I wiggled the toes of my left foot. The telltale tingle zoomed up my leg and throughout the rest of my body. I closed my eyes and felt like purring. Yeah, the magic was there, all right, ready and waiting for my command.

A butterfly of nerves threatened to break through my high. I stomped them down fast with another wiggle. No time for that. Understandable, though. Practicing the magic on the dog and masseuses and doctors and hair stylists and grocery clerks was one thing; influencing a television audience and millions of TV viewers something else entirely. Good news though: even if it didn’t work, I still got my face and book in front of a huge audience.

The On Air lights flashed on all over the studio. The audience dutifully applauded. Flunkies worked themselves into a frenzy. One materialized beside me with a professional smile and poked my elbow. Like I needed a physical cue. I had the magic.

“Welcome back to the Four Nights a Week Show!” Tom Stupert bellowed with a plastic grin. His voice boomed in my earpiece. “My guest tonight is the author of Bill Clinton: Succubus Hunter, his debut novel that has everyone talking since it was released last month. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show… Derek Trist!”

I brushed off the flunky’s guidance and strode onto the stage like I owned the place – confident smile, straight shoulders, chest out and gut sucked in. As I basked in the audience applause and fought the urge to wince under the glaring lights, I took a moment to appreciate Stupert’s generous introduction. Folks may be talking up my novel, but they sure as hell weren’t buying it – at least not in sufficient quantities to allow me to retire and spend the rest of days lounging in an opulent Scottsdale mansion.

Tom and I shook hands. His grip was loose and soft, a weenie handshake. Guess you couldn’t expect anything more from a New York TV personality. Out in Arizona, born and raised like me know the value of a good strong manly handshake.

We got settled in at the desk. I leaned forward. “Do you mind if I say something before we get started here?”

Tom shrugged and threw up his hands. “I’ve already lost control of this interview. Why not – what do you got?”

“When I received your generous invitation to appear on your show, I was shocked and thrilled. Then I got to thinking.” I paused for effect. Stupert raised his eyebrows. “Was I the first fiction writer you’ve had as a guest?”

Stupert pursed his lips. The audience tittered. “Now that you mention it…”

“A quick Google search showed that was indeed the case. I remember sitting at my keyboard and asking myself, how should I handle this? I could journey down the humble road, or, you know, revel in the historical breakthrough.”

“Feed the ego, huh?” Stupert said with a knowing grin. “Boost the self-esteem a bit?”

I nodded. “Of all the great writers around, many of them having sold far more books than I likely ever will, they didn’t make it on The Four Nights A Week Show with Tom Stupert.” I looked out at the audience. “That’s really cool, right?”

The people laughed and slapped their hands together like good little circus-trained seals.

“Stephen King didn’t make it. Not Dean Koontz. No Charlene Harris, Kim Harrison, Dan Simmons, Rowling, Straub, frigging F. Paul Wilson.” My voice rose as the audience continued to roar and Stupert egged me on with fist pumps. “Except for me, Derek Trist, no-name hack.” I glared into the camera and raised my fists in triumph. “Suck on that, bitches!”
“Yeah,” Stupert crowed over the audience’s thunderous approval. “Suck on that!”

I waited until the audience had settled down before wrapping it up in a neat bow. “But, instead, I decided to go humble and appreciate this unique opportunity with uncommon grace.”

“Clearly.” Stupert said. The audience giggled. “Let’s talk about the book. I’ll admit, I don’t read much fiction, which is why we’ve never had a fiction writer on my show.”

“You prefer to inflict pain upon yourself by reading about politics.”
Stupert nodded proudly. “Right. I saw your book in my local bookstore, and it spoke to me. It said, Buy me, read me, you’ll love me. I did and I did.”

For the next few minutes, he asked me questions about the book, I regurgitated all the right marketing blurbs, and then he asked me the most important question of all. I knew he would, and if he hadn’t, I would have brought it up myself.

“Folks often ask me, and other comedians pretending to be talk show hosts, how we dream up all the monologues and sketches. I’m sure you get the same thing, so I have to ask: how do you come up with this stuff?”

I folded my hands and posed with a thoughtful frown. “You know, Tom, it’s hard to say. Imagination plays a role. Reading, observing the world around me. Ideas can come at any time, often with little warning. When one hits, you do your best to think it through and hopefully come up with something writeable and sellable. That being said, I do have a bit of a secret weapon.” I lowered my voice to a theatrical whisper. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course,” he responded with his own whisper and leaning in close. His breath smelled like Tic Tac. “Just between you and me… and my staff, and the folks in the audience, and everyone watching at home and on my web site.”

“What helps get my creative juices flowing is this little trick I can do with the toes on my left foot.”

“Oookaaay.”

“Do you want to see it?”

“Um, well, I’m not sure.” Stupert looked to the audience. “What do you say?”

The folks whistled and hollered.

“There’s your answer. Let’s do this!”

I whipped off my shoe and sock and plopped my bare foot on Stupert’s spotless glass desktop. He rolled back with a look of disgust, fake or real I couldn’t tell, but the audience ate it up.
“Don’t worry, Tom. The Tinactin’s cleaned up most of the fungus.” The audience guffawed.

My foot gleamed in the bright lights, standing tall and erect. The nails were neatly trimmed, the hair on the toe knuckles closely shaved. Flecks of black sock spotted the ebony skin.

“Here’s what I do. First, I bend the first knuckle of my second toe while keeping all the other toes still.” The second toe dutifully responded. Stupert winced with amused bewilderment.

“Then, I flex out the little toe, without moving any of the other toes.” My little toe wiggled down and to the left. Stupert put his hands over his mouth. His eyes bulged. The audience gasped with stunned bemusement. Even the flunkies with headsets backstage stopped their scurrying to stare.

“Once I’m warmed up, I bend each toe in turn, ending with the little toe’s flourish.” One by one in succession, each toe bowed at the top knuckle until the little toe bounced out. “I can do this all day.”

Over and over, my toes performed the wiggle wiggle, producing the magic, filling me up with energy and adrenaline until it couldn’t be contained. I could feel it spreading outside of me, filling the studio, attaching itself to every person and soaking into their bodies. They didn’t have a clue, of course. They were too busy laughing themselves hysterical. Stupert’s face was beet red, tears streamed from his eyes, and he was about to fall out of his chair.

I briefly thought back to when I discovered the magic. A year ago today. I was sitting at my PC, staring at a blank screen and blinking cursor, nervously wiggling my toes, when my dog lifted his leg to mark the bookcase. “Dammit, Baxter, why don’t you piss on yourself rather than the furniture?”

Immediately my Rottweiler rolled onto his back and squirted all over his belly.

I soon discovered that it worked on people too. My feet had to be bare and the toes had to be wiggling in the same pattern I was using now. Then, whatever I told them they did. My hot masseuse gave me an erotic massage. My babe doctor gave me a BJ during my annual physical.

I haven’t paid for groceries or haircuts in a year – as long as I wear open-toed sandals.

“When I’m doing this trick, the ideas flow like Niagara and I write like a badass. Speaking of ideas, here’s a great one – everyone watching should go buy Bill Clinton: Succubus Hunter and tell all your friends how great it is!”

A flunky was frantically waving her arms. Stupert was too busy convulsing to see it. “Commercial break?” The flunky averted her gaze and nodded.

“I’ll take us there.” The job done, I removed my foot and sat up straight. “We’ll be right back with the Four Nights A Week Show with Tom Stupert!”

After the show, I sat at a desk in the studio’s main hallway, signing books for the folks as my publicist’s assistant sold all copies. The imaginary ringing of an old-fashioned cash register reverberated through my head and filled me with a warm tingly feeling. A quick check of my web site stats on my cell showed a 900 percent increase in traffic.

All hail the wiggle wiggle.

As I signed and performed a reasonable impersonation of someone who cared what the folks were telling me, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the millions under the magic’s spell would suffer the not-so-rare side effect. Five weeks after performing the scintillating erotic massage, my hot massage therapist grabbed a hose at a car wash and jammed it down a stranger’s throat, nearly drowning him. Three weeks after my physical, my babe doctor cut off her husband’s ear while he slept and fried it up for breakfast with eggs and bacon. They couldn’t explain why they did it. They just felt the overwhelming impulse and acted on it.

