Fiction #75: Robert Hilles

A Trick of the Brain
            
I was at the kitchen sink when my father lit his hands on fire. It looked like a trick at first. But everything moved so quickly. First my father’s hands were on fire and then I was on fire. And then the kitchen was on fire. My father had mistakenly used gasoline instead of fuel oil to light the stove.

“Jesus,” my father said, although not religious man. Then, “Robert hold the door open,” which I did.

An October gust blew flames everywhere. He and I were on fire and shook from the cold.

“Jesus,” my father said again and I screamed.

My mother hurried my sister, brother and I out the bedroom window. Then she went back to help my father fight the flames with coats and blankets. And for a few minutes my sister, brother and I huddled together outside terrified that both our parents would perish in the fire. But they got the fire out. My father’s hands were badly burned, but he drove us twelve miles to the hospital in Kenora. He didn’t say anything all the way there. My mother was silent too. Us kids sobbed in the back seat.

He carried that guilt for many years.

I never held him responsible and thought him brave in fact. But I never told him that and now I wish that I had. He would have liked to hear that. Would have liked to know that it made me love him more.

For years I thought everything was held together. Whole. But now I see it’s always coming apart, never finished or complete. Chaos breeds more chaos and only the small details are orderly. Molecules, particles, yet they too burst out of control make fire, wind, and rain. Become dangerous one moment or veer off at some odd angle. Fire is caused by one molecule being attracted to another.

Later at the hospital we were sent to different rooms for treatment. Only my father and mother went home, his hands and her legs bandaged. He went to work in the next day.  Every evening for the next two weeks he visited me in the hospital. He sat in the chair beside my bed. He’d already figured a way to hold a cigarette despite the bandages.

He said little between puffs but always rubbed my head with his bandaged hand before he left. When I think of my love for him I think of those visits and how we didn’t speak and yet we were as close as we’d ever be.

*

Robert Hilles won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for Cantos From A Small Room and his novel, Raising of Voices, won George Bugnet Award. His second novel, A Gradual Ruin, was published by Doubleday Canada. His books have also been shortlisted for The Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Prize, The W.O. Mitchell/City of Calgary Prize, The Stephan Stephansson Award, and The Howard O’Hagan Award. He has published fifteen books of poetry, three works of fiction (including A Gradual Ruin) and two nonfiction books. His latest poetry book, Line, will appear in the spring of 2018. He is currently working on a short story collection called, Little Pink Houses and a novel set in Thailand tentative called, Our Silken Finery.

Photo credit: Rain Hilles.

Fiction #75: Tonya Walker

The Creative Planner

There are really no male editors in women’s magazines. People will tell you it’s because a man cannot truly understand a woman’s perspective. Bullshit to that say I. No man would stand for being paid in glamour and sample sizes they had to Atkins to fit. Actually, there is one man, but he did fashion and beauty for a prominent newspaper, so he doesn’t really count. The papers pay better. Still David is a character. That’s what we all say with an indulgent insider smile, ‘David is a character.’ What we mean is David is a rotund, gay drunk channeling Truman Capote - the bitter years. Mean as a 43 year old ex-wife kicked to the curb after 20 years of marriage. I actively dislike him. I applied for his position when he made his leap to FashionGate, Canada’s newest magazine at the time. I would have gotten it too, had he not chimed loudly about my lack of style - this from a man who sports denim pregnancy overalls and a Gap T everywhere.

I do lack style. It’s true. I love it, but lack it. I wear black from head to toe all the time. My feet are shod in black Bass Weejuns and my backpack is a sturdy black leather Roots bag. Black is the new Black, Again. This is not original, everybody’s done it, it requires no information or preparation, it never feels wrong and it never feels right. It is the absence of style and it pleases me.

My style epiphany happened over two decades years ago, I was still working for Maclean-Hunter as associate editor, and had been offered the job of managing editor for Vida. It was to involve relocating to the city of Angels. Vida really wanted me which was flattering, and the idea of really shooting real women rather than models and  not just giving lip service to the idea was exciting. Still I viewed myself as far too caustic, fat and Canadian to be Californian. So before accepting the position I went on a job interview as a copywriter for an Ad boutique at St. Clair and Young. That’s advertising-speak for a very, very small ad agency with three or fewer accounts. The ‘boutique’ part is supposed to make civilians think that the agency is tiny by choice. They supposedly have too much integrity to prostitute themselves by growing to an unwieldy, overpriced size. This is all very impressive until you realize that advertising by its very nature is corporate prostitution at it's purest. Big or small, a 'ho is a 'ho. Not that I'm judging.

Anyway, in ‘98 I enter the building on Young Street to interview for this ad-writer job. The boutique shared space with a behemoth ad agency it supposedly hoped never to emulate. The boutique rented a floor. I press number four in a thoroughly ordinary faux wood-finish elevator. I dressed carefully for the interview. I avoided the whole black thing because at that point in my life I still viewed it as tired and cliché. It was summer in Toronto which is my favorite fashion season because one can dress well cheaply, no coats, blazers or cashmere cardigans required. I was wearing a sleeveless ivory cotton knit top and high-waisted wide-leg ivory trousers and feeling utterly Hepburn a la “High Society”  - well Hepburn after she’d eaten a huge lunch anyway - and some really fabulous next-season shoes I’d scored from the fashion closet at work. They were pointy-toed and kitten-healed, very new - remember this was years ago. People were still adjusting to the square-toed flat when fashion dictators somersaulted and proclaimed pointy for next season. The elevator stopped at the agency’s floor, the door jerked open and I entered into the rarified atmosphere of the ‘boutique.’ The air had that sucked clean scent distinct to ad boutiques and designer shops on Bloor.  Fragrances, cleaning supplies and pedestrian sweat were all ionized neatly away. I looked around for a receptionist or even a place where one might sit. Neither was to be found.

In the center of the deserted space was a large oval boardroom table lodged in a glass bubble. A video camera pointed directly at the table. The whole set-up looked rather Jetson-like. The bubble was attached to a black wall at the back. At first it wasn’t apparent where one entered the glass bubble. I rolled my eyes in exasperation. It is just possible that ad folks were more self-consciously hip than fashion editors. Mid-roll I caught sight of another video cam to the side of the elevator.

