prose

aurelia
ben bush
stranger in the bedroom
ben flasher
prelude to a work in progress
earl jackson, jr.
rothko
brian lane
the unseen video
daria portillo
box 783
kristy valenti
looking it up
rebekah werth

stranger in the bedroom
ben flasher

The Stranger in the Bedroom He opened the book in his lap and began to read, hesitantly at first. Soon the words pulled him in, enraptured him, held him tightly in their grasp. He was standing in a shower with a lovely young girl. The author directed his attention tastefully, however; his eyes were shielded, and he could not reach out and touch her. Nonetheless, it was a thrill to be standing next to her, to feel the warm water pouring down over his head, forcing his eyes shut, just as it poured over her head.

They got out of the shower and she dried herself off. The author lead him to exercise modesty; he saw nothing in detail, except for the towel. But then, he already knew everything he wanted to; she was young and beautiful, and any further description of her private bits could only diminish her in his mind.

The woman dressed while he was led about the room, allowed to examine her tasteful record collection, the well-worn literary novels piled haphazardly on her bookshelf, the old stuffed frog sitting on her bed, missing one eye and patched on its side.

Now that the room had been described, he could seat himself anywhere; he chose the bed, deciding that she was the kind of girl who would have a bed like sinking into a pile of autumn leaves.

He listened to her chair pulling back along the carpet, the soft brush of her body lowering into the seat, the scritch-scratch of a pen moving along paper. He should have been content, but something itched uncomfortably in the back of his mind. Before it had been enough, convenient even, to sit unobtrusively and absorb her presence; being unable to act or speak was honestly kind of a relief. But not tonight. He needed more, he needed to act.

Her back was turned. He rose from his seat, and stepped towards her quietly. He threw his arm about her waist, pressed his lips towards her clean, warm neck.

His lips fell through her skin. The flesh came apart; broke into pieces; crawling black letters; swarming like ants. He tasted pungent ink and the sour glue pulp of paper. He tasted the author; a hunched, nervous man in a tiny room; coffee and sunflower seeds and cigarettes.

The black letters covered him. They scattered and crawled under his clothes, across his flesh, past his lips, into his ears, under his eyelids. Now, most horrifying of all, he could taste himself. The springy hint of his shampoo, the sharp sting of his cologne. It was all around him, inescapable: the saggy feeling of his own skin, the weight and responsibility of his memories. It was as cold and dark and lonely as his dreams.

He shouted out and threw the book down. It was gone; the girl, the room, the crawling letters. It was just a book, a few hundred white pages and a green jacket, lying open on the floor. He coughed a couple of times, and glanced around to see if anyone had noticed; no one had. Cautiously, he picked the book up, shut its pages, and set it back on its shelf.

rothko
brian lane

Red, White on Black. 1950
Mark Rothko
Oil on canvas, 117 x 107 1/8"
Lent anonymously.

He's so late now that she sighs, lifts herself up from the cement stairs and steps out onto the sidewalk. She excuses herself past a sharply dressed man who is hurrying into the building behind her and she walks to the little machine. Her fingers search all the pockets of her heavy coat and she manages to find the six coins for the Sunday edition, the change from breakfast. One after another, she guides the quarters into the slot and, after that slight click barely audible over the wind, she opens the little door and pulls out a pile of the papers from inside the small box. One under the crook of her arm, she places the rest on top of the white box, drops low for a moment and picks up something from the ground. Upright again, she slides one of her pale hands across the top page, over the dense headlines and blue title, and weights down the light newsprint with an adequate sized stone. Back at the steps up to the place, she sits down and looks down at the journal on her knees as her hands stretch up above her. Sifting her fingers through her hair, twisting the band, the wispy strands are secured, and finally her hair is free from her face, the wind now only attacking the loose pages of the newspaper.
Her arms reach for one another across denim pants and then her hands find their way into opposite sleeves and she reads about the world. A celebrity couple has been divorced. A famous artist has killed himself. The president is taking a trip. A bombing. A train accident. The world moves itself ahead, scarred by the actions of man. She shivers and ignores the wetness on the back of her neck. Nothing interesting enough to keep her from being distracted by the passing crowds or the rhythm of the city.
A curl of leaves dances quickly past her, a simple performance for her alone that she almost misses.
Behind her, high above, the long neck of a cherry picker lifts a maintenance man towards the immense colored banner flapping on top of the portico. His co-worker shouts instructions up to him as his gloved hands struggle to tie the white nylon rope into its proper hook. The fight to repair the display is immense and almost comical.
A school bus pulls up to the curb and, in a frenzy, a few dozen ten-year-olds escape their teachers and run the steps up to the glass doors. Her eyebrows tighten her forehead, her eyes dart around.
She spots him in the park across the street, and follows him with her eyes only as he walks across the muted grass and then as he passes through the black iron bars of the gate, ducks through traffic, notices her. His hair is covered by a black knit cap and his faux peacoat is buttoned up to the neck, which is covered by an unsophisticated cream scarf. He is apologizing before he even reaches the sidewalk, saying her name, "Mia, Mia." She tries to brush it off like it's nothing. He explains about the meeting with the student who is having trouble with the paper and the other one who needed to ask for an extension and how he had to explain that he wasn't responsible for handing out extensions. She's not really paying attention. She tries to sound forgiving but that's not her thing. He asks her why she didn't wait inside and she reminds him the plan was to meet outside on the steps. A short pause and she adds what time they were supposed to meet. He apologizes again.
"Forget it. Let's just go in." He looks understandably hesitant at her quick dismissal, and she reassures him. "Sam, come on." She modestly turns and climbs the ancient set of cement steps, and he follows her.
Slowly ascending, the building pulling them in. The sun emerges from behind a cloud and for just a brief moment the whiteness of the place seems to glow, bright in this well-worn city. The glow makes the place seem larger, less primitive, even more grand than the neighboring skyscrapers that stretch into the heavens above. The slight erosion of the place, the handprints and marks and gum, seem to disappear for a moment. It's like a monument, this place, a deliberately classic building that has the feeling of reverence. This just king of marble and concrete and wood solemnly reigns over the city from its strategically placed throne, back to the river, eyes on its subjects. The clouds move, this sovereign again governing from the shadows. It pulls them in.
They push through the revolving doors, each in a separate compartment, and then meet again in the lobby. A small man smiles to them and picks a piece of red lint from his beige sweater vest. "Cash or credit?" the man asks, and then ushers them to the proper cashier.
They stand behind an older man with remnants of a once healthy silver slick of hair on his head. The old man's back to them, she studies his shoes. She watches as he pays for his own ticket and then, with a crisp, flat single, he tips the cashier, adding, "And this for you, my dear." The cashier, a woman not much younger than Mia, smiles blandly and takes the bill from him. The old man shuffles away slowly and then her companion is buying their tickets.
Mia watches the transaction intently, and leans her head slightly over the counter to see into the cash drawer. Inside, she sees a five dollar bill with a black Magic Marker scrawl across it. After discerning a few stars along the margin, the secret drawing is lost forever as the cashier slams home the drawer and hands to them two small pink stickers.
"Where's the coat check?"
The cashier gives them simple directions and they traverse the lobby, the grand reception hall whose ceiling rises to the top of the building. Even such an open area must be carefully navigated, and they pass other people, a donation stand, some ropes that signify where a line should form. Beyond the welcome desk is a jigsaw of a staircase that calculates its way to the floors above, moving past the hanging centerpiece of the lobby, illuminated by skylight alone, a huge glass sculpture that winds and screams in a thousand directions. The red of the piece is nearly crimson at such a dark time, and the rain on the windows makes the red drip onto the visitors below. Mia looks at a security guard, a big man reading a thick paperback and picking his tongue along his teeth behind closed lips. He looks up briefly from behind the tired pages and then is back into his book. She turns and they are at the baggage check stall.
Sam takes off his coat and hands it to the check woman, and then she hands hers over as well. He puts his army satchel up on the counter and reaches into it without undoing the latches, pulls out a small notebook and then slides the satchel over.
"Wait. Here, put this in there, too." Mia gives him the newspaper. The paper is crammed into the satchel and then they put their stickers on their chests. He is wearing the sweater she doesn't like, the green one, and she wonders if he's just not catching any of her clues. For a moment, she wavers indecisively on whether or not to say something, but then she decides not to, rolls her eyes away and looks across the vast lobby to the elevators. "Well? Let's go."
And they begin into the museum.

*

It's about three feet by two feet, and hangs behind glass, behind a velvet rope protecting it from outsiders, with a special guard standing next to it at all times: women crying, a broken horse, fingers everywhere, rendered in a style so primitive a child could have painted it.
He is looking at it with about five or six other people, all of them closely watching it, as if awaiting instructions, but Mia has sat down on the bench in the center of the room. She instead admires the cleanliness of the place, the way the visitors glide over the polished floors, the quiet, ambling path people follow to avoid each other. She looks down to her hand and runs her thumb along the edge of the bench, over the bumps and imperfections in the wood, the discolorations.
"Did you see it?" he asks as he eases down next to her, still looking back to it.
She mutters that she did. "Where did they find it?"
"Burnham was in Paris and he went to this little shop and bought it for the frame. Something like ten dollars." He swallows. "Turns out to be an original, a lost study."
"Study?"
"It's like a practice before painting the real thing. You can really see how he's trying to balance the picture. The harlequins come out a lot more."
She's still investigating the wood with her hands, and she asks him why it's so important. "Lost for sixty years, what if it just stayed lost?"
"It's a really important painting. This is definitely going to provoke some new studies of the finished piece now. It would be like finding drafts of a Shakespeare play."
"What happened to the town after the war?"
"I don't know. I think it was just destroyed."
She's silent for a moment as a tour group passes them by. "Are there any pictures of it? Photographs, I mean."
"I'm sure they're somewhere. This painting is the main thing, though. The art is the best interpretation of what happened that you'll find."
She stands. "Is there much more on this level?"
"I don't know." He rises to her. "Do you want to go upstairs?"
She shrugs and they walk on.

