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Paul had reached, we hoped, the final leg of his dissertation on La-Z-Boy  recliners.  “Babe, help your mother,” Gracie said. She was a good one. Megan, Paul’s mother, looked to be in no particular need of help, but Gracie tried to push Paul always in the right direction. He needed it. Megan couldn’t do it anymore. She’d passed the torch. “Hold on,” Paul said, “I’m mansplaining simultaneous recline and rock.” He said things like that, but I guess we still loved him.  By “we,” I include myself here only grudgingly. And for clarification, I’m Bev, shopping for furniture with the Browns, my oldest friends. There were five of us: the parents (Megan and Gerald), the kids (Paul and Gracie), and Bev. You’re welcome–now, keep up. Megan surely loved her son. That moment, though, she stood transfixed by a natural wood-edge teak coffee table upholstered—festooned?—with the taut hide of a young deer. I’m not an expert on deer, but something about the skin suggested to me a poached doe or fawn. It wasn’t just a skin; a painted hide is more like it, because some droll, wistful man had painted cowboys and Indians chasing across hither and yon.  A young man who worked at the furniture store came to greet us. "Hello, Dr. Brown, Mrs. Brown. Got the kids with you?" The man was younger than Paul, but he called him and Gracie "kids." He had ginger hair and rusty stubble, was tall, athletic, and reached to take Gerald's hand.  Gerald has beautiful tawny hands, large with perfect, strong fingers. I’ve mostly lost the savor of masculine beauty, but you have to admire Gerald’s hands. The furniture salesman was strapping, but his hand looked dainty in Gerald’s. He didn’t reach for Megan’s. One look at her poor hands and you’d understand. She’d had rheumatoid arthritis since before Paul was born. That day at the furniture store—the name’s going to come to me—Megan and I were 73, Gerald was 72, and Paul and Gracie were pushing well up into their thirties.  “Robert,” said Megan, who knew the salesman’s name, of course. “Did you make this?” She didn’t gesture to the table. She might have meant the world itself, for all Robert understood. I’ll never understand if Megan enjoyed confusing people, keeping people on their toes, or if she simply took no part in our understanding. “Ma’am?” Robert asked, squinting, a little sweat beading on his pink forehead—it was hot in the front gallery; the glass entrance door had a handwritten sign warning of problems with the heat. This was January, but the day was pleasant; inside, the store was sweltering. "The table," I said and did gesture. I didn't like it when people were confused by her. Mind you, this was something that spanned back most of our lives. It was getting worse. “Ah, nope,” he said. “Sure is something, though.” “I think,” Megan said, “it’s a little rustic for our living room. But we do need a coffee table. It really is something.” She smiled in a way that put Robert at ease. She was good that way. You couldn’t find a kinder person. I didn’t know if she honestly admired the awful table. It was always her mystery that made you feel, no matter how well or poorly things were going in your own life, that you maybe only circled hers.  “I kind of like it,” Paul said. He gave Gracie a child’s pleading look, like, can we? She evaded with a funny kind of pirouette and went on into the larger showroom to the right of the entrance gallery. Shrewd.  But before he could follow, Megan took Paul’s arm and they admired the poor dead baby deer table for a while. I thought they both had something to tell the other, but I only knew for certain Megan’s hard news. And I wanted, awfully, to go away and let that moment last as long as it could. Paul rested his head on the top of hers. He kissed her crown, right there in front of God and everyone. He did it all the time. Gerald, as ever, looked so confused—felt, I think, that he too risked interrupting something but had nowhere else to be. He was sweating, too, and stooped, rummaging a collection of cavalry swords and walking canes in a tall iron fireplace basket. The front room had a gentleman's motif, a few distressed leather pieces, a billiard set, a mahogany bar, and, lining a hallway back toward an office, some full-sized safes.  Nothing for me there, I followed Gracie into a larger showroom of mostly sofas and recliners. That’s where I fell briefly in love with a purple chair.   I hope this isn’t confusing. I’m not a storyteller. Let’s try to set things right. Others might try to steal the spotlight, but I mean this as a testament to Megan. We were there at F. F. McFadden's Fine Furniture—sure, why not?—to buy a living room set for Gracie and Paul. They'd bought a house and had the kitchen and the upstairs covered. For their downstairs office, Megan had given them her oak bookcases. She'd given away all her hundreds of volumes of mysteries and switched over to a Kindle, paperback print too small for old eyes, anymore.  She had the most beautiful pale electric blue eyes. It’s the first thing anyone remembers. A rascally smile—Paul has it, too. I want to call her beautiful, but the arthritis had aged her early and by then, the best word I have is “small.”  This all happened before she died, obviously, and before Paul lost his mind, Gracie almost lost her baby, Gerald wilted like a rose, mostly gone in sad sweet petals, or crumbled like the flakes of chewing tobacco he left like breadcrumbs through his life.  This isn’t a story about Gerald, either. He’s an imposing, silent man. There may never be a story about Gerald.  But before you know any more about any of that, you have to understand I could not decide if this fuchsia button-tufted wingback chair clashed with the terracotta drapes and the turmeric throw in my nearly perfect living room.  It was not a perfect living room the way that sounds. I’m a poor retired teacher. I just almost had it the way I wanted. And now this chair came into my life and upended all of that.  As I stood enraptured by it, tracing tawdry fingerings along the supple stitchwork, Gracie and Paul played around the sectionals, giggling, goosing and grab-assing, because they thought no one was looking.  Let that be a lesson to you—Beverly is always looking. Paul went for any couch wild or garish, distressed leather U-shapes and lime loveseats, a black leather Chesterfield with a Union Jack emblazoned all the way across. Surely he was joking with that. Patient, abiding Gracie reigned him back to the choice between a taupe modern L-shape and an ash transitional L—these faced off across the showroom’s central, widest row. Paul considered, then pointed to the latter, because it was bigger. We’d visited the new house early that morning and there was certainly space to fill. Gracie looked at the tag and balked. “Nineteen hundred? We can’t.” I noticed Gracie kept patting absently at her stomach. Paul sat on various sections of the ash sofa, wiggling his butt. “Ah. We can.”  “We owe them so much already.” “It’s cool.” Paul tried to be casual, but the two grand played a little in his eyes. “We’ll pay them with our tax returns. And I did all that yard work last month.” “You picked up sticks in their front yard and put them in their backyard.” “I also pulled the vines off the trees out front.” “No, you pulled the vines off of two trees, and then you said it was ‘too hurty.’” “To be fair, it was hurty.” Paul grimaced, wriggling his fingers in phantom pain. “I know. I did the other five.” Gracie mimicked his wriggling, gave him the bird. “So, they owe us both.”  “Not two thousand dollars.” “I don’t know what you charge for your time, babe, but that’s about right for mine.” The lights thrummed down for a moment and some commotion arose from deeper in the store, from a hallway leading off on the left side of the showroom. I went to investigate because I'm nosey, and because I didn't want to listen to the kids bicker anymore. Except, it wasn’t bickering; that was how they spoke to each other all the time—Gracie serious, Paul aloof, and they stood very close and petted each other and you got the sense that if they were too long out of each other’s company, they’d perish like fruit. Megan told me she knew they’d get married the first time she met Gracie, because it was plainly there. Love. Young love bores me. So—the commotion. It was much hotter in the hallway leading off the showroom, and down it on the left was a sort of alcove or cubicle. “This dang heat!” shouted a young woman stuck behind a counter there in the tiled alcove squeezed in by wood paneling and guardian, one assumes, of the cashbox. She shouted, “Frank! I’m dying!” “I know, Marla!” came the voice of some Frank from a door that led outside at the end of her alcove.  “Howdy,” Marla said to me. “How can we help today?” "I'm interested in a fuchsia easy chair." “I think we have a pink chair in the west gallery.” She pointed from where I’d come. “You do. I found it.”  “Oh. Do you have the item number?” I wanted to ask what it was she did there. “No. Do you offer any kind of layaway?” “Well, we can talk to Frank. He’s the owner.” She hooked a thumb back toward the door. I need to back up and add that the whole compound—the only real word for it—spanned 40,000 square feet, easy, with the front gallery, at least two large showrooms including where I’d left Gracie and Paul and a second beyond, and a vast warehouse adjoining at the rear of the property. We’d arrived at noon to an empty parking lot, the Saturday shopping traffic likely gone to lunch or scared off by the signage. A big razor-wire fence with a mechanized gate was set to close off what must have been north of 2 million in inventory, with the furniture—all high end—and the safes and outdoor patio sets and saunas, marble statuary and such stored in as-yet unexplored rooms and wings.  A middle-aged, redheaded man, paunchy and clearly salesman Robert’s father, came inside the alcove shaking his head. “Wilkes thinks he’s got it.” “Wilkes ain’t got sh—” Marla remembered me and smiled. “He hasn’t got anything. Call the HVAC people. Why can’t we just turn it off?” Frank ignored Marla, looked me over once, and appraised me as a hopeless miser-woman. He had the gift. "Howdy," he said, shambling past me down the hallway. From outside came a big clatter and curses. “I’m calling the HVAC guys,” Marla said to me or no one. I went back down the hallway past the showroom to the front gallery, and as I passed a large open safe in an obsidian finish and bigger than a fridge, a hand reached out and grabbed my shirt sleeve. “Damn!” I shouted. I’d almost peed my slacks. Megan held my arm. She stood entirely in the safe. Her face was twisted up. Finally, she smiled weakly and let me go. “Close it.” I squinted at her. “Just for a minute.” I didn’t have to ask. I did what I was told. I was afraid I wouldn’t hear her knock, but in six or seven seconds, she did, and I opened it again with a tug. She came out and took my arm and led me to see a cherry coffee table that looked identical to what she had at home. “It’s taller,” she explained, “and I’m getting shorter.” Who the hell knows what that meant? In the main showroom, Megan and I found Gracie fretting still over the price tag on the sectional. Paul watched her, then secreted something between the couch cushions and said in a loud voice, “Drills!” Gracie hopped to attention. “It’s time for Jeopardy and where’s the remote? Move! It’s 5:02!” They rushed around, Paul looking under pillows, Gracie patting along the couch, digging between cushions and furrowing her brow. She found it quickly—Paul's phone—and they sat together simultaneously as synchronized swimmers, tossed legs over knees in mirror-reverse, Gracie flipping imaginary channels. “Not bad,” Paul said. “Workable.”  “My children are silly people,” said Megan, announcing her presence.  Paul winked at her. “Drills! Mom and Bev are over and everyone has chili. No spills!” We pantomimed with our bowls and all fit easily enough. “I like it better without so many beans,” I offered.  Paul looked long into his bowl. He gave a forlorn stir and sighed. “The magical fruit.” Paul and Gracie went to look in another showroom where Megan believed more couches lined the upper floor.  I led her on a shambling path toward the fuchsia wingback nearby in a corner of other misfit items, hoping she might notice it on her own. “Have you told him yet?” I had to ask. She shook her head, mouth drawn into a tight line. “Later. Let’s buy their couch.” “Paul wants an easy chair, too.” I ratted him out.  “I know, Bev.”  I can be a tattletale. Megan never liked that. She loved her secrets. "Hot damn, that's a chair." Gerald had found us. He went and sat in my fuchsia wingback and beamed at us. I'll always love that man. Somewhere in the next showroom, Gracie squealed. “Stop it, Paul.” Too much life, too much death. It can make you giddy. Not me, though. Giddy’s not in my repertoire. I leaned into Megan’s ear. “You need to tell them, honey.” “You worry too much.” Megan gave me a long look. “It gives you cancer.” She passed around me and went to Gerald. “Here,” she said, handing him her purse. “That’s better.” He took it proudly, crossing his legs at the knee.  “I’m thinking of buying it.” I had to say it. It felt good to get it out there. Megan frowned. “I’m trying to picture it in your house. The foyer? Upstairs?” Then, she had it: “Oh, out in your workshop. Sure!” I shook my head. “Not the living room?” She couldn’t see it there either, not with my father’s best pieces and the earth tones and the lowlight and the ferns. In terms of decor, my house is mostly a museum of my father, the carpenter, who died of lung cancer five years prior. He never smoked a cigarette in his life. Megan smoked two packs a day until after Paul graduated college. She was going tomorrow to get a mobile oxygen unit.  She’d be dead in three more months. We drifted. In a soft-lit annex of bedroom suites with beds and lamps and dressers, Megan plucked a leather-bound volume from a writing desk and flipped pages. "I never read Sherlock Holmes," she said.  “Well, you’ve read more than about anybody else has, for what it’s worth.” I didn’t like the eulogizing, but it wasn’t my funeral, so to speak. It was true, though—Megan must have read at least a book a day. I always assumed she preferred mysteries because things resolved so neatly. Who knows her reason, though? I never asked.  It’s not a bad thought though—it’s worth considering. I like resolutions. It gives me an idea—but hold that thought. “I don’t remember anything I read,” she said. “I’ve been re-reading the same three books all year long. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a series about an earthquake in Siam. I think I’m stuck forever.”  “I think I read The Hound of the Baskervilles .” “I wish I’d been a detective.” “I can’t see that at all.” I was always honest with her; she always called me mean. It was a joke we had, though it hurt my feelings. “You’re very cryptic, but you’re indecisive.” Normally, a person perks at hearing herself described, but she shook her head once, a new mannerism she’d have until the end, like saying, “There’s no time for that.” “Listen, Beverly. I need to tell you something.” I thought she was going to ask me to check in on Gerald and Paul, to extend some aspect of her presence, as if I could, but she knew I couldn’t, and she told me, “Please don’t be unhappy.” And I couldn’t look at her, but I nodded. “Don’t you be unhappy. Buy your purple chair. Make urns and vases like in those poems you used to make me read. The Ancient Greek stuff.” I’d never made her read a poem in my life, Greek or otherwise. We went back to Gerald dozing in my chair. The kids came back, no luck in the other showrooms. Gracie seemed resigned. “It’s hot in here, folks. Time for lunch?” "Hey Mommy, buy us that couch," Paul said, pointing to the ash sectional again. Gracie hit his arm, feigned mortification. Her blush seemed real, but her eyes gave away the plan. “How much?” The kids jumped; they hadn’t noticed Gerald in my chair. "Damn, Dad. That chair is really you." He smirked. “How much is the couch?” “Doesn’t matter,” Gracie said. Suddenly Frank, the proprietor, barreled into the showroom and down our aisle—-probably he had the place bugged. At any rate, he surmised the situation by triangulating our proximity to the sectional. “We could probably do seventeen on that,” he said. “Howdy, Doc. That chair brings out your eyes.” Some device on his belt beeped. “Frank? You there?” He begged a moment with his finger and snapped up the device. "Yeah, Wilkes." “This thing is fucked.” “I’m with customers.” “Yeah, I see.” A man in coveralls with one of those mullet hairdos and mutton chops came striding into the showroom with a Walkie Talkie, walking with his knees bowed like he’d been out busting broncos. As he passed Gracie’s couch, he brushed a grease stain across a cushion. Gracie squeaked. “Careful,” Frank said. He smiled at Gracie. “A little Dawn and that’ll come right out. Just give me a moment.” Wilkes chuckled at Gerald in my chair. “Hey, folks. Frank, the HVAC’s fixing to blow, gonna take the whole grid down with it, I bet. I did everything I could.” “You broke my good socket wrench, is what you did.” They sidled off, arguing in low voices. We watched them go, except for Gracie, who stared at the grease smudge on the cushion. “It is hot in here,” Gerald said. He rose gingerly from my chair, his knees cracking loudly. Paul helped him up. “Well, let’s buy a couch and go.”  “What about your La-Z-Boy?” Megan crossed her arms as if she had him, but knew as well as anyone, no one out-schemed Paul.  "Actually, I have it covered." He scooped into his jeans pocket and flashed a roll of bills. "We just need a little help with the couch." “What the hell, Paul?” Gracie asked. “Did you rob a bank?”  “I sold my Magic cards.” “How much for?” “Two grand.” Gerald reached into Paul's pocket and took the money. He put it in his own.  