Issue 2: Fall 2016

Fiction

The Orange Lawn Chair

Sharon Kurtzman

Sleet drummed against the bonus room windows as the garage door sprang to life. Maggie’s temples pulsed and she feared another migraine as she wrote out one more shipping label for a pair of socks. The backs of her hands reminded her of Manhattan subway maps, lines of bones and veins instead of the colorful 1 or A trains.

Old lady hands, she thought. “That’s because you are an old lady,” she said to the empty room.

She slapped the shipping label on a manila envelope and dropped that on the molehill of packages she’d drive to the post office later. It had been smart to list her home-knit creations on Etsy. Lucrative. She enjoyed the extra cash and welcomed the extra activity to mainly housebound days.

Downstairs the mudroom door opened and she braced. If only she could turn back the calendar. Two years would do the trick.

“Maggie?” Jerry called.

“Mom, we’re back,” said Brian.

The mudroom door closed and outdoor smells perfumed her cozy upstairs workspace with pine, ice and something minty. “Up here.” She laid her reading glasses on the desk, hoped she’d remember where she’d left them in an hour, or ten minutes.

Heavy footsteps climbed the stairs. Jerry’s footsteps. Forty-six years married to the man and she could have picked out his plodding gait from amongst a stampeding herd. She shivered. Until a few days ago, the temperatures had been mild for December in northern New Hampshire.

Jerry appeared in the doorway holding an orange lawn chair, the price tag dangling off its plastic arm like a surrender flag. To most, her husband seemed like any other senior citizen, gray-haired, stoop-shouldered, and movements deliberate.

However, to Maggie, Jerry appeared as tall and handsome as the day they’d met, almost fifty years ago, when he was the quick-witted young man telling stories at her cousin’s graduation party. He’d kept the group spellbound with oral snapshots from his life in the mailroom at the Boston ad agency, Bunker and Chase. There were about eight of them gathered around that sweltering summer day, either sitting on the grass or on plastic chairs that if you wore shorts it stuck to your legs. The evening air held sweet remnants of lemonade and meats charred on the grill. Jerry talked and his blue eyes repeatedly sought her out as if he’d saved all his best stories for their first meeting.

“There’s my beautiful bride. Sending out those scarves?” Jerry wobbled forward into the bonus room.

Her fingers combed a few silver strands off her face and she thought, here we go. “I’m shipping the socks today. The scarves were last week. Remember, we talked about that this morning?”

“Oh, right.”

She picked up a string of purple yarn, rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. “What do you have there?”

“I told you I’d replace the chair. It’s pretty close to the one that washed away from the beach.”

“Yes it is. You’re good to your word.”

“Should I put it in the garage?”

“No, I’ll take it.” She dropped the thread and eased the chair from him. “You know I like things where I like them.” As she pecked his cheek, needle-like stubble poked her lips. “We need to make sure you shave later.”

“Didn’t I shave this morning?”

“You didn’t want to, but we’ll do it before dinner.” She rubbed his flannel-covered arm and then pulled away after a quick static shock. Jerry didn’t notice. “Go in the den and I’ll bring you and Brian some hot chocolate.”

“Perfect.” He placed a hand on the rail and stayed tethered to it as he negotiated his way down the stairs.

Her knees ached as she carried the chair to the bonus room’s storage closet. A snow storm was headed their way and her knobby, psychic bones were better predictors than any of the boobs on The Weather Channel.

Maggie’s hand rested on the closet knob.

“Mom,” Brian said from behind.

She hadn’t heard him come up. There were purple shadows under his eyes. These weekly Home Depot shopping trips with Jerry took a toll on their son, but he insisted on being the one to take him. Jerry’s only other weekly outing was with her to the supermarket on Thursdays, where he insisted on holding the list, pushing the cart and announcing the things they needed while she gathered them. “I’m going to make Dad and you hot chocolate.”

