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the last time anyone saw her  she was smoking Pall Malls in the back of a town car and ashing into a green glass brick. now, rising from the surf like a giant,  taller than Capitol Records, wearing the broken Hollywood  o like a halo, she is barefoot and  crushing all the studios. she is picking up executives and  hurling them into the Pacific Ocean. later, their bloated bodies return with the tide, bobbing like pin-striped manatees, later pushed back out to sea  by a great gray whale who doesn't give a shit about  movies. DJ Wolfinsohn’s first published work was a riot grrrl ‘zine. Her fiction and poetry can be found in Gone Lawn, HAD, Variant Lit, Brawl, Lost Balloon, Jake, Vestal Review, and on her website,  debbywolfinsohn.com . Her 'zine can be found in the rock 'n roll hall of fame in Cleveland. Born in Detroit and raised in Wisconsin, she currently lives and writes in a 70's ranch house in Austin, with a large collection of rescue pets, rescue plants, too much yarn, and her wonderful family.

Maud Lavin’s latest chapbook Silences, Ohio  (Cowboy Jamboree Press) is set squarely in the Midwest, a place I’ve spent very little time. As a native Californian, who grew up on the rural edge of Silicon Valley, I didn’t expect to relate to these tales from the middle of the country. But in this collection of essays, I recognized the silences, and the exclusion that often comes with them. These are the same silences that my grandmother carried with her from Wisconsin when she moved to the West Coast, and that she taught her California-born children to hold onto, that I learned from my mother and her siblings.  In her powerful collection, Lavin moves through the decades from her youth to more recent high school reunions, and offers glimpses into her Ohio home from different points in her life. I was especially struck by “4-H Church Basement Meetings,” in which she recounts time spent in a 4-H sewing club. She includes the pledge in the story that I remember from my own stint sewing and raising a rabbit as a kid. But the kick of the story is that Lavin learned decades later that while the other girls were often invited over to someone’s home for dinner, she never received an invitation. I know that silence of exclusion, and the way it gets filled up with extrapolation about what might be wrong with you, or what you might have done to deserve the exclusion. I have my own tale of a friend whose parents would not allow her to visit my home, but never gave a reason for it.  “I really really liked 4-H,” Lavin writes. “If I’d known how much I was left out of the dinner social scene around it, that would’ve ruined it for me. I would’ve felt horrible.” Lavin chooses to hold onto the positive memories, and to cherish the adult relationship she has with a friend who attended 4-H with her. She doesn’t ask her friend about the dinners, or the why she wasn’t included. The silence in this instance provides a protective buffer. In “Night Swim or Silence Only Goes So Far,” Lavin recounts an encounter with an old crush from high school when she returns for a visit in her late twenties. It harkens back to the first piece by her I ever read, “Bodies, Water” a vulnerable CNF piece published in Roi Fainéant’s “Heat” special issue. In this new body of water story, Lavin flirts with the idea of a romance with this old crush, though stays faithful to a boyfriend she has back east. The next they meet up, the boy has become a man who has shifted into a new being, a conservative who openly uses racist slurs. This time, Lavin speaks up and calls him on the inappropriate language, a rebuke he brushes off by calling her a “humanitarian.” The encounter is the last one she has with him.  While most of the 14 short essays focus on a specific person or encounter, in “To Someone Moving to the Midwest,” she offers some advice for how to break silences, and how to speak up for your ideals. “The bigotry spreads wide. Be prepared to say, ‘Oh, I have a really good friend who is X.’ Make that friendship unassailable, ‘We grew up together. She was my neighbor, we’re still in touch decades later.’ Cast aside prejudice for the moment.” Like Lavin, I have been silent for much of my life, and like her, I have found a voice through writing. In times such as the ones we are living through now, post-2024 election, we must use our voices to speak up for ourselves and for those around us who may not have the power to break their silences. Lavin provides the beginnings of a blueprint for what we can find in the quiet if we let our words out. Silences, Ohio  (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2024) Available from Amazon.com. Melissa Flores Anderson is a Latinx Californian who lives with her son and husband. Her creative work has been published in more than two dozen journals or anthologies, and she is a reader/editor with  Roi Fainéant Press . She has a chapbook “A Body in Motion” (JAKE), a novelette “Roadkill” (ELJ Editions), and her first full-length short story collection “All and Then None of You” (Cowboy Jamboree) is out fall 2025. Follow her on Twitter and Bluesky @melissacuisine or IG/Threads @theirishmonths. Read her work at   Melissafloresandersonwrites.com .

‘Compassion was the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence. ~ ‘The Idiot’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky The realisation he is sleepwalking comes to me abruptly, with a slightly delayed sense of eeriness and confusion. Soon I realise what sort of a sleepwalker he is, and it scares me. I came to London after the hysteria with Covid, which was not taken seriously in my home country, was replaced with another, this one coloured in yellow and blue. I don't want to sound cynical, I just want you to understand me: I am angry, and I am sick of it all. Because of this I leave my own country, a no-longer-young professor of history and language, left to start over from nothing in a country I deeply respect but am still an alien in. I would love to come here in prosperous times, with a confident smile on my face and friends extending their arms in greeting. Instead, I arrive alone, depressed, broke, and broken. I still consider myself lucky when I move into this little room on the first floor. There are four rooms and a shared kitchen. Right on top of me lives a man from Kyiv — Mikola, we call him Nick. We share Russian as our native language, so I am glad to have him around. He also appreciates I know some Ukrainian and greet him saying ‘dobrogo ranku’, which means ‘good morning’, so we get along. Two other rooms are rented by quiet and reserved English guys who work for a construction site nearby, and we rarely see or hear them. Nick, though, says he is more English than Ukrainian. He settled in London long before the invasion, six years ago, works in a law firm, cut all ties with his homeland, and stays away from the news. ‘What is happening there is horrible, of course,’  he says to me once, ‘but I am no longer a part of that world and I cherish my feeling of being local here; this is why I don’t get mad over the war — I help when I can, I donate some money, but I still treat it as just one of the inevitable things happening in a globalised world.’ I don’t doubt his words, which amplifies my surprise later. Most of my time is spent either searching for a teaching job or working on my academic writing. I don’t spend much time in my flat to avoid the acute sensation of loneliness, which is always lurking around me. I am just glad I can  sleep here for a reasonable price.   The first couple of nights at the new place are quiet —  I don’t hear or feel anything because of how tired I am. Then, during my second week here, a strange shuffling noise from above wakes me up;  like someone slowly pacing about their room. I glance at my watch: it is one in the morning. I think that maybe Nick has just returned home from somewhere, but then remember saying ‘good night’ to him around three hours ago.  I lie without moving, breathing quietly. The noise doesn’t stop. I think it is all nonsense, but soon I hear steps. I calm myself with the thought that Nick probably just can’t sleep and decide to go downstairs for a cup of tea. However, as soon as he gets down he starts to go up. I am lying in my bed, all sleep gone,  listening to footsteps creaking because my neighbour is going up and down the stairs, up and down, up and down, and then again, up and down. He never pauses. Then I pick up another noise — a steady murmuring.  I am afraid to move —  Nick is a friendly and chatty type, but what is happening now is something else, but the Nick just behind my door now is a different man. It takes him about half an hour to calm down and to return to his room. The noise ceases. I can’t fall asleep for an hour  before my tiredness takes over.   In the morning we greet each other like nothing happened — he doesn’t say a word about that night, and I am not confident enough to ask. Next night is calm, and I decide it was a one-time accident enlarged by my frayed nerves. I blame myself for being paranoid and aim to forget it.  But then it happens again. And again. Four weeks in and I am starting to develop insomnia fuelled by  the unrest this strange case of sleepwalking is causing. I read Wikipedia about whether it can be dangerous. I start to think I can distinguish words – and these words scare me.  Finally, it all culminates  to an even more grotesque encounter.  It is late at night. I try to finish my paper on the Russo-Japanese War — my area of academic interest — and the final point of my argument keeps eluding me. Well after midnight I get up, pick my empty cup and go to the kitchen for some peppermint tea.  It is dark in the corridor and even from afar I see the light is off in the kitchen. However, when I come closer, it becomes obvious someone is inside: soft blue light is sinking from under the shut door, and there is noise, as if someone is watching a TV. I gently push the door open. What I see there doesn’t look too grim at first: Nick is sitting at the dinner table, his staring face illuminated by his laptop screen. The sounds the laptop is making are strange, though: it seems he is watching some kind of reportage with shouts, crashes, and something resembling gunshots.  What is even more ominous is that Nick is murmuring something to himself, as if he repeats what he can hear on his laptop. ‘Hey mate’, I say in a low voice.  He pretends he doesn’t see me.  ‘Is it alright if I switch the kettle on? Need more tea.’ No answer.  Only then do I pay attention to what Nick is watching, suddenly distinguishing a mix of Ukrainian and Russian in his murmurs. On his screen there is GoPro footage from the camera mounted on a soldier’s helmet. The owner is sitting in a trench, peeking out to shoot automatic fire over his head. Next moment he sees a soldier running towards him and fires at him without taking time to aim. The soldier falls to the ground. The shooter comments on his kill. A dreadful realisation: this is real footage of one man killing another in a war happening right now in Ukraine. The soldier is shouting and swearing, and Nick is glued to the screen watching this ravenous display and repeating all the words he can hear in a half-whisper.  He looks like a zombie. I glance at him: a glassy stare, his hands hanging low along his sides, he is dressed in his sleepwear. ‘Nick’, I call in a low voice and wave at him. Nothing. He behaves as if I am not there. I become scared. I forget about my tea, rush to the door, and, closing it behind me, lock myself in my room.   When later I hear the stairs creaking, I think my heart is going to blow up right inside my chest. Nick, still swearing and murmuring about recharging arms and fighting the invaders, gets into his room. The rest of that night is black and silent.  When we stumble upon each other again in a few days, I am not brave enough to ask if he knows he is a sleepwalker. Instead, I say: – Did you start following the news about the war in Ukraine, by the way? – No. Anything happened in particular? – Nothing, same stuff, basically.  – I see. As I’ve said before. It is a terrible thing, but I don’t feel I should be too concerned about it — my home is here now, and here we have our own troubles. Thank God my relatives are not there  anymore. Why do you ask?   – Ah, nothing, just… wondering when it all ends. – Man, do as I do: stop reading news, and start thinking about what you actually have influence upon. Worrying about stuff you can’t change never brings any good. – Yeah, you’re right, one hundred percent.  – There you go! You’ll see you’ll sleep better at night. I wish him a great day. He has absolutely no clue.  In a few days I finally manage to get a job as a tutor, and decide to leave that place for a small flat in the outskirts of London, exchanging shorter commutes for the right to cope with my own demons only. *** After I settle at the new place, my routine of long commutes via the Tube starts. I am used to it, so it doesn’t bother me: most of the time I am just reading without paying attention to what is going on around me. However, there are encounters that both trouble and resonate with me.  Like this girl with a duffel bag.  She is standing right in front of me, and as soon as I glance at her face I know she is from Ukraine. I can spot a war refugee by the look of their face . She is in her early twenties, dressed in an old hoodie sweatshirt with worn out ‘NASA’ logo, a military-style khaki-green jacket on top of it, sweatpants, and heavy boots.   In her hands she holds a small women’s bag, and with her she has just one duffel bag. I can say she is cold, but I can understand why it doesn’t seem to make the top five of the things bothering her right now.  That look on her face, on all of their faces — let me try to describe it. First thing you notice is deep, boundless tiredness. Second is fear, fear of two kinds: of the unknown, and fear for those who are still there . Never for themselves. Third is homesickness. Right from the moment you are forced to leave your home, the longing starts, and with time it only becomes stronger.  Quite unintentionally she glances at a woman sitting across from her, who looks either Russian or Ukrainian, but is very different: she has lush black hair, wears a lot of makeup, a rather exposed dress, and a Gucci bag. The girl only briefly gazes upon her and stares away. When the train stops, the announcement says it terminates here and won’t be going further. With occasional grumbles, people start to leave. The girl looks around, disoriented, hesitant about what is going on. Train announcements are hard to understand even for those with a good command of English. Finally, when everyone leaves, she also gets to the platform, still trying to figure out what is going on.   When the train starts moving, there is a sudden harsh noise followed by abrupt shouts. The girl screams and kneels down, covering her ears. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened: just an unusually loud crack of train wagons, and two agitated men joking between themselves about it. However, I think I know what is happening with her at the moment. The cracking noise could have reminded her of mortar explosions shattering and smashing in all the windows in a place that was her home. And men shouting… well, it is rarely a good omen.   When the next train arrives, a man gently touches her shoulder and helps her to her feet. – There you go, it was nothing, just an old train. Here comes the one you need — you can board it. She is hesitant at first. Slowly, she grabs her belongings. He accompanies her.  – Thank you, — she says with a strong accent. — Thank you very much.   – No worries, there you go. When the doors close, she realises a pleasant gentleman has not followed her. A feeling of not being alone that illuminated her soul for a fraction of a moment is now gone. Her shy smile gave place to a familiar look of tiredness, fear, and homesickness.   I hurry to leave the platform, feeling sickeningly powerless. It is all unjust. I want to scream. *** A few weeks later my younger cousin, who at the moment lives in the Netherlands with her husband, comes to London to spend a weekend with me. We have been close friends since the time I visited their family in Kherson when I was just a boy. Between visiting Hyde Park and Tate we pop in a supermarket. My cousin is a wide-smiling, chatty, and charming type; she manages to make friends everywhere.  – Where are you from? — one of the store clerks asks us. He is an elegant, neatly dressed man in his fifties, wearing glasses with golden rims. He is more polite than curious now.  – I am from Ukraine, — my cousin says, — and this is my brother, he is from Russia.  The man does not look surprised. – I could say you are from Eastern Europe by your looks. Very beautiful. And a gentleman as well, — he slightly bows to me. His compliment is nothing but respectful. We smile. He adds, — I am sorry for what is happening, — after a nod of acknowledgement from my cousin, he is addressing me, — I have been to Belarus, you know where it is? Minsk? Of course I know. I say so.  – I studied physics at the Belarusian State University, in the nineties. I am myself from Syria. I have got a PhD in astrophysics there as well, and have been teaching physics to students for fifteen years! Optics, quantum physics, biophysics — you name it. — He looks proud, but most of all — he looks pleased just having an opportunity to remember it and to share it with someone.    – This is serious, — I say. — And very difficult. — I don’t feel it would be right to ask him why he is here, working in a store at a low-paying job. I know it should be a sad story.  – Yes, I guess so, — he smiles. — It has been ten years already since I came here.  We are silent for a moment. My cousin saves us from an awkward pause: – We are going to Tate! Do you remember how to get there? Should we turn left or right from here? A former physics professor turned supermarket clerk explains how to find the way to the gallery. I marvel at his patience, and at how he hasn’t lost an ounce of his dignity. I felt we have something in common with him. Was it because this big city and the reasons we are here made us both aliens? A man from Syria with a degree in astrophysics and a Ukrainian with a Russian passport fleeing the reality in which two of my motherlands are sending their sons to be shelled and killed by each other. We are of the similar kind. The rest of the day we enjoy art, we walk, we laugh, we recall the past.  My cousin says she is glad I am here. She has been to St. Petersburg once, she knows it is much safer there than in Southern Ukraine, but still she feels better knowing I am far from there. I know we both keep thinking about that man, wondering where we are going to be in ten years after life has banished us from our homes.   She leaves the next day for the Netherlands. When parting she asks me if I follow the recent news. No, I say, I don’t follow it. But I still know.  She nods. We both cry in our souls.  *** When I feel particularly lonely, I come to Holland Park’s Kyoto Garden, a tiny island of contemplation and beauty with its small ponds and a toy waterfall.  I am here now. I would love to say it is lovely weather, but it is not: a grey sky hides any glimpses of sun, and the wind keeps reminding how precious our warm scarves are. However, I feel better here. Everything and everyone is still. People are slowing down. A stately heron stands right outside the pond overseeing the surroundings.  I sit at the bench. There is a girl not far from me, reading a book. I quickly glance at it and see that it is ‘Idiot’ by Dostoevsky. I also see it is in Russian.  Very soon I cannot restrain myself from approaching her.   – Excuse me, — I say to her in Russian, — I am sorry, I hate to bother you when you’re reading. I… just wanted to say, it is a great book. And I admire people who read it so carefully, with such concentration, as you. I hope it cheers you up.   She smiles and says it is all right.   – I’m reading it for the third time, — she confesses. — It gives me hope in times of despair. We exchange words about where we come from, but very sparingly. We are always careful when talking to strangers — old habits die too slowly even in the youngest of us. She is from Mariupol, once a beautiful romantic city on the shores of the Black Sea, now lying in ruins after becoming a battlefield for the opposing Ukrainian and Russian forces. She managed to escape it before the siege. She is lucky, although it sounds sacrilegious to use the word ‘lucky’ here. Her home is obliterated, its history and good name wiped out. Google ‘Mariupol’ now and instead of sun-drenched seashores you’ll only see occasional splashes of smoke and fire breaking their way through the dead dark-grey ruins. She is alone and she is much less welcome here than she would like to be — it is just the way it works. She doesn’t need to say it, I know it. Instead, she says: – I love this novel because of Prince Myshkin’s character. He is from another world… so different. An outsider. And yet he stays true to his nature and principles. This… life, it doesn’t change him. After everything that he goes through, he is the same: kind, intelligent, sincere. He possesses such a beautiful soul. She turns to me. – I’d love to have a beautiful soul.  Our smiles are sad, but we are smiling nevertheless. Soon I leave. While on my way back to the place where I currently live, I feel a pleasant warm light inside. We don’t need much: a couple of kind words and an understanding gaze is enough to grant us hope.  If only more people would notice how beautiful the souls of every one of us are. Mark Marchenko is a writer and a scholar of Ukrainian origin, born in Moscow. Mark writes both in English and in Russian, and has six short stories published recently, including several in English in 3:AM and New Pop Lit literary magazines. Mark has also recently received his MSc degree in Mediaeval Literature and Languages at the University of Edinburgh.

Driven What a strange word “driven” is, none the stranger for being hummed in a dream of driving a DeSoto with three on the column,  the shifter tipped with a thimble. “Too long a throw,” my father said, driven from store to store on rain-black streets, staggered  stop-lights every other block.  “Driven driven driven driven,”  he said, frowning. “You liked  Nash Ramblers best, right?  Brightest showroom in town!” Absurd Ode Why didn’t I write you after the one night we had? Five times a day I should’ve written to conceive the slightest hope of doing justice, a correspondence Victorian in its detail though not in the least circumspect.  If this were a voice-over, wind would rush through the leaves, “dappled”  the only word for the light, a four-note theme fingered on the gut strings  of a dreadnought guitar the aural embodiment of the rivulets coursing  the skin of two spent strangers no one will ever see. Your letters   would’ve found me with nothing but time in the motel five states away— mushy apples, cellophane-sealed cupcakes & a permanent quart of beer  nestled in a trash can heaped with ice. I wouldn’t have tried to entice you, just asked whatever questions I had, propped against the headboard, inscribing my best block script on page after long yellow page,  the manager due his dollars each day, his phone never ringing with news of a place to land where I’d come for reasons you made me want to forget.  I could’ve said anything I wanted, shaken out another day’s pages dented with words I never before had meant so hard then folded them in two they made such a fat parcel. It’s forty years now. It’s never yet gotten any harder to think “If only”—one phrase among a geometrically replicating profusion that earn the truest adjective of age: “Absurd.”  Still, once I’d found the converted carport in Shepherd, Michigan,  I should’ve strolled to the drop on, yes, Main Street, shoved that day’s  packets into the slot & unlocked the P.O. box packed with things you had  to tell me, along with the clippings, feathers & pine needles of home. John Repp is a poet, fiction writer, folk photographer, and digital collagist living in Erie, Pennsylvania.

It’s a Seiko wall model hung in the middle of the waiting room. The battery is still working, but the second hand is stuck. It jitters in one position, halfway between the 11 and the 12 on the dial. I keep forgetting, and every time I look up, I think, “It’s still  12:45?”  After looking up at the clock for the umpteenth time I start to wish someone would fix it. I am half-tempted to fetch it down myself and peak into the insides. In the end, I don’t, but I imagine what my downstairs neighbor might have done with it. He could fix anything. I remember bringing him one of our bedside clocks that was slow and kept losing five minutes every day. I knocked on  his door and a moment later he opened it and smiled. I was just going to drop it off, but he told me to come in, it would only take a minute. He made the pun as he held up the clock and winked at me. His apartment had an entire wall filled with different tools. He put the clock on his workbench and selected a small screwdriver. Once the clock was open, he peered inside using a small flashlight.  “Here’s the problem,” he said. I stepped closer and looked down into the clock. The gears were clicking and turning; I couldn’t see a problem. He could, though. His old eyes were sharper than mine. He nudged at a gear that was buried down deep in the workings of the clock. A few moments later he clicked the cover back into place and handed it back to me. “Good as new,” he said. He died last year. The word passed up through the apartment building, like a cold wind. Soon everybody was down on the first floor. It was the bus driver who found his body. “His heart just gave out,” the ambulance nurse said after he arrived a few minutes later. “Sorry to say, it’s not uncommon for someone at his age.” Why am I thinking about this? Oh, that’s right. When the doctor comes back out, I’m going to tell him about the broken clock. It’s an unnecessary additional burden that weighs on those of us who are out here in the waiting room.  I hold my wife’s hand and we wait.

When I was 24, I got an email forward that changed my life.  I was working in middle management at a finance company and was increasingly listless at work. The company had just opened several offices outside of New York, where they were able to hire much more experienced people for less money. A pall hung over the office as we wondered about the implications of this. I welcomed distraction. I opened the email. It was from a friend. It contained a thought exercise, bundled in some new agey something or other, but the thought exercise was -- if you don't know what to do, ask your future self.  I was bored enough at work that I gave it some thought.  All of a sudden, a burst of courage came to me out of nowhere. I stood up, all 24 years of me, and walked into my CEO's office. "You have a morale problem on your sales floor," I said. "And if you don't do something about it, I'm going to quit." His mouth was agape. But he listened. Later that evening, me and my burst of courage were sitting in my father's living room, watching TV. My Pakistani father, whom I was not out to. We weren't especially close, but he had moved to New York the prior year and we had been spending more time together.  My mind ticked over to my future self exercise from earlier. I was still feeling the exhilaration of what I'd done that day.  A thought came to me, resoundingly clear, that took me aback: "Just tell him."  I argued with this inner voice. I couldn't imagine going through with it. The thought hadn't crossed my mind once before this. My father, a Pakistani man who had tried in recent years to coax me into meeting people with the possibility of marrying them because I was THAT age, who had simultaneously believed in and supported my education but tried to point me to medicine and learning the language properly and fitting into Pakistani culture-- because, I thought, he believed it would make me more marriageable-- my father with whom I had clashed terribly, whose stubbornness I had inherited, and whom in pushing up against him and running away from the things he wanted for me I found out who I really was... my father had given me no indication that coming out was in any way a good idea.  I had heard no good stories of coming out to Pakistani parents. In fact, I had heard no stories at all. It was hard not to editorialize into the silence. I can't do this, I thought.  "It's not like it's going to be different for you," the thought came back, "that you're ever not going to be like this. You've tried that." I can't, I thought. But then, at least I was making my own money, even if it wasn't great money. I mentally prepared myself to walk out of the apartment and not walk back in again. I could always change my name, go into hiding. There were options.  This pitched debate was raging inside my head while I was sitting mute next to my father on the couch. He was placidly watching TV after his long day at the hospital, as usual. I was sitting next to him feeling, and possibly looking, like a shaken soda bottle about to burst.  He flicked through the channels. Quite often, he'd settle on a Hallmark or Lifetime movie-- programming oriented toward women, low-level life drama stuff. On this particular program, someone was pregnant who shouldn't have been.  Aha, I thought. Here's my opening.  "Dad," I said. "Would you ever disown your children for any reason?" He looked at me. "What are you talking about?"  "Just answer the question," I said. He got quiet. "Well," he said. "I might not agree with all your decisions, but you're an adult." The answer surprised me. Even so, I spent the next what must have been thirty minutes fumbling for what to say. "We've had a hard relationship for a long time…" I said, and it went on from there. I talked about my stepmother, and the havoc she had wreaked on our lives and our relationship. I talked about how I had been afraid of him for most of what I could remember. These were sore topics, but still easier to talk about than telling him. Eventually, we were at the dining room table, him with his hand at his temple, his fingers a visor over his eyes as he looked at me. Mercifully, he interrupted.  "You're trying to tell me something," he said.  "Yes," I said. "And you think I'll be angry if I know."  "Yes," I said again. He shook his head. "Just say it," he said. "Fine." I paused. Finally I choked out, "I'm gay."  A wry half-smile from him. "I know," he said. "I'm not stupid. Parents have intuitions about their kids. You I've known about for a year, your brother for 15 years."  This was so far removed from anything I expected from him that my head immediately started hurting. He spoke more. I don't remember much of what he said.  I do remember though how he walked me to the door that night, after I told him I was getting a migraine and I needed to go. I remember that he hugged me, and I remember marveling that even though the earth had shifted under my feet and I existed in an entirely new world, his way of being with me felt the same. Leena Sulahri is a recovering academic with an eye for how the mundane, the absurd, and the sublime frequently occur together. She is a muslim-ish, diasporic South Asian raised in the Arab Gulf region, and very, very gay.

