by David LARSEN

The man fell to his knees on the car­pet­ed floor in his bed­room. For what seemed like the umpteenth time in less than two months he’d turned his an­kle and twist­ed his back, the same an­kle and spine he’d in­jured four nights ago in the very same room. And all be­cause he was up to no good, as his moth­er used to chide him, sev­en­ty years ago.

Sam, a man of pre­dictable, se­date habits, had re­cent­ly be­come fix­at­ed on his neigh­bor. Every night, once Mil­dred, Sam’s wife of fifty-five years, dozed off in front of the TV, Sam sneaked in­to their bed­room, turned out the lights, opened the blinds, just enough, climbed up on­to a rick­ety wood­en chair that al­lowed him to peer over the red­wood fence be­tween his house and the house next door and wait­ed to spy on the new res­i­dent, a young school­teacher, thin, painful­ly plain-look­ing, rather stu­dious in her thick-framed glass­es, a woman who, for some rea­son, un­dressed with her cur­tains open. In­tense­ly cu­ri­ous, if not gain­ful­ly aroused (he was get­ting along in years), Sam piv­ot­ed from his perch when the woman turned abrupt­ly and stared at her un­shield­ed win­dow. Sam tum­bled like a strick­en sen­try. The show was over and he was a ca­su­al­ty… not ex­act­ly of lust, but of a long­ing for some­thing he felt he had missed out on. And he might be in more trou­ble than he could imagine.

Once again, he’d suc­ceed­ed in tweak­ing every nerve in his al­ready-tor­tur­ous back, and, on top of that, he’d man­aged to thump his nog­gin against the head­board of the bed, the stan­dard-sized, creaky old four-poster he had shared with Mil­dred for more than fifty years. He was lucky not to have im­paled him­self. Was be­ing a peep­ing Tom worth it, a racked-up hip, a jived-up back that felt like some­one had thrown a switch al­low­ing the elec­tric­i­ty to jolt through it like a surge through a con­demned man whose stay of ex­e­cu­tion had got­ten lost in the mail? Ap­par­ent­ly, it was worth it. He’d been at this, dili­gent­ly, night af­ter night, for near­ly two months.

Sam’s bed­room win­dow, ad­ja­cent to his neighbor’s gauze-cur­tained win­dow with the flim­sy ma­te­r­i­al pulled back — invit­ing­ly, thought Sam — of­fered the ide­al van­tage to en­joy her am­a­teur bur­lesque show, ex­pos­ing her­self, not com­plete­ly, but sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly, good enough for cu­ri­ous Sam, though prob­a­bly not ad­e­quate for a true, hard­core voyeur. Sam was a man still in­ter­est­ed in such mat­ters, pruri­ent and tit­il­lat­ing. Most men would want more, but Sam, a re­tired ac­coun­tant, a dea­con at the Dis­ci­ples Church, a Shriner, wasn’t one to ask for more than what was of­fered; he was a man of mild ex­pec­ta­tions; he set­tled for what was offered.

His wife would sure­ly ask him in the morn­ing, on their mile-and-a-half walk through the bu­col­ic sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood of hand­some­ly-groomed homes, well-man­i­cured lawns, all main­tained by their neigh­bors of more-than-mod­est means, why he limped. Hadn’t his leg re­cov­ered from his mys­te­ri­ous mishap of on­ly a few days ear­li­er? Again, Sam would blame the dog, Max. Would Mil­dred be­lieve, that on more than a hand­ful of oc­ca­sions in less than a few months, her hus­band was so clum­sy that he tripped over the schnau­zer when he took the dog out to re­lieve him­self be­fore she and Sam turned in for the night af­ter Jim­my Kimmel’s mono­logue? He could on­ly hope so.

Sam nev­er claimed to be the most cre­ative guy in the world when it came to ly­ing to his wife, or any­one else for that mat­ter. He’d nev­er been a good liar. The dog was the best he could come up with. Luck­i­ly, Mil­dred, gullible and won­der­ful­ly naïve, wouldn’t press for more than he of­fered; she trust­ed her sev­en­ty-eight-year-old hus­band. And the dog could be a re­al nuisance.