*

The second floor is much more interesting than the first, no pompous black and white photography, no crassly posed models, no absurd and meaningless sculptures of amorphous forms. She marvels at the small collection, quartered off in two small rooms. She takes her time with the paintings to absorb the colors and the way the paintings change when she moves closer and farther away from them. He is telling her something about the artist and she nods. She tries to move away casually, but he follows along listing off facts and dates intently.
A young woman, maybe even in her thirties, gazes out with dead eyes as she calmly fingers some daisies and her dress spreads out in front of her in the lyrical grass.
"I really like this one," she tells him.
"I think it's in that calendar I got you at Christmas."
"Yeah. June."
"I don't know, Renoir just doesn't seem to speak to me."
She looks into the girl's eyes, absorbed, reading them.
He asks her if she wants to move on to the next floor, and that's when she sees the man across the room, staring desperately at the wall. His sharp clothes-he has on decisively buffed wingtips, a black three-piece suit, black tie pulled taut to the throat, a gold watch on his right wrist-falsify a slightly sophisticated edge, but his hungry stare belies this classy dress. His dark nest of hair has gone unattended for a while, and actually looks as if it could use a cut, and his shadowed cheeks tell her that a razor hasn't touched his face in days. Greedy eyes hover inside black circles from behind thin, crooked wire-rimmed frames, and so dark it looks like he's been recently beaten, and the shimmer there makes Mia think he might have been crying. Workman's hands clench and unclench at his side, pull at his unbuttoned sports coat and fidget. One of his shoes is untied. She thinks of him as a vagrant who's found some expensive clothes, dressed up as a businessman
She would have forgotten him immediately were it not for the peculiar way he was staring into the white wall across the room. The wall there is almost blank, aside from a small plastic plaque that details the name of a painting, who painted it and when, and the size of the canvas, but the painting to which it refers is gone. Underneath the plaque is a small laminated card that excuses the painting's absence due to maintenance. But the vagrant is just standing there, staring at the blank, unspoiled wall.
"Hey," she whispers. "Look at him."
"What?"
"He's just staring at the wall." They look at this odd visitor, watching him study the unspoiled whiteness.
"Wow. That's pretty impressive." Sam looks at his sportswatch. "You know, when the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, more people went to see the empty spot where it used to hang that usually saw the actual painting."
"I didn't know the Mona Lisa was missing."
"This was a long time ago. Third floor? The abstract expressionists are at the top."
As they ease their way out of the room, she's still looking back to the vagrant, her intense gawk mimicking his. "That's so odd. I mean, all the paintings in the whole place to look at and he just fixes himself to that one blank spot."
"I don't think it's that odd. Maybe he's thinking the painting's been damaged or something. Too much time in the light."
"But why would that be so interesting?"
The rain is pounding on the skylight above them, and they are raising their voices to speak.
"People like things to be extraordinary. If the painting's been damaged, it's more interesting-there's the threat that it might be irreparable. Most people only care about the third world country that happens to be being cluster bombed, you know. I feel the same way-I don't have time to bother with something unless its destroyed or in trouble."
She swallows deeply. "I can't believe that."
He steps onto the wooden floor, the top floor, the museum's final offering of wonder. Looking away from her, he says, "I'm sorry this has been disappointing. That exhibit downstairs was supposed to be much more remarkable. We can go if you want."
"It's okay." Mia sighs to let him know that it's not okay. She hates it when he tells her he's sorry like it's her fault. "I'm going to the restroom," she tells him. "I'll find you."

*

The red light blinks rapidly and then the water comes out, quick and soundless. Her hands massage each other underneath the faucet deliberately. The soap suds form and then are swept away into the metal basin, and she watches them swirl around the drain and then disappear forever into the darkness, not missed or noticed. Taking a paper towel from the dispenser, Mia dries her hands and then tosses it into a brilliantly polished metal receptacle where something catches her eye. There on the floor, among the immaculate tile and near the faultless trashcan, is a carefully folded piece of notebook paper. She looks around and sees no one. With two slim fingers, she picks up the small note and unfolds it with caution, as if she were afraid of its contents. Pausing at every single word, she reads:
Hewitt called. Your check was $65.00 even.
Louise-still a pair of slacks at her place (white)
You may pick them up friday
She reads the note maybe twenty times while still kneeling there in the women's restroom. This entire page of college-ruled paper, ripped out of some wire-rimmed notebook, with a such a huge amount of information in so few words. Its simplicity is hers now. With the utmost care she refolds the note and puts it into her back pocket. She pushes the swinging door to the lavatory and drifts out into the museum.
Mia is in this monument now, she is in this monument and she is drifting over the beach-colored wooden floors, passing the bleached perfection of the walls. And on all these walls, the paintings hang. Room relents to hall, hall to room, and on and on further and further into the recesses of this building. Paintings, pictures, everywhere. All the walls. There will be no time soon when she'll feel this alone and secure all at once. On her left is a massive shout of color that is screaming rage and frustration. A murmur audible to her alone beckons her from a room somewhere ahead. The dense hum of some sleeping fetus. These voices pull her down the hall, deeper inside.

*

She turns a corner and there it is. Huge and red, it has an entire wall to itself. Immediately it dominates and quiets all. It dwarfs her and anyone else that dares come its way. It is powerful, and is loud and silent at the same time. She sees in it nothing or everything. It is as deep and profound as she can think. It is humming quietly, beating something awful, pulling and twisting life, saying nothing. It vibrates with calm and is motionless with anxiety. She thinks that if she saw a picture of it, she could easily brush off this magnificence. But seeing it here, so big and filled with emotion, so physically present and commanding, it must be stared at, regarded. And she stands there, staring, focusing. It hangs on the wall like the most powerful explosion in the world.
A great, bottomless red square with a slightly oblong white band across its middle, bordered by such a deep black. And worshiping this idol, sitting on the bench in the middle of the room, stands the vagrant.
Her focus is broken as there is movement behind her and she turns to see a security guard, clad in a suit and a plastic nametag pinned to his lapel, passing behind her, making his rounds. He nods to her and she nods back, and then her focus shifts from this guard to the man in the room before her. She steps cautiously into the room, which feels cramped by their presence. She is amazed by the man's attentiveness and she can see he is like a follower of the god before him.
He looks worried, or maybe sick. His skin is a pale cream color, and strands of his stringy black hair cling to his forehead, held there by sweat. She sees him run his hands through this hair a few times, but it never stays. He loosens his tie ever so slightly, unbuttons the top button of his shirt. He looks at this canvas so intently that he wavers a bit, remembers to stand straight and gazes not just at the painting but into it. His mouth hangs open. His hand fidgets a moment. His arm slowly begins to move and then his hand disappears into, then comes out of, his pocket. He's holding something, but she can't see what it is. He's obviously not staring into the red anymore, he's doing something else, both hands together, fixing something, twisting. He looks around some and then there's a pop and a small metal disc rolls across the flat floor straight to her feet, where it slowly leans into a spin, turning into stillness. A splatter as black liquid has fallen onto his slacks and the clean wooden floor. His arms pull the small can he holds back and pause one second, one long second that stretches into forever, before springing back, and the black paint from the small tin can splashes onto the canvas and blots the red with crisscrosses and splotches of dark, glistening, wet blackness. In the backswing, he loses control of the can and it flies from his hands, but it's obvious he doesn't care about this. Before the tin can even clatter across the wooden floor, spilling the remaining paint as it rolls off, he's reaching into his pockets again and pulling it out: his knife. It's small and sharp with a carved wooden handle, and he is gripping it tight. He puts his left hand onto the canvas, presses his palm onto it deeply, staining his skin black, fingers splayed, and with three hacking motions, he slashes at the painting, cutting it through and ripping it open and exposing the white wall behind, masked in the shadows by this man and the thick material.
Through this all she is transfixed. She barely notices the guard running past her yet again, grabbing for the vagrant.
The man is jerked back and is dropping to the floor. Another guard is yelling, "Get the knife, get the knife!" but it's already fallen from his hand and he's going limp. She is thinking so slowly she is wondering where this other guard has come from. The first guard has wrestled the vagrant to the floor, whose eyes close as the back of his head slams onto the floorboards. The guard grabbing at the vagrant's mid-section has fallen with him, and is now trying to maneuver the man on to his side. But the man's leg is looking for something to brace against, and it catches the bench, his body twisting onto his stomach. The other guard is there now, grasping for the man's wrists, which are at his back and are useless to him now anyway. The first guard is now lying across the man's waist, helping the second guard with the plastic cuffs he's trying to get over the man's hands. The two guards are heavy, but the man pushes back up onto one side as his glasses fall forward, slide off his nose and disappear. And his head is turning, turning backwards, trying to see. A vein is pulsing in his neck. He is pushing hard on his one leg and the other is straight and pointed. He grunts. The plastic cuffs are being tightened around his wrists, but before they can wrestle him up, before they can pull him to his legs and drag him away and out of there and off to wherever they'll take him, he manages to take one last final look, and he sees what he's done, they all look up and over the roar of the storm outside and the deafening silence of the museum they see what he's made.
The great red beast is sagging now, tilted slightly, dripping black and ripped from the inside out.