Emma had been moving in since we started dating six months ago, one little object at a time—a chartreuse toothbrush sprouting out of the holder in my bathroom, a pair of olive tights draped over my headboard, a candy-lime phone charger coiled up behind the couch—so that by the time we agreed to officially cohabitate, there was not much more to be done, as she had been living a peripatetic life, couch surfing with various friends she kept at a distance from me. No furniture, a couple of suitcases, some potted plants. Actually, she had a surprising number of these for someone who had never rented or owned a place of her own.  All of them succulents.  And all of them super adorable. “I’m a succulent person,” she said, shrugging. I had never owned a pet before, nor cared for a plant, but I welcomed the change. “They don’t really need any water or anything,” she told me. “Just sunlight. They pull all their moisture out of the air.” Which explains why they were spread out across the windowsill and my multipurpose table and crowding the side tables by the couch—the sunniest spots in our cramped four rooms near campus. But a few days later, when I was loofahing my naked body in the shower a shiver of revulsion ran through me upon noticing the Minion-like green domes ogling me from the shower caddy with the goggle-eyed nodules that beaded their bodies.  “I thought your plants didn’t need a lot of moisture,” I said, dripping wet in the doorway. “Hmm? Oh, you mean the guys in the shower? Not them, they’re super thirsty,” she said, glancing up from her laptop screen. The next day I dug a prickly globe topped with a scarlet floral bow out from beneath the dust bunny wasteland beneath our bed. “I thought these things need sunlight.”  “Well, that one lives off dust,” the succulent person said through a mouthful of wintergreen toothpaste. I returned it to its sunless dust bowl. Another one, my favorite of hers—sorry; ours —a bouquet of fanciful fluted tubes, was placed in the closet beside a pile of Emma’s colorful t-shirts, which I noticed after a time had started to fade from bright neon to pastel. “Oh, don’t move those, babe,” she said when she came upon me shifting the t-shirts away from the coral-like plant. I noted that all the unexposed areas of the shirt were still just as bright as before. “That little fella lives off color.” “Say what?” Her glasses flashed. “Did I stutter?” Then she laughed. I was living in a desert landscape of waxy leaves and luscious blooms and dusty tendrils, but it was by no means unpleasant—anyway, being surrounded by flora is supposed to be therapeutic. However, in this arid environment, my skin began to itch and flake. “Hmm, I wonder if I’m allergic to our plants,” I said, noting the squamous, angry appearance of my wrist. “Lemme see,” she said, setting her chopsticks down into a takeout Thai container from which every sliver of bamboo had been culled. “Ahh, yes. This happened to me at the beginning.” I coughed, from spice. “The beginning?” “The little guys are so thirsty, they just suck every drop out of the air. Strip,” she instructed, “and lie down.” As I obeyed she strode into the bathroom and returned with a large bottle of viscous liquid. “What are you doing?” “Aloe vera,” she said, straddling me, and with an obscene noise squirted a blast of cold gel onto my bare chest. “Extract from another succulent, natch. Fire with fire. Now be a good boy and lie still.” Then she leaned in and whispered into my ear, the back of my neck erupting in gooseflesh, “and after, I’ll let you rub it on me.” That night, my throat parched,I stumbled out of the bedroom and into the darkened kitchen for a glass of water, when I stepped in something mealy and cold. I leapt back and fumbled for the light switch. The ground was littered with coils and coils of orange tubes of Play-Doh, reminiscent of either fiddleheads or ammonites, I couldn’t decide which. I wet a paper towel and wiped the substance free of the arch of my foot and between my toes, then got down on my hands and knees, approaching the tight coils, sniffing. They had a fresh, sweet, medicinal smell, much like the aloe Emma and I had rubbed all over each other hours earlier. Now that I was studying them, I saw that the orange coils protruded from the nodules of the thick-leaved succulents Emma had spaced around the kitchen floor and counter. One of these tubes formed a line of communication between a nodule on one plant and the powdery lilac blossom of another. I can’t say why, but I found the substance revolting, so much so that I retreated back into the hallway, vigilant not to squash any more coils, and returned to bed without retrieving a drink. There, I lay awake for hours listening to the silent apartment, convinced I could actually hear the orifices of these plants evacuating the long tubes of this … stuff. “Take it from an ethnobotanist: It’s super normal,” Emma informed me in the morning when we ate our avocado toast in a transformed apartment. It looked as if someone had thrown a party in here last night, going hog wild with weird intestinal-like streamers, the coils and tubes festooning every surface. Prolific. Or, as it turned out, promiscuous. “They’re known as antherpods, just a means for the little ones to communicate and navigate their environment, and also an alternative method of reproduction.” “Woah, woah, woah. Two things. First, did you say navigation?” She nodded, smirking, and took a big bite of chewy toast, a dab of bright-green paste smeared along the side of her mouth. She hid her chewing with a hand. “Haven’t you noticed they move?” “Well, it’s hard to keep track of them all.” It had only been three weeks or so, but there must have been a hundred of these potted plants by now; when had she brought them all in? “But I figured you just hadn’t settled on their arrangement.” “No, no. The succulents decide.” She nodded sagely. “Okay. And two: these anther-things are— “Antherpods.” “Okay, right—antherpods; they’re part of the reproductive process?” “Don’t make that face!” she said, punching me jocularly on the shoulder. “Pollen is part of the reproductive process; so are gorgeous blossoms; so is yummy fruit”—another bite of toast here—“and yet those don’t gross you out.” “I never imagined quite how much I’d learn about plants when we started dating.” “Just wait, babe. Ain’t seen nothing yet.” “In the meantime should we clean up all these coils?” “Wait till this evening. They’re still in the active cycle. After a few more hours, the eversible proboscises will have become detached and turn powdery, then we can just sweep them up. Ooh, gotta hop to it: teaching an 8 am class today—mwah.” She gave me a gooey kiss. “Be back for lunch.” Though I wasn’t teaching that day, I went into the lab to do some edits on a paper, work I easily could have accomplished at home. For some reason, however, despite my healthy attitude towards pollen and fruit, I felt uncomfortable in our cramped apartment surrounded by the succulents’ antherpods; the things struck me as creepily lecherous. Emma and I arrived home only a few minutes apart, and we found that the vibrant color of the coiling tendrils had faded, all of them now completely dried out, leaving behind brittle veils of whitish-gray that turned to dust at the faintest breath. I swept up and dusted while Emma made us egg and pepper tacos, a meal that later struck me as a celebration of fertility. After lunch we had another hour before Emma had to return to campus for a seminar, time we spent in bed doing the human version of antherpod exploration. I noticed for the first time a couple of quarter-sized scars right near the base of her scalp, one on each side. They looked surgical, and I thought it best not to pry. She would mention them in time when she felt comfortable. Still, I had kissed her neck so many times during foreplay over the past months, it was strange I hadn’t noticed them till now. I worked more on my paper when Emma went out. This time I stayed at home. Now that the antherpods had been cleaned up, I felt a bit silly about how weirded out I had been over them earlier. A few hours writing and reading articles, another hour jogging, the day was well spent. Emma texted around five that she was grabbing drinks with some colleagues. I didn’t want to come hang, did I? Thanks,   I get my fill of ethnobotany at home , I texted back.  Made a pot of puttanesca for us and when she came home humming and smelling of gin an hour later we fattened ourselves up and Netflixed till bedtime in the growing sageland that was our home. Throughout the evening Emma was constantly on her phone, texting with “no one important.” Before we had sex that night, she put on a pair of green stockings I’d never seen her wear before. And even with the lights out, I noticed those scars on her neck. Also on the sides of her breasts, and secreted away on her inner thighs. I can’t explain how, but the small circular scars drove me crazy. I couldn’t stop ... attending to them, and Emma, her body slick with sweat, had never been more vocal, never seemed so feral. After she had fallen asleep, and I was lying there, my inner eye replaying exquisite scenes from the evening, my phone lit up in the darkness. I reached for it, focused on the screen, then furrowed my brow at the unusual background.  Duh, it was Emma’s phone. The text from someone named Steve, telling her that he would leave his spare key in the mailbox.  And also that he was super-excited.  That was all, and despite all the missing pieces in the conversation (no, I did not open her phone and read the entire text thread) I knew that Emma was moving on, moving in with another guy.  I collapsed back on the bed, my mind reeling, my eyes pulsing in time with my crushed heart. Steve? Who? It was too sudden. How could she? What had I done? I thought we were so good together, laughing, loving. We had a life together, a horde of hundreds of little green children. I had to wake her up, hear it from her own mouth, convince her she was making a mistake.  But I didn’t get the chance. I felt a sharp pinch at the base of my neck, then my chest and groin. I couldn’t see anything in the dark, but I reached towards my nipples and felt the tubes, the antherpods burrowing into my flesh, exuding a cooling aloe-like substance at the puncture marks. To numb the pain, apparently. Whatever it was doing, these proboscises numbed more than the pain, for suddenly I felt no sense of regret about Emma and I, nor did I panic at the sight of all these tubes coiled over my body. If anything, I felt I wanted to reach out and squeeze Emma’s hand, to enjoy this euphoric experience with her. *** In the morning, Emma was gone. So were her toothbrush and tights and phone charger. So were the lion’s share of the succulents.  She did leave me a couple, and it’s a good thing too, because one thing I’ve definitely taken away from our time together is that, like Emma, I’m also a succulent person.

