Vox Inaudica

Rind
Literary
Magazine Issue 3
2
Rind Literary Magazine
Issue 3
May 2013
rindliterarymagazine.com
All Works © Respective Authors, 2013
Original Cover Art By: Myran Mahroo
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Editor in Chief:
Owen Torres
Fiction Editors:
Johnathan Etchart
Jenny Lin
Melinda Smith
Shaymaa Mahmoud
Nonfiction Editors:
Collette Curran
Stephen Williams
William Ellars
Anastasia Zamora
Webmaster:
Omar Masri
Blog Manager:
Dylan Gascon
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Contents
Acknowledgements 5
Contributors 72
Fiction:
Can You Hear Me Now?/Kristi Peterson Schoonover 6

A Thump Over the Head with Sampson’s Jawbone/
Daniel Davis 27
Body/Anne Britting Oleson 29
The Obituary/Marian Brooks 32
Five Fatal Diseases/Allen Kopp 34
Minotaure/Jenean McBrearty 43
Time Remaining/Ronald Friedman 62
Nonfiction:
Talk/Jeffrey Graessley 40
Cool 55:
Moonshine/Marian Brooks 39

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Acknowledgements
Thank you to all of our contributors, past and present, for helping us get this
thing moving. Thank you to the creative writing faculty of the University of
California-Riverside, Mount San Antonio College, Rio Hondo College and Riverside
Community College for your continued support of this magazine.
Rind is on the look out for original artwork and photography for our upcoming
issues. If you or someone you know might be interested in contributing, send us an
inquiry for more details.
Please support the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival; find them at
http://www.sgvlitfest.com.
MUSE Literary Journal at Riverside City College and Creepy Gnome Magazine
have gone to print! They are wonderful journals so run out, get them and start cracking
those spines. Check out Creepy Gnome at
http://creepygnomemagazine.wordpress.com/ or find them both on Facebook.
Rind is now on Duotrope! Please feel free to check out our listing. The socially
minded can find us on Facebook and Twitter. Regular updates on RLM and other fun
and interesting things can be found at our affiliated blog site:
http://www.thegrovebyrind.wordpress.com. If you would like to contribute to Rind, send
your manuscript to rindliterarymagazine@gmail.com.
Cheers!
–The Rind Staff
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Can You Hear Me Now? Kristi Peterson Schoonover
For the three hundred and seventy-eighth day in a row, Neal tried to ignore
the rapping at his mobile home door and focus on his request of God to bring his wife,
Teresa, back from the dead.
The only person who ever came to see him at all, let alone daily, was Angela, a
widow his age who’d bought the neighboring property some time recently. He’d been
polite—once he’d even served her coffee on his screened-in porch—but even if it was
the only contact he’d had since Teresa had passed, and he did find Angela pleasant, he
never looked forward to the intrusion.
Especially since she had a knack for interrupting his prayers.
Rap rap.
Every day he hoped that knock would be Teresa’s, the one she’d always use
when her arms were full: that Shave-and-a-Haircut-Two-Bits rhythm he had used at
her window all those years ago, when they were teenagers. Before they were married,
when she was still living with her parents.
Rap rap.
“Dammit.” He winced as he set his arthritic hands on the bed and worked his
decrepit knees. “Coming!”
He hobbled to the back door and opened it.
Angela’s coral lipstick and delft blue eyes blinked beneath a lemon-colored
sunhat. Today she harbored a lumpy paper sack. “Hi Neal! Haven’t you noticed your
trees are bearing fruit? There’s so many out there they’re falling to the ground. I
figured I’d pick them for you.” She held the bag out to him.
It was then he realized the bag was full of oranges—Teresa’s oranges—and
he took a step back.
“I could even make you fresh O.J. My granddaughter just bought me a juicer
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for my birthday, and I can’t possibly drink so much by myself. Do you like O.J.?”
He wanted to slam the door and run—okay, not run, limp quickly—back to
his room. Those were Teresa’s trees and he didn’t want anyone touching them. He’d
spent many an afternoon in the Florida room, watching Teresa on her step ladder,
picking the oranges, marveling at how she somehow looked as she had forty years ago.
Then she’d come in and juice them, and they’d drink, maybe add a little champagne,
and do what they’d done many times, though not as well.
“Neal?”
“You should have left them there.”
Angela’s mouth formed a small ‘o’, and her face flushed. “I’m sorry.” She
turned to go.
He realized he’d hurt her.
“Wait,” he said, instinctively reaching out, then catching himself and
withdrawing his arm. “I mean, uh—I was going to go out and get them, I just haven’t
gotten around to it. And uh, I can’t drink orange juice. It’s no good for my acid
stomach and it conflicts with my pills.”
She stopped and considered him; her expression cheered a little. “Well, if it’s no
good for you it’s no good for you. I wouldn’t want you to be tempted. My Charlie had
diabetes and those damn Snickers I let him have put him in his grave. I’ll just bring
these inside, then, I brought something else! Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream! That
shouldn’t bother your stomach at all.”
“Uh—” The woman had never been in his house before. No one had been in
his house since Teresa had died.
But she was already making her way up the three Astroturf-covered steps; she
stopped and looked around. “Oh, my, this is a nice place.” She moved down the hall
and quickly reached the living room; she had no trouble with mobility. “You could use
some lights in here, though. Well, aren’t these incredible!”
He followed the pungent scent of oranges in her wake. “Angela, I do appreciate
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your hospitality, but I’d prefer—” But when he reached her and saw what she was
pointing to, he stopped.
It was a shadow-box frame on the wall; in it were Teresa’s dried-orange slice
ornaments, which she’d made every year for Christmas gifts.
Neal had forgotten it was there.
Angela was touching the glass. “These are just exquisite.”
He couldn’t help it; he blushed with pride. “Teresa did those, and she made
wreaths with oranges and shells, too. I have boxes of them in the closet in our
bedroom.”
“Very good work, very very good work. You could sell those, you know, and
get a pretty penny for them. They’re sorta like ‘Christmas in Daytona Beach’ things.”
She patted his arm, shifted the bloated bag, and hurried away. By the time he’d
reached the kitchen, Angela had pulled the tub of Edy’s from her grocery bag. She
swept open his kitchen cabinets and drawers and pulled out bowls and spoons.
It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten off any of those dishes in a year. “You
might want to wash those—”
But she’d already wrenched the top off the Edy’s and plopped two large scoops
of pale green ice cream into each one. She set them on the table, sat down across from
him, and thrust her spoon into the scoop closest to her chest.
After a few bites, she eyed him. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
“Um, yeah.” He made a half-hearted motion for his spoon, knowing he couldn’t
put anything in his mouth without thanking the Lord first. He watched her; she was
busily mining for chocolate chips and didn’t seem to notice, at least for the moment.
Hastily, Neal closed his eyes, folded his hands, and said a silent prayer.
Her spoon clinked against her bowl. “Do you always say grace?”
Neal opened his eyes.
“I think it’s well-intentioned.” She took a bite of ice cream. “Oh, this is good
stuff, good stuff. Edy’s really is the kind I like best. My grandchildren won’t eat
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anything but Breyer’s, but that’s because my son’s an investment banker and he can
afford it. By the way, God can’t hear you that way.”
Neal frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Oh!” She laughed, and a tiny blob of ice cream shot out of her mouth and hit
the vinyl fruit-patterned tablecloth, which Neal noticed for the first time was looking a
little threadbare and faded. She put her hand in front of her mouth and talked around
her mouthful. “God can’t hear us because of all the pollution in the air.”
It was Neal’s turn to almost choke on his mouthful. “What?”
“Of course!” She licked her spoon. “That’s what my church says. Think about
it: all that pollution puts heavy layers in the air, and our little voices sound like mouse
squeaks to God.” She happily dove back into her ice cream.
Neal considered this. She could be right. After all, he was sure he’d prayed in
the past, long before the commercials with that crying Indian guy, and gotten results.
A light breeze blew through the screen on the kitchen windows, carrying the scent of
oranges with it, and he felt hopeful.
“In fact,” she continued, scraping her spoon around her now-empty bowl, “I
finally stopped messing around with those doom-and-gloomers at Our Lady and
caught up with the times. I go to the First Silver Lining Church of God on Dunlawton
Avenue, and they just make so much sense. They’ve built a special tower that rises
above all the pollution and broadcasts directly to God.” She got up from the table,
went over to the bag of oranges, took one out, and dug into the peel with her
fingernails.
Neal shifted in his seat to look at her. For the first time in what seemed like
forever, he smiled. “Really? It works?”
“Absolutely!”
Neal almost couldn’t control his excitement.
“Do you have something specific you’ve been trying to ask God?”
She blinked at him curiously as she split the naked orange in half. “Because,
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you know, it does cost a little money, but it’s worth it. I’ve never had a prayer not
answered.”
He was on a fixed income, and his social security was just enough to cover his
living expenses. He had his life savings, but he only dipped into it when something
happened, which he hated doing—he was still reeling from the $4230 he’d had to
spend last summer to replace the air conditioning unit. “How much?”
She pried a section of orange loose and popped it into her mouth. “Twentyfive dollars a word.”
Wow, Neal thought. He was already thinking about his prayers, and they were
rambling, sometimes quoting lines from the Bible, sometimes begging, sometimes
asking God to bring Teresa back three or four times in three or four different ways.
Well, he could keep it simple. He thought: Dear God, please find my wife Teresa in
heaven and send her back to me. That would cost him $375. More than he spent on
pills, doctor’s visits, food, and the electric bill combined. He edited, recalculated.
Please bring back Teresa. Neal. $125. Taking that out of savings would hurt, but it
wasn’t unreasonable. At what price came happiness, after all?
Angela put the nude orange on the counter next to the sink and went to the
table to retrieve her dirty bowl. “Are you done with this?” She asked of his dish.
He nodded.
She carried both bowls to the sink and ran the water, then put another slice of
orange in her mouth and began to empty the dish drainer—which, sadly, he realized,
hadn’t been emptied in a long time. She picked them up, examined them, made a face,
and then put them all into the sink and began to wash. He noticed how comfortable she
seemed, as if this were her turf. “It’s really quite brilliant, and if you can afford it at all
you really should consider coming to church with me and doing it. It really is results
guaranteed. I mean, I sat around and prayed and prayed and prayed—” she set a nowclean and rinsed pot in the dish drainer—“for my granddaughter to reach out to me and
nothing happened. Then I got smart and had it broadcast and she did, she sent me that
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juicer, and I only had to put that prayer up once and it happened.”
Neal felt as though the clouds had parted. He glanced over at the calendar on the
wall to see how many days he’d have to wait until the next Sunday came around, but
then he realized it was last year’s calendar. He looked at Angela, embarrassed. “Uh,
what day is it?”
She wiped her hands on a dishcloth. “It’s Saturday, dear. I’ll come pick you up
at eight tomorrow.”

