Adelaide Literary Award Anthology 2018: SHORT STORIES, Vol. One

SHORT STORIES
So, the world had called his bluff—and maybe, all in all, that
was for the best?
In the silence of the freshly vacuumed living room, the brass
clasps of Virginia Poorman’s briefcase went off like pistol shots. She
made with her papers a furious rustling sound. Beneath the case,
her knees looked—loomed—like two boiled skulls. What he hadn’t
known—and only now realized—was how much he would miss his
sister. He saved her school pictures, her report cards, the drawings
she used to bring home: He wasn’t her father, not even close, but in
some ways he truly had been her mom.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Mrs. Poorman closed her briefcase. She brought her gaze level
with his. “The ultimate disposition won’t be up to me, you under-
stand? All I’m going to do is gather whatever pertinent information
we require and write a report.”
“I’ll help you in any way I can.”
She offered him a condescending smile. “Mr. Wolding, you
mustn’t take it personally.
Many, many people—I can’t tell you how many—go into this
thing with blinders on. They have no idea of the challenges involved.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by childrearing.”
He had a stiff-upper-lip face he used in British dramas. Tody
put on his doughty Colonel Nicholson mask. “Would you like
something to drink? I have iced tea?”
“That won’t be necessary. I won’t be here that long.” “Sure?
No trouble?”
Before she had a chance to dismiss his tea a second time, the
front door banged open and Shelly stamped in. She looked like the
tomboy she’d once been, hair loosened in a wild nimbus from her
ponytail, face bathed in sweat. She stretched out her big hand to
the startled caseworker. “You must be Mrs. Poorman? How do you
do? I’m so sorry I’m late! One of our most beloved patients had a
thrombosis in the cafeteria and I felt I just had to stay! Tody”—she
turned to him her earnest red face—“where are your manners? Mrs.
Poorman, let me get you something to drink?”
“Oh, I’m fine, dear, you—”

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“Don’t be silly! How about iced tea? Sugar? Lemon? Oh, this
house is such a disgrace! I apologize, you’ll have to forgive us—we’ve
both been sooooooo busy!”
Last week, across Kattlove’s long deal table Tody had unrolled
an expensive bolt of Thibaut fabric. He measured, cut, and rerolled
seven yards into a heavy tube and toted it on his shoulder to the
front. After he rang up the sale, the woman accused him of mis-
leading her on the price. He had not: About money he was exceed-
ingly careful. If carpenters measure twice and cut once, yardage
clerks lock down agreement long before they reach for the shears.
Mrs. Kattlove, roused from her nap, descended from her mezza-
nine like a roiled czarina and sided with her customer, which she
felt an obligation to do, and publicly reprimanded him, which she
did not have to do. He wasn’t going to marry Ortensia Costello or
anyone else, he wasn’t going to troll the alleys looking for lonely
men like Harold Robinson. Shelly was as close as he would come
to having a daughter, a child, and, even if they emerged victors
in this particular skirmish with family court, she would soon be
leaving him behind. He was going to spend his life in a musty shop,
Mrs. Kattlove’s clerk, and die an old biddy bachelor, someone who
cooked hot meals in summer and fanned himself with a rolled-up
newspaper. As he listened to Shelly laying it on thick—as thick, as
Harold Robinson might say, as mustard on pastrami—the artistic
director of Ganaego’s sole theater company smiled, then forced an
even broader smile.
“I say,” Tody said to his half-sister, “it’s just beastly hot today,
isn’t it though?”

Robert McKean’s novel The Catalog of Crooked Thoughts was the
first-prize winner of the Methodist University Longleaf Press Novel
Contest and was published January 2017. The novel was also named
a Finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award.He has been nominated

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twice for Pushcart Prizes and once for Best of the Net. He has pub-
lished more than 20 stories in journals such as The Kenyon Review,
The Chicago Review, Dublin Quarterly, Armchair/Shotgun, The
MacGuffin, The Bacon Review, Front Range Review, 34th Parallel,
Crack the Spine, Border Crossing, and elsewhere. His collection of
stories was a Finalist in the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short
Fiction, the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and the Tartt
First Fiction Contest. A novel he is working on was a Semi-Finalist
in the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel. He has been awarded a
Massachusetts Artist’s Grant for his fiction. McKean’s website is:
www.robmckean.com.

301



The Last Tequila Run

By Royce Adams

Our technique was simple. We would cross the border in Tijuana
visiting several liquor stores so as not to create suspicion, buying
up dozens of bottles of Jose Cuervo tequila. I don’t know who we
thought might be suspicious, but worrying that someone might be
watching made the venture more thrilling. Then we would find a
remote spot and bottle-by-bottle start filling Robert’s phony gas tank
he’d installed under his Chevy pick-up truck. A few empty bottles
were saved to refill and sell or pass around at dorm parties back home.

Once loaded with our hidden contraband, we would head
down to Punta Banda, back in the early ‘50s just a rocky, barren,
isolated place to camp and fish. Our routine was to start drinking
once we left Tijuana making sure the level of the bottle’s liquid
had fallen to the crow’s feet on the label. This usually got us as far
as Ensenada where the Mexican border patrol had a small station
requiring travelers to stop and sign in for permission to continue
further south.

Perhaps because we had done these runs before, or more likely
because we had dropped the level of the tequila in the bottle below
the crow’s feet, Robert decided not to stop this time at the border
station and drive on through to our usual camping spot.

“We need to set up a camp before dark.” He hunched his tall,
lean body over the steering wheel and looked at me to see my reac-
tion. His speech and blue eyes showed the effects of the tequila, and
I wondered if I looked as wasted.

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“Not a good idea, man. We’d better stop. It only takes a couple
minutes.” I was drunk, but not that drunk.
“Naw, it’ll be okay,” Robert tried to assure me. He had on a
tight, white T-shirt that emphasized his tan. He kept leaning for-
ward, like he was going to leap at something, the muscles in his arms
tightening on and off as he kept squeezing the wheel.
“I don’t like this,” I admitted.
“Don’t be a pussy.”
One of his favorite words: pussy. He used it to refer to many
things, but more often at me when I didn’t like one of his schemes.
Physically, he was bigger and bolder than me and almost a year older
than my twenty. Sometimes I questioned why he liked me. We’d
met as freshman at UCLA two years before and hit it off, rented an
apartment together, took the same classes, did homework together
when we did homework, crashed the same parties, usually told each
other everything. But he was “the man,” you know, the big Kahuna.
Everybody liked him, because he said what he wanted in a non-threat-
ening way and showed no sense of fear. Good looking, funny, smart.
Women went for him. And I often benefited from that by merely
being with him. I felt flattered he let me hang out with him, because
I had none of his attributes. I thought of myself as a kind of remora
runner, involved in the swim of things, attaching myself to his glow;
but never the big fish. Sometimes I felt like his mascot. Not that he
treated me that way. Never. It’s just the way I saw myself sometimes. I
enjoyed my status, like a little brother who looks up to his big brother.
As we drove pass the border station, Robert showed his white
teeth and waved congenially to the authorities waiting for us to stop.
“See. No problem,” Robert said, peering in the rearview mirror.
It didn’t take long for our tequila-bloated brains to become
conscious of an official car of some kind trailing us, lights flashing
and siren screaming. We realized, even in our loss of good sense, it
meant pull over. Thankfully, Robert did, and we soon found each of
us had an armed Mexican federale pointing guns at us.
“Fuera del carro! Fuera del carro!” the men yelled.
“Oh, oh. They want to see our stinkin’ badges,” Robert said,
laughing.

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A fuzzy sobriety came over me. “Not funny, man. I think they
want us to get out of the truck. Don’t get stupid on me. They’ll fuckin’
shoot us.” At that moment, knowing Robert, I was more worried he’d
pull something to get us both killed than I was of the border guards.
“Crap, now we’ll never get there before dark,” Robert slurred,
still sitting in the truck.
“Come on. Just . . . get out . . . and keep your hands up.” I
opened the door and stumbled out.
Robert took his time, but managed to step out, his hands
halfway up, and give the men a big smile. “Hola,” Robert offered,
pronouncing and emphasizing the “h.”
This did not endear us to the officers in charge.
One of them, short and pudgy enough to stretch the but-
tons on his brown uniform shirt, said something in angry Spanish
I didn’t understand. When I didn’t move, he yelled it again and
motioned with his gun for me to go to the driver’s side of the truck
and stand beside Robert, who was having trouble standing. When I
did as instructed, the other officer, taller and apparently the one in
charge, held his gun on us while he apparently ordered his partner
to inspect the truck.
“Well, this is the shits,” Robert muttered. “Hope they don’t
find the booze.”
“Oh, great. Just tell ‘em where it is, why don’t ya,” I whispered.
“Silencio!” the tall one yelled. “¡Arriba las manos!” By now he
could see we were gringos. “Hands…up!”
I don’t know how long we stood there swaying with our hands
up, long enough for it to feel painful and for the searching officer to
go through our camping stuff shoved in the camper shell. He came
out of the truck cabin holding three empty bottles, and the almost
empty one we would later blame for our predicament.
Something was said to the officer holding a gun on us, but my
freshman college Spanish being fragile at best, I only caught “muy”
and “borracho.”
I guess it showed.
The two officers spoke to each other, argued about something,
and then seemed to agree on what to do with us.

