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QUARTO

QUARTO The Literary Magazine of the School of General Studies Columbia University 2000

SUBMISSIONS Current and recent undergraduate creative writing students — including nondegree students enrolled in other divisions of Columbia University who are taking undergraduate creative writing courses — are encouraged to submit to Quarto. We welcome poetry, fiction, nonfiction, translations, and drama, including excerpts from longer works.

Each submission should be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. Please include your name, address, telephone number, and e-mail on your manuscript.

Manuscripts may be submitted elsewhere while under consideration at Quarto. Please notify us of acceptance by another publication.

EXECUTIVE EDITORS Shoshana Sternlicht Catherine Wallach MANAGING EDITORS Ari Rubin Miriam Abramowitz Virginia Anderson Mirjam Dittrich COPYEDITORS Danielle Lefkoff Eunice Martinez ART DIRECTOR Brooke E. Morton

Address all submissions and correspondence to: Quarto 612 Lewisohn Hall 2970 Broadway Mail Code 4108 Columbia University New York, NY 10027

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For information on becoming a patron of Quarto, please call the Office of the Creative Writing Center at (212) 854-3774.

Quarto 2000 wishes to thank the Barnard Student Government Association and especially the General Studies Student Council for their generous support.

CREATIVE NONFICTION EDITORS Danielle Lefkoff Melissa Kirsten Terman POETRY EDITORS Catherine Park Erica B. Zeichner SENIOR EDITORS Bonnie E. Erickson Evelyn Kircher Eunice Martinez Brooke E. Morton Porat Saar Oengus Timpson

Cover art: Oengus Timpson, Installation, 1998 Copyright © Quarto, 2000 All rights are reserved and revert to authors and artists upon publication.

ISSN 0735-6536

FACULTY ADVISER Leslie T. Sharpe DIRECTOR, CREATIVE WRITING CENTER Alan Ziegler

Quarto 2000

The Way She Stares at You Now

Brandon Griggs

1

Conquest

Myronn Hardy

5

Baby Killing

Keith Brecher

6

In Search of a Permanent Union

Idra Rosenberg

13

Private Rooms

J.C. Barker

14

So She Left

Idra Rosenberg

19

The Old Italian Priest

Sandra Paulina Bazzarelli

24

Spades to 2000, Then?

Sam Lanckton

26

Rue for Remembrance

Kait Kerrigan

31

Egg

Anne Potter

46

Prayer Wheels

Kelcey Nichols

47

Way She Stares at You Now Brandon Griggs It always starts the same way. Across the breakfast table, sprawled on the couch or under a languid knot of bedshcets.

She'll look over, study your face for clues and say, "You're awfully quiet this morning," or "Is everything OK?" or the alltime-squirmer, "How do you feel about our relationship}" This is the moment you welcome and dread. Which words do you choose? Do you keep coasting along this pleasant path or do you hurtle over a cliff? Once you make the leap, there's no going back. You know because you have been here before.

Meg takes a quiche from the oven, her hands in red oven mitts shaped like lobster claws.

"We should go for a hike later," she is saying. She plops the quiche onto the stove and turns toward you, claws waving. "We never hike anymore."

You raise a coffee mug to your lips and study the Sunday arts section. Pavarotti looks fatter than ever. Now Meg is slicing open a melon.

"Let's play it by ear," you say.

You are not a bad man. You care about these women, every one of them, and you want them to be happy. You court them in good faith, intoxicated by their newness, their charming quirks you're sure you'll never tire of. But inevitably, somewhere in your drift of days together, a malaise sets in, you grow restless, and you know in your gut you're doomed. With most girlfriends you reach this point after several months. With others, it takes years. A couple of times you knew from the beginning but went on anyway. Why? Companionship, sex, spooning under the blankets on cool October mornings when your landlord hasn't turned on the heat. A few months of comfort in a hard-skinned world.

Beginnings are easy, it's endings that are hard. You know a guy who can dump a woman in the time it takes to shave. No regrets, no conscience, no softening the blow beforehand. Just whammo and he's gone before the tears. You know another guy who hates conflict so much he moved to L.A. to escape his girlfriend. She showed up at his apartment one day to find someone else living there. Not you. You agonize for weeks over -1-

"Does your mother like me?" Meg asks. She picks a piece of crust off the quiche and pops it into her mouth. "You say she does, but I never got the feeling she really embraced me like, you know, Teresa."

"Teresa and my brother have been married for years," you say. "My mom takes a while to warm up to people."

"So I have to wait three years, is that what you're saying?"

"Maybe not." You lower the paper, raise a smile and get up, mug in hand. "You've only met twice. More coffee?" ir isn't like women have never dumped you. You quit your job and moved across the country for Stephanie, who sent you reeling one March night two months later as you lay on her bed reading a magazine. One minute you were propped on your elbows, wondering whether she had put in her diaphragm, and the next you were stumbling alone into the snowy street, the air piercing your lungs. You called and wrote and groveled, but Stephanie stood firm. For weeks afterward you leapt for the mailbox, you checked your machine, you allowed yourself pathetic dayrdreams about her knocking at your door, teary and contrite. You swore you wouldn't go through that again. You were wrong.

You have a code of honor about breaking up with someone. You don't do it in a letter, you don't do it over the phone and you don't do it on the heels of some family tragedy. You don't do it on their birthday, on the eve of their final exam or the wreek you're leaving together for Rurope on nonrcfundable plane tickets. You don't do it in public. You don't do it late at

>ht because it could drag on for hours and neither of you -ould get any sleep. You don't do it at your place, because she might get a n g r y anÂŁ l n u r ' y o u r ( ' ^ collection out the window.

So that leaves her place, preferably in the morning or afternoon, and preferably when her roommates, if she has any, are gone.

But most breakups aren't wrapped in one tidy session. A long-term relationship is like a thick rope of many strands, and you have to keep hacking and tugging until every last one is severed. With Emily it took six hellish months. You lived in different cities, and you kept agreeing to meet in person to "assess" things. It almost ended, after three weeks, in your car at the airport. You were both defeated from talking all night and you pulled to the curb to drop her off, to say goodbye. Emily fingered the door handle but she wouldn't open it and just sobbed at you until your heart caved in. "We almost broke up," she told her worried roommate from a payphone, "but now we're going to lunch."

Breaking up took four more meetings, dozens of late-night phone calls and $850 in airfares. Plus the bills for the therapist you began seeing about your "commitment" issues. Emily said, "It might help you learn how to love me." You thought, "It might help me with my next relationship."

You watch Meg as she sits reading the sports page and twirling a lock of her hair with her left hand. She is wearing your Princeton T-shirt under the blue bathrobe she wore on your first night at her apartment eight months ago, a robe you noticed only because you helped her out of it. You met through friends at a Los Lobos show at the Roxy, where she didn't seem to mind when you spilled beer on her shoes. On the sidewalk outside the club you talked, bodies inching closer, until your friends gave up and left. Later you kissed in the back of the cab. You still remember how she smelled of soap and sweat and cigarettes, the surprising strength of her thin arms around your neck, the way the streetlamp shadows slid across her face when the taxi turned corners. She gazed at you then, and it was not the buoyant look of a giddy girl but the measured stare of a woman who understands what she's tumbling into and wants to make sure you understand, too. Like the way she stares at

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when and where and how to do it. You create scenarios, fashion scripts, brace yourself for recriminations. You'd think after all these breakups you'd be an expert at this. Often you get sick just thinking about what you have to do. You look for any excuse to back off: she says something clever, or a friend tells you how much they like her, or you agree to go with her to Buffalo for her sister's wedding. Your resolve weakens. Things aren't so bad, you think. But the malaise always comes creeping back.

The malaise. It's hard to define, even when it's gnawing at you, but maybe it comes down to this: She no longer surprises vou.

Myronn Hardy you now.

"Did you hear what I just said?" Meg asks.

"No, sorry," you'd say. "I was thinking."

"About what?"

"About our first night together. How when the cab brought us back here, I got out with you and came in like it was the most natural thing in the world."

"That's because we just knew," Meg says. She is not smiling.

Her eyes scour yours.

"Yeah," you say, nodding. "We just knew."

"I still know," she says.

You toss the newspaper next to your half-eaten quiche and meet her gaze.

"What did you want to ask me?"

When the tears come, as they always do, you will want to join in. You will want to break down in big shivering sobs to show her this is not easy for you, either. You will notice the rawness in her voice and the sudden hardness in her eyes. You will want to hold her, to comfort her, to somehow make everything all better as you push her away. You will want to be an honorable man and stay as long as she can stand you there. You will want to run. You will feel guilty. You will feel relieved. You will realize only then how much she loves you. You will fixate on a headline from the newspaper and read it to yourself, over and over. Yes, you deserve all the terrible things she suddenly is saying about you. You are a heartless bastard. You are a coward. You betrayed her. Yes, yes, yes. You will nod silently and look at the floor. Everything will be easier if you cry, but you cannot. Your voice will grow husky and your eyes will get moist, but that's it. Moist is the best you can do.

-4-

Vou buy vegetables on Caldereria Nueva.

Sandalwood Os mouths singing sweet smoky breath. I buy hazelnut pastries and remember being stung while gathering honey in Florida my legs and arms spilling lava. I crush garlic the scent of the kitchen before the telephone rang. Your face covered with blood Jim Crow tightening around your neck nothing can save you. The zucchini and eggplant lay on the cutting board in chunks Moorish tiles forever building Spain. I used to know people in Mexico who wore feathers on their heads. They thanked the sun when the maize grew and the rivers ran thick with fish.

They are now drunk.

Their wives have black snakes for hair.

The men beat the women girls until their faces crack warm brown eggs.

-5-

Baby Killing Keith Brecher I You see the schedule today? Riggs slurps coffee, nibbles a bear It's a day like all the others. The sky is white, the grass is green going on gray, the clinic is a square brown cinderblock in the middle of suburban nowhere. Outside the razorwire, they're walking in circles.

1 point things out to Clare, the medical student. There's the crucified fetus. There's the blood-spattered bride. There's the man with the boy's face and the skeletal eyes, standing outside the prayer circle, watching me.

Remember that man's face, I tell Clare. He'll kill me one day. Clare laughs. T laugh, too. It's funny because it's true.

Inside, the morning is heavy with Kevlar. People are sipping coffee from bulletproof mugs. Past the metal detector, there's a bloodstain on the floor that just won't wash out. Yesterday it was Bullwinkle; today it's Iceland. I walk from Reykjavik to Akurcyi for good luck. In the doctors' lounge, Riggs is parading around in a steel helmet with BORN TO KILL scrawled in red Sharpie on the front.

What's that supposed to be, I say, some kinda sick joker1 Clare laughs. She's cute, but I'm done fucking medical students.

The sick jokes're out there, says Riggs, stabbing a thumb at the Operation Rescue sign fixed to the wall. The sign says CHOOSE LIFE in Big Brother-script, like in the Wham! video.

Next to it, there's a computer printout of me with my smiling face in the crosshairs of a rifle. Somebody up there likes me.

Wham!

I pour coffee, add a taste of mescal from a Robitussin bottle. Clare's watching Martha Stewart and I'm watching Clare in her short black skirt and her short white coat.

What's Martha making? I say.

Shit, says Riggs.

Martha's shoveling shit into a wire cage. Compost.

But it's perfect shit, says Clare. Kmart shit.

Riggs laughs with one eye on the TV and the other on Clare crossing her legs. I see a flare of panties like a flashbulb popping. Wham! I sit between Riggs and Clare on the couch.

claw.

Why? It's gonna be one of those days.

It's always one of those days.

Clare leans around me to sec Riggs better and her tits nudge my arm. I nudge them back. Clare says, What's going on today, Doctor Riggs?

Nudge. Nudge.

Riggs changes the channel to the gray Doppler of the security cam. That's what's going on, he says.

A black Mercedes is pulling through the gates. Massed behind the car are the sick jokes, the obsessed, the righteous, the killers-for-Jcsus, waving their atrocity photos and pickled fetuses, carrying their crosses, pogoing in a punk-rock, Pentecostal frenzy.

Riggs snorts in disgust, waves a disgusted arm. Those people need to get a life, he says.

Isn't that why they're out there? asks Clare.

I look at Riggs and Riggs looks at Clare. We're wondering whether she's a dupe. We're wondering whether she's an assassin. In the hive-mind of the righteous, an instant of martyred glory might save generations.

I sample my coffee. It needs more Robitussin.

Clare says, So what's on the schedule today, Doctor Riggs?

Assassin. But with great tits, like a Bond girl.

Riggs leans forward until his breath clouds the TV screen.

He taps the glass. She is, he says.

Clare leans forward in a fog of soap, shampoo, and toastedalmond lip gloss. On the television screen, next to Riggs's finger, I see a girl slide from the back seat of the Mercedes.