*

They step out into the rain, huddled closely together, and he's saying to take a taxi back to the apartment they share. She is quiet. They stand on the curb, not speaking to one another, red and blue lights pirouetting across their faces and their clothes, the only brightness in the drab day. Her coat is wrapped around her like a cape, and beneath the heavy wool she turns it over in her hands, feeling its rounded edges and the heat that remains from being held so tight by nervous hands.
He opens his mouth to speak but fakes a cough instead. He looks down at her. "I can't believe that happened."
A small stream flows next to the curb at their feet, and she's watching a small leaf float along it, turning and spinning, performing a little ballet just for her.
"Yeah. I can't believe it."
A taxi pulls up and they get in and it drives away.

the unseen video
daria portillo

Because we have never seen each other cry, the scene is especially unreal. Crying was barely acceptable when we fell off bikes and got scraped knees. But now we take turns crying for each other, for ourselves. I am filming my Abuelita tell a story. She is hamming it up for the camera. She says, in Spanish," You'd always hang out with your friends. You'd go to a neighbor's house and talk to his dog for hours, drinking and laughing. I had five children to raise...But it's okay, it's okay, nobody's perfect. You never raised a hand to them, even when they were bad. I'd say, go spank this one! But you'd only pretend and your hand would barely touch him." She motions with her hand imitating a mock slap that snaps at the wrist.
I am filming because there is one real chair in the hospital and where I am sitting I can see most of my family. My grandfather is the star of the show, who I can barely stand to see, let alone film. He fills one third of the screen because I am one foot away from him. He is a landscape of tubes and machinery. He is a series of hums and beeps.
I picture this horrible scene I saw on T.V. A fat lady shrinking during liposuction until her limbs are flaccid and tiny. The bed looks like it is swallowing my grandfather up. I'm afraid there are no legs beneath the covers- he is that thin. I am filming my grandmother weeping, oh Teto, oh Teto, no, don't leave me.
Eventually my cousin takes his digital camera back. He shoots from a better angle. He is a documentary film major at UCLA. It's the camera that we're drawn to and that we hide from as snot and tears run down our faces. We turn away on cue if the camera pans to our faces. No one says ACTION and sometimes we are caught off guard by the glass eye staring into our tears. And we cry, wondering how awful, how real our grief must look.

box 783
kristy valenti

Gilbert noted the scrape of an overloaded backpack through the low, always-open back window of his college mailroom. He could never overcome his start at the students popping through, although he himself used this convenient if unconventional entrance; distracted, he clumped over to the package log. An unfortunate hackysack injury had put him in the plastic, boot-type brace for at least a week, but he was still able to put in an hour or two at his work-study job in the mailroom--as long as he occasionally rested on a small stool his supervisor had provided for him. Gilbert was glad, because he couldn’t afford to miss too much work. Besides, he enjoyed the semi-automatonism of his job--sorting mail could be done efficiently with part of his mind while he daydreamed. Since Gilbert had a natural flair with customer service, the job was not taxing; and his supervisors allowed him to play whatever music he wished to pass the time. Today he had chosen the obscure soundtracks of the anime (Japanese animation) Cowboy Bebop, composed by his hero, Yoko Kanno. Cowboy Bebop was a space opera in which Gilbert identified with the main character Spike, a devil-may-care bounty hunter searching the galaxy for his lost love Julia. Yoko Kanno’s techno-jazz and blues perfectly expressed Spike’s melancholia; her range constantly surprised Gilbert—a western tune would be followed by reggae followed by a ballad.
The music did not prevent Gilbert from looking up attentively as soon as he heard a student approaching his service window—he took pride in his job. However, when the footsteps stopped out of sight from his window and he heard the unmistakable sound of someone spinning the dial on their mailbox, he went back to double-checking the log.
Then, to his shock, a light soprano sang along to his imported CD,
Love is a joke
Like a little jack in the box… [footnoted. –j]
The voice came from the other side of the mailroom. He craned his neck out of his window but he couldn’t see the rouge diva. Realizing that he looked like a fool, he pulled his head back in. Gilbert was dying to see who the singer was--not in all of his time in college had he met anyone, not even in the anime club, who had even heard of Yoko Kanno--much less own her expensive CDs, which he had only managed to purchase through online auction vigilance. (The thrill of the hunt had made him prize these CDs all the more.) A more confident person would have just called out, but Gilbert, when not utilizing his customer service technique, was notoriously shy when speaking to girls.
Gilbert decided to look on his side of the mailboxes to see which one was hers. Hobbling around the narrow corridor between the back of the mailboxes and the wall, Gilbert encountered many package obstacles. Panting, he made it just in time to glimpse a punk rock, kohl-rimmed brown eye with implausibly long lashes before the crisp closing of box 783 cut off his view. He tried to make it out of the corridor to at least see her leave—but the brace slowed him down. By the time he burst out, she was gone. Before he gave himself up to despair, however, he remembered to look at the mailbox label on his side of the boxes. It read “Geneva Walters/Destiny Wallace.” Gilbert winced twice—once because one of the box owners wasn’t male, which would have proven her name conclusively, and then because the girl’s name might be Destiny, and even in his newly besotted state, he realized the cheesiness of that.

*

“So, you’re telling me that you are falling for a girl you’ve never spoken to, never seen, and know nothing about, other than she is one of two girls out of approximately 7,500 at this school. You realize that she could be married and/or have kids, have a boyfriend, or be a lesbian, correct? Not to mention that she could be a bitch, not interested in you, be a real dog, etc. etc. etc. You won‘t even check out her mail to see what kind of person she is because of ‘ethics‘.” Lomas complained.\
Patiently, Gilbert explained--again--to his friend Lomas his attraction for this mystery girl as they picked through the cassette bin. “She KNEW the WORDS to “Flying Teapot,” okay? Which means she likes Cowboy Bebop--the best anime of all time, with emphasis on good writing, voice work and characterization--enough to buy the soundtracks and memorize them.” Lomas waved a Lou Reed CD and began to speak, but Gilbert would not be interrupted.
Gilbert continued,” Plus, I know a few things about her. She was carrying a backpack big enough to scrape the sides of the window, so she’s probably tough (she has to be to lug all that stuff around campus) and studious enough to necessitate all of that. Her eyes were beautiful--you know that I am an “eye and leg man”. She had to be tall; otherwise her eyes wouldn’t have been level to box 783. Her voice was pretty good-- trained; it was on key and everything.”
“You’re tone deaf!” Lomas interjected. How would you know?”
“Just because I can’t sing on key doesn’t mean I can’t tell when someone else is. I was in choir with you in junior high, remember?”
Lomas hissed, “Keep your voice down!” He nervously eyed the exotically dressed students of all types that surrounded them: piercings, tattoos, and Betty Page fashions were prevalent. Gilbert was marooned in 1994 with his white t-shirt, blue jeans and ubiquitous flannel—keenly he felt his lack of cool. The stack of Gershwin CDs he was clutching didn’t help. Lomas with his long black hair fit in a little better; he was attired in a black duster and the slogan on his t-shirt was appropriately profound. Luckily, the loud music had prevented anyone from hearing.
Gilbert, unaware, said “Anyway, this tells me she has good taste, is smart enough to be at this school and works hard, has beautiful parts to her, at least, and is artistic enough to have voice training at one point. She had the potential to be the coolest girl ever. I just have this feeling, man, that this girl is something really special. That’s enough to take a chance for, right? Right?”
Gilbert and his roommate Lomas were at Nite Lite Records, an indie record store. Lomas sighed, his lanky frame slumping in an attempt to mock Gilbert, but the gesture was instead sympathetic; he agreed with his friend more than he cared to admit--the foundation of Lomas’ and Gilbert’s friendship was their mutual horror of the mundane and affection for the obscure.
Most people didn’t understand Gilbert’s labyrinthine logic, and that tended to alienate them, but Lomas enjoyed his friend’s creative schemes, insights and off-the-wall solutions when there appeared to be none. He had had more success than Gilbert with girls, but not much. In a strange way, he knew this was making Gilbert happy, although he suspected his friend had watched too many John Hughes and John Cusack movies, instead of sensibly spending his youth playing Dungeons & Dragons, as he had. “Why don’t you do something about this girl other than just whining about her to me. I think--” Lomas paused mid-sentence to check out a tan girl wearing very little enter the store—Gilbert was too far gone to even notice.

*

Gilbert decided to simply watch for the two names on the package log list. When sooner or later his mystery girl received a large package and had a pickup slip in her box, he would be able to recognize her voice over her box mate’s--he was certain--and, since he invariably played Yoko Kanno while he worked, he would be able to strike up a conversation while he had the Mail Room Attendant Persona to make him bold. In his experience, most people had a routine in regards to mail pickup--between such and such classes--so in all probability, she would appear during his shift.
In the corner of his mind, Gilbert knew this plan was ridiculous, but in matters of the heart--and this was fast becoming one--he operated on one part fantasy, one part strategy. (At times, he speculated this was due to overexposure to John Cusack’s teen romance movies but found himself unable to stop this naive behavior.)
Gilbert may have been an incurable romantic, but he wasn’t stupid. He realized his Master Plan depended greatly on luck. He knew some people that had gone through four years at school without having once seen their box mate, and so in comparison, his chance of meeting Geneva or Destiny was merely a long shot. He tried to think of ways to increase his odds and find out information on Destiny/Geneva without being creepy or stalker-like about it, and finally increased his hours at work as soon as his leg healed.
He found himself checking out every girl’s eyes he met, searching for a match. (This resulted in two preempted rejections and three come-ons, which he declined with extreme embarrassment.) Although the mail was emptied out of the box regularly, and he avidly watched box 783, he never saw her. He reasoned that she might have dropped a class, changing her routine.
As a month passed and the quarter neared dangerously to a close, Gilbert began to despair. He had put no large package slips for either girl in the box thus far, and he saw clearly the large holes in his plan. Every time he worked, he felt as alone as if he really were Spike in the spaceship Bebop, traveling through space and searching for an enigmatic woman.