Those were just the cases I knew about from the newspaper. No telling what violent acts a grocery checkout clerk or hair stylist had committed that didn’t make the news. I know the side effect didn’t happen to everyone, but I never bothered figuring out percentages or probabilities or anything so mathematically difficult and time-consuming.

To be honest, I didn’t much care. When and if the worldwide homicidal atrocities began, I’d be safely ensconced in my walled Scottsdale compound, rolling in seven-figure royalty checks and getting my wiggle wiggle on with the Phoenix Suns dance team.

Damn, life was good.

When we go out to a restaurant—something my father insists on the moment he finds himself with money over debt—our host asks ‘Smoking or non’ only because it’s a formality whose omission could earn him a demerit. The host and the entire live-long world knows where we will sit on account of her. They only need take a look at the fissures raked down her upper lip so hard they don’t look like wrinkles but like birthmarks from a Bully God. That buttery blot at the meeting place of her smoking fingers. The fried laugh she musters upon hearing something decently raunchy. Jesus Christ knows why her voice still sounds husky rather than crunched, like gravel under a Mack truck, because in down or simply boring times the woman’s been known to plow through two, three cartons a week.

There’s a legend coursing through suppers in my family that, prima gravida with yours truly, she idled down to a pack a day, an ascetic level she kept until at three weeks old I was weaned to whole fat cow’s milk with Karo syrup. For this reason, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that whenever I die, it will be with perfect awareness that I could’ve lived 15 to 20 years longer but for her nasty crutch. Though she does scowl when I wave this matter under her deadened nostrils, there are greater ways to evoke a rise out of Mathematical Joyce. When she’s on my ass about something the way she is given half a chance, I’ll point out that had she breastfed longer I might have been a more intelligent child. Might’ve had real potential to get out of this backwash delta she and my father took a shine to for no reason they’ve ever been able to articulate.

Usually, then, we share a mother-daughter laugh and let go whatever our discrepancy was because—Christ only privy, again—despite her smoking to beat a spit, her little daughter Iris is a genius. Not “I painted neat pictures young” sort of parent-labeled genius. No, I graduated at 13 just to be addled by various colleges saying why I should attend when I know well and fine the reason I should attend—to bring to their school the weird sort of prestige that goes hand-in-hand with Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not and overstuffed people in freak-tents at fairs.

Right now, though, I’m not contemplating colleges and I’m not gagging on a secondhand fog. I am sitting in the lounge of the Family Planning Clinic waiting to be called back.

Several factors would prevent nearly anyone with sense from liking this building. The first is that the workers are cloistral to a mind-numbing extreme—nouveau nuns from the order of Testing Poor People for Babies. Christ’s sakes, there’s a dollar store in town where you can get a two-pack of home tests for fifty cents; I’ve known girls to go home with ten boxes in hand just to shore up against their unpredictable futures.

Another thing that can make your skin creep as though from chiggers is that directly cock-eye of this place, so you’ll see it if you look up from the table magazines the nun-workers have arranged in a perfect stack, is Linwood’s Laundromat where the owner’s son is famed for killing himself one night. He got hopped foolish on a multiplicity of drugs, used his daddy’s key to the place and—you may not want to visualize this—stood there touching himself in front of the huge windows panes. Everyone knows this due to half the town driving by seeing him; he gleefully waved with his unemployed hand. Then he climbed up to the roof and just jumped, crown-down onto the cement which had just had oak leaves blasted off it earlier that afternoon.

Can you conceive of how hard a boy’s got to thrust himself, and from what angle, to accommodate his death when thousands of other boys all over the country jump from buildings taller than Linwood’s Laundromat to no consequence except a lasting vibration in their shins? I’ve tried to shut my eyes and see it several times. And though theorems dawned powerfully upon me while most were drawing rainbows in the empty place of their protractors, I cannot understand this suicide. Every single time I’ve been to the clinic, I’ve looked over there, then shut my eyes and tried to be quiet enough that the facts would come together and create some kind of motion picture.

I’ve been here, now, five times. For me, it’s a matter of convenience: the clinic is only 87 strides from my house.

When the girl calls my name, she stops and sighs halfway through saying, “Iris Auction.”

I give them a sample, wait for them to demystify it. The girl who normally intimates that I’m not pregnant this time tells me to hold a skinny minute if I will, there’s someone else who wants to see me and before I can swing off this table, there is little black Ingrid Hertz in front of me. Little black Ingrid Hertz asks point-blank what in land-over-hell I’m trying to pull and even though I know what she means, I ask her to tell me what she means.

“You been in here repeatedly taking these tests, and you go slack-jaw when it turns out nothing. Now you explain for me, and you do so without your smart lip, what you’re doing wanting a baby.”

When I do not answer her, thinking it’s not one stitch her business, she changes her question to: “Iris, do you know how to have a baby?”

Do I know how to have a baby.

“Iris.” Ingrid is gentle now. “You haven’t been close with any of those boys have you?” Her eyes claim she won’t believe me if I say I have. I sit there for a while looking square-on at her, allowing female-to-female transmissions to go on between ours sets of stonewalling eyes. Now, her features squirm alive. “Iris Auction, your mama would belt your ass! Do not tell me—we just naturally assumed you were coming in here ’cause nobody’d ever taught you birds-and-the-bees, and you thought maybe, well, maybe …” I can visualize her eyebulbs going POP right out of their sockets, oozing down her cheeks like runny eggs.

“Your mama has talked to you about sex?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m doing it.”

“You are thirteen.”

I explain to her that, most likely thanks to a generational flailing of hormones, which in turn is thanks to over consumption of bovine once subjected to steroids, most girls have their monthlies well before thirteen now. I ask her then why I’ve had not even a scare when I’ve made sure to be as skin-to-skin reckless as possible with them.

She now loses the equanimity she’s known for, slapping her thighs as she stands up with a snap. “Why on the good Lord’s green earth you want to go havin’ a baby you’re only thirteen you’re a baby you are –” She stands near the door of the exam room, pointing at me and not flinching from that stature. I would assume she’s picked up on the conjugation of my male pronoun, is realizing that I’ve just claimed a farm of them. I see her reasoning stripped stark in the changing contour of her eyes, the restriction followed by the shrugging by the easing off of her eyelids. I have now exaggerated too much and have lost my footing.

That rapidly, Ingrid Hertz makes a face to indicate her worries have gone the way of so much left-over salad dressing. She conjectures I feel ostracized from the girls at my grade-level, a group around here known for swelling up like knotted water-hoses, having pretty babies, getting saved, taking to cross-stitch patterns of wolves and rainbows found at Walmart. I listen to her go through this, amused and grateful to be so.

When I convince her that I’ve seen the error in feigning promiscuity, I get away from her and into the sun. Warmed up and fit for the next thing on my shoddily built itinerary, I stroll over to Linwood’s and shield my eyes to see the roof. I’m certain that Linwood himself or any one of his myriad Asian workers could look out and see what I’m doing, know that I am trying to see something that happened a while back now and did not involve me. If they indeed think that last part, they’re actually somewhat wrong. Which is not to say I had one iota to do with the boy’s goon-headed leap; but I knew him.

Sometimes now, I will find myself losing track of what his name was, reminding myself and writing down that it was Solomon if I light on it through the day, but name is incidental in the affairs I’ve worked up for he and I over time.

In my mind, Solomon Linwood didn’t blister himself on every chemical handed to him, and he certainly didn’t lose two-thirds of his brain bashed on a sidewalk. He lived and made good on the hinted-at, daredevil promise he’d given me by saying, “Hay, Iris” and waggling his sandy eyebrows, walking backward in the hall at school that was being rebuffed that day. He lived right the hell on. We started going out, eating bananas sitting on the balcony of the water tower, tossing our peels down afterward and waiting to see various rodents and water bugs make eyes at them. I sat passenger while he slung mud off the tires of his Jeep onto anybody with poor enough sense to get near him. He got me pregnant, and was I ever a sight—little peg-body Iris and then this gelatinous egg in my middle.

