Winner
The mail had piled up while I was gone, forming a low hill that spanned the foyer. The plastic windows on the envelopes caught the light and winked out one name, again and again, in capital letters. The name was mine, and I was glad to recognize it. LUCKY WINNER! said a blue mailer with a red star, and in the star was a photo of a man on the beach—a man laughing and carrying a woman into the surf. They were happy; their muscles were visible, their teeth snow-white; their beach could be mine. I was due for a win. I had been gone so long the apartment smelled like someone else, like no one, the absence of man. I wouldn’t have to pretend to be happy for the other winners; they would pretend for me. I called the phone number. “Hello?” said a voice. He was just waking up. “Hello?” He was just beginning. I could hear how close he was to the wall, how small his room, how long his legs. “I won,” I said. “Oh, that’s wonderful,” he said, sipping old water, looking for his glasses. “That’s wonderful,” he said, rubbing his eyes, kicking back the blankets. “And which state are you in? Have you won before?” “I’ve always wanted to,” I said. “Then I’m so glad it’s you this time. We wanted it to be you. Now listen closely. What time is it where you are? We wanted it to be you so badly. Do you identify as a protected veteran? Did you earn income in Yonkers? Now listen carefully.” And I tried to, but all I heard was his breathing, the sound of a clock in his room. I listened to the back and forth, mostly forth, of his breath. He dealt in breaks of fortune; my luck was the worn coin in his palm. But now he dwelled in dream. His septum was deviated. He lived alone, in a small chamber, the tight quarters of righteousness. He was a minor deity on the isle of winners, a name written in the pillowed sands. I could almost taste a wave, see the little crabs escape the surf. A woman screamed in a good way, for the good things. I went back to the pile, where a fresh envelope slid from the hill. “Here’s another one,” I said into the phone, but he was beyond speech, he was in flight, he was dreaming of my tropic luck in wonder. YOU’RE A WINNER! the new mailer said, the runes of my name catching on the whim of light, twisting with the thought of sea. I could hang up and call back, but instead I listened to him sleep, his breath going forth, forth, forth.
This Store Is Closing
The shop was near my office, so I stopped in after work. I’d stopped in before to pick up small gifts for my coworkers or presents for my little nieces who live in Texas. The shelves were high, unless they were low. Some evenings I had to get up on a ladder and reach out with my fingertips; or get on my knees and stretch out my arm into darkness. It was all familiar—but this time, something was different. Where was the ladder? There was more glass than I remembered, more objects reflected. The tables had moved, been moved. And how old were my nieces now? Texas could hold them, but it would never define them. The light was no more or less, but it had changed, congealed into wax, gathered like sap and now rolled down the walls. The rugs were redder than I remembered. Where was the young woman with the braided hair, the heavy mouth? This was no store for nieces. “This store is closing,” said a voice, an older woman turning off the lamps. How do you get a rug so red? She pulled the chains one by one. The floor lurched, or the thing beneath it did—the liquid eye, the dark side of earth. I heard the flapping of a coat that wasn’t mine. I held myself, shivering, feeling cold air on my bare arms, the sun a world away. The woman stood at the door with her back to me. “This store is closing,” she said. Say it again, I begged, for it was the voice of my mother. The wind whistled through my bones, calling the dog of memory. The white flutes sang as one—as if I were the instrument, the wood of a tune. “What is the store doing?” I asked. She was trying to be strong. She had made a decision. She turned the sign from open to closed. Daddy still loves you, I should have said. Daddy still loves you very much, but he can’t live here anymore. She had been gone for years. The light rolled down the walls. She cleared her throat, like she used to. She stared at the door, like she used to. She stayed silent, like she used to. I heard the bolt slide into the frame, the night slide into the night. “Please,” I said, “please, one moment more.”
The Canoe of Love
We wanted the best for Nick and Tricia. We wished them well. We said so as they boarded the boat and wobbled under what little light the dock’s one bulb would give. It was late, and we were drunk. We tried to note the movements of the night: the surface of the lake and the bulb overhead; our eyes in their sockets; our bodies on the soft boards of the old dock; the old dock itself, its soaked-through wood, a loyal oak that hoped to hold. What about this planet, someone offered. Orb of rock and dirt, a kind of spherical dock? In the black lake of space? We considered it but didn’t respond—our way of rejecting it, making its framer drink warm wine and stare dead-eyed at the moon, a hole in the night. A plop in the water like someone had dropped his watch. Someone had. Nick was crying because his pantleg was soaked, and he feared a chill. Tricia was crying because she feared Nick. Raymond was crying for his watch. We were laughing out of desperation, out of running low on options. But the seriousness of the world could not touch us here. If they survived the Canoe of Love, a ceremony in Nick’s family, they’d be happy together. It wouldn’t be their first time making love—but it would be their first in a boat, as friends and family thought specifically, graphically, and collectively about the act. To picture it clearly, the love they would make, we took a good, long look at the boat’s bottom, where knees would knock together, where limbs would bark on parts of the old canoe. Her legs propped on the center thwart, we had to assume. His hands gripping the gunwales, we had to figure. We dipped a cupped hand in the lake and drank to taste. We helped them cast off and heard the boat rocking, the wood creaking, a rusted metal piece crying like a rat in a trap. Nick whispering not yet, not yet. The giggles of Trish, the call of the loon. The plash of something dunked, a buckle’s brassy chime. The hiss of bridal cloth bunching, being bunched. The thick reeds clacking—percussive, instructive. When the boat drifted out of earshot, we turned and looked at each other, tried to think of what to do. Anyone have the time? someone asked, to make Raymond sob. And Raymond sobbed. Shouldn’t we go back to the hotel? Suddenly, it was cold. Was the mood large enough to let us love again? Suddenly, it was fall. We felt the weather, the latitude. We had beds for the night, dark hours ahead. We needed a ride, a road pointed north. Did anyone see them return to shore? A part of us is always with them, Nick and Tricia. Has anyone seen them since? The itch to think of them, thank them for our symbols. They float by like passing years, backs pressed to the ribbing. They tap out the rhythm and rate of consummation, trail their fingers in the water, lose their hair and speech. The paddles lie forgotten. The boat spins in circles. The shore is overgrown. There is judgment on the water. Soon, the boat will find the bottom, the watch will tock its last. Soon, the night will choke the moon, the quiet pour back in.
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Artwork by Amanda Sala
