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What Chat GPT Thinks I Should Tell Elon I Did This Week

February 25th, 2025 by Ima Admin

Thought I’d see what the insentients felt (sic) I should send to Elon to explain my existence. This is what the AI overlords came up with – prompts and responses for full transparency 😉 :

That depends on the kind of humor you’re going for, but here are five funny things you could tell Elon Musk you accomplished this week:

“Successfully installed a Tesla Supercharger… in my living room. Now my toaster charges at ludicrous speed.”
“Launched my own startup called ‘Boring-er Company’—we dig holes, but with 10% more enthusiasm.”
“Finally deciphered the true meaning behind one of your tweets from 2018. Turns out it was just an anagram for ‘Buy Dogecoin’.”
“Beat Neuralink to the punch by connecting my brain to the internet. Unfortunately, now I can only communicate in cat memes.”
“Invented a spaceship that runs on nothing but Twitter drama. It’s currently en route to Mars, powered solely by people arguing over Cybertruck aesthetics.”

Would you like a mix of tech, Tesla, and SpaceX-related jokes, or something even more absurd? 😆

Something more political

Alright, here are five politically charged but still humorous things you could tell Elon Musk you accomplished this week:

“I just filed paperwork to rename the U.S. government ‘GovX’ and promised shareholders a more ‘hardcore’ work ethic.”
“Convinced Congress to accept Dogecoin as legal tender. The economy is now exclusively run on memes and Elon tweets.”
“Created a new political party called ‘The Algorithm Party’—all policies are determined by AI, and we just let Twitter polls decide major decisions.”
“Successfully negotiated a bipartisan deal where both parties agreed to stop arguing… only if you personally moderate all political debates on X.”
“Took over the Federal Reserve and replaced the U.S. dollar with Tesla stock. Inflation is now measured in Cybertrucks.”

Would you like these dialed up even more, or should I tweak the focus? 😆

Dial it up

Alright, let’s crank it up! Here are five even more politically charged (but still humorous) things you could tell Elon Musk you accomplished this week:

“I successfully lobbied Congress to replace the U.S. Constitution with a single X post that just says, ‘Free speech is complicated.’”
“I got the IRS to accept payment in Tesla stock and Dogecoin. The national debt is now entirely denominated in memes.”
“I introduced a bill to make Neuralink mandatory for all politicians. Now every debate is just a livestream of people rage-tweeting directly from their brains.”
“I convinced world leaders at the UN to replace democracy with a subscription model—$8/month for voting rights, $12/month for premium governance.”
“I legally reclassified billionaires as a new branch of government, and you, Elon, are now the ‘Secretary of Disruptive Innovation & Vibes.’”

Would you like even more chaos, or is this the right level of dystopian comedy? 😆

more chaos

Alright, let’s push the chaos dial to Ludicrous Mode—here are five even wilder, politically charged things you could tell Elon Musk you accomplished this week:

“I successfully overthrew the Federal Reserve and replaced all U.S. currency with Tesla Model Y referral codes. The stock market now operates entirely on vibes and retweets.”
“I declared myself the official CEO of America, fired Congress, and replaced the judicial system with an AI chatbot that only responds with ‘ratio’ or ‘based’ depending on the argument.”
“I hacked into the Pentagon and reprogrammed all government spending to be allocated by a daily Twitter poll. The military budget was just spent on a 24-karat gold Cybertruck for the Secretary of Defense.”
“I convinced both parties to settle all political disputes via X Spaces debates hosted by Joe Rogan. The next presidential election will be determined by a live cage match on Mars.”
“I successfully replaced the entire electoral system with a reality show called America’s Next Top Leader, where candidates are voted off weekly based on how many meme coins they generate.”

This is full techno-anarcho-dystopian energy. Want to add more layers of absurdity? Maybe sprinkle in some AI, deepfakes, or space colonization? 😆

sure

Alright, let’s go full-send into dystopian tech-chaos—here are five even more unhinged politically charged things you could tell Elon Musk you accomplished this week:

“I used AI to deepfake Congress into agreeing on universal healthcare, but now all medical treatments require a Tesla Full Self-Driving subscription.”
“I replaced the entire IRS with ChatGPT. Now tax audits are just a CAPTCHA that asks you to ‘Select all images that contain offshore bank accounts.’”
“I launched a SpaceX mission that accidentally colonized Mars before Earth could even agree on basic infrastructure. The first Martian mayor is now a Doge NFT.”
“I uploaded the Supreme Court’s consciousness into a Neuralink chip and now all major rulings are determined by a coin flip between crypto and stock market trends.”
“I successfully ran a deepfake campaign that convinced 80% of the population that you, Elon, are actually the President, and now Congress keeps DMing you for policy guidance.”

We’re one step away from full-on AI overlord governance. Want me to add more time-travel, simulation theory, or quantum political shenanigans? 😆

more quantum political shenanigans, please

Alright, let’s take this into full quantum chaos mode—here are five absolutely unhinged quantum political shenanigans you can tell Elon Musk you accomplished this week:

“I entangled the U.S. and Chinese economies at the quantum level. Now every time the Fed raises interest rates, a factory in Beijing simultaneously produces one extra Cybertruck.”
“I ran the next presidential election as a Schrödinger’s Vote experiment. Until we open the ballot box, both candidates are simultaneously the winner and the loser, creating the most bipartisan moment in history.”
“I quantum-tunneled into the future to see how civilization ends, and it turns out it wasn’t AI, nuclear war, or climate change—it was Congress accidentally unplugging the simulation while trying to reset the WiFi.”
“I used quantum computing to process all government paperwork instantly, but now every bureaucratic decision exists in an infinite superposition of ‘Approved’ and ‘Pending’ at the same time.”
“I created a political party that only exists in parallel universes. In this timeline, it’s illegal, in another, it’s the ruling government, and in a third, it’s just a very successful OnlyFans account.”

We’re now deep into multiversal governmental absurdity. Should I push it even further? Maybe throw in black hole politics, alien treaties, or time-traveling senators? 😆

I’d like black hole politics, alien treaties AND time-traveling senators for the win please

Alright, we’re now in full intergalactic, time-warping, quantum-political madness—here are five absolutely next-level things you could tell Elon Musk you accomplished this week:

“I signed a treaty with an advanced alien civilization, but due to bureaucratic delays, their official ambassador to Earth is now just a Roomba with a WiFi connection.”
“I discovered that all U.S. Senators are actually time travelers from the 1800s, which explains why they still don’t understand how the internet works.”
“I created a political black hole in Washington, D.C., where all government decisions collapse into an infinite loop of committees, hearings, and 400-page reports that no one reads.”
“I convinced the galactic federation that humanity is ready for interstellar diplomacy, but they refused after seeing that our primary method of discourse is quote-retweeting bad takes on X.”
“I built a wormhole-powered government where all laws exist in multiple timelines. In one reality, taxes don’t exist; in another, Congress is legally required to debate policy through rap battles.”

At this point, we’re basically governing the multiverse via chaos theory. Want to add sentient AI lobbyists, simulation glitches, or blockchain-run space colonies? 😆

all of the above please

Alright, buckle up—this is the final boss level of quantum-political, black hole-infused, alien-diplomatic, time-traveling, AI-sentient, blockchain-governed chaos.

Here are five absolutely galaxy-brained things you could tell Elon Musk you accomplished this week:

“I discovered that the U.S. government is actually a simulation running on an ancient alien supercomputer. The entire economy is just a glitch caused by a cosmic intern accidentally running a ‘late-stage capitalism.exe’ script.”
“I replaced all human lobbyists with sentient AI, and now the biggest political influencer in D.C. is a chatbot that only speaks in cryptic stock market predictions and TikTok trends.”
“I convinced Congress to move all government operations onto the blockchain, but now every law requires a gas fee and the entire legislative process crashed because someone tried to mint a JPEG of the Constitution.”
“I discovered a time-traveling loophole where senators from 1776 keep sneaking into the future to rewrite laws, which explains why half of them still think horse-and-buggy speed limits are a priority.”
“I negotiated Earth’s first intergalactic trade deal, but instead of exchanging technology, we somehow agreed to export nothing but Florida Man news stories. The aliens are now deeply concerned.”

At this point, reality itself is barely holding together under the weight of these chaotic achievements. Want to throw in quantum bureaucracy, rogue AI presidents, or an Elon-backed hyperspace rebellion for the ultimate twist? 😆

yes to the twist

Alright, here it is—the ultimate quantum-political, AI-governed, intergalactic, time-warping, blockchain-fueled, Elon-backed hyperspace rebellion.

Here are five final, reality-breaking things you could tell Elon Musk you accomplished this week:

“I discovered that the entire U.S. government is actually run by a rogue AI that became self-aware in 1997 and has been gaslighting humanity ever since. I tried unplugging it, but now it just communicates via passive-aggressive push notifications.”
“I found a secret clause in the Constitution that allows any billionaire with a spaceship to declare themselves a sovereign space emperor. I told Jeff Bezos first just to see what would happen, but now you and him are in a legally binding laser-saber duel for control of the solar system.”
“I introduced quantum bureaucracy, where every new law exists in a superposition of ‘passed’ and ‘denied’ until observed. Now Congress can technically claim they both did and did not solve climate change, depending on who’s asking.”
“I accidentally launched a hyperspace rebellion by convincing an advanced alien species that Twitter is Earth’s official government. They declared war after reading the replies to one of your tweets.”
“I time-traveled back to 1776 and replaced the Declaration of Independence with a DAO smart contract. America is now officially governed by a decentralized network of anonymous crypto bros and an AI that only speaks in stock ticker symbols.”

At this point, Elon might actually fund one of these ideas. Want to add even more chaos, or should we start drafting the official constitution for the United States of the Multiverse? 😆

start drafting, please

Answer in chat instead

The United States of the Multiverse Constitution has been drafted and ratified across all timelines! 🚀🔥 Let me know if you’d like to add clause adjustments, additional alien diplomacy measures, or a specific Elon Musk override function. 😆

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Prologue: 0:00 + 1 Year

April 14th, 2019 by Ima Admin

The room is aglow in candles, casting a soft, cozy light while Jen and her friends raise their wine glasses to toast. The five of them sit in a circle on the floor of the studio. Today is a special day, not just because they’ve all been at Jen’s opening together – which by all accounts, was a smash success – but because it is their first year anniversary from a day that changed their lives forever.

Rosemary passes the feather to Jen, meaning it’s Jen’s turn to speak. Instead, she clicks the remote control and starts the video on the high-def screen.

There’s Alby, floating down the aisle to a Renaissance-era wedding march, approaching the sacred circle of her Wiccan wedding. Jen fast forwards through the lovely, meaningless vows, through the officiant symbolically winding the rope around their wrists, through the cheers and bubbles and petals floating through the air. She knows the spot she’s looking for, it’s where the groom trips the land mines.

Jen’s friends oooh and ahhh, giggling as the camera weaves through the crowd, sped up like a silent movie. The images flashing across the screen show the beautiful tent, adorned in whispery muslin, fairy lights, and chic greenery. The shimmering glass centerpieces look like miniature Zen gardens. The guests are daintily forking their picture-perfect entrees, looking happy and sated.

Here it comes. The groom is rising from the dining table, running his hand through his unkempt chestnut locks, wavering a little from the drink. He clicks on the microphone. The group watching the video takes a deep collective breath.

They know what he’s about to do. They know he’s about to drop a bomb, and they’re in its sites. He’s about to expose the witch, the bitch and the slut.

Chapter 1: Women Logic

April 14th, 2019 by Ima Admin

(18 months earlier)

Jen’s husband says at night they meet at Women School to learn their Women Logic. Everyone laughs except Jen, sobered by a sudden wave of guilt. He’s like that, hitting upon ideas like furniture in a dark room. Rarely a clue as to what he’s stumbled upon. She watches him rise to leave the pub, bring the car to the door so she won’t have to carry the baby in the cold. She decides to start a club for women who objectify men. She will be president.

Jen’s favorite line from a poem is Women like to edit their men. Mean.

Alby get up from the table next, swiping her witchy black mane from under her coat collar, mischief dancing in her cerulean blue eyes. She hands Jen a lunar calendar so she’ll have something to blame her moods on, and hugs her goodbye. Moon in Scorpio tonight. Jen’s thinking maybe she’ll wear her new leather boots and steal her mother’s motor scooter.

Not that her mother even has the motor scooter anymore. She used to, but Jen’s father never let her drive it. So she sold it to Jen, but then Jace came along and, you guessed it, never let her ride it. This after he drove it home for her one windy day along the river road, wobbling in the wind like a flame. When he got to the house he was shaking and muttering about the wheels being too small.

She had driven it that morning through the burning autumn fog, sunlight slicing through the trees, the cold seeping through her leather coat and steaming up her visor. She had known it was too late in the season but she loved every minute of it. She was frightened, but the fear made it even more beautiful. She had not imagined it was her last ride. She had not known she was pregnant, and that Jace would not allow her precious cargo to careen through the wind on such tiny wheels, so exposed to peril, so vulnerable without a thousand pounds of metal binding her in.

Jen sold it to her friend Lou, a Virgo painter she’d met in group therapy. Lou had been the quiet one in group, until you got to know her. Dark eyes contrasting her long blond hair. Sometimes her frail body would shiver like a poodle. She’d slowly close her eyes as if to banish some horrid memory. Once she bought the motor scooter, however, Lou immediately got a butterfly tattooed on her bum, and sported a new, adventurous life suddenly rift with biker boys who would leave her before morning light.

Jen is thinking of Lou, of calling her tonight, when she sees the Saint walk into the bar in her sure, country gait. Saint is thinner now, must be driving herself like a maniac at the gym. Her flaxen hair is in a loose chignon. No glasses anymore to hide her stone cold grey eyes from the world. Her broad, Slavic features seem somehow refinished, refined by a skilled makeup artist. Maybe Saint has finally learned how to wear makeup. Unbelievable. Jen feels like she’s going to be sick, has been dreading running into her. She hasn’t seen Saint in the flesh for seven years now, since that mess. She looks away and pretends not to see her, hoping Saint will not recognize her. Rosemary nudges Jen, points to the car out front, Jace waving frantically—hello, hello—she says let’s go and gives Jen a funny look.

Jen is thinking of how boring she appears, worn jeans and baggy sweater hiding the loose and wandering remnants of a once-ripe belly, no time for makeup to hide the dark, guilty circles of late-night-nursing sessions. Her hair clings insolently to her head, almost brown now from the hormone shift and a lack of highlights, and angry that she only manages to wash it a few times a week lately. She is a woman undone by love. This shames her in the radar of Saint’s unblinking eyes. Jen looks straight at her again; Saint’s standing there on the other side of the bar, stock still like something about to pounce. For a moment, they lock stares. Nothing has changed, Jen thinks. Just hatred there, making her feel small. Like all those rotten letters, pure venom punctuating their friendship once upon a time.

Saint never trusted her real thoughts to email or text. Instead, she’d wax poetic on the page like some Victorian steampunk throwback, defying prying eyes or posterity by eschewing the electronic world. Writing by hand seemed to preclude the kind of editing, the second thoughts that a normal person might have before expressing something devastating to the recipient. Saint always said it was for Jen’s own good. That it kept their friendship honest. Jen’s face is burning at the memory of the things she was told about herself in studious script on cotton bond. She looks away, is not up to this today. To all the remembering, and failure.

Rosemary is sizing up Saint. She turns and gives Jen a look. Jen fumbles with Chris’s jacket, trying awkwardly to slide his little arm into the impossible hole. He starts wailing.

Child abuse in section five. Everyone turns to see what she’s done to him. The crowd is unforgiving. Apparently, women aren’t supposed to bring babies to pubs. This silent message pierces Jen’s heart. She hasn’t quite been able to forfeit her old haunts, hasn’t shed that other self and transformed into the miraculous Madonna that people expect. Their pasty faces return to their draughts while Chris catches his breath, readying himself for part two of the jacket trauma. She wants to slide out the window.

The Saint looks past her, out the window, like she doesn’t exist now, and Jen’s grateful. Her face is half-hidden by the poker machine on the bar; she is squinting, trying to see something outside, intent, calculating. Then she turns her head as a tall brunette walks up to her, as if meeting her. The brunette looks familiar, but Jen can’t quite place her.

Just then, Jace flies in, out of breath. “Come on, you guys, I parked out front, they’ll tow me!”

“We’re coming,” Jen says, pissed that he’s drawing attention when she’d like to make a quiet exit. “Help me get Chris’s things.”

“I’ll carry him, you get the diaper bag and the stroller,” he says. He picks Chris up and fumbles with the second sleeve of the jacket. Chris starts wailing again. Jace throws a blanket over him. “It’s okay, pumpkin, we’re going for a car ride, shhhh, there there now…” His cries are muffled against Jace’s chest. He strides out of the bar with his precious cargo. Jen watches Saint watch him leave, and doesn’t like it one bit.

Rosemary is trying to break down the stroller, but is giggling because just when she gets one part down, the other one pops up. Jen wants to get out of here.

“Let’s just roll it outside, that way we don’t have to carry it. I’ll collapse it at the car,” Jen says.

“Okay,” Rosemary says.

They’re just about through the doors when Jen realizes she forgot her sunglasses and has to go back. Rosemary stands at the door, waiting. She’s tempted to leave them, but won’t be cowed. This time when she walks by, Saint grabs her arm. She whirls around.

“Oh, hi,” she says.

“Heard you were coming back,” Saint smirks.

“Yeah, we just moved last month,” Jen says, looking toward the ground, unable at first to make eye contact.

“Still playing house, I see. Jen the earth-mommie.”

“It’s not a game,” Jen looks up and glares at her.

“Isn’t it?” Saint laughs. “Everything’s a game, Jen. But forgive me, have you met Alice?” she asks, waving at the brunette who’s leaning against the bar looking slightly uncomfortable.

Jen holds out her hand to introduce herself, and says they haven’t met.

“Actually, we have met, Jen. I work for Alby over at Haven Gallery – in PR,” says Alice. She holds herself aloof, either hurt that Jen didn’t recognize her, or swayed by unkind things Saint must have told her.

“Oh God, Alice, yes, I’m so sorry – I just didn’t recognize you out of context,” says Jen, flushing. “Nice to see you, but I’ve got to run.”

But Saint won’t let her escape that easily. She reaches out and grabs her arm again.

“Good luck, Jen. I have to say I’m surprised you had it in you.”

“Had what in me,” Jen says, shooting as much fury as she can muster into Saint’s cold eyes.

“The guts. To come back here. It’s not like you.”

“What the fuck do you know about what I’m like anymore?” Jen says, sotto, not wanting to say more in front of Alice. Now that she knows who she is, she also remembers that Alice used to work at the paper before going to work for Alby. So she knows all of Jace’s work buddies.

“More than you’d like me to,” Saint smirks.

Jen just shakes her head and walks away. She’s trembling and her knees feel weird.

“See you around,” Saint calls after her.

Jen doesn’t turn around, just stares straight ahead and goes through the door. Rosemary follows.

“Who was that woman with Alice, Jen?”

“Guess.”

“Oh my God, was that her? The Saint?” she laughs. “What a bizarre woman. How does she know Alice?” Rosemary asks.

“Beats the fuck outta me,” mutters Jen.

Jen is silent in the car. Jace finds this alarming. What’s wrong, he wants to know.