Gracie shook her head. “We only need the couch, doofus.” “Why not both?” Paul turned a beaming smile on his parents. “We’ll pay you back.”  Megan hemmed. “What about this one?” She pointed to a perfectly boring taupe sofa, just a three-seater with an orange sale sticker on the tag. Was she solving a problem or getting a rise?  Gracie nobly faked consideration. "It goes with the shiplap." Paul grinned. He had everyone precisely where he wanted.  "Nowhere to put the baby, not with guests." Gracie blushed again. I checked a strong impulse to yell, “I knew it!” I’d gloat later. “Well!” Megan shuffled over—she moved so slowly—and gave them both a kiss between the eyes. She stared past their shoulders into the showroom for a while. We watched her, those who knew and those who didn’t on either side of a thin divide too endless deep and mean for me to worry over anymore. Just goddamn aging, time creeping up the ass of everything.  She said, “I just can’t believe it.” Then she perked up, came back into the room with us. “Which embryo?” I know she knew, but wanted to hear it. “The girl,” Paul said. It was Gerald who gave away the game, bursting into tears and sitting heavily on a chartreuse loveseat. Megan made it to him first, somehow, and leaned as best she could and told him, “Stop it, please, honey. Now’s not the time.” Gracie began crying, too. She held her flat belly. “Did I do something wrong?” Paul kept saying, “Dad? Dad?” And then came a thundering bang, and down went the lights. In the darkness, someone shrieked.  No more than a minute later, the fluorescents flickered back to life, casting first an eerie, sepia pall, then bringing the room back up to technicolor. British technicolor, mind you. Please adjust your ear to accents. The costumes have changed, too.  “Sorry about that!” Mister Franklin McFadden, the shoppe’s prim proprietor, called out from the doorway between the showrooms. “Wilkes? What’s happened?” Mr. Franklin looked around, confused.  “Oh my god!” Ms. Gracie jumped onto a couch. She pointed a thin, ivory finger down at the floor a few meters away where a form lay crumpled on the Pergo. It was Wilkes, prone, motionless, a cavalry sword protruding from between his shoulder blades and a dark stain swelling underneath him. “Gads!” I shouted.  “Everyone, please be calm,” came the cool voice of the Inspector. “I’m afraid there’s been a murder.” Angela Lansbury herself would have swooned at Megan’s single-breasted henna blazer, her understated pearls, her box pleated skirt and crisp stockings. But it was her hand-blocked wool fedora with its jaunty upward lilting brim that put wrongdoers most on edge.  “Dearie!”  Mr. Franklin came shuffling over, fretting nervously at his watch chain and peering queasily at his dead assistant. “I cannot abide blood,” he added, turning away. “Father?” The young Mister Robert McFadden came into the showroom. “What’s all this?” “Gads,” I said again, for I felt as if no one had heard me the first time. “Everyone, please remain calm,” said the Inspector. “I’ll have to ask you to be seated.” The Misters Franklin and Robert seemed at last to notice her. “Goodness,” Franklin exclaimed. “What luck! It’s the Inspector down from Shillingham.” "What brings you to our village?" asked the son, who could not quite match his father's gracious affect. Already, beads of sweat formed along the rosy edges of his brow.  “I’ve brought my son Paul and his wife here in search of a new living room,” Inspector Megan said flatly, staring at Wilkes where he lay seeping. “I’ve given up waiting for a free afternoon. And work follows me everywhere.” Franklin nodded. “I see you’ve got your assistant, too, and the good Doctor. A family affair! What luck.” “Is it lucky, though? You’re down an odd-jobman.” “No, of course.”  Young Robert had slipped away but returned now with a blanket with which he clearly meant to cover the cadaver. Inspector Megan put a halt to this with a stern look and insisted again that everyone be seated. She hated for anyone to interfere with the victim before she and the Doctor could give a full inspection. “There’s someone on the telephone,” announced Ms. Marla, the fiancée of Mr. Robert, from the hallway that led away to the shoppe’s office. “Oh, what’s all this, then?” “Better have a seat,” I told her. That was part of my job as the inspector’s assistant. Directing traffic, making tea. I glanced at The Inspector. “Shall I put on a kettle?” "Afraid the stove's out," Marla said. Then her eyes settled on Wilkes, and without so much as a peep, she fled the showroom. We heard her padding down the hallway.  “Where’s that hallway lead?” the Inspector asked.  “The warehouse,” Franklin and Robert said in unison. “Where else?” “Just the employee lounge.” “Let’s go,” Megan said to me. This was my cue, as I could far exceed her pace. Off I went down the hallway after Ms. Marla. Luckily, she hadn’t thought to lock the heavy doors into the warehouse, but inside, I became immediately lost in the sprawl of plastic-wrapped furniture and crates and boxes stacked high up, nearly to the tin ceiling. “Marla!” I shouted. No answer. Then I noticed footprints—heel prints—in the dust and packing foam.  I found her in the lounge, kneeling before a locker bestrewn with broadsides of ill-clad women, much confederate iconography, and a pair of dirty dungarees and a shirt hanging from hooks. Marla knelt low, scooping from the bottom of the locker a packet of twine-bound letters. “Drat,” she said, noticing me behind her. “Please, just let me take these, before Robert…” But it was too late. The proprietors had followed and young Robert demanded this correspondence with a pitiful sigh. "You swore it was over," he added in a querulous voice, clearly never having been assuaged of his suspicions. "Ah, Marla," he said and deflated there before us in a most loud and unmanly fashion. Now it 'twas I who needed to turn away. We left them to their lovers’ quarrel. Franklin and I returned to the showroom where I reported the goings-on to the Inspector, as ever inscrutable in her reaction, her blue eyes sparkling, her brow furrowing, the poor knotted hands working idly at the stitchwork on her jacket.  “Interesting,” she said. “But that woman is no killer.” “What about the boy, Robert?” the Doctor asked. He liked to guess, though he never came near the scent. Inspector Megan shook her head once. “No. Too vain. He’d never admit it to himself, not without the proof. It’s all out of order.” I raised my hand. “I think it was Master Paul.” “Poppycock,” said Paul. “And I’m a Mister, thank you.” "You always think it's Paul," said the Inspector. "He can be three hundred kilometers away, aboard a ship and flat out with a fever, and it's 'Paul, Paul, Paul.'"  “Poppycock,” Paul said again. He laughed at the word and repeated it until Ms. Gracie elbowed his ribs. “I hate to interrupt,” said Mr. Franklin, “but there is the matter of the grease stain.” He stared cooly at Gracie, who seemed to wilt, ducking behind Paul. “Doctor,” the Inspector said, “does anything strike you as off with the body?” “As a matter of fact,” Doctor Gerald said, bending gingerly to poor Wilkes there trying in vain to cool despite the infernal heat of the showroom, “it does.”  “The blood?” the Inspector asked. "Indeed, my dearest. This is mere seepage. A sword wound of this magnitude should have expelled all kinds of arterial spray all over this fine upholstery." He gave a general flourish to the couches nearby, then pantomimed blood spraying from his own back and made a sputtering sound with his tongue and lips. No wonder Paul had never learned his mother's sense of propriety.  “Precisely,” Inspector Megan said. “The blood’s wrong.” “If you knew it,” the Doctor retorted, “why have me kneel? Someone, help me up.” Paul leapt to.  “So,” Mr. Franklin said, doffing his cap, the wheels behind his eyes rolling slowly over. “If the sword wasn’t the true implement, then?” “Paul,” said the Inspector, “please lift the second cushion on that ash sectional.” Underneath was a bent and bloody socket wrench. We all gasped. “Gads,” I said. "My wrench!" Mr. Franklin shouted. He scanned us wildly. "Treachery! I've been set up! I'm no killer, but 'twas in the other showroom, concealing flatulence!" Inspector Megan wrinkled her nose. “It’s true, I’m afraid.”  “So, it was  Paul,” I offered.  Everyone looked at me.  “What? You’re not telling me it was Gracie?” Megan put her arm gently on my elbow. "Dearest, it's time to give up the charade. You nearly fooled me. I thought it was Gerald after that look Wilkes gave him in the purple chair. And that certainly is his sword work. That I'd know a mile away." Gerald shrugged. “I panic easily in the dark.” “But, Beverly, I also saw the way you rankled at Wilkes’ reaction to your chair. You missed the macho undertones completely, so worried about your precious sense of fashion.” “I think it’s pretty,” said Gracie, a good girl, much too good for Paul. I backed away, but Paul and Gerald cut off my exits. How did I ever hope to foil the greatest mind in the commonwealth? With some relief, I exclaimed, “Ooh, you bitch. You’re good.” I sat in my wingback and offered up my wrists for the hobbles. Thankfully, someone had left them in the car.  