laughing every day compassion can also be a casualty the elderly find that their slumber becomes more fitful do you frequently act and respond in a spontaneous manner rather than in a controlled and calculated fashion do you tell others beforehand how much time you have allotted for what you are about to do the body's natural tendency to seek equilibrium a bundle of 10,000 nerve cells light hits the retina and the message is carried to the brain a sleep-inducing 47-

David Letterman is over.

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Berkeley Fiction Review chemical as yet unidentified accumulates during the time a person is up do you think predominantly in "I" terms with you at the center of attention the urge to doze grows stronger and stronger and eventually a person nods off cheap safe and efficient illumination throughout the darkest nights

Peter wakes up.

He takes out his wallet, opens it, and there's a crisp hundred-dollar bill in it. But the man behind the counter will not sell him a beer. Peter tries to yell, but he can't. He's with a woman in a black evening dress, but she's a secretary, her skin is old, her nails are long and pink, she smokes. Dan laughs, his mouth wide open. Peter's mouth mashes against the secrerary's mouth (her mouth is wide and moist); he reaches out his arm to put around Dan's waist; he kisses Dan (his mouth is strong and tight); they rub noses. The man behind the counter laughs. Peter runs out of the diner. Everything is gray and the buildings rise up forever. A large man wearing a ragged black cashmere jacket holds out a grimy hand. Peter is afraid of germs. He sees his grandmother crossing the street wearing a black dress, and he runs to her. He puts his hand on her shoulder, says "Grandma," and she turns and hisses at him. His eyes are open. He sees darkness, feels his room. He must have been asleep. He's not sure if he has slept. Then, he's not sure if he's awake. Does he ride the subway into the office, the clacking of the rails, the people trapping him? Was he a child? How much money does he have in the bank? Ten years ago when he was an undergraduate, he slept. Ten years from now his temples might be gray, he might have a place in the country. He hugs the pillow to his head. He counts his breaths; one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand. He prays to the God he prayed to as a boy: "God almighty. God creating and damning, you who made Man in the image of God. Oh God, no I don't believe, I admit I don't believe, but I do try to do good, I will try to do good. I cannot do good if I cannot sleep. Oh God, give me sleep. I ask only for sleep." If a caveman woke up in the middle of the night, the caveman would

Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking not look at a clock; he would not care what time it was. Fatigue mixes with a spark of alertness, his head pounds, no breath is deep enough to clear the lungs. He hugs his pillow. The caveman might wake up and be afraid of being eaten. The caveman would sleep with others, sleep around a fire, one caveman sraying up each night to keep watch. The birds start chirping. Sharp sunlight peeks through the blinds. The early morning cars pass by on their way to a new day of work. First one, then two, then they come regularly. Sunshine blares through the window.

Central Park is noisier toward the Harlem side. He takes off his jacket and tosses it over his shoulder, becoming hor in the morning sun's increasing glare. "Nan, it's me," he says to himself. "Here I am, now." Last night, he dressed in the blue wool suit he bought in London. He felt perfect, warm, debonair. The entire city was partying. He decided that he would drink all night, go from bar to bar. There were brilliant laughing faces at the first bar. He sipped a gin and tonic. In an artsy bar, a dark, dramatic eye blazed for a moment, then disappeared. He drank a scotch on the rocks. He gave a bottle of champagne to a woman sleeping on a subway grate; her sharp cheekbones made him think that she had once been beautiful. "Thank you," she said, opening her eyes, then closing them. "I've noticed that you haven't been all here," Dan had said. "We don't feel as if you're giving us your all." Peter reaches up to his neck, but his tie isn't there. It was a silk tie, a Hermes, the first tie he'd bought after moving to the city. A door of a brownstone hangs open, a gutted building, burned. He remembers the smile on his doorman Max's face when he gave him his Christmas present, the cufflinks. Max always said yes sir, no sir. Peter wonders if people sleep in the gutted building. A black man with a black hat on his head plays an electric piano, "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head." Anorher man is slouched, sleeping next to him, holding a forty- ounce bottle of Olde English. Peter puts a dollar into his can. He feels good. He puts another fifty cents into the can. This is not a dream, he thinks. He lool^s ahead and 49

Peter wakes up.

Berkeley Fiction Review sees people going into a church, all dressed up. They're going to praise God. If there is a God to serve, he would serve that God, he thinks. He walks toward the church. "The final push is always the most important moment," Dan had said. The sun pokes at Peters eyes, and he feels as if he is dying. Almost no one had ever not praised Peter. A woman stops him. "We need money," she says, "to keep the shelter open." Peter reaches into his pocket, but there is nothing. He pulls out his wallet, there is nothing. She stares into his eyes. "I didn't sleep last night," he says, "I can't sleep." She takes his hand. Her hand feels fragile, but it is warm. "I have a lor of money," he says. "I can make a lot of money. I'll give you money. Something needs to be done." She smiles. Warm. Concerned. "What is your name?" he asks. "My name is Sally." "I once knew a girl named Sally; it was in the fourth grade. I was very happy in the fourth grade. I liked studying geography." She nods her head and walks on. He walks by the church. A man stands in the doorway, a green robe, his black head shaved and shiny. Peter walks to a pay phone, picks up the receiver and hears a dial tone. "Just organize yourself better," Dan said. He hears music, yelling, and clapping coming from the church. He dials Nan's number. It rings four times, her answering machine, Madonna. He thinks that he's not a winner, or he just doesn't want to win, or he's lost. Nan's friendly voice says, "Please leave a message after the tone." "Nan, it's Peter. I want to see you, I've been drinking all night and I want the two of us to drive somewhere and just drive for a while, to the mountains or something. I've got to get out of here, I feel so fucking weird right now. I just feel so fucking weird. Please call me immediately, I'm at a pay phone, but I'm going home now. I'll be at homeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" and the tone cuts him off. The man in the green robe shakes people's hands vigorously, grasps and hugs people. Peter sits down on the curb and watches the man hug 50

Sleeping And Not Sleeping And Waking one person after another, his large and joyful arms seeming as if they have all of the energy and answers of life. If there was a way out, he thinks: He watches each person walk away after being hugged: a boy holds his grandmother's hand, two women laugh, an old man adjusts his hat on his head. Peter takes out his handkerchief and wipes a spot off of his shoe. "I'm going to be President of the United States," he says. His voice sounds as if it comes from outside of him, hollow and strange. "President," he says. "President." A siren cuts through the air and he closes his eyes, letting himself be carried away into the approaching funnel of sound. Who would have known? he thinks. No one could have known.

Rime Of The Sweaty Girl The dog does not belong to the girl, but to a neighbor. R i m e

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G i r l Shawna Ryan

The girl sweats and meditates on the heat.

There is a heat. My pores open up to oppose the dryness with their moisture. And there is a listlessness in the heat, which makes any Luis Bunuel-surrealist filmmaker working from the movement surreal, lifted by a plagiarist's hand 1920s to the 1970s. Works from a Bunuel film. include Belle dujour, starring Catherine Deneuve. There is a step in the heat. I sit upon this step. There is a house connected to the step, casting a shadow under which my feet curl in respite from the sun. There is a lawn, green and gold, extending The girl sits on her front from the step in the heat. From my step, I watch step in the shade and looks at her front lawn. the blades of grass on this lawn, green and gold, drawing heat from the parched earth. A path of brown creeps slowly up each stalk until the grass bends, wilts, like sleepy-headed children in deference to the sun.

A dog lounges on the front lawn. dog-noun. 1. a domesticated animal related to the fox, wolf, and jackal. 2. a mean, contemptible fellow. 3. a mechanical device for holding or grappling. 4. [slang] feet. 5. [slang] an unsatisfying person or thing. The dog stretches and looks at the girl. 52

There is a dog on the lawn, green and gold, that extends from the step in the heat. The dog (in the heat and light and not in the shadow of the house) rises from its matted bed of sleepy headed grass, stretching slowly his haunches and forelegs. He shakes out the drowsiness then turns laudanum eyes to me, on the step, in the shade, my feet curled and protected. The dog does not belong here, on the lawn, green and gold, that extends from the step in

The dog walks toward the girl. movement-a moving or manner of moving OR an evacuation (of the bowels) OR a change in the location of troops OR a principal division of a symphony OR rhythm

the heat. He is not my dog. As the shadow of the house connected to the step creeps along, darkness licking the edges of the lawn, the dog, his knotted brown fur highlighted with strands of gold grass, makes a movement towards me. I do not want to share my shade with the knotted brown fur dog who smells of heat and oil. I open my lips, forcing out sound against the heat that battles for a place in my throat.

"Go dog! Go!" I bark. "Home dog! Home!" The wagging tail droops and the dog turns The girl tells the dog to once more, away from me. In the still, still air his nails click on the cement, a click clack tip go home. The dog walks away tap snip snap in movement away. In the time it from the house and to takes for the dog to reach the road, the shade the road. has extended to the edge of the lawn, the sun setting serenely behind the house. The dog gives a last glance towards me. The dog stands "Go!" indecisively at the edge And as the dog steps off the curb, a man, of the road, wanting to turn back towards the bursting through a mirage of oily distortion, shade of the house. existing in a different time-world within a cool gotomovealongtoworkprop erlyoperatetoacttoresulttop air-conditioned loud music pumping bass blown asssaidoftimetobecometobe back hair environment, drives past in his car. This expressedsungtoharmonize agreetobeacceptedtoleaved very man, with a speed unfamiliar in this heat, eparttocometoanendfailto hits the knotted brown fur dog, exploding the beallottedorsoldtoreachex tendtobeabletopasstobeca dog's body upward in a dark, fast arc against the )ableofbeingdividedtobe cloudless blue sky. ongtotravelalongtoputu pwith

time-every moment there has ever been or ever will be a system of measuring duration [standard time] the period during which something exists, happens, etc [usually pi.] a period of history; age, era, etc [usually pi.] a set period or term, as 53

Rime Of The Sweaty Girl The dog does not belong to the girl, but to a neighbor. R i m e

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T h e

S w e a t y

G i r l Shawna Ryan

The girl sweats and meditates on the heat.

The dog walks toward the girl. movement-a moving or manner of moving OR an evacuation (of the bowels) OR a change in the location of troops OR a principal division of a symphony OR rhythm

Berkeley Fiction Review of work, confinement, etc standard rate of pay rate of speed in marching, driving, etc a precise or designated instant, moment, day, etc an occasion or repeated occasion rhythm as determined by the grouping of beats into measures tempo

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rom the beginning, Kenneth had been honest about the fact that he was married. He'd told Claire that his marriage was a loveless sham, a convenience, and said divorce was imminent now that he had found someone he really cared for. He and his wife had grown apart after marrying too quickly, too young. He came to the city all the time on business; his wife was always out selling Westchester County real estate. They hardly ever saw each other. He'd gone to Puerto Rico on business, he told Claire—conferences, tedious banquet dinners, golf. And although he wasn't gone for long, one Wednesday night without him (he always "worked late" midweek) helped her to make up her mind: she was tired of waiting. She would tell him she couldn't see him anymore. She didn't like to think about what had made the others leave, but now—in the confident flush of her decision about Kenneth—she could look coolly at the events of the past. She'd sent Martin roses and made Gary a dinner that costed more than a hundred dollars at Balducci's (she had taken special pride in ordering fiddlehead ferns out of season, meeting the eyes of the gruff produce manager and cocking her head to say, "Yes, please, no matter what they cost," imagining he knew it was all for a man). Martin had waited two days to call to thank her and then never called again. Gary stopped sleeping over, saying it wasn't worth it since he got up so early to go running. At least this time, she'd be the one to end things. So when Kenneth called at the studio the next Monday, as she was gathering her things together to ask if she would meet him at the

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Berkeley Fiction Review Rainbow Room for a drink, she said no. It was almost eight o'clock, she was hungry. She was going home, to order in Chinese, and put on her sweats. It was supposed to drop to 10 below by midnight. Fine, he'd meet her there, bring a bottle of wine. She had cramps, wanted to go to bed early. It was the strongest she'd ever resisted, and she was sure the cramps would deter him, but he persisted. He'd missed her, he said, wanted to see her; a quiet evening sounded great, he'd show her his photos from Puerto Rico. It was nice to see him, when he walked in the apartment door and his bulky shape filled its frame before he shut it; he strode across the wooden floor, scrunching up the rag rug, to kiss her. Her apartment always seemed changed with him in it, as if it couldn't quite contain him. It was more than just his height, although at six feet, he was eight inches taller than she; it was something in his energy that made the room seem too small. His voice boomed off the walls, his footsteps pounded, even the sound of his showering seemed too much for the small studio apartment to contain. When he sat on her futon sofa, where she curled up alone so perfectly, it was as if it had been custom made, his knees jutted up and his feet slid restlessly under her coffee table, kicking the fallen TV section of the Times, stepping on the paperback that had slipped from her hand when he walked in. "How's your time?" "I should catch the ten-oh-seven." Claire looked at the clock radio on the table next to the phone. 8:35. She'd give them until nine. "How are you feeling?" He was slipping a dark bottle of wine from a paper bag. She grimaced, held her stomach. "Aw." He made a sympathetic pout, bent his face with his mane of wispy brown hair toward her. The buzzer sounded. Claire leapt up, jogged to the intercom, pushed the button. She opened the apartment door, called "Up here," listened to the delivery man climb three flights of stairs with her fragrant mooshu pork, her favorite sweet and sour soup, her little stapled packets of waxed paper holding mustard and soy sauce. He wore a yellow rain slicker although it wasn't raining. Cold lifted off of him in waves. She took the bag and handed him ten dollars. Kenneth had already eaten. 56

The Splendor Of Orchids She never got to finish the food, though, because when Kenneth got up to use the bathroom, pounding again across her floor, and pushing further askew the slippery rug, she reached in his briefcase for the photos he said were in the pocket, and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper: a typed itinerary for Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Cook and children. At first she thought it was a name, as if another couple, the Childs, had traveled with them. At the two hotels listed, a master suite was booked, with an additional room having twin beds and a supplemental cot. Three kids. The loud flush of the toilet startled her, the way it always did when someone else used it, and she tucked the itinerary back in the briefcase. The photos showed palm trees, a rain forest, sugar plantations, pink, green, and yellow stucco houses with lacy wrought-iron balconiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;none of the people except Kenneth standing, smiling in a straw hat against a golf cart. Which one of his children had taken that, she wondered. She asked so many questions-what he did, where he ate, whom he metâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; that she marveled at how smoothly he lied, the ease with which he must have been making things up. The more he talked, the more she froze into not confronting him with what she'd found. She would rely on what she'd planned to say, as if she'd never seen the word children, the words supplemental cot. So when he slipped the photos in his inside coat pocket and leaned back, smiling, to stretch his arm toward her, to run his fingers up and down her back, she started, "I can't do this any more. You need to work out your own life, your own problems. It's not fair to me, to you, to her." He didn't put up much of an argument, not as much as she'd hoped. His hand dropped from her back and he looked down at the floor, nodding, his chin almost touching the knot of his tie. He didn't seem to notice how hollow Claire's words sounded, how rehearsed, how obviously echoing with all they weren't saying. At last he looked up. "I'm sorry. I've asked too much of you. Your patience. Your good will." He reached oyer and ran his index finger along the curve of her cheek, her jaw bone, and when he reached her throat, she twisted away and stood up. "I don't want to lose you, Claire." "You can't have it both ways, you know. If you make a decision, let me know." 57

Berkeley Fiction Review "You're right," he said. And then, after standing, shrugging into his camel's hair coat, and wrapping his scarf around his neck, he said, "You'll be fine." He bent to kiss the top of her head and walked out the door. She leaned into it when it closed. She had stopped shaking by the time she remembered her half-rolled pancake, her cold soup. Although he'd left, the room was still too small. She grabbed her coat, hat, and gloves, and ran down the stairs to the street. The wind from the river raised dead leaves and bits of trash, whirling them around her feet. Her street ran through an unnumbered wedge of Greenwich Village, between the solid flanks of Seventh Avenue and Hudson Street; a pocket of tree-lined cobbled streets, old brownstones with black-painted iron banisters and flower boxes, red townhouses with arches of shadow where the newer brick met the old, when stoops had been torn down and original front doors bricked over to turn houses into flats. Nothing was higher than five stories. She turned north on West Fourth, passing restaurants, florists, and cafes whose windows steamed with heat and breath, toward the blinking pink neon of the crisply lettered LIQUORS sign, the golden dot of a traffic signal up ahead at Jane Street, the word DELICATESSEN in lit red letters from the cornice of a building, all foreshortened in the black night. It looked like an album cover, a movie still, a poster picture of All Night New York. It would be her lover now, this city with its richness of pleasures in neon, its swirling trash, its aching, vibrant life. It would never lie to her. The next morning she woke to shovels scraping pathways beneath her window. Curbs disappeared under the snow, parked cars made hunched hills, and off every surface shone a million reflections of the harsh morning sun. At street intersections, snow had been pushed and mounded into piles taller than most pedestrians, piles that would harden and turn black and melt. Sand, salt, and kitty litter dusted the busier sidewalks; footprints became dark pockets of slush. The snow was melting in the sun, but when the temperature dropped again into the single digits at night, it would freeze into sheets of ice. When the first hang-up call came, Claire shrugged it off as random error. But when it happened three times in one night, and the caller didn't hang up but stayed on the line, breathing as Claire heard her 58

The Splendor OfOrchids own repeated query—"Yes? Hello, yes?"—echo in the apartment, she pulled out the thin silver cord and left the phone disconnected until the next day. They started coming two, three times a week, either in the late afternoon, four or five, or around ten or eleven at night. Never on weekends. The phone would ring, she'd pick it up, and there'd be a brief moment of imagining Kenneth punching in her number—to say he'd made a mistake, before his wife walked in, and he had to hang up—and then she'd hear the sound of the blizzards engulfing the city, buzzing with the absence of all they blotted out. No, it wasn't Kenneth at the other end of the line, but a shapeless phantom with a pale delicate hand, moonglow fingernails bitten short, blue subdermal veins, holding a receiver, not hanging up. At work, callers identified themselves. She arrived by eight to find Gerald and Nina hovering over the huge 4 x 5 camera in the middle of the studio, holding light meters and flicking flashes like a wink of sunlight. Harmon's studio was in a loft on the sixth floor of an old warehouse on West Eighteenth Street. Two of its walls were taken up with huge, single-paned windows that looked out onto the leaden sky, the gray and brown buildings of Chelsea blanketed with snow that melted in patches to show tar paper and froze again to shine like glass. Below the windows, steam heaters hissed and banged, but the loft stayed so cold everyone wore mittens and scarves. A kitchen and offices had been built along the inside wall, but Claire worked at one of the long tables set up behind the elevator shaft, where the plants were lined up on counters, tagged, trimmed, and misted with atomizers, ready for sacrifice under the hot lamps and the camera's lens. She worked freelance, eight hours a day to write, copy, read galleys and mechanicals, think about flowers—their colors and growing characteristics. This month had been orchids. Next month: poppies. The phone became the first thing Claire looked at in the morning when she awoke, and the last thing before falling asleep. She turned to it as soon as she walked in the door at the end of the day and watched it all evening as if her stare would keep it from ringing. She started talking to herself whenever she passed in front of the window, drawing the blinds as soon as she got home, and practicing a deep, gruff voice. 59