*

Lomas found Gilbert that night on their living room couch oscillating between sorrow, hope and fear. He had consumed half a beer. (Gilbert didn’t drink much.) Lomas downed the remainder in one gulp, knowing that Gilbert wouldn’t mind. While plunking down in the beanbag chair, Lomas scowled—Gilbert was playing his old records on the hi-fi, a sure sign of his misery. “You’re an ass, Gilbert. If you had just talked to her in the first place, you wouldn’t have this problem.” Gilbert was quiet.
More gently, Lomas said, “I just don’t want this to destroy you. She’s not a stacked cartoon—she’s a real person who might not live up to your fantasy.” He tossed the beer can at Gilbert.
Gilbert replied, “I know that. I just…want someone different. Someone you can’t put in a box, categorize like a piece of mail. I want someone who’s like Yoko Kanno’s music—playful, unclassifiable, with lots of different aspects to her personality. I want her to be able to appreciate things that other people can’t seem to appreciate.”
Lomas’ mouth quirked as he muttered, “Like you.” Out loud he said, “Well, Gilbert, it’s about time you stopped fooling around. Here’s what we’re going to do…” _

*

Lomas’s plan was so simple Gilbert felt ashamed he hadn’t thought of it, although it did contain a bit of harmless deception that he wasn’t quite comfortable with. (“You learn a lot role-playing.” Lomas had said cryptically.) With only one week to go before finals and then summer vacation, Lomas mailed overnight two large packages to box 783, containing a “free book” and a trial offer to a (fictional) book club. He purposely made the books as uninteresting as possible (Patio Furniture and You and The History of Furniture Tags), in the hopes that neither girl would want to join. Since most of his coworkers wanted the week off to study, Gilbert had all of the hours he wanted to stake out box 783.
On Tuesday, a tall girl with smoky eyes came up to the window with her slips. “Excuse me, I have packages. Geneva Walters.” Gilbert’s bonging heart belied his outer calm as he went to retrieve her packages; the book Lomas had sent her and one from a music club. This was an ominous sign—music clubs tended to showcase only the most banal musicians.
“So, what kind of music do you listen to?” He asked nonchalantly as he handed her the log for her signature.
“Mariah Carey is my favorite! I can’t believe her movie bombed, she’s so talented.” _ Gilbert blinked in revulsion and carefully assessed the girl: she was clad entirely in Tommy Hilfiger, like a walking Macy’s ad. Mentally backtracking, Gilbert thought, “If she likes that dog whistle Mariah Carey, no way can she be the one…it HAS to be Destiny Wallace, not her. Please God, not her.”
“I like Yoko Kanno music,” he offered, handing her the packages. “Have you ever heard of her?” Geneva gave him a look of contempt. “No,” she said. She might as well have tacked on “You-out-of-it-loser.”
Later that night Gilbert briefly explained to Lomas the incident with Geneva. Lomas rolled his eyes and said, “Just don’t fall apart when Ms. Wallace comes to get The History of Furniture Tags, Romeo.”

*

Gilbert awoke with new optimism. Destiny Wallace was bound to come in at least once before the craziness of finals, and then he would meet her. He fantasized about being like John Cusack, his underdog charm causing her to melt even before their hands touched as he handed her the package. He cringed as he put in Yoko Kanno’s “No Disc” CD and pictured another scenario in which he managed to make ten sexist comments before she slapped him. She then filed sexual harassment, causing him to be kicked out of school and end up a wino. He was so occupied in his thoughts he didn’t hear the soft shfft as someone walked through the window.
A line had gathered by this time--everyone made sure their box was cleaned out before vacation, causing people who hadn’t seen the inside of the mailroom all quarter to show up--and Gilbert became busy. As a result, he didn’t notice the overburdened girl with persuasive brown eyes waiting patiently until she was right in front him. She said, “I have a package. Leigh--oh, crap—Destiny Wallace, please?”
Gilbert swallowed. This girl was beautiful, with short, choppy hair the color of California poppies and a too-large smile. Without any rational thought to what he was saying, he muttered, “Destiny isn’t your name?”
She rolled her eyes dramatically. “I share the same curse as many at this school--I’m the daughter of hippies. I usually go by my middle name, I haven’t gotten around to changing it yet.”
“Oh.” said Gilbert inanely. Inside, he anguished. The line was long behind her, and she was just about to sign out her package. All of this time waiting to meet her, and now his throat closed like a drawstring bag and he couldn’t meet her gaze. She seemed friendly--why couldn’t he just make some kind of comment? Something to make her laugh, or pay attention to him, or SOMETHING??? This was his last chance. He knew it.
“Is that you playing Yoko Kanno? I love her. You know, I haven’t met anyone else with her soundtracks.”
Gilbert felt himself straightening up. “Oh, you’re into her music? You know, I have the soundtrack for the new movie that hasn’t been released in the U. S., yet.”
“Really?” Leigh said excitedly. “I’m dying to hear that! I can’t afford it on Amazon and it hasn’t shown up on ebay. Would you burn it for me, if I gave you a blank CDR?” Gilbert inwardly crumbled.
“I don’t have a burner.”
“I do. Listen, what time are you off work? Do you need to study or anything? Because if not, and it’s not too inconvenient, would you stop by Juniper Hall 152 by with it? We could pop in some anime while it’s burning--I just got the boxed set of Lain for my birthday-- if you want.” Suddenly, she blushed. “My roommate will be there, so you can’t try anything funny—no offense.”
Ignoring the growing line, Gilbert exalted. Despite his delusion, all he had really longed for was a chance, a start with her. He hadn’t fooled himself that they would fall blissfully into each other’s arms at first contact, but this exceeded his wildest dreams. And here it was.
“You know, I have the soundtrack to Lain too,” he said with feigned nonchalance.

prelude to a work in progress
earl jackson, jr.

Dear Juan:
I had promised you my translation of the section of the play Malatimadhava that resulted in the play never being performed on the Indian stage. The section in question violates the taboo against mixing the "flavor" of love with the "atmosphere" of horror. At the moment, which is later than the eleventh hour, I am still looking for the text. As an alternative, I am offering this consolation prize text, and my foot is pressing heavily on the irony gas-pedal in the vehicle of this metaphor.

Call it Steve:
Love, Sex, and Desire Underground.

A few years ago I started publishing meta-autobiographical pieces that marked certain moments in a personal life that couldn't help being political. I have often thought about collecting these pieces (and a few more as-yet-unwritten ones) into a collection with the working title, Call it Steve: Love, Sex and Desire Underground. If I ever did this, the collection would have two origin stories I would rather not choose between. I'd rather record both stories and let the reader (if any) choose or customize a hybrid between them.

ORIGIN ONE.
In the summer of 1996, a doctor casually suggested to me that I begin telling people about my anorexia, so that "they wouldn't think you died of AIDS." My efforts toward
recovery included a kind of enforced attention to myself I found nearly intolerable unless
I could use it as a method of writing. I planned to turn the notes I took into a journal of
sorts, with the working title, "Vanishing Act."
Ultimately, this project seemed somewhat defeatist. Either I would survive and the notes would look like a kind prematurely self-congratulatory indulgence, or I wouldn't survive and the notes be redundant, describing my absence that my absence would already make evident. If I were going to pursue a kind of self-attentive writing, I would rather the exercises result in texts that wouldn't embarrass the surviving writer or survive the writer as an embarassment. In other words
I wanted to leave stories behind that would be of use whether I left or not. Instead of detailing the process of leaving life behind, I would rather record what made staying so valuable.

ORIGIN TWO.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the external and internal landscapes of Japan changed dramatically. The naturalist writers considered it the duty of Japanese intellectuals to record what life was like as lived in this new and constantly in-process world. They considered their own lives somewhere between an experiment and a laboratory. Their writings - both their non-fiction essays and their autobiographical novels - were reports from the field on those experiments.
After a year in San Francisco, I began to feel a similar duty to record life from within a specific intersection of sexual margins. It seemed to me that any aspect of life for a sexually marginalized subject was a complex of theoretical negotiations. Feeling particularly stung by the antagonism that gay activists expressed toward lesbian and gay theorists at that time, I hoped that recording some of these experiences might begin to traverse the chasm between "theory" and "practice" that so tragically divided what might have been communities.
I also wanted to write these stories to inject more complex possibilities into public discourse about sexuality. The AIDS crises made it imperative that thinking become more complex. I thought about Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders. When asked about masturbation, she responded that it was indeed a form of sexual expression that kept one safe from exposure to AIDS and other STDs. When President Clinton fired her for giving that information, he was not alone in considering his action a moral gesture. I wondered if he issued Dr. Elders enforced resignation in the same room he had amused himself by inserting cigars into Monica Lewinsky's vagina. I worried about the $1.7-million study, "Sex in America," which announced that 98 percent of all American adults prefer vaginal sexuality. What could that possibly mean? And why was no one noticing that it could not mean anything? President Clinton at first insisted that he did not engage in sex with Lewinsky. Under further questioning, he defended his denials by explaining that for him, "sex" meant engaging in physical contact with the aim of causing the other party to experience pleasure. My stories are responses to these moments of national ignorance. I wanted the stories to be exercises in complexity and clarity.
I would begin by defining my three key terms: Sex, Love, and Desire.

