Adelaide Award Anthology 2018: SHORT STORIES, Vol. Two

SHORT STORIES
the counter. The cook had come in at some point, cooked a meal,
and left. Varsha dimly recalled seeing her during the course of the
day. She must have come into her study to ask for instructions.
Wondering what she had asked the cook to prepare, Varsha lifted
the lids of the dishes and saw a brinjal curry and some fried prawns.
Grabbing a plate, she heaped food onto it and made her way to the
tiny dining alcove to eat her meal. She switched on the television and
half listened to Modi’s speech at the Krishi Unnati Mela. But Modi
failed to hold her attention. Yawning, she switched off the television.

Varsha decided to tidy up the flat. She liked performing house-
hold chores. They gave her the satisfaction of a job perfectly done,
unlike her writing, which seemed to have a mind of its own. On
good days, the words flowed and a warm glow of pleasure filled her
being. On bad days, she spent hours trying to take a character from
Point A to Point B in the plot, but the words never came out right,
and she wondered if she was cut out to be a writer at all. The fact
that she had written two novels that had sold very well didn’t matter.
With each new novel, she felt she had to prove herself all over again.

Picking up a cleaning cloth, Varsha polished the surfaces of
the furniture in the living room. It was a tiny room but Varsha had
made it cosy and inviting. A beige couch with plump, brightly co-
loured brocade cushions stood against a wall painted a burnt orange.
Table lamps, placed on small tables on either side of the couch, cast
a mellow glow in the room. A collection of books was piled on a
square coffee table. A turquoise wingback chair stood opposite the
couch and a magenta ottoman with another pile of books was placed
before it.

Varsha loved books. And when she wasn’t writing them, she
spent her time reading books. Her reading taste was eclectic. She could
effortlessly navigate her way through the pages of Leo Tolstoy, Deepak
Chopra, Ruth Rendell, and Rebecca Shaw all at the same time.

Varsha picked up the pile of books on the coffee table. She
sorted out the ones she had finished. She would put them away.
Next she decided to tackle the books on the ottoman. As she picked
up the books, her gaze fell on a stranger seated on the wingback
chair. Startled, Varsha dropped the books. They fell to the floor with

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a resounding crash. She gave a short scream and stared hard at the
lady occupying the wingback chair. She looked strangely familiar.
It was Rita! She would recognize that sleek black hair, the arch of
her widow’s peak and those luminous grey eyes anywhere. After all,
wasn’t Rita a creature of her own creation? Hadn’t she seen her often
enough in her mind’s eye?

Varsha was used to having the characters from her story inhabit
the shadowy recesses of her mind. Now, one of them had stepped
out of the pages of her novel into real life. How was that possible?
Trembling, Varsha walked towards Rita.

“It’s you, isn’t it, Rita?” she whispered.
Rita nodded.
Varsha stared in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
Rita arched her eyebrows. “That’s a strange question. I live
here. And I have to stay here till you finish your novel.”
“But …I don’t understand. You aren’t real!”
“Of course I’m real!” Rita cried indignantly. “You created and
moulded me into the person I am. How can you deny my existence?”
Varsha hastily backed away from Rita and sat down on the
couch.
“How did you get out of my mind and onto that chair? Why
are you here,” she asked weakly. She pinched herself wondering if
she was dreaming. And winced in pain. This was real. Somehow
Rita, a character from her novel, had appeared in her life.
“I’m here to tell you that you are making a mess of the novel,
Varsha,” Rita explained patiently.
Varsha nodded helplessly. “I know but I can’t fix it.”
“I’ll help you.”
For the next hour, Rita spoke and Varsha listened as she told
her how to straighten out the rough edges in the plot and add more
depth to the characters. At some point, Varsha pulled out a writing
pad and jotted down notes. Finally, when Rita had finished, she
vanished. Varsha rose from the couch, stumbled into bed, and fell
asleep.
The next morning, Varsha was convinced she must have
dreamt the whole episode. Then her gaze fell on the writing pad.

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She shivered as she glanced through the notes. The episode had
been bizarre. But the notes hit the nail on the head. They pointed
out exactly what was wrong with her novel and how she could fix it.
Excited, she picked up the notes and went to the laptop. She didn’t
care if Rita had actually given her those tips or if she had woken up
from her sleep and written those notes. What mattered was that she
had found a way to fix her novel.

Varsha worked on her novel all through the days that fol-
lowed and late into the nights as well. When her mother called, she
explained that she didn’t want to disturb the flow of writing and
would meet her some other time. She dimly recalled Varun saying
that there would be spotty network in the area where he was sailing
and he would call when he could. But the real world had receded
from Varsha’s existence and she was living within the pages of her
novel. In her mind, she was in Goa where her novel was based. She
explored the beaches and felt the salt spray against her face as she
worked out the tangled web of Bhavesh’s mysterious disappearance
and Naveen’s torrid affair with Rita.

Varsha was trying to figure out how she could make Naveen’s
wife, Payal, aware of her husband’s affair when she saw Bhavesh
seated on the beige couch flipping through the pages of a Nicci
French mystery. This time she wasn’t surprised. Instead she sat on
the wingback chair and listened while Bhavesh told her how to tie
in his disappearance with Payal’s discovery of Naveen’s affair. Payal’s
daughter, Gauri would play a key role in the sequence of events.
Varsha took down notes and went to work.

They visited her often after that, Naveen, Payal, Rita, Bhavesh,
and Gauri. She accepted their comings and goings as insouciantly as
she accepted the milkman’s visit every morning.

“You should invite your mother home, Varsha,” Bhavesh said
one day. “We’ll make ourselves scarce, don’t worry.”

Varsha shook her head. “Ma isn’t keeping well, Bhavesh. That’s
why she hasn’t been to see me in so long.”

“Then you should go visit her some time,” he advised.
Varsha nodded.

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“There are six missed calls from Varun. Why aren’t you taking
his calls,” Payal asked, standing behind Varsha, while she was hard
at work on her novel.
Startled, Varsha looked up and nodded. “Yes, I know. I’ll call
him back as soon as I finish this scene. I don’t want to break the flow.”
“Don’t neglect your husband, Varsha. I neglected mine and
now he’s having an affair,” Payal said dolefully before vanishing.
“I hate the classics, Varsha, but Tennessee Williams is pretty
good,” Gauri said as she flipped through A Streetcar Named Desire.
“Listen to what Blanche DuBois has to say. ‘We are all sentenced to sol-
itary confinement inside our own skins, for life.’ Now aren’t you lucky
you have all of us living with you? You’re never lonely, are you, Varsha?”
Varsha shook her head. She didn’t bother replying. Lately, she
felt she could do with a little bit of solitude. The characters from her
novel seemed to have overtaken her life and she didn’t know how
to get rid of them.
One morning, when Varsha emerged from her bedroom, she
stopped short. A man was standing against the light spilling in from
the window. She didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t from the pages
of her novel.
“Who are you?” Varsha whispered fearfully.
“Don’t you recognize me,” the man asked. He was short with
dark skin and the most piercing pair of eyes she had ever seen. They
seemed to bore into her soul when he looked at her. Diminutive in
stature, he still managed to fill the room with his presence. There
was such an air of dynamic vitality about him.
Varsha shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know you.”
“Of course you do. I am the silent echo of your soul. I am love,
eternal, timeless and immortal.”
Varsha’s fear melted away. She stepped forward and lightly
ran her fingers over the stranger’s brow. It was smooth and soft. She
caressed his cheek and folded her arms around the nape of his neck.
For a fleeting moment, she thought of Varun.
“Don’t think of him,” the stranger whispered, as he drew her
close to him. “He doesn’t belong to your world, does he? Is Varun
part of your world of books and writing?”

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She shook her head. “Varun doesn’t like reading and I can’t
discuss my writing with him. He is too practical to understand cre-
ativity and imagination. But I love him.”
“There are different kinds of love,” the stranger replied. “The
love you share with Varun is a union of flesh. It is physical, tran-
sient, ephemeral. Let me show you love that is a union of souls and
minds.”
She nodded. How could she refuse? He unbuttoned her
clothes, which fell in a pool at her feet. He tugged at the elastic
band in her hair setting it free. It fell in a flowing ripple around
her naked bosom. When he enveloped her in his arms, she found
that they fit together perfectly. And when he took her, she knew
she had finally found a missing piece of her being, which had long
eluded her.
The hours melted away as they discussed books and her writing.
She told him about her aspirations as a writer. She hoped, one day,
to move away from the potboilers she currently wrote.
“What I want, more than anything in the world, is to write a
self-help book. But I don’t know if I have it in me. I’m afraid to leave
my comfort zone and try. What if I fail,” she said.
“If you don’t try, you’ll never know, will you?” he said. “Here
I want you to read this.” He handed her a copy of The Alchemist by
Paulo Coelho. “Open it,” he instructed.
“Any particular page?” she asked.
“Open the book to any page. It will always give you the answers
you need.”
She opened the book and read aloud, “People are capable, at
any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”
She shut the book with a snap. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“You’ve given me the courage to try.”
“No, all I have done is show you what is hidden within the
depths of your soul,” the stranger said, gently caressing her brow
as she lay with her head in his lap. “Now sleep,” he whispered,
continuing to caress her brow. Varsha fell asleep, a smile tugging at
her lips, while Coelho’s Alchemist slipped out of her hands and fell
to the floor.