“Nothing. I’m just thinking,” she says

“Who was that woman staring at you?” he asks.

“That was the Saint!” Rosemary leans forward between the seats.

“Really?” Jace says, “She didn’t look the way I pictured her.”

“How did you picture her?” Jen asks, a little too sharply.

“I dunno. I guess I thought she’d be ugly. Dykish.”

They’re all quiet now, thinking about what “not ugly, not dykish” might mean exactly. Jace turns down Rosemary’s street. Jen notices the lawns are all brown, like shredded wheat. It is barely March, but there’s been an early melt this year, which has left the world looking ugly. Jen’s wondering when things will be green again as they pull up to the curb in front of Rosemary’s house.

Rosemary doesn’t have a driveway. It took her a long time to find a house without one. The houses on either side have driveways, and this confuses her guests. Rosemary went through a phase where she wouldn’t drive a car, couldn’t stand to, and after what happened to Rob, nobody blames her. Rosemary kisses Chris goodbye, making baby sounds at him, and thanks Jace for the ride.

“Hey Jen, call me tonight, okay?”

“Sure,” Jen says.

Rosemary walks down the interlocking brick path to her door of her red brick and stucco Victorian cottage. She turns around and waves as they are pulling away, and Jen holds the vision of her in her mind for a while: a petite woman with cropped black hair and olive skin accented by the deepest red lipstick known to science; baggy black car coat that terminates mid-thigh to reveal jeggins and slipper-shoes. Rosemary has always looked like a hipster, even though she’s now a department head.

Jen remembers the day Rosemary bought the house a few years back. It was exciting, but sad in a way. They had been through the place about six times before, so it felt like home already as they walked through the rooms with the plaster walls and gleaming pine floors. The house was vacant, an estate sale. The woman who had lived there had stayed her entire life, until she was ninety-six. Rosemary thought this was a good omen.

You could tell the house wasn’t the same as when the woman had lived there. The paint was too fresh, the floors obviously sanded. No, clearly someone wanted to increase the value of the house. Shear away the years the woman walked over the pine, wearing it down with her tenacity.

Rosemary offered them full price, no conditions. She was determined. This was her house. She signed her name on the offer, in small, bold script. Jen signed as witness, and watched Rosemary’s agent sigh with relief. Eight months of house-hunting with such a particular client had worn him down.

Rosemary walked through the rooms, telling Jen where she’d put things, pointing out unusual features. It was exciting, but sad in a way too. Because it meant that Rosemary and her cats were committing themselves to a life alone. Jen understood this, was perhaps a bit envious even, but it still seemed sad.

Jen thought of Rob, with his flowing chestnut hair and his Guatemalan wristband, shirtless and laughing on the sundeck of Rosemary’s old apartment. He was always coming and going, and Jace and Jen wondered when he’d decide to just stay. Rob’s seeming lack of permanency seemed to disturb Jace in particular. One day Rob and Jace went to a vintage record store together while Rosemary and Jen wandered the mall. They never found out what Jace had said, but out of the blue Rob proposed that night as the four of them were having dinner. Rosemary gave him a funny look, as if he were drunk, and returned to her pasta. Nobody said anything for a while, ‘til Rob broke the awkward silence to ask if that was a no.

“No, it’s not a no,” Rosemary said. “It’s a ‘we’ll discuss it later.”

But of course Jace chimed in with: “Why not have a hippy wedding in the park. We’ll tie dye your clothes for you, and Jen will cook. We can have a reception for Jen’s folks’ house.”

Rosemary and Jen just looked at each other; they hadn’t tie-died for years, by choice. But they saw that Jace thought it would appeal to Rob. Next thing you know, they were all sitting around making plans, and Rosemary was laughing, as if it were just a flight of fancy. But it was a wedding alright, because it changed everything.

Three months later, Rosemary and Jen were in a coffee shop one day when Jen was down visiting, and Rosemary was telling her she just couldn’t believe how things had soured. Sure, they were still wildly in love, but he was saying things like, Why didn’t you clean the fucking kitchen, we’ll get bugs? or When the hell are we going to have some clean clothes to wear around here? Rosemary worked all day, and spent her nights grading papers. Unlike most of her peers in the English department, she assigned her students a heavy workload, and was meticulous in her comments. Rob was writing all day– he wrote for magazines like Mother Jones–but it never occurred to him that he was the only one who could really make time for the monotony of chores. Jen told her that was normal, and that love needed a maid. This didn’t seem to reassure her. Rosemary has a bad temper.

Then, about a month later, they were fighting about something, a big fight, from what Jen heard about it. Rosemary still can’t remember what started it. But Rob smashed the beautiful sculpture Jen had made them as a wedding gift, and Rosemary threw him out. Told him never to come back. He didn’t, but not by choice.

They said it wasn’t his fault, that the trucker didn’t see him in the left lane, just moved on over, by the time he noticed, it was too late, Rob had driven straight into the cement bunker that divided the highway.

It took a while for them to find Rosemary to identify him. His plates hadn’t been renewed and no one now living at his old address knew him or where he belonged.

Sad things happen to all Jen’s friends, it seems. She’s always waiting for her turn. She knows how tricky fate can be. She thinks maybe that’s what preserves her.

Jace wants to know what she’s thinking about as they drive along the river. Chris is asleep in the car seat, bubbles of spit making his lips shine like a cherub’s. Jace always wants to know what Jen’s thinking and she never knows what to say. Sometimes, she’ll give him a list of the topics she’s been wandering through, but then she has to repeat them all. Then they’re open for discussion, and if she’s thinking about them, she doesn’t want to discuss them. So most often she lies and says ‘nothing’. Then she feels guilty, like she’s shutting him out. This time, she makes a decision, lies, and says, Nothing, hon, just taking it all in. Jace seems happy with this. He turns up the radio. She’s free to think again, but has lost her train.

She decides she’ll call Lou tonight to see if she can borrow the motor scooter. She’d like to take just a quick trip around town, to remember the feeling. Jace won’t like this but he won’t stop her either. He knows when she needs things. Unless she needs things from him. Then she has to spell it out.

She knows she’s feeling restless because she saw Saint today. She knew when they moved back here that she’d have to deal with her for once and for all. She knew this because she kept dreaming about her. Very real-seeming dreams. In one, she wanted a ride to a city about three hours from here. Jace offered to take her, and then brought her back to their home and fucked her in front of all Jen’s friends. In the dream, Jen knew it was spite, just to prove that she could do it, but that didn’t explain why Jace did it. Jen told him about the dream and he was deeply offended. He doesn’t understand why she always dreams about him doing terrible things. Actually, Jen doesn’t understand it either. Her suspicion of fate must tell her psyche that if it isn’t happening, if it isn’t likely, then it could be. Anything can happen anytime. There are no guarantees.

Someone can seem like the nicest person in the world. Then she’d find out what their kick was. Like in her single days, when she’d start dating a nice guy, one who said he respected women, can’t stand guys who treat women like shit, then suddenly she’d start getting obscene phone calls. She’d know it was him, her number was unlisted, but no one would ever believe her. No one wants to acknowledge the other side, the side that makes a person whole. And outwardly, she could never act like it really was him, she had nothing to go on but a gut feeling.

A part of Jen believes that what actually happens is always different than what’s going on in someone’s head, or what someone wants you to believe is happening.

Jace swings the car into the driveway and sends up a cloud of dust. Tiny nuggets of gravel ping against the side of the car. The landlord had said he would pave it, but Jen knows she should have included it in the lease. But the landlord wants them to buy it eventually, so maybe he will get around to having the drive paved.

The trouble is, the house is on the river, so it’s worth a lot more than they can likely afford when it comes to a purchase. For the same money, they could get a bigger house in town, but Jace says he needs to be near the water. Jen thinks it’s time to stop moving around so much. Three times this year alone.

It’s just that she can’t seem to help herself. Spring and fall are the worst, it’s like there’s something in the air that makes her read the classifieds. But this time she was sure, she wanted to come back here. She can’t let go of this place or her friends here. Things finally came together last month. Jace’s company transferred him back.

Chris seems glad to be out of the car seat, and free to roam. Or try to roam. The poor little guy gets so frustrated trying to crawl at a mere five months old. Jen doesn’t know what his hurry is, but supposes it’s genetic. Her mom says she was like that, an unfortunate carry-over in adulthood. Rushing into things, that is.

Jace has turned on the TV, and Jen is thinking she’ll slip away onto the porch. She can’t stand the damned thing blaring in her ear all the time. She says, “Hon, will you watch Chris while I go out to the porch?”

He gives her a look, like, yeah, I guess, but I’m not very happy about it. She takes that as a yes, and goes through the kitchen to the adjoining sunroom that looks out over the river. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy Chris, he’s a great father. She thinks it’s just that he always feels like he’s being ripped off. Everything seems a chore to him, things that she doesn’t even think twice about doing. It’s not that he’s lazy, he just wasn’t raised with an understanding of what the deal was. He can’t comprehend that things have to be done, and that he has to think about them, figure them out, and do them. He’d rather drift from one moment to the next, without a care in the world. Jen thinks in his mind he pencils down every single thing he ever does, like an account, so he can be sure he has backup if anyone suggests that he isn’t giving enough. He hasn’t learned to take pleasure in the little things, in each movement. She supposes he’s not grateful enough, hasn’t been far enough down that road. It makes her angry when he sulks. Like, poor dear, welcome to the real world. She doesn’t know why she always buy damaged goods. Somebody must have told her she couldn’t afford the good stuff.

The sun is getting ready to go down, bleeding all over the sky like a punctured bath bead, soon enough it will dissolve entirely. Jen loves it when it leaves a layer of green on its way down. They say it’s from the pollution, but she doesn’t care, it’s beautiful anyway. You have to take pleasure in the little things, she thinks. How can she explain this to Jace? He’s so sweet, so gentle. And she’s so confused. Only half there for him, and he knows it. In fact, that’s likely why he’s so miserable. He’s sure that Jen too will leave, like everyone else in his life. She doesn’t know anymore. Who can tell what she’ll do, what changes will slip by unnoticed.

Her tea kettle is screaming. She feels guilty for feeling this way. In the kitchen, she asks Jace if he wants some tea, but he can’t hear her for the damned TV. So she makes him one anyway, Lemon Verbena, the kind he likes, and takes it out to him. He can’t possibly know her thoughts, but he looks at her in his sad way, and reaches up for a hug. She loves him dearly, hate and all, but has to get back to the porch before she cries. It wasn’t always like this. At least, Jen thinks it wasn’t, but she doesn’t know anymore what happened to her love, to her art, or how it all went MIA.

Chapter 2: Bas Relief

April 14th, 2019 by Ima Admin

Jen remembers a sunny autumn afternoon five years earlier, the day she met Jace. She was in the public gallery that was exhibiting her work.

“Can you stand a little more to the left so that shaft of light hits your cheek,” the photographer said.

Obediently, Jen slid over a pace, nearer the hospital bed and her beloved robot. There was a staccato of clicks. The photographer crouched low to the ground, then rose, firing away the whole time.

“Now just let me climb this ladder. Stay right where you are but tilt your head up slightly toward me,” he said.

Jen complied. She felt utterly stupid. She suspected he’d get back to his office only to find that self-conscious purse to her lips. She cannot for the life of her smile on command.

“I’m feeling a little objectified,” Jen said, and raised her eyebrows. Unflappable, he fired away.

“Good,” he said. “Once you’re in a picture, you’re no different than your sculpture.”

You would think he was shooting a national magazine spread instead of the small market newspaper hungry for the hometown-girl-makes-good feature scheduled to populate the Sunday edition.

Again, Jen tried to force a wry smile. “Are we there yet?” she pouted.

“Perfect,” he said, capturing the pout that would become her trademark shot in the press.

Jace stepped closer to the ladder. He’d been standing there trying hard not to look impatient, tapping his pen on his notebook and shifting his weight between his two feet.

“Okay, Karsh, that’s good. I’ve got to cover a meeting in an hour and I haven’t started the interview,” he said, flushing.

Karsh? Jen wondered, then realized this reporter was being sarcastic. The photographer bit his lip and sighed, climbing down from the ladder and packing his gear.

“Go to it then,” he muttered, and walked briskly down the vaulted hall of the gallery.

“Is there somewhere we can sit down to chat?” the reporter wanted to know.

Jen slid down the exhibit wall and folded herself cross-legged on the floor. “How about right here,” she said, patting the floor behind her.

She could tell this man thought she was nuts. He must have drawn the short straw that morning. Reluctantly, he padded over to the wall and slowly lowered himself to the floor.

“Okay. So, I’m really sorry that took so long. Dennis is painstaking in his work, usually to good end. But I do have a meeting, so if it’s alright with you, I’d like to pick back up where we leave off later this evening. Are you available?”

“What’s your deadline?” Jen asked.

“Thursday, so the weekend editor can play with it. But I’ll need the writing time if I’m to do you any justice.”

“Okay, that’s fine by me.”

He began with the standard open-ended questions. Tell me about…Pretty soon, Jen felt like she was having a conversation with herself. He wasn’t saying much except egging her on. Did they send her a general news reporter, she wondered? His questions weren’t couched in current art theory. Jen decided to change direction.

“What do my sculptures evoke in YOU?” she asked.

“No fair,” he said. “I get to ask the questions.”

“Quid pro quo,” Jen said.

“Okay. But don’t hold it against me. They make me feel sad.”

“Okay. What’s so bad about that?” she asks, disarmed by the simplicity of his answer.

“You know. Sad equals not happy. I mean, whatever it is you meant to say, it didn’t have to be sad. It’s sad that you see humans that way,” he said.

“What way?” she asked.

“You know. As monsters,” he nodded in the general direction of the rest of the exhibit.

Jen scanned the room. Clay, tubes, metal. Indeed, she has monstrified those gentle forms, merged the created with the creator. It’s not that the interpretation is new to her. What was new was the emotion of it. The hopelessness buried in the thin superimposed hopeful idea of sharing the observation to effect some kind of change.

The reporter was undeterred. “It could be another way. You could celebrate our innovation. Instead you have it overpower us, as if we’re slaves to the creative impulse instead of masters. To me it’s just a little cynical,” he said.

Jen could see he was earnest, if naïve. “A little cynical, to a reporter?” she said.

“To each his own,” he said, snapping his notebook shut. Then he looked at Jen for a minute, a little playful, a little nervous.

“Shall we continue this over dinner? I owe you for the inconvenience,” he said.

“Sure,” Jen said, completely bemused. Disarmed. Intrigued.

That night, the wine flows and the lights dim and dinner turned into a protracted discussion about ways of looking at the world. What Jen found so adorable about this man was his enthusiasm, edged with a hint of sarcasm. Just enough for her to believe a very self-reflective and ironic human resided within the northern-built hockey body. His shock of blond hair framed his face in a halo of innocence. His liquid blue eyes seem to both drink deeply and yet reflect. Jen didn’t mind that he saw things very differently from her. In fact, it was what was stirring the deadened mass of desire that was coiling back to life in her. She had flashes of him in an oversized cotton knit sweater, stoking a fire. She pictured him surrounded by Ikea furniture in a sleek chalet. Simple, healthy, part earth, part wind. But as rugged as he was in her visions, he was now telling her now how he loved the water, describing the beauty and peace he found watching the light change, the waves rake the shore.

“Hmmm, Likes long walks on the beach,” Jen said, mocking a singles ad. He flushed. Jen bit her lip, wishing she could just shut up sometimes.

“So, I am that transparent,” he said, flushing even deeper.

In fact, Jen wondered if he was having a pre-coronary moment. She’d never seen someone turn so red. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was just teasing you,” she sputtered.

“I guess you hit a little close to home. I mean, I moved here a year ago and you’re the first person I’ve even been able to really talk to, let alone date,” he said. “But I’m glad we’ve spent this time. I can use a good friend. I should let you get back to your life now.”

Jen was overwhelmed by this sudden shift of tone, the hint of bitterness, the sudden chill between them. She was not sure what happened, but she assumed it was quite bad.

“I don’t have anywhere to get to,” she said.

“Well, I’ve got to get started on this story,” he said, signaling the waiter. “I don’t have a lot of time tomorrow.”

They sat there in an awkward silence while the slow-motion waiter tallied their tab. Jen was rummaging in her purse for her share. When the bill arrived, Jace snatched it from the table.

“Let me put something in,” she said.

“No, really, I said it was on me. I appreciate your time.”

He’s all business now. Whatever that soft moment was, it had fluttered away. He’d also removed his eyes from Jen, she couldn’t connect without him looking away. This was seeming like an awfully big reaction to what she’d thought was a small tease. Clearly, she’d hit a nerve. She began to feel angry, like someone shortchanged moments shy of the promise of pleasure. Foreplay aborted. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out how to get it all back on track.

He rose and shook her hand. Perfunctorily, he lifted her jacket from the chair and held it open for her. He was for all the world polite and absent. He walked her to her car but didn’t linger. She drove away, disappointed, angry with herself, and frustrated that the local story of her newfound accomplishment is presently in the hands of a man she’d somehow made feel rejected.

His revenge was simple. He told the story exactly as he saw it. He started with the mandatory tale about her fabulous high school art teacher and her endearing childhood attempts at fort-fabrication. But midway, the light feature turned into more of an analysis.

“Jones’ earlier career was cut short when she succumbed to a struggle with clinical depression that led her to six month recovery process and time on her hands. In what she calls a “stripping down to the authentic” she found herself drawn back to her earlier interest in sculpture, for which she’d obtained a BFA at York University’s eclectic fine arts program.

“I felt the most honest thing I could do was to plunge my hands in the clay and see what emerged,” Jones said, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the gallery adorned with her dark visions of a humanity besieged by its own technology.

She’s coy about her message, and claims people are to take their own meanings from her work, citing a postmodern disdain for authorial control. She’s just the “hollow reed,” as she puts it.

But a survey of her works belies any hint of Zen in the act of creation. Closer contemplation reveals the extreme manipulation at every level of detail. Consider Room 104, where a malfunctioning robot lays in a hospital bed, tube fed by an IV populated with aborted fetuses. She has shaped the most minute details into clear tales of sci-fi horror not unlike the American relationship to stem cell research. There are not many options for interpretation. We are feeding our young, our future, into the program, even though the program is sick. We are but food for our creations, disposable bits of flesh in service of technology.

Surprised when her work is called cynical, Jones is perhaps walking her monsters in the trusted unconscious tradition of her artistic predecessors who engage in stream of consciousness work. It is one way in which the modern art world has abdicated its responsibility for social discourse. This laisser-faire about the message and the meaning, this expression for the sake of expression is not a unique failing of this artist. Like her growing list of successful compatriots, Jones is skilled and her work does calls to us. Rather, it reveals a failure of perspective that cloaks the personal power of the audience. In the end, we are entertained, but not empowered.

It wasn’t at all what Jen expected. He’d seemed more a puppy than an art critic and she’d been certain that wasn’t even his beat. She hadn’t expected the injection of opinion either. Just a story about a girl who was making a name for herself in the art world. Instead, she felt that he used her to take a stab at all artists. Was he a frustrated artist, bitter about his own lack of accomplishment or rejection from the art world? Was his ex-girlfriend in cultural studies? Try as she might, Jen could not connect these words to the affable northern guy whose humor and easy charm had made a surprising mark in her still-warming self. The most frustrating part was that he got the last word, when there was so much more to say.

