The Opiate: Winter 2021, Vol. 24

The Opiate Winter 2021, Vol. 24

The Opiate

Your literary dose.

© The Opiate 2021 Cover art: “Muscles of the Hand and Arm” by Jacques Fabien Gautier d’Agoty, 1745 Back cover: “Muscles of the Foot and Leg” by Jacques Fabien Gautier d’Agoty, 1745 This magazine, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

Contact theopiatemagazine@gmail.com for queries.

“Go with me to a notary, seal me there/Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,/If you repay me not on such a day,/In such a place, such sum or sums as are/Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit/Be nominated for an equal pound/Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken/In what part of your body pleaseth me.”

-Shylock in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

3.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Editor-in-Chief Genna Rivieccio

Editor-at-Large Malik Crumpler

Editorial Advisor Anton Bonnici

Contributing Writers: Fiction: Emily Jon Tobias, “Nova” 10 Destiny Cannon, “Russian Interference” 17 L.A. Ricketts III, “The Man in the Field” 20 sleazy b, “Split” 24 Jacques Debrot, “Bad Astronauts” 32 Sylvia Totah Calabrese, “Snow Job” 36 Leanne Grabel, Husband: Chapters 11-12 39-46

4.

Poetry: Ben Nardolilli, “The Builders and the Butchers” 48 Victor Marrero, “Cosmetic Relief ” 49 Marissa Glover, “And the Oscar Goes to—” 50 Maria Berardi, “Pagan” 51-52 Donna Dallas, “American Marriage” 53 Sean Chapman, “By the wayside” 54 Nikoletta Nousiopoulos, “eve” & “eyeless socket” 55-56

Ron Kolm, “Mama Said” 57 Alan Britt, “Worth the Wait” & “Glad We Had This Talk” 58-60 Susie Gharib, “The Maimed King” 61 Anna Kapungu, “Voiceless” & “She Was Earning A Living” 62-63 Imogen Arate, “Elegy for Mary Wollstonecraft1” & “The ‘R’ Word” 64-65 Serena Piccoli, “Gulp\Gasp” 66

Criticism: Genna Rivieccio, “The Subtle Finesse of The Queen’s Gambit As a Novel vs. a Series” 68

5.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Editor’s Note

If anyone else is feeling like a pound of your “fair flesh” has been summarily extracted by the end of 2020, you’re surely not alone. 2021, lamentably, promises to be no different (as the U.S.’ recent failed coup has indicated). And, of course, this pertains most patently to matters of the financial. With so many people—particularly those in the artistic community taking a hit—losing their source of income, running out of benefits that have exhausted the proverbial statute of limitations and generally scrambling to squirrel away any kind of sou, the effect has been as painful as what Antonio endured (even if only psychologically) when Shylock emerged from the shadows to collect on his pound of flesh. To that end, if the year of COVID taught us anything, it’s that the world could be going up in flames all around us, and the creditor will always—always—come to collect. There is no sob story, no circumstance, no extenuating excuse that can make a creditor turn their back on what they believe they’re owed. Immediately and with interest. You are not a person, you are a dollar amount (or, in the case of Antonio, a ducat amount).

Alas, as the saying goes, “You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip.” If there’s nothing to give, there’s nothing to give. Or as Antonio puts it, “I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh to-morrow to my bloody creditor.” A creditor will never see it that way. To them, you’re just another number (that they’re still profiting from majorly in interest rates, by the way, and will still get the money they’ve “lost” from you no matter what thanks to insurance). A silly little number who entered into a contractual agreement that makes you beholden to all of their scare tactics, whims and furiously coveyed frustrations with your negligence; your inability to be a “stand-up” human being who knows better than to let your mouth write a check that your ass can’t cash. Shylock, like all creditors, has a nose to sense when a potential borrower will be unable to cash that check with his ass. The ass he likely would have chosen to pull his flesh from were he not thwarted by Portia dressed as a man while posing as a lawyer (because Shakespeare’s works, even the dramas, needed to incorporate a bit of gender-bending).

Ironically enough, Antonio is ultimately paying for the financial sins (read: broke assery) of Bassanio. As something of a spendthrift fuckwit of the Renaissance era, Bassanio spent all his dough in order to look his flyest in the most alla moda clothing. His plan to gain respect and notice by doing this has clearly backfired, as the one woman he truly wants to impress, Portia, comes along just when he has nary a centesimo left. Luckily for Bassanio (though unluckily for Antonio), his homie is willing to serve as the guarantor for any loan he can find in order to come up with the means to project an illusory persona that will attract a woman of the nobility like Portia. The only one willing to give someone with such a sordid credit history a loan—even with a guarantor—is Shylock. The sole Jew in town. Or so the play makes it seem (though that wouldn’t be entirely unbelievable considering Italy’s uber Catholicism at this juncture, and pretty much any other, in history. Then again, Life Is Beautiful later reminded us that there were certainly enough Jews in Italy to be rounded up for the concentration camp).

In the background of everything driving The Merchant of Venice, there is this good versus evil tone that suggests, very obviously, that to be “Christian” is good and to be Jewish is evil (nay, to be anything suggesting “the other” is evil). Hence, the grotesque depiction of Shylock representing all the worst possible caricaturized stereotypes of Jewish people. To the point that Hitler and co. saw fit to broadcast the play on the radio after Nazi storm troopers and Hitler Youth members ransacked Jewish neighborhoods throughout Germany from November 9-10, 1938. Called Kristallnacht (which translates literally to Crystal Night, which is a bit of a creepy term to label something so horrific), or Night of Broken Glass, the fact that

6.

Shakespeare’s play fueled the flames of contempt for an ultra cartoonish version of what Nazis believed “all” Jews embodied is quite telling. And proves, in addition to how effective scapegoating remains as a political practice, that somehow Shakespeare still managed to outshine his roundabout “mentor,” Christopher Marlowe, even centuries later. Marlowe, who basically wrote the precursor to The Merchant of Venice with the far more incendiary title, The Jew of Malta. In this particular play, released in 1590, well before Merchant’s premiere date in 1605, Marlowe takes an altogether different approach to religion. That is to say, he makes it much clearer that he believes it’s bullshit, and so is anyone who adheres to it. Thus, our narrator, a ghost named Machiavel, based on, duh, Niccolò Machiavelli, announces, “I count religion but a childish toy,/And hold there is no sin but ignorance.” Amen.

The eponymous Jew of Malta is Barabas. He is no “peripheral character” the way Shylock is, but, as the title indicates, the star of the show. So Marlowe wastes no time in presenting him in his counting-house, because naturally all any Jew does all day is sit around counting their money.

Breathing heavily in eroticized ecstasy as they finger each bill and coin individually to prolong the “orgasm.”Oh wait, that’s Jeff Bezos (and now, Elon Musk). In any case, Barabas is already feeling the weight of discrimination as he reckons with the loss of his fortune, plucked from him by the Maltese government to pay for a war against the Turks. Like Jafar with Iago, Barabas has his stooge as well: Ithamore. As Barabas sets about his vengeance upon Malta, it is far more than just a pound of flesh he seeks. He wants everyone else to suffer for his own misery. At one point, this involves poisoning an entire convent, murdering a friar and then getting another friar framed for that murder. Once again, it’s not a warm and fuzzy depiction of a Jew, least of all with those many mentions about Barabas’ nose. Yet some scholars have argued that Marlowe’s intent was not anti-Semitism, but rather, to show the absurdity of all three religions involved in the narrative: Christianity, Islamism and Judaism. Alas, any Jew reading this text would likely not agree that Marlowe achieved his supposed intent by painting such a monstrous portrait of Jewish people rolled into one amalgam of a character.

The most biblically poetic outcome in both plays is that the trap set by each man ends up being the one they’re forced to fall into. In Shylock’s scenario, this is more metaphorical, whereas in Barabas’ final act, it becomes very literal indeed. To add insult to injury, Portia’s famed speech about mercy posits, “It is an attribute to God Himself...” Ummm, girl, one would definitely have to object. If God is so “merciful,” why the fuck are we in this place? Tangibly and philosophically.

It is worth underscoring that when Bassanio initially appears on the scene, he tells Antonio, “Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.” This, in a nutshell, is a lot like religion itself.

Yet people appear to be turning to it more than ever (see: every superspreader choir event that has transpired this past year). Religion, too, comes in the form of false idol worship (e.g. The Orange One and his coup-attempting disciples). There is more comfort in the utterly implausible than the reality laid bare to us every single day.

Anyway, I hope no one somehow takes my own interpretation (which calls out anti-Semitism) of these texts as somehow anti-Semitic itself. Because, speaking from experience, for me, it’s odd when you’re always simultaneously “in trouble” with people for writing something perceived as affronting, yet at the same time, no one actually gives a shit what you’re saying.

7.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 Whatever one’s religious beliefs may be, at this moment, there can be no refutation that money is everyone’s God. No matter how fitfully they’ve fought to avoid that cruel fate. Maybe what I’m trying to say, in the end, is that I know how hard it is to be a writer. Not even just to write, but to know in your bones that being creatively liberated was what you were meant to do, yet instead you are forced by the hand of society’s iron fist to focus on bullshit endeavors like money-making. To worry tirelessly about repaying your debts, where the next amount required is going to come from. And how will you kill another brain cell in order to get it?

I don’t know what the answer is for those of us left still writing for the joy of it (not, conversely, to make money from it by other forms of bastardized writing for pay). For the belief we have in ourselves that we know we are good. I wish there could be a patron for every writer who is in this for pure reasons, as seemed to be the case in the “olden days” (provided you were a white man). Instead, all they want is any remaining “tissues” we have to give of ourselves, as we continue to be left with no choice but to allow them to pull away at our artist’s flesh. Pecked at by the vultures that are this seemingly unshakeable economic system. Will someone please try to overthrow that instead?

On such a note, please enjoy the following fiction and poetry from some who are still fighting the good fight for the sake of art.

Sincerely, Genna Rivieccio January 2021, the month of an attempted government takeover. But the French these Americans are not. And rather than revolution, it was just another sign of devolution.

P.S. Does it look like any of the Capitol rioters have ever read a book to you? Even if only The Art of the Deal. No. And that’s a rather significant core problem of the United States to consider. Such a rampant de-emphasis on literature and learnedness that it’s no wonder we’ve got the creatures from Middle-earth running amok with slack-jawed outrage. Not knowing anything of critical thinking, let alone “basic” thinking. Hence, a decision to show up without wearing balaclavas.

8.

FICTION

9.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Nova Emily Jon Tobias

F

irst time I laid eyes on Jones, I didn’t know then how I would be tortured, gently, how I would come to rest just beneath her skin. The thing was never meant to be permanent. Me and Jones. Before her, I knew I wasn’t built to stay. But here I am, inked. A stunted nail, the jailhouse hammer, nuzzled into the tracked crook of her left arm. We know what I am to her now, acutely.

I’d gone from East L.A. to Santa Monica on the cheapest bus I found. Drank a pint nickeled off my newest foster brother some days before. I should’ve pinched it from the prick the way he’d always look at me like I was his very own blow-up sex doll. Off the bus, I walked, drunk, from the station to the Venice Beach boardwalk. A lifeguard tower—Number 10, I still remember—graffitied with a pinup girl in a Darth Vader helmet smoking a joint, white bikini, one nipple out. Walls were neon, animated, surfaces and sidewalks all done up and painted like clowns, a whole stilted scene. Unnatural, really, artificial like plastic made to look like glass. Light flecked with spit and smoke came off the beach. A girl gathered cash in a hat on the ground from people wanting to pet the snake choked around her neck.

10.

One old guy, long hair, shirtless, had an electric plugged into an amp. I smelled cotton candy—sweetness on him— when he screamed “Voodoo Chile” at me. Over a low wall behind him, a rat. The guy’s eyes were shaded, but I felt him watching me when he wailed. I kept my eyes down.

I found a cracked palm tree to lean against and crouched off the lip of a curb somewhere near the corner of 25th and Speedway. I looked up. Green fronds reminded me of paradise in some kid’s book. I squinted. Brittle at the ends, browning against blue. No one seemed to notice me there, some straggly thing like the tree I was up against.

Nothing worth noticing.

I opened my eyes. Venice. Craned my neck reaching for air. Gut rot from booze on an empty stomach. Looked down across my grass-stained front, wondering where the fuck I had fallen, sick, I swayed, and there he was again, front and center, like it was seventh grade all over again.

The teacher who thought I was special. He said he wanted me. Young. My head all spun with clouds like blooms of chalk dust in the late autumn light of that classroom. I clamped my lids down and gouged at the hangnail on my right thumb, let ocean salt sting the raw flesh. A rock kicked

Nova - Emily Jon Tobias off the skateboard of some little, local shit made me flinch. So close, the ground rattled beneath my beat-up Converse as he flew by. Looked up, and there she was—big and noble— out of nowhere, like my mama’s old ceramic Madonna. Jones.

Before I ever saw her, I caught a musky whiff of Jones off the afternoon Venice wind, like I was close enough to bury my face in the peach fuzz of her neck. Cat-called. She didn’t seem to see me, all tied up, busy rolling through the red light ahead— California stop—coming right for me.

She occupied every inch of her very own matte black 1974 Chevy Nova, as she rode alongside a shotgunned no-namer. I braced myself and used the bandana in my Levi’s back pocket to clean the salt from my glasses, so I could see her.

The Nova rolled up, jammed to a full diagonal stop, front right tire bouncing off the curb, so close I could almost reach out and grab the plastic baby head superglued to the dash. Red paint across the doll’s mouth caught my eye before the beefy rider did, and to this day, he remains nameless—a faceless object, thrown out way before the dried sage that sat propped against the frayed goat hide in the rear window.

She was savage, crude, as if sculpted from Venice sand, watered by its sea. Seemed she belonged to that turf since the beginning of time. I felt yanked, like I was downwind from some raw scent of hers. She was calm when she hissed, “Get the fuck out,” at her rider. Then, she growled, “Get the fuck out and don’t look back as you go.” What she held to his throat looked like a weapon clutched between her middle fingers. Now I know it was only the eagle talon pendant capped in steel, a thing she religiously wore on a rusty chain around her neck. The one some ex got her trying to win her back after she dumped his ass, too. But the way she held it up to this guy’s throat, with its point against his Adam’s apple, it might as well have been a straight-

edge.

With her free hand, she reached across his lap and opened the passenger door. He slipped up and out of the rider’s seat, shuffled down the boardwalk with his tail between his legs. He dusted the Nova off his ass and shot me one quick glance over his shoulder. He gave a wave of his hand and said, “She’s all yours,” then trudged toward the strip where he simply disappeared, swallowed up whole. Leaving just her and the Nova, right in time to swoop me off the edge.

The Nova’s door hung open on rusted hinges. I peeled back from the palm tree like bark curling in the heat and staggered toward the car, then spread my hands across the Nova’s roof to brace myself. She leaned lowdown across the seat, looking up at me, dark lashes and black holes of eyes.

“What a fucking dog he was,” she remarked. “You,” she said, turning to me like I was something worth noticing. “Get in.”

Junkie Jones swan dove, let go of the wheel, and slid her bare legs across the hump to land in shotgun, loaded. The Nova idled, gurgled a low, offbeat jazz tune. Then she was even closer to me.

Everything changed, like when it first gets in you, as I laid eyes on that tattooed wonderland of a woman.

A bucking carousel horse wrapped around a pole etched down her spine, its mane draping along her shoulder and over the collarbone to her throat.

Its bushy tail disappeared down her back into an unbuttoned waistband.

Under the shredded hem of her cutoffs, a geisha. Blasphemy was scribbled on all her bends and creases. And a splash of color, like city neon in a rainstorm. Red puckered lips—a kiss to go with the FUCK YOU hacked on the underside of her soft wrist. A small six-pointed star in the corner of her gorgeous left eye. One raven’s feather spelled STRENGTH in blurry cursive along her arm. A hooded serpent with jeweled eyes and spiked fangs inside

a thigh. Each ink touched another, a skin-thread tapestry that was Jones. I dug dirty nails into the palms of each hand, released and looked down at the crescent-shaped divots until red turned pale again. I wiped the corners of my mouth, wavered from the car and stood back, eye-to-eye with her, the hook, line and sinker.

“You drive,” Jones said. I dragged long and hard on a smoke, threw the butt down, snuffed it out with a busted heel.

I tossed my bag to the back and settled into the Nova’s driver seat, planting my hands on her oversized grungy wheel. I had only enough to survive. That bag was all I brought from the foster home. I knew if I had slowed down to think, I wouldn’t have had the balls to go. Somehow I knew right then that Venice would be just one pad of many lilies strewn across my days on the road. Turns out, besides my bag, all the other shit just kept falling away each day to lighten my load for the leap.

I held my breath while Jones situated herself, moving aside cracked CD cases—Nirvana and Mazzy Star—kicking up feathers and sand from the floor. Jones had a thing for feathers. Wore one hanging off each ear from a steel hook that could catch a fish. She danced through the mess like she’d planned each move while I sat wanting to run.

From her seat, Jones looked me all over like syrup running down a stack, thick and slow.

“What’s your name, love?” she asked.

“Bettie,” I said, soft.

“You don’t look like a Bettie,” she said. My eyes shifted down, then straight ahead. “Drive us along the coast, Bettie, I want to taste the ocean.” Jones flipped the old knob and the radio buzzed from static to some oldies station where the songs all sounded like they were straight off vinyl. She turned it up and leaned her head back, like she hadn’t rested in

11.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 years. Took the aviators from the top of her head and sank them low across the slope of her nose.

I took the Pacific Coast Highway, south. Visions of sunset in Mexico, a tulipán I’d pick off a tree overhanging a shared hammock just so I could tuck the stem behind her ear.

“I’m picking up good vibrations, she’s giving me the excitations,” Jones sang.

“Don’t you just love this fucking song, Bettie?” She stuck her arm out the window, cupped her palm against the wind. I looked over and then she had her whole head out that damn window, cheeks ballooning with the chorus.

She came back into the car, turned the radio down a bit. “You ever been banged on a Harley riding backwards?” she asked. I shook my head. “One of my ex’s was a big, old motherfucker, all ego and attitude, belly and beard, to boot. Tons of cash though.” She reached toward her feet, came up with a spoon off the floorboard.