While we waited for the constabulary, the entire Brown clan teased Gracie about names for the baby.  “I still think it was Paul,” I said, but no one listened. OK, Megan, I tried. Surely, in Heaven of all places, you can find it to forgive whatever the hell that was.  But, honestly, you’re not here, and I like my story better. By the time the actual power returned, Gerald had regained composure and was able to pass off his outburst as a reaction to Gracie’s good news and the heat. Paul and Gracie didn’t seem to believe him, but as he brought out the Mastercard and led the kids to Marla in the office, followed by Frank, practically skipping, they let it go. They arranged delivery for next week on both the ash sectional and a La-Z-Boy for Paul, and before we loaded up to head for lunch, I saw Gerald return Paul’s wad of cash in a furtive handoff.  They gave him everything, but that’s their business. In fairness, he appreciated them. I imagine that’s all there needs to be. They made a wall with it, one the rest of us couldn’t enter. You liked to be near it, though. Gracie and I might have shared a few looks as Paul got everything he wanted, but it made you happy, knowing someone did. Then again, I guess he didn’t.  Do I need to tell you that in the parking lot after lunch at the Gondola pizzeria, Paul and Megan shared a cigarette and she must have told him then about her diagnosis because he took her cigarette and stomped it out and was loud and then quiet and then they held each other for a long time there between my truck and her Toyota and the rest of us decided we'd take a walk down to the liquor store a block away? There. What does it change? I could add that because this was Paul, and because this was Megan, some barely teenage boys saw them hugging and carrying on in the parking lot and one must have said something, because Paul shouted at them, not even words, just a roar, and the boys ran to their car, and Megan held his face in her sore hands and told him something and that’s when Gerald suggested we should go and get more wine, as if there might be enough in the world. Megan did not approve of drinking, and Gracie couldn’t. As for the rest of us, we drank all evening. Paul made a lovely dinner. He’s an excellent cook. I’m hard on him because I’m jealous. Late, after Megan had gone to bed, I found Paul and Gerald passing a joint on the back steps. They were telling stories about Megan as if she’d passed already, having no idea of everything that was coming, but they were laughing and standing close together. I didn’t want to intrude, but they insisted I join them, and it seemed like they wanted me to tell a story, too. Stars above their woods made a pale gauze of the clouds. It was cold and the smoke of their breath and the joint piled above them.  I had to think a while for one they wouldn’t know. “When we were sixteen, your mother played the flute, and she loved a boy named Harold. He was the first chair and she was second chair and she’d learned all these songs he liked—he listened to jazz, like Bennie Goodman. Megan hated jazz. But she would play the songs when they were warming up and it annoyed him. I think Harold was gay, but that’s beside the point. He didn’t love her back, for whatever reason.” “I was in band, too, and I teased her about it. She wouldn’t admit to anything. She claimed not to care at all about Harold and to love Bennie Goodman. So, I guess it was the fall or the very end of summer and they were going to decide the chairs again and we know they’re going to evaluate us that afternoon and Megan just won’t stop playing Bennie Goodman, it was “Sing, Sing, Sing,” I think. She’s working it into the marches. It’s throwing Harold. She’s getting looks, the tall blonde girl with the flute bopping along, out of sync with everyone—and she was a good player, normally.” They watched me, expectant, shivering, but I couldn’t finish the story. My voice had simply gone away. I’m not an emotional person and I was embarrassed. They went inside and soon enough, we all went to bed.    Early next morning, I was pulling on my shoes on the couch. Gerald and Megan were still asleep—they always sleep in on weekends. Paul burst in through the kitchen door and smiled and waved me over. He put his finger to his mouth, knowing his parents would be asleep. But at the kitchen door, he stopped me and took a deep breath and told me like he'd worked up a speech: "You've always done so much for my mom. I saw how much you wanted your chair, so I…" And he just gestured out to my truck, where he'd already moved the fuchsia wingback from his own.  "I returned the La-Z-Boy. I didn't want it." His smile went watery, but he wanted very much for this to be a happy thing. I put my hand on his shoulder, though I’m not much of a touch-er. And I told him, “Paul, you cannot do this. It’s too much.” “No.” He shook his head. He had to wipe away tears. “I just think…I know. Everybody should have whatever they want.”  And that was his speech. He went to wake up his parents or to go sleep in the spare room, I don't know. I got in my truck and left, wishing I'd told him something better than just "thank you." When I got home, I took the chair to a friend. She loves it. I never finished the story. Why did Megan play Bennie Goodman all through that rehearsal? She lost second chair and had to win it back. It took all fall. I never heard her play that song again. She lost interest in Harold, too.   When I asked her, she only smiled. She told me, “That’s why we’re friends, Bev. You ask all the right questions.” Maybe Harold was like the purple chair. How do you know what the thing you really want is? How do you?  I’m really asking.  I’d really like to know. Lucas Flatt's work has appeared in X-R-A-Y Lit, Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House and other fine publications. He teaches at Volunteer State Community College. You can find him on X at @lucasflatt1.

Her Soviet Her Soviet looked, with the disdain of flowers, askance at all and sundry. A Collective,superior beauty but in constant need of a carer. Peripatetic petals all. Her Soviet composed of packets of meat offcuts imprudently piled. Bodies formed from the memory foam of misguided marital beds. They only consumed food that contained the potential to be formed in to a mound. She- topped with watermelon and bottomed unironically in the hue of the recently departed. Her Soviet lived by the Ho Ho Credo* For Her Soviet she made felt effigies, that they all kept in drawers, and not one of them could muster the required fervored hatred despite being allowed, being encouraged and hate being simpler than thinking. Peripatetic petals all. All living a life up on blocks. *it wasn’t Christmas until they had all seen the Wanking Santa in Pontypridd *** A wartime lecture* on nutrition delivered by Noel Coward from his suite at the Savoy Hotel wearing merely a smoking jacket and lipstick We had a few sherries on a pretty bad Blitz but not as bad as Wednesday. Couple of bombs and the walls bowed a bit. Carroll Gibbons played the piano, I sang as did Judy and a pair of drunken Scots Canadians joined in. They played ‘Danny Boy’ on humbled bagpipes. I played the part of their indulged indulgent cartoon. More bombs on Friday, more dancing. *the nutritional value of recreational piss is inestimably cloudy *** Kindness is logged The Wifi Password is ‘Love Everybody #1’. I drink from all cups and then none and I spectate as the dehoused individual is disgorged. A hot drink for a winter smile always struck me as a fair trade. The Wifi Password is ‘Love Everybody #1’ and all kindness is logged and all love rests into a milky dislike. *** Girls who laugh at death Finger entry girls,calluses on veiny hands, tap out looney tunes on chapel oak with nails as long as birds claws. Late to the font again. Valleys moga fuelled by fugazi fudge bombs and the feminine urge to crowdfund a coven. Russet cheeked alpha,buffet butt omega. Girls who laugh at death and pushover headstones. *** Work Party Every other day or so, a delicious new flavour of cope another way to lay,stitch eye shut coffined,attached to the floor,peering at the ceiling figures sheepishly rooting. One room after one room after a string of precedented times forming an orderlike can queue as the vacant lot of her belly bloated, all the while not feeling pretty pretty enough for play. A spirit raped and polished. That was Monday, finished. *** KG is a poet and author based in Wales. The author of the best-selling 'Troubadour Tales' series of books on Bob Dylan, he has now embarked on a poetic journey. Published in Wales, Ireland, England and now in the US his first book , 'Poetry For The Feeble Minded' was published to critical acclaim. His current WIP, 'A Working Class Book Of Psalms' from which these poems are taken, is due to be published in 2026.

