They start innocuous, as playful mispronunciations of my surname. I blink and the interactions have escalated to being pinned against a wall and pummelled repeatedly by Jon, Bret, and Joanne while the trio shout at me in unison, collectively demanding the answer to BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM as I whimper the “nowhere important” I think they want to hear before realising, too late, that only informational specificity might spare me from a broken nose or bruised ribs.
Does anything good come in three? Really? That’s what we say. It’s a crowd. The Wise Men. The time periods: past, present, future. The fundamental qualities of the universe: time, space, matter.
But just as often, three’s a hindrance. An obstacle, subject to chance. Rock, paper, and scissors.…
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I guess I hadn’t been paying too close attention. One day everything was normal, the next it seemed as if Woody had aged 30 years. His eyes were as bright as ever, but most of his hair had turned grey overnight. His walk was much slower and his taste for any type of food had all but disappeared. Then one night I noticed he completely ignored his favorite meal of steak and baked potato, preferring to just veg out on the couch. It was obvious that things were far from being right. He had stopped communicating in his normal fashion and all of his movements had a slow, almost exaggerated, motion. He didn’t moan or complain, just slept a lot and didn’t move too much. I had seen these signs too many times to ignore them.…
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Most everything gleamed because gleam means clean and hospitals are supposed to be clean. I’d finished with the tests but my doctor wouldn’t let me leave. That’s a bad sign and he knew it but he couldn’t reel it back, so in some sort of med-school compensation he offered a nicer room. I jumped on the deal but the room, as hospital rooms go, was a bit bigger but not any nicer, so I went for a walk. He allowed it, but only after saying not too far. And the bad signs just kept coming.
I left to look for the cafeteria, not because I was hungry, just curious if it gleamed like everything else. In the hallway white scrubs jostled toward me and I asked for directions.…
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When Mina scrubbed a dirty toilet bowl, she didn’t think: shit. When she changed sheets with islands of stains or tossed wastebaskets with snotty tissues and bloody tampons, she didn’t think: disgusting. She just did her job, her mind elsewhere—which was why, throwing open the curtains in one of the rooms at the end of her shift and seeing the parking lot covered with snow, the in-ground pool a large white postage stamp, she was only mildly surprised.
In the hallway, she asked Renata how long it had been snowing, and Renata, wringing out her mop, said, “You no see? All day long.”
Some of Renata’s mop water splashed out of the bucket. Her black eyes flared, lips flattened.
“Good night,” Mina said. “See you tomorrow.”…
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Freedom tasted like chunks of strawberry ice cream sliding down our newly-licensed forearms onto the leather car seats we promised my mother we’d keep clean. You screamed every time you merged onto the highway, the exclamatory shape of your mouth ringed with sweet berries and cream. The volume knob on the radio turned sticky from our iced fingers turning up the music so we could shout cheesy lyrics at each other, letting songs about living while we’re young get lost in the wind. We would fight over who got to drive to our weekly ice cream trip, but I let you win most of the time. You looked better driving my mom’s old minivan anyways.
Irresponsibility was whirled into the rocky road ice cream I ate at the Fourth of July party to try to mask the cheap taste of vodka searing down my throat.…
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On my way to the countryside, I pedaled through what’s known as Hollywood, a cluster of shacks at the edge of town. They listed to the side, had gaps between the sideboards and looked almost as if a stout summer breeze could flatten them. It was said some still had dirt floors.
As I approached the place closest to the street, I could see that the yard was a mess of weeds, patches of dirt and concrete yard ornaments broken beyond recognition. There was a mongrel with swollen teats and a guy sitting on a lawn chair. He had a cigarette pack rolled in the sleeve of his T-shirt and appeared to be soaking his feet in an inflatable wading pool. A young girl in a feed sack dress was playing hopscotch by a wash tub at the side of the road.…
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He texted his landlord the lie that he had Covid, even though he knew Ben was away on a road trip. But Ben could come back at any minute. Maybe he’d grown a little paranoid. But the apartment had gotten that bad. In the kitchen, he had put out the apple cider vinegar and dish soap for the flies the night before. Weeks too late. There were dishes in the claw foot bathtub and compost in the kitchen sink. The drain to the kitchen sink didn’t work. But he couldn’t let Ben know that, of course, because Ben would have to come into the apartment to fix it and to let him in would be to get evicted.
In the main room, a sense of paper overwhelmed the eye.…
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