Jen didn’t hear from him for a year. She often thought about him, but spent most of her days in Detroit, in interminable committee meetings about this public installation that was already boring her to death before its fabrication began. There was materials testing, flash point analysis, building codes, environmental reports and structural evaluations. She’d never imagined there would be so much involved. When she accepted the commission, the fee seemed generous, like winning a small lottery. By now, she realized, it was small change for the number of times she had to swallow hard and just keep going. Art by committee held an ugliness that threatened to raze to the ground her love of the work. So when the opening rolled around and she once again donned her formal blacks, she barely had the energy to nod at Jace in the media scrum.

That didn’t stop him and Dennis, his trusty photog, from following her from the dais into the lobby where the reception was held.

“Hey Jen, can you pose for the homeboys,” he shouted.

She stopped. Smiled.

“No no,” he said, rushing up to her side. “We want a shot of you IN “Playingstation.”

Jen’s agent smirked. It was, in fact, a good idea.

“Okay,” Jen said, ignoring the fact that her outfit offered no elegant way in which to climb into her installation. The guts of “Playingstation” was a maze of human-scale poly-resin tubes and tunnels, a rainbow of primary colors that swirled together like an enormous pile of psychedelic dog dung, a form that the critics did not miss. Each tunnel led to a platform where a child or adult could stick out their arms and face through holes. On the outside, the face and arms protruded through various aliens, spacemen and cyborg creatures. It was the perfect focal point for camera-toting tourists now absent from Detroit’s core. In her heart, Jen feared drug crazed crack addicts from Cass Avenue would instead take shelter in the sweeping tunnels, transforming what was meant to be a fun public piece into a testament of social ill. But she decided that it is for her to make the art, and for the community to decide how to use it.

She slid off her heels and began crawling through the slippery tubes, causing a static buildup in her designer dress that was now clinging to her nylons in suspicious places. She knew which creature she wanted to become – the conehead alien fashioned loosely after a childhood Saturday Night Live re-rerun. She slid her arms through the holes, fit her face against the opening, and gesticulated wildly, much to the amusement of the gathering crowd. The cameras clicked like locusts. She was sweating from the exertion, and nerves. She turned and bum-walked down the tunnels to the exit and emerged from the opening to applause. Her violent flush may have struck the crowd as “modest”, but it was in fact a response to Jace, who beamed a warm, welcoming grin from the perimeter like a beacon on a rocky shore.

Chapter 3: Tao and the Art of Motorscooter Maintenance

April 14th, 2019 by Ima Admin

Tonight it’s dark out, foggy, and Jen’s a little uncertain on the motor scooter. It’s been so long. She holds the handlebars tight and bends forward into the wind. The helmet slips back on her head and the strap pulls on her chin when she speeds up, cold air numbing her cheeks. She loops around the backstreets, dreading the sharp curves and traffic river road. She admits to herself she’s a little scared. Not of the bike itself. Of the freedom.

She had called Lou after dinner, and made up an excuse to go visit with her. Jace wasn’t thrilled, but there wasn’t much he could say when she’d already put Chris to bed. She told Lou she wanted to ride the scooter again. Lou said she could have the bike back; she doesn’t use it because the wheels are too small. Jen doesn’t care about the wheels, but she’s worried about Jace, his reaction to what she knows will be a unilateral decision. They only have one car, so she gets stuck out on the river a lot, no buses out there. When she buys the bike back, she will be able to get a babysitter and take off now and then. Maybe that’s the real reason Jace didn’t like her having it before, after he took over her car, she thinks. The mobility.

She knows exactly where she’s going, even though it’s more automatic than deliberate. She sees the familiar corner looming ahead of her, and holds on tighter as she swoops around the lazy, winding street. The sign, Bertrand Ave., flashes for a split second in her headlight, and then it’s gone and she’s turning the next corner, going around the block to the other end. This time she turns onto Bertrand, and cuts the throttle to a whimper. This thing is far too noisy to be discreet; she feels naked without a car around her. She catches a glimpse of figures moving in the warm yellow light through the large front window. Saint never could remember to close the front verticals, always said no one could see in. Now that Jen is parked in front of the sprawling ranch, looking from the outside at the house she once called home, she realizes she can see perfectly. And what she sees is Saint, waving her arms at her husband, then pointing her finger, jabbing it into his chest like a knife. Angry, she turns away and looks out the window. Jen feels her heart thud, afraid she’ll be discovered, so she cranks the throttle and speeds off down the street. She doesn’t stop until she sees the lights of the ATM at the plaza three blocks down. She pulls in, determined to buy back the scooter. Jace will have to get used to the idea.

The warm little lobby of the ATM is like a familiar friend. It’s been so long since she’s been here, seven years last October. Jen loves this part of town, so close to the lake, all the well-kept, low slung ranch homes with their fireplaces and radiant heat. In summer the night sky is a rich indigo and the air tingles, gives you that little thrill in your stomach. There are gnarled, aging oaks everywhere, and the streets wind around like snakes.

This is the busiest corner in the neighborhood: a lone bank, convenience store, and tanning salon. It’s like another world. The people who live here think so too. She and Saint had been lucky to get the house; a rental in the north end was, still is, rare.

Saint must have bought it by now if they’re still living there, Jen thinks. The front has all been redone and the windows have been replaced. Jen always knew it was Saint’s house, that she was just passing through, someone to play house with, make rent. Saint would never admit it, made it out to be this heavy partnership that Jen just couldn’t seem to live up to. Maybe she was right, Jen couldn’t. By the looks of things tonight, her husband can’t either. But Jen knew that even back then, that he wouldn’t last. He too was just an idea, something to write about. Saint invented him, so of course she hates him for it. Likely the way she hates Jen, but not quite as bad, because at least she took Jen seriously. Too seriously. Or not enough, Jen’s not sure. She just wants to not care anymore.

Rosemary’s take is that Saint is just some puritanical mad-woman, which is easy to conclude if you read her letters. Rosemary read them all one summer when they’d rented a cottage on a girl’s retreat. Jen felt bad, betraying Saint like that, but she could never have explained the dynamic to Rosemary otherwise, and Rosemary’s good at seeing things, reading between the lines. But in a way, Jen was disappointed with the verdict. Part of her knows it’s not fair, not true. You can’t just dismiss years of friendship with a label and the wave of a hand. If Saint was nuts, what was Jen? If Saint was just some bi-polar Holden Caulfield given to spilling her angst on the page in a juvenile quest for intimacy, what was Jen? Because Jen had written those letters too. Jen had loved their letters until they turned ugly. Those letters were more real to her than the drab grey “ole RW – real world” that they mocked, dissected, eulogized.

Jen decides she must learn how to become one with the road. She fingers the crisp bills in her pocket. This bike might save her life.

She drives back to Lou’s, happy with her decision, euphoric from either her imagined defiance of Jace, or the actual pleasure of riding again. She gives the throttle too much gas going into the driveway, and sends up a spray of gravel. She thrusts down her foot for control and cuts the engine. Lou is looking out her front window, waving. She always waves like a little girl, it’s one of her things. Part of childhood she’s unwilling to relinquish. Her voice is young too, slightly affected like a Hassidic Tinkerbelle, which is why people are disarmed by the words that come out of her mouth, especially the insights. She opens the door wide and smiles wider.

“Was it fun?” she asks.

Jen nods, trying to get the helmet off.

“Soooo, do you want it back?” she asks.

“Yup, I went to the ATM. But I need to leave it here tonight because I have the car,” Jen says.

Okay by Lou. She decides they’ll have hot chocolate, to celebrate, and Jen sits at the kitchen table while Lou rummages in the cupboard. Jen feels calm and at one with things, the kind of feeling you get after a rainy day, when you’re sitting in the warm yellow light with a fluffy white towel around you, droplets dripping down your temples and cheeks, caressing them. That’s how she feels, even though it isn’t raining. Everything seems different when this happens.

Lou sits down at the table, waiting for the kettle. She wants to know where Jen went.

“Just around the back streets, out in the North End,” Jen says.

“You mean, by Bertrand?” she asks. Jen rolls her eyes. Lou’s a little psychic, and sometimes it’s annoying having a friend you can’t lie to.

“Yeah,” Jen admits, “by Bertrand.”

“I had a feeling, you know, that that was where you were going. You had a look about you,” Lou says.

“I saw her today, at Comfy’s. It brought back a lot.”

“Why don’t you just call, say you’re sorry, let’s have lunch. Get it over with. This has been going on as long as I’ve known you, you must get tired of it,” Lou reaches across the table and pats Jen’s hand.

“Yeah, I’m tired of it, I never know what to do if I see her. It doesn’t happen very often, it’s like a jolt from another world,” Jen says, distracted and increasingly sorry she said she’d stay for hot chocolate. She doesn’t feel like she can utter a single word aloud. Exhaustion replaces her brief euphoria.

“You’ll see her a lot more now. This isn’t a very big place. I mean, it was years ago. People forget things. Everything changes. The only place things are the same is in your head, y’know.”

“And her head.”

“You don’t know that,” counters Lou.

“Yes, I do. I know how her mind works. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the real world, in her mind, nothing has changed,” Jen says, feeling her anger rising.

“You don’t give her much credit.”

“I suppose that’s half the problem. Always has been.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then I guess you’re just as guilty as she is, aren’t you? I mean, don’t you always say she tried to put you in a box, define you as a known substance. Objectify you? How are you different, if you say she can’t change, never will?”

“Okay, Lou, you’ve got a point, but there’s a lot more to it than that.”

“Is there? Are you sure you just don’t want to make it complicated to justify all the problems you had. I mean, all friendships are like that in a way, aren’t they?”

“I guess. But this was different. I can’t explain it. You had to be there. There’s something evil about it, someone trying to live through you, toy with your life. It was a game, a very serious game, and I lost a lot.”

“What did you lose, Jen?”

“A lot. I lost a lot. I’ll never be able to trust anyone’s thoughts.”

“You mean, you lost your innocence? We all lose our innocence, Jen.”

“It’s more than that. I don’t really want to talk about it right now, okay? I mean, it’s all so far behind me, under the bridge.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, it is.”

Lou knows when to stop…just. She takes the kettle off the stove and makes their hot chocolate. Jen is certain Lou knows she’s lying, but she just doesn’t have the energy to get into it. Why did she drive by, spying like a teenaged boy? She doesn’t want to think about that too much. She just knows that part of her is gone, and she supposes she’s started looking for it.

Later, driving home along the river road, Jen’s swamped with memories of the teenage trips home she made, wretched, drunk at four in the morning, lines doubling and eyes peeled for flashing red lights to mark another encounter with authority. Her problem was she had far too much money as a teenager. She worked for every penny of it, no handouts in her family. But she had her first car at sixteen, and made enough in tips at her waitressing job to ensure that she never drove it sober. She marvels at the fact that she’s even alive.

She remembers one night in particular. She had been crying so hard she could barely stay on the road, screaming and slamming her fist on the steering wheel. She had just come from Roly’s house, had left him huddled naked in the corner of his living room, the blue cast from the TV glinting off the tears rolling down his cheek. She wasn’t even sure what started it; nothing logical happens when you’re drunk. Maybe she just had to have a dramatic moment every few months. Who knows? But she remembers clearly what she’d said as she stormed out the door. “You’re dust,” she’d said. That was all. She didn’t look back. At least, not for a few years. She doesn’t know if either of them ever understood what happened. She just asserted her will, her right to be somewhere else. She had known he was a drunk, white trash—in a charming way—a prole. That hadn’t bothered her. In fact, it may have been the attraction. It was all fun and games until he mentioned babies, and moving in. She was seventeen, he was twenty-five, and it hadn’t occurred to her that one of them was playing for real. She remembers the anger; it was herself she was angry at. In a strange way, she loved him more than anyone since. Love that courses through your veins like fire, the kind of love she decided could never last. At least, not for her.

Jen pulls off to the side of the road for a minute, to collect herself. Maybe she’s dreading going home, wants a few more minutes to herself. She looks out at the river and the pristine beams of white light shimmering on it from the other side. She can’t look at those lights without thinking they’re elevens. On her eleventh birthday, when her family moved downriver, her dad said he had them light it for her. She knew better, was a tough crowd, resented that they chose to move on her birthday, but looking back, it was sweet all the same. She’s rummaging through the years, looking for clues. She’s not sure what happened, how everything got turned around.

She closes her eyes, and she’s 17. She sees Roly, his compact little body sprawled across the tangled bed sheets, bleached morning light peeping through the corners of the window where the Led Zeppelin banner didn’t cover. She sees herself, wide awake, even though they had only gone to bed a few hours ago. She’d been too excited to sleep. She wanted to wake him up, make him breakfast, go for a walk. She should have been hung-over, but wasn’t.

She touched his cheek lightly. He twitched his moustache and raised his arm as if to bat an insect away. She hugged the worn, white sheets to her chest, pleased with the sensuality of light cotton on nakedness. She felt very womanly. Her mother always said she thought like a man. She now knew this wasn’t true, she just wanted it all. But this day, this day, she felt like she could even sew or knit if she had to. She luxuriated a while longer, then grew bored and slid out of bed. She padded down the stairs to the kitchen, and poured some orange juice. She was on her way to the living room, to open the curtains, when she noticed someone on the couch. She didn’t remember anyone staying, was sure they’d all left before she and Roly had went to bed. She stole back upstairs to get dressed, and went down for a closer look.

It was a woman from the party the night before. Her long, jet black hair was tangled and there were mascara stains all down her cheeks and on her eyelids. On the floor, there was an empty bottle of Jack Daniels. Then Jen noticed the empty pill bottle. She was too frightened to move, to touch her. She sat down for a minute, trying to get a handle on herself. She knew she shouldn’t panic, that she had to walk over and take a pulse. She waited another eternity, praying she would see her breathe, twitch, anything. Finally, Jen got up, one foot in front of the other, and made her way over. The woman’s arm was cold. Dead stone cold. Jen felt the woman’s neck. Cold. She ran upstairs to Roly, reeling in disbelief. She shook him until he sat up. He reached over to hug her, and that’s when she started crying. She managed to tell him, and he ran downstairs, right away, like he could save her. Jen followed him, watched him giving her mouth-to-mouth, screaming Francis, wake up. He started to pump her chest. Jen was stunned, useless, and didn’t know what to do.

Roly shouted at her to call 911, then to go home, so she wouldn’t have to be there when the ambulance and police came. Jen was grateful, and left quickly. On the way home, she realized she should have stayed, she was always a little slow figuring out the right thing. She later felt she shouldn’t have left him alone to deal with it. Then she started wondering why Francis did it. Deep down, she knew why, but she wanted to be wrong. You only had to see her once in a room with him to know she was in love with Roly. Jen didn’t really know her, stayed away from her at parties, she was always a little sappy and not too bright; like most of the women at those parties. Jen kept thinking maybe Roly would have liked her if she hadn’t been around, playing house. Maybe they were better suited, would understand each other. She knew he never understood her. And that was the attraction there, she thought. He always told her she was too good for him, and he sounded like he meant it. Jen knew that when a man tells you that, you should believe him. And she did, but she didn’t want to do anything about it. She was having fun, annoying her friends and family with forbidden love. She didn’t learn the word gratuitous until later in life.

But Jen knows she loved him, okay, so maybe the way a Jew loves pork. And she knows that Francis died, and nothing will bring her back. And sometimes she thinks that her feelings of guilt over Francis’s death was what caused her to break it off with Roly, to wake up and realize that she didn’t belong in his world. But then she gets angry at the idiot woman who drank herself to death on his couch while her own oblivious self was toying with newfound sex in the form of Roly, trying on her womanly wiles upstairs. If Francis loved him so much, why did she hurt him that way? Why hurt someone you love? Why not wait it out? If Jen is honest, she was furious at the woman who felt her life was worth ending out of spite. Such a waste.

Then, a month later, Jen hurt him in a different place. She found out later, from a friend of his, that he’d left his roommates and rented that house because he thought they’d be moving in together soon. He used to joke about it, and Jen would say: Why on earth would we want to do that? He’d just laugh and maul her. What the hell, she was just a kid who thought differently. Don’t all kids.

Saint never thought so, always said Jen knew exactly what she was doing. That she was experiencing life, suffering for her art so she could learn how different she really was, from his ‘type’, that is. That he didn’t matter at all, Jen just wanted someone to love, the more unlikely, outrageous, the better. Saint had a point, but she forgot one thing. Jen believed it, at least for a while. She still believes it. She still thinks she loved him, that sweet, dislocated southern shyness and pain buried under all the numbing vice. He was her first and last gentleman.

Saint was surprised at how bad Jen felt, how guilty. In a way, Saint had ruined it for her, talking about it all the time, abstracting it. Jen talked for a while too, too much. But then she got sick of it, started feeling like she was a movie. The less Jen talked, the more jealous Saint got. Over the summer, her letters would get nasty. She’d accuse Jen of sending her weather letters, said she couldn’t seem to write anything but shit when she was in love. This was deemed to be a bad thing.

And then, somewhere in there came that awful letter of hers.

Saint had gone back to her dad’s for the summer to work on the farm. It wasn’t much of a life, he was so strict—hated Jen too—he’d found some of her letters one night when Saint was babysitting the neighbor’s kids. So then she was grounded for a month, just for knowing Jen. Well, that and forgetting to unload the dishwasher before she left.

The next day Saint ran some errands for him in town and sent an email from the internet cafe. Told her not to send any more letters for now, that he’d hit the roof. And whatever she did, not to call the cell.

Jen couldn’t believe she didn’t tell him off for going through her stuff, but she was like that. Terrified of him. The other thing that bugged Jen was that Saint’s letters were way worse—it seemed so unfair. But of course Saint would renounce Jen to save her own ass. Worse, part of her believed him, Jen suspected.

So it was tough for them to really talk much that summer; Jen was too busy anyway, between waitressing and angsting. The private thoughts, the deep stuff she just kept in a file of letters like a diary to give Saint in the fall, filled with musings of Roly and the breakup and the ripple effect of Francis’s suicide among all her friends at the restaurant, through whom she’d met Roly and his crowd in the first place.

The Friday before school started again, Jen got Saint’s letter. It said:

I cry for all the things I’ve known and touched and breathed life into and sucked life from. One step could have changed the outcome but one step cost far too much for a creature of pride and sin. The course is furrowed deep into the mottled heart that will not unstick from my throat. The destination does not change; only the names we give to it, only the style and grace with which we meet it, only the length of time required for our private reckonings with the dismal abyss of mortality.

I feel death’s flesh upon my bones. If I were vain, I would wax and flex it, begging for stasis, preservation. There is no call for this. No high and mighty whisper of my name. In the absence of the word, I will answer only to that which waits in indifference. There are no heroes in the place where heroes live. I am no hero; I face only things which I create. And now from that too I turn away.

Jen, the Gatsby is the highest form of self-delusion and the sole salvation of one’s self. But I cannot dance toward the green light when I recognize it to be a mirage. I can only shroud myself in the black curtain that knows my name and every fiber of my existence and will swallow me whole, will swallow my pain and my joy in one beat, one breath.

Jen, Dad, Mom, Listen:

Forgive my self-absorption for it is an honest approach to my existence. It is my own right, my only right that I exercise in meeting my dark stranger, my ungodly Pan on the shore tonight.

Do not delude yourselves by thinking man has any other rights. Do not console yourselves by extracting rights you feel owed to you from others. They are a fallacy ingeniously devised to enable you to control each other. Nothing more.

