PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATIONS, 2024
Unsolicited Press is thrilled to announce its nominations for the 2024 Pushcart Prize, celebrating the extraordinary talent and craftsmanship of our authors. This year's nominees include Douglas Cole for Casino People (from The Cabin at the End of the World), Katie Holtmeyer for Country Curtains (from She Asked Me Where), Anthony DiPietro for when I was an uber driver (from Kiss & Release), Lara Lillibridge for Confession: An Exploration of Guilt and Secrets (from The Truth About Unringing Phones), Taylor Garcia for Animal Husbandry (from Animal Husbandry), and Sean Murphy for This Kind of Man (from This Kind of Man). Each of these works exemplifies the bold, innovative storytelling Unsolicited Press champions, and we couldn't be prouder to see their contributions recognized on a national scale. Stay tuned for updates as these incredible pieces vie for one of the most esteemed honors in literary publishing!
Casino People
From THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Douglas Cole
The Angel of the Winds and heat devils rise on a highway
going nowhere. And there, a fallen farmhouse crushed as though
sky pushed down from above and ground pushed up from below,
timbers snapping, souls like swallows bursting through the doors—
Out here people call property a spread, and a horse is a true identity.
Most run machine shops, drive truck, or receive disability yet say
they work the land, wear cowboy boots and jeans, give you Jack and Coke
when you’re seventeen and don’t bat an eye when you start smoking.
They’re not religious, but if you aren’t Christian you’re suspicious.
They want homes set back from the road with room for goats, guns,
new tires, and a new transmission, a local bar to watch the game in,
a solid retirement or government pension and good television reception.
They respect the man with a clean haircut and a straight stack of wood,
make it part of birthday celebrations to burn the back field brush
and float down river on inner tubes with coolers full of cans of beer,
follow high school sports to see who punches through to the big leagues,
sneer down those who leave and shake their heads at those who never go,
break out snow tires and chains in winter, respect the cocktail hour,
watch black and white movies for cultural history, play Tammy Wynette,
Waylon Jennings, drive pick-ups and get tattoos of Jesus on their biceps.
Too much, no way you say, that all sounds like sad stereotypes,
but I know, I live among them: Uncle Billy with a big gut he’d slap
and call his investment went out fast by heart attack at forty-eight.
Gentry made it to nearly seventy, but after a lifetime of cigarettes
and exposure to asbestos from his time in the navy, he got cancer.
The worst thing, he said at the end, were the constant hiccups.
Hard by thirty with relentless debt, foreclosures, lost weekends
in roadside motels or the Big Lake cabins, savings gambled away…
We go down a misty backroad, crazy Joe waving at the headlights,
and he’s saying, never be in a hurry and you’ll always be on time,
as meadowlarks come alive and The Angel of the Winds arrives,
lifting the broken bones of a farmhouse in a swirl of swallows,
earth pushing up, something else pushing down from the sky.
Country Curtains
From SHE ASKED ME WHERE
Katie Holtmeyer
we all want revenge but so many of us
would settle for justice. I’m not talking about logistics
today I am talking to friends through a computer screen
and now there is the hint of a permanent
smiley face on my bedroom wall. I have
made so many casual mistakes. I have
shot at soda cans with a bb gun at close range
and done so much better than the boys did. do you
remember the coveted sticky tac we’d collect
when the teachers let us help them clean out
their classrooms on the last of school? drawing our names
in shaving cream like reverse finger paints.
these are our collective keepsakes. please
marry my memories. sing the vows to the crowd
of ladybugs on my front porch. I told you before
I’m not talking about logistics today. I am
talking through black ink on a white page. I filled
the dent in my wall with toothpaste and I laugh
every time I pass it. please don’t kiss me
in the sunken garden. just lie on the ground
beside me and stare at what’s left
of the stars. we named the fountain there graceful
martyr. once filled it with water from the bottles
we brought from home because an empty fountain
in the ghost of a lake was the saddest thing
we’d ever seen. I’ve been over this already.
I’m not talking about logistics today. I’m talking
about you and me and the trace of sharpie on our skin.
did you think if you whispered goodbye it would hurt less?
I recognized every damn one of your tactics. this isn’t
about changing the channel or searching for yourself
in a song. this is about the clocks being an hour behind
half the year because I don’t know how
the settings work on my car’s dashboard. this is about how
I was only supposed to give you a
ride home that first night but you complimented
my commitment to protesting daylight savings time.
this is about a guy at the bar who gave us a dollar when
we were drunk and really wanted to win
the stuffed gingerbread man. this is about a girl jumping out
of the telephone booth before I knew you. this is about
the onion you placed by my bed when I was sleeping
because you read it could help cure colds.
we crashed away with bulleted phrases
of our own private questions
so I’ll tell you this:
your worst offense wasn’t leaving
the coffee pot empty but it did make the list. we made it out
beautiful but we didn’t make it far. kept each other warm &
left a few legends in our wake. I’m not talking about logistics
today. I am swept in the blurriness of both
our mistakes. we were born to be gutter balls
and slippery dance floors and sad songs
in the late morning slipped back into bed.
I’ve been told I’m an empath but I don’t think
I’m a good enough person for that. I wonder if you
ever forgave me for all the things I almost did. take me home
but drive real slow and make sure to turn on the car radio.
listen to the lyrics again before you
change the station. know that broken
blinds still let the light in.
cover them up
with your old flannels.
when I was an uber driver,
From kiss & release
Anthony DiPietro
friends asked for my horror stories. I said my scariest customers were four young republican lawyers, drunk from a long day of golf. pickup at pine brook country club, heading home to newton highlands. the one guy looking at the back of my head had ordered the car. each of his three buds stumbled across their green lawns to kiss their wives with reeking breath. after they left, my customer said, my friends are not bad guys, which told me he thought they were real assholes. he was sorry they talked about golf vs. tennis & which was a real man’s sport. I said golf is not the most important thing in life, but there are worse things you could say in someone’s back seat. very level-headed of you, he said, I like you, I’d back you for congress. then he asked what I thought of the gun debate. I knew not to answer. uber driver training was only a nine-minute youtube vid, but it distinctly said, never venture into politics or religion. instead, I steered the conversation to where we grew up & that’s how we realized that will & I went to the same college, him two years behind me. he was the one who hosted a foursome once at his dorm, all guys, & I left in the middle. I wanted the hot one for myself. the other two were boring. I had encountered will one other time, in the basement restroom of the research library. there was I, hard in his soft cheeks, holding his pierced ears, giving him the rhythm, his small, toothy mouth not doing a great job. but he was really trying.
Confession: An Exploration of Guilt and Secrets
From THE TRUTH ABOUT UNRINGING PHONES
Lara Lillibridge
I have to tell you something ugly: when my father told me he was trans, my first response was rage. My guilt is deepened by the fact that he thought I was the safest to tell. Like during so many conversations with my father, I clutched the phone to my cheek and paced in circles in the backyard—the phone more tangible that he was.
I heard his confession with the ears of a daughter, not those of a queer person, not even as an ally. I was already the daughter of a lesbian. Adding a trans father was more than I wanted to bear.
In an effort to mitigate your judgment, I need to explain that my father was an admitted sex addict. I couldn’t tell whether this was a fetish or an identity. Was he a man who dressed a woman for sexual humiliation? Nothing was lower in his estimation than a female.
It’s important to note that my father has never had boundaries when it came to his sex life. I had long been a target of his roving gaze. I’ve been witness and confidant beyond what a father should expect of a daughter. I am always (mostly) obedient. Or I was back then. Even when I didn’t want to be.
My father has paired me with his wife or mistress in many a compare-and-contrast study on what makes a good woman, used me for a punchline in dirty jokes, told me the status of his hard-ons.
