by Andrew GENSKOW

“Kung Pao if you’re look­ing for men, teriya­ki for women. Sweet and sour if you swing both ways.” Phoebe is idling in front of her KitchenAid stand mix­er as it pum­mels fresh cook­ie dough in­to a creamy goo. “Not the lit­tle plas­tic hot sauce bot­tles,” she adds. “You’re look­ing for the big­ger glass bottles.”

She switch­es off the mix­er and scoops a dol­lop of dough in­to her mouth, swal­low­ing her fin­ger to its hilt. “Not that I’ve dab­bled, Tate would mur­der me,” she gar­bles, bat­ting her lash­es, in­dex fin­ger still lodged in her mouth. “Ish on­ly on Fri­day af­ter­noons, so shtart your en­gines ish you’re in­teresht­ed shweet­heart.” She sucks the rest of the dough off her fin­ger and buries her chin in her neck, leer­ing at me like she’s done some­thing naughty. “Not that I’m shay­ing you would be. God­b­lessh you and Trevor.” 

I sleep on it and wake up next morn­ing twist­ed in sheets, full of that same urge I’ve had for a long time now. Trevor is “get­ting in a quick nine holes with Tate,” Phoebe’s hus­band, which means he won’t stum­ble in un­til well af­ter dark, breath flam­ma­ble. I think about him beat­ing off on the couch in the dark liv­ing room, not as qui­et or con­trolled as he thinks he is. He al­ways does it left-hand­ed and I won­der if it’s be­cause his wed­ding ring is ribbed.

That af­ter­noon I find my­self cruis­ing Al­bert­sons, the child seat of my oth­er­wise emp­ty shop­ping cart tot­ing a sin­gle 14 oz. glass bot­tle of P.F. Chang’s Sweet & Sour Sauce, tipped over on its side so its la­bel is clear­ly vis­i­ble to passers­by. My Adam’s ap­ple feels like ce­ment in my throat as I wheel through “Frozen Foods,” then out in­to “Poul­try” where whole raw chick­ens lay sprawled out like wet su­per­mod­els, twist­ed in­to supine pos­es that would give Jim Per­due a tent­pole hardon. ‘84 coke-zenith El­ton bee­bops a zinger sound­track for shop­pers as I mo­sey along, try­ing to look both non­cha­lant and all-business.

I’ve nev­er been so in­tense­ly aware of the grand pan­tomime of a gro­cery store. Every­one is up to some­thing — heft­ing mel­ons to gauge ripeness, sniff­ing at big bun­dles of cilantro like brows­ing cows. At the Thanks­giv­ing gourds I pause and won­der for a brief mo­ment if I’ve found my­self on the ass-end of a joke, and maybe this isn’t even a thing peo­ple do, but then a cart swings in front of me and sud­den­ly I’m eye-lev­el with two rows of stained yel­low teeth, turned in­to a grin. There’s a stray men­thol tucked be­hind his ear and he’s breath­ing heavy. I clock a bot­tle of Teriya­ki sauce in his cart.

“Sor­ry,” I say, an­gling my cart away from him.

“Sweet and sour huh?” at the ex­hale of “huh” he leans in and I can smell gut­ter-cheap beer. His ex­posed stom­ach is ris­ing and falling, a whole ’nother ap­pendage with its own pulse.

“For a, uh, a watch par­ty lat­er,” I stut­ter, tak­ing a wide berth to avoid eye con­tact. I shuf­fle my cart past an over­flow­ing ta­ble of green ba­nanas and round in­to “House­hold Sup­plies,” feel­ing a lit­tle sor­ry but not sor­ry enough to turn back around. I wheel halfway down the aisle and stop in front of the fab­ric soft­en­er, run­ning my hands idly over the laven­der and pan­sy yel­low plas­tic bot­tles. A cart squeaks to a halt at the end of the aisle be­hind me and I can hear the la­bored breath­ing of my ill-fat­ed suit­or. He per­forms a grumpy lit­tle throat clear and when I don’t turn around I hear the cart roll away.

Some teenag­er is on the PA sys­tem, “Hey Rowan, can you come up here and, um, give me your keys?” The mi­cro­phone is still on and some­one is gig­gling. Clear on the oth­er side of the store I hear “YES CHEF!” fol­lowed by bound­ing footsteps.

