He sat at his desk. She grated cheese in the kitchen.
As his practiced fingers danced on the keyboard, he thought about the letter in the drawer.
As ivory confetti fell into the big glass bowl, she listened to the sounds of a silent apartment. They seemed all around her, the susurrus that emanated from the walls, the more insistent hhhhhnghhhhh of the fridge, the padded pulse of the party upstairs. Even the ghosting of air from room to room.
He tried to concentrate on the screen, but the corners of his eyes tightened. The glare touched his eyes, then wrapped around his eyeballs. He tried for a minute more. And then he pulled the lid of his laptop down.
She thought she heard a sound, so she leaned sideways to peer, but all she saw was his smiling face. Tired, but smiling, as always. She looked at him for a little while, and then she pulled herself back to an upright position. And then she took a swig from the bottle of Baileys.
He could sense her looking again, but he said nothing. He wasn’t worried about what to say. He was worried about what he would say if she replied.
She grated her cheese, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
It was better to think about her, these days. He especially liked going back to their first half an hour. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he saw her: bent at the waist over the remainder bin, and then she was standing, a glossy hardcover in her hand. His name was stamped on the spine in steady block letters. Cream. His name matched her hair. He had smiled, and then filed the sentence away. It was a good line.
She teased him about that smile many times. A plastic smile any woman can kiss, only thirteen dollars and fifty cents. Most of the time she said it in an ironic voice. Unless she’s stupid enough to pay full price. She smiled now, at that memory, and at others. He used to tell her she was lucky she got to kiss the real deal for free. Her lips froze at that; within seconds there was a solid, blocky smile on her face.
He felt tiny weights lining his closed eyelids. She stopped grating, put the triangle down on its ragged side, and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. After that she just sat, staring. He burst open his eyes, and then – blinked.
He stood up, the back of his knees scraping the chair away. He looked at all the books on the shelves of his desk, and it suddenly seemed wrong that the books were stolidly in their places. He could still sense her looking; at that moment he wanted nothing more than for her to leave him alone. He looked at the books, and nursed the feeling until it grew steadily in his sternum. As it spread through his ribcage. As it leeched into the hollows at the outlines of his chest. He could feel it pause at his shoulders, and he urged it on. Just a little bit farther. But then it receded, and then it receded, and then it receded. And once it was gone it was gone, leaving behind only a strained relief. He shook his head. He suspected he would have balked at the end anyway. He did not like being noisy.
Her eyes hurt and her chest hurt. She waited a moment more, just a moment more, but nothing happened. So she blinked, and then she blinked again, and then she took a handful of cheese and stuffed it in her mouth.
He looked out into the careless flashing light of Shenton Way.
She chewed the strips of Stilton in her mouth. She thought about leaving the bowl out, just in case, but that was stupid and she was not stupid. He was not a Stilton man; never had been, and never would be. When they went into the cheese store on Third for the first time she’d told him it was a blue cheese. He’d looked at it, then said with a joke in his voice, Yet another thing in America pretending to be white, I see. And then an instant, and then he’d grimaced so she couldn’t miss it. But because he never said it again, she pretended he never had.
He turned away from the window. She swallowed and took another handful.
The letter was still in the drawer. He pushed the drawer slowly, watching the letter disappear centimeter by centimeter. And then he pulled the drawer out again. The letter was still in the drawer.
The noises were crowding her. The cheese felt ganky in her mouth, and it gummed her back teeth. She turned and spit the mouthful onto the floor, and then instantly wondered if that was too much. She felt like a fraud for acting out.
He took the letter. As he looked at the handwriting on the envelope, dominoes in mid-fall from left to right, a sound thumped in the apartment somewhere. He wondered if it was she, and then he shrugged. Nonchalantly. Suddenly feeling a little foolish, he flipped the envelope over and took out the sheets of paper. They smelled of lavender two seasons old. This time I’m arriving on the fifteenth at five in the afternoon. You better be holding a bottle of Baileys when I see you. She would have written “15th” and “5 am”, except he’d asked her once whether the entire department was sloppy. She’d said the word ‘sloppy’ was sloppy, and then she’d put on her best teenager’s voice and said, “What”. She told him her students loved her impressions. He usually refrained from replying. Or he rolled his eyes and then pulled her close.
As she threw the sodden tissues away she thought about going home. The flight had been booked, but it could be brought forward. She was looking forward to seeing her students again. She would go to the cheese store and pay a normal price for her Stiltons again, she would even look forward to apartment-hunting, to filling out forms. But like an uninvited guest a thought barged into her head and lodged itself: she wondered if he would follow her.
He stared at the cursive handwriting until the letters unlinked. Suddenly, a voice in his head said, This was the type of woman Mrs. X was: on envelopes she wrote in black block letters, but in letters she was curls and lavender scents. It was a good line. He filed it away. He had become Christopher Fucking Robison.
She stood up and took the big bowl of cheese. She cradled it in one arm as she pulled the refrigerator door, and then suddenly she paused. After a moment, she kept the door open with one foot, and then took the bowl by its rim with her free hand. She held the bowl by its rim as she slid it into the refrigerator. When she was done, she stepped into the hallway to look at him again. He was still smiling. Of course. She needed another long slow swig.
She had been holding a bottle of Baileys. He had been holding a bottle of Baileys. You can’t. Get drunk. On That Shit, was what she said, every time. Tough Chick Rapping, she called it. She was high on the adrenaline of an eighteen-hour flight, her eyes shadowed and shining. He was high on the writing of a passage he secretly loved. They were adult children, basically, and after two bottles of Baileys they fucked like adults with the enthusiasm of children. And the carelessness. He heard her giggles as he put the letter back in the drawer. He shook his head, and suddenly felt tired and in need of food.
She took one step towards him, Baileys in hand. And then another. She suddenly became aware that she was tiptoeing. On her ninth step the skin on her upper left arm twinged. She ignored it as she ignored all the other phantom pains.
He stared at it for a while, and then he took the bowl of Stilton cheese out, and dumped it, cheese and bowl, into the trashcan.
She looked at him now, him with his smiling face. She pressed her lips against the acrylic shield, against that plastic smile, feeling a little morbid. My parents’ idea, he’d said, reddening. He reddened the same way whenever he told people who his parents were. Asian parents like to keep trophies, and they like their sons to keep trophies too. She’d said, grinning, In their living rooms no less, I see. Later, when he’d told her, It isn’t the right time, it had been his mother’s voice that she heard.
He sat on the chair in the kitchen. She thought about punching the picture.
He thought of her butt on the downy cushion. She loved to sit in this chair stuffing her face with cheese. She made a face at him whenever he said that. He thought of that, and he thought of the Stilton in the trashcan. He thought of L’Ecole, and Starbucks, and Forever 21, and the East Village Cinema, and Dulce de Leche, and Kiehls’ Facial Fuel. Then he thought about Orchard Road, and char kway tiao, and durians and her revolted face, and malls connected by walkways, exhausted days and exceeded budgets, and rain thunderstorming outside on quilt blanket days. Then there was nothing left to think about. Nothing except the sullen summer past, and the hours stretched between patience and deliberate ignorance, and everything else.
She was in his room now. She had to remind herself of that. It seemed too empty to be his room. She trailed a finger across his desk, and looked around the empty room again. Through the window she could see the traffic light on Shenton Way flashing, green, green, red. She hoisted herself up his desk, wobbled to adjust her butt, and then sat watching the flashes. Every change of the light made her feel a little less – made her feel a little less.
She did it, and they had decided not to talk about it. Both of them had decided. So they filled the silence with sounds, but they couldn’t get rid of the other silence, the silence that bounced off the walls and settled on their shoulders, the silence of other people having fun, the silence of a ghost in the room with them. He heard it now too. There were more ghosts now. He could sense her, sometimes.
They had stood at that very street corner, beneath that traffic light. He’d taken her hand awkwardly while they walked home from the movie, she’d gradually slid her hand away again, his face had set in rigid impassiveness. Then, under the traffic light, while they waited, she had finally shouted, after weeks and weeks of silence. The summer was ending and the flight was only two days away, and she could not bear the thought of going home with those words still in her. You don’t want to talk about it? You think I’m afraid to shout here? I’ll shout as loud as I want, so why don’t you walk away, huh? Are you staying so you can take notes? Where’s your fucking notebook, huh? Eight years I’ve never seen you without your notebook. Where is it, huh?
They were two adults shouting like children, flinging and hurling every stone they could scrape up. He’d done his share of the shouting, and more. You’re a twenty-nine year old teenager. What did you want me to do?
Hurting. You’re a remainder-bin writer who underlines errors in other people’s books.
Pushing. Yeah. Tell me again, what are those files you’re hiding away in that folder in your laptop? Yeah, I thought so. At least I took a chance once.
Is that why you went to Paolini’s book signing? Is that why you told him about the “continuity mistake”? A nineteen year-old and he doesn’t even know you exist. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Stilton cheese? Stilton. Cheese? Stilton cheese and Baileys? Who does that? That’s fucked up, you know that? And you think wearing Donna Karen with J-Crew makes you eclectic? Interesting? It doesn’t. You’re still a high-school teacher, teaching high-school kids and going nowhere. And that’s not going to change no matter how hip and cool you try to make yourself.
Your parents made you hang up that picture. Yeah, right.
Tell me why all your previous boyfriends were also bananas. Go on. Tell me.
