In Which We Attempt To Stop Ourselves From Weeping

Morning Star

by KATE NURSAS

She explained she had brought her boyfriend, Davidson Legrange, to see her family on some minor holiday.

He wore a handmade shirt with the letter 'P' on it. Her mother asked him what it meant. "It refers to Plato," he said, and she saw her mother almost imperceptibly grimace. Later her cousins, all decked out in Raiders jerseys, got wind of the fact that Davidson Legrange had written a poem for her.

She found him in her father's garage, tapping on a toy piano that no longer could produce any discernible noise other than a soft G. He had not yet begun to cry, holding his hands in his hands.

The poem began,

Night falls.
Stars manage to bow,
I see you in the light
or out of it.

You know
you should just let your
hair grow.

It went on like this, mostly about his feelings for her or himself, replete with so many broken metaphors it made her a little dizzy when she had read it the day before. She did not know if the purpose of the poem was praise or advice, but the more she thought it about, the nearer she was to the conclusion that this distinction eluded her fairly often.

While her family cut up cakes, he begged her to drive him to Home Depot. His broken Schwinn sat in the back of her truck. She watched him try to fix it outside a Dunkin' Donuts. Across from them, at a picnic table, an officiously dressed up family of four mildly ate bagel sandwiches. Their voices, low and steady, sounded like worship in the cool night.

When she pointed them out to Davidson Legrange, he shuddered, recalling her mother. It is one thing, she thought, to love the women who gave you life and another completely to be reminded of her when you really did not want to be. The faithful family joined hands around the table and let out a sigh. She reflexively put her hand on his boater.

Another part of the poem read

A lighthouse
tumbles into the ocean.

A man stands on his heels
or falls to his knees
in supplication. Your hand touches my face.

She had looked up from his notebook and told him she thought using the word 'tumbles' was inappropriate. "It's nothing wrong with the word itself." She went on: "It's the association it has with a popular website." She has suspected at first this would make Davidson Legrange angry or chagrined, but he had kind of grunted and put an index finger to his temple. Then his face softened and he nodded. She supposed that meant he felt he was the one wandering through the lighthouse, the person this was all happening to. At that thought she herself had made a face.

The moon bristled and ascended over the Dunkin' Donuts. It did not surprise her that he could fix his own bike. He had said to her more than once before that he did not understand the idea of starting something and not seeing it through to its completion. At the time had been clearly referring to a mentorship program with underprivileged youth he had joined as an undergraduate. In time she had begun to wonder if it applied to her as well.

When they returned to her parents' house, everyone was watching the game in a drunken fugue. At halftime Davidson Legrange read his poem when her cousins demanded it, brushing his bangs back from his face and periodically looking at the sky. He never met her eyes. It was not that the poem was unkind to him or to her. It was that it existed at all.

Back at their apartment in the city he kept opening and closing the refrigerator, or drawing circles on his mousepad. She knew saying something was probably going to lead to unkindness on her part, so she suppressed it. She did not think he had ever been willfully cruel, or she hoped she had not been.

The end of the poem read,

A maelstorm. A haunted, caloric cavern.
Where I stand thinking of you forever.
Your embrace.

She watched him at the desk from her sid of the bed, always about to say what she was going to have to say. His back was to her, and her mouth felt dry.

Once in a book by an author she used to admire, she read that a woman would tell you something on her own time, when she was ready for it, or not at all. This, she still believed, was not only sexist, but completely without even the slightest grain of truth that such generalizations usually possessed.

To her, both sexes seemed remarkably transparent. Even if someone she knew did not come out and explain their difficulties, it took no great insight to uncover the truth. As soon as this idea entered her mind, she knew that it was not about the world, held only as far from her as the top of the lighthouse might be from the ocean below in order to guide those who passed, but about Davidson Legrange.

Tears on a fucking mousepad. Jesus.

