The music venues that were spared have opened their doors again. I dial the number of a friend to arrange to meet at the hall at the end of the boardwalk. There’s a concert later: four acts, each renowned. It’s important to arrive there early to avoid the crowds, though I might be overthinking the whole thing. As of this date, the death toll has surpassed one million, and most people aren’t that willing to take the risk. It’s safer to catch a stream. A woman picks up, and I leave a message with her. It’s loud, and the connection is poor. She speaks with a foreign accent. People are driving mechanized vehicles on the wood or composite wood. No one has any respect anymore. Nonsense.…
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Dear new homeowner,
(Do you know that homeowner is the only instance of the word meow in the dictionary that doesn’t relate to the cat noise.)
Welcome to 163 Oak Street. Please enjoy this bottle of wine and a $50 gift certificate to Luigi’s down the street. The pizza from there is just okay, but it’s fast and cheap and it will do for the average Thursday evening dinner when your whole family has a project or meeting due the next day and everyone is cranky as hell about it.
I think you should be able to leave gifts for the people who replace you when you move. If houses had souls (and who knows, maybe they do) the gifts would ease the transition between occupants.…
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“Ahyeon-dong is a motherless neighborhood,” Mother says as she looks out the narrow window of our banjiha.[1] Half-underground, we can just make out the legs of a group of guys wobbling around and spitting on the street. One guy drops his cigarette, stomping on it like he’s dancing.
“Go on up to the store,” Mother says firmly. “Make sure everything’s okay up there.”
From my mattress, I run up the staircase crammed right next to me. Within moments, I’m standing behind the counter at Paddy-Go, where I stumble to find the light switch hidden behind the mini-microwave we use for our instant rice on weekday mornings. But today’s Saturday, so we’re in less of a rush, especially since we don’t have the usual herd of mothers stumbling in at five AM to buy last-minute school lunch items for their children.…
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So, this guy’s breaking my friend’s yo-yo, which has drawn considerable attention since we’ve been in the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street in New Orleans. We’re poor grad students. Won the tickets from our campus radio station. We nibbled on some homegrown psilocybin about an hour ago but agreed we felt nothing as we walked in the door.
I merely raise my eyebrows in disapproval when this guy says, “Oh MAN! No way that’s a yo-yo!” and holds his head in his hands as if he just discovered the earth was round. My friend is a kind soul and hands over the red butterfly.
I look at the guy, who’s straight out of the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer soundtrack, fucking my friend’s yo-yo up good.…
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I look up, where forgotten things go, saying, after a pause, And a robe of some kind.
The detective nods. what about his demeanor?
I look up again, Well, he seemed, I don’t know the word.
mad? angry? upset?
Those are the same things.
sad? depressed? unhappy? heavyhearted?
Heavyhearted?
disappointed.
That’s it.
he was disappointed? about what?
About everything. But also me.
how do you know?
I could feel it.
he touched you?
No. I mean, not like that. He looked at me.…
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“Okay, Jamie,” Coach says. “Four more pitches, and then I’ll have you try for a hit off the tee.”
I sit in the shade of a twisted old apple tree and watch my chubby, clumsy son struggle at the plate. My nail polish is chipped, my bare legs need a razor, and my bra squeezes a reminder that I’m 10 pounds too many.
It’s the third practice for 1st grade, coach-pitch, Little League baseball. So far everyone but Jamie has eked out a hit, a pitched hit. Even the one girl on Jamie’s 13-player team.
Coach pitches. Jamie swings and slams nothing but air. “Nice swing, bud!” Coach cheers.
Coach pitches. Jamie’s slow, wobbly bat nips a bit of the ball. A couple of boys in the dugout laugh.…
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I can see him clearly from my window, standing tall in the arena with his bodyguards, though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Whatever it was, it excited a wild roar from the audience that boomed up through the loudspeakers to the 20th floor.
I knew why they were cheering. He was one of us. He cared. He saw we had nothing.
The crowd knew that. And they liked entertainment, accepting whatever gift he offered, even a shrug of his shoulders, his fingers pointing up as he illustrated some principle that others had forgotten. It didn’t matter what he was saying. The arena could have been full of slaves battling against beasts and they would have cheered with him. Because he knew what people liked.…
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