A Campground Celebration

Some high-ranking capitalist in the Dutchess County political hierarchy had decided to sell the woods across the lake and the campground along with them. Naturally a celebration was in order. There was a time when I went camping there frequently with my family. At some point, though, I started spending less time up at our country house and more time in the city. It was around this time that I became another pretentious New Yorker, skeptical of the existence of culture outside of the city. And not without good reason! But I digress. I say this thinking of a specific acquaintance of mine, Peter, who lived in the small town by the lake.

When we were little, Peter and I were good friends. We went sledding in the winter, played baseball in the spring and soccer in the fall. But as I grew older, we drifted further and further apart, to the point that Peter had come to epitomize everything I thought was wrong with the town, the suburbs, the country. He was blissfully ignorant, that is to say, ignorant of his ignorance. Anything I said went over his head, and everything he said seemed so obvious and unnecessary that it bothered me. But I had no problem with stupidity. It wasn’t his stupidity that bothered me, more his personality on a whole. Perhaps I should have pitied him, but instead I simply disliked him.

There were five of us at the campground: Rufus, Mark, Peter, myself, and Rosie. Rosie was Peter’s dog, an ugly ancient hulking brute of a dog, with whom Peter had been inseparable since I knew him. She used to play football with us, but she had been younger then, in better shape. She laid her enormous body on top of the tent Mark and Rufus were trying to set up, and fell asleep. Mark and Rufus were my friends from the city, but Mark knew Peter too. And Mark didn’t like him either. In fact, the only reason Peter was there at all was because we needed to use his canoes to get across the lake.

I sat down next to the fire pit by the water. I began gathering the little branches within arm’s reach. Peter brought me an armload of thicker wood, and in a few minutes I had a nice little fire going. We took out our food for the night, two boxes of donuts, one chocolate and one cinnamon, and began eating them. So goes the food when all you have are coupons. At least Rufus had been thoughtful enough to get that box of cinnamons, remembering that my allergies made chocolate out of the question. As I sat on a log, staring into the fire, Peter paced around the fire in circles.

“You have to stop, Peter,” I finally blurted out. “It’s getting on my nerves.”

“What’s getting on your nerves?” he asked, circling behind me. I wasn’t sure if he was being annoying or merely stupid, so I played it safe and explained myself.“Stop walking in circles. It makes me dizzy.”

“Oh this?” he laughed. “You mean this?” He sped up, taking big goofy strides around the suddenly roaring fire. “Does this bother you?” he asked, and truthfully, I now found it somewhat amusing. I chuckled in response, and he went faster and faster, until all of a sudden he kicked the box of cinnamon donuts, my cinnamon donuts, right into the lake.

“You idiot!” I exclaimed. Now I had nothing to eat except the lone donut balanced on my knee. My anger quickly subsided, though. I knew it was just an accident, and Peter was very apologetic, and in addition to that, he probably felt worse than I did. So I decided instead to let him wallow in his guilt and take pleasure in that. A bit sadistic perhaps, but I was going to be hungry.

My assumption that Peter would feel guilty was completely misconceived, as I soon realized. Within seconds of sitting down, a big gap-toothed grin had crept across his face, suggesting that perhaps he had already completely forgotten what had just happened. I looked out at the water, slightly regretting the fact that I had not exploded on him. Nothing to do about it now. Oh well. Mark and Rufus were far out on the lake, fishing. They were making furious stabbing motions at the water, flailing with what I knew were their knives at what I knew were pieces of bread dropped in the water to attract fish. Yes, I thought, I will certainly be hungry tonight. I looked back at Peter, who had his donut stuck on a branch and was holding it slightly above the flames. The heat from the fire was hurting my eyes, so I turned to look back at the canoe out on the lake. I stared at them for a while, hoping someone would fall in, but no one did.

“You should try this,” Peter said, holding up his donut.

“No thanks, I’m all…”

“No no no,” he interrupted. “Put your donut in the fire. It makes it warm and good.” Sure, I thought, why not? So I stuck my last donut on the stick that he handed to me, held it just above the fire, and waited.

“O.K., now take it out,” Peter advised me. I took it out and off the stick, and juggled it from hand to hand to avoid burning myself. Then I took a bite. It did not taste like cinnamon. It tasted like dirt. Or, more precisely, ash. I made a face and spat it out. Peter burst out laughing.

“You realize that this was my last one?” I asked, as it dawned on me that I was already pretty hungry. I tossed the donut into the other canoe, which was half on shore and half in the water. Rosie was sitting at the floating stern of the canoe. The donut slid down and she immediately gobbled it up, grinning. Peter responded by laughing more and more hysterically. I cursed at him and kicked the end of the canoe, sending it sliding into the water and out into the lake, with the dog still inside. He immediately stopped laughing.

“Now what’d ya do that for?” he asked, pathetically.

“You deserved it.”

“But she can’t swim! You gotta go rescue her!”

“Yeah right,” I said, “I’ve seen her swim.” I was pretty sure that dog could swim.

“I’m telling you…” he was interrupted by a splash, as the dog, who had been rocking back and forth, tipped over the canoe and was dumped into the water. Peter immediately took off his shirt and dove out towards her. It must have been ten seconds before he reached her; I had pushed that canoe surprisingly far. Rosie was helplessly flailing her front and back legs, which were tiny and weak in comparison with her massive body. Peter was strong, but he was clearly struggling to support her. I jumped in and swam out to help.