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“Varsha, wake up,” Varun was gently shaking her awake.
Varsha opened her eyes and saw the familiar figure of her husband.
She rose hastily from the bed. “When did you return,” she asked.
“I just got back. Varsha, why haven’t you been returning my
calls? I have been worried sick about you. You haven’t even been to
see your mother. What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Varun. Payal told me about your missed calls and I
promised Bhavesh that I would visit Ma, but things have been a bit
hectic with my writing…” Varsha’s voice trailed off when she saw
the puzzled expression on Varun’s face.
“Who on earth is Payal? And Bhavesh?”
“They are characters from my novel,” Varsha whispered. “I
know it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true, Varun. They’ve been here
the whole time you’ve been away.”
“Varsha,” Varun stepped forward and took her hand gently in
his. “You haven’t been taking your medication, have you?”
Varsha stared at Varun uncomprehendingly.
“It’s my fault. I should have insisted you stay with your mother.
But you have always been so stubborn about your writing. You said
you couldn’t write at your mother’s place. Even so, I shouldn’t have
given in to your whims and left you alone here.”
Varun pulled open the drawer where Varsha’s medication was
stored. He rifled through the box of medication and groaned in
despair. Then he quickly left the room.
Varsha could hear him speaking on the phone in a low voice.
“Looks like the onset of a schizophrenic episode but I am not sure….
skipped most of her medication…”
Rising from the bed, she stumbled over Coelho’s Alchemist that
lay on the floor. The memories of the previous night flooded her
consciousness. She felt a strange tingling in her fingers. She needed
to feel the keyboard under her fingers; she needed to write. She had
it in her to be a fine writer. She hurriedly went to her study and
switched on the laptop. The pages of her novel appeared on the
screen. She had to write a couple of scenes and then she could wrap
this up and move on to write more serious stuff.

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But her fingers were frozen over the keyboard. Rita, Bhavesh,
Payal, Gauri and Naveen crowded around her giving her instruc-
tions on how to complete the novel. Who was telling the story? And
whose story was it anyway? The words fluttered and flew in the wind.

Zia Marshall holds an MPhil and PhD in English Literature. She
is a Learning Designer and Communication Specialist skilled in
performance and competency development for personal and pro-
fessional growth. She creates context-sensitive, solution-oriented
e-learning, blended learning, and mobile learning programs for cor-
porate houses like Wipro, Infosys, HCL, DHL, IIIT, Macmillan
and also for the education sector. She is skilled at applying instruc-
tional psychology to learning environments and aligning learning
programs with business goals and strategies. She has designed and
written several courses deploying life skills, communication skills
and skills in dealing with workplace issues. She has also conceptual-
ized and designed products and solutions across multiple industries
and verticals such as banking and finance, business logistics, man-
agement coaching, performance management, software training,
product training, process training and sales and service training. She
has worked extensively in the K-12 sector to transform conventional
textbook material into story-based multimedia solutions and feed-
back-oriented assessment banks. Her articles have been published
in http://www.selfgrowth.com/, https://elearningindustry.com/,
http://havingtime.com/, https://overcomingms.org/community/
blog/. Her short story ‘The Choice’ has appeared in the May 2018
issue of Adelaide Literary Magazine. Her short story ‘A Writer’s
World’ has appeared in the July 2018 issue of the Quarterly Literary
Review of Singapore.

305



She

By Lisa Lopez Snyder

I hear them laughing down the hall at work this morning, and I hear
my name—“Barbara” this and “Barbara” that—the story of what
happened after I left the bar last night, how I passed out when I got
home. Half my body inside my front door, the front door propped
open, my feet outside. Waking up.

And here I was, rubbing my eyes, thinking I got lucky, but
it’s just the wet lick of a dog’s tongue on my toe, I had told them
earlier. They all laughed when I told them this, and then someone
said, “hush,” and hurried away as if they had been complicit in my
exploits.

But these people—I’ve worked here longer than any of them—I
know that they are laughing with me, not at me. I not only told them
the story, I gave it to them. How silly, they are. They must think,
that a single woman of 39 would stay later than everyone else after
happy hour ends. That’s what a boss should probably not do. But
hey, I work hard. I earned it. So what if I can’t remember every detail
from the night before? At least I made it into the office this morning
before most of these knuckleheads. Seven forty-five. Preparations for
the board meeting can’t wait.

Okay, so maybe last night got a bit out of hand, but surprise,
surprise—our newest hire left The Dubliner last night right before
our last toast. I’m going home, she said. She stood up and slipped
on her jacket. I think she yawned, good grief. She’s only 25, and yet
she can’t handle her liquor. I watched as she mumbled her good-

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byes with an exasperated smile to the group and pushed unsteadily
against the pub door to leave. We accepted her, though. She’s a part
of the communications and public policy team. Now let’s see if she
can drink like the rest of us.

Bill, our chief lobbyist, jubilant after his testimony before the
House health subcommittee, ordered another round for the table.
We kick ass, dammit. I raised my glass and did my little woohoo,
which always makes Bill laugh, but my leg twisted or something and
my chair seemed to fall away. I heard a tumble of chair wood around
me and felt strong hands grip my arm and elbow.

Barbara! Someone yelled.
How in the hell did I land on the floor?



Bill says I should be nicer. I am, I told him. They’re lucky to get this
chance, these young writers I hire right out of college. It’s a good
job, you know, working next to all of these lobbyists and getting a
chance to see how Congress works up close.

She’s just like all the girls I’ve hired, really. Comes in right
on time at 8:30, says hello to me as she passes my door. She sets
her things in her office and gets her coffee, a tight hand about the
mug. A confident walk, but not too much so. She ducks into her
friends’ offices—first Jeanie, our editorial assistant, who’s in at 8,
and then Kim, from membership. I hear them laugh at a shared joke
or something in the news. The girls take to Friday night dinners at
each other’s little apartments in the city, probably dancing to Ariana
Grande and Selena Gomez. They swap clothes sometimes, I can tell.
Jeanie gave her a light blue sweater once, and gingerly told her when
to look for the red dot sales downtown at Nordstrom Rack.

When I finish with my morning media alerts, I hear the quiet
stir of our staff. Mostly, because my office is next to hers, I hear the
determined clack of her keyboard as she works on her first drafts.
Medicare isn’t the most exciting topic, but a lot is happening—not
always such good things for our physician members under the cur-
rent administration—and she could do well if she learns the ins and

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outs of these crazy Medicare reimbursements. She twirls her hair
when she stands before my desk with a question about why our
physician members would support the latest fee schedules. She has
a lot of questions.

Bill likes her work, though. Sitting in his vice president chair,
swiveling half the day away. Arms and hands, his usual bravado and
gestures. After he makes some notes on her articles and speaks in
encouraging tones—I can hear his barrel voice down the hall—she
comes back with a bit of a swing in her walk. She almost scares me
when she stops at my office.

Barbara, she says. A question is coming. She stands there in the
open doorway, always with the coffee mug and a pen. Why doesn’t
she do something about those long bangs? I cut mine really short and
that seems to take the focus off my weight. Bill kids me all the time.
I hear you coming down the hall, he says. He’s such a lovable jerk.
I can’t help that my polyester pants make that noise when I walk.



In the beginning I was excited to have her write for the newsletter.
She was hungry to get any kind of byline, of course, having just grad-
uated from journalism school. In public relations, she said. I figured
she said this because she knew that I, too, was once a journalism
student, and hail from the Midwest as well. She lives in town and
commutes on the bus from Georgetown to Lafayette Circle every
day. She rides like all the other girls out of college, in their flats and
Amazon discount finds. On her first day, I took her to my favorite
Thai restaurant for lunch on K Street, one of those soft, carpeted
places for the power crowd, along with Jeanie and Kim. It was nice,
just our small department in the cushioned booth. She left a thank
you note on my desk the next day.

