It was a fine afternoon for murder. The bell rang for dismissal and children poured out of classrooms into corridors, spilt into courtyards, escaped into streets. Within minutes, the campus was almost deserted, as even the adults began to make their less hasty
exits on the last day of term. Into this scene of impending calm strode a group of boys. Coming
down a flight of stairs, they turned and stood around the little pond just beside the stairs, jostling for position around the edge of the pond until they were all leaning over, distorted faces staring up from the rippling water.

In the pond, several tadpoles could be seen harmlessly swimming. The
boys observed the tadpoles for several minutes, completely oblivious
to the growing stillness of their surroundings. One boy produced a
small plastic bag, and with one swift move, scooped up all the
tadpoles. Having tied the bag securely, he and the other boys stepped
away from the pond, grinning gleefully, completely absorbed in their
sport. Holding the bag up high, he was about to turn and walk off,
when he closed his fingers around one of the tadpoles, felt it squirm
through the plastic, and squeezed. Hard. An explosion of murky fluid,
the first of several.

Satisfied for the moment, he chucked the plastic bag into the bin, and
chuckling with his friends, walked out the gates of the school. He
turned left when they turned right. Unlike them, he lived uptown. None
of them clocked the man standing opposite the school beside an idling
car. He might have been a parent, waiting for a tardy son, except for
the gun discreetly tucked into his belt. He watched the boys waving to
each other, waited until the group that had turned right was around
the corner. Then he cocked the gun, got into the car, and drove off
after the one who was left alone. LS

The first woman says the second woman will see me now.

I adjust my coat and tie. Ties paint a desperate need. Coats add obligation.

The second woman, the executive, is so taut the air in her corner office hums. She twists her necklace and studies my application. Her hair is blonde surrendered to roots. She has a constriction at the base of her left-hand ring finger where an entire past used to be, perhaps until recently. She has a big desk and a big monitor. She has a nameplate that reads Judy Rothman. Judy Rothman, Vice President of Technical Support. She has a framed 5x7 of a cat on her credenza. I know her type. I can see the Powerpoint graph of her career and relationship curves, divergent over time.

"Why did you leave your last position?" she asks.

"Religious reasons", I answer.

"And are you available for periodic travel?"

"No."

"You write on here, under "Tell Us Something About Yourself", that you’re faith is Christian, but you spelled it wrong. I’m not supposed to ask about creed, but since you volunteered it, and you can’t spell worth shit, I think it’s appropriate. I won’t hire a technical writer that technically can’t write."

"It’s spelled correctly", I say. "Not Christian - Christianne, as in the name."

"I don’t get it", she says.

"You would if you met her", I say.

"Why are you telling me this?" she says.

"Because I’ll probably need to take some days off every now and then", I say.

"To do what?" she asks.

"Worship", I answer.

She’s obviously not getting this at all, tugging on her jewelry and staring at me and starting to get up from her chair and I’m seconds away from being shown the door, so I let fly, so I ask her: "Ms. Rothman, if you could tongue the sun without burning your own face off, if you could just taste that magnificence, wouldn’t you do it? Wouldn’t you tear off hunks of it and cram as much of it into your mouth as you could?"

She sits back down in her chair.

"Ms. Rothman, forgive me, but if you knew of sex that could be like rolling naked in warm shards of starlight, like drinking the entire Renaissance distilled into a cup, wouldn’t you take whatever oath and pay whatever tithe just to keep it? You’d chain yourself to that altar and play the acolyte, just like I do. And if the sun wanted some things done around the house, you’d do them. And if the sun needed more money and told you to quit trying to be a novelist and go get a real job, you’d find yourself in some office just like this one, begging for a chance."

She’s twisting her necklace so tight that it looks like the thinnest of leashes around her neck. Her eyes are liquid.

"I’m sorry", I say. "I shouldn’t have said all those things. I’ve got to learn to stop praying in public like this."

"Shut my door", she says.

I smile, and obey, and this is no longer interview, but conversion.

Yes, ma’am, I’m fine with that, let’s cut the crap.