I decided to face it head on and say, “Really?” and then I smiled brightly and added, “A button, a password, a hidden key, a broken stone tablet that fits perfectly with another hidden in the wall? Even Frodo had a clue,” I intone brightly keeping my mouth corners up like my Buddhist buddies tell me to do in a crisis of confidence. “Shall I simply stand here while you watch?” I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice, my tones light. A few moments passed as I stared down the video cam, then the black wall at the back of the bubble slides open like department store doors and a girl dressed completely in black scurries out, a big apologetic smile pasted across her face. She waves and says something I can not hear. She presses a button on the table and the bubble cracks open, literally, like an egg, each jagged side pulled back three feet, revealing a six-foot wide entrance. She begins again, this time with sound.

“I’m sorry I can’t believe . . . someone was supposed to be out here to meet you, uh, Leslie Gulch right?” She is quite pretty but visibly flustered. Her hands flutter to smooth her already smooth waist-length braid. Her bangs are cut in a precise dark line straight across her forehead an inch and a half about her brows I estimate. Her exceptionally lovely eyes save her face from looking like a Bedlam inmate with such a severe hairstyle. I wonder idly if she has any head shots I could take back to the magazine. We haven't done a feature on bangs in a long time.

I hold out my hand to her. “Yes I'm Leslie” She takes it and forgets to introduce herself.

“And uh, we, uh, I mean, we weren’t really watching you, the guys, the creatives,” she shrugs conspiratorially. “You know, how creatives can be,” she caught herself and laughed awkwardly,

“Well, sure you do, you want to be a writer, right?”

“Well, I …” I blush for her stupidity and paused, “I am a writer, I’m Associate editor at Femina.”

Her smile became even wider, till her eyes scrunched completely closed. “Of course, I didn’t mean, well, you know, you want to be a copywriter.”

I smile politely and nod. Informing her that a magazine writer writes copy too would’ve seemed pedantic and only encouraged further stretched smiles that I feared may land her in the next Batman movie as the updated Joker.

Instead I offer, “Cool bubble.”

She nodded, a slight apologetic smile returned to her face, “Maximillian designed it himself. In fact, this whole non-receiving reception area was his idea.”

I looked at her expectantly, wondering if she was as aware as I that we were being watched.

She motioned for me to follow her through the egg, as she continued, “He felt the idea would be more democratic, this way no one in the company is more subservient than anyone else, we all have important jobs to do and really anyone can show you into the agen…I mean boutique.”

I was puzzled. This ‘boutique’ seemed more prankish frat house than potential workplace. “Shouldn’t you have a buzzer then so a visitor can let you know that they are here, surely that would be easier than having someone waiting or not waiting for someone to arrive, 'cause wouldn’t the waiting person be, well, waiting, and therefore subservient to someone?”

She frowned non-committally, “That’s a perspective.” I looked at her sharply, searching for sarcasm, or at least irony to accompany her comment. Nothing. We walked through the hole in the wall into an entire black and white workspace. Black circles of all sizes graced the walls. The ceilings were black with white inspirational quotations punched through, signed and dated by Maximillian. The carpeting was an ironic zebra stripe. Again I thought, ‘Really?’

I decided to make a joke, “Let me guess, the people provide the color.”

She swung around and looked at me as if I’d just won the spelling bee and an Emmy: “Yes! Exactly! That’s what Maximillian says all the time!” Her eyes were wild with enthusiasm; as far as she was concerned I was finally getting it. I sighed, trying very hard not to despise Maximillian pre-introduction and failing. White ¾ dividers curved around the space housing desks and computers. No one seemed to be working; toasters flew across every screen – the original funky screen-saver now 12 year olds consider old school.

“Is it lunchtime?” I asked, looking over the vacant spaces.

“Oh we don’t have a lunch time, people come and go as they need to. Maximilian doesn’t want to be responsible for people’s gastro-intestinal issues.”

“Is that code for hunger pangs?” I joked, trying to detect any evidence of a sense of humor.

“Yes. After all we’re all adults here.” As if on cue a noisy shower of orange Nerf bullets erupted from around a curved divider.

“Got ya!” whooped a bespectacled, pimply twenty-something to my guide.

“Not play-ing!”she responded in an exasperated voice. Trying to brush past him, he touched her shoulder lightly. As she shook him off he said,

“Is Kiko bitchy? Are you like on the rag, dude?”

My eyebrows must have shot up to my hairline. I looked at my guide, Kiko, in astonishment, her pale faced tinged pink. “Did he just say that?” I asked. Nerf-boy looked at me, shrugged and reloaded. I waited for an explanation.

“Maximillian doesn’t like to stymie impulses, the creatives are encouraged to be who they are and say what occurs to them. We can use it all; it’s all good.”

I turned to the creative nerf-dude, “Where is everyone?”

He gestured with his gun to an area over the dividers, “In the bullpen.”

“Why aren’t you there then?” I questioned.

“Don’t wanna be. Need to play.” He responded. I nodded as he wandered off, obviously bored with me.

“Kiko, how many women work here?”

“Five.”

“How many men?”

“Including Maximillian, twenty-one.”

“How many women are creative?”

“One, but I know what you’re thinking, Maximillian is always trying to hire more female creative, it’s just, well not many make it through the hiring process.”

“Why do you think that is?” I spoke slowly, feeling my way. This whole place felt like one big cult and I had this overwhelming urge to wrap my arm around Kiko’s bitty waist and save her from the Kool-Aid. She looked at me contemplatively, as if the question had never really occurred to her and answered with great seriousness.

“You know they’re not really sports, they um, well. . .”

“We,” I interrupted.

“Huh?” She looked confused.

“We, you and I are women too, we are not really good sports according to his Maxness. How many women are account executives?”

“Oh, none, I mean we don’t have account executives, we have creative planners, everyone is creative here. We’re a wholly creative shop.”

“Holy creative shop is right,” I muttered.

“Two of the women are planners and the other two are traffickers.”

“And you?”