The new Medicare reimbursement calculations keep changing,
so we have to take more time and be more careful with our coverage.
I wish I didn’t have to revise her work, though. I have so many meet-
ings, and can’t she figure out the new coding changes yet? So I start
to write “Boring” across the page in my favorite red pencil. Let her

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try to figure it out. I leave it on her chair when she’s away at lunch.
When she comes back, I hear the gentle swish of the paper and the
squeak of her chair when she sits down. All quiet. Fifteen minutes
later she appears at my door. There’s that damn hair twirling again.

Barbara, she says in a soft voice.
I’m conveniently on the phone, though, and wave her off.
Later, I mouth, as my tongue forms the words from the top of my
teeth in deliberate demonstration.



February now and the board meeting in New Orleans. We’re all
staying in a brand new luxury hotel. Our organization can afford it.
Doctors, you know. When everyone is through with dinner, we all
go to a few bars in the French Quarter. I tell Bill all the best places.
We tumble out of the House of Blues, and pop into a couple more
dark corners. After that, we gather on a curb somewhere. No one
seems to want to hit the male strip clubs, though.

Barbara, we have the board meeting at 7, Bill says. Come on,
let’s head back.

It’s still early, I say.
But it’s 2 a.m., this, from a meager voice among the group.
Who the hell goes to bed at 2 am in New Orleans, I ask. No
one answers. I look around. Where did everybody go? It feels like
10 minutes maybe, but probably not.
Barbara. Barbara. I hear her voice near my ear and I feel her
unsteady hand on my arm. We need to get a cab, she says. Why the
hell is her hand always on my arm? I can walk by myself, and the
words spill ahead of us as I try to catch up with them. I spy a white
car, or a truck of some sort. Let’s take this taxi, I say.
Oh, I see—it’s a tow truck.
I feel her tight grip. No, it’s not a taxi, but then she barks out
something to the driver and mumbles something—this will do—and
she pushes me up onto a high seat into the truck. When the driver
smiles, I see a few gaps in his teeth and some flash of silver. Still, not
bad looking. She looks straight ahead and jolts forward when we

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stop. I don’t think she even has her seatbelt on. And here I thought
she was a careful girl. I decide to tell him all about our adventures that
night, the blues bars, the drinks, our nice hotel. Maybe he could join
us for a drink in the lobby. I feel the sting of her pinch on my leg.

It’s just a little cocaine, he says, as we near the hotel, but we
can share. He has one arm resting on the truck window and whistles
when he pulls up to the lobby entrance. Maybe we can go to your
nice room. I can go park my truck.

She starts making some kind of noise in my ear, but I can only
make out a few things. This time she is telling me no. Barbara, she
says, you can’t invite him up. Let’s go now! She keeps holding my
wrist up. And we have to fix this, she says.

I look at my wrist. How the hell did I get blood on my finger?
There is that crushing noise again in my ear—is she saying some-
thing to me? And her stupid round face in my face as she pulls me
out of the truck. Finally, I hear her scream at me. You fucking fell.



It’s a week later. Sometimes I bewilder myself at my organizational
skills. Bill pulls me aside. I hate to do this, Barbara, but you know
why. This is just the first notice, he says. Two more chances. And we
can help you, okay? He says this in his damn calm voice.

I keep to my work after that, my head down, as the saying goes.
No problems for anybody. No happy hour.

Not everybody, though, gets three strikes you’re out.



I ask to meet with her. It is Friday, 4:50 pm, and most everybody has
already left. She has that damn pen in her hand, but no coffee mug.
We’re just not the right place for you, I say. She looks at me with
eyes that crawl out the back of my head. I do give her a few weeks to
find another job, though. We’ll treat this as a resignation, I tell her.

What I don’t tell her was that I overheard her and Jeanie and
Kim laughing earlier this week, recalling the stories. It wasn’t about

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New Orleans or the time I lost my raincoat and spent my Monday
lunchtime calling the bars. It was the one I told the morning after
our toast at The Dubliner, the time I collapsed after I returned home.
My body half in, half out. How the next morning I could only re-
member that I woke up and felt a tongue on my toe. I thought
maybe I had gotten lucky, I told everyone. But it was just my neigh-
bor’s dog, I explained. She laughed. They all laughed.

That was the best story of them all, someone said. I think it
was her.



Jeanie and Kim don’t say hi to me when they pass in the hall. They
hear I’ve already advertised for another writer—the third one in two
years. These young girls don’t seem to last for long.

I hear she started working at a magazine on Capitol Hill, one of
the health policy ones we subscribe to in print and online. Someone
underlines her name in the masthead in a bright blue marker—she’s
an assistant editor now. It stares back at me in bold Helvetica. I can
see her face in the stark letters, laughing in san serif. I’m sure she
feels better now, but it’s nothing like it could’ve been here, I know it.
She could have made something of herself here, if she had just tried.

Joan, I tell the front desk receptionist, please take my name off
the distribution list.

There. I bet that will show her.

Lisa Lopez Snyder lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio, where she
is at work on a novel and a collection of essays. Her work has been
featured in The Chattahoochee Review, The Raleigh Review, The
Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The Acentos Review, Gravel, The
34th Parallel, and other publications. She received her MFA in fiction
from the University of South Carolina and was named the 2015 Carl
Sandburg Writer-in-Residence.

312

Robby and Alfred

By Peter K. Wehrli

Translated by Peter Baltensperger
He tore the mustache from his face, dropped it into the cardboard
box, and closed the cover. Since the beginning of his tour, he had
followed the same ritual every evening, accompanied by a soft sigh
of relief. He put his fingers in the jar with the almost completely
transparent cream and smeared his face. As he rubbed the cream
over his face, it transformed the reddish-brown make-up on his
chin and forehead into an unsightly mess, a dullish plastic mask
on his skin. The bright rouge on his cheeks didn’t dissolve as easily,
and he had to rub more vigorously to loosen it from his skin. Then
he took a tissue from the box and wiped his face. With each stroke
of the tissue, his face became more familiar again and he was able
to recognize himself more clearly in the mirror above the make-up
table in his dressing room. Hello! he said to himself, here I am again,
and dropped the fourth of the dank, gelatine-soaked tissues in the
wastepaper basket.

The procedure had aged him by a good fifteen years: after the
performance, time always passes more quickly then before; the ageing
process always takes place more rapidly then the transformation into
the twenty-two-year-old rebel Robby who wants to abandon his re-
cently started studies because he has big plans in his head. He wants
to change the world and knows how. But right now he is back in the
world he knows, in the musty dressing room with the dreary light.

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Soon he will be back out in the familiar streets and the neon signs
will be the same as always and the busses as well.

The applause was stronger yesterday; I should have slept longer
last night, he thought while wiping the last remnants of black liner
from his eyes. Why are they always giving me parts of characters so
much younger than I? Emil has been getting older roles for a long
time; he’s only thirty-five and they’re already giving him grandfa-
thers to play. Perhaps I’m just younger than I really am. It was a
comforting thought.

He had already pulled on his coat when he realized that he
actually preferred his theatre face to his own with its bloated skin
and the pimples. By the time he entered the Cafe Miami, he was
convinced that Robby’s face suited him much better than the ordi-
nary, after the performance distinctly tired-looking visage of Alfred
Strossmann. Robby’s face remained fresh and bright throughout all
the acts of the play - spanning more than a decade -and the skin
stayed firm and the eyes wide and alert. Although he had wiped
Robby’s features off his face, he wanted to carry the flashy, rebellious
demeanour of his character into his own daily life, across the years.
Robby can’t do without me, he needs me, no one else.

“A beer,” he said to Eva, the waitress at the Miami, as he did
every evening after the performance. He brushed his finger across
his upper lip, as if he had to wipe the foam from Robby’s sparse
moustache.

“Hey, Robby!” a girl called to him from among a group sitting a
few chairs further along, where the bar curved into the reddish room.
Alfred Strossmann stared into his glass, ignoring the greeting. The
girls giggled and whispered about the play they had just seen in the
theatre. He felt scrutinized. He took a gulp from his glass.

“Hey, Robby!” the girl called again. He found it easy to pretend
that he didn’t hear her. He watched the girls from the corner of his
eye. The blond one looked very appealing, obviously not one of the
rapturous teenage fans; he felt she might have been able to under-
stand his character. Then he saw that her laughter came from deep
inside. He sipped his beer.

