MARCH 2024

Softee
By Elizabeth Gassman

Anthony arrived in his truck on a Tuesday in June. It was the summer I learned to shave my legs.

I was working the register at Bodiddley’s market, where I had to wear a stiff, red cotton vest and khaki shorts. No denim. Mr. Bodiddley—Al Peterson was his name, but everyone, including his wife, called him Mr. Bodiddley—was very strict about this. In his truck, Anthony wore a white tank top curdled with sweat and chocolate stains. It was an ice cream truck. And even though there was a freezer full of desserts I could purchase for 25% off at the market, I bought a drumstick from Anthony every day for the rest of the summer after I saw him that first afternoon.

He was hairy, unlike any other man I’d seen. When I told him this two weeks or so after he started showing up, while I counted out the cash for my cone, he laughed.

“That’s cause they keep ’em clean shaven down here. Boot camp ready.”

“But don’t you get hot?” I asked when he handed me my change back in a hand shadowed by coarse black hair.

“It might be hot out there, but it’s cold in the truck,” he said, “It’s a freezer on wheels.”

He started driving me home not too soon after. He told me about Atlantic City. The bets he made, the bets he lost. He explained to me the importance of the gold Virgin Mary token around his neck. He said that the best ice cream was really in Ocean City. Kohr Brothers was the name he told me to remember. I sat in the passenger seat listening with my knees tucked under my chin trying to stay warm. He’d been right. The truck was a freezer on wheels. In the twenty minutes it took for him to bring me home, stubble poked through the skin of my legs and each night I had to shave it down even though it wasn’t long enough. My mother, who bought extra moisturizer to soothe the razor burns, told me to be more careful. I promised I would.

I had Anthony drop me off two blocks away from home. Sometimes, we talked while the truck idled before he had to head over to the baseball fields to catch the boys after practice. See, he couldn’t turn it off. If the engine stopped the freezers stopped and he couldn’t risk showing up to the fields with melted popsicles. Those boys were his best customers. If we sat in the truck, talking over the grumbling engine he let me pick anything out of the freezer I wanted.

“Just not the fudgsicles,” he’d remind me, “They go crazy for the fudgsicles.”

If Anthony wasn’t telling me about the slots in AC, he was asking me questions about town. Who had money? Why were all the streets in certain neighborhoods named after trees and in others after nothing? Where did Al Peterson come up with the name Bodiddley’s? Why did Mrs. Bodiddley act so high and mighty all the time? Did everyone really go to church on Sundays?

I had never been considered an expert before. It was, I’m sure, the first time anyone assumed I knew anything at all. Even when I was ringing up groceries, Mr. Bodiddley had a habit of coming by my register and asking if I knew all the codes for discounted fruit. I do, I’d insist. Even if I didn’t, he’d printed and laminated a sheet of them for me at the start of the summer.

I answered Anthony’s questions with the seriousness of Tom Brokaw on the nightly news. If there was something I did not know—say, if I he wanted to know the name of the Petersons’ German Sheppard—I’d took it upon myself to find out. I took his interest in town as an interest in me. I started leaning across the armrests, trading him for a lick of his orange creamsicle for a spoonful of my Italian ice. I told myself come September he’d offer to bring me back to Jersey with him. We’d find a new town with new cravings. We’d chase the cold.

But late in July, the Petersons were robbed. Mr. Bodiddley came home after church to find Lucy, the German Sheppard, locked in a closet, scratching at the door. Mrs. Bodiddley’s jewelry box—the whole box, not just the jewels—was taken. The safe in the basement was emptied. After the baseball championship, the catchers from both teams mounted a campaign to get their mothers to drive all the boys across town to Scoops for sundaes. A consensus was reached that hot fudge was infinitely better than frozen.

It occurred to me much later, sometime in October when my mother sent me to the market where my discount was stilled honored, that ice cream trucks aren’t such terrible getaway cars. They’re always running.