Berkeley Fiction Review She learned that if she uncoupled the phone from the machine she didn't have to hear the ring. She didn't even have to say hello. When she'd gone five days without a hang-up, she thought it was over and was on her way to reconnect the machine to the phone when she stopped, halfway across the room, at the sound of a loud click. The machine beeped twice, flashed its red light and then glowed its green as it played the recorded message she'd changed to eliminate her name and emphasize that "we're not here to take your call." She tiptoed to it, slid up the volume button, and—when all she heard was the moist smack of tongue against palate—pulled the machine's cord firmly from the wall. She went back to doing the dishes, but kept looking over her shoulder, armpits clammy, as though a stranger had entered her apartment and occupied her favorite chair. It had been in the single digits for three days in a row. Thin tears of ice ran along the edges of the studio windows, and the plants were blanketed under heavy plastic tarp. The mechanicals were supposed to go to the printer in two days, but Gerald told her not to bother coming in the next day, it was too cold. He photocopied the mechanicals for her, and told her to phone in any mistakes she found. It was almost eight by the time she reached her apartment door to turn the police lock, drop the deadbolt, and push in. Her purse fell heavily from her shoulder, tugging against her wrist,and banging into the grocery bag whose corded handles cut into her bare hand. Slippery magazines and bills slid to the floor. She dropped everything in disgust-keys, gloves, purse, bag, mail—and, from the hall light coming through the open door behind her, watched the room contract to the round table next to the armchair. There it sat, crouching, a trick in its passive quiet: the phone. Its red light beamed solidly. At least six calls. She shut the door and moved to the futon, her coat still hanging from her shoulders, to collapse and grab a pillow to her chest. Last summer, when she was between jobs, she had painted the walls of the apartment a pale yellow, a color she'd mixed specially to match a Pantone swatch. Dressed in a T-shirt and old jeans, she'd opened the windows wide to the sounds of kids playing softball in the playground across the street, the salsa beat of the downstairs neighbors' radio, and a breeze that felt clean and fresh against her forehead as she painted. She'd taped 60

The Splendor Of Orchids the edges carefully, and squared off each wall with a roller's width of paint before filling in the expanse with color. It was a lovely color, with a tinge of peachy warmth. She'd kept the baseboards and window and door trim a glossy linen white. The apartment had been hers then, all hers, but it wasn't any longer. It had been invaded by the phantom, its four walls appropriated by the accusation in the silenced phone. It had been two weeks since they'd broken up, but she still found herself looking for one of Kenneth's stray socks under the sofa, a tie draped over the back of a chair. Other men had left remnants behind, remnants that Claire had kept in place for a while—Martin's toothbrush on the edge of her sink, Gary's sweatshirt on the knob of her closet door—as a way to hold onto the presence of these men who'd slept in her bed, propped their feet on the edge of the tub, draped an arm around her hip as she stirred a delicate sauce. By the time the toothbrush found its way to the bucket beneath the sink, silver polish caked at the base of its mashed bristles, and the sweatshirt had been washed and cut into squares for dusting, Claire had made of her apartment a shrine to the masculinity that had passed through its doors. But now, looking around the room, she blinked at her furniture, its shadows looming like stains against the dimness, oddly unfamiliar, and startlingly empty. Now it was just she and the red light, the only bright thing in the room. Claire stood stiffly, removing her coat and walking to the closet. She bent to pick up the scattered mail and her purse and placed them neatly on the dresser. In the kitchen, she pulled the chain of the overhead light and the room filled with brightness. There. She pulled groceries from the bag, put them away, leaving the broccoli, red peppers and two eggs in the sink for dinner. Back in the living room, she pulled the shades, kicked off her cold, damp shoes, and found her thick wool socks under the futon. She walked over to the table and pushed the "Playback" button on the phone. The tape rewound almost half its length, and Claire leaned against the chair, waiting. Five sharp beeps signaled a successful rewind, and then it began to play Silence. Clicks. Muffled breaths. She made herself listen, holding her hands away from the cords. More clicks. What sounded like a stifled giggle. Then a voice, young, female, but trying to sound older and male so that for a strange, disorienting moment Claire wondered if the tape had somehow captured her own gruff answerings: "Yes, hello? This is a call for Ms. Bridgeman." 61

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"Who's calling?" Her own voice was sharp. "Claire Bridgeman is a slut. Claire Bridgeman fucks married men." The voice was still so polite that as Claire slammed down the receiver, her heart pounding, she wondered if she was overreacting. She pulled the cord and held it in her hand for ten minutes, then plugged it back in to call Gerald, telling him that she'd had to run out before the deli across the street closed. They went over the corrections, and Gerald reminded her of Harmon's policy that the actual mechanicals had to be signed off on before going to the printer, not just the photocopies. She'd need to come in the next day. He told her, "Hey, stay warm tonight. Stay in" and when her hand peeled off the receiver, it left a starfish of moisture on the smooth white plastic. Now she knew the calls weren't from Richard's wife, either, but whenever she started to consider who they were from, she'd stop at the fact that she'd been found out. And fast on the heel of that fact was another, whose sharpness stunned her on the treacherous streets on her bundled way to the studio the next morning, her eyes no farther than the patch of ice her next footstep would avoid: He was married, and she'd known it all along.

A pleasant voice, if somehow altered, almost professional. "We're taking a survey and would like a moment of your time. Have you ever slept with a married man?" Claire reeled, and moved to stop the machine, but the next message had already started and her hand stilled at the sound of the same voice, fiercer this time: "We must know. How many times have you slept with a married man?" Claire pulled her hands to her stomach, pressing her palms against the narrow barrel of her ribcage. Beneath the soft wool of her sweater, her upper arms were clammy. Who would know? They had to be cranks. Kids looking in the Manhattan phone directory for names with the giveaway of a single woman: first initial; no address. It was a coincidence. It had to be. But then, just as she felt her body relax with a release of breath, came the whispered reminder, its tone a threat: "Adultery is a sin," and Claire's right hand fluttered but from under her arm to hit the "Playback" button, yank the cord from the jack, put out the red light. Her window shades were thick, but not opaque, and later that night, when she went to bed, the image of her own shadow moving behind them was enough to make her crouch on the floor and crawl to the table, click off the lamp, undress in the dark.

They closed the Exotics catalog, and at the end of the day, Gerald handed her an orchid to take home. At first, she resisted. An orchid required a great deal of care, she knew; she'd written the copy detailing its need for frequent misting and proper drainage in porous rock or chips of bark. But then he said, "The splendor of Phalanopsis brings sophistication and understated elegance to any living space," quoting her own words, which he'd set in four different display fonts before finalizing the layout. So she smiled and took it. She wrapped itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it was a Phalanopsis, lavender and magenta with faint etchings of redâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in layers, first a paper tent over its delicate pillow of a bud, then plastic sheeting loosely over that, followed by a blanket of bubble wrap, and lastly, placed it in the cardboard box she found under the sink arid sprinkled Styrofoam worms all around it. But in the narrow vestibule downstairs, her carefully arranged bundles failed her. With full hands Claire had no way of opening the door. She propped her knee against the wall and balanced the box on her thigh, pulled on her hat, tightened her scarf around her neck, lifted her purse

It was nice and quiet working at home; she kept her feet in the wool socks and drank mugs of herbal tea. Outside the window, just beyond the reflection of her lamp hovering against the glass, the sky stayed the same gray all day; no wind rattled the bare branches of the ginkgo tree against the fire escape. She felt as though she were inside a cloud. By four o'clock she'd checked the mechanicals three times, slugging the captions and verifying all botanical names. She found a few minor corrections, things Gerald could fix with a knife, and called the studio. On her hands and knees to plug in the phone and machine, she knew she couldn't leave her phone disconnected forever. She was a freelancer, after all. Gerald was in the middle of a shoot, would call her right back. So Claire didn't think twice when the phone rang a few minutes later. But when she said, "Hi, you ready?" and there was no response, something sank in her belly. A quick intake of breath and a voice, the same as the night before, distressingly polite: "Claire Bridgeman, please."

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Berkeley Fiction Review strap over her head, fingered in her pocket for a subway token, and opened the heavy door, sticking a booted foot in the space to hold it open. Cold rushed in, tossing snow onto the wet floor. She gathered her bundles to her chest and pushed out. It had been snowing since noon. In the failing four o'clock light, the freshly fallen drifts looked blue. The subway was only half a block away, but snow gathered quickly in the creases of her coat sleeves. She reached the station steps, mounded with layers of ice, clouded white and jet black, frosted on top with fresh snow, and descended carefully Even in the cold, the corridor reeked of urine and disinfectant, and looking ahead through the bulb-lit gloom, she stopped. In less than twenty minutes, she'd be turning the key in the door of her apartment and walking into the room where the machine waited, messages lurking in its silver tape. She ran back up to the street, to the air that didn't stink but tingled her nose and throat, toward the lights draped on the bare branches of the trees along Seventh Avenue, and into the back seat of a taxi that had just let someone out at the corner. She told the driver the Met, and he slapped down the metal flag. It was an older cab, without a thick plastic wall between front seat and back, and Claire leaned forward into the open space. "Take Sixth Avenue, please." The cab braked through the slush to turn east on Sixteenth Street. "Hell of a night to be going anywhere." She leaned back against the sloping seat. "Mm." "We're in for another big one." "Oh?" In the rear view mirror, his eyes were brilliant blue under bushy brows. The pale skin on the back of his neck looked soft above a wool scarf and below bristles of short, dark hair. "Yep. Some system's moving down from Canada, gonna hit early morning. No one's going nowhere tomorrow. Ain't seen anything like it in forty, fifty years, they say." "It's been snowing all afternoon." Claire tilted her head and licked her lips. Chapped. His eyes met hers in the mirror. She turned her head, sat up straight. "This is nothing." His hand moved to his hair, smoothed it. "City's gonna shut down. Hope you live close to the Met." 64

The Splendor Of Orchids "No, I live downtown." Claire crossed her legs. He laughed. "Well, then I hope you got the shoes." She smiled, looked out the window. "I have an orchid in my care," she announced. "A rare, valuable flower." "A florist, huh?" "No. I'm a copywriter for a garden catalog." "What catalog? I get a lot." "Harmon's Garden Catalog." "Don't know it." Their eyes met again in the mirror. "Not Victoria's Secret?" Claire felt a smile, prim, and looked away. "Not exactly." Outside the window, the stilled, white city passed, hulking castiron buildings of Sixth Avenue giving way, after the dullness of shut-up second floor envelope-and-box printers, streetfront florists, sweatshop garment factories, the blackened brick and limestone of the upper Twenties and Thirties, to the billboard jazz of Times Square where high up on a dark facade the national debt spun frantically to the fourth decimal point, to the hard-edged, moneyed glass-and-steel glitter of midtown. Then it fell, suddenly at Fifty-ninth Street opposite the grand hotels, into the dark park where black branches bent with fallen snow and lamplight glowed against stone bridges and shone on frozen ponds. Something fell in Claire, too, to anonymity and quiet, and when she looked up toward the front seat again, the cabbie was shaking his big head, shaggy hair swaying above a thick neck, and softly repeating, "The Met." She felt the bones in her own hands moving, and looked into her lap to see her fists clenching and unclenching. Kenneth was wrong. She wasn't fine at all. The cab stopped in front of the museum. Snow fell in big, wet clumps, and she walked toward the huge banners above the front steps, which proclaimed Degas, Alexandrian sculpture, and Japanese woodcuts in white letters on fabric whose color looked leeched by the gray dusk. In the entryway, overhead space heaters spilled hot air. A blue-uniformed guard raised his hands. "Check your packages, please." Straight ahead, a profusion of lilies and tulips and long, serpentine branches of pussy willow exploded from a huge porcelain vase atop a marble pedestal. Piano music tinkled down from the mezzanine. Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not a crowd, but enough to fill the lobby with a buzz of 65

Berkeley Fiction Review voices—milled about in small clusters, consulting guidebooks and museum floor plans. Of course. Only visitors from out of town would come here on a night like this. Claire felt her spirits lift: the allure of anonymity still tugged at her, but now she felt vital, pulsing—a native among tourists. Holding her head high, she walked to the checkroom, where she checked her wraps and box, and then down the hall, past the roped-off floor mosaic of Medusa and the Greek statues, to the ladies' room. With every step, she felt the drama she carried grow more noticeable, a cloak of mystery trailing her, a wake of speculation. Surely these people could sense that she lived a life of strange phone calls, of thwarted attraction, of a lover cheating on his wife for her. But when she pushed through the swinging door and walked toward her reflection in the mirror above the row of sinks, she stopped. There was no mystery—only her hairline dotted with light freckles and swirled with hat—flattened auburn curls, her lips loose and dry with squares of chapped skin, her high, curved forehead beaded with perspiration. Saliva pooled at her back teeth and she tasted tin foil. She leaned against a basin and turned on the taps. She yanked her hands away: the water was scalding. Moving quickly to a stall, she bent over the toilet, but nothing happened. She turned around, lifted and pulled her clothing, sat. Nothing. Back at the sink, she splashed her face with cold water and forced herself to meet her own eyes, whispering "Okay, okay," to a metronome beat. Her hands, almost green in the fluorescent light, looked small and forlorn under the heavy fall of water. She pressed a paper towel to her face until she felt moisture seep through and worked a comb through her tangled hair. She held her own wrists, briefly, her thumbs and middle fingers making twin bracelets. Then she pushed out the door and hurried down the hall, through the lobby and up the stairs, past somber canvases of dourfaced nobility and dark resurrections, and into the nineteenth-century European collection: feverishly pink cheeks of Renoir maidens, Van Gogh's insistently peaked waves of paint. Against a wall, Rodin's Adam and Eve hunched in sorrow and shame, and just past them, she turned a corner to Degas's bronze castings. A ballerina stood under a glass dome, on her own pedestal, in a stiff, faded net tutu. Her head was lifted like a bud on the stem of her neck, one foot forward so that her weight slung in the balance of jutting hips, 66

The Splendor Of Orchids a real blue satin ribbon tied neatly around a bronze plait of hair. Alone in the gallery, Claire placed her feet in what she remembered as fourth position, her own belly heavy and dull. It was there she'd felt desire, sharp and quick, when she first knew she'd take Kenneth into her bed, as they sat in a dark corner of an Italian restaurant, feet touching under the table, her small fingers in his large hands. The ballerina's eyes were closed and her head was back, her face pure and serene, free from the complications of desire. The painting Claire had come to see without realizing it until she found herself in front of it, was Pygmalion and Galatea. Galatea's feet and calves, as fish-white as the block of marble they rose from, climbed to flushed thighs and buttocks and a dimpled back, shiny brown hair, arms that protested Pygmalion's too ardent admiration of what he'd wrought. He'd dropped his chisel and pushed a furtive hand on Galatea's breast. In the background of the painting, on a shelf beneath a puddly cupid, two masks opened their mouths in a scream. The crisp squeak of rubber on marble announced a guard in blue uniform. "Museum's closing in fifteen minutes." Snow was still falling, less clumpy now but faster, and sticking. As she moved to the top of the steps, it whirred and spun around her face, around the blinking red D O N ' T WALK sign at the curb, around the fountain, drained for winter, at the bottom of the steps, and around the rectangles of warm yellow light made by the windows across Fifth Avenue. Claire took small steps, as if these would lighten her weight, and held the polished brass railing with a gloved hand. She walked. The man in the coat check, whose mustached, sallow face reminded her of Lech Walesa's, had found an abandoned Bloomingdale's shopping tote for her, so the orchid was easier to carry. The snow was falling light and dry now, and there was no wind. On the sidewalk, her feet shuffled their way through drifts of fresh powder. She passed a few people, dog walkers and the occasional bundled pedestrian heading resolutely home, chins tucked into fine wool overcoats or shaggy furs. It was only six o'clock but it felt like midnight. Haloes of illuminated snow surrounded the globular street lamps and, twenty-five blocks away, the tall buildings of midtown disappeared in a smudgy yellow glow. The city was quiet, muted, yet she could feel it 67

Berkeley Fiction Review under her feet and in her fingertips, humming and pulsing: alive. At 79th Street, a bus would lumber alongside her and she would climb aboard, drop the token from earlier into the coin box, slump into a window seat. Her fingers and toes would tingle and her face would slacken in the warmth. Drowsiness would overwhelm her, seep into her bones like ink into paper, and she'd feel her lids grow heavy, her mouth dry. At home, she would lift the box from the Bloomingdale's tote and place it on the table. She would pull a blanket around her, burrow into the futon, and dream of snow surrounding her, falling dry and soft over the bump of her shoulder, the curve of her hip, the slope where her stomach dipped, and accumulating in the creases and bends of her clothes and body to make of her a generally round mound. With the falling snow would come whirring white noise ending in a hush, as big as a roar, one big pillow of oblivion. The snow would not be cold; it was only the air that was cold, she thought as she lifted her face into it, and when she threw open the windows, that air would chase from her apartment Kenneth's shadow and shape, the phone's incipient ring, the sting of her guilt. And she would sleep. When she awoke, she would sit up to a thick finger of snow on the narrow ledge outside her window, a painfully bright blue sky, and she would shake from her hair and the coat still around her body the flakes of fallen snow. She would pick up the silver cord and trail her hand along it back to the jack and plug it in. She would call New York Telephone and order a new number, and then she would turn to the window's bright light and see the box on the table. She would unwrap the orchid and find its magenta blossom sprung from its testicular bud. And she would marvel at the hairline netting in its petals, now back lit by sunlight and as intricate as veins.