Sad that all of this has been pulled from beneath me and with such lingering gusto, I leave the block of Linwood’s and the family clinic. Having reached the end of what I intended to do with my day, I try to think of something else that seems likely to either titillate me, lull me into a body-and-mind dullness which will allow me to not care that I am not amused, or provide a spate of gossip for passing back and forth with Joyce.

There is nothing. There are few dull movies. There are no new road-side mascots for tax firms for me to pester. I glance backward at the ugly, ribbed, beige Family Planning Building.

I walk the 87 Iris-steps back home. Joyce sits on our front porch, which has always reminded me of a bird house. Our yard this time of year sways full with red sweet grass and purple yard flowers; when the breeze strikes it just right, the whole thing appears to be a square-shaped, pulsing spleen.

Having waded through our ankle-tall weed garden, I sit down beside her and lean away from her exhaust. Then I change my stance on smoking, entirely and suddenly, and hold my hand out, asking that she give me one. She cannot bring herself to do this, not even when I point out that I’ve already smoked the equivalent of a skybox seat stuffed full of loose cigarettes, what with neighboring her so long. She offers no response to speak of.

For a few minutes, we sit there looking at the cul-de-sac, both hoping our neighbor will materialize in her gown the likeness of a dressed-up cowbell. While this doesn’t happen, a boy and a girl staying with their grandmother who lives exactly parallel to us come out in the middle of the street’s bulb and hover over a dead raccoon. The little girl pokes it with bare fingers.

My IQ didn’t germinate out of the blue, piecing itself together from nary an anteceding material. My mother once blew the ever-living socks off of Stanford. Born here, left here, could have stayed gone as long as she cared to, throwing her intellect at the great quizzes of the world. Came back here instead. Didn’t come back married and dragging the dirt with child, now. She came back fully aware of herself and everything that she could do, every way in which her life could diverge from the front-porch-sitting, meatball-cooking, pack-a-day-smoking lives of her friends. Hell. When you’re born in one of the world’s last remaining petri dishes of rednecks, aren’t you supposed to want to get away?

I look at Joyce, who was once beautiful and has weathered herself to within inches of a greeting-card caricature, who is part of all this but not quite. She asks have I been down heckling the good-hearted sisters of the clinic. Not knowing how she knows this—I certainly haven’t told her—I say yes I have.

She comments that she hopes that stupid kid washes her hands before sticking them in her mouth. She waits a little bit then cuts her eyes toward me, saying, “You get bored, don’t you, baby?”

I wait a minute myself, so as to fence back my sarcasm because she is asking me something real, and I say, Yes ma’am, and she nods because she knows exactly what I’m saying.

She opened her dinky, red umbrella and hoped for the best. Futile was the first word that hit her. It tore her umbrella from her grip and sent it up through the vortex where it arced over the park, to land in the branches of a stately row of oak trees.

Razor sliced her bicep from elbow to shoulder. It wasn’t too deep, but blood gleamed and dripped in a slow streak down her arm.

She watched the storm with trepidation now, trying to read the words as they came close, trying to determine the storm’s trajectory, trying to decide which way to run and whether she could dodge the really dangerous words like eviscerate—that would be a bad word to cross paths with. Ambivalent hit her squarely in her lower belly, with enough force to drive the air from her lungs. She stood stock still, catching her breath, not knowing what to do next.

Giddy slapped her across the face, and Ellen started laughing. She danced, and skipped, and hooted merrily for a short time. A minute passed. Then two.

Ellen realized she was in the eye of the storm. The half-way point. A moment of respite. The words spun faster here. There were too many to count and trying to read them as they whizzed by made her dizzy.

Escape. She could make out the word escape orbiting around the eye of the storm. Escape seemed her best bet of all.

She knew she had to concentrate. She slowed her breathing and heart rate, let her vision blur a bit and as soon as she saw escape entering her peripheral vision, she lunged for it. She caught the descending stem of the letter p and held on as tightly as she could.

Everything swirled. A jumble of the verdant grass, darker trees, letters and words of varying typefaces, and the small dot of red from her umbrella in the trees. She was spinning so fast now that everything became a panoply of green and black, blue and red, a kaleidoscope ride through space. Still a bit giddy, she thought of green-skinned witches, sparkling red shoes, and tornadoes in Kansas.

Suddenly, everything was calm. She could feel the ground beneath her back. She kept her eyes closed to let the vestigial effects of spinning stop. She could no longer hear the freight train roar of the storm. After a moment, she opened her eyes and stood on unsteady legs.

Ellen was on a beach surrounded by palm trees. A gentle, susurrating surf came in from the ocean. “I’m not in Kansas anymore,” she thought, grinning for no reason.

She had escaped. She was no longer at the mercy of a word storm in Austin, Texas. She was on a small island in the Pacific, or perhaps the Atlantic. Ellen Morris laughed, wondering how long the giddy effects would sustain her before she had to face the reality that escape might not be a good thing.

In his former life he would have been schlepping his battered sample case and wearing his wool suit and white shirt with a tie Arlene would have bought for him at Fields or Saks. He would have been thinking about the sales calls he’d made and his plans for the rest of the week, and he would have tried not to think about Arlene waiting at home for him, ready to unload a day’s worth of her complaints. The passengers would be packed hip-to-hip and ass-to-ass, and Hank’s teeth would be clenched as the train screeched and clattered down the track, and he’d be suffocating from the tang of cheap after-shave and smoke-breath and the international potpourri of BO. And with all that stink and heat and humidity and noise Hank would have been happy.

He gripped the stainless steel loop on the back of a seat occupied by a trim, dark-haired woman who was reading an Elmore Leonard novel. Hank liked everything about her: her taste in literature, her lack of an iPod, the way her silk blouse draped her breasts—which Hank was studiously not staring at—her crooked mouth, the way her eyes darted from side to side as she read, and her smooth skin, which was sort of peach-colored, like she did stuff outside on the weekends. She was pretty, but not too pretty and she was younger than Hank, but not too young. Maybe she was one of those “life possibilities” his employment counselor had been talking about.

Hank’s left hand clutched the glossy brochure the CareerFinders counselor had handed him at the end of their session. The brochure, he was told, was full of important stuff he would need as he “pivoted” (the counselor’s word) toward his new career (whatever that was going to be). But it didn’t have the weight of his old briefcase, and when the train lurched out of the station, Hank lost his balance and fell hard into the tattooed kid standing next to him. The boy grabbed Hank to keep him from tumbling to the floor.

“You okay?” he asked.

Hank steadied himself and he could feel the color rising in his cheeks. He used to be able to hold his satchel in one hand and flip through the Tribune with the other. He nodded at the boy. “Thanks,” he said.

When the train pulled into Grand, he couldn’t avoid his reflection in the window. His hair was completely gray now. Arlene probably would have told him he looked distinguished, but with the harsh lighting he looked almost frail. He missed Arlene’s meals. His polo shirt hung loose and the collar was frayed. Arlene never would have let him leave the house looking like that.

This time, as the train accelerated, he held on tight. The woman had closed her book and was staring at him as though she knew him. Her eyes were friendly, inviting conversation. He would ask her about the book. Let her know he had read it, that they had something in common. And he wouldn’t do all the talking. He’d listen to what she had to say and then…

She tugged on his sleeve. “Would you like my seat, sir?” she asked.

Her words crumbled him. He shook his head. “I’m okay,” he mumbled. He tried to stand a little straighter, but his strength was gone. As the train screeched to a stop at Clark & Division his hand nearly slipped from the handhold. The man seated next to the woman got off and she moved over to the window seat. Hank dropped himself into the seat next to her. He sighed deeply.

“Long day?” she said, again smiling.

“Not long. Just different.” He looked at the brochure. He snorted. “My future is behind me,” he said.

“Behind you?” she said, her eyebrows peaked.

“A sportscaster once proclaimed of some hotshot rookie that, ‘most of his future is ahead of him.’” He shook his head. “Most of my future isn’t.”

She tilted her head to read the cover of the CareerFinders brochure. “You’re looking for a new job?” she asked.

“I’m looking for an old job. But they don’t make them anymore. I was in printing services–-you know, company newsletters, handbooks, brochures. Arlene warned me. Told me the internet would make me obsolete. What do you do?” he asked.