My father advised me on how to be desirable:
· have pretty hair and be good in bed,
· be smart, but don’t henpeck.
· Make a healthy dinner,
· laugh at dirty jokes,
· turn the other way when the mistress walks into church,
· never say no, I’m uncomfortable, that’s not funny, I don’t like that.
How could I trust that his confession was pure, and that he wasn’t just trying to find a way to discuss lacy underwear with me? I couldn’t see if there was leer on his face over the telephone lines.
Already he showed me his wife’s bras when I visited one summer, discussing their merits with me—something his wife and I both wished he wouldn’t do. He showed me how he ironed them with spray starch to give her more support. Already he drew breasts on the toy rubber ducky that perched on the edge of his bathtub.
He was the kind of father who liked to push the boundaries of acceptable behavior. He said how people reacted told him everything he needed to know to understand them. I’m still not sure what that means.
The worst of it is I used my father as a punchline, a way to get sympathy, to one-up someone in bar games of Family Dysfunction Battleship. Even as I was his sole confidante. He wrote me long emails about passing at bars in fishing villages and flirting with men. My father asked me to call her Cleella and then a different name, Frances Victoria. I wrote letters to these names and mailed them to the clandestine out-of-town mailbox, addressing the envelope with only the name of the fishing boat he’d traded our beloved sailboat in for: F.V. Assiduous. My father pronounced it assy-do-us. I was supposed to laugh. I didn’t.
When I was a child, my father signed his letters “Clint” and I only ever wanted him to be Daddy. I didn’t want to see my father other than in relationship to me—we were only ever tenuously connected. The one thing he could give me that no one else could was a ticket to StraightLand. I paraded him out (metaphorically, he was never in town) to boyfriends’ parents my whole life. See? My father is straight. My father is a doctor. My father is smart and successful and my genes aren’t tainted.
But of course my genes were tainted. Even before he said he was trans my genes were never going to behave properly. I was never entirely straight, conventional, tamed. Though I was pretty good at acting as if I was.
I need to insert here that my father never changed pronouns—never used she/her. Dad only left the house dressed and made up rarely, and just when out of town. He only told his biological children and a spare niece, who happened to be a lesbian. I am uncomfortable about my use of pronouns in this essay, but father is a role in my life and I reject its association with gender. Father is not mother, is not friend. Father cannot be undone, unclaimed. And Frances V. was the one who taught me how to sail, how to build a boat, how to rewire a lamp, how to taxidermy animals—all the Daddy things—no matter what name or pronouns I use.
Does it mitigate my offense if I tell you that I didn’t shame my father (I don’t think) and helped F.V. pick a better wig (not that she listened) and told F.V. how and where to buy makeup? Pre-online shopping, we spent months mailing glossy catalogs back and forth between Alaska and Kansas, where I was living at the time. There was no one else to help, and Dad needed all the help I could give. I sent F.V. my best corset—the brand all my drag queen friends wore, that cost $140 at a time when that was all my spending money for two months. I always wished I had kept it for myself. I’ve gone soft around the middle. I’d like to wear it right now, as I write this. This corset might tame me into a better version of myself—one more restrained, more winsome, one who doesn’t giggle in the wrong places. Jiggle I meant but guffaw is a better word for what I need to do less of. I’ve never been very good at being a girl. If I could be a better girl I might also become a better daughter.
My father shined golden rays of adoration on my brother because as son he had the right genitals. It didn’t matter that I was braver, more obedient, better in school. A boy needs a father and all that bullshit. It took me years to learn how, but I can pee standing up too, not that I would do it in front of my father. Now that my father no longer wants to pee standing up I don’t know how I am supposed to gain his affection.
It’s important to note that my father loved women as objects. My father loved men for everything else. My father adored my boyfriends and husbands and wrote them letters and sent them gifts, even after we broke up. Even as my mailbox remained empty.
Suppose I tell you that after each of my divorces my father asked me if I were a lesbian. When I said no, he replied, “Thank you. That’s my biggest fear. That you will be a lesbian like your mother.”
Does this person get to call themselves a lesbian trapped in a man’s body?
Thank you for not being a lesbian like your mother.
Does that lessen my crime?
My father didn’t get to walk into my world—the queer world—as someone who thought it would be a lark. My moms and brother and I had been here for decades. It had cost all of us something. It wasn’t an identity to put on as casually as my father pulled the black miniskirt over unshaven legs.
Will you forgive me if I tell you that I was queer enough to help my father hide from his Catholic wife, who explicitly told him that this was grounds for divorce? I sincerely attempted to help. I spoke to transmen and confronted my own inner-disparager and tried my hardest to embrace this identity. I hoped that it might make everything better between us. But my father put Frances away when his wife demanded it. I was left in the closet beside her.
Now my father has dementia, or at least senility. The doctors said Alzheimer’s, the doctors said Parkinson’s. The wife in question insists he’s fine but he can’t be left alone, can no longer understand cell phones, is easily lost and confused. My father wears only what the wife in question buys and washes, folds and puts away. I don’t know if Frances is still inside my father, ignored and unseen. I don’t know how to say that I remember her, that despite everything, I wanted to love her, though she only existed to me in emails, in phone calls, in brown envelopes sent through the mail.
Animal Husbandry
From ANIMAL HUSBANDRY
Taylor Garcia
The thing was, was that they kept different hours. But this was nothing new. Rose was a confirmed night owl and Mario was an early bird, or, as he called himself, an anytime bird. He claimed he was alert any time of day, but he was always inclined to go to bed early, and now in midlife, there was rarely a night when he wasn’t “lights out” by 10 p.m.
“Over time you learn that people are the way they are and they’re not apt to change,” was what Antoinette Felix had said to him on a Zoom call when she was letting him know the bad news. Mario couldn’t remember the context of her comment, but when she said it, he was thinking of his wife, Rose, and that she would probably be a late-nighter for life. Antoinette Felix, Mario’s regional VP, talked in those pithy one-liners that revealed both universal truths and her own problems at home at the same time.
The bad news: Mario's position, along with twenty-seven others like him across the country, was eliminated. Gone, in what felt like a snap, yet it wasn’t that much of a surprise. Mario’s insider friend from another division, Gary Aronson, said to be prepared. Gary knew everything and everybody and so when, two weeks before Antoinette’s call, Gary’s position was eliminated too, Gary’s last words to Mario were, “I told you so.” Followed by, “We just can’t compete.”
With the machines, is what Gary meant. The bots had at last come for sales. Who knew that this would ever happen? People would always feel more comfortable interacting with humans. Always. But first it was the prospect emails, then the follow up emails, then the creation of sales plans and strategic monthly reports that came easier for the bots. They learned it all and rendered people like Mario and Gary and all the others whose livelihood was built on relationships with humans, obsolete. He had sensed something was on the horizon; he just didn’t know that he was going to lose everything to a chat feature with the verbal aptitude of a high school junior.
“It’s not so bad,” Rose said over dinner that night. “At least they gave you a package.”
“But that’s just for a few months. We’ll make it to September at best.” Mario began clearing the table, rinsing plates, and putting them in the dishwasher. Their tween daughters, Becca and Bella had retreated to their tablets, a place where they zoned out. It was a refuge for ignoring their parents when the bickering started. It was never long before that happened. Tonight, it was more Cold War-style. Few words, lots of tension. Passive aggression on point. Mario was an expert at this, but Rose was the Supreme Master of Icy Relations.
“I’ll do those,” she said.
“I got it,” he said, his sink work quicker, water splashing as he moved dishes from sink to rack. He was thinking of what to say, how to say that they would need to figure something out soon. How the severance wasn’t going to last, how her work as a party planner was probably doomed too with the rise of the … Intelligencia, he sometimes called it. And he also wanted to have a philosophical talk with her, just some time to speculate and ponder, however that was never on the table. She was known for shutting down conversations that flirted with the idea that there was life beyond the Solar System.