“I’m a trafficker, I chaperone a piece from creative to Maximillian – you shouldn’t really shorten his name by the way, he prefers we all address him in the same manner, that way no one feels greater intimacy than anyone else - there have been jealousy concerns in the past – then I pass it back to a planner, then a client, back to a planner, then Maximillian, then creative again.” I was finally beginning to hear the rustle of people and paper One voice was speaking louder than the rest.
I lowered my voice, “Sounds like Maximillian’s a real hands on guy.”

Kiko nodded, “He personally approves every piece of work that flows through this agency.” She’d pasted her big eye-crinkly smile on again. We’d arrived at what I assumed was the ‘bullpen.’ It was a fairly large curved space surrounded by wide counters laden with papers, pens, and cutting boards.

While more art directors worked on Macintosh computers now, old-fashioned cut and paste directors could still be found in most ‘shops.’ And since Maximillian himself had been a cut and paster and was (shhh) computer illiterate, there would always be a place to play with crayons in his 'boutique.'

Several people perched on the countertops not covered in paper. Kiko and I waited quietly until Maximillian finished speaking and she caught his eye. I noticed two televisions on the top shelf of a side divider. One displayed the boardroom, the other, the place I’d been standing in: the non-reception area. I breathed deeply; glad I hadn’t picked my nose or adjusted my panties outside the bubble for all the bullpen to witness. Already a magazine for teenage girls seemed a far more professional pursuit than this Chuck E. Cheese for adults. Still, I shouldn’t judge, I hadn’t spoken to the great man himself.

He turned to us, “Well how did you like being on television, Ms. Gauche?”

“Gulch,” I replied, “As in riverbed. Television’s great, though I’d prefer to write for it rather that guest star.” I dusted off my prom smile, it didn’t fit properly anymore, it didn’t even reach my eyes.

“You seem to be a fan.”

“An excellent medium, especially when people are caught unaware. Would you like something to drink? Kiko please bring us some blue water.  Annie will be joining us; she is one of our planners. Do you understand about planners?”

I nodded, “Creative planners instead of ad executives because everyone is creative here.” I saw Kiko smile as she scurried away to fetch blue water whatever the hell that was.

Maximillian looked pleased: “We do not hide our creative people from the clients; rather we show them off in all their brilliance. Annie, let’s go to the boardroom.”

Annie led us back to the bubble. I guessed his Maxness liked to play to the camera. Annie was a skinny 27 year old and with short white Madonna hair (circa 1992) and very pale, pillowy lips. She was dressed all in white with a very square-toed white Gucci loafer gracing her foot. I guess she let the other creatives add the color. I glanced down at my outfit and felt stuffy, even my fabulous shoes did not seem right anymore. In this arena where these folk seemed so smug in their hipness my next-season pointy-toes didn’t count, you can only get credit for what people are aware of it.

I couldn’t think of a graceful way to work into the job interview: “I just want you to know that I’m so fashionable that my shoes are next season.” Or better yet, “Square toes are sooo over, oops I didn’t mean yours.”

Chic Annie indicated with a sweep of her elegant melanin-free arm that I take the chair across from hers. His Maxness sat at the head of the table. I placed my portfolio on the table and began unzipping it. My zipper jammed at one corner, as I was tugging Chic Annie coughed. I looked up automatically to notice Maximillian holding his hand up in the air in a ‘Halt who goes there” manner. I raised an enquiring eyebrow at Chic Annie.

“Why don’t we get to know each other first?” She suggested smiling apologetically at both Maximillian and I. What she was apologizing for I’m not sure, his bizarre inability to vocalize his desire, or my bizarre inability to both open my case and read his mind. I sank down into the black-clothed chair. Maximillian stared into space, his eyes narrowed as if his second sight had just kicked in and he didn’t want to miss a thing and Annie looked at me pleasantly – half smile, benign eyes, and expectant cock to her eyebrows. My instincts were to wait it out, but I felt too nervous so I waded in. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. When I get nervous I either use too many words to describe mundane thoughts or forget how grammar works in the English language. I decide to address my comments to Chic Annie and leave her boss to continue exploring Planet Max.

“So Annie, how long have you worked here?” I aped her pleasant expression, imitation being the highest form of flattery.

Annie looked at Maximillian before answering, and then answered carefully, “One year. Working with Max has been such an honor.”

Oh Lord, I thought, slit my wrists now. It is exactly because of this type of ass-sucking that I avoid church. Random genuflecting irritates me. I am no longer nervous. I give Chic Annie in her hideously outré square-toes a piteous look and reply, “How fascinating.” It sounded sarcastic, bitchy. I didn’t intend it to, but there it was, hanging.

Rebuke was swift. His Maxness tuned in and turned on me. “Why would a fashion editor be so horribly unfashionable? You rather resemble a potato with two pointy eyes at the end.” I blushed hotly.

Chic Annie had closed her eyes the moment His Maxness spoke his first syllable – a sixth sense I suppose. My brain reverberated with loud white noise. No witty rejoinder coming from this end. I snatched my portfolio from the table, pressed the door button I’d seen Kiko press before, looked Max in the eye and whispered, “Fuck you asshole.” I marched to the elevator, looking wildly for a door to the stairs, anyway to get out of there as quickly as possible. There was no escape. Humiliated I pressed the elevator button and stood waiting, my back-end to the bubble until the door slid open and I could get on and out to the Pacific Ocean as quickly as my unfashionable luggage could be packed.

*

Tonya Walker is a Canadian living in New York with her husband and teaching on the Upper East Side in New York at an all-girls' private school she adores. After 20 years in Virginia raising a poet and an engineer and writing four unpublished novels, she rediscovered the joy of the short story. She is now crafting a collection of short stories about Toronto's media scene in the 90s. 

Fiction #74

New fiction! Issue #74

• One Mistake After Another by Harlan Yarbrough
• Ragged White Ice by David Menear
• The Job Interview: A Murder by Kathryn Mockler
• Exit Interview by Steve Passey

Submissions now open for #75!

Special thanks to all who have been submitting. Enjoy.

