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Across The Wire Vol. 2

Watch and Learn

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By Jillian Luft

Every day, the knocks came. Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy.

Beads of sweat ran down their bodies, clung to the polycotton blend of their K-Mart dresses, squished between toes scrunched in shimmery plastic. Humid sighs of nothing, there’s nothing hung in the afternoon haze as they waited for someone to drive by and wave, for anything  to coast around the corner and take them by surprise.

There was only so much Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy could do in Verdant Village. They could roam the subdivision’s empty streets as if they were one sad backyard. They could buy Screwballs from the ice cream truck and throw the bubblegum stones at the warty red ducks that bit their hands far too often. They could creep toward the canal and wait for a gator to feast on their tender shins. And when they exhausted those options, they could look toward the road while the blacktop cooled, dull and quiet and wonder what lay beyond those rust-flecked walls. .

I was too new to the world then to grow tired of things but now I see why Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy slouched on the sidewalk, their day-glo jellies poking the pavement while they longed for anyone—even their mothers—to come outside and talk to them. After school, they appeared on my doorstep because I nodded and smiled and consented to anything they asked. I gave them what every girl wanted: I made them believe they were at the center of things. I was eight and glad to have a job to do.

When not at school, I spent my time staring slack-jawed at the TV screen, filling my head with a constant reel of music videos. Smoke and silk, fire and fantasy, neon and nasty. I couldn’t get enough.

But when those knocks came, I always answered.

Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy were older. Fifth and sixth graders with awkward teeth and budding breasts. They liked charm necklaces, WWF wrestling, scratch-n-sniff stickers. They loved, loved, loved Bon Jovi.

Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy spoke softly of Bon Jovi. How they would marry him, how his hair looked in the video premiere, how he sang and made them cry.  If you asked me—and no one ever did— Bon Jovi was a twerp with a horsey smile. Even his winks were wholesome. He was a goof, like someone’s dad wearing a wig. I liked the wild boys, the ones with the impish sneers and scandalous pouts. The ones that looked like they were up to something secret and special and I was dying to know what. 

How cute is he? Katie swooned. We were sprawled out on her living room floor and “Bad Medicine” was playing for the umpteenth time.

Sooooo cute, Bren and Shandy swooned right back.

My mom said I can go to the concert but only if we win the lottery. She’d better play a zillion times because there’s no way I’m missing my husband!

Katie clutched her heart and flung herself against her bean bag chair. We watched this performance and giggled like we were supposed to.

My dad’s always playing that dumb lottery, Shandy said, rolling her Disney animal eyes.

My dad tries to tell my mom it’s a waste of money but she doesn’t listen to him, Katie scoffed.

Bren said nothing because her dad didn’t live with her.

I said nothing because I didn’t know what the lottery was and I didn’t know much about what my dad thought about anything. He was always working. At night, a scrambling of keys in the door, a tired face in the cramped foyer. A man who put me to bed, tickled me and told me he loved me before leaving me in the dark.

In Verdant Village, none of us had money but we acted like we did. We had a community pool and our condos were basically houses with screened-in patios, modest dining rooms, vanity lighting. Maybe it wasn’t true suburbia, but it was the same sunshine warming our limbs. The same grass, only less of it. Even if we owned more square footage, we’d still be hyped-up on Kool-Aid, strung out on MTV. We told ourselves it was all the same.

Dads worked at power plants and pizza joints. The lucky ones pulled shifts at both. Moms stayed home and set the table. When their kids were watching, they danced in their living rooms. When no one was watching, they napped until dark. Their lives, fevered pink with blusher sets, lemonade, flamingo home decor. They baked and vacuumed and tied up the phone lines with stories of bill collectors, their husbands, other people’s husbands, the state of the neighborhood, the state of the world, department store sales, and how we drove them crazy. And then one day we heard them murmur a new word.

What’s a Peeping Tom anyway? Shandy asked.

Katie sipped her Capri Sun, let out a world-weary sigh. It’s like a pervert or a robber. It’s like a bad guy, okay? A really bad guy. 

I don’t get it, Shandy said.

I don’t either, I admitted.

He watches ladies through their windows and waits for them to take their clothes off. Do you get it now? Bren smirked.

Kinda, I guess.

But why is he called Tom? Shandy asked.

He just is! God, you guys can be such babies sometimes. Katie buried her upturned nose into Bren’s triple-pierced ear and snickered.

I tried to ignore them, return my focus to Bon Jovi and his lame antics. But it was no use. Their laughter won out.

Katie and Bren often teamed up, making it clear where their loyalties lay. I didn’t mind, really. I was just happy to be there. But Shandy, the 10-year-old in the group, wanted to be seen as their equal. Her dignity depended on it. Like so many times before, at this sign of alliance, she fled for Katie’s bathroom, slamming herself inside. I shuffled toward the door, waited for her in the hallway. Loud sniffles competed with the running faucet. I never knocked. I let her be.

When the sink went silent, Shandy exited with her sad movie stare, imploring me to take her side while she took my tiny hand. And I never knew how to say no to anyone so I let her lead me out Katie’s front door and across the street. I’m not sure Katie or Bren even noticed.

***

Shandy’s dad, Don, was home. Like usual. Wearing nothing but his tighty-whities. Hairy legs spread wide in his recliner. A jar of Miracle Whip in one hand. A butter knife in the other. Thick chest hair, thicker glasses. The stench of fried bologna glazing the air.

Hey honey, he greeted me, licking the knife’s edge clean, then dipping it back into the jar. And he smiled. Wide. Not like Bon Jovi’s grin, not like Billy Idol’s snarl. More like a circus clown on a smoke break. Relieved that the facade’s crumbling. Pleased that you’re confronted with his true nature.

Shandy, sweetie, grab your Daddy a soda before you go play, wouldya?

Shandy abandoned me for the fridge and I swayed in the sliver of light Shandy’s mother’s seashell lamp offered, the only light in that living room at all. Cars exploded on the television. Shotguns fired. The knife ran circles in the now empty Miracle Whip jar, scraping and screeching against the sides.

So, what are you girls up to? Don scratched a furry thigh. I avoided his tortoiseshell frames but I felt his eyes leaning into every part of me, burrowing past my suntanned skin, my chubby-cheeked politeness and digging deep to reach somewhere I didn’t even know about.

I shrugged, looked down at my Easter yellow socks, my candy pink jellies. Tried to focus on the colors, the cheer they offered in brighter places than this. He was asking me something. But I didn’t understand what. He was asking more than what he was saying. He was asking me something else entirely.

You’re so shy, he laughed. Just like my Shandy.

My skin burned so hot I was convinced it smelled. My tongue wilted. My limbs froze. I decided that at least half of me was dead. Half of me had gone limp, watching Don ingest me without even opening his mouth.

Here ya go, Shandy mumbled. A soda can hissed. I heard a gulp, a belch. No thank you. Just the increased volume of brakes screeching, glass shattering.

Shandy took my hand again. She revived me. I fixated on the back of her strawberry print romper as she skipped down the hall, leading me to safety.  I tried not to think about Don’s hungry eyes bulging in the dark.

In Shandy’s room, we knelt on her bottom bunk, undressed Barbies in our fists. We smacked taut torsos together, bent legs into impressive splits, contorted smooth groins into straddle-friendly positions. Some of the dolls didn’t have heads. We’d managed to pluck their symmetrical faces clean from their necks, leaving that weird fleshy knob. We made their grotesque bodies wail and whimper Oh mys! and Oh nos! even though they didn’t have vocal cords, even though they didn’t have mouths.

It was a ridiculous game. A game fueled by our curiosity about how a woman’s body worked. What it did when it was alone and out of our sight. In this game, we agreed that to be a woman was to be naked and maimed. To be a woman was to be hysterical. I didn’t know where we got this from. Maybe TV. Or maybe it’s what our mothers implied when they rested silently on their loveseats. Their eyes, unfocused but fierce with knowing.

A flock of headlights flew across Shandy’s window, signaling the dads’ return home from work and dinner time. I dropped my dolls, said good night and made for the door.

