Rind Issue 18v4

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Rind Issue 18 September 2025

R-Evolution, San Francisco – Photo by Rind Staff

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Rind Literary Magazine Issue 18 september 2025

rindliterarymagazine.com

All Works © Respective Authors, 2025

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Editor in Chief: Dylan gascon

Fiction Editors: Johnathan Etchart Jenny Lin Melinda Smith Stephen williams Shaymaa Mahmoud

Nonfiction Editors: Collette Curran Owen Torres Anastasia Zamora

Poetry Editors: Shaymaa Mahmoud Sean hisaka Lisa Tate

Blog Manager: Dylan Gascon

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Table of Contents Santa in the Dry Season/Boma Cho …………………….……………….….6 Eutychus/Huntley Paton…………………………………………………..…….7

The Car/Esther Sadoff………………………………………………………..26 Fame, Friendship, and Flower Anatomy/Subramani Mani ……………...28 Actor-Dreamers/James Croal Jackson ………………………………………..46 Aunt Alma’s Flower/Scott Bassis …………………………………………..48

Contributors……………………………………………………………...69

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Santa in the Dry Season

By Boma Cho Weaver birds ae singing again This is the dry season The sun will shine again and reflect its rays into the hearts of the people Happily, the people will parade their fields again The stringent noises, the waterfalls Will become soothing and melodious And witty sayings will flow off My old man’s mouth Like the smoke from his pipe It’s fun time again Time to ride horses

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Eutychus

By Huntley Gibson Paton

When Tom punched his father in the face, he didn’t have the slightest bad feeling about it. Not even when he bent down and took a good look at Daddington’s split lip and the way his eyes rolled up white. Even when Daddymeister came to, pulled himself up, knocked over Mom’s favorite vase and stumbled right through the sliding door onto the patio — glass pebbles everywhere, dog going nuts — Tom didn’t give it a second thought. He was high, wildly free, unconstrained by gravity, blood ties or the rules of men. He was eating cereal when Mom came home from the hairdresser.

He spent the next three months in the Bicker County Juvenile Detention Center, and there, he thought about it a lot. He felt bad about the vase. He wasn’t sure why he punched His Highness. Something to do with the dog.

When he got out on his eighteenth birthday, he was not welcome at home, which figured, so he hitchhiked down to Dallas and spent a couple months there, ate and slept mostly beside a dumpster behind a barbecue joint. It was spring and the lightning storms were bad. Sometimes, he could feel the ground shake. The drugs were easy to find, but money wasn’t. He made a cardboard sign and panhandled.

For a while he joined a picking crew in Waxahachie, got stung by fire ants every day. He started a fistfight with a yappy local kid after an argument over a rake, stole three crisp fifties out of the foreman’s pickup truck one time, robbed a Mexican lady another time, and then he went back to Dallas in early fall, before the heat broke. Some new guy had staked out the good

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dumpster by then, a guy with about half his teeth gone and a snarly dog and a shiv fashioned out of bamboo, so Tom had to find somewhere else to go. For two weeks he slept in an abandoned Hyundai, before the city towed it.

He met a girl, Gabriela. They did the deed in the Hyundai and other places. She would hook so they could beam up together, but some of those paunchy, fake cowboys driving slow up and down the block wanted him not her. One day, Gabriela disappeared.

He persevered, stole a nice bicycle in Kessler Park, got decent money for it. He kicked in the back door of a little church in Oak Cliff late at night, made off with an old slide projector and two microphones. He traded those for some rocks to smoke. One day he huffed from some discarded paint-thinner cans. That was pretty good.

Then his older sister Jo Jo found him at the house near Fair Park with all the graffiti and bullet holes. She looked scared and brave.

Been looking for you for so long, she said. Showed your picture everywhere.

He agreed to go. She bought him two McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and large fries and a huge soda, bought him underwear and new jeans and a couple T-shirts and sneakers at Walmart.

She took him to a clinic. They kept feeling his armpits and neck and asking him dumb questions for which they seemed to already know the answers. The doctor said, Dermatitis neglecta. The doctor said, Malnutrition. The doctor said, Let’s test you for HIV. Oh, Tom Tom, his sister said.

She drove him back up to East Paw in her blue Tahoe, to her new house in the fancy development that went bust a couple years before, taken over by the RTC. All the medians were overgrown, and the empty lots were going back to nature, but Jo Jo’s house was still nice. Tom showered and when he shut off the water the tub was brown. He put on some of the clothes his

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sister bought for him. Downstairs, her two boys were home from school, sipping juice pouches in front of the television. Uncle Tommy, they said, hugging him. Little possums, he said.

Jo Jo’s husband Austin wasn’t around. He’s in Saudi Arabia, Jo Jo said. Have you been watching the news?

No, he said. What’s going on?

She showed him the newspaper. Dang, Tom said.

Jo Jo showed him the stack of shoe boxes she was filling with candy and paperback novels and deodorant sticks and beef jerky. These go out on a cargo plane day after tomorrow, she said. These and thousands more like them. Churches everywhere doing it, for the troops.

That night, at her insistence, they drove over to their parents’ old Victorian near the East Paw town square, which Tom always called Podunk Square or Mayberry, Texas. Mom hugged him, had wet eyes, and was nervous. Dadzilla, after some hesitation, shook his hand. His face looked OK. He had a mustache now. The dog, an old terrier, jumped up on her arthritic legs and cried when she smelled him. Tom scratched her ears, whispered to her. Mom served sweet tea and some corn chips out on the back porch. The new sliding door was better than the old one. Jo Jo’s boys played in the backyard beneath the old live oak, where the tree fort used to be, kicking a soccer ball around.

Wonder Daddy asked him, What are you going to do now?

Don’t know, Tom said.

Well, you can’t stay here. I don’t think any of us are ready for that.

Right, Tom said.

His mother brought him a vitamin and brushed his hair back with her fingers. Look to God, she whispered. That annoyed Tom a little.

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When they got back to Jo Jo’s house, his sister made up a bed for him on the pullout couch in the loft. I want you to stay, she said. Long as you need to. Maybe you can go back to school. Or get your GED. Tom asked, You got any pain pills?

Jo Jo frowned. She went to her room and came back with a white pill. She said, These are left over from Austin’s wisdom teeth last year. There’re two more if you need them later.

Thanks, he said. Maybe just bring ‘em now?

He laid there awake in the dark, thinking about the house, what he had seen, things he might take that Jo Jo wouldn’t notice missing. The juicer in the kitchen looked dusty. How much silverware did one place need? He took a beef jerky from one of the care packages for the soldiers and ate it, looking out the window at the streetlights that lit up empty lots all the way down the block, like they were leading to something.

The next day he swept out Jo Jo’s garage and pulled weeds from her garden beds. The day after that he tried to fix her leaky kitchen faucet but couldn’t figure it out. It’s OK, she said, don’t worry about it. The day after that, when the boys were at school and his sister was at work, he took one of Austin’s jean jackets from the closet and stuffed the pockets with as much of Jo Jo’s jewelry as he could fit, and walked two miles down to U.S. 75, so he could hitchhike back to Dallas. At the southbound onramp a landscaping truck clipped him. Tom went airborne in a kind of camel spin, bounced off a mile marker. Jewelry flew everywhere. #

In hell, Tom was assigned a place behind the barbecue joint’s dumpster. The guy with the shiv was there too and every night he stabbed Tom again and again, all over his body, while the

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guy’s snarly dog locked down on Tom’s cojones and just wouldn’t let go. The lightning storms never ended. In the mornings a squad car would arrive, lights flashing, and the cops, gigantic and demonic, would hop out, mace him, beat him head to toe, shove a nightstick up his anus, then break it off at the handle. He lost count of how many broken clubs were stuck up there. There were no drugs, nothing to ease the pain. Nothing to drink. The restaurant workers who brought out the food trash were all dead ringers for the Mexican lady he robbed, and the trash bags were filled with pig rectums and razor blades. It was hot as a Texas summer.

#

But Tom didn’t die. When he came out of the coma, a nurse was the first to notice. She went up and down the hallway, telling people to come. A big fuss, lots of questions he couldn’t answer. Someone asked, Can you tell us your name? He said Tom but it came out like Tifbud.

But later, he nailed it: Tom, he said. I’m Tom. He thought he might be late for football practice.

Then the family showed up. Jo Jo said, Oh Tom Tom. He remembered her and remembered that she liked to call him Tom Tom, ever since he was little. His brother-in-law Austin was there, too, crew cut like always. Mom stroked his cheek. Sweet baby, she said. My darling child. She was bawling. One surprising thing they told him was that Dad had passed on.

When they told him he had been in a coma, and for how long, he just couldn’t believe it.

He never did remember being at Jo Jo’s house or walking out there to U.S. 75. No one ever mentioned the stolen jewelry. He weighed practically nothing, ribs like banister slats, arms like Q-Tips. Coach would be mad at him. He had to relearn how to eat, how to control his bodily functions, and the first time they tried to stand him up, his legs acted like You’ve got to be

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joking. So it was a wheelchair and then a walker. But the doctors were amazed by him.

The doctors said, No permanent mental or physical damage, like he was a freak. The doctors said, Good thing about a long coma, all your bones are better. The doctors also said, You have HIV. They sent some woman up to talk to him about that. She had pamphlets.

Tom told one of the doctors about hell. The doctor smiled. When you cycled back to us, you had a dream, that’s all. He said, You’re not in hell, we’re not that bad, ha ha. They discharged him.

At Mom’s house, the old dog cried and jumped all over him. His room was just like he remembered it, except the Public Enemy poster was gone, and the stash box he kept under the bed was missing too. His dresser was topped by all his old swimming and football trophies.

Jo Jo and Mom asked him if he wanted to go to church with them – the smiley Methodist place. He sure didn’t want to. No one pressed him. While they were gone, he read Dadaster’s old fishing magazines. He remembered them fishing for bluegill at East Paw Town Lake. That was a long time ago.

Jo Jo came over almost every day. She made him things to eat. She would say, Do you remember when we had bats in the attic and you were scared and I sang you a song? She would say, Do you remember how I made you bologna sandwiches and we ate them together in the tree fort? She would say, Do you remember your chemistry kit and how you made the whole house smell like rotten eggs? And he would say, I remember. One day Jo Jo just looked at him sitting there at the table, the exact spot where he ate cereal after punching Daddy Dearest, and she said, I love you. He wondered, Why? One day, Jo Jo said to Mom, We have to celebrate. They had a big barbecue dinner at Jo Jo’s on a Saturday, early evening, after the heat backed off. Austin had been babysitting the

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smoker all day, feeding pinion wood into the firebox, and the brisket was so big it could have fed multitudes. Someone had mowed all the medians, planted flowers, and construction crews were building on some of the lots. Austin told him how the Coalition routed the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and about all the sorties he flew. Tom tried to throw the football around with the little possums, but his arm was so weak it embarrassed him.