She laughed. “Used to call me ARCO, after the gas station, ‘cause that’s where we met. I jumped on that bike and rode him ass backwards and sideways through the next few years. First ride on that Harley was at 60mph down Speedway against the boardwalk.” Jones slid the bandana out of my back pocket. Held one end by her teeth, tied the other around her left arm.

I kept my gaze ahead. Next time I looked, she was drawing the rig out. Then she used one hand to grab hard on the sagging hill of her chest, the other on her crack below. As her arm fell limp to her lap, she said, “That whole stretch has seen this treasure.” It was sugary, the way she said it, slowmoving and tacky like drying tar. The spoon slipped from her fingers to the floor. She finger-flicked the memory westward, out the window, toward Venice’s sea of salt, sand and gypsy bruises. Gone.

12.

“Good, good, good, good vibrations,” her voice trailed off. Her head nodded, bouncing off to the side.

She was quiet. I turned the radio back up, sneaking glances at her as I drove. To me, it seemed the crinkle of her forehead told less of age than experience. Jones was barely covered, decked out in sheer, vintage rags, revealing her many sagas. Could I become one of her stories? Nothing was hidden from the eye but something told me even back then that she was anything but loose with her nakedness.

I could tell by how she wrapped her arm with my bandana after, like tending to a child’s wound.

“Hey,” I patted her on the shoulder, “You got any of that left for me?”

She opened her eyes, looked at me above her shades. Then she said, “If you’re lucky, I will tell you the end of that story later.” An omen. A curse?

She paused, eyebrow cocked, she went on, “If there is a later. For your ears only, promise.” She winked, reached over and dotted my nose.

I would discover there was always a price to be paid for Jones’ attention. This time the cost was a tantalizing wait.

We drove along the Venice boardwalk where misfits camouflaged seamlessly against ocean grays, midget waves and jagged horizons. It all blended together like God got bored and climaxed with one long stroke of a hand—a stretched out buildup, with a quick, smeared release. A sable sunset dimmed over lingering tourists and non-natives. I looked over at her again. I could smell the seediness on her. Jones slumped low in the Nova.

Her body, spread thin, shellacked itself over the whole mess that was Venice and sealed it up. That place would never be itself without Jones, and she seemed to know it—that saintly mess with rings on every finger, and the way she balanced a Newport between her crooked front teeth... she didn’t

just belong to Venice, no, she ran that place.

“Bettie, pull over there,” she said. “I need to see my ocean.” I drove her close to the boardwalk. She slinked out before I had the Nova in park.

I followed her down the boardwalk. She swayed, one long stride crossing over the next, hips moving in time with how the waves crashed. Feathers off her earlobes blew back, behind her. She outstretched her long arms, wrists twirling, fingers strumming ocean air like she knew just how to play the way the air moved her.

When she spun toward me, Venice gently carried her hair forward, across her face, wrapped around her neck. She smiled. She smiled at me.

Then whirled back toward the water.

I smelled her in the wind, vanilla and dirt. I breathed in. Venice. Sewers and smoke from good weed. Bodies and skin that had been there all day long, all along. I saw the old guy—from before—same spot, electric in hand...

“Standin’ on a corner, suitcase in my hand...” his shirt was on this time, he’d taken his glasses off... “Sweet Jane, sweet, sweet Jane...” He looked at me, again. I met his eyes. Nodded my head. I knew then, he belonged there.

I looked for Jones. Couldn’t tell where she ended and the shore began. I caught her feathers again, and she was like the black raven itself, swooped and circling. Sun settled. Tourists retreated.

Venice rolled onto her back into night and all the shit came out of hiding like fleas from under a dog’s belly.

The place seemed inebriated. Against the boardwalk, Jones smoldered, and Venice flared with buzzed freaks like hungry flies. The tide bellowed behind them and I heard an echo—a whisper in the rumble. An old familiar, like my mother’s—there is something mystical here—and I was intoxicated, drunk on her voice, Venice. Hooked by the white fingertips of each capped wave tugging me closer. Venice’s breath was air to a fire inside me. All for her. All

Nova - Emily Jon Tobias for you, my queen! I wanted to scream, overtaken by her untamed sea, waves wilder in dark than day.

Jones stepped onto the sand from the boardwalk. People swept toward her, into one another, gathering on the beach. I stood back. Seemed to me that Venice light didn’t stand

crouched, Zippo in hand. She lit her smoke, then the nearest McDonald’s bag to start the fire. She leaned in and blew. Smoke from her dragon mouth made flames on the sand.

“Play me a song, Skeet,” Jones said. “I want to dance.”

Skeet tuned the box to some

Skeet stayed to the side shivering, his face toward the water.

“I’m good,” I said into her chest. Never been better, I thought.

She pulled away from me, but we stayed touching. “Skeet, joint,” she said, then took it from his hand to balance it between her lips. She

“She was savage, crude, as if sculpted from Venice sand, watered by its sea.

Seemed she belonged to that turf since the beginning of time. I felt yanked, like I was downwind from some raw scent of hers.” a chance against her midnight ocean lungs. I kissed the prints of my two fingers, then flattened my palm toward the shore. Jones was there to catch the kiss. She grabbed at the air, then waved me toward her. I ached, wanted to be snatched, taken. Venice and Jones— they collapsed me. I went forward, onto the beach, into her darkness.

When I walked up, two guys stood near Jones around a heap of newspapers and trash. One arranged kindling and a couple logs across the pile while the other set his boom box against a pack of Red Stripes. Jones was

reggae station. Bob Marley. “Good shit,” he said, and lit a joint. She rose then—Jones—sidled toward me singing, “There’s a natural mystic blowin’ through the air...” I smelled her above the fire, through the wind... “If you listen carefully now you will hear.” She had Skeet’s coat around her held together at her throat. The glow of the fire rose to meet her wings, lifted like a phoenix.

“You cold, love?” she said when she wrapped her arms around my shoulders, pulling me into the coat. My head rested at her collarbone where the tail of the tattooed horse would be.

ran her hands down the length of my arms, locked her hands around mine.

We spun as one toward the sea. Full moon dangled way out there like a lightbulb from some invisible chain.

Scattered light gathered into a narrow strip down the beach and we were onstage. We were the Venice stars, we were her night. We flew faster, dug our heels in closer, torsos leaning back, her hands securing my wrists, mine around her forearms. I was standing on the tracks and Jones was my train blurred across the shore, smudged into Venice’s papery waves. Her teeth

13.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 shone against crests when she smiled.

I caught X-rays of her in that light when she sang, like I could see right through her. We laughed. She stopped. I fell. We piled atop one another, rolling on the sand.

We walked back to the fire, arms locked. Skeet had a bottle in his hand.

“Where’s the other dude?”

Jones asked.

“You don’t remember his name, girl?” Skeet laughed. He finished his beer. Threw the empty bottle in the fire. Ash kicked back. He opened another.

“Should I?”

“I mean you fucked the guy.

You might want to remember his name.” Skeet laughed.

“I fuck a lot of guys. Doesn’t mean shit to me.”

I didn’t believe her. I imagined she was good at sex. But I didn’t buy that she didn’t care. She sat down next to the fire. Its glow turned her redder in the face.

“He had to bounce. Looks like you ladies are stuck with me,” Skeet said.

I stepped toward Skeet.

“You got beers for us?” I asked. He handed me two. I opened one for Jones, walked it over to her. When she looked up at me then, I saw a snake in place of a dragon. She was shrunken.

Her arms rested on her knees, head hanging between. I shoved the beer toward her.

“Here,” I said.

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Feel sick.”

“Drink it.”

“Need something stronger.

Quick.”

“You’ll feel better if you drink it.”

“You got any cash?”

“Not shit.”

“Fuck.”

She put her head back down.

14.

I set the bottle beside her. Stood up to face the water. Venice was coming closer, her tide rising toward our fire.

“Let’s go,” I said to her. She didn’t move. Skeet’s jacket was still on the ground. I wanted to put it around her, to carry her out of there. I knew she needed something.

When I turned around, there was Skeet. Right in front of me, all up on me, not more than a foot away from my front. I stepped to the side to try to get around him. He moved with me.

“Come on, man.”

“Let’s dance, newcomer.

You are new around here, remember.

Fresh.”

“We’re all set.”

He moved toward me but I ducked back toward the jacket. I grabbed it and stood up. “Here,” I said, “take it.”

Skeet took the jacket and tossed it toward Jones. It landed in a ball at her backside. She stayed still.

Then, there was just me and him.

He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me toward him. He lifted one leg.

Wrapped it around my knees. Locked me in. He put his hand on the back of my head, lightly at first, pat, pat. Then stronger. He flattened my face into his chest. His palm was across my cheek, pushing, squeezing. He fisted my hair close to the scalp. Pulled back.

My face was pointed toward that lightbulb moon on a chain beyond the open holes of his nostrils, beyond the fire mirrored in his red eyes like a demon.

I felt her behind me. I knew she was there. Jones. I felt the coat around my shoulders. She had her hand over Skeet’s against my head.

She seemed to pry his fingers loose from my hair. He released. I fell back with my hand to my head. She took my place.

She moved her body against his. “No woman, no cry,” she sang while she tiptoed her fingers along his front,

up to his face. “No woman, no cry.”

Then she had her hands entwined with his, swaying, dancing. She pulled him closer. Turned away from him.

She was facing me when she bent at the knees, still holding onto him, rubbing her whole backside along the length of him, down his legs to his feet, she crouched, leaning back into him, then snaked her way back up again. She did not lose my eyes.

Jones reached forward.

Grabbed the bottle stuck in the sand from where she’d sat near the fire.

She held it by its neck. Crack. Bottle against a burning log. She turned to him then, arm up. He pulled his face from the bottle, busted at the bottom.

No cut needed. Just a threat. She dropped the glass in the sand. Then, she just looked at him, grinned and said, “There’s more than one way to fuck a man.”

Walking back to the Nova, I slipped my hands down the pocket of Skeet’s jacket. Pulled back, and there was his wallet. When I passed it to Jones, she took the cash out and tossed the empty thing at me, high enough to catch. I missed. Bent down to grab it from the ground. When I stood up, she grabbed my face, pulled my lips toward her, and landed a quick kiss. The kiss was for the cash, not for me, not really. Shit had little to do with me back then, but I’d take it. Skeet’s cash was enough for what came next. I tossed the rest of the wallet into the nearest bin, wiped my hands down the front of the coat, and threw it in.

I drove. She was getting sicker. “Take me to my alley, Bettie. I want to share with my new girl,” she said. Suddenly, I’d do anything just to be with her, to keep running. Jones’ dirty parts made me feel cleaner somehow. My left finger twitched. I tried to cover it up by picking at the hangnail of my thumb. Blood trickled from my knuckle to the knee of my Levi’s.

Nova - Emily Jon Tobias

“A couple blocks up, behind Pacific,” she said. “You down, Bettie?”

“I’m down,” I said. Without a doubt, I thought.

We chugged, rolled, slid in two blocks up the boardwalk.

Stopped, idled. Jones’ body hummed.

Jiggled gently. Dumpster-sided back alley business was so close I could spit at it.

Sun was on its way up. Beach light came off the ocean reflecting her face in the windshield. It was like seeing two faces of the same coin.

Pallid was the one I noticed first; she was getting sicker by the second. I used the tip of my finger to draw a star in the fog on the Nova’s inside windshield. Jones’ sour breath filled the car and my mouth watered like the pang of cotton candy dissolving.

“Best keep your hands on the wheel,” she said, tapping the wheel twice, deliberate. “You never know what can go down.” She rolled her eyes and grinned.

She cupped her left hand over my white-knuckled right. She brushed along the side of my face, ran her finger down toward my mouth, barely grazing my bottom lip.

“There he is,” Jones said.

“Wait for me.”

“I’ll keep my eye out,” I said.

Without a doubt, I thought.

She grabbed a wad of cash from her bag, and backed her butt out of the Nova, never breaking the stare between us. Jones shut the Nova’s door with a quiet smack. She swung her backside toward me, and sauntered, full-throttle toward the alley.

I could make out a figure leaning by the dumpster—a small hooded monster, thin and pointy. A dealer. He had her fix in his hand so, for now, he was safe. But only until she got it. My long shot from the Nova was enough to see he was terrified by the blissful, awful sight of her. Who

wouldn’t be?

I took one hand off the Nova’s wheel, flicked the stick to wipe salted sea fog from the windshield. A small scope, just enough clearing to catch them in my line of sight. I held the wheel tight.

A small clock on Jones’ dash read 5:45. I ripped off a hangnail from my pinky. Smelled Old Spice out of nowhere like back then when it’d ooze from his sweat-stained pits under each fat arm planted on either side of me. I bit the fleshy part of my palm until it looked like a clam shell had burrowed there. I could take the car. Leave Jones and go. I wasn’t born to burn like that, all ablaze and seen.

I wiped the star from the windshield.

Looked in the rearview, behind me.

Shit, I could’ve gone back, sure. I was scared to come out of hiding. I was scared of how good it felt to get found. But there was a flare inside me. A fire stronger than fear. Not back there, but within me. I looked ahead. I searched for Jones.

The dealer dangled a bag.

She stepped toward him. They were closest at their waists. Jones still had the cash balled in her hand. Ran her fist up his middle. He caved. She had him. But then he pulled his hips back.

Held the sack at the tip of her nose, carrot on a stick. He yanked back, grabbed her wrist. He held her face in one hand, squeezed her cheeks, put his mouth over hers. He pulled back still holding her puckered. He spat. She scrambled. He drew a small blade. He spun her around. Dragging his elbow wide, he cut her from jawline to hairline.

Jones fell bleeding at his feet.

He stood over her with powder and cash in one fist, the knife in the other.

He spit at her again, this time at the open wound on her face. Frozen in the car seat, I retched.

I sat straight, spine like a board. Yanking her bag to my lap, I dove in, rummaging fast. Empty-

handed on the first dive. Just a wad of crusty, unused Band-Aids and a rusted nail clipper. Fuck. Looked around the Nova for something, anything. I fingered the cracks down the seats, never mind if I came up with a needle. I broke into a sweat.

Wiped at my face. Finally, I spotted it. Must’ve fallen from her neck. That eagle talon hanging from its chain.

Venice swirled outside, but inside, the Nova was deadlocked, and I was still, hardly moving, barely breathing, and composed.

A brilliantly aimed sharpshooter. I breathed in and blew Venice’s grit from around the weapon’s edges, still dangling from its chunky chain.

I swallowed an iron mouthful, rusted and metallic, and armed myself. The claw’s steel spike jutted between my fisted knuckles. I thrust the driver’s door wide, left it hanging, and ran.

I ran hard. Caught up with him down the alley past where Jones lay cast off. Seemed he had forgotten the bloody mess he’d left lying there.

I swooped in behind him. Grabbing at his hood, I ripped down on him. I came from all sides, pierced him with the talon. I howled. Fanged his left ear and chomped, crunching on his lobe. His whine turned to a whimper.

I bit harder. He crumpled, slumped forward, cupped a hand over his ear.

But he did not scream.

“Who are you?” he said.

My chest heaved. He couldn’t fathom a warrior armed only with Jones’ adornment. He couldn’t know that I was loaded with her power, or how invisible I’d been before. That for her, I’d become fearless, like magic. I was ignited.

“Just go. Run,” I said. He scattered.

I ran to Jones fiercer than I had arrived. I saw her all sick and sordid and for a moment, hated her weakness, beaten as I used to be.

But even with a little hate mixed in, I loved Jones enough to wrap my

15.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 arms around her wasted waistline, and whisper, “You’re safe now.” I put one arm around her hips, heaved her other arm over my shoulder. Her blood dripped onto me. Her feet dragged as I carried her but, together, we made it back to the shelter of the Nova.

“We’re going to have to get that stitched up,” I said.

“No hospitals.”

“I will be with you. The whole time.”

She gave a nod like waving a white flag.

Early morning and already Venice had her chomp on people in line waiting to get fixed up at the nearest ER. Jones threaded her fingers through mine while we waited. By the time they came to get her, I didn’t know which hand was hers or which was mine. They led Jones to the examining room. I couldn’t stand to see her go. I looked around at the others, my head throbbing.

A man in the corner of the crowded room paced the border of the room alongside me. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief, undid the top button of his shirt. His doughy neck hung over his collar. His speed picked up as he rubbed the top of his balding head. He stuffed his thumbs into his waist and yanked up, hard, the flicker of his wedding band hit my eye. I rubbed my eyes. Was it him, the teacher? With his fat hand over mine, a ring finger dressed in gold, swiping virgin hair to the back of my ear, nudging his middle against my backside. I gripped the claw in my palm. The man talked to himself, louder, more frantic with each step as he closed in on me. He was coming forward, closer. My ears rang. I gripped harder, felt the claw slice into my palm. Clamped my eyelids down. I sucked in my breath, chest puffed. When I peeked through one eye, he had already walked past me. I turned. He sat next to a woman, holding her hand. Emergency room.

16.

Tragedy, right. I caught my breath like I’d been held down under. My hand was bleeding.

“I need a Band-Aid,” I said to the ER attendant. “And I need to see the woman I brought here. Is she almost done?”

“She’ll be out in a minute. Just sit down and wait.”

I sat on the other side of the waiting room. When Jones was released, I put my arms around her.

Outside, the Nova cushioned Jones as I got behind the wheel. Venice’s ebb and flow kept time as we sat silently, together. A parade of goosebumps clustered at my nape. One single tear swelled up in the dam of my left eye, and with it fell away an entire jungle of lizards, snakes, bugs and starving beasts—fear released from its cage, freed to find a home outside of me.

Jones turned to me, and with her crooked index finger, dabbed three stars across my forehead, then she dotted my nose at the end.

“There,” she hushed. “We’re safe now. Safe.” We would come to know each other’s faces many times over, Jones and me. Safety and fear, together. When she said, “I love you,” even then, I knew she didn’t mean it.

Even then, being needed was enough.