Don was still pantless and parked in front of the tube when I re-entered the living room. At that moment, I was reminded of my mother’s advice when playing in the backyard, the canal flowing a few feet away. Don’t get eaten by those gators. Run like mad but scramble! Zigzag. If you zigzag, they’ll never catch you.

Hey, sweetie, Don called after me. Don’t be a stranger. You’re welcome here anytime.

Thank you. I-I-I won’t, I stammered, memorizing the same crap linoleum I had in my own entryway, hands trembling as I reached for the doorknob. I could feel his eyes roving in their glass cages. Somehow, I managed to stagger out into the streetlights and zigzag my way home.

When I walked in, I inhaled deeply. Exhaled finally, too. Taco night. Cumin and onions. Something sizzled, something bordered on burnt. TV on, not MTV. The evening news. But no one was watching.

Mom’s voice spiraled through her bedroom, following the length of her phone cord as she stretched it to its limit. Hovering in the teeny space between her bedroom doorway and the kitchen entrance, she monitored her ground chuck. Nothing was in flames, so she continued gabbing.

It’s probably that Christian kid…No, no his name is Christian. He’s definitely not Christian…The one that lives by Tammi. You know the one. He’s got that satanic music blaring out of his car at all hours of the night…Yeah, the dirtbaggy-looking one. It has to be him because Gary and I caught him and his punk friends on our roof throwing rocks up there, drinking beers and other dumb shit… Un-huh. Yep. And he was pressing his pimply face to our skylight, looking in at us watching HBO, yelling and laughing. Gary dealt with them, went out and told them to knock it off. We haven’t had trouble with him since. He doesn’t even make eye contact with us anymore, the twerp. But I could see him doing other creepy crap. I wouldn’t put it past him to be our neighborhood Peeping Tom…Hold on 007’s home… Heeeey, when’d you get here? Your dad’s out back. Go say hello.

She patted my head absently but I didn’t bother responding. I knew she wanted me out of the way so I kept on walking through the kitchen. I yanked open the sliding glass door, stepped onto the patio to find my dad beyond the screen, perched high on a ladder, installing the high-tech lights he’d blabbed about for weeks, the kind that clicked on when something moved. When someone moved. Someone. Somewhere out there.

Don’t come outside. Stay where you are, Dad barked. 

I won’t. I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my face to the screen. 

The mosquitoes are bad. Some huffing, some panting, some metallic clanging and then: What’d you do with your friends today, squirt?

Nothing really. Just played.

Sounds nice.

I waited for my father’s next question. Crickets chattered in the grass. My father’s feet rested on the rung in front of me, his dirty work boots level with my face. I peered up but could only detect the faint outline of his denimed torso. All I could see was his neck. The bugs were finding me through the screen and my father stopped speaking, so I wandered back into the faux warmth of our living room. Dusk filled the skylight above my head. I was getting hungry.

On the TV, an old man reported another girl missing. I immediately changed the channel to watch a pretty man sing.

***

It was Mom’s idea. Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy at our place for a sleepover. An excuse for her to invite their moms, and Tammi, over for some “grown-up fun.” Strawberry daiquiris and girl talk at the kitchen card table while their daughters huddled up in sleeping bags in the living room, slowly losing their innocence to cable TV. 

Katie and Bren didn’t want to be there but their moms refused to leave them home unsupervised. After all, there was a Peeping Tom on the loose. Plus, their dads were working overtime and wouldn’t be home until dawn. They were probably bribed with cheap jewelry and cassettes from the mall. It was fine to hang with me during the day but no babies were allowed in their presence past sundown. When they arrived, they talked only to each other, kept their distance from Shandy and me in case some cool stranger dropped by and they had to explain, Hey, we’re not with them. We swear.

Have fun, girls. Pretend like we’re not even here, Bren’s mom said before disappearing into the kitchen. We didn’t have to pretend. Once the blender started whirring, we rarely saw our mothers’ faces. We might as well have been alone.

I didn’t ask Katie or Bren to play Barbies or board games or Truth or Dare. I didn’t ask them anything at all. Instead, I decided to gossip. To reveal something. Something I’d overheard that might ingratiate me to them further. Something that might change the course of their lives—at least for one evening. And they’d have no choice but to be grateful.

We were watching that boring movie with Tom Cruise and the unicorn when I turned to my fickle friends and teased, Hey guys, I know something you don’t know.

What? Bren asked, eyes still on long-haired Tom.

Yeah, what? Katie asked, stuffing more popcorn into her mouth. 

Well, you have to promise you won’t tell anyone. 

God, we won’t. Now tell us.

Yeah, spit it out already.

Shandy grinned patiently, said nothing.

You know that older boy, Christian? 

Their eyes fixed hard on my little impish face. I knew I had them now.

Oh, he’s so cute! Katie exclaimed.

Yeah, he’s super dreamy. Dreamier than Bon Jovi maybe. What about him?

I kept my tone casual but glowed with pride. He’s been on my roof before. Him and his high school friends go up there to party and drink beer. And one night he was looking in on my parents. Maybe he’ll do it again tonight and we can wave or something.

Oh my god, no way!

All three girls screamed. With anticipation. With fear. With desire. I tried to shush them in case the moms heard but it didn’t matter. The moms were cackling too loudly. The moms were drunk. 

We should scare him by sticking our tongues out!

Ew, no. Funny faces are lame, Katie. We should just look up at him like, “What are you doing, you freakin’ weirdo?” Like we don’t give a crap.

Yeah, you’re right. I was being totally lame. Let’s just do what you said.

I gotta put some mascara on. Bren rummaged through her purse.

I don’t know, guys. Maybe he’s the Peeping Tom. Shandy laughed nervously; her Disney eyes panicked.

But we ignored her concern. This was the night’s new plan.

For what felt like hours, we craned our necks toward the glass-plated night and waited for Christian to see us. Eventually, our necks ached and our stomachs rumbled and mom had baked a batch of Toll House she was willing to share and we were getting tired even though we swore we’d remain awake to see Freddy Kreuger invade teenage dreams, to see a startled Christian beaten at his own game. The prospect of his arrival had been enough to satisfy us. So, we turned away from the skylight and filled our mouths with chocolate before giving ourselves over to sleep. 

I was faking though. I took advantage of any opportunity to stay up late. The moms were still in the kitchen, pairing their cookies with Kahlua and milk, discussing what they would do if they were the Peeping Tom’s next target. Who they would call (their husbands at work, the cops, each other), what they would shout (curse word, curse word, curse word), who they would blame (pornography, society, unemployment).

Then I heard the squeak of nylon and opened my eyes to see Shandy slipping out of her sleeping bag and ambling into the kitchen. I didn’t hear what she said but suddenly she was leaving and ruining her mother’s good time.

This was my one night off in forever, Shandy, her mom grumbled while stepping over our still bodies.

I didn’t ask her but I think Shandy was afraid Christian would show up and haunt us in our slumber. I stared up at the skylight again and held my breath. I saw only black but I couldn’t help but think of Shandy’s dad’s face. 

At some point, I fell asleep to the TV and the moms’ tipsy excitement about when and where the Peeping Tom would strike next. My own dreams remained undisturbed. 

***

A few weeks after the sleepover, Katie, Bren and me were down at the pool, splashing around. Shandy stayed home with a stomach bug. We were showing off our handstands and holding our breath in the deep end when we spotted Christian, up-close and shirtless, washing his car in front of the pool’s gates.

Katie and Bren scrambled out of the water like excitable dogs, shaking their bodies dry in an embarrassing hurry. A boy was better than handstand contests. A boy was better than me, better than ice cream or anything. They elbowed each other in their scrawny sides and dashed toward the gate, leaving me and their towels behind. I hung back because I knew my place. I knew I didn’t belong in this scene. Still, I entered it anyway.