Back home, Mom went straight to bed. She said, I just feel like sleeping all the time, it’s terrible. She did not bother to close her door. Her room went dark and then a preacher’s voice thrummed from her radio speaker: When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed.

Tom almost never slept. All he did was think. Sally Johnstone. They had been obsessed with one another. Then his drugs. After that, he didn’t care one lick about her. She was at Oklahoma State now, Mom said. He remembered his last football game. He played high as a spy plane. Ran an interception the wrong way. Coach candled his eyes with a pen light on the team bus after the game and made him hand over his shoulder pads and helmet right there, in front of everyone. He thought back further: about Jo Jo’s wedding – her in white, Austin in his uniform, how Jo Jo made him dance with her, how he wanted to be just like Austin. And further: Dad teaching him how to tie knots, for the merit badge, mussing his hair, calling him Tommykins.

Tom attended some meetings for people like him. He landed a job at the Pig ‘N Jig on the town square, a ninety-second walk from the house. They had country acts on weekends and Tom would listen, from his dishwashing station in the kitchen. Two of the waitresses were nice and one of them wasn’t even married. He thought, Stick with this a while, hang in there. One Saturday, Jo Jo and Austin brought the boys there for dinner, and Tom, during his break, watched his sister and her husband do a little two-stepping through the sawdust there on the

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dance floor while their little possums ate fries. A while later, a stack of dirty plates arrived and on one of them was a handwritten note, spotted with grease: Love you, Tom Tom. It was signed, J J. He peeked out into the dining room, but they were gone.

That night he thought about the time he drove My Lord’s old Lincoln north on 75 all the way up to the Oklahoma border for no reason, the speedometer topping 110, his buddies laughing, except Tanner, in the back seat, scared out of his mind, begging him to stop. Tom would never stop. Or the time on mushrooms, climbing to the top of the water tower, while all the kids begged him not to. He pissed from the top, climbed back down, hooked up with Darlene Blackwell, who was stoned and impressed by the stunt. His first screw. What that felt like. Or another time, his first shot of horse. What that felt like.

He thought, Hang in there.

About a week later, he asked the waitress, the one who wasn’t married, if she would like to get Dairy Queen with him sometime. Her name was Winnie. She leaned against the kitchen wall in her pearl-snap shirt, a little sweaty from running from table to table all night, and her glistening forehead and cheeks seemed to Tom impossibly luminous. She gave him a long look, like she was trying to figure him out. Then she said OK. He asked, Can you drive? I don’t have a car. She laughed and said OK to that, too.

On the big day, just a couple hours before Winnie was to pick him up, Mom fell asleep on the couch and he sat there looking at her. His legs were all jumpy. The house was quiet, wall clock ticking. The dog was asleep in the hallway, her little legs twitching with dreams. Winnie didn’t know what he had. He just wanted to talk, to look. That wasn’t true, though. This ain’t never gonna change.

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Mom slept sad. Sorry, so sorry. He found his backpack, took all his money, a change of clothes, his great grandfather’s gold pocket watch. He snuck out the back door, hushing the dog, who tried to follow him, made his way down to the highway, southbound side. Had to be a hundred degrees today, at least.

Stuck out his thumb.

#

There were patterns, a weary order to things he did not think about but which he obeyed.

The drugs being the most obvious, but also, the places he went, without realizing it. Dead neighborhoods, street corners colonized by loiterers, circuits of potholed streets and alleys and empty houses that he came to time and again. He didn’t specifically recall breaking into the little church before, didn’t remember the slide projector or the microphones, only that something good happed here, one time, somehow. He came upon the building late in the evening. There was a white cross fastened above the front door. The church sat on a big lot, which in East Paw would suggest money but here in Oak Cliff was no prize, only sorry territory no one else wanted. He remembered something: Back door. Kick. Grab. Smoke.

He went to the back. Three steps up to the door, a single yellowish light bulb above it, cuffed by frantic moths, their shadows whorled as from a disco ball. Be quick about it: The first kick, nothing. Weak. He almost tumbled down the stairs. Another kick — the door held and his foot hurt. Before he could kick it a third time, the door opened, and there stood an enormous black man, nearly big as the doorway. He was holding something, a book. Tom’s legs wouldn’t move.

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Two ways we can play it, the man said. Run, or sit down and talk.

Since the man did not mention the police, and since Tom couldn’t seem to run, speak or fight — he was petrified — he went in. The room had storage cabinets, a sink, a folding table, everything vaguely familiar from last time. The stuff he stole had been in one of those cabinets.

The man flicked on an overhead light, set his book down on the table. He was blimpish, his short hair about half gray, and he wore a white button-down shirt, cargo shorts, flipflops. No one can run in flipflops. Tom was angry at himself — he should have bolted when he had the chance.

Sit, the man said. There was a refrigerator, and the man pulled from it a tray of cold burritos. Eat, the man said. The book he placed on the table was a Bible. Tom was afraid to take the food. Eat, the man said again. Want some water? Tom said thanks and when he drank some and finished the burrito, he said again, Thanks.

So what’s your story? the man asked him.

Super sorry, Tom said. Can I go? Won’t bother you again.

The man studied him for a while and Tom was nervous. The man said: You know about Jesus?

Tom shrugged. This Texas or not?

You believe?

He’s dead, I guess.

No. Far from it.

I don’t think I believe that.

You will.

When? Why would I? When you meet him. Here or hereafter. Now or later.

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Tom didn’t have an answer for that.

You sick? the man asked.

Tom shrugged.

You can go, the man said. Come back tomorrow at lunchtime. You’ll meet some people.

We’ll talk some more.

Tom didn’t come back. The next day he panhandled at Dealey Plaza. A tourist with a New York accent cussed him but a nice lady from Japan or someplace like that gave him five dollars and talked to him in her language. He couldn’t understand a word, just stood there and listened, and when she was done, she touched his hand and walked off. He found a guy who sold him a couple pills. That night, he slept inside a fort of old boxes he gathered near Stemmons Freeway.

The next day, a Tahoe cruised slowly down the street near Fair Park, where he was looking for drugs. He could have sworn it was Jo Jo. He hid behind a vandalized mail truck.

A few weeks later, he sold a guitar he took from a guy passed out behind a club in Deep Ellum, and that same night, with cash in his pocket, he ran across Gabriela outside of a 7-Eleven.

She clutched a microwave burger. Her eyes were barely open, and she didn’t remember him, but she seemed to take his word for it. She knew a place. The house had mattresses on the floor and a man with a handgun in one pocket of his sweatpants and rocks to sell in the other. In the morning, Gabriela was gone and so was the rest of Tom’s money. In the corner, a black boy younger than him was propped against the wall, head back, eyes open, mouth open. A fly crawled out of his mouth. Other people staggered around the room.

Tom lurched from the house, squinting in the bright sunshine, backpack over his shoulder. He did not want to be that boy in the corner, though the boy’s troubles were over. Was

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there such a thing, a state in which there was no trouble? Tom doubted it, wished he was high.

He shambled a little way until he realized where he was. There was the church, cattycorner from him. The front door was open and without thinking about it, Tom went right to it and stuck his head in. The big man from before was there, in the main part of the sanctuary, arranging folding chairs in rows. A pulpit sat on the bare floor. The man was dressed in a nice suit this time. He turned, gave Tom the once-over. Well look who’s here, he said.

Tom didn’t know what to say. Could I use your bathroom? he asked.

He had bad diarrhea that left him weak. He wetted down his head and washed his face.

The big man was waiting at the door for him, holding a little Styrofoam cup of coffee. Drink it, he said. The bathroom smelled horrible, but the man said nothing about it. Tom was shaking and spilled some coffee on the floor. The man paid it no mind. He said, Well, you’re just in time, have a seat somewhere and we’ll talk after. In walked three black women in dresses and fancy hats and some young kids in little ties. It was Sunday, apparently.

I should go, Tom said.

No, the man said. Sit down and listen. We’ll talk after. He went to the door to greet people, stood there like a sentry. There was no escape.

By the time the service started there were maybe fifty people there, almost all of them women or kids, most dressed all churchy. Nearly everyone was black. Everyone seemed to know one another. They were hugging and talking. A few vagrants showed up, too, men like Tom who wore bad clothes and smelled just as bad as Tom. He sat in the back, trying to be invisible in his metal folding chair. People said hello to him as they walked in but otherwise left him alone.

There was a four-piece band – drums, piano, electric guitar, bass – and the front doors were left wide open so the sound would spill out into the neighborhood. Everyone stood up, so

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Tom did too. The music was loud. The speakers and amplifiers were crackling, hissing a little, not good ones, but loud, and Tom wondered what he might get for them. Everyone but Tom was swaying and clapping, even the other burnouts. They all were singing about fish, so many fish that the nets broke, and then another song about walls tumbling down and then a third song about an empty tomb, all of it so loud Tom figured all the crackheads in the whole neighborhood were woken up by now and smoking and maybe dancing too and here he was stuck out of some weird sense of politeness.

The big black man was the preacher. He was loud, like the music, and didn’t need a microphone, though he used one anyway — his voice boomed through the speakers and Tom’s head hurt. Friends, he said, Jesus is here. He talked for a long time. He said, Friends, Jesus is the source of life and he gives himself freely, can I get an Amen? And they gave him loud Amens.

He said, Loved ones, there is no other way. He went on and on. Tom never heard anyone talk so much. At one point, he nodded off, caught himself falling out of his chair.

Then the preacher said, Brothers and sisters, it should come as no surprise that the God who made you would long to touch you and some people fell right down on the ground like someone shot them, but no one else seemed worried and then the preacher, raising his arms, so big and tall that his hands rose above them like tree branches, said The Spirit is among you and something ran down Tom’s spine and the preacher said, Speak the words that the Spirit gives you.

Then there was a murmuring in the room, the sound of many words all spoken at once, none explicable, people turning pell-mell to the people next to them or the people behind them, some with their heads bowed, others with their chins raised high, hands clasped tightly in supplication or held aloft, eyes closed or open wide, lips moving like grass in the wind and it

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seemed to Tom that there was a real wind in the room, a wind of words mixed together that sounded like a storm flying across the city and the words were everywhere and buffeted him like real wind, and Tom was very afraid, had no words of his own, and had to sit down.