With her touch, my heart swelled up so big that its lock pried loose and burst open. She entered me again, and stayed. I was at the top of the mountain. All sand and sea and sky in one infinite moment.

Later, I would anguish most in those moments, moments in which I wished I could yet again save her. Jones was to become my punishment, my crime, my penance. She was my savior before I saved her.

I came back into myself with only one thing to do. I punched Nova down Speedway, never alone, forever reclaimed.

Russian Interference Destiny Cannon

A

t 1:30 in the afternoon on the day the President was acquitted, I received an email from one of my contacts at the VA. As is rarely the case in electronic correspondence these days, it was written in standard business letter format, with a clear and distinct salutation, body, complimentary close and signature. However, I couldn’t read it, because it was written in Russian.

Clicking “Forward,” I sent it to my boss, adding, “What fresh hell is this?” before pressing “Send.” I waited a few moments, then headed down the hall to her office.

I’m the Veterans’ Court Coordinator for Okaloosa County, Florida, a position I’ve held since 2015. Previously, I did a number of different things at various private companies and quasi-governmental offices. Right before landing this job, I worked as a headhunter for attorneys seeking expert witnesses for hire. I learned a ton about how the world turns, but in all other respects I hated that place.

We were always hired by the side with the deepest pockets.

When the two sides were Apple vs. Samsung, squabbling over a patent buried deep in their smart phones that might push a few billion in revenue in one direction or the other, it hardly mattered. But employment law cases were excruciating.

Casting around for other opportunities, I spotted the Veterans’ Court listing. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen it; apparently they had a lot of turnover. My background didn’t exactly make me a bullseye candidate. But by cobbling together various skills and experiences I’d acquired during my long and winding career path—plus a lot of keyword stuffing—I was able to write a plausible cover letter. I sent it off and then forgot about it. I send out a lot of applications. Most of the time nothing happens.

Two months passed, during which I continued working for the headhunting firm. Then one day I got a call from the office manager of Veterans’ Court. Was I still interested in the job?

Turns out Judge Harris was familiar with Bard,

17.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 the artsy-fartsy college in upstate New York where I did my B.A. And not only familiar with, but impressed by.

When their first round of interviews didn’t result in a hire, she went back through the resumes and fished me out of the slush pile.

Before the interview, I read

I think the program is great.

My only question is why it’s not offered to everyone. In my experience, other people also experience trauma, anxiety, stress, and addiction.

Lucky for me, Judge Harris feels the same way. I’ll always be in her debt for offering me the job. She

the hiring committee was willing to give it a go. She pretty much runs the show anyway.

What I brought to the job, in lieu of military experience, was extreme organization, attention to detail, social media savvy, marketing skills and an understanding of anxiety.

“Her appearance was very Middle America, and she had no discernible accent, but sometimes when she spoke her syntax was so peculiar, her word choices so strange, that she was like one of those Men in Black extraterrestrial characters, trying to fit in.” up on Veterans’ Courts. The first one was established in Buffalo in 2008. Currently, there are about five hundred nationwide. Florida has thirty-one. The program offers vets who commit crimes a chance at rehabilitation instead of incarceration. Participation is voluntary, and includes a twelve to eighteen-month case plan that might offer PTSD and TBI therapy, anger management training, domestic violence prevention classes or addiction treatment.

18.

was really taking a chance when she hired me. For one thing, because I’m not a veteran. It had always been an unspoken assumption the role would be filled by a vet—that was one of the principles of the Veterans’ Court, to surround the vet with people who understood their experience.

But the turnover rate for the job had been high—my three immediate predecessors, all veterans, each stayed for less than a year. So when Judge Harris said she wanted to try something different, the rest of

Armed with these tools, plus Judge Harris’s intelligence and work ethic, we soon had Veterans’ Court running like a Swiss watch. We had more veterans participating, and more of them were graduating. Everyone was pleased.

More clients meant more interactions with the VA. Each vet is assigned a VA case manager. They all have Master of Social Work degrees. They offer their clients some counseling, but their main job is to assess the client’s needs and then

Russian Interference - Destiny Cannon line up the appropriate services and classes. Once the client’s individual case plan is set up, they’re supposed to check in regularly and cheerlead.

Sort of like a life coach.

Each VA worker has a case load of up to thirty-five clients.

This seems reasonable to me, not much bigger than many American classrooms. Actually, when I started, their case loads were even smaller, but as we’ve grown the program, they’ve inched closer to capacity. Still, it seems manageable. How hard it is to make thirty-five phone calls a week?

Or 17.5 home visits (assuming you wanted to visit each client twice a month)? That is not an overwhelming work load.

But nonetheless…

But nonetheless, the case managers’ performance leaves something to be desired, imho. They don’t appear to have any tracking system whatsoever. How does an agency with a 220 billion dollar annual budget not offer its employees a functioning database? We use a very good community corrections software program. But if we didn’t, I would still find a way to track my clients. I’d make a spreadsheet if I had to do. But I’d do something.

But those VA case managers?

They don’t track anything. They ask the same questions over and over again, then never read the emails I write in response. And this inattentiveness isn’t just directed at me. The clients often tell me they can’t get a callback, either.

I don’t like to slag the employees at a sister agency. As far as I’m concerned, public sector workers have suffered forty years of abuse, most of it unwarranted. Almost all of my colleagues, here and elsewhere, have been smart, hardworking employees who maintained their integrity and did the right thing even in the face of a barrage of rudeness from the public.

But these VA case managers… the week before, when one of them was a no show for a crucial meeting, during which her client had a meltdown and had to be escorted from the building, I’d stormed into Judge Harris’s office.

“What is it?” I demanded. “What are they up to? Are they embezzling?

Are they using the VA Hospital script pads to stock up on Oxycontin?

Clearly, they’re not helping veterans, so it must be something else!”

Judge Harris shrugged.

“Partners,” she said pithily. What she meant is, it’s almost always a mistake to partner with another agency, especially one that has a higher public profile. It always turns out like those group projects from school, and we’re always the bookworm who does all the work.

So, when I received the email in Russian, it was like the punchline to a long joke. Finally, an explanation to what they were doing over there! It wasn’t about money, or drugs—they were Russian spies!

The case manager who’d sent the email, Valerie, was the most maddening of the bunch. Blonde, athletic-looking, scatterbrained.

Her appearance was very Middle America, and she had no discernible accent, but sometimes when she spoke her syntax was so peculiar, her word choices so strange, that she was like one of those Men in Black extraterrestrial characters, trying to fit in.

After forwarding the email, I headed down the hall to Judge Harris’s office so we could have a laugh about it together. But five steps out of my office, our receptionist, Jasmine Walker, stopped me. “The police are on the phone,” she said.

“They want to know whether we have security cameras outside the building.”

“What? Why?”

“They said the credit union across the street was just robbed.”

“You’re kidding!”

Instinctively I returned to my office, which has south-facing windows with a view of the credit union. Jasmine followed. The blinds were closed, but we peeked through.

It was quiet as chess over there. There was one black SUV parked along the curb that I thought might be an undercover cop. Other than that, nada.

“What the hell? Every cop in town should be there.”

“It’s weird,” Jasmine agreed.

“In any case, we don’t have any security cameras.”

“I’ll let them know.”

Jasmine returned to the receptionist desk, while I stayed at the window. It was an unseasonably warm winter day, seventy degrees, with a light breeze and sunny. I waited for the cops to descend upon the bank.

No one came. A wren hopped down the sidewalk.

My phone rang. “The police want to talk to you,” Jasmine said.

Perhaps sensing my hesitancy, someone else interjected over the receiver, “Ms. Cox, can you come out here for a moment? We just have a few questions.”

“You’re welcome to come in,” I offered.

“No, we need to keep an eye on things out here. But if this isn’t a good time...”

“No problem, I’ll be right out,” I said, and headed out to the parking lot, where there were no security cameras—and, as it turned out, no cops, either.

19.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

The Man in the Field L. A. Ricketts III

I

t seemed as good a place to die as any, the man thought. Under the lone oak tree in the open field, an acre clear in all directions.

Morning was coming. The dim grayish-blue glow in the sky began to show the dew-soaked grass landscape.

The field was mostly flat, save for the gentle hills rolling away from him to the east. He assumed that’s where they would come from. Over the hill and down the slope; where he would make his last stand.

He looked down, observing his wife’s shallow breaths as she slept next to him. He had managed to slow the bleeding, but the damage was done. He found himself hoping that she didn’t wake. There was no need for her to see what was coming. To endure the final scene, her survival instincts crying out to be saved. Only to be met with the unforgiving reality that the man had already accepted: their journey would end here, under this tree, in the not too distant future.

20.

The man was at peace with this. They had lived a decent life. He’d married the most beautiful girl in town right after school. He’d loved her every second of every day. They had a beautiful daughter, and then a son that was everything that he imagined a son to be and more.

What else could he ask for?

If he closed his eyes, he could see his son like it was yesterday. Eight years old, playing soccer. Jesus, was he fast! The fastest eight-year-old any of them had ever seen, and never got tired. Ever. The man held onto that memory for a moment longer. It gave him hope.

Reluctantly he opened his eyes, fearing that he would miss his pursuers’ descent from the ridge. The sky had brightened slightly in just those moments. He guessed it was roughly five in the morning. Soon it would be full light, and the darkness which sheltered them would wane; with it their chances of survival.

His wife stirred. He recognized his daughter’s name in her mumbling. The man once again prayed for

The Man in the Field - L.A. Ricketts III his wife to pass tranquilly in her sleep.

He saw his daughter’s face in his wife’s features. She was always the impetus of the family. The man knew when she was very young that the small town and simple life that he had built would not be enough to contain her. Not nearly enough. He started saving when she was just seven and their son was only two. Saving to get out, to have something better;

had. Of course, not in the way he set out. He’d hoped to be there to see her metamorphose. He planned to watch from afar, holding his wife’s hand. Life, as was its tendency, gave him something a bit short of this. But he’d kept his promise. She was out, she would meet her abnormally fast brother and the man would make his stand; with a full heart. All the siblings needed were each other, the

stich of makeup, she was beautiful.

Yet still, she paled in comparison to their daughter. The man’s daughter was absolutely breathtaking. At times awkwardly so, like a tiger swimming in the ocean. Her beauty was the outward manifestation of her spirit’s displacement in the environment which she was born. A beauty like hers belonged in Manhattan or Paris; Milan maybe. It was her beauty that

saving for a glimpse at something that resembled an opportunity. She made him feel uniquely inadequate and unprepared, the way only a young girl with big dreams can. As a father, he felt it was his duty to let her pursue her happiness. Pursue her right as a human being to chase her dreams, and it was his job to take her as close to them as he could.

Sitting there under that great tree he felt he had. At least to the best of his ability... with the cards he’d been dealt.

He promised his daughter he would get her out of the meager surroundings she’d inherited. Get her to someplace she could blossom. He

man told himself.

In the distance he heard engines rumbling. His pursuers were drawing closer, coming from the east as he expected. He glanced north, the direction in which, after a firm exchange and a hurried goodbye, the man had ordered his son to run. The son had about an hour head start. By himself, without dragging his dying mother, they would never catch him.

Not a chance.

The engine noise drew clearer. He glanced at his wife again, cursing her for fighting her inevitable demise. He took a moment to admire her. Even here, bleeding to death, without a shower for two days or a

god bestowed upon her as her curse.

Once of age, her friends always wanted to take her to the nearest city.

With his daughter in tow, they were treated like royalty. They would walk into any place without charge. Eat and drink all night without spending.

The man knew trouble would come, but what could he do? She was nearly twenty-one. He’d saved only enough to secure an exodus for three and, even with his son now working, it would take at least another year to scrape together enough for the coyote to take all four of them.

It wasn’t long before the wrong type of guy noticed her. In the areas around where the man lived,

“The consequences of being born in the wrong geography chased them.”

21.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 there were more “wrong types” of guys than right ones.

One night, she didn’t come home. The man checked her best friend’s house in the morning and found she, too, had not returned. He caught the next bus to the city, fighting the knot in his stomach that grew with every passing minute. The knot of his world crumbling; of him failing as a father.

It was not difficult to track where she’d been. Everyone who’d seen her had her beauty seared into their memory. It was even fairly easy to find her once he knew who’d taken her. There was a level of bad men that didn’t need to be discreet; a level that owned everyone and everything.

Anonymity was pointless at this level.

That night, he was brought to a warehouse. He guessed its use from the countless dogs he could hear as he approached. The space smelled of shit, cigarettes and blood. With the incessant barking of the fighting canines, he almost didn’t notice the two large cages in the middle of the area occupied by humans. The man rushed over. In the first cage, he saw the lifeless body of his daughter’s best friend. Clothes ripped off, face smashed, a pool of dried blood formed between her legs.

In the next cage was his daughter, a look of pure darkness in her slightly glazed over eyes. She saw him but was not really looking at him. Not really looking at anything from what the man could tell. More like she was watching a movie that was playing only for her; over and over. Her father tried not to think of what that film entailed.

She looked as if she’d fought most violently for a long time, judging by the swelling in her broken hands and her blood-stained fingernails. Her clothes were also ripped, but somehow still draped on her.

“I stopped them, Papa.” She muttered. More to herself than him.

The man looked at the corpse in the

22.

next cage and was doubtful she did truly stop them, but for now he was content with her being alive.

“Fine girl you have. Not like her friend, who had to be taught some manners.” The shrill voice cut through the air like a whip. The mongrels stopped their barking. “I’ll pay you handsomely for her... she will be mine only. Not for my men like her friend,” the evil man said. Routinely, the money was presented immediately by one of the workers. More than he had saved in the thirteen years since he’d started.

“You won’t want to do that, sir.” The man started, “Due to her boyfriend.”

The evil man let out a fullthroated laugh. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Some of the dogs whimpered.

“You think I’m afraid of her boyfriend?”

“No, no,” the man replied. “I think you need her boyfriend... H-he’s a customs agent, in the booth.” The man stated flatly, never breaking eye contact. “She can drive anything across... he will wave her through. A useful connection for a man of such varying business interests as yourself.”

The evil man paused for several moments. He studied him; like a bug crushed but still moving.

“And if you’re lying or she fails?” the evil man demanded.

It was the father’s turn to laugh.

“She knows what would happen to her mother, her brother, me... She’s seen it,” the man said as he gestured to the body of the best friend.

The evil man battled shortly between his desires to possess the young beauty and the obvious financial gain of a free pass through the border. In the end, the money won. Always did.

Father and daughter rode the bus back home in silence. Quietly acknowledging what the man and his lie had done. He’d put his whole family

up as collateral for her performing a task she had no chance of completing.

When their small town was on the horizon, the man broke his silence to explain to her a plan. A plan that for all its good intentions, simply led him here. To this field; to this fate.

Once the daughter’s face had healed, the visit came. A slim-looking individual with a car loaded with hundreds of pounds of drugs and papers to get her across. She did exactly what her father told her, ditching the car on the side of the road half a mile out from the border and walking across using the papers they provided.

It didn’t take long for goons to show up at the man’s house looking for his family. They found the house deserted.

That same morning, with his daughter already across the border, the man and his savings had gone. The savings, which was enough money to pay the coyote for three.

He hoped that he would be out of cell phone range by the time the evil man thought to call all the local smugglers. No such luck existed where he was from.

His heart sank to his knees when he heard the coyote’s phone ringing. Once again, the man’s choices were none.

The smuggler took his last breath amongst the tall grass on the path to more. The coyote was far from alone as he died. Rather, he was simply another body, in the valley between nowhere and somewhere.

On foot, without a guide, the evil man’s goons closed in swiftly. They tracked the entire group for more than a day, scattering them into a blind dash for freedom. The consequences of being born in the wrong geography chased them. The sounds from the Jeeps and ATV engines ever-present in the background. Until suddenly they just stopped, and a lone metal sign attached to a wooden post declared to them that they had traveled into a

The Man in the Field - L.A. Ricketts III world that was the antithesis of the one they’d left. A world where you could make your own destiny. At least that’s what the man believed.

It was a belief he held for an ignorantly blissful thirty minutes while the man walked with his wife and boy the sun beginning to set to their left. A belief that was ripped from him in the same moment a shot tore through one of his fellow freedom seekers some forty yards away.

The migrants had picked up new pursuers. “Minutemen,” they called themselves. The man had heard of them, but assumed it was a myth. Why would any ordinary citizen take the time to hunt his wife and child?

The man watched from a hiding place as they rounded up or shot the others. What struck him as odd was how similar the group he had escaped from and the new group he avoided were. Even down to the all-terrain vehicles they drove. Where the man was from, evil hunted and killed for money or power; control.

These new pursuers did it for sport.

The man could not decide which one was more frightening, which one was more inhumane.

His family managed to slip away with the help of the night, but it was not without cost. He glanced at his wife again. All night, he’d been filled with the memory of the one who shot her: soaked glow from the headlights of the ATVs, wearing a black helmet with a light-colored shirt. On the shirt he saw an oddlooking flag, one he was unfamiliar with.

Fortune had given them more time, allowed them to escape.

Permitted the man and his son to drag his wife to this tree. A beautiful place for her to rest and for him to accept his lot in life.

At last, the man caught sight

of the inevitable. Headlights paused at the top of the hill. The man stayed motionless, watching them swivel their heads on craned necks until eventually one pointed in the direction of the tree; his great oak.

The rider with the strange flag was the first to hone in. The man could see the shirt clearly now. It was a red square that made the flag, blue strips with white stars within going diagonally from corner to corner forming an “X” in the center.

The man was pleased when the strange flag rider accelerated first; leading the pack. In this land of justice, perhaps a sliver was there for him.

Without the hill muffling the sounds, the engine noises grew louder. The man’s wife began to stir.

He kissed her lips, then put the gun to her temple and pulled the trigger.

“Vaya con dios, mi amor,” he uttered. “Contigo pronto.” The bark of the tree exploded over his head from a bullet. The man scrambled to the other side of the oak to take cover.

His back against the rough trunk, he listened to the engines grow louder.

He closed his eyes and took slow, deep breaths to steady himself.

A vision played in the darkness behind his lids. Before him, his unusually fast son was running into his sister’s arms. They would know what to do; he’d gone over it.