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“Speak Spanish?’ the leader asked.
“Not me,” Robert said, his arms drifting down. “Nope.” He
did speak some, of course, but was being a stubborn drunk
“Up–hands.” The leader used his gun to point up and then
back at us. “You.” He looked at me. “Speak Spanish?”
I reviewed my two semesters of Spanish as best I could. “Me?
No mucho.” Then I tried, “No comprendo muy … no … muchas …
yeah … muchas palabras.” I felt pretty sure I hadn’t said that right.
He shook his head in disgust. “Why you here?” the leader
asked, ignoring my language facilities.
“We love your country,” Robert said.
“Qué?”
“To camp and fish,” I injected. I’d used up all the Spanish I
could remember.
“And drink,” Robert added, trying to make a joke of our situ-
ation. “Mucho drinko.”
He ignored Robert’s comment. “Dondé campamento?”
I think I understood what he asked. “Camping? Punta Banda.
Many times.”
“Many times?”
“Yeah. I mean ‘si.’ Many, many times.” My arms were killing me.
“Why you no stopped at sign? Many times you no stopped, eh?”
“No. No. We always stop. Always.”
“Yeah,” Robert must have felt I needed support. “Yeah, we
always stop-ped. Always. We stop-ped, for sure.”
I wanted to knock Robert in the head. His charm wasn’t
working here.
“You think this funny?” The lawman stepped toward Robert,
and I thought he might hit Robert for me.
Robert looked down at the gun near his stomach and at last
seemed to wake up to our situation.
“No, no, no, man. This is not funny. Definitely not. Far, far
from funny.” Then added, “Sorry, man, okay?”
“Why you no stopped?” I was asked again.
“We thought, you know, since we’ve done this before maybe
we didn’t really need to stop.” Pathetic was the best I could com-
mand in my condition.

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“Yeah. We’re, like, in a hurry to get to our camp sight before
dark.” Robert pointed toward the sky as if that said it all.
I just blurted it out. “We’re drunk,” then added to show re-
spect, “sir.”
The other border guard clinked the empty bottles together,
punctuating my confession.
The two lawmen conferred for a few minutes, then the leader
gave us orders.
“You and you,” he waved his gun toward the patrol car. “In
back. Con rapidez!”
We knew then they weren’t going to let us go on our way.
“What about my truck?” Robert looked worried.
“Dame las llaves.” The other officer held out one hand, his
other he placed on the gun in his holster.
Robert looked at me, puzzled. I’d never seen him so nonplussed,
and in the unusual moment I felt more in control than Robert.
“He wants your keys.”
Robert hesitated but only for a moment, then yielded. “In the
truck.” Then he asked the officer, “You gonna drive it? Where ya’
gonna take it?” He didn’t like the idea.
No answer came, but they finally let us put our hands down
only to handcuff us together and put us in the back seat of their car.
No one said anything, as we were driven back to the patrol station
where earlier we had spritely waved our way through. Robert kept
looking out the back window making sure his truck was being driven
behind us.
Once back at the station, they uncuffed us, demanded our
wallets, and placed us in a small room with two chairs and a small
table. One small window sat high on one wall. The green paint
was peeling off the walls and a naked light bulb dangled by tangled
wiring from the ceiling. While my stomach was ready to heave away
all the Cuervo, and my bladder demanded attention, my mind be-
came attentive to the grave situation we had liquefied our way into.
Before they left us alone, I said what was true to the rotund
officer. “Sir, I have to pee.”
“Yeah, me, too, really bad,” Robert said.

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“Qué?” the man looked blank.
“Pee. Piss. Urinate. You know…” Robert held his hand to his
crouch and tried to mimic the action.
Hesitant at first, they took us, again at gunpoint, around to the
back of the building and we did our business to great relief. Then
they took us back to the room and shut us in.
We could hear the men in the outer room talking, but my
Spanish was no match for theirs. We assumed they were explaining
to the others how they had caught two stupid Americano gringo ban-
ditos trying to get away from some caper we had pulled.
“Jesus.” Robert sat in one of the chairs rubbing the wrist that
had been handcuffed. “What d’ya think they’re gonna to do?”
“Damned if I know,” I answered. “This is Mexico, man. You’ve
heard stories.”“What’s the penalty for running through a border
stop?”
“How should I know? This is my first smuggling offense.”
“What if they discover my hidden tank?”
“Arrest us for booze running, probably.”
“But we haven’t smuggled anything yet. We bought it all here.”
“Yeah, but they could warn our own border patrol when we
go back. The hidden tank looks suspicious. They could set us up,
you know.”
“If they let us go.”
That sobering thought kept us quiet for a moment, our imagi-
nations going wild in real time worry as we fought against our fear.
“Could they keep my truck?” Robert wondered aloud. His face
showed a fear I’d never seen in him before.
“Maybe. How do I know? Think about it. We look suspicious
running the border like we did. It looks to them like we were. . . I
don’t know. . . trying to get away from something. Maybe they think
we robbed a store or a bank. Hell, I don’t know.”
We both went silent again, our minds imagining every worse
thing possible.
My scared-to-death situation turned on Robert. “Why’d you
run through like that anyway? Why didn’t you stop? You know
we’re supposed to stop! That was really stupid!”

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“Hey, I didn’t hear you say stop. You were in just as much a
hurry as I was. You could have said ‘stop-ped’.”
“Not funny, Robert!” The fact he could make a joke at this
point made me even angrier and more sober sick.
“Well, why didn’t you say something?”
“I tried, remember?”
“Maybe if I offered them some tequila they’d let us go.”
“Oh, sure. Why don’t you just do that. Show ‘em your ….”
That’s when the door opened and the tall patrolman who had
held his gun on us, and a more official-looking man, with a thick
mustache and bars on his shirt epaulets, came in the room.
The official one, looking at one of the driver’s license taken
from our wallets, asked, “Who Robert Barker?”
“Me.” Robert stood up and reached for his license, but it
wasn’t offered.
“And you…” he read the other license, “how you say, Rays
Adam?”
That was good enough for me. “Yes, sir.”
He looked at us both, shaking his head. Then he broke out in
pretty fair English. “You give no respect for our country. You come here,
get drunk and break laws. You like us come your country, do that?”
He didn’t expect an answer, but Robert shook his head in
affirmation.
He went on. “We are poor country, but demand respect of law.
You drunks show no respect. We no want you here. We wait report
on you. Maybe you steal truck, yes?”
“No, no. It’s mine,” Robert blurted out. “The registration’s in
the glove box. Check it out.”
“We soon see.” The officer said. He looked angry. Then the
two men left the room.
“Oh, Christ, they’re going to keep my truck!”
I didn’t say anything, because at this point I believed the worst.
I worried more about me than his damn truck.
The more sober we got the longer it took for time to pass by.
We fell silent, lost in our own personal worries about what could
happen to us.

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“They could put us in a federal prison, ya’ know?” I said half aloud.
“For what? The tequila?”
“No, idiot. For running the border.”
“Shit, they could, couldn’t they?” Robert got up and walked
around. “No. Wait. We crossed the border in TJ legally.”
“Yeah, but we ran this check point or whatever you call it.
That’s just as illegal. That’s like a border. They could jail us for that.”
I could see the thought hit him. “No body would know, would
they? We’d never be heard of again.”
“Yeah. Or they could put us on a work farm. Make us, like
slaves. I read some countries do that.”
“Does anybody know you’re here?” he asked.
“No. You?”
“No. Shit. They could kill us, make our bodies disappear. Or
sell our body parts. Keep our stuff; sell my truck. Sell it for parts,
too.” He paused. “My tequila.” He started pacing the room.
“You and your damn tequila.” I was ready to blame Robert
for everything.
“I gotta get back by Tuesday.” He said, like an after thought.
“What?”
He looked kind of sheepish at me. “Gotta get back by Tuesday,”
he repeated, louder.
“Why? What’s Tuesday?”
Before Robert could respond, the officer and another border
patrolman burst through the door and threw our wallets and the
truck keys on the table. “You go now.”
Shocked at the abruptness, neither Robert nor I moved.
“We’re free to go?” Robert asked, to make sure we heard right.
“You go home,” the officer said.
“Home?” I said. I felt a not trustworthy relief. “No camping?”
“No camping. You go home. No come back. Ever.”
Robert and I looked at each other, then picked up our wallets.
This was too easy. Something didn’t feel right, yet I was ready to
split muy pronto.
“Look, we’re sorry we caused all this confusion. We apologize.”
Robert pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet. “Here. Take this as a
peace offering. Our apology.”

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The officer looked at the bill, then at Robert. “You no buy your
way here. Maybe I arrest you for…” he searched for the word “…bribe.”
“No!” Robert almost yelled. “No, no, no. No bribe. For being
sorry, for apology. Like a … a fine,” Robert said, falling into pigeon
English. “We sorry.”
Robert stuck the bill out and the officer hesitated hen grabbed
it. “For fine. No bribe.” The bill disappeared into his pocket. “Go!
Now!” the officer pointed to the door.
“No camping?” Robert asked again.
“No camping. Go now!” he scowled.
We could see there would be no camping, and didn’t much
care at this point. Relieved to be free, we headed back toward the
Tijuana-California border. For a short time, we noticed someone in
a car followed us to make sure of our direction.
“Shit, man, I can’t believe they just let us go.” I felt numb.
“I knew if I gave him money they’d let us be on our way.”
“Bull tacos. He was letting us go anyway. Offering money al-
most added to our troubles, man.”
“Well, it was worth a shot. He took the money. Thought he
might let us camp.”
Too tired to argue, I just shook my head and leaned my aching
head back against the seat. I closed my eyes. I wanted to sleep, but
wasn’t sure how awake or sober Robert was for the drive back, so I
thought I’d better keep him awake.
“What’s Tuesday?” I asked, remembering his earlier comment.
“Hmm?”
“Tuesday. You said you have to get back by Tuesday.”
“Yeah. I have to report for duty.”
“Duty? What duty? You didn’t sign on for Duggan’s geology
field trip, did you? I thought we agreed not to. That’s three days
stompin’ around in Carrizo Plains, man.”
“Naw. I was gonna tell you in Punta Banda. I signed up. The
Marines.”
“The Marines?” It took me a minute to absorb what he was
saying.
He nodded. The look he gave me I interpreted as guilt.

