Wednesday 30 November 2016

Doing Mr. Velvet

by Gay Degani


All the dead bodies end up in Riverside County, and my cousin Emma tells me one more won’t matter. We’re on the I-10, slipping over the San Bernardino-Riverside line, Emma up ahead in Mr. Velvet’s gold Cadillac DeVille, Mr. V. dead in the trunk. I’m following behind in the station wagon.

We’re not bad people, Emma and I, and she says it’s our destiny – as cousins from a long line of beauticians – to open our own day spa. And now that it’s possible, we’ve worked too hard to waste time going to court to prove my innocence. And since she’s Mrs. Velvet and the sole heir to Mr. Velvet’s House of Hair in the event of his death, she doesn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention to herself. If anyone asks, Harold Warren Velvet went to Vegas.

Emma turns onto a two-lane highway for a couple of miles and then onto a gravel road. It’s dark, and as lonely as a hair salon on Monday mornings, the clouds around the moon reminding me of our grandma’s spit-curls.

An abrupt thump from behind, a voice at my ear: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

I scream and jerk the steering wheel. In the rear view mirror is Jesus himself, all riveting eyes and bearded chin.

The wagon sways and bumps along the side of the road, spewing sand and grit. I don’t throw up; I pee my pants.

“Gilly?” Shit. The Almighty knows my name.

The reek of fries and heavy sweat helps me calm down. I know this smell. It belongs to Holy Roller, the guy who preaches in the middle of the intersection of Baseline and Haven back in Rancho Cucamonga.

We met my second day in California where I came to learn the family trade. He was digging through the dumpster out back and said to me, “I used to be in the Truth and now I’m not. I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.”

I bought him a couple Whoppers and have been feeding him ever since.

“What the hell are you doing in Emma’s station wagon?” I ask him now.

“Hiding from the cops.” He starts to slide between the bucket seats and into the front and I swat him back. Emma’s gonna be hotter than an uncertified curling iron about this new development.

Emma’s taillights flash red across Holy’s bearded face. “Is that Mr. Velvet up there?”

“Keep your head down!”

We’ve caught up to the Cadillac, its bumper recognizable, so I hit the brakes, fishtailing a little, to fall behind. Emma’s not gonna like having a witness to our crime.

Before long she turns off the road and into squishy sand. The clouded moon turns the yucca trees into bandits, the boulders into bears. Emma parks the DeVille on a ridge of rocks. We are finally in the middle of nowhere.

“Holy,” I say. “Emma can’t know you’re here. You gotta stay in the wagon and be quiet, you understand? I mean it.”

“Fear not, little flock.”

A long gulch stretches below the ridge, willows on both sides. When I reach Emma, I lean against the Caddie’s front grille to keep from shaking too hard.

“Don’t wimp out on me now, Gilly. It’s your neck, don’t forget.”

“But I didn’t mean to do it.”

“No one’s gonna believe that now, so let’s get this car in the gully and light it up.”

She’s right, of course. Emma’s always right, and yet . . .

I glance over my shoulder at the station wagon. It’s still dark and quiet.
Mr. Velvet started to go stiff back at Mr. Velvet’s House of Hair while Emma made a plan. By the time we were ready to leave, we had to wrestle him into the trunk and now we have to wrestle him out. We tug and pull and finally get him onto the sand. Emma said we’d put him in the driver’s seat because then it would look like he decided to ramble through the desert for god-only-knows-what-reason, and something went terribly wrong, but his body still won’t bend, so we just slide him in along the front seat.

“That Mr. Velvet in there?” Holy Roller. Popping up next to me.

“Gilly,” snaps Emma.

“I didn’t ask him to come.”

“Dammit.” Emma swings around and glares at Holy. “Don’t screw with me, Jesus-freak. Gilly’s in trouble and I’m helping her out. You go wait in the station wagon, you hear? You lay down and you don’t look. I don’t wanna hurt you.”

He says softly, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and–”
Emma grabs him by the arm and drags him back to the wagon, me hurrying behind, explaining to Holy what happened. “It was an accident. I was washing Mr. Velvet’s hair –”

“You don’t have to explain anything to the likes of him!” shouts Emma.

“But I didn’t murder Mr. Velvet. I was washing his hair –”

“Shut up, Gil –”

“He jumped up when I sprayed him with hot water and then he slipped –”

“Stop it, you stupid, stupid girl.”

“And hit his head.” I’m hanging my own head.

Emma lets go of Holy when we reach her station wagon.

He glances from Emma to me and back to Emma, looking just like Jesus does in pictures of him chasing the money-changers out of the temple. He says, “So when you put the plastic over his face, Emma, you were helping him?”

Her body stiffens. “What plastic, you idiot?”

He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Well, I was hungry so I was looking for Gilly through your window. And when Mr. Velvet moved, you covered his face with Saran wrap. I saw the box. You held it there until he stopped moving.”

These are the most words I’ve heard him say except when he quotes the Bible. It takes me a second to get it, then I gape at Emma, my cousin and life-long best friend. “You killed him and you were gonna let me think I –”

“Don’t believe this junkie, Gilly.”

Fumbling for the wagon keys in my pocket, I haul Holy to the passenger door. Open it.

“Where are you going?” Emma comes after us, grips my shoulder.

I shrug her off, yell at Holy to get in and shut the door. He does. Emma tries to hold onto me, but I throw an elbow into her chest, and she slips in the sand.

I race around the car, jump into the driver’s seat, lock doors. She’s there, hammering on the roof, peering in the window, her hair mussed, her face violet with rage.

I slam the accelerator. The wheels churn sand, then shoot us forward.

We hit the black top hard, and Holy Roller says to me, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall live.”

It isn’t until we spy the first billboard for the International House of Pancakes, and Holy Roller mutters something about Whoppers, that I roll down the window and poke my head into the cool dawn. Behind us, at the foot of the mountains, I see a rod of smoke twisting to the sky.

Emma, if nothing else, is a practical woman. Somehow she’s managed to light up Mr. Velvet in his Cadillac crypt, sticking to her plan. And if I know Emma, and I guess now I do, that means she’s not going to let anything or anyone stand in the way of her transformation of Mr. Velvet’s House of Hair into Emma Elkins’ European Day Spa, and someone else is going to have to take the blame for doing Mr. Velvet.

I turn to Holy Roller. “What do you say we take a vacation?”

“Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, didn’t he?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

* * * * *

From Gay Degani's collection, Rattle of Want.


Gay Degani has had three flash pieces nominated for Pushcart consideration and won the 11th Glass Woman Prize. Pure Slush Books published her collection, Rattle of Want, in 2015 and the second edition of her suspense novel, What Came Before was published by Truth Serum Press in 2016. She blogs at Words in Place.

