The Places She Missed

He’d been with Hector the one-testicled elephant for years, but not in that way. She was his one and only. But when she shaved her beard to fit in with the other women in the neighborhood, he cried.

They had been married for three years, two months. Enough time, the monkey-boy had told him, to want to join the circus again and be the shovel boy for the two fish-sisters. It wouldn’t be like that for him, he’d said. He thought of the last time he kissed her face and felt her hairs stick in his teeth. It made each ounce of his finely striated muscles shiver.

She nodded at the garbage can. “You forgot to take the trash out,” she said. She wore an apron over her jeans, and a pink blouse that buttoned at the neck. He wore his extra-extra large shirt from the Gap, but it itched him. He wished he could take it off, but she had bought it for him, said it made him look like he could be in sales, or a golfer.

He looked at her for any hint of a five-o-clock shadow. “I’ll do it tomorrow.” He could lift it with his little finger, the same way he lifted his weights, but he pretended it was too much work. Life was like that. He turned away and began to rummage through the mail. Mostly junk mail and free credit card offers. A postcard from the Man With Two Heads, who was vacationing in Tuscany. He separated out the bills and tossed them on the desk with the others.

She brushed past him, her smooth face grazing the tattoo on his huge bicep. But she was angry, and did not choose to linger. Instead she started working, like she always did when she didn’t want him around.

All this was strange to him. He had gotten used to the superhuman strength, just as all the circus freaks had lived with the normality of their own deformities. But how do you learn to live with a woman?

He watched her at the sink, washing dishes. The shine had left her hair, and she kept it now in a tight bun, never loose and flowing like how he used to love it. With the beard, he’d said, it made her look like Jesus. Now she looked like a housewife. Her soft curves merged with the lines of the plates, the counters. Three years, and they were slowly becoming invisible to each other.

“It’s too hard to keep this place clean,” she said. She undid the buttons at her neck and wrists, rolled up her sleeves, and tucked her shirt better under the apron.

He grunted, knowing she wasn’t saying what she was saying, was saying more or less, or something just right that he didn’t understand. “We need to fix the refrigerator.”

“I start work on Thursday.”

He’d forgotten. Or maybe she hadn’t told him. It was hard to tell these days.

He pushed the stack of bills away from their wedding picture. They were married at the side show. Him in his giant suit, her with her beard curled in ringlets, standing next to the Siamese twins who were best man and maid of honor. They were happy.

He missed the wildness, the rough scent of their bodies in the heat of Summer as they courted in the side show. He had lifted cars to impress her, and she made a game of tickling him with her face from behind. Why they traded that in for tailored clothes and shaving gel, he didn’t know.

Back then he thought he could do anything.

Beads of water trickled down her arms onto the ground. He closed his eyes and remembered. She had feet like a goddess, small and perfectly shaped. He could hold both in one large hand. What he loved most, though, was the warm smell behind her knees.

He was the strong man. He could do this. He held in his mind who she was, who he was, beneath what the years had made them.

Sometimes she receded, and he could see only her smooth face. Still, he knew, there were places she missed and these excited him. He opened his eyes. He walked to her, gently lowered the edge of her collar and kissed her hairy neck.

He reached into his heart and lifted away the years.

Crimes of Passion (Werewolf story #1)

Marcus always got the really gory ones, the ones that made the other detectives skip their lunch or lose it on their shoes. If there were claw marks, or extreme violence—he was called in immediately. Marcus specialized in domestic disturbances that might not be the usual kind. Werewolves, especially. You get two people, a little hairy and crazy, maybe a little jealous, and a simple fight turns into somebody’s heart ripped out or a knife through the brain.

Most often, you had the case where the woman, bitten by the man and wanting out of the relationship, kills him so she can be free of the curse. If she hasn’t tasted human blood yet herself, she’s good to go—it’s common knowledge.

This looked clearly like one of those cases.

“He bled out right here,” Hambly said. A large, dark stain the size of a throw rug glistened in the sharp lights of the crime scene team. His voice echoed in the wide room; Marcus noted there was no rug or curtains to absorb the sound. Even the furniture was utilitarian and imposing, made of rich wood and clean designs. He found it hard to believe a woman slept here.

“The body?”

“Bringing it back to the morgue now. The heart was missing, I think. Big hole in the chest anyway.”

“Knife?”

Hambly looked down and backed away a little from the puddle, which had started to seep into the cracks of the floor. “Lots of slash marks, also some ripping. Something sure tore at him.”
This was perfectly in line. Werewolves regenerated, mostly. In order to kill them, you had to damage either their heart or their brain. Suffocation worked nicely, but violent stabbing or shredding was more the standard.

