Fiction

Meditation on the Permanence of Glass

Sal Jackson

A bird hit the window. It wanted to fly right in. Your initial anger was at the bird, then the window, then the window cleaner for doing such an immaculate job; there was no way the bird could have seen it. The window cleaner must have felt a sense of pride in a job so well done, but did he feel a dull dread, knowing this crystal-clear glass would increase the chances of little birdies snapping their necks in mid-flight? The old window cleaner may have been aware of this danger and might have done a lousy job on purpose so birds like this one—it might be a sparrow—would notice the glass in time. If this were true, the old window cleaner, while performing his lousy work, would have had the same sense of pride as the new window cleaner. This new window cleaner’s work is impeccable, but was your complaint to the window-cleaning company worth it? What was such a bother about a couple of streaks on the window? Why is a sense of pride in one’s work important? Why was the window closed in the first place? A bit of fresh air would rid the apartment of its staleness, and a sparrow swooping around the room while you skipped amongst the furniture, trying to shoo it back outside, would have really got the blood pumping. But now you’re rooting through the closet for a shoebox, the only dignified place for a small dead bird.

B.L.T. Rider

Racan Souiedan

Image: B BarbosaImage: B Barbosa

Marek Laredo quit his job at the office, broke up with his girlfriend, Sarah, and headed along the highway to the badlands of Death Valley in his blood-red Chevy Camaro. At mile fourteen, he pulled over to the side of the road and whipped his stale necktie out of the air-conditioned interior and into the parched California desert.

Marek leaned back behind the wheel and brushed his wild, curly hair aside. He stepped on the gas and then set his car on cruise control through a smooth stretch of highway.

At Leadfield he spotted an exit sign and turned off the highway for a hot meal. Leadfield was a quiet town with little pink houses and big green lawns. At Tot’s Diner, Marek pulled into the parking lot and screeched to a halt.

Tot’s Diner seemed no different from any of the countless dives Marek had visited in his life. A young man in an apron dragged a dirty mop along the cracked linoleum floor. Obese customers bulged out of shabby blue vinyl booths. A man in a trucker cap shovelled eggs and meat down his throat. A ceiling fan spun overhead, sprinkling years of collected dust onto plates below. As Marek peeled off his shades, a few of the men caught his gaze. Quiet murmuring filled his ears. From one of the booths, the town’s sheriff, gave him the stink eye while chewing a mouthful of steak. “You keep your nose clean in my town, son,” said the sheriff.

Marek nodded and cracked a thin smile. Play the game, Marek thought. You can wreak vengeance on the drive out but for now, don’t step out of line. The walls of the diner were battleship grey, but the paint had clearly been white once. “Feels like I’m in the hull of a ship,” Marek whispered. He took a booth by the window so he could see his car.

“Need a menu, honey?” asked the waitress, a plump middle-aged woman with dull black hair.

“Yes, please,” he replied. The waitress handed him the menu, a single laminated sheet of lined paper. He immediately decided on the bacon and tomato sandwich. “I’ll have a bacon and tomato sandwich, please,” he said.

“Do you want lettuce with that?” she asked, and Marek responded positively.

“Hey, that’s just a BLT!” said Marek. He laughed awkwardly. The waitress stared at him. The sheriff glared at Marek, clenching a fork between his pale fingers.

“Come on, it was just a joke,” said Marek. The waitress glared at him. Her stomach bulged from the weight of her heaving breaths. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead. The metallic ping of cutlery striking linoleum resounded throughout the diner. Marek could feel everyone in the room staring at him with hostility. Amid the silence, someone said, “His sorry ass is finished.” Marek trembled but couldn’t decide what to do.

The waitress abruptly stormed off toward the kitchen. Marek seized the opportunity to scramble for the exit. His feet skidded on the damp floor. He kicked open the door and ran into the parking lot. He dropped his keys in the dirt. His hands clawed at the car door.

The waitress stepped outside and pulled a pistol from the pocket of her apron. She aimed and shot Marek through the temple. His corpse fell to the ground. “No, it ain’t just a BLT,” said the waitress. “Pity it took your worthless life for you to figure that out.”

Anguish of a House-Sat Cat

Marty Bachman

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My diet has been reduced to canned food ever since my keepers left for vacation and the fat tart they employed for my own personal care threw the salmon steaks that were reserved for my lunch and dinner into the box freezer in the basement. She muddled down there for what seemed like an hour, and when I heard those meaty slabs she uses as thighs slapping together as she lumbered back upstairs, I slid against the doorframe and prepared to pounce, to take a bite out of one of those fleshy hooves and fight for what was mine! But then, I thought, what would happen to the poor freezing salmon? A sneak attack would only waste valuable time and make an enemy of the only being who could retrieve my precious fish from the icebox, a task I am incapable of performing myself.

My only hope was to smother her with affection. So as one of her chunky ankles passed by the door, I bristled my tail and shouldered into her calf with a purr.

“Oh kitty.”

I carved figure eights between her legs until she stooped to pick me up.

“You must be hungry.”

I allowed her to stroke my well-manicured coat as she walked around the living room, and I blinked my eyes to feign a look of ecstasy.

“Listen to your little motor running. You’re not at all the devil they spoke of! Let’s get you some food.”

But she was wasting time! The poor pink fish steaks were freezing in the basement. I wanted to swat at her to let me down and release me from the senseless stroking and pacing—but wait, she began to tromp toward the basement door—yes, yes!

