Given the times we are in, I am strangely reminded of this story. Early in
my stand-up career, I became a regular act at Catch a Rising Star. June
1981. Catch a Rising Star was a showcase club featuring comics and
singers, on First Avenue between 77th and 78th. It was the East Coast
center of the stand-up universe, as the Comedy Store was in LA. I was just
beginning to kind of make a living at this. At Catch, they paid you $6 if
you got on stage, which was called "€œcabfare,"€ but to most of us, it
was a livelihood. Everybody got $6. Me, Rodney Dangerfield, Robin
Williams, Jerry Seinfeld. It was strangely egalitarian. Back in 1981, $6
could get you a decent meal at the Green Kitchen, the diner on the next
block. One night, around 3 am, a bunch of comics were seated around a
table. Me, Adrianne Tolsch (who was the house MC at Catch), Larry Amoros,
Jimmy Vallely, Eric Zoyd (my roommate) and Michael Hampton Cain. This is
months before Adrianne and I started dating, two years before she moved
in, nine years before we got married, 25 years before she went to
Heaven....

I went to the john in the middle of the meal, and stole a roll of toilet
paper, which I had run out of the day before. I jammed the roll into the
pocket of my sportcoat. I came back to the table. We kept yakking.
Suddenly, Adrianne lifted up the bottom of my jacket, where the toilet
paper was bulging out of the pocket, so the rest of the table could see
it. She yelled, "What kind of man reads Playboy?" We got the check. No
one could follow that.    


Bill Scheft is a writer living in New York.

Listen, this is a true story. More or less.

This was on the evening news: slightly more than an hour ago a mousy thirty-five year-old woman walked into a convenience store and met her demise at the business end of a Winchester pump. It nearly cut her in two. She, of course, is not the only one to die at the hands of some idiot with a gun, lots of others die in shootings everyday. But this story is about her.

People die in this country via gun violence in staggering numbers every day, nothing seems to stem the body count. The Coroner comes to the scene, makes a quick examination of the victim in the shooting and  verifies that, yes, the victim is indeed dead. The body is then loaded into what in some circles is called the meat wagon, to be taken to the Coroner’s office so to verify what is so painfully obvious, in this case: death by shotgun blast.

The Coroner’s examination of the body in a shooting is perfunctory at best - really, it’s obvious what the cause of death is and the body isn’t a birthday gift package with a surprise inside: a cherished keepsake or the keys to a Porsche convertible waiting to be unwrapped, or even a sweet puppy. I mean, whenever they operate on a gun violence victim they always find the same things - a piece of soft lead, maybe a ton of lead pellets or other pieces of shrapnel. Very few surprises, in other words.

BUT

At this particular Coroner’s inquiry something interesting was discovered. The woman besides being filled with enough buckshot to be considered her own lead-filled toxic waste site, was jammed filled with tumors of every size and description. Small ones, large ones, and every one cancerous.  There were tumors in her stomach, in her breast, in her liver, in her intestines, and even in her brain. When the pathologist cut open her skull, she gasped. “Oh, my God!” because what she found was simply frightening. She found a honeycomb of tumors that had inched their way into her brain like a swarm of bees escaping a nest after being struck by a baseball bat.

And this is when the scientific observation comes in: if this woman had not been cut down by the punk in a convenience store robbery, she would’ve collapsed in a few days and surely be dead within a month, tops. The coroner read the police report about the robbery and found out the woman had for an inexplicable reason thrown a can of soda at the creep with the shotgun. According to the store clerk the robber hadn’t seen her until the soda can whizzed by his head and he reactively turned and leveled her, jacking in another round as he returned to the clerk.

Miraculously, according to the clerk, after the robber ran out the door only to be cut down by police, he could see the woman as she lay smiling on the cold concrete floor waiting for death to take her. She didn’t say anything, she just smiled an enigmatic smile at him until all life faded from her.    