---

“I hope you wrote down your prayer exactly as you want it.” Angela tucked her
white clutch under her arm and they crossed the parking lot of the First Silver Lining
Church of God. “I mean, you’ll have to fill out a special form, because the broadcaster
has to keep very accurate records of who asks what and all of that, but—”
Neal tuned her out; he was busy beholding the structure that would save him.
The church building was an all-glass A-frame sparkling in the sun. Behind it rose a
white brick tower with a beacon on top.
Angela was still talking. “They have a station where we can do all of that and
even in the middle of the service they stop and they have petition time. It’s usually
between the first and second hymns. Oh yeah, and they take checks and cash but no
credit cards.”
Angela reached for the door, but Neal interceded. He watched her cross the
threshold, her bright red patterned skirt swishing behind her.
The soaring atrium was crammed with foliage, and Neal was blasted by the
overpowering smell of chlorine and coconut: several palm trees huddled around a
waterfall and pool clear enough to see the round stones on the bottom. Birds chirped,
and when Neal looked up, he saw a white cockatiel perched on a branch. He felt more
peace than he had in a long time.
“Right over here!” Angela banked to the right of the oasis; when she noted
Neal’s lagging, she turned and motioned with her clutch purse, slapping it lightly
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against her thigh. “Come on, come on! They’re taking prayers before the service
today! Hurry!”
He hobbled faster despite the searing pain in his knees. They went to an oak
and glass stand-up desk—it reminded Neal of the stations in banks where the deposit
slips were kept—and he teetered as he struggled to pull out his wallet; it was fat with
the cash he’d taken from the hole in the back of his closet and the things of Teresa’s he
always kept with him: her driver’s license, membership cards, key to the locket that
was buried with her.
“Let me help you,” Angela said cheerily.
A woman with a shock of unruly white hair and fluorescent pink lipstick
looked up at Angela with approval and nodded. Great, Neal thought, this woman
probably thinks I’m Angela’s new man. He was aware of Angela’s fingers working to
retrieve the wallet.
“I got it,” he said, gruffly, waving her away.
She blinked at him, and he knew he’d hurt her. He was about to say he was
sorry when the worn black billfold pulled free of his pocket, and he rummaged through
it to get the piece of paper on which he’d penned the carefully-developed prayer. It’d
ended up costing more than $125—it’d clean him out of $300—but when he’d been
composing it, he’d marveled at his own foolishness, being cheap about so important a
thing. What good was his money, after all, if he didn’t have Teresa? He needed to
make sure every word was perfect so he’d get his expected result in one shot.
The paper was missing.
“What are you looking for?” Angela asked.
He thumbed past dollar bills and a movie ticket stub from the last film he and
Teresa had seen together, but the butterfly-shaped memo page he’d written it on
wasn’t in his wallet. He repeated the process, but still no luck.
“I wrote down my prayer. I was sure I’d put it in here.”
“Did you check your pockets?”
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Neal did, and found nothing. He looked up hopelessly, and spied Miss Unruly
White Hair turn away.
“Do you remember what you wrote, at least?”
Neal was devastated. “No.”
“We could come back next Sunday.”
Neal looked up at the atrium and noticed three small birds fluttering high
above the trees.
No. He had been waiting long enough.
He felt the warmth of Angela’s hand through his short-sleeved madras shirt
and was going to shrug it away, but he suddenly realized it was comforting. Angela’s
expression was soft and earnest, and in her eyes he saw that her offer was genuine.
“No. I can do it.”
She patted his arm lovingly. “Just remember what I said, the phrasing is ohso-very-important. Take your time. It’s okay if we’re late to the big service. Lots of
people are because they have to make sure they’re wording their prayers correctly. I’m
going to go over there and wait on the bench for you.”
She patted his arm again and hurried over to a bench under a couple of palm
trees at the foot of the giant fountain-oasis.
His hands were hurting, and he was sweating. It was familiar, though longago, and he tried to remember when he’d felt this before, this stomach-wants-to-comeup-jaws-clenched-weak-light-headed feeling. And he did recall.
On his wedding day.
He reached into the plastic holder for one of the pens. It was one of those
fancy, gold-trimmed pens connected to a sheath with a long chain, the ones that were
always tough to clutch—and write with—because of his arthritis. He slid one of the
sky-colored special PRAYER REQUEST SLIPS onto the counter and considered it.
Lettering on the bottom of the form said: PRESS HARD—YOU ARE MAKING
THREE COPIES. WHITE—GOD’S COPY YELLOW—PASTOR’S COPY PINK—
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CUSTOMER’S COPY. There were little boxes on the right side of the slip for him to
total up the number of words and the cost. PLEASE KEEP THE PINK COPY FOR
YOUR RECORDS AND PLACE REMITTANCE WITH THE YELLOW AND
WHITE COPIES IN THE ENVELOPE.
He glanced over at Angela. She examined her nails, then drummed her
nervous hands on her small white clutch. Her fluttering hands reminded him of small
birds.
Hurry up, he thought. Every moment you sit here thinking is another moment
apart from Teresa.
God, what had he composed back in his kitchen? He’d worked it to
perfection. Just focus on the words, you have extra cash in your wallet anyway, he
thought. A good, specific prayer will guarantee a result, right? How about, I am sad
without my wife Teresa. I know you want her in Heaven, but please send her back to
me. Neal Blake.
He counted it up in his head. Ouch. $575. He’d only brought $400 with him.
Okay, how about: I’m sad without my wife Teresa. Please send her back to me. Neal
Blake. He added it up: $350. He could do that. And he was satisfied; he felt it was
clear, made his point, and identified him as Neal Blake, so surely, God would know
that Mrs. Teresa Blake was the one who needed to go home. This would work. This
would bring her back.
He clenched his teeth and grimaced as he clutched the pen and pressed as hard
as he could. When he was done, he seized an envelope from the rack and pulled out a
wad of money.
He grimaced as he counted out the bills and shoved them into the envelope; it
was even more difficult to separate the white copy from the yellow copy from the pink
copy.
When he went to tear the white copy along the perforation, it ripped.
Oh no! He’d have to do it again. Surely God wouldn’t answer his prayer or
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take it seriously if he was presenting it on any medium that was less than perfect. He
chastised himself. How could he have been such a klutz?
He looked back at Angela. She was now twittering her thumbs, and he
suddenly felt bad. Here she was, going out of her way to do him a favor, and with his
terrible arthritis and everything it would take him at least another five to ten minutes to
fill out the form.
Look, he told himself, God isn’t going to see this anyway. It gets broadcast to
him. No one will care if the paper’s ripped.
He licked the envelope and deposited it into the oval slot in the locked center of
the island. Then he carefully folded the pink slip, put it into his wallet, and went to
fetch Angela.
The service was active, but no matter how many times the choir sang or he
was called to recite The Lord’s Prayer or Psalm 91 from memory, he couldn’t focus.
He was sure that within just a day or two Teresa would be home, and there was so
much to do before then. Vacuuming, dusting, washing every dish in all of the cabinets.
He didn’t want her to see the condition of their bedding, the sheets and towels he
hadn’t washed. And she’d need her keys and her pocketbook, which meant he’d need
to pull it down from the tippy-top of his closet, which would mean getting up on the
stepladder.
And even though the thought of all that work made his joints ache, he was
sure that he wouldn’t need any aspirin, because he would be doing it with a cheerful
heart.

---

Monday and Tuesday passed, and he wondered if the Broadcaster had
telegraphed his message to God yet. He wondered if there were a way he could find
out, because as Wednesday morning dawned, Teresa still wasn’t home.
He’d finished washing all the dishes and had managed to wash the windows.
He’d stripped the beds and thrown away all the threadbare towels. He’d even gone to
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1
Publix and chosen a new tablecloth to replace the one that had been on the kitchen
table.
There was a knock. Teresa! He dropped the pink towel he’d been folding and
rushed to the side door.
But it was Angela. Smiling, as usual, this time from beneath a wide-brimmed
puce hat with a large parrot feather rooted in its brim. “We’ve something to celebrate!”
She held aloft a ceramic dish that was in the shape of a pumpkin pie. “My prayer was
answered, I’m on the Little Miss Orange Beauty Contest Committee, because you
know I’ve been on it for years but I really felt it was about time for me to be
chairwoman since that Edna Graham, she’d done it for ten years and it’s time for her
to not get voted in again, I mean she’s done a terrific job but it is time for some fresh
ideas and I’m one of the most personable people on that committee, and they just
called! My prayer was answered! It was a unanimous vote and I’m the new
chairwoman!”
Neal smiled thinly.
“What’s the matter?”
He didn’t know what to say. Now he knew that Sunday’s prayers had been
broadcast.
And still Teresa wasn’t home.
Then he remembered the ripped sheet, and panic gripped him.
Angela didn’t wait for him to say anything. She burst into his house and headed
toward the kitchen.
“Don’t.” Neal, cringing, followed her.
She stopped short, turned, and simply looked at him; then her expression
changed. She cleared her throat and hurried to the counter. “I know this pie will make
you feel better.” She went into the cabinets and pulled down two small plates, rubbing
her index finger along them, seemingly amazed at how they were dust-free. She hefted
two giant chunks of pie on the plates and set them on the table. “Sit.” She went into
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the drawer, retrieved two forks, and set them in front of him.
He stared at the pie. He didn’t want it. All he was thinking was that maybe
Teresa was on her way, and how would she react if she came into the house and found
another woman—my God—that he was eating pie with another woman.
“So,” she took a bite. “Has your prayer been answered yet? You know, the
pastor says that generally they’re answered within twenty-four to forty-eight hours of
Broadcast, and he’s never been wrong.”
Neal forced himself to take a bite of pie so that he’d be chewing, so that he
wouldn’t have to answer, because all he could think was I ripped the receipt!
He’d have to do it again.
He dreaded dipping into his life savings again, but it had been his own fault. A
fool and his money are soon parted. “I was thinking. I’d like to go back to church with
you on Sunday.”
She took another bite of pie. “See! I knew it would work!”

---

That next Sunday when Neal stood at the podium and lettered the receipt, he
repeated the message: I’m sad without my wife Teresa. Please send her back to me.
Neal Blake. He went through the process, licked the envelope, inserted it through the
slot, and went into church with Angela.

---

Three years after they’d retired and moved to Daytona Beach, Teresa’s oranges
had been killed by an unexpected May frost.
He’d been sitting in his olive easy chair in the living room, watching a
documentary on a rash of sinkholes that had opened up in nearby Indigo, watching as
they, like giant mouths, swallowed houses and cars. It’d made him shudder.
And then he’d heard Teresa scream.
He’d bolted (he could still bolt, back then) from the chair and rushed to the patio
door; she was outside. “Tessie?”
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She’d stood beneath the tree, the branches and fruit of which glimmered with
icicles. She’d clutched a bruise-colored orange, looking at it as though it were a thing
to be pitied. “The frost! The frost has killed my beautiful oranges!”
He’d heaved a huge sigh of relief that she wasn’t hurt, that she hadn’t fallen off
a ladder or anything like that, and he’d lumbered down the stairs gone to her side.
“No orange juice,” she’d said. “What a waste. I just hate it when I can’t have
my own, fresh. I mean, Publix brand is fine, but it just isn’t the same.”
Across the street, one of their bathrobed neighbors had emerged, rubbed his
arms, made his way to the curb to pick up his newspaper.
“I’ve got it!” she’d said. “Oh, I know, I know, I know!” Still clutching the
orange, she’d gone back into the screen porch and come out with her large harvest
basket, the one they’d bought at a Vermont apple orchard years ago. She’d set the
basket down and reached for the lowest branches.
“What are you doing?” he’d asked.
“I have an idea.”
And there had begun the orange art. For the next several weeks, all the puffy
rattan furniture in the sunroom, the painted concrete floors of the sun porch, all had
been covered in drying slices of oranges, halves of oranges—orange rinds that she’d
notched or shaped with her delicate fingers; he’d watch her for hours, marveling at
how she could twist the rinds but they’d never snap or break. That Christmas, all of
her friends had gotten creations she’d made, and then she’d begun beefing them up
with shells and other things she’d found around and selling them at craft fairs.
Now, Neal sat at his kitchen table and sighed. He still hadn’t dealt with Teresa’s
collection of things made from those oranges, the dolls, the framed art, the Christmas
ornaments.
It took him all afternoon, but he forced himself to pull them from their dustcovered bins and spread them on the new kitchen tablecloth. They were as beautiful
and clever as he’d remembered.
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---

On Saturday, there still had been no answer, and Neal found himself, at four
o’clock, wishing that he had somewhere to go, something to do. All that was in his
house was the ticking of the clock on the wall, the sound of outside—the guy in the
bathrobe across the street had his family down, he thought, because for the first time in
many months there were children outside playing. He’d seen them earlier, when he’d
gone out to pick up his own paper. They’d balanced an old porch chair on a skateboard
and were pushing each other around on it, and Neal had thought they were certainly
creative but were probably going to hurt themselves, as the mobile home park’s idea of
pavement was crushed seashells.
He was surprised that for the first time, he wanted to see Angela. She’s probably
busy, he thought. But it seemed like a pleasant enough way to kill a couple of hours
before bed; they could go to Aunt Catfish’s and have that thing Teresa always liked,
sunburn something-or-other—shrimp, it was sunburn shrimp, it had this weird orange
sauce all over it. He knew they had early-bird specials, especially on Saturdays—but it
was the free sweet rolls he loved. Teresa used to complain that he ate so many of them
he almost always left half his dinner on the plate.
He looked in his bedroom closet for a shirt that didn’t have a stain or a hole.
When he’d dressed, he went over to Angela’s and knocked.