Miss Purse
By Ezra Solway

Dear Miss Purse,

Two years ago, you dropped a red purse (mistakenly? on purpose?) from your balcony on the 24^th floor. This was dawn—before the thrum of traffic had scattered my innermost thoughts, the sun yawning across the sky. Miss Purse—the sound of your purse nearly startled me! I was five stories below you. At first, I thought it was another foolish bird trying to fly through my window. But it was you. Standing over your balcony like you’d been waiting for me all along. This was two years ago, after all, so please forgive me if this doesn’t jog your memory, but as I raised my platform to return your purse, I noticed that you were completely naked. There was a scar on your back, spanning from your spine to the dimpled area below your waist. I cupped my hands and yelled something to the effect of “Excuse me miss, is this your purse?” To which I heard nothing but the echo of my own voice.

Now I know how this must sound—I’m an older man whose eyesight is not what it once was. My time cleaning windows has come to an end, in lieu of younger eyes and hands. Amid years of abeyance, I had depended on the rare burst of clarity. The dive of a chimney swift. A corporate man talked off a ledge by a compelling young girl. And now your red purse.

I know love and heartbreak well, Miss Purse. And what I’ve learned is that they are water and ice. I write to you now, after two years, because your purse has begun to erode. The patina has cracked and peeled. The straps have broken. I have found your lipstick and note, a doodle really, of an old man (of me—maybe?) next to a skyscraper, holding a squeegee. I have chuckled at this little sketch countless times and I am slightly embarrassed to admit that one night, in a state of whiskey-induced stupor, I applied your red lipstick to my mouth and kissed the piece of paper. When you try to put it into words, it sounds crazy. But if you hadn’t dropped your purse that morning, then maybe you’d understand.

Months ago, a woman I hardly know asked me why I’d been keeping your purse on my bookcase. For some inextricable reason, I hesitated and said it belonged to my late wife. Now I don’t usually tell such white lies. I think of myself as an honest man who has made an honest living. My wife has indeed passed on (to where I’m not exactly sure). She never owned a red purse but spoke about the color often as though it could cure loneliness. Perhaps this is the price of having an imagination. The more I sit here and write, the more the dream of you washes away, replaced by a flood of sadness.

Herewith you’ll find your $36, of which I have not spent a dime. You’ve probably skipped town, and this letter will be consigned to the dustbins of history. But on the off chance that you do see this, I must ask, is it all right, Miss Purse, if I keep the straps of your purse and bury them in my wife’s grave?

Yours,

Mr. W

La Dolce Vita
By Jedediah Smith

People sometimes ask me, What does your pancreas do? And I always say, I don’t know. But, it betrays me continually. I thought we were family, my pancreas and I, blood relations. My heart is loyal. It stays put in my breast, thumping blood, running the whole engine. My hands stay close to my sides like fraternal twins. But my pancreas is only looking out for my pancreas.

I work each day, and I land at home each night. I have no friends, no engagements, no social life. I am insular. I have my wife and my house, but before we even sit down to dinner, my pancreas is gone.

It slips out of some secret slit in my being like a stubborn teenager obeying no one but its own hormones. Then it’s through the door and into the night.

I hear wild tales about my pancreas. While I am lonely, my pancreas has a wide circle of friends, real friends with deep talks and soul pacts who laugh at pancreatic jokes and weep at pancreatic romances.

While I watch TV, my pancreas has a full social calendar. It attends soirées and salons, and shows excellent taste in culture and couture. I have heard my pancreas has a signature visual style, and many artists hope it will attend their gallery openings. Drama critics keep eyes peeled for my pancreas. If it attends your one-act play, you are sure to get a breathy review.

My pancreas has affairs with beautiful exotic women, bees drawn to its nectar. They sip sangria by starlight and dance the Honey Dipper, the Dipsey Doodle, and the Big Egg. I am envious, and I worry about what it might bring home.

My pancreas brushes with intrigue, gambling with spies, tapping phones, selling secrets to men in mirrorshades.

My pancreas dabbles in the dark arts, hosting séances, channeling Houdini, raising demons, and casting the runes.

It used to nestle somewhere inside me, a part of the Main, within the lesser capillaries, an archipelago of islets in a sea of blood. It filled my hold with cargoes of cane and mango and sugar-apple. Now, my pancreas betrays me, in the way of all flesh, I betray myself.