What about you? “Yet another thing in American pretending to be white”? Passive-aggressive, much? You think I haven’t seen the way you look at Singaporean women? You think I don’t know why you like coming to America so much? You’re fucked up, that’s what you are. What, not blaming this on your parents as well?
You can’t even keep to a hundred dollar budget. What makes you think you can deal with a baby?
I can’t deal with a baby? Please. You’re the one with the commitment problem. Is your second book coming, huh? Ever? Guess not, huh. What do you do with your days? Sit around and read those ‘promising debut’ reviews?
Fuck you.
Fuck. You.
And then later, when the anger had burned itself out:
I’m tired of being around you. You make me feel like I need to be saying something, even when I am.
You smiled at me once like it meant something. But then I saw you smile the same way at your students, at the flight staff, even at the fucking 7-11 cashier. What happened to us? You and me?
And yet later:
I don’t want to talk to you anymore.
I don’t, either. In fact I’d like nothing better if we never talked to each other ever again. That would be great. That would be heaven.
She’d gotten up, and started walking. He didn’t call her name.
The traffic light was blurring, but she kept looking at it, and she forced herself to think about the drive to the airport two days later. Two days of silence later.
He stayed in the chair, and he thought about the silence in the car. Silence, silence, silence. And then right after the roar of metal crunching, as they were spinning weightlessly across tarmac, a silence as if light itself had been sucked out of existence. They were voiceless.
And then it was over. I’m sorry. We did everything that we could.
Something was gripping her chest. She had trouble breathing, and then the room swirled around her for a moment. And then she felt a sharp pain around her shoulders, and then – nothing. Nothing. There was only the slightly inadequate feeling of exhaustion left. And even that felt – silly, after a while. She pushed herself off the desk slowly, and left the room. The couch in the living room caught her eye, so she went to it, and sank into its left side. Her side.
He felt stretched. Thinking about it always made him feel that way, in the end. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought about it, just to feel the sharpness of letting go at the end, just to feel the blunted weariness afterwards. Then he felt self-conscious, again. The television. He needed noise.
The couch felt soft and yielding at the back of her neck. She thought about him, about his inky hair and eyes, about the cremation, about the half of the ashes given to her two days ago. She thought about going home, and then she wondered if he was somewhere in the room, somehow, watching her. She did not think it was entirely impossible. Sometimes she saw him, in the second after she turned, through the crack of a door swinging shut, in the moments when dream and waking merged, as a shadow if she stared until the world turned purple. And then there were the times she was sure he was there, somehow, in the chair, at his desk, only invisible to her.
The right side of the couch received him like forgiveness. He let the seconds of a minute pass by, less silent, more quiet. Then he took the remote and pressed the red power button. Gunshots and sirens. Then the picture came on, a movie they’d seen six thousand times. He said it was fun. She called it the cockroach of movies. He could sense her, again. Sometimes it felt like if he had the right word she would be there when he turned.
“Tell me what I need to do,” she said, softly. She did not know if they were the right words, but it felt good to know that those words were in the air, that they might fold into the other noises and linger after she was gone. Until he heard them, somehow, wherever he was. Then maybe there would be a sign.
The television suddenly blipped “what I”, and then the gunshots resumed, but he was still tense. A clear sign, a clear sign was all he asked, every day. But nothing else happened. He shook his head and sank into the couch again, half-snorting at his own credulity. And then he said, “Please”. And then – “I’m sorry.” Just in case.
She shifted to a lying position, head resting on the left arm of the couch, legs lopped over the right arm. Sometimes when she was tired enough the right arm felt like his thighs.
He closed his eyes and let the television’s blare wash over him. His hand crept to the left side of the couch, and stayed there.
Her eyes closed.
His mind wandered.
And soon they were dreaming of hearing each other again.
(Revision)
He sat at his desk. She grated cheese in the kitchen.
As his practiced fingers jabbed at the keyboard, he thought about the letter in the drawer.
As pale white shreds fell into the big glass bowl, she listened to the sounds of a silent apartment. They seemed all around her, the susurrus that emanated from the walls, the more insistent hhhhhnghhhhh of the fridge, the padded pulse of the party upstairs. Even the ghosting of air from room to room.
He tried to concentrate on the screen, but the corners of his eyes tightened. The glare touched his eyes, then limned his eyeballs. He tried for a minute more. And then he pulled the lid of his laptop down.
She thought she heard a sound, so she leaned sideways to peer, but all she saw was his smiling face. Tired, but smiling, as always. She looked at him for a little while, and then she pulled back to an upright position. And then she chugged the bottle of Baileys.
He could sense her looking again, but he said nothing. He wasn’t worried about what to say. He was worried about what he would say if she replied.
She grated her cheese, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
It was better to think about her, these days. He especially liked going back to their first half an hour. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he saw her: bent at the waist over the remainder bin, and then she was standing, a glossy hardcover in her hand. His name was stamped on the spine in steady block letters, cream on red. His name matched her hair. He had smiled, and then filed the sentence away. It was a good line.
She teased him about that smile many times. A plastic smile any woman can kiss, only thirteen dollars and fifty cents. Most of the time she said it in an ironic voice. Unless she’s stupid enough to pay full price. She smiled now, at that memory, and at others. He used to tell her she was lucky she got to kiss the real deal for free. Her lips froze at that; a solid, blocky smile fixed her face in place.
He felt tiny weights lining his closed eyelids. She stopped grating, put the triangle down on its ragged side, and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. After that she just sat, staring. He burst open his eyes, and then – blinked.
He stood up, the chair wobbling against the back of his knees. He looked at the books lining the shelves of his desk, and it seemed suddenly wrong that they were abreast. He could still sense her looking. He looked at the books, and nursed the wrongness until it lurched in his sternum, like liquid lead. It spread through his ribcage, and leeched into the hollows at the outlines of his chest. He could feel it pause at his shoulders, and he urged it on. Just a little bit farther. But then it receded, and then it receded, and then it receded. And once it was gone it was gone, leaving behind only a strained relief. He shook his head. He suspected he would have balked at the end anyway. He did not like being noisy.
Her eyes hurt and her chest hurt. She waited a moment more, just a moment more, but nothing happened. So she blinked, and the purple patina vanished, so she blinked again, and then she took a handful of cheese and stuffed it in her mouth.
He traced on his window the flashing light of Shenton Way.
She chewed the strips of Stilton in her mouth. She thought about leaving the bowl out, just in case, but then she shook her head at the stupidity. He was not a Stilton man; never was, and never would be. When they went into the cheese store on Third for the first time she’d told him it was a blue cheese. He’d looked at it, then said with a joke in his voice, Yet another thing in America pretending to be white, I see. And then an instant, and then he’d grimaced so she couldn’t miss it. But because he never said it again, she pretended he never had.
He turned away from the window. She swallowed and raked another handful.
The letter was still in the drawer. He pushed the drawer slowly, watching the letter disappear centimeter by centimeter. And then he pulled the drawer again.
The noises were crowding her. The cheese felt ganky in her mouth, and it gummed her back teeth. She turned and spit the mouthful onto the floor, and then instantly worried about a stain. She felt like a fraud for acting out.
He took the letter. As he looked at the handwriting on the envelope, dominoes in mid-fall from left to right, a sound thumped in the apartment somewhere. He wondered if it was she, and then he shrugged. Nonchalantly. Suddenly feeling a little foolish, he flipped the envelope over and took out the sheets of paper. They smelled of lavender two seasons old. This time I’m arriving on the fifteenth at five in the afternoon. You better be holding a bottle of Baileys when I see you. She would have written “15th” and “5 pm”, except he’d asked her once whether she was as sloppy when she taught. She’d said the word ‘sloppy’ was sloppy, and then she’d put on her best teenager’s voice and said, “What”. She never said it as a question, only as a playful challenge. Then she’d tell him her students loved her impressions. He usually refrained from replying. Or he rolled his eyes and then pulled her close.
As she threw the sodden tissues away she thought about going home. The flight had been booked, but she could negotiate an earlier date. She was looking forward to seeing her students again. She would go to the cheese store and pay a normal price for her Stiltons again, she would even look forward to apartment-hunting, to filling out forms. But then a thought barged into her head and lodged itself: she wondered if he would follow her.
He stared at the handwriting until the flowing lines smudged. Suddenly, a voice in his head said, This was the type of woman Mrs. X was: on envelopes she wrote in black block letters, but in letters she was curls and lavender scents. It was a good line. He filed it away. He had become Christopher Fucking Robison.
She stood up and took the big bowl of cheese. She cradled it in one arm as she pulled the refrigerator door, and then suddenly she paused, aware of the flatness of her stomach. After a moment, she used a foot to keep the door open, and then took the bowl by its rim with her free hand. After she slid it into the refrigerator, she stepped into the hallway to look at him again. He was still smiling. Of course. She needed another long slow swig.
She had been holding a bottle of Baileys. He had been holding a bottle of Baileys. You can’t. Get drunk. On That Shit, was what she said, every time. Tough Chick Rapping, she called it. She was high on the adrenaline of an eighteen-hour flight, her eyes shadowed and shining. He was high on the writing of a passage he secretly loved. They were adult children, basically, and after two bottles of Baileys they fucked like adults with the enthusiasm of children. And the carelessness. He heard her giggles as he put the letter back in the drawer. He shook his head, and felt tired and in need of food.