After collecting our towels. I dragged my feet across the scorching cement to the pool’s entrance. Once outside the gates, I dawdled under a tree a few yards away and tried my best not to gawk, to make my presence known. There he was. Flaxen rattail pasted to the damp of his neck, silver cross earring sparkling in the sun. Axl Rose whistling through his stereo speakers. An open beer next to a bucket of suds. Christian, dirtbag teen and possible Peeping Tom, on full display.

Katie and Bren squatted on a nearby parking curb, squinting up at danger. They talked loudly about nothing. They used bad words and acted stupid. They didn’t acknowledge me once even though I stood directly behind them.

Christian sponged his windshield, humming along to the radio like we weren’t right there ogling him with open mouths. We watched his muscles crest like waves across his back as he lunged over the gleaming black of his Pontiac Fiero, as he hosed down his hubcaps, waxed his back bumper, polished his taillights. And then he turned his attention, along with the full force of his nozzle, to Katie and Bren. He doused their just-dried bodies, aiming directly at their bare browned skin. They squealed and bolted across the parking lot, giving themselves away as the children they were.

Eventually, the water stopped rushing and the girls stopped shrieking. But Axl was still singing when Christian moved toward Katie and Bren. He lit a cigarette, looked on as they shivered with delight.

I’m headed up the street to the Gas-n-Go. You two wanna go for a ride?

I mean sure yeah cool. That’d be awesome. Katie and Bren were beaming, giddy. Then, emboldened by his invitation, Katie asked: Would you mind buying us some Garbage Pail Kids?

Christian laughed. Yeah, I can get you some of those. You’ll owe me one though. Then he turned his bright eyes on me. What about her? Does she want to come, too?

She’s not allowed, they said while I stayed in the shade. He took their word for it, tossed his bucket in the back, and revved the engine. In their soggy two pieces, Katie and Bren clambered into Christian’s passenger seat. All goosepimpled flesh and giggles. Katie squirming on Bren’s lap. Don’t you dare tell on us, they smirked. Fingers to lips curled in satisfaction. It’s a secret, okay?

The shiny Fiero sped off, left me choking on a cloud of burnt tire and cigarette smoke. I wanted to know Christian’s secrets. Not if he was the Peeping Tom or not. I knew he couldn’t be the one stalking our windows. Getting loaded with his friends on our roof was for fun. What the Peeping Tom did was for something else.

I wanted to know other things about him. Like his favorite Slurpee flavor, his favorite song, what he wanted to be when he turned 18. I wish I’d blackmailed Katie and Bren, asked for a pack of Garbage Pail Kids or Dr. Pepper Gum in exchange for my silence. Asked for anything at all.

That night, I curled into my covers and imagined Christian lurking outside my window, surveilling from the front seat of his Fiero, aiming his eyes and high beams into my bedroom, hoping for a light to flicker on, for a mere glimpse of my beauty. He wasn’t a Peeping Tom, just a lovesick boy. In my mind, there was a difference. 

I fantasized I was older. Older than Bren or Katie but not as old as our mothers. I had teased hair, bleached blonde, like the girls on Club MTV. I wore ripped jeans and bustier tops. To sleep, I slipped on satin negligee. My room wasn’t crowded with toys or stuffed animals. Everything smelled fruity-sweet and party-ready. Everything was cool. I was cool. 

And Christian knew it and longed to be inside. He ached to hold my hand while I slept. He ached to make me stand in the middle of my moonlit room, his arms around my waist as he looked deep into my eyes to find that I knew much more than Katie and Bren. About life. About rock music. About all the things that mattered to him. That I was ready to ride shotgun in his Fiero far past the Verdant Village walls and the Gas-n-Go. That no one would have to know he kidnapped me. That no one would care if I went missing.

***

***

Not long after Katie and Bren’s Gas-n-Go escapade, the knocks stopped. The pair became a rare sight, sometimes glimpsed in Christian’s driveway where he and his scummy pals loitered past dark, blasting metal from their cars’ tinny speakers. 

Katie and Bren still looked bored but less alone and more important. I guess that’s what Mom meant when she said there was a way something called puberty could change you. I wondered if they still loved Bon Jovi. I wondered if they thought of him—or me—at all. 

There was still Sometimes Shandy, skittish and lonely at my front door. Big eyes pleading for me to not turn her away like everyone else. And I never did. Only lied now and then when she asked me to play at her house.

Sorry, my mom says I’m not allowed anymore. She wants to keep an eye on me. 

Mom was one of the last to encounter the Verdant Village Peeping Tom. Dad was working overtime the night he visited, which meant I was staying up later than usual lounging on the sofa like a lazy empress, gnawing on cold slices of leftover pizza. Adam Curry was counting down the top videos of the week. 

Over Bret Michaels’ broken heart, I heard my mom on the phone.

Holy shit, Tammi. He was here…You know who, the creeper, the peeper!…No, I couldn’t tell. It’s too dark and those stupid lights Gary installed don’t catch crap. But someone was out there, standing and facing my bedroom. I got out of the shower with my boobs out and everything else before I even noticed! Jesus Christ.….Yeah. it’s kinda my fault though. I left the blinds open by accident like a dum dum…Yeah, I’ll be fine. Gary gets home soon. Hope that asshole got a good show…Hey, you might be next! (laughter)…Okay, g’night.

I waited for the clack of the receiver. Her door was ajar. I knocked gently.

Why are you knocking, kiddo? Get your butt on in here!

Mom was in bed, freshly showered and smiling. She pulled back her bedspread, patted the empty side of the mattress.

Come on in. The water’s warm.

I dove in between the sheets and snuggled into the soft of her terry cloth robe, her loose curls spilling wet onto my cheeks. I hoped she’d spill her secrets, too. I wanted to stay there, nestled against her. Warm and safe. I wanted to be her baby still, for her to watch over me and never let me go.

We cuddled in silence for a while, our bodies facing one another. I kept my eyes on the vertical blinds, their vinyl slats jammed shut. Protectors from the night. 

I swallowed hard and looked deep into my mother’s eyes before asking, Mom, did you see the Peeping Tom just now? 

Were you listening to my phone calls again, 007? You’re too smart for your own good. She ran her fingers through my tangled hair. I didn’t see who he was but I saw someone man-shaped for sure.

I swallowed hard again. Do you think it was Don?

Don? She jolted upright, her spine kissing the headboard. Why would you ask about him? Kiddo, what’s going on?

Nothing. But I don’t think it’s that Christian.

Jesus, 007! When did you hear me say that?

I don’t know…one day when you were on the phone.

Dear lord, you truly are a spy. Listen, I’m not sure who he was, she sighed. And I don’t want you to worry, okay? He’s not going to hurt me. And he’s not going to hurt you. Whoever he is. She reached for my hand, crushing it against her sun-damaged chest. Her eyes boring into my brain. There are people out there that are searching for something. Some excitement, I don’t know. We feel more sorry for people like that than anything.

I nodded although I didn’t understand. Mom vibrated with a nervous energy, but it wasn’t fear. 

You know sometimes I think you know more than we think and it’s terrifying. She bent down and kissed my forehead, gave my tummy a playful poke. Let Mommy get dressed, sweet pea. Daddy will be home soon.

She rose from the bed, freeing herself easily from my embrace, opening and shutting dresser drawers, retrieving her clothes and then her cosmetics. I lay there and thought about how mere minutes before a mystery man took in the sight of my mother’s naked body. But more than that, he’d entered a place he didn’t belong without ever having to step inside. 

I watched my mother watch herself in her bureau mirror, pursing her lips together like a promise and admiring the results. Her eyes, aflame and haloed in kohl, she reminded me of the women on MTV—the way they arranged their faces to fit the mood of the man’s song, the way they pretended they weren’t seducing and surrendering to danger. But they knew they were and they liked it. My mother’s reflection met my eyes. I wasn’t sure which one of us had been caught.

She turned around and bared her normal face, flushed and sheepish. Shoo, shoo! she squealed, chasing me out of her room before quickly closing her door. I lingered, hoping to be reinvited, but the blow dryer began its pretty drone.