Poppy Is My Half-Sister But That’s Not the Whole Story
By Zach Keali’i Murphy

Poppy is my half-sister and she has a whole lot of nerve. When I was twelve, Poppy tried to poison me by baking me a cake that had laundry detergent in the frosting. It took me hours to get the taste out of my mouth. Poppy offered up an apology by baking me a new cake. I threw it in her face. It was half-baked anyway. My dad said I should be more forgiving, but people usually say that to excuse their own mistakes. Poppy and I have the same dad, but we don’t have the same mom. My mom’s spirit died when she found out about Poppy. Poppy’s mom died during childbirth.

Poppy is my half-sister and she doesn’t use her whole brain, but I’ve been told that no one does. When I broke my leg climbing a tree during my freshman year of high school, Poppy brought a hibiscus plant to my hospital room. After she placed it by my bedside, she turned around and her backpack knocked it over. The bulky plant fell directly onto my bad leg. I had to stay in the hospital for an extra week because of it. I could’ve sworn Poppy knocked it over on purpose. She probably enjoyed having the house to herself. My mom salvaged the hibiscus plant. She’s more forgiving than I am. Or maybe she just really likes plants. After I left the hospital, we brought the hibiscus home. It’s actually quite beautiful when it blooms.

Poppy is my half-sister and she’s full of surprises. When I attended my junior prom, my date ditched me midway through the dance. While I was hiding out in the hallway, wiping my mascara onto my turquoise dress, wondering if it was possible to die from humiliation, Poppy was puncturing the tires of my date’s car. The entire incident was caught on the school parking lot’s security camera. I asked Poppy why she did it, and the only thing she said was, “I was feeling spicy.” That night, Poppy was expelled from school but accepted into my heart.

Poppy is my half-sister and I miss her a whole bunch. When I left for college, Poppy decided to help me move into my dorm, but only after I promised to bring the hibiscus plant with me. She even helped me decorate the drab walls. My mom and dad come to visit me at college, but Poppy never makes the trip. My dad always says Poppy isn’t feeling well. When I came home for the holidays, Poppy wasn’t around. My dad says she’s staying at a friend’s house now. But I think friend is a generous term. The late nights of studying feel extra lonely when I’m worrying about Poppy. I take good care of the hibiscus plant. It’s dormant right now. But just when it seems like it’s done growing, it always seems to bud again.

Allerednic
By Rachel Rodman

Tachyons crackled in the sky, spraying the hands of the clock. Midnight, then one minute till, then two minutes, then three. As she hurried backwards up the steps, she regained her shoe.

In the ballroom, she spun (in these moments, direction didn’t matter) before mounting a pumpkin coach drawn by mice-horses, which trotted in reverse, taking her home. Here, with her Fairy Godmother, she exchanged her existing set of clothes for another. Then she passed her time until the sun rose and she went to sleep and woke up, went to sleep and woke up, cycles upon cycles, until one evening, upon waking, her father was alive.

Once upon a time.

“Tell it again,” says my little prince.

Everything is going backwards here: he is wetting the bed though he should have stopped, experiencing night terrors as he hasn’t for years, struggling with schoolwork that he has already mastered. I, too, am not the parent I was. I am a bad parent now, who reads to him though it is the middle of the night and we are both very tired; I read to him whenever he asks me to.

Now that his father is dead.

“The End,” I say, restarting the story.

Marion checks in
By Kjetil Jansen

To be placed in a motel in cabin number one is not like winning the lottery, but I didn’t mind his sandwich meal company, and I feel safe with the young manager in his office next door. He may have deduced I did register under a false name. A slip of the tongue. Not that it matters. Come morning I will be gone, heading back to Phoenix to sort out my life.

This is not why my heart is pounding. As I stripped down to my black lingerie, I sensed a miniscule shift in the light. Men watch me, I know. Furtive glances and polite conversation spinning into outright leering and innuendo, oh so delicately and yet so blunt. Men are such animals. But not this one.

Deciding on a shower, I slip into the motel bathrobe, climb into the tub closing the curtain behind me. A sensitive soul, this Mr. Bates. Norman. His outburst, hinting at some unresolved mental issues, ruined our sandwich moment, but the connection, I felt it. I feel it now. After all, we all go a little mad sometimes.

The jet stream, so nice and warm against my body. I wonder if he is still looking or must do with his imagination. I hope it is as vivid as mine. I should be outraged, and not in this state of pining for his embrace. Not one of those shady “hot pillow” motels, this is a decent establishment, family owned. A boy’s best friend is his mother, but I could be more than a friend, the woman who springs him from the trap he was born into.