She took one step towards him, Baileys in hand. And then another. She suddenly became aware that she was tiptoeing. On her ninth step the skin on her upper left arm twinged. She ignored it as she ignored all the other phantom pains.
He stared at it for a while, and then he took the bowl of moldy cheese out, and dumped it, cheese and bowl, into the trashcan. He scuffed his foot against the floor, getting rid of something sticky.
She looked at him now, him with his smiling face. She pressed her lips against the acrylic shield, against that fourteen-dollar plastic smile, feeling a little morbid. My parents’ idea, he’d said, reddening. He reddened the same way whenever he told people who his parents were. Asian parents like to keep trophies, and they like their sons to keep trophies too. She’d said, grinning, In large print and in their living rooms, I see. Later, when he’d told her, It isn’t the right time, it had been his mother’s voice that she heard.
He sat on the chair in the kitchen. She thought about punching his smile.
He thought of her butt on the downy cushion. She loved to sit in this chair stuffing her face with cheese. She made a face at him whenever he said that. He thought of that, and he thought of the Stilton in the trashcan. He thought of L’Ecole, and Starbucks, and Forever 21, and the East Village Cinema, and Dulce de Leche, and Kiehls’ Facial Fuel. Then he thought about Orchard Road, and char kway tiao, and durians and her revolted face, and malls connected by walkways, exhausted days and exceeded budgets, and rain thunderstorming outside on quilt blanket days. Then there was nothing left. Nothing except the sullen summer past, and the hours stretched between patience and deliberate ignorance, and everything else.
She was in his room now. She had to remind herself of that. It seemed too empty to be his room. She trailed a finger across his desk, and looked around the empty room again. Through the window she could see the traffic light on Shenton Way flashing, green, green, red. She hoisted herself up his desk, wobbled to adjust her butt, and then sat watching the flashes. Every change of the light made her feel a little less – made her feel a little less.
She’d gotten the abortion, and they had decided not to talk about it. Both of them had decided. So they filled the silence with sounds, but they couldn’t get rid of the other silence, the silence that bounced off the walls and settled on their shoulders, the silence of other people having fun, the silence of a ghost in the room with them. He heard it now too. There were more ghosts now. He could sense her, sometimes.
They had stood at that very street corner, beneath that traffic light. He’d taken her hand awkwardly while they walked home from the movie, she’d gradually slid her hand away again, his face had set in rigid impassiveness. Then, under the traffic light, while they waited, she had finally shouted, after weeks and weeks of silence. The summer was ending and the flight was only two days away, and she could not bear the thought of going home with those words still in her. You don’t want to talk about it? You think I’m afraid to shout here? I’ll shout as loud as I want, so why don’t you walk away, huh? Are you staying so you can take notes? Where’s your fucking notebook, huh? Eight years I’ve never seen you without your notebook. Where is it, huh?
They were two adults shouting like children, flinging and hurling every stone they could scrape up. He’d done his share of the shouting, and more. You’re a twenty-nine year old teenager. I asked you if it wasn’t the right time, and you agreed. What did you want me to do?
Hurting. You’re a remainder-bin writer who underlines errors in other people’s books.
Pushing. Yeah. Tell me again, what are those files you’re hiding away in that folder in your laptop? Yeah, I thought so. At least I took a chance once.
Is that why you went to Paolini’s book signing? Is that why you told him about the “continuity mistake”? A nineteen year-old and he doesn’t even know you exist. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Stilton cheese? Stilton. Cheese? Stilton cheese and Baileys? Who does that? That’s fucked up, you know that? And you think wearing Donna Karen with J-Crew makes you eclectic? Interesting? It doesn’t. You’re still a high-school teacher, teaching high-school kids and going nowhere. And that’s not going to change no matter how hip and cool you try to make yourself.
Your parents made you hang up that picture. Yeah, right.
Tell me why all your previous boyfriends were also bananas. Go on. Tell me.
What about you? “Yet another thing in American pretending to be white”? Passive-aggressive, much? You think I haven’t seen the way you look at Singaporean women? You think I don’t know why you like coming to America so much? You’re fucked up, that’s what you are. What, not blaming this on your parents as well?
You can’t even keep to a hundred dollar budget. What makes you think you can deal with a baby?
I can’t deal with a baby? Please. You’re the one with the commitment problem. Is your second book coming, huh? Ever? Guess not, huh. What do you do with your days? Sit around and read those ‘promising debut’ reviews?
Fuck you.
Fuck. You.
And then later, when the anger had burned itself out:
I’m tired of being around you. You make me feel like I need to be saying something, even when I am.
You smiled at me once like it meant something. But then I saw you smile the same way at your students, at the flight staff, even at the fucking 7-11 cashier. What happened to us? You and me?
And yet later:
I don’t want to talk to you anymore.
I don’t, either. In fact I’d like nothing better if we never talked to each other ever again. That would be great. That would be heaven.
She’d gotten up, and started walking. He didn’t call her name.
The traffic light was blurring, but she kept looking at it, and she forced herself to think about the drive to the airport two days later.
He stayed in the chair, and he thought about the silence in the car. Silence, silence, silence. And then right after the roar of metal crunching, as they were spinning and floating across tarmac, a silence as if light itself had been sucked out of existence. They were voiceless.
And then it was over.
I’m sorry. We did everything that we could.
Something was gripping her chest. She had trouble breathing, and then the room swirled around her for a moment. And then she felt a sharp pain around her shoulders, and then – nothing. Nothing. There was only the pulling of exhaustion left. And even that felt – silly, after a while. She pushed herself off the desk slowly, and left the room. The couch in the living room caught her eye, so she went to it, and sank into its left side. Her side.
He felt stretched. Thinking about it always made him feel that way, in the end. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought about it, just to feel the sharpness of letting go at the end, just to feel the blunted weariness afterwards. Then he felt self-conscious, again. It was the same feeling he’d felt when her father had cried. The television. He needed noise.
The couch felt soft and yielding at the back of her neck. She thought about him, about his inky hair and eyes, about the cremation, about the half of the ashes given to her two days ago. She thought about going home, and then she wondered if he was somewhere in the room, somehow, watching her. She did not think it was entirely impossible. Sometimes she saw him, in the second after she turned, through the crack of a door swinging shut, in the moments when dream and waking merged, as a shadow if she stared until the world turned purple. And then there were the times she was sure he was there, somehow, in the chair, at his desk, only invisible to her.
The right side of the couch received him like forgiveness. He let the seconds of a minute slide by, less silent, more quiet. Then he took the remote and pressed the red power button. Gunshots and sirens. Then the picture came on, a movie they’d seen six thousand times. He said it was fun. She called it the cockroach of movies. He could sense her, again. Sometimes it felt like if he had the right word she would be there when he turned.
“Tell me what I need to do,” she said, softly. She did not know if they were the right words, but it felt good to know that those words were in the air, that they might fold into the other noises and linger after she was gone. Until he heard them, somehow, wherever he was. Then maybe there would be a sign.
The television suddenly blipped “what I”, and then the gunshots resumed, but he was still tense. A clear sign, a clear sign was all he asked, every day. But nothing else happened. He shook his head and sank into the couch again, half-snorting at his own credulity. And then he said, “Please”. And then – “I’m sorry.” Just in case.
She shifted to a lying position, head resting on the left arm of the couch, legs lopped over the right arm. Sometimes when she was tired enough the right arm felt like his thighs.
He closed his eyes and let the television’s blare wash over him. His hand crept to the left side of the couch, and stayed there.
Her eyes closed.
His mind wandered.
And in their dreams they heard each other again.
(Revision)
He sat at his desk. She grated cheese in the kitchen.
As his practiced fingers jabbed at the keyboard, he thought about the letter in the drawer.
As pale white shreds drifted into the bowl, she listened to the sounds of a silent apartment. They seemed all around her, the susurrus that emanated from the walls, the more insistent hhhhhnghhhhh of the fridge, the padded pulse of the party upstairs. Even the ghosting of air from room to room.
He tried to concentrate on the screen, but the corners of his eyes tightened. The glare touched his eyes, then limned his eyeballs. He tried for a minute more. And then with a grunt he pulled the lid of his laptop down.
She thought she heard a noise, so she leaned sideways to peer, but all she saw was his smiling face. Tired, but smiling, as always. She looked at him for a little while, and then she pulled back to an upright position. And then she chugged the bottle of Baileys.
He could sense her gaze again, but he said nothing. He wasn’t worried about what to say. He was worried about what he would say if she replied.
She grated her cheese, back, and forth, back, and forth, back, and forth.
It was better to think about her, these days. He especially liked their first half an hour. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he saw her: bent at the waist over the remainder bin, and then she was standing, a glossy hardcover in her hand. His name was stamped on the spine in steady cream letters. His name matched her hair. He had smiled, and then filed the sentence away. It was a good line.
She teased him about that smile many times. A plastic smile any woman can kiss, only thirteen dollars and fifty cents. Most of the time she said it in an ironic voice. Unless she’s stupid enough to pay full price. She smiled now, at that memory, and at others. He used to tell her she was lucky she got to kiss the real deal for free. Her lips froze at that; a solid, blocky smile fixed her face in place.
He felt tiny weights lining his closed eyelids. She stopped grating, put the triangle down on its ragged side, and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. He burst open his eyes, and then – blinked. She sat, staring.
