Prose

Cindy House

Marco Polo

Before my cousin Bobby died in his garage in Arizona, he had stayed with me in Washington, DC for one brief period when we were in our twenties. Before Bobby showed up for treatment at DC’s Walter Reed Hospital with a shattered arm from falling off a tank during his deployment to Bosnia, we were children in the summer at our grandparents’ house in Grand Island, NY.

The road my grandparents lived on was flat, crossing the island right down the middle. The house was white. In the yard, there was a birdbath with a mosaic of tiles and mirrored shards of glass laid into cement.

Niagara Falls was the local attraction. The mist covered us with wet goosebumps as we stood behind a barrier watching the swirl and rush of the water. I daydreamed about being a person who would climb into a barrel and willingly be tossed into the currents, how it gave me a rush, a thrill, a strange yearning in the pit of my stomach.

Bobby and I were the youngest of five cousins on my father’s side; our dads were brothers. Every summer, we found the same fun. Our grandparents knew the owners of an RV dealership across the street from their home and we were allowed to play there, to climb inside all of the campers for sale on the lot, dozens of recreational vehicles with a new car smell, tiny kitchen sinks, weird bathrooms like closets, beds over every driver seat. I liked to climb up the ladder, pull the curtains closed, and lie flat on the mattress, imagining myself moving blindly across states I’d never visited and could not picture clearly. Nebraska and Nevada and New Mexico, places far away.

Bobby liked to be the driver, sitting in the soft leather bucket seats with controls at his fingertips and a rearview mirror he could adjust if he got on his knees.

All of us cousins played hide and seek on that lot, in and out of the motor homes, whispering, hands over our mouths so the others wouldn’t find us from our giggling.

We wouldn’t see each other all year but still, most of our games were about trying not to be seen.

There was a pool in the backyard at our grandparent’s house, an above ground pool, but still over my head in the middle. There were always rubber snakes on the sides of the pool to keep the birds away and I’d check twice to make sure they weren’t real.

We’d play Marco Polo. One of us would be it, the rest yelling no peeking when the counting began. Grandpa rode around the grass on his ride-on mower and Grandma collected the warm tomatoes for dinner from the vines in the garden while the unseeing it person would scream “Marco” and wait for the Polo in response. I was the youngest and I was usually it but still, I never cheated. Shivering and treading water in the center of the pool, calling out Marco again and again, my eyes firmly closed.

 Where were our parents? They are never there when I remember.

I didn’t see Bobby for years after childhood, not until I walked into his hospital room at Walter Reed, a morphine drip in his arm, the surgery over, metal drilled into his bones, telling me Bosnia was bad. Me, eyeing that morphine drip with the longing and grief of early recovery, envious and half-listening to my cousin’s opioid-drenched stories of patrolling along the Sava River with the smell of death seeping into his clothes.

Who could ever have known that it would be a couple more decades after DC when I would sit with Bobby’s wife and children, listening to the story of the night he left this world.

It was last February when I claimed a chair at Bobby’s table in the Arizona house where he died. His wife and daughters and his Marine son have far more pressing questions, more heart-seizing concerns, more breathless whys than my own. But still, I wonder why I am still standing, breathing, typing.

Look at Bobby and I, forty-five years ago, the two of us swimming around each other in that water, our futures a dream, a mist, a fog in front of us. A soldier and an addict, born from those small bodies in that swimming pool. And if I’d been forced to guess who would still be here right now, tonight, I would have said Bobby, with his desire to drive and see the road on the other side of the windshield, and his ability to whisper Polo and then dive deep where my kicking, stretching legs could never find the edge of his body under the blue. Not me, with my eyes closed tight, waiting, waiting, listening hard for his voice to say Polo, breaking the heavy, hushed heat. I would have said that it would be me holding a gun to my own head in a moment of unplanned intolerance for all that this life serves us, me to pull the trigger and send the bullet deep into the same place where these memories have always lived. And even without knowing us, who in this world would ever disagree.

Cindy House lives in New Haven, CT with her husband and son and opens regularly for David Sedaris. She has a debut collection of essays coming out in early 2022 with Simon & Schuster.

Dhaea Kang

Awake

Your mom and dad (together, for once) and your brother, now taller than you were, are greeting guests as if they are gracious hosts in the receiving line of your wedding. You wouldn’t believe the people who are here, like that dirty-foot hippie Steve, and a man I overheard introduce himself as your probation officer—seriously, what the hell? There’s so much bullshit happening, tears streaming down the faces of people who never answered your calls or who slammed the door in your face when you needed a place to sleep.

Your ex—I recognize her from the background photo you had on your phone before you replaced it with one of us—is standing so close to your brother that people in line mistake her as part of the family. She accepts condolences as they step down the line to greet your brother and parents, acting like she belongs, even though I know the last time you fucked her was the summer after high school.

I pass over her without a glance and give your folks the obligatory I’m sorry for your loss before continuing along the assembly line to view your body. They’ve cut your hair—I wonder whose decision that was. It’s short enough now that I can see the two tiny indents near your eyebrow where you used to have a piercing. You would’ve hated that they brought in a priest, laced rosary beads between your fingers. They dressed you in that goddamn awful suit you wore during your first court hearing, with that purple paisley tie you used to tie off your arm after they let you off with two years of probation.

“I’m free,” you said, as you slid the tie from around your neck.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” I said, watching as you pulled gear from your pocket. I can’t believe that was only six years ago—it seems like a lifetime has passed, which I guess in your case, it has.

I grab a seat on the metal folding chair closest to the exit, just in case. I feel like I’m not supposed to be here, like a kid sneaking into an R-rated movie. The sermon is in Polish and I stare intently at the priest as if I understand every word. You barely even spoke Polish, but I guess that’s why they say funerals are for the living and not the dead. At a certain point everyone stands up and begins to form a line in front of the priest, even Steve and the P.O. Jesus, is everyone here Catholic? I follow suit, walking down the aisle with the rest except instead of taking a place in line, I slip out the door and into the lobby.

To my surprise, your brother is already out here, sitting alone on a bench. He acknowledges me with a nod as I take a seat beside him. Though we’ve only met a handful of times back in the early days, he seems to recognize me.
“This sucks.” His voice has matured and sounds so much like yours it takes a moment to realize that I’m not hearing a ghost.

“Yeah. It really does.”

“At least we know where he is now.”

You’d apparently slipped off everyone’s radar for months before you died. Except for mine. I don’t mention that to him.

“Do you think it was on purpose?” he asks.

What would be a more comforting answer—suicide or accident? “I don’t know.”

The doors of the chapel open and people begin to file out, some heading straight for the exit and others lingering in the chapel and lobby. A man I don’t recognize—probably an uncle, based on his resemblance to your dad—waves your brother over. He rolls his eyes. “Sorry. I need to make my rounds.” As soon as he leaves, someone else takes his place.

…

“So, Melanie.” Through the rearview mirror, I saw the cop’s eyes flick downwards as he
read the name off of my ID. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” I said, even though he had the information right in his hand.

“Is that so? That’s my daughter’s age. She’s a freshman at Southern. You in school?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your major?”

“Psychology.”

He nodded approvingly. “My daughter, too.” I wondered where he was going with this. Wasn’t he supposed to be reading me my rights or something? “That young man you’re with tonight—he a friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Boyfriend?”

“I- I don’t know.”

He gives a little snort before continuing. “Well, that’s some serious stuff we found in his vehicle. Now, I need you to be honest with me, Melanie, and tell me what you were out doing tonight.”

We’d been making a run for Steve, who’d promised to hook each of us up with a bag if we did him a favor. I knew now that I wouldn’t be getting shit, and that Steve’s car probably wasn’t even in the shop like he’d said.

“We were going to a friend’s house.” I peered at the cop car beside us, trying to catch a glimpse of you in the backseat, but the tinted window obscured my view.

“Which friend?”

For the briefest of moments I considered making up a name. “I don’t know. He just picked me up and said we were going to stop by his friend’s—” To my horror, I began to sob. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Yeah, yeah, it’s not your fault right? You were just on an innocent cruise with your buddy the boy scout helping him deliver tins of popcorn.” Static popped on his radio and the voice on the other end muttered something unintelligible. Without explanation, he left the car and walked over to the other cop. I closed my eyes and willed myself to wake up, find myself back on the couch where I must have dozed off while we were watching that show about some rapper’s kid planning his ridiculous sixteenth birthday bash. Flooded with relief, I’d tell you about the craziest dream I just had, and when Steve called we’d let it go to voicemail. The driver’s side door creaked open.

“I’ll tell you what.” Something in his voice had softened, and I wondered if he was
picturing his own daughter in my place. “I’m going to let you sleep in your own bed tonight—
not because I believe you, but to be frank I just can’t see someone like you locked up in a jail cell.”

“Really?”

“Also, that friend of yours insists you didn’t know about anything.”

I wanted to ask again if he was serious but I kept my mouth shut, afraid that he’d change his mind.

I stood on the side of the road and watched the red and blue lights, alternating so rapidly they seemed to blend into purple, gradually fade into the distance as they carted you away. That friend of yours insists you didn’t know about anything. It struck me then that not once during that whole ordeal had it crossed my mind to defend you, let alone try to take your place. Later, you would tell me it would’ve been stupid for both of us to be nabbed for the same thing, that you figured because it was your car they would have to pin it on you anyway. “Besides, it’s just probation,” you said when you came over to celebrate. We were back to business as usual, the two of us on my couch, with me flipping aimlessly through channels as you laid out the works. Only from then on, it stopped being fun.

…

“Hey.” I don’t have to look over to know that it’s Steve. His nervous tension is so palpable it makes my skin prickle.

“Hey.”

In my periphery I see him grinding his shoes into the carpet, as if he were stamping out
cigarette butts. “You look good.”

Every inch of my body is screaming at me to flee.

“I mean, not like that, Mel. I mean it looks like you cleaned up.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I stopped slingin’.”

“Congrats.”

He lets out a deep exhale, starts bouncing his knee. “If it wasn’t me, he would’ve found someone else. You know that.”

“Was it you?”

“You mean this time? God no, I wasn’t bullshitting when I said I was done.”

I stand up to leave, allowing him to mistake my silence as skepticism.

“Hey, wait.”

Steve’s eyes are rimmed red, and I don’t know if it’s from tears he’s wiped away or tears he’s holding back. His stringy, greasy hair is pulled neatly back into a knot and I wonder if this is how he usually wears it or if he put in the extra effort for tonight.

“Yeah?” I say.

He’s still now, and he holds my gaze for just a second before looking away. “It’s mostly my fault, right?”

If he’d asked me anytime before last week, I would’ve said yes.

…

You called me that day, as you did every now and then, said you completed the sixty-day program at this center on the West Side and needed a place to stay. “Just for a few days until I figure something out. I’ll stay out of your way. I promise.”

I knew you were lying, that you were kicked out for dropping dirty like all the other
times. Once when I’d let you stay, you disappeared with my wallet and a half-empty bottle of Fireball I kept in the freezer. Another time, you wandered out after I’d gone to bed and woke me at three in the morning, pounding on my door to let you back in. And just three months ago, I’d finally put my foot down and told you to fuck off, only to find you the next morning asleep on the bus bench right outside my building. You blinked up at me, your cheeks rosy with the beginnings of sunburn. “I told you Mel, you’re the only one I’ve got.” For once, I knew you were telling the truth.

When I opened the door this time, there you were, looking at me but not quite meeting my eyes. Something about the defeated look on your face, the way you didn’t even try to pretend that things were good, made me look away. You slung that ratty red backpack you’d had since we were teenagers onto the floor and flopped onto the couch. With your eyes closed, you mumbled, “Thanks, Mel, I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

You were gone by the time I woke up. You’d even folded the throw blanket with the pillow stacked neatly on top.