“How would we ever know?” she had said in their early courtship in response to Mario’s, “The universe is much too big for us to be the only intelligent form of life in it.” That was that. She had changed the subject to talk about cruises. She was crazy about cruises. He was not. They had met on a cruise years before, when travel was normal. Before the outbreaks and masks and political violence.
Tonight’s silent battle wasn’t based on anything in particular. It was a typical Tuesday. She’d just come from her telepathy classes, of which Mario thought they were getting longer each time. Their family calendar was populated with at least three a week. She had just switched teachers; evidently Google tapped the previous one to work on a new e-telepathy training program.
Telepathy being one of the few things the bots couldn’t actually do. Telepathy, it was predicted, would be one of the most coveted job skills in the new economy. Mind reading was going to be the next indoor plumbing. Mario thought differently. You would know if you were a mind reader, wouldn’t you? It’s not something you could teach or learn. It was like his profession as a salesman—you either had it or you didn’t. Plus, she was spending so much money on those classes.
That’s what was bothering him, that and the fact that they hadn’t had sex in—what was it, three, almost four months. This was typical. They’d go through long dry spells, then get back on and things would be fine, then more dry spells and so on. It wasn’t good or bad. It was just—marriage. With kids. That, and they were busy people. Now that the Plague had passed, they were getting back into activities outside of the home that they had paused for a few years. He’d returned to the gym and was feeling more confident about his 45-year-old body. He was chipping away at the dad bod, at least one line of abs was starting to peek out again.
On those nights that they went to bed at different times, which was every night, Mario found himself spooning his Just-Like-Me body pillow. That was the other craze: these body pillows that were in your likeness. You could send in a picture of yourself and Just-Like-Me would mold and print a custom body pillow about a third of your size for you to cuddle. This came out of the Post-Plague mental and spiritual health surge in which everyone was devoted to self-care and rescuing their inner children. Rose had one made too, and they worked for a while, but then they became these strange doll-like creatures that hung around. Even Becca and Bella lost interest playing with their parents’ mini-doppelgängers.
Mario knew it was a problem when he began having sex with Rose’s pillow. He did it once as a little joke, something to make himself laugh, but there in the dark, it helped fill a void, and acheive the post-coital relief, the one that helped him nod off to sleep after a stressful day. It was also something different, something to break up the monotony. Something to ease the loneliness even though Rose was in the next room up pecking away on the computer, working on whatever it was she worked on so late into the night.
But then one night, he didn’t know he was fucking his own pillow by accident, and it both grossed him out and made him think for a minute what it might be like to have sex with…himself. He pushed the pillows out of the bed and the next morning they were gone. Rose had bagged them and put them in the garage next to a pile of old pool noodles. When things disappeared in their home, they were usually in the garage.
“I’m going up to the hot tub,” he said, after he finished washing the dishes. His shirt was soaked and so was the floor at his feet.
“Okay.” Rose was in of those patterns where she neither agreed and nor disagreed. Her response was more of an agreement tinged with a question. Okay? Mario had learned to let those ones slide. She glanced at his shirt and the floor, her eyes communicating he needed to clean up the mess.
“Oh, can you change the cat litter?” Mario said before he went upstairs.
“Okay,” she said, retreating to the couch with her phone. With the three of them on their devices like this, the house fell into an eerie calm, which often signaled to Mario that he could and should slip away. They’ll never know I’m gone. He’d done it one time—just decided to take a walk on a Sunday afternoon when they were all deep into their screens—but when one of them, maybe Rose, maybe one of the girls sensed his absence, his phone lit up with a somewhat panicked tone. “Where are you? You can’t just leave like that without telling us where you went.”
And it’s not like you don’t spend hours—HOURS—outside of the home, and with your location finder off. And do I say a word? Do I ask?
Ten bucks says she doesn’t change the litter, he thought walking up the stairs. He’d bet himself like that all the time about those stupid little domestic chores, and in doing so, his resentment account was overflowing.
Back downstairs, now in his swim trunks and draped in his fading blue terry cloth robe, Becca, the youngest, popped up from her tablet screen.
“I wanna come!”
“Oh no, honey, it’s late. You have to get ready for bed.”
Rose shot him a look. Yes, it was her night to put them to bed, but could he take them to the hot tub, too? Was that what the look meant? Was she using some of her new telepathy skills on him? She hadn’t really told him anything about what she was learning in those classes.
“No, honey,” Rose said to Becca. “It’s bedtime soon.”
“Okay, I’ll be back,” Mario said.
“Okay.” This time was less inquiry, more feigned agreement dashed with offense. He couldn’t read minds, but he certainly felt words. He locked on her nose, not her eyes, and not the space just between them as a potential protection from her third eye gazing into him. He almost laughed to himself: can she actually read minds?
The Ariana Community Clubhouse hot tub was hit or miss. Hit if you could get it alone, which was what Mario hoped for, and miss if there were people overstaying the recommended 30-minutes per group, plus, drinking, which was not allowed, but everyone did it. Not to mention, the tub only held a max of eight people. More than that and it became a disgusting bath with strangers, the water quickly turning a mucky green from all the people dipping without showering first.
Mario detested this more than anything. A former pool boy, he knew the fastest way to destroy a pool was to get in without rinsing off, the sweat and oils and laundry detergents that people carried into the water destroyed the chemical integrity, and thus created a breeding ground for bacteria. He was convinced it was how he caught molluscum contagiosum back in his single years, when he frequented his ex-girlfriend’s upscale apartment jacuzzi, which was a festering hub for singles. Temptation Apartments, they used to call it.
At the Ariana Clubhouse, Mario went straight for the showers, and after he was doused in the cold water en route to the hot tub, he noticed activity—bodies moving against the high lights of the two pillar beacons on either side of the tub and the low lights of the bulbs inside the water, casting a warm glow upward into the cloudy dark blue sky. He considered turning away. He wanted only to relax, to think, to consider the future, the future him. He couldn’t do that with people. He’d have to make small talk. The way these bodies were moving, the laughs he heard as he approached meant they were there for fun. And, once he was within fifteen feet, he realized it was them.
They were the neighbors from a few buildings down from his home. They were a couple. Or a throuple, a word he had learned in recent months. Or maybe they were a quadruple. At the very least, there was the man and the woman who were always hanging on each other. They were a young professional looking type but could also still be in college. Either way, they were young enough that their bodies were…perfect. With them was another young man, perhaps their roommate, and he usually had another girl with him—never the same one—or sometimes another friend, and those friends brought their friends.
Those friends were difficult to describe. One was most certainly male from the top up, but from the waist below, Mario didn’t know. Once, on another pool visit, when Mario had brought his daughters, some of the Quadruple’s friends were there doing yoga on the deck, while the others were laughing and splashing and hanging on each other. Mario found himself stealing glances at the ones whom he couldn’t tell exactly what they were, wondering if their downward dogs would reveal what was actually between their legs. He’d snap away from his errant glances when one of his daughters called him, bringing him back to the reality that he was now that total pool perv, the type he used to silently chide when he worked at the YMCA eons ago.
But what was between people’s legs didn’t matter nowadays. It didn’t matter who you were below your belt and who you were inside your head. He knew this from all the diversity training at work and the questions his daughters brought up about non-binary and what not. He wasn’t exactly prepared to talk about these things with his young girls, but he wasn’t exactly not prepared either. He simply hadn’t formed a perspective yet, and he was a little unsure whether he should at all.
He kept walking toward the hot tub. It appeared to be only the main couple, the man and woman, plus their roommate, and what appeared to be another woman, though the roommate and the other woman were not too close to each other, not like the Core Couple, Mario had suddenly dubbed them in his mind as he was kicking off his Birkenstocks. He nodded toward all of them, signaling he was about to enter this adult soup.