I let my mother be, plopping myself down again in front of the television. I let the men in the music videos tend to me, let them teach me. Those men that sung about being hungry beasts, bringing me to my knees, watching every breath I take and wanting more, more, more. I brought my face so close to the screen, I could taste the technicolor of their feigned desire. I didn’t dare look anywhere else.

Jillian Luft recently returned to her home state of Florida. Her work has appeared in Hobart, XRAY, Rejection Letters, Expat, Vlad Mag, and other publications. She’s currently seeking publication for her novel about toxic Florida romance. You can find her on X @JillianLuft and read more of her writing at jillianluft.com

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

THE SUICIDAL IDEATION THAT SPIKES WHILE CHANGING JOBS

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By Jesse Hilson

I was at a library and talking with a middle-aged woman and made a pass at her. I was telling her movies to watch and books to read. I touched her throat, then said I’m sorry, and are you married? She seemed alarmed but not like she was going to call the cops or anything. I think she gave serious thought to being unfaithful to her husband with me, like she wasn’t hostile to the idea but it made her feel very sad because she felt trapped. Only one other person lingered in the library with us, the librarian, another even older woman who sort of represented the middle-aged woman’s life and sense of propriety. She was pretending to read a book and waiting for us to be done with our conversation and leave.

I’m very attracted to you, I said, as if this fact should knock over everybody else’s needs and upend lives. Vronsky and Anna didn’t wait for the world to cohere around their wants. I didn’t say that at the time but I’m saying that now. This really happened and it’s still happening.

Then I drove her somewhere. It was a cross between LA and the town where I grew up. She ended up disappearing.

I’m the Son of Sam but instead of a dog, it’s a black mold pattern glyph on the wall at the head of my bed, behind the headboard that gets onto my pillows and seeps into my mind while I sleep, gives me hyperdreams. Grand Theft Auto Sadness. Antisocial fantasies in isometric pixel animations. And I don’t even like games.

I couldn’t give my wife a back massage because her back was covered with ink. Less a tattoo than a glossy book cover, like a catalog. For Xmas shopping. I said she had a lot of knots and tried to remember the parallel runways of muscles up both sides of her spine but the printed back ink was confusing me. I felt her big breasts. She kicked me out of the house. I tried to talk her out of it. A baby was walking around the room. It was such a bitter argument. It was forever. A typical theatrical event was happening elsewhere and I drove there listening to delusion-reinforcing music with cryptic lyrics as I used to do in that part of the city. At the theatre thing, which was full of kids because a lot of schools went there, an adult pulled a gun. They talked him into leaving and he was tackled by a tank of a security guard on the front lawn. I went to a concession stand inside which seemed familiar: and I bought three cannabis-infused bananas from the rip-off artist. Right away they got jumbled with normal bananas so I lost track of which ones had the drugs in them. So I ate three and went outside and there was a rock concert with people dancing and the band was playing the hit single from that year “(I Was) Standing In Heaven.” 

The interview they give to welcome new schizophrenics is called the IRIS (Ideas of Reference Interview Scale), and a high score on item 14 indicates that some message of significance has been sent to the interviewee through the media. In the Before Time, usually while driving, awake and not dreaming this time, I did perceive that — Kurt Cobain singing “Yeah” on the car radio meaning whatever random thought I was thinking at the moment I heard that verse of the song was true, song lyrics teased information about hidden Cotard arrangements, death marbled into life — but now it’s as if TV shows and movies and pop radio were daily rushes slipped quietly over the transom of my heavy-lidded eyes in REM aquarium depths. Dreams are safe psychoses (sike-oh-sees), rehearsals of virtual unreality. Wandering around fairgrounds honeycombed with tents and corrals no one wanted you to be in, populated with crooked firefighters, rapists, angry ghosts, disabled childhood friends, all in constant frenetic video game motion.

I am led by spectacle through dream-malls. Stage massive dynamic group-races that absorb me and take me along. Blood trips, voyages that always have some dramatic turning or betrayal among passengers, often family members. Shopping spaces, markets both indoors and outdoors, carve up group attention. An audience waits and peers into my dream-world. Mass media pilgrimages staged for someone, not me, not the dreamer displaced by the spectator’s passive ego. Everything is given a new portentousness, a signal within the dream transmission.

Setting up social media accounts, dating apps, work emails at my house, I had to come up with wifi superstitions to combat the ghosts that prevented multi-factor authentication from getting through. Everything’s combat. And the authentication code only arrives when it’s too late and you are no longer near the device. This is the shield of the poltergeist.

Frustration happened impacting the mood, paralyzed the mood-feeler beyond the actual obstruction causing the frustration. Can’t eat can’t sleep can’t perform simple tasks. The crazy man is a robot with one square task-peg stuck in his round queue-hole blocking a whole string of other later tasks, of all more amenable shapes. I don’t appreciate you setting the extroverted tempo. I have not intersected enough with all of you. Very well. I will take my chances. A noon whistle blotted out all repetitions of your name.

Jesse Hilson lives in the Catskills in New York State. His work has appeared in Maudlin House, Rejection Letters, Expat Press, Hobart, Exacting Clam, Don’t Submit!, Bruiser, Apocalypse Confidential, and elsewhere. He has published two novels, Blood Trip and The Tattletales, and a poetry collection Handcuffing the Venus De Milo. He is the founding editor of Prism Thread Books. He can be found on X and Instagram at @platelet60.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

LOU AND OTIS

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By Ed Komenda

Lou opened the door with a heavy blanket over his head.  I hadn’t seen my best friend in over a year, and it was a relief to see him standing there, cloaked like the South Side’s Obi Wan Kenobi. It was January.  A few days after Christmas.  A dull gray Chicago.  Lou welcomed me into the house:  A rented three-bedroom on 67th, where the temperature was a few degrees warmer inside than outside. Comforters covered the picture window. A blue couch sat at the center of the living room.  On the cluttered coffee table sat a TV remote, a Tambourine, a stack of X-Men comics, an old Ziploc of weed, an empty bag of Lays, a pickle jar half-filled with garlic chunks suspended in juice, a peanut butter jar with a protruding spoon, a two-liter of Coke with one pull left at the bottom, an ashtray with Camel cigarette butts, six or seven nubs of days-old blunts and a tattered copy of Road-side Dog.  The reason blankets covered everything is winter gas bills got too high.  One weekend of heating the place and you were bankrupt.  Lou zipped his body in a sleeping bag and breathed through a fabric air hole he fashioned in the shape of his mouth.  We walked through the living room and into the hallway, where another set of  blankets obscured a doorway.  Lou parted the blankets like a beaded curtain, and we stepped into the kitchen.  It was warm.  All four burners on the gas stove were going.  Lou sat at the table. In front of him sat a bottle of Jim Beam.  Next to the bottle was a tiny puddle of spilled whiskey – an erroneous pour left to evaporate.   Lou poured a shot for himself and took it. He slid the shot glass to me, and I took one, too.  We said little. We traded the shot glass until we felt brave enough to exit.  Lou said he needed five minutes to shower. He left the kitchen and entered the bathroom.  Shower sounds and steam leaked under the door. I rubbed my hands together and jammed them into my coat pockets.  I could see my breath.  The spot reminded me of the country house where I’d been living the past three years. I stapled Walmart blankets over the windows. I kept a space heater next to the bed.  I slept fully-clothed – pants, sweatshirt, socks – with a hood drawn tight around my head.  A heavy blanket on top. On the dead heating vent, I kept a bottle of Wild Turkey.  It was nice to have someone to drink whiskey with.  In the country, that someone was Otis, the fifth man on our four-man lease. He looked like a descendent of Andre The Giant if Andre The Giant grew up roping steer and using Keystone beer to fluff up his scrambled eggs. He stayed in the basement. Tucked in a corner room cramped with warped, musty vinyl, a king-sized bed and computer desk, he chain-smoked Winstons and played World of Warcraft, wrapped in a nest of secondhand blankets. We had a fireplace in the living room and no money for wood. But we worked in the library, and one day Otis returned with stacks and stacks of discarded books. He grabbed a thick history text and tore it in half.  Split it right down the spine.  He grabbed a geography edition next  and tore that in half, too.  I could tell he was well-versed in the art of book disposal.  We stacked the pieces like cords of wood. I crumpled pages into kindling balls, and Otis dropped his own in the ash. He flicked his Bic under the yellow pages, and soon there was fire.  We spent the next week watching Kubrick on couches we salvaged from curbs around town. I was working a library shift when Otis fell asleep during a Cheers marathon. A few embers popped past the metal mesh and landed on the carpet. Smoke filled the living room. A house party regular named Cody showed up and found Otis snoring. “Yo, wake your ass up!” He slapped Otis awake and stomped the smoldering rug. Otis rubbed the crust out of his eyes and peered through the haze. “Shit,” Otis said, “that was a close one.” He cracked a window, shut off the TV and went back to sleep.  Lou came out of the bathroom, slicking his hair back with a brush.  Steam followed him like a fog.  We drove to Chinatown for five-dollar soups. We cruised. Marquee Moon played from the car stereo.  We glided through the dirty slush with no plan, no discussion about what we’d been up to, no talk of what came next. We were full of broth. And we were warm. 