Marcus adjusted his khakis and nodded to the detective. “Where is she?” His job was always to talk to the spouse, to try and get a confession. Ordinarily the women would get away with it, but Marcus found that when he confronted them with his knowledge, they broke down. Usually they were scared and desperate, and hoped they could claim self-defense. The courts had no clue what to do with these cases, of course, but Marcus didn’t care. He just did his job and had gotten quite a reputation for solving the city’s most grisly cases.

He walked into the library of the house, where a tall, woman sat leaning over her legs like she was getting ready for an airplane crash. Long black hair covered her face, but Marcus could tell by the grace of her ivory fingers that she was beautiful. He ran his fingers through his hair and straightened his tie.

“Ms. Sheridan,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She looked up. He could feel his thoughts echo in her dark eyes. Sometimes he couldn’t help feeling bad for them, these women. They were so young when they were taken, and it wasn’t a pretty life.

“It was my fault. I should have locked the door.” She wiped her eyes. “I came home, and found him lying on the floor, in a pool of blood.”

“Was anything taken?”

“My jewelry. His watch, some money we had just taken out of the bank to pay the painters. Do you think it was them?”

He looked at her closely, trying to gauge the truth in the muscles of her face. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“I told you,” she said. “I was shopping. I came home and found the door open. I called for Richard, but he didn’t answer me. I found him in the bedroom.”

Marcus pulled out his notebook, opened it slowly to make her wait. “How long were you married?”

“Three years. Almost four.”

She had stopped crying, and the room was so quiet he could hear his pencil scratching across the paper. “I’m sorry I have to ask you this,” he said, “but how was your relationship?”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. She lowered her head. “He was my honey, my one and only. Have you ever been married?”

Marcus remembered his ex-wife, then tried to forget her. “Once, a while back. It didn’t work out.” Why was she asking?

“We were this close,” she said, rubbing her fingers together and looking straight at Marcus. “He said I was his forever. Forever isn’t so long, is it? Whoever did this--” She started to cry again.

Marcus knew the detectives had already questioned the doorman. He had not seen any strangers come in. The Sheridans didn’t know their neighbors; there was no motive there. He wondered briefly how she might act so vicious, so cold, but then thought that probably she felt she had no choice.

The detectives led the woman out in tears. Marcus bit his lip. He couldn’t help her until she admitted the truth. He walked into the bathroom and pulled out his Swiss Army knife, then opened out the screwdriver. He reached into the bathtub and carefully unscrewed the drain trap. Gently, he pulled it up. With his other hand, he opened one of the little bags he kept in his coat pocket. He looked at the trap. There they were—tangles of thick, silver hair. Not human. They got caught in with the regular hair during the change back. Maybe they belonged to the dead man instead, but they would be good enough to show Ms. Sheridan.

He thought about her all week, and decided by Friday it was time to visit her. He found out she was staying across town in a rental property and drove over after work. The house was in a nice part of town, at the end of a cul-de-sac of groomed lawns and expensive cars.

He walked up the stairs to the front door, and rapped on the storm door. He held the little packet of hair in his hand.

“Miss Sheridan,” he said. “Please, open up.”

She came to the door in a green kimono, her hair wet and stringy. She had no makeup on and her face looked raw. “Come in, Detective Marcus. Please.”

He followed her down a hallway, where she showed him in to a warm room decorated with bright, painted furniture and dried floral arrangements. There was an open book on the couch and a full wine glass on the coffee table. “What are you here for?” she asked.

“You know why I’m here,” he said, trying to sound kind. He held up the bag of hair. “I know what you are. What you were. You’re not the only one this has happened to. I want to help you. I can find you a good lawyer.”

She turned away from him. “How did you know?”

“I’ve seen this before. So many times.” She was so young, but she was strong. Usually it took them a few more years to get their courage up. He put a hand on her shoulder then guided her to the couch. They sat, her knee touching his. He waited while she collected herself.

“I was nineteen when we met,” she said. “I was his trophy, his muse. He bought me anything I wanted and told me he’d love me forever as long as I didn’t tell.” She paused.

Marcus could see the soft skin where her robe opened slightly. His mind wandered. The curve of her shoulder reminded him of nights when he was much younger. He’d heard all this before, in one form or another, from all the women who had confessed to him. “Please, go on.”

“He had other women. He was away a lot. He locked me up so I’d stay pure, said it was for my own good.”

