The Blue Penny Quarterly

		                                    

Volume One, Issue #2

                                                                                        September, 1994



ASCII Version.







**** The Blue Penny Quarterly (ISSN 1079-042x) is Copyright 1994 by Douglas L. Lawson, All rights reserved.  Electronic Distribution of this ASCII version is limited.  You may download and print one copy of this document for personal use only.  All other uses prohibited without written permission from the publisher.  Macintosh version is also available free, complete with full color artwork and greatly improved aesthetic appeal.  Anonymous ftp to ftp.luth.se (130.240.18.2),  in the directory  /pub/mac/misc/BPQ/ .  ****









Authors:





C. B.  Adams

David Gilbert

Steve Libbey

D. Navarro

Eva Shaderowfsky

Robert Sward

Donna Trussell

Marion de Booy Wentzien











Staff:





Editor and Publisher:   Doug Lawson



IBM Version Editor:  Dan Patrell



Newton Version Editor:  Jerome Chan



Readers:  Aaron Even, Giselle Gautreau, Chrys Sims, Marc Seldin



Review:  Brenda Buttner



Proofreaders:  Brenda Buttner, Randee Dawn















Special Thanks To:



Our Icon:  Mark Starlin (MStariln@aol.com)



Our Blue Penny:  JF Williams



Feedback Magazine of Richmond, Virginia













About The Blue Penny Quarterly:



Our mission:  BPQ is an electronic journal distributed nationally via computer bulletin board services.  Our goal is to bring good, literary writing into the electronic communities and to give good writers exposure to potentially wider audiences than is reached in regional small presses.  We are published electronically as a service to the online communities by a volunteer staff that spans several states.





What we want:  We accept primarily literary short fiction, and are interested in working with beginning as well as established authors.  While we have no bias against previously-published material, ( in fact, we like it--if you've got a story that's been published in a small, non-electronic place that you'd like a wider readership for, we're here to give you a hand.  Send the story for consideration as well as the citation of where and when and in what issue the piece appeared so we can mention that magazine's good taste).





Submit with a cover letter with the usual routine to "Editor."  Submissions via America Online are welcome at "BluePenny" and "BPQ" (submit to both simultaneously, please).  Submissions via the Internet can be mailed as email to either BluePenny@aol.com or dll5e@virginia.edu.   If you're sending as a Microsoft Word document, you may binhex and email your file--send us a separate letter letting us know.  



**We would prefer to receive fiction via regular US Mail.***

Submissions via regular mail are accepted at The Blue Penny Quarterly, c/o 102 B Morris Paul Ct, Charlottesville, VA  22903-2900.   That address may change without notice--email to BluePenny@aol.com for the most current address to be sure.  Send the story on paper or on a 3.5 inch diskette saved as text.  Or both.  Don't forget the SASE if you want your work back.  We're not responsible for the return of submissions received without the proper return materials.











From the Editor's Desk:









     I'll call this introduction something from my desk, though if it actually were on my desk I would probably lose it.   Amidst manuscripts, books (face down, covers curling up from the humidity--Deborah Eisenberg's Transactions in a Foreign Currency,  John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, Rick Bass' The Watch, the latest North American Review),  three half-empty coffee cups, boxes of floppy disks, pens, highlighters, a terracotta Aztec cat full of bills, this computer, a wine opener, an unopened bottle of Ed's Original Cave Creek Chili Beer from Cave Creek, Arizona, (the only beer with an Arizona chili pepper in every bottle, and this particular bottle has two), a bird whistle, and a stuffed blowfish, this one small letter would have little chance.



     But from the center of all this clutter, I am happy to tell you good things about this (and future) issues of The Blue Penny Quarterly.  First of all, we've been able to increase the amount of stories we're bringing you this month due to the influx of good submissions.  Our first poetry selection is in this edition, as is our first book review and our first featured artist.  In the future here, you'll see more of all three.  The Classified section, run for the first time this issue, is for the purpose of small press and writer/artist promotion--hopefully you as readers will find books and/or services here that spark your interest.  



 

     This issue will also be the first released in an IBM compatible format.  To those of you with PCs, welcome.  Thanks for your patience.  Your issue will include stories from our first issue as well as the current ones.  Sit back and put your feet up--you've got a lot of reading to catch up on here.



     So it's been a good quarter.  We've seen a growing audience, both on America Online and the Internet.  We've seen a growing number of submissions and a great swelling of interest for something that started as a simple idea, on a small computer, in the countryside of Virginia.  I guess we can say that the electronic age of publishing is descending upon us.  Let's hope the inevitable decentralization puts attention (and, perhaps, funding?) where it is deserved--on the shoulders of those who continue to persist in their art through all the things, bad and good, that the world throws at them.



	     Thanks for downloading us.  Your opinions and thoughts are welcome  at BluePenny@aol.com.





                                                             

-Doug Lawson









     





Fishbone

     



by Donna Trussell 

    

     

     

     

     	The other girls from Grand Saline's senior class were off at college or working at jobs.  Not me.  I stayed alone in my room and played The Game of Life.  Mama didn't like it.

     	"Wanda, are you on drugs?" she asked.

     	I shook my head.  I spun the plastic wheel--it made a ratchet sound--and moved the blue car two spaces, up on a hill.  The great thing about The Game of Life was all the plastic hills and valleys.  No other game has such realism.

     	"You need a change," Mama said.  "You're going to Meemaw's."

     	My bus was leaving early the next morning, so I had to pack in a hurry.  But I took the time to put a matchbook in my purse.  I don't smoke, but I thought it might come in handy if I needed to send a message to the bus driver: Hijacker, ninth row, submachine gun under his coat.

     	The sky was overcast, and it was a slow, pale trip.  The only rest stop was in Centerville, where I got a sandwich at the Eat It and Beat It.

     	Meemaw was waiting for me at the bus station.  She smelled of cold cream and lilacs.

     	Ed was there.  He grabbed my suitcase.  "Yo," he said.

     	"Yo," I said back.

     	Ed's pickup was full of old Soldier of Fortunes.  I rested my feet on top of a picture of a tank.  Meemaw's life sure had changed since she married Ed.

     	"My little girl," she said.  She patted my knee the way a kid flattens Play-Doh.

     	"She's not your girl," Ed said.  "She's your granddaughter."

     	"She IS my little girl."

     	A chain link fence surrounded Meemaw's garden.  "Keeps dogs out," she said.  The fence made her farm look even less farmish than it used to, with its green shack for a barn and refrigerator toppled on its side out back and giant new house modeled after the governor's mansion.

     	Meemaw fussed over me at supper: Wanda, can I get you some more roast, would you like another helping of butter beans, how about some corn bread?

     	Ed had three cups of coffee with supper.  He poured the coffee into his saucer and blew on it.  I asked him why he drank his coffee that way.

     	He didn't answer.  Finally Meemaw said, "To cool it down."

     	Ed's cup and saucer were monogrammed in gold.  My plate too.

     	"Meemaw, where's your dishes?" I asked.  "The ones with the purple ribbons and grapes?"

     	"Well, we have Ed's china now."

     	He slurped his coffee, staring straight ahead.  He might as well have been talking to the curtains when he said, "I'm glad you're here, Wanda, because I've been wanting to ask you something.  All day I've been wondering--who paid the hospital when you had that baby?  The taxpayers?"

     	I smashed a butter bean with my fork.  "Excuse me," I said and went outside.

     	I looked out across the pine trees, dark green.  I used to believe trees had people inside them.  I wished some God would change me into a tree.  That wouldn't be a bad life--sun, rain, birds.  Kids looking for pine cones.  Me shaking my branches for them.

     	The peat moss in the garden was warm.  I lay down and pulled a watermelon close.

     	Meemaw came out and sat down near my head, in the snapdragons and cucumbers.  Meemaw planted her vegetables and flowers together, except for the glads, off by themselves.  Pink, peach, yellow, white--a million baby shoes shifting in the wind.

     	She smoothed my hair.

     	"Meemaw, what happened to your strawberries?"

     	"Birds," she said.  "But that's all right.  Plenty for the birds too."

     

     

     	Every morning Meemaw and I went to the garden.  We pulled weeds and Meemaw talked about how important exercise was.  Or she told me uplifting stories about people she knew.  Trials they'd had.  A young man wanted to commit suicide because law school was so hard.  Once a week his mother wrote him letters full of encouraging words.

     	"What encouraging words?"

     	"Oh, 'don't give up.'  That sort of thing."

     	When this man graduated he found out she'd been dead for a month.  She'd known she was dying, and had written the last letters ahead of time.

     	Meemaw knew lots of stories about people who "took the path of least resistance" and ended up sick or poor.  I got back at her by asking personal questions.

     	"Meemaw, have you ever had an orgasm?"

     	Yes, she said.  Once.  "I was glad to know what it is that motivates so much of human behavior."  She smiled and handed me a bunch of glads.

     	Afternoons I stayed in my room.  Mama wouldn't let me bring The Game of Life.  I stretched out on the bed a lot.  The light fixture had leaves and berries molded in the glass.  One time I wrapped my arms around the chest of drawers and put my head down on the cool marble top.

     	Meemaw would call me to supper.  There wasn't much discussion at the table.  If anyone said anything, it was Ed talking to Meemaw or Meemaw talking to me.  Except for once, when I went to the stove to get some salt.  Ed told me I'd done it all wrong.  "You don't bring the PLATE to the salt.  You bring the SALT to the plate."

     	After supper Meemaw and I went down to the barn.  She milked Sissy and I fed the chickens.  I'd throw a handful of feed and they'd move in at 80 miles an hour. 

     	Ed never came with us.  He hates Sissy, Meemaw told me.  "He's jealous."

     	"Jealous of a cow?"

     	"Why, of course.  I spend so much of my time with her."

     	Evenings Ed watched Walking Tall on his VCR.  Or he went inside his toolshed.  He never worked on anything.  He looked at catalogs and ordered tools, and when they came he hung them on the walls.  He read books about the end of the world.  The whole state of Colorado was going to turn into Jell-O, and people will drown.  "You've got five years to live, young lady," he told me.  "FIVE YEARS."

     	He had guns--a whole case-full.  One time when I passed his study, I saw him polishing them.

     	"What do you think you're doing?" he said.

     	I walked away.  He shut the door.

     

     

     	One day when I was watching Meemaw through a little diamond shape made of my thumbs and two fingers, and Ed said, "You planning on sitting on your butt all summer?"

     	"I haven't thought about it."

     	"Start thinking."

     	Meemaw knew a man in town who was looking for help.  She knew everybody in town.

     	"It's a photography studio," Meemaw said.

     	"I don't know anything about photography."

     	"He's willing to train someone.  It's a nice place.  There's another studio in town, but everyone says Mr. Lamont's is the one that puts on the finishing touch."

     	She made the phone call.  Ed was smiling behind his newspaper.  I KNEW he was.

     	I drove Meemaw's old Fairmont into town.  First Ed showed me all the things I had to do to it, because "service stations don't do a damned thing anymore."  I was supposed to check the oil about ten times a day, and never, never, never drive the car without washing the tires first.  "Ozone," he said.   "Ozone layer."

     	I washed the tires and drove to Lamont's Studio.

     	Mr. Lamont wore horn-rimmed glasses and a pair of green double-knit pants that were stretched about as far as they could go.

     	"Wanda, you put here that your last job was back in December.  What have you been doing since then?"

     	"Nothing."

     	"Nothing?"

     	"Nothing you'd want to know about."

     	"But I WOULD like to know."

     	"Ok.  I was in love with this guy.  We were going to get married, but then we didn't.  Then I had a baby boy."

     	"Oh."

     	"He's been adopted."

     	Mr. Lamont tried to act natural.  He looked down at his desk and poked his index finger with a clear plastic letter opener.  Inside was a four-leaf-clover, frozen forever.  I thought about how millions of years from now an alien might dig up this letter opener.  Maybe he'll write a term paper on what the clover means.  Luck, I thought, as hard as I could.  Maybe aliens will know how to read the minds of people who used to be alive.  IT MEANS GOOD LUCK.

     	I can't pay minimum wage," Mr. Lamont said.

     	"Whatever."  I might as well be here, I thought, as out on the farm with Ed.

     	After supper Ed gave me a lecture about jobs and responsibility and attitude.  People don't think, they just don't think.  World War III is coming, and no one's prepared.  All the goddamned niggers will try to steal their chickens.

     	"But I'm ready for them," he said.  "I've been stocking up on hollow points.  They blow a hole as big as a barrel."

     	He punched his fist in the air.  Meemaw sort of jumped, but she didn't say anything.  She clanked the dishes and hummed "Rock of Ages" a little louder.

     	I went to bed with the pamphlet Mr. Lamont gave me, The Fine Art of Printing Black and White.  The paper is very sensitive, it said.

     	The next day Mr. Lamont showed me the safelight switch.  "See that gouge?  I did that so I could feel for it in the dark."

     	He made a test strip.  "Agitate every few seconds," he said, rocking the developer tray.

     	He let me print a picture of a kid holding a trophy.  "Make it light," he said.  "The newspaper adds contrast.  Look how this one came out."  He showed me a clipping of a bunch of Shriners.  It looked like they all had a skin disease.

     	After a week I got the hang of it, and Mr. Lamont left me in charge of black and white.  I liked the darkroom.  No phones.  No people, except for the faces that slowly developed before me.  Women and their fiances.  Sometimes the man stood behind the woman and put both arms around her waist.

     	Jimmy used to do that.

     	Jimmy and I went to the senior picnic together.  It was windy.  Big rocks pinned down the corners of each tablecloth.  Blue gingham.  The white tablecloths had to be returned because the principal thought they'd remind the students of bedsheets.  Jimmy and I laughed.  We'd been making love for weeks.  We got careless in the tall grasses by Cedar Creek Lake.  Night birds called across the water.

     	When I was two weeks late, I told him.  He looked away.  There's a clinic, he said, in Dallas.  I covered his lips with my fingers.

     	At Western Auto they said they'd take Jimmy on, weekends and nights.  At the Sonic too, for the lunch shift.  Jimmy and I looked at an apartment north of town, on Burning Tree Drive.  A one-bedroom.  He stared at the ceiling.  Jimmy? I said.

     	Goodbye, goodbye, I told the mirror, long before I really said it.

     	I read every book I could find about babies and their tadpole bodies.  I gave up Pepsi and barbecue potato chips.  My breasts swelled.  I felt great.  Hormones, the doctor said.

     	At first my baby was just a rose petal, sleeping, floating.  At eight months I played him records, Mama's South Pacific and Daddy's bagpipe music.  I stood right next to the stereo, and my baby talked to me with thumps of his feet.

     	You want to feel him kick? I asked.  Mama shook her head and kept on ironing.  Daddy left the room.

     	I didn't get a baby shower.  Mama told everyone I was putting it up for adoption.  "It," she always called him.  I made up different names for him.  Fishbone, one week.  Logarithm, the next.

     	Mama bought me a thin gold wedding band to wear to the hospital.  Girls don't do that anymore, I told her.  Some girls even keep their babies, these days.

     	Not here in Grand Saline, she said.  Not girls from good families.

     	My little Fishbone got so big that two nurses had to put their hands on my stomach to help push him out.  Breathe, they said.  Pant.  Now push.

     	Please let me hold him, I said.  PLEASE.

     	Now, Wanda, Mama said, you know what's best.

     	He cried.  Then he slipped away, down the hall.  The room caved in on me, with its green walls and white light.  Mama held me down, saying, we've been through this.  We decided.

     	At the nurse's station Jimmy left me a get-well card.  Good luck, he wrote.  That's all.

     	Mama took me home to a chocolate cake, and we never talked about Fishbone again.  She never mentioned Jimmy's name.

     	Now, before driving home to Meemaw's house, I liked to stop at the trailer court at the edge of town.  I watched people.  A woman would frown and I'd think, that's me, heating up a bottle for Fishbone and the formula got too hot.  A man takes off his cowboy boots and props his feet on the coffee table.  A woman tucks herself next to him.  He kisses her hair, her neck.

     	I remembered love.

     	Now I felt thick and dull, something to be tossed away in the garage.

     

     

     	"How's the passport picture coming?" Mr. Lamont asked, knocking on my door.

     	"Don't come in.  Paper exposed."

     	"The man going to New Guinea is back."

     	The man had worried about his eyes.  I've got what they call raccoon eyes, he'd said, is there any way you can lighten it up around the eyes?

     	He looked disappointed when I gave him the picture.  "I know you did the best you could," he said.  He smiled.  He didn't look like a criminal when he smiled.

     	When I got home, Meemaw was cutting up chicken wire and putting it over holes in the coop.  Making it "snake proof," she said.  I took over the cutting.  I'd never used wire cutters before.  Everything is just paper in their path.

     	"It's so bare in the chicken coop," I said.  "Why don't you put down an old blanket or something?"

     	"You know, Wanda, I did that very thing one time, when I had a batch of baby chicks.  I put down a carpet scrap, so they'd be warm.  And they died.  Every single one!  I was just heartbroken.  And do you know what I found out?  They'd eaten the carpet."

     	"How'd you find that out?"

     	"I did an autopsy."

     	"Ooooooo Meemaw!  That's awful."

     	She shrugged.  "Nothing awful about it.  I wanted to know."

     	"I could never be a doctor," I said.

     	I read somewhere that these psychologists asked a bunch of surgeons why they became doctors, and they all said they wanted to help people.  And then they did psychological tests on them and found out they were part sadists.  They liked knives.

     	"How about becoming a photographer?" Meemaw said.  "I hear they teach photography in college now.  I would pay for you to go."

     	I rolled up the leftover chicken wire and put it away in the barn.  Meemaw came in after me.

     	"Almost time to milk Sissy," I said.  I went to get the milk pail.

     	"What do you want to do with your life, Wanda?"

     	"You promised not to ask me that anymore."

     	She laughed and patted me on the back.  "Yes, I did."  She set the pail under Sissy, and then turned to face me again.  "But what ARE you going to do?"

     	"I don't know, Meemaw."

     	Lately I'd been thinking about the homeless on TV.  I live in the gutter, I could say.  It has a nice ring to it.

     	"Wanda, I once read a book that had a quote from the Bible right after the title page.  I  thought it was the most beautiful of any Bible verse I'd ever read.  It said, 'The Lord will restore unto you the years the locusts have eaten.'"

     	She paused.  Then she waved her arms.  "Isn't that beautiful?"