Kate Nursas is a writer living in Chicago. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

"40 Times A Day" - Jil Is Lucky (mp3)

"Dead Star" - Jil Is Lucky (mp3)

In Which There Is No Telling Which Way These Things Go

Five Days Ago

by DAN CARVILLE

Certain events came to light. There is no need for me to detail these occurrences. As the perpetrator she is well within her rights to come forward, although I know she will not.

It is enough to say I remember hearing your name that first time. (I saw her moving around, gesturing at the still photo of a child. When I spoke to her then, it was like a man addressing a very proud eagle.) You acted flattered by what I said, but when I thought back to what it was, I had not considered the remarks encouraging at all.

"It's a matter of scale," said the paleontologist to the triceratops.

You will remember that as a boy that I knew the names of such creatures. Once my mother saw me puttering about the yard. "Use your words," she said. (I did not realize she meant it condescendingly until much later.)

I was only a child with poor eyesight when that took place. Should I not have told you of it until now, should I have bided my time to some future date when you could begin to understand what I am composed of?

+

There were other such places, people. Sometimes I was among them as you always seem to be. Evidence in shining eyes, a joy of your own making, not mine. It makes me envious.

Maybe you could not say these things as well as me, that is why I say them to you now. I assumed you knew, but you acted surprised. Do not tell me about them, and do not give their names, and do not transmit photos of them or of you when they are nearby.

I had a strange experience in an airport last year. I haven't told you of that either. I saved someone. You'll want to know all about this. Perhaps later.

+

When searching for the reason something is beautiful, I consider three main principles:

(1) Does it make me feel something I have never felt before?

(2) Can I hold it in my hands?

(3) Does it give a reflection in a mirror, and what kind of image is revealed?

These are all ways of touching. I myself do not like it when another is in control. (We all know that many creatures are by this definition not beautiful.) I do want to be that familiar, as though disembarking from the revelation involved in pushing the sleeve of my shirt up to the elbow.

These lifeless husks you meet could not satisfy you because they are not the girth of the world. Light flows through me alone. It is folly to consider another. When I lie - when I find myself lying - I consider it sort of an ode.

+

For the rest of time, it has been an utterance on my tongue, a splitting deep in my lower abdomen, the den of all pleasure and all pain. There is no purpose in being like this, except to the extent that it represents a form that must be inhabited before it can be discarded. That is what you wanted me to think or feel, hurt by the faith you lack. There is no difference in between those modes of thought: the indeterminacy signals only acceptance.

Making visible the hours in the arbor, holding a small object rather than a long, thin point. The sea of the formerly inconceivable. He must turn against himself, a key frame redrawn on paper. I'll show you.

Dan Carville is a writer living in New York. He last wrote in these pages here, and you can find an archive of his fiction on This Recording here.

Images by Julio Larraz, except for Heavy Dog Kiss by Dennis Oppenheim.

 

In Which We Take Off The Gloves

To The Touch

by GREG AMELIAN

"My first week on the job," Samuel told me. "I can't forget."

They had transferred my new partner a few weeks earlier, but Samuel had been forced by his previous department in Algonquin to take all his unused vacation days before showing up for work in Botter.

Samuel stood considerably shorter than me, but he would not turn his head up to my face; it was not his habit to do so. I was forced to stoop slightly to make any eye contact. His eyes examined me in turn, but never really met mine. The sun bounced off his bare head.

Samuel explained that he had been paired with an older officer who had a bad reputation in the department as a sort of hazing.

I asked the man's name but Samuel would not reveal it. "I shouldn't," he said. "He would not want me to and I am not like that." He ran hands covered in soft, leather gloves over his scalp.

At that moment we got a call about a domestic disturbance south of the river and the story suffered from an interruption.

The offending man was large and drunk, and had to be cuffed and transported. I should not say it this way, but I was shocked by Samuel. For one thing, he was maybe the most agile thing I had ever seen. Possibly I'd observed a cat as quick as he was at some point, I cannot say for sure. But he moved fast, and always knew exactly where to go. And he was strong. When I saw him lift his foot in the air and put this muscled individual on his knees I have to admit I was smiling.