Believe it or not, says Riggs, her name's Baby.

I don't believe it, says Clare.

Baby Spice, I say.

Baby Houseman, says Riggs. Beth Swain's patient. Twelve years young. Twenty-three weeks pregnant.

Twenty-three weeks, I say.

Fuck, I sav.

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I stand up for more coffee and I forget the coffee and drink the Robitussin straight from the botde. Pacing, I say, Why the hell's Beth Swain turfing that shit over here?

Riggs changes the channel to CNN. That's why, he says.

There's Beth Swain. There's Beth Swain's house. There's an ambulance with its lights doused. There's a body bag on a stretcher. There's another body bag on a stretcher.

And another.

And another.

And. Five bags. Beth, her husband, their two kids, and the dog, Lucky.

Killing for Jesus, I say.

Take a life to save a life, says Riggs.

Oh, that is so horrible, says Clare. Doctor Swain was supposed to write a letter of recommendation for me.

Don't worry, says Riggs. I'll write one for you. Removing his helmet, he says to me, How about it, killer? Ready to rumble?

1 crave one last taste of Robitussin, but it's all gone. Emptied out. I follow Riggs upstairs to meet Baby.

Mommy and Daddy are waiting for me in my office, but there's no Baby. Mommy's had work done. A lift here, a tuck there, a squirt or two of collagen. Daddy's a hair club member.

You come highly recommended, says Mommy.

I doubt it. For this kind of thing, there's me, an eighty-yearold GP in the Bronx, and Beth Swain.

We couldn't find very much about you on the Internet, says Daddy, darting a look at Mommy. Who did you train with?

Thomas Moscr, T say. Tn Boston.

Oh, Doctor Moser, says Daddy, nodding. He's very good.

He's very dead, I say.

There's a long silence.

This needs to be done, says Mommy.

Daddy clears his throat. Did you see the records from Mott Street? he asks. I nod yes, though 1 haven't seen them. The papers are still in the belly of my fax machine.

This needs to be done, says Mommy. Her face is pulled tight enough that her skull's showing.

What the records don't reflect, says Daddy, a tax lawyer, is hat we simply did not know. We did not know.

We didn't, whispers Mommy. We didn't know.

We're not going to let this ruin her life, says Daddy.

We are not, says Mommy, shaking her head.

I riffle through the records. I read the ultrasound report.

Twenty-three weeks. A boy. I wonder aloud about the father.

An older man, says Daddy. Fourteen. Chinese. Baby met him on AOL. We should never have gotten her the iMac, says Mommy.

Never.

Daddy says, It was your idea.

But why Baby? I ask. Why did you name her Baby?

Because that's what she is, says Mommy, crying. She's only a baby. Please help her.

Twenty-three weeks, I think. Twenty-three. I can't do it. I won't do it.

Okay, I say. I'll help her.

I follow Mommy and Daddy outside to Baby. She's having her blood drawn. Her face is paler than her pale blond hair. Her eyelids are fluttering. Her T-shirt has ridden up and her swollen belly is visible above the band of her sweatpants. I watch the skin below her naval pulsate and ripple with life and then I turn away.

Riggs and Clare are waiting for me outside the OR. So? says Riggs.

Let's get it on, 1 say.

While Riggs places lines, gets the consents, does a pre-op check, I pimp Clare.

1 ask, What fetal weight can we expect at twenty-three weeks?

Clare says, Eight hundred grams.

Will the eyes be open or closed?

Closed.

When does rapid eye movement begin?

Twenty-one weeks.

Does the fetus dream?

Clare shrugs. Can I ask you a question? she asks.

Shoot, I say. So long as it's not about my ex-wife.

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There's his hand. There's his spine. See his heart beating?

I see it, says Clare. I see it.

Okay, I say. Enough with the coming attractions. Let's get

Okay, says Clare. She licks her lips, takes a breath, crosses her skinny arms. In a small voice, she says, Will this be gruesome?

Nurse Sherri opens the door to the OR. He waggles a thumb. Riggs wants you, he says.

Inside, Baby is on the table. The room is cold and bright.

When I lean over Baby, I see a warp of porcelain walls and glaring surgical lamps reflected in her eyes.

How do you feel? I ask.

I'm scared, says Baby.

I hold Baby's hand. It's thin and frail as a leaf. Don't worry, I say. You're going to sleep now and when you wake up, everything will be over.

Riggs dials in some Versed and Baby disappears in an amnestic haze. When she's gone, Nurse Sherri removes her gown, spreads her legs, puts her feet up in stirrups. He hands me a gauze-wrapped speculum. I let Clare slide the cold steel between Babv's legs.

She's not very dilated, .1 say.

Clare peers over my shoulder. What are those? she asks.

Laminaria. Seaweed sticks. You want one?

Nurse Sherri says to Riggs, You been to Nobu?

Riggs says, Yeah.

I stare into the steel mouth between Baby's legs. Inside, the cervix glistens pink, plethoric, medium-rare. I'll need dilators to pry the lips farther apart, to break through to what's sealed inside.

Go ahead, I say to Riggs. Intubate her.

While we scrub, Clare says again, Will this be gruesome?

Yes. Will I be able to forget this?

No. Back inside the OR, everyone is staring at the ceiling.

What am I looking at? says Clare.

The ultrasound people have arrived. They're showing lowbudget horror movies. The television screens suspended from the ceiling are filled with black snow, shifting gray tides, static.

One of the ultrasound techs says, There's the babv's face.

started.

The room holds its breath as I dilate the cervix with graduated steel dilators and use a vacuum cannula to rupture the membranes. While the pink spume drains out, Riggs starts a Pitocin drip.

I say, Forceps, like I'm playing golf.

Riggs says, Wait a minute.

I say, What's going on?

Riggs say7s, Something's wrong.

I walk around to where Riggs is hidden behind his shroud of heavenly blue drapes. He's tapping the screen of the heart monitor.

Baby's got no pulse or blood pressure, says Riggs.

Oh, yeah? I say. How come she's got an ECG tracing?

EMD maybe. Want me to call a Code?

I shake my head. Don't fucking fuck with me, Riggs.

Riggs shrugs and changes the blood pressure cuff. After Baby has been resurrected, I return to my seat between her legs.

I take a deep breath. I say, Forceps.

The room holds its breath.

The first thing I pull out is a leg. The skin is wrinkled and pink as crumpled tissue paper and when I examine the foot I know the baby is more than twenty-three weeks old. Shit happens. Perfect shit. Compost. 1 think about stuffing the leg back inside, but, of course, there's no going back.

Have a leg, I say to Clare. Get a foot up in the world. Clare grunts.

For my next trick, I dismember the baby. I chop it up with a broad-rimmed curette. I slice it and dice it. I macerate it. When I'm done cutting, I fish the pieces out with forceps. Like a magician, I pull from Baby a leg, an arm, the placental disk, and, finally, the torso with the other arm and the head still attached.

The torso fits in my palm, snug as a bug in a rug. Clare crouches next to me and together we look at the baby's wizened face. As we watch, the little man opens his eyes, turns his head,

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of a Permanent Union Tdra Rosenberg wriggles his chest from side to side.

Tell me that's a reflex, says Clare. Please tell me that's only a reflex.

1 don't say anything.

When the procedure is done, the clinician must confirm completion by identifying all major fetal parts.

Extremities. Check.

Spine. Check.

Calvarium. Check.

Mommy and Daddy are waiting for me outside my office, pacing the tiles like expectant parents. When I appear, they leap up and shout, How's Baby?

I say, Baby's fine. Check.

I'm fine, too.

I spend the dregs of the day doing simple evacuations. At three, I enjoy a late lunch with Riggs. At five, 1 look for Clare, but I can't find her. As 1 drive through the gates, 1 expect to see her in her white coat and black skirt, walking in circles, carrying her cross.

There she is, I say. There's Clare, the medical student. There's the cracified fetus. There's the blood-spattered bride. There's the man with the boy's face and the skeletal eyes. We make guns with our fingers and shoot each other goodbye.

It's a day like all the others.

Wham.

I want to be a woman with a man tattooed on her arm. A quiet man in a crescent moon, a hook and he will hang from it. I will call him steady, and he will follow me everywhere— know the stretch and smell of my skin. When I wear wool, he too will turn red with my sweat and itch. In exchange, his moon will never eclipse nor let him fall— an unpicked fruit too old for its stem and left beneath its tree, where the sun would make him splotchy, as it does the bald heads of older men. No, he will wither with me, together we will grow old, go dry and I'll never have to adhere to him, scratch on his behalf, or hear the name he'd give to the forlorn skin that binds him to me.

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Private Rooms J. C. Barker "Ain't nothin' wrong with him," she says and chuckles as "What are you doing to your toes, Mike?" I ask.

"Oh, just trying to mend them a little bit," he answers. His glasses are smudged and cockeyed and he has knocked his oxygen tubes askew. His smile, too, is off balance, as if his face were a jigsaw puzzle with the wrong pieces jammed together.

I watch as he grabs at his toes with a tissue from his hospital bed nightstand. They are the scariest toes I have ever seen—the color of bruised eggplants and seemingly fuzzy. The doctors had threatened to cut them off, but as hideous as they are, he chose to keep them. "Gross toes are better than no toes," he is fond of saying.

My brother is dying. Leukemia poisons his blood, which in turn poisons his heart, his lungs, his every cell. Why, just yesterday, T was speaking to him on the phone when his heart decided to up and stop. He had a seizure when they pricked his finger for blood and "Code Blue" was all I heard before the phone was slammed into the receiver. It wasn't until my sister called me half an hour later that 1 realized that for about a minute, Mike was dead. I live in New York and he is in Texas, so I decided to board a plane in order to finish our conversation.

When I arrived, he was curled up in the fetal position, semiconscious. For that reason, I am delighted to see him fiddling with his toes today.

"Don't they hurt when you touch them, Mike?"

"No," he answers as he swipes and misses.

"I'll be right back. I'm gonna go get a drink of water," I lie, as I sneak out to call the nurse.

His face contorts into a grimace when 1 return with Lakeisha in tow. He is a first-born child and having lived a life of fearless independence, he prefers autonomy while in the hospital, at any cost.

"Whatcha grabbing at, Mike?" Lakeisha asks.

"A storybook," he says.

"What storybook?"

"The one I'm telling you right now," he answers and slaps his knee in delight.

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she exits.

"Let me ask you something, Jan," my brother says. "Do you think I'm crazy? Phyllis says that sometimes 1 act crazy."

Phyllis is his wife, the only one bold enough to tell him the truth.

"Of course, not," I respond. "I just think the drugs make you confused. If you were really crazy, you wouldn't be aware enough to ask the question."

"That's what I think, too," he tells me, as he wipes his eyes.

"I'm glad you agree."

I am alone with my brother, since my sisters have gone out to pick up dinner. They do this on a regular basis, as Mike is sure that the hospital food, rather than the disease, will be his demise.

Watching him literally makes my skin hurt, as if all of the nerve endings were being scraped with sandpaper.

I try desperately to make meaningful conversation, unsure of what exactly is meaningful to a dying man. I want to tell him about my two little girls, but feel too guilty because I get to see them grow up. I want to ask him about his two little boys but feel too guilty because I get to see them grow up, too. I can't talk about the fact that he is dying because to talk about it is to acknowledge it and if I do that I think it will kill me, too. I glance at his cluttered bedside table and am torn between Deepak Chopra's latest tome on spirituality and People magazine.

"Look," 1 say, as 1 hold up the magazine for him to see. "A whole page of couples going through nightmarish divorces. I can't believe I didn't make it in."

"Clearly an oversight," he answers. I begin a litany, regaling my brother with stories of boob jobs and battered wives, heroines and heroin. He begins to nod out, but I am stumped for conversation so I continue.

Fortunately, a rehabilitating drug addict is three doors down and we are afforded a host of topics to chat about as we hear him scream and curse and thrash about in his room. A security code is announced and we see what appears to be a police officer fly by.

"Quick! Hide the Mystic Mints," Mike commands gleefully, as if this drug-crazed maniac would find solace in cookies, rather -15-

than cocaine. 1 quickly stash the contraband in the most obvious place I know—under the bed. I clap my hands, applauding both our high-jinks and the ascension of our spirits.

Katie and Laura appear at the doorway. "One of your cellmates seems a little touched," says Laura. "We almost got run over by the security guard." They bring, along with our dinner, the feel of confetti and balloons, party hats and punch.

Tonight's fare is Goode Company Barbecue, which was Mike's request, and a crisp Chardonnay, which was ours. We obsess over mealtimes, carefully planning every7 detail and we are thrilled with this dinner party in particular because of the elite guest list. Ordinarily his room is fraught with well-wishers, but today he is fresh out of Intensive Care, where no visitors are allowed. Phyllis slept at the hospital the night before, so I sent her home to be with their sons. Mike has been in and out of the hospital for three years now, and never before have my sisters and I managed to be alone with him.