     	"Uh huh."

     	The barn door swung open.  Ed.

     	"How many times do I have to tell you not to leave the wheelbarrow out?  It's been sitting there in the garden since morning."

     	"I told her it was ok," Meemaw said.  "It doesn't hurt anything."

     	"The hell it doesn't.  If you leave it out, it rusts.  If it rusts, you have to buy a new one."

     	"I don't think it'll rust for ten years at least," Meemaw said.

     	"Either you use tools or they use you.  That's all I have to say about it."  He stomped off.

     	Meemaw rubbed my arm.  "Don't worry about it.  Ed's just upset because yesterday you left his mail in the glove compartment instead of bringing it in to him.  He's afraid somebody could have stolen his pension check."

     	"Who would steal it out here in the middle of nowhere?  Who'd even know it was there?"

     	Meemaw shook her head and went back to milking Sissy.  I always thought milking a cow would be fun, till I tried it.  The milk comes out in tiny streams the size of dental floss.  It takes forever.

     	"You know how Ed is," Meemaw said.

     	"Yeah, I know.  Why did you marry him, anyway?"

     	"He needed me."

     	"But why not marry someone you needed?"

     	"I don't need anybody.  I just need to be needed.  They say money is the root of all evil, but I say selfishness is.  Selfishness and lack of exercise."

     	That got her started.

     	"Sweetie," she said, "I once read about a mental hospital for rich movie stars.  It costs a powerful lot of money to go there.  And you know what the doctors make those rich ladies do?  Run in circles.  That's right!  Why, one movie star had to cut wood for two hours."

     	I thought about that on the way to the house, but I just couldn't see how cutting wood could make a difference.

     	That night I wrote Jimmy a letter: "I hope you like it at college.  Do you ever think about our baby?  Whenever I take a shower, I think I hear him crying.  Do you have this problem?"  I signed it, your friend, Wanda, and sent the letter in care of his parents.

     	"Let sleeping dogs lie," Mama wrote me.  "Think of the future.  Pastor Dobbins will be needing a new receptionist at the church, and he told me he's willing to interview you.  It's very big of him, considering."

     	I dropped the letter into the pigpen.  The next day I could only see one corner, and after that it was gone.

     

     

     	I did Dwayne Zook, his sister Tracy Zook, and then I was done with the high school annual.  Mr. Lamont asked me to sit at the front desk to answer the phone and give people their proofs.

     	"Lovely," they'd say.  Or, "Your boss surely does a fine job."  Mr. Lamont told me no matter what they said, I should reply: "He had a lot to work with."  There was this one girl, though, who looked like Ted Koppel.  I didn't know what to say to her.

     	We had a lot of brides, even in August.  I patted their faces dry and spread their dresses in perfect circles around their feet.

     	One day Mr. Lamont asked if I'd like to come into his darkroom to see how he did color.  

     	"It looks like pink," he said, "but we call it magenta."

     	He held up another filter.  "What would you call that?""

     	"Turquoise?"

     	"Cyan," he said.

     	"Sigh-ann."

     	He let me do one, a boy sitting with his mother on the grass.  The picture turned out too yellow, so I did another one.

     	"Perfect," he said.  "You learn quick."

     	We goofed off the rest of the day.  He showed me some wedding pictures that were never picked up.  "A real shame," he said.  "That's the best shot of the getaway car I've ever done."

     	He started going to Food Heaven to get lunch for both of us.  We'd eat Crescent City Melts and talk.  He teased me about Ed, asking if it was true that Ed got kicked in the head by a mule when he was a kid.

     	"Does he really have two Cadillacs?"

     	"Three.  They just sit out back, rusting.  He drives his pickup truck everywhere."

     	Sometimes Mr. Lamont came into my darkroom.  He'd check on my supply of stop bath or Panalure.  Then he'd lean in the corner and watch me work.  He never touched me.  We'd just stand there in the cool darkness.

     	He told me about his mother and why he couldn't leave her.  "Cataracts," he said.  "I read to her."

     	I told him about the book I got at the library, The Songwriter's Book of Rhymes.  Also-ran rhymes with Peter Pan, Marianne, caravan, Yucatan, lumberman, and about two hundred other words.

     	In Discovering Your America every state was pink, green, blue, or yellow.  Nebraska had tiny bundles of wheat in one corner, and New Mexico had Indian headdresses.  One night I dreamed I was high above Texas, watching the whole pink state come alive.  Oil wells gushed.  Fish flopped high in the air.  Little men in hard hats danced around.

     	"I don't want to go to photography school," I told Meemaw the next morning.  "I want to buy a car and drive to West Texas.  Or maybe California."

     	"You can't do that," Meemaw said.  "A young girl, alone."

     	"Why not?"

     	"It's just not done."

     	"Then why can't I be the first to do it?"

     	"Oh, Wanda."

     	Meemaw believes in Good and Evil.    She doesn't understand how lonely people are.  Anyone who tried to hurt me, I'd talk to him.  I'd listen to his tales of old hotels and wide-hipped women who left him.

     

     

     	On my 77th day at Meemaw's I came home and found Ed filling up the lawn mower.

     	"It's about time you earned your keep," he said.

     	"What about supper?"

     	"Forget supper.  You're going to mow the lawn."  

     	"Oh, is that so?"

     	"Yes, ma'am, you betcha that's so."  He sat down on a lawn chair.  "Get started."

     	A vat of green Jell-O swallowed him up, chair and all.  

     	While I mowed, I thought of another fate for him--a giant cheese grater with arms and legs.  Ed ran and ran, and then stumbled.  The cheese grater stood over him and laughed as Ed tried to crawl away.

     	I didn't get to the big finale because the lawn mower made a crunching sound and stopped.  Ed came running over, asking how come I didn't comb the yard first, how come I can't do anything right?  "You're as lazy as a Mexican house cat."

     	His red, puffy face pushed into mine.  In the folds of his skin I could see the luxury Meemaw had given him--her flowers and food and love.  He just lapped it up.

     	He followed me into the house.  Young people!  Welfare!  Good-for-nothings!

     	"You're a fine one to talk," I said, turning to face him.  "I've never seen you lift a finger around here."

     	He moved towards me, and then stopped.  His eyes rolled up into his head, and his eyelids quivered.  The room was silent.  I could hear the hands on the clock move.

     	"You ungrateful bitch," he said.  "Your grandmother thinks you're different, but I told her.  I told her what you are."

     	It got dark while he told me what I was.  He must have been rehearsing.  I heard words I knew he got out of the dictionary.  Meemaw twirled yarn and cried.

     	Ed went down the hall and came back with my suitcases.  He threw them at my feet.

     	"Get out!  Now."  He turned to Meemaw.  "If she's here when I come back, I'll send for my things."

     	He slammed the door.  His truck roared out, spitting gravel into the night.

     	"He's a child," Meemaw said.  "A grown-up child, and I can't do a thing about it."  She held my face in her hands.  "My little girl.  My sweetie.  What are we going to do?"

     	She put my head on her shoulder.  We stood there, rocking.

     	"I named my baby Fishbone," I said.  "Did I tell you that?"  She shushed me and patted my back.

     	He'd be eight months old now.  In 20 years he'll come looking for me.  We'll have iced tea and wonder how to act.  I wanted you, I'll tell him, but I was young.  I didn't know I was strong.

     	"There's a bus to Grand Saline in the morning," Meemaw said.  "I'll call your mother."

     	We rode a taxi into town.  Meemaw got me a room at the motel.  She brushed my hair and put me in bed.

     	"You can go home now, Meemaw."

     	"Yes, I suppose I can."

     	She wouldn't leave until I pretended to be asleep.  But I couldn't sleep at all.  I found a Weekly World News under the bed.  I read every single story in it.  Then the ads, about releasing the secret power within you and True Ranches for sale and the Laffs Ahoy Klown Kollege in Daytona Beach.

     	At five in the morning I went for a walk.  The air was cool and clear as October.

     	Waffle Emporium was open.  Something about dawn at a coffee shop gets to me.  Pink tabletops, and people too sleepy to talk.  New things around the corner.  Carlsbad Caverns.  White Sands.

     	I thought about what I was going to do next.  I had eight hundred dollars in my shoes.  I could go anywhere.  San Francisco, to work at the Believe It or Not Museum.  Or Miami--I could take care of dolphins.  I thought about Indian reservations.  Gas stations in the desert.  Snake farms.  The owner would be named Chuck, probably, or Buzz.

     	I walked to the bus station and read the destination board.  I said each city twice, to see how it felt on my tongue.



  

                                                          

*   *   *



     











The Man with One Leg







by Steve Libbey









      The man had two legs.  One, the right, was hairy, and made its way from his pelvis to the ground (or hardwood floor, in the case of his apartment) with the attitude of a gnarled tree that had seen more than one witch's coven cookout and supported (not by choice) more than one lynching.  The muscles above the knee seemed larger, more like mice (for which they were named) when seen from above than when he studied his leg in the full length mirror on the closet door.  And he did study his legs, both, in the mirror, flexing and unflexing them for so long that they became cramped and he had to rub them with Ben Gay.  The mirror drew him that way, like a tongue to an empty tooth socket, or a fly to a buzzing purple bug catcher.  He thought of the bug catcher, too, the purple of its light, because of his left leg.  Unlike the wiry fur of the right, the left had a blond down that belonged on a champion swimmer.  The muscles beneath flexed less enthusiastically than the right ones did; they took a different approach to the flexing, as if they had figured him out, and that the flexing was not serious, real life flexing that required the full effort the right leg always put out, like a bull in a bull fight; and therefore slid into shape, enjoying the movement, stretching the skin around them, nudging the kneecap (smugly, sliding, rubbing up against it snug but yes even smug, somehow, and this angered him, in a resigned sort of way, the anger).

      These legs he scrutinized, in his mirror, in his apartment, on Eighth Street, between--well, he scrutinized his legs, sockless, from just below the pelvis, about four inches, where the boxer shorts ended (he had spent time once examining the legs under the boxers [never nude; his penis made him uncomfortable]; they had paled under perpetual cover, and the hairs poked out of the skin with hesitation, like grass on a desert; this region struck him as unimportant, a borderland, a border to the netherland, still [culturally] part of the pelvis, and thus he lost interest), and explored them in their journey from the ankles to his shorts, and wondered.  Wondered, pondered, standing in shirttales and boxers.  .  .

       He tried to recognize them.  He couldn't, not completely, not as the pillars of the community of his arms, torso, head, organs.  .  .

      What he wondered, pondered, was: "Just what the hell are they doing there?"

      Perhaps, he thought, on a Monday, after work (after work, he would come home, throw his jacket [navy blue] on the plush chair, drop his briefcase next to the chair, turn on the television [always tuned to the independent station, though he disliked it], preheat his oven [450”], take a frozen dinner from the freezer and tear the foil to uncover the chicken and cherry pie, shove it in the oven, take his shoes, socks, pants off, and stand before the mirror until the oven timer buzzed), I got one from Mom and one from Dad.  My father could have been a surly Armenian, and swarthy, and my mother a statuesque Icelander, and fair.  Or: my mother could have been a troll, and my father an angel.  

      The oven timer buzzed.  He stopped his wondering, pondering, for a while, to eat, and watch the television, and grow weary, and crawl into bed, and slip away, and in the early morning hours, to dream.  



      The legs, as an issue, were always there, in the back of his mind and in the legs of his trousers.  They walked well enough, and took him up and down stairs without complaint, but he hesitated to run with them, for fear that they, being mismatched, would be uncoordinated and net him a concussion.  Jogging was, of course, out of the question; the idea of being seen in shorts publicly frightened him.  

      The building on Fourth street sported columns along the Fourth Street and Main Street sides, two stories high and doric, plain, unadorned, imposing, similar to his left leg.  Nights, he imagined, they would casually allow their muscles to bulge under the marble, perhaps bend their knees halfway.  

      Days, he worked there, under fluorescent lights that bathed him, and the pretty woman, in a shower of dazzling blue, fluctuations in the tubes shooting cascades off their cheekbones, which were sickly yellow in the office, under the shower, under the lights.  Coarse beige carpet clung to the walls like coarse beige moss, giving carpet burn to those elbows that brushed against it.  Cubicles with a pastel pink version of the moss divided the massive office chamber into a corral, the workers in their pens like, yes, cattle, bulging at the waist too, fattened by conservatism and bad food, raised to buzz when told BUZZ, when everyone else buzzed, when buzzing was the norm (the thing to do).  He buzzed too, in the chorus, but always supported consciously on his two mismatched legs.  As they all buzzed in their corral of an office he watched his buzzing, and mooing too, coworkers, looking for a sign that one, who had perhaps seen him years ago (when his legs weren't so much on his mind as was where he might put his penis besides his pants) at a pool, showing off, or perhaps glanced furtively under the stall door and seen his pants crumpled at the foot (feet) of his legs.  

      He had no clear idea what they might think.  

      He knew they thought, for everyone thinks, and what made him so special? He was just another (worker)(cow)(sheep)(bee) guy, and the fanciful and romantic vision of a rebel, in the misunderstood-James-Dean sense, he found self-centered.  The dream of a suburban lawn and wife and car and children was one he shared, but found distant as he aged.  The motivating force behind their labors, money, security, he found a reasonable goal.  He found that many things he found to be true others found true too.  What he couldn't find was a overall logic to the structure of things that would explain to him in just terms why his legs were the way they were.  They were that way, there was no excaping it, and he wished them to be another way, the way everyone else's was: unremarkable.  

      Over the course of ten years, all ten spent under the blue lights of the office, and still leaving him midway up the totem pole, he had begun to accept the difference between his legs.  He spent only the time it took for his dinner to cook to ogle them, note the lack of change aside from a pimple or two, and sigh with resignation.  Dinner itself gained prominence in his evening, and his self-esteem grew as the quality of his meals did.  He now cooked on the stove, using the broiler for meats and experimenting with sauces.  He made a shopping trip one day and purchased a new set of knives and a steamer, and for the next month sampled every vegetable in the produce aisle.  This improvement in attitude was not deliberate, despite its resemblance to an expensive self-help program.  It was more a survival mechanism: some chamber in his brain had grown alarmed at his increasing melanchola, and issued orders for the dosages of certain enthusiasm-producing drugs to be doubled, or tripled; whatever was necessary to keep the organism running smoothly.  This chamber of the brain did not understand the reasons (both, and under it) for the melanchola; that was not its department.  Once the man had begun to treat himself right again, the chamber returned itself to more organic and routine concerns.  

      The grand upshot of these chemicals was the realization of a fantasy: to ask out the pretty woman.  Healthy, glowing with confidence, he had gained acceptance in the office, and thus participated in lunchtime speculations on the various prowesses of the female coworkers, most notably the pretty woman.  The lack of any exercise program had not prevented him from being the least deteriorated of the men, and as one of the few bachelors in the office it fell to him to seduce her for the vicarious titiliation of his buddies.  The idea appealed to him: he had fantasized about sleeping with her for years, ever since she had been hired; it would please his new friends; and the off chance that it might result in matrimony would bring him closer to the suburban dream (wife down, kids and house to go).  His visualization of the suburban dream, unlike his friends', included the end of conscious thought.  He imagined the scene from the outside, as if through a movie camera, from which he could walk away and home, to another life.  Had he analyzed this detatchment, he might have realized that he had suburban life confused with death.  But his only thoughts were for his yellow-faced quarry, the pretty woman.  

      "Come have lunch with me today," he said to her, resisting the temptation to sit on her desk with one leg (probably the gnarled one).  "I'll buy." The thought of the rich food at Santorelli's made him bold.  "There'll be wine," he added.

      She smiled at him.  When she spoke, the smile vanished, even its memory thin.  She was thin, too, with slightly bad posture that made her seem delicate, and breasts that defied the slouch of her shoulders.  He had seen her walking before, and noted the definition of her calves (matching).  

      "Okay," she said.  "That sounds nice." Beneath the vacuity of her returned smile was cunning, he thought, like a rat living in a junkyard.  

      Tables, draped with red/white/green cloths and dining couples, dotted Santorelli's in a mockery of order.  The kitchen, he knew, shook with the anger born of chaos, which made the restaurant purr as it did now, loudly and warmly.  

      They ordered meat tortellini in marinara sauce, and garlic bread, and chablis blush, and smiled at each other over the breadsticks and melba toast in a wire basket.  Two candles burned between them.  

      "What do you like to do?" he asked, still warm with confidence.  

      "I hike, and bike.  I have a dog," she said.  She wore a loose blouse that made her torso a mystery land, an island shrouded in fog.  

      "A dog," he said.  "What kind?"

      "I don't know.  He's nice."

      "What's his name?"

      "Barry.  After one of the Bee Gees." She giggled, a shrill sound.

      "You like the Bee Gees?" He remembered them dimly, three bearded and/or balding men with impossibly high voices.  They wore white satin pants.

      "When I was fourteen," she said.  Her eyes narrowed, as she smiled, expecting him to laugh with her at childhood.  He didn't feel like it, but did so anyway, his fat office colleagues smirking in the back of his head.  

      A woman comparable in size to his friends back there arrived with two steaming plates of tortellini.  The pretty woman squealed with delight and shook half the shaker of parmesan cheese over hers, topping that with red peppers and finally salt.  She dug her fork into the mound at once, without glancing to see if he had begun to eat his.  He unfolded his napkin and covered his lap with it, noticing that hers still stood like a watchtower next to her plate.  

      She ate like an animal at his table, grunting and gasping, as if she were either a gorilla or experiencing orgasm.  He wondered (pondered) if she made the exact same noises in bed, and if so could he use them as a relative measure of his performance (one grunt yes, two grunts no?) 

      "You seem to enjoy eating," he said, smoothing his voice to make the comment into an innuendo.  

      "Yes," she said between forkfuls.  "I take great pleasure in the physical aspects of life." 

      His eyes widened, and he narrowed them back to normal size before she could notice his surprise.  

      "Oh, so do I." He groped for an example.  "I treat myself to a lavish meal every night." Relieved, he didn't realize the truth behind his statement.

      "Oh yes?"

      "Yes," he said, pleased that his life contained something that so easily fit his story.  "I bought some cookbooks, and learn a new recipe every week."

He could even imagine himself whistling at the stove, stirring a spicy oriental stir fry, like a tv cook.

      "You should invite me over," she said, remarkably.  The boys in the back of his head cheered, slapping him on the back.  