He took another breath as the engines grew louder. The vision skipped forward. Both of his children had spouses now; and kids. Oh far too many kids! The man smiled, one was even named after him. The man opened his eyes, still smiling; assured what he saw was their fate. He basked in the success of his life. As short as it was rewarding. Only one thing left.

The man quickly jumped out from behind the great tree.

Positioning himself on one knee, he lined up his sights. This seemed to

surprise the pursuer with the peculiar flag. The rider hesitated for a second, but a second was all the man needed.

He took aim right at the intersection of the “X” in the flag on his shirt and squeezed the trigger.

23.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Split sleazy b

J

ake sat across from me picking at his fries. In the window to my side, I watched the city go.

“This shit’s soggy as fuck,” he gestured at his fries, “let’s get the fuck out of here.” We left twenty bucks on the table.

Outside there were yellow and red lights, and cars going by. We went down Broadway heading up toward 96th, eyeing everybody around us. Jake was making an ass of himself: he grinned at everyone, walked by and leered at the girls and took up about as much space on the sidewalk as he could.

We buzzed into the apartment on 96th and when we rolled in, the party was going strong. Micah came over and dapped us up and before he was even done, Jake was fishing a beer out of the sink and I was lining a shot up for the three of us. Micah was pretty toasted as far as I could tell, and he pulled a j out his shirt pocket and lit it and took a hit, then he took the shot I’d poured for him and took another hit of his joint and passed it to me.

I didn’t know whose place it was—Micah had in

24.

vited us, but Jake knew a bunch of people there. I didn’t know anybody but Micah and Jake. I was a little disappointed. There was, at that time in my life, a class of people I’d only see at parties, people whose names I’d always confuse: Charlie, Will, Sae. But every time I saw one of these kids, I’d lose my shit and they’d lose their shit and we’d have a good time together. We’d exchange numbers and all that but never get in touch with one another, and that’s how I liked it. To be honest, I had enough friends.

Jake was rolling a blunt. He pulled a dub out of his pocket and broke it up on the counter, then he pulled out a pack of dutches. He took one out and split it down the middle perfectly with his thumbs and let all the guts slide out, then he packed it and started slobbering all over the thing before wrapping it up. Finally, he pulled out a lighter and dried the thing from all his spit.

While Jake was rolling, Micah and I were passing the joint around and sipping on beers and a girl came over who Jake had been hooking up with a bit. Music was going loud in the place: Kendrick or whatever the fuck, rapping about getting drunk and high. “He’s rapping about

Split - sleazy b us,” was probably what everyone was thinking. “We’re so fucking cool.” We were so fucking cool, for what it was worth. At that time, I must have been seventeen and there was nothing in the world I wanted more than to be cool.

I listened to The Strokes a lot back then and kinda dressed like a hipster from a few years before: tight black jeans and Chucks and t-shirts and that. I smoked a lot and didn’t do my homework. But it’s not like I did anything after school: I’d just wander around the city. Sometimes I’d crew up or whatever, but most of the time I was just on my own. And I’d hit up all sorts of record stores and shit and never buy anything. I was running from something I think... even now, I don’t know what.

But here’s the thing: the whole time I was going about the city, I felt like I was looking for something, too. Something bigger than me, something larger than all the world.

In a word, I was looking for magic.

And so I would stop and talk to birds, and I’d listen to the clouds, and I’d pray in my own way. None of my friends knew I spent my time like this, of course. But I’d kinda drop hints here and there. “Jake,” I’d say, “I can hear the voice of God tonight!” And I’d kinda make out like I was joking around and that. But, truly, sometimes I thought I could.

That night, there was a humming all around me like the whirring of a power line. I chalked it up to the booze and the pot, because who wouldn’t? And throughout the night, there was this one girl, and whenever I made eyes at her the humming would get so loud. And it was warm too, you know? So I finally went over and talked to her. Her name was Felicia.

Now Felicia looked about the same as any other prep school girl.

Tight tank top and a fresh tattoo.

Real big tits. So I leaned against the wall next to her and I asked her if she wanted a hit of my joint. The thing about it is that, at the time, that was kinda my move. First: it made me look kinda cool. Second: nobody wanted to say no ‘cause then they wouldn’t be cool. Third: a girl taking a hit of my j kinda meant she owed me something, at least a bit of attention.

Felicia was a senior at a school on the Upper East Side. She was gonna go to NYU, and I kinda giggled a bit when she said that ‘cause of course she was. And she was gonna study theater. I didn’t say a thing.

I was a junior but I told her I was a senior and I looked old enough for it, I guess. Felicia asked me where I was going to school when I graduated and I said I wasn’t. I told her I was gonna travel for some time. That turned out to be true in the long run but I hadn’t a clue in that moment.

I was leaning in on this girl.

We’d been talking a while and I was about ready to make my move when somebody bumped into me, hard.

I turned and I told the kid to watch what the fuck he was doing and he was just some scrawny motherfucker.

But he got in my face about it. Felicia said, “Max chill the fuck out. What’s your problem?” And I put it together pretty fast: that this guy probably didn’t like my moving in on his territory or whatever. So I backed off a bit, just to show the girl how chivalrous I was. I mean I was kinda itching for a fight but I’d rather have gotten laid of course. But then Jake came up on him too.

Usually you’re at a party and you got a crew with you, so any sort of altercation turns into a bit of a brawl.

This kid was there on his own though.

Probably hadn’t even been invited to be honest; he didn’t look like the type to be going to parties. A nerd, basically. But when Jake shoved him, that humming I was talking about

stopped completely. And Jake stood over him and just started wailing on the kid. Felicia tried to pull him off but I kinda got between them, knowing it wasn’t such a good idea to put hands on Jake when he was like that.

Obviously, a whole bunch of kids had gathered around the thing and were watching and kinda cheering it on. Honestly, all I had on my mind at the time was to hook up with this girl. Jake finally calmed down a bit and took the kid and bodily tossed him from the apartment. He yelled some words after him, not nice words. And that was pretty much the end of it. The night continued like more or less nothing had happened except Felicia was really not into me anymore. She was just agitated. She dipped only a little while later and I got pissed at Jake and told him to chill the fuck out.

But it was all cool—I chilled out and Jake chilled out—and we proceeded to get fucked up out of our minds. A fight puts me in a good mood and even though I wasn’t getting any, I was still pretty hype. Micah started a cypher with some kids and we were all circled up, stoned out of our minds and yipping as they rapped. That’s the memory that most stands out to me: us all in a circle with some big white kid rapping his ass off as Jake and I shared another joint.

Around 3:30, the three of us—Micah, Jake and I—were around the corner on Broadway smoking squares and laughing about whatever the fuck, I don’t even know. And that wimpy kid that Jake beat the shit out of comes out of nowhere and just decks Jake right in the back of the head. Like really out of nowhere.

Jake fell over, but he’s a big guy and pretty tough and he got the fuck up and was about to pounce on this kid.

I was getting ready to pull him off after he’d got a few punches in ‘cause I knew Jake could get carried away

25.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 with that kinda shit and I was sure he’d be pissed as all hell after getting sucker punched like that. But Jake just stood there kind of shaking. And that wimpy kid was staring at him so fuckin’ intense.

He kept standing there, and the skin peeled back along his fingers and the bones of them curled up along with the skin. And then the arms bent back into him and his body and his legs too, and it all kinda crushed together, and for a while he was just a ball of flesh floating there in the air, no bigger than a soccer ball.

And Micah and I stood and watched and did not understand.

We stood like that for what now feels like twenty minutes, but was probably more like twenty seconds.

And then Jake, such as he was, fell to the floor and the wimpy kid took off, not that we were paying attention to him. I was just staring at this ball of skin and bone—like literal skin and bone and blood and everything—that had been my friend a minute ago.

“What the fuck,” I said to Micah.

“What the actual fuck?”

To Micah’s credit, he kept some of his wits about him. He grabbed me and said we had to get the fuck out of there and we did. We ran downtown to Micah’s parents’ place on Riverside. We ran like some scared little kids. I puked my guts out when we finally stopped running, emptied everything in me onto the street. And across from me were the trees of the park, and the highway beyond them and the river beyond that. I vomited and I cried and I retched out slick bile from my insides. I watched the trees and the lights against the trees, and I cried like a child at what I’d seen.

I dunno how I got home, and I would not leave my room the entire next day. But at school, I finally saw Micah again. I went up to him by his locker and stood for a moment until he acknowledged me. But he couldn’t

26.

look at me. “We gotta do something,” I said. “What’re we gonna do?” He turned to me finally, but he couldn’t look me in the eye.

“What the fuck do you expect us to do exactly, what even happened dude?”

I smiled. “That kid killed Jake. I dunno how, but he did. And I’m telling you, I’m gonna pay that punk back. I swear. You in?”

Micah was finally looking at me, but he was looking at me like I was crazy or something.

“Dude you’re saying this kid’s got like psychic powers or whatever and you’re trying to what? To jump him?”

“Na,” I said. “I’m gonna kill his ass.”

Micah shut his locker and walked away.

I was serious about it, too.

You’ve gotta understand, I was seventeen and I had this idea of honor and, to me, this was what had to happen. Someone had killed my friend. I was gonna put whoever did it in the ground. It was that simple.

And I had that girl’s number.

The first thing was to find out who this kid was and I knew she’d know.

I drafted a text in my head for like a half hour.

Hey it’s me from the party, sorry shit went down like that with your friend.

You free this week?

She got back to me like right away which was a good sign. She apologized for the kid starting shit at the party and said she’d be down to do something Wednesday.

So that was that. I was on my way. I went to the gym that day for the first time in forever and just benched ‘cause I didn’t know what I was doing. Next day, my arms were in so much pain I could hardly move them. Micah asked me what was going on with my arms and I told him. He said he’d show me around

the gym after school; he was on the basketball team and was down there a lot.

I found myself thinking about the girl from the party all the time. I was plotting how to get some and still get the info I was looking for.

Kinda silly I know, but like I said, I was seventeen. Besides, this whole thing was exciting to me. I mean, it was just settling in what I’d seen. And even though it was terrible, the fact that there was something out there beyond what little I’d experienced— something that had a touch of magic to it—made this whole endeavor feel sort of incredible. I mean in the literal sense of the word—unbelievable—I couldn’t really believe that something like this was happening to me. And I was eager for revenge on this fucking twerp. Had he been playing by the rules he would have gotten his ass kicked and that would be that. But he was special in this way. He didn’t have to play by the rules as far as I could tell.

I wanted what he had.

Honestly, I spent a bunch of time trying to move shit with my mind that week. Trying to move pencils and shit on my desk. Of course nothing happened, but sometimes I imagined I saw something move just a little.

In any case, Wednesday rolled around. Micah had been avoiding me all week. Like we’d hit the gym together and he’d dip. That was something I’d have to figure out.

In the meantime, I had Felicia to get together with.

I met her out front of her school, hoping I’d catch the kid. “The Kid”—I still didn’t know his name or anything about him. I assumed he went to school with Felicia, but who knows? And did I really wanna see him? Maybe he’d catch me and squash my head or tear me apart or whatever. I was thinking he wouldn’t try shit in front of everyone, but

Split - sleazy b looking back that wasn’t such a smart gamble. It was fine though.

Felicia and I jumped on the subway and headed downtown to this Mexican joint I knew in the Village that didn’t card. Didn’t talk much on

At some point there was a lull in the conversation though. “I’m sorry my friend tried to pick a fight with you,” she said. And my brain switched from this foggy, semi-drunk, semi-functional mess into something

like this. To be honest I don’t go out too much.”

I smirked; I’d only really started going out that year but I guess I’d really gone at it. “You like it?”

She took a sip from her beer

“I felt something about the way in which I was deceiving her. I felt powerful. I never knew how powerful one could feel in dishonesty. And I imagined the power the kid must feel to be able to hurt people like he could...” the train, but made a lot of eyes at each other. I made jokes about the ads above the seats, made jokes about the passengers, made jokes about the shitty MTA and all that. I realized I was putting on my best performance.

I was kinda surprised; I looked at this girl and wondered what was going on.

When we got to the spot, we sat down and got some tacos and beer. Corona, I remember. I asked her what school was like. I asked her about her work with theater shit. And she was into it. And I was into it. We were having a good time.

a little more focused.

“Yeah, it’s no problem. I’m sorry Jake got carried away with him.” I kind of choked on saying Jake’s name. “In any case,” I said, “the kid seemed to have a thing for you,” and I glanced up from my beer.

She looked away a moment, then smiled. “Yeah I shouldn’t have invited him. I kinda knew he had a thing for me. We did model UN together. He’s kind of a weirdo, you know?”

I laughed a little. “He seemed it, no doubt.”

“I’ve never been to a place

and kinda bobbed her head. “Yeah,” she said. And she smiled, and I smiled back. The truth is, for everything, I’d never had a girlfriend. And inside of me I was still a total romantic. I realize now I oughta have played the whole thing a little different. At least, I could have been more focused.

We got on real well, Felicia and I. We drank a bunch of beers and we talked; not about anything particularly interesting, just school and shit. But she was into me, and I was into her being into me. She had that look in her eyes: kinda shiny, if you know what I mean. And I was

27.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 getting drunk and all that. Plus, I’d made a plan in my head that would let me get at this kid without even letting on I was trying.

So yeah, we had a good time and stayed out later maybe than we should have. And afterward made out on the street against the outside of the bar. My head was spinning when we broke apart—she got in a cab and headed home and I watched as the car drove away.

That night, I walked home through the city. I felt now that the city was full of that magic I’d been searching for, but it had taken on a new light—something sinister. In every alley, I saw Jake being murdered: everywhere I went I imagined violence; the light of the moon shone through the clouds above me and I watched it as I went. My feet were sore and I was covered in a thin layer of sweat by the time I got home. I rolled a joint and lay on my bed in the dark, lying in the thin light of the moon coming through the window.

I woke up for school the next day early, tired but not hungover.

Micah had texted me, asking to talk.

Everything was coming together for me.

In class, I doodled and imagined what I’d do to Felicia’s friend. We were texting throughout the day: inane shit, you know. And I felt something about the way in which I was deceiving her. I felt powerful. I never knew how powerful one could feel in dishonesty. And I imagined the power the kid must feel to be able to hurt people like he could, to be able to threaten them with nothing but himself. I’d been in a few fights in my life—gotten jumped or whatever— and losing a fight was about the worst thing that’d ever happened to me.

Maybe it was even worse than losing a friend. I mean I liked Jake, but I realize now that he’d been something of a friend of convenience, as perhaps all friends are at that age. We hadn’t had

28.

too much in common other than that we liked getting fucked up.

I met Micah by the basketball courts on 96th. He was wearing a ragged-looking black tank top for some B-class basketball team I’d never heard of. The painted-on logo of a basketball exploding through a backboard was flaking away; his red cap was on backwards and sweat was working its way through it—he’d been running drills. I watched him for a minute through the fence as he dribbled up and down the court, making lay-ups at each end. I entered the cage.

When Micah noticed me, he stopped dribbling and held the ball to his side, resting it on his hip. I smiled at him and dapped him up; he was sweaty all over but I didn’t care too much. We walked over to some benches inside the fencing around the court.

He was having trouble looking me in the eye again. I pulled a pint of whiskey out of my backpack and passed it to him. He looked at me a minute, then took a sip.

“I’m sorry,” he said. I put my hand on his shoulder and smiled.

“Don’t worry my guy, we’re gonna get this fucker.”

Micah sat there and took another pull from the whiskey. He turned to me and said, “You’re fuckin’ right.” I grinned big.

“What made you change your mind?” I asked.

“I haven’t slept since it happened, you know, not really. I keep thinking that sonofabitch is gonna find me and do to me what he did to Jake.

I walk down the street and I’m looking over my shoulder all the time. I guess the way he ran away, he probably hasn’t got coming after us on his mind, but still. Ain’t anybody ever gonna make me scared like that. If he’s gotta get got to get him off my mind...”

And Micah turned to me and looked in my eyes and smiled. I took the whiskey from him and took a big

drag.

“I got a line on the kid,” I assured. “The girl from that night’s gotta have his number in her phone.

I’m gonna get at it.”

Micah nodded his head and held out his fist for me to bump.“I got you on this, whatever you need.”

I looked up at the sky. Clouds were coming on: it felt like it was gonna rain. “Fuck it,” I said, “let’s cop a dub and chill. There’s plenty of time for this sinister shit.”

He texted his guy and we picked up, then headed west toward the park. The wind kept intensifying and the spliff kept blowing out as we walked; a drop or two hit us through the leaves. I kept tensing my muscles and letting them loose. I was ready.

The cold air made me feel good as my head got light from the tobacco. We walked through the park and I split off on Central Park West.

Instead of going home, I walked north. It was about 6:30 and my legs were itching, I could see the city before me and I wanted it all to be mine. I went back to where the party had been and I searched the sidewalk, looking for some sign of what had happened, but there was nothing. I looked up at the building where the party had been and I thought I was looking at the window of the place, but who knows? It started to rain and I found shelter in the lee of a building entrance. I lit a cigarette. I stood there as the sun went away and the streetlights came on. I stood there and watched the light reflect off the streets, slick with rain. I stood there till I ran out of cigarettes.

When I got home, the place was empty and all the lights were off.

The rain made a nice noise on the windows and I sat in the kitchen for a bit. I was soaked through, and cold, so I stripped naked. I took the bundle of wet clothes to my room and dumped it into the hamper. Then I lay in bed naked and shivering with the shades

Split - sleazy b up and the sounds of the city coming in through the window, and my phone playing music real low.

I woke up the next day under the covers. Felicia had texted me a few times the night before and I texted back saying I was gonna dip out on school and asking if she wanted to hang.

I jumped on a train headed down to Union Square. The train was full of people headed to work and a cluster of college kids by the door.

I put in my headphones and leaned back.

When I got to Union Square, Felicia still wasn’t there so I sat myself on the steps toward the south side of the park. It was the usual scene: kids skateboarding, tourists congregating, people who should have had jobs loafing. I pulled out a cigarette and started huffing away at it. It was a hot day and I was feeling a little out of sorts. In fact, I had started sweating a little—I mopped my forehead with my hand. Felicia came up to me without my noticing her and stood looking at me with a frown on her face.