“I can’t stay. Emily has a basketball game in a half hour. They’re playing Eastside again.”

She nodded. “Tell my granddaughter to play hard. I’ll try to get to next week’s game. And tell her not to take any crap from that big girl on the other team, the one with the pink braces.”

“You want me say ‘don’t take any crap?’”

“Clean up my language however you like.”

She knew his smirk matched hers, teeth framed by duck-shaped lips. “Did everything go okay at the store?” she asked.

His eyes traveled past her to the closet door. “Once they brought the chair out from the stock room he calmed down. I tried to explain that stores don’t keep lawn chairs on display in December.”

“How angry did he get?”

“Not too bad this week.” Brian tapped the handrail a few times. “I’ll call later tonight.” He thumped down the stairs in the same run-jump pattern he’d had as a kid.

Then Maggie opened the closet door where five orange lawn chairs lay stacked.

It had been thirty years since the orange chair that Jerry thought he was replacing had washed away. They’d been vacationing at the shore in New Jersey, leaving an umbrella, a blanket and the chair to walk along the beach, caramel miles of feet dipping in and out of the Atlantic, their sometimes loud exchanges drowned out by surf and gulls.

“I forgive you,” she’d said after an hour. His eyes were red and swollen, his nose raw, each feature matching her own.

Jerry’s affair had started the year before, one boozy night after landing a diaper account. Of all things, she’d thought, diapers. The woman was on the client team, some sort of marketing genius, also unmarried and flirtatious. He swore it had only lasted a month. Maggie never would have found out about the thing if six months after it ended she hadn’t been cleaning out worn luggage to donate to Goodwill. A letter from the woman was tucked under a stretch of torn lining.

When Jerry and she returned to their spot of beach still marked by their umbrella, the blanket and the chair had been swept away, the chair visible in a few flashes of orange.

“Should I go after it?” Jerry had asked.

“Let it go.”

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he said.

Now, thirty years later, he had kept that promise every week for six weeks running, his stroke-addled memory trapping him in a Groundhog-style Day of Atonement.

She opened the new chair, set it on the cream carpet and sat. The straps felt stiff, and the plastic armrests chilled her palms. With her eyes shut, she leaned back, thoughts transporting her to a different day on the beach, one that took place the month after Brian’s wedding. Jerry and she had vacationed for a week on the Cape, and this particular day the two of them had come to the beach for lunch. After eating, they’d stretched out on the blanket, him with The New Yorker and her with some bestselling thriller for book group. They were content and had been for some time. She knew her husband like nobody else, how he liked raspberry jelly with his peanut butter, farted every morning as he woke up, and that he didn’t give a damn about the hair poking out from his ears.

A single tear tracked down her cheek. “Damn silly old woman.” She wiped her eyes.

A crash from downstairs sent her to her feet, knees angry and bitching.

“Uh-oh. Maggie,” Jerry called.

“Coming.” Then she placed the chair on top of the rest and shut the closet door.

Sharon Kurtzman is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and BetterAfter50. Recently, two of her fiction pieces were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Hippocampus Magazine, South Writ Large, Crack the Spine, Cleaver Magazine, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Still Crazy Literary Magazine, Every Writer’s Resource: Stories, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Belle Reve Literary Journal, Main Street Rag’s anthology, Voices from the Porch, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Writers. To read more of her work, visit her website www.sharonkurtzman.com and follow her on Twitter at @sharonkurtzman1.

The Hour

Gregory Janetka

The headphones were old. They came with the cassette player his father had traded his credit card points for. Tim couldn't sleep without them, even though it confined him to sleeping flat on his back or face down, carefully positioned in order to keep him from suffocating to the sounds of silence. Despite the music, however, the ticking bled through. Ticking that could be muffled but not silenced. The clock was a century old after all, what could one expect?

