Berkeley Fiction Review, Volume 23 by Berkeley Fiction Review

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Issue

F I C T I O N

CALI<FO<^N'IA

B E R K E L E Y

F I C T I O N

R E V I E W

EDITORS

Matt Gough

Sarah Haufrect

ASSOCIATE EDDITORS

Martha Benco Maria Howard

Irene Nocon Jules Simon

ASSISTANT EDITORS

LAYOUT EDITOR

Kessy Gbendio Nisrene Kazimi

Cindy Leung

STAFF

Cover by Ting Chin Copyright 2003 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. ASUC sponsored. Inquiries, correspondence, and submissions should be sent to: Berkeley Fiction Review, 10 Eshleman Hall, Berkeley, CA 947204500. The Berkeley Fiction Review is not responsible for unsolicited material.

Jan Andres Linda Azez-Zadeh Laurel Brown MarisaBurrill AlissaCambier Alicia Churchill Michelle Fellows Karrie Fuller Michael Gisolia Erin Hayes Pat House Kathryn Hutchison Courtney Jones VandanaKapur LaraKirkner COVER AND INTERIOR ART

Ting Chin Member of CLMP Distributed by Ubiquity, Brooklyn, New York Printed by Alonzo Printing, Haywrard, California ISSN 1087-7053

Christy Kovacs Tierney Kramlich VladKroll Drew Kroner Stephanie Look Monica Padrick Dani Sahagun Wakana Sears Chau Tong Jeremy Walsh Victoria Wang Amber Whittiker Katie Wintermute AlishaWoo Steven Worley

B E R K E L E Y

F I C T I O N

R E V I E W

EDITORS

Matt Gough

Sarah Haufrect

ASSOCIATE EDDITORS

Martha Benco Maria Howard

Irene Nocon Jules Simon

ASSISTANT EDITORS

LAYOUT EDITOR

Kessy Gbendio Nisrene Kazimi

Cindy Leung

STAFF

Ting Chin Member of CLMP Distributed by Ubiquity, Brooklyn, New York Printed by Alonzo Printing, Haywrard, California ISSN 1087-7053

A D V I S O R S

F O R E W O R D

FACULTY

PROF. STEPHEN

BOOTH

PUBLICATIONS

XAVIE

HERNANDEZ

ALUMNI

JAMIE

MONTEFU

NATALIE

WRIGHT

This year the Berkeley Fiction Review celebrated its 20th year of existence. All of us on staff feel the full value of that number, the experience that has been gained, the pitfalls and the heights we have broken out of and risen to; 20 is also the average age of our staff. The Berkeley Fiction Review has achieved much, and we can only hope that the tradition will carry on. This year's selections come from a very diverse group of writers, who hail from cities as far away as Vancouver, and as close to home as San Francisco, and from many cities in between, like, Somerville, MA, Lincoln, NE, Chicago, IL r and Clemson, SC. We are reminded that sharing stories with others is not just a process, but a beloved pastime, in which people come together with open ears and open eyes; storytelling in this sense is the work of unification. The Berkeley Fiction Review takes great pride in bringing together this diverse collection of stories for everyone to enjoy and to share. We would like to thank all authors who have submitted their stories to The Berkeley Fiction Review and hope they continue to supply us with their art. We feel honored that you find our magazine to be a suitable publication for your work. Thank you to all the staff members who worked so diligently to complete this issue. Without your hard work and support, this would have been a lot harder. If this is the first time you have picked up an issue of ours, we .hope you enjoy it. If you are returning to us, welcome back.

Matt Gough

Sarah Haufrect

A D V I S O R S

F O R E W O R D

FACULTY

PROF. STEPHEN

BOOTH

PUBLICATIONS

XAVIE

HERNANDEZ

ALUMNI

JAMIE

MONTEFU

NATALIE

WRIGHT

Matt Gough

Sarah Haufrect

S U D D E N

C O N T E N T S

F I C T I O N

Breathe John Talbird

Suits and Bodies Michael Darcher

Doing Without Thomas H. Brennan

"The Death of a Mexican Part I" Second

Breeding Quarks Julie Benesh

The Death of a Mexican P a r t I Manuel P. Lopez First Place Sudden Fiction Winner

O n e With The World John Skinas

Bendicion Alisa Rivera

Characters Adam Snider

T h e Rain M a k e r HarlynAizley

M o h a w k Trail Jon Boilard Second Place Sudden Fiction

W i n n e r s o f t h e Berkeley

Fiction

Review's

Sixth A n n u a l Sudden Fiction Contest First Place M a n u e l P. L o p e z

Place

Jon Boilard " M o h a w k Trail" Third

Place

Rebecca Baker "Soon She Will Catch U p to M e "

Winner

S U D D E N

C O N T E N T S

F I C T I O N

Breathe John Talbird

Suits and Bodies Michael Darcher

Doing Without Thomas H. Brennan

"The Death of a Mexican Part I" Second

Breeding Quarks Julie Benesh

The Death of a Mexican P a r t I Manuel P. Lopez First Place Sudden Fiction Winner

O n e With The World John Skinas

Bendicion Alisa Rivera

Characters Adam Snider

T h e Rain M a k e r HarlynAizley

M o h a w k Trail Jon Boilard Second Place Sudden Fiction

W i n n e r s o f t h e Berkeley

Fiction

Review's

Sixth A n n u a l Sudden Fiction Contest First Place M a n u e l P. L o p e z

Place

Jon Boilard " M o h a w k Trail" Third

Place

Rebecca Baker "Soon She Will Catch U p to M e "

Winner

r Queen Nefertiti Andrea" Rudy

Milton, Keats, and My Son Paul Levine

101

Blinded Holly Monacelli

105

Soon She Will Catch Up to Me Rebecca Baker Third Place Sudden Fiction Winner

113

Cut Me Jon Boilard

115

Letting Go AriBank

117

r Queen Nefertiti Andrea" Rudy

Milton, Keats, and My Son Paul Levine

101

Blinded Holly Monacelli

105

Soon She Will Catch Up to Me Rebecca Baker Third Place Sudden Fiction Winner

113

Cut Me Jon Boilard

115

Letting Go AriBank

117

B R E A T H E

John

Talbird

y chest is doing funny things, Mom." Jan turns from the sunny window, blinks, shakes the daydreaming trance from her head. The kitchen is stifling with afternoon air. Cutting off the water, she dries her hands on a dish towel. A fly moves sluggishly past, half-dead from the heat, unconcerned about flyswatters. Jan kneels so they're face to face. She loves seeing Hank up close like thisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it gives her chills to think that someday he'll be her height, someday she'll have to look up into his face. His blond hair is getting long, curling out of control. A man thought he was a girl last week in the grocery store. Perhaps she should cut it, she thinks, but she's afraid of screwing it up. She hates going to the barbershop: the thick men with cologne-andcigarette-scented breath, fat fingers holding scissors too close to his neck, the long wait while she bites her nails, spits the slivers. She puts her fingers through his curls, his serious expression making her smile. "What's it doing, buddy?" "It just keeps jumping." His eyes move slowly downward as if he's afraid to look. The fly buzzes. He hiccups. "That was it. Did you hear it?" "Yeah. You've got the hiccups." "Will it go away?" "Sure. Try holding your breath." He puffs his cheeks, places his fists against his neck as if to hold the air back. The clock on the wall hums and the second hand races around its white face. Should a little boy hold his breath this long? Jan looks at the clock, but of course, she never started timing so its speeding second hand means nothing. Hank hiccups and giggles, placing a hand on his heart as if about to pledge allegiance. "Just a second," Jan says, filling a glass with tap water, tasting itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;room temperature, slightly metallic. "Here. Drink this fast." He does, but after just a few swallows, his chest jerks, and his eyes widen. She smiles, but has to admit she feels a bit uneasy. She knows it's nothing. Still, she wants to fix it. "Hey, buddy, try to drink upside down." He hesitates, squints and bites his lip. She can see the picture in his mind: balanced on his head, drinking a glass of water somehow unaffected by gravity. "Like this," 13

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from his glass, turning and bending so that she's looking at him through her legs. She swallows, smiles upside down, her black, curly hair pooling on the gray linoleum floor beneath her head. "Like that. Got it?" He giggles, delighted, and then swallows some water, hands the glass back, bends over. The water runs down his face, into his hair, onto the floor. His laughter, jarred by the hiccups, is musical in the kitchen. Jan pours the rest of the water down the drain. Outside the window, Hank's cat, Smoke, is inching through the grass, staring at something she can't see. She could turn suddenly, yell "boo," scream, scare the hiccups from him it occurs to her. Of course, that's a ridiculous idea. When Jan turns, he's looking at her as if to say, "What next?" "They'll go away, buddy. Get your bathing suit on. We need to leave if we're going swimming." # * * Jan packs a lunch—a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, some potato chips, sodas—and they head down 441 to Lake Walters. The grass on Paynes Prairie looks so dry it's a wonder it doesn't just burn up under that Florida sun. Palmettos are sprinkled here and there like bundles of red-brown daggers. The long, green sedge speckled with white flowers stretches for as far as Jan can see. Wavy lines of heat rise in the air as the road blurs and twists ahead. The sweat runs down the side of her face, her ribcage, the small of her back. The steering wheel vibrates like a lawnmower handle in her palms. Hank wipes his forehead with his hand, smoothes the sweat into his hair. Warm wind whips through the open windows, flicks their long hair around their ears, passes out again. Elbow against the armrest, Hank stretches his neck to peer at the speeding scenery. He's wearing his new blue bathing suit, a YMCA T-shirt, black sneakers, the Donald Duck sunglasses his Aunt Jen brought him last spring when she visited. Jan touches his hair and gets that feeling: her chest contracts, eyes blur, and she tries to swallow, but it's stuck in her throat. Sometimes, she thinks she loves Hank so much it'll kill her. "How are the hiccups, buddy?" "Still there." "What the hell, eh?" He nods and shrugs and Jan laughs. Then she's flipping down the blinker and turning onto the dirt road.leading to Lake Walters. The old Chevette kicks up dust, obscuring the road in the rearview. Her tongue's gritty, the air, smelling of chalk and gasoline, making her cough. "Hey, look, buddy." A brown rabbit crouches in the middle of a freshly mowed field. He turns his black eyes toward the car as they pass and hops away. The little automobile struggles up a steep hill and at the top they see the lake below them, the sun reflected on its surface, little people running on the beach, splashing in the water. Hank hiccups and Jan presses her foot against the 14

Breathe brake; it goes all the way to the floor. There's a surge of panic and she stamps down again, thinks she's pressed the gas by accident, slams her foot against the other pedal; the car shoots down the hill, toward a family walking across the parking lot. Banging her palm against the horn over and over, the silly sounds coming from beneath the hood are more like a cartoon duck than the panic in her chest. She's stomping on the brake again and again, while Hank says, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy," a voice much too calm for a four-year-old in a brakeless car. The father picks up his little girl; he and the mother run, dragging the boy across black pavement. Jan jerks the wheel, swerves from the family and other blurred bodies and Hank's saying, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy," and the Chevette nicks a car—gray, large like a Buick, Oldsmobile maybe, Jan doesn't know, can't think about that—there is the deep crunch of metal and tinkle of glass. She keeps jerking the wheel away from a large oak; they run up a hill— green and cushiony with grass. It nudges the front of the car into the air and they're floating. Jan inhales and she and Hank look at each other and, for some reason, smile. They hit the water and Jan lets out a big sigh because water is soft and she thinks they're safe. "That was exciting. Huh, buddy?" Her laughter's shaky, without humor. "Uh, Mom, water's running in the car." "Don't worry, it'll be okay. We're just a few feet..." But when she looks over her shoulder, she's surprised that land is so far away. In fact, her shock paralyzes her for a moment, not allowing any movement but a slow nod as she measures the distance with her eyes: ten? Fifteen? Twenty yards? The placid water is marred slightly by the concentric rings expanding from their little car, the horizon wet and rising toward her line of vision. A man—large and flabby, burnt-red skin, too-tight T-shirt—is in the water and moving toward them, struggling against lake, free-styling his arms through the air. His eyes are white circles, tiny teeth framing an open mouth. People gather on the beach to watch. Water is pouring into both windows and their feet slosh in it. Hank is staring at Jan, waiting. "Don't panic, buddy. It's going to be fine." She pops off her seatbelt and is already reaching into water for the button on Hank's. "Goddamn. What?" It won't unlatch. Jan feels her lips curling into something like a smile but not, the situation too surreal to be true. She can see that Hank is not scared, he trusts her, waiting. "Don't panic, buddy." She jerks at the seatbelt, punches the button, jabs until her nail breaks. "Goddamn it. Fucking goddamn! Come on!" He hiccups, his eyes round with fear. Or perhaps shock at her language. "Don't panic, baby. When the water comes up, hold your breath. I'll get you out." He nods once, his cheeks puff and the water is over his head. Jan is under and Hank's looking at her, eyes wide, fishlike. She jerks at the strap which is unbudging. But then, with the second pull, her shoulder 15

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Breathe and touch his chest to make sure he was breathing. The second time, when he shifted onto his side and mumbled something about his dad, she decided to get out of there before she woke him or just made herself crazy. Jan cracks some ice cubes out of their plastic tray and they click loudly into a glass. She breaks the plastic seal on the bottle of rum she bought the day before. The liquor smells like rubbing alcohol with a sweet tinge. She licks her lips, fills the glass half-full, almost takes a swallow, but decides against it. Opening a tiny can of pineapple juice, she pours it over the rum, the yellow-orange liquid diffusing in the clear liquor—it looks like the knockout gas bad guys use in movies. She stirs it with a finger. Not bad, a bit strong, but okay. That doctor. He looked Hank over, said he was fine. Put his card in Jan's palm, his home phone number in pen. If there are any problems, call me. And with the adrenaline wearing off, relief running through her like cool air, she couldn't help but ask: "Doctor, he's had these hiccups for over twelve hours. Is that normal?" The doctor tilted his head, rubbed his chin, smiled, lectured in a voice rich with authority: " . . . spasm of the diaphragm.. . involuntary inhalation...sudden closure of the glottis...that sharp, distinctive sound we call the..." "Yes, yes, but is it okay? Is there anything to worry about?" He kept smiling, staring, and then shook his head a couple times as if to say both, "No, there's nothing to worry about," and "You overprotective mothers, you kill me." But he just said, "Don't worry. Hiccups are completely harmless," and placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezed. "Well, good, I just worried. You see..." And then she stopped with a sudden realization: He's flirting with me. It was something in the way he stared into her eyes, the slight upward curve of his lips. He was good-looking: dark hair; young, a few years older than her, perhaps thirty-six or -seven; tall; wide shoulders. He could have walked off any hospital television show. But the thought of him standing there in her personal space, flirting with her while Hank sat a few feet away on an examination table with his hair frizzed out, a plump, gray-headed nurse wrapping a towel around his shoulders, whispering soft words and kissing his forehead, only hours after Jan brought him back to life by breathing into his mouth: it made her sick. There were goose bumps on her arms, a sour taste in her mouth, and her head hurt. She shrugged his hand from her shoulder, turned to Hank, said, "You ready to go, buddy?" He stared at Jan for a second, blinked once, hiccupped, and said yes. She picked Hank up and he put his arms around her neck; she thought about the sunlight at the lake, the taste of muddy water, his arms flopping at her sides as she stepped through thigh-high water toward land, moving with the slow desperation one almost only ever feels in dreams, and her eyes filled with tears. It was easy to ignore the rest of the doctor's words as she carried her son from the room: "Uh, Ms. Pender, I was wondering...Ms. Pender?"

straining as if to break, it comes loose. Sliding Hank from the straps, she shoves him through the open window. His head bumps the frame, knocking an explosion of bubbles from his lips, air rushing through water toward the light. There's a low moan beneath the water as she pulls him toward the surface. Is that me? she thinks. Putting her foot down, she sinks, surprised not to find mud, and swallows a mouthful. The lake water is warm, gritty. She kicks up, sucking, the air sweet in her mouth, on her tongue. She can even feel it in her teeth, and all she can think of are the tiny lungs in her son's chest. His eyes are closed, his mouth open, lips blue and fragile as wet paper. Shouting and splashing next to her ear. "Lady, here, let me have him." "No!" Jan yells, bats the hand away, swallows another mouthful, coughing. Her arm is across Hank's chest as she swims toward shore. A few feet and there's mucky earth beneath her shoes. Hank is in her arms—light, limp, like a doll, but no, not like a doll, skin rubbery, his tongue gray between even, white baby teeth. Her mind swirls with the chaos of the moment, the what next: How do I get him to the hospital with the car gone? Call Ray? He'd threaten to take my son, I got him into this now get him out. I could walk? I could...But when it registers that her son isn't breathing, language breaks down, her mind screaming nonsensical atavisms. The sun and water slide across her eyeballs, blurring everything but dark figures gathering and murmuring, hands to mouths, milling, unsure postures. Sand and spidery shadows, sprouts of grass fly up at Jan's corneas as she drops to her knees on the sand, her son in her arms. She lifts his neck, stares down his pink throat, pinches his nose, puts her lips against his. Breathing into his mouth, his lips gritty with lake, her good air travels through his lungs. She wills the air to exist, become solid, something she can see—not this ghost she sucks into her nose and mouth. An image from grade school comes to her unbidden: science class, cartoon 0 2 s, arrows pointing them in the right direction. Muttering from above—the crowd—concerned hum, white and wrinkled toes and feet nearby. She pulls away, listens down his throat, but there's nothing but the sound of sea. Pinch, breathe, listen. Nothing. Pinch, breathe, listen. And then he coughs, spits water, squints and blinks into her face, the sun. Jan's tears come and her chest squeezes and she knows that this is it—this is going to kill her. "It's all right, buddy, it's all right. Don't be scared. You're okay. Don't be scared." Putting her hands under his head, she pulls him so tightly to her it's as if she could pull him inside her body. He's shaking, but no, she's shaking, her tears hot and salty. His voice is tiny and warm in the cup of her ear, fills her with joy and some sort of indefinable sadness: "It's all right, Mom, I'm not scared." His words tickle the tiny hairs in her ear and then he hiccups. It's two in the morning and Jan can't sleep. She's spent the last hour sitting on a chair in Hank's room, watching him. Twice, she had to stand up

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The ice clicks against her teeth, so she mixes another drink. The alcohol is giving her a buzz: she's relaxed, the world doesn't seem as scary or complicated as it did a few minutes ago, all sharp edges dulled. Carrying her drink to the living room, she sits on the couch, tipping her head against the wall, closing her eyes. The sweating glass feels good in her palm. My car is ruined, she thinks and the sentence conjures an image of her little silver Chevette on the bottom of the lake, guppies swimming in and out of the open windows, light filtering down on a calm Hank with ballooned cheeks, crash of bubbles rushing crazily toward the surface. Practical stuff: Hank and Jan will be catching the bus for a while or riding her bike, Hank strapped into the child seat. How can she ever save enough cash to afford another car, at least a car which won't break down every month? Will she even be able to drive? When she moves her foot to press that pedal on the left how can she assume that they'll come to a stop, that she and her son won't go flying into danger? Bodies of water, brick walls, the wheels of semis coming down like God's foot. Her father will probably buy her another car, but she's thirty-four. When will it stop, when will she stop being his little girl? She should call Hank's father, tell him what happened, but it's late. The VCR clock reads 2:33. Actually, Ray would probably still be up, but he might be out and Jan's not crazy about talking to cute little what's-her-name. She's jealous and immatureover ten years younger than Ray and Jan. Sometimes it makes Jan laugh to think that Ray has to buy alcohol for her, sometimes it hurts though. And sometimes it makes her nearly blind with rage. Jan hates when she catches the new girlfriend on the phone, that coldness, as if that little chick has any right, as if Jan gives a shit about Ray, as if she would consider getting back with him even if he were single and willing. Jan considers turning on the stereo, but the thought of deciding which CD to play is overwhelming. She could watch TV. She doesn't really feel sleepy, but her eyes are tired, feet deadweight on the coffee table, the glass sweating cool into her palm. Moths tap the glass doors in double time to the rhythm of her breath: in, out, in, out... Jan's eyes come slowly open on the sunlight streaming through the living room window. "Shit," she says, dragging her teeth across her tongue. She's spilled the last of her drink on the sofa—the cat methodically licks the spot^ purring. The rum and pineapple juice which seemed so inviting last night is" now a sickly-sweet-smelling dark spot on the beige couch; it makes her depressed. The clock reads 9:38. She's missed her first class. Putting the glass on a coaster on the coffee table, she goes down the hall to Hank's room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Honey, don't you think it's time to get up?" There is a tightness in her chest as she walks through the too-still house, resisting the urge to run. He's not there. The sun bleeds around the drawn blinds, throwing soft light on floating dust motes. She walks to the kitchen, her bare feet aching 18

Breathe against the carpet and then linoleum, calling, "Buddy? Where are you?" There is a chill on her arms. The kitchen is empty and she stares, her body rigid, feet sucked to the floor as if she has taken root, the only movement her swiveling head, examining each surface: counter with a smear of red, catsup; stove, one eye missing; refrigerator, son's bright abstract art beneath magnate letters, B, J, L; spin of second hand on white clock face. The phone rings, cracking the silence in half, making her jump, snatching a shout. She puts her hand to her throat, picks the receiver up on the second ring. "Hello?" "What the fuck happened?" Anger, sudden and liquid, rushes through her chest at the sound of Ray's voice. "I can't talk now." "Yeah, Jan, you can talk. I see in the paper that you almost drowned my son." Her lip is shaking, a breath shivers out before she speaks; she wonders why the phone doesn't shatter under her grip. "Ray, I didn't almost kill him. I saved his life." She takes a deep breath, chews the inside of her mouth. "He's okay. A doctor at the hospital checked him out and said he was fine. I couldn't help it. The damn brakes went out." "How did that happen? Jan, when you hear that squeal it means you need new brake pads. It doesn't mean you wait until they quit." "Don't..." Her voice falters—he's right, she has been hearing that squeal for weeks, maybe months, and somehow hoped it would go away. "Don't lecture me." "Baby, if you can't handle Hank, let me take over." "Ray, you know this has nothing to do with fucking parenting skills." She notes how quiet her voice is; it almost frightens her. "No," he sighs, "I don't know that." "Ray...don't. Custody is settled. If you try to change things, I'll fight." She hates the pleading she can hear in her voice: "The judge awarded me custody." "Yeah, I remember. Maybe we should ask Hank? If he wanted to live with me, I don't think I'd care what a judge said. It doesn't seem like you should either." She takes a deep breath, tries to ignore the fear crawling across her belly with tiny fingers; the clock's second hand hums like mad. Ray sounds so reasonable. Jan wonders where the dread is coming from. She looks around the kitchen for something, a weapon maybe. Black handle of a serrated knife leaning in the dish rack. She can see herself slicing into the telephone line: it would spit blood, save Hank, save herself. Jan glances out the window and there he is: Hank crouched in the grass— that same spot where Smoke was hunting yesterday—meticulously setting up army men, the grass so long he has to position each little man carefully between the brownish-green blades. He's in the shadow of the oak, but she 19

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can still see his lips moving silently as he talks to the plastic men gripping tiny guns and grenades. She turns from the window, stares at the black holes in the phone's mouthpiece. The white handgrip is smeared with Hank's and her fingerprints. The whole kitchen feels dirty; it makes her tired. "Ray, do you have to do this to me right now? Can you just remember when you loved me and not make me feel like complete shit right this minute?" There is an intake of breath and then nothing. He doesn't speak for many seconds, maybe a full minute. "Jan...I don't know. I'm sorry. My band played last night, I didn't get much sleep. Then I see this on the front page this morning. My god, what do you expect?" She doesn't know what she expects, doesn't know what to say to that question so she says nothing. "Ray, I need to get ready for school." "I know. Hey, Jan...I'm sorry. Are you okay?" "Yeah, we're fine. I've got to go. I'll talk to you soon." "Can I talk to Hank first?" The request surprises her although it shouldn't. She stares through the window at Hank. There is a smudge in the lower corner of the pane which glows gold in the sunlight. Hank's face passes back and forth on the other side of the smudge, clear then blurry, clear, blurry. He seems like a wisp, something she can only imagine. She has a sudden urge to grab him up, get in the car and go. But where? In what car? She bites her tongue. "Of course. Let me get him." Saturday, a little after one in the afternoon, and Jan is running late for work. She's a part-time employee at Book Purgatory, a used bookstore. She , had considered trying to scrape by on college grants, student loans, food stamps, and the bit Ray gives, but found herself getting bored and lonely on those odd weekends when Hank disappeared. What now? she'd think as soon as they pulled off, Hank strapped into the passenger seat of his father's jeep. She had dates and would hang out in bars with friends, but there was always something missing. She had no real connection with those people—friends from school, guys who would ask her out after class. They seemed so young—some of them were. It's a good job, pays over minimum wage—not much, but over it. She works with interesting people—writers, musicians, artists, community activists, people who like to talk about literature, but these conversations are rarer than she would have thought. Since she's worked here, she's become intimately familiar with the types of books most people want to read, like the historical romances with their covers depicting busty heroines forced backward by handsome Cro-Magnons, with True Crime books and their black-and-white police photos of carnage. She's even had to flip through Playboy magazines as the store won't buy these unless they still have their pin-ups. After a long day, her eyes will itch from dust and her head will ache from the steady throb 20

Breathe of the fluorescents lining the ceiling. Most of her time is spent counting and pricing and shelving books, many of which she's not even interested in looking at, let along talking about. People's contempt for books has been disheartening. She's seen a man take a pocketful of change for his dead mother's books, rather than trade for different ones. She's seen books so moldy they looked as if they had been stored outside with the gardening tools. And even though she's had a few engaging conversations about literature in the last few months, she's had to realize that, despite the perks—cheap books for her and Hank, creative and intelligent coworkers—this is a job, this is retail, books are "product." Still, she usually enjoys her job. But at moments like now—running around the house shoving toys and a change of clothes for Hank into his backpack— she would rather not be working. On the way to work, she's got to take him to his friend Patrick Henry's house. And Book Purgatory is the last place she wants to be today; she wants to be with her son, drink a beer with Patrick Henry's mom, Rain, while the boys play in the sandbox or the little pool in their back yard. But Jessica called in sick and William, the manager, said they were desperate. And she and Hank need the money. "Are you sure you don't mind spending the night at Patrick Henry's house?" Jan asks as she locks the front door. "No," Hank smiles, "he's my best friend." He's having trouble with his bike helmet so Jan leans close to help. He hiccups. "You've got hiccups." Jan puts a palm against his cheek. "Yeah." He shrugs. "Do they bother you?" "No, I'm getting used to them." He smiles, tugs on a hank of Jan's hair. "Ow, don't do that," she says, pulling his hand away. "Do you hiccup all the time?" "Not all the time." He wraps his arms around her neck and for no reason she can name, her eyes water. She picks him up and straps him into the child's seat on the back of her bike. "Ugh. Soon, you'll be too heavy for this." He nods. "Soon, you'll be picking me up." He nods again. She gets that feeling. Her chest contracts, her head aches. She knows she's overprotective, worry grips her temples, squeezing her skull like a muscle, like a heart, one beat from splitting, cracking in half—her worry would pour forth like gravy, or maybe it'd hiss like gas, float to heaven. She can see her body deflating, insubstantial like a popped balloon; a street sweeper would come along and nudge her body into his handled dustpan, dump her in a garbage can. Pushing the bike, she kicks her leg over the frame and pedals toward Rain and Patrick Henry's house. The sun pounds down and the sweat is already breaking out on her neck, arms, back. But there is a breeze and the air feels good working in her lungs. "Pedal faster, Mom. Go fast," Hank shouts behind Jan, his hand coming 21