“What’s up?” I asked, turning toward her.

She kept staring at me for a second. “Not much, you look like you’re not doing too great,” she said.

I smiled a little and took a drag of my cigarette.

I stood up and said, “You’re right, I feel like shit.” And I did, I felt kinda hot and cold at the same time, like I was overheating or something.

We went into the movie theater nearby and got some tickets for some shitty comedy. It had to do with a kid just out of college whose parents died and left him a bunch of money. And most of it was just him riding around on jet skis and chasing after girls and shit. They kinda glossed over the fact that his parents died and the whole time I was cracking up ‘cause what a weird fucking thing. Felicia pushed up against me a little and we made out

some, but I wasn’t really feeling it. As soon as she’d reminded me she was there I started thinking about the kid.

So when we got out I tried to bring him up real sly. “I was thinking about that kid from the other night,” I said. She laughed and asked if I was jealous. “Sure,” I offered, “maybe a little.”

“I wouldn’t worry about him, I only invited him to that party cause he asked me what I was doing that weekend.”

“You know him pretty well?” I asked.

“Kinda,” she said. “We grew up together. We used to be really close actually.”

“What’s his name?”

“Max. Max Harsher.”

I smiled. Max Harsher. I’d kill him. I knew it inside of me, I’d kill him. “He seemed kinda tweaked out,” I said, turning to Felicia. “What’s his deal?”

She sat down next to me on the steps. “I dunno, he got kinda weird in middle school. Like he stopped hanging out with kids. I guess he got picked on a bunch is what happened.

And he kinda started avoiding everyone. Spent a lot of time alone.”

I nodded and took a drag of my cigarette. It tasted sweet. “I get that,” I said, “that shit happens. I went through some of that myself.”

“I think he has a big crush on me actually. I mean I’m pretty sure.

Maybe I shouldn’t have invited him to the party. I’m sorry.”

I put my arm around her shoulder. “No worries, it’s not your fault. Not anybody’s fault.” Flashing before my eyes, I saw Jake’s head splitting open.

We went to the bookstore down the street. We hung out for a while making fun of the covers and that, just kinda joking around. I stared at the hipster chicks most of the time...

I wasn’t that interested in books, to be honest—I’d never been much of a

reader. We went upstairs and Felicia freaked out over finding some old copy of a book she’d read as a kid. It was about dragons and that kind of thing, she was telling me. And about a girl finding dragons in Central Park. She described to me a scene in which the main character is walking on The Great Lawn all in fog. And there in the fog were the dragons with which the main character held conference, stalking silently through it. I thought to myself I was like one of those dragons, and Max was too; each of us stalking through the fog. And I was searching in it for him, certain to find him by his scent. Meanwhile he was looking for this girl standing next to me.

Micah texted me while we were there asking what was up. I texted him back saying I was hanging with the girl and that we should meet up later. Felicia asked me who I was talking to. “One of my friends from the other night. You should meet him.” She smiled real big—I could tell she was thinking this was like a step toward something.

We left the store and walked west on 14th to grab some food. We stopped in at a diner—it had gaudy lights all on the front: The City Diner.

It was kinda playing on the 50s style diner thing but everything seemed new enough that it must have been built in the past decade. The menu was a thick binder with each page of it laminated, sections like “Health Lifestyle” and “Tasty Pasta.” I ordered an omelet with tomato and feta—my favorite— and Felicia got a burger, of which she ate maybe half. I picked at the fries on her plate. She was telling me about her classes; she was worried about a test coming up. I was distracted all the time, thinking about the kid, Max.

Max had found what I was looking for and I wanted to know what it was that made him so special. Why had he found what I’d spent all that time searching for down every street of the city. What did it feel like? What

29.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 was it? Where could I find it? And the only answer I had was him.

I smiled at Felicia. She asked me what I was doing Sunday. Sure we could hang at hers.

That night I lay in bed again, smoking a spliff with the window open.

It was cold and I let the cold air wash over me. I was listening to music and I lay there not thinking about anything.

My arm was under my head and I could hear the sound of sirens coming in through the window, reflected back at me from the building across the way. I didn’t have any lights on, but the light of the city reflected off the sky illuminated my room. In my bed, in the cold air and the cold light of the city, the edges of everything were rough and frayed.

I told Micah the next day.

I told him where she lived and to be ready. He looked at me and I could see in his face he didn’t want to do it, but the words came out his mouth the other way. “I got you on this,” he said.

It was Friday. I hung out in Central Park after school smoking cigarettes and watching the passersby. I bailed on everything going on that weekend.

I wandered the city all day, sweating in the sun. Saturday night I went into a bar in Alphabet City and drank in the corner just staring at my phone, texting with Felicia. At one point, I was talking to an old-timer at the bar who was there on his own as well. He’d lived in Stuy Town his whole life—his family was dead, he’d never married— and now he didn’t do much but clock in at some government job and drink.

Waiting to die, I thought, trying to hold his gaze.

“I never been in love,” I told him. I puked my guts out on the street and passed out when I got home.

I slept through most of Sunday. That night, I went by her place. When I got there, she practically jumped me. When we made it to the couch she went and grabbed a bottle of her parents’ whiskey and I pulled

30.

out the j and we made out and talked and drank until we were off our asses.

Her parents’ apartment was gorgeous, no two ways about it. Very tasteful. We made our way to her room and fucked and she fell asleep lying with half her body on top of me. About a half hour later, I texted Micah to head over.

Then I grabbed her phone and found Max’s contact info. I texted him asking what he was doing and he got right back to me. In the half-conscious, halflight of that room, I smiled and went to get some water to clear my head, then I lay down again next to Felicia, trying not to fall asleep. I met Micah at the door. He’d gotten a gun from who knows where and I told him to tuck it. I led him into Felicia’s room, motioning with my hand to keep quiet. She was snoring lightly and was kind of curled up, like a kid. Max texted her phone.

“Door’s open, come on in,” I replied.

I told Micah the kid was here and he got the gun out. I stood next to the door by the foot of the bed. We could hear someone walking around.

Max came in and there was Micah holding the gun. And he went to raise it but froze and I could see Max staring at him just the same way he’d stared at Jake. And I jumped into him. As I tackled him, he turned toward me and I felt my skin scream as I caught fire.

But I did not waver. The fire all about me felt like ice, like I was dropped in a frozen lake and it hurt like nothing else and I screamed. I saw Max’s eyes —a cold, pale blue. I took the knife in my right hand and I drove it over and over again into the kid’s stomach as my skin began to char. There was a moment of clarity as the knife went into him. There was a moment I could see something. I do not know what.

There was a moment that never came again for me as I kept jamming the knife in and out of the kid’s stomach.

The blood on my hand was steaming and I took the knife and I drove it up into Max’s throat and tore it to the

side. Blood spurted out and caught fire in the air and then it was done. The fire disappeared, but I still felt it on me, writhing. And I lay there a moment just whimpering a little and letting the scream burn itself out.

Micah was crumpled in the corner and I could finally hear Felicia screaming at the top of her lungs. I stood up with smoke coming off me and I pulled Micah from the ground.

He wiped at the blood coming from his scalp and leaned on me. We stood there a moment, me looking at him, him staring at Max laying there on the ground in a pool of blood soaking into the burnt carpeting. Felicia was quiet, hunched up in the corner on her bed, staring into the middle distance. Her mascara ran down her face and she was trembling a little. She looked up at me and I smiled. Then Micah shot her.

The sound of the gun going off didn’t shake me at all. It all felt so normal.

I didn’t even blink. Felicia slumped over and I listened in the quiet for something. There was only a sick bubbling coming from Max’s throat. I knelt by him and I looked at his thin face, already going pale. I stared at the body a moment and then walked into the bathroom to wash my hands off.

The skin on my right hand about where the thumb met it was curled up and red and there was a part of it, where the blood was thickest, that was burnt black. I ran cold water over it and took soap and washed off my forearm. I came out of the bathroom and grabbed Micah by the arm and we dipped. From the hallway, we went into the back stairwell and finally exited onto First Avenue. I took my last two cigarettes out of my pack and looked at Micah, and held one out for him. He looked back at me. Then he turned and headed off uptown without saying a thing. I went the other way.

I ended up in a little park at the end of Sutton Place and I posted up on a bench looking out over the river.

I had a little spliff in my now empty

Split - sleazy b pack of cigarettes and I pulled it out, more to have something to smoke than anything. I lit it and sat there, staring at Brooklyn, and I listened. I tried to feel something, but there was nothing. I sat there a long time into the night. But I didn’t feel anything.

31.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Bad Astronauts Jacques Debrot

T

he chimpanzee wasn’t adapting well to life on the lunar space station. After she’d scrawled an engorged phallus on the Cold Atom Laboratory Module’s shiny white wall for the third time in seventeen-and-a-half orbits, Conrad, the Station Commander, was seeing red.

“We’ve got to do something about Peanut,” he fumed, bobbing slowly up and down on the ceiling. A tube of the astro-ape’s lip gloss wobbled past his head.

Siddhartha nodded in apparent agreement, but he was having a difficult time keeping it together himself.

His space nausea had sunk its fangs into him again. It was humbling. With all his experience of space travel, Sid had come to believe that he was immune to the disagreeable side effects of zero gravity. “I’ll talk to her,” he assured Conrad half-heartedly before levitating with some urgency to the space toilet. *** The Watchtower 3, the small crew’s home away

32.

from from home for the next ten months, measured five hundred feet from end to end. The living quarters—including the cooking, sleeping, and personal hygiene facilities—was entirely contained within the donut-shaped one hundred and seventy-foot cylinder of the space station’s titanium pressure hull. There was a gym with treadmills and advanced resistive exercise devices located in the afterdeck, a media module, and an inflatable activity assemblage to lodge visiting space crews. In the event of an emergency, an escape rocket was anchored to the spaceport dome by a pressurized docking tunnel. Given the space station’s relatively confined size, however, it wasn’t surprising that nerves were already frayed.

By now, Sid and Conrad had known each other for forever, it felt like, having first met as callow trainees at the Ross Perot University of Advanced Space Studies in Houston. It was Conrad who’d first introduced Sid to his future wife. A long-time bachelor, Conrad had quickly made a habit of dropping in unannounced at Sid and Nancy’s cozy ranch house wearing only a pair of tight swim briefs and bearing a bottle of jug wine.

Bad Astronauts - Jacques Debrot

“Darling, we were just talking about you,” Nancy giggled after Sid had discovered the two of them lounging around the backyard pool just forty-two hours before the Watchtower blast off. “Your ears must be burning.

Isn’t that true, Conrad?”

“I wonder what it is that Nancy sees in you,” Conrad said, smiling amiably. “I don’t get it.” Still dripping wet from the swimming pool, he wrapped a towel around his broad, furry shoulders and plopped down on a wicker lounge chair beside Sid’s wife.

“Why the long face, sport?” he asked Sid. “Don’t tell me you poindexters in AstroIT are still dicking around with the pulsed plasma thrusters?” He winked at Nancy. From the evidence scattered about the red brick patio, the two were well into their second bottle of Chablis. “I keep telling your hubby to just let me fly the dang thing and everything will be hunky-dory.” ***

There was nothing wrong with Peanut that a little patience wouldn’t remedy, Sid believed. After all, the chimp had practically been born into the astronaut corps. At seven months of age, she’d been a buttonpushing prodigy, and by two, after five or six brain tweaks and surgical augmentations, had mastered basic computer and digital literacy skills. In the meantime, Sid had begun to take her with him on his daily rounds of the space station, hoping to keep her out of Conrad’s hair. He was glad to have the help, in any case. In ten days, a rowdy Chinese work crew was scheduled to dock at the Watchtower for a brief layover before continuing on to the helium-3 mine under construction on the moon’s south pole. To prepare for their arrival, Sid and Peanut spruced up the inflatable activity assemblage, laying out extra sleeping bags and silver-coated NASA pajamas. It took them most of the morning. Afterward,

they retreated to the galley where they lunched on fluffernutter sandwiches while practicing new vocabulary words in sign language.

The moon has not color, Peanut gestured, pointing to the blank lunar craterscape filling the Watchtower’s observation window. She seemed genuinely confused by the subzero wasteland of outer space. Red is a color.

Where? An apple is red. Then, smacking her lips, she used her long, snaky index finger to mime the sign for “apple.”

Peanut hungry again. Give apple please. ***

Despite occasionally feeling harassed by lingering bouts of nausea, Sid’s space sickness had steadily improved. Illness was simply not an option, in any case. Except for the eight minutes or so of radio blackout that occurred whenever the space station passed behind the moon’s dark side, CAPCOM was continually transmitting urgent orders and instructions to the crew. A workaholic, Sid never found the slog tedious. Even as he was being hustled through yet another pointless-seeming systems check—the onboard exaFLOPS supercomputer, for example, required endless updates and peak-speed rejiggering—his attitude remained unflappably positive.

Conrad was another case entirely. As far as he was concerned, the lunar mission was already a huge disappointment. He craved excitement. At the drop of a hat, he was prepared to suit up in his skintight jetpants and pressure suit and venture outside on an EVA or take a joyride on the moon capsule to the beckoning lunar surface. In his mind’s eye, he was NASA’s premier space jockey— Flash Gordon and the Silver Surfer rolled up into one. The very idea of Peanut’s presence on the Watchtower was offensive to him. When the first sentient apes joined the astronaut

ranks, Conrad had come close to resigning in disgust. ***

On Christmas eve, the crew hosted a streaming call-in broadcast.

Sid donned a Santa suit and a full white beard. Peanut was dressed like an elf—pointed cap and boots and a pair of rubber elf ear tips that she and Sid fashioned from some old cable insulation in the nuclear reactor. As expected, Peanut was the star of the occasion. “How old was she?” viewers wanted to know. “Did she own a pet?”

“Would she consider dating a fan?”

Sid translated her signed remarks into colloquial American English, sometimes adding geekish commentary of his own for context. “Peanut’s been measuring the propagation rates of Physarum polycephalum colonies in microgravity,” he explained at one point, adjusting the Santa beard’s scratchy mouth hole, which kept sliding down over his lips as he spoke.

“It turns out these slimy little critters proliferate at nearly four-fifths the established value observed at standard g0. Crazy stuff.”

It was almost too much for Conrad to stomach. Except for awkwardly riffing a couple of times on his deeply-held faith in Jesus—“the birthday boy,” he called him—he floated sullenly upside down in the background, silently stewing. ***

Christmas was a work day, like any other. The crew got a wakeup call at 0600 hours from the CAPCOM officer, a dumpy ex-astronaut in a tall black cowboy hat. “Good morning rocketeers,” he hooted. “Rise and shine.” A second later Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” kicked into high gear over the ATU. Peanut loved it.

With the chimpanzee clinging

33.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 to his chest, Sid floated around the station in his disposable ankle socks, checking and rechecking the station’s life support systems and scraping sticky green gunk out of the air filters.

“Siddhartha,” he heard Conrad shout just as he was plucking a stray charm bracelet of Peanut’s

“It’s got to be the SCaN relay. Let me see.” He put Peanut down and hovered above the Display Panel. As he typed away at the glass touchscreen keyboard, the panel’s indicators lit up like a dozen different species of tropical fruit.

“That’s weird,” he said, frowning in

with her large yellow teeth. “No anomalies,” Conrad continued. “No software errors. Nada.”

“It’s a mystery,” Sid acknowledged. “But perhaps the Chinese will clear things up.” Until then, he’d been dreading their visit.

Space miners—whose IQs were

“In his mind’s eye, he was NASA’s premier space jockey—Flash Gordon and the Silver Surfer rolled up into one. The very idea of Peanut’s presence on the Watchtower was offensive to him.” out of the Bacterial Filter Element.

Sid turned and saw his crewmate furiously flipping the rows of toggle switches on the Situation Display Panel, seemingly at random.

“What is it?”

“I can’t get an Earth signal,” Conrad said. There was a note of dismay in his voice. “The link should have returned when we came around the moon’s flip side.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Two minutes. Maybe more.

The backup computer’s not picking up a signal either.”

34.

confusion. “Everything checks out.

Maybe the bug’s on Houston’s end.”

They spent the next couple of hours bouncing radio distress signals off all the commercial and scientific satellites they could sniff out, but to no avail. Nothing they attempted panned out.

“I just ran another diagnostic program on the Starboard VHF2 antenna,” Conrad said when they were done. He began patting his pockets for a calculator. Over Conrad’s shoulder, Sid could see Peanut chewing on the end of it

legally capped in the low eighties— were notorious drunks and brawlers.

But now suddenly he found himself impatiently awaiting their arrival.

Stymied and miserable, Sid and Conrad bumped their way handover-hand to the galley. It had been more than twelve hours since their last meal. Conrad was in a surly mood.

“Where did this come from?” he asked, roughly extracting a pink stuffed elephant from the bottom of the food locker. “This is contraband. You know that, right?”

Bad Astronauts - Jacques Debrot he lectured Sid, slamming the lid down hard. “I’ve just about had it. That monkey of yours is driving me crazy, Siddhartha.” His face was ugly. “You are driving me crazy.”

Sid held his tongue.

“I’ve always disliked you,” Conrad persisted.

“That surprises me.”

“There’s a lot you don’t understand about people.” A smirk of superiority spread across Conrad’s face “I bet you still haven’t figured out that I’m in love with Nancy.”

“What do you mean?” Sid asked. “Are you saying the two of you are having an affair?”

She wants to leave you.”

“She told you that?”

“Your marriage has been over for a long time. You’re just the last one to find out.” His mood seemed to suddenly lighten. “I’ve never met anyone like her. The first time I saw her naked I nearly fell down on my knees in amazement and gratitude.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Sid said, cutting him short. He grabbed a wall handle and flung himself headfirst out of the galley. Tears welled up in his eyes, but the microgravity kept them plastered to his eyeballs, temporarily blinding him. ***

Radio silence continued, unnervingly, into a second day.