Ed Komenda is a writer based in the Pacific Northwest. Follow him on Instagram @ejkomenda

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

Leaky Boat

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By Dylan Smith

They put a perfect

Cathedral in my phone 

an endless Barn

gets Spiritual inside 

Wordy Mountain 

Brand New Bible

for every War 

and all its Trees

like an Ark 

Take that apocalypse

out of your pocket  

Google the Word 

Tevah—haha

why not, Put an-

other Endless War

in it, Put all of 

Moby Dick 

in it and

every Name 

of every Tree 

and all that Math 

My phone is a

leak in the Alphabet 

Proof of Space 

I loved your name 

absorbing Light

and Water and

this is the Way

we’ll be told 

our Mothers

are dead

Dylan Smith is serializing a novella-length fiction thing called Crayon Barn Chris and plants flowers for money in Brooklyn, NY.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

Wrong Currencies

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By Sy Holmes

I stood next to Julia, holding a portion of Lou’s ashes in a Dixie cup. The air was calm, and it was cold, but not snowing yet. We were in a scrubby half-acre out behind Lou’s friend’s house, near Rochester. It was short on views, but my late father-in-law had claimed it was his favorite place on earth. He had hunted deer here. He could sit in his tree stand, drink Black Velvet, and be at peace. No memories of 9/11. No stress from the firehouse. No kids asking him for money. No cops bringing his drunk wife home. Just him, a rifle, a pint, and the deer that sometimes decided to show up. It was beautiful. He wanted his cremains scattered here. 

“Dixie cups?” I had asked Julia. 

“What the hell else are we supposed to scatter him out of, Ben?” 

“I don’t know.” 

I really didn’t. Maybe they made special ash-scattering cups. I had always assumed that was something the funeral home would give you on the house.

“Ben, baby,” she was talking slowly, like I was a kid in her second-grade class, “we’re giving him the best we can.”

“Yeah, I know, but I used to drink Sunny D out of these after church.”

“We’re doing the best we can.”

“I know, babe, I know. He’d just think it was funny too, probably.”

“I don’t think it’s funny, Ben. He’s my father. He’s dead. We’re honoring his memory.”

“I know, I know.”

Lou had been a man dedicated to his college rock. On late-night shifts in the ‘80s, when there was nothing else going on, he’d call radio stations until he became caller number five or whatever and win records. Eventually a couple of them had to ban him. His wife got herself banned from the local Chinese place, the school where she worked as a teacher’s aid, and most of the bars in Queens. His kids had gone to Catholic schools. It wasn’t a bad life, he’d say. I was from South Carolina, which was close enough to Georgia for him, so he always told me about how much he loved R.E.M. Murmur, Fables, and Automatic were classics, of course, but his favorite album was Monster.

 I’d come up to his retirement place – the house in small-town Pennsylvania – on Christmas and sit in the garage with him, listening to it as he got drunk and nodded along. He had the album on a moderately-scratched CD. Some friends I have are all about sound quality, fancy speakers. Not Lou. Lou was a man for the people. If the boys from Athens repeated a couple lines, that was alright with him. He wanted “Strange Currencies” played at his funeral. It felt weird holding him in a paper cup next to a picture of him, young and thin in his FDNY turnouts, CD player ready to go on the leaning folding table.

We were all going to walk around the woods, sprinkle out his ashes, then reconvene for the final goodbye. I split off from Julia and wandered, sprinkling the ashes into a bush here, in some moss there, trying not to create little piles of Lou everywhere. I loved the man. I don’t want to make light of his memorial. It was hard looking at Julia through the trees, trying to do the same thing. I liked to think Lou would think it was ridiculous. I liked to think he was looking down on me from somewhere. It made it easier to cope with the fact that he was gone, and this was all I could do about it.

We all made it out of the trees. There was a tasteful trash can for the Dixie cups. I crushed mine and put it in my pocket, promising myself that I would burn it in our backyard later. Hell, I might take the whole bag back in the car with Julia. Just her and me and the cups contaminated with the remains of her father. I would build a bonfire and hope the HOA didn’t bitch. 

Mikey, Julia’s younger brother, was standing by the table. He was wearing a black suit with a black shirt, a red tie to round it out. He was ready. Ready to play the disc. Ready to inform me that it was time to leave an Italian restaurant. I was in no state to judge Mikey’s fashion choices. I was freezing my ass off, an old down coat over my blazer. When you’re thinking about an outdoor memorial service, you really never consider that no one is going to lug fine wooden furniture out to the woods, or that maybe your dumbass family and friends won’t look like a Brooks Brothers catalog. You never think about Dixie cups and the fact that it isn’t going to be the classiest thing on earth unless you’re mob-connected. It’s hard to fuck up R.E.M., though, unless you decide to play “Everybody Hurts.” At least Lou could have that. 

Mikey pressed play. I was waiting for the feedback. I could almost see Lou, drunk and leaning his head back, tapping his foot, smiling. Instead I got the click and piano riff of the song after it, “Tongue,” the band’s ode to the cunnilingus, desperate yearning, and the pain of feeling like a last-resort lay. As I heard Michael Stipe’s falsetto start, I tried to bury my face in my hands and act like I was overcome with emotion. It didn’t work. I was cackling, man, not a shred of dignity left. 

“Ben,” Julia hissed at me, “this was the song he wanted. I don’t get it, either, but could you stop being an ass for five fucking minutes?”

I’m sorry, Lou, we fucked it all up. I should’ve known. You should’ve known. I hope you’d have done the same. 

Sy Holmes is a writer from western North Carolina. He lives in Montana with other people’s dogs.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

If we make it through December

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By Sheldon Birnie

Some of the neighbourhood dads are planning a trip out of town to harvest Christmas trees. 

A little jaunt to the great outdoors sounded swell, just tickety-boo. Pocket flash full of rye, maybe sneak a toke or two after the kids run ahead. Good clean fun. Only we got this giant fake tree off my wife’s parents like 10 years ago, when they were downsizing. Seven feet tall, big fucker. I’m spitefully committed to putting the son of a bitch up every year until all it’s plastic needles fall off and it’s just a metal skeleton, or I die, whichever comes first. 

I send our regrets. Leave another one to grow out there in the orderly wilds of southern Manitoba. Maybe next time, I tell ‘em. Sure thing, dudes. Sure thing.

Every year, when we set this big bastard up in December and take it down again in January, we vacuum up at least a cup, maybe two, of green little plastic needles. But it doesn’t show. This thing might as well have come outta the box yesterday, fresh off a boat from China and a transcontinental shipping container ride by rail to the middle of fuckin nowhere.

At least the kids still get a real kick outta setting the thing up. Pulling out the bins of decorations – some as old as my wife and I, some older, even – and dressing the tree. Seasonal tunes playing in the background. The classics. Please, daddy, don’t get drunk this Christmas. I try to soak it all in, but it isn’t always easy. Merry Christmas, I don’t wanna fight tonight. They’ll be grown before I know it, uninterested or feigning so in all this seasonal mumbo-jumbo, and then they’ll be off on their own and it’ll be time for my wife and I to downsize ourselves. If we make it through December.