Tuesday 29 November 2016

Language Meanders

by Catalina Claussen


Language meanders,
trickling over touchstones
multi-faceted in riprapped river beds
that seep knowledge of geologic time and space
reflected and refracted
from the sparkle of your green eyes to the tips of my toes.

Language stores,
indigenous, intimate knowing of animal, vegetable, and mineral,
nourishing the web,
permeating the skin of a blue-belly lizard,
vibrating in the fecund chloroplasts of prickly pear pads,
purifying the cells of those who wish to drink it.

Alive, born,
merging and vanishing at the confluence of past and present,
I am per-son.
One sound.
One tone in the symphonic cacophony of existence,
riding the current into the uncertain future.


Monday 28 November 2016

She Taught Me About Gossamer

by Catalina Claussen


She taught me about gossamer
It’s everywhere
Floating, knitting sunlight to starlight
Granite cliff faces to precarious spiders
weaving
willows to the banks of
The West Fork

And then she said
Shhh
Bring your children
So they can hear themselves
Play, weaving inspiration into motion
Making bark boats and racing them downstream

Keep a watchful eye
On giggling shouts of triumph
And lizards bathing in midday streams
Of sunlight warming round rocks
That roll away uncertainty
Not found in the present moment.



Sunday 27 November 2016

Roots

by Poor Louisiana

You may suffocate me with many layers of concrete.
But like roots, I thrive in gruesome environments.
Twisting and turning through the muddiest of muds,
Traveling blind through the driest of dirts.
But like roots, I have never stopped tracking sunlight.
Through the thin spaces in cracks
And in the oddest of places

You’ll see me sprout.

Saturday 26 November 2016

Reading poems by Poor Louisiana reminds me of fairy tales nuts where, when you break them open, a beautiful dress might spill out. Here a world of significance spills out.


The Only Way to Run

by Poor Lousiana

Running away from sadness is only a sin if you look back.
For if you do, sadness has already claimed you.
The only thing I wished of this life was to be free.
The wind never felt threatened until it saw me run,
Nature itself had even commanded its features to halt.
Take note of a breathtaking sight.

Friday 25 November 2016

Notes from the Night

by Louise Beech



Dear Father,
I dream sometimes of strangling Cassanby with his black silk tie.  He looks a little like you ten years ago (perhaps, if I were pushed to analyse, he’s heavier in the face and stomach, and definitely somewhat taller, but the lazy swing in his walk and the loose-handed mannerism is you) and that only intensifies my loathing of him, because it makes me miss you more.  I have to smile with clenched teeth (and jaw muscles!) when he chews gum after sucking wetly on this ghastly fat cigar, which he only smokes after red wine; then he always takes me to the latest show at the Palladium, and for dinner and drinks at Embassy London, before he drives us to his home (which I’ve told you is beautiful, much like the ones I drew as a child and dreamt of having!) and asks me to unfasten that wretched shiny tie, wrap it around his limp wrists and tug on it until the skin chafes, remove his trousers, and penetrate him with a dildo that looks oddly like the pink Play Doh I had as a child...

Valery shakes the snow-globe, sets it on the desk and—while the spiralling storm settles into calm—closes the notebook, marking her page of half-written letter with a perfume sniffer stick, and unclips her hair, unfastens her blouse, unzips her skirt, and lets them fall to the floor with a synchronised whisper.  Within the glass dome flakes settle on the plastic New York skyline, like white ash after fire.  Valery touches the silk stockings on the bed, garments that she will roll up her legs and clip onto matching suspenders in order to go and tend Dr George Cassanby for two hours, for which she will be paid five hundred pounds, perhaps an extra fifty tip if he climaxes twice, and a box of chocolate liqueurs that she will give to carer Jean ‘for her sweet tooth.’ 

The doctor was Valery’s first ‘date’ and has been the most demanding, despite having specified to the agency that he required only ‘companionship’ and the ‘occasional evening out.’  November, three years ago, he opened the doors of his Georgian home in Regent’s Park, invited Valery into an imposing hallway and then the lounge, where she half-expected cameras to be assembled or chainlike devices to be dangling from walls, and was relieved that there were only comfortable chairs and a coffee table littered with numerous editions of Capital Doctor.  Observing the advice of colleague and long-time call girl ‘Pam,’ she’d chosen another name, Violetta, and offered it softly as Dr Cassanby removed her borrowed coat.  Concealing nerves with words, she told him that her father picked it, after the courtesan in La Traviata, ‘because it was the opera where he first saw my mum and fell in love with her, even though she was picking her nose behind the all-colour programme.’  Then Dr Cassanby handed Valery wine in a crystal glass and reminded her that the ‘real’ Violetta Valery had died of tuberculosis, a disease that while now controlled was still one of the most deadly in the world.  She died singing; it was the line from a childhood note, but Valery couldn’t dwell on such things while wearing too-big fishnet stockings and wondering how one initiated sex for the first time with a paying customer.  She needn’t have worried; Dr Cassanby told her, as one might instruct a dog with a stick, to remove the dress and then her underwear, which she did, stumbling over the buttons near her breasts and blushing as she peeled off the simple black briefs she’d bought at Marks and Spencer’s for the occasion.  Cassanby told her he was going to suck her nipples for twenty minutes and then she was to take his cock in her mouth.  Valery prepared a note to her father while performing exactly as Cassanby requested.  Dear Father, I often wonder what it might be like to abandon my life and travel to all the cities you visited while I was growing up; to see first-hand the Hong Kong skyline you described so acutely, to see the Golden Gate Bridge appear out of mist, to find myself—in awe—at the feet of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, to walk the cobbled streets of Prague instead of spying them through the glass of my newest snow globe...  It was a note that she would later put down on paper, one that survived many edits and scratched out words, and was delivered.        

When she was small Valery’s father James wrote notes to her while roaming the world.  She didn’t call them notes because they were brief (quite the contrary) or formulaic; she thought the word note sounded more poetic than letter, that a note might be something a fairy would leave under a pillow; and also there were so many.  James didn’t write these notes while in India or China or Russia and send them via the mail, as was done in the nineteen-eighties.  He penned each one before departing the family home for Heathrow airport.  One for each day he was absent.  One for each evening he couldn’t tuck Valery in.  One for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, through to Sunday, and over again, depending how many weeks he was gone.

The lion-embossed sheet always commenced Dear Valery; occasionally James wrote Violetta in jest and crossed it out so that the secret epithet was still visible.  The note would then take some such form as, Tonight, while Cecilia makes the hot chocolate and you read the next chapter of ‘Danny the Champion of The World,’ I will be in New York.  It’s a marvellous place—the trees are lit up even when it’s not Christmas and the shops never close.  When Cecelia turns off the lamp, look up into the night sky and see those stars staring back—can you see the words there? New York is my world tonight, but you are my home, my anchor. 