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“The Marines. You signed up for the goddamn Marines and
didn’t tell me?”
“Yeah.” He tried not to look sheepish.
I couldn’t hide that I was pissed.
“Why?”
“My draft number’s gonna be up. Come on. We talked about
it. Rather be in the Marines than the army.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know that your numbers up for sure.
Mine could come up before yours.”
“I can feel it, man. My number is comin’ up.”
“Bullshit.”
“Well,I did it. I’m reporting in on Tuesday.”
“Thanks for sharing, asshole.”
We stayed quiet for a few miles, then I asked, “Why didn’t
you tell me?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I was going to. After we set up
camp. Which we’re not now.”
“You could have told me what you were planning.”
“Ah, I hurt my pussy buddy’s feelings.” He tried that winning
smile.
“Fuckin’ A, man. You did. You have.”
“Look, it was kind of a spur of the moment thing to sign up,
but I’ve been thinkin’ about it for some time. This Korean crap is
hanging over our heads, knowing they’re gonna tag us soon. If I
have to fight in some war not of my making I want to do it on my
terms. I just want to get it over with. No more waiting, you know?
In, then out. Over and done.”
“What about finishing school?”
“It’ll wait. School’s not goin’ any where.”
A few more miles of silence went by, and then he said, “If I had
told you, you would have joined up, too. I know it”
“Maybe. You don’t know. Probably. Yeah. I don’t particularly
want to go into the army, either.”
“See, if I’d told you, I’d be a bad influence on you.”
“You already are. You’ve got me in trouble with the Mexicans,
and now I’m a tequila smuggler.”

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“There you go. I rest my case.”
“You didn’t tell me ‘cause you thought I’d follow you?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
“Fuck you, man. Now who’s the pussy?”
Tired and almost sober now, we said little if anything until
we pulled in line to cross into the California border where we knew
we’d be asked our citizenship. They’d either pass us through or ask
us to pull over so they could inspect the truck.
“Do you think the Mexicans called our border patrol about
us?” Robert asked, as we inched closer to the inspection site, his
face drawn.
“Why would they, and what could they do? Unless they dis-
covered your tequila tank.”
“Oh, hell. You think they did, and that’s why they’re sending
us back?”
“Maybe.” I tried to sound more worried than I was.
“I’ll bet they did. Yeah. That’s why they’re sending us back.
It’s a set-up.”
I sat up straight in my seat. I thought it highly unlikely. The
odds the Mexicans knew about the tequila tank and didn’t say any-
thing were in our favor, and I felt pretty sure they had no way of
contacting our guards at the border. But I was pissed at him for
not telling me about his joining the Marines, and I liked seeing the
unusual concern and paranoia on his face.
“Could be. We’re about to find out, aren’t we, Marine?” I put
strong emphasis on “Marine.”
I have to confess I found pleasure in watching Robert sweat out
our crossing. For once, I felt like the top dog. He got more fidgety
with every forward movement of the truck. When it was our turn,
the border patrolman asked our citizenship, where we’d been and
what we’d purchased. Robert pulled it together, lied and said we’d
been camping and hadn’t purchased anything but a bottle of tequila.
The truck was given a once over and we were waved through and
safe across the border.
“Fuckin’ A! We did, it pussy-boy.” He immediately became
his old self.

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Me? I guess I sulked, keeping my hurt feelings up most of
the drive back to LA. Why hadn’t he told me he’d enlisted? Our
dynamics had changed.
Once home and Robert started getting ready for Tuesday, I
kept realizing my life was about to face a major change with him
gone, and I started wishing I had joined the Marines with him.
When I told him that I was considering joining, he reminded me
that it was too late for us to share boot camp together even if I did
enlist.
“Besides,” he said, “you’re too much of a pussy for the Ma-
rines.” He gave me that look-at-my-perfect-teeth smile and a jab at
my shoulder.
He was right.
That weekend before he left, Robert sold his truck and threw
one hell of a farewell tequila party. In truth, I didn’t enjoy it like the
others. The more I drank, the more depressed I got. I watched him
work the crowd, truly a person magnet; the kind of guy it felt easy
to be around. In the time I’d known him, we’d shared big and small
together. Outwardly I still let him know I was pissed, but inwardly
I started missing him before he’d even left.
Then Tuesday came and Robert went. Wham, bam, thank you,
ma’am. Gone.
I heard from Robert twice while he was at Pendleton boot
camp. The second one was a note that he’d graduated and was ship-
ping out. He didn’t say where, but I assumed it was Korea. That was
the last I heard from him.
Things were lackluster after that. I had to get a new roommate,
Greg, who was okay, but we never got close like I did with Robert.
He didn’t like to party much and liked his alone time. His indirect
influence pushed me toward studying more, and even though I par-
tied with old friends on occasion, my life vibes just weren’t right.
Another school quarter passed. I turned 21 but with little fanfare.
Spring Break came and there was no tequila run. But as they say,
life went on.
Then through word-of-mouth the word came down. Robert
was KIA.

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It was too big a jolt at first. I didn’t want to believe it. Guys
like Robert don’t die in stupid wars. He is too vibrant, too alive with
life. The Big Kahuna. I felt numb, too devastated to accept the truth.
Then I did.
Since I couldn’t tell Robert all that I felt, mostly that I should
be grateful he didn’t tell me he was joining the Marines, because I
know I would have followed the leader, I decided on a little cere-
mony in his honor.
I bought a bottle of Jose Cuervo and found a pick-up truck
in the apartment parking lot. I didn’t care whose truck it was, but
it would do. I dropped the tailgate and sat on it, feet dangling. I
opened the bottle of tequila.
“This one’s for you, Robert,” I said and took a swig.
“This one’s for pussy me.” I took another.
I raised the bottle in the air.
“Fuckin’ A, man.”
W. Royce Adams, a retired English professor, has published over a
dozen college textbooks, several academic journal articles and juve-
nile novels. He won the Haunted Waters Literary Magazine’s 2016
Grand Prize Short Story Contest and an Honorable Mention for an
essay from Winning Writers. His works have appeared in Green’s
Magazine, The Rockford Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine,
Catamaran, In the Depths and others. He lives in Santa Barbara,
California.

315



The Dance

By A. Elizabeth Herting

How they would dance!
All of their life together was one long, intricate dance, every

movement and action perfectly in sync. For as long as she could
remember, he had been a part of her world, and she of his.

Perhaps this was why she suffered so, watching his steady de-
cline. There was very little she could do for him now. Only watch
and wait for the inevitable.

Lately he seemed to favor his right side, comfort eluding him
even in troubled sleep. She spent every spare moment trying to heal
him, attempting to meld her body into his as the hours dwindled
away to a precious few.

They had experienced much in their life together. Memories
of lost children floated through her mind. So much promise tinged
with so much regret. How they had survived such calamity gave tes-
tament to their union, unbreakable and complete. It would be just
the two of them in the end. If she could not make him whole again,
at least she would be present. He would not die alone.

He turned his face away from her for the last time, his breathing
jagged and slow. She hovered around him, turning and turning in
graceful circles as the last vestige of life drained out of his tired old
body.

She knew the moment he left her as the water gently unmoored
him from his final resting place and carried him to the surface, her
frantic movement pushing him higher and higher. She could see,

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from a great distance, his body being lifted out as she desperately
trailed behind and then, he was gone. Gone in an instant, as if he’d
never been. Gone away from her forever.

As the water calmed, she resumed her lonely vigil in the place
where he had been. All too soon, the mysterious, shimmering surface
would call for her, but not today.

She began to swim around and around in mournful celebration
of her lost love, and how they would dance.
A.E. Herting.  I am an aspiring freelance writer and busy mother
of three living in colorful Colorado. My short stories have been
featured in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Bewildering Stories, Cafe
Aphra, Clumsy Quips, Dark Fire Fiction, Edify Fiction, Everyday
Fiction, Fictive Dream, 50-Word Stories, Friday Fiction, Furtive
Dalliance, Ghostlight–the Magazine of Terror, Halcyon Days, Lit-
erally Stories, New Realm, No Extra Words, Peacock Journal, Pil-
crow&Dagger, Quail Bell Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, Scrutiny
Journal, Spank the Carp, Speculative 66, Storyteller, The Fiction
Pool, The Flash Fiction Press and Under the Bed.

318

Room 103

By Tara Lynn Marta

After walking through the entrance of Westbank High, I needed to
get cleared by security. The procedure was new to me, but I hadn’t
been in my old high school for twenty years. In those days there were
no security check points, no cameras creeping out of every corner of
the building. Times had changed.

