Taylor Mazer – “Elevated Train”
Table of Contents = Some Fiction Davy Knittle = Breakfast at Tiffany's ............................................................ 1 Melissa Palmer = At This Moment ............................................................... 2 Andre Zucker = La Ruta Del Bakalao ......................................................... 3
Art = Taylor Mazor Taylor Mazer was born 1988 in Kalamazoo, MI. He drew prolifically throughout high school and is currently seeking his BFA in illustration. He is currently showing work in Byrneboehm Gallery in Grand Rapids, MI and he continues to attend art fairs in Chicago. http://www.taylormazer.com
Jim Blackburn = editor/founder Alexa Kocinski = fiction editor
Taylor Mazer - “Tribune Entrance”
“Breakfast at Tiffany's” by Davy Knittle
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I'm too grateful to be home in a diner full of Philadelphia's ghosts and regulars to care that this lady thinks I'm twelve. Besides, Sonia returns to take my order and I stop my list there. "What'll it be, Buster?" she asks me, and I order a piece of strawberry cheesecake and a large glass of milk. I pause, adding a cup of coffee and lying by way of explanation that "I have a long drive," as if coffee is only given out only under certain circumstances and I've just spit out the code that breaks the “you must be this tall to ride” rule. She brings me the coffee immediately and asks, "You take milk in that?" and when I nod, she walks away.
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think Heather is going to strip for my birthday, and while I'd like to continue to work on my position on this, the traffic on Roosevelt Boulevard is so heavy that I pull off and park behind the Tiffany Diner, intending to wait it out with a slice of cake. I'm seated by a woman whose nametag says "Sonia." Sonia is wearing an apron that makes a tent over her breasts, and when she hands me a menu and rotates away, they turn out to be much more shapely than the apron conveys from the front. Grapefruit-like, I note and consult the menu, thinking about grapefruit and cake and then about milk, all at the same time. Sonia brings me a glass of water and looks at me with a sweet, attending hawkishness, like I'm her nephew visiting from Nebraska and killing time at the diner while my parents wrap presents back at her house. Sonia’s misinterpretation of me is emblematic of something that, as a young, transgender man, happens to me all the time - where I’m locked permanently at a max-out age of fourteen. And yet I feel like an undercover agent, liable to take her into the back and show her my badge so that she understands my permanently juvenile maleness as a front for a greater mission. I work out a couple of examples of what I'd tell her when I blow my own cover: I'm the health department's youngest inspector. I'm a junior secret agent sent to inform her that she's the long lost sister of Princess Di. I work for a guy I met in the supermarket who hired me out at $50 an hour to go into diners and recruit attractive women with low-paying jobs to be dancers at his all-night strip club.
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I’ve heard of lots of people who meet their life partners in diners, jewelry stores, at the welcome desk just over the Florida border, and yet I don't know what I'd say to Sonia to penetrate the combined fortress of her sexiness and the authoritative separation afforded by her apron, her diner job. Meanwhile, if I thought that Sonia were my soul mate, it might be because she’s got a fix on her own Philadelphia ghosts, who are bopping around all over the place at her feet. Whatever barometric tweaking the ghosts perform on their various Philadelphia domains, they're all over us tonight in the diner, little ghostlets dancing around the dessert case where Sonia replaces the rest of the cake and turns to give another diner, an older lady, her change. This lady is small to the point of being ellipsoidal and is evidently a regular. Sonia says, “Goodnight, Noreen, and Merry Christmas if I don't see you’s all before then." "You're going to bring the nieces around, yeah?" "Sure thing, Sonia. You work Tuesday? Send my love to your family until then, alright?" "Every night but the holiday itself," Sonia says. "I bet those girls are all kinds of big." "You bet your life they are. We'll see you then, Sonia," she says and heads for the door. A moment later, Sonia brings the cheesecake, the milk and creamer for my coffee, and I sit there barely eating and thinking about my parents who split up just around when the song "Breakfast at Tiffany's" came out in 1995 and with whom I endured one horribly tense meal in this diner right around that time. When that line of thinking feels like too much of an indulgence, I try to generate pick-up lines for Sonia, which all end up being about buns and dough and milkshakes and then about fruit: cherries, bananas, one really terrible line about wanting to be "cucumbered in you" that makes me wince visibly. Sonia thinks the problem is the cake and glides over to me. "What's the matter, sugar?" I almost want to try out one of these lines, and I want there to be something wrong so that she can stay with me long enough to fix it. I come out with: "No. I'm just taking my time with this cheesecake," which is the worst of both options. "Could I have some more coffee, please?" I ask. "Of course, baby," she says. "Baby" makes Heather appear in the room for a moment before ghosting out. Sonia brings me the coffee and asks, "You’s sure you're okay, Buster?" "Yeah," I say, opting for the confessional sweetness that's distinguished my short career in flirtation. "Just, you know, nervous about the holidays."
She bites. "You got lots of fam coming in?" She's holding the coffee pot and puts it down. "No, just my parents, but they're separated, so that's always an adventure.” "I hear you, sugar," she says. "My own family is all kinds of trouble." Then she asks, "You from here, Buster?" "Yeah, well, from East Falls." "Just up the road," she says. "If it gets real bad, we're open every day but Christmas, and I'm working nights all week." This is my chance. "Thanks," I say and hold out my hand. "I'm Carter." "Like the Backstreet Boy?" she asks. "Like the Backstreet Boy," I say and smile broadly, still shooting in a barrel for a fish that’s immune to me. "I'm Sonia," she says. "So I gather," I say back to her, nodding to the serious institution of her breasts. "Seriously, Carter. Anytime," and she walks back along the pick-up counter to deposit the coffee pot in its station. When she brings my bill, it's for $1.65 plus tax for a cup of coffee, and she's signed her name and written “Merry Christmas, Carter,” in the big, floral script I imagine the girls in The Breakfast Club using. I've always had designs on doing a girl who refused, just a little, to vacate the 80s. A girl who let the calculated Molly Ringwald swing in her hips tell everything she's got, all held at attention behind it.