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his business of shaking your fists, hollering to God and thenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;on top of thatâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;locking yourself in rooms over someone forgetting a name is unreasonable. You'd be ashamed if your kids didn't grow out of such behavior. But you'd figure by the behavior of their own mother, who's nearly 80 years old, that they might also resort to this kind of nonsense. "You going to come out of there, Annie?" I asked. I'd been standing outside the bathroom door for the good five minutes that she'd been in there. She'd stopped the wailing and was now sniffling like a five-yearold. "Go take your medicine, Matthew." "I don't know where it is," I answered. "You didn't forget that, too," she said. I was surprised she didn't start all over again, but I could tell by her voice that she'd calmed down. "The cat got a hold of it," I said. She snickered a little at that one. "The cat's been dead how many years?" "She came back because she had some extra lives to her credit. She got a tenth added as a Christmas bonus back in c86." I had Annie going before she could put her guard up. "She's waiting for you to come out so she can show you the contract. Coincidentally, she's hungry." Annie usually simmers down after she has sufficiently milked the dramatics. I asked her if she was going to stay in the bathroom for the rest of the evening but she didn't reply. "This your way of making sure I don't leave the seat up?" That really got her going. She stifled her laughter. 69

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Berkeley Fiction Review "Oh, Matthew, go relax and watch television. The six o'clock news should be on." "I can't wait." I started toward the living room. "Matthew," she hollered, "Take your medicine before you do anything." "Thanks, Boss." I had stopped hoping she was going to say something important. She blew her nose and it sounded like the blare of a bugle. It amazed me how such a little body could produce a noise that made you look for the nearest big brass musician. "You could give Severinson a run with that schnoz," I said. I heard her laugh and mumble something about the medicine, but I was busy ambling over to the T V set. At this age, if it's one thing I need rnore than medicine, it's a remote control. It would be a serious tragedy to die while bending down to turn on the TV when I already have a more efficient solution with this Parkinson's. I spotted some golf while flipping through channels so I left that on and lowered myself into the sofa chair. I nodded off for what I suspected was a half-hour before waking up to Annie's voice. She was on the phone in the kitchen, and by her tone and the way she was rolling, I could tell she was raising a stink about something or other. I couldn't guess, for the life of me, whom it might concern. Even though eavesdropping has always been one of my pet peeves, at the time, it was all I could do to find out what was going on in this place, especially when I was the topic of discussion. You never know what Annie and the rest of the family might be conspiring to do next. At this moment, or any other, they could have been collaborating to prove that I was Soviet Intelligence. Annie spoke in a conniving tone. "I don't know either... I caught him making his way out the back door this morning. I don't know if it was another lapse or... Well, he's always complaining about it. The steps are terrible on his ankles and he tried to go upstairs again... He's a dog with a bone when it comes to the stairs. And most other things." If I'm the dog with the bone, then I'd like to hear how she'd characterize herself. This business about the steps is a prime example. Annie declared herself guard dog of the steps after I'd told the doctor about my ankles occasionally giving out. According to the doctor, I'm 70

A Kiss On The Forehead not willing to acknowledge my limits. If I'm so unwilling, then why would I have mentioned my ankles in the first place? Doctors think you withhold information to keep them off your backs, so when you reveal something,- they latch onto it and blow it out of proportion. Of course, whatever the doctor says, Annie takes as gold, so she barks at me whenever I go near the steps. I've taken falls down steps before. I don't see what the fuss is. The banister's sturdy enough. Never had to tighten its bolts or do anything else in the 40 years we've lived in this house. But because of the nonsense with the stairs, I can't even go to sleep in my own bed. Annie had our grandson bring one of the guest beds into the dining room. Can you imagine the embarrassment? The only advantage I can see is that it's a shorter walk to dinner. The other night I forgot we were eating dinner and I asked my wife to pass the bedpan. (That's not actually true.) Annie gabbed on. "Well, I realize that honey, but it's his own son, for the love of God... I realize that, but you can at least make the distinction between your brother's name and your own son's name. Three times today he asked, 'James and Marianne coming in town this week?' He remembered his daughter-in-law's name and he couldn't even remember his son's." I love it when she starts the business about the names. I've always had trouble with names. Sometimes you just get talking and your mind is ahead of your mouth. It's not an issue of competency. You want to talk about competency, talk to the old woman who locks herself in bathrooms when complications arise. Annie's mother was the same way about losing composure. I remember eating dinner at her parents' house one evening when we were first marriedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;some 48 years ago. Her father had upset her mother about somethingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I don't recall what it wasâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and her mother started up with the tears and the rest of the business. The old man put an end to it in a hurry. He grabbed her by the arm, led her to the bathroom and closed the door behind him. They both came back after no more than a minute and the old lady just sat down and bit her lip. Kept to herself the rest of the meal. Annie branched to another topic. "Well, David's calling next week. He claims to know the market pretty well, so we'll see... I'm just waiting for the day he forgets my name." She started with the tears again, only this time it was a fishing-for-sympathy cry Lately, whenever she had 71

Berkeley Fiction Review the chance, she'd throw humility out the door and let everyone know about her burden. She was a martyr, through and through. "I'll see you tomorrow, Catherine-honey," she said. "What time will you be here? Okay... All right... No, I'll be all right. Thank you, Honey... You, too. Goodbye." She tipped her hat and rode off into the sunset. I could tell she was talking to our daughter Catherine—before Annie said goodbye— because children eat it up when parents come to them about problems. I shouldn't be too hasty because Cathy's a fairly humble person. Annie is also humble, when she's not treating her life like a drama. There have been a few days—like this one—when she loses her head and starts with the nonsense. It's ironic that people who want their hands on the steering wheel usually run off the road at the slightest hint of traffic. They can only handle the clear, open road. As terrible as it sounds, it was a good thing that Annie was going to the hospital the next day, because one of us probably would have killed the other. She was going to have a stress test done because of her heart condition, a condition that I'm undoubtedly the cause of. I know that's what they all talk about behind closed doors, when they're figuring out what's best for the situation. Most likely, it's the children and my brother and sister doing the talking and not as much Annie. I know that they meet, because they call Annie and I try to overhear their conversations as I pretend to nod off in the sofa chair. They do so much talking, they forget who and what they're concerned about. They must think I'm some sort of vegetable if they don't think I know where my own house should be, for crying out loud. I knew that David was calling to discuss the house. They think I'm killing my wife with a disease that / have. Maybe they should, as a more efficient solution, give me a pair of cement shoes and bounce me off the Eads Bridge. That would be the dignified thing. That night, Annie tried to kiss me before bed and I barely turned my cheek to her. The next morning, she didn't bother to wake me before she left for the hospital. Catherine had taken her, and my grandniece was left to keep watch on me in case I decided to challenge the no-stairs rule. My grandniece is a sweet kid—just graduated from high school. She learned how to patronize from the others but isn't pushy about anything. 72

A Kiss On The Forehead As I watched TV from the sofa chair, I could see her in the dining room where she sat reading. "Annie," I said, "That you?" "No, Uncle Matt, it's me." Her voice was bright and she got up out of her chair like a soldier, "Evelyn." "Catherine?" I asked. "No," she said, "Evelyn." "I thought Evelyn was supposed to be here today." She looked a little nervous so I figured I shouldn't alarm her. "Is that Evelyn?" "Uh-huh." Her voice brightened again. "Well why on earth didn't you say so to begin with?" Relieved, she chuckled. "You told me you were Annie," I said. She smiled. "No, you asked me if I was." "If you were what?" She shook her head to show that she was on to my lame attempts at humor. I didn't bother her the rest of the day. I read, and after lunch she made sure I took my medicine. Annie came back at three in the afternoon. She was white as a ghost and she went directly upstairs after Evelyn let her in. Annie smiled at me on her way up, but before I could get out a greeting, Catherine was around the corner and in my face. "She's fine, Dad," Catherine said in a shrill voice. She smiled so big it looked painful. "The tests just wore her out. The doctor said she did fine." She kissed me. "How was your day with Evelyn?" "Is your mother going to take a nap?" Catherine sighed and nodded. "Yeah, you've taken tests like that so you know how it is. She'll probably sleep for an hour or two. Did you take your medicine today?" Catherine visited for about fifteen minutes and then took Evelyn home. Annie slept well into the evening and got up at about six-thirty, or seven. When she came down, I went to throw a sandwich together for her. Before I could, I got the feeling that someone from the office might have called earlier in the day, perhaps when I'd dozed. I was an accountant with the city some time ago, and the office would call during days when I wasn't scheduled to work. I called the office several times just to check but kept getting this vulgar young lady who swore at me like the devil, so I just gave up and went back to Annie's sandwich. Because Parkinson's makes your hands shake, it took me a good while 73

Berkeley Fiction Review to make the sandwich. Annie thanked me for the sandwich and headed right back to bed after she ate. I wasn't such a baby about letting her kiss me and told her a few good ones so she could at least go to bed with a smile. The next afternoon Catherine visited again and brought Evelyn with her. Catherine had plenty to say from the time she arrived. "Good news, Dad." "We get a letter from Ed McMahon?" I said. By the way she laughed, I didn't think she had any idea who I was talking about. "Mom's just a little stressed. Other than that, she's in good health. Isn't that wonderful? I was so relieved, Dad." "How did you hear?" "The doctor called this morning to tell me the prescription was waiting. Aren't you relieved?" "Why didn't he call here?" She chattered anxiously. "Oh, he only did that because I told him that I would pick up the prescription... It was... I guess he figured that because the whole thing didn't turn out bad... or that it wasn't too serious, all he was worried about was the prescription. I'm sure that's all it was. How's Mom feeling?" "Is that you, Honey?" Annie called from the kitchen. "Yeah, Mom. I'm happy to say that I'm the bearer of good news," Catherine answered and she walked past me to the kitchen. Annie and Catherine went on and on about what the doctor said and about the medicine Annie would have to take. I would have shown some interest if I hadn't felt insulted by the whole situation. Catherine had developed the same control habit her mother had mastered, and she had the audacity to use it on me. Annie should have been ashamed and embarrassed. Instead of throwing a fit and getting caught in the mess taking place, I let it slide. I was still worn out from the previous days' turmoil. I could sit in the sofa chair and pester Evelyn for a while. She sat on the couch with her book, diligent as ever. "What book you got there?" I asked. "Easter Monday," she answered. "Easter's a month away, did you say?" "East of Monday," she said emphatically. She spoke louder for my 74

A Kiss On The Forehead

I kept on. "Easter's usually in April, Honey. You've got a longer wait than a month. More like three months. We're still in the last week of January, if I'm correct." She gave me a wise grin and went back to the book. The other two, still in the kitchen, were cackling about something. They would talk for hours if they both weren't so busy with life. They could talk through muzzles. "Do you want to turn on the TV?" Evelyn asked abruptly. "No, that's all right, Honey," I replied. "Thank you, though." I felt bad that I had spooked her without telling her afterwards that I was teasing. But I didn't think explaining was such a good idea either. She might get tentative around me and think that I'm always trying to pull one over on her. I'd rather be able to have private fun at her expense. "You're really mesmerized by that book," I told her. "Yeah," Evelyn said. She seemed refreshed by the chance to have sane interaction with a crazyman. "Are you running around with your Aunt Cathy today? Doing some shopping together?" She appeared surprised. "They didn't?... Well, no, she's taking Aunt Annie out to shop and eat at Nicomack Plaza." She quickly caught my anxiety. "They're only going for a few hours, she said." "Aunt Catherine said this?" I asked. "Yeah, they'll only be gone a few hours." "And I suppose you're guard-dog for the day." She looked like she'd swallowed a rotten egg when I said that. I felt bad for putting her on the spot, though she managed to smile through it. I was too angry to apologize. Catherine was more of a manipulator than her own mother. And she was naive enough to think that no one was on to her. Catherine was still gregarious when she came out of the kitchen with Annie. She explained the arrangement as if she and her mother had just come up with the idea, taking me for a fool. Both she and Annie planned too much of everything to do something on the spur of the moment. Catherine would ordinarily have made a production about such an outing, and the same goes for Annie. They left Evelyn and me for the day and didn't come back until quarter of six. Annie came back with a headache and a sore hip and 75

A Kiss On The Forehead

Berkeley Fiction Review went to bed early again. You'd figure someone would know better than to take a 76-year-old woman with a bad hip on a shopping marathon. When Annie was on her way to bed, I asked her if Catherine, at any point, made her get out of the car and push. She hissed at me. That day was just the start of the plan. The next day and for the rest of the week, Annie would leave in the early afternoon and go out to lunch with a relative or a friend. A couple of days, she went to the old museums and parks, places that I know she hadn't been to since we were first married. I was the one who'd always have to drag her to these places, and now—out of nowhere—she was a born-again tourist. If these trips reduced her stress, that's one thing, but I'll be damned if it turned her into a sweetheart around the house. She'd come home tired and grouch at me to leave her alone. Heaven forbid you ask your wife questions about her day. By the end of the week she would jump down my throat before I could get a word in. Sunday rolled around and I had remembered the whole week that David was supposed to call. I wasn't about to miss any more information sessions. With Annie gone so much these days, it had become harder to find out what was going on. She hadn't been using the phone as much, which prevented me from catching anything worthwhile. Annie and I went to church that morning and managed to appreciate each other's company for a while. The ride there and back was pleasant, although I've never been comfortable with Annie's driving. She's too herky-jerky with the brake and she's defensive at the wrong times. I was giving her trouble about it when we were walking back to the house, but the phone rang just as we walked through the front door. She shot into the kitchen to answer it. I sat down in my chair and aimed an ear at the kitchen. "I'm doing fine, Honey... It was fine... Next week? Wha—who did you have in mind?... What about Evelyn?... Oh, that's right. She starts up with school again... Wait, I was going to ask you a question, Catherine, but I forgot what the heck it was. Oh, will you be coming back Saturday night or Sunday night? I forgot what you said... Okay, because David is calling tonight or early tomorrow about the house and I figured we should get together sometime before or soon after you come back from vacation... Just sometime soon... Uh-huh... You and Jerry looked at the place last night? Is that right? Well, good, maybe 76

A Kiss On The Forehead when you two get around my and your father's age, we can live across the hall from each other. Okay, Honey... All right. No, he's fine. A little spacey here and there but... Oh, he won't mind it. He does his own thing for the most part anyway... He'll have someone new to tell his stories to. He probably ran out on life stories with Evelyn, so maybe this week he'll get a fresh ear to work on... Okay, then, I'll call you before you leave tomorrow... Okay, Honey, bye." I couldn't remember if I'd left the keys in the ignition so I stood up to check my pockets. It drives me into a panic when I think I've misplaced my keys. When Annie and I first got married, we lived in an apartment in a not-so-pleasant neighborhood. This got me into the habit of making sure all the doors were locked. Some of the people who lived around us, like the couple who lived upstairs, weren't as careful and they paid for it. So I went outside to check about my keys and got halfway down the block when I heard Annie holler my name. "Matthew," she yelled. I stopped and turned around. She was hustling down the block after me, still in heels. "I was checking about the keys," I told her. She gave me a vicious look and hooked my arm. She led me back to the house, mumbling something about the car and the garage. One of the neighbors came out of his house and saw us on the sidewalk. Tom Forder, I believe, is his name. "He running out on you again?" Forder asked, amused. "You might have to get a shorter chain," he said as he locked his door. He looked up at us and Annie shot him a look that I'm sure he could feel in his gut. His frightened look made it obvious that Annie had conveyed her message and needed no words for support. I slept for a good part of the afternoon. Annie said little, only asked me on occasion if I was hungry. I declined her offers knowing that I'd embarrassed her with the key incident and feared that she offered just to get a clean shot at rejecting me. She fixed me a sandwich anyway and set it on the living room coffee table without saying a word. "This for me?" I asked. "Who else would it be for?" she condescended. "I thought you might have fixed it for that Forder character you got such a big kick out of." "Don't even start," she said, flames bursting from her nose. (I couldn't 77

Berkeley Fiction Review actually see the flames but I smelled the smoke.) I ate the sandwich and read for the rest of the evening. Annie and I barely exchanged words, but I did manage to get a peck on the cheek before I turned in. When I woke up the next morning, all the lights downstairs were off and I could here footsteps on the second floor. I tried to call Annie's name but my throat was dry as cotton, so I pushed myself out of the chair and headed for the steps. Before I could call her name, I heard her voice from one of the rooms. I couldn't tell whether her voice came from the bathroom or the bedroom. Her words were muffled so I assumed she was behind a door. Not wasting a second, I hurried to the kitchen and picked up the phone. "David?" I said. "Well, hello, Dad. How're you?" he said, sounding pleased but startled. "You made me jump there for a second. I thought we were suddenly on a party line." He had a pleasant sense of humor and seemed happy to talk to everyone. "Mom said you were snoring away down there so..." "Don't let her kid you, son. She's the one who snores. You ever hear your mother blow her nose? She wakes me up every morning with a verse of reveille." They both enjoyed that one. "Dad, you haven't lost it," said David. Annie continued laughing and then sighed as if her joy had nearly caused her to pass out. "Oh, Matthew, stop taking pot shots at my nose and go lie back down," she said and chuckled more. She was bold enough or desperate enough to think she might slide with this tactic. I could tell by the way her laughter died that she knew I wasn't sold. "David," I said quite seriously, "this business about the house, you realize, might not be so smart. If we leave now when the market's weak we could be looking at a small return." "But Dad, you can cut through the hassle of waiting and worrying by letting the bank take care of it. Right now, you're looking at a small sacrifice." "No one's waiting and worrying here," I said with some defiance. Annie broke in, addressing David. "So should we stay with the first estimate? I don't know if I like the idea." "Well, we'll just wait and see what happens today, Mom. It's too hard to decide anything when nothing's on the table." "Is a realtor coming?" I asked. 78

A Kiss On The Forehead "We don't even know these people, David," Annie whined. "Waiting six months would be the most intelligent strategy," I insisted. "Mom, you're just going to have to trust people to do their job. All you can do is trust that they'll be responsible and reasonably honest." My input meaningless, I hung up the phone and started back to bed until I realized what I was doing. If they could have their way, I'd be in bed for the rest of my days. They'd have preferred me on life support and in a coma so they could come around on holidays and hang ornaments on my ears. I got dressed in the downstairs bathroom when the doorbell rang and Annie answered it. I could hear a young man's voice but it wasn't familiar. When I came out of the bathroom, Annie took me by the arm and steered me into the kitchen. I sat down at the table because my ankles had been giving me trouble all morning. "There's a young man, a friend of Evelyn's, here to visit with you today," Annie said, keeping her voice down. "How long will he be visiting?" I asked, alert. "Until one or two. I'll be back around then." "You're going to be gone for that long?" I asked. She was too busy buttoning her coat to respond. "He's going to visit for five hours? I must be quite a swinger to have a young man I don't even know wanting me to entertain him for five hours. I must be in high demand." Annie didn't respond. She put her hands on my cheeks and closed her eyes like she'd taken aim. She bent down, zeroed in, and laid one smack in the middle of my forehead. It gave me the worst chill I'd felt in years. I didn't know if it was another pat on the head, or if she'd merely sealed my doom. It was more unpleasant than a slap in the face. She put a stamp on me and was set to mail me off. She might as well have been wearing a black cloak and been carrying a staff. Annie walked out of the room and I heard the front door close. I sat for a while, feeling heavy, before the idea flashed in my head. No active thought was involved. "Young man?" I called from the kitchen. He came immediately and stood at attention, wide-eyed and eager to act on any request. "Yes, sir," he responded politely. "Could you check to see if my wife left the garage door open? She 79

Berkeley Fiction Review forgets sometimes and just drives off, you see." "Absolutely," he said and started out of the kitchen. "And young man?" I called. He stopped and again stood at attention. "Could you let me use the house key for a minute. The one Annie gave you. I need to make sure the basement door is locked and I need the key, you understand." "Sure," he said, digging into his pocket. He handed me the key. "It's your key anyway, sir. You shouldn't have to ask." That was the smartest thing I'd heard in months. I followed him to the door and watched him as he exited and went around toward the garage. I felt guilty that he would be a part of this, but apparently not overly so, as I closed the door and turned the deadbolt. I returned to the kitchen to make sure the back door was locked and found that it was. No need to check the basement or any windows. Annie was big on home security. The only other house key she'd given out was with Catherine, and she was on vacation. It might have been at her house but our key to Jerry's and Catherine's was in the bill drawer. So unless anyone wanted to use a battering ram or start breaking windows, I was safe for a while. After a few minutes, the young man knocked at the door. He politely called my name. "Mr. Walsh?" he pleaded several times. I started my journey to the second floor and his voice faded as I ascended the stairs. When I reached the second floor I glanced over the area just to reacquaint myself. I heard a car start and assumed it was the young man's. Within an hour, Annie returned and pounded on the front door, yelling something I couldn't make out. I was in bed reading, so I got up and went over to the staircase to hear what all the fuss was. Maybe she was irked by having to return so early from her outing. She yelled that my actions had proved nothing, and then she did the obligatory howling-to-God routine. After she concluded that God was out of the office, she whimpered. I felt a strong inclination to go to the door but held back. I headed back to my room, reassuring myself that she would find somewhere to go, maybe her sister's. She had found refuge without problems every other afternoon. Either my hearing failed completely or she just stopped crying all together, but the whimpering died. Maybe she opened her eyes for a little while she was wiping them.