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up to touch her back. She smiles and pedals faster. William is taking a smoke while Jan sits on the break room couch, waiting for her frozen burritos to cook in the microwave. The emergency door is open, letting in dusk light. William, blowing smoke through the doorway, presses the sole of one of his large, black sneakers flat against the jamb, his knee jutting out. Skinny and tall—maybe six-two or three—he has brown, frizzy hair which projects from his head in an afro and a couple days' growth of stubble on his face and neck. His pale arms are covered in tattoos—black lines and symbols which look like Egyptian hieroglyphics. He wears thick black glasses, the kind nerds in high school would have worn, but which now seem to have become fashionable. His intense stare, at first, during Jan's interview, intimidated her. She had been a customer for years and always found him subtly frightening. He had that introspective gaze she associated with the intellectual, but the way he clenched his jaw made it seem he carried a subtle anger which might burst into rage at any moment. When he spoke, though, he had such a calm, deep voice that she felt at ease. Jan gets a vibe that maybe William has a crush on her. Nearly always when she takes her dinner break, he comes back to smoke and talk. Most of the employees are college students in their early twenties and, at first, Jan assumed William was just glad to work with someone who was closer to his own age. But, as the weeks wear on, and she sees the way he looks at her, the way he teases her, or compliments her on her hair or blouse even when she suspects she looks like shit, she is starting to wonder. It worries her a bit because he's her boss after all. Also, she doesn't think she's attracted to him. But she respects him. She thinks he may be one of the smartest people she knows. He's got his degree in philosophy, but he also knows about literature, art, film, history. He knows local fauna and flora. He knows how to fix a carburetor or a lawnmower. He designed and made the bookshelves and the front desk in Book Purgatory. And she feels comfortable talking with him. Or not talking, like tonight. The microwave dings and Jan removes the plastic plate, setting the burritos on the sofa's arm to cool. William takes a final drag from his cigarette and then pulls the big, blue door shut. He turns on the TV in the corner and sits next to Jan, flipping through the channels with the remote. She eats her burritos, occasionally looking at him from the corner of her eye. He is staring at the television, mouth slightly open, tongue tip moving back and forth over his teeth. He pauses on ESPN as a gate pops open and a gigantic bull with a humped back bucks into a muddy pen, black earth flying through the air in chunks. The cowboy on the bull's back is doing a desperate dance, his hat long gone, gripping the rope around the animal's chest. "I never would have guessed you for a sports fan," Jan says laughing. William smiles a bit, but doesn't look at her. "I'm not really." The cowboy's ass leaves the bull's back and comes down again so hard Jan can feel it in her own spine. The bull flings the rag doll man up again and 22

Breathe this time the cowboy's hand is jerked from the rope. He flies through the air like a sack without bones or cartilage or anything solid. The bull seems to know exactly where he is as if this part is well-rehearsed. Arching his neck, the animal jerks his head viciously to the right. A horn, which must be at least three feet long, goes into the man somewhere in his lower stomach. "Oh god," Jan says and William takes in a loud breath. The man's hands grasp toward the place where the horn went in, and as he hits the dirt, the bull drives the other horn into his back. Frantic clowns converge on all sides to taunt the animal, to lure him away from this former cowboy lying still in the dirt. Jan puts the plate of burritos on the coffee table in front of her. Her stomach feels full of fluid. She takes a deep breath and her voice comes out in a whisper: "That's not only ruined my dinner, but I think my evening." William looks at her. "Yeah." He shrugs. "Pretty disgusting. If that guy is alive he's not going to have much of a life from now on." He barks an odd, loud laugh. "What about the bull though? His life devoted to people taunting him, making him angry, riding him for sport." He scratches his head and looks at the floor for a second, then back at Jan. "These macho guys think the world exists for them, they think they'll live forever." He spreads his hands toward the TV. Jan's mouth is open, but all she can do is stare at him, not sure how to take this. Is he joking? she wonders. She can't be so cavalier about a man losing his life. He's some mother's son. Perhaps he's a father and husband. But she doesn't feel like getting into a philosophical debate; what she's just seen has put her in a foul mood and she glances at the clock, looking forward to getting back to work. "You're weird," she says. * * * Jan waits at the front of the darkened store for William who has gone to the back to drop the day's earnings in the safe. Her mood hasn't improved since break. The night was slow and so she flipped through a back issue of some rock-and-roll magazine, read an article about a rock star who had recently died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The piece offered no answers as to why he killed himself, but Jan wondered if she wanted any. She felt like she was putting her foot on the brake, slowing to catch a glimpse of bloodsplattered bodies pulled from a crushed car. Her stomach growled even though she wasn't hungry. She chomped aggressively on the piece of gum her coworker Erik had given her until all the spearmint flavor was gone, until it tasted of rubber and then nothing, and still she chewed. She could feel the frown on her face, but didn't care, suddenly resenting all the customers— they had a ravenous appetite for serial killers, war stories, rape fantasies. She didn't have a smile to offer any of them. Outside, the parking lot is nearly empty on this side of the strip mall. At the other end, light glows from the large Publix windows; a guy with long, 23

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blond hair walks through the automatic doors with a 12-pack under his arm. "So, you're coming to the brew pub with us tonight," William says as he turns from locking Book Purgatory's front door. This has become a ritual for them on Saturday nights when Jan works: He invites her to come out for beers with him and some other Book Purgatory employees and she politely says no. Tonight she doesn't feel polite though, she doesn't even look at him. Unlocking her bike, she says, "No, I'm tired. I'm going home." "You said last week you'd join us tonight." She shrugs, still not looking at him, pulling a strand of hair from her mouth. "Maybe I did; I'm not though." "Are you pissed at me for what I said about the cowboy?" She keeps her face averted, slides the lock into its holder, ties her tennis shoe. "No, I just have to go home." "Do you have Hank tonight?" "No," she sighs, "he's at his friend Patrick Henry's house." She brushes the grit from her knee as she stands up. "He's got a friend named Patrick Henry?" William has such a comically puzzled expression—eyebrows pushed together, mouth open and turned downward—that Jan laughs despite herself. "Thanks anyway, I just can't," she says, shaking her head. "I'm sorry; I'm in a really foul mood." "That's even more of a reason to come out with us. If you go home, you're going to be lonely and depressed. You won't be able to sleep no matter how tired you are. You'll probably drink and you know what drinking by yourself is a sign of: alcoholism. You'll start drinking before exams, before work. You'll end up on the street selling your body, drinking cooking sherry and rubbing alcohol. You'll lose your looks: your teeth will fall out, your hair will become thin and greasy, you'll lose weight everywhere but your belly which will sag..." "Stop, stop, you're grossing me out." She's laughing. Despite the absurdity of what he's saying, his stare is intent, expression serious and worried, lines delivered without a hint of facetiousness. He's got his hands on hep handle bars, gently steering the bike out of her grip and toward his beat-up truck. The cars moving past on University Avenue hum in bursts of speed heading toward the campus area; they almost sound happy, as if fun awaits in that direction. "All right, just one beer, okay?" "Sure, just two beers and then straight home to bed." He nods, that mock serious expression still there. Jan smiles at him over the hood.of his truck. Was she really in such a bad mood a few seconds ago? She feels desperate to hang onto this good feeling. "Are you flirting with me, buster?" 24

Breathe He doesn't smile back. "Maybe." The door swings open and they stumble into Jan's house, William kicking it closed behind them. He is crouched low so she can reach around his shoulders. His afro bobs as they move awkwardly across the living room— he's partially supporting her, partially dragging. He looks funny so she laughs. One beer became two became three and the next thing Jan knew, everyone except William was gone and the bartenders were flashing the lights, groaning, "Go home, go home, you losers." Jan laughs some more. They stumble down the hall, William panting. Jan bumps against the wall, feels him bump against the other. She's giggling as they enter her bedroom. There's a click and the light next to the bed comes on. They move across the floor in slow motion. William's sweat smells sour, or maybe it's Jan's, she doesn't know. He lurches as if he can barely make it, as if he's stretching for the finish line, and they collapse on the bed with a loud creaking of springs. Jan's head spins and, for a moment, she thinks she may throw up. But then the room is right again and she take a deep breath. She runs the back of a hand across her forehead and it comes away damp and cool. "I'm a lightweight," she says. "Yes, you are." She giggles and squints. "Hey, what's the big idea? Goddamn, turn off that light. What are you trying to do, blind me?" "Yes, I'm trying to blind you." He sounds drunk or tired, but as he leans toward the lamp, there is a half-smile on his lips. Jan blinks in the sudden darkness, a red spot dancing from eye to eye and then sinking*out of sight. In the light from the hallway, William's afro glows, his glasses glint. He is looking down at her, his large hand on the bed next to her waist. Sighing, she puts her hand on his wrist, thinks of sex. It's been over six months—some guy (Dan? Don?) in one of her science classes. She knew quickly, maybe from the beginning, that the attraction was physical, nothing more. After a couple weeks with him, she knew she never wanted to hear him speak another word. When she tries to talk, her voice is husky. and startling. She clears her throat and tries again: "I've got a queen-sized bed. If you want to sleep here, you can." He kisses her forehead. "I better not, but thank you." Untangling the sheet in a ball at the foot of the bed, he spreads it over her, brushes the hair from her eyes, wipes the sweat from her face with his palm which he then wipes on his pants. "Sleep well," he says, kissing her forehead again. She smiles. Her eyes blink closed as William moves through the doorway, his large body flickering in the light like a ghost. She is in complete darkness even as she hears the dull click of a light switch down the hall. She dreams: He comes back in the night, slips under the covers and runs his big hands 25

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Breathe

over her body—under her T-shirt, across the stretch mark ridges on her belly, over her rib cage, her breasts. He touches her nipples, twists them, takes them into his mouth and they become hard like pebbles; there is a tension in her belly and then lower. He is a shadow bearing down with the weight of a pile of rocks, an anvil—she is hot liquid, melting plastic beneath his body. Arching her back, she's both aroused and trying to get away. She wants to sink into the mattress, but also into his body. He puts his lips against her neck, his tongue a gliding thing, his mouth working silently as if to teach the skin secrets. She touches him, terrified of offering more than her fingertips, and her mouth opens to say no and yes. But the sounds that come out are little gasps which make no sense and she's jerking her head from right to left, eyes shut tight. He fills her and she sucks in something foul and black. Her saliva wells with a taste like shame and the goose bumps break out. She's dirty like she's awakened in a cold, dank place, an open grave maybe. Slipping out from under William, his hands fall away, back to his own body. She runs her palms over herself desperately as if they could be clothes. Shaking, she peers at him through the hair hanging in her face. "How dare you?" she whispers. "I'm really disappointed. Don't you know I'm a mother?" The light from the street lamp outside, the shadows from the frames dividing the panes of glass, throw black fissures on his face as if his head were cracking open. Although his expression is blank, mannequin-like, his voice is so loud Jan cringes, fearing the words will shatter her: "You're useless. You don't even matter. You're just taking up space. You're a void with no..." And she has to shut him up. She can't bear to hear his voice filling the room, to know that it is leaking out and traveling into her neighbors' ears, to know that they'll be listening at their windows to the antics in that single mother's house, that they'll come to save her, see her naked against the wall with her hair in her face, his come running down her leg. She picks something from the floor—a shoe—and throws it. The move is futile, desperate, and she knows that she's powerless. The shoe bounces off his chest and his eyes immediately widen and fill with tears. His mouth hangs open without sound; then a child's howl fills the room and he runs to the front door, flinging it open and disappearing. She can do nothing but stand and stare at the open door and listen to crickets sing and feel the cold wind rushing in, shivering her skin. Her face steams with shame and she wants to curl up on the floor in a little ball.

spider web, blank-screened computer monitor, wadded white sock on the floor, too-bright ray of light piercing the broken blind. The little clock next to her bed glows red in the dimness. She picks it up and holds it to her face, both shocked at what she reads and only slightly able to comprehend. It's 12:03 p.m. 12:03.12:03? "Shit! Shit-goddamn!" A pounding of feet and then a hairy giant bursts into the room. "Shit," Jan screams again, slamming against the wall, pulling the sheet up to her chin. "What are you still doing here?" He blinks at her stupidly; by the time he's finished speaking she can hear her teeth grinding in the back of her head: "...slept on your couch. I was—I was tired...and—I, uh, thought I was too drunk...to drive." There is no reason for her to cover herself; she's still wearing the shorts and T-shirt frorh the night before. Flinging the sheet off, she sits on the floor, puts on her sneakers. She smells the stale cigarette smoke and sweat coming from her and she swallows, grinds her teeth some more. "What's going on?" he asks, his deep voice deafening. She wants to tell him to shut the fuck up, but she's busy tying shoes—it's very complicated, takes forever. "I was supposed to pick Hank up two hours ago. I can't believe Rain didn't call to see where I was." "The phone rang several times this morning." Jan can only stare, her mouth hanging open. Finally, the words come: "Why didn't you answer?" William opens and closes his mouth like it's on a broken hinge and Jan fights the urge to scream. "I thought you were ignoring it," he says finally. She jumps up, dials Rain's number; it's busy. Slamming the receiver down, she brushes past William, runs down the hall, her sneakers slapping the floor. Each footstep reverberates in her head. She knows at any moment she's going to vomit down the front of her shirt. Standing clench-fisted in the foyer, blinking at the spot where she keeps her bike, all she can do is scream: "Goddamn! Where the fuck is my bike?" She rubs her temples, hysteria creeping across her scalp like insects. "Relax," William says behind her, "it's still in the back of my truck. I'll drive you." Jan follows him through the door, slams it without looking back. The engine won't turn over and she grips the dash, biting the inside of her mouth. William's eyes flicker at her, but he doesn't turn his head. After several seconds, the engine catches and they're heading down the road. "Where to?" he asks. "Summertree apartments. It's on..." "I know where it is." The windshield is like a magnifying glass, the sun shining through it intense, sucking the air out; the world out there is large and warped. Jan cranks down the window, but the air which rushes in is hot, heavy as if from the mouth of a blow dryer. William's jaw is rigid, his neck muscles taut

Jan opens her eyes on a corner of the ceiling. The abandoned spider web there is bowed down with the weight of accumulated dust. She thinks she should knock it down, but doesn't know where her broom- is, can barely fathom the complexity involved in finding it, raising it above her head, directing it toward that spot. Rolling over takes forever and is nauseating, a taste no longer beer in the back of her throat, the cavern of her stomach. Afraid she'll vomit on herself or the carpet, she's hyper-aware of everything in the room— 26

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cords. Jan feels something like hate for him, but isn't sure why and needs to look away. The scenery rushes past in a blur, twisting her stomach, vertigo seeping through her. The smell of gasoline is strong inside the truck, a metallic taste in her mouth and the back of her throat. She stares at the floor which is vibrating, her feet a blur. "Jan, are you all right?" Sweat on her upper Hp and in her eyes. She wipes her face, turns toward William, opens her mouth, but doesn't speak. "We're here, Jan. Which apartment?" She looks out the window and they're passing Rain's apartment. "Stop," she yells, opening the door. "Shit." William slams on the brakes and the door jerks from her hand. She stumbles, loses balance, falls, skin yielding to hot concrete. Bile mingles with the not-beer taste in the back of her mouth; she gulps to keep the vomit down. "Jan, are you okay?" behind her, but she's up and moving across the pavement and then the manicured lawn, breaking through the warm stream of a stuttering sprinkler with its vague scent of sewage. Jan goes through the door without knocking. Rain steps into the hallway, dishrag in one hand, blue cup in the other, eyes huge with concern and something else. Anger, maybe. Her face is makeup-free, but her cheeks are red and her eyes hard as if looking directly at Jan for the first time. "Where were you? You scared me." Jan shoves past, not wanting to talk, suddenly angry at Rain too for no reason. Hank's there. Standing in the dining room, biting a thumbnail, his feet bare, one of them turned sideways, his double-jointed ankle the image of a broken bone. His face is red and smeared with tear streaks. "Oh, honey," Jan says, and the shame in her voice brings tears. She moves to Hank, crouching so that they're face to face, putting her arms around him, holding him to her as if this were more serious than it is, as if he were dying. Adult voices murmur above and behind, but they're unimportant. "Where were you, Mom? I was so scared." Hank's voice moves in Jan's ear like a sweet tune which brings more tears for no reason she can name and she squeezes him tighter. She can't think of anything to say, so says nothing, running her hand under his shirt, across his warm back, running her fingers through his curly hair, pulling his cheek to hers, turning his lips to her ear, listening to the silence which seems to rush down on the apartment like a graceful, vicious bird. His breath comes and goes in her ear, but there is not one other sound.

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killed them at the interview. Had an answer for every question they asked, not that I'm bragging. It was the usual drivel everyone asks. "Why do you want to be a floorman?" "What makes a good pit administrator?" "What would you do to improve the Aces Oasis?" Batting practice. Even when they asked if I'd have a problem writing up a former crewmate. I told them what they wanted to hear, that I understood putting on a suit was crossing a line, that my fidelity lay with the company, not the dealers. The only question I snagged on was when DeLuca asked, "What do you consider to be your biggest weakness, Essex?" Like any good poker player, I paused for the same measured interval before responding. But inside, I was scrambling to manufacture something believable because the truth is: I don't think in those terms. The world is lousy with people, and DeLuca is one of them, who beat themselves up on a daily basis. I don't. What I wanted to say was, "My willingness to humor butter-heads like you." What I said was, "My temporary inexperience." At home, while running a dab of gel through my hair, I wondered who among mycrewmates I would write up if a pit boss asked me. It's common practice, management asking a new floorman to write up a former crewmate as a show of good faith. A reminder that you're now a suit. My crew thinks I'm on glue for putting in for one of the three floorman positions the company listed a week ago. Dead Bob, who rarely initiates conversation, asked me in the middle of a thirty-minute hand while four pit bosses lurked over us like vultures, "So what are you going to do? Work or watch people work?" After things died down, Max said, "I thought the floor was for people who can't deal." And Liz, who's new to the crew, mustered up enough moxie to tell me that I dress too well to be a floorman. I'm wondering about it too. I tell my friends in the other forty-nine that dealing craps for a good store like the Aces Oasis is a drunkard's dream. And for my metabolism, it is. F 29

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haven't used an alarm clock in three years. When I awaken is when my day begins. I sleep like a saint except for when Hoppy and Nick bring by some powder or pill that's got a little zip in it. Like last night. Nick claimed the stuff had just a trace of meth in it, but it turned me into a lighthouse for a good six hours. Everyone on swing shift wonders how I can live next to an ambulance service. But I never hear the sirens—Max claims it's because I don't have a conscience—so they're not a nuisance. And rent is cheap. The house stood empty for three months before I took it for a hundred less than what the owner wanted. And I got to meet Hoppy and Nick, the graveyard EMTs, who provide what little uncertainty exists in my life. That's one reason for putting in for the floor. It's not that dealing is so bad. I just want to try something new. Everyone is dogging me this week. The dry cleaner says I only gave her four white shirts. Ernie the Pencil, the swing shift schedule maker, is pushing me to accept six day work weeks until Labor Day like everyone else. The landlord wants to raise my rent—I shouldn't have bragged. And last night, Nick and Hoppy pressed me to ride with them in the ambulance. "It's time you learned to forage for yourself," Hoppy said, showing me four different colored pills, his latest victim score. "What are those?" I asked. They looked like planets. "Meals on wheels," Nick said and grabbed one. "Next time, Essex, you ride with us," Hoppy said. "No more free lunches." I ate the one that looked like Earth. The thing I like best about working on the 4-C craps crew is no one burdens me with his private life. I hate it when someone reveals something personal because I know he's doing it for a reason. I'm not a priest. I can't offer absolution. Fortunately, on our game, there's no line leading to'the confessional. Conversation with Dead Bob is like pulling teeth. Liz doesn't fraternize with dealers. Just Born Jimmy has a new girlfriend so as soon as the shift ends, he's out the door getting his wick wet. And unless he's hammered, Number One just talks shop. Only Max has ever felt the need to confide, usually about his bad luck with men. And the only reason I've feigned interest is that Max isn't telling me; he's just telling someone straight. Because he expects no gush of wisdom from this sperm whale, I listen. Still, every time he begins a story about his latest heartbreak, there's this naked moment when we catch each other's eye and realize again, this is for his sake only, that it's acceptance, not understanding, he wants. That said, I realized in the shower today that if some pit bull demanded it, Max is the only crewmate I'd have qualms writing up. I'm not home five minutes when Hoppy and Nick are at my door. 30

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"Have we got a surprise for you," Nick says. I know they want me to guess but I'm not in the mood. "Grab me a beer, too," I tell them. "So when's the last time you had hash?" Hoppy shows me a wrinkled aluminum ball the size of a lima bean. My desire betrays me. I put on my sweats in front of them and don't feel faggy about it. I assume my normal spot in my Lazy-Boy. Hoppy is busy cramming hash into the bowl of a foldaway wooden pipe. "You took the guy's pipe too?" Hoppy and Nick laugh at this. I reach for the beer Nick has brought me. With my free hand, I wag a finger. "Some day." "No way," Hoppy says. "Who's going to rat us out?" "It's the only reason I come to work," Nick says. "To find out what's on the menu." "Doesn't it affect your work?" Stupid question. "It better," Nick says. The second time Hoppy packs the pipe, we strikea deal. They take me for a ride and I teach them craps. It's all I can do not to take the paddle that covers the slot to the drop box and shove it down DeLuca's gullet. Each time "he does something on the game, like examine the dice, or write up a fill slip, or extend a player a marker, he turns my way to show me what he's doing. He's already treating me like a suit. I avoid him as best I can. I keep my eyes riveted to the layout, to the bets on the table. I avoid my crewmates' silent attention, most of all Dead Bob's amusement. Everyone assumes I've decided. They actually handed out diplomas when we completed craps school. And because I was ranked first, I was immediately promoted to the pit. When I called my father to tell him I was now a dealer, he thought I meant drug dealer. "What were you before?" he asked. "A pimp?" Tonight sucked. We dumped our game big time to the tune of eighty grand which brought all kinds of heat on the game. DeLuca changed the dice three times, like they were dirty diapers. Herrera kept badgering Liz to pick up the pace. Even the casino manager parked his carcass on the game for fifteen minutes, as if his presence alone would staunch the bleeding. It didn't happen. Worst of all, the players were as tight as virgins. We dumped eighty thou for a puny three hundred in tips. Thanks, you lucky stiffs. Afterwards, Number One and Liz, surprisingly, wanted to talk shop at the bar, but I wasn't in the mood. I walked out with Max who was on his way to a date with some guy he met at his step aerobics class. I told him he seemed happy. A year ago he wasn't. I don't know the circumstances, but I know he 31

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wanted out. He was unsure whether to quit the club and start an export business out of Florida, so he threw the I-Ching. Typical Max. Willing to place his faith in what three coins might tell him. Number One had a field day with this. "What's next? The Ouija board? Tea leaves? Psychic Hotline?" When Max turned to me, I asked him what was the worst thing that could happen. "I could always come back here," he said. "But I'd rather die." Number One softened, asked Max if he'd ever been to Honduras. Asked how much Spanish he knew. Or if he was willing to play macho. "No offense," he said, "but communism is the only alternative lifestyle down there." Dead Bob had one question. "Why do you need three coins?" It sounds funny, but I met Nick and Hoppy by accident. When they showed up at my door in their white jump suits with their names inscribed in red cursive stitching on their breast pockets, I assumed they were pest control sprayers or some service like that. It wouldn't have been the first time the landlord sent someone over without notifying me. Then I saw the AAAA Ambulance Service patches on their sleeves and backs. "You're blocking us," the one named Nick said. He read my confusion as if diagnosing an emergency. "Your car. It's blocking our driveway." "You're killing our commission," the smaller tech, Hopkins, said. "Move your Mustang. Pronto, Tonto." Initially, they declined my offer of a beer, but an hour later, they were back, off shift, ready to accept my liquid apology and to offer me a hit of what looked and felt like MDMA. Max is right. I don't have a conscience. But he's wrong to assume that morality is a virtue. All a conscience provides is another chance to feel crummy. It's all a drill bit driven by the biggest fear of all: someone else's discovery of the real you. What I have is a responsibility to myself. When I show Jimmy or Liz a new way to pay off a bet, or how to inform a tourist of a winning bet before some other flea claims it, I'm not acting out of conscience. I'm acting out of self-interest. The sooner Jimmy and Liz learn to deal the high limit game, the sooner I get to quit baby-sitting. Informing a player about a sleeper bet prevents a gung-ho observation goon from getting me written up for lax game security. That's one reason why I'm reluctant to put on a suit. Corporate fidelity? Dream on, DeLuca. The only allegiance I have is to myself. The. second time Hoppy and Nick came over, they told- me about their scam. I've heard about parking valets taking somebody's 'Vette for a ride up Route 80 before bringing it to the door. And maids who swipe guests' contraband, knowing there will be no formal complaint. And cocktail hostesses who get hard-ons to leave by serving up specials, Visine-laced drinks guaranteed to give any pest the screaming squirts within fifteen minutes. But Nick and Hoppy's plan is a beaut. Whenever an accident victim fits their m.o., Nick goes for the 32

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gurney and trauma box while Hoppy stabilizes the victim and gets in his ear, tells him that he knows there are drugs somewhere, that the cops are on their way, that if the lucky bastard tells him where his stash is, he'll dispose it for him. "And they believe you?" "Hoppy's got good cop down cold," Nick said. "I suppose you guys are making money off this." ' "No jackpots yet," Nick said. "Maybe an ounce of bud. Or a gram of crank." "Don't forget the crack,"Hoppy said. That got a laugh out of Nick. "Fifty rocks. Big pile of albino rabbit turds. We tossed them out. Nasty stuff." "Didn't you expect the guy to come back for his stash?" Both of them flashed me a New to this country? look. "That would be a little piggy," Nick said. "Besides, they think we're doing them a favor." "Symbiosis," Hoppy said and told me about his dream of attending pharmacy school. On our way to his Eclipse, Max, insistent that I check out his new sports car, tells me that he was once married. In front of his new ride, so shiny I can see my own reflection in the black gloss paint, Max admits that he had fought off what he calls my tendencies for as long as he could, until the idea of sex with his wife repulsed him. "Was she that ugly?" "Essex, she was stunning," he says. I find myself unable to disengage from Max's gaze, a look that, for once, measures me fully. Once again, he wants from me something I don't have. I'm no homophobe, Max knows that now. The first time he came out to me, I said, "Great, more women for me," which wasn't the response he wanted. So I told him that life is too short not to be happy, something I've repeated several times since, usually during his latest crisis. But as I again catch my reflection in the polished hood that has yet to receive its first scratch, I realize I've been lying. Not the gay part. The happy part. No one in Reno is happy. If we were, we wouldn't be here. Leaning against the car, staring out at the skyline, Max seems a light year beyond. "Max. Max." "Leaving her isn't what I regret," he says. "Or hurting her. I just wish I hadn't waited for her to make the recognition." "What makes you think it would have been any better coming from you?" Max ponders this which provides me an out. "Nice car," I say. "When you die, can I have it?" I dig out my keys though I'm two blocks away from my truck. I hope that Hoppy and Nick are working tonight, that they'll bring over a handful of sudden happiness. "You got yourself a real Batmobile here," I tell Max and pat him on the back. "Now go find yourself a Boy Wonder." 33

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Suits and

Because he believes there is a reason for everything, my father, the CPA,. finds gambling pointless. The notion that a bluff might subvert the winning hand is unfathomable. Twenty-two black? Box cars? To someone who has held the same job for thirty-one years, chance is not an attraction but an onus. Powders are the worst. Hoppy has a pharmaceutical book with a picture and description of every pill ever produced in the free world so there's minimal risk there. And of course, anything organic is recognizable. So are the garage drugs, which I won't do. But powder is another story and one with a perpetual new ending. Nick still bristles about the time Hoppy took a snort of what turned out to be PCP and almost ended up taking'a ride in his own ambulance. It's Nick's job to identify what's in the powder. Anything he can't pinpoint with a dab and a taste, he condemns. "I don't know what these wahoos are putting in this stuff," Nick once admitted. "There's no quality control anymore."

Bodies

While waiting for the toke committee to divvy up tonight's tips, I draw up a P and M list on a cocktail napkin. I'd prefer to use my palm, but the pen I borrowed is a felt tip, the kind that smears. I list the minuses first. Drop in pay Cost of new clothes Shop talk with stiffs like DeLuca Eventual boredom Will miss the game I add to this last entry: - not the crew, the game Next, my plus list: Something new Rise in the ranks More money - eventually Prove Dad wrong I stare at this column long enough to miss Max's offer to buy a round. The brevity of both lists bothers me. I ball up the napkin and throw it at Liz's tush.

Essex isn't my real name, but I won't say what is. Why should I tell you something that my own crew doesn't know? No one here outside of Personnel knows my given name, and I'm not about to tell them. The need for distance I learned my first week dealing when, after reprimanding a player for claiming another player's bet, I was pulled off the game and chastised for my poor customer relations. When I tried to explain that 1 was providing game security as I was taught to do in craps school, the pit boss laughed. "Who do think you are?" he asked. "Brinks? The only thing you or me or anyone here has to offer is service. That's the only thing we provide. You want security? Then go secure a name tag." At the bar that night, I made this vow: they get my skills, but they don't get me. Not even my name. I marched up to wardrobe. I had the woman print out ESSEX, my hometown, on a name tag. The word meant nothing to her. The only thing she wanted to know was how to spell it. At work, that's who I am. Essex. It's all an act anyway, being polite to customers you'd just as soon piss on as pay off/1 don't want these fleas calling me by my real name, assuming a false familiarity when the only reason either of us is here is that we want each other's money.