Katie neatly dispenses our dinner onto cheerful paper plates, while 1 pop the cork. As we clamber into Mike's bed, we come to the horrible realization that we have no stemware.

"We could pass the bottle around," suggests Laura, "but Mom would be appalled."

"Mom would be appalled period," I say, "to see us boozing it up in a hospital bed. It wouldn't matter what we are drinking from."

"I'll go to the nurses station," Katie offers. "They have a supply of those little cups that they put Jell-O in."

"And sometimes, pee," chimes in Mike, finding himself far more amusing than we do.

Katie procures our improvisational crystal from Lakeisha with a smile and a lie and we proceed with our makeshift feast.

We are children, once again, with Mike at the helm.

"Remember when we used to all sleep in my bed together on Christmas Eve and we would wake up at three in the morning and wait for Mother and Daddy to get up?" I ask.

"Yeah," Katie responds. "Maybe that's why the mattress used to collapse all the time in the middle of the night. Interesting, sleeping at a forty-five degree angle."

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"Hev, what's this, Mike?" asks Laura, as she presses a button the side of the bed and sends us catapulting forward.

"Jesus, are you trying to kill me?" he responds and we laugh before we can catch ourselves.

Bv now, my sisters and I are drunk and my brother is happy because for once we are relaxed. Usually, we are circus clowns, performing with our big, painted grins, but today our joy is real.

Lakeisha enters the room just as I am fetching dessert from under the bed. This, and the fact that Laura is trying to shove her pee-cup of Chardonnay into Mike's bedside drawer, send us into hysterics. We naively think she doesn't know that we are sauced even though the Igloo cooler with our liquid anesthetic sits in plain view.

"Cookie, Lakeisha?" I bribe. We fear authority, having grown up in a strict Catholic household. Lakeisha's crisp white uniform carries with it a sense of detention, grounding, extra chores, though the sparkle in her eyes belies this. Katie looks the perfect Catholic schoolgirl as she has crawled out of the bed and into the chair where she sits grinning with her hands and legs crossed.

"I'll have one," she says.

"I wasn't offering them to you," I respond. "You don't have the power to throw our asses out of here like Lakeisha does." Luckily, Lakeisha finds us as amusing as we do and after checking Mike's vitals and dispensing some drugs, she leaves the room with a cookie and a little clucking sound.

It is getting late and the doctors will be in soon for their nightly rounds. Katie and Laura decide to leave, but I stay to tuck Mike in. As the only out-of-towner, I feel my moments are more precious than theirs, only because they are more rare.

'You guys go home," T urge. "I'm going to stay here and hit on the neurologist when he shows up."

"Maybe he can take a peek at you, too" says Laura as she gathers up her things. The evening's festivities come to an end and we bid the girls adieu. They flip off the overhead on their way out, instantly transforming the ambiance.

I can feel my chest constrict and expand simultaneously as I watch my sisters leave and all manner of speech escapes me. I -17-

So She Left (Por eso. se fue) Idra Rosenberg fill up the empty space with grooming—I brush Mike's teeth, I soothe his lips with cherry-flavored Chapstick, 1 comb his rakish hair.

"You should get going, too, Jan," he tells me. "It's late."

"1 don't want to," I answer and the matter is dropped. The drugs are making him both sleepy and feverish and I watch as he struggles to stay awake.

"You rest," I say as I climb into bed with him. "Don't worry about me. I'm perfectly happy." I lay a cool washcloth across his fiery forehead and stroke his temples in an effort to erase the creases in his brow. He nods in and out and every time he is in, he simply looks at me and smiles. T can't decide if this is Heaven or Hell and I feel sure that I am emanating one of those highpitched sounds that only dogs can hear. After what feels like thirty days, but is only the equivalent number of minutes, he appears to be sleeping peacefully. His breathing is less labored, the grimace on his face relaxed—I hope he is dreaming sweet dreams. Reluctantly, I climb out of bed and slip on my shoes.

"Mike," I whisper, "I'm gonna go now."

"1 love you," he tells me.

"1 love you too, Big Brother," I say, as I lean over and kiss the top of his head.

Good Night.

-18-

"Look, Magali," my sister says, pulling me down to spy through the peephole below the bathroom sink. "Look at this!"

I duck down and push her out of the way. The hole opens a view into our neighbors' kitchen. From the shouts we hear through the wall, I know something exciting must be going on over there. I crawl below the water pipe and peer through. A woman is dancing on the kitchen table and she looks like my mama, but that can't be. It must be some other lady who is taking off her clothes in the Castillo kitchen, dancing so hard the wood table has cracked down the side. The Castillos are leaning up against the wall laughing and dozens of excited hands are pounding on the counter and cheering the woman on. She squats down and starts to wiggle out of Mama's blue-striped shorts. I close my eye and whip my head out, banging it against the drain pipe.

"Is that Mama, Magali?" Ana crouches down beside me on the blue bath mat and peers into my face. "Don't tell Papa," I say quickly, and push her out of the bathroom in front of me.

I tell her to forget the whole thing and we do when Mama comes home and the three of us dance in the kitchen and cut meat for the chacican. We laugh at ourselves until some old man knocks on the window and shouts that he wants Mama to come out and dance for him, dance until she breaks the porch. Papa marches into the kitchen and Mama tells him the old man is confused. She flicks her chin toward me, "Maybe it's your daughter who dances for drunk old men." She looks at Papa then back at me. "What a trashy little girl." Mama smacks me hard, slams the window shut, then pulls Papa against her and dances up his thigh.

I run out the door into the black night air and rush down the blurring hill. But there is no need to see—the path down to the beach ties me to the ocean like an umbilical chord, and to the seaweed that no one ever talks about. All those dark tangles flowing out from beneath the rocks, the hair of mermaid princesses hiding below.

Climbing out to the rock closest to the sea, I go to the spot -19-

where I can sit and feel the water on my face. My legs quickly fall asleep beneath me and the air is getting colder. With my legs still tingling, 1 start to wobble off the rock but my foot slips and 1 fall, face first near the edge of the rock. The dark water spits at the ledge, taunting me. Stupid Magali. Stupid Magali. I push away from there, scramble off the rock, and run home.

Ana is curled up in our bed, her face hidden beneath her dark hair flowing out across the pillow like inky strands of seaweed. I put on my pajamas and crawl in beside her and she snuggles up against me, and it could be yesterday or last Monday the way we are small and close in our bed together. But it isn't and 1 can't sleep. Lying awake in our bed, 1 listen to the creaks in the house asking questions all night long.

It is Sunday and Papa is leaving for the stadium after lunch to see the soccer championship with Uncle Oscar. Mama goes out a couple minutes after Papa and comes back in with a skinny man in a sleeveless T-shirt. From the couch in the living room, I can smell them and standing there in the doorway, they have the same disgusting odor of urine. Mama smiles at me strangely with half her face, "Go to bed, Magali and take your sister with you.

"Who is this, Mama?" I walk out into the hallway and leave Ana by the television. "Magali, just go to bed," Mama says and steps closer to me. Her smell takes me into the circle with the skinny man and his splotchy bare arms. He stares at Mama and me all over, watching us as if we were behind a store window and wouldn't notice him through the glass.

"C'mon, Ana," Mama whispers and Ana meekly gets off the couch, leaving the TV on. Two women on the screen are drinking coffee. Their high voices reach the hallway as a muffled gossip, like the giggly murmur of a party? next door. As Ana and I walk quickly to our bedroom, I hear Mama laughing in hers, the same way she laughs with Papa at night, and I hate her.

"Papa is going to come home anytime now isn't he, Magali?"

Ana asks but I don't answer her. I want to run out of there, go down to the beach, and watch the sea whirl around the rocks, but there is no way I would leave now. Ana leans against me and we stand together awTkwardly in the middle of our square -20-

oom. I t u r n mY head to see our reflection in the mirror above the dresser—between the two of us, we take up just three stripes of the stained wallpaper. Squinting my eyes until we get blurry in the mirror, 1 imagine what it would be like to smash the stripes together and disappear between them. The front door opens and shuts and the house begins to ring with the sound of pots banging around in the kitchen. The radio is on and Papa is home.

Mama starts laughing again and i imagine what the two of them must look like out in the kitchen together. My hands are over my face and I try to block everything out of my mind except for the image of the two of them laughing near the sink as if it were a singular tangible light I could guard between my palms like a firefly. "Put your pajamas on," T tell Ana but she shakes her head and dives under the sheets. Staring at the bedspread, I am caught in the swirl of the petals, the scatter of tulips flicked from their stems, and for a moment, I can't see the small rise on my side of the bed where Ana is curled up crying.

"Sleep in your clothes, then," I tell her and crawl into the covers on her side, pulling the sheets up over my face. A drawer opens and then I hear the snap of buttons. Ana slides into bed and curls up beside me. We dress silently in the morning for school and don't say a word to each other the whole way down the hill. In front of the blue doors of Ana's building, she presses her face into my jacket as if it were a pillow and starts to cry.

'I'll wait for you here when school lets out, okay?" I tell her and run my hand across her hair. Ana smiles at me quickly as she files into line with the other children.

At the curve in the path near the Castillos' house after school, Ana and I see that there is laundry lying all over our porch like a church rummage sale. Mama's bra with the pink padding is straddling the banister beside my striped underwear and the sight of them out there together where anyone could see them makes m e sick to my stomach. Twisted around the porch light, Papa's trown scratchy sweater looks like the body of a cat run over °n the highway. "Mama did this!" Ana yells as she runs up the porch behind me. I yank Mama's bra off the banister and whip -21-

my arm back to throw it but Ana grabs it, letting out a wail like a fire alarm, and clutches it against her. "What do you want her dirty old bra for, Ana?" I try to take it from her but she holds it tightly against her and runs toward the door and leans against it, banging it frantically with her foot.

No one comes out of our house but 1 spot Mrs. Castillo's round face between the yellow curtains in her front window. I watch her stare at our porch and my little sister crying by the door. I want to scream at her, tell her I know she has somehow been a part of all of this. 1 long to open my mouth and let her know 1 hate her. But I just stand there, as still and silent as the house behind us, and watch Ana cry.

The door is open now and Papa is there. He smells like the sea, like fish and clams and empanadas de mariscos. Ana and I both run in to hug him but he turns and walks back to the kitchen. Papa sits down on the broken stool in the kitchen and rests his head on the table. Ana rushes over and wraps her arms around him. "She's gone," he says flatly and he doesn't cry but we do. Ana tries to crawl onto Papa's lap but he doesn't embrace her so I sit down and pull her onto mine and hold her tightly against me. She still has her red backpack on and the edges of her books beneath the vinyl are sharp against my arm as I try to keep her on my lap.

The doorbell rings and Ana and I both run to see if it is Mama. A chubby man in dirty jeans and a T-shirt asks where Mama is. "She's gone," I scream at him. He laughs and asks me if I'm still a school girl. Papa thunders out of the kitchen, the man is gone, and Papa's face is hidden in his hands. Leaving him there with Ana pulling at his arm, I run out the back door to my ocean brooding below in shades of purple. I run down the path to the scatter of nispero trees near the beach and stop at the third one.

Crawling into the cave beneath the arched branches hanging low with fruit, I find a boy already under there. In the shifting spots of shade and sunlight, I see him smile at me then turn his head to spit a shower of nispero seeds against the tree trunkThe seeds bounce off the bark, making the sound of rain. The boy offers me a handful of orange speckled nisperos from his -22-

pile on the sand and 1 take them. The first one I eat is sweet, soft as melon.

We eat nisperos in silence together under the tree until the boy slides over right beside me. Pie puts his hand on my leg for a moment and his fingers are warm on my skin. When 1 close my eyes and lean in against him, he places a nispero into my palm and curls my fingers around it. "That's a perfect one," he says, placing his hand on my leg again. My whole body trembles like a window shutter in a storm. 1 let go of the nispero pull away from the boy and he rolls back against the tree. His nispero kingdom has fallen down and the little orange speckled fruits are rolling around everywhere. I step all over them as I run out of there.

Outside on the beach, I wrap my arms around myself and stare out at the ocean darkening like a bruise as the sun descends behind it.

It is getting dark quickly and I turn to go, but stop to pick up one of the boy's wet seeds off the sand outside the tree and put it in my pocket.

Ana is sitting on the porch beside a pile of folded clothes with her head leaning against the wooden railing. "Sorry" I smile nervously and pat the clothing pile. "You folded up'the dirty r laundry."

-v ", P a P a d i d it. I just watched. I was waiting for you to come back. Ana squints her eyes at me, the same face I m a d e at Mama when she came into the house with the skinny man "Well came back," I say and sit down beside her. We stare at each other until Papa opens the door behind us and sits down on the step beside me. "No more running off, Magali," he says and his My knCe b u m S Ana S h 7 2 g pile, I ' agamSt ^ ^ P ' > - s hÂŤs the and my lavender jacket falls off the porch.