I buried my mom last week, and her first leaf emerged this morning. The green limb blinked out of the dirt bed. The directions on her packaging dictated the watering routine. In an auburn pot, I interred into the dirt a single seed, sort of a kidney bean or fetus, which was not the typical size, but bigger. Correct soil and proper pH gathered in this earth womb, my grow-light adjusted to the optimal distance (10 inches as per my 30-watt bulb) from the tentative green tendril. I hadn’t cried when my mom passed. My family chalked it up to shock. True, her death diverged from the way I anticipated. Too soon, fast, and not enough weepy, hospital-sentimental hand-holding. Scientific advancements proved literally fruitful for this issue. I enfolded a sample of my mother’s DNA, a lock of hair and 1-centimetre square of skin salvaged from the corpse, and mailed it to Morsanito™. Within a month the seed arrived in a bubbled pouch in the post. She germinated in a baggie with a moistened paper towel while I sculpted her nest. I watered my mom twice a day and sat each morning with a steaming tea watching the baby leaf wobble gently. Thin green fingers pointed up and leaves stretched out and branched into elephant ears. Yellow flowers yawned on the vines between the leafy continents. The fruit grew resembling a melon-sized bean, and kept going. When my siblings came and saw the thing coming from the pot on the table they said what the fuck, and I observed yes, I know I need a larger table. The fruit and the vine of the mother-plant grew too fast, and I didn’t think I wanted to put her on the floor. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with that. The enormous mother of baby fruit took up most of the dining table. The DNA was good and the face forming beneath the phylo-film resembled not a child, but my dear mother as I remember her from faded photos of her youth. The organic bag around the GMO baby then sucked directly to her veggie flesh, adhering to her and becoming her skin. When her skin started to go pink, her eyes opened. She didn’t cry. Wastefully, though, I had to reject that one. She had no hands and a blunted nose. You know how when you grow produce, some will go to the chickens or compost because of lumps? The first couple mom-children went that way—my mom but wonky, like a Roma tomato with bruises, warts and blotches. I didn’t have chickens. I knew others with veggie kids that came out lousy. They leaked and smelled bad after a while. Some grew a fine fuzz. Cheeks too large, eyes too tiny, arms a funny length. I composted each until I got a pristine mom, receiving packages and trying again, again. I raised this young girl, who was my mom, but I couldn’t wait for her to be my mom. I needed her advice—should I buy or rent? Should I get married to him ? Should my taxes go into the interest-free saving account, or something? So I told the young girl all the things I remembered my mom telling me, because then she would be on the same page when she finally was mom-age to give me advice. Her skin glowed a greenish undertone. Her voice sounded like wind through the leaves of trees. Her eyes were wrong, but with too many moms composted already, all fermenting into fertilizer, I kept her. The bright, cold green orbs departed from the warm tree bark hue of my mother’s eyes. This one’s resemblance to my mother, and, I guess, by extension, me, was otherwise perfect. She grew with leaves on her head, which needed plenty of sunshine. They were thick and veined. She enjoyed sitting and soaking in the warm rays, and I read her favorite books to her, American Dirt, Where the Crawdads Sing and All My Puny Sorrows. She asked me for paints, and I told her no. My mother never painted, in fact, she held painters in contempt, preferring musicians. My new mom nodded. She nodded. I woke up on a Wednesday, saw the dull sun on the floor, and I finally felt her death. That woman who died, who fell one day, she  was my mother. The plant mom in my kitchen, watching as I taught her how she used to cook Kraft Dinner exactly the way I liked, that was someone else. None of the experiences my mom actually lived through would be contained in this young girl. She couldn’t be the star piano player at school; she couldn’t meet my dad, John Mackenzie, in 2015; I couldn’t put her through the pandemic as a teenager. The logistics would be impossible. My mom was dead. I laid on the couch watching plant-mom. She held the umbilical vine, connected to her belly button. Her long hair clung, creeping on her shoulders. She would soon be the age she died. Crows-feet dabbled about the corners of her eyes, and her lips pursed like two raisins. But this creature was too quiet, too uninterested in celebrity gossip, apathetic to my poor dating choices, bored by Deepak Chopra and the divine feminine. I winced and I winced again. I kept wincing. I took a shower and I got out hot and relaxed, but the next moment my head throbbed a dull pain like a church bell. Was I on the ground? I had fallen. I saw my mom looming over me mouthing words. My name? Her lips pressed into an M and opened and then again closed to another M. She cut the vine with a pair of shears. The ceiling changed colours and the sun spun fast making all the shadows whirl. I got out of the hospital with my mom holding my hand. The next couple weeks I couldn’t do anything. My mom turned out great at motherhood—she came into herself again, a new harvest. Vegetable mom wasn’t meat mom, but she brought me food. I couldn’t get up much. How wrinkled, shriveled and rotten I had become. I checked the mirror, like surveying the fridge. Week-old produce dripping and shrinking. But mom takes care of me. She brings meals. With dumb serenity, she brought me to bed. Mom tucked me in with studied action, a perfect reenactment of when I was a child. She stood at the door frame, looking at me, silhouetted against the light of the hallway. She held the frame. She was like a child holding the hem of her parent’s coat. Then she left, and the light flicked off. Florence Bews [she/they] is a trans writer from Treaty 7 land, near Longview, Alberta. She grew up a rancher, got an MA from the University of Calgary in English literature, and works at a bookshop. She’s reading “The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis” by Lydia Davis, and is online as @catmilkremedies

During those first awful weeks in March, when rumors swirled that the city was about to go into lockdown and the wealthy clogged bridges and tunnels, headed for second homes in Vermont and the Hamptons, Myles and Nora decided to adopt a dog. “What do you think about this one?” Nora asked, tracing a polished fingernail across her phone. Two wine-stained glasses rested on the coffee table. Myles glanced up from his own screen. He’d only been half-listening, scrolling through the Times  in a futile search for answers about the virus. A photo of a dog with anime-big eyes flashed in front of his nose. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want.” Myles’ hand lay on Nora’s knee, caressing it absently. Since the calendar flipped to March, he’d spent his days in a state of permanent distraction, his mind on other things. Flattening the curve. Super-spreader event. Zoom fatigue . They didn’t even know how  the virus spread, by what mysterious means it had managed to circumnavigate the globe and bring the entire world to a grinding halt. Myles and Nora had decided to shelter-in-place at his apartment in Park Slope because he didn’t have a roommate and his place was a palace compared to the one-bedroom Nora shared in the Village. The stay-at-home order would only last a week, two at most, they had reasoned. Now they were entering their fourth week of endless breaking news alerts, of shuttered offices and restaurants, of having nowhere to be and no one to see—all demands and constraints on their time utterly, magically erased. Nora wanted a project, something to distract them from the world falling down around them. “I looked into it,” she said. “There’s this shelter in Williamsburg that does this foster-to-adopt trial. The whole thing’s only three weeks. And then, at the end, you can keep the dog or return them if it isn’t working out. The application’s on their website.” “You think we’re gonna be locked down that long?” Myles asked, though the answer seemed clear. A pervading sense that things might not so readily return to normal had crept into their lives, taking up residence on their crumb-littered couch like an unwanted guest. At first, lockdown felt like an unexpected, welcomed vacation. They slept in, remaining in bed until two or three in the afternoon, camping out as if it were a snow day and they were eight years old. In the evenings, they screwed, drank wine, and ordered Chinese, because it was the only place willing to deliver. They binged Tiger King , 30 Rock , Parks and Rec . “As long as it’s nothing too girly,” he declared. “Like a chihuahua. One of those dogs that fits in your purse.” Nora moved her knee, dislodging his hand. She lifted one finely plucked eyebrow, bringing the full power of her narrow, dark eyes to bear. God, she could have melted glass with that look. Her freckled complexion and red hair, the flush that got into her cheeks whenever she got worked up. The effect was terrifying and sexy at the same time. Myles wasn’t sure what caused him to make that crack about chihuahuas. Maybe it was the wine or the fact that he had grown up in the Midwest, where dogs only came in two sizes: big and bigger. “Well, what do you want then?” she asked. That was a larger question, one Myles wasn’t prepared to answer. He barely knew what he wanted when they ordered from #1 Asian Kitchen, which they’d had three times that week. Maybe that was why he’d said yes without even checking to see if his building allowed pets. It was easier to go along with what Nora wanted than try and decide things for himself. “I signed us up,” she said. “We should be getting a call from the shelter in a day or two.” Myles suffered a flicker of hesitation. Normally, he wouldn’t have said anything. Would have let Nora have her way. Maybe it was the wine. “It’s just…” He tried again. “Do you really think it’s…wise? Letting someone into our apartment with everything that’s going on?” “There’s a whole section on their website dedicated to safety and all the precautions they’re taking,” Nora said, not missing a beat. “I can show it to you if you’re worried. Okay?” It sounded like a challenge. “Okay.” Outside, the high keen of a siren screamed past, its lights momentarily turning the tree outside red. “Fire truck? Or ambulance?” “Ambulance, I think,” Myles said, straining toward the window. It was the fourth or fifth they’d heard in the past hour. It was getting hard to keep track. Nora poked her phone again, reached for her glass. “If nothing else, a dog’ll give us a legit reason to get out of the house, right?”    * The shelter worker who appeared at their apartment a week later wore beige socks with his Birkenstocks. Despite the latex gloves and mask that covered the lower half of his face, he bore a remarkable resemblance to Frank Zappa. Nora had wrapped a scarf around her face and Myles wore a bandana like an outlaw in a bad Western. A carton of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes waited on the counter. “Hello, hello, hello,” he said, leading a black, floppy-eared dog by a short leash into their apartment. “This is Roxie.” Myles and Nora shared a look. The dog was muzzled. “Don’t worry—she’s not dangerous,” Zappa explained, a smile lifting his mask. “It’s just, when presenting them with a new environment, we find it’s better to go slow and easy. Let ’em get acquainted. Do you mind if I show her around? Let her get a feel for the place?” “Sure, sure,” Nora said, making a small, fretful motion with her hands. “Wow. Nice place,” said the worker admiringly. He walked to the window. Across the street, the heads of trees were still bare, the sidewalks empty. “Your own little slice of heaven, am I right?” “Th—thank you,” Nora said, shooting Myles a who-is-this-guy?  look behind the man’s back. Myles shrugged. While his building had a doorman, it wasn’t much compared to the lavish apartments his co-workers rented in Chelsea. Not that he would be seeing them, or their apartments, any time soon. Overnight, New York had become a centrifuge, spitting friends far and wide, back to their parents’ basements in the suburbs. He followed the worker and Roxie into the hall, feeling oddly like a guest in his own home. “So, do you know what kind of dog she is?” he asked, hoping to distract the worker. “Oh, not one hundred percent, but she’s got some Rottie in her, that’s for sure.” They headed into the kitchen. “Maybe some pit bull.” “And has she been fostered before?” Myles said, brushing past the worker, whisking an opened cereal box from the counter. “Roxie here is one of our long-term residents. She’s been adopted a few times. Looked like the last one might stick, but then the owners wound up bringing her back.” The worker opened and closed one of the gleaming white cabinets, nodding appreciatively. Roxie’s long, whip-like tail was folded between her legs. She cowered behind Zappa, only agreeing to enter a room after he did. “Did the previous owners say why?” Nora asked. “Nope. They don’t have to, though it can be helpful if they give a reason.” “Have you been getting a lot of requests to adopt?” Nora worked as a food blogger and had been fortunate, like Myles, to continue her working life largely uninterrupted. Zappa shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe it. Busier than ever. Everyone wants to adopt now. You’re my second of six stops this afternoon.” They left the kitchen and entered the bedroom, Roxie’s nails clattering nervously on the parquet floors. “Being a no-kill shelter like we are, sure, it sounds great,” Zappa said, taking in Myles’ king-sized bed, built-in bookshelves, and guitar suspended on the wall. “But it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Sounds humane, but some of these dogs, they won’t ever get adopted. They have too many issues—from abuse and whatnot—and, of course, we can’t put ’em down. So, we have to pay to feed ’em and look after ’em the rest of their lives. All that, knowing they’re never going to have a home outside the shelter. It’s kinda sad, real— “Oops. Little accident there,” Zappa said, nodding to the growing puddle of urine on the floor. “Don’t worry. Totally normal. Just nervous is all.” “I’ll get some paper towels,” said Nora, disappearing into the kitchen. “She does pretty well off-leash—not that I’d recommend it,” said the worker, leading Roxie and Myles back to the living room. “We gave her breakfast,” he continued, dropping the leash into Myles’ hand. “She’s up to date on her shots, of course. Might be timid, real lethargic the first few days, ’til she gets used to her new environment.” “Sure, sure,” said Myles, nodding. “Is this your first pet?” Zappa asked, lowering himself to one knee and clicking the buckle that held the muzzle in place. “It’s mi—” Myles began. “But not mine!” Nora exclaimed, dropping a wet piece of paper towel she’d been holding pinched by a corner into the trash. “I had a dog growing up. In Jersey.” “Maybe just set out some water in a bowl for her,” said Zappa, gaining his feet again. Roxie’s tail remained firmly planted behind her haunches. “And don’t be surprised if she doesn’t show much interest in dinner. You have our number if you have any questions.” Zappa put his fists on his hips and fixed Roxie with a look. “You be a good girl now, ya hear?” “Thank you so  much,” said Nora, herding him toward the door. “We really appreciate it.” The worker gave them an it’s-no-problem wave before his frizzy mop of hair vanished behind the door. “That name,” Nora said the moment she replaced the bolt, “has to go.”    * Myles and Nora ran out of toilet paper several days into April. When she shouted from the bedroom that someone would have to go to the bodega, Myles bucked from his stool with such excitement, he nearly upset his tea. “I—I will! I mean, yeah…sure. I’ll see what they’ve got.” After six weeks, the apartment had begun to feel like being trapped in a car on a day with 100-degree heat. He had to get out, just for a few minutes—even if it meant possibly contracting the virus. By the time he gathered his keys, wallet, and mask, “Luna”—for Luna Park, one of Nora’s favorite places in the city—was already standing by the door. She waited while he snapped her harness around her impressively broad chest. Nora joined them, chewing a pen. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Why the previous owners brought her back?” Nora had a point. Luna was so quiet, Myles sometimes forgot she was there until he got up to use the bathroom or make tea and she would rouse herself from the floor and come follow him, curious. She showed no interest in tug or fetch, even when Nora got down on the floor in her leggings and sweatshirt or bowled a tennis ball down the hall. When Nora performed her daily Yoga with Adrienne , Luna sat like a sphinx at the edge of her mat, watching, calmly waiting until she was done. “We adopted the most boring dog in the world,” she announced. “I don’t think it’s that strange,” Myles said, shrugging on his coat. “There are a bunch of people out of work right now. And a lot of people have left the city. Maybe they couldn’t afford the extra expense.” “Yeah,” said Nora doubtfully. She pushed her wide-frame glasses up. “What do you want for dinner tonight? Text me.” “All right,” said Myles, ushering Luna through the door. And then it happened, the words just rushing out. “Love y—I mean, uh, yeah, I’ll let you know.” He stopped as suddenly as if he’d stepped on a nail. “Okay. Bye.” The door swung shut behind him with a disheartening clank. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Myles descended the loud, echoing stairwell, Luna bouncing down the stairs at his side. All right. I love you? What had he been thinking? And was that even what he felt for Nora? Love? Up until five months ago, he loved everything about Nora: her eyes (big, brown), her laugh (infectious), her passion, and many causes (racial justice, reproductive and LGBTQIA rights, the environment, canvassing for third parties). She had joined the Women’s March and Occupy before it was broken up by officers with shields and billy clubs. Once, when he asked if she really believed in all those things, she leveled him with a look. “Why? Don’t you?” He supposed he did, and didn’t. Not enough to take to the streets. Not enough to march, to risk life and limb. Not enough to forsake his $4.50 morning latte, 401(k), and health insurance to join the makeshift camp of students and anarchists he passed each day on his way to Wall Street. Outside, the parked cars and sidewalks were glossy with rain. Unoccupied Ubers drifted past the park, one or two slowing until they saw he had Luna with him. It was only eight; still, you would have thought it was three or four in the morning. There was no one out, and those who were crossed the street to avoid him. During the mornings and afternoons, the world outside his apartment’s south-facing windows played like a silent film. But now that he was out, that he was part of it , everything moved and thundered around him. A hard reset to his senses. It was a joy to be present in his body again, to feel his tendons and joints moving congruously, blood sloshing through the tunnels of his veins. Was the intensity he felt because, for the past month and a half, he’d spent every waking minute with Nora? His only other human contact being work and his weekly calls to his parents back in St. Paul, assuring them he wasn’t dead? Was it because everything in his life felt tenuous and uncertain, the future turned slippery, and Nora was the only solid thing in his life? Or was it something else? Was there any way to tell? Maybe asking someone to move in after six months was  too soon—but then the pandemic had happened, and everything was moving so fast. What choice did they have? Myles considered himself a bit of a catch: He was thirty-four, a nice enough guy with good credit. He had a reliable job at a major bank whose ethics he repeatedly questioned, but nonetheless provided him with an ample salary and the promise of a comfortable retirement. If that weren’t enough, it wasn’t like he was un attractive: There was his height, his lithe, lean swimmer’s body and well-defined jaw. But he wasn’t striking in the way Nora was. They’d matched on Tinder a year after he moved to the city. They both promised the other they weren’t looking for anything serious. After a few casual hookups, she began inviting him to accompany her on random errands around the city. A trip to Home Depot or the Upper East Side to retrieve a dresser. Myles wasn’t sure when they crossed that porous line between convenience and dependence. Nora didn’t discuss her dating history other than to once remark that, during college, she’d been “kind of a slut.” “Really?” Myles fell back in his chair. He was decently drunk, just short of sloppy. “I mean—hey, no judgment. You do you.” “You didn’t sleep with every girl in your dorm?” Nora asked, loud enough that she could have been heard in Times Square. Her roommates were out. She’d thrown one of their T-shirts over the lamp, so the whole room was enveloped in a red glow. Myles scoffed, dragging a hand through his hair. “I mean, no, I   didn’t. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.” “It’s—fine. I mean, I get it. You’ve got this whole”—she waxed a hand in his face—“pretentious-sad-boy thing going on. Of course—of course, you wouldn’t understand.” “Well, explain it to me then,” said Myles, leaning forward again, trying to hide his hurt. Nora, he was discovering, was full of unprompted, incisive remarks. She swirled the wine in her glass. For a moment, Myles was sure the night was over. That they’d spoiled it by bringing up something neither of them wanted to talk about. “I was pretty wild for a few years. Prone to ‘risk-taking’ and ‘dangerous, reckless behavior,’ according to my therapist. She was convinced I had a latent death wish. But I wouldn’t say there was anything latent about it.” Brown plants lined the fire escape. “Now, I realize, I was acting out because I didn’t care . If I got picked up at a party or someone pulled up to the curb while I was walking home. Did I want a ride? Sure, why not? Oh, you don’t have a condom? Fuck it. Who cares? Someone I never met until tonight offered me blow, or I went shoplifting, or took my girls on a drunken joyride? What did it matter? What if I took one too many sleeping pills just to see if I could do it? It was almost like a dare, you know? To see how far I could go, to see how much I could get away with.” All at once, Myles’ pleasant, buzzy-headed drunkenness became too much. He set his wine down on the crowded coffee table and didn’t touch it again. The apartment was too warm, the corners too dark. His mouth was suddenly cotton-ball dry. “Why?” Nora shrugged. “Fear drives us to do things we might’ve never considered doing, you know? Or to become someone we didn’t plan on being. And I didn’t like my life or who I was, anymore.” She drained the last of her wine. Her teeth were dyed red. “And, anyway, my dad, I told you he worked for the Transit Authority, right? He was downtown on 9/11. He was evacuating the South Tower when it collapsed. I was a junior in high school. That fucked me up pretty good, I’d say.” *** Toward the end of April, as Myles and Luna were leaving the park, a window across the street flew open, then another. By the time the light changed, the neighborhood was swollen with raucous applause and boisterous shouts. Someone somewhere down the block blasted an air horn. Children on stoops screamed at the top of their tiny lungs. The echo of pots rung with spoons, clanging bells, and cars laying on their horns completed the ensemble. Luna’s ears went flat. Myles instinctively led her to the curb and placed a calming hand on her back. During their daily excursions through Prospect Park, crisscrossing its sloping lawns and rolling woodlands, she often plowed ahead, straining at her harness, or trotted gamely at his side. Only when a sudden noise startled her—the slam of a delivery truck’s rolling door or the honk of an impatient driver—did she draw close, plastering herself against his leg as if she were trying to crawl inside his pocket. Myles may not have had Nora’s childhood know-how, but he had learned to read Luna’s moods like a twinge in the knee. “It’s okay, girl. It’s just seven o’clock. That’s all.” Within minutes, the last of the die-hards closed their windows and doors and went back inside. The cacophony faded. “That wasn’t so bad, was it now, Loon?” Myles cooed. Luna’s head bobbed with each stride, but her ears were still pressed against the side of her massive head. “Almost home, Luney-Tuney. Almost there.” If Luna sensed she was nearing home, that she recognized the trees stuck in the sidewalk like candles in a cake, the stoops and garden apartments that lined their approach, she showed no indication. She pulled at her leash, drawing Myles’ arm taut, like a bloodhound with its nose to the ground. He had to jog to keep her from dragging him along. A thought flared in a dim corner of his brain: As much as she kept him sane and he kept her safe—from raccoons big as boulders, cars barreling through red lights, four-year-old daredevils on scooters—she was still an animal, with animal instincts. The tension in the leash was a stark reminder of Luna’s awesome strength. It came to him, perhaps for the very first time, that if he truly needed to control her, he wasn’t sure he could. She was over a hundred pounds of pure muscle and confused breeding. They were less than a block away, the crosswalk beckoning them with its solid WALK signal. Coming toward them was a woman in a billowing skirt, tote slung from her shoulder. Myles barely registered her, concentrating as he was on getting Luna home. After they passed, the woman spun, giving them a startled, uncertain look. When Myles returned to this moment later, just as he was slipping down into the dark waters of sleep, he couldn’t decide what it was he saw. There were too many variables: it was dusk; he was distracted; they were both walking quickly. Still, he couldn’t dispel the uneasy sense that Luna did exactly what he feared she had. Snapped at the woman’s skirt, catching the flapping parachute of fabric between her bared teeth for an instant before letting go. *** The George Floyd protests began in May. Police helicopters boomed over Flatbush, Fort Greene, Barclays, the unmistakable thwup-thwup-thwup of their blades stretching from afternoon into evening. They hovered over the park for hours at a time and Myles began to feel, in a small way, what people in a war zone must feel like. Nora paced the apartment like a caged cat, her outrage compounding with every shaky cell phone video of the NYPD pepper-spraying bystanders, attacking people with their hands up, pulling women down by their hair—undeterred by the presence of journalists and hundreds of smartphones recording their every move. The next morning, she joined Myles at the kitchen island in a Mets baseball cap and running shoes. “I need you to watch Loon today,” she said. “I won’t have my phone with me.” He glanced up from his own phone, from images of last night’s demonstrations. Police with shields. Young men in beaters galloping down an empty avenue, bandanas knotted over their faces. An overturned, fire-scorched police cruiser on Flatbush. “There’s another protest today,” she said. Myles hadn’t had his morning tea. The world was still coming to him in slow-moving waves. “Do you really think going to a protest is”—he fumbled for the right word—“a good idea? There was looting in Midtown last night. And now there’s a curfew.” He splashed his spoon into his cereal. “Besides, aren’t you working today?” Nora smirked and, in that instant, he glimpsed something—a look of such revulsion—you would have thought he was the one battering protestors with his bike or chasing people down with a billy club. “I’ll have my mom write me a note, so I can play hooky. God. Are you for real right now? Do you not see what’s going on? The world is going up in flames and you want to sit on the sideline!” Luna’s ears, hearing the anger in Nora’s voice, rolled back, but she didn’t move her chin from her paws. “What I   see is that we’re in the middle of a global health crisis,” said Myles, surprised by how defensive he sounded. “There’s civil unrest. The idiot just tweeted he’s ready to deploy the military—” Nora and Myles had begun referring to the president exclusively as “the idiot,” as in “You’ll never believe what the idiot said now.” “But the economy!” they would cry whenever the idiot did something indefensible, an almost daily occurrence. It had become a shorthand between them, an inside joke they began to use for everything. “I just mean, do you think it’s—safe? With COVID and everything else?” What he really meant was, did Nora think she would be safe among a writhing, roiling press of angry strangers who might find themselves subjected to tear gas, rubber bullets, and sound cannons? Whose exercise of their constitutional rights could descend into a melee in a matter of seconds? There would be other women there, certainly, but men, too, to say nothing of the officers looking for any opportunity to mete out their brand of justice, regardless of sex or size. “What choice do we have?” she asked. “It’ll be fine. I’ve been reading message boards. As long as you keep your mask on, the risk of transmission is relatively low.” He guffawed. “What about the police ?” “I’ve been reading up on that, too. The ACLU says not to bring your phone—or keep it on airplane mode. And if you’re arrested, not to unlock it.” Myles shrank in his stool. He was awed by Nora’s courage, and his own cowardice. “No, you’re right,” he sputtered, glancing down into his bowl, unable to meet Nora’s eyes. “Besides, someone should be here, to keep an eye on Loon. And I’ve got work, a big presentation actually— “Besides,” he said, unleashing a grin, “someone’ll have to be here to post bail.” Nora lifted her arm, shot back her sleeve. A string of digits were Sharpied to her wrist. The number for the local legal aid office. “Don’t worry. If I only get one phone call, it won’t be you.” *** When Myles exited his building’s marble lobby with Luna in tow, he discovered a day laden with sunshine. The prospect of an hour or two away from the apartment—away from his laptop, away from the ceaseless dinging of new Slack messages and emails about things he really didn’t care much about—filled him with a vague sense of promise. True to her word, Nora had left her phone and so he hadn’t heard whether she’d made it to the protest safely, if she still was safe. Nora could take care of herself, he knew. She’d be fine, or she wouldn’t. There was nothing he could do about it now. After a brutal winter that lingered on through April and into May, the day was shaping up to be one of the nicer ones they’d enjoyed all year. Luna appeared in agreement: she cantered at his side and they traveled down 7th at a robust clip. It was pleasantly, shockingly warm and, after only a block, he unzipped his sweatshirt. A block later, he took it off altogether, hurling it over his shoulder. He wondered if Nora had thought to bring water, if she’d remembered to bring sunblock. Myles was sweating beneath his T-shirt and it helped distract him from his guilt, as well as the ugly, unmistakable truth: namely, that Nora was far braver and more principled than he would ever be. He couldn’t explain, even to himself, why he’d been so hesitant to join her at the rally. He was afraid, sure. Of the virus. Of the simmering unease and potential for violence. But there was more to it, he felt. Did his hesitancy stem from the fact that he was secretly a bit…racist? Not only racist, but the worst kind of racist: the progressive kind? Nora, for her part, believed everyone was racist—Judge Judy, Beyoncé, even her father. In our society, it was impossible not to be. It was what you did  about it that mattered. He supposed, in the final analysis, that he hadn’t taken to the streets because he didn’t  need to. That alone spoke to his immense privilege, didn’t it? Demonstrating in support of another’s civil rights was optional, a luxury—not a matter of life and death, as it was for so many others. Without having meant to, Myles had arrived at the scene of the protest. He heard the rally long before he saw it. There were hundreds of people, perhaps thousands—more people than he had seen in any one place in months. The promenade was filled, spilling into the avenue and intersection. Endless bodies, a great roaring of voices. Some people held up signs. Others were chanting. On street corners and in bike lanes, people were drawn in the direction of the crowd, the din rising in the afternoon heat. “Does anyone need snacks?” someone shouted. “Water? Hand sanitizer?” Myles could feel Luna shrink beside him. He tightened his grip on her leash, keeping to the edge of the crowd. He felt like a lurker, an intruder. All these people who’d shown up for a cause larger than themselves. It simultaneously flooded him with hope and despair. There were some white people in attendance—more than he expected—but not enough. Not nearly enough. Myles felt Luna stretch to the very end of her leash, ready to cross the avenue when the light changed, but it didn’t matter. There were far too many people in the street for any vehicles or bikes. Instead, Myles turned toward the endless succession of faces and tried to glimpse Nora—a flip of red hair beneath a ball cap—tucked into the crowd. He