A Kiss On The Forehead As I reached the bedroom, I heard an ignition and the vibrating hum of a car driving off. I decided I would let Annie in later, after she'd calmed down and contemplated the message. I would have time, before everyone could pull the rug out, to be alone in the house that I paid off fifteen years ago. I didn't need to prove anything to have a day to myself, a day without personal guards or barricades or a bed in the wrong room. Of course, when all was said and done, I'd likely end up downstairs in the sofa chair, possibly awake but probably not.

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P l a y B r i d g e

J e n n y Weisberg

The Play Number of Players: Four. The four of you that always hang out together these days. Didn't you used to get together just on weekends? Doesn't it seem excessive to do movies, basketball games, dinners, and now cards during the week? Put it out of your mind that you found a condom in the back pocket of your fiance's jeans while doing laundry tonight. Yes, lately he's been antsy and argumentative, and you've noticed that he squeezes shut his eyes while making love. But you didn't expect this. Finding that blue, foil-wrapped packet was like having a tire iron slammed into your guts. You want to give him the benefit of the doubt: someone at work slipped it into his clipboard for a prank; or he's planning to use it for part of his Halloween costume. Put it out of your mind that last summer when you and Julie discussed birth control, she said she would never go on the pillâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;after you mentioned making the switch. Partnerships: Two pairs of partners play against one another. Don't let your fiance know what you found in the wash. Sit down opposite him like you did last Tuesday when you tried to learn this blasted game. Observe his every move. Why can't he talk and shuffle at the same time? Do the cards keep slipping out of the pack because they are new, or because he is chatting with Julie. Her new fuzzy peach sweater is cut 83

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Berkeley Fiction Review

How To Play Contract Bridge

low, a v-neck with a capital V How are she and Ben together? You didn't see if they came in holding hands because you were in the kitchen, pulling scorched brownies from the oven, when your fiance answered the door. The smoking dessert seemed ominous but, since it turned out edible after all, try and relax. Don't eye Julie suspiciously when your fiance compliments her new perm. Sip, don't swig your beer. You don't want to say something you'll regret.

(strong, boisterous, handsome), and you (diffident, ordinary, overweight). Tonight you feel especially club-likeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;lumpy and wide in your pleated wrap skirt, even though you've lost a few pounds recently. You're also droopy from working extended hours this week. Since the manager at The Kozy Kitchen scheduled you to close an additional two nights per week after another waitress disappeared, you have a feeling you'll be in a half-awake daze until you find a better job.

The Deck: A standard 52-card deck. You've stashed a couple aces and twos from a matching deck in the pocket of your cardigan. It feels like a crime since the only thing you've ever cheated on was a math quiz in the ninth grade. But it's necessary. The extra resource could keep you at a competitive level. Glance down to ensure the spare cards are well hidden. Don't panic when you notice a dangling thread where the bottom button of your sweater was attached earlier this evening. Think. Should you alert the table that there might be a dime-sized wooden disk floating in the brownies or, before making that embarrassing claim, search the apartment in case it fell elsewhere? Your face is hot and the cold sore on your lip is throbbing. Opt to scan the floors. But don't leave the table when the other three lean toward you and begin explaining the rules so the game can get underway. Nod positively as their voices come at you all at once in an indistinguishable garble. They have that expectant, wide-eyed expression, like they will be sorely disappointed if you find their directions confusing. Or they will think you're an idiot. Details about card values, transfers, and bidding conventions rush past you without registering. Watch in distress as Ben grabs a brownie and gulps half of it down in one bite. The dimples in his cheeks flex, then disappear, as he swallows. Smile weakly when he says they're good, even though the bottom is the consistency of hardtack. Dig your nails into your palms when he takes another bite. Life's deck seems stacked against you, but remember, you're fresh out of college and too young for such paranoia. Recall how stress used to energize you, increase your resolve to come out. on top. Not how it now uses you like a rest stop, over-taxing the facilities while increasing its reach.

When the phone rings and your fiance ignores it, jump up to catch it before the machine does. Try not to be curt with your mother even though this is her second call this week. When she inquires about your job search, inform her that because greasy food is such a hot commodity, you have no time to look for employment elsewhere. When she tells you that women in the sciences are getting the good jobs these days, and that you could make a mint as a female chemist, don't mention you received a C- in Algebra 124. Instead say you're not interested in the sciences. Your mind doesn't work mathematically. And that as long as you're happy with your nose in a book or at a museum (although you Can't recall the last time it was in either) a crummy job doesn't matter. Remain silent when she sighs and says, Just like your father, and he's still laying carpet somewhere in New Jersey. As you watch your hand drop the receiver into its cradle, ignore the fact that the slight tan you managed to get last summer has completely disappeared. You've never liked October.

Rank of Suits: Spades (high), hearts, diamonds, clubs. Julie (witty, confident, attractive), Ben (intelligent, quiet, handsome), your fiance

The Deal: Each player draws a card from the pack; the player drawing the highest-rank card is the dealer. Julie is the dealer. Shouldn't she offer you the cut? Why did she offer the cut to your fiance, who just shuffled? Did their fingertips touch during both card exchanges, or are you over-analyzing the situation? Maybe it's all in your imaginationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ben seems oblivious, but maybe it's because he's reaching for another brownie. God! Grab the crumbling square from his hand and the plate from the table. Run them into the kitchen and dump them all into the garbage. You won't get a chance to peruse the floor for the button, and you don't need this added stress in your life right now. Say you recently read an article about burned food causing cancer in laboratory rats and that you refuse to be responsible for the death of your guests. Return 85

Berkeley Fiction Review

How To Play Contract Bridge

Rank of Suits: Spades (high), hearts, diamonds, clubs. Julie (witty, confident, attractive), Ben (intelligent, quiet, handsome), your fiance

Berkeley Fiction Review with a plate of un trimmed carrots and a bowl of ranch dressing. Set them on the corner of the table as Julie finishes dealing. Slide into your chair. Don't utter wild curses when you notice your missing button lying near the tip of Ben's hiking boot. The Bid: Each player in turn beginning with the dealer makes a call (pass, bid, double, or redouble). When it gets around to you and no one has bid, assume you have most of the good cards and, as you can't remember the point system, open with two spades. Holding five of them seems adequate. Joke to your fiance that you hope he has a good hand, anything to get his attention so you can give him your cutewrinkled-nose-blink sign (the one you made up because you can't wink without holding down an eyelid). He used to laugh and blink back at you. Now he avoids eye contact by slouching behind the fan of his cards, like he's at a masquerade party. Doesn't he realize a hint of affection is necessary? Ignore the dart of pain in your chest when he only grumbles into his cards that table talk isn't allowed. The Pass: A player passes when unable to bid higher than the preceding bid. Julie passes. Your fiance makes a pass at Julie. But then you're not sure if he was winking since he rubs and blinks his eye violently, as if a bug has flown into it. Perhaps the wink was meant for you? Try to get his attention by staring so intently at his face that it feels like you'll singe holes into his forehead. When his eyes blur into the top of his hair, give up. He doesn't seem to notice and, anyway, has passed. Ben looks from his cards to you, back to his cards, and back to you again. His brow is furrowed and his knee is bouncing anxiously. He's either sorry for you or for your cards. Reassure him that it's O.K. to bid like he normally would, not to be nice for your sake as a beginner. He relaxes and says, Then it's a challenge, Eileen, I'll double! Doubling: If a player doubles an opponent's bid, the value of undertrick penalties is increased. Ben must have a better hand than you thought. Or he wants you to think so. Remember, your psychology professor said that males often exaggerate in order to boost their selfconfidence. You've noticed this trait in your fiance as he regularly states his expert opinion on topics like plant care and cooking. And how

How To Play Contract Bridge many of your African violets remain alive? Zero. And what did he make for dinner last night? Canned soup. So, have confidence in your cards. A bid of two means you can lose up to five tricks, right? That's a lot of leeway. Take a drink of that expensive micro-brew you bought with your tip money, and redouble. Redoubling: If a player redoubles the doubled bid, scoring values are further increased. Redouble your efforts to get your fiance's attention by kicking his shin. When he looks at you, surprised, and says, What? holler back, What! Have you been keeping up with the bidding? What did I just bid? When Julie says, A daring redouble! We don't see that often. Cheers! and raises her bottle to drink to you, say to her, I asked Wes, not you. Glower when your fiance says, Redouble, you don't have to nag, Eileen, I was paying attention. Was it your imagination, or did your feet skim over nylon-covered toes before making contact with your fiance's ankle? The Final Bid and Contract: After three consecutive passes, the bidding ends; the final bid becomes the contract, and the suit in the contract trump. Julie passes, your fiance passes, and Ben passes. Your redouble at two spades becomes the contract. Pretend to study your cards as a different contract, that of marriage, comes to mind. When you got engaged last year (the condition for your fiance to move in with you), you told him that you take marriage vows seriously, that you don't believe in divorce. He had tossed you onto the bed and declared, Till death do us part! and tore off his clothes and fell on top of you. His deportment tonight, though, worries you. What if he changes his mind after the last T do?' And you stand firm on your belief? Try not to picture a night after your new husband has surprised you with dinner. You swallow the last spoonful of chicken noodle soup and tell him how delicious it was. Then you start cleaning up and find an empty jug of poison from his job at the pest control service next to the empty soup can in the garbage. You recall that your new husband didn't touch his soup, and everything begins to blur... For God's sake, look at your fiance! He's the one who was squeamish about finishing off the mangled daddy 87

Berkeley Fiction Review longlegs in the shower drain. He's definitely not a murderer. Get your mind back on the game! Say to your fiance, We're partners, remember? You've got to support me here! and give a little laugh to lighten it up. When your chuckle sounds wavering and forced, apologize. Tell everyone that The Kozy Kitchen was a mad house today and has put you in a foul mood. Your face feels hot and prickly and your armpits are damp. You notice that the macrame owl on the back wall is crooked. You can straighten it later. Your beer is still cold. Finish the bottle. Declarer and Dummy: The player who bid the suit named in the contract is the declarer. Declarer's partner becomes dummy, and spreads his hand on the table after the lead. Declarer plays both her and dummy's cards, each in proper turn. As the declarer you wonder how the hell you will take eight tricks when you see dummy's one dismal spade. Julie hums and drums her fingers on the table, impatient for you to play. If you had a spatula you'd press down on them, like when you squeeze the grease from the hamburgers at work while the cook gets high in the bathroom. Julie smiles and looks wide-eyed at your fiance. We need more drinks, she says. You might as well make yourself useful, dummy, she adds and laughs. Your fiance groans. Then he jumps to his feet and salutes, like a corporal. Yes, ma'am. You're right, ma'am, he hollers, four beers on the double! You've tried to pull off comical orders like that, but he always gets defensive. Sweat is trickling down your sides now, but you can't remove your sweater because of the cards and the thing from the wash you put in the pocket. Your fiance brings more beer to the table, stomps his feet and salutes again, then takes away the empty bottles. Ben takes the first trick with a ten of diamonds, then runs the next three. Your fiance plays the tape he bought yesterday, a thirty minute cassette entitled, The Best of Beethoven. He used to label your classical music 'slow crap' and push it to the back of the shelf. In fact, had he looked back there he'd have found three of Beethoven's concertos. Ooh, Wes does have some class, Julie says. Of course, says your fiance, and sits down. 2. Scoring

How To Play Contract Bridge

Undertricks: When declarer wins fewer tricks than bid, the opponents score for each short trick. You manage to take a few tricks, but go down by four. Julie and Ben simultaneously say, Good try, and your fiance grimaces into his drink. Julie gathers the cards in a graceful sweep and shuffles them for your deal. You offer Ben the cut, but he is staring over Julie's shoulder at the world map tacked to the wall. Does he seem quieter than usual tonight, or only since you took away the brownies? You tap his arm lightly to get his attention without startling him. He doesn't react and Julie says, Hey, Ben, cut the cards! He smiles and cuts them. Overtricks: Tricks won by the declarer in excess of a contract are scored to the credit of that side. You deal the hand and pass on all rounds to avoid another humiliating ordeal. Julie bids three spades and ends up taking an extra trick. If you hadn't played over your fiance's jack or accidentally trumped his heart trick, she would have been set. Julie chirps in an ear-splitting falsetto, I made my bid! We should have bid to game! She points at the score pad by Ben's elbow. Put us down for one over, she declares. Then she looks at your fiance and says, Did you see that, dummy? I got my bid, plus one! She turns back to Ben and says, Did you score that, hon? Ben looks surprised, then frowns. Maybe he's tired of the tag ÂŁ hon.' Julie rarely calls him by anything else. Julie says, Shit, sorry. You wonder if she's ever been sorry about anything. It's O.K., he says, I got the score down. He deals the next round. Slam: If a side bids and makes a contract of six or seven tricks, a premium is added to the score. Ben gets a strong hand and bids to six hearts. He becomes the declarer and Julie lays her cards down after the lead. Your fiance looks at Julie and says, Now look who's dummy. She smirks and tosses back her tight blond curls. You find yourself rooting for Ben even though he is the opponent. He studies his hand and dummy's seyeral moments to strategize. One of your problems with this game is you don't take enough time to account for the tricks. It would also help if you knew the rules. Ben plays with confidence, leading his next card before collecting the previous trick. Toward the end of the game he lays down two high trump and a jack of diamonds all at once to take the

How To Play Contract Bridge

Berkeley Fiction Review remaining tricks. I wouldn't have made my bid, he says, if Wes had saved his queen of diamonds. Your fiance reddens. Your brain shouts telepathically, Thank you for saying that, Ben! Ben barely smiles after his win. Suddenly he tosses the pack of cards down onto the table. It splats like a belly flop, and several cards shoot across the table into Julie's lap. We have to tell them sometime, Julie, he says. Her cheeks flush and she looks down at the table, but doesn't argue. You pray to the devil she is pregnantâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;she's pregnant and they've decided to get married, or she is pregnant and is going back to Cincinnati for nine months to live with her mom. Ben looks at you, then at your fiance and says, Julie and I broke it off two nights ago, guys. Then Julie pipes in, But it was a mutual decision, right Ben? We both decided it would be better to end it now than to let things drag on. We'll be roommates and stuff, but see other people too. We talked it over tons of times. Right, Ben? Yeah, says Ben, and grabs a carrot. Game 1: When a team amasses 100 points or more it wins the game. Ben's slam has clinched the first game. Julie looks at you, then at your fiance (your mouths have dropped wide open) and begs you both not to worry, that she and Ben have been thinking of breaking up for so long it seems like old news. Then Ben says, tentatively, I have more news. I've been offered a job in Texas that I've decided to take. I'll be joining a crew of archaeologists near Big Bend National Park. He suddenly smiles. A grin so wide his ears move. His eyes are bright and he adds, The pay isn't very good, but isn't it about time one of us bums gets a real job? Vulnerable: A side which has won its first game becomes vulnerable and is exposed to increased penalties if it fails to make a contract. Your arms and legs turn into jelly and you wheeze through your constricted windpipe. They are breaking up after four years togetherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that's two years longer than you and your fiance have known one another. Your stomach curdles. Then you notice that Julie is sheet-white and staring at Ben. You watch in amazement as she hollers, You didn't tell me you were thinking of moving! I thought we were still going to keep the apartment! Ben glances at her with no expression on his face. I made 90

Hoiv To Play Contract Bridge the decision a few minutes ago, he says. I haven't done much travelling and a trip to Texas would be an adventure. Besides, a job in archaeology is tough to find. Jesus, Ben! Julie exclaims. Something would eventually turn up around here. Ben doesn't seem to hear her and looks back to the map. You imagine he sees arrowheads and shards of pottery dancing over southern Texas. Game 2 and Rubber: When a team amasses another 100 points it wins the second game and receives the premium for the rubber. The scores are then added and the side with the most points has won the rubber. Julie picks the cards out of her lap and, out of turn, shuffles and cuts the deck. She slides it toward your fiance. Deal the cards, Wes, she demands. He obeys without comment. Julie picks up her cards one at a time, flicking their edges up from the table. She fidgets in her chair, crossing then uncrossing her legs, like she'd run out of the apartment if she didn't have the cards to concentrate on. You, yourself, feel a surging impulse to throw in the cards and stop the game. But the grave atmosphere is somehow binding. Julie bids to four hearts while you and your fiance mutely pass on all rounds with a wave of a hand. She takes an extra trick, but shows none of the excitement which succeeded her first victory. You're pretty sure that she and Ben have won the rubber by now, but you don't know the intricacies of scoring and aren't positive. Anyway, no one else seems to care. With trepidation you look at your fiance who has remained silent, even thoughtful, throughout the big news flashes. His mouth is still agape. His lips are wet and his eyes are wide and glassy, as if he's won the lottery. Suddenly, Julie whispers hoarsely, You can't move, Ben. I don't want to live alone. Who would I get for a roommate? Your fiance gulps and clears his throat and says to Julie, You could move in with us. Then he looks at you and bites his lower lip. He says, Right Eileen? Julie could stay here till she finds a new place? We're all friends. The three of us would get along great together. The tape deck snaps off. It's quiet except for the gurgling radiator and several muted explosions from the neighbor's T V It's like a cue from a B movie. You stand up and your thighs rock the table, sending the dip 91

Berkeley Fiction Review and carrots splashing to the floor. What the hell are you saying? you shout at your fiance. Just today you were complaining about how small this goddamn place is, and now you're inviting her to live here? And what the hell is this? You pull the prophylactic from your sweater pocket and fling it at him. It bounces off his chest and lands in the pool of dip. He is speechless, and crimson blotches emerge on his face. Julie gasps at the rubber in the dip. Oh, my God, she murmurs, you came over yesterday with that in mind? Then she appeals to Ben, ignoring the condom. You can't move, Ben. Please don't go to Texas. We can get back together. I don't want to live here. Your fiance looks ill and doubles over like he is going to vomit. You know how he feels. You've lost seven pounds during the last month because of that same agony. Wishing you had something filthier, like an ash tray or a dirty diaper, you throw a fistful of snotty Kleenex from your sweater pocket at Julie. The hidden cards fall onto the table. Julie throws her hands into the air! You're gross! she screams, and a cheater, too! How pathetic to cheat at a stupid card game. Well, it's better than the kind of cheating you do, tramp, you snap. Then you mock-lunge at her. She knocks her head against the bookshelf. You hiss at her and sit down.