“You never bit anyone?”

“Never.”

Marcus wiped a tear from her eye. It was always the same story. “Did he hurt you?”

“Sometimes.” She sat taller, and the muscles in her arms twitched. “It’s hard not to, when it’s a full moon and you’re locked up together, you know. But I didn’t mind that. It was when he left me alone…sometimes he didn’t come back for days.”

“You knew how to kill him.”

“There was no other way. You know that.” She sniffed, and pushed the hair away from her eyes. “I didn’t want to live like that any more.”

“I can help you,” he said. And this time he wanted to.

“How?”

He looked at her, and knew he’d made his decision. She wasn’t like the others. “You’re free now. I’ll file this as inconclusive. No one will know.”

He got up and walked to the window. The sun sank below the horizon and the trees waved in the mist while a flock of children scattered and ran into their houses. He hoped she could have a normal life here.

She got up and stood behind him. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said. “And so are you.”

She pressed against him and darted her tongue against the side of his neck. “You’re such a smart man,” she said. “But you made one mistake.”

“What is that?” he said, reaching up for her.

“He didn’t die immediately, you know,” she said. “I tasted his blood.”

His breath caught in his throat.

She smiled as her nails dug into his neck. “He had such a good heart. Just like you.”

Hairshirt (Werewolf story #2)

Once, when I was young, Morelli and I spent an evening combing each other.

This is a love story.

In the full moon, his hair shone gold like the rays of a thousand suns. He was fierce, and smelled of blood and sex. I was old enough to know both scents, just barely, and I loved his car.

The first time he picked me up at school he honked from the back of the parking lot and all the other girls looked in unison as I slung my bag over my back and walked to the open door. It was a boat of a car, streaked with blue and glimmering silver. It reminded me of the night reflected in the lake, a cool cosmic fire. His thick hands rested on the wheel, his thumbs pulsing to the rhythm of some old, old song. That was the night he bit me.

I knew what he was, and I wanted him. Each time he came for me we walked through the woods, and he took me to the place where he spent his time. The grass and the sticks were matted down in an oval, an egg-shaped depression that held him, shivering in the moonlight, as his body grew hair and his saliva drooled out of his senseless mouth. I watched, each time, conscious of my own naked body. Then that one afternoon, with everyone watching me, I knew things would be different.

“I want it,” I said.

“I thought that was the plan,” he said grinning.

“No, it. You know. I want to be one too. I’m bored. Nothing’s right any more.”

He looked at me, sized me up. I touched his leg.

“When?”

“Now.”

“Tonight?”

I slid closer to him and brushed the soft belly of my wrist over his lips. “Do you smell me?”
He groaned. The sun started to go down and I knew it would happen.

When we were done, I nearly fainted at the sight of all the blood coming out of me. Your mother doesn’t tell you about this. How could she know? He pressed his hand against my arm to hold the blood in, the blood that began to boil inside me. My skin tingled, each hair straining upward like a hungry plant. My arms began to hurt and I screamed, and suddenly I couldn’t see because his hair grew down over my face, and we writhed together as the change took us both over.

There was tenderness, too, then. So much hair to stroke, grass to be picked off of one, dirt caught between our naked toes. I started bringing my comb, told him I’d make him handsome. He laughed hard at that. We took turns, so careful of each other, especially the matted hair. “I’ll bring leave-in conditioner,” I told him. “Now it can be tested on animals.”

I loved running through the woods, growling and lumbering over fallen branches. We would see others occasionally, and we would all howl, our hairs vibrating with that one shared, keening note. We stayed away from roads, until that one moon, just before Thanksgiving.

The boy was biking. I don’t know why he was out so late. He shouldn’t have been. Didn’t his mom care? He was on a little kid bike, one of those ones where all you have to do to stop is pedal backwards. He stopped. “Come on Morelli,” I said, laughing. “You gotta chase the boy on the bike.”

“No.”

“Dare you.” I panted. I hadn’t tasted anyone else yet, just Morelli. The boy’s cheeks were soft and white, and he stood still as a deer trying to figure out what it was he heard in the woods.
I nipped at Morelli’s heels. “Go!” I licked him, nudged him toward the road, then took off myself in a quiet lope towards the boy.

He must have heard something, or finally had the sense to get scared. He put one foot on the pedal, waiting for his weight to push the bike forward. Too slow. My teeth dug into his ankle. I cut my lip on the pedal and let go, but by then Morelli had come up on the other side and pushed the boy over onto me. He smelled like pee now and I ripped at him with my claws. He fell, a cry caught in his throat. I looked back at Morelli, but Morelli wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the boy. I gnawed at the boy’s throat until he stopped thrashing, then licked up the sweet blood. “Come have some,” I said. “It’s good.”