The coroner started to speculate about the woman. Was she totally out of character when she tossed that soda at the robber just doing an incredibly stupid thing? Or was such a brave act - she did after all save the clerk’s life according to police - totally within her personality waiting to come out at an opportune moment? Did she know about the numerous tumors in her? Did she have blinding headaches and intense dizziness that would soon go away?  In any case, when the woman’s husband came to identify her at the morgue, the pathologist had a difficult dilemma on her hands, should she reveal the discovery of the tumors or should she stay silent and only offer stock condolences as she often did in these situations?

The husband asked the usual questions, “Did she suffer?” “What do I tell the kids?” “She wasn’t a brave woman, what was she thinking  going up against against a man with a shotgun?” and as he started to cry. “I don’t understand, ” he said, barely audible as he lay his face into his hands. “Why?”

                                                                          - - -
A few weeks later the coroner did something she’d never done before, she went to the funeral of the woman. She thought she might offer the husband and his children the answers to the why…

Among the family and friends of the husband and wife the funeral also became a place for the mayor and chief of police to what these situations demand: to make a public statement about their joint plan to curb violent crime and to step up enhance efforts to stem the tide of gun violence. The husband couldn’t care less about their empty promises. He stood with his children as person after person offered a hand, or a hug, or when they gently kissed him their condolences pouring down on him like rain.

The pathologist watched all of this unfold before her eyes. She debated telling him the truth about his wife’s death, the real reason why she did what she did. She stood up and walked toward the family and at the last moment, she turned, mumbling, “No. Let the mystery be.” And she left the funeral without a word.
                                                                           - - -
Some people commit suicide after someone close to them passes, others turn to religion, and there are some who sit in their offices making adjustments to the notes they’d previously written about an autopsy they’ve performed so some future examiner of the record will know the truth about a death.

Far from that office a man wonders why a death happened - a mystery unanswered. Others he does not know, in this world, past and present, wonder the same about the mysteries in their own lives.

                                                                   
Jake James is a writer who is a looooooong way from the Hot Valleys of California.
*The title of this story comes from the great Iris DeMent song, "Let the Mystery Be"

I would sing you a love song
I could sleep inside your dreams at night I could lay here forever just to watch you sleep
My days and nights I think of you.
 
We could drive from coast to coast
In a brand new automobile
See the things that remind us that our love is so very real.
 
Ten thousand miles and a million stars
And the moon to show us the way
We could drive forever as long we’re together
And I would sing you a love song for you.



So you say you have touched the sun
Now it's setting in your eyes
your love has grown into a fire that's burning in your heart
And now you hold the key to forever more.

Yesterday you said you love me
You said you’ve never loved before
Did you know for the last thirty years
Ive loved nobody but you.

Yesterday you said you love me
I hope you know that I love you too.


One hundred years and maybe more
Since the words of Katy came through this door.

Words of patience, words that bring the wind
Words that take me back to times so long ago
When Katy’s love was the breath of a hundred men
Men that dreamed of Katy’s touch
Men that dreamed so long ago.

If I were a traveler of time and years in between
I’d travel that foggy road to Katy’s door
Just to hear the words of Katy as she moves across the floor.

Words that captured the hearts and dreams of lives so long ago
Stay alive in the fog at Katy’s front door.

She told them stories of love so long ago
She kept their dreams alive
Alive in the fog at Katy’s front door.



Jeff Nesvig is a writer living in Florida.

Since I have recently been playing Ken Burns’s seminal PBS documentary from 1994 Baseball in the background and as we are now only a couple of weeks from pitchers and catchers reporting, I figured it was a good time to create something on baseball and history and traveling back to the moments below. A modern-day Zelig.

• Beholding the play of, arguably, the two greatest players of all-time, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle (minus the knee pain and its subsequent deterioration from hard-core carousing) who just happened to begin their careers at the same time, in the same city, for … only six years until the Giants and Dodgers moved west. But there would be so many moments of theirs to enjoy and appreciate in Brooklyn and the Bronx during those years from 1952-57.

• Attending the Yankee Stadium opening day in April 1923, both inside for the game and wandering outside before and after the game, drunk on the excitement and watered-down gin.