Through the porthole’s high strength bulletproof glass, the Earth looked unchanged. It was inconceivable that a mass extinction event of some kind could possibly have occurred so unexpectedly. But what other explanation was there? Clutching at straws, Sid and Conrad had dialed one number after another on their personal smartphones, concluding at last with the Oval Office. A month earlier, the president had given them business cards engraved with his top secret number during a pre-launch

ceremony in the Rose Garden. But the Commander-in-Chief ’s hotline just rang and rang. When Sid finally hung up, he felt a shiver go through him.

By now Conrad had pinned the blame for their predicament squarely on Sid’s shoulders. “Fix it,” he ordered. ***

“According to you, the readings check out,” he said, “but I don’t believe them.” As the two drifted over the SCaN board yet again, Conrad cruelly broached the topic of their new living arrangements back on Earth. “I was thinking that you could take over my bachelor condo,” he said. “It’s the perfect setup for a single guy.” He tipped his head and grinned bleakly.

“I’m going to miss the place to tell you the truth. But it’s not big enough for Nancy, me and your kids.” ***

With Peanut perched on his lap, Sid watched from the commander’s seat as Conrad fired off the little rockets on his jetpants and flew under the giant robotic arm beside the communications array.

“Beautiful day outside,” Conrad drawled into his helmet microphone. “Clear skies with a chance of satellite debris. Over.”

The line was obviously rehearsed. It made Sid think of all the cheesy space movies he’d devoured obsessively as a boy. How tempting it would be, he mused, to send the Watchtower’s robotic fist crashing down on top of his love rival’s irksome head.

His finger hovered over the big red button flashing on the control console.

Just then, silhouetted against the immense sunlit moon, Conrad’s dark figure seemed pathetically small and vulnerable. Who would ever know? Sid asked himself. But a full minute passed, and then another. It was no use. In the

end, he simply couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Bad man, Peanut vigorously signed. Pant-hooting a loud dominance vocalization, she pointed again emphatically at Conrad.

Preoccupied as he’d been, Sid had almost forgotten about her.

Bad man, the chimpanzee repeated. Bad astronaut.

Looking back after many years had passed, Sid would sometimes wonder if there was anything he could have done to prevent Conrad’s murder. Ultimately, he blamed himself.

No doubt, without intending to, he’d planted the idea in Peanut’s brilliant mind. All the same, it was over before he realized what had happened. The console literally vibrated with the force of Peanut’s thwack.

Sid was aghast. Even after the fatal blow, Conrad’s headless pressure suit appeared to be intact.

But the bubble helmet shattered into a thousand slowly spinning fragments, glittered brilliantly in the galactic vacuum like a scattered jigsaw puzzle.

35.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Snow Job Sylvia Totah Calabrese

I

sabel sat cross-legged on the huge bed chopping blow on a mirror with a single-edged razor blade.

She stretched it out in long lines, then pushed it back into a heap and chopped some more. There was an elemental satisfaction in cutting up rock. How you started with a small blue-white chunk and cut it again and again until it became a little white mountain of glittering powder. Like pressing grapes or making butter, an activity that starts out as one thing and ends up something else entirely. Alchemy.

She heard the front door open, then lock. Pierce entered the room. He tossed a sheaf of rubber-banded hundreds on the bed which disturbed the cat, whose tail swept across the mirror. The coke scattered, glistening like the snowflakes outside as they crossed the light beam emanating from the lamppost on 90th Street.

“Holy shit, that was a lot of blow! Here, hurry,” she urged as she shoved the cat at Pierce. “Snort the stuff off Bogey and I’ll get this.” She buried her nose in the Indian bedspread and inhaled. Pierce dove onto the bed, a California king they called “the arena,” and tackled her.

36.

For a few minutes they romped, crushing coke diamonds into the blues and greens of the batik.

“Let’s get high,” she said, and the little silver bells sewn on her shirt tinkled happily as she sat up.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Isabel reached for the mirror that lay at the far corner of the bed reflecting prisms on the ceiling. A collection of antique stash boxes with hidden compartments— what she and Pierce always gave each other when gifts were in order—were scattered about. She chose a heavy silver one made hundreds of years earlier in Java to hold betel nuts and fiddled till the secret drawer popped open.

She withdrew a small foil rectangle, selected a rock from inside it, then made the packet vanish. She started to chop again. The cat came back. Pierce fished the biggest roach out of the ashtray and lit it. It was the last of those crazy Thai sticks with each bud meticulously wrapped on a bamboo twig like a three-inch reefer shish kabob. She took a deep hit and held it as long as she could. Spicy, sweet, resinous smoke filled her lungs and spread to the ends of her hair before she allowed what she hadn’t absorbed to

Snow Job - Sylvia Totah Calabrese slowly escape through her nose.

Soon the new rock was transformed into a gleaming heap of snow. She centered it on the mirror and cut it, prolonging their anticipation with the rapid staccato of blade hitting mirror. She cut the mound in quarters and drew them out in even white furrows.

She held out a hand. “Money?”

Pierce felt around under the cat and extracted the wad of bills. She chose a new hundred and rolled it into a tight tube. Balancing the mirror on her knee, she bent her head and put the straw to her nostril. With index tip pressing the other side shut, she carefully moved the rolled bill from one end of the line to the other, then switched nostrils and did the same with the second, hoovering them both cleanly.

The drug smashed high inside her nose first, way up between the eyes.

Then the sharpness hit her throat and dripped down the back of it, trailing chemical numbness. Eyes closed, she let her head fall back and inhaled deeply, drawing in each last speck. In the moments it took for Pierce to remove the straw from her hand and the mirror from her knee, the thrilling familiar surge of pure white energy thrummed throughout Isabel’s body, but especially her head. The back of her skull lifted off and burst like the evening’s best and final firework, straight toward the stars, hesitating for a moment way high up before exploding outward in blooming, unfurling chrysanthemum petals of light. Every synapse in her brain fired simultaneously in precise harmonic organization and soaring flights of virtuoso counterpoint. Crystalline thoughts bubbled upwards like champagne. Blow made you bloody brilliant.

Somewhere on the bed, the big red telephone rang.

“Don’t for a second think I’ll get it,” Isabel said

“Aw, come on, you know it’s

going to be for you. It always is.”

She held out the ringing phone. “Do you honestly expect me to screen my own calls?”

Pierce shook his head and picked it up. “Lady Isabel’s residence,” he said in a British butler tone.

“Certainly, sir, may I tell her who’s calling?” He cocked his head. “Yeah, who the fuck else do you think it is, dickhead?” He threw the receiver at her feet. “It’s your boyfriend, my love.”

“Which one?” She reached out, laughing, trying to hook his belt loop with her finger, but he evaded her and pirouetted off the bed.

“Well, let me see, Madam...”

He put his hand over the mouthpiece.

“I believe it’s the one you screwed in the swimming pool in Sand’s Point last year while the whole party watched.

His wife, too.”

Isabel didn’t release his gaze even as she watched the pupils tighten in his unreadable hazel eyes. They were not, as her grandmother had often said eyes were, a window into his soul. “I felt it wise to give up tequila after that.

Stuff is hallucinogenic.”

She took the phone. “Jesus, Pierce, I can’t understand how you put up with my shit! I would never take that crap.” She blew him a kiss from the tips of her fingers and turned away.“Long time,” she purred into the receiver.

Pierce went into the living room, kicking his old Frye boots off to opposite corners as he wandered through. He picked up the large blue Tiffany box that sat on the floor near the coffee table. Not long ago, it had held six Waterford crystal double oldfashioned glasses his father had sent as a wedding gift. Now it had a slot in its top and a label that read: “What Shall I Do About Isabel?” Pierce shook it a couple of times, hoping that perhaps this time some suggestions might have found their way inside. Disappointed again, he moved to the stereo and dropped the needle precisely onto a track in the middle of the record.

The Rolling Stones leapt into the room and Jagger howled “...and there will alwaaaaaays be a spaaaa-aaaace in my parking lot/When you need a little coke and sympa-theeeeeeee.” Pierce twisted his Marlboro into a pizza crust petrifying on the kitchen counter and vanished into the bathroom.

“I’d really like that,” Isabel said into the phone crunched between cheek and shoulder, her hands busy rolling one of her famous joints. She licked the gummed edge of the paper, smoothed it down and twirled the ends, then held it up to examine the faultless white cylinder.

“Yes, Thursday is good. I have work, but it won’t take long to get to Prince Street afterwards. I take it Antonio will lend us the loft again?”

His response made her smile.

Isabel felt around on the bed for her dad’s old Dunhill lighter. Her fingers found it and wrapped around its cool gold heft as it warmed to her palm. The impossibly smooth roll of the cylinder yielding to her thumb pleased her, and she flicked it a number of times. So few things are perfect. Beautiful objects embody the possibility that things might actually be as we’d like them. They offer hope.

She had more than once confused the confident closing thud of a European car door and the vehicle’s primal leather pheromones with the guy whose hand had shut it behind her.

She’d smoked half the joint and was getting mellow when the bedroom door burst open and crashed into the wall, denting the sheetrock.

An erection materialized in the doorway and hovered before it sailed majestically into the room followed by the naked and just-showered Pierce.

The thing was breathtaking—like Stonehenge or the Muir Woods—and it drew him towards her like a lodestar.

Isabel was awed anew each time she saw it. It caused her penis envy way beyond the standard female yen for the convenience of being able to pee

37.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 standing up. Much more. No, she yearned to know how it felt to actually wield this protean appendage. She’d never met another dick with such gravitas, which was saying something, considering the scope of her circle of acquaintances in that free and happy time between The Pill and AIDS. Pierce was one-eighth Cherokee and swore his cock embodied his ancestor’s genetic gift, the legacy of a brave man named something like Dick Doubles As Tent Pole. Mesmerized, Isabel watched as it glided to a halt inches from her face and revealed its mission.

Along its rosy length, in blue eye pencil, Pierce had written, “Please get off the phone. Now!”

Isabel still held the receiver to her ear, but the one-sided conversation leaked out unheard. Her attention had been diverted to the situation at hand, to her husband’s sudden polite insistence.

“Hey, sorry, I’ve got to run,” she said. “No, this minute. Something’s come up. Yes, I’ll see you Thursday, 5:30.”

She hung up and kicked the cat off the bed.

38.

Chapter 11: Meow Leanne Grabel

When I met my husband, he was wearing a Guatemalan sweater with brown buttons like mini muffins. And a Scottish cap. He also had a girlfriend on his arm like a purse. I noticed instantly she was the opposite of me. She was naturally blonde, naturally thin, pinched, loud, a big fan of high heels, and she was wearing powder blue. She also looked wealthy. I think it was the perfect fingernails.

I was just back in town after four months in California where I was trying to mend my broken heart.

39.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

I was wearing all tight. Tight jeans, tight tank top, tight spine, tight heart. He started following me all over the house telling me things, telling me things. Later he said it was love at first sight but we needed to be patient. He wanted a kind and clean break from Ronna.

Primarily impulsive, I didn’t understand or practice patience. But I waited. Two months went by.

40.

Husband - Leanne Grabel

We finally made love on a beautiful overstuffed couch in the middle of my rental room. The couch was periwinkle blue chintz with splashes of white irises and violet primroses. The room had a balcony ringed by old hawthorns like sage uncles. The love was honey. No. It was the taste of honey. No. It was bathing in warm honey. No. It was the look of honey. Golden. Sweet. I made deeply layered mammalian sounds with panache. I remember how my teeth shimmied.

My paws buzzed (I mean my feet).

41.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

It was at least a year until the judges arrived. They took their permanent seats in my occipital court. They began to ruin everything with their snotty little number cards.

42.

Husband - Leanne Grabel

Now thirty-six years have gone by. We sit on our couch like couches.

We could probably feed the hungry with all the crumbs. Buried in between the cushions. Someone should vacuum.

43.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Chapter 12: Even Bukowski Knew That Leanne Grabel

We watch our daughter mother her new daughter. She is magnificent. She has a digital swaddling, nursing and bedtime rulebook.

Her baby has no Happy Meals, no chicken fingers, no sugar in her birthday cake. I can’t say an olive tree will grow in her stomach if she swallows an olive pit. My daughter wants to spread no myths, no lies (not sure about the Easter Bunny).

44.

Husband - Leanne Grabel

Our daughter dresses her baby in bathing suits that have long sleeves and long pants, but breathe like skin. Her baby’s shoes are ergonomic. Her hats are the size of pizzas. Our daughter’s daughter barely cries. And she loves to sleep. We watch our daughter pause, think and listen. We watch her proceed with precision. Tender as fur.

45.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

I want to take lessons from her. That I gave birth to her is a hilarious miracle (even Bukowski could look at his daughter and know that).

46.

POETRY 47.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

The Builders and the Butchers Ben Nardolilli Watch me now, as I divide the world into the builders and the butchers, a simple trick, as is any line drawn between two camps that one declares but my explanation is longer, the clarification more complex, and the examples I find of each are titillating, soon everyone will want to know if they are a builder or a butcher and what company they keep, see the pictures on page 234, all glossy, which one are you?

That part’s vital, no one will accept a tribe until you tell them someone famous living or dead is in it, they will defend the group then, but first you still have to sell them the tests and the counseling, since you’re the first one, you’ll start on the ground floor, or what I call the killing floor, because that’s where the division in vision between all us builders and all you butchers begins.

48.

Cosmetic Relief Victor Marrero 1 Some never make it. Others do. The rest of the cast, so-called survivors, preserve the mold, endure life’s raw ordeals. Here and now, where twilight is just another twilight, the relicts relate, nonchalant, held in one piece by a pinch of nerve, by smoke and mirrors. All cosmetic relief.

Their own remains wear on and off, marred and null, day in, day out, all ides steeped in time like the trickle in the hourglass. Grand intrigues of disparities and deceits and misrepresentations pay deadly homage to the grind.

Is it all just the fill of reality by reality?

What else want? How else be? The mystery outlasts the quest, exhausts imagination.

2 Science fiction and fables and faith’s born-again nostrums report ready-made cures replete with convenient sightings.

Like a snow peak rising in a desert plain.

Now you see it. Now you see it again.

Here you see it double, even if not there.

Only the end of time and oracles untested bear true witness to the dimensions of heaven.

Troublesome because it is unfinished, life’s fellowship of slaves lives on as it fancies: if blank, in quest of design, if bound, astir for release.

By the dumb glare of the real, it is all unreal.

3 This cadence of blank verse cannot sustain the sputter of an ancient clock as it unwinds.

All alarms are ringing.

The purple heart’s gears throb in retreat.

The barometer fails to gauge our blood’s impulse stuck in reverse.

And holiness nostrums oversell the wonders of other-world bounties held past the expiration of warranties.

The downward spiral of things.

Life surges earthbound to the pull of gravity, rolling like a tide drawn by a droll face of the moon, receding between ebb and more ebb.

49.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

And the Oscar Goes to— Marissa Glover Don’t believe actors when they complain about the price of fame and say they hate it—the bright lights, the constant click of paparazzi bulbs, being hounded round the clock—it’s what they’ve been dreaming about since winning the lead in their middle school play, since they dropped out of college and moved to L.A., where they wait tables and practice how to stand at just the right angle, how to smile, pretending a question about the menu is a red carpet interview. Don’t believe them when they cry on stage at the Oscars and omigosh! they had no idea and have nothing prepared and then they recite the most perfectly imperfect speech—the one they practiced in the bathroom mirror holding a hairbrush.

When Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button grows too young to be with Daisy, I don’t cry as he dies in her arms—because he dies for a gambling debt in A River Runs Through It; gets mauled to death by a bear in Legends of the Fall; he’s hit by a car in Meet Joe Black. And I can’t hate Christian Bale as Dick Cheney because I still love him as Laurie in Little Women even though he didn’t really adore Jo the way he said he did or he wouldn’t have fallen for Amy. You want to know who deserves an award for playing their part, for making it believable? Mothers.

Applaud the woman who had no idea it would be this hard, pretending to pay attention to a toddler’s story of the red truck beeping his horn he beeped his horn did you hear the red truck beep did you see the truck did you hear the horn beepbeepbeep went the horn in the red truck.

The woman who gives her daughter the car keys when she’d rather hand her a gun, or pepper spray, or anything to protect her while she’s out on a date; Mom pays for AAA, waves, and acts like she’s okay. Mom hides her fear and saves her tears for the shower, where water washes it all away before the curtain opens again: the woman’s in bed with a husband she’s forgotten; she quickly gets into character and delivers her lines.

50.

Pagan Maria Berardi

“I didn’t come here of my own accord and I can’t leave that way.

Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.”

Rumi, “The Tavern”

1.

When I am happiest, just myself, happiest, knowing full well the failure of that word, is alone in the forest, careening unevenly on not-young knees in the early-spring landscape, the over-long grasses of last summer’s wet reign hunched flat, licked by months of snow, licked like a foal just born, disheveled and barely formed.

The air has the first hint of something like petrichor, the first clue that the trees are alive, the rocks are alive, the dirt itself teems with its million lives awakening in quiet riot.

So much life barely sensed – I do not have the equipment to fathom it (all the colors my eyes cannot perceive!)

I barely have the sense to sense it – and this happiness of being part of this, this forest that does not need me, this happiness of being, unnecessary being, tilts and spills over to the greatest longing, the most human love of the unhuman, pain of being separate in the middle of being part of – basically being in love with the world

51.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 that does not love – or that loves with a love that is harrowing to even approach. *

*

*

2. that careening longing is for a faraway god, the one who needs altars the one who needs buildings.

There is a clue there, the shape the space but what is the absence, is there an absence?

Who is looking, who asks the question?

What is the noticing, who is the noticer?

Who is driving this vehicle of limbs careening?

Is finding all this sacred the thing that is sacred?

The longing is for the world to be more in the midst of its actual abundance.

This world’s great vividness sparks a burning for some eternal real.

Wise men have called this longing, joy.

Wise men have called the longed-for, Heaven, God. Maybe this, just myth.

Maybe culture, maybe meme.

Maybe vestige, not needed.

Maybe empty is just open.

52.