The machine came in a box without instructions. No label. Just a black mark where the sender’s name should have been. It looked like a cross between a cassette deck and a bread maker. I had to drag it upstairs on a towel. The first time I plugged it in, nothing happened. No hum. No light. Just the bite of ozone, like air after lightning. It didn’t have a screen. Just a narrow slot and a tiny embossed label beneath it reading: handwritten only . I tried a grocery list. A recipe. A line from a poem I often misquoted. Nothing. It didn’t respond until I wrote a name. Just the name. No explanation. Then it spoke. It didn’t speak out loud. The words appeared on a small strip of paper, like a receipt printing itself in reverse. The font was old, serifed, a little uneven. The first message said: Do you want to hear it or say it back? I didn’t know what that meant, so I tried another name. Someone I hadn’t thought about in a long time. This time, the strip read: She said: It’s not your fault. But she wanted you to try harder. I stared at it for a long time. Folded it twice. Put it in my pocket. The machine took anything I gave it. Half-names. Nicknames. Ones I wasn’t sure how to spell. Its answers got quicker, more intimate. Some responses were brief. He didn’t believe you, but he wanted to. She left before the argument got bad. She only remembers your laugh. No . But he would’ve said yes if you’d asked again. Others were longer. Whole paragraphs, sometimes. Memories I never knew they had. Or maybe ones I’d invented and given to them. It never answered questions. Just spoke as if it already knew what I was asking. I started saving paper scraps. Anything I could write a name on. Receipts, old envelopes, the backs of takeout menus. There was a pen in every room. I told myself I wasn’t using it that often. Just when I couldn’t sleep. When something came back too sharply. When I wanted to know how it might have gone differently. I stopped telling friends when I let someone off the hook. I let the machine say it for me. It never gave me what I asked for. But the words were close enough to stand behind. That was enough. One night I fed it my own name. The paper took longer to print. I thought it had jammed, but then the strip appeared. You already know. I didn’t try that again. Then one night it printed a name I hadn’t entered. I was brushing my teeth. The machine wasn’t even turned on. Or I hadn’t meant for it to be. But there it was, a single strip of paper waiting beside the slot. You owe her more than you admit. I read it twice before throwing it away. Maybe I’d written the name in my sleep. But it kept happening. New names. Some I hadn’t thought about in years. Others I didn’t recognize. Messages waiting in the morning or when I got home. She forgave you. You just weren’t there to hear it. He told someone else first. You were too late. I started sleeping with the machine unplugged, but the messages kept coming. There were other changes, too. Names I’d never written down. Sentences that didn’t feel like apologies, but warnings. Don’t check the date on this one. You ’re not who you think you are. Close the drawer. Close the drawer. Close the drawer. I opened the nightstand anyway. Inside were the folded slips. All the messages I told myself I kept because maybe I’d need them. I found one I didn’t remember reading. Didn’t remember saving. It said: You’re not done yet. That was the last message for a while. I stopped feeding names. Stopped checking the tray. A month passed. I thought it was over. Then one morning, the machine was humming again. There was no paper in the tray. Just the name already printed, faint and curling out of the slot. It was a name I’d never spoken out loud. Not to anyone. Not even myself. My hand shook as I tore the strip free. It said: He would have stayed if you’d asked. He was waiting for you to say something true. It  wouldn’t have fixed everything. But it would have changed everything. I didn’t fold that one. Didn’t pocket it or throw it away. I slid it back into the machine and closed the lid. I put it in the hall closet and shut the door. I haven’t opened it since. I still keep a pen in every room. I don’t write names anymore. That doesn’t mean it stopped collecting them. Ryan T. Pozzi is a writer and cultural critic who explores legacy, myth, and reputation, with particular attention to who shapes our understanding of history. His writing has been accepted by Rattle, Fjords Review, Northern New England Review, and Ponder Review, among others. He is a 2025 Best of the Net nominee. Find him at ryantpozzi.com  or on social media @ryantpozzi.

The girl who swallowed coins Let’s say the first five pence went down between handfuls of popcorn. As Elizabeth’s teeth hit metal, it was a do or don’t, spit or swallow moment. Let’s say she calculated the risks of this coin getting lodged or causing mischief at the other end and found them within tolerance limits. She swallowed, thinking of Carmen, the precise lines of her bob, the moon pebble perfection of her teeth when she laughed.  The next evening, she gulped down another five-pence piece. Let’s say she began to see these coins as protection, as a way to steel herself through all those do or die moments at school, like whether to eat lunch with the artsy crowd (tolerated, not much to contribute) or the outliers (lots to say, not much listening) and how to stop when she could see people’s eyes glazing over but hadn’t finished her story. In short, how to navigate the mysterious world of other people. She found the metallic lick of the coin, the brief pressure at the back of her throat, reassuring. Let’s say the coin girl correlated the greater percentage of copper, nickel and steel in her insides to a greater strength of character. She made friends who didn’t mind her iffy eye contact. When Carmen started dating a football player, Elizabeth honed her attention on a gutsy girl who hung around the edges like she did. Marina had sea green eyes and the lean energy of a whippet. She liked how much Elizabeth knew about dogs, her encyclopedic knowledge of different breeds.   Let’s say Elizabeth’s mother discovered the coin swallowing and booked her in with a therapist to rid her of this “dirty little habit.” While speeding through twenty-mile-an-hour zones and zipping through amber lights, her mother monologued a series of “If you think… I keep telling you… You have no idea…” while breezily cheerful Magic FM DJs chimed in: “Tell us what you like for breakfast. Cold pizza? Hula hoops? We don’t judge!”  Let’s say in the soothing greens and plastic plants of the therapist’s office, Elizabeth found a person who asked questions and listened. After multiple conversations were stalled by her mother’s “I keep telling her… She seems to think…” the therapist asked her to leave. In the quiet that followed, Elizabeth decided that swallowing her mother’s judgement exceeded tolerance limits. And so she learned to say when she was overloaded, to say “I’d rather you didn’t” and “What I think is.” She called out social rules she found meaningless. She learned illogic wasn’t always a stumbling block for other people.  And so a family truce was eventually negotiated.   And so she discovered that coins and character were not cause and effect, that she was already made of copper and iron and strength and forged her path without them. Cole Beauchamp (she/her) is a queer writer based in London. Her stories have been in the Wigleaf Top 50, nominated for awards and shortlisted for the Bath, Bridport, Oxford and WestWord prizes for flash fiction. She's been widely published in lit mags including Mr Bull, Ghost Parachute, The Hooghly Review, Gooseberry Pie and others, and is a contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review. She lives with her girlfriend and has two children. You can find her on bluesky at @ nomad-sw18.bsky.social

Another exhausted day yawns, a winter chill painting my knuckles white as I sink into my pillow and replay January. A plane ride ago, the herd of us spilled out of Worthing Square, bellies half-full with cold beef patties and pockets empty as we flooded the sidewalk to go who-knows-where—the boardwalk, Quayside, any corner we could claim. The streets were ours and they were just driving in it, the gaze of grizzled men on my bare waist, their Mazdas throbbing with bass and spilling soap-bitter smoke as I looped arms with the girls because they couldn’t take us all if they tried. We poured into a moonlit beach no one will ever call Private, traced our sand-filled sandals into Chillymoos. In chipped plastic chairs, coconut ice cream melting down our fingers, we threw our heads back with laughter and fuck-you ’s that meant Never change . A table from us a guy in a cliché Hawaiian shirt scorned, I thought this was a tourist spot , but the ground was ours and he was just playing on it. Choiselle Joseph is a writer from Barbados. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rust & Moth, Gone Lawn,  and elsewhere. Her writing centres gender, the body, and decolonisation and their current project is Hummingbird , an in-progress chapbook exploring daughterhood through myth and surreal imagery. They are an editor at The Saartjie Journal.

A child steps into an orange grove.  Not realizing it, he continues to strut along.  I am sorry that I can’t explain to you my dear why the earth does its magical things.  But at that very moment, an orange broke from the tree and made home for the boy’s head.  This snapped him back to earth’s beautiful reality.  Coming to sense where he was, the boy began to smell the delicious fragrances, and the beautiful state of all of the oranges.  Not one was rotten or miscolored.  All had the same fresh painted skin, golden in the sun.  The boy, still admiring their beauty, plucked one effortlessly.  He held the orange with cupped hands. It seemed to humble him, the sight of a single but mighty aspect of the moment. Celia Johnson is 11 years old, and a native of Minnesota.