He stood up, the chair wobbling against the back of his knees. He looked at the books lining the shelves of his desk, and it seemed suddenly wrong that they were abreast. He could still sense her looking. He looked at the books, and nursed the wrongness until it lurched in his sternum, like liquid lead. It spread through his ribcage, and leeched into the hollows at the outlines of his chest. He could feel it pause at his shoulders, and he urged it on. Just a little bit farther. But then it receded, and then it receded, and then it receded. And once it was gone it was gone, leaving behind only a strained relief. He shook his head. He suspected he would have balked at the end anyway. He did not like being noisy.
Her eyes hurt and her chest hurt. She waited a moment more, just a moment more, but nothing happened. So she blinked, and the purple patina vanished, so she blinked again, and then she took a handful of cheese and stuffed it in her mouth.
He traced on his window the flashing light of Shenton Way.
She chewed the strips of Stilton in her mouth. She thought about leaving the bowl out, just in case, but then she shook her head at the stupidity. He was not a Stilton man; never was, and never would be. When they went into the cheese store on Third for the first time she’d told him it was a blue cheese. He’d looked at it, then said with a joke in his voice, Yet another thing in America pretending to be white, I see. And then an instant, and then he’d grimaced so she couldn’t miss it. But because he never said it again, she pretended he never had.
He turned away from the window. She swallowed and raked another handful.
The letter was still in the drawer. He pushed the drawer slowly, watching the letter disappear centimeter by centimeter. And then he pulled the drawer again.
The noises were crowding her. The cheese felt ganky in her mouth, and it gummed her back teeth. She turned and spit the mouthful onto the floor, and then instantly worried about a stain. She felt like a fraud for acting out.
He took the letter. As he looked at the handwriting on the envelope, dominoes in mid-fall from left to right, a sound thumped in the apartment somewhere. He wondered if it was she, and then he shrugged. Nonchalantly. Suddenly feeling a little foolish, he turned the envelope over and teased out the sheets of paper. They smelled of lavender two seasons old. This time I’m arriving on the fifteenth at five in the afternoon. You better be holding a bottle of Baileys when I see you. She would have written “15th” and “5 pm”, except he’d asked her once whether she was as sloppy when she taught. She’d said the word ‘sloppy’ was sloppy, and then she’d put on her best teenager’s voice and said, “What”. She never said it as a question, only as challenge spiked with playfulness. Then she’d tell him her students loved her impressions. He usually refrained from replying. Or he rolled his eyes and then pulled her close.
As she threw the sodden tissues away she thought about going home. The flight had been booked, but she could negotiate an earlier date. She knew she could, even if the fine print said otherwise. She wanted to see her students again. She would go to the cheese store and pay a normal price for her Stiltons again, she would even look forward to apartment-hunting, to filling out forms. But then a thought barged into her head and lodged itself: she wondered if he would follow her.
He stared at the handwriting until the flowing lines smudged. Suddenly, a voice in his head said, This was the type of woman Mrs. X was: on envelopes she wrote in black block letters, but in letters she was curls and lavender scents. It was a good line. He filed it away. He had become Christopher Fucking Robison.
She stood up and took the big bowl of cheese. She cradled it in one arm as she pulled the refrigerator door, and then suddenly she paused. The glass rim curved against the flatness of her stomach. After a moment, she used a foot to keep the door open, and then took the bowl by its rim with her free hand. After she slid it into the refrigerator, she stepped into the hallway to look at him again. He was still smiling. Of course. She needed to kiss the bottle again.
She had been holding a bottle of Baileys. He had been holding a bottle of Baileys. You can’t. Get drunk. On That Shit, was what she said, every time. Tough Chick Rapping, she called it. She was high on the adrenaline of an eighteen-hour flight, her eyes shadowed and shining. He was high on the writing of a passage he secretly loved. They were adult children, basically, and after two bottles of Baileys they fucked like adults with the enthusiasm of children. And the carelessness. He heard her giggles as he put the letter back in the drawer. He shook his head, and felt tired and in need of food.
She took one step towards him, Baileys in hand. And then another. At some point she became aware that she was tiptoeing. On her ninth step the skin on her upper left arm twinged. She ignored it as she ignored all the other phantom pains.
He stared at it for a while, and then he took the bowl of moldy cheese out, and dumped it, cheese and bowl, into the trashcan. Then he scuffed his sole against the refrigerator, getting rid of something sticky.
She looked at him now, him with his smiling face. She pressed her lips against the acrylic shield, against that fourteen-dollar plastic smile, feeling a little morbid. My parents’ idea, he’d said, reddening. He reddened the same way whenever he told people who his parents were. Asian parents like to keep trophies, and they like their sons to keep trophies too. She’d said, grinning, In large print and in their living rooms no less, I see. Later, when he’d told her, It isn’t the right time, it had been his mother’s voice that she heard.
He sat on the chair in the kitchen, rubbing the soles of his feet together. She thought about punching his smile.
He thought of her butt on the downy cushion. She loved to sit in this chair stuffing her face with cheese. She made a face at him whenever he said that. He thought of that, and he thought of the Stilton in the trashcan. He thought of L’Ecole, and Starbucks, and Forever 21, and the East Village Cinema, and Dulce de Leche, and Kiehls’ Facial Fuel. Then he thought about Orchard Road, and char kway tiao, and durians and her revolted face, and malls connected by walkways, exhausted days and exceeded budgets, and rain thunderstorming outside on quilt blanket days. Then there was nothing left. Nothing except the sullen summer past, and the hours stretched between patience and deliberate ignorance, and everything else.
She was in his room now. She had to remind herself of that. It seemed too empty to be his room. She trailed a finger across his desk, and looked around the bare room again. Through the window she could see the traffic light on Shenton Way flashing, green, green, red. She hoisted herself up his desk, wobbled to adjust her butt, and then sat watching the flashes. Every change of the light made her feel a little less – made her feel a little less.
She’d gotten the abortion, and they had decided not to talk about it. Both of them had decided. So they filled the silence with sounds, but they couldn’t get rid of the other silence, the silence that bounced off the walls and settled on their shoulders, the silence of other people having fun, the silence of a ghost in the room with them. He heard it now too. There were more ghosts now. He could sense her, sometimes.
They had stood at that very street corner, beneath that traffic light. He’d brushed his fingers against hers while they walked home from the movie, she’d gradually slid her hand away, his face had set in rigid impassiveness. Then, under the traffic light, while they waited, she had finally shouted, after weeks and weeks of silence. The summer was ending and the flight was only two days away, and she could not bear the thought of going home with those words still in her. You don’t want to talk about it? You think I’m afraid to shout here? I’ll shout as loud as I want, so why don’t you walk away, huh? Are you staying so you can take notes? Where’s your fucking notebook, huh? Eight years I’ve never seen you without your notebook. Where is it, huh?
They were two adults shouting like children, flinging and hurling every stone they could scrape up. He’d done his share of the shouting, and more. You’re a twenty-nine year old teenager. I asked you if it wasn’t the right time, and you agreed. What did you want me to do?
Hurting. You’re a remainder-bin writer who underlines errors in other people’s books.
Pushing. Yeah. Tell me again, what are those files you’re hiding away in that folder in your laptop? Yeah, I thought so. At least I took a chance once.
Is that why you went to Paolini’s book signing? Is that why you told him about the “continuity mistake”? A nineteen year-old and he doesn’t even know you exist. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Stilton cheese? Stilton. Cheese? Stilton cheese and Baileys? Who does that? That’s fucked up, you know that? And you think wearing Donna Karen with J-Crew makes you eclectic? Interesting? It doesn’t. You’re still a high-school teacher, teaching high-school kids and going nowhere. And that’s not going to change no matter how hip and cool you try to make yourself.
Your parents made you hang up that picture. Yeah, right.
Tell me why all your previous boyfriends were also bananas. Go on. Tell me.
What about you? “Yet another thing in American pretending to be white”? Passive-aggressive, much? You think I haven’t seen the way you look at Singaporean women? You think I don’t know why you like coming to America so much? You’re fucked up, that’s what you are. What, not blaming this on your parents as well?
You can’t even keep to a hundred dollar budget. What makes you think you can deal with a baby?
I can’t deal with a baby? Please. You’re the one with the commitment problem. Is your second book coming, huh? Ever? Guess not, huh. What do you do with your days? Sit around and read those ‘promising debut’ reviews?
Fuck you.
Fuck. You.
And then later, when the anger had burned itself out:
I’m tired of being around you. You make me feel like I need to be saying something, even when I am.
You smiled at me once like it meant something. But then I saw you smile the same way at your students, at the flight staff, even at the fucking 7-11 cashier. What happened to us? You and me?
And yet later:
I don’t want to talk to you anymore.
I don’t, either. In fact I’d like nothing better if we never talked to each other ever again. That would be great. That would be heaven.
She’d gotten up, and started walking. He didn’t call her name.
The traffic light was blurring, but she kept looking at it, and she forced herself to think about the drive to the airport two days later.
He stayed in the chair, and he thought about the silence in the car, and the silence in the two days prior. Silence, silence, silence. And then right after the roar of metal crunching, as they were spinning and floating across tarmac, a silence as if light itself had been sucked out of existence. They were voiceless.
And then it was over.
I’m sorry. We did everything that we could.