The number of people in this world that I trust I can count on a sawmill worker's hand. Nick is one. He knows what I won't ingest. Heroin. Angel dust. Ice. I assume he and?Hoppy score every night, but they seldom show up with something I won't try. Powders are the exception, but even so, with one dab, Nick can tell me what's in any given synthetic. He just can't tell me how much. It's no different in the pit where they promote people to the floor never knowing how much body is in a suit. At the podium tonight while signing in, I hear Herrera calling another pit to request two more twenty-one dealers. Apparently, Phoenicia Timmons and Danny Wjlson are no-shows. "I need two bodies," Herrera tells the other pit boss. "Got any to spare?" Omthe game, when Dead Bob "asks me, as he's been doing at the start of each shift, "So are you going to put on a suit or not?", I begin to feel like an ingredient no one can identify. It's no solace. In this place, you're either small currency or the empty wallet it fell out of.

The other dealers are starting to lay it on thick. Number One now calls me Brutus. Liz, who has been on our crew all of two months, says this is tantamount to the break-up of the Beatles. In the toke room in front often other dealers, One Can Nan says a part of swing shift will die if I put on a suit. Baker doesn't say anything. Instead, he shadows me, arms folded, in exaggerated pit boss poses. I tell them-that I haven't decided yet. And I haven't. But my consideration alone condemns me. It's as if I'm the one who's being written up.

A new entry for the plus column: No more crap from the crew. Angry? You bet I am. I almost stick^whipped Number One tonight, right across his new bridgework. Not that he started it. Max did with his comment about the new men's store at Meadowood Mall having a two-for-one suit sale. After that, Number One hunkered down like a Rottweiler and wouldn't let go. "A suit," he said, staring at the top of my head, an old trick, just to get my goat. "A paid voyeur. One more company hack. Hope you're ready for some major ass kissing. Management and clientele both. Pucker up, Buttercup." 35

34 L

Berkeley

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Suits and

Bodies

34 L

Berkeley

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"I think Essex has nice lips," Liz said. "He'll need them," Number One said. "Better buy some lip balm. And some knee pads. I hope your nose prefers autumn colors." "You'll look good in a suit," Max said. "If that's what you want." Because Max started it, I went off on him. "How would someone like you know what I want?" I asked. Afterward, I was sorry. And vexed. The P and M score is now even. Nick doesn't wait for me to answer the door. Any light on is an invitation to enter. "We need a second opinion," he says and unwraps his palm to reveal an elliptical shaped pill. "Dr. Hoppy can't find it in his pharmaceutical bible. I say it's a hit of Ecstasy. What do you think?" I bring Nick's palm up to my face, resisting the urge to lick its contents. "Looks like Ecstasy to me." "And circle gets the square," Nick says, eating the pill. "Hey, what about the consultant?" "Sorry. This is all the guy had on him." Says Hoppy: "We need to upgrade our clientele." Last summer, when my father came to Reno, he kept his watch set on EDT. On my day off, we drove around Lake Tahoe. At the top of Mount Rose where we stopped to view the vista, he turned to me and asked, "Is this what you wanted to see?" His maize tie flailed in the afternoon zephyr like a caution flag. I told him that all my ties are clip-ons, that if a customer grabs me by the tie, that's all he's going to get. The good controller, who probably wears a tie to bed, asked me what the customer normally got. I said, "The same thing as , you, Dad. Anything but me." You'd think they'd know better than to have a new suit sit box on a high limit game, but DeLuca and the Shift Manager like to put their rising stars on our game. Tonight, we had a supernova. Tonight, this new suit decides to be the dice police, making sure every player throws them in a timely manner. It almost costs the club a player with a credit line as big as Guatemala's GNP. Wes, who Number One says owns the construction company that has built every 7-11 in California, likes to take his time with the dice, shake thenvtalk to them, have his fleshy wife blow on them. It's all part of his routine and if these histrionics prevent an extra roll or two, then they make up for it in attracting other players who are drawn by Wes's exuberance. I don't mind Wes. He tips. The new suit has other ideas. After his third reprimand, he tells Wes that if he can't shoot the dice properly, then he can't shoot dice. Wes's response is to pick up the crimson cubes and drop them in his wife's Bloody Mary. "I'll do anything I want," he says and to prove it, paws his wife in front of everyone. It takes the Casino Manager ten minutes to calm Wes down. Wisely, they 36

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move the new floorman to a different pit. I'm on break for most of this, but I still get brought up to the pit office along with the others to file an incident report. Liz, who takes all this to heart, says that as the stickman, she should have intervened. "It's your job to educate your players," DeLuca says, not to Liz but to me. This gets a rise out of Dead Bob. He asks DeLuca, "Is it also our job to educate our pit bosses?" He too looks at me when he speaks. Only Max fixes on DeLuca when he says to leave me out of it if the crew gets written up since I was on break when the flame-out occurred. DeLuca dismisses Max's beau geste with a smile so broad, I see two gaps where there were once teeth. I wonder if they were pulled out or knocked out. The knock on the door that I've been expecting still catches me by surprise. It's Nick, alone, with something else to offer. "We got a call," he says. "You want to come?" I've just taken off my shoes and am two sips into a beer, none of which concerns Nick. "In or out?" he asks. "We're not maitre d's. We can't make them wait." "In," I tell him. I'm still wearing my black and whites, but Nick's look tells me I don't have time to change. Quickly, I locate my shoes. The vacancy of the cabin is startling. I thought I'd be surrounded by all sorts of medical equipment. More surprising are the attitudes of Nick and Hoppy. "Got a one car," says Nick who's driving. '.'Driver exited through the windshield." "We may not get to stay and play," Hoppy says in the same steely tone. These are not the loadies who seem more comfortable in my house than I am. Our drive is a short one. The siren doesn't sound for long. At the scene, Nick bypasses a policeman directing traffic, another who's setting up flares. He drives by the mangled car just beyond the curb where the driver lies. Nick and Hoppy put on plastic gloves, hand me a pair, then flee the front seat, open the rear door, begin removing equipment. "Come on, Essex," Hoppy shouts. "Time to load and go." I exit the-cabin, bump into a policeman who looks at me suspiciously. "He's a trainee," Hoppy tells him. "Come on, Essex." He hands me the backboard, races ahead. I carry it like a shield, desperate not to blow my cover. I want to look at the car whose engine parts lie.strewn over the road like spilled intestines. I"want to be mesmerized by the glimmering glass path that leads me to Hoppy and Nick. I want to take this all in, the randomness, the severity, before it's all explained. "Come on, Essex," Hoppy says. I can't see the victim's face because Hoppy and Nick are bent over him applying a c-collar, but I recognize the half inch cuffs and penny loafers. I almost drop the backboard that Nick grabs from me. Hovering over everyone, 37

Berkeley

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Suits and

Bodies

Berkeley

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I feel like the angel of death. I know I should say something, but the hideous taste in my mouth makes any word I say seem like a drop of poison that could kill him. So I watch. "Don't worry, buddy," Hoppy is telling him. "You're in good hands." And then to Nick, "He's ABC. Vitals are good. Head and back lacerations. Possible collapsed lung. I'll check for broken ribs." And then to me, "You know this guy?" I nod. Hoppy kneels beside Max, but his attention is fixed on the approaching policeman. He leans into Max, whispers, "The cops will screw you if they find drugs in your car. If you have any, tell me where they are and I'll remove them." "Tell him, Max," I blurt out. Max turns his head toward my familiar voice, shrieks in pain. "Don't move," Hoppy says. "Wink once if your car is clean." Apparently Max does. "Come on," Hoppy says. "We've got a scoop and scoot." I watch them load Max into the back of the ambulance as if they're doing no more than shoving a pizza into an oven. Hoppy follows him in. Nick again turns on the siren, rolls down the window, spits. "I'm sorry about your friend," he says. "Payday!" Hoppy says. "I knew it!" An orange plastic vial flies into the front cabin. Nick picks it up, examines it, drops it suddenly. "Christ on a crutch," he says and lets go of the steering wheel long enough to wipe his hands on his pants legs. I pick up the vial, hopeful, and begin to unscrew the safety cap. "I wouldn't do that," Nick says. "Why not?" "AZT." He looks at me. "Friend of yours, huh?" "We're on the same crew." "I'll bet you are," Nick says. I drop the vial. I wonder what kind of buzz AZT provides, then realize that I'm doing it too, scrubbing my hands against my thighs. I know it's Max, but I can't stop.

Suits and

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changed. But everything has. It bothers me that Max never told me. Not that I could do anything, but it would have been nice to know.. I thought we were tighter than that. Now I feel like a mark. All along I've been granting Max dispensation from a sin he's never cared to commit. My life is venial. His sins are mortal. Of the flesh, that's the real P and M listâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which makes my decision easy.

I'm sitting in my living room with the lights out so Nick and Hoppy won't drop by. I've taken two blistering showers and washed my hands with Clorox. I'm sitting in my Lazy-Boy, stuck in the adhesion of my own sweat. My last beer lies empty at my feet. Max's vial sits by the door sealed inside three Ziploc baggies. Hoppy said Max's accident wasn't life-threatening. So after I get some sleep, and lunch, I'll probably go see him. I'll bring him a copy of Playgirl just for grins, find out what he wants to do with his meds. If he's alert, I'll ask him where he shops, maybe get the name of that mall store. I'll act like nothing has 38

Berkeley

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Suits and

Bodies

Doing

D O I N G

W I T H O U T

Thomas H. Brennan

e writes feverishly, scribbling and scrawling, then he stops. "It's finished," he announces. "What?" she replies. "I did it." "Did what?" "Here, look." He pushes it across to her. She picks it up and reads it quickly. "So?" "So? Don't you see?" "See what? This doesn't work. It's bland. It's got no...Oh, I see." "That's it. You got it." He smiles broadly. "Duh? Really now." "What do you think? Honestly?" "It doesn't work. It's stupid." "No, it's experimental. It's good. Gosh, it's good." "It's inane. Don't kid yourself." "You think so?" "I know so. But why write this? Come with me. Let's go in - then under - then in...." She eyes him flirtatiously and wiggles. "Later. I'm busy with this." "You promised. Remember?" "When I'm finished." "Promise again then," she says smiling warmly. "I promise." "You don't mean it." "I do." "Cross your...." He interrupts her, "I cross. I cross." "Why do you do this?" she asks seriously. "You remember them. They stated you couldn't use...." "Oh, them." "They're nice." 40

Without

"They're wacky." "No, they're not." "Whatever. I'm just going to remove some..." She moans. "Please, I really do promise. Don't beg." "Okay. Want to know what I really think?" "Yes. It's what I asked you before." "It's challenging." "Thanks." "Know what else?" "What?" "Write one without any.... You know." "That's impossible." "No, it isn't. Listen to this." She pauses. "You're staring." "I'm listening intently." "Good. This is it." She starts, "He and she, at first, ah. Then he and she passionately. Then he and she voluptuously. Then.... You get it." "You win." "Come follow me. Don't dawdle." She undresses as she walks backwards ahead of him. "Who cares about what you don't have? Concentrate on what you do have and you've got me." "You can't do without, can you?" "Neither can you. After we finish you can continue if you're up for it." She laughs.

Doing

D O I N G

W I T H O U T

Thomas H. Brennan

Without

Breeding

B R E E D I N G

Quarks

"I'm not even technically divorced..." I adjusted the laces on my borrowed shoes. "No one's gonna ask to see your papers," she said, throwing back her shoulders to begin her approach. "You think men even care if you're married?" Spare. My turn. "They're gonna care more that you still talk to the creep." It was true. Just that week on the bus a leering guy had sat down next to me saying, "so, are you happily married?" But was that the kind of guy I wanted to meet? I threw. Gutter. She went on. "Prove to yourself that someone *sides Arnold will find you attractive." Unspoken: since Arnold didn't anymore. Five pins. I thought about the guy on the bus... but she read my mind. Her turn. "Someone viable that you can find attractive, too. Just like what Arnold did." Ouch. Strike. On the one hand, any end I imagined to my suffering required an Arnold simultaneously penitent and unrepentant, like a politician who issues a blanket apology while admitting no wrongdoing, saying only that mistakes were made. The only other possibility was a massively adjusted forgiveness-prone me, which, stretched and stressed as I was, seemed unlikely. It seemed cruel and ironic that we had to rise to occasions when we were, inevitably, least prepared to do so. I watched Mae double her strike then spin and stretch her arm to punch the air. "What if I can't?" "Gina, you're making too much of this. You gotta start somewhere, practice, work your way up. Make an effort." It would be good for me. After my gutter ball, she pulled me to the mirrored wall. "We set each other off to good advantage, you know. Heads turn when we walk into a room." I wondered if she were kiddingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;our reflections looked distorted at that angle, with blurry feet and fuzzy heads. It occurred to me that Mae had been alone awhile, going through what single people referred to as a dry spell. Looking at her in the mirror was seeing my future in a crystal ball. I was about to say I'd do it for the team when I remembered why, of all social events, I hated dances'the most. I pulled away and turned to face her. "But I don't know how to dance, even." She walked toward the ball return. "You don't know how to bowl either." She picked up her ball and I waited for her throw. She only got three pins this time. "Seriously, I can't dance." The last time I had danced was>at Arnold's sister's wedding. My father-in-law had felt sorry for me and ferried me around the room, my shawl slipping from my shoulders. It was beyond excruciating, but no worse than the other three or four times I'd attempted it under duress, when it seemed like the best thing to do was to fake it, but it never was. "That's a shame, 'cause that's how you can tell." She threw again, another three. I took my turn. "Tell what?' "Who you should do it with." "What?"

Q U A R K S

Julie B e n e s h

xperiments show that the forces containing the quarks get weaker as the quarks get closer together - The Bag Model of Quark Confinement The Champaign-Urbana Bowl smelled like floor wax, onion rings, and disinfected foot sweat. It was empty on a weekday afternoon and the sadeyed manager, Mr. Redwin, was letting us bowl free, in honor of my mother's memory. My mother had been dead for three months, but her portrait adorned the C-U Bowl locker room from the day she bowled a 298. She had a 172 average, before she got sick, bowled in four different leagues. My friend Mae would have preferred more of an audience, but the isolation suited me fine, and we both liked the price. And bowling suited my current meditations on motion and momentum, my obsession with natural laws prompted by my editing job in the university physics department. "It's time. Get back up on that horse. At least meet some folk." Mae was bugging me to go to some mixer with her for singles over 27 sponsored by the Champaign-Urbana Social Club. I heard echoes of my mother saying, Do it. It will be good for you. "I've been trying to meet people." People like me. I called the Grief Support Group at the hospital and they told me that it was only for parents whose children had died. The phenomenon of parents dying was too trite and routine to require special care. So when I called the Divorce Hotline, 1 was not surprised to hear that their support group was called Children First, the name saying it all. It was like feeling bad about your sore leg and seeing some beaming, tow-headed urchin, the kind Mae worked with as a rehab nurse, with no leg. I felt simultaneously shamed, rejected, and lonelyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; even my most profound tragedies were trivial, commonplace, yet if that were true, where were my cohorts? There had to be millions of us. "I mean normal people." People with legs. "People you might enjoy keeping company with. For fun" "But I have you." "Men, Gina."

42 j

Breeding

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Q U A R K S

Julie B e n e s h

42 j

~nr Berkeley Fiction

Review

Breeding

"By how they smell. I keep forgetting, you don't know any of this, do ] you?" I threw another gutter ball. No, and I'd done my best to* avoid it by getting married at 20 . Damn Arnold for putting me in this position! And Mae was no replacement for my mother. Arnold and my mother were utterly devoted, once, both had years of , practice in making my life bearable, meaningful. How likely was it that anything would ever work out again? I knew there had to be a better way of thinking about all of this, but my access to it was blocked. It was a library filled with books written in a language not my own. Tenth frame, one more throw, five pins and my game was over. Once Mae finished we could be on our way. When I was a teenager, my mother and I used to play a game when I wanted a boy to call and was afraid he would not. She'd bet me a quarter he'd call. A quarter was a small thing, of course, not a huge investment, and I can't remember actual monetary transactions or even any outcomes. Of course the Copenhagen Interpretation said she couldn't know; that no one could know the future. All possibilities existed until the moment when they collapsed into one, the one we call "real." What was really important was the way she would say it, the authority she projected. It gave me hope. Moreover, it gave me confidence. Implied was that if the boy disappointed, at least my mother never would. If he got bored, forgot me, failed to love me, she never would. Hidden variable theory says the quantum world is whatever and all it is, independent of our knowledge of it, because the quantum world knows itself. Now she was gone, and my love problems, supposed to be over forever when I married, were back like my mother's recurrence of cancer after a lengthy remission. As if caused by the same line of force. Everything affects everything else no matter how far away. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance." Indeed. After Mae beat me by 57 pins I told her I'd do it for the team. The minute I said it I regretted it. But I honored my commitments, it's what made me better than my husband. Besides, the sole test of the validity of an idea was experiment. * * * I wore a red dress and red lipstick, coloring myself courageous. Mae wore a royal purple dress with black buttons and matching pumps. The mixer was held in the Round Barn. The other women there seemed giddy and relaxed, like the overgrown sorority girls they almost certainly were. Most of the men looked vaguely religious, like they should be carrying copies of The Watchtower. Near the registration desk we made name tags listing three passions. Mae's were: Commercial Real Estate, Gourmet Cooking, and Biotechnology. "Au courant, powerful yet nurturing," she confided. I panicked. Why had they not told us there was an assignment? I would have come prepared. "What should I pick?" All I could think of was Shopping, Dorothy Parker, and Galileo.

Quarks

Materialistic, bitter and misunderstood. "Modeling, Journalism, and Travel," Mae proposed. "You'll sound like a young Diane Sawyer." I settled on Fashion, Poetry, and Physics. Mae sighed, then recovered. "Hmmm. OK, a brainy and romantic babe." Between her dances Mae pointed guys out to me, trying to get me to "stretch my horizons" by fantasizing about sleeping with them. Most of the fantasies I quickly aborted. One guy was OK. He looked familiar, a little like a Raggedy Andy doll, homely, unthreatening. He lacked Arnold's nerdy handsomeness, but I liked him. Arnold's nerdiness had been deceptive, his handsomeness ultimately problematic. I had granted him his handsomeness, and he had thanked me by luring someone else with it. I looked at Raggedy Andy imagining a kiss, a touch, nudity. . . The guy smiled and walked over, having caught me looking with God only knows what kind of expression on my face. I could see his passions on his name tag: Investments, Films, Music. "Hi. I don't dance. My name is Brian." He had a handsome man's voice, if not his face. "Brian," said Mae. "I've always liked that name. It means...lionhearted, right?" He was looking past her, smiling at me. "Let me get you two kids a drink," she said, and swayed off to the bar. "Why aren't you at a dancing?" asked Brian. "Don't dance. You?" "I don't dance either," he answered as Mae walked back with a beer for him and a glass of wine for me. "I don't drink," he added. "Well, no wonder you don't dance, baby," said Mae. "Hey, investments. Gina here will be coming into some money shortly." Unspoken: divorce settlement. "Do you have any advice for her? Maybe you should set up a meeting. Films. What kind of films do you like? Gina likes independent and foreign films. Music. Do you play any musical instruments? It's a shame you don't dance. Of course, neither does Gina." And finally, "Gina has a card she can give you so you can call her up and take her somewhere nice for dinner." Brian grinned and held out his hand while I fished in my bag. From where I sat, he smelled OK. As Mae and I left the stars were shining, home movies of nuclear reactions from before we were born. On the way home Mae said, "He's smitten. Love at first sightâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it's so romantic. " "Or sleazy..." "Speaking of sleazy, what's up with that musician?" "What musician?" "The one from the band who asked me your name." "I didn't even see him." "He said he thought he knew you, and I said well, if he knew you, he wouldn't need to ask your name. I'd watch out for him. He's a Harley.This Brian's more like training wheels." 45

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Breeding

Quarks

44 A

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Or in physics terms, electricity is stronger and less predictable than gravity. With gravity you always know where you stand. * * * Brian took me to the Great Impasta for lunch. My first date in over half a decade. Mae prepped me well, telling me there was a good chance he'd stand j me up. And I'd already made up my mind that nothing would happen or I'd have been even more nervous. I kept looking for people I knew, to hide from, since you always see someone you know out in Champaign-Urbana. But no one I saw was important enough to greet, anyway. Brian asked questions, about my recent trip to Italy, about my mom, about Mae, and listened to the answers. I knew that was unusual in a man, from the casual conversations I had with guys at work and from the stories my friends told about dating, and books Mae lent me like Why Men Are Impossible...and Why We Love Them Anyway. At one point, he said, "So, is' this a comfortable silence or an uncomfortable one?" I thought that was charming even though it was cheesy, and he had probably rehearsed it. Somehow that just made it more sincere. So far he was exceeding my low expectations. He also let me avoid the topic of Arnold. When he dropped me off in the waning afternoon light he gave me a quick hug. Mae told me to play my cards right, and I could have whatever I wanted. After our second date, dinner at the Dragon restaurant, we fooled around a little on my sofa. I was still drawing a line in my mind abut what could and could not happen between us. Kissing, definitely, intercourse of any kind, no way—there were diseases, pregnancy, the question of adultery: a constellation of looming barriers. But there was a universe of ambiguous territory in between kissing and all of that. Turned out he had an eclectic style that showed the influence of many years of dating around. He held my face and caressed it. He was good, all around, with his hands. He probably excelled at shop in high school. At a certain point he mentioned that he had no rubbers on him, but he had some in his car. "In your carT" He asked if he should get them. "No, that won't be necessary right now. Maybe we should chat a little. I'm getting a little sleepy." I still had not explained my marital situation. He undoubtedly assumed I was ; divorced. "Never make a decision when you're hungry, angry, lonely or tired. I read that somewhere." "If I followed that, I'd never make a decision at all." "Really." I drew back to look him in the face. "Say more about that." "Well, it was a bad day today . . . " Here I thought he was having a great night. He sighed. "This woman at the office is a thorn in my side: She just announced her engagement. I went out with her a couple times, just a couple months ago, and she said she wasn't ready for anything serious. And now this. It was just depressing, and it sort of made me mad, I guess." "Did you want to marry her? Were you serious?" "No. We only had two dates. But that's enough time to know how you 46

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really feel." I'm sure I looked upset. Maybe he thought I was commiserating, what an empathetic girl. That was part of it, but I was also thinking about Arnold and how I really believed I'd never love anyone else. And how Brian ought to at least have found me adequate compensation, which would mean I expected him to care more about me than I cared about him, and how screwed up is that? Yet it was the best I could do. Suddenly I was tired and told him I needed to get some sleep. He sat up, eyes widening. "Maybe next t i m e . . . " "Whatever." I said it more sharply than I meant to, and he looked so sad. I actually did feel sorry for him. "You know, technically, I'm still married. My divorce isn't final." "Does that matter?" "I just thought you should know, you know." I paused. "I'm still friends with him, my ex, Arnold." "Men and women can be friends, you know. My roommate's a woman. She was a friend of a friend who needed a place to stay. She has a boyfriend. Plus she's not my type." "What's your type?" He raised his arm in my direction. They say any plane landing you walk away from is a good one. But then I didn't hear from him for several days. Mae said it was because I'd put him down, by not sleeping with him. "That's just how they are," she insisted. Then he left me a message saying he was in the hospital. He had some chronic stomach problems. I hated hospitals, especially that one, ever since my mother had spent so much time there and died there. I didn't even like to visit Mae at the other place where stje worked as a nurse. But I heard my mother say, Do it, it'll be good for you. So I picked a bunch of violets and went, throwing them in the trash bin before I got to the lobby. When I got to his room, I said, Hi!" then realized I was practically yelling. He was alone, thank God, and looked happy and surprised to see me. Before I even sat down, a nursing assistant came in to serve him his first meal since his IV was removed. I looked at the bread and saw some blue green algae-like blossoms on it and pointed it out to him. He summoned the nurse and very politely asked for another tray. In his gown, he seemed noble and compassionate, like some Roman senator, as well as vulnerable—hungry, lonely, tired. We made plans for when he got out and on the way home I wondered what it'd be like. Another man after being with Arnold all these years, and there were not many men before him. I didn't feel guilty—Arnold had created this situation, and I was only making a reasonable response. But I felt awkward and anxious like one of those dreams where you have to take an exam and you realize you forgot to ever go to the class, like accidentally getting a job in physics after a career in fashion. To prepare, I browsed the sex and dating 47

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Berkeley

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books at Pages for All Ages, feeling like an overgrown teenager or a dirty old woman. * * * Brian was supposed to come to my house at 6:30. The table was set, I was bathed and dressed by 5:30. I wore a black silk shirt and shorts and wound a multicolored silk scarf through the belt loops. I had salmon and pasta from Fancy Foods in the refrigerator ready to heat up for a cozy dinner. I hadn't eaten all day and felt shaky and light-headed, the room seeming to shimmer in the afternoon light. At 6:30 exactly I poured a brimming glass of Merlot to try to relax. I thought about calling Mae, but I didn't want to get all agitated. At 6:50 the phone rang, and Brian explained he was running late—a meeting had gone long. I relaxed. And got sleepy. By the time he got there, 45 minutes later and pulled me into his arms, I was anesthetized and mildly dehydrated, as Mae, with her medical background, would have been able to predict, had I asked. It was a practical exam, like a driver's test, is what I told myself. It didn't really matter how comfortable you were, and you certainly weren't expected to enjoy yourself. It was something to cross off your list so that you could be proud that you had your license and free to drive whenever you needed or wanted. By those standards it was more fun, even in my anesthetized state, than I would have ever guessed. The love that was missing made it easier to concentrate. Who knew? Afterward he said, "Are you my baby? Are you my girl?" I passed. "No, I thought maybe you just wanted to be friends." "No way. Where have you been all these years?" Then my foot seized up in a cramp, and he grabbed it in his big hands and squeezed it before the pain even registered. Over dinner he invited me to his sister's wedding. * * * At the Union coffee shop I reported to Mae that everything seemed to be in working order. She said, "Marry the man. You know what I miss about being married? Playing cards. Do you know married people live longer and healthier lives than single people?" Mae had a romantic view of marriage. She met her husband in a VA hospital during the Vietnam war. She promised him that if he got better she'd marry him, believing he wouldn't. But he did, so she did. And they were happy and had a son. They used to play cards on Sunday afternoons and that's what she remembered and missed the most since the pre-dawn morning she fled with nothing but the clothes on her back and a two year old. She attained her escape velocity—the minimum speed needed to pull away from gravitational attraction— only when her husband was having post-traumatic stress flashbacks and sleeping with a gun under his pillow, ever since he started drinking again. 48

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"Speaking of getting married, he invited me to his sister's wedding." Mae's hand flew up to her mouth. "That's wonderful!" she gasped. "You know what this means, don't you? He's bringing you home to mom and everyone!" "Actually, he mentioned his mother won't be there. She hasn't spoken to his dad in 20 years, since he remarried. And since his dad is footing the bill..." * * * At the reception, I inadvertently caught the bouquet, a random accident of trajectory and velocity potent with infinite possibility. Or perhaps it sought, like a missile, the only ostensibly single, technically married woman. Either way it came straight at me and I, an electron resisting acceleration, spiked it like a volleyball, sending it straight over the heads of the bridesmaids. "Get it, Cindy," I yelled at his other sister, but it crashed into the wall behind her and fell in a crumpled heap like a sad, satin voodoo doll. The woody stems had scratched my hands, and two of my fingers bled a little, leaving scarlet droplets on the fingertip length hem of the sapphire blue silk skirt I was wearing with a matching sleeveless shell and longjacket with matching blue and black four inch platform shoes. Brian's brother walked up, as handsome in face as Brian was in voice, shaking his head. "First you wear the short skirt, not that I'm complaining, then you mangle the bouquet. Are you wanting to impress this family or not?" I looked at Brian, and he grinned and shrugged. The bafid was taking a break, and Brian and I were at the buffet, when the sax player walked up. He had tousled wavy, brown hair, brown eyes, a smattering of freckles like a constellation in negative. A few crinkles around his eyes and mouth that somehow made my throat close and eyes sting. I wiped my scratched thumbs against one another as he looked at me. He said, "Nice to see you again." Then he looked at Brian arjd said, "Would you like to make a request for you and your fiancee?" nodding toward me. "Oh, she's a friend. My fiancee hasn't been born yet," Brian said. He snorted a little; I hoped he was just nervous. The sax player handed me his card, turned, and walked away. Fumbling, I dropped it and Brian picked it up, glancing at it as he handed it to me. He squinted, puzzled, as if it were some mistake, as if the man had somehow confused me with the person he meant to give it to, as if it were a religious tract or a flyer advertising hot merchandise. He frowned. "He must think you're going to need a band. People keep asking me when we're getting married. I tell them I haven't met the right woman—because she hasn't been born yet." "I think maybe he was coming on to me when you said we were friends. People do that at weddings, you know." Brian rolled his eyes. "I'm sure he's gay, anyway, c'mon, look at him. He's a musician." "I thought you were a liberal," I said, smoothly. 49

Berkeley

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Breeding

Quarks

Berkeley Fiction

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"Girl, if I were a woman, I'd be a lesbian. Is that liberal enough for you?" He stroked my thigh under the table. I looked at the card again, realizing where I'd seen it, and him before. Another event, another buffet line. He must have been the guy Mae was talking about, the one I had missed entirely at the mixer, the one who said he knew me, the one she warned me about. The kind your friends always warn you about. * # * That night in bed with Brian I did something spontaneous for a change. Or at least I said something, more spontaneous than I ever had to him. "Your mom . . . " "What about her?" "She missed Carrie's wedding." "Your mother wasn't at yours." "Well, I didn't have a wedding—that's the point of eloping. But just to avoid your dad?" "And his wife, and their kids, and all these people she used to know." "What does she do when he calls for Cindy?" Cindy was between jobs and living at home. "Well, she either gets her or tells him she's not there, depending." "There's something else." "What?" "The girl in the red dress." She'd been lovey-dovey with a date ... "Do you know her?" "Yes." "Some friend of Carrie?" I felt his leg tense up next to mine, the hairs-prickling against me. "Yes." "Marilyn? The girl who announced her engagement?" "Yes." "Why didn't you introduce me?" "I didn't want to talk to her." "That's not talking to her. Are you still infatuated with her?" "I'm with you now." "Don't you want to know if I'm still in love with Arnold?" "You're with me." "What does that mean?" He pulled me over in top of him in response. * * * We started spending weekends together, at his place or mine. We sat on the sofa with my legs over his. We had a lot of sex, four, five, six times a weekend, but we didn't kiss—Brian told me on our fourth date that he didn't like kissing. There was very little tension between us, or it had little chance to build before being dissipated in the act, as they say, if not the reality, of "love." Brian called me every night and I started ignoring my "friend" Arnold's •50

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calls. Until we were watching that dumb TV show at his house and he said something like, wow, that guy gets a lot of sex. And I said something like, you honey, get as much sex as any guy. And he blinked and said, "Yes, but he gets it with different women." Then I blinked and said, "Is that better?" When he answered his voice was even quieter than usual. "Of course I want to sleep with more women. All guys do," he said. "This has been the best relationship ever. But I never expected it to last this long. It wasn't like I planned i t . . . " I went home and read about asymptotic freedom—a quark, the fundamental constituent of matter can't break from another until the gluon between them breaks, and the gluon only breaks when there's enough energy to make new quark on each side. Quark reproduction. I didn't hear from Brian for a few days, and I didn't really know what to say to him, anyway. Physics tells us attractions are common bm\almost always doomed, one side or the other too weak to hold. And everything evens out in the end, reverting back to the ground state, the lowest ebb of energy. * * * It was dusk and Mae and I were on our way to dinner, walking downtown toward the Great Irnpasta. And there Brian stood under the rainbow on the window of that thrift store, Rainbow's End next to the Blind Pig night club. He was with a pastel ldoking Woman; beige hair, pink Oxford shirt, khaki trousers with cuffs, tiny earrings. Kissing her—and swaying as if to some distant starlit music. But all I heard was the roar of a Harley, as Mae pulled me by the shoulder, back the way we came.

