Johnny America

 

 


JOHNNY AMERICA

Is a little ’zine of fiction, humor, and other miscellany, published by the Moon Rabbit Drinking Club & Benevolence Society since 2003.

Photograph of Johnny America 10Photograph of Johnny America 10

Our latest zine is Johnny America # 10, a steal at three bucks from our online shop. And we have a new collection of fiction by Eli S. Evans that’ll knock your socks off: Various Stories About Specific Individuals in Particular Situations.

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Photograph of Johnny America 10Photograph of Johnny America 10

Johnny America has been bringing you fresh fiction and humor since 2003.

Our latest zine is Johnny America # 10.

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Failed State

by

Illustration of two disembodied suit jackets shaking hands in front of an equestrian statue, with rider holding an AK-47.

The drug trade in a four-block neigh­bor­hood in the north­west of the cap­i­tal was con­test­ed by two gangs, Karum Krew, known as KK, and Shaa­mi Posse Two or SP2. There was lit­tle to dis­tin­guish the two gangs. Both were made up of ado­les­cents from fam­i­lies the gangs had re­placed in their al­le­giances. Each was led by a man in his twen­ties with the tor­so and arms of a weightlifter. KK and SP2 both sourced their mer­chan­dise from the same for­eign car­tel. The boys were se­mi-dis­ci­plined, quick to anger, bare­ly ed­u­cat­ed, fear­less, and street-smart. All were armed with knives or box cut­ters. On­ly the mus­cle-bound lead­ers and their body­guards had firearms. No­body was fright­ened by the po­lice; rather, it was the po­lice who were afraid of them. The few busi­ness­es that had not left or closed down paid pro­tec­tion mon­ey to one gang or the oth­er. The largest, an au­to and mo­tor­bike re­pair shop, paid both.

Af­ter half a dozen youths were killed in eight days, the lead­ers en­gaged in a brief ef­fort to ne­go­ti­ate a di­vi­sion of the ter­ri­to­ry. But diplo­ma­cy was not the forte of ei­ther, so things went on as be­fore, as tense­ly but with a bit more re­straint. Thanks to the plu­to­crats in their Mer­cedes and Range Rovers, from which they nev­er got out, busi­ness was brisk and prof­itable enough. Still, the ter­ri­to­ry was a mere four blocks and, in the opin­ion of the SP2’s chief, not big enough for both. A merg­er was out of the ques­tion. The two gangs loathed each oth­er, like a brace of jeal­ous fra­ter­nal twins.

The chief of PS2, who went by the name of Shred­der, was a small-time op­er­a­tor with big-time dreams. What he dreamed of was mo­nop­oly and ex­pan­sion and he knew that the for­mer was a pre­req­ui­site of achiev­ing the lat­ter. Once KK had been elim­i­nat­ed, with a base firm­ly in his hands, he could di­ver­si­fy in­to pros­ti­tu­tion, gam­bling, kid­nap­ping, loan shark­ing. He could spread his wings, move in­to wealth­i­er parts of the city, ex­tort big­ger busi­ness­es, maybe even arrange pho­ny gov­ern­ment con­tracts. With his nar­row, fam­ished eyes, Shred­der had been watch­ing gang­ster films since he was a child, most­ly Amer­i­can ones. The Amer­i­can dream meant be­ing a suc­cess­ful crook. When he was start­ing out, the man who re­cruit­ed him had a fa­vorite say­ing: “If you rob a liquor store, you’re just a thief; if you steal Asia, you’re a god.” But to steal well, to flour­ish, he would need back­ing. As he saw things, the most ef­fi­cient way to make him­self a big­ger tu­na was to col­lab­o­rate with a tu­na that was al­ready big.