When the editor at the post asked me to write a story about the
oldest high school in Newburgh County, I hesitated. Going back to
a place I once regarded as a nemesis didn’t thrill me. But as a reporter
it was my job, nothing more.

The principal, Mr. Watchinson, was an old friend of my father.
I promptly went to his office where he greeted me with a big smile.
He then gave me a visitor’s badge, which I hastily clipped to the
lapel of my suede coat.

“Shall we save my interview for the end?” he asked
“That’ll be fine,” was my reply.
There were other interviews I wanted to conduct first, but Mr.
Watchinson insisted that I spend the first half hour taking a fieldtrip
around the halls to reacquaint myself with my former school. And
he trusted me to make my rounds alone.
Westbank had undergone a minor transformation since I grad-
uated. A glass cabinet in the main vestibule displayed awards and
photographs of athletes, both male and female - a far cry from when
I was a student and the accolades were separated by gender. Red and
yellow splashed across the once alabaster walls, and the floor beyond
the foyer bore the school’s emblem.

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Without warning an antagonistic sensation washed over me,
causing my eyes to prickle with tears. I had a bittersweet relationship
with Westbank. From the moment I became a freshman, the other
students mocked my entire existence. I was devoid of friends and
fitting in wasn’t in the cards.
“Life isn’t a popularity contest,” my father would chant when-
ever I protested about not having enough friends. “One, maybe two
friends, that’s all anybody needs.” Sound advice, but it did little to
placate the misery that had claimed a permanent place in my life.
How I wanted to be part of a group – any group – so long as I fit in.
My classmates were divided into three categories: you had the
preppies, who were adored by the faculty for their brilliant grades,
their athleticism, and their charming personalities. There were the
metalheads, who dressed in black and had silver chains dangling
from their pants. And then there were the average nobodys like me,
who neither played sports nor had much interest in Goth. Whatever
I was, popular I was not.
I rounded the corner on the main floor and a flood of memo-
ries haunted my mind, not all of them pleasant. I used to waste time
before homeroom sitting at the hall monitor’s desk. This didn’t go
over well with my classmates who strode the grounds in a cluster.
“Look at the loser sitting all by herself,” my cohorts would
taunt. And then a snide remark about my wardrobe: “Don’t you
know how to dress like a girl?”
I was a girl in every sense of the word, but my clothes didn’t live
up to conventional standards. Tee-shirts, blue jeans, and sneakers
suited me, while other girls wore short skirts, tight blouses, and
heavy makeup to cover their acne. I didn’t bother with make-up
since it was the reason for my own acne flare-ups. I was plain Jane
and bore the title unwillingly.
Over by the guidance office I reminisced about the times spent
filling out my schedule, and how during my junior year I mulled
over plans to attend college, which at the time didn’t seem plausible
thanks to my disastrous SAT scores.
“You can always go to a community college,” Mrs. McFadden
assured me. “Once you establish yourself there, then you can move

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on to a university.” She was one of the kindest guidance counselors
I’d known and held a genuine interest in students’ academic careers.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor and wandered into the
gym where I found some students trying to dunk a basketball while
others assembled on the bleachers, staring at their cell phones. The
P.E. teacher, whom I didn’t recognize, was engaged in a conversa-
tion with another faculty member.

Without any open windows the gym had a dry, stale air that
wreaked of perspiration. My hand unintentionally reached across
my mouth, then pinched the tip of my nose, an attempt to prevent
the stench from invading my lungs.

As I stood in the doorway of the gym, I recollected the days
when my 4 ft. 11 stature prevented me from getting the basketball
high enough to pass through the net. “Why are you so short?” my
classmates would chide. I never had answers to any of their ques-
tions, but the cutting observations left me with a complex. I was
short with frizzy hair, dark rimmed glasses that occupied most of my
face, and my classmates had no interest in me other than to poke fun
at the things I couldn’t change.

“Ignore them,” my father remarked whenever I arrived home
in tears. “The only way anyone can make you feel inferior is if you
let them.” Dad always knew what to say, even if the quotes he used
were not his own but Eleanor Roosevelt’s.

The cafeteria on the third floor was a place I often dreaded
during those desolate academic years. At a table in the far corner of
the lunchroom, isolated from the rest of the crowd, I often rumi-
nated on what it would be like to keep company with some of the
admired girls, whose fashionable attire and stellar good looks per-
meated the hearts of every eligible football player. Though I ached
to be recognized, I knew that my placid personality would never
garner attention from my contemporaries. The only interaction that
ever surfaced were the persistent jests I received at the fate of being
different.

On once such occasion, Stacy Landen, whose beauty and
tanned body surpassed every young man’s imagination, grasped my
shirt sleeve as I passed by. “Where are you going, ugly?” My cheeks

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flushed, my eyes welled with tears. I lowered my head, but Stacy
wasn’t finished. She grabbed the lunch bag out of my hand and
emptied the contents onto the table.

“Hmmm, anything good?” she uttered. Everyone at the table
took turns ripping apart my lunch: the bologna sandwich on whole
wheat got tossed between three different people until the sandwich
was too slimy for consumption. Kyle, the captain of the football
team, lunged for the apple that rolled across the table. He assumed
the position of a major league pitcher and hurled it to his friend
John, who in turn began eating the fruit.

Betrayed by emotion, tears glided down my cheeks leaving me
victim to callous ridicule. A sudden loss of coordination caused my
knees to buckle, and when my shoelace came untied, I stumbled
until my back end landed firmly on the ground. Sobs imprisoned
my throat, and though my hands covered my face, I could see a small
throng of students huddled together, pointing and jeering.

Back on the first floor I crossed the hall from the main office
and peeked into some of the classrooms, most of which were occu-
pied with the exception of room 103. I took advantage of its vacancy
and wandered inside, a rush of familiarity greeted me as I crossed
the threshold.

Room 103 wasn’t an ordinary classroom. It was more than
that. It was the place where two decades earlier, a slow but steady
transformation began - a renaissance.

Ms. Colms had wavy, dark hair that relaxed on her shoul-
ders, tall in stature with a slender figure. Her olive skin glowed and
her piercing voice reverberated throughout the classroom whenever
she spoke. Perfectly coiffed in designer clothes, Ms. Colms took
immense care of her exterior. Beneath the surface, however, was a
woman whose internal beauty exceeded her superficial exquisiteness.

It was customary for me to sit in the back of a classroom, but
something beckoned me to the first seat in the second row, adjacent
to Ms. Colms’s desk. “Welcome to Sophomore English,” she de-
clared. “This term we will delve into classics from literature’s finest
authors: Willa Cather, Agatha Christie, Shakespeare, and Victor
Hugo, just to name a few.”

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I’d heard of these famous writers but had not spent a great deal
of time studying them. Though a voracious reader, my spine cringed
at the thought of having to read the work of outdated scribes.
But something miraculous happened when Ms. Colms
launched into lectures on the importance of these celebrated au-
thors. Cather and Christie, Shakespeare and Hugo, Bronte and
Dickinson – they came alive as if Ms. Colms’s very breath of life
carried them back from the unknown. Between the pages of those
books, the writers’ words commanded control of my presence, and
I was caught in the vortex of their message.
“What’s all that?” my mother queried when I arrived home
from school one afternoon with an armful of books.
I grinned as I sped up the stairs to my room. “Just some books
I got from the library.”
In the past, the creature of habit would only study required
reading material, but all that changed after being a student in room
103. I was under Ms. Colms’s spell, even if she wasn’t aware of my
sudden conversion. Tucked away in my room, I read hard cover
editions of classics by renowned authors, cramming details in my
mind so that I could share the information with Ms. Colms.
Thereafter, whenever I arrived at school, I waited for Ms.
Colms by her classroom and pounced on the opportunity to reveal
titles of the books I’d been examining.
“I’m so pleased that you’ve taken such a keen interest in the
classics,” she would exclaim, as I beamed back at her. Classmates
would happen by and snicker under their breath at the sight of me
grasping large, dusty tomes while conversing with the enemy.
Ms. Colms would remain my English teacher while I was a
sophomore and junior. But even in the midst of another instructor
during my senior year, I would find my way back to room 103
at least once a week, to continue my alteration with my preferred
mentor. And there Ms. Colms would sit with me for nearly an hour,
presenting her views while receiving mine.
English was not the only thing I learned from Ms. Colms. Her
strength and resilience captivated my attention. She carried herself
in a way that alerted the entire universe to her durability. Students

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cackled because she wasn’t married, bestowing unkind titles on her
like old maid and spinster whenever they thought she wasn’t lis-
tening. But she heard every word. And still, she remained undeterred.

“Never allow anyone to undermine who you are,” Ms. Colms
said, during one of our weekly visits. I had complained to her about
the scrutiny I was under at the hands of my classmates, and she in
turn cautioned me not take offense, because those who took pleasure
in wounding others were insecure, seeking refuge from whatever
pain afflicted them.

Back in room 103, I woke from my trance when I heard foot-
steps behind me.

“Can I help you with something?” asked a middle-aged man
wearing blue slacks and a striped shirt with a name tag stitched above
the upper right pocket. He was holding some kind of tool, indicating
that he was the janitor.

