I hear music coming from my bedroom. Music I’ve heard nearly 40 times in a day in the past month. It’s my phone and the ring tone “You & Me “By “Lifehouse”. This is one of my favorite songs to listen to, when I’m really missing my boyfriend, Richard. It’s the first song he shared with me on his way to a medical appointment and somewhere along the drive; it became “our” song.
Richard lives in Lake Arthur, Louisiana and I live in Blythewood, South Carolina, quite the distance and test to see how this relationship will grow. He phones me every chance he gets (over 40 times) during the day and night. I so look forward to hearing “You & Me” ring out from the distance. I feel like a little teenage girl who has a crush on a boy and I can feel the heat from my heart beating my blood through my body, start at my toes and working its way up to my blushing face and stopping in my head.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Heat - Maria Robinson
For the first time in over thirty years, Martha decided to stay in Manhattan for the summer. Her mother had left for Florida and Sean, her ex, now based in London, had taken the boys to Patagonia for a bonding trip. The heat of the summer induced madness in many including making interminable weekend drives to the Atlantic shore just for 24 hours. For Martha, it meant the freedom to explore Brooklyn alone and begin her search for an apartment, having cocktails night after night in different bars to check out vibe of the neighborhoods. She gravited towards a "micro-hood" near her friend's clothing store. There was a cheese store with surprising finds from spai, a wine bar with fair trade wine from South Africa and a tapas bar with swirling tiles a la Barcelona. It felt more Berkley than Brooklyn, But maybe they were really one in the same. She wanted to feel as she felt in London, part of something that was unique and real time, someplace she could really say that she was from at the next art gallery opening.
Frozen, Blizzard of ’78, Massachusetts - Elizabeth Weld Nolan
Inside ski gloves and a woollen liner, my hands clamped around the shovel with decreasing feeling. Lean, scoop, lift, toss. I was clearing the driveway in case the roads got cleared in case we wanted to drive somewhere which we couldn’t. It seemed like the thing to do.
The neighborhood had turned into a sculpture of every size of mound, the snow, light and fluffy in the cold, turned the railings alongside the steps up to the the Donnellys’ house into thick, long lumps. Our car was a round, curved heap that looked like a kiva or a beehive. The street was framed by a low, clumsy fence where the snowplow had made a pass early in the storm, left a riffle of snow where more piled on, and more, and more.
I wasn’t making much progress. I had nowhere to dump the snow once I got it on the shovel, except in the street where I would have to drive over it. Ordinary life was stopped. No school, no traffic, no work. I stood up, stuck the shovel into the heap I’d made and gave in to the day.
The sun was out, the landscape glowing brilliant white, the air brisk and bracing and exhilarating. It hurt to bring the air through my nostrils. I retied my fluffy, blue scarf around my neck, ran up the front steps and opened the door to the house. It took half an hour of unlacing boots, stamping snow off my snow pants, rousting out the girls, hunting down the cross-country skis, relacing us all into our gear. But finally, breakfast finished, dishes thrown into the sink, we set out on our skis down the magic, silent street, lined with trees plumed and enveloped in white, past Betty’s, then the new neighbors across the street, our skis making a soft whoosh in the powdery snow that had not one drop of melting anywhere, not one little rivulet or rush of water emerging from the great, smooth surface of the blizzard’s layered snow, because, although we were warm inside our clothes from the exercise, our breaths floating past our cheeks, the town of Beverly, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the whole world, was frozen.
The neighborhood had turned into a sculpture of every size of mound, the snow, light and fluffy in the cold, turned the railings alongside the steps up to the the Donnellys’ house into thick, long lumps. Our car was a round, curved heap that looked like a kiva or a beehive. The street was framed by a low, clumsy fence where the snowplow had made a pass early in the storm, left a riffle of snow where more piled on, and more, and more.
I wasn’t making much progress. I had nowhere to dump the snow once I got it on the shovel, except in the street where I would have to drive over it. Ordinary life was stopped. No school, no traffic, no work. I stood up, stuck the shovel into the heap I’d made and gave in to the day.