“I’m a librarian.”

Hank raised his eyebrow.

“We’re not obsolete. Not yet,” she said. “But we’ve had to adapt.”

“Yeah that’s what Arlene always told me. ‘You’ve got to retrain, Hank. Go to trade school, Hank. Upgrade yourself, Hank.’”

The train emerged from underground. In the natural light he could see friendly lines around her eyes.

“My name’s Hank,” he said.

She smiled. A southbound train roared past the window. “I’m Diane,” she said, after the clamor subsided.

They rolled past familiar landscapes: Treasure Island and Torstenson Glass Company and the dog park and then the backside of a row of Chicago-brick three-flats.

“See that guy there?” Hank said. He pointed out the window where an old man was seated in a folding chair on the third-floor stoop drinking a beer.

“He looks content,” Diane said. The train started to slow for the Fullerton stop.

Hank leaned forward. “When the train slows down, I can look into those apartments and watch people having dinner or reading a book or washing dishes. I imagine their lives.”

The conductor announced the transfers for Belmont. Diane leaned toward him to make room for a large woman making her way to the exit. “Is Arlene your wife?” she asked.

He nodded. Nobody ever asked him about Arlene anymore. “She died last year. Breast cancer,” he said.

She touched his forearm, just for an instant. “I’m sorry.”

“We were married for twenty-one years and Arlene was a complete pain-in-the-ass for nineteen of those years.”

Diane laughed and then quickly covered her mouth. “I guess sometimes marriage changes people.”

Hank shook his head. “Arlene was always in my corner, but she was annoying when I met her and she just got worse after we were married. Complained about everything—the weather, neighbors, politicians. Democrat or Republican—didn’t matter to Arlene—she was an equal opportunity complainer.”

Diane looked at him, the lines around her eyes a little more crinkled. “So what were the two good years?”

“When Arlene got sick her attitude changed. Through all that suffering she never complained. Even developed a sense of humor. Woman was amazing.” His voice had turned husky. More passengers exited at Belmont. The aisle was now empty. “Dying,” Frank said. “That was Arlene’s finest moment.”

Diane squeezed his hand. “When I get home I’m not going to complain to my boyfriend about anything,” she said. “Unless he really screws up.”

Of course she had a boyfriend. Hank should have expected that.
The train doors whooshed open and the computer-voiced conductor announced they’d arrived at Addison. Diane shoved her book into her bag. “This is my stop.”

As she stood, Hank tapped her on the arm. “Just remember. Most of your future’s ahead of you,” he said. They laughed.

Her eyes crinkled. “So is yours, Hank.”

When she got to the train door she turned and gave him a little wave. Hank couldn’t help but smile. He had liked everything about her. Well, everything except for the boyfriend thing. As they pulled out of the station he watched the sun-washed neighborhoods roll by. From where he sat, everything looked clean and bright and promising.

Not the first thing you want to hear when you have just stumbled groggily in to work Friday morning after a hard night on the town. Not entirely unexpected, however, as I work at a nuclear weapons research establishment. Death threats from the more pacific members of the public, ironically enough, have become mere commonplace.

“I know exactly what you mean,” I replied sympathetically. “My head feels like it’s exploding.”

“It’s set to go off in sixty minutes,” the caller insisted.

“Mine went off the minute I woke up. Been seeing fireworks all morning.”

“There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
The notion trickled into my fogged consciousness that something was a tad amiss.

“Hang on a minute,” I said, “hang on, are you talking about a bomb?”

“That’s right,” he confessed, a tinge of irritation coloring the edges of his voice, “and it will go off in an hour unless my demands
are—”

“Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?” I demanded testily.

“Instead of going on about headaches and such. Really. A bomb?”

“Yes! And my demands are—”

“Look,” I interjected, “can you just call me back in an hour? I haven’t had my coffee yet and I’m really not equipped to deal with fringe lunatics until I’ve had my morning jolt of caffeine.”
“What!” he cried. “You’ll be dead in an hour. Blown to bits,” he added for emphasis. “You won’t be around to answer the phone.”

“Well, in that case, you’d best just leave a voicemail.” I hung up.

There is nothing calculated to peeve a deranged bomber more than being, er, blown off so flippantly, but in my defense, I truly am a member of the walking dead without at least three cups of the blackest brew in me.

One blustery morning last March I rang up Security to warn them of a gaunt stranger with wild hair and pale bloodshot eyes stalking about the premises. Security men in dark glasses materialized promptly with baying dogs and a litany of point-blank questions. Turned out it was just a pre-coffee reflection of myself I had chanced to glimpse in a window. The Security men were not pleased. They have failed to hold great stock by my word ever since.

No surprise, then, that after a steaming cup of the restorative I was jolted by a brilliant flash of inspiration. Here was my chance to oil my way back into Security’s good books. All I had to do was, aha, defuse the situation by virtue of my own wit and acumen and I would never again be taken for the boy who cried wolf. Security officially frowns upon the presence of alcohol on the premises but tends to look the other way for individuals in their good books. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been able to crack open a beer in my office, but it had certainly been before the aforementioned fiasco, hence the grave need for me to curry favor with them.

Quickly I rummaged in my wastepaper basket and retrieved a pamphlet with the confidence-inspiring title of “Bomb Threat Checklist.” It was handed out during Crisis Management and Security Awareness Week last month (as if we weren’t already acutely aware of their presence, what with them always tramping about the place in leather boots and conducting random cavity searches). On it were tips for handling bomb threats—a series of items to note about the caller’s voice characteristics (soft, loud, angry, excited, or disguised, check one; I wondered what I should put down if it seemed to be disguised as an angry voice), various questions to ask, etc.

The first tip on the list was to try to stall the caller for as long as possible in order to delay his scheme pending notification of the appropriate authorities.

As if on cue, my phone buzzed. Stall, I intoned to myself, drew a deep breath, and answered.

“Morning!” I boomed cheerily. “Nice day out, isn’t it?”

“Er, I suppose,” said the caller dubiously.

I glanced out of the window and straightaway I realized my error.

Rainclouds were gathering on the horizon, amassing for a bold frontal attack calculated to decimate the city’s morale. I hastened to correct myself.

“When I said nice, I meant terrible, actually,” I explained. “Slip of the tongue, really.”

“Okay,” said the caller.

“Right,” I agreed. “Yes. Er, so how’s the wife?”

“She’s fine, thank you for asking.”

“And the kids? How are they doing?”

“Fine, fine,” he said, “just fine. Quite all right. Er. I haven’t got any, as a matter of fact.”

“Ah. I see.” I was unfazed. “Well, good on you. Can’t stand little brats myself, you know. Always running around burying bones in the garden and piddling on the floor.”

“That’s dogs, I think.”

“Dogs, kids, they’re all the same,” I said airily. I felt I had stalled enough to satisfy the checklist and decided to get straight to the point without dilly-dallying. “Where is the bomb?” I inquired, as this was the first of the Questions to Ask on the checklist.
“The bomb?” said the caller. “Ah yes, the bomb. Of course. Er, what bomb?”
“The bomb, you oaf. The one you were just calling about. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?”

“First I’ve heard of it,” he said frankly. “I think you might have the wrong number.”

“You called me,” I reminded him.

“Did I? Oh yes, I did.” There was a rustle of paperwork. “Oh yes, I believe I was calling to offer you some auto and life insurance at amazing rates.”

“You wouldn’t happen to sell mental health insurance, would you?”

“Er, no.”

“Too bad. I could use some.” I slammed the phone down.

Damn insurance salesmen, always clogging the lines up with their inane chit-chat in the midst of an emergency. I was up to number nine while brooding on the number of ways there are to skin a telemarketer when the phone buzzed again.

“I don’t want any,” I snarled, and was about to slam the phone down again when a familiar voice spoke.

“It’s going to go off in forty minutes,” it said. It was the madman again—that is to say, the other madman; the insurance salesman was a madman too and this one was only slightly madder.

I rapidly scrambled through the checklist. The time for stalling was past. The caller’s voice characteristic was asinine, verging on loony, check.
Question one. “Can you tell me where the bomb is?” I coaxed in a voice as sweet as honey—sweeter, perhaps, as I had dumped a little too much sugar in my coffee.

