The floor creaked in the hall outside my bedroom at 3:20 in the morning, and shortly after that, the doorknob quietly turned. I had a Louisville slugger in my hands and a hundred-pound dog snoring next to my bed. On the other side of the door was Mike Harper, a childhood friend who had suffered a mental breakdown, thought mobsters were after him, was carrying a large knife and pining away for Adeline, a woman he hadn’t seen in a dozen years.
Over the past three years Queenie Reginald Smith had been arrested more times than she cared to admit. Recently she even managed to get herself arrested on Sixth and Howard Streets at four o’clock in the morning by trying to solicit an undercover cop she saw leaning against the entrance to The Tip Top Donut Shop. After she was taken to Juvenile Hall, Queenie assumed that Judge Williamson would release her from custody the way all judges did, given her youth and the prevailing view that her kind of crime did not warrant custody time. Judge Williamson, however, was not like all other judges.
He could not see anything, nor was there any sound. He knew he was moving forward and could feel the soft squish of the ground underneath his feet. Because of the void he did not know if his path was narrow or if he walked in an expanse. He held his arms out in front of him and then waved them in the air at his sides but felt nothing. He felt like he was walking in the right direction yet was not sure if the next step he took would plunge him over the precipice and into the abyss. He was not sure that he would have minded that but didn’t think that was what was going to happen.
Rummaging through the evening’s profile and its many lit sunsets – on the pavement, in the shadows, in the alleys, on the shore – Iqra had a keen sensation of what it felt like to be in love. She felt the dual nature of reality – one, in which she existed with him, and the other in which she was part of the ordinary world – come in close contact when she realized that she had not answered either his phone, or the work-meet. Lost in the contemplation of nature she had let time slip by and the announcement it made on her life was evocative, fulfilling. She realized that both Tahir and Usman would be upset with her. She had missed birthday calls, engrossed in the setting sun.
When the cold, white morning of her fiftieth birthday arrived, Beatrice couldn’t lift her head. The chimes of her good morning, programmed into the phone she kept beside her, just in case, circled through their simple melody three times and then stopped. From outside her bedroom door came the cries of the cat, hungry again, its staccato screeches demanding attention. Sunlight fell like shards of glass on the floor, too bright this April morning, reflecting the snow that should not have fallen, here, in Atlanta, where last week was springtime.
I enjoy teaching 19th century novels for three years at a small private college before a student steps forward to query the bias in my curriculum.
He is a serious, hardworking student with perfect attendance. He portends an earnestness for which I am not prepared. It is the unreported thunderstorms, the torrential rains presaged by quiet, windless skies, which cause the most damage.
My Dearest
Sometimes I think they did it deliberately, these nations, started this war just to separate you and me. Sometimes I think they all did, these strange cowards who’ll follow me into battle.
That’s unfair, after all I don’t know them – for all my bitter mind knows they could have their own Dearest waiting for them at home, pouring over the letters they write, waiting for that next train to bring them home.
Gerald is sitting in a wingchair in the lobby, waiting. His walker’s in easy reach of his right hand. Periodically his head drops to his chest and he wakes up startled. Tom comes to a stop in front of him and coughs gently into his hand. “Sorry I’m late, heavy traffic.”
“No problem, Tom. I like being alone with my thoughts.”
“Is that the good news or the bad news?”
“You tell me. I’m trying to be philosophical. Like my doc tells me, ‘a day at a time.’”
It wasn’t that we particularly enjoyed Lolo Genesis’s death. It was more like a sigh of relief because the guy was kind of a dick. Buena and I were not purposefully attempting to live out an irreverent, dark comedy by playing music and dancing on his grave. We were raised with standards. The inherited musical and creative types by nature. Call it genetics.
After he awoke, he did not remember his name for many days. By then, the mess of line that had tangled around his ankle had peeled away. He’d also found the transom of his boat, The Aloha, broken over a sandbar and stretched and twisted and torn like chewing gum. Now he remembered her, a lovely little schooner with a cream-colored deck over a small one-man cabin. The atoll, too, was small. It was so small one could see its east coast from its westernmost point.
The first time he came to our house I was six or seven. My sister and I were playing on the carpet in the living room. Mom told us to be quiet and he sat down heavily on the couch. She served him a glass of water and we watched him drink it. His flannel shirt made crisp little tearing sounds against the cushion covers. Mom made those herself out of yarn from the hobby store.
Outside the funeral home wet, heavy snowflakes fell on an approaching incandescent Christmas while Binary stood before an open coffin with the echo of his father’s desperate screams reverberating in his head. “Ones and Zeros! Ones and Zeros!” Binary rubbed his face with his thick, moist hands dreading the onslaught of well-wishers and empathizers. He already missed the comfort of his house; the safe, familiar walls, the cushy easy chair sitting before a glowing television, and the absence of unfamiliar people expressing uncomfortable emotions.
Once upon a time there was a great forest that stretched for miles and miles along a tranquil river. The river was wide and long, and the azure water glimmered like crystals. If the river was followed deep enough into the wood, there could be found a small cottage tucked beneath the bosom of a mountain. The cottage was covered in countless flowers, and berries, and all sorts of vined things that grew out and up from a large garden. Inside the cottage there lived a little girl and her mother. This little girl was the sweetest, most docile child one could encounter. She had large eyes the color of umber and dark curly hair that shone reddish-brown in the springtime sun.