The sun was out, the landscape glowing brilliant white, the air brisk and bracing and exhilarating. It hurt to bring the air through my nostrils. I retied my fluffy, blue scarf around my neck, ran up the front steps and opened the door to the house. It took half an hour of unlacing boots, stamping snow off my snow pants, rousting out the girls, hunting down the cross-country skis, relacing us all into our gear. But finally, breakfast finished, dishes thrown into the sink, we set out on our skis down the magic, silent street, lined with trees plumed and enveloped in white, past Betty’s, then the new neighbors across the street, our skis making a soft whoosh in the powdery snow that had not one drop of melting anywhere, not one little rivulet or rush of water emerging from the great, smooth surface of the blizzard’s layered snow, because, although we were warm inside our clothes from the exercise, our breaths floating past our cheeks, the town of Beverly, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the whole world, was frozen.
Frozen - Judy Albietz
Shoving through the hot sweaty bodies in the hall to get to her 10:00 class, Lily felt she had been there before. But she couldn’t have, since she had just started high school today and she had never before been in this hall with all these kids, changing classes. She needed to stop at her locker in the next corridor to get her Spanish book. All this felt way too familiar. No. The only time she had ever in her whole life gone to her locker was this morning, when she got her locker assignment and threw some books in. This crowd wasn’t there this morning.
Then images began forming in her mind. She saw herself almost bumping into a short pudgy girl dressed in yellow—a girl, running, falling and then dropping a couple of books—Lily helping the girl before going to her locker.
A minute went by. Lily froze when she rounded the corner and saw the running girl, wearing a yellow scarf. The girl had tripped and dropped her math and history books. Lily leaned down and picked up the books for her. The girl, who was a good 4 inches shorter than Lily, smiled up at her. “I’m new,“ she said in a cheerful tone. “I don’t know anyone here. I just moved from Detroit. Thanks for helping me. See ya later.” Then she ran off.
Lily felt a wave of nausea like she was getting seasick. Now at her locker, she opened it slowly. She was glad to see her Spanish book was right where she left it.
Then images began forming in her mind. She saw herself almost bumping into a short pudgy girl dressed in yellow—a girl, running, falling and then dropping a couple of books—Lily helping the girl before going to her locker.
A minute went by. Lily froze when she rounded the corner and saw the running girl, wearing a yellow scarf. The girl had tripped and dropped her math and history books. Lily leaned down and picked up the books for her. The girl, who was a good 4 inches shorter than Lily, smiled up at her. “I’m new,“ she said in a cheerful tone. “I don’t know anyone here. I just moved from Detroit. Thanks for helping me. See ya later.” Then she ran off.
Lily felt a wave of nausea like she was getting seasick. Now at her locker, she opened it slowly. She was glad to see her Spanish book was right where she left it.
Frozen - E. D. James
It floated through the tunnels like the first wisp of fog that slides under the Golden Gate signaling the end of a heat wave. And like that finger of fog sliding along the top of the water, the song seemed undaunted by any obstacles it encountered, bending and twisting through the tunnels. Delicate, but insistent, as if testing to see if the time was right for it to return, or perhaps sounding a warning, a harbinger of changes ahead.
Alan stood with his head out the window of the train watching the passengers load at Embarcadero station. It was always at this station in that moment that the train was loaded and the platform empty but the doors were still open that he heard the song. Usually in the middle of the evening when the trains were spaced pretty widely in response to the lull in the crowds between the commute hours and the end of the night rush. It sounded like the aria from Delibes’ Lakme, the haunted twisting voices of two woman who were at once both the saddest and most hopeful creatures Alan had ever heard. He looked quickly up the tunnel as he always did when he heard it and saw nothing. Then he punched the button and the doors of the trains squeaked shut and the electric motors whirred back to life and he closed the window and headed for the next station.
“You ever hear singing at the Embarcadero station?”
Johnny raised his eyebrows and slid the ice around in his glass of gin for a second, “Those panhandlers up in the hallways?”
“No, I mean down on the platform when you’re stopped at the station.”
“Like kids waiting for a train?”
“More like floating up the tube from under the bay.”
“Man, you better lay off the boilermakers for a while.”