I side-eye three carts pass­ing by me in quick suc­ces­sion: a har­ried blonde woman laden with all man­ner of mind-melt­ing snacks — chips, the whole Host­ess li­brary, hard can­dies shaped like dag­gers; an old­er man in Crocs with an emp­ty cart, whistling the hook to “Who Wears These Shoes?”; and a stun­ning, col­lege-aged girl in hoop ear­rings, glass bot­tle flag­ging me down on the child’s seat. Teriya­ki. Bingo!

I hiss a whis­per, “Hey. How do we do this?”

I bite my lip a lit­tle. She turns up hers, “Ew, get away from me,” then breaks in­to a long stride, trundling her cart down the aisle, around the cor­ner and out of sight.

Feel­ing sud­den­ly jilt­ed I retie my pony­tail and cor­rect my pos­ture. It’s def­i­nite­ly no big­gie. She was def­i­nite­ly just em­bar­rassed. I’m def­i­nite­ly not go­ing to show up on one of those tur­bo slop YouTube chan­nels, the ones that de­base hap­less strangers who do id­i­ot­ic things like stick their hands in­side Looney Tunes holes that say “FRƎƎ MONƎYS” and scream when they pull out a dil­do or a star­tled rodent.

I leave “House­hold Sup­plies” and wheel in­to the col­or-wheel shelves of condi­ments, not­ing the emp­ty “Taste of the East” sec­tion. Where this pack of sub­ur­ban smuthounds emerged from I do not know, but the P.  F. Chang’s rack is gut­ted and blow­ing dust bun­ny tum­ble­weed. I make my way down the aisle, past a hunched woman who looks too old to be in­volved. She has six P. F. Chang’s Beef & Broc­coli frozen din­ners, and I won­der if maybe this is part of some OT VI­II-lev­el menu I’m not even aware of yet, or maybe she just has a bunch of hun­gry grand­kids at home.

I scan the aisles: mus­tard, rel­ish, mayo. Olives. Are olives a condi­ment? I round the cor­ner and near­ly crash my cart in­to an on­com­ing shop­per. I look up and Trevor is pi­lot­ing the cart op­po­site, sport­ing the green golf po­lo and kha­ki shorts he was wear­ing this morn­ing when he left. It’s al­ready far too late to wipe what­ev­er stu­pe­fied ex­pres­sion is on my face off my face.

“I thought you were at home!” he says, loud enough to turn some heads.

“I am. I was.” I’m falling up­hill. “It’s Asian night. We need­ed sauce.” There is a long si­lence as the fridges hum over in “Frozen Foods.” I fi­nal­ly gulp the ce­ment ap­ple down my throat and say, “I thought you were golf­ing with Tate.” I look down in Trevor’s cart and see a bot­tle of sweet and sour sauce.

The teenagers are gig­gling on the PA again, “Rowan, some­body needs to use your keys one more time.”

Filed under Fiction on April 10th, 2026

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Care to Share?

by Kyle SUNDBY

This is dur­ing our last child­less va­ca­tion. Some might say, “So, your last va­ca­tion then?” I might re­ply “Ha,” or maybe “Fun­ny.” This is on our tenth and fi­nal night in Nicaragua. And this is at a mo­tel, close to the air­port, in Managua.

“What the fuck is go­ing on? What the fuck?” This is what I hear soon af­ter falling asleep. Soon af­ter that, I hear the beep that prompt­ed my husband’s in­ter­rog­a­tive burst. It is an in­ter­mit­tent beep, and if I thought about it, I would re­al­ize that it had been beep­ing for some time. I had been able to in­cor­po­rate it in­to my dreams, sig­nal­ing seam­less scene and sit­u­a­tion changes like a metronome. My hus­band failed to demon­strate any com­par­a­tive capability. 

The time be­tween beeps is al­most a minute. Our flight is in about eight hours. We have been mar­ried for just over a year. 

I sug­gest that my hus­band at­tempt to an­swer his own ques­tion con­cern­ing the fuck and what it is. The source of the beep is some­where out­side our win­dow over­look­ing the al­ley­way be­hind the mo­tel. That is where I rec­om­mend he be­gin his investigations.