The three of us frantically treaded water while at the same time trying to move ourselves towards shore. At some point Rosie became exhausted and stopped flailing. She must have weighed two hundred pounds. We could have tried to put her in the canoe, but it was quickly drifting away, upside-down. I don’t know how long we were there, treading water, but at some point my head started going under at regular intervals. It was hard to see much through the water in my eyes, but I could see that we were not close to shore and that Mark and Rufus, who were paddling towards us, were not within a hundred yards.

I felt my arms slowly begin to give way, until my head went under and I realized I could not bring myself back up to the surface without taking my arms out from under the dog. I slipped my arms out from under her and surfaced, but Peter couldn’t hold Rosie by himself and he gave way, too. She slid out of his arms and sank. We watched her sink down, and her wrinkled face became more and more obscured until we couldn’t see her at all. Peter took a breath and dove down, but I knew he couldn’t get her. When he came back up he let the air out of his lungs and began to cry.

“You bastard,” he sobbed. He let loose a string of insults rising in pitch and intensity. Then he turned to me, his face wet with water and tears. He put his hands around my neck and began to strangle me. I was in no position to fight back; I could hardly keep myself from drowning. I mumbled something about Rosie’s age, and that maybe it was her time…

I woke up lying on the pine needles in the forest. For a split second I had no idea where I was, or what I was doing here. Then as I sat up, I looked at the lake, and it all came back to me. There was a canoe half-way across the lake, with a figure silhouetted against the setting sun. That was Peter, I knew. Guilt swept over me, and with guilt, sadness and regret. I stumbled out towards the fire pit, coughing up water and massaging my neck. Mark and Rufus were sitting talking on the logs. When I appeared, they fixed me with glances of such utter contempt that I turned right around and stumbled away. I could have explained my side of the story, but when the end is drowning a friend’s dog, nobody wants to hear your explanation of the means. So instead, I crawled into the tent and crawled in my sleeping bag, guilty, hungry, and exhausted. I fell asleep within minutes, and dreamed of Rosie.

Henry G.

Shave and a Haircut

Zach sighed contentedly, settling back in the barber’s chair. He had just received what he was sure was the best haircut of his life. It was neither too short nor too long, in exactly the style he had requested. Among haircuts, it stood tall and proud, with chiseled good looks, upon Zach’s head. It seemed to know it was special, the way its chin jutted fiercely outward, perhaps the Kirk Douglas of haircuts. He could almost hear it calling to him, whispering, “Zach… now that I am on your head, people will caress me… you’re going to love it.”

Frankly, it exuded the same sense of yuppie virility that hit him whenever one of the senior executives passed through his office on the way from the cafeteria to the bathroom they used when the other one was out of order. Zach had never been able to exude virility. It just wasn’t his thing. All the other guys could do it. They were busy sailing their way up the corporate ladder, exuding virility all over the place, impressing all the senior executives, who, Zach was quite certain, spent their lunch hour practicing virility exudation while walking through his office.

He could practically hear them whispering, “Did you see that virility? Man, the way he totally exuded it right at that junior clerk with the lousy haircut! You know, the one who has the office we walk through on the way to the bathroom we use when the other one’s out of order? Hey, Jeff, you know the junior clerk whose office we walk through on the way to the bathroom we use when the other one’s out of order? Right, with the lousy haircut. What’s his name? Zarves?”

Paranoid? Perhaps he was, but he felt that his hair was the source of his inadequacy. Even the high-powered businesswomen exuded virility. And oh God, did they love walking right up to him and flirting shamelessly with him, virility exuding like nobody’s business, laughing at him, knowing that he could never flirt back into the giant torrent of virility that was being exuded directly into his face, until he didn’t know whether to jump out the window in his office that couldn’t be closed, or flee for his life and masturbate in the bathroom everybody else used when the other one was out of order.

All this (Zach desperately hoped) was about to change. He had the haircut of a lifetime, and it was sitting right on top of his head. Now, all he needed was a shave to match. During the week, he never brought a razor near his face; by Friday night, he looked quite scruffy and manly. Scruffy and manly was just right for picking up girls in clubs that smelled (and frequently sounded) like vomit and had bouncers of roughly the same shape and conversational ability as the Hound of the Baskervilles, but he could hardly go back to the office in such a state of scruff and vomit.

For this reason, he always got up early on Monday morning and got a shave, and, when necessary, a haircut, at the barbershop. However, he had managed to thrash his way a few furlongs up the virility river and was now clinging to an overhanging salary that dropped a slightly less sour paycheck onto his head; many spare-bathroom masturbations had gone into the effort. He could now afford an apartment with transparent windows, and hinges on the doors, and four legs on all the furniture. He had moved across town, and had consequently changed barbershops, and was quite happy with the change.

“That’s the hair.” The barber had a soft, pleasant, wheezy voice and an accent that darted around Long Island; it was an easy, unthreatening voice that made Zach feel relaxed, and a bit drowsy.

“Can I have a shave?” he asked sleepily.

“Sure thing, my man,” the barber wheezed. He switched on his electric razor, but it sputtered out again. At the same moment, the fan in the corner held its breath and began its slow whir to a halt. There was still plenty of morning light flowing in through the storefront windows, but it was clearly a blackout. Two thoughts entered his head simultaneously. The first was that his boss, a maniacal man with enormous neck tendons and retinae that were clearly waiting for the right moment to pounce on some unsuspecting victim, had hooked the building up to a spare generator in case of alien attack (by his own species, Zach often supposed), and so it would be business as usual for them all. The second was that now the electric razor wasn’t running, and he was still scruffy.

“I don’t suppose you have any battery-operated razors, do you?” asked Zach hopefully.