• Re-experiencing the awe and wonder of youth at the first site of the rounded white top of the Metrodome, the hurricane-force winds sucking bodies through the revolving doors, and that first narrow, step view of the plastic blue chairs sinking towards the plastic green grass. RIP The Hubert H. Humphrey Minneapolis Metro Dome, for you were the last of the wonderful dual-use stadiums that dotted the sporting landscape of North America from the 1960s into the new millennium.

• Walking into Wrigley Field in 2001, which felt similarly to what I would imagine a genuine spiritual moment to be.

• Listening to a conversation in the dugout between Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra.

• Experiencing the 1932 World Series, with games and fun at Yankee Stadium in NYC and at Wrigley Field in Chicago. And there are bonus points for these trips back in time because I would love to take in the best of the architecture and culture of the day, along with the unfortunate worst of the day with the “Hooverville’s” built on the grounds of Central Park and the criminal remnants of the misguided Volstead Act.

• Watching live and in person the 1933 All-Star Game at Comiskey Park, followed later that summer by the Negro League All-Star Game, also at Comiskey. Both were the first of their type.

• Any game, at their best, where Satchel Paige pitched. And Walter Johnson. Bob Feller, Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, and Pedro Martinez. Nolan Ryan, Greg Maddux, and Sandy Koufax.

• Any game, at their best, that Ty Cobb played in. And Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Brooks Robinson, Mantle, Mays, Rickey Henderson, and Ken Griffey, Jr.

• Mark Fidrich on Monday, June 28, 1976 against the New York Yankees. “The Bird” was a sensation that season, and this game was on Monday Night Baseball. This game presents an unusual situation in that it would be great to have been able to be in Detroit, at Tiger Stadium, in 1976 but it would also be interesting, if not a bit unsettling, to sit and watch this game on television with five year-old me. It would probably not be long before I opted to watch the game as the young me.

• Watching with great admiration, and sadness, the strength and resolve of Jackie Robinson in the face of such ugliness.

• Watching the Saturday Game of the Week, or Monday Night Baseball, or a Twins road game back when they were on television for only about fifty times a season during the late 70s and early 80s. And while I was there I may as well watch an episode or two of Mel Allen’s “This Week In Baseball”. Going to a movie theater to watch Major League during my senior year (thank you, Wikipedia) with an old friend who would later pass away from years of battling her cancer and the horrible aftereffects.

• And, lastly, taking in a few Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints games, especially those pitched by the fascinating Rube Waddell, at-bats taken by a young Ted Williams and a young Henry Aaron, pitches caught by the multi-multi-multi-multi-multi-lingual spymaster Moe Berg, and fly balls being chased down by Willie Mays. And then spending time in my home state during the most interesting of days from the late nineteenth-century up to and through the 1987 World Series and the 1991 World Series, with the former satisfying my love of history in general and the latter soaking in the atmosphere of an area finally able to enjoy our teams’ championships in an area starved for them.

And there it is, for better or worse. It’s funny, I have never been anything close to a Yankees fan but they are so intertwined within the fabric of the history of major league baseball, or at least since 1920, that it is impossible to not include them in many of the moments. But that is the thing about history, it can be a lot of fun to look back on, enjoying and imagining, but only before it can become too dangerous by spending too much time back there, re-imagining.



Tony Welch is a writer living in Minnesota.

Lucy peers at me through the opposite side of a smudge clinging on an oversized wine glass. Her leveled gaze suggests one last ditch effort in swaying my decision to ruin this cleanse I am supposedly on.

“What day did you make it to?” She asks, her voice rising over the metal shaker she’s furiously jiggling in the palm of her hand above her head.

“Uh, 7?” I lie. The corners of my mouth twitch, appreciating her attempts at interest in this pledge I don’t remember making to myself, let alone telling her about.

I flash her a wide grin and jerk my chin toward the glass of rocks. She nods and pours the vibrant green liquid over the rocks and slides it across to me. I wrap my fingers around the thin stem, raising the wide basin to my lips and swallow. Most days Lucy is already moving behind the bar mixing my drink before I cross the bar, folding myself onto a stool. It’s why I still come to this place.

“Do you work on the lot?” A lilting voice two seats over slams into focus and introduces itself as Crista.