Valery picks up the first stocking; in slipping the sheer nylon over flesh, forming a second - blacker - skin, she begins the real transition from day-carer to night-worker.  She would rather finish writing, or talk to her father for a while, but longing is fruitless when there are stacks of bills in the desk drawer, papers far less eloquent than cherished childhood notes.  Regularly, the invoices arrive in the post, sometimes two or three a day, often stamped with Final Demand, and Valery has no sooner exhausted one cheque book than the next one is half used; all the noughts and pound signs make her vision blur.  As she takes the second stocking from the bed – it’s snagged, too much for last-minute disguise with clear nail polish - the phone buzzes and she answers, hoping that Dr Cassanby is dead, but he isn’t, just ill.  Gina, the owner of London Angels Escort Services, describes Cassanby’s bout of ‘explosive diahorrea’ and they talk for a while about new client Simon who is ‘a little shy and morbidly obese,’ so someone ‘sensitive’ who does GFE like Valery might be perfect for him.  After hanging up she flops on the bed, one stocking on, topless, exhausted, which (she muses) is odd when there isn’t a client fastening his trousers nearby, and which is absolute bliss, and absolute misery.

Valery always swore she’d never kiss anyone she didn’t love.  When she was fourteen and the ‘shyest girl in 3G’ she discovered the joy of French kissing with Jonathon Foster, behind the bike sheds.  When they should have been studying Modern Irish Syntax in third period English, she told him (before blushing furiously) that she must have been born to tongue rather than talk, whatever the language, French, Irish or the Italian her father was learning for his next trip.  If someone had predicted that one day she would similarly kiss a seventy-two year old man who liked to have his nipples pinched so hard one of them became infected, and who gave her three hundred pounds in mismatched notes, she might have cried.  Yet, alongside a picture of her in pink underwear and pigtails, Valery’s online London Angels ‘resume’ lists that she indulges in DFK (deep French kissing), GFE (the girlfriend experience), A (anal sex), sex in all positions, CIF and CIB (come on face and come on body); but not CIM (come in mouth) or BBBJ (bare back blow job.)  Agreeing to French kiss clients, Valery discovered, meant more business, repeat business, and that meant the bills were paid sooner, and she could work fewer hours and be home during the day.  What she found harder than kissing was eye contact.  After a threesome last Tuesday with coked-up Frederick Lee (an investment banker from Liverpool) and colleague Tara, the girls shared a cab home.  The girls had kissed and caressed one another while Frederick bounced on the hotel bed in his diamond-patterned socks.  Tara lit a cigarette, blew smoke out of the cab window and commented that Valery was only now ‘opening her eyes.’  Valery conceded, as snow began to drown the oblivious shoppers on Oxford Street, that she might be willing to kiss as though she loved, touch as though she cared, but she could not extend the pretence to her eyes.

With an unexpected night off to her advantage Valery removes the snagged stocking, puts on flannelette pyjamas, resumes her seat at the desk, opens the note pad at her half-page of writing and, with a quick glance at the clock (metaphorical hands mark the moment as eight-fifteen,) continues the note to her father… Last night I was with Ethan, the guy who stinks of garlic but makes every effort to conceal it with Armani aftershave.  He even puts it on his penis.  I smell it there.  He likes to call me Tinkerbell (how I long to fly away sometimes) and I have to dance for him until he’s hard, and then he can only stay hard if he fucks me from behind while biting my back.  It doesn’t hurt as much as you might imagine; or perhaps it once did and I have forgotten.  I come home and I bathe and bathe and bathe so that I can get warm and then try and sleep.  I told you, I think, that when I first saw the advert for the agency, and Julia (who hasn’t spoken to me since) dared me to call them, I don’t think she thought I’d go ahead with it.  Neither did I.  But the money.  God, the money.  I can make in a night what I made in a week at that damned office.  If you saw the bills, and I’m glad you don’t, you’d understand.  There’s the mortgage, debts that seem to grow not shrink, the running of a house this big, and there’s… well, you don’t need to be concerned about that.  At my interview with Gina (my first in a room with leopard-skin wallpaper) she told me that ‘enjoyment of sex is not a prerequisite for the job, nor is being good at it, though that helps – the only necessity is desperation.’  You’re as far away now as you were then, father, but at least these notes bring us closer.  As your notes to me always said, (and here Valery pauses, chewing the pen and idly stroking a strand of buttery hair, recalling the exact line), ‘You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll be waiting.’  Wasn’t that from JM Barrie?  Peter Pan?  What a shame you had to grow older, father, you always said it was your greatest fear….

Like the line in the Moody Blues song (which Valery listened to when her father was away Summer 1987 and Jonathon Foster confessed he preferred kissing Jane Spencer because she let him ‘touch her naked breasts’) she has more ‘letters I’ve written, never meaning to send’ than notes she has shared, and tonight’s is one of them.  Valery scrunches it up and aims at the mesh bin near her feet, missing completely.  The paper on the floor un-scrunches slowly, opens, undresses.  Valery’s father doesn’t know what she does.  She wonders how many pages describing nights in black satin, endured domination and resisted submission, and rape that can only be shared with the wall and a pretend father, have been torn up before an honest note was prepared.  Wrap the cover around you, be warm, be safe, dear Valery, and keep out the world; now she must make it ‘safe’ for him.

When she was twenty-one Valery left university with an MA in English Language, a measure of cynicism thanks to a failed relationship with the Head of the Biology department, and the knowledge that her father James part-owned the largest chain of strip clubs in the world.  Best friend Sue worked in Spice London and said she was ‘surprised’ Valery never knew.  Voted ‘most exotic in the world’ by Strip magazine, there were Spice clubs in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Amsterdam and Moscow, to name the ones that received ‘*****’ from Curve magazine.  Girls at Spice have won Miss Pole Dance most years and the Las Vegas club is proud to be home to the oldest stripper in the industry, eighty-four year old Medusa, who can still give herself a toe job.  Valery’s mother never admitted to others what her husband’s job entailed (preferring to say that he was in ‘property’) but she liked the lifestyle it afforded them too much to surrender her marital status, and loved that she could read Mills and Boon novellas all day, and lunch with other socialites, while their only daughter Valery was privately educated and cared for by three nannies.  Dr Cassanby’s wife travels too.  The world has a lot to answer for.