“The woman next door wants to come over and talk with us,” said Mil­dred as she poured her hus­band his first cup of morn­ing cof­fee. “She sound­ed rather se­vere on the phone.” Each morn­ing, be­fore their walk, Mil­dred but­tered Sam’s two pieces of wheat toast and pulled the box of his fa­vorite ce­re­al from the cup­board above the stove. His break­fast was al­ways the same, a bowl of Chee­rios with a sliced ba­nana, two pieces of toast and cof­fee, black. “I told her to come around ten, that we’d be back from our walk by then. Her name’s Su­san or Sharon. I think that’s what she told me.” She hummed, as she al­ways did when she put­tered around the kitchen, or if she was ner­vous. And when wasn’t Mil­dred ner­vous? If Mil­dred wasn’t prat­tling on and on about one thing or an­oth­er, an an­noy­ing habit, she was hum­ming. She was of the jit­tery sort by na­ture. “I’ll of­fer her cof­fee, but I won’t bake any­thing. She sound­ed a bit of­fi­cious on the phone. I think she’s like the rest of them these days. She prefers tex­ting.” Mil­dred sighed. “But as you know, I don’t text. I won’t do it. If they have some­thing to say, they can call me or just show up at the door, for cry­ing out loud. Who do they think we are, the Jetsons?”

Re­turned from his brisk walk with Mil­dred and, of course, Max, Sam sat anx­ious­ly at the din­ing room ta­ble. He pre­tend­ed to read the morn­ing pa­per while he tapped his foot like Gene Kru­pa, his right foot, the kick-drum foot; the left foot ached some­thing aw­ful, along with his an­kle. Luck­i­ly, Mil­dred hadn’t com­ment­ed on his hob­ble. The neigh­bor was in the kitchen lis­ten­ing to Mil­dred chat­ter away about the change in the trash col­lec­tion days. In a mat­ter of min­utes, they’d both bring their cof­fee in­to the din­ing room. Sam pre­pared him­self for the worst; he was about to face the mu­sic and there was noth­ing he could do about it.

For the first few min­utes the con­ver­sa­tion was light: how cool the nights were, but the days were warm for this late in au­tumn. Yes, the weath­er was ex­cep­tion­al­ly pleasant.

Then: “I hate to be a com­plain­er,” said the neigh­bor, Su­san or Sharon, “but there’s some­thing oc­cur­ring every evening that just has to stop.” The thin-faced, young woman glared at Sam. Across the ta­ble from him, ful­ly clothed, she was more at­trac­tive than she was un­dressed late at night.

Sam ceased tap­ping his fin­gers. The jig was up. He’d soon find him­self on the sex of­fend­ers list or even in the slam­mer. Sex of­fend­ers don’t do well in prison. He’d read that some­where. He’d be shunned at church, per­haps al­so at Pier­point Bowl­ing Lanes where he went every Tues­day for the Se­niors League. His team, The Hip­sters (a name Sam de­test­ed) would scratch him from the ros­ter. Even a bowl­ing al­ley was no place for a deviant.

“Tell us what it is,” said Mil­dred, earnest­ly. She tend­ed to fret. Over every­thing. Even her gro­cery list and smar­ty-pants con­tes­tants on Jeop­ardy. “We’ll do what­ev­er we can to make things right. If we can. Won’t we Sam?”

Sam nod­ded. Even if they had to move out of the neigh­bor­hood, they’d make things right. But would Mil­dred move with him? Or would she turn her back on her ban­ished hus­band? And could they af­ford a di­vorce on their fixed in­comes, her schoolteacher’s re­tire­ment, and his mod­est funds?

“Well, Mrs. Smith,” the young woman said slow­ly. “I think your hus­band al­ready knows ex­act­ly what I’m re­fer­ring to.” She paused. She looked di­rect­ly in­to Sam’s eyes. “Do you want to tell your wife what’s been go­ing on, or should I?”

Sam shook his head. He bit at his trem­bling low­er lip.