A familiar yet foreign melody croons over the speakers.  Crista asks Lucy if she’s a fan of the singer the voice belongs to. Lucy tells her it’s just the ipod rotation and that she doesn’t control the rotation, a twinge of annoyance creeping into her voice. I watch Crista’s face rise and fall so quickly that I almost miss it.

“I see this singer, whatever her name is, on the lot sometimes,” I add. Crista’s face brightens and she scoots closer to me.

“She’s been sober for eight years now. I guess she was a boozehound before. Her assistant found her unconscious in the bathroom once,” She blurts. “Anyway, this girl is like, my idol. I just don’t understand how someone can do that to themselves.” Crista’s voice is small, like she’s grieving the loss of an old friend.  She waves her hand at Lucy, who places another shot of amber liquid in front of her.

“Laura Turner, we love you, please get up?” I mutter.

Crista blinks hard.

“It’s from a poem.” I release a dry scrape of a laugh.

 “Never heard of it.” She tilts her head and slams back the shot.

 “If you ever see her on the lot again, could you like, text me?” Crista roots in her bag, retrieving a pen and crumpled sheet of notebook paper. She scrawls her number in spiky calligraphy across the top.

I am too busy wondering how she got her hands on a vintage Waterman, I barely notice her crook her finger to initiate a pinky promise. I am about to raise my finger when Crista pushes the empty glass across the bar and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She slides off her stool, steadying herself on a pair of towering high heels, and tumbles toward the door.
 
I place a wrinkled 20-spot on the table and turn to leave. That thought from earlier creeps back into my head and I wrestle it away. I step onto the sidewalk and the heat hits me like a wall. Sirens howl to life nearby. I dart across the street to the lot.  An ambulance growls at the curb. A face peeks out from underneath a scratchy white sheet. Sweat-drenched chocolate brown hair plastered to her forehead. Lipstick smeared across her cheeks. I swallow and turn on my heels. I wonder if she knew. If she tried just as hard as I did to chip away at that nagging thought. “I just don’t understand how anyone could do that,” Crista’s voice pounds in my ears. Her face swollen and blue as a fountain pen.



Jennifer Ledbury is a writer living in California.

A and B are traveling together in a car headed east on a road that runs through what was farmland when they were both children. They did not know each other as children. They did not live in this community when they were children. They moved here shortly after they were married.

The road still exhibits its history of effortless hills, but the potato, cabbage, and corn fields it once meandered through were developed into industrial parks and shopping malls beginning about fifty years ago. Nothing remains to recall that previous purpose except the names of the cross streets. Apple Lane. Vidalia Way. Greenfield Avenue.

At one point, slightly more than half-way between where they started and where they’re going, A and B pass, on the left-hand side of the road, a low, two-story building that has made a slight effort to resemble a barn. There is a central building with a gambrel roof and faux hay-loft doors. Coming off to each side of the fake barn are flat-roofed wings consisting of two-stories of open gallery walkways and doors meant to resemble the Dutch doors of a stable. It is a motel. More properly, it was a motel. There are no cars in the parking lot, the flagpoles are without pennant or banner, and the marquee at the edge of the road states The Red Barn Inn is available for lease or sale.

B looks through the windshield as they approach the motel without slowing and remarks to A, who is the driver of the car, “The Red Barn is closed. When did that happen?”

A replies: “I don’t know.”

B: “Looks like it’s been closed awhile.”

A: “Does it?”

B: “Why do you suppose it went out of business?”

A: “Things have been fading around here.”

B: “It was never really a fancy place, was it?”

A: “No.”

B: “Traveling salesmen kind of joint.”

A: “I suppose.”

B: “Do they still have traveling salesmen?”

A: “Maybe that’s why it closed.”

By now the ghost of The Red Barn Inn is behind them. A watches it shrink in the rearview mirror, eventually sinking below the crest of a hill.

But A continues to think about The Red Barn Inn as the journey continues and B looks for something agreeable on the radio.

A’s mind is considering a problem. What will happen if A mentions to B, as casually as possible, that A once spent a night at The Red Barn Inn with a person of the same sex as A?

