Dear Readers, I am hosting a new Autumn writing competition. The theme of your stories should be STRANGERS, in the broadest sense of the word. You have until the 25th of November 2023 to get your stories in. Please post your stories on this thread. They be should be no more than seven-hundred and fifty words.
"Bald, silent, a muscular physique." My sister, Kathy, describes a workman who had come to fix her leaky faucet this morning.
Before he left, they had coffee together. "Nice to have a man in my kitchen again." It sounds intimate to me because I'm American but, in the Netherlands where Kathy is, she's just being polite.
All day their empty cups and saucers remain side by side on the kitchen table. "When a visit is really cozy I leave the cups for a long time."
"He's still present."
She doesn’t clear the table till it’s dark out, after she draws the curtains.
Standing at the sink, she turns his cup around and presses her lips against the place where his mouth had been. Kathy tells me this, and nothing more. But eventually, I think, she will have to hold that man's cup down under water and drown it like a kitten.
It happened every night in Via Nicolò Mascardi. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she would go down to her street. There was always a table and two chairs in front of her house, where she would sit and chat with a friend while the outdoor dining tables of the neighbouring restaurants filled up. At a certain moment only known to her, she would start the music on an old-fashioned CD player. The restaurant customers would look at each other, at the woman and the restaurant staff, only to see the waiters nod and smile at this familiar scene.
She always started off dancing by herself, getting into the moves. She was probably in her mid-seventies, and rather corpulent, so that no stranger would ever have expected the true extent of her elegance and skill.
At the end of the ‘overture’ she asked every male passer-by to dance with her. Some neighbours or acquaintances would stop for a joke and a few rounds with her, knowing her personal history. But her real challenge was dancing with strangers. Sometimes it took several attempts to get them on the dance floor. Most of them reacted by blushing, pretending they had an urgent appointment or that they didn’t know how to dance, that they had never danced before. She reassured them she would lead.
She was very confident about herself and her dancing skills. She told everyone that she had been a professional, that she had danced at La Scala in Milan... The strangers could not know whether this story was true or whether she made it up, every night anew. But her graceful movements and the way she took the lead with any man she had managed to convince, might have been taken as a sure proof of her story.
The first one tonight was a customer in a restaurant who was dining there with his wife; they had just been served the antipasto. She danced around their table, swaying her hips, looking only at the man who kept trying to ignore her by immersing himself in the delicacies on his plate. The prosciutto was exceptionally good. As her swinging hips came closer and closer, the man became uncomfortable and she asked him to dance with her. He smiled and shook his head. His wife tried to make a joke about him being a terrible dancer, but the woman didn’t even notice her.
He proved to be a tough nut to crack. When not even telling her life story could make a difference, she usually admitted defeat. She turned round on the spot as gracefully as she had come and didn’t look back.
Next came a group of four young men who giggled at the sight of her; she grabbed one by the arm and swung him around against his protest. His mates stood there transfixed, staring in amazement, and when she finally let go of him, they cheered and greeted him like a star, patting him on the back. These were the moments she loved most. Seeing the initial questioning, embarrassed, and even disparaging looks turn into admiration was like a drug. And more men were to follow. Once she got going, there was no stopping her.
And when she had exhausted many a man of a night in Via Nicolò Mascardi, when she began to feel dizzy from all this swinging round and round and round, she felt happy. The medieval walls of the houses seemed to swing with her, the whole street was her stage and the tourists in the restaurants her audience.
When she was lying in bed later, still half dizzy, she knew it had been a good night. Once again, she felt the gratitude and satisfaction of a successful evening’s performance, of having pleased her audience. The applause of a Scala filled with thousands of people resonated within her until she finally fell asleep.
Tomorrow, she was sure, would bring more strangers along her way.
We were feeling confident with over an hour between flights, having landed on time at Houston’s George Bush International Airport. But unexpected slowdowns emerged. We didn’t realize we had to go through customs, thinking that would occur at our final destination in Los Angeles.
On edge, we snaked through a long line at US re-entry. We waved our passports at the border security officer who pointed the way. We retrieved luggage at one end of baggage claim and rechecked at the other end. Sounds simple, nothing to declare and the two of us the picture of innocence. Upstanding middle-aged citizens, white haired women. Not targets for customs enforcement.
Sure enough, smiles and gracious attitudes from the border guards. Then off to the final leg with another snaking line, and hopefully out of security and hustling to our departure gate.
Which gate? And what is the best way to get there? Now we’re stressed and PRESSED FOR TIME!
“Reilly, we need to check that flight information board before we get in the line for the escalator!”
“The board says Terminal C. We’ve been down inside the security-from-hell loop for 45 minutes —it’s disorienting, let’s head up and out.”
With that, Reilly zoomed ahead, I lagged to confirm the next gate number and was suddenly aware of a skirmish nearby.
“HEY STOP! You jumped the line, you can’t do that.” A gruff, unfamiliar voice.
I looked back and the yelling man was soon at my side, then zooming by.
“Hey, you two. STOP. I saw what you did and YOU CAN’T DO THAT HERE.”
I didn’t have my bearings — who was he admonishing. Soon I understood. I fixed on him. He was short, middle aged, in Texas-style attire; wrangler jeans, cowboy button down shirt, leather hat, handlebar mustache, with neck veins bulging.
He locked onto my eyes.
“Those TWO. I saw what they did. They cut RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. They can’t do that here.”
Surely he’s a nut - obviously angry, maybe dangerous but unarmed (we’re in an airport thankfully) but in an ugly mood.
I glance ahead. I notice two people, uncomfortable, alarmed. They’re focused on me — assessing. He’s a tall middle aged man, frail — with a woman, sweet face, my height, petite… an Asian couple. Guessing they are in a hurry like everyone else. I suppose they went around me when I paused at the information board. They were not rude or offensive!
Now we four are frozen in place. Eyes focused on the tough guy. I’m watching him; my heart has gone wild.
“Hey, sir?” I say very sweetly, deferentially.
“Sir, it’s fine, it’s not an issue at all, I stopped, and they simply passed me.”
“No, that’s not what happened, I WATCHED THEM, they jumped the line. Now you go and get in front of them.”
“Excuse me sir, were all good. Let’s all just keep moving along.”
“NO. THEY HAVE TO GET BEHIND YOU.”
Intimidated, I was inclined to do as he said. But I looked at the couple, silent, confused, scared. They stood still. Maybe waiting for me to jump ahead.
“Sir… hey sir… I’m actually with them. We’re all together, OK? So, we’re going to continue to the escalator together.” Sounding like I was asking for permission.
He moved toward me, now nose to nose.
“Oh, so you’re gonna be chivalrous huh, is that it?”
I knew not to laugh, even nervously—but what the hell did he mean by…”chivalrous”? I moved ahead to disengage. I did not want to provoke him but could not allow his words to stand. What if these people are foreign visitors? What if they are like my parents were seventy-five years ago; frightened new immigrants? This is my country too. He can’t have his misguided way with me, with us.
Quickly, I was beside the lady, threading my arm through hers. We walked to her husband’s side. The ever-long line snakes back toward us, I see Reilly in the adjacent queue.
She waves me under the rope partition - I join her, leaving the husband and wife, now with other travelers between them and the mad guy.
I watched to see where he was standing. Anger perhaps still bubbling. I was braced. Our eyes met — he looked away first. A good sign we were safe, anger spent. Then I saw the Asian couple holding hands, passing us, she grabbed my arm over the rope line.
“Have a safe flight home.” Her sad eyes looked relaxed - and kind.
There are many different accents on the boat going to the island. I hear one I don’t like, move away from the others and lean on the bow. The captain is a Shetland man, but the rest of us are strangers. We’ve come here to see the visitors.
The accent provokes the old pain in my shoulder. I try to think of something else, and end up thinking about last year’s World Cup.
“It’s England versus Germany,” Tony said, jumping up and down, the way only children can, “and Bobby Charlton will be playing. You can watch it on our new telly!”
I said I was busy. It was only a white lie.
The boat nudges the jetty. I wait for everyone else to get off first as I don’t want anyone making a fuss. The captain insists on helping me off the boat and says: “Remember what I said, auld fella.”
An old yellow GPO van and a local guide are waiting. I hang back, sit down on a barrel and look out to sea. The van engine grumbles into life and they leave without me. Then the boat returns to the sea and soon the only sound I can hear are the waves gently breaking. I am alone, but that’s alright. I want to find the visitors on my own. They’re strangers here too in a way – rare migrants that haven’t visited Shetland for a century.
The newspaper cutting rustles as I pull it out of my pocket. I read the headline again: ‘Birdwatchers flock to Shetland to see rare Snowy Owls’.
Fred, my eldest, and Tony’s dad, didn’t approve of me coming here.
“You’re 72, Dad,” he said.
I should have told him how the birds had saved me, after I came home from the trenches, and showed him my little dog-eared bird guide. There were faded pencil ticks by every illustration, except one, and that’s why I had to come north, before it was too late.
The captain told me where to find the owls. I shift my weight on the barrel and take a deep breath. The breeze is salty and cool. I put the newspaper cutting away and get up. My legs hurt. Everything hurts these days, but the shoulder pain is the worst. It always has been. Got to get moving. I button-up my duffel coat and pull my bobble-hat down. Turning to face the island, I realise I’m not alone.
A tall man with a white moustache stands by some lobster pots. He’s about my age, I think. He’s wearing an Ascot cap and a long tweed coat. The binoculars around his neck are twice the size of mine. He smiles at me. We are strangers, but I feel I know this person somehow, so I don’t mind sharing the captain’s directions. He listens and nods, but he doesn’t say anything. Must be the quiet type.
I lead the way and he follows. He has a bad leg and we have to stop three times as we follow the steep path onto the moorland. The third time we look at each other and smile. His face is red and I’m sure mine is too.
The moorland is a dull green, and a powerful wind makes the small plants shudder by the path. We spend two hours, maybe three, looking for the owls, without success. I can’t help grumbling, but my new friend doesn’t say anything. My shoulder aches as I scan the moors again. Then I feel a strong hand on my arm. It’s my new friend. He points at a rocky outcrop – a huge white bird is floating above the dark stone.
“It’s the male,” he says. “Oh yes, most definitely.”
The accent is strong, and unmistakeably German. I push his hand away and glare at the man who was my silent friend a moment before. His smile fades and we recognise each other for the first time.
He takes a step back and taps his bad leg: “Verdun,” he says.
I put my hand on my shoulder and say: “The Somme.”
A high-pitched bark draws us back to the rocky outcrop. It’s the female. She’s even bigger than the male, but with black flecks on her white plumage. The two ghosts fly side by side and disappear behind the rocks. I look at the old man next to me. His coat is too big for him. We nod at each other and set off for the rocks together.
It was a winter Tuesday, and I was commuting home from work. The subway was crowded, and I sat beside a homeless man. You don't need to know much about him; all that matters is that he burped.
The belch was cartoonishly violent. Its production sounded painful; the man's esophageal structures flapped like a stiff playing card in bicycle spokes. It overpowered the train's rumbling, yet no one seemed to notice.
Perhaps I was the only one.
My body reflexively straightened, battening down my nostrils for the looming olfactory siege. The space between the sounding of a stranger's belch and the arrival of its humid intestinal air turns out to be its own breed of purgatory.
Everything vanished. It was just me and the belch.
My mind raced with anticipation.
I felt perplexed—even concerned—that, as I felt the warm air push at my cheeks, my first thought was: "I want to smell it." I immediately felt the urge to submit, to let the stench invade me and burn my nostrils like a fine whiskey.
I'd long been fascinated with the homeless: Where do they go? What do they eat? Who are they? If, as it is said, "we are what we eat," could I meet this man? His belch is what he ate, and what he ate is he.
Would it smell like me?
I felt a tickle in my nostrils.
I imagined watching as he ate his last meal. It's dark. I see him hunched over, his oversized Dickensian rags flapping as he speedily scurries after a plump rat. He pounces and clasps his hands around the rodent. Like Goya's Saturn, he violently bites the squirming varmint's neck as it omits plaintive tea kettle shrieks. Tufts of mangy fur sail through the air; the blood spills from his Santa Claus-like lips, shooting down his forearms in purposeful tributaries and dripping back down to the pavement.
My cheeks grew rosy in the gaseous air.