The tree, I’ve no doubt, will still be standing. An offgassing ghost of Christmases past. Unless we suffer a house fire or sewer backup in the meantime. Maybe I can pass it on to one of the kids, once they’re grown. Keep the tradition alive. Will they still celebrate Christmas, as the world spirals inevitably into climate catastrophe? At least the bulbs burning upon its boughs are LED.

And they do look lovely, late at night when the rest of the house is sleeping, all the lights out but one I read by. A tall dark rum with a splash of coke for colour close at hand. But most nights I’m not reading. No Chuck Dickens for me. I’m just staring at the tree – lights twinkling, sparkling, anytime my eyes tear up – until the morning comes yet again.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, dad, and beer league hockey player from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. 

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

Tiny

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By David Williamson

The day Rosie was sick and stayed home from school, her daddy stayed too. He worked from his home office and sat in his chair and clicked on his laptop and looked at reports. Every few minutes his hand reached down and ruffled Buck’s golden doggy ears. Automatic, unthinking affection. 

Because he had to work most of the day, Rosie could do whatever she wanted. All morning she streamed musicals on her tablet. When her eyes dried out and started to itch, she switched off her tablet and plugged it into the charging station in the kitchen. 

She pulled a near-full gallon of milk out of the fridge, poured four giant glugs into a plastic salad bowl, squeezed eight seconds of chocolate syrup into the milk, and whisked it up until it frothed. She put the bowl on the ground, crouched on all fours, and lapped it up like Buck would do with his water, but it didn’t make her feel like a dog.

Rosie grew tired. 

Her bed faced the windows in her room, but too much sun came through for her to sleep. It cut chaotic scraps of light all over her bed like the throw-away parts of a paper snowflake. 

She gathered up a thick quilt, her pillow, and armfuls of her stuffed animal friends – Night-Night Bunny, Team Owl, Ogre, Jelly, others – and carried them into the bathroom, lined the tub with them and climbed in. The curtain screeched as she closed it. She lay in the tub thinking about chasing squirrels in the backyard until she fell asleep. 

When she woke up, the first thing she saw was a giant chrome cobra hanging over her. She shrieked, then remembered she made a bed in the tub, and the cobra was just the showerhead. She climbed out of the tub and called for her daddy. He didn’t answer even when she knocked on the closed door to his office. 

She moved like a ghost through the hallways, down the stairs, in and out of rooms.

Daddy, where are you? bounced off the walls. 

She ran back to the office and threw open the door.  Her daddy’s chair was gone. Where his desk should have been was a cardboard box instead, sealed with rainbow-colored tape. 

The insides of her body rattled. She floated through the house again, calling Daddy! but there was no Daddy, and – a thing she hadn’t noticed a moment before – there was no furniture. No pictures on the walls. No charging station in the kitchen. No tablet. A house emptied of everything but her and the box. 

She went to her daddy’s office and picked up the box. The rattling in her body, now a steady vibration. Her fingers trembled so the tape was hard to peel at first, but once she got a corner free, it came off in colorful strips. 

Inside was a miniature stuffed version of herself. She and the tiny Rosie even wore the same clothes: purple pajama pants and a t-shirt that read “Good Vibes Only.” The tiny Rosie clasped a rolled-up piece of paper in her tiny, stuffed-toy hands.

The real, life-sized Rosie unrolled the paper and read the message typed on her father’s official letterhead. 

Dearest Rosie,

I looked for you but couldn’t find you. Just this miniature stuffed version of you in the tub. I looked for you in your closet and in the crawl space. I looked for you in the attic and inside Buck’s doghouse in the backyard. I called your name, but you didn’t answer. I looked for you in the linen closet and the small cupboard where only your little body could fit. I looked for you in the sofa cushions and in the trunk of the car. I looked for you in the neighbors’ houses and under their beds and in their cupboards. I called the police, and they looked for you in the sewers and the woods and the tree forts that the neighborhood kids build. They looked for you at the school and the playground and at the bottom of the pool at the community center. They looked for you inside of wells, as children your size can fall into them, but you weren’t anywhere.

I don’t know how I could have missed you. Why did you leave? It’s been so long. I’ve gone now, still looking for you. I miss you terribly. 

Lots of love,

Daddy

He signed the letter in his official-looking signature. 

Rosie felt too sad to cry. She rolled the letter back up and hugged the tiny Rosie. Then she went downstairs, opened the front door, and walked into the yard. The grass under her feet was soft and fine like Buck’s doggy fur. The giant maple tree with leaves that caught fire in the autumn was now a thick column of knotted yarn. Wisps of batting poked out where the knitted bark came loose. Buck curled up in the corner of the yard, billowy and still. His eyes, hard disks of glass. The neighbors’ houses were enormous downy things that looked as soft as marshmallows. The sky was an unrolled bolt of felt. Clouds of stuffing hung down from fishing lines, and the sun was a bright golden pillow. 

Everything was stuffed except for her body. She felt the bones inside her arms, the tremors running through her muscles. The organs inside her hardened and squirmed as if she were hungry. 

She cradled the stuffed version of herself, lay down on the fluffy grass, and shut her eyes. Moments later she fell asleep and dreamed of her daddy at his desk, clicking away on his laptop, his head, inches from the monitor. His lips muttered words, but she couldn’t tell what he was saying. She called out to him from the doorway, but whatever words each said never reached the other. Their speech came out too softly. Whispers in cotton.

David Williamson is a writer living and working in Richmond, VA with with his family and a whole bunch of animals. Williamson’s stories are forthcoming or have been published in Short Story, Long, X-R-A-Y, BULL, Maudlin House, HAD, and others.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

I Want to Tell Secrets to the Rhythm in Your Bones

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By Leigh Chadwick

You put your leftover orgasms in a Tupperware container in the back of the fridge while I recycle the night on the futon. I spend the weekend in your weather. It’s good, the sounds you make before breakfast. The sounds after. Outside, snow covers what snow is meant to cover. I dream you dressed in all white on billboards skyscrapers tall. You, all glow. You, a halo covered in snow. You, talking in touch. I always get turned on watching you put the moon to sleep. I’ve got a silly feeling about my silly feelings, so watch me get drunk in your wilderness, fall asleep beneath a blanket of linden, and wake up before my alarm to tell secrets to the rhythm in your bones. I never finish my dinner because your thighs are my favorite dessert. You, the shape of last night’s clothes strewn across the floor of the Comfort Inn. You, the tavern filled with smoke signals. You, the tambourine stuck to my chest while I use my tongue to build a karaoke bar along your ribs. You, the dim lights before last call. You, all hips pointing south as I crawl toward the closest mirage.

Leigh Chadwick‘s most recent poetry collection is Sophomore Slump (Malarkey Books, 2023). 