waited, scanning the roiling, seething froth of humanity for her before giving up and heading home. *** Myles was slumped against the headboard, the shoebox where he kept his stash of weed cracked open beside him, when Nora appeared in the doorway, laptop riding on her hip. “You mind taking Loon out? I forgot I’m supposed to FaceTime with Nathalie at nine.” “What time is it now?” he asked. “Like, eight-fifty. I won’t have time before—wait. What are you doing? Were you smoking?” Myles made an exaggerated effort to nod toward the box, but wasn’t sure his head moved. Nora’s eyes narrowed to killer slits. “What have I told you about doing that in  bed? I hate when you smoke in bed! Our sheets and the duvet smell for, like, a week.” “…Do you have my phone?” Myles asked. “You know what? Never mind. I’ll just take her.” “No, no,” he said, uncrossing his ankles with forced concentration, then swung his feet to the floor. “I’ll do it.” “She pooped at lunch,” Nora said, her voice already floating down the hall. To Myles, it sounded as if it were coming to him from a distant mountain peak. It took him five minutes to fit Luna’s harness over her head and another five to figure out how to clip the leash to her harness. Luna stood by the door, waiting and watching him with infinite patience. By the time they got outside, there was a soft blush over the city. That fuzzy time between daylight and nightfall, just light enough that the streetlights haven’t come on yet. It felt like a hundred years and no time at all had passed since the night he took Luna to find toilet paper. This was what weed was for, he reminded himself with a giggle. Normal life was like being on speed—he needed something to come down. These days, a bowl before bed was just about the only way he could get to sleep. But maybe, tonight, he’d overdone it. His head felt impossibly heavy on his shoulders, and every sound—the single blast of a delivery bike horn, the thunk of a car door—was over-heightened, impossibly distinct. He spent such an inordinate amount of time watching a couple stroll, hands held, to their car, then back out, that he couldn’t be sure whether Luna had peed or not. So they continued on. Walking was like moving through a waking dream and, in the time it took them to reach the end of 11th, Myles went from high—what he would consider a pleasant, three- or four-beer buzz—to out-of-his-mind blitzed. Maybe he’d gotten some bad  bud. This was the last of his stash, the weed he had before the city shut down. His dealer was in TriBeCa. First thing he had to do when he got back to the apartment was find a new dealer. A local one. His thoughts were so loud, he couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t been speaking them aloud. Where was his phone ? He might need it if something happened. If he needed to call 9-1-1. Fuck. Did he tell Nora where he was going? When he’d be back? Up ahead, a door painted the most mesmerizing blue swung open and a man emerged, descending the steps. All at once, Myles’ skull felt like a sack of marbles or the ball in one of those snow-globe compasses you stuck to your windshield, spinning dizzily. The man was coming toward them. As he approached, he gave Myles and Luna extra berth. Myles cocked his wrist in a wave, or thought he did. He felt like he was made of bubbles, every square inch of him. “Hey, you,” said a voice that both was and wasn’t inside Myles’ head. He turned, slowly. The man—short, combative-looking—was standing ten feet away, his face shining like a spotlight. “Where’s your mask?” “Oh.” Myles reached for his mouth and, in a nightmarish moment of terror, discovered his nose and chin completely exposed. “I said, ‘Where’s your mask?’” the man repeated, his voice rising toward a yell. “Sorry, I—” Talking was an effort. The words turned to gum in Myles’ mouth. “I forgot it.” Luna had gone rigid—Myles could feel the tension in the leash. He gave her a little tug and started walking. “Where’s your mask, asshole?” The man was screaming now, his voice carrying down the block. “WHERE IS IT?” The man’s feet clattered behind Myles. “HEY, ASSHOLE! I’M TALKING TO YOU!” The man’s face appeared at his shoulder like a jack-o-lantern. “DON’T—HEY, DON’T YOU DARE  WALK AWAY FROM ME!” The man yanked down his cloth mask, so he could shout directly into Myles’ face. “THERE ARE PEOPLE DYING IN THIS CITY! WHERE’S YOUR MASK, HUH? HUH, YOU FUCK ?” Luckily, about halfway down the block, right before the streetlights ignited above them, the man unexpectedly gave up. He was there—and then gone—so quickly that, for a moment, Myles wondered if he’d simply hallucinated the entire event. Nora glanced up from her laptop when he opened the door. “Just a second, Nath,” she said, removing an earbud. “Myles? Your phone’s on the counter.” *** Sunday. Myles was up early. After killing an hour thumbing through the news, waiting to see if Nora would wake, he saddled Luna with her harness and pocketed his keys. The park’s off-leash hours were from five to nine, and to stumble upon the Long Meadow with dogs standing in packs, running this way and that while their owners gathered in small huddles, leashes tucked under their arms, was like stumbling onto a New Yorker  cover. Myles discovered off-leash hours purely by accident; the first two or three times he and Loon participated, he decided against releasing her to run free with the other dogs. What if she bolted like an inmate outside a prison fence, tried to tree a squirrel half a mile away, or, worse, escaped the park entirely, running head-on into a city bus? LOST DOG posters plastered fence posts and light poles ringing the park. The last time he came, however, Myles stood off from the fracas of the dog party and cautiously unclamped her leash. She didn’t bolt. She didn’t do anything. “Go on,” he encouraged. “Go on. Run, play!” After several minutes, Luna eventually wandered a few paces from Myles and sniffed something in the grass, allowing an energetic border collie who galloped over to them to inspect her sex. There was a fair-sized crowd in the meadow today, though none of the owners were standing together. Nearest them, a labradoodle and an impressively groomed golden retriever were rolling around on the ground. A German shepherd with a stick between its teeth circled the congress of dogs, trying to entice others into chasing him. It was a regular cornucopia of city-dwelling canines: a Dachshund, beagle, several terriers and huskies, a corgi or two, a very rotund bulldog, mutts of all kinds. Their raucous chatter—excited barks, happy yips and yowls—echoed across the park. “All right, all right, Loon,” said Myles, trying to release her leash from the harness. “Just a sec. Okay, go.” Luna made a tentative beeline for the pack and was greeted by two or three dignitaries—a Frenchie and Pekinese—before being quickly sniffed and forgotten. After checking to see if he had any messages from Nora, Myles casually inspected the other dog owners. Fifteen feet away stood an aging hipster sporting a Catskills-rustic-meets-Goodwill outfit, his hair knotted in a greasy bun. He intended to keep a close eye on Luna, but was almost immediately distracted by the arrival of another dog owner. A bottle-blonde in a neon-pink sports bra and biking shorts, apparel that left very little to Myles’ considerable imagination. He let out the mental equivalent of a whistle. She was a bombshell, a real knockout, and he could feel the other men’s gazes stray from their charges or phone screens. A California transplant. Venice Beach or Palm Springs, if Myles were to guess. You didn’t get that kind of healthy glow in Omaha or Ames, or an apartment on the park, for that matter. Unless you were up on the roof with a towel every day, and it had been too cold for that. Myles was carefully observing the woman in the neon sports bra, the exquisite curve of her calves, when it happened. One moment, Luna was standing nose-to-nose with a boxer who had circled the crowd of thundering paws and twitching tails to approach her. The next, she launched herself at the newcomer and bit down on the other dog’s neck as if it were a jam-filled doughnut, locking her considerable jaws around the boxer’s throat like the chew toys she normally disdained. The boxer’s owner—a spindly man in hiking boots and a pine-green Patagonia vest—gave a panicked cry and bounded toward the animals. Myles was only half-aware of what was happening. He felt as if his brain had left his body somewhere below. When he came to—heart frozen in his chest, legs loaded with cement—he’d reached Luna, the boxer, and its owner and threw himself at Luna in a flying tackle, trying to dislodge her jaws from the dog’s neck. “Loon—Luna, stop!” he gasped. “STOP!” The other dogs and onlookers shrank away, aghast. Myles attempted, with little success, to grab a hold of Luna’s harness, to get control of her and drag her away from the boxer, but she was so much stronger than he had ever dared imagine. Her teeth—the same teeth she consented to let Nora brush with an oversized toothbrush and cinnamon-scented toothpaste—were so deep in the boxer’s neck that both animals were flecked with blood and Myles was terrified of what might happen once they removed her jaws. All he could see was the eggshell-white of her eyes. There was nothing in them he recognized. She was all feral animal, locked in a life-or-death struggle. At first, Myles believed the other owner might be bleeding, too, until he saw that his face was shining with snot and tears, not blood. The man wept as he struggled to separate the two animals. Myles managed to swing one leg over Luna, so he was standing astride her like a tiger wrangler, while the boxer’s owner kicked Luna in the chest with his hiking boot, hoping to wedge himself between the dogs’ muzzles. Luna’s grip on the boxer’s neck tightened with each blow and it occurred to Myles, the thought flashing across the sky of his panic-addled brain, that Luna might very well succeed in killing the other dog. Unless Myles or the other owner did something drastic, and quickly. It was like being caught in a storm, a furious hurricane of snarling teeth, claws, blood, fur. Impossible to get a good grip. “Grab his—collar,” the man panted. This was what did it. Myles reached for Luna’s collar and it was like unzipping a coat. Her jaws came unglued; he felt a bizarre pressure on his hand, his arm transformed into a white-hot bar of agony. The other owner wrapped the boxer in a bear hug, springing the dog free, and staggered a few short steps before collapsing to his knees, shoulders quaking with sobs. The first owners began to approach him. The bottle-blonde was gone. The remaining strength ran out of Myles’ legs. His sweatshirt and shorts were gloved in blood. He glanced down at his hand, inspecting it for damage, and felt a terrible, wet warmth. Luna, still without her leash, had gone off to stand by herself, like a pariah, head low, blood and saliva hanging in ribbons from her muzzle. Although he was in shock, Myles was able to wobble to his feet. He stumbled-shuffled toward Luna, who didn’t move, and snapped her leash onto her harness, unsure what he would have done if she chose to attack him or run. To his amazement, no one said anything to him as he trudged away, blood running in a torrent from his wounded hand, Luna’s leash lassoed around his good arm. Everyone was too shocked, too cowed, by the sudden, casual violence they had all just been witness to. He didn’t think about what he’d have to do. He wasn’t thinking at all. Only when he arrived outside his building and stupidly patted his pockets did he realize he’d lost his keys in the scrum. “Oh, my god—oh, my god! You’re bleeding!” Nora cried once she buzzed him in. Her face went white as bone. “You’ve got blood everywhere!” She darted down the hall and returned with a dish towel. “Jesus fuck. What happened ?” “There was a—a fight. With another dog.” His back and arms were one solid ache. Now that it was over, that all the adrenaline had drained from his body, he was utterly spent. “Here, here.” She took his wrist. “Hold it up. Elevate it. We’ve gotta—fuck—go to the hospital. Another dog bit you?” “No—not exactly.” Nora stopped, took a step back from him as if he were infectious. Did his mask come off? Had he put it on? He couldn’t remember. “ She  bit you?” “I was—no—she attacked another dog, and I was trying to separate them. I don’t think she realized what she was doing—” Nora placed a hand to her forehead, her color starting to return. “Luna bit you,” she said slowly. “No”—Myles felt as if he never expressed anything the right way—“it was an accident.” “An accident ? Dogs don’t accidentally bite someone! What about the other dog? The other owner?” “I—I don’t know.” Myles hand had soaked the dish towel and was dripping on the floor. “You left and didn’t—? Oh, god.” Nora turned in a small circle, her hand still pressed to her forehead. “Oh, god. They could sue  us. Oh, oh, that’s it! She’s going back to the shelter. Today.” Myles said the word so gently, he wasn’t even sure it came from him. “No? No, what?” “No, we’re not—we can’t bring her back.” Nora’s eyes bulged. “Look what she did to you! To your hand! You’re probably going to need stitches.” Nora walked one direction, then immediately back the other. “No. No, Myles. Absolutely not. I am not living with that—that thing —that dangerous animal in my house. No. You hear me?” Luna was standing in the living room, ears back, alert, as if she knew they were discussing her. Her leash hung from her harness. Nora moved slowly toward her and picked up the leash as if it were poisonous. “It’s me or the dog.” “No, no. You’re right,” Myles mumbled, the whole awful mess—their entire predicament—crashing down on him like a load of cement. She was right. Of course, she was right. In fact, he felt stupid for not having seen it before. “Come on,” she said, herding Luna toward the bathroom. She complied, her nails clicking on the floor, tail tucked between her muscular haunches. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” she cooed. “Everything’s gonna be all right.” Once Luna was inside, Nora closed the door. Luna’s glistening black nose floated in the doorjamb, then vanished. While they waited for the Uber, Myles realized he wasn’t sure whether Nora had been talking to him or the dog. *** Later that summer—after everyone who fled the city has returned—Myles is walking along Van Brunt when he glimpses a halo of red hair beneath a Mets cap. No, he thinks, that can’t be Nora. Can it? She’s sitting outside a restaurant. She spots Luna first, then Myles, attached to her leash. “My god, Myles!” she cries, her face opening with surprise. “How are you?” She sets her margarita down and Myles suffers a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he is living a scene from his old life. Nora here, in his neighborhood. She asks how he’s been, her friend’s eyes—Nathalie, he remembers suddenly—flashing between the top of her Ray-Bans and the rim of her straw sunhat. “Have you been back? To the park, I mean?” Nora is wearing a navy jumper with pink flowers he hasn’t seen before. It looks good on her, he thinks. She  looks good. “How’s your hand?” “Oh—better,” he says, twisting it around for his own inspection. Although it’s been a month, the bruises on his arms and chest—continents of purple, ringed by yellow—haven’t fully faded. Luna pants in the heat. Once it becomes clear they won’t be continuing their walk, she drops her head onto her paws. “Does she have to wear that thing all the time?” she asks with a jut of her chin. “Only ’round other dogs.” He wedges a finger beneath the nylon muzzle and gives Luna a scratch. “How about you? How’ve you been? Seeing anyone?” Nora’s cheeks pinken. She’s been on a few dates—outdoors, of course, or on Zoom—but nothing serious. “Good for you,” he says, and means it. He has never felt all one way about their breakup. His feelings are a miasma, a confusing swirl of remorse, guilt, relief. “How’s work?” she asks cheerfully. The horn from the ferry carries over the row houses, the rusted, rambling warehouses several blocks distant. “Have you been back to the city?” “No. Quit, actually. I’m teaching now.” “Teaching? Really?” she says, unable to hide her surprise. “I never knew you wanted to teach. What subject?” “ESL,” he says with a long, embarrassed look at the ground. “Pays practically nothing, but…” “Long as it makes you happy,” Nora says. A dial of sunlight glints off a passing bus. For a single instant, everything—the sidewalk, Nora and Nathalie, Luna and Myles, the city, and everyone in it—seems new and sweet, etched in stark relief. “Yeah. Yeah, I think it does.” Joseph Pfier is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. He teaches fiction at Brooklyn Brainery and is the fiction editor at The Boiler Journal.  His work has appeared in publications such as Oyster River Pages, PANK, Juked,  and X-R-A-Y.