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I think Heather's going to strip for me, because before I get in the car to drive home, she's online and says "oh hello," and I say "hi" back and ask "how are you doing?" and she tells me, "I'm naked." I say, "I want to see you." When she says, "so see me," it feels like too much, but I go ahead and do it anyway. We video chat for a minute, and Heather’s wearing only a pair of disarmingly hot black heels that amplify the impending illicitness of nudity the way a thong might. She says she's practicing but won't say for what. I say I need to get in the car and that I'll call her when I get to Philly. I can't tell if she's upset when I hang up. On my way out, I take the last two oranges from the fridge and slip them into my duffle bag. I ride around campus twice, down Church Street, between the two libraries, and back past my house to give myself time to recollect anything I've forgotten. I think briefly about the girl whom I encountered in the main library this afternoon retrieving a pair of shoes from the circulation desk where her one-night stand had left them. I note
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the similarities in the shoes, hers and Heather’s, and leave campus, turning from Vine Street onto 66 West. Driving south on the Merritt, I think about Heather saying "oh hello" the same way she might in fifteen years when we get a babysitter for the night and I pick her up in the lobby bar of a hotel in the Adirondacks to revamp our spark. I think of this only because Heather talked this week about wanting to do it years from now. Part of me thinks it's romantic, and part of me wonders if she's sniffing out some kind of impending doom or worse, stagnancy, against which I am still benignly resolved. In my full-blown fantasy about this night, we're both 35 and pretending to be divorced with kids that we don't talk about, who are spending the weekend with their other parents. We've both come to this place to solitarily envision some next steps after spending the last ten years trained on our kids and otherwise in the vacuum of the passionate, disordered loves that we’re worried will remain unparalleled, despite their expiration. When I see her in the bar, she's wearing a complicated wolf-gray sweater that makes her shoulders, her breasts, and their interplay look phenomenal. Heather sitting alone at the bar makes the whole place look inviting, and I station myself near the other end. I glance at her again to consider her sweater, its big open neck and display of the commencement of her collarbone. I order some unembarrassing bottled beer and take a newspaper out from the encyclopedia of stately, useful things kept in the pocket that’s shirt side of my sport coat’s lapel. Eventually, I put the paper down, and she's looking right at me or out beyond into the hotel’s handsome circular driveway. I debate saying, "I'm honestly too old for this, but I just thought..." but refrain because I know she wishes that I’d be sexier tonight than I customarily manage at home. I walk up to her and say either, "The engineering of your sweater reminds me of a Smithson sculpture" or something more to the point like, "Word on the street is that Adirondack wolves are bred to sniff out people who walk alone." Maybe she asks my name or just pauses and looks at me with the incisive, betta fish deadlock that means she wants it. I smile at her, noting that she still operates on a sex appeal that's hotter for its contrast with my impishness – the twinge of projected defilement that’s always permeated our sex, where a crafted, mature woman wrecks a boyish, well-scrubbed man. In the silence between the trading of remarks, I hover over her, hesitant to sit down. "I'm Carter," I eventually say and offer my right hand for the parents’ night-style handshake our oldest child's teacher might have given us the week before. Maybe I kiss the tendons behind her knuckles or across the joints of her narrow fingers. I turn her hand over and kiss her palm next, saying something about how it distinguishes itself, to underwrite the affect of a first encounter.
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I release her hand, and in response to my name, she says: "Carter, like the president," my favorite of the trifecta rounded out by "Carter, like the Backstreet Boy" and "Carter, like the guy who cultivated peanut butter," to which I say "no, that was Carver," which is routinely embarrassing for everyone. While I'm still holding her hand, she tells me "My name is Heather," and I bring my head down until it's just above hers, the heat of my breath creating a rainforest tented between my mouth and her ear. I whisper, "What a beautiful name," and I think many times about running my tongue along the inside of her ear, my discreet nod to our fifteen years together, but maybe this is too much. We both want me to take it slow. At several points, we’ll want to turn to the bartender and tell him that we're long married so he doesn't feel like he's getting in on the action, but we’ve promised we won’t. If she can tell she's working me up, she'll order another round of drinks and torture me for an hour while she sits there, full of the flirtiness we never needed. Otherwise - or if she can't bear it - after a few minutes, she’ll stand and I’ll run my arm along her waist, steering her back to the room. As we walk there, I’ll make two mental diagrams – one that illustrates the way I consider sex as it relates to our relationship and another that illustrates her thoughts on the matter. I’ll wonder if, in her perceptions of our sex, Heather sees something that I've overlooked in my quest for an ideal and unshakeable balance in all things. In the first panel of my diagram, there’s a bathtub that’s full of water and contains two paper boats floating there with tape on their hulls to keep them dry. The next panel adds a well-constructed naked woman in high-heeled shoes who submerges herself in the tub, her head and the upper curve of her breasts protruding from the water. Another person stands at the threshold of the door clad in quiet pants, a sweater, and the sort of hybrid hiking-dress shoes that I wear. The disruption of the even plane of water by the submerged woman has soaked the paper boats, which have sunk without her noticing. The other person is revealed to be a man who stands in the doorway, his shoes poking into the room. As he watches her beckon him, he waits there, wrestling with whether to focus on the woman or the boats. In the interest of parallelism, Heather’s diagram starts with the same hull-taped paper boats sitting in a tub full of bathwater. Whereas the stillness of the water is appealing to me, in Heather’s fantasy, the boats, intimidated by the comparative hulk of the thick-thighed woman, and she have no such relationship. In this diagram, the same woman, naked except for the shoes, comes into the room and sits on the edge of the tub, her heels digging into the throw rug on the tile floor. She runs her fingers through the water, creating a wave that causes one boat to rock against the other and pushes both of them to the edge of the tub's curve. The woman pulls her hand back through the water, drawing the boats towards her. She directs the water with her hand, the boats bobbing closer and further away as, with her
other hand, she begins to touch herself, enunciating small, tight circles around her inner thighs, her self-touch paced to the tensile waves of the water. The feet visible in the doorway are bare, and when he steps into the room, the figure is naked entirely. From the bathtub, she watches him run his own hands along his torso and into himself, finally - her wet, patient man. III. One night, Heather and I talked about her stripping when I'd asked her if she'd done it before and she said "no," and because I said I thought it would be fun, I feel somewhat responsible for whatever she has planned. For her birthday at the beginning of November, I wrote her a song and played it for her in the unisex bathroom in Fisk Hall after I pulled her in as she was leaving her Russian Literature class. She sat on the toilet and we debated having sex right there but left instead, one at a time. I think she wants me to like my present as much as she liked that song since it's the first time we're celebrating my birthday. This is why she's going to strip and I want her to do it. I want to see her, but I have some misgivings. I occupy the drive between the diner and my house coming up with a list and settle on these: For Heather's birthday, I gave her something borne of my creative work and she's giving me her body, stylized, but her body. I don't want her to think that her body is all that she has to give or all I'd want, even if other men have made her feel that way. "I feel disadvantaged as an attractive female," she's told me." That isn’t something I want to exacerbate. After she strips, everyone will want to have sex. The first time we have sex in my house, I want us to feel equal. If she's just provided me with a gift that is also a service, this will be impossible. I don't want to disrupt my mom or upset the cats or addle the Philadelphia ghosts who take care of me when I'm home and who take care of my house when I'm not in it to keep watch. I don't want my mom to hear something and get the impression that this girl is just an easy fuck, especially because I'm making a big show of bringing her home to be met.