What do I really believe in? Well, I’d say goddesses are defined on all sides by their loneliness. I’d say religions are convergences of need, like waves collecting on oceans, which I guess makes all worship transactional. So that’s basically what I believe in. Transactions.

She buzzes Human Resources. I’m sending someone down, she tells them. LS

It was about a month before the incident at the 7-11.

Nobody knows this part of the story except me and, now, you.

We were in his backyard shooting his BB gun at a magazine page target nailed to a big maple tree. At first it was Nixon. I had no trouble shooting at Nixon. Got him once, too, right between the eyes. Hell of a shot. Then Ted took that one down and put up a page from a Playboy centerfold, went back to his shooting position and aimed the rifle.

“What are ya’ doin’?” I asked, but he had his eyes locked on the picture.

“Target practice,” he said, with a crooked smile, then pulled the trigger. He took two, three shots, then handed the gun to me.

“No,” I said, “I can’t shoot at . . . that.”

You have to remember, he was sixteen and had been trying to get to second base with Suzie Wiederman for six months with no luck. None whatsoever. I don’t know what he was thinking.

“Let’s take it down,” I said. “Maybe get Nixon again. Or Agnew. They make much better targets.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you,” he said, and grabbed the gun away from me, aimed and started pulling the trigger, pushing off several shots before I yelled out: “Stop! Enough! You can’t do that!” Staring at the picture of that naked woman. Air-brushed, but a woman, no less.

He dropped the gun and stared at me with that open-mouthed look he used to get, looking like a caveman, a degenerate, like somehow he wasn’t all there. Not a pretty sight. Not at all. But it was Ted. My best friend at the time.

The 7-11 thing, nobody could have seen that coming. It was 12:37 in the afternoon, July 2nd. A hot day. Flags flying everywhere, waving in the breezed, displayed in the store. We went in there for Slurpees.

We were at the machine, the slushy blue stuff slopping into my cup. That’s when we heard the pop and the cup flew out of my hand, blue sleet flying everywhere. I turned around and saw the back of this blond-haired guy with a Led Zeppelin T-shirt at the checkout. The curly-haired clerk had his hands up over his head. I slid down to the floor but Ted, he yelled out “Hey!” I don’t know why he did it. The guy whirled around and next thing I knew Ted was dropping like a bag of cement to the floor, red oozing out of him like in the movies. It didn’t seem real. He was on the floor, just lying there, breathing light, shallow breaths. And, meanwhile, the guy was yelling at the clerk, gun pointed at his face, ordering him to open the register, put the money in the bag. I was behind the magazine display, lying on the floor, shaking, trying not to breathe. Red was spilling out of Ted, a sea of red, out onto the floor. I couldn’t move, couldn’t get up. And from the cover of one of the glossy magazines some fashion model was staring at me with a bored haughty fashion model kind of look that seemed to be turning, at the corners of her mouth, into a smirk.

Then, in minutes that seemed like hours, the guy was gone, the police and paramedics were there, but Ted, Ted was gone. Gone, gone, a pool of red surrounding his prone body. They were all around him, looking at him, prodding him. Electronic voices staticcy voices on police radios, lights flashing outside the front window, the curly-haired clerk in hysterics, telling what happened, the cops standing there, one of them telling him to “Calm down, calm down,” writing in his little pad.

And I was standing there, shaking, watching my friend, my former friend, Ted, lying in his own blood, thinking about how he looked when he was lining up his shot with that crooked smile, saying “Target practice,” just before he pulled the trigger. LS

As dusk set in, the highway heading south was clogged with cars, vans, SUVs, Hummers, tour buses and trucks.  The vehicles were crawling, inch by endless inch, a sea of pebbles at the mercy of a sluggish Friday rush hour tide.  Vonda Barrett was boxed in by a moving van on her left and a Mack truck on her right, each the length of the Great Wall of China, or so it seemed.  She tried to extricate herself from these mountains of steel but it was impossible; she was resigned to the fact that if she dozed off and an accident occurred she’d be crushed to a gory death, and that would be that.  A grape squashed by the foot of a gorilla.  No one would know she was even there.