This curtain, how flimsy is it, how easy to rip away to embrace my ripeness, oh Norman, what are you thinking boy you want that bird you want to stuff that bird and bring it into my home oh no Norman she is the trap all vinegar hiding inside honey to lure you to hurt me and place me in what she dared to call someplace his soft arms around my body you wouldn’t know what to do to her so gentle end this now or I will end this for you I am doing this to protect you haven’t I always protected you?

Norman averted his eyes as she gingerly climbed out of the bathtub. He might be a voyeur, but there is still common decency. When he looked again, she had the robe on, and had a towel swept around her head. She walked out of his view, and he heard her sit down on the bed without getting ready for it. After a while, she got up, crossed his eyeline as a blur a few times, before she went into the bathroom, purse in hand.

As she returned, he got a good look at her as she stopped to look at the wall, his wall. She had put fresh lipstick on. A moment of introspection, before her face and eyes determined to act. She tightened her robe and disappeared. Three heartbeats later she softly knocked on his door.

“Mr. Bates. Terribly sorry to disturb you. Are you still up?”

He glanced down his body at his mother`s dress and the knife in his hand as he touched the wig. It felt all wrong. Like dead feathers.

“I wonder if I can take you up on the offer to continue our conversation. It ended a bit abruptly, but I really enjoyed your company. I want to make your evening better, better for the both of us.”

The voice inside. Striking like a hydra snake. This outsider. Maim, maul, eradicate.

“I’ll only be a moment.”

A moment later he opened the door.

“Matching bathrobes!” he smiled. She smiled back.

Marion never checked out. The next morning, during breakfast up at the house, she told him she had inherited forty thousand dollars from her aunt and wanted to invest it in the motel. She drove back to Phoenix to move out of her apartment. That gave him an opportunity to clean the house and get some stuff out of the fruit cellar.

When Marion returned, he explained the woman he had quarreled with was not his mother, but a disturbed former house tenant, who had been under the impression his late mother had invited her back to stay when she got older. She had adopted his mother as one of her many personalities and was now safely back at the mental hospital. The poor soul. Marion had seen The Three Faces of Eve and did not challenge his story.

Business picked up, as many travelling men didn’t mind going the extra mile to chat with this charming new proprietor. Overcoming a reluctance to work on domestic animals, Norman became a renowned taxidermist, adding to the income.

The voice, it was still there. A murmur, a whisper, a fading scar. His new situation helped him, especially when the family grew, you couldn’t ask for better sons than Robert and Alfred. When they found those bodies in the swamp, such vile acts, he felt no connection and was never suspected or questioned. And now, with a pair of extra hands, a drifter, but solid, his name Frank Chambers, the future looks nothing but bright.

DINNER SERVICE
By Suzanne Johnston

It was between the last bite of chicken cordon bleu and before the cheesecake arrived that the commotion at table four started.

They had seemed pleasant enough. He had pulled her chair out. She had handed him his napkin to place on his lap. “Fancy,” he’d said, and told me, “My foxy lady here will approve the wine.” But with a definitive, “Yuck,” she had not approved of the wine. They’d ordered double vodka Diet Cokes instead. He had ordered the chicken; she asked me what was vegan. After a disappointing few minutes, she ordered a sirloin. Rare. And said why the hell not because it wasn’t like they could afford to come back to this restaurant again. In all my too-many years here, I’d never met anyone quite like these two.

She was in the washroom when I served their meal. “It’s a special night,” the man entreated, sliding a ten-dollar bill toward me. “Of course,” I replied with no clue what kind of added value he expected at that price point. I pocketed the ten because she was walking toward us, and brought them another basket of warm bread.

When I returned to the table later to inquire about their intentions for dessert, she asked what the cheapest thing was. He said to just get whatever the hell she wanted and bring more drinks because there ain’t no goddamn way they were coming back to this shithole again.

Was it the food? I asked if the steak had been overcooked. Sometimes that makes customers cranky. But she had eaten every bite. Even the fatty pieces she said that clunked down her throat half chewed because you sure as hell can’t waste even gristle when it costs as much as a tank of gas. And his chicken, well, he’d rabidly torn it to shreds leaving his plate like the floor of a fox’s den, so I’m not really sure if he actually enjoyed it or just liked playing with his food. He had flicked debris from his teeth onto the table with a mangled toothpick, so I took that as no complaints here and proceeded to recite the three-item dessert menu that we keep short so we don’t have to scrape freezer burn off too many things in the cooler.