-23-

The Old Italian Priest Sandra Paulina Bazzarelli

And so 1 stuck my tongue out At the old Italian priest Who had tried to stop my crying By shooshing me hard and short With his bony finger drawn To his thin, blanched lips He had tried to scare me quiet Shhh!

It did not work, I tell you I want my mother now, I sobbed 1 jet me stand with her at the altar.

I can be the Matron of Honor, Just like her if you let me try.

Father Tosta never budged from God's pi:Ian— No children he was alive And so I stuck my tongue out At the old Italian priest Who died a week after Mass disruption Still wearing his starched white collar But it did not work, I tell you My praying to God he would die His miserable body did that all on its own And I didn't cry for his sake Shhh!

Then I shifted in that pew some more At the right side of dear Grandma Who swore she'd bash my little body With her Bible, "GODDAMNIT, SIT STILL!" And so I stuck my tongue out At the old Italian priest Who, by virtue, tried to squash my vitality And the pinkness of my direct tongue That, hard and short, Poked through plump lips Like the stem on forbidden fruit While parishoners gasped and whispered Condemnation to Hell for certain All I wanted was my mother Who was standing at the altar Who was hearing me and seeing me And needing to come and gather me She offered the priest her forgiveness, As we left walking out hand in hand -24-

-25-

Spades to 2000, Then?

Sam Lanckton "No can do, my friend. Bigger hands than this have tried to me say it."

"What exactly does that mean?" I asked.

"Big hands, I know you're the one," said Weintraub, who proceeded to giggle uncontrollably.

"No, seriously, Dan, just tell me you love me, and I'll let you win the hand."

"Afraid not," Dan said. "This is serious business." Weintraub handed him the bong, he stuffed in some more dope, and shot a column of smoke into his lungs.

"Don't be ridiculous, dude," I said. "We all know you love her. Just say it."

"I'm not into saying that when others are around," he said, a cloud escaping from his mouth.

"There's the fucking understatement of the year," Michelle said. "1 love you. There, I said it. T say it all the time."

"See, she said it," I said, digging this more and more. "Why don't you say it?"

Dan and I had spent countless hours alone together and had never once had any sort of discussion concerning our emotional lives. The closest we had come to anything even bordering on a frank exchange of deeply held views was the morning after my first adventure with Ishmael, when Dan was heard to say, "I feel a little sad."

That was it! Three years of close friendship, spent almost constantly in each other's presence, and just once, just once in all that time had he deigned to offer so much as, "I feel a little sad." m ake

The games would last until late into the night, usually ending when Michelle declared she had more studying to do. Then she and Dan would go into his room to have sex, Weintraub and I would sneak in a few more bong hits, and the evening was at an end.

Weekends weren't much different, save that the games would often last until dawn. One Friday we decided to play Spades until the score reached 2000. The game is typically played to 250, maybe 500, and those games can last anywhere from one hour to six. So our game to 2000 promised to be epic.

Michelle never got high, so she decided that if the three of us were going to be smoking pot the whole time, she was going to get as drunk as possible. She withdrew a gallon jug of Absolut from the freezer and set it down in front of her. Dan partnered with me, Weintraub with Michelle.

The game moved along without incident until early in the morning. The score had been dancing around 1500 for the past hour. We were all exhausted, burnt out on dope and drink. The hand being played was a big one. Dan threw lower trump than he should have, opening up an opportunity for Michelle to win the hand and knock us back almost 200 points.

"C'mon, Michelle, don't do it," Dan said. "Let's just get this over with."

"But 1 can win it," she said.

"That's not the point, though. We just want to finish."

"I don't want to finish," Weintraub said through bleary eyes.

"I want to, uh . . ." Weintraub took another bong hit.

"What if Dan told you he loved you?" I asked.

It was a stupid question to ask. No good could come of it Throughout the summer, Michelle had been bringing up the fact that Dan never said he loved her when anyone else was around. For a few days she had nicknamed him "The Snuffaluffaguss of Love," but that's a whole lot to have to keep calling someone, right? 1 mean, right?

"Well, then I wouldn't trump," she said.

"Dan?" I said.

-26-

To be fair, I didn't exactly wear my heart on my sleeve, either. I expressed my dislike for my parents, but everybody hates their parents, so there was nothing particularly taxing in relating those feelings. And besides, the most I ever really offered in that regard was to say, "My complex differs distinctly from the Oedipal: rather than wanting to kill my father and sleep with my mother, I want to kill both my parents and have sex with Madonna."

But this was ridiculous. Dan had been dating Michelle for almost a year, and must have told her he loved her countless -27-

oive. I could feel it. She snatched the bottle off the ground and sent it flying across the room. It smashed into vodka-soaked shards. The cat had been napping near the projectile, and let out a frightened yell.

"Would you tell the cat you loved her?" Michelle asked.

"Well, the cat, 1 mean come on," Dan said. "That's an entirely different story."

Michelle narrowed her eyes to furious slits. "Let's see just how much you love that fucking cat."

With that, she walked over to the unsuspecting feline and lifted it off the ground by the scruff of her neck. Then Michelle marched off down the hall toward the balcony.

"What's she up to," Weintraub asked. "Oh, and where's the bag? The bowl's kicked."

"I'll get it," Dan said, and walked toward the kitchen. Something caught his eye as he passed the hall. "Michelle!" he called out. "What the hell are you doing?"

"You better get over here right now and tell me that you love me!" she yelled.

Dan turned back to us. "Dudes, you gotta check this out.

Totally insane."

We rose and followed Dan out to the balcony. Michelle was pressed up against the railing, holding the cat out into the air. We were six stories up.

"Easy, Texas," Dan said.

"If you don't tell me you love me, I'm going to drop the cat."

Dan looked at her with a blank expression and said, "It is my policy never to negotiate with terrorists."

Michelle stared at him. I tried to gauge whether or not I could leap forward and wrest the cat from her grasp. I didn't even like the cat that much, but I felt by just letting this domestic drama play out I might somehow be complicit in its death.

Weintraub had an equally concerned look on his face.

"Where did you say the bag was again?" Weintraub asked.

"In the kitchen," Dan said.

Weintraub walked off down the hall.

"I'll do it," Michelle said.

times when they were alone. But not once, not even if it meant that we could finally throw in the towel on this fucking game and go to bed, not even now would he volunteer this information with anyone else around.

"What if I gave you five bucks, dude?" 1 asked.

"Money can't buy you love," he said.

"Worked for Patrick Dempsey," I said.

"Or did it?" he said.

Michelle stewed behind her cards. "You're such an asshole," she said.

"Why am I an asshole? You know 1 feel that way. I just don't like the idea of having to say it. I find it very suspect. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It does."

"How about ten bucks?" I asked.

"Love for sale!" Weintraub sang out. "Pretty little love for sale!"

"Let's just drop the whole thing," Dan said. "If she wants to trump, she'll trump."

"What about a hundred bucks?"

"Dude," Weintraub said, "I would drink a glass of piss for a hundred bucks."

"As would I, my friend, " Dan said. "But say that—I don't think so."

Michelle stood up violently, tipping her chair over. I hadn't realized until then just how drunk she was. She flung her hand out to point it accusatorily at Dan, but accidentally smashed it into the vodka bottle, which went toppling to the ground. It did not break, but we all could hear the glug-glug of liquor spilling out onto the floor.

"Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Weintraub asked.

"You are all assholes! I am wasting my summer, no, I am wasting my life with you. Dan, if you don't tell me you love me, I am leaving right now, and I am never coming back."

"You'll have to come back," Dan said. "Who'll remember to feed the cat."

"Fuck the cat! Fuck this fucking apartment! Fuck all of you!"

"What'd I do?" Weintraub asked, and sparked up the bowl.

Michelle looked around wildly. Something was about to -28-

L

-29-

Rue for Rememhrancp I,

1

Kait Kerrigan "If you feel it's worth it, go right ahead," Dan said. "I don't think you've got the nerve."

"I will," Michelle said.

"You know what, Michelle," Dan said. "Be my fucking guest."

Michelle looked out over the railing at the cat. Then she softened, pulled the cat back to safety, and deposited it on the balcony. She walked up to Dan, put her arms around him, and kissed him full on the lips.

"Take me to bed," I heard her whisper in his ear.

"You go ahead," he said to her. "I'll be along in a minute."

She scampered off to the bedroom. Dan winked at me.

"Our long national nightmare is finally over, eh?" he said.

I could hardly think of what to say "Yeah, I guess so."

"Bong hits, then?" Dan asked.

"What about . . . ?"

"I'll get to her in a few minutes. She's not going anywhere."

She was quiet on the eve of my death. Her father did not hold her, but she would not have let him if he'd tried. She stared at my body but did not cry. At the funeral service again, she would not cry. She would wait to cry alone, when everyone else had gone—walked away from the funeral. There in the parlor and finally alone, head bowed over the casket, she would clasp her hands to her heart and let tears fall. T would try to lift my hand to touch her heart too, to give her some comfort. Death, however, brings a strange sensation. I would feel as if I had moved my hand, but in looking, I'd realize that my hands were still folded over my ribcage. I was beginning to see that my body and T were starting to sever. I tried to teach myself new ways to touch her but I couldn't learn quickly enough, for she would walk away without knowing that I was here. In my former state, I would have closed my eyes, dropped my head. I might have shed a tear. She needed a mother so badly, and I had left her. There was so much that I had forgotten to tell her when I was alive—so much that she wouldn't understand yet. She was still so young.

In death, there are no tears, nor eyes to shed them.

Her father was something of a fool when it came to children. I often wondered why I had married him. Of course, he was a nice man. He had good intentions, but his methods of raising children were oversimplified. Paul seemed to think that a father was someone who gave good advice. He played a minimal role in raising our m o children when I was alive, but after m y death I couldn't protect them from his long-winded speeches which led up to a small epigram of advice: "Tender yourself more dearly, or (not to crack the wind of that poor phrase) tend'ring it thus you'll tender me a fool." or "Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment." These he would say to our ten-year-old s °n, who was more interested in playing pretend war with his friends than in listening to his father quote Shakespeare. Larry Wa s smart to ignore his father's prattling. Perhaps I had been

-30-

L

-31-

Were

beginning to wear on her. I began to wonder if she was losing herself. She listened to her father too carefully. I had wanted to impart to her before 1 died that she needed to be her own, but she had been so young. Now eight years after my death, she bought a notebook and plucked a pen out of her desk drawer.

She threw back the covers on her bed and jumped in, pulling the covers taut over her shoulders. It was cold in her room that night. Were I able, I would have closed her window but she had always liked sleeping with a breeze. I warmed her toes with my thoughts. I took care of her. When she had warmed sufficiently, she situated herself to write. She sat with the notebook in her covered lap. Her still young hands hesitated before writing it.

mistaken in not guiding Paul to be a better father when I was alive.

"Larry! Come over here." Paul would call to him from the back porch. Larry would run over to his father. Sometimes, Hank, his best friend who lived next door, would follow him.

They would stand, breathing heavily, in front of my husband.

Paul would impart such a morsel of advice. "I was thinking, Larry. When you get older, you're going to have to be very careful. Things aren't as easy as they appear. Sometimes, people that you think are trustworthy can betray you. And sometimes, people you think that are not trustworthy—you will find are trustworthy. You know what Shakespeare would say to this, don't you? 'Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.' Do you understand, Larry?"

"Yeah, Dad." Larry would say, nodding.

"All right, I'm glad we had this talk. Now you and Hank go back to whatever you were doing. And remember what 1 told you."

Larry and Hank would race down the steps of the porch and run through the adjoining backyards—back and forth— yelling to each other. Paul would sit on the porch swing, feeling fulfilled. He had imparted some piece of age-old wisdom to his son. Larry had not, of course, given his father's words a second thought. He knew better than to listen to Paul's drivel.

Perhaps he had been old enough when I died that I had taught him that much. My poor Ophelia took his words to heart. "Lia," he'd scold, '"you'll tender me a fool.'" She listened and tried so hard to please her father. Her brow would furrow and she would commit his advice to memory, so that she could call it up if ever a situation should arise that she would need it. She was so desperate for guidance but there was no one alive to give it to her. Had 1 not died, she might still have eyes, to shed tears; lips, to speak; a body, to make love.

Dear Mother, Things have become so confused. I don't know who to turn to anymore.

I havefeelings that I should not act on. I know what 1 'm supposed to do— It's so clear. But Ijust don't know that I can do it. I know you 're gone. I know that you have been gone for ever so long—but I wish you were here. I hardly remember you anymore. 1 feel so lost.