I found out through a Facebook post your brother tagged you in. My first instinct was to call you—I mean, I’d literally just seen you less than 48 hours ago, this had to be a misunderstanding, right? Maybe you’d ignored their calls one too many times and they finally decided that you must be dead. The call went straight to voicemail. Hey… you alright? Call your brother he’s totally freaking out right now.

It hit me the moment I hung up. I’d kept it for peace of mind, like an Epi-pen or the morning after pill—something I hoped I’d never have to use but kept around, just in case. A reward for the elusive tomorrow, a way to delude myself into delaying gratification just for today, as the Big Book thumpers liked to say.

I flung open the cabinet doors beneath the bathroom sink, holding my breath to forestall panic, and reached for the pink vinyl makeup bag I’d hidden behind a wall of extra toilet paper. The tube of cheap drugstore lipstick felt nearly weightless in my hand and I knew even before I twisted off the cap that it would be empty.

…

The bus ride home takes me past that cash-only Chinese bakery where they wouldn’t bother us for taking up the bathroom, as long as we each bought a bun on our way in. A sign in the window reads CLOSED FOR WATER DAMAGE, which probably means a Starbucks will be in its place by the end of the year. Did you ever get to try that coconut tart that was always out of stock? I hope you did.

As the bus approaches my stop, I imagine you reclined on that bench, your backpack a makeshift pillow, casually whistling one of those random tunes that always seemed to be stuck in your head. Maybe you’d ask about tonight, and I’d tell you about Steve, that he keeps his beard short now and actually owns a pair of dress shoes. We’d laugh about how what’s-her-name made a show of standing with your folks, who by the way, gave you a Catholic funeral with all the works. I’d tell you about how your brother worries and has questions that only you know the answer to, so you should probably hit him up soon. Or maybe we’d say nothing at all, and let the truth reveal itself in the words we leave unsaid.

Someone pulls the cord to request a stop. It’s that older lady from the unit next door, the one I hear on the phone most nights speaking in a language I can’t quite pin. The doors hiss open and she lugs her cart of bagged groceries off the bus where it lands on the curb with a thump. She catches my gaze and smiles, stands in place as if waiting for me to rise from my seat and exit after her. The doors fold close and we’re moving again.

I feel into my coat pocket for my phone. His number, along with many others, have long been deleted but the string of ten digits is a long-forgotten password my fingers still remember. He picks up on the fifth ring.

“Hey, it’s Steve.” His voice is gruff and sluggish, as if he’s just woken up, as if I didn’t
just see him a half-hour ago. “Who’s this?”

“You still at Belmont and Kostner?”

“Mel? Shit. Why are you calling?”

I know he already knows, so I say nothing.

“Yeah, same place.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen.”

The bus keeps moving. The last time I made this trek, you were driving as I looked out the window from the passenger seat, tracking the orange glow of the sodium lamps that lined the street, oblivious to the trap that awaited once we left Steve’s. The streetlights now sport LEDs, their bright glare flooding the alleys and gangways, illuminating all the places I wish would remain unseen. With every passing stop, I travel further back in time.

Dhaea Kang is a musician and writer from Chicago, IL. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Lunch Ticket, The Grief Diaries, and So to Speak Journal.

Kimilee Norman

Overgrown

It had been what we called a “micro-jungle” when we first moved in. A space out back, not any bigger than the square of our laundry room, connected to the apartment by a sliding-glass door. At first it was mainly an assortment of weeds and grasses, nests and burrows housing who knows what. We simply neglected the space and blamed the Florida summers. We’d think about going out there with trimmers and shovels but by mid-morning it’d be far too hot to risk sliding back the door and letting out the cool air from inside. We’d say things like, “one of these days, when it cools off…” but when it did we’d say, “there’s a big wasp nest out there that I don’t want to stir up.” Then when no one could deny that the November nights had exiled the wasps, we’d just close the curtain and ignore its existence­– for it became far too late and embarrassing to fix now.

We envied our friends. Their manicured yards and patios decorated with grills and umbrellas, lawn chairs and gardens, kiddie pools, string lights, and bird feeders. We never had that summer barbeque, never planted any seeds. I swear we drew out the plans for it. We said we’d paint the fence baby-blue, pull up all the weeds and lay down stones or pavers, put a tea table in one corner, some potted plants in the other, install a solar-powered lantern by the door. We’d have our friends over for dinner, and drink coffee out there every morning. The dogs could lay out, leashless, in the sun. It was beautiful and doable. But the sketches and swatches remained stacked in a pile. And soon they were covered by mail and coupons, and the dream was over. The weeds grew taller– the nests wider. The curtain remained drawn for another summer. The once-small jungle had since grown over the door, vines pulling on the handle.

When our family outgrew the apartment, we left the jungle behind. We had talked about just cracking the door and throwing a match unto the brush. We’d just close our eyes and wait for our reckoning. But we loaded our car and left the curtain drawn for whoever came next.

Kimilee Norman writes humbly from Tampa, Florida, supported by her two rescue dogs and (non-rescue) fiancée. She is still trying to decide which non-dairy milk is superior: almond, oat or coconut. Her work can be found in The Bangalore Review, For Women Who Roar, and hung up on her mother’s fridge.

Haley Nicole

Robin Eggs

“Any changes of medical history in the last year?”

I remember the lights having this iridescent glow that tinted everything green. The walls were this harrowing yellow that reminded me of the wallpaper that hung originally in our bedroom the day we moved in. He saw on my face that I didn’t like it. He took it down the next day. He could fix anything.

“No.”

“Are you a smoker?”

I remember the sound of paper tearing. My thighs kept sticking to the parchment, like how the sheets would cling to our damp backs as we laid bare in front of the windows, our lungs thirsting for a cool night’s breeze.

“No.”

“Do you drink?”

“No.”

“Allergic to any medications?”

I remember counting the dots on the sleeve of my gown. They weren’t quite dots, but rather oval-shaped and blue in color, like robin eggs. Like the eggs I found one day in my newly seeded garden. He had grabbed his ladder from the basement and returned them back to the nest in the tree they had fallen from. I heard baby birds singing every morning that summer.

“Just a quick pinch.”

I remember swallowing down bile. Through the stomach cramps and blurred vision, I saw him cooking breakfast in our kitchen. He was confused when I told him one day to not make his eggs anymore. The smell of them just became too unbearable.

“You will feel some scraping.”

I remember the brush of cold air between my legs. I felt myself floating away and grasped onto his necklace to keep myself anchored. He told me he loved me. He told me he would always be there for me.

“Almost done. You’re doing great.”

I remember signing the papers, shaking my head as I explained to the receptionist that I was driving myself home that day. I remember staring at the mounds of soil in my garden. I remember not hearing any birds.

Haley Nicole is currently a graduate student in Manhattanville College’s MFA Creative Writing program, where she will be focusing on fiction writing. She recently graduated from the University of Connecticut with a Master’s in Curriculum & Instruction and a Bachelor’s in English and Bachelor’s in Elementary Education. This summer she had the honor of working with Nora Baskin and attending her fiction writing workshop. Haley also had the pleasure of working with Lori Soderlind, Jane K. Cleland, and Alan Felsental. At the University of Connecticut, she studied under Douglas Kaufman who focuses on writing and language arts education. The stories she wants to write are the ones that are seldom told or published. Through her writing, she hopes to reach readers who have gone through similar experiences. Through her writing, she hopes readers gain the courage and the strength to one day tell their own stories. She can be reached on Instagram @haley.nicole.s and via email at haleyshettles@yahoo.com.

Robert Sachs

The Loop

The first few stops of the elevated train are at ground level, bells ringing, gates lowering ahead of the train, stopping automobiles. Larry leans his head against the cold window and closes his eyes. As the tracks begin to rise over his northwest side Chicago neighborhood, he feels this secret thrill, like taking off in a small plane from Meigs Field. By the Western Avenue stop, they’re up out of the way of traffic. A woman boards. She is tall, thin with straight gray hair touching her shoulders. To Larry she looks a little like Doris, maybe a tad taller, a little older. She’s wearing a heavy blue wool, ankle-length coat and, like him, she’s wearing a party hat—this one a small cardboard bowler with red and green stripes. “Happy New Year,” she says.

 “Ditto,” he says, giving her a thumbs-up. She sits across the aisle, looking at him and smiling. “Do I know you?” he asks.

“Not likely,” she says.

“You’re staring.”

“It’s two in the morning on New Year’s day. You’re on an El train wearing a party hat. What are the odds of me getting on a train at two in the morning with another lonely drunk wearing a party hat? Gotta be a million to one.”

“Million to one,” Larry agrees, with a dry laugh. The train lurches forward. His party hat—blue with yellow stars—is shaped like an inverted funnel and held in place with a thin string of elastic tucked under one of his chins. A half hour earlier he had been celebrating the New Year at Fahey’s Tavern on Lawrence Avenue, not far from his apartment. It was one-thirty when Fahey, the bartender, shooed him out. “Party’s over,” Fahey said, palms on the bar, a small towel draped over his shoulder.

The street was deserted and Larry, his attention suddenly focused by the dank, frigid air of a Chicago winter, needed to find a place to go. His apartment, the one he found after Doris left him, is cheerless, cramped; the only thing it fits is his meager budget. Friends? All married and asleep. Doris was probably asleep in a big house out in the suburbs with her new boyfriend. The wind swirling along the icy sidewalk penetrated the thick wool of Larry’s overcoat and gave him the shivers. So it was the El, for years his lifeline out of Albany Park. When he was nine, it took him downtown on Saturdays with a friend or two to see a movie at the Oriental or the Chicago Theater. By the time he was twelve, he took it to Addison and then bused to Wrigley Field. At thirteen, he took Leanne Mormelstern downtown on the train for lunch, after which they walked hand in hand around Buckingham Fountain. The El is how he got to college at Navy Pier. Now it’s a place to go in the middle of a glacial night for twenty cents. Around the Loop and back will take about an hour and by then he’ll have sobered up some and ready to face sleep. 

The wicker seats on the old train crunched in the cold like Rice Krispy’s. He propped his feet on the seatback in front of him. Neither the motorman nor the conductor had boarded, so there was no heat. Bone chilling wind blew through the car. He pulled up the collar of his overcoat, closed his eyes, and waited. He had this thought that if he kept his eyes closed he could pretend the train was taking him somewhere special, not just around the Loop and back. Somewhere warm, with a beach and tanned young women in skimpy bathing suits, women that smiled at you as they sauntered by. “Larry, honey, call me later.” Gloria Berkowitz had been at Fahey’s. He’s known her since third grade. Once, when they were teenagers, he sat next to her in the balcony of the Terminal Theater on a Friday night watching Guys and Dolls and she let him feel her up. She kept herself in good shape and Larry could imagine her on this beach sitting next to him. “Help me with this suntan lotion, will ya?” But she barely smiled at him at Fahey’s and left the bar just after midnight with a building contractor named Phil.

“Feet off the seat, Larry,” the conductor said as he walked by. He lifted Larry’s party hat and let it snap back to his head. “Happy New Year, buddy.”

Larry hadn’t heard him get on. “Hey, Donald. Happy New Year to you too,” he said, adjusting his hat. “How about some heat in here.”

The old train shuddered to life, like a thoroughbred shaking off the morning dew and the heat came on. “Ask and ye shall receive,” said Donald, collecting Larry’s fare. He closed the doors to keep in the heat and pretty soon they were off. The Ravenswood El—around the Loop in that magic time between two and five. Larry’s first time early morning round trip had been a couple years ago, the night Doris left him. That’s when he met Donald. They spoke only on the return trip, after leaving the Belmont Avenue Station. “You’re going to end up back where you started, mister,” he said to Larry. “That what you want?”

“Guess so.” Larry told him about Doris. She was a decent enough person when he met her, but she developed this idea that they should be wealthy. She had a girl friend that married wealthy and Larry did not compare well. When she finally realized he’d never be rich, she walked. Of course, she’ll say it was his immaturity, his penchant for fantasizing, his lack of initiative, his snoring, whatever. She had a long list. But with Doris, money was numero uno. No one could convince Larry otherwise.

