catalog of nightmares) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Rachel Eodice

“is the Amorometer. ”

She looked at the contraption, the central component of which was a metal box forced into an awkward heart shape and painted red. It looked like something Ryo would have built with his erector set.

“I was hoping… ” he began.

She looked up quickly.

“I was hoping you ’d be willing to, well, provide some new data. A longitudinal study, if you will!” And he laughed.

“Ah!” She imagined herself hooked up to the cold metal devices, the evidence of her fakery pouring forth, and shuddered. She sat down.

“Are you all right? Is there something you need?”

She shook her head.

“You see, ” he said, opening and closing a clamp full of tiny metal teeth, “this way I can be sure...wecan be sure… ”

She thought of her lipstick, and touched a finger to her mouth, as if testing a wall one had regretfully painted.

“I think I should go, ” she said.

Her train wasn ’t due to for over an hour. She wandered the fluorescent underground corridors of the station, passing shops advertising souvenirs for places elsewhere—blackened eggs from Hakone, tiny limes from Shikoku, habu liquor from Okinawa. She wondered how many of the gifts she ’d received over the years had come from places like this. Was everything so false?

She heard the music long before she saw the players; it came from nearly the same place as the first time, next to the ticket machine for the Hibiya subway line, which, she ’d learned from Shingo, was the deepest subway in the world. If you stood at the bottom of the Hibiya escalator, it was said, you could feel the heat of hell and see the light from heaven.

She looked at the spot the quartetminus-one had been a week before but found it empty. She followed the melody with her ear. It was coming, she realized, from beyond the ticket gates, rising up the escalator.

She made her decision at once; or rather, she reflected later, her heart had made it for her—a luxury she had not allowed herself in many years.

Inside the stall of a nearby bathroom, Aya flipped the latches on her viola case. She lifted the instrument from its bed and, drawing the ancient bow across the strings, began to play.

The strings were old; the A and G were frayed along the bowline and she worked the tuning pegs, cradling the wooden body to her chest. Shoes clattered on the disinfected floors, doors slammed and hands were washed and for once in her life Aya did not care who observed her. These women were strangers yet they shared this city; maybe some had been students at Keio University, maybe the other Aya Kawaguchi was in the stall next to her, pants down. The thought made her laugh, and without realizing what she was doing, she began playing the solo she ’d performed her last year of high school, Shubert’ s Arpeggione. Heady, she watched her fingers land on the strings, and though the B was falling out of tune already, her rhythm was dead on.

It wasn ’t perfect, but she felt it was good, and if she practiced it could be marvelous, better than it had been in school because everything she had lived through would go into the music. She was no longer a girl. Her fears and desires were known and did not bind her. She hit the final notes with this in mind, standing alone in the corner stall of the women ’ s bathroom near the Hibiya Line in Tokyo Station and when she was finished a small clap echoed against the tile walls, and a second later more applause joined it. Aya lifted her head. She nodded at no one, then played some more, thinking how the beadyeyed judge had nodded, even smiled, when he commended her: Even the space betweenthenotesspoketome.

(catalog of nightmares)

by Rachel Eodice

asphyxiation; aliens, from mars ofcourse; black cats, the bad luck kind; drowning, amidst those who drownedbefore me & the muck that is decay; falling, jumping offofswings, teeth, out ofmouth; death (the dead), as ifnothing was wrong; screaming, lacking the ability; rape; car crashes, witnessing demise; running, lackofspeed; witches and warlocks, Grimm to say the least; tornados; babies, mine; losing, someone (close to me); getting caught, under sheets & in closets; nudity, exposition; bathrooms, no doors, filthy creatures; repetition; getting nowhere, though I try; cartoons, funny colors; breathing, underwater; high school, a test ofwills again; weddings; zombies.

Rachel is a 2008 graduate of Temple University ' s Film and Media Arts program. Currently, she is working on two screenplays set in the Philadelphia area when she is not editing for Comcast Spotlight. Kelly Luce

’ s story collection received the San Francisco Foundation ’ s 2008 Jackson Award and was a finalist for Black Lawrence Press ’ s 2009 Hudson Prize as well as the McCarthy Prize from Sarabande Books. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, and other journals. Next spring, she will be the writer in residence at the Kerouac House in Orlando.