Before you stopped talking, you told me you were nervous about what might happen to you in the days or hours leading up to the end. It was the only time the two of us talked about your impending death without dancing around the pale, cold particulars of it.  “I want you to promise to remember me this way,” you told me, sitting up in bed. “Not in my pajamas obviously, but I want you to remember me how I am right now and not what I might be like in a few weeks or whenever this supposedly all goes downhill, ok?” You carefully smoothed the blanket across your lap, the once red polish on your fingernails faded to pink. “Ok,” I said, trying to understand the cruelty of life that it makes people have to warn loved ones that they might become unrecognizable to them. “Maybe we can have a code or something?” you asked. Your voice was still light then, almost playful. “What do you mean a code?” “A way for you to know if I’ve still got a light on upstairs.” “Very funny. Ok, what’s the code?” You thought for a moment, tilting your head slightly to the left the way you always did when you were searching for the right word. The light from the window catching the icy gray of your chin-length bob.   “I’ve got it,” you said. “Nevertheless, she persisted.” “Where’s that from?” I asked. “It’s the motto for the Sausalito Women’s Club.” “Of course, it is.” “The minute I forget the code you can start remembering the way I was up until that very moment. Deal?” “Deal.” This was our little inside joke over the next few weeks. Every once in a while, I would catch you in the middle of breakfast or watching the nightly news and say “Nevertheless?” and you would smile and answer back, “She persisted.” It seemed impossible back then. That someone like you could one day no longer exist on this planet. You were a mythical creature that could not die. Tuesdays. Major League baseball. The southern migration of sandhill cranes. How could they go on as if nothing had happened?  But then the smiles became few and far between. The news was rarely on. You were in bed one morning when the hospice nurse told me to get you up for an early lunch. I went to your room where I found you lying on your side, the covers tucked around you like armor. I touched your shoulder. The fabric of your nightgown was soft and worn thin. “Nevertheless,” I said. But instead of answering, you let out a low moan, your eyes shut tight to some private agony. I said it again in case you hadn’t heard, but you just lay there in silence.  That was the moment I stopped remembering you.  Trevor J. Houser works in advertising and lives with his family in Seattle. He published his first two novels, PACIFIC (2021) and THE PRUMONT METHOD (2023) with Unsolicited Press. His third novel comes out in 2026. He has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and has had stories published in dozens of literary journals, including Zyzzyva, StoryQuarterly  and  CutBank .

Notes for a Community College Commencement Speech From a certain perspective everything looks like math but if you pay attention to the subtext it says to work on being charming and go into sales. Not cut out for sales I got a job redirecting people’s negative thoughts. I think the mind is sometimes a vaulted ceiling and sometimes a shallow pit. Everyone wants to be both a child and a great Oak tree. My father wanted me to be a simple country doctor; my mother, a tech giant. Everyone wants a billion dollars. In my line of work what seems to work is sharing mildly interesting anecdotes or asking personal but superficial questions. Bach had 13 kids and none of them played the piano. Jack-o'-lanterns used to be carved from turnips. What’s your favorite kind of mail to get? What’s the hardest part of the day for you? That’s when you should make a snack. You can try and try but you will never be happier than when you’re eating a snack. If your dog is there with you then that’s better. If you give your dog a little bite that, too, is even better. You can try and try but that’s the best you can do. But keep trying because you never know.  What’s Happening in the World of Sports Today Is That the World’s Top Tennis Players are Beating Each Other Over the Head With Their Rackets Because of an Out-of-Bounds Call One guy says it’s good and the other guy says it’s shit. I don’t argue on the internet anymore. I might not even believe in the internet anymore. How do I know if I exist? I’m sitting outside in a lawn chair, that’s how. Entrepreneurs invent something new every two hours. They don’t think it’s funny but everyone else does. I watch the news once a day, and what I miss, I miss. I’m studying a picture of our daughter standing on a drawbridge at night in the summer. She’s looking out at the water. She seems content and beautiful but minutes before it was taken she was crying. The picture invents an ache that lives inside me. It’s my favorite possession. I think every door is saying open a door and walk through but I think every bridge is saying you could be happy either way. I suppose the ability to take a punch is something you’re born with. Either you have it or you do not. No, wait. That’s wrong. Taking a punch is not something you are born with. Taking a punch is something you will need to learn. Everyone Come Back We never decided which color to paint the bathroom. If you want sky blue, raise your hand. If you think eggshell, take a step forward. If you want wallpaper I guess take a step back. The average person spends seven minutes and 19 seconds in the bathroom every day. Not counting extraordinary circumstances. In a public restroom people cut that time in half. If I had to choose I’d say California is the most dream-like state. Second is Kansas, of course. Having decided is probably the saddest thing you can do. All those lives shriveling to nothing behind you. The color no one wanted. The jobs you never trained for. You could have been a good surgeon or a bad surgeon. I never punched a guy I wanted to punch and I told myself I was better for it. The world was better for it. A violence that surely would have borne more violence was instead kept on a leash. Kept in my jacket pocket. We have fists but we also have hands. It’s always 50-50.  Not that Kind of Funeral I once donated five boxes of books to the library. The next day I couldn’t find the novel I’d been reading. The main character was about to take dramatic action. I went back to the library and found my book shelved under new arrivals. I brought it home and started from the first page like we were strangers. Turns out the hero fails every challenge. In the end she is worse off in most ways. Does not untangle the web of clues to her past. Does not find love. Someone steals her car and her mother dies unexpectedly. At the very end she is faced with a decision. I’ve been asking myself my whole life what’s worthwhile, what adds and what diminishes. I taste my own blood and wonder if that’s God. I wash the dishes and wonder if that’s God. The soft belly of my dog, is that God? When a Prince song comes on and I remember after having forgotten how beautiful his voice was, is that God? They’re interviewing a basketball player on the news who wins every game at the buzzer. He says he’s no hero. He thanks Jesus and his mother and his teammates. They show a clip. Time is running out. He is most alive as everything comes to an end.   It’s Hard to Tell If You’re Doing It Right I let my dog chase rabbits. I do it because it makes him happy. I think it reminds him of a distant past. A code in his mind. A true self. The rabbits are safe. I make sure. Though they must be frightened, I imagine. I try to do right in life. I care for helpless things. Delicate things. I would care for a wounded rabbit if I saw one. After chasing a rabbit my dog and I keep walking. Both of us scan the grass along the row of thick rose bushes. This Goddamn world. Everything is hungry. All the flowers and all the animals. The Sun and whatever will destroy the Sun. I’m wrong more than I’m right. That’s something I admit. There’s something I want that’s hiding in a small space I cannot reach. My breath is hot and smelling like iron. The D Poem Our daughter asks for help writing a poem for school. We tell her all the rules they gave her are wrong. Her poem gets a D. People say there’s a lot wrong with the D poem. But the D poem doesn’t pay attention to any of that. It gets up every day and faces the world. I’m a D, it says to itself. I’m a D poem. Not an easy thing to do in a world that believes mostly in As. A world that might lower itself to admire a B, maybe. Someone tells the D poem that it would have been an E poem except they don’t give out Es in poetry. In an infinite universe there’s no way to know if that’s true, we say. We tell the D poem it’s doing great. We love you, we say. On its birthday our daughter sends messages to the D poem. She says things like, “D is for dare, D is for dream!” She says, “D for donuts and Daytona Beach!” The D poem is in love with the world and it doesn’t matter if the world loves the D poem back. “D is for desire and demand to live in the sun!,” she writes. Nothing can stop the D poem now.  Jeffrey Hermann's work has appeared in Okay Donkey, Passages North, Heavy Feather, Wigleaf, and other publications. His first full-length collection of prose poetry and flash fiction will be published by ELJ Editions in 2026. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure.