The other person stealing glances was the roommate. Mario had sensed this young man’s eyes once before on their street, either when one was driving into the circle or the other was walking or checking the mailbox. They seemed to be those innocuous neighborly glances when you look up and acknowledge the other person’s existence and you either nod or smile or some other combination. But Mario had noticed a pattern with the young man where he seemed to be outside whenever Mario was outside. Once, the young man was walking to his car for work in the morning, and he looked up at Mario as though trying to get his attention. Mario disregarded those glances, thought they were nothing more than two neighbors who kept similar schedules.
Here, now at the hot tub, Mario saw those same inquisitive eyes from the young man, and he also felt them from the woman nearest to him. At first glance, Mario recognized her as another neighbor,but here in the dim lights her face blurred into the foamy surface, her focused eyes on him were the only visible feature.
“Hello.” Mario gave a small wave as he eased into the hot water.
“Hi.”
“What’s up?”
The Core Couple tilted their chins at him. They were laughing about something mischievous it seemed.
“What do you think?” the girl said to the other two. “What do you think love is?”
The unrecognizable woman leaned forward, lighting up with a smile. Now Mario recognized her. She was the older woman on the far opposite end of his street who walked her dog in a stroller. He always scoffed to himself at this. Why on earth would someone walk their dog in a stroller?
“It’s the one you want to share something with first,” she said.
The young girl laughed. “What?”
“What I mean is, when you see or experience something new or exciting, who’s the first person you want to share it with? That person, that’s the person you love. That first person you think of. That’s what love is.”
They all laughed. “What do you think?”
Mario didn’t realize they were asking him until the male roommate turned to Mario.
“Hey,” the roommate said, “They’re asking what you think love is.”
“Oh, me?” Mario heard it all, but was pretending not to be seen. And come to think of it, he didn’t have a first person whom he thought of when he experienced something cool. Rose didn’t come to mind because these days when he shared anything with her, she was aloof at best. Maybe he shared things with Gail first. She was his direct teammate and together they were a pair of gossips. Gail was also let go. She and Mario were texting all that morning, commiserating the company’s ridiculous decision.
“Yeah,” the girl in the Core Couple asked, “What do you think love is?”
Mario smiled at them looking for a witty response.
“I think…love is…a figment of our imaginations.”
“Whoa!” the Core Couple man said. “Deep!”
The bathers laughed and Mario joined them, but he wasn’t trying to be funny. He really meant it. Everything those days was made up. It was all imagined. The difficulty was, he didn’t know whose imagination it was coming from. Humans or the machines?
“You’re on our circle,” the Core Couple man said. “I’m Pete. This is Lissette.”
“Mario.”
“And that’s Loren and Teresa.”
After the hellos, the atmosphere relaxed, Mario no longer felt invisible. Something brushed against his foot. He looked up at Loren and Teresa. They both smiled. Before the conversation continued, the gate to the pool deck opened and three other people entered and disrobed. It was another young man and two young women. They knew the Core Couple and Loren and Teresa.
“And here comes the rest of the crew!” Pete said.
Within moments, hugs and kisses and high fives went around amongst the now crowded tub. Mario already lost track of the others’ names, yet he suddenly knew that wasn’t as important as the level of intimacy amongst this group. It was true, he thought, they were all together. He knew where this was heading.
Soon after, the bathers began sipping hard seltzer from aluminum cans, passing around vape pens, and casually hanging off each other. Even Loren and Teresa. Pete passed Mario a seltzer. He declined, until Loren hit his knee against Mario’s underwater and said, “Come on, we won’t bite,” followed by Teresa, who said, “Hard,” after which Mario felt fingers—hers?—graze his thigh.
In college, Mario’s friends called him Blackout. In their heyday, Mario was known to wake up on a couch in the Student Union building, in the backseat of a car, in someone’s closet. The faster he drank, the sooner it came. Tonight, however, he knew one White Claw couldn’t erase his memory, but how he got from the hot tub back to the Pete and Lisette’s place was indeed a blur. Perhaps it was all the flirty talk and the brushing up of limbs against bodies and the second-hand smoke and how it all felt so exhilarating and natural that he would accept their offer to continue the party so close to home.
At one point, perhaps by his third White Claw, he woke his cell phone. No messages. 9:38 p.m. It seemed early. Rose was likely reading to the girls by now, plus, Mario was only a few driveways down from his home. It wasn’t like he was out at a bar, yet, he decided to put his phone on airplane mode. He rarely did that, and when he did, life surged through him, a little attempt at reclaiming what he’d lost so long ago.
“Mario, right?” Teresa had sidled up to him. Hip-hop filled the living area mixing with the chaos of a muted animated show on the plasma screen. “It’s insane we literally share the same street but we don’t know each other.” She exhaled after puffing her vape pen. “Are you…Mexican?” she went on. Loren had moved over to them.
“Yes, well, Mexican-American.”
“Well, Lorenzo here is from Spain.” Teresa inhaled again, then offered him her vape.
“Oh, no thank you, I—I don’t smoke,” Mario said, which was a lie. He had a sizable stash of buds and joints in the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. “I mean, I don’t vape. Spain, really?”
“Si,” Loren said. “So, then you smoke?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“But what?” Teresa said. “Mario, you need to relax, what’s bugging you? Us?”
“No, I—”
“Come.” Loren motioned Mario up the stairs off the kitchen. Teresa followed. Maybe the alcohol was kicking in, but time moved a bit faster, and soon Mario was puffing a pipe packed with marijuana from Loren, then passing it to Teresa. She coughed after her toke and Loren patted her back. She passed it back to him and gave him a little peck on the cheek.
“That’s how they do it in Spain, right, Lorenzo?” Teresa laughed.
“That’s right,” Loren passed the pipe to Mario and leaned forward to offer a peck to Mario’s cheek. Mario recoiled at first, then let the young man’s cheek touch his, after which Mario pulled from the pipe, then, handed it to Teresa, whereupon she leaned forward offering her cheek. Mario hesitated, then reciprocated, and just as soon his lips went to her cheek, she turned to face him, their lips scraping awkwardly.
Teresa laughed and set the pipe down. “See, I told you we wouldn’t bite!”
Loren smiled and laughed, nodding his head, and planted his hand on the back of Mario’s robe, just above his swim trunks. The young man patted Mario there and let his hand drift downward just a bit.
“Oh, wow, I need to get home,” Mario said, checking his phone.
“So soon?” Teresa pouted. She reminded him of Martha Stewart, whom he actually had a low-key crush on.
“No te vayas, tío,” Loren said, puffing on the pipe.
“I have to get up—and then he remembered he was out of work.
“Maybe one more,” he said pointing to the bedroom door, waking his phone, and switching it off airplane mode.
“Another drink?” Teresa said, pointing to her can of White Claw.
“But before that—” Loren said, passing the pipe back to Mario, mocking him with puckered lips.
“Ha, ha… tío,” Mario said, accepting the pipe and faking a puff.
Back downstairs, the ambiance had shifted. The pairs had moved in on each other. The lights were lower. Netflix was playing but no one was watching amidst the fondling.
Pete stood up to meet the three.
“Another drink,” he said, leading them to the fridge.
“Actually, I just need some water,” Mario said.
“Okay, okay,” Pete shrugged. “You two didn’t scare him, did you?”
Teresa draped her arm around Loren’s neck. “Nah, he’s tired. Has to put the kids to bed.” She winked.
Mario gulped his water. “Thank you, thank you,” he said. “How often do you—” Mario waved his hand around the room.
“Netflix and chill?” Pete said. “Almost every night. Come over anytime. Come on, guys.”