How To Play Contract Bridge Thank God this chaotic bridge lesson is over; Goren himself couldn't have rescued this game. Leave the mess in the living room and walk down the hallway to the bedroom. Close the door and lock it. Forget about doing sit-ups tonight and change into your red fleece pajamas. Crawl into bed and turn out the light. As you lie there staring up into the darkness, remind yourself to stick to rummy in the future.

Back Score: After the rubber, each player's standing is entered on a separate score called the back score. Don't worry about the score. Tug at your engagement ring, picturing the gaping wound it could impart to your fiance's cheek if you threw it at him and told him to take his ring and go to hell. Decide it would be worth more at the pawn shop instead. You'll need the money to pay full rent after tomorrow. The thought of being single again dispirits you, but for now, ride with the nervous relief of knowing the truth. Ben has been faintly smiling throughout this whole fiasco, not humored by the antics or moved by Julie's teary appeals. He's probably planning his trip. Make a mental note to give him the address of your cousin in Galveston. Look at the map yourself, hoping a giant hand or rainbow will point to a place for you to start a new life. When this miracle doesn't happen, don't worry. The internal blow-down caused by today's hurricane can be repaired here at home. The thought of moving has always corroded your stomach lining anyway.

Bearded Irises

B e a r d e d

I r i s e s

Candice Rowe

am weeding my bearded irises. They're beautiful things, the pale purple of a thick vein under white skin, ruffled as | a frail handful of bunched curtain. A lot of times when I'm outside people stop their cars and compliment me on them. I live in a small town, so that's not so unusual, even in these days of general mistrust. It is warm. I'm wearing one of my husband's old squash t-shirts. I've knelt forward, letting the still-chilled petals brush my cheek. The earth sends off its stored-up nighttime coolness onto my skin. How long I stay like that, I'm not sure. Then, "Hello there," a voice says. Using my shoulder, I tip back the grand straw hat I'm wearing. My daughter wore the hat at some garden wedding of a friend some summers ago. It's a wonderful hat; a yellow grosgrain ribbon secures it under my chin. Perfect protection from the sun. The man behind me is smiling, standing in one spot as though rooted, yet turning around so that he doesn't lose sight of the street back over his shoulder. It's hard to tell how old he is. Not as young as my son, who is in his second year of college, not old enough to worry about. "Those are some great flowers there," he says. He has hair cut close to the head, each strand separate with a mind of its own. His head reminds me of one of those oranges, stuck all over with cloves and intended as natural deodorizers; the kids used to make them as gifts for me at summer camp. His eyes though, they're a beautiful blue. Morning glory blue, delphinium blue, but there's something strange about them. When he smiles, which he seems to do when he thinks about how he 94

should be smiling, one of his teeth is missing. A missing tooth says a lot about a person's upbringing. He says a few more things, about the weather, my rock garden up on the side yard, and so on. But he's rushing his words to get somewhere else, you can tell. Then he's out with it. "I've been by your house before. I like to walk, you know? Do you think I could shampoo your hair for you: He's crazy, I think. Nuts. Out to Kansas, as my husband, Daniel, would say. So how can I get rid of him, I think. "Your hair," he says. "It's the color of burning leaves." He must sense I am trying to ignore him because he says, "I used to be a hair stylist. I've had New York training. I know good hair when I see it. It would be important for me, you'd really get a lot out of it too. I can massage your follicles for you. That could change your whole outlook on the day." He smiles vaguely, staring into the back yard at my smoke tree, the branches now a gentle haze of a blush. A scam artist, I think. He wants to size up the house, the security system, and come back later and rip off our Matisses and Picassos, if only we had them. The family silver, if we had that. The jewels in a vault, so to speak. I watch him as his eyes move conscientiously over the neighborhood's line of trees and house peaks. That's what's so odd about his eyes: they don't blink. "What kind of shampoo do you use? Dark green shampoo strips the hair, leaving it vulnerable to attack," he says, looking right at me, but his vision falls off somewhere short of my face. Or, I think, he could be a serial rapist. One of those charming men that wins the confidence of lonely or bored middle-aged women, wooing them with poetry and a single wild flower, winning them over by making them feel singular in this world of mass everything. You know the type. You, see shows about them all the time on television. Once inside the house, they play out the scenarios they've imagined since their boyhoods, which are invariably spent in orphanages, where their mothers, invariably heartless young prostitutes, have deposited them as though they are as valuable as empty milk bottles on the stoop. These are boys who crush the skulls of pet cats to idle away the hours. He reaches out to touch a thick strand of hair sagging near my ear. My sun hat is knocked back a bit by his hand and my sudden move to 95

Bearded Irises

B e a r d e d

I r i s e s

Candice Rowe

Berkeley Fiction Review avoid him. It seems at that very moment the sun shifts suddenly and full light falls on his face. He has a pale saddle of freckles over his nose, making him look boyish enough. There is an anchor-shaped scar by his left eye. I find myself compelled to touch the scar, ask him how he acquired it, even put the tip of my tongue to it to feel its deepness. "I imagine," he says, "the warm water—not too hot or cold—running over your hair. With my fingers, I would smooth it back from your forehead. It would drift into the sink, darker now, it's always like that, and in thick waving ribbons. I would feel the outline of your head— there used to be a science like that," he adds informatively. "Phrenology," I say, strangely unable to move away from him. "I saw it on television." He looks at me as though he doesn't understand why I have interrupted him. Then he takes my hand, still in my soiled garden gloves and we walk to the kitchen door. I am so concerned with breakins that the door is locked, so I need to fish the key from beneath the tub of nasturtiums by the back steps. Then he is shampooing my hair. At first I am tense, my neck a little stiff from bending back into the sharpness of the counter and the kitchen sink. British doctors, I remember reading in the newspaper, recently announced a condition known as "Beauty Parlor Syndrome." When the neck stretches backward over the sink, the carotid artery is overextended, leading to a stroke. The woman the doctors were talking about first noticed a stiffness in her leg when she stood up from the chair, and by the next morning her speech was slurred and her face was numb. I plan to mention this rare syndrome, but he seems irritated that he can't adjust the temperature of the water just so. Forget the shampoo, he says, holding a squeeze bottle of dish liquid. At first I can't think beyond the white, curved expanse of my throat arching toward him. The carving knives are, what, five feet away on the counter? What does it take to hit a major artery? What does it take to plunge a single sharp blade into a single chamber of the heart? But there's worse. What if he doesn't kill first? There's biting, tearing of flesh, binding, trussing, insertion of foreign objects, unnatural acts. "You're not relaxing," he says. He sounds angry. "The whole point is that you relax." For a single moment his hands stop moving over my •

Bearded Irises head. I wait to feel the first jab of the knife as it slices through the skin, the first touch of his hands around my neck, tightening like rawhide in the sun. "Relax," he orders. I open my eyes, but all I can see are the bristles of his hair against the white expanse of the ceiling. As he bends over me I see that he has a widow's peak, as my mother used to call it, that deep "V" of hair some people have at the center of their foreheads. What did she say about the widow's peak? A good life, bad life, never trust those that have them? The only solid rule I can light on is that if a tiger cat has the fur line of a dark "M" etched over its eyes, it's protected by the Virgin Mary. My mind is a bit jumbled. He stamps his foot impatiently, like a naughty child. I can feel his tension through my scalp. I will myself to relax. I give myself over to it. Maybe that sounds easy, but what other choices do I have? I think of my bearded irises. I think of the smell of mushrooms under a bed of ruff. I think of my grandmother pinning a tiny sprig of lavender to my dress when I was a child so that the earth could be a part of me as I passed through my day. Then I think of all the people I know who are dead now, family members, friends, a boy in high school who got killed in a car accident the week before graduation. Timothy White, his name was. I think of him still, in a tweed sports jacket flapping at his sides, smiling at me across the expanse of heads in homeroom. Once in history class, during Mr. Lapsky's lecture on the Peloponessian Wars, Timothy White slid a mayonnaise jar of garter snakes from his desk and tipped it toward me. I thought myself very sophisticated, not the sort of girl who would be rattled by a jar of snakes. I straightened my back in my starched white shirt, straightened my plaid skirt, waggled my shoulders in complete disapproval of Timothy White's stunt, and focused all the more intently on Mr. Lapsky. Then Timothy White was dead, driving north, as he'd said in his goodbye note to his mother, in order to find the father he had never known. Whenever I think of him, I think of him on his Suicide Shift Indian motorcycle with the twin leather packs flopped over the rear wheels, riding into a roiling snowstorm until he's nothing but a tiny bead of black lost in a wash of white. "You're done, Ma'am," the young man says. He's wrapped two kitchen towels around my head. "The comb-out," he says, befuddled, looking around the kitchen. "I don't have the proper equipment. His 97

Berkeley Fiction Review eyes slide past the rack of knives easily. "That's okay," I say. "I can take it from here." He looks around as though he can't spot the door where we came in. "Can I get you a cold drink, some iced tea?" I say, hoping he won't accept, already planning to serve the drink to him in a plastic cup. It's over and I want him out. "A sandwich to take with you for the road?" That's something my mother always said. "No, no," he says. "I have to get back. Be on my way." "Your tip," I say, looking around for my handbag. "No, no," he says, and hurries out the door without so much as a "goodbye" or a "see you later" or a "take care." My hair is tangled and wet but not unpleasant with its faintly lemon scent. Back outside, my irises have been warmed by the late morning sun. They are no longer cool to the touch, no longer giving off that damp, earthy smell of mystery and the unknown past. It's too hot to weed now, so I might as well brew some tea and relax in the shade of the ornamental cherry tree. But before I rouse myself from the ground, I spot the shimmer of metal among the green iris fronds. It's a straight-edged razor, the kind you see in old-fashioned barber shops. How silvery, I think, not unlike the swooping petals of a silver gray iris washed in early morning rain. And when I put the blade to my cheek, I swear, the fist-sized shaft of the thing is still human-warm to the touch.

T h e

S e x o l o g i s t

Grant Flint

ur blind date was at the Round House Pizza Parlor. The only time I had a blind date in such a place. Her idea. Actually, it was kind of nice. Casual, dark enough to hide some blemishes, sort of an upbeat, relaxed place. We shared a small combination pizza and a pitcher of dark beer. Her name was Amy. She smoked Camels. Would I have answered her ad if she had said she smoked? Probably not. Her ad: FINDING YOUR SPECIAL SOMEONE Me; female, attractive, bright, well educated, vivacious, foreign, sophisticated, mid-30s, romantic, funny, ambitious, supportive, independent. You: male, successful, sensitive, handsome, 30-40s, divorced, architect, lawyer, pianist, author, humorous, affectionate, selfaware. 7 out of 12 is a match. First one is a must. Send letter/photo to Box #2627. What does one make of such an ad? Well, it was a so-so ad, better than the averageâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;about a "grade B." Demonstrated she was generous, not tight with money. Used a headline that costs six bucks extra. And more words (eighty cents a word) than most ladies use. I answered her ad and seven more ads in the same issue. Told her I was ten of the twelve. So she liked my letter and picture well enough to call me and there 99

T h e

S e x o l o g i s t

Grant Flint

Berkeley Fiction Review we were. She was seventeen years younger than me, meaning I was graduating high school when she was born. I had fibbed about my age, deducting six years. Though she was looking at me semi-intensely in the half-light of the pizza parlor, as far as I could tell she was giving me tentative approval. Point of fact: she was the most attractive lady I had met in the ads up to that time. It occurred to me that I could get used to the cigarettes. Who knows, I might even start smoking again after fifteen years. If the total occasion warranted it. We chit-chatted. I was smooth by this time. I took her hand in mine, touched her knee casually now and then under the table, gazed into her eyes soulfully, complimented her on every possible good thing that I could discover in her. By the time I took her home and kissed her several times, she actually said, "I like you very much," and was crying gently. I was astounded. Why that emotion? I drove off feeling uneasy. Thus, on the next date, I did not seduce her, or allow myself to be seduced, which is much the same thing. I felt the need for caution. I was not in this business to hurt people. I liked her. So instead of seducing her or being seduced, I stopped over after dinner on two nights running, brought my boy along, heard her life story while cuddling on the sofa with her, helped her younger girl write a piece for class on Thomas Jefferson. My son didn't enjoy it all that much, though he had some fun playing her video games. Her two girls liked me, I could tell. Amy seemed a little sad. Her life was up for grabs at the time. Her ex-husband, a Frenchman, took the kids every other weekend; she had been fired from her job as an industrial psychologist two months ago, and her father's funds were tied up in Argentina so he couldn't help; there were no positions here like her glory days in Argentina as a sexologist. On our third date we were alone. The kids were with their father. She invited me into, her favorite room, the den. There was a fancy bearskin-like rug on the floor. A fireplace with a burning artificial log. The hi-fi was on. There was an electric organ in the cornerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Amy said she took lessons. She made us Black Russians and we drank them and talked and did little hugs and kisses while stretched out on the rug in front of the 100

The Sexologist fireplace. I had the peculiar feeling, not altogether unpleasant, that I was being courted. She looked good, her mouth was clean. "Do you want to go to bed?" she asked eventually. I could have said, "Yes! Yes!" but I felt a tiny bit uneasy. As though I weren't writing the script for our play. "Just hugs and kisses," I said, "that's all I have to have." Which seemed to move her. As it does all women. The most seductive thing a man can ever say. Guaranteed to result in the ultimate intimacy. So when a very short time later she said with some urgency: "Let's go to bed!" I did indeed say, "Yes! Yes!" As we staggered kissing into her room with its giant bed, I saw that it did not look like a room fixed up for planned-ahead total romance, in that some of her intimate apparel, a stocking, a bra, and other assorteds were strewn upon the bed. Thus I was confused. Was she a cool, shrewd woman, calculating all of this, or was she a woman of impulse? "It's not a contest," she said after we were thrashing away, half-clothed upon her bed. Which froze my mind and nearly my amatory equipment. But then I did recall that she was by profession a sexologist, and as one knows one gets into that game because of one's own sexual problems, so I forgave her, crossed her off my list as a possible life-long partner, and just went about my business, lovemaking, as undisturbed as I was able to be. We did a number of possibilities, tests of experience, initiating moves we had seen, books we had read, she was making it quite the contest all right. With some uneasiness we both eventually achieved what the sport was all about and fell fitfully asleep shortly after. That is, she fell asleep; I wondered what all of this meant and whether I should just take off, then fell asleep. We awoke cold, sleepily got in under the covers, fell asleep again. Not in the best of moods. The alarm went off at 4:00 a.m., nearly causing an accident. When it went off, I sat up abruptly in bed, convinced I was in my own bed back home but that my cat, which always sleeps with me, though not in love with me, had turned into a woman, a cat-woman right there, 101

Berkeley Fiction Review suddenly in the bed with me. I nearly whacked her, but settled down in time. She coolly turned off the alarm, lit a cigarette and informed me that she had to get up because her son was with his father but he had a paper route and on every other Sunday morning she had to deliver the route for him. Did I want to join her? Good God, no! I wanted to say. I am not going to marry you, I am not even going to see you again, we had our only fornication; so long, and may all your contests be victorious. But I hesitated and remembered that I am an innocent, very nice person, and said okay. So we sleepily got up, really feeling very cranky, but controlled it with mature politeness. We drank coffee, ate cold pastry, and dragged ourselves out into the unforgiving night. It was dark, no moon, on the edge of cold. We went to the stupid drop-off place where the huge Sunday papers were dropped off in enormous bundles. We assembled all the stupid ads in each Sunday paper. We loaded up the trunk and the rear seat almost to the ceiling. She drove, we both threw. The papers were heavy. The rubber bands broke too often. I had to hand-carry them up to the apartment house units. We drove and drove and drove through the endless dawn. I felt tired, scratchy-eyed, probably bad-breathed. And infinitely old. I thought, now, now—now, she is getting a real squint at the real me. Seventeen years older than her. Old enough to be her father. I felt like my makeup, my disguise, had melted away. All that was left was the real me. Just a tired old son-of-a-bitch. No breath left for constant compliments. Not making her feel like the most wonderful woman on earth. As for her—she was okay. I kind of liked her quiet seriousness. I even felt a kind of comradeship with her as we threw down, threw out, that mass of Sunday papers, the level going down, down, steadily down. We were a quiet, efficient, old veteran team, fighting with some success the brutal realities of life. Tired, older man. Tired, younger woman. The sun came up. We were dragging. We got down to the last papers and they weighed a ton apiece. 102

The Sexologist It was nearly 8:00 a.m. when we finally got back to her place. The sun was well up. She had circles under her eyes. God knows what I looked like. I hoped she would now invite me in and we would just go in and get into bed, close together, warm, thankful, and hours later, long after, wake up refreshed and be able to play the game again. Try again. We had earned it. And I hoped the opposite also—she would now say nothing at all. Just goodbye. She did neither, but mostly the last. She looked at me directly—God, I felt, old—she looked straight into my soul. Saw—who knows? I'm a very nice man, but not Jesus Christ. I can do very well in the evening in front of a fireplace. Not so good with the raw sun in my face. "Goodbye," she said. "Thank you." "Goodbye," I said. "It was fun." So—end of story. But in real life, as we know, it's not quite like that. She called me up two nights later, came over to my place, up to my bedroom, was much more friendly in bed, left her panties behind. I never saw her again, but I found the panties way down at the bottom of the bed when I changed the sheets. Which in my case is once a month. I considered calling her to return the panties. But I didn't. Instead I put them in my bottom drawer where I put other things I can't use but can't quite bear to throw away. End of story. Except I can't forget Amy. I remember most that first night I took her home. Kissed her several times. And she said, "I like you very much." Was crying gently. Crying gently. Why that emotion? What does it mean? I remember the tears most of all.

