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From PHILADELPHIA, the WORDSHOP of the WORLD
Cover Image: Françoise Sagan, Rouchon Héritage, 1961
Daniel Shapiro
“The Circle Of Red”
The professor made an unusual discovery that morning. A small black spider (he'd first noticed it yesterday, at the time more of a distraction than a cause for alarm) had taken up residence on the third shelf of his tall oaken bookcase where he kept his leather-bound journal collection. The bookcase contained the complete collection of the Antiquarian Journal of Archaeology, published yearly dating back to 1883. He had a special fondness for this particular journal, as it was here where his work was first published: "An Archaeological Exploration in Southern Algeria" (1967; pp. 145–179).The web, which extended from the top of the volume downward in a diagonal fashion to the lip of the shelf, resembled a gauzy hammock tipped on its side. A streak of sunlight from the window slanted across the study to illuminate the spider's new domain. Would it now attempt to further expand its web to include other volumes? Only time would tell.The professor was in excellent spirits. He had recently signed a lucrative contract with the prestigious New York publishing house Endicott Barlow to write his memoirs, and had been given a hefty advance to complete a first draft within a year. Writing the memoir would be a snap. He'd left behind a distinguished paper trail over the course of his lifetime: two hundred plus scholarly articles and fifteen books. The difficult part, as always, would be the preliminary work, deciding what goes and, more importantly, what stays -- separating the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately, it was an aspect of writing he thoroughly enjoyed.He complimented the spider on its impeccable taste. Reaching for his teacup, he was surprised to find it wasn't there. "I must have left it on the kitchen counter." His face darkened. "Here we go again," he said to the spider. He recalled a spate of absentmindedness he'd experienced lately. Hard to pin down precisely when it started. Small things mostly, nothing to be overly concerned about. Forgetting to turn off the burner on the stove. Leaving the water running in the bathroom sink. Returning a quart of milk to the freezer, a box of breakfast cereal to the microwave instead of the cabinet beside it. Picking up the phone but unable to remember whom he was calling. Or remembering but forgetting why. He was convinced these episodes would stop once he began writing.He got up to retrieve his tea, stopped suddenly when he heard a decisive crackle of paper underfoot. "Ha! Absentmindedness strikes again!" The floor was littered with reference materials -- notebooks, maps, atlases, handbooks, manuals, monographs, journals -- fifty years' worth. Like an archaeological site, it was necessary to tread with care lest he trample upon valuable source material.Over the past few weeks, he'd overseen their migration from bookshelves, filing cabinets, desk drawers, boxes piled high in the closet and the garage (boxes now open and scattered). Material he thought might prove useful, he had stacked neatly in piles beside his desk; the remainder relegated to the floor, to be returned to their proper resting places at a later time. Now he had to stop to clear a path from his desk to the door, something he should've already done.The tea was on the kitchen counter just where he'd left it. Recently, there had been a more troubling incident. It concerned his favorite corduroy jacket. He expressly remembered taking it to the cleaners along with three sport shirts. When he returned later in the week to pick them up, the sport shirts were ready, but not the jacket.As it turned out, it was not lost, but still in the back seat of his car.He returned to his desk and sipped his tea and swiveled round in his chair to face the bookcase. "Now, where were we?" He certainly wasn't encouraging the spider, far from it. Access to his journals was critical, especially now. They were his lifeblood, his most beloved possessions. Rarely did a day pass when consultations were not made. It's true that online access was convenient, but it just wasn't the same. Call him old-fashioned, but the smell, texture, and weight of each volume in his hands triggered sensory pleasures that could never be duplicated online."A word to the wise, my friend," he said, pointing a long, bony finger toward the bookcase. "Cease and desist." The thought of talking to a spider caused him to smile. "So, this is what it has come to, hey, Billy Boy?" (a pet name his father had given him as a child).There had been some apprehension regarding writing the memoirs. Memoir, from the French mémoire, meaning memory. Time marched on. He tried his best to keep in step, but increasingly found himself lagging behind. Why dwell on it? No one need question his competence or desire. He was writing a book, not running for president.There were caveats of course. "Don't make it too scholarly," the publisher warned. "You don't want to scare off the lay reader." His agent echoed the sentiment. "Folks these days aren't interested in anything that happened more than a week ago or takes more than a page to describe." "Under one hundred thousand words is preferable," the publisher said. "War and Peace it's not." "Remember your audience," the agent added. "And don't be an egghead. Folks don't like eggheads."This would not be a problem. He was confident in his ability to hold the reader's interest, with a combination of charm, humility, and most important, a solid grasp of the material, no matter the audience. Although recently he had confessed to his agent over the phone -- a confession he now regretted -- that at his advanced age, his memory was not what it once was.A formidable silence on the other end. "For God's sake, Bill, just keep it under your hat. You should've told me you wanted to write fiction."After that, no more was said on the subject.Last week he'd expressed a similar sentiment to a colleague. His memories often resembled hieroglyphics, symbols of a bygone era, distant and remote, familiar but not always recognizable. He told him of the agent's reaction. His colleague dismissed it as insignificant. "Don't worry, Bill. We all get old. Comes with the territory. As long as you can remember how to sign your name at book shows and on the backs of checks. Everything else is gravy."He planned to devote this week to recounting his search almost fifty years ago for the Circle of Red. Even the most unscientific minds with the shortest attention spans, with only a clue as to the work of an archaeologist, couldn't help but be fascinated, dare he say enthralled, by the subject. Three thousand years ago in the Sahara desert, in what was now southern Algeria, just north of the city of Zeshdi, literally translated as the City of Grief, the great king Mnadeem, tormented by the sudden and unexpected death of his beloved queen Villia, wandered out into the desert, slit his wrists, then plunged them deep into the earth until all precious fluids had drained from his body, forming in the alabaster sands a perfect circle of red, precisely twenty-five feet in circumference (nearly eight in diameter).Circle of Red sightings were rare; verification was difficult, the literature sparse. Oscar Teppich in 1784; Cyril Dupuy in 1855; Jonathan Marigold in 1875. All trained archaeologists who at one time in their careers had made the Circle their primary vocation."In its redness lies a hint of man; in its roundness the perfection of God," Teppich wrote in his book, The Gospel of Hope (London: Beaumont Press, 1790). For whatever reason, he seemed more interested in exposition than excavation. It was filled with revelations on man's temporal nature, the true path to salvation, and the bounteous omnipotence of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Perhaps he had spent too much time in the sun. According to Teppich, a firm believer in the triumph of belief over evidence, it was not Mnadeem's blood that infused the sands, but more likely that of Christ. Given that Zeshdi was two thousand five hundred miles from Jerusalem, this seemed unlikely.Dupuy's descriptions of the Circle were often vague enough to be useless; they could have been lifted from a dime store novel. More importantly, he failed to offer a single definitive clue as to its location. In a eulogy delivered by Cyril Dupuy, his son, one year after his passing (reprinted in Le Journal Archéologique, March 1860, pp. 54–6), he explained that given his father's deep reverence for the sacredness of the natural order, it was not surprising he had intentionally omitted certain details for fear that revealing them might put the Circle at risk of being forever defaced by what he described as "the grimy hands of civilization."And then there was Marigold, William Marigold, whom the professor considered nothing more than a profligate adventurer and lush. In search of a brothel, a besotted Marigold had stumbled off the main road into the desert, and collapsed in a drunken heap. When he awakened the next morning, he lay prostrate, sprawled out on the Circle of Red, inhaling it through sand-clotted nostrils.In his biography, William Marigold: Squaring the Circle (New York: Bettmann & Peavy, 1987), Jonathan Brinker-Bell, a former science reporter for the New York Times, writes that in the second half of the nineteenth century, formal academic qualifications, such as we know them today, didn't exist. In the 1870s, survey work was considered a natural stepping stone to archaeology; a formal degree was not required. Heinrich Schliemann and Flinders Petrie, two giants in the field, were both self-taught, neither the recipient of a university degree.A native of Mesquite, Nevada, a town in the Mojave Desert, Marigold received only a primary-level education and did not pursue further schooling. As a teenager, he often accompanied his father, a land surveyor for the government and a retired sergeant major in the U.S. Army, on surveying trips. He drummed into his son's head the tools and techniques of surveying -- such as the proper use of theodolites, compasses, surveyor's chains, plane tables, and leveling instruments -- as well as methods like chain and compass surveying, triangulation, leveling, and plane table surveying.For the most part, Marigold found the work to be humdrum and uninspiring. But all that changed one afternoon when he accidentally uncovered a shallow grave containing the skeletal remains of a Paiute chieftain dating back some two-hundred years. Brinker-Bell writes, "It was as if a light suddenly had been switched on in his head." Fascinated by the bones and the eagle feather warbonnet, ornately beaded and made from tanned animal hide, he was smitten. It sparked a newfound appreciation for the desert and was the beginning of a new vocation.During the Civil War, Marigold served in the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major General George Meade. It was here he met Edward Prestmann, then in his forties, a cartographer and geographer. Prestmann had been doing survey work in Algeria when he received a letter from his mother informing him that his hometown of Frederick, Maryland, had been taken by Confederate forces. By the time he arrived home five weeks later, Union forces had reoccupied the town and he was immediately conscripted into the Union army.Marigold and Prestmann spent many evenings exchanging stories while on guard detail. In the years preceding the Civil War, Marigold had focused his attention on indigenous Paiute burial customs and practices, and had two studies published in The Mojave Bulletin of Great Basin Archaeology. It was from Prestmann, Brinker-Bell reports, that Marigold first heard about the Circle of Red.In his travels in the Sahara, Prestmann had met Cyril Dupuy, the French archaeologist. Dupuy told him about his own discovery of the Circle of Red in 1855. Prestmann was familiar with the Circle but thought it more a product of mythology than one of science. The problem, he told Marigold, was Dupuy's sketchiness regarding the Circle's location. He would say only that it was near Zeshdi, which was like saying El Paso is near Mexico. During their conversations Dupuy would cross himself whenever he mentioned Le Cercle Rouge, and repeatedly thank God for his success. Prestmann, a graduate of Harvard University and an avowed atheist, was dubious.After the war Prestmann planned to return to Algeria to continue his work, and suggested Marigold accompany him. Together they could search for the Circle. The idea intrigued Marigold. Unfortunately, Prestmann was killed in the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864. His death delayed but did not derail Marigold's plans or dampen his enthusiasm. Eight years would pass before he set foot in Algeria.The professor walked into the kitchen, pleased with the path he had created. Refilling the kettle with water, he meditated on the randomness of archaeological discovery. There was no getting around it, serendipity was often a key ingredient. Serendipity: more dignified sounding than just dumb luck. Some would say that it -- serendipity, luck, whatever you wished to call it -- diminished the results; he disagreed. Not a bad thing; on the contrary, it often proved a most worthy ally. The oil that greases the wheel. One thing he knew for sure: it was better to have it than not.Professional jealousy was commonplace to all professions, archaeology no exception. The passage of time and the success of his own expedition, however, had gradually lessened his own resentment toward Marigold. Nowadays, the mention of his name barely caused a ripple of indignation. Even so, on occasion, he could not help himself. Tongue in cheek, with a touch of Williams Jennings Bryan in his delivery, he warned his students that an excess of testosterone was rarely a useful tool in archaeology.He glanced at the clock; almost nine. He turned on the black portable lamp beside him. The onset of summer allowed him to write longer without the use of artificial light. He'd been writing for almost seven hours without a break, during which time he'd completely forgotten about the spider. Curious about its progress, he twisted the neck of the lamp and directed its beam in the direction of the bookcase. The spider had not moved. Satisfied, he shut the study light and padded off to bed.As he lay under his thin blanket, arms limp at his sides, staring up at the ceiling, he thought further about hieroglyphics. While many civilizations were reticent, less willing to open themselves up to prying eyes, ancient civilizations used hieroglyphics -- he believed, with intention -- as postcards to the future. Yes, here we are. Study us. Learn from us. Don't be shy. The Circle of Red was a perfect example. A red stain on a carpet of sand left by King Mnadeem. His name was rarely mentioned in the historical literature, his legacy lacking -- just this one exceptional tale of love and grief: a monarch who bequeathed nothing to future generations but the Circle, and a gallon of his blood. Brow furrowed, he tried to picture the Circle. Fifty years later, it seemed almost an abstraction. A red spot on a white background was the best he could muster. To imagine one circle of red was to imagine a thousand others, one indistinguishable from the next. As precise and vague as a distant memory."I must do better," he chided himself, "if I am to describe its full glory." But how? Suddenly he felt alone in the world, like a man marooned on a desert island. Finding the Circle had been difficult enough. Bringing it to life now fifty years later would be a neat trick, given the image currently occupying his mind was no more detailed than a drawing done by a child with crayons.He got out of bed and walked over to the window. The night was clear, the moon, almost full. "I should be able to visualize the circle as clearly as I now see the moon." A lofty goal, one definitely worth pursuing.
Back in bed, he felt a tightness in his chest but didn't give it a second thought. Stress, no doubt. That night, he dreamed. He dreamed he was in the desert in search of the Circle. In the distance, a lone bedouin, cloaked in a black, flowing burnoose and white keffiyeh, a rifle slung over his shoulder, approached on camel. Twice he had circled from afar, appearing in the distance as an inky shimmer, a wavy black apparition devoid of corporeal substance. Up close, however, there was a definite majesty to the stranger. The camel's head and neck cast a long shadow in the sand. The sun irradiated his simple black garb, and the grayish beast of burden bucked under him and snorted, balking at coming too close, twisting its massive neck all the way around, baring its large yellow square teeth and making horrific noises, part bray, part neigh and part bark. The bedouin muttered something, then leaned forward, and slapped the unruly beast squarely on the snout, which for the moment quieted it. The camel pacified, the bedouin turned his gaze upon the professor. The keffiyeh wrapped around his face for protection from the sun, all that was visible were a pair of large brown eyes.After exchanging salutations, exalting the beneficence of Allah, remarking on the vastness of the desert and the evanescence of life, complimenting each other's noble and generous natures, exchanging tokens of friendship (a wallet-size photo of the professor standing in front of his summer residence in Connecticut for an animal pelt -- fox, weasel, mongoose, difficult to identify)."Good morning, Professor Bradford.""How do you know my name?" There was something vaguely familiar about the man. Certain their paths had crossed before, but where? A former student? Faculty member? College classmate?Slowly, the bedouin unwrapped the keffiyeh from his face, revealing a small hawk nose, thin lips, short, curly brown hair, and three or four days' stubble.Recognition was instantaneous. "Marigold!" The professor had seen his photos, the most well-known, a series taken by the famous Civil War photographer Matthew Brady circa 1862. Wearing a blue frock coat with light-blue trim, brass buttons and epaulets, one hand tucked inside the coat, à la Napoleon, somberly gazing into the distance.The professor came directly to point. "The Circle of Red. Where is it?"Marigold chuckled. "You are standing on it, my friend."He looked down. "Oh my God! Just as I'd imagined." His eyes brimmed with tears. He dropped to his knees in joy, cupping his hands in the sand, letting it sift through his fingers. Overwhelmed by emotion, he couldn't believe his good fortune. But his joy quickly turned to despondency as the Circle began to shrivel under him and like quicksand devour him whole."Help me!" he cried, stretching out his hand.Marigold remained astride the camel and laughed. The desert echoed his laughter. The camel threw its head back and brayed.The professor was sinking. His eyes were soon at the same level as the knees of the camel. If the beast were just a bit closer he could have reached out and grabbed on to one of its legs, and pulled himself out. Marigold, however, anticipating this, backed the camel up just enough to make it impossible.Sinking. He lifted his chin to no avail. The sand tickled his nostrils. A last breath. His closed eyes cast in a murky darkness. A whoosh of pent up air released from deep in his chest cavity, then a sputtering cough that woke him.
