Five Minutes

I entered the restaurant. A spotlight shone on the single table. Music played in the background. Opera of some sort. I wondered where my brother had found the recording. 

The table was covered with a white cloth.  There was a red rose in a gold vase.  A sweating glass of ice water tempted me to drink. I reached for the glass then withdrew my hand. “Drink nothing,” my mother had said. “Your brother is conniving.”

I pulled out the chair and sat. 

A man appeared suddenly.  A waiter.  I did not recognize him, but then again, my brother had stopped hiring people from the village. The man wore a white shirt, neatly ironed and tucked into black silk pants. There was a thin black necktie around his waist. A black apron encircled his waist. His hair was arranged in the old way, when fashion had been important. “Good evening, sir. I will be your waiter this evening.” 

My brother. Master of artifice. Leader of my village.

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Almighty Dollar

Miles Mayhem sat on the leather chair, strategically placed by his wife’s decorator in the corner of the room to let him observe the entire party at a glance.  But Miles wasn’t watching.  Truth be told, he really didn’t care.

He’d closed his eyes so as to distance himself from all the fuss that surrounded him, fingering the thin cotton blanket someone had shaken over him despite the fact that he’d said he didn’t want it.

“You’ll be more comfortable,” a familiar-looking woman had said, tucking it around his lap.

The young generation always and forever thought they knew better than their elders, Miles mused.  He listened to snippets of conversation that went on around him as people stood in line for the buffet table.

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A Lighter Shade Beneath

Liese watches the car pull up to the tollbooth; notices its Ohio plates.  Someone coming home, then.  She shoves her cigarette though the gaping mouth of the empty can of pop; hears it sizzle out.  She puts a flat hand out the window and waits for the ticket.

“Err…We have a bit of a problem.”

She looks up.  Problems are rare in the tollbooth. 

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Six-Nineteen

The six-nineteen pulls into Penn Station right on time, all in a clatter of whooshing winds and flashing lights and hot steamy air that makes it hard to breathe.  The doors glide open and the passengers disembark, shoving past the crowd, glancing at watches, holding cell phones to their ears as they stream as one body towards the escalator.

Judith can spot the new ones easily enough.  This one wears a cheap polyester suit, pinstripe, the jacket folded neatly over his left arm.  He’s got shiny leather shoes.  Carries a leather bag that his father probably bought for him after he graduated college with a degree in accounting or perhaps international finance.  There are two pens—blue and black—tucked in the pocket of his dress shirt.  A thin tie, baby blue, covers the line of buttons tracking down the front of his shirt.  This one doesn’t look at his watch.  This one has stopped, dead still, in the middle of the busyness of the station.  She smiles.  She enjoys the new ones.  She likes seeing people surprised by the city.

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Forever This Time

I kiss Louise goodnight and tuck the blanket around her tiny shoulders.  It’s a woven synthetic, scratchy like wool and just as heavy in the middle of the summer.  Edged in smooth satin.  And that’s the only saving grace of this cheap blanket: that smoothness over the scratchiness that soothes Louise to sleep.  She grasps the satin, rubs her thumb along the top.  I hear a rumble of thunder and go to her window, wrestling it closed against thick layers of paint that flakes in my hand.    

“Sleep tight, Louie,” I whisper.  From her dresser, I pick up a picture of my mother—a mother who died giving birth to me—and whisper a silent prayer to that smiling woman behind glass—Let her be happy.  Let her be safe—before tiptoeing from the room and closing the door quietly behind me.

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In the Space Between Contrasts

“That’s such a beautiful chair, Juliette.” Andee sets a cup and saucer on the table at my elbow and pours tea from a porcelain pot. “Shall I add a few logs to the fire? I know that chill gets to your bones.”

I nod. Andee is paid to visit; paid to be polite; paid to be interested in my uninteresting life. Orange Cat leaps onto my lap. I rub my hand across his arched back. He begins kneading on my leg, his claws stabbing and releasing; stabling and releasing; the relentless stabbing and releasing, desire unfulfilled. Outside the storm rages: cold rain streaks down the windows like tears.

“Listen to that wind,” Andee says now, tossing a log on the fire and then jumping back before adding another. “I hope the power doesn’t go out again.” She peers outside the window into the darkness that surrounds the old farmhouse that has contained the pieces of my life for seventy-five years when I bundled up what little life I had and married John. She pours herself a cup of tea and flops on the couch. I admire her lack of decorum. “End of the day, Juliette.” She sighs.

“End of the line for me, I’m afraid.”
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You Can't Close...

I stare at the bombs exploding on the plasma screen.  The fish in the tank open and close circular mouths, constantly demanding something I cannot give.

The camera cuts to a boy, newly-orphaned.  Tears wash streaks down grimy cheeks.  He speaks in a language I will never understand.  He lies there among the rubble of his burned out home.  I can make out a cast iron pan.  A mattress.  Too many bodies.  The smoke trails off behind the boy.  Sirens scream in the distance. 

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