Tim sat up in the bed that transformed into a couch during waking hours. Fine for when he was a college student, embarrassing for a man his age. He rubbed his face, clawing at two weeks worth of facial hair that he couldn't part with. The clock stared, smiling, ticking away, its cogs and mechanics doing what they'd always done - always with the exception of that period of three months in 1988 when a young boy hid his ill-gotten chocolate inside its works during the height of the humid Chicago summer. He could still see his hand dropping the candy inside, the first hidden place he had thought of, but the story had soon taken on a life of its own, been told so many times that his actions in the tale had as factual a relation as his current reflection did to that of the boy. The truth was there somewhere; hiding, hazy, rearranged.

Much like his mind this time of morning.

4AM. Again.

Part of time but existing outside of time. The hour the 9-5 crowd find themselves in only when something has threatened their wide green lawns and won't let go – the time the rest of us can't escape from. This is the familiar territory where Tim finds himself, wracked with thoughts of Dea. Dea, whom he met at work, whose eyes launched a million road trips in the hearts of dreamers. They laughed and joked and she was it. She was the dream. Then she left and became a real dream. His attempts to spend time with her were fruitless – “Yes,” she always said with a genuine smile and kitten glance, “I'd love to,” but last minutes always came, bringing something more important with them. Promises and apologies were made. “Soon,” she said, always soon, but soon never came to pass.

He tried to eternal sunshine her but failed. Everything, with the exception of that first grasp of the intangible about her, told him to let go, leave her be, she wasn't interested at best. And yet, he saw attractive women and knew they were attractive but his body remained unmoved, they weren't her. That had never happened before.

Forget it, forget her.

Yanking off the headphones, he rubbed his face again, swung his legs out from under the blue ocean of a sheet, attempted to stand, made it half-way, adjusted his glow-in-the-dark novelty ghost-themed boxer shorts that his ex had thought so funny and collapsed back on the thin mattress.

***

He wasn't told he had to move to Palm Springs but it was layered in his father's subtle lack of subtlety.

“Grandma June is on her last legs. She needs someone to stay with her. I'll try to get out there in the next couple months but you know how things are.”

“Sure, I know,” Tim said, but he never did know.

Tim's four siblings, all female, older and married, and busy being fully realized tax-deferring adults, left him no option. He'd followed their footprints, getting a degree in a professional in-demand profession that paid well. When it came time to commit to 45 years of three-color carbon-copy weekdays, he did the math - two weeks out of the year his own for 45 years gave him a total of 90 weeks, or less than two complete years, under his control – and he couldn't do it. One sunny April afternoon he played hooky to go to opening day at Wrigley Field, where he watched the Cubs lose. Afterwards he walked to the lake, found a spot without ice, threw his law books in and ran to fill the help-wanted position at Dexter Haven's, a dusty memorabilia shop, surrounding himself with trinkets of a bygone era he felt more a part of than his own.

And it was there that he stayed for years, inciting the ire of his father. Beginning as a torrent of cuss words, it soon settled into a continuous burn, staying just below the muck like Bubbly Creek, feeding off the chemical porridge of years of slaughtered animals.

It wasn't that Tim didn't want to take care of his grandma but he wanted a choice. He loved her. She was his confidant growing up and he, once she figured out what to do to entertain a boy, became her favorite. After she moved to California with Jo, she wrote every Monday, always enclosing a recipe clipped from the Sunday paper. After Jo died she began to slip – letters, words, notions of the real. Her last letter included a recipe for stuffed cabbage leaves. Tucked in Tim's lock box, safe from fire or any other worries, it remained unmade, always a possibility.

***

Wrenched from the couch-bed, Tim felt the rough carpet on his bare feet turn into to the cold, cracked linoleum of the kitchen. He pulled a mug from the drainer that read, “I Love You Beary Much” beside a picture of a teddy bear wearing a bow-tie, filled it with water from the tap and sat at his pressed-wood desk. His fingers ran over the uneven screws he'd added last week to re-affix the amputee's legs. He glanced at the clock. 4:07 AM. He wondered if he'd sleep better with no artificial light – no light from the L platform showing through the cheap blinds, no illumination from the street light on the other side, no light from the clock on the microwave, no light from the alarm clock, no light from the clock on the stove, no standby light on the TV, no ready light on the smoke alarm. Darkness. The thought shrank his heart and he pushed it away.