SEX
If there is anything shocking about my project, it is my basic definition of sex. It shocks me every time I repeat it. To conceive of it this way at all, I have to imagine a Martian anthropologist doing field research on the behavior of earthlings. From that alien perspective, "sex" could be abstracted from its bountiful expressions as applied friction whose basic purpose is to induce an involuntary muscle spasm. Isn't that shocking? Just consider how deeply and pervasively human histories, cultures, and every aspect of daily life have been informed with and determined by this urgent friction. Think about the all the ways societies have imagined sexual difference, and the extremes to which they enforced their notions of sexual difference as gender rules. Think about the rituals of courtship, the institutions of marriage, the fashion industry, the culturally induced obsessions - from fandom to stalker.
Of course, I had to make the anthropologists extraterrestials, because no human earthling could ever experience sex so affectlessly. And this cognitive dissonance between the basic physiological "fact" of sex and the importance sex holds in human life is what I want to illuminate in this thought experiment: the infinite distance between the zero-degree instance of "sex" and "sex" as a culturally, socially, aesthetically, psychologically, and politically overdetermined category of human experience. The radical difference between the two tells me that meaning and meaningfulness are intrinsic to being human. Sex as a human activity is always infused with and constantly transformed, localized, and reinvented by the human propensity for meaning-making.

Love
In some cases I believe that having children and making art share a common function. Both are ways in which an individual can trick her- or himself out of committing suicide. Imagining the possibility of love is another trick, but of a different order. It tricks itself out of being a trick. Remaining in the world in case one might experience love, is a wager that gives the concept "love" a value. That value is a function of a practice. If there are enough people who remain alive in case of love, that joint practice gives "love" a value that transforms the "concept" into a realizable potential.

Desire
I rely on the Lacanian notion of desire, but emphasize its usually obscured optimism. I agree with Lacan that desire is a realization of lack, but I see that realization tempered by the optimism that throws the subject out into the world after whatever might address that lack (notice that I write "address" and not "fill" or "repair".)

HUMAN LIFE
I isolate sex, love, and desire first to understand them on their own terms, and secondly to recognize the intricacies of their interrelations. Call me Aristotelean, but I also have discovered in writing that each of these terms evince dual aspects which I will call potential and actual. Sex is an appetite and the practices that whet and satisfy that appetite. Love is an emotion and an emotional capacity or receptivity to that emotion. Desire is the recognition of lack and the quest in response to that recognition.

The morals of the stories
The first celebrity I ever saw in person was Ann Landers. She gave a speech at Lafayette High School in Buffalo, New York one day during my sophomore year there. The auditorium was packed. Addressing the entire student body, Landers asked us to imagine waking up one night extremely hungry.
Going to the kitchen, the only thing we could find in the refrigerator was a new jar of pickles. It was sealed tight, too tight to open it with our bare hands. We looked in all the drawers for a jar opener but found none. And we were getting hungrier by the minute. Those pickles looked so tempting in that jar, we might even smash it against the counter. But we showed some restraint and started to look through other areas of the house. Eventually we find a family heirloom, a beautiful diamond broach. (Being a precocious 14-year old cross-dresser at the time, my ears pricked up). Now ravenous, we jam the broach's pin under the lid of the jar. We wedge and pry and pound relentlessly. And eventually, the lid yields. Elated, we gorge ourselves on the pickles. It is only once we are sated that we notice - too late - that the brute force with which we used the family jewels disfigured them beyond recognition, and beyond repair. This, Landers concluded, is what sex before marriage is like. Opening a pickle jar. With a diamond broach.
One of the major flaws in this allegory is that its moral confuses marriage and love. Of course, this confusion is intentional, because if the moral was simply sex without love was a diamond broach pickle-jar opener, it would give the go-ahead to any unmarried couple who thought they were in love. And certainly adolescents experiencing their first post-pubertal urges are going to call those feelings anything they can think of, especially if it gives them permission to act on them.
Ann Landers's story is an argument for abstinence; it presumes that sex outside an established legitimating context is meaningless. The stories I tell are arguments for attention; I presume that there is no such thing as meaningless sex. In the inevitability of its meaningfulness, in the volatility of its meanings, and in its versatility as a mode of expression, sex demands critical attention. I want to draw attention to what meanings any given experience has for whom, when and under what circumstances those meanings change. I want to pay attention to what range of experience is valorized by certain institutions, and what experiences those institutions exclude from not valorization but intelligibility. I want to distinguish wherever possible the difference between experience and practice. And I want to pay attention when experience and practice become indistinguishable. The radical attention I call for and hopefully practice conceives of sexuality as always personal and political, always potentiated and actualized within a sociohistorically specific Symbolic and a complex contest for and over meaning.

aurelia
ben bush

My roommate Aurelia could enjoy anything.
She made grocery shopping fun. We were struggling to decide on our breakfast for the next week. Dwarfed by the towering fortifications of cereal boxes. "Give me your hands, Sherman." We each placed two fingers on the shopping cart and allowed a Ouija-like paranormal force to guide it. "Concentrate. Hold your breakfast question clearly in your mind. Spirit, help us to choose a cereal which will be tasty and delicious." The front of the cart tapped a box of almond raisin bran that had escaped our attention.
Aurelia drove my silver Honda back from the store. The trunk was filled with effortless bachelor meals. Aurelia pulled onto a side street by the University. The enormous letters on the houses made me feel like I had wandered onto Sesame Street in Athens. A green tinted porch light and beer bottles balanced on banisters. From inside the fraternities we heard a wordless rumble of conversation and the crack of colliding pool balls. Aurelia pulled a stack of pink triangle gay pride stickers from her pocket and smiled. She works at the rape recovery center and most of the staff has gotten pretty jaded about the male gender. She handed me half the stack. We sprinted up and down the block slapping them onto the bumpers of the jeeps that lined the alley behind the fraternity. Scurrying through their back parking lot, I tipped over their precariously full trash barrel, sending glass bottles cracking and rolling across the pavement. We leapt back into our car, laughing as we made our getaway.
After outing the fraternities, Aurelia read the paper while I tried to make dinner. We had bought dented discounted cans but now the opener kept derailing on the twisted rim. "I can't believe this," she said jabbing her finger into the center of the page. "The census count was even higher than expected. The government is concerned about the ecological impact of the world's overpopulation," she read, "They're going to use time machines to redistribute people evenly over the span of history. That way no single time period has to disproportionately bear the burden."
"Huh," I said while mixing the cylinder of concentrated soup into a steaming pot of tap water.
"They give you food and housing and some kind of stipend and in exchange you work for the federal bureaucracy. That could be great. I'm going to apply."
When Aurelia says she will do something she follows through on it. "There's an office over in the city. Do you want to come along when I apply tomorrow?"
I was always glad to keep Aurelia company on her errands.
My idea of entertainment pales in comparison to her errands. I'll go wherever she's going because she can make her obligations more fun than the stuff I choose to do. She refers to this as the Institute for Creative Living. She tries to enjoy every part of her life. And she works hardest to enjoy the things that aren't supposed to be fun. I just try to rush through the annoyances but Aurelia would rather take a little longer and enjoy doing her taxes.
About a month ago I thought Aurelia was gone. Her stuff was still in the apartment but I hadn't seen her in days. As it turns out she had locked herself in the linen closet. She stood in the dark with wooden shelves digging into her back and coathangers tangled in her hair. She tried to have as much fun as possible under the circumstances. When I finally saw her again she was sitting in the living room examining the list she had made of all the ways she had entertained herself. She'd spent a couple hours recollecting all the best jokes she had heard, trying to identify different items in the closet based only on touch, eaves dropping on my phone calls and I think she honestly had a pretty good time. After that she referred to the linen closet as her laboratory. It was where she had tested her theories for the Institute.
Sometimes she would go without food or sleep and then do her best not to be miserable. "There are so many people in such terrible situations." She mumbled as she was finally dozing off on our corduroy couch after four days without sleep. "Of course ideally we should work to end suffering but it's an impossible task. Right? Is there anything wrong with doing a little research into making the most of bad situations?" I rolled an afghan blanket across her and she didn't regain consciousness for a day and a half.