After the service ended, the preacher, sopped with sweat, invited Tom into the room with the cabinets and refrigerator and offered him a bottle of Coca-Cola.

So now you’ve been to church, he said.

Been before, Tom said.

Yeah?

Grew up in church.

Hmm. Not like this place, though.

No? You freaked me out.

The pastor smiled, nodded. He said, You look very sick, son.

Tom burst into tears.

The pastor laid hands on his dirty head, one big hand on each side. His hands were heavy and strong, yet meek, careful, like Tom was careful, a long time ago, when he was a boy, when he would hold Mom’s old vase, the one she loved so much, while she dusted the credenza. Tom cried, infantile, helpless and ashamed. The man held Tom’s head as if it was the most important thing in the world, a glowing jewel hidden inside a lump of mud and coal. Lord Jesus, he prayed, Lord of everything alive, Lord of everything that ever lived … on and on like that. When he was done Tom smelled flowers and he asked, What did you do to me?

The pastor said, Me? Nothing? Not me, no sir. But you are clean, the Lord has told me

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and I can feel it, you’re not an addict anymore.

Tom scoffed, wiped away tears, noticed dust particles floating in the sunlight beams like living things. He said, What, just like that? Some magic trick? And the pastor said, I myself was delivered, I myself lived like you once, was a slave like you.

Doubt that, Tom said.

I played college football. Longhorns. Tore up my knee. Had my first taste of pain pills.

That was all it took. All downhill from there.

Yeah? Who laid hands on you?

Just the Holy Spirit. I had the barrel in my mouth when he touched me, spoke my name, washed me. The Spirit doesn’t need my help, but sometimes I get to witness, and explain, and rejoice. Like now.

Tom said, Sorry to disappoint you but nothing happened.

Then the pastor said, You’re swept clean but you need to fill up the empty place with the Word or else the demon comes back with his buddies twice as bad as before. I’ve seen it. Fill yourself up with the Word, he said, take this Bible and fill yourself up.

Tom wanted to leave. Instead, for some pointless reason, he found himself telling the pastor about the coma and hell. The pastor listened quietly and when Tom was done, the big man just shrugged and said, Real hell would be worse than that. He said, Come back tomorrow, lunchtime, I might be able get you into a safe place I know about. Come back tomorrow, you will meet others like us. We’ll feed you. Take the Bible.

Tom walked the streets slow, looking around. Somehow, he did not have that raw, bottomless hunger for a chemical, any chemical. There was no desperation for that oblivious descent. It was just as the pastor had said. And yet, if he had drugs right now, he would take

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them anyway. He did not believe the pastor or what he said about God. It was too late to reconcile with fathers. This was a trick of the mind, some type of autosuggestion, making him see possibilities that were not there. He was ashamed. All his senses were awake. The sunshine, the wind, the air, they were tangible things, just now, as if they were aware of him, watching him. The sounds of traffic and distant machinery – the jackhammer, the generator, the beeping of crosswalk signals — were long ago relegated to meaningless background noise, but now they were distinct, and their effect on him was revelatory, making him aware of all he had missed.

Birds called to one another. He noticed the texture of tree trunks and the living sprigs of their branches and even the unfurling of new weeds in the lots he passed, and it felt like loss, all of it.

That night, he returned to the weedy slope near the underpass of Stemmons Freeway and assembled a new shelter of cardboard, using some scrub oak as a lean-to. He wondered whether to go back to the church. It had been a long time since he had an obligation or would even entertain one. It seemed preposterous. For a while, he laid on his back with his head peeking out, staring up at the stars. The glow of office-tower neon, the streetlamps of the vast city, the headlights and porchlights of a million heedless strangers polluted the view — man’s lights hiding the heavenly ones — but he spied them, nonetheless, shimmering fire in a pale, yellowgray sky. They were overwhelming, those stars, he could not process them, so he curled up inside the box and fell asleep.

He woke up burning. Exultant laughter, boys in a pickup truck, driving off, tires spitting gravel from the shoulder. Pain rose symphonic and he smelled the charcoal lighter fluid and awful sweetness of his own flesh blistering, oxidizing. He careened away, screaming, swatting himself. The box fort and his backpack and everything in it went up fast in hot orange licks and came down slow in flickering gray embers. Tom staggered back toward downtown, his heart

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wild to fly. A patrol car rolled past. The officer gaped at him, stomped the brakes, got out of the vehicle, unbelieving, and in a loud voice exclaimed the name of the Lord. Tom, smoking like firewood, collapsed at her feet.

*

On the twenty-first day, Tom heard the doctor tell Jo Jo: The burns aren’t really an issue at this point. His other conditions …

Jo Jo drove him to his mother’s house in East Paw. New construction everywhere along the way, new worlds springing up. They arrived in his old neighborhood just at sunset. There was a For Sale sign out front. When his mother spotted him, she ran to the Tahoe as if young again, kissing him so many times, overcome, words dissolving into noise, plaintive as a donkey.

Tom said, Mom, Mom. The house was filled with packing boxes, things in disarray, but smelled like baking.

They had filled his old room with flowers and pictures. There was a new bed, with siderails and wheels and extra pillows. Painkillers numbed him and he did not hurt anymore.

You’re home now, his mother said. We love you so.

You moving? he asked.

We will never leave you, Jo Jo said.

There was a strange woman there, too, a Mexican lady with a soft smile, wearing blue scrubs. Hi Tom, she said. I’m Ines. You and I are going to be friends.

They helped him undress and put him in bed. Ines patted him with a wet cloth, starting with his forehead and moving down, very carefully, as if she might break him. The cloth was

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oily and cool. A resinous sweetness lingered. The dog was crying to be with him, so Jo Jo lifted her up to the foot of the bed.

Where are the possums? Tom asked. Where’s Austin?

Jo Jo was quiet for a moment. She said, He’ll come around. He just feels …

It’s OK, Tom said.

Our lost coin, his mother said, brushing tears from her cheeks. Our lost coin.

They sat with him a long time, telling stories: Remember the time little Tom jumped off the high dive when we took our eye off him? Remember the time Jo Jo had a fever and little Tom made her pancakes with Frosted Flakes mixed into the batter? Ines laughed softly at that, gave him more pills. After what seemed a very long time, Jo Jo yawned, weary. She leaned over and kissed him. I’m sleeping on the couch, she said, I’m right out here if you need me. His mother kissed him too, smiled, kissed him again. Ines turned out the light and the three of them went out together. Tom laid very still, listening for them. His mother and Jo Jo talked softly for a while, out in the living room. Like a child, he listened.

Maybe he slept. At some point, a man’s voice, gentle and deep, came from his mother’s radio, and he strained to hear as one might listen to a friend approaching: Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones … in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits … in danger in the city, in danger in the country … I have known hunger and thirst … I have been cold and naked …

Street talk. He knew it, squalled that way himself, many times, yet somehow he could not relate to the words, secure in this house that withstood time, survived every storm and even him.

His mother and sister were just on the other side of the wall, he could feel their presence and was reassured by it. The old dog slept at his feet. He noticed, too, in silhouette by the corner, that the

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nice woman was in the room with him once again, watching over him. Surrounded by love, he wanted for nothing, and his heart, which was tired from its journey, stopped.

THE END

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The car

By Esther Sadoff I overshot myself. I was screeching keys and spinning wheels. The car was turning too fast.

I opened the doors and ran out. I was soundless, motionless. I was consuming speed and sound. Sometimes escape is the only logical conclusion. The brain hardens itself, acclimates to speed and sound so that they are transformed into stillness and silence. I was standing on the side of the road. I was spent, the sound and speed were reaching in and I could almost see myself as if I were something that could be held. Please don’t say the word deserve. No one ever knows what it is they truly deserve. If you asked me then, I would have said I deserved nothing.

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Fame, Friendship and Flower Anatomy

By Subramani Mani I received this letter in the mail a few weeks ago.

Dear Ramu You might have heard about the Jnanpith award being conferred on me for my novel ‘Chinna Chinna Aasaikal, Oru Chittu Kuruvi Chinthanaikal—Small Small Longings, a Sparrow’s Musings’. After much internal deliberation and debate I’ve coaxed myself to accept the award. The function will be held on the fifteenth of next month at the Taj hotel, Delhi. As my dearest friend, going back to our childhood days, I would be thrilled if you could come over and share the space and time with me.

Your childhood buddy Vasu Jnanpith, standing for knowledge-feet, is the highest literary award in India. It is awarded to the author of a book published in the previous twenty years recommended by the award selection committee. The prize had been announced a week earlier and I had dialed up Vasu multiple times to congratulate him. But I always got either a busy signal or a ringtone. There was some speculation in the media that he might decline the award. Of late, Vasu had become extremely critical of the Kashmir policy of the central government.

I flew into Delhi the morning of the biggest evening in Vasu’s life. He received me at the airport and we headed to the Taj hotel where he was staying in a suite. After dropping my bags, we both headed to the hotel restaurant for brunch. Vasan picked a secluded corner table and we sat down

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to chat. A waiter came and served us Darjeeling tea, and pointing to the large buffet spread said to us, help yourself.

Vasan spotted some dignitaries he recognized, seated on the far side, and waved to them. Then turning his head towards me, and looking into my eyes, asked—How have you been? It has been almost ten years since we met in Chennai for Nirmal and Nila’s wedding reception. Time just rushes past as if you are in a long-haul flight and you don’t feel any movement; it is all still, and suddenly you find yourself touching down in another city in another time zone, half-way across the globe.

I noticed right away that certain things had changed with Vasan. He was graying but he hadn’t cared to color his hair. And, even though it was a big day for him he wasn’t putting on any airs.

He didn’t even appear very jubilant. I had assumed he would be ecstatic about the recognition, notwithstanding some media coverage about his hesitation surrounding the award. It was clear from his facial expression and demeanor that he seemed conflicted, and wavering. This is a much-mellowed avatar of Vasan from the Chennai meet, I thought. I knew fame and friendship can intersect in various ways. It had collided unexpectedly then, preventing Vasan and I from meeting each other in person again, until today.

He seemed to be in no hurry for anything. As I watched him sitting casually, sunk deep in his seat, and taking little sips of tea, slowly, from his cup, my thoughts wandered to the Vasan of my childhood universe. He appeared to me to go decades back in time, becoming a kid again. *** My first introduction to Vasan happened in the elementary school playground during recess. He and his buddies were playing cricket which I knew nothing about. It was the first day of our fourth-grade class in Fort elementary school. Vasu, as everyone used to call him affectionately,

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was an all-rounder—he could bat, bowl, and field well. Sometimes, he would stand behind the wickets too. He was an opening batsman, bowled both pace and spin as best as any seven-yearold can, and fielded at the slips.