When Shred­der re­ceived his month­ly de­liv­ery in April, he took the couri­er aside and de­mand­ed a face-to-face with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the sup­pli­er— “not,” he added dis­dain­ful­ly, “some squirt like you but some­body with juice. Un­der­stand?” When the fright­ened couri­er asked why, Shred­der smiled con­temp­tu­ous­ly. “Mu­tu­al ben­e­fit. Duh,” he said, de­liv­er­ing the last syl­la­ble like a ham­mer blow.

A week lat­er, Shred­der got a text in­struct­ing him to be at the eques­tri­an stat­ue in Cen­tral Plaza at pre­cise­ly four in the af­ter­noon on Mon­day — and to wear a suit. He bor­rowed a suit from his skin­ny cousin. At the ap­point­ed time, he was ap­proached in the plaza by a forty­ish man in a blue suit that fit. In an ac­cent that was on­ly slight­ly for­eign, he told Shred­der to talk fast and not loud.

Shred­der of­fered the Car­tel a part­ner­ship. With a rel­a­tive­ly small in­vest­ment of cash and mus­cle, Shred­der said the com­pe­ti­tion could be elim­i­nat­ed and, in due course, he could take over the whole city and or­ga­nize things prop­er­ly. He said he had it all worked out. The rise of PS2 would be­gin with re­mov­ing the punks of Karum Krew. He asked for help with this first step. Why? Be­cause the boss of KK, called the Hulk, al­ways kept his two tough­est men with him, one with a pis­tol, the oth­er with an Uzi. He thought it im­pru­dent to risk the lives of his boys or, of course, his own. He didn’t want any ev­i­dence link­ing PS2 to the op­er­a­tion. “More than plau­si­ble de­ni­a­bil­i­ty,” he said, “to keep the cops off our backs.”

Shred­der was noth­ing if not thor­ough. He had two boys watch the Hulk for a month. He knew where he and his top boys hung out and when. They were at the Tu­gram Bar and Grill every Tues­day and Thurs­day from noon to three.

The big­wigs of the car­tel de­bat­ed the costs and ben­e­fits of us­ing this am­bi­tious Shred­der to turn what had been a nose un­der the tent in­to a firm foothold, a re­al beach­head. Some thought it made sense to work with a ris­ing PS2 rather than sup­ply­ing both them and KK. Small pota­toes, they ar­gued. They stood to move more prod­uct with an am­bi­tious client who aimed to ex­pand than to go on feed­ing two small-time gangs who soon­er or lat­er would tear each oth­er apart over four mis­er­able city blocks. Those op­posed point­ed out that if this Shred­der was too weak to elim­i­nate the lo­cal com­pe­ti­tion on his own, he cer­tain­ly couldn’t be count­ed on to ex­pand ei­ther his ter­ri­to­ry or ac­tiv­i­ties. One lieu­tenant who once had tak­en an in­tro­duc­to­ry course in eco­nom­ics re­tort­ed that they should con­sid­er the po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ty costs of re­ject­ing the re­quest. Up till now their op­er­a­tions in the cap­i­tal had been lim­it­ed. They were mere providers, run­ning a kind of ex­trac­tive econ­o­my. There were rich­es in that flab­by, cor­rupt cap­i­tal. Wouldn’t it be bet­ter to be silent part­ners? Shred­der, he added, had dis­played some in­tel­li­gence in not want­i­ng to at­tract too much at­ten­tion to him­self, pa­thet­ic though the au­thor­i­ties were.

In the end, the big boss de­cid­ed to oblige Shred­der but to min­i­mize the risk of be­ing iden­ti­fied with any vi­o­lence them­selves. “That’s bad busi­ness,” he said. “We can get some­body from the out­side. And cheap.” Here he turned on the eco­nom­ics ex­pert. “Sup­ply in that seg­ment of the la­bor force wild­ly ex­ceeds the de­mand, no? So, a bus tick­et. A ho­tel room. A few hun­dred dollars.”