We ate till there was nothing left.

This did not bother me. I was young, and knew that I would make mistakes.

I had assumed that Morelli was used to this, that I wasn’t the only one he had taken. He was so handsome, so assured. Whatever he wanted he got, wherever we went. But how do you ask your boyfriend if he’s eaten anyone before? It just doesn’t come up in conversation. I had other stuff to talk about. Algebra, band, mean kids in the smoking section. He talked about his job hauling logs out of the woods, said after he changed he couldn’t bear sitting at a desk anymore. I think he was just scared of being around people.

We didn’t last too long after the thing that happened with the boy. “Everyone makes mistakes,” I said. “You’ve got to get back on the horse, and you know, try not to eat anyone again.”

He looked at me like I was a monster. “We killed a boy. You can still see the blood by the side of the road.”

“We were wolves,” I said. “We were hungry; he gave himself to us.” I had felt the hunger, and had felt it go away. I knew what was in me couldn’t be denied, that once we heard the sound of his tires that everything had been decided.

But Morelli wasn’t convinced. “I buried his clothes. What was left of them. It makes me feel sick.” He turned away from me and nothing was the same after that.

So what could I do? He was lost to grief and guilt. He was never hungry any more and only ate to live, barely. He was always cold, those big hands that had clawed my neck now clasped around his own sad body. The fool. Maybe he was too much wolf; the human mind knows well how to forget its own disasters. You clean up and move on. But he drove himself crazy, refused to run with the pack. The last time we were together I brushed him, one last time, and added the hair to the pile I’d been keeping without him knowing. Toward the end, so many clumps of hair came out, there wasn’t anything to do but save them.

I played with them when I was alone in my room, and teased them out into soft locks. I spun them each night, little by little, until I had a strong yarn. The yarn I plied and knit top down until I had a seamless sweater, another skin. I knew I was losing him. I wanted to protect him, to wrap him in his own nature and make the wolf show on the outside at least a little.

Someday, I hoped, he could walk in the world with me, that we could run together again. I missed his breath and the place at the back of his neck where I used to kiss him. In the meantime, I had a life to live. I had many lovers, some wolf, some man, some both when the taste was right. I opened a yarn store, and sat in the back room spinning when I wasn’t chatting with old ladies. Word must have gotten out. The others must have seen him.

Now they all come to me, in the back door of the shop after hours. My old hands don’t move as fast as they used to, but I turn their bags of hair into gloriously warm sweaters. They’re always cold you see, the ones who need me, and sometimes they sit by the fire and watch me spin.

I wonder if Morelli is still wearing his.

A Little Slice of Heaven

Robin smoothed the napkin on his lap and smiled at her. “It was only after I was stung by the box jellyfish that I realized I liked chocolate cake best.”

Lisa put down her cosmopolitan and looked for the waiter. Robin was the kind of irritating jerk that she avoided religiously, or had, until her dermatologist, with whom she’d been sleeping for months, told her he could never leave his four kids ages four to eleven. She had been angry, annoyed, and since then, horny.

Then she met Robin at a car wash. He had a scrupulously clean car, and always kept an extra chap stick and a package of tissues in the glove compartment. For this, she might forgive him anything. After the second date, she let him take her home. His apartment was full of disinfecting wipes and breath mints. He was straight, had fresh breath, and was prepared for the new millennium of germ warfare. He was boyfriend material.

“Is that so?” She applied some lipstick and blotted it on the napkin. He did look cute when he was talking. He had a boyish face, smooth skin and full cheeks that sprouted stubble as easily as grass on fresh ground in spring. If you didn’t pay attention to what he was saying, he sounded swell; handsome and earnest, voice booming like a king.

He leaned back and stretched his arms behind his neck. “Some days I’d like vanilla, and some chocolate. I’m not the kind of man that likes uncertainty. Still, I shouldn’t have put my hand in the tank.” Lisa nearly choked. She had assumed he’d gotten stung on the beach.

Her previous boyfriend had collected his fingernail clippings in a small wooden box. This didn’t turn her off as much as his insistence on reading the entire Economist sitting on the toilet Sunday morning. She would lie in bed, hungry, envisioning the post-coital crowd at the local eatery finishing the last scraps of bacon. She didn’t think she was picky, just selective. But still, her mom was married by twenty-five and had three kids by the time she was Lisa’s age.