His mother used to hold his little body against her bosom as he cried, feeling the pressure of something unfathomable rising inside him. She bobbed up and down, gently patting his back until he belched. She'd praise him and kiss his forehead.
I thought I saw condensation on the windows.
Maybe excising his gut in confined public spaces makes him feel powerful. Each belch is an act of chemical warfare against the elites, a way to force entry into their posh bodies and become unmistakably present.
Or maybe he's generous. Perhaps the flatulence of the dregs is a cure for something, a secretly powerful smelling salt. One good whiff will knock you flat on your ass, freeing you from all your disenchantment and malaise. You'd wake up safe in your childhood bedroom. You'd hear your parents laughing in the other room. You'd rise out of bed feeling more content than ever. You'd notice a spider on the wall. Rather than fearfully squish it, as you were once prone to do, you'd gently guide it into your palm and place it on the window sill.
Maybe it's the cure for modern callousness: "Inhale my gaseous runoff and share my struggle; thou shall know compassion." He understands that empathy is penetration: the other in you, yourself in the other.
All you have to do is submit.
The moist air clouding around your face is the stranger's extended hand.
Claire was washing dishes at the kitchen sink when she saw her in the garden, a woman crouched in the flower bed and working at something in the soil. She wore a cloth tied around her head and a long, shapeless dress that lay bundled around her thighs.
Claire’s first impulse was to phone someone for help, but instead she left the dishes and went outside by the back door, into the chilly morning. Cautious of this odd intruder, Claire walked slowly but without hesitation up the garden. When she was a few feet away, close enough to see her own trowel buried and sticking upright in the ground, she gave a small cough. The woman seemed not to notice and continued flattening out soil with her muddied hands.
“Excuse me”, Claire said, she hoped calmly.
The woman turned and looked up, showing a hard face, scored with deep lines around a mouth that barely opened as she said, “Your roses are besieged, young lady. Aphids. They won’t make it into May if this keeps up”.
She turned back to her work and left Claire stood there, feeling ridiculous in her pink marigolds.
Not knowing how to respond, Claire returned to the kitchen and stood again at the window, watching the woman clip roses with a small pair of scissors. Claire took out her phone and looked at herself in the black screen, then placed it on the table. She returned to drying dishes while the woman methodically moved from flower to flower, careful and precise with her agile hands.
After a while, Claire felt some reason return to her and marched back out to confront the unwanted gardener.
“I’m sorry, I’m sure you mean no harm, but you really need to move along now. This is my garden, my home”.
The woman stood up. “Is the staircase still wooden, or have you covered it in some garish carpet?”
A confused moment, then a piece slotted into place for Claire.
“You used to live here?”, she asked, and the woman seemed to give a small nod.
“How amazing!”. Claire felt herself ease up with this small revelation.
“So”, Claire continued, “how old were you?”
“From there”, the woman said, ignoring the question and pointing up at Claire’s bedroom, “you can see the trees coming into leaf now, correct? And the lake with the little boats?”
“The trees, yes. But the lake? No, no we can’t see that from the bedroom. We do love it there though. We used to take the kids when they were younger”.
“No, you’re wrong”, the woman replied. There was something hard in her voice that took Claire aback. “You can see the lake, and the boats. Even the boathouse that was once painted red.”
“No, I’m sorry, it’s you who are wrong” said Claire. “I’ve lived here for years. Not the lake, trust me”.
“Why not take a look for yourself?”.
A thread of annoyance wound itself inside Claire. She was irritated by this attack on her very senses. She turned and paced back to the house and climbed the staircase, wondering why she was entertaining this farce. In her bedroom she parted the curtains and looked out, half expecting the woman to be gone, the last half hour a fever dream. The woman was there, staring back at Claire, her breath pluming in the cold air.
Claire looked out to the distance and took in the familiar view, but what she saw made her gasp. There were the distant trees, as always, spotted with young green leaves. But behind these, almost invisible but undeniable in its silver gleam, was the lake. She felt suddenly unmoored, detached from reality. The lake was there, as though for the first time, like a sudden mirage.
Claire returned to the garden, dumbstruck.
“You’re right, I can see it. The lake, the boats, the waves glittering. How could I have only seen it now?”
The woman gazed at her.
“I don’t know how to feel”, said Claire.
“It’s a terrible, terrible thing”, the woman said, gently nodding.
Claire wanted to ask what was so terrible, but the woman suddenly turned and was making her way back to the street, though the side gate. The next day she did not return, and Claire stood at her bedroom window looking out at the flowering trees, and the lake with the little boats, and at her garden with the beds of roses in yellow, pink and red.
Phoebe was about to go for her morning run when the text came from her son, Steve. She opened the message and saw he had sent her a photo. The message said, “Do you know this guy?”
She looked at the photo and thought: What an appealing human being! The face was open and smiling, and the eyes were kind. His hair was rather long, and his beard was a warm dark brown.
She was sorry that there wasn’t some gray in that beard, for if only he were age-appropriate, this was just the sort of man she wanted to date. Phoebe, fifty-seven, had been widowed for almost two years.
The face did look vaguely familiar, but she just couldn’t place him. “No, I don’t know him,” she texted. “Who is he?”
Her question went unanswered, so Phoebe tied her left running shoe more tightly and went out the front door. It was perfect running weather, sunny and in the mid-fifties. She jogged down the block and into the park. The usual suspects were there: the young woman speed-walking, clutching weights, the older man doing chin-ups in the children’s playground, the guy walking three huskies. Phoebe thought his house must have drifts of hair in every corner, for she had once had a huskie which had shed constantly and copiously.
Halfway through her run, she began musing about the photograph. Wasn’t attraction mysterious! Why did she yearn to know the owner of that face? Why did she feel he just might be her soul-mate? Was it possible to fall in love with a stranger? And should she tell Steve?
Well, no.
She got home, drank some water, and went upstairs.
After her shower, she called Steve.
He said, “So, mom, did you figure out who he is?”
“No,” said Phoebe. “Tell me about him. Does he live near me?”
Steve spluttered with laughter. “Yes, he does. Why do you ask?”
For a moment, she hesitated. Then slowly and shyly she said, “I just feel a kinship with him. Like we would understand each other.”
Steve laughed even louder.
“I know it’s ridiculous,” Phoebe said.
Between gasps, Steve said, “Actually, mom, it isn’t so crazy!”
“Maybe he’s age-inappropriate,” Phoebe heard herself saying boldly, “but I’d like to meet him.”
More laughter. Steve managed to croak, “Actually, mom, he’s exactly your age!”
“Really! Do you think we’d get on?”
“You would, mom, you would.” Steve couldn’t stop laughing.
Phoebe was getting annoyed. “Why is this so hilarious?”
“Cause it’s you, mom!”
“What?”
“I sent your photo to a website that changes people’s genders. I sent in my photo, too. I sure make an ugly woman! But you—you make a cute-looking guy. Only—” he began laughing again—“I just didn’t think you would crush on yourself!”
Phoebe looked at the image again. Of course! Why hadn’t she seen it before? Those were her teeth gleaming through the beard, her understanding eyes beneath brows that had been thickened.
She thought she had fallen in love with a stranger, but she had fallen in love with herself.
“You know, I can fix you guys up,” Steve was saying. “I bet he wants to meet you, too!”
“Stranger sex,” Francisca marveled, a gleam detectible in her widening eyes. “What deep neurosis has he been hiding from us?” I sat in her newly remodeled living room, aloof amid the muted neutrals and Spanish tiles. As we talked, she fiddled with the room’s atmospheric controls, dimming and brightening the lights, turning on the fireplace, playing low music. In a friendship that, as it aged, had developed an undercurrent of competition, I began to regret sharing my discovery. Still, I’d felt desperate for a confidante. Francisca was a problem solver, an action taker. Already she was compiling a list of therapists and divorce attorneys.
I’d discovered the text chain about a month prior. My husband had gone out, and as our kids ate dinner under the spell of their screens, a babel of electronic voices emanating from the kitchen, I’d crouched over his discarded iPad scrolling further into his message history. Nearly ten years of marriage and three children had failed to quell some deep-seated insecurity I held about us. I conducted these furtive audits occasionally, searching for confirmation of his dissatisfaction with our life, with me. I paused at a year-old exchange with an unnamed number.
8:08 pm: Who is available this evening?
8:15 pm: Bonnie available now
8:18 pm She is a bit far away. Anybody on the west side?
8:19 pm: Karina available now
I cast about wildly for any explanation but the obvious. Like a rebuke, Crystal’s Escorts flooded the search results for the phone number. Our own message history confirmed he had been out that night. “Wordle in three!” he’d texted, before telling me he would grab dinner at the bar. Moments later he’d contacted “Crystal.”
As the shock wore off, an adversarial composure set in. I created a new email address to which I sent the incriminating screenshots. I ordered a tracking device and slipped it beneath the fabric of our youngest’s car seat. “Being methodical is your therapy,” Francisca observed. I saw my gynecologist. From my perch on the exam chair, I watched her react to the reason for my visit. We had been pregnant with our first children at the same time. “You will negotiate a path forward,” she said eventually. I would summon this phrase in the following weeks as an antidote to a more self-pitying refrain: you have no good options.
I retreated from people I knew, venturing online instead. In the forum for betrayed spouses, no-tolerance crusaders dished out tough love while women-who-stayed marked discovery date anniversaries like recovering alcoholics. The local mongers’ message board pulsated with carnal referrals and scammer warnings. I’d come for details of Crystal’s service and stayed in abject fascination for sex represented in its pure physicality.
In the mornings I ran on the beach, warily eying men along my path as if they wore dogwalker and surfer veneers to conceal a common sinister core. The ocean glittered but offered me no profound revelations. Sea lions dotted the shore in unusual number, beached by a neurotoxic algae bloom off the coast. By each fluttered a tiny orange flag, staked in the sand to warn people against approaching. I passed the hapless creatures in their same spots each morning, dipping and bobbing their heads as they looked out toward the water.
Our married life carried on. We celebrated Father’s Day. We celebrated his birthday. We had sex. We grieved the death of his mother. The gaps between Francisca’s check-ins grew wider. My snooping revealed nothing but the humdrum routine of a middle-aged dad. The days, with all their distractions, became manageable. But at night the pain bore down, insisting I confront him.
At sundown on the fourth of July, our family joined the revelers on the beach. Clusters of people stood silhouetted against the darkening sky, their laughter blending with the crashing of the waves. Fireworks cracked and whistled erratically. The sea lions had been transported to the relative safety of marine rehabilitation centers. Our kids leapt like sprites on the sand. My husband embraced me as we watched them together. “Look at what you built,” he said, beaming at me. And then he kissed me, tenderly.
I met a stranger in a hospital, I another casualty but able to walk. I would bring him things and read to him, he didn’t care what it was. A bottle label would do if nothing else. No-one ever wrote on his file but he was stable, inert. He refused visitors, and letters, even family ones.
We had been there for months, I think, we ran out of bottles to read and the ward’s only novel was in other hands, when told me about something in the trenches, something called f fire. Officially, no one knew about it. The few who were told, never told anyone else. If anyone in authority knew, they did not know what mention of it in the wider world would do. Destroy society. Cause more atrocities. So it was never mentioned. It was a very rare thing, a rumour that did not spread.
He chose me to hear so (like the wedding guest in the ancient mariner) I had to listen.
F fire happened when attacking the enemy from a trench. One man behind the other the one in front using his penis if he could to set off the cannon or trigger, the other one fucking him from behind as he did so. They made their vulnerable bodies more vulnerable still. They liked to do it. It became the only thing they liked to do, and if someone died doing it, it was not the same as if they died otherwise. At night they would do little drawings to work out how to make it work best, ideally the erect penis doing the work of pushing the trigger. He told me some men didn’t have an erection, but they still liked to do it. It didn’t seem lewd or even sexual. He told me they couldn’t do it one day because there was an inspection and he wanted to go over the top, just walk towards the enemy guns.
After he told me, there was a long silence. This was the reason he chose me to tell, he told me, that he knew I would listen to him and then listen to his silence. He said after the long silence, that it was if anything, it was play. He said it was play. He could never say what he felt about it, even now years later he was nowhere near feeling anything, and he thought he never would be, but what he thought he felt was affection, as after a game where children are allowed to make up their own rules, go feral, flex, try ways of being tacking off at angles to the roles they have been taught.