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I knew about the Tiffany Diner before I knew about the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, and so I grew up misjudging the reference in the eponymous song, and I still hear both meanings when I listen to it. I heard the song most frequently during its heavy rotation in the late summer of 1995, while my parents' marriage splintered irreparably and we made our last trip to visit my grandparents in Manhattan before my parents finally
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separated in October. On that trip, the first few miles along Roosevelt Boulevard felt interminable, and we spent all our car time listening to the radio. I doubt we ever heard "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in front of the diner, even though the traffic on that stretch of the Roosevelt is terrible and the diner is enormous and the song was on the air all the time. I remember thinking about the song while sitting on the day bed in my dad's old room and freezing on "our lives have come between us," like the song says, and being astonished at the accuracy of the image, of the finite and clean boundaries of the separation. The disruptions, fights and general unrest that compromised the standard, sinusoidal waveform of my parents’ marriage were often triggered by changes in surroundings: getting out of the car, entering or exiting the grocery store and, most often, by leaving the house. Domestic departure uniformly caused tension centered on my well-being, as much as I worked to prevent it. Particularly turbulent preparations for departure began with my mother yelling up to my dad in his second-floor study across from my room to ask, for example, "Have you seen Emily's backpack?" "Ask Emily, she knows where her backpack is." "Emily! Have you seen your backpack?" "Stop yelling and just go ask her." "You're right there. You ask her. Please, Boris." "I'm really trying to work on something, Sally." "Honestly, Boris," my mom trudging like a wildebeest up the stairs. Meanwhile, I’d have shut my door triggered instantly by yelling and deposited my backpack on the floor outside. My mom knocks on my door anyway: "Emily! We're going to leave in ten minutes, are you ready?" "You don't have to yell. Everyone can hear you.” "I don't want to rush her," my mom says. "What is she doing? Filming a porno? She's six. Open the goddamn door." "Honestly, Boris," my mom says one more time, ending the conversation. My mom opens the door and I'm all ready to go, reading a magazine or flipping through my encyclopedic "Flags of the World" book and trying to look studious and prepared, something that seems to get my dad a lot of mileage. Half an hour later we're in the car, driving past the Tiffany Diner on the Roosevelt, the radio on playing The Spin Doctors or "Mr. Jones," and my parents looking straight ahead as if having an unspoken debate over how to best conduct the car in traffic. I'm silent, looking out the window and waiting for our song to come on the air so that I may consider its wisdom while we’re all in the same place.
At age six, the song "Breakfast at Tiffany's" didn't suggest to me that the solution to a dying relationship is to rediscover the couple's shared interests in a movie but, instead, to have breakfast - to have Breakfast at Tiffany's. I reasoned that the song's big point was that the forced face time of a diner booth mandated the kind of communication that would have saved a relationship or, for that matter, my parents' marriage. I was later embarrassed by this interpretation, but in the music video, the band does have breakfast in front of the Tiffany store in Midtown, and they raise their glasses and they look like they like each other and like they’re having a good time, so I may not have been all wrong.
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My childhood bedroom is closed off and unheated when I'm not here, so when I open the door, it's fifteen degrees colder than it is in the rest of the house. Ramparts, the cat, darts under my bed and I kneel down to plug in the space heater. My enormous, inflatable sixth-birthday gift pterodactyl is still hanging from the ceiling. I briefly compare its angularity to how Heather's body might look when she strips, but I stop myself. I sit on my bed thinking about my father being here in two days and then about Heather’s arrival in a week until the cat seems like he's ripping something apart, and I lie down on the floor to try to extract him by his paws, which he hates. Ramparts is determined to stay there, too deep in to reach, although once I give up and sit on my bed again, he comes out partially to sniff the edge of my comforter and my ankles, as though trying to figure out if we’re linked. I get down on the carpet and try to grab him again, but he retreats and I stand up to retrieve the fishing rod toy from the bedroom where my mother is asleep and snoring. She wakes up briefly when I enter and asks only, "Carter?" "Yes, Mom." "What time is it?" "9:17." "Do you need an extra blanket?" "No," I say, "I'm just looking for the fish toy so that I can get Ramparts out from under my bed." "Okay. Goodnight, Carter." By the time I say "Goodnight, Mom," she's asleep again. I spend ten minutes on my stomach, flinging the fish around, but Ramparts doesn’t bite, his harlequin eyes flashing out at me. I stop only when I hear my mom’s voice. "Carter?" she asks.
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I turn around to find her in my doorway in her calf-length L.L. Bean tartan plaid nightgown, looking like an aseptic, strenuously thoughtful Mrs. Claus. "Carter," she says, "I'm really glad you're home." "Me, too, Mom," I say and turn again to the fish on the end of the string-andplastic-rod toy that Ramparts has enveloped beneath my bed. I reach under to grab hold of the fishing rod and tug until I free the attached fish that shoots out when Ramparts releases it. I jump the toy up and down near the edge of the bed to simulate the way a tiny dolphin might, in warp speed, spring from and return to the water. Ramparts watches for a minute, and when I sit up, he lunges out after the fish. I pull it away and grab him, dropping the toy and throwing him over my shoulder like a slain deer. Ramparts, surprisingly, doesn't mind, and when I sit down on bed and drop him into my lap, he rests there, temporarily still. My mom sits down next to me and nestles her fingers into the fur under his chin, massaging him there and on his chest. He purrs and we stay like that for a minute. She asks, "Was the drive okay, Carter?" "Yeah," I say. "Just heavy traffic on Roosevelt Boulevard." "Okay," she says, "because I called you and you never called me back." "I was driving, Mom." "I know. I just figured you'd call." I consider saying something about not wanting to call in traffic or only calling if I knew I was going to be really late, but I say none of those things. "I'm sorry," I say. "I'm here now." Ramparts crawls out of my lap and onto my mother's legs where he kneads his front claws, one after the other, into her nightgown like he's operating a Stairmaster or riding a bicycle. He does not seem to be hurting her. "So Dad comes on Sunday," she says. "You're still okay with that?" I ask. The idea that my family will spend Christmas together, despite the fact that it's not a holiday we celebrate, is my idea. "Of course," she says. "It's not a day where you want to be alone, is it?" "Yeah," I say and pick up Ramparts and hold him over my head like a piglet at an agricultural tradeshow before he squirms and I drop him onto the floor. "You think Heather will like me?" my mom asks. My mother has a history of quasi-adopting my girlfriends. She takes one look at them, and they open up to her about all of the things they've never talked about with me. Several of my ex-girlfriends from Philly have come to visit her while I'm at school. "Of course," I say.