The tables near them were full of married couples, eating silently and occasionally smiling and touching. Lisa was jealous of them, their ability to look backward and forward, to rest in the present with barely a gesture. Her life was on perennial reset.

Finally, the appetizers came. Tuna tartare, brilliant little slivers of reddish fish snowed with kosher salt, and a delicate basket of fried calamari. She hooked a piece of tuna on the tines of her fork and slipped it onto her plate. The fish reminded her of her uncle Walter, who loved fish, but hated odor. All his fish had to be raw. He would come to dinner and slap his sushi-quality fish down on one of your plates and go to town.

“So, you’re not related to the Colonel, are you?”

Lisa was used to being asked this as a joke constantly, but Robin was serious. She was surprised this hadn’t occurred to him before. “No, a different Sanders,” she said.

“No chicken?”

“No chicken. My family made paper clips.” She waited, but he didn’t seem bored.

She watched as his thick, golden fingers plucked one of the breaded tentacles off the pile of rings. Some people would never touch food with their fingers; others seemed to love the familiarity of it. Robin held the squid to his lips and gently pulled off one of the arched limbs. Lisa felt attracted and repelled at the same time. His hands seemed warm and gentle in the candlelight. She wondered what he would be like to sleep with. Would he talk, or would he just touch?

“My granddad owned a paper clip factory,” she continued. “My father took over for him when he retired. By all accounts I should either be making paper clips or babies, or both. Not writing legal papers.” She looked down at her own cold hands, dry and cracked from a long day in the office. Maybe he would hold them later when they walked to the cars. She was glad she wasn’t eating alone again.

She had let him order, again, unusual for her. You couldn’t go wrong with Italian, anyway. She’d done the calculation in her head, balancing equality, self-esteem, with the need for one less decision and the possibility of being touched. The main course was taking just a little too long. He was looking at her. She was sad, a little. There just wasn’t that much to wonder about her. People like her were a dime a dozen; the job, the condo, the mother calling every weekend. All the guys she met were the same. Equally desperate, looking for true love in a haystack full of settling.

Finally, the main course came, two steaming plates of veal saltimbocca, so politically incorrect and tasty. Robin looked so happy, she could be with him forever.

“Is this your favorite dish?” she asked.

“Nah,” he said, grabbing his knife. “Kung pao.”

“What?”

“Kung pao chicken. I always get aroused after eating kung pao chicken.”

Lisa smiled and blushed a little. “Probably a good thing we’re eating Italian tonight, then. People would talk.”

He smiled back. “I like Italian too. And I like eating with you.”

“You sound like you like a lot of things.” She wasn’t sure if she was flirting.

“I like sex,” he said. She guessed she must have been flirting. “Sex is like Chinese food,” he continued, his fork full of veal paused in mid-air. “A little slice of heaven every time.”

They finished their meal over small talk and wine and walked to the parking lot, close enough to feel each others’ heat like a beacon in the cool autumn air. She thought maybe she’d take a chance on him. One thing could lead to another thing and to another thing, and it could be pretty good even if it wasn’t your favorite.

Fig

If men are unreasonable beasts, then women are sheer madness. Micah couldn’t stand either; she preferred the company of her hairless cat, Fig.

It was for him that she collected the blankets. With no hair, he needed warmth, and there was a fabric and texture for every mood. Sometimes Fig was perky and needed something colorful, sometimes an earth-toned mohair was just perfect. But, you never knew which you’d need, and therefore had to be prepared.

On Monday she usually checked the discount store near the bank. She could go there on her work break and see if anything new had come in. Then she would go get coffee. If she had found a blanket, the coffee would be a celebration; if she had not, it would make her feel better. Today she had found a bright runner made of Indian sari silk that she was planning to double up and edge with tassels. It had been a good day.

Micah stood close to the door and waited for the line to get smaller. She shrugged her glasses further up onto her nose and brushed the hair away from her eyes. It had been too long since the last haircut and her bangs were tickling her nose. She liked hiding behind them, sometimes, like when the man at the grocery counter tried to talk to her or when she couldn’t decide what coffee to get. She quickly hid behind the fat man ordering a latte and ran through the tastes in her mind—sweet, cinamonny, mocha. Nothing fit. It made her angry and she left before anyone could look at her for long, or wonder what she hid beneath her baggy clothes.

Fig seemed to like the runner. She gave it to him when she got home from work, and explained to him that it wasn’t quite done. She stroked his warm downy body and thought he was the cutest thing she had ever seen. The mean man delivering a package yesterday had laughed and said Fig looked like a large rat. That wasn’t nice—you don’t insult someone’s cat.