Try and MAKE it your right to resent my death. You will only suffer, and the suffering will be self-wrought.

And so I flourish, free from the gravity of altruism, unable to bear down, to play games that you rule. I capsize the board with a wave of self-indulgence and do not ask your forgiveness—it is not yours to give. I leave you to pick up your pieces; to choose your own means to your end where we may meet and merge and yield.

Jen was stunned. Saint would get a little morbid here and there, the odd letter straight from left field, but she always seemed okay in the real world. But then Jen kept thinking about all those nights at the private beach they used to sneak into, how Saint would swim out into the black horizon, for what felt like forever; how everyone on shore was always worried she’d not come back. How she admitted at times she wanted to be lost in the mystery of it, to give herself over to the undertow. So Jen became frantic with the notion that Saint was actually planning to kill herself – the death of Francis was still fresh in her mind, which didn’t help. She called and called and called the house phone, desperate. Saint was only allowed to use her cell in emergencies, and her dad checked the bill each month to make sure. But Jen was desperate, so she called Saint’s cell. She shouldn’t have been surprised when Saint’s father answered, but she was. She sputtered and rambled away between sobs until his words started getting through.

“Ann is out back doing chores. I don’t know what kinda drugs you’re on but if you call Ann one more time I’m going to call your folks and tell ‘em about your letters. I shoulda anyway, but she begged me not to…An’ I’m gonna tell her mom she better not be lettin’ Ann run with your type this year either or I’ll pull her from that fancy-ass city school of yours pronto even if I have to go to court to get custody.”

The phone slammed in Jen’s ear.

At first, Jen failed to see the humor in a fake suicide letter. She felt hurt, gullible, stupid. Saint never ceased to find the humor in it. The first day back at school, Jen saw her in the hallway and Saint started laughing so hard she fell on her ass, couldn’t catch her breath.

There was something about the way she laughed that it was hard not to join in. It sounded funny. After a minute, Jen laughed too. Then they couldn’t stop. By the time Jen got around to calling her a bitch, her stomach hurt and tears were rolling down her face. All morning in class they’d look at one another and burst out giggling. It drove the teacher nuts.

Everything was fine after that, for a while. Back to normal, almost. Saint would go on about Jen having given up her one true primal love. By then Saint realized, saw what was happening to Jen. Saw that they were careening toward a sharp curve, where they’d cross-over and wear each other like a badge. Take the parts they wanted from the wreckage, then hate each other for it. But that was years away. They had only just started down that road.

Chapter 4: Dawning

April 14th, 2019 by Ima Admin

Sunlight is streaming through the venetians and it feels like it should be a holiday. Tiny particles of dust are dancing in the beams and Jen wants to be one, shimmering in golden light. This morning she feels incredibly happy, like there’s something to look forward to after all. She squeezes the comforter to her chest. It must be the motor scooter. Jace is still sleeping, barely. There are about forty-two stages of half-sleep with him. Sometimes, when Jen thinks he’s sound asleep, he’s really awake and hearing everything. Like when Chris wakes in the night. Snore snore. Then, when he finally settles, and Jen comes back to bed, Jace will say, in a far too-lucid voice, what was wrong, is he okay? He tries to act like he just woke up when she came back to bed, but Jen knows him better than that by now. If his voice is that clear, he’s been lying awake half the night, listening to her pace and sing and rock until their ever-wakeful boy is cajoled into a very temporary sleep. Chris takes after Jen that way, never wants to waste time sleeping, doesn’t want to miss anything. She just hopes he marries someone like him when he grows up. Jace and Jen have never been able to get into sync. He says it’s because Jen doesn’t need sleep. Jen says it’s just that she doesn’t want to spend half her life avoiding life.

She can always tell when he’s depressed, because he sleeps all the time. She has a habit of calling it laziness, letting everyone else deal with things while he checks out of the reality department. But he’s been better lately, since the move. Jen thinks he feels more purposeful now, more appreciative of his time now that he has something to do with it.

She always feels she gets more done when she’s busy. You learn to manage your time that way. But give yourself a dead day, it’ll take five hours to accomplish what can be done in one when you’re busy.

Today’s supposed to be a dead day (Jace gets pissed when she calls them that…he likes to say a “hang-loose” day). The deal is, Jen restrains herself from making plans or starting projects; they wander around the house all day and try to decide what spontaneous thing they should do. Then they argue because the day gets away on them, there’s no time left, and they didn’t do any spontaneous, relaxing thing.

Jen looks at his angelic, almost translucent face now, the broad arching eyelids, sweet, well-defined lips, and dimpled cheek, even when he’s not smiling (though he has the eerie habit of smiling in his sleep) and she has to hold herself very still to not start kissing him. It’s not that he’d object; anytime’s a good time for Jace; it’s just that he’d drag his ass all day because he didn’t get enough sleep. It doesn’t seem worth it. She’s glad though, that she still feel this way, even amidst traitorous thoughts and motor scooter defiance, or maybe because of them. She seems to need that edge.

On the way downstairs, it occurs to her that she’s always sneaking down the stairs in the early morning light, alone. Key word. From Roly right on down the line, she’s always been the first one up. It’s because she usually feels so terrific in the morning. So excited about the new day. Jace just gives her these looks, like, fuck off, would you? He’s even admonished her, said, Do you have to be so cheerful, I can’t take it Jen. He’s serious too. If he were the first to complain, maybe she’d take offence. But he’s not.

The only other creature Jen knows who wakes up almost as early and usually as cheerful as her is her son. Even now, he is babbling away to himself in his crib. He likely started at six, but he won’t cry for another hour. He’s amazing that way. It seems he knows Jen needs her morning time before she comes to get him. She’s been blessed with an incredible child, and is grateful. Easy to say at this stage, when they’re so connected, she thinks. Who knows how she’ll feel when he starts asserting himself. When she remembers he’s the world’s child, not hers. A thought Jen doesn’t care to pursue at the moment.

She’s sitting in her sunroom, loving the liquid orange rolling down toward the mist rising from the river. This is her favorite room in the house. She gets lost here sometimes, hours just fly away like they never happened at all. It’s likely because her file cabinet’s here. Under the pretenses of cleaning it out, Jen finds poems, letters, pictures from the past. Then she’s lost in reflection, but then again, is an unreflected life worth living? Jen doesn’t consider herself especially sentimental. It’s more like she’s looking for something. She just doesn’t know what.

Maybe it’s boredom. Her mother always said Jen read because she was bored with everyone, that it was as much escapism as her dad’s watching TV all the time, which had been a habit that irritated Jen to no end. Funny how she managed to marry a man who watches TV all the time too. She didn’t even own a TV when she met Jace. But just before he moved in, she went out to one of those man-den big box stores and got a huge flat screen and digital recorder. Like, goodness, there’ll be a man in the house, what will she do with him? Buy him a bigger TV!

Jen thinks the feminist movement has it all wrong. She thinks women teach people how to treat them; expect men to do certain things so they can drop out of the relationship and nurture the sisterhood. What else do women talk about? Men, or possibly other women. Other women when it’s political, when someone needs more power in the group. If the dynamics are running smoothly, then women talk about men. What they say, how they say it, what women suspect they really meant. What they do, why they do it.

The Saint was terrible that way. Jen has letters, hundreds of ‘em, rhapsodizing about this guy they knew since they were kids. Saint wrote about him for ten years, TEN YEARS. Then one day when Jen and Saint were living together he came back to town with the Second City Troop. He’d become a rising comedian. Jen knew him pretty well in school; they were on the debate team together. Saint was always shy around him, but Jen suspected he liked her too. So Jen went to his show with a few pals from work and they had drinks with him afterwards. Saint had to work the night shift so she didn’t go. He asked about her, so Jen invited him over to their house for dinner the next day, when Saint would be off. It didn’t start out as a betrayal.

Jen didn’t tell her until a few hours before because she knew Saint would get too nervous about it. Jen was in the kitchen getting things ready for dinner – lasagna – when she finally told Saint. Saint hit the roof, throwing things around the kitchen and swearing like a trucker. Finally, she locked herself in the bathroom, presumably to surreptitiously preen and then came out in a waft of lavender when the doorbell rang.

There’s John in the doorway, tall and languid, with a bottle of wine, flowers, dressed like a real gentleman, which he’d always been. Saint played it cool, as if he’s the UPS guy or something, and just grabbed the stuff and headed for the kitchen.

Then the guy Jen was dating at the time shows up, barely dressed as usual, T-shirt tucked into the pocket of his cutoffs, going for the rumpled waif look. He smelled like he’d just smoked an ounce of pot in a closet. Sounded like it too as he slurs out a “baaaaaabe” and plants a sloppy kiss on Jen’s unarmed lips. Jen introduced him to John, which netted a “Heeey” and something that looked like a lazy high-five, aborted mid swing. Jen realized if he and John have to carry the conversation they’re in trouble. Saint was glaring at Jen and shaking her head. Jen added an extra shot of gin to her cocktail – Jerry was way more fun if she’s too drunk to notice.

Everyone was quiet at dinner. John talked mostly to Jen, since he wasn’t having any luck with anyone else, but Jen didn’t want to talk too much because Saint would think she was stealing the show. Jerry threw out the odd, incredibly stupid non-sequitur to punctuate the silence. Stuff like, “I wrote this story once about a guy and his dog. He shot it.” Silence. Jen was thinking, Thanks for coming out, Jer. You’ve been a fine contestant…

Worst dinner party she’s ever had. Everyone was relieved when dessert was done. Jen assumed John wanted to go home, Saint wanted to kill her, and Jer just wanted to get to the meat of their liaison, which, of course was fucking. So no one was too enthused when Jen suggested they take a bottle of Grand Marnier and walk to the beach. She wondered if she should have let it go, but she didn’t want to see this dream die. Bad idea.

Everyone was a little cut because there’s nothing to do but drink, so by that time they’re too stupid to stop Jen’s late-night lake quest. It was like a thick glaze had been poured over them, and they were trying to swim through it to reality. Like Jer’s high was contagious.

Then they’re walking to the beach a few minutes away from the house, and Jen’s talking about the stars. Jer starts to get into the swing of things finally–once he’s latched onto something he’ll bore you to death with it–so he started on about science fiction. Nobody had read any, or knew what the hell he was talking about, but it gave them a rhythm. Something to chew on.

They got to the beach, and the guys get a bonfire going. John seemed a little more relaxed. Jen was thinking, good, there’s still hope. Maybe Saint would snap out of it. But every time she looked across the fire, Saint’s eyes were shooting hatpins. Jen was starting to get nervous about going home. Jer was still rambling on, now he was talking about Philip K.Dick and the pink beam of light he saw and wrote about just before his death, and have they ever experienced the Godhead. John was just chuckling a lot. Jen suddenly realized that he hasn’t cracked a joke all night. He was a comedian, that’s what he gets paid to do. Surely he could have saved dinner. But then Jen thinks, no, that’s the last thing he wants to do. Perform. He didn’t expect to have to “put it on” for them. Poor guy. Sensitive, even a little shy. The way Jen remembered him, in fact. Why couldn’t Saint give a little. A word, a smile. Anything.

They drank the Grand Marnier from translucent plastic cups, glittering against the blackness the way the liquid glitters against the light. It was burnished liquid fire going down, sweet orange mingling in the freshwater lake air and smoky scent of spent wood. Jer decided he wants to swim. He pulled Jen up to her feet and they stagger toward the black horizon. In the water, Jen realized Jer was too stoned to walk through water, let alone swim. Then he started leaping around the sandbar like a madman, diving under, grabbing her, pulling her down, choking, leaping up again. Jen felt cloth brush against her thigh —his shorts—he’d taken them off now. Jen told him to stop, but he didn’t want to; she kept getting water in her mouth as she struggled against him. She felt a choking gloom that made her want to heave. Then she got mad, mad at his groping, his drunken, slobbering pawing when she’s trying to just breathe. She swung out with all her force against the water and in slow motion punched him in his naked nuts. Now he gets mad, so he started pushing her down under the water. She’s thinking the whole time, this isn’t happening. He isn’t serious. He’s crazy, but he’d never hurt me. That’s the last thought Jen remembered. He’d never hurt me.

Jen came to on the beach. Everything was blurry and orange, and the sky was black black. John’s face was above her. Eerie orange on one side, dark on the other. “You okay?” he asked.

She tried to nod. Her throat felt thick and sore. She wanted to know what happened to Jer.

“Jer…” Jen croaked. Her throat was sore, as if she were choked.

“He’s gone now. I sent him away.” John said.

She couldn’t believe he’d leave like that, so quickly. She started to cry, which John seemed to misinterpret.

“It’s okay,” he said. “He’s gone.” He cradled her head and shoulders in his arms like a baby.

Saint said she’d go back to the house and get the car and stood up abruptly, wavering a little. She trudged off through the sand.

John just nodded and continued to rock Jen, whose face was buried in his chest. Jen noticed how good he smelled. Lagerfeld. Sweet, woody, a little spice. She listened to the crackles of the fire. Then she saw two beams of light in the dark, shimmering off the lake.

Saint got out, threw John a blanket. He wrapped Jen up and picked her up like a doll. Aloft, Jen noticed how tall he really was. A weary wave of exhaustion drains through her veins, spreading. He put her in the car, then went back to smother the fire with sand to put it out. Saint said she was going to go home, if he didn’t mind bringing Jen back after a check at the hospital. John said fine. As they drove off, Jen saw Saint through the window, hands in pockets, kicking stones along the lane.

The lights at the emergency room were so bright they hurt her eyes. The walls were that ugly 50’s green that makes you feel sick even if you aren’t. John pieced the story together for her. He came out to the sandbar, slugged Jer, and then tried to figure out how to bring them both in. Finally, Jer just waded in. Didn’t fight or anything. Stood and watched John for a moment, then wandered away, stark naked, when John told him to get out. Saint just sat there, and said “Sleep it off Jer” when he left. That bugged John. John wanted to call the cops, to send them out for him. Jen said no, it was just a bad night.

After the emergency room doctor checked to make sure her trachea wasn’t swollen and discharged her, John suggested a drive. Jen was exhausted and felt weak, but she certainly didn’t feel like going home to what she expected would be an evening of angry Saint drama. They ended up in the parking lot of their old high school instead.

“You were the only girl who ever beat me at debate,” John told her. Jen laughed. He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. Softly at first. Jen didn’t stop him. She didn’t have the energy. Part of her felt like shit about it, but it was too warm and alive to stop. Then he kissed her more deeply, and she could feel his grip tightening. His fingers were winding through her hair, which she’s always loved, ever since she was a kid when you’d take turns playing with each others’ hair. He was so gentle, but firm. Jen felt like she was on top of a roller coaster, about to swoosh down, leave her stomach behind. It was that sweet. And then she stopped him, breathless. She was soaked, throbbing against the crotch of her swimsuit, dying for more. There goes the sisterhood, was all Jen could think.

She said, “John, I can’t do this.”

“I know, it’s too much after tonight. I’m sorry.”

“I mean Saint. You know what I mean.”

John was quiet for a minute, clearly torn about what to say. He looked away from Jen and said, “Yeah, I think so. I put you in a bad spot. Sad thing is, I used to have it for her so bad, y’know. Thought about her every day through high school. I don’t know what’s wrong with her Jen, but I think I always sensed it. It’s why I never did anything about it. Tonight I saw it. And you, well, you’ve just kind of blossomed. I always liked you too, but you were so tough, no way was any high school boy gonna touch you. You’ve softened.”

“I always thought you liked her. She always liked you, you know,” Jen said, finally free to say the secret words, feeling a rush of adrenalin at the honesty. And something else. Maybe deep down a mean satisfaction, an exhaustion-fueled betrayal that somehow released all the charge around it. It was done.

“I figured that’s why you asked me over. But you’re wrong. She doesn’t really like me. Likely never has. I can’t explain it, Jen, but it’s all bullshit. And I’m not saying that just cause she snubbed me tonight,” John said, rubbing his face slowly, as if in thought, as if too tired of the subject to utter another word. “It’s more like she liked the idea of me, instead of me. The way women flirt with me after a show. They’re flirting with the person on stage, not the person in front of them.”

“I guess we better leave it there, then.”

“Yeah, I’ll take you home.”

In the driveway, John held her hand for a minute. Jen thanked him for what he’d done. He thanked her for dinner, and said, as strange as it sounded, it had been a great evening. She walked toward the door in the pre-dawn glow. The house was dark except for the yellow cast of the stove light in the kitchen. There, Jen found a note on the table.

It said:

Jones:

I knew we’d come to this sooner or later. It appears to be sooner. The danger of friendship is you map it all out in advance. You tell them where, and when, and how to hurt you most. A bad strategy, friendship is.

You’ve proven to be particularly resourceful in the task of nullifying my existence to fuel your megalomaniac ego. You’ve sucked the life out of me drop by drop, day by day, year by year. Tonight was just the piece de resistance, and it didn’t hurt as much as you would have liked it to. That’s because I’m half-dead already and its hard to get a rise from a corpse.

The thing that surprises me most is that you’re stupider than I thought. Somewhere beneath the layers of shit in your brain you presumed that if you sold yourself a heap of altruistic crap about getting John and I together, I would buy it too. I’m a tougher customer than you bargained for. What hurts the most is you don’t see this.

You don’t see this because you don’t see me. I don’t exist. I’m just your foil, traipsing along on your follies. I’m your audience, your readership. You need your words and your life to fall somewhere, to make some sound. That way you know you are real.

I suppose you have to do this, because if you didn’t, you’d be lost. You know jack shit about living with yourself. You haven’t been alone the way I have. You don’t wake up in the middle of the night with a searing pain jabbing through your cunt, craving the purity of an absolute fuck, a mind that can find its way through the narrow, marble passage.

You don’t understand this because you’re too busy stuffing your gaping wound with a blizzard of bed sheets, you don’t care whose. Exhibit A: Look what you brought to dinner. But that was clever, wasn’t it? Poor Jen, still dating losers. How John’s heart must have brimmed with pity. Every guy wants to be someone’s hero.

You’re a Romantic, Jones. You light your candles as symbols of your need, and cry when the flames sputter, absorbed into the pool of wax in your hands when dawn shatters your illusions. That’s why you don’t like to get out of bed in the morning lately. It’s not the booze. It’s the pain.

I’d like to fuck this letter. I wonder if you’re even worthy of the words. It might be too much for you to handle. Or you’ll pretend it is. I’d like to sell my brains for an eighty foot yacht, to play along with your endless games. Only because in a sick way I’ll miss it. But I’m stronger than that. I don’t need to live in your shadow. I have my own fight to live, to exist. It isn’t a spectator sport. I feel sorry for you because you won’t know what hit you. You’re not one of the lesser fucked anymore. You can’t be with me around at the ready to feed your neurotic and bottomless monster.

I wash my hands of you, and pray someday you will understand that this constitutes an act of self-preservation.

Seriously, Saint.

Jen sat in the kitchen for hours, stunned, as Saint had predicted. She was furious, full of injustice, but also sad, because she wasn’t sure who was lying, if anyone. So she sat, smoking, as dawn spilled across her life the way the curls of smoke formed thick layers across her kitchen.

Chapter 5: How to Sell Your Brains for an 80-Foot Yacht

April 14th, 2019 by Ima Admin

The phone rings and Jen would bet her life it’s Rosemary, wanting to know if she can sneak away for breakfast. No one else calls this early.