The waiting room was filled with people who were already anachronisms in their own time. There was an entire battalion of Confederate soldiers. Until this year this they had been allowed to recreate the battle of Antietam in a soybean field. Because of crop rotation this year the newly planted rows of corn had obstructed their battle so they were hoping to move the festivities to 1865. There was a group of retro-fifties kids hanging in the delicate balance between beatnik and mod. Their polished patent leather shoes and plastic glasses were the color of old vinyl records.
"If I can't bring my collection of seven-inch singles I'm not going." said a kid in a sweater vest as he swapped phone numbers with a girl.
There were nervous looking families hoping to get back to the relative stability of the Eisenhower administration. I stared at the nervous ticks in the parents' faces. The only people who seemed comfortable in their current time period were some kids from the Americorps program looking to pay off their student loans.
Aurelia was nervous. "I wasn't expecting quite so much competition for the job." Her hands were sweaty and her fingers left moist imprints on her resume.
"Don't worry, most of these people are wing nuts." Behind the desks were Army/Navy recruiters. They had been transferred over here temporarily while the project was getting underway. They were cracking jokes and discussing antique guns with the Civil War re-enacters.
"Look at the hobnobbing of the military men. There's no way these people are going to hire me. They're not looking for a social worker employed by lesbians." Her resume was an experiment in brevity. "Sherman, this application is worthless. I've got to make up a prestigious job and you'll be my imaginary reference. When they call you've got to lie and pretend to be my boss."
I agreed because what Aurelia had in mind was not always the best idea but it was always more interesting than what I would come up with. I did kind of wonder if deception for a federal job application might be the equivalent of lying under oath.
"It won't be entirely untrue. Every convincing lie is built around a kernel of truth. Just tell them that you manage the Institute for Creative Living and that I am one of your researchers towards positive human consciousness. I'm sure they need a trained pleasurologist when they're putting large groups of people in such unusual circumstances." She scratched my name into her application and left it on the desk. I'll follow Aurelia on her errands but I wasn't reading to relocate into the past. She picked up a couple pamphlets. "I guess everyone who goes has to be sterilized so they won't bring more people into the past. And even though you're living 1763 you're inside of a little plastic bubble so you can't talk to people or change the past. They give you food and housing but you earn it auditing income tax forms."
"Aurelia, why are you going to do this? It sounds awful."
"Sherman, I've proved to myself that I can enjoy any situation."
"I don't think you should do something just because you feel like you ought to." I fumbled around trying to refold a brochure I'd been looking at about how to get vaccinated for the ancestral viruses and bacteria encountered in time travel.
"Being true to yourself is kind of disgusting and self-absorbed. Look. My parents used to force me to eat salad all the time. While I was gagging on the lettuce I would fantasize about losing my taste buds so that I could eat only healthy things and not mind a bit. If nothing had any flavor I would rise joyfully each morning and dine on nothing but spinach and string beans.
"When I first moved away from home and I was trying to get by washing dishes I became pretty much indifferent to my own life. Everything just seemed terrifyingly equal. Why would people rather have sex or ski than sit on the couch? You didn't really gain or lose anything, it was just something to do. I figured that my salad theory applied here. If I didn't care what I was doing, I may as well do the right thing. So, I quit the diner and started working at the rape help center. I thought it would be depressing but I loved it. Being good was more fun than doing what I thought I liked. So I just gave up control to my own sense of morality."
"Now, it's the opposite," she said, "With the Institute for Creative Living I have trained myself to enjoy anything. Everything tastes like chocolate. So, if I'll be less of an ecological burden in a different time period I might as well try it."
She's a mercenary for her own sense of goodness. We'd both discovered that listening to our inner desires didn't make us happy. She obeyed her conscience and I obeyed her.

When they called about her application I had a whole story in mind about what a terrible employee she had been, always showing up to work late. I didn't want her to leave and I thought this might be last chance to get her to stay. But in that moment of decision with the phone pressed to my face my loyalty to her was stronger than my loyalty to myself. I gave her a glowing review. I said I would come into work in the mornings and find that she had been up all night studying pleasure. I said that she worked around the clock with astounding dedication and offered to assist in any additional projects.
A couple days later she packed her bags and was gone.


I have always been in love with narrators. In pre-school they showed us a filmstrip of eggs turning into tadpoles turning into frogs. It was a scary. The narrator made sense of it. Her voice was calming. I imagined her looking beautiful.
I missed Aurelia terribly. I didn't know what to do with myself. All the good parts of my life had come from doing whatever she wanted to do. I stopped going to work. I kept expecting her to walk casually out of the linen closet and tell me about all the adventures she had inside of it. I rented a stack of documentaries from the video store. I spent a couple days sitting on the corduroy couch watching them and eating almond raisin bran. Even so many years later that instructive voice gives me the feeling that things have their place. I was three quarters of the way through a documentary on the vanished Anasazi people of the American southwest. The narrator had the same unhurried pace as the empty ruins in the film. The phone rang. I fumbled to find the remote and mute my narrator. "Hello?"
It was the Department of Defense. "Mr. Davidson we learned of you through Aurelia Selavso, an employee of yours who we recently hired."
Had they discovered our lie? What was the punishment for falsifying a federal job application? I pressed my hand to my temples and squeezed. "Oh, yes, she's an excellent worker. Very dedicated. I'm sure she'll do great work for you."
"Yes, yes. Things seem to be working out just fine. I'm calling because we would like to commission a project from your Institute. In the eventuality of chemical or biological warfare the American populace will of course be confined to their homes. We're looking for someone to devise methods of amusement, games, what have you to bring a sense of play, joy, even meaning to this sort of claustrophobic existence. Keep people happy, prevent revolt."
I stared at the toothless women grinding maize, unsure what to say. "Well, you know we are already busy with a lot of research right now."
"I'm sure we could make this financially worthwhile. I'll fax you the specs on this thing and you can look it over." There was a bureaucratic gloss over what had once been the voice of a drill sergeant.
"That sounds great." I sputtered.
I accepted his offer. I knew that this was not Aurelia's idea of goodness but I was just glad to have some direction to my life again. I worried what Aurelia would think of this if she happened to be the one auditing my tax return and saw where I was getting my money from. I started doing some research into what seemed to satisfy people in a game, what sort of things make an American glad to be sitting still. I went to bingo night at the nursing home. I went to the thrift store and bought a dozen different board games with only half their pieces. I dumped them all out on the coffee table and tried to make something new out of them. The DOD's research pointed to apartment buildings as one of the points of highest conflict, dissimilar people forced to share their space for an uncertain amount of time. Aurelia would have had a list of hundreds of thrilling ways to enjoy being trapped inside an apartment.
I drove my silver Honda out to the Indian reservation. Casinos are designed to keep people trapped in their games. The players are quite content to be still. Some people sit in front of the same video poker machine for years. When I walked inside the place sounded like an ice cream truck traffic jam. A thousand machines with their tinny imitations of trumpet fanfares all playing out of sync. The occasional pay-off of coins being released sounded like machine gun fire. It was like ice-cream trucks doing a drive-by. Everyone at the slot machines seemed docile enough by Department of Defense standards but they were also pretty far from joyful by Institute for Creative Living standards. It reminded me of this temp job I had doing data entry. I wondered if the obsessive gamblers developed carpal tunnel syndrome. I speculated about the practicality of putting a slot machine in every home in America. The government would quickly recoup any initial costs.
I walked over to the card tables. There were some men from a fraternity. They were smiling and laughing and cheering on their friend's winning streak. I thought about Aurelia's contempt for them. But here they were the only people actually enjoying themselves in a place people theoretically go to for fun. You would think she of all people could appreciate an organization that is based around pleasure seeking.
As I approached them they looked up, scrutinizing me, sizing me up. "Hey, That's the faggot who fucked up my car!" He walked towards me. I was looking him in the eye and then I wasn't anymore. I didn't realize I'd been hit. Before I could figure out why my body wasn't in the position I had left it in, I was up against a slot machine that seemed to be made entirely out of corners. The lever dug into my back. I was eating my own lips. Instinctively, I put my hands up to protect my face and a punch to the stomach dropped me to the floor. Sprawled on the amber and maroon carpet, staring at the broken pretzels and loose change underneath the video blackjack machines. I was surrounded by them and the bartender was yelling for security.