It was the only thing he did not feel shame about. He never would, whereas he felt he might come to feel shame for the act of enlisting, taking an officer role when he knew less than some children about war or leadership. But he knew that if he did try to tell anyone, anyone in authority, he would go from being a hero, which was what he was now, to be certified insane.
Of course I was silent, but at no point was I “shocked” or “horrified”. It seemed to me a very grave thing, a thing to be heard and known, not to be responded to. Like the stranger, I wouldn’t know for years what it made me feel.
We were never visited anyway, but by the time our second year there started, the flu was at its height, so we were quarantined. There was a need to wear masks and we had to keep our distance from the nurses who, also masked, kept their distance from us. The masks were to be changed hourly, and there was a great need for them. I offered my services to help make them as there was nothing else to do, the novel and bottles exhausted. I could sew on a machine, and I worked out a pleasing design for the masks, pleats that fitted over each other, and a space inside for an extra lining. My stranger cut out the linings and put them in place. They were made of paper, for want of anything more sterile, cut from his note book. He wrote on them, I didn’t ever ask if what he wrote was about f.fire.
Now I am old and war has never stopped. I wonder if anyone else still knows about f. fire, or any of the drawings survived.
There was always a five minute break in the middle for bum changes, boob release.
Time for Preti to fulfil her vow to herself: speak to at least one other parent, per class, per week. She’d set this salve for loneliness in response to the common refrain: I met friends for life at the baby class / park / school gate.
‘Look, Luna, he’s got the same giraffe as you!’
‘Oh, that was a present from Nanny, wasn’t it, Freddie?’
‘That’s nice,’ Preti said to the mum, now, directly: the preliminary work completed. ‘Does Nanny live nearby?’
A key question: local people had existing networks, so had little imagination for why someone might make a fool of themselves chatting up a stranger like this. Fellow transplants were always much more friendly.
‘No, hours away; my partner and I work on the science park,’ she replied, as explanation for her physical presence in that room at that moment.
They twinned up aspects of their lives with ease.
Preti glowed, her awkwardness vindicated.
‘Right, little ones,’ the leader shouted, ‘Let’s do a few more songs!’
A unknown nursery rhyme crackled from the fuzzy cassette player. Preti squinted to listen whilst dancing a scarf, green, in Luna’s face. Freddie’s mother fumbled the words, shrugged. Laughed.
They saw each other.
‘Ah, oh, look,’ Freddie’s mother whispered.
Preti turned to her—
Let’s do it—
Maybe a coffee, after?
—but she wasn’t looking at her at all, she was looking down at Luna, whose mat was covered in poo, yellow and liquid: a snow angel in radiant ooze.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Preti squeaked, aflame with embarrassment. She stripped Luna off, wiped her down until she was chilly and screaming. The class stopped singing to help—eight adults, like Caillebotte’s floor scrapers, wiping back and forth, back and forth—
Obviously, everything was ruined: Luna’s clothes, the mat, the scarf, the moment. Gross yellow lingered between the floor-planks.
Freddie’s mother paused near the door as they were leaving…
So,
I'm free now?
…but then found the dummy in her pocket and sped to her car, lip curled, eyes adverted.
Gah! I missed the deadline, but that's okay, it's about the sharing, I realise, not competition. This was so much fun. Thank you Hanif for this place and inspiration, as always, and all strength to you.
Park Bench
I've been watching them on and off for weeks in the park at lunchtime. A fragile old man, vacant stare the colour of the washed out Autumn sky overhead. A bright, vital younger man cajoling and guiding him with such cheerfulness and kindness, it squeezes my heart. They always stop at the bench and eat sandwiches. I've been wanting to say hello forever. Too shy and nervous. And I nearly miss my chance this time, too. They've almost finished up before I gather myself and ask the first question.
"Mind if I...? " I gesture to the seat.
"Oh, Of course!" The young guy smiles. "Better enjoy the sun whilst we can, eh?" And we're off On the safe British territory of weather.
"Definitely getting chillier, though, " I state, obviously. "I see you walk around here a lot with -?"
The older man is oblivious, throwing a crust to some hungry starlings.
"Dad," the younger man confirms. My heart thumps. My facial expression is clearly interpreted as surprise "Dad" is so old, because then he says,
"He started family late. Mum much younger."
"Oh, right, I never see your mum..."
"We lost her six years ago."
"Oh, I'm so terribly sorry." The platitude tumbles and I look down, ashamed of it.
"No, I mean, like, we actually lost her in the park six years ago. We come here every day looking for her." My head whips up, startled, to meet a wry smile, a twinkling tease in dark eyes.
"Psyche!" he says. Our laughter joins in the air. Suddenly it feels lighter, easier to breathe. How had he done that with something, so difficult? So painful?
"I'm Anna, by the way. " I put out my hand.
"Josh." Our hands clasp, but don't shake. For a split second, we're hand holding.
"And this is?" I lean, try to meet "Dad's" eyes, but he is immured in his own head, shifting fallen leaves with his feet.
"Stanley. He doesn't respond much anymore," Josh covers for him. "The dementia affects his communication now..." he trails off, gaze seeking something easier to talk about amongst stricken London plane trees.
"Do you have any help? Brothers? Sisters? "
"Nope, " he pulls a wet wipe from his backpack, tenderly cleans his father's mouth and hands "it's just me and you, isn't it dad?" He asides to me, "Moved in after the split with my partner, then dad got sick, so I became his full-time carer."
"That must be tough to cope with on your own," I say.
"Yeeeeah, the pay's great though." I catch the lacing of sarcasm in his voice. We exchange another look, another grin, which makes his shoulders visibly relax. He nods, as if deciding something.
"He's forgetting who I am - that's the hardest part," he tells me. "I really miss him. He's all I've got left.."
Stanley suddenly gets up with surprising agility and starts wandering off down the pathway.
"Oh, well, that's my cue!" Seemingly pleased to be released from his confessional, Josh jumps back into cheerfulness. "Good to meet you, Anna."
"You too, good chatting- bye Stanley!" The old man turns at the sound of his name and looks straight at me. His face floods with recognition.
"June?" He stumbles toward me. "Junebug?" He approaches so unaccountably fast, suddenly he is inches away, staring deep into my eyes, cradling my face in his arthritic hands.
"Dad!" shouts Josh.
"Junebug, I've missed you so much, my darling. Why did you leave? Where did you go? "
"Dad! Leave her alone! Sorry, Anna...." Josh gently takes the hands from my face and pulls his father away. At his touch Stan goes slack and falls behind his own eyes again. "...he does this sometimes, gets people mixed up? So sorry. Did he frighten you?"
"No, not at all, it's fine."
"You sure? You've gone all teary."
"It's nothing, its just - my mum had dementia too," I lie. She died sharp as a pin of whiskey and cigarettes. But my mother's name was June.
"Shit, I realise I never asked you anything about yourself, at all," Josh says.
"No worries. You better catch up with your father." Stanley is already wandering off down the leafy pathway.
"If you're sure you're okay?" I nod, smiling, wiping tears, as he backs away,
torn between concerns. "Alright then - next time?" My heart dances.
"I'd like that, " I say. Hoping when that time comes, I'll finally have the courage to tell him the truth.
‘I hate bloody icebreakers,’ a skinny young woman says, yet she stands up anyway, pushes her seat back against the wall.
‘Remember the language rules people - three strikes and you’ll have to leave.’ The group leader’s sing-song voice. Whilst the prisoners clear floor space, she rocks in her brogues, fingers the badge on her jacket. Sophie Barnes. Thinking Skills Instructor.
‘Make a circle.’ This from a squat, worn-looking prison officer. Byron Davies. Co-facilitator.
They throw a balled-up collection of nylons to each other for five minutes then, looking fed up, shuffle and scrape back to classroom mode.
‘There’s no one to sit by. I don’t know anyone.’
‘Don’t worry. We’re all newbies at the moment,’ says Sophie. ‘The only people who know each other are Mr Davies here, and our longer serving residents.’
In the front row, a muscular woman with short blonde hair says,
‘She means lifers and IPP’s.’ Eyes slide towards her. She doesn’t turn around. Sophie leans forward, scans the label on the prisoner’s sweatshirt.
‘Thank you, Marnie,’ she says.
‘Welcome,’ says Marnie.
‘Okay. Today we will look at Module One, Problem Solving. We will choose a problem and run through our model. Does anyone have a problem they would like to offer?’
Silence.
‘Right – well, how about something like this.' Sophie rolls off a list: 'No clean socks, disliking custard, not being able to sew...’
‘What kind of fucking problems are they?’
‘Language, Marnie,’ says Byron. ‘First warning.’
‘I apologise,’ she says, ‘but you want a problem? I’ll give you a problem.’
‘Please do,’ says Sophie.
Marnie folds her arms, chews the inside of her cheek. 'I don't sleep too good,' she says.
Sophie claps her hands.
‘Great! I mean, thank you, Marnie. I expect many of us can identify with sleep issues. Would you like us to run it through our problem-solving model?’
‘I would.’ Marnie stretches her legs out, crosses her ankles.
‘First - write the problem down,’ says Sophie.
Byron obliges, using the white board.
‘Now, we need ten solutions. They don’t have to be completely feasible, just ideas at this stage.' Sophie is pacing now, gesticulating. Then she stops and faces the room. 'So - who can think of something?’
There is barely any movement, and no sound at all. Marnie turns slowly and looks around, eyes moving from one woman to another. Then,
‘Gee up mares!' she shouts. Sophie does a little jump and Byron blushes, but quickly gets busy as a scramble of suggestions rings out,
‘Count sheep.’
‘Eat toast. It’ll knock you sideways. Six sheets should do it.’
‘Sheets?’
‘Yeah, sheets of toast.’
‘D’you mean slices?’
‘Oh yeah. Slices.’
‘Make hooch.’
‘Use marmite, it’s a good yeast starter. Better than juice.’
‘Marmite hooch?’
‘Jeeeezus!’
‘Keep it legal,’ says Byron.
‘Sorry.’
‘Come on group, this is serious,’ says Sophie. ‘We’re trying to help Marnie.’
‘Meditation.’
‘Relaxation techniques.’
‘That’s better. Keep going.’
‘The toast one is a good idea. Carbs are like tranquilisers.’
‘Oooh yeah. Get some tranks from healthcare.’
‘Go to the gym and run around.’
‘You having a fucking giraffe?’ says Marnie.
‘Second warning.’ Byron rolls his eyes.
‘Okay that will do,’ says Sophie. ‘Thank you for your enthusiastic contributions. While Byron finishes writing them down, let’s ask Marnie what she thinks. Which one would you like to try first Marnie?’ Sophie gestures toward the emerging list. People straighten in their seats.
‘Nah,’ says Marnie eventually.
‘Nothing here that appeals to you as a first possible solution?’
‘Nope.’
‘What’s missing? What would you like to see on this list?’
‘Hmmm.’ Marnie leans forward, takes on the classic Thinker pose. Someone giggles. She leans back again, drums her fingers on her heavy thighs.
‘I think the best solution would be to get up,’ she says.
‘That is sound advice,’ says Sophie. ‘Most sleep plans advise us not to stay in bed tossing and turning. Okay, then what?’
‘I’d pick up my pillow.’
Byron rubs his temple.
‘And?’ Sophie prompts, hand circling as if winding string.
‘I’d creep over to the other bunk, really quiet like, so I don’t disturb. I’d raise the pillow way above my head, like this.’ Marnie reaches her hands high into the air, fists clenching around an invisible pillow. ‘Then I’d smash it down, throw myself on top and stay there until the fucking psycho cunt stops snoring.’
Marnie grins and salutes as Byron escorts her from the classroom.
Truth is stranger than fiction, they say. I believe that truth has the power to soothe troubled souls. At least that has been my experience. Until some past truths became unlocked this story could not have been told.
A voicemail message, received at work, started it off.
"My name is Ruth Ryan. I am researching family history and I have some information to share with you. Would you call me to arrange a meeting?"
This seemed like a strange request, though she sounded friendly enough. Before returning the call, I checked with my brother. Family history is his specialty after all; I have never taken much interest. He denied any knowledge of this person. Not someone he had contact with. Who was she then? And why contact me? I waited. I thought. Curiosity made me decide to call and arrange to meet at a mutually convenient time and place.