It was a long time ago, or at least A likes to think it was a long time ago. And now the place where it happened is closed. Soon it will likely be razed, erasing all evidence of the night.

Erased except for the occasional memories…not full memories, but shards and fragments of memories…of the night: The other person’s wrist watch ticking in A’s ear. The open suitcase on the stand next to the dresser. The way the headlights of passing cars sliced through the incompletely closed curtains to etch triangles across the “cottage cheese” ceiling above them. These images occasionally float up from the back of A’s mind to remind A that the thing that happened had actually happened.

B turns off the radio and pulls the folded newspaper out of the pocket molded into the car door.

A rolls down the window to let some air into the car.

They drive on to their destination.

Solve for X in which X = Will the destruction of The Red Barn Inn change anything?

Show all work for partial credit.



Joseph Dougherty is a writer living in California.

My father was a veteran TV writer who passed away six years ago at the tender age of 92. One month before he left us for the Big Deli in the Sky, in hopes of finding a bottomless bowl of matzoh ball soup and corned beef to die for, he finally figured out how life began. Although he had no plans to go anywhere for at least 20 years, he couldn't wait to share his theory with those of us gathered around his bed: 

"So, how did we get here? Who decided, okay, I'll make a place and we'll call it Earth? Maybe he was the producer, the money guy. And then someone else in the room, one of the writers, said, 'Earth? Why are we calling it that?' And the producer said, 'Why not?' No one had a good comeback, so the producer kept going. 'We need some people on Earth. How are we going to get people? Hang on, I know. We'll start with a fish.' And then the same writer who thought Earth was a dumb name said, 'A fish? Why a fish?' 'Why not?' the producer said. 'So then this fish was swimming around in the sea and said, 'I'm tired of being a fish,' and walked out of the water and became a man. Wow. 

"Then one day the former fish got lonely. So the producer said, 'Listen, give me a rib and I'll make a woman for you.' And the former fish said, 'Why do I have to give you a rib?' 'Because I said so,' the producer said. 'You can give me a rib or I'll rip it out. Your choice.' So the ex-fish said, 'Fine, I'll give you a rib, just make sure the woman is pretty. I'm not giving up a rib for a dog.' And the producer said, 'I'll see what I can do. But I'm not making any promises.' "
 
-- the late great Ben Starr



Carol Starr Schneider is a writer living in California.

“Do it with two,” Mike tells me as he ambles back to the dugout. “He don’t throw that hard.”

“Looks hittable,” I mutter as I get up off my knee and toss the donut off to the side. Time to play tennis with Mister Swope. He serves, and I serve it back. No return, no deposit. It’s about position, two gone, outfield deep or in, third guarding the line, short fudging the middle, getting on, turning the order over. 

“Time!” I yell.

Manny nods and asks for the ball, gives it a spin and flings it back at Swope. “Get in,” he barks.

I hate lefthanders.

Mike left me a hole. I gotta fill it in. I need my thirty, not my thirty-two. “He any good?” I ask Dutch, who grunts and spits on the plate.

“Nothin’ for you to hit, Hughes.”

“First time,” I say. “They all screw up.”

“Not this time. He‘s a bitch on you lefties,” Dutch shifts and drops his mitt.

I can hear his fingers tapping his shin guards. Lefty’s goin’ away on me, maybe down.

Big kick, no wind. Heater, down.

“Syy-k one!”

“Way down, Manny. Get in the game!”

“Bat, Hughes.”

“You need a shave, blue.”

“Didn’t come out here to look good.” Manny adjusts his mask and his pad. “Hit.”

“Fuckin’ oh-one. Damned pitch was no strike.”

Dutch is patting his shin guard again. Down and out again.

Big kick, white spot. Low and away.

“St-yyyk two!”

“Manny, ya puke, ya! At least let me save my career!”

“Hit strikes, make the Hall, Hughes.”

“Damned pitches are down, Manny. Ain’t even catchin’ black.”

He steps up and brushes the dirt off the plate, puts his broom back in his pocket, pulls his mask down and nods. “Oh-two. Hit.”