Donald listened politely to all this. Larry invited him to Fahey’s for a drink that first night, but he turned him down. He called out each stop even though Larry was the only passenger. It’s in the book, Larry supposed, and Donald followed the book. He stood on a small, rubberized platform and each time the train approached a station, he’d lower his window and look out. If no one was waiting, he’d tug on a wire that clicked in the motorman’s booth and off they’d go. “Why the round trip?” he asked Larry that first time.

“Cheaper than a shrink, I guess. A place I can relax, sober up.”

Donald gave him a strange look. “All right by me,” he said. After that, Larry took the round trip twenty, maybe thirty, times, almost always with Donald, almost always after having had one too many. Larry would give Donald this: He was a good listener. Never commented, never criticized. But he never agreed to have a drink with him.

“Flo,” the woman says.

“Larry. Nice to meet you, Flo. I’m on my way back to where I started and I’d like to invite you come along for the ride and join me for a nightcap.”

“No can do,” Flo says. “Gotta get to work. I’m late as it is.”

“What kind of work is that?”

“I help take care of this guy,” she says, unbuttoning her coat.

She crosses her legs and Larry’s not too drunk to notice how long and shapely they are. He’s reminded of Doris’ legs and thinks that of all the important parts of a woman, legs are the last to go.

“I’m the night nurse. The old man has no family—needs someone with him ‘round the clock. What about you, Larry?”

“Ladies’ shoes. Been selling them so long I can tell a woman’s size just by looking at her feet. You, for instance, wear a seven and a half, double A.”

A familiar look flashes across her face just before she responds. It says: What is a guy your age doing selling shoes? Doris wore that same look like a shawl. High school guys sell shoes, she’d say. College, maybe. But here you are, almost forty and still selling shoes. Why aren’t you managing the fucking store by this time? The fact is Larry likes selling shoes, and he’s good at it. Managing the store would be one headache after another. But Doris couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. To her, it was all about the money.

“On the money,” Flo says, smiling. “Great party trick.” She takes out a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. “Smoke?”

He declines the offer. Flo lights up, holds the first deep drag in her lungs for a few seconds and blows the smoke up in the air. Her crossed legs are angled toward him, her arm on the seat back, like she’s lounging by a pool. “This guy I work for? Quite a character. I think he owned some business. Anyway, he’s got money. You should see his apartment. Two stories. Right on the Drive. You can see the lake from his living room. But all that money don’t help him none now.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Well, he just sits there, staring out the window. Watches some TV. But that’s it. Can’t feed himself, can’t bathe himself. You know.”

“But he’s got money to hire people to do that. What if he didn’t have the money?”

“So he’d be in a state home somewhere, looking out the window. What’s the big difference?” Flo says.

“Better scenery, for one thing. Rich folks have options,” Larry tells Flo. “That’s what the money buys them. They can do this or they can do that.” He holds his left hand out in one direction and his right in the other. “The rest of us can only do that.” You wouldn’t have a good-looking woman like Flo scrubbing your back if you didn’t have money, he thinks but doesn’t say. He wonders if the old guy ever makes a pass at her. Wonder what she’d do. It would be nice, he thinks, to take her back to his apartment. Spend some quality time with her. 

“What kind of party?” he asks.

“Run of the mill. A friend of mine from high school. Hadn’t seen her in years. We bump into each other at the A&P a few weeks ago and she invites me to her New Year’s party. It was okay, but I didn’t know anyone there. Mostly couples. It was a little awkward. But the booze was good.”

“You could have brought a date.”

“Could have. And you? Where did you ring in the new?”

“Fahey’s. A bar on Lawrence near Kedzie. He puts on a little shindig for the regulars. Some food, free wine. Drinks we have to buy. I hung around too long. Closed the place.”

The train rumbles along, barely stopping at the stations. Just before the Belmont Avenue stop, the tracks merge with those from other lines. This is the big jumping-off place. You can go north up to Evanston, transfer to the subway to get downtown quickly, or stay on the Ravenswood line and go around the Loop.

“Belmont,” Flo says. “I get off here.”

“Go around the Loop with me, Flo. Won’t take that much longer. We’ll be back at Belmont in no time.” Larry is surprised by his boldness. He gives her his sincerest look. Flo checks her watch.

“What the hell, I’m already late. Another half hour won’t make a big difference. Maybe clear my head for a long night with the Oldie.”

“We’ll have an adventure,” Larry says. As they head south toward the Loop, Larry realizes he’s more or less sobered up. That usually takes hours, and he figures it must be Flo. She’s an attractive, if plain looking, woman. No makeup. “Handsome” is the word that comes to Larry’s mind, although he knows from experience women don’t like to be called handsome. But, hell, that’s what she is. They’re downtown, coming up to the curve that will send them east, running above Van Buren. As they hit the curve, there’s a bang and all the lights go out. The train coasts silently to a stop on the banked track.

“Shit,” says Flo. “Pardon my French. I’m gonna be even later than I thought.” The street lamps below provide just enough light for the three of them, Donald, Flo and Larry, to see one another. The train begins to creak as it settles itself on the track, an aged lion bedding down for the night.

“Hey, Mr. Conductor,” Flo yells, “We’re not in any danger here are we?” The train does look off balance, leaning into the curve. Donald’s looking around, checking to see if the motorman pokes his head out of the control cab in the front car. He doesn’t answer immediately.

“Well, Donald, are we safe?” Larry asks.

 “We’re safe for now,” he says. “Train’s got a low center of gravity. Don’t worry about it falling over. But if we don’t get the power back up pretty soon, it’s going to get really cold in here. I’ll go up front and see what the motorman says.”

“We’re not that far from the next station,” Larry says to Flo. “Maybe we can walk the tracks to it. Get a bus or a cab or something.”

“Not in these things,” Flo says, pointing to her high-heeled seven and a half double A pumps. “I’d kill myself.”

Donald walks back from his visit with the motorman. “Not much news, Larry. Power’s totally gone. We’re waiting for someone to come out and tell us what’s happening. It’s possible they’ll send out a fire department picker to take us off.”

“Walking up to the next station is starting to look better and better,” Larry says.

“Can’t allow that,” Donald says. “You fall and kill yourself, I could lose my job. Power to the third rail can come back on and fry you. It’s too dangerous.” As Donald talks, Larry imagines himself walking down that track, hoisting himself up on the LaSalle Street platform and getting help. He figures Flo would be impressed.

“Now and then us ordinary people have options, Flo, just like the rich guys. Like here: we can wait on the train until frost forms on our noses or we can walk the tracks to the station.” Larry says it quietly so Donald can’t hear.

“You heard what he said,” she whispers. “Don’t go do anything foolish.”

“I’m not about to do anything foolish. But it doesn’t look that difficult. The station can’t be more than a block away.”

“That’s about right,” says Flo, looking ahead. “If I was wearing better shoes, I might be tempted.” Donald’s sitting down with his hands across his chest, his eyes closed.

“I don’t have to be anywhere until tomorrow,” Larry says. “Might as well stay here. Still, it is getting cold.” He checks to make sure the top button on his overcoat is buttoned, wishing he had taken his scarf. Doris would have made him wear it. He buries his hands deep in his coat pockets. Screw Doris, he thinks, I’m up for being a hero.

“Say, Flo, I’m really thinking I should get out of here and walk up to LaSalle. Come with me.”

“I told you, not in these shoes. Anyway, I think Donald’s right, it’s dangerous. With the wind and all. Besides, you just said you’ve got nothing better to do.”

“It’s getting colder, Flo,” Larry reminds her. She slides over to give him room.

“Sit by me, Larry, we’ll keep each other warm. Got anything to drink?”

“Nothing. Hey, Donald, how about cracking open the bar and giving us a drink?”

“Would be nice,” Donald says not opening his eyes. “Got a box of Good & Plenty I’ll share with you.”

Flo is resting her head on Larry’s shoulder, her eyes closed. Donald walks over and Larry puts a finger up to his lips. Frost covers most of the windows. Donald’s wearing gloves, but his Transit Authority jacket looks skimpy and he’s shivering.

“I’m going,” Larry tells him. “I’ve made a decision. I’ll bring help. You can’t stop me.” Donald nods, showing his resignation.

“I’m going up to talk with the motorman,” he says. “If you’re going to go, do it while I’m up there.”

“Larry, you must be nuts,” Flo says, opening one eye.

Not this time, he’s thinking. This time, he’s going to save Flo and Donald and the motorman. This time he’s going to be the one who saves the day.

“It’ll be okay,” Larry says and moves to the sliding doors. “I’ll be fine – I’ll bring help.” He pulls the doors apart just wide enough to slip though and lowers himself to the track. The doors snap shut behind him. He’s standing on the ties between the set of tracks next to the train. The wind whips his overcoat around his legs. Crouching, he begins to move slowly toward the station. He’s taken maybe ten steps when the train, inches from his right shoulder, shudders; the lights flicker and then stay on.

“Fuck,” he says to himself.

The train lurches forward, stops for an instant and begins to move, slowly picking up speed, leaving Larry behind. He sees it stop at LaSalle. Flo is out of the train first. She runs to the end of the station closest to him, yelling something and motioning for him to stop. But Larry keeps moving forward—he’s about a hundred yards away. He knows they’re worried he’s going to electrocute himself, but it’s a clear shot and he feels pretty solid staying with the crouching walk. So on he goes. He wonders what Doris would think if she could see him now. Impressed? Larry is sure she wouldn’t understand why he jumped off the train. She’d think he was a sap.

He hears the sirens and sees first a policeman and then a couple of firemen run up to the platform. Flo motions to them and they join her. A gust of wind knocks Larry off balance and he drops to his hands and knees close to the edge of the outermost track. He decides it’ll be safer to crawl. The ties are rough-hewn, tearing at his palms and his knees. He’s not making very good time. Flo is yelling words of encouragement.

“Relax,” he thinks he hears her say to the firemen. “He’s got it under control.” Larry smiles and keep going. By the time he reaches the station, his hands are scratched and bloody, his slacks a mess, his knees hurting. Getting onto the platform, he realizes, is going to be tricky. He doesn’t want to fry himself on the third rail. God, what would Doris think of that? But the firemen lower a wooden stepladder and, grabbing both his arms, lead him safely up. Flo claps, but the others seem dour and put out. She comes over and gives him a hug. “My hero,” she says. “You look a mess.” She’s still wearing her party hat and Larry realizes, after all that, he’s still wearing his. He wonders if the firemen would have taken him more seriously if he wasn’t, but he figures what the hell, that’s their problem.

Donald closes the doors and pulls the signal cord; the train begins to roll. They watch from the back window as the police and firemen gather up their things and leave the station platform, condensate as heavy as cigar smoke pouring from their nostrils. After LaSalle and Van Buren, the train turns north. Flo and Larry look for glimpses of the lake through chinks in the phalanx of buildings along Wabash Avenue. “It’s too dark anyway,” Flo says, giving up. They see steam rising from the manholes along Wabash, and Flo says she’s glad she didn’t have to be out in the cold.

“Didn’t bother me,” he tells her. “It was more the wind. I was afraid I’d lose my balance and fall onto the third rail. That’s why I decided to keep down. Did I look like an ape?”

“You looked fine. It just was a nutty thing to do.” But she says it with a smile and Larry knows deep down she’s impressed. That’s the way it is with women. They think it’s crazy, but they admire a guy who’s willing to put himself on the line. She’ll probably be telling her friends about how this stranger risked his life for her.

They sit in silence, holding hands on the ride back to Belmont station. Then the woman Larry crawled on train tracks for leans in and kisses him full on the mouth and gives him her card. “Call me.”

He quickly skims the card: “Florence Krazner, Licensed Practical Nurse,” with her address and phone number. Flo stands and moves toward the door as Donny calls out, “Belmont Avenue.”