Two weeks later my husband travelled with me the 500 kilometres to spend Christmas in July with family. During that weekend nobody could say they had ever heard of my mystery caller, Ruth. But the weekend gave me time to think. My five siblings and I had become closer in the years following our parents’ deaths, within five months of each other. I had always felt distanced from them, being the eldest. The middle three seemed to have a close bond; the youngest two had been my charges in their early years. I felt slightly disconnected from all of them. Sitting by the fire that evening I felt it even more acutely.
On Friday 13th July at 2pm a pleasant woman I didn’t know arrived at my workplace at our agreed time. We found a quiet space where we would not be interrupted, and opening her bag, she produced a large file of documents.
She seemed shy, almost nervous, and what she showed me made my head spin. Her charts made no sense with their numbers and lines showing names and relationships. Clearly this was my family tree, my name and the names of my grandparents, parents and siblings were arranged in order. Her research was thorough, conducted, she said, on behalf of someone else, a friend, who had been searching for his mother. He was 45 years old, and she thought he might be mine. She had a photograph to prove it. The face I saw looked strangely familiar.
And suddenly my mind is flashing back down the years. An early morning kiss, a tender smile: “Good morning, Beautiful!” Then everything changes, and he becomes a stranger.
My internal video plays me back to the parental home, where whispered voices share a bad daughter’s disgrace.
What are you going to do?
Keep my baby – at home.
Don’t be ridiculous. That cannot happen. You must never see that man again.
Too late. He has already flown.
Family rejection casts a shadow, though from an unexpected quarter a stranger comes to the rescue. A grandmother, her husband, and their frequent children and grandchildren welcome me into their home and into their lives. What a relief to be spared the holy nuns and their women’s workhouse, the lamentable laundry and the daily plaintive prayers and cries of forty fallen girls exiled among strangers.
Well, what could I say to Ruth? "I think you might be right!"
The first email that came so quickly after talking with Ruth began a wildly exciting, if not rocky emotional ride.
Email: Hello. My name is Shannon. I think you know me. Shall I call?
The underlying urgency was unexpected, the implied trust startling. He was opening the door so willingly to a person who, as far as he knew, had abandoned him at birth – left him behind in an uncaring hospital, dashing off to enjoy the rest of her life unencumbered by an unwanted child.
It was not the child who was unwanted – the mother was unwanted.
Many emails, text messages and conversations later, this 45-year-old man became less and less a stranger. We shared our deepest secrets, our dearest memories.
An agonizing ten months passed until my first-born son, who I had never seen, travelled more than 16,000 kilometres to meet me for the first time in an unfamiliar city.
We are strangers no more.
Truth is stranger than fiction, they say. This stranger is my truth.
Oooh, Oooh, dangerous stranger—traitorous, laborious, even vaporous. What to do? Should I show aglow with angst at the foreign advance? Should I curl up in a ball if English is not on call? I should know something besides comment allez-vous or cómo estás before I grow aghast that a people appear trashed, out of kilter in a harmonious social filter. Oh, should I fear a heave-ho from my primal post as tojo of white mojo? Will that cause a stall in my where-with-all? The effort exhausts keeping up the frost. Play the world like an aired, bared, and scared funhouse ride where faces pop from the dark to blight animosity, squeezing generosity. It can get worse and wends a hearse if a line’s traversed. That’s what they say at night with the torches; in the eyes lies dredged from the evermore. Hot yak as flack will succor a stupor so forlorn and gone apart from Odysseus. That Greek lived to speak welcome stranger. Hospitality contrived virtue and honor as morality, a modality now done. Why do I bother? Old concepts tossed when the Other went blooey, cluster bombed by resentment stewed hooey. What to do with the toxic grudge in the sludge of I-won’t-budge from this fence or stay the grunting judge in my nonsense? If curious it is spurious, quick lift the glutenous butt; you need to find in your seed the unknown, the tumble into humble, a peep into the steep and stony, amen to what skunks the crank dishing bunk. It’s simple combustion that strangers from afar sans cars in a flood cross the horn of desperation and dare come bleating and needy for human care.
Let’s move closer to home, Jerome. There, the significant person, the one you love, and the versa with no vice is smooth as fudge with a dash of salt, and a surprise within that makes times for cries in your eyes, or maybe a nut with a shell but delicious when shed, flaunts your want of the punch in its crunch. No strangers, here are intimates, shared, paired, and declared. You have more than spilled your creamy center pursuing the billed thrill of mine and yours for now and onward; time is the spine, you say, giving it no mind. But if Jack or Jill hikes over the hill and goes rogue in the demimonde. When known, will stoke a revoke of thine so fine and unbind the time. Comes a chill in the mundane universe you are in daily converse because a stranger who played the ukulele, under the inside most lid hid. Damaged but alive, in the brain estranged and aflame, still can strive and, with pain in the grain, thrive.
We continue fingering a commingling of strangers in the mist that takes on a gist. We are not so bright if we can’t distinguish between those in the light and the dark, Clark. They are next to us, marooned in a gloom with no room to bloom. Like in an eclipse, the recognizable Joe or Jane recedes from view behind a mass dense as the moon, yet invisible—how? You want a why to justify the ravaged sky? Your race to abate yields far from the gate and calls it fate. Alien is as stranger does, a double trouble. Into grief you’ll fall if a thief lifts what hope gave in squalling claim on the possible, the vital, and the lovable. Unexplained, unexpected, the intruder comes bold, your balance with malice cold struck. Taken a grace, dropped, let go, and tossed away, a slight by a strange hand, less magic, more tragic. How by love strained, by help, by the joy of being fleeing, by memory and a past cast in connections fled in dread. Found after and left bereft at a dead-end, you seek the one who fails the will to comprehend.
Now you see, dear reader, we each host within a stranger who, despite our promises, emerges to be seen. What is demanded by their appearance is not something extra, beyond reason or our heart. Meet the stranger and hold her tight. There are only so many chances for the balm of recognition to transform the stranger with the courage of love’s embrace.
On an evening before dinner with her husband—and after the boy’s gentle snores began—she walked into the main room, just as her husband put down his newspaper, Vőlkischer Beobachter, with its many stories about Germanic purity. From his large leather chair, he told her they would be going out to a dinner the next evening with other officers and their wives She was to wear a new gown. It would be delivered at noon. The women in the neighboring flat had been asked to come by to stay with the boy.
“She does not love the boy.”
“She likes him enough. It is only one night. Fetch me your gold locket.”
“It is on my dressing table,” she said. “He might wake.”
“Get it,” he replied.
She did, her footsteps like whispers inside the bedroom.
He told her to slide out their wedding photograph—he in a white morning coat, she in the lace low-necked gown she’d adored. He told her to slide in the new photograph of himself in uniform.
Before dinner the guests drank Champagne from large glasses, made of crystal. She toyed with her locket and through her alcohol blur strained to take in the crowd. She saw men as a sea of uniforms but she could focus on the women. She wondered: Who were they, really? What had they given up to be here and wear these gowns of different colors, similar to hers, cut low but not too low, all tight at the waist no matter the size of their waists. A few wore mink stoles. Many draped the sashed handles of evening bags on their wrists, bags made from thick satin and shut tight with gold clasps. The gowns and the bags were French. As was the Champagne. Of course. Real Champagne was always French. She took another generous sip. It dimmed her more. The world of that party room was in chaos.
The man who shook hands with her husband spoke his German with a British accent. Could this be?
He introduced himself to her.
“Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart,” he said, kissing her hand. “A distinct honor to meet you Frau Heidenreich.”
Her husband nudged her, with the good humor he had not shown since he became an officer. “From the radio - the Irishman,” her husband explained.
Yes, now she remembered. The accent was not British it was Irish. Not exactly a traitor. Ireland had just declared neutrality, as expected.
“I adore your program,” she said. “Your lovely voice makes my little boy happy.”
Her husband glared.
“Ach, he must be a smart lad,” the Irishman said.
“He is. But he will be four years of age soon and he does not speak.”
She saw deeper anger on her husband’s face.
“Ach, but he will,” the Irishman said, cheerfully. “He will be worthy.” She looked at him, as if she did not understand.
“Worthy,” he repeated, as if that one word was a long sentence.
She noticed a glimmer of worry on the Irishman’s face, which was blotchy but not in a German way.
The Irishman turned to her husband.
“May I show your charming wife a painting I admire?”
Her husband nodded.
The Irishman took her arm and led her to an unremarkable landscape. He seemed to be admiring her. Before she had married, men often did.
“Your little boy is at home now?” he asked.
“Well, of course,” she said. “A neighbor is looking after him.”
“Keep him with you always,” he said.
“Well, of course,” she repeated, wishing she had drank less champagne.
“Why can’t I write whatever I want? Create any character I want?”
He was shouting. I’d just had lunch with him. He was sitting next to me and pointing at the woman about to speak.
“We will get to that, but first I must clarify that I do not see myself as a so-called ‘sensitivity reader’.”
So, that was my fault. I’m just an intern with the publishers. The fact she left such long pauses between “do, not and see”, made it worse. The shining white room felt smaller. I’m just here to make some notes. I wasn’t sure what to write down. So I just wrote down her name. Shaqeelah Ibrahami-Bennington - Sensitivity Reader. Isn’t that a thing? I put that in the email to everyone. I wrote down her qualifications from Yale and Cambridge. Top stuff. I wasn’t sure if she was British or American, but it’s pretty obvious now she’s talking.
“I see my role as part of the age old process of refining each draft through layers of editing. Exhausting, exhaustive, essential. I am a hired gun but I don’t intend to shoot the writer. I am not concerned about structure, themes, allegorical or metaphorical resonance, or other such matters. But, I do think we have to be careful about our own stereotypical tropes seeping inadvertently into what we write, especially when writing about people, places and communities we don’t know. They are strangers to our own validating lived experience. We need to be careful.”
That really triggered him.
“I’m sticking my swinging dick in careful!”
“I understand the concerns of the writer, that their unique personal voice is being snuffed out, that we are entering a new age of censorship, a form of intellectual castration.”
No kidding. He went bananas when we first met him. He was going “You might as well cut off my bollocks! You are not changing a single word.” I fancied him a bit. Young, smart, gobby, and energetic. Not my type, but when he stopped using big Oxbridge type words and started talking about music I quite liked him. They told me to take him to a posh restaurant. Calm him down before the meeting. He said he wouldn’t talk to anyone else. He’s actually a bit of a laugh when you get to know him.
“Which brings me to the matter in hand. The proposed adaptation of the unpublished novel Queens Park Strangers into a new kind of groundbreaking hybrid reality TV/drama show. I am a Legacy Safeguarding Consultant. I sincerely hope this promising piece of new writing does not remain…promising…unpublished. My primary concern is to ensure that the content clients produce, or any new hybrid forms, is relevant today and in perpetuity.”
She did that thing of saying each word one at a time with massive pauses…”and…in…perpetuity”. The writer started twitching during the massive pauses.
“I’m here to protect writers, in some cases from themselves, and in rare cases from the somewhat vacuous vicissitudes of their imaginations. The main stumbling block here, is that we have a white male writer who has made a deliberate choice to write about what he calls “strangers” in one of the most richly diverse areas in this country, from the perspective of a disturbed young white male. The narrative is structured around a week in which the main protagonist has apparently been mugged four times, by various members of the local diverse community”.
He started whispering to me, leaning into me. I liked his cute lips and his breath. He was going on about it not being autobiographical and that it was based about something that happened to his best mate Paul, an artist.
“The publishers have accepted my comprehensive and detailed revisions, based on the concept of “identity paradigm shifting”. The TV company have incorporated these into the DNA of their innovative format. I understand a lot of work will be needed now, by several people, on a comprehensive re-write. I don’t think I or the publisher, or the TV execs have anything to add?”
The silence is making me feel weird. Some of them were nodding and others shaking their heads but it meant the same thing. Then she looked at the writer.
“ So… are we on the same page so to speak? My question is do you want to get published or not?”
Kathy at the Sink
"Bald, silent, a muscular physique." My sister, Kathy, describes a workman who had come to fix her leaky faucet this morning.
Before he left, they had coffee together. "Nice to have a man in my kitchen again." It sounds intimate to me because I'm American but, in the Netherlands where Kathy is, she's just being polite.