“Time.”

Manny points at Swope, who backs off, gets rosin, rubs the ball, turns to me.

He’s gettin’ rosin. What did Ziggy tell me? Rosin means the hook. Pitcher goes to rosin for the hook. Fuckin’ oh-two. I can’t hit oh-two. I look down at Ziggy. “Dutch, you ain’t believin’ this. Ziggy’s givin’ me the take.”

Dutch snickers. “You pay attention to third-base coaches? No wonder you’re oh-two.”

“Ump sucks,” I tell Dutch.

“One more and you’re gone, Hughes,” Manny informs me.

“Just acknowledging your fondness for Tootsie Rolls, Manny,” I said. “No offense.”

“Hit, Hughes.”

“Zig tells me to take.”

Dutch gets up and calls time, adjusts his cup and settles in again. I can hear his hand against his shin guard. Hell, they’re wastin’ this one. Hook? Straight change. Heater off and high.

Swope comes set.

Up and way in, heater. Not the best I ever saw.

“I’m in a slump, Dutch. No point dustin’ me.”

“If we wanted to hit you, we’d do it.”

I nod. “Frickin’ one-two.” His edge. I step out. “Time.”

Infield moves back. Outfield moves in. Ziggy flashes a sign. “No kiddin’, Zig.”

Protect the plate.

Heater, too high. I foul it back.

Swope gets a ball.

He’s in a hurry now. “Time,” I say, and back out.

“Hit, Hughes,” Manny says.

I step in, dig around a little and come set. “Throw me that change,” I say under my breath.

Way off. Two-two. Lookin’ better.

Swope’s in a hurry. Kicks, here it comes.

High and in. I can’t handle it. Dribbler foul, right side.

“Check the ball, Manny,” I say.

“Ball,” he tells Swope, who delivers it. Manny rolls it over, throws it back to Swope.

Blind spot.

Two-two, down and away. Too close.

“Full,” Manny barks.

“You called one of them a strike earlier,” I tell him.

“He throws one more like that and I’ll call it a strike again,” Manny laughs. “Hit, Hughes.”

Ziggy’s coachin’ at third, playin’ with his zipper or something.

Twice up and in. Three times, down and away. Gotta be down and away. Heater, I bet. I step out. “Time!”

Manny points to Swope. “Full. Play ball.”

I get in and wrap my hands around the end of the bat, settle it on my shoulder and … flick away a pecker gnat. “Time. Bug alert!” I step out.

Back in. Swope bends down, kicks … up and over the middle. I foul it back.

“Stretchin’ this out, huh?” Dutch says. He takes a ball from Manny, flips it to Swope, who backs off the mound, gets some rosin and rubs the ball up in his glove.

He nods. Heater, down and out.

“THREE!” Manny barks.

Inning over.



J.C. Updike is a writer living in Indiana.

Young At Heart

Young at heart, I look up at the sky
Sat in a chair in a broken down house
Young at heart, I cry out the names
Of those that hurt me, of those that died
Young at heart, my name doesn't fit
Get off this train, son, you don't belong
Young at heart, there's someone listening
Pack your bags, boy, trains leaving.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You're Not My Mom Anymore

Don't point the finger at me
I'm not a child anymore
Wrapped in cloths no more
Wrapped in your arms no more

The tendencies of my movements
They plague my everyday 
The tendencies aren't improvements
Singing in the day now, singing in the day

You're not my mom anymore
Between our hearts there is no love 
You're just a whore
And you're heart is poor  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You Don't See Me

In the middle of my existence
You are sitting on the side
Other people who know you
Tell me not to hide
Though it seems like yesterday 
You were on top of the mountain
Flying high and free
Now the cold air has frozen you in your sleep

You don't see me
You don't breathe me in
Just imagine if you can the moment we first met
Settle it down in the pit of your stomach 
And tell me one simple word 
That will make me love you again
Or fly away and never come back 
You were not mine to begin  



Rogan Hennie is a writer living in Alberta, Canada.