Tuesday morning Fig was asleep when she woke up. She put on her black pants and her large brown sweater and decided she would chance the coffee shop again.

The café boy looked like the boyfriend she used to have until he decided he liked her best friend better. The tears, phone calls, threats, and broken windows had not convinced them otherwise. Micah had been forced to move away to live alone in a new place with Fig, who loved her truly.

“Large regular,” she said to the boy. “The largest you’ve got. No cream.” She got her money out so she could leave quickly and a high-heeled woman in a pin-striped suit bumped her elbow and did not notice. Micah turned red and tried to focus her hate on the woman’s back the way you would crisp an ant with a magnifying glass on a hot, summer’s day. People never seemed to notice her. She wanted to say something, to reach out and grab her and say hey, watch out, but people were crazy nowadays and you couldn’t be too safe. She didn’t want to be too late to drop her bags off at the consignment store, anyway.

Fig had too many blankets, that was true. You could only keep so many before you couldn’t justify buying any more, and it was important to keep up with the latest fashion. Micah found if she brought a bag or so to the consignment store every season or so, it kept the closet manageable and made Fig’s choice easier. Some women had problems with money, couldn’t keep control of it. Mica budgeted. Every now and then she would splurge, like for example if she found something in a delectable cashmere, or a cool linen in Summer. She felt good about herself. This weekend she could buy something new, and she and Fig would be happy.

“Excuse me,” the boy said, trying to get her attention. “You pick up your coffee over there.” He pointed toward the end of the counter where the woman in the business suit had already moved and was waiting impatiently. She was tapping her high-heeled shoe, the pointy tip striking the floor over and over again.

Micah walked next to her and gathered her courage. “It’s not even your turn,” she said. Fig would hate her. There wasn’t even a speck of hair on her suit. She probably hated cats and had a boyfriend who called her every three days and took her out to expensive restaurants after work.

The woman looked at her. Didn’t seem to care, like everybody else. This is why Micah worked by herself, in the little stall at the bank. The other women talked behind her back, literally, shouted their giggles from one end of the bank to the other and gossiped about the customers, but Micah kept to herself. No one seemed to mind or notice. The woman was tapping, tapping, and the coffee was taking too long.

“It’s not your turn,” she said again, loudly. But she would not, could not wait, and ran out the door. The small, tied bags were still in the back of her car, ready to go. Perhaps this afternoon she could let herself go to Macy’s and pick out something soft. Fig would be waiting, as always, patiently.

The Suit

Robert regretted that first step out on the ice the most. Just like his first drink and his first marriage, it had led inexorably to disaster, but unlike these, in which more drink and marriage assuaged his error for a while, step after step had only stoked his foolhardiness and led to the current situation. Fortunately the boys nearby were old enough to know to go for help.

The water was cold and empty as space. He knew to hang on to the edge, to stretch his arms out over the frigid lip of ice. So he waited there, half floating and half perched, posed as if sleepwalking through a wintry desert. Only his head and arms poked up through the jagged hole he had made falling through the surface of the lake. The kids were standing at the edge staring, some laughing, some scared he would slip through and die in front of them.

Theoretically, he knew, if you kept your wits about you and didn’t flail you could survive easily, albeit unhappily, until help came. This was the story of his life. Margaret, his second wife, had just turned forty and as some sort of way of marking passage into a new stage in her life insisted he listen to how he had nearly ruined her life. He didn’t given a crap, and wished she would stop talking. But if he tried to shut the door on her, she would scream and cry until the neighbors called the police.

“Alright, come on in. But I need to go pick up my dry cleaning before they close.”
Margaret sniffed and looked around at the safe beigeness of his apartment. She sat down on the new sectional. “I bumped into Ms. Fuckbunny the other day. She said you called it quits after three months. That’s a record for you.”

“Yes, well, it just wasn’t working out,” he said, holding his tongue. Margaret didn’t need to know about the fights over money, about how Anna had really only wanted him if he had enough money to buy a brownstone and take her to Europe.

But now Margaret wouldn’t give up, no matter how much she did when they were married. “My therapist said you’re a psychic vampire, the kind of person that sucks the energy out of everything. It’s a wonder you even expect things to work out.” She fiddled with the buckle on her bag and looked down. “I was just so tired, you know?” Now she was looking over at the boys, her kitten heels digging into the slush. She was radiant in the sunlight, kind of like the Virgin Mary in a winter coat.

