Fiction
Buckle Up
Rick and I are trying to get to Costco for bulk pastry to bring to brunch club, but the City Marathon is today and we’re trapped like ants in an ant farm. We’ve been driving idiot circles around our neighborhood for over an hour, and street after street we’re rebuffed by race barricades and stock-looking cops grinning the same dog grin from behind their sunglasses. Sunshine, overtime pay, and runner butts, their faces say, and God Bless America.
The Taker
She wouldn’t let it keep her from working, never that, but she did wonder. If the pain didn’t let up soon, if it filled her completely, would it get from her into other people? Could it reverse course, travelling back down from her, through the boots and road and into the earth itself? God. What then?
The Miracle Part
So now imagine you’re by the window, this window, at the table with me and a tuna sandwich of your own, and just look. What do you see?
You see watches set to different time zones, sometimes three or four to a wrist. Where’s that person been, and what up to? See stripes of skin milkfish-pale on ring fingers, wedding bands lustily shucked. Is the wife aware? Is she also out there shucking?
High Speed
Ramirez'll be out back with a neat whiskey on his freshly treated deck. The bird feeders will be full, the tiki torches lit, the water features burbling. Against a red sky he will manage maybe two minutes of stillness before finding something out of place. Two hours later and he’ll still be down on hands and knees, whipping mulch and hostas into ever neater rank and file.
Janie
Next time an 18-month lease, she thinks. Janie shuts the car door and air from its shutting puffs her carefully twirled lock upward. It settles back down at an angle much different. Her face warms as she appraises a squatter version of herself in the distorted reflection of her car window. She resists re-twirling the lock of hair and tries to work with it, slants her beret slightly, and is now a sort of woman-on-the-go. She turns from the car window, smooths-rumples-smooths again her warmish-day October microfleece jacket, and is ready to begin her walk down the trail.