All day their empty cups and saucers remain side by side on the kitchen table. "When a visit is really cozy I leave the cups for a long time."
"He's still present."
She doesn’t clear the table till it’s dark out, after she draws the curtains.
Standing at the sink, she turns his cup around and presses her lips against the place where his mouth had been. Kathy tells me this, and nothing more. But eventually, I think, she will have to hold that man's cup down under water and drown it like a kitten.
Dancing with Strangers
It happened every night in Via Nicolò Mascardi. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she would go down to her street. There was always a table and two chairs in front of her house, where she would sit and chat with a friend while the outdoor dining tables of the neighbouring restaurants filled up. At a certain moment only known to her, she would start the music on an old-fashioned CD player. The restaurant customers would look at each other, at the woman and the restaurant staff, only to see the waiters nod and smile at this familiar scene.
She always started off dancing by herself, getting into the moves. She was probably in her mid-seventies, and rather corpulent, so that no stranger would ever have expected the true extent of her elegance and skill.
At the end of the ‘overture’ she asked every male passer-by to dance with her. Some neighbours or acquaintances would stop for a joke and a few rounds with her, knowing her personal history. But her real challenge was dancing with strangers. Sometimes it took several attempts to get them on the dance floor. Most of them reacted by blushing, pretending they had an urgent appointment or that they didn’t know how to dance, that they had never danced before. She reassured them she would lead.
She was very confident about herself and her dancing skills. She told everyone that she had been a professional, that she had danced at La Scala in Milan... The strangers could not know whether this story was true or whether she made it up, every night anew. But her graceful movements and the way she took the lead with any man she had managed to convince, might have been taken as a sure proof of her story.
The first one tonight was a customer in a restaurant who was dining there with his wife; they had just been served the antipasto. She danced around their table, swaying her hips, looking only at the man who kept trying to ignore her by immersing himself in the delicacies on his plate. The prosciutto was exceptionally good. As her swinging hips came closer and closer, the man became uncomfortable and she asked him to dance with her. He smiled and shook his head. His wife tried to make a joke about him being a terrible dancer, but the woman didn’t even notice her.
He proved to be a tough nut to crack. When not even telling her life story could make a difference, she usually admitted defeat. She turned round on the spot as gracefully as she had come and didn’t look back.
Next came a group of four young men who giggled at the sight of her; she grabbed one by the arm and swung him around against his protest. His mates stood there transfixed, staring in amazement, and when she finally let go of him, they cheered and greeted him like a star, patting him on the back. These were the moments she loved most. Seeing the initial questioning, embarrassed, and even disparaging looks turn into admiration was like a drug. And more men were to follow. Once she got going, there was no stopping her.
And when she had exhausted many a man of a night in Via Nicolò Mascardi, when she began to feel dizzy from all this swinging round and round and round, she felt happy. The medieval walls of the houses seemed to swing with her, the whole street was her stage and the tourists in the restaurants her audience.
When she was lying in bed later, still half dizzy, she knew it had been a good night. Once again, she felt the gratitude and satisfaction of a successful evening’s performance, of having pleased her audience. The applause of a Scala filled with thousands of people resonated within her until she finally fell asleep.
Tomorrow, she was sure, would bring more strangers along her way.
(663 words)
We Have a Problem Houston
We were feeling confident with over an hour between flights, having landed on time at Houston’s George Bush International Airport. But unexpected slowdowns emerged. We didn’t realize we had to go through customs, thinking that would occur at our final destination in Los Angeles.
On edge, we snaked through a long line at US re-entry. We waved our passports at the border security officer who pointed the way. We retrieved luggage at one end of baggage claim and rechecked at the other end. Sounds simple, nothing to declare and the two of us the picture of innocence. Upstanding middle-aged citizens, white haired women. Not targets for customs enforcement.
Sure enough, smiles and gracious attitudes from the border guards. Then off to the final leg with another snaking line, and hopefully out of security and hustling to our departure gate.
Which gate? And what is the best way to get there? Now we’re stressed and PRESSED FOR TIME!
“Reilly, we need to check that flight information board before we get in the line for the escalator!”
“The board says Terminal C. We’ve been down inside the security-from-hell loop for 45 minutes —it’s disorienting, let’s head up and out.”
With that, Reilly zoomed ahead, I lagged to confirm the next gate number and was suddenly aware of a skirmish nearby.
“HEY STOP! You jumped the line, you can’t do that.” A gruff, unfamiliar voice.
I looked back and the yelling man was soon at my side, then zooming by.
“Hey, you two. STOP. I saw what you did and YOU CAN’T DO THAT HERE.”
I didn’t have my bearings — who was he admonishing. Soon I understood. I fixed on him. He was short, middle aged, in Texas-style attire; wrangler jeans, cowboy button down shirt, leather hat, handlebar mustache, with neck veins bulging.
He locked onto my eyes.
“Those TWO. I saw what they did. They cut RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. They can’t do that here.”
Surely he’s a nut - obviously angry, maybe dangerous but unarmed (we’re in an airport thankfully) but in an ugly mood.
I glance ahead. I notice two people, uncomfortable, alarmed. They’re focused on me — assessing. He’s a tall middle aged man, frail — with a woman, sweet face, my height, petite… an Asian couple. Guessing they are in a hurry like everyone else. I suppose they went around me when I paused at the information board. They were not rude or offensive!
Now we four are frozen in place. Eyes focused on the tough guy. I’m watching him; my heart has gone wild.
“Hey, sir?” I say very sweetly, deferentially.
“Sir, it’s fine, it’s not an issue at all, I stopped, and they simply passed me.”
“No, that’s not what happened, I WATCHED THEM, they jumped the line. Now you go and get in front of them.”
“Excuse me sir, were all good. Let’s all just keep moving along.”
“NO. THEY HAVE TO GET BEHIND YOU.”
Intimidated, I was inclined to do as he said. But I looked at the couple, silent, confused, scared. They stood still. Maybe waiting for me to jump ahead.
“Sir… hey sir… I’m actually with them. We’re all together, OK? So, we’re going to continue to the escalator together.” Sounding like I was asking for permission.
He moved toward me, now nose to nose.
“Oh, so you’re gonna be chivalrous huh, is that it?”
I knew not to laugh, even nervously—but what the hell did he mean by…”chivalrous”? I moved ahead to disengage. I did not want to provoke him but could not allow his words to stand. What if these people are foreign visitors? What if they are like my parents were seventy-five years ago; frightened new immigrants? This is my country too. He can’t have his misguided way with me, with us.
Quickly, I was beside the lady, threading my arm through hers. We walked to her husband’s side. The ever-long line snakes back toward us, I see Reilly in the adjacent queue.
She waves me under the rope partition - I join her, leaving the husband and wife, now with other travelers between them and the mad guy.
I watched to see where he was standing. Anger perhaps still bubbling. I was braced. Our eyes met — he looked away first. A good sign we were safe, anger spent. Then I saw the Asian couple holding hands, passing us, she grabbed my arm over the rope line.
“Have a safe flight home.” Her sad eyes looked relaxed - and kind.
“You too. Please, you too.”
Strangers
There are many different accents on the boat going to the island. I hear one I don’t like, move away from the others and lean on the bow. The captain is a Shetland man, but the rest of us are strangers. We’ve come here to see the visitors.
The accent provokes the old pain in my shoulder. I try to think of something else, and end up thinking about last year’s World Cup.
“It’s England versus Germany,” Tony said, jumping up and down, the way only children can, “and Bobby Charlton will be playing. You can watch it on our new telly!”
I said I was busy. It was only a white lie.
The boat nudges the jetty. I wait for everyone else to get off first as I don’t want anyone making a fuss. The captain insists on helping me off the boat and says: “Remember what I said, auld fella.”
An old yellow GPO van and a local guide are waiting. I hang back, sit down on a barrel and look out to sea. The van engine grumbles into life and they leave without me. Then the boat returns to the sea and soon the only sound I can hear are the waves gently breaking. I am alone, but that’s alright. I want to find the visitors on my own. They’re strangers here too in a way – rare migrants that haven’t visited Shetland for a century.
The newspaper cutting rustles as I pull it out of my pocket. I read the headline again: ‘Birdwatchers flock to Shetland to see rare Snowy Owls’.
Fred, my eldest, and Tony’s dad, didn’t approve of me coming here.
“You’re 72, Dad,” he said.
I should have told him how the birds had saved me, after I came home from the trenches, and showed him my little dog-eared bird guide. There were faded pencil ticks by every illustration, except one, and that’s why I had to come north, before it was too late.
The captain told me where to find the owls. I shift my weight on the barrel and take a deep breath. The breeze is salty and cool. I put the newspaper cutting away and get up. My legs hurt. Everything hurts these days, but the shoulder pain is the worst. It always has been. Got to get moving. I button-up my duffel coat and pull my bobble-hat down. Turning to face the island, I realise I’m not alone.
A tall man with a white moustache stands by some lobster pots. He’s about my age, I think. He’s wearing an Ascot cap and a long tweed coat. The binoculars around his neck are twice the size of mine. He smiles at me. We are strangers, but I feel I know this person somehow, so I don’t mind sharing the captain’s directions. He listens and nods, but he doesn’t say anything. Must be the quiet type.
I lead the way and he follows. He has a bad leg and we have to stop three times as we follow the steep path onto the moorland. The third time we look at each other and smile. His face is red and I’m sure mine is too.
The moorland is a dull green, and a powerful wind makes the small plants shudder by the path. We spend two hours, maybe three, looking for the owls, without success. I can’t help grumbling, but my new friend doesn’t say anything. My shoulder aches as I scan the moors again. Then I feel a strong hand on my arm. It’s my new friend. He points at a rocky outcrop – a huge white bird is floating above the dark stone.
“It’s the male,” he says. “Oh yes, most definitely.”
The accent is strong, and unmistakeably German. I push his hand away and glare at the man who was my silent friend a moment before. His smile fades and we recognise each other for the first time.
He takes a step back and taps his bad leg: “Verdun,” he says.
I put my hand on my shoulder and say: “The Somme.”
A high-pitched bark draws us back to the rocky outcrop. It’s the female. She’s even bigger than the male, but with black flecks on her white plumage. The two ghosts fly side by side and disappear behind the rocks. I look at the old man next to me. His coat is too big for him. We nod at each other and set off for the rocks together.
BELCH
by
Ryan Carraher
(577 words)
----------------
It was a winter Tuesday, and I was commuting home from work. The subway was crowded, and I sat beside a homeless man. You don't need to know much about him; all that matters is that he burped.
The belch was cartoonishly violent. Its production sounded painful; the man's esophageal structures flapped like a stiff playing card in bicycle spokes. It overpowered the train's rumbling, yet no one seemed to notice.
Perhaps I was the only one.
My body reflexively straightened, battening down my nostrils for the looming olfactory siege. The space between the sounding of a stranger's belch and the arrival of its humid intestinal air turns out to be its own breed of purgatory.
Everything vanished. It was just me and the belch.
My mind raced with anticipation.
I felt perplexed—even concerned—that, as I felt the warm air push at my cheeks, my first thought was: "I want to smell it." I immediately felt the urge to submit, to let the stench invade me and burn my nostrils like a fine whiskey.
I'd long been fascinated with the homeless: Where do they go? What do they eat? Who are they? If, as it is said, "we are what we eat," could I meet this man? His belch is what he ate, and what he ate is he.
Would it smell like me?
I felt a tickle in my nostrils.
I imagined watching as he ate his last meal. It's dark. I see him hunched over, his oversized Dickensian rags flapping as he speedily scurries after a plump rat. He pounces and clasps his hands around the rodent. Like Goya's Saturn, he violently bites the squirming varmint's neck as it omits plaintive tea kettle shrieks. Tufts of mangy fur sail through the air; the blood spills from his Santa Claus-like lips, shooting down his forearms in purposeful tributaries and dripping back down to the pavement.
My cheeks grew rosy in the gaseous air.
His mother used to hold his little body against her bosom as he cried, feeling the pressure of something unfathomable rising inside him. She bobbed up and down, gently patting his back until he belched. She'd praise him and kiss his forehead.
I thought I saw condensation on the windows.
Maybe excising his gut in confined public spaces makes him feel powerful. Each belch is an act of chemical warfare against the elites, a way to force entry into their posh bodies and become unmistakably present.