#
The next morning he was up at dawn. Stepping out of the shower, he paused before the mirror to squeak away the condensation with a finger. A tall man, six-three in stocking feet, he needed to bend slightly to admire his face. Grayish-green eyes ridged by silver, bushy brows that resembled passing clouds stared back at him. He always believed his eyes were his best feature. They were filled with an eerie sort of transcendent light, almost biblical in their certitude, as if on the brink of revelation.His students had nicknamed him "Wild Bill" for good reason. Stringy, unkempt, gray hair that curled behind his ears and straggled over his collar; a prominent chin jutting out like a stony projection from the side of a mountain; a nose with a slight bend to the left, a result of breaking it playing basketball in high school. He spoke slowly, as if tasting the texture of each word before pronouncing it. Although he was from the Midwest, he had no discernible accent.It was already late morning by the time he was back at his desk. He removed a fresh legal pad from his desk drawer, and took a pen from the pencil holder atop his desk. First, he would describe how Marigold found the Circle, then explain how he'd used that information to aid in his own search. He stretched his arms out in front of him and flexed his long bony fingers like a concert pianist.When he turned in his chair toward the bookcase, he was distressed to find The Antiquarian Journal of Archaeologyfor the year 1967 no longer visible, the year cocooned in a silky protective half-moon curtain. Odd how the spider had randomly selected this particular volume to spin its web, given there were so many others to choose from.Despite the difficulty caused by the spider, he couldn't help but feel a certain kinship with the small creature. After all, were not insects the great master builders? The ant's labyrinthine underground tunnels, the bee's perfectly symmetrical cloister-like honey cells, the paper wasp's umbrella shaped hexagonal cells, and yes, the spider's majestic airy firmaments, as if spun from the silver hair of angels. To destroy the web seemed sacrilege, unthinkable; perhaps there was another way.Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flutter. A small brown moth had become entangled in the web. Furiously beating its wings to escape, to no avail. He recalled a movie about a giant moth that devastated Tokyo. Beating its wings caused hypersonic gusts of wind that demolished buildings and picked people and cars off the street, launching them into the air like projectiles.Each day, he would check for correspondence from Endicott Barlow. They had promised to send him an information packet, to include copies of the signed contract, cover design for the book, schedule of promotional events, marketing and publicity plans, and additional paperwork. Two weeks had passed and not a word.The phone rang. "Dr. Bradford, this is Amelia from Endicott Barlow.""How about that! I was just about to call you.""The information package we sent you last Friday came back to us today stamped 'Address Undeliverable.' The address we have on file for you is 3612 Coolidge Terrace. Is that correct?""No, it's 6312. I must have transposed the numbers. In my own defense, I've only been living here for the past thirty-five years."She laughed -- insincerely, he felt. She promised to overnight it, and to call if he hadn't received it by tomorrow afternoon.Later that same morning, as he was retrieving the mail, a sudden gust of wind blew the front door closed behind him. He'd hidden a spare key outside in case of such an eventuality, but now couldn't recall where. He looked everywhere. Under the welcome mat. On the top of the door frame. Beneath a white decorative stone in the front yard, his street number 6312 painted in large red numerals. Fortunately, a neighbor had a second spare key.
#
When Marigold reached Algiers, after his discovery of the Circle of Red, he headed straight for Le Rubis, a modest bar on the waterfront he was known to frequent. After cleansing his parched palate with a double shot of whiskey, he hopped up on the table to make his announcement, eager to share his news."Mesdames et Messieurs, I have found Le Cercle de Rouge." His voice trembled, tears ran down his sunburnt face. He removed from his shirt pocket a small vial filled with the commingling of sand and King Mnadeem's blood and waved it over his head like a flag. The crowd's response was muted. "I'll drink to that!" cried a soused patron in the back. Three or four others, sensing something historical about the moment, raised their glasses politely, and nodded in admiration. Coincidentally, a freelance journalist named A. O. Guthrie, just happened to be having a drink at Le Rubis at the time. Helping Marigold down from the table, Guthrie told him he'd heard about the Circle. He had lived in North Africa for many years and would be willing to do a story, provided he thought it would sell. Marigold was reluctant at first, but after a few more rounds, Guthrie was able to persuade him.Marigold then related in graphic detail how four evenings previous, in a besotted state similar to the one he was currently approaching, he'd gone out in search of a brothel, but through a quirk of fate -- how else to describe it? -- ended up the next morning face down, in the greatest archaeological find of the century."At first, I didn't know where I was. My head throbbed, throat bone-dry, mouth gritty. I felt like a camel had just kicked sand in my face. It took a minute to get my bearings. Then it all came back. There was a bruise on my chin. I must've fallen down face first. In the distance I could see the brothel I'd missed the previous night by no more than a hundred yards. The sample contained in the vial is a testament to the veracity of my tale."Guthrie, fascinated by the tale, promised to write it up and send it to his editor the next day. "Can I make a copy of the map?" he asked. "You know how it is. Good copy goes only so far. It's the illustrations that really catch the reader's eye.""I'll do you one better. I'll draw you a map myself." He ripped a sheet of paper from Guthrie's notebook and set to work. He kept the map simple. Zeshdi in all caps, located three-quarters of the way down the page. A small whiskey bottle representing the bar at which he'd been drinking -- he couldn't recall its name. An unbroken line heading north and forking east just outside the city toward the brothel, designated by the letter B and drawn like a pair of women's breasts. A dotted line showing where he'd prematurely diverged from the main road into the desert just before reaching the brothel and leading to the Circle, denoted by CR.He slid the map across the table. "Here you go, for what it's worth. A photo of me would be nice, don't you think?"Guthrie removed a camera from his satchel. "Say Circle.""Now if you'll excuse me, I have some catching up to do with a certain Nubian lass. I look forward to reading about myself in your paper."Two days later Marigold was found dead in -- where else? -- a brothel, a knife embedded in his chest. "Victim of foul play," the police report concluded. A second map was found among his belongings. It did not resemble the one he'd fashioned for Guthrie. That one was bogus, a fabrication, the directions altered purposely to prevent curiosity seekers from finding the Circle. This one was assumed to be genuine.Brinker-Bell includes a photocopy of the telegram Marigold sent to his father, as well as the map, which he did not send (William Marigold: Squaring the Circle, Plates 8 and 9). The telegram, dated August 2, 1875, was sent a day after the discovery and a day before his death:Dad: I found the Circle! Might say I fell into it. More details to come. BillBrinker-Bell questions the legitimacy of the map. Was it just another deception? Perhaps the real map existed only in Marigold's head. He concludes this map, similar to the one Marigold had drawn for Guthrie, was a decoy, designed to mislead rivals while safeguarding his own discovery until it could be properly validated by authorities.In 1967, nearly a century later, the question was finally put to rest with the publication of Dr. William Bradford's work, An Archaeological Exploration in Southern Algeria, in the Antiquarian Journal of Archaeology. "What better way to disprove the wrong way than to find the right one?" Brinker-Bell writes in his biography of Marigold. Quoting from the Bradford's study, he allows the professor to speak for himself:"It was only after I'd found the Circle of Red that I could state emphatically that Marigold's second map was also a deception. There had always been the nagging sensation I'd somehow misread the map or was not rigorous enough in my excavation methodology. The fact that it was a mirror image of the first, the exact reverse of the one he'd drawn for Guthrie, made me even more suspicious. Marigold had abandoned the main road at the fork, this time proceeding west, not east, as the second map indicated. As he moved, so, too, in tandem, did the brothel and the Circle. It reminded me of a nursery rhyme, or something similar. Everywhere that Marigold went, the Circle was sure to go."In hindsight, the Circle's location was neither east nor west of the fork, which made me suspect that Marigold was either guarding its true location or had never discovered it at all."In contrast, the professor's search for the Circle was everything Marigold's was not. Methodical, meticulous, systematic, organized, deliberate, and most important, unimpeachable (as in documented). He had parsed the shifting desert sands into small bite-sized squares, three hundred and forty, to be precise, each a hypothetical resting place for the weary Mnadeem. He had inspected each, leaving not a grain of sand unsifted. Using excavation brooms and brushes, the hired natives swept each square to a depth of a foot (to account for wind and erosion). After each square was examined, it was staked with a yellow flag and numbered, using his own coding system. Vials of sand were collected for analysis, which involved an exhaustive battery of tests, looking for traces of life, blood, bone, hair, DNA -- anything that might warrant a closer look. In his tent, a small laboratory was set up for that very purpose. When nothing turned up, he further subdivided each square in half, six hundred eighty in total (now marked with a second flag, a green one), because one could never be too meticulous, too systematic, too organized.How odd these waving yellow and green flags must have appeared to passersby, especially to planes flying low overhead. What is this? A giant golf course or some lunatic making his own personal statement about art?He tried to recall the natives who'd helped him to sweep the sands and plant the flags. All good men, paid next to nothing for their services. He was surprised to learn none had ever heard either of Mnadeem or the Circle itself. What were their names? Where were they now? He had a photograph of him and his team, twenty or so natives, taken at the first site in 1964, and from the second in 1967. When compared side by side, it looked like he was the only one who had aged. "I must examine the photos again. It's been too long."His most vivid memory was of the sun. Blistering. Scorching. Blazing. A demanding taskmaster. His favorite time of day was sunrise, when the sand was still cool to the touch and his thin elongated shadow knifed through distant dunes. He had twice been hospitalized for dehydration. One telltale symptom: mirages, or as he liked to call them, optical delusions. No, not of the Circle, never the Circle. A pirate ship flying the skull and crossbones. Bedouin warriors on camels lined up on the horizon, ready to charge. A bank of clouds unexpectedly morphed into a laughing face.Day 1 was lost to a bureaucratic snafu. Incorrect permits had been issued, requiring the professor to drive one hundred miles to Algiers for replacements.The search began in earnest on Day 2. The professor was up before dawn. The pounding of his heart made sleep impossible. He listened to the trills, tweets, and whistles of hoopoe-larks and desert sparrows, and the faraway reverb of a Muezzin announcing the adhan -- the Muslim Call to Prayer, on a minaret loudspeaker. He opened the flap of his tent just in time to see the desert transformed to a blazing golden hue by the emerging sun. Instantaneous. Too fast for human perception; blink and you missed it. A verse from Isaiah came to mind: The desert and the parched land will be glad... Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.In the early afternoon, excited shouts came from Square 201. Music to the professor's ears. Off to a good start. The desert was soaked with the blood of dead animals, not to mention, a graveyard for dinosaur bones. Nevertheless, each Square needed to be checked and documented. A pinkish discoloration in the sand was discovered at a depth of six inches. Definitely blood, but what kind, human or animal? Too soon to tell. A second brusher was summoned. On hands and knees, in synchronized movements, these men methodically brushed away the sand from the center, slowly enlarging the discoloration's circumference. At three feet, the professor's focus became intense; at five, a knot formed in his chest caused by holding his breath; at six, the sound of his heart thumped rudely in his head, at which point the pinkish coloration began to fade. A false alarm. Close, but no Mnadeem. More likely an oxen or goat, maybe even a hyena, not uncommon for the desert.Back again in 1967 for a second and final visit. He was distressed the university had initially declined his request for funding, citing budget constraints and a lack of new information to support further exploration. A compromise was reached. The university would grant him an additional month. Hardly enough time to establish camp and get things up and running, but better than nothing. Begrudgingly, he accepted, having no choice.
#
Folding his arms on top of his desk he laid his head down. He was tired, his brain in a state of free fall. In less than a minute, he was asleep. Another dream, this one a doozy. He was back in the desert, looking through a pair of field binoculars, scanning the horizon. The hot sun beating down on his head. He grumbled and cursed to himself. "Where the hell is he?" meaning Marigold.Shocked when Marigold presented him with a list of grievances in the form of a legal document containing every slight ever uttered or written about him by the professor, now referred to as "the defendant." The list was arranged in reverse chronological order. Thirty-seven pages, single-spaced in a tiny archaic font impossible to read, claiming his reputation had been tarnished irrevocably.To remedy the situation, the professor would need to expunge from both print and online editions all references to brothels (most notably the disparaging remarks made to students that the excessive production of testosterone was rarely a useful archaeological tool) and the outsized role serendipity had played in his discovery of the Circle. Lastly, a public apology, plus twenty percent of the proceeds from the published memoir. In return, Marigold would agree to reveal the location of the Circle.The professor raised his binoculars for a second look. In the distance he could see his own house, so close, as if he were standing in his front yard, which, in fact, he was, peering through his study window. Marigold was standing at the bookcase. In one hand he held a collection jar, in the other a pair of tweezers. He placed the jar on the shelf next to the besieged volume.The once fierce sun was now parked behind a dark-gray nimbus cloud. And it was raining. Drops of water from the eaves above dripped down on his head. The sudden dramatic fall in temperature caused him to shiver.He watched as Marigold expertly plucked the spider from its web with the tweezers. But instead of depositing it into the jar, he dropped it to the floor. "No!" the professor cried, but too late. Marigold had already crushed it under the heel of his boot, and then with a finger, brushed away the last remnants of the web. Again with the tweezers, Marigold deposited the volume into the small jar -- the professor could not help but marvel at this bit of legerdemain -- screwed the lid shut and disappeared."The Circle of Red. Where is it? You promised!" the professor shouted, banging on the window to no avail. The banging woke him. He knew what needed to be done. Extract the spider and move on. The same procedure Marigold had so deftly illustrated in the dream, hopefully this time with a happier result (at least for the spider). Using the eraser cap on his mechanical pencil, he gently prodded the recalcitrant spider toward a paper cup. But the spider resisted. Curling its legs tightly, it tucked itself up into a ball and played dead, resembling a blotch. Familiar with its defensive mimicry, the professor successfully nudged it into the cup, then covered the top with his hand. He released it into a flower bed in the front yard, beneath the green and white variegated leaves of a hosta.The hostas were all that remained. A hearty breed, difficult to kill, intentionally or otherwise. A reminder of what once was. Purple lobelia. Golden spirea. Heavenly blue clematis. Panicled pink phlox. A fusion of colors; a feast for the eyes. The bed was a victim of dissipation, neglect and forgetfulness. Not enough TLC. Too much sun. Insufficient water. The flowers were browned and shriveled, cracked and withered. A blue watering can tipped on its side. For the professor, a clear case of gardener's remorse.Back inside, he wiped the web away with a tissue and removed the volume, no worse for wear. In the vacant space against the back panel of the bookcase, the spider had laid its eggs. A gauzy oblong sac the color of moth balls, the eggs themselves a cluster of little bumps like a skin infection. Carefully, he extracted the sac on the tip of his pencil, and transplanted it to where he had left the spider.He pushed a stack of papers on his desk aside and gently laid the volume down. The Antiquarian Journal of Archaeology, 1967. Opening the book released distinctive odors: the mustiness of age, the scent of almonds, a hint of vanilla. Like a whiff of smelling salts, it brought back a flood of memories.Then he opened to the table of contents. Even after fifty years, he still enjoyed seeing his name in print. Antiquarian Journal of Archaeology, William Bradford, Professor of Archaeology. He ran his finger down the page, checking each entry."So where is it?" His casual manner belied grave concern. His article -- pp. 145–179 -- had been mysteriously displaced by two others: "Principles of Sequence Stratigraphy" (pp. 139–157) and "Recent Excavations in Mongolia: Something New Under the Sun" (pp. 158–182)."Squatters!" he hissed and slammed the volume shut.Possible he had missed a correction or apology printed in a subsequent issue. We regret that "The Circle of Red: An Archaeological Exploration in Southern Algeria" by William Bradford was accidentally omitted from the 1967 volume. Please check our website for a future publication date. OR: We regret that "The Circle of Red: An Archaeological Exploration in Southern Algeria" by William Bradford has been temporarily removed while Dr. Bradford attempts to recoup his memory.In the kitchen, he filled the kettle for tea and put it on the stove. So much had happened today, a strange series of events he'd need to write down to remember. The second dream about Marigold even more bizarre than the first. The removal of the spider and its eggs from the bookcase and their subsequent relocation outside. The web wiped clean. The retrieval of the volume. The startling discovery that his scholarship did not reside within its pages.If not there, where? Not so easily misplaced like a teacup or a corduroy jacket. This was his life's work, for God's sake!He recalled the day of the discovery -- it was fine in every respect. The sky was a glorious blue. The clouds white and fluffy, purple tinged on winged silvery tips. The temperature a relatively comfortable eighty-nine degrees (for these parts). The wind kicked up sand in their faces as they worked. The desert, in addition to being a cruel taskmaster, was also a prankster and a bully.In his back pocket a telegram received from the Chairman of the Archaeology department. BILL: A REMINDER -- FUNDING ENDS MIDNIGHT THURSDAY. AFTER THAT, SORRY TO SAY, IT'S STRICTLY OUT OF POCKET. NEED TO WRAP THINGS UP ASAP. There was no way to cover such a large area in so short a time. He was fighting a losing battle.Strange how vividly he remembered the flight back to the States, most of it spent staring out the window into the night. Not much to see. His own reflection grinning back at him. A feeling of sheer exuberance. Weightlessness. As if he'd float away if he didn't grip the armrests. Three martinis had failed to douse his spirits or make him sleepy. He'd planned to catch up on paperwork, but was too busy reveling in the moment, the hour, the day. His mind was elsewhere. He had found the Circle of Red. Strike up the band!