---

Angela answered the door in a pink gown; Neal thought it seemed a little flashy
even for her, but he had to admit that she looked nice in it. “Neal!”
He tried to talk around the lump in his throat. “I was wondering—”
“What a coincidence! Pastor Lock’s here and he was just getting ready to stop
by your place and now there’s no need to, because here you are!”
Neal swallowed and straightened his tie, not sure he wanted to see the Pastor,
because what was he going to say? The prayer hadn’t worked yet?
“Well, I—”
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“Oh, come on in.”
He knew he had no choice.
Her home was nothing like his. Her kitchen looked new, white tile, gray
cabinets and marble counter-tops; and she didn’t have those thirty-year-old roll-out
windows—no, she had big, arched modern windows, and even in her living room there
was a vaulted ceiling. It didn’t feel like a mobile home; it felt like a real house, and the
walls in the dining room were a pale blue with pink stripes.
She ushered him to a chair.
Pastor Lock—whom Neal had always thought tall, thin, and balding—was
actually shorter and a bit thicker around the middle. Neal also realized the man wasn’t
bald—he had a very thin layer of blond hair, like peach fuzz. “Hello, Neal. I
understand you’ve been enjoying our Broadcast service.”
Angela picked up a ceramic horseshoe crab-shaped platter that sported two lone
coconut macaroons. “I’ll just refill this and bring some coffee.”
Pastor Lock waited until he heard Angela’s swinging kitchen door close behind
her. “Neal, I hold to the highest standard of confidentiality,” he said. “Angela has
spoken often of you over the past year, and I was hoping that she’d bring you to our
congregation, and so I’m pleased you’ve joined us. However.” He reached for his
teacup, but didn’t drink; rather, he thumbed the delicate handle as he leaned forward
and dropped his voice another notch. “I’ve noticed that you submitted the same
Broadcast request twice.”
Neal felt like he had the time in third grade when he’d stolen another student’s
crayons. “Well, yes, I…I ripped the corner of the sheet, and I—”
“You thought perhaps God hadn’t answered you.”
There was movement outside the big window behind the Pastor. It was the
neighbor’s grandkids with the skateboard and the patio chair again. They whooped and
hollered as they raced up and down the road. “Well—”
The Pastor leaned even closer. “Look, our success rate is very high. Our
21
6
custom—I mean, our congregates—are always satisfied. So I’d like to impress upon
you that God always answers prayer. He always answers, I can assure you.” He sat
back and smoothed his thin layer of hair. “We don’t have failures of answered prayer.”
Neal was annoyed. “Well, what I asked for, it hasn’t happened. So maybe I just
need to be more specific—”
“I hope you’re having a nice chat!” Angela flitted back into the room, harboring
the platter; Neal noticed that the same two coconut macaroons, but now they were
surrounded by chocolate shortbreads and white oval cookies.
The men stared at each other. Angela set the plate between them, stood for a
moment, and then said, “well, you two boys let me know when you’re done.”
She turned and left.
Neal felt her absence.
“You don’t,” Pastor Lock said, “need to be more specific. Now I’m certain, sir,
that your prayer has been answered. God listens to us. We are the only people on earth
that can guarantee your prayers get heard.”
Neal was beginning to feel he was being pressured in a way he didn’t like.
“My prayer,” he said, “hasn’t been answered.”
The Pastor’s glare was almost mean. “It has, Neal. We have a reputation here.
I’m sure that God has answered your prayers; you’re just not seeing it. He answers
prayer in mysterious ways.”
Outside, one of the kids tipped out of the chair. Neal could hear the shrieks of
the injured child through the window and saw the infamous bathrobed neighbor come
rushing out of the house. “Pastor Lock, I’ll see you at church tomorrow.”
The Pastor seemed surprised, but after a moment, nodded and rose from his seat.
When he reached out to shake Neal’s hand, Neal didn’t take it. He was, instead,
thinking of withdrawing whatever money he needed to write: Dear God, please let
Mrs. Teresa Blake, of 5209 Pineland Avenue in Port Orange, Florida, come home.
Her husband, Mr. Neal Blake, needs her.
22
7
Satisfied with his new plan, he finally got around to the original reason for his
visit: asking Angela to dinner.

---

Angela sat in the passenger seat of the maroon Oldsmobile, smoothing the
material on another dress—she’d changed out of the pink thing, which Neal wasn’t
sure he was grateful for or not. “So…I know, of course, that Pastor Lock so respects
the whole confidentiality of his flock, of course he wasn’t going to tell me what it was
all about, why he wanted to see you, but I was wondering if it’s something you want to
talk to me about? I mean, was it good news?”
Neal grimaced as they rolled to the stoplight at the busy intersection of
Dunlawton and Route 1.The bright yellow and pink stand that sold conch shells on the
corner caught his eye: THREE SHELLS ONE BUCK! He remembered that Teresa
was always at that stand.
“Everything is fine.” Neal forced a smile and glanced at her as the light turned
green.
She nodded, but Neal could see the look in her eye that his wife often gave him
when she didn’t quite trust or believe him.
At Aunt Catfish’s, they were lucky enough to get a seat by the water—they
were late. Still in time for early bird, but most of the true early-birders had gone on
home already, were watching the news or getting ready to turn in.
They were seated and given menus by a waitress that Neal recalled from his
visits with Teresa. In fact, he’d been seated at this table many times: he could just see
part of the long pier over Angela’s left shoulder.
Neal opened his menu and wondered if he should tell Angela what had
happened between himself and the Pastor. After all, she’d always seemed so satisfied
with her prayers, and they’d seemed to be exactly what she’d asked for, not an
interpretation of what she’d asked for. Maybe she had a tip for him. He didn’t have to
tell her what his prayer was, after all. “I was wondering if—”
23
8
The waitress brought the complimentary basket of sweet rolls and asked if
they’d like anything to drink; Neal nodded at Angela, who ordered a Madras.
“That was Teresa’s favorite.” He reached for a sweet roll and took a bite.
“Well,” she whispered, “you certainly can tell they don’t use fresh-squeezed
orange juice, but it’s definitely not from concentrate and that’s a plus, don’t you
think?”
Neal remembered Teresa saying the same thing, not just at Aunt Catfish’s but at
the other places they went, Duff’s and Marco’s.
The Madras arrived, and he noticed Angela pull the little red plastic sword
from her orange garnish. Instead of sticking it in her mouth and sucking the flesh, she
ripped the flesh clean from the rind, and began twisting the rind in her fingers.
He remembered the first time he’d seen Teresa twist the rinds; she’d flattened
them and twisted only the ends. They’d reminded Neal of golf clubs. “What are those
for?”
“These will be doll’s arms,” she’d said. “If I turn the ends, she can hold a
basket, or make a teddy bear that she can hug.”
The memory filled Neal with a peace he couldn’t explain, a peace he hadn’t
felt since Teresa had died. He watched Angela scan the menu, her coral lips in a closed
smile. He thought that maybe he could do this with Angela more often. He was having
a nice time, and it was almost like—
The waitress offered to take their order.
“Sunburn Shrimp,” Angela said.
Neal was mute.
“Aren’t you going to order, dear? Or did you already eat too many sweet rolls?
You’re going to ruin your dinner.”
Neal mumbled, “Sea Scallops.” He’d never ordered them before.
The waitress hustled back in the direction of the kitchen.
“Now.” Angela sipped her Madras and reached for a sweet roll, split it in half
24
9
with her thumb. “It seems to me you were saying you were wondering something?
When we first got here? I just got completely distracted with the drink and the menu.
What were you going to ask me?”
“I was thinking. I pulled out those ornaments of Teresa’s. I actually—I have a
whole box of them. Maybe more, I think there might be another bag or two in the back
of the closet.”
She buttered a corner of the roll and popped it in her mouth.
“I think it’s time to—let them go.” Had he really just said that?
She stopped mid-chew.
“I’d like to know what you think we could do with them. You said…you said
something about I could sell them?”
She swallowed her bite, and a small smile played at the corners of her mouth.
“Why, yes! Yes, you could, I’m sure of that. In fact.” She rubbed her fingertips on her
cloth napkin. “I mean, I happen to know a whole lot of the local Mom and Pop gift
shop owners around and they’re always looking for great local stuff because believe it
or not, it sells, even those awful shell-Jesus statues they buy, and I’m sure I could talk
to a few of them.” She set her hands awkwardly on either side of her plate.
Neal was shaking, but did it: he set his hands on top of hers, felt his nerves
steady the second he’d done it: it felt nice, familiar, easy. “Would you come back to
the house with me after dinner and take a look?”
Angela blushed. “Of course.”
The waitress returned with their meals, and though Neal had to admit the sea
scallops were delicious, he wasn’t really interested in anything but watching her delve
with pure delight into her Sunburn Shrimp.