Behind her smoky Goth eyes and platinum blonde hair, Vonda was a small town brunette who used to play baseball and bake red velvet cakes.  At seventeen, she conjured up a new life, turning Halloween into a daily activity.

When the traffic began to flow again, allowing vehicles to increase their speed, Vonda was thinking about the Standard Hotel with its white façade illuminated by eerie blue lights, and its quirky, eye-catching upside-down banner that seemed like the work of a prankster or a legally blind hotel employee.  With its live performance art, electric blue astro-turf sundeck, and nightly DJ in the lobby, the place thrilled and energized her.   

The Sunset Boulevard exit was just one mile away.  Vonda veered into the right lane and prepared to head east, toward the half-mile portion of the Sunset Strip that was crowded with weekend cruisers, young partiers, and industry peeps dripping in fur, ego and bling, desperately trying to become part of the cutting edge.  The men didn’t wear worn overalls.  The women didn’t don homely housedresses.  The neighbors didn’t stare at you with disdain as if you were some foreigner who didn’t speak the language.        

Vonda closed her eyes and could practically smell the hotel’s heavily perfumed air that seemed imported from some magical place where it was manufactured with a combination of oxygen and opiate.  She inhaled, and pretended.        

Just as Vonda opened her eyes, she thought her car had been struck by a missile from the sky, and the world was coming to a deafening, fiery end.  Then came the screeching of metal, and then the blasting or horns like the brass section of an amateur orchestra trying in vain to play the same note.  Like a flash frame in a movie, she caught a fleeting glimpse of her smiling parents before the screen abruptly cut to black.  

In the end she was wrong.  Many people knew that Emily Vonda Barrett had been there.  LS

This is what he’s done to you. You turn off the lights, close the bedroom door, close your eyes and wait for the sounds. Tiny scratches, the creak of a mildewed floorboard, the soft sigh of breathing. In your rush for explanation you blame it on the dog, but he took that too.

You tried leaving the door open; you tried leaving the front door unlocked, hoping that either he’d return or the person or thing would leave, but night after night the noises reappear. Yet you don’t see them either, except through the film of dream, because when you finally get the courage to get up and go to the bathroom, the air cold and your bladder aching, there is nothing to see.

On your return from the bathroom you pause between steps, daring yourself to look around the corner and into the living room. Please, please be there, but there is only the sight of the mess you’ve left the couch. A pizza box, lid flung open, the crescent shapes of moldy crusts and the shriveled peppers you’d asked them not to include, a pile of clothes in the middle of the floor, unwashed and soiled from the sweat of missing.

Scratch, creak, sigh; tomorrow you’ll get a dog.  LS

I wondered if my divorce could have caused my illness. Did some breakdown in my body set loose a demon. Perhaps the amyloid had been in my brain for years and the stress of losing the thing most precious to me allowed disease to manifest.

What causes disease to start? I don’t know that answer anymore than I know what causes love to stop. I don’t know where love goes when it ends. Does it experience death? Should I send flowers? Where?  LS

Watch making was Harold’s passion in life; it was all that he knew. He made his watches with fastidious care, pouring over every detail until the end result was flawless.  There was a certain tranquility in it, each piece finding its designated location, each piece working in flawless harmony with those around it. Once each watch was finished he would stare for hours as the gears moved, all coming together in a symphony of order. Harold worked day after day in his little shop. He had never made large profits. In fact, he had never made any profits at all. He wasn’t in it for the money, he just hoped that the people who took his watches home would care for them as much as he did.

His latest creation had taken much longer than the rest. Not because Harold was having trouble with it but because he wanted to do it justice. He had never made a watch

so intricate before. Every piece fit together so precisely that any error, no matte how minute would cause the entire device to fall into chaos. With the utmost precision he gently positioned the final gear and connected the battery. He held his breath, as the gears sprang to life, praying that he had not made a mistake. The gears, however, fit together seamlessly and he gazed in awe at the exquisiteness of his creation, a true homage to order.

