We shattered the hourglass.
We were tired of waiting to be old.
We said, Let’s start now!
Let’s be crazy old people.
You wore polka dot tights
And I had a baby blue ascot.
We went to court and filled the room with sand.
Then we samba’d and salsa’d on the tables.
I sang in the key of G and you sang in the key of A.
Two half-tones apart, it sounded like modern music.
Imagine that–two old souls
Singing in the contemporary.
One hour before the puppet show was to start, a bomb blast blew the theater apart. While the ceiling collapsed and through the massive hole in the back wall the hills far away could be seen, the stage curtains had remained intact, and lazily waved like loosened tongues in the settling dust and rising smoke. Felix shoveled his hands through the puppet pieces and masks mixed in with bits of brick and foam, searching for his brother Fernando. He could hear screaming underneath him. His body felt more alive than ever, heaving heavy stones and tossing away singed theater chairs. As he pulled away a chunk of wall in the shape of a continent, he released a wail that had been muffled. A red starfish shot out and he realized that it was the hand of a young child.
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It so happens that in an artist’s kitchen enters a man whose hands smell like goat cheese. In the corner is a woman crying. He drops what he holds to the ground, except for the balloons. The canary breaks out into song. When the woman whips her head around, it’s revealed that her cheeks have charcoal stripes of make-up. She grabs a towel and dabs at her eyes and face. He looks away, to give her some privacy, staring at the blue tiles that make up the countertop. When she is done, she turns to face him with smudged cheeks and a smile. He announces his objective.
I’m here to make a birthday cake. Read the rest of this entry »
It was during college, so it felt scary but also exciting to be one of the first. Jenny and Mike were married their junior year, the first couple they knew to tie the knot. Jenny and Mike’s parents were rather traditional, so it did not surprise them to hear of the wedding the Christmas before. Jenny, with her sparkling eyes and wide, white-teeth grin, and Mike, the handsome business student who played basketball, told the news to their parents beside the Christmas trees and after all the presents had been unwrapped. Mike’s house was more orderly, and presents were opened one at a time at the dining room table.
The ceremony took place at Lake Tahoe, and Jenny cried when she said her vows to Mike. Her friends were beautiful and jealous. They all eyed their own boyfriends and contemplated marrying the men they linked arms with as they marched down the aisle, as best men and bridesmaids.
After the wedding, they went on a honeymoon to Paris. Neither of them had left the country before. At one of the little hotels they stayed in, which was not on their itinerary, but Mike had convinced her to try it, they stayed in all day and lay in bed. They just talked and laughed and made love, and whenever the other would get up, the one in bed would plead for the lover to come back. This was the life! And they were set for it at such a young age.
I didn’t even knock. I just ran in, like I used to do, when it was acceptable to open the door and run in and sneak up on Eva and cover her eyes. This time there would be no sneaking up and no blindfold made from my fingers. Things were different – there was a red couch that I didn’t recognize, along with a shag rug and glass table, and the portrait of me that once hung next to the front door was gone. It felt like someone else’s loft. Eva could be dead by now, I could find her sprawled on the stairs with a broken back or something. Instead, she stood in the kitchen, stirring with a wooden spoon, the scent of garam masala in the air.
“Don’t tell me you went over the speed limit to get here so fast,” Eva said. “Helen would never do such aa thing, would she?” She smiled, brought the spoon to her lips, and blew on a scoop of red pulp. Read the rest of this entry »
No one remembers my name in Minden. My face is always fresh and my smile is always bright like the first time they saw me. No one realizes that I have been here all summer. Every morning when I get breakfast at the one coffee shop in town, I know that Lacey will be there to pour me a cup of tea, and every day she will say to the other customers, “Boys, we got a visitor.” I know that Billy will be sitting at the counter with his trout and eggs and Frank will be playing video poker in the corner. They will look me up and down when I walk in each morning, and then go back to the routines imprinted in their blood cells. They don’t remember all the times I robbed them, right there in plain sight, and they don’t recall that I was the one in their houses, taking whatever I wanted.