The yard was lit up by the impossibly tall lights that beamed down like something from an alien spaceship in an abduction movie. Alan took the train off the computer and eased it into the cleaning line. He was the last one in tonight. The run from SFO had been slowed by the big Eastbay crowd loading out of downtown from all the gay pride events going on. It was always a bit tense on these evenings when the clubbers mingled with the revelers and tonight had been no exception. Security had their hands full and held Alan up at 24th Street for about twenty minutes dealing with some pushing and shoving in one of the cars.
Alan slowed and stopped before the packed platform. He’d have to use the ladder. He tidied up the cab, folding up the Guardian he grabbed to pass time during the hold at 24th Street cruising the sex ads, shook the dregs of his cup of coffee out the window and screwed it back on the top of the silver Thermos, and then tucked it all into the Google bag he’d found empty and without I.D. at the end of a run a couple of weeks ago, slung it over his shoulders, and pushed through the door to make his final inspection.
He punched through the doors between the cars one by one till he came to nine. Then he peered through the windows thinking that he’d be able to skip actually going in until he saw a pair legs sticking out from the rear-facing seat just in front of him on the right.
He turned away from the door, “Shit!” A drunk. The bane of the mid-night run. He’d have to call security and get them and the paramedics up to haul the guy out and fill out all the paper work. Fuck. The U.S. game against Algeria was on at 3 a.m. and he’d have to hustle to make it now.
Alan took a deep breath and pushed through the doors ready to breath through his mouth if it was one of the stinkers.
A woman. White. Twenties. Covered by a coat. A bit of dried blood lay just beneath her right nostril. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing so he reached down and gently shook her on the shoulder.
She stirred and tried to sit up, pushing his hand away, “No, no more.”
The coat fell away and Alan could see that her dress was torn at the hem, her right knee bloody. He reached for his radio and began to pull it from his belt but her hand shot up and stopped him.
“Please.”
“Listen, you look like you’re hurt. I need to get you some help.”
“They’ll send me back, I can’t go.”
Her accent was eastern European to Alan’s ear, “Listen lady, you’re hurt, you need to see a doctor.”
“They raped me.”
“I’m sorry, that’s why you need to see a doctor.”
“They have to report a rape. The police.”
“Well, I need to get you off this train. We’re at the yard,” Alan gestured out the window at the bright lights.
“Help me.”
The song from the tube floated through Alan’s ears, that sad haunting melody. If he could put a face to that melody it would have been the one on the bench in front of him. He put his radio back into it’s holster. Took a deep breath. Walked over to the window at the next isle and looked out.
“Can you walk?”
He opened the door of the car and put down the ladder. Standing at the bottom he watched as she turned unsteadily, holding the handrail, turned and stuck her right leg out to catch the first step. As she stuck her left leg out he could see she didn’t have any underwear on and his gaze was drawn for a moment in spite of himself, then he tried to look away as he reached his hands up and felt the smooth skin of her calves. He steadied her as she descended, grabbing under her arms when she reached the last step before the long drop to the ground. His thumb gripped the solid muscle over her shoulder blades while the tips of his fingers sunk into the soft flesh at the sides of her breasts. She turned and leaned into him for a moment and he wrapped his arms around her and felt her heart beating hard and felt the warmth of her against his chest and heard that song again.
Alan stood with his head out the window of the train watching the passengers load at Embarcadero station. It was always at this station in that moment that the train was loaded and the platform empty but the doors were still open that he heard the song. Usually in the middle of the evening when the trains were spaced pretty widely in response to the lull in the crowds between the commute hours and the end of the night rush. It sounded like the aria from Delibes’ Lakme, the haunted twisting voices of two woman who were at once both the saddest and most hopeful creatures Alan had ever heard. He looked quickly up the tunnel as he always did when he heard it and saw nothing. Then he punched the button and the doors of the trains squeaked shut and the electric motors whirred back to life and he closed the window and headed for the next station.
“You ever hear singing at the Embarcadero station?”
Johnny raised his eyebrows and slid the ice around in his glass of gin for a second, “Those panhandlers up in the hallways?”
“No, I mean down on the platform when you’re stopped at the station.”
“Like kids waiting for a train?”