Valery opens the drawer and takes out a batch of notes tied with red string, feeling as she unwraps them that she is opening her father’s life.  At night, when she is clean and the flakes are still in their glass world on the desk, she writes the real note, the note she will make sure her father gets.  First she opens one of his, for inspiration.  Dear Valery, (no crossed out Violetta in this note) Have I ever told you that a city landscape is misleading from the air, especially at night?  When a plane touches down in a new place, the scattered lights give no indication who lives there, what happens there, no clue of its history, its culture, its battles won or lost.  An airport is a gateway and the city it opens onto is cold to a stranger.  Can you imagine then how I miss home, you?  I wish you didn’t know the truth of my travels.  I wish we could still pretend that I’m Peter Pan or Santa Claus.  I fear that you see me differently now.  I didn’t choose this sordid industry, this world where image precedes heart, but I was seduced by the possibilities, the money, the opportunity to give you the best education, the best life, and I’m not sure I have.  I try and protect the women in my clubs, imagining their fathers somewhere, worrying for them, disappointed in them, in what they do.  But we’re not what we do, are we?  We’re what we dream of doing.  The note is more than ten years old, yellowed with time and touch, and now Valery responds.  Dear Father, When we landed in New York, and I was eight and you’d let me join you that one magical time (I think Cecilia was ill), I pretended all the way that you were Peter Pan and I was Wendy.  So for me New York looked like Neverland.  My friend Pam says it’s a sordid, seedy place, but I’ve not been since, and will forever see it as sparkling lights and whizzing colour and glitzy banners.  Father can you see my world that way if I confess something to you?  Can you pretend that I am the lady in the fur coat who, in Times Square, gave me the gold-wrapped sweet and had beautiful white hands?  You said she was a real lady, the kind who drank tea with one finger raised, but I know father, I know now what—who—she was.  Love Violetta.  She crosses out the name so it can’t be seen, writes Valery, and decides to deliver the note by hand.

The house is quiet, like Piccadilly Circus at four am once the night-workers have departed and before the day-workers arise, when even the birds prefer the sky.  Three doors along from Valery’s room, past the third bathroom that her mother called ‘the china garden’ and she never knew why, past the study where as a child she read Roald Dahl and Lewis Carroll and CS Lewis until dawn, is a room where the world lives, sleeping.

In Central Park the leaves were dying.  You permitted me to run free, after I begged you to let go of my hand, ‘just this once,’ because I ‘wouldn’t go far’ and I ‘could only fly when I was alone.’  

Vases of jasmine and stargazer lilies barely dispel the urine aroma, framed photographs of cities only accentuate their distance, and in a large bed near French doors Valery’s father James is sleeping.  Soft curtains sigh secrets in the draught; Valery knows them all.   Ten years earlier, at forty-eight, James was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, a hereditary condition that causes damage to nerve cells in the brain, and premature death.  Friends suggested that the sudden loss of his wife (Valery’s mother suffered a huge heart attack while swimming) and bankruptcy (James sold his share in the clubs and squandered the money on grief-suppressing activities) were ‘an influence’ in his ruin; doctors conceded that, although unlikely, the onset of the disease might have otherwise occurred later in life.  Bed-bound for more than a year, he cannot swallow and—despite Valery paying for the best speech therapist in London - has not spoken since June, when he expressed dislike of her blouse.  Sometimes, in startling moments of clarity, his eyes beseech hers, and she wills him to indicate what he wants.  The light fades before she can read the words there.  Carer Jean stays with James when Valery works at night (she left only half an hour ago with three boxes of Valery’s chocolates), nutritionist Molly oversees a diet designed to aid his swallowing and build weight, and physiotherapist Dave provides manual therapy.  The rest of the time Valery is there.  She reads him Roald Dahl and Lewis Carroll and CS Lewis.  And notes from the night.

You laughed when that dog—I think a St Bernard—barked at me, straining on its lead, the owner laughing, and I ran back to you, the leaves flying away from my feet like stones from a galloping horse.

Valery pulls the cover over her father’s chest and tucks him in.  In the Arabesque chair, with her head on the bed, she falls asleep, only stirring when the rustling of sheet breaks into dreams of autumn in Central Park.  Dawn is coming.  Her father is waking.  He is moving.  His hand touches her hair.

When I buried my face in your jacket (I can still smell the musky lining) you patted my head, said that he was a rescue dog and he was just protecting his park and his leaves.  I asked ‘what about me’ and you said… you would protect me.

James puts the pillow on his face.  Valery thinks he is confused.  He peers over the padding.  She shakes her head no.  ‘Free me’ say his eyes, and they are as light as postcard pools.  She shakes her head no.  But there is no such word as no when you are paid to be yes; Dr Cassanby released Valery’s left nipple from his mouth and reminded her of this, blood running down his chin, staining the numbers on the bills in her mind.  He took her hand in cruel grip, put it over his mouth, unshaven chin scratching her hand like gorse bushes, and she knew the game.  James, with more strength than he has shown in months, touches Valery’s fingers.  His palms are like paper.  Cold note paper.  Still bloody, Cassanby wrapped the silk scarf around his cock, tightened it, tugged it, while Valery suffocated him.  Time and again she considered stopping his breath for good, stealing his air until there was no more, but he paid her double for the asphyxiation game.  He liked to play cheat; but in his eyes she imagined defeat every time.  Valery’s father holds her hand as he did when she couldn’t cross the road alone.  He takes her with him now, not waiting for the cars to stop, and puts her reluctant fingers over his, over the pillow, over his face, but not his eyes.  She still says no, wordlessly.  Cassanby inhaled air like a drowning man surfacing sea, panic, relief and desire staining his pupils, panting, smiling.  Valery’s hand was still inches from his mouth, like she might slap him, but it was he who slapped her, twice, before throwing her onto the bed.  James presses Valery’s hands into the pillow, showing her what she must do.  He lets go, as he did when she ran across the leaves.  In his eyes she sees the colours of the world, gold of desert, red of sunrise, blue of sky.  Not the world he gave to her in his many notes.  Not the world that stole him.  His world.  Her own reflection.  Home. 

Dear Father, when the lamp is turned off, look up into the night sky and see those stars staring back—can you see the words there?  The night is my world, but you are my home, my anchor, and now it is morning.

He dies singing.


* * * * *

"Notes from the Night" won the Glass Woman Prize in 2009.

Louise had been writing since she could hold a pen, and before that it was all in her head. Her debut novel, How to be Brave, was released in 2015 and was a top ten bestseller and a Guardian Readers’ pick. Second novel, The Mountain in my Shoe, is out now and longlisted for the Guardian Not The Booker Prize. Maria in the Moon will be released in 2017. When she was fifteen she bet her mother ten pounds she’d be published by the time she was thirty. Her newspaper column started when she was thirty-one. She still owes her mother the money.