The next day, in his little shop, a man walked in that Harold had never seen before. Instantly, Harold could tell this was a man of taste. He was tall and thin with a thick head of mahogany hair, not a single one out of place. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, gray with black pinstripes and ironed to perfection. There was not a wrinkle or a smudge that could be seen without a microscope. The man was dressed so cleanly and with such meticulousness that Harold knew instantly what he wanted. Harold retreated to his workshop and returned holding his masterpiece.

“It is my finest creation,” Harold said, gazing longingly at his watch, “I can tell that a man of your fine taste can appreciate such a wonderfully ordered piece of machinery.”

“I’ll take it,” the man said, distractedly flicking a particle of dust that had managed to find purchase on his immaculate suit coat.

“If you’d like I could add a warranty,” Harold Asked, “If the watch ever breaks I can fix it for you free of charge”

“That won’t be necessary,” The man said, and with that he raised the watch high above his head. In a moment of horror Harold realized what was about to happen. He opened his mouth to protest but could not make a sound. With one swift motion the man brought Harold’s masterpiece careening to the floor of the little shop. Harold watched, dumbstruck, as his creation shattered, each gear he had worked so painstakingly to position now flying in every direction.

“Is that not the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?” the man said as Harold stood there, arms hanging limp at his sides. “Order is all well and good but the only true pleasure lies in chaos.”  LS

for Hope Witsell

My lover has corduroy skin now, sea shell irises and feather-stuffed limbs that he swings around me as we slow dance on a night when my parents are out.  If my brother catches me, he’ll be cruel like all the rest of them.  He’ll call me, “Idiot” because I’m sixteen and still clinging to a teddy bear.  But my brother doesn’t understand how precious you are, how wonderfully you keep secrets, not like my schoolmate who turned me inside-out so that now there are graffiti slurs written beside my name and places I can’t go without being spit on. 

It’s a cheap road that I’m taking, I know, I know.  I don’t want anyone getting sad on my account, yet I didn’t choose to be here either.

I kiss my lover goodbye.  I’ve knotted a string of Mother’s scarves together.  I tie one end to the canopy bed and one across my neck.  I know I’m not a slut.  I know I’m not a bad person, even if everyone else disagrees.  God will take me in.  His arms are long and warm, his voice a soft prayer all itself.

These are visions I need to be true, the last things I tell myself before leaping. LS

The clock on the science room wall reads three fifteen. My buddies stampede through the hallways towards waiting buses while I slosh a mop across the tile floor in sweeping figure eights. Bam! A face appears in the window, smooshed against the glass, lips like the suction-cupped feet of a sticky-toed tree frog. It’s Carter. His eyes are wide, eyebrows high and arched like the path of the spitball that started it all. I dip my fingertips into the muddy mop water, splash it at the glass and watch him flinch. He peels his face from the window and mouths, “You missed a spot, Mr. Clean.” Laughing, he turns and runs for the bus. But I’m laughing too because tomorrow when the first spitball flies I’ll be ready with my wet-willy revenge. LS

Her stiletto heels are drawing music on the cyclical night. That’s all she cares about—even as her husband weeps in a reclining chair, his accusations like a ghost wind blowing through their soon-to-be vacant apartment. As she speaks she breathes life into space again, leaving behind the moment when she thought herself pregnant: the panic, the fear of confinement and guilt over the phantom fetus growing in her womb. A throbbing life one had to take responsibility for, a life born out of a marriage without love. How could she—or anyone else—bear such cruelty?

‘The baby never existed. It was a mistake,’ she says. He doesn’t believe her. Years have passed; he still fails to taste the wildness in her smile. No, she doesn’t lie. She has only willed herself to live a promise she made, in her youthful days, until the phantom fetus came calling: ‘Come and sign our freedom away.’

Her man trails on, haggard and stunned. He stares out of the windows as if the drama would pass with the next hurricane. But the roof of their domesticity is shaking, ready to be blown away along with other houses in their neighborhood. All is growing fainter at the end of the road where an accordion is playing: her future.

‘This is what we’ve come down to,’ he says.

‘We’re not responsible,’ she says. LS