Pete took Teresa’s hand, and she took Loren’s.
“We’ll be waiting,” Teresa said, following Pete to the couch. On the coffee table sat more pipes and buds.
Loren cocked his chin at Mario.
“See you later, tío.”
“Okay, goodnight, you guys,” Mario said.
Teresa blew him a kiss.
Outside their door, under the night sky, his phone showed one text.
Goodnight
No emojis. No punctuation. Rose was furious.
The smell woke him the next morning. In the downstairs half bath, where they were toilet training the kitten, awaited a generous pile of diarrhea. This was day four of the cat’s digestive woes. They had changed the food; however the food was only part of this cat’s stress. Becca and Bella tormented it with their squeals of delight and how they tried to capture it anytime of day, plus, it was a rescue and had been neglected, so it had no desire to be loved. It only knew tough love, which meant hiding under the couch twenty-three out of the twenty-four hours of the day.
Rose had thought it would help the girls unglue themselves from their screens. It did not. If anything it had awakened Mario’s dormant allergies and had turned him into the Head of Animal Husbandry. And, cleaning the rings of the cat toilet training contraption was nothing like scooping up clumps from a litter box. It meant scraping up the feces with a gloved hand and flushing them down the toilet, then washing the rings with a hose outside and bleaching them, then Lysol-ing the whole bathroom to eradicate the smell. And it meant sweeping up all the litter the cat had kicked up in the process. Thank god Mario didn’t have to log in this morning because he was not in the mood.
Gail pinged him after he’d spent a good half hour on clean up.
Day 1 of “No Work Period” (sad face emoji)
Right?!, he replied, followed by, but not missing District Check In (laughing with tears emoji)
Mario parked himself in his usual corner of the galley kitchen setting out the cereal bowls, slicing bagels for the toaster, and whisking eggs. Why he kept making eggs every morning he didn’t know. The girls only pushed them around the plate once they found out what they really were. Becca was fine with it until Bella continually reminded her it was an unborn baby chick that came from a bird butt. He’d set out the food and they’d eat and he’d shuttle them off to school and when he’d come home, Rose would still be asleep. She’d sometimes sleep until 10:45. They used to have midday sex, which was a good thing, and then that faded when the company started scheduling more calls to prepare for Transformation, which was around the time she enrolled in telepathy.
Back home after drop off, Mario sorted through the mail and papers on the “Catch-all counter” and found a few worksheets.
Cues as Clues: Verbal & Non-Verbal
Tapping In, Tapping Around
Perception is Reality
Interpretation vs. Translation
Eyes Don’t Lie
Rose’s notes showed she was into this thing, the page filled with sentences and bullet points and arrows. Then, not so into it, what with all the doodles. And then, a name. Phillip. It was written in a few places in different script. Cursive. Block letters. Mario didn’t need to telepathy to decipher that she was in love with someone named Phillip. He used his own over-thinking brain for that.
They had never cheated on each other. At least they’d never admitted if they had. She travelled a lot for her party planning, which was only day trips for weddings and communions and bar mitzvahs, but she had lots of these short-term intense relationships with brides and grooms-to-be, fathers and mothers, and bachelors and bachelorettes. She’d made and stayed friends with many of them; had even become part of their lives.
He went to three-day trade shows and rah-rah sales meetings in Vegas and Phoenix. He had overnights in LA and San Francisco and Palm Springs. He had these “client-friends” pretty much all over the place. Women, men, business leaders, financial decision makers, mid-levels, and peons all of whom he took to dinners and bars and sky boxes, and who embraced him like their benefactor brother—the guy with a big heart and a corporate AmEx. And yeah, a lot of the ladies charmed him, would try to lace their fingers into his, nuzzle their noses into his neck. Some of the guys even doing what Loren did last night: testing the waters to see if maybe, just maybe.
Rose came downstairs dressed and ready, eyes a bit sunken.
“Morning,” she said, looking down for her shoes.
“Morning,” he said. “Coffee?”
“No. Gotta run.”
“Class?”
“No. Waxing,” she said, tying her shoes. “It’s in the calendar.”
She’d been getting waxed on the regular now for about a month.
“I can get the girls,” he said.
“That’d be great,” she said.
She grabbed her keys and that moment came, where they had to decide: come in for a hug or kiss or something. Anything?
And a miss. She was in a hurry. He was not.
“Let me know if you want to get lunch,” he said.
“Umm, okay.” The okay a surrogate for no. “Oh, thanks for cleaning the litter. Sorry I didn’t get to that,” Rose said.
“Yeah, it was more messed up this morning.”
Then, Rose was off. The house felt eerily silent again.
He went back to her class papers, then to the internet to research the school. Under “About Us,” the link to the staff only showed a list of names, no pictures. P. Carter was one of them.
Then, from under the couch emerged little Jasper, the rescued American Short Hair waiting for absolute calm to make his daily appearance. He was a cute little thing. A mostly orangish coat with hints of brown stripes, a kind of pitiful mini tiger. Mario smiled at him, called and psp-psp-psp’d to him as the cat walked by. Mario thought Jasper was on his way to the bowl to eat his morning meal, however it was headed for the half bath where Mario had not replaced the rings over the toilet, nor the litter. Jasper went in, but found the space unacceptable, so he turned back toward the living area, then lifted his backside to a squatted position and shat with great emphasis on the blue paisley rug.
“Fuck me,” Mario said.
Mario wasn’t a gym rat by any stretch, but now he had a routine, and was getting friendly with some of the regulars at the Ariana Clubhouse Gym, mostly the older men who came early in the morning hacking their coughs on the machines. Mario wondered what the other early birds had going on in their lives, especially the ladies who used the elliptical machines on the highest settings, their bodies moving aggressively slow. Or the young men who pumped in small quick movements with very little weight. Was it doing anything at all?
He ran his fob over the sensor to unlock the door when he saw Pete and Lisette inside. Even when they worked out they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Mario thought to turn around right there, and then he reminded himself that nothing happened last night—there was no reason to be ashamed. He was making new friends.
“Mario!” Pete called to him. “Hey!”
“Hey, you two, what’s going on? Thanks for having me over last night.”
“Definitely,” Pete said, going back to a machine.
Lisette stood up from the mat she was on and smiled at Mario.
Mario stretched near them, trying not to look at Lissette’s midriff.
“So, what do you do?” Pete said, pulling down on the lat machine. Mario looked up from his downward dog.
“I’m…in between jobs.” He sprung to his feet. “Mine was actually recently eliminated.”
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry man,” Pete said.
“AI.” Mario swung his arms, hugging himself.
“Oh,” Pete said. “Yeah.”
“And you?” Mario said. “What do you do?”
“AI.” Pete finished another set.
“You’re kidding me,” Mario’s shoulders slumped.
“No, seriously. I’m a product developer,” Pete said.
“So am I,” Lissette smiled, then bent forward to touch her toes. Mario averted his eyes.
He had a thousand questions. What was the actual work? How long had they been doing that? Were they hiring? And yet, his mind went to how much fun they were having. How they had created some kind of life that involved tending to their carnal needs first, and how that was probably the best thing you could do for yourself. Self first, work last.
“I’m—wow, you’ll have to tell me more about it. I’m so curious.”
“Come over anytime,” Lissette said. “We’re watching movies again tomorrow night.”
“Yeah, come by. Oh, and I think Teresa likes you,” Pete said.
“Oh wow, I’m flattered. But, I’m married. With kids.”
“Yeah, we’ve seen you around,” Pete said. “What’s your wife’s name?”
“Rose.”
Pete and Lissette looked at other, holding in laughs.
“What?” Mario said.
“Nothing, nothing.” Pete stifled his giggles.
“It’s just—we have this theory,” Lissette said, “that women named after flowers are crazy.