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reen door. Slanted shutters on the front porch windows. I Summer months of too-hot warmth, too much sunshine. I A half hour of thunder and rain to cool off the grass and make the night sweet. I'm thinking of summer because that is your smell. Lemon and heat. We'd sit on the front porch and smoke and count the cars passing on the highway. The pulse in your throat as you gulped and gulped the iced tea I poured for you, glass after glass. "Talk dirty to me. Make me enjoy this heat." "What do you want me to say?" "Tell me...what did she look like? How would you hold her in bed?" "That's not dirty." "Tell me what she'd say to you." "I can't remember...." "Yes you can. You dream of it. I know you do." Your lips pressed against the glass beaded with tea and sweat, your eyes closed. Your hands running through your greasy hair as you lift your skirt just above your 105 mH&fcj iÂŤHÂŤ|

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Green Door

Berkeley Fiction Review knees to catch a cool pocket of air." Why do you ask me? What do you want to know? "Her eyes were green, like mine." Like water, like liquid glass. Like smoke in winter.

A hot wind blew across the porch. Your voice was foreign and painful. The heat became electric. I watched your skirt cling to the back of your thighs, above your knees, shifting restlessly and calm. "Talk dirty to me. Tell me about the curve of her breasts." "No...."

"Her hair was dark and deep, and her skin was cream. She shivered at your touch and when you looked at her. And she would whisper your name in her head so you could hear it even in a crowd, across a room, across that dry field out there." The asphalt of the highway bucked and rippled under the heat, under the hard bounce of too-fast cars. It was rhythmic, seductive, like the breeze beneath your skirt. "Tell me again how you first met her. And you loved her as the first words fell out of her mouth. What did she say? 'Hello, is this seat taken?'" "She asked my nameâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; " "And you pierced her with your eyes and your lack of Words, like you do." Clouds gathered slowly, discretely. "Tell me about the first kiss. Did she taste sweet? I bet like peaches. And spicy. Lips and tongue and teeth. She grabbed you softly, with purpose, and put your hands on her body." You rubbed the cold, wet glass along your neck, outlined in sweat. Closed your eyes again and tilted back your head, a good long while. You couldn't wait for the storm. Couldn't sit anymore in the shade... so you walked to the porch railing and stood with your back to me. "How you must miss those sweet, spicy kisses. Your body aches just to see her walk up those steps one more time...." 106

"She had pale pink nipples, and she liked to be bitten. Her fingers in your hair... her nails in your back, like spikes of fire. An angel's touch df steel, iron, glass, air...." She'd kiss my eyelids. She'd open her legs wide and wet and call me Baby. Her baby. The shutters shook with premonition of thunder and rain. You crossed your legs at the ankle, turned to me, and licked the lemon from your fingers. I listened for the cars on the highway. I bit my lip and watched the clouds darken and blister. Kitchen table granite waiting to melt from the sky and douse the cruel vision in your eyes. Glaring at me with bitter softness, paralyzing me in my thoughts and your relentlessness. Green door. Like your eyes, thick and meaningless. "She was beautiful in the heat, wasn't she? Sweat made her skin weaken and call to you." My dry mouth, remembering the last sip of water. My throat suspended in a cool memory of a swallow, running your words across my face like her hands, her hair dangling above me. "Come over here to me... the rain will come soon. You should feel it on your face. The first few drops are the sweetest, so heavy and intense." My hesitation irritated you; it loomed over your head annoying as the uncooperative rain. But I put my boots solid on the creaking wood planks and stood slowly. You were pleased and conquering. Couldn't you feel me weakening anyway? Did you have to turn around and lean into the too-soaked sky and press the jagged splinters of glass into my gut? 107

Green Door

Berkeley Fiction Review knees to catch a cool pocket of air." Why do you ask me? What do you want to know? "Her eyes were green, like mine." Like water, like liquid glass. Like smoke in winter.

Berkeley Fiction Review "Sabrina. Such a beautiful name." The mint ice of her eyes, her name... dangling from the hole in my belly. Off in the distance, lightning started in patches taunting the hot field with moments more of waiting. I walked up to you, behind you. Not touching, but breathing, looming with the rain. "Hold me... like you held her. Put your hands on my breasts. Pretend." "No...." But you reached behind you and held your hand against my stomach, circling my wound with your fingertips, and I leaned into you to smell your sweatâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;lemon and pain.

Green Door haunting questions and vicious memories extracted from my mouth like metal splinters. No porch, highway, or dry field at a distance to focus on. I remember you with desperation today. As I long for distraction from the season. As I crave the sweet after-storm nights with wet grass. The air tissuethin like the sundress against your body, barefoot, standing at the railing and watching what the storm had done. Today was summer with no storm. Too-hot warmth. Too many cigarettes and endless reminders of green.

"Kiss me. Kiss my neck. Bite it. I like to be bitten like she did." Rivers of nothing trickled through my mind, flooding me with desolation and sand. Desert winds. Images of bone and rock. She is a dry and uneven scar. You nuzzled your lips close to my ear and exhaled with imagination. My jeans pressed lightly against your legs, soaking in your acid whisper. "Tell me you love me. Call me Sabrina, and tell me how much you love me." The sky cracked and shattered like a bone, like the glass ice of her eyes. "I love y o u â&#x20AC;&#x201D; " Broken vision. Remembering. The rain was chunky and fierce. It bled through your dress and into me. Steam. Rainwater mixed with your tangy sweat, dripped onto my lips, fell from your hair and drugged me. Left me soaked and empty. Green door. Like this rusting table. Today's heat tasted of you. I sipped sugary lemonade and watched people on the sidewalk with dogs and children. All day. I watched the sky for blistering clouds that would not come. Here, there is no thunder, lightning, or heavy drops to pour down and obliterate the liquid green flames in my head. No more 108

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ne plus one," says Jenny. They are playing teacher-andstudent. Next year there will be a real teacher, and desks i instead of white patio furniture. But for now Sagittarius has only Jenny to fear. She focuses on Jenny, the narrowed eyes and pinching fingers. Jenny is frightening enough. Iwo! "Pretend you don't know," Jenny hisses. "I can't." The lightness in her stomach. Crack! Jenny strikes her hand with the ruler. "Sorry," Jenny says breezily, "You didn't get the right answer, student." It doesn't hurt. But Jenny's smirk jars her back to reality—this is Sagittarius's patio. Her father is inside, meditating. Closed eyes behind glasses. The smirk belongs to Jenny, not a teacher. "Don't," Sagittarius says, understanding as she speaks that she is right and Jenny is wrong. Truly right and truly wrong, they are not equal, she is better. "Don't hit. My dad says—" Jenny scoffs. "Your dad's a burnout." Sagittarius has no idea what the word means, but Jenny's insulting tone tells her all she needs to know. Her father has one brown eye; the other is bright green. He showed her how to meditate, you just close your eyes and say "one." She bends down, grabs a rock, and hurls it at Jenny. Screaming until her throat burns. Rage makes her forget words. Jenny cries out when the rock hits her chest but Sagittarius is now screaming and crying uncontrollably—her nose and eyes run, and she feels sick and wet. 110

Banging the screen door shut behind her, Sagittarius races blindly through the long hall, barging into her father's darkened study. He looks up in alarm from his cross-legged pose on the carpet, as if he has nev^r seen her before. Jenny appears at the screen door half an hour later. "Can you play?" Sagittarius looks down. Her shoes feel too small. She says, "No." Jenny says, "I was thinking about it. I just remembered it's your turn to be the teacher." She stares at Jenny's pigtails in their pink bands through the mesh of screen. She realizes she has no desire to be the teacher. Imagining it, she feels no excitement, only pity. She feels a little embarrassed too, because all along Jenny hadn't understood the game quite the way she had understood it; Jenny had just been doing what came naturally She feels sorry for someone. "Jenny?" "What." "Hey, Jenny. Why don't we play Twister?" she says, almost tenderly. "Nah." In the kitchen, her father skins tomatoes for a salad. He peels everything. Sagittarius has never eaten tomato skins or apple peels. "Dad?" she whispers. Her father does not turn around. She goes to him, presses her small cold hand on his hand. He jumps a little. * * * At recess, there are three of them. Waiting for her. Bony girls in hooded sweatshirts. "We voodooed you," Barbara announces. "We stuck needles through doll guts. You'll feel it." "You talk too much," one of the others explains. "You should shut up." They pop their gum and grin lip gloss at her. Elisya stares at their legs, six stems wrapped in designer jeans. Elisya does not believe in voodoo; she believes in biology, chemistry, and psychology. But already her guts hurt. "Voodoo always works," Barbara says. Her mother's hand flutters. "It couldn't be what I think it is," she says, smiling, girlish. "You wouldn't call it a cramp, would you?" "No." The pain is not a cramp. But what is it? Psychosomatic. How many fifth graders know that word? "I'll brew chamomile." Ill

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r Berkeley Fiction Review "No thanks." Elisya and her mother subsist on Twinings samplers and salted, skinned tomato sandwiches, the slices sweated on paper napkins. Sundays, they devour the New York Times alongside a platter of sandwiches. Her father does not believe in either eating wheat or reading the newspaper, so during the summer Elisya suffers withdrawal pangs. Now she pictures buttered newsprint, hooded heads on a plate. Her stomach tightens. A pebble flies though the open window. "Hey, Elisya!" Barbara calls from outside. "Don't yell at them," Elisya begs her mother. Leaning out the window, she looks down on the driveway. They gaze up at her, more curious than cruel. "Is it working yet?" they call. She starts to speak, but the taste of sour milk interrupts her. Word becomes bile. The tomato sandwiches inside Elisya have turned to worms. She coughs. Something spurts—those slippery, bloated worms?—and hits the driveway, colliding with their screams. * * * Maybe it's the glasses. Though Johnny, her tennis instructor, who is sixteen-years-old, says he likes her glasses. They make her look mature. He adds, somewhat awkwardly, "You have beautiful eyes, Nilifer." Maybe it's the name. She knows that most kids beg for contact lenses. Johnny leans in, places two fingers on each side of her head, and carefully removes her glasses. Nilifer feels she should close her eyes while this is happening. When he brushes her temples she feels a rush of pleasure; other than that, this is a fruitless exercise. Johnny doesn't know what to say when it's over. He doesn't kiss her. She expected him to and he doesn't, and now she feels blind and humiliated. Neither of them speaks. Nilifer doesn't speak because she has expressed herself already. In the click of her soft brown boots, a message—in the second skin foundation and drugstore lipstick. It makes her sad to think that no one replied, as if she had sent a telegram into space. At home, she takes off her glasses, smoothes off the foundation and lipstick, and washes the shadow from her beautiful eyes. How seductive they are! Heavily lidded and sleepy. She will not beg for contact lenses— not she, Nilifer. Someone with a different name will beg. But who? 112

Girls With Weird Names And what name? She turns on the water. Nameless turns on the water. Here is a washcloth, there is a bird at the window. A blurry bird. She can find the make-up remover with her hands. * * * Xenia carries her brand new shoulder bag to the pool party. Along with her swimsuit, she has packed a tube of antibiotic ointment and a pink plastic razor. The disposable kind her mother calls ugly. This is Jan Brown's house. The hills. Jan is Xenia's brand new friend. The other two girls have already arrived and sit cross-legged on Jan's porch swing, flipping their hair in the heat and waiting for the boys to show up. The boys are rude and vacuous, but each girl claims to be in love with one of them. Well, no one claims to be in love with Tom, who wears muddy overalls to school. His parents grow marijuana on their farm. Cheerleaders are not stupid, Mother. Everything is planned. Jan checks her out, expertly. "You need to get some sun, girl." The others laugh. Xenia's hands tremble slightly. Start a conversation. Which is the boy Jan has a crush on? Derek. "So... you're going out with Derek?" Jan's blue eyes narrow a little. "Kind of." "He seems like a very nice person." "You know what?" Jan says. "You remind me of a model. From a magazine I saw yesterday." She looks at Xenia suspiciously. Xenia understands she has done something wrong. One of the blondes whispers, "Tell her." "Tom... likes you," Jan says, smiling. They all smile at her. "I think you guys make such a good couple," one of them says. The quieter one flips her hair and giggles. Upstairs in the bathroom, Xenia removes her baggy black sweater and washes the razor. She drags a shallow cut along the radius of one breast. And then another. The cuts came out like sunrays on a kid's drawing, the nipples at the center of each sun. Twelve red lines. She stares at the girl in the mirror. Left profile. Right profile. She could fall in love with her, just looking. There isn't much blood. She fishes around for the antibiotic ointment. "Oh," says a husky voice to her left. Xenia stares at Jan, who stands behind her in the mirror holding a 113

Berkeley Fiction Review box of tampons. She could have been in the doorway for minutes. Stupid: I only notice me. Jan's pupils are dilated. Xenia catches a whiff of sweet smoke and menstrual blood. Then Jan puts her hand on Xenia's shoulder. "Does it hurt?" Xenia nods bravely. "It's nothing," "Oh, I wouldn't say that," says Jan, as if she really was saying it. "It's like—art. You're like a performance artist." "A performance artist," Xenia says. She starts to cry. In her imagination is the future. Jan will decay. Xenia knows everything! She knows that the smell surrounding Jan is the scent of death. Jan leans closer with interest, almost with hunger, then pulls back in disgust. Xenia herself feels nothing but pity for Jan. * * * "Hey, straight shooter." "Hey, burnout." There is a dialogue now. She sits at the red picnic table in her mother's backyard. She writes: Dad, I can't recognize the girl in the mirror. No smug expression. He writes back; it's as cryptic as ever: keep taking your medicine; don't speak—sing!; say hello to everyone, even ants. And, more reassuringly, You're going to make it. Was there ever any doubt? She can bring tears to her eyes, thinking fondly of herself and how close she came to wasting it. Get over yourself. But she is over herself, her old self. All her old preferences—wiped out: carrot sticks, Democrats, spaghetti straps, David Bowie, black bras, big families, tennis. These days she dresses like a preppy and talks like a zombie. When she talks at all. Mostly she is too busy. There are a hundred thousand renewals, like kites flying in her head. When someone asks her a question, all she can think of is, I'm alive. Sometimes she thinks about college but is not sure she wants to apply. She is thinking of changing her name again.

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Or, Mackey Rottler s G r a n d p a Dirge Stephen Davenport

Don't think of her as Dutch's wife. How many times does she have to explain that the Napoleonic Code was overturned more than a century ago, that femme couverte (watch her lips, woman as that which is owned) was replaced by femme seule (it's not like you have anything against the idea, woman as that which owns)? For some reason, she has to keep explaining the simplest of things, like, she says, sexual exchange value and self-ownership. And what about, you want to ask one more time, her full-moon meetings of the DisOrder of the Daughters of Lilith? Something about the first principle being the primacy of self-naming. Her name's always been Lucy Brown, she says. She does what she wants when she wants—usually without regret, she adds—and she has a career of her own. Lawyer Lucy can say all of that in three languages that you know of. No doubt about it. Lucy lives large, and if you're smart, she'll make you a lot smarter. So, Lucy asks, what's your goal tonight? Say: Survival. But think: Atonement.

"Your fingers." She's looking at your glass and pointing. You wipe your fingers on your shirt and watch her laugh. Dutch is watching too and tugging at his soul patch. Watch him as he lowers his head. His ball cap has horns on it. Wonder: Would a goat dance this afternoon have helped Grandpa Rottler, aka Sam or Ram or Sam the Ram, carry your sins away? Don't 115

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The Goatman's Wife

Berkeley Fiction Review answer. Instead: Clear your throat. Lucy drags on her cigarette and holds, exhales, and blows smoke over your head. "I'm hungry. Let's order something." Menu the color of mustard with three columns of food in large black print. Coolly study it. Mounds of golden brown shrimp. T-bones, it says, of a giant pound, thick and juicy. The Dutch Delight, an 8ounce chopped sirloin charcoal-broiled rare, simmered for two minutes in equal parts goat blood and milk, and spiced lightly. Or the almighty world-famous Hornburger: one pound of 110% pure beef slaughtered and skinned, gutted and ground on the spot, and served between the largest buns in Albers County, garnish of cheddar, swiss, onion, green bell pepper, tomato, pickle, bacon, crisp leaf of lettuce. Jalapeno and secret sauce (yikes) optional. All for the low, low price of on the house. Dutch's treat. "I don't see anything that grabs me," she says. "How about you?" Shake your head no if you want. Notice that Dutch is pushing thick hair under his horn cap and staring at Lucy. Notice that although she's looking at you, she knows he's looking at her. Notice how everyone is looking at everyone else. Every once in a while, look to the door and pray Jenny Diver, aka Lucy's partner, and/or her husband, Dick, doesn't come through it. Let Lucy order for you.

Try to put yourself in the Goatman's shoes. The Horn of Plenty's his place, and it's very public. The food is his, and the woman sitting across the table from you is a woman he probably considers his wife. Yes, it's a booth and much of you is hidden, but no one can hide that it's you, Mackey Rottler, not the Goatman, sitting there and that he's her husband and you're not. Aha, you think. If, as Lucy contends, she's not his wife, then he can't be her husband, right? Okay, but remember two things: one, no one else in the joint knows or believes that, and two, he's still the Goatman, still the guy you and Agenbite watched walk into the sauna years ago and set what must have been some sort of Inwit Health Club record. "No one's hung like a horse," you insisted. "A goat then," said Agenbite. "A really, really well-endowed, scary 116

goat. The Goat Lord."

Ask Lucy if he's a Capricorn. Mention the Sanskrit monster Mahara, goat-headed, sea-going. Theme established, share your knowledge of variations: the Babylonian Suhurmas, goat fish; the Persian Vahik, sea goat; the Greek Aigokeros, goat-horned one. Notice the newspaper by the wait station near the back door. Excuse yourself from the table; then slip over and check Dutch's horoscope. Dum-de-dum-de-dum. Leave immediately if it says anything about goat-administered goat-understudy ritual sacrifices. Cursed be the man who has no goal. Let the people say amen. You say nothing.

Admit it. You're nervous. That you agreed to meet Lucy back at your place after the burial made sense. The circle of life. That you have dinner with her here at the Horn this evening was a dare you should never have accepted. It'll be Dutch's treat, she said. The Goat Lord giveth. The heel of your right foot is tapping the floor in Morse Code, something like "Shit, shit, shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit. Shit, shit. Shiiit." If you knew the International Radio Alphabet, you'd be chanting "Foxtrot Unicorn Charlie Kilo" under your breath until the cows turn blue or you come home. Or something. Tell Lucy she's a bigger person than you are and ask if you can be excused. If she asks what your goal for the evening is, tell her it changes by the minute. Look to the door for the Divers.