Thursday 24 November 2016

Excerpt from the novel Who Saw the Deep

by Christine Klocek-Lim





(Context:
When Noah moves back home after grad school, he doesn’t expect a simple handyman job to turn deadly. Amelia seems like a sweet old lady with a run-down house, but appearances can be deceptive. When an alien ship lands in her woods, Noah discovers that everything he believed about Earth and human civilization is wrong.
Amelia already gave her heart to one man—does she really want to let another one inside? Even though Noah is everything she ever wanted, can she really trust him? He seems like a good person, but her family’s genetic legacy is more important than romance.
When all their secrets are laid bare, Noah and Amelia discover that the survival of their species may be more dependent on love than either could have imagined. Civilization endures because of anonymous acts executed by ordinary individuals. And love, especially in the face of betrayal, is worth everything.)

Noah leaned further over her shoulder and blinked. The album had fallen open to a photo of a very young Amelia, holding the reins of a horse. She wore tight pants and knee-high boots with a thick jean jacket buttoned up to her neck. Her hair was long, dark, and loose. She was gorgeous. Noah wished the photo was in color, but the sepia was still crisp enough to show all the detail.
“Is that you?” he asked, reaching a finger down to smooth over the curling edges of the photo.
“Oh yeah, that’s me,” she replied, then flipped the page. “Here’s Hugh.”
Noah looked at the man in the photo. He was ordinary, but had a very kind smile. He was young too, standing on the front porch of the house, holding a soft hat in his hands. Noah couldn’t tell for sure from the black and white photo, but he thought the door was red back then, too. “Your husband?”
“Yes. That photo was taken right after we were married.” She smiled sadly, trailing her fingers down the page. “I forgot these were here.”
“How long?” Noah asked.
Amelia twisted around. “How long what?”
“How long were you married?” Noah hated himself. The look on his dad’s face when he’d described what happened to his brother haunted him. How old was Amelia, really? He hoped she didn’t catch on to what he really wanted to know.
“Oh, a long time.” She avoided his question, turning the page and Noah didn’t bring it up again. They sat together for a few minutes, both of them quiet. When the wind picked up outside, the back of Noah’s neck prickled. He glanced out the small window at the far end of the attic. He pursed his lips. Nothing but blue sky out there. He turned back to Amelia. She was looking down at the book, a small frown creasing her forehead.
“Do you miss him?” Noah asked quietly. He watched her turn the pages. Most of the pictures were still intact, little triangular photo corners holding them securely against the black paper. Here and there one was missing, or askew. She ran her fingers over the blank spots and carefully fit the loose photos back into place. He watched her, not pressing for an answer as she picked up yet another stray picture, wiggling it back into its spot. In it she was still young, sitting on the stairs in the living room, her chin in her hands, grinning into the camera. Noah wondered who’d taken that picture.
Finally she sighed. “Yes, sometimes I miss him. We were happy together and when he died I was alone. Leah had already moved to California and she had the girls to keep her occupied. They were so little it just wasn’t practical for them to visit too often. Even when my son-in-law, Tom, died four years ago, Leah didn’t come back. I missed my granddaughters more when Hugh died, probably because I didn’t really get to see them much and Hugh wasn’t around to keep me company anymore. They’re fourteen now.”
“I’m sorry,” Noah offered.
Amelia closed the album and shook herself. “No sense dwelling on the past. Hugh wouldn’t want me to pine for him. We had a good life and he made me very happy but that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy now.” She looked at Noah. “Happiness comes from within, not from someone else. It doesn’t matter how much Hugh loved me. If I hadn’t allowed myself to be happy, we would’ve been miserable together.”
Noah frowned. “You’re saying that no one else can make you happy?” He reached down and lifted the album off her lap, thinking of his dad. His mom had been lost after Uncle Tony died, after his dad shut himself down in the basement. He wondered if that’s why she’d left. Except if what Amelia said was true, his dad wasn’t responsible for his mother’s unhappiness. “Seems to me that other people can make you pretty miserable.”
She smiled and shrugged. “Oh sure, if you live with someone and they treat you like crap, that can affect how you feel. But if want to be happy, it’s up to you to stay and accept what can’t be changed, or leave and make another life for yourself.” She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds selfish, I know, but it’s true. And if you’re happy because of what you’ve done for yourself, you have more to give to those you love.”
Noah looked at her. She was serious. “I don’t know how to do that,” he said, voice low. He worried he’d end up like his father: alone and bitter.
She looked down into the box. “You have to figure it out for yourself. That’s how life works.”
“Shit happens, though. War, famine, depression. You can’t control that,” Noah pointed out as she pulled a small leather box from the larger cardboard one and put it on her lap.
“That’s true. But even though sometimes you can’t fix what’s happening around you, you can still make choices in your life. I should go visit Leah instead of complaining that she never comes here.” She rubbed her nose, leaving a streak of dust along her cheek. Noah wanted to wipe it away, but Amelia kept talking. “You can choose to meet whatever happens head on, or run and hide, or ignore it all.”
“Running sounds cowardly.”
Amelia sneezed. Noah pulled a tissue from his pocket and handed it to her. Her eyes were watering, making her blue irises even more vivid in the dim light. “No, not necessarily. It’s not that simple.” She wiped at her eyes, smearing the dust more. Noah took the tissue from her and gently wiped it away.
She smiled, letting him turn her face so he could get to a spot under her ear. “Sometimes running is the courageous option. You may want to fight some evil, but what if you have children? Isn’t your first responsibility to them?”
Noah hadn’t thought of that. “Protect the offspring.” He stuffed the tissue back in his pocket.
“Yes, exactly. And sometimes you have to fight anyway because your children would die later if you didn’t. You can’t make broad statements about what’s right and wrong. Context is everything.” 

* * * * * 

Who Saw the Deep was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) 2012 Semi-Finalist Winner and is classified as Romance, Suspense, Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Mystery

Christine Klocek-Lim won the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. When she's not reading poetry for Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY, she writes novels (Disintegrate, Who Saw the Deep) and is an acquiring editor for Evernight Teen and Evernight Publishing
Twitter: @chrissiemkl

Excerpt from the novel Who Saw the Deep

by Christine Klocek-Lim





(Context:
When Noah moves back home after grad school, he doesn’t expect a simple handyman job to turn deadly. Amelia seems like a sweet old lady with a run-down house, but appearances can be deceptive. When an alien ship lands in her woods, Noah discovers that everything he believed about Earth and human civilization is wrong.
Amelia already gave her heart to one man—does she really want to let another one inside? Even though Noah is everything she ever wanted, can she really trust him? He seems like a good person, but her family’s genetic legacy is more important than romance.
When all their secrets are laid bare, Noah and Amelia discover that the survival of their species may be more dependent on love than either could have imagined. Civilization endures because of anonymous acts executed by ordinary individuals. And love, especially in the face of betrayal, is worth everything.)