American Marriage Donna Dallas It’s a cancer that mutates and spreads after rings are placed on fingers sacred prayers bless us for eternity it wove into the lace of my dress the knot of your bow tie needled into our skin blackened the grip between us we sprout flagrant rants (can we really be this pathetic?) how quickly we rotted out (your mother must have put a curse on us) as just yesterday we held our infant son under the lazy sky and laughed giddy like angels in flower beds today you sit gray as death and plot my demise

53.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

By the wayside Sean Chapman Out amongst the desert of highway where only cars and trucks exist there is a stopping point, absent from any ancillary buildings or amenities.

There isn’t even an exit or an off-road just our own abrupt decisions to pull us against the current and into the dirt of nowhere.

All under one flat topped roof bearing the sign Church, white dust beaten slats of wood and a few utilitarian chairs stand watch over the careening sands between the headlights and the years.

Inside there is a space and a silence carved into the chaos, a chamber for us all to still ourselves amongst the ever-flowing stream of consciousness and shadows.

54.

eve Nikoletta Nousiopoulos At that time, the garden was frozen and unfrozen. I started to feel bewitched, like a full moon, when an angel invaded the sky.

It stared down at me with its fat eyeballs, surveying and scanning snakes from insects, as if they resembled some smaller angels.

And I would have looked right up at the angel, but I couldn’t stop blinking from the light, or twisting my head between portals of death and life.

Garden was it, or graveyard? I started to doubt the essence myself.

I was packed with worms and wet dirt.

My head was full of flowers when it burst.

55.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

eyeless socket Nikoletta Nousiopoulos I long to mope like vines wedged in a forest of deep crevices. I long to bloom on the edges of killed light. I look into the mirror and the mirror looks back. A detached glimmer lifts my face off. Each morning, the small riots crystallize distorted rain. My heart speaks before my throat. My spell closes before the elements disconnect from clouds. The clouds disconnect from heaven’s trapdoor and give me all the gray.

Unlike twigs, I bend into earth’s cracked face. In dirt, incomprehensible sounds worm in and out of exile. The body is honored with sunshine and raised with the cosmic cup.

56.

Mama Said Ron Kolm When I was young My Mother said to me: “Son, you got big tender chops Don’t get eaten – Save your butts & ends And keep your navel clean.”

But me, A victim of circumstance From way back, met her, The salamander center of the universe Who gave to me The perfect bed of tongues And now all I want to do Is live on the edge of her dream.

I hold my eyes In my hands Like two hot coals.

O God Make me fleet, Grant me speed.

57.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Worth the Wait Alan Britt I had a rock, a sack, a rock on my back, much like the rocks shouldered by billions before me. But my rock, my rock with a clock stuck in its windpipe grew tentacles like some cephalopod morphing from a morning glory blue watering can in a Renoir garden into a Van Gogh bloody sky in the blink.

Somehow this rock got stuck; so now I don’t know if jellyfish are the answer or if I should slide my antlers across George Harrison’s Gretsch for the refugees of Bangladesh or the refugees of small-town Indiana corporate pit stops & car dealerships.

I don’t know if opal fireflies flashing at dusk mean the same today as they did when I was backless.

I don’t know.

I wish I knew, but those days everything spun with the universe, & Spanish moss filtered my waking thoughts, & wheat was blood & blood was wheat, so it’s no wonder a defrocked priest appeared as saint to escort me through the various levels of Purgatory.

Dusted by opal fireflies during Saturday evening cabernet, I’m all flesh, no bone.

Distracted by something there is that isn’t a cow town glistening diamond debris from a jeweler’s vibrations splashing starlings like a forgotten Pollock murmuration across the horizon—easily distracted by a dignitary with an apple for a head— easily distracted by a clergyman strapped to a lusty piano weighed down by one dead cow—distracted when I get distracted—distracted by maple & ash, distracted by oak leaves that never will be color wheel red, or distracted by rubber when

58.

I tossed rubber into the dumpster not knowing that rubber plays an important role in the way things are—soles shifting plates like catgut, like a bat’s umbrella wings, like moonlight blistering a pair of sunglasses in a darkened auditorium, like downtown windows about to break, like toupees floating on the lake, like a card trick signaling a long walk home, like a herd of rhinos flooding Times Square as the ball drops amidst red, white & blue confetti for the new year while 300-story multinationals cook the books for the next third world overdue for a monetary intervention.

My memory foam pillow cricks my neck, & about now I’m braiding eagle feathers dipped in Jupiter light, eagle feathers dusting the dogwoods along Butler Road, eagle feathers heavy with 18th century inkwells, eagle feathers that defy the laws of gravity & long for a future that humanely embraces the universe, a future acknowledging unconscionable behavior from the past while promising equality for every living person on this planet so help us every single deity that’s ever been invented on this godforsaken planet.

Worth the wait.

59.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Glad We Had This Talk Alan Britt Thoughts like seaweed dangle the hooks of your smile, each briny bubble, each rusted berry once broiled by the sun bleeding like fireworks inside a galvanized bucket in the middle of panic traversing the skulls of newborns squirming like tadpoles from the Big Bang—look into my agate eyes below two flaming horns trapped in an arena filled with jesters, breathe their vapor & imagine digesting flutes masticated by their vapor, let thoughts like seaweed sloshing two thighs barnacled with desire convince you that you aren’t leaving here without me, & tell me you haven’t slimed the very rocks stranding us below an opal firefly’s lighthouse—that starving on the prowl female firefly posing as the harvest moon saying run better run lest you attract the jalapeño thorn of scorpion dawn—saying run better run—thoughts like an orchestra crashing brasses & violas molded from the bones of atoms that used to be Stegosaurus plates plus a host of tiny mammals first thought to be primitive but later discovered to be on their one trillionth run at a dominant lifeform on this azure marble—thoughts dying too young & exploding like fibers from marigolds embracing solar flares—likewise thoughts packing hours into designer purses slung from the shoulders of widows of those who died too young imploring folks to pay attention—thoughts like tongues of the plow or ballads reminding us of things we need reminding of—thoughts wearing headphones in a control room or lighting the wicks for kerosene heaters on a bitter Moorhead, Minnesota night, a night filled with conviction in the face of consternation, a night that shook its fist at the stars like Blake, a night that gathered stray mollusks into its marsupial pouch, night that purchased half of New Jersey plus a good stretch of lakefront that used to be glacier—thoughts in turn blinded by human nature—the way it goes un-for-tu-nate-ly.

60.

The Maimed King Susie Gharib I am ceremoniously sitting next to him in a boat that looks like a lily’s wing, both contemplating the irritated lake, whose bosom envelops his dangling bait, the moon all blown into a trillion flakes.

“I do not like to kill any living thing.

We believe in the fishes’ sacredness,” I audibly mumble to my agitated self.

His response comes rippling on the wailing wind, his first heard utterance in a thousand years: “I only fish what is already dead, what lies deep hidden on a sacred bed, in the bottom of this benighted lake.”

I wait.

He averts his face and solemnly prays.

I think of T. S. Eliot, of Idylls of the King, but fail to comprehend his allegorical intent.

He cannot be speaking of a sword’s demise, that had been burnished at Merlin’s command and the Lady of the Lake has eternal life.

The wound in his thigh is gaping wide.

The blood has trickled into my mind.

I wake up to a clot within my mouth.

61.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Voiceless Anna Kapungu I heard the piercing sounds of screams Those were the strings of my heart The slow drip of blood Run within my skin Close my eyes I still feel your presence Spine tingling touch My love was yours It was not endless skies Free fall my world was cold Hear every splash as the snow hits the ground No distance cries of seagulls All was silent Silence to hear myself Breathe breathe without gratitude Hurt hurt without words Hear the phone ringing Whisper I am voiceless

62.

She Was Earning A Living Anna Kapungu Times were hard She was earning a living Three jobs a day Paid the rent, school fees and food on the table No Easter, summer vacations or Christmas parties Meals were breakfast in the morning Porridge, homemade bread, water for tea Bought charity clothes from the dollar stores Lived on friends’ generosity and borrowed money Bankrupt, the banks refused to give us credit Milk tokens from the government Water was rationed Bathed once every two days We hardly had any visitors Played indoors; the streets were not for children High density, high-strung and bullets through the windows Times were hard She was earning a living

63.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Elegy for Wollstonecraft1 Imogen Arate Mother of feminism stripped bare

by a woman no less Ain’t that a kick in the teeth “For” or “of ” preposition raises “everywoman”

cum Birth of Venus via penectomy’s flotsam as Uranus from Hades looks on Female bodies seen as public property embodied by nude park statuette in honor of self-made woman who took the fire from Prometheus hidden by men to brighten only their face Robbed of protection at a young age at whim of an abusive father who drank

irresponsible to his care

yet given more legal right overpayment for a flailing appendage Mary petitioned for equal rights opened a school to educate girls but artistic rendering would conjure her legend naked tear away her accomplishments as early death her rise to fame Her progeny Mary Shelley

continued to caution about the hubris of men without ethics Yet a backhanded honor unveils tonight as warning that our path to stand shoulder to shoulder with men can and will be slick with obstacles sprung from the narcissistic discharge of every self-indulgent gender ______________________________________________________________________________________ 1. “More than 90% of London’s monuments celebrate men, compared to a population of 51% women, according to the [Mary on the Green] campaign... ‘Meanwhile, women walking or jogging through parks experience high rates of sexual harassment because our bodies are considered public property.’” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-london-54886813.

64.

The “R” Word Imogen Arate I know men who’d never raise their hand against a woman but will tear her down each time she dared to reach their height They’d smile and talk of respect while filling their father’s shoes and boundaries are torn to shreds like inconvenient red tape Deafened by thunderous accolades for talents Mars’ arrows shot to the sky though their self-worth is chained to the ground Blue bruises they can’t face while glee giggles from power trips grasping for control ferociously sheltered behind profuse sorries Dancing on the border of the physical while patting their own backs with a sigh of apprehensive relief that their childhood stayed behind though the shade they enjoy if they dared to glance back is rooted in the long reach of the knotting branches of an ancient family tree bedecked with spellbound leaves tracing rationalization’s curves to boughs thick with denial tucked into a disavowing trunk springing out of a network of roots sucking needed nourishment from a toxic firmament whose palms they can never escape and the shadows of frightened little boys raise furious fists to pummel their idea of the inferior sex back into their imagined place Yet their abuse only lays waste the remnants of their own innocence battered and barely hanging on to humanity’s ideals they claim to raise

65.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24

Gulp\Gasp Serena Piccoli all the erupting noise is gulped down the beak and I hear the seashell falling on cement ravens are smart they kill and cause no pain for a guilt-free meal still I hear the gasp of the clam

66.

CRITICISM

67.

The Opiate,Winter Vol. 24

The Subtle Finesse of The Queen’s Gambit As a Novel vs. a Series Genna Rivieccio

W

hile the runaway Netflix hit that is Scott Frank and Allan Scott’s The Queen’s Gambit has remained more faithful than most adaptations to the original it’s based on, it bears noting a number of glaring differences that make Walter Tevis’ book stand out for its nuances.

Appropriate, considering that to be truly great at chess, one must recognize that it’s all about the nuances. Seeing the moves and adjustments that only the most skilled and adept can. Alas, if only one could say that about other facets of life—for it’s evident that we’ve all become complacent with crude, slapdash approaches to most everything, the arts included.

Upon the book’s release in 1983, reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (one supposes we must mention he wrote for The New York Times to give his opinion Legitimacy with a capital “L”) touted, “Forget just for a moment that Walter Tevis’ The Queen’s Gambit is a novel about the game of chess—the best one that I know of to be written since Nabokov’s Defense. Consider it as a psych-

68.

ological thriller, a contest pitting human rationality against the self ’s unconscious urge to wipe out thought.” If this sounds like a slightly more cerebral and erudite version of what you watched on Netflix, you would not be wrong. For the devil is in the details, and since that’s the case, Tevis’ rendering of our heroine, Elizabeth “Beth” Harmon (played by Anya Taylor-Joy in the show) comes across as slightly more complex, especially when juxtaposed against the show’s heavy-handed addition of certain backstories— namely that of her parents.

From the very first paragraph, one of the biggest discrepancies is established: Beth’s mother dies in a car accident while her daughter is at home, as opposed to Beth being potential collateral damage in her mother’s need to end it all a.s.a.p. Because of this latter plot detail switch in the show, greater emphasis is placed on where Beth’s self-destructive tendencies—in a direct collision with her brilliance—stem from. Conversely, in the book, her mother’s death is never flashed back to in terms of highlighting her progenitor’s depressive, mad genius

The Subtle Finesse of The Queen’s Gambit As a Novel vs. a Series - Genna Rivieccio predilections. And any vague flashbacks aren’t nearly as “deliberately pertinent” as what’s put in the show (e.g. in the book, Beth’s mother teaches her the meaning of the word cunt by instructing, “Wipe yourself… Be sure to wipe your

Tevis wastes no time in getting his reader situated in the orphanage (called Methuen) setting with Beth. Except Jolene isn’t exactly the rough exterior’d-butwith-a-heart-of-gold presence she’s made out to be in Netflix’s version.

reached a hand under the sheet and laid it gently on Beth’s belly. Beth was on her back. The hand stayed there, and Beth’s body remained stiff. ‘Don’t be so uptight,’ Jolene whispered. ‘I ain’t gonna hurt nothing.’ She giggled softly… ‘Just

“...as Beth plays Borgov for the first time in Mexico City, she thinks of his game, ‘Everything he was doing was obvious, unimaginative, bureaucratic.’ In many regards, the same can be said of the Netflix adaptation of the novel.” cunt”).The father element also gets peppered in by Frank, who wrote all seven episodes, opting to lend Beth’s childhood further palpable tragedian flair by emphasizing that her mother drove her father away to the point where he finally decided he’d prefer to simply abandon both of them altogether. In the book the father is non-present, and fuzzier in Beth’s memory when mentioned perfunctorily one time to Jolene.

No, no. Here instead, it doesn’t take her long to molest Beth by putting her hand down her vag and telling Beth to do the same.

As Beth experiences it, “Sometime in the middle of the night she was awakened. Someone was sitting on the edge of her bed.

She stiffened. ‘Take it easy,’ Jolene whispered. ‘It’s only me.’ Beth said nothing, just lay there and waited.

‘Thought you might like trying something fun,’ Jolene said. She

relax. I’m just going to rub a little.

It’ll feel good, if you let it.’”

This horrifying moment of child molestation feels, in many ways, as abusive and exploitative as if it were coming from a male pedophile (even though the gender shouldn’t need to be specified when one says “pedophile”).

The one-time instance also seems like some kind of mirror of Beth’s entire life, where people tell her to enjoy things she has no

69.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 enjoyment of. The only source of Beth has encountered an opponent star-like Townes after entering the pleasure for her being chess, where she knows she can never defeat. Jolene Kentucky State Championship. This, there are rules, order—the situation can be controlled. There in the bed of the orphanage that night, it was just another instance of Beth having absolutely no control over anything that happened to her. Thus, the irony of her gravitating to substances that allow her to numb herself and check out mentally are almost in direct contrast to the entire reason why she is so ardent about chess. Lives and breathes it—thinks only about it at all hours of the day. Plus, it’s just another way not to examine too closely all the horrendous events that have befallen her. A way not to address what should feel like crippling loneliness.

But no one is lonely enough to want to be fingered by what amounts to a stranger (no matter what Jolene tries to pull with her “It’s just me” bullshit).

The cringeworthy nature of the entire scene persists as Jolene’s “hand was moving downward. Beth shook her head. ‘Don’t…’ she whispered. ‘Hush now,’ Jolene said. Her hand moved down farther, and one finger began to rub up and down. It did not hurt, but something in Beth resisted it.” Jolene, not the type to give anything without getting something in return, ups the ante on the entire violating affair as she “squirmed a little closer to Beth and took Beth’s free hand with her free one, pulling it toward her. ‘You touch me, too,’ she said. Beth let her hand go limp. Jolene guided it up under her nightgown until the fingers grazed a place that felt warm and damp. ‘Come on now, press a little,’ Jolene whispered.

The intensity in the whispering voice was frightening. Beth did as she was told and pressed harder.”

Here, too, the metaphor of Beth’s existence is summed up with simply doing whatever she needed to in order to move through a situation and get to a better (or at least less disgusting) one.

In this scenario, it’s as though

70.

is the first version of Borgov in this regard—except Beth never got the fair advantage of at least being able to contend with her molester on a board. Jolene’s fiendishness for orgasm escalates with the urging, “‘Come on, baby, move it up and down. Like this.’

She started moving her finger on Beth.

It was terrifying. Beth rubbed Jolene a few times, trying hard, concentrating on just doing it… Then Jolene’s face was against hers and her arm around Beth’s chest. ‘Faster,’ Jolene whispered.

‘Faster.’ ‘No,’ Beth said aloud, terrified.

‘No, I don’t want to.’”

At last, Beth advocates for herself with enough firmness to put a stop to the assault. Even though, not a moment later, one of the “orderlies,” if you will, opens the door to do a spot check (or maybe she heard all of Jolene’s avid grunting). Regardless, Beth’s empowerment at this moment is in direct correlation to her quick study of chess around the same period as Jolene’s “proposition,” giving her the confidence she gets from nothing and no one else in her life.

The attraction to the board happens the same way in both narratives, with Beth catching sight of Mr. Shaibel perched on his stool in front of a table in the basement illuminated only by a bare bulb. As Beth is drawn to the mysterious game, Shaibel warns her, “‘You should be upstairs with the others.’ She looked at him levelly; something about this man and the steadiness with which he played his mysterious game helped her to hold tightly to what she wanted. ‘I don’t want to be with the others. I want to know what game you’re playing.’”

Having never felt such an automatic response to anything as she did to that board, Beth is perhaps startled that her wheel of emotions is capable of more after she’s adopted by the Wheatleys and ends up encountering the movie

of course, amid Mr. Wheatley’s patent abandonment of Mrs. Wheatley.

Another father figure bites the dust.