Something was gripping her chest. She had trouble breathing, and then the room swirled around her for a moment. She felt a sharp pain around her shoulders, and then – nothing. Nothing. There was only the pull of exhaustion left. And even that felt – silly, after a while. She pushed herself off the desk slowly, and left the room. The couch in the living room caught her eye, so she went to it, and sank into its left side. Her side.
He felt stretched. Thinking about it always made him feel that way, in the end. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought about it, just to feel the sharpness of letting go, and the blunted weariness afterwards. Then he felt self-conscious, again. It was the same feeling he had felt when her father had hugged him. The television. He needed noise.
The couch felt soft and yielding at the back of her neck. She thought about him, about his inky hair and eyes, about the cremation, about the half of the ashes given to her two days ago. She thought about going home, and then she wondered if he was somewhere in the room, somehow, watching her. She did not think it was entirely impossible. Sometimes she saw him, in the second after she turned, through the crack of a door swinging shut, in the moments when dream and waking merged, as a shadow if she stared until the world turned purple. And then there were the times she was sure he was there, somehow, in the chair, at his desk, only invisible to her.
The right side of the couch received him like forgiveness. He let the seconds of a minute drift by, less silent, more quiet. Then he took the remote and pressed the red power button. Gunshots and sirens. The picture came on, a movie they’d seen six thousand times. He said it was fun. She called it the cockroach of movies. He could sense her, again. Sometimes it felt like if he had the right word she would be there when he turned.
“Tell me what I need to do,” she said, softly. She did not know if they were the right words, but it felt good to know that those words were in the air, that they might fold into the other noises and linger in her absence. Until he heard them, somehow, wherever he was. Then maybe there would be a sign.
The television suddenly blipped “what I”, and then the gunshots resumed, but he was still tense. A clear sign, a clear sign was all he asked, every day. But nothing else happened. He shook his head and sank into the couch again, half-snorting at his own credulity. And then he said, “Please”. And then – “I’m sorry.” Just in case.
She shifted to a lying position, head resting on the left arm of the couch, legs lopped over the right arm. She was tired, and sometimes when she was tired enough the right arm felt like his thighs.
He closed his eyes and let the television’s blare wash over him in restful waves. His hand crept to the left side of the couch, and stayed there.
Her eyes closed.
His mind wandered.
And soon they were dreaming of hearing each other again.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Story: Memoria
Ella Fitzgeralds at every street corner, trapped in giant speakers, singing their countless lungs raw in blue streaks of sound. “For this time is the one, where the first time is the last time. I’ve got beginner’s luck…” Strips and bits of paper fall from the sky, confetti of garbage and dead trees. The store windows are Omnicolor brilliant as they transmit moving scenes from a not-so-moving life. Mine. I stop, my compadre walks on, and I hear myself saying, like Keanu, “Whoa.”
My voice sounds like it’s coming from my sneakers. Why is that? Why are my sneakers so scuffy? What have I been doing?
“Move along now.” My companion’s standing there, waiting, his fingerless hands punching the sides of his stomach. It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. He has no fingers because he’s a Gingerbread Man, browned to my skin tone. “Come on.”
I just realized I have no idea where his voice comes from. How does he talk when he has no lips (and thus presumably no voice box)? I hold up three fingers, and they are an arm and a half’s length from my head, because I shift my face to the side like a Hindi movie. I am squinting and making my best fishhook mouth.
“Three fingers, and you are squinting and making a fishhook mouth.” He sounds exasperated. I can hear him mutter “druggie, murderer, hopeless – druggie, definitely” because he underestimates my hearing powers. He sounds like me when I can’t find my fucking Houdini keys. And now he’s walking towards me.
His breath smells like dead squirrels, even though he has no nose. “You are not supposed to be here, but since you are here I will give you what you need. What you want.” He’s gesturing to the store windows with a Doraemon hand: screen after screen the tablets of Christopher Jonathan, last name More-ron. Done this. Didn’t do that. Did her, and many times over, oh yeah. I wonder whether Alison McNee is successful. She always was a smile slut.
“Focus.”
.
I wasn’t on drugs anymore. This was for real. When he said “focus” the fog in my head… wasn’t. It didn’t evaporate, it wasn’t sucked away, it wasn’t blown away by a giant fan. It was. And then it wasn’t.
But after the fog wasn’t he still was. Ella was still there, and all her copies, and the sky was still falling to pieces everywhere.
He looked at me while I went through the stages of shock, and when I was finally done he tossed me a sheet of paper, literally tossed it. That sheet of paper had the weight of a bomb, and the words nailed every bit of my head: “Ella Fitzgeralds at every street corner…”
After I finished convulsing again his moon face twisted where his mouth should have been, and I shivered.
Then he took me by the hand, and he carried me in his doughy arms, and he piggybacked me, and together we went through all the streets of New York, New York, Alphabet City to Columbia University, Hudson to East Rivers. The stores were all gone, vacated, doors removed, each storefront turned into a still or video, definition higher than shit like Blu-Ray or HDTV. He made me look at each still and video, and he said, “Yes or no”.
I killed him in the end, of course. Or at least I think I did. I don’t know if there had been any other option. He stopped fidgeting, and his neck stopped pulsing under my hands like all other necks, and then he just dissolved. Wind blew the crumbs into the air, mixed it up with the shitstorm. He smiled just before the end, another twist of the dough, and I said, “You’re welcome”. And I meant it.
I think that if you are reading this it means that you have offed me in turn. I found a piece of paper after I killed my predecessor, and I assume that this is some sort of pass-it-down tradition, so I have followed the formula, changing the details, of course.
A couple of final things:
It will suck a little at first. You will think to yourself, was I really such a stud when I lost my virginity? Occasionally you may also wonder whether there was more to the world beyond the East and Hudson Rivers, and beyond Alphabet City and Columbia University. Or, if we were in another city when you came, beyond the gray walls sheer like glass and beyond the lines dividing street and smoke. You may wonder that.
And yes, it will sometimes get a little boring.
But this is my personal theory, free: if you got here, and if you actually managed to kill me, and if the knife appeared to you after that, then you must belong here.
So this is what you need to do later, as passed down for god knows how long this place has existed: you need to take the knife, and you need to slice off your nose, gouge out your eyes, shave off your lips, and straighten the lines of your head. You have to chop off the toes too, but the hands will take care of themselves after you finish everything else. And, I’m sorry, but the penis has to go too.
I’m not sure what happens if you turn out to be a woman. I didn’t get any instructions about that. Sorry.
And if you’re afraid, prick any part of your body first. You’ll see why this place ruxors, like a buddy of mine used to say. Go ahead. Isn’t that the neatest thing? And once you do all of that, just sit and wait. The rest will happen to you without you doing anything. I promise.
The power to change the music and the storefront channels will come in time. I recommend Times Square (if you’re in New fucking York) for your best memories – lots of triple-plus-size shops there.
And, lastly, before you do anything else, you need to write down something like what I’ve done here. Copy the piece of paper I tossed at you, write down how you felt when I took you through your life, brag about how you killed me or whatever, and then just basically copy this set of instructions, adding your personal details as you like, I guess. Remember to do this first before anything else. I was here for you, so don’t mess it up for the next guy (or girl). Have a sense of pride, yeah?
And then go ahead and cut, and cut, and cut, and then wait.
And have fun with this city. I know I did.
My voice sounds like it’s coming from my sneakers. Why is that? Why are my sneakers so scuffy? What have I been doing?
“Move along now.” My companion’s standing there, waiting, his fingerless hands punching the sides of his stomach. It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. He has no fingers because he’s a Gingerbread Man, browned to my skin tone. “Come on.”
I just realized I have no idea where his voice comes from. How does he talk when he has no lips (and thus presumably no voice box)? I hold up three fingers, and they are an arm and a half’s length from my head, because I shift my face to the side like a Hindi movie. I am squinting and making my best fishhook mouth.
“Three fingers, and you are squinting and making a fishhook mouth.” He sounds exasperated. I can hear him mutter “druggie, murderer, hopeless – druggie, definitely” because he underestimates my hearing powers. He sounds like me when I can’t find my fucking Houdini keys. And now he’s walking towards me.
His breath smells like dead squirrels, even though he has no nose. “You are not supposed to be here, but since you are here I will give you what you need. What you want.” He’s gesturing to the store windows with a Doraemon hand: screen after screen the tablets of Christopher Jonathan, last name More-ron. Done this. Didn’t do that. Did her, and many times over, oh yeah. I wonder whether Alison McNee is successful. She always was a smile slut.
“Focus.”
.
I wasn’t on drugs anymore. This was for real. When he said “focus” the fog in my head… wasn’t. It didn’t evaporate, it wasn’t sucked away, it wasn’t blown away by a giant fan. It was. And then it wasn’t.
But after the fog wasn’t he still was. Ella was still there, and all her copies, and the sky was still falling to pieces everywhere.
He looked at me while I went through the stages of shock, and when I was finally done he tossed me a sheet of paper, literally tossed it. That sheet of paper had the weight of a bomb, and the words nailed every bit of my head: “Ella Fitzgeralds at every street corner…”
After I finished convulsing again his moon face twisted where his mouth should have been, and I shivered.
Then he took me by the hand, and he carried me in his doughy arms, and he piggybacked me, and together we went through all the streets of New York, New York, Alphabet City to Columbia University, Hudson to East Rivers. The stores were all gone, vacated, doors removed, each storefront turned into a still or video, definition higher than shit like Blu-Ray or HDTV. He made me look at each still and video, and he said, “Yes or no”.