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

I Ate Around the Loss and Was Still Hungry

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By Joshua Vigil

Gordo pushes a damp kitchen towel into my hands. Shaped like a cylinder, it’s vegan banana bread. He does this every week, ever since we first met. Gordo believes an alien invasion is impending. He says we should eat up. Am I fattening myself for the aliens, or for him? Gordo tosses another bunch of bananas into his shopping cart. Gordo thinks that love is a lie. I tell him friendships are just as deceitful. My pants stop fitting and so I buy new ones. Gordo is a little ghost. A bed sheet draped over his body, thin slits for eyes from which blood drips. I tell Gordo this is the only time I’ve ever enjoyed Halloween, then I have the dentist fix my five cavities—he does this every year now, since the gifts started coming. It’s always the same five cavities. Is he a bad dentist but a good businessman? Once I asked Gordo, Would you still be my friend if I was a capitalist pig? Gordo said he’d marry me right then and there. I was dreaming of squat brownstones in Brooklyn not far from the water. He was dreaming of pigs. I start wearing sweats and only sweats. When I’m not home, Gordo slides the bread through the mail slot. I scoop it, flattened, and eat it watching  the news. The floorboards creak as I hobble past now. The downstairs neighbors say cracks have formed on their ceiling. I tell them mine is water-stained, and what’s the difference? Gordo says the aliens are coming any day. He pushes two loaves through my mail slot. Gordo snaps at me in the car, on the way to the movies, after the movies, in the parking lot, at the potluck. He’s getting evicted. Gordo snapped at me once in bed—this was before, when we were still together. He has anger problems and drops people easily. Will we be friends for the entirety of our lives? Three loaves fall to the floor. I unwrap them, pick at them, leave them for the flies. On the phone, Gordo is terse. He doesn’t know where he’ll live. I ask him if it even matters if the aliens are coming. He snaps—this isn’t a joke, this is my life. I am teaching for the first time this semester. A student kept Mick hostage last year. Another made sexual advances towards Lily. My students look at me with pity. It’s a look I’ve seen in Gordo. His loaves of banana bread pile up and pile up. He says the aliens arrive tomorrow. I should really consider eating more.

Joshua Vigil lives in the Pioneer Valley. His work has appeared in Hobart, HAD, Maudlin House, and elsewhere.

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Crayon Barn Chris

IV

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By Dylan Smith

If only on a cellular or like nuclear level I could embody my love for Alma in every moment through all of time while making love with her literally everywhere forever, I thought, maybe then in my body I might feel alright—but that’s when I came barreling out of a blackout, and I was sitting on a barstool next to Chris. Uh-oh, I thought. Haha. Holy shit. The length of the old oak bartop trembled with the energy of a newly felled tree and in my body, spirit, in my mind, I felt like a finger painting. Or like a piece of birthday cake mushed in barn dirt and glitter, with like alphabet confetti and crayons for candles burning purple pink black and red—like something smoldering, deformed, smeared. 

I’m here to get my car back, I thought. My mission, my purpose. To confess my love for Alma to Chris. 

A new beer shone in Chris’s hands, in those carefully washed immaculate hands, but I could tell from his eyes that we must have taken drugs. My glass, of course, was empty. Smudged. I had a sneaky look around. Last thing I remember I was upstate, taping Art’s taillight back together with Diane—so what happened? Art’s moonshine, maybe. Definitely. I felt Art’s flask in my paint-stained pocket. Now it felt like morning. Chris’s uppers were what woke me up. Those famous little blue ones. Thank God, I thought. I worshiped them. I found the only window in the bar, a basement window way high up with the sunlight shining through. Long, golden rays of it. The bar was dark wood. Pressed suits. It was happy hour. Golden hour. Somewhere in Manhattan—and it was evening. I felt like a hollow bone, the air-conditioned air like faint music moving through me. Humming, humming—what happened? Chris was waiting on something. The molecules around his head whirled in the mirror behind the bar. Keys to my Volvo on the bartop. My cash and credit card too. But I sensed a serious tension. The bartender came back around. A halo lit his loose silk shirt. I ordered another beer. Chris had our father’s eyes, eyes like boiling water. I looked down at the duffle bag at my feet. Hallelujah, I whispered. My notebook was in there. My Chris poems—my secrets. I felt his eyes on the side of my neck. Chris’s eyes were wild, trembling, whirlpooling, blue. 

“I’m pretty high right now,” I said. 

“No shit, man. I’m daunted too. But you were right in the middle of something.”

“Right. I was. I remember.”

“Mid-story, man. Like mid-sentence. Something about Art’s glasses.”

“Right. Sorry—I spaced out. Must have lost my trail of thought.”

At this Chris laughed. Or sort of scoffed. “We’ve got a thing called trains now, mountain man. You’ve been in the woods too long.”

I wasn’t getting it. 

“It’s train of thought, man. Not trail.”

The bartender came back with my beer. An angel lit by a loop of light. My brain throbbed loud blood, nervous fear-pumped blood. Chris’s pills had scraped at my eyes, my skull, it’s sockets. I clasped my hands in a pious way. Closed my eyes. Pictured Alma’s. 

Honey-colored moons. Depths of golden light. 

The bartender placed a candle between me and Chris. The yellow flame wiggled. Soon it would be dark, I thought. The city would come alive in the dark. Maybe I could too. Alma had completed the shape of my dreams, my future, my face. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. Oh God. I’d walked this city like a thin miracle once, I thought. Poems and paintings and people. Fearless. Alive. A part. What happened? I looked dislocated, incomplete, depleted. I had to come clean to Chris. I knew it was the right thing to do. I downed three quarters of my beer in one go, reaching for an ancient effect—but it was gone. Nothing worked. I was destined for disastrous, disgusting things. Dirty. Disconnected. I longed to go back home to my cave, my shack. To return to the beginning of time. To the center, the candle—Alma’s eyes. The cave. 

“Art’s glasses, man,” Chris said. 

“Okay, right. Sorry. I remember. It was probably just that I wore them. Wore Art’s glasses as a joke. The joke being that I’ve started to sort of absorb him. That I’m training to become the newer better, younger Art.”

“You’re not bored of it yet. You still have fun following him around.”

Chris asked questions as if they were statements. It annoyed me. 

“Definitely not bored, Chris. No.”

“What are you working on then, man. Tell me something specific.”

“Well we’re mowing lawns right now, mostly. But a lot of trees fell this spring from the rain. We handled that. Now at night we work on Alma’s doors. I mean those farmhouse doors—we took them up to the barn where the beer is. To patch the rot holes. Remember? Same red paint as the barn. Huge rot holes in the wood from the rain.”

Chris sipped his beer. The tiniest little sip.

“That’s when I started wearing Art’s glasses,” I said. “Drunk at night in the barn. But Art’s glasses are destroyed, is the point. Totally chipped up, chipped thin. Just like Alma’s doors. I bet that’s what I meant to say. Art told me it’s been a decade since he got new lenses. Ten years of carpentry work and trees, and sometimes metal shavings shoot up off the saws and chip away at his lenses. Little by little bit. Point is, it’s a miracle the old man can see.”

A long pause. Another tiny sip of his beer. Long pauses were common with Chris. Alma called them pregnant pauses. They annoyed me. If he’d only just take a bigger sip of his beer. I picked up the key to my car. Held it to the light. It reminded me of Chris’s scar—I looked for it in the mirror behind the bar. Barely noticeable in the candlelight, but it was there. The width of a key. Right in the center of his head. Chris’s mother, April, she’d left him up on the kitchen counter, playing with a ring of keys. In one of those plastic car seat things. Bottle of vodka under the sink. Chris rocked himself off the counter with the keys—and thwack. White tile. Blue face. Blood red blood. This was how our father told it. Chris was too young to remember. The key almost got to his brain, our father said. Swollen eyes. Fractured skull. That’s when my mom came into the picture. Quick divorce—quicker marriage—quickest me, etc. 

Later April died in a desert motel alone. Alcohol and pills. Chris had just turned ten. 

I wrestled a half-breath up out of my chest, and put the key to my car in my pocket. The bar had grown more crowded, and the window had started to darken. The bar felt like an airplane taking off, the way it was shaking and shaking—but now it lifted. Chris cleared his long thin throat. I felt the question come before he formed it. Here it comes, I thought. Hold on, Bill. Strap in. Here it comes. 

I felt like a little bird. 

“So have you spent any time with Alma?”

Chris’s eyes became two black circles in the mirror behind the bar. I looked away, down, and deep into the flame of that candle. A darkness opened in the center of it, and my life unfurled in there for a while. Black thoughts like a road tumbled out. My fugitive love for Alma. I had every intention of telling Chris the truth. Of coming clean. The road opened onto my future, I thought. Nothing in my way. Nothing to hide—I rode it right up onto a bright horizon. The sky inside me sparkled, it was my future. To tell the truth. And at the end of the truth was my freedom. 

“No,” I lied. “No—I mean, I see her up there in the garden a lot. You know, alone. But no. We don’t really ever spend that much time together.”