Fiction #74: Harlan Yarbrough

One Mistake After Another

Rudy once admitted he preferred slender women, and Ysadore made sure he paid for that transgression.  For twenty-three years, she attacked him and criticized him for failings invented, real, and imagined.  Already tending ever so slightly toward the Rubenesque, she put on ninety pounds to become a caricature of the beautiful woman he had courted.  But Rudy loved her and submitted to her attacks and did his best to make her happy—a difficult task at best, but one that mattered to him.

Through two decades, Rudy wished his wife could feel glad for his love, for his desire.  He wished she could experience their lovemaking with a feeling of “He isn't making love to a tiny waist or a pair of pointy tits—he's making love to me,” but she apparently couldn't.  Instead, Ysadore usually avoided sex altogether, which left Rudy's large appetite frustrated most of the time.  Still, he persisted in doing everything he could to make her life as good as possible, not because he was a saint but because he was in love with Ysadore.

He faced an enormous conflict, when, after twenty-three years together and twenty-two years of marriage, Ysadore met a man who liked “curvy” women and fell in love with him.  Rudy felt devastated to lose whatever love there was from the person he loved most in the world.  At the same time, he wanted Ysadore to be happy, the same thing he’d wanted for twenty-three years.  He wished she could be happy with him, of course, but first and foremost he wanted her to be happy, to live the life she wanted.  Keeping his focus on that wish wasn't easy, but he worked hard at it.

Fred seemed like a decent sort, nothing special (except to Ysadore), maybe not as intelligent as Rudy or Ysadore, but a nice guy who might love her and care for her.  Rudy wanted to accept that, and he didn't dislike Fred—Rudy wasn't sure whether that made the situation easier or more difficult—so, although aching, he did his best to support Ysadore in her exploration and development of her new relationship.  She had the decency to feel guilty about putting Rudy through so much pain, but Rudy didn’t want Ysadore to feel guilty: he wanted her to be happy.  For his part, Fred seemed to sort of go along with whatever Ysadore wanted.

Mei Lin came from Hong Kong and taught biology at the university in the city.  When Rudy met her, he wasn't swept off his feet—he was still in love with Ysadore—but he was impressed.  Mei Lin wanted Rudy and didn't hesitate to say so, whenever they were out of earshot of Ysadore.  Rudy appreciated Mei Lin's attention, as well as her beauty and her intellect, but didn't encourage her—until the week Ysadore told him about Fred.  Even then, Rudy continued to wrestle with an inner conflict because of his continuing love for Ysadore,  but he did enjoy feeling wanted in a way he hadn't in a quarter of a century.

In the course of a difficult five months, Rudy and Ysadore made a relatively peaceful transition to separate lives.  Rudy moved into a too small house with one of their daughters, and Fred moved into the house Rudy and Ysadore once shared.  Rudy entertained Mei Lin most weekends for six months, until he went overseas for work.  As an immigrant himself, Rudy thought he could understand Mei Lin’s situation and outlook better than most and thought seriously about making a life with her.

Nevertheless he worried about their compatibility—or potential lack of it.  They talked about how they could spend more time together, but she felt no desire to leave the city and Rudy knew he could never stand to live in an urban environment.  Ysadore went on with her life almost as if no change had occurred.  Her feelings for Fred seemed to put a glow on everything, at least at first.

Her life seemed almost identical to the life she and Rudy once shared.  She continued to enjoy her many animals, the garden, and the orchard she and Rudy had planted.  Once their initial passion subsided, sex became an afterthought every three or four weeks.  Her younger daughter, Lily, continued her successful high school career and mostly got along OK with her mom and stepdad.  Lily didn't much like Fred but obeyed half of her father's injunction to tolerate and respect her mom's new partner.

The months Rudy spent overseas didn't do much for his emotional state—he continued to ache for his lost love—but they left him in a much better financial position.  He faced the pleasant dilemma of whether to add on to the house he and his elder daughter, Rosie, again occupied or to buy something else in the area.  He chose the latter option, which didn't effect much change in his life and made none at all to the pain lingering in his heart.  Mei Lin resumed visiting but with less intensity and less frequency than before Rudy's overseas trip.  Between those visits he enjoyed a couple of dalliances with female friends who expressed an interest once they learned he was single.  He still loved Ysadore but recognized after two years that he was better off out of that relationship.

One late Autumn evening nearly three years after Ysadore had moved Fred in with her, Rudy's 'phone rang.  He picked up the handset and heard her voice saying, “Rudy, do you think you could come over and fix the pump?”

“Why doesn't Fred fix it?”

“He can't do that.”

“He prob'ly could.  It isn't that hard.”

“Fred isn’t handy like you.  You know that.”

“Sure, but, really, it would be easy, even for him.”

“Trust me: he couldn't do it.”

“OK, then.  Can you manage until tomorrow, so I can do it in the daylight?  Do you have water on hand?”

“Some.  Yeah, tomorrow would be great.”

“Do you know what's wrong?”

“No.”

“OK.  Is that old blue pump still there—in case I need to install it as a temporary fix?”

“Yeah, I think so.  I'm pretty sure it's in the garage.  I'll look.”

“Good.  If you need more water tonight, you can get all you want out of the tap down the hill from the hen house.  It's below the tank, so you don't need the pump.  You can't take a shower or that sort of thing, but that'll be OK overnight, won't it?”

“Yes, Rudy, that'll be fine.”

“OK, good.  I'll see you tomorrow then, probably late morning or early afternoon.”

“OK.  Thank you.”

The next day, Rudy fixed the old water system, as he did for two decades before Ysadore met Fred.  He found the problem wasn't the pump but a severely clogged filter, cheaper and easier to fix, which he gave a thorough back-flushing at the tap below the henhouse.  He showed both Ysadore and Fred the old filter and how to install it and told them to pick up a new one next time they were in town. 

The next day, Ysadore 'phoned Rudy again.

“I just wanted to thank you for fixing the water,” she said, then added, “and to tell you how nice it was to have you here.  I've missed having you around the place.”

“You're welcome, of course.  You know me: I'm always glad to help.”