We are waiting for our flight.  We are a group of four (the Beatles but worse): Alan, Susie, Paul, me. We are playing eye-spy and two-truths-one-lie and all manner of exciting games. We are attempting handstands.  We are still waiting for our flight. We are researching the history and etymology of goldfish on Wikipedia.  We are eating all our food, a royal buffet of sandwiches and apples and salted almonds. We are talking to an old lady—she is going to Malta to spread her husband’s ashes. We are nodding seriously.  We are informed by a self-serious Italian man about his scruples with the corrupt Italian government. We are nodding in confusion.  We are analysed by an American. We are lectured by an Argentinian. We are quickly running out of fun anecdotes to tell each other.  We are called suddenly to Gate 5, but once there we are told by airport staff to go away. We are seriously and diplomatically discussing our options as if we have any at all.  We are watching the sun set on the sticky smoking balcony. We are more than slightly tired of waiting. We are planning on sleeping in shifts.  We are called again to Gate 5, but this time there is nobody there. *** There is no flight, says Alan, who hasn’t slept in at least thirty hours. There is no flight. There is no holiday. There is no plane. There is no hope. There are only duty-free shops and overpriced cafés and fast-food restaurants and all of them have kicked us out because we didn’t buy anything. There is no reason to get hysterical, I tell Alan.  There is no God, Alan continues. There is no afterlife. There is no reason for anything. There is no meaning and there is no time. There is nothing. There is nothing.  *** Alan falls asleep, finally. Susie wakes up and checks the live departures board and starts crying.  Phil wakes up and does some push-ups. I count the number of windows on the upper floor (it’s ninety-three).  Paul does jumping jacks. Susie falls asleep again. Alan wakes up. I am falling asleep. Paul is doing chin-ups. Alan falls asleep again. I begin talking to a wall to stay awake.  Paul does Tai Chi until the airport staff ask him to stop.  I fall asleep. *** Then I wake up.  Then I eat my second-to-last packet of salted almonds. Then I tell Paul I’m down to my last fucking packet of salted almonds. Then Paul says he finished his food two hours ago so I can join the club.  Then Susie starts physically attacking Alan, all punches and flying kicks and everything, and the rest of us just watch in shock. Then she stops and apologises, says that she doesn’t know what came over her.  Then we are called to Gate 5 again. Then, then, then—the plane is actually here .  Then we are actually boarding the flight, and I can’t believe this is happening, and Susie says this is the happiest she’s been in her entire life.  Then we are waiting for two hours at a standstill on the runway. Then we are told to get off the plane. Then we go back into customs.  Then Alan vomits on the floor. Then the flight is cancelled. Daniel Birch is a writer of fiction and nonfiction from the UK. He currently lives on the Cornish coast, where he studies English & Creative Writing at Falmouth University. More of his work can be found on his blog, https://contagiouswordsblog.wordpress.com

The Breakup I leave this with you— a few lines, hastily scratched on a page gone limp with the perspiration of sorrow. The paper retains, I believe, the faint chill of my grief, and my grief—what else?—bears the stale imprint of your desire. Bravo. You’ve always had a talent for undoing. The Destroyer: yes, that name will do. I bequeath it to you without malice. Do not search for me. I shall be elsewhere, in some God-forgotten hamlet the mapmakers have mercifully missed,  living in quiet congress with my own lamentations. Your love, as it turns out, was counterfeit— and now, at last, the world concurs. Verses about me—I hope—in her Snoopy diary So here’s the deal:  He’s basically a Neanderthal. Stone jaw. Big mitts. Cro-Magnon vibes all the way down.  But God help me, he delights me. He speaks fluent bear.  Not like “roar roar” bear—real bear. Actual ursine communication.  He whispers into the wind and animals answer back. Owls. Foxes. Once, a bison. No kidding. When he walks through a field, it’s not romantic.  Every flower gets crushed.  Every petal screams silently. It’s kind of beautiful. Kind of tragic. Like most things. His masculinity goes before him like a warning flare. Like: Caution. Primitive force approaching. He breaks things. He bites.  He’s bitten me, and—surprise!—sometimes I like it.  There. I said it. Cancel me. He might not be entirely human.  Might be 60% animal.  Might be 40% sadness.  Might be 100% wrecking ball. But our love-making? Earth-shattering. Literally. Once, a shelf fell down. Maybe that’s the only thread tying me to him. And if that makes me shallow—then I guess I float. The Map of Your Treasure There’s a trail I walk when the night presses in close, when the air thickens with want. It begins at your brow, salted with sweat, like the Gulf air in August, runs the line of your neck where the skin grows soft and shadowed, moves past the place your breath stutters to the dip of your belly, until I reach the ocean of you. And when I do, your toes curl like leaves in heat, your breath a rush of wind through pine and field. You make a sound— not quite word, not quite cry— and the sky splits open like a wound, galaxies pouring from the seam. In that moment, time forgets itself. The world rights its wrongs, and life— wild, beautiful, trembling— begins again. Albert Rodríguez  is an emerging writer based in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Borough of Manhattan Community College, his fiction has appeared in  Five on the Fifth, Litro Magazine, White Wall Review, Platform Review, Across the Margin, Modern Literature, Ink Pantry, Literally Stories, Active Muse, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Fictional Café, Yellow Mama, and The Piker Press , among other periodicals.

1 . Costa had broken his leg. No sooner had he received his diagnosis than a stream of messages came flowing forth in the group chat, beweeping his state and putting in requests for alcohol, food, dexamphetamines, and other miscellania. He was going to be laid up at his mum’s house for at least six weeks, which obviously didn’t suit his lifestyle. For all that he had served our community, he was calling on us now to be with him in his time of need. Lachie and I were the closest to Costa. So it was incumbent on us to support him (more so than the others, who mostly just endured his dominion). Everyone liked him, but the cold hard fact was that liking him was forbearance. Lachie and I seemed to just have that subservient nature, like a Versailles footman or death row executioner. Simply put, when compared to everyone else, we’d spent more cumulative hours listening to him rant at four-thirty in the morning about democratic principles in contention with plutomania or whatever thesis happened to have sprung out of the last YouTube documentary he’d watched. The rest of them had better things to do. 2. We sat at Costa’s bedside, as though he had cancer or AIDS or something. His hairy toes were poking out of the end of his cast, pointing toward me with what felt like accusation. For someone who had always seemed so gargantuan, who shrouded a room just by entering it, he was small there in his childhood bed, bereft, like a shrunken head. It was somehow touching that this man, who could send quivers of seismic shock through a party at his merest whim, was so contained. He was midway through berating Lachie for having brought up his ex-girlfriend, even though it might have been him who had done so. In a brief aperture of his raving, he leant across to his bedside table to clutch at one of the cherry-and-pomegranate vapes we’d bought him (Lachie and I had argued about how many to bring - I was fast being proven correct that seven wouldn’t last a week). I took advantage of the breath to probe Costa about his accident. ‘I was playing netball and I tripped, that’s all that happened, it was innocuous , totally innocuous, but what happened was that I was going down and my foot didn’t go any further so my entire weight came down on it. Crushed the bones to dust, just a freak accident they said, so now I’m holed up like a fuckin… invalid .’ ‘Why, though? It’s not the eighteen-sixties.’ He puffed. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ ‘Why don’t you use crutches?’ ‘Fuck crutches.’ ‘Or a wheelchair.’ ‘I’m not using a wheelchair, Dylan.’ ‘Sorry I asked.’ There was a certain joy he was taking in his misery. He couldn’t bear the thought of six weeks with only his mum to talk to, with nothing to do but play his online chess games and watch the news feed of the upcoming presidential election. I didn’t feel that this prospect sounded vastly different from his routine, except for the one obvious major alteration; he couldn’t party. ‘I miss you all so goddamned much. I know it’s only been two days but it feels much longer because of the anaesthetic. And Mandy’s thirty-first is on Saturday. I was looking forward to it, even though she can go to hell for what she said about me. But I already paid for my drugs, so I’ll guess I’ll just be sitting here off my face on ket trying to keep myself from going in a hole - unless you guys want to come out here at like…twelve? We’d  just be doing what we’re doing now, or unless you want to bring a couple of the girls, they could see my cast and bring a few drinks, you know, that could be good…probably don’t bring Lucy though, or Adam, they’re a bit -‘ In the depths of his soliloquies, he had a way of self-perpetuating. As much as we were unable to interrupt or contribute, so too did it seem as though he were unable to stop. There had been moments in the dead of an early-morning high when I could see a panic flashing in his eyes like a far-off supernova in the depths of a forgotten galaxy. I got to feeling like that flash of panic was a communique from the innermost being of Costa, the truest Costa, that was desperate to be recognised. That true Costa, like a castaway or a media company, was reduced to a crude, semaphoric state in which communication was both the end and the means, and purely one-sided. I would watch him suck in giant gulps of oxygen to fuel his logorrhea. As though he were sucking in all the air in the room. All the air from us who watched and laughed for his near-perfect performance. This character who veered larger than reality. This engine of the social. ‘ - I’ll need more booze though, if you don’t mind doing another delivery, which is all right because then we can hang out a bit more- ‘ ‘Why will you need more booze? We’ve brought a whole case, plus the gin and the rum.’ ‘And the wine,’ Lachie said. ‘I’ll pay you back, it’s just that mum won’t get me anything, ‘cause of what the doctor said - ‘ ‘What’d the doctor say, Costa?’ ‘Some medical  bullshit, you know, they think we haven’t read up on these things, they’re talking out of their arse about stuff that appeared in a medical textbook forty-five years ago and got outdated forty-four-and-a-half years ago - ‘ ‘Yeah, so what’d he say?’ ‘He said I’m not ‘supposed’ to mix alcohol with the pain meds.’ ‘So why did you ask us to bring you alcohol?’ ‘I’m not going to go six weeks without a drink, dude. I went two days already and I was starting to shake like a bitch, and anyway Lachie didn’t mind - ‘ ‘You knew he’s not allowed to drink?’ ‘Yeah,’ Lachie shrugged. ‘Why did we get him alcohol then?’ ‘It’s his choice,’ he said. I turned back to Costa, who had slopped some dark red wine into the mug from which he’d been guzzling. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t  drink for six weeks.’ ‘I don’t want to be sober for that long.’ ‘That’s kind of my point.’ ‘Anyway, it takes the edge off the dexy’s, and I need the dexy’s for my ADHD, but it’s fucking lame when I have no one to talk to. So it’s good to take the edge off.’ ‘So you drink when there’s no one around. And also when there’s someone around.’ ‘When someone’s around, a bit of booze makes the conversation better. Jesus, Dylan, since when did you become a nun? Fucking rule-boy here.’ ‘I just don’t really understand why you wouldn’t listen to a doctor.’ ‘Doctors tell us to stop vaping, but you puff away on that little robot dick until you go crosseyed. And you’re one to bitch about booze; how many times have I carried you on my - literally on my back - to get to the Uber? And when exactly was the last time you paid me back for the coke I shout you? And the ket? And the MD? And the weed? I don’t even like weed, dude, and there I am spending my money on it so that you’ll stop being a killjoy all the time. God damn, excuse me if I’m not running a half-marathon every Tuesday. I have other interests. Shame on me for liking to hang out with people and for getting a good feeling from the people around me. I don’t have to stock everyone with wine from Auntie Grace’s vineyard, but I do it because I know that what’s good for one person is good for everyone. That’s what a community is, and that’s why we need to take care of one another. And you also, let’s not forget, wrecked my favourite - ‘ I’d set him off. To avoid doing so was one of mine and Lachie’s sacred rules. I was punished enough by Lachie’s glare to shut up then. We sat there for another few hours, never really being forgiven by Costa for our terrible sin of coming to see him. 3. I grabbed Lachie by the arm later that night, when we were briefly left alone in the courtyard of the Bowlo. The girls had gone to take a bump in the bathroom. I asked Lachie what the hell was his problem, and why he hadn’t spoken up in my support today at Costa’s. It wasn’t that I needed him to agree with everything I said, but I truly felt I was going crazy if no one else agreed that we had at least some degree of responsibility, as his friends, to help him. Not to coddle him like an infant, though he acted like it sometimes, but to make sure he was healthy when he couldn’t. At least, I thought, we could do that. At least, I thought, we could try. Lachie told me that I was being overdramatic, a nanna, trying to control people and how they responded to the world. He said I was like the state government, which had over the past decade slowly choked the nightlife out of Sydney, a city we’d once loved. I told him that I was different, because my intentions were altruistic and I wasn’t a corrupt bastard wrist-deep in a casino magnate. Lachie said that altruism isn’t about telling people what to do. Or what not to do. ‘But he’ll fucking die or something one day, mate. It’s not cute anymore. We’re not getting younger.’ ‘What’s our age have to do with anything? My dad still gets on the sauce, and your mum…well, fuck me, no offence. And that bullshit about your body getting less able to manage it, that’s nothing. If anything I feel way more capable of a bender than I used to be.’ ‘I can tell.’ ‘Like an athlete…practice makes perfect and that…’ The girls came back. Kate had a bit of powder ringed around her nostril. She told me to lick it off, which was an escalation I hadn’t expected. The chrome flavour of the coke numbed my gums almost immediately. Which meant it was good quality. Mandy asked us what we were talking about, and Lachie immediately told her. He made me sound like a prissy old conservative. Honestly, the way he told it he wasn’t wrong. Kate rubbed my leg. ‘…and he reckons Costa’s gunna die.’ ‘I’m not saying he’s going to die.’ ‘That’s literally what you said.’ I rubbed my eyes, frustrated as hell. ‘I’m just saying…he might be a bit much, but he hates to be alone. And he hates to sit still. Now he’s being forced to. For six weeks. I don’t know if he can take it.’ Mandy gave me a grim smile. ‘You don’t trust people, Dylan. You’re not afraid that Costa’s going to go nuts. You fully expect  it.’ I gave it up then, but I did ask if the girls wanted to go with me to see Costa tomorrow. I told them it’d mean the world to him. Mandy couldn’t be bothered, but Kate said she might. Lachie said he had breakfast with his parents. 4. The problem Kate had with Costa, she said as I brought her a cup of black coffee, was that the entire universe had to revolve around him. She didn’t blame him. It was just his way. He was like Pantagruel, excessive in everything. Including his presence. She was honestly looking forward to a month and a half’s worth of parties where she could talk to someone without Costa’s thunder booming down the hall, vibrating in our glasses. Think of it, she said, a whole six weeks where we don’t have to debrief the next day about whatever scandalous thing he had said or done, six weeks where the friendship group could just get along without fractures or tensions, six weeks without the garbage bags full of gossip that always seemed to have Costa as their subject. And besides, he was bad to women. He was rude and dismissive when he spoke to her, and she didn’t like to feel that way. She’d made her point. I told her as much. But I was still going to go, and I’d still appreciate her company. She muttered something under her breath and tried to find her bra. 5. ‘Lachlan told me you’re spreading rumours about me. I don’t appreciate that.’ Costa’s disdain was poised before I even entered. ‘You’re a little-goody-two-shoes worry-wart bitch. After everything I’ve done for you, you still talk shit about me behind my back. That’s being a bad friend. I’ve saved your arse on multiple occasions. Remember those chicks from Bathurst? I smoothed that whole thing out. And you say I’ve got a problem. Get thee thy plank outta thy own fuckin eye. You know what I’m talking about. You’re a fucking fiend on the gear.’ I told Kate to sit down in the chair by the window. Her hangover had kicked in. Costa hadn’t yet acknowledged her presence. ‘And anyway, I’m a remarkable human being. I read a whole thing on the Roman emperors when you left yesterday. Does that sound like a drug addict? How could I run a successful business if I were an alcoholic? Are you saying my business isn’t successful?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Goddamn right.’ Costa looked out the window, straight past Kate. The white light illuminated his dark skin and eyes. It was the first time in a while I’d seen him well-rested. But as I looked deeper into his expression of rough machismo, I realised how hurt he was. I’d embarrassed him with the one substance he couldn’t stomach. I’d intended to help him, but in doing so I had subjected him to mortality in front of his peers, whose opinions, for better or worse, he desperately cared for. He was a proud man. And if he had nothing else but pride, at least he had that. Lachie was right. Who was I to try and tame a spirit like Costa? I felt a wash of shame for my arrogance. ‘I’m sorry, mate.’ He shrugged. Kate looked at me dolefully. I saw how little she wanted to be here. ‘I just get worried, Cos. I’m worried that things will get worse for us all. Not better.’ ‘They probably will, you fucking idiot.’ ‘You want to play chess?’ ‘Nah, I’ll whoop you too quickly. We should play something for three players.’ Kate’s eyes brightened a bit. ‘I’ve got a pack of cards. We can play Gin Rummy.’ We sat there the entire afternoon, Kate and I, with Costa’s insurmountable, mountain-like presence beginning to eclipse his small room, smoking a joint, staggering out Costa’s and Kate’s dexy’s, sipping on some whiskey I’d found under the bed, laughing and swearing, competing and losing to Costa, who could not, in his indomitable excess, lose. Michael McStay is an Australian writer raised on Bangerang and Wurundjeri country and living in Berlin. He has produced five full-length theatrical plays to critical acclaim. If he isn't reading or writing, he's probably running or talking too much.

My son’s latest venture is hunting down and slaying vampires. From my seat on the porch, I’m watching him fling wooden stakes at a propped-up life-sized cardboard cutout of my sister that has been sitting around collecting dust since we’d used it for her 40th birthday party, the last time I had any contact with her.  My son’s getting better. Just now he nailed her body double directly between the eyes, although technically I think the stake is supposed to pierce the heart.  I take a sip of beer and then a drag from my cigarette. Together, they taste just like life does after a certain age—what I hid from, but suspected all along, came true: my life held no grander purpose, and everyone has been a disappointment. I’m tempted to ask my son how he’s going to be able to tell a vampire apart from a regular person, especially if the vampire is hiding in plain sight, but then I think that given his object of choice for target practice, he’s probably on the right track. Ah, there goes the stake into my sister’s heart. At this rate, my son will soon be ready to take on his own father—no need for a cardboard cutout of him . Eliot S. Ku is a physician who lives in New Mexico with his wife and two children. His writing has appeared in Whiskey Tit, Maudlin House, Carmen et Error, HAD, and Bending Genres, among other places. You can read more at www.eliotsku.com