Remember Charlie Bischman? Ponytail science geek, used to watch us from the bleachers? Well, Stacie, guess who drunk-dialed me in August? And know what’s weird? I thought he was dead! Didn’t someone tell us that? Drove his Vespa off a cliff or into a tree or something? Anyway, it’s like 3 a.m. and I’m thinking I’m talking to a ghost, saying, Wow, Charlie , how are you? and he’s like, Stacey I ’ ve worshipped you since high school even though you were so cruel to me - and he’s completely wasted, right?  And then he says, So would you, like, have my baby?  I had to teach a Comp. Lit. section at 9 a.m., so I say, Gosh Charlie, that ’ s sweet—let ’ s sleep on it and you call me sometime, ‘K?  Next night he actually calls back—totally sober—and gives me this crazy pitch!  Turns out little not-so-dead Charlie is doing quite well for himself, and he says if I go through with this, I get a hundred and fifty grand plus medical expenses, no strings. So now I’m listening, right? He’s going on about options and contingencies, and I’m Googling him to see if he’s for real. No kidding, Charlie Bischman is totally famous! He patented these robotic surgical micro-tweezer things and now the guy’s loaded! I know! And how ’ re you planning to explain to people how you suddenly have a baby?  I say, kinda stalling for time ‘cuz my mind is really jammed up over this. And all business-casual, like he’s already thought of everything, he says, Oh, I ’ ll say I hooked up with a beautiful mysterious lady at a bar, we had consensual sex, and unbeknownst to me she got pregnant. One day I go out to my Tesla and there ’ s this baby strapped in the passenger seat, with a note, and so of course I do the right thing and raise it as my own.  Smart, right?  And I tell you, it started making sense—like, dollars and sense, you know? Hey, my thesis is totally stalled out—my advisor barely remembers my name, and how am I supposed to get a teaching job without his stupid recommendation? A hundred and fifty grand could even shut my parents up; What ’ s that Dad? What was I doing all year? I was growing a rich man ’ s child in my womb, Dad, that ’ s what!  Two nights later we’re having dinner at Charlie’s mansion, drinking this really nice merlot, and next thing I know we’re going at it in his ginormous bed! He looks so much better, by the way—the ponytail kind of suits him now—very entrepreneurial. And he definitely  got a personal trainer. And those teeth of his? They’re like, perfect now. Fertile Myrtle here gets knocked up on the first round!  Then a couple of weeks ago, at my eight-month check-up with the OB Charlie’s having me go to, who waddles into the waiting room but the rest of the Cooperville cheerleading squad! I hadn’t seen them in like twelve years, and suddenly there’s Marnie, Brenda, Haley and Francie, coming at me like a bunch of Bosu Balls, and we’re all, What the fuck?  The receptionist hands out fat new legal contracts—the original ones were just downloaded from LegalZoom, apparently—and takes us to this room where Charlie’s Zooming in on this huge screen. He reveals he’s making us each the same deal: the hundred and fifty grand tax free, but only one of the babies gets to be his heir. He’ll choose based on its Apgar score, cuteness potential and his own “visceral reaction” to its cry. The mom of the chosen kid gets a bonus hundred grand, a fat monthly stipend, and the suggested option of becoming Mrs. Charlie Bischman. Losers keep the babies, and a consolation trust fund, unless they opt for the lump sum buyout.  So I’m super pumped, because Marnie just had these scrawny little twins, which disqualified her (the contract excludes multiples-duh), and honestly, Brenda and Haley’s babies were pretty, well, meh. Francie is due any day, but with her weight gain, it’s gonna come stomping outta her like Big Foot. So I’m thinking I’m about to be a gazillionaire, and both Dad and my advisor can bite me.  And honestly, Stacie, I don’t know if I’ll marry Charlie. I mean, get real— he’s such a geeky little twerp, right? I do have standards for fuck’s sake.  R. C. Barajas’ writing and photography have appeared in such places as The Washington Post, Cleaver Magazine, Fatal Flaw, and Hole in the Head Review. She was thrilled to be a finalist in the Not Quite Write and Bath Flash Fiction contests. One of her favorite places on earth is a darkroom. But she likes the ocean, too. Especially the Pacific. R. C. is a Californian by birth and temperament, and a Virginian through transplant. She lives with her husband and two loopy dogs.

I’m five, holding my scooter in position at the front of our house. I’m staring down the driveway that stretches to the gate near the street when I hear the boom buzz of an airplane taking off. A new race begins. I push off the concrete and go, go, go . The wheels rumble over crackling leaves as the wind sends my hair flying behind me like a cape. I scream past scarlet flowers as I look up at the sky then back at the pavement – I’ve still got the lead. Push, breathe, push, breathe . I’m more than halfway when I glance up and watch the plane soar past me and I know I’ve lost. I screech to a stop. My heart kicks as I gulp down air. Then I turn around, walk the scooter back to the house, and ready myself for the next round. I will never tire of this game, even though I’ll never win. * I’m forty-one, sitting at my computer as I type the street name into Google Maps. I find Santa Monica Airport and I know I’m in the right area. I scroll left and right searching the virtual neighborhood until I find the fairytale house we all bought into. The Tudor construction of pointy roofs, dark frames, and white panels. The turreted column of windows along one side that spanned three stories – the mysterious attic at the top I was never allowed into, the second-floor bedroom where my parents slept next to an altar to foreign gurus, and the downstairs living room where my father sat in his cloth-bound recliner, a brown hooded robe draped around his body as he wolfed down the business section before work. I think of other memories. When I got a packet of carrot seeds in my McDonald’s Happy Meal and poured all of them into one hole I’d dug into the grass. I wondered for weeks why nothing ever sprouted. Or when I got roller skates from Santa, but spent most of the time breaking in my wrist guards as I crashed onto the pavement over and over. Or the evening Mom asked me to collect flowers for the dinner table, and I clipped some fuchsia blossoms from the bougainvillea bush that turned out to be all color but no fragrance. I’m trying to make this house about something other than that morning in March when Mom and I carried our suitcases down the driveway after a weekend trip up north. We opened the front door to a hollow echo. Stay here , Mom said in the entryway as she flicked on the lights one by one, the clack of her boots and swoosh of her skirt the only sounds piercing the thick quiet of the house. I remained frozen as instructed, but curiosity lured my eyes left into the living room. That’s when I noticed things were missing: the rosewood coffee table where I ate cereal before school, the Persian rug where I cuddled our Siamese cat until she was hissing to get away. And in the far corner, by the window next to the lamp, four tiny carpet indentations marked the place where my father’s recliner no longer stood. * I toggle back and forth around the front gate on the screen. I can’t access an angle to view the driveway. But in my mind I see the stretch of pavement, the curve right and then left, the side-lawn of flowers with no scent. And I imagine I’m there skating in circles and pulling up carrots because we didn’t move out in May, and my father stayed, and I won the race against the planes. Becs Tetley is a nonfiction writer and editor in Wellington, New Zealand. Her personal essays have appeared in The Spinoff, Reckon Review, Vagabond City Lit, Headland, and elsewhere. She is a member of the New Zealand Society of Authors and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Auckland University of Technology. She can be found online: @BecsTetley.