No. She walked past the basement and plunked me down beside my stinking bowl.

What is this foulness? Whiskas?

I can no longer be held accountable for my actions.

Wishes For Your Journey

Pablo Garcia

Image: Davide TavianiImage: Davide Taviani

Dear Erika and Juan,
A poem, on your wedding day, to feed the flames of your life-long love:

I wish you much health,
of mind and body, of heart and soul,
clear skies, ripe fruit and straight roads—
in fact, one straight road,

Very straight and very wide, with many
rest stops along the way for when you should
need them, with pleasant scenery—trees and
cows—to be gazed upon from this road.

Whether you choose to travel by car or foot
or, more romantically, by horse and carriage,
may this road be free of speed traps,
may you get no tickets on this road.

May this road be straight but only insofar as
it is not boring, for when you are bored,
may this road veer, this way and that, gently
or, if you prefer, with sharp, exciting turns
so that you are forced to hang on, with all
your might, to the steering wheel or the reigns
or simply to walk with more care.

May the sun that beats down on the road provide
you with adequate warmth and light, and never
scorch your skin but rather give you, Juan,
a light tan, to accentuate your olive skin—and you, Erika,
may you always find the sunscreen
of your choice at one of the many rest stops.

May the elks that cross this road
cross at a safe distance so that
you may admire them but not
endanger their, nor your own, lives.

May the passengers who travel along your road
be agreeable, may you want them there and
may this road lead to where you want to go:
a grassy meadow, a deserted beach, a field of unicorns,

Or just a little country farmhouse where
you can sit by the fire in the living room
and, on sunny mornings, look out the window
at the road that stops at your front door.

Many happy wishes on your journey,

~Pablo Garcia

Wishes For Sweeping Romance

Pablo Garcia

Image: Ed YourdonImage: Ed Yourdon

Dear Derek and Jane,

On this luminous day of your marriage I wish you the sweeping romance, the crushed seeds and pulpy mess of love, that bound my mother, Bonita de Flores Perdes, and my father, Carlos de Cervantes Garcia. Derek (though it would be easier to impart the message of my parents’ tale upon you if your name were more exotic, like Jean-Pierre or Dmitry Alexandrovich or even Lord something-or-other), I wish that Jane (who, let’s face it, would make the writing of these wishes easier by adopting a name like Ekaterina or Grace or Florence) inspires in you the burning desire my father, Carlos de Cervantes Garcia, found in my mother, Bonita de Flores Perdes. And now, I would like to share their tale with you so that you may understand what true love is.

When my father was twenty-two, he served as a deckhand on a cargo ship, usually full of passion fruit and bananas, that travelled down the west coast of South America. In one of the port towns, Santa Clara, my father was leaving a bar at sunrise when he spotted the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. She was sweeping the steps of a fabric shop. What is your name? he called out to her. Bonita de Flores Perdes, she spoke back. The name echoed across the cobblestones of the empty streets. Then he called out, and I am Carlos de Cervantes Garcia, remember me. When his ship pulled out of the harbour that evening, he wrote in his diary: Without my little flower, the earth is but a cold glass sphere. Though he sailed along that coast for three years, all the way to the southern tip of Chile and all the way north to San Diego, and visited a brothel in every port, whenever he went to sleep, on the wind that blew in from the sea, he could hear the name Bonita, Bonita. And in storms, when the waves slapped down onto themselves or onto particularly jagged rocks, in the echo of water crashing over itself, he could hear de Flores Perdes, de Flores Perdes.

One Christmas day, off the coast of Mexico, his ship was attacked: a gang of pirates stormed the deck and held the crew hostage with muskets and swords and clubs. Then the wind picked up and the name Bonita filled my father’s ears and that name brought to my father’s hands the force to throw a barrel full of salted sardines at his eye-patched captors. The pirates who were not crushed by the barrel fled on their own accord, for they had seen, in both my father’s eyes, the fire of a man in love. Bonita, Bonita was all my father heard when the pirates were gone and the wind caressed his cheeks.

And so, Derek and Jane, it was one day, when my father came to believe he would never again see his love, and that the woman who burned in his heart and whose name rang in his ears was forever lost to him, that my father’s ship was caught in a wicked storm. The wind and the waves, together, synchronized, called out, Bonita, de Flores Perdes, Bonita, de Flores Perdes. My father ran to the captain to say his guardian angel, Bonita de Flores Perdes, was calling to him and saying the ship should be steered toward port, not starboard as the captain and his men had thought, for the ship had become turned around and all the ship’s men confused, and it was the light in my father’s eyes, the light of a man in love with a woman that could only be named Bonita de Flores Perdes, that convinced the captain to listen to my father. When the captain turned the ship, in no time they found their way out of the storm and soon spotted a lighthouse and lumbered into a little port town.

The port was the same Santa Clara that my father had visited three years before, and my mother, Bonita de Flores Perdes, was waiting in the wharf, for she’d had an ominous feeling that night and could not sleep, and so, when the ship pulled in, it was my mother who greeted my father. When, finally, they held each other on that wharf, under the full pregnant moon, the dazzling stars, the salted sea wind whispering Bonita, Bonita, my mother said to my father, I had not forgotten you, it is you who burns in my heart, I hear your name on the wind and in the waves, I have waited for you since that night you called out to me those years ago, I have waited for you, Carlos de Cervantes Garcia.

I wish to you, Derek and Jane, that you too are swept away in such a romance, this epic drama the gods call love.

Your dear friend,

~Pablo Garcia

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