“Thanks for the excitement, Larry,” Flo says, waving as she steps out onto the cold elevated platform. “Happy New Year.”

Larry yells, “Wait!” but Donny closes the doors too quickly and she is gone.

Larry puts the card in his wallet and sits down. He thinks this is probably his best New Year celebration of all time, this train ride, but it doesn’t end right. She should have asked him to go with her to the old guy’s apartment. This time of night he’d be fast asleep and they could have watched the sunrise over Lake Michigan. It would have been beautiful: two people who had shared an adventure silently watching the first dawn of a new year from the warmth of a Lake Shore Drive hi-rise. Sitting up there in the lap of luxury with your arms around a beautiful woman. That would have been something.

Robert Sachs’ fiction has appeared in The Louisville Review, the Chicago Quarterly Review, the Great Ape Journal, and the Delmarva Review. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Spalding University. His story, “Vondelpark,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017. His story Yo-Yo Man was a Fiction Finalist in the 2019 Tiferet Writing Contest. Read more at www.roberthsachs.com.

SM Colgan

Pretension

They’ll speak of doodles, marginalia, put forth theories of boredom and idleness and attempting to find words in mindless scribbles of art that are too rough to be art and not from an artist’s hand. There may even be a lover in the story, interfering and distracting. But there will be no record of ‘Wonderful Tonight’ or Warren Zevon’s mournful pleas. Nothing to speak of three duvets and two hot water bottles and the light of three candles – black orchid and sandalwood, tea rose, lavender and iris – invoking ancient gods.

It was an attempt to waste the ink, and that was all.

It was art, they’ll say. A glimpse into the psyche. A crude attempt at illustration. A look at a talent unexplored.

And they’ll hang it in a museum. And put it on the exam.

SM Colgan (she/her) is a bi writer living somewhere in Ireland. Her work focuses on emotion, history, sexuality, and relationships, romantic and otherwise. She has prose forthcoming from Emerge Literary Journal, Stone of Madness Press, and Words & Whispers Literary Journal, and her poetry can be found at Lucky Pierre Zine. Twitter: @burnpyregorse

Tim Tomlinson

Don’t Fizzle My Stick

The problem with Phoebe, as I saw it, wasn’t that she had a boyfriend, and not even that the boyfriend was talented, much more talented than me, but that he was big. A half-famous, swinging-dick kind of a guy, always walking around campus with a guitar that he carried by the neck. You’d see him outside Butler or on the steps in front of Low Library flat-picking, scat-singing, making it up as he went along. Brian, his name was, Brian Conjeaud. He could play piano, clarinet, drums, harmonica. Not a bad voice, either. Had an informal group called The Coordinates who’d made a single that somehow found its way onto the jukebox of the Marlin. Called “Don’t Fizzle My Stick, Part 1,” b/w “Don’t Fizzle My Stick, Part 4.” The implication was that Parts 2 and 3 were on the way, but of course they weren’t. And another “joke,” for those who bothered to flip the single over, was that “Part 4” had as much connection to “Part 1” as Iceland had to a banana.

But Phoebe. I had, many of us had, a thing for Phoebe. Truly, you couldn’t help it. That olive skin and the radiant intelligence. Hard not to fantasize, unless Brian Conjeaud’s arm reached down from his six foot-four inch frame and covered her narrow shoulders. Phoebe was in Visual Arts, two floors down from Film, and the hallways and staircases were lined with her work in charcoal sketch, watercolor, and photography. I particularly marveled at the Plus-X black-and-white photos of sacred texts projected onto her nude form. These did not remain up very long—no idea where they could have got off to. But on this day, there she was, front table at the Marlin, late afternoon, “Don’t Fizzle My Stick, Part 4,” if I recollect correctly, on the jukebox, and she’s staring out the window while cross-hatching a page of a Stillman & Birn sketchbook with a stick of gray-black charcoal. Alongside the notebook, a black coffee gone cold in a white mug, and a dog-eared copy of Henry Miller’s Time of the Assassins. Time of the Assassins!

“Mind if I –” I said.

“Only if I can draw you,” she said, flipping a page of her sketchbook.

“Sounds like a fair trade.”

And what I loved about the sketch was that it bore no resemblance not just to me, but to reality.

“That might make a good cover for ‘Don’t Fizzle My Stick, Part 2.’”

She said, “There won’t be a Part 2.”

I said, “That’s kind of what I mean.”

I was reminded, I told Phoebe, of a time back in the eighth grade when I got in
trouble in Art Class for a charcoal drawing that I called “Smog.”

Phoebe said, “I’m impressed you remember the title.”

“It was just a bunch of wild lines and smudges that I mushed around with the
heel of my hand.”

“Creative,” Phoebe said. “I didn’t know you had that kind of imagination.”

“Probably more delinquency than imagination,” I said, “but I can’t claim responsibility. I was just the conduit.”

“I see,” Phoebe said. “Guided, as it were, by the gods of drawing kind of thing.”

“Them,” I said, “or smog.”

“Oh,” she giggled. “You’re funny, too.”

“Miss Bramlett didn’t think so.”

I told her about Miss Bramlett, our new art teacher. The mini-skirts, the pop-art designs.

“She made me do a revision.”

“Always useful,” Phoebe said.

“She’d introduced us,” I said, “to The Notebooks of Paul Klée.”

Phoebe said, “I adore Klée.”

“So did Miss Bramlett.”

“Paul Klée,” Phoebe said, “is the Erik Satie of art.”

“Amazing,” I told her. “Miss Bramlett said that, too.”

“So how was your revision?”

“Not much better, according to Miss Bramlett. I called it ‘Pollution.’”

“You had a theme.”

“She said I had a vexation.”

“Oh,” Phoebe said, excited. “Can I play you something?”

•••

Phoebe lived in a one-bedroom five flights above the Marlin and overlooking Broadway. On her turntable, she placed a recording of Satie’s “Vexations” for piano. Its score was barely half a page, but it came with the instruction to play the theme eight-hundred forty times in succession. “It would be advisable,” Satie cautioned the performer, “to
prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.”

“Serious immobilities,” Phoebe exclaimed. “At a moderate tempo it would take
over eighteen hours to perform. Can you imagine how deliciously perverse this man?”

We got neither serious, nor immobile.

Her living room resembled the office-cum-museum of the Freud House in London. Both her parents were psychotherapists.

“You must have been a well-understood child,” I said, palming artifacts from
Rome, then masks from New Guinea.

“If you believe in that mumbo-jumbo,” she said.

The Satie continued, but you couldn’t really tell that unless you looked at the tonearm because fifteen minutes later sounded exactly the same as fifteen minutes earlier. It had a weird effect on both us, I’d wager.

Phoebe got up from the bed—we’d gone to bed, I should mention, and we’d enjoyed what for me at least was a deliciously carnal romp, at the end of which I’d discharged just below her breasts, a not insubstantial amount that, later, I reasoned represented all those weeks and months and semesters I’d built up desire for her—and retrieved a book her father had written on countertransference. “For Phoebe,” he’d inscribed on its title page, “the radiant moon in our solar system.”

“Phoebe means moon,” she told me. “Or some shit.”

“That’s sweet of him,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, “until you start thinking about what countertransference means.”

I said, “What does it mean?”

She said, “I don’t really know exactly but I find all of that stuff just totally creepy.”

She was sitting up now, thumbing through the text. She shuddered.

The telephone rang.

“Who the fuck is this?” she said.

She held up a hand for me not to talk while her answering machine gave instructions to leave a message.

“Feebs,” we heard, and Phoebe jumped out of bed.

It was Brian.

“No,” I said, “don’t pick up.”

She ignored me.

“Sweety,” she said.

I looked around for my clothes, got my bearings on the exit options. There was a fire escape outside the kitchen window, but I’d been stuck on one of those motherfuckers before. Long story, but I can say briefly that it was not a very pleasant, nor warm, four hours in late February.

“Nothing,” Phoebe said. “Cliff is here.”

“What the fuck!” my mouth mouthed.

“Brian says hello.” She listened more and said, “He’s asking if you have to leave
right away. He wants to play something for you. He’s just round the corner.”

At that point I became somewhat out-of-body dissociated. I was picturing Brian’s huge frame, my narrow one, while appreciating at the same time that the not insubstantial discharge I’d splooged onto Phoebe’s chest was still there trickling. Actually, it was not still there, not most of it anyway. On her exquisite olive skin there was a splotch of darker olive, the main target area of my release, but beneath that a rivulet reaching from the source pool all the way to her navel—an inny, I believe is the anatomical parlance—into which a small gelatinous amount had gathered. Seeing that, seeing that she hadn’t bothered to wipe it off, seeing that she could talk to her boyfriend with the linebacker shoulders while another man’s semen coagulated vertically on her torso, I experienced such a surge of admiration, and of desire.

But I didn’t lose my instinct for survival.

I jumped into my boxers and trousers.

Phoebe laughed.

“You’re being silly.”

I gave her a kiss at the door and went up to the next landing to finish dressing. I heard her buzz, heard him enter, climb the stairs. He was robust, this Brian. He could sing while climbing five flights of stairs. “Girl from the North Country,” a Dylan crooning call followed by Johnny Cash. He entered Phoebe’s flat with a key.

“Good Christ,” I thought. “What was she thinking?”

Making less noise than a shadow, I fled down the steps.

Outside, I slid across storefront windows flat as a reflection in case Brian happened to be looking out. South, to Cannon’s on 107th Street.

From Cannon’s window you could see Straus Park, the desperate little triangle where West End Avenue dead-ended into Broadway. It was named after Isidor and Ida Straus, a doomed couple who went down on the Titanic.

I liked Cannon’s. Beer was cheap, and the jukebox had a new song by Bruce Springsteen. Each night, this guy steals a car. Each night he waits to get caught, he says. But I never do.

Tim Tomlinson is the author of Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire (poetry) and This Is Not Happening to You (short fiction). He’s a co-founder of New York Writers Workshop and a professor in NYU’s Global Liberal Studies. Visit Tim at timtomlinson.org.

Anna Genevieve Winham

STEM

Alright you lot. Thousands of people donate their bodies to science each year, but I’m not so sure this is the most valuable use of my body. If you donate my body to science and I’m left just to lie (or, rather, it not I is left just to lie) on a slab of table smelling of formaldehyde and being prodded at and poked by medical students not as mature as we hope they might be by the time they are doctors, I might help, say, 10 million people. But I invite you to consider, say, any of the forty-four Mrs. Cézannes. She had just one body, and forty-four paintings. Who cannot gaze upon Mrs. Cézanne without instigating dramatic improvement to her interior life? She, Mrs. Cézanne, must have saved the souls of millions; and she died only two hundred years ago. By the end of time, who will have contributed more value to the world, the sunflower stalks in Van Goghs’ vase or that corpse on the chrome table?

If I am to become an object, or, rather, if my body is to become solely an object, let it become truly an object. This is why I am putting it in my will: I am donating my body to Art. I am not positive that there are any artists around at this particular time who are worth my body, so you will just have to put it on ice until such time as worthy artists come along. I’m thinking a once in a generation kind of artist; your Kusamas or Picassos or whatnot. In order to maximise the donation we shall need to maximise the artist. There’s one unfortunate setback, which is that the subject part of me won’t be around to identify the correct artist. I understand it’s a bit of a gamble, but I feel confident the right artist will feel called to the task.

Anna Genevieve Winham writes at the crossroads of science and the sublime, cyborgs and the surreal. She is Ninth Letter’s 2020 literary award winner in Literary Nonfiction and Writer Advice Flash Fiction Contest’s 3rd place winner. Anna writes and performs with the Poetry Society of New York, and her poetry appears in Q/A Poetry, Panoplyzine, Meniscus, and Breadcrumbs Magazine. Her prose appears in Oxford Public Philosophy, Rock & Sling, Tilde~, Paragraph, and Gold Man Review. While attending Dartmouth College (which was the pits), she won the Stanley Prize for experimental essay and the Kaminsky Family Fund Award. She can be reached at www.annagwinham.com.