At least now she has a boy she’s interested in, so who cares about a Daddy? With regard to this devirginizing chess tournament (in terms of Beth competing “professionally” for the first time), her means for coming across the money to do so is quite different than what happens in the show, and is indicative of her character: willing to do whatever it takes. That is, whatever it takes to participate in chess and, above all, win. While, in the show, Beth writes to Mr. Shaibel to ask for the five dollars—promising to repay him ten when she wins—in the book, he gives Beth the five dollars after she already stole two five dollar bills from the school’s resident popular girl, Margaret. Specifically from her bag while she’s showering in the locker room.

Beth plots out the heist all too methodically, in a panic about not having enough to compete in the tournament. When she gets the extra five dollars in the mail (in the form of one-dollar bills), she uses four of them to refill Mrs. Wheatley’s prescription bottle... for herself. Beth, indeed, did acquire quite a taste for the green “gems” modeled after Librium, but called Xanzolam in the show.

Whatever the fictional or real name, Beth is quick to note the tranquility her daily benzodiazepine intake gives her—though not as quick to give it up.

That’s why she’s willing to take the gamble (just as she does when she plays a high-stakes game of chess) on a rogue move: stealing her fix from the jar full of pills still proudly displayed behind the counter at Methuen. In the show, as in the book, the Saturday afternoon movie being played when it happens is The Robe, starring Richard Burton. And while Beth’s initially sly and successful approach to the jar

The Subtle Finesse of The Queen’s Gambit As a Novel vs. a Series - Genna Rivieccio occurs in much the same way, it is the “right after” that clashes with the limited series’ version of events.

For the purposes of pacing, Frank’s account ends on a cliffhanger at the end of episode one, “Openings.” When it picks up again with “Exchanges,” Beth and Jolene are talking about the incident in the past tense, with Beth’s punishment of not being allowed to play chess anymore already doled out. When she sees Mr. Shaibel screwing in a lightbulb in the hallway, she walks toward him with an aura of defeat, explaining, “They won’t let me play anymore. I’m being punished. Can you help me? Please?

I wish I could play with you more.”

Shaibel, naturally, says nothing, only casts her a potentially woeful look.

Conversely, the book tells of the aftermath of Beth’s pill “gambit” with the description, “Fergusson rode with her in the brown staff car and carried her into the hospital to the little room where the lights were bright and they made her swallow a gray rubber tube. It was easy. Nothing mattered. She could still see the green mound of pills in the jar… She fell asleep and woke only for a moment when someone pushed a hypodermic needle in her arm.”

Fergusson would drive her back to Methuen the same night.

After twelve hours of sleep, the next morning, Beth is summoned to Mrs. Deardorff’s office. Kept waiting for an hour, she is given the ultimate blow as though it is a chess move, saved as a checkmate for Deardorff’s endgame: “No more chess.” That’s what she tells Beth to conclude the meeting.

Along with the punishment of being expected to write a summary of each Sunday’s chapel talk—the time Beth once specifically used for going down to the basement to play.

Beth’s aloofness and general mistrust can be chalked up to the fact that, as Tevis wrote, “...she had never been touched very much by older

people, except for punishment.”

Here, that punishment didn’t even need to be associated with touch in order for it to have a profound effect on Beth. It isn’t until she is adopted by the Wheatleys that she can at last get back into it without fear of abusive reprisal. It’s noteworthy in both instances of the show and book that, as Beth is about to win the state championship, her goddamn “womanhood” gets in the way. Her accomplishment is overshadowed by, once again, being a girl.

Yet it feels all too poetic that this is the same day she develops her first real crush on Townes— fitting, as he is someone romantically unattainable and Beth doesn’t actually want to get that close to anyone.

That’s why, in the book, there is no female player who happens upon Beth in the stall to kindly offer her a pad. No, that’s the show’s type of coddling. In Tevis’ scene, Beth simply does what Jolene taught her to and creates a makeshift pad by shoving some toilet paper up her vag (an act “Show Beth” does anyway after she’s given the official materials and decides to throw them in the trash).

One aspect the show is committed to keeping completely intact is the death of Mrs. Wheatley in Mexico City, with Beth’s phone call dialogue to Mr. Wheatley in Colorado being essentially verbatim.

When she returns to Kentucky to bury the body, the “affair” that ensues with Beltik has a more attenuated tone. Because of this, Beltik’s eventual departure isn’t nearly as dramatic, and much of the dialogue given to him is extracted from the narration of this section, put as words into Show Beltik’s mouth.

So it is that it’s another instance of the book’s details being mélangé to suit the show’s “needs.” At least when it comes to Beltik.

He does not make a big, dramatic production about leaving,

nor does he compare her to Paul Morphy, “the pride and sorrow of chess.” Their cutoff is clinical, terse.

Beltik tells her he’s decided she’s learned all she can from him and that he’s moving to the apartment near the university. All Beth says is, “Okay,” and that’s that. No emotional speeches or teary departures. Beth goes about the business of getting drunk now that old buzzkill Beltik is gone. This distinction puts a finer point on Beth’s cold nature. Cold by necessity. She’s spent her whole life “training alone,” as it is said in the novel. In every way possible. So why bother pretending that she’s capable of attachments when the only thing that means a damn to her is chess?

Ah, but that doesn’t make for a “relatable” enough character in “TV land” (now streaming service land).

The emphasis must be made on the importance of subtlety in the conversion from novel to screen.

Even something as “off-handed” as a racial slur. Specifically, where Jolene is still given the license to call Beth “cracker” in the show, thanks to the hyper-sensitivity of the times, Beth does not hit back with the retort of “nigger” at any point as she does in the book. Forget the commitment to historical or literary accuracy, this was another uncomfortable (and again, seemingly “throwaway”) moment Netflix would prefer not to take on—just like Jolene’s unwanted finger bang scene. It’s just too much for audiences of the present.

Even her affinity with Benny is played down in terms of sexual tension. When she agrees to go with him to New York, they do spend their days locked in his apartment practicing strategy. An apartment described with more evocative detail

by Tevis, who is sure to mention that Benny had a “whole shelf [of the] Shakhmatny Byulleten going back to the nineteen-fifties.” While the “party” of three that shows up the night Beth

71.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 beats everyone at speed chess does occur, they do not end up having sex until days later, under much soberer pretenses on Benny’s part, who finally simply states, “I’d like you to come to bed with me.”

At the “party” in the show, Benny is blatantly turned on by Beth’s ability to now beat him and his other two friends at speed chess while the French girl, Cleo, watches (it sounds très double entendre, and it’s supposed to). Indeed, everything about the scene is laden with sexual innuendo when written by Tevis, who illustrates Beth on the floor as she says, “‘Let’s do it again’... There was a bitterness in her voice; hearing the words, she knew it could have meant sex: Let’s do it again.

If this was what Benny wanted, this was what he would get… They got into position on the floor…”

Yes, sexual as all get-out. So no wonder Frank sees fit to keep the Tevis-created dialogue, “Nobody has done that to me in fifteen years.”

Benny says this to Beth after the others leave. She presses, “Not even Borgov?”

He affirms, “Not even Borgov.” It is after this that Benny confesses to being far more drunk than Beth’s “sober as a judge” status. He then pulls her toward him and they finally do what Beth tried to well before she arrived in NY. Show Beth panders to his ego far more. “That’s what it’s supposed to feel like,” Show Beth notes breathlessly after they’ve finally relieved their mounting desire. Book Beth, on the other hand, is much more of the “that don’t impress me much” mindset, with the far less excited assessment, “Making love had been all right too, although not as exciting as she had hoped.” In no uncertain terms, it was not as though Benny had “blown her mind,” even in comparison to the other non-lothario men she’d been with (a guy from Russian class and Beltik).

What’s more, Book Benny does not advise her to play the Sicilian

72.

Defense against Borgov when they’ve finished boning. He tells her, “You shouldn’t try the Sicilian against Borgov… He’s just too good at it.”

Show Benny, instead, urges, “In your game with Borgov, you should play the Sicilian.” Beth questions, “Why? It’s what he’s so good at.” Benny explains, “It’s also what you’re most comfortable with. You should always play your line, never his. Play what’s best for you.”

This is a sentiment that connotes the sort of “La La Land” version of how to get what you want.

As though “believing in yourself ” is all it really takes. Book Beth would have never fallen for this yarn. Granted, even Book Beth isn’t immune.

Especially when she’s forced to admit to herself after Benny abruptly tells her he has to go to a poker game the day after their first “consummation” that his “behavior was like his chess game: smooth and easy on the surface but tricky and infuriating beneath. She did not like tagging along, but she did not want to go back to the apartment and study alone.”

Thus, she succumbs to this trip to his poker game, held at the Algonquin (maybe the show just didn’t want to add that location into the budget). She leaves out of boredom, and blind anger. It dawns on her that he’s a “cool son of a bitch. It was quick sex with her, and then off to the boys.

He had probably planned it that way for a week. Tactics and strategy. She could have killed him.”

Benny’s apt decision to time their sex when he would need to go to a poker game after, therefore not really address the new shift in their relationship, is part and parcel of his distancing nature. Even so, it doesn’t stop Beth from continuing to take advantage of having a “lover” before she heads to Paris. The show, in contrast, makes it seems as though they have a one-off fuck session. Tevis paints an alternate portrait with, “They continued as lovers and did not

play any more games, except from the books. He went out for a few days for another poker game and came back with two hundred in winnings and they had one of their best times in bed together, with the money beside them on the night table. She was fond of him, but that was all. And by the last week before Paris, she was beginning to feel that he had little left to teach her.” So again, Watts is something of a more palatable Beltik to Beth.

Ah, and speaking of Beltik, another key change to a significant interaction between him and Beth occurs when she plays again at the Kentucky State Championship. In the show, Beltik arrives to give her another sermon about his concern, whereas in the book, a worried Beltik does not confront her outside. However, where Show Beth flees the scene after her emotional exchange with Beltik, Book Beth ends up losing to a lesser opponent because of her alcoholic haze. It is this embarrassment that leads her to wonder, “And what was wrong with her mind? She hadn’t had a drink for a day and two nights. What was wrong? In the pit of her stomach she was beginning to feel terrified.

If she had somehow damaged her talent…”

Such a fear is the primary reason this plot point of her losing to a basic player is included, to provide her with the most sobering wake up call of all. For if she was to become subpar, or even par, as a player, it would mean the shattering of her world. Chess isn’t what she does, but who she is. To lose it would be to have no identity anymore.

There are other “minute” tidbits that vary between screenplay and manuscript. For instance, the girl who comes to Benny’s apartment is not a French model and does not meet up with Beth in Paris. This Cleo character, who seems to awaken in this version of Beth the same lesbianic exploration Jolene awakened in the novel, is ostensibly based on Jenny

The Subtle Finesse of The Queen’s Gambit As a Novel vs. a Series - Genna Rivieccio Baynes, the name of Benny’s female guest in Tevis’ story. That there is no lesbian tryst between them in the book (because Cleo does not exist in it) means that the “Russian spy theory” posited by fans can only be applied to the series.

Most deviant of all in the show is that it starts with Beth waking up completely hungover in a Parisian hotel room, having overslept for her big match against Borgov. In the novel, while in Paris (a plot point never featured at the beginning), Beth doesn’t lose to Borgov because she got drunk the night before. She loses simply because she was still not yet prepared.

Other standout distinctions from the book include the fact that Beth is the one who reconnects with Jolene by contacting Deardorff.

Jolene does not just show up at Beth’s door seeking her out. In the book, they meet at a restaurant where Beth suppresses her intense desire to drink alcohol, instead opting for Coke (after Coke after Coke). In place of Jolene being the one to tell Beth about Mr. Shaibel’s death as she does in the show, it is Deardorff who informs her of the custodian’s passing, after Beth comes home from a game of squash (a “rich white people” sport Show Jolene alludes to learning how to play herself while driving Beth back to the orphanage). Furthermore, Jolene does not lend Beth $3,000 to go to Moscow after she gives the Jesus freak (“Christian Crusade”) people their sponsorship money back.

Notably, Frank sees fit to insert a scene before Jolene and Beth arrive back at Methuen, with the latter evidently wanting to reveal to her friend how hard her life was from the start by telling her to stop at the trailer she started to grow up in before the car crash. Definitely not anywhere in the book is Beth’s expressed backstory, “My mama came from money. Then she married into more of it.” Jolene

asks, “Then how’d y’all end up way out here?” All Beth can say is, “It’s complicated.” It’s a rather superfluous scene, and could have probably been swapped out in favor of adding Benny’s poker one instead. Oh, and by the way, Book Benny is way more upset with Beth for not coming back to New York after she fails in Paris.

Though the dialogue between them on the telephone is almost precisely the same, there is one omission that makes all the difference in how venomous Benny comes across as he screams at her, “You asshole!... You crazy fucking asshole!” Instead, Frank wields only the line that follows, “First you don’t come back to New York and then you basically tell me that you’d rather be a drunk than be with me…

You can fucking well go [to Moscow] alone.”

Another conspicuous absence in Frank’s account of events is Beth’s trip to San Francisco after Jolene whips her into shape at the gym (being on a Physical Education scholarship at the university and all). Jolene’s brief tutelage is already enough to make a dent in her physical shape after so long spent doing nothing but binge drinking. This much is demarcated when Tevis writes, “Looking back at the bay, she saw a young couple a block away climbing toward her. They were clearly out of breath and stopped to rest. Beth realized with surprise that the climb had been easy for her.”

All thanks to Jolene’s intervention. Alas, though Jolene might be able to help with Beth’s mind and body, she cannot help with her bank account, and does not lend Beth $3,000. Book Jolene has no such amount. Jolene’s elevation in economic status is at least partially a product of The Queen’s Gambit being released at a time when the importance of presenting Black people—especially Black women—as not “less than” is more crucial than ever. So, rather than settling for being

a public relations shill for a law firm as she does in the novel, Show Jolene is on her way to becoming a lawyer, in the midst of having an affair with a white married man who has given her the car she’s driving Beth in. Book Jolene also calls herself “an imported nigger to stay even with the times” for the law firm in Atlanta that’s hired her.

Show Jolene puts it less bluntly with, “Instead of the usual Black cleaning woman, they wanted a clean, Black woman.”

As Jolene drives them back to the orphanage, Beth’s contempt for her youth, and the “raising” she was subjected to, is more pronounced with gradation in the novel, which leads to Beth, even after all these years, throwing Deardorff under the bus for making her “punishment” as a child no longer being allowed to play chess when being interviewed in Moscow

by Paris Match and Time, as though at last getting some form of vindication for her repressed upbringing in the orphanage. A paragraph that speaks to her particular brand of torment as she was growing up is as follows: “She had never thought of anyone encouraging her. It began to enter her mind now, standing in front of the building. She could have played in tournaments at nine or ten, like Benny. She had been bright and eager, and her mind was voracious in its appetite for things that people like Shaibel and Ganz could never teach her. Girev was planning at thirteen to be World Champion. If she had had half his chances, she would have been as good at ten. For a moment the whole autocratic institution of chess merged in her mind with the autocracy of the place where she was now standing. Institutions. There was no violation of Christianity in chess, any more than there was a violation of Marxism. It was nonideological.

It wouldn’t have hurt Deardorff to let her play—to encourage her to play.”

Instead, “it pleased her” not to let Beth

73.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 do so. Such is the way of autocratic (a.k.a. sadistic) institutions, whether in the West or the East.

As for Show Beth’s so-called dream boy, Townes never shows up in Moscow, nor is it ever inferred that he veers toward the preference of men. However, the kernel of the idea for Townes to appear in the last episode might have stemmed from Beth wishing he would arrive at the Kentucky State Championship again, elucidated with, “In the back of her mind she had hoped Townes might show up with a camera, but there was no sign of him.” Another seed of this idea is while she’s riding on the plane to the USSR, with Tevis illuminating, “For a moment she let herself imagine traveling with D. L. Townes, the two of them staying together in Moscow. But that was no good. She missed Benny, not Townes. She missed Benny’s quick and sober mind, his judgment and tenacity, his knowledge of chess and his knowledge of her. He would be in the seat beside her, and they could talk chess, and in Moscow after her games they would analyze the play and then plan for the next opponent.

They would eat their meals together in the hotel, the way she had done with Mrs. Wheatley. They could see Moscow, and whenever they wanted to they could make love at their hotel.”

Although the screenwriter finds Townes to be the man she wants to see most while in Moscow (therefore wills it so)—requiring a fairly sizable amount of suspension of disbelief—it is Benny she yearns for in the novel.

As a result of the tiring and painstaking process of it all— playing such high-level opponents for every game—Beth doesn’t really get a chance to go out and explore much… as usual. Something that harkens back to Mrs. Wheatley trying to persuade Beth to see the sights

74.

with her in Mexico City. And, going back to that geographical moment in the series, when Beth’s flashbacks to Mr. Shaibel in the basement are pitted against the book, they do not consist of dialogue. In the show, Shaibel is positioned to offer up his best version of Mr. Miyagi-inspired wisdom, with one notable instance being at the Mexico City zoo, when she recalls him warning her, “People like you have a hard time. Two sides of the same coin. You’ve got your gift. And you’ve got what it costs.

Hard to say for you what that will be. You’ll have your time in the sun, but for how long?” A prime example of “gifts” and “talents” only seeming to be impressive in a person when they’re young, there is an ongoing theme of time running out for Beth—more than the average, ungifted plebe. But the time, to use a cliche, is now. In Moscow. Her chance to truly shine and prove to this male-dominated atmosphere (and the male-dominated world at large) what she’s capable of.

When she at last does make it out for a bit of exploring, we come to find that the ending of the book is presaged by a scene during which she already walks through the park and discovers the slew of old men playing chess, whereas this initial encounter is removed from the show to make the moment come across as even more poignant within the context of the last scene. Or rather, perhaps a type of forced poignance.

Speaking to this, as Beth plays Borgov for the first time in Mexico City, she assesses of his game, “Everything he was doing was obvious, unimaginative, bureaucratic.” As entertaining and well-made as it is, the same can be said of the Netflix adaptation of the novel. And yet, like Borgov’s game, there’s a reason it has drawn so much success, such an endless barrage of accolades. They did not

opt for subtlety or intuitiveness in their game (as Beth is known to do).

Rather, they played it methodically by the numbers as they picked which details to sensationalize and which ones to eliminate altogether.

75.