“What have you done?” asked Mildred.

Sam looked down at his hands, locked in­to a knot in his lap. He cleared his throat but couldn’t ut­ter so much as a sound. Tongue tied, as his moth­er used to say. Cat got your tongue?

Fi­nal­ly, the woman spoke. “It’s dis­gust­ing, Mrs. Smith.” She sighed. “I hate to even bring it up, but it’s got to stop.” Her eyes shift­ed from Mil­dred to Sam, then back to poor Mil­dred. “Every night, late at night, around eleven o’clock, your hus­band takes your dog out to do his busi­ness.” She huffed. “And the dog seems in­tent on lift­ing his leg on the pyra­can­thas that line against the side of my house.” She gri­maced. “He’ll kill them if he keeps do­ing it. And you,” she said di­rect­ly to Sam, “don’t seem to care. You just let him pee wher­ev­er he pleases.”

Mil­dred gri­maced and the neigh­bor fold­ed her arms across her chest, the small­ish breasts Sam had caught glimpses of over the past eight weeks.

His wife took a deep breath. Fi­nal­ly, she asked, “Why don’t you take Max in­to the back yard at night? Or down the street to the park?”

Sam shrugged. His se­nior-cit­i­zen brain wasn’t pro­cess­ing as ef­fi­cient­ly as it should. “Max prefers the front yard… and the side of the house,” he said with a timid grin. “From now on, I’ll let Max go out in­to the back yard.”

Both women stared blankly at him, the on­ly two women he’d ever seen un­dressed, oth­er than a few in the more mod­ern movies he and Mil­dred had seen together.

“Sam,” said Mil­dred. “You might at least apologize.”

“I am sor­ry.” Sam gulped. “I guess I’ve just been lazy.”

“No harm done,” said the young woman brusque­ly. “I just thought we need­ed to get this settled.”

Si­lence.

Mil­dred, nev­er one to tol­er­ate awk­ward breaks in any con­ver­sa­tion, said, “Let me run in­to the kitchen and heat up some cin­na­mon rolls. They’re the kind you get on the re­frig­er­at­ed shelves at Kroger’s. You know, the kind you bang against the counter to get the tube to ex­plode. That’s how you get them to open. You hit the pack­age. The tube pops, and out comes the dough.”

“That would be nice,” said the neighbor.

“It’ll just take me ten min­utes.” Mil­dred gave Sam an all-too-fa­mil­iar look of dis­gust and left the two strangers alone at the ma­hogany table.

Sam tapped his fin­gers light­ly on the table­top and looked out the win­dow. Out to­ward the woman’s shin­gled house. Her trim need­ed paint. He could feel the schoolteacher’s eyes bor­ing a hole in­to the side of his head. Each breath she took seemed in­sis­tent. Out of the cor­ner of his eye he could see her, not quite as plain­ly as he could feel her pres­ence, but she was there: the grand in­quisi­tor of the sub­urbs. He knew, all too well, that he wasn’t off the hook. He was dan­gling help­less­ly and she was en­joy­ing every mo­ment of his anguish.

In the kitchen Mil­dred hummed a hymn Sam thought he rec­og­nized but didn’t much care for. She slammed the door on the oven, too loud­ly, as she al­ways did; not an­gri­ly; she was sim­ply worked up and fretting.

Sam burned the roof of his mouth on the thick frost­ing on his cin­na­mon roll. On­ly a hint of the flames of hell, he thought. His wife and the neigh­bor dis­cussed the prob­lems with schools to­day, in par­tic­u­lar, how an in­cor­ri­gi­ble child is best handled. 

Filed under Fiction on January 19th, 2024

—

Care to Share?

by Mark JACOBS

“Does your moth­er know what you do for a living?”

Gi­na had been out last night. She and Pi­geon danced their brains out at Sur­face 21, which meant hours of what Pi­geon called mar­ti­ni in­fu­sions. At work, Gina’s brain and body were shaky. So she wasn’t sure she heard the ques­tion right and blew past it, stay­ing on script.