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On the floor beside his desk lay a brown padded mailer: the information packet from Endicott Barlow. Time to face the piper. He had purposely not opened it; he felt guilty, and with good reason. He had reneged on a promise, broken the terms of the contract, failed to deliver fully on his obligations, specifically the chapter on the Circle of Red, a pivotal event in his career, one he should have had no trouble recalling.The "6312" of the street address was double underlined in pen. He opened the mailer, and was surprised to find a second one inside. The original mailer, stamped "Address Undeliverable," contained the material. He considered taking a look, but it was already after midnight. He was dead tired and needed to sleep to help to clear his head.In bed he rolled over on his back, stared up at the ceiling, then turned to face the clock, a big mistake. Every time he opened his eyes, there it was, staring back at him, the inexorable march of time. Folding the pillow in half, he turned the other way, closed his eyes and waited for sleep. He was pleasantly surprised to hear himself snore, a sure sign that sleep was near. Murmuring to himself, he then drifted off."I transposed the years!" he whispered in the dark, the words lingering on his lips. He shot up in bed. "I was looking at the wrong volume!" He glanced at the digital clock on the night stand: 3:07. In that flickering instant between sleep and wakefulness, the thought had come to him. So simple it pained him to think about it. Shades of Occam's razor. His skin felt cold, clammy to the touch. His eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness. Sighing, he leaned back against the headboard. "1976. 1967." Repeating it again and again like a mantra. He smiled, as if he'd broken a secret code or solved a difficult puzzle. No wonder the table of contents hadn't looked familiar.Like Marigold, his memory was not to be trusted. No way could he wait until morning. He turned on the lamp on the nightstand, threw back the covers and got out of bed. Walking briskly down the hall in the dark past the bathroom, he paused in the study doorway and fumbled for the light switch. In a second the study was illuminated, brighter than he'd remembered. Spots swam in front of his eyes; he felt a searing pain in his chest and shoulder. Staggering forward he tried to reach out and grab the desk but missed and collapsed on the floor.
Brenda Mann Hammack
Five Poems
Excerpts from The Living Dead Woman Sonnets
“The Living Dead Woman Does Not Know How to Care Less”
though she wishes she could :: what
with the 24-hour grief cycle :: ticker
queuing :: headlines, rules :: she never
sleeps :: melatonin not enough to puther under :: ketamine :: she'd sooner
suffer full body electro-puncture
than roofie herself to oblivion :: hiber-
nation won't reboot her intel core ::she finds the peace she does not
rest in can't be scored anymore
than stillness and decomp deter
rumination :: thought as buckshot ::apocalypse cannot be calmed
by ativan :: or self-care balm
“The Living Dead Woman Tells Her Therapist”
she died :: she does not say how
many times :: she might be taken
for an addict :: or attention-seeker ::
non-compliant member of munch-hausen's set :: it began with hair
detaching at the root :: a stippling
on fingers, under breasts :: her
temperature gone north, then left ::straight on past cancer's house,
the sloughing and the mourning ::
so much more than monthlies ::
she cannot say what's habitualor terminal :: p.t.s.d. or b.d.d. ::
n.d.e. or a.d. :: diagnosis :: morbid
“The Living Dead Woman's Paracosm”
is poetry :: where lazy eye can
track invisibility :: what only cat
can see :: where sight is not exact,
or righteous :: so much she takeson faith :: like stereoscopic
view :: so much is happening
outside us :: so much she can-
not taste :: or run her fingersthrough like orbit :: dark matter ::
thought experiment :: she'd like
to bypass bias to get at something
real :: but understands yearningfor catastrophe :: a gasp, a sob ::
what only hints at pulse :: of god
“The Living Dead Woman Meets Her Birth Mothers”
huddled together like sabines :: who did not consent
to rape commemoration in public :: posed for all
the tourists care :: figura serpentinata :: to strain ::
to straddle :: to facetime fountain-side :: in naples ::some tears do not collect sympathy :: do not provoke ::
restitution :: little flames that burn the throat :: death,
an act of imagination :: when it's not your own :: grief,
the loud part stilled in stone :: or terracotta :: magdalene'sscream is hammer-claw :: if raptor is to raptured is
to so much fuss :: what pain is not enough :: to
compensate, commiserate for apple intel :: cutlets
under dome :: saint agatha's gel :: was bust :: doesno one notice difference between trussed and trust ::
does incorruptible mean marbleized :: or shushed
“The Living Dead Woman Loathes The Tyranny Of Morning People”
who expect a world to acclimate
to their disorder :: some hearts
beat three times harder to circulate ::
adjust to verticality :: she's nevermastered grace when toppling into
swansdown heap :: she can't explain
a bruise that drifts, or why a needle
fails to draw :: she's only hub fororbiting :: aura :: spin of sequinned
light :: she can't account for sand
in eyelids if not by curse :: she sees
the bluff you do not mean :: if youcould hear the flub of artery at waking ::
you'd save your breath for undertaking
Allison Cross
“My Japanese Futon”
There isn't an elevator, and my client is on the sixth floor. The staircase is narrow and winding, as so many in Paris are. The smell of baking bread mixes with a spicy, pungent odor, floating from under a door. In a little over an hour, I'll be home. My Japanese futon is rolled into a knapsack, the extra weight bending me forward. I'm thankful the session is shiatsu; I don't have to lug my table up the stairs.When I arrive on the sixth floor, my face and chest are damp. I twist free from the knapsack, take a Kleenex from my pocket, and wipe between my breasts. I'm a few minutes early, I have time to catch my breath. There's only one apartment, under eaves so narrow there's just the door. A bicycle leans against the wall, and a tall potted fiscus sucks sunshine from the windowpane. A welcome mat sits with three pairs of sneakers, toes to the wall. I slip mine off and place them to the side.When I ring the doorbell, it opens before I've lowered my hand. I understand; I was being watched through the tiny hole in the door. I don't see this as the first red flag."Bonjour! Paul?""Oui, entrez." Come in. He doesn't ask my name.I step into the apartment, and the varnished wood floor groans beneath my feet. He studies my face but doesn't speak. I can't see the color of his eyes, can only imagine them. Flat and dark. His silk robe clings."Ah, monsieur?" My voice is a rasp; I clear my throat. The door is right behind me. I can turn around and leave. "This is a shiatsu massage. You must be dressed.""Use oil then," he says."I practice acupressure, sir. I can send you someone else if you'd like.""I'm fine like this," he says."No, I'm sorry, you're not. Clients for this massage must be dressed." He was new to me, a business partner of a friend. As an in-home therapist, I practice only shiatsu when the client is a man.Paul's eyes lock on mine. I allow them to stay. He turns away. When he disappears, I release my breath.A leather armchair, a vintage poster of Ziggy Stardust, a plush beige couch. The apartment is small; the living room and kitchen blend into one. A candle burns in the corner, its heavy jasmine fragrance trying to mask the lingering scent of Lysol. And of something else.The place is immaculate. Cushions, like soldiers, line the length of the couch. Not a crease, not a dent. I blow out the flame, the chemical smell tightening my skull in a vise. I move the coffee and side tables to make room for the futon and lower myself to the floor. I don't hear him come into the room, but I know he's there. I ignore him, focus on my ritual. Experience has taught me that. I arrange the towels and headrest and roll back onto the balls of my feet. Only then do I raise my head.He's changed into sweats and a t-shirt; his feet are bare."Lie on your stomach, please." My voice is no-nonsense, and the man, Paul, obeys.And for a moment, I believe it'll be okay.I place my hands between his shoulder blades, straighten my upper body and arms, ready to push my thumbs into his back. He rolls away and jumps to his feet. Moving to the door, he turns two bolts and slides a chain.The pulse in my throat jumps; I feel it move my skin. A shift in the air makes my hair stand on end.He's just making sure we're not disturbed.But I know better.A man concerned for my safety would have asked me my name. A man who respects boundaries doesn't have to be told twice to dress. I keep my breath even, focus on my Japanese futon."Lie back down, please."He obeys.A strange man in a locked room.I have to believe I'm safe.After working a few minutes along his shoulders, I shift to the side of his body to apply pressure using my elbows. I rock the point of my elbow along the length of his spine, opening and closing my arm on each point.He groans, and his fingers splay on the floor."Too strong?""No."I continue the pressure, repeat the schema.He shifts on the futon. A subtle movement -- his hips press into the floor.I pause.He lies still.I continue the massage.When I'm back to his shoulder blades, he arches his back. Presses again into the futon. Grinds himself against the eggplant-purple towel I've covered it with. A color I chose for awareness and peace.I rock back on my heels. My face and hands burn. A tendril of panic coils in my throat.His hand snakes around my ankle.I hadn't seen it move.An iron grip.One snap of his wrist, and I'll be on the floor.My eyes are frantic. A lamp, a book, a candlestick. But I had moved everything to make room for my Japanese futon.I don't look away from his arms and hands. My body is tense, my breath still.I allow the sound of him grinding my futon to fill the room.His grip slides down my ankle.I stop breathing.He falls asleep.Inch by inch, I stand. My knees crack. His breath stays even.I reach across his body for my bag, lifting it straight up and over. It's heavy, but I don't sway.Sliding on my socks, I move backward to the door.Take a deep breath.Turn away from the man on my Japanese futon.Slide the chain open, turn the knob of each lock, and leave.The air on the landing is stale, and I hold my breath as I hurry down the stairs.My back is unburdened by my Japanese futon, but the weight has shifted.
Ben Guterson
“Capsule Biography No. 29:
Joost Verschoor”
Joost Verschoor, one of two significant philosophers currently living on the island of Madeira (the other is Pierce Walton) was born in the village of Bunnik, in the province of Utrecht, on August 12, 1928. His family moved to Rotterdam when he was four. His earliest formal education was at a school established on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, where a lifelong appreciation for the power of music was impressed upon him and where he first discovered an intuition for the virtues of Idealism. In 1940, during the attack on Rotterdam by German forces, Verschoor lost his parents and his brother; he himself suffered an injury to his left leg which was, eventually, amputated at the knee. The uncle with whom he lived for the next half-decade advised acquiescence and the cultivation of detachment, counsel that led Verschoor to Epictetus, Boethius, Schopenhauer, and, finally, the comprehensive metaphysics of Benedictus Spinoza.Verschoor dedicated himself to philosophy and a study of Classics at the University of Groningen. In 1951, he published two essays, one on the foundations of Molinist notions of counterfactuals, the other on Pythagorean harmonics. He took a position as a lecturer and assistant professor at Leiden University (where Spinoza studied in the late-1650s) in 1953 and discovered a talent as a polyglot. In addition to his facility in French, English, Latin, and Greek, he became fluent in Italian, Portuguese, German, and Spanish over the next two years. His teaching was focused on Scholasticism and German Idealism.In 1958 he was overtaken by a terror he could not elude: the certainty that he was wasting his life. He resigned his position, took a room in the home of a cousin outside of Amsterdam, swam in open water daily without fail (winter included), and studied The Ethics fanatically. In 1962, he claimed to have apprehended a third attribute beyond the pair -- thought and extension -- Spinoza identified. His submission to the French philosophical journal, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, in 1963 describes his intuition: "I have chosen to call this third attribute -- which is, of course, only one of the infinite attributes -- vibration, because this seems to me the most approximate designation for something by nature indefinable. We are familiar with materiality and consciousness; we only dimly sense the thing I call vibration, and this purely through deep intuitive perception or insight -- momentarily, askance, fleetingly, dimly. It is a third reality, a manifestation of substance, and it is as fundamental as extension or thought. As each attribute unfolds in action and is dynamic, vibration takes place within the individual who has refined a certain receptivity. It is something like a sound or movement, but only analogically. It is, above all, an experience. It cannot be communicated, only lived."Verschoor resumed teaching at Leiden in 1965 and published widely over the ensuing decade. His most popular works (academic publications attaining designations of "popular" if sales exceed a thousand volumes) include A Theory of Substance and Human Freedom, Thirty-Six Problems Concerning Divine Omniscience, The Averroist and Eternity, and A Guide for the Unperplexed. In 1976 he discovered the reality-based game Eseidra after joining the Lisbon Circle and became one of the game's most devoted players. He has published over a dozen papers on Eseidra in general-reader publications and gaming journals, all focusing on strategy, though in oblique fashion. To the uninitiated, the details are impenetrable and seem to describe mundane facts or read like instructions for carrying out daily tasks: shaving, preparing lunch, boiling water for tea, washing sheets, walking to the theater, using the toilet.In 1981, Verschoor moved to Madeira, where he has lived for the past seven years. He takes daily swims in the ocean and provides instruction in hand-percussion instruments at a senior center. He has published five papers in the Journal of Spinoza Studies, a University of Amsterdam quarterly, since 1982. Two years ago he claimed to be on the brink of describing a fourth attribute, an effort he seems to have abandoned. "Eseidra occupies nearly all my time now," he wrote in a 1985 article in the gaming journal Squaare. "I could die, quite happily, while playing the game. I think anyone could. It vitalizes the present and redeems the past."Sembla Intelligencer, August 26, 1988
Matheus Dutra
“Some Type Of Way”
Emma's baking cookies. She's been trying to learn how to cook, or rather her Mom has been trying to teach her, because she says -- her Mom says -- that every mom needs to know how to cook. We eat her cookies and they aren't any good but I tell her they are and she knows I'm lying so she bins the whole batch. Then we go to her bedroom to watch a movie. Emma likes weird black-and-white movies and I pretend I like them too. We watch a French movie about a donkey and I try my best not to check my phone and then not to fall asleep and as I watch this movie about a donkey with the future mother of my son I get bitten by her cat about thirteen times. She tells me her cat bites out of affection. Most cats lick but her cat bites and they don't know why that is but that's just the way her cat is. I stare at the cat coiled like a frayed scarf on my stomach and feel it vibrating or rather purring and I can see that this is indeed a cat that bites and never licks and that it will be a cat that will die having only ever bitten and never licked and that no one will ever know why it only bit and never licked.Sometimes I glance at Emma and see the side of her face rapt by that movie that made me think about what I would be having for dinner. Eventually I stop being bored and the movie starts making me anxious, because I start thinking about the donkey as my future son. I wonder whether I'll end up abandoning him, my future son, and whether he'll be born with some great talent, something not even AI can do, like Lebron James. I'll abandon them, I just know I will, I'll abandon Emma and I'll abandon my nameless son and then some day in the future when we're all the same, fathers and sons, both poor and homeless, I will use the only penny I'll have left to go to the circus, and clad in rags and with my face all black in soot I will watch my son take the stage and stun the world. It will be something remarkable and I'll be proud of him, and I'll feel the regret of abandoning him so strongly I will cry. It will wash out the soot on my face. On my lower face.The donkey dies in the end. Emma asks me what I thought of the movie."It's sad," I say."Yeah, it's a tragedy.""You watched it already?""Oh yeah, a bunch."I think she's crazy. I stare at her as we talk and I see that not only is she crazy she's also not that cute. Her skin is pale and she has acne and her nose is big. I think I look better than her, which is a terrible thing to think about the mother of your future son. But I think I can do better. Could have done better."So you like it then?" I ask her."I love it.""Good. Me too.""Good. Listen," she says, and then she sits upright in bed and her enormous stomach bulges out of the covers. "Let's go for a walk, I want to talk to you about something."As we put our clothes on, in silence, in that stuffy pale room lit by the sun's reflection off the snow outside, I am grinding my teeth so hard I can hear it. Bruxism. A dry, brittle crunch. Occlusal is a word I know.