“I demand that—”

“No, look, ‘What are your demands?’ is question number five. You can’t answer question five without answering questions one through four, it just isn’t fair.”

“Questions? What questions?” he said suspiciously.

“Just think of it as a hiring interview. If you answer all the questions
exactly the way the interviewer—that’s me—wants you to, I can hire you on as, er, Senior…Lunatic…Terrorist…Engineer. If not, of course, we will have to offer the position to some other suitable candidate, and believe me, there is no shortage of lunatics around here.”

“There’s nobody else. I am acting alone.”

“Fine, fine. So it’s a very narrow pool of applicants. But we will have to make do.” I racked my brains for a suitable interview question. Ah, yes.

“Now, education: do you have any?”

“I went to a private Catholic school.”

“I’ll take that as a no.” I scribbled this down. “I must say, this isn’t looking very good for you so far. Experience?”

“I blew up some fireworks yesterday for practice.”

“Good, good, now we’re making progress. Although we do prefer our candidates to have at least three years’ experience in the field. Still, we can make do; I’ll round it up to the nearest year and write down ‘One…year…of…on-the-job…training.’ Next: where is the bomb?”

“In the dumpster behind the—hey! That wasn’t fair!”

“All’s fair in love and war,” I pronounced solemnly.

“Which one is this?”

“Neither, but there’s no reason to be pedantic about it. Now, question two, how—”

He cut me off. “No, no more questions,” he said brusquely. “You have thirty minutes to accept my demands or the bomb destroys everything.”

This deadline instilled a new sense of urgency. I would have no chance of getting into Security’s good books if I got them killed. The fact that I would be dead too certainly wouldn’t help matters.

“All right, all right,” I appeased. “We can skip to question five but, I’ll have you know, I am doing this under protest. So, what are your demands?”

The caller cleared his throat. “Number one: all animal testing to be ceased immediately.”

“Er…” I began.

“Number two: All captive laboratory animals to be released immediately.”
“Hey, that was almost poetry,” I said. “Rhymed, did you realize? But I don’t think—”

“And finally: a written guarantee, sent to all the major newspapers, that no further animal testing will ever be conducted by you. All three must be accepted within thirty minutes.”

My industry is no stranger to ultimatums, especially since we are generally the ones issuing them. Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Surrender, or the Emperor gets it right in the Tokyo. Ultimatums as easy as this lunatic’s don’t come along very often. I had half a mind to ask him what the catch was, but there’s an old adage about gift horses that forced me to refrain.

“I—that is, we, accept all your demands.”

“What, all of them? Just like that?” he said incredulously.

“Yep.”

“You mean you’ll cease all animal testing?”

“Easier done than said. All animal testing will be ceased, all animals will be released, all maniacs will be pleased, mountain bears will dance in the Pyrenees,” I babbled, getting perhaps a little bit carried away.

“You will release all captive animals?”

“Are you listening? We’ve never had any in the first place; this is a nuclear weapons research facility after all. I am insulted, in fact, that you would even suggest it. Torturing innocent individual woodland creatures is morally heinous and utterly contemptible and goes against all the ideals we stand for. It’s obliterate entire cities or nothing, with us.”

There was a brief silence, during which I fancied I could hear the caller’s three brain cells sputtering in tandem in a desperate effort to keep apace of this unforeseen twist.

Finally, in a tinny voice he said, “Excuse me, but did you say nuclear research facility?”

“That’s right.”

“Not pharmaceutical research facility, then?”

“Ah, no, no, you’ve got the wrong number. You’re looking for the Phfoozer Pharmaceuticals Lab, just down the road. I can give you the number if you’d like.”

“Er, no, thanks, I can look it up myself,” he said, against all evidence to the contrary.

“As you wish,” I harrumphed with bad grace; it had just occurred to me that my plan to inveigle myself into Security’s good books had just been taken to the cleaners.

Something else occurred to me. “Incidentally, did you say the bomb would destroy everything?”

“Everything,” he said proudly.

“All the employees at the lab?”

“They will all be killed.”

“All the buildings?”

“They will all be obliterated.”

“All your precious animals? The ones you want freed?”

“They will all be—” He stopped.

There was a heavy pause, while the three brain cells struggled to cope with yet another plot twist. I wondered idly how long the man would last against a Hitchcock thriller before his head exploded. I reckoned about twenty minutes.

I glanced at my watch. “You have twenty minutes,” I said solemnly. “Now, if you would just care to answer questions two through—”

He hung up. So much for my grand Security plan. I waited a few seconds and then dialed the Phfoozer lab (the ‘P’ is silent) to warn them of a lunatic on the premises.

He was nabbed in a dumpster frantically trying to disarm his bomb.
As it turned out, it wouldn’t have gone off anyway. It was already clear that when it came to dialing the right phone number, he was no Einstein, and in the handling of high explosives he was just about as dud. My role in the case came to light somehow despite my attempts at modesty, i.e. my assurances to everyone that I had absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever and that the man who had called Phfoozer and left my full name and my mailing address with a note to put me “on record for Security” must have been mistaken about his own identity, and I was hailed as a local hero.

Security never believed a word of it.

“We will talk to the doctor now,” she said. “About Grandmama.”

Being five, I didn’t like being shushed. We had been waiting longer than expected. I was tired and hungry. I wanted to go home. I didn’t even like Grandmama, who was as old as fuzzy cheese. Nevertheless, I took my seat.
From my mother’s face, I knew I had better be quiet. Science had to be respected. Science was going to save the world. Mother was a believer in science, and who was more scientific than a doctor?

When my mother rose to greet the doctor, she did so warmly. My father remained seated, hands folded in front of him. He was a frugal man, and he rarely talked. It was like he thought he’d be charged by the word. Mother said, “How is she, doctor?”

“Please sit down,” he said. “Sit down, everyone.” My mother was the only one standing, but she obeyed his command. He was a doctor. He knew what he was doing. Mother waited for him to start.

“I’m afraid there were complications,” he said.

“Complications?”

“Yes,” he said. “As you know the patient—“

“Grandmama.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, clearly resenting being interrupted. “Your mother, my patient. Please let me continue.”

Mother blushed. “I’m dreadfully sorry.”

“As you know—Grandmama—was brought into the hospital for ingesting a Musca domestica.”

Mother said, “I do not understand.”

Again the doctor became annoyed. He looked at me. “What did your grandmother do?”

I shrugged. “She swallowed a fly.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Even the boy understands. She ingested a Musca domestica. She was almost hysterical. We knew immediate action must be taken. Such cases are extremely dangerous, if left untreated, and we felt to delay any procedure would be life threatening. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Mother said. “What was done?”

“We administered an arachnid.”

“You what?”

“She was given an arachnid to ingest.”

“She–?” Mother was confused. We were a family of janitors. All of this medical jargon was over our heads. He might as well have been talking in Latin.

The doctor sighed his resignation. “A spider. She was given a spider to swallow.”

“A spider?” Mother said. “Is that—is that normal?”

“It’s standard procedure in cases like this.”

“A spider?”

“Yes, yes. A spider! She was given a spider to catch the fly.”

“What kind of spider?”

“It doesn’t matter what kind!” The doctor took out a handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. “You must excuse me. It has been a long day. The point is there were further complications.”

“You mean, the fly is still there?”

“No, absolutely not. The arachnid made quick work of the Musca domestica, but it was disinterested in extraction. We made a choice to move to the next level of treatment. Mind you, we had no time to consult. Things were moving quickly.”

“What are you saying?” Mother asked.

“She was administered a member of the class Aves.”

“I know that one!” Father interjected. “It’s a bird, right? Like an aviary.”

“You are correct, sir. A bird. Erithacus ubecola, to be exact, or as you commoners call it: a robin. ”

My mother was beginning to get a sense of things. She leaned forward toward the doctor. “Mother swallowed a bird?”

“It was perfectly painless.”

“My mother swallowed the bird to catch the spider?”

The doctor sighed and put away his handkerchief. “Yes, that was the prescribed treatment. Look it up in any medical text. But I might as well tell you now that the Erithacus ubecola, despite making a quick lunch of the arachnid, could not be coaxed out of the patient—ahem, Grandmama—and so we had to move to other treatments.”