The cut-rate con­trac­tor the car­tel hired was, in some re­spects, com­pe­tent. He knew how to smug­gle in the com­po­nents and as­sem­ble a bomb. He even un­der­stood how to det­o­nate the thing re­mote­ly with a cell phone. But he made a vi­tal mis­take, if in­deed the er­ror was his. In­stead of plac­ing the de­vice in the Tu­gram Bar and Grill in the run­down north­west of the city, he plant­ed it in Restau­rant Nubran in the af­flu­ent south­west. It’s pos­si­ble he’d been giv­en the wrong ad­dress by his em­ploy­er. Maybe it hadn’t been writ­ten down quite leg­i­bly. Per­haps he was in­struct­ed to mem­o­rize the name and did it bad­ly. Im­pos­si­ble to say, as he was mur­dered three days af­ter us­ing his re­turn bus ticket.

At one o’clock on a Tues­day in May, an ex­plo­sion tore apart the Nubran, an el­e­gant restau­rant pop­u­lar with ladies from the up­per-crust. The blast se­vere­ly in­jured sev­en­teen peo­ple and blew eight to bits. Among the lat­ter were three tod­dlers and the preg­nant wife of the deputy trans­port minister.

Dis­pos­able ado­les­cents stab­bing and shoot­ing one an­oth­er was de­plorable but tol­er­a­ble. A bomb killing af­flu­ent din­ers and their chil­dren two blocks from the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly was not.

From that af­ter­noon events moved at a breath­tak­ing pace. It was as if chaos were a doz­ing drag­on wak­ened by the blast. The gov­ern­ment de­clared the bomb­ing a ter­ror­ist out­rage, de­clared a state of emer­gency, and de­ployed troops around the city. The first check­points ap­peared be­fore the sun was down. 

On the large mil­i­tary base three miles out­side the city, a young colonel con­vened a se­cret meet­ing of ju­nior of­fi­cers. They had met be­fore, ini­tial­ly air­ing per­son­al griev­ances, crit­i­ciz­ing se­nior staff, the min­istry, the food. Sub­se­quent ses­sions were more po­lit­i­cal. Now the crit­i­cism was aimed at the civil­ians who ran things, the courts, the leg­is­la­ture, the pres­i­dent — all on the take. There were pa­tri­ot­ic speech­es and pledges of sol­i­dar­i­ty. The young colonel had laid out his plan for when the time was right. Now, he de­clared, the time was right. The meet­ing end­ed with every­one stand­ing at at­ten­tion and singing the na­tion­al anthem. 

The coup be­gan at dawn three days af­ter the bomb­ing. Tanks and per­son­nel car­ri­ers moved in­to the cap­i­tal.  The sol­diers man­ning check­points most­ly joined; the ones who re­fused were over­whelmed. A few were shot, the oth­ers tak­en in­to cus­tody. The pres­i­dent fled in a he­li­copter to an army base in the north. From there he is­sued a call to the peo­ple to de­fend the con­sti­tu­tion and an ap­peal to all loy­al troops to re­sist the trea­so­nous coup. There were demon­stra­tions in the cap­i­tal to which the coup lead­ers re­spond­ed first with wa­ter can­non, then tear gas, and fi­nal­ly live am­mu­ni­tion. Near­ly a hun­dred pro­tes­tors were killed. In the North, the Pres­i­dent ral­lied his forces, put him­self at their head, and be­gan a march on the cap­i­tal. In the cap­i­tal, the jun­ta led by the pa­tri­ot­ic colonel de­clared the con­sti­tu­tion de­funct and the pres­i­dent an en­e­my of the people.

The bloody civ­il war was on. Sup­plies of food, wa­ter, and med­ical equip­ment be­gan to run out. Loot­ing and ban­dit­ry spread like can­cer. The wealthy raised pri­vate mili­tias. Refugees flood­ed the fron­tiers of neigh­bor­ing coun­tries who kept both sides well sup­plied with weapons but lit­tle hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid. Ur­gent meet­ings were con­vened by the Re­gion­al Union and the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Res­o­lu­tions were pro­posed. The ones that weren’t ve­toed were ignored.