---

Neal had, indeed, found three more bags in the back of his closet. He and
Angela spent an hour going through them, and soon there were ornaments
everywhere—they not only blanketed the kitchen table, they covered the counters and
25
0
lined the windowsills.
“Do you really think we can sell all of these?”
“You live in Daytona Beach, dear. There’s a gift shop every twenty feet. I’m
certain we’ll have no problem.” She moved next to him. “We’ll have to get some
boxes and start organizing them so that each store will get a variety.”
They were close; he could smell her floral perfume. He felt a strange
compulsion to…kiss her.
There was a rapping at the door.
Neal tried to ignore it, but he couldn’t…because he recognized it.
Shave-and-a-Haircut-Two-Bits.
26
Original Art By: Titian
27
A Thump Over the Head with Sampson’s
Jawbone Daniel Davis
When I woke up yesterday morning, the world was bleary. The ceiling over my
head was indistinct, just a white blob floating above me. When I held my hand before
my face, I could vaguely make out my fingers, thick wiggling worms. I glanced over
at my girlfriend, but could barely discern her silhouette. The alarm clock went off with
a sharp, instant shrill, and when I smashed the snooze button with my fist, all I saw
was a peach-colored blur striking a hard black object.
I made something for breakfast. Tasted like Frosted Flakes. The coffee was
terrible. I left before Melissa woke up; got in my car, stared out the windshield for a
few seconds, and then decided why not. Driving was surprisingly easy; I figured the
bigger blurs were cars, the smaller blurs pedestrians, and I avoided both. I couldn’t see
well enough to tell red from green, so I just moved when the bigger blurs around me
moved. At work, I nodded to each vague form. I recognized my boss by his voice, and
Stephen by his; Todd by the way he scratched his growing bald spot. Others, whose
faces I’m sure I would’ve known, remained anonymous to me, and I tried to smile and
nod, wondering if they could see my smile, or if I was as blurry to them as they were
to me. I didn’t get a thing done; my computer screen was inscrutable, so I just tapped
the keys and turned my radio up. I left for lunch when someone told me to go. I could
still recognize McDonald’s, thanks to the arch; God bless capitalism. I ordered the
usual, trusted that it was what it was. Returned to work. Did what I’d done earlier.
I went home. Melissa had left; I usually called her after work, tried to get her to
come over, but last night I didn’t. I had more cereal—I recognized the box—and
listened to the television for a few hours. Funny enough, I followed everything. Later,
when I went to bed, I fumbled with the alarm clock for a while, using sensory memory
to figure out how to turn the alarm on. My wake-up call set, I closed my eyes, and it
28
seemed to me that even the darkness was out of focus.
This morning, I open my eyes, and I can’t see. Not a damn thing.
29
Body Anne Britting Oleson
Patty had run on ahead. When I finally came upon her in the tiny clearing, she
was snuffling about something that lay, a slight mound, in the dead leftover bracken of
the previous fall. I stepped toward her, browned leaves gleaming wetly underfoot. I
called. She turned slightly and showed her teeth.
I whistled once, hardened my tone to repeat her name, and pointed to the ground
at my feet. She came this time, unwilling, cowering close to the ground. She gave a
little whine as she neared.
“Stay,” I ordered. She whined again, but did as she was told. I repeated the
command, then went to look.
He had been dead a long time. I felt my gorge rise, and looked quickly away
from what was left of his upturned face, eye sockets empty, skin torn or worn away to
reveal the shocking whiteness of bone. Rather I ran my eyes over his jacket, mudcolored by design or accident, and his jeans. One boot was where it ought to have
been, at the end of what had formerly been a leg; the other was some distance
away. A long white bone—a femur—extended from it. I whirled away, fell to my
knees and vomited.
A bit dizzy, I crawled to a nearby tree stump and dragged myself upright. I kept
my head down, my arms across me knees. I had never seen death close up before, and
this was death, as far as I could see, in its extreme form. He had been dead a long
time. There was not enough there for me to recognize him, even had I known him
while he was alive. Even his clothes were indeterminate, generic.
Wade had no idea how long he sat on the stump, head cradled in his arms. He
could not bring himself to look again at the dead stranger. Someone from town? He
could not remember hearing of anyone going missing over the last several months.
Since fall? He wondered how long this stranger had been lying here. Through the
30
winter? Perhaps he had been a hunter, shot accidentally. But no—the stranger wasn’t
wearing orange.
When Patty, having waited long enough for his next command, came to his side
and poked her wet nose under his hand, he fondled her silky ears and did not
reprimand her. She was a good dog, in appearance very much like his first hound,
Mary. The hound his older brother Darrell had shot, all those years ago when they’d
been kids. Stupid kid, Darrell had been, Wade thought, feeling the old shock and
fury. They’d been out all that dismal November afternoon, and sundown was coming
on. They’d seen no sign of the buck that had been sighted off and on all summer, nor
any of his does. No wonder, the way Darrell was always dragging his heavy size
thirteens through the dead leaves, the way he was always sniffling and rubbing his
orange sleeve across his nose. Despite being sent home twice, Mary had still stolen
out after them, and now, nearly silent, she picked her delicate way through the trees
just up ahead, nose to the ground. Which was why it was all the more of a shock when
Darrell, tripping over a root or his own feet, had fallen to the ground: the report of the
30.06 had echoed all around them, and then faded away to uncover the whimper of the
dog.
Darrell had gut-shot her. Poor Mary had looked up at Wade with those huge
brown eyes, and he closed his own as he put the barrel of his own gun to the back of
her head and finished her quickly. While his brother sat blubbering off to one side, he
had scraped a shallow trench with his hands and buried his dog the best he could.
“I didn’t have the safety on,” Darrell had said as he moved to Wade’s side. “I
could have shot myself.”
For a long moment Wade hadn’t been able to speak. His gun, safety re-engaged,
leaned against a tree. Wade had stared at it mutely, at the barrel, at the trigger where
his finger had lain; he had felt again the kick when he fired the shot. Wade swung
before he thought. The right cross had knocked Darrell to the ground. Wade had
picked up his rifle and stalked away toward home.
31
Now Patty wriggled under his hand, whining a little. “Sit,” he told her, his
voice hoarse. He patted his pockets and drew out his cell phone. Surprisingly, there
was service. He dialled 9-1-1, gave the dispatcher a report, the words sounding
strange and disjointed to his own ears. Then he sat back to wait. Only then did he lift
his eyes to the body, where it lay slowly moldering into the damp spring ground. He
thought again of Mary and her pain-filled eyes. He thought briefly of Darrell, dead
these fourteen years from a drug overdose. Wade wondered how long it had taken this
stranger to die out here in the clearing, and what he had thought, staring up into the
evening sky, knowing his end was coming—until he saw, perhaps, the first star of
evening winking mercilessly down on him.
32
The Obituary Marian Brooks
Joseph Kemper, “Jack,” 84 and Elizabeth Stone, “Betsy,” 82 of Lancaster held
hands as they entered heaven together on May 27, 2012. They are survived by two
daughters, Caroline and Sarah, and a son, Jason. Betsy served as president of the
Scranton Garden Society. Jack was the director of the church choir.
Among the couples’ possessions were newspaper clippings about a man and a
woman who had burglarized four banks and a Burger King in the area. Also
discovered in the home were $200,000 in cash and a revolver in the potting shed under
the newly planted geraniums.
33
34
Five Fatal Diseases Allen Kopp
Mrs. Pesco and Mrs. Vandenberg arrived together and waited outside until Mrs.
Tashman arrived. When they saw Mrs. Tashman’s white Cadillac pull onto the parking
lot, Mrs. Pesco ground her cigarette underneath the heel of her shoe while Mrs.
Vandenberg took off her gloves with a huff of impatience and put them in her purse.
“She’s always late,” Mrs. Vandenberg said. “She’ll be late for her own funeral.”
“Yoo-hoo!” Mrs. Tashman called cheerily to them as she got out of her car. “I
thought you would have gone in without me.”
“We said we’d wait,” Mrs. Vandenberg said grimly.
“Don’t you have a clock at your house?” Mrs. Pesco asked.
“Don’t ask!” Mrs. Tashman said as she came toward them, wobbling on her
high heels. “I had to wait for the plumber to arrive to let him in and just as I was
leaving I got a telephone call.”
“You need to tell everybody to go to hell when you know you have people
waiting for you,” Mrs. Pesco said.
“I know you would tell them to go to hell, dear,” Mrs. Tashman said, “but I
don’t treat people that way.”
“Well, we’re here now so let’s get this over with,” Mrs. Vandenberg said.
They entered the foyer and walked together, shoulder to shoulder, down the aisle
between the rows of pews just like in a church to the casket nestled snuggly in its
bower of flowers at the end of the long, narrow room.
“Such a lot of flowers!” Mrs. Pesco said. “I wonder who could have sent them?”
“She had family,” Mrs. Vandenberg said, “but she never spoke of them.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I believe there was some riff there. She carried on a feud with two of her sisters
from the time they were in nursery school.”
35
“Well, you know what sisters are like.”
“I can hardly believe poor Lillian is really dead,” Mrs. Tashman said, sniffling
into a handkerchief.
“Why not, dear?” Mrs. Pesco said. “She had about five fatal diseases and it only
takes one.”
“It seemed like it took her such a long time to die,” Mrs. Vandenberg said.
“Yes, that’s a lot of bunk about people dying quickly,” Mrs. Pesco said. “I never
knew of anybody to die quickly. Everybody in my family takes their good old sweet
time. It took my mother twenty years to die.”
Mrs. Vandenberg put on her glasses to better see the deceased. “She looks
funny, doesn’t she?” she said.
“Well, she is dead,” Mrs. Pesco said.
“That dress looks terrible on her! I wonder what Goodwill box they dug that out
of? It’s got sequins on it. It makes her look like a cocktail waitress in a haunted
house.”
“It doesn’t seem to quite suit her, does it?”
“And her hair! It was never that color before.”
“It’s a wig,” Mrs. Tashman said. “I visited her in the hospital about a week
before she died and she was complaining about how her hair had thinned. You know
how vain she was. Even in her hospital bed, near death, she had to have a covering on
her head so her hair wouldn’t show.”
“The makeup is all wrong, too,” Mrs. Vandenberg said. “It’s too peachy. The
lipstick is too red and there’s too much of it. They have her looking like Jane Russell
in a 1950s Technicolor movie.”
“I’d rather look like Jane Russell than a lot of others I can think of,” Mrs.
Tashman said.
“Yes, but it’s not the Lillian Sherwood we knew and loved.”
“What does it matter?” Mrs. Pesco said.
36
“Well, I think they should try to make the dead look as much like the living as
possible.”
“Why?”
“So you can at least recognize them.”
“Why don’t you give it a rest for a while?”
The funeral director, realizing that the first of the mourners had arrived, came
out of his office and entered the chapel. He was impeccably dressed in a dark blue
pinstripe suit with a red carnation in his lapel. His bald head gleamed dully in the dim
light like old family silver.
“Good evening,” he said, smiling sympathetically. “May I offer my
condolences?” He shook hands, limply, as if he didn’t really mean it, with Mrs.
Vandenberg and then Mrs. Pesco and then Mrs. Tashman.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Tashman said pitifully.
“Are you family members of Mrs. Sherwood’s?” he asked.
“No, we’re old friends,” Mrs. Vandenberg said.
“Very dear friends,” Mrs. Tashman said.
“It’s such a comfort to see them one last time, isn’t it?” he said. “To bid them
one final farewell.”
“You did a wonderful job with her,” Mrs. Vandenberg said. “We were just
remarking how she looks just the way she always looked in life. She looks as if she’s
going to open her eyes and raise up and speak to us.”
“Wouldn’t that be a story!” Mrs. Pesco said.
He flushed with pleasure. “So glad you think so,” he said. “We work with
photos of the deceased as they were in life to achieve as life-like an illusion as
possible.”
“She looks lovely,” Mrs. Tashman said, and meant it.
“Well, if I can be of service, in any way,” he said, “any way at all, you be sure
and let me know.” He shook hands with them again and was off to supervise the
37
placement of more floral offerings.
“I think he’s kind of cute,” Mrs. Pesco said. “That overbite of his is quite
fetching.”
“He’s hoping to get our business,” Mrs. Vandenberg said. “When he looks at
me, I know he’s thinking about having me naked on a table while he pumps the blood
out of my body.”
“I’m going to be cremated,” Mrs. Tashman said.
“Make sure you’re dead first,” Mrs. Pesco said.
“I just don’t like the idea of being embalmed and buried under the ground.” She
managed a little shudder for emphasis.
“But you think that being burned to a little pile of ash is pleasant?” Mrs.
Vandenberg asked.
“No. I try not to think about it at all. Maybe there’s a better way.”
“Well, if you hear of a better way, dear, you be sure and let me know, won’t
you?”
“Hey, I think I just saw Lillian move her hand,” Mrs. Pesco said. “I think she’s
trying to communicate with us.”
“Your eyes are playing tricks on you again,” Mrs. Vandenberg said.
“No, really! She’s trying to tell us that she has just met Satan and has found him
very much to her liking.”
Mrs. Vandenberg laughed in spite of herself. “That’s a remark that my mother
would have said is ‘in questionable taste’.”
“Don’t encourage her!” Mrs. Tashman said. “This is not the time or place for
crude jokes.”
“Oh, why don’t you lighten up a little?” Mrs. Pesco said. “What good is life if
you can’t laugh a little?”
“Don’t you two get into a fist fight, now,” Mrs. Vandenberg said. “The funeral
is tomorrow and you don’t want any black eyes. I suppose the two of you are going?”
38
“Yes,” Mrs. Tashman said.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Mrs. Pesco said.
“It should be quite a show,” Mrs. Vandenberg said. “I want to see how many of
Lillian’s ex-husbands are there.”
“I think most of them are dead.”
“How many times was she married?” Mrs. Tashman asked.
“Four that I know of and probably more.”
“Yes, she always had a way of attracting the men.”
“She could get them but couldn’t keep them.”
“Well, she was always a lousy cook and you know the old saying: ‘It’s the face
powder that catches ‘em and the baking powder that keeps ‘em at home’.”
“Truer words were never spoken.”
“When she was young she was quite beautiful, but then her looks faded, as they
always do.”
“She needed a blind husband like the one Bette Davis had in Mr. Skeffington.”
“He would have had to be deaf, too, to be able to stand the sound of her voice.”
“What time is it?” Mrs. Pesco asked. “My watch has stopped.”
“It’s just after six-thirty.”
“Well, I’m hungry. We’ve paid our respects. Let’s sign the guestbook and
leave.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Vandenberg said. “We’ll reconvene this little gathering tomorrow.”
“You two go on,” Mrs. Tashman said. “I think I’ll stay for a while longer.”
After Mrs. Vandenberg and Mrs. Pesco left, Mrs. Tashman took a seat on the
front pew and, in the absence of family, stayed until closing time. She had never
known Lillian Sherwood all that well, but she didn’t mind giving up her evening to
demonstrate to a cynical, uncaring world that sometimes there is a person who
genuinely cares and isn’t afraid to go out of her way to show it.
39
Moonshine Marian Brooks
After years of frustration Kevin asked, “What more do you want from me,
Charlotte?”
“I’ll just have a slice of that moon,” she replied, knife in hand, sharp as her
tongue. She smiled and left the room leaving a cold draft from the future.
40
Talk Jeffrey Graessley
Black and whites roll through the parking lot, half a dozen La Puente Sheriffs. I
keep my windows up. Cell phone flashes, her text reads: On Temple. An Asian couple
in their late 20s giggles to their Import– the female opens his door before driving off.
One of the same eight radio songs is humming through the broken speaker on
my passenger side when her SUV pulls in; loops around my car and parks. Her
window glides down.
“Get in here.”
I crank the handle on my door, window slow climbs up, get out, and flick the
lock. Quick inventory pat on my pockets, everything in order. I pull her door open and
climb in.
Her boyfriend’s work uniform is hanging in the back window. She smells like
him. Wide eyes holding onto mine. I smile at her before she pulls my beard and kisses
me– a little more than a peck. Then pulls away.
“I was talking to my mom. She made me feel better.”
I nod. “Moms are good like that.”
“Yea, moving is just a hard thing to do, especially in with another per-“
The blare of a patrol car cuts the transient silence to pieces, like a ripped bag of
cans spilling to the asphalt. Tires belt out the parking lot onto Temple. Two more
follow.
“Someone’s fucked,” I say, knowing who.
She giggles, nervous. “I know this has to stop,” she manages.
Her eyes won’t meet mine, and that’s okay. I allow myself a few seconds–
mental inventory of her skin. I won’t be back.
“I know.”
“It’s just terrible timing. I really like you. The way you-“
41
I lift a hand up, she frowns, something real and lively twists on her face. Fuck it,
I thought.
“I’m the invalid that continues to touch the flame.”
“What does that mean?”
“That this needs to stop.”
Silence resumes.
I refuse her goodbye hug, why bother? I unlock my door, and the scent of stale
tobacco assaults my nose. I light up, pull the car around and wait for a moment’s
worth of separation to needle my way back onto Temple Ave.
42
Original Art By: Gustave Doré
43
Minotaure Jenean McBrearty
“Are you familiar with the Minotaure?” Epstein-the-bookseller said to the
man in the dusk-colored linen suit who had been sifting through the stacks in the rear
of the store. Epstein looked like Toulouse-Lautrec – short, bearded and bespectacled.
His question was a way to separate the connoisseur from the dilettante or, more likely,
identify a genuine customer. Detective John Hall did look more like a cop than one of
the 1930’s cult freaks who idled in the gay enclave of the Hillcrest cafes discussing
Dada and decadence.
Hall clasped his hands together, closed his eyes, and held his fingertips to his
lips. “Tell me you have an issue of the magazine,” he said, then followed the
bookseller to his office. “For all their adulation of Feud and de Sade, Hitler must have
scared the hell out of a bunch of young Jewish artists fascinated with unrestrained
freedom and dismemberment. Wonder how they felt when their dreams became reality
at Auschwitz.” Epstein stopped so abruptly Hall almost fell on him. “Dali did a cover
for the magazine, as I remember,” Hall continued as Epstein eyeballed him. “The
picture of a robotic looking woman with a lobster coming out of her belly.”
“Then you do know it.” Epstein took a right turn into his office went to a file
cabinet, one of three against the wall opposite his desk, and brought Hall a file folder.
“Dali painted like a surrealist but never claimed the label.” He handed Hall an original
cover protected by a heavy plastic wrapper, and an approving smile. “They were
condemned by feminists, of course. All that bru-ha-ha over representations of women
as body parts. Bullshit, I say.”
Hall nodded in agreement as he perused the cover, a picture of a mannequinlike figure with the head of a bull and an open drawer for a mouth. “1930’s art’s a
hobby I acquired in college,” he said softly. It was a half-truth. He’d become
fascinated with broken bodies by viewing crime scene photos. Each unique, yet a
44
conglomeration of geometric shapes—like the shapes art teachers tell beginning
students to imagine. Dr. Phelps said his obsessive interest in the visual was a coping
mechanism— a coping mechanism that nurtured a curiosity about surrealistic art that
mirrored Phelps’s own. That curiosity led him to the World War I veterans who
became artists after they’d seen the toll the bombs took on the human body, and
reflected the trauma in their work. Modern art – a term for exploding reality into
fragments. Once strong, confident men humbled by machine guns and gas, pitting their
art against the weaponry used by the Hun—then Hitler came to power and outrage
morphed into terror. The Kaiser fought to preserve the past; Hitler to build a contrafuture. Erection through annihilation. Hall closed the folder and handed it back to
Epstein. “You’ve got an interesting collection.”
“I must,” Epstein said. He returned the file to the cabinet. “You’re the second
person this morning who’s inquired about it since the article in the paper.” Hall wasn’t
surprised. The spread in the Tribune was written to lure history aficionados and their
money back to the inner city. Nothing sells like sex and violence. “Only—the other
customer was more interested in this.” Epstein opened a locked cabinet and produced a
first edition of Black Dahlia Avenger. “Do you think Steve Hodel is right about his
father being the killer of the Black Dahlia?” It was another test.
“Hodel was part of the artsy inner circle in the Hollywood of ‘47. He was a
doctor—friends with Man Ray—knew Marcel Duchamp. There was a connection. But
I guess if you can’t confess to a notorious crime yourself, the next best way to gain
notoriety is to claim a relative committed a notorious crime,” Hall said as he took his
checkbook out of his inner coat pocket. “This other customer, male or female?” He
knew the answer. He’d been tailing Alphonse Silva since he reported finding a body in
Balboa Park.
“Male. Early twenties. The cover isn’t for sale.”
“Of course not. I’ll pay twenty for a color copy.” Epstein nodded okay, and
Hall finished writing out the check. “How much for the book?’ he said as casually as
45
he could manage.
“I have a feeling it’s an appreciating asset, but I’ll take down your contact
information.” Epstein walked like a sailor—side to side —to his desk and wrote some
notes.
“I’ve got a copies of a remake of Dreams That Money Can Buy for sale,” Hall
said. It was his turn to test Epstein. “Can you contact your other customer and have
him call me?
“I’m not interested in the toys. I’ll call him. You have a lot in common.”