Yesterday, I saw Hank for the first time in so long. When I was dropped off from school, I noticed him sitting on his porch. He looked the same. I hadn 't heard he was coming, but 1 guess with his father's illness, his arrival had been overlooked. It's strange when you start to see someone that you had always thought ofas older, as an equal. He asked me about school and I asked him. Oh, Mother, he's so smart! He knows everything about poetry and science. There's so much to him. It's more than Larry ever led me to believe. I had always thought that he seemed so crass, but there's more to him than that.

Dad saw us... He warned me that I shouldn 't be talking to him but I don't see why. I've never been so confused. I 've always tried to listen to what Dad said, to take his advice—but I don't agree. I think he's wrong.

My eyes are getting heavy, Mother. Good night.

Love, Ophelia

She pressed the journal closed and hid it between her mattresses. She pulled her blankets up further and turned off her ught. Then she slid lower in her bed and fell asleep quickly. Her

"Dear Mother," she wrote. Ophelia began to write to me when she was sixteen years old. Things had gotten difficult for her. Following her heart and following her father's epigrams

J -32-

-33-

1,1

him. "Look at you!" he exclaimed, pointing at one of the pictures on the wall.

"Yeah, I must have been about four in that picture." She srniled, joining him. It was a picture of Ophelia and me. Our mouths were both open, laughing. My arms were thrown around the waist of her red dress and there were blurred blue buttercups in the background. "I'd forgotten about this picture." She felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her. She sat down.

"Are you okay, Lia?" Hank turned from the picture to look at her.

"Yeah. I am." Ophelia smiled. "I just haven't thought about that in a while, I guess. I just felt this rush. I'm fine now."

"A rush of what?" he asked. He crouched in front of her and took hold of her hands.

She noticed that his hands were on hers. A slight tingle went up her arms, "Fear... sort of, but that doesn't make sense. I don't know." She tried not to meet his stare, but after a moment, and only for a moment, their eyes locked. She let her eyes drop.

I saw this bud form before they, themselves, did. He had fallen desperately in love with her in the moment that he first saw her two weeks before. She had changed quite a bit in the time that he was away. She was taller and more graceful. He had always been fond of her but there was a new attraction that both confused and amazed him. She felt it too. His hands resting lighdy on hers in comfort, he focused his searching eyes but she could not meet them. She was not allowed to feel such things for him. It had been forbidden. Had I a voice, I would tell her to leave with him now and never look back; had I arms, I would shake her, tell her to run away with him before anything happened. Hank would replay this day and the night that Was to follow in his mind for years to come, wonder what he could have done differently because at the time it didn't feel as if there were a choice.

They spoke for a while, exchanging experiences, dodging the undercurrents. I felt that my presence was an intrusion but I couldn't leave. I was doomed to be the silent witness to all that

eyes soon fluttered. As her sleep deepened, her lips parted with a sigh. Thoughts, reflections, emotions all spiraled within her, as did I. Ophelia dreamed of a small girl with her mother in a garden. The blue flowers surrounding them were faded but the child wore a bright crimson dress. The mother whispered in her daughter's ear, both of them laughed, but there was no sound.

The mother kissed her daughter's face. As the mother and daughter ran across the grass, it began to turn into water... A large crash jolted Ophelia out of sleep. She went to her window and shut it, for it had begun to rain. The streets shone with the reflection of the street lamps. She thought she saw the shape of a man standing near the old oak on their tree lawn. Shivering, she quickly drew the curtains and ran back under the covers. It was 2:26 when she finally fell asleep again. Morning came, and she did not remember her dream. She hardly remembered closing her window, except that it was closed.

"Lia?" A voice called from behind. It was nearly two weeks later, and her father had gone away on a business trip so she was home alone. Her stomach turned in fear, as she pulled her hand out of their mailbox. She held a wad of letters, as she turned around to sec a familiar face. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hank! You scared me. I didn't know you were there."

Ophelia smiled genuinely at the grinning face on the other side of the screen door. "Come in."

She led him into the house. "Wow, it looks the same," he remarked, as he came in the front door.

"What?" Ophelia asked. She walked to the back of the house and started sorting letters on the kitchen table. She had seen me do that when she was young—carefully piling each piece of mail: individual letters, bills, advertisements. The advertisements were quickly discarded.

"Your house—it looks the same as when I last saw it. I haven't been in here... probably since I was thirteen. So, that's, what, six years ago?" He walked through the kitchen and into the den. Ophelia quickly finished sorting the mail and followed -34-

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was to come. I was fated to play my role. A beautiful smile crept onto my daughter's face as they spoke. He recited a poem for her. They laughed at what she once thought were crude jokes. He asked her questions. She provided answers. She grew easier with him as she forgot her father's bidding. I began to think that perhaps it could work.

And then their lips nearly touched. It happened when she was kneeling on the floor in front of a bookshelf. He was crouched just behind her, reading over her shoulder. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she whispered, "Have you read it before? I mean, everyone loves Shakespeare it seems, but that doesn't lessen it for me." She cocked her head to look at him and found him closer than she expected.

Her breath quickened as she saw the look in his eyes. "It's beautiful." He smiled. Ophelia pulled away and looked back at the book. Hank regained some composure, "Read it to me, will you?"

"What?"

"Come on, read it to me. I want to hear you read it." He moved away from her and sat down on the couch.

Ophelia looked at him for a second, smiling a little, and shrugged, "Alright. I won't be able to do it justice." She sighed deeply and looked at the page. With a nervous giggle she began, '"No longer mourn for me when 1 am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled...'

"There. Now you've heard me read. I don't want to bore you, seeing as I already made you read it," she said with an embarrassed laugh.

"That was fine." His voice was sweet and low. He stood up, "I should probably go. Thank you for a lovely afternoon."

His words slapped her across the face. She had just showed him something very personal to her. It occurred to her that what she had read as interest could have been mere friendliness.

"Anytime, I had a nice time too."

"Can I see you tomorrow?" he asked.

The embarrassment that had risen to her cheeks subsided

and the tingling sensation that she had felt earlier when he had touched her returned. "You can stop by again, if you'd like. My father won't be home for another three days."

He smiled and touched her hand, "All right, 'til then."

She followed him to the door and watched him walk out and across the yard to his house. She saw the emergency Red Cross van that was often parked in front of their house and remembered—she hadn't asked about his father.

Late that night, she pulled her journal out from in between her mattresses. She carried it into our bedroom—the bed that my husband and I had made love in years ago. She sat down on my side of the bed—the side that was always made because, still, after all these years, Paul would not sleep on my side, nor would he let anyone else. Each night, he still spoke to me in prayer, telling me that he didn't know how to raise two children to be adults. As I said, he was well intentioned. He did not know that his daughter sometimes slept in his wife's place when he was away on business.

Very carefully, Ophelia pulled back the blankets and sheets.

She slipped into the tightly made bed and burrowed under with her notebook. She leated through to the next blank page. She had written me religiously since that first letter. She no longer hesitated.

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Dear Mother, I wanted to kiss him. Is that wrong? If Dad knew he d be so angry.

Hank says he's coming back tomorrow. I don't know that he will but I just tremble to think of it. lie's beautiful. 1 keep thinking of the most ludicrous things—what I should wear, how I should act. It's frivolous, I know, but I can't stop myself. I can't wait to talk to him again.

Love, Ophelia

She laid her notebook on the nightstand where I had once kept my books, and stared at the ceiling. Her eyes were wide and there was a slight lift to her mouth. With this lift, she sighed, tolled over on her left, and fell asleep.

Her dream came to her, as it had come to her every night.

Again, she watched the little girl in red, held by her mother,

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surrounded by faded blue. The mother whispered and they laughed as if in a silent movie. A kiss and they ran across the grass laughing and tripping, as grass grew longer and began to change color until it lay down and was a deep blue. The blue began to ripple like water. The mother continued to run, laughing, beckoning her daughter. The little girl stopped where the rippling began. Her bare toes were submerged in the blue. She stared at her mother running on top ot the water and then, as if hearing her name called from another direction, she whipped her head around to where a boy stood, safely on the grass. He held out his hand, solemnly, "Ophelia!"

She heard his voice, but it was not the voice of a little boy— it was that of a man. It woke her from sleep—that voice. And there was a knock on the door. With a pit in her stomach, she slid out of bed, wrapped her robe around her and walked down stairs. Looking through the peephole, she saw it was Hank.

She unlatched the door and let him inside. It was 2:34 AM. "Hank, what are you doing here?" It wasn't until she said this that she realized how she must have looked.

"My mother and I had a fight. She wants to take my father off life support. It isn't my decision but I can't be here when she makes it. She wants to move on with her life. She's fallen in love with someone. She won't tell me with who. I don't think I really want to know. I'm leaving tomorrow. T'm going back to school—I'll just stay there until the semester starts." His words fell like spilled water. He had tear-stained cheeks, though he was not crying now. Ophelia watched him carefully This confession would bring them closer, possibly closer than they should be so quickly, but no one was in the house to stop what was about to transpire. I did not have hands to lock the door, to keep her in and him out.

Ophelia touched his arm. It was a small invitation, an abandonment of all her father had warned her of. Hank took it for all it was worth and collapsed into her arms, letting her hold him as he cried. In these tears, he breathed heavily into her neck.

Desire took over inside her. She kissed his hair. She took his reddened face in her hands and kissed it. She kissed his lips, tentatively at first. He looked stunned initially but when his sur-

prise at her forthright actions wore off, he answered them. Still gulping back tears, he kissed her cheek and neck.

"Where will you stay tonight?" Ophelia asked, as he held her tightly.

"I hadn't thought about that. I'll probably just go to a hotel.

Don't think about it," he whispered.

"No," she said pulling away, "stay here." She looked in his eyes. He furrowed his brow and stared back at her, he leaned forward and kissed her. Their night was only beginning. She pushed his coat from his shoulders, and it dropped to the floor.

A trail of discarded outerwear led up the stairs to Ophelia's bedroom. Hank followed her to the bed. They both sat down, suddenly shy Smiling a little, Hank spoke first: "Do you want to do this?"

"Is this what you intended in coming over here?" Ophelia asked.

Hank let out an anxious laugh, "Ah, no."

"Yes, then." She smiled. Hank went to say more but she kissed him.

He smiled as they finished undressing each other. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room they began to see the blue color of their bodies in the moonlight. Hank held Ophelia's breasts in his hands, kissed them. They touched, caressed between each other's legs. He asked her what she wanted him to do, how it felt. She could not respond for the feelings she was having... It wasn't there yet. She knew there was more to be felt and she wanted to feel it with him. Instinctively, she guided him inside her. He was on top of her. He pressed himself against her. He pressed again, and she remembered to breathe. She held him close to her, felt the hair in the small of his back. As they pushed farther into each other, he whispered her name into her hair, "Ophelia." He did not call her the sweet nickname that her father had given to her. It was the name I had called her— the name he had called from outside. It felt right to Ophelia for their bodies to entwine further and deeper, for their fluids to combine.

That night, two bodies slept in her bed. Her father would never know, nor would he have been able to understand the

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started to remember it in bits and pieces. She could remember the blue background, the woman and her child in a red dress.

She remembered running, greens and blues, and a boy. It didn't click until Ophelia was flipping through an old photo album from when she was young. She found a series of pictures of o ur family taken by a lake at our old home in the country. The pictures were taken just before we moved to our current home, •which was next door to one of Paul's college friends. We had needed more room and I had wanted the children to grow up in a neighborhood. The pictures were taken on the Fourth of July. We were having a picnic to celebrate our last days in the country. Paul invited his friend, our new neighbor, and his family. It was the first time Hank and Larry played together, but they got along well from the start. Paul took most of the pictures. Ophelia was too young to remember any of this. All she knew was that her dream somehow related to that day. She carefully removed the pictures from the photo album and stood up to take them to her bedroom. As she walked out of the room, she saw the picture that Hank had pointed out to her nearly a month earlier. It was the woman in her dream and her daughter dressed in red. It was us. I was naming the flowers in the garden. "Rue—they used to call these buttercups rue. It's the flower of remembrance," I whispered to her.

She laughed, "We don't need that flower! There's no one to remember—everyone is here!"

I laughed too, "If I disappear, you'll have to remember trie!" I kissed her cheek and jumped up. I ran through the grass.

Ophelia laughed and chased after me...

"Lia! There you are!" Paul interrupted, as Lia held the pictures, "what are you doing?"

"Nothing. I was just looking at some things." She felt as though she had been caught stealing, and the memory that had felt as if it were coming close fled.

"Are you ready to go? I just got a call from the funeral parlor. Hank's on his way. He needs a ride from the airport because he flew in to get here in time. We're going to pick him u p and go straight to the service," Paul explained. Ophelia did not move right away. This wasn't the romantic reunion she had

consecration of their love had he found out. In the morning, Ophelia woke to the sound of the front door shutting. She ran down the stairs to see Hank standing in the doorway. "I thought you'd left," Ophelia yawned.