Until fourth grade, I had lived in Delhi with my uncle and attended an elementary school there.

In Delhi there was no cricket either in our school, or in our neighborhood. We played hockey and football; both were popular with the kids. The rules of both the games were also simple to understand and follow. Basically, the goal was to score goals to win the game, easy for kids to follow. Then my uncle retired from the army; we all moved south to Trivandrum, a small city more than two thousand five hundred kilometers from Delhi. We settled down in the Fort subdivision of the city.

It is difficult for seven-year-olds to play any game that requires good motor skills—hand-eye coordination, muscle strength, quick reflexes, and an ability to perform short sprints and turns.

Vasan was tall and big for his age but I was one of the smallest kids in my class. It made playing games even more challenging for me. But we all tried to compensate for our lack of strength and stamina with our interest, enthusiasm, and motivation.

I started out as a fielder. I could run quickly to collect the ball coming my way but couldn’t throw the ball to the bowler or the wicket keeper from the depths of the field. So, a long-on or a long-off, or even a deep mid-on or a deep mid-off fielding position wouldn’t work for me. Vasan accommodated me in the second slip position near him. He would always be the first slip when he wasn’t bowling, and when he bowled, I would move to the first slip. Vasan was the reigning captain of our class team when we played against other classes. My batting and bowling were a joke initially; I couldn’t score a run or take a wicket unless I got extremely lucky. But I found playing cricket fun, and Vasan patiently taught me and coached me during class recess, and later

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on in the playground near our homes. We stayed two blocks apart and played pretty much every day in the neighborhood park grounds in the evenings. He trained me in both offensive strokes and defense, and also in spin bowling, mostly off-spin. Over a period of a few months, I learned the rudiments of batting, spin-bowling, and catching the ball in the air. However much I tried I couldn’t execute any pace bowling.

In Delhi, I had learned to ride only the tricycle. With three wheels it remained stable on the ground and I had no problems riding it inside the house. Vasan already knew how to ride a bicycle. He owned one but it was bigger for me. We rented a smaller twelve-inch bike, and he taught me how to ride it. There were no training wheels for bikes in those days. Vasan and another friend SK would hold the bike for me and walk along on both sides, as I pedaled, until I learned how to balance it, and pedal straight ahead keeping good body posture. In the process I fell down a few times but escaped with minor bruises. By the start of the fifth grade when we all moved to Central High School near the East Fort, Vasan had become my best friend by a mile.

In fifth grade there were three class divisions based on the medium of instruction, the language in which science and social studies courses were taught. Division A was the Malayalam medium, division B the Tamil medium, and division C was the English medium. There were conflicts, competitions, and contradictions among the three divisions. Apart from this there was the traditional bullying. A and B divisions had also a few students who had been detained in the same class for an extra year or even more. Naturally they were older, and bigger for the grade they were currently in. They could easily bully kids like me who were much smaller. Fights would break out intermittently, but Vasan was always there for me and protected me from the bullies. He had a knack for dealing with guys even bigger than him. He never picked up a physical fight with them but somehow managed to give the impression that it is not a good idea

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to mess with him; it could turn out badly for them. Later on, I came to know that Vasan’s older brother was a trained boxer. A local goonda had tried to rob him by pulling out a knife. Vasan’s brother punched him so hard that the rogue fell down and cracked his skull. The news had spread through the town by word of mouth. But I never asked Vasan about it though.

There was this fifth grader who used to taunt me frequently. He was a bigger guy and I always tried my best to avoid him. Trying to pick up a fight, he cornered me one day and said in a mocking tone—Your mom is so very cute; I want to date her. I was embarrassed, and my face reddened. I suddenly saw Vasan approaching him. I thought he was going to punch the bully but Vasan just stood face to face, raised his voice and said—You can date my mom; she is not very cute but will pick you up from our school tomorrow in the stinky van which she uses to transport pigs and sheep. And he continued, she will then knock all your teeth off. Your permanent teeth will not come back but the milk teeth will be replaced eventually. You will look so strange that you will be a good replacement for the Amazon forest monkey, sporting a juvenile face, our city zoo lost recently. My mom is a zookeeper, and she will put you in that cage which has just fallen vacant. When little kids visit the zoo, they will have lots of fun with you sitting in the cage there, as the cornered big-bully. Saying this Vasan took my hand and led me away. The bully-kid did not show up in class for a whole week, and never ever crossed my path after that.

Vasan had quickly learned how to swim in the Olympic size public pool that had come up in town recently. His older brother had taught him. Vasan took me to the pool one day offering to teach me swimming. I believe this was when we were in seventh grade. The shallow end of the pool was three feet deep, and the deep end eighteen feet. I was four and a half feet tall at that time, and Vasan was almost five feet then. He led me to the deep end, asked me to wait on the curb, and jumped into the water. Anchoring in one corner of the pool he took a deep breath. Then

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holding his breath and as if digging up the water with both palms he went down, touched the floor of the pool, and then pushing down with his hands bubbled up to the surface, elegantly, like a porpoise. He then told me it was my turn and asked me to get into the water feet first, hanging on to the curb. He instructed me to keep to the wall, go down, touch the bottom of the pool, and come up as he did. I took a deep breath and did as I was told. Halfway up I felt breathless but somehow managed to keep my cool, and bubble up. But I got scared. My swimming lessons with him ended then and there. But we continued to be best friends.

Vasan had a good voice and could sing Malayalam, Tamil, and Hindi movie songs with ease and grace. He also started taking lessons in Carnatic music, vocal, and also the violin. I also tried my hand in violin but gave up quickly; I didn’t have the talent or motivation to continue. After a year of training, Vasan’s guru encouraged him to give a performance in the All-India Radio station.

Vasan gave a memorable performance, and he became a celebrity in school.

For athletics we could earn one star, two stars, or three stars based on our performance in one hundred and two hundred meters sprint, high jump, long jump, and cricket ball throw. We started training together and by the end of six months Vasan was running one hundred meters under thirteen seconds, two hundred under twenty-five, clearing four and a half feet in high jump and fifteen feet in long jump. He even made some freak eighteen-feet long jumps. He could also throw the cricket ball over sixty meters. These performance measures placed him close to a twostar level. My timings and distances were much more modest—one hundred meters under fifteen seconds, two hundred meters below thirty seconds, three and a half feet high jump, and twelve feet clearance for long jump. All these would have qualified me for one star if I could also throw a cricket ball over fifty meters. However much I tried, I could only clear thirty meters, a really poor performance. By the time we entered high school he had earned two stars while I had none.

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During middle school and early years of high school, Vasan and I walked three kilometers each way to the YMCA in the heart of the city to play ping pong. We also got about ten minutes of coaching two days a week for our efforts. Here was one game where I could really compete with Vasan and beat him frequently.

We were good students and loved science and mathematics. We studied together for tests and got together to work out challenging math problems, and pursue complex science projects. We would go to our science teacher’s house over the weekend with questions and she enthusiastically encouraged us to take up difficult competitive projects. During one of our visits, she plucked a red champerty flower from her well-kept flower garden in the front yard where we were standing and chatting. In class she had been teaching us the parts of a flower. She started discussing and pointing to the different parts of the flower—petals, stamens, and pistil. Flower anatomy intrigued and excited us, and Vasan started asking all sorts of questions about pollination and such. Suddenly the teacher’s adolescent teen daughters also barged into the conversation, the learning dynamics changed, and our excitement and animation grew. The girls started giggling instantaneously. We would look at the flower parts and exchange glances with the girls. The teacher was not particularly amused by the unintended change in the learning environment; she shooed her daughters away from the front yard, literally forcing them back inside the house. Naturally, Vasan and I were disappointed and the girls too we hoped.

On our way back from the science teacher’s house I noticed that Vasan was in high spirits with red streaks and reddish hues radiating all over his face. Suddenly he started reciting— Stamens and Pistil living together in the same big red hibiscus flower What a wonderful life!

I was also initially elated but when he started repeating the lines intermittently all the way back

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to our homes, it started feeling like the replay of an advertisement heard frequently on the radio.

In school, during class recess the next day, Vasan showed me a poem he had written. I can only recall the following lines— From her flowering, sprouting bust Emerges her long slender neck and giggling face Stamens and Pistil living together in the same big red hibiscus flower What a wonderful life!

Vasan and the science teacher’s cute teen daughter Living together in the same little red hideout house What a wonderful life! …

Flower anatomy, and the mechanics of pollination was all the sex education we got in school in those days. In high school we won some state awards which brought recognition to our public school, and kept our teachers happy.

With some of our classmates and neighborhood pals we played some strange but interesting games that seem to have almost gone extinct these days. They are neither represented in Olympics nor being played by the city kids in this day and age. One is hide and seek which we used to play with gusto in the neighborhood park. It is a natural game which doesn’t require any equipment. Though I don’t see children playing it in public spaces, my guess is that it is still being played inside homes and backyards. I don’t see anybody playing with marbles or tops either, these days. We used to play these a lot in our younger times. They have practically vanished from the outdoor life of the town kids.

Two other games which I am nostalgic about are the stick and spindle, and the seven tiles. They

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were never popular outside my state in those days, and sadly, I don’t even see children of my hometown play these games now. The stick and spindle we shaped from a tree branch and a piece of soft wood. The stick would be typically a foot and a half to two feet in length and about an inch in diameter. The spindle is about six inches in length, two to three inches in diameter, and tapered at the ends. You could say the game is a poor kid’s version of golf and baseball married together, though we had never heard of golf or baseball growing up. An oval-shaped hole is dug in the ground and the spindle is placed across it. With the stick the hitter digs out the spindle and sends it flying. If a fielder catches it in the air, you are declared out. Otherwise, the fielder retrieves it and throws it towards the hole which you can defend and bat with the stick.

The runs are measured by spindle lengths. When the fielder manages to throw it into the hole, the hitter is declared out. Otherwise, the hitter can tap on one end of the spindle with the stick to make it jump, and then hit it in the air. The game can be played by two teams like cricket or baseball or as an individual game—the hitter versus the others as fielders. Vasan used to be quite good at it; I wasn’t.

The seven tiles game is played between two teams using a tennis ball and seven flat circular or rectangular tile pieces which can be stacked on top of each other to make a tower. The tiles can be shaped out of wooden or ceramic pieces or stone tiles. Once the tower is set up one player of a team throws the ball from a set distance at the tower, trying to dislodge the tiles and reassemble the tower. In the meantime, if an opponent team member catches the ball, throws the ball and hits you, then you are declared out. Vasan and I enjoyed playing this game very much.