Noah leaned further over her shoulder and blinked. The album had fallen open to a photo of a very young Amelia, holding the reins of a horse. She wore tight pants and knee-high boots with a thick jean jacket buttoned up to her neck. Her hair was long, dark, and loose. She was gorgeous. Noah wished the photo was in color, but the sepia was still crisp enough to show all the detail.
“Is that you?” he asked, reaching a finger down to smooth over the curling edges of the photo.
“Oh yeah, that’s me,” she replied, then flipped the page. “Here’s Hugh.”
Noah looked at the man in the photo. He was ordinary, but had a very kind smile. He was young too, standing on the front porch of the house, holding a soft hat in his hands. Noah couldn’t tell for sure from the black and white photo, but he thought the door was red back then, too. “Your husband?”
“Yes. That photo was taken right after we were married.” She smiled sadly, trailing her fingers down the page. “I forgot these were here.”
“How long?” Noah asked.
Amelia twisted around. “How long what?”
“How long were you married?” Noah hated himself. The look on his dad’s face when he’d described what happened to his brother haunted him. How old was Amelia, really? He hoped she didn’t catch on to what he really wanted to know.
“Oh, a long time.” She avoided his question, turning the page and Noah didn’t bring it up again. They sat together for a few minutes, both of them quiet. When the wind picked up outside, the back of Noah’s neck prickled. He glanced out the small window at the far end of the attic. He pursed his lips. Nothing but blue sky out there. He turned back to Amelia. She was looking down at the book, a small frown creasing her forehead.
“Do you miss him?” Noah asked quietly. He watched her turn the pages. Most of the pictures were still intact, little triangular photo corners holding them securely against the black paper. Here and there one was missing, or askew. She ran her fingers over the blank spots and carefully fit the loose photos back into place. He watched her, not pressing for an answer as she picked up yet another stray picture, wiggling it back into its spot. In it she was still young, sitting on the stairs in the living room, her chin in her hands, grinning into the camera. Noah wondered who’d taken that picture.
Finally she sighed. “Yes, sometimes I miss him. We were happy together and when he died I was alone. Leah had already moved to California and she had the girls to keep her occupied. They were so little it just wasn’t practical for them to visit too often. Even when my son-in-law, Tom, died four years ago, Leah didn’t come back. I missed my granddaughters more when Hugh died, probably because I didn’t really get to see them much and Hugh wasn’t around to keep me company anymore. They’re fourteen now.”
“I’m sorry,” Noah offered.
Amelia closed the album and shook herself. “No sense dwelling on the past. Hugh wouldn’t want me to pine for him. We had a good life and he made me very happy but that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy now.” She looked at Noah. “Happiness comes from within, not from someone else. It doesn’t matter how much Hugh loved me. If I hadn’t allowed myself to be happy, we would’ve been miserable together.”
Noah frowned. “You’re saying that no one else can make you happy?” He reached down and lifted the album off her lap, thinking of his dad. His mom had been lost after Uncle Tony died, after his dad shut himself down in the basement. He wondered if that’s why she’d left. Except if what Amelia said was true, his dad wasn’t responsible for his mother’s unhappiness. “Seems to me that other people can make you pretty miserable.”
She smiled and shrugged. “Oh sure, if you live with someone and they treat you like crap, that can affect how you feel. But if want to be happy, it’s up to you to stay and accept what can’t be changed, or leave and make another life for yourself.” She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds selfish, I know, but it’s true. And if you’re happy because of what you’ve done for yourself, you have more to give to those you love.”
Noah looked at her. She was serious. “I don’t know how to do that,” he said, voice low. He worried he’d end up like his father: alone and bitter.
She looked down into the box. “You have to figure it out for yourself. That’s how life works.”
“Shit happens, though. War, famine, depression. You can’t control that,” Noah pointed out as she pulled a small leather box from the larger cardboard one and put it on her lap.
“That’s true. But even though sometimes you can’t fix what’s happening around you, you can still make choices in your life. I should go visit Leah instead of complaining that she never comes here.” She rubbed her nose, leaving a streak of dust along her cheek. Noah wanted to wipe it away, but Amelia kept talking. “You can choose to meet whatever happens head on, or run and hide, or ignore it all.”
“Running sounds cowardly.”
Amelia sneezed. Noah pulled a tissue from his pocket and handed it to her. Her eyes were watering, making her blue irises even more vivid in the dim light. “No, not necessarily. It’s not that simple.” She wiped at her eyes, smearing the dust more. Noah took the tissue from her and gently wiped it away.
She smiled, letting him turn her face so he could get to a spot under her ear. “Sometimes running is the courageous option. You may want to fight some evil, but what if you have children? Isn’t your first responsibility to them?”
Noah hadn’t thought of that. “Protect the offspring.” He stuffed the tissue back in his pocket.
“Yes, exactly. And sometimes you have to fight anyway because your children would die later if you didn’t. You can’t make broad statements about what’s right and wrong. Context is everything.” 

* * * * * 

Who Saw the Deep was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) 2012 Semi-Finalist Winner and is classified as Romance, Suspense, Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Mystery

Christine Klocek-Lim won the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. When she's not reading poetry for Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY, she writes novels (Disintegrate, Who Saw the Deep) and is an acquiring editor for Evernight Teen and Evernight Publishing
Twitter: @chrissiemkl