“Nope, sorry,” answered the barber, “they give me the creeps. They run even though they’re not attached to anything. It’s like General Electric has telekinesis. No way, sorry, uh uh.”

Zach was considering driving to work with the door open and his head against the ground, scraping the hairs off as he drove, when the barber said, “But I might have a handheld. Let me see…”

He disappeared into a dingy back room, and emerged a second later with a handheld razor. It looked as though it hadn’t been used since the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, and then only on the president’s prize elephant tusks at Sagamore Hill.

“Isn’t it a little rusty?” asked Zach uncertainly.

“Not in these spots,” said the barber, pointing.

“Ah, yes. Not in those spots,” Zach said agreeably. “When was the last time you changed the blade?”

“Never needed to,” said the barber. “Now, hold still.” He slathered some shaving cream on Zach’s face. It was cold and slimy, and, Zach hoped, a little numbing. He looked nervously up at the ponderous blade, and then the barber brought it across his cheek.

There was worse to come in Zach’s life, but it involved getting gored by wild boar while experiencing peritonitis, so, for the time being, this qualified as extreme pain. Pain, yes, pain, and oh God was it painful, and stinging. Yes, it was also stinging. Zach struggled to comprehend what was going on, and why more skin than hair was coming off his face, but he couldn’t really manage. By the end, he would rather have closed his head into a barbecue grill, because at least then he could have lived for the rest of his life in a shack down by the city limits telling kids about his bar-shaped scars. But no, even if he had anything to show for this monstrosity among grooming ventures, he wasn’t excited by the prospect of telling anyone that a barber had molested him with a geriatric razor. Especially not kids.

The barber stopped (Zach was ready to tell him anything he wanted to know, because they sure did have ways of making people talk) and handed Zach a mirror. It was like the scene in Batman in which Jack Nicholson is handed a mirror and starts laughing insanely and smashes the mirror, only Zach was crying, and had to try several times before successfully smashing the mirror. Actually, at this point, he would rather have looked like the Joker than like the Hindenburg mid-explosion.

Why did he pay the barber? He didn’t want the barber to think him uncouth. It seemed perfectly sensible to the bright red, throbbing thing that was Zach’s head as he set off for work.

It was even easier to torture him now that they called him “The Turnip.” Zach tried to protest. Turnips weren’t even red, he reminded them, but it was no use. He was just a sad, throbbing mass of dejected skin and failed charisma on the way to the bathroom they used when the other one was out of order. Still, the senior executives and the high-powered businesswomen privately agreed, the Turnip’s haircut really exuded virility.

Jonah L.

Automatic Transition

The bathroom door opened with a burst of air saturated with warm moisture and the fragrant scent of hibiscus shampoo. Gillian’s head poked tentatively out of the door and peered up and down the hallway, checking if the coast was clear. She was almost sure it would be, but it was a precautionary measure. As expected, the hall was empty. She stepped out of the seemingly tropical bathroom. She left, in the closed quarters of the pink bathroom, the floral scent of her two-in-one conditioner to evaporate with the steam on the medicine cabinet mirror and the beads of condensation bejeweling the ceiling like sweat on a woman’s brow. Wrapped in a thick maroon towel, Gillian scampered down the hall, her footsteps leaving a dark trail of damp marks on the pink plush carpet. She passed her parents’ bedroom, where her father was sleeping, and then went quickly into her own. Diffused light flowed into her bedroom through the half-closed Venetian blinds, making a cage-like pattern across her bed and spilling onto the carpeted floor around it. The clock radio, softly buzzing WJPR’s morning show with Tad and Tom, read 7:35.

She set about getting dressed with a mixture of excited expectation and unexplainable familiarity. After buttoning her blouse, she dug through her sock drawer in search of her box of pearls. She found the necklace, but not the matching earrings. Gillian struggled to clip it but her locks of hair stuck to her neck, and her water-logged fingers, wrinkled and prune-like, couldn’t manage the delicate clasp.

The uneasy sense of familiarity continued to unnerve her after she closed the door of her room. It persisted while she buttered her corn muffin in the hazy glow of the kitchen’s warmth, a mixture of water boiling for her father’s egg and morning sun playing off the wall papered with poppies.

“Is everything O.K., Gill?” her mother asked from the kitchen sink. “It’s all probably just nerves.” Facing away from Gillian, her mother spoke generally, as if she were addressing someone who was not in the kitchen at all, but instead somewhere past the faded curtains of the window above the sink.

Gillian took a gulp of orange juice, moistening the dry glob of chewed corn muffin gathering at the back of her mouth and allowing it to ease down her throat. She took another, but her throat was still dry as she croaked, “I’m fine.”

“It’s perfectly natural, dear.” Her eyes still focused on some point outside the kitchen and the foggy glass plate she washed. “Anyone would be, before their first interview after graduating.”

“I guess.” Gillian swallowed her last piece of muffin with a dry cough that made her face flush. “I think I should have left by now, Mom.”

“Well, wait, let me see you first.” Holding a soggy dishrag in one rubber- gloved hand and a glass plate in the other, she said, “That’s nice, dear. You’re wearing your nice necklace and the earrings, too? No? Where are they?”

Gillian shrugged.

“Oh well, that’s it, dear, don’t you remember? You lost them at a sweet sixteen. Whose was it, Genna’s?”

Sweet sixteen. That was it, the creeping feeling she had felt in her room and all through breakfast. It had reminded her of the way she had prepared for parties in high school. “Oh, I don’t know. How would I remember?” It was Samantha R.’s. The similarity between this morning and that morning seven years ago made her shudder with disgust. Short of breath and feigning composure, she tried to suppress a mixture of embarrassment and self-conscious excitement.