Filed under Fiction on January 31st, 2025

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The Man Who Hat­ed His Job

by

Illustration of a misty mountain top.

Once, there was a man who hat­ed his job. “I hate my job,” he said to him­self, and then he stopped typ­ing and screamed, right there in his home of­fice. It was Fri­day night. An ur­gent email had just made its way in­to his in­box, and it would take hours to re­solve. The room was blue with the light from his screen. 

There were fast foot­steps down­stairs, then up the stairs, and his room­mate burst in. 

“What hap­pened?” the room­mate said, “Are you okay?”

“I hate my job!” the man said.

“Oh. I thought some­thing bad had happened.”

“This is bad!” the man said, “I spend like 60 hours a week work­ing! Every week! I help com­pa­nies find bet­ter pro­cure­ment so­lu­tions! Be­cause of me, busi­ness­es save a lit­tle more mon­ey! How can this pos­si­bly be all that my life is?” He waved his arms as he spoke and al­most clipped the side of his stand­ing desk. 

The room­mate tilt­ed his head to the side. The man kept go­ing, “And I al­ways get stuck with the hard­est projects and I do them any­way and I put in way too much ef­fort be­cause I can’t stand to look bad, and I nev­er get rec­og­nized and I’ve tried push­ing back and that nev­er works and I just don’t know what to do!”

“Well, is there some­thing else you wish you were doing?”

“I don’t know!”

The room­mate took a step back. “Well maybe you should fig­ure that out then.”

“That sounds hard.”

“Well then don’t?”

“That al­so sounds hard!”

The man turned back to­ward his com­put­er for a mo­ment to read an email. When he turned back to­ward the door­way, his room­mate had al­ready gone. But the man kept think­ing. He scrolled through job post­ings. There were list­ings for sales as­so­ciates and project man­agers, and even one for a ‘dy­nam­ic go-get­ter with a can-do at­ti­tude.’ He sighed. If on­ly he had enough mon­ey to nev­er work again.

On a trip down­stairs to get some wa­ter, he passed his room­mate and stopped. “I still don’t know what to do,” he said.

“Maybe you should talk to some­one about it?” said the roommate.

“Like a monk or a gu­ru or some­thing?” The man lit up. He thought of every com­ic he’d ever read with a white-beard­ed wiz­ard­ly man with great wis­dom. He’d nev­er had a gu­ru or a sage in his life be­fore. Maybe that’s what he needed.

“I mean, I was think­ing more like a men­tor or a ca­reer coach—” said his roommate.

And that just wasn’t go­ing to cut it. “No,” said the man, “I want a gu­ru, and I want one to­mor­row.” The man al­ready had his phone out and was search­ing on­line. There was a guy who lived on a moun­tain near­by, com­plete with a flow­ing white beard. And this guy had very good re­views on Yelp. 

“An un­ortho­dox life-chang­er!” start­ed one. The man start­ed to nod. “I feel so full of pur­pose now, worth every step of that hike,” said an­oth­er. “I can fi­nal­ly go to work with a smile now. I am new,” went a third. The man nod­ded ex­tra hard at that one. He clicked through the guru’s web­site, and there was a pic­ture of the gu­ru grin­ning with teeth the same col­or as his beard, and or­ange robes flow­ing. “Moun­tain­top dis­cern­ment. Your tra­jec­to­ry: redi­rect­ed. Your spir­it: re­aligned. Cash on­ly. $500 per guid­ance.” That sound­ed like a lot of mon­ey, but then again, the man knew he need­ed some redi­rec­tion. And this sound­ed like just the guy.