“Hold your chopsticks this way,” he tells her. “It’s how the Japanese do it.”
So he’s a bit of a bossy pants. But she’ll give him a chance.
“You want to prove you’re a dope?” he says. “When you take out the chopsticks, rub them together like you’re trying to get rid of splinters. Think about it. How insulting is that to a restaurant?”
Did she rub her chopsticks together? She can’t remember. She looks at them in her hand and for an instant imagines jabbing them into his eyes. Pow! Pow!
Okay. That’s a terrible thing to think and they’ve only just met and going all Oedipus is probably an awful idea. Try to focus on the good bits. He’s attractive. Not too fat or too skinny, he is three little bears porridge, just right. Dark eyes, dark hair, a crooked smile and the hint of a single dimple.
He’s slurping at his miso soup. A piece of green onion settles on his chin.
Berkeley undergrad, Vanderbilt Law, works for a public interest firm. Likes hiking, all music except pop, all sports except NASCAR (and why is car racing considered a sport anyway, that’s what he said in his profile and she has to agree). The last time he cried was when he went to the Musée d'Orsay and saw van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone. He thinks going to restaurants should be an adventure.
And that’s how they’ve found this place, newly opened, not reviewed yet and usually you might be a little wary of an unknown sushi place, but he’d heard the head chef used to be at Kiriko. Or Sushi Zo. It doesn’t matter, it’s some place good.
Of course he insists on omakase. “Why not let the chef pick?” he tells her. “He knows what’s the freshest, so what if it’s more expensive? This is on me.” He winks.
She forces a smile. The food is good. The sake is cold. She’d agreed to the omakase, but would prefer no sea urchin.
“You’re an uni virgin?” The piece of green onion is still on his chin.
“Not a virgin. Just a hater.” She could take her napkin and wipe off the green onion. Instead she eats her Spanish octopus with Japanese mushroom.
“I’ll make sure they bring us uni,” he says. “Two orders.” He smiles and the onion drops off his chin and onto the table.
The waiter presents a new platter and announces, “Blue fin tuna belly sashimi.”
When the waiter is gone, her date picks up a piece of the blue fin tuna belly sashimi. “Dating in L.A. is brutal,” he says. “Let’s face it, I’ve got everything going for me. So you should feel pretty lucky.”
She nods. Feeling wildly unlucky.
He smacks his lips. She can see bits of sushi in his mouth. “Excellent.”
He’s not wrong. He’s arrogant and controlling and talks with his mouth open. But the sashimi is fabulous. So fabulous she wants to call the waiter back and ask for more. Maybe she should date a sushi chef.
She watches him eat. Wonders how long you give a date before you realize it’s time to cut your losses.
She’s thinking about that as they eat skipjack, fluke, kanpachi, raw amberjack with shiso leaf and pickled plum. And uni.
She could cut him some slack. It’s not so bad, he’s nervous, he’s trying too hard. She pokes at her rice with her chopsticks. Take the high road, why be a judgy bitch?
He grabs the chopsticks out of her hand. He’s frowning.
“What are you doing?” he says. “You can’t stick your chopsticks in a bowl of rice. That’s how they honor the dead in Japan. Only dumb motherfuckers do that.”
“A friend of mine told me there’s a polite thing to say to the chefs when you’re leaving,” she says as he’s paying the bill.
“I’ve never heard that.”
“My friend spent a year in Osaka.”
He looks skeptical. “So what is it?”
“Wow, I hope I remember.” She taps the side of her head. “Kuso kurae. Geri shiteru, bakayarou.
“Tell me again?”
She does.

When they leave the restaurant, he waves and says in a too loud voice, but with much gusto, “Kuso kurae! Geri shiteru, bakayarou!”
She has already called her Lyft and sprints down the street away from him.
In the car on her way home she tries to think of a bright side. At least perhaps one day he’ll find a use for learning how to say, “Eat shit. I’ve got diarrhea, asshole.”

Ella Horton is a writer living in New Mexico.