      "Tonight?" he said.  She looked up.  "Or maybe that's too soon," he added.

      Her smile was cunning again, but an anticipatory cunning, and it tickled his loins.  "Tonight isn't too soon for me."



      He had had an hour after work to clean the apartment, and thus threw anything extraneous and occupying floor/table space in his broom closet.  Cushions were straightened, endtables dusted, sinks wiped clean of grease, carpets vacuumed, tile floors swept, and, optimistically, bed made with cool clean sheets.  He performed these duties in boxers, pants draped over the sofa, and snuck glances at his legs whenever he passed in front of the mirror.  With every pass they seemed more conspicuous.  He pictured her greeting him at the door not looking into his eyes or, as some do, at his nose, but eyes directed downward at his legs, seeing, as women do, right through him, through his pants, comparing his legs for the first time.  Would she find them repulsive? Odd? Shocking? Or intriguing? The thought struck him with freshness: perhaps mismatched legs are an advantage.  His mind spun now, and with the new thought as grease in the gears made even greater leaps.  Such as: mismatched legs (or anything , his mind grandly thought) are a flaw only if thought a flaw.  It is (reveling in the generalization) all a matter of perception.  He had succeeded thus far with the pretty woman because he believed in himself (and had believed in himself because his fat cohorts believed in him).  And this power could take him further.  He had to believe in his soft pink body as sensuous and desirable, and so it would be, and then .  .  .and then, sex! Passion! Even (even!) love.  Love, too, as confidence, is perception; he could love anyone! (Or anything: a dog, an inflatable party doll [but he deserved better than that; as he treated himself to gourmet meals, so would he savor the pretty woman]).  And with love, anything is possible! Anything justifiable! He remembered, now, a college chum with a steady girlfriend.  For six months they hovered around each other like moths.  After, though, they began to fight, fight about anything (clothes, food, school, beer, money, the president), and take a perverse joy in it.  He would marry the pretty woman, and three or four times a year they could fight, pity themselves, then make up wetly.  

      The future stretched before him then, with its terminus, and the gravity of his revelations (his mind: whirr, clank, clank) gave a weight to his limbs that he was unused to, a weight like a tortuous dream of carnage and fear.  .  .

      Leave it to the pretty woman to arrive early, pushing the doorbell in the lobby three times rapidly, and bouncing from foot to foot, thinking into the future too, but not far enough to feel that gravity, feeling, rather, buoyant, anxious.  Seeing two paths, only two: happy path, and sad path.  

      (She too was locked into a pattern by the years, segued by work-sleep, work-sleep, celebrate then work-sleep into a mode of gratification that fogged up the future [future possibility, that is], and created in her a readiness for change, for significant action, for a new perspective to be dumped upon her.  And, like him, she was willing to reach for it, to push through the membrane toward something unseen.  She thought she saw it, briefly, when he sat on her desk, suave in manner but shaky on the support, as if his legs weren't secure draped over the desk.  So she shifted her weight [foot to foot], early, ready to spring.)

      Sad path was: he would be a creep, and make a pass at her, which she would reject, thus causing all sorts of tension in the years ahead at the office.  Happy path was: he would be a sweetheart (an angel!), and make a pass at her, which she would accept, thus causing all sorts of affection and (maybe even this time for real) love in the years ahead.  

      Every decision, she thought, pretending, as she often did when bored at work (often), to be an advice columnist, and wise, is a door, behind which lies mystery.  If you don't open a door (gentle readers), you gain nothing, and lose nothing, except self-respect, which one needs, blah blah blah.  

      His voice buzzed out from the grill under the mailboxes: "Hello?"

      "It's me," she said, addressing the grill.  

      "You're early." The tiny speaker made his voice that of a surprised radio announcer drawn in by a shortwave from Australia.  

      "I thought I'd help cook.  That way I can steal the recipe." Bouncy, clever, as she decided to be on the drive here.  

      "Okay." A buzz, like an angry giant bee, sounded, and she opened the security door, and climbed the stairs to apartment six, and knocked on his door, twice.  

      He faced the door, pants in hand, confused.  Early! He struggled to make the connection between the pants hanging from his hand and the legs they were supposed to be drawn onto, and failed, seeing the clothing and the legs as mismatched as the legs themselves.  His confidence, his smug philosophizations, crumbled at her second knock, and melted under her voice: "Hey, you in there?"

      He hesitated.  "I'm here."

      "Then let me in." She spoke with mock annoyance, but it gave him a glimpse of what her brand of annoyance might be like.  He crumbled more.

      "I have to put my pants on," he said, like a child.

      "Your pants?" Her tone shifted to amusement, which intimidated him more.  "You walk around your place without any pants on?"

      "I was cooking."

      "Smells good, too.  Put your pants on and let me in.  I'll make a salad."

      He stepped into his pants, relieved when they had concealed his again conspicuous legs.  The living room, he saw, was clean, but not immaculate: a calculated effect.  He opened the door.  

      "Hi," she chirped, pushing past him (rubbing against him) into the room.  She wore a green dress that curved when she did.  She reeked of hairspray and perfume; the scents drifted up his nostrils and registered as reasonable substitutes for pheromones.  He began to get stiff, and shifted his right leg to hide it.  

      "Hi," he said.  The word seemed to disappear as soon as it left his mouth.  I must, he thought, calm down.  "Want a drink?"

      She turned from her examination of the room and examined him, amused, before answering: "A drink, okay.  Just a beer, actually." 

      He was helpless, trapped.  She, in her green dress, in her sly smile, had control over him; held a leash connected to his rebellious penis.  Panic surged in his chest.  If she were to seduce him, and discover his legs, what then? Rejection was tantamount to death.  If he couldn't satisfy her, he was worth zero.  Nothing.  Mismatched nothing, no less.  

      "What kind of salad fixings do you have?" The salad! A crushing blow.  He staggered.  

      "Check and see," he managed to say.  "I'm going to sit down." He steered himself toward the couch.  

      "You must be exhausted," she said, sweetly.  "Working all day, then cleaning the apartment and making dinner.  I'll finish it, how about that?" She said it sweetly, but aimed it as a barb right into his side, where it protruded, dripping.  With a wiggle she descended upon the kitchen.

      He listened to the sounds of pans clanking, utensils crashing, refrigerator doors opening and closing, and the wok sizzling its charges.  

The cacophony soothed him, as if a gorilla had seized him and dragged him out of his home then pulled off its mask to reveal his mother.  It fit into his surburban home dream.  Lines of power are being drawn, he thought, and one of my station gets served, and she does the serving.  We've skipped the dating business and gone right to domestic arrangements.  We both know what we want, and we're here to get it.

      "Are you going to get me my beer, Mr.  Lazypants?" 

      He stood, ready at last.  His penis stiffened again, leading the charge.  

      "The salad's not done, but the stir fry just needs mmhph," she said, cut off by the kiss.  Her hands gripped his sides, seeking the spot where her barb had lodged.  He drew away from her surprised face.  "Hey," she gasped.  Uncertainty flickered in him briefly, with visions of screaming and rape (the monster was there, inside, somewhere; isn't that what the feminists said?)(then again, passion has never favored either sex, nor favored politeness), but her pelvis suddenly crushed against his, driven by a force that he knew would carry them to the kitchen floor and convulse their bodies with an animalistic need to crawl under the other's skin and rub muscle fibers against each other.  

      And they did, too.  

      (Interrupted, briefly, and beneath his notice, by her turning off the burner that cooked their stir-fry.  She did this while she was on top, arching her back to accomodate the lightning shooting up her spine, and squeezing her eyes shut so tightly that they popped open automatically and spied the stir-fry, steaming away unattended.  She released her grip on his arm long enough to twist the knob to "off." He, deeply involved in the act of coitus and suckling her breasts, missed the odd maneuver, which might have struck him as belittling or, in a more thoughtful frame of mind, surreal.  It did, however, save dinner.)

      The tiled floor was no place for basking in afterglow, and while he tried anyway, she stood, eyed the cooling stir-fry, then her abandoned dress and still partially clinging undergarments, and decided that a policy had been ratified by their bout, and clothing was now a needless nicety.  She deposited the brassiere and panties in the lap of the dress.  

      He watched her turn the heat back on and stir the stir-fry.  Her nude body was more solid than he had envisioned, even when making love to it; up close or hidden, the whole picture was obscured.  The significance of the discarding of all remaining garments had not escaped him.  He still had his pants, gathered at his knees, and the discrepancy between his legs was not immediately apparent.  The openness that she had heralded shone in his chest like a candle, warm (like a fire; a clichŽ that still, he thought, felt right), and he slid out of his pants and boxers without getting up, as he had done as a child in bed.  

      The stir-fry had begun to cook.  

      "Smells good," he said, standing, catching the rush of air in his dampened crotch.  

      "Yes," she said.  

      "I'm glad you're here with me, eating dinner."

      "Yes," she said again, although this time a satisfaction filled her as she answered him.  She had been, she realized, alone, but now she sensed a presence, and a smile rose up to her face.  

      It made him smile, too, one of the best smiles he'd ever smiled.

      There was, though (nagged a tiny voice), still the issue of his legs.  

      "Darling," he said (it thrilled him to finally use that endearment and mean it), "would you please look at me?"

      "Why?" She shook soy sauce over the wok.  

      "I want you to see something."

      "What--" She turned, looked, and the blank expression on her face raised a long dead hope: perhaps his legs were mismatched in his eyes only, that he was--his chest tightened--normal.  

      "Oh," she said, head tilted at his legs, his two odd legs, and the long dead hope returned to being long, long dead, and ready now for the long haul.  

      She looked puzzled.  

      The stir-fry sizzled.  

      "I'm.  .  .I'm sorry," he said, blushing, shamed.  

      She set her face in a neutral expression, though it kept slipping to confusion.

      "I should have told you--shown you, I mean.  Or--"

      "No," she said.  "It's not like you just gave me herpes or something."

      "I feel as though I tricked you."

      She managed a wry smile.  "Tricked me, no.  Rushed me, yes." She glanced at the stir-fry.  "C'mon.  Let's eat this.  Did you make rice?"

      "No," he said heavily, looking at the floor.  "I did not make rice."

      

      They ate naked, touching feet under the table.  He picked at his food and shifted his feet restlessly.  Her feet always found his and held them, firm.  Her eyes watched him with purpose.  

      "It bothers you, then," she said.  

      He nodded.

      "Why?" She scooped up a forkful (he had no chopsticks, nor the ability to use them)(neither did she) of green peppers and onions and stuffed it in her mouth, chewing and watching him.  

      A wave of emotions came to him in response, but, of course, he could not express them (who can?).  He searched for words, slumped, and settled for: "They make me feel weird."

      "Uh-huh." She swallowed.  "Please don't get upset, but you are."

      He slumped more, wishing that someone would accept him as normal.  

He said so.

      "I don't think that will happen." She met his eyes (his: pleading, hers: apologetic).  "It's weird, there's no doubt.  I guess you could learn to live with it.  Maybe learn to like it, to like being weird."

      "I can't," he said, his life passing in summary before his eyes (as if he were dying), all of it focused on normality.  "I hate them, I guess." He did.  Hate them that is.

      She chewed thoughtfully.  "Maybe," she said at length, "someone would find them kinky."

      "Do you?" 

      She hesitated.  "No.  Large operation scars, curved dicks, butt hair, tattoos, even scabs, yes.  Maybe.  But your legs aren't weird enough to be kinky, and not normal enough to be overlooked." She paused, saw his shoulders sag in defeat.  "I'm sorry.  Really.  It's not your fault."

      "It's a reflection of me, though."

      "Hey, can the self-pity.  I did fuck you, you know."

      "It didn't count.  Would you do it again? Now that you know?"

      She fell silent, and scooped up the last of her stir-fry.  

      "No," he answered for her.  

      "But it's not--" she blurted.

      "It's no.  You wouldn't.  I'm a freak to you now."

      The stir fry toppled off her fork.  A scorched pepper bounced off the rim of the bowl and left a brown trail on the table.  She stared at the pepper, lip trembling.              

      With the finality of a jail door locking, his dream of a grassy green future, clean, normal, steady, danced away from his grasp, and mocked him.  Sorrow welled up in him, squeezing his chest until his blood pushed throuhg his tear ducts.  

      "God help me," he said, feeling foolish, too.  

      "I'm sorry," she repeated.  

      Before him the stir fry steamed.  Its steam crawled up his nostrils.  He thought that perhaps he had better take care of his affairs.  He ate his stir fry intently, calmy, and finished it, and for good measure ate the pepper on the table.  

      She looked up when he speared the pepper, a hopeful smile materializing and just as quickly dissolving when she saw the resignation that had settled in.  She thought of her grandfather, years ago, near death; the same chill shook her now, seeing the man across the table.  

      "You--" she began.  

      "Yes?" he said, startled, having become accustomed to the silence, and in fact having come (quickly) to believe that such silence was what became an outcast.  

      She exhaled too loudly and spoke: "What are you going to do?" She gasped after the words were out, and blushed.  

      Her discomfort soothed him, pointed to a path to follow: a new path, one he had never envisioned himself walking (hopping?).  His earlier ruminations, floating in the limbo realm of relativism, were paper thin, meaningless, thoughtgames.  This is the straight and narrow, he thought.  The truth from the gut (it is good to have a man on the inside).  Thinking can hide the truth, build a wall between you and everybody else.  They're what matters: you are everybody else.  

      He felt like he thought a Zen Buddhist monk must feel like.  It felt good.  Perhaps he would develop smile wrinkles in his old age.  (Yes, old age.  He had no intention to die.)

      "I'll need your help," he said.  

      "My help to do what?"

      "My plan.  I have a plan, now."

      He smiled, and enjoyed it (the smile, and the plan, too.)



      They piled the necessary supplies on the kitchen table:

      

            Evercleer, 180 proof, and good for killing infection.

            Grape juice to help chase it down.  

            Three absorbant towels.

            A rubber tube, twenty inches long.  

            Ibuprofen, three bottles worth (over the counter, underpowered).  

            Crutches.

            A hacksaw.

      

      The pretty woman was still unsure.  "I've never done anything like this.  My brothers used to to cats, but I--"

      "Don't worry," he said, levering himself up on the table.  He uncorked the Evercleer and filled half a glass with it, then filled it to the top with grape juice (Purple Jesus, they had called it in his college dorm.  He felt ever more serene).  He poured her one as well.  "This will make it easy.  You have the easy job." He pushed the hacksaw across the table towards her (she flinched a little).  "I have to decide which one to keep."

      They sipped their drinks and studied his two mismatched legs.  





			                                                         *   *   *

      













The Key of F







by D. Navarro

    



 

     These guys, they take my car.  I guess this is what they think they do, you know, take peoples' cars, and they did, you know, they just took it, right out of the mall, while I was there.  It was only like half an hour or something, and first I go out and it's not there, where I parked it, so I'm thinking I'm in the wrong level, 'cause there's two levels coming out of that store, and they look just alike, except you have to go up the stairs to one and down the stairs to the other.  I was sure I had parked upstairs, but I went downstairs and it wasn't there either, so I was like, _shit_!

     Anyway, this had never happened to me before so I'm so fucked up.  I'm thinking, God, shit   you know, I felt so violated like someone, these guys, had physically attacked me or something and they don't even know me.  It's like, _fuck you! Who the fuck do you think you are?_ People don't know, you know, they have no idea what it means to be taken from like that.  So it's gone for like two weeks.  I think it's gone forever, I'm never gonna see it again, 'cause the cops were really less than helpful, you know.  They didn't know shit about how to handle this, or they do it so much they don't even care anymore.  It was like an hour and a half after I told the mall cops that my car had been stolen that they even began to think about maybe doing something about it, like looking for it somewhere other than actually in the mall parking lot, like someone stole it so they could drive it around the parking structure or something.  And I'm waiting there in the mall on a bench near the little police station that has, you know, two cops behind a counter and those phony column things with the round lights on top like its supposed to be Scotland Yard or something, and an hour and a half later this guy comes out and I guess he's a cop, he's about in his late twenties and he's wearing regular clothes, but he says to me he wants to get a description of the car.  And I couldn't believe it! _You want to get a description of the car? I gave a description when I first reported it stolen an hour and a half ago, and now you guys are supposed to be looking for it, and you don't even know what it looks like?_   So I'm screaming all this.  I had had it, you know, with these stupid cops not knowing their ass from a hole in the ground, so he takes me into their little police boutique and he's like, _listen, young lady, I know you're upset but I don't have to take down this report, you know, I can just go do something else_.  Like, right, he can just opt wheteher or not he wants to do his job or not, like one day I'll just decide I don't want to answer any more phones at the office, or maybe I'll answer this one, but not the next call, or like that.  So I'm hitting the ceiling, you know, and I throw my purse down and I'm about to scratch some cop's eyes out, and then this older, tough-talking cop in uniform with his big fucking macho gun on his belt comes and stands in front of me with his fists planted on his hips, but it's just the same shit as the other guy.  He's all, _young lady, why don't you calm down_,  and I'm like, _calm down? What the hell have you guys been doing about my car? Why should I be calmed down when I told you almost two hours ago that my car was stolen and you guys are just now asking me for a description_?   And they were like, _young lady, we have policies and procedures_.  And I'm like, _fuck policies and procedures.  My car's been stolen and you guys are supposed to find it_.

     So I call my brother who's this total car freak and ask him to drive me to the car rental place, and over there they totally tried to fuck me over on my insurance thing.  I paid with my American Express, you know, which means that whenever you rent a car like that it's covered.  You know, American Express is insuring whatever you rent like that.  So the lady at the rental agency is trying to sell me their insurance and it's like, _look, lady, I don't need it.  I have an agreement with my card company that they will cover whatever I rent on it_ , but she's like, _no, that doesn't cover it_ , which is a lie.  So I'm like, _Hey! Lady! I know you're doing your job and all and the company wants you to get people to buy this but I don't want it so stop giving me the hard sell_.

     So anyway, it must be just a bunch of airheads they have working there anyway because the next one we get takes us out to the lot to get the car, and she's talking at me like she's trying to sell me the car, telling me about the plush interior in this one and the V6 in that one and all that.  It's like, _look, I just want to get to my stupid job so give me a cheap stupid car, okay, and go get a job at Cal Worthington or something 'cause nobody here is buying anything_. 

