By Julián Martinez
Jesus
The Vatican’s senior accountant started locking her office door, ignoring emails. Calls. Knocks. From out in the hall, her colleagues of the Holy See heard sobs. Invoices needed to be processed. No one had any idea how much they’d gone over budget, if they’d gone over or if not, how close they’d gotten. When greeted on the stairs, she’d walk faster, graying head down. She’d jet out at odd times, once immediately after coming in and shutting her door behind her. “Boss Macabre,” The Pope dubbed her over coffee with a cardinal, according to a rumor. Dozens of theories proliferated. The HR director prayed for her before every meal. What no one guessed was that the sixty-five year old was months pregnant and suffering a nightly nightmare: Jesus enraged in Herod’s Temple, flipping the tables of the money lenders. Her child was obvious— his Second Coming had been prophesied. She’d never taken those stories seriously, but for the first time in her life, she surrendered to His power. She confided all this over the phone one night with her ex-husband, the con artist, the last person she’d been intimate with over a decade ago. He told her she should be institutionalized. That’s exactly it, she thought. I’ve become institutionalized. Her stomach sank. Then a kick.
Pussy
Wire taped to my chest, I stared at my crotch to avoid looking at the open shirt in the dresser
mirror’s reflection. Green boxer briefs with tropical flowers and flamingos on the waistband. The phrase ‘big pussy’ flashed in my mind. Imagining Big Pussy from Sopranos in the mirror instead of myself made it bearable to button my shirt— it wouldn’t be me kissing the neck of my crime boss wife, asking questions about slush funds pumped with funny money over slow jams at
Easter Sunday brunch. It’d be some other rat in my place. It’d be Big Pussy. I saw Big Pussy,
sauced on a boat, riddled with bullets that never paused for a reload by my towering wife. My dick stood up at the thought. “Wait, what the fuck? Why?” I asked my crotch. My FBI handler,
coming in from the bathroom, cleared his throat and tapped his watch.
Cleo
Her jeweled hands passed over the crystal ball like ocean waves. She told me exactly how I’m supposed to die— an infection in my skull after a fall from a stranger’s window. At one point, I asked her how she could be Miss Cleo when the Miss Cleo from TV had passed away. She froze, index finger tickling my palm’s heart line, candlelight painting the maroon of her nails a deep shade, and took a breath of the Nag Champa basement air. She exhaled with a chuckle and, dropping her Caribbean accent, she said, “it’s a persona owned by the company I work for, my dear.” I thought then that I’d fallen for a scam, but she proceeded to lay my life open like the tarot cards she had me shuffle. She knew me better than anyone ever had— every embarrassing habit, every good thing about me. She said I would soon go through tough financial times— this was a couple weeks ago— then yesterday my boss called me into the conference room and told me I was being laid off. Miss Cleo said I’d be falling in love sooner rather than later, which I found hard to believe, until the memory of her dark brown eyes and silky fingertips kept me up all last night. I came back for another reading this morning but the neon sign in the house’s window is gone. I called her company’s 24-hour hotline a dozen times but it was never her, the ladies’ Caribbean accents sounding forced and offensive coming out of them. They all said they were Miss Cleo, but the real Miss Cleo is out there. Not the real real Miss Cleo, but my Miss Cleo. I love her. I need her. I don’t care how I die anymore. I need her to tell me how I’m supposed to live.
Julián Martinez loves Chicago so much, he’s marrying her. Find him @martinezfjulian or martinezfjulian.com.