Once again stuck in this in-between hour, Tim goes to his computer to look for distraction, for conversation, connection. He stares at the gas-lamp-blue glow as it starts up. He signs in, lets the programs load and looks for Julie, his friend two time zones away who also suffers from insomnia, but she's not online.

But Dea is.

***

It was after 42 applications, six weeks and a great deal of desperation that Tim accepted a job at PS Pro Golf. He hadn't planned on staying in California after his grandma's inevitable death, but what was there to go back to? Dexter Haven's was gone, turned into a gourmet popcorn store with lines around the block. Besides which, he could get passive-aggressively bawled out over the phone just as easily as in person, and over long-distance he could at least get the dishes done.

With her insurance, plus Jo's pension, paying for everything, no one in the family had known how little money Grandma June had survived on. The will left unmarketable trinkets, those closest to her heart, to specific grandchildren. They and the other relatives who had flown out for the funeral left as soon as it was over, rushing back to their busy lives of rushing to keep their lives busy.

When the show was over and the programs, folded and wrung by sweaty hands, were tossed, Tim sat alone in the condo, surrounded by everything that had been hers. He was hungry. It was dinnertime. Her favorite program, Wheel of Fortune, was on. The answer to the puzzle was obvious - “Adam, Hoss and Little Joe,” but none of the contestants could see it. Everything was here, everything she owned. Everything he grew up loving, everything that she loved enough to pay great sums to lug 1,968 miles across the country but without her what the hell did any of it matter? He kept the photo albums, letters and hand-written recipes and sold the rest – except for the grandfather clock. The one that currently reads 4:17 AM.

Now, 4AM is also funny because it's a time where it becomes harder to lie – to yourself and to others.

“Aww, what the hell,” he says as he types out “Hey,” hesitates for a moment, then hits send. It would be the last time he would try. Just like the dozen last times, and the dozen more he knew would follow. The screen tells him she was last active five minutes ago. And so he waits, weary from chasing and with little expectation anything would change.

But he's forgotten one thing – it's 4AM.

“Hey,” comes the reply. “I was just thinking about you. I was listening to this song -.”

He clicks on the link. It's an artist he hasn't heard of. Mellow indie pop – not the sort of thing he listens to often but it was from her and anything from her took on magical qualities. He had once told her she was magical, which she deflected with a simple, “I know.”

Acoustic guitar over layered strings, the chorus repeated the intent not to fall in love with a particular person, chastising them for making her feel these things, making her care, making her fall in love.

He'd drempt about her often – mundane dreams, just walking and talking together. He loved talking with her, that feeling of intimacy, of shared space and time, of no time at all. A dream, a test, something had to be wrong, anything that could explain away the song ran through his thoughts.

The cursor blinks and seems to speed up. He writes out, and erases, several responses. Fearing misinterpreting things and making a fool of himself – well, a bigger fool of himself – he settles on a smiley face.

***

In the aftermath of the chocolate incident his grandmother began hiding things, little gifts, in the clock whenever he came to visit and he was glad because he liked surprises and because it meant that she wasn't angry and nothing could have been worse than that. It began simply enough with the appearance of the Easter basket the bunny always delivered to her house for some reason, but soon the clock turned into a magical cupboard, offering up something new every time, a tradition she continued as he wandered into adulthood – a new shirt, a toy from the dollar store, homemade cookies. He never looked until she suggested it, a game within a game that delighted both players.

Not once, however, did it contain chocolate.