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Outside Emma tells me she wants an abortion. That's what she says, "I want an abortion." From the way she says this I can tell she expects me to resist. Maybe she wants me to. I feel like I should, so I do, lightly, barely, so as to make it easy for her to win me over."Are you sure?""I'm too young," she says. She is."What about your parents?" I moved up here from Florida, so I'm still not used to the ice on the ground. I have to walk while looking down. Plus my face burns."That's why I'm talking to you, they can't know.""Also, isn't it too late? Isn't there a limit -- ""It's twenty-four weeks," she says, looking straight ahead. She doesn't have to look at the ground. "I'm at twenty-two right now, so we have to do it fast.""In the next two weeks?"She looks at me."Yes. Twenty-two plus two.""Okay... I mean, it's your call, right, as the mother, as the woman?""Yeah.""Right, so."Her hair is rippling in the wind like the surface of something. She doesn't look happy, but there's still something calm and peaceful on her face. I don't think she's broken up about it or anything. I can hear four feet going crrssh crrssh crrssh on the slush, because now there's no more ice, there's slush instead."So... what do I... like... what do I have to, you know..." I stutter, begging her to finish my sentence for me, which is "what do I have to do?"She stops walking and I'm relieved, because now I'm standing on a dry patch of cement where there isn't any ice under my feet. "You have to drive me," she says. "My parents are going to a conference, they won't be around for a couple of days." Emma's parents are both dentists, which I always found funny, the idea of two dentists being married to each other."When?""Monday. They leave tomorrow and it's open tomorrow, but I want to go on Monday.""Okay.""Do you want to talk about it, or...?""I mean... it's your call, right, end of the day?"She starts walking again. I do too. We're following our breath."Do you want to talk about it?""Maybe later," she says."Alright... I mean, I'll need an excuse, to skip school," I say, thinking about it some more. "Also, to get the car... can't you take an Uber?"She looks at me the way I should have looked at her when she told me she wanted an abortion."Never mind, sorry.""We should head back. You're supposed to stay for dinner."We turn around.
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I'm chewing some extremely rare steak at a table with two people whose grandson's existence I'm supposed to curtail in two days' time. There's a pool of blackened blood under the steak, rutilating. I'm chewing it and it's soggy with blood. Emma's Mom is telling us about perikymata. She says they're like tree rings on your teeth, tiny ridges on the enamel that form as your teeth grow, one every eight to ten days, give or take, so you can literally count them and then you can tell how old someone was when their teeth formed, down to the week, she says."And if a child goes through childhood stress or malnutrition or illness, then enamel growth slows down and it creates a stress line, like a scar in your teeth," she says. "We call them Wilson bands.""Do I have any of these Wilson bands, Mom?" Emma asks."Of course not, why would you?"Over our four months together I've noticed that Emma has a way of saying things that are so passive aggressive you can barely tell if they're aggressive at all or if you're just being paranoid. I'm running my tongue over the back of my teeth now, trying to feel my own Wilson bands."I doubt the kids are interested in all the mynoosha of, uhm... forensic odontology," Emma's Dad says, seeming to savor the words forensic and odontology. I don't know what mynoosha is."Emma's not, but Eric is," she says. "Aren't you, Eric?"I am. "I am," I say.Her parents have been coping with their daughter's teenage pregnancy remarkably well. If anything, they seem glad to have skipped the line so to speak, glad to be having grandchildren at such a relatively young age. They give off a natalist air, Emma's parents. Despite being passionate about their sciency vocations, there's something vaguely creationist, "be-fruitful-and-multiply" about them."Ms. Miller -- ""Eric, please," she says, interrupting me as I'd expected her to, "how many times! Annabelle, please.""Right, sorry, Annabelle... I was wondering... I have, like, pain? In my jaw, cause I grind my teeth? Bruxism, right -- ""That's right, bruxism, uh-hum?""Right, so, the thing is, I know I'm not supposed to grind them, but sometimes I worry so much about not grinding my teeth that I forget how I'm supposed to, like, have them, in my mouth, you know what I mean?"She squints at me, politely. She's trying her best to understand what I mean. My face warms up."Like, how are you supposed to leave your teeth inside your mouth, you know, I mean, are they supposed to touch, are they supposed to be spread apart, like, should there be a gap between them, also the tongue, where should I leave the tongue, because it has to touch something, so I never know, is it supposed to touch my upper teeth or is it supposed to remain down there, like, in the lower teeth, you know what I mean?" I can feel my facial expression on my face, all tightened up, squinting and sort of frowning and clenching around the eyes. I don't usually speak that many words."Eric, more people wonder this than you'd think" she says and I feel my face loosening. "Your teeth should be slightly apart, just a little space, we call it freeway space," she says, and I immediately want to ask her how much space is a little space. In an instant the thought of ramming a measuring tape inside my mouth flits past my mind. "They're not supposed to be clenched or even touching most of the time, that's called parafunction, and it's no good." Parafunction. I pounce on that word, seize it. Parafunction. I love knowing what to avoid. I love the words for bad things."Parafunction can lead to jaw tension, headaches, cracked enamel, you name it."Cracked enamel."Now for the tongue, it actually has a home. It should rest gently against the roof of your mouth." I try to find it with my tongue. I don't know my own mouth. "It's just behind your upper front teeth, but not actually touching the teeth themselves. Like the little dome behind them, the palatal spot." The palatal spot."And the rest of your tongue kind of spreads across the palate. Kinda like a hammock. We call that the physiologic rest position."The physiologic rest position."Eric, if your jaw hurts you can come over anytime," Mr. Miller says. "Annabelle here is too busy, but I'm pretty sure I'm available Tuesday, a client just cancelled. We can see if you actually have bruxism."For some reason I briefly glance at Emma, like she'd be jealous. She shrugs."Sure, that'd be great," I say, and just making the appointment relieves me a bit.
#
On the bus home all I can think about is avoiding parafunction by maintaining optimal freeway space while simultaneously maximizing my tongue's time on the palatal spot so as to remain in the physiologic rest position. I am halfway home when I remember Emma's abortion. For a minute or two I try to think of both things at once, before giving up and bringing my attention entirely back to my mouth's insides.I get home at eight thirty. Dad doesn't seem to even notice my presence, he's so focused on the game. He's watching Luka Doncic's Lakers debut. I used to like basketball but I don't anymore, I don't know why. Sometimes you stop liking things.Mom's loading the dishwasher, and I'm by the door taking my shoes off when she emerges from the kitchen."How's the missus?" Mom says. She never refers to Emma by name."She's alright."Dad leans back on the couch. I can see a bit of his pale hairy guy. "Jesus, she's rough huh?""What?"Dad points at my arm, grinning again. I see a long red scratch running from my wrist halfway up my forearm."That's her cat."Dad smiles full of delight and he's about to say something when a logo three distracts him. I take the opportunity to go to my room.This exchange reminds me of that one time when my parents left for some trip without me and I stayed in their bedroom because their bedroom has windows and mine doesn't. During those two weeks in which I lived in their bedroom I had a lot of trouble with a desk lamp that was made of some kind of reflective material that had the optical properties of a funhouse mirror. I'd be playing Valorant and I would forget about the lamp, and whenever I glanced at it I would see my face distorted, outstretched like the reindeer on Emma's ugly Christmas sweater or shrunken down or spread out wide like someone was pulling me by both ears, and as I played Valorant I'd be shifting my position on the chair so that every time I caught my reflection on the desk lamp I would see myself distorted in a different way each time, each time from different angles.
#
Sunday comes and goes and then it's Monday. There's a DM from Emma when I wake up. "Meet at my place at 9:00," it reads. I text her back, "There's no way I can get the car so we'll take an uber ok?" Six seconds later I send her another text that reads: "Together."Dad drives me to school and my tongue does not behave. I can't get it to settle on the palatal spot, instead it keeps rubbing against the back of my lower teeth. I'm still looking for my Wilson bands, they're in there somewhere, but instead I notice that there aren't any gaps between them, between my lower teeth. It feels like I just have one wide tooth that curves in an arch over my jaws. I haven't been good about flossing, so all of my teeth have been joined together by intervening walls of plaque. They also feel like they're a little longer than they used to be, my teeth. I've always had great teeth, I never needed braces, but if I run my tongue over my teeth right now I feel like there is more tooth than gum, or at least it feels like the ratio of tooth-to-gum has grown even more lopsided. They also feel a little loose. If I press on them with the tip of my tongue they give a little bit, move slightly. Why am I thinking about my teeth? Is there something subtly off about them, something barely noticeable that I've picked up on just now and that will only get worse over time, some kind of gum disease that will end up with me toothless, needing dentures? My tongue is also stressing me out. I don't know what to do with it. I can't keep it on the palatal spot without it lightly touching my teeth, and then I can't shake the feeling that by doing this I'm pressing on them, ever so slightly, which cannot be good for someone in my condition, with teeth that are apparently already loosening. So I keep twirling my tongue all over my shut mouth while trying to avoid my teeth until I develop a sudden urge to stick my tongue out, just to stop feeling the inside of my mouth. I want to extend it as far as it will go and keep it stuck out of my mouth. I begin to feel like my tongue is uncomfortably contracted. My arm, for example, is fully extended when I walk. My tongue is almost never fully extended, because I hardly ever stick it out. This feels wrong, and the more I think about it the more I feel my tongue aching down my throat from all the hours it spends retracted. I feel like whenever we're home we should stick our tongues out, give them a stretch. Imagine if you kept your arm bent at the elbow at all times, for every waking hour.When I get to school I remember that's where I was headed. I say goodbye to Dad and go to the gates. There's always a traffic jam at the gates so once I get there I am out of Dad's sight. I just keep walking past the gates and keep walking until I'm not on Dad's route back anymore and that's where I get the Uber to Emma's place.
#
I knock. She opens, wearing a white bathrobe over pink pajamas."I thought you'd be ready.""Sure, in a bit," she says. "Come in."I thought she'd be in a rush to get there. As she escorts me to the couch where she's evidently been living for the past twenty-four hours I forget all about my teeth and start thinking instead about her, hoping she's not mulling it over, hoping she hasn't changed her mind. The lights are off and the blinds are drawn and the only source of light is the television. There's a McDonald's bag on the floor, a half-empty pack of Doritos on the table, two bottles of soda, Sprite and Coke, the smell of weed, and for three seconds I hear the woozy and vaguely cannabine scene transition sound cue of old Spongebob episodes. She sits down on the couch and she's shining, lit by the TV, a flickering faint blue cast that turns green and then yellow smeared on her face."Don't you wanna go?""In a bit." I can tell she's sleepy. I sit down next to her and all of a sudden we're watching Spongebob."No French movies today?"She chuckles. "Yeah, no."One Spongebob episode ends and another begins. "As Seen on TV," the title card reads. I know this one. This is the episode where Spongebob thinks he's famous after being in a Krusty Krab commercial."Do you have any weed?"She looks at me. "We shouldn't both smoke, not today," she says."Right, that's right.""We gotta get down to my favorite restaurant," Mr. Krabs says to Mr. Doodles, his pet worm. "Mine. Where we're shooting our very first Krusty Krab commercial!"Emma lets out a long sigh."How far away is the clinic, again?"I don't look away from the TV. "About forty minutes, Uber says. I checked already."She sighs an even longer sigh this time and we keep watching Spongebob. The commercial is supposed to air at three in the morning, so Gary and Spongebob are still awake in their living room, waiting for the commercial to come on. Gary yawns. "Yeah I got butterflies too," Spongebob says, eyes beaming. "This is the most exciting thing to ever happen in the history of history!""You know..." she begins, and I turn to face her."I don't think I'm gonna do it.""What?""I don't know..."I stare at her."Look Gary, it's on!" Spongebob shouts as the commercial starts."Like... I don't know," she says."Make sure you think it through, I mean... didn't you say you were too young?""Yeah, but... my parents will flip."I look back at the television. Mr. Krabs is talking about the Krusty Krab in a close-up, a boom pole mic almost hitting him in the face. When Spongebob finally appears in the commercial all we can see of him is his chin and his eponymous pants in the background of a detail shot of the Krabby Patty. The second time he appears in the commercial we can only see his forehead behind the booth, a yellow smidge. Spongebob points at it, delirious, "Look Gary, there I am again! Look!"I am laughing, cackling, because I know the rest of the episode. It's funnier if you know how it goes. When the ad is over Spongebob says, "that was the best sixty seconds of my life!" I'm tearing up a bit and I can barely breathe. It's that funny, to me."It's too far away," she says."What's that?" I'm wiping away a tear with my finger, a smile still lingering."It's too far, the clinic."