“More like floating up the tube from under the bay.”
“Man, you better lay off the boilermakers for a while.”
The yard was lit up by the impossibly tall lights that beamed down like something from an alien spaceship in an abduction movie. Alan took the train off the computer and eased it into the cleaning line. He was the last one in tonight. The run from SFO had been slowed by the big Eastbay crowd loading out of downtown from all the gay pride events going on. It was always a bit tense on these evenings when the clubbers mingled with the revelers and tonight had been no exception. Security had their hands full and held Alan up at 24th Street for about twenty minutes dealing with some pushing and shoving in one of the cars.
Alan slowed and stopped before the packed platform. He’d have to use the ladder. He tidied up the cab, folding up the Guardian he grabbed to pass time during the hold at 24th Street cruising the sex ads, shook the dregs of his cup of coffee out the window and screwed it back on the top of the silver Thermos, and then tucked it all into the Google bag he’d found empty and without I.D. at the end of a run a couple of weeks ago, slung it over his shoulders, and pushed through the door to make his final inspection.
He punched through the doors between the cars one by one till he came to nine. Then he peered through the windows thinking that he’d be able to skip actually going in until he saw a pair legs sticking out from the rear-facing seat just in front of him on the right.
He turned away from the door, “Shit!” A drunk. The bane of the mid-night run. He’d have to call security and get them and the paramedics up to haul the guy out and fill out all the paper work. Fuck. The U.S. game against Algeria was on at 3 a.m. and he’d have to hustle to make it now.
Alan took a deep breath and pushed through the doors ready to breath through his mouth if it was one of the stinkers.
A woman. White. Twenties. Covered by a coat. A bit of dried blood lay just beneath her right nostril. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing so he reached down and gently shook her on the shoulder.
She stirred and tried to sit up, pushing his hand away, “No, no more.”
The coat fell away and Alan could see that her dress was torn at the hem, her right knee bloody. He reached for his radio and began to pull it from his belt but her hand shot up and stopped him.
“Please.”
“Listen, you look like you’re hurt. I need to get you some help.”
“They’ll send me back, I can’t go.”
Her accent was eastern European to Alan’s ear, “Listen lady, you’re hurt, you need to see a doctor.”
“They raped me.”
“I’m sorry, that’s why you need to see a doctor.”
“They have to report a rape. The police.”
“Well, I need to get you off this train. We’re at the yard,” Alan gestured out the window at the bright lights.
“Help me.”
The song from the tube floated through Alan’s ears, that sad haunting melody. If he could put a face to that melody it would have been the one on the bench in front of him. He put his radio back into it’s holster. Took a deep breath. Walked over to the window at the next isle and looked out.
“Can you walk?”
He opened the door of the car and put down the ladder. Standing at the bottom he watched as she turned unsteadily, holding the handrail, turned and stuck her right leg out to catch the first step. As she stuck her left leg out he could see she didn’t have any underwear on and his gaze was drawn for a moment in spite of himself, then he tried to look away as he reached his hands up and felt the smooth skin of her calves. He steadied her as she descended, grabbing under her arms when she reached the last step before the long drop to the ground. His thumb gripped the solid muscle over her shoulder blades while the tips of his fingers sunk into the soft flesh at the sides of her breasts. She turned and leaned into him for a moment and he wrapped his arms around her and felt her heart beating hard and felt the warmth of her against his chest and heard that song again.
Taking Care of It - Camilla Basham
At the age of six I had my first taste of alcohol: a room temperature Budweiser as I stand forgotten beside my brother and mother staring at an LSU game playing out on the Zenith.
At thirteen I had my first taste of cardboard and grapes in the guise of boxed wine as we honored my deceased grandmother with a wake in our living room.
At sixteen I had my first mixed drink: Bacardi and coke, in a drive through bar off of a gravel road with a guy named Vince.
At eighteen I had a joint passed to me in a college dorm room. I puffed it. Hated it. My tongue turned to cotton. Never again, I thought.