---

Hall talked to Alphonse Silva—a.k.a. Alphonse el Greco—and made an
appointment to meet him at the Starbuck’s in El Cajon. He’d be out of jurisdiction, but
he didn’t care. Even if the lead didn’t yield a suspect in the Balboa Park murder, it’d
give him access to San Diego’s art underground. A detective is only as good as his
informants. It was possible Greco re-enacted the murder of Elizabeth Short—the
wanna-be starlet who became the Black Dahlia —in the Park’s Spanish Village. What
was he doing in the park alone at six AM? If he didn’t do it, it was possible he knew
who did. Like LA’s European ex-patriots who knew whether Hodel really did molest
his daughter and whether he really did kill Short.
“Why’s he called el Greco?” Ron Smith said. Hall’s partner was leaning over
his shoulder as he studied Alphonse’s Facebook profile, and breathing garlic onto the
computer screen. “What’s a Neo-Surrealist? Some weird cult?”
“An exploding phenomenon—a throwback to an art movement that’s almost a
hundred years old,” Hall said, “and el Greco means the Greek.”
“Like Jimmy the Greek, the Vegas bookie?”
“Just like that.” Hall waved Smith away and handed him a breath mint.
“He don’t look Greek to me. Too light-skinned.”
“You don’t look Italian and all you eat is Italian food.” Now he knew how Dr.
Phelps must have felt during their first counseling sessions. Impatient with
46
ignorance. “He’s called el Greco because he looks like he just stepped out of a
Domenikos Theotokopoulos painting – elongated features, tall and thin.”
“With a name like Dominoes Theo-popp, I know why he got his nick-name.
But our Greek looks more like an alien geek, if you ask me.”
“Our Greek got an art degree from U.C.L.A. That’s interesting.”
“Why? The punk’s a trust fund baby. So what?” Smith finished off his
manicotti and popped the mint into his mouth. “It means he’d be familiar with LA
lore.” Hall said.
“As in I got L-Aed?”
Hall pushed his chair away from his desk far enough so he could snap his
prosthesis straight and stand up. It’d been his decision to amputate the knee along with
the lower leg after his squad car ran afoul of a guardrail on I-5, but he regretted it
every time he had to lock and unlock his “walking device” as he preferred to call it.
After three years of therapy, Phelps got him to admit it wasn’t the decision he
regretted, but losing his leg, period. “As in nobody in CSI has mentioned the
similarities between the LA and San Diego murders because they aren’t familiar with
LA lore, Ronnie”
“Not everybody’s into art lore like you, Johnnie. You all look and talk alike.
Fuckin’ clones.”
“Us all? Who are us all?”
“All you middle-aged Goths. The rest of us guys aren’t old enough to be
interested in lore or art, LA or otherwise,” Smith said rolling out his tongue and
breathing air over what was left of the mint. “We’re still think’ about sex. You’re still
thinkin’ about that Dahlia chick, right?”
“Our vic’s a guy but that doesn’t explain the coincidences — body severed at
the waist, arms arced at the shoulder, amputated right breast, the gashed in the thigh
and groin area, the cuts from the corners of the mouth to the cheekbone same as the
Dahlia — here, look.”
47
Smith turned away from the crime scene photos Hall had tacked to the
bulletin board. “I’ve seen ‘em. Maybe the CSI folks were too busy gatherin’ up the
parts to notice the whole,” he said. “but, if you wanna talk to this el Geek-o punk,
we’ll talk.”
The proximity of the crime scene to the gay enclave led investigators to think
the vic and the perp were gay, but Hall knew better than to work on easy assumptions.
Maybe the LA CSI folks were shocked at what they saw in that field in ’47, as
shocked as SDPD CSI was busy – whatever. They were all trained professionals who
failed to see patterns. Connections. Relationships. “I’d rather go alone,” Hall said.
Smith wiped a feigned tear from his eye. “What, I’m not good enough for you
to take me out in public? I thought we had a thing…”
Sergeant Bales rolled his eyes. The two plain-clothes detectives hadn’t
noticed the blue-uniformed man. “They’ve ID’d the vic, if you sisters are interested.
William Long,” he said tossing the coroner’s report on Hall’s desk before retreating
down the hall.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Hall said, snatching up the report. “It’s opposites. Yin-yang.
Short – Long. Real-ideal. Real-surreal.”
“What’s that mean, surreal?” Smith said
“Well, you got real and fake. Then there’s conscious reality and its opposites
—subconscious reality, dream reality, hidden reality,” Hall said, paying more attention
to the cheese Smith dripped on his desk than to what he was saying. “You’ll see what
it means when you meet Alphonse,” he said as he wiped his desk with a Kleenex. “I’ll
introduce you as Jack ‘cause you don’t know jack shit about us old guys. We still
fuck…and we can carry on a conversation, jackass.”
“I don’t wann’a be Jack. It sounds too much like Ron. I want a pretty name
like Alphonse el Greco…” Maybe it was okay that Ron wanted to go to Hillcrest.
“Okay. You can be Jacopo Tintoretto.” Hall said.
“Gorgeous. Was Tintoretto a surrealist?”
48
“No, but he’s famous.”

---

“This is my partner, Jack…Tintoretto,” Hall told Alphonse as they sat at an
outside table. El Cajon was heating up. It’d be close to ninety degrees by ten o’clock.
Alphonse was wearing mascara and lip-gloss. A make-up melt-down seemed
inevitable. “He knows nothing about art but has a large checkbook.”
The still standing now-Jack adjusted his balls and smiled at Alphonse.
“What’ll you have, Pal, I’m buyin’”
Alphonse smiled at Hall, a quick, perfunctory smile that said he was being
nice to older folks, but gave Smith the once over. “Caramel latte, two per cent, no
whip.”
“No whip. Right. I’m on it. The usual for you, Darlin’?” Jack leaned over
close to Hall. The mint hadn’t worked and he gave him a square-on shot of garlic
breath.
Hall nodded and said, “sure” and Jack went inside. “He’s a good guy. A little
rough around the edges, but we all have rough edges,” Hall said.
“And appendages.” Alphonse looked 16th century alright. Pale, goat-teed, with
a long face crowned by mounds of black hair. Dressed in black pants tucked inside
black leather riding boots, and a white stocking shirt. He looked older than twenty-five
and could pass for Count Orgaz himself. “I notice you limp,” Alphonse continued. “A
friend of mine lost a foot to diabetic gangrene and walks like you. Fake foot?”
Alphonse put a non-filtered cigarette in a holder and lit up despite the no smoking sign
on the table. “You don’t mind, do you?” he said as he settled back in his chair. Even if
he said yes, he did mind, Alphonse would ignore him.
“It’s your body,” Hall said. “And it’s my entire lower leg that’s fake.”
“Too bad. But it must make for an interesting sex life. Epstein didn’t sell you
the Monitaure cover did he? He told me he wasn’t going to part with it.”
“Copies are fine for Jack’s budget now.”
49
“Damn. Didn’t think of that. Did he show you the Picasso ad?” Now that he
was close to him, Hall knew Alphonse wasn’t strong enough to overpower the six-foot
two William Long. Two drags on his cigarette, and Alphonse was coughing. If he was
an accomplice, he was probably a consultant. He couldn’t get close to dirt, much less
blood. “Your partner is a crude proletarian. Do you mind if I have sex with him?”
Alphonse said.
Hall made a mental note to warn Jack his wife was right. He was too convincing
to work undercover. “No objection, if you can persuade him.”
“How is he as a lover?” Alphonse said. Jack was walking towards them,
balancing three coffees in a cardboard tray in one hand, and three scones and a wad of
napkins in the other.
“He’s a pain in the ass, but I like him,” Hall said and went to help. “Watch
your backside,” he whispered to the man confounded by waitressing. Jack grunted an
okay.
“How long have you been a fan of art between the wars?” Hall said. Alphonse
was staring at Jack who did look like a working class hero–thick hands and neck and a
square jaw–a poster boy for the peoples’ revolution of 1917.
Alphonse removed the cigarette from the holder and squashed it on the
cement with the toe of his boot. “Since I found out my Russian great-parents were
Jews and communists. Real communists. The politics of the time—that’s what the art
revolution was about—Dada, Surrealism, Magical Realism. The avant-garde preached
anarchy, but they wanted the masses to free themselves from their chains, not reap the
benefits of freedom. An agenda like that was bound to piss people off.”
Hall caught Jack staring at him with grinning that’s-what-you-sound-like-after
four-beers eyes. “Everybody decried the contradictions of individualism and ignored
the contradictions of equality,” Hall said, and pulled a DVD case from his jacket
pocket.
“Exactly. Can any artist stand out when seven billion people can write, film,
50
photograph and u-tube?” Alphonse said. “The real revolution of the 1920’s was
technical—even ordinary people could afford a camera by then. And who needs
painters to capture impressions of the world when Nikon captures the real thing?”
Alphonse looked past Hall and into the eternal air. “Only individual artistic vision can
save us from egalitarian mediocrity.”
Jack looked up from his coffee into Alphonse’s half-closed blue eyes. “Yeah,
democracy shouldn’t be wasted on those with no talent,” he said.
“Your ignorance is profound,” Alphonse said. “How much do you want for the
film, Mr. Hall —you say it’s a remake?”
“UCSB grad students decided to update the film’s vignettes. The Girl With
the Prefabricated Heart is a Japanese robot instead of a mannequin. That sort of thing.
Twenty-five and it’s yours.”
Alphonse winced. “Anybody famous connected with it?”
“Scorsese saw it. Gave Sylvia Manning a bit part in Gangsterland. He thought
the guy who shot the Narcissus bit shows promise—a new president practices his
inauguration speech in front of a mirror.”
“This I gott’a see.” Alphonse handed Hall two tens and a five.
“We haven’t finished our coffee,” Jack complained as Hall shoved the money at
him.
Alphonse gave Jack a doleful glance that Hall understood immediately. He
wished he’d told Jack that the protocol for 1930’s artists was to spend hours at cafes
doing nothing but talking about having nothing to do, and gossiping about other
indolent artists. “Shall we play Exquisite Corpse?”
“Sure,” Jack said enthusiastically. “How does this work again?” Hall gave a
napkin to each of them and took one for himself. Alphonse took a pen from his
shoulder bag, and Jack one from his breast pocket.
“Usually we only have one piece of paper we fold into thirds, but this time we’ll
each have our own piece. Alphonse, which do you want for round one? Head, torso, or
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limbs?”
Alphonse hesitated. “Head, I think.”
“Jack, you take the torso and draw whatever you want as the middle of the body
and I’ll draw the bottom.”
“I’m no artist,” Jack said, but began to draw. “Then what?”
“When we’re done, we’ll put the drawings together, and create accidental art.
It was a parlor game the surrealists played. They were too highbrow for poker and too
dumb for bid whist,” Alphonse said. Hall thought Jack had blown it, but Alphonse
seemed to like him, and was eager to meet again, reminding Jack that he must come
too and meet his friends at the Rue D’Alene coffeehouse. The game provided Hall an
entire body drawn by Alphonse, and as soon as they got back to the station, he packed
all their efforts, face up, in a large plastic bag.
“Were all the surrealists like Alphonse—creepy smart ghouls?” Tintorettonow-Smith-again said. He’d set the plastic bag in front of him and was staring at the
drawings inside.
“Pretty much. Thirties people took themselves and their art very seriously
‘til they had to pay bills. After the First World War, they lost their patrons, and had to
earn their keep. Most came to America and got teaching jobs or worked in New York.
That was another contradiction in their politics – for people who swore they hated
crass commercialism, they sure liked the money the movie industry gave them. Dali
designed the sets for Hitchcock’s Spellbound, you know.” He sounded as pretentious
as Alphonse even to himself. Smith had probably never seen Spellbound.
“No, I didn’t know.” Smith examined Alphonse’s body. “Are these drawings
important?”
Hall was scanning his cell phone for a phone number. “I’ll know that after
I’ve talked to Dr. Phelps.” He punched in numbers and waited. “This is John Hall—I
need a consult for a case, Joanie… …Yeah, tomorrow morning…You don’t mind,
Ronnie?” Smith nodded a no. “Okay. Thanks, Joanie.”
52
0