Celia Nothwang

Twenty-Nine to Nothing

“Good God,” she groaned, “don’t you think of anything besides yourself?”

Lake stopped his whining and gave her back the jacket. It was her jacket, so he couldn’t exactly get upset, but he felt that it suited him better in general. A bright yellow puffer coat with a green stripe and their ship’s insignia embroidered on the breast, a jacket only given to the engineering and supervisional teams. Lake, as part of the agricultural team, only received a beige tech vest as part of his employment.

“It’s not too big on me, is it?” Shey asked, slipping her arms through the sleeves. The jacket sounded like crinkling paper when it moved around.

He shook his head no.

After a while she said, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be.”

“I am, though.”

“Okay,” he said first. “Thanks,” he said a little bit later.

They peered out the window in search of something to talk about. The vast blackness on the other side was just as it had been yesterday, the day before, and so on. A dark sheet with scattered dots of light must have been draped over the window’s view. Both of them had expected the cosmos to be more picturesque. Neither wanted to sound ungrateful or give the impression that their view of the universe was anything less than breathtaking, however, the textbooks from home depicted space in a way that was quite vibrant, a way that some watercolor artist from Earth must have imagined. Instead, it was manta black and kosher salt on canvas. This was the case for the view, but the outside itself was a crushingly divine void that was contradictory in every conceivable way; infinite and teeming with life but also empty, a grim homage to the lonesomeness of existence. Each speck of light was unfamiliar as they hurdled through deep space, anything close enough to identify would have sucked them into its gravity.

Lake scooted towards the oxygen alarm and tightened the wrap of dirty laundry that muzzled the sounds which repeated infinitely. The buzzes were two seconds apart. Shey had previously explained what the different pauses meant, but the knowledge escaped him now.

“Shey,” he began.

“It means we’re at twenty percent.”

“Oh.”

“Was that all?”

“Do you mean the start of the twenties? Or the end?”

“What?”

“Like, when the alarm starts going every two seconds, that means we’re at twenty percent, not twenty-nine percent?”

Shey had to think for a minute.

“I think it’s twenty-nine, actually,” she said at last.

“That’s good.” Lake pulled his sleeping bag up to his shoulders and Shey followed suit. They had started out sleeping in shifts to take care of the essentials; monitoring trajectory, oxygen and fuel levels, checking for abnormalities, scanning for transmissions, and, most importantly, putting the coffee on. However, it didn’t take many conversations for a deep bond to form, and neither Lake nor Shey wanted to separate themselves like that. It was nice, having a friend to float around the void with. They enjoyed talking, joking, and occasionally checking the aforementioned essentials—excluding the coffee, which they always remembered. So they opted to sleep at the same time and hope for the best.

The pod’s air supply wasn’t quite at capacity when they’d set out, but it was close enough to figure they now had less time ahead of them than behind. This was only an estimation as they’d already given up on counting days. What was a day with no sun to dictate it, anyway? The closest star to them was likely one of those dying white dots; a twenty-four-hour clock suddenly felt so restrictive. Resolving to ignore the pod’s clock, the “day” became simply the time they spent awake.

Lake was occupying his mind by throwing a rubber ball against the wall.

Toss. Bounce. Catch. Repeat.

“Pass it here,” Shey said, holding out her hand as though a catcher’s mitt were on it.

“Hold on.”

“Just pass it.”

“Hold on . Catch the rhythm, then catch the ball.”

Shey rolled her eyes as far back as they could reach and began tapping her foot in sync with the beat of the ball. Lake shot glances at her between tossing and catching to make sure she was focusing. She thought he was bullshitting, and deep down he did as well. Once he decided that she’d caught it well enough, he tossed the ball her way and the beat continued from hands to hands. Shey never noticed that Lake’s tempo followed that of the oxygen alarm.

***

Lake woke up first. Good morning , he told himself, and it was in a sense. Morning was now whatever they made it, so Lake declared it morning. And it was good, as the morning was to become the day that they would suffocate to death. Once the oxygen depleted, they would fall light-headed and peacefully die in their sleep. It was already at no more than nineteen percent. Lake and Shey knew that they would die soon. On the fourth day, Shey fixed together a temporary range extender for their comms system. She multiplied the range of the laser communications relay and found that their escape pod had hurdled into deep, unsettled space. The nearest rescue they could count on was probably a lifetime away.

Acceptance came easy for the two, however. Both of them thought the realization of unavoidable death would be a significant moment, leaving them pleading with whatever higher power to let them see their loved ones again—but once that moment came, when their agency was fully stripped of them, they felt nothing but relief. They were properly comfortable for the first time since either could remember. As if the dread was too powerful for their bodies to process and it chose to relax instead. It felt a tad like being in grade school before your fear of the future sets in, to only have to worry about the day in front of you, if that. Maybe, they considered, the only scenarios that can truly humble a human person are impending doom, immortality, and public school.

Shey rustled in her bag. Lake reached over and pressed a button on the monitor. On the underside of the computer, a pot slowly filled with brown drips that smelled like heaven. Sniffling and sitting up, Shey’s hair was in disarray and falling over her tired eyes. She wiped her face, then let out her morning grunts.

“Coffee?” she asked and he poured some into the two mugs he’d set out. He handed one to her and took a big gulp of the other.

“Can I cheat?” asked Lake.

“Sure.”

Lake paced over towards the monitor, removing a piece of masking tape. He took a good look at the screen and stuck the tape back on. Shey stared at him and he stared at her also.

“What’s it at?” Shey asked.

“You don’t want me to tell you. You never want me to tell you.”

“This time I do. Go on, tell me.”

“Fourteen percent.”

“Nice,” she whispered and rolled over.

Sometimes Shey would get intrusive thoughts. She knew that most people got them too, but she was especially disturbed by hers. When they were on the ship she would get the most horrible ideas of abandoning her post, smacking her crewmates, disrespecting her boss, even kissing her clinician, who she was not even remotely attracted to. She thought perhaps the seriousness of the voyage would do away with the thoughts she felt on Earth, but for some odd reason, travelling into the unknown only worsened her anxieties. Talking to Lake in the morning, one of her first thoughts was to bash the controls, intentionally cutting their time even shorter. She didn’t consider this to be nearly as problematic as the intrusions she would feel on the ship at least. Her only anxiety left was the time between now and the end.

“I thought about it again,” she blurted. “About killing us.”

“I’m sorry. Do you want to?”

“I don’t.”

“It wouldn’t make a difference,” he said. “You can. Really.”

“No, it’s a nice day. Let’s enjoy it,” she said, and that was that.

Lake and Shey had just about exhausted every card game they could remember, so they began to make up their own games to keep things fresh. Their favorite, which was still a work in progress, was called Scoop Chuck. The game was sort of like Spoons, sort of like Fifty-Two Pickup. In Scoop Chuck, each player held twelve cards with the rest of the deck placed in between them. The players went back and forth exchanging cards from the deck with the other’s until one of them obtained three instances of the same card in all four suits, at which point the winning player scoops up the remaining cards in the deck and chucks them like a dodgeball at the loser. If the losing player manages to evade all of the cards, then it was the winner’s job to pick up the deck. A game of Scoop Chuck had just ended in a papercut on Lake’s earlobe. He sat with her behind him, cleaning and bandaging the cut.

“Why do we need to bandage it?” Lake asked.

“So it doesn’t get infected,” Shey said coolly.

Lake decided to not pursue the argument, and just let her treat his wound.

***

Suppertime came and the alarm was now nonstop. The continuous buzz meant the tanks were down to ten percent. Shey and Lake noticed, shrugged, and kept eating their dehydrated fruits. The wait was soon to be over—this was an uplifting thought to them.

“Do you want any more of these mangoes?” Lake asked.

“No, I’ve had too many already.”

Lake took this as an invitation to dig in on the chewy mango slices. His plastic fork struggled to pierce them so he just grabbed them with his fingers and tossed them down his gullet. He chewed as many as eight slices at a time.

“Pig,” Shey teased.

“It’s my last meal. Forgive me.”

“You make it sound like a death sentence.”

“It is, kind of,” sighed Lake.

“With less guilt involved.”

“You don’t feel guilty?” he asked and she had to think. Their station’s failure was due in part to the engineering department, but the human error fell on an engineer from a different division than her’s. Still, any of the engineers probably could have fixed the fuel leak if just one of them had tried instead of rushing for the escape pods. But that was all in the past now.

“I could,” she said at last. “It wouldn’t be very helpful though.”

“Do you think inmates feel guilty on the way to execution?”

“They might, but they shouldn’t. All that time before the execution was their time to feel guilty. I don’t think they should beat themselves up at that point. Makes the process smoother.”

“You sound like an expert,” he responded.

She shrugged. “I have a lot of time to think now.” After a bit she added, “I’m glad you
got in this pod with me.”

“I am too.” They hugged and slid back into their sleeping bags. Butting heads, they gave a proper, silent goodbye. The situation had been exploited for goodness by their friendship. Soon enough, the thinning air would put them to sleep and the rest would be out of their hands. Just then a second sound began and stopped, a sound directly from the pod’s monitor. A beep in harmony with the oxygen tanks’ buzz. It sounded off again a moment later. Shey casually strolled over to check. A signal, laser transmitted to them.

“‘Found signal. Stop. Will rescue. Stop. Respond for extract. Stop.’”

Neither said a word, but Shey got back into her sleeping bag. They exchanged looks and sprawled out. The energy had already been spent saying goodbye, making peace, and wasting that effort by seeking out rescue felt like a slight to fate. So they ignored the signal. They relaxed and listened to the monitor to remind them of the signal every half minute or so.

The sound went on and on as oxygen levels reached as low as five percent. The beep grinded like rusty gears, unmuffled, flubbing the mechanisms of Lake’s mind. He had made his peace, but what was peace in a survival situation? It dawned on him that perhaps he wasn’t as humbled as he had thought he was. But how to tell Shey? Shey, who was dead set on greeting oblivion, would never understand his sudden will to live. He knew then that he couldn’t tell her, he needed her to fall asleep so he could respond to the signal.

Lake shut his eyes and pretended to sleep, but filibustered in his mind to stay awake, hoping she would follow suit and allow him to act. And we’re gonna get up, we’re staying awake, we’re gonna send a distress signal, we’re staying awake, we’re going to stay awake… and on he went, reminding himself as frequently as possible to stay awake.

Shey wondered why her friend was going to sleep early. The air hadn’t started thinning yet, and it wouldn’t for a few more minutes. She let him do as he wished. But she was sure that she wanted to fall asleep naturally with the lack of oxygen. That’s what felt right for her.

The minutes went by, the air grew harder to breathe. Lake’s thinking turned to mental violence. He intentionally aroused a feeling of claustrophobia, hoping it would trigger a fight or flight reflex. But Lake was slowly learning, as Shey was only starting to nod off, that fight or flight was still based on his own conscious action. He couldn’t wait any longer. The first time Shey’s eyes closed and didn’t reopen, Lake shot up without a care for the racket he made. Unsure of how to send a distress signal, he hit all the buttons on the console he knew, and some of the ones he didn’t. The pod shook and rattled, and Shey bounced up and down as the artificial gravity shifted rapidly.

“What are you doing?” she asked and he didn’t stop hitting buttons.

“Go to sleep!”

“Are you responding to that message?”

Lake said nothing.

“It’s under the console. The big orange rectangle all by itself.”

He paused, cold as ice and straining to stay awake, he moved in sporadic shutters and managed to hit the button. Shey turned onto her side and accepted having to bring about sleep herself. The distress signal was sent, all that was left to determine their fate was if the receiving end could reach them before they suffocated. Whether they lived or died, Shey accepted the outcome with a steady beating heart while Lake clawed at the window, red-faced and trembling.

Celia J. Nothwang is a writer and restaurant cook from Ventura, California. She is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago and currently lives in Des Moines, Iowa with a small cat to keep her company.