“Lily, Daisy, Violet,” Pete said.
“He dated a Zinnia once,” Lissette laughed.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—look, I don’t even know your wife. Sorry,” Pete said.
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s funny.” Mario thought for a moment. Was Rose crazy?
“Hey, we were just finishing up here,” Pete said. “And about coming over and stuff, we just hang out, you know. We’re relaxed people. We don’t judge. And I didn’t meant to embarrass you about Teresa. She’s a really nice lady.”
“Yeah,” Lissette said. “When you come over, you just leave your worries at the door.”
“You’re really cool people,” Mario said.
“Come over and we’ll talk AI. There’s a lot going on with it. Oh, and sorry about your job.”
“Thanks. It’s okay,” Mario said. “What time?”
“Late thirty.” Pete winked.
Mario’s prior mornings began with a check of his calendar to remind him what was ahead; whether he needed to shower or shave, put on a shirt, or stay off camera. When he had to leave the house to see customers in person, which came less and less leading up to his termination—a sign he had ignored to his peril—he relished in the preparation. There was a low-grade thrill in booking a Hilton, packing an overnight bag, and driving ninety to a two-hundred miles away. Once, when he had to go to Bakersfield for a meeting, he bought a pack of Marlboros for old-time’s sake and smoked only one when he arrived, then threw the pack away in disgust.
But now it was the family calendar only, which was filled with little blocks of time fixed on the routines of their lives. Drop off and pick up times, doctor appointments, dental check-ups, beauty treatments, car maintenance, parties, and play dates. The AI would tell you when it was time to leave, and even if you weren’t going there, it would remember you went there last week and give you a little nudge on the same day. Previously, he would add his blocks of work time so Rose knew when and where he was. He laughed a bit thinking she didn’t need to know that anymore with her telepathy and the fact that he didn’t have a job.
Today, she was out all day with several meetings preparing for a wedding. Tonight, she had Telepathy, plus, Thursdays were Daddy-Daughter Date Nights, or 3DN, they called it. Bella dispensed her usual dramatics at drop off—the kid hadn’t quite recovered from two years of quarantine once she realized that you didn’t have to actually leave the house for anything. Pick up was uneventful except for the girls’ desire to return home immediately to get back to their screens. Mario was past the point of caring about this. Rose had never seemed to care in the first place. She called the tablets a modern pacifier, and although he hated them, Mario couldn’t disagree.
They’d fallen into a Chuck E. Cheese rut for 3DN, but Mario obliged. It was their haven before the pandemic, and had risen back to popularity in recent months, now that Rose let them touch the games again with infections down to a minimum. They only had a year at best of going to that place as the girls would soon age out of themed restaurants.
He texted Rose: Do you want to meet us at CEC after your class?
Rose was also the Queen of Leaving Mario on Read. Her usual refrain several hours later: I just saw this.
Once past the turnstile, the smell of Parmesan on the nose, Mario wanted to puke.
“What do you girls want?” he said
“Cheese,” they said.
He didn’t need to ask.
“Here, let’s go get your cards filled,” he said.
And they were off. He considered a beer but stuck with Coke. Scanning his phone, a wave of anxiety hit him. She was there learning to read minds with him. Someone named Phillip. Her location was on. Indeed she was there. And it was close, not one exit away from where they were. He could go, check in on them.
But how? They could leave early, swing by the neighborhood. He could take the girls home, ask Toni a few doors down to watch them. But that was only in emergencies. Or, he could leave them. They’d probably never notice. And then, he found his answer. Their neighbors from the other side of the complex, the Timkins. He had texted Randy earlier, told him they were going there, would they like to join. Like a miracle, they actually showed up. Mario waved at them, already planning out the excuse in his head. He and Randy were close. They drank beer together at the hot tub from time to time. The Timkins would for sure watch the girls. Mario would only need to run to the pharmacy to get some Pepto, that was it.
“Oh absolutely,” Darcy said. “We’ll keep an eye.”
“Girls,” Mario put a hand on Becca and Bella’s shoulders. “Daddy’s stomach is messed up. I need to run to the CVS. It’ll take me only about 15 minutes. Just right over there. To get some Pepto. Ms. Darcy and Mr. Randy are going to keep an eye on you.” He rubbed his belly.
“I wanna come,” Becca said.
“Oh, I can watch Bella if Becca goes.” Darcy nodded.
“Oh, no honey, just stay here with Ms. Darcy. It’s kind of an emergency,” Mario said.
“Come on, honey, let’s go play with Seth and Ben.” Darcy guided Becca away, mouthed, go ahead, to Mario. Thank you he mouthed back.
“Oh, their pizza’s coming out soon. Can you grab it?”
Thumbs up.
Rose’s car was not there, and her location finder was now off. He drove around the back of the building. Nothing. His calendar widget still showed “Rose: Telepathy. 2376 India Way.” Did they get out early? He had heard somewhere that it only took twenty minutes to have an affair.
Back at Chuck E. Cheese, the kids were playing well. Darcy and Randy were drinking a beer with Rose. She had apparently decided to join them.
“You okay?” she said. “Did you get some Pepto?”
“Oh, yeah, stomach just felt awful,” Mario said.
“It’s this food,” Darcy said, taking a bite of pizza.
“Yeah, but he didn’t have any!” Rose said.
“How do you know?” Mario shot her a look.
“The girls told me.”
“Oh.” Mario sat.
“So, this telepathy class?” Darcy drained her beer. “I’m curious about it.”
“I hear it’s going to be one the skills AI can’t do,” Randy said.
“I doubt that,” Mario said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
Rose shot back. “Well, anyway, it’s fun and interesting. And I kind of think I’m opening my third eye.”
“Do you think there will be third eye doctors?” Mario asked Randy.
“Hilarious, but I have no idea. I only do teeth.”
“I should have picked a field like dentistry,” Mario said
“He just lost his job.” Rose leaned in.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Darcy said.
Randy reached over, patted Mario on the shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Mario said. “It was time. I need to reinvent.”
“So, what’s next?” Randy said.
“I don’t.” Mario said, turning to Rose. “You can see the future, can’t you?”
Darcy went for her drink, but it was empty.
“Kids!” Randy shouted toward the arcade, none of either couples’ offspring insight. “Time to go.”
Back home, the Cold War continued.
“Are you on kids tonight?” Mario said, then immediately corrected with, “I mean, I’m going to get them to bed right now. I’d like to go to the hot tub again. Is that okay?”
“You don’t have to ask me,” she said. “You can do what you want.”
“Are you okay?”
“Am I okay? Um, that comment at Chuck E. Cheese. It was kind of rude.”
“About what?
“About how I can read the future?
“It was a joke.”
“It didn’t feel like a joke,” she said. “It was how you said it.”
“Look, please don’t use your new tricks you’re learning or whatever. It was just a joke.”
“New tricks?”
“You’re trying to read my mind, aren’t you?” Mario said.
“No. I’m not. That’s not how it works.”
Silence. He felt looked into, not looked at.
“You know, you may want to avoid the hot tub,” she said. “Especially if you had diarrhea. There’s a sign there that says if you’ve had active diarrhea, you shouldn’t get in.”
“I didn’t have diarrhea.”
“The Pepto?” Rose said.
“Oh, it was gas. Bloating. I haven’t been digesting well.”
“Dad! Can I have a bath?” Bella shouted from upstairs.
“No, it’s too late,” he said.
“They need a bath. Especially after Chuck E. Cheese,” Rose said
Mario froze. He was about to ask her about her telepathy instructor. But now was not the time. The Quadruple and friends were meeting soon. He’d have to get over there.
“Okay,” he said. “Start the water.”
After the girls were bathed, brushed, combed and lulled with stories, Mario slipped out.