Let's play a game. If, in asking to be excused, you are, consciously or unconsciously, thinking of her as your mother, take one step back. Cursed be the enlightened man who turns a lover into his mother. Let the people say amen. You say: Survival. Add: Through ritual sacrifice, burial, atonement. When Lucy says what, say: Nothing. Look at something over her shoulder. If, in asking to be excused, you are merely being polite and would 117

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goat. The Goat Lord."

The Goatman's Wife

Berkeley Fiction Review have asked the same thing of a man, any man, hold your position. Try to maintain this posture throughout life. If you asked without thinking because you were scared and you can admit it, take a step forward. Such honesty is admirable. Your fear is cute. Either is a potential aphrodisiac.

Vesicapiscis: yoni, vulva. Freya, Venus. Siren, mermaid. Hindu Great Goddess, aka Fishy Smell or Truth. Vessel of fish. Pagans considered fish an aphrodisiac and ate it on Friday, aka dies veneris or Day of Venus, to prepare for goddess-centered sex rites. Because sex involved the body and the body was dirty, Christians douched the Virgin Mary of her sea smell. And her power. Why you denied sleeping with Jenny Diver is a mystery. How many times does Lucy have to tell you sex is pleasure and dishonesty displeasure? How many times does she have to tell you the only thing she expects from you is the thing you seem least able to give, truth?

In nine cases out of ten, "aphrodisiac" is a silly word. Don't say it unless you mean it. Don't say stuff like "Like dogs we're drawn to each other, sniffing, circling, legs raised" unless you do it with a kind of animalistic Romeo-knowing and add, with perfect timing, "Like what you smell, Lucy Brown? I smell you all the way aroun'. Want you all the way through. Coo-cooca-choo." Don't bother with what "through" means. Just mean it. Tell her your new goal: To be a fisher of women.

She taps the table with her lighter and tells you you're funny. You do things that would repulse her in another man. At the funeral this afternoon she watched you poke yourself in the forehead with a pen. Twice. In the same spot, can you believe it, she says, in the same spot. Think of the odds. She laughs and chokes on her beer. Wrong pipe apparently. She coughs and wipes her nose. She takes another swig, then checks your forehead for ink. Pour her some more beer. Her fingers feel good, and she's a swigger. You have to respect that. Pour yourself the rest of the beer. 118

She lights a cigarette, her last one, and looks into your eyes. She touches her black sweater, pours salt in her glass. Shake your head no if you don't want any. Then, if you really mean it, look at her black sweater and feel a little embarrassed by what happened earlier at the burial. Don't tell her what you're thinking, but think this: All the friends and relatives clustered under umbrellas and talking quietly, pointing you out as the grandson who found him dead. All the umbrellas and everyone shocked when you stumble in loose gravel not three feet from the hearse and cause your end of the casket to hit the ground. Grandpa Rottler on the rocks. Shake your head imperceptibly at the thought, the metaphor, a word he wouldn't have understood, but a joke he'd appreciate. Look at Lucy's red hair. For embarrassment. You have red in your pockets too, Grandpa's checkers, and the black, some of them too. For luck, good and bad. And Lucy's hair and sweater like checkers. Say nothing when she asks you what you're thinking. Mean what you say, but say nothing. You notice her look. The long fingers, the full lips. You like that look. Vampiric in the best possible sense. Make a note to find a way to make it sound beautiful. She excuses herself. Dutch smiles and says something you can't hear as she walks down the hall to the restroom. Lucy's move. As it should be. Look to the door for the Divers. Look at Dutch without seeming to look at him. 10 Do your goat homework. Kingdom, animalia. Phylum, chordata. Subphylum, vertebrata. Superclass, tetrapoda. Class, mammalia. Subclass, theria. Infraclass, eutheria. Order, artiodactyla. Family, bovidae. What, you ask, would cause an alpha maleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the billiest horn daddy of the bunchâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to offer his wife so openly to his goat understudy? 11 See 1. (Umb-day uck-fay.) 12 Study up on cuckoos, the bird equivalent of the lecherous goat. Call Carolus Linnaeus if you want at 1-800-CUC-KOOS, but taxonomy, or systematics, isn't likely to help you with this one. Even though 119

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Berkeley Fiction Review October is five months too late, consider yourself part of a sacred May ritual, a symbol of freedom, a sign for marriage partners to set aside their vows of monogamy and enjoy a month-long debauch. Cursed be the bird who mocks when everyone's so willing. Let the people say amen. Let cuckoo mean something else, something more than the Bard's word of fear to Dutch's married ear. You protest? Why would you, a nice guy, want to cuckold someone? Good question. Lie back and tell me all about it. Start at the Garden of Eden. 13 Recall the preacher's words at the funeral if you can. You can't. Anything he said was lost on you because of the two old women a few rows back. Did your aunt really mean it when she said Grandpa Rottler, between prison terms, lived with them in "unofficial matrimony"? Recall the line you would have had the preacher say, the one that kept running through your head: the sins of the father shall repeat themselves in the grandson, goat understudy, year-round cuckoo. Cursed be he who fornicates and jokes about it. Let the people shout amen. Wonder: Does Leviticus 18 have anything to say about rural three-ways? Notice: Dutch is not at his customary station at the end of the bar. Suppress: Where's Lucy? 14 Ichthys. You recall the preacher saying that. Greek for "fish." Symbol for Jesus Christ, fisher of men, professional son, no grandfather to worry over, under. Add: An earlier Ichthys was the son of a sea goddess, Atargatis, aka Delphine, aka womb or dolphin. She kept her sea smell. If you're thinking of Lucy as your mother, take one step back. But understand it's not all your fault. Start with the Ancients. Consider the Great Goddess of Ephesus, who wore a belt slung over her hips, an amulet of fish positioned over her genitals. Sea smell suggesting womb, wild original energy. Look at Lucy's hips when she comes back. If she comes back. 15 Can you say Oedipus ten times with your tongue sticking out? Try it at home. 120

The Goatman's Wife Your food's here. Order another pitcher of beer. Don't eat with your mouth open. Look to the door for the Divers, either one or both. 16 Finish this mournful dirge. Add it to the book you're writing. Tentative title: The Book of Fucking and Dying. Your father's father, a bad boy most of his life, drunkard, carouser, ex-con, Sam the Ram, was laid to rest after six months in an Inwit old folks' home, where you spent twenty guilty hours a week taking care of the bastard. When your aunt could fly in, she put in twelve-hour days. Your aunt's a good person. If she has a list to work out, it's short and private. Your agenda, as far as you can tell, is selfish. Each time you combed his hair, played checkers with him, got him a mint, rearranged his dresser, tucked the old man into bed, or watched your aunt do the same, you stored the details and impressions on your cranial hard drive for later use. One midnight calling: Bourbon splashed over ice like a sacrament. The other: List files, choose one, reinvent yourself. 17 When you get home, click on Ram. Here are some things you'll find. Horned god. One of the most popular of the animal incarnations of the Holy Phallus. Like all phallic gods, Ram is a vehicle for atonement, a sacrificial victim that, in dying, carries our sins away with him. Days or festivals of atonement usually mark the turn from one year to the next. Ram is the symbol of the first sign of the zodiac. See Bull, Stag, Goat. See also Jesus Christ. Some speculate that our fascination with tjie horn as a symbol of virility originates in the horns of Moon-Cow, the Great Mother. See Astarte-Tanit, lo, Keroessa. On the astrological scene, some speculate that confusion over the linguistic similarity of Aries, aka the Ram, and Ares, aka Greek God of War, might have caused Aries's association with the planet of Mars, aka Roman God of War. That might explain Aries's association with the element of fire and tendency toward domestic troubles and shifting fortunes. See Zodiac. See also Sam the Ram Rottler, born on All Fools' Day.

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18 We are edited by observation. You're still editing Grandpa Rottler, and he's in the grave. Observe yourself in the booth. Do you see goat or cuckoo? Fish or ram? Take your time.

22 Ask yourself why Lucy, given her sexual liberationist politics, remains married to Dutch. Also ask yourself why you can't tell the truth. Before yon decide what to say, look to the door for the Divers.

19 Straight up nine o'clock. Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckooâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;O word of fear. How does it sound in a cuckoo's ear? Watch the customers watch you. Let the people nod and say amen. What are the chances of the Divers showing up? Calculate the odds.

23 Report Card: Mackey Rottler appears to be suffering from an acute inability to understand the concept of open marriage. Does this failure of the imagination have anything to do with his proclivity for sleeping with married women? Does the agreement between Dutch and Lucy, if there is one, hinder in any way Mackey's proclivity? If everyone's willing and no one's anyone's property, is Mackey breaking one of the commandments? Does lamby Jesus believe in private property? If so, is Mackey a thief? If no, given that he's given to doing wrong things, how does he sustain his interest? We've asked Mackey these questions, but he says nothing. Maybe we can all get together for a conference? Where's Lucy? Glance at Dutch's customary spot at the end of the bar. Look to the door for the Divers. Your food's getting cold. Clean your plate. Watch your manners. Cursed be the boy who doesn't pay attention. Lucy may be teaching you a lesson. Let the people say amen.

20 Pretend you're back in college taking an essay test. What are the essential differences between the goat and the fish? The cuckoo and the ram? What do you make of the goat fish? Is a ram-fish-goat-cuckoo combination possible? Is there any such thing as an essential difference? Do you really think Grandpa Rottler a ram? If so, do you really think his sacrifice will erase his sins, your sins? If so, how long do you think it will take you to cover your clean slate with new marks, most of them failing? If Christian symbols aren't working for you, why do you think the ancient ones will? Hint: You don't. 21 When Lucy comes back, tell her you're not sure about the ancient symbols. Tell her you're confused about your goals. Tell her also the following. Say: Once upon a time, Lucy, boy meets a pearl, aka girl. Expect her to say she's writing her own version, to be titled something like Wild Woman Who Doesn't Get the Blues, or Fishy Smell With the Power to Choose. Or maybe she'll say, "If the boy tells the woman the truth, what does he have to lose?" "The girl," tell her, "like in the three-parter written with the boy's interests in mind." She'll smirk and say, "I prefer another story, another role: Independent ho-ho instead of his yo-yo. Or yours." Which means she directs her own scenes. In one of them, she asks you if you slept with Jenny Diver, and you tell her yes, and she asks you how it went, and you tell her it was enjoyable. Nothing has to rhyme. 122

24 If you learn nothing else, Mackey Rottler, learn this: Lucy Brown's no man's meat or gift or property or thing to name, she's not the Goatman's Wife, and she's not your mother, though your confusion is understandable. Some speculate that on a subconscious level men seek the womb, aka dark water, aka primordial deep, because only through immersion can they die their little deaths and be reborn. Isis swallowing Osiris to give birth to him. Moon-Cow spitting out the sun every morning. The circle of life, turning origins into destinations, making blessed mothers of devouring lovers. So, Mackey, you can be excused for the occasional confusion* When Lucy uses the expression petit mort, or little death, to describe orgasm, go ahead and dream of being washed in the salty waters of your beginning, of losing and finding yourself, of being returned whole and clean to the universe. 123

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18 We are edited by observation. You're still editing Grandpa Rottler, and he's in the grave. Observe yourself in the booth. Do you see goat or cuckoo? Fish or ram? Take your time.

Berkeley Fiction Review Questions for group therapy: If rebirth in the vesicapiscis, aka vessel offish, is a type of baptism, is it also a form of ritual sacrifice? If women are not swallowed up in sex, how are they devoured so they might be reborn? At what price to their psyches? H o m e w o r k assignment: Trace the historical and cultural transformation of vesica piscis to the Gates of Hell, aka Vagina Dentata. Queries: What does this assignment have to do with your being left here in the booth to eat alone? Exactly who's abandoned whom? 25 Go home. Gulp your bourbon. Plunk a dirge on your guitar and slur your words as you sing. Make a fool of yourself in the mirror. Play the clown prince of pathos. Consider applying for membership in the DisOrder of the Daughters of Lilith. Study up on Lilith. Concentrate on what the Christians did to defame her. But know that you're not a fish. Know that unless you change your ways, you'll always be a goat understudy, little lonely cuckoo, nicens baby tuckoo. Consider calling Jenny Diver and telling Lucy about it. Consider the song Grandpa Rottler wrote about the ram that gets caught in the thicket. Imagine what the Daughters would say: On his way to the deep, the ram seeks entanglement, encourages the thicket, seeks the path of most resistance. Add: Then one day dies. Go home and write that in your book.

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Peaches

P e a c h e s G. Davies Jandrey

erry looks over the edge of the catwalk as Omar Gamboa demonstrates the levers that control not only the halt and go of the conveyer belts, but also the number of peaches released from the vast bin on the south side of the belt. This is a man's job, and though Jerry Hardin is not yet a man, even by his own standards, he is male. The scene Jerry finds so riveting is the women's work. Fifteen feet below him are six rows, twenty women per row, forming a gauntlet of sorts, through which thousands of peaches roll each hour. The women sit on stools, their netted heads bending over the belt. Sweat darkens the front, back and underarms of their dresses. With gloved hands they grasp the slippery peach and impale it on a spike which simultaneously pits and halves the fruit. Collectively they are known as "the girls," and though many clearly are, many clearly are no longer. Conversation on the canning room floor is made impossible by the great hiss of steam from scalding, lime-laced water that leaves the peaches bald and slick. The women's faces are slack with tedium. Occasionally, one picks up a golden, apparently imperfect peach and lobs it over her shoulder into a bin of hundreds of composting fruit. The heady perfume of peaches awash in syrup is undercut by a sweet, vegetal rot and the chemical tang of lime. "Hey, kid," Omar shouts, his meaty, hairy-knuckled hand resting on a lever. "Stop twiddling your dick and look here. This is the one you use to stop the peaches. You watch down there; if there's too many peaches, if them girls get behind, you pull this one here. See?" 126

Jerry watches Omar demonstrate. "You think you can keep your lever straight?" he asks, hooking his thumb in the direction of the women below. This was the 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. For ten hours, not including his two fifteen minute breaks and half hour he has for lunch, the conveyer belt is to be Jerry's sole responsibility. For ten hours it is to be his job to watch the women pass their hands over the slippery fruit, to pull a lever if they fall behind, to watch the sweat roll down their necks and wet their dresses, to evaluate the flare of their hips as they lean across the belt to pick up a peach. "Yes, Mr. Gamboa, I think I can," Jerry answers. Just eight weeks out of his life. He can do it. It's the height of the peach season. The Marysville branch of the Libby McNeal and Libby cannery is running double shifts daily to keep up with the crop. This is Jerry's first job, but he isn't like this man or any of those girls below who will stay here in Marysville or across the river in Yuba City for the rest of their lives, working in the cannery, or not, as the seasons demand. This is temporary. In eight weeks Jerry will be on his way to UCLA.

Large moths circle the flood light, the occasional bat zig-zagging in pursuit. The women stand about the yard in small knots of threes and fours, smoking and drinking Coke. The summer air is cool in contrast with the steamy cannery. Jerry leans against the side of a corrugated tin shed, well within its margin of shadow. He watches as a heavy largebreasted woman stands with her legs wide apart, fanning herself with her skirt. "Hey Rosalie," someone shouts from across the yard. "Quit that, honey. We're trying to get some fresh air." Rosalie smiles and shakes her backside in the woman's direction. Jerry taps out a Camel. Stepping out from the shadow, he places it between his lips and strikes a match. The air is still, but he cups his hand protectively around the flame as he brings it to the tip of the cigarette. He inhales deeply, exhales slowly into the space above his head, then picks a piece of tobacco from his tongue. There is no urgency 127

Peaches

P e a c h e s G. Davies Jandrey

Berkeley Fiction Review in these acts. He has only started smoking recently and has yet to begin the addiction that will last half his life. He looks around the yard and assumes the bored expression he hopes will set him apart as the sophisticated college man he is determined to become. A girl waves to him and his chest shrinks involuntarily as he watches her approach. He clamps the cigarette between his teeth and kneels to retie the lace on his left shoe, squinting against the smoke that fills his eyes. The tips of the girl's soiled Keds come within the circle of his vision, and he looks up. "Didn't you go to Yuba High?" she asks. Although Yuba High is the only high school around and therefore the only high school he could have attended, there is no irony in his voice when he stands and answers, "Yes." "I thought you looked familiar. My name is Naidra Zabriski. We weren't in the same class, but I remember you. You're the guy who used to sneak into the bus yard before the drivers were there and back the buses out of the garage, you and that other fellow." "Steve Rosenberg." She shrugs. "I don't remember him. But I remember when you knocked the rearview mirror off. We took up a collection to help you pay for it, but you got suspended anyway." "That suspension almost cost me my scholarship. Smoke?" he asks, shaking the pack until a single cigarette emerges from the opening as it has done so many times in practice. She hesitates, then shakes her head. "I quit last year for Lent. Every day I put that quarter I'd have spent on cigarettes in a big old pickle jar. When I get four hundred of them, I'm going to open up a savings account." Jerry studies the girl, trying to place her. She has a pretty, round figure and sweet face, smooth and still rosy from the heat, but it is not a stand out kind of face. He smiles and folds the cigarette pack into the sleeve of his T-shirt. "I guess you don't remember me. I was a year behind you." He nods, "Oh yeah. Naidra. Now I remember you. You were a junior last year, right?" he says. "Can I buy you a Coke?" "No, no thanks," she says, ducking her head. "The bell's going to go off right about now." An amplified buzz drills the air. "There. Gotta 128

Peaches go." She turns away and hurries, half skipping, toward a group of women slowly unknotting. Together they make their way towards the yawning yellow light of the cannery door. Jerry follows at a calculated distance.