In the early days the clock also served as his go-to for hide and seek. The wood, the ticking, the glass came together to render him invisible. It was one of those times he couldn't shake from his mind the day he arrived at her place in California. There was a Christmas present inside the clock. His eyes welled up - from the sweetness of the thought, yes, but also because it was the first of June and she had no clue.

The money Tim got from selling the rest of the furniture and the condo covered her funeral costs, his moving debts and a studio apartment for a month. The only surprises the clock holds anymore are treats for his cat, but the black-and-white fluffball still hasn't picked up on the trend and has to be led there every time.

***

4:22 AM.

Tim waited but Dea didn't respond. What was there to say to a stupid smiley face anyway? She must have hundreds of men pursuing her. That charm, that infectious charm - once caught what could one hope for but to see her again? And so he knew he'd keep throwing paper airplanes her way. He began typing, feeling the cat's judgmental stare.

“You want to go down to the water tonight and see the sand castles, or there's that new coffee place Susan mentioned the other day.”

“I'd love to but I already have plans. We should go to the coffee place sometime though – you mean Vermilion, right?”

“Yeah, that's the one. Okay cool, well, I guess I should try to get back to sleep. Have a good day.”

Another smiley face.

She didn't reply but remained online and active. “Why do I keep doing this to myself?” he said to the heavens as he headed to the kitchen, threw some oatmeal in the microwave and shook his head for once again getting his hopes up. Three minutes later he pulled the bowl out and sprinkled in some cinnamon for variety. That's what being an adult had become. He walked around stirring the oatmeal, waiting for it to cool. Less than three hours until work. She had made his day every day they worked together, just by being her. Then she moved on. She would've been right at home in Dexter Haven's – her and Tim and Audrey and Humphrey and Dick and Laura and George and Mary.

Tim placed the bowl on the desk and sat down to find a message sent at 4:37 AM.

“Hey, you busy now? You want to watch the sunrise?”

Twelve minutes ago.

“I'd love to. Where?”

“How about at the top of Adams Hill? That way my dogs can run around.”

“Sure. I'll head there now.”

“Okay, see you soon.”

She signed off and he laughed, lost in the glare of the screen. Rushing about he stopped to flick the light-switch on and off, then checked the numbers on the digital clock – two lucid dreaming methods to discern reality he'd learned long ago. Establishing the real as best he could he tried to finish the oatmeal but his shaking hand spilled a not inconsiderable bit of the congealing mass onto the glow-in-the-dark ghosts, alerting him to the fact he had forgotten they were all he wore. Throwing on clothes that would pass for work he opened the door and felt the damp morning on his face, followed by an almost inaudible meow - the fluffball's breakfast. Tim rushed in, grabbed a can from the cupboard, popped off the lid and dumped the entire contents into the bowl on the floor.

“Hey,” he shouted, “let's have a feast!”

Waving goodbye, Tim locked the door as the clock chimed five.

Gregory T. Janetka is a writer from Chicago who currently lives in San Diego. His work has been featured in The Birch Gang Review, Flyover County Review, Gambling the Aisle and other publications. He is terribly good at jigsaw puzzles and drinks a great deal of tea. More of his writings can be found at .gregorytjanetka.com

Insects

Kevin Phillips

1

I think my brain is eating itself.

I also think Sam is smiling. Inside her own head probably laughing too, yet still she concentrates. Hard. Focus is important right now. In the backseat of my Chevy Dually she lines out two rows of white girl on her cell phone with the precision of a surgeon. Dome light in the cab is off and I can’t see her full, beautiful lips. I wish I could. Her smile shakes the earth. Maybe she isn’t smiling. Her small and tan fingers guide the credit card back and forth, side to side; slow and smooth paint strokes on a dark reflective canvas made of touch-screen glass. She never takes her eyes away from the art. Not once and I’m jealous. I fantasize about becoming that lifeless device she’s using so much care and effort not to drop, and not the first time, either. My thoughts about her lately have transformed into vigorous passion; I cannot think about anything but her palm locked tightly around my edges, holding me with undivided attention until she finally inhales that precious, chalky dust.“Truth is dead; the internet killed it,” she says. “Haven’t you figured that out yet, Thomas? All lies.”