Pete was wearing a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned. Lissette was in a grass skirt with shells over her breasts.
“I didn’t know it was Hawaiian night,” Mario said.
“Neither did we,” Pete said. “Come in. We just do stupid shit like this every now and then.”
“Mario!” Teresa and Loren shouted from the couch. They stood to greet him with European cheek kisses, he in a floral print shirt and shorts, Teresa in her own skirt and tube top. He gave them their kisses and a brief, wild possibility wedged into his thoughts.
“You look like you need a drink,” Teresa said.
“And a smoke,” Loren said.
“Where’s the rest of the crew?” Mario said.
“On the way,” Lissette said, topping off cups with rum.
Pete put a cup in Mario’s hand. “Here,” he said, “Catch up.”
Rum and Mario did not mix well. It made his throat itch, but tonight, he thought nothing of it. The liquor went down easy and warmed his insides. The vapes came around, and on the TV was a reality singles show in a faraway paradise, where the main feature was the skin of gorgeous bodies. With the sound low, drown out by an ambient electronic beat Pete had selected from his playlists, everything went glazy, Mario himself swimming in a forbidden ether. He found himself comfortably wedged between Teresa and a new party guest, a young lady whose name he’d quickly misplaced. Loren sat at Mario’s feet, watching the show, resting his back on Mario’s legs.
When the clothes started to come off, Mario knew it was too late. He’d already made up his mind before he came, like the song said, the rap jam he listened to in the gym to feel dangerous and sexy. WAP, WAP, WAP, Megan Thee Stallion rapped as he grunted with dumbbells.
“Just relax,” Teresa said. “It’s best to just keep your eyes closed until you’re ready to open them.”
Hands against skin, reaching all over, up, under, around, some parts firm, other parts soft, moisture of sweat and saliva, fluids. It built around him like a bubble of heat and sin, it grew and thickened viscous on his flesh the more he let go, the more he let himself get lost in the experience. There were no borders, no customs, nothing to declare. It went on forever and also lasted only moments. He didn’t remember what touched what or what went where. It was like those times he had blacked out, yet in place of a hangover was a distinct electricity coursing his skin under the sweat and essences of their bodies, like sweet and pungent chemical traces, leaving an indelible mark on his psyche.
After, he skipped the cigarettes. He jumped in the shower with Teresa and Loren. He’d never been that close to two people naked at the same time. Maybe in college in the dorm showers, but it was always such a hurried thing. Mario had never been this relaxed in his entire life
“I have to ask,” he said. “Why do you stroll your dog around like that?”
Soaping herself, her back toward him, Teresa turned to face him.
“He has arthritis, you asshole.”
Loren gave Mario a look of consolation, tilted his head for Mario to get out of the shower.
“Sorry,” Mario said, and this moment of clarity zapped him out of his ecstatic haze. He quickly dried off, dressed, and found his phone downstairs where he had left if before the orgy. Six texts. Two missed calls.
Bella threw up. Where did you put that Pepto?
Hello, are you still at hot tub?
When are you coming home?
Where are you?
Are you at a neighbor’s house????
???
“Holy fuck,” he said. “I have to go.”
“Bye,” Loren said.
“I’m sorry. About that comment,” Mario said to Teresa.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Everything okay.”
“Ah, no,” Mario said.
“Location finder on?” Teresa stepped out of the shower.
“What? Yes. How did you know?”
“You’re a terrible liar,” she said, then blew him a kiss.
Outside, dressed but hair still damp, he rushed home. Rose intercepted him halfway under a street lamp.
“Where in the hell were you? Who’s place did you just come from? Are you wet?”
“I was at the hot tub. I stopped by these neighbors’ place after. They were at the hot tub, too. Is Bella okay?”
“What? Neighbors? She’s fine. I put her back to bed,” Rose said.
“Sorry. I just got distracted.”
They walked back to their house. Rose stayed silent, then began prognosticating.
“You weren’t at the hot tub. And you never went to CVS.”
“Here you go again,” he said. “Trying to read my mind.”
“No. I checked your location. I’ve seen those kids down there. That young, sexy couple. I know what they’re up to. You don’t need telepathy to know they’re swingers. And, I checked the bank. No CVS purchases. I had a hunch.”
“I left Chuck E. Cheese to go see where you were. Your location was off.”
“You were spying on me?” Rose said.
“Who the fuck is Phillip?” Mario said.
Rose stopped walking. They stood in the driveway, the front door ajar. She pursed her lips.
“I saw your notes, saw the name scribbled all over. Are you in love with your instructor or something?”
“Let’s go inside to talk about this,” she said.
“Are you fucking him?” he said.
“Let’s go inside,” she pointed. The door moved just slightly.
“Tell me.” Mario demanded.
“No.” She crossed her arms. Huffed. “Phillip…is a friend.”
“What kind of friend?”
She pulled out her phone, tapped the screen. Blue light bathed her face. She turned the screen toward Mario. A handsome man’s face stared back, waiting for input. His idle face, so very humanlike, perked up. His expression changed.
“Rose?” the man’s voice said. “Is that you, babe?”
Rose turned the phone back to herself, tried to silence it.
“Just a minute,” she said to the screen.
“Who the fuck is that? Is that…a bot?”
“It’s a friend. I told you,” she said.
“You’re talking to a fucking robot.”
Their front door opened more. A silhouette appeared, a small animal. A cat. Jasper sauntered outside. He stepped gingerly at first, sniffing the lilies and hyacinths in the flower bed with curiosity.
“Jasper, no!” Rose shouted, trying to approach the cat.
Mario ran toward Jasper, but it darted the opposite way.
“Don’t scare it!” Rose said.
Just then, Jasper turned in the other direction. Mario was within reach. He lunged, but fell to his knees. Jasper took off into a sprint, bounding toward a hedge. They both followed it trying to keep up with it, but after a while, the cat was gone. They stopped running. Rose leaned forward, hands resting on her knees to catch her breath. Mario paced in a small circle, hands on top of his head.
“Fuck,” he said.
Teresa, still freshly showered, walked by, nodded hello.
“Everything okay?” she said.
“Yeah. No. Hi,” Rose said. “Our cat just go out.”
“Oh no.” Teresa covered her mouth. “What’s he look like?”
“Like a little tiger,” Mario said.
Teresa tutted. “I’ll keep an eye out for him. When I walk my dog.”
“Thank you.” Rose said eyeing Teresa as she walked off. “Goodnight.”
Mario and Rose turned back to head home, but she stopped and faced him, reached for his head, felt his hair. She rubbed some of his wet strands in her fingers, her eyes boring into his with deep inquiry. He glanced at her hand, still clutching her phone. Phillip called to her. She looked down at it, shoved the phone in her pocket. She faced Mario. He felt something he hadn’t felt from her but maybe a few times in his life. One was at the altar, when they had exchanged vows. The other times were when they shared exhausted looks at the births of their girls. This look was like those, but different. It was raw and intense and all-knowing, but what came back to him revealed something else entirely. They didn’t need to say anything else to each other. They both knew. They both knew they were well past the beginning of the end.
This Kind of Man
From THIS KIND OF MAN
Sean Murphy
The ground beef has been mixed with two eggs, salted, and shaped. My hands thoroughly scrubbed with soap and water, I’m ready for action. Next step is going to the grocery store for the rest of the ingredients.
What kind of man does this?
A man with a lot of time to kill.
My wife was like most women. She would ensure she had everything she needed before preparing a meal. But even before our second child was born, she’d already cooked enough dinners to lose all fondness for the routine. Food became another chore—fuel which fed a family; another task to accomplish with as little effort as possible. The more time it required meant less time to do anything else, and something else always needed to be done. The bathrooms wouldn’t clean themselves; the dishes wouldn’t put themselves away; the carpets wouldn’t miraculously get vacuumed.