In the morn­ing, the man stuffed mon­ey in an en­ve­lope, and packed his back­pack with trail mix and a wa­ter bot­tle. He hopped in the show­er and made sure to re­al­ly give him­self a good scrub. Af­ter all, he would be redi­rect­ed to­day, and he want­ed to look tip-top for when his new life be­gan. He put on a clean shirt and laced his sneak­ers and walked to the door. Then, his phone buzzed. Some­one had re­spond­ed to one of his emails from the night be­fore. He paused in the door­way, huffed, and typed out a reply. 

Once it was off and sent, he called an Uber, and min­utes lat­er, he was off! The car rolled through town, past frown­ing shop­keep­ers in store­fronts, and of­fice build­ings where every parked car meant at least one per­son was work­ing, even now on the weekend. 

The car zoomed on­ward. High-ris­es turned in­to low-ris­es. Low-ris­es spread un­til the side­walk dis­ap­peared and they were in the coun­try. And then, soon enough, they were at the foot of the moun­tain. That was fast, he thought.

There was a lit­tle sign­post by the trail­head. ‘Gu­ru peak: 12 miles.’ The whole moun­tain looked big­ger up close too. A lone dusty trail snaked up through gray brush to­ward the peak, un­til it van­ished from sight al­to­geth­er. Lit­tle blips of peo­ple dot­ted the path, and even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­peared as it went high­er too.

The man shrugged and start­ed pow­er-walk­ing right on up the trail. He swung his arms with ex­tra-large swings. But with­in min­utes, he was huff­ing. His mus­cles burned. His calves, his ham­strings, even the weird lit­tle mus­cles around his an­kles that he hadn’t thought much about be­fore. Typ­ing at his desk all day wasn’t ex­act­ly do­ing him fa­vors in the hik­ing de­part­ment. Soon, he was go­ing in more of a walk, with sub­stan­tial­ly less power. 

But he want­ed this. He need­ed it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so pleas­ant, but hey, he had plen­ty of prac­tice do­ing things he didn’t like.

Up ahead, some­one had set up a re­fresh­ment stand, and had lit­tle Dix­ie cups of Gatorade set out. Dol­lars per swig. A line of thirsty-look­ing peo­ple wait­ed. The man took a sip from his wa­ter bot­tle and kept on go­ing. He passed more peo­ple, head­ing both up and down. Some trudged down, de­feat­ed. “Quit­ters,” thought the man. Oth­ers took care­ful steps down with gen­tle smiles on their faces and peace­ful far­away looks. He thought of mak­ing that walk down him­self, how good he would look, smil­ing and tranquil. 

The sun rose in a gen­tle arc. The man trudged. It hit its peak. The man con­tin­ued to trudge. It start­ed its de­scent back down to­ward the hori­zon. The man kept on. He was cov­ered in sweat, and his shirt had a big wet mark over his ster­num like a tar­get. He gave his pits a smell. Not great. He con­sid­ered turn­ing around, maybe com­ing back on a less-sun­ny day when he could ar­rive in bet­ter form. 

He gri­maced at the thought of hav­ing to wait, and kept trudg­ing. His left leg be­gan to cramp, and he paused. He nib­bled on a lit­tle trail mix. And then he start­ed hop­ping up the trail on his good leg.

He hopped and hopped, mak­ing progress in lit­tle slow lurch­es. And then sud­den­ly, the slope lev­eled off. He was there! He could see his city in the dis­tance, but it looked so tiny from up here. Just a se­ries of box­es and blips in the dis­tance. On the peak, there was a lit­tle wood­en bench amid the brush and small dusty stones, with a per­son-shaped lump cov­ered by a blanket.

The man fell to his knees in front of the bench. “Great gu­ru,” he said, “I need your help. I hate my job.”

The blan­ket shift­ed, and a beard­ed face peeked out. The gu­ru blinked a lot. He yawned. “Wel­come traveler.”

The man hand­ed him the mon­ey en­ve­lope, and then fell back to his knees. The gu­ru count­ed it and slid it be­neath his blan­ket. “Thanks man,” said the gu­ru, “Got any snacks?”