Another month passed before Ysadore 'phoned again with another request for help.  This time, Rudy drove over and fixed a broken rain gutter.  Fortunately, he left plenty of spare lengths of gutter and fittings, when he moved out, and noone had moved them.  He even found the glue he'd left behind, so fixing the problem took almost no time.  As Rudy stood by the door of his pickup ready to leave, Ysadore made as if to hug him, but he slipped into the driver's seat with as much subtlety and tact as he could.

The following day, Ysadore's 'phone call didn't surprise Rudy.  She thanked him again for his help and again told him she missed his company.  “I miss you, too,” he said, truthfully, “but you have Fred after all.”

“Yeah.  I don't know how much longer that'll be.  I'd rather have you.”

“Awww, that's sweet,” Rudy said, “but I'm still me, and you're still you.”

“We did pretty well the first time,” Ysadore replied.  “We lasted twenty-three years.  We can be really good together.  Wouldn't you like that?”

“I guess that's something we can think about,” Rudy answered and extracted himself from the conversation as quickly and tactfully as he could.

*

Graduated as a mathematician, Harlan Yarbrough has been a full-time professional entertainer most of his life, including a stint as a regular member of the Grand Ole Opry. Repeated attempts to escape the entertainment industry have brought work as librarian, physics teacher, syndicated newspaper columnist, and city planner among other occupations. Harlan lives in New Zealand but returns to the US to perform.

Fiction #74: David Menear

Ragged White Ice

Her face was grey and dry and deeply lined, reminding me of driftwood stranded on the rocky shores back home. I sat up ramrod straight on the tattered plaid couch beside my mom’s sister, Aunt Anne. There was a tired and musty smell of damp ashes about her. Anne’s nose was a big jellyfish blob webbed with thin red veins looking like a crumpled old treasure map, but where the rivers flowed blood and not water. When she spoke, it was a mumbling, sandpapery sound that I struggled to understand. Between Aunt Anne and her husband John, sat a large, alert and happy looking dog. They had named him ‘King’. He was a caramel coloured German Shepherd splotched with patches of black, and some gold tufts over his bright and eager eyes. His long, shiny tongue dripped long lines of spit that dangled and swayed with his breathing in the hot dead air of the crowded apartment. I bent forward to see past King to peer over at John. He noticed this, and smiled at me with his wet and baggy red eyes. He only had a few teeth left in his mouth. They were yellowish-brown and had me thinking of rotten corn or cigarette butts. Still, I trusted his smile. He was wearing one of those white undershirts without sleeves that most men wear, stained a pissy yellow under his hairy pits.  The bottom half of his right pant leg below the knee was crumpled and empty, and draped off the couch like a puppet show curtain to the floor.

Across the cluttered room my mother looked uncomfortable, and embarrassed. She was lying flat-out in a battered Lazy-Boy chair that was stuck on recline. My kid sister Wendy was dozing fitfully, sprawled limply across her body, sighing softly and making cute little sticky noises with her lips. Dennis, my big brother and the oldest, is nine. He stood slumping against the wall beside my mom and my sister like some tough little bodyguard thug looking bored and kind of  pissed-off. I stared hypnotized, at a wood-framed picture on the bumpy wall just over his head. It was a scary painting of a long-haired skinny guy wearing only a big white diaper, or maybe a dirty gym towel. He was hammered to an upright wooden cross with big nails and was bleeding a lot from his hands, feet and stomach. Women with long, flowing white dresses and covered heads, knelt beneath him in the blood-puddled dirt. One lady was crying, looking far up at his drooping face with tears in her eyes. A few soldiers holding spears talked and laughed nearby. In the distance on a low hill there were more crosses with other guys dangling off of them too. I had to wonder who they were, and what they had done so wrong.

Dennis didn’t even notice the weird painting behind him. He was focused on a life-sized plastic leg propped in the far corner of the room. The leg shared the space with a no-string guitar, a blackened dirty broom, a crutch, a Donald Duck umbrella and a busted cane. Maybe the leg was stolen, snapped off of a Sears store mannequin as a prank. It just stands there propped calmly in the corner, naked except for a crumpled black sock and a scuffed-up shoe.

My father wasn’t here. I didn’t know why, but I did know that I didn’t miss him. I did miss the trees hugging our house, and the nearby ocean always calling out to me like a friend that wanted to play.
In front of King was a TV tray crowded with mostly empty beer bottles. Abruptly, John, grunting hard, struggles to stand. Pushing himself up off the couch, he’s swaying . I don’t know if it’s because of the beers or the missing leg. He brushes up against the table setting a bottle wobbling and then he hops wildly over to the TV set. Anne reached out and steadied the bottle, coughed, choked and then let loose a loud witches cackle. Dennis and I looked at one another with our eyebrows raised trying hard not to laugh. “Christ John!, you sit back down and finish your beer before you fall down.” she said. King smiled at Aunt Anne and barked brightly, his eyes sparkling with fun. John turned the big knob and clicked on the set. From the TV there was only a bunch of static hissing noise and the screen was nothing but grey ghosts and funny flickering lines. Mumbling, he fiddled with the rabbit ears until the picture was pretty clear. It was ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ just starting! I love the whistling music and wished I knew how to do that. John seemed crabby suddenly. He turned and announced, “You know-sometimes, I think the only way I can change my crappy life is by changing the channels on this damn stupid idiot-box.” I glanced over at Wendy to make sure she wasn’t scared. She was fine, her big brown eyes smiling at the show and happy hugging King.

Before we took the long trip to the city, I had heard my mother in the kitchen on the telephone. She was yelling and then whispering and crying some too. Mom sounded so upset and angry that I was shaking and scared. I only heard some scraps of what she was saying,  “...sleazy... disgusting drunk…pervert...sweet little girl...ruined...he’s sick...” The next morning we packed all of our things into one big brown suitcase. Mom said that we were allowed clothes for 3 days, 2 books and 1 toy. I couldn’t decide if I should bring my View-Master or Mr. Potato Head, and so, I packed 3 books. Wendy only wanted to take her rainbow striped Hula-Hoop. My mother started to say no, and Wendy started to cry, and then Dennis said he would carry it. And that was that.  