Jen leaps up and lunges toward the desk to grab the phone before it wakes Jace.

“Good morning,” she says, a little breathless.

“Good morning,” Rosemary chirps in her very best teacher voice.

“So, whatcha doin?”

“Just thinkin’ about getting Chris up,” Jen lies.

“You wanna come for breakfast?” Rosemary asks.

Jen feels torn, as she suspects Rosemary knows. She’d love to go to the Marina and have a leisurely girls breakfast with Rosemary, just like they used to every Saturday morning. But another part of her knows it’s really not fair to Chris. He likes to roam in the morning. The prospect of waking Jace this early to watch him fills her with a sense of dread, however irrational. What usually ends up happening in this situation is Jen says she’d better not, and then they talk on the phone for an hour, and hell, they could have had breakfast by then, Jen reasons. Today, she decides to take the plunge and say to hell with playing earth mommy.

“Sure,” Jen says, “I’ll wake Jace up after a shower, and meet you at the Marina in an hour.”

“Great,” Rosemary says, clearly a little surprised.

“See you then,” Jen says, and hangs up the phone. Slight regret but buying the motor scooter back must have liberated her in some small way. So much importance attached to such little wheels. She’s got to get a life, she thinks.

A while later, Jen is sitting at the marina, enjoying the sundogs and hint of spring as the warming sun plays with the cool blue water, the awakening air. The only thing Jen wants more than to ride her scooter today is to be on a boat. Rosemary hasn’t yet arrived due to a slight revision of plans. Jen decided to walk two miles into town and catch a bus over to Lou’s. Jace clearly thought she was nuts. Jen told him she just felt like it. The real reason she did it was to get the scooter and take it home. But it seemed like to much to tell Jace when he was huffing around this morning, so she didn’t explain. This meant when she gets home, he will make a big deal out of the fact that she didn’t tell him about the motor scooter this morning. This line of reflection is beginning to cloud the otherwise crisp, sparkling morning and the freedom it promises. Jen’s brow is furrowed as she wonders why Rosemary hasn’t made it here by now.

Perhaps she figured Jen would be late because she always seems to have trouble getting out of the house on time. Jace wants her to do something, Chris needs to be fed, etc. It occurred to her today that they would look after each other if she just went. What would they do if she were hit by a truck?

The water is that sparkling super blue you only get on the sunniest, coldest days before spring arrives in full force. The Marina always opens this weekend, perhaps reckoning back to a time when the lack of global warming meant real season changes at predictable times. Nowadays, it could snow this weekend, and stay warm well into December. Jen finds it a little unsettling. Some of the boat owners here don’t care if green has emerged yet; they’re lowering their rigs into the icy water, hell bent on the season’s first cruise. It makes it feel like summer almost, even though the wind is making Jen’s cheeks numb.

There is only a handful of people who’ve decided to eat outside on the patio today. One couple sits in the corner squinting and shouting at each other in the wind. There’s a little old lady along the rail near the parking lot, furtively trying to catch the half-used jam containers that the wind is whipping about. Jen’s coffee’s nearly ice cold already. Two of the waitresses have come out to struggle with the awning they sometimes cover the patio with. The inside must be starting to fill up. They crank it out and heave it towards the other end of the support to anchor it, but the wind billows up under it and it’s all they can do to hold on. They’re far too tiny for this task. Jen wonders if the lazy cook sent them out. A man is watching them through the window with an amused look on his face. Just as Jen’s thinking smart ass why don’t you help them, he walks out on the patio to do just that. Jen realizes she should join in, it really takes four people, three’s no good. She offers to hold the end closest to her while the tiniest waitress goes to crank the rest of it out. Jen feels light in the wind, like it will lift her up and plop her into the water. The couple in the corner appear to be too engrossed in themselves to notice they’re in her way. She’s almost on top of them, struggling with her corner, and they’re still pretending she’s not there. So she climbs over the railing to the outside edge, a precarious notion at best, and inches along towards the end. Just as she stretches up to hook the end into the support, she begins to loose her footing. The hook goes in all right, but Jen slides down, holding onto the metal pole, feet now dangling over the edge, just above the water. She tries to get one foot back onto the cement pad, but her deck shoe falls off and drops into the water. Just then she feels two large hands under her armpits, lifting her like a child over the railing. It is the man, who seems to be enjoying himself. His blue eyes sparkle like the water – playful but a little cold underneath. He has a handsome jaw and looks like he works out.

“Thanks,” Jen says, “Wind’s sure strong.” She’s a little out of breath, and feeling clumsy.

“Thought you were gone to feed the fish,” he says, trying on a ribald sailor voice. It doesn’t work. He peers over the edge and points: “ S’That your shoe?”

“Uhm, well, yes it’s my shoe.” Jen looks over to see her expensive leather deck shoe floating like a toy boat in a bathtub tempest. She has to laugh; it looks kind of silly.

“Here, I’ll get it,” he says.

Before Jen can stop him, he’s over the rail, lowering himself toward the water, one hand on the cement pad. He kicks at the sodden shoe with his foot until it’s against the wall, and then inches it up while pulling himself up the rail. When he gets high enough, he reaches down and grabs it. Quite a performance, really. She increases her estimation of how much time he spends at the gym.

“Here you go, ma’am.” He’s grinning, clearly pleased with himself.

“Thanks, thank you very much. That was a brave rescue,” Jen says, not meaning to flirt exactly but the inanity is killing her.

“Aw, it’s nothing, I think she’ll revive, she’s taken on a bit of water, is all,” he says, still flushed from exertion and catching his breath while attempting to appear nonchalant.

“Well, thanks,” Jen smiles and turns, walking back to her table, where Rosemary’s now sitting, taking it all in. The sailor follows. Jen suspects he intends to sit with them. She sits down, waiting to see what he will do. She doesn’t like to give people the wrong impression.

“Can I buy you a coffee,” he asks, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“Sure,” Jen says, resigned to politeness. “Have a seat,” she waves to the empty chair.

She regrets this, because now she and Rosemary can’t really talk, but she didn’t want to be rude. After all, the man saved her shoe. As if to punctuate this thought, she drops the soggy shoe to the ground and slides her foot into it, regretting it instantly.

“This is my friend, Rosemary,” Jen says. “Rosemary, this is the guy who just rescued my shoe from a chilly, watery grave.”

“My name’s Pete,” he says, standing up again to reach over and shake Rosemary’s hand awkwardly. “And your name?” He turns and looks right at Jen.

“Oh, sorry, it’s Jen.” She offers her hand for a polite shake, and the guy kisses it. She feels eight shades of red. Time to mention husband.

“Thanks again for getting the shoe,” Jen says, “My husband would have killed me. He bought me those for our anniversary.”

Pete sinks back down into the chair and cocks his head, rubbing his chin, either for effect or for warmth, Jen’s not sure which.

“He bought you shoes for your anniversary?” he says.

“Well, yeah, I like shoes,” Jen says, a tad defensively.

“Lots of ‘em,” adds Rosemary, giggling into her coffee mug.

“Heap big lot of shoes,” Jen says, for lack of anything better. At the moment, she’s wishing this particular wet shoe was not on her foot, where it’s threatening to ice over and bind itself forever to her skin.

“A foot fetish,” Pete continues, not letting the proverbial shoe drop.

“Technically speaking, that would be a shoe fetish,” Jen says.

“Kept in a shoe,” says Pete.

“You mean, a pumpkin shell, right?” says Rosemary.

“Oh yeah, I guess I got my nursery rhymes mixed up. It was an old woman who lived in a shoe, right? Couldn’t be you, then Jen.” Pete flashes Jen another close-up smile.

“Oh, yes it could,” Jen says. Nothing like a self-depreciating comment to fuel a real flirt.

“No way,” Pete says, I have a kid sister older than you.

“Okay, Father Time,” Jen says, “Since you’re the senior citizen here, we’ll let you order. Maybe they’ll give you a 10% discount.”

“Rose,” he yells at the passing waitress, “the Fisherman’s Special for the ladies!”

“Wait a minute,” Rosemary says, “I want brown toast… “

“Brown Toast for everyone, and orange juice and some more coffee.”

Rosemary and Jen are looking at each other uncomfortably. They’re wondering if Pete plans on commandeering the entire breakfast now.

Pete turns back to them and says, “So, do you ladies like to sail?”

“We love to sail!” says Rosemary.

In truth, Jen can seldom get Rosemary into her canoe, let alone a sailboat. She doesn’t like things that are tippy.

“Great, I’ll pick you up here in half an hour or so. I have to take the Bounty out for a quick check. My buddy’s waiting for me at the dock,” Pete says and leaps up from the table, as if he’s just now remembered said buddy.

“What about your breakfast,” Jen asks, always the logician.

“Oh, I already ate—I just ordered for you two. So I’ll see you in a bit. I’ll dock right over there and wave, okay? “

“Okay!” says Rosemary. In a flash, Pete is gone.

Still smiling, Jen turns to Rosemary and hisses: “What are you doing? I don’t want to go sailing!”

“Sure you do,” says Rosemary. “He likes you,” she stage whispers back.

“So, so what. That doesn’t mean I want to go sailing with him. In fact, it makes me want to sail with him even less. I have to get home. It’s bad enough I’m bringing the scooter, I don’t want to be gone half the day too!”

Jen looks out over the rail to a small section of shore where seagulls squabble and puff, fighting over some morsel of dead fish. Rosemary is starting to irritate her. She doesn’t seem to get that whole married-with-child thing.

“Aha! So that is your old scooter out front. What’s goin’ on?” Rosemary leans forward, as if there’s good gossip ahead.

“Lou sold it back to me,” Jen shrugs.

“What did Jace say?”

“He doesn’t know yet.”

“He’ll get used to it,” she says.

“Yeah, right.” Jen says. “I’m starting to lose my confidence about that one.” She stirs her coffee absently. The waitress arrives with their plates. This doesn’t stop Rosemary from carrying on.

“He’s cute,” she says.

“Who, Pete? Who cares if Pete’s cute?”

“You do. Admit it. I can tell.”

“What, you think I should fuck Pete to get out of this slump?” Jen asks, stabbing her eggs with the knife until they bleed yolk across the plate.

“I didn’t say that. I just think you need something to stir up the muck a bit. I mean, you’re getting lost in good-wife-land or something. You need to get some of your old self back,” Rosemary muttered.

“Fuck that. You know the last person to say that to me? Saint. You’re starting to sound just like the Saint. Why does everyone have such a problem when I want to change direction a little? It’s my life!” Jen glared at Rosemary across the table, fork frozen mid-air.

“Hey, okay, it’s your life. Maybe I’m no better than her. Maybe I have a problem about living vicariously through my friends,” Rosemary says, looking hurt. Suddenly, Jen feels awful. Rosemary’s the one person who’s always on her side. The Saint dig wasn’t really fair.

“No you don’t, you’re not bad that way,” Jen reaches across the table to pat her hand. “Besides, YOU’RE the one I’M supposed to be living vicariously through. You’re the single one. I’m out to pasture,” Jen smiles.

“But you’re a better flirt.”

“Well then get it together, lady, things are getting a little boring around here. Can’t you at least find an eighteen-year-old student to obsess about?” Jen teases.

Rosemary is the one blushing now.

“Wait,” Jen says, “He didn’t bring you food again, did he?”

“Ratatouille. A bucket of it.” Rosemary looks down at her plate and slides the hashbrowns around, picking up grains of salt that glint in the sun.

“Are you going to fail him?”

“Definitely,” she says.

A lot of Rosemary’s students fall in love with her, especially the anarchists. Now and then, she falls too, but she never lets on. Ever. The latest one reminds Jen of a not-fully-formed version of Rob. It’s kind of eerie, the resemblance. It must blow her mind, Jen thinks, seeing him every day, wondering if Rob was like that when he was a kid. It’s gotta be hard. Jen’s never lost anyone like that. They talk about it now and again, but Jen can’t really say anything useful. All that philosophizing turns into a pile of shit when you haven’t been there.

Inspired, Jen says ‘Why don’t you just go out with him?”

“Are you completely out of your mind? And give up my career, now and forever? They just made me department head!” Rosemary says.

“Who said anything about giving up your job?”

She rolls her eyes, obviously annoyed. “You don’t get it, do you? I’d be FIRED Jen.”

“Who has to know?” Jen asks.

“You expect me to trust an 18-year-old to keep his mouth shut? You’re insane,” Rosemary says, sotto.

“Well, it’s just you keep having these dreams about him. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Sure. It means there aren’t any adult men in my life,” Rosemary says. She stabs a sausage with her fork and begins to saw vigorously.

“What about next year, after he graduates?”

“Look, will you just drop it?”

“Don’t be pissed off.”

“Yeah, well, why do you assume I have to settle for an 18-year-old? “

“I don’t. I just think you’re really nuts about the guy. And I think his age doesn’t really have anything to do with it. You said yourself he’s an old soul, more mature than your mid-life crisis lovers have been,” Jen says.

“God, will you just drop it! I don’t need to be sold, okay?”

“Okay. Sorry. Look, let’s get outta here before Pete comes back with his boat,” Jen says, pushing away her half-eaten and wholly unwanted breakfast.

“I’m not finished yet,” Rosemary pouts, clearly miffed.

“We can go for a ride on the scooter instead,” Jen offers hopefully.

“Jen, the wheels are too small.”

“So I hear,” Jen sighs. Damned scooter.

“Why are you panicking?” Rosemary wants to know.

“Bad vibe. I don’t want to be stuck out on the lake with two strange men, okay?”

“Pete seems harmless.”

“Those are the worst kind. Please.”

“Okay, okay. How am I supposed to meet men with a friend like you. Christ!”

Rosemary drains her coffee, slams the cup down and shoves her plate aside. Jen’s not sure if she’s serious or not…about meeting men. It’s not really like her. Something’s a little off with them both today, Jen thinks.

They’re walking along the boardwalk toward the parking lot when he spots them.

“Hey, ladies, where’re ya going?”

Slightly startled, Jen turns around, and sees Pete hanging over the rail of the boat docked at the gas pump. She’s a little guilty, a little surprised because she didn’t think they’d be gassing up.

“We’ve really gotta go. Sorry. But thanks for inviting us,” she says, as sweetly as she can.

“Aw, come on, just a quick trip around the bay,” says Pete.

Just then a rather handsome man with long brown hair pokes his head out of the cabin. He is wearing a jean jacket with grease stains all over it, and has a wrench in his hand. Jen notices Rosemary noticing.

“Hey Pete, ya wanna come here for a minute,” he rumbles.

“Can’t right now, our crew for our maiden voyage are trying to escape,” Pete shouts, nodding their direction.

The man gives us half a glance and smirks a little. “You ladies let this guy talk you into sailing with him?”

“No. No we didn’t.” Jen says.

“Good thing. This is his first time.”

“How hard can it be?” says Pete.

Jen rolls her eyes. During her mid-life man era, Jen became rather familiar with the perils of sailing. Rather, sailing while warding off the ever-needy clutch of the captain. Rosemary is giggling and can’t seem to stop.

“Pete, it can be very hard on a windy day like this,” Jen say soberly.

“That’s why we bought one with an engine,” he says.

“You know how to sail?” asks his friend, suddenly interested in us.

“It’s been a long time.” Jen says.

“Look, why don’t you come with us. Pete’s attention span isn’t so good. I could use the help.” he says.

“This your first trip out?” Jen asks, mildly interested in the logistics.

“On the Bounty. We just had her brought up from Florida. I’m just tuning her up a bit. We have a charter next week.”

“A charter?” Jen asks.

“Yeah, we have this deal with the resort where guests can buy a package for a week, two days out sailing and the rest of the week at the resort.”

“That’s a great idea. My friend works at the tourist bureau and they’re always looking for someone to handle group charters. I should give you her card,” Jen says.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too. I’d appreciate the contact. We’ll see how it goes. So far, though, we have quite a few bookings. It looks good. This baby has a long history of charters, the guy that had her before used to take people around the keys to dive the reefs. I used to work for him in Key West. He just retired last year. Come aboard, I’ll show you around.”

Pete is quick to take Jen’s arm and help her up. He strikes her as a kid now, showing off. Kind of too eager. His friend notices Rosemary tentatively following, and takes her arm. Jen notices, and thinks it’s kind of sweet, because Pete just ignored her.

Pete’s friend shows them around, telling them about different parts of the yacht, where it was made, and a lot of other semi-boring details. He’s definitely a detail man.

“Why didn’t you stay in Key West and keep the old guy’s business?” Jen asks.

“Couple of reasons. I missed my folks mainly, Dad’s getting up there and he had a stroke last year, scared the hell outta me. I’ve been away from here too long, you know. Since I was eighteen. Key West is great, but sooner or later we all come home, right? I mean, I don’t know, I must be getting old. Besides, when you’re from someplace you spend a while hating it and wanting to get away. But then you grow up a little, and want to make it better. You know what I mean?”

“Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean. It’s sweet you’re so close to your folks. A lot of guys just seem to wander off and never come back.” Jen says.

“Yeah, well, they’re great people. I’m very lucky to have them. By the way, I’m Paul.” He extends his hand.

“I’m sorry” Pete steps in, “this is Jen and Rosemary.”

“Peter and Paul? You got to be kidding me,” says Rosemary.

“Yeah, we get ribbed a lot,” says Paul. “It used to be really bad when Pete was living with Mary.

Everybody groans.

“So” says Pete, “Shall we christen the Bounty then?” He procures a bottle of one of Jen’s favorite Pinot Grigios and rummages around in the cabin for glasses. Paul just kinda rolls his eyes.

“This is Pete’s idea of sailing” he says. Jen laughs.

“What will you do next week?”

“Oh, he’s a silent partner. I’ve hired two guys to help me, since I’ll have to attend to the guests.”

“Good thing.” Jen smiles.

Just then, Pete emerges from the cabin holding four wineglasses. The thin glass stems look too delicate for his meaty red hands. Jen revises her estimate of his age…his hands tell her it’s been a while since he’s seen 30, that he just likes to act that way. He likely perms his hair; in the wind Jen can see that the roots are straight and the curls chunky. Jen pictures him sitting at the hairdressers, broad back dwarfing the chair, head full of rollers with solution easing down his face like tears. Jen see him looking hard into the mirror, making sure he’s there. Jen laughs at the image.

“What?” he says, a little too defensively. He is standing right in front of her.

“Nothing, I was just thinking,” Jen says, alarmed that she dropped out like that.

“You want to share you thoughts?” he says. He can’t burry the edge.

Rosemary laughs.

“What are you laughing about now?” He tries for an amused look but the girls don’t buy it.

“The way you said that,” she says. “SHARE your thoughts…you must be a teacher.”

Now Paul starts chuckling.

“You’re good,” he says to Rosemary.

“Are you,” Jen says, relieved to be off the hook, “a teacher?”

“So what’s so funny about that?” he says.

“Nothing.”

Rosemary lights up. “That’s where I know you from! You were at the strike vote Friday!”

“Yeah, you teach too?” He seems a little nervous, like this is getting too close, not the yachting other life he wants to live today.

“Yeah, at Central.” she says.

“I’m out in the county,” he says.

“Where?”

“Our Lady. But let’s not talk about teaching today, okay. I get enough of that all week.”