The man reached in­to his bag for the trail mix, and hand­ed it over. The gu­ru plucked raisins be­tween his fin­gers and flicked them off the moun­tain. Fi­nal­ly, he tipped the bag up and dumped the rest in­to his mouth. A cloud of peanut dust set­tled in his beard. “Any­thing to drink?” 

The man passed the gu­ru his wa­ter bot­tle. The gu­ru chugged. Lit­tle droplets slid down his robe and pit­ter-pat­tered in­to the dust be­neath the bench. The gu­ru hand­ed the bot­tle back, emp­ty. “Thanks,” he said.

“So what should I do, wise guru?”

The gu­ru laughed. “Beats me,” he said, “Got any cigarettes?”

The man’s jaw clenched. “Lis­ten here,” he said, “I think you’re rip­ping me off! And I’ve wast­ed a whole day on you and my calves are killing me and I’ve just paid you a lot of money!”

“Okay,” said the gu­ru. He grinned, and the man could see all of his teeth. They were per­fect­ly straight and shiny ve­neer-white, just like in the pictures. 

The gu­ru pulled his blan­ket back over his head, and rolled over on the bench. 

The man wait­ed a beat. And then he screamed, “Are you fuck­ing kid­ding me?” His voice echoed off in­to the dis­tance, and set off some rustling in the brush near­by. “Give me an an­swer or give me my mon­ey back.”

“No,” said the guru.

The man’s eyes went big. He let out a ner­vous laugh. “You’re re­al­ly go­ing to make me take my mon­ey back?”

“Sure,” said the gu­ru. He laughed too.

The man stepped for­ward and ripped the guru’s blan­ket off. He grabbed the gu­ru by his robe. The man start­ed to lift him up in the air. “Lis­ten here, you stu­pid fraud-ass fake guru —”

At that mo­ment, the gu­ru struck the man right in his sweaty ster­num. The man stag­gered back­ward and sprawled among the grav­el­ly stones on the moun­tain peak. The gu­ru walked to­ward him with slow foot­steps. His teeth glint­ed in the sun and his beard flapped in the wind.

The man tried to get to his feet, but his leg was still a lit­tle cramped. He wob­bled. But the gu­ru was al­ready there, and he swung his leg and kicked the man in his ribs. He fell back down and dug his fin­gers in­to the dirt.

The gu­ru stooped down to­ward the man. His grin was now inch­es away from the man’s face, and his cheeks stretched and stretched, wider and wider. He lift­ed the man up by his col­lar, un­til the man’s feet dan­gled. The two men made eye con­tact. The gu­ru nod­ded, still grin­ning. Then, he threw the man with a great great force, straight back down the trail. The man went fly­ing. He was air­borne for sev­er­al sec­onds. And when he hit the ground, he be­gan to roll.

He tum­bled side-over-side down the dusty trail. Lit­tle stones jabbed at him. His shirt snagged on pokey brush branch­es. And he rolled down, back down past fel­low hik­ers and past the lit­tle Gatorade stand and then fur­ther and fur­ther down un­til he land­ed in a heap at the very bot­tom by the trail sign.

“Ow,” he said. He was cov­ered in dirt. His pants and shirt were torn. He def­i­nite­ly had a bruise or two form­ing. And he was very very dizzy. One of his shoes had dis­ap­peared part­way down the moun­tain and his phone was gone too and that meant no Uber.

The sun was be­gin­ning to set now, and it was get­ting dim as the man swayed and hob­bled back along the road to­ward town. He stum­bled along the dirt path on the side of the road un­til it turned to side­walk. Then past of­fices with lights still lit and stores with open signs flick­er­ing. As he passed through the city cen­ter, some­one said, “Sir,” to his side. He turned. A stranger held out a dol­lar. The man stared at the mon­ey, then shrugged, and took it.