He hands her the beer can. She takes a sip and passes it back. Jerry's Levis are pushed up to his knees. They stand bare foot and ankle deep in the Yuba River, squishing mud between their toes and gazing into a sky, brilliant and unpolluted by exhaust or the lights of Sacramento. That will come later, but now it's still a diamond studded field of blueblack, the Milky Way a shimmering smear across the surface of the river. Their shoulders barely touch. This is the second time they have ended their shift standing in the river, splitting beers. Jerry takes a swallow of beer and hands it back to Naidra. She takes a long pull then reaches for his hand. "I was sorry to hear about your dad. I've been wanting to say that since last year, you know, but I wasn't in school when it happened, and well, there was just no way I could tell you. Now it's too late." Jerry wiggles his toes deeper into the plush of silt and rotting leaf. "It isn't too late," he says and squeezes Naidra's hand. "How's your mom doing?" "That's Elizabeth. She's not my mom. She's just somebody my father married." "Oh yeah? Where's your mom?" "Dead." "Wow. She's dead too. How'd it happen?" "Car went off the road up by Pentz." "How long ago?" Jerry shrugs. Not long enough to be able to talk about it, he thinks, recalling the shock and the shame of it. He was nearly ten the night his mother's car split from the road and rolled, old enough to know she had been drunk. "Awhile." "My dad's been gone awhile too. Not dead, just gone. But at least I got my mother." 129

Berkeley Fiction Review For a few moments, neither spoke. Jerry wonders if he should let go of Naidra's hand and put his arm around her shoulder. He wants to, but their silence makes him feel awkward. A hollow "nunk" interrupts the sigh and gurgle of the river. "Bullfrog," Naidra observes. "There's some big ones in here." "Yeah. Some people eat their legs." "Taste just like chicken." "You've eaten frog legs?" "Sure." She takes another sip of beer. "Once when I was little. Was before my dad left. We came here one night to catch frogs. The way you do, is shine a flashlight in their eyes. Light freezes them so you can gig them. Next morning my mom fixed us frog legs with eggs for breakfast. My sister wouldn't even try a bite but I did, to see what it was like. Was like chicken." "Frog legs are a great delicacy in France. A dinner of frog legs costs a lot of money." "Oh yeah? Well, you can get them for free right in this river." Naidra takes another swallow of beer. "Sure is warm tonight. You want to go for a swim?" Jerry wonders if she means to swim dressed or undressed. He had been cool to the base of his crew cut, but now heat spreads across his chest, up his neck and into his face. He's glad it's dark. "Skinny dipping or what?" "It's no fun if you leave your clothes on. I mean, we can keep our eyes shut until we're in the water. Don't tell me you never been skinny dipping?" "Sure I've been," he says casually. "Ever skinny dip with a girl?" "Once," he lies. "So you want to?" "Why not?" "Okay then, turn your back. When I say so, you close your eyes and we'll go in together." Jerry pulls off his jeans, wetting the legs in the process, and throws them up the bank, hurling his T-shirt and Jockeys after them. He waits, resisting the urge to fold his hands in front of his groin. From the corner of his eye he sees Naidra's cotton dress sail up the bank, followed 130

Peaches by two streaks of white. "Ready? Close your eyes now. You've got to promise." "They're closed. I promise." "Okay, then. Take my hand" They clasp hands and take a step forward. Jerry feels the current pull at his knees. Another step and the water swirls about his waist. With a shriek, Naidra pulls him under. His hand grazes her thigh. In a panic, Jerry breaststrokes underwater until his lungs get hot and tight. He bursts through the surface and continues to swim, arms churning, until his toes rake the grassy bottom on the opposite side. He stands, the river lapping at his navel. He can see Naidra treading water in the middle of the river. He watches her swim to shore. She rises out of the river. A waning quarter moon is rising. It casts a quavering path across the river and onto the shore. The Yuba is a humble thing, narrow in all places, and even from the opposite side he can see her, back to the water, pulling up her panties. Later there will be bikini underpants and the thong, but now, Naidra's generous buttocks are clad in prim, white cotton from the top of her thigh to her waist. Jerry is moved by the sight of those panties in the moonlight. They seem to float, disembodied, a magic pillow, rather than carpet, upon which he longs to ride. Slowly, she turns in his direction. It is a sight Jerry has only encountered in pulp magazines and he is unprepared for the challenge of reality. She stands there for some moments, moonlight bouncing off full, pale breasts, then picks up her dress and pulls it over her head. Amazed, he watches her tuck the bra into her purse and his teeth begin to chatter. "You still out there Jerry?" she calls shading her eyes from the moon and scanning the river. "Yup." "Aren't you getting kind of cold?" "I'm okay." "Well, come on out. It's getting late." She turns her back. "Come on. I'm not looking."

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Berkeley Fiction Review Elizabeth puts the plate before him. It offers a soft mound of scrambled eggs, three strips of bacon, and toast already buttered and spread with jam. She ruffles his hair before sitting across from him at the small dinette and watches him put a forkful of egg in his mouth. "You're such a handsome boy, Jerry. I wish your father were here to see how you've grown this past year. And your scholarship. He'd have been so proud." Jerry concentrates on the strips of bacon, which he breaks in half and places on his toast. "How are the eggs?" Fine. "So what time did you get in this morning?" Jerry shrugs. "About four, I guess." It had actually been five. "That's awfully late. Doesn't your shift end at two? What could you possibly do at two in the morning? Nothing's open." He shrugs again. "Some of us went down to the river. That's about it.

"Boys and girls?" CCT Âť 1 guess. "You guess?" She reaches across the table for her pack of Kools which her doctor has suggested she smoke because of her chronically irritated throat. "You guess, Jerry? Look at me when I speak to you, please. You guess: Her voice is getting tight, not loud, just tight. Jerry can almost see those vocal cords squeezing together. "Listen, Jerry, I know your father's name may not mean much to you, but he worked hard to make it respected in this community, and I don't want you to do anything to soil its memory Your father would tell you this himself if he were still alive. Those cannery girls, Jerry..." "You don't know the first thing about it," he says, picking up the toast from his plate. "Excuse me, Elizabeth. I have to take a shit." The word "shit" sounds emancipated to his ears. Years later, he will be grateful to Elizabeth as his prime motivator for good scholarship. When she is in a rest home and tethered to a small oxygen tank made mobile by a little cart, he will even feel sympathy for her. At her funeral, he will shed tears, his emotions mixed by things he will learn to appreciate about her over the years, but at the moment, she inspires 132

Peaches within his heart nothing but loathing and an intense desire for escape.

They lie in the sparse grass beneath a walnut tree, one of hundreds, forming a thick canopy between earth and sky. The dark beneath is solid. Jerry cannot see Naidra's hair fan out across the grass. Cannot see his tanned hand outlined against her naked breast. Naidra, half pinned beneath his leg, arches against him, grasping his hand. Then drawing his knuckles to her lips, she forces her tongue between his fingers. A pulse of electricity slams down his spine and into his dick which already throbs. "Have you ever made love?" she asks. "Once," he lies, recalling the time he dry banged Cathy Buhler until he had lover's nuts. "Only once? Me too. Well, I mean, I've only done it with one guy. Dp you want to make love to me, Jerry?" He answers her with a kiss while trying to think of a reason why he couldn't possibly. "I don't know, Naidra. Are you ready for this? I mean, I really respect you and wouldn't want you to do anything...." At that moment, he feels the slightest settling in beneath his leg, feels her loosen at the hips, as if his words are pouring over her heat like liquid oxygen. It is then, with love such a keen possibility he can feel it spin beneath him, that he gives himself over, his senses closing to a sparkling, hard point. He will spend two wives and the next thirty years trying to replicate that spin, but at the moment, he is only aware of his desire, and the black, softly unfolding flesh beneath him. He begins to unpeel the cotton panties, so like the skin of a peach, from Naidra's hips. Naidra lifts her buttocks so this can be accomplished and he feels her hand seeking hisfly.He slips his hand across her rounded belly, and hesitates, unsure how to proceed. Naidra delicately guides his hand down into the slick of her. He is amazed at how naturally his finger slips along the proper groove and into place. He is terrified and thrilled by its wetness and astonishing muscularity. Just as Naidra has freed his member from the constraints of his underwear, the black beneath the walnut tree is split with light, momentarily blinding them. 133

Peaches within his heart nothing but loathing and an intense desire for escape.

Berkeley Fiction Review "Who's under there?" A voice from the other side of the light demands. In a single movement, Naidra closes the top of her dress across her breasts and pulls her skirt down. "It's Naidra, Mr. Franklin. Naidra Zabriski?" "What're you kids up to there?" Jerry is thankful Naidra is doing the talking. His heart is beating hard and his stomach doesn't feel right either. "Oh, we're just looking at the stars, Mr. Franklin." "Ain't no stars under there, Naidra. I'd of thought you'd learned that. N o w you two come on out before I call the sheriff." Naidra's panties are still somewhere just above her knees, so it is a delicate matter getting to the car.

Jerry pulls the Ford onto the dirt lane that fronts Naidra's bungalow. The little house, one of a dozen owned by a farmer, stands in a bald yard streaming with moonlight. "Come in for a minute," Naidra says, taking his hand. "I want to show you something special." Jerry wonders if she still wants to make love, a phrase that became a euphemism the moment the farmer's flashlight penetrated the dark of the walnut grove. Months later, Jerry will lose his virginity between the cleanly shaven legs of a co-ed who knows no euphemisms, but at the moment, his hopes are riding on Naidra. He follows her across the hard packed, beaten-down yard and into the little house. "Shush," she whispers as she eases open the screen door. Inside the air is still and warm. There is a small table in one corner, two chairs, a couch that is Naidra's sleeping place, a stand with a lamp, and two doors. One opens to the kitchen and one, which is closed, to her mother's bedroom. The lamp, draped with a green scarf, provides a dim light, like sunshine through water. In the corner, is a crib. Naidra now stands beside it, dipping a hand within. With the other hand, she gestures for him to approach. Reluctantly, he steps up to the crib. He does not want to look inside. Does not want to acknowledge what he already understands. 134

Peaches "Isn't he beautiful?" she whispers, stroking the damp head with a single finger.

After that night, Jerry no longer invites Naidra to go with him to the river. During the long final week at the cannery, he never offers to buy her a Coke, does not speak to her if he can avoid it, and never explains. What would he say? That she terrifies him? That the possibility of being trapped in that valley by a girl with a baby terrifies him, and that even the possibility of her open, wet sex can not quell that terror? Some years later, following the death of his first marriage, he will revisit the cannery during the height of the peach season. He'll talk Omar Gamboa into letting him climb the cat walk for old times' sake. He will peer over the edge and be astounded to see that the women have been replaced by one hundred and twenty machines. He will wonder about their fate, about Naidra. He will then drive by Naidra's bungalow. Two small brown children will be playing in the dusty yard, while a young woman, Naidra's brown counterpart, hangs laundry. The air of entrenched marginality will make his chest tight and leave him with an unaccountable sense of loss. Jerry will often think of Naidra in the years to come. He will begin to appreciate, idealize even, her unselfconscious willingness to take things as they are given. He will often imagine her spread beneath the walnut tree, open and willing or beside the crib, her face glowing as she studies the one beauty in her life. Regret will come to lay upon his chest with the weight and warmth of a large cat and will be renewed each time he recalls the callow young man, at once fearful and self-serving, he had been. Part of him will come to love her as he had been unable to so long ago. He will begin to wonder how their lives, Naidra's and his, would have been different had he performed that one careless act.

Jerry is looking out the soiled window of the Greyhound bus as it labors up the Grapevine. The sky is brown, two fists above the horizon. Above that, it is a troubled, subdued blue. The color of the sky and 135

Peaches "Isn't he beautiful?" she whispers, stroking the damp head with a single finger.

Berkeley Fiction Review quality of the air are unimportant to Jerry. It isn't blue he seeks, but escape and the life he will have, which at this moment, is full of promise. He breathes deeply, completely, as if possibility were pure air and bright blue sky.

T h e I n c h

L a s t o f

U n b e l i e v a b l e E x t r a

Troy C o o k

nside a moving street car on an Autumn day, I sat with Polly, Neal and my sister. Polly looked at me. "I have a question." "Yes?" I could see Polly breathing: lifting belly, lifting belly, why not sneeze? My chest was tingling again; it tingled, this time, for Polly. I once saw breathing in a film where the rain dripped from the brim of a hat to the floor of a lobby, and behind a wall a raised eyebrow was a gift from one lover to another. "Well it's not really a question; it's more of a riddle." Polly looked at my sister. I looked closely at Polly's face. She was beautiful; she was ashen. Her chin had three lovely little pimples that shrieked of life. Her eyes were framed with dark circles, and her hair glistened for want of washing. "Go on," I said. Even before Polly began, she was blushing. "If I were to have a cathartic reaction that grew from a tickle to a climactic explosion, leaving only damp traces behind, what would it be?" Polly was a thrift store masterpiece. Her outfit consisted of an old hip-length jumper with a matching sleeveless woolen cardigan and scarf. The skirt was knee-length and pleated. She had on black stockings, and her muddy two-toned shoes completed the endearing ensemble. "Polly, you naughty girl," said my sister. "A sneeze," I answered. This was the last unbelievable inch of extra. I was amazed. How could we have connected in such a way? Neal snorted. "Is that right?" 136

137

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137

Berkeley Fiction Review "Of course," stated Polly. "Of course," I reiterated. Polly's belly was lifting, and she had little bits of dandruff on her shoulders. I wanted to run home and seek advice from Ovid. I certainly could be freed from torpor. The cure for slackness is to fall in love. No more lazily scribbling in the shade for me; no more softening up for me. The love of Polly will drive this sluggard to action. Hey Venus, fair's fair now. This Polly has got me hooked, and all I'm asking in return is love, or maybe some hope of carrying out everlasting devotion, or perhaps just a bit of love for me to give. But what have I got to offer? Well, my bumblepuppy, I can offer poetic genius and divine inspiration, and, of course, a bit of love. Scribble, scribble, I'm yours to command! You are my Helen; you are Troy-bound from Sparta; you are the cause of war! I will never tire of bringing you gifts! I will cease reading Ovid; I will not want a cure or a facial treatment. (I felt as though I needed an antacid). I'll admit that I have certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation upon the beauty of Polly's pimples, which causes me to wish above all things the. embrace of her. Yes. Of course I do. I needed Polly's perfect pimples in a blemished world. "Of course," my sister said. "Of course you all know that a sneeze is the meaning of life. You Neal must know the most about it, the meaning, I mean." "What do you mean?" Neal said with the rhythm of my sister's musical yet slightly acerbic tone. "I mean, dear Neal, that you must, being a doctor Neal, deal with sneezes all day long." "I mostly deal with large wounds to the face and throat," Neal rubbed his eyes. "I probably wouldn't even notice a sneeze." Polly looked at me. "A sneeze is something . . . it's something big." "I know what you mean," I said. "I'm glad somebody does," my sister said. "Sorry," Polly said, "I'll just shut up now." "No, no," I said, "can you explain?" "Well, just that it's a kind of bright spot in my day." "What is?" my sister asked. "A sneeze?" "Well, yeah, sort of." Polly rubbed both of her stockinged calves. "It's hard to explain; I don't mean that it's a highlight; I just mean that 138

The Last Unbelievable Inch OfExtra it's a bright spot; oh, I don't know what I mean anymore." "I think you need to get a life," my sister said. "Don't be rude," scolded Neal. My sister laughed. "Sorry." "I think, it means exactly that she does have a life," I tried to explain. What Polly was saying, I of course felt that I knew, was that a sort of daily miracle happens in a sneeze; it's a kind of illumination; it's a headlight turned on unexpectedly in a dark alley. Polly smiled at me. I smiled back. "It is something big, I think." Polly raised a hand to her forehead, twisted a lock of hair, and let it fall again. She was grinning; her grin rose to the very height of her bright spot. Seeing her like this meant that my center had shifted because little flags of birds on a November afternoon with its bright leaves and wet roads suggest that sometimes, usually on Sundays, there will be a woman or women, never more than three or four of them, standing in a row of boots or moored in a bus stop arbor, dreaming of fabric dyed in Madagascar to exactly their shade of blue and terra-cotta all the while recalling somewhat ruefully that they are looking forward to a life of color and love.

139

C o n t r i b u t o r

N o t e s

AUTHORS

John Blair has published prose and poetry in magazines such as The Georgia Review, Poetry, New Letters, and The Sewanee Review, as well as two novels with Ballantine Books. He teaches in the creative writing program at Southwest Texas State University. Troy Cook is pursuing his MFA in creative writing at Mills College. When he's not suffocating in simulacra, he enjoys getting the gist of the gest. Lindsey Crittenden's collection of short fiction, The View from Below, won the 1997 Mid-List Press First Series Award and will be published in February 1999. She has had stories published in Quarterly West, River City, and Faultline, and her personal essays appear frequently in the East Bay Express. A graduate of two UCs—Berkeley and Davis—she lives in San Francisco. Stephen Davenport, a post-doc in American literature, teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as he searches, searches, searches for a tenure-track job. Recent publications include poetry in The Iowa Review and an article in The Review of Contemporary Fiction. "The Goatman's Wife" is his first fiction publication. Grant Faulkner grew up in Iowa and now lives in San Francisco. He's currently working on his first novel, still. Grant Flint is 69, writing the great American novel trilogy (70% complete), has met 53 women in the personal ads, and has been published in Poetry and Nation.

Wayne Harrison received an MFA from the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop last May. His stories have appeared in Ploughshares, B&A € New Fiction, and elsewhere, and he is presently at work on a novel. G. Davies Jandrey is currently a Special Education teacher at Tucson High Magnet School in Tucson, Arizona. Her fiction has appeared most recently in Passenger and High Plains Literary Review. Her non-fiction was awarded first place in the Arizona Association of English Teachers' 1998 English Teachers as Writers contest. Phoebe Kitanidis lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. "Girls with Weird Names" is her first published story. Stephanie Mazow is a short story writer and playwright living in San Francisco with her girlfriend Meg and Lilith, the cat. She has recently resumed production of Gyrll, a zine which showcases local short fiction and poetry. In addition to working on a collection of short stories, she also currently writes and performs stand-up and sketch comedy throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Candice Rowe has published poems, essays, and short stories in magazines such as Apalachee Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, and Red Rock Review. A chapbook of her poems appeared in Permafrost. A oneact play, Why Does Constance Get Those Terrible Headaches, was produced off-off Broadway in New York City. Shawna Ryan graduated from U.C. Berkeley in May 1998, with a BA in English. She is currently living inTaichung, Taiwan, teaching English to children. This is her first published work. Susan Steinberg is from Baltimore. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Mississippi Valley Review, Denver Quarterly, and Indiana Review. She is currently working on an MFA in English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she teaches creative writing. Josh Stevens, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, lives in St. Louis where he just completed his first novel. "A Kiss on the

C o n t r i b u t o r

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AUTHORS

Forehead," dedicated to James Kearns, is his second story to appear in the Berkeley Fiction Review. The first received nomination for the Pushcart Prize. Jenny Weisberg grew up in Minnesota, where everyone plays cards during the cold winter months. She has since lived in Wisconsin, Wyoming and Oregon, and now lives with her husband and son in Ft. Collins, Colorado. ARTISTS

Christine Ambrosio (aka Cici) completed her BA in Art Practice at U.C. Berkeley. She continued on to get her master's degree, in Arts in Education, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Currently, she works at U C Berkeley as a student group adviser. Her published works include pieces in Maganda and an essay, "Individualizing Space," in Filipino American Architecture, Design, &: Planning Issues. She hopes to work in museum education and continue working for the Pilipino community. Mon Thai is a third year student at the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in art practice and minoring in Asian American studies.

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