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Davy Knittle is a graduate of Wesleyan University and a 2011-2012 Thomas J. Watson Fellow. His work focuses primarily on the process of becoming acclimated to subways, bridges and dogs and to changes in landscape, scale and temperature. His work has been featured in elimae, Philadelphia Stories, 580 Split, Jai-Alai and Natural Bridge among others.
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"I'm looking forward to meeting her,” she says, then stands and asks me, "Can I have a hug, Carter?" I stand, too, and we embrace while Ramparts winds himself through my legs. "You want me to leave him in here?" she asks. "Sure." "But don't let him get too close to your face," she says. I look at her, trying to avoid the juvenile rejoinder of "I know, Mom." "Goodnight, Carter," she says and pads back to her room, the cat following her as far as the hallway and then darting back under my bed. I get up and shut out the lights and close the door. I lie down on my bed and Ramparts jumps up on my chest. I close my eyes and pretend it's two nights before Christmas three years ago, the week before my eighteenth birthday. I pretend that I've just gotten home from being in the car alone on West River Drive where I’ve pulled into one of the parking lots to watch the water through the bare trees. I think about the quality of sleep here, its texture as being specific to Philadelphia's sky, to the way the city smells, to the deals the ghosts sweeten at their leisure that make my dreams here brighter and more solid. I put one hand on Rampart’s back and open my eyes to consult the unarticulated sky of the clouds, as if watching for a sign of the potential for those dreams. I hope I have them tonight, and I wonder briefly if Heather, when she’s here, will have them too.
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Taylor Mazer – “Oriental”
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Taylor Mazer – “Tribune and Sidewalk”
“At This Moment” by Melissa Palmer
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I
t was hard enough for Josie to get a date these days, what with the economy being so bad. It’s not like she could afford to go out to bars, even if she wanted to. It was hard enough with the social networking and the dating sites that promised to find her one and only, despite the fact that half of the handsome and available young men messaging her were actually convicts or overweight married guys looking for some kind of treat that had less to do with love and more to do with a tragic spellcheck error. It was hard enough with all of that. And then there were the bagpipes. She had grown accustomed to the playing, sometimes soft and steady in rhythm with her steps as they fell. But today he was playing louder, more boisterously than usual as she walked, an up-tempo number at full volume with little to no pauses for breath. When the song would finish, he would start it up all over again, the same tune over and over. Normally, her close-walking companion would change it up a little, if not for her benefit than for his own artistic sake. He enjoyed changing it up, which is why today, it was more than just an awkward annoyance to hear the song again and again. It wasn’t that she didn’t like disco; it wasn’t that at all. It was just that a little variation in his song choice, especially at this moment, would be more welcome than what she’d been hearing on repeat. She was half hovering under the oversized patent leather purse she’d suddenly felt happy about picking up last week at the consignment shop. It was functioning as more than an umbrella, which was also necessary. More importantly at this point, it acted as her shield, a buffer blocking out the booming sound coming from right behind her. Some days were easier than others. Some days he’d play the Carpenters or an old Viennese waltz, tunes suited for dentists’ offices and discount stores. Other times, it was the sweet sounds of the 60s or the more traditional Scottish folksong. Today she wasn’t that lucky. She wasn’t doing so well in the getting lucky department. It’s not like she needed a date - not where she was going - but sometimes it would be nice to have someone on a day like this, someone to hold her elbow as she negotiated the slippery sidewalk, a nice guy in an overcoat with a large umbrella to keep the cold rain from plastering her hair to the side of her face, little black beads of seldom-worn makeup sliding down her face like slalom skiers. In her hand, the crumpled paper said 3:00 to 6:00 pm, the messy handwriting hanging on by a runny blue thread under the droplets that fell from the overhead awning just in front of the entrance marked with the name written in scroll script. There was a set of heavy white wooden doors carved with the swirls and squiggles that could
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only mean she was entering somewhere formal where the only thing colder than the temperature inside would be the small talk and uncomfortable, forced smiles. By the looks of it, she was, unfortunately, right on time. “Are you going to stay out here Fleming?” The piper, swept away by strains of his own song, finished his tune and looked up somberly as if the question in itself were an offense. Fleming had gone all out today. His kilt was pressed into perfectly crisp pleats matched exactly by his tunic, which mirrored his bright plaid cross and waist belt. His scheme was quite deliberate. From his spats to his hose and garters all the way to his puffed-up feather bonnet, he had made sure every stitch of him was in place, completely squared away. Not one color was off. As far as bagpipers go, he was looking top-shelf. “I didn’t think so,” she sighed, taking a moment to straighten the mess that had become her hair, wiping off a blob of skier from her upper lip. “Here we go.” As expected, a rush of chilled sterile air brushed her cheeks like an estranged love’s kiss hello. She wished she had brought a hairbrush or, thanks to the unforeseen downpour, a beach towel to make some sense out of her sodden hair. As if he’d read her mind, Fleming turned up the volume on the song that was now dictating the cadence of her heart. At least he was standing close enough to provide her with some much-needed heat at her back - because from the front, all she was getting was ice. An army of eyes shot down the corridor where she stood half frozen by the small room where she’d reluctantly given up her coat. The black and white tiles on the floor suddenly reminded her of a dartboard as she trained her stare downward concentrating on an imaginary shot she needed to make, rather than giving any attention to the angry peacock rump that was the group of lovely ladies dead ahead or how her hair had gone gooey from rain and products she’d never used before. Fleming was still riffing on the intro to the song. He seemed to add more flourish and pizzazz this time. He didn’t seem to mind that she ducked into the bathroom. Bathroom stalls, showers and other more private or more inauspicious occasions he had left to just Josie. It was either out of respect or complete disinterest. That, she hadn’t figured out yet. As far as her piper, he’d been with her for as long as she could remember. One day in elementary school when the boys and girls were divvying up sides for dodge ball, she turned around and there he was, decked out in kilt, tunic and baseball hat. No one in her class seemed to mind his rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” And by the time she was in high school, folks had just grown accustomed to him, bleating out “Weird Science” during chem finals, freestyling à la jazz as she sat munching a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch. There was that brief time in junior high when Fleming just up and disappeared, temporarily and unexpectedly replaced by a robust
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and overtly affectionate Gospel singer named Yolanda who was good natured but, nonetheless, not Fleming. He was a silent partner despite the bagpipes. Yolanda was something of an extrovert, bidding praise and advice to all of Josie’s schoolmates. It was only then she realized how much Fleming had grown to be part of her. She was thankful when he’d emerged one sunny morning just a couple years later. But before she could even get out the first word to question what happened, he’d jumped into a medley of pop songs that were dominating the charts. She appreciated his efforts to be relevant and hip as she got on the school bus for the first time as a high school student. It was somewhere between that day and his soft, seductive rendition of “Killing Me Softly” as she departed for her prom that she stopped questioning at all. Either way, the warmth of the ladies’ lounge was welcome. She loved how these fancy places did everything they could to disguise something as innocuous and potentially gross like a bathroom as something else, a lushly furnished sitting area, an old-timey room full of cabanas. She’d seen a few. This one was set up in toasty mauve velvets. It reminded her of a dressing room you’d see in a saloon in an old western. No matter what it was dressed up as didn’t matter, so long as it served a purpose. It had enough light for her to see the mushy wreck that had become her face. How she was convinced to slather this stuff on in the first place had escaped her. She wiped at the mess under her eyes and slicked down her fuzzy albeit sopping hair so that she could push some of the stray pieces behind her ears. With her blunt, no-nonsense, half-wet do, she could almost pass for someone who had done their hair this way on purpose, like those models in the old Vidal Sassoon commercials or those music videos with the serious models in the black dresses and red lipstick. It would have to do, this attempt to spruce up for the occasion. It wasn’t everyday you met up with your first boyfriend. And it only made matters worse that he’d become obscenely successful in the finance world; not that Josie begrudged him the success, but it made the crowd even tougher than what she was used to. The original group of looky-loos had dissipated, leaving behind one or two stragglers who stood agog looking more like nutcrackers than smartly dressed professionals and suburban soccer moms. She just needed to get down that corridor. It emptied out into a larger room, a more open setup where the pipes wouldn’t reverberate in such a way that her bones seemed to shake. It wasn’t just in her head. She passed a large glass vase full of respectable flowers that absolutely quaked as they walked by. “Really?” She turned back to Fleming with a pleading look as they approached the opening. There were overstuffed chairs on opposite sides of the room. They looked soft, sound absorbent. “Can you stop for just one second?” He looked at her sad eyes, and for a moment, something happened that hadn’t occurred in the past two decades. He stopped.