“Hey, Robby!” he heard one of the girls call to him again.
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“Are you talking to me?” he asked across the bar. “My name
is Alfred Strossmann.” But the girl continued as if he hadn’t said
anything. “I think it’s great that you fight against your parents and
the teachers and the officials who want to make you into computer
fodder. You’re not a number; you’re Robby. You’re not just a code;
you’re Robby. What goes on in your brain would overload any chip.
You want to experience life, not watch it on the screen.” He brushed
his hair with a gesture of embarrassment and stared into his glass.
“Hey, Robby!” the girl raised her voice so that he could no
longer pretend that he didn’t hear.
“I am Alfred Strossmann,” he said dryly. He forced himself to
be friendly and turned towards the girls. The blond one nudged her
friend, then continued: “Hey, Robby, we think alike, you and I, the
electronic cannibals bore me as much as they bore you. I want to
feel myself and the world around me. I shudder when I think that
it’s possible to create a true-to-life clone of every human being as
long as all the characteristics are keyed in properly. Let’s go, Robby!
We’ll show them that they can’t do that to us! I shudder when I
imagine how hordes of highly-trained computer programmers will
soon come marching six abreast out of every school in the country.
This panic we have in common, you and I.”
He turned away again and reached for his glass. He rubbed his
finger along the rim to indicate he was thinking about something
else.
“Hey, Robby!” the girl called again, a touch of familiarity in her
voice. His index finger continued to circle the rim of his glass. “Please
do me a favour, will you?” He turned to face the girl. “I’m Bettina.
Please, Robby ... I have a collection. And you’re still missing.” His
glass was empty. “Well,” he said, as if it were a word of farewell. He
pushed three coins across the bar. “Please, do me a favour!” He felt
an uncomfortable pressure in his chest, wanted to say, “I am Alfred
Strossmann.” The girl took a piece of paper from her purse. “Please
sign here. I collect autographs ... of celebrities. I would be really
happy if you did.” Then he remembered that he had wanted to say,
“I am Alfred Strossmann.” The fingers of his right hand twitched
nervously on the bar. The girl continued, “I saw you at the theatre

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today. We have much in common, you, Robby, and I. Tell me you
know that. Sign my paper, please.” Her voice was full of urgency.
She thrust her hand with the piece of paper towards him. He stared
blankly at the paper. When he realized what he was doing, it seemed
to him as if he had been staring at the paper for a long time. He tried
to think the piece of paper out of his life.

He wasn’t aware that he reached for his pen; in his mind he was
already standing outside where the taxis were waiting, he didn’t want
to put his pen to the paper, imagined himself in a taxi driving past
the shopping centre, and, as his hand was writing, climbing out of
the taxi and walking towards his front door. “Alfred Strossmann,” he
had written on the piece of paper. As he walked away from the bar
and towards the revolving door, he could see in the mirror reflecting
the bar how the girls were trying to decipher what he had written.
He heard, as if from a great distance, how the brunette said to the
blonde, “That wasn’t Robby at all.” Bettina’s friend took the folded
piece of paper from her. “You’re right,” she said. “This isn’t Robby
Driver’s autograph.” She unfolded the paper. And gasped. The top
half of the paper was covered with typed lines, lines about fever and
nausea, about the flu and the fact that Bettina wasn’t able to attend
school that afternoon. Bettina nodded self-consciously, suddenly
embarrassed by her friend’s unexpected discovery. She took a sip
from her Pepsi. “It’s a note. I didn’t go to school this afternoon ... I
went to the cinema. I wanted to see Absolute Beginners. It has a lot to
do with me and my life. And since the play with Robby Driver seems
to be the talk of the town these days ... I wanted ...,” she brushed
nervously through her hair, “... I wanted ... Robby to sign the note.
He is like a friend, he understands me. Robby’s signature would have
impressed my teacher a lot more that my father’s. My teacher would
have known with whom he was dealing ... with Robby Driver, who
thinks exactly the way I do ... and who supports what I do.” She
crumpled the piece of paper in her hand. “Funny,” she said. “The
guy seemed to look like Robby.”

‘Why did I let myself get so involved with this character?’ Al-
fred Strossmann asked himself as he stood by the curb underneath
the taxi sign. ‘He’s become like a friend, but I’m sure he wouldn’t

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like it if I passed myself as him ... if I took his place. I am Alfred, and
Robby is someone else. I play his character, give him my body and
my voice. I can’t be Robby ... I can’t allow myself to be Robby, not
even in front of the girls. I can’t do that to a friend.’

A taxi pulled up, and he said to himself as he climbed in, ‘Per-
haps it isn’t all that bad that the teachers train the young people to
be competent computer programmers. The world needs computer
programmers, that’s for sure ...,’ the taxi driver revved the engine, ‘...
no matter how much Robby protests that it doesn’t.’

317



Debts

By Joshua Hren

You left the closet lights on and a bruised eggplant cut in two on the
counter and you left. Other things need to be decided still. The car.
I appreciate that you didn’t take it and fled by bus instead, but you
did pay half and I want to honor that. As we were all expecting—my
mom caught a stand-by flight but arrived an hour too late, especially
hard since they were estranged—my grandmother passed in Florida
two days ago, a place she had never wanted to go, as you know, and
neither do I, except that she willed her car to me. I would drive hers
back to Milwaukee, then title ours to read your name only, but I
have been paying the rent singlehandedly for the past two months.
You signed the lease too, unless you left the line blank while the
landlady lorded her gripes over us, droning about the last tenants’
children, listing their encyclopedia of noises and offering imitations.
I cannot find our copy of the contract so I do not know

Regardless, remember how we laughed the first few months,
our bedroom right above hers, wondering whether she would tattle
to some future tenants, showing and telling the new noises we con-
tributed to her volumes. She did have hearing aids and she said she
took them out at night and I thought maybe that was her hint that
we need not worry about her overhearing, but as you know I tend
to read into these things unduly. Funny how funny things aren’t
funny now.

Repetition becomes redundancy, the ruin of many good things,
but I have to once more say I will never cease to be grateful to you

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for not having the child. This godawful snap is impossible to endure
already and think of all the other things we’d be cutting in half and
all the halves we’d have to hold together to keep the child together.
And, absent infant or other mortality, this would go on for years,
for a lifetime, really—I can’t, I couldn’t touch it. Without doubt
this was the single most selfless thing you did for me and I won’t
forget that. Never.

Unfortunately, things as they are still have knots I can’t undo
alone. Veritable umbilical cords that need cutting before they ring
around the neck and choke. Of the rent due next week I am willing
to pay up to $800 even. And then there’s the snow blower which I
was against from the start in spite of my back I swear I would have
kept the sidewalks clean just as I had winters prior. Yes, if someone
is going to spend money on machine like that buying a high end
one makes sense, because of everything is built to break but the
gilded ones go a little more slowly. The bottom line is you handed
over a thousand dollars and by all measures the contraption is yours.
But if you can’t commit to sending at least four hundred a month
then you give me no other choice but to sell the thing, which will
probably land me $299 at best, based on a quick perusal of the snow
blower market. Which means one month where I’m not putting in
overtime.

Not that I know what to do with my time. I can’t bring myself
to go crying to Father Marto over at Our Lady of Sorrows. At the
end of our last meeting, after the baby, he hugged me too long.
Or maybe it was me, clinging to him. Probably. The point is you
don’t want to get too close to anyone or anything. To be honest
I’d go just to sit in the dark in the last pew and stare down the old
crucifix for a few hours—I’d like to say I’m still searching—but
you can’t sneak in without being noticed. The door of that place is
hard, almost impossible to open, and it creaks and groans like death.
How do the octogenarians who are always filing in there manage? I
should note that I signed up for a Mindfulness Retreat, which you
always recommended. Yes until you left the whole idea looked like
an outgrowth of the self-actualization industry. A sham. But it is
not good for a man to be alone. And maybe they’ll help me to not

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remember. Like the gash on your wrist where I dug my thumbnail
in. How many times you held those raw red tracks so I would have
to see them. While we did dishes, waiting for me to see and—what,
say sorry? What did you want me to do—let you run out the door
while you swore that you’d follow the thirty others who’ve jumped
from the Hoan Bridge, that you’d do so without any fanfare, thank
you, and faster than I could dial emergency you’d be at the bottom
of Lake Michigan? Floating up.

None of this is to milk guilt. The being merciful with our-
selves was another thing you got entirely right. I even read a study
two weeks back while looking for affordable Mindfulness Retreats.
A heap of evidence suggests lower rates of all kinds of illnesses for
those who live without guilt. The retreat I signed up for, called No
Strings Attached, operates according to Pay What You Can. At least
they believe strongly in what they are after. I am not there yet. My
mind is too full.

Last night I slept on the floor, which is to say I did not sleep.
The couch remains covered in your cat’s hair—what did you do with
Foster?—and the mold in this place already agitates my allergies. An-
other discovery: your body must have blocked the draft that comes
in from the west window. It creeps up under our feather blanket,
feigning weightlessness, whispering up and over me and then sud-
denly leaden, trying to anchor me down. The price of a broken lease
is steep. For now, then, I am sleeping on the floor, which is to say
the bed would be all yours if you returned.