     So anyway in two weeks the police find my car.  I get this call at work and it's them, it's the police, and they're telling me they found it on a street 'cause it had racked up all these parking tickets.  So I called my brother at work and I screamed, you know, I was so happy they had found it and I didn't have to drive this stupid fucking rental car, this piece of shit they were making me drive which kept veering to the right while you were driving it.  It was like you had to hold the steering wheel sideways to get the car to go straight.  I mean like shit, what's the point? So taking the car back was a pleasure, 'cause I wasn't going to have to see those bimbos anymore.  It was just, like, _here, here's your car, take it, okay, I'm leaving, bye_.

     Except my brother had to drive me from there to the towing yard and I love my brother and he does know a ton about cars but he really is kind of a stupid driver.  I mean, he won't just go , you know? Sometimes he even slows down at a green light.  It's so frustrating, and on the freeway he drives like he's spastic or something.  He'll speed up then he'll slow down and he doesn't keep, you know, just like one speed.  So this time, we're going over to the towing place and there's this intersection that's totally blocked off.  There's not an accident or anything, it's just people are being stupid and sitting in the intersection and they won't like move around the other cars or anything.  So our light goes green and we can't move 'cause there's all these other cars going in the other direction blocking us and they're not moving.  Well, my brother, he's at the front of the line and he won't do anything so I like lean over and push on his horn and he's like, _stop that_!    And I'm saying, _what? They're being stupid, they won't go_, and he's like, _well that's not gonna make 'em go_,  and I go, _yes it will and if not at least they'll know they're being stupid_, and he's all, _well I'm driving.  I don't do that when you drive_, and it's like, _well I don't drive stupid like you do_.    So he gets all put out and I'm just frustrated 'cause I want to go see my car and we're not getting there 'cause of all the stupid traffic.

     So we get to the towing yard and it's, you know, one of these places where you're afraid to even walk around in the daytime 'cause it looks like one of these rusty old things might just eat you, you know, and there's like rats in there or something.  There's this fat stupid lady behind the counter who doesn't know anything and it costs like seventy-five dollars to get the car out of there and we go back to it and it looks pretty good, you know, they didn't tear up the upholstery or anything.  They even left all my stuff in there, except my tire pressure gauge and my Thomas Guide, but they didn't take the seats or anything or the wheels.  I mean, these guys weren't pros or anything.  It was just a couple of kids on a joy ride who wanna be like big-time car theives or something someday 'cause they parked it only about a half a mile from where the mall is.  I didn't have much gas in it when they stole it so they weren't gonna get too far anyway.  

     So they weren't pros but it looked like they probably wanted to steal my steering wheel 'cause they had taken off the top part that you press down to make the horn go and there were just the two wires sticking out of the steering shaft, so if I want to honk my horn I gotta reach with my fingers to find the wire and touch it against the other wire and that'll make it blow.  So this is really useful, you know, 'cause you're on the freeway or something and some old grandma cuts you off, it's not like you have time to go looking for the wires to touch 'em together.  It has to be instant, you know, or you're gonna get hit by somebody.  So of course what happened was I'd go driving around and every time I'd make a turn the wires were just hanging there and they'd brush against the metal thing where it was exposed 'cause they had stolen that part off and it would conduct and my horn would just be going all the time.  Every time I made a turn or something or hit the brakes the wires would swing around and touch the thing so everybody on the road is looking at me like I'm crazy, trying to honk my horn at everybody or something.  I didn't mind it for a little while but it got to be too much.  I was afraid I'd get pulled over or something by those cops if they ever escaped from the mall.  So I got my brother to like tie back the wires into the shaft so it wouldn't do that anymore.  Then like the next day I'm trying to leave work and I'm pulling out from under my building where there's this underground parking garage, and I'm trying to get out but there's this guy in this truck -- it's this big, macho truck like guys drive who want to prove to the world that they have big dicks or something -- and he's parked across the exit like he's outside waiting for somebody but he's right in the way and he sees me drive up, I'm sure, when I'm trying to get out.  So like instinctively I lean on the front of my steering wheel but its just this plate of cold metal.  I'm like ready to explode.  It's like you're in one of those dreams where everything's coming down around you and you're gonna die or something and you open your mouth to scream but nothing comes out -- it's just my palm against this metal plate on my steering wheel.  So I get out of my car and walk up to the side of the truck and it's like, _hey! What are you doing? This is a driveway, people have to get out!_   And I'm screaming so he can hear me through the window and whatever stupid country music he's probably playing in there, and he starts looking at me like I'm the troublemaker, raising his eyebrows at me, like I'm some crazy lunatic out on the street just yelling at the top of my lungs.  And I'm like, _get your fucking truck out of the way, mister_ , and I'm waving my arms and everything trying to get him to move.  So finally he gets the hint and he rolls the truck past the driveway and finally I can leave.

     Finally I say I've had it, so I go down to the dealership where I didn't even buy the car and it's super expensive, but I know these little greasepit gas station places won't have the right parts, and I tell them I need to have this thing on my steering wheel put back on and the horn hooked back up so I can, you know, drive again and be heard.  So first they make me wait 'cause I wasn't there like first thing in the morning but eventually they put this guy on it so I go and I watch him while he does it and he's hooking up the horn and he says to me _you know all car horns are in the key of F?   And I go, what?   And he says to me that all car horns are in the key of F_.  And it's like he thinks I'm a musician or something.  Why the fuck should I care that all horns are in the key of F? He says, actually not all.  It used to be all cars, but more recent cars have deviated from the standard.  Mostly foreign cars . But this guy's kinda old and I figured he'd been working on cars since he was really young and now he's probably the horn expert at the dealership and this is what he knows and so he tells everybody this.  I don't know if he even knows what he's talking about -- about the key of F, I mean, 'cause obviously he knows how to put in the horn 'cause he put it in real quick -- but I can see how he might just say stuff about the key of F to keep his customers interested or to make conversation or something.  So I acted like I was interested, like, _wow, why is that  you know_, and he went on talking about it, but I really couldn't have cared less.  I just watched what he was doing with the steering wheel 'cause I wanted to have my horn back.

     So the first thing I do, I can't wait to get home 'cause my brother's there and I want to show him the new fixed car and I'm pulling out of the dealership, I've got to make a right turn onto the street and I'm going to do that and this lady with like fifteen kids in her station wagon comes speeding up from my left.  She was going like super fast and she slams on her brakes and swerves out past me and her car like stops right in front of mine, so I have to slam on my brakes 'cause I almost hit her and her stupid fifteen kids, and there it was, man, my hand just flew to the center of the wheel, and the sound came out of there sounding so good, like an opera singer, and I just let it go, that key of F.  I almost cried.  I almost did.







                                                         

*   *   *

     















Private Parts





by C. B.  Adams







	    Whatever you do, don't get involved with Phil, my ex-boyfriend.  I mean, he won't talk about it right away, but the morning after the third or fourth time you sleep with him Š that's when he'll start.

    	That morning, the sound of his coffee grinder will wake you as he prepares breakfast.  You'll look around for your clothes, which are gone.  You're sure you left at least your panties by the bureau.  His clothes are gone, too.  But folded neatly over a chair is a bright white terry cloth robe.  You recognize immediately that it's for you, and you're not sure you like this form of manipulation Š please notice the "man" in manipulation.  This beats your former lover who never got up before you and just expected you to wear one of his dingy t-shirts, or your clothes from the night before, or maybe nothing at all.

    	So you walk down the hall.  His apartment is like a really good movie, the kind you can watch over and over and keep noticing new things.  This time, you can't help noticing the polished wood floor covered with an oriental runner.  The wood shines with attention and feels old, established and comforting.  It squeaks with quality.  The blue and blood-red Turkish pattern of the runner draws you along.  

    	You stop for a quick spruce-up in the john.  The clear plastic shower curtain is pulled back, and sunlight streams through the window over the tub.  Interesting, you think, as you notice that a collection of prisms hangs in the window, a glinting collage spraying pinpricks of light over the walls.

    	A quick look in the mirror.  Damn fine.  Nothing slows you down, honey.   Of course, that handful of vitamins and minerals you tossed back with that last glass of expensive Chardonnay didn't hurt either.  Always replace what you have lost is my motto.

    	Are you paying attention?  So then you move toward the apartment's airy living room.  Same gleaming floor here but covered with a bristly sisal carpet that tickles your feet and makes your toes curl.  As you pass by the overstuffed leather couch, you touch it and remember last night.  The dozen or so candles are still on the chrome-and-glass coffee table.  Vanilla and patchouli and sandalwood still scent the air.  The rest of last night is gone: the wine glass that balanced perfectly in your hand, the thin white plates, the bowl of Thai chicken with lemongrass and ginger ...  and your clothes.

	    A left turn by the pickled oak entertainment center lands you at the kitchen.  The early sun filters perfectly through the miniblinds onto a French bistro table.  The top is dimpled green glass, the legs are metal with a verdigris finish.  Only two rather small, but inviting chairs.  Lights, camera, action, you think.  

    	Breakfast is waiting.  Imported whole-bean coffee.  Sweating carafes filled with freshly squeezed tropical fruits and sparkling mineral water.  Homemade yogurt in antique crystal compotes, topped with Alpine strawberries.  He's really outdone himself.  I mean, dating Phil is like dating Julia Child, but this morning, he's lifted off for the gastronomic stratosphere.  A foodie in orbit.  Of course, you suspect nothing.

    	Phil, putting the finishing touches on his famous Denver omelet with ancho chile cream, stands at the stove.  He wears an outlandish pair of pressed boxer shorts with bold blue vertical stripes and an oversized white pocket t-shirt.  On a heavier, less muscular man, the shorts would look sloppy, like something your goofy fat uncle would wear and then show off when he's had too much of Kentucky's finest.  On Phil, the elasticized waistband lies flat against his abdomen; the stiff cloth accentuates the curvature of his buttocks.  Of course, you're not thinking "buttocks," you're thinking "ass." What will suddenly surprise you is how perfect Phil looks Š not just now, but all the time.  His cropped, dark blonde hair that's washed and brushed, but never coifed.  His boyish, light skin.  His lack of body hair.  His just-so clothes.

    	He picks up the plates with the omelets and walks towards you.  He points with the plate in his right hand, indicating where you should sit.  You are relieved to have the table between you for the moment.  

	Phil pours juice into your glass and the coffee into your cup.  You notice that each liquid makes a different sound as it flows; the juice soft, the coffee crackly.  You wonder why, then you wonder why you are wondering.

    	"I hope you don't mind," he says.

    	"Mind?"

    	"I don't believe in small talk."

    	"Me either."

    	"It's good to have something to concentrate on in the morning.  That's why I like to cook."

    	"Do you do windows?"

    	"You need to ask?"

    	"Don't get me wrong.  It's just...I don't know what to say.  It's wonderful...  everything's wonderful."

    	"A good meal is in the details.  It took me a long time to understand food Š how all the elements should be indicative of the humors of the body.  Hot and cold.  Sour and sweet.  Salt and spice."

    	"It's very good."

    	"Feel like experimenting?  Take a spoonful of yogurt and be sure to get a strawberry, too.  There.  How's it taste?"

    	"Good."

    	"Now try it with some of this." From a small dish, Phil pours a stream of purple sauce on the yogurt.  You take a spoonful and you can't hide the surprise.  	

    	"Tell me what you think."

    	"Well, it's the sameŠ"

    	"Only better.  Enhanced, right."

    	"Yes.  How did you do that?"

    	"It's a reduction of the elements in the yogurt and berries.  Through the process of reduction, it's possible to enhance the pleasure of certain elements."

     "You mean like eating frozen orange juice from the can?"

    	"No.  That's a concentration, which is too strong.  A reduction is the search for the essence."

    	"This may take me awhile."

    	"You see, I crush the berries and steep them in balsamic vinegar.  Then I strain the liquid and heat it.  Just before it boils, I add honey.  Then it simmers until it is reduced by half."

    	"Amazing.  How did you know to do that?"

    	"Experience."

    	You switch your attention to the omelet.  You can't just eat it, now you have to notice the balance of the ingredients.  

    	"I don't mind if you just enjoy," Phil says.

    	Then your eyes will meet Phil's.  He'll take a sip of coffee and carefully  set his cup on the table.

    	"Carol, I have to ask you something." 

    	For an instant, you wonder who Carol is.  You've never heard your name spoken this way before Š so round, so familiar.  This makes you uneasy.  It's hard to keep your mind in the present.  You've only slept with him, what, three or four times?  Phil leans closer and again you are thankful for the table.  "Does it bother you?  Please be honest."

    	"What?"

    	"Surely you noticed.  Don't worry, I'm not embarrassed."

    	What-what-what runs through your mind.  What is he talking about?  

    	"I'm sorry, but what are you asking me?  Breakfast is wonderful."

    	"Breakfast?" Phil face pinches up.  "I'm not talking about breakfast." He looks at you, waiting, like a teacher who knows you know the answer and suspects you're just holding back.  This scares you and you put your fork down to keep from showing how shaky you've become.

    	Finally, he turns his gaze to something outside the window.  "I have only one testicle.  I assumed you noticed."

    	My God, he just says it, like "Look, the sun is out.  The world is round.   By the way, I'm missing a nut." Now that's a reduction.

    	"I didn't notice."  What else can you say?  You're embarrassed you didn't notice.

    	"We should talk about it." 

    	Talk about it?  Talk about it?  About which one, the one that's there or the one that's not?  So you say: "Phil, I'm sorry, but I don't know what to say.  It just doesn't matter."

    	"Maybe it will start to matter."

    	"How?  it doesn't affect, you know, anything.  Do we have to keep talking about it?"

    	"It's important to me."









    	So back up a minute here.  I warned you, didn't I?   Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, she now must face the consequences.  You don't want to talk about it or them, but he draws you in, anyway.  Before you know it, he's standing in front of you, sliding those striped shorts over his slim hips to the floor.  And then everything's right there in your face.

    	His lack of modesty is astonishing.  Where is this going?  Uncharted waters.  You hold on to his voice for support, but only the nouns seem to make it through.  Sixteen...Testicular cancer...Surgery...Excision.

    	He shows you two small, silvery scars at the top of his scrotum.  One is from the original removal.  The doctor inserted a prosthetic testicle to replace the cancerous one.  The second scar was from a few years ago when he had the fake removed because he read some magazine articles and became afraid the silicone in it would leak out.  Breasts and balls are best left unenhanced.

    	You've never seen a man up close in the morning light Š or any light Š before.  This is not virgin territory, but the view certainly is.  Until now, these dark parts have been hidden in dark cars, dark rooms, the dark of too many drinks.

    	 It's not pretty, really, but it's not revolting, either.  It's just skin, isn't it?  But the idea of a penis is out of kilter with its reality.   It's not your fault you feel this way.  Women aren't raised to believe a man's private parts are beautiful.  No romantic paintings hang in galleries.  No movies pan in for close-ups.  Bars don't sponsor wet boxer short contests.  On the other hand, how many women pay any attention when Š or if Š they're ever here?

    	As Phil quietly and methodically tells you about his adolescent humiliation, you can smell the sweet almond scent of his bath gel rising from his skin.

    	He turns your embarrassment to empathy.  He guides your fingers to the wrinkly sack and shows you how to roll the vas deferens, the tube leading from the testicle to the body, between your fingers.  You notice how the sides of the sack are worn smooth from being rubbed by his inner thighs.  He slides your fingers underneath so the soft skin lies on your palm, outlining the single, solitary, egg-like testicle, healthy and still teeming with little tadpoles of Phil.  You've got his whole world in your hands.  So now he's got you.

    	You touch his penis when he has finished telling you, and all you can hear is your breath and heartbeat.  He is not aroused.  The lovers you had before got an erection at the slightest touch, not to mention the boys in high school who practically lived with hard-ons.  So while you're here, you decide to get the lay of the land.  You study the bumps and ridges of the shaft's landscape.  The darkish ring left from his circumcision.  Your fingers explore the soft, yet solid, corona.  

    	Phil reaches under the terry cloth of your robe and cups your breasts as you kiss the tip.  Almonds, and images of dry, hot Mediterranean groves fill your senses.











    	You could have stopped things that morning.  You could have run screaming from the kitchen or pointed at him and laughed with hysterics until he pulled his shorts back up and offered to reheat your omelet.  But you didn't because you're weak Š even weaker than I am.  It was a strange situation, and titillating, too.  Notice the "tit" in titillating?  And you're curious.

    	So if you keep seeing my ex-boyfriend Phil Š and I cannot stress strongly enough that you should not Š you'll find yourself in his apartment on an early Saturday afternoon.  The stereo is tuned to a fuzzy AM station playing a football game between his alma mater and some other midwest team.  Phil is in the bathroom, cleaning the floor and fixtures.

    	You rifle through the magazines stacked neatly on the Biedermeier end table.  Architectural Digest.  AdWeek.  HG.  The Paris Review.  The Art of Eating.  Grande Cuisine.  Gourmet.  He even has one called Peppers!

    	"Phil?  Where's my Glamour?" "

    	The ballgame announcer raises his voice and you cannot hear Phil's reply.  Why does he have the game on?  It's usually the classical station.  You walk over and survey the knobs.  It takes a few seconds to find the off knob.  The game ends suddenly, and in the quiet, you hear Phil scrubbing.

    	"Where did you say it was?"

    	"You mean Orgasm Monthly?  Haven't seen it."

    	"I'm sure I left it here last weekend."

    	"Don't think so.  You check the stack?  I don't know why you read that.  It's for women who don't know any better." Add this to the fact he thinks you watch too much television.

    	No more comments from Phil in the bathroom, just more scrubbing.  Since you can't find your magazine, you head for the kitchen for something to eat.  You're in the mood for a peanut butter sandwich, but can't find anything to make it with.  You don't mind all the gourmet meals that Phil fixes, but now and again, something simple and plain wouldn't be a sin.  The man has six kinds of olive oil but not one goddamn jar of peanut butter.  He makes you edgey sometimes and you don't know why.  Sometimes he's just too Š

    	"Carol! Come here quick.  You've got to see this."

    	So you walk back to the living room, slapping a silk peony which sticks out too far Š in your opinion Š from a huge spray in an amethyst vase.  As you round the corner to the bathroom, you see Phil naked except for his bandanna.

    	"Look, crystal balls," he says.  Phil is perched on the edge of the tub, swinging two of the prisms from his crotch."

    	"Cute.  Can you read the future?"

    	Phil widens his eyes and his dick begins rising like a crane in an erector set.