Robert tried to say something, found he had a hard time moving his lips. They were sealed shut against the chattering of his teeth; his jaws were starting to hurt despite the numbness everywhere else. “So am I,” he managed. So tired that sometimes he would play with closing his eyes when he was driving; always when it was safe, but practicing for the moment when it would be up to God or fate or some sorry trucker barreling back toward the highway. So tired that when he saw the ball out on the ice the danger became irresistible. Shining in the sun, it had beckoned to him like a pearl. It was like Anna, Anna when she claimed to love him, and turned toward him with her low-cut dress.

Six birds flew overhead. Robert felt giddy as he tilted his head back and watched them fly across the sky and over the trees. Margaret had left him, again. The slim evergreens rocked gently in the wind, whispering of things dark and alive. Robert’s mother had lived near the forest, in a small house that smelled of bread. She had thought Margaret was too plain but approved of Anna. And his first wife, she had refused to even talk to.

“You don’t listen,” she said. “Never did, no sense in that head of yours.” His mother always had a sour look on her face, as if she’d tasted something bad. She looked at the situation he had gotten into, and crossed her arms. Robert could hardly hear her, but knew she wasn’t saying anything nice.

His fingers slipped a little, and he began to cry. His legs were numb now, but the icy water could do nothing for the feelings that burned in his chest. There was no point arguing. He was a fool, or he wouldn’t be shoulder-deep in the water on a cold winter day. The tears froze on his eyelashes, or seemed to; they simply would not go away. The boys were hazy, colored streaks, the sky a dirty, dishwater-gray nothingness that made him dizzy.

His vision slowly cleared, and as he blinked he saw a police car and a rescue truck pull up by the side of the lake. People got out and milled around, pointing at him and talking to the boys, who had gathered to look at the rescue equipment. Their voices were tinny and distant. He could hear one of the boys laughing.

Robert saw something spidery and bizarre gesturing from the edge of the lake, a man in an orange suit, kneeling down to shimmy over the ice. The suit was the color of moving vans and oriental poppies, and it stood out like flame against the surrounding whiteness. Robert thought of visiting his mother for the last time before the nursing home, the seed pods shaking like maracas in the autumn winds. The flowers were memories, bright points in pictures packed in the little boxes along with remnants of his childhood. Things used to be so perfect.

The figure stretched out and slithered toward him, shining and glorious. For the first time in his life, Robert let go. He felt a pair of strong arms encircle his chest and closed his eyes against the water, knowing that for once, quite possibly, everything would be okay.

Grace On Fire

Roses, at their most elemental, are made of pain and beauty. Grace saw things clearly nowadays. You couldn’t help it, after so many nights of driving alone, wretched and headstrong behind the wheel, listening to late-night preachers and love songs. Last night she came home from her studio to find it on her pillow, that one long-stemmed rose. Damn that kid. She had felt the lid fly off her heart, letting air in and hope out, from where she had kept it safely hidden for the past few years.

Grace poured the beeswax pellets into her small slow cooker and turned it on low. It would be about a half an hour until they melted sufficiently to brush onto the canvas. The gallery was expecting a few more pieces from her by the end of the month for her collage exhibit. In the meantime, she trimmed a pile of pictures with her cuticle scissors, careful to leave the little locks of hair jutting out from the sides of the heads. She was too distracted to do anything else. The old pictures were brown and cracked, and had probably been sitting in a box in someone’s attic before making it to the flea market where she’d found them.

The leaves outside were turning, too, everything browning and falling to earth. The trail of a solitary airplane divided the sky into two cold, blue halves. It had been a while since she had talked to anyone beside her daughter, who called every few days or so from college. Mollie was studying art at a design school about an hour away. She didn’t come home often, though--ever since the divorce she had been coming home less and less. Grace seldom stocked up on her favorite snacks and crackers now. It was funny how one person could walk out of your life and leave more space than they took up. When two people left, you may as well be on the moon.
Last week Mollie had brought a boy home for the weekend—not a boyfriend, but her roommate’s brother, who had come to look for a place and a job and needed somewhere to stay. “It’s okay, right?” she had asked. “I told him what a good cook you are.” Grace didn’t give it much thought until he showed up later with his small suitcase and heavy carryon full of books. He looked like a student—old jeans, shredded sneakers, and a T-shirt with some Midwestern bar band’s name on it. But he had long eyelashes and a smile that made you feel like the world was blessing you. She left; he stayed.