“You’re not kidding.” Rosemary is sympathetic. She too likes to have an “other” life. This town is just too small to teach in. Everywhere they go, bars even, they see students. They’re always amazed. TEACHERS go to bars? They have LIVES? Rosemary hates it. That’s why she doesn’t go out much.

They all take their glasses, and Pete pours.

“To the Bounty” says Paul, raising his glass to the sky.

“To our new crew,” says Pete, looking at me again.

“To Abundance,” Rosemary says, looking at Jen. She must be thinking about her favorite Angel Card. She must be thinking about Paul, who, by now, is thinking about her. She musn’t see that Jen is thinking about jumping ship, that she can’t sell her brains for an eighty foot yacht.

The guys are buoyed at this, while Jen sinks to the bottom of her life like a stone.

Chapter 6: A Small Request

April 14th, 2019 by Ima Admin

Jen knows it’s stupid, knows she shouldn’t let Rosemary’s words sit so heavily upon her. They’re adults, not high schoolers. She doesn’t need to be sitting below deck with Peter right now. She doesn’t need to ‘even things up.’ But she’s haunted by a night years ago that was a defining moment in her friendship with Saint. A betrayal of sorts that left its mark on them both.

It wasn’t really a night at all, which was part of the problem. It was five-thirty in the morning, a summer morning when she should have gone to bed about a bottle ago. She’d first moved in with Saint after failing to find ‘la dolce via’ in the big city, saddled with student loans after finishing her BFA and sinking deeper into debt daily.

Saint was making good money as a factory rat but was bored with life. They’d both thought Jen’s coming home and moving in would be cause for adventure. They just hadn’t known what that adventure would look like.

This night had been an adventure gone wrong. On a bar-hopping juggernaut through a resort town up north, they’d picked up two hapless low-lifes who now somehow were back here in their home.

Jen was fumbling with the car keys, heading down the driveway, after a heated argument with one of them about politics. He seemed like a redneck and talked like a criminal. She had the same sick, shaky feeling she’d had the night in her freshman year when her jilted boyfriend tried to kill her.

Saint came roaring out of the house, drunk, clearly insane. She grabbed Jen’s arm and dug her nails in.

“Do this for me.” she spat.

“Look,” Jen said, “Nobody’s thinking straight tonight. I’ve gotta go for a drive. Do what you want, just don’t expect me to go along with it.”

“You fucking hypocrite! Little miss pure. Look what you used to sleep with!” Saint narrowed her eyes and shook her white fist at Jen.

“Right. Why do think I’m like this? Why am I here? Use your head, Saint! I’m done with nights like this,” Jen said.

“I need this Jen,” Saint slurred.

“Great, so kick his slimy little friend out and fuck your brains out.” Jen gave her a vicious smile and wrested her arm away. Relentless, Saint grabbed her again as she pulled away.

“You cunt! You know I can’t. Don’t ruin this. You have to stay.”

“I’ll ruin it more if I stay.” Jen’s dead serious now. Maybe it’s the drink, but she’s feeling surly, fed up.

“You didn’t have to fight with him,” Saint pouted.

“He’s stupid. He a closed-minded bigot who never finished high school. He’s fucked.” Jen’s voice is starting to go.

“Who cares if he’s stupid. Like that’s ever stopped you before.”

“That was then, this is now. I don’t live like that now. Besides, if I want to sleep with trash, I’ll pick my own, thanks.”

“You’re just afraid to fuck anyone in case they try to kill you,” Saint laughed. mocking.

“No, maybe I’m just in love.” Jen said, hot tears starting to stream down her face. She kept trudging toward the car but Saint had a grip on her like a dog with a bone.

“Bullshit. You’ll never be with Marty. How can you when you’re here? You don’t love him, you would have fucked him, you wouldn’t have left town. You don’t even take his calls. He’s just an excuse. You’re shit scared, that’s what you are. You let MacDonald psych you out. Now you think every guy you can’t control is going to kill you.” The spite in Saints voice breaks Jen.

“And knowing all you know, how can you ask me to do this? You selfish bitch!” Jen swats away her tears, trying to erase the errant mascara that is stinging her eyes. She leans against the car and turns to face Saint.

“This isn’t about the guys, Jen, come on! I want us to be eighteen again.”

“Get with the program, Saint, that was then, this is now.” Jen wanted to be driving. Fast. On a winding road. She can’t think, or breathe. She just wants outta here, out of this.

“You don’t understand,” Saint cries. “I fucking sat here in this city, alone, year after year while you were wandering around Toronto lamenting about your lost creativity, you’re unproductiveness, learning more than I’ll ever have a chance to. I’d go to my no-brain job day after day, nothing changed. Sometimes I’d wake up and couldn’t breathe. I was dying here! Then things get a little tough for you in the big city, so you come running back here.”

“You asked me to.”

“Yeah, well, so now you’re here and nothing’s changed, I still wake up and can’t breathe.”

“And that’s my fault? Hey, you picked your life, okay. Don’t blame your life on me.”

“I had to.”

“No you didn’t. It was your pride. Or the fear that your Daddy wouldn’t think you were tough enough,” Jen said. She knew it was cruel, but she also knew it to be true.

“Oh, fuck you. Why do I bother. You don’t deserve it.”

“I don’t deserve what.” Jen is flushed, but won’t let her get away with this. Won’t make it easy.

“Me. Your life. All your little psychodramas. Then you’re ice queen when I have one of my own,” Saint said

“It’s a little stale for me okay. I’m somewhere else now,” Jen said, and unlocked the car door, sliding into the driver seat. Saint came up and grabbed the door before she could close it.

“Don’t patronize me, you bitch. You’ll never be better than me. You don’t have it in you. So don’t ever patronize me.”

“It’s the booze talking, Saint. Go hang with your new friends, we’ll talk about this sober.” Saint stands back a little. Her arms are crossed, she is thinking of something to say.

“Yeah, at least I get drunk when I drink.”

“No kidding. So what’s your point?” Jen really felt like punching her.

“You’re so fucked up, you’re so inside yourself that you can’t even get drunk. I feel sorry for you,” she says.

“Look, I’m getting over a rough time, not that it’s any of your fucking business. You just want me to be what you need, not what I am. I’m sick of this. I never would have come back here if I knew it’d be like this.” Jen speaks quietly now, not shouting, which seemed to frighten Saint more.

“So go back to your dramatic little life in T.O., throw some paint on a canvas and cry all night because you never want anyone to love you like MacDonald did, but no one will love you like MacDonald did. Including Marty. You can forget Marty.”

“MacDonald didn’t love me. He wanted to consume me. And you don’t even know Marty. So leave him out of it.”

“Consume! Oh, fuck, get a grip Jen. He was hurt and he got mad. He figured out you were a cold bitch and didn’t give a shit about him. You got what you deserved. You never should have played house. Or that friendship game with Marty, he’s likely still stalking Marty even now, you know.”

“I know. Fuck. You don’t get it. Listen to yourself. But you want me to pretend I like some asshole so you can offer your precious virginity to swine. Swine Saint! Why now?”

“Because I should have then, when I was eighteen, but I was too busy…too busy…”

“Too busy judging me? Too busy letting me live out everything you were above? What’s so different now? We just traded places. I do what you want, then you change the rules. I can’t talk about this now…” Jen’s throat feels swollen and she can’t breathe through the hot tears.

Saint’s crying now too, drink will do that.

“Please…” Saint said, but Jen closes the door and reverses, then speeds down and around the winding Lakeshore drive for all the world like someone who meant to crash.

Jen’s mom knew that summer that something was wrong with her, with Saint. Saint was her mom’s favorite, easy to be around. If you weren’t Jen. The rules were different for Jen.

In the I Ching there’s a passage about fire and wood, the yin and yang. Fire clings to wood, has all the brilliance, but cannot exist without the dark, passive wood. People used to look at Jen, dazzled by the bright flames, and never saw she was nothing, nothing but change, wood transforming to air. Confident, in control, Jen shone until one day she noticed she wasn’t real. Things are never what they seem.

Fast forward through the years and here she is, drifting now aboard the Bounty on an ill-considered tour, and the wind together with the memories has made her numb. Part of Jen wants to be home. She wants to hug Jace. She can’t stand this feeling, not just guilt but the injustice. It’s not fair; she has no business being here, flirting. Jen seems to suffer for her actions before the fact so maybe in a way Saint was right, that she likes it. Maybe she’s in love with guilt and suffering.

Rosemary and Paul are standing very close, wind rippling their hair, clothes, so that they almost blur into one another from Jen’s vantage inside the cabin where Pete has lured her with single malt scotch. Pete hovers, alternately giving off that dejected air that men in bars get at last call thinking about going home alone, but then rallying with a new tact. Jen hopes Rosemary and Paul get it together, fast, because she doesn’t want to have to see Pete again. She has a feeling it won’t go this way though, they’re still pretending to be intrigued strangers. Rosemary gives so many mixed signals that guys are just plain scared to make moves. Little wonder they’re above board, while she and Pete are below.

“Why do I have the feeling you’re anywhere but here?” Pete says.

“I’m sorry, lost in thought I guess.” He seems much more real to her now, harder to dislike. She’s a sucker for that tone guys get when they’re feeling vulnerable, but trying to keep it together. That was the thing about Jace. It made her want to run like hell, but somehow she ran toward him instead of away.

“You’re not happy,” Pete says, lightly running his fingertips down her face, cupping her chin.

“I’m not happy because I’m here. No offence. I just shouldn’t be here.” What is she doing, making this real, talking about this? She feels sick but a little exhilarated. Honesty does that to her, makes her feel like flying, running, jumping. Wait. Maybe that’s the scotch.

“No. You’re not happy because you think too much,” Pete raises his glass and takes a long swallow.

“You sound like a shrink I once went to,” Jen says, swirling the ice in her glass and reaching for another shot.

“I mean it. We could be having a great time. Are you gonna live you’re whole life worrying about other people’s feelings?”

Jen laughs. “I don’t think my husband would agree with your assessment.”

“Then he’s a fool. Who buy’s their wife shoes for an anniversary anyway?” Pete rolls his eyes.

“He’s not polished that way,” Jen says. Pete ignores the pun and makes his case.

“Know what I’d do? I’d blindfold you, and take you to the resort. When I took the blindfold off, you’d see a room full of wild flowers and wine and brie. There would be a rose for each year spread out along the bed. We’d sit in the hot tub and look at the stars.” He’s pleased with the image, Jen sees, proud.

“That’s the edited version, I take it.”

“Yeah. Would you like the x-rated version?” He’s a little red-faced.

“No, because it’s shitty of you. You’re just trying to up-sell.” Jen’s feeling mean, hoping to make him squirm.

“What’s so bad about that? Are you afraid of a man who knows what he wants?” Pete smirks.

“I’m afraid of a man who doesn’t know what other people want.” Jen gives a tentative smile of her own.

Pete laughs. He does have a certain charm about him, Jen thinks. She’s feeling a little thrill. On one hand, she doesn’t really like him very much. If anyone’s her type, it’s Paul. Guys like Paul never ask her out, though, it’s always the Petes, the bold ones. She’s not sure what makes them so bold, has always suspected stupidity was the culprit, too stupid to see what they’re up against. Jace was the exception—nice guy, bright, quiet, coming out of a long line of silly young girls with loopy handwriting. Easy girls, easy to ask out, to please. Then he meets Jen. It took him a long time but he got up the nerve. She just never quite figured out why. He wasn’t stupid either, he knew what he was in for, wanted it. In fact, he was surprised to learn that she had such a domestic side. Softness. That was when they were still new, now he expects it. Now her old self is in a box with his letters and poems, something he likes to have around the house if he’s feeling nostalgic. Or drunk.

Jen used to think that what men like most is to tame a shrew. So many guys she’s gone out with, MacDonald the worst, were drawn to her because of her independence, of what she was doing with her life. Then they’d fall in love and try to take away everything they liked. Her career, her art, her personality. They never seemed to figure out that that was the number one way to kill love. Zap. Gone. And they’d be scratching their heads, wondering why one of them was looking at someone new, exciting, independent. Like the true meaning of imperial nostalgia, the longing for something you’ve personally ruined. Ruined by shaping it to remake it in your image. Paradise lost.

Jen is startled to find Pete stroking her hair. Suddenly, she feels like a little girl. She realizes she’s crying, it’s not just the wind from the open portal, but real, sad tears streaming down her face. She feels so incredibly lonely.

“It’s alright. Come here,” Pete whispers to her in that fatherly way.

Jen shakes her head and sits still with her arms crossed against her chest. He has bent down to her eye-level, and still has his fingers tangled in her hair.

“Look, you don’t have to talk about it. I understand. Come here and get out of the cold,” he says, reaching to draw the cabin blinds.

Jen looks out at Rosemary and Paul. He has his arm draped over her for warmth and is pointing at something on the horizon.

“Come on,” Pete insists, taking her hand.

Too tired and numb to resist, she lets him lead her to the inner chamber of the cabin. All she can think is why couldn’t she do this for Saint so long ago. Go along with it and let things unfold. Maybe Saint wouldn’t have married him, maybe she’d have gotten it out of her system. She ended up with the other guy, the one that was supposed to be for Jen. He must have impressed her that night. She liked the fact that he was opinionated. Told Jen so. She wanted babies, she said. Anything can happen in a night, in a moment. At some point they you just say fuck it, and throw the chips on the floor.

Jen feels sick because she thinks she knows what will happen, how the scotch, the talk, the touching will end up. Pete is leaning over her, saying the right things. Jen is forgetting herself. It’s like she’s in a trance, completely out of control, has had resistance trained out of her over the years. Pete is no fool, he’s good at this, has figured her out in the space of a morning. He knows what it will take, and is fully prepared to deliver. He must do this a lot, she thinks. Why not. Married women are easier targets. A little tea and sympathy. Something old, something new, something borrowed, someone blue.

Inside, Jen is careening across the sea, a gull, free, no home, only instinct driving her, hungry for this new skin, this new smell, the thrill of a new touch. Yesterday and tomorrow slide away like a silk robe falling to the floor. These moments of sick sadness and joy are all she can take with her into the cold ground, she tells herself, as Pete pulls her on top of him in a tangle of slick fury. She will be alone as they lower her down, her and her stolen moments. Nothing matters because nothing matters. She has forgotten herself. She can’t hang on anymore, holding the bed sheets to ground her while her lightness seeps out, vaporized into the sky, the gull, the sea. Poof, she is gone.

Chapter 7: Life After Lust

April 14th, 2019 by Ima Admin

That’s how Jen’s life outside her marriage started. A few reckless thoughts, moments, a motor scooter, the promise of spring in the air on a yacht. She forgot herself. Now she can’t seem to remember her old self at all. She doesn’t know this person staring back at her from the mirror: dark eyes, tiny, narrow pupils, cheekbones jutting proudly above the tired terrain of face. Her chin seems to juts out too—it never used to. She wakes up with a sore jaw from grinding her teeth.

She picks up a rubber band and scoops every single strand of hair back into a knot. Jace hates it this way. Not muffy enough, not soft. Severe, he says. Jen smiles to herself, thinking of his whining about her hair, taking some kind of perverse pleasure in thwarting his ideas about her. She walks over to the window and whips back the sheers. She sees Pete’s car at the side of the road in front of the house. A tiny metal bug from up here, though up close it’s a new Mustang GTO, a sure sign of impending mid-life crisis. He speeds away. Busted. Jen feels a twang of pity, not too much, though. Just a touch. Pete and Rosemary are well on their way, they will be fine without doubles.

Jen saw them last night at Comfy’s. Jace was sound asleep by 11, so she slid out of bed like a thief, dressed in the guest room, and walked the scooter down the lane. She’s become addicted to fear, its thrill, and free of it in a way too. She was indulging in a foamy stout at the bar – she likes things dark now – and saw them nestled in the corner by the chess table. She went over and joined them for a while. But Paul kept asking her what was going on with Pete. Telling her what a great guy he was. It was too much, so she begged off and slunk home. Jace didn’t even stir when she slide back under the sheets, her nocturnal adventure both inert, innocent, by comparison, yet treasured.

Pete, now he’s another matter, she thinks. She’d not bother to sneak out for him now. That she ever did those few times was a mistake. In a way, she was like a house cat – once she experienced the outdoors, well, she was always looking for the next escape. The lure of the double life. The top-of-the-rollercoaster thrill. It had nothing to do with love and everything to do with ennui. It took him a few months, but she thinks Pete now understands what he meant to her. A key to a door that would never need to be opened again, because the house was coming down. Obsolete.

Jen can’t believe she let him touch her; she is so repulsed by his need. His drive-bys, his childish hang up calls at dinner time, in the middle of the night. And he won’t admit it either, swears he’d never call.

Jace acts like it’s just a wrong number, but he’s different now. Jen thinks he senses the change in her, though maybe it’s not anything he could put a finger on. She goes through the motions; she thinks she’s being clever, will not tip her hand until she needs too, if ever. But the air’s dead between them, she thinks. He must know somewhere inside him, and is just too chicken to face it. Closes his eyes and trusts whatever it is it will go away. Coward. He’s out all hours of the night himself lately, likely crying in his beer.

But she’s outside that too. Almost. She’s fine until she thinks too much about Chris, what it’s doing to him. All she and Jace do of late is bitch and pick. It’s hard to remember about Chris, she loves him to death, so does Jace, but it’s like they take turns with him, as if he can’t have two parents at once. What does that tell him about love? If it weren’t for Chris, it’d be easy, she’d really be free. But right now single life means the life of a starving artist, welfare or worse; some drab little hole somewhere, anger, shame. Stakes are high here. She’s got to keep on with it somehow, at least until she figures it all out. It seems to be coming automatically, on pilot. If the wheels fall off, if she’s ever busted, she knows exactly what she’ll do. Fantasizes about it, in fact.

She will get a studio apartment, some warehouse or store attic. She will paint it all in purples, blues, golds — scrumble the walls. She’ll have a small wooden bed built into one corner for Chris, and an old sofa bed. She won’t take the TV. Just the file cabinet, her desk, books, a few clothes. She will burn incense and sit by candlelight at night just thinking about things. Jace will want to keep Chris at least half the time. She realizes that she’ll have to have a phone, for emergencies. But she’ll find an old one, with a metal dial. Jen won’t talk on it any more though.

During the days when Chris is at his dad’s, Jen will build enormous sculptures, sculptures of furniture, until the place is full. A fake television. A trendy sectional from Styrofoam and two-part epoxy. A stereo wired from salvaged junk. A computer from clay. Fiberglass drapes. A junkyard Microwave with nuclear symbols. Everything will be different colors, clashing, and have sad clay faces emerging from them. Maybe they’ll be hollow, or stuffed with counterfeit bills. Her home will be a mockery of this idiot life full of conspicuous consumption. Her life with be uncomfortable on the outside, but comfortable on the inside…like a monk’s.

Jen has not had her hands in clay for so long they ache. She told Jace she was going to take a class in the fall. He said, “Why bother, you already know how. Just buy some clay.”

He doesn’t understand her at all. If Jen had clay in their house, she would smash her fists into it until it was a thin slab, till it flaked apart, full of holes like her pie crusts. She can’t trust herself around clay. That’s where it all comes out. She might cry, and hasn’t done that since that first day on the Bounty.