Darcy, I burned the envelopes I used to load with wrongs and
mail away. You are under no obligation to call me but I wanted to
ask if you would, because help me see how in hell you don’t you
lose your mind? I’m still lost in the manuals of moral qualms cooked
up by those Jesuits who had me for nearly eighteen years, and you
know how hard it is, for novices like me, to let the baby be. If in this
interim I can’t at least ask you to forgive me I think I’ll—not Hoan
Bridge, but———because by now the restless guilt, nowhere to go,
has erected a little bank in my soul. And is gaining interest.

A letter with your latest past due loan balance is enclosed
within this envelope.

321



Lobster Night

By Maureen Mangiardi

Even though they were often loud affairs, if my parents had to so-
cialize I much preferred that it be at home or at least in the neigh-
borhood. That way the worst that could happen - and often did
- was that someone might get tossed in the pool in a display of
drunken bonhomie. Since my parents were good swimmers, I knew
that should this occur, their primal instincts would kick in with no
harm done.

There was nobody in that neighborhood who did not drink.
Mr. Douglas, who lived next door, made a potent vodka concoction
that became known as a creeper after an unsuspecting guest passed out
while uttering, My God, these things just creep up on you, don’t they?

The parties often migrated from house to house and invariably,
they would end up at ours. There could be as few as ten or as many as
one hundred and fifty at these events - a hybrid of neighbors and my
father’s professional colleagues. They would congregate throughout
the main floor in the oversized, high-ceilinged Victorian house - the
living room, the study, the kitchen, the dining room, the foyer, the
huge enclosed back porch, even the bathrooms.

My parents’ bathroom was so big you could perform a pirouette
in it, according to Mrs. White, evoking her childhood ballerina days.
She was normally quite prim and standoffish, but one evening she
had an irrepressible urge to prove her point. I remember watching
incredulously as she demonstrated for groups of five or more the
roominess of the bathroom by whirling with the vigor of a cheer-
leader. Between cartwheels, she walked on her hands while drinking

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upside down from her constantly refilled creeper. With the zeal of a
missionary she gushed, now this is what I call a bathroom; I can do a
complete cartwheel with room to spare.

The manic jauntiness of her vastly altered demeanor was so
peculiar that it attracted people for repeat performances with the
same sort of banal curiosity that rivets the eye to accident scenes or
gesticulating madmen.

That bathroom had an old-fashioned footbath, large enough
to bathe a toddler. It also boasted a roomy multi-spray shower and
an oversized pedestal sink. There were two entrances - one from
my parents’ thirty-foot long bedroom, the other from the foyer.
The Tiffany window that opened onto the cathedral-ceilinged back
porch stood in stark contrast to the gleaming white tiles and por-
celain. It depicted a colorful underwater scene of pink and yellow
fish swimming through a green and red sea garden. But for me, the
most coveted feature was the immense seven-foot long, four-foot
deep claw-footed tub. I would often sneak a bath in it (off-limits
for us progeny) because I could actually float without touching
the sides.

During my parents’ famous summer soirees, it was used to
store live shellfish. My father would fill the tub with ice and dump in
scores of lobsters, none less than two pounds. During the course of
the evening their stock would diminish as they were taken through
the kitchen, out to the barbecue yard and into giant boiling pots
and their demise.



When he was a young surgeon, my father had removed a huge,
deforming growth from the cheek of a tough Italian from Brooklyn
named Vito Centi. Vito had been a driver for Murder Incorporated.
They called him UgMug because the tumor had so overtaken his
face. One evening around midnight, Vito went to the emergency
room suffering from an acute asthma attack. My father, then a resi-
dent at the hospital, was on the late night shift when Vito came in.
Looking critically at this tough man with arms the size of tree trunks

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and his horribly extruded cheek, my father said with his character-
istic delicacy,

“Jesus Christ, why the hell are you walking around like that?”
“Nobody will operate on it Doc, they say it’s too close to my
tri-facial nerve or somethin’; they say my face might get paralyzed.”
“Well, you can’t get any uglier than you are right now. I’ll take
some X-rays and see what I can do.”
“But I don’t have no money for that kind of surgery, I don’t
got no insurance.”
“Let’s take one thing at a time”.
A week later my father called Vito in and said,
“Let’s go for it; just don’t shoot me if it doesn’t work”.
“That’s funny, Doc; no matter what happens, I owe ya.”
When they removed the bandages after the operation, Vito was
afraid to see the outcome.
“So whaddaya think, Doc?”
“Well, you’re no prize,” my father said as he held up the mirror.
After Vito stole a look at his face, he leaped from the examining
table, engulfed my father in his steely arms and sobbed like a little
boy.
“I owe ya, Doc, I got my life back!”
My father laughed; but he was touched. After it healed, there
wasn’t even a scar where he had removed the massive tumor. And
Vito did get his life back. He quit the Mob and got a
job at the shipyards. But more importantly for us, Vito became
a permanent fixture in our lives. He was my father’s bodyguard,
friend, and partner in crimes of indiscretion. If my father cooked up
some far-fetched scheme, Vito helped plan it. They were the original
odd couple.
Whenever there was anything to be done around the house,
Vito was there to do it. He would have given his life for my mother,
my father, any of us. A true gentle giant, Vito was one of the kindest
men I ever knew ­-­ except when it came to his wife, Eva.
Eva was as tall as he was, and almost as strong. Of stolid White
Russian extraction, she took no prisoners. Her red-streaked light
brown hair topped a broad attractive face of smooth white skin and

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small piercing sky blue eyes. She was well proportioned and big-
boned. When they had fights, as they often did, furniture would fly
- heavy furniture. Always thrown by Eva. Vito would get so angry
and terrified of his own strength, if I ever hit her, I’ll kill her - that
he would instead punch holes in their apartment walls and rip out
the telephone until finally the phone company refused to repair it.
I never hit a woman in my life, not even my wife, he would say with
a certain pride.

Eva didn’t have the same standards when it came to her spouse.
She went at him with metal pans, spatulas - whatever was handy.
In her own apartment, she was a fearsome force. But she was some-
what shy in social situations; and did not due well out of her urban
element, frightened as she was by nature and its flora and fauna.

Which brings us back to lobster night. My father and his cro-
nies had been harmonizing to some barbershop songs - he, playing
the ukulele, they, grasping their creepers - their faces a study in con-
centration. Harmonizing was a serious pursuit. Both my father and

Mr. Douglas had been bright lights in their college glee clubs.
They were good, and tonight as usual heavily in their cups.

There were about sixty guests mingling on the porch, the bar-
becue yard, wherever they could find a perch - including the wide,
curving mahogany steps on the first floor staircase landing. We kids
always kept a lookout for strays who might wander up to the second
floor - our haven from the adults. If they made it upstairs, it meant
they were either lost or so far gone that they needed herding back
down forthwith. This was how I viewed them - as a flock of unruly
sheep: some were skittish, some got left behind, and some settled in
and just didn’t move at all.

This last group wouldn’t go home until after daybreak when
they finally came to; so we always wanted to make sure they hadn’t
made it up to one of our rooms. They made obnoxious roommates,
snoring as they did in alcoholic oblivion. My younger brother
Frankie had a NoiseOmeter, a Christmas present he had received
from my father who hoped to cultivate his son’s interest in science.
Frankie put it to good use. We’d gather around the unconscious
stray as Frankie held the device right next to their unsuspecting

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noses. Mrs. Mandeville, though an unlikely candidate with her bird-
like frame, was the noisiest snorer. No contest, not even close. She
practically broke the NoiseOmeter every time.



It took a while to notice that what was first perceived with displea-
sure by the barber shoppers as an off-key harmonic, was actually a se-
ries of shrieks. The revelers searched for the source. When it was de-
termined that it was coming from my parents’ bathroom, everyone
first assumed that Mrs. White had finally pushed her gymnastics
beyond the dimensions of the room and - propelled by too much
thrust - had hurled herself into the porcelain footbath or perhaps the
broad pedestal sink. But there among the curious, now back to her
prim pose, was Mrs. White - her lips pursed between disapproval
and polite concern.

“They’re coming to get me. I’m trapped. Help me, help me!”
screamed a terrified high-pitched voice.

“Good Lord, what’s going on?” asked my mother as she came
rushing in.

Lured by the screams, my brother Harold and I came down-
stairs and gave each other the ‘what now?’ eye roll as we listened at
the door.

“Mom, I think it’s Eva,” I said.
“Eva, is that you?” asked my mother.
“I’ll try to climb in the porch window,” said Harold.
“Don’t force it, Harold. Unless, she’s dyin’ in there, I don’t
want that glass broken,” said my father, who had been inspired to
try scuba diving because of the window’s idyllic aquatic scene.
“Let’s break the door down,” suggested Mr. Douglas and sev-
eral of the other men.
“Maybe the door from your bedroom is open,” I said to my
mother. I ran through the bedroom’s hallway entrance to the bath
door, but it was locked. The shrieks were getting louder. As Eva had
high blood pressure, my father was concerned that she might be
having a heart attack.