“No, I was just daydreaming.”
“Were you a student here?” the man inquired.
“Many moons ago, yes. This was my English class.”
The man strolled inside the classroom and leaned against the
wall. “Let me guess, Ms. Colms was your teacher?”
“That’s right,” I replied.
“A fine woman, yes indeed. Shame what happened to her. Too
young.”
The janitor’s words hung in the air as I thought about Ms.
Colms and how I’d allowed my relationship with her to fade into
the background.
I visited my favorite teacher every month or so after gradua-
tion, but life had consumed me, and somewhere along the way we’d
lost touch. It was a rainy afternoon when I picked up the newspaper
at work and saw Ms. Colms’s photo in the center of the obituaries.
Her white hair hadn’t thrown me. I knew her face anywhere, even
before I noticed her name in bold. At only sixty-five, Ms. Colms fell
victim to cancer.
“Yes, a real shame about Ms. Colms,” the janitor reiterated.
“Well, I won’t bother you any longer. I’ll leave you to your mem-
ories.”

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I sat down in the first seat of the second row and peered at the
desk Ms. Colms inhabited for many years. It was hard to imagine
that such a force of nature could be extinguished. But she was only
human, even if she’d exhibited a perpetual existence.
After forty minutes of recollection, it was time to head back
to Mr. Watchinson’s office to nab the interviews I needed for the
paper.
Before taking my leave, I scanned the classroom one last time,
thoughts of Ms. Colms hastening through my mind.
My peers had made high school unbearable, leaving my self-es-
teem in shambles. Graduation day was no exception:
“You’ll never amount to anything,” Chris Leopold hissed as I
got up to receive my diploma. And I believed him, too.
But standing in the shadows back stage, Ms. Colms gave me
two thumbs up, then folded her arms and bobbed her head up
and down in recognition of all that I’d accomplished and all that
I would go on to accomplish. The card I’d received in the mail a
few days after graduation confirmed her belief in me. “You’ve been
given the foundation to your future,” she wrote. “Now it’s up to
you to build it.”
I walked back to Mr. Watchinson’s office where he motioned
for me to take a seat. “Where do you want to begin?” he asked.
I’d come to Westbank skeptical of how I would write a story
about a school that haunted my adolescence. And as I walked the
halls, I was accosted by agonizing memories of my contemporaries,
and how they’d gone to great lengths to disparage me. But, just like
when I was a student, there was one thing that kept my head afloat:
my beloved teacher. For even the thought of Ms. Colms brought
comfort and reassurance.
Every so often someone comes along with a knack for revolu-
tionizing an unsuspecting target. My future became possible under
the leadership of one of education’s best – an English teacher, who
taught me that I was just as good as anyone else. Without any delib-
erate attempt Ms. Colms managed to eliminate my diffidence within
the confines of room 103.

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Tara Lynn Marta is a substitute teacher of English and a writer of
fiction and nonfiction. Her work has been published by Aaduna,
Inc., I AM STRENGTH, The Humor Times, PoetrySoup, Heart-
ache to Healing, Thirty-Third Wheel, and others. She is an avid
reader and serves on the committee of Scranton Reads, a local com-
munity reading event that holds book discussions on great works
of literature. Tara earned her B.A. in English from Penn State Uni-
versity and her M.A. in Creative Writing from Wilkes University.

326

Anger

By John Wells

Dean Erickson was drunk again, passing out. Lying face down, he
closed his eyes, trying to mentally retrace his steps. He could not
remember anything, nothing visual in his mind’s eye but blurry
dizzy images merging together, rolling backward, dissolving out of
sight. Did the cute redhead tell me she was too busy? Or was that last
night? Dean tried recalling a single event or person...maybe there was
loud disco music in a crowded bar somewhere...someone tapping him on
the shoulder as he was taking a leak...a mysterious woman who looked
like Marlene Dietrich materializing under a foggy streetlamp...He tried
swallowing, but his mouth tasted like a bowl of dust.

Opening his eyes, He realized that he was lying down some-
where. Across the room a dazzling beam of light sliced through an
opening in a door like a golden knife, pulsating as if it was alive and
breathing. Rising up from the floor, a dozen bloody meat cleavers
swirled around the golden knife slashing brilliant red roses to smith-
ereens. One of the meat cleavers stared at him suspiciously, roses
tumbling from his mouth, rivulets of blood dripping down his stain-
less steel face. Dean rolled over and grabbed something soft. At first,
he thought it was the redhead, but it smelled funky, familiar. It
smelled like his left arm; Dean was holding on to a pillow.

Sometime in the middle of the night, a bestial fury roiled inside
of him, billowing up like a monster from the bowels of his stomach,
snarling at the back of his throat. Terrified, he forced his mouth shut
so it wouldn’t escape. Karen was lying naked on the bed, mocking him,
calling him a drunken loser. Breathing fire and spitting sulfur, he tied

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her up, handcuffing her arms to the bedpost, stuffing a dirty sock in
her mouth while slashing her face with poisonous fingernails, gouging
her eyes out with his thumbs. He leaped on top of her like a ravenous
wolverine, clawing and scratching her to death, skinning her alive as
he bit off huge chunks of her tits. Karen’s naked body wriggled like a
hooked fish, eyes bugging out of her sockets, begging for her life as he
stuck a blowtorch to her head. For a few precious moments, he listened
to the gentle comforting hiss of the gas escaping from the nozzle before
squeezing the sparkler. Beautiful red-hot flames exploded, searing every
deceitful cell in her remorseless brain. He set the blowtorch down on the
bed, lit a joint, and sucked in a full drag. Smiling, he blew a massive
plume of smoke over her charred body and singed hair. Thin blue wisps
mingled with sulfuric smoke ascending over her body...

Dean woke up. He was soaked in sweat, his head exploding
from the nightmare and throbbing from a hair-burning hangover.
Turning on his back, he stared mindlessly at the blades of a ceiling
fan spinning slowly around and around. He had no job, no wife, no
kids, no place to go. He considered himself one of the luckiest men
on the face of the earth.

Rolling over on his side, he detected a guttural sloshing noise
deep within his stomach like vile liquid bubbling in a vat of sour
buttermilk. He sat up, placing his hands on his knees looking down
at the floor. Then he closed his eyes, massaging his temples with his
fingertips before carefully touching his hair to make sure it really
wasn’t on fire. His head felt unattached, lolling side-to-side like a
woozy rag doll. If I could only get to the kitchen for a drink of water
and some aspirin, I might feel better. Grabbing the bedpost, he tried
hauling himself up but collapsed back on the bed following a roiling
wave of nausea. Suddenly, the kitchen seemed a long way off. He
looked up at the fan again. Abruptly, the telephone beside the bed
rang loudly. He let it ring a few times before it stopped. He figured
it was probably Karen trying to reach him again.

As hard as he tried, he could not remember many details about
his marriage. It seemed every month he lost a year or two until now
he could only recall sketchy fragments, withering bits of time, thin
slices of random life…somewhere driving a car, turning his head, and

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SHORT STORIES
noticing one of her silver hoop earrings…touching her red birthmark
shaped like a strawberry…the steamy antiseptic smell of the bathroom
after she showered…running to retrieve a rain-soaked newspaper lying
on the lawn. Dean realized he and Karen must have had a thousand
conversations, but he could not recall anything they talked about,
except one time when she was upset that the neighbor’s dog Brutus
was tied up on the porch for a whole weekend in the hot sun.“Those
fucking Collins’ are assholes,” she hissed. Something else came to
mind. It was late; they were lying in bed together. She rolled over
and said to the wall, “I think love is overrated.”

Dean stared at his hands curled into vein-popping fists, con-
stricted blood-red, clutching the sheet as if someone was sawing off
one of his legs. He needed to calm down. He needed to get a grip.
He needed to quit drinking. He needed these nightmares to stop.
He needed to control his anger. He thought about the wisdom of
Buddha: You will not be punished for your anger, but punished by
your anger.

He fought off the urge to pound the mattress with his fists.
Instead, he muttered, “Fuck it,” to himself. Smiling ruefully, he re-
laxed his grip, lifted his hands in the air, and lobbed a couple of lazy
boxing jabs to an imaginary opponent. Then clutching his stomach,
he rolled over to the side of the bed, choking and retching, afraid he
was going to throw up.

Dean forced himself up and leaned back on the headboard,
trying to ease his wobbly, troubling mind. Wiping his sweaty brow
with the sleeve of his shirt, he grabbed the pillow next to him and
rolled sideways into a fetal position. The softness of the pillow re-
minded him of Genie Madison, his first girlfriend. Closing his eyes,
he drifted off once more..sliding back into the past…

Slow dancing cheek-to-cheek in the gym, a golden mist was bathing
Genie’s face in soft illumination…swaying and swooning...she glided ef-
fortlessly across the dance floor. Heavenly radiance was flowing from her
as if her soul was reaching out to embrace me...Hold me again, with all
of your might...in the still of the night.

And afterward, alone together, I moved closer to her, hoping the
magic and mystery of it all would last forever. She smiled flirtatiously,

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kissed me gently and nestled her head on my shoulder. Her warm body
silky soft, emitting a sweet fragrance of fresh lilacs and orange blossoms...

Hours later, Dean sat naked in a cane chair in the middle of
the living room listening to John Coltrane’s Love Supreme on the
record player. Holding a pencil lightly between two fingers, he
channeled his Buddhist mode of intuitive thinking by focusing
on a circle with a dot in the middle while trying to elevate his
consciousness into a Zen-like cloud of mystic unknowing. God
could be loved, but not thought—never known by concepts and
ideas. Less thinking, more loving. He was not searching for a su-
preme being, but a cosmic revelation revealed from his third eye,
the mighty extrasensory organ linking patterns and connections in
everyday life. He was hoping to find some peace of mind by gaining
inner-worldly intuitiveness. He wanted to understand emotions
and thoughts, not only in other people but himself. Most of all, he
wanted to control his anger.