I want to respond the article concerning human brain cells devouring each other after snorting this shit was from a medical journal, but I don’t.

“Hurry up. We’ve been out here too long.”

She hands the phone over; I shake my head no. I’ve had enough. Enough of everything about our situation really, but a thought I don’t say aloud. We’re on our first sneaking-out-don’t-get-caught-by-our-spouses-excursion this evening, and I’m done.

“Fine,” Sam mumbles, pulling the phone back and snorting the rest. She licks the phone’s screen, a honey bee finishing up a pollinated flower. “Can’t feel my teeth. I shouldn’t have done that one. Thanks Thomas, you’re an asshole. Come on, quick, they’ll catch us.”

We make our way back inside the club and immediately separate. I never take my eyes off her. I stand near the bar in the back, away from the dance floor. My wife Tracy is somewhere on the salted hardwood with a stranger, sliding across to country music, not thinking about me. Sometimes I wish I’d get caught on a trip to the truck. So I knew she was paying attention. So she knew I existed.

The prettier waitress working this side of the building delivers the beer I’d ordered before sneaking out. Before scuttling off back into the crowd, she winks as if she knows every bad thing I’ve ever done in my life. Maybe she does by now. Sam and I have been “car-fairing” for almost two months. She likes to name everything and that’s what she calls what we do. Because we don’t have sex. We don’t touch each other. We meet up at this same bar and do coke until we run out on out Fridays and Saturdays in my truck while our significant others forget we’re significant.

We mainly talk about insects. Just bugs, but I love the conversation I’m not getting at home. And we’re both fascinated by them. Last week Sam told me everything she knew about the Luna moth—the big green ones I sometimes find on my screen door that never seem to move. When they rise from their cocoon they live for only a week. They have no mouth and don’t eat. Essentially, they are only alive to mate.

“Could you imagine a life like that, Thomas? Never eating? Never speaking? Do they make sounds? How do they find a lover?”

I watch as Sam sits at a table on the other side of the club. She looks sad, lonely, and silent—like me. We make eye contact and she smiles. I feel the ground underneath moving. Her husband is laughing and teaching two women behind her how to play pool; correcting them about the proper to way to shoot. Sam told me once that’s how she met him.

2

My wife decided to get in shape about six months ago. Lose some weight. Every night after dinner around seven Tracy went jogging. Thirty minute runs. Sometimes an hour. At first I admired the effort, and encouraged her.

“You should come run with me, Thomas. Get rid of that belly.”

I wanted to. I did. But work found its way back home with me, night after night, and after eating I was forced in front of the computer. I got so caught up finishing that I wouldn’t even hear her return. I blamed everything on my job, though I knew it was more than that. I’d become thick and heavy since our wedding four years ago.

“You don’t pay any attention to me. Always working; always in front of that damn screen; just sitting there getting bigger. It’s unhealthy.”

The words attention and bigger stung as if they were angry hornets tearing into my flesh. I’d felt the same way for a while too, like she’d forgotten me. And I knew I was overweight. I couldn’t fit into half of my shirts anymore. I felt if I could just lose a couple pounds, she might remember me like she used to. She might really talk to me, and know I was there. I’d do anything for that.

At work I began taking the stairs, thought the added steps might help shed some extra skin. I also asked a co-worker who shared a cubicle with me about how he’d lost so much, and so fast. He told me he was using an older South American diet, so I began trying that too.

But most importantly, I decided to give Tracy all the attention I could.

I first noticed she would stay gone longer than the usual hour run. I praised her for increasing her endurance. Tracy smiled and said nothing. I watched her undress and saw how skinny she had metamorphosed. The sight of her made me feel even more bloated. I started parking farther away at work—more walking, more exercise.