Blowing up hot dust and gravel a big bus lurched to a stop, picking us up on Cow Bay Road to take us into Halifax. Soon, we were on a train to Toronto for two days and one night of green and grey and bright blue skies. Starless darkness streaking by. Our mom kept writing stuff in a notebook, and sometimes looked up. Through us, or past us. She seemed determined, not worried. Leaning against the window Dennis was reflected in the black glass. He had two heads now, with two mouths that never smiled or spoke. Wendy and I, we ran around screeching and laughing, chasing each other from car-to-car, up and down the length of the train, again -and-again-and again. A navy guy growled at us to ‘shut-up!” A bigger navy guy told him to “shut-up.” Grinning and nodding he waved us over, and then slowly fed us little treats of jujubes and Cracker Jacks, as if we were stray puppies or squirrels at a park. Mom called us.

Our Mother had gone out early to get money from someone at the government so that we could have our own apartment. Dennis, Wendy, King and I were all crammed in tight together on the couch to sleep. It was lumpy and smelled of stale beer and stinky old dog farts. The air was heavy with wet heat and yesterday’s cigarette smoke. Somehow, we all woke up at the very same time. Hungry, we shuffled along together into the kitchen rubbing our bleary eyes. John was there sitting on the floor, leaning against the cabinets near the sink, drinking what smelled like coffee. We stopped abruptly in a fuzzy line, bumping into each other and then silently stared. His scarred raw stump was sticking straight out of his underwear. It was like a one-eyed giant’s big ugly weiner. I felt sad and strange and struggled to breathe, remembering the emptiness I felt standing still and alone at the edge of the ocean. Frozen solid in my feelings I watched as a cold and hard wind creeped steadily beneath the clouds, pushing calmly across the grey water like an evil invisible spirit  leaving a plain of ragged white ice before me.

Mom came back to Aunt Anne’s after a few hours. She looked really, really happy. We were all sitting together crammed on the couch with King, watching Woody Woodpecker cartoons. Together, we all looked over at her and sang out, “Ha-ha-ha-Ha-ha-ha…”, just like Woody would. She laughed, and told us to hurry up and put our stuff back into the big brown suitcase. Mom said,”We’re going home kids.”

It was egg-frying hot again. Dennis and mom wrestled along the broken sidewalk with the heavy brown bag. I held on tight to Wendy’s one hand and scraped the Hula-hoop along in the other. No one seemed to have anything to do or anywhere to go around here. A few people were busy with gardens on their lawns growing what looked like giant brussel sprouts. Ugh. Mostly though, everyone just hung-out drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. I don’t know what they were all waiting for. We passed cars with no wheels and kids without clothes. Toothless mouths spat shiny black goop. There was some pushing and shoving and some yelling. Police came. Dogs barked, women hollered and glass broke. It was dreary and grey and crowded. It was Cabbagetown. It was scary and exciting. Now it’s  home.

Our new place was over a fish & chip shop at Sackville Street and a busy road with clattering and clanging streetcars. Around the back-alley we climbed up steep, creaking wooden stairs, that swayed from side-to-side as we clambered higher. The place was huge. There was nobody or nothing in it. Our voices bounced like rubber balls, loud off the walls in the welcome silent emptiness. We loved it. Our apartment, and our lives quickly filled up with new friends and furniture and school and fun.

Our mom didn’t have a job job. Because her job was to look after us, she said. She did work the few weeks before Christmas though to buy Santa stuff for us.  One night, she came home late and tired to her Christmas surprise. Our magic show! Still in her wet snowy coat we sat her down on the couch. Standing in front of Mom, between Dennis and I, Wendy stood with a shining goofy smile on her sweet little face. Slooooooowly, we raised a sheet in front of her and then we hollered out, ‘Shazam!’. We dropped the sheet, and Wendy disappeared. After a few anxious minutes, we raised the sheet again, and then suddenly dropped it, yelling out another ‘Shazam!’  And, there was little Wendy again, looking sly and shy, like she had a secret she’d never share.

*

Menear is most often described as an edgy, urgent, gritty and sometimes ‘transgressive’ short story writer with a soft heart and a sense of humour. You find him at that place where Salinger meets Cormac McCarthy for tea and cookies. In his first few years of writing Menear’s stories have been published in several respected Canadian literary magazines. DevilHouse produced his short story collection in 2014 that sold out in a few short months. He was selected for an Exile Editions anthology 'Canadian Noir' March 2015. David, a father of four, has spent most of his life between Toronto and Montreal but has also lived in big city England and quaint village France. He studied art in New York City. First novel publication is imminent. Menear is currently trying to pay the bills modeling and acting.

Fiction #74: Kathryn Mockler

The Job Interview: A Murder

I had always been a careful person, neurotic, in fact. I wouldn’t walk at night alone. Ever. I always double-checked that the doors were locked before bed. I touched the burners on the stove more times than I cared to admit before I left the house. I wouldn’t mix Tylenol and alcohol because it could harm my liver. I read directions on all my medications. Rarely would I jaywalk. I basically lived my life thinking the worst possible thing was going to happen at any moment, and I did my best to prevent it. The methods of operating my life in this way were the result of obsessive compulsions, a hypochondriacal mother, and the fact that we live in a nightmare with no plausible explanation for how or why we are here.

My husband and I had been living in Windsor, Ontario for about a year so he could attend a graduate program in visual arts. I had graduated from my master’s program in creative writing the previous year after which was I lucky enough to get a grant to write a book of poetry. However, the money was now running out, and I needed a job badly.

There were at least two reasons I always had trouble getting jobs. I suffered from extreme under-confidence and I had terrible anxiety making job interviews nearly impossible. I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t be myself, and so it immediately turned potential employers off—understandably so.

Because I had been a student for years and didn’t require the type of clothing needed for a professional job, I didn’t have much in the way of a wardrobe. I wore casual clothes around the house and then I had my one outfit that I liked to wear when we went out. One night when we were at an art opening, a woman from my husband’s program to whom I had only spoken on a couple of occasions and didn’t particularly like, turned to me in front of a group of people and said, “Do you only have that one outfit? Is that like your uniform? Because every time I see you, you’re wearing the same thing.”