---

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Minotaur myth is not just about the
labyrinth as metaphor for the intricacies of the mind,” Dr. Phelps said. Phelps told
stories and back stories, and knew how unrelated things were related—different from
the other forensic experts on the department payroll. Hall never felt “sick” during his
therapy, just in need of better education. “People forget that at the heart of the myth is
Poseidon making Minos’ wife overcome a universal taboo and screw the bull—the
Minotaur is a product of the ultimate degradation of the female—bestiality. And what
happened to the bull and after the Minotaur was born? We don’t know, but if PETA
and NOW had been around then, would it be okay to marry your German shepherd
now? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Why were the surrealists so enamored of the myth? Was it all that what lurks
beneath the surface thing?” Hall said.
“Yeah, and they loved Freud and his mysterious subconscious. Loved him for
the same reason we all love Freud even though we think he’s full of shit now. He was
all about sex. Who doesn’t like sex? The deeper and darker the better. It doesn’t get
much deeper and darker than the result of a woman mating with an animal. You ever
see the woman in Tijuana screw the donkey? Positively fascinating. Can make a man
with the biggest dick feel insecure. I thought the gal was gonn’a choke.” Phelps was at
his bookcase, searching the shelves.
“Women can’t get pregnant by animals can they?” Hall said. “Sure. Where
do you think politicians come from?” A blast of Phelps laughter followed. No one
enjoyed his quips as much as he did. “I’m kidding, John. There’s a biological barrier
that precludes cross-species fertilization. Mother nature doesn’t mind a monster now
and then—one Jeffrey Dahmer is alright—but get one too many and the world goes to
hell in a hand basket. Hitler, Stalin, Elvis Presley. Talk about Mother Nature gone
awry.” He handed Hall Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents. “Freud said we have
to subdue the life force so we don’t kill each other off. Too much sex and too much
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1
death and there’d be no progress. It used to be a struggle to make civilization, but now
most of us never have any fun.” Phelps grabbed a handful of gummy worms and sat at
his desk. “We spend the first half of our lives squishing our desires into a social cube
and the second half trying to find our inner spunk.” He held a gummy up to the light
and wriggled it like live bait about to be hooked. “The surrealists were also crazy
about the idea of sexual relations between man and machines disguised as women—or
other men. Let’s face it, fucking feels good. Every man dreams of being a sex
machine. But become a machine and you stop feeling.” Phelps slowly rubbed his chin
with his fingers. “Good experts must be expert fuckers.”
Hall chose a random page and began reading while Phelps examined the bag
of napkin drawings . “You’ve got some great combinations here,” Phelps said, “but I
think this is the most artistic—Alphonse’s head and torso, but Smith’s lower limbs.”
Hall shrugged. Thinking of Smith as being more artistic than he was made his
head hurt. Maybe Phelps was looking at the pictures with doctor eyes and not artist
eyes. “So you think the killer will choose that combination?” he said.
“Let’s see if I’m right about the accidental art,” Phelps said. He made a copy
of his choices and scanned them into the computer. “I developed this software – I call
it Ariadne’s Yarn. It started out as an experiment and ended up my personal thread
into the labyrinth, you might say.” He held the disc in his fingertips, inspecting the
plastic carefully. “And I’m Theseus,” he said as he slipped a disc into C Drive. Hall
watched the monitor with him. “It reads my patients’ drawings as geometric images
and patterns and matches them with an art database to see what picture is closest to
them. It helps me link the patient’s inner self to an artistic vision. It sounds esoteric but
it helps me understand where they’re living in here.” Phelps pointed to his head. “And
in here.” He pointed to his heart. “All men are artists in their own way.”
In seconds a picture appeared on the screen. Hall recognized Dali’s
1936 black and white City of the Drawers – a recumbent nude woman’s head hanging
down, obscuring the face, draped over her torso which was a series of open drawers,
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2
her nipples the drawer knobs, and the bottom, a drawer with a key hole over her groin
area. One muscular arm was at her side bracing her torso, and the other outstretched,
her long legs crossed left over right. “And if we use only my body drawings?” Hall
said, curious about what he’d accidentally produced.
Phelps made another copy and scanned it into the computer. “I’ll be damned,” he
said, “ Will you look at this.”
Hall read the small print at the bottom of the computer. Maxfield Parrish
Prometheus. “The colors are beautiful,” he said. A bronze god, draped in a long,
narrow piece of golden cloth seemed to be descending from heaven, the tip of one foot
touching a mountaintop. In his right hand he held a brass scepter topped with a large
white luminescent globe. Prometheus’ right leg was bent behind him to give the
appearance of walking, but looking straight at the picture, all the viewer saw was a
thigh—the lower leg missing. The self-portrait made him uneasy. Impersonal,
involuntary self-disclosure. “What is Edison-Mazda on the banner behind him?”
“A lamp company. Parrish supplemented his income with advertising art. It
ain’t exactly Paris Hilton hustling hamburgers, is it?” Phelps said, then again slipped
into pensive silence. “How old’s your suspect?”
“Twenty-five. In the 30’s he’d have been considered an adult. Funny.”
Phelps nodded. “He’ll grow out of his romance with surrealism eventually. The
movement didn’t survive once its gurus were gone. Even nihilism couldn’t survive
Hitler’s armies. That’s the trouble with peace and progress. It sidles up to history and
the next thing you know there’re cures for the despair it wreaks. Hope, beauty, faith,
friendship, a new car, a favorite song sung by someone who cares. After a while,
people have to work hard at sustaining misery. Most give up the ghost and adjust to
mundane reality—even guys like Alphonse. Does he have copies of all of the
drawings?”
“Yeah, he put them on his cell phone.”
55
3

---

Balboa Park gets crowded early on Sunday mornings, especially around the
House of Hospitality Restaurant across from the Art Gallery. But this Sunday, the
bridge leading into the prado area was closed, as were the entrances at Pepper Grove,
Roosevelt Junior High School, and the Zoo. A nude body was found sitting in front of
the carved gallery doors, leaning against them, propped up by one arm, the other
outstretched as though begging for alms, head slumped forward on the chest, face
invisible.
“CSI done here?” Hall asked as he side-stepped the blood pooled in the
shallow cement pockets in front of the door.
“Yep. Even think they have the murder weapon,” Smith said as he knelt by the
body. “Poor bastard. Look at his tits.” Over each nipple a drawer knob had been
meticulously sewn, and a key-hole shaped piece of flesh removed from the groin. “I
hope the bastard was dead before our Martha Stewart wanna-be got to him.” The body
was unmistakably an exquisite corpse. “Who could have done this to another human
being?”
Hall marveled at his ignorance. Gestapo. Janjaweed. Saddam Hussein.
Torquemada. Vlad the Impaler. Caligula. He lifted the body’s head and gazed at the
face. “The question is how, did Dr. Phelps get here in this condition?”
“You serious?” Smith grabbed the body’s hair and looked for himself. “Jesus
fuckin’ Christ,” he said, letting the head drop and pulling away. “It is him. Did
Alphonse have any connection to him?”
“Because they were both artists, you mean?” Hall said. He made a quick visual
sweep of the porch and steps. Maybe CSI missed something–anything that would tell
them who and how—but the area was almost sterile.
“I mean in any way. Was Phelps a member of the Hillcrest crowd, you think?”
“Phelps wasn’t Alphonse’s type. Too refined. But he could have been William
Long’s type, maybe,” Hall adjusted his walking device and crouched on one knee.
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4
“We’re missing something.”
“Clues. Suspects. Leads. Facts. No biggie.” Smith was making notations on his
PAD.
Hall steadied himself, his hand pressing against the wooden doors, his fingers
feeling the groves and bumps of the Renaissance carving so painstaking recreated
when the Art Gallery had its face–lift. “Add motive to your list. This might be
suicide,” he said.
“Bullshit,” Smith said without hesitation.
“No bullshit. Phelps might have killed himself. Look at those sutures. No
amateur did that stitching and no amateur carved up Long’s body.”
Smith brought his face within inches from the knobs. The black thread was
laced with precision, each stitch no more than an eighth of an inch apart and no more
than an eighth of an inch long. “If it wasn’t gruesome, it’d be as beautiful as my
grandmother’s embroidery.”

---

The Rue D’Alene was a half a block from the Turn About Club, where female
impersonators entertained straight men and women and made extra cash from drug
deals and blowjobs in the bathroom. The Café building itself was set back off the
sidewalk with outdoor seating on the patio that was shaded by a net awning. Nothing
kept San Diegans from enjoying the sun they paid so dearly for in housing prices, Hall
though as he and Smith waded through the groups of artists who posed for the tourists,
and admired each other’s period costumes and straight guys who looked like Smith.
Alphonse was holding chairs for them, and stood and waved as they neared—so
the crowd could see him with Smith. “Jack, over here,” he called to them, then turned
to the waiter who was wearing a blue smock and a dark green beret and giving Smith
the once over. “I’ll have iced mint tea, but bring my friends coffee.”
“You’re right. Alphonse didn’t do it,” Smith whispered as they walked passed a
group of guys in tight tee shirts and short-shorts. They overheard the name Phelps a
57
5
dozen times before they reached the almost unrecognizable Alphonse. He’d shaved his
facial hair and gotten a haircut. The make-up was gone.
“ Sounds like the art community’s abuzz,” Hall said as they sat down. “A
body begging at the doors of an establishment art gallery—how symbolic.”
“I swear these people don’t know art from arthritis, “ Alphonse said when the
waiter had left their drinks. “They’re all poseurs and I’m bored with them.”
“I’m no artist myself,” Smith said. He and Alphonse were wearing khaki
Dockers and madras shirts. Life imitating art imitating life.
“At least you don’t pretend to be. That’s respectable,” Alphonse said. “Now that
we’ve been seen, let’s go where we can talk without yelling.” He led them to a small
patio at the rear of the café where three bistro tables and six chairs lined the walkway
around a white marble birdbath. “The owner lets me sketch here. The others talk a
good line but it’s all for show, you know. I need quiet when I work. That scares me.”
“We all get old, if we’re lucky,” Smith said.
Alphonse shot him a look of approval, and unfolded a newspaper, revealing a
picture of Smith standing by the Chief at a microphone. City Vows To Catch Phelps
Killer, the headline read. “Respectable Pill Hill shrink dead? The SDPD’ll be right on
it. Phelps wasn’t very old, was he?” Alphonse said as Smith, his face reddening,
refolded the newspaper. “I wouldn’t have told me I was a detective either. It was
stupid to think I wouldn’t be investigated after finding that body—or that you
wouldn’t want to talk to me after another one turned up.” He turned to Hall. “You
really are into art though, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Me and Phelps.” Hall patted his thigh. “I was a patient.”
“I didn’t kill anybody.” Alphonse said soberly.
“We know that,” Hall said “We—I think Phelps committed suicide after
committing the Long murder. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what I think. But the film you sold me was worth the money.”
“I’ve read all I can get my hands on about the Black Dahlia case. You probably
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6
did too after you found Long’s body—you saw the similarities immediately,” Hall
said.
“As did every gay neo-artist in Hillcrest. The Black Dahlia is a cult icon. More
glamorous and famous in death than in life. A drama drag queen’s dream.” Alphonse
got that I’m searching-my-memory look on his face.
“Tell me about the Minotaure magazine—and the Picasso ad,” Hall said,
“I first saw it when I was in college. Art students fall in love with movements
the way interns fall in love with diseases. The ad is Picasso’s rendering of the
Minotaur – showing the bulls head of course, but as a muscular man with ample sex
organs—full frontal male nudity, not something everyone enjoyed back then.”
Alphonse stopped. Smith was looking at him, intensely interested. “Anyway,” he
continued,” Picasso was having an exhibition in New York—and across from the ad
was a poem by Charles Ford that went: The sinister is saved by a sense of humor, but
love is lost. I remember thinking how tragically true that is. Laughter maintains evil,
but destroys love. I remember I felt—well—sad when I read it.”
Smith nodded in agreement. “Guys hate being laughed at more than anything.
That’s why florists do a boomin’ business and I threw away my poetry in Middle
School.” Hall bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh.
“Then I felt guilty for feeling glad that love could be left standing alone on a
stage, ridiculed into oblivion. That’s what made me a surrealist—I felt sorry for evil.”
Alphonse took a long drink of his tea. “It’s unnerving to think Faye Ray could have
stopped King Kong with a giggle, and Picasso’s work could degenerate into a porno
Sendak creature,” he said after wiping his lips with a starched white napkin. “It was
the same sad feeling I got when I read a book review of Black Dahlia Avenger .”
“The story isn’t exactly a back-slapping rib-tickler.” Hall said. “Neither was the
review. I’ll never forget it because it speculated that Hodel’s motive for writing it was
his frustration that he and his pals never got the recognition he thought they deserved.”
“Were they laughed at?” Smith said.
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7
“More like ignored when other fads replaced them. Frivolous America.
Hollywood wasn’t the place for idealistic politics or serious art movements.”
“So, Hollywood made you sad too?” Hall said. “You left LA.”
“I left LA because I didn’t want to tell my parents I’m gay. Like they didn’t
know.” Phelps said Alphonse would grow up. “I’ll never forget how the review ended:
when accidental art replaces the genius of intentional art, we have nothing to
distinguish ourselves. Man is the only canvass that can do justice to our muses.
Signed—Theseus.”