“And what were they?” Mother was almost yelling.

“First the feline, then the canine.”

“A cat and a dog?!”

“Madam, calm down. In surgery, any emergency may arise and you must make split-second decisions that could determine whether a patient lives or dies. Your getting unreasonably upset will not change the fact your mother swallowed a goat today!”

“A goat!”

“Yes. A goat. To catch the dog.”

Mother yelled, “Since when do goats eat dogs?! Or even chase them?!”

“It’s in the medical texts, Madam! Are you a doctor? Are you someone who has studied medicine for years? I admit these things may seem counterintuitive. For instance, why should a cow be sent to chase the goat? We do not know, except that cows are bigger and it has always been this way. Madam, you cannot fight City Hall, even in medicine!”

“I think I’m going to faint,” Mother said. She looked at Father. “Will you do something?”

My father just shrugged. “What can I do? Your mother swallowed a cow. If the Doctors prescribe this, who are we to argue?”

This seemed to mollify the doctor. “A sensible man,” he said.

“What I want to know,” my father said, “is how much does a full cow cost these days?”

“We will send your insurance a bill,” the doctor said. “I will say this. Such a remarkable woman, this Grandmama, such will to live.” He shook his head in amazement. “She is the first ever to survive the bovine treatment.”

My mother sighed. I think we all did. I could see everybody’s shoulders grow slack. Grandmama was a mean old lady, but nobody deserves to die gagging on a cow.

“So mother will live,” Mother said. “Thank heavens. She will poop leather for a month, but we get to take her home.”

“Well,” the doctor said. “Not exactly.”

“Don’t tell me you sent in the elephant!”

“Madam?! Do you think we’re monsters?! Honestly, as if this job were not difficult enough!”

“I do apologize,” Mother said. “This has been a hard day on us all. Please go on. When will we get to take her home?”

The doctor let his silent contempt for us fill the room for a time.

“Equus caballus,” he said finally. He knew what we were waiting for. “A horse.” The room grew very quiet.

“Not even that big of a horse, mind you. More like a large pony.”

“But she’s dead?”

“Of course. You can’t swallow a horse, Madam, and not be dead. At that point, you’re just trying to ease the suffering. And you can take comfort in the fact that the end came quickly. She never even got the head in.”

My mother shook in her seat. “We will sue,” she said. “We will sue and sue. And then we will call up another lawyer and sue some more.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” the doctor said. “But I was thinking in there, somewhere between the goat and the cow, what would be the real question the lawyers might ask.”

“Real question?”

“Yes. This question: Why, oh why, did she swallow that fly?”

Mother said, “What are you implying?”

“Nothing, Madam. Just that people do not often on their own swallow flies. Most times, perhaps, they are fed the flies.”

“You bastard!” Mother stood. “You accuse me of, of—feeding my own mother a fly?! And you, a man of science!”

He did not respond. He knew the authorities would side with him, and besides, all this talking to people below his station was annoying to him. Mother grew quiet. At last, her face pale and ten years older, she grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. Father lagged behind. Helplessly, I looked at my toy tank, which was still resting on the chair where I’d been sitting. I wanted to go back, but Mother didn’t stop pulling.

A year later, when I walked through the woods and swallowed a whole mouthful of gnats, Mother drove right past the hospital to the Church of Our Lord, where I made a full confession of my sins.

” – so then,” said Elisabet, “she goes, ‘What we’re doing here is reorganizing the reference desk. And there’s no ‘I’ in ‘reference desk.” And then Kendal goes -”

At that moment a knight in full-plate armor appeared six inches above the floor and fell with a clatter. The noise turned women’s heads all over the quiet café. He raised his hands to Elisabet.

“My lady!”

Carla shrieked. Bakarne dropped her coffee.

“What?” said Elisabet. Bakarne half-watched, snatching up a bundle of napkins from the next table to clean up the spilled macchiato. The other two just gaped. The knight pushed himself up noisily until he was on one knee.

“My lady Elisabet, embodiment of beauty. So long have I sought thee!”

“Where the hell did you come from?”

The knight raised his visor and smiled. He had a rugged face, square and masculine, and clear blue eyes obsessively fixed on Elisabet. Bakarne supposed it was a reasonably good face if one liked that sort of thing. “Does it matter?”

Elisabet’s cheeks turned the color of radishes. She cleared her throat. “Well… No. I guess not.” Bakarne was not certain why it didn’t matter, but she kept quiet. A switch seemed to have flipped in her friend’s mind, and she had a feeling arguing would be pointless.

“I have sought you,” the knight explained, “for years. Ever since I first heard your name.”

“Oh,” said Elisabet. “Well, maybe we could talk about that. Over coffee.”

“You already have coffee,” said Bakarne, mopping up the table.

Elisabet gestured vaguely at her untouched ristretto. “Over different coffee.”

“Of course, my lady.”

Elisabet pushed her chair back. “Sorry, girls. Nice talking to you, but you know it’s been a long time.”

She made a muffled tea-whistle sound as they left hand in hand. It sounded a lot like “squeee”. Bakarne dropped her napkins in the wastebasket. She and Carla looked up at the space where the knight had appeared, then down at the floor where he’d landed, then over at each other.

“What the hell?” said Bakarne.

“That there?” said Carla. “That was impossible. She should have told him it was impossible.”

“Impossible and creepy,” said Bakarne. “They’ve never even seen each other before.”

“Yeah. Definitely creepy.” Carla looked out at the door. “I want one.”

#

Men were scarce on Bakarne’s planet. The Great Plague five years earlier had been mildly unpleasant for women, but in males, it was swift, painful, and deadly. After finding a cure a little too late, the richest and most powerful women had whisked away the few remaining men into private apartments to be kept like precious artifacts. The sleeper ship from Earth, carrying safely immunized replacements, wasn’t due for another ten years. So a sky-fallen man in shining armor made the news.

“I think it’s interesting, that’s all,” said flame-haired Courtney at work. They were fussing over a pile of unshelved books: electronic tablets with wired-in content, cards with passcodes for protected content online, mixed together haphazardly with old-style printed volumes from Earth.

“Mm-hmm,” said Bakarne. “Interesting that they broke the laws of physics, I guess.”

“No!” said Courtney. “It’s just interesting. The whole thing.” Bakarne shrugged.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” said Courtney. Her voice became muffled periodically as she leaned in to shelve the printed books and slot the electronic ones into their cubbyholes. “I think it’s great how well we’ve gotten along without men. Everything’s been just exactly the same as always. We really don’t need them at all.”

“Mm-hmm,” said Bakarne, which was usually the safest response to that speech. Bakarne still grieved at times for the father and brothers and friends she’d known. But she still went out for coffee, read books, and did her job, same as always. In the early days after the plague she’d made the mistake of saying so. Some of her friends looked at her with an odd anger, and then sort of slumped down, mumbling about arms to hold them while they slept. Other people agreed much too enthusiastically. Like they knew deep down they didn’t mean it.

“And it’s so wonderful not to have to worry about that sort of thing,” said Courtney, too enthusiastically. “Really that sleeper ship can take all the time it wants.” Bakarne shelved the last book and scrolled through the computer display at the wall, updating their list of stocks. She scowled.

“Against the Sophists is missing. That’s the fourth one this year.”

“Mm-hmm. Are you going to the Felicitas after work?”

“I guess so,” said Bakarne. She hadn’t really thought about it.

“Good,” said Courtney. “I’m going.”

#

Too many women stood craning their necks in the Felicitas. Bakarne couldn’t even stand comfortably, let alone find a seat. She could not understand why so many people were so enthralled. She watched as Elisabet elbowed her way over through the press of bodies, garnering cries of “Ouch!” and “Hey!” and dirty looks all around.

“Oh, Bakarne!” said Elisabet, smiling and ignoring the looks. “I’m so glad you’re here!” Bakarne raised her eyebrows.

“Where’s your knight?”

Elisabet shrugged. “He disappeared in the morning. But look! The news is all over!”

Carla elbowed her way in. “It wasn’t just you. Haf Yates came in three hours later and she got one too. Hers was a cowboy.”