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“What the hell are ya yappin’ about?” shouted Vito through
the door. He pretended to act tough but I could tell he was worried.
“Oh my God, oh my God!” was the only reply.
“Eva, it’s Elizabeth, now calm down and try to come to the
door,” said my mother.
“I can’t move,” she wailed.
“That’s it,” said my father, “let’s break it down!”
“Will you all please keep quiet and step away from the door?”
asked my mother with her low-keyed authority. Everyone started
backing away, even my father and Vito.
“Now, Eva, I want you to take some deep breaths and tell me
if you are injured. Does anything hurt?”
“Not yet, but it’s just a matter of minutes.”
“Can you stand?”
“I am standing.”
“Where are you standing?”
“Where do you think? I’m standing on top of the toilet seat.”
“Eva, why are you standing on top of the toilet seat? Why can’t
you come to the door?”
“Because they’re all over. Please help me.”
As it dawned on my father and Vito what the scene in the bath-
room might look like, they broke into wild laughter. I had never seen
my father sport such an extended smile on his face, if that’s what one
could call it. Weakened by their mirth, they literally slid down the
wall. The rest of the guests, clueless as to the cause of their hilarity,
were aghast and confused.
My mother was angry, but even she couldn’t help laughing.
“Don’t worry, Eva, we’ll get you out; just stay calm.”
Just as she said this, Harold, successful in his climb through
my father’s treasured sea garden window, opened the door to the
bathroom. And there among one hundred lobsters pouring from the
tub in an ominous tide - their hard shells clicking as they advanced
across the white tiled floor - was Eva. Her stockings and underpants
were down around her ankles. Only her green dress shielded her
modesty. Her hair, normally coiffed in a neat French Twist, was
wildly askew; her blue eyes aflame with fear.

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My father and Vito were now dangerously close to cardiac ar-
rest. This was Vito’s moment of triumph after all the years of being
target practice - sweet, sweet revenge. He was apoplectic and my
father, who was notorious for being a mean tease, was right there
with him. I honestly believed they might die from laughing. They
were on the floor - Vito pounding the walls, the plush red carpet, his
chest, my father.
“That’s enough,” said my mother. “Harold you and Grace go
in there and put those lobsters back in the tub.”
Eva refused to move until we had rounded up the last of the
runaways. Then my mother took her into the kitchen and asked
what had happened. Like many of the guests, Eva had no idea
that the huge tub was harboring an army of crustaceans. As she
sat on the toilet, the first brave one had thrust its weapon over the
edge; instantaneously, the lobsters’ collective unconscious sensed
a mote to freedom. Like Navy Seals landing in hostile territory,
they climbed quickly over the slick embankment and made their
break.
Shocked to see a menacing tentacle emerge from the benign
contours of the tub, at first Eva couldn’t make sense of it. Unfortu-
nately, that had been her only moment of escape. She was immedi-
ately surrounded and had only seconds to slam down the toilet seat
and leap up. They were staring at me, trying to find a way to attack. I
kept shifting my weight from one leg while lifting the other - back and
forth - to try to throw them off.
“But did they actually try to bite you?” Harold asked. He had
been thinking of maybe going into Oceanography.
“If you hadn’t come in right then and there, they would have.
I have no doubt about it!”
Later that evening, as everyone gathered in the barbecue yard
to feast on the re-captured crustaceans, steamers and corn, Eva -
calmed and perhaps emboldened by several Creepers - seized the
lobster mallet that Vito had been holding. They locked eyes.
“Do you think I’m deaf? That I didn’t hear you laughing?
Vito jumped back. A nervous hush spread over the munching
crowd.

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Take that you bastard! Eva cried as she swung the mallet to-
wards Vito’s chest, then down onto a freshly steamed lobster he
had just put on the slatted wooden table. The shells shot out in all
directions like shrapnel - hot juice and green innards splashing with
each blow. A relieved exhalation ushered forth from the partygoers
- none louder than Vito’s.

330

The Coal Bucket Cradle

By Daniel Ruefman

As the death throes of winter descended upon the Appalachian foot-
hills, a team of mules struggled to find their footing, dragging a
Hoover wagon through the mud. Atop the wagon, where the wind-
shield of the stripped Model-A once was, Stanislaw snapped and
pulled the reigns in a futile attempt to find the nearly impassable
lane that, like the freshly plowed fields surrounding him, seemed
erased by the late spring snowfall.

“Cholera jasna!” Stanislaw’s Polish curse ascended over the
sloppy, suctioning sound of rubber parting the muck and snow
scraping against the bottom of the truck’s frame. “Up! Up!”

With a lurch, the rig pulled onto a steep drive, shored up
with field stones. It rocked, and finally came to a rest between a
gray-shingled farmhouse and barn, partially imbedded in an adja-
cent hillside. The driver leapt down from his place and opened the
door. Without a word, Richter swept from cab of the old truck and
entered through the back door of the house where he was greeted
by an entryway piled with boots and stained clothes inundated with
the aroma of aged manure. Old coats lined the walls, some on pegs,
others knotted over the rest. He stomped and scraped his boots, but
did not remove them before pushing through the door and into the
main house.

As he crossed the threshold, he encountered the flitting fingers
of 8 children huddled around the dinner table, busy with games
and needlepoint. Many of the older children paused to watch as he

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removed his coat and cradled it in the crook of his elbow, before
breezing by instinct through the bedroom door to his right.

The moth-eaten curtains were drawn and the wick of the ker-
osene lamp bedside held a blue flame that was all but swallowed by
the dark. Richter covered the room in three strides, found the lamp’s
knob and raised the wick to push the shadows back from the bed,
revealing a woman in her thirties. Her breathing was labored, but
hushed. As the light washed over her pale face, she squinted up at
him.

He bent over her, peeling back the quilt and covers leaving
only the single, white sheet draped over her. There, between the twin
peaks of her knees, a copious amount of blood soaked the sheet.
Lifting the final cover, the crimson stain grew wider, soaking into
the feather mattress that cradled her distended hips.

Wide-eyed, he repressed a gasp and glanced up at the wom-
an’s face. Eyes closed, her head had fallen limp against her pillow,
but her chest continued to rise and fall intermittently. He grabbed
for his bag, retrieved a small bottle of alcohol and moved to ster-
ilize a blade over a ceramic basin on the dresser. Across her mouth
and nose, Richter placed a rag laced with chloroform and cut the
nightdress, exposing the woman’s bulbous belly. With a sigh he
leaned in and slowly, irreversibly, dragged the blade across her ex-
posed skin.

On the other side of the closed door, the children huddled
around the table and listened to the pendulum of the wall clock
pushing the seconds. No sound escaped the room. Joasia, the eldest
daughter, busied herself with dinner, rolling the biscuit dough out
on cookie sheets, pausing occasionally to feed the iron stove in the
corner. Between tasks, she bent over her sisters’ needlework, raising
her eyes cautiously in the direction of the bedroom where Richter
was tending to her mother.

At last, Richter emerged from the darkened bedroom, clutching
a bloody bundle of rags, his shirt drenched, his arms still glistening
with coalescing human fluids. Without raising his eyes to the chil-
dren, he proceeded to the side of the stove in the corner. There,
wedged between the wall and iron belly was an empty galvanized

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bucket, its bottom glittering black with coal-dust. He paused to
consider the bundle before kneeling in the corner and with an air of
finality, deposited the bundle inside the cold steel.

All eyes in the room watched, but Richter gave no acknowl-
edgement that anyone else was there. Raising a shoulder, he
dabbed his eye and wiped his nose on the one clean spot on the
shoulder of his shirt. With a half-grunt, half-sigh, he pressed his
hands against his knees, stood slowly, and breathed as a soldier
might during a ceasefire, before vanishing once more through the
bedroom door.

The younger children returned to their tasks, while a few of the
older ones remained in their chairs, trading glances with one another
and eyeing the bucket with mingled curiosity and fear of whatever
now lay within. Joasia tried to distract them, setting the table for
dinner, placing a plate of hot biscuits at its center. One-by-one, the
children reached for the plate and quietly began nibbling—all except
five-year-old Bertie. She placed her toy on the table, toddled across
the room, and bent over the bucket to get a better look at the bundle
that Richter had placed there.

Joasia, drew breath as if to scold, sweeping to her sister’s side,
but paused at a flicker of movement. Something poked at the fabric.
Joasia knelt next to her sister then, and they considered the bucket
together. Just as she had convinced herself it was a trick of the light
cast by the kerosene lamps on the wall, the fabric offered up another
twitch and emerging from a loose seam of folds, five tiny fingers
flexed and stretched.