I’m eleven. Kneeling beside my bed, hands clasped. “Uncle Brendan? Are you up there? Sister Claire says now that you’re in heaven you can be my guardian angel.” I’m pretty sure it was drunk driving that sent Uncle Brendan to heaven, but I did not tell Sister Claire that part.  I go, “Sister Claire says you can look down and see all.” Which I think about every time I go to the bathroom.  “I have a birthday coming up. I’ve been pretty good lately. You may have noticed last Christmas I let the poor kids have the toys I didn’t want anymore.” I unclasp my hands. I get up off my knees. I suspect the angels, drunk or otherwise, never hear the likes of me. I yell downstairs, “Pop! Pop! For my birthday…? Do you think I’ll get a new G.I. Joe? With lifelike fuzzy hair?” Pop yells upstairs, “It’s nice to want things. Now go to bed, Bobby.” It’s nice  to want  things?  *** For my birthday, I get, a  slinky. A spaldeen. A board game called Diplomacy. Diplomacy ? You know what I think? I think we should give this  crap to the poor kids. Ma and Pop study my face. For reasons I cannot fathom, they did not expect me to be disappointed. I say, “But what about the new G.I. Joe? With lifelike fuzzy hair…? and a beard…? and kung fu grip?” Ma says, “G.I. Joe glorifies war.” “But on the box at Roy’s Toyland, it says G.I. Joe can go on scuba missions, jungle missions, he can climb the mountains of Nepal.” I pronounce it Nepple. ” “It also says only four dollars and ninety-nine cents.” Pop says, “If you really, really want one…” If ? “… you can earn  it.” Earn it? I know what that  means…  *** Scrubbing the toilet. Ma hands me a big fuzzy brush. I’m scrubbing that toilet bowl good when my little sister Maggie sticks her head into the bathroom. She goes, “I wanna help!” “Scrubbing the toilet is for smart  people!” “I’m smart!” “Scrubbing the toilet is for big  people!” “I‘m big!” “No, you are not ! I will always  be bigger than you and you will never be a man !” *** Two weeks later. I got a pocketful of quarters. Roy’s Toyland opens at 9. G.I. Joe waits on the shelf.  Lifelike fuzzy hair. And a beard. So he cannot possibly be mistaken for Ken. I grab the box and float up the aisle to the register, Roy accepts my pile of quarters, and I float back home, the boy who invented the world. That morning is a blur of scuba missions, jungle missions… kung fu grip… A quick break for Fluffernutters… But after Fluffernutters… I look for G.I. Joe. He’s not on top of my dresser, he’s not anywhere in my room, he’s not anywhere upstairs, he’s not anywhere downstairs…  “Maggie! Maggie!” She hollers, “I’m doing my chore!” “Where?” “The bathroom!” I walk down the stairs and down the hall and the closer I get to the bathroom…  I hear scrubbing.  I hear Maggie singing, “He’s got the whole world in his hands…” She’s on her knees in front of that filthy toilet. “He’s got the whole world in his hands…” She’s scrubbing. “He’s got the whole world…” She’s clutching G.I. Joe by his legs, scrubbing the toilet bowl with G.I. Joe’s lifelike fuzzy hair. I reach for G.I. Joe. and I guess I scream because now I’m being restrained and Ma tries to pry G.I. Joe out of my kung fu grip and then I’m writhing on the bathroom floor watching Ma deposit my beautiful brand-new hard-earned shit-covered G.I. Joe into the garbage.  I go, “Ma? I think I’m having a nightmare. Like that time I dreamed my dead turtle rose from the grave and tried to bite off my tinkle?” Maggie stands there looking down at me.  I go, “Maggie? I want you to know something. My life was much better before you were born. Every Saturday morning Pop used to walk me to the bakery to buy crumb buns. The day you entered this world, the crumb bun buying came to an end.” It crosses my mind that Uncle Brendan may be seeing all. But if Uncle Brendan has the power to intervene in human affairs, he’s clearly chosen not to. I open the garbage can, and take one last look. The lid slams shut. *** Ma says, “Bobby? We have a surprise for you!” “A surprise?” “Your godmother is here to sit for you. You always have fun with fun Cousin Mamie.” My godmother is anywheres between thirty-five and sixty. Fun ? I go, “I thought Cousin Mamie got married.” Ma says, “Hush now, Bobby.” “I thought Cousin Mamie sailed to Ireland.” “ Hush  now.” “I saw  Cousin Mamie get on a ship and sail away. We waved goodbye to her.” “We don’t talk  about that.” Now my godmother appears. She bellows, “Raaaaaahbit…” Don’t ask me why but that’s how she pronounces Robert . “Remember me? Fun Cousin Mamie?” We especially don’t talk about the fact that ever since fun Cousin Mamie sailed back  from Ireland, her head tilts all the way to one side. She says, “Your mommy says you lost your wee dollie.” I go, “He was more of an action figure…” “Well, you are lucky your godmother is here.” She’s got a big bag slung over her shoulder. She slaps that bag. “We are going to make  a wee dollie.” “That’s really  not necessary.” But now Cousin Mamie is sitting cross legged on the living room carpet, unpacking her bag. What can I do? I join her. Yarn. “Cousin Mamie, did you happen to bring this yarn back from Ireland?” “Who says I’ve been to Ireland?” “Nobody. Actually everybody . Scissors.  “Cousin Mamie, did you get married? “Who’d marry me ?” Thread.  “What happened to your neck?” “Never mind my neck. My neck’s always been like this.” “No it has not . Why would you even say that?” Scraps of cloth.  After a while, she says, “Now I  have a question for you . Do you know how to handle a bully?” “Do I know how to handle a bully?” “I’ll tell you how to handle a bully.” Stuffing.  “How do you handle a bully? “Kick him in the hiney.” “Kick him in the hiney?” “In the hiney. Fast. And hard. They never see it coming. And it can do a great deal of damage. Never forget that.” I will never  forget that. Between the two of us, me being eleven and Cousin Mamie with her crooked neck, it’s a miracle my rag doll looks anything remotely like a human being.  Buttons for eyes. Paint.  Cousin Mamie paints my rag doll a little smile. She paints a heart on his chest.  She says, “When you see that rag doll heart, you’ll always think of your godmother. And you’ll always remember the best  day.” The best day? She says, “Bobby? What shall we call him?” “Whatever.” She raises the rag doll’s arm, like he’s saluting. She says, “G.I. Patrick, reporting for duty.” *** I take the ugly thing outside. And God forbid any boy in the neighborhood walks by our front yard to witness this. G.I. Patrick. Climbing the mountains of Nepal on the front stoop. After a while, Cousin Mamie calls, “Raaaaaahbit…? Soda bread fresh out of the oven!” I bolt up the stoop to the kitchen and demolish a plate of warm buttered soda bread that Cousin Mamie may  have learned to bake from the family of her apparently vicious ex-husband in Ireland but that’s pure conjecture. But when I get back outside, here comes this older boy up the block. He’s got a long, pointy stick. He gets to our mailbox and smacks it a good one, then he stops. He spies G.I. Patrick lying in the front yard. Then he does something so strange that I still think about it. He takes that stick and stabs G.I. Patrick through his heart. He picks up G.I. Patrick and parades up the block, my rag doll on the end of a stick. When I’m pretty sure he’s out of earshot, I holler, “You’re a rat!” Cousin Mamie steps out on the stoop. “Robert, what are you screaming about?” “An older boy stoled my rag doll and he stabbed him through the heart with a stick and walked away with him and he is a rat !” “An older boy? Who was it?” I think about that. “Raahbit? Who was it?” “I think it was…” “Who?” “I think it was Jimmy Gannon.” Cousin Mamie whistles like Pop whistles when I tell him the Mets are down ten to nothing in the bottom of the ninth. “Jimmy Gannon? Of the thick-headed omadhaun Gannons up the block? Robert, are you sure?” Am  I sure? Word around the neighborhood is don’t mess with Jimmy Gannon. I go, “Yes.” Now Cousin Mamie is strutting up the block. Apparently she’s gonna mess with Jimmy Gannon. *** By the time I reach Jimmy Gannon’s house, Cousin Mamie is having a little chat with Mr. Gannon. Mr. Gannon goes, “You mean to say…” Cousin Mamie goes, “I don’t mean  to say. I’m telling  you what your Jimmy did.” “Jimmy don’t steal little boys’ dollies. Your little boy’s got a sweet little imagination.” Cousin Mamie is waving a fist in Mr. Gannon’s face. “I’ll show you  a sweet little imagination.” “It’s threats, is it?” “It’s promises.” Mr. Gannon hollers, “Jimmy! Get over here!” Jimmy Gannon appears out of nowhere. Jimmy goes, “Yo, what’s up?” Mr. Gannon says, “Lemme ask you something. What did you do with this little boy’s dollie?” Jimmy’s looking at me. He goes, “Bobby’s dollie?” I go, “It was my sister’s  doll, Jimmy. It was my sister’s  doll.” Jimmy goes, “Bobby, what are you talking about?” Cousin Mamie is waving that fist again. “What did you do with the wee dollie, you thick-headed omadhaun?” Jimmy’s all cool. “I didn’t do nothing. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Now Mr. Gannon is waving a fist. “Jimmy, if you’re lying…” “Why would I lie about something so stupid? Word around the neighborhood is don’t mess with me. I don’t need to steal little girls’ dollies.” I go, “Jimmy, you know what you did.” “I don’t  know what I did. I swear to God, Bobby. I didn’t do nothing .” “You’ll go to hell for this.” I wish my voice wasn’t trembling. Mr. Gannon comes for me with that fist in the air. “Don’t be prancing around my house saying my Jimmy is gonna go to… Uuuuuuuugh. ” Mr. Gannon drops to the sidewalk. Apparently Cousin Mamie kicked Mr. Gannon in the hiney. He’s lying on the pavement. “ Uuuuuuuugh. ” Mr. Gannon stands up, slow, Jimmy hauling on his arm, Mr. Gannon all hunched over.  He limps up the front stoop into the house. “ Uuuuuuuugh. ” Jimmy gives me a look. The walk back to my house is ridiculous. I look for my rag doll on the sidewalk, in the gutters, in everybody’s front yards, I open garbage cans. He isn’t anywhere . Cousin Mamie says, “Raahbit, are you sure it was Jimmy Gannon?” Then I’m not  sure. I see the older boy’s face and it isn’t Jimmy. It’s some other boy stabbing my rag doll. *** That night. Kneeling beside my bed, hands clasped. “Uncle Brendan? Are you still drunk driving up there?” I climb into bed, close my eyes. But all night long, rag doll commandos invade my room — they pour through the window, march across my floor, scale the side of my bed, whisper in my ear, “It was my sister’s  doll, Jimmy. It was my sister’s  doll.” *** Morning. I know what I have to do. Even if it means getting punched in the face, which it probably will. I walk to Jimmy Gannon’s house. Here’s Jimmy sitting on the front stoop, like he’s waiting for me. But when I get closer, I see Jimmy’s cheeks are wet. He goes, “I’m gonna kill  you!” “Jimmy, what’s the matter?” “My mommy and daddy just left in an ambulance. It’s my daddy’s hiney. He can’t stand up straight.” Jimmy reaches into his pocket. Now he’s got something in his hand. “Jimmy, where’d you get a switchblade ?” “What? Why wouldn’t  I have a switchblade? You think I don’t know switchblade people?” “I was just making polite conversation.” “‘Jimmy, where’d you get a switchblade?’ is polite conversation? You think I’m a thick-headed omadhaun?” The blade flicks open. “No, Jimmy. Only an omadhaun would be a big enough omadhaun to call another omadhaun an omadhaun.” “That sentence had the word omadhaun  in it like five times.” “Actually, I think it was more like four.” “That lady who kicked my daddy in the hiney called me a thick-headed omadhaun.” “Jimmy, that’s actually why I’m here. I want to apologize. For three things. And number three is the most important.” “Okay. Number one?” “Number one. I’m sorry I accused you of stealing. I know you didn’t take the doll.” “Thank you, Bobby. I swear to God I didn’t. Number two?” “Number two. Who would’ve thought somebody as little as Cousin Mamie could kick somebody as big as your daddy in the hiney so hard he’d have to go to the hospital?” “Is that an apology?” “Yes. People can’t be going around kicking other people in their hineys.” “Thank you, Bobby.” “No problem.” I start backing away. “Yo, Jimmy, I’ll say a novena for your daddy.” “You said there were three  things.” “No, just two.” “You said number three was the most important.” “Well. If you must know. Number three. It wasn’t Maggie’s rag doll. It was…” I sniff the air. “Jimmy, do you smell something?” “I don’t smell anything. What’s number three?” “Number three. It wasn’t Maggie‘s rag doll. It was…” I sniff. I sniff again. By“Jimmy, are you sure you don’t smell something?” “I don’t smell anything.” “I think I smell smoke. I think I smell smoke coming from your backyard.” We run around back, and here’s the Gannon family’s rusty old barbecue.  My rag doll lying on the grill.  Smoke.  Flames. “Jimmy. What. The…” He goes, “I want my daddy  back!”  That switchblade glistening in the morning sun. He goes, “I want  my daddy  back!” Our eyes meet. We stand there. I go, “Jimmy, sometimes, when I’m having a bad day, I remember something Pop once said to me. It’s nice to want  things.” “What did you just say to me?” “I said, sometimes, when I’m having a bad day—” “No! Not that  part. I heard that  part. The part at the end.” “It’s nice to want things, Jimmy. It’s nice  to want  things.” We stand there. Jimmy wipes a tear from his cheek. “Thank you, Bobby. It is  nice to want things, isn’t it?” Jimmy flicks his switchblade shut. “Yes, Jimmy. It is  nice to want things.” We stand there for a long time watching the smoldering remains of G.I. Patrick. Button eyes. Painted smile. Rag doll heart. Smoke curls up, up, up into the morning sky. Robert Firpo-Cappiello (@RobFirpCapp) is a two-time Emmy nominee (for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition for a Drama Series) and a Folio-award-winning magazine editor focusing on travel, hospitality, and health. His creative writing has appeared in Roi Fainéant and Cowboy Jamboree Press, and he has performed his short stories, novels, and songs at Rockwood Music Hall, St Lou Fringe, Dixon Place, Irvington Theater, Spark Theatre Festival NYC, Urban Stages, and Bad Theater Fest. Robert holds a Master of Music degree in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory, a BA in English from Colgate University (where his mentor was novelist Frederick Busch), and he made his show-business debut at the age of five on WOR-TV’s Romper Room. Robert is represented by Jill Marr, at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.