 It was the worst day of my life.  I was so sad and so scared.  I had lived with Betty forever – six years.  I knew something was wrong when a neighbor came to the house and said that Betty had died.  I had no idea what that meant but I knew it was bad as the neighbor was crying.  The next day she took me to a huge park with lots of dogs to find me a new home.  People came and looked at me and I put on my happy face but I didn’t feel happy.  So very sad.  A lady stopped and immediately hugged me and said, “This is just the dog I’ve been looking for.  Look at her tail wagging a mile a minute.”  What, my tail?  I thought my best features were my big brown eyes and cute floppy ears.  But my tail?

I heard that her name was Nancy.  She drove me to her house then hurried to get a black dog named Inky, just a little bigger than me.  We went for a walk up the hill then back to the house. I guess it was kind of like a meet and greet.  When we went in the house I saw a basket filled with my favorite things – squeaky toys and bones.  It made me feel a little less sad.  That night we slept together on her big bed and snuggled up. 

We settled into a routine – Nancy, me and sister Inky.  We went on walks and I made new friends like Chewy and Ginger.  Over time, I began to feel more at home.  I wagged my tail all the time. The best thing happened at Christmas.  Under the tree were two large bones, one for Inky and one for me.  I was so excited.  Nancy said that Santa brought my bone but I knew it was really from her.  She knew exactly what gift I would love.

Time passed and I wanted to do something special for Nancy – show her how much I love her besides just wagging my tail.  I had the perfect idea.  I buried my Christmas bone on our bed under her pillow.  When she found it she laughed, hugged me said how sweet it was of me to give her such a precious gift.  I’m not sad or scared anymore.  I am loved.  And I love my new home.  


Nancy Woods is a writer living in California.

Becky gave one final tug to the cardboard box occupying a corner of the attic. The box lurched forward and knocked her on her butt.

“Childhood books.” She recognized her own terrible handwriting from her college days on the label.

This box had followed her through several moves, collecting dust and remaining unopened for almost thirty years.

Already days behind in her downsizing duties, Becky knew prepping for the move into a condo meant discarding a lot of her possessions. This box proved an unexpected task.

“No biggie,” she mumbled to herself. “I can just donate most of these to the library.”

Sitting cross-legged on the cold attic floor, she pulled out stacks of books. She read out loud the titles of tomes that had once occupied the faux wooden bookcase in her adolescent bedroom.
Some of the author names made her squeal with delight, like an old friend calling her up out of the blue to say, “I’m still around. I’ve missed you.”

How familiar so many of the illustrations were, even now that she was past her fiftieth birthday. Where wild things dwelled. The Ingalls cabin on a prairie. The home where striped ice cream was served. Bear Country. Mrs. Gaffney’s antique shop.

The skylight in the attic provided dwindling light as the afternoon drew to a close. Becky considered throwing all the books back in the box, taping it up and leaving this memory lane job for after she moved. Tonight’s tasks included balancing her bank account and scrubbing the grout on the bathroom floors.

Instead, she ran downstairs, poured instant hot chocolate into a travel mug and grabbed the battery-operated camping lantern from the garage. She couldn’t help giggling as she balanced her load while climbing back up the attic ladder.

Hours later, a tartan fleece blanket from another box wrapped around her, she forced herself to come back to current day. She folded down the corner of a page in a book to remind herself where to pick up again in the morning. Becky couldn’t wait to find out what mischief Ramona the Pest got into next.

Bearing their own folded corners, several other antiquated books formed a pyramid. Becky had consumed a paragraph here, a chapter there. She devoured the shorter books in full. Peeks into the long-lost worlds of her childhood friends stirred her soul. She realized she missed these characters the way she missed actual people who had moved on from her life, through death or disagreement.

Becky left the blanket and lantern in the attic. She stashed one passenger in the waistband of her pants for the climb back down the ladder.

After a warm shower, she flopped into bed. Her phone rang but she didn’t check to see who it was. Instead, she leaned back against her pillows holding a well-worn gift from her aunt. “Happy 11th birthday!” read the inscription on the title page.

Becky’s eyes settled on page one. She began to listen in on a conversation between God and a little girl named Margaret.

The library received no donations from Becky’s move.


Eve Allen is a writer living in Texas.