Gillian pushed in her chair and picked up her black patent purse. She slipped it onto her shoulder and tried discreetly to maneuver its bulky width. She tried to appear collected, but still her arm hung awkwardly, protruding vulnerably from her side. After attempting a variety of arrangements, she decided to simply hold the bag in her hand.

“So I think I’ll walk.”

“Rather a long walk dear, I think.” Gillian didn’t answer. Her mother continued, once again facing the window, translucent with an unknown film, maybe dust or dried soap suds. “Have Daddy drive you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Gillian’s bag hung uncomfortably from her hand, nearly grazing the worn linoleum floor, black and sticky with spots of spilt sugar. “It’s fine. I’ll drive myself.”

“You’ll take your car, won’t you?”

Gillian unlocked the door of her car. As she did this, it gave a benevolent little hoot. The noise over the years had come to aggravate her every time she drove. However, she wasn’t sure whether it was the inveterately good-humored pitch or the car itself that exasperated her. It had been a gift from her parents. And at the time a red VW Beetle seemed more than ideal. It was May of her senior year in high school, a time in which the Beetle briefly held status in the realm of low-budget cars. Gillian could feel her stomach coil as she reflected on the unconscious freedom she had felt when she would drive to school with her moon-roof open (an additional feature her parents had splurged on) and Jewel blaring on the radio.

Her satisfaction continued all through the summer and into the fall of her freshman year of college. The car served as more than just a fuel-efficient form of transport. It acted for Gillian as a recognizable trait. She became known as “the girl with the red Beetle.” It was not until halfway through her second semester that she began to notice the little hoot and the title’s ring started to wear off. Now, five years later, she was referred to as “the girl with the old Beetle.” Pick your poison. What irritated her the most, though, was that her parents considered the purchase of the red Beetle as quite possibly the most brilliant move in the history of parenthood. Gillian was shocked that they could be so obtuse not to realize how incredibly wrong they were, especially in the recent months when her embarrassment and loathing had grown exponentially.

As she backed out of the driveway, she could see her mother’s dim silhouette through the murky window panes, obscured by the faded curtains. Gillian could see her gazing demurely above the sink, mouthing the words “Good luck.”

Gillian sat in the waiting room of the public relations branch of Velstry Communications. The Tad and Tom morning show on WJPR was still playing. Though the room was painted a pale yellow, it seemed gray. The window at the end of the hall supplied the only source of natural light. Even this seemed to have an artificial, decompressed quality. The rest of the waiting room was illuminated by fluorescent overhead lights that gave a purpling, lurid affect to everything that moved under them. Gillian sat on one of the benches made from blue plastic material and read an issue of Better Homes and Gardens. The hot lights beat down, a bruised and hot hue, causing her thighs to stick to the synthetic seat. She squirmed, hoping to free her legs from their moistened bonds. Her hot fingers clung to the thin paper of the magazine. Gillian felt herself reading the same sentence again and again: “Unlike other members of the monocotyledonous family, which prefer indirect sunlight, the Arcane strain of orchids, more commonly known as the spider orchid, prefers direct sunlight.” The words washed repetitively through her mind, like the blurry Monet posters decorating the walls.

A crack on the loudspeaker broke her daze. She hoped it would be the calling of her name. “There is a red 1998 Volkswagen Beetle in the parking lot with its lights on. Again, there is a red Volkswagen Beetle with its lights on in the parking lot.” Gillian buried her head behind the protection of the Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the others in the waiting room exchange confused glances that attempted to conceal their smirks. She sunk deep into her seat, trying to close out the voice of the speaker box and immerse herself in spider orchids. Try as she might she couldn’t ignore it. Every two minutes the message was announced. She was relieved when her name was called for the interview.

Gillian got up quickly, letting the magazine slip to the ground, and proceeded towards the open door where a secretary stood beckoning her. “Are you Gillian? Right this way. Mr. Rapt is waiting.”

Gillian entered the office, seating herself in a stiff chair in front of Mr. Rapt’s desk. He had yet to lift his eyes from the face of the computer. Gillian sat in silence with her jacket and purse on her lap, looking awkwardly about the room. It was completely devoid of color and smell except for a photograph on Mr. Rapt’s desk and a rather pungent cup of cooling coffee. He took a sip and made a face; apparently it was still hot. “Would you like some coffee, Gillian? Are you sure? Well then, let’s begin.”

The anxious need to tap her loafered foot, that had persisted all through the interview, subsided as the interview came to an end. She was preparing to get to her feet when Mr. Rapt’s secretary opened the office door. “Mr. Rapt, may I interrupt? I was just wondering if the red Beetle outside with its lights on was yours?”

He looked out the window. “Oh, that thing? No, not mine at all.”

“No I didn’t think so, but we’ve just been announcing it for so long and I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t yours. Anyhow, we can’t figure out whose it could be.”

“Well I don’t have a red Beetle,” her boss answered, staring out the window. “It’s too bad though, an awful waste of electricity. He shook his head with a parental mixture of disappointment and disapproval. “It’s not yours, Gillian, is it?”

She froze. A hot shot ran up her back, diffusing all through her neck and face, which felt swollen and red as though she were having some sort of allergic reaction. Her throat tightened. She gripped the coiled straps of her bag. “Ah no,” she said, as if gasping for air. “ I hear it’s pretty fuel-efficient, though.” Her eyes were fixed on the labyrinth of black cords below Mr. Rapt’s desk. Her foot began to tap again.