“Ooh,” said Courtney. “It’s so interesting!”

Carla nudged Bakarne’s arm. “Who would you want, Bakarne? An old philosopher in a toga, right?”

“No,” said Bakarne.

“A young, cute philosopher in a toga?” said Elisabet. Bakarne tried to find words for the vast lack of difference this made. While she was still thinking, a delicate silk-haired young man fell on top of Courtney with a crash.

“Oh!” he said, disentangling himself. “I-I’m so sorry!” He looked at her and blushed.

“Oh my God,” said Courtney.

The two of them elbowed their way out of the café in a hurry.

“Does anyone else think this is creepy?” said Bakarne. She’d already said it to Carla yesterday, but she suspected Carla had forgotten.

Elisabet patted Bakarne on the head. Bakarne squirmed away as best she could in the limited space. “Don’t worry. You’ll get one soon.”

“Eurgh, I hope not.”

She wasn’t sure, exactly, what bothered her so much. Well, the men who fell from the sky might carry diseases. Or someone might get attached and feel awful when their partner disappeared. But she wasn’t really worried about that—just repelled. It was like everyone else had suddenly lost their minds.

A burly fireman fell to the floor next to Carla, pushing past Bakarne like she wasn’t there. “Communists have set fire to the building,” he said. “But I’m here to rescue you!” Carla squealed. Bakarne left the café alone.

#

It went on for weeks. Men were popping out of the sky all over now. Bakarne took to spending overtime in the library, cataloging reprints of ancient Greek dramas. When the cataloging was done, she picked one book at a time and sat quietly by the window with them. She started imagining what would have happened if men fell from the sky in, say, Antigone. Nothing good, she thought.

When she missed having sane friends, she struck up a conversation with Kendal, the library’s short-haired archivist. At least there was one demographic immune to this madness.

Bakarne had suspected, back when the Plague started, that lesbians would suddenly be everywhere. Women who liked sex had to get it somewhere, after all. But it hadn’t happened that way. There were bisexuals who’d switched to an all-female diet, and a few straight women who awkwardly snuggled into half-romance-half-friendships. But for the most part, if two women came out in public holding hands, they’d be greeted with glares. No straight woman wanted the reminder of what she couldn’t have.

Kendal’s friends hung out at the Aarde, a comfortable pub with rattan chairs and beaded curtains where it was okay to like what Kendal liked. Kendal settled in on the sofa with her girlfriend, who had light-emitting diodes in her hair, changing color with her mood.

“This is Bakarne from the library,” she said.

“Hi,” said Bakarne.

“Hi,” said the girls.

They quizzed her about books, music, the reason she’d come to the Aarde. They groaned in chorus when she talked about the crowds of mad straight women.

“All these years telling us not to throw our sexuality in their faces,” said Kendal’s girlfriend, “and now look at ‘em.” She pecked Kendal on the cheek like it was a challenge.

“It’s the planet’s fault,” said Kendal, after returning the peck. “Seriously? Just men, no women? No dashing elven princesses for me?”

Her girlfriend pretended to smack her.

Kendal tugged playfully on the diodes. “Well, I suppose you’ll do.”

Bakarne felt vaguely irked at them curling together, but that feeling faded. At least these people didn’t act like there was nothing else interesting in the universe. She got talking to a girl in heavy eyeliner who liked Aeolic verse in translation.

“But in the original Greek,” said Bakarne, “it’s much easier to see what difference the anceps syllables make.”

It went well until late in the evening, when Kendal, slightly tipsy, smiled over at her. “So when did you realize you liked girls?” Bakarne blinked.

“I don’t, really,” she said. “I just came here to get away from the Felicitas thing, like I said.” She pursed her lips, suddenly realizing this might be a faux pas. “I hope that’s okay. I didn’t mean to intrude on your safe space.”

Kendal shrugged. “It’s fine. But I thought you were. I mean, you never showed an interest even before the Plagues. I figured when the rain started, you finally figured it out. So you’re straight?” Bakarne shook her head.

“So you’re not straight.”

“No.”

“And you’re not into girls.”

“No.”

“What are you into? Lemurs?” Bakarne drew back.

“I just wanted a good conversation.”

The eyeliner girl smiled appeasingly. “Are you sure you’re not into girls? I mean, it can kinda sneak up on you. It took me a while to realize.” She was several years younger than Bakarne, which Bakarne refrained from pointing out.

“You seem like the right type to me. Maybe you’ll like it when you try it.” Bakarne took a good long look at the assembled women. She tried as hard as she could to summon up the littlest spark of sexual interest. But it just wasn’t happening. Conversation wound down after that. People who’d been eager to talk a minute ago were now less so. When Bakarne stepped out of the pub and turned down the rain-swept road home, she was in a foul mood. She wanted to pluck the attraction out of each woman’s head and wring its neck.

A swaggering, leather-jacketed boy dropped down in front of her.

“Hi,” he said.

“Go to hell,” said Bakarne.

He obligingly disappeared in a puff of flame.

#

Life did not grind to a halt. The women who looked so insane at the Felicitas still reported to work every morning, designing electronics or running the government. They even still read books. Bakarne had never thought she was that weird. There had to be someone like her somewhere in this town. The trick, she decided, was to find a group talking about men and pick the one who didn’t squeal.

She found her mark, or thought she did, in a diminutive college girl who showed up at the library on a group project. Bakarne helped them find the Restoration poetry, then quietly listened while pretending to catalog. The girl had a lot to say for the first ten minutes, while the conversation stayed on topic. But when it strayed into a discussion about which poets it would be fun to meet at the Felicitas, she looked away.

Bakarne caught up with her after her shift. Unlike her companions, the girl had stayed at the library. She sat curled on a comfy chair, just reading.

“Can I help with anything?” said Bakarne.

The girl sighed. “Probably not. Can you flog people who don’t stay on topic?”

Bakarne grinned. “No. But I feel your pain. What’s your name?”

“Akua.”

“I’m Bakarne.”

Akua held up her book. “I like this one. We’re supposed to analyze his use of nostalgia and compare him to Alexander Pope.” She wrinkled her nose. “I still don’t know how people got from that to sex. It’s like they don’t even care.”

Bakarne led her to the little park in front of the library. They talked about books for a long time. Akua’s mind zeroed in laser-like on the topic at hand. Serious and intent, she dissected literary device after literary device. Bakarne cross-referenced and made recommendations. She could like this girl, she thought. They could be friends.

Just when Bakarne’s stomach started growling for dinner, a slender man in an impeccable suit fell to the ground. He put a finger under Akua’s chin—ignoring Bakarne— and gazed intently into the younger girl’s eyes.

“I think you’re coming with me,” he said.

Akua’s eyes went very wide.

“You don’t have to,” said Bakarne, feeling protective all of a sudden.

“I know,” said Akua. “Um. I’ll be right back.”

Bakarne expected her not to come back. Still, she waited half an hour, just to be polite, reading Akua’s discarded book and ignoring her empty stomach. Then she sighed, went back inside to return the book, and began to trudge home.

A crowd had spilled out around the Felicitas, as usual. Bakarne rolled her eyes and thought growling, grumbling thoughts.

Then something fell into her hands. A book.Bakarne looked down at it.

Elegies, said the book, in Greek, by Tyrtaeus. She opened the front cover, disbelieving. For centuries these poems had been known to classicists only in fragments. But here they were in their entirety.

Bakarne put a hand over her sudden grin, muffling a tea-whistle sound. It would have been an awful lot like “squeee.”

She turned and rushed back to the library. She knew she only had until morning.

#

“A book?” said Carla in disbelief, the next day.

“A book,” said Bakarne, beaming.

“Better you than me,” said Elisabet. And Bakarne had to agree.

She stopped getting angry after that. Eventually the novelty wore off. Women still went out hoping for a man, and still squeaked with delight when they got one, but after a month or two they could talk about other things.

Every few weeks, when Bakarne least expected it, another ancient manuscript fell from the sky. She suspected that the ancients hadn’t really written these words. That they’d been built from her fantasies, just like the knights and firefighters at the Felicitas.