Wednesday 23 November 2016

JANUARY THAW
by Kathy Conde

This kind of cold brought the focus close to the body. If Mel touched exposed metal with bare fingers, her skin would stick. If she breathed too deeply, her lungs would burn. If she didn’t keep moving, her toes would throb. She was alive, and it hurt.
The sky stretched out over Missoula like a sheet of blue ice. She stepped through the door of the Bitterroot Café and was hit by a current of warm air and the smells of brewed coffee and cinnamon. A group of men and women from the morning AA meeting were seated around a large circular table in the corner. Bart, a young guy in a studded leather jacket, was talking. They slid over to make room for Mel, and Bart continued his story.
“I heard old White Feather forked over his brand new Jeep. Gave it to a guy he didn’t even know.” Bart took a sip of coffee to give them time to digest that. His Adam’s apple bobbed up out of sight for a moment when he swallowed.
“What do you mean? Why would he give his Jeep to a guy he didn’t know?” Sonia said. She flung her hair back over her shoulder and squinted her dark eyes at Bart as if she might punch him in the face if he didn’t clarify things fast. Mel turned a coffee cup upright in its saucer. She understood Sonia, less than two weeks sober and still edgy.
“It’s a custom,” Bart said. “He’s from one of the plains tribes. When they lose someone they love, they give something away. His son was killed in a hunting accident.”
Mel’s mind went to the gore of the hunting accident, but she nudged it back to the conversation at the table.
“White Feather had his last dime in that Jeep,” Sonia said, still eyeing Bart. “It was worth more than the place he lives in.”
“Yeah, but according to the custom, the thing they give away has to be something they really care about, something they love,” Bart said. “And they have to give it to the one they see who needs it most.”
“Well, it’s too bad I wasn’t in his line of sight that day,” T said. T always said he lost his name along with his youth and everything he owned because of booze. He alternated between drinking and sobriety every few weeks. Every time he returned to the meetings, people just told him to keep coming back.
“I heard White Feather saw a guy walking down the street in a hunting jacket all patched up with duct-tape, and he pulled over to the curb, stopped the guy, and asked him if he had any use for a Jeep,” Bart said. “Took the title out and signed it over to him right there on the spot. Then walked back to the rez.”
“That’s over six miles.” Sonia dark eyes were darker.
Mel liked to be with people from the meetings, listening to their talk. They spent hours hanging on to coffee cups. She had lived here almost eight years but had never been in this café before AA. After a while, she got up to leave. Sonia slid out of the booth and said it was time for her to go, too. Sonia was tall, with long dark hair, and she might have been beautiful when she wasn’t racked with DTs. She walked out behind Mel.
“How you doing?” Mel turned and tried to sound casual, confident. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Sonia wasn’t there to make friends.
“It gets better.” Mel was only three months sober and could remember the razor edge of the first two weeks. She wanted to tell Sonia something wise, something useful she could remember in the worst moments, but nothing came. Sonia’s glare knocked her off balance.
Sonia hurried across the street. Mel’s car was an old Volvo hatchback and the door creaked from the cold when she opened it. To start it in freezing temperatures, she had to work the choke. The engine finally turned over. Her breath was a white cloud inside the car. The weather reporter on the radio said, “…a break from the freezing daytime temperatures. A change in the jet stream this afternoon will bring us a January thaw.”

Mel dragged herself from bed. Mornings were the worst part of getting sober—sludge in her veins. She’d had a nightmare about accidentally downing a bottle of Wild Turkey and suffering instant remorse instead of a high. The people at the meetings kept telling her she was going through a grieving time and it was perfectly normal; alcohol had been her best friend.
 She stood up and the sludge went pouring down into her feet. She thumped her way into the kitchen and went straight for the coffee machine, her new best friend. She sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a daily inspiration book someone had given her at the last meeting. The reading for Sunday was about letting go. It talked about how once she made the decision to let go of alcohol, she had to let go of other things too, or she’d end up going back to the drinking.
The phone rang, and she picked it up on the first ring. “Charlie?”
“Irma?” It was the thin voice of an old woman. “Irma? Is that you?”
It took Mel a second. “No, wrong number.” She hung up the phone. She walked to the window and leaned on the sill. God, she was still hoping Charlie would call.
Charlie was her husband. He was about her height and had light brown hair like hers, but in every other way he was her opposite. He was prudent, planned ahead. He owned a small company that built kitchens. He knew how things fit into a house. He was financially secure, had relatives all over town. He must have seen her as a woman in need of him, her life a flooded kitchen that needed rebuilding, her relatives scattered from California to Wisconsin, no foundation. Or that was how it looked to her now that she was sober. To be fair, he really did want to help. Helping was his way of loving. But after seven years together, he stopped wanting to help—she wasn’t cooperating.
The last time they spoke she was hung over. The night before that, she had blacked out drinking Wild Turkey and beer at his sister’s wedding reception.
“Mel, you need to quit,” Charlie had said. “Last night was out of control.”
“Shh. Could you aim that over that way?” She steadied herself at the kitchen counter. Marble, Charlie’s doing. “My head.”
“You can’t stop.” He had never directly confronted her about drinking before, probably because he liked to drink too. But she had noticed that he never drank too much. In this way he was different from anyone she’d ever been with, and she had taken it as a sign that her life was turning around. That she was growing out of it. She held her own drinking in check. Until recently.
“I hardly ever drink.” She put her hand to her head. “Ouch.”
“But when you do, you tune out. Like you’re gone, and you just keep pouring it down.” He reached for her but she turned away.
“Let me get some coffee,” she said.
“This isn’t working for me, Mel. You could at least listen to me.” He shouted the last few words and she covered her ears. “After all I’ve done for you.” He left, slamming the door, and wouldn’t talk to her after that, even later when it was just the two of them in the house.
That was four months ago. After a week, she moved into a trailer in town and stocked the fridge with salami and cheese, eggs and beer. She did not buy Wild Turkey, proving, she thought, that of course she could stop. She called in sick and drank too much beer. It turned into a bender. She lost her job at the university bookstore and a baby she didn’t know she was carrying.
The cramping and bleeding didn’t surprise her at first. She had always had irregular periods, sometimes months between them. But the cramps got worse and then something plopped into the toilet. Through the haze of hangover, she stood and looked into the bloody water. She thought she detected the shape of a tiny red creature floating there. She didn’t know what to do. She reached to flush, pulled her hand back, then reached again, shut her eyes, and flushed the toilet. She closed the lid and sat down, her knees too weak to hold her up. That afternoon she dragged herself out of the trailer and into her first AA meeting.

Mel read the Sunday reading again. She decided to take a shower and go to the newcomer meeting. In the regular meetings, people who’d been sober for years told their drinking stories as if they were showing off trophies they’d won. But at the newcomer meetings, the hell of blackouts and hangovers and early morning gin was described in raw detail, and when she looked around the room at the puffy faces with red-rimmed eyes, she knew she wasn’t the only one going through this insanity.
Slogans were taped on the walls in the clubhouse. The meetings were filled with them. One Day at a Time. Easy Does It. Live and Let Live. They took on mystical powers in the context of the meetings, slogans that were small, bearable slaps in the face. She taped them on her fridge and bathroom mirror, wherever they would stick.
She turned on the shower, threw her clothes in the corner, and squeezed toothpaste onto a toothbrush. She felt the sharp bite of mint before it touched her tongue. Her senses had taken on an acuteness recently that called for a lighter body, a body that could jerk itself to attention instead of slogging through a two-second delay. She touched the toothbrush to her teeth. What she saw in the mirror was someone she was uncomfortable standing in front of naked.