Kathryn Llewellyn

Making Art Safer for Models

Two large SUVs blocked my driveway. I parked on the street and rushed to the front porch with my son. Through the living room window I saw people peering behind my furniture. They wore khaki pants with badges clipped onto their belts. Detectives. Thinking we’d been robbed, I sent my son to our neighbors’ house. Not seeing my husband, the stepfather to my children, I became concerned that he had been hurt. I asked the first officer I encountered “Where’s Steve?”

But Steve was not the victim.

[All names have been changed, including my own.]

***

The officer went straight to the point and explained that Steve held a one-on-one figure drawing session apart from his weekly group. During that session Steve asked the model, a college student named Beth, if she’d mind if he removed his clothes too. He then asked her to masturbate.

My life unspooled as I listened. How could the person I married be capable of this? Who else did he victimize? Did he exploit my children? How long had Steve been lying to me and about what else?

While accusations against famous artists and photographers such as Chuck Close and Bruce Weber have made news in recent years, allegations against lesser known artists such as Steve are rarely made public.  This makes sense of course, due to defamation laws and the fact the public’s familiarity with the work of famous artists, but the pattern of exploitation should be more widely understood in order for harassers, regardless of their status, to be held accountable.

His secret life

Over a period of weeks, then months, I learned more about Steve’s secret life: that he offered alcohol to models, drew them while he was intoxicated and nude, asked multiple subjects to masturbate. His predatory behavior included extra-marital sex, sometimes with models.

According to the officer, Beth felt suspicious while posing with her back to Steve so she turned to find him holding up his cell phone as if taking her photo, which was not what Beth had agreed to for the modeling session. When she confronted Steve, he claimed he was texting. “But who texts like this,” the officer said to me, “with their arms up and out?” While the detectives inside gathered Steve’s electronic devices, I told  the officer all I knew: Steve held a weekly figure drawing group with multiple artists in attendance. I had no idea he was having one-on-one drawing sessions with models and harassing them.

The officer explained that since Steve worked as a staff member at the university where Beth was a student, she filed a complaint alleging, in part, that he took a photo of her without her permission during the off-campus drawing session. The university referred the case to local police. According to the search warrant executed that night, the detectives were to take “any nude photographs or video recordings of Beth, any electronic devices capable of storing photographs and/or videos.” Had the student not filed the complaint and the detectives not executed the search warrant, I might not have found out about Steve’s secret life.

Several days after the police conducted their search, Steve checked himself into the emergency room. Since I was still listed as his emergency contact—the staff called me. Once I arrived at the hospital, a nurse told me confidentially that when Steve arrived he kept repeating “I’m a bad person. I lie and I cheat.” (Steve was subsequently hospitalized for psychiatric care for a week—I wasn’t privy to any information about his diagnosis or treatment and could only guess that he was having a mental breakdown due to the stress of his actions and their consequences.)

While he was hospitalized he needed someone to let his dog out of his studio where the two of them had been staying since the night the police came to my home. Steve seemed nervous about handing his keys to me and only did so when I promised I’d give the keys to his nephew who agreed to take care of the dog. First, I drove straight to his studio.

Not everyone who has been serially betrayed wants to know the extent of what transpired, but I did. The studio reeked of resin and paint, with barely any natural light. The dingy walls and concrete floor pressed in from all sides. I turned on the few lamps and saw a series of nude drawings lining every vertical surface. The repetition of this single theme struck me as obsession.

Tucked in a dark corner inside a red milk crate, I found three large dildos, condoms, purple handcuffs, men’s underwear, lacy fabric, and a pair of hair clippers. Behind the milk crate I discovered plastic boxes of compact discs I had never seen before. Late that night I opened the dated files and found indisputable evidence of his clandestine sexual relations with several different women and men. Many of the photos revealed a fetishistic side of him. Some of his photographic series began with models fully clothed, then nude, then masturbating. As I clicked through this progression I started to wonder if he intentionally groomed models for sexual exploitation by first cultivating an image of himself as a respectful artist, then, once he gained their trust, asking to remove his clothes and requesting sexual acts.

The most gut-wrenching revelations that night were photos of him in bed with two different women in two different hotel rooms. The file was dated during his favorite art show in the Deep South. That year, his return from the show coincided with my birthday. After dinner at our favorite restaurant, he talked about how he’d had time to reflect on our relationship during his trip, and asked me to marry him. I said yes, and the server brought us champagne. I loved him. Yes, he was eccentric, but also smart, funny, and charismatic; and we had fun doing 5k races together, hiking, and going to concerts. 

During the sleepless nights after searching his studio, surges of guilt about the impact this situation would have on my children punctuated my shock. Self-doubts reigned the nights: I’m unable to detect deceit, I’m not a good parent, I’ll never love someone again, and more. While pondering what else I didn’t know about my husband, I started to wonder who knew more about his secret life.

Driven by this gnawing drive to understand and through slow persistence over time, I talked with his former studio neighbors, fellow artists, former co-workers, and models. From these conversations, I learned that he had been having secret one-on-one modeling sessions since early in our relationship. His studio neighbor, Nathan, commented that he noticed Steve’s models occasionally stayed a long time, longer than expected for a drawing session.

When I saw people who had worked with Steve at university events—I worked there too—I found ways to bring him up in conversation and signal that we were no longer together. One of them, Sarah, said she was glad to hear we were divorcing. When I asked why, Sarah said he sexually harassed her at work. A second colleague, Tamara, blurted out, “Well, you know how I feel about him.” But I didn’t. Tamara explained that the first time she showed up to model he appeared drunk and the next time he asked her to masturbate, goading her, when she declined, by saying that other people did it for him. I have no idea why she assumed I knew how she felt when we had not spoken to each other about Steve’s exploitation. When I told another acquaintance of mine, Kim, that I was divorcing my husband, she said she had posed for him and he behaved inappropriately by offering her alcohol and flirting. Kim decided never to model for him again. Although she was someone I would chat with occasionally at the grocery store, but she had never mentioned modeling for my husband. She explained that his behavior was not unusual—as a model she was used to it.

Had one of them told me about her experience, how much sooner would I have learned about Steve’s sexual exploitation? Would I have found out before marrying him? I’ll never know.

We’re conditioned to be polite, to stay out of other people’s business, and to assume any message will be met with denial or blaming the messenger. But by keeping predators’ secrets we enable their destructive behavior. Before the shocking end of my marriage to Steve, I don’t know if I would have spoken up had I been in these women’s shoes. After these revelations, I promised myself I would not stay silent.

A local artist, Michael, expressed his concerns about the safety of local models given Steve’s predatory behaviors. Michael told me about a model who described how Steve had felt him up during a drawing session. The model suspected he was given a date-rape drug and told Michael he woke up on Steve’s studio couch feeling he had been sexually violated. For personal reasons, the model chose not to go to the police to press charges. Michael said that a number of people who posed for Steve reported negative experiences with him: although their first few modeling sessions didn’t necessarily start with transgressions, after Steve gained their trust, he started offering them alcohol, removing his clothes, and requesting sexual favors. I believe the authority associated with his gender and age, the studio space, and status as the artist-employer allowed Steve to exploit models in these one-on-one situations in which any allegation would result in his word against that of the models.

Steve’s true artistry was his predation and deception.

But I didn’t know all of that then. That night, after talking with the detective, all I knew was that my husband was not the person I thought he was.

The investigations

While the local police department investigated Steve, the university proceeded with its own investigation of sexual harassment and/or exploitation as defined by its Title IX policy. The allegations against Steve brought home the statistics I’d read as a parent and a university employee about sexual and gender-based violence and harassment. According to a survey by the Office on Violence against Women and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “an average of one in four undergraduate females experience sexual assault by the time they finish college.”

As the university’s Title IX probe continued, the investigator needed to know Steve’s intentions with models. I agreed to testify on what I had learned from the police as well as my discovery of the sex toys, condoms, and the photos in his studio. I couldn’t imagine describing the situation while in my office at work so I drove home and laid out the notes I’d taken over the past few months on the kitchen table. By the time the investigator called my stomach was knotted tight and my breath shallow. She recorded the call and said the transcript would be included in her report. Part way through the story, I started to tear up. After the interview, I sat for a long time hugging my knees close to my chest.

Fortunately, the university found Steve responsible for violating Title IX policy, meaning there was a preponderance of evidence to conclude he violated the university’s sexual harassment and exploitation policy. Steve was given the option to resign rather than be fired, which would mean another institution could hire him and have no knowledge of his transgressions. The university also issued a no trespassing order against Steve, but that didn’t stop him from jogging blatantly through campus on the public roads and sidewalks in front of his former office.

From husband to serial harasser

When the police officer informed me of Steve’s harassment of a student, I immediately imagined my own daughters in this situation. Both of them, enrolled at the same university where Steve and I worked, were extremely distressed to learn that their stepfather had sexually exploited a fellow student.

By the time the detectives drove away the night of the search, I knew the marriage was over. Steve said simply, “I’m sorry.” when he returned from the police station, then proceeded to minimize the situation as “all a big misunderstanding.” He claimed that Beth was new to modeling and nervous, and asked to pose in a one-on-one session before doing so for the group. He clearly had been lying to me, so I told Steve to sleep somewhere else. The next day I asked him by email to start picking up anything he would need for the foreseeable future and to leave the house key behind.

When, a few days later, I met the detective and his colleague at the police station, the police explained that they never found the photo of Beth. The detective said there were photos on Steve’s phone from the day before the incident and the day after but none on the date of the modeling session. He wondered aloud whether Steve deleted any images. While the detectives never found evidence of strictly illegal activity regarding Beth, and the case did not go to trial, the investigation revealed Steve’s pattern of unscrupulous and predatory behavior.

The detectives found significant amounts of pornography on Steve’s devices, including images they flagged because the subjects looked under eighteen. We talked about images found at his studio, several of which also featured subjects who could have been under age. The detective said that if the models didn’t appear prepubescent, then the police wouldn’t investigate Steve for child pornography due to a lack of departmental resources. I walked out of the station stunned, thinking about how young some teens are when they reach puberty. 

Prosecutors have discretion whether to pursue these “he said, she said” cases. And for some in law enforcement, the will to investigate may also be constrained by sexist views, such as blaming the victim. Realizing how many hurdles must be passed in order to investigate and prosecute predators like Steve made me feel hopeless that he and others would ever be held accountable for their exploitation.

My recovery has not been linear. Often a new bit of information sets me back wondering how I didn’t see through his lies and manipulations. The shock I experienced during these discoveries was visceral: constantly cold, I wore my coat indoors and piled blankets on top of me at night. Later I appreciated that frozen state for postponing my grief and anger until I had more capacity to feel them without falling to pieces. In the meantime, the numbness of disassociation cloaked me, keeping the trauma at a safe distance, perhaps so I could function enough to take care of my son and get through each work day.

Hindsight

We think we know our romantic partners, but it is hard to see what you have never envisioned. I could visualize my partner falling in love with someone and committing infidelity—that is an old story—but I could not have conceived of, before now, him being a serial predator. I had been through one difficult divorce already, and thought I was being careful in my assessment of him when we first dated. Even with this extra layer of caution, I was deceived. I’m a fairly smart woman and was duped. I’ve asked myself repeatedly how was I unwittingly complicit in Steve’s exploitation by not having seen more fully who he was? Perhaps I was captivated by his idiosyncrasies, enabling him to manipulate and deceive me more easily.

One of the first things Steve told me was: “I’m a good guy,” distinguishing himself from unscrupulous men. What influenced me most in those early weeks of getting to know each other were his descriptions of why he ended recent relationships—because his previous partners were dishonest or unfaithful. I realized later that these and other stories about valuing fidelity and honesty were Steve’s shrewd attempts to build my trust.