She’d leave the house at random times, sometimes not till nine when the street lights came on. Our neighborhood wasn’t known to be dangerous, but still, I worried. I mentioned bringing mace with her once and she just laughed.

I came home from work earlier than normal one afternoon and she wasn’t there. The Fitbit I’d bought for her to help keep track of her runs was still on the charger, blinking. She was never without the device so I decided to use the opportunity and find out how many miles she’d ran. I wanted to buy her that many flowers; surprise her; celebrate her hard work.

I discovered she wasn’t running very far. Maybe four or five blocks a night, if that. In a couple months she had ran a total of one mile. One.

When she came home I had her favorite dinner ready. A single rose stood in the middle of the table.

While eating I asked about her day, what she had done, had anything exciting happened?

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Same old, same old.”

I’d already finished my plate and was reaching for seconds, and she’d only eaten half. I stopped myself and put my fork down. I asked her what was wrong, was the food okay? She only grinned, and went to the bedroom to put on one of her running outfits. I felt fat.

I waited a minute after she took off for her run. Then I followed her.

3

Sam is sitting outside the grocery store on a coin operated toy-ride that resembles an exaggerated dragonfly. The front end has a face with huge eyes; one slightly covered by a piece of paper that someone has written in permanent marker—out-of-order.

She jogs to my truck, opens the door, and climbs inside.

Why tonight, I ask, it’s only Wednesday?

Sam instead replies, “Oh my God, Thomas. The Voodoo wasp. You’ve got to look it up—turns caterpillars into zombies . . . is that not the greatest? Eats their brains! Please tell you me you can top that?”

I shift into first and we take off. I’ve been too busy to look up insects. And I don’t see her car in the parking lot.

“I walked up here; I had to get away. I just can’t handle him tonight without any.” She lights a cigarette without rolling the window down. There are bruises on her inner arm. Light yellow with a circular brown border, coffee-colored and matching her wavy hair. “And,” she asks, watching the street lights pass by as we drive, “did you get any?”

Of course I did, anything for you I want to say, but don’t. I lower her window with a button on my side, just enough for the smoke to rush out. I reach into my pocket for the cocaine and toss the baggie over. Pieces of grass come out as well.

“That’s all? We’re going to need more than that.”

I’m not doing anymore, ever, I tell her. I can’t. I’m sorry.

“And the weekends? I can’t do them alone, Thomas.”

I’ll still be there, I promise her.

I drive her to the house where I buy the coke. So she can get it herself, I say, but she’s not happy. Sam doesn’t smile when she meets the guy, or when he promises her he’ll give her the same deal he gives me.

Driving back to the grocery store Sam is silent. I think about how we met. I was walking outside to my truck to get some fresh air, while my wife danced inside the bar with strangers. Sam was bent over near the dumpster, vomiting. Another drunk barfing in the parking lot. I decided to keep walking. I had my own problems. But then she dropped to one knee, struggling to stand up. Left hand was high above her head sticking to the side of the trash bin, and she wore a tight green dress; she looked like an injured praying mantis. I felt sorry for her. I stopped and asked if she was okay, did she need anything? She said she only wanted to be happy. And not drunk.

I told her I had something to sober her up, and she came to my truck that first time.

I park at the grocery store and turn off the engine. She lights another cig and doesn’t move to get out. A couple of kids are playing around the broken-down dragonfly. They dangle from its pink, dilapidated wings. Where are their parents, I ask first; then about her arm, about the bruises?

“Tied me up. He likes it rough, okay?” She pauses for a minute, waiting for reaction. When I don’t respond, she adds, “I do too. And this,” she says, holding the baggie. “This makes me numb.”

Finally again, she smiles. I can almost see the earth shaking through the dirty windshield as she gets out of the truck and starts walking. She begins twirling around in the parking lot, aimlessly as if a dancer without a floor. Bathed in the yellow tint of my headlights, she laughs into the starless city night.