This town is losing its memory. Once a stop on the railroad from the state capital to a mountain resort, Minden is now just waiting for its people to die or drift away. Each time a dust storm strikes it feels like another layer of its history gets chewed away. I spend many afternoons walking by the empty storefronts, the abandoned milling factory, the dried up lake. Some days I shoot out the windows of the old buildings with the pistol someone gave me. Sometimes I run into the only boy in town, riding on his mule Milk Dud, the only other wanderer in Minden. I salute him like a soldier. And one time, I found brittle grains when I broke into the old factory, grains that were probably at least fifty years old, just lying there on the cement floor, waiting for some water to come to life. That was what changed everything.
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They pulled up to the house so fast he thought the car would smash into the front window. His father, who was driving, slammed on the brakes and all three of them swung forward. The seatbelt cut into the boy’s neck. Not even a second later, his head snapped back and bounced against the seat cushion.
“You drive like a maniac,” his mother said from the passenger seat. She jumped out of the car and slammed the door. His father murmured something, then looked at the boy.
“Get out,” his father said.
The boy rubbed at his neck. He undid his seatbelt, and in a daze, stepped out of the car. The sun was really bright and the gravel driveway they were on seemed to have already absorbed the morning sunlight. He glanced around and noticed the large rose bushes that went along the driveway. He walked over to smell one when his father shouted to get going.
The three of them stood in front of the door, which was preceded by two stone steps. His mother adjusted her skirt and his father shoved his hands in his pockets. They waited, and the boy wasn’t sure if anyone had knocked. He stepped forward to do so, but his father’s left hand shot out of his pocket and grabbed the boy’s shoulder.
The door opened and an old woman appeared. What she saw was a close-knit family, a father gently pressing the son’s shoulder with his hand.
“Why hello,” she said. “What a beautiful family. How nice of you to stop by.”
We were interviewed separately, and wrote our own police reports, so it wasn’t until after my father had left in the ambulance that we discovered the discrepancies in our stories.
“What if they think I did it?” my mother asked.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. My mother was the shorter than most teenage girls and could barely hold a twelve-pack of Pepsi without buckling under its weight.
“They took his own gun from the bedroom,” she said.
“They can do tests to see where the bullet came from.” I did wonder, though, if something had happened that she wasn’t telling us. My parents had been arguing, a rare thing for them, just the other day. As if reading my mind, my sister spoke of the same thing.
“Weren’t you and Dad arguing about the groceries yesterday?” she asked.
“I was just mad because they overcharged me on the Pepsi, and he didn’t want to drive me back so I could get a refund. If they overcharge you on something, it’s free.”
My hands were sweating as I unlocked the apartment door. Adrian followed me inside. Was he playing along, or just drunk? Within two steps he crashed into my table full of overgrown plants.
“You’re just like my mother,” I said. The plants were luminous in the night, the leaves so shiny they reflected the light from the signs buzzing on the building across the street. The fecund smell of their soil made the air thick and pungent. I opened the only window all the way to let fresh air in.
“I don’t have a couch, as you can see,” I said, gesturing to the unmade bed. “Sit down. I’ll get the keys for the car.”
I opened a drawer in the kitchen to pretend I was actually looking for keys. Adrian plopped down on the bed. At the bar he said his name was Brian, but I knew who he really was, and by now it was safe to assume that he didn’t remember me. Maybe it was because of the wig. I lifted it to scratch my itchy head. I grabbed my house keys and walked over to him.
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I found out I was living Prince Scotty’s life, and I didn’t know what to do. He had been arrested the week before my birthday, charged with murdering his mother and a woman the newspapers referred to as Lily. They were both killed with these strange, electric pistols. The pistols had to be plugged into an electrical outlet, and the bullets glowed a flaming blue when they shot out of the barrel. I know this because on my birthday I received a pair of these pistols from my father.