“So Gillian, how about we call you?” And the interview was over.

In the parking lot, the black asphalt was heating in the late morning sun. She caught sight of the Beetle staring out at her blankly with its headlights gleaming. She sighed and unlocked the door. The Beetle let out a naive, innocent hoot. Gillian stopped and turned, dropping her keys, and walked out of the parking lot, leaving the car with its lights on.

Mariela Q.

Light Snow

I filled the kettle up with water and put it on the stove. “Here,” I said to Ann, taking a jar down from above the refrigerator. “Pick a tea bag.”

“How is ‘stomach relief’?” she asked, rooting through the bags.

“Bad,” I said, taking mugs out of a box by the stove marked “dishes.” “Stick to green.”

“Too bitter. Do you have Earl Grey?”

“Somewhere in there.”

“Got it,” she said, picking a bag out from the bottom. “So,” she turned to me, “when’s your flight?”

“Six-thirty.”

“So when do you have to leave?”

“Five. It’s right on the metro line so it shouldn’t take that long.” Ann nodded. “And these e-tickets—they’re great. You just give them your name and go.”

“Is it in the same time zone, even?”

“Yes Ann,” I said smiling, “it’s in the same time zone.” I paused. “Part of the state isn’t, actually—it’s on the line. But right now in Nashville it’s 11:20. They might actually be directly south of us, I’m not really sure.”

Ann shrugged and we stood there for a moment. Then steam began to come out of the kettle by my right arm. “It’s probably hot enough.” I motioned for her to give me her tea bag, stuck it in the bottom of one of the mugs, and took a green one from the jar.

“Why isn’t Louise here?” she asked.

“She’s at her boyfriend’s house.”

“Well Jesus, isn’t she going to come and send you off?”

“I’m not going to the moon, Ann, I’m going to come back up sometimes and I haven’t been hired indefinitely.” I paused. “And yes, yes, I do plan on waking her up with my alarm clock tomorrow morning and splitting a pot of coffee with her.”

Ann nodded, “I wish I could be there. But I’m so busy and I haven’t been sleeping.”

“It’s fine. I’m glad you’re here now.”

“Yes, but it’s nice to have people at airports for you.” I looked over at her as I took the tea bag out with a fork. “What about James? What happened with him?”

“Ah…you know. It just tapered off.”

She nodded and looked like she was about to say something. I handed her her mug.

“No big deal,” I said.

“Right, but I was kind of under the impression that you guys—”

“What?”

“Oh, never mind.”

What had actually happened was that about a month ago I had found out that he had slept with his friend Ava… I had asked him something about how things with her were getting on. I knew he’d had feelings for her and he told me that they had slept together a couple weeks ago, and then she had gotten back with her boyfriend. I’d felt a little piqued, and we went out to the stairwell to smoke cigarettes. We had sat there talking about it, and I had made it hard for myself: “So you said you were in love with her before any of this happened—is that true James?” and he said, “I don’t know, but I mean, you know I have problems being emotional with someone—” “Should I even be with you then? I don’t need you to be in love, that’s a little arrogant, but believe me James, the difficulties of actually being with somebody when the feeling is consistent is so much harder than this…chasing the wind”—and on and on like that until we had exhausted ourselves. Where we left off, sure, he may have had some feelings for me, and inside I knew that I was in love with him. We sat there silent for a while and I put out my cigarette and kissed him. Then we made love there, right there on the fifth floor landing. Then I went home and said we could talk on the phone later—purposely leaving it to him to decide to call. We both felt completely weird about it: I felt weird because here I had slept with James on the stairwell and shown him I was ready to stick it out, opened myself to him, and he mustn’t have been prepared for me to be so ready to take him back.

I didn’t ever tell Ann about it. The last she’d heard I was all worked up about the first feeling of connection I’d had with him. I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want her to see how her practical friend had been weak and rash and not gotten anything back for it. It occurred to me that I would probably never tell her, and she probably wouldn’t be seeing James for him to tell her why he wasn’t so sorry to see me go.

“So,” she said, “what exactly are you doing at this place? I still don’t really understand.”

“Just helping out in the administration, like I told you, of this foundation that my aunt works for. Phasing out public housing with fewer apartments, and moving the people who don’t have homes, and raising more money… It isn’t so simple.”

“Yeah… I mean I can’t imagine. But your aunt, do you even know her?”

“No, not very well… I haven’t seen her since I was young.”

“And you aren’t worried?”

“No. Why would I be worried?”

“You’re going to another planet, and she, this woman, has lived there her entire life.”

“That’s right… I’ll come up the hill to her plantation and she’ll be walking around in the atrium with a debutante gown while the red velvet cake decays on the table.”

Ann took a gulp of tea and nodded. “For all you know, yes, yes she will.” She paused and took a sip. “What’s red velvet cake?”

“It’s this Southern thing… but anyway, I was making a reference to Great Expectations… There’s this character who lives in her mansion and wears the wedding gown she’s had on for thirty years.”

“Weird. Is that any good?”

I took a big sip of my tea. It was losing its heat fast. “Not really. You would hate it.”

“Yeah, I haven’t ever gotten on well with those ‘plot books’.”

“Anyway, it’s not going to be so incredibly different. I mean we’re straddling the Mason-Dixon line here.”

She shook her head. “Washington is different. It’s so American it doesn’t have anything to do with how America actually is.”

I wanted to tell her I didn’t think it was so American just because it was full of American buildings and people who were working for America. “Yeah, it’s definitely in its own world.”