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At the threshold of the room full of well-dressed people who shook hands, hugged and pretended to listen to each other, the piper freed his mouth from his music, leaving the room as close to silent as it had been since Josie’s conspicuous entrance. “Thank you,” she half-sighed and smiled, touching the small Scot’s shoulder. He didn’t try to ignore her but wasn’t a bit moved by the gesture, too busy with his own business. He steadied his tall, feathered headpiece so it stood perfectly erect, a giant Josie atop his head, straightened his cross and waist belt that hung against scarlet tunic like raspberry stripes. He even took a moment to inspect his hose and garters, making sure his cherry legs weren’t hiding any stray raindrops or wrinkles. His patent leather spats looked like mid-life convertibles gleaming hot in the sun. He made sure he was spot-on before they crossed the threshold. She didn’t see him puff out his cheeks as his lungs filled to capacity. She hadn’t guessed that he’d saved his loudest playing for this precise moment. It was too late. The overstuffed chairs were deceptive in their complete lack of buffering ability. If anything, the loud blasts of “Stayin’ Alive” bounced off the thick leather cushions, ricocheting across the room. The few people who stood in tight clusters loosened up their circles to get a look at who or what had just made such an entrance. Some looked disappointed that it was only a slightly familiar-looking young woman in brown, slouching so far into her own shoulders she may have been able to pass for headless. They were, on the other hand, agape at the sight of Fleming, who was so engrossed in his own music that it was he who did not notice. Even if he hadn’t been putting on the performance of his life, the piper was one often unimpressed and unmoved by the opinions and musings of others. Staring, pointing, even thrown tomatoes were never so much as a distraction, let alone a deterrent for the one who played the pipes. “Sorry, excuse me. Sorry ‘bout this… it’s… I can’t help what he… oops, excuse me. Sorry.” She moved through the path of people that seemed to be carved into the small crowd and continued her apologies to herself, no one, and whoever would listen as she stood in the greeting line. By the third rendition of the song, she could see that he waited there at the end of the line at the far end of the room. He was flanked by women she almost recognized, save one she knew straightaway. She wasn’t wearing the traditional white of the perfect catch, but she still smiled the same well-trained, Vaseline-slicked lifeless grin she’d learned years ago when she was still doing dance recitals and her favorite accessory was a sash. She was the one who wrote him the letter, the one that said he’d be happier with her and that Josie would understand. It was years ago, stupid high school stuff that meant nothing, literally or existentially. It was more than under the bridge as far as Josie was concerned, but for a split second, she thought that Fleming was going to break
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into a more sinister tune. For a tiny tick, she thought she could hear a lick of something ominous break into the loop she’d forgotten was still going. People were stopping to talk to her, holding her hands and patting her on the shoulder as she smiled back nodding, speaking softly and demurring her head to the one Josie could call her first. He didn’t say much. He sat there, reclining with a changeless look on his face. Out of everyone there, he seemed to be the most genuinely at ease. At least he was happy where he was. She had to believe that. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with the nonsense anymore that she dealt with everyday, the senseless dating anxiety, performing like a circus clown, the pretending, the meeting people and number exchanging, that stupid first-time conversation fodder that is so rooted in what seem to be questions that are already written for us. He wouldn’t have to act like a game-show host or ask the prewritten 20 questions that everyone wants to hear and no one wants to answer - truthfully, at least. He wouldn’t have to wonder if he’d be spending his nights alone or getting all caught up in that dopiness and romancing that always end up in some sort of question about forever. Now he wouldn’t have to worry about any of that anymore. After today, he’d never have to worry at all. Josie was glad for him that he found that peace. Fleming was booming now, really wailing. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see someone fighting the urge to join in on the chorus. Most people are put off by a steady soundtrack of bagpipes, but she’d been waiting so long in this line that it had seamlessly become an accepted component of the festivities. The main squeeze, letter girl, the giant tube of extra-whitening toothpaste stood there gleaming. Her makeup had been applied expertly. Not a hair on her head was out of place. She held a small handkerchief that she apparently did not need in her left hand, and she blotted at phantom scourges on her face that posed no threat to soiling her cheeks the way Josie’s had. It was interesting to watch her pretend that she couldn’t hear Fleming, or better that she couldn’t see Josie approaching three people back on the line. It was obvious that she could. She’d flinched noticeably only a second ago. But now she was back to nodding at whoever spoke to her, alternating between saintly looks and hands folded in front of her, then serenely at her sides. On downtimes, she’d motion to the man next to her or touch his arm or cheek all virtuous and better than everyone in the room. It was her right to act that way, Josie supposed. It was kind of like her special day, after all. Fleming dipped his volume as they approached the head of the line without having to be told or given the pleading look of a person driven half-insane with desperation. Josie gripped at the satin lining of her only business suit. It was brown and utilitarian, but this was short notice and she didn’t exactly have a closet full of formalwear. She squeezed at the jacket lining pretending to reach for something in an inner pocket that didn’t exist, attempting to nonchalantly wipe away the clammy layer of