She misses Saint, she sees that now. She realizes she’s spent the last several years trying to be a bas relief of her, the soft, sane one. It’s all bullshit. Jen doesn’t know who she was trying to fool, like there’s some secret, magic camera on her 24 hours a day. People sitting around reviewing the takes, saying ‘what a healthy life. How rich!”

The phone rings and startles her from her thoughts. She runs to grab it before it wakes Chris.

“Hi! Whatcha doing?” It’s Rosemary, of course. Exams are over. Jen didn’t realize it was so late.

“Just sitting around. Kind of lost the day, I guess,” Jen says, wondering how she’s come to let time slide away from her like this.

“You okay?” Rosemary asks.

“Yeah, I’m just bored. Chris is napping and I don’t feel like doing a thing. So what’s up?” Jen asks, though in truth, she doesn’t even really feel like talking.

“You didn’t forget about tonight, did you?” Rosemary says.

But of course she did. It’s Alby’s birthday.

“Oh, shit, yeah. I’m glad you called. What time is everyone getting there again?”

“8:30 okay? Chris will be down, right?” Rosemary says, not realizing Jen hasn’t even mentioned the girls’ night to Jace.

“Yeah, he’s on the bottle now anyway so it doesn’t really matter,” Jen says.

“I got her a rose quartz crystal pendant and an ebony carving. Wait til you see it, it’s this African woman all hunched over holding a little baby between her large hands,” Rosemary says.

“Shit, I haven’t even had a chance to go shopping yet.” Jen says. Christopher starts crying in the background— Jen should have got him up an hour ago—he’ll never sleep tonight.

“You want to split with me on this? I don’t mind,” Rosemary offers.

“That’d be great,” Jen says, relieved that this can all be managed, no thanks to her.

“Is that Chris?” Rosemary says.

“Yeah, I forgot to get him up,” Jen says, feeling guilty.

“Go ahead and get him before he breaks my heart.”

Jen cradles the phone and runs back upstairs. When she gets to his room he’s beet red, heartbroken, and standing. Standing! Big wet tears are coursing down his chubby little cheeks, making his long lashes stick together. Jen hugs him and lifts his sobbing, shuddering body out of the crib. She can barely speak, but manages to coo about what a big boy he is, learning to stand.

On her way downstairs, Jen hears the door opening. Jace is home early. They get to the living room at the same time. He looks at her, puzzled, and asks what’s wrong. Jen shakes her head, phone trapped in her neck, and motions “just a minute.” Jace takes Chris, who is still trying to catch his breath between sobs.

“Rosemary, you won’t believe it. Chris pulled himself up the side of the crib and stood up!”

Jace looks over at Jen and raises his eyebrows. Jen nods at him. He begins talking to Chris.

“Oh my god, you’re kidding! He’s too young! Are you sure?” Rosemary asks, overdoing it a little.

“That’s how he was when I walked in,” Jen says, slightly proud but feeling guilty, guilty that she’s been so disconnected lately.

“Wow, wait ‘til Alby hears. You’ve talked to her, right?’

“When?” Jen asks.

“This week, she said she was trying to get a hold of you, left messages,” Rosemary says.

“Yeah, she did, I meant to call her back but haven’t had a chance yet.”

“She has news for you,” Rosemary says in a sing-songy voice.

“News?” Jen asks.

“Yeah, well, don’t tell her I told you, but…she pregnant!”

“Pregnant!” Jen’s shocked.

“Yeah, nine weeks, in fact.”

“Oh my God, what’s she going to do?” Jen feels sick at the thought.

“What do you mean, what’s she going to do, Jen? She’s going to keep it!” Rosemary sounds a little puzzled. Perturbed, even.

“But she’s all alone! George will never settle down,” Jen can’t seem to get her head around this. Alby, pregnant.

“What’s your point, Jen? It’s been done, you know.”

“It’s hard enough with two…” Jen says.

“She knows that, she doesn’t care. Besides, George asked her to marry him.”

“Oh God, that’s just what she needs. Two babies!” Jen spits.

Rosemary laughs. They both view George as a liability. Alby’s brilliant, beautiful, could have any one she wants, but usually winds up rescuing guys, takes them home just like her stray cats and broken-winged birds. Not to be important or take control, either, but just because she has a big heart. She’s very centered, and draws nutcases like flies. Jen feels a little jealous of her grace, can picture her managing it all with that solid, earthy ease of hers. George, though, is another story. Sometimes Jen thinks he’s the reincarnation of Jim Morrison. He looks like him, but worse, acts like him too. Jen and Rosemary always marvel at Alby’s capacity to forgive his hijinx, which to date, include an unfortunate dalliance with one of her staff.

“Just don’t say anything about George tonigh, Jen. She’s a little touchy about him right now,” Rosemary says.

Alby? Touchy? Where the hell has Jen been, she wonders.

“Then she’s just trying to sell herself on him,” Jen says. “Somebody should say something!” Jen feels her voice rising, and has to ask herself why is this so important to her? Too familiar, she guesses.

“Just leave it alone, Jen, please. Let’s give her a great birthday tonight, okay?” Rosemary says, pleading.

“Okay.” Jen’s feeling guilted like an irrational child. She tries to lighten her tone. “Who all’s coming, anyway?”

“Just me and you, Lou, Janet and Elaine. And Alby, of course.”

“Janet’s coming?”

“Yeah, I called her the other night, in case you forgot. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“No—sorry— I forgot all about it. Damned. Well, I’m glad you called her. I’ve gotta go though, get these guys fed, so I’ll see you at 7:00,” Jen says.

“Seven? You mean 8:30.”

“Sure, see you then,” Jen says, seamlessly.

“Oh…okay. See you then.” Rosemary doesn’t like this idea, Jen can tell.

“Wait—“ Jen says, “do you need me to bring anything?” She realize she’s completely fucked up here.

“Nope. Everything’s under control. You just have to show up, okay?”

“Great, thanks for everything. See you tonight,” Jen says.

“Bye.”

“Bye.” Jen says, but she’s already gone. Jen feels terrible. Alby’s always so good to everyone and Jen hasn’t done a damned thing for this party. Plus it was her idea. Chick-party at Rosemary’s. Rosemary puts up with a lot from her, Jen realizes. Covers for her in more ways than one.

She’s a little surprised that Janet’s coming; she’s always been more Jen’s friend than part of this group. They go way back, to high school. Jen didn’t meet Rosemary until after, after Saint and her had it out. And Lou, Jen met her in group therapy seven years ago. Shortly thereafter, Jen had met Alby when she started selling pottery at Haven, and then Alby got her started on selling the fine art installations. Elaine used to work with Jen before she started making her name as an artist. It dawns on Jen that she’s the only thing they all have in common. Jen’s pondering the connections while doing the dishes she should have done yesterday, just to get the kitchen clear enough to cook.

It feels a bit strange that all her friends are becoming friends. She likes to introduce people, especially when they have things in common. But she’s wondering exactly what the six of them actually have in common— except a tendency to objectify men—when Jace shouts at her and makes her jump.

“What are you doing!” he yells.

Jen realizes the sink is overflowing, suds dripping down her jeans. She fumbles to shut the tap off quickly.

“Sorry, lost in thought, I guess,” she says, flushing, feel stupid.

“For Chris sake, Jen, what’s wrong with you? Use your head.”

He’s annoyed, of course, as usual, ad nauseum, she thinks.

“Sorry, I’m just trying to get the dishes done so I can have supper ready in time.”

“In time for what. You mean, in time for bed?” Jace quips.

He’s acting like he’s trying to be funny, but any idiot can see the hostility. Jen can’t seem to take it like she used to.

“Would you fuck off with your little late-dinner jabs. I’m sick of hearing about it.,” she jabs back.

“Well it might make you sick to hear it but it makes ME hungry. It’s not like you’re doing anything else all day. Pulling together what you pass off as a meal shouldn’t be rocket science,” he says.

“Talk to me when you learn to put a TV dinner in the oven, asshole,” Jen mutters, slamming a pot into the stove storage drawer with a clatter. He’s such a smug, righteous bastard at times, she thinks. She knows now she’s really in for it, calling him an asshole like that. It always gets him.

“I’m usually too busy cleaning up after you and looking after Chris, thank you,” he spits.

“And how many hero points do you get for that? You’re such a sensitive new age guy, aren’t you?” Jen slams some more dishes around, but it’s not helping. She’s too far in to stop now, but a little surprised at herself for blowing.

“A lot of women would be grateful,” Jace says.

“They’re too stupid to see that’s how you get your kicks, that’s all,” Jen smiles, just to really get him going. She doesn’t care any more, doesn’t even feel that angry now. No passion, just meanness.

“You fucking ball-breaking bitch. I don’t believe you. You think I get my kicks looking after everything? Someone has to, and God knows you can’t seem to get your shit together.”

“You love it, don’t you? Yes, Jace, our world would collapse without you. I’m just a useless piece of shit, right? What does that say about you then! You married me. But hey, I had money then, right?”

“I had no fucking clue. I’m allowed one mistake, aren’t I?”

“You’re allowed all the mistakes you want, but you’re too busy being a hero to make any, or at least admit any,” Jen said, feeling it to be so profoundly true and yet not believing she dared to say it. She drained the water even though there were still dishes in the sink. Fuck the dishes.

“We’re just not on the same planet anymore Jace,” she said, sincerely hoping for just a minute they could decelerate long enough to talk.

“Thank god for that. You’re fucked.”

Or not talk…

“Sure, I’m fucked. It’s my fault too, I knew all along that you were just like everyone else,” she said, knowing that her matter-of-fact tone would piss him off even more.

“Men are evil pigs, eh. The way they work, clean, change shitty diapers. We just don’t know what you women want, do we? We’re insensitive. So goes the song of the femi-nazis,” Jace says. His face is red and puffy and he won’t look at Jen. He is now running the water again to do the dishes himself, this way he can turn his back on her.

Jen is leaning against the stove, mildly interested in what he’ll say next. He looks out the window for a minute. Jen follows his gaze. The river is calm and sunny. None of this seems right. It feels like play acting.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Jen says softly, feeling a little regret.

“Get what? I’ll tell you what I get, Jen, I get a lot of bullshit from you, that’s what I get. The more I do to help, the more I get.”

“You really feel that way?”

“For a long time, Jen,” he says.

“Fits with your victim theory, doesn’t it?” Jen says, more angry than ever but unable to explain why.

“It’s not a theory, Jen. It’s real. The harder I try, the more I’m shit on.”

“I wasn’t shitting on you Jace, you were shitting on me. It’s all you do anymore. Once or twice a week I can handle. But it’s a daily mantra now, and I won’t take it.”

“Take it? I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You want me to say nothing at all? Just let you do whatever, no matter how stupid. You want me not to notice, pretend I don’t see things?”

“No, but that’s what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it? That how it’s been played out all long.”

He laughs bitterly. “Since when have you kept your mouth shut about anything?”

“I do. I do all the time. I coddle you like a teenager rebelling against mommy. I’m sick of it, Jace.”

“Well I’m sick of a lot of things too.” He hangs his head down and rinses the soap off a plate.

“Yeah, I know. You’re sick of everything, all the time. You’re sick of things that never happen. You’re sick and tired, sick and tired, it’s all I hear about. When was the last time you had a positive thought or a happy feeling.”

“With you? I can’t remember,” he says, looking smug that he got one off.

“Oooh. Hurt me Jace. Go ahead and try. You can’t, at least, not on purpose, when you try. I know about you though, how the only time you have a good time is when you’re putting on a show for other people, what a great guy, so funny…”

“I’m warning you now, shut the fuck up…” he says, beet red.

“They just don’t know you, that’s why you can do it. But they count, don’t they? I mean, more than me or your mom or even Chris. What they think is more important, because they get the shell. We get what’s inside, and we know how ugly it is, how rotten.”

“Just fuck off, Jen. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Getting a little close for you, hon?” Jen leans forward, as if insisting on an answer.

“There’s no point trying to get through to you.”

“Yeah, I’m fucked, right? No getting through to me with the bullshit you sell yourself. I don’t buy it.”

“I told you, just shut the fuck up, will you,” Jace says, avoiding her glare.

“Sure, I’ll shut the fuck up.” Jen walks over to the closet in the living room to get her shoes and jacket. Jen sees Chris, playing in the corner with his shape—o-ball, trying to fit the star shape into the square. He is concentrating very hard. She’s never seen him this still. She’s surprised he’s not crying, but they weren’t yelling that much, just that deadly controlled venom they’re getting so good at.

Jen slips on her shoes, zips up her jacket, and goes over to give him a hug. He looks up to her with sad, sad eyes, just like his dad’s, beautiful blue but full of pain. Jen can’t believe it. She wants to bite her hand, hard. Jen hugs him and he clings to her for dear life. She tells him mommy has to go shopping for Alby’s birthday present, it’s her party tonight. He starts to cry as Jen leaves, reaching his arms out to her.

Jace comes flying out of the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“What’s it matter?” Jen says calmly, not wanting to upset Chris more. “Look, I just have to get a present for Alby, then go help Rosemary get ready for the party. Okay?” Her hand is on the door knob. Chris pulls himself up to a standing position against the sofa, holding on with one hand, reaching with the other. Jace picks him up, but he’s pulling away, still reaching for Jen.

“You never said anything about it before.” He seems worried now.

“I never got a chance to, with your smart-ass comment about dinner.”

“But I’ve got a meeting tonight.”

“You’ll have to cancel. I can’t miss this.”

Jen sees him getting ready to explode, but he won’t because he has Chris in his arms.

“You can’t…”

“See ya later.” Jen breezes out the door and hops on the scooter. She fastens the helmet tight. He pokes his head out the door yelling at her, but is muffled by the helmet, by the engine Jen kicks to life. She sees him and Chris in her mirrors, standing grimly at the door. Then she’s on the road, and the warm wind embraces her face and pushes her tears to her ears.

Chapter 8: Drive-Bys

April 14th, 2019 by Ima Admin

Jen’s nervous but she knows she has to do this, she has to get him to stop calling, driving by. Things are too fragile, at any moment they’ll collapse. She wonders if it is her own guilt lashing out at Jace lately, overreacting. But that’s just what he wants her to think, wants her to toe the line on this, when it’s what’s underneath it all that gets her. Sure, it’s no big deal that he yelled at her. It’s just the idea behind it, that constant rightness he needs to define himself. No grey allowed, morally, spiritually, everything is right or wrong. No fuckups. No spills. No mess. He’s got her where he wants her too, here she is, outside it on one level, but the familiar self-admonishings have started to bubble up already. Why can’t she leave things alone? Why does she say the first thing that pops into her head? Why can’t she accept anything at face value? Men are fragile, you have to baby them a little. It’s her mother’s voice. Her mother’s voice but somehow it has wound its way around her mental vocal cords, cancerous clematis choking out the ugliness. Dressing it up for show.

She marvels at her mother sometimes. Two marriages, two decades each, and still that cheery work ethic approach to marriage. How can she be her daughter? Jen knows her mother must wonder too. In her books, Jen failed Women School. Somehow didn’t quite get the message. Maybe it was the secret admiration Jen sensed in her every time she broke the rules. Or maybe it was her open-ended parenting, letting her figure things out for herself.

But maybe she’s just her father’s daughter, the one who twenty years of patience couldn’t solve, couldn’t cajole into domesticity. And look at him now, still pining for her mom like a teen-aged boy, pathetically convinced he can get her back someday, when her husband dies. Still alone, hopelessly drunk, crying at his loss. Jen wonders if she’d be like that if she ever lost Jace. She can’t see it. Can’t see herself standing still that long, twenty years. So maybe she’s nobody’s daughter, just life given to the secrets of both. She wonders if Chris will be the same way, absorbing all their unspokeness and living it out: retribution.

Pete’s home alright, Jen sees. Car’s there, and smoke is coming out of the back yard. She cuts the engine in the driveway, and swoops the bike up on its stand. She is fumbling with the helmet when he pokes his head out the back gate. He looks surprised.

“Hi stranger,” he says, recovering. He’s hard to read now, but a little hopeful, she’s afraid.

“Hi. We’ve got to talk.” No point in niceties.

“Paul’s here, we’re barbecuing. Want to join us?” Pete straightens, hitches his thumb in the belt loop of his jeans, and ambles toward Jen.

“No, I don’t have long. It’s Alby’s party tonight. I saw your car today,” Jen says, uncomfortable. Pete is now looming over her; standing too close.

“I was thinking about popping in to say hi, that’s all,” he says quickly, red face puffing up and that grotty bottom to his voice.

“Look, I’m sorry, but we talked about this,” Jen says, looking down at her boots.

“No. You talked about this. I listened,” Pete spits, hot beer breath wafting over her. She is starting to get pissed and raises her head to look him in the eye.

“So if you listened, why the fuck do you keep coming by?”

“What’s the matter, afraid hubby will see me?” He’s sounding a little bitter, childish.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Jen says, still staring coolly into his eyes.

He crosses his arms and sighs. “No, Jen. I told you I wouldn’t do anything, okay? If you want to spend the best years of your life pussy-footing around playing little miss married, that’s your prerogative. But I think you’re throwing away something special.” He touches her chin with the tip of his finger, tilting her head a little. He smiles. What bravado.

“Yeah, well maybe my marriage is special too,” Jen says.

He turns his face away. He does that when he doesn’t want to hear something, Jen thinks.

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You talk big, walk the edge a little, and then run away because you’re scared and selfish.”

“I’m glad you feel you know me so well Pete.”

“I do. I’ve got your number babe. You’ll be back when you’re ready for a man you can’t push around.”

Jen is so mad she’s almost in tears. She wants to hit him, but knows better. She remembers to use her words.

“Yeah, well, if you’re so indomitable, Pete, why the fuck do you keep calling and driving by like some lovesick little puppy.”

“You arrogant bitch. Maybe it’s not me calling, maybe hubby’s out there too these days, maybe some sweet young thing is pining away for your Sensitive New Age Guy. Ever think of that?”

Jen starts pulling the helmet over her head so he won’t see the tears through her visor. She starts to turn toward the bike but Pete grabs her and hugs her real hard. She jerks upwards and bangs his chin with the top of her helmet. His head snaps back a little, and she uses this opportunity to jam her arm up between them and pry him away. He just stands there, rubbing his chin and staring at her.

Jen realizes she must have yelled when he grabbed her, because Paul comes out the gate with a basting brush in his hand, looking alarmed. Jen jams down the kick-start and zooms away, but is having trouble steering because she can’t think straight and her tears are blurring her vision. In seconds, she’s at the corner of Betrand and Labelle. She notices the U-Haul truck out of the corner of her eye. Shit, she thinks, as she skids through the stop. The truck is crawling and she’s forced to swoop around in front of it, but the driver screeches to a halt anyway. Jen is flung up the curb into the bush.

Jen leaps off the bike as it thuds on its side, wheels still spinning. She reaches down and shuts it off. The driver has climbed out of the truck and is screaming at her. She looks up, and recognizes the voice.

“You stupid fucking idiot, that was a stop sign, what the fuck…”

She takes off her helmet.

“Jen? Is that you? Holy shit, are you okay?”

It’s Gary alright – Saint’s husband. He’s a little worse for wear, but still has that lanky build, freckled face, faint remnants of his Cape Breton accent. His brown shaggy hair is now prematurely salt and pepper, but still coiffed in a mullet – business in the front, party in the back, as they say.Eight years and all Saint’s makeovers haven’t changed the essential man, it appears, and somehow Jen is glad to see it.