The beeswax finally melted into a warm, yellowish glaze, and the room smelled of the industriousness of bees. She did not like her canvases white. The emptiness was too daunting, in the same way that planting her garden every summer seemed an impossibility until she placed the first timid seedling into the rich, brown rectangle of humus and soil and manure. She dipped her brush, a cheap trim brush from the hardware store, into the wax and then stroked the canvas, first the front and then the sides, until it was coated in warm, rough wax. Then she ripped a piece off an old sewing pattern and placed the brown tissue on the canvas so that the printed lines, curves and arrows made a pleasing background pattern. Another coat of wax sealed it down.

She hadn’t been feeling lonely, certainly not. Twenty years of marriage was enough for her; the marriage had succumbed peaceably to a slow calcification that could only lead to numbness or finality. She had lived long enough knowing that things could turn with a breath; that conversation and love could end as suddenly as a dandelion dissipated by the wind. Nature tended towards decay—but she did not tend toward nature. She had always wanted to make something new, to put things together, to roll the dice and move ahead. Love was supposed to be the closest you came to magic, a place where you could look at yourself and see more than your skeleton and connecting fibers. You just couldn’t live without a glimpse of heaven.

The young man, his name was James, spoke softly and appreciatively. Looked you in the eye half the time he was talking with you and the other half down at his shoes, blushing like a child at a recital. He wanted to be a programmer, just like everyone else. He was so young, everything he cared about fit in that duffle bag. She imagined that a few thousand miles west he had a mother her age, dusting a roomful of old baseball trophies and photos. She had shaken his soft, firm hand and wished him luck. Her hands had started to become lined and leathery, like her mother’s, and she did not like it one bit.

Once the wax cooled, she smoothed it out with the small, shovel-like tip of her quilting iron, then picked up one of the photos with tweezers. It was a woman in mid-jump, face alight, her plaid skirt flared around her knees. She placed it down and sealed it in with another coat of wax. Below it she placed small cutouts from faces from Mollie’s art magazines; six pairs of eyes looked out. Did they know the joy above them? Small pieces of beach glass near the top completed the composition, all encased in layers of wax drawn over them like a summer blanket.

Grace had spent most of the week in her studio, driving there early in the morning and coming back late at night. Sometimes when she came back James was sitting on the couch watching old movies, and she would make him tea and tell him about the odd jobs she had trying to make a living when she was younger. He told her that the plane ride over was the longest he’d ever been on and that he’d never seen the ocean before. At night the bridge across the sound looked like a bright caterpillar, or that dragon from the Chinese New Year celebration in Chinatown. She thought he might be slightly homesick.

She layered the canvas with more wax and then carefully pressed a large rubber stamp of a chambered nautilus over the photographed figure. Eyes closed, she waited a minute as the wax cooled and the rhythmic chug of the radiator filled her world. She removed the stamp and carefully rubbed some black ink into the impression, then wiped off the excess. The spiral of the shell radiated outward. Straight lines and precise measurements mathematically described the shell’s ripple. She pulled out the small tube of quinacridone crimson, and dripped some around the edges of the canvas. It looked like fresh blood. She bit her lip. This was when everything was supposed to come together, when you slipped out of the process and looked with your hands open, to see if you had been given more than you started with. But it was not, and her hands were shaking.

He had left suddenly, yesterday, was gone when she came home. She thought maybe he just had not come back yet, but his bag was gone and there was a sweet, scrawled thank-you note on the kitchen table. And the rose. Foolish! How could she feel like a schoolgirl at this age? But she felt like she’d been kick-started, opened up, taken out without a coat. She didn’t want to feel like this, but it was too late. Love was something that you yearned to, an unaccountable warmth that beckoned like the sun on the face of a swinging child.

Grace wiped her hands on her old jeans and decided she needed to go home. She’d have to go to the mini-mart and get gas first, since she’d been too distracted this morning to realize the tank was empty. Maybe she could work some more at home. She unplugged the slow-cooker and grabbed her keys. Hopefully the old Chevy could make it down the street. At the station she got out of her car and slid her card through the machine, then hefted the stiff hose with both hands. As the gas pumped into the car, she stood alone on the island while her breath collected, briefly, in rings in front of her and looked at the people around her. A few kids were standing to the side near a beat-up car, pooling their money for gas and cigarettes. They looked at her and she averted her eyes to the numbers clicking round and round. “Nice ass for an old broad,” one of them yelled, as the rest giggled and cuffed him on the shoulder. She looked down at her car and topped it off, and the gasoline started pouring back out of the tank, up over the side of the car and down onto her shoes, as she began to laugh and cry at the same time.