At nineteen, after a Black Flag concert, someone gave me a sticker with a strange design on it and dared me to put it under my tongue. I laughed and did so, thinking they were mad. For the next three days aliens chased me, traffic lights melted down the windshield of my car, every Pink Floyd song seemed to hold the answer to the universe. Unfortunately, these revelations came with days, no, weeks, of recovery and plenty of missed college lectures.
At twenty-one someone at a party took a razor and began chopping madly at powder on a mirrored coffee table the way a chef would attack an onion on a chopping board. House music blared in the background. Whatever you do, don’t sneeze, someone said. I pressed my index finger to one nostril and inhaled through a rolled up twenty with the other as instructed. It burned like hell for a split second, until someone dipped their fingers into their champagne glass and held them to my nose to inhale. The champagne drops washed down the nostril clinging residue, cooling my nose, my throat my lungs. It was as if someone flipped a switch in me. I could fly. I was sure of it. I could write the worlds greatest novel in a day if my hands would stop shaking, no doubt about it, I was on top of the world. I was in fucking heaven, well for twenty minutes away. MORE, I begged, and more I’d get. Each time I’d fly but not quite as high as the time before. And so it went. I tried and tried, God knows I tried to fly as high as I did the first time, but I never again got close to the sun.
At twenty-five a doctor gave me Prozac to forget about the sun.
At thirteen I had my first taste of cardboard and grapes in the guise of boxed wine as we honored my deceased grandmother with a wake in our living room.
At sixteen I had my first mixed drink: Bacardi and coke, in a drive through bar off of a gravel road with a guy named Vince.
At eighteen I had a joint passed to me in a college dorm room. I puffed it. Hated it. My tongue turned to cotton. Never again, I thought.
At nineteen, after a Black Flag concert, someone gave me a sticker with a strange design on it and dared me to put it under my tongue. I laughed and did so, thinking they were mad. For the next three days aliens chased me, traffic lights melted down the windshield of my car, every Pink Floyd song seemed to hold the answer to the universe. Unfortunately, these revelations came with days, no, weeks, of recovery and plenty of missed college lectures.
At twenty-one someone at a party took a razor and began chopping madly at powder on a mirrored coffee table the way a chef would attack an onion on a chopping board. House music blared in the background. Whatever you do, don’t sneeze, someone said. I pressed my index finger to one nostril and inhaled through a rolled up twenty with the other as instructed. It burned like hell for a split second, until someone dipped their fingers into their champagne glass and held them to my nose to inhale. The champagne drops washed down the nostril clinging residue, cooling my nose, my throat my lungs. It was as if someone flipped a switch in me. I could fly. I was sure of it. I could write the worlds greatest novel in a day if my hands would stop shaking, no doubt about it, I was on top of the world. I was in fucking heaven, well for twenty minutes away. MORE, I begged, and more I’d get. Each time I’d fly but not quite as high as the time before. And so it went. I tried and tried, God knows I tried to fly as high as I did the first time, but I never again got close to the sun.
At twenty-five a doctor gave me Prozac to forget about the sun.
Taking Care of It - Anne Wright
“I’ll take care of it,” he said. Nobody else was around so he was talking to himself. He liked the confident sound of his voice. It had a loveable rough growl when he ended his sentences and he felt a little sad that no one was there to hear it. If only, he thought, then stopped himself. It was one of those dreams that would never happen, no matter what he wished. He had already been more fortunate in his life than any of his friends. He had had a wonderful wife and family, and a fulfilling career. The children were grown up now, but his wife had died in a terrible accident and he missed her every day. If only he could go back and change one day, one little thing, maybe she would be alive. Maybe he would have met another woman who wasn’t so wonderful. It could have been that his son had turned out to be bad, and his daughter stupid. He might have not graduated from college and had to join the army and kill snipers that were hiding around the corner, and he might have gotten gassed with Agent Orange and end up in a veteran’s hospital for a few years. And the nurse, who he thought was so beautiful, and fell in love with and married, cheated on him with the man next door. The nurse was a blonde but she let her black roots show, until they were an inch long, before she bleached them. Plus she had long toenails that scratched him in the middle of the night, and when he woke from his nightmares of the enemy getting ready to stab him with a bayonet, he thought her nails were dipped in poisonous juice from a tree only found in the jungles.
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