In the spir­it of a part­ner and not a mi­cro­man­ag­er, I do not weigh in on his ap­proach to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I say noth­ing as he sham­bles out of bed. I of­fer no re­veal­ing ex­pres­sion as he opts to clam­ber out the win­dow in on­ly his last-day-of-va­ca­tion un­der­wear. I dis­play no re­ac­tion as he comes back through the win­dow mo­ments lat­er car­ry­ing a smoke de­tec­tor that con­tin­ues to beep. I hard­ly re­spond when he asks, “I don’t smell any smoke – do you?” I do not ask him to pro­vide an an­swer as to why a smoke de­tec­tor is in­stalled and ac­tive in an alleyway.

The beep­ing is much loud­er in the room. The de­tec­tor has a red blink­ing light cor­re­spond­ing to the beep that makes it some­how loud­er. It can­not be turned off. I do ask my hus­band what the next step of his plan in­cludes. His an­swer in­volves putting on shorts, grab­bing the room key­card, and tak­ing the smoke de­tec­tor to the mo­tel office.

I hear the beep three or so more times as he ex­its our room from the front door this time and makes his way to the of­fice a few doors down. For five or so min­utes every­thing is qui­et. Ten or so min­utes af­ter that I lat­er learned that he’d been ex­plain­ing the ex­is­tence of the smoke alarm in the al­ley, ra­tio­nal­iz­ing him­self hold­ing the alarm, and jus­ti­fy­ing his de­ci­sion to bring the alarm to the front desk. This had not oc­curred with­out frus­tra­tions, as my hus­band and the per­son man­ning the front desk spoke dis­sim­i­lar lan­guages and both were on­ly re­cent­ly fast asleep.

My husband’s re­turn does not in­clude the beep­ing noise but is near­ly as loud as his ear­li­er ex­it through the win­dow. There are the ap­proach­ing foot­steps of a man who is tired and want­i­ng to share it with the world. There is the re­peat­ing chirp-click-wig­gle-swear se­quence as he ma­nip­u­lates the key­card and door lock. There is the ex­pec­ta­tion but ab­sence of the beep, which leaves a buzzing kind of tone/vibe/atmosphere in its place. There is the small num­ber of words ex­changed be­tween us. But sleep comes and lasts for the re­main­ing four hours of the night.

We wake at some point dur­ing the process of wak­ing up, then tran­si­tion to the process of check­ing out. We drop the key­card at the of­fice, where the beep­ing con­tin­ues muf­fled from a desk draw­er. My hus­band ex­changes a look with the de­feat­ed front desk per­son. By the time we leave the of­fice, the ex­changed look has be­come a head nod. An un­der­stand­ing. Recog­ni­tion of a shared ex­pe­ri­ence be­tween two peo­ple, one of which is my hus­band and the oth­er of which is not me.

At the air­port, I go to the bath­room and stare in­to the mir­ror for more than a few min­utes. On the flight and con­nect­ing flights home, I re-watch down­loaded episodes of “The Of­fice” for more than a few hours. At home, I share a bed and last name with my child’s fa­ther for more than a few years. In all that time, I hear the beep or some­thing like it on more than one oc­ca­sion. For each, I lis­ten for the beep and the re­sponse to come un­til the re­sponse no longer does.

Filed under Fiction on March 13th, 2026

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Care to Share?

by R. K. WEST

Our ten-year-old saw video clips about snakes in Guam com­ing up through toi­lets, and now he would rather soil his pants than en­ter the bathroom.

We point out that Guam is two thou­sand miles away. He just says, “Snakes are everywhere.”

Of course, we im­me­di­ate­ly in­stall very strict parental con­trols on the home net­work, but once he leaves the house, we can­not shield him from god knows what else is out there, so we make him an ap­point­ment at the Youth Coun­sel­ing Cen­ter, and in the mean­time we have pro­vid­ed adult di­a­pers (size Small), the cost to be de­duct­ed from his allowance.

Just to see what we’re up against, I lo­cate the videos on­line and watch them all: nasty-look­ing ser­pents lung­ing at the cam­era; grainy, sub­ti­tled news clips show­ing huge snakes coiled in­side toi­let bowls and sinks or slith­er­ing across the floor; in­co­her­ent hos­pi­tal in­ter­views with victims.

It’s ridicu­lous, ex­ag­ger­at­ed sen­sa­tion­al­ism, ma­li­cious­ly de­signed to spread fear, and I scoff.

Lat­er, I find my­self stand­ing out­side the bath­room, un­will­ing to open the door.

Filed under Fiction on February 13th, 2026

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