“Totally. It isn’t a state and it doesn’t feel like a state. Tennessee? Completely different. You aren’t going to have any reference points with anyone.”

I shrugged. “People are people.”

She shrugged. “But come back if it isn’t…” She paused and looked out the window. “You know, your life. Don’t get so into it that you don’t notice, or feel like you’re giving up if you come back.”

I smiled, put my hand on her arm, and let it fall back to my side. “Don’t worry. I will. And I’m going to write you.”

She smiled to herself, looked down, and then looked back out the window. “Hey, it’s snowing.”

I turned to the window. “Yeah, how about that?” A few large flakes were slowly dropping down, highlighted by the streetlights.

Ann smiled at me. “So what’s the weather like in Tennessee?”

“Well, I think they get season changes and everything, but it makes the D.C. winter look like blizzards.”

She nodded and looked back out.

“So anyway,” I said, “you need to write your address down for me.” I turned and started looking in the kitchen drawers for a pen.

“No,” she said, “hold on, I’ve got a pen and paper in my bag. You don’t need to rummage.”

I nodded and when she went back to the living room I picked up my tea and turned back to the window. I thought to myself that this moment when the snow begins to fall is the best part of the winter. I thought of the rest of the city; I thought about snow falling and beginning to gather on the grass of the White House lawn, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It was melting on the grates of Union Station. I knew that I was going to miss this city. This world of Washington where it was quiet and snowing on a Saturday night. I remembered my first feeling about coming here, a sense of belief looking at all these buildings. It was the same feeling I had had when I was little and I watched fireworks on the bleachers of Rockville, Maryland. When I got accepted at college here I was afraid that it would be too full of people with that feeling, who were in awe to be here. So I was relieved to find Ann, who had no idea about that feeling and who was happy to drink red wine in the dorm and read plays to me, go to art museums. I hadn’t ever tried to explain that feeling’s pull on me. I hadn’t ever tried to explain my childhood. As far as she knew I had been born sixteen in Boston.

I wondered if enough snow would collect to delay my flight. It didn’t take much to throw D.C. off.

Ann was back in the kitchen bent over a notebook page. “I’m going to write you a note, but I don’t want you to open it until you’re on the plane. Can you do that?”

“Yes, I can.”

“You’re sure?”

I nodded. Then I looked over at the clock. Midnight. “It’s late… you should be getting home.”

She nodded and finished writing. She folded the paper over. “I’m underdressed, as usual.” She just had on a short overcoat.

I walked over to my suitcase in the hall. “Here, take my scarf.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes… I was going to wear it to the plane but I won’t really need it… I looked on the weather this morning and in Nashville it’s in the 60s.”

“You’re totally sure? I don’t really need it either.”

“No, I want you to take it.” I held it out and she took it. I looked at the clock. “But all right… We’d better get going, I think a bus comes in ten minutes.” I had waited for that bus to get to her house late at night many times.

I got my coat, and stuck her note in the pocket. We headed to the door.

“You don’t have to walk me, you know. Scarfless as you are.”

“Nonsense, I will.”

Out on the street I lit a cigarette and drew my coat up around my neck. We walked the three blocks in silence and then arrived at the bus stop on the big avenue.

“Nights like this are the best ones to smoke,” I said, looking down at the neon and the snow.

“Yes, I have a hard time.” Ann had given it up around when I had met her, when I had been taking it up myself.

We paused again and I looked at her and then over my shoulder. The bus was pulling up. She looked at me and smiled a little sadly. “So, I don’t want you getting sucked up.” She hugged me.

“Don’t worry,” I said, my hands still on her shoulders, “I’ll be coming back.” In fact, I had no idea if I was coming back or what I was doing.

She got on the bus, and I waved as it pulled away. I turned back and walked towards my house. Under a streetlight, I stopped, finished my cigarette, and pulled her note out of my pocket. I haven’t ever been patient about those things and I felt like I was in the right mood for it.

In her block letters, she had written:

J -
WELL, WELL, REMEMBER WE LIVE IN A BEAUTIFUL WORLD. BUT I THINK YOU KNOW THAT, BETTER THAN ME. I'M NOT SURE ABOUT TENN. THOUGH. WRITE ME A LETTER. SEND ME A PICTURE IF IT SNOWS.
WITH LOVE,
ANN

Ingrid N.

The Honeymoon

Samantha stretched across her seat to turn off the ignition. Immediately, the radio cut off and she was startled by the sudden silence. She let out a deep breath of air, as if she were very weary, and opened the door of the black Jetta. The heat had finally broken. A cool Kansas breeze rustled the trees in the parking lot. It was a perfect day, warm but not humid, with blue skies spotted with fluffy clouds. Samantha stuck out a bare foot onto the asphalt. Her cutoff blue jeans had risen up slightly, showing her tan line. The asphalt felt warm and rough under her toes, and she laughed softly under her breath at the tickling feeling it gave her. She stood up and stretched her arms over her head, noticing that the suburban mall was almost completely deserted. There were a few kids sitting on the curb across from her, rolling on their skateboards and listening to a boom box. The words to the song drifted slowly over to her, and she recognized them as the words to “Lollipop,” the old bubble gum tune of the 60’s. She wondered at the randomness of it. The blast from her past reminded her of the countless summer days she had spent listening to this song and riding her bike to the diner.

Just then she saw Alex walking out of the Publix carrying two grocery bags. She danced over to the back seat, took out the camera and snapped a quick photo. She had been fastidiously recording every aspect of their trip. But looking at his face, she could see that he wasn’t happy, and it reminded her of what she had planned to do. She walked slowly up to him and took hold of one of the shopping bags.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking at him as he opened the trunk.