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cold saltwater that coated her hands. The song ended. Her time was up. Before Fleming started up again, she cleared her throat. “Hi, Cherie, you look, uh, good.” Fleming slowed his tempo and quieted into diminuendo. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry for your loss.” Her smile was fake but far less strained than Josie had expected. Her well-trained voice was level and even. She could moonlight as a wrong-number recording if she ever needed extra cash, though Josie doubted that would ever be the case. She didn’t quite know what else to say to the tanned woman who smiled for no apparent reason. She was fresh from a wedding and even fresher from a honeymoon cut short due to some freak lightning and an ill-chosen spot for a siesta. “Thank you, Josie. How very thoughtful of you to come and pay your…” she paused to look at Fleming, who was just about sitting piggyback during the exchange, “respects.” “No problem at all.” Fleming’s music began building again. He’d finished the first chorus at a respectfully slow volume and lullaby’s pace, but that reprieve was clearly over. She continued to speak and resisted the urge to raise her voice over the song. No one could compete with the piper when he was charging up, so she leaned in closer than comfortable. “I’m not that far away, so it wasn’t a big deal to come. So, um, I’m sorry about your honeymoon. And all this.” She had already taken a step back from the casket and the too-soon widow. Fleming was on a roll again and she had never been a good closer. “Have a good day.” The rain had let up a touch as the duo walked to the economy car that looked more like a small turtle rather than a conveyance of mechanized transport. Josie’s hair stuck out in rusty-brown hunks of hair products and humidity, her suit clinging to her in all the wrong places. Fleming had let up on the volume so that it faded with the sight of the funeral home in the distance. He sat next to her in the cramped car looking way too big for the space, even without the feather hat. It sat on the floor in front of him, sprouting like a giant red Allium between his knees. Josie peeled a piece of wet hair from her face and questioned why she’d even gone in the first place. She looked over at her quiet friend and exhaled a warm breath, her companion shrugging thoughtfully when she spoke the only words to break the silence of the ride home. “That went better than I’d imagined.”
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She taught at several private institutions post Masters in order to subsidize writing her first novel Amelia’s Attic, a mercenary stab at commercial Chick Lit. She found that also, not to be her thing though she did have a few requests for full reads on the project. After an unfortunate turn of events, she found herself writing at the popular paper in Cape May County where she wrote stories on budgets and murders, rapes and fires. Though that also was not her thing, what she did find completely wonderful there was the offer to write gaming and humor columns during her tenure as the Wildwood reporter. It was then that she picked up on the creative writing, becoming an honored poet of the Rogue Scholars Collective with “Brueghel” and “In the Frame,” and when she wrote “Mom’s Song” and “Things I forgot to tell you,” two pieces featured in Kiss Me Goodnight: Stories and Poems by Women Who Were Girls When Their Mother’s Died. Her poem “The Broken Doll,” was accepted by Illuminated Paths: Women’s Visions on Sex and Self. Her short story “Mrs. MacMillan’s Garden” will be featured by the Writing Disorder next Spring and she was recently named an “honorary Scot” by the McStorytellers for her short story “At This Moment,” which also appeared in Quail Bell and South Jersey Underground magazines. A chapter of her memoir A Life Less Normal, appeared in The Quotable. “Shattered” also appeared in the Wilderness House Literary Review and The Write Room. Her short piece “Transvestite Music,” another excerpt appeared in the South Jersey Underground. “Gustav’s Leash,” the second installment from her Twin Oaks stories appeared in the Larks Fiction Review.
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Melissa Palmer was a teaching fellow at Seton Hall University, assisting Dr. Angela Jane Weisl on the book Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages and on the paper “Let Us Inne: Performing the Second Shepherd’s Play” delivered at the 35th International Medieval Congress. During those years she published several poems and short pieces, one of which was her claim to fame for subsequent years, a haiku about Bea Arthur honored by Spaceghost himself on Spaceghost Coast to Coast. She was part of a spoken word poetry group during those years but found slam not to be her thing. She knew even then that she was an awkward and silly person.
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Taylor Mazer – “Stone”
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Taylor Mazer – “Wacker”
“La Ruta Del Bakalao” by André M. Zucker Note on the text: La Ruta Del Bakalao is real.
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yellow school bus was parked at the point where the pavement met the grass; it seemed out of step with the world around it. It was odd that a park with no school near it had a bus waiting for people on a Friday evening. The bus was an old model from the 70s or late 60s. Its yellow paint had faded. There were no children around, only adults were seen entering the school bus and smoking cigarettes outside of it. The bus was a gathering point of some sort, and one by one, individuals trickled onto the bus. James Donnell only saw this scene from the periphery. Not paying attention to which direction he was walking, he found himself on the green grass walking parallel with the long bus. The second James noticed the bus, a woman's head popped out and yelled, “Subete al autobus!” “Wha?” he replied without thinking. “Get on the bus!” James looked up. He was surprised to hear English in this part of the world. He made direct eye contact with the girl yelling these words to see if they were meant for him. James looked around and then back at the girl. “You speak English?” “American.” “Then get on the bus!” She was smiling, holding a bottle of red wine. James smiled. He had nowhere to go and nothing to do; he didn’t even have a return ticket to New York City. There was nothing in his life, except “Get on the bus.” With only his clothes, cash and a sense of adventure, he stepped off the grass onto the pavement and entered the bus. He scanned the inside and immediately saw her fire-red hair. She waved him to come over to her. As he approached, she handed him her bottle of wine. She wore a knee-length green skirt and a black t-shirt with a logo for some European brand James didn't know. She had jewelry all over her body that made little metallic sounds as they brushed against other each time she moved. He took a swig from the bottle and sat down. “American?” he asked. “Oh, yeah.” James looked around the metallic interior of the bus. He saw college students with rucksacks eating sandwiches, playing cards and passing around a bottle. It reminded him of the school bus that took him to junior high on the West Side. These people were older now; they spoke Spanish, Italian, French and Greek. A driver came
onto the bus and closed the door as he exhaled. The ignition started, and the passengers started to cheer. “Where are we going?” “We’re almost there,” she replied and kept chugging the bottle. The bus started to count down. She smiled and James grew more confused. “Cinco, Cuatro, Tres, Dos, Uno. Bakalao!” The driver pressed the gas pedal, and the bus started moving east. She smiled at James as she took two orange pills out of a tin. The two pills were placed on her tongue and she kissed him, inserting one of the pills into his mouth. The bus was exiting the East Side of the city and empty highway lay ahead. James closed his eyes as they kissed and exchanged pills; he gave up his sense of direction for this moment. “Where are we going?” James asked when their mouths separated. “We’re already there,” she replied. In the back of the bus, a voice yelled, “Sous les pavés, la plage!” Everyone cheered.