She stepped out into the morning and onto a sheet of ice that covered the front steps. Yesterday’s sun had melted the snow to slush that froze again during the night. She skated on her rubber-soled boots out to the street where her car was parked. The right front tire was frozen in a solid lake of ice at the curb that almost reached the hubcap. She kept a crowbar behind the seat for times like this. She went around to the driver’s side and pulled hard at the door, expecting it to be frozen shut, but it opened easily. She never locked doors in winter. Locks froze in below-zero nights. She leaned into the car to get the crowbar and saw a hole where the stereo had been.
She looked in the glove box and found it empty. She tried to remember what had been there. A tire gauge, tissue paper, an old watch. Junk. A CD case was missing from the passenger seat. She looked up at the rearview mirror. The ivory pendant still hung there. 
The pendant was her mother’s. It was large and round, with a running mustang etched into the ivory, its wild hair flying. It was part of Mel’s story that she was making up as she went—of her life with a mother as free as the mustang. She had taken it years earlier from her mother’s drawer cluttered with jewelry, makeup, pins, underwear, a letter opener that looked like a knife.
After her mother died, Mel kept the pendant on her rearview mirror. Its wild beauty flew before her wherever she went. Now she grabbed the silver chain, unwrapped it from the mirror, and clutched the pendant, squeezing it in her fist as if she were being dragged along behind the kid that had taken the things from her car.

After she couldn’t get her tire unstuck from the ice at the curb, she walked the mile and a half to the clubhouse. She got there just before noon, already a half hour into the meeting. She saw T at the coffee machine. He looked shrunken in his frayed suit coat, but he smiled and squeezed her hand. She found a seat in the back corner. She didn’t want to talk or be noticed. She rubbed the ivory pendant that now hung from her neck. The topic of the meeting was letting go. It usually was. She listened to people talking in turns about how hard it was for them to let go of grudges, of betrayals and abuses, of the drinking.
She looked around the room. There were a few new faces, and these people studied their coffee cups or the slogans on the walls, avoiding looking into anyone’s eyes. Sonia was sitting near the window, looking as if she might jump out of it. The first weeks sober were hard for everybody, but Sonia was in worse shape than most. Like Mel, she had refused to check into a treatment center. She said she’d already been that route several years earlier, and this time she was going to do it on her own.
Bart had the floor and was telling the story about White Feather again. When he finished, he said, “You know, that guy knew how to let go. I’ve got grudges against my ex, my folks, the cops. The old-timers keep telling me I have to let go of it all if I want to stay sober.” He looked around the room as if hoping to find a clue in one of the slogans. “Okay, but how?”

Mel refused a ride from Bart, saying she wanted to walk home, get some exercise. Bart would want to talk. She went out the front door of the clubhouse, a large wooden house probably a hundred years old. Outside was a huge maple tree, whose bare branches looked like a scaffolding for the sky. Charlie was standing under it stamping his Sorel Pacs on the frozen snow. He was wearing the bomber jacket she always thought looked so good on him. He had parked his pickup at the curb. The door was still open, as if he were ready to jump into the driver’s seat at any moment. He waved her over. She went toward him, looking down at the ground and concentrating on sliding her boots over the ice on the front walkway.
“Hi, Mel.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest.
“What do you want, Charlie?” She’d been aching to see him, to hear his voice, but now his smile was forced.
“Is that all you have to say to me?” His wounded look was familiar.
“Charlie, it’s been four months.” The sun was warming things up and made the ice all around look ridiculous. “You haven’t returned any of my calls.”
“I don’t want a scene.” He glanced at his boots and stamped them, punctuating his sentence. “Look, I’ve heard about what you’re doing, staying sober and all.”
“Three months tomorrow,” she said. The others in AA shared her enthusiasm for the monthly sobriety birthdays, but Charlie didn’t seem to. He dug his hands into his coat pockets. “Hey.” She reached out to touch his arm. “Everything will be okay. You’ll see.”
He took half a step away from her. “Mel…I don’t…” He looked up at the branches. “I want a divorce.” He sounded like he was ordering pizza.
“Oh.” She looked at him across the frozen air.
He stamped his feet again.
She stood still for a minute. The rusty smell of blood came into her nose from somewhere in the center of her head. “Look, I have to go.” She turned without looking at him, picking her way along the slick ice as if she were walking across a spider web where she might fall and get stuck.

As she walked, images of things she’d lost went running through her mind. The more she heard about letting go the more she hung on, and the more she hung on the faster things kept getting jerked from her grip.
And then there were the things that wouldn’t budge. Like the image of her mother, years ago but still vivid, lying on the road beside a mangled car. They had been on their way home from the principal’s office—Mel had been in trouble again—and they were arguing.
“That’s it.” Her mother was yelling, gripping the steering wheel. “You’re never going anywhere again. Ever.”
“I’m eighteen,” Mel had said, anger taking the place of her fear. “You can’t keep me locked in the house.”
“I don’t know what to do with you,” her mother screamed. “I can’t take this anymore.” She had already made the change, the one that came over her when she was in a rage. She was so mad she shook.
“Okay, okay,” Mel said, the fear coming back. “Come on, Mom. Hey. Come on.”
Her mother swerved into the lane of oncoming traffic. She was screaming, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to kill us both.”
That was where things went black. No memory until the image of her mother on the street, her limbs at strange angles. Blood pooling around her. That was where Mel was stuck, no chance, ever.
Mel never told anyone what happened inside her during the following months. The anger so intense it scared her. She felt robbed, not of something she had, but of the possibility for something she wanted more than anything else.

With every step, Mel picked up her pace, sliding her feet along the wet ice. The ivory pendant lay flat and solid between her breasts. She kept thinking about White Feather. 
As she turned the corner at the Bitterroot Cafe, Sonia came out the door.
“Hey,” Mel said when they neared each other.
“What the…” Sonia jumped, startled, and glared at her.
“Sorry.” Mel held her hands up, palms out. “I thought you saw me.”
“Shit.” Sonia’s hands were trembling and her eyes were red.
Mel’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. She willed them to relax. She took the silver chain from her neck and held it out to Sonia. The mustang was caught in a pendulum swing between them. Vertical lines dug into the space between Sonia’s eyebrows.
“I wanted to give this to you,” Mel said.
Sonia took the pendant and mumbled something. She looked down at the etched mustang for a minute, then, shaking her head, she held the necklace out to Mel.
“Please keep it,” Mel said.
Sonia’s eyes were hard and shiny like the thawing ice. She let the necklace drop, and it slid into the storm drain at the side of the street. She stepped around Mel and walked away.
From the black cave of the storm drain came the roar of run-off cascading down to a whirlpool, water crashing and swirling like vengeance.
Mel was nauseated. She had been hoping to understand something, like someone back from a vision quest. But she didn't understand anything. It all hurt. She walked the mile and a half toward home, then passed her street, kept walking. 

* * * * *
 "January Thaw" first appeared in CutThroat: A Journal of the Arts.
Kathy Conde won the Crab Orchard Review Jack Dyer Fiction Prize 2014. She has also won prizes and scholarships from Salem International Literary Awards, Munster’s Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition, and the Aspen Writers' Foundation. Her stories have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, CutThroat: A Journal of the Arts, Southword, Underground Voices, Word Riot, and others. She lives in Colorado with her husband and son. You can see more of her work at www.kathyconde.com.