looking it up
rebekah werth

Cookie found and savored facts. She was a reader and a note-taker and a reciter of information. Pieces of casual conversations haunted her for hours until she could confirm, Dee Dee Ramone was the name of the drummer for The Ramones, or people from Scotland are referred to as "Scottish," not "Scotch," or whichever point was up for debate. She was addicted to Internet search engines. Ink stain, how to remove, she typed in the white field. New Hampshire, capitol of. Bob Marley, cause of death. Rub with alcohol, Concord, cancer. She found it all and she was right.
Tuesday morning Cookie arrived at the downtown library at 9:00am. She stood on the hot concrete steps and listened to the cars coming off the nearby I-40 exit ramp. It was July in Arkansas and the air was so humid it was like breathing whipped cream. Despite the fullness in her lungs, Cookie wished she still smoked. Cigarette butts were strewn in constellation shapes on the blacktop in front of her. In high school, driving around at night or after school in their uniforms, she and her girlfriends had flicked still- burning cigarettes out of their car windows, exclaiming, "The world is my ashtray!" A reference to some cautionary tale their lipstick-toothed Sacraments teacher, Mrs. Fundacio, told them about a wild girl, the kind of girl who got what she deserved. The world is my ashtray: she and her friends loved the drama of it. Now that kind of drama made Cookie cringe. Now she felt more like Mrs. Fundacio, whose toes hung over the ends of her sandals.
Cookie squinted into the lemon sunlight, then turned and opened one of the glass doors of the front entrance. She entered the hush of the library, where her fellow employees were getting ready for the day. These were her people: the card catalogers, the comfortable shoe wearers, the pale. The fluorescent lights reflected bright rectangles on the buffed linoleum and gave their skin a greenish cast. At home, Cookie had a cosmetics mirror with three settings: day, night, and office. The mirror magnified her face between two rows of lights. She looked honest in the yellow-toned day, almost romantic in the rosy night, and, apparently, hideous at the office, her blemishes purple on her jaundiced skin. Looking at her face in that light, Cookie considered unemployment.
Her sneakers squeaked as she climbed the stairs. She approached the reference desk where she worked as an assistant. "Morning, Nancy," she greeted the head librarian.
"Oh, hello, Cookie." Nancy said, her mouth full of the ice she was constantly chewing. Sometimes Cookie looked at Nancy and pictured herself in ten years: orange cat hair on pants with an elastic waist, reading glasses on a beaded chain, Lean Cuisine warmed in the employee lounge microwave for lunch, nervous habits like the ice chewing. "We finished unpacking the law encyclopedias from Jonesborough." She moved the ice cube to her other cheek. "We’ll start entering them in the database this morning."
"Sounds good."
Cookie sat down at her desk. Her thighs in shorts spread out beneath her, pancakes resting on the plastic seat. She switched on her computer and waited for it to boot up, listening to its straining sounds. She breathed in the book smell, a musty scent like grandmothers with Kleenex up their sleeves.
She had processed the "H" case files section of the law reference manuals, and was pondering the "hair-ASS-ment" vs. "HARESS-ment" pronunciation of harassment, when a husky drawl broke the semi-silence of the humming lights and whirring computers. "Is that Cookie O’Clock?"
It was Virginia Klee, secretary of Cookie’s graduating class. In platform sandals she shuffled to Cookie’s desk. Her skin was a seamless tanning-bed orange to the tips of her toes, a tan that had eaten too many carrots.
"My god, how the fuck are you?" Virginia said, leaning over Cookie to squeeze her arms in version of a hug. She smelled of cigarettes and the peach lotion she used to cover up the cigarettes. "You still work here?" She looked at Cookie’s hair. "Cookie the bookworm."
"Yep." Cookie drummed her fingers on her desk. "How’ve you been?" Due to an extra large incoming class, she and Virginia had been assigned to share a locker in ninth grade. Cookie had hung a little PETA sign with a picture of a sad cow: Eat your veggies, not your friends. She thought she was rebellious, a beacon of good sense. Now Cookie liked pepperoni. She wore leather shoes. Virginia had posted pictures of her friends at the lake, a bunch of rich white kids, drunk and sunburned. Cookie doubted Virginia had sworn off beer. Or rich white kids. "How is U of A?" Cookie asked.
"Oh, fine." Virginia regarded her French manicure, the closest she would ever come to multiculturalism, leaning back with her hand stretched out in front of her and squinting like she was looking at a piece of modern art. "I was living at the Pi Phi house with my fucking psycho sister, Moony, bless her heart, but I’m not going back."
"Too stressful?" Cookie asked. Moony really was crazy, and it was okay to say so as long as one included the ‘bless-her-poor-heart’ caveat. "Going to transfer?"
"No, Kurt and I are engaged." Virginia turned her hand and flashed a ring the size and shape of a small chandelier pendant. "We’re going to build a house out west and I’ve got a ton to do planning the wedding."
"Wow, congratulations." Kurt and Virginia had been dating ever since the days Cookie and Virginia had shared a locker. Kurt drove a flatbed truck and went skeet shooting on the weekends. In high school he had been known as "The Bull" for his football playing/ steak-eating abilities. "I guess some people are just lucky in love." Cookie smiled. "When is the wedding?"
"Not ‘til next July. We had to wait until the club was free." This was rich- speak for the country club, where, surely, half of their graduating class had had debutante balls and post- prom parties and where they would now have wedding receptions. She had once gone to one of Virginia’s club parties, where after three strawberry wine coolers, she walked up to the boy she liked, saying, I’ve got x’s for eyes, Jeb! X’s for eyes! He had said, Uh, I’ve got to find my ride.
"Are you still at yewlar?" Virginia pronounced UALR the local way. "Still with what’s-his-face?"
"Peter?" said Cookie.
"That’s right! Peter Fucking Holmstead! I thought you all were moving to Boston?"
"As soon as we find where that money tree grows." Cookie said. "Peter’s still living with his mom."
Virginia left with a stack of Bride magazine back issues and promises of sending Cookie an invitation. Cookie made a mental note to skip her five-year high school reunion in two years.
At noon Cookie drove to meet Samuel at Leo’s Greek Castle for lunch. Her Hundai was hot as a toaster-oven from sitting in the sun. She used only the tips of her fingers to steer. She imagined how she would tell Samuel about seeing Virginia, You know Virginia, she would remind him, the one with the harelip and the huge house where we got drunk sophomore year. She thought about the June after freshman year when she first met Samuel. They had been in the same Driver’s Ed course. Cookie was the only one who didn’t even know how to turn on the car. When Samuel saw her flattening those orange cones everyday, like so many squashed soldiers, he bought her a Coke from the vending machine.
Samuel was smoking on the porch when she pulled into the driveway of the restaurant. "We’ve got to sit inside, Sweetheart. It’s too dadgum hot out here." He stomped out his cigarette and kissed her cheek. His sweaty hairline made the side of her face wet.
Yellowed posters lined the walls of the tiny Greek restaurant, depicting gyros eternally propped up in front of Mediterranean ruins, falafel revealing glistening tomato slices, and . . . deep-fried cheese sticks. Oh Arkansas, thought Cookie, the ole’ ethnic food capital of the South.
"And Toby always wants to cuddle after we fight," said Samuel, gesturing with his gyro. "He’s like some needy animal."
Toby was Samuel’s live action role-player boyfriend. They lived in a duplex filled with action figures and comic book posters. Cookie teased Samuel about playing naked "Magic: the Gathering," but really she thought there was something charming about two grown-ups who spoke seriously about tempests and lost lands.
Cookie said what she thought Samuel wanted to hear. "He just wants to be dominated," she offered, pushing a falling chunk of onion back into her mouth. "And he is an animal. All that chest hair . . ."
"Yeah, my sweet old monkey," reflected Samuel, smiling at the thought. Toby was so loveable, a camp counselor kind of guy who could greet all of the baggers at the grocery store by name. "Next time, I’ll just leave his Magic cards in the plastic sleeves and avoid the whole mess." Samuel said and took a sip of iced tea. "How’s our favorite anarchist?"
Cookie’s boyfriend, Peter, was an aspiring artist who painted giant canvases with slogans like $ubvert Capitalism or Die and Stop Animal Vivisection Now. He worked at a Sherwin Williams paint store in a West Little Rock strip mall, where his store was sandwiched between a starchy Italian restaurant and a family-owned Chinese restaurant. "Macaroni and Chi’s!" Cookie had joked on their first date, her voice high and strange. Peter laughed too, when she explained.
"I got him a Woody Allen book at the library last week," Cookie started.
"Which one?" Samuel asked.
"Getting Even."
"Ha." Samuel snorted. "Check you out, Captain Passive Aggressive."
"Anyways, last night I asked him how he liked it."
"And?" Samuel interrupted. "Did he remind you that he doesn’t know how to read?"
"He knows how to read," Cookie said. " No, he just said, ‘Oh that? That was niiicce.’ You know how he does."
"Like he just got a backrub?"
"Yeah. ‘niiicce’," she repeated. "And he says it about everything--- Godard, tofu dogs, sunsets," Cookie ticked them off on her fingers. "He’s not a discerning consumer."
"No kidding. He’s dating you."
"Funny." Cookie’s chest tightened.
"Seriously," Samuel said. He put down the rest of his sandwich and licked some spicy sauce off his thumb. "What do you guys talk about? Do you have anything in common anymore?"
"Well," Cookie said, "a lot of my stuff is at his house and a lot of his is at mine."
"Cook-ie."
"What?" She studied the rings of condensation their glasses made on the plastic tablecloth. The inside of her mouth tasted metallic, like she has just pressed the tip of her tongue to a battery. "He makes a good quiche . . . and he likes my mom. And he thinks I’m funny."
"So do I," replied Samuel, "but that doesn’t mean you should date me."
Cookie pushed her chair back from the table and wadded up her napkin. "So anyway, cancer," she said.
"Cancer?!"
"Yeah, that’s how Bob Marley died. Brain cancer. I looked it up."
She stopped to see Peter on her way back to work. It was his day off and he was sitting on his front stoop eating instant noodles out of a glass bowl. He wore soccer shorts and tube-socks, one with green stripes, one with blue. There was a mug of orange juice at his side on the wooden steps.
"The sodium in that stuff is going to kill you," Cookie called out as she walked up on the lawn, which was marshy from that morning’s sprinkler shower. She stood in front of him on the stone walkway, simultaneously scratching a mosquito bite and swinging her car keys. "Never mind, the preservatives will keep you alive forever."
"Nice to see you, too." Peter reached out and grabbed her hand to stop the swinging.
"I read an article that said that Americans eat too much beige food."
"How’s that?" Peter looked up at her, using his hand to shield the sunlight.
"You know, carbohydrates. Pasta, bread, potatoes."
He scraped a noodle out of the bowl with his finger and studied it before dangling it into his mouth. "Maybe I should put some food coloring in there. Blue noodles."
"That’s nice. Poetic. Bloooo nooodles." Cookie repeated, drawing out the syllables. She moved to stand in front of him and block the sun. "Did you go pick up your paycheck?"
"Those fuckfaces are such fuckfaces."
"Which ones? Why?" Cookie asked. A minivan drove by then with the windows rolled down and a kid’s head and arms sticking out. "Hey, stupids!!" the kid yelled, his mother swatting at him from the driver’s side. The van turned the corner and the street was left glimmering in the heat.
"Fucking, my manager is who." Peter said after a minute. "Jerk pulls me aside and wants to tell me how to mix the paint like I’m a novice."
"You should tell him that you’re an artist." Was she being sarcastic? "Did you guys fight?"