The pale gray dot before his eyes slowly drifted outside the
circle, dissolving into nothingness. The pencil hit the floor. Dean
picked up the stopwatch lying between his legs. He clicked it: one
minute and forty–five seconds. A personal best. Not up there with
the Tibetan monks, he thought, but not bad. He put on his shorts,
and then walked over to the couch, plopped down in front of the
TV and switched on an NBA game. It was in the third quarter and
the Miami Heat was pummeling the Detroit Pistons by 22 points.
Dwyane Wade drove the lane, sucked in the defense, then whipped
a behind-the-back pass to Lebron James who promptly drained a
wide-open three-pointer. Heat by 25. A few minutes later, Dean
got up and went into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of Seagram’s
VO and a liter of ginger ale and ice from the refrigerator. He mixed
a drink and then returned to the couch just as Lebron sank another
3-pointer. Suddenly, the phone rang.

“Hello.”
“Dean?”
“Karen?”
“Yes, it’s me. How are you?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”

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“Look, I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I felt I needed
to call you.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to explain...I wanted to tell you what was—
is—wrong with me.”
“What is that?”
“I’m seeing someone...a therapist. She told me that I have a big
problem...I’m addicted to sex.”
Dean looked at the phone as if a tarantula was crawling out of
it. Then he drained his drink. “You’re gonna have to explain what
you mean Karen. Addicted to sex? What the hell does that mean?”
“I have an abnormal sexual drive. My therapist...she thinks it
is insatiable and I have an obsessive-compulsive disorder that drives
me to commit immoral acts.”
“Like cheating on your husband?”
“Yes, like that.”
“Wait one second.” Dean went back to the kitchen and re-
trieved the bottle of VO and ginger ale. He mixed a drink on the
coffee table and took a healthy sip. “Okay, I’m back. Listen, Karen,
I don’t know what to say. Are you apologizing?”
“Yes, I’m sorry I was such a terrible person, but I wanted you to
know that I was out of control...I could not control my sexual appetites.”
“And you are getting help for this?”
“Yes, I’m in therapy—and taking medications.”
“To control your sex drive?”
“Yes, in a way.”
“Karen, I’m a little confused. To be honest, I don’t think there
is anything wrong with having a strong sex drive. It seems normal to
me. You mean you have a disease like alcoholism?”
“Yes, that’s a good way to put it. Some people can handle al-
cohol, but some people become addicted and lose control—”
“And make you want to fuck random men—and women?”
“I don’t know what to say, Dean. I was out of control. I’m
saying that I’m sorry for what I did to you.”
“Well, no offense Karen, but it’s a little late. I don’t know what
to say except that I am glad you got help and I guess your therapist
knows what she is talking about—”

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“Oh! she’s a genius!”
“She must be if she can tell the difference between totally
selfish behavior and a compulsive disorder.”
“What do you mean?”
“Karen, you were only thinking about yourself—fulfilling your
own desires. The sex drive is—well, it can go anywhere. I mean, you
can’t go around having sex with people while you are married—”
I know! I was wrong!”
“What about the lying and cheating part? Are you addicted to
lying too?”
“I had to lie! I had to cover it up! Don’t you see?”
Dean slammed down another huge gulp. “Things fall apart
pretty easy when they’re held together by lies.”
“What is that? One of your self-serving Buddha quotes?”
“No, it’s the truth. It seems to me that your therapist is a
quack. She’s offering you an out—a way to escape responsibility for
what you did.”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand. It was stupid to call.”
“For Christ’s sake, Karen, we were married. If you’re single,
you can fuck five men or women a day and who gives a shit? I’m no
psychologist, but it doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to figure out that
if you are going to get married, you need to be monogamous—and
that means channeling your sex drive towards one person—”
“But I tried!”
Dean polished off his drink, ran his fingers through his hair,
and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “So, what does this have to do
with you being a lesbian and not telling me for seven years? Do you
have an obsessive compulsion to sleep with other women?”
“Okay, Dean, cut the sarcasm. You know as well as I do that a
person can’t change his or her sexual preference—”
“Right. So, if you were born a lesbian, why did you marry me?”
“I was confused. I tried to deny my sexual feelings, but after a
while, I could not stop...”
“I’ll say this much. You were a great actress—Academy Award
stuff.”
“I’m sorry about all the lies...I really am.”

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“That’s okay. I’m glad you’re getting help. You’re right. I don’t
understand your actions—and I sure don’t understand how you
can be addicted to sex. You could say that about anything that gives
you pleasure, and you want to do again. What was I? Addicted to
baseball?”
“Are you doing all right?”
“Sure. I’m okay.”
“Can we still be friends?”
“Thanks for calling, Karen. I know it wasn’t easy for you, but
at least now I have some answers. Goodbye, Karen.”
“Good night, Dean.”
Dean glanced at the television, watching the fans exit the
stands following the Miami Heat blow out.
John Wells is a retired naval engineer living in Annapolis, Mary-
land. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval Post-
graduate School, Monterey, California, he cut his teeth by writing
technical documents for Navy shipbuilding programs that resulted
in his ability to express ideas clearly and elegantly, but it’s been
a lifelong obsession with classical literature that honed his skill to
become a professional wordsmith who writes fiction that has read-
ability and character-based dynamic storylines. A literary realist, he
has developed a writing style suited to modern readers in this pub-
lishing era when novels have to compete with television and video
games. He believes that “following the crowd” in writing guarantees
mediocrity.

333



Sanctuary

By Heide Arbitter

They took the birds away. That was the last hint. They were unat-
tractive birds, loud and sad looking, with feathers plucked bloody
and wings hanging helplessly. But, these birds were his joy, the one
thing that made him laugh, and to that end she would never say
anything against them.

A few days after the birds were put into cages and carried away,
she saw his photo perched on a shelf in the laundry room of the
building, his stern, handsome face, encased within a frame of par-
rots. The notice next to his photo mentioned when he died and the
many things he had done for the people of the building, although
nothing in specific was listed. Donations in his name could be sent
up to his bird refuge located on the roof.

The exodus of birds had not been the only hint that something
was wrong. He had become kinder. Perhaps, too kind. His was a
nature made even more sour by age, yet here he was, holding the
elevator with a smile. She did not know him well anymore, but over
the years, at each random encounter, be it in the lobby or the mail
room, she noticed he was a little thinner, his cheeks gaunter, and his
blue eyes lighter. They would nod at each other, but the exchange of
pleasantries was left for other neighbors entering or leaving.

It was not always this way. She had been in the building a while
when he moved in across the hall. He was a sullen, but intriguing
addition to the fifth floor with a brash, expensive style of dressing.
He worked in a pharmacy, he said, and the way he flashed his bold
eyes at her got them talking. Soon, they were arguing about the vir-

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tues of taking anti-depressants versus putting in the time to find true
happiness and this lead to something else. Their affair was brief and
basically unsatisfying. Passion and possession stemmed from prox-
imity and convenience, more than any genuine physical or mental
attraction. One night, they just gave up, even though they still had
plans for the next day.

Once, while they were still together, she visited him at the
pharmacy in the back of one of those enormous we sell everything
stores. There he was, standing behind the cash register, ringing up
an order and she wondered how he could afford his apartment on a
cashier’s salary. When the next customer stepped up and he snapped,
“You should have looked it up online before you came down here,”
she knew that dispensing prescriptions was not his true calling. She
did not mention this as they left the pharmacy and headed up to
their favorite place, the zoo.

Although, she did not know much about birds, she loved them
anyway. On their first trip to the tropical center of the zoo, she felt
like she entered a fairy world where ibis and spoon bills were the
guardians of the gate and egrets and cranes the majestic escorts of all
who wished a guided tour. But, when they walked, on this autumn
day, among the arctic center of the igloos and the ice bergs, she was
shocked when her casual observation about the penguins shook her
tenuous connection to him. They caught the bus back to the city
in silence.

And it was in silence that she watched through the peep hole
of her front door, as woman after woman entered and left his apart-
ment. She made a plan with herself to run into one of these anon-
ymous beauties and tell them what he was really like, but on that
particular night, as she walked down the hall from a yoga class, she
stopped in shock. It was not one of his paid women waiting by his
front door, but him, his body lying crumpled and still.

She ran to him, took out her cell and dialed 911. They took
their time, but when the paramedics and police did arrive, they laid
him on a cot, and took his vitals. “Can I go with him?” she asked,
nervously. He weakly opened his eyes, “Call my wife” he whispered.
“Family only” said the cop. The elevator doors slammed in her face.