Chess didn’t fascinate us but carroms did. Teaming up, Vasan and I aced the school-wide carroms tournament, and won the first prize. Vasan deserves more credit for our success.

It would appear strange that most of my classmates chose engineering or the medical trajectory

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after high school. Vasan went to an out-of-state engineering school and I joined the medical school in town. Vasan’s family soon moved to a different city. Sadly, it was the end of our childhood and adolescent friendship as we knew it.

After medical school I went out of the country for further studies and training. Whenever I visited my home town, which happened infrequently, I heard that Vasan’s extracurricular career had taken off. He was getting recognition for his musical talent, and becoming known as a singer, songwriter, music composer, and novelist. I thought of visiting him but for some reason or the other it kept getting postponed, and just didn’t happen. By that time, he had become a celebrity, and the thought somehow entered my mind that it was probably not a good idea to bother him and rekindle the old friendship. What if he just brushed me off politely because of his busy schedule? Or, he might be moving in a totally different artsy and musical circle that he would no longer care about a rusty old friend from his very early school days. These were the thoughts that were roiling me, and I kept putting off contacting him though I very much wanted to be face to face with him, and exchange some old banter. Unfortunately, it never materialized. *** There comes a time in one’s life when you can no longer afford to continue to procrastinate, and keep on postponing getting in touch with or meeting old friends or extended family members.

Our son Nirmal’s wedding reception was to be arranged in Chennai as the bride Nila was from that city. I came to know from childhood friends that Vasan was settled in Chennai, and a couple of those old buddies were in touch with him.

An era had gone by. After many decades of leaving our old school I cold-called Vasan one early cloudy morning. I was sitting at my dining table with my usual cup of Darjeeling tea. He picked up the phone on the very first ring, but sounded sleepy as though he was just waking up. I

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addressed him Vasu like in the old days, and we chatted as though nothing had changed, and time stood still like a big rock fossil. We reminisced mostly about old times, talked about our respective families, but kept his celebrity life out of the conversation. He probably assumed that I knew all about his musical and writerly accomplishments, which was only partially true. I invited him to the wedding reception, and he promised to come.

He came by himself, chauffeured, in a BMW sport utility vehicle. He had at least three inches on me and a head full of hair. He is the same old Vasu, I tried to tell myself. My hairline had receded but he told me I hadn’t changed much. We hugged and sat down in a corner of the lobby to chat. I noticed that the eyes of the hotel staff were trained on him. Soon the manager came down, greeted him, and asked if we would like to have tea, coffee, juice or snacks. We settled for plain water.

We mostly dwelt on the present, his present. Over the phone, before we had seen each other, we talked mostly about the past. I was surprised by his current calibration regarding his rank, position, and status in the music and art world. When I gently probed, he rated himself numero uno as a composer and musician, and as a great writer too. Catching possibly a ray of surprise in my facial expression, he added—it is my honest evaluation. People started noticing him and came closer. But the feeling developed in me that he had acquired the G-O-A-T syndrome which made me somewhat uneasy. I knew fame and humility rarely walk together under the same umbrella. It was painful to have that feeling reinforced by your childhood friend.

A queue was forming mostly of young women looking for autographs. Some of them were carrying Vasu’s latest best-selling novel, Chila Nerangalil Chila Paravaikal, Some Moments, Some Birds, for his author signature. Their faces radiated joy, curiosity, admiration, and anticipation.

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I knew it was time to leave him alone and let him bask in his fan adulation. I was almost tempted to ask him—Vasu, do you remember the time we went to our science teacher’s house and learned flower anatomy in the presence of her giggling teen daughters? I didn’t ask; I also needed to attend to other guests. He quickly took leave after the reception got over.

We never met face to face after that for a decade. And we rarely discussed the present. We talked over the phone many times—about our old school, about the pranks we played on our teachers, about growing up, about the games we enjoyed, about flower anatomy, and about all the other shared good old times, rekindling in the process the small and large, the significant and insignificant, events and happenings dotting the events-calendar of our decade-long, intense childhood and youth friendship. But on some days, I felt that it is because of my jealousy that I was reluctant to meet him in person, and chat with him face to face. *** Sitting in the Taj restaurant mostly we reminisced about our childhood and school years. We talked about cricket, seven tiles, and stick and spindle. Holding up his palms for a hi-five and meeting my hand, he said, those were the best years of my life Ramu; there is nothing more magical in life than that. The innocence, the freedom, the fear of our parents and authority created a bond between us, and our other childhood friends that I have never been able to replicate later in life.

You’re a writer, a novelist of great repute, and now a recipient of the Jnanpith award. What do you think is the basis of this old friendship, our childhood friendships? I asked him.

The brunch was winding down. Vasan looked around and suggested—Let us walk across to the ITC hotel lobby and continue the conversation there.

It was a nice lobby and much less crowded than the restaurant at the Taj. He picked a table close

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to the window through which the Taj was visible. The table was also just across from the lobby bar. I looked at my watch; it was almost two in the afternoon. We have just about two hours to shower and get dressed for the big function, I reminded him. Looking outside through the window and then turning his head towards the bar, there is still plenty of time, Ramu, he said slowly. The casual and dismissive way in which he said this alarmed me. I just sat down watching him.

Let us order a bottle of red wine in celebration of our childhood friendship, he declared. The bartender brought a bottle of Bordeaux Margaux blend, and poured some in two glasses. Raising his glass towards mine and looking at me with some sadness in his eyes he remarked—cheers to our lifelong friendship. Cheers, I then repeated.

See Ramu, he started, paused for a few seconds as though gathering his thoughts, took two quick sips from his wine glass, and continued. All children have some talent and a lot of potential. The expression and differentiation, the flowering—all that is still to come. So, in childhood we were all in the same boat. We all had to adjust to our parents’ whims, try to have fun in class without annoying and provoking our teachers too much, and do our best to study and learn. It was still a level playing field even though there were differences in terms of family wealth, caste, and religion. But we all played together, got along well most of the time, fought some of the time, but quickly reconciled. We played, learned new things, our bodies grew up and our bonds strengthened. But after high school we all got scattered, like a boatload of migrants after making a discreet landing in a new country, and everything changed.

He took a few sips and filled up his glass again emptying the bottle in the process. Shouldn’t we be going? I asked.

Wait Ramu, let’s chat some more, and then we will see, he said casually and without much

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conviction. I could see where he was headed.

He beckoned the waiter and ordered another bottle of wine. He took a few more sips from his glass and poured some from the new bottle into his glass and mine. Both of us remained silent for some time. I looked at him. He seemed lost in thought.

I am skipping it, he announced abruptly. I knew it was coming.

Are you sure? I asked. Absolutely, he said, nodding his head. Though I was expecting it, a feeling of sadness crept over me.

“This is how the system works. Take startup companies for example. They’re innovative in the beginning. Once they have enough investors they stop taking risks. Their loyalty is towards the investors. Likewise, a writer starts cultivating her readers and the writer’s loyalty pendulum swings towards them. A form of self-censorship creeps in, knowingly or unknowingly. And when readership increases, unfortunately, arrogance also sneaks in. I knew I became pretentious; you might also have noticed that”.

Vasu was looking into my eyes while saying all this. I remained silent. Then mulling over what he said, I chimed in.

“You were vocal about Kashmir and Palestine; you were not keeping quiet, Vasu”.

“Yes, of course. Kashmir and Palestine are close to my heart. I didn’t want to keep mum on both of those issues”. He said this with emotion and conviction.

But I sensed where he was headed. He had always maintained a diplomatic silence on the controversial Ram temple construction. Taking a long deep breath, he continued.

“See Ramu, I cannot get over this. You surely can guess. I kept quiet on the Ram temple issue. I was afraid of losing many readers. The Ram temple was built with so much fanfare over the remains of a mosque―after demolishing and burying a historic mosque that had been standing

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for half a millennium. It is like bulldozing your neighbor’s house after picking up a quarrel, and building your second home there evicting the neighbor from his land and home. A writer needs to stand up for what she believes in”.

“I agree with your sentiment. But it wasn’t easy to oppose the Ram temple project, Vasu. There was mass hysteria in favor, and then the supreme court also weighed in, supporting the temple construction on land where the mosque had stood for five centuries before its willful destruction

by Hindu fanatics”.

Vasu didn’t want to be coddled and mollified.

“A writer should show courage; she needs to write with honesty, and express what she believes in”.

I could see that Vasu was getting agitated. It was clear he was upset with himself. I hadn’t expected him to be this contrite, and regretful.

“It is okay Vasu. You don’t need to be this hard on yourself”.

I didn’t want Vasan to continue with his self-flagellation. It was becoming painful for me to witness it. Slowly, he calmed down.

We sat there chatting for a long time. The afternoon gave way to evening which paved the way for the night to creep in. We had the bar food for dinner and a few more drinks.

The bright full Moon was visible through our window. It appeared to be climbing up the sky slowly. I looked at Vasu. He seemed to be lost in some deep thought. Jerking his head like a sparrow after a short drizzle, he perked up, and moved to the edge of his chair. Placing his two elbows on the table and cupping his face with both his hands, he met my gaze. I could see sadness coating his eyes like a feathery cloud moving across the face of a full Moon. His face seemed soaked with pain and regret like the face of an honest and ethical person who had failed

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to keep his promise to himself or herself; his moonlit face now looked to me like a crumpled wet washcloth. I had never seen him with that type of face presentation.

He straightened himself up, and seemed to recover some. Slapping his head on both sides gently with both hands as though atoning for something, he started again.

“I am seriously thinking of moving back to Trivandrum. That is where my heart is, (he took a deep breath, craned his neck towards me, and holding my right hand with both of his hands, he continued) and where my unforgettable childhood memories are”.

His face was flushed, his hands were warm and sweaty and I could hear the thumping of his heart. He continued.

“You tend to be hot-headed in your younger years. When you hit a half-century and keep scoring, adding years to your life beyond that age-marker, you get to see many things clearly.

There is no greater joy than spending time with your childhood friends. And it will be merrier if it happens in our hometown, where we all grew up together, and where our old memories are curated, preserved, and stored—in classrooms, hallways, the school playgrounds, the trees on campus, and the town plazas”.

“Take your time Vasu. You don’t need to rush your move back to Trivandrum”. I didn’t want him to make any hasty decisions, then have second thoughts, and end up regretting the return to our hometown.

Vasan had seen the right green-turn-signal at the peak of his success and fame. It was a great thing, I thought; I could not have hoped for anything better. The lobby had emptied out; we were the only two people still seated there. It was past midnight and the bartender was closing up his shop. The full Moon now shone on our faces with maximum brightness through the window. His face seemed relaxed now as though the Moon had somehow ironed out his crumpled face.