I killed him in the end, of course. Or at least I think I did. I don’t know if there had been any other option. He stopped fidgeting, and his neck stopped pulsing under my hands like all other necks, and then he just dissolved. Wind blew the crumbs into the air, mixed it up with the shitstorm. He smiled just before the end, another twist of the dough, and I said, “You’re welcome”. And I meant it.
I think that if you are reading this it means that you have offed me in turn. I found a piece of paper after I killed my predecessor, and I assume that this is some sort of pass-it-down tradition, so I have followed the formula, changing the details, of course.
A couple of final things:
It will suck a little at first. You will think to yourself, was I really such a stud when I lost my virginity? Occasionally you may also wonder whether there was more to the world beyond the East and Hudson Rivers, and beyond Alphabet City and Columbia University. Or, if we were in another city when you came, beyond the gray walls sheer like glass and beyond the lines dividing street and smoke. You may wonder that.
And yes, it will sometimes get a little boring.
But this is my personal theory, free: if you got here, and if you actually managed to kill me, and if the knife appeared to you after that, then you must belong here.
So this is what you need to do later, as passed down for god knows how long this place has existed: you need to take the knife, and you need to slice off your nose, gouge out your eyes, shave off your lips, and straighten the lines of your head. You have to chop off the toes too, but the hands will take care of themselves after you finish everything else. And, I’m sorry, but the penis has to go too.
I’m not sure what happens if you turn out to be a woman. I didn’t get any instructions about that. Sorry.
And if you’re afraid, prick any part of your body first. You’ll see why this place ruxors, like a buddy of mine used to say. Go ahead. Isn’t that the neatest thing? And once you do all of that, just sit and wait. The rest will happen to you without you doing anything. I promise.
The power to change the music and the storefront channels will come in time. I recommend Times Square (if you’re in New fucking York) for your best memories – lots of triple-plus-size shops there.
And, lastly, before you do anything else, you need to write down something like what I’ve done here. Copy the piece of paper I tossed at you, write down how you felt when I took you through your life, brag about how you killed me or whatever, and then just basically copy this set of instructions, adding your personal details as you like, I guess. Remember to do this first before anything else. I was here for you, so don’t mess it up for the next guy (or girl). Have a sense of pride, yeah?
And then go ahead and cut, and cut, and cut, and then wait.
And have fun with this city. I know I did.
Story: The Lapedusivian Military
The conscription of women into the Lapedusivian Military began very simply. It began on the morning of September 4th 2004, which would turn out to be a particularly rainy Saturday, when a clerk pressed the return key on his Dell computer.
In the two seconds that followed the pressing of the return key, within the inner workings of the laptop a complex series of algorithms streamlined itself into a very simple line. As it appeared before the clerk’s panda eyes, this line spiked a few minor times, but valleyed almost catastrophically again and again, not so much jumping as falling and bumping and falling further as it made its way across the screen to Year 2020.
The end point of the line was so far below its beginning that the clerk had to press the ‘fn’ and ‘page ’ keys in combination twice before he could see it.
Within twenty-four hours, the Defense Minister of Lapedus was notified of the document, which the clerk had helpfully printed out and labeled in red ink “Projection of Lapedusivian Birth Rate – Revert Soon”. Within forty-eight hours a committee was convened, its members spanning five branches of the incumbent party. The Prime Minister, after all, was expected to announce the date of the once-every-five-years Election Day soon. Several names for this committee were considered, and at the end of three and a quarter hours the acronym MIW was selected by popular vote among the seven committee members, none of whom actually owned cats. One member of the newly created Military Institutional Watch remarked that their constituents would probably start calling them the Men In White soon. There was a distinct pause before someone laughed.
A week and two days later, the Prime Minister made his announcement, and over the next six months the MIW, its function, and its ability to upgrade existing military technology were at the center of a ferocious debate between the incumbent party and the fragmented opposition. Regardless of the Lapedusivians’ feelings on this matter, however, on February 18th 2005 the People Action Party was returned to power for the twelfth consecutive time. Of the 14 wards that were not ruled walkovers due to election parameters, three stalwart opposition wards remained stalwart opposition wards, while the remaining eleven wards kept the PAP’s white flags flying for the weekend-long celebration, before removing them in accordance with the city-state’s laws regarding flag usage.
And while the PAP had won only 58 percent of the 1.22 million votes, 81 PAP Ministers took seats in the new 84-member Parliament. This was perhaps crucial.
Two months after Election Day, a member of the MIW presented the committee’s findings during a Parliament Session. His opening statement was this: “Perhaps it is not time to ask whether the Lapedusivian Military is ready for upgrading. Perhaps it is time to ask whether the citizens of Lapedus are ready for equality in the military.”
*
Anna Lazarin was about to make Marksman. And even though it was long past midnight, and even though she had to knuckle her eyes practically every minute, she could not help herself: she found the notion of making Marksman more deliciously ironic than celebratory. This was not because of the gender inappropriate title, which would be corrected as soon as possible, according to that day’s Routine Order. She cared nothing for gender inappropriateness. She only wondered how, after making Marksman, she would tell Betty Irkinson, now her bunkmate, but forever the bitch who had sniped her through doors repeatedly in Counterstrike when they were both wearing pinafores in the same high school. Betty Irkinson had turned out to be the sort of girl who couldn’t hit a cyalume stick-outlined target in real life.
But Betty Irkinson was not Anna Lazarin’s sole motivation. It was also vitally important to Anna that the next two shots hit their targets because she had discovered her utter and complete ineptitude at most things military.
In Week One of Basic Military Training, she had run one kilometer, and vomited twice afterwards. Worse, one of the two was a bout of only dry heaving. This was because she had, contrary to warnings, only picked at the brown goo that constituted breakfast.
In Week Two, she had only realized that she had not secured her MOP 4 goggles properly after stepping into the chemical chamber.
And in Week Three, she had laughed, but laughed incredulously, when four girls in her bunk, including Betty Irkinson, started calling themselves the Lape Mi Girls. And then she had failed to laugh when Mimi Shimujima, a second generation Lapedusivian, made a racist remark about the Lape Mi Girls to her while they were showering in adjacent stalls.
Yes. It was indeed vitally important to Anna Lazarin that she made the next two shots. As Recruit Anna Lazarin, she was Lazarin to her superiors, and nothing to her bunkmates. As Marksman Anna Lazarin, she would still be Lazarin to her superiors – but perhaps she would be Anna to her bunkmates, maybe even Lazyrin. She had only been not unpopular in Saint Joseph’s Convent, and she had learned that sixteen-year old girls in the military were still sixteen-year old girls. She did not want to sit alone in the cookhouse anymore; she was running out of pocket-sized books, she would not get off the island for another two weeks, and lately Shirley Mazinro had begun to give her hopeful looks from her own one-woman table across the cookhouse. If anything could give her all the determination she needed, it was the prospect of breakfasting, lunching, and dining with Shirley Mazinro. So as she lay on her stomach at the 300-meter mark of the shooting range, she thought of that prospect.
I am going to make the next two shots, she also told herself in the meantime, as she made sure that the dial on her M-16 was not turned to ‘auto’ or ‘safe’, as she made sure that the bullet casing deflector that marked her as a troublesome left-hander was secure, and as she made sure that her front and rear sight posts were aligned. She could hear Betty Irkinson giggling about the male safety officers – as if they wanted to be there, after the incident with Third Sergeant Charlie Sysinkis – and she could sense Shirley beside her, bored and unhappy about the gritty grass and the kamikaze mosquitoes, but she put everyone out of her mind, including herself and her petty concerns. So as she closed one eye, trained the other through the sight posts, and blocked out the noises around her, she told herself: In the circle, on top of the spike, fire. In the circle, on top of the spike, fire.
And then something moved in the circle, and so she fired.
The first thought in her head after that was that she had forgotten to wait for it to be on top of the spike.
The second thought was that she was very lucky the spike didn’t matter after all.
In the two seconds that followed the pressing of the return key, within the inner workings of the laptop a complex series of algorithms streamlined itself into a very simple line. As it appeared before the clerk’s panda eyes, this line spiked a few minor times, but valleyed almost catastrophically again and again, not so much jumping as falling and bumping and falling further as it made its way across the screen to Year 2020.
The end point of the line was so far below its beginning that the clerk had to press the ‘fn’ and ‘page ’ keys in combination twice before he could see it.
Within twenty-four hours, the Defense Minister of Lapedus was notified of the document, which the clerk had helpfully printed out and labeled in red ink “Projection of Lapedusivian Birth Rate – Revert Soon”. Within forty-eight hours a committee was convened, its members spanning five branches of the incumbent party. The Prime Minister, after all, was expected to announce the date of the once-every-five-years Election Day soon. Several names for this committee were considered, and at the end of three and a quarter hours the acronym MIW was selected by popular vote among the seven committee members, none of whom actually owned cats. One member of the newly created Military Institutional Watch remarked that their constituents would probably start calling them the Men In White soon. There was a distinct pause before someone laughed.
A week and two days later, the Prime Minister made his announcement, and over the next six months the MIW, its function, and its ability to upgrade existing military technology were at the center of a ferocious debate between the incumbent party and the fragmented opposition. Regardless of the Lapedusivians’ feelings on this matter, however, on February 18th 2005 the People Action Party was returned to power for the twelfth consecutive time. Of the 14 wards that were not ruled walkovers due to election parameters, three stalwart opposition wards remained stalwart opposition wards, while the remaining eleven wards kept the PAP’s white flags flying for the weekend-long celebration, before removing them in accordance with the city-state’s laws regarding flag usage.