"I went back home to get the rest of my stuff. 1 was just coming back to say goodbye." He kissed her forehead, "My father's not doing so well. Even if my mother sticks it out, I think I'll probably be back for his funeral in a few months. I just can't be here right now. I'll call you from school."

Ophelia stood quietly, trying to take in what he had just told her, trying to understand what it meant.

"Lia? We'll talk, okay? I know we've left a lot unresolved but I really have to go. 1 can't be here. I'm way too close to home. I'll call and we'll talk." He touched her face and she nodded. "All right. We'll talk soon, and last night was amazing." He kissed her again and walked out. His car was already packed so he opened the door, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled out of the driveway.

Dear Mother, Hank's father died and he hasn 't come back yet. Though he called me when he got back to school, nothing was resolved. 1feel betrayed and as if Dad might have been right. It felt so good to kiss Hank and then to sleep with him but it was rash and now 1 'm more alone than ever. It occurs to me that it was more than just wanting him. 1 think it might be love. F^very night, Ifall asleep to the thought of him, but I don't know where we stand.

I called yesterday and left a message with his roommate because the funeral service is tomorrow morning and I don't think he even knows his father died. I'm afraid to ask, his mother. She hasn't spoken of him since he left.

Dad's oblivious to everything. Jf Hank comes back, and doesn't recognise what we 've done... if hejust calls it amazing again and leaves it at that—• I'm not sure what I'll do. It would almost be better if be didn 't come back.

Then I wouldn 't have any expectations. You don't share that with someone, and then expect her to pretend it never happened. You don't make love to someone, and tell her it isn 't love. Especially when she knows it is.

Love, Ophelia

More and more, her nights werefilledwith her dream. She -40-

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notice his tears. She did not know that he was only saying these words to make someone else hurt as much as he was hurting.

envisioned. She walked over to the chair in the kitchen where her coat hung.

The car ride was silent. She was thankful for that. 1 suppose the impending funeral was the cause because this silence was uncharacteristic for Paul. They met I lank at the airport. Ophelia restrained herself from running to him by standing behind her father and not looking up. She hardly greeted him at all. She didn't know how to with her father there.

It was a beautiful service. The flowers were lovely and Paul gave a very nice eulogy. He had always been a very effective public speaker. Hank disappeared for most of it. Instead of looking for him, Ophelia chose to play the role of the respectful daughter. She followed her father around the room and listened to people talk about me, mostly. Recent death often kicks up settled residue. She was afraid to look for Hank. They hadn't spoken since only a few days after they made love and she didn't know what he'd say. It was interesting—the formality that their relationship had acquired.

Suddenly Hank pulled her aside. He held her by the arm.

"Do you see her?" he hissed.

"What?" Ophelia gasped, taken aback. "Hank, you're hurting me. Let go of me."

"My mother. She's there with my father's doctor. Can't you see it? That's who she fell in love with. That's how she pulled the plug. She had my father's doctor do it. He probably wasn't even as sick as they made us believe." Hank still held her arm.

"Hank, your father died because he was sick. I was there when he died. No one pulled any plug. Are you all right?"

Ophelia tried to touch him.

He grabbed her shoulders, "Don't you sec? That's what they want you to think? But what would you know—you're as lusty as my mother is."

Ophelia's eyes widened, "Is that what you think? Was it nothing more than that to you?"

Hank loosened his grip, "It was pretty impetuous to throw away your virginity like that."

"Go to hell," she whispered. She shook off his hold and walked out of the funeral parlor. She did not look back to -42-

Dear Mother, He is not mine. He is not my love—my life. He did not make love to me butfucked me. He did itfor the pure pleasure of the act not to feel this lovefor me. I realise now what a fool I was. My period has not come. Is that possible? I haven't bled in nearly two months. I feel it—I know it. I am pregnant with his child. I'm soiled by his lust (not mine, for mine was love... is love for I still think of him, for I am hurt by this.) If Dad ever finds out my life is over... and it's over anyway. I feel him growing inside me—my womb isfilling with him and I won't let that happen. I will die before I let that happen. lave, Ophelia

She is a small girl. I hold her in my arms. There are beautiful flowers and things are the way they once were when she was young. Her father takes pictures of us. "We are beautiful," she yells to me, throwing her little arms in the air. In the back of the yard where the grass is greenest, near the oldest trees, Larry plays with Hank. They have just met.

"Hey Hank! Watch this one!" Larry screams as he climbs a tree to one of the low branches and jumps off. My maternal instincts tell me to scold him, but I don't want to embarrass him in front of his new friend. I let Hank's mother scold them.

Instead, I let Paul take our picture as I show Ophelia the flowers. "Rue—they used to call these buttercups rue. It's the flower of remembrance."

Paul snaps a picture as we laugh. I kiss my daughter and I run. She follows me. We run, laughing and squealing, over the well-kempt lawn. We run toward the lake, to where the grass grows wild and dark. I yell to her, "Come, Ophelia!" as I throw off my clothes to swim in the lake. I wade in the water until it gets deep. I swim out to the island in the middle. I stand, naked and waiting.

"Ophelia!" another voice calls. Hank is calling her from behind, "come see what I found!"

Ophelia sees me standing on the water. The island was just

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barely submerged because there had been so much rain that year. She runs a few steps into the water. She feels water on her ankles. Hank calls her again. Once, she had chosen him. Once, she had run back to him and he had fallen on the ground, hooting, "Made you look! Made you look!" And again, she chose him, making love to him, to have him use it against her. She will not make this mistake a third time. She will walk across the water.

Or she will die in the attempt.

Hank found Ophelia's body in the lake when he was sent there by the search part)' that was formed when, after two days, no trace of her could be found. The autopsy showed that she had committed suicide and that she was with child.

Hank, still mourning his father's death, left before her funeral. He had already missed school for his father's funeral and he had too much work to make up to stay home longer. He left before Larry returned home. Larry, who had gone abroad for the Christmas holidays when all of this had transpired, hadn't seen his sister since the previous summer.

I knew, though no one else did, that Hank loved Ophelia.

I le had loved her the moment he saw her step out of the car a few days before Christmas. He had written her poetry that he would never show her. Hank left because he couldn't watch those who mourned her, and know that his rash words had killed her. The child, his child, died with her. He, too, had imagined that they might spend their life together. Now they would not.

A few days after returning to school, Hank received a package in the mail. It contained a small notebook, filled with letters to her mother from Ophelia. As he opened the notebook, a piece of paper fell out of it. He picked it up off the floor and looked at it for a moment. For the first time since he found her body in the lake, his face grimaced with tears. On the page, scrawled in very small letters, it was written:

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No longer mourn for me when 1 am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: Nay if you read this line, remember not That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O, if, I say, you look upon this verse When I perhaps compounded am with clay, Do not so much as my poor name rehearse; But let your love even with my life decay; Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 71

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Anne Potter

As my son drowses in the bath and curls in his knees I can see the swirling memory of his cells recalling those languorous watery months when the pop and hum of his dividing self were named zygote, morula, blastula.

So many syllables needed to hold an effervescing life.

I rinse his head. His hands flutter like two birds talking. Reaching, he grabs a fistful of my hair. I pull on each toe—"this little piggy . . ."

When he was smaller I asked my doctor, "Is he the size of an aspirin, a paper clip, a thumb tack?" She faced the sonogram screen. For five weeks he had grown. Shaped like a seahorse he had hands like mittens. She said, "His head is hidden in the yolk sack."

I glowed like a goose. My belly held a golden egg.

I lean down to place my palm against his tufty-feathered scalp.

He unfurls his legs with a splash and a toothless grin. Doused, I call him "egg" and marvel that my entire heart can curl inside such a tight little word.

Gennaro Brooks-Church, Gabor Family, Romania, 1999.

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1,1

Mikhael Shabani, Mud, 1987.

Gennaro Brooks-Church, Casa Patas # / , Spain, 1992.

-I,

Shoshana Sternlicht, Es-car-go, 1999.

•••'••

•

J-.

Brooks-Church, Traveling Musicians, Spain, 1992.

•

:

•

•

Gennaro Brooks-Church, Casa Patas #2, Spain, 1992.

h Brooks-Church, Casa Patas #3, Spain, 1992.

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;

I.1

Kelcey Nichols

David treads through the Katmandu airport parking lot feeling like an astronaut, bouncing through space, moving nowhere. Except, instead of the lightweight spaceman's suit, he wears an armor coat of an exhaustion so extreme it cuts to his muscle fibers. The heaviness in his chest reminds him of moving at altitude and the way he felt right after he found out Neil had died on the mountain. David must execute each step consciously, as if he were doing the Himalayan rest step through the streets. Move one foot forward. Lock the leg so the bone takes the weight instead of the muscle. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

A cabby with red, half-moon eyes steps in front of David.

"Where you go, sir? You want, I take. Lookâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" the man strains to focus David's attention on a beat-up red Honda. "No," David tells him. David calculates that there are thirty potential cabbies for every Westerner in Katmandu. He spots Kendra standing a hundred feet away, one foot on top of her duffel bag, guarding it, a head taller than the Nepalese cab drivers who circle her. The stance gives her a decidedly Western posture and David pauses to watch her as she narrows her eyes at the sun. Despite thirty hours of travel, she has a serene look on her face, carving out a small square of privacy in the midst of chaos. One of her New York habits. David considers turning around; he could simply leave and he would never have to tell her. At the same time, he Gennaro Brooks-Church, Roma Grandmother <& Granddaughter, Republic of Georgia, 15 wants to feel the familiarity of her body against his.

David spoke to Kendra last from a village in the Khumbu region over a crackling phone line. Kendra's voice was sleepy; he had called at four in the morning, her time. He thought of her, naked (she always slept nude) with her down comforter pulled tightly around her body, sitting up in bed and twisting the phone cord against her wrist. "David, what's happened?" she had asked. David began to speak in a blur of words but then heard his voice echo and delay. "David?" she asked. He could hear her, even felt she was near but he could not answer. The weight of exhaustion, an immovable lead blanket, covered his body. "David, what is it?" Kendra asked with panic in her voice.

David cleared his throat. "Nothing, nothing. I'm so sorry I -47-

It takes David a long time to reach Kendra. He still feels as if his body is operating at 25,000 feet—with one third the oxygen—even though he's been in Katmandu for four days. The other members of his expedition are back in the States. David sees Kendra raise her chin and again notices her urbanness. He had seen it first when she showed up for his Outward Bound course. The other students were wearing old khaki shorts slung low on their hips; Kendra had been dressed in tailored black shorts and a black V-neck shirt, a flash of silver around her neck. Kendra meets David's gaze and waves one hand over her head. David maneuvers through a herd of taxi drivers to reach her. He should have expected Kendra to attract a lot of attention: a blue-eyed, Western woman wearing toeless shoes and lipstick. As he gets closer he senses her body tense, preparing to leap into his arms. He almost takes a step back knowing that, in his present condition, her six-foot frame will topple them both.

Instead he turns sideways, comes in next to her and holds her body against his. He holds her a little too long; she twists away

to look at him. "Hi," she says. Her voice is gentle. Her eyes focus on the frostbite-blackened tip of his nose.

"You're here." David stares at the mild lines around her eyes, the wrinkle between her eyebrows.

"Of course." She smiles.

David takes Kendra's hand and leads her through the crowd of cabbies. The drivers stare at them with reproach each time they refuse a cab. Still, the men hover around David and Kendra shouting out prices and names of hotels. David thinks only of getting back to the hotel so he can lie down next to Kendra. As they are moving through the crowd, he hears Kendra say his name but the rest of her words are lost in the commotion. Her eyes gloss over with tears and he's not sure if they are tears of happiness, of disappointment, relief, or jet-lag. He zeroes in on a cabby standing in front of him and negotiates a fare.

In the cab, Kendra holds David's hand. She laces her fingers with his and holds his arm close to her. She kisses his cheek.

"You look terrible," she whispers. David nods. A truck honks loudly and Kendra's attention shifts outside. Her eyes widen, taking in the dusty streets of Katmandu. "It's incredible," she says. "For some reason I thought it would be much shorter. It's like a Third World New- York." The streets are lined with threeand four-story buildings: typical Katmandu apartments without running water, a family to each floor. Women stride through the streets in saris w^hile the men wear pants and long-sleeved shirts.

Katmandu smells of dirt and diesel, with a distinct animal odor beneath it. David remembers being struck by the sheer otherness on his first visit. The signs in the Nepalese alphabet, cows freely roaming through the streets, bicyclists, pedestrians, and cars all moving abreast of each other. The staring black eyes of children. He has never heard the sound of a baby crying in Nepal. A cloud of diesel leaks into their cab through the open window. David covers his mouth with his hand and coughs.