“What?” he said. “Oh. Nothing. It’s just that the sun was behind you. I couldn’t see anything.”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

“Yes. For Christ’s sake, Sam, you don’t have to make everything into a bigger deal than it is, O.K.?” He slammed the trunk door shut and turned around to look at her. “You always do that!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, hurt. Slowly, she walked back to the passenger side of the car. She didn’t open the door, but stood there looking at him. He walked over to the driver’s side, looking for the keys. She spent another moment just looking at him, while he was absorbed with other things. It shocked her to realize how little she actually knew about him. She knew that he was a neurotic driver, that he couldn’t stand to be awake when she was driving. He was very handsome, but she knew that he couldn’t care less about the way he looked. He felt perfectly comfortable going several days without changing his shirt. He had been the second-string quarterback on the football team in high school and dated a girl named Mandy for most of that time. He loved dogs and mint chocolate chip ice cream and kind of liked her (she figured), but what else did she really know? What was his mother’s name, for instance? What was his favorite subject in school? What had he wanted to be as a child? Just at that second he looked up and caught her looking at him.

“What?” he asked, smiling a little. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Sorry,” she apologized again. He had found the keys and was about to open the door when she stopped him. “Alex.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think we’re crazy?”

“Of course.” He smiled at her again. “But wasn’t that sort of the point?”

She nodded slowly, avoiding his eyes. He was right: the whole situation was crazy, but for some reason that made her feel worse that she was having second thoughts. She felt like she was letting him down.

“Sam,” he asked, picking up on her change of heart. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. It’s just that, well, I’m not sure if this is such a good idea anymore.” She waited, and for a moment he looked hurt and confused. But then it passed.

“What, you don’t want me to meet your parents? That’s cool. I mean, whatever. We can just stay right here and buy a place and never have to see either of our parental units again. I’m totally O.K. with that.” He laughed. He was making a joke. She tried to smile, but couldn’t make it happen. For some reason she felt like she was about to cry.

“I don’t mean just that. I mean—everything. I think we should get an annulment.” This time he didn’t reply at all and wouldn’t look her in the eyes. She felt like she had to elaborate. “I mean, Alex, it’s not you. You know that. I think you’re great. It’s just the whole situation, the way everything happened. I mean, come on! We’re like a walking cliché. Get drunk at your high school reunion in Las Vegas and marry some guy that you spoke to maybe five times when you were sixteen? I mean, we weren’t even friends at school!” She looked over at him for the first time and saw that he was looking at the kids in the distance. He didn’t even look like he was listening. She got the feeling that she was doing this all wrong, and the thought cut like a knife into her chest. Why couldn’t she just have waited until they had gotten to New York, or better yet, toughed it out and kept her mouth shut in the first place?

“Alex, I’m sorry. I really have had a great time with you. This is the most fun I think I’ve ever had driving across the country!” A faint smile appeared on his face. “It’s just not… practical,” she finished, hating having to drag up a word that she never intended on using when speaking about her life. “I’m sorry.” It felt to Samantha that she had apologized more for herself in these last five minutes than she had in the last five years. There was a long silence, and then he slowly turned to look at her again. She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes, but suddenly she wished that he would disagree with her and refuse to go home without her. In that moment he looked to her like the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. But then he spoke.

“O.K.,” he shrugged. “I guess you’re right, Sam. We weren’t thinking. I mean, I don’t even know you!” For some reason, this comment offended her deeply. “But I’ve had a great time with you too.” There was a long silence.

“Is that it?” she asked, astounded.

“I guess so. I mean, there is the question of where we go from here, but we can figure that out when we get to Kansas City. So if it’s not too awkward for you, I think you’ll have to get back in the car for a few more hours.” He sounded like he was mocking her, and she opened the door and sat down feeling like she had been defeated. But it was over. She had said what she had planned on saying, and it had turned out pretty well. If there was one thing she had learned about Alex on their five-day road trip together, it was that he had the power more than any other person she knew to make her feel one thousand different emotions at the same time. He flopped down in his seat and turned on the ignition. He turned once more to her and said, “Hey. Sam, I really love you.” He then took her face in his hands and kissed her warmly on the mouth. Dumbfounded, she tried to speak but the words would not come. She was desperately trying to regain control of the conversation. Alex slowly pulled out of the parking space. Taking her hand in his, he said, “I’m glad we had this little talk.” She opened the window and took a deep breath. She hated him again. The car drove past the kids sitting with their skateboards, and they flashed her a peace sign as the car rolled by. The lyrics of “Sugar Sugar” drifted after the car as it turned down the lonely Kansas road, carrying husband and wife.

Phoebe P.

In the Woods

He was an odd creature that lived in the woods by a seldom-traveled road that led to a seldom-visited village. About once a week he would hear the sounds of a car nosily coming down the bumpy path, but that was the closest he came to human interaction. He had a dark cave covered in spongy moss and hidden by tangled vines. He fed off the scrawny rabbits, raccoons, squirrels and other small woodland creatures that populated the woods surrounding him. He had been there since forever and had no notion of any other place. He was very clever in his way. He had a clean spring nearby to wash and drink from, and a bow and arrows to hunt with. For he could not catch his food on foot as the other predators of the forest could. He never worried about being discovered for he had been so long alone that it never occurred to him that there might be others out there. He ate his meat raw and so had no fire smoke to give away his presence. He moved through the trees like a ghost and so had no tracks or sounds to announce his movements.