#
When I asked for the weed again she said she was out, actually, and the following day at her Dad's office there's no one in the waiting room. All I hear is a child screaming. The receptionist has a glacial smile as she peers at her computer monitor which is in perfect line of sight with myself so that I'm constantly thinking that she's looking at me and even when I look at her I can't quite tell whether she's looking at me or at her computer monitor, but if I stare for a little bit then she actually looks at me and smiles that frigid smile and then I can tell the difference between her staring at the computer and her staring at me.The child stops screaming and I hear a quick jet of water and then the sound of a liquid going down a drain."Usually he's not such a wuss," I hear who I presume to be the Dad saying, from behind the door."No no, he was a brave little man, weren't you, Jeremy?"They talk some more but I lose interest and stop paying attention. When the door opens Jeremy and his Dad shake hands with Dr. Miller and then they walk out the door, but not before nodding at me, both of them, father and son, Jeremy's nod of the head seeming to me almost precocious, a serious and polite nod of the head. I get the distinct impression that he is indeed a brave little man. And then I realize that I should receive this moment as one of those little felicities life doles out sometimes, at random, given what happened yesterday. I'm aware of the feeling I should be feeling but I don't really feel it, not really. I do smile at him though, I do give Jeremy a little smile."Eric! Let's take a look at those chompers."When I approach him he grabs me lightly by the shoulder and escorts me into his office. "Did Dad catch the game last week? I hear he's a Lakers man, is that right?"I'm lying down on the chair that is already lowered into more of a bed. "Yes," I say. However, thinking that that's not enough, I add: "that's right."He's gathering his materials, pulling a little cart loaded with white, complicated-looking dental apparatus, "what did you think?""He's out of shape, right?" I didn't watch the game but I'm aware of the discourse."Yep, he's overrated in my opinion, all that hoopla and he scores fourteen points." He's arranging his tray, the sterile clinking of metal. I don't know what hoopla means. "Not a terrible game, but still... It would have been better if he'd had a terrible game, would have been interesting, at least." He adjusts the overhead light so that it shines directly into my eyes, so I close them. "Something to talk about. There's not much to say when a star scores fourteen points.""Right." I don't know what to say to all that. I guess I'm like a star scoring 14 points. Or what he said is."Alright," he says. He settles in his chair and looks down at me. We stare into each other's eyes for two seconds."So, let's take a look. You're comfortable?"I am now that we stopped staring into each other's eyes. "Yep.""Alright," he says one more time. He gathers his instruments, a long stick with a mirror at the tip and a long stick with a tiny sickle at the tip. "Open wide."I close my eyes when I open my mouth, for some reason. Silence for a few seconds. Spongebob comes back to mind and I picture my mouth in one of those gross hyper-detailed close-ups they have sometimes where we see the character's face the way they really are, missing teeth and hair sticking out and gooey discharge and rotten brown bits."Eric, it's official," he says. "You have bruxism.""Wheewhee?""Yes, it's very obvious."He takes his instruments out of my mouth and I open my eyes."I thought I did," I say.He has his back turned toward his cart of dental apparatus. When he turns back to face me I'm worried to find that he looks a little worried. He clears his throat."I see some pretty significant wear on the enamel, especially on your molars. You're grinding your teeth quite a bit, even during the day, looks like.""Right, I know. I can hear it sometimes.""It's caused by stress, mostly, so you could look into that, relaxation stuff, maybe meditation? You ever tried anything like that?""No, is there a pill for it or something?""I could prescribe you some muscle relaxants, but mostly I recommend getting a mouth guard, a night guard. You wear it while you sleep.""Does it hurt?""No, no, no, not at all... actually, I have a sample here somewhere, hang on."
Dr. Miller leaves me all alone in his office with the knowledge that I'm chewing my own teeth away. I look out the window. There's as good a view as you can get here where I live. I'm running my tongue over my teeth, trying to feel the wear on the enamel, even though I'm not exactly sure what enamel is.He comes back with a plastic mouth guard wrapped in a plastic bag."Here you go, try it out."I unwrap it and put it in my mouth. It's not comfortable but it doesn't hurt."If you decide to go with it we'll make a custom one to fit your mouth, this is just to give you an idea. It won't stop the grinding, but it'll protect your teeth from further damage."Damage. I nod. I'm feeling that chunk of plastic stuck inside my mouth, thinking about having to wear it every night, in bed. I take it out to speak and some strings of saliva hold onto my mouth."Dr. Miller, isn't there a way... I mean, it's my mouth, you know, so I mean, shouldn't I be able to, like, control it, if you know what I mean, like, shouldn't I be able to stop it from grinding, in some way, my own jaws, you know what I mean?" I can feel that face on my face again, all tight."Eric, this isn't really something you're consciously choosing to do. It's not something you control." He coughs. "Excuse me. Most of it happens while you're asleep, when the brain's running on its own patterns.""Right."I look out the window for a second. I put the plastic mouth guard back in my mouth, the plastic that will keep me from chewing my own teeth away. My teeth will still grind and gnash but they will grind and gnash on plastic from now on.
September Woods Garland
“Kelp Thief
(or The Nasty Habit of Living)”
At high tide mermaids swim into my cove and raid the kelp forest. The freaks are too smart for my traps but too rare to shoot. I go to the department of fish and wildlife, ask for help. The lady says tough titty and leaves for a smoke.How I know she went for a smoke is I see her pull a pack of Kools from her handbag. I could ask her for one and maybe she would share how to get rid of the merfolk without getting caught, but I quit long ago; I don't backslide. They don't tell you what kind of insider information you miss out on once you quit.At low tide I comb the shore for trash the pests leave behind. I don't know who keeps buying them beer, but they could at least take the empties home. I fill a black garbage bag with cans and bottles that litter the shore. As I'm loading it into the back of my truck, I see her.She's passed out on the sand and her scales are dried out from the sun. That sheeny green that would usually glimmer in the sunlight is now a dull moss color.Hey, I say. You can't sleep here.Her hair is a mess of knots, seaweed tangled in the long locks like sea-dreads. Just my luck, I'm thinking. Last thing I need is some merhippie preaching about microplastics like I can control all of humanity and its short-sighted ways.I think she's pretending to be asleep -- they do that, the tricksters. She's thinking I'll leave her there since it's on the books now: can't touch merfolk unless it's to remove them from a humane trap.For this, I envy inland farmers. Their pests are easy: raccoons, deer, coyotes. Kelp farming's a whole new game. I'm growing gold, sure. Yuppies line up to buy the stuff. But not without that merfolk friendly label. Like it's that easy to do anything on this planet without hurting someone or something in the process.Now she's opening one eye, the rest of her body perfectly still.I see you seeing me, I say. I know you're awake, and I know you got into my kelp.Her body is wrapped in the brownish-green tendrils, streams of it swirling around her tail and torso like she'd done somersaults in the stuff. She stifles a giggle, and a smile teases at the corner of her mouth.That's my livelihood you're messing with, I say.Geez, I got stuck is all. Her voice is gruffer than I expect.I'm near her now, enough I can see the waterlogged quality of her features. Her nose is slick like an animal's.I didn't steal any of your damn seaweed, she says.Kelp.What?It's kelp, I say. I'm a kelp farmer.Now she's laughing at me. A mean laugh and I wonder how long I can keep from breaking that hands-off the merfolk law.I don't know what's so funny, I say.It's funny that you farm seaweed, she says, splashing water on her belly.The tide's come in just far enough she can reach forward and scoop briny handfuls.Kelp, I repeat, dejected.People actually buy this stuff? She looks at me like I'm the pest.I'm holding a tool I use for harvesting. Rust-proof, machete-like. Its weight in my hand grounds me.You're not the first mer-pest I've caught stealing, I say. I sit next to her in the sand.Yeah, well, she feigns. I told you I didn't steal it.Her eyes gleam in the sun, a deep turquoise. Waves carry bits of sea grass and scurrying crab onto shore. My anger is growing faster than the tide can come in, and I clench the tool in my hand. She's younger than I first thought. She's got youth and the freedom of the ocean. I've got old bones and a struggling kelp farm.What's that for? She's pointing at my farming implement.Kelping, I say.There's that mean laugh again, and I'm thinking she wouldn't have time to react. Wouldn't see it coming, were I to swing the tool and slice her throat.As the tide creeps up the shore, waves lapping against her tail, I think about harvests past. It wasn't always this hard to make a go of things. To put food on the table and smiles on the kids' faces.You could do some real damage with that blade, she's saying. Seems a bit overkill for weeds. Her tail wriggles in the shallows, bits of kelp breaking free.It's got to be sharp, I say. Not just for kelp. For pests too.Her eyes bulge with terror. A split-second, and then she's laughing again. Stalling, I believe, and anticipating the tide will deliver her escape.I've heard the blood of merfolk is aquamarine, I say. That you mate for life. That you make art and philosophize.She's afraid now. How I know she's scared is I see her lip trembling and her humanlike top-half is covered in goosebumps.That true? I'm asking.Yes, she answers, staring at the blade, then into my eyes with courage. We farm too. Like you.The tide continues its journey up the beach. Her tale is nearly submerged and I can see she's plotting her move. I think of my lost harvest. The street value of mer-meat.I look out across the cove and picture her home below the surface. Her community. And though it goes against my human desire for vengeance and a need to feed my own community, I set the tool on the shore beside me. She flinches at my touch, but only briefly. With a gentle nudge she's free, wordlessly swimming away. I watch her dive and then she's gone.Farming, I'm thinking, like living, is a nasty habit.
Sal Difalco
“Jugular”
We were alone in the house. My father reclined in his black Barcalounger watching a gameshow on television, sweating and cursing to himself in Sicilian. I couldn't blame him, though. A heatwave in July and we had no air-conditioning, not back then. A couple of fans feebly whirred at both ends of the living room, offering meagre relief, but really just stirring the hot air around. You could stick your head in the refrigerator for a few minutes, and at least cool your head, but then risk getting told off, like my father told me off that morning for doing it. "The fuck is wrong with you? Cretino, use your fucking brains." You know, something like that. He couldn't pound on me with his fists anymore, but he could nag me into submission, or tears.My cousin Margaret had taken my kid sister Angie to summer day camp. My mother was at work. She stitched pockets to shirts at the Brill factory, a ten minute walk from our place. With everything going on at home, I don't know how she dragged herself there every morning. Guess she had no choice. My father had been sick with lung cancer for two years, in and out of hospital. Down to one lung, he'd lost about a hundred pounds, and could barely walk. Didn't look good. And it didn't make him any nicer or humbler or more grateful than he used to be.My mother had ordered me to stay home with him in case he needed anything, even though he couldn't stand the sight of me. She knew this. She'd tried to protect me during healthier times, when he felt compelled to let his fists fly or unleash the belt on my ass, but she could only do so much. He'd tuned her up enough times to let her know who ruled that household. Memories of black eyes and swollen lips lingered. He never touched my sister, a count in his favor. And at the end of the day, he never broke bones or anything, though he broke skin now and then. So maybe I'm making too much of this. He was a hard-working immigrant who missed his homeland and despised his job in the steel mill. Now he just despised the life remaining to him.I sat in the stuffy kitchen swatting flies and reading Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? I was hooked on that extraterrestrial shit back then, like everyone else. My father called me to the living room. Told me to get him a cold glass of water."Make sure you let it run. Last time it was warm as piss. Do something right for a change."In the kitchen I ran the tap for a good minute before I filled a glass and brought it out to him. He looked at me with his hollow eyes and tested the water with his finger to make sure it was cold before he drank it. His bony, bobbing Adam's apple almost made me pity him."Go get my strop," he demanded as he returned the glass. "It's hanging in my bedroom closet. Bring it here."The leather strop had belonged to my nonno who'd sharpen his straight razor with it whenever he shaved. My father had used it for different reasons in the past. I wondered what the bastard had in mind now. I thought, If he somehow plans to give me the strop, he's got another thing coming. Just let him try, I thought, though I had no follow up to that.He flashed a skeletal smile when I brought him the strop. "Remember this?" he said, half to himself, but he didn't indicate any intent to hit me with it. He handled the strop fondly, maybe recalling my nonno. Then he made another unusual request."Go get my shaving cup and brush in the medicine cabinet upstairs. Nonno's straight razor's in there, too. Bring it down." He glared at me. "Why're you standing there catching flies? Muoviti!"I resented climbing the stairs again. It was like a sauna up there. I grabbed the ceramic shaving cup and brush in the bathroom medicine cabinet. I didn't see the evil straight razor at first. But after poking around, I found it behind a a box of gauze.When I came down, my father instructed me to move an end table close to the Barcalounger and set the shaving items on it. He then told me to go fill a bowl with hot water in the kitchen. "Bring a washcloth, too," he added. He opened up the straight razor. "Beautiful, isn't it?" he said with a faraway voice, eyes lidded. Then he started slowly swiping the blade along the strop, muttering under breath.In the kitchen I filled a bowl with water and grabbed a washcloth. I wondered if he planned to shave himself in the living room. Cousin Angelo had been shaving him for the past year.My father had finished stropping the straight razor and told me to wet the shaving brush and the washcloth, with which he moistened his face bristles. Then he worked the brush in the shaving cup until it foamed up thick and white, and lathered his face."You're gonna shave me," he said.Thought I misheard him"You're gonna shave me."He wasn't kidding."I can't do it," I said, horrified that he'd asked. It wasn't a job for a twelve-year-old."You can and you will. Show me you're not a piece of shit."He told me where to begin and with a shaky hand I started scraping foam off his face. When the blade neared his right jugular vein, he grabbed my hand and looked me hard in the eyes."Not like that!" he barked.I tried pulling my hand away, but he held tight."Like this," he said, sawing the blade into his jugular with a sudden jet of blood. "Like this, you idiot. Like this."