And while the PAP had won only 58 percent of the 1.22 million votes, 81 PAP Ministers took seats in the new 84-member Parliament. This was perhaps crucial.
Two months after Election Day, a member of the MIW presented the committee’s findings during a Parliament Session. His opening statement was this: “Perhaps it is not time to ask whether the Lapedusivian Military is ready for upgrading. Perhaps it is time to ask whether the citizens of Lapedus are ready for equality in the military.”
*
Anna Lazarin was about to make Marksman. And even though it was long past midnight, and even though she had to knuckle her eyes practically every minute, she could not help herself: she found the notion of making Marksman more deliciously ironic than celebratory. This was not because of the gender inappropriate title, which would be corrected as soon as possible, according to that day’s Routine Order. She cared nothing for gender inappropriateness. She only wondered how, after making Marksman, she would tell Betty Irkinson, now her bunkmate, but forever the bitch who had sniped her through doors repeatedly in Counterstrike when they were both wearing pinafores in the same high school. Betty Irkinson had turned out to be the sort of girl who couldn’t hit a cyalume stick-outlined target in real life.
But Betty Irkinson was not Anna Lazarin’s sole motivation. It was also vitally important to Anna that the next two shots hit their targets because she had discovered her utter and complete ineptitude at most things military.
In Week One of Basic Military Training, she had run one kilometer, and vomited twice afterwards. Worse, one of the two was a bout of only dry heaving. This was because she had, contrary to warnings, only picked at the brown goo that constituted breakfast.
In Week Two, she had only realized that she had not secured her MOP 4 goggles properly after stepping into the chemical chamber.
And in Week Three, she had laughed, but laughed incredulously, when four girls in her bunk, including Betty Irkinson, started calling themselves the Lape Mi Girls. And then she had failed to laugh when Mimi Shimujima, a second generation Lapedusivian, made a racist remark about the Lape Mi Girls to her while they were showering in adjacent stalls.
Yes. It was indeed vitally important to Anna Lazarin that she made the next two shots. As Recruit Anna Lazarin, she was Lazarin to her superiors, and nothing to her bunkmates. As Marksman Anna Lazarin, she would still be Lazarin to her superiors – but perhaps she would be Anna to her bunkmates, maybe even Lazyrin. She had only been not unpopular in Saint Joseph’s Convent, and she had learned that sixteen-year old girls in the military were still sixteen-year old girls. She did not want to sit alone in the cookhouse anymore; she was running out of pocket-sized books, she would not get off the island for another two weeks, and lately Shirley Mazinro had begun to give her hopeful looks from her own one-woman table across the cookhouse. If anything could give her all the determination she needed, it was the prospect of breakfasting, lunching, and dining with Shirley Mazinro. So as she lay on her stomach at the 300-meter mark of the shooting range, she thought of that prospect.
I am going to make the next two shots, she also told herself in the meantime, as she made sure that the dial on her M-16 was not turned to ‘auto’ or ‘safe’, as she made sure that the bullet casing deflector that marked her as a troublesome left-hander was secure, and as she made sure that her front and rear sight posts were aligned. She could hear Betty Irkinson giggling about the male safety officers – as if they wanted to be there, after the incident with Third Sergeant Charlie Sysinkis – and she could sense Shirley beside her, bored and unhappy about the gritty grass and the kamikaze mosquitoes, but she put everyone out of her mind, including herself and her petty concerns. So as she closed one eye, trained the other through the sight posts, and blocked out the noises around her, she told herself: In the circle, on top of the spike, fire. In the circle, on top of the spike, fire.
And then something moved in the circle, and so she fired.
The first thought in her head after that was that she had forgotten to wait for it to be on top of the spike.
The second thought was that she was very lucky the spike didn’t matter after all.
Story: Certifiable
Joshua leaned against the hood of the camouflage-colored Jeep Wrangler. “I don’t know if I should get in the car,” he said, turning to Alex, his fingernails tapping in metallic consideration. Looking at Alex, he shrugged, a sly smile on his face.
Alex folded his hands across his chest. Joshua mock surrendered. His raised arms twisted into a grotesque dance as he swayed his way to the passenger’s side.
Alex snorted and took the four cans of Heineken off the hood of his car. When he got into the driver’s seat, he dumped the cans in the backseat, where they crinkled introductions to the other cans already there. Joshua made a face, and palmed his ears.
Alex ignored him, and shoved the key into the ignition slot. After he revved the engine twice, he leaned over Joshua to pull at Joshua’s seatbelt. Joshua didn’t move an inch, and Alex could feel his friend breathing on his neck.
“Sorry,” Joshua said, when the seatbelt cinch was secured.
“No problem,” Alex replied. He pulled the shift stick into gear, kept both eyes on the rearview mirror, and slowly reversed the car out of the garage.
The tarmac before them was flooded in yellow fluorescent light, but beyond that the road shivered in an orange glow latticed by shadows. As they glided down the highway, Joshua leaned into the dashboard, twisting his head this way and that to look at the stars. Alex jabbed at the radio buttons every few minutes.
It was a long time before Joshua laid a hand on Alex’s fingers. By then they were already on Medway Drive. “Great song,” Joshua said, taking Alex’s fingers off the buttons and wrapping them around the steering wheel.
“Whatever,” Alex said. Joshua was already drumming on the dashboard with both his index fingers. For the next two and a half minutes Frank Sinatra crackled New York, New York to Joshua’s beat.
When they finally pulled up outside Joshua’s house, Alex switched the engine off. “It’s good,” Joshua insisted, as he fumbled with the seatbelt. Alex watched him go on for another minute, and then released the cinch for him. Joshua rolled his bloodshot eyes and muttered something.
And then they sat there, neither one of them moving, for a few moments. And then Joshua got out of the car, and then he slammed the door closed. One hand ready to push his car door open, Alex watched Joshua stumble up the tiled path.
After the front door closed behind Joshua, Alex pulled closed his own car door. Then he turned around and counted the beer cans in the backseat. Six cans of Heineken, four cans of Tiger, and eight cans of Bud. He shrugged, and was about to turn back when two red cylinders glinted in the light of a passing car.
Alex reached into the backseat and took the two cylinders. When he settled back in his seat he tossed his into the passenger seat, and twisted the cap off Joshua’s.
The graduation certificate was curled up, and he had to smooth it across his lap several times before it would stay somewhat flat.
Rooting in the glove compartment, he found the red marker pen. Then he scribbled diagonally across the certificate, “Stay jack-assy in New York.” Then, in smaller letters, his e-mail address underneath. He rolled the certificate and slid it into the cylinder again. He screwed the cap back. Then he switched on the engine again.
He leaned and rolled down the window on the passenger’s side. “Josh!” he shouted. After a few moments, the front door swung, he pitched the cylinder at it, and then he slid back into his seat and floored the accelerator.
In the rearview mirror, the red cylinder gleamed in the moonlight as Joshua picked it up.
Alex folded his hands across his chest. Joshua mock surrendered. His raised arms twisted into a grotesque dance as he swayed his way to the passenger’s side.
Alex snorted and took the four cans of Heineken off the hood of his car. When he got into the driver’s seat, he dumped the cans in the backseat, where they crinkled introductions to the other cans already there. Joshua made a face, and palmed his ears.
Alex ignored him, and shoved the key into the ignition slot. After he revved the engine twice, he leaned over Joshua to pull at Joshua’s seatbelt. Joshua didn’t move an inch, and Alex could feel his friend breathing on his neck.
“Sorry,” Joshua said, when the seatbelt cinch was secured.
“No problem,” Alex replied. He pulled the shift stick into gear, kept both eyes on the rearview mirror, and slowly reversed the car out of the garage.
The tarmac before them was flooded in yellow fluorescent light, but beyond that the road shivered in an orange glow latticed by shadows. As they glided down the highway, Joshua leaned into the dashboard, twisting his head this way and that to look at the stars. Alex jabbed at the radio buttons every few minutes.
It was a long time before Joshua laid a hand on Alex’s fingers. By then they were already on Medway Drive. “Great song,” Joshua said, taking Alex’s fingers off the buttons and wrapping them around the steering wheel.
“Whatever,” Alex said. Joshua was already drumming on the dashboard with both his index fingers. For the next two and a half minutes Frank Sinatra crackled New York, New York to Joshua’s beat.
When they finally pulled up outside Joshua’s house, Alex switched the engine off. “It’s good,” Joshua insisted, as he fumbled with the seatbelt. Alex watched him go on for another minute, and then released the cinch for him. Joshua rolled his bloodshot eyes and muttered something.
And then they sat there, neither one of them moving, for a few moments. And then Joshua got out of the car, and then he slammed the door closed. One hand ready to push his car door open, Alex watched Joshua stumble up the tiled path.
After the front door closed behind Joshua, Alex pulled closed his own car door. Then he turned around and counted the beer cans in the backseat. Six cans of Heineken, four cans of Tiger, and eight cans of Bud. He shrugged, and was about to turn back when two red cylinders glinted in the light of a passing car.
Alex reached into the backseat and took the two cylinders. When he settled back in his seat he tossed his into the passenger seat, and twisted the cap off Joshua’s.