But they didn’t even let me finish elaborating on our New York-style cheesecake and interrupted me at strawberry sauce hollering, “Fuck yes!” and cheers’ing their umpteenth vodka diets.

I probably should’ve watered those down before the slurring started, but he had seemed nervous in front of her and I myself enjoy a relaxing agent or two when wooing a pretty girl with long black hair and lips the colour of a stop sign, so I stayed out of it.

When I brought the cheesecake over, I was surprised to see him covered in one of the syrupy drinks. I stood there, waiting for the punchline while he mopped his receding hairline and dampT-shirt, but I guess I missed it because neither of them explained why he was soaking wet and the tealight was out. They just stared at each other, not like lovers lost in each other’s eyes, but like two gunslingers facing off at high noon. And that’s when I saw the small velvet box resting open on its side and the too-big-to-be-real solitaire diamond popping out of the cushion so I left them with dessert forks and a subtly instructive, “Enjoy.”

Now, I’m stuck wiping cheesecake off the wallpaper and contemplating my responsibility in the whole mess, as per my manager’s instructions. I ask my co-workers where they felt the night had nosedived. One server tells me while she sweeps up broken glass it was when the guy toppled over getting down on one knee because that’s when the lady chucked her drink in his face. Table six, just next door to four, chimes in over their tiny glasses of port that it wasn’t that at all but when the chick admitted to banging the dude’s father and I had told them to keep it down.

Another server, tugging a fork out of the cushioned chair back, says that it wasn’t the woman who had cheated but the man with her best friend at her father’s funeral.

It seems to me supper had been doomed to fail before they’d even stepped through the doors, but I can’t help but feel if I had suggested the stuffed pork chop instead of the chicken and not called them a pair of dysfunctional hyenas that they wouldn’t be standing in the entryway now yelling, “I ain’t going to fucking marry you,” at each other like it’s a competition to see who will run out of breath first and collapse, and I wouldn’t have this black eye. But we’ve called the police, so I guess they’ll come by sooner or later and sort it all out.

Minotaur Dresses in the Dark
By Emma Goldman-Sherman

Imagine my newest version of the fabled jeans, like the ones I made at 13. Tight, a blue light special, delicious. Stonewashed and tapered to the ankles to show off my hooves. On the outseams, daisy chains. On the left thigh, the maze, bane of my existence. I wish I could say I memorized it, but it’s so complex. I’m trying to embroider a way out. So far a jumble of stitches in red thread.

You may have heard I’m a monster. But who got to tell that tale? Then again, an epithet provides a kind of grace. I polish my horns til they shine. By the time I made those jeans, I’d developed a tough hide. She burned them in the courtyard. Every inch of that denim ashed. I could hear it from here. Wanted to burn me in them. Leave nothing but rivets. Aren’t I riveting?

She smokes like a chimney, can’t kill herself quick enough. Hates her life upstairs. Bored, she tries to get me to wax my legs.

It’s not ladylike, so much hair. You can’t walk around that way. No one’ll love you.

No one loves me now.

Not true, I do!

Hear the little wail in her voice, as if she’s still a waif the king picked up (like an std) in some alley. How she got to be queen—frailty’s the key. Passive Faye. So many kings like their women that way.

She wants to teach me to purge: Just stick your finger down far enough to start gagging, lean over like—what choice do we have?

All I ever wanted was to wear these impenetrable jeans. Solid. Sewn as I wish I could sew myself. If only I could get my crotch up onto the arm of her Singer. You should have heard her screaming, calling me abomination. As if she loves her female self.

I tried to explain. The tapered legs of those jeans. Now these. If only I could taper off the stuff of myself, what intoxicates me, this idea I have of who I could be.

Addicted, she calls me. I guess she might be right. Obsessed with the dream of my own life. Beyond this labyrinth.

Imagine me in daylight, outside, walking down the street. Walking to the store in these jeans. Picking something out, anything. Doing things anyone does. Only different, embroidered, with different designs.