Tom Gilboy
“Spiritus Monday Morning”
At night on fire roads the Chrysler Imperial slips out of California, headlamps off, brakelight fuses pulled. The wide whitewall striping is blacked out with shoe polish. No plates.In April the car crosses the Nevada desert, in May the canyons of Utah, in June the alpine tundra of New Mexico. It performs numberless miracles steering around the rocks and pits as if the driver has the night sightedness of a cat, or as if the car itself feels its way. One night it follows an abandoned narrow-gauge railway route crossing three condemned girder bridges each more wobbly and cheese-holed than the last. The next night it creeps miles up a crumbling mining-cart run hacked into a high cliff face. The impact of the stones below is too distant to be heard.It keeps cities and towns glittering on the horizon. Rarely does it go near a service station, and then only for coolant or a quart of oil. It seeks out solitary unattended vehicles -- hikers' cars, surveyors' jeeps, tribal agency trucks -- taking half a tank, never more.A whole night, sometimes two, spent in contemplation of a valley highway. Then the crossing, at a crawl, to not raise dust.Always before sunrise the car finds a natural garage to hide from the sky: a windgraven pocket in a redstone wall, a narrow canyon doglegged as a lightning strike, a cave with diagrammatic bloodpaint animals across the walls.This night, having traced a set of undocumented covered-wagon ruts over a remote pass still home to jaguars and other creatures long believed gone from the region, the car descends to come to rest in a dry creek bed under the spread of a cottonwood. The engine cuts. The driver door opens. Out swings one bare leg, muscular, a weightlifter's leg; out comes the other, helped by hands. The driver gripping the door frame pulls himself up to stand. Leaning against the car he opens the rear door and a couple of haggard sheep looking more like shorn goats step down. They walk a few feet, pee, and nose around till they find fodder. For a long time the driver does nothing but stand by the car and watch them eat.Under starlight he is a circus strongman in a robe, bowed by age or injury. Arresting in the foredawn gloom are the white eyebrows, like a pair of spruce fingers heavy with snow. They stand out like a raised voice. They stand higher than the crown of his head.It is the shape of the head that is wrong. In the near light it resembles a fresh clay bust pressed down symmetrically but monstrously by a great pair of hands. It is a gargoyle's head, flattened and overbroad.But with the dawn the illusion passes and it becomes the head of a maneless lion, a puma's head. It sits on a human form covered with fine short fur like oft-washed flannel, silver from one angle, putty from another. Except at the wrists and ankles, where the coat is worn away to skin with the purple gloss of scar tissue.He stretches and reties his napworn green robe. He teeters wooden-legged to the trunk, takes out a rucksack clinking with the gas stove, the coffee things, and slings it over one cannonball shoulder. From a paper grocery sack dark with fat he shakes free a thick wadge of pepper jerky, stuffs it in his mouth, and worries it wetly with his remaining teeth while he studies the sky. Today it is a cloudless unplumbable blue. His eyes flick and sift. He has organized the sky in distinct tiers of bird, plane, jet, rocket satellite.Twelve miles north, three miles up, a vapor trail moves east. The human look leaves his eyes. In the irises the particles of gold and brown fall back like a field of sunflowers parting. The small round pupils grow to cat slits. He studies the vapor trail as he would an animal's spoor and decides the pilot is making time rather than combing the ground with instruments.One hand for the car he turns in place. If a sound interests him, his ears quiver so fast they blur.When he has covered the points of the compass he swallows the softened jerky whole. He pinches his nostrils and blows to dislodge any clots, consequence of the weeks of interrogation by men. Tilting back his head he opens his nostrils wide, impossibly wide, mouths of baby birds. As he inhales, from deep in his sinuses comes a sound like blowing over the lips of a bottle.Till Lion is satisfied. Another day and they are not on him.He gets to work. From a pocket he produces five pipe cleaners he tucks in the creases behind his ears. From the trunk of the car he takes a pair of wooden canes. He makes his way out into the open, raises one cane to horizontal, and bolks out a harsh syllable the echoes do nothing to mellow.It can take minutes for the large bird to appear, a local raptor, a crane or heron, a duck. Sometimes he is surprised by a lost migrant, a pelican or egret. In April he had a swan.This morning it is a bald eagle, a female. She lands on the tip of the lifted cane and as he speaks to her in Flemish, for that is the language for birds, he deftly tips her to his shoulder. He fishes from a breast pocket inside the robe a small envelope like a teabag made from waxed paper. In it is his note, the same note always, in tiny ballpoint characters. Whispering to the bird he binds the package to the ankle of the offered foot with the pipe cleaners.Lion watches the bird vanish northeast, which is good. One in four heads off in the wrong direction. Though truth be told, these days he holds out little hope for the other three given the obstacles and distractions birds face. Their talents for homing -- sorting of sun angles, trust in star patterns, the tickle they get from the burring of magnetic fields -- are less keen than they were a few years ago. These days birds, all birds, and many animals, have lots on their minds. He sees it in their eyes each time he sends off his passenger falcons, passenger mergansers, passenger storks. They look lost even on their own home grounds.All it will take is one to get through and his work is done. And he will rest and get strong.On his canes he sets off to join his sheep, who have found tiny round-leafed succulents above the dry creek. Just beyond them a chunk of red flagstone warming in the sun invites him to sit and tend his stove. Making his way he hears a breeze in the cottonwood behind him, and he stops and turns and raising a hand like a beloved king he returns the waves of all the leaves.Some mornings while the coffee boils he calls over his sheep and spray-paints their backs, filling in patches where the green has faded. Other mornings he hums sub-basso, and as ant legions come, he lays out towels over the car's windows and directs them to deposit their sticky secretions on the finish, to renew the dustcoat camouflage. He will not be captured again.This morning he sits and enjoys all the motions of making a cup of coffee. With the first sip he tells himself the eagle will make it. She had a nonplussable eye.By the third sip he has taken out pen and paper to begin the next day's note. "We can't kid ourself," he says aloud. "We can't look for help from greater forms. It's up to us to pull our tail out of the fire." The sheep no longer look up when he speaks.Lion is older than the hills. An Irish spirit, a púca -- or more accurately the Irish-American variant pook -- he is one of the few creatures left with any memory of the world that crumbled into this one.Lion, ancient of days, has never felt fear. Sadness, yes. Annoyance, dismay, yes.On this soft June morning he feels a coldness, a clenchedness inside, and does not know what it could be.As a cow has three stomachs, a Carlow man three kidneys, so Lion has three hearts. There is the big one of his chest; there is the smaller sidekick nuzzling his gut like a pushy dog-nose; and there is the miniature vital engine of joy situated between his stones and bung. Lion's hearts, keeping time since time began, most often in a march, occasionally in contemplative counterpoint, have been drummers in all he has done.In the six months since his capture and escape, throughout his failed mission and his long furtive journey eastward, Lion's first heart has thumped harder, erratically, too fast. It is something the men did to him. His gut heart has repeatedly sped up to match it before backing off gradually as if leading a wild horse back to canter -- although lately increasingly without success. This, along with the recurring dizziness and numbness, his waning vigor, and the flash nosebleeds, has several mornings brought Lion to the brink of worry.Lion, worried.Despite the soft June morning and the hot coffee and the stone heating his clammy buttocks, and the meadowlarks speaking up as to be heard over the wind, Lion is afraid.Last night, trundling the Imperial down the east ramparts of the Continental Divide, he felt a strange stillness coming over him. Not of calm or ease, but of something in him muted, as if part of him had passed behind a cloud. And now, beneath the wild beating of his chest heart and the patient nudges of his gut heart, he feels it: his third heart, the heart of his loins, has gone still.In spite of himself he looks for help. It is everything he can do not to appeal to greater forms.He writes to us. Look up.
Nasta Martyn
Seven Illustrations
Roxanne Fequiere
“Utilidors”
I thought of Pedro when I heard the news. He'd been fired the day before it happened -- eighteen months of exemplary performance cut short, just like that. It wasn't fair, but we all knew what the rules were when we took the job: no talking, no baby holding, no breaking character. They trained us well. Some little monster would come along and kick you in the shins or something, and you'd surprise yourself with the discovery that you really could remain mute. The wildest part was that you'd be proud of it, too, downright delighted with yourself for taking a beating without making a peep or a move to defend yourself.One time I was playing Donald. This kid's parents told him to smile for the camera and for some reason he chose to stomp on my foot instead with all the strength his beanpole frame could muster. Well, I swear to God the spirit of the duck himself must have possessed me, because not only did I hold my tongue, I actually managed to do that little hunched-over, single-leg hop that he does in the cartoons with his fists balled up, like he's having a temper tantrum? One of my finest renditions, if I'm being honest, even though no one really saw it. The dad rushed in and hauled off on the kid, who started howling, the mother started yelling at the both of them, and then my handler announced that Donald needed to take a quick break. The people waiting in line didn't appreciate that very much. But the thing about it is I was elated. I couldn't wait to tell everyone backstage how I had channeled the pain into my performance or whatever. It seems silly now, but at the time I really felt like I had done the role justice.Pedro was a real professional, one of the best. A run-of-the-mill outburst from some wayward kid had never been enough to trip him up, so when I heard he'd been let go, I knew something must have gone really wrong. He was doing a set at EPCOT on the day that ended up being his last, as one of the Aristocats -- you know, the cats that live in Paris? There's three kittens: two boys, whose names I can never remember, and Marie, the white one with the pink ribbon. Pedro got tapped to play Marie -- you don't get to choose these things -- and they trotted the whole litter out to the France Pavilion to do an afternoon meet and greet.Some guests like to do this thing at EPCOT where they have a drink at every one of the eleven countries in the World Showcase as they make their way through, and France is right at the eastern edge of it…you can imagine. A group of guys who'd gotten good and drunk were all fired up over the idea that when you meet a male or female character in the parks, there's no way of knowing if the person inside the suit actually is a man or a woman. So they hatched a plan, queued up for the nearest character, and when it was their turn to meet Marie, one of them reached out and squeezed the crotch of the costume to see what they'd find. These kinds of things happen more often than you think, but in this case, the guy did it aggressively enough that he actually got a handful of Pedro. Well, Pedro snapped -- swung on the dude and then kept wailing on him while cursing up a storm from inside the costume. Pedro was a fairly small guy (which is why he was able to play Marie in the first place), so when the guest's friends jumped in, it became a full-on brawl and Pedro ended up getting beat down pretty badly. Security managed to pull them apart quickly, but the damage had already been done. I heard they didn't even offer him any first aid before management told him he'd been relieved of his duties.Poor Pedro, we all said, tutting and sighing pointedly. Anything to avoid saying something out loud that might be construed as critical of the company. Damn, that sucks.Anyway, I thought of Pedro when I heard the news because we'd all been feeling so sorry for him and then just a day later, it became so obvious that he was the luckiest one of all. He was probably at home when it happened, while the rest of us had to soldier on as though nothing was wrong. Theo ended up having a panic attack inside his Sneezy costume backstage and Marissa basically had a mental breakdown. I think they may have let her go home early, but all Theo got was twenty minutes to pull himself together and then: heigh-ho, heigh-ho.On the day it happened, I was slated to do a twelve-hour shift at Magic Kingdom. Forty-five minutes per set with thirty-minute breaks in between, the usual. By eight o'clock in the morning I was out playing Pooh and feeling ambivalent about it as always. He's a crowd favorite so people generally seemed less likely to fuck with him, but from a logistical standpoint, working that suit always felt like trying to power through an obstacle course with the lights turned off. The weather was pleasant enough, but it wouldn't have made much of a difference to me since it's always sauna-hot inside those costumes.I was halfway through my second stint with guests on Main Street doing my silly old bear spiel when I noticed that the line was thinning out. Some of these families had been waiting ages to get a photo, so it was odd to see one, two, three, four separate groups suddenly gather up their things and leave. In retrospect, I guess they had gotten phone calls from home.When the closure announcement came over the loudspeakers, I was talking to this little girl -- not really talking, but you know what I mean -- who was maybe five years old and very chatty. She had a lot of questions that I didn't quite have the answers to, but most of Pooh's shtick is about being slow on the uptake, so I was clapping one of my paws to my forehead the way he does when he's trying to make himself think, think, think and that's when the message came through. Park closed, effective immediately, "due to circumstances beyond our control" or something like that. I can't recall what the girl looked like or if she had an autograph book in her hand, whether I took one last photo with her or gave her a hug before we parted ways, but what I do remember is that after the announcement, the music didn't come back on. No jaunty oompah tunes, no "Surrey With a Fringe on Top," no nostalgic strings. The park went silent and the shops began to shut their doors. Really unprecedented stuff.Everyone stood there in shock for a second or two, waiting for a familiar falsetto to cut in and tell us that this was some kind of joke -- heh heh! -- and we could all go ahead and carry on with having a magical day. When that didn't happen, guests began to talk amongst themselves all at once, and the sudden burst of crosstalk created this dull roar that seemed to rattle the windows of the old-timey storefronts along Main Street.The greeter who had been accompanying me during my set cleared her throat and announced that it was time for Winnie the Pooh to head back to the Hundred Acre Wood. Considering the confusion of the moment, she probably didn't need to do a cute character-appropriate sign-off, but like I said, we'd been trained well. Her carefully chosen words reminded me to snap back into character. I waved at the stunned guests in my immediate vicinity and shuffled off behind my greeter, carrying my hefty belly as though I'd just gorged myself on one too many pots of honey -- oh, bother. Inside the costume, the sweat pouring from my hairline trickled into my eyes so I had to shut them tight. I reached my gloved hand out ahead of me and grasped the greeter's arm tightly as I stumbled along.As soon as she led me down into the utilidors, I pulled the bear's head off and tucked it under my arm as best I could. "What the hell is going on?" I said to any one of the countless cast members hustling past. My handler had already drifted off."I'm not really sure," someone said. "I think I heard someone say that a couple of planes collided with each other over New York City?""No, they hit the Twin Towers," someone else said."Jointly?""Separately.""Right, like they hit each other and knocked into the towers?""One plane per tower. On purpose.""They're evacuating all the parks," another person said."Yeah, but they won't let us tell the guests why! People are getting seriously pissed off up there."That was when Marissa started screaming. I felt a sharp pain in my armpits, as though my pores were too small for the torrent of perspiration rushing to the surface of my skin. I should have gotten my things and left right then and there, but I didn't know which of my colleagues to believe. And we were underground at the time, which felt safer than racing to my old Buick just to sit in hellacious traffic getting out of the resort.The music had been turned off backstage, too, so Marissa's whooping reverberated through the tunnels like a siren. If she had ever dared make a commotion like that within view or earshot of paying customers, a cast member would have swooped in to quiet her down in an instant, but as news of our national crisis made the rounds, a sense of chaos descended upon the utilidors. For once, the chain of command seemed to have dissolved. The poor girl was crumpled and caterwauling, and everybody -- myself included -- just let her howl. I passed by a break room with a blaring TV and ducked inside to escape the sound of Marissa's shrieking.There was a mixed crowd milling about: women in colonial garb, cleaning crews, one macabre maid, food vendors in space-military outfits, and a few character performers, one so wrapped up in the television that he had neglected to remove his head. When we're in costume, we're taught to keep our arms always animated, never hanging like dead weight by our sides -- it makes the character look like a zombie, they say. This guy was wearing a Pluto suit and I realized they'd been right. His stillness chilled me -- hands, ears, that dangling red vinyl tongue, all suspended in midair -- as Katie Couric cued a video of what had happened. I wanted to shove this guy, jolt him back into action like an old jukebox, and then I remembered I was in costume too, looking even worse. At least there weren't any guests nearby. That was when I thought about Pedro, how fortunate he was to not be stuck here in the asylum as the world burned."Does management know something? If they're getting guests out of the parks, why are we still here?" Belle asked. (Her name wasn't Belle but you know what I mean.)That seemed like a valid question to me: why evacuate everybody if there weren't some kind of threat? But some people in the room didn't agree and got really riled up about it. They said there was no way someone would go to all the trouble of hijacking a plane just to crash it into Cinderella Castle of all places, and the company would never leave its employees like sitting ducks if they thought we were in danger. Well, that comment got under another group of people's skins and they argued that these people had already attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, symbols of commerce and government, and we were sitting underneath the epicenter of American recreation, so we absolutely were in danger and of course the company was going to focus on protecting guests before they'd think to protect us.The debate was getting pretty heated, and I was frankly a bit fed up with the whole situation. Twenty minutes ago we were playacting cartoon characters and suddenly everyone was an expert on what the terrorists were going to do next. I guess tragedy makes some people go silent and others start yapping -- anything to avoid focusing on something gnarled and surreal. Now I can understand that urge to look inward and nitpick about something inconsequential at the exact moment glancing outward would be too much to bear, but at the time I was disgusted by everyone around me.I was making my way to the door so I could find a different break room when Pluto sprang to his feet and shouted, "Christ in heaven!"The bickering stopped and everyone turned to the television. That was when we saw the first tower collapse. A sound of despair rumbled through the room and crescendoed into a hellish cacophony. For some the sobbing came hard and fast, the kind that comes rushing out of the lungs so that you're babbling and hiccuping and bouncing your shoulders hysterically as the tears flow. Others began to pray. Some ran from the room, shouting the news through the utilidors. My eyes remained dry but I felt my gut knock up against its confines, gently first, then urgently as the magnitude of what I had just seen sank into my body. Even the scent of Folgers brewing in the corner felt like an assault on my senses. "How many people…" I muttered, but I couldn't finish the thought. I clamped my lips together and tried to shake it from my skull. Traffic or no traffic, it was time to go.This was all going down in a break room located directly underneath Main Street. To leave, I had to make my way to the opposite end of the park, through the tunnel beneath the castle and Fantasyland beyond that. I tripped into the corridor, still bustling with employees going God knows where. I thought I'd long ago acclimated to the peculiar odor of the utilidors -- an unholy union of a musty basement and ripe locker room with top notes of a trash chute -- but every sewage-tinged inhalation threatened to lay me out. I trudged ahead, brushing my hands along the large pipes lining the walls to steady myself.As I went along, I gathered snippets of other conversations in motion. The monorail wasn't running, so additional buses had been chartered to get families back to their hotels. To make sure everyone had been cleared out, cast members had joined hands and swept through the park like encroaching floodwater, forcing guests to keep moving toward the exits. Meanwhile, in New York, people were running for their lives, a furious gray cloud of pulverized concrete and keyboards and bones billowing behind them as they sprinted through the streets. Cell service at the resort was basically nonexistent; since cast members had been advised not to announce what had happened, many remained bewildered as to why their day of fun was being cut short so abruptly.My phone was tucked away in my locker. I wondered if anyone had called me when they heard the news. I'd given my sister the new number but she didn't use it much beyond quick check-ins on birthdays and Christmas. I wasn't sure if she'd bothered to pass it along to the rest of the family. I didn't know how strict my parents intended to be with the terms of our estrangement. On a day like today, did they care to know if I was dead or alive? For all they knew, I could have been living in New York or DC -- or London or Paris or Berlin. I guess there was a chance they could have been in New York, too, but my mother had always hated big cities. She'd never been on an airplane and never seemed eager to give it a shot. I was almost certain my whole family was sitting at home exactly as I'd left them -- definitely shocked by the news, possibly concerned for my well-being. I resolved to call them once I got on the road. These events were bigger than our differences. I thought so, anyway. I briefly considered checking in with Pedro but then remembered we'd never exchanged numbers.Any other day, I would have looked for someone in management to check the next day's schedule, but I decided I would simply change clothes, clock out, and leave. It sounds dramatic to say it now, but at that moment, tomorrow didn't seem guaranteed. I wanted to go home and sit in silence, let the awful truth of what was happening sink in, far away from others. We all knew we were always being watched at work, and people had been let go for much less than the scene Marissa just made, backstage or not.I saw one of the managers, clipboard in hand, lingering by the door of the costume room as I approached. "Name?" he asked. So much for clocking out early. I considered giving Pedro's name -- maybe the rolls hadn't been updated from the day before and I could escape without getting a demerit -- but I chickened out and gave my own.The manager rifled through his papers until he tracked me down. "Okay…" he said. "Go ahead and put this suit in the laundry and report back here for your next costume. You're playing Jiminy Cricket at the Grand Floridian."