Berkeley Fiction

Review

Breeding

Quarks

Death of a First

Place

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Sudden

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Fiction

Mexican

"let those i love try to forgive what i have made." ezrap.

Winner

3. no one understood mefio. our families black sheep, my nana's special one, who she described as the wind, or the lord's incense, or the miracle of a sudden spiritual shower, for mefio had the the power of osmosis, the ability to diffuse through walls, to escape just as mysteriously as when he had appeared for so and so's quincenera.

M E X I C A N

M a n u e l P. L o p e z

and the days, sometimes long weeks at a time when manuel pablo lopezwould vanish beneath the ski mask of night, and no one, i mean no one, would know where he'd gone, and when he'd finally return, there he'd be, certain as a shadow: black cape, fake maroon leather pants, with pablo neruda's memoirs, always pablo neruda, tucked beneath his arm, as if nothing had ever happened.

i wanted to be a writer, but not like my cousin mefio, who, walked the town with a pen in his hand so he could catch the spontaneous flight of haikus, who made everyone call him by his full name, manuel pablo 16pez, "because," he said, "artists do that kind of shit."

4. my tia had grown used to manuel pablo 16pez' antics, she'd developed antibodies for the infectious hijo she had bore in the sixties, the family said that my tia had manuel pablo lopez while she was "juiced up on tofu and all that other hippie shit," that she lived in a commune in northern California with charles manson y su familia, that a giant chupacabra had swooped up from the bowels of hell to impregnate her with 6 different sperm cells, from 6 different condemned races carrying 6 different soul-deafening diseases

all i know is that the burning was in me, i felt it everyday growing like a pansa filled with chorizo con papas. i wrote for no reason at all. on 7 eleven big gulp cups, on napkins, even on the bathroom walls at school, because high school was nothing to me: the thought of it was like dry sawdust in my mouth, especially after my cousin manuel pablo lopez explained to me that we were all born geniuses, but most of us spent the rest of our lives collecting stupidities like seashells, and most of the collecting, he insisted, was accomplished in schools, "people are numb," he'd say. "compromised, passive as assholes." then he'd shout a fidel castro-style, "que viva vangogh!"

the truth is, manuel pablo lopez' father left his mother while manuel pablo lopez was a small childâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;took off as fathers often did, taking everything, ripping even the peephole from their front door to disguise his direction.

2. manuel pablo lopez taught me so much, so many books at such a young age. "do you wanna be rimbaud, or shelley," he'd ask, handing me handmade baseball card-looking things, except there weren't any baseball players on them, but writers, scissored from encyclopedias, library books, some old, some young, with all of the books they'd written on the back of each card, their date of birth, the day they died, and how.

5. barbershop folklore claims that my tio was the throbbing nucleus of a circus crew that performed just outside of mexicali. some say he was a magician, graceful, swan-like when performing to iron butterfly and Jefferson airplane, a human larvae that gave birth to mexicali exhaust, taquerias, prostitutes, even pausing the busy traffic of the frontera for a full two seconds with the snap of his fingers, some even say that he farted gold dust, changed grandfather clocks into small children, and created ozzy osborne out of matchsticks and kennedy's market's carne asada.

the suicide cases were manuel pablo lopez' favorite, or at leastthat's what i thought, because for every man and woman there was an adornment of penciled flowers, a crown around their heads, and a medal drawn triumphantly around their necks in blue pen that read:

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Death of a First

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"let those i love try to forgive what i have made." ezrap.

Winner

M E X I C A N

M a n u e l P. L o p e z

53 L

Berkeley

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6. my tia never spoke bad about my tio, not even when my nana called him a common bum who took advantage of the family, a family that was already dying. 7. manuel pablo lopez had a thing for faking suicide attempts, it was all like a theatre piece to him, but my tia soon grew fed up, so thereafter, each time that he'd try to stick his head in the stove to threaten a sylvia plath, she'd scald him with the menudo she'd been simmering over the stove, or kick him in the ass with one of pops boots so hard that he'd scream: "aaayyy," convulsing with a smile to the dream of internal bleeding and familial homicide 8. manuel pablo lopez made a habit of chewing on paper, because he said that it would feed him lorca, rulfo, hamsun, but times when he drank a little too much of his wine, he'd cry, like a drama queen, while chewing on danielle steel. 9. the last i heard of my cousin, was that he had locked himself up in a shack, that he lived in with three roosters, a pig, a python and a whore from tijuana, who was mute, but who had a face tattooed like a mask in perpetual astonishment, as manuel pablo lopez typed until his fingers became raw nubs of flesh, and the medal he'd strung with yarn and construction paper fell with the thunder of his last carved letter.

Berkeley

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One With the World

T H E

JohnKosmas Skinas

slow song began to play; now he could hold her close. She was blond, chubby in the right places, and she talked about cheerleading and beer. Abed had been drinking a Coke when she tapped on his shoulder. He set the can on the floor and took her by the hand. She said her name was Mandy. Now Abed's hands were sliding up and down her back, not slowly to the beat of the music, but with clumsy jolts that made her jeyes widen. She smiled knowingly. Her breath smelled like cherry bubblegum and something sour. As they moved, he could feel her breasts sliding across his ribs. His hands jerked her closer. He saw a friend dancing nearby. He smiled at him, a hazy-eyed smile advertising dreamy ecstasy and forthcoming possibility. Two out of every three. This was the number of teenagers the article said have intercourse by the time they graduate from high school. This statistic had been haunting Abed for months. An Eastern Orthodox in a Roman Catholic school, and an Arab in a white suburb—he was already weary of being in the conspicuous minority. The dance was over. For the last half of the song he had been kissing her. They'd used their tongues. He was surprised at how natural and easy it felt—like running, or chanting—which he couldn't do anymore since the services of the only nearby Orthodox church were conducted almost entirely in Greek. A fast song had started, and she led him out of the gym. He was chewing her gum. They sat on the curb, facing the parking lot. He looked around for any one of the friends he had come with. No one was around to see him. She wasn't talking so he had to. "What school you go to?" "OLM." Her voice was high and confident. She was the kind of person Abed, before the move, thought only existed in movies designed to attract people his age. "What's that stand for?" Simultaneously, her eyebrows arched, one side of her upper lip curled, and her head shook—all conveying her disbelief at his ignorance. "Our Lady 56

of Mercy," she said. "Duh." He wished he had another can of Coke to hold and take slow sips from. "Do you have a car?" "Not really." She laughed. "What does that mean?" He didn't say anything. He watched a SUV thumping with music go by. "So, what year are you, Abey? It's Abe, right? Like the president?" "Abed." "What?" "My name is Ah-bed. I'm a sophomore." As soon as he had said it, he castigated himself for not lying. "So have you been to Mecca and all that stuff?" He hated when this happened. He recalled the recent events in Beit Jala, the predominantly Christian Palestinian community where most of his family still lived. Militant Palestinian Muslims were forcing the Christians into the intifada by infiltrating their neighborhoods and opening fire on the nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo. "You don't have a bunch of explosives strapped to your body, do you?" She winked, then smiled and touched the bony brown plain between his knuckles and his wrist. "Kidding," she said. "I'm Orthodox." He had to regularly go through this with his classmates— asserting that he was indeed a Christian then having to explain why he couldn't go up to receive the round white body of Christ along with the rest of the boys near the end of every school mass. She appeared disappointed. "You don't look Jewish." "I'm an Orthodox Christian—like you. I still got a lot of Muslim friends back home though." "I'm Catholic." "We don't have a pope and our priests can marry, but the rest is pretty much the same," he said, even though he knew it wasn't. "So what year are you?" She let some time pass. Then she smiled, ran her fingers through her hair, and said, "I'm a senior." He looked at her feet. She was wearing black open-toed heels. Her nails were painted blue. "Like them?" She wiggled her toes. He nodded. His sister, Najibeh, had painted her toenails the same color. Najibeh, who wanted everyone to call her Natalie, was in the seventh grade, already going out with boys, refusing to speak Arabic, and constantly fighting with their mother. On TV, sit-com girls not much older than Najibeh had "the talk" with a parent, and were told to use common sense and protection. A news report on Channel Seven had said something about condoms being passed out to fifth graders. And here was Abed, in high school and he had barely even kissed a girl. One of the daytime talk shows did a program on 55

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virgins. Four of them were displayed like freaks before the astonished and amused eyes of the studio audience. She rose to her feet. "Come on; let's go." "Go where?" He noticed the soft, pleasing glow the nearby lights gave to her sun-colored legs. There was a small purple scab beneath her right knee. "For a drive; / got a car." She pulled him up from the curb. He was about to say something about needing to tell his ride about the change in plans, then decided not to. She brought him to a burgundy luxury sedan. "I'm a little woozy; you feel like driving?" "Yeah." Abed drove toward Saint Gabriel's Lake, where his father would occasionally take him for practice drives when the streets weren't crowded. Not used to a car of that size and unable to handle the turns well, he drove slowly. He glanced at the girl. She had dozed, her head leaning against the window and her lips moving as though mouthing the lyrics to a song. A number of dark, quiet cars were spread across the lot. Several empty spaces lay between each vehicle. It was both a foreign and familiar sceneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; one that he was never a part of, but had viewed dozens of times on TV and in movie theaters. Now (he hoped) was the time to make the transition from spectator to participant. All he needed to do was pull into a space and follow the unwritten script. He parked, facing the leaf-covered path that wound through the trees and led down to the water: With the headlights off, he could barely see past the hood of the car. He looked at the sleeping girl. She was pretty enough, not perfect, but he really did like the mild color of her skin. And her breasts could turn a lot of heads. He'd never found large breasts particularly attractive, but he thought they had to be, considering the popularity of implants. With her bra-size, her tan, and her long blond hair, he figured she was someone to take pride in being with. What was more, she seemed interested in him. He sat watching her chest rise and fall to the rhythm of her breathing. He imagined meeting her friends and familyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;his hand so markedly dark in each of theirs during the introductions. In his imaginings, he noticed the looks they exchanged when they thought he wasn't paying attention, the mouthing of the word terrorist. When she began waking up, Abed's thoughts were channeled to the condom he had been keeping in his wallet for the past year. It was there for display, but he now realized that he might actually put it to use. At school (on the same auditorium stage that they performed their masses on) he had seen a demonstration done with a banana to show how to use one. "Where are we?" The girl was afraid. "Saint Gabe's." She looked at him, and he watched her expression change from fright to 58

One With the World recognition to relief. "It's Alfred, right?" Her voice was lower now. She yawned and smiled. "Abed," he said, offended. "Sorry, cutey. I'm just trying to get my brain to work." She shook her head until the blond hair covered her face like a curtain. She pulled it back and said, "So, Ah-bed, what would you like to do?" He shrugged. "Whatever." He didn't like her voice. He felt teased by it. "Let's go for a walk." She was out of the car before he could say anything. The night had turned cold, and he draped his jacket over her shoulders because it was the expected thing to do. He put his arm around her and found it to be a clumsy, uncomfortable way of walking. Abed wondered how the others could look so at ease with their arms tight and confident around their girls. He tried to match her relaxed pace as they walked under the trees and over the crunch of leaves. In the distance he could-hear the water rushing over the shore then retreating back into itself. He thought it sounded like breathing. He had gone on a retreat in the woods when he was a freshman. There was an activity called "Attitude Exercise." All of the boys jogged in place in the middle of the room and were asked Yes or No questions. Those who answered Yes ran to one side of the room, those answering No to the other. One of the questions was "Do I plan on waiting for marriage to have sexual relations?" Abed almost stood considering the question for too long before joining the rest of the boys, who had ran immediately to the No side. The Yes side remained completely unpopulated. "Are you cold?" she asked. "No." "Are you lying?" "Yeah," he said, making his teeth chatter. She laughed, and he was satisfied with his reply. "Let's get back in the car." She turned and walked on ahead. Abed followed. Standing outside the car, her keys in his hand, he asked, "Do you want to get in the back?" "Sure, but what are you going to do-up front all by yourself?" "What?" he fumbled. "I thought...? "I know what you meant, cutey," she said. "Hurry up and open the door so we can warm each other up." After a few moments of groping she pulled back with a forbearing smile. "You kiss like I'm not even here," she said. "Relax. Talk to me. Take it slow." Abed wanted to go home. She was making him feel like a kindergartner. And she wasn't as pretty with her make-up smeared and faded. He now regretted shunning the vespers service his mother (who didn't use make-up) 59

Berkeley Fiction

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Berkeley

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Review

had wanted him to attend instead of the dance. It was one of the few times he hadn't done exactly as she said. An altar boy before the move, he actually liked church. At Saint Basil's, hundreds of miles away and comprised mostly of other Palestinians, his mother used to chant the Sunday Epistle in Arabic. Her face would become transformed by the words of God, the words that came crying out of her soul and wounded the hearts of all who heard. As her voice rose and fell and trembled, Abed would find himself transported to Bethlehemâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the place of his mother's as well as his Messiah's birth, the place where, despite the violence, the tangible world came closest to touching heaven, the place, he had assured her, he himself would one day call home. As his hand slid under the shirt and cupped the girl's breast he was surprised by how wonderful it didn't feel. It was an unremarkable lump of flesh with a hard protrusion, just a part of a body. Old women, baboons and cows had them. He almost pulled his hand away and was about to end the encounter when he heard something: a low note snapped and sustained, then joined by notes even lower still. It was from the soundtrack of the pornographic movie he had seen at a friend's house not long ago. Soon images joined the music in his mind. As he became excited a strange insight occurred to him: while viewing the movie he had fantasized about touching and holding an actual warm, responsive woman, but now that he had one in his arms the prospect of re-enacting the fleshy scenes was all that he found appealing. The fantasy made him yearn for the reality; and now that he had the reality he wanted the safety and control of the fantasy back. She had stopped talking; now he could concentrate. He wanted her to make sounds like the women in the movie, but, fearing rebuke, he didn't dare ask. Instead, he pulled out the condom. "So, I see you're a Boy Scout." Her voice was an intrusion. "What?" "You know, always prepared." "Huh?" "Forget it." It was done quickly. She hadn't made a sound. She hadn't done much of anything. Abed's legs and arms were left feeling flimsy, boneless. He found it nearly impossible to pull his pants back up. As he struggled, he felt as if his head was about to float away and leave his body to its own troubles. While he climbed over to the front seat, his elbow knocked against her shoulder. "Watch it," she said. Up front, she looked into the lighted mirror in the sun-visor and said "Get out and get into the passenger's seat; I'll drive now." Abed watched her slide over as he walked to the other side of the car. He was afraid to ask what was wrong. The wind blew into his eyes, and he felt dangerously close to crying. She started the car. The fear of being left 60

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stranded made him rush to open the door. She spoke only to ask the way to his house. The low, mournful sound of the motor filled the tense gaps of silence. "Turn here?" He only nodded. "I said, do I turn here?" "Yeah." In front of his driveway, he stepped out and swung the car door shut. She sped off without giving him another look. He turned and almost walked into the lamppost by the lawn. His teeth came together, and he realized he still had her gum in his mouth. It was stale and tasteless. He spit it into the grass and made his way to the front door. Turkish coffee, honey, walnutsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the warm, familiar smells of home were a comfort to him as he walked softly over the carpet and up the stairway to his room. He didn't turn on any of the lights, but in the hallway he could feel the plaintive eyes of the hanging icons fixed on him. Something like nausea went along with the guilt and the vague sense of relief. After he had his shirt off, it occurred, to him that he wasn't going to boast about the girl at school. For the time being at least, he didn't want the high-fives and the back-slaps; he didn't want anybody calling him a pimp or a stud. If the friends he had gone to the dance with asked, then he would tell them. But he wouldn't exaggerate and lie and make up details inspired by pornography. At least he wouldn't be like them in that one, minor way. As he stumbled out of his pants, Abed remembered the used condom in his pocket. He hadn't known where else to put it when he was through. The last thing he wanted to do now was stick his hand in and pull it out into the open. He left it alone and shoved the pants under the pile of laundry on his closet floor. He did the same with his underwear. Abed rummaged through his bureau, trying to find something to cover himself with. He wanted desperately to wash the night off in the shower, but he couldn't; the noisy pipes would wake his parents. Then his mother, the smell of church still in her hair, would come out to see what was the matter. He wasn't ready for her. He shivered, hating his nakedness as he searched by the weak light that crept in through the window facing the road. The light made his skin appear jaundiced and more pale than possible. At the bottom of the drawer he found the pajamas he hadn't worn in such a long time, having come to consider them too boyish. But Abed now pushed his face into them and breathed in their faint washed and ironed smell deeply. He held the pajamas to his chest as he looked for fresh underwear. Not finding anything clean, he used an old pair of gym shorts. They were tight and made him itch. Moisture and heat seeped endlessly out of his skin, and he couldn't keep his body from shaking. It was as if it had become a hateful stranger to him. Once he managed to get the pajamas on, he slid into bed. 61

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One Wth the

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The covers were cold, heavyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;pressing down on him like a massive, insistent body. His breath came with choked effort as he lay shivering in the darkness, waiting for morning to come, for his mother to walk in and put her hand on his forehead.

B E N D I C I O N

Alisa Rivera

he first guy I fucked at the Rittenhouse Hotel was Frank. The last one was Bob. There were 10 in between. Gabriel calls it my "year of the dozen." Now when I say fucked them at the hotel, I don't* mean I fucked them at the hotel. Not that I couldn't have. With all of the businessmen passing through, I could have spent the night in every damned room of the place three times over. I'd walk them to their tables at the restaurant (that's where I worked as the hostessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all the stress of being a waiter but with no tips) and out would come their business cards. Management consultant, architect, lawyer, even the deputy mayor of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. They'd press those cards into my hand soaked with their sweat and anticipation. I got so many that I stoleithe spike next to the register where we stuck the receipts and started impaling'the cards on it. In a month, I got 40 or 50 of them, easy. I guess it's like Gabriel says, "Mari, there's nothing like sleeping in a strange room in a strange city to make a man horny." I had people tell me I should have rucked at least one of those guys, it â&#x20AC;˘ would have been good for a nice restaurant dinner and maybe even a show. But I'm funny about who I'll sleep with. Those were businessmen, you know? I just couldn't see it. Plus I don't like screwing in hotel rooms. Too impersonal. They make them so you feel comfortable but not settled. And if I'm fucking,' I want to feel settled, even i f it's just for one night. So who were the guys I did hook up with? Mostly they worked at the hotel or were friends of people at the hotel. And given that mere were 12 in one year, you probably think I did every concierge, bell boy and waiter in the place. But really, I'm funny about who I'll sleep with. It's not about their looks, or about how much mortey they make. It's just that some guys, they have a way of doing something, some little quirk that only I notice, like using their shirts to wipe the sweat off their foreheads or rubbing their eyes like little boys half asleep. With Gabriel it was the way he held his pen when he wrote, that bit of silver in his huge hand so that it looked like he was trying to write with a needle. But Gabriel wasn't connected to the hotel, so I guess I shouldn't be talking about him. He wasn't one of the dozen, not really. 62

Berkeley

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B E N D I C I O N

Alisa Rivera

Berkeley

Fiction

Review

Bendicion

Frank was the first one. It's a corny cliche" that you always remember your first. Though it would be hard to forget the thing he did that caught my attention. It was enough to get the attention of the whole kitchen and it almost got him fired. Plus it happened just when I started working at the hotel, a couple of months after I left school. Frank was a cook and it was a Wednesday night, and the reason I remember is that that was the night we served pizza soup, which is tomato soup with croutons and mozzarella cheese melted over the top. Not exactly fine dining, but it was a big hit with the pre-theater crowd who went to the Academy of Music. â&#x20AC;˘ Dwight was a real snotty asshole waiter and an art student who thought he was going to be the next Picasso or something even though he could barely draw a goddamn straight line. He came into the kitchen and started bitching that Frank had burned the cheese and how he'd done that all night and that his tips were sucky because of it. That's when Frank got a crazy look in his eyes, which were sort of crazy-looking anyway because they were so pale green he seemed almost blind. He punched his fist into the soup bowl and pulled the cheese out in a gloppy ball and yelled, "If you don't get the hell out of my face you'll look like this too." Dwight ran and got Tony the manager and whined about it like the little prick he was. Tony sent Frank home for the night and he probably would have fired him except that Won Lee never showed up for work the next day and they had to have someone in the kitchen. I followed Frank when he went to clock out, kicking the walls and cursing as he walked down the hall. I reached toward his arm and I felt the heat of him before I actually touched him. He flinched but I stood there quiet, not smiling, waiting to see what he would do. He stared at me with his pale green eyes and I got that hollow feeling between my legs, like something was missing and too much there at the same time. And that's when I knew I'd go home with him and that we'd fuck, and that it would be weird afterwards. Gabriel says that when a guy has a one-night stand, he wishes the woman would turn into a pizza when they're done, because then he could kill the munchies and not have to make conversation. But that's one thing I can't go along with him on. No matter how weird it might be the next morning, I never want the guy to just go away.

books or no books at all? Nunchuks hung on the wall or a print from the Museum of Art? Food in the fridge or a pile of duck sauce-soy sauce-hot sauce packets from Chinese takeout? Once you get to know a man that way, it doesn't matter how weird he is the next day. That was one thing that was different with Gabriel. He always managed to wake up before me. When I tried to slip out of bed he'd croon, "Mari, Mari," pull me gently against his torso and envelope me in a cocoon of warm, velvet skin. I wonder if it was like that for his other girls, if they made a tent of the blankets and breathed in his smell and wished it would last forever. Goddamn it. The next guy I fucked was more than a one-night stand. Mike and I lasted a month, long enough that I could have called him my boyfriend if I'd wanted to. Mike's thing, the thing that hooked me, was how he knew everything about the Spanish American War, all about Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, San Juan Hill and the yellow press. He wrote poetry too, good poetry, not the kind you pretend to read all the way through while you think of something nice but vague to say to the writer. I met him at McGregor Is, the bar where all of the waiters, cooks and busboys hung out. It was a place where you could get two hot dogs and cheese fries for three bucks and I ate there all the time since I was too broke to eat anywhere else. The funny thing was, Mike had never gone to college, never even finished high school, just dropped out and eventually landed at the hotel as a bartender. When he found out I went to Penn, he got embarrassed and didn't want to say anymore because, "You went to the U-ni-ver-si-ty of Penn-syl-va-ni-a. Shit, Mari. Ivy League. You must think I'm a moron." But I explained to him that there were plenty of assholes at Penn, kids wno got in because their dads donated piles of cash to the school, and even the smart kids were only smart in a'limited way, that they could get A's but couldn't handle everyday life. I told him about a girl I knew who lived in a huge house on a hill, like a fairy princess, and how one day the stupid bitch took a bunch of sleeping pills then took a bath and drowned. Then I told him about finals, how everyone would study all night and then march across campus to take their tests, hundreds of students at a time so that they looked like soldiers going to war. Even Gabriel would panic, Gabriel who walked as if he were a skater gliding on an icy pond and whose eyes were like a lake on a calm day, opaque and reflective at the same time. He'd sit at his desk and whisper, "I'll never pass," until I pulled the books from his hands and opened my blouse. Then I told Mike how I was better at those games than anyone, how I won a scholarship because I could take tests like a kid playing hopscotch, jumping from one box to the next and never stepping on the lines. But the longer I was there, the less important it seemed, especially after what happened with Gabriel. Though I didn't tell Mike about any of that because it wasn't any of his goddamned business. All I said was, "I closed my books and got

Not that it mattered to Frank. He might as well have been a pizza for how long things lasted. Just one night, a true one-night stand. We both went back to work the next day and I don't think we ever spoke to each other again. But even though it only lasted one night, I still felt like I knew him. That's because whenever I fucked a guy I made sure to wake up before he did. It gave me a little time alone and it also gave me a chance to learn about a guy in a way that you can't if you just fuck him or even become his girlfriend. I'd pad through their rooms as the night sky dissolved into gray light and look for clues. Was the floor gritty or clean? Were there books or comic 64