    	"No way."

    	"Why not?" His hips gyrate, and the prisms make crazy patterns on the     wall.  "The family jewels could be yours."

    	"Call the cops, one of the jewels is missing."

    	"Carol!"

    	"You smell like Comet." you say, turning away.  "It'd be like fucking that genie, Mr.  Clean or Wally Wall Cleaner or whatever-his-name-was."

    	Good for you.  You walk out, just like that.  Let him get edgey for once.

    	The door closes behind you and Phil turns on the shower.  Later, when he is dressed in jeans and a faded denim workshirt, he offers a picnic lunch and a drive to Buck State Wildlife Area.  You say yes because this is one of those perfect fall days when the leaves are turning but haven't fallen, the sky is that certain shade of intense blue, and the sun is warm.   The top is down on Phil's convertible.  Perfection is all around you, almost blowing through you.

    	On the way you can't wait, so you open the cooler and take out a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.  You pull the cork and put the bottle to your lips.  Phil smiles.  The wine is cool but dry Š so dry it almost makes your teeth hurt.  It warms your empty stomach.  You hand Phil the bottle, lower the seat and look up to the sky.  Phil takes a discreet sip from the bottle, hands it back to you, then turns on the radio.

    	At the entrance to the park, Phil tells you to hide the empty bottle.  The ranger waves you in.

    	"I've never been here," you say as the blacktop turns to gravel just after you pass the lodge.

    	"I love this place.  I've been coming here since high school," Phil says.

    	"Oh, I guess they had to rename it Buck Naked Park."

    	"Actually, the land was donated to the conservation department by Buck Brewing Company about 20 years ago."

    	"Thank you Terry Tour Guide.  And now, ladies and gentlemen, if you'll turn your attention to the left side of the bus..."

    	"You're in a strange mood today," Phil says.

    	"You're just so earnest all the time.  So where're we going, anyway?"

    	"My favorite place Š the pine forest."

    	"The Pine Forest.  I see."

    	"Well, it's not really a forest, but it's the biggest stand of pines in the state."

    	For some reason, probably the wine, you feel like singing camp songs.  

    	At the end of a picturesque lake, Phil turns the convertible into a small gravel lot.  Under a tree stands a wooden picnic table.  A dented white pickup with two bumper stickers is also parked in the lot.  One sticker says "Rockin' Good News" and the other states "My Kid Is A Fuck Up at Valley High."

    	On the trail, the sun shines down hot and bright and you get quite warm, sweating even, as you carry the quilt.  Phil carries the basket and the cooler with the wine.  As you step into the stand of pines, your eyes have to adjust to the dimness.  The thick mat of needles muffles your footsteps.  You follow Phil for what seems like a long time.  When he stops and speaks, his voice startles you and you almost run into him.

    	"So, what do you think?" he asks.

    	"I love the smell of pine.  It's like Christmas."

    	"I don't know why, but coming here reminds me of stepping into a cathedral.  The light comes through the trees like stained glass."

    	Phil has brought along one of those picnics you always read about.  His wicker basket has leather hinges and a brass clasp, and is lined with fabric that looks like an expensive scarf.  Inside are two crystal wine glasses, tiny silver knives and forks, small china plates with an acanthus leaf pattern along the edge, and linen napkins.  Phil places everything on the quilt, then reaches in and brings out soft, runny brie, mottled Stilton, herbed goat cheese in olive oil, crisp bread, salted multi-grain crackers, apples and grapes.  You reach for the cooler, but Phil insists on opening the wine himself.  He takes out a bottle of champagne, then reaches into the basket for the small flask.  He carefully pours a few drop of a garnet-colored liquid into each glass.  

    	As he unwraps the foil around the champagne, you say "Let's see how high the cork will fly into the trees."

    	"Can't," Phil says.  "That will disrupt the carbonation."

    	He carefully wiggles the cork from the bottle, allowing the pressure to be relieved in little burps.  When he removes the cork, fog floats from the top.  He pours the champagne into the glasses and the liquid in the bottom colors the drinks.

    	"What is this?"

    	"Kir.  Also known as frambois liqueur and champagne."









    	Excuse me, but you're drifting off again.  I have been more than clear that you shouldn't continue to see Phil.  This is not some perfectly proper day in the country, not a scene from some tweedy British novel.  This is Phil, remember?  My ex-boyfriend?

    	This is a good day, for a Phil day.  Phil is always full of surprises, but there is a certain pattern he follows.  He has been around the block enough times to know that the fastest way into your pants is through your stomach.  It's like a horror movie.  You know that the girl shouldn't leave the party alone and take the short cut home through the forest.  But each and every time you jump or scream anyway.  You know what's going to happen, but you almost wet your pants every time.

    	If you've kept seeing Phil, at this point you haven't moved in with him yet, but you probably would if he asked.  And today, you think you've got him figured out.  Love in the afternoon in the great wide open.  Best not to burst, or should that be "disrupt" his bubble.  But wait a minute Š if he expects you fall in line with his plan, maybe you should head him off at the pass.  Make the first move.  Catch him by surprise.









    	"If you don't put everything in exactly right, it won't all go in," Phil says as he carefully places everything back into the basket.  You try to help, but he insists you just relax.

    	"I'll say." You lean over and open the middle two buttons of his jeans.  As you slide your hand inside you realize he isn't wearing any underwear.  

    	"You dog," you say.  But his face is relaxed and unreadable.

    	 You pull your hand from his pants and begin unbuttoning his shirt.  He grins and unbuttons your blouse.  Bingo! You're not wearing a bra and he begins rubbing his thumbs around your nipples.  He knows right where to go.   You feel the arousal rising within you, distracting you, so you push his hands away.  He's not getting away that easily.  You press your palm against his chest to make him lie back.  You sit on his thighs and finish unbuttoning his jeans.  Ooo, filet of Phil.  You touch him lightly, exploring his intricate contours.  On your wrists you feel the cool metal buttons and the soft brush of his jeans.  The scent of his cologne drifts up.

    	You're amazed how slowly he becomes aroused.  You stand and pull off his jeans, then remove your own.  You move down on Phil, putting him inside you, but this is awkward though you've done it many times before.  But the open space eliminates your internal compass, your reference points.  Phil puts his hands on your hips and guides you, providing the rhythm.

    	Nearby, something glints from behind two trees growing side-by-side.  At first you don't think about, but there it is again.  When you turn to look, a head ducks down and you can see part of another shoulder.  You stop the rhythm and cross your arms over your breasts.  The languid feeling from the wine disappears.

    	"Phil!.  Someone's over there."You try to move away, but Phil's hands hold you strongly.

    	"Let's keep going."

    	You try to move again.  Phil sits up and you are cradled in the fold of his body.  He wraps his arms around you and pulls you close.  He whispers in your ear.

    	"No," you say.

    	He whispers again.

    	"I can't."

    	He whispers some more.  You don't know why, but you listen.  Phil is still inside you and you feel him grow harder.  His lips brush your ear as he whispers.  

    	"Oh, just get it over with."

    	Phil rolls you onto the quilt and pushes his hips strongly, methodically into you.  Of course, he doesn't hurry.  He never looks at the watchers, but he is aware of them.  It's unreal, like perfect movie sex or sex dreams.  All lightning and no thunder.  You think about the gas station you passed just outside the park.  "Bait and Tackle," the weathered sign read.

    	When he comes, he lifts his head and sighs.  Nothing more.  He looks at you and you mouth "Let's go now." He lowers himself, covering you, then pulls the quilt overhead.  You move to the edge and Phil keeps lifting the     quilt higher.

    	"What are you doing?"

    	"For privacy.  Now get dressed."



    	Okay, I see you, looking at me like, "I would never do that." Well, yes you would.  You don't know what he whispered to me, but you will, sooner or later.  And just like me, it will persuade you at the time.  Besides, that night, if you keep seeing Phil, he'll ask you to move in with him.  And you will.  











    	Still with me?   You have yet to follow my advice and so tonight is a big night.  You moved in three months ago.  You've partied with his friends and you've partied with his coworkers at the agency Š most of whom overlap.  He finds your friends uninteresting, and your friends find him strange and exotic.  An acquired taste.  So tonight, you entertain "in home." In vitro.  Just a small affair.  With his "A" listers only.  Mi casa, su casa.  Isn't that sweet?  

    	Of course, you're allowed to do almost nothing.  First, Phil spends a solid week flipping through cookbooks and magazines.  Then there's a week of eating hors d'oeuvres while he tries out the recipes, followed by a week of cleaning and calling the wine shop and signing for UPS packages from gourmet mail order places and visiting the farmers' market.  He does give you small chores to do, like picking up salt-cured capers at the Italian grocery, but there is no fun in this because he doesn't just put the name of the item down, he draws a map of the store's aisles and indicates with a little arrow on which shelf you can find the goddamned capers.

	    It's all in the details, he says.  Little details.  Little food.  You wonder which little detail you've become

    	Phil takes two days off from work to prepare the food.  Each night as you come in from work, you can smell his efforts in the elevator.  He bakes his own bread, makes his own tortillas, simmers his own stocks, polishes all the silver.

    	The big night is Saturday.  Tray by tray the hors d'oeuvres are completed.  Chive toast with Beluga caviar.  Smoked duck burritos with salsa verde.  Marble Head oysters on the half shell.  Miniature gruyer cheese soufflŽs.  Squash blossoms stuffed with crab and lobster.  Dolmades stuffed with marinated lamb, couscous and fresh mint.  Soba noodles with tahini and ginger.  Melon marinated in port.  Espresso truffles dusted with bitter dark cocoa.  Strawberries dipped in white chocolate.  For music, Phil loads seven compact discs and set the stereo on random mix Š Brazilian, East African, delta blues, Queen Ida, Jelly Roll Morton, Paul Simon, Talking Heads.

    	They arrive.  In singles.  In pairs.  In gaggles.  One of the last is Mary Hartman, Phil's ex-girlfriend, the only one he still keeps in touch with.  Her name really is Mary Hartman.  Once, though, not twice like the television show.

    	Everyone finds Phil and picks treats off the tray welded to his hand.  Even this, the serving, he hogs for himself.  So you stand by the antique mahogany tea cart and refill wine glasses.  No one ignores you, exactly.  They hold out their glasses and you pour and chat for a few minutes.  A fuck of Phil's is a friend of mine.  But they're all in advertising and you are a passenger services representative for a small cruise line.  What have you got to talk about, except Phil.

    	Amazing how quickly the evening progresses.  One minute everyone is arriving and the next minute Phil is pulling bottles from the second case.  You hear someone ask Phil if it's time to play "Petey," some game he made up for his fraternity brothers in college.  It's a round-robin game where you have to think of all the names for dick and say them in order or take a drink from a bottle of a wicked juniper-berry liquer from Czechoslovakia.  Scary to think these are the advertising people responsible for selling the rest of us mouthwash, deodorant and tampons.  

    	Because of all the food and alcohol you start to blink in and out of the scene.  Fortunately, the guests seem to get to this stage at the same time, and they soon start leaving.  When only a few are left, you find Phil in the kitchen, cleaning up.

    	"I'm tired.  I think I need to lie down."

    	You say the appropriate goodbyes to the few remaining guests Š Mary Hartman is one of them Š and head for the bedroom.  Some time later Š how much later you'll never know for sure Š you become aware of a slow, circular motion on your thigh.  As you rise from sleep, you recognize Phil's touch.  You know it's late because the wine and booze has worn off.  You smell something familiar and open your eyes.  Phil has lit all the candles and placed them around the room.  The way the light flickers reminds you of a movie you saw once where people swam underwater and then came up for air in an underwater sea cave.  The room is a Sex Grotto, the air is heavy with the scent of vanilla, patchouli, sandalwood.  Phil lies next to you, with his elbow under him.  His fingers warm a patch on your thigh.

    	"The party went well, don't you think?" he asks.  His eyes shine intently into yours.  

    	You nod and he kisses you.  His lips are cool, soft and strong.  His hand moves slowly up and down your leg.  He knows just the right spots.

    	"Is this okay?" he whispers.

    	You cannot decide whether you're very tired or very relaxed, but Phil does all the work so you don't mind his love-making.  He moves you to the center of the bed and removes your panties.  He touches your eyelids, and you close your eyes.  He kneels and the feel of his head between your legs and his exploring tongue pull you further into the depths of dark sensations.  Your clitoris sends sparks into the night.

    	Then, a creak.  Hands rub your breasts.  Not Phil's, they cannot be.  You sit up on your elbows and open your eyes.  There, naked and lithe in the candlelight, stands Mary Hartman.  Phil lifts his head.  You dig your heels into the mattress and push away.

    	"No!" 

    	"Carol, calm down."

    	"No! I won't"

    	"Just relax."

    	You jump up and look around for something to wear.  Your heart races and your head is dizzy.  How could he even think you'd go along with this?  

    	"Get that bitch out of here!"

    	"I'd better go," Mary says.

    	"No, wait," Phil says.

    	"Get out! Now!"

    	"Carol."

    	The woman and Phil leave the bedroom.  Phil closes the door behind them.  As you put on your clothes, you can hear their voices through the door.  She says, "I told you she wouldn't go for it."

    	After she leaves, you hear Phil's footsteps coming down the hall.  You move to the side of the door and flatten yourself against the wall.  As Phil walks in, you grab him between the legs.  Your nails clamp hard.  A surprise attack.  A She Rambo.  You're in control now.  Phil tries to push you away but you squeeze tighter, making him draw in his breath.

    	"Do it and I swear I'll rip this fucking thing off."

    	"Carol." Phil stands still.  You can feel the tension in his abdomen.  

    	"Don't Carol me.  How dare you try this."

    	"I just thought Š"

    	"Don't fucking interrupt me."

	

    	Did I, or did I not, warn you about seeing my ex-boyfriend Phil?  I tried to tell you it would come to this.  But you persevered.  What are you going to do now?  It's the middle of the night and you've caught the weasel trying to steal the golden egg.  A fistful of manhood.  Will you crush it like a grape?  Will you twist it off like a deformed apple?  Or will you let him go, then stand back and kick him where it counts?  Each bead of sweat on his face will be one of these questions.

    	If you're like me, you'll  slowly let go.  He's not worth it, suddenly.  Phil thinks he's some strange brew, concocted Š notice the "cock"?  Š of exotic ingredients.  Instead, he's just some overly horny thing in the back of the fridge.  This comes to you in a flash of inspiration.  It won't be until later that you'll understand he's an acquired taste you can't deny once you have it.

    	For now, you'll grab your purse and leave.  You'll spend the night driving around, have breakfast at an all-night cafe, drink too much coffee, and watch the sun come up.  Then you'll go back to the apartment only to find all your belongings in piles in the hallway.  You'll try your key, but there's already the broken shaft of a key in the lock.  He's left and shut you out at the same time.

    	You get the hint, but you'll keep trying to call him long after you've moved into a new apartment and talked one of his friends into giving you his new unlisted phone number.  All you get it his silence through his answering machine and secretary.  You'll try to get on with your life, see other men.  But nothing works out, something's not right.  There's a part, a private part, that's gone.  You can still feel it, like the limb of an amputee, but it's gone.  And you can't pick up without it.

    	So one day, while you're searching for your missing part, you'll find yourself on his street.  And you'll look up and see him sitting with a new woman at that small bistro table with the green glass top and the verdigris legs, and you'll want to warn her.  You'll tell her this story.  You'll tell her about our bodies, myself.   Because once Phil's in you, he's really in you.  Members only.  He'll haunt you, your thoughts.  And you'll blame yourself for not following him to the end of the strange journey the two of you were on.  What you thought was your triumphant exit becomes your entrance to this raging, screaming doubt.  





                                                        

*     *     *















The Handy Man





(On Hearing That Jim's Aunt Jane Was Murdered Monday-4/11/88)









Jim's Aunt Jane, killed on Monday,

her wattled throat snapped

head-shaking tremor stilled at last

by her handy man out from jail

he'd forged her check two years before.  



front door slammed in his face,

he came in the back.

musty rooms curtained green and maroon.

an upright piano, wedding pictures, 

baby tears in dried bouquets.



body pushed under the ancient bed

silenced springs, two babies long ago.                       

swampy hills, cypress hung Spanish moss                  

back round the white capitol,

still lived-in slave shacks



antebellum family tree 

his life the sacrifice,

seared with acid and angel dust.

concrete dream behind black bars

brought to her high front door.



pale blue eyes large with fear

slack skinned brittle bones in his hands

feeble struggle near the bed,

teeth clenched in the dim light         

Why did you close the door?



he stilled the shake of

pink-palmed hand with cigarette smoke,                     

dropping ashes of evidence.

her black purse  $22 and car keys.

he closed the door firmly on the mute house



he drove her 77 Chevy to

the gas station in the next town

bought a pint and pressed the bottle hard

against his numb gums the amber liquid

quieting the tremor of his hands.





                                      

-by Eva Shaderowfsky 





















My Dancing Girl Father





by Robert Sward







	    My father holds a razor.  He's completely naked except for boxer shorts and a brassiere and he's shaving the hairs off his shoulders and chest around the brassiere.  There are black and white whiskers and streaks of red in the bathtub and long black hairs in the sink and whiskers on the new white washcloths and towels and clumps of moustache on the floor.

	    "Murder," I scream.  I picture myself snatching up the razor and slicing his bare throat and chest.

    	"Stop, you little goof.  Don't you knock anymore?" he yells.

I can tell he's not real happy to see me.

	     His entire body is covered with Gillette shaving cream and blood.  Gertrude, my mother, is on her knees behind him laughing.  I've never seen her--or my father--so happy.  She's got a razor in her right hand and she's shaving the backs of his legs and then reaching up sometimes to shave the long black hairs off his back.  Not very organized, but they're having a good time.

    	"Look at what this place looks like, Dad.  She's killing you.  You're bleeding.  You look like a woman, too.  I'm going to be the only kid in Chicago with two mothers.  Now you'll just spend your time shopping with Gertrude.  Is that what you want?  All I  want to do is go to a Cubs' game!"

    	"Is that all you think women do together, Bobby, is shop?"

    	"They drink coffee.  They play mah jong.  And they eat fudge."

    	My mother pokes me in the ribs with her knuckles. 

    	"Hey, Mom, I'm only kidding.  All I mean is we never do things... you never take me places I  want to go to."

    	Picking up a pair of scissors, pretending I'm a barber, I reach into the tub and clip strands of my father's fallen hair.