"...Today?" I asked. I should have left.I should have left."Yes," the manager said, impatient. "We're sending characters out to the hotels to help keep guests entertained."Entertained. Unreal. I'm sure I asked him if he was serious, or maybe I just sputtered. The details of our conversation are lost to me now, but either way, I can't say I put up much of a fight.The next thing I remember was standing in a changing room surrounded by pieces of Jiminy Cricket's costume, realizing I didn't know the first thing about him. Like, I knew he was Pinocchio's sidekick and conscience, and I could sort of picture him parachuting slowly to the ground with the help of a tiny umbrella, but there wasn't much I could do with that information. Did he skip, stroll, or swagger? Was he timid or more of a showboat? I didn't know how to play the role.I wrenched the door open and stuck my head out to see if I could ask anyone for a primer on this cricket's lore. That's when I saw Theo rip off his Sneezy head and have a proper meltdown. Someone from management started going on about how we'd all signed up for this -- to make magic for our guests -- and today was a day that desperately required "a sprinkling of pixie dust to ease the pain." I wish I was kidding.A girl dressed as Dale (the chipmunk) rubbed Theo's back and said some comforting words. In spite of myself, I imagined her counsel in the same high-pitched tittering cadence you hear in the cartoons. I closed the changing room door and pressed my forehead against it, focusing on the feeling of cool metal against my skin.By the time transportation arrived, I'd shimmied into my costume and gleaned what I could from it. A top hat, cravat, spats, and pretty dramatic collar led me to believe I was dealing with a gentleman. A dandy. No umbrella, so I'd have to rely on the movement of my body to convey his presence, whatever that was supposed to be. A dandy with a conscience? A conscience, as a dandy? The more I tried to dredge up something from my memory to inform my performance, the more my brain buzzed in protest. This was madness, all of it.When the bus came to take us to the hotel, they instructed us to wear the heads of our costumes during the ride, lest any of us be spotted on the road and "give some poor kid a shock." Those were the words they used, I swear to God. Of course I listened, though. I made sure Jiminy's head was nestled snugly atop his well-dressed thorax as our troupe made our way out of the utilidors, desperate for a gulp of fresh air after steeping in the scent of the tunnels. Emerging from backstage felt like climbing out of a bomb shelter. I couldn't shake the sensation of being naked and vulnerable despite my cartoon shroud, as though havoc could rain down on us at any second. I walked to the bus as quickly as I could without tripping over my oversize feet.Once we got underway, at least one person took advantage of the relative anonymity the costumes afforded us and began to weep freely from within the confines of their character. As the volume of the wailing increased, I wondered when my own tears would come, if I'd be able to reel in my emotions throughout the remainder of my shift. If I ended up crying, it would only be the second time I'd ever let it happen at work. I was diligent about never crying on property, always waiting until I'd crossed the threshold of my apartment to let emotion overcome me, but once -- it must have been the day a child attempted to climb onto the shoulders of my Dopey costume and nearly choked me out, or maybe it was the day during the heatwave when I was dressed as Daisy and went to hug a guy who muttered something obscene only I could hear -- once, I found my tears couldn't wait for the commute. That night I sat in my car after work and cried as though someone had died. The parking lot had been deserted, or so I thought -- when something tapped the driver's side glass, I just about went through the roof.Sorry, sorry, Pedro mouthed to me from the other side of the window. He looked embarrassed, which I thought was odd, since I was the one blubbering and bleary-eyed. I pressed the button to lower my window, remembered the car was off, and fumbled with my keys, dropping them between my feet. Finally, I managed to open the car door."I didn't mean to startle you," he said. He was stout and slightly barrel-chested, which made him look proud in his too-big jeans and too-small polo shirt, which was jet black with the embroidered jockey on the chest."No, no," I replied, sniffling and rubbing the heel of my hand along the underside of my nose. "I was just having a moment."He nodded, hesitated. I sniffled again loudly; my gesture hadn't stopped my nose from running."I have moments, too," Pedro said. "I think we all do."I smiled. We weren't exactly friends, and our work colleagues tended to be weirdly competitive, jockeying for better schedules and the pride of being known as an exemplary cast member. I appreciated the kindness but felt uneasy in his presence. I didn't want this moment of vulnerability to make it back to management and be read as weakness."Do you want to talk about it?" Pedro asked."No, I'm okay -- but thank you. I'll sleep it off and be back bright and early tomorrow, ready to make magic." The words felt trite and clunky coming out of my mouth and I immediately wished I could retract them.Pedro smirked. "Well, zip-a-dee-doo-dah. Do you want a tissue?"I wanted to drive into Bay Lake, but sure. He pulled a small batch of plastic-wrapped Kleenex from the back pocket of his jeans and held them out. While I picked at the packet, he walked around the front of the Buick, pulled open the passenger door, and shut it as he sat next to me. I blew my nose loudly and shut my door, too."Thank you, seriously," I said, trying to smooth out the annoying wobble hovering just beneath the sound of my studied baritone. "Can I give you a ride home or something? I feel a lot better now.""Dude -- no, you don't," Pedro said. "But that's okay. If the job was supposed to be pretty, they'd have hired us to be princesses."He chuckled at his own joke as my heartbeat accelerated. I knew he was just trying to lighten the mood with a corny quip, but that last word cast a pall over the entire interaction. I felt like I'd been lured onto a minefield. My father had hurled that word at me -- preceded by spittle-laced expletives -- so often that it became my calling card: a nasty nickname deployed by my cousin whenever he wanted to rile me up; a codeword whispered among aunts at family reunions. I tried my best to reassure everybody that the masculine milestones I'd failed to achieve were just a fluke, but in the end it was my long-suffering mother who could no longer stand the way hushed conversations with my name at the center seemed to come to a halt whenever she entered the room. She asked if I had any intention of "ensuring that our name lives on," like we were members of some fucking royal court, and when she saw my face -- I'm not a very good liar -- she told me she wanted me out of the house."Look, do you need a ride?" I said, a bit too forcefully. "I've gotta get home."Pedro knew something was wrong. Like I said, I'm not a very good liar. "Sorry, did I -- ? I wasn't trying to insult you or anything. I mean, I'm right there with you. I actually auditioned to be a dancer, but a job's a job. You put on the suit and make do, y'know?""Yeah, I know. Do you need a ride or not?"He said my name sternly as though to snap me out of a mood, and placed his hand on my knee. He apologized again, or I suppose he did -- a rushing sound between my ears drowned out whatever words he said next. I thought to move his hand away, place it firmly back on his side of the car, but my intention, fueled by panic, propelled my arm forward and I swatted Pedro's knuckles like a parent scolding a child whose fingers had wandered too close to an open flame. He recoiled for a second before swatting my hand in kind, I returned the gesture, and then we were exchanging rapid-fire hand slaps like a couple of bickering siblings, him laughing as my face grew hot with unfocused rage and confusion.Pedro freed his arm from our strange skirmish and reached for the back of my neck, clumsily bumping his calloused palm along my cheek in his haste. He launched himself across the center console and grinned as he kissed me, delighting in the sound I made as I succumbed to the inevitability of whatever was going to happen next. He smelled of sweat and Acqua di Gio, and I wondered if my stubble felt as prickly against his lips as his did against mine."Yes," he murmured into my mouth. "I very much need a ride."It was astonishing, I thought to myself as my vision went blurry with anticipation, how exquisitely painful it was to be seen in spite of one's best efforts to hide.
#
As the bus pulled up to the Grand Floridian, my crying co-worker's squalls dialed down to a whimper as if on command. A manager up front swiveled around to make a few important announcements: we were all to remember our training, stick to the rules, and per company decree, character attendants were not to answer any questions from children or adults about what had happened. We were to treat this like any other shift, bearing in mind there just might be "a few guests in there who could really, really use a hug."The lobby was a real wedding cake of a room, all plush paisley carpets and wingback chairs, intricate ivory wainscoting and heavy drapery -- which made the guests in their running shoes and Old Navy tees look even more rundown by comparison. A large group of people were crowded near the check-out desk while stricken-looking families sat scattered throughout the center of the room. Hotel staff were stationed at intervals in their Victorian-style uniforms with open-mouth smiles plastered across their faces as they tried to calm the most anxious guests.They announced our arrival as we marched through the main entrance: "Wow! Look who's making a grand entrance at the Grand Floridian!" I strutted in, still unsure of Jiminy Cricket's prescribed vibe but hoping to convey a mix of warmth and wisdom. I probably could have cartwheeled in if I wanted and it wouldn't have made the slightest difference. No one seemed to take much notice of us, but I waved here and there in any case and put a real pep in my step as we made the rounds. The ease with which I was able to do all of this surprised me. My body was doing what my mind was convinced it couldn't. I guess I should have been glad that I could operate on autopilot, but instead I felt like I was possessed, spurred to action in spite of my better judgment for fear of what might happen if I didn't. I tasted blood and realized I'd been nervously gnawing on my bottom lip for several minutes."Hey, Jiminy!" my handler said. "It looks like we have someone who wants to say hello."I saw a small boy, five or six years old, peering up at me. My training kicked in and I waved enthusiastically before getting down on one knee and holding up a gloved hand. As I did my routine, the attendant narrated for the boy's benefit. "Jiminy says good morning! Oh, he wants to give you a high five! Can you high five?" The boy inched forward cautiously, lifted his hand, and brought it to mine timidly. I performed a few celebratory gesticulations. He said something that I couldn't hear through the layers of foam and fabric encasing my head. The greeter repeated it: "Jiminy, our friend Paul has a question for ya: are you a grasshopper?"I feigned shock, then put a hand to my head and shook it, as though this was a tiring question I'd heard one too many times before. The greeter explained that I was a cricket as I stood and gave the carpet an aw shucks kick. I remember being grateful to be interacting with someone who was probably too young to have any real grasp of what was happening. Even better, this kid didn't even know who Jiminy was. As long as I remained animated and friendly, I could get through this. The boy listened to the attendant's Cliff's Notes of my backstory: goes on adventures and gives lots of advice to my good friend Pinocchio, who wants to become a real boy, etc. I preened and nodded as she spoke.It was time to wrap it up. The greeter told Paul I needed to say hi to some of my other friends and asked if he wanted to give me a hug before we left. Paul nodded and I knelt again, opening my arms wide. He came in close and I folded my arms around him so as not to smother him too tightly."Ohhhh, so sweet," the greeter said as we embraced. He buried his face in the crook of my neck and held tight. One of the many rules they drill into us in rehearsals is that when a kid gives you a hug, it's the kid who decides when the hug is over. You're not supposed to pull away until they do. So I waited, but Paul didn't seem to have any intention of letting go. I glanced at my handler and she clasped both hands to her heart with an exaggerated pout. So sweet!"Jimmy, can you help my mom?" The kid hadn't released his grip; he'd spoken into the space between the head and body of my costume. Only I could hear him. "Jimmy?"I couldn't end the hug, so I couldn't use my arms to equivocate. I could either nod my head yes or shake my head no."Jimmy, my mom is sad. Can you help her?"I nodded.Paul stepped back and tugged insistently on my hand. The attendant said something to cajole him into releasing me, but I let him lead me through the lobby and over to one of the staircases, as she trotted nervously behind us. Near the base of the stairs were two chairs and a table occupied by two kids even younger than him, both climbing down and up and down and chasing each other in circles. A dazed woman sat cross-legged on the ground with a crying baby in her arms. "Mommy, look, it's Jimmy," Paul said.The woman lifted her head, but her gaze seemed to settle on some point far off in the distance. Her eyes were bloodshot and heavily ringed, her entire face damp with sweat and tears. She seemed oblivious to the sound of her child's cries."She's sad about Uncle Matt," Paul said, looking up at me. "Mom, Jimmy said he can help."The attendant linked her arm with mine and took a step back while saying something. I no longer remember what, but I'm sure it was perfectly themed and profoundly unhelpful. I shook myself free and crouched low to the ground. Up close, I could see that the woman was still crying silently, tears dripping down her face and landing on the baby's chest. I put a hand on her shoulder."Okaaay, Jiminy," my handler said in a high-strung singsong. A warning. "I think I hear Pinocchio calling."The woman rasped and trembled as she inhaled. I wondered if Pedro had wavered before he broke free, if he'd considered choking back his humanity just one more time to make it to payday. "I'm so sorry, ma'am," I said. "Let me help you."I slipped a hand beneath the baby's head -- Jiminy! -- and carefully scooped him into my arms. Stunned into silence by the absurdity of his newfound situation, the child reached a tiny hand out to assess the strange green creature now bouncing him up and down."Can we help her into a chair?" I asked my attendant. She glared at me. There was a good chance I was putting her job at risk, too. We stood there a moment, me bouncing a strange child on my shoulder in flagrant defiance of just about every training session I'd ever received as a character performer; her, trying to improvise her way out of a bind without further aggravating the situation. "Hey, Tina?" I said, reading off her name tag. "Can we help this grieving woman into a chair, please?"She gave in. The woman allowed herself to be pulled into one of the chairs and I asked the attendant to go find a glass of water for her. The entire interaction took a minute or two. The woman's husband returned from the check-out desk and I handed him the baby and slipped away. But before I could think of what to do next, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Someone from management, of course. Their efficiency was worryingly impressive.I was quickly ushered out of the lobby -- as though I could no longer be trusted to be among the general public -- down a hallway, and into some employees-only space where we couldn't be seen. I knew what was coming, so when the door closed behind us, all I could think about was whether it made more sense to keep my head on while they delivered the news, or remove it so I could look them in the eye.As it turned out, the scripted language spilled forth so quickly that I didn't have a chance to make a decision. I stood there nodding my sculpted head with the built-in smile as a guy with frosted tips told me that transportation was being arranged to take me back to the utilidors so I could gather my things and leave the premises. Just like that. There was no use protesting, so I didn't. We stood there after he'd recited his remarks, the silence in the room interrupted here and there by the sounds of frazzled guests and cast members rushing back and forth beyond the door.He asked if I understood everything that had just been explained to me. Sure -- one more time down into the backstage bowels of this place, and then the performance would be over. But even though I was being let go, I felt as though I'd been given one last test. Was I supposed to stay in character since I still had the costume on or give verbal affirmation and break the rules one last time? The manager repeated his question, this time with an edge in his voice.I know I would have been well within my rights to really let him have it, to tell him exactly what I thought about the absurdity of everything they were putting us through, but I guess I'd already said everything I needed to say. I tugged on the lapels of my suit jacket like the dandy I was supposed to be and gave him a cheerful thumbs up.