Daniel Ruefman’s short fiction and poetry has appeared widely
in periodicals, including the Barely South Review, Burningword,
Clapboard House, DIALOGIST, Gravel Magazine, Red Earth Re-
view, Sheepshead Review, and Temenos, among others. He currently
teaches writing at the University of Wisconsin—Stout.

333



Bandit Love

By Carolini Cardozo Assmann

You can not blame me, my family has a long tradition, I am not
good and much less evil, I just do not follow the rules.

Today I will see he again, I was already with longing I can not
deny. I had to run away so they would not catch me, glad they did
not blame him.

I turn on the shower, I caught the sponge and pass through my
body, I let the water drain, I turn off the shower, in a few minutes
the mirror gets blurry, I approach and with the finger I write his
name “BERNARDO” and a smile takes over my face. I leave.

In the hotel room I hide myself from everyone, but today I
have to kill the longing, tomorrow I’ll be far away again. I put on a
long black dress with a huge crevice, black panties, high shoe, I love
black, it makes me look more beautiful and he loves it.

I approach the backpack that is inside the safe of the wardrobe,
I open, I choose a necklace, I know it’s audacious of me to put it, but
I look beautiful in it.I caught on the bed, my mask, the invitation,
the bag and I leave.

I go down the emergency stairs, it’s good not to draw too much
attention, I put on the mask, I leave the street.

I stop on the sidewalk, I signal, three taxis stop, I enter the
first, I deliver the invitation to the taxi driver who leaves. I open the
window, let the wind hit my face, what a delight, soon we reach the
destination. My heart kind of shoots, does he come?.

I enter the place, everyone is masked, the place is not very full,
a waiter comes and hands me a glass of champagne and walks away,

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I look up, Bernardo standing watching me, I smile and wave with
the glass. I do not think he’s believing I’m here. I walk up the stairs,
Bernardo stands still, his jaw dropped. I reach the top, Bernardo
approaches, extends his hand, stop beside him that smiles, I will not
be easy in front of everyone.

I walk away, Bernardo follows me from far away, this place is a
labyrinth, I enter a corridor, Bernardo follows me laughing, his smile
is wonderful, way faster, Bernardo runs, I run away from him, I hide
behind a curtain, Bernardo It takes seconds to appear, it stops, the
hallway has two sides, I leave behind the curtain, I’m on your back,
Bernardo takes a deep breath, sighs.

- I miss your smell.
Bernardo turns, approaches, touches his lips to mine, throws
me against the wall, smiles. I take his hand, open the door next to
him, and enter a small bathroom.
Bernardo kisses me, I can not deny retribution, I throw his tie,
he gets me up, I sit in the sink, I pull and kiss, I take off his suit, I
see his gun and his handcuffs.
- Are you working?
- Not anymore.
-Was I your mission?
- It will always be.
Bernardo put over the sink the gun and the handcuffs, kisses
me, moves away, runs his hand through the necklace.
- I know that necklace.
Just smile, it’s a long story, Bernardo takes off my dress, we
fuck right there, as always, anywhere, we’re always perfect when
we’re together, but I can not fall in love with him, I can not, in a
minute of Bernardo’s carelessness, I put a little powder in his drink,
that lies in the bath, I deliver the glass of champagne, takes every-
thing, in minutes Bernardo extinguishes.
I put on my clothes, I take the bag, I open it, I get a lipstick, I
write in the mirror, “UNTIL THE NEXT”
I take the necklace and leave it on the sink. I leave.

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Photographs

By Lynette Yu

Photos are magical. Looking at the ones I’ve uploaded into my com-
puter six years ago, bunch of memories started to bubble in my
brain, yet vague and foggy.

Those I regarded as the most significant were gradually fading,
shivering in a small corner of my mind, becoming trivialities. Do
they hibernate in the winter? They might as well wake up in the
spring, sleepy-eyed, drowsy and yawning incessantly. Otherwise
what disintegrated them into dim pieces?

I took a deep breathe, and clicked the photo file in complete
readiness.

So, the story began.

The 1st photo

It was mid-June. I wiped away the sweat on my forehead, walking
arduously under the vicious sun with a Fuji X100F on my hand.
The dazzling sunlight burned the surroundings, then bounced back
into my eyes. I felt like my legs were gradually melting into a puddle
of sweats.

I always thought that summer was overpraised by people, until
I met him.

He was walking towards my direction, looking right through
me. His whole body was soaked in the splintery sunlight, soft eye
lashes shone. Summer preferred him, I guess. I raised my camera.

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After the camera flashed and made a sound, he was captured
in the photo. He turned to stare at me, his head titled, large chest-
nut-colored eyes filled with curiosity.
“That was for yearbook.” I lied, then quickly ran away without
looking at the expression on his face.
In July, the yearbooks all came out. He carried the one he just
purchased and flipped it through in front of me, asking me where he
was. I laughed when I saw the pure seriousness in his eyes.
That’s part of the reason why I liked him, and the other part
was probably his chestnut-colored eyes.

The 2nd photo

“Click”.
I slowly put down my camera. He raised his head behind the

drums, smiling blurrily. I stood up from the empty auditorium,
walked over to him. I was here to take actual yearbook photos for
his band rehearsal this time.

“Will you come tonight for pictures?” He asked, putting his
drumsticks together.

“When does the concert start?” I passed him a bottle of warm
milk I prepared this morning, pretending to be careless.

“At seven,” he took over the milk, “thanks. You are coming,
right?”

I nodded.
“So, could you please take more pictures of the other members
too?” He asked bashfully.
I went to the concert that night, sat at the backrow. Some
people shouted out his name when his band came out from back-
stage. He wore a pale white shirt, first two buttons unbuttoned. I
saw him exchanged a look with the bass girl, then sat down behind
his drums with a bright smile. A smile I’ve never encountered before.
After the performance, I sneaked into the backstage, carrying
my heavy camera. He was talking to that bass girl, who had straight
brown hair and round cheeks, her voice’s as soft as toasted marsh-

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mallow. She was indeed perfect and attractive. After the girl told
an inside joke that I couldn’t catch, they both burst into laughter.

No one at the backstage noticed me, including him.
“Wow Brian, you guys were just harmonious.” One of his
friends walked by and tapped his shoulder. He pushed his friend
hard, but didn’t say a word to refute. I observed that he blushed a
little, definitely not because of the heat.
I bumped into someone’s guitar when I left by running, which
made a sound loud enough for everyone to hear. Then I tripped,
suddenly fell on the ground.
“Oh my god, is she okay?” The bass girl covered her mouth and
cried out in a sharp voice.
He didn’t say anything, but just came over and offered a hand.
“I’m okay,” I rejected his hand and forced a smile, “nice per-
formance by the way, I took a lot of good photos tonight.”

The 3rd photo

Walking behind him after our common block ended became my
daily routine. I followed him silently through the hallway, along
classrooms and lockers, staring blankly at his backpack.

He had never turned his head once. He always vanished into
the crowd promptly, and was nowhere to be found.

Once, when he walked past a floor-to-ceiling window, the sun-
light sprinkled mildly on half of his back. I walked carefully behind
him, afraid of stepping on his shadow. I put my phone on silent,
then pressed the shutter.

Sun was not the illuminant, but he was.
There was a time when the bass girl walked by, my illuminant
ran to her but kept a little distance between them. He tried hard
to make conversations, but the atmosphere was deadly awkward. I
observed behind the back that his auricles became completely red as
he was talking. When they parted, he waved a little and mumbled a
delightful “see ya”, then suddenly faded into the crowd.
When he was with her, she was his illuminant.

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The 4th photo

During lunch time, me and my friend sat shoulder to shoulder on
the bench together in complete silence.

“Do you know that Brian actually has a crush on Yasmine?
The one who plays bass in their band.” My friend broke the silence.

I lowered my head and took a sip of my apple juice, tried my
best not to show a slice of panic: “Whoa, I don’t know. Who are
these two anyways?”

“You don’t remember Brian? You were in charge of taking his
band photos for yearbook last year. He played drums.”

“No impressions.” I shook my head diffidently, “but does that
girl like him as well?”

“He asked her out yesterday. She accepted. I mean, how could
she not?” My friend responded.

In December, his band went on a field trip to Japan. He posted
a photo of him and the bass girl sitting together, the girl tried to
scoop up her matcha ice-cream and he was aside, staring at her softly,
his chestnut-colored eyes flickered.

I clicked the “save” button and hit down the laptop with in-
credibly strong power. I sniffled hard, so that my tears won’t stream
down wildly on my cheeks.

How could he look at her like that, just the way I looked at
him?