The city squeezes the life from its inhabitants: it is his opinion of all cities and the reason he stays in his Montana cabin. Their cab stops in traffic. Kendra looks at a beggar, the woman's small body folds in upon itself, a lone hand extending from the rags.

The woman sits cross-legged and her position makes her seem

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woke you. I just wanted— We just got down."

"Are you sure you're all right? How was it?"

He knew Kendra was looking at the apartment across the street with the red geraniums in the window. They had watched the neighbors, a yuppie lesbian couple with a baby, from Kendra's bed on David's visits to New York. At these times David could almost see himself living in New York with her. "I'm fine," David said. "Just fine. I'll meet you at the airport in two days."

Two days. He had spent months planning this climb and now all he could think was out. David put down the phone. The main room of the tea house smelled of lemon and onions.

David sat on one of the benches, picked up the tea he had ordered and let it warm his hands. Looking down at his jacket, he saw the sleeve had ripped and the material hung in a loose flap. His hands were dry and callused from the cold and he could barely feel the texture of the fabric against his skin. It occurred to David that the jacket had gotten caught on his crampon. He had gone down into a crevasse to look for Neil's body and snagged his coat climbing out.

as if she is tied around herself, her tailbone a root growing through the sidewalk.

At the hotel David gives the cab driver 300 rupees. "Please 300 rupees is too little. It is a long way. 400, please, sir. We are poor here."

David shrugs his shoulders in exasperation. "We agreed to 300," he says and hands the man several bills.

"Did you tip him?" Kendra asks as she follows David up the stairs to the room.

"You don't tip here," he tells her.

"David." Kendra looks at David for three seconds, a stare, and then offers a thin smile. "How much is 300 rupees anyway?"

"About five dollars."

"It's not that much to us," Kendra says.

David feels like sighing. "You have to bargain," he tells her.

"Otherwise, it drives up inflation. If you start overpaying and tipping, it screws up the whole economy. Already only the people who are involved with the tourists make money."

"Bargaining is fine. But you don't have to be too good at it."

Kendra stops on the balcony outside their room. She gazes at the Buddhist stupa visible from the back of the hotel. It is made of three white half-domes, piled on top of each other. On each level is a place to walk; people move around the domes clockwise. A woman drops to her knees, prostrates herself, stands, and falls again. The woman is in her mid-twenties, about five years younger than Kendra, and American. "Is she praying?"

Kendra asks David. He nods and says, "Something like that."

David touches Kendra's cheek and she turns her head to him.

Her eyes are a pale blue, the color of a mountain pool above timberline.

Kendra recovers from her jet lag in one night. She is up the next morning, exploring the roof of the hotel, checking out nearby restaurants (she calls them cafes) before David can even prop himself up on his elbows. "I saw the Living Goddess," Kendra tells him as she crosses the room.

"I didn't realize there was one."

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"She's only seven, so she sleeps a lot. Her term is over as soon as she gets her first period. She goes back to being mortal." Kendra throws open the curtains. Fog rises from the gravgreen floor of Katmandu Valley. Kendra's eyes shift north to a temple on top of a steep hill.

"Swayambunath," David tells her.

"I went there this morning and sat by the Lingum. At least a dozen little girls came and asked for blessings."

"Did I sleep that long?" David asks.

"No. It's still early. An Australian woman I met told me the girls were asking for love." Kendra crawls into bed next to David and kisses him. "1 put in a good word for us," she says.

Kendra lifts her body and straddles David. He recognizes her expression as her sex look.

"I think it's a religious thing," he says.

"It is." Kendra leans in and kisses David, with tongue this time.

David lets himself be kissed a few more times, then says, "I can't do this right now." He tries to find the words to tell Kendra about Neil's death but decides it's the wrong time.

Kendra stands without looking at him and begins to unpack her things. Her back faces David and he has the feeling it is because she doesn't want him to see her eyes. "Kendra," David says. She doesn't turn. He watches her sort through socks, shampoo bottles, and long underwear. There is a strength in the way she moves. David says her name again.

She sits on the edge of the one chair in the room and fixes her gaze on David. "So," she says. "Tell me about your climb."

David has the feeling she is asking something particular, that she has an idea of what happened with Neil. He wonders if jack spoke to her. Wbuld Jack call Kendra even though he only met her once? "What do you want to know?" he asks.

"Tell me the first thing that comes into your mind."

David thinks of the wind, the way the howling became familiar, almost reassuring. The feeling of moving through white noise and white space. He begins to speak but he feels the tickle of a cough in his throat and lets the cough take hold of him. It is easier to cough than to tell Kendra about Neil. The cough -51-

starts small and escalates until it shakes his entire torso, making a raw strip through the center of his body. He can't stop the coughing and his face feels red and hot. When the fit is over, he knows how bad he looks from Kendra's look more than from the pain in his body. "I think you need drugs," she says.

"I'm taking Amoxicillin," David tells her hoarsely and gulps down water from his water bottle.

"Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" her voice sounds like a mother warning her child away from a nasty house cat.

"What?"

"Jesus." Kendra paces to the other side of the room. Her eyes focus on his nose. "Look at you."

"What?"

"You look like hell."

"Thanks." David brings one hand to his nose and touches the end. Now that the frostbite is healing, it itches. He had worried about scratching off an entire piece but his exhaustion keeps him from thinking about it. Kendra glares at his nose. "I thought 1 might be like that famous astronomerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;missing a small piece of his nose," he says. Kendra's eyes don't soften. "You know," David smiles. "Like a war wound. Sort of sexy."

"It's not sexy," Kendra says flatly. "Tycho Brahe died of a burst bladder. In addition to having a missing piece of his nose.

Which he lost in a duel, not on a mountain."

"As if that's somehow more honorable." David tries not to wince as he touches the scab on his nose but he does anyway and Kendra catches it.

"As if climbing a mountain is inherently honorable."

"What does that have to do with anything? Whether or not it's honorable?" David feels too tired to argue with Kendra.

They have had few real disagreements and they always leave him feeling heavy and unsettled.

"That was your word, not mine." Kendra seems larger to David when she is angry. He never knows exactly what infuriates her, just that her anger comes sideways and unexpectedly.

She stares directly at him. "Where is this going?"

David doesn't answer.

"You don't know what you want or you don't want to tell -52-

mc?"

David is unable to speak. He sees himself as if he were outside his body, mute, blinking stupidly.

"Fine," Kendra says. "I'm going out for drugs." She leaves the room.

David isn't sure if she means drugs for him or drugs for her. The sound of the door closing stays in his ears for a long time. He stares out the hotel window and watches the people walk around the base of the stupa, pausing to spin each prayer wheel. It is easy to be religious in Nepal; everything is a circle.

Spin a wheel with a prayer on it and you are blessed. Circle the stupa and you are blessed. David has done all these things and knows he is not blessed. He feels the fatigue of too little oxygen, of having forced his body to use its final reserves. He remembers the cold on the mountain, the wind beating against his face, freezing, jack was behind him and the other four men of the expedition back further still. The end of his nose had gone white betore he even noticed the cold. The wind blew razor sharp against the exposed areas of his face, slapping his cheekbones.

Later, in the tent, Jack had looked into David's eyes and motioned to his nose. That was when David found out about the frostbite. David could not remember at what point the oxygen became so thin that they all stopped talking, the point when each word was precious because it expended valuable energy.

Outside he can hear the bells of rickshaw drivers and the distant gong of the nearby monasteries. The sky is clouding over and he hopes it will rain, quiet the dust aroused by tires and scuttering feet. David coughs and feels as if his chest will collapse. Every time he coughs now, he thinks of Neil. Neil in the red tent handing out pills: antibiotics for the bronchitis that began as colds in Katmandu. They all took Diamox for altitude sickness, Decadron for cerebral edema. David had felt cerebral edema once. His brain pounded against the inside of his skull, surging against the bone walls. He stumbled through the snow feeling as if his head were caught in a tightening vice grip. The stark whiteness of the snow against the Himalayan sky gave him vertigo. The sky was so blue he felt as if he were staring into a -53-

around him but gesturing nervously as they waited for the womping sound of the storm to fly over and past them. It sounded like a helicopter hovering next to his ear.

Kendra's eyes are filled with sparks. She curls up on the bed, her stomach to his back and holds him. He knows he looks haggard and feels ashamed under her stare, as if he is wilting. Kendra moves her hand across David's chest in a relaxed, absentminded way. She wears a perfume he hasn't smelled beforeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Indian, all sandalwood and spice. She touches the skin to the left of David's nose. "Does it hurt?" she asks.

"No." David rolls over so that his body faces Kendra's.

"Not so much. It just itches. Do you think I've lost a piece? It seems like there's a flat spot."

Kendra leans back to survey his nose. "A very small piece maybe." She takes his hands into hers. David's body trembles slightly. He is suddenly aware of how much he missed lying next to Kendra watching the flicker in her eyes. "You should tell everyone a different story about the nose. It will make you mysterious."

"Do I want that?" David puts one hand on her thigh. He remembers the shape of these thighs well.

"Absolutely." Kendra rests her head next to David's chest.

He breathes in her warmth, her honey-woman smell. With this new Indian scent, she smells like a hot cup of Chai. "I'm sorry," he tells her. "I wish I had more energy."

"Yeah," she says. "Considering you just climbed one of the world's highest mountains, you should be much more lively."

She laughs. "And the rest of the world is tired out by a run in the park."

David pulls her body closer to him so that she is leaning against his chest. He can feel her weight on his rib cage and is surprised by the pressure, by his own weakness.

"What was it like on the top?" Kendra asks.

"I'm not sure we got to the summit," he says. "It was blowing so hard. I couldn't really seeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" He stops. He wishes for a moment that Kendra were part of his immediate circle, a member of the Montana mountaineering crowd. She would already know about Neil, and there would be nothing to explain. It has always

deep, still pool of water. Jack had been with him. Jack had led him down to Camp Two and made him tea, telling David stories about hitchhiking in Mexico in the '60's. "We hopped on the back of this little gray pickup," Jack said. "These Mexican guys wanted to know why we had ropes so we told them to pull over and we marched up to this sheer face. No holds anywhere on that face. Just straight sheer rock. 'Aren't you going to use the ropes?' they asked." Jack's voice sounded muted to David and he felt as though his body were rocking to and fro. "We told them hell no. You just climb. The ropes are in case you fall and we've got to drag out the body." Jack handed David a cup of tea. Through the steam rising from his cup, David tried to focus on Jack's features. The light made David's headache worse and he noticed that Jack's face had a different kind of sharpness than the men David knew from the Rockies. Jack had skin like the desert where he lived: reddish brown with surface cracks and deep lines.

David closes his eyes and leans back against the pillow. He likes having a pillow, it seems a great luxury, after sleeping on mountaineering clothes for two months. He brings his fingers to his eyes and rubs them. He reads a few pages of a paperback spy novel and then gives up, putting the book on the nightstand.

As he falls asleep he thinks of Kendra winding her way through the Katmandu streets, a big Western woman, her tallness a handicap, an awkwardness in the narrow passageways. She had nearly gotten hit by a rickshaw the night before, used to, as she is, the loud honks of taxis and screeching firetrucks. The little dingding of the rickshaw meant nothing to her. In New York, it is Kendra that stops David from stepping off the curb into the path of a taxi.

Kendra comes in from the rain, her chin-length brown hair a mess of wet, stringy curls. She tosses a bag on the chair. Her eyes have slight black smudges around them where her makeup has run and she comes into the room like a frantic wind. As he wakes, David has an image of hiding from the tornadoes as a child. He remembers the wet earth smell of their Nebraska root cellar and the way his mother's arms were not wrapped -54-

i

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been long distance with Kendra; sometimes David thinks it is the distance that has kept them together. As if, because their day-to-day lives exist in such completely different spheres, the intersection gains an intensity and desperateness. David puts his arms across Kendra's back. He turns away from Kendra to cough and catches her grimace as his entire body shakes. The cough is so fierce he fears he will retch.

hoping to make a bid for the summit in the morning. David and Jack, having semi-summitted, had come down first. They were the strongest; it made sense that they should be the ones to look for Neil. It was all just a formality, a way of convincing themselves they were doing something. You don't find people alive who have disappeared on Himalayan mountains. Not people like Neil who should never have been on the mountain in the first place. David followed Jack across the snow, toward their yellow tent. He was glad not to be leading anymore, to merely fall in behind Jack's footsteps. The sky was a deep blue and the stars and moon threw milky light across the snow so that the mountain appeared to glow from within. Jack did not ask what David had seen or if Neil was alive. When David crawled into one of the tents, he forced himself to cook some ramen and drink tea before falling asleep with most of his gear still on. He woke to the sound of his own breathingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;loud and foreign. The breath came from somewhere outside his body and David was convinced he was dead. Then he realized the breathing came from Jack, who snored through a congested nose. David could not hear or feel his own breath. He panicked. Jack woke. Jack said, "Take off your crampons and get into your sleeping bag." David did as he was told. "It's all right," David told him. But Jack didn't seem to hear him.