I don’t know how, but I managed to stammer an attempt at self-mockery—“Yes it’s my uniform. It’s the only thing I like to wear.”

Then I quickly excused myself to the bathroom and sobbed. Big wet sloppy tears were pouring out of my eyes. I could hear people chatting and laughing on the other side of the door. I cried like a kid who had just been picked on by a schoolyard bully—even though I was twenty-eight-years old. I felt shame and hatred and anger all at once. All my good comeback lines played themselves over and over in my head.

Yes, I really did only have that one outfit. It served as both my job interview outfit and my going out outfit—a black blazer, a light blue collared shirt with blue flowers, and black pants. It was the only outfit I felt good in since I had recently gained some weight.

So here I was in Windsor, Ontario looking for a job, a little more desperate than usual since “the uniform” comment. The problem for me in terms of getting a job, in addition to my confidence and anxiety issues, was that I didn’t have any skills. I wasn’t experienced enough to get a teaching job, and the jobs I had held in the past—house cleaning, dishwashing, and factory work—I didn’t particularly want. I was too terrified of people to waitress and I didn’t want to work a job where I had a use a cash register because I was too terrified of cash registers.

I had always longed to work in a bookstore or a library, but I could never land one of those coveted positions. So that pretty much left me applying for administrative work which was also proving impossible to get in this small economically depressed town in 1999.

I applied to several temp agencies and took all their demoralizing personality, word processing, and excel spreadsheet tests, and I looked in the paper every day to see if there were any listings for odd jobs. For a little while, things were starting to look up. I got a day of work answering phones at a paper factory, and I made it to the second round interview stage at the Nutrition Hut in the mall but ultimately didn’t get the job. They said I wasn’t experienced enough.

So I continued to scan newspaper ads until I found one from a company looking for some part-time admin help for a small family-run business. They were going to pay ten dollars an hour which was better than minimum wage. It sounded good to me, so I called the number right away and set up an appointment.

Even though I put on the “uniform” and told my husband that I was going to an interview before I left the apartment, I realized as I got off the bus and walked down what looked like a residential street in a run-down subdivision, I had not given him the address or phone number. That was kind of a stupid thing to do, I thought to myself as I stood in front of the house.

I considered just walking away, but there were a couple of kids playing out front—a little boy with a skateboard and a little girl wearing a pink dress and heavy black shoes, which made the place seem safe enough, so I decided to knock on the door.

A guy with a mustache named John wearing cut-offs and a dirty undershirt answered in bare feet. If this was a story, I thought to myself with a little laugh, he’d be a cliché. Since I started writing, a little game I played with myself was picking out people who I thought were clichés. John was a white trash cliché. The boy was a little boy cliché and his sister would have been a little girl cliché if she hadn’t be wearing such unusual shoes. As I straightened my black blazer and adjusted my blue flower shirt, I thought about the woman who had insulted me at the art opening and decided she was a grad school cliché. And although I didn’t know it at the time, I too would become a cliché—a dead girl cliché.

The boy from the front yard ran up to the door and said—“Hi, John, can I come over and play video games?”

“Not right now, Ethan. We’ve got a guest,” he said and let me inside.

I took off my shoes and looked around. The place seemed normalish enough, a little messy but nothing really out of the ordinary except all the furniture was white.

John said, “Our office is downstairs,” and he led me all the way to the back of the house. The house was long. It seemed to take forever to get from one end to the other. As we walked through the living room and then dining room and then to a little porch, the two kids from outside followed us along the side of the house. They banged on the windows and yelled things at us, and by the time we got to the back, Ethan and his sister were standing at the screen door.

“Who is the blonde lady?” Ethan asked. “Is she the same one from before?”

“None of your beeswax,” John said. He had this strange ability to be nice and mean to the kid at the same time.

“Can we come in, John?” Ethan asked.

“Not now,” John said. “Go home.” And he shut the door in the little boy’s grinning stupid face.

God, that kid is annoying, I thought.

“John,” Ethan pleaded. “I don’t want to go home.”

I do, I thought. I want to go home right now.

“Get outta here,” John said, this time with a firmer tone.

There’s a weird prickly feeling that you get when you realize that you could be in serious danger.

Some people call it a sixth sense or instinct. I remember a guest on Oprah talking about self-defense and how women have the ability to sense danger before they are actually in danger. It’s kind of like built-in radar, a protection device. It’s something you should always listen to, she said. It’s something you should never ignore because it could save your life. When you get these sensations, your body is trying to tell you something.

She was right. I had this radar. And I knew I had it. I knew I had it because when I took one look at the outside of the house the feeling was there—that sense or instinct that told me I might be headed for danger. A voice inside my head said, it’s not worth it—go home. And as I was stepping inside the door that same voice tried to stop me. I knew I shouldn’t have gone in, but I went in anyway because I wanted to believe there was a job that paid me ten dollars an hour. I won’t eat mayonnaise past the expiration date, yet somehow I managed to find myself in a strange man’s basement and no one knew I was there.

Before we went downstairs, John told me to put on some slippers because the basement floor was dirty. Along the edge of the porch, there were several house slippers of different sizes lined up in a neat row.

Did I mention that I was a germophobe?

The slippers were blackened with dirt and they smelled, and even though I declined them at first, John insisted. He didn’t want my sock feet to get dirty, he said, and there was a tone in his voice that made me feel like I couldn’t refuse. So I picked the least offensive pair and put them on trying my best not to show my disgust as I walked down the rickety steps to a newly renovated basement that smelled like Ikea furniture, cigarette smoke, and black mould.

Another man was sitting at a round table near a kitchenette smoking. He too had a mustache. And he too looked like a cliché. He looked like a cliché of a bad man who might cause me harm. On the table beside him—a 40 ounce bottle of rye and a shot glass.

This wasn’t a job interview. There was no family business.

“Would you like a drink,” the man said. It was a statement rather than a question, and like with the slippers, I couldn’t refuse.

I thought about Ethan, who in one moment I found as annoying as a persistent housefly and in the next, he became my lifeline who I prayed wouldn’t give up trying to play video games with John. Maybe he would break in. Maybe he would tell his mother that something terrible was taking place.