Still, there were worse things to do than have her fantasies fulfilled. So she drank the words up shamelessly. And she wondered every now and again if Earth’s men knew what they’d be up against, ten years from now, when the slow, slow sleeper ship arrived.

Some might call it the onset of a mid-life crisis. Others might write it off as the last remnants of a half-remembered nightmare, a panic carried over from a dream into the cool AC dawn of reality. I honestly don’t know what to call it.

In fact, I can’t say that I know much of anything anymore, or at least I don’t know anything for certain. The one thing I do know is that when I woke up that Monday morning, next to the sleeping form of Laura, my once-ravishing and still-beautiful wife, I felt extremely cold. I wondered if someone had turned up the air conditioning during the night – perhaps one of the boys – but I soon realized it wasn’t that. The chill wasn’t external, but internal; it was coming from somewhere in my lower chest or upper stomach – perhaps the pancreas. As I turned to look at Laura’s sleeping figure, the chill turned into a bone-biting cold. Just who the hell was this woman anyway?

I tried to calm my breathing. I knew who she was. Of course I did. She was Laura, my wife of sixteen years, thirty-eight years old, a real estate agent, president of her book club, a die-hard fan of Anita Shreve and Jodi Picoult, a slight germaphobe and a decent cook. But why her, why me, how exactly had we ended up chained together by twenty-four carat bands of Holy Matrimony?

She stirred, blinked, looked into my panic-stricken face.

“Good morning, honey,” she smiled and blinked again, showing off the first signs of crow’s feet in the corner of her eyes.

I stared back, my mouth a cavern several inches in diameter.

My God. I was trapped. I was trapped in bed with a woman I didn’t know. Well, I did know. Sort of. I knew her. I even knew why I had married her – she was pretty, I was handsome, or at least I had a strong chin; she wanted three kids, I wanted two kids, she said that was alright; she liked Devo and I said they were alright. Those seemed like logical-enough reasons to marry a person. So then what was bothering me? Why did I feel so cold?

Then it hit me. I never liked Devo at all. In fact I hated Devo – I found “Whip It” particularly irritating – and I had only told her I liked the band so that she would sleep with me that one time at Marty Humple’s Fourth of July party.

Without responding to her saccharine morning greeting, I threw the sheets off my numb legs and leapt out of bed. That wasn’t a figure of speech – my legs were, inexplicably, actually numb, and I crumpled to the floor like a chronically imbalanced action figure. I was up in a minute, though, and with sensation returned to my legs, I hurried downstairs to make myself some coffee and caffeinate myself out of this waking nightmare.

I found my children, Oliver and Bentley, already in the kitchen pouring Aunt Jemima’s over Eggo waffles – or was it pouring their Eggo waffles over Aunt Jemima’s? – and I stopped short. Something seemed odd, off, out-of-place. They were my children, of course, my sturdy boys, my pride and joy, the fruit of my loins – look, Oliver has my nose and Bentley, though he more closely resembles his mother, will probably inherit my paunch and my bad knees. They were mine, yes, but something about them seemed off…

Of course! Their names! Oliver and Bentley, Bentley and Oliver, just what the hell had I been thinking? I’m a conservative man, at least socially; I live in the suburbs and I drink Bud Light – Bud Light Lime only when I’m feeling adventurous. So why hadn’t I named my sons Jack, Jimmy, Mark, John, Steven, Patrick, or Humphrey? Although I had never realized it before, Oliver reminded me of that damn cartoon kitten, and Bentley sounded like a name you’d hear on “16 and Pregnant.” Why had I chosen these ridiculous names? More importantly, why did I know anything about “16 and Pregnant?”

“Morning, Dad!” the boys greeted me in unison. I let out a pitiful squeak and lurched out of the kitchen. Not knowing where I was headed, I stumbled into the living room. The panic gripped me like a straight-jacket; though I had never experimented with drugs any harder than weed and the roofie my college friends once slipped me as a joke – oh, and that one time that I took one-too many Codeine after my knee surgery – I supposed that this was how Hunter S. Thompson felt as he stumbled around Las Vegas in a psychedelic daze: I couldn’t walk straight, my vision was blurred, and all the colors of the room swam and blended together like an impressionist painting left out in the rain – not that this last effect was really all that dramatic: my wife had taken care of the decorating, and the carpet was tope, the walls were white, and the Venetian blinds were either eggshell or accrue – I can never tell the difference.

Somehow I made it to the front door, which I swung open with a clumsy heave; I stood there, clad in Ralph Lauren pajamas, and starred dismally at the sight before me. There, parked in my driveway, sitting there smug and unashamed, was a minivan – and not even one of those sleek ones that tried to pretend like it’s a semi-respectable SUV – a fucking minivan. I put a hand over my mouth, wondering if I had just said “fucking” aloud in front of the boys.

Of course I remembered buying it. I remembered the smarmy dealer, remembered picking out the color, remembered nodding sagely and agreeing with everything he said – “Hmm, yes, highly functional” and “Oh look, honey, a built-in Blu-ray player!” But why? WHAT had I been thinking?

It seemed to be mocking me with its unappealing high-capacity bulk. I looked back, and it had turned into a unicorn.
Actually that part isn’t true. It was still a minivan.

Reeling from the smart of my own poor taste, I turned and stumbled back towards the kitchen, towards anything, towards some familiar household item that I could unreservedly call my own. My wife appeared in the door to the kitchen, smiling with just a hint of concern.

“Honey, is everything alright?”

I stopped short. No, everything was most certainly not alright.

“I never liked Devo!” I screamed, and ran up the stairs, away from the subdued tones of the living room and from the subdued – one might even say “dulled” – attractiveness of my wife’s pale face, away from my two syrupy sons and their absurd names, and most of all, away from that goddamn minivan squatting in my driveway.

Upstairs, in the hall, I was breathing fast and my head felt very heavy and light at the same time, as if I needed first to lie down and then float out of my body, up and up into sunny suburban skies.

The very air seemed to be made of impossible questions, which threatened to suffocate me like Carbon Monoxide. Why had I married Laura? Why had I chosen such embarrassing names for my children? Why oh why oh why had I bought a minivan? Were the blinds eggshell or accrue? What made them Venetian? And what was so great about Devo anyway?

The coldness was becoming unbearable now. I shivered involuntarily. My life seemed to be coming apart at the seams. I suddenly wished that my minivan actually had been a unicorn – less practical, yes, but at least it wouldn’t be a sign of my defeat as a man and as a human being. And grass had to be cheaper than gas, I was sure of it.

The cold was getting worse. These sporty Ralph Lauren linens just weren’t enough. I needed a coat, a hat and gloves. Or at least a Ralph Lauren robe. I lurched forward, still dizzy, trying to make it to the bedroom. If only I could get back in the bed, hide under the sheets like I was six years old and afraid of the dark all over again, fall back asleep, and when I woke up, maybe the world would make sense again, maybe the house would be a comfortable sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe the Panic would pass like a mental kidney stone, in a mighty exertion of equal parts pain and relief.

Maybe.

I tripped just outside the door and clutched the wall for support; my head came to rest next to the thermostat on the wall. Shivering, exhausted, my eyes fell on its LED screen. The temperature read forty-nine degrees. My eyes widened. That was much too cold. The mid sixties was my preferred range; high fifties would even be acceptable on an August afternoon. But forty-nine was virtually Arctic. One of the boys must have snuck into the hall and lowered the temperature in the heat of the summer night. I raised a weak hand to the touch screen, tapped the up arrow several times, and then sank down to the floor.

Slowly, the house warmed, and my panic subsided. It had been the thermostat after all.Things started to make sense again. My wife was still quite attractive, and would probably remain so until it didn’t matter anymore, anyways. I married her because I loved her, or because I thought I was getting old and all my friends had already married – I can’t quite remember. Oliver and Bentley were alright names; they made the boys stand out, and added to my arsenal of small-talk subjects for backyard barbeques. I didn’t mind the colors in the living room; I should have known better than to worry about window treatments, after all. And I had to admit, Devo had some catchy songs.

Yes, it looked like everything was going to be alright. But I decided then and there that I had to trade in the minivan – there would be no compromising on that issue. I still, to this day, can’t quite remember why I bought it.