One day as he was checking his traps he found a golden object sticking out of the ground. Of course he didn’t know it was golden because he had never seen anything fitting that description before. As he knelt to the ground to look more closely at it he was unable to put a word to the thought that came to his mind because he had never seen anything beautiful before either. He reached a clawed hand forward to pick it up, but it seemed rooted strongly into the ground. He tugged harder and the object came up a little further, revealing more gold in the ground underneath it. Every time he pulled, the smooth golden dome that the golden object was rooted into came up a little further, and he would become even more excited at the prospect of so much beauty at once. But then an unbeautiful part began to emerge. He tried to push it back down, disliking the look of it, but it too was attached to the golden dome. Curious, he pulled it up further to see if perhaps there was more beauty attached to this unbeautiful part, but there wasn’t, at least as far as he could see. But the more he tugged, the more he lost interest in what came out. Nothing else had the alluring quality of the golden piece that he had first discovered. He gave a casual glance at the unbeautiful pale place, a white part that was attached to the golden dome, not knowing that it was called a head, and at the two dark and foul smelling pits in it, not knowing they once held eyes. He ran a paw quickly down the long pale arm and two bare breasts, not knowing that they were once warm and soft to the touch. He did all this and then, just as quickly, he severed the golden object from its golden dome with a swipe of a claw. It was what you and I would call a pigtail.

Taking the pigtail in one of his paws, he pressed it warmly to his wet mustache. The coarse, dark threads that grew abundantly on his upper lip entwined lovingly with the smooth, soft strands. He inhaled deeply and breathed the clean fresh-scrubbed smell that tickled his nostrils. He nuzzled it gently and tentatively ventured his tongue out to ascertain its taste. It was good. He snuffled wetly into the braided hairs and stroked the various rises and falls smoothly following its shiny surface. Then he took it and stuffed it into the animal skin that he used to cover his patched fur body and headed for home.

Kiki T.

These damn streets are so dirty. I try to help, I really do, but no one seems to help me help them. I sweep it off, and I swear to God, it’s not more than three hours later that they’re all dirty again. It’s dangerous, I tell you, extremely dangerous, and I try to yell to tell them so, but no one seems to pay attention. They just don’t understand how much danger they put themselves in by this mess they create. And it’s not like the cars do anything to help it. They say these new cars are good for cleanliness, but I know they are lying. They always lie. And they say they like it when you discover they’re lying, but that’s just to cover their own asses. This medal here is for that. I discovered The General was lying, and he beat me up for it, but when they found me the next day, they told me I was great for having discovered their lies. They said it was really courageous of me, but how can it really be courageous if they make you do it? And if you don’t remember? They kept saying that it was O.K. not to remember, but that can’t be true. Because all I saw was him coming for me, and then there was blood, and I was lying down and the dirt wouldn’t leave. I tried to scrub it off but it wouldn’t go. It was sticky and brown because it wouldn’t come off. And I tried, but I couldn’t move my arm because it wasn’t really mine if it was in that position. And I thought that before I was screaming, and I told them to stop, but they didn’t listen. They never pay attention. And then the other ones came and told me I was so courageous, but I know they didn’t care. They gave me that one first, but then I got this one later when they found out about the man who was living with me without them knowing because he was my friend. But they didn’t understand why he was there with me.

The others I got other places. And each one was for something else, but some I only found. I sometimes find them on the ground or in my dustpan. And I try to ask whose they are, but no one seems to hear me so I shout louder, and I don’t think they hear me even then. My dustpan doesn’t get full but I keep going because there’s so much damn dirt, and even when it’s gone it comes right back very soon and then it’s dangerous for everyone although they don’t know how dangerous it is. They told me to keep cleaning, and so I did, but they kept throwing the dirt onto the ground and there was more for me to pick up with the broom and so I tried. But then they wouldn’t let me stop, and when I continued my dustpan got full. I put the dirt in the dustpan and put it into the garbage but then I looked again and the floor seemed dirtier than before and when I tried to throw it away the garbage was empty. I was cold, but they laughed and I kept sweeping.

He and the guy told me not to tell, but I didn’t know what they wanted me not to say, and I tried to say that but they wouldn’t listen. So he took me in, and then I don’t know what but I was on the ground and the blood was there. The rats were everywhere, and the dirt wouldn’t leave. I looked like the ground with the brown covering me too, but it wouldn’t leave. Then they took me somewhere warm and I tried to tell them what I thought, but they wouldn’t listen and told me that they knew. They didn’t, though, because I didn’t know, so how could they? They weren’t there, but they told me that the men had been hurting others also, and that I was the one who found it out. But they didn’t care about that. The other guys heard me, but they didn’t know where it was from. And they didn’t listen, not to me really. Just heard, and heard the yells. But I was trying to talk to them, and they ignored it, because they weren’t supposed to know. So later they told me I was courageous, but I don’t listen, because I know they don’t really mind at all.

But the dirt wouldn’t go away, and I wanted it to, because it was slimy and awful on me, and it wouldn’t let me get it to leave. So I still try to tell people, and they still don’t listen, because they don’t know how dangerous it really is for them. They don’t understand even though I tell them again and again. And also, it gets cold outside, but I don’t care because I have all my medals on, and the sun warms them up. Then I’m warm because I know how hot the sun is. I don’t like to go home too early, because there are lots of drafts in there. It also stays much better if I’m not there because then there isn’t any dirt there for me to make. So when I’m done for that day, I go there, and then I try to leave, because in the mornings, they dirty it again. Even when I tell them to stop.

Ilana N.