    	"Bobby, stop that," says my mother.  

    	"The world is made of hair," I say.  "Hair, hair, hair, hair."

	    "You're flushed, Bobby," she says.  "Are you ill?"

    	I shake my head.  

    	My mother puts her cool, wet hand on my forehead.

    	"If you're not ill, then you're blushing," she says.  My cheeks blaze.

    	"A man with no hair on his body is no man at all.  He's a turnip, he's a cantaloupe."

    	"Alright, Bobby, that's enough now," says my father.  He raises his hand with the razor.

    	"Shhh, Irving, for God sake!" says my mother.  Then, turning to me, she frowns.  "Bobby, leave your father shave in peace."

	    "You're really going to do it, Dad?  Put on a wig, make-up, and go out and dance in front of a thousand people?"

    	"And don't forget the highheeled shoes.  See Irving?"  My mother holds up some highheeled shoes with sequins in them and laughs.

    	"Mom, you're Dad's wardrobe mistress," I say. 

    	"There's a saying.  'Two's company, three's a crowd,'" says my father.  "Do you know that saying?"  

    	I look around to see who else is in the bathroom. 

    	"Irving, dear, it's alright.  He's only teasing."

    	"What's wrong with you, dad?  I mean, all I want to do is wash my hands."   He's looking at me in the mirror while he goes on shaving under his arms. 

    	"Bobby, don't bother us!  I've laid out that blue suit for you.  You can borrow one of Dad's neckties."

    	"Which one?  Not the one with the stripes," says my father.  "And not the new one."

    	"My husband, the prima donna," she says.  "Bobby will check with you first, okay?"

    	"No, I won't check with him because I'm not going," I say.  "You never said anything about it.  You never asked me.  Besides, the Cubs are playing a doubleheader with the Phillies and I need to hear the games."

    	What I don't say is I'm scared my buddies Eddie Greenberg and Junior Pucklewartz are going to see him like this.

    	"You may not think you're coming, young man."  She goes on shaving the backs of my father's legs.  He goes on shaving under his arms. 

    	"You never asked me," I repeat.   "What am I, a little dachshund you can toss into the backseat and take out when you feel like it?"

    	"Ask you?  What are you talking about?  Strangers you ask.  Friends you ask.  Tell me, why should a mother have to ask her son to see his own father dance on stage?  You want your mother should send you an engraved invitation?  My God, Bobby, we've been talking about it for a month.  And guess what?   Now you've given me a headache.  Don't come.  I don't care."

     	"You didn't tell me I was going to have to come.  How do you know I want to come?  You guys talk to each other, but nobody checks things with me."

    	"Don't argue so much, smart aleck.  You don't have to know everything.  Just do what I'm telling you."

    	"I have to come just because you say so.  Don't I have any choice?  How come in our family we don't talk things over?"

    	"Another prima donna, like your father," she says.  "Listen, I'm not talking to you now, either.  I'm telling you.  Enough is enough, Bobby.  So shut up already.  You hear me?  You're coming."

    	"And no back talk," says my father.  

    	"Listen to your father," she says.

	    "It's a fund raiser," says my father.  "Do you understand?  To put a second story on the temple.  So I'm performing."  

	    "I don't get it.  A second story?  God needs a second story?  How many floors do you need to be Jewish?  Why don't you perform for six months and they can build a skyscraper?"

    	"That's your son, Irving.  What a mouth on that kid."

    	"Aw, come on, Dad.  Why'ya doing this?  What's the sudden interest?  Is it because Doctor Sam and Uncle Abe are doing it?  You know you hate going to temple as much as I do.  It's boring.  It only deserves one story."

    	"Start getting ready," my mother says, spinning me around.

    	"Your Tuesday night poker club and playing dress-up games, that's what you're interested in, not the temple.  Well, I don't like going either.  And I'm not going tonight."

    	"Then don't go, you little ingrate," says my father.

    	"What's ingrate?" I ask.

    	"A noisy, unappreciative teenager," he says, "a smart ass."

    	"It's me you're talking about, isn't it?"

    	"If the shoe fits, wear it."

    	"I'm not a teenager.  I'm only twelve, Dad."

	    "You should become a lawyer.  Big Mouth, Big Mouth, Smart Guy and Bobby.  You have an answer for everything," says my mother, with a toss of her shoulder-length black hair.  She stares me down with her big green eyes.   Suddenly she looks like those pictures of her on their bedroom dresser, the old newspaper photos showing her in a black bathing suit winning beauty contests.

    	"Gee, Mom," I say, "I never noticed, but you were pretty the whole time I was growing up, weren't you?  You know, all those years I thought you were just my Mom."

    	She goes right on shaving my father's legs.

    	Frank Sinatra's singing I've Got A Crush On You  on the kitchen radio.  My mother hums along with it:



    		Mmm, crush, crush;

    		Mmm, crush, crush;

	    	I've got a crush on you.



	    So I pretend I'm mushy Frank Sinatra and mock him for my mother:			   



      Sweetie pie mush, mush,

   		 could ya, would ya, mush mush

		    Baby baby baby, I've got a crush on you.



	    Tonight she's a former beauty contest winner, the cheerful old veteran helping the new contestant get ready for the Big Show--a good sport!  It doesn't make any sense to me.  He stands in front of the mirror with his padded brassiere putting on lipstick and rouge.  Now he's smiling at himself.  People are really crazy.  Instead of a normal mother and father, what I have is these two beauty queens.

    	"You know, Mom, you're like Cinderella's fairy godmother.  You're helping Cinderella get ready for the ball.  Only Dad is Cinderella."

    	"Well, not really.  Think of it this way, Bobby.  Your father's going to be a gorgeous Ziegfield Follies girl."

     	There are red blotches and band-aids and mercurochrome on my father's back.  My mother's like a Red Cross nurse tending a wounded soldier while now on the radio Benny Goodman and his orchestra play Bugle Call Rag.   

    	"Yeah, Mom.  Dad, what do you think it feels like to get shot?  On the radio I heard a  soldier say all he felt at first was numb.  He says it doesn't hurt until afterwards." 

    	"Jesus Christ, watch it, Gertrude."

    	"You're not listening," I say. 

    	 "Ouch," he cries.

    	"Shut up, darling.  You know you can trust me," she says grinning up at him.  She's on her hands and knees.   She's got a funny look in her eyes.

    	"I'm only trying to help, Irving.  Bobby, hand me that box of Kleenex." 

    	"Kleenex?  What Kleenex.  I don't see any Kleenex."

	    "Bobby.  By the sink."

	     "Dad, the war's over.  But you go right on bleeding.  I'm going to be sick," I say. 

    	"Then get sick.  But get sick somewhere else," he says. 

    	"I'm gonna die."

    	"Then die."

    	I sit down on the edge of the tub.

    	"Are you really my father?" I ask.

    	"What's that?" 

	    "Ever since the Cubs won the pennant you've been promising you'll take me to a game.  That was two years ago and you still haven't found the time."

    	"Bobby, not now," says my mother.  

    	His moustache is gone.  The hairs in his ears are gone.  The little hairs that used to curl around his gold ring on the left hand are gone. 

    	"You're going to have to remove your wedding band," my mother reminds him.  My father takes it off and gives it to her.  "Hand me my glasses, dear."  My mother hands him the glasses with the gold frames. 

    	"Honey, I know it's going to go fine," she says.

    	"I never asked to do this," he says.  "Not in front of all those people.  And I bet Sam and Charlie don't bother to shave their bodies."

    	"You can always phone in and say you changed your mind," she laughs.  

    	"I'm scratching just thinking what it'll feel like when it grows back in.  Never again," he says.











    	As I walk into the auditorium at Lane Tech High School, I see Eddie Greenberg and Junior Pucklewartz with their families.  I clench my fists and avoid their eyes.  

    	Mom and I get to sit in row one next to Mrs. Goffen, the dentist's wife, and Rabbi Gefferbaum and all the other big shots.  Mom has a big bouquet of roses which she sticks under her seat.

    	Dressed in a suit and tie, sitting in the big rented auditorium, I'm prepared at any moment to slide out of my seat and hide in the aisle.  Finally, at eight o'clock, a half hour late, the curtain goes up.

    	I keep my eyes shut as long as I can.  Twenty seconds, thirty seconds go by.  Then, aware of lights flashing, I open my eyes.

    	My quick-stepping chorus girl father is the first one to make a move.  Before he dances, he raises his smooth, hairless arm and waves to us, to a full house--1200 people--standing room only.  My mother looks enthralled.  Tears come to her eyes.  My stomach is in knots.  I see people smiling and looking at one another.

    	My mother: "Look, Bobby, look.  There's your father.  Wave back to him."  My father's wave is practised, assured, confident, a theatrical wave intended for the entire audience.  I slump down in my seat and pretend not to be there.

    	My mother turns away disapprovingly.  Then she rotates in her seat and grabs my arm.  "Bobby, pay attention to me.  My God, why can't you behave like Ritchie Goffen?" 

    	To please her, I put up my hand and wave.   Then I scrunch back down in my seat and cover my eyes with my hands.  Squinting between my fingers, I see where she's stashed the flowers.  There it's dark and cool.  Struggling for breath, I begin coughing and giggling uncontrollably.

    	Again, the auditorium grows dark.  

    	Music.  

    	Stage lights.  I see a spotlight like a beam of sunlight on my buxom, show girl father.  He's wearing a two-piece, pink polka dot sun-suit, and he's dancing arm-in-arm with Dr. Sam Goffen the dentist, Charlie Silver the butcher, and Sonny Berkowitz the poolroom proprietor.  I stop laughing.  Even the dentist is good.  They dance like high-kicking angels, and they look like real, honest-to-God women. 

    	 Everyone in the theater is clapping and cheering.   I turn to my mother to see a look of triumph on her face.   And all the other women, too, all the chorus girls' wives, Mrs. Goffen, Mrs. Silver, and Mrs. Berkowitz, are clapping and cheering.  My pals Eddie Greenberg and Junior Pucklewartz are sitting there bug-eyed.

    	An hour later the show ends.  The dancers waltz to the footlights and take a bow.   Dad winks and shimmies as the audience, 1200 strong, rises to chant and cheer.  He is radiant.  "You're beautiful," I yell.  "Let's go see the Cubs play."  I mouth the words at him, but he's looking past me.  "I want a date!"   My eyes burn with tears.  "What do I have to do to win you anyway?

    	 "I want a real Dad!"  I shout at the top of my voice.

	    People begin hauling out bouquets of flowers.   I stand with both arms in the air reaching out to him and, my heart swelling, I hear yelling and screaming.  The sound of my own voice and my mother's voice shouting together, "Encore.  Encore."  I reach under Mom's seat for the flowers.  Yes, even as the light moves away from him, I applaud and throw flowers at my dancing girl father!







                                                         

*     *     *















Taking Toll





 by  Marion de Booy Wentzien





     				

     	Albert C. Cooksley is Mom's latest boyfriend. He's been on the scene for over a year now. He likes to think of himself as my dad. He's always saying, "Whatever you need, Princess, you come to me. I'll do my darndest to get it for you." His eyes, shy and toad colored, meet mine, blink, and look away. He jingles the loose change in his pocket.

     	What he has no idea of is that he can never be my father. He's a nice enough person. In fact he's too nice. It's hard to hate someone who's so nice. But I do my best.

     	"How can you hook up with someone like Albert?" I ask Mom when it sinks in from a conversation I've eavesdropped on that he's going to be a permanent fixture like the wall stain over the couch. 

     	 Mom, in her slip, is on her unmade bed getting ready to go to work. She has her panty hose in her hand, inspecting it for a run. "And what's wrong with Albert? He's a perfectly nice man." She pushes the gooseneck lamp away so she can see me better. 

     "Why aren't you ready for school, Miranda? They don't like all those tardies, you know. That one...Sister whatever...."

     	"Immaculate," I fill in. That isn't really her name--it's what we call her. Her real name is Mary Claire.

     	"She calls me at work--a personal call--you know how Mr. Lawston hates personal phone calls--to tell me that you're always late and that sometimes you don't even show up at all." Mom holds me in the solemn beam of her hazel eyes and I feel trapped--as if one of those shopping center spotlights is holding me in place. "If you don't get educated you'll end up like me. You don't want that, do you?" There is a quick shine of tears, gone almost before I even register them.

     	"You didn't end up so bad." I swallow and reach out to touch her bare shoulder but she's already bent over and is struggling into her pantyhose. My hand flies stupidly through air.

     	Her big toe, the nail painted bright plum, rams through the end of the stocking. "Oh, shoot," she says. "Get me..."

     	I reach into the top drawer of her dresser and hand her  another sealed package before she can finish her sentence.

     	"Thank you. Now go on. Get dressed."

     	I turn and am halfway to the door when she speaks again.

     	"Albert treats me like I'm the only woman in the world," she says. Her voice is soft.

     	"He's a toll taker, Mom."

     	"And I'm a restaurant hostess," she says. "Big deal. Since when have you gotten so snooty?"

     	"You're a singer, waiting for a break, not a hostess," I say fiercely, reminding her of the dream she's told me ever since I was big enough to hear a bedtime story. "Albert's..."

     	"Albert's not dumb," she says, guessing--correctly--at what I'm thinking, but she sounds unsure. I know I have planted the beginning of the end of Albert C. Cooksley. It won't be long before Albert is history like Len, Mitchell and Jase. If it hadn't been for me, Mom wouldn't have realized that Len just pretended to be job hunting while he was living with us. He went to the cheap afternoon shows instead. Mitchell had another woman. It took me a long time to find something to unseat Jase. And even then I had to stretch. Sometimes I think getting rid of Jase was a mistake. Mom took it hard. She still hasn't gotten her fire back after dumping him.

     	Lureen and Betty are already at the bus stop when I get there. Riding the bus to school has turned into my biggest nightmare since Mom began dating Albert because we have to go over the bridge. So far as I know from the questions I've asked he's never manned the truck and bus entrance to the bridge. But there's always a first time. I just know he'd wave like he knew me.

     	Once the three of us are jammed in a seat Betty starts talking about where we'll go on our lunch break. Before Albert I never had money to eat out with Betty and Lureen. Albert's taken to leaving coins stacked up in two little neat piles next to my place at the table every morning. 

      	The bus swings wide and suddenly we're at the top of the hill approaching the toll plaza. I can't see the people taking toll yet; the cars themselves are smaller than matchbox toys. Albert should be in the third booth from the right--that's what he's told me. He gets mildly annoyed when I call him a toll taker. He says he's a bridge officer. 

     	I imagine him standing in a booth which is so small he can't bend to tie his shoe. The booths have been redone recently--made smaller to conserve space. Although he doesn't like this, Albert takes it in stride like he takes everything. Two of his old time buddies have quit over it, one because he was too fat.

     	"If you were too fat to fit what would you do?" I asked him.

     	"Diet," he answered. He'd reached over and helped himself to more mashed potatoes. "'Course I've never had a problem like that. As you can see food doesn't land on this frame for long."

     	He loves to tell of the emergencies he's handled--the sights he's seen. Naked people. Crazy people. One woman tried to give him her baby for the toll. Dangerous people. "The abuse I have to take," Albert says letting out a sigh. "It isn't like it used to be out there when people brought you the first apricots of the season."

     	Mom clucks and looks at him like he's some kind of hero. And he gets that shy proud tucked in smile as if every day in the toll booth is like going to the front line in a war.

     	When the bus rolls up to the booth, I let go of the pen I keep for this emergency. It plunks onto the floor and slides under the seat.

     	"How come you can't keep a hold of that thing?" Lureen asks. "You drop it every day."

     	Not answering, I fumble around her shoes for it. I keep my head low until I can tell we're on the bridge. Then I straighten up and breathe.

     	"You're getting weirder and weirder, Miranda," Lureen observes. "It's getting hard to be your friend you're getting so weird."

     	"So be somebody elses. You've got so many to choose from."

     	"Come on, guys, don't fight," Betty begs. Betty is the person who links us together. Lureen and I wouldn't be friends in a million years if it wasn't for Betty.

     	"You two going to the Freshman Sports Fair Saturday?" Betty asks. It's for fathers and daughters. She's asked Lureen and me that every day for the last week. Much as I like Betty, she can be insensitive. I feel Lureen stiffen beside me. Neither Lureen or I have fathers. I mean, I, at least, had one once; I don't know if Lureen ever had one. I suspect by how prickly at the mention of fathers she gets she didn't. Both of us hate the idea of this annual event. 

     	"No," Lureen says straight off.

     	I hunch my shoulders. "Actually I think the thing is kind of stupid. I mean, it was all right when I was seven or nine...."

     	"But now that you're almost fourteen, you're too old?" Lureen interrupts.

     	"Something like that," I lie. Sports are the one thing I'm really good at. I hold the school's record for the long jump and I'm second in the hundred meter hurdles. My mother's never seen me compete. Sports just aren't her thing. My athletic ability must have come from my dad. 

     	A glance at Lureen tells me she isn't fooled. Betty is. She's already rattling on. I can only catch every few words. The bus has hit the worn patches on an upgrade in the highway. The gears grind. It shakes and roars. I try to imagine asking Albert to go with me. No way! I think.

     	Mom keeps a picture of my father, Russell Harvey, inside her dresser under her underwear. He was in the Navy and stationed here. Mom met him at a dance and dropped out of high school to marry him five days later. According to her they were married exactly sixteen months. He was sent somewhere, she seems unclear where, and she's never heard from him since. She never bothered to get divorced. I don't think she bothered to track him down either. Mom tends to procrastinate about things.

     	 Sometimes when I am feeling sorry for myself, which isn't as much as it used to be, I pull out his picture and look at it. 	He only looks about four years older than I am now. In the picture he has a far-away look in his eyes and a stubborn chin. I expect he found marriage, a baby, and debts more than any eighteen year old has a right to be buried under. Mom, when she talks about him which is only after she's had three glasses of red wine, says he had big plans. For a long time I thought she meant like being an Olympic track star or one of the Blue Angels.

     	 Then I made the mistake of asking her. "Yeah, Russell had big plans all right," she agreed darkly. "Like robbing a bank. Listen, you might as well get any fantasy you have about him straight out of your head. He was a big talker--that's what he was. And he liked big trouble. He's either in jail or dead. One or the other doesn't matter to me. Just don't go telling me he was some kind of wonderful because that he wasn't. I was just too young and ignorant to know it at the time. So here I am and here you are. And we've made the best of it. Albert's a nice guy. So quit comparing him to Russell. I want you to like him." 