---

“Sounds like that Theseus guy was excusing Hodel for using the Black Dahlia
as a canvass. You think Phelps could have thought of William Long as his personal
canvass?” Smith said as he and Hall walked into station. Joanie was waiting for them,
sitting in the hallway outside the office area, sipping coffee, sans a white lab coat over
her polyester pantsuit. “I’ll write up the Greco interview,” Smith said, and left them to
say what people say after a tragedy.
Did she see Phelps’ meltdown coming? Not that it mattered. How does a
nurse tell a shrink he needs to see one?
“I probably shouldn’t have done this, but I know you and Dr. Phelps were
friends. Fifteen years is a long time,” she said. Her eyes said she was maternal, the
kind of person Phelps needed to handle a calendar of crazies. Hall ushered her into one
of the lawyers’ conference rooms. “This is for you,” she said. She took a thick file
folder labeled JOHN HALL from a large zebra-striped handbag, and put it on the
table.
“Thanks, but you have to return this immediately, Joanie. The department
will ask a lot of questions if my file isn’t with the rest of the PD’s patients.”
“It’s only a copy—but a complete copy,” Joanie said. She stood up and patted
his shoulder. “Ariadne’s Yarn software’s in there. Doctor Phelps couldn’t bear the
thought of her..it.. being advertised like a Sham-Wow.”
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8
No. Myths were somebody’s religion, once.
“There’s nothing worse than a maze of unanswered questions, unless it’s
carrying around a bunch of guilt. Neither of us saw this coming, John. I don’t believe
anyone can ever really know what’s inside people. I’ll see you at the funeral.” Hall
watched her walk slowly away, each footstep repeating the word why.
Hall looked at each page of the notes and reports referencing his accident, his
depression, his medications—three years of his life reduced to black and white
sentences. He’d keep the file, he decided, and leave instructions that, when his time
came, his death certificate be added to it. Then it really would be complete. At the
back of the file was a manila envelope containing Ariadne’s Yarn and a strange
drawing he’d forgotten he’d made. Shrinks often have new patients draw self-portraits
as a clue about how the patient feels about himself. At the time, he’d assumed it was
just a gimmick used to distract the patient while the doctor observed him. Now he
knew detectives and shrinks searched for the same thing: motive. What drives a person
to such self-hate? Losing a leg. Being laughed at. Desire for something unobtainable.
He’d taken all of three minutes to outline the disconnected circles and cylinders that
were as inanimate and broken as he was, and didn’t know Phelps had saved it.
He didn’t know Phelps’ love affair with machines had been such a long one
either. Attached to his crude drawing was a print out of Hans Bellmer’s The Doll—a
collapsed mannequin with one stumpy half-leg and a big joint at the hip, a broken
torso with the chest area bent over a broken rattan-seated chair, a disconnected head
resting on a chair leg and a human hand, palm up, off to the side. Surrealism at its best.
And behind the picture of the distorted, pitiful doll, was the copy of Parrish’s
Prometheus. Glorious, beautiful, triumphant.
“When an ordinary man accidentally becomes a god,” Phelps had scrawled at
the bottom of the printout, “he no longer needs Theseus to help him escape the
labyrinth. He need only open the door and walk away.”
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62
Time Remaining Ronald Friedman
Jackson Rowley sat hunched over on a stool in the nurse’s station and waited
for his vision to clear. Bright streaks jittered in the center of his visual field
accompanied by stabs of pain.
He shut his eyes and the pain receded a little. The three-legged stool jerked
about on the polished floor as his muscles strained in response to the jolts of pain. All
around him, muffled and distant, like the soundtrack of a television movie playing in
the next room, he heard the familiar sounds of organized chaos in the intensive care
unit
A hand on his shoulder interrupted Rowley’s thoughts. Now he could hear
ringing phones, shouted orders, shuffling feet. The conversations around him became
distinct. “Are you all right, Doctor?”
He forced his eyes open and hesitantly rubbed his palm across his face,
knowing he couldn’t hide the ravages of the pain.
“Just getting a slow start.”
“Can I get you anything?”
Rowley looked up and saw Elsie Cerioni, the supervising nurse. He hadn’t
recognized her voice, although he knew her well.
He managed to smile, knowing he alarmed her, seeing it in her face. He was a
little over six feet tall. He had always been thin, but in the past month he’d lost 10
pounds. “A headache out of nowhere,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” He got to his feet. The
pain was receding.
“Are you doing the consult on Robert Tremain?”
“The gunshot. Yes. Why are you keeping him in the ICU?”
Elsie shrugged her shoulders. “It’s beyond me.” Then she shook her head
slowly. “We can’t take that bandage off. Help us with the mom.”
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“I’ll talk to you as soon as I’ve seen them.”
“He’s in eight.”
Rowley felt Cerioni’s eyes on him as he walked across the floor. There were
no secrets in a hospital. He wondered if she knew how sick he was.

---

The intensive care units fanned out around a central nurse’s station. Electronic
monitors and direct observation allowed doctors and nurses to watch over their
patients without interruption. Smart sensors and automatic data synthesis programs
delivered needed changes in medication, oxygen, and other life support measures
smoothly and efficiently. In Robert Tremain’s room most of this sophisticated
technology had been turned off.
“Good Morning,” Rowley said as he entered. He was greeted with a familiar
sour smell, a combination of antiseptics mixed with rancid sweat and body waste. The
room was small and crowded. “I’m Dr. Rowley. I’m a psychologist from the
Department of Pediatrics.”
His vision had finally cleared. So far the attacks were painful, but brief. He
knew that wouldn’t last.
He stood at the foot of the bed and looked at each of the three people gathered
around the patient. They would be Robert’s parents, Harold and Emma and his sister,
Tasha. Only the immediate family was allowed in the ICU. There were two brothers as
well, most likely in the family room down the hall. The faces of the three were drained
of color, their eyes red and swollen from crying, but he saw the flicker of hope appear
in Emma Tremain’s face as she turned to him. For Rowley, the expression was
familiar. He was a doctor she hadn’t seen before. Perhaps he brought good news.
Harold Tremain looked grim. He nodded in response to Rowley’s greeting.
Tremain was a short narrow faced man with sharp features and thin black hair combed
back over his head. He wore a gray suit that was wrinkled and stained. The points of
his shirt collar were twisted right and left, but his tie remained tightly knotted at his
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throat.
“Good morning, Doctor,” Emma Tremain said. For a moment longer she
stared, as if challenging him to dare to give her anything but a good report.
In the bed lay the unmoving form of 14-year-old Robert Tremain, a large
white bandage like a turban covering his head to a point below his eyes. His chest rose
and fell regularly solely as a result of the air pumped into his lungs by the ventilator
inserted in his trachea.
Rowley glanced at the monitors mounted above the bed, but he already knew
what he would see. Robert’s stubborn heart was still beating, but the EEG showed
only occasional random bursts of activity when someone jostled Robert or bumped
into the bed.
Robert Tremain was dead. He had died 48 hours ago, shot in the center of the
forehead about two centimeters above his eyebrows with a hunting rifle owned by the
father of a friend. The powerful bullet had flattened when it hit his skull and tumbled
through a large swath of his cerebral cortex turning it to pulp, finally exiting through
the crown of his head taking a large portion of his brain and skull with it. His brain
stem had been spared the worst of the trauma so he was still breathing and his beating
heart sustained the illusion of life.
Despite having been told their son was dead, Emma and Harold Tremain
refused to allow the ventilator to be removed and had not told the other children their
brother had died. They remained focused on his evenly rising and falling chest as a
sign that all was not beyond hope as if, through the raw power of love, they could
forestall his terrible fate.
Rowley had spent his professional life taking care of people like the
Tremains. He understood their wishes and prayers, the despairing longing for a gentle
soothing parent’s voice to wake them and assure them that this nightmare would end
when morning came.
Robert’s mother had begged the nurses to remove the bandage so she could
65
see her son better, but the medical staff wanted to save her from the image of her son
with half his skull missing. Nothing remained of his head above the level of the entry
wound.
Rowley shook hands with the boy’s parents and turned to Tasha who looked
young for her 12 years and said, “You must be tired, Tasha. Were you here all night?”
Tasha shook her head.
“She slept in the family room down the hall,” Emma Tremain said. She
reached out and stroked the girl’s hair. “Her brother is so ill. Harold and I sat up with
Bobby. We wanted to be here in case…” her voice trailed off.
All three were looking at Rowley. The rhythmic sound of the ventilator pump
hissed in the background. Muted sounds from the public address announcements were
a constant murmur beyond the glass door.
“In case of what?” Rowley asked.
Harold Tremain looked at Rowley with pleading eyes. “In case there’s a
miracle. In case he wakes up,” he said, finishing the sentence his wife could not speak.
His voice was barely audible. “He could wake up. We have to give God a chance.”
Every minute of denial, every second that Robert’s chest rose and fell in a
simulation of breathing the parents could pretend their son was still with them. But
now it was past time to turn off the ventilator and allow normal grieving.
“When will Robert be better?” Tasha said.
“We have to be patient, sweetheart. Robert is very sick,” her mother said. She
turned her face from her daughter as she spoke.
Rowley knew he had to stop this quickly. He was sure that a good portion of
the parents’ own reluctance to acknowledge their son’s death grew out of their fear
about telling their other children that their brother was dead. Rowley had to work
through this terrible circumstance, forcibly if necessary.
Rowley recognized that both parents knew the truth even if they did not admit
it. But by insisting that Robert was still alive, the parents denied the children and each
66
other the support each could offer to help work through their loss of Robert.
“Can you take the bandage off his head so I can see him?” Emma Tremain
asked.
“No,” Rowley said firmly. “There’s nothing to see under the bandage, Mrs.
Tremain. The bullet destroyed the top of Robert’s head. I want you to remember your
beautiful boy as he looked before his awful thing happened.”
Rowley kept his eyes fixed on her. She closed her own eyes and shuddered.
“Mrs. Tremain? Are you with me on this? Do you understand what I just
said?”
She shook her head, but at least she wasn’t arguing. She was responding to
her own sense of loss and regret, but Rowley could not follow her there. Finally she
looked at him. “He was such a beautiful boy,” she said.
Emma reached for her purse on the nightstand next to the bed and fumbled
around inside for a moment. She brought out a small picture of a smiling teenage boy
looking into the camera holding a baseball bat in his hands.
“Almost too pretty for a boy,” Emma said. She turned to her husband and
gave him a weak, sad smile. His eyes were flooded with tears.
Rowley wanted the parents to explain to their other children that Robert was
dead. It would not have the same effect if the words came from Jackson or another
member of the medical staff.
“Tasha, I have to talk to your mother and father for a few minutes. Would it
be okay if you stayed here with Robert or would you rather wait in the other room with
your brothers?
” I want to stay here,” Tasha said.
Rowley felt the pain stab behind his eyes. He took several slow breaths in an
effort to calm himself. There was no way to predict the violence of each attack.
His symptoms the past few days convinced him that the glioma had invaded
the optic chiasm and was putting pressure on nearby brain structures including the
67
internal carotid artery. The vessel ran alongside the bundles of nerves that carried
impulses from the retina to the portion of the brain that controlled vision.
Each jolt of pain was like an electric shock triggering thoughts he was trying
to avoid.
He was at urgent risk of a ruptured vessel.
Do you really want to die of a stroke?
He had family, grandchildren.
He was only 58 years old.
He managed a smile and a calm voice. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes.” He
would find an unoccupied room and wait out the pain.