Early in our relationship when I expressed my uneasiness about dating someone with a separate studio space, Steve said, “Come by anytime.” In retrospect, I understood that all he had to do was plan any clandestine activity around my schedule so he wouldn’t have to worry that I’d stop by the studio unexpectedly. As a single mom with a full-time job, children’s sports, and other activities, I was busy—and predictably so. I believe he falsely reassured me, knowing he could count on me being at work during the day and at home for the night from my son’s bedtime onward. Being an artist with a private work space provided opportunities for undisclosed one-on-one modeling sessions and sexual activity, as did his road trips to art shows. While on the road he called every night. In hindsight I viewed his calls as pre-emptive, giving me a false sense of confidence in his fidelity and reducing the chance I’d call him when he was indisposed.

Looking back, I see how he played on my earnest nature and tendency to take too much responsibility for issues in my relationships. He capitalized on this vulnerability to keep me focused on doubting myself, not him. For example, he explained that there was nothing sexual about figure drawing, dismissed my concerns about him working with live models in the group setting, and suggested I was being insecure. Steve occasionally showed me his sketchbooks from the group drawing sessions, probably to assure me that it was professional. What he didn’t show me, a sleight of hand, were all of the drawings from his secret one-on-one sessions, including some with overtly sexual content; these I discovered later in his studio. Steve encouraged me to come draw and to try posing to experience for myself that it wasn’t sexual. I drew at one session and modeled for his group and another local artist’s class a few times. Now I realize he was trying to normalize figurative art for me, so he could continue this front for sexual exploitation without hindrance. In the more than four years Steve and I were together, he never once stumbled and revealed his secret life, until he harassed Beth.

Technology and the Internet gave Steve easy access to meet with people secretly and conceal his exploitation. During our relationship I didn’t see many of his electronic files—he used a sophisticated password management tool with his laptop  and never left it open and unattended for any length of time. He also didn’t leave his phone lying around, and because he opted out of allowing texts to show on his phone’s home screen, there was no chance I’d have seen any suspicious messages. I thought he was simply a private person. Now I see these behaviors as red flags. In addition to posting flyers soliciting models, he found them using the site Model Mayhem and through Craigslist where his postings may also have sought sexual liaisons. The detective said they found in his search history that he viewed models’ online social media profiles prior to sessions and “he [Steve] frequented SeekingArrangements.com,” also known as a “sugar daddy” website. I didn’t realize there was a SeekingArrangement.com website active in Central Virginia. Using this website, older men pay a membership fee and then compensate young women for services—an evening out, or much more. Since the encounters are framed as “dates,” SeekingArrangement.com bypasses laws against prostitution.

Later, a forensic psychologist I consulted with said that it sounded like Steve’s behaviors indicated sex addiction. He explained that sex addicts are known to be skilled at lying and compartmentalizing. They often want a family life—normalcy—plus the activities that feed their addiction. Some seek out single moms with children at home as cover for their predatory behavior because a family man is less likely to be suspected, while others seek out single mothers in order to prey upon their children. As a single mom of three children, although two of them were in college by the time his deception came to light, I wondered if he used me and my kids as cover for his addiction. Thankfully, my children were not exploited by Steve.

When we were together, Steve was focused inward, more absent than present. A negative space. I thought this was a symptom of being an introvert and an eccentric artist; but after talking with the forensic psychologist and reading about sex addiction, I learned that sex addicts are driven by their predation, preoccupied with planning, revisiting, and fantasizing. Everything and everyone around them become vehicles for it.

According to this psychologist, sex addicts are often narcissistic and even angry when their behavior is disrupted. They feel entitled to continuing it—one reason recovery is so difficult—and are aware it is wrong, but believe that by keeping their escapades separate from their family, loved ones won’t be hurt. However, since addictive behavior usually escalates, this doesn’t work. The psychologist assured me that in situations like this one, family members and friends often have no idea the person is a sex addict, particularly true with highly intelligent and strategic addicts who avoid getting caught.

Still, I had a difficult time accepting that justice may not come before Steve’s behavior escalated. I struggled with self-recrimination for not realizing what he was doing and was determined to become more aware of my vulnerabilities and blind spots. This process required pushing past the simplicity of tropes like the philandering spouse and the monstrous predator to examine how I failed to see all of him. I let his carefully curated identity as a credible artist demarcate how I viewed him.

Demythologizing the artist

As a self-described introvert, Steve said he required a significant amount of alone time, most of which he spent at his studio: “Steve time,” he called it. An introvert myself, I empathized with his need and supported what I saw as his creative pursuits. I elevated his needs because I thought at the time that as an artist he was a special type of person who deserved time to create. 

Raised by a staunch feminist, I thought I was immune to prioritizing my partner’s needs above mine, no matter what his talent or vocation. In “How the Myth of the Artistic Genius Excuses the Abuse of Women,” Amanda Hess points out my deference is not unique and explains how men use their powerful positions in various creative contexts to exploit. Admired artists are insulated from accountability; it’s as if the perspectives of admirers are slanted towards an imagined pedestal where the usual standards and ethical behavior aren’t expected.

It’s not just the exceptionalism of the artist, but also of the art world; revered, it offers unique vantage points (consider how infrequently we see nudes in everyday life). In universities, cooperatives, and private studios around the country, artists study the human form with nude models as subjects. This remains an important practice that develops artists’ skills and has led to masterpieces highly valued by society. In this world apart, many artists treat their models with professionalism and respect, but occasionally, unscrupulous people take advantage of models. Not as passé at the beginning of the 21st century as I would have thought, the cliché about the relationship between “the artist and his muse” with its possessive, masculine pronoun implies an inherent power structure that perpetuates inequality and victimization in the art world.

Over time I started to piece together a more complex portrait of Steve and see through his disingenuous claim: “But I’m an artist, this is all about the art.”  Not only did Steve exploit models, he also exploited the tradition of figurative art to sexually harass them. I began to understand the modus operandi of predators like him: cultivating privileged identities, choosing occupations with access to victims, selecting susceptible prey, and employing techniques such as gaslighting and deflection, among others.

Abuse in the modeling industry

Historically, figurative art has been a space controlled by men. Women have been excluded from all areas of the art world, save modeling; and, throughout history, women have been studying nudes for a relatively short period of time. Greater equity throughout the echelons of the art world for women and others who are marginalized may eventually make the working conditions for models safer. Even though Steve invited me to his studio occasionally, it always felt like his territory and a masculine space.

Without training or a safety net, models must navigate between public and private spaces that vary widely depending on the set-up of artist studios. Once there, they have to assess the professionalism of the artist and the safety of the situation in the moment. But there is typically an imbalance of power. If I were standing nude in front of a male artist several decades older who had removed his clothes and asked me to masturbate, with no one to turn to for help, clothes out of reach, and the studio far from campus, I would have felt terrified.

Models include people of any age and gender identity with an interest in the arts or earning extra money. They are moms like me and often students, as in the case of Beth. Although people of all genders and sexual orientations model, our society remains preoccupied with the female nude. Therefore, the majority of models in figure drawing sessions are young and female—not coincidentally, the same population historically harassed and exploited at a higher rate on campuses and in the workplace (other than trans individuals).

Since I didn’t find data about the rate of sexual harassment of figurative art models, I looked for an indicator of the frequency. The most comparable data I came across were from the 2012 Model Alliance survey of women fashion models which found, for example, that “29.7% of models have experienced inappropriate touching on the job.” Although these are two distinct professions, if the experience of women fashion models is any indication, then almost one in three women art models may have been sexually harassed or exploited on the job.

As my acquaintance who modeled for Steve said, she was used to this behavior from men—it was normal. Our society protects predators in a number of ways such as socio-cultural taboos that caution against warning others about harassers. (Many of us have experienced the phenomenon of doubting the messenger.) And one of our society’s highest values—the right to privacy—serves survivors as well as predators.

As a result, there have been too few consequences for sexual harassment and abuse. That is, until recently with the #MeToo Movement when more people began to question the value of artistic products created by people now known to be predators. Roxane Gay says pointedly, “It is not difficult to dismiss the work of predators and angry men because agonizing over a predator’s legacy would mean there is some price I am willing to let victims pay for the sake of good art…” In my view, Steve’s identity as an artist was eclipsed by his predation.

In the months after the search warrant was executed, I would occasionally check his website to see if he was still hiring models: he was.

Creating safer working conditions

Certain industries carry more risk of sexual harassment and exploitation—fashion and film are notorious for power imbalances that lead to exploitation. Although more protections are needed, professionals in fashion and film have taken steps in recent years to develop safer working conditions, including: forming a coalition that advocates for models’ rights, creating a position to direct intimate film scenes, and developing a commission to reduce sexual harassment (with funding), and more.

How could these specific approaches be applied to the production of figurative art which also entails a high degree of intimacy and vulnerability? A commission tasked with reducing sexual harassment could also assess models’ perceptions of their safety, providing data needed to advocate for changes. Meanwhile, artists and art instructors have a shared responsibility to educate new models about what constitutes a safe working environment, inform models about safe modeling options in the region, recommend participating in guilds, and communicate a code of ethics. A review system assessing participants on professionalism, communication, punctuality, payment, and safety would benefit both artists and models. Finally, an information escrow service, in which an official holds information provided by a victim until additional complaints are filed about the same person committing similar offenses, would offer a safety net to protect models from serial predators. In the case of Steve, had there been an information escrow service available, perhaps more models would have felt comfortable filing complaints. 

What percentage of exploited models were aspiring artists whose ambitions were derailed by trauma, their talents unknown to the world? Philanthropists need to step forward the way Susan Unterberg has (for years she gave millions to women artists over 40 through Anonymous Was a Woman), and invest in a mobile review application and information escrow system to support women and other marginalized people in the arts.

All of our vigilance

After the detectives left that night, I found myself leaning against the kitchen counter where crinkle-cut fries lay defrosted on the baking sheet and three uncooked burgers sat perfectly formed on a plate, ready for the charcoal grill that my husband never lit. It was a minor mess, but one I could clean up.

The after-effects of Steve’s harassment are harder to put away. A young person may see Steve’s Craigslist ad for figure drawing models and walk into the studio assuming he will behave professionally. Since Steve now drives for Uber and Lyft, when an intoxicated student requests a rideshare, he might drive up. Other men and women may swipe right on dating apps and meet him for a drink.

The figurative art world needs a cultural shift that encourages standing up to sexual harassment and exploitation, and must provide the tools to do so (e.g., guilds, reviews, and information escrows). Let’s stop giving credence to the idea that the artist is exceptional and therefore less accountable. All of our vigilance is needed to rectify the imbalance of power represented by the artist and “his” muse.

Kathryn Llewellyn has worked in higher education for over twelve years. As a single mom of three, she relishes time spent paddling the waterways of Central Virginia and meandering the trails of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Previously, Kathryn has been published in Challenge into Change. During the pandemic, learning how to do a headstand has helped her confront this upside-down world.

References Cited

Frank, P.  (2017). Chuck Close Is a Giant of the Art World. He’s Also a ‘F**ing Pervert.’ HuffPost. [online] Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chuck-close-sexual-harassment_us_59f877dee4b09b5c2568fd88 [Accessed 2 Feb. 2019].

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Laura Stanfill

Wind-Up Girl

I am seven or eight, old enough to be embarrassed. My bowl-cut hair is clamped to my forehead by an itchy sequin headband. My neon-green leotard gapes at my thighs. I like the fringe. It’s flamingo pink. The diagonal rows sway with my body.

My mother requested my jazz show attire because this is an on-camera performance. I don’t have to dance, though. She promised. I am the human star of a home movie, but not the real star. Her collection will perform: a fleet of her best wind-up toys. A television that walks. A flipover automobile. A knife-wielding sushi chef prepping to dice a plastic fish.

The tiny marvels stand at attention on the table, waiting for my fingers to animate them. My mother has even agreed to let me play with my favorite one: the eraser. I’m doing this show just to get my hands on it. Erasers fix mistakes. You’re never, ever allowed to make a mistake, except on paper. When you’re using a pencil, if you have an eraser. The wind-up toy brushes away rubber crumbs with spindly bristles as it walks. I cannot ever use this eraser or the toy will be ruined. No longer a collectible.