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the hell out, like you did. It just took me a little longer, that's all." Even after I said that, Mike was still shy with me. But I haven't met the guy yet who's so shy he won't fuck a girl when he gets the chance. The next morning he woke up with the shakes and poured himself a shot of scotch from the flask he always kept in his bag. I watched him drink it off, then kissed him very softly on the temple, on the spot where someone once told me you could kill a man if you hit him just right. Mike and I spent four weekends together, and in that time he got pretty attached to me, even talking one night about having kids and dogs someday. But I'm not about that bullshit, and besides I could see how the drinking was messing him up, how he looked puffy and his mouth tasted bitter and metallic. So I kissed him on the temple one last time and then I let him go. I held back for about a month after that, didn't go near any guys, just made the round from the hotel to the bar to my apartment. Alone in bed, which felt really alone because it was the only piece of furniture in my apartment, an island that I slept, ate and read on. But never fucked on, because I never brought anyone over. Not ever. I'd come home at two in the morning and check to see if the answering machine light was flashing. Most times it wasn't. When I did have a message, it was usually some guy trying to hook up. Every once in a while it would be Papi calling from the Bronx, his voice wistful as he asked, "Mari? Donde estas?" I always waited a day to call him back and when he asked me when I was coming home, I'd have to tell him "I can't," the way I had ever since I'd left the Bronx to go to Penn. Even though I was laying low, I carried my overnight bag around with me, because I knew eventually some guy would do something to catch my attention and I wouldn't be home again for a night or even a week. What did I keep in my bag? Five pairs of Brazilian thongs. A toothbrush and Tom's of Maine toothpaste, the only kind I like. Astroglide lube, because it sounds like something George Jetson would use. Condoms, all kinds, ribbed, colored, even extra-large, because for some reason I seem to hook up with guys who have extra-large dicks. It's a good thing I was always prepared, because when the next time came it was sudden, as usual. And I've never been one of those women who say, "It'll be okay just this one time." As it turns out, this fuck was kind of a charity case. Dan was a guy I'd known for a year, a blonde Jewish kid with dreadlocks who loved hip hop and wanted to be a producer like Rick Rubin, but was working as a busboy in the meantime. He and I both liked oddball shit, like watching "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" and really bad Charleton Heston movies. That's why we always buddied around together. But I never thought of him as a potential lay because he was in love, truly in love, with a girl who went to Howard University. He would do things like travel to Washington D.C. just to give her a rose before heading back to Philly to start his shift. And no matter what people might say about 66

Bendicion me, I never touch another woman's man. The thing that threw Dan and me in bed together, the only thing that could have done it, was when his girlfriend dumped him for the anti-Dan, a chocolate god with an MBA and a BMW. I showed up at work and saw him crying into the dishtrays and sneaking drinks from the bar. By the time our shift was over Dan was blasted, and I took him home in a cab to make sure he'd be okay. I tried to put him to bed and go home, but then he grabbed me by the waist and put his nose between my breasts, so that I could feel his tears wetting my skin. That's when I undid his pants and took his dick into my mouth as though I were cradling a baby in my arms. Dan cried the whole time, and when he came it was with huge sobs that shook him so hard he almost fell to the floor. The next morning he was a lot better. We sat around in bed eating corn chips and yelling, "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!" We never fticked again. But I'm glad we did that one time because it actually made Dan and me closer. He'd say hello to me at work by throwing his arms around me and kissing me on the forehead. And when he saw me hooking up with other guys, he'd pull me aside and tell me to "Chill out, Mari," in a soft worried voice. Not too long after, Gabriel called and asked me to meet him for lunch. I never knew when Gabriel was going to call and it always felt as if he were dropping out of the sky, as though I were living alone inAlaska and listening for the supply plane but never knowing when it would come. I met him at Les Trois Canards, a bistro a long way away from cheese dogs at McGregor's and which I could never have afforded on my own. But Gabriel always treated me when we went out, and it made me feel so good that one time I stole his credit card receipt and carried it around in my wallet. Since I worked the 4-to-l 1 shift and I usually never woke up before 1 or 2, lunch for me really meant breakfast. I was still hungover from drinking the night before and feeling like a line I once read in a Kurt Vonnegut book about "burning cat fur." But then Gabriel came in and it was as if a cool wind had blown over me. I watched him glide towards our table and I wondered again how a man could be 6 foot 4 but move as if he were a bit of dandelion fluff drifting on the air. Gabriel insisted on ordering lunch for me, the way he did ever since the time I pronounced creme fraiche as "fraysh." He also ordered two glasses of merlot and told me that he hardly ever drank wine anymore, because now that he was interning at Fidelity everyone would think he was queer if he didn't drink scotch or martinis instead. "What trouble are you getting into now?" Gabriel asked. So I told him about how Frank bent me over on the carpet and screwed me from behind so that the next day I had rugburns on my face. "Your tribal warpaint," Gabriel laughed, and traced stripes lightly across my cheeks with his fingertips. Next I told him about Mike, how smart he was but also the way he drank 67

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so much that you could smell it on his skin and even his bedsheets. Gabriel laughed again and said, "Of course you'd manage to find a second-rate Dylan Thomas." I laughed too, because I may not know how to order in a French restaurant but I know every way that famous writers have died. But he stopped laughing when I got to Dan. Gabriel knew him, knew that we were friends, and didn't like it. "All the girls say he's pretty fly for a white guy," Gabriel said, so sarcastically that it drained all of the fun out of the joke. It made me happy though, because I knew he was angry and I almost never managed to push him that far no matter how hard I tried. "He's very fly for a white guy or any other guy for that matter. Anyway, it's none of your goddamned business." "Why so vulgar?" "I'm the girl who says creme fraysh." "Exactly. And hanging around with D.J. Jazzy Jew isn't going to help." "Gabriel," I whispered in a sing-song voice. He looked up at me, then down at the table. "I fucked him." "Mari." "I fucked him." "Mari." Gabriel reached across the table and rested his hand on mine, so lightly that it felt as if he'd draped my hand with a silk scarf instead. I sat there for a second, letting his warmth soak into my skin. But when I looked up, I think Gabriel saw more in my eyes than he wanted to. He took back.his hand and I shivered, even though I tried hard not to because I didn't want to give him any more reasons to pull away from me. After Gabriel paid the check he hugged me goodbye. But it was so quick that it made me think of the time when I was a kid and I tried to grab the air on a foggy day and cried when I came up empty handed. I stood in front of the restaurant and watched Gabriel walk away until he disappeared around the corner because I knew it would be a long time before I saw him again. I went straight home from work that night and stripped off my clothes and took the hottest shower I could stand, so that afterwards my skin looked roasted and my face was so dry that it hurt when I frowned. I stood naked in front of the mirror and slowly looked myself over. I know my good points pretty well and I know how to play them up too, when I'm in the right mood and not feeling like telling the whole world to go fuck itself. Since I worked nights my skin was really pale and more than one person told me that I had the complexion of a china doll. I'd gotten thin after leaving school, so my hip bones poked out and formed a perfect triangle with the crease at the top of my thighs. And even though my tits were small I really liked them and so did the guys I fucked. Most women are self-conscious about their boobs but what they don't understand is that guys are so happy to see a woman with her shirt off that the only thing they're thinking at that moment is "titties." The one big flaw I had was the scar on my belly, from the time I was 9years-old and my appendix burst and my parents didn't figure out how bad it 68

Bendicion was until it was almost too late. Plus I was operated on at Lincoln Hospital, the worst place in the Bronx, I wouldn't be surprised if they used a butter knife. The scar was a pink 8-inch ridge that snaked from my lower right belly and curved up to the left so that it pointed to my heart. It freaked out a lot of guys. They'd suck in their breath and say "How the hell did that happen?" and try not to touch it when they fucked me. Gabriel was different. When he saw the scar he traced it softly with his tongue, then kissed me on both cheeks and said, "Scars make a beautiful woman more beautiful." And when I remembered that, part of me wanted to smash my wrists against the mirror and smear the blood on the walls. Instead I started rubbing my head, which I do pretty often since I buzz my hair. I did it for the first time just after Gabriel and I broke up, when I was in my dorm room alone and feeling hollowed out from the inside. I bought the shears at a pet store and I can still remember thinking about the silly poodles at the Westminster Dog Show as I plugged it in and turned it on. My hair was so long that the ends brushed the top of my ass and Gabriel would mess it up on purpose because, he said, "I like it when you look like a backup singer for Heart." When I pushed the shears against my scalp it hurt, but that was good because it got the feel of Gabriel's fingers off my skin. After I was done, the hair that was left stood straight up like porcupine quills and I could see my pale scalp shining underneath. The next day at work I could feel something building up inside me, the way it does every so often, so that when I brought customers to their tables I slammed their menus down and smiled to myself when I saw them jump. I was giving the waiters shit too, overseating some of their stations and underseating others until finally Rich threatened to send me home. Rich threatened to do this almost every day and I usually ignored him because I knew there was no one else who could take my shift. Bjut this time I almost told him to fuck off, which made me feel a little afraid of myself because as shitty as the job was, I really needed it. Instead, I took a smoke break behind the hotel. It was July and hot, and I could smell $20 room service sandwiches rotting in the dumpsters. I don't smoke every day, but when I get into these moods I can eat my way through a whole pack in one night. It always has to be Marlboros, because if you're going to kill yourself you might as well do it the cowboy way. I love the feel of hot smoke burning into my lungs, so I took really big drags and held them in as long as I could, until finally I had to cough out huge billows of smoke. When my shift was over, a bunch of us went to this club called Trash. It was a real dive, with the walls painted black and the floors sticky from all the spilled drinks. There was always a live band and if you couldn't count on the music being good, you knew it would be loud. It was the kind of place where there were usually at least two people in the bathroom at the same time, either taking drugs or fucking. I stood in the middle of the room and looked around and I felt strange, as 69

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if I were at the end of a long tunnel very far away from everyone who was there. I thought about the last time I felt that way. It was my first day at Penn, after I'd said goodbye to Mami and Papi and Abuela, to my older sister Neti and her daughter Jasmine, and watched them drive away in the old station wagon. As I turned away it was as if a rope had snapped, the rope that bound me to them,,the Bronx, streets filled with glass, salsa blaring from the windows, crowded kitchens with babies crying and pots of rice steaming up the windows. I turned away from all that and stepped onto the dark path, alone. They couldn't follow me, and I couldn't go back. That first night at Penn I went to a freshman reception at Hill House. The students stood chatting in small groups, boys in khakis and blazers, girls in cotton pastel dresses. A lot of them knew each other, had grown up together at schools like Spence, Choate and Dalton. And I stood there alone in my black dress with the ruffle down the front, a dress that I'd worn to parties and weddings at home but was just wrong here, so that I felt like Anita in some fucking dinner theater production of West Side Story. I stood there with one hand on my hip, clutching a glass of punch as if it were a bottle of Old English, daring them to stare at me. But what happened was a lot worse. I can't even say that they snubbed me. Instead, they treated me like furniture, something only worth noticing so that you can avoid tripping over it. "Your dress matches your eyes," Gabriel said. He had walked up beside me so quietly I hadn't noticed, and when he spoke I jumped and the punch spilled over the side of the glass, leaving a long red trail on my hand. He was dressed like the rest of them, even had a goddamn crest on his blazer, but the look on his face was completely different, weary and hungry at the same time. "It's the wrong dress," I told him, as if someone else had put it on me and dropped me into the middle of the room. After I said that I felt like an ass and I waited for Gabriel to laugh. Instead he said, "Your dress is perfect. You should wear that dress forever." And as I remembered that day, I spotted Ron. He was sitting on a couch talking to, Dan, his legs spread wide open as if his dick was too big for him to sit any other way. Usually that annoys the hell out of me, but that night it made me want to jump him, or jump into him, like diving into a lake in the dark. I sat down on the couch and Dan introduced us. It turned out Ron was one of his acts, a white rapper who wanted to be like Eminem but who seemed more like Vanilla Ice to me. I tried flirting with him by making a few jokes, but it felt as if I were trying to shoot baskets and lobbing the ball over the backboard instead. That's when I decided to cut to the chase. I looked him in the eye and said, "Wanna fuck?" He stared at me for a'second and I couldn't tell if he was shocked or just couldn't hear me over the music. But then he got it, and I think it must have been the culmination of all his homeboy dreams because he started grinning and saying, "Do /wanna fuck?" over and

over. I almost got up and walked out but things had gotten to the point of no return, so I led him over to the bathroom instead. The bathroom light was red and the walls were covered in graffiti saying things like "Mark and Amy 4 Ever," and "Janey Benson is a dyke," and even "Bird Lives," which seemed way too sophisticated for that dump. I kept reading it and trying to figure out who wrote it as Ron bent me over the sink and hiked up my skirt. As he jammed into me from behind, my hands gripped the cold porcelain and I was glad I couldn't see his face. I started to cry, which happens to me sometimes when I'm fucking, so I turned on the water to cover the sound. I thought about my first time with Gabriel, how I cried and the way he pulled out of me and drank the tears from cheeks. And that memory burned me the way the cigarette smoke burned my lungs, so my tears dried up and I started throwing myself back onto Ron's dick, our thighs making a huge slapping sound like some kind of crazy applause. The next day I was really sore and every time I sat down it felt as if a little fireworks show were going on between my legs. But it was okay because that feeling filled my mind so that I didn't have to think about anything except how the elastic of my panties was chafing the inside of my thighs Next Saturday I went back to Trash and Ron and I did the whole thing again, only this time we didn't bother talking at all. It went on this way for four weeks and I would have been happy to have it go on forever. But then one night I showed up at the club and Ron wasn't there and I realized that he'd dumped me, if that's the right word for ending what was going on between us. And I stood there feeling shaky and scared, not because I missed that dumb fuck but because now 1 didn't have any way to erase myself. Of course I didn't have to worry. There are plenty of dumb fucks in the world and it only took me a few days to find the next one. There isn't a lot to say about him or any of the others. We fucked in bathrooms and bedrooms, cars and vans. One guy lived at home and we fucked on the rec room couch, just like in high school. I gave another guy a bfowjob in the space next to the freezer at work, with him pumping in and out of me so hard he almost poked a hole in the roof of my mouth. I'd go home every few days because, I told myself, I needed to wash my clothes and to open the mail. But the real reason was so I could check the answering machine. I never called for my messages, couldn't stand to do that when I was with the latest fuck. I had to see for myself if the red light was blinking. But when I pushed the door open, the machine was always dead and dark. And I knew I couldn't make the call I wanted to make, because if I did he would make me feel like a dinner guest who'd overstayed her welcome. A little piece of me started dying with each fuck, like I was developing gangrene in my soul. And it scared me when I realized I was forgetting some of their names. Either that or I never knew their names to begin with. It all came to an end with Bob. He was the beverage manager at the hotel 71

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and was cute in a bland, frat boy kind of way. Bob liked to tell a story about the time he peed in a beer bottle, stuck it in the fridge, then watched while a friend grabbed it and drank it. I never paid him too much attention. Not until a bunch of us went out drinking one night and Bob started feeling me up under the table. As he massaged a circle along the inside of my thighs I felt as if I'd left my body, like a bird flying up into a tree, watching what was going on below. I watched myself open my legs wider so Bob could slip a finger up to my crotch. I watched myself smile at him and breathe into his ear. And none of it made any sense to me. It was like those times when I'd read a word over and over again and the meaning would drop out of it so that it was nothing but a string of letters with no connection to each other or anything else in the world. Bob brought me back to his apartment, keeping the light off while we undressed and started fucking on the floor. As my eyes got used to the dark, I looked up at the ceiling and saw panties, all kinds, satin briefs, Fredrick's of Hollywood thongs, even cotton granny panties, hanging together from the light bulb. And I realized that this son of a bitch had stolen those panties from the girls he'd fucked and hung them up like a hunter mounting a deer's head on the wall. I thought about those girls, how maybe they were in love with Bob, were excited and nervous about going to his apartment. How they wrapped their arms and legs around his body and clung to him as if he were a piece of driftwood they'd found while floundering in a dark, open sea. And how they felt when they looked up and saw those panties dangling overhead. I reached out with one hand and started groping along the floor for my panties but Bob had already snagged them. And that's when I came back into my body, came crashing back into myself. While Bob pumped in and out of me, I reached around with my left foot and tapped him in the balls with my heel. It wasn't as hard as I would've liked, but it was hard enough to make him yelp and roll over onto the carpet. I grabbed my panties out of his left hand, then yanked the rest of the panties down from the ceiling. When I left he was still huddled on the floor, shaking and clutching his groin. I walked the 20 blocks to my apartment, an icy wind blowing me past the dark, shuttered rowhouses. When I opened my door, the first thing I saw was the red light flickering on my answering machine. I didn't listen to the message right away because first I had to find a place to put the panties. The closet wasn't right, or the dresser, or the hamper. And I knew I couldn't just toss them in the garbage. In the end, I-took the panties out of my bag and tucked them underneath my pillow. That's where I rested my head as I reached out and pressed the play button on the answering machine. I heard Gabriel invite me to lunch, his cool voice drifting through my dark bedroom. I called him, holding the phone to my ear with both hands. 72

Bendicion "Hello?" he answered, in the same groggy way he did when I woke him for his early classes. "I fucked twelve men this year," I said, or tried to say. But my throat closed up at the end and I sobbed into the phone. After Gabriel and I broke up I swore I would never let him hear me cry again, and I almost put my palm over the receiver to cover up the sound. But I couldn't do it anymore. Instead, I sobbed into the phone until twin pools,of spit and tears soaked into my pillow. When I quieted down I could hear Gabriel breathing into the phone and rustling his sheets. Finally he said, "It's your year of the dozen," half joking and half annoyed. When I heard that I thought of a game I played with my sister, where we held hands and spun around in a circle as fast as we could until finally I let go. I'd crash to the ground and lay there, close to vomiting, watching the room whirl around me. I think maybe "Gabriel felt what was happening, because after a few seconds he whispered, "I want to see you." "Bendici6n," I answered. It was how I used to say goodbye to my mother and grandmother, asking for their blessing before venturing out into the world. But I didn't wait to hear what Gabriel said, just hung up the phone like putting a baby to bed. I came home every night after that, and every night I'd open the door and see the light blinking on the answering machine. As the messages piled up the light pulsed faster and faster, until after a week it was flickering like a movie marquee. I'd hit the play button and listen to all the ways Gabriel would ask me to see me, bored, tender, sarcastic, seductive. 1 saved the messages, then lay in bed with the point of a pen jammed into my belly to stop myself from calling him. As one part of my skin went numb I'd shift the pen to another spot so that the aching pain was seamless, like a blanket I wrapped around my body to protect myself from the cold. The last message was the shortest one. "Mari," Gabriel said, his voice weary and hungry like that first night at Penn. I listened to it over and over again, shifting the pen on my belly each time, until it was 6 a.m. and the gray December light began seeping into the room. I got up to look in the mirror and saw my stomach pitted like the skin of an orange, with my scar slicing through the middle. I walked over to the bed, pulled the panties from under the pillow and spread them across the sheets. Some were stiff with sex, others were as pristine as a girl's first communion dress. I took each pair and slid it across my belly, as if silk and cotton could erase what I had done to myself. I gathered the panties into my arms, carried them downstairs and buried them in the backyard, digging into the cold dirt with my bare fingers, folding each pair into a neat triangle before putting it to rest. Afterwards I climbed into bed and crossed my hands across my chest, not caring about the clots of soil that fell on the sheets. I slept. 73

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e have Joe running down a street, though we're not sure why. It's a crowded street in a nondescript big city, skyscrapers and alleyways. Daytime, people carrying groceries in brown bags and children in crooked arms. We take a vote, 3-2, we decide that Joe is running because somebody is chasing him. Mack suggests it be a punk, he says he doesn't like punks, how he can see them chasing people down a street. We all disagree with him, but we owe him from last week, so we let Mack make it a punk, a stereotypical punk—green mohawk, buttons and patches all over a black leather jacket, tight pants, big boots, a chain belt, a lesbian girlfriend. We ask him about the lesbian girlfriend. He reminds us of what we did to him last week, we all think back, feel bad, and let him have his way, let the punk chasing Joe down the street have a lesbian girlfriend. After Mack has had his way, we take a break and head out to the candy machines. "I wonder if the three musketeers actually liked chocolate," Robert says. "Did you know Coca-Cola used to have cocaine in it?" Mack says, talking to nobody in particular, getting no response. "Anybody have thirty-five cents?" Vic asks. Again, we are silent. Connor stares at the soda machine, doing nothing, saying nothing. "What about who he passes?" Mack asks. This time we don't ignore him. We all look at each other suspiciously, thinking Mack is going to want another nonsensical thing, maybe a pet ferret sticking out of a pocket of the punk's leather jacket, maybe because punks have pet ferrets, maybe because Mack can see them carrying their ferrets around in their pockets while chasing people down the street. "How so?" 1 ask him. "Well, who are Joe and the punk passing while they run down the street?" "I take it you have an idea," Robert says. "They come upon a dildo shop with a large neon sign saying DILDOS. There's a guy out front holding a bucket of shredded cabbage. He has a monkey on a leash. As they pass by, the monkey trips up Joe and he knocks over the bucket of cabbage." 74

We get back to work and have a discussion about the purpose of dialogue; we remind ourselves, yet again, that it should have a point, that it shouldn't be a means of conveying an empty idea. We all agree that trite one-liners from flat characters are just plain juvenile. .Robert lets us know that he still feels dialogue itself is deceptive. Vic says that the one dialogue-free story we've written is enough. We vow never to use dialogue tags like he enthusiastically interjected or she said, her voice sounding like the ocean'. We decide that dialogue should advance plot, begin conflicts, reveal character traits. It should not be the author's toy so he can scratch off a couple of notes he's scribbled down on a paper towel, under the heading "crap to throw into a story." It should not be his sad and unsuccessful attempt at cleverness. Then we discuss what should happen during the chase, if they should be heading somewhere, if something should slow down either Joe or the punk. We all try to ignore Mack's monkey-cabbage-dildo shop idea, but he won't let us. Then we realize that we don't know the result of the chase, we don't know if Joe will be caught or somehow outrun the punk. We don't know what is going to come of Joe's incident. We surmise that it's a minor detail, considering how we don't even know why Joe is running down the street, why he's being chased in the first place. After some pretty dirty bickering, we come up with this: "And then the dude shat his pants!" They all laugh, so I join in, chuckle loudly, slap my left knee. Then I take a step back, realizing that I don t know these people, and I probably shouldn 't be laughing at the end of their private joke. But it s too late—the one with the green mohawk has noticed me. His eyes shrink to an angry squint, and I decide it's about time I get away. As we run down Fourth, he starts yelling "hey" at me. I get confused, not knowing whether he wants me to stop—though I wouldn t stop if he did want me to—or he's really impressed with my running speed; it's a very vague "hey. " I have been doing leg squats between customers at work ' recently, so I think I'm a bit faster on my feet now. I make the turn at Hollis and get bowled over by I won't bother you with any more. I assume you don't like stories without a point, so I won't force any more on you. Readers definitely don't like being forced to read things they don't want to; that we have learned many times. After that, it goes on about the guy with the cabbage and the monkey hanging out in front of a dildo shop. Nice descriptions about how the cabbage was a swirl of red and green, how the sunlight made the monkey's face look almost human, how the bucket had a broken handle and had to be held by the bottom, so on and so on. All because we were feisty one night and laced Mack's coffee. But it was worth it. Around lunchtime, after getting a bit more work done, we spot a 75

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prospective reader in the cafeteria. She's sitting in the corner, alone, busy sizing up the tray of food before her. She wears a brown and beige plaid skirt, black combat boots, a black tanktop, and is capped with spiky maroon hair. We all look at each other, thinking how if she were a lesbian she'd be the perfect girlfriend of our fictional punk. Vic has a copy of our work so far, so I grab it from him and approach her. "Hi, excuse me, do you work here?" I ask. I want to ease into it. "Yeah, up on seventeen," she says, looking up from her tray. "You?" It takes me a second to realize this is a question; it sounded more like an accusation to me. "My colleagues and I work in B3." She looks confused. "It's subbasement three, three stories below ground level. The sewage pipes are inches below us, part of the concrete floor. Every time somebody, anywhere in this building, flushes a toilet, our floor rumbles." I get the passing thought that the rumbling floor has to be out there on somebody's paper towel. "I didn't know that existed. Now what do you want with me?" She has the curtness that I'm sure a girlfriend of a punk would have. "We're working on a story, and I was wondering if you'd read it, tell us what you think. You should like it." "Fine. But I've got to get back to work now." "If you want, you can swing by after you get off," I suggest. "We're there a lot." "Fjne with me. Now, can you go?" I find her curtness almost sexy. After eating our cafeteria lunch, we get back to our little room and hold a vague discussion, completely unrelated to our current piece. We talk about cliches, of how cliches aren't really that bad if used appropriately, if used on purpose. In moderation, we decide, they can spice up a story. Used too often, they can cause seizures. We talk of characters, we discuss how it would be interesting to have characters who know they are in a story, who know that their existence is limited to paper. Mack points out that we are all characters in at least one person's story. We all agree. We also agree that it's a cheesy thing to say. A cliche\ too. We take another break after our vague and useless discussion, then we work a bit more on refining what happens with Joe, the punk, and the guy with a monkey on a leash and a bucket of cabbage. We take votes on what word to use and at what time, votes on sentence structure, votes on the future of the story, 4-1, 3-2, 5-0, 3-2, more votes than I can count. What we have now, as final as we'll get on it: / make the turn at Hollis and get bowled over by a guy standing on the 76

Characters sidewalk. I feel something wet and slimy on the back of my neck as I stand up. I reach back and pull some cabbage off. Already confused, I notice that a monkey is tugging at my pant leg. I look around—a bucket lies on the sidewalk, more cabbage spilled around it, the monkey is at my feet, an old guy grunts from the ground, a handwritten sign reading "12 Inch AutoLube ... only $49.991" hangs in the window. I look up and see a large neon sign; it tells me that I have just crashed into a man and his monkey, spilled his bucket of cabbage in front of a dildo shop. This is all we've done; we've spent five hours and this is it. We've worked five goddamn hours and came up with a paragraph that it just took me thirty seconds to read. It's never a surprise, but it's always irritating. "This is shit," I say to Vic and Robert. Just then, the punkish girl opens the door. "This is amazing," she says. "I'm sorry I was mean to you earlier. I really don't like strangers approaching me. But this truly is brilliant. Do you have any more?" Now this is the kind of conflict I like, a kind of conflict free of cabbage and monkeys and dildo shops. A conflict about fiction, in—as Mack says— somewhere else, somebody else's story. I have had a part in writing a story and have suddenly realized that I hate it so far. Now somebody else has said they love it so far. And I'm the one who asked her. "Amazing," she says. "Brilliant," she says. "Shit," I say. A horrible idea, a trivial plot, a pathetic attempt at cleverness, I say. I think of what it would be like if this person we ? ve met were a character in our story. I consider this newfound punkish girl as the lesbian girlfriend of our green-haired, Joe-chasing, ferret-wielding punk. I wonder if I could transport her there, make her aware that she's in the story she's read,-we've wrh\ ten. I think that maybe she'd consider me shallow and judgmental for assuming, based on her looks, that she'd date a punk. And maybe she really is a lesbian, a real lesbian, not the kind of lesbian that Mack envisions, the kind that has a boyfriend. — I consider what things would be like if we, the six of us in this tiny room, were indeed a story ourselves. I wonder what the author would think about us, if he would like us or not, if he would love us or despise us. I wonder if he would in fact be a he, perhaps a she, perhaps even a punk with a mohawk. I wonder if the author would give us a good conflict to deal with. I wonder if we'd be surrounded by irony, sarcasm, witty sayings, cliches used appropriately and on purpose. I wonder if we'd be thrown into a situation without an explanation as to how we got there. I wonder if that situation would be believable. I wonder what the readers would think of our story, of the conflict somebody else gave us, of the dialogue somebody else wrote for us, of the 77

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themes we are unaware of. I wonder if the reader would hold against us problems that are the author's fault. I think of Mack saying how we are all characters in somebody else's story. I think it's an -awkward phrasing of a graceful concept. We all have been in the background of somebody else's photograph, pass*ing on the street of a tourist city, a newlywed couple honeymooning there, taking pictures of each other in front of a famous building. Everybody has a picture that they show to others and say, "Look at that guy behind Maria. What's his deal? I mean, look at him." We wonder about the anonymous faces in the backgrounds of our pictures, people wonder about our anonymous faces in their pictures. I remember a photograph I saw once: a bearded man, camera to eye, taking a picture of a small house, unaware that his own picture was being taken. I think that, if stories are pictures, that it would be a story about a story, the inner believing it is alone, the outer fully aware of both itself and the inner. I think of another picture, one I have yet to see, of the same bearded man, pointing his camera back at the photographer: two pictures conscious of each other. "Hello?" the punkish girl says; she's talking to me. "So, do you have any more of this story?" "Nope," I say. "That's it."