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I had one last question for the night. Turning towards Vasan, and with a serious expression on my face I asked him—Do you remember our visit to our science teacher’s house and the flower anatomy lesson she gave us in her front garden?

Vasan didn’t even blink before answering with an all-knowing smile now adorning his face, illuminated fresh by the moonlight. All I remember is that both of us had turned fifteen; the teacher’s teen daughters had suddenly joined us. They were thirteen and fourteen I think; both the girls were looking really hot, Ramu.

I immediately knew I had gotten back my old edition of Vasan.

Alice Munro conveys through one of her stories that in a person’s life there are places where something happened, and then there are all the other places. And I thought, there is your hometown which holds many places where certain things happened in your life, and then there are all the other towns of the universe. Moreover, your hometown is also the nest of your childhood friends with whom you shared secrets nobody else is privy to. There is no better place than your hometown to move back to, late in your life, I reasoned. I had no argument with Vasan’s decision to move back to Trivandrum. But I also did not want him to make an abrupt move bulldozing anything and everything he had built in Chennai. He could for instance split his time between Chennai and Trivandrum initially, and later make the final move. These were my thoughts as I soon started counting down the days to welcome Vasu back to our hometown for his initial visit, and immerse ourselves in our old play nest, filled with memories of our bygone years which come to life, and start dancing, first in your head, and then in front of you, as you stroll through your hometown with your childhood friends in tow. ***

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Actor-Dreamers

By James Croal Jackson Michael says actors are delusional– the ones who star in poorly-scripted films, over and over. How can they live as soft-boiled eggs? I want to believe in excellence, too. That love of craft– steering ships– can navigate to where one needs to go, even when relentlessly punched in the ring.

I, too, am weak, having said the words of Winkler for free just to get on screen.

And the cost was stock-video explosions that were copyright violations.

But to live a dream (and dream I do) one must wake up and say the words to anyone who listens.

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Aunt Alma’s Flower

by Scott Bassis

I received the call in the afternoon, right as I returned from lunch. It was from Jerry’s secretary. I wondered if Jerry was sleeping with her, if this was who he had left Aunt Alma for.

She said that Jerry hadn’t heard from Alma in a while. He was worried about her. That provoked a skeptical huff from me. Would it be possible if I checked in on her? I said “sure,” then hung up. It occurred to me that I hadn’t heard from Alma in a while either.

The last time was about a month ago. She had called me while I was waiting to audition.

She asked if I knew about applying for health insurance. I was next up, so I told her I would call her back. I didn’t. I didn’t get the part, as usual. Deflated, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

Life in New York wasn’t what I had imagined it would be. When I arrived three years ago, fresh out of college, I had a plan. Alma was part of it. She would cover my rent so I could focus on making it as an actor. I left Encina, Texas on March 1st of 2020. The coronavirus was hardly discussed on the news, China’s problem.

Before I even got headshots, the New York theatre scene was shut down. Not a week into the nationwide quarantine, Jerry announced he was in love with someone else and moved out to be with her. Alma, who hadn’t worked in thirty years, found herself unable to pay her own rent, let alone mine.

Jerry had no obligation to support her; they weren’t married, had no children. She looked for work halfheartedly. She was too accustomed to sleeping in: “Ten hours a night is why I’ve never needed a facelift, Cariño.” She sold off her jewelry and Jerry’s Rolexes to get by.

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My situation was just as precarious. I worked temp jobs, living in a tiny, Bronx studio apartment. Even once performances resumed, I couldn’t get acting gigs. Everyone in the theatre world seemed to already know each other. Waylaid by the pandemic, it had no room for outsiders.

I didn’t land a permanent job until three weeks ago, in the “coding unit” of a corporate law firm. “Coding” involved classifying seized emails by sender, recipient and subject matter. It was as dull as it sounded.

I tried calling Alma every hour, hiding my phone under my desk. She didn’t pick up. At five thirty, I bolted. I ran the four blocks to the subway station. I dove onto the “1” train as the doors closed. In my gut, I knew something was wrong.

I had felt a connection with Alma since childhood, even if she hadn’t been around much.

She only visited during the holidays, bringing expensive gifts for me, my siblings and cousins.

I had heard stories about her from my relatives, who judged her vain and immoral.

Grandpa Perez, a strict disciplinarian, had mysteriously doted on her, no doubt due to her beauty.

In high school, she was caught shoplifting Revlon lipstick from a drugstore. Granda Perez let her off with a light smack, and she was even allowed to keep it after he paid for it.

She dropped out of Sacred Heart College, running off to New York. Working there as a secretary, she fell in love with her boss, Jerry Rizzo, though he was twice her age and married.

“Are you happy being the other woman?” my mother, Delia, once asked her. I was nine years old. Alma was waiting for the car service to take her to the airport.

“At least I didn’t marry our father,” Alma remarked, throwing a pointed glance at Hector, Delia’s husband, my father. Hector raised his fist: his reaction to any slight.

“And he has a great lawyer,” Alma noted coolly. Hector stomped to the couch and sat,

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fuming silently until the car pulled up. I had never seen my father cowed before. I had never seen a woman so strong, so fabulous.

I got off at Christopher Street. Alma had lived in the same West Village apartment since she was Jerry’s mistress, before his divorce. I recognized the concierge on duty, Raul. Alma often tried, humiliatingly, to set us up, never quite believing Raul’s assertions that he was straight. “¿Pedro, como estas?” he asked. I hurried to the elevator, giving only an awkward smile.

My hands shook as I rang her doorbell. I waited. I called her cell phone again. There was still no answer. I wondered if she had a landline. After looking her up on Google, I found the number. She picked up.

“What?” she said.

“It’s Pedro,” I said, elated.

“Who?” she asked.

“Your nephew,” I said. I assumed she was joking.

“Oh, right,” she said. She sounded unsure.

“Let me in, okay?” I pled. I heard her panting.

“I can’t.” She whimpered. “Just go home, Cariño.” Cariño was what she had called me since I was little. It heartened me, slightly, that now she seemed to remember me.

I paused for a minute, unsure what to do. I was hesitant to knock on a neighbor’s door. I was olive-skinned. Slim and baby-faced, I resembled a teenager. People tended to be wary of me.

“Irene has a key, in 2F,” she reflected. “She waters my plants when I’m away.”

“I’ll be back,” I promised.

I ran to the stairwell, then down to the second floor. I rang the doorbell to 2F. There was

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no response. Desperate, I rang it again and again. A door opened. It wasn’t 2F; it was 2G. “I can help you?” a man asked, with an accent.

Thanks to my obsession with Emily in Paris, I could tell that he was French. He wore a spiffy, paisley dress shirt. He seemed to be in his early forties, with salt and pepper hair. He was thin. He had a long, Roman nose. His eyes were a striking, pale blue.

“I think my aunt’s hurt. I have to get her key from Irene,” I said.

“One moment,” he said. He disappeared into his apartment. “A young man is at your door!” he shouted. I heard faint talking. He returned to the hall.

“She comes. She doesn’t hear the doorbell when she’s on her terrace smoking,” he explained.

“Thanks.” I was so grateful I could kiss him. That he resembled Ralph Fiennes in his prime didn’t hurt.

“My pleasure. I am Theo,” he said. Before I could give my name, the door to 2F opened.

“Yeah?” an old woman in cat eye glasses croaked. She was seemingly Alma’s best friend in the building. I pictured them laughing and gossiping over a bottle of wine.

“I think Alma’s hurt. She said you have her key,” I said. Her brow furrowed with concern.

“Hold on.” She went inside her apartment and returned with a set of keys. The keychain was shaped like a rose. Alma loved flowers and plants.

“You’re Pedro, her nephew,” she said. I nodded.

“Pedro,” Theo thoughtfully repeated to himself.

“I’ll bring it right back,” I said.

“Don’t bother. She gives me a set each time she travels. I must have a dozen somewhere.

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She gets so worried about her damn plants,” she said.

Key in hand, I walked to the elevator. It came right away. After I got on, I saw Theo running towards me, seemingly to help. I couldn’t find the door open button in time. It was just as well. Alma would hate being seen without makeup and elegant clothes, especially by a handsome man.

Upon entering her apartment, I knew the situation was dire. My eyes drew to the living room’s huge, bay windows. She kept most of her plants there, on the sill and on two floating shelves. Her plants were all wilted. Dried leaves littered the floor.

“Alma?” I called out.

“Bedroom,” she replied hoarsely. As I approached, a rank, ammonia-like odor hit my nose. I expected the worst. Still, I was shocked by what I saw when I opened the door.

She lay flat on her bed, the phone receiver beside her. She clutched her stomach, which was swollen to the size of a watermelon. She looked pregnant, but she couldn’t be. She was fiftysix years old. Her eyes were glassy. Her coffee-colored skin had turned a yellowish orange, like the flesh of a mango.

“I haven’t been feeling well,” she said. This struck me as an absurd understatement.

“I’m calling an ambulance.” I took out my phone.

“No!” she shouted. She squirmed around frantically, managing to hoist herself up to a sitting position.

“I have no insurance,” she cried.

“They’ll get you on Medicaid,” I assured her. Until my current job, I was on Medicaid myself.

“Really?” She sighed, relieved. I held her arm to brace her as she lay back down.

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I suddenly remembered the call from a month ago. Alma had asked about insurance. She must have been starting to feel ill. If I had just called back, this might have been avoided.

“I look gross, don’t I? I’ve gotten so fat,” she said. I wondered if she was joking. She wasn’t. Hurt shone in her eyes.

“Maybe it’s a tumor,” I reflected.

“Maybe.” She grinned, seeming to actually prefer that explanation.

I stepped into the hall to call the ambulance, so I could describe Alma’s condition without upsetting her. When I returned to the bedroom, she was sitting upright, naked from the waist down. She readied herself to stand. I leapt to her before she crashed to the floor.

“Rest until they get here,” I implored.

“Need pants,” she grunted. She pointed to the bottom drawer of her dresser.

I brought her a pair of sweatpants. She struggled to raise her leg even an inch. I slowly rolled the pantlegs up as she winced in pain. Once the sweatpants were on, she lay back down and closed her eyes, exhausted. She was snoring in under a minute. She started awake when the doorbell rang.

There were two paramedics. One was a bearded redhead. The other looked Latino and had an overbite. I led them to her.