But he made no mention of this display over lunch at a Sbarro. (They know me there, and I wanted him to see how others treated me.) Finally I decided to see if I could get him to talk about it. Casually, I moved my arm across the table, catching his mug of coffee enough to topple it to the floor.

Without even looking, it seemed to me, he caught it. And from his face, when I moved it into view, I suspected he was about to let me in.

He told me he was a Jew, and I said that I knew it, someone had mentioned it to me. His face drained of blood, so I said, "My wife's Jewish. That's probably why they said it." He relaxed some then, but resumed his already irritating habit of rubbing his scalp with his gloved hands.

"There was a tornado in Norwich last year," he said. "Maybe you had heard about it." I said I had seen it on the news.

"It's not really tornado country," he said. "I don't know if I've ever been to a place that was. We were, like most of the department, poking through the wreckage. Looking to find anyone who might have been trapped. The smell was incredible."

I nodded.

"It never blew away," he said. "Sometimes it filled my nostrils when I woke." I told him that I understood, and after a few moments he continued.

"There was a home that had not been decimated as the others. Downed trees filled the yard certainly, and the corpses of birds. But the home still stood, even when those around it did not, and the gate leading to it had been torn off its hinges."

By this time we were no longer in Sbarro. I pulled the car into the most scenic spot I knew. It overlooked a small lake.

"For obvious reasons it was the last place we went. My partner knocked on the door, and when no one answered, we opened it. It was unlocked, you see. Once we went inside, we found that it had locked us in.

"My partner began to panic. He would not stop pounding the door. Finally, he slumped against it while I went off to look for another exit.

"Nothing in the house, so far as I could see, had even been disturbed. The smell of death that had been following us that week had disappeared. I called out but no one answered.

"Finally, I descended rickety wooden stairs to a basement level. It was splendid down there."

"Splendid?" I said.

"Magnificent," he said. "It was a den as some men have, maybe even you have. The den where the first man slept. But everything - the bar, the pool table, the chairs - was painted a brilliant shade of gold."

"The Midas touch," I said.

He laughed. "It was not actually gold, you see. Simply the color of it. At the rear of the room, an older man, perhaps five or ten years older than yourself, reclined in a rocking chair. I called out to him, but he did not answer. When I took his pulse I found he was still alive, but most likely unconscious. I could not move him by myself, and he did not seem in any immediate danger.

"I thought to make my way back to my partner. It had been a trying few days, and Jim was not a young man. That is not his real name."

I smiled.

"I began to ascend the stairs, but I had trouble balancing. I felt light-headed, but I slowly made my way back to the foyer and the front door. I told Jim what I had found and suggested we carry the man back to our car. Getting an ambulance was unlikely, we might have waited all night.

"He agreed, and we went back downstairs. I was not feeling myself still, but I did not want to show it, and have Jim expose my weaknesses in front of our peers when we returned to the office."

With a motion of my hand I stopped his story.

I said, "You found you could lift the man in the chair by yourself, I suppose."

He only stared.

"I noticed it when you came into the car just now. You weren't paying attention when you opened the door." I indicated the passenger side door. "You almost ripped it off its hinges. Look at the damage there."

He apologized and fell silent. I told him to take off his gloves. He did not.

"It's communicated by touch," I said. "You touched the man in the chair."

"Yes."

"When you came back, was the man in the chair already dead?"

Samuel shook his head. "He was still breathing."

"I noticed you took off your gloves to apprehend the drunk we cuffed this morning," I said. "How long does he have?"

"He abused his wife," Samuel said. "You must know that's why I did what I did."

"I suppose it's one reason you did it," I said. "I suspect you can't go very long without touching something. Your old partner - how long did he live?"

"He never found the exit of the house," Samuel said, and started to weep.

I fought the urge to console him, to take him in my arms. "It's all right," I said. "It's all right. It doesn't matter now. It doesn't matter at all."

Greg Amelian is a writer living in San Francisco.

Paintings by Pham Luan.

"The Waiting" - Angel Olsen (mp3)

"The Sky Opened Up" - Angel Olsen (mp3)