The 5th photo

June 30th, the day of graduation. I got up all my courage and
ask him to sign on my yearbook page, because I knew that we will be
parted forever after that day. I stood beside him when he was signing
his name, and he doodled a smiley face beside it.

I heard a “click” sound, then the two of us were captured in
the same photo. We both startled and raised our head at the same
time, saw a girl who was standing in front of us, holding a camera.
She was in grade 10, and was in my photography class.

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“Sorry, it’s just, you guys are so suited to each other in this
scene, so I couldn’t control myself taking a photo.” She quickly apol-
ogized.
“What do you mean, we are suited in this scene?” He asked
banteringly.
I felt like my cheeks were on fire when he said that. He said
“we”. Us. Him and I. A word worth to taste for the rest of my life.
“C’mon,” The girl shrugged, “photographers like me love
catching beautiful moment like this.”
I chased after the girl. Finally, I reached her, and she turned to
look at me curiously.
“What?”
I didn’t know where to start, or what to say. I just stood there
like a weird sculpture, and gasped a little.
She blinked her eyes, her eyes were large and clear. “Oh, is it
because…but I already apologized for taking a photo of you two.
You want me to delete the photo?” She chuckled nervously.
“No, no, can I have the photo?”
I looked ridiculously blurry in that photo. It’s probably because
I raised my head too quick; the boy beside me was expressionless,
his eyes were cold and foggy as they always were, but with a slice of
confusion. He had an angular face with prominent cheekbones, hair
slightly curled and the color was natural brown.
That was the first photo we took together, but also the last one.
“Happy graduation.” I said gently when I passed him at the
school gate.
“Hey…” he called me behind my back. I hesitated, then turned
to look at him.
“You too.” He let out a smile.
Now that six years had passed from graduation, it’s odd that I
was still mesmerized by his chestnut-colored eyes every time I stared
into them; it felt as they are taking me in, bringing me back to my
high school life which was filled with him. After so many years, his
figure still struggling in my brain intermittently, and his smile in my
dream, vague yet vivid.

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“Remember Brian from our high school? I heard that he’s
about to marry,” My friend brought him up when we hung out the
other day, “whoa, time really flies by quick. It feels like yesterday
we were still in high school, but now people are getting married…”
Something bitter hit the tip of my heart when I heard his
name, but I just nodded, fearful of asking more.
I reached out my hand, fingertips slightly touched the screen.
“Bye, “I murmured the word repeatedly, voice trembling. I guess
this was the real time for me to say goodbye to him, and I should
really be started looking forward.
I deleted all the photos, and just sat there, staring at the blank
file named “him” in a trance.
Lynette Yu.  A freelance illustrator and writer, also a 17-years-old
idealism who believes that words are the most tender creatures in
the world.

342

Paper Faces

By Mandi N Jourdan

The corseted bodice of my long, pink dress was already uncomfort-
able by the time I reached the gym, but I wouldn’t let myself com-
plain about it or about how hard it was to keep on the thin, black
metal mask that kept sliding over my ears and falling out of place.
I’d been the head of the prom committee, spearheading everything
from the decorations to the DJ’s setlist, and it had taken me weeks
to persuade the other members that a masquerade theme could be
fun. I wasn’t about to back down now and join the people who had
already ditched their masks, leaving them on the tables covered with
silver confetti and mask-shaped paper centerpieces.

Nothing was going to ruin my mood. Not the fact that less
than a week earlier, my date, Caleb, had admitted having feelings
for me but had said he didn’t want a relationship because he was
leaving for college. Not the chair sitting in the corner, symbolically
reserved for my classmate Jolene, who had put her father’s Glock
to her head a semester earlier. Not the fact that Caleb’s friends had
worn every type of mask from Guy Fawkes to the Phantom of the
Opera and clearly didn’t take the theme the least bit seriously, and
not the presence of Peter, whom I’d had a crush on for the better
part of two years. He’d come with one of the popular girls who had
a laugh faker than my smile every time Caleb made a joke that made
me want to sink through the floor. But when Peter told me how
much he liked the theme, I felt like I could survive whatever the rest
of the night had to throw at me.

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“What do auditioning for a musical and playing sports have in
common?” Caleb asked as we took to the dancefloor. “If you break
a leg, you get cast.”
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.
For the first half-hour or so, most of the people in attendance
kept their masks on, and I considered that a small victory. I wasn’t
going to let anything take away my pride at the fact that I’d actually
pulled all this off—not even the fact that the DJ started throwing
in songs that weren’t on the list after the first hour or the fact that
during the few slow songs that played, Caleb pressed so close to me
that even through my thick-skirted dress and his suit, I could feel
his erection.
But he didn’t finish his joke about what you call an uncon-
trollable photographer when the words “If I die young” poured
about of the speakers at the front of the room. He had the decency
to look startled. I froze on the dancefloor and scanned the room
as my stomach dropped. No matter how popular The Band Perry
was, and no matter how much that song was played on the radio,
the prom committee had unanimously decided that under no cir-
cumstances was the song played at Jolene’s funeral going to be
heard at prom.
The silence that filled the gym apart from the soft, acoustic
music was the most excruciating one that I’d heard since the morning
after her death, when I hadn’t heard a single person whisper in the
hallway between classes and the cafeteria had echoed like a mauso-
leum.
All around us, couples took seats on the floor or returned to
their tables, and it was then that I realized only about twenty people
still wore their masks. Nausea rolled through me, and I couldn’t
make my legs work to get off the dancefloor.
I didn’t process that Caleb and I were the only people still
standing until the spotlight landed on us and stayed there. I squinted
in the harsh light, searching out somewhere to run, but I only man-
aged to lock gazes with Peter, whose mask was nowhere in sight. The
moment after our eyes met, he looked away.

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Mandi Jourdan studied English and Classics at Southern Illinois
University, through which she wrote and performed in two adapta-
tions of the Harry Potter books in the style of Shakespeare. When
not writing science-fiction and fantasy and listening to eighties
rock, she spends time with her cats. She can be found on Amazon,
at http://bloodandtalons.wordpress.com or on Twitter (@Mandi-
Jourdan). A novel LACRIMOSA (Adelaide Books, 2017) is her first
published book.

345



What We Leave Behind

By Masha Shukovich

There is no way I could ever leave my husband. He would never let
me. And if I did somehow stumble into leaving, he would find me.
Or his police buddies would.

And once he has found me, he would grab me by the chin and
hold my face close to his, my mouth staring at his mouth, like through
a foggy window. People may think that he is poised for a kiss, and
smile.

“How in love those two are!” they’ll say admiringly.
But they won’t see the tightening of his fingers, like pliers,
around my jaw. He is feeling for weak spots. Little crevices where
he can push and prod and poke until the wall crumbles. In his free
time, he is a craftsman who unmakes things.
What would he do with my jaw, if he pried it apart? Put it
under his pillow? Place it on his nightstand before he goes to bed?
Tie a string around it and hang it on his rear view mirror like a
charm? Use it to decorate the Christmas tree? Put it in a cardboard
box at work and write EVIDENCE across it with a black sharpie?
And what would I do without my jaw? It’s funny how I always
forget about that part.



I could never leave him. That much I know. So I start leaving parts
of him instead.

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I take his slippers to the park. I put them under the bench,
lined up neatly, right next to my sneaker-clad feet. They sit there,
obedient, like puppies. It seems like I’m sharing the bench with an
invisible man who likes his feet to be warm. We sit there, for a while,
silent, the invisible man and I.
“I have to go,” I say finally. “It’s starting to rain and I have a
meeting I can’t be late to.”
I never have any meetings. The word tastes strange in my
mouth, like a bite of too-sweet fruit from a land far away where the
sun always shines.
“OK, I’m leaving now,” I say to the slippers, firmly.
It’s like training for a marathon. One step at the time. Not
that I think I could ever run a marathon. But running is a little bit
like leaving. You just need to practice it, every day. First half a mile.
Then a mile. Then two. Before long, you’re half the world away. I
used to think someone like me could never be a runner. But now I
can imagine myself doing it. There’s no law against imagining, even
if you don’t have the legs for it.
“Bye,” I wave to the slippers.
They seem to understand. Maybe this is what they’ve been
waiting for all these years, too. An empty park bench and a little
time to gather their thoughts.



“Where in the hell are my slippers?” he roars later that night.
“What slippers?” I ask.
“The fucking brown ones I wear every fucking day!” he screams.
But I can tell by the color of his voice that he is uncertain,

wobbly. There’s a hint of Egyptian blue in it, like a hairline fracture
in the sky. Something is getting dislodged there.

I shrug. He blinks, like a thing that crawled out of a cave into
the sunlight by mistake. I’ve never shrugged like that before. He
never blinks. This is new.



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