Late Laura

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Perpetually late, Laura wandered into the restaurant, her dyed black hair wispy thin, clothes slightly hanging. She was always apologetic. Always an excuse I didn’t quite believe. Back when time was money, she wasn’t worth the wait. When pressed, she confessed her singleton childhood, broken parents, mother bent on crazy, father so enamored of his whacked out wife he’d do anything wifey asked. When she was fifteen, Laura awoke to her father, pulling her waist-length hair taut above her head, her mother poised over her with sewing shears, cutting close to the scalp. I didn’t scream, Laura said. No one was there to hear me. When she turned seventeen, her parents took her to a cafe in NYC, sat her at a table, and left. A wild-haired man, acne-scarred and snaggletoothed, came up and introduced himself as “Master,” led her away. Laura’s parents had sold her for $5,000; he produced a bill of sale. He was a savage, Laura said. It took her months to escape. You understand now why I’m late, she said. But I grew tired of her tardiness, and began giving her a meeting time a good 40 minutes before the actual appointment. It worked. She showed up on time again and again. One day she asked me why I no longer seemed perturbed when she arrived for lunch. I confessed my subterfuge. She burst into tears. Like she’d been duped. Again. I can’t be alone at a restaurant table, she said. Too traumatic. Her shorn hair. Her kidnapping. Her entire, frightened life.

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"Late Laura" was first published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (2021) Nominated for Best Small Fictions, 2021

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Cleaver, Diode, Duende, Pirene’s Fountain, Poetry East, Pedestal Magazine and elsewhere. She’s authored five poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019), and EROTIC: New & Selected (New York Quarterly Books, 2021). Another, full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, was published in 2021. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. www.alexisrhonefancher.com