If I didn’t comprehend all this then, I do now.
I could and, according to my daughter, should, just hire a cleaning service. It’s only me, though, and the house remains pretty manageable, at least compared to the days when four of us were living in it. I tell her I can handle things; that this isn’t about the money. And it isn’t. The truth is, I have too much of what my wife always wanted more of: time.
My wife considered it an unforgivable lapse of discipline if she had to make separate trips to the store in a single week. Her shopping lists were legendary, almost scientific equations, precise and unerring. Years of trial and error led to an exact awareness of how much milk, bread, toilet paper, and detergent our family used. We seldom had extra supplies but never seemed to run out of anything. I can’t recall ever needing a razor, or a Q-tip, or a tissue. There’s a sort of method there anyone might emulate. Not especially organized when we first got married, my wife became an expert at efficiency. Housewives from our generation learned how to balance budgets and resources in ways that should embarrass the clowns in today’s government.
When my wife got sick, I learned how to cook. I hated it. Prepared food or frozen meals were fine with me. Maybe I was busy doing other things (by that point I was doing everything), or simply took no pleasure in eating. It’s difficult to enjoy familiar flavors when you live with someone who can hardly recall what they taste like. When they’ve reached the point where all the machinery keeping them alive has turned them into a machine. My wife once told me she envied my morning bowel movements, something I never imagined hearing one person say to another.
I was a terrible cook, like most men from my generation. It should have been easier, following a formula for consistent results. Nevertheless, it took longer than I’d like to acknowledge, becoming comfortable in my own kitchen. Then again, I couldn’t have become an accountant the same day I learned to add and subtract. Anything done with some degree of competence involves practice, and a great deal of failure.
I’m not sure if I enjoy cooking now so much as I appreciate overseeing a process from start to finish. My son makes a good living, but he’d save a lot more if he didn’t eat out or order-in for every meal. In fairness, I would have done the same if I’d never settled down.
I’d explain this to him if we still spoke, but he’ll figure it out, eventually.
Or maybe he won’t have to. We shouldn’t wish for our children to be exactly like us, especially when it entails making the same mistakes.
What kind of man doesn’t speak to his son?
A man whose son won’t speak to him.
I used to spend weeks with difficult clients, doing everything possible to convince them and still occasionally lose the account. When I cook, I know exactly what I need, the precise time, materials, and effort expected. If we were able to know what was expected of us, what we should expect, I reckon most people would be perfectly content.
My wife and I always joked about how I would die first. Which of my friends, I’d ask, will be the one who flirts with you? Which ones would you consider going on a date with? Would you ever remarry? What on earth would you do with all the extra time? I never admitted it, but it was that last question that caused me the most distress. That was the one I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to.
What kind of man worries his wife will be at peace when he’s gone?
Any man who is honest, I say.
Women from my generation are capable of losing sleep over one simple question: How will my husband manage, living alone? Men worry that, after so much time spent serving and fretting over us, our wives would relish an autonomy they’re unaccustomed to. Perhaps even regret the wasted years, the missed opportunities, etc.
Thank God for religion. Without its mechanisms of control, our hospitals would become retirement homes for chronic alcoholics. Our streets would be overrun with once highly functioning husbands who can’t do anything other than work, sleep, eat, and sometimes screw. It’s safe to say, if not for religion—and the self-regulating shame it imparts—my own mother would have been there too, once I was out of the picture. Religion, money, and viable options: Without the first and with either of the following two, how many wives would stick it out?
I know there must have been times my wife saw greener grass on the other side of our marriage, and I can’t blame her too much. However, if she had followed through, she wouldn’t have had a partner by her side when for better turned to worse.
Or maybe she would have. Maybe she would never have gotten cancer at all. We always figured I’d be the first to go.
Losing your wife tends to complicate your feelings about the afterlife. If it’s there, she’s there, and someday, God willing, I’ll be there, too.
But so will everyone else. That means God—not to mention countless strangers—will know everything. They’ll have seen all the fights, the times I wouldn’t speak to her, all the lies (mostly small ones), that one time at the Christmas party that I was too drunk to remember exactly what happened anyway, etc. Her parents will have seen the way their grandson and son-in-law squared off in the garage, just after their daughter’s funeral; the day my son finally felt he had the right to pop off about how miserable I made his mother, as if he was the one wiping stains off the bathroom floor, or double-washing sheets soaked with sweat and puke, or keeping track of the meds, or driving to another appointment, or sitting alone in the waiting room bracing for bad news— it’s always bad news no matter what you think you’re prepared to hear.
What kind of man would trade places with his dying wife?
Well, it’s complicated.
No sane person would want to suffer like that. It’s difficult enough dealing with disease from a mostly safe distance. Still, once it became obvious how our story was going to end, I won’t say I didn’t envy her a little.
We don’t get to see our own funerals. We never know what everyone will say, what they really think of us. And unless there’s some type of eternity, we never will. Unless we die first, unless we have the type of death that attracts a crowd. You expect sympathy, but it’s the ones who show up that tell you everything you need to know. I couldn’t believe the people who came to say goodbye, not just the viewings, but those last few days. People we hadn’t seen in years, people I had frankly forgotten about, people I know would never have come to see me.
Who will come to see me? I can count on my daughter, even though she lives in a separate time zone. I don’t think my son will even be there to see me buried, but he’ll have to live with that, just like I did, not attending my father’s funeral. I’m pretty much at peace with it.
Of course, I was relieved so many people showed up for my wife. I know it meant a great deal to her. It provided proof she was loved, that her life mattered. Most of us won’t get that same opportunity. And if we do, we might not like what we discover.
Even when her bones hurt, she worried about me. My bones hurt when I breathe, she said. And she still told me she worried about me. Mostly, she reminded me everything would be okay, that I deserved a break after this ordeal, that I’d enjoy my space, that we’d never have to fight over the remote control anymore, that kind of crap. But she really did worry. Her concern was the one thing, besides her pain, that I remember most clearly about those last weeks.
Although I saw her give birth, and breastfeed, and get up in the night with sick kids, and make bag lunches, and wash dirty underwear, and maintain every important relationship, and send out birthday cards to relatives, and put everyone she loved before herself, even as she lay dying, it wasn’t until then that I finally understood the real difference between husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, men and women.
What kind of man doesn’t have some regrets?
A man who has tried his best, whatever that means.
A man who owns what he’s done, whatever that is. I know I was there when it mattered most, and my wife said it meant everything. But did that make up for all the other things? The wasted opportunities, the forgotten slights, the countless times I could have told her something sweet, the times I made her cry, the days and nights I wasn’t there?
The only promise I ever cared about keeping was the one I made to myself when I swore I wouldn’t be like my old man.
I saw him do things, and say things, and mostly not say things, but I don’t think he ever entertained a moment of doubt. He checked all the boxes men of his time were supposed to: When he wasn’t working, he was sleeping, or in church, or building something, or repairing something else. He was the only man I’ve known who didn’t appear to have an imagination. I don’t think he ever envisioned anything other than what he expected to happen. I couldn’t forgive him for this, and now I’d give anything to experience what that feels like. Especially if there’s no afterlife. If it all ends, what’s the point of all this wasted thought? All this useless energy convincing ourselves that anything matters…
What kind of man will the neighbors, or paramedics, or whoever find, when someone finally finds him—as though he simply fell asleep on the same couch he’d slept on during so many forgettable TV shows, in the same suit he hadn’t worn since his wife’s funeral, an emptied bottle of pills he’d stolen from the hospice nurse and hidden away, without a note, or phone call, or farewell, a half-made meatloaf on the counter, some kind of signal or surrender?
A man who hopes he’s not around to ask or have to answer any further questions.