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The sun was setting in the west behind them as the bus cruised down the N3 Highway. Other buses, station wagons and vans were all speeding down the highway into the same coming darkness. Passengers pulled down the windows to greet their friends in other vehicles, yelling in different languages at 110 kilometers per hour. Spanish rush hour had ended, classes were done for the weekend, and a clear highway lay between the city and the Mediterranean. The sun was almost gone and the highway lights were turning on one by one to illuminate whatever path they were going down. Techno music played from a transistor radio in the front of the bus while guitars and handclaps echoed from the back. Travelers were singing songs in all languages from traditional songs and hits from the 80s to old union songs. A busload of songs with a sparse dark route in front of them. Hash smoke filled the interior and softened everybody's faces, morphing them into bodies instead of separate individuals. Bottles of rum and vodka made their rounds up and down the aisle. The students took off their school clothes and stripped down to their undergarments. A man ran from the back completely naked yelling in Greek. Not everybody paid attention. James was back to kissing the girl with the red hair, exchanging saliva, tabs and identities. They grabbed at each other not sure where hands were landing or if any of this was permissible. The drugs started to hit, sounds and colors started to blur, and the bus felt like it was moving faster and faster, yet still in one space. Every touch they
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exchanged blended with the environment, becoming liquid feelings. The distinctions between sight, sound, and touch became unclear and irrelevant. In the haze, James looked up and saw that darkness had come to the highway. It was easy to forget he was in Spain. Nobody on the bus even noticed his public display of affection; perhaps it was a laissez-faire mentality or, perhaps, the drugs, music and excitement that consumed everyone. James was feeling all too happy to think about how time was running by him. He had come to Madrid in a rush. At the counter in JFK airport, he threw his platinum card on the table and told the representative, “Get me the first flight out of here. International!” It was about six in the morning at the airport, and James had been partying in the Meatpacking District all night. He arrived at the airport without any luggage, half drunk, un-showered and smelling like six different nightclubs. Surprisingly, he had no trouble getting through security; typically, terrorists and drug smugglers don’t show up drunk. The TSA had a laugh thinking that he was so drunk, he’d be surprised to wake up in another country. Airport security gets a few of those in New York City. It was a night of clubbing like any other; drinks, drugs and celebrities were all James barely remembered. As he left the last place he had visited walking to 12th Avenue to get a taxi, newspaper trucks were throwing stacks of the morning edition onto the pavement. He walked by a few stacks without much interest. He stood still and put his hand in the air to stop a yellow taxi. Looking back down, he saw a picture of his father staring back at him. He saw “scandal” written in big red letters under his father’s picture as a taxi stopped in front of him. James knew about embezzlement, greed and all other crimes committed by his father. He knew this life of leisure he was leading was now exposed in big red letters. He entered the taxi; without thinking, he uttered, “JFK airport.” The couple stopped kissing when the bus came to a halt. James lifted his head and heard ambient thumping coming from outside the bus. All the people were filing out holding various bottles, cheering and laughing. He watched them exit but saw no city or town out the window; they were just on the side of the highway. Colored lights flashed into the bus, and the girl stood up and took his hand. “Where are we?” She gave a smile, “We’re already there… like before… we’ve always been there.”
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Flashing colored lights were in James’ eyes as he exited the bus. Deep baselines and synth-generated sounds spun circles in James' ears once he was off. Their hands separated, and she ran ahead into the lights. He tried to keep track of her, but a light flashed into his eyes and she was gone.
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Hundreds of color-tinted silhouettes of party people were all around him; the throng had converged on this desolate spot off the expressway. James walked ahead, taking in each flashing light like a display of fireworks. He couldn’t make out where he was; the pounding baseline of the music made it hard to concentrate. He kept walking forward into the unknown party. Some of the Spanish and French party kids passed him by chatting, spilling bottles of drinks, smoking, and kissing each other over and over again. Inebriated and tripping, they walked into the flashing lights. The music was thumping and calling James to enter. He wasn’t in front of a nightclub or disco but a garage full of 18-wheelers. The interior was gigantic with at least ten trucks parked. The lights were on a bar suspended above the party. It reflected off the aluminum facades of the different trucks. The party kids were dancing on top of the trucks and on the ground. Others were having sex in the cabs while more people danced in the empty trailers. There was a makeshift bar in front of a wall full of tools. The people behind the bar had a different ambience than the rest of the garage. From the sight of their greasy jeans and out-of-fashion t-shirts, James could tell they were mechanics and probably owned this garage. They stood in a group behind the bar smoking, laughing at drunk people, checking out the girls, and drinking. James walked up to one of the mechanics. “Where are we?” “Que,” replied the mechanic in Spanish. “Donde estamos?” James asked with an American accent. “La Ruta Del Bakalao.” James stood there trying to translate Spanish while the lights flashed green, then orange, then yellow, red, and blue. His year of Spanish in high school did not prepare him to know what “La Ruta del Bakalao” meant. Instead, he almost involuntarily spoke the one word of Spanish with which he was most familiar, “Sangría,” and they handed him a cup. As he drank and tried to figure out what was going on, James realized he had lost the girl with the red hair. He started to walk through the garage sipping his Sangria but did not find her. In all the hash and cigarette smoke, it was hard to see anyone's face. He spent most of the time looking for her red hair. Hours passed by. The music seemed to be one continuous song. James threw away his Euros on more and more alcohol. He danced with different women and men underneath a gigantic truck. He kept looking over his shoulder for her red hair, but she never showed up. She got absorbed by the party. He wondered if she met another man or if she had already left. He started to look for the exit; again, he was lost. He saw written in spray paint on a wall: “Sous les pavés, la plage!” The alcohol was not helping him find his way through the maze. Then she put her hand on his shoulder. She grabbed him and spun him around.
“Where are we?” he immediately asked. “La Routa de Bakalao,” she smiled. “You look tired, you want a coffee, red bull or some coke?” she shouted over the music. They kissed. “Let’s catch a bus out of here.” She led him through the labyrinth to the exit. James was happy to breathe the smoke-free air. She grabbed his hand, and they ran towards a depot with many different buses. They hopped on a bus that was pulling away from the truck stop. It was not the same bus they arrived on. Hundreds more had arrived and left the garage. James and the girl fell onto a seat kissing. “Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything,” she said.