Redbeard knelt beside her. She scooted back, agitated. He asked her if she knew where she was. She nodded. He asked her what day it was. She didn’t answer. He asked her who the president was. She said, “the orange, asshole Cheeto,” which prompted a chuckle. She was wrong, though. “Biden is president,” he reminded her. Distraught, she threw me a fretful glance.

“Can I talk to you alone?” Overbite asked me. I followed him into the living room. Once there, he asked if Alma was a heavy drinker.

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“A heavy drinker?” I repeated, wondering what that entailed.

“She is a drinker then?” he asked. Alma did enjoy her wine. I knew she drank more after Jerry left. She even joked about it: “Who needs pinga when you’ve got pinot?” I shrugged, not wanting to betray her.

Redbeard shouted, “Bring the gurney!” Overbite retrieved it from the hallway and rolled it into the bedroom. Redbeard grabbed her arms. Overbite grabbed her legs.

“Get away! I’m not going! I have rights!” she shrieked.

The paramedics fastened straps over her shoulders and ankles. She was carried out of the apartment. There wasn’t room for me in the elevator, so I ran down the stairs. I arrived in the lobby first.

“How is she?” Raul asked. The elevator opened. “Ay, carajo,” he exclaimed, seeing her.

“I’m being kidnapped! Call 911!” she shouted.

“We are 911,” Overbite reminded her.

After she was brought into the ambulance, I climbed in with them. Redbeard took her blood pressure while Overbite called Adventist Hospital.

“Talk to her,” Redbeard told me. “You make her calmer,” he observed. I thought, that must have been some elevator ride down.

“You’ll be okay,” I promised her.

“I know,” she said with a solemn nod. Her believing it made me believe it. I told myself, the doctors would save her. I would never forget her again. I wouldn’t let her give up on life. I wouldn’t let her drink herself to death.

All the effort I put into dressing her turned out to be for naught. As soon as she came in through the emergency room doors, a team of doctors and nurses swarmed her. A pair of scissors

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glinted in an orderly’s hands. I heard the ripping of fabric, her screams of protest.

A portly, white woman introduced herself as Kate, a social worker, and walked me to a waiting room. She disappeared for two hours, then returned to inform me that Alma’s PET scan indicated advanced cirrhosis of the liver. She received a call and had to leave again. An hour later, she came back. She was wearing a facemask. She hadn’t been before.

“Unfortunately, your aunt tested positive for COVID-19. She won’t be allowed visitors until ten days after a negative test,” she disclosed.

“She wasn’t able to leave her apartment,” I pointed out.

“Those with compromised immune systems are especially susceptible. Maybe someone was delivering food or liquor,” she said casually. It seemed like she was trying to blame her.

Even contracting COVID was her fault because she was a drunk.

“You think she deserved this?” I snapped. I was emotionally spent, exhausted and hungry.

“I never said that,” she maintained.

“You didn’t have to.” I stood up and left.

I got home after midnight. As tired as I was, I didn’t sleep a wink.

During my lunch hour the next day, I called the hospital’s information desk. I was on hold for forty minutes before the operator gave me the number to Alma’s room. I tried to call her, but her phone rang with no answer.

I stopped by her building after work. If I couldn’t see her, at least I could water her plants, pick up her mail and crack open a window to air out her apartment.

Her mailbox was crammed to capacity. It took me a minute to extract everything. Upon finishing, I turned to find Theo beside me. Startled, I dropped the stack of mail.

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“Merde,” he said. He knelt to pick up the mail. I knelt. I found myself fixating on his shapely mouth, his small, but plush lips. Distracted, I only grabbed Alma’s issue of Fine Gardening. He handed me the rest. We stood.

“Your aunt is better? Irene worries. Pardon me, is worried. My English isn’t perfect,” he said.

“She’s in the hospital,” I said, sparing him the gruesome details.

“That’s a shame. Tell me if there is anything I can do. I give my, um.” He paused. He pulled out his phone and typed. “Condolences,” he said, finding the word on Google. I didn’t think it was the right word, since she wasn’t dead, but I didn’t want to embarrass him.

“Thanks,” I said. We walked to the elevator. He hit the button.

“I have to take care of her plants. I’m afraid I’ll kill them,” I divulged. He laughed. I was serious. For the last few Christmases, Alma gave me plants, no longer able to afford exorbitant gifts. I managed to kill each one, even an aloe vera that she promised was indestructible.

“Plants are, like, her obsession,” I explained.

“They’re her chéries,” he remarked. I nodded. Whatever that word meant, it sounded appropriate, and lovely coming from his lovely mouth.

“They’re in pretty bad shape.” I sighed.

“I come help you?” he proposed. I squinted, questioning his motivations. Though he set off my gaydar, it might have been because he was French. Even Emily’s Parisian paramours were stylish and sophisticated. “Only if you want,” he added.

“Sure,” I said. I found myself hoping that he did have ulterior motives.

My romantic life in New York was as nonexistent as my acting career. At first, I had fantasies of finding true love. Wary of Grindr, I put off dating until the bars reopened. It turned

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out that men in person still only wanted one thing; they were just less honest about it.

I lost my virginity to a sandy-haired, Taylor Swift-obsessed stockbroker, who gushed that I looked like “a tan Joe Jonas.” When I suggested exchanging numbers, he sighed, “Oh honey, I’m not in my ‘Love Story’ era right now.”

Now, I insisted on a first date before sex. That strategy hadn’t proven successful. After being ghosted six times in a row, I even brought my iPhone to the Apple store, believing, delusionally, it must be broken.

“Have you lived in New York long?” I asked as we rode the elevator up.

“Three months. I transferred from Paris when my company opened a headquarters in Hudson Yards. Have you heard of L’Oreal?” he asked. I nodded.

“I’m a marketing director. I started as an artist, designing ads,” he revealed. I smiled: an artist at a cosmetics company; with that career, he had to be gay.

“And you?” he asked.

“I do data entry at an office near Bryant Park. I’m trying to make it as an actor,” I said.

He smiled. I wondered if it was because “actor” was high on the list of gayest professions too.

When we stepped into Alma’s apartment, he was kind enough not to mention the stench.

We walked over to the bay windows. I opened one a few inches.

“With all this sun, it should be easy,” he remarked.

“I’ll still screw it up,” I insisted. He rolled his eyes.

“There is a thing to give water?” he asked. I retrieved the watering can from the kitchen after filling it in the sink. I started on the left, watering an odd-looking cactus. Round with long arms extending in every direction, it resembled a monstrous octopus.

“Eh, you do too much. You don’t want it spills from the bottom,” he said. I noticed a

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brown puddle forming below the pot. I snatched a Kleenex from the coffee table and soaked up the water.

“See.” I pouted.

“Watch.” He took the watering can. He moved onto the next plant, stepping closer to me.

I smelled his cologne. An image popped into my head, of us standing across from each other shirtless, then him leaning in and kissing my neck.

“The soil,” he said, seeing I wasn’t paying attention. He slowly watered a plant with small, oval leaves and a handful of pink, star-shaped flowers. This plant, with its whimsical, delicate beauty, reminded me of a little girl.

“Okay,” I said doubtfully.

“She takes what she needs,” he explained. As the water was absorbed into the soil, he made a sucking sound. “She stops when she has enough. That’s when you stop.” He turned the watering can upright. “You try,” he directed.

I watered the next plant. It seemed in poor shape, bent over and shriveled up, its magenta leaves turning grayish brown. In it, I saw an ailing, old woman. I took the watering can, poured it slowly. I stopped when the soil seemed saturated.

“Perfect. Next, remove the dead parts.” He plucked off several withered leaves. “Voila, it has new life.”

“Hmm.” I had to admit, the old-woman-plant looked better, rejuvenated, like Grandma Perez after Grandpa Perez had his stroke and died. I scanned the remaining plants. None seemed so far gone that it couldn’t be salvaged.

“I think I got it,” I said, giving him permission to go. He lingered.

“Irene said Alma speaks about you often. She also said, forgive me, that she doesn’t get

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along with most of her family,” he said.

“Yeah, she’s kind of the black sheep,” I admitted. From his confused smile, I could tell he wasn’t familiar with the expression. “Nobody likes her,” I said, putting it bluntly.

“She’s lucky to have you,” he said.

“I’m lucky to have her,” I replied. Tears welled in my eyes. Alma had saved me.

All it had taken was one photo for Alma to perceive my suffering and offer me an escape.

Luz, Alma’s cousin, had posted the group shot from a Perez family barbecue on Facebook. Alma had noticed my black eye.

Alma would later confide that she had suspected I was gay since I was five, when I would sing along to “All I Want for Christmas is You” with a tad too much exuberance. She had always been afraid of my parents’ reaction once they found out.

I hadn’t been stupid enough to come out to them, but I had been stupid enough not to delete my laptop’s search history. My mother’s snooping was prompted by a Sunday sermon on the corruptive influence of the internet. She called me a deviant, said my soul was diseased.

One day, I received an email from Alma.

“Pobrecito, I couldn’t help but notice your shiner. Your father really is an hijo de puta. It broke my heart, seeing how your face is so handsome. I heard you want to be an actor. Even Delia, Miss ‘Pride is a Sin,’ brags about your talent. Come to New York and follow your dreams.

It’s where you can be you.”

She bought me a plane ticket on a redeye flight. I snuck out during the night, leaving a note on the refrigerator, “Your deviant son’s in New York.”

I remembered ringing Alma’s doorbell, terrified, at 11 a.m. When she opened the door, she was as glamorous as a movie star, wearing a silk, floral print caftan, her makeup impeccable.

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“Don’t be afraid, Cariño,” she said, wrapping her arms around me. “It’s fun being the outcast. You’ll see,” she whispered. The smell of wine on her breath didn’t concern me. If anything, I found it intoxicating.

“It’s hard to be different,” Theo noted.

“It could be fun too,” I said with a smirk. It was what Alma would say. He laughed.

“True.” He gazed into my eyes. I thought he would kiss me. At last, he looked away.

Now wasn’t an appropriate time for a make-out session, though Alma, herself, wouldn’t have minded. She had no regard for decorum.

“You can manage.” He tore off one last brown leaf from a spidery plant. “There is a trash?” he asked.

“Let me,” I said, extending my hand. He dropped the clump of leaves into my palm. We touched ever so lightly, yet it sent a tingle through my whole body.

“I take your number,” he suggested. “If you need botanic advice,” he added. I nodded.

We exchanged numbers.

“Super. Don’t worry about these plants. The water and sun, it will...” He grasped the air as he searched for the right word. “Heal,” he asserted. I thanked him and he left.

A minute later, I received a text from him. It read, “Here if you need to talk,” with a GIF of a meowing cat. Unthinkingly, I gave it a “love” tapback. I cringed, realizing “love” might have been too strong, but changing it to a “like” now would be even more awkward.