And then he trudged back home. It was ful­ly night now. The moon was prob­a­bly some­where up in the sky. The man opened his door and went up­stairs and sat on the show­er floor. He turned the di­al. Wa­ter poured over him and came off tint­ed brown.

“Yo dude,” came the voice of his room­mate from out­side the door, “you okay?”

The man didn’t respond. 

“Uh, what hap­pened?” went the roommate.

“The gu­ru was a bust,” the man said.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Sor­ry dude.”

“What the fuck am I even do­ing?” the man said. “In what world was some Yelp gu­ru on a moun­tain go­ing to fix all my job bull­shit?” He start­ed to cry. “And this guy took my mon­ey and tossed me away af­ter I’d giv­en him every­thing I had. Just like every­one does.” 

“Uh,” said the room­mate,” that kin­da sounds like an overgeneralization.”

“What­ev­er,” said the man. He squeezed his eyes shut, and he fum­bled around with one hand, look­ing for the bar of soap. 

“Maybe you just need to find —”

“But even if it’s not every­one it’s a dang lot of them and they just take and take and take from me. And maybe it’s time I start­ed tak­ing things for my­self too.” 

“Oh?” said the roommate.

“Not like from you,” he said, “but like from my work or some­thing.” The man was still fum­bling around look­ing for some­thing to clean him­self with. His hands closed on his roommate’s thing of body wash. He gave the noz­zle a pump, and gel filled his hand.

“Hm,” said the room­mate, “I don’t think that’s re­al­ly what I was go­ing to say.”

“Maybe I’ll call in sick on Mon­day.” The man chuck­led to him­self. “Or maybe longer. These sick­ness­es can sure last a while.” He sniffed the dol­lop of body wash and be­gan to rub it in­to his pits. Then, the man grinned, and he felt his cheeks be­gin to stretch.

Filed under Fiction on January 17th, 2025

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Clouds

by

Illustration of a container ship in front of a background of clouds.

How do I ex­press this? 

The thought comes word­less­ly to Bruno as he sits fac­ing the sky be­yond the boxy, util­i­tar­i­an cruise ship docked at Os­an­bashi Pier. The clouds have caught him again.

He shifts his gaze to the bay it­self as the mo­tion of a wa­ter taxi catch­es his eye. Far­ther out, a con­tain­er ship makes its way to­ward the open sea.

The Ju­ly sun is blaz­ing and mer­ci­less, but Shizu­ka found them two chairs un­der a canopy tent. They are seat­ed in the cor­ner of a Mex­i­co-themed arrange­ment of food stands, set be­tween two brick ware­hous­es built be­fore the First World War which now serve as a com­mer­cial com­plex. Tex-Mex fare and var­i­ous drinks are on offer. 

Bruno’s Dos Eq­uis Am­bar is get­ting tepid, so he drains it and thinks about what to get next, ig­nor­ing the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance caused by his slow­ly ex­pand­ing bel­ly and de­clin­ing liv­er function. 

Shizu­ka smiles at him, and he smiles back and re­mem­bers that he needs to stay sober enough to get her home safe­ly. In the twi­light be­tween youth and mid­dle age, she is six­teen years his ju­nior and less prone to hang­overs, though she can’t hold her booze well. He leans over and kiss­es her.

He gets up to buy an­oth­er Dos Eq­uis, then re­turns to his chair and looks again at the sky.

Up­on the hori­zon lay bil­low­ing clouds of white and grey, ex­pand­ing im­per­cep­ti­bly against the un­bro­ken blue ex­panse, mov­ing him in ways ar­cane and in­ex­press­ible by verse, sketch, or paint­ing. A beau­ty his soul holds cap­tive and yet longs for. 

“I wish I could paint it,” he says to her, eyes still fixed on the clouds.

“You could write it.” 

“Yeah, maybe.”

“You can.”

He takes a swig of beer and says, “OK. Thanks for find­ing these chairs.” 

Filed under Fiction on January 3rd, 2025

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