The graduation certificate was curled up, and he had to smooth it across his lap several times before it would stay somewhat flat.
Rooting in the glove compartment, he found the red marker pen. Then he scribbled diagonally across the certificate, “Stay jack-assy in New York.” Then, in smaller letters, his e-mail address underneath. He rolled the certificate and slid it into the cylinder again. He screwed the cap back. Then he switched on the engine again.
He leaned and rolled down the window on the passenger’s side. “Josh!” he shouted. After a few moments, the front door swung, he pitched the cylinder at it, and then he slid back into his seat and floored the accelerator.
In the rearview mirror, the red cylinder gleamed in the moonlight as Joshua picked it up.
Poetry: Still
Then I kept my hand on his kneecap, and underneath
the flat of my palm a field of hairs flattened into
cold clammy flesh. He
had gone very still, and in his stillness time seemed to stop… So.
I knew his eyes had not strayed. Not once. Never from the screen –
then his fingers – they tapped. tapped tapped. the Nintendo buttons. So
I gripped. And I – patted. Then, slowly, my hand grazed, upfield.
-----
But, after that day, he still put his arm around me.
Still joked about tennis skirts and girls who wore them.
That was why, six months of four-classmate movies and five-friend meals
later, three months before final year exams,
when a friend, looking away, taught me the word everyone knew –
zengkunophobia: only a word, after all –
I slept. Woke. Slept. And why if awake I memorized dreams.
-----
And I did exceptionally well for my exams. Do, still.
Entered a top, if unexpected, junior college.
Still. Time passes. One day I glimpsed a man, and moved on. And on…
-----
Until I grasped that time passes and stops. I grow older, and
stay fifteen. So in love I will always be gently haunted
by a hand resting on a field of hair and flesh, waiting.
Still.
the flat of my palm a field of hairs flattened into
cold clammy flesh. He
had gone very still, and in his stillness time seemed to stop… So.
I knew his eyes had not strayed. Not once. Never from the screen –
then his fingers – they tapped. tapped tapped. the Nintendo buttons. So
I gripped. And I – patted. Then, slowly, my hand grazed, upfield.
-----
But, after that day, he still put his arm around me.
Still joked about tennis skirts and girls who wore them.
That was why, six months of four-classmate movies and five-friend meals
later, three months before final year exams,
when a friend, looking away, taught me the word everyone knew –
zengkunophobia: only a word, after all –
I slept. Woke. Slept. And why if awake I memorized dreams.
-----
And I did exceptionally well for my exams. Do, still.
Entered a top, if unexpected, junior college.
Still. Time passes. One day I glimpsed a man, and moved on. And on…
-----
Until I grasped that time passes and stops. I grow older, and
stay fifteen. So in love I will always be gently haunted
by a hand resting on a field of hair and flesh, waiting.
Still.
Poetry: This Is What "Yep" Meant
I wait in the dark,
my eyes closed, my hands poised.
Sometimes it seems like nothing will come.
I open my eyes:
A white screen, a blank life.
A spark of anger flares up and fades.
I look at the clock:
two fifteen, two forty.
My mind begins to skitter and grasp.
I start to tap keys,
Foraging, accreting.
A vomit of letters piles up and reeks.
I barrel ahead
Ignore it, but I can’t
And yet I’m typing, forgiving myself.
Even though I know myself this writing is:
An accelerating unraveling: strands
drawn from desperation,
pulled apart to fill up space,
which is stuffed with straw and dross
from thin memories fattened up.
Strands unraveling from a height,
falling and tangling
to jumble together, but together.
If meaningless.
---
I gave you my page
last Wednesday, I did it.
Sometimes it seems like I wasn’t wrong.
I thought you would talk
about it, or something.
I thought you would be… clear if not kind.
I didn’t think you’d think
it was good, or thought through.
But you said nothing, nothing at all.
I cannot stand this,
I cannot, I will not.
I should have told you: nothing did come.
I’m doing that now:
forgive me, I’m sorry.
I hope you will say – don’t do it twice.
Even forgive me, by telling me writing is this:
A slow tying together – ropes
of patience,
of the need to fill an emptiness,
of straws made into twine,
made to sustain.
Ropes making a bridge that stretches ahead,
sturdy if flawed,
but not unraveling –
connecting.
---
Maybe. But that’s what kills me.
Do you remember?
I gave you my page.
Our eyes met, a beat passed.
“A great job today,” and then, “All right?”
“Yep,” I said. And I left you
in the dark.
But no more.
my eyes closed, my hands poised.
Sometimes it seems like nothing will come.
I open my eyes:
A white screen, a blank life.
A spark of anger flares up and fades.
I look at the clock:
two fifteen, two forty.
My mind begins to skitter and grasp.
I start to tap keys,
Foraging, accreting.
A vomit of letters piles up and reeks.
I barrel ahead
Ignore it, but I can’t
And yet I’m typing, forgiving myself.
Even though I know myself this writing is:
An accelerating unraveling: strands
drawn from desperation,
pulled apart to fill up space,
which is stuffed with straw and dross
from thin memories fattened up.
Strands unraveling from a height,
falling and tangling
to jumble together, but together.
If meaningless.
---
I gave you my page
last Wednesday, I did it.
Sometimes it seems like I wasn’t wrong.
I thought you would talk
about it, or something.
I thought you would be… clear if not kind.
I didn’t think you’d think
it was good, or thought through.
But you said nothing, nothing at all.
I cannot stand this,
I cannot, I will not.
I should have told you: nothing did come.
I’m doing that now:
forgive me, I’m sorry.
I hope you will say – don’t do it twice.
Even forgive me, by telling me writing is this:
A slow tying together – ropes
of patience,
of the need to fill an emptiness,
of straws made into twine,
made to sustain.
Ropes making a bridge that stretches ahead,
sturdy if flawed,
but not unraveling –
connecting.
---
Maybe. But that’s what kills me.
Do you remember?
I gave you my page.
Our eyes met, a beat passed.
“A great job today,” and then, “All right?”
“Yep,” I said. And I left you
in the dark.
But no more.
Poetry: To Robert Jason Leahey
I had in mind your fallow hair,
in hands your curious face.
You entered thoughts and lurked in words,
a shadow near or far.
So then my plots I under lined
with clumsy traps that showed
the angled mirrors of a boy
who longed for tricks of light.
But when the weeks began to glue
and months began to build,
I thought you time and page had shelved
in memories turning cool.
So clumsy traps were set aside
and mirrors hid away,
and pen was put to paper now
in search of truths that’d fled.
But as I waited through the nights
my page and lives were blank.
My mind askittering would grasp
that nothing had been known.
I’d built my hopes with gossamer strands
and stuffed them full of dross.
I’d twined my castles and their floors
with memories fat and stray.
So now I looked with twice-opened eyes
and tried to build anew
a different home, a different way
to put me up above,
beyond the shadow of your touch,
beyond the clumsiness,
beyond the stains of memories,
beyond your startling reach.
Unwriting you from page and ink
I cleaned you from my thoughts;
since time and page had gathered dust
I tore you from new work.
But then the words were hollow and
the lines rang grey and false,
and he who pried apart the page
would nothing under find.
And calibrated angst and smarts
would only build to this:
a careful house and careful days
of waiting craziness.
So now I take the clumsy but
I take away the traps;
I take the mirrors and the dreams
but take away the light;
I put them all in front of you
in all this messiness;
I was given this to live and use,
this home, this time, this you.
I have in mind your fallow hair,
in hands your curious face.
You enter thoughts and bolster words,
a shadow next to mine.
And when this home should fall to ground
and when this time should pass,
your fallow hair and curious face
will stay and mark these truths:
I stopped and knew it would not do
to hide behind my words.
And if I have but all these words,
these here are due to you.
in hands your curious face.
You entered thoughts and lurked in words,
a shadow near or far.
So then my plots I under lined
with clumsy traps that showed
the angled mirrors of a boy
who longed for tricks of light.
But when the weeks began to glue
and months began to build,
I thought you time and page had shelved
in memories turning cool.
So clumsy traps were set aside
and mirrors hid away,
and pen was put to paper now
in search of truths that’d fled.
But as I waited through the nights
my page and lives were blank.
My mind askittering would grasp
that nothing had been known.
I’d built my hopes with gossamer strands
and stuffed them full of dross.
I’d twined my castles and their floors
with memories fat and stray.
So now I looked with twice-opened eyes
and tried to build anew
a different home, a different way
to put me up above,
beyond the shadow of your touch,
beyond the clumsiness,
beyond the stains of memories,
beyond your startling reach.
Unwriting you from page and ink
I cleaned you from my thoughts;
since time and page had gathered dust
I tore you from new work.
But then the words were hollow and
the lines rang grey and false,
and he who pried apart the page
would nothing under find.
And calibrated angst and smarts
would only build to this:
a careful house and careful days
of waiting craziness.
So now I take the clumsy but
I take away the traps;
I take the mirrors and the dreams
but take away the light;
I put them all in front of you
in all this messiness;
I was given this to live and use,
this home, this time, this you.
I have in mind your fallow hair,
in hands your curious face.
You enter thoughts and bolster words,
a shadow next to mine.
And when this home should fall to ground
and when this time should pass,
your fallow hair and curious face
will stay and mark these truths:
I stopped and knew it would not do
to hide behind my words.
And if I have but all these words,
these here are due to you.
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