But in the end little Ethan couldn’t do anything to save me. In his last attempt to get inside—he banged on the basement window and waved with a dazed and crazy smile on his face. To be honest, he looked more like a maniac than any of them. Maybe he wasn’t a cliché after all. But John just ignored the kid and pulled down the blinds.

“I like your shirt lady,” Ethan said through the window.

Then I heard Ethan hop on his skateboard and ride down the gravel driveway, his sister clomping after him in her heavy shoes. I wondered if Ethan would tell the police that I had been there, that he had seen me? Would his sister? Were they too young to remember or would they even care?

I smiled and looked down at my pale blue shirt that just this morning I had considered retiring, not because of what the grad student had said, but because of the yellow sweat stains I found under the arms.

*

Kathryn Mockler is the author of the books Some Theories (ST Press, 2017), The Purpose Pitch (Mansfield Press, 2015),  The Saddest Place on Earth (DC Books, 2012) and Onion Man (Tightrope Books, 2011). Her writing has been published recently in Entropy, Cosmonauts Avenue, Public Pool, The Butter, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

Photo credit: David Poolman

Fiction #74: Steve Passey

Exit Interview

     “The laborer deserves his wages.” - 1 Timothy 5:18

With the new ownership in place the layoffs began. The misery of working where the shareholder is the only acknowledged stakeholder and their margins come solely from your compensation (because no one has any ideas as to how to actually sell this shit) is a peculiar motivator, and so the carrot became severance; the stick became the creeping fear of what to do when severance runs out. No one thinks of remaining. No one aspires.

There was a group of us that would meet at an “Authentic Naples Pizza” Friday after work. It was owned by Syrian emigrants, or possibly Lebanese. I am not sure. After four months – which would have been the completion of my training module, had it ever happened – I was the only one still with the company who attended these “meetings.” Everyone else was a “former employee.” We speculated as to the quantity of the next round of severances. We surmised that those who stayed on in any position of authority only did so because of their accidental and wholly fortunate possession of grainy cell phone video of the CEO fellating a donkey.  We spoke semi-seriously of crossing the street to other companies run by the same dictums, more seriously of going back to school, or even reluctantly of reenlistment. I discovered that the others had created a betting pool as to when I would be told that I was redundant, and as to when I’d sit in the group as one of them and not a living reminder alternately envied or derided as still being employed by “the company.”

One veteran – the first to quit the new regime – made it every time. He had crossed the street to a competitor. He was doing alright. He’d buy the new people – the ones who had just quit or just been let go - a drink. He was our eminence grise. I think he gets there Fridays about noon, because a lot of people quit at noon on Friday and need someplace to go and celebrate. People got fired Wednesdays first thing in the morning, but they’d have some severance and be there Friday to be with those who had emancipated themselves. These are the good times. They are a lot like the old times, with the alcohol and friends but without salary and benefits.

The exception to this was the former Vice-President of Human Resources. Apparently she was from some place called “Saskatchewan”. She had worked for the old company in the same position before the buyout. She had always been “Kathy” until the new company took over and she began referring to herself as “Kate” and demanding that everyone else do so. Only the new hires would do it. They didn’t know any better. Our guy, our eminence grise, and the other more experienced people called her “Kathy.” She’d always correct them, always have the last word, but the next time they saw her it’d be “Hi Kathy.” When newly-statused former employees were divested by the company and done their last ever meeting with “Kate” they’d come to our meetings. We taught them to refer to her as “The Kunt from Saskatchewan,” making sure that you knew it was “Kunt” with a “K.”

When she was let go she came to the pizzeria on the Friday. No one acknowledged her presence or responded when she asked how things were. After all, she’d let them all go; she’d been there while they put their children’s drawings and their boxes of Kleenex in a box. Look around our table and you’ll see the ghostly image of what used to work there, a couple of young guys in their twenties and a lot of middle-aged ladies working for “benefits”. It was a pink ghetto for the most part, and she’d walked them all out. If they quit she’d sat there and blacked out all of the comments they put in their exit interviews, condescending to tell them that “You don’t want negative comments about one employer to follow you to your next one.” She seeded employer review websites with positive reviews – these are written by freelance copy writers for modest fees and their signatures on standard non-disclosure agreements. She did all that and they’d made her a Vice-President for it. She fired us for them and then they fired her. The world goes round and round, summer, spring, winter and fall. But she wasn’t one of us – was never one of us - and now she was here trying to be one of us, just like she’d tried to be one of them. No one would even look at her.

Finally our grey eminence asked her “So, Kathy: Is it true your grandfather had been a capo in the camps in World War Two?”

Everyone had heard about this. Someone in her family had written a book. Apparently the old man had been a trusty of some sort in one of the camps, a dutiful and efficient servant of the Nazis. When the Russians had liberated the camp the prisoners he’d overseen strung him up with barbed wire and beat him to death while he hung there. The inmates beat him with planks torn from the buildings, beat him with stones, beat him with their bare, bony fists and even - for those too weak to beat him with anything - the weight of the hate in their eyes. The Russians watched and cheered. After all, you can understand the master being the master, but it is the servant who betrays his own.

“Fuck you,” she said. “Fuck all of you. So what if my Geed was a capo in the camps. He lived better than the rest of them in there, and longer than most. And my severance was bigger than all of yours combined.”

She got up and walked out. She forgot her coat. No one said a thing until our eminence held up his glass in a toast and said: “So passes the Kunt from Saskatchewan,” and we were just us again.

“Who had me lasting longer than her in the pool?”

I asked this and the other’s laughter rang out of the building and into the street and we returned to our particular stasis, like any other group of weary drones fallen from their wrecked and drying hive. No one touched her coat. It was still there when the last of us left; hanging by one shoulder on the chair she had sat in when she tried to join us.

*

Steve Passey is originally from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the short-story collection "Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock" (Tortoise Books, October 2017) and chapbook "The Coachella Madrigals" (Luminous Press, August 2017) . His fiction and poetry have appeared in more than forty publication worldwide, both print and electronic.