Script 2B, in­tend­ed for the ones you kept on the line but were not quite co­op­er­at­ing, or not yet co­op­er­at­ing. Some of her work-mates kept print-outs of the scripts thumb-tacked to the walls of their cu­bi­cles. Gi­na didn’t need any prim­ing. She knew them all by heart, which now that she thought about it was a strange way of putting it. Heart did not come in­to the work.

“Mr. Dixon, as a mem­ber in ex­cel­lent stand­ing of our Pre­ferred As­so­ciates Club, I know how you val­ue your time, and I want you to know that we val­ue it, too.”

She stopped for breath, and to fo­cus. That was mar­ti­ni blow­back. No big­gie, it was al­ways like this. Some­thing had been tak­en out of her. It would come back.

God damn it, she missed what the old fart said. The shoes the shoes the amaz­ing blue Per­ru­gios on sale for fifty per­cent off if she ap­plied for their cred­it card. Those shoes were tap danc­ing on the screen of her phone, which peeked at her dis­creet­ly from her purse, left open for mo­ments like this one when she ab­solute­ly had to think about some­thing that wasn’t the script.

She did not need an­oth­er cred­it card. An­oth­er cred­it card would be an­oth­er mis­take, it was that simple.

Pi­geon was a cool name for a per­son who didn’t know who she want­ed to be, or what. Left all kinds of doors open, which al­so was cool. Pi­geon was hot.

“Old school,” the man was saying.

Am­brose Dixon was 66 years of age, ac­cord­ing to the tar­get pro­file da­ta Gi­na was us­ing. He had paid off his mort­gage. What the fuck kind of name was Ambrose?

“It’s on­ly be­cause I’m old school that I’m not hang­ing up on you, Miss — is it Miss or Ms. Peruggio?”

Nah, he didn’t re­al­ly say Pe­rug­gio, that was her mar­ti­ni-in­fused brain.

“Gi­na In­fan­ti­no. I’m not married.”

You weren’t sup­posed to give up per­son­al stuff like that, but she had learned that some­times it was use­ful in es­tab­lish­ing trust, and Bill wasn’t go­ing to ar­gue with re­sults. Not to say that her su­per­vi­sor wasn’t an ass­hole be­cause he was.

A thought crossed Gina’s mind. Dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry, that. The thought was a ques­tion: was she still drunk? No. Maybe. Sort of. It didn’t matter.

All around her, in neigh­bor­ing cu­bi­cles, men and women with mediocre cred­it rat­ings were say­ing ex­act­ly the things they were sup­posed to say, in the or­der they were sup­posed to say them. Stay­ing on script, it was called. Some­day, it would be re­al­ly nice not to have to work in a cube farm.

Back to the script.

“I’m sure you and Mrs. Dixon would love our An­chors Aweigh get­away pack­age. It’s customizable.”

“Mrs. Dixon is de­ceased. We lost Mar­jorie three years ago.”

Gi­na scrib­bled a note. They were sup­posed to up­date the tar­get data­base if they turned up mis­takes, or new in­for­ma­tion, as long as what they learned fit one of the fields. Gi­na knew those fields re­al­ly well, every last one of them.

“I’m sor­ry for your loss, Mr. Dixon.”

In a way, she was. Specif­i­cal­ly what way, she was un­able to say. Not now, when her sen­tences kept scrambling.

She plunged.

“I bet you haven’t tak­en a va­ca­tion once in those three years.”

Si­lence on the line then, but he did not hang up.

“We have a get­away pack­age de­signed for ma­ture in­di­vid­u­als,” she said care­ful­ly. “It’s for peo­ple who share sim­i­lar life ex­pe­ri­ence, and a sim­i­lar lifestyle.”

“You mean sin­gles with a cer­tain in­come level.”

“Well, yes, I guess I do.”

“I’m not a sin­gle, I’m a wid­ow­er. Lis­ten, Ms. In­fan­ti­no, I’m go­ing to hang up now.”

“Wait.”