Or maybe he's generous. Perhaps the flatulence of the dregs is a cure for something, a secretly powerful smelling salt. One good whiff will knock you flat on your ass, freeing you from all your disenchantment and malaise. You'd wake up safe in your childhood bedroom. You'd hear your parents laughing in the other room. You'd rise out of bed feeling more content than ever. You'd notice a spider on the wall. Rather than fearfully squish it, as you were once prone to do, you'd gently guide it into your palm and place it on the window sill.
Maybe it's the cure for modern callousness: "Inhale my gaseous runoff and share my struggle; thou shall know compassion." He understands that empathy is penetration: the other in you, yourself in the other.
All you have to do is submit.
The moist air clouding around your face is the stranger's extended hand.
He's offering a gift.
It's all around you.
I enthusiastically inhaled.
…
It smelled like Diet Pepsi.
Spring Roses
Claire was washing dishes at the kitchen sink when she saw her in the garden, a woman crouched in the flower bed and working at something in the soil. She wore a cloth tied around her head and a long, shapeless dress that lay bundled around her thighs.
Claire’s first impulse was to phone someone for help, but instead she left the dishes and went outside by the back door, into the chilly morning. Cautious of this odd intruder, Claire walked slowly but without hesitation up the garden. When she was a few feet away, close enough to see her own trowel buried and sticking upright in the ground, she gave a small cough. The woman seemed not to notice and continued flattening out soil with her muddied hands.
“Excuse me”, Claire said, she hoped calmly.
The woman turned and looked up, showing a hard face, scored with deep lines around a mouth that barely opened as she said, “Your roses are besieged, young lady. Aphids. They won’t make it into May if this keeps up”.
She turned back to her work and left Claire stood there, feeling ridiculous in her pink marigolds.
Not knowing how to respond, Claire returned to the kitchen and stood again at the window, watching the woman clip roses with a small pair of scissors. Claire took out her phone and looked at herself in the black screen, then placed it on the table. She returned to drying dishes while the woman methodically moved from flower to flower, careful and precise with her agile hands.
After a while, Claire felt some reason return to her and marched back out to confront the unwanted gardener.
“I’m sorry, I’m sure you mean no harm, but you really need to move along now. This is my garden, my home”.
The woman stood up. “Is the staircase still wooden, or have you covered it in some garish carpet?”
A confused moment, then a piece slotted into place for Claire.
“You used to live here?”, she asked, and the woman seemed to give a small nod.
“How amazing!”. Claire felt herself ease up with this small revelation.
“So”, Claire continued, “how old were you?”
“From there”, the woman said, ignoring the question and pointing up at Claire’s bedroom, “you can see the trees coming into leaf now, correct? And the lake with the little boats?”
“The trees, yes. But the lake? No, no we can’t see that from the bedroom. We do love it there though. We used to take the kids when they were younger”.
“No, you’re wrong”, the woman replied. There was something hard in her voice that took Claire aback. “You can see the lake, and the boats. Even the boathouse that was once painted red.”
“No, I’m sorry, it’s you who are wrong” said Claire. “I’ve lived here for years. Not the lake, trust me”.
“Why not take a look for yourself?”.
A thread of annoyance wound itself inside Claire. She was irritated by this attack on her very senses. She turned and paced back to the house and climbed the staircase, wondering why she was entertaining this farce. In her bedroom she parted the curtains and looked out, half expecting the woman to be gone, the last half hour a fever dream. The woman was there, staring back at Claire, her breath pluming in the cold air.
Claire looked out to the distance and took in the familiar view, but what she saw made her gasp. There were the distant trees, as always, spotted with young green leaves. But behind these, almost invisible but undeniable in its silver gleam, was the lake. She felt suddenly unmoored, detached from reality. The lake was there, as though for the first time, like a sudden mirage.
Claire returned to the garden, dumbstruck.
“You’re right, I can see it. The lake, the boats, the waves glittering. How could I have only seen it now?”
The woman gazed at her.
“I don’t know how to feel”, said Claire.
“It’s a terrible, terrible thing”, the woman said, gently nodding.
Claire wanted to ask what was so terrible, but the woman suddenly turned and was making her way back to the street, though the side gate. The next day she did not return, and Claire stood at her bedroom window looking out at the flowering trees, and the lake with the little boats, and at her garden with the beds of roses in yellow, pink and red.
Face of a Stranger
by
Catherine Hiller
542 words
Phoebe was about to go for her morning run when the text came from her son, Steve. She opened the message and saw he had sent her a photo. The message said, “Do you know this guy?”
She looked at the photo and thought: What an appealing human being! The face was open and smiling, and the eyes were kind. His hair was rather long, and his beard was a warm dark brown.
She was sorry that there wasn’t some gray in that beard, for if only he were age-appropriate, this was just the sort of man she wanted to date. Phoebe, fifty-seven, had been widowed for almost two years.
The face did look vaguely familiar, but she just couldn’t place him. “No, I don’t know him,” she texted. “Who is he?”
Her question went unanswered, so Phoebe tied her left running shoe more tightly and went out the front door. It was perfect running weather, sunny and in the mid-fifties. She jogged down the block and into the park. The usual suspects were there: the young woman speed-walking, clutching weights, the older man doing chin-ups in the children’s playground, the guy walking three huskies. Phoebe thought his house must have drifts of hair in every corner, for she had once had a huskie which had shed constantly and copiously.
Halfway through her run, she began musing about the photograph. Wasn’t attraction mysterious! Why did she yearn to know the owner of that face? Why did she feel he just might be her soul-mate? Was it possible to fall in love with a stranger? And should she tell Steve?
Well, no.
She got home, drank some water, and went upstairs.
After her shower, she called Steve.
He said, “So, mom, did you figure out who he is?”
“No,” said Phoebe. “Tell me about him. Does he live near me?”
Steve spluttered with laughter. “Yes, he does. Why do you ask?”
For a moment, she hesitated. Then slowly and shyly she said, “I just feel a kinship with him. Like we would understand each other.”
Steve laughed even louder.
“I know it’s ridiculous,” Phoebe said.
Between gasps, Steve said, “Actually, mom, it isn’t so crazy!”
“Maybe he’s age-inappropriate,” Phoebe heard herself saying boldly, “but I’d like to meet him.”
More laughter. Steve managed to croak, “Actually, mom, he’s exactly your age!”
“Really! Do you think we’d get on?”
“You would, mom, you would.” Steve couldn’t stop laughing.
Phoebe was getting annoyed. “Why is this so hilarious?”
“Cause it’s you, mom!”
“What?”
“I sent your photo to a website that changes people’s genders. I sent in my photo, too. I sure make an ugly woman! But you—you make a cute-looking guy. Only—” he began laughing again—“I just didn’t think you would crush on yourself!”
Phoebe looked at the image again. Of course! Why hadn’t she seen it before? Those were her teeth gleaming through the beard, her understanding eyes beneath brows that had been thickened.
She thought she had fallen in love with a stranger, but she had fallen in love with herself.
“You know, I can fix you guys up,” Steve was saying. “I bet he wants to meet you, too!”
The End
We Are Not One, We Are Two
“Stranger sex,” Francisca marveled, a gleam detectible in her widening eyes. “What deep neurosis has he been hiding from us?” I sat in her newly remodeled living room, aloof amid the muted neutrals and Spanish tiles. As we talked, she fiddled with the room’s atmospheric controls, dimming and brightening the lights, turning on the fireplace, playing low music. In a friendship that, as it aged, had developed an undercurrent of competition, I began to regret sharing my discovery. Still, I’d felt desperate for a confidante. Francisca was a problem solver, an action taker. Already she was compiling a list of therapists and divorce attorneys.
I’d discovered the text chain about a month prior. My husband had gone out, and as our kids ate dinner under the spell of their screens, a babel of electronic voices emanating from the kitchen, I’d crouched over his discarded iPad scrolling further into his message history. Nearly ten years of marriage and three children had failed to quell some deep-seated insecurity I held about us. I conducted these furtive audits occasionally, searching for confirmation of his dissatisfaction with our life, with me. I paused at a year-old exchange with an unnamed number.
8:08 pm: Who is available this evening?
8:15 pm: Bonnie available now
8:18 pm She is a bit far away. Anybody on the west side?
8:19 pm: Karina available now
I cast about wildly for any explanation but the obvious. Like a rebuke, Crystal’s Escorts flooded the search results for the phone number. Our own message history confirmed he had been out that night. “Wordle in three!” he’d texted, before telling me he would grab dinner at the bar. Moments later he’d contacted “Crystal.”
As the shock wore off, an adversarial composure set in. I created a new email address to which I sent the incriminating screenshots. I ordered a tracking device and slipped it beneath the fabric of our youngest’s car seat. “Being methodical is your therapy,” Francisca observed. I saw my gynecologist. From my perch on the exam chair, I watched her react to the reason for my visit. We had been pregnant with our first children at the same time. “You will negotiate a path forward,” she said eventually. I would summon this phrase in the following weeks as an antidote to a more self-pitying refrain: you have no good options.
I retreated from people I knew, venturing online instead. In the forum for betrayed spouses, no-tolerance crusaders dished out tough love while women-who-stayed marked discovery date anniversaries like recovering alcoholics. The local mongers’ message board pulsated with carnal referrals and scammer warnings. I’d come for details of Crystal’s service and stayed in abject fascination for sex represented in its pure physicality.
In the mornings I ran on the beach, warily eying men along my path as if they wore dogwalker and surfer veneers to conceal a common sinister core. The ocean glittered but offered me no profound revelations. Sea lions dotted the shore in unusual number, beached by a neurotoxic algae bloom off the coast. By each fluttered a tiny orange flag, staked in the sand to warn people against approaching. I passed the hapless creatures in their same spots each morning, dipping and bobbing their heads as they looked out toward the water.
Our married life carried on. We celebrated Father’s Day. We celebrated his birthday. We had sex. We grieved the death of his mother. The gaps between Francisca’s check-ins grew wider. My snooping revealed nothing but the humdrum routine of a middle-aged dad. The days, with all their distractions, became manageable. But at night the pain bore down, insisting I confront him.
At sundown on the fourth of July, our family joined the revelers on the beach. Clusters of people stood silhouetted against the darkening sky, their laughter blending with the crashing of the waves. Fireworks cracked and whistled erratically. The sea lions had been transported to the relative safety of marine rehabilitation centers. Our kids leapt like sprites on the sand. My husband embraced me as we watched them together. “Look at what you built,” he said, beaming at me. And then he kissed me, tenderly.
F Fire
8/11/23
I met a stranger in a hospital, I another casualty but able to walk. I would bring him things and read to him, he didn’t care what it was. A bottle label would do if nothing else. No-one ever wrote on his file but he was stable, inert. He refused visitors, and letters, even family ones.
We had been there for months, I think, we ran out of bottles to read and the ward’s only novel was in other hands, when told me about something in the trenches, something called f fire. Officially, no one knew about it. The few who were told, never told anyone else. If anyone in authority knew, they did not know what mention of it in the wider world would do. Destroy society. Cause more atrocities. So it was never mentioned. It was a very rare thing, a rumour that did not spread.
He chose me to hear so (like the wedding guest in the ancient mariner) I had to listen.
F fire happened when attacking the enemy from a trench. One man behind the other the one in front using his penis if he could to set off the cannon or trigger, the other one fucking him from behind as he did so. They made their vulnerable bodies more vulnerable still. They liked to do it. It became the only thing they liked to do, and if someone died doing it, it was not the same as if they died otherwise. At night they would do little drawings to work out how to make it work best, ideally the erect penis doing the work of pushing the trigger. He told me some men didn’t have an erection, but they still liked to do it. It didn’t seem lewd or even sexual. He told me they couldn’t do it one day because there was an inspection and he wanted to go over the top, just walk towards the enemy guns.
After he told me, there was a long silence. This was the reason he chose me to tell, he told me, that he knew I would listen to him and then listen to his silence. He said after the long silence, that it was if anything, it was play. He said it was play. He could never say what he felt about it, even now years later he was nowhere near feeling anything, and he thought he never would be, but what he thought he felt was affection, as after a game where children are allowed to make up their own rules, go feral, flex, try ways of being tacking off at angles to the roles they have been taught.