T H E

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yner MacVee awakens to the sound of sirens. There seem to be a hundred of them crying out like geese in flight - more sirens than are registered to his small town of St. Chapelle, including fire, police and medical vehicles, more sirens than there are on the whole of Cape Litton Island, more sirens than any man should hear in the morning at 7:00 when the springtime air is cool and damp, and morning glories lie dormant against wooden fence posts. The next thing Byner hears are his dogs. They howl back from their pen in the yard like volunteer firemen signaling they are ready for duty; ready but not prepared, as if one evercan be prepared to be ripped out of sleep by such things. The dogs Byner quiets briefly with bowls of leftover beef, water, and a few quick pats to the head. There is Casey, his four year old yellow lab, and Casey's mother, Miss Bliss, who belonged to Byner's father before he passed away. Byner's own mother died ten years earlier and never had known Miss Bliss, who runs like wild fire, despite her age, through the meadow in back of Byner's house and barn, and who still gives Casey admonishing little nips whenever he steals her food or chases after Byner's pant leg as he is passing by. Casey, Byner had planned on taking into his life, never Miss Bliss. But that is what you do when someone's gone and there is nobody else nearby, like a brother or a sister. Still in his Iong-johns, Byner steps away from the dogs and scans the sky for smoke. There are blue and gray patches of clouds as far as the eye can see, but no smoke, no smell of burning diesel or wood shingle - no crash out on the highway, no house-up in flames. Byner trains his ears and listens carefully to the pause between one siren's blare and another's for the sound of a ship's horn, or the mournful wail of the lighthouse foggers. He follows the length of each as it blends into the next, and pictures the sound in layers like paint upon a canvas, accident upon accident, loss upon loss. He imagines the sirens as streaks of yellow and red blazing across the sky, intercepting each other in-long colorful twists and spirals. As the Litton County Coroner, serving per designation of the state all of St. Chapelle and Cape Litton Island, Byner MacVee knows what lives before 79

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and after a siren's blare: the gasp for air, the fall to one's knees, and then the months or years of mourning left to those who remain. He suspects this will be different, however, perhaps there are two or three people involved; because a heart attack never has generated this much of a ruckus, even the lost crew of a capsized boat has not ever created such a stir. No, this is something big, something without flames and smoke - perhaps a suicide, or the Heaneys' sad marriage taking a final fateful turn. It must be horrible because there is absolutely nothing different about this morning, except that everything is different. Byner notices there is not a bird in the sky. From his stance in the yard, Byner can hear the fateful ringing of his telephone. He looks at the newly thawed ground before him, at mud-caked boots thrown hastily over bare feet, and tries to guess who it is, what might have happened. Though he knows he should run inside to answer it, instead Byner lingers, granting himself precious more peace and privacy than will be his once he picks up the receiver. After only a few half-hearted bites, Casey and Miss Bliss ignore their food. Without knowing why themselves, as if imploring of him to return their hunger, the dogs dance from their bowls to Byner and back again, whining and pawing at the ground, barking quickly and guiltily, running and turning and shaking themselves, until Byner unlocks the door to the pen and sets them free. In an instant, the dogs bound through the yard and Byner, not one prone to loud noises or harsh words, has to heave the impulse up and out of his chest like an anchor hoisted from deep within the sea in order to shout loudly enough for them to mind him. Miss Bliss immediately comes to attention, but Casey continues barreling across the yard toward the edge of the meadow that leads to the rocky bluff overlooking the bay. "Casey! Come!" Byner's voice, low but fierce, startles Casey into obedience. They are just dogs, but Byner feels himself tense as he looks into their faces. Casey is doing all he can to control himself and stay put. Miss Bliss is looking back at Byner, her brown eyes wide and full, as if with tears, as if in sorrow. She looks so forlorn and lost in anguish, that Byner has to turn his face from hers. He rests a hand upon her head and says, "Missy," as if to rouse her from this well of despair. Abruptly, like the jolting end of a nightmare, both the sirens and the telephone cease their disruptive cries, and Byner is afforded the illusion that his gesture has worked. All will be well with the world. He tells himself the power must have shorted down at the fire house, maybe the chief of police's troubled son messed with the patrol car again and everyone got involved to teach the boy a lesson. The phone call was friendly, just to let Byner know. Byner allows himself a sigh of relief and the image of a day without death. Perhaps he will walk the dogs out by the harbor or begin the season's planting. There are two boards to replace on the back door landing, the screens to down and the storms to up. The dogs eye him intently. Byner waits another 80

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moment in the heartening silence before releasing them from his command and heading back to the house. Byner's house, all weathered wood and shingles, with low beamed ceilings and wide pine floors, rooms just large enough for a twin-sized bed and a small bureau, is a fisherman's house, meant to be temporary, ancillary, not home for the last fifteen years to a grown man with a medical degree. The plan had been for Byner to move back into his family's house upon his father's death - a house so large and open it sometimes was mistaken for Chute's General Store or the rectory of the Our Lady of the Harbor Church, each just a few more steps down the road. But when the day arrived, even as the funeral party was disbanding, Byner tried to imagine himself living there again, with parishioners crossing his yard every Sunday morning and on holidays, and tourists all the time poking their noses in to ask directions. He remembered hiding as a child, in his room or out past the fence that edged their property, and decided to board up the house instead. "It's an eyesore," Mrs. Tusckot came right out and told him one day at the funeral parlor where he was delivering a body for embalming, a task Byner sometimes shared with Mrs. Tusckot to help fill the often empty hours of life without death. Byner simply lowered his eyes to the ground. "Really, Byner. Why don't you open it up and move back in?" The body Byner had been examining was that of Paluca Raymaker, a local woman who had taught Byner to sew stitches years ago when he just was starting medical school. He was saddened by the loss, but even more disconcerted by the expression that had described Paluca's eighty-three year old face as he drew back the sheet and took in for the very last time, her long silver hair and the smooth threadlike wrinkles of her face and brow: seductive. It had made Byner, close to forty years her junior, blush despite the coldness of her skin and the rigidity of her body. "Tsk, tsk," Mrs. Tusckot clucked in the direction of Paluca Raymaker's body. "Why anyone would want to live cramped inside of a cottage when they could spread out nice in a house like your father's is beyond me." "Maybe one of these days," Byner said to Mrs. Tusckot, wishing at that moment that it was Paluca Raymaker who stood so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her breath brushing his neck, and not Mrs. Arnold Tusckot. Such are the thoughts Byner is prone to; some people would be better off dead than others. It's as simple as that. / The sirens start again and a sudden chill travels down the length of Byner's spine. Casey and Miss Bliss wrestle with the urge to run. Byner is about to herd in the dogs, about to pen them up until he can get dressed, for criminey's sake, and find out what all of this is about, when he hears the first of a week's, a month's, a lifetime's worth of wails. It is the mournful cry of a woman and it stops Byner cold. The dogs perk their ears. There is one scream and then another, until it is as if the entire sea around them is crying and moaning. 81

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father's. As a child Byner imagined his waiting room, the female receptionist with the blue-gray hair who would schedule his appointments. He imagined taking his bagged lunch out to a park or a meadow and eating silently, chewing slowly and methodically as he pondered the day's cases. He imagined going home to a quiet and secluded place, not unlike the fisherman's house, and making tea and supper. Afterward, there would be medical journals, a novel, and then bed. He pictured dogs, a barn. But what Byner never saw, despite their considerable relevance to this work, were his hands. "If your hands aren't in it, then your soul's not in it." That was the first seed of doubt Paluca Raymaker had planted in Byner's mind, the first time it ever had occurred to him that he had a choice in the matter of his future. Byner went home that day, and on the edge of his bed with the curtains drawn, removed the image of himself as a doctor from the back of his mind and tried to imagine his hands. His man-hands. His doctor-hands. But he couldn't. From that moment on, Byner made a point of dropping in on Paluca Raymaker and her baby granddaughter, August, each time he bicycled passed their house, so he could ask Paluca more about hands and choice, and how one might imagine other pictures of the future. But Paluca's perspicacity was elusive, "Oh, you got it all laid out for you, Byner. Don't go messing with a nice, fat future like the one you got laid out."

Byner, still in his long-johns, bounds with the dogs across the meadow, up the shallow hillock overlooking Heron's Bay, and casting his sight like a fisherman's line, works his vision west from Ellie's Cove, beyond the lighthouse, all the way east to the shore where he sees it for the first time. Standing there in his underwear with the dogs barking beside him, Byner tries to take in with his eyes what his mind cannot believe. Shimmering in the deep blue green of the bay are the scattered pieces of an airplane, and floating all around it, as far as the eye can see, bodies - bodies and pieces of bodies. On the edge of Cameron's Bluff overlooking the water, Byner MacVee tries to envision straight lines, a plane soaring from the sky, A, into the ocean, B. He tries to picture his hands peeling off clothing, cradling the bloated fragments of stranger after stranger. He takes a deep breath. He can smell the slightest hint of diesel from the rescue vehicles, smoked birch from the Madison's wood stove. Above him bare trees tower like a theatrical backdrop, motionless and silent. Branches do not sway in the breeze. Chipmunks and squirrels do not rustle through the grass and fallen leaves. It is as if the entire world grows stiller and stiller as inside Byner a storm begins to unfold. Byner hears a voice call to his dogs and then his own name, shouted out in plaintive desperation. "Byner!" "Dr. MacVee!"

It's a fifteen minute drive to the Cape Litton Community Building, a rickety wooden structure large enough to house all of the town offices as well as the Island Museum. An ancient widow's walk sits atop the building like a top hat. Byner walks down the empty corridors of the Cape Litton Community Building into the office of the County Medical Commissioner, John Hoight. "Byner, sit down." John Hoight, is a stockier man than Byner, an immigrant from the mainland not prone to shock or dismay. He has come for peace, after all, and contentment, with his two small boys, and a beautiful wife - both of them painters in the spare time they believed would become plentiful once they bought Mr. Garrigle's enormous house on the bluff. They renewed the garden, tamed the lawn, and took to painting countless pictures of their new landscape. The pictures are displayed now along the meandering walls of the Cape Litton Community Building, above the Commissioner's desk and around the corner where his receptionist would be sitting if she were not at home fielding an onslaught of phone calls, dispatching men with boats, women with binoculars, and old people with bibles to the crash site. The paintings are of ordinary images, brush pine and granite jetties, Chute's General Store.

As a boy, when there was no more room, when there were too many people and not enough air left to breathe, Byner would go to his bedroom or inside the closet in the second of his family's two guest rooms. He'd squat his pale, thin frame like a nomad at rest, go without food or drink, crouched in retreat, drawing pictures for hours on end until there was silence; until the only sound in his parents' house was the repetitive drone of his sleeping father's breath, the hum of the electric clock in the kitchen, the steady beat of the leaking faucet in the tub down the hall. Only then would Byner emerge to pad past his parents' bedroom and tip-toe down the stairs. In the kitchen, he'd spread jam on slices of bread, pour himself a glass of milk, then put himself to bed. "He's gonna grow up to be a monk," the ladies at church thought they were reassuring Byner's mother - a monk being a much better fate than a hermit or a madman. "No, he just doesn't like company. He's shy around strangers. He's going to be a doctor, just like his daddy." A doctor. Byner had had this image of himself for as long as he could remember, white coat, stethoscope, a pen always at hand. He held the picture in his mind like a familiar, inescapable photograph, calling it forth from time to time to examine in the privacy of his room. He would imagine the lines on his face, the part in his hair. Perhaps there would be some streaks of gray, glasses. His pants, he assumed, would be starched linen or wool like his

But now John Hoight the artist is trembling. Beads of perspiration cover his forehead so completely that Byner wonders how one might paint such a thing, maybe by sprinkling water onto wet paint, or by carefully dribbling tiny dollops of shellack onto the image of a face. Byner notes, John's skin is the color of sea foam. 83

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"Byner, we're getting you help. Staff. Plus the countries involved, it was a big plane you know, international flight, they'll want to send their own. You understand. But you'll be in charge. You can direct them anyway you want. But we have to get started soon, the families will want to know as soon as possible." Outside the sirens are accompanied by the unfamiliar whir of helicopters. "Know what?" Byner cannot imagine what more there is to know about a disaster such as this. "They'll want to know how their loved ones..." John clears his throat, evidence of the ludicrousness of the statement. "They'll want the bodies identified. But you'll have plenty of help. A big staff. Just like in the city." Byner listens as John Hoight makes the first of what will be hundreds of phone calls to the media and a seemingly endless number of government officials, speaking into the phone and to Byner simultaneously. "The Whitney's barn will be used as a temporary morgue. It's close enough to the site so that the bodies and their belongings can be brought in quickly day and night by the Navy and volunteer fishermen. Our coroner," John says nodding in Byner's direction. "Byner MacVee, will be the chief of human recovery operations. He will lead an international group of pathologists in the gruesome task of identifying the bodies." Byner turns his face to the window. The gray clouds have given way to a magnificent blue sky. The song sparrows have returned. Each morning, before the sun has risen higher than the top of the Cape Litton Lighthouse, Byner MacVee takes a bag containing his green surgical pants and white lab coat, and makes his way on foot down Cameron's Bluff, passed the service station, and on to the Whitney's barn. The walk once peaceful and serene, with nothing but bayberry bushes and fox sparrows, now resembles what Byner imagines Los Angeles, California to look like: roads littered with cameramen and satellite dishes, news vans, studio lights, and scattered limousines. Byner leaves his house before sunrise to avoid being accosted by reporters and anchormen. He purposefully dresses in the barn behind a stack of body tagging supplies, like those used to mark deer and moose, so as not to be identified in public as the County Coroner, the Chief of Human Recovery. He takes to walking to work with his head hung low and his shoulders hunched, a solitary man on a lonely predawn stroll, a native not to be disturbed. In the vast emptiness of the Whitney's barn, bodies lie in bags on steel tables, and remains waiting to be identified are stored in special refrigerators shipped in from a teaching hospital on the mainland. Remains brought in during the night lie on ice, like cod or haddock. There is a section cordoned off for the passengers* rescued belongings: ruined wallets, passports, the blurred pages of a diary. Byner makes coffee from a percolator donated by Mrs. Tusckot and looks at the inventory from the night before. 84

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A set of dentures, recovered by Captain Stuart of the fishing vessel Kerry Doren, @21:00 hours, March 22, 1999. A human arm and leg, both recovered by Captain Goff of the fishing vesselLarabee's Wake, @01:30 hours, March 23, 1999. On the far wall near to the coffee pot is a chart much like a time card listing the name of each pathologist, the hours he or she has worked and the passengers he or she has been able to identify. Just as John .Hoight planned, simply because the plane crashed in his jurisdiction, Byner is in charge. Therefore, in addition to his work as coroner, he is also now an administrator, manager, and bookkeeper for the crash. Another twenty miles south and he would be home working on a drawing or walking the dogs. "Dr. MacVee," the French Medical Examiner, Paul Rozin, usually arrives just moments after Byner. "Good morning." "Good morning." Byner is tortured by the obvious irony in the phrase, like a bad joke he has been sentenced to repeat over and over again each day to rid him of the impulse ever to say it again. "I hear your fishermen are getting angry," Dr. Rozin attempts each morning to make conversation with Byner. "Apparently, your Navy is going to enforce an extensive exclusion zone around the crash site." Byner nods. "Perhaps they will reduce it so as not to impact the men's livelihood." "Perhaps," Byner says without looking up from the table at which he has begun to work. "There is a stench from the water." Byner thinks Dr. Rozin talks to keep himself from running out the door. "It is just horrible." It's true, Heron's Bay now gives off the pungent aroma of fuel and decay. Byner smelled it last night as he slept. The wind off the water lifted it up through his open window, so strong it woke him from a sound sleep. Byner got out of bed to close the window and then, unable to fall back to sleep, decided to get dressed and drive out to Paluca's place where he left a cord of firewood for August who - young son in tow - had moved into the old house upon her grandmother's death. On his way back up the bluff, Byner drove past his parents' house. In preparation for a deluge of family members and press, town officials, early on, had asked Byner if he would open up his father's house so that guests could stay if need be. Byner relegated the task of prying plywood off the windows, turning on the heat, and sweeping out the dust and cobwebs, to Pete Larabee's seventeen year old son, Kevin. Still, it surprised Byner to see the lights on and the silhouette of a man pacing back and forth across the empty living room. Now, amidst Dr. Rozin and the other pathologists, the constant influx of emergency and military personnel, Byner remembers his own sleepless vigil, sitting with his mother who lie dying on a rented hospital bed in that same living room - his father asleep, the nurse long since sent home. Byner, alone, 85

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had accompanied his mother through the night. He turned out the lights, placed his chair beside her bed, and spent the hours she slept looking out the window or sketching in the dim light cast by the moon. During the hours of her painful waking, Byner held her hand and showed her the drawings he had done. "They're beautiful, Byner," his mother managed to say once or twice in a strained whisper. Soon afterward she would slip again into unconsciousness, resembling to Byner the lifeless bodies with which he had become so familiar. Only when he was certain his mother could not hear him had Byner dared to say, "I don't want to be a doctor." His mother's face a pale yearning from pain, revealed nothing. He checked her pulse, lay a cool hand upon her forehead, and waited for her to wake. "Dr. MacVee, it looks like they've found passengers in a piece of the cabin." A young Medical Examiner from a neighboring state, donating a week of his time to the cause, shouts this news to Byner from across the barn. "They should have it up by tonight or early tomorrow if the tide permits." Byner extracts himself from his mother's bedside and orders space made for the new arrivals. In the evening, on his way home, Byner avoids the one road that leads from the barn back into town and instead follows a bicycle trail overgrown with branches of brush pine, and swept with sand. This time of year there is no threat of a cyclist come racing through, maybe just some locals looking for bayberries or a place to make a fire. Byner carries his clothes in a plastic grocery bag which he uses to brush aside the branches that fall like a canopy across the dormant trail. He retires to a cup of coffee and the sound of the dogs lapping their dinner from a can, his ears trained for the sound of August Raymaker's car. She has come the last few evenings and left food upon his doorstep: lasagna or roast beef, brownies sprinkled with colored sugar, last evening a pizza from .the parlor in the center of town. She neither knocks nor raps on the window, but simply leaves Martin in the car as she hurries to leave the gift at Byner's door. The dogs have since ceased barking at her as she pulls in the drive. Once the sound of August's car fades into the distance, Byner opens the front door wide enough to receive the parcel. But the next evening, Byner is too astonished to wait. Instead of listening for the arrival of August's car, he takes the dogs and heads down the path behind the cottage, along the bluff and away from the crash site. In the dwindling light, with the sound of the surf filling his ears, far enough so that he can smell ocean salt and pine, Byner revels in the day's miracle. The miracle was not the delivery of three bodies impossibly intact: father, mother, daughter. Nor was it the lawyer who insisted Byner perform autopsies on each of them. 86

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"I'll tell you how they died," Byner told him. "They were killed in a plane crash." "Perhaps one had had a heart attack before impact," the lawyer said. "Mdybe one already had a dreadful disease." Byner, desperate to preserve the dignity and integrity of this family won the battle by shouting to his entire staff, to whomever stood shaken and weeping in the barn, "There will be no autopsy performed on this family!" Nor was it the woman waiting outside the barn, without an umbrella, all afternoon in the rain, or John Hoight's endless press conferences, or the microphones pushed into Byner's face as he left through the back door to go home in the middle of the day and let the dogs have a run. It began when the rain-soaked woman rushed after Byner, explaining as she ran that her sister's family was still missing. Had he any information about an American man and woman in their thirties, a young daughter? Byner stopped in his tracks to look at the woman. She stood so close to him he could see that her eyes were light brown, the color of wet sand, so close he could smell on her skin sleepless nights in a donated guest room. Byner ignored the men and women with television cameras and microphones who hovered nearby, ready to capture the moment, and told the woman that he had seen them. "You have?" "They're all fine," Byner said to her, thinking of the expressions preserved on their faces: serene, peaceful, resigned. The woman's eyes widened and her own expression lifted. She repeated Byner's words as if gently waking herself from a nightmare. "They're fine." Byner can recall the intensity of the woman's relief as something so vast and deep as to be tangible, something he had been able to taste and to feel like a woolen blanket covering him on a cold winter's day. "When can I see them?" she asked him, one foot in front of the other as if ready to bolt right then and there. "I'm not supposed to allow family into the morgue. But you'll definitely be able to take them home for a burial." Immediately, it was as if the woman's face, like those of her lost loved ones, fell from the sky and landed with a crash into the ocean below. Only this time Byner heard the sonic boom, smelled the smoke and flames, saw for himself the split second in which time stood still. And then he saw the woman falling, and his own outstretched hands reaching up to catch her. Despite his best intentions, she slipped through them, bit by bit, like countless drops of rain. "I'm sorry," Byner said. Byner follows atrail that edges the ocean. How could he not have known? How could he have been so blind as to not have seen the amount of faith possible in one human soul? How could he not have known of hope large enough to reverse tragedy, great enough to grab a man out of darkness and, 87

M Berkeley

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The Rain

Maker

Berkeley

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Review

The Rain

without plan or purpose, thrust him into light? "They're gone," he told the woman, though he knew that he himself had been saved. With Casey up front and Miss Bliss pulling up the rear, Byner revels in the stunning, startling image of his hands. He recalls the smooth tapered end of each finger tip, how the folds of one knuckle led inevitably, purposefully to another. He marvels at the flexible base of each finger, the arched lines of his palms. In his mind, he turns his hands over and sees his fingernails and the slight half-moons at their base, his long fingers like slender stalks rising through the winter earth. By now the real moon is itself a sliver. A cold night has settled, the rains having exhausted whatever warmth earlier was in the air. Byner thinks this must be what it is like to be inside of a cloud - a bitter, moist embrace. rHe leans his body against a tree and looks at the ocean, all dark blue and gray except where the lights of the rescue operation - The Navy Trawler, the Coast Guard Salvage Ship with its radar and night crew - casts a sickly orange glow. In the last few days, rescue workers have disembarked their boats crying as they clutched a waterlogged teddy bear, a sneaker, a camera. Counselors have set up shop in the gymnasium of the Heron's Bay elementary school to lend support to the fishermen and hotel staff and volunteers who have been traumatized by the transformation of their bay, once peaceful and providing, into something monstrous and unrecognizable, littered endlessly with remains and jet fuel. A memorial is planned for the next evening, a candle-light vigil with a gospel choir from the mainland. The French Ambassador and the Vice President of the United States are both scheduled to appear. Even John Hoight has taken Byner aside from time to time to ask him how he is doing or to offer relief in the form of a joke or a pat on the back.

Maker

"Byner!" "Hurry, Mommy!" Martin calls from the car. Byner looks from August to the pieces of chicken and glass at his feet, upwards to the sky, and back to August again who is bending now to pick up what is salvageable from the mess. "You scared me," she says. "I'm sorry." The words remind Byner of the rain-soaked woman at the barn, of the miscommunication and then his hands, helpless but free. "1 saw my hands today," he tells August as if she is Paluca, as if she might remember. "Mommy, hurry up!" "In a second, Marty." August stands to face Byner. "Your hands?" â&#x20AC;˘ "They were in the sky, trying to catch a falling woman." "And did you?" August asks, uncertainly. "No." They are standing face to face when the car door opens and closes and the sound of footsteps, light and quick, fill the quiet. Martin peers at Byner from behind August's legs. "Mama, cartoons are going to be on in five minutes." "I'm sorry about the mess, Byner. I promised Martin he could watch cartoons." Byner sees August now, too, falling through the clouds like rain. He closes his eyes to relish the next image - that of his hands outstretched to catch her, to guide her, in celebration. "Byner?" Byner opens his eyes and smiles. "I'll clean it up." "Thank you. And thank you for the wood. Grandma's stove eats logs just like this boy eats candy." August gives Martin's hand a squeeze. "I've been watching you from the window." Byner smiles. "It must be horrible for you down there at the barn, I've never known how you could do what you do, Byner. Handling dead bodies and all that. Though I guess you don't ever have to worry about hurting someone," August chuckles sadly. They stand nervously for a moment and then Byner opens the door to his house. "There's a television set in the closet," he says. "Why don't I get it out." It is not an invitation but an expectation, as if there is no other option, as if their entry into his home and everything else that happens in this life is obvious, inevitable, whether you see it at first or not, even misdirection and people falling from the sky like rain.

But for Byner, leaning against a tree in the dark, there is peace. He knows he will not attend the service. He knows he will not return tomorrow or ever to the Whitney's barn. Though the image of his hands did not come with an answer as to the direction his life must take, they were there nonetheless, for the first time ever, and he will honor their arrival. He will have faith. Byner calls the dogs and leads them back to the house. August should have come and gone by now. At the door there should be a tray still warm from her oven. He puts the dogs in the pen and makes his way down the front path, a dusty and crackling mosaic of bits of shell and granite. But the stoop is empty. Byner stands confused for a moment until he hears the sound of a car heading down the drive. The headlights announce their arrival. ForPaluca's sake, in honor of the vision of his hands that she had alerted him to so many years before, Byner stops himself from running inside the house, and instead remains standing, a statue frozen upon the stoop. August leaves the motor running as she hurries from the car toward the front door. She is about to lay down the tray when the unexpected presence of Byner startles her so, that it slips from her hands and shatters on the ground. 88

89 m .

Berkeley

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The Rain

Maker

89 m .

Mohawk Second

Place

Sudden

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Trail

father if I was the next Yastremski and my father told him that I was a chip off the old block. We played catch in the backyard sometimes before things got too bad. Pop flies were my favorite. My father threw the ball so high that sometimes I waited forever to snag it. When he wasn't around I practiced on the dented roof of the barn. Then my father shook me and said It's time to go now. Hesaid3oy.

Winner

In the bright glare of the dying day my father's face was red and his nose was red and his eyes were red around dime-size black buttons. His flesh was also deep pocked like some rotten old rind or a too-used pincushion. He walked sidesaddle like he was going to fall down. Then he put his hand on my back and I felt the whole weight of him. We climbed into the Willy's and he stuck his head out and got sick on the door. Then he put the steering column shifter in neutral and hit the clutch and turned the key and a sputter and a'rumble under the heavy hood became a hum. Route 2 toward Charlemont was jammed from Perry's Pass to Whitcomb's Summit. We drove behind, what my father called the stall-and-crawl leaf peepers. They came from the city to look at the fall colors through fast-clicking and instamatic eyes that could only record postcard-size glimpses of reality. He had no patience for strangers. He punched the horn and used foul language. He said God damn. He said Get the lead out. He pounded the dashboard with his fist that was a rock. And in his unchanneled fury he got reckless and he put us into a ditch. It happened so fast but I saw it in slow motion. Tires screeched and nothing and metal crunched and glass broke. Then my head hit the windshield that became a spider web and I tried not to cry. I tried not to. The radiator hissed hot and busted. My father stopped the fast bleeding and carried me. I smelled the laundry detergent on his flannel jacket and the sweat and the gasoline and they were comforting and familiar. I could smell the other thing on him too, but I didn't care. He scrambled us up the embankment duck footed for traction and walked in the narrow breakdown lane against the current of oncoming traffic. Ghosty faces peered from passing cars and my father followed the painted stripe painstakingly and stuck his jaw out. Now we were part of the show. I told him I was sorry. He told me to keep awake. He let loose inside tears that didn't show but I felt them tremble his chest. I breathed deep: Pin Cherry and Tamarack and Mountain Ash. He said he would really quit it this time now that he could see how all the repercussions played out. It didn't matter to me at that point. But I wanted to keep^ believing him. I was tired and I closed my eyes. Each stretch of the Hoosic River, each bend in the road, each pond, each meadowâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;each brought the possibility of something new. My father said again You got to keep awake. Then we were in town and on the lawn of the bank was a Northern Red Oak with barely a leaf missing. Rich ruby and orange and a warm fudge brown. It was perfect. Tomorrow it would be different and the leaves would lie in thick mats around its trunk. But today it was holding on.

