Fiction
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.
Two more and his merino quarter-zip will be sweated through, the sky now bruised a deep green purple.
A car door will shut and shake the air. Her heels will pock-pock-pock up the drive and through the house.
Into the full dark she will say hon-ey? Hon? Come in for a drink? Please? Five minutes, dear, Ramirez will say. Just five more minutes.”
Janie
“The coast seems clear, so she makes her exit from the car, a svelte little hybrid, reasonable compared to what some of these people drive. The lease is up in March. It’s November now, and Janie has been thinking more and more often about what to do next. Two or three leases ago she leased one and hadn’t spent enough time thinking about lease terms and the stress, gosh, she was in and out of the doctor’s four maybe five times with a dang bleeding ulcer.
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.”