They stood waiting to cross the intersection as a line of cars lumbered downtown. Bobby fingered the phone in his pocket and glanced over at Gabriella. Gabriella was in the middle of a story about their friends Jessica and Raul. They’d been in couples therapy for almost six months. Raul had become a better listener, which had made Jessica happier, but Raul was happier too.
“With enough effort,” Gabriella said, “relationships can improve.”
Bobby turned his head to watch a cyclist shoot past, pedals whirling.
“It’s amazing,” Bobby said. “Bike riders go so fast on crowded city streets, much faster than cars.” He stroked the hairs of his tiny goatee. “Why don’t more people get around on bikes? Europeans are just smarter than Americans in that way.…
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For someone who bragged about their off-campus apartment, hers sure had a lot more roaches than mine. A small red one skittered near my feet, and I jumped back.
Lainey opened the door. “Hey girl,” she said. The phrase lacked its usual cheeriness.
“Hey,” I said, walking in.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “We needed to talk.”
She was being all quiet and squirmy, like the tension in the air caused her physical discomfort. She didn’t just express her emotions, she wore them, like a flashy accessory that everybody had to see.
Because we were fighting, I didn’t know if I should assume my typical spot in her green armchair, so I stood awkwardly beside it. I watched her shuffle into her kitchen.
“Well, do you want anything?…
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We stole a gun from the safe and went out to the fields, where the moon lay like a serrated wound on the face of the night sky, and pointed the boom end at cows. Dumb sentinels of pastures overgrazed and nearing depletion. They sat on all fours like a scarecrow pushed over. My buddy held them in his sight for a long time, slowly breathing through his whole body, his skin a membrane he’d been trying to shirk off, and he said to me, almost a whisper, bang.
But that wasn’t good enough for me. When I got big I would go out to bars and sit in the corner and stare out at the shifting forms, men and women in all different kinds of couplings looped together, blended into the same silhouette, and I would try and project my own face onto theirs.…
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“Your beard is telling me you care about the planet,” the blonde with the clipboard said.
Sylvester just kept walking, and he tried not to sneer.
He did love the Earth, but not in the trivial way she did. He loved it all, loved it down to the nickel-iron core; wondered, at night, if the center really was a high-pressure crystal, perhaps a gigantic diamond.
Her love, or concern, he expected, was only for the skin of the planet, the puddles that were the seas, and the froth of atmosphere above; and perhaps the cuter quadrupeds.
People, he thought, are so shallow.
The crowds at the corner, waiting for the pedestrian scramble, had him asking himself if you could divide people by class and politics simply by observing their coffee cups cross-referenced with their shoes.…
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Aaron Christianson sat absent-mindedly rubbing the cast on his right arm as Mr. Grimes, the Middle School principal, finished up his devotional to begin the second semester.
“Boys, it’s so wonderful to have y’all back with us. I like holidays as much as anyone, but I also miss you young men when we aren’t in session. For you 8th graders, this is your last semester of Middle School. Make the most of it. I want to finish today with a ‘Christmas Miracle.’ I’ve gotten Andrew Smitherman’s permission to tell it.
“Some of you will remember that Andrew lost his backpack right before exams. Well, two members of the Ames maintenance staff found the backpack during their big cleanup over the holidays. I don’t know where they found it, but they turned it in to Lost and Found. …
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He heard the woman in one of the seats in First Class say, “Really, there’s nothing I can think of that’s more ridiculous than a trilobite. I mean, just who do they think they’re dealing with?”
That being more than enough of that, he crammed his earbuds firmly back in place.
At fifty-two, the man – who, for reference, was seated in the middle aisle, one row in front of the bomb — could afford to sit in First Class but loathed the people in First Class. He remembered stories of Paul Neumann buying all the seats around his, for privacy. This man didn’t have the adoring fans problem, but he sympathized.
His son kept getting little cancers.
The man spent several minutes familiarizing himself with the touchscreen, deciding what rate the coffee should be coming.…
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Sarah only drinks whiskey when she grades. She is otherwise not allowed. By herself. By her friends. Sarah, you become such an asshole when you drink whiskey, they say. It is true; they are true friends.
Sarah drinks whiskey because she has to sometimes not be in love with her students. Because she has to sometimes not be in love with herself. The end of the semester is hard, she tells herself. The end of life is hard, she remembers the hospice nurse saying. They took turns feeding her father morphine and little sips of whiskey and now and then the tiniest nibs of dark chocolate.
Sarah has had to explain to some students that failure is not death. Or is not a big death. Or is not the big death.…
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