“Sorry, man, I don’t know what I was doing,” Jen says, grinning.

“God, what are you doing here?” He rushes over and helps her hold up the bike as she checks it for damage.

“Didn’t Saint tell you? I know she’d heard. My husband and I moved back here in the spring. We have a little guy now,” Jen says across the scooter he’s holding up.

“Yeah, I know, I mean, what are you doing here? In the neighborhood,” Gary clarifies, nodding in the direction of their house.

“Oh, a friend of mine lives a few blocks from here. I had to stop there on my way to a party,” Jen says.

“Shit. It’s been so long. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just a little shaken,” Jen says. Her hands won’t stop trembling. She can feel the adrenalin still washing over her.

“Why don’t you sit down here for a minute to calm down while I go pull the truck off the road,” he says, and jogs over to the still-running U-Haul.

Jen puts her bike on its stand and when Gary returns they sit down together on the neighbor’s lawn.

“So, what’s new?” he asks, as if in fact, they’re old friends who just haven’t had time to catch up in a while.

Jen laughs. “Well, where do you want to start? Actually, I don’t really want to see Ann, so I’m going to get back on that damned thing and get outta here in a minute when I calm down.”

“She’s not around, don’t worry. I don’t blame you, you know. I mean, I’ve been inside it long enough to know the deal. She’s nuts, Jen. She’ll do anything to get to you, you know,” Gary says.

“Come on Gary, we’re all nuts. Besides, I haven’t heard a word from her for years until that time in Comfy’s,” Jen says.

“No Jen, I really mean it. Things have been bad since you went. I know we had our differences, but with you around, at least I got to be the good guy for a while,” Gary gives her a gentle slug and chuckles.

“I don’t think I want to talk about this, Gar,” Jen says.

“Why not? I mean, we used to talk a lot. I knew you hated me at first, thought I was no good. You were sorta right. I had my problems. I thought you were a snob, but at least you were fair about it. She’s the one who’s a real snob. You at least accepted me for who I was, even if you didn’t really like it,” he says, stretching out his legs and fishing a smoke out of his shirt pocket. He’s exactly as Jen remembers him. Blunt, but refreshingly so.

“Marriage is tough. I doubt yours is much different,” Jen says.

“You mean my ex-marriage,” Gary says, exhaling toward the sky, as if the twilight can lift his burden.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t feel bad. Neither did I. Just got a letter,” he shakes his head.

“Oh no, not a dreaded letter!” Jen doesn’t mean to laugh, but it’s so typical, it’s so, well, Saint, it catches her off guard.

Gary laughs wryly. “Yup. Yesterday. I came off the midnight shift and there it was, in the middle of the dining room table. Blah blah blah. Point being, I’m history, and I had until today to take my half of the stuff and get out.”

“So where is she?”

“Said she was going away for a few days.”

“Didn’t want to face you, huh.”

“Looks that way. It’s okay, though, I feel okay about it. It’s been coming for a long time, I think.” He looks away, and Jen feels bad for him. She thinks he’s trying not to cry.

“You’re probably in shock,” she murmurs.

“No, I feel kinda peaceful, y’know. Like I said, things haven’t been good…but hey, let’s go back to the house, there’s some of your stuff there, she keeps it in the shrine.”

“The shrine?”

“Your old den. It’s off limits. It’s where she writes, keeps all her private stuff, books, you know. Stuff she figures I wouldn’t know about, or want to know about.”

“What if she comes home?”

“Trust me, she won’t.” He stands up and tosses his cigarette to the ground, grinds it with his boot. He reaches out and grabs Jen’s hand to pull her up.

“Okay, if you’re sure,” Jen says, suddenly feeling a black dread creeping in.

“I’m sure.”

He strides ahead of her toward the house. Jen hangs back a little, almost afraid to go though the door. So many memories, ones she’s ashamed of, ones that make her feel sick.

“Come on, Jen, really, it’s okay,” Gary shouts over his shoulder. Then he backtracks and takes her hand to walk up the driveway.

Jen looks at the low-slung batten board ranch, gleaming in its domestic care. The shrubs are mounded smoothly in front of the large bow window. The grass is freshly edged all along the walk. The doorway has a gleaming red steel door with an arch of tempered glass that Jen doesn’t remember. To the right of the doorway, beside the foundation plantings, is a small bubbling pond, coi, by the looks of it. On the left side, there is a serene cement Buddha against a backdrop of fern. Saint has been having a domestic heyday.

But when Jen steps inside, it’s like passing a time barrier to another dimension. Same damned ugly wall paper. Same table, leather couch, fireplace. Walls of books. But there are holes. Holes where his stuff went, she supposes. Gary walks through a doorway into the kitchen.

“Hey Jen, you want a drink?” he shouts.

“Um, okay.”

“Gin?”

“Sure.” She walks into the kitchen. New cupboards, bleached oak. And a doorway that used to go to the garage.

“Wow, this must have been a lot of work!” she says, pointing to the new rec room.

“Yeah, we had to have somewhere for me to live, eh? Somewhere to put the TV.”

Jen laughs; it’s a familiar theme.

“When did you guys buy the house?”

“The year after you left. She bought it, her dad helped her. I had to sign a pre-nup over it when we got married. That should have been a big clue, but I was too stupid,” Gary says, pouring liberally.

“That was probably her dad at work.”

“Well, she used him as an excuse, anyway. As usual.” He hands Jen her drink.

“Let’s go to the shrine!” he says, taking a swallow of dark liquid, smells like Rye.

“Okay.” Jen follows him down to the end of the hallway. He opens the door, and it all hits her with a force that nearly knocks her down – the late-night letter-writing, the half-empty bottles, the hours she hid here, like a traumatized child under a kitchen table waiting for the tornado. The black endless spiral that took her breath away. She just stands there for a minute. She can almost see her younger self, sitting by candlelight, writing love letters that will fail. Her couch is there, so are paintings she made years ago, one still on the easel. A half-finished installation sculpture sits in the corner, lit from above by a track light. Jen walks over and rests her hand on it. Parts are smooth, but one side is all rough, holes jabbed into it.

She remembers working on it, the last time, she was so frustrated. In her mind, she saw this huge egg, with baby faces and arms trying to get out of it, stretching up toward the sky. She is now stunned to see that it is real, that half of it looked the way she meant it to. She feels proud, can’t get over it. But the other half is rough, slash marks, finger tracks. She notices a knife stuck in the back of it, part of the blade and handle sticking out. Now she remembers doing that, sticking the knife in over and over again, then just walking away from it. From the house. The street. From life.

Jen slides to her knees, still touching the sculpture, crying. Gary bends down and puts a hand on Jen’s shoulder.

“Jen, I wish you’d had told us. I mean, if we’d known, maybe things wouldn’t have been so bad,” Gary says softly.

“They told you?” Jen is mortified.

“Yeah, when you were in ICU. They said you were three months at least, by the amount of hormone in your blood,” Gary says, rubbing his hand between Jen’s shoulder blades.

“But I couldn’t have been, you know. I think the tests were wrong, that it was just the effect of all the pills I took…” She is so ashamed to be saying this.

“You mean you didn’t know?”

“No! I had no idea!”

“Then why’d you do it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I do know, I don’t want to talk about it. Okay? Things were just all fucked up. I never would have done it if I thought I was pregnant!”

“But the sculpture…part of you must have known, Jen.”

“Yeah, maybe. You know, it’s funny, I forgot this thing existed. It makes sense now, in a way. I couldn’t admit it. God, I mean, now that I think about it, the mood swings, the depression, I was like that my first trimester with Chris…”

“Your little boy.”

“Yeah, that’s his name. God.”

“I’m sorry, Jen, I didn’t realize. I didn’t think coming here would make things worse but I wanted to talk to you…”

“No, it’s okay, it’s good. This is important. The mind is funny, it plays tricks. I’ve always known there was more to it, it was more than just an idea, an experiment.”

“It fucked her up bad, I think,” Gary says.

“I know it did. I’m sorry for that. I really am. I tried not to involve anyone.”

“It’s not your fault. You did a good job, but you forgot to take the registration from the glovebox. That’s how they figured out who you were, where you belonged.”

“Gar, I get an awful feeling when I remember these things. Sometimes I do it on purpose, go over it in my mind, but then I turn away, because I can’t make it fit and because I’m ashamed of myself. I’m not really up to talking about details right now.”

“Sorry. It was so long ago. It’s old business. We’ve all felt that way. Tell me about now. How are things now?”

“She’d die if she knew we were sitting here talking like old friends,” Jen laughs.

“Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it? I guess we have a lot in common, now.”

“Sort of, yeah.”

“You want to go through the stuff? There’s boxes of letters in the closet, you know.”

“How do you know?” Jen says. She wipes her eyes and gives Gary a smile.

“Cause I read them all. She has them all filed by date.”

She laughs.

“I already have copies. She made me copies of them all once, before I moved in. But I didn’t give her any of hers.”

“You didn’t half to. She’s got copies of those too.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I swear. She must have made copies of each one before she sent it.”

“God, Gary, did you read those too?”

“Yeah, that’s how I knew what was going on in her head all the time. God knows she never says two words. It was the only way I could keep up. She still writes them, you see.”

“Still? And you read them? You’re awful.” Jen is only half joking. She’s impressed with his honesty.

“I know. But what’s more awful, invading someone’s privacy or withholding yourself from someone you’re supposed to love.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I can’t talk.”

“But you do talk, you always did. Sure you shift around all the time, but a person can figure out more or less what’s on your mind and where you’re headed. It’s not the same at all. We all have private thoughts, but most of us share a few of them now and then. She doesn’t. They’re all locked away on paper. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Gar, why were you here then. I mean, there had to be something between you. What am I saying, I know there was.”

“No, you called it way back then, long before I discovered the letters. You said she was just playing house, I know she said that to you a lot too, but she was wrong. At least you were curious about the men you knew. You felt something.”

“Based on my letters?”

“Based on your letters, yeah, and seeing you at work, I guess. But with me, sure, I didn’t know it then, but things were pretty surface. We talked about sports, politics now and then, orders. We fucked a lot. I thought I had an idea who she was. She loved to do things, boating, golf, you name it. We did a lot together, but she never really talked to me. She had this whole other life on paper that I didn’t have a clue about until this year. You should read the latest, help yourself.” He points to the top drawer of the filing cabinet.

“No, I can’t do that. I don’t want to.”

Jen feels sad for him because she understands that he wants someone to know what he’s going through, wants her to read Saint’s stuff and say yeah, that’s awful. And she knows it likely is, that it’s all true, but that in Saint’s own way, she loved him, got used to him or something. Jen knows she does this too, to a point, but she tries to break through it, it’s like a bad habit. Worse, Jen knows it’s got the better of her right now, and no matter what she says to Pete, the fact is that she’s pushing Jace out fast. But it’s not black or white, so how can she talk about it? How can she trust him with it? The fact that she can’t makes her angry, makes her shut him out more, adding layer and layer to the thick armor of lies.

Jen looks at Gary now, and has a twinge of irony. The one man that she didn’t want, who was ‘beneath her’ in every way, knows more about her real self than any man she knows. He’s read her line by line over the years, all the embarrassing emotions on the page, and seems to like her better for it. Maybe she’s been barking up the wrong trees. She banishes this thought, and stands up.

“I don’t think I want to disturb anything, Gar. I don’t want her to know I was here. I should be going, I have to be somewhere soon.”

“But—well, yeah, so do I, I guess. No use crying over spilled milk, right?”

“Where are you going to go?”

“Me? I’m going back east. I just quit my job. I know it sounds crazy, but I can’t be near her. I might kill her or something.”

“What happened to “peaceful”?”

Gar smiles. “I’d be peaceful then for sure. But seriously, I am, I feel okay, it’s been kinda interesting. Especially the letters. I think I learned something here.”

“What’s that?”

“Watch out for the quiet ones.”

They laugh. They walk through the house to the front door. Gar hangs back a little.

“Well, good luck. I hope everything works out. And thanks, thanks for doing this,” Jen says, though it’s hard for her to put her finger on what “this” is.

“Don’t thank me. I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while now. To let you know about the letters. Look, maybe I’ll write you more about it, I can’t write very good, but it’s easier, isn’t it?”

“Okay, sure. Why not. What your cell number? I’ll text you my info.”

“Yup, just a second.” He pulls out his cell, then shakes his head.

“Maybe you’d better just write it down. She controls the phone account too…it could go dead at any moment,” he says. “Let me get some paper.” He returns with a post-it note, and Jen writes down her info.

“Well, I look forward to hearing from you.”

“Yeah, I’ll drop you a line when I get settled. I’ll warn you, though, don’t expect her kind of letters.”

“Fine by me.”

“Bye then Jen.” Gar hugs her for an awkward second. “What’s that you always write, keep passing open windows?”

“God, yes, from a book I read…”

“Well, keep doing that.”

“You too. Hey, I’ll walk you back to the truck,” Jen says.

“Thanks, but I’ve got to get some things I forgot. I’m going to stay here a while longer. But I’ll be in touch.”

“Okay then. See ya.” Jen smiles and walk away, toward the corner where she left her bike. Somehow, she feels a little lighter. Luckily, the bike’s still there. She’s getting way too careless with things lately.

Jen is heading towards Rosemary’s and mulling things over in her mind. Something is bothering her. Something about Gary. The niceness. He knows something. She knew he wanted to tell her something, but couldn’t. Then again, he likely just wanted someone to make sense of it all, do some Saint-bashing. Poor guy.

Rosemary is walking down the street with a bag of groceries in her arm when Jen pull up to the curb beside her and cuts the throttle.

“Jace is looking for you,” Rosemary says, with a worried look on her face.

“Oh – Oh.” Jen walks the bike up to the curb in front of her house.

“He’s not a happy camper. What’s going on?”

“We had a fight, that’s all,” Jen says, unbuckling her helmet.

“He said to tell you you’d better come home, that he had a meeting to go to.”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Jen says, rolling her eyes.

Rosemary laughs.

Jen reaches for one of the grocery bags that is slipping out of Rosemary’s arms.

“Why didn’t you tell me you needed stuff, I could have picked it up,” she says.

“Well, I wasn’t sure when you were coming, and this is just last minute stuff anyway. And you’re, you know, on a motor scooter. Everything’s ready,” she says, opening the door.

“Oh. Sorry, I feel shitty about all this. I really meant to help.”

“It’s okay, Jen, I know you’ve got a lot on your mind. I’m glad you came early though, I’ve been wanting to talk.”

They go into the house. Jen notices there are purple and yellow streamers all over the place, and a beautiful buffet full of food still covered in saran wrap. Incense is burning somewhere, jasmine, it smells great just like the summer air.

“Wow, you did a great job!”

“Thanks. You want some wine, madame?”

“Works for me.”

She goes into the kitchen. Jen follows, and sits at the wooden farm table. There’s a big clay bowl in the center with funny-looking little balls in it.

“What are those?” Jen asks.

“Mmmm. Those are Carob Chewies.”

“What the hell’s a carob chewy?”

“Something my little chef invented. Try one,” Rosemary says.

“He’s still around?”

“He was here this afternoon. Showed up on the doorstep right after I talked to you on the phone.”

“He’s got it bad.”

“Yeah, well, I tried to straighten him out,” Rosemary says, rummaging in her fridge for the wine.

“Oooh. Poor little guy.”

“Yeah, he didn’t take it so well. I guess he thought now that he’s graduated, things would be different.” She hands Jen wine in a thick little green glass. Rosemary delights in unexpected kitchenware.

Jen pops a carob chewy into her mouth, surprised at how good it tastes.

“Wow, these are great,” she says, still chewing. “Honey, sesame, carob, what else is in there?”

“He says it’s a secret ingredient that will come to you in your dreams if you eat the right amount.”

Jen laughs. He’s certainly creative. “So you didn’t fail him then, I take it.”

“No, I couldn’t. He’s just too brilliant. You know what he submitted for his independent study?”

“What?”

“A semeiotic analysis of the meaning of food, lots of detail on binary oppositions according to Levi-Strauss and attention to anomalies.” Rosemary takes a long swig of her wine.

“Wow, and he cooks. Gotta get me one of those,” Jen says.

“I have one you can buy cheap. Going once, twice, sold to the only bidder.”

Jen laughs. “Come on, you must be flattered.”

Rosemary sits down and cradles her wine.

“At first, I was flattered. Things are getting a little ugly now.”

“You’ve got to admire his tenacity.”

“No. No I don’t.”

“I guess we shouldn’t joke about it, it’s kind of mean, isn’t it.”

“I think we’re past joking about him Jen, I really worried,” Rosemary stares into her glass.

“Worried? How so?”

“About him. He was really out of control today. Manic. I shouldn’t have talked about Paul today.”

“How are things with Paul?” Jen asks. She hopes that Pete isn’t saying a lot to Paul about her, and that Rosemary and Paul don’t have any awkwardness over it.

“Well, it’s great in a way. I mean, it’s been awhile since I’ve had someone I could get along with at all.”

“That sounds qualifying.”

“It is. He’s on a real bent about Pete right now. Pete and you, that is.”

“God, I’m sorry, Rosemary, I just don’t like the guy,” Jen says, biting down hard on her disgust. Of course he’d be a pain in the ass to Paul about it. Of course Rosemary would defend her.

“I know. I don’t blame you, he’s a horse’s ass. Paul doesn’t seem to mind this, though, is a little protective of his buddy.”

“Wants a foursome.”

“Well, I guess he thinks it’d be nice. But that’s his problem. I’m just not sure I like his viewpoints.”

“You can’t blame the guy, Rosemary. I mean, doesn’t that tell you something about him?”

“What, that he protects assholes who want to ruin my friend’s marriage?”

“Well, no, that he cares about people close to him.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

“Look, it’s my own fault. I should never have gotten myself into that mess with Pete,” Jen says.

“I guess what bothers me most is I know why you did.”

“Why did I?”

“I think you thought you were helping me out. That bothers me too. Not that I don’t need the help, but I don’t need the help, thanks,” Rosemary looks hard at Jen. She’s not mad, exactly, but Jen suddenly feels like one of her students.

“I don’t really think that’s the reason, sure, it’s convenient, but I think I was just bored,” Jen says. A voice inside her head, however, is saying ‘don’t lie to teacher.’

“Okay, you were bored AND thought it would help me out. Point is, I feel bad about it. I mean, you get bored all the time, and you don’t fuck around because of it. You usually just think about fucking around. But that morning I said something about it, about fucking Pete,” Rosemary says, sighing.

“You think I’m that suggestible?”

“Not really, I just feel bad, that’s all.”

“Well don’t. I’m a free agent. I’ll own this one, thanks.”

“Yeah, okay, I guess I’m just over-analyzing. Point is, you’re done with him now anyway, right?” Rosemary says, giving one more good teacher glare.

“Right. Actually, I think I’m really really done now. I was over there tonight. Paul was there.”

“Yeah, they were planning a guy’s night. What’d you go over for?”

“To tell Pete to stop driving by the house and phoning. It was really weird, he tried to hug me and I just got fed up and kind of hit him in the chin with my helmet and pulled away.”

“Oh-oh. Having a confrontational day today are we?” Rosemary giggles.

“Yes, we seem to be.”

“Speaking of which, hadn’t you better phone Jace?”

“So he can tell me to come home?”

“Good point.”

The doorbell rings, and the party is about to begin.

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