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The noise of those slamming doors haunted her for some time.
He never did return to his fifth floor apartment. She missed spying on
him and plotting revenge on the women. One day, there was a racket.
She stepped into the hall to investigate, and saw moving men carrying
his furniture out. At first, with sadness, she thought he died in the
hospital, but later, the doorman told her that his wife had bought the
penthouse apartment and his stuff had been moved up there.
After that, they sometimes ran into each other in the building,
but when they did, they kept their eyes to the floor. But, gradually,
the routine of being in the same elevator and the safety that only
living on top of the world brings brought him to a muttered “hello”.
The doorman even told her that he had been acquiring special birds
and that the enormous penthouse garden had been turned into a
kind of roof aviary for the sick and maimed.
It was about this time that she noticed a dimming in his once
bright eyes. She wanted to tell him that she really loved penguins,
she was just making a joke, but somehow the words failed her. She
had just been laid off from her long time job as the hostess of an
exclusive restaurant and they were giving her a hard time about un-
employment. Her refrigerator broke and when she knocked on the
super’s door to ask him to fix it, he snapped, “Fix it yourself”. She
could not do that and took to eating all of her meals at a diner with a
“C” rating. But on that morning when she entered the lobby, a new
state-of-the-arts refrigerator was being delivered. “The super must
like you” said the doorman, but she knew differently.
In the laundry room, she stared at the photo of her former
lover, but did not take down the donation information. As she col-
lected her laundry, she heard the squawks of birds. Through the
service entrance, cage after cage of avian patients were being returned
to the building by his wife and her servants. The cries of the birds
were loud, like knives slicing beef into thin strips, or human flesh
shredded translucent on mandolins. She could see how in his last
moments, their piercing bird shrieks were too close to his human
pain to be the odd, but loved cherished pets they were.
She was surprised by her feelings of hope as the injured birds
were loaded onto the freight elevator. She followed, after his wife, a

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tall, thin woman with deep brown eyes, and squeezed herself in be-
tween the cages. The wife pressed the penthouse button. She pressed
nothing and summoned all the friendliness she could. “I can help
you take care of the birds,” she said. His wife looked startled, and as
the elevator doors closed, smiled briefly. “Yes,” she nodded to her
neighbor.

338

Wings

By Jeff Bakkensen

The question of who would die first consumed us. We had been that
way ever since I’d retired and it came in and set up shop, the third
partner in our marriage, an unplanned and unwanted late-life child.
It tugged at our pant legs from beneath the kitchen table, climbed
into our bed and sat on our chests while we slept. We had never been
especially grim or morbid people, at least not until I retired.

The question liked to join us on the couch for our nightly
dose of evening news. I felt it stir as the female anchor sent us to
the airport with a deeply voiced, “Breaking news from Manchester
tonight.” There’d been an emergency at Manchester Regional that
morning when a west-bound 727 departed into a flock of migrating
geese. One engine shut down entirely and oxygen masks deployed.
No serious injuries. No mention of the state of the birds. The seg-
ment opened with a long-distance shot of the plane sitting on the
runway shortly after landing, smoke rising from beneath one wing
backdropped by the crisply burning leaves of a New England fall. A
reporter narrating from off-screen gave us the details: 149 passen-
gers, crew of 7, heading for Phoenix via Midway. Airborne for less
than ten minutes. Then we passed into the inside of the terminal as
they cycled through a half-dozen harried passengers in quick two- or
three- second cut shots ending with a husband and wife pair about
our age, their names and town of origin displayed in white text on
the banner across the bottom of the screen. Frank and Mary-Ellen
Dolan – Derry, NH. This was clearly intended as the piece’s climax.
The camera focused on husband then wife in turn, mouths moving

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mutely while the narrator explained that they had been on their way
to visit adult children in Arizona. The real-time audio faded in as
Frank finished his layman’s take.

“There’s black smoke all over the place,” he said. “And it feels
like we’re falling out of the sky. And I just look over at Mary-El, and
I remember thinking that she needed to put her mask on. I wasn’t
going to sit by while she had no mask on, no matter what the safety
manual says.”

I turned to Kat, who was leaning forward on the couch, totally
absorbed in the interview, and I knew that this was going to be an-
other one of those nights.

Onscreen, Mary-Ellen confirmed Frank’s account and then
Frank, one hand on his wife’s shoulder, gave credit to the flight
crew for maintaining calm. They would be restarting their trip the
next morning, they said. Then they passed off-screen.

We transitioned to an outdoor shot, nighttime now as the
narrator’s voice found embodiment in the form of a cub reporter
standing in a windbreaker outside the darkened airport. We were
back in the present, the near-disaster at a safe enough distance for
reflection. The reporter said his piece and released us to the care of
the anchors back at the studio, both of whom shook their heads and
wished the couple well. Commercial break.

I knew what was coming. There was nothing I could do to
stop it.

“Will,” said Kat.
“Don’t even,” I said.
“You don’t know what I’m going to say,” she said.
But I did, exactly. I got up for water, hoping to put some dis-
tance between us before the inevitable.
“I hope I go first,” she said. “I know that’s selfish but it’s true.”
She said this like it was something she’d been struggling with
for a long time and had finally found the courage to say, when in
fact she pursued more or less the same line whenever the situation
allowed.
“No one ever said the two are mutually exclusive,” I said.
“Selfish and true, I mean.”

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She went on, “I wouldn’t know what to do if it was you.”
I nodded from the sink.
“I’m not even talking about grief stages or anything. Forget
grief,” she said. “Just living. Getting by on a day to day basis.”
This was her biggest concern, not-dying. Not something hap-
pening to her, but having to watch something happen to me. And
waiting for it in the meantime.
I walked back into the TV room. She was sitting with her
upper body turned towards me, legs hidden beneath the horsehair
blanket.
“And you?” she asked.
“I don’t think it’ll be an issue,” I said, pointing to my chest.
“Wish I could say otherwise.”
She smiled again, and I knew she was hoping I was wrong,
but the fact of the matter was that the odds weren’t in her favor.
The odds said one in five I’d have a second heart attack within two
years of my first, and I was still only eighteen months removed
from Transmural Myocardial Infarction Numero Uno. Six times
as likely as the uninfarcted man in the street. I carried the odds
with me wherever I went. Sometimes it seemed like I was all heart.
I could feel the ticker quaking. And when that happened and I
needed to be reminded of something good, I would think of Kat
and tell myself that this was the same girl I’d met in college, who’d
worn hemp more often than cotton and who shaved her head when
John Lennon was shot. Who lobbied for the college newspaper to
devote a weekly column to the atrocities in Lebanon and then dis-
tributed her own hand-typed and photocopied one-page rag when
they turned her down. This was that same girl. And I was the same
guy she’d fallen for. So long as I could keep that picture in frame, I
knew that we would be alright.
We watched the news until they got to the weather, and then
we turned off the set. One great thing about retirement is that you
don’t have to plan the rain into your morning commute. We climbed
the stairs, brushed our teeth and got into bed. Kat performed the
nightly ritual of placing the morning pills in his and hers dispensa-
ries. Then we let sleep overtake us.

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The next day’s plane crash was news before the news was on.
We couldn’t have missed it if we tried. The morning after that,
Frank and Mary-Ellen’s picture – a still from their interview – graced
the covers of both the Union Leader and the Globe. Accidents on
consecutive days at the same airport: these are the dreams that
headlines are made of. The various outlets would probably play the
“more than a coincidence” angle eventually – Is Manchester safe?
What protocols are being put into place? – but in the short term, we
had to satisfy ourselves with the little knowledge immediately avail-
able. Everything was couched in minimally confident terms. No
overlap in flight crew. Maybe a mechanical issue. Or maybe it was
something mechanical compounded by flight crew error. Neither
paper was certain, nor did they think they would they be for quite
some time. The dry, ass-saving formulations of The aircraft had no
history of mechanical issues, however. Meanwhile, every local station
was scrambling to contact its affiliate in Phoenix, hoping to score
the first interview with the bereaved children, and the question was
following us room to room, screaming and stomping its feet for our
attention.
We had our own adult child, Sam, who lived in DC, close
enough to not merit the risk of flying, if flying hadn’t been entirely
out of the question, anyway. We made the ten-hour drive once every
few months, Kat gripping the passenger-side door handle with both
hands and pumping an invisible brake pedal while I tried not to take
it personally. It wasn’t my driving, she assured me. It was driving
itself. And it didn’t seem to matter that my last stint before retiring
– before being forced to retire – had been as a shift safety supervisor
at the power station in Seabrook. No matter that I’d kept a clean
record throughout. Driving was driving, and it was dangerous. Sta-
tistically more dangerous than flying, I’d pointed out more than
once. But flying was out of the question.
Our visits followed a routine that we’d more or less hammered
out over Sam’s four years of college and the year and a half following.
We started down very early Friday morning, arriving at Sam’s little
Arlington apartment in time for a late lunch that Kat insisted on
preparing herself, she told me once, to get the blood back into her

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SHORT STORIES
fingers. Then we took the Metro across the river to a park or mu-
seum, depending on the season. Either way, we knew we would
be conspicuously protected. We walked around the Washington
Monument with its National Guardsmen, their M-16’s slung non-
chalantly at their hips, and Kat asked Sam what contingency plans
he had in place for various types of terrorist attack. We went across
the street to the Holocaust Museum, and Kat, nodding knowingly
towards the security guard as we passed through the metal detector,
observed that violence breeds violence, and the world was getting
bitterer every day. We watched the question leak out onto every-
thing we touched until other people, other tourists, seemed to as-
sume we were hiding some unhappy secret. When we visited the
Vietnam Memorial, I swear half the crowd was staring right at me,
waiting, I bet, for me to recognize a name and break down in front
of them. But of course I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, and
I wanted to stop and ask them, How old do you think I am? I have
plenty of friends who’ve served, but we were all still in grade school
when ‘Nam peaked.