You do that quite well. Can you do it again. The repeat has a gold medal for showing up and making a fool out of itself. The comfortable repeat lives in a big house up on a hill. At night, his living room comes out and does a little dance. You can hear Dizzy Gillespie blowing a horn made out of brass that knows every note on the scale needs to be primped. A little lipstick here, eye liner, brush those cheeks like you wanted them to bear the beauty of jazz.
I walk into his office; the name in brass on the door reads Dr. Adam Reagan. I sit on the small plush chair and pull my feet under me, my warm mug of tea in my hands. He smiles when I slide into the seat and sigh. He thinks he is breaking me but there is no way I can allow that to happen, not after everything I think I have been through. “Where do I begin,” I say, I don’t mean it to sound sarcastic but to my ears the words sound sharp like tiny pieces of glass in my mouth.
My roommate and I were both freshers and had both been assigned temporary accommodation at the college hostel. My mother hadn’t paid the hostel fee and because she knew someone who knew one of the college administrators, I was allowed temporary accommodation for ten days. She promised she would send the money before those days were up. The matron, a portly nun with a serious face, said she didn’t care.
His country is the land of paradox and contradiction; where a frustrating government pleads for more productivity but can’t provide an efficient bus system to get people to work on time.
Clifton—or the newly stylized Cliff, as his well-to-do friends call him—knows he should have been out of the apartment at least fifteen minutes ago if he wants to catch an early bus to get to work. He works doubly hard at his job in the ICT sector, which means he gives online technical support to people overseas. In his hurry, he pulls a T-shirt over his thin frame, only to realise it’s on backwards. He fixes it while struggling with his keys to lock the front door, then runs off before noticing that he’s left his phone and has to turn back.
Even dressed as a man, Elena was radiant. Kate dabbed her eyes with her one remaining tissue. As the music from the final act of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier swelled to its rousing pinnacle, Elena’s voice soared through the opera house, merging and blending with those of the other singers. Together they joined the interweaving melodies and chromatic harmonies of the orchestra, the entire ensemble climbing to such unsustainable heights that, to Kate, their ultimate convergence personified longing. The crowd rose and erupted into cheers seconds after the orchestra released its last chord, but Kate remained seated, thunderstruck. Finally, she stood when Elena strolled to the front of the stage to take her last bow amid the roar of applause, while flowers and programs stripped to confetti rained over the cast.
I first encountered the hidden world on a muggy summer night in Bahrain, near the still waters of the Arabian Gulf (or Persian Gulf, depending on who you wanted to avoid an argument with). Multiple witnesses denied what they saw after the fact, blaming alcohol, of which there was admittedly plenty, or tricks of light and shadow. The religiously-inclined claimed we saw one of the jinn, a being from the spirit world, which was more plausible than an excess of overpriced beer. No one ever hallucinated from Heineken.
Dr. Levine, the psychiatrist, seems perfectly comfortable with long stretches of silence. Long stretches of silence are the story of my life. This is my third visit with the doctor. Mom is mad at him because he doesn’t prescribe anything for me. She wants me fixed. My mind needs mending in her opinion. He’s asked me why I’m here. I don’t answer. Looking out the window I watch a squirrel climbing up an oak tree. He loses his balance, landing on the lawn below where all the acorns are anyway but he ignores them and jumps right back onto the trunk and tries again. Stretching out to reach a limb he falls onto the grass once again. The acorns are right there. What is he really after, I wonder. I just want to hear the truth. That’s what I’m after. I think about the day I told my mom I know the truth.
Torn clouds scuttled across the sky with the beginnings of the moon’s light dancing behind them as they chased their own broken shadows. The yellow glow and low hum of the city street lamps fluttered and shook, not quite sure if it was their time to shine in the waning daylight. The air had turned cool in the evenings, keeping the large crowds of lookie loos inside the bars or coffee shops up the street from the bridge, only giving them reason to venture out for necessity instead of pleasure walks. The faint sound of moving water purred underneath him, as he sat on a bench near the end of the bridge, waiting and watching out of the corner of his eye. Without fail, he always managed to find one.
At the time, I lived on the 31st floor of a modern apartment complex for middle-income households. I loved the large grounds and being a fitness freak, the easy access to a pool and a gymnasium. I loved having a shopping mall and a multiplex cinema a stone’s throw away.
It was 4 am and I exited my Uber, teary-eyed, inebriated and nauseous. I had just ended things with Dee, the love of my life. It had been the most amazing relationship for eight years. We were two hippies who floated through life like synchronized swimmers too lazy to collect their gold medals at the Olympics.
Captain Haines sheds his rain-pressed coat and hat in the entryway of the railcar diner. Laughter from 3 a.m. troublemakers, snores from booth-ridden sleepwalkers, snaps from slow-moving line cooks cut through the smoke-festooned air in the same whirling loops.
Dark-haired, gum-popping Dina points her pen at the large central booth with only two place settings. Haines nods as he retires his trench and cap on the sharp wall hook over a bouquet of tired umbrellas.
When I first met the girl with the white bicycle, it was early spring. The tulips were only just beginning to bloom. I had often seen her, riding that overly large bicycle which had been painted entirely white, from the frame to the tires.
Then one morning, as I sat alone in the garden, she rode up to the front gate, in a plain white summer dress, and dismounted. She came to stand in front of me and stuck out her hand.