It was the only thing he did not feel shame about. He never would, whereas he felt he might come to feel shame for the act of enlisting, taking an officer role when he knew less than some children about war or leadership. But he knew that if he did try to tell anyone, anyone in authority, he would go from being a hero, which was what he was now, to be certified insane.
Of course I was silent, but at no point was I “shocked” or “horrified”. It seemed to me a very grave thing, a thing to be heard and known, not to be responded to. Like the stranger, I wouldn’t know for years what it made me feel.
We were never visited anyway, but by the time our second year there started, the flu was at its height, so we were quarantined. There was a need to wear masks and we had to keep our distance from the nurses who, also masked, kept their distance from us. The masks were to be changed hourly, and there was a great need for them. I offered my services to help make them as there was nothing else to do, the novel and bottles exhausted. I could sew on a machine, and I worked out a pleasing design for the masks, pleats that fitted over each other, and a space inside for an extra lining. My stranger cut out the linings and put them in place. They were made of paper, for want of anything more sterile, cut from his note book. He wrote on them, I didn’t ever ask if what he wrote was about f.fire.
Now I am old and war has never stopped. I wonder if anyone else still knows about f. fire, or any of the drawings survived.
Community Centre by Lyndsay Wheble
Wednesday morning: ‘Baby Sing Time.’
There was always a five minute break in the middle for bum changes, boob release.
Time for Preti to fulfil her vow to herself: speak to at least one other parent, per class, per week. She’d set this salve for loneliness in response to the common refrain: I met friends for life at the baby class / park / school gate.
‘Look, Luna, he’s got the same giraffe as you!’
‘Oh, that was a present from Nanny, wasn’t it, Freddie?’
‘That’s nice,’ Preti said to the mum, now, directly: the preliminary work completed. ‘Does Nanny live nearby?’
A key question: local people had existing networks, so had little imagination for why someone might make a fool of themselves chatting up a stranger like this. Fellow transplants were always much more friendly.
‘No, hours away; my partner and I work on the science park,’ she replied, as explanation for her physical presence in that room at that moment.
They twinned up aspects of their lives with ease.
Preti glowed, her awkwardness vindicated.
‘Right, little ones,’ the leader shouted, ‘Let’s do a few more songs!’
A unknown nursery rhyme crackled from the fuzzy cassette player. Preti squinted to listen whilst dancing a scarf, green, in Luna’s face. Freddie’s mother fumbled the words, shrugged. Laughed.
They saw each other.
‘Ah, oh, look,’ Freddie’s mother whispered.
Preti turned to her—
Let’s do it—
Maybe a coffee, after?
—but she wasn’t looking at her at all, she was looking down at Luna, whose mat was covered in poo, yellow and liquid: a snow angel in radiant ooze.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Preti squeaked, aflame with embarrassment. She stripped Luna off, wiped her down until she was chilly and screaming. The class stopped singing to help—eight adults, like Caillebotte’s floor scrapers, wiping back and forth, back and forth—
Obviously, everything was ruined: Luna’s clothes, the mat, the scarf, the moment. Gross yellow lingered between the floor-planks.
Freddie’s mother paused near the door as they were leaving…
So,
I'm free now?
…but then found the dummy in her pocket and sped to her car, lip curled, eyes adverted.
Oh.
Oh, okay
I see.
ENDS
Gah! I missed the deadline, but that's okay, it's about the sharing, I realise, not competition. This was so much fun. Thank you Hanif for this place and inspiration, as always, and all strength to you.
Park Bench
I've been watching them on and off for weeks in the park at lunchtime. A fragile old man, vacant stare the colour of the washed out Autumn sky overhead. A bright, vital younger man cajoling and guiding him with such cheerfulness and kindness, it squeezes my heart. They always stop at the bench and eat sandwiches. I've been wanting to say hello forever. Too shy and nervous. And I nearly miss my chance this time, too. They've almost finished up before I gather myself and ask the first question.
"Mind if I...? " I gesture to the seat.
"Oh, Of course!" The young guy smiles. "Better enjoy the sun whilst we can, eh?" And we're off On the safe British territory of weather.
"Definitely getting chillier, though, " I state, obviously. "I see you walk around here a lot with -?"
The older man is oblivious, throwing a crust to some hungry starlings.
"Dad," the younger man confirms. My heart thumps. My facial expression is clearly interpreted as surprise "Dad" is so old, because then he says,
"He started family late. Mum much younger."
"Oh, right, I never see your mum..."
"We lost her six years ago."
"Oh, I'm so terribly sorry." The platitude tumbles and I look down, ashamed of it.
"No, I mean, like, we actually lost her in the park six years ago. We come here every day looking for her." My head whips up, startled, to meet a wry smile, a twinkling tease in dark eyes.
"Psyche!" he says. Our laughter joins in the air. Suddenly it feels lighter, easier to breathe. How had he done that with something, so difficult? So painful?
"I'm Anna, by the way. " I put out my hand.
"Josh." Our hands clasp, but don't shake. For a split second, we're hand holding.
"And this is?" I lean, try to meet "Dad's" eyes, but he is immured in his own head, shifting fallen leaves with his feet.
"Stanley. He doesn't respond much anymore," Josh covers for him. "The dementia affects his communication now..." he trails off, gaze seeking something easier to talk about amongst stricken London plane trees.
"Do you have any help? Brothers? Sisters? "
"Nope, " he pulls a wet wipe from his backpack, tenderly cleans his father's mouth and hands "it's just me and you, isn't it dad?" He asides to me, "Moved in after the split with my partner, then dad got sick, so I became his full-time carer."
"That must be tough to cope with on your own," I say.
"Yeeeeah, the pay's great though." I catch the lacing of sarcasm in his voice. We exchange another look, another grin, which makes his shoulders visibly relax. He nods, as if deciding something.
"He's forgetting who I am - that's the hardest part," he tells me. "I really miss him. He's all I've got left.."
Stanley suddenly gets up with surprising agility and starts wandering off down the pathway.
"Oh, well, that's my cue!" Seemingly pleased to be released from his confessional, Josh jumps back into cheerfulness. "Good to meet you, Anna."
"You too, good chatting- bye Stanley!" The old man turns at the sound of his name and looks straight at me. His face floods with recognition.
"June?" He stumbles toward me. "Junebug?" He approaches so unaccountably fast, suddenly he is inches away, staring deep into my eyes, cradling my face in his arthritic hands.
"Dad!" shouts Josh.
"Junebug, I've missed you so much, my darling. Why did you leave? Where did you go? "
"Dad! Leave her alone! Sorry, Anna...." Josh gently takes the hands from my face and pulls his father away. At his touch Stan goes slack and falls behind his own eyes again. "...he does this sometimes, gets people mixed up? So sorry. Did he frighten you?"
"No, not at all, it's fine."
"You sure? You've gone all teary."
"It's nothing, its just - my mum had dementia too," I lie. She died sharp as a pin of whiskey and cigarettes. But my mother's name was June.
"Shit, I realise I never asked you anything about yourself, at all," Josh says.
"No worries. You better catch up with your father." Stanley is already wandering off down the leafy pathway.
"If you're sure you're okay?" I nod, smiling, wiping tears, as he backs away,
torn between concerns. "Alright then - next time?" My heart dances.
"I'd like that, " I say. Hoping when that time comes, I'll finally have the courage to tell him the truth.
Ice maker breaker.
‘I hate bloody icebreakers,’ a skinny young woman says, yet she stands up anyway, pushes her seat back against the wall.
‘Remember the language rules people - three strikes and you’ll have to leave.’ The group leader’s sing-song voice. Whilst the prisoners clear floor space, she rocks in her brogues, fingers the badge on her jacket. Sophie Barnes. Thinking Skills Instructor.
‘Make a circle.’ This from a squat, worn-looking prison officer. Byron Davies. Co-facilitator.
They throw a balled-up collection of nylons to each other for five minutes then, looking fed up, shuffle and scrape back to classroom mode.
‘There’s no one to sit by. I don’t know anyone.’
‘Don’t worry. We’re all newbies at the moment,’ says Sophie. ‘The only people who know each other are Mr Davies here, and our longer serving residents.’
In the front row, a muscular woman with short blonde hair says,
‘She means lifers and IPP’s.’ Eyes slide towards her. She doesn’t turn around. Sophie leans forward, scans the label on the prisoner’s sweatshirt.
‘Thank you, Marnie,’ she says.
‘Welcome,’ says Marnie.
‘Okay. Today we will look at Module One, Problem Solving. We will choose a problem and run through our model. Does anyone have a problem they would like to offer?’
Silence.
‘Right – well, how about something like this.' Sophie rolls off a list: 'No clean socks, disliking custard, not being able to sew...’
‘What kind of fucking problems are they?’
‘Language, Marnie,’ says Byron. ‘First warning.’
‘I apologise,’ she says, ‘but you want a problem? I’ll give you a problem.’
‘Please do,’ says Sophie.
Marnie folds her arms, chews the inside of her cheek. 'I don't sleep too good,' she says.
Sophie claps her hands.
‘Great! I mean, thank you, Marnie. I expect many of us can identify with sleep issues. Would you like us to run it through our problem-solving model?’
‘I would.’ Marnie stretches her legs out, crosses her ankles.
‘First - write the problem down,’ says Sophie.
Byron obliges, using the white board.
‘Now, we need ten solutions. They don’t have to be completely feasible, just ideas at this stage.' Sophie is pacing now, gesticulating. Then she stops and faces the room. 'So - who can think of something?’
There is barely any movement, and no sound at all. Marnie turns slowly and looks around, eyes moving from one woman to another. Then,
‘Gee up mares!' she shouts. Sophie does a little jump and Byron blushes, but quickly gets busy as a scramble of suggestions rings out,
‘Count sheep.’
‘Eat toast. It’ll knock you sideways. Six sheets should do it.’
‘Sheets?’
‘Yeah, sheets of toast.’
‘D’you mean slices?’
‘Oh yeah. Slices.’
‘Make hooch.’
‘Use marmite, it’s a good yeast starter. Better than juice.’
‘Marmite hooch?’
‘Jeeeezus!’
‘Keep it legal,’ says Byron.
‘Sorry.’
‘Come on group, this is serious,’ says Sophie. ‘We’re trying to help Marnie.’
‘Meditation.’
‘Relaxation techniques.’
‘That’s better. Keep going.’
‘The toast one is a good idea. Carbs are like tranquilisers.’
‘Oooh yeah. Get some tranks from healthcare.’
‘Go to the gym and run around.’
‘You having a fucking giraffe?’ says Marnie.
‘Second warning.’ Byron rolls his eyes.
‘Okay that will do,’ says Sophie. ‘Thank you for your enthusiastic contributions. While Byron finishes writing them down, let’s ask Marnie what she thinks. Which one would you like to try first Marnie?’ Sophie gestures toward the emerging list. People straighten in their seats.
‘Nah,’ says Marnie eventually.
‘Nothing here that appeals to you as a first possible solution?’
‘Nope.’
‘What’s missing? What would you like to see on this list?’
‘Hmmm.’ Marnie leans forward, takes on the classic Thinker pose. Someone giggles. She leans back again, drums her fingers on her heavy thighs.
‘I think the best solution would be to get up,’ she says.
‘That is sound advice,’ says Sophie. ‘Most sleep plans advise us not to stay in bed tossing and turning. Okay, then what?’
‘I’d pick up my pillow.’
Byron rubs his temple.
‘And?’ Sophie prompts, hand circling as if winding string.
‘I’d creep over to the other bunk, really quiet like, so I don’t disturb. I’d raise the pillow way above my head, like this.’ Marnie reaches her hands high into the air, fists clenching around an invisible pillow. ‘Then I’d smash it down, throw myself on top and stay there until the fucking psycho cunt stops snoring.’
Marnie grins and salutes as Byron escorts her from the classroom.
‘Laters gang.’
Laughter follows them down the corridor.
I think you know me …
Truth is stranger than fiction, they say. I believe that truth has the power to soothe troubled souls. At least that has been my experience. Until some past truths became unlocked this story could not have been told.
A voicemail message, received at work, started it off.
"My name is Ruth Ryan. I am researching family history and I have some information to share with you. Would you call me to arrange a meeting?"
This seemed like a strange request, though she sounded friendly enough. Before returning the call, I checked with my brother. Family history is his specialty after all; I have never taken much interest. He denied any knowledge of this person. Not someone he had contact with. Who was she then? And why contact me? I waited. I thought. Curiosity made me decide to call and arrange to meet at a mutually convenient time and place.