4

Security lights flickered on as I followed my wife, staying far enough behind so that Tracy couldn’t hear me. She took long quick strides and kept a steady rhythm, and by the third block I was breathing hard. I was out of shape even though I’d been taking the stairs at work every day. I weaved in and out of parked cars, and remained out of sight. I watched as she turned right at the stop sign and kept advancing.

I moved as fast as I could, trying to keep up. She was fast. As I neared where she had veered right, I arrived just in time to see her take Allocosa Street at the next block. I hadn’t been down the road but once, as it eventually ended in a dead end. None of the houses in this area looked familiar, and we didn’t know anyone who lived in the addition.

I kept running until halfway down the block I succumbed with exhaustion and had to walk. I thought about what I would do if I did catch her with another man. Would I be in a condition to do anything really, as out of breath as I was? My legs were burning, and heavy like stones. I could barely lift them. My heart was pounding.

There were only two houses in the dead end of Allocosa, big and facing each other. They looked almost identical; both with massive glass windows in the front and lights on inside. I chose the left one, because of distance, and movement inside.

From outside on the street, I watched as my wife laughed and sipped from a plastic bottle of water inside the front room. I couldn’t see who she was laughing for. I snuck up the driveway, anger building, and hid behind one of the dark green bushes that littered the yard. As I moved into position, I could see the man she was talking to. I also saw his lover, for they had to be. The man was holding hands with another man, radiating unyielding attention for him.

I watched as the first man took my wife’s wrists, removed the Fitbit, and danced with her. Tracy moved with the elegance of a springtime butterfly, bright and pink in her running outfit, twirling around in circles. They continued until the music faded, and the other man adjusted the radio to start another song. They danced for an hour, gliding around and stopping here and there for her partner to explain different moves; to correct her. She looked the happiest I’d ever seen her. I loved watching her dance, and never took my eyes off her.

I pushed as far back into the bush as I could so that she wouldn’t see me as she took off to jog home. I waited until she disappeared down the street and then crawled out. The baggie of cocaine I’d forgotten about fell out of my pocket, and I could feel my heart still racing from the previous run.

For a moment I thought about leaving the stuff there, lost forever behind the dance instructor’s thick shrubs. I hadn’t lost as much weight as my friend from work had promised, and I felt sick and guilty. I knew I had to tell Sam I was done. I grabbed the bag along with a handful of grass, and forced it inside my pocket until I would see her again.

5

Friday night, and I’m standing in the bar near the back, waiting for the right moment. The building is packed as usual, and the heat from the dancers on the floor hits me in waves of warm breeze. I watch my wife dance with a stranger in a cowboy hat, sweat dripping from her forehead, concentrating on only the music and the rhythm of her partner. She moves with perfect, steady grace.

Sam stands close by with her husband. They’re on their way out, but I know she wants to watch my wife, too. She doesn’t acknowledge me, or say hello, and that’s okay. I nod to her anyway. Sam has one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen, and I can feel the earth below me shaking from the loud music. The prettier waitress on this side of the bar taps on my shoulder, and asks if I want a beer. I shake my head no. As she turns to walk away, I notice a Luna moth on the back of her shirt. They have no mouths, never eat, and discover love in silence.

When the fast song ends and a slow one begins, I meet my wife on the salty wooden dance floor, and grab her hands. I pull her small, tight frame to mine, and I can feel her against my large stomach. She looks surprised, but doesn’t say anything. We take steps in slow circles to the music, and I feel her palms locked tightly around my edges, holding me with undivided attention.

Kevin Phillips lives in Choctaw, Oklahoma and attends Oklahoma State University where he is seeking a MFA in Fiction. When he isn't writing, he works as a bartender and plays guitar for two bands: One country and one heavy metal. He is addicted to rare, beautiful words and spends most of his free time lost in books of poetry wishing he could write them, or fishing Thunderbird Lake wishing he could catch something.