I tried calling Alma again that night and during my lunch hour the next day. She never picked up. I decided to stop by the hospital after work. I wouldn’t be able to see her, but I needed to know that she was alive.

I was cutting through Bryant Park on my way to the subway station when my phone

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vibrated. The number was from Alma’s hospital phone.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Pedro, it’s Alma. I just want you to know I’m all right,” she said. She must have had my cell phone number memorized.

“Thank God. They won’t let me visit you because of your COVID,” I explained.

“Jerry’s behind this,” she said.

“I really meant to come see you,” I said contritely, thinking she had guessed that it was Jerry’s idea to check in on her.

“He’s got me in some kind of prison,” she continued. I felt queasy.

“You’re in the hospital,” I said.

“No, that’s what he’s telling everyone. Please help me,” she begged. “Oh God, they’re here,” she said. A woman said Alma’s name and the call disconnected.

Bewildered, I sat down on a bench. I Googled “alcohol withdrawal symptoms.” Paranoia was listed as among the most common. I knew I had to tell someone at the hospital about her delusions. I called the information desk. The operator transferred me to a nurse’s station.

A blasé sounding nurse named Vicky informed me that “delirium” was already noted in Alma’s chart. She tersely promised to add my number to her record and to keep me apprised of any new developments.

Though I never heard from Vicky again, Alma called me the next morning. She mentioned that she was scheduled for surgery, which seemed like the kind of development I was supposed to be apprised of.

“They told me to sign a consent form so they can drain my stomach. They say it’s for my health, but it’s really a torture method. Jerry’s punishing me because I told Irene about his

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toupee,” she spouted.

“Sign it. It’s better if they don’t realize you’re onto them,” I advised.

“Good point. But I think Jerry already knows that I know. I shouldn’t have called him,” she said.

“You called Jerry?” I asked, hoping she was recounting a hallucination.

“Or his robot stand-in,” she said with uncertainty. “Are you the real Pedro?” She gasped, then hung up.

She called again in the evening. Still fearing I was a robot, she quizzed me on Bridgerton plotlines until I convinced her I was me. As the days passed, her claims became increasingly outlandish. Jerry had learned how to alter his appearance to look like anyone. Jerry switched her Jell-o to lime to torment her; he knew how she hated that flavor.

Between unhinged calls from Alma, I received another text from Theo.

“Hello. It is Theo. I am thinking much of you and Alma.”

“Thanks,” I typed. I smiled, finding his odd phrasing as cute to read as it was to hear.

“If you want, maybe we share a drink?” he texted.

I was about to reply “sure,” but hesitated.

It occurred to me that Alma was in her early twenties, like me, when she began her affair with Jerry. Jerry was in his early forties, like Theo. Jerry was well off, like Theo. She must have thought Jerry would take care of her, give her everything she needed. In the end, he left her with nothing, not even her mind.

I ignored the text. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust him, though I didn’t. I was afraid to fall in love with him. Alma had loved Jerry, and I saw what it had done to her.

The day Alma didn’t call me I wasn’t overly concerned. Her procedure had apparently

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gone well. She had mentioned Jerry’s “punishment” backfired. She was skinny now, “a flaquita like when we first met.”

The following evening, I received a call from a strange number. I guessed it was from the hospital. I feared the worst.

“Can I speak with Pedro?” a familiar voice asked.

“Speaking.”

“My name’s Kate. I’m a social worker at Adventist Hospital. I’m calling about Alma.

Your number was in her file,” she said.

“We met,” I reminded her.

“That’s right,” she said with a note of displeasure. “I’m calling to let you know that her quarantine has been lifted. You can see her.”

I let out a shocked laugh. It was actually good news.

“You changed the rules?” I asked. It hadn’t been ten days since a negative COVID test; she was admitted nine days ago.

“No, it’s called a ‘compassionate exemption,’ done in cases of end-of-life care,” she explained.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Didn’t Dr. Marx talk to you? Let’s see. There was a switch in attendings. There must’ve been an oversight. Your aunt seemed to be recovering well, but there were complications from her stomach drainage procedure. I’m sorry.”

“Are you saying she’s going to die?” I asked.

“I’m saying, if you want to see her again, you should do it now,” she said evenly.

“Visiting hours are nine a.m. to nine p.m.,” she added. It was seven-thirty p.m. Within fifteen

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minutes, I was on the subway to Manhattan.

When I saw Alma in her room my heart stopped. She lay on her back, shivering beneath several blankets. Her skin was a ghoulish pale green. I approached her slowly. Her dull eyes settled on my face.

“Hi Alma,” I said. She didn’t respond. Beside her sat a middle-aged, African American woman with purple bangs.

“Do you know who this is, Alma?” she asked. She threw me a smile. Alma opened her mouth. All that escaped her lips was a soft grunt.

“It’s Pedro,” I told Alma. “I’m her nephew,” I said to the woman.

“I’m Gloria. I’ve been her sitter since she came in,” she said. She turned to Alma. “You loved pulling out your tubes, didn’t you?” she scolded her gently. Alma wrinkled her nose.

“She understands still, I think. Talk to her,” Gloria said. I nodded, but I couldn’t think of what to say. I walked over to her side.

“You’re allowed to touch her,” Gloria said.

I reached over to Alma’s hand and squeezed it. Her skin felt papery. Her bones seemed as fragile as twigs. She stared down at our hands. She muttered something. I wasn’t sure, but I thought she said, “Cariño.” She swallowed. She looked up at the ceiling, then closed her eyes.

She held onto my fingers.

“You make her so calm,” Gloria marveled.

I stayed until midnight. Gloria said it would be fine. She even brought over a second chair for me. Before I returned home, I kissed Alma’s forehead and whispered “goodbye.” I misspoke. I meant to say goodnight. Yet, it turned out to be appropriate. In the morning, I woke up to a voicemail from Kate informing me that Alma had passed away.

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Although only I had come to visit her, it was soon apparent that others were aware of her hospitalization. When no one contacted me about her remains, I called and was transferred to the morgue. A receptionist there told me her body was already enroute to Encina, Texas.

I could imagine what her funeral would be like. She would be turned into a cautionary tale; forsaking righteousness, she died a destitute drunk. Even in the unlikely event I was invited, I wouldn’t go.

She may have called a family member in her delirious state. I learned that she had, in fact, spoken to the real Jerry, in all his scumbag glory.

I wanted to save her plants. I owed it to her, for failing to save her. I returned to her apartment building after work, but when I headed to the elevator, Raul blocked me.

“Sorry Pedro, Jerry called management. His name’s on the lease. He made a point of saying no one can enter,” he said.

“I only need five minutes. Just let me water her plants, so they survive another week,” I pled. He shook his head, no, then glanced pointedly at the camera above us. I stormed out, slamming the door behind me.

As I left, I saw Irene outside, smoking a cigarette in front of the “No smoking” sign. She had seemingly overheard us. She was sniffling.

I didn’t blame Raul. He was just doing his job; no doubt, he hated his as much as I hated mine.

Friday afternoon at work, four days after Alma died, I received a text.

“Hello. It is Theo.”

I hadn’t given much thought to Theo. I assumed I had ruined things by ignoring his offer to meet up for a drink. I felt a pang of regret now.

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“Hi,” I typed.

“I am sorry about Alma,” he texted, along with a coffee-colored angel emoji. While wellintentioned, making her an angel didn’t feel appropriate. She didn’t believe in them, and she certainly wasn’t one in life.

“TY,” I replied. Three dots appeared. I hoped he would suggest meeting up. I would say yes, this time. The message arrived.

“I am close ur office. In Bryant Park.”

“U r?” I texted, befuddled.

“U come?” he asked.

I glanced at the time in the corner of my screen. It was a quarter past noon. Lunch wasn’t until one. I was about to apologize, explain I couldn’t. Then, I thought of Alma, how she had encouraged me to be bold, like her. If she were here, she would shout, “Go! Hurry up! ¡Ándale!”

I texted, “On my way,” grabbed my jacket and left. I would just say that I felt sick and needed air.

Theo stood in front of the west facing entrance. He held a ceramic pot with a plant. It was about two feet tall, with lightly speckled, spear-shaped leaves. A single, bright red flower with tiny, round petals peeked through the green, reminding me of an exposed heart. I recognized it from Alma’s apartment.

“Irene has the rest,” he said. Irene, I remembered, had several sets of Alma’s keys.

I tried to thank him, but my voice choked. His kindness touched me. I was so grateful I met him. Something beautiful had arisen from tragedy, like a flower from the dirt.

Suddenly, a wild impulse came over me. Perhaps it was the spirit of Alma. Perhaps she was an angel now. I grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed his mouth. Startled, he dropped the

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pot. It landed on its side.

“Oh no!” I gasped, certain I had killed it.

He scooped it up and examined it. Miraculously, both the pot and plant were unharmed.

We laughed. Holding it firmly to his chest, he put his free arm around me and brought me closer.

He pursed his lips. We kissed again.

Somehow, I knew this thing between us wouldn’t die. It was too strong. Whether it was good or bad, we couldn’t stop it. All we could do was watch it grow.

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Contributors Boma Cho (San Francisco artist) It’s me looking at you It’s you looking at me They are looking at us We are looking at them So who is looking at who?

Huntley Gibson Paton is a former journalist and news media executive Who lives near Asheville, N.C. His short stories have appeared in Narrative, Eclectica and Bewildering Stories Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgenholes, Santa Clara Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Hole in the Head Review.

Subramani Mani trained as a physician in India and moved to the U.S. to pursue A PhD. In Artificial Intelligence. After teaching at Vanderbilt University and the University of New Mexico for more than a decade, he started writing, feeling the urge to share memories of certain life experiences. His stories have Been published in The Charleston Anvil, Umbrella Factory Magazine, New English Reviews, Fairlight shorts and The Phoenix.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino American poet who works in film production His latest chapbooks are A God You Believed in (Pinhole Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds with Me (Ethel Zine and Micro-Press, 2022).

Recent poems are in The Garlic Press, Glint, and Triggerfish. He edits The Mantle Poetry, from Nashville, Tennessee. (jamescroljackson.com) Scott Bassis has had short stories published in the Rappahannock Review, Litbreak Magazine, Masque and Spectacle, Poydras Review, The Furious Gazalle, Punt Volat, The Writing Disorder, Jab, Sweet Tree Review, The Acentos Review, Marrow Magazine, SandPiper, Trouvaiille Review , and others.

Ralph Romero is a freelance photographer from Los Angeles.

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