Contributors
ALLISON CROSS spent twenty years as an international fashion model before transitioning to a career in complementary and integrative medicine, with a focus on palliative care. As a writer, her short stories and essays have appeared in The Penman Review, Thieving Magpie, Green Hills Literary Lantern, and other publications. She was honoured with an award in the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition (2024) and in Leaf by Leaf (2025).BEN GUTERSON’s writing includes the Edgar Award-nominated middle-grade novel Winterhouse (Holt/Macmillan) and the New York Times bestseller The World-Famous Nine (Little, Brown/Hachette).BRENDA MANN HAMMACK is graduate coordinator for the department of English at Fayetteville State University, where she teaches digital storytelling, modern poetry, and creative writing. Her most recent scholarly writing focuses on invalids as living vampires in work by Violet Hunt and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Selections from her manuscript, The Living Dead Woman Sonnets, have appeared in multiple literary journals, including Mudlark, Eclectica Magazine, BlazeVox, and The Queen’s Review.DANIEL SHAPIRO was a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea. Before retiring, he worked in software quality assurance; now he spends his time gardening and writing. He lives in Framingham, MA, with his wife Carol and cat Cisco. This is his first published short story.MATHEUS DUTRA is a Brazilian writer living in Porto, Portugal. He is currently working on his first novel as well as a feature film screenplay. This is his first published story.NASTA MARTYN (НАСТА МАРТЫН) is an artist, graphic artist, illustrator, writer and poetry. She graduated from the State Academy of Slavic Cultures with a degree in art and also has a bachelor's degree in design. Nasta writes fairy tales and poems, illustrates short stories, and draws various fantastic creatures: unicorns, animals with human faces; she especially likes the image of the siren. In 2020, she took part in Poznań Art Week. See her IG at @nasta.martyn33.ROXANNE FEQUIERE is a multidisciplinary writer based in New York City. Born and raised on Staten Island, she received a BA in English from Harvard University and now lives in Manhattan with her husband, son, and two cats. Her journalism has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Vogue, The Village Voice, and ELLE. This is her first published fiction story.SALVATORE DIFALCO is a poet and storyteller who lives in Toronto, Canada. Recent work appears in Cafe Irreal, E-ratio, and Bull Fiction.SEPTEMBER WOODS GARLAND hails from the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys long, romantic walks through haunted houses and feeding Bigfoot peanut butter and seaweed sandwiches. Her work has been supported by Hypatia in the Woods and Arteles Creative Center and has appeared or is forthcoming in Door is A Jar, The Berlin Literary Review, Jersey Devil Press, and elsewhere. September is the founder and editor in chief at Weird Lit Magazine, a platform for the weird and boundless. Check out her work at septemberwoodsgarland.comTOM GILBOY lives in Louisville, Colorado. His first published story, “Whipsnake,” appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of The Raleigh Review.
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SORTES is a spinning collection of stories, poems, songs, and illustrations to help while away the wintery June nights. It’s an oddball grabbag wunderkammer mixtape offering distraction and refreshment.We have neither theme nor scene. Each issue is its own creature. We publish both the sufficiently strange and insufficiently boring: swart stories, hoity poetry, magical surrealism, beatnik travelogues, hard modern haiku, pulp, fantasia, antibiography, crooning balladeering, experimental sentimentalism, and grainy sideways photography.We also host online readings, old time radio performances, and other beloved gimmicks as they occur to us. Previous issues are available via the site’s Archive link.
Submitting
SORTES considers unsolicited submissions of poetry, prose, illustration, music, videos, and anything else you think may fit our format. Feel free to poke us; we’d love to find a way to publish dance, sculpture, puzzles, and other un-literary modalities.SORTES is published quarterly. Each issue includes approximately ten works of lit, visual, or performance art. We like a small number of works per issue: artists and readers should have a chance to get to know each other.SORTES, you’ll notice, is primarily a black-and-white publication, and we like to play with that (by featuring monochrome videos and photography, for example), but we’ll happily consider your polychrome submission.Submissions are ongoing throughout the year. We consider artists with both extensive and limited publishing experience. We accept simultaneous submissions but please inform us if your work has been accepted elsewhere. We publish translations and reprints on a case-by-case basis; please send us a note describing your interest. And while there's no restriction on the number of pieces you can submit, please have a heart.There’s no need for an extensive cover letter or publication history but please tell us who you are, what kind of writing or art you do, and a bit about what you’re sending us. There are no formatting requirements for text submissions. There is no fee to submit. Please send submissions as email attachments whenever possible; multimedia submissions may be sent as links.
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You asked and we provide: what's up with publication rights and ownership?Simple: When you publish with us, you give SORTES one-time publication rights for your work. You retain all rights to your work after publication. Work published with SORTES will remain available via our online Archive.While SORTES retains the right to link to or excerpt your published work, we do not have the right to publish your work in new formats (including print). If we would like to pursue publication of your work in new formats, we'll ask you and hopefully agree to terms.
Mahoffs
SORTES was created by founding editor Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum and emeritus editor Kevin Travers. Current editors are listed in our masthead, Many of us live in Philadelphia, some luckily do not, but we invite writers and artists everywhere to live the SORTES fantasia.
Events
SORTES regularly offers readings and performances. For upcoming events, please check here and our Facebook page.
Coming Soon Enough
The SORTES 23 Reading
Sunday, October 5, 2025
7pm
TEXT
Meeting ID: 870 7878 4177
Passcode: 083738
Radio SORTES
Archive
A Suspense-Full Halloween, October 29, 2023
On October 29, 2023, Radio SORTES presented A Suspense-Full Halloween -- live performance of two old time radio Suspense episodes -- "The Screaming Woman" and "Ghost Hunt" -- each dripping with period music and sound effects.From 1940 through 1962, Suspense, "radio's outstanding theater of thrills," terrified radio listeners with macabre true crime and supernatural horrors.Our production was reanimated by the electrifying Radio SORTES Players: Alyssa Shea, Betsy Herbert, Dan DiFranco, Demree McGhee, Eliot Duhan, Emily Zido, Fionna Farrell, Iris Johnston, Kelly Ralabate, Lino, and Nick Perilli. The performance was adapted by Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum and Aria Braswell, with direction and sound by Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum.
Scary SORTESies To Tell In The Dark, October 30, 2022
On October 30, 2022, Radio SORTES presented three ghastly and unnerving old time radio stories, including original adaptations of Arch Oboler's "The Dark," Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains," and Oscar Wilde's “The Canterville Ghost,” plus poetry from "Weird Tales" magazine.Our infernal Radio SORTES Players included Betsy Herbert • Brenna Dinon • Christina Rosso • Demree McGhee • Emily Zido • Evan Myers • Iris Johnston • Kelly Ralabate • Lino • Luke Condzal • and Rosanna Lee Byrnes. The performance was written, produced, and scored by Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum.Radio SORTES is an unnatural extracurricular extension of SORTES magazine, whose events and readings are always free, open to all, and ideally less than two hours. See SORTES.co for inexpressibly brilliant literature, art, and upcoming events.
1950s Western / Sci-Fi Double-Feature, February 25, 2022
The talented Radio SORTES Players performed two old time radio episodes broadcast live via ethereal wireless right to our audience's home receivers.We galloped into the unknown with a 1950s western / sci-fi double-feature: The Six Shooter episode “Battle at Tower Rock” and the Dimension X episode “A Logic Named Joe” -- each with music and convincing sound effects.The all-star Radio SORTES players were: Abbey Minor • Betsy Herbert • Brenna Dinon • Brian Maloney • Britny Brooks • Daniel DiFranco • Dwight Evan Young • Emily Zido • Evan Myers • Iris Johnston • Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum • Kailey Tedesco • Kelly Ralabate • Kevin Travers • Luke Condzal • Nicholas Perilli • Rachel Specht • Rosanna Byrnes • and Victoria Mier.Radio SORTES -- an unnatural extracurricular extension of SORTES magazine -- was produced and directed by Kevin Travers and Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum. Radio SORTES is always free, open to all, and less than two hours. See SORTES.co for upcoming events.
The 39 Steps, February 19, 2021
The Radio SORTES Players performed this classic adventure story, written by John Buchan and adapted by Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum from Hitchcock's 1935 film and the 1937 Lux Radio production. It starred Brenna Dinon • Heather Bowlan • Rosanna Byrnes • Betsy Herbert • Iris Johnston • Warren Longmire • Brian Maloney • Britny Brooks • Nicholas Perilli • Kelly Ralabate • Dwight Evan Young • Emily Zido • Victoria Mier • Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum • and Kevin Travers.
Halloween Eve Special, October 30, 2020
Introduction
Suspense, "The House in Cypress Canyon"
Commercial
Inner Sanctum Mysteries, "Voice on the Wire"
The Radio SORTES players presented a live Halloween Eve special: two programs of classic old time radio horrors. The shows -- including dialogues, music, and sound effects -- were performed for a live Zoom audience.The Suspense episode “The House in Cypress Canyon” was originally broadcast December 5, 1946 and the Inner Sanctum Mysteries episode “Voice on the Wire” was originally broadcast November 29, 1944. Both programs were performed by Kevin Travers • Sean Finn • Britny Perilli • Don Deeley • Brian Maloney • Betsy Herbert • Kyle Brown Watson • Nicholas Perilli • Emma Pike • Susan Clarke • and Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum. Between episodes, we presented an original commercial in period style written and performed by Kevin Travers.
Odd Lots
A Proper Mast-Lashing
Philosophies and Phrases for Debased Phases
or Aphorisms for Schisms or Epigrams for Pigs and Rams
The first lie we're taught is existence of sin. The second is we shouldn't have it..
Drinking, like religion and suspicion, is only dangerous in excess or less.Sex and love are each admirable but together inconceivable.The problem with good taste is that there's too much of it. A surfeit of quality is the tedium of heaven.From birth I easily succeeded. Only through great effort have I failed, albeit not very well.Sobriety is the only impediment to intoxication.Poetry lies to make truth seem plausible.Don't deny yourself a fantasy because reality is flawed. Fiction is a valid form of fact.I derive from a long line of the dead. In fact, everyone I know comes from dead stock. All living people have survivor's guilt.I assume all interactions are loving and flirtatious except those that are.The body makes us human but adornment is denial of the body and denial of the body is civilization and civilization makes us human..
It's later than you drink.I'd like to die while I'm young enough to appreciate it. I may not have traveled much in life but I expect to travel reasonably far in death.La petit morte is more manageable and repeatable than la morte grande.Intellectual property fences in the ocean. Wit belongs to any qualified thief.A friend is just a stranger you've met.Morality says A is right and B is wrong. Ethics asks you to choose between C and D.A nickname given for not drinking is a soberquet.Marry the myopic and live beautiful forever.Decency is the most popular hypocrisy.Religion revealing the historic is a useful mooring. Religion revealing the mystic is abusively boring. Religion is only useful when unbelieved..
My only regret is having been born a man instead of a book.An epicurean, voluptuary, and hedonist walk into a baroque...My mistakes are my best and only qualities.It's best to be hated by the wrong people.We always knew the world was round. Through vast effort we taught ourselves it was flat. Then through much more effort we taught ourselves it was round. And we've never learned our lesson.Fear is not, and the only, convincing theological argument.Life exists to create life but death exists to create thought.I'm queer in every sense except the homosexual.I'm an atheist because I'm too moral not to be.Great minds kink alike..
All evil is caused by children or what they become.
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Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum
Editor
June 13, 2025
Correspondence
SORTES invites readers and contributors to fight amongst themselves. Please talk with us! Comment on stories and poems, letters, and the SORTES demimonde in general by emailing
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SORTES is a mostly online journal, as you know, but every so often we can't resist existing.
Spectral Annual 2024
Here are four ghastly cards celebrating the tradition of sharing ghost stories at the end of the year. Each card features original eerie illustrations and newly-commissioned horror stories:-- Irina Tall's illustrations
-- Kailey Tedesco's poetry
-- Luke Condzal's historical existential story
-- Nick Perilli's familial ghost warmer, and
-- Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum's fraternal horror.Keep them, mail them, trade them, resell them once supplies inevitably exhaust.
Annual 2023
The SORTES Spectral Winter Annual 2023 revives the tradition of haunted holiday fiction. This beautifully crafted 44-page paperback anthology features ghastly short stories showcasing a dead man’s special deliveries, a judgmental seaside specter, the pains of an aging table-rapper, the heartwarming war on the poor, and the electrifying end of the year / world, as well as poems celebrating the Jersey Devil's unsung siblings. Authors include Daniel DiFranco, Jean Zurbach, Kailey Tedesco, Max D. Stanton, Mordecai Martin, and Nick Perilli. The Annual makes an ideal holiday present for any dear friend or family member who loathes the living.
SORTES Sampler 2
A SORTES Sampler 2 is a slender tasty book collecting weird fiction by Max D. Stanton, surrealist collage art by Danielle Gatto Hirano, and a poetry cycle by Uri Rosenshine. It’s a handsomely designed but affordable little snack of a book. We have incredibly limited copies on hand, and every day they become incredibly more limited, so leap today.
SORTES Sampler 1
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A SORTES Sampler 1 was our first attempt to make the ephemeral real. It contains a dystopian farmstead fantasy by Iris Johnston, paper cutout art by Abi Whitehead, and a Coney Island noir by Mordecai Martin.
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When in Philadelphia, please gobble up your copies from:Brickbat Books, Head & Hand Books, A Novel Idea on PassyunkPlease note that not every publication is sold in each location. If these fine stores are sold out, march to the counter and sweetly demand more SORTES.
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SORTES is dedicated to free: every online issue is lovingly brought to you for zero dollars while each Radio SORTES entertainment is beamed gratis to your Zoom dial. Our masochistic editors tell me they’re delighted to put in hundreds of hours for no money and paltry recognition.However, the rest of the chilly world is less dedicated to free and much the opposite: our website, our Zoom, our physical publications, and so many other digital nickels and dimes sap us more each year.We must fight back – and we need you to help us! Every dollar supporting SORTES goes to creating a strange literary world in which you’re a citizen. To delight you, we’re dancing in our red shoes down to our nubs.Why don’t we accept advertising? Because we hate it and it seems like too much work anyway. It blocks the bucolic view. It spoils the fine pleats in our website.So we turn to solicitation, which is much more up our alley. Patreon revives a tradition old as Roman poetry and frumpy chapel ceilings.
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