Two weeks later my husband travelled with me the 500 kilometres to spend Christmas in July with family. During that weekend nobody could say they had ever heard of my mystery caller, Ruth. But the weekend gave me time to think. My five siblings and I had become closer in the years following our parents’ deaths, within five months of each other. I had always felt distanced from them, being the eldest. The middle three seemed to have a close bond; the youngest two had been my charges in their early years. I felt slightly disconnected from all of them. Sitting by the fire that evening I felt it even more acutely.
On Friday 13th July at 2pm a pleasant woman I didn’t know arrived at my workplace at our agreed time. We found a quiet space where we would not be interrupted, and opening her bag, she produced a large file of documents.
She seemed shy, almost nervous, and what she showed me made my head spin. Her charts made no sense with their numbers and lines showing names and relationships. Clearly this was my family tree, my name and the names of my grandparents, parents and siblings were arranged in order. Her research was thorough, conducted, she said, on behalf of someone else, a friend, who had been searching for his mother. He was 45 years old, and she thought he might be mine. She had a photograph to prove it. The face I saw looked strangely familiar.
And suddenly my mind is flashing back down the years. An early morning kiss, a tender smile: “Good morning, Beautiful!” Then everything changes, and he becomes a stranger.
My internal video plays me back to the parental home, where whispered voices share a bad daughter’s disgrace.
What are you going to do?
Keep my baby – at home.
Don’t be ridiculous. That cannot happen. You must never see that man again.
Too late. He has already flown.
Family rejection casts a shadow, though from an unexpected quarter a stranger comes to the rescue. A grandmother, her husband, and their frequent children and grandchildren welcome me into their home and into their lives. What a relief to be spared the holy nuns and their women’s workhouse, the lamentable laundry and the daily plaintive prayers and cries of forty fallen girls exiled among strangers.
Well, what could I say to Ruth? "I think you might be right!"
The first email that came so quickly after talking with Ruth began a wildly exciting, if not rocky emotional ride.
Email: Hello. My name is Shannon. I think you know me. Shall I call?
The underlying urgency was unexpected, the implied trust startling. He was opening the door so willingly to a person who, as far as he knew, had abandoned him at birth – left him behind in an uncaring hospital, dashing off to enjoy the rest of her life unencumbered by an unwanted child.
It was not the child who was unwanted – the mother was unwanted.
Many emails, text messages and conversations later, this 45-year-old man became less and less a stranger. We shared our deepest secrets, our dearest memories.
An agonizing ten months passed until my first-born son, who I had never seen, travelled more than 16,000 kilometres to meet me for the first time in an unfamiliar city.
We are strangers no more.
Truth is stranger than fiction, they say. This stranger is my truth.
727 words
STRANGERS
Oooh, Oooh, dangerous stranger—traitorous, laborious, even vaporous. What to do? Should I show aglow with angst at the foreign advance? Should I curl up in a ball if English is not on call? I should know something besides comment allez-vous or cómo estás before I grow aghast that a people appear trashed, out of kilter in a harmonious social filter. Oh, should I fear a heave-ho from my primal post as tojo of white mojo? Will that cause a stall in my where-with-all? The effort exhausts keeping up the frost. Play the world like an aired, bared, and scared funhouse ride where faces pop from the dark to blight animosity, squeezing generosity. It can get worse and wends a hearse if a line’s traversed. That’s what they say at night with the torches; in the eyes lies dredged from the evermore. Hot yak as flack will succor a stupor so forlorn and gone apart from Odysseus. That Greek lived to speak welcome stranger. Hospitality contrived virtue and honor as morality, a modality now done. Why do I bother? Old concepts tossed when the Other went blooey, cluster bombed by resentment stewed hooey. What to do with the toxic grudge in the sludge of I-won’t-budge from this fence or stay the grunting judge in my nonsense? If curious it is spurious, quick lift the glutenous butt; you need to find in your seed the unknown, the tumble into humble, a peep into the steep and stony, amen to what skunks the crank dishing bunk. It’s simple combustion that strangers from afar sans cars in a flood cross the horn of desperation and dare come bleating and needy for human care.
Let’s move closer to home, Jerome. There, the significant person, the one you love, and the versa with no vice is smooth as fudge with a dash of salt, and a surprise within that makes times for cries in your eyes, or maybe a nut with a shell but delicious when shed, flaunts your want of the punch in its crunch. No strangers, here are intimates, shared, paired, and declared. You have more than spilled your creamy center pursuing the billed thrill of mine and yours for now and onward; time is the spine, you say, giving it no mind. But if Jack or Jill hikes over the hill and goes rogue in the demimonde. When known, will stoke a revoke of thine so fine and unbind the time. Comes a chill in the mundane universe you are in daily converse because a stranger who played the ukulele, under the inside most lid hid. Damaged but alive, in the brain estranged and aflame, still can strive and, with pain in the grain, thrive.
We continue fingering a commingling of strangers in the mist that takes on a gist. We are not so bright if we can’t distinguish between those in the light and the dark, Clark. They are next to us, marooned in a gloom with no room to bloom. Like in an eclipse, the recognizable Joe or Jane recedes from view behind a mass dense as the moon, yet invisible—how? You want a why to justify the ravaged sky? Your race to abate yields far from the gate and calls it fate. Alien is as stranger does, a double trouble. Into grief you’ll fall if a thief lifts what hope gave in squalling claim on the possible, the vital, and the lovable. Unexplained, unexpected, the intruder comes bold, your balance with malice cold struck. Taken a grace, dropped, let go, and tossed away, a slight by a strange hand, less magic, more tragic. How by love strained, by help, by the joy of being fleeing, by memory and a past cast in connections fled in dread. Found after and left bereft at a dead-end, you seek the one who fails the will to comprehend.
Now you see, dear reader, we each host within a stranger who, despite our promises, emerges to be seen. What is demanded by their appearance is not something extra, beyond reason or our heart. Meet the stranger and hold her tight. There are only so many chances for the balm of recognition to transform the stranger with the courage of love’s embrace.
Excerpt from novel-in-progress:
THE DIGGER RESISTANCE
Chapter: The Letter Writer
Berlin, Germany
1939
On an evening before dinner with her husband—and after the boy’s gentle snores began—she walked into the main room, just as her husband put down his newspaper, Vőlkischer Beobachter, with its many stories about Germanic purity. From his large leather chair, he told her they would be going out to a dinner the next evening with other officers and their wives She was to wear a new gown. It would be delivered at noon. The women in the neighboring flat had been asked to come by to stay with the boy.
“She does not love the boy.”
“She likes him enough. It is only one night. Fetch me your gold locket.”
“It is on my dressing table,” she said. “He might wake.”
“Get it,” he replied.
She did, her footsteps like whispers inside the bedroom.
He told her to slide out their wedding photograph—he in a white morning coat, she in the lace low-necked gown she’d adored. He told her to slide in the new photograph of himself in uniform.
Before dinner the guests drank Champagne from large glasses, made of crystal. She toyed with her locket and through her alcohol blur strained to take in the crowd. She saw men as a sea of uniforms but she could focus on the women. She wondered: Who were they, really? What had they given up to be here and wear these gowns of different colors, similar to hers, cut low but not too low, all tight at the waist no matter the size of their waists. A few wore mink stoles. Many draped the sashed handles of evening bags on their wrists, bags made from thick satin and shut tight with gold clasps. The gowns and the bags were French. As was the Champagne. Of course. Real Champagne was always French. She took another generous sip. It dimmed her more. The world of that party room was in chaos.
The man who shook hands with her husband spoke his German with a British accent. Could this be?
He introduced himself to her.
“Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart,” he said, kissing her hand. “A distinct honor to meet you Frau Heidenreich.”
Her husband nudged her, with the good humor he had not shown since he became an officer. “From the radio - the Irishman,” her husband explained.
Yes, now she remembered. The accent was not British it was Irish. Not exactly a traitor. Ireland had just declared neutrality, as expected.
“I adore your program,” she said. “Your lovely voice makes my little boy happy.”
Her husband glared.
“Ach, he must be a smart lad,” the Irishman said.
“He is. But he will be four years of age soon and he does not speak.”
She saw deeper anger on her husband’s face.
“Ach, but he will,” the Irishman said, cheerfully. “He will be worthy.” She looked at him, as if she did not understand.
“Worthy,” he repeated, as if that one word was a long sentence.
She noticed a glimmer of worry on the Irishman’s face, which was blotchy but not in a German way.
The Irishman turned to her husband.
“May I show your charming wife a painting I admire?”
Her husband nodded.
The Irishman took her arm and led her to an unremarkable landscape. He seemed to be admiring her. Before she had married, men often did.
“Your little boy is at home now?” he asked.
“Well, of course,” she said. “A neighbor is looking after him.”
“Keep him with you always,” he said.
“Well, of course,” she repeated, wishing she had drank less champagne.
When they returned home, the boy was gone.
Queens Park Strangers
“Why can’t I write whatever I want? Create any character I want?”
He was shouting. I’d just had lunch with him. He was sitting next to me and pointing at the woman about to speak.
“We will get to that, but first I must clarify that I do not see myself as a so-called ‘sensitivity reader’.”
So, that was my fault. I’m just an intern with the publishers. The fact she left such long pauses between “do, not and see”, made it worse. The shining white room felt smaller. I’m just here to make some notes. I wasn’t sure what to write down. So I just wrote down her name. Shaqeelah Ibrahami-Bennington - Sensitivity Reader. Isn’t that a thing? I put that in the email to everyone. I wrote down her qualifications from Yale and Cambridge. Top stuff. I wasn’t sure if she was British or American, but it’s pretty obvious now she’s talking.
“I see my role as part of the age old process of refining each draft through layers of editing. Exhausting, exhaustive, essential. I am a hired gun but I don’t intend to shoot the writer. I am not concerned about structure, themes, allegorical or metaphorical resonance, or other such matters. But, I do think we have to be careful about our own stereotypical tropes seeping inadvertently into what we write, especially when writing about people, places and communities we don’t know. They are strangers to our own validating lived experience. We need to be careful.”
That really triggered him.
“I’m sticking my swinging dick in careful!”
“I understand the concerns of the writer, that their unique personal voice is being snuffed out, that we are entering a new age of censorship, a form of intellectual castration.”
No kidding. He went bananas when we first met him. He was going “You might as well cut off my bollocks! You are not changing a single word.” I fancied him a bit. Young, smart, gobby, and energetic. Not my type, but when he stopped using big Oxbridge type words and started talking about music I quite liked him. They told me to take him to a posh restaurant. Calm him down before the meeting. He said he wouldn’t talk to anyone else. He’s actually a bit of a laugh when you get to know him.
“Which brings me to the matter in hand. The proposed adaptation of the unpublished novel Queens Park Strangers into a new kind of groundbreaking hybrid reality TV/drama show. I am a Legacy Safeguarding Consultant. I sincerely hope this promising piece of new writing does not remain…promising…unpublished. My primary concern is to ensure that the content clients produce, or any new hybrid forms, is relevant today and in perpetuity.”
She did that thing of saying each word one at a time with massive pauses…”and…in…perpetuity”. The writer started twitching during the massive pauses.
“I’m here to protect writers, in some cases from themselves, and in rare cases from the somewhat vacuous vicissitudes of their imaginations. The main stumbling block here, is that we have a white male writer who has made a deliberate choice to write about what he calls “strangers” in one of the most richly diverse areas in this country, from the perspective of a disturbed young white male. The narrative is structured around a week in which the main protagonist has apparently been mugged four times, by various members of the local diverse community”.
He started whispering to me, leaning into me. I liked his cute lips and his breath. He was going on about it not being autobiographical and that it was based about something that happened to his best mate Paul, an artist.
“The publishers have accepted my comprehensive and detailed revisions, based on the concept of “identity paradigm shifting”. The TV company have incorporated these into the DNA of their innovative format. I understand a lot of work will be needed now, by several people, on a comprehensive re-write. I don’t think I or the publisher, or the TV execs have anything to add?”
The silence is making me feel weird. Some of them were nodding and others shaking their heads but it meant the same thing. Then she looked at the writer.
“ So… are we on the same page so to speak? My question is do you want to get published or not?”
He turned to me and whispered something.