"No, I motherfucking held my tongue like always." Peter spun his spoon around in the bowl and it clanked against the sides. "That guy’s such a jackass I just want to punch him sometimes."
"That’s Buddha of you."
"What the fuck, Cookie? Am I supposed to put up with this guy being a condescending jerk?"
"You don’t have to be violent about it."
"I didn’t say I was going to hit him."
Cookie sat down. They didn’t say anything. They watched the neighbor’s dog, a black dog who’s curly coat was wet on the underside, scratch at the fence closest to Peter’s house. The chain link fence banged against its posts.
"And how’s my day going?" Cookie asked and answered herself. "Well, it’s going okay.
"I was going to ask."
"That girl from Saint Cecilia’s came in. Virginia Klee."
"That girl? The harelip?" said Peter.
"The very same." Cookie answered.
"How’s her jerk boyfriend?"
"Make that her jerk fiancée."
"Oh, Jesus" Peter rolled his eyes. "Those two are getting married? Nice. Gotta keep the asshole population thriving." He paused. "Did I ever tell you what Kurt did with my tie at senior mass?"
"Yep." Cookie answered. Peter had about seven favorite stories. Six of them were about being picked on in high school.
"That guy’s probably making a shitload of money, too. What’s he doing? Investment banking or some shit?" Peter asked.
"Yeah, working for his dad."
"Pig."
"No, it’s ‘Bull’." Cookie looked at her watch. "I’ve got to get back to work. You coming over later?"
"Maybe. I want to finish this up." With his foot he gestured to a wooden door leaning against the garage. It sported the beginnings of a skeleton in pale green.
"Okay. See you later ‘maybe,’ then." She stood up and wiped her hands on her shorts. Inside the house, the television blasted a game show theme song. Cookie knew that in a moment Mrs. Holmstead would shout an exasperated, "Petey, turn it down!"
"Hey, what’s wrong?" Peter asked and touched the back of her knee.
"Nothing." Cookie said. Her shoulders felt tired, like she had spent the morning carrying those law reference books rather than alphabetizing their titles.
"Right."
"Right."
Only the desperate need the reference desk in July, concluded Cookie when she returned to work, a film of sweat drying stiff on her skin. The only patrons in the library were transients and haggard state employees reading John Grisham paperbacks. She checked in with Nancy, who pointed out a cart of sci-fi books that needed re-shelving on the first floor. Cookie pushed the cart from the reference desk to the jerky maintenance elevator. On the way down, as her stomach dropped to her knees and rose again to her throat, she thought of the night before.
She and Peter had brushed their teeth side by side in the bathroom, talking turns spitting in the sink. Samuel always said that when a couple performs bathroom rituals together it’s a sure sign that a relationship has lost its spark.
"Hey," Peter had said when they settled into bed. He slid his arm under her neck and Cookie inhaled his comforting paint thinner smell. "Tell me something sweet."
This was a game they sometimes played: telling each other the best thing that happened that day, or the worst thing, or the silliest.
"Today this little girl came into the library," she began, "maybe eight years old, a little hippie’s kid with tie- dyed overalls. Anyway, she came right up to the reference desk."
"Uh- huh."
"And she asked if I would show her where the books about dinosaurs were. So I started walking toward the elevator, to take us down to the kids’ section, but she stopped me and said, ‘ No, I mean the real dinosaur books.’"
"Oh."
"So, we got some books from earth science and then when I walked by her table a few minutes later, she had these sheets of white typing paper spread out and she was trying to copy the pictures from the book with a tiny golf pencil. She was concentrating so hard and chewing her lip."
"Huh."
"What?" Cookie said. "You don’t think that’s sweet?"
" I meant something sweet about me."
Cookie couldn’t get it right. She wheeled the metal cart to the bookshelf and began re-shelving the books, sliding them neatly into their Dewey Decimal home addresses. She thought about the beginning with Peter. Her last year of high school she had met him in the paint store, while looking for a certain shade of pink for a bookshelf. Pink like the basins of seashells. Pink like erasers. Pink like the tips of his ears. "Can I help you find what you’re looking for?" he had asked.
He had written her poetry with grammatical errors: "I love you my angel your the light of my day." She told herself it was the content that mattered. He listened to her with his head cocked and nodded like a sympathetic therapist. He put his hand on her leg when they drove places. In bed, his feet were warm next to hers. He painted pictures for her with glossy house paint: Cookie as a butterfly, Peter holding a giant red heart.
Two months ago Cookie had thought she might be pregnant. Lying in bed she had gingerly poked at her belly and felt her breasts, calculating the days of her cycle. Five days late, she stayed at her computer during lunch break and, after looking behind her to see if anyone was watching, she searched pregnancy symptoms. The first hit was a health Q&A homepage. There was a letter from a woman who described an elaborate scenario involving missed birth control and unprotected sex. The woman ended her note with the question, Is there a chance I might be pregnant? The online doctor’s reply was an ominous single sentence: There is always a chance.
Cookie’s blood ran sick and green and cold. She quickly formulated a new search to cover her tracks, recipes for rice pudding. She thought of a joke she had read in Reader’s Digest. The "Laughter is the Best Medicine" section, ha ha. A woman is sitting in a doctor’s office waiting for the results of her exam. The doctor bursts in and says, ‘Congratulations, Mrs. Williams, I have great news!" The woman interrupts to say, "That’s Miss Williams," and the doctor replies, "Oh . . .in that case Miss Williams, I have terrible news.’ Oh God, Cookie had prayed, thinking of the girls she knew with babies. The too-quick weddings and depressing small apartments with particle board furniture. Dads who still rode skateboards and moms who never moved away.
She didn’t tell Peter until a few days later when they were in the clear.
"Don’t you trust me?" He had asked, his brow furrowed and now his eyes pink. "Why didn’t you talk to me about it?"
A few days later he said, "You only work and talk about work. You never want to talk about us. You’ve changed."
"You’ve stayed the same." It was the truest and most equal accusation she could think of.
When it was time for the library to close for the evening and the sky outside was glowing bruisey yellow, Cookie stacked books and pushed chairs up to their tables. The library people left the way they did most things, murmuring and with NPR tote bags in tow. The next day was the Fourth of July.
"You’re welcome to come back tomorrow night, Cookie," said Nancy. The ice made her speech slurred and her breath cool. She walked Cookie to the stairwell. "Some of us are going to watch the fireworks from the roof."
"Thanks," replied Cookie, "but I’m going to the whatever-annual-Holmstead-family- reunion that my boyfriend’s parents are having. Thank you, though. " She imagined Nancy’s personal life: the cats, the potted plants, the books in alphabetical order on her bookshelves, and library friends for holiday parties.
"Well, that should be some fun. We’ll see you on Thursday, then?" Nancy tugged at her shirt and smoothed it over her pudgy stomach.
"Sure," Cookie said, shifting an armful of books. She hesitated, thinking of last year’s Fourth of July. She and Peter had ridden in his uncle’s speedboat down the river to hear Hank Williams, Jr. sing the national anthem at the amphitheater. They had wished on the fireworks like they were shooting stars.
"Actually, can I go up there now?" Cookie asked Nancy. "To the roof?"
Cookie climbed the narrow staircase off the third floor and stood on the roof. The soles of her shoes stuck to the tarpaper. To her back was the interstate, cars coming back from North Little Rock to downtown. If they turned around and drove away from the city, drove 20 miles away, they would hit the delta, with its streams like metal shards cutting the chocolate land. Cookie looked out over the eaves of the library. She thought about the commuters driving home to make dinners with salads and side dishes and glasses of milk. About going home herself and eating beige food and walking around her apartment with bare feet. About how she would open a window, but there wouldn’t be a breeze. Too lazy to move, the air particles would stand still on either side of the window frame, a failed science experiment that would show how diffusion doesn’t work. It was the time of day when Cookie wondered why she should do tomorrow what she did today. Why she shouldn’t run home and turn on the television so that the rest of the day would pass and the morning would come with cereal to be eaten and showers to be taken and temperatures to rise. She thought about the promise of personal change and getting things right, of plans, the shifty lie of whiter teeth and slimmer thighs and tomorrow’s better personhood. In front of her was the Arkansas River, swift and brown, a conveyor belt for sticks and catfish. The warm air held her. She was a raisin in rice pudding.
She spent the Fourth of July with Peter at his family barbecue at the Riverfront Park. Mosquitoes punctuated the smoky air. Oak leaves hung limp on the trees. Golden grass crunched beneath their feet. In the parking lot someone’s car stereo was playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. On the phone Samuel had warned her, "Be sweet, Cookie. They’re looking at you like potential family. A Holmstead recruit."
"Don’t remind me."
"Do you like the burgers, Cookie?" Peter’s mother asked at the barbecue. She wore a tee shirt depicting a giant watermelon chunk with black buttons for seeds. "They’re beefalo. Peter’s dad got the meat special from Colorado."
"The best of both bovines, I guess," Cookie replied, instantly wondering if a buffalo was a bovine or maybe something else. She balanced her soggy paper plate on her knees and attempted to shoot Mrs. Holmstead a normal, not-nerdy, smile.
While Peter set up the volleyball net, Cookie picked the olives out of her pasta salad and watched his younger cousins. They were sticky with soda and sweat and their hands caught on the aunts’ and uncles’ clothes and hair. Tired from the sun, their faces crumpled, red and teary.
One of the uncles convinced Cookie to play volleyball with Peter and the older cousins.
"Just swing like this and hit with your wrist." Peter, suddenly the all-American boy, demonstrated a serve, holding the ball in the palm of his left hand then batting it over the net with his right. Cookie mimicked his motion and lunged like some species of dinosaur with arms too short for its body. The girl at the library would know which kind, she thought, trotting to get the ball from under the oak tree where it rolled, her face hot and full.
"No. Hit it with the underside of your wrist." Peter mimed a serve again when she returned. "And bend your legs."
Peter’s mother watched from the picnic table, arms crossed over her watermelon chest. Cookie swung again, her forearm aching with the smack. The ball vaulted straight into the air and arced above her head. It landed with a thump at her feet, a bomb unsettling the sand. Her eyes and wrist stung.
"It’s okay," Peter said. He picked up the ball and handed it to a boy cousin. "It’s okay. We’ll play again later." He knelt and brushed the sand from Cookie’s legs.
"No, keep playing. I’m just going to go find the restroom," Cookie said, sidestepping his hands. Peter gave her a look she had seen a thousands times before. The same look as when he asked her what she was thinking about and she said, "I was just wondering how many boys I would be naked with before I die." Or when she told him she was over The Cure when she was 14, or when she laughed at his idea for a tattoo.
She wandered away from the volleyball pit. She walked down near the water, sliding her hand on the hot rusty railing that separated the walkway from the river. She sat on the scratchy grass, wishing again for a cigarette. "God Bless America" was playing on a riverboat parked on the North Little Rock shore. Cookie looked up, waiting for the fireworks.

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