T R A I L

Jon Boilard

he burning red of early swamp maples and then a singular stand of white birches and then a picket fence snaking along a hillside. Then my father parked the truck and I breathed deep. The name of the place was Joey Mitch's Horizons. There was a band there that afternoon but I don't remember what they played. It was loud. Everybody was dancing and having a good time already. It was Saturday. I was on a stool at the bar that squeaked whenever I turned around to look at the drums and the people. There were three grown men with the hardscrabble beginnings of their winter beards playing pool. They looked up one by one and called my father Buddy. My father knew the bartender too. Then they were drinking shots of Jim Beam. My father ordered a glass of Michelob. And another. The bartender's name was Fitzsimmons and they used to work the pits at Hinsdale together. My father told him about the 1967 Mustang convertible he picked up in Bernardston. He called it a cherry. He told him you could eat off the engine. He talked about the Windsor heads and the TRW pistons and the rebuilt V8 302. He said It runs like a top. His hands were thick and nimble and dark-grooved with axle grease. There was a window. It was autumn and the hills were blushing gold and copper and a pale purple but the gray threat of winter was lurking in the form of a cold snap and outside my bedroom that morning bare sugar maple branches had been mad and dancing skeletons beckoning me. Then Fitz gave me marshmellow-topped hot chocolate because I could see my breath even indoors even with the fireplace with a fresh log just tossed in and crackling. Paper-thin black flakes floated like broken promises when a pretty girl poked it with a black iron stick. Fitz told me to go easy on the hot toddy and he laughed. He said something else funny to my father and he looked at me and winked. I liked him. A hunter in a Double D's cap called his name at the other end of the bar and he went away. My father touched my arm and said Just a little while more. He called me Sport. He stayed looking at me when I faced the long mirror behind the rows of bottles. There were pretzels in a salad bowl. Fitz came back and asked my

90 i

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T R A I L

Jon Boilard

90 i

Q U E E N

N E F E R T I T I

Andrea Rudy

ust yesterday she sat on the dock with her feet in the water, her skirt hiked to her knees, mumbling all muddled-like to the skittish fish, reaching for them with her toes. I was trying to get by, slip my new kayak into the water and paddle off before she noticed. But at the last minute she turned around and lucidly asked me for her sewing basket, like she hadn't been talking crazy to the fish, like she knew I was there the whole time, waiting until I thought I was in the clear. She sat on the dock and said, "I'm going to stitch the waves of this sea right into a blanket for you. Would you like that Benny? They'll ride up your bed and wash over you in the night." Drown you, is what she meant. Drown you when your father's safe in the city during the week and you're stuck out here with me. Now I fish for the milk buried in the fridge and hope she doesn't call down the stairs. I'm pretty sure she's aiming to weave some spell, to make all those mad shadows of hers spill onto the ground in front of my feet, so I can't leave. I better get out the door quickly, so I forget the milk and grab a couple pieces of raisin bread instead. This morning before she wakes up, I take the kayak to work across the lake. Maybe tonight I'll hang out in town with some of the guys or paddle over to Ashley Cooper's until the old lady's passed out. No boats have been out on the water yet this morning and each stroke is like a sharp blade cutting through glass. It looks damn cool, those little swirling eddies swinging behind me. I can just make out the marina on the other side of Sajiwaki and it's looking pretty quiet this morning. Definitely the best part of my job there is diving down to retrieve sunken keys and sunglasses, jewelry and wallets for stupid tourists. The greater their loss the bigger my tip and I've learned I can increase this gratitude by spending at least twenty minutes going through the algae and rocks before surfacing, making them worry just long enough to pay me what I'm worth. Harry finally sold me his old dive equipment at a decent price and I get all the retrieval business now. 93

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Andrea Rudy

Berkeley

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This afternoon a local man drops his car keys in the water after getting out of his boat. He rushes panicked into the shopj he's on his way to his sister's wedding. Old Harry gets me from out back where I'm unpacking boxes and I gear up to go down. If I find his keys quickly he'll be ready to give me the boat. The arm of his tux is soaked to the elbow. I know his sister. Poor bastard. He's in for it. I deflate the be vest and spin down into the lake water and an easy silence closes in on my ears. It's a relief from all the racket of people, music and cars revving, but there's something to the occasional muffled hum of motorboats at that depth. It's like I know they're out there, but they can't touch me down here. I keep my eyes open for the snapping turtle that lives below the docks. He's damn nasty and likes to come up from behind. I think I see those mad eyes peering over an old tire. It's going to get it if I lose an inch of my fin. I feel my belt to make sure the dive knife's still there. I hear a clanging and it's probably Harry banging away on his metal pot, just below the surface of the water. I know he wants me to come up, but I stay down another five minutes until I find the man's keys. They aren't too tough to spot shining beside a rusty soda can. When I surface I find Harry on the dock, leaning back on his haunches. I pull the regulator from my mouth and ask what's up. "Hey Ben, I won't mince words. Your mother's in the bar. I think you'd better take her home." I pull myself up the ladder and steady the weight of the tanks on my back. The edge of the dock is slippery with slime. Why do I have to deal with that? My stomach starts to slip and Harry reaches out to help me get the gear off. Damn. All I can do is give him the man's keys and he grins back. "This one'll be happy," he says. I stand there and after a moment he adds, "You want me to go in with you?" "No." I hate him. I hate everyone. I feel flabby, covered in spots. All eyes are on me, my greatest failure obvious through the welts on my face and the bulges in my clothes and I wish the gravel road would open up and suck me down. I slip my sandals on and a rock gets lodged between my toes as I walk across the gravel road. I can't shake it out. There aren't many people inside Eddie's Bar, a small relief because there she is in a trashy miniskirt showing off sunspots and wrinkles, stretch marks and cellulite. She leans against the pool table casually rubbing the cue with one hand and rolling a ball across the felt with her other, showing off painted acrylic nails. Sexual indiscretions: symptom. She sees 'me and turns quickly to conceal her face. She picks up the chalk, marks the cue tip and nods to Patty for another drink. Suddenly she spins around and says, "Michel, pourquoi Stes-vous ici?" I see she's hiding the hand with the eight ball behind her back. Her hair slips from the red banana clip she likes to wear when she's feeling this way. 94

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I'm in shit. Dad'll kill me. I didn't check her medication. "It's Ben, your son," I say. Like she cares. She looks at me unbelieving. Patty brings a glass of water over and vouches for my identity. My mother gives her the same look. "You don't speak French," I tell her. "And you don't know anyone named Michel." "What makes you say that?" she asks. How will I get her out? I could slip her a tranquilizer, knock her on the head, tempt her with liquor or money. The supplier son at work, no better than the mother. "I'm taking the car home. Give me the keys," I say to her. "You're too young to drive," she says as she hands them over. Her head's cocked to one side. I know how to tempt her. "I'm going to Toronto." She straightens up. "I'd better go with you. 1 need to stop off for a few things first," she says. I don't speak to her on the drive home. She's never been this bad before, not when I've been around. How much of a tip did I get for the sunken car keys? Enough to buy a pack of cigarettes? How am I going to get my kayak and dive gear back? I'll get Ashley to bring them by when she's done work and maybe I'll check out the action on Gibbons tonight. Back at the house the yard's quiet despite the water skiers on the lake. The humidity's high and it sends Mom to her air-conditioned room. Everything's the same as the day before. I check her medication and see she hasn't taken it since Dad left, which I guess is no surprise, but even so. I'm not her baby-sitter. I take her a glass of ice tea and her pills and I don't leave until I see her swallow them. I slipped in a sedative. Ashley's working in town at the ice cream shop, so I give her a call there. "Yeah, sure I'll drop the stuff off to you. You owe me one," she says. "That's fine, baby, whatever you want. I'll do what I got to do to make it up to you." She laughs and I say good-bye. When we moved up here, the first thing I noticed about Ashley was her hair. It's bright red and she wears it like Anni-Frid from Abba. She tells me all the time that the hippie look is passe" and European chic is in. To be honest I don't care; I just like the way she kisses after a couple gin and tonics. Sometimes she sucks the air from my lungs and gives me a head rush. I know she kisses others, but that doesn't bother me much. I 'm waiting in the driveway when she pulls in, ready to take my kayak out of the backseat. She drives a sweet, tight convertible Rabbit, but from this angle she blends with the image of my mother in our car on the way home, preening in the passenger's mirror, all loose and falling out. I turn away. Ashley likes her fancy clothes and sunglasses and hairspray. 95

Berkeley

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Queen

Nefertiti

Berkeley

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Review

"You going to Gibbons Island tonight?" she asks. "Yeah, thanks for bringing my boat. How you getting out there?" "Jane's taking her father's motor boat so I'll probably go with her, unless I get a better offer. I'll see how the day goes." Jane's a slut, but then they all are up here. Ashley too, but she's the only girl I know who's been to France. She lived in Dijon for a year on a student exchange and when she gets drinking she starts to talk in a French accent and goes on about the Parisians. Some of the other girls make fun of her, the ones who speak French themselves, but I know it's jealousy, and her put-on talk is just plain sexy. She's something. The island's in the west section of the lake, which is horseshoe shaped, and our place is on the east hook where most of the permanent homes are located. The small marina is at the base of the lake and the west leg, where Gibbons Island is situated, there's only thick brush with a couple seasonal cottages. The island's long and narrow and has been up for sale in the real estate office for years. Dad actually looked at it before buying our house, but it wasn't practical, he decided. We'd have to invest in snowmobiles for the winter and motor boats in the summer, and find a safe place to park the car on the other side - j u s t too much. And anyway, weren't we up here to make life easier on mom, not harder? It's a handy place to get loaded and stoned in the summer, but only deadbeats go there in winter, with their knives and hash. These guys have accidents, frigid death plunges, snowmobiles going through the ice or getting stuck in snow banks and the drunken drivers falling off and passing out. The old guys going out ice fishing usually find the frozen bodies. It's free from all that humiliation in the summer. No one ever has a pot overdose, and most of us are smart enough to sleep it off, to go home in the morning when we won't capsize boats. Ashley drives off and my mother comes outside and goes to the garden to start her building. She's creating some sort of rockery with lake pebbles and what she calls wild flowers, but they look like plain weeds to me. She thinks she's some sort of landscaper. I make myself a chicken sandwich, take one of my father's beers and have it out on the dock, watching the neighbour girls paddle around the cove. Later, there's some movement towards the far side of the lake. It's a hot night and I bet there'll be some sort of trouble. I head out, and my kayak skims across the water with a forty of whiskey, Pepsi, vest, regulator, tank and towel in the hatch. They say there's a bottomless sink in the west leg, just above Gibbons Island. Like the Bermuda triangle, they say, men fishing are sucked down. Once, a diver never surfaced, and no one ever catches fish there. I've decided to check it out either tonight or in the morning before heading home. Depends on when the action is. There's a fire going to keep the bugs away and a few of the guys are 96

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sitting near it at the top of the island. I join them and listen to their tinny FM radio. Mark and Steve get into a contest to see who can chop one of the small trees into kindling. Steve is having trouble with his aim, so I move to the other side of the fire out of the way of flying chips. Laughter and hollering from a motor boat full of girls bangs across the water. Ashley's in the group. She may look like a slow mover, but she's on you before you know it. She takes her time dancing around the fire, exploring her options and tossing her hair, her bubbly voice rising above everyone else's. No one can touch her. I just want her for the night; to push into her, squeeze those freckled arms and legs. She moves like a fish in water, never really stopping, daring me to try and catch on. I know whatTI get her, she likes to think she has a challenge, although she can just suck her fingers and have any guy she wants. If I move away from the group she'll get curious and come find me, see what or who I'm up to. She likes the guys who walk away. Two canoes, a paddleboat and my kayak conceal the small beach below the grassy head. A couple girls are skinny-dipping and yell at me to join. They go under the water together, then surface, one at a time only farther apart. Their bodies work well with each other, experimenting how close they can get, and how far they want it to go. Farther out Mark Sanders and Kelly Kuzinko are tangled in each other's arms and hair. There's too much going on here. The music and fresh bodies are too much. I close my eyes and look again. Ashley isn't coming. I start unpacking the hatch. I look into the kayak to see if I remembered to pack the underwater torch, which is there, so I start to gear up. Ashley watches me from the rock where she sits like Queen Nefertiti herself, with black kohl pitching her round eyes forward. I don't want to give in to her all the time, but the damn Queens can sap a man of his power when they want to, although sometimes they get burned. She stands up with her snug white shorts and pale tee shirt showing off all the curves. She comes to get it, sure enough. "Where you going?" she asks. "I'm going to check out that sinkhole they're always talking about." "Are you crazy?" "Well I bet you there's some good finds down there, or maybe I'll just dispel a myth," I say. And then to suck her in, "It's going to be a real rush." "I want to go with you," she says. "You don't know how to dive." "You'll show me how," she says. "You got an octopus there. I know about those." She poses with one hand on her hip and the other brushing at her hair. She knows she'll get what she wants. Girls like that always do. In one of the canoes I find Kelly's mask and fins. "Okay, girly, here you go. Wear these." She sits down in the sand and put the fins on. I show her where to grip 97

Berkeley

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Queen

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Berkeley

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Queen

the octopus with her teeth. "Don't bite, just hold it between your teeth, yeah just like that." Even with a regulator in her mouth she looks sexy, like she's asking for it. She knows when to push it forward, not going over the top like others. She takes a couple puffs and her eyes get bigger. "Wow, can you get high off this air?" she asks. "We're just going down for fifteen minutes, about thirty feet. That's all we got air for. You'd better stay with me. We'll surface in stages, so only come up when I do." We wade out until the water reaches our shoulders and then we begin to paddle. Ashley swims close by my side and I can feel her wet hair on my arms. The warm lake pulls us out farther and when I think we're near the sinkhole, we stop. I turn the torch on and hold the second regulator out for her. She says something about breathing that I can't quite make out before fixing her lips around the rubber mouthpiece. I hold her hand tightly and we descend. At first there's nothing to see. I shine the light down and it shows a column of particles moving like an extension of my arm. Slowly the rocky bottom reaches up for us and we move along the sandy edge. The algae's tall and stiff, growing thicker in some spots and touching our legs when we glide by. The small rubber tube joins our lungs and we breathe together for the first time, her inhalations short and quick, mine slow and steady to balance it out. We disappear in the darkness behind the light. Night diving feels like a chase, trying to catch up to the action that always stays three feet in front. I think I see something red just ahead. It looks like fabric, waving through, the green. Could it be a sleeve? My arm stiffens, I look to Ashley, but I don't think she notices because she's looking directly down. I don't want to look again, but I do. I know nothing is real down here, because I'm sure I see a woman's eye staring out from under a mud blanket. Her fins hit my legs and she pushes away. She must have seen and now she'll panic. No, just looking at clamshells on the bottom, doesn't see. Hysteria's no good down here. She's making all this up, but that doesn't make me safe. She's got her hook in good. It crawls towards me along the bottom, gripping the weeds. Tangled hair of lost fishnet and steel-hook fingers, rusty. Round black lake pebbles fall from her mouth, slither, and clams slip down her arched back. Skin coated in sand. Old dirty sand covered in lake bottom sludge. Water thick and foul. I reach out to Ashley, her breathing is still quick and short but so is mine now. Wasting oxygen. Panic causes blood to bubble, but she's not freaking out, still, she's not going anywhere, her fingers run across the sand bottom, looking, searching for shells. The watery dirty woman moves forward and speaks, my mother's voice, as clear as on land.

Nefertiti

Don't you know my troubles with God? Why do you think they aren r yours, boy? Someone's pissing in the water. Hook fingers run across her face, four red trails left to float off her skin into dark water. Just for a second, a damn second, I take the light from her. For a second, just. Make her disappear myself, enough of the madness. Ashley touches my arm. Turn light back on, but it's gone, the body, eyes, hooks. Fall to sand and dusts the rocks and shells. And then she's gone and so is the chance to change what I mean, what I see. A sound is muffled and bubbles escape Ashley's regulator. I'm squeezing her arm too hard. She's going to bolt to the surface, she must have seen it now, I'll have to restrain her arms, keep her down here, ascend slowly, got to do it slowly. She's fighting against me, I hold harder, just to restrain, just to restrain, not to hurt, for her own safety, not to hurt. Ashley's scream is the first thing to break through the surface. My heart is still beating, it hasn't stopped. Her jaw's locked on the regulator and it snaps her backwards when she splashes through the black water frenzied. I have my own troubles. She spits it from her mouth. "You asshole! Are you trying to kill me?" She doesn't wait for an answer. Perhaps I held on a little too hard. She splashes-off. There's nothing real down there. She won't stop at herself, has to make me, Ashley, think that I'm crazy too. The tank on my back is too heavy. It would be easy to let it go, but I struggle through the water with it. I don't know how long it takes me to get back to shore, but Ashley's already by the fire with Sam Stevenson's arm around her shoulders and a drink in her hand. It's all movement and noise. That girl's going to take what she wants tonight. I can see it in her stiff back and sure sips and the way she steals light from the flames. Those charged black eyes of hers scorn me, but if it's not her fault, then it's not mine either. In the heat of the fire her white shorts dried tightly against her thighs and now even those she won't let me touch. The sand is gritty between my toes. I stumble up the beach, dump my gear in the hatch and push off. She casts me out. The skinny-dippers swim alongside my kayak for a while. Their skin is slick and hairless like a seal's and their rhythm moves me along, diving under the rudder and surfacing in front, staying out of the paddle's reach. Their legs make scissor cuts in the air and splash back. The movement relaxes. A voice tells me I'd get a better ride if I joined them in the water, better than what any redhead could give me on land. I move steadily forward and the pair eventually turn back to join the assholes on the beach.

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Nefertiti

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My mother was a stunning woman once. In old pictures I can see how long eyelashes and angular bones hid her madness well. She wore dresses that cinched her waist and flattered her bust. Is it sick of me to notice? To calm herself when the troubles started, she made blankets and pillows all the time, tablecloths too, crazy colours. Once back at the house in Toronto, she buried me in a stack of them. I laughed until I couldn't breath any more and then I screamed. She dug me out, set me in front of the television, gave me a bowl of ice cream and cried along with me, wouldn't stop and that kept me going.

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PaulLevine High pitched sounds start all around me when I reach the middle of the black lake. At first it seems like singing, a chorus of female voices rising and falling with each stroke of my paddle. The echoes bounce off the flat water and the distinct voices multiply. Soon I can distinguish the noise - it skims across the water and grows into screams, individual intonations from all sides of the lake, coming from the trees, the island, the cottages. I paddle harder to kill the voices with splashing water, but it makes no difference, they just come at me faster and higher. The sound closes in and the open space between the sky and lake shrinks. All I can do is move forward in the night and soon the rhythm of my strokes joins in. In time I reach the dock and as I come up alongside it, the belting refrain quiets, gives way and I can hear my mother warbling through her bedroom window. The bug lights are snapping. My father's car is in the driveway. The sensor lights at the side of the house are on. I reach out to grab the dock and touch water. Someone has been out for a late night swim. But it's only her playing tricks again, probably splashing her feet over the edge. And sure enough, I end up following watery footprints down the dock. I stumble up the path and find myself in the garden beside her rocks and weeds, where my feet go to work smashing. Where's the solid ground? I don't know what I'm doing here, my hands are buried in her earth looking for the roots and they just keep digging and won't stop. My Dad's in the house, I can hear him now and his calmness cools her down as always. I look at the mess I make and know I'll get it tomorrow. I sit down and see all the dirt on my feet. She might be able to rebuild after all this, but she'll have to start from scratch. She won't ask for any help. But there's a way to put it right, and maybe in the morning I'll get out here before she does.

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ead down, I enter the 'classroom, quick quiet. Late. Equidistant students, like game pieces at a large oval seminar table, watch the professor, hear the words Milton was blind to limitations... No one looks up at me. But instead at a piece of cheese in the teacher's mouth dogmatic, and turn to Keats now in a large, small-print anthology, but my mind is on my car, double parked in front of the rainy, sandy swept building on this next to last class. My damp raincoat, limp cloth slouching on the back of my chair, touches the floor a prefiguration, a harbinger religious authority he finishes the cheese cut in small yellow cubes on a paper dish. No one passes the cheese claimed by the professor, that unspoken claim, his spoils. Can't ask, can't raise my hand and say please pass the cheese to this end of the table, can't assert myself when Keats* letters are here and read can't utter I've come from work no lunch and I won't see my son tonight. On an empty stomach, a letter from Keats can't be digested. Black haired girl with seltzer 180 degrees from me. Open mouthed at the 101

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teacher's words, holding the bottle, agape, intent, wanting those drops of graduate education to quench her desire. Teacher's words, streamers flung as in a parade for heroes watched by educational hangers on as I think about how my wife puts him in his crib about how he is in his pajamas, blue ones with yellow design. I can't remember the design, but I remember the feel. Soft, head down on my shoulder at first, then up to check if I am still there. Those eyes probing all the new. She lifts it up sparkling water fizzling rattles dropped from a white crib Italian style arch shaped with sloppy oatmeal and bananas. Following the movement of the spoon in the baby food jar. He grabs it, holds on; I pry it loose 1818 precursor of discourse and it undermines authority an anarchy to it, the student says soiled diapers something anarchic the full professor says as he reaches for another piece of cheese. Twenty-six eyes probe the teacher's brilliance, watch the cube disappear did he chew? How does one become brilliant with MTV and Roseanne and the Cartoon Network? Or is it the oasis here at The College amongst seltzer, subways, sand, and cheese. I'm out of mints so I cough twice controlled, post pneumonia. Keats has many inheritors. I've lost the flow A sand storm in the desert of learning right outside. The construction has gone on for five years now, The new building never finished being built for future students in cribs to someday sit at oval tables with full professors eating cheese. He finishes chewing, nods, 102

Milton, Keats, and My Son listens, answers, two more people come in late so I'm not the latest I can smirk at their lateness at their lack of promptness at their rudeness to come in so late and drip water on the table I answer a question spurred on by not being the latest. Eyes turn to me. My mouth moves. Words come out miraculously strung together. My son might miss me tonight, might not even realize I am not there as he follows his mobile of Mickeys and Donalds around and around and not even know I am on fire now with Keats and Coleridge and Homer and sonnets. It breaks the rhythm. There's a certain flatness. I have given an incorrect answer. Not exactly incorrect, for it is not exactness but interpretation that counts. All of a sudden, my tired, hungry ideas roll off the ledge of the sixth floor and fall away in the wind. Silence now. I know that silence. He hasn't said exactly that, that it was exactly wrong, but has gone on to another student, leaving me to think about Huggies. A traveler reader, a juxtaposition, a way of thinking romantically, wayward, a white Toyota on a highway alone getting into the head of the poet of the timeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; it was politics, it was sex it was an attempt to fit the inner imagination it was fraught with TB and love affairs but I'm back with strained squash. You're collapsing two perspectives. Why don't I ever talk like that or ask for the cheese to be passed. but the teacher goes for the last piece, a small cube, yellow orange entering his mouth being chewed now masticating swallowing going down a brilliant 103

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throat and soon entering a brilliant stomach aabb abab Rhyme quatrains-so good to know tossed amongst the students and my son, probably asleep now dreaming of that mobile that magically goes around overhead dreaming of that image in the sky, and of that father who once was there.

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Holly Monacelli

pretend it doesn't bother me that she always wants to have sex from behind. I don't really know why I even care. Pretty much for me, it's enjoyable from any angle. But it seems so cold, so animalistic, so impersonal. I wonder if Luna's had other kinds of sex with other guys or if it's just me that makes her not want eye contact. Jeezus, I sound like a woman. So we finish and I pull out, resting my hand slightly on the curve of her ass before flipping over and lying next to her. "Gil?" she asks, leaning over to pet my eyebrow. Shit like this confuses me. You'll pet my eyebrow but you won't have sex the normal way? "Yeah?" I say, my voice hoarse. "Are you all right?" "Why?" "You seem... I don't know. You just seem different." She moves her hand away from my face and sets it next to her. I can smell the faded scent of her shampoo; vanilla and almonds. Luna is into all that smelly, girly stuff. She always smells good. "Can we go to Angelo's?" 1 ask. The line's usually long, especially on weekends, but something about their French toast drives me crazy. "Gil. Are you sure you're all right?" she asks, turning up on one elbow to face me. She has these eyes that are such a weird shade of green, like pea soup, but they're not dull like pea soup. They have this sheen and glitter to them and everytime I look into them, they look different. They always say the eyes are the window to the soul. Luna's soul must be constantly changing. "Yeah. I just need some food," I say, kissing her on the mouth, hoping she doesn't taste my morning breath as much as I do, and darting into the tiny bathroom. Taking a piss, I know suddenly and certainly that I will break up with Luna today. And the weirdest thing is, I feel like it's the other way around. Like I have no control over the situation. Like she's leaving me. So I feel bad for myself and jump in the shower.

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We finally get seated at a table because Luna doesn't like the counter stools. Maybe I'll sit at the stools with my next girlfriend. Maybe I'll do a lot of things. Luna brushes her hand distractedly over my thigh. "French toast, hon?" she asks, looking over my shoulder trying to find our waiter who'd come by with coffee-stained menus and thrown them down without a word. "Oatmeal?" I ask her, leaning over to pull a strand of her dirty blond hair away from her face. It's longer now and-thick and I love how if feels when I bury my face in it when we make love. When I met Luna her hair was spiky and more of a sunwashed blond. I knew I'd have to paint her. "Actually, eggs benedict." She says, looking at the menu. "I feel like eggs." For some childish reason I think she wants me to be surprised she's ordering eggs. And not only to be surprised, but to comment on the fact that she's ordering eggs, considering they make her think of the little chicken fetuses swimming around in the milky white. "So what are we doing today?" I ask. "Why do I have to think of everything?'11 She twists her hair into a small bun at the base of her neck. I don't understand how it stays with no clips or rubberbands. Our friendly waiter returns and we give our order quickly as if we don't say it fast enough, we'll never get our food. He slides two sets of silverware onto the table and sets down two black coffees with a thud. You don't even have to order coffee here; they just bring it. You have to tell them you don't want it. "Well, we are not going to any museums or doing anything else inside," I say. "Today's the first day it's been sunny in forever. Let's go over to the Arb." I love the Arb. It's like the one place in Ann Arbor where I feel at peace. Where I don't feel too old. Too mutton as lamb. Students, the undergrads, do go there, I guess, but you don't notice so much how young they are there. It's not how they are at the football games or in Scorekeepers, when I'm torn between wanting to be them-again and wanting to beat them up. How am I going to do this? I mean, it's not like I don't love her. In fact, it's almost because I love her. So I should just do it quickly, cleanly. Luna, I'm breaking up with.you. No. Too harsh, too scripted. I'm moving out? This isn't how I pictured the rest of my life, Luna. I got a painting scholarship to Florence. I have to take care of my mom in Sacremento. Shit. "Can we get some pepper?" Luna calls to the waiter's back. "Maybe you can paint today, Gil." Luna loves the way I paint. She used to pose for me. That was our thing on Sundays for awhile. We'd go somewhere scenic, or maybe not so scenic, and I'd set up my easel and create her. The first painting, though, was the best. "And I can finish my book. I cannot believe he's not going to choose Giovanni," she says, shaking her head. Luna's been reading Giovanni's Room 106

Blinded for nearly three weeks. It's killing me because I get the blow by blow although she knows I read it ten years ago in college. "He's gonna choose the girlfriend, isn't he? I mean, it's almost too predictable the way the woman wins out, when clearly he loves Giovanni just as much if not more. Baldwin's great, but it "You're not even eating those eggs, Lun." I watch her jabbing her fork into the yolks, creating tiny streams that spill around her toast. "Yes I am." "Then why are they still sitting on your plate?" "Why do you care? What is the matter with you today, Gil?" "Sorry. Jeezus, I'm sorry. Let's just get out of here." I take her hand across the table. She's wearing the ring I brought her back from Toronto last summer. Sketch #13: Luna's ring Charcoal lines on vanilla paper. Paper from a shoebox that once housed Luna's funky sandals. Close-up of just Luna's hand, small and filled with veins tunneling through pale skin, bursting with life. Sometimes, depending on the angle, her hands look like an old woman's. Not in the sketch. Dark lines, blurred, strong. The ring, meant to be the focus, is hard to make out. Simple. Grooved. A glimmer on her slim finger. The hand, its five digits beckon. The Arb is teeming with the colors of early spring. Trees that I'll never know the names burst with tiny bouquets of off-white flowers. The grass is just beyond that shade of unhealthy, the green just outshining winter's brown and yellow brittleness. A slim girl with tight biking shorts and a long-sleeve Michigan t-shirt runs by, concentrating on the music that I can clearly hear throbbing into her ears through small headphones. An older couple, probably professors, sit on a tattered wool blanket sharing a bottle of cheap wine. With his unruly beard and her huge sunglasses, they might be good to sketch. There's a few other couples out like us, and I scan their fingers trying to see who is'married. This is something I started about two years ago, fingerlooking. Actually, Luna got me into it; we'd be sitting in one of our hangouts like Mitch's or Pizza House and play Married or Single? The key was making sure we couldn't see if they wore rings right away. "Ok," Luna said, "the two in the back corner booth." "The young ones?" I replied, thinking this would be an easy one. "They're not that young," Luna said, rolling her green eyes. "They might just look young." "Definitely not married," I said, swilling the last of my Bud Light. "Ten bucks," she said, sticking her hand out for me to shake it. "That they're married? Ok. That's the easiest ten bucks I've ever made." I shook her hand and sat back in the booth. "So who asks?" The game always required proof. 107

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"I will," she volunteered, bringing her glass of Bell's Solsun for support. She returned a few minutes later and sat down. "Well?" I asked. Reaching into her rainbow crocheted bag, she pulled out a ten-dollar bill and slapped it on the table. "Ha!" I said, picking up the money and kissing it. "See, I told you. Too young." "They're separated," she said. "Then I didn't really win," I said, frowning. I looked at Luna, but she was looking down at the table and didn't look up. "Why the hell are they in a bar together?" "I don't know, Gil; I didn't ask." She glanced up. "I need another beer." "Why are you so upset, Luna? God, you act like you knew those two." "It kinda feels like I do," she said. Luna has this way of doing that. Making something ordinary seem so extraordinary. It's annoying. But I always find myself thinking about things like that days later, trying to find the meaning in it for myself, that it seems to have for Luna.