Wait? That wasn’t in the script. Blame Sur­face 21, or the mar­ti­nis. Not Pi­geon. Noth­ing go­ing on in Gi­na was Pigeon’s fault.

Dixon said, “I un­der­stand that your com­pa­ny gives you a script, and you have to fol­low it. That’s how all of this works.”

It’s not my com­pa­ny, is what Gi­na thought, I’m mere­ly one of their flesh-bots. What she said was, “The rea­son for the script is to make sure we cov­er all the nec­es­sary information.”

“No, it’s not.”

“What do you mean?”

“The rea­son for the script is mar­ket re­search. It’s what you peo­ple think will be ef­fec­tive. Just out of cu­rios­i­ty, where do you work?”

“We op­er­ate out of Cincin­nati. Why?”

“I spent a long week­end there once. This was years ago. I re­mem­ber it snowed hard, and I got lost down­town. They record all your calls, don’t they?”

“For train­ing pur­pos­es, and for qual­i­ty control.”

Al­so, she did not add, just in case Bill felt like mess­ing with her. Mess­ing with her was his idea of a great day at the office.

The kick­er was, Gi­na was good at her job. Damn good. Some­times man­age­ment used her calls to train new hires. Lis­ten up, peo­ple. This is how it’s done. She was a top-tier performer. 

Speak­ing of per­for­mance, here was an­oth­er ques­tion: how come she could not bring down what she owed on the plas­tic be­low $14,000? Shoes were not the whole an­swer, they couldn’t be.

“If anybody’s lis­ten­ing,” said Am­brose Dixon, “I want them to know that peo­ple like me — I be­lieve there are lots of us around the coun­try — are turned off when some­one reads from a script over the tele­phone. If they want us to buy their va­ca­tion trips, they might con­sid­er al­low­ing the em­ploy­ees to have a reg­u­lar hu­man conversation.”

Was he dar­ing her? Nah. He was just be­ing him­self, an old guy who’d lost his wife and owned his home free and clear. No cred­it card debt for Mr. Am­brose Dixon, that was for sure.

“What did you say about my mother?”

“I’m sor­ry?”

“Be­fore. When we first start­ed talk­ing. You said some­thing about my mother.”

“Does she know what you do for a living?”

Now was the time to get back on script.

“I’d like to send you some lit­er­a­ture in the mail,” she told Dixon. “I think you’ll find it in­ter­est­ing, and hope­ful­ly a lit­tle ex­cit­ing, too. Let me just be sure we have your cor­rect address.”

She read the ad­dress that was on her screen.

Am­brose. The name was grow­ing on her.

“Shake­speare? Charles Dickens?”

“Sor­ry?”

“You said you were send­ing me literature.”

She def­i­nite­ly had a headache. It was def­i­nite­ly not go­ing away. She felt an in­tense long­ing to be some­body else, in an­oth­er place. We could die in Cincin­nati, that was one thing she re­mem­bered Pi­geon say­ing last night.

There was some­thing about the si­lence on the line when Am­brose stopped talk­ing. Mys­te­ri­ous was the word that came to Gi­na, but she was not en­tire­ly sure what she meant by it.

It was time to end the call. No­body who knew this job would es­ti­mate the chances of sell­ing Am­brose any of their prod­ucts above three per­cent. That was what top-tier per­form­ers learned ear­ly on. If the cus­tomer wasn’t buy­ing, you weren’t sell­ing. Move on. Every minute you spent not sell­ing was a minute robbed from your next prospect, who might be gold­en. Be­sides, if Bill hap­pened to be lis­ten­ing in — he did that fair­ly of­ten, some­times just for grins — he would be sali­vat­ing at the chance to rip her a new one.

It was not like she planned to stay with the com­pa­ny for­ev­er. The day she paid off her cred­it card debt she was out of there.

Fuck it.

“My moth­er thinks I do graph­ic design.”

“Of course,” said Ambrose.

It was not an in­sult. There was a hint of sym­pa­thy in the words. Not too much, not too little.

“No­body knows what I do for a liv­ing,” she ad­mit­ted to him. “Not my fam­i­ly, not even my friends.”