I finished the rest of my beer. Haha. My future folded right back up. 

“I saw her yesterday,” Chris said.

“Wait—what?” My reaction was not nearly calm enough. “Hold on—when? Saw her like how?”

Chris looked at me for a long time. 

Like a really, really long time. 

All Chris said was, “Yesterday, man. In Brooklyn.”

“But saw her like how?”

“Do you remember that guy she was seeing before me?”

“Not really,” I said. “The film guy?”

“Right. We went to his documentary together. The one about the old fisherman living alone on that island. Alone in that church. You remember. That film guy.”

“But what about him?”

“I saw Alma walk into a movie with him.”

“Where, though—are you sure?”

“Just a glimpse. But yeah, man. It was her.”

I felt sick. My vision shook. I thought about going to the bathroom, but I didn’t trust myself to stand up right. I was blowing it. Chris could see straight through me. Betrayal. Calamity. Death and doom and all that. I could still change my mind, I thought. There was still time, like right now—I still had time to surrender. To the moment. To confess my betrayal—no, my love—my love for Alma was pure. Just come clean, Bill. Right now. Come on, man. You have nothing to hide. Just do it. Come clean, Bill, this is your last chance—but then we were up on the street. 

Bury me, I thought. God, bury me directly underground. 

Above the bar Chris turned to face me, and I flinched. The last bit of daylight beamed off a tower, and cast him in this strange green secondary light. Chris laughed. He pulled something out of his tote bag, then the light was gone. A regular summer night. We stood there staring at each other for a while. Two stones in a stream of people. A current. The two of us totally still. 

I thought Chris would be holding a knife or gun or like some kind of crowbar or something, but it was a gift. A long box wrapped in red paper. Red bow. Red card. Chris pulled me in for a hug.

“Happy Birthday, Bill. Thank you for everything, man.”

My birthday. Haha. Holy shit. Chris was right. Somehow I’d forgotten all about it. 

“Just put this box straight into your duffle bag, man. Open it later. Let’s try and have ourselves a night.”

Chris made me buy us both CitiBikes, two of those crazy gray electric ones with the engines that go quietly vroom through the city like cars. I stuffed the red box into my duffle bag. Noticed my poems and notebook were still there, my secrets, then I nestled my bag into the bike’s plastic basket. Chris led us downtown. Second Avenue. Toward the fountain. Young rich drunk couples leapt into the street like deer and whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, Chris and I curved and swerved all around them. We stopped in front of a deli for beer. Chris said he’d watch my bike. I picked up two six packs, paid with cash, then came back out. A dark blue night in New York. Back on the bikes. Back on the street. Chris howled up at the half-moon, a liquid neon rainbow blur. I howled too—and we were laughing. 

We walked our bikes across the square, beers clinking around in my basket. There was the arch. The fountain. I hadn’t ever noticed these trees before. Chris passed out more pills. Beyond the fountain was a catalpa tree the same size and shape as Diane’s. Its leaves looked blue and fleshy and wet. We sat on a bench made of chiseled rock. Washed the pills down with beer and more beer. Chris told me about the job he’d landed at a museum uptown. An old professor of his was the director. Chris got paid to guard the art. 

“And I’m seeing somebody new,” Chris said. 

I passed him Art’s flask. Opened him another beer. 

“I’m happy to hear that, Chris. Really. You have no idea.”

“Sarah’s her name, man. She’s uptown. Near the museum. This great big building a couple blocks from the park. You just wait, man. You’ll love her.”

The half-moon hung high above the fountain. A kid in a star-spangled cape wrote CURRENT on the ground in red chalk, and I started to feel a little better. The pills, the moonshine, the beer. Sarah. Suddenly my secret felt totally manageable. Maybe Chris had already moved on. My innocent love for Alma—maybe he wouldn’t even care. Chris talked about at the museum. How he planned to work his way up to a more powerful position. To be in charge of the parties, Chris said. Fundraisers. Events. Money to acquire more art. CURRENT. What a wonderful word! The fountain unfolded like a flower. Electricity. Water. The moment. I tried hard not to think of the film guy. I pushed the film guy violently out of my mind. I was really starting to feel much better. People sat around in the fountain spray, spun circles around it laughing, singing, dancing. The square had its own rhythm. Its own pulse, like a body, I thought. Everybody growing up said Chris had Vision. Always looking up ahead. Radiating light. Making new things happen. I followed him around wherever he went. Hung back behind him, watching. My teachers said I liked to reflect. A man in a suit painted silver and gold sat on a bench beside us, smoking. No longer a sculpture of himself, I thought. He looked so loose and breezy. Chris told me about his favorite painting at the museum. This portrait of St. Francis by Bellini. “I’ll take you back uptown tomorrow to see it,” Chris said. “We can meet Sarah up there too—the Volvo’s parked out in front of her apartment.”

Chris followed my eyes. The statue guy smiled. Exhaled smoke. Chris waved. “Poor dude’s covered in bird shit,” Chris said. I touched my own bird shit stain, the one from my blue bird upstate. My blessing, I thought. My gift. I was glad hadn’t come clean to Chris. I felt wave after wave of drug-fueled relief. Moonshine. Haha. Fuck this film guy, I thought. I would win Alma back. I would stop doing drugs. Stop drinking. Whatever Alma wanted, I thought, I would do it. I had Power. Divinity. Control. I felt like a miracle again. I’ve been blessed, I thought. Alma’s grace. Our love. My secret. 

Chris and I biked over the bridge into Brooklyn. Orange blue sky. Purple black blue water. We shot through the air like shooting stars. I felt just like Evil Knievel. Our father’s favorite. I looked down at the birds flying home, the sail boats sailing on the surface of the river. Moonlight is reflected light, I thought. The city lights rippled in the water. 

We re-docked the bikes, like boats. 

A bookstore not far from Chris’s place. 

Rainbow lights. A courtyard. A tall brick wall. 

A couple poets, Chris whispered. A reading.

But I couldn’t pay attention to anything at all. I felt very very, very high. I got hooked into staring at the bones of the poets’ hands, got fixated on the fact that there were cells that made up the bones in hands and that each poet had cells deep within the center of the bones of their bodies, their hands, and I looked around. Everybody had bones. And I fixated on the fact that there was marrow or something in the bones of this one particular poet’s hands, and I concentrated on the nuclei of the cells that made up the marrow of her bones and her poem was boring and looking at the brick wall behind the poet and her reading of this boring poem, I became conscious of the density of the bricks, and of the atoms at the center of each thick brick, and I thought of a thin yellow falling maple leaf twirling up out of a tree in late autumn. Then the red of Art’s barn at dawn in winter. A shard of his busted taillight, shining. The poet finished her poem and then read another, better poem about muddy water. About all the colors of the rainbow mushed together to make a muddy wet brown, about the cold wet density of the wind above a creek in the morning, and I realized there were probably pipes full of blue water behind the bricks that made the wall behind the poet, reading. Why can we see through clear blue water, I wondered. Through glass? I remembered my reflection in the blue sloshing water of the toilet on the bus ride down. The only thing I remembered. Art says mirrors reflect back the colors we see in the light, and I thought back to the mirror behind the bar where earlier I lied to Chris. Moonlight is reflected light. And I thought about Chris’s scar.  

Chris looked drunk. Haha. He turned to look at me too. Like looking into a mirror, I thought. Everything was fine. I laughed. Chris laughed too. He patted my knee with the bones of his hand. He had no idea, I thought. No clue. I was going to turn my whole life around. Alma loved me back. I knew she did. And now I had a secret. Something to keep. That’s what I was going to do, I thought. I would do anything. My love for Alma. I would keep it. 

“Where’s your duffle bag, man?” Chris whispered. 

The rainbow lights swayed, then flickered. 

I looked down and around at my feet. 

Uh-oh, I thought. Haha. Holy shit. 

For money Dylan Smith plants flowers on rooftops in New York and has a website with links to other stories online. Oh and check out The Other Almanac. A piece of Dylan’s will be published in print with them this fall.