Blinded "Love it. Have you read it?" "Overrated." "Are you an English major?" "Art school. Graduate. You?" "M.B.A." "That's surprisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" "I hate it." She invited me to sit down then and we talked for about an hour. I drank a cafe" latte and she had two espressos. And a half pack of Marlboro Lights. I was in trouble. Remembering something I'd read somewhere, I wanted to leave first. When I stood up, she pushed a pack of matches at me. In dark ink were her phone number and Luna written in short block letters. I hadn't even seen her write it. "Hey," she said, standing up with'me. "You'd better be careful," she continued, gesturing at the matches. I called her the next afternoon.

Painting #8 Luna on Christmas morning An oil painting on canvas. Mostly neutral colors: bone, buttercream, ivory, beige. A billowing comforter surrounds Luna in its folds. Her body a small lump in the large bed. Spikes of platinum blonde peek out onto the pillow. Eyes closed, lashes full, cheeks flushed from last night's red wine.

Painting #18: Luna at desk Only sage. Watered down, so it's hard to tell if it's brown or green. Or even black. Luna s profile, smalt upturned nose, barely there chin. Hair small sporadic strokes to form the bun, high atop her hand. Strands falling, brushing her face. Glasses, never worn, fall down the tiny nose. She stares, tense. Serious. Forgets about the painting. Laptop, out of view, shows another Powerpoint presentation: For the Green: How to Market Profitable Environmental Change.

Lying in the grass, I close my eyes to the Arb's bright sunshine and Luna beside me. I have no suntan lotion on, and I like the way my face feels so hot. Luna uses 15 because of her fair skin. She always bums. That was actually what got me talking to her in the first place. Her sunburn. She was sitting at one of those small tables outside the cafe" in the Union. I think it was still called Fino then. Her face was bright red and the most interesting thing I'd seen in awhile. She was reading .4 Prayer for Owen Meany. "You better be careful," I said, approaching her without really thinking too much. If I did, I might have thought I was way out of my league. Or at least come up with a better line. "What?" she asked me, setting her book down. "Oh - your face, I meant. You better put on some sunblock. Looks a little red." "Yeah? Maybe 1 better just get home. I don't think I have anything - any sunblock with me." She looked at me with her green eyes. I had a hard time looking back. "Do you like it?" 1 asked. "Sunblock?" "No - oh sorry, your book. Do you like Owen Mean/?"

Today I feel her lying next to me. It's weird how sometimes we can be totally silent and it just feels right. And then other times, the silence is so tense. You're not even sure why, but you know it's just not the time to reach over and tickle each other or steal a baseball hat or use nicknames. There's this barrier of protection around each of you and it doesn't just keep the other person out. It keeps you in. I try to think about what I will do without Luna. Hang out with Tom and Frankie more. Shoot stick at the Eight Ball. Talk to my brother more often; maybe go down and visit him in Cleveland other than just Christmas time. Find a girl that keeps me guessing. Maybe a brunette, an artist, someone who appreciates my work. Someone who washes her hair everyday. An ordinary name. "Gil?" Her voice startles me. "Yeah?" "Why don't you get your paints from the car?" "Now?" "Why not?" she asks. "Hey, Luna?" I say, thinking this is the moment. "What Gil," she sighs her sigh, somewhere between annoyance and con-

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cern, kind of like she's addressing a child. "I don't know if - I don't think this is a good idea," I say, gesturing somewhere near my stomach to somewhere near hers. "God, Gil. If you don't want to paint, don't paint." Her eyes narrow and widen again. "You feel ok? You're really pale, hon," she says, leaning in to touch my forehead with the cool back of her hand. "I think you've got a fever." "It's just the sun. I just need to get out of the sun," I say. "Maybe I'll just paint in the shade." I try not to breathe because I know I'll smell the vanilla and almonds. Painting #4 Luna and Trish at the Cape Two girls. Best friends. Arms entwined, leaning forward, keeping each other balanced. Swirls of frothy white form an angry ocean. Girls'backs to water. Luna's shirt is red and white, tiny stripes. Her face tan, not burned. Trish 'sjet black hair wild, blows in the breeze. Trish s fingers a "v" peeking out unknowingly from Luna's corn-colored waves. Mouths wide with laughter. Tiny glimmer of Luna's tongue stud. I get my watercolors and paper pad from the backseat of the car. I like working with oil much better, but it's too much effort to collect all the tubes and then you have to worry about them melting and everything. Watercolors. Simple. The trees don't come out right. They're lifeless; my brush keeps doing things my mind doesn't envision. I try doing the grass and this one weed near Luna's feet. It's tiny with just a hint of purple on the top, more like its green stem changed colors than a separate flower. The colors bleed into one another and nothing is clear. My discarded attempts blow slightly in the breeze, the paint drying. I don't want to paint scenery. "Can I paint you, Luna?" I ask, shy for some reason. A glimpse of a slight smile. "Okay," she says. She leans back, her palms on the grass behind her, chin tilted up at the sun. "This all right?" "Perfect." The brush touches the paper in light strokes, colors spreading. I use hues of blue and green. Periwinkle, sky, deep teals, navy. Luna's hair glows. It's the only light color on the page. It takes me awhile to get the colors right. It always takes me awhile to make a painting I like. Most of my work, other people tell me, is very good. I feel, sometimes, like I see differently. A lot of this stuff just looks like everything else. But every now and then I do see it. I see the beauty that they see. Like the first time I painted Luna. Painting #7; Luna She's naked. Just made love; she sits on my bed, legs crossed, arms folded lightly over her breasts. Cheeks moist, eyes glowing. Wanted to capture her 110

Blinded like that. Because for the first time, I felt like I wasn't in a hurry for the woman to leave. Swirls of fiery colors, deep reds and shocking oranges, burning yellows. Oil clumpy and thick. Makes you want to touch it. Doesn 't look like Luna exactly, but everyone who sees it knows it s her. I captured her spirit, on the canvas. Hung it over the bed when we moved in together. I still look at it for inspiration. "Gil. I'm getting tired, hon," she calls now. "Are you almost done?" I add water and try to determine what isn't working for me. Something with her head being tilted back like that. I can't see her eyes. "It's getting there. You can move if you want. I'll remember the way you were." "I just need to shift." "That's ok, Lun. You can move." "Can I see it?" "When it's done." We drive back to our little apartment off of Main Street, my unfinished watercolor spread out on top of the back seat. It's,about the best of the worst. Off-term students with Birkenstocks and heavy backpacks cross in front of our car without looking. People flock to the tofu dog stand in front of the Red Hawk. Too many vegetarians in this town. At the stop sign, I see this kid just out my window with long hair and baggy shorts, kicking a hacky sack to his friend, a girl with a buzzed head and a piercing through the middle of her nose. The guy looks at me for a second and the light changes. Luna has her eyes closed and face tilted towards the open window. The breeze blows her hair, and I can tell by the way she breathes she's just resting. I pull into the driveway and park in the back, realizing I don't remember passing the One-Eyed Moose or the place I always get a cranberry muffin from, and the radio's playing sorfie song I don't recognize, the same station on since we left the Arb. Inside our apartment is hot; most places are too old to have air conditioning, and we actually haven't broken down and bought a wall unit yet. Maybe later this summer, when the humidity gets to be too much. Luna lies next to me on the bed. I hear her breathing regularly. Her stomach moves up and down, up and down. A steady pace. I lean over and run my fingertips along her belly, tugging lightly on the band of her underwear. Her breathing changes. She runs her hand over the side of my face, hesitating on my eyebrow. I kiss her, breathing in all her store-bought smells. Quickly, we undress each other, our clothes tangled on the floor. She stretches on the bed, her face deep within the pillow. I look at her for a second, wanting to turn her over. I don't. I come up behind her and have sex her way. I want to tell her this isn't going to work, but my face is buried in her hair.

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Painting #21; Couple in bed Vibrant hues - lemons and oranges and mint greens mix with chestnut browns and faded grays. A man and woman lie naked. The man's short brown hair creeps down his neck, his body lean and his face hidden in her pale neck. Her face, pink, peers out over his left.shoulder. Eyes bright green.

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Rebecca Baker

y stride is heavy and short. Her quick steps, her lean, flexed calf muscles will bring her back to where I am before my shoe even scuffs the spray-painted line that marks the halfway point on the track. She is not supposed to be here. I come to the park at night so I will not have to see her, or the other replicas of her, their round breasts pressed flat by sports bras, their sinewy arms slicing the air. And I come here late so that they will not have to see me. They jog faster when they spot me scuffling around the track, as though they recognize, in the flesh, what they could be if they do not keep running. At nine-thirty it is usually only me and the couple who live in the huge, dull, grey-blue Buick. They use the parking space under the trees. She has long, grey hair braided down her back; he is salt and pepper, always in flannel. Sometimes they sit at the concrete picnic table and talk. They are there tonight. I catch pieces of their conversation as I pass. "The pine blight is taking those trees," she says. "They might be cut down." She means the trees that roof their car. This is critical, I decide. The trees are shade and privacy. Meanwhile, my head is crammed with a catalog of fat grams and calories consumed versus calories spent. It would be a luxury, I realize, for the couple to worry about those things. I hear the gasping breaths of the jogger at my back just as I walk under a pole lamp that casts both our shadows onto the asphalt. Then her shadow is in front of mine as she passes me. Her shadow emerges from mine; my shadow gives birth to hers. I am large enough to hide another behind me; large enough to hide another inside me. Her shadow is the curves of a woman; mine something bulky and huge. But I am a woman, too. For three weeks my mirrors have been covered. For three weeks I have been mercifully free of my reflection. But now I see again. Peter Pan asked Wendy to sew his shadow back on. Of course. He is lithe and strong and any likeness of him is beautiful and worth keeping. I do not want my shadow. Wendy can take her scissors and cut it off. Then I 112 u

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Fiction

Review

Third

Place

S O O N

Sudden

S H E

Fiction

W I L L

Winner

C A T C H

Rebecca Baker

113 1

Berkeley

Fiction

Review

could walk, here in the darkness, with no fear of meeting my self. Something pushes the jogger around the track. Perhaps it is my image and what I represent. And her image pushes me. We chase each other; we run from each other. The couple stands and looks up into their pine trees.

Jon Boilard

he imminent sky outside my window was wide and white as gauze. A spray of small birds derived from the strange summer fog passed before me like windblown leaves and smacked into I* the silence of that earthbound heaven again. My mother was disappearing. She told me I was a bastard. She hit me with the vacuum cleaner. When she stopped I got up from the carpet and ran away. I went to the waterfall near Bardwell's Ferry that everybody called the fork. I stayed until a cool moon illuminated the valley and I knew she had gone into her room to die a little more. Then I knocked on her window until she unlocked the front door. With a transient barn cat's cold look she studied me and said Get in here now. Her hybrid meds were cocktailing to strike a chemical balance in her perpetually see-saw brain. Her far-away eyes focused on an imprecise point over my left shoulder. She told me she called the police switchboard because she thought maybe I got hit by a car or stuck in the swamp or taken away by a man with bad skin in a white panel truck. She imposed her recurring nightmares on me. She meant to protect me. She said You are my life. She said Don't ever leave. We went to her bed and hugged. She put her arms around me-so I could see the scars that made me queasy from where she especially liked to kill herself. Then I Wasn't really sleeping anymore and I heard her walking up and down the hall. She was offkilter again and getting more so. I observed her discreetly with my one good eye and she was a haunt already in her white t-shirt and her legs and her arms and white face. In the morning I went to,the cemetery on Stanislaus Street that was like a park. There was a pond with a red bridge slicing it in half and cattails at one end. There were snapping turtles. I smashed bullfrogs with sticks. I sneaked up on them and hit them hard. I threw them into the air so they landed on the blacktop with a sound like a single wet clap. And when Richard Zagrodnik and Rocky Morales showed up we played smear the queer. I spit bubble gum into Richard's hair and slapped him with both hands until his teeth bled and Rocky told his grandmother who was scared of me. She wouldn't let them play with

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115

Berkeley

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Review

Jon Boilard

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115

Berkeley Fiction

Review

me anymore. I chased ducks that were green and gray. I crawled up behind them pretending to be a soldier. I kept my head down to avoid imaginary barbed wire and make-believe sniper fire. I jumped to my feet with juvenile enthusiasm and abusive whoops of chaos and they scrambled down the mudslick bank and glided easily away from the danger that had recently become such a fundamental part of me. Then I hitchhiked 116 and 91 to the Holyoke Mall. I looked at blacklight posters and talked to the talking parrots near the wishing well. I took a penny from the water and closed my eyes. Then I returned the copperish embodiment of hope to its original fluid jurisdiction, generating ripples outward as it penetrated the glassy surface, sinking side-to-side to the bottom like a falling feather. I didn't know for sure if it worked like that but hoped it did: I'd wished my mother finally dead, but not in a hateful way. More for her than me. By her own account she was not well-suited among the living. Then I sat by the Orange Julius booth just to smell them. The girl behind the counter was wearing a paper hat and vest. She chopped oranges and strawberries and she crushed big bags of ice. She didn't look at me. Not one time. I didn't blame her. The blue-uniformed security guard kept an eye on me because I stayed in the atrium for too long because it was hot outside. His face was dark and bumpy as a chestnut. He talked into his radio. He wore black boots. He fingered his baton. He stopped watching me so he could help somebody and I stole a candy bar from the drugstore and left with it stuffed in my pants. Then the front door opened again as usual and she said You little bastard. She broke everything in the kitchen all over the floor and made me watch. Plates. Glasses. Bowls. The blender. A vase. A jar where we used to keep colorful pasta when things weren't that bad. The toaster right out of the wall. Then she hit me with her wrists, which hardly hurt anymore because she was shrinking so small. Smaller than me. Then she told me to get a broom and clean up the mess I made. I swept it against a cardboard scrap and put it in the trash. Then she was tired because of what I had just put her through. I apologized. She swallowed blue pills with water. I watched "Wild, Wild West" while she slept. She covered her legs with a thin afghan and eventually appeared to struggle as it gobbled her up. I witnessed her disturbing slumber as the distant yelps of a mange-coat coyote conspired with a northeast wind to perforate the silence and signal some ancient distress known to nature and purvey a vague call to arms and 1 knew she didn't stand a chance. Lastly there was a muted sound that I sorted from the others and even the sound of my own heart. Then she woke up and said Cut me. She said Cut me in pieces and hide.

116

L E T T I N G

AriBank

romise you won't leave me. Promise you won't let me go. That's her in bed curled up in a ball. She was like that when I saw her three days ago and it doesn't seem as if she's moved an inch. The room is cold. I sit on the edge of the bed and hold her hand and she's cold too. There's an ugly, grey blanket folded over the arm of a chair but it's acrylic and she's allergic. No one knows that here. No one knows she's cold and needs a blanket made from cotton. She needs someone to tell these people these things. She needs someone to help her get better. She needs someone who won't ever give up on her. That's her in the red cowgirl hat. She always needs to wear something red. She's swaggering up to that mechanical bull like Annie Oakley except Annie Oakley carried a pistol in her hand, not a bottle of Jack Daniels. I tell her to give me the whiskey but it's too loud and she's too far away. She climbs on top, puts one hand on the pommel, and lifts the bottle high in the air. Bill, the owner of the bar, is controlling the speed and knows to take it easy. As she dips and swells, undulates, spins in circles over and over again, she sips from the bottle and takes her hand off the pommel so she can wave her cowgirl hat around in the air. Everyone watching her whistles and hollers; the drunks at the bar raise their drinks and slur their cheers, and some people over at the pool table start clapping and shouting, but she can't hear any of them. When she's like that, going up and down, up and down, she can't hear anyone at all. We've been in the Graceland Diner for two hours and we've heard almost every Elvis Presley song they have on the jukebox. She's been dropping quarter after quarter into that machine, saying she's saving the best for last. lean t help falling in love with you. Her favorite and mine. She hasn't eaten any of her dinner, and her Love Me Chicken Tenders and side of Suspicious Fries are getting cold and oily. I didn't order anything because my stomach is still doing cartwheels and back flips. We almost got married. A shotgun wedding at the same chapel where Jon Bon Jovi got hitched. But when we got there we 117

Berkeley Fiction

Review

116

L E T T I N G

AriBank

Berkeley

Fiction

Review

Letting

found a note tacked to the door saying the organ player had the flu and they would be closed until tomorrow. We had to be home tomorrow. Workr School. Bad timing. Fate. For now our Winnie-the-Pooh engagement rings would have to do. Save the wedding for another day. Darling don tyou know, some things were meant to be.

Sometimes you begin to think that maybe they're right. Maybe you shouldn't trust your feelings. Maybe you're in love with her because she needs help and you're the kind of person who is good at giving help, the kind of person who likes to help, the kind of person who needs to help. Maybe you're being selfish.

It was like reaching the top of a rollercoaster, the second before you drop, that butterfly feeling you get, your heart pounding hard against your chest, you can't breathe, that's what it felt like to be near her, that's why you'd want to be near her.

That's her watching the rain fall. She's been looking out the window with eyes as black as a china doll's and she doesn't say anything when I touch her arm. They gave her an injection at the hospital and sent her home with pills which are supposed to help calm-her down. She's practically a zombie. The doctor said if these don't help then there are other pills and if those don't work then there's lithium. But certain medications aren't covered by her health insurance. If she needs help.and we can't afford it then she can be admitted to state. She spent a week in state once~before. She's never going back there again.

That's her roller skating in the kitchen. She's not supposed to skate in the house but it's been raining all day and if she sits still any longer she'll just explode. So now she's whizzing around the kitchen table and she's going really fast but one of her wheels slips on the linoleum and she falls. She bumps the table on her way down knocking over a plastic pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid. Red rivers spill over the table and race across the kitchen floor. The pitcher falls to the ground with a thud. Her mom hears, runs to the kitchen and sees her struggling to pull her skates off her feet with the laces still tied. Now she's in trouble. She's pulled from the floor and her mom lifts her by her arm, so high her skates barely touch the ground. She can feel her shoulder snapping and the bone goes loose. I'm not like her. I'm not crazy. That's her squatting on the sidewalk with her dress hiked up to her hipbones. It's six in the morning on Easter Sunday and I'm watching her piss on a street corner two blocks from Penn Station. We were supposed to be on a train that left seven hours ago but she said we could just take the very first train home in the morning. It's Sunday. It's Easter. There are no trains. But it doesn't matter now and she's giggling and telling me to look at her piss because it's blue from all the Bombay Sapphire she's been drinking. She must have drunk an entire bottle. She stands and smoothes out her dress and asks me how we ended up here. I really don't know. That's her crying in the dark. We were having a fight and she picked up the flower vase and it smashed against the wall. Glass shattered everywhere. Cut pansies fell by my feet. Now she's in the bedroom and she's locked the door and I can hear her sobbing into her pillow. She's crying her heart out. I want to hold her but she wants to be alone. She doesn't want help. I should leave but I can't let her go. What's wrongwith me? Why am I like this?

118

What would you do without me? People start worrying about you, and trying to tell you what to do, and how they've seen something like this on Oprah Winfrey last week, and how Dr. Phil said some people become victims of codependent relationships, and they become trapped in their need for each other, and that kind of love is dangerous... you say I know I know and nod your head and wonder what the fuck does Oprah know about love anyway. We're taking Clyde to the animal hospital. He has some cuts on his paws but they're not too deep and he's wagging his tail so he should be okay. It could have been much worse. We were in the park and we were walking across the old stone bridge which led to the trail on the other side of the river. She was holding Clyde's leash and he was a few feet ahead. As we were crossing, Clyde spotted a squirrel scooting along the wall of the bridge. Clyde is a boxer and therefore loves chasing squirrels. He lunged and jumped onto the top of the wall; the leash jerked so hard I heard her shoulder snap. She held onto the leash, but when Clyde slipped and lost his balance, she couldn't keep him from going over the side of the bridge. "Oh Clyde!" She snapped forward and tried not to let go but the dog almost pulled her over too. I grabbed the leash from in front of her and took all of the weight. We looked over the wall and Clyde was hanging from his leash, the collar around his neck strangling him. "Let go! Let go! He can't breathe!" His eyes looked scared and he was fighting and he was struggling and I just couldn't pull him up. I could hold on but I couldn't pull him up. "You're killing him! Let go!" The river was almost thirty feet below and it was shallow. There were sharp rocks. He might not make it. If he died it would be my fault. "For God's sake let go!"

119

Berkeley

Fiction

Review

Letting

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Review

They say no one could have saved her but you know that's a lie. That's her doing the jitterbug. That's her singing Patsy Cline. That's her riding on the back of her brother's Harley. That's her throwing a wine bottle at the bedroom mirror. That's her laughing. That's her really laughing. That's her breaking down in the bathroom of an International House of Pancakes. That's her in the Magic Kingdom. That's her at the Stoned Pony. That's her going back home to Missouri for a while to try to get better. That's her drinking hot cocoa with marshmallows. That's her jumping puddles. That's her chasing boys around the playground. That's her hiding under her bed. That's her in the sunglasses she stole from Wal-Mart. That's her in her favorite dress. That's her wrapped in the blanket I gave her the year before she died. How much longer can I live this way? One day you let her go. You just give up, give in. Everyone's right and you're wrong and it's time you face this because your love isn't enough to believe in anymore. Perhaps it was never love at all. You think about this and then you realize that they've won. It begins like this. You look into her eyes and they're so deep you almost fall in, so rich they hold everything. You can't look away. You want to look into her eyes forever. But then something happens, and they change. The light starts to disappear and they become cold and empty, and it seems as if she almost isn't there anymore. So you wait. You wait for her to come back. You hope that she'll just come back. That's her haunting me like a ghost.

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C O N T R I B U T O R S

N O T E S

Michael Darcher teaches English at Pierce College, a community college in Washington. His stories have appeared in High Plains Literary Review, Green Mountains Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Nebraska Review, and elsewhere.

Harlyn Aizley's writing recently has appeared in Boston Magazine, 96 Inc., The,Sierra Nevada College Review, and The South Carolina Review. Her book-length manuscript, Buying Dad: One Woman's Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor, will be available in July 2003 from Alyson Publications. Harlyn is the Director of the Writing Program at the Rashi School in Newton, MA.

Paul Levine's writing has been published in the Kansas Quarterly, Permafrost, Karamu, Apalachee Quarterly, and The New York Times, among others. He lives in New Rochelle, NY with his wife and son.

Rebecca Baker lives in Knoxville, TN. When she's not working or writing, she reads, bellydances, serves as pit crew for her boyfriend, Doug Warren, during his dirtbike races, and plays with her small dog, Dixie.

Holly Monacelli is a Detroit native and Michigan grad now living in Boston. This is one of the first things she's written with a real sense of setting, probably because Ann Arbor is so full of stories. She'd love to visit again soon and find the next one.

Ari Bank has earned an M.A. in Creative Writing and teaches composition and literature at Bucks County Community College. He lives in Philadelphia with his cat, Boo Radley.

Alisa Rivera, a Bronx native, now lives in sunny Los Angeles, where she has only recently adjusted to having palm trees growing outside her window, Her non-fiction work has appeared in Latina, McCall's and Parenting magazines, and in The Oregonian newspaper. Her fiction has appeared in iris: a journal about woman.

Julie Benesh is finishing up a physics-themed novel. Her fiction has appeared in Tin House and other magazines, including Beacon Street Review, Red Rock Review, Licking River Review, and Pangolin Papers will appear in, the Tin House anthology Bestial Noise, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Julie lives in Chicago, has a day j o b and a masters degree in organization development, teaches writing seminars for the Newberry Library, and attended Washington University in St. Louis.

Manuel L. Lopez currently lives in El Centro, CA, fourteen miles from the Mexicali border. His work has recently appeared in Hanging Loose and ZYZZYVA.

Andrea Rudy is a recent graduate of the M.A. in Creative Writing program at the University of New Brunswick and she is currently working and writing in Vancouver. Her most recent work has appeared in "A Room of One's Own." John Kosmas Skinas has had stories published in Fourteen Hills, Aethlon, and San Diego Writer's Monthly. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and son.

Jon Boilard was born and raised in Western New England. Since 1986, he has been living and writing in the San Francisco area. One of his short stories has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as one of the best of 2002, and dozens of others have appeared in literary magazines in the U.S., Canada and Europe. He is currently working on a novel.

Adam Snider is a recent graduate in English from Clemson University, where the liquor stores close at 7 pm. He is looking at graduate schools in creative writing. He currently works third shifts at a gas station, using the time to write on his laptop with the cursor that never stops moving to the right. This is his first publication.

Thomas H. Brennan's recent fiction appeared in Prima Materia. His reference book "Writings on Writing" published by McFarland has been reprinted by Barnes and Noble. He is, like so many others, at work on a novel.

John Talbird has been published in Coe Review, Delirium, and several others. "Breathe" is a chapter from his just-compeleted novel, The World Out There. He is finishing a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

C O N T R I B U T O R S

N O T E S

Paul Levine's writing has been published in the Kansas Quarterly, Permafrost, Karamu, Apalachee Quarterly, and The New York Times, among others. He lives in New Rochelle, NY with his wife and son.

Ari Bank has earned an M.A. in Creative Writing and teaches composition and literature at Bucks County Community College. He lives in Philadelphia with his cat, Boo Radley.

Manuel L. Lopez currently lives in El Centro, CA, fourteen miles from the Mexicali border. His work has recently appeared in Hanging Loose and ZYZZYVA.

B e r k e l e y

S u d d e n

F i c t i o n

R e v i e w

C o n t e s t B a c k

I s s u e s

Issue 19 $ 2 0 0 Prize for First Place

Winner Issue 20

First, S e c o n d , a n d T h i r d P l a c e w i l l b e p u b l i s h e d in I s s u e 2 4

Issue 21

Guidelines:

Issue 22

~ $ 6 e n t r y fee + $ 4 e a c h a d d i t i o n a l e n t r y ~ M a k e check or money order payable to B F R Sudden Fix ~ 1000 w o r d s or less

All B a c k Issues

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S e n d R e q u e s t s To:

S e n d submissions to: Sudden Fiction

Berkeley Fiction Review

Contest

10 Eshlema n Hall

B e r k e l e y F i c t i o n R e v i e w c/o 10 E s h l e m a n H a l l

University of California

University o f California

Berkeley, C A 94720

Berkeley, C A 94720-4500 ( M a k e checks payable to Berkeley Fiction Review) D e a d l i n e

is O c t o b e r

2003

Winners will b e notified b y the end of January 2004 t

B e r k e l e y

S u d d e n

F i c t i o n

R e v i e w

C o n t e s t B a c k

I s s u e s

Issue 19 $ 2 0 0 Prize for First Place

Winner Issue 20

First, S e c o n d , a n d T h i r d P l a c e w i l l b e p u b l i s h e d in I s s u e 2 4

Issue 21

Guidelines:

Issue 22

~ $ 6 e n t r y fee + $ 4 e a c h a d d i t i o n a l e n t r y ~ M a k e check or money order payable to B F R Sudden Fix ~ 1000 w o r d s or less

All B a c k Issues

~ Typed and doubled-spaced ~ I n c l u d e a b r i e f c o v e r l e t t e r & S A S E for list o f w i n n e r s ~ Submissions will not be returned

S e n d R e q u e s t s To:

S e n d submissions to: Sudden Fiction

Berkeley Fiction Review

Contest

10 Eshlema n Hall

B e r k e l e y F i c t i o n R e v i e w c/o 10 E s h l e m a n H a l l

University of California

University o f California

Berkeley, C A 94720

Berkeley, C A 94720-4500 ( M a k e checks payable to Berkeley Fiction Review) D e a d l i n e

is O c t o b e r

2003

Winners will b e notified b y the end of January 2004 t

Fiction by: Harlyn Aizley Rebecca Baker AriBank Julie Benesh Jon Boilard Thomas Brennan Michael Darcher Paul Levine Manuel Lopez Holly Monacelli Alisa Rivera Andrea Rudy John Skinas Adam Snider Cover and Interior Art by: Ting Chin