We did the museums, splurged for lunch and dinner out and
breakfast at the hotel while Kat caught Sam up to speed on whose
parents we’d seen and which former classmates’ notices had appeared
in the paper, and at some point Sam and I would be left momentarily
alone and it would suddenly seem that the only topics that came to
mind were those leading places where neither of us wanted to go,
including but not limited to: 1) what Sam was planning, if anything,
for the next five years or so; 2) the fact that the best plans accounted
for being dealt not one but possibly several truly rotten hands one
right after the other; 3) late-career joblessness and the American
Dream; 4) lesser known aspects of TMI recovery such as depression,
restlessness and claustrophobia, as well as treatment side effects like
salty or metallic taste, diarrhea, decrease in sexual ability paired with
sometimes painful erections, bodily fatigue, general weakness, and
anxiety; 5) the impact these side effects can have on a spouse; 6) the
challenges associated with helping arrange suburban transportation
for that spouse should she suddenly refuse to drive herself; 7) whether
an only child should be expected to divert a promising career in

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Public Administration in order to move closer to his ailing parents;
8) how much protest an only child should be expected to put forth
before he gives in and accepts that his parents will allow no such
thing; 9) global warming, black holes, and other apocalyptic sce-
narios; 10) the way that someone who internalizes an extraordinary
amount of worry will eventually, like a black hole emitting Hawking
radiation, begin to project that worry back out into the world; 11)
the challenges of living with someone like this, for whom prepara-
tions must constantly be made to guard against exposure to the many
worry-causing things they might encounter; 12) what parts of this
dysfunctional arrangement Sam could expect to inherit from each of
us, and what he could learn from watching our example.

And since once any one of these topics entered your mind it was
impossible to let it go, we danced awkwardly around each of them
until Kat returned and we could go back to letting her guide us to-
wards more comfortable ground and leave the dance to someone else.

Then we went to another museum or walked along the Mall
and eventually the weekend was over and we’d head back up north,
satisfied in the discharge of our parental duty. On the way home, Kat
would once again do everything in her power to avoid looking at the
actual road and would complement the Golden Oldies soundtrack
with grating teeth and little whimpers whenever she felt we were
drifting too close to oncoming cars or vice versa.

Sometimes it seemed she felt that the combined effects of my
heart problems and giving up my job and our only child running
off to another city had given her mystical access to a part of life that
passed unseen by the rest of us. That she felt things on a deeper, more
self-honest level. And I would pretend along with her that I thought
the world was only cruel and unfair because we accepted it that way
and that together we would all change things for the better once we
decided we’d had enough.

“There’s so much meanness in the culture right now,” she said
while she was warming dinner. “When did that happen?”

I smiled and tilted my head like she was making me think real
hard, because I could still see the girl who shaved her head when we
heard that John Lennon had been shot.

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And even if maybe I’d never been the great cultural critic or
someone’s guardian angel, and if most of the time my role was con-
fined to problem solver and sense talker, that had value in it, too,
didn’t it? And hadn’t I helped raise a child who was hardworking
and level-headed? Didn’t that count for something?
Two days after the crash, the night after the governor declared
a statewide state of mourning, someone threw together a makeshift
memorial at one of the entrances to the airport. We saw it first on
the evening news, of course, the cub reporter standing in almost the
same place he’d stood the night before and the night before that.
This was his story as much as anyone’s. We had anointed him to lead
us forward, and cable executives were sure to be watching.
He did the expected bit: memorial sprang up overnight,
mourners and sympathizers arriving all day with gifts of flowers,
stuffed animals, and personal notes. He said this while we waited
to be shown the memorial itself, and then he stepped to the side
and – this was the big twist – revealed that it had been behind him
all along. With an outstretched arm, he directed our gaze towards
the red and black ribbons weaving in and out of the fence links, the
colors, he said, representing airline disaster support.
I turned to Kat, who was nodding along with the anchors back
at the studio.
“Did you know that?” I asked.
“What?” she asked. “About the ribbons? They have a color for
everything. Don’t you remember the yellow ribbons for the hos-
tages?”
Of course I did. Signs demanding that we simultaneously De-
port All Iranians and Bring Them Home Now. But the embassy take-
over was an attack, not an accident. It was a challenge to the world
order. You couldn’t compare one to the other.
“That was to show solidarity,” I said. “To say that we weren’t
giving in.”
“And these ribbons are for the victims,” she said. “You show
solidarity with the victims and their families.”
I frowned. Solidarity against what? Bad luck? To show that
you wished it hadn’t happened? There are things that are essentially

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human and either you have them or you don’t. A plane, for example,
doesn’t care whether it lands or crashes. You can’t argue a flat tire
back to full pressure. But this was too complicated a point to make
in front of the TV.

Instead, I said, “Interesting that they should choose the airport
instead the crash site.”

I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have remembered
the prayer meetings for cyclone victims and vigils to end domestic
violence, the time she dragged me down to Gloucester to attend
the mass memorial for fishermen at the end of the season. I should
have given a thought to all of the arcane forms of grief she’d already
explored over the past year and a half.

“The crash site belongs to the investigators; the airport belongs
to the mourners,” she said. She knew all of this. “Should we go down
there?”

Never let disaster pass you by.
Night found us on the road to Manchester, Kat’s fingers
squeezing the life out of the seatbelt while she repeated incantations
just beyond my range of hearing. I didn’t ask what she was mum-
bling and she didn’t offer.
The airport lay in the middle of a reclaimed swamp surrounded
by a sort of irregular manmade berm. The memorial was against and
along a wire fence just beyond the Hilton with its small chapel to St.
Joseph of Cupertino, who, Kat told me from between her fingers,
was the patron of both air travel and the learning disabled. It was as
close as you could get to the runways themselves without boarding
an airplane. We drove past once and I parked the car in the waiting
lot, and then we walked, Kat squeezing my hand, across three dif-
ferent access roads on our way back to the fence, which, sure enough,
was festooned with red and black ribbons, some of them turning to
white as they bled their color. It had rained the night before.
“It’s like a Georgia tailgate out here,” I said under my breath.
“Will,” said Kat, and shook her head.
She let go of my hand only when we had reached the ten or
so yards of sand-bit grass between the curb and the fence. Two
dozen mourners, well-wishers, empathizers, whatever, stood about

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SHORT STORIES
in clumps of two or three. The odd doubling feeling of seeing some-
thing in real life that you’ve seen on TV. I waited on the pavement
while Kat roamed among the scribbled notes and assembled offer-
ings, turning back from time to time, looking on the verge of tears,
to make sure that I was still where she’d left me. I was reminded,
uncomfortably, of the first time we brought Sam to the zoo.

A clot of interested persons formed around a woman who
seemed to be dispensing some sort of privileged information. She
might have been an airport employee or a minister or just the best
informed among us laymen, a guide explaining the local attractions.
Emotional tourism (n): the practice of intentionally placing oneself in
stressor situations in order to find release from chronic anxieties. Origins:
south-central New Hampshire, early twenty-first century.

The listeners looked like a casting director’s idea of a small New
England city: mixed ages but trending older, white, conservatively
dressed. They listened with their arms crossed and one leg bent or
they leaned against each other and whispered or they just stood there
and looked dumbly over the little memorial and the airport beyond
because what else could you do? I wondered whether any of them
actually knew someone on the plane. Did they lead rich lives, these
people? Did they go to baseball games and school recitals? Would
they tell their coworkers where they’d been the night before?

I waited, keeping my distance and with my feet making little
mounds out of rocks that had strayed onto the pavement. Eventu-
ally, Kat broke off from the group and came back, her eyes red and
puffy from swallowed tears.

“There were three little boys on the plane,” she said. “Three,
seven and sixteen. The younger two were brothers.”

I wrapped my arms around her and didn’t say anything, be-
cause there was really nothing I could say. We alive and unhurt. Our
son and everyone else we knew and loved, were, so far as we knew,
alive and unhurt. There was no connection between us and this
place. Head against my shoulder, she thanked me for bringing her.

I felt heat on my back and turned to find a cameraman fixing
us with his incandescent light. The cub reporter stood patiently to
one side. I was news.

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You spend your youth worrying about old age and old age
regretting your wasted youth, and in the end, there’s nothing you
can do about it. That’s what I believe. You become the person you
were always meant to be. So let it go already. Quit wasting our time.
We walked out of the limelight and back to our car. I felt
nothing like release.
The road home wound through thin secondary growth woods.
Next to me, I could hear Kat gripping and regripping the passenger
side door handle and emitting little high-pitched sounds as we
rounded turns and our headlights crossed with those of cars going
the opposite direction.
I asked if she would mind if I turned on the radio. She shrugged.
I switched on the news at low volume.
I tried a joke.
“Why is the common cold so much more dangerous in an air-
port?” I finished before she had a chance to stop me. “Because then
it’s a terminal illness.”
She looked at me in horror.
“Kat, come on,” I said. “You can laugh if you want to.”
She shook her head.
“Kat,” I said. “We’re not the couple on the plane. And when
we go, it won’t be because of some grand twist of fate. There’s no use
making it into a fetish. It’s not going to make it any more romantic
when it happens.”
“Who said anything about romance?” she asked.
But the whole thing was romance. I thought about the little
knot of listeners, the way they’d all craned towards the woman at
their center. The way they would talk on the ride home about the
woman who’d come by herself, the man who stood alone on the
pavement.
I pressed down on the accelerator.
“You can’t be the victim for everything,” I said.
“Who’s being the victim?” she asked.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that she had poked
her head out from behind her elbow and was looking at me across
the console. I pressed down harder on the gas.

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