On the mountain, David had been the strongest on his expedition. It had been David who rappelled into the crevasse where the German expedition had spotted Neil's backpack. He shone his head-lamp against the ice walls that tapered into darkness. When he moved, his head-lamp threw light against the walls with a suddenness that was like tissue paper igniting. He had no idea what time it was; they had started climbing before dawn and it was now several hours after dark. He thought the glacier could easily give way and trap him in its jaws, flattening his body against the ice. David rappelled ten feet. He was in a narrow part of the crevasse. He heard the glacial stream below him and flashed his light downward, catching a flicker off the water. Neil's backpack was stuck on an ice ledge in a wider part of the crevasse twenty feet down. David shone his light to see if Neil could still be attached to the pack. He wasn't. The backpack was red against the stark, white walls. It seemed to him that the crevasse was a room for solitary confinement, a place for the insane. He turned his headlight toward the pack and called Neil's name. David heard his voice echo off the ice. His cry surrounded him: He had not known he was afraid until he heard it in his own voice. When he looked up, he could see the rope, disappearing into nothingness and he had a flash where he could feel his body falling. He remembered the words You're delirious but he did not know if he spoke them, thought them, or if it was Jack yelling from above. He only knew that he was climbing out of the crevasse, scrambling, trying to dig in his crampons and get out.

When David emerged over the rim, Jack met his eyes and stood. David had an impulse to rush toward Jack and hug him but he lacked the energy. The other men were at a higher camp, -56-

The first two days in Katmandu with Kendra are a feverish dream for David. She is in the room sometimes, giving him antibiotics, or food. In the hotel restaurant he tells her that he doesn't want to eat until they are back in America. "David," she says softly, "I just got here. We'll be in Nepal for another month."

Mostly he tries not to speak because he is afraid of not making sense and of blurting out something about Neil. She tells him comforting things: his fever is down, he doesn't cough as much in his sleep, it looks as if his nose is still intact. She doesn't ask where things are going again but the pressure is in her eyes. On the third day David wakes feeling clear, not strong, but no longer disabled by exhaustion and what Kendra thinks was the beginning of pneumonia. They decide to visit a temple Kendra wants to see because she is curious about the Hindu cremation cer-

1

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emonies.

As they walk down the street, Kendra tells David about voodoo in Brooklyn, part of her anthropological study for graduate school, and the words sound magical, as if she were talking about a country he has never visited. Her eyes shine in the morning light and her wavy brown hair blows against her cheeks. David thinks that she will still be beautiful when she is old. Kendra stops mid-sentence, aware of David's gaze. "What?" she asks, not unfriendly. David kisses her lightly on the lips. Kendra just smiles. Her smile is enormous and takes up almost a third of her face. David knows they are nearing the temple because he sees more sadhus, men with spindly bodies clad in saffron robes. Some move in a crouched position, others have saffron and crimson paints to mark people's foreheads. A few sadhus wear dreadlocks down to their knees; David remembers this sect believes the dreadlocks are symbolic of the chaos of life.

Kendra pulls herself nearer to David as they cross a cement foot bridge. They sit on stone steps across from the temple and four funeral pyres. A slim, dingy river separates them from the cremation ceremonies. Tourists mill about speaking in loud voices and twisting their telephoto lenses. Kendra narrows her eyes at them and seals her camera in her backpack. They watch a young man in a loincloth, his head shaved, come out and stack branches to prepare a pyre. The young man is of the merchant caste; there arc different pyres for each caste. Other young men in loincloths appear and vanish, moving back and forth. The oldest son is in charge of the ceremony. They watch as the oldest son and another man carry the father's corpse and lay it on the pyre. The father's body is slight and wrapped in white cloth.

The son pours gasoline over the corpse and lights the body at the head. David finds himself irrationally shocked; they should start at the feet. The son wailsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a cry more like the dying call of a trapped animal than a human being. He howls with a rawness that makes David think of torn, exposed flesh. A man leans over David's shoulder to get a better picture of the burning body. Kendra is in shock still, rigid, unblinking. The smoke rises from the pyre in a billowing cloud. The river flows beneath the platform, demure and shy. The sons sit on a wooden bench -58-

taking in the flames consuming their father's body. There are no Nepalese women here and noticing that makes David glad Kendra is beside him. The oldest son has stopped crying but his tortured voice echoes in David's mind. The sons put more wood on the pyre.

The corpse turns into dust and lightness and will be carried away by the river. David thinks of Neil's body being swept away by the glacial stream, back into the underworld of the mountain. He remembers a day a week before Neil's death.

David followed Jack through the snow field that separated Camp Three and Camp Four. He was not acclimatized yet and it was difficult to make his way through the snow. David had listened to the sound of his crampons digging into the snow and ice, the whir of the rope as it slipped through the carabiners that anchored his body to it. From somewhere above he heard the voices of the German expedition, laughing. Their laughter seemed to float through the sparse air and take on a glory of its own. He and Jack thought there would be a window of good weather in five days, a perfect time to make a bid for the summit. But they had to be strong, fully acclimatized. The sky would shimmer, as if it were w7ater, reflecting the depths of the mountains beneath it. When David sat down on the other side of the snow field, he wanted to tell Jack that he knew they would make it; a sense he felt in his blood and breath. He met Jack's eyes and realized Jack had the same feeling.

"Gorgeous, isn't it?" Jack said. David nodded. He was still trying to catch his breath.

Jack motioned down the slope with his shoulder. David spotted a lone figure moving through the snow field. David recognized Pemba's red parka; he was climbing alone. "It's all right," Jack called to the Sherpa. "Just stay there." Pemba stopped.

Pemba looked down at the snow with awe, as if he were staring at a fearsome depiction of God. "Too many crevasses here." David clipped Pemba into their rope. The Sherpa had shown David pictures of his daughters the night before. Their eyes were dark, like Pemba's, their wide smiles authentic and innocent. One of the girls posed in a straw hat, as if she were a -59-

movie star.

"Where's Neil?" David asked.

"Camp Three. He said to come up here and tell you he wasn't coming."

"I'm going to kill that guy," Jack said.

David led the way down with Pemba behind him and Jack in the rear, cursing.

They found Neil at Camp Three sitting in a tent with half of the Australian Women's Expedition, playing a game of Hearts. Jack looked at David and shrugged and David felt Jack's rage. Neil peeked his head out of the tent. "I'm kicking ass here," he said. "I've already won five Powerbars and two hot chocolates."

Jack fixed his gaze on David, narrowed his eyes, pressed his chapped lips together. David could also feel Pemba's eyes on him. "Neil," David said. "Come out here."

"Sure. I just want to finish this game. Be with you in a sec."

Jack kicked off his crampons. "Sure thing, Cinderella." Jack threw a snowball at the tent.

"It's okay," David said.

David heard one of the girls giggle and had the feeling the others had their hands over their mouths, suppressing laughter.

Neil stepped out. "So, what is it?" he asked. He stood with his hands in his pockets, slouching down in the snow.

David felt tension in his arms and shoulders. Neil was twentyeight, just finished medical school. Their expedition doctor.

"Oh," Neil moved his foot in the snow. "We decided to stop for a break and hang out. Then I just got involved in the card gameâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" David grabbed the front of Neil's coat. "I don't care if you don't give a fuck about climbing this mountainâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;How could you tell Pemba to climb alone?"

"He's all right," Neil said. "Pemba's cool. He said he didn't mind."

David gripped Neil's coat more tightly. He wanted to knock all of Neil's teeth out of his mouth and see the red of Neil's blood stain the snow. "You have no idea what the fuck you're doing."

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Neil said, "Fuck this. I can climb by myself."

"You can stay at base camp." David turned his back to Neil knowing that the young man was fuming behind him. It was a game for Neil; he was playing at being a mountain climber.

Pemba stood waiting for David in front of David's and Jack's tent. The man looked down as David approached. "Why don't you climb with us from now on," David said and Pemba nodded. He could still see a fear in the Sherpa's eyes; it was beyond the usual fear he had seen in almost all Sherpas. Once Pemba had rushed into David's tent at base camp and tapped him on the shoulder. He told David to come outside but he wouldn't say why. David had gotten dressed and stepped out.

He found Pemba gazing at a crescent moon rising over a snowcovered ridge. He and David had stood, listening to the wind, watching the stars emerge from the deep sky. Pemba was cautious; he knew you had to stop and take things in. Sherpas were afraid of the mountains because they had grown up next to them and knew the Himalayas were something to respect. How arrogant we were, David thinks. How terribly arrogant.

David watches the smoke rising from the funeral pyre and thinks it will take a long time for this body to burn. Hours, perhaps. In hours, the shell of a man's life will be nothing but ash in the river, bones polluting an already rancid waterway.

David stands abruptly and offers his hand to Kendra. "I need to get out of here," he tells her. He anticipates a protest but she merely stands and walks by his side away from the temple.

They have afternoon tea at a restaurant near the hotel. The Westerners who reside permanently in Katmandu are mostly British so the city caters to their traditions. From their rooftop picnic bench, David and Kendra look out on the Buddha's eyes painted on a gold background on top of the stupa. Lines of prayer flags tremble, strung from the very top of the stupa to the base. Kendra sips her tea and looks blankly, peacefully, toward the horizon. The expression on her face is one David hasn't seen before, a private expression, the way she must look alone in her apartment. It bothers him that he has never seen this look before, as if he has missed a part of her or willfully not -61-

uarto 2000 Contributors acknowledged it. On a nearby rooftop, a Louis Armstrong song plays. The music gives David a sharp stab of homesickness. He longs to be on his own porch, staring out at the pine trees he has watched grow over the past ten years, listening for the hollow hoot of the barn owl. He would like to wake up with Kendra in his cabin. David puts his hand on top of Kendra's. They sit without speaking and watch the umber light give way to sepia.

"Neil was killed on the mountain," he says.

Kendra closes her hands around David's. "You found him?"

David holds Kendra's hands more tightly. "He fell into a crevasse. He had stopped for lunch, I think."

David watches the lights of Katmandu fade into a dusty haze in front of him. He concentrates on the shadows cast by the people circling the stupa. The American girl creates long, thin lines of gray. He can almost hear her footsteps against a background of gende gonging and the lull of Louis Armstrong.

David notices how, in this light, Kendra's eyes have become the color of the Himalayan sky. He thinks of the match setting fire to the dead man, the son's wail, his own voice echoing in the crevasse. He sees the American girl rise and fall, then she disappears around the curve of the stupa. When he looks at Kendra, the space between himself and her eyes is the same distance he felt on the mountain, staring up at the sky.

J. C. BARKER is a transplanted Texan and mother of two. She also writes creative nonfiction. a twenty-four-year-old GS student, has always written poems and short stories in addition to songs and plans to continue writing until she expires.

SANDRA PAULINA BAZZARELLI,

KEITH BRECHER

feels that he cannot be summed up in so few

words.

GENNARO BROOKS-CHURCH has traveled to sixteen countries

photographing Roma (Gypsies), in the process amassing an impressive archive of about 64,000 photographs. Some hundred of these will be published in his forthcoming book, Roma: Photographs of Gypsies. a 1999-2000 fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at CU's Graduate School of Journalism, has been writing for newspapers for fifteen years. This is his first published work of fiction.

BRANDON GRIGGS,

MYRONN HARDY is finishing his MFA in Writing at CU's School of

the Arts. His book of poetry, Approaching the Center, will be published in spring 2001 by New Issues Press. started writing when she was seven years old and has published both stories and poetry. This story is for her father.

KAIT KERRIGAN

a CC graduating senior, recently returned to complete his degree after a two-year stint in the Army.

SAM LANCKTON,

KELCEY NICHOLS works

as an editor at Zoetrope: All-Story. Her writing has appeared in Quarto and the Village Voice.

ANNE POTTER graduated

from GS in 1999 with a BA in Literature and Writing. "Egg" is about her son West, who was born on Labor Day, 1998.

IDRA ROSENBERG is a Barnard senior who plans to flee the Northern Hemisphere after graduation.

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has been an amateur photographer for over thirty years. He lives in Newton, MA and Israel with his wife and the younger of his six kids.

MIKHAEL SHABANI

SHOSHANA STERNLICHT graduated from GS in May 2000 with a BA in Literature and Writing. Her photograph, "Es-car-go," was taken outside the ZD Winery in Napa Valley in March 1999.

OENGUS TIMPSON was born

in Dublin, Ireland, and moved to the U.S. when he was eight years old. He is currently working on a group show with the Brooklyn Art Coalition and applying to the Whitney Program in the fall.

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