     	I just can't. He's too real--like you can see his bones and each breath he takes. Then there's the way he shines his shoes so that you can almost see your face in them. 

     	"How's life treating you, Princess?" Albert asks late that afternoon when he comes in after work. He tosses his uniform jacket over the back of the couch where I am sitting watching TV. His shoes look just as shiny as they did this morning. He's carrying a paper bag. I can tell by the smell it's crab--crab and French bread, which is getting to be Wednesday night dinner. 

     	Mom is thrilled by the fact that Albert brings in dinner half the nights of the week and she doesn't have to cook. Most of the guys she's hung around with aren't enthusiastic about women's lib. They think a woman should work and cook. They think a guy should lie around and be waited on.

     	I want him to stay in the kitchen but, of course, he comes in and sits down on the couch next to me. It's too much effort to get up, snap off the TV, and go into my room; otherwise I would if for no other reason than to show Albert C. once and for all we are not buddies or friends or whatever else he's hoping we'll be. 

     	He settles into watching the game show I'm watching. Len used to make me change to sports whenever he plunked his fat fanny down. My sideways glances take in the fact that there are damp half-moons under Albert's arms--he's got his hands folded behind his head. According to him the booth is either too hot or too cold--nothing in between. Evidently today it was hot.

     	"A guy bit me today," he says in a low voice not looking at me just watching the toothpaste commercial as if it were the most important thing in the world.

     	"Bit you?" I say, amazed in spite of myself.

     	"Yeah. I reach for his toll and all of a sudden he grabs my hand, bares my wrist and takes a bite."

     	Albert rolls back his tan sleeve and sure enough there's the shape of a human mouth on either side of his brown wrist. A couple of the teeth marks are deep and filled in with purple. Only the two front teeth seemed to have broken the skin and those narrow pockets have dried blood in them. 

      	"I sure hope he don't have AIDS. I don't think I'll tell your mother. She'll get all upset. I probably shouldn't have told you. Don't you tell her, Princess. Okay?"

     	"Did you tell someone?" I ask, not answering his question. I can't believe he let someone bite him and then just stood there taking tolls and saying "Have a good day." I'm not sure that's what he says but it sounds like the kind of thing he would. He's very polite.

     	"Like who?" He seems confused by my question. His forehead has crumpled up like a plowed field. "He was out of there before I could do anything. He was driving a Volvo station wagon." Albert is shaking his head now, his eyes wide with disbelief. "I'd never think the driver of a Volvo would bite. I wasn't even prepared for anything bad. A VW bus, a black Caddy, a low rider, I brace myself, but a Volvo..." his voice trails off and I suddenly know that after this experience no car will ever just sail through his line again. That he thinks he's lost his ability to judge. And that's shaken him more than the thought of getting AIDS. Albert lowers his sleeve, buttons it. "Let's just keep this between you and me, Princess," he adds again.

     	I make no promises.

     	The game show is back on and he's watching. "I hope that blonde lady wins," he says. "She sure looks like she could use $10,000 dollars."

     	How can he even care about her? I wonder. If someone bit me, that's all I'd think about. But not Albert. I can see he really wants her to win. 

     	If there hadn't been a toothpaste commercial would he have told me about the bite? I know the lady smiling all those white teeth made him remember. I run my tongue over my front teeth and feel the slight overlap. As we watch the woman guess, I find myself circling my thumb and first finger around my wrist which feels as if there isn't any spare skin covering the bone.

     	Or is he scared and just being brave? The idea of Albert being brave is a new one. It pulls at me all during dinner. He cracks all our crab legs for us, cuts the French bread and there isn't a trace of fear or self-pity. He just is. Asks Mom about her day and listens to her bitch about how two customers lit up in the no smoking area. Sympathized when she said her feet were just killing her. I just can't get the idea of those imprints on his arm out of my mind. I want to say more about the bite but I'm not sure what. I can't believe he can just sit there and eat and not talk about it.

     	When Mom goes out with the crab shells wrapped tightly in newspaper to the chute in the hall Albert thunks both elbows on the table, juts his head forward and scowls at me. It's a pretend scowl--he's trying for my attention. Albert has been known to do anything for a laugh. Just crossing his eyes makes Mom giggle.

     	 "You're looking at me crabbier than that old crab we just finished," he says. "And he spent his life scuttling sideways under water before he landed on our supper table."

     	I don't answer.

      	"Something bothering you, Princess?" The scowl is gone. He looks directly at me like he wants to help, blinks, and looks away. 

      	 "There's this Sports Fair the school's having Saturday," I blurt out. "With fathers." I don't know why I've told him. It was the last thing I planned to do. But there it is standing between us like a huge embarrassment.

     	He swivels his gaze at me. I expect him to offer to come with me. I expect him to fall all over himself wanting to please--I mean, I know he wants to win me over because of Mom. They've all wanted that--at first. The story changes as we go along. That's when their real behavior comes out. I squint at Albert willing him to say something. Anything. But he stays silent as if he's waiting.

     	"You want to go with me?" I ask exasperated.

     	"Sure." His features seem to be melting into each other. Even his eyes are smiling.

     	"Not that you're my father...or anything like that," I add quickly.

     	"But close enough--for me, at least," he says. "I don't know about you. You see things different from me. You probably would have spotted that Volvo driver as a trouble maker right off."  Albert's looking shyly proud that he's got my attention and he's jammed his right hand in his trouser pocket fiddling with the coins.  

     	"Do you know how to do anything?" I ask him feeling something fierce and wild rushing through me--some terrible kind of feeling I'm not sure of and which feels scary. I realize I sound mean, ungrateful, which isn't how I mean to sound but I can't stop. "Use a starting gun? A stop watch?"

     	Albert doesn't take offense. He's thoughtful. "I can barbecue good. Most parties I've been to someone needs to know how to barbecue. You could do the games with the other gals and their dads, and I could barbecue everybody's meat."

     	I don't say anything. I'm already regretting opening my mouth. I have a vivid, not fun, picture of Albert, wearing his toll takers uniform, standing beside a smoking barbecue flipping hot dogs and hamburgers. It's not even that kind of thing. There'll be people to cook. Although I suppose Albert could give them advice. Or he could stand near the finish line and cheer...for me.

     	"So are we on?  Do we have a date?" he asks, looking so pleased I can't think of what to say. 

     	He's got a bite on his arm I remind myself. He could this very minute be dying of AIDS. You could be nice to him just once.

     	"It's Saturday from 11:30 to 3:00. But we don't have to stay more than a couple of hours."

     	"Unless we're having fun," he says. "Have you seen that bumper sticker, 'Are we having fun yet?'" He goes on to tell me that he's been keeping track of that one. He's counted five hundred and twenty-three. "I thought it might be fun sometime to run an ad and invite everybody who has that bumper sticker on his or her car," he says. "And see what kind of a party that turns out to be."

     	 "This isn't exactly a party," I say. "These are just girls in the ninth grade and their fathers. It's not likely to be much fun. I'd just like to go." 

     	"To be like everybody else," he says, nodding. "I know. I've been there."

     	Mom comes back, newspaper in hand, complaining that the garbage chute is broken--again. Albert gets to his feet and immediately offers to take the crab remains down to a dumpster he knows about near the liquor store at the corner.

     	"Isn't he something?" Mom asks when the door shuts behind him.

     	I don't answer. I can't. Something is lodged in my throat, hard and painful as a baseball. I wonder if I accidentally swallowed a piece of crab shell.

     	"I don't care what you think about Albert," Mom snaps. "I love him. And I don't want to hear one nasty word out of your mouth about him. I gave in about the others. But you're wrong about Albert. I love him," she repeats as if my silence means I've gotten deaf. 

     	I shrug and leave the room afraid that I'll cry. The last time I cried in front of Mom was when I wanted Jase to go to the Sixth Grade Fair with me. He said he would. But he went to the races instead. He won. He even offered to split the $50 with me. But I just couldn't forgive him.

     	I look at the ceiling and think of Albert jingling the coins in his pocket. I think of the teeth marks on his arm. 	If Albert says he'll go, he'll go. He'd never back out. Not even if he was dying on that very day. I know that, too.

     	 Mom has these set rituals she goes through every night. She takes a shower, sets her hair--even though nobody sets their hair anymore that I know of, Mom does. I wait until I hear the water running. I know I will find Albert out by the TV still dressed, waiting for her to finish. He'll have spread some papers on the coffee table and be polishing his shoes.

     	I stand quietly in the doorway for a moment. Albert's not watching TV although it's on. He's not polishing his shoes either. He's rolled up his sleeve again. He's looking at the bite, pushing at it with his fingers.

     	"Albert," I say, taking care to keep my voice soft.

     	He jumps like I've caught him doing something private and quickly rolls down his sleeve. "What is it, Princess?" he asks.

     	"What did the guy look like?" He knows right off what I mean.

     	"Like a professor. Wire rim glasses, a beard, his hand was white and very strong."

     	"He sounds like someone who was fired. I think he was just mad. You asked him for money and he flipped out. I'm sure he didn't have AIDS." 

     	"Why thank you, Miranda," Albert says slowly.

     	For some reason I can't just drop it. "But maybe you should be tested...just to be sure."

     	"I'll do that," he says after a second. "Okay?" He doesn't tell me to stop worrying, but I know that's what he means. His face has turned into one giant question mark. Albert doesn't like anybody to worry.

     	"Okay," I answer. I think it's the first time I've ever answered Albert directly. But he doesn't seem to notice. All along he's pretended that I answer. He just expects what you've said or haven't said and responds. Kind of like saying, "Thank you," I guess, sometimes over 4,000 times a day, to everyone who hands him a dollar to cross the bridge.

     			                       





                                                          

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I Shot The Hairdresser



by David Gilbert







      I walked into the CUTUP Hair Salon and shot Edward Hart Benton--or, "Eddy," as his family and co-workers had called him.   The shooting was premeditated, but without malice.    I'd always wanted to shoot a hairdresser.

     The CUTUP is next door to the HOUSE OF GUNS.   I wasn't bothered by the convenience, in fact, I like convenience.    So I didn't hurry in selecting a gun.   I browsed, if that's possible in a gun shop with a garrulous clerk.   I bought a .45 and left abruptly to sit in my car and finish reading an essay in ARTFORUM.   I keep a box of ARTFORUMs in the back seat, or in the trunk if I sleep in the car.   When I had finished reading I loaded the gun and walked into the CUTUP without giving my name or specifying how I wanted my hair.   I avoided an "above the ears" or "short on the sides," which would have made the shooting difficult.

	    The hairdressers saw the gun even before I pulled it out of my pants and shot Eddy at close range.   I blew him all over the mirror, which shattered so that I could no longer watch myself as I shot the hairdresser.   At first the other hairdressers responded in a stock "surprise" and "horror." It was not very believable and it was disappointing.   As they moved closer to the shooting site, they became curious, but were in a state of denial.   I know you don't think that's very interesting.   The details of the shooting may be interesting only as evidence of a psycho.   But, if I'm a psycho, how is it that I'm still walking the streets and my subscription to ARTFORUM hasn't been canceled?

	     The hairdressers gathered around me after the shooting.   I sat in Eddy's chair.   If they thought I was dangerous they didn't show it, standing as hairdressers do when they're gossiping or talking about a look.   At that moment I realized that the shooting was the look and that I had become a cult figure.   Recognition on a larger scale would come later.

     	When I entered the CUTUP I had frankly underestimated the hairdresser as someone who could appreciate the shooting as art.   Recognition began in the salon and has since moved inexorably toward the offices of ARTFORUM, a magazine I've listed as source material.   It is a forum where I've learned a range of art projects, among them, "I Shot the Hairdresser." They are now aware of my project.   They know it's art.   You know it's art.   

     	It took Eddy a few minutes to die, seven according to the clock on the wall.   Why didn't I put him out of his misery?  It wasn't part of the concept for "I Shot the Hairdresser." That he died is a matter of indifference.   I could have just as well shot him in the arm and ruined his career in hair.   What does it matter?  I don't have a theory for the shooting.   I just like the sentence, "I shot the hairdresser." Everybody likes it.   

     	As Eddy died I had coffee with the staff of the CUTUP.   They loved Eddy, but they were taken with how I just came in and shot him.   Very Zen.   The district manager was there evaluating the other hairdressers and he was impressed with me.   I think he was hitting on me, but I couldn't tell in the mob scene of remembering Eddy and my emerging celebrity status.   And there was fear among the hairdressers that I was still in an artistic mood.   I had no desire to terrorize the staff, so I told them that while the project wasn't finished, the gun was empty and there would be no more shooting.   I also promised to order a gift subscription of ARTFORUM, not inexpensive, so that they would have the magazine in their rack.   The subscription would be in Eddy's name as collaborator in the project.   The gift was thought to be in good taste.

     	The hairdressers wanted to talk.   It was my first discussion of the shooting, and it determined by and large how I would talk about it in the future.   As we talked I realized I liked the idea of study groups, working through to a closure, dealing with grief and how the project would be received by the community.   Our group was inclusive and democratic, but there were unfortunate similarities between our discussions and "art openings." Their observations, though often puerile and irrelevant, were an essential part of the process.   I was happy for the response.

	     The hairdressers at the CUTUP were among my first friends in town.   They have been loyal in their support for my project, honoring me with a standing offer for free haircuts, but I haven't as yet taken them up.   I'm squeamish around razors.   And I don't care that much about my hair.   I spend a great deal of time thinking about art, so my hair is often mussed.   The girls at the CUTUP think it's cute, so why should I cut it?

     	We wrapped Eddy in plastic smocks that were covered in hair.   The district manager let us use his van.   It was perfect.   We drove Eddy to his family's house outside town, where the houses are improbable, even absurd, and spread randomly in the fields along the highway.   I wanted him buried.   I know it sounds fussy, but the shooting was over.   Eddy was like a rough draft.   I don't want to give the impression that I wasn't worried.   In other words, I didn't have the desire, even as an artist who is not unsympathetic to self advertisement, to spend a lot of time on death row writing letters to Norman Mailer, if he's still alive.

     	The Bentons, Eddy's family, are great.   Eddy's father, Ward, and uncle, Ike, helped dig the grave.   The family took it better than I thought.   As a eulogy I gave an introductory talk about the concept for "I Shot the Hairdresser." I tried to get them to consider the brilliance and highly contained audacity that ended in the unthinkable.   I wanted to sell the project without explanation.   I tried to stymie the way they normally experienced art.   The results were mixed.   The kids couldn't stop repeating, "I Shot the Hairdresser," as it made the rounds among the relatives and neighbors.   I was afraid they would go too far and get the family gun and we'd have an accident.   The accidental was not part of the project, as I had conceived it.

     	It wouldn't have been art if I had just driven out of town after the shooting, and I did consider it.   Confronting the family and dealing with their reaction was important for the project.   I simply couldn't dismiss them as a walking iconography.   The Benton family is as follows: Eddy's mother and father, Bonnie and Ward; his uncle, Ike, who drives an ice cream truck; Eddy's wife, Wendy, and her twin boys, Eddy, Jr.   and Sam.   There are other aunts and uncles, but they are just faces in the background, bodies on the caved-in couches, hands picking extra meat off the barbecue, the beefy guy who throws endless ringers when we play horseshoes, the woman who does something with a chicken that everyone raves about.   I miscalculated the quantity of family.   I'd hoped for an unextended family.   They all like me and have accepted the unusual situation.   

     	On the night of the shooting Wendy did not sleep with me as a widow and have her first orgasm.   That would be kitsch as I understand it.   I was invited to stay with the family, but in the guest room.   Early in my stay I had to throw Wendy out of my room one night when she came in "wanting to talk." I was thinking, as I often do, about the shooting.   Fucking brilliant.   One of the uncles is a cop and he told me everyone knew what happened.   The shooting, with its charisma of site-specific art, had taken the town.   It would not have been art if it had been staged in a gallery or a museum.   It would have been something else, kitsch's double.   

     	Everyone in town wanted to meet me.   Unfortunately the social event of meeting the artist degenerated into a barbecue.   I may have been a fool for having killed a hairdresser in a small, chicken-eating town, where there is something political about eating chicken while talking about ideas, my ideas, in a simplified form.   They wanted to meet me, but I'm afraid it was celebrity gawking, the downside of the project.   I was and I am now solely interested in a continuance and full rendering of the social possibilities of "I Shot the Hairdresser." At the time I just wasn't successful in reducing my ideas to ordinary speech.   Something was lost.   And God knows I didn't come here to be a fucking folk artist!

     	There was also the problem of baseball on the radio.   It appeared to be a small banality that was, in fact, monumental.   Invariably when I tried to talk about my ideas or read something out loud from  ARTFORUM or ART IN AMERICA - another interesting magazine - I would hear the goddamned radio and a description of a foul ball.   Was the description of a foul ball different from an explanation of why "I Shot the Hairdresser" and what the project means to contemporary art?  I'm not sure, even now.

     	One day I asked that the radio be turned down.   I was short with them.   They jumped and moved with an absolute obsequiousness, as if they feared that there was more to my project, and my annoyance signaled a next step, a Part Two when I would get "artistic" again with a gun, if they didn't grovel around the volume knob.   I realized that I had to be careful how I asked for things so I didn't disturb the below-the-surface terror that they had in dealing with me.   It was understandable that there were tensions, anxieties and misreadings of the boundaries of the artist, project and audience.   It was unfortunate and I regret it to this day.   But the line was and is, "I Shot the Hairdresser." It is enough art.

     	After the radio incident I came to believe that they were simply afraid of me.   Elaborate behaviors masked this fear.   It was a disappointment, and I should have known that they could only think of me as an outsider with a gun.   At the time I was taken with myself as a cult figure.   It was as though I could not listen to them listening, if they were listening, even for signs of danger.   As the adrenalin was finally bled out of the project, I realized, by the questions asked - and it took time - that they were in fact listening to me and involved in my ideas.   

     	The Benton family was different.   Bonnie Benton would get a little weepy when she missed Eddy, and that was often.   It was understandable.   In her grief she began to think of me as her son.   I was flattered to finally have a praying mother.   She told me that if she had gone to college and had a boy, he would have been like me, daring and progressive.   It was an affection I never thought possible from the mother of a hairdresser.   This transference was not something that I encouraged, but it was an eventuality for such a project.   