---

“You have to stop working,” Dr. Carol Sunday had said when Rowley met
with her in her office that morning. He sat across the desk from the Chief of
Neurology and nodded. “You’re right.” He shuffled through the Mylar sheets with
pictures of his brain, the results of the MRI, set out in rows and columns.
“No more stalling, Jack, Today’s the day you have to decide what you’re going
to do.” Sunday shook her head. “Two weeks ago you were eager to fight this thing.”
“I was, but that was just a reflexive response to a threat. Now, I’ve had some
time to think about what’s at stake.”
“Jack, there’s only one thing at stake.”
Rowley shook his head. “No,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“There are other things to consider.”
“Besides your life?” Sunday looked at him like an angry parent.
Rowley thought about the evolution of his thinking over the past few weeks.
“It’s important to me how I die. It’s important to me whether I put up a useless fight.”
Sunday ran her fingers through her loose brown hair and rubbed her temples as
if she was the one who suffered from pain. “Trust me on this one. This is neurology,
68
not witchcraft. I’m sorry, Jack. It’s stage 4 and very aggressive. You cannot afford any
further delay.”
“You really think it’s still worth treating?” Thinking about never seeing his
grandchildren again brought a flood of desperate emotion that made it hard to breathe.
Sunday looked at him for a moment, her head tilted as if to get a more
revealing look at him. “It would have been better if we had started two weeks ago, but
I wouldn’t put you through radiation and chemo if I didn’t think you’d have a decent
chance.”
“So I get a couple of years.”
“Eighteen months to three years with the first six months pretty rough.”
“Six months? C’mon, Carol. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
Sunday held out her arms with her palms up, a supplicant’s gesture, but she
did not back down. “You’ll still be weak after that.”
“Jesus, Carol. A year of agony and maybe a few months that aren’t so bad? Is
that the life I get if I’m lucky?”
“You could get three years.”
“If you radiate the tumor it will leave me blind, won’t it?”
The neurologist sighed. “Probably. But that’s three years with your
grandchildren.”
Rowley closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “I think about that a lot. How
long with no treatment?”
Sunday shook her head. “ You could have a stroke right now and never walk
out of this office.”
He tried to smile. “No long-term patients for me then.”
“What work are you doing?”
He told her about the Tremain family. “Here’s the craziest part. I thought
about helping them keep the boy on the vent for a while longer. As long as they can
see his chest rise and fall, they think he’s still with them. I can coach them on what to
69
say that would force the hospital to keep the vent going for another week or month.”
He paused. “What would be the harm?”
“But you didn’t.”
“Of course not. I’m supposed to help them stop pretending he’s alive.”
“You think I’m deluding myself about you?” Sunday asked.
“Carol, I get sicker and weaker every day. I have this fantasy that I’ll slip right
past the moment I die and just keep going through the routines of my work.”
“Like Robert Tremain.”
“Exactly like Tremain. For all practical purposes I’m dead already.”
“Who’s helping you with this?”
“Just you.”
“I mean the personal side.”
“I know what you mean.”
Sunday shook her head. She would not let him be. “Who did you talk to when
your wife died?”
“That was different.” Helen had been sick for a long time. He’d needed an
outlet for the sorrow that haunted him and the bitterness that grew inside him as he
witnessed her pain. “I needed strength to take care of her.”
“This is not something you do alone. Have you talked to your son?”
“He’s a surgery resident.”
Sunday smiled. “He’s your son first. Not every surgeon with a knife is a
megalomaniac.”
“I talked to him yesterday. He’s angry I haven’t started treatment. I’ll call him
tomorrow. After I decide.”
“I’m angry with you too,” Sunday said. “Talk to McMillan, then. He does our
family and grief groups.”
“Carol, I’ll handle it.”
“You’re a stubborn asshole. Just because you’re taking care of a family who
70
won’t let their dead son rest in peace doesn’t mean the same thing is happening to you.”
Rowley stood.
Sunday held him with her gaze. “Today, Jack.”

---

Dr. Rowley led Robert’s parents into a consulting room across the ICU. He
closed the door and invited them to sit. He took a seat in the chair next to Mrs.
Tremain. Rowley wore a long white coat with his name embroidered in red over the
breast pocket. He usually wore a sport coat and tie at work but he knew that the white
coat was comforting for parents and children so he always wore it when he worked in
the ICU or the emergency room.
In a gentle, but firm voice Rowley said, “Robert died two days ago. He died
immediately when he was shot. Do you understand that?”
Neither parent responded.
“Emma? Harold? Please look at me.”
He waited until both were looking at his face. He reached out and put a hand
on Emma Tremain, then, after a moment, did the same with Harold. “No one can
imagine the pain you both are experiencing right now.” Emma nodded.
“You have to explain to Tasha and Donald and Andrew. They don’t know
what’s going on here and it’s best if they hear it from you.”
“Yes,” Harold said.
“Mrs. Tremain?”
Emma sat with her hands clenched tightly in her lap her eyes on the floor, her
strained breathing, laced with frequent cries.
“Not my boy,” she said.
Her husband reached to touch her shoulder but she shook him off angrily.
“You’re not his mother,” she said harshly and Rowley saw Harold wince, but
he put his hand back on her other arm. This time she allowed it to stay there.
Rowley remained quiet, his full attention on Emma and Harold. Emma was
71
0
being forced now to acknowledge Robert’s death. Then he saw it, first in Harold and a
moment later in Emma, the slight shift in posture, the release of clenched muscles, a
breath like a sigh, which indicated the acceptance of what they had resisted for days.
Rowley leaned forward slightly.
Emma finally looked up at Rowley. Her face was empty. “My baby is dead,”
she said simply as her face twisted in pain and tears poured from her eyes.
“I’m very sorry.”
For several moments they sat silently the only sound the quiet weeping of
both parents.
“In a few minutes I’m going to bring in the children,” Rowley told them. “I
want you to tell them that Robert has died. Let’s just sit here a few more minutes.”
When he thought the time was right Rowley said, “Are you ready for me to get Tasha
and the boys?”
Emma nodded her head as her husband said, “We’re ready.”
Rowley got to his feet gingerly. He felt lightheaded.
A few minutes later he returned with the three children and directed them to
chairs next to their parents.
Rowley glanced at the parents. Neither was looking at their three children.
“Kids, your mom and dad want to talk to you about Robert.”
Tasha and Andrew turned their gazes to their mother. Donald looked at his
father.
“Mr. Tremain?” Rowley said.
Harold hitched his chair closer to his three children. He still had not looked
into their faces. Now he did and tears began to roll down his cheeks.
“You know that Robert was hurt very badly,” he said.
The children stared at their father. He seemed unable to continue.
“He’s sick,” Harold said.
Rowley started to correct Harold Tremain, but his wife interrupted.
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1
“He’s dead,” Emma said firmly.
The children turned their heads to her.
“You heard me,” she said. “Your brother’s not sick; he’s dead.”
The children began to cry and their parents moved closer to pull them together
and held them tight.
Rowley stayed with the Tremain family for another half hour while they
talked and comforted each other until it was clear they would prefer to be left alone
with their grief.

---

He thought about Verity and Valor. Since his wife had died, their
grandchildren had been an emotional compass and anchor at the same time even
though they lived so far away. Just the thought of them soothed him. This was his
greatest regret. He felt a desperate agony at the thought of them growing up and not
being part of their lives.
He had hoped he would be able to continue seeing a few patients for a while
longer, but he knew that was not possible. His work had given him a great deal of
satisfaction. It helped him know who he was. He’d been good at it, too. At times, he
found himself wondering how many patients he had cared for over the years, but it
was usually a trivial question of the moment and he never checked to see.
Carol Sunday had been feeding him a line of bullshit. She knew he wouldn’t
choose the treatment option because she knew him and she knew medicine and she
knew he was aware of its false hope. He could no more choose the route of hopeless
treatment than he could have encouraged the Tremain family to live with the fantasy
that their son was still alive and some miracle might yet save him.
He took great pleasure from his ability to get close to his patients, to gain their
trust, to help them make their lives whole. He was a man who had spent his
professional life helping people face the harsh realities of life and death and here he
was struggling to make the decision about his own life. But had he really struggled?
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2
Not much, he thought. In the end it turned out to be easy to decide.
Rowley stood outside Robert Tremain’s room until the ventilator was shut
down and removed and the plastic tubes that had sustained his body taken away. He
entered the room and stood next to the bed. Robert’s body already appeared sunken in
on itself, his hands closing in contractures that looked like claws.
The boy was dead. He didn’t look peaceful. He looked dead. He thought about
the force of will the boy’s parents brought to their desperate desire to imagine him
alive days after they were told he was dead. It had been madness really.
What madness drove him to deny, even for a moment, that he had passed the
point of no return in his own life? Were Carol and Mark just as much under the spell
of desperation as were Robert’s parents? He couldn’t join them in pretending that
chemotherapy and radiation would give him back his life anymore than he had been
able to support the Tremain’s and their unjustified fantasy that the some miracle would
bring their son back to them.
He would remain with Robert until his family came to say goodbye. Then he’d
call Mark and tell him that he’d made arrangements with a hospice across the city,
affiliated with a different hospital. After that, he’d stop by Carol’s office to tell her
what she already knew he would do. Her office was on the other side of the hospital.
He would enjoy walking through the corridors one last time.
74
Contributors
Kristi Peterson Schoonover’s novel, Bad Apple, was nominated for a
Pushcart Prize in December 2012; her fiction has appeared in The Adirondack Review,
Barbaric Yawp, Full of Crow Fiction Quarterly, Macabre Cadaver, Morpheus Tales,
New Witch, The Smoking Poet, Toasted Cheese, and others, including several
anthologies. She is the recipient of three Norman Mailer Writers Colony Winter
Residencies, and is an editor for Read Short Fiction. Her collection, Skeletons in the
Swimmin’ Hole, is a collection of ghost stories set in Disney Parks. She lives in the
Connecticut woods with her husband, occult specialist Nathan Schoonover, and still,
most of the time, sleeps with the lights on.

Daniel Davis was born and raised in Central Illinois. He is the Nonfiction
Editor for The Prompt Literary Magazine. You can find him at
http://www.dumpsterchickenmusic.blogspot.com, or on Facebook.
Anne Britting Oleson has been published widely in the US, UK and
Canada. She earned her MFA at the Stonecoast program of USM. She has published
two chapbooks, The Church of St. Materiana (2007) and The Beauty of
It (2010). Another book, Counting the Days, is scheduled for release next year.
Marian Brooks is recently retired and has just begun to write some short
fiction. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband. Marian was a family therapist for
many years and now works as a hospice volunteer.
Allen Kopp lives in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, with his two cats. He has had over
seventy stories appearing in such diverse publications as Santa Fe Writers’ Project
Journal, Danse Macabre, A Twist of Noir, Skive Magazine, Midwest Literary
Magazine, Short Story America, Midwestern Gothic Literary Journal, Planetary
Stories, Best Genre Short Stories Anthology #1, ISFN Anthology #1, Superstition
Review, Quail Bell Magazine, State of Imagination, Dew on the Kudzu, ThunderDome
Magazine, Spasm Valley Magazine, The Medulla Review, Subtext Magazine, and many
others. He welcomes visitors to his website at: http://www.literaryfictions.com
Jeffrey Graessley is a writer from La Puente, CA. His latest works can be
found in the forthcoming Summer Anthology of Silver Birch Press; as well as Electric
Windmill Press, and The Pomona Valley Review. His recent discovery of the BEAT
generation has prompted loving and longing thoughts for that simple, drunken, fargone time in American history.
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Jenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, and former
community college instructor who taught Political Science and Sociology. She
received the EKU English Department’s Award for Graduate Non-fiction (2011), and
has been published in Main Street Rag Anthology—Altered States, Wherever It
Pleases, Danse Macabre, bioStories, Cobalt Review, Dew of the Kudzu, Nazar Look,
and Black Lantern, among a slew of others. She now resides in Kentucky, and writes
full time.
Ronald Friedman is a retired psychologist living in Scottsdale, Arizona. He
has written a lot of nonfiction, but only started writing short stories a couple of years
ago.

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