Get ready, get set! my dad shouts.

My fringe sways as I lean over the kitchen table. My mother presses the triangle button on the tape player. Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday Mr. President” issues from the speakers. It’s my cue. I wind a white knob three times to the right, just as I have been taught. I set a kangaroo down to march, and pick up the monster. My mother is particular about white knobs. She refuses to collect the ones that run with metal keys.

My parents decided to make this video for another collector. It’s this man’s birthday soon. When the song ends, my father will pull the footage out of the video camera, pop it into the shell of a VHS tape, and mail the package. Probably I have met the collector and he will be charmed, but I don’t really want his eyes on me in this neon green leotard. It’s like wearing my pajamas for a stranger, but worse because Marilyn Monroe’s voice has too much breath in it.

My smile is a line of pencil, smudged at the corners. My sequined headband migrates down my forehead. I cannot stop to fix it because I have to keep the toys moving.

When the song ends, my father yells, Cut! He knows how every single thing in our house works. He uses pen, not pencil, because he doesn’t make mistakes. He’s too smart to do anything wrong. I pick up the eraser toy and smell it one more time before my mother takes it away again. Then I run upstairs to change back into my brown corduroys and a striped button-down shirt that I will button all the way up to my neck.

Laura Stanfill, a neurodivergent author and publisher, founded Forest Avenue Press in 2012. She believes in indie bookstores and wishes on them like stars.

Sarah Pascarella

Strange Currencies

June 10, 1995 / Saturday

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

For such a small car—a VW Beetle—the windshield wipers sounded abnormally loud. My uncle S and I sat in a line of cars to leave the venue, the rain and crowds making it slow going. Post-concert, my eardrums still hummed.

We went over the highlights of the show, the Pittsburgh stop of R.E.M.’s Monster tour. I was thrilled to hear the cuts off Out of Time and Automatic for the People; he was, too. We both agreed “Everybody Hurts” was particularly good, especially when all 25,000 of us in attendance sang along.

The concert invitation had come as a surprise. S had been on-and-off estranged from his siblings over the years, my mother included, although she happened to be in his good graces during that period. Being sixteen (and a niece), I was usually exempt from any feuds—call it innocence by generation. So when S somehow found out I was also an R.E.M. fan, the extra ticket was offered and I accepted.

We had made a weekend of it, given that S lived nearly five hours away. I knew some grievances could come up during the visit, but tried to keep our attention focused on the show. As a teenager, I didn’t want to know about my relatives behaving badly. I didn’t want to be a sounding board for conflicts that predated me. I also flattered myself, thinking I was above the fray, a peacemaker of sorts.

In actuality, I was just a kid who really wanted to see her favorite band, knowing full well when I accepted the invite that being privy to some vitriol would be my cost of admission.

For the bulk of the concert, there wasn’t any. By all measures, a grand time was had. The weather was unsettled, even poor, but we’d made the most of it—we laughed at particularly fierce downpours, danced in the mud alongside other revelers. But after the encore, an hour into the traffic jam, the atmosphere in the car changed, too.

“I’m sure you know that I don’t get along with my siblings,” S began, and I simply nodded. A litany of complaints began to spill from his lips. I half-listened, and instead watched the neighboring cars as we idled in place. Next to us, a few teenagers in a station wagon passed a joint back and forth. They were packed in, maybe four in the backseat, their grins visible even through rain-blurred windows. I felt a twinge of envy.

Can you squeeze in one more? I thought, followed by a wave of guilt.

“I just have nothing in common with them,” S continued. “They don’t really know me, there’s no real relationship there—”

The cars merging from the right put on their signals to join our lane. Occasionally, the clicks of our windshield wipers synced up with their blinkers. I concentrated on the patterns of sound and light, my ears still abuzz. S talked and talked.

“I just don’t need that stress in my life—”

The cars in front inched toward the exits as we merged into one lane, orderly for the most part, until the tokers edged over to cut us off. S pretended not to see their approach, until the station wagon wedged forward, forcibly taking the right of way. We could either cede the next spot or ram them.

“Goddammit,” S said. He hit the brake, then the horn. The station wagon pulled ahead of us.

We crawled behind them toward the gate. A few minutes passed, and S picked up where he left off. “I wish things could be better between everyone, I really do. But there’s just no way that—what the hell?”

The rain had fogged the windows of the line jumpers, and the passengers in the back seat had turned around to write us a message against the steamy rear windshield. A single finger traced out the letters:

VW BUG SUX

S laughed, loud and hollow and forced. “OK, buddy. Insult my car.”

I saw an opportunity—here was a common adversary, of the non-familial variety. “What jerks!” I said, and folded my arms in disgust. “And really, was it worth it?” They were at most three feet away, and we were all once again at a complete stop.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

The insult blurred and cleared, blurred and cleared, against our own wipers. I could feel a rumble outside the car, although I couldn’t tell if it was the storm or our nemesis’s bass stereo. In profile, a vein pulsed at S’s temple, ropy and raised.

***

June 11, 1995 / Sunday

Click-click-click-click-click. Click-click-click-click-click.

The day after the concert, in line for the Racer roller coaster at Kennywood amusement park, my nerves kicked in. I’d never been on a roller coaster before, having preferred my adventures up to that point to be of the pen-and-ink armchair variety. S was having none of my reluctance, and I didn’t feel I was in a place to refuse. He’d paid my theme park admission and taken me to the concert. He wanted to go on this terrifying ride, the least I could do was accompany him. You won’t die of fright, I told myself, but wasn’t quite convinced.

Click-click-click-click-click. Click-click-click-click-click.

I could hear the trains making their way up the first incline, the rattling chains taunted me as the cars ascended the wooden track. The coaster was designed with two parallel routes, each with its own train that would “race” the other for the duration of the ride. Today’s racers were blue and red. We witnessed several rounds of the ride while in line, and the blue train won each time. The red passengers didn’t seem upset with their loss—the thrill was the ride, not the race. I studied the preceding passengers’ faces on departure, some with wide smiles, some apprehensive. On return, most everyone was windswept and beaming, their cheeks flushed and eyes wide. This did not reassure me.

S took no notice of my nerves—or if he did, he ignored them outright. “I can’t believe I get to go with you on your first-ever roller-coaster ride!” He bounced in place in anticipation.

When our turn came up, my stomach rolled and my legs started to shake, but I followed S up on the platform and into a car on the red train. Good, I thought, the slower one. I pulled the safety bar onto my lap and felt it lock in place. It still had a little bit of give.

“Whoo!” S yelled. “Eat our dust, blue team!”

A whistle, then an exhalation of air as the two cars left the waiting area and progressed down the tracks and up the first hill. The clicking was loud now, but I found myself distracted by the view. I could see the whole park as we climbed, all the other rides, the restaurants, the parking lot, and the Monongahela River.  

Click-click-click-click-click. Click-click-click-click-click.

Wait, I thought, wait. I want to look around—

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

We slowed down at the top of the first hill, the blue car to our right, the view to our left. We lingered for a moment, then the front car crested and disappeared from view. In a roar of wind, we followed.

My stomach flew up to my throat to say hello, then immediately plummeted to visit my ankles. The air in my face was a full-force gale, as loud as a winter storm, matched only by S’s boisterous whoops. I could see the blue cars as a blur in my peripheral vision, heard my fellow passengers’ delighted shrieks and laughter as we careened around the tracks.

From that initial hang at the top of the hill, and the unexpected sense of calm before the descent, pure adrenaline kicked in. For a few brief seconds, despite the rushing track, I could discern that we, the red car, were in the lead. From deep in my chest, I felt a building urge to yell, too.

“Whoo!” I yelled alongside S. It felt good, a release fostered from climbing and falling, twists and turns, all at great speed, a byproduct of resting in place while throttling through canyons of webbed wood and metal. “Whoo!” I yelled again.

We pulled back into the station just seconds after the blue car, as expected. S’s hair stood straight off his forehead, his cheeks aglow. I grinned, intuiting I looked the same. The cars came to a stop, and he leaned forward to gauge the line.

“Want to go again?” he asked.

“Yes!” I said—and meant it.

***

November 13, 2017 / Monday

“I’ll hear him if he comes to the house,” R, another uncle, S’s brother, said over the phone. R called me from his landline after I was inadvertently included in a group text:

C heard from Pittsburgh police. they went to his apt no answer. S texted C and said he didn’t want to talk. So he’s not dead.

??? I texted in reply.

S, estranged from most of the family for nearly twenty years. Married, divorced. Employed, unemployed. Depressed, on meds. Depressed, off meds.

R talked fast: S mailed C, the eldest brother, a goodbye letter. C called S immediately, assuming the worst. When there was no answer, C notified the cops.

R, the recipient of most of S’s anger over the years, alone in his Connecticut house.

“I’ll hear him, I’ll see him pull up in the driveway,” R said, then paused. “I don’t think he’ll do it. He wouldn’t do it.”

“Do what?” I asked. “Hurt you? Hurt himself?”

“Neither,” he said, but his voice shook.

I paused. “And the cops just … checked in on him, then left?”

“I mean, technically there’s nothing they can do. There’s no crime committed…”

“And he’s still in Pittsburgh…”

“As far as we know.”

“Who’s he talking to right now, family-wise? Is there anyone he’d be willing to be around, even to just sit with him?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence.

“Are you OK by yourself? Do you want to come up here?” Rush hour was long over—R could quickly get to my Boston apartment, if needed.

“No, no, I’m fine. I’m not going to leave my own house!” A pause. “It sounds like he’s OK. I think he’s OK.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Keep me posted.”

Click.

***

November 13, 2017 / Monday

When the cop approached S, he was sitting on a park bench in Bellevue, Pennsylvania. J, my cousin, S’s nephew, also got a goodbye letter, then a goodbye text. J called the police, who traced S’s location via his cell phone. The park, we learned later, selected for its proximity to a police station.

S had a gun, a note in his shirt pocket with instructions for his body. Across town, he’d labeled everything in his apartment, a will and estate by Post-It Notes.

The cop walked toward S and called out to him. Asked to see his hands.

S lifted them. One held the gun. He brought it to his temple.

Click.

***

June 11, 1995 / Sunday

After the R.E.M. concert, we got back to my uncle’s apartment in Pittsburgh. It was late, well past midnight, but I wanted to take a shower—I was sticky and gross after hours in the field, the rain.

“Of course,” S said. He had switched to host mode, any grievances from the parking lot or family history muted. “Towels are in the hall closet, and—oh! Almost forgot. For the shower, hot means cold and cold means hot.”

“Got it—thanks for the heads-up.”

In the bathroom, I peeled off my damp clothes and hung them on hooks to dry. I turned on the shower, adjusted the knobs in reverse of their labels, the opposite proportions of what I’d normally choose. I put my palm out to test.

The water was icy. I pulled my hand back, waited a few moments, tried again.

Still cold.

I waited.

In my mind, something clicked.

Would he…

I wondered, back in the car, if I’d had a tell, something in my body language that showed my alignment with the station wagon kids. If my refusal to add to his earlier grievances, or my replies, had been taken as a sign of disrespect. If there was an element to my voice, my movements, my bones, that evoked my mother.

I reached out and adjusted the taps to match their labels.

Or maybe it was none of those things.

I reached out again, put my hand under the water. It was warm.

Maybe he just couldn’t connect with anyone.

I stepped in, rinsed off, didn’t linger.

Maybe discomfort was the only connection known.

The next morning, my clothes were dry and stiff, resisted when I folded them.

Downstairs, there were eggs and coffee.  

“Did you sleep well?” S asked. I could not read his expression.

“Yes,” I said.

Sarah Pascarella is a writer and editor based in Boston. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Establishment, The Boston Globe, and The Grief Diaries, among other publications. She has a Master’s in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College.