     	As Bonnie Benton considered her life in the context of "I Shot the Hairdresser" I began to question the idea of the shooting.   I wasn't experiencing remorse or myself as a pathology.   What I found to be the problem, the source of anxiety, was that I didn't know if, in fact, I had any ideas, or if they were the kind of ideas that could be developed into a book, or even an essay, which was to damn the project for having no ideas at all.   This was a failure of nerve that haunted the documentation I was amassing.   It is the kind of equivocation that ARTFORUM is quick to notice.

     	What was more disturbing was that I wasn't even sure what I had been telling people.   I thought I knew.   I had so much to say.   I tried to talk about the project in new ways, which is a sign of not only a good mind, but a mind respectful of its audience.   As it was, I was talking too much and enjoying it less.   I was no longer sure if I had a lot of ideas, or only a few ideas, or even one idea that I kept repeating.   And because I kept repeating the one idea, others feared me because they thought - rightly so - that only sick and dangerous people have only one idea that they keep repeating and are not aware or able to control themselves.   I thought that they thought I was, if not crazy, someone intellectually inferior, who could never make anything cohere, someone whose unstated desire for attention dwarfed the ability to deliver anything worthy of attention.   It was certainly not a definition of self that I was comfortable with even though it was endemic.   Of course this was all absurd, because if I had been sick, the town, a small town, wouldn't have maintained the silence about the shooting.   They would have had fun with me, then settled the score.

     	While I was protected by this silence it was also an oppressive shroud.   I found that when I was alone and thought about the shooting, I could no longer remember why I had shot the hair-dresser.   The shooting seemed gratuitous.   It was because of this lapse that I asked Wendy to marry me.   I thought that in living as a family with the cute twins, I would remember why I had shot their father.   I would recover what had been lost.   The original concept would seed other projects.   

     	My intention had not been to make a cynical spectacle, like the Karamozov who marries the cripple.   Spectacle as co-dependency has been done.   My intention has always been art.   But when failed memory and the dreadful repetition of "I Shot the Hairdresser" began to sound like a song on the radio, it was time to rehabilitate myself.   I had been abandoning art for days at a time.   I would find myself thinking that I had shot the wrong hairdresser.

     	My problem has always been that I have such big ideas that I've never successfully broken them down into parts.   It was Eddy's problem too.   We found each other.   His mistake was in trying to detail his ideas.   Wendy eventually showed me video tapes of Eddy talking about himself and his life.   Every so often he would sit cross-legged on the floor and talk in front of their camcorder.   Now that I've seen all the videos I'm sorry I shot him.   I'd love to tell him what a jerk he was.

     	In video Eddy practiced two distinct and pernicious kinds of obfuscation and for that he has to be taken seriously.   First, as a jerk, Eddy tried to impress Wendy by talking about his life, creating an impenetrable wall of hackney.   He tried to appear sensitive.   Imagine, the CUTUP is still being sued over an ear he cut while trimming a sideburn on the fucking town lawyer.   Now the litigation is meaningless.

     	Eddy wanted to go places.   This was his second obfuscation, which he practiced shamelessly.   Everyone in this small town wants to go places, but most of them just say they want to go, and don't bother recording themselves on video.   They know that they're losers and they know how losers live.   How could Eddy ever have worked in a salon in a large city, a city with a night life?  He was an auto mechanic with scissors.   Someone might have taken him on for laughs, for the sight gag of a white trash working over the tourists.   

     	It was white trash that was the seduction.   I was seduced when I arrived unexpectedly with my project and the fortuitous proximity of the HOUSE OF GUNS and the CUTUP.   Had I arrived in another part of town I might have had a few days to think about what I was doing.   I might have shot someone in a bookstore.   

     	As it is I fear white people who can't talk about art.   What good are they?  Had I studied the town - there are better salons -I most certainly would have raised the issue of class, in this case, the class of white people who can't speak about art.   I've dealt with the issue.   Now the Bentons and their friends speak about art.   I taught them.   The art of the shooting has not replaced their religious superstition, but it has undermined their confidence.   Their ignorance has implicated them in the shooting.   I am no longer an outsider, someone from the coast, who wants to abuse tax dollars.   

     	Eventually I was overwhelmed by the project.   To be alone I went with Ike in his ice cream truck.   People were out on the street waving, going about their business, going to church, talking about the shooting, which meant talking about art, but I didn't see them.   They were Other, so I had time for myself, quality time, when I no longer thought about white people or art, or the videos of Eddy as a self, or what kind of men the twins would become.   Ike refused to acknowledge the shooting.   He liked digging the grave and tending the new sod until it merged with the old lawn, but he had no interest in the shooting.   Of course he understood the project completely.   His understanding was the achievement of his idiot savant.   He had his own project.   He didn't always stop for children or give them what they wanted or accept money or give change or play music at a volume that was consistent with community standards, but he understood the shooting, smiling and staring down into frozen compartments.   It was a mute curation and a suggestion of future projects.

     	I would be less than candid if I didn't tell you that I am also using a camcorder.   It began innocently.   Wendy wanted to record me reading Mr. Fixit to the twins.   The cassette would be there to "explain" what had happened to their biological father.   I used this time to explain what had happened, using Eddy's method and Mr. Fixit's insight.   

     	After Mr. Fixit repaired a vacuum it only worked on ceilings.   So it is with my project.   A ceiling is there, as an apparent end.   My ideas about the shooting no longer function in the original design.   They are no longer relevant to the community.   Does this illustrate a species that has a high failure rate as it defines itself?  No, certainly not.   I have merely shifted the emphasis of "I Shot the Hairdresser" to that of presentation.   This is where the camcorder enters.   Presentation alters ideas, if it is not an admission of having given up on the shooting and the submission of the documentation to ARTFORUM.   

     	The presentation, the selling of "I Shot the Hairdresser," is my final treatment of the material.   I will use my body as a sympathetic conduit for the project.   I hope to scrupulously present the ideas that would be denied by the kinds of obfuscation Eddy practiced; nevertheless, I am practicing gestures.   Eddy was very good at gestures.   I am practicing eye contact.   Eddy looked me in the eye to the very end.   Frankly, I have learned from him.   I work at presentation because I fear becoming, like the people around me, an extra in a project that is not art.





                                                           

*     *     *



















What I Lived For

 by Joyce Carol Oates

Dutton, 608 pp.

ISBN# 0-525-93836-2





Review by Brenda Buttner







  "The Nicest Guy in Union City, New York!"







    	Don't expect to like Jerome Andrew "Corky" Corcoran upon first meeting him.  The smooth-talking, hard-drinking, free-wheeling protagonist of What I Lived For is hardly a likable guy.  But be careful of judging a character crafted by the pen of Joyce Carol Oates too quickly.  Although the self-described "bastard, with a furious short temper" can barely contain a lusty desire for his stepdaughter, has no problems keeping two sets of business books, and nurtures the barely-disguised ambition to "climb high enough so he can shit on them all," Corky demands more than just a first glance.  What I Lived For offers the chance to spend four whirlwind days side-by-side with Corky.  It also provides another opportunity to explore a chilling side of the America psyche with one of the finest authors of our time.

   		The most recent addition to a long, long list of novels from an incredibly prolific writer (Oates has written 23 at last count, as well as numerous short stories and plays) is set in typical Oates terrain: a blue-collar town in upstate New York.  Much of the psychological territory is familiar, too -- she writes unflinchingly of incest, murder, rape, madness, sex, and jealousy.

   		Corky, a third-generation Irish-American with tight curly red-russet hair and a love of Johnny Walker Red, custom-made silk shirts, and almost any woman (but the richer, the better) is planning what could be the biggest speech of his life, at a high-society fundraising dinner for his local Congressman and boyhood buddy, Vic Slattery.  Corky can't wait for the moment when "stone cold sober in his elegant black silk-wool coat and trousers, black satin cummerbund, black bow tie, impeccably starched dazzling-white pleated-front with with gold studs, gold cuff links and $240 Bally dress shoes," he will stand in the Chateauguay Country Club, flanked by the people who really   matter.  

   		We join Corky on May 22, 1992, four days before his moment in the spotlight, and watch as, piece by piece, his world begins to crumble.    He learns the woman he loves has betrayed him--she had told her husband of the affair from the beginning.  "Kicked in the balls by Christina, what a joke he'd  wanted to marry her , O.K. but don't think of her now, a cunt's a cunt, forget it," he thinks.  His troubled stepdaughter, Thalia, leaves several hints that she is about to commit suicide.  "But she wouldn't, would she? Without saying goodbye?"  Several slightly shady business deals threaten to fall apart. "He's the one likely to get fucked, not the one who does the fucking ... Why has it taken till now, ... he's forty-three years old and divorced and no kid or kids and no woman he loves or can trust and, asshole, you're not getting any younger, or smarter, -- why has it taken him till now to realize this simple fact?" And, on top of everything, he is pulled into a mystery surrounding the death of Thalia's friend, Marilee (an elegant and exotic dusky-skinned woman whom Corky has the hots for).  It only confuses matters that she sparked the racial/political/sexual scandal of the decade in Union City, accusing one of Corky's arch political rivals of raping her.

   		The suspected murder of Marilee Plummer is the centerpiece of What I Lived For's page-turning plot.  But Oates provides more than a riveting read.  At the heart of this 608-page epic is a powerful theme she returns to again and again in her vast body of work: an American's need to belong and to bond.

   		Corky is desperate to be liked, and even if he is the (self-proclaimed, of course) "nicest guy in Union City, New York!," he is haunted -- obsessed, really -- with the fear of being trapped on the outside.  Not only was he left fatherless as a young boy (he watched the murderers flee the scene) and motherless, too (she went mad after the death of  Corky's father, Tim Patrick Corcoran), but Corky is surrounded by people like Vic Slattery who had an easy ride to the top, unlike himself.  His Irish immigrant family's constant cry "Shit on their shoes, Corky, shit on their shoes!" runs like a chorus throughout his life.  From the time he was a "homely freckled mick face like a baby's ass and stunted-short" in the tired and tattered neighborhood of  Irish Hill, to now, a successful businessman and respected city councilman "voted Good Citizen in 1989," he wants nothing more than to be on the inside.  Corky says to himself,

   	 



   	   	"Corky's stories have one thing in common, of course: Corky's at the center.  He's the hero, or he's the jerk you have to love.  He's the victim, or the worm-that-turns, or the guy-who-loses-his-temper, or the dumb-fuck who wins in the end. He's the sneaky counterpuncher.  He's the mastermind.  He's the man with the aces, the royal flush.  He's---who?  Corky Corcoran !"





   		Most times, that need to seize the spotlight explodes in a cocky, arrogant attitude.  Like the time a politician refused to shake his hand. "Leaving Corky with his hand stuck out, like an erect prick.  Nobody snubs Corky Corcoran! "  But, in the next breath, he is capable of revealing a much more honest vulnerability.  "So lonely.  Christ have mercy on his soul." 

	   		Corky sometimes finds a sense of belonging, if fleetingly, in sex. "Corky loves this, something fearful in it, the woman's convulsions, but wonderful too, his cock deep inside her and gripped so frantically tight, how needed he is, how much she does love him, no subterfuge here, no hypocrisy ..."   And sometimes, too, he enjoys a quicksilver moment on the inside when he flashes his importance like an expensive watch (Rolex, of course) or new car (what else, but a Cadillac?): "There's respect for the Caddy, ... It's what you live for, Corky's thinking, hitting his brakes to make the turn, moments like this."

   		The story of the outsider is one Oates has told many times before.  From her early novels, such as them, to more recent works like Foxfire, she writes often of those snagged on the edges, living on the borders.  In Marya: A Life, a modern woman escapes a childhood of poverty and rape to achieve fame and fortune as an intellectual critic, but never shakes away the shackles of insecurity that bind her.   So, too, have we heard time and again about the issue of bonding from Oates.  In Because it is Bitter and Because it is my Heart, two people find connection through the act and witness of a murder.  Legs Sadovsky and friends in Foxfire forge a strong link by deriving freedom and strength from their very status on the edge of society.

   		But most of these stories are told from the eyes of a woman.

   		Not so What I Lived For.  As you might have guessed, Corky is very much a man.  He thrills for the bonds he believes only men can know.  "There's a bond of maleness that does not so much repudiate the female as transcend her: the anxious intimacy of brother-rivals who dare never accuse one another of any manly sin for fear of being expelled irrevocably from that intimacy." And he pities those who can never share that connection.  "How sad how serious to be a woman in a man's world.  He'd probably cut his throat, or bloat up to three hundred pounds if he had to be a woman.  That's the fucking truth." In a frantic, frenetic stream of consciousness, Oates successfully explores male sexuality, male bonding, male ambitions, and male greed.  This from a dexterous author who has long displayed a fascination with things male: Her essays range from analyses of boxing styles to the beauty of a Ferrari Testarossa. 

   		But disquieting theme and viewpoint aside, What I Lived For is, quite simply, a damn good page-turner, complete with hard-edged plot and threaded with sex scenes that clearly demonstrate Oates' mastery of erotic writing.

   		Perhaps Corky's story could have been told in fewer than 608 pages.  And if, at times, the writing gets a bit too"epic" in tone (the opening line is "God erupted in thunder and shattering glass") and if Oates sometimes strays from Corky's voice (would hereally  say "a simulacrum haphazardly and insufficiently willed into being by an imagination not your own"?), readers will probably appreciate each of the many well-crafted scenes that make up What I Lived For anyway.

   		By the end, you likely still won't like Jerome Andrew "Corky" Corcoran.  But you will understand him.  And there's no doubt you will like Joyce Carol Oates.  Very much.

















About the Contributors:







C.B. Adams is a native Missourian who lives and writes in the St. Louis area. He has been a newspaper reporter, advertising copywriter, magazine editor and travel writer/photographer.  Adams is currently a part-time graduate student in the Master of Arts Creative Writing Program at the University of MissouriŠSt. Louis.  His fiction (including "Private Parts") has appeared in the Missouri Arts Council Writers' Biennial 1994, Forest Park Review, and The Distillery, Artisitic Spirits of the South.  He pays the bills as a freelance writer and is currently working on a novel, The Jesus Transport System.  He can be reached at chasline@aol.com.



Brenda Buttner, a former Rhodes Scholar and broadcast journalist, is currently editor of a motorcycle magazine and writer of short fiction.



Giselle Gautreau is a painter living in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She is a member of the McGuffey Arts Center and has shown works in juried exhibitions in Virginia, Maine, and Vermont.  



David Gilbert's writing has appeared in many small magazines.  His books include, I Shot The Hairdresser (Detour Press, St. Paul, MN) and Five Happiness (Trip Street Press, S.F. CA).  He is currently working on a mystery called Crazy Legs.



Steve Libbey has published in Clifton Magazine, Mind in Motion, Imminent, and EveryBody's News, among other magazines. He currently serves as editor in chief for Evil Dog Magazine, and spends his offline time as singer/guitarist for the band Snowblind.  He is at work on recording an EP and/or single with the band, finishing up some weird stories, and starting a novel about the last days of the Emperor Hadrian. He and his current magazine can be emailed at evildog@aol.com.



D. Navarro  talks just like the protagonist of Key of F.



Eva Shaderowfsky lives in Rockland County, NY. Her short stories, poetry criticism, and essays have been published in anthologies, magazines and journals over the past twenty-five years.   This is her second publication with us and hopefully not her last.



Robert Sward has taught at Cornell University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1990 Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award, the Chicago-born author has appeared in over 200 magazines and anthologies.  Sward's Four Incarnations, 1957-1991, was published by Coffee House Press (Minneapolis). His novel, The Jurassic Shales, was published by Coach House Press (Toronto), 1976.



Donna Trussell is a native Texan, now living in Kansas City.  She has worked as a tour guide, newspaper editor, nanny, radio producer, film critic and phone solicitor.  Her writing appears in Poetry, TriQuarterly, Poetry Northwest and other journals.  



Marion de Booy Wentzien is a short story writer who lives in Saratoga, CA, with a variety of formerly abandoned animals, a tolerant husband, and four adult children who drop by for occasional meals and advice. 











About the Stories:



Fishbone was first published in TriQuarterly, 1989.  Since then it has been anthologized in Fiction of the Eighties, New Stories From the South 1990 and Growing Up Female: Stories by Women Writers From the American Mosaic.  In February 1994 "Fishbone" was read by an actress at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of their Arts & Letters Live series.  The story is being translated into Polish for inclusion in an anthology of American fiction.  TriQuarterly, Northwestern University, 2020 Ridge Ave, Evanston, IL  60208.



The Man With One Leg appeared previously in Clifton Magazine a while ago, a year before the author was hired as editor in chief for that magazine. He can't remember exact dates very well, so we didn't ask him to.   Clifton Magazine, University of Cincinnati Communications Board, 204 Tangeman University Center, ML 136, Cincinnati, OH  45221.



Private Parts was a winner in the 1993 Missouri Writers Biennial competition, sponsored by the Missouri Arts Council. The story was published in a limited-release anthology featuring the work of the winners, edited by Elizabeth Alexander and produced and printed by Greg Michalson and other staff members of the Missouri Review. 



My Dancing Girl Father was a PEN Syndicated Fiction Project selection, broadcast by National Public Radio on "The Sound of Writing," Program #83.  Series #8.  This is the story's first appearance in print.



Taking Toll was published in Seventeen in March of 1989 and in the San Francisco Chronicle of September, 1989.



I Shot The Hairdresser is the title story of a collection of short stories, (ISBN:  0-938979-39-6) published by Detour Press in St. Paul, a program of the Minnesota Project for Contemporary Language Arts.  Detour Press, 1506 Grand Avenue, #3,  St. Paul, MN  55105.  



The Handy Man and The Key of F are seen here for the first time.











About the Editors:





Doug Lawson was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Creative Writing last year at the University of Virginia, and this year is teaching Creative Writing at the same place.   His collection of short stories,  Strange Orbits, will soon be looking for a home.  He spends all too much time in front of the computer these days.



Dan Patrell, who is in charge or our IBM version, is a freelance writer and media consultant living in Frederick, Maryland.  He is also the co-moderator of America Online's Fiction Workshop.   



Jerome Chan lays out our Newton and Adobe Acrobat formats.  He can be emailed at Fading@aol.com.













Again, we of The Blue Penny Quarterly offer a fond thanks to everyone                 

who helped in making this issue a possibility.   



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