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The bus sped through the night, taking the two of them closer to their destination - always east, always towards the Mediterranean, like they were following a distant star and only stopping for the next adventure. “Where we just left… was that La Ruta Del Bakalao?” James looked at the dark N3 highway passing outside the window. “No,” she replied. “Where we’re going, is that it?” “No… it’s where we are. Right now and just before and where we are going. You’ve never heard of this?” “No… did I miss something?” The bus started to veer off the road and slow down. “This is the greatest party on earth. It’s here. It’s in this bus, in the next bus, back at the truck stop, wherever we stop next. It’s the whole highway… all the way until the beach. And at the beach, it's still the party … and we will be at the party wherever we go until we find our way home.” “The party is everywhere,” James replied. The bus stopped, and everyone started to stagger off into yet another orgy of flashing lights and thumping music. She ran, and this time, James grabbed her hand so as not to lose her. She led him deeper into the newest location of the party. He grabbed her and kissed her. She popped two more tabs of ecstasy, one for each of them to share. James looked at the scene before they entered the next dance floor. Bodies lay around the outside of the bus like a battlefield with some people on their backs, others vomiting on hands and knees, some standing upright lost in a haze. Couples were kissing and grabbing each other, swapping partners, and permitting everything. It was the way James envisioned the apocalypse.
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Engulfed by a new set of lights, they found themselves in an abandoned restaurant. A DJ was spinning records in the kitchen, and the tables were turned into dance platforms. Another partier exiting the restaurant grabbed James by the arm. “El millor partie de la Terra!” “I don't speak--” “Greatest party on Earth!” He was holding a bottle of bright green alcohol. James looked at the bottle and up at the partier. He moved James close to him and said with a Barcelona accent, “Did you know absinthe is legal in Spain?” “It is?” “Well, not the stuff Toulouse Lautrec was pounding… but it’s something.” He handed the bottle to James. “Sous les pavés, la plage!” the man cried as he stumbled away. James and the girl swigged the bottle and kept moving deeper into the restaurant. James walked forward tentatively scared to lose her again. She looked over her shoulder at him; flirtatious, sexy, innocent, this would be James’ memory of her. He held this vision in his mind, the way the light struck her, the smoke around her, how her hair contrasted with the endless darkness in the distance. He wanted this mental photograph to last forever. While he dreamed, she climbed on top of a table and started dancing to the music. James was still on the floor, eyes even with her knees. “What’s your name?” He started to dance to the music. Vocals and bass lines made her lose herself in her cocktail of pills, absinthe, lights and music. James looked up to her on the old restaurant table. Each light illuminated her in a different color; her dance became looser, faster, more erotic; her body dissipated into the music, her mind a cipher to decode. James had no idea where to go when he landed in Madrid three days earlier. He didn’t speak Spanish, didn’t know much about Spain, but he had a lot of money to spend. He would ride out his time partying and living in hotels around Madrid or, if that got boring, Barcelona. He never expected to see a beautiful woman with fire-red hair call him onto a bus. Life had dealt James the last hand he expected. Now he stood under this beautiful woman unaware of her name, age, sign. He wanted to follow her to all the parties and wild rides her future held. He wanted to see through the different-colored pills and music and find who was under it all. She jumped off the table into James’ arms. He caught her and realized she didn’t know his name either. He cradled her entire body like a groom carrying his new wife to the bedroom. They kissed again, one of many, but real. He started to walk her deeper into the transformed restaurant; through the hash smoke, they passed a smiling DJ spinning records and disco lights and the wall of the speakers into the quiet on the other side of the sound. They looked for each other and were alone for the first time.
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* The sun was up when they arrived at the beach. All the party kids scattered in different directions for cups of coffee, tortillas and anything else to nurse a hangover. No one gave it a thought when he carried her body off the bus, another lifeless drunk, another girl who had too much, just a casualty of La Ruta del Bakalao. James brought this stranger to the only goal they had ever shared, the beach. He faced her into the sun and sat with her in the sand.
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“Sous les pavés…” she started. “La plage!” he responded. Alone or just unaware of anyone else around them, they removed each other's clothing. They had no thoughts, just their physical movements. He didn’t want it to be the E pills or the absinthe in his system. He wanted something real, something underneath it all. James wanted more than a passing moment. From his back, he saw the stars above him and realized that they were outside. A natural feeling coursed through him. He needed to speak. He didn't need to drink, smoke or drop anything. He was comfortable being still. He lost track of time as he watched the constellations move around the two of them. Naked, he reached over to her. She was too distant, and the quarter of a meter between them was too much for James. He touched her stomach, then her breasts and her right cheek. She was sleeping and silent. He touched her hands and ribs, her lips and her red hair. James looked up at the stars and heard the sounds of the N3 Highway behind them. He touched her again. He silently wanted her attention. She was so warm. She didn’t respond to him. He squeezed her, and she didn’t react. James realized how little he knew about her. He saw the truth now; he saw she wasn’t with him anymore. She wasn’t moving, and she wasn’t going to move again. Her body scared him. It lay in front of him no different than the sand or pavement. In James’ mind, the music disappeared, and he saw an infinite dark space in front of him. He hoped that they were alone; he didn’t want anyone to see her naked and lifeless. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” James said. He took her clothes and dressed her. He forced her skirt back on and gently replaced her bra and shirt. She looked normal, like a person who was just sleeping it off until the party was over. James, with all his strength, picked her up and walked her through the smoke, lights and music of the party. He found a bus on the other side and carried her onto it. They sat in the last seat as he waited for the bus to leave. He hugged her and held her as close as possible. No one noticed them. There was nothing odd, just two people in the back of bus sleeping, like the other times before the bus drove into what was left of the night.
“This is it… the beach,” he said. He was hoping he was wrong. Perhaps in his inebriation, he missed a pulse. Maybe she was breathing lightly and he never thought to check. He begged inside for the drugs not to dissipate. If he could stay high, there would be some fantasy of her looking over and saying something. James sat in the sand and felt his consciousness return, a sadness, and a regret for a party girl he met in passing. He watched the sun rise higher above the earth. He saw sunbathers arrive for a day’s leisure, he saw newspapers like the ones about his father being sold and lost. The Mediterranean opened in front of him. She lay still in the sand, looking almost happy. James went through her pockets until he found her passport. He opened it up and looked at her full name. He just stared at the letters of the name she hadn’t revealed. Her address was thousands of miles away across the world. Who was waiting for her to come home? He felt unworthy to share this moment with her. He touched her check and kissed her with a last hope that she would wake up. The drugs were gone, the absinthe flattened. He held her address in his hands. “Sous les paves, la plague,” he whispered into her ear. “It was one hell of a party.” He watched the sun, the water, the people congregating. He turned around and saw the rout behind him going inland on a paved road, running fast from the beach. “Sous les paves, la plague!” -Graffiti, Paris May 1968
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André M. Zucker was born in The Bronx, New York. He is the author of several short stories. His work has appeared in Blaze Vox, And/or, Structo, South Jersey Underground and several others. He works as an English teacher in Antwerp, Belgium.
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