Pi­geon knew, of course, but what was the point of blurt­ing that out? Any­way Pi­geon had her own strange gig. She gave Brazil­ian wax jobs to rich ladies at a su­per ex­pen­sive spa. She be­lieved her­self to be an artist, and who was Gi­na to say she wasn’t? If women had had their pussies shaved back in the day, in the Old World, maybe Michelan­ge­lo would have been in­to it.

“I think we ought to hang up now,” said Ambrose.

“Why?”

“If they’re tap­ing this con­ver­sa­tion, it’s not go­ing to do you any good, is it?”

No.”

He was gone. Why in the world that would bring tears to her eyes, she had no frig­ging clue.

Be­cause he was the su­per­vi­sor, Bill had an of­fice with a door he could close and open and then close again to suit his man­age­r­i­al pur­pos­es. He had this thing he did, ex­act­ly like what you saw on cop shows, where the cap­tain stepped out in­to a room bustling with de­tec­tives and uni­formed po­lice­men and sketchy crim­i­nals, called somebody’s name in a hard voice, and then, “My of­fice. Now.”

Gina’s cu­bi­cle faced away from Bill’s of­fice — a mixed bless­ing — but when Am­brose hung up some­how she knew her su­per­vi­sor was open­ing his door, he was stand­ing in the thresh­old, he was open­ing his mouth to say it.

“In­fan­ti­no. My of­fice. Now.”

“Be there in a ‘sec,” she called back.

First, a quick text to Pi­geon. Promise me we won’t die in Cincin­nati. Then she wrote a few quick sen­tences on a piece of note pa­per. It was not re­al­ly a script, but it would work like one when she had her con­ver­sa­tion with Bill. When that was over, how­ev­er it came out, she was or­der­ing the blue Peruggios.

Filed under Fiction on January 5th, 2024

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Care to Share?

by Robert WEXELBLATT

“Your great-grand­fa­ther was a tram dri­ver. Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, he stayed on the rails, but at home he went off them once a month. This was down to his home­made slivovitz, which, for your in­for­ma­tion, is an in­fer­nal brandy made by fer­ment­ing plums.”

Ten-year-old Stephen rolled his eyes at his broth­er Will, who shook his head. Al­ways the same joke about the rails, al­ways the hell­ish slivovitz. Still in their pa­ja­mas, they were seat­ed on the sag­ging couch in their grandfather’s liv­ing room on the morn­ing of De­cem­ber 27. The lights on the tree were off; the room was chilly and full of shad­ows. At twelve, Will un­der­stood that the old man felt some com­pul­sion to tell them the sto­ry of his life. He was will­ing to sit through it be­cause he knew that his moth­er, for whom he would do any­thing, wor­ried about her fa­ther. It was af­ter their grandmother’s death that she in­sist­ed they spend two days of Christ­mas week in their grandfather’s drafty Vic­to­ri­an house. The boys went, Stephen sto­ical­ly, Will un­der protest. Both would have pre­ferred to be at home with their own beds, bath­room, presents, and friends. 

By now, lis­ten­ing to their Djed’s sto­ry was a sea­son­al rit­u­al, like pro­duc­tions of The Nut­crack­er and A Christ­mas Car­ol. This was their third year. The old man was set­tled in his re­clin­er with a mug of tea with hon­ey. The boys sat still on the couch, do­ing their du­ty while their par­ents were up­stairs sleep­ing — or pre­tend­ing to.

“The al­co­hol made Otac crazy an­gry. Ma­j­ka in­sist­ed that he was on­ly blow­ing off steam, let­ting out all his dis­sat­is­fac­tions and dis­ap­point­ments, the bad mem­o­ries from the war. He was usu­al­ly a gen­tle man, my Otac. It was on­ly when things went bad­ly that he got in­to the slivovitz. Some­thing went bad­ly every month. But it wasn’t so bad be­cause by the time he came af­ter us, the brandy spoiled his aim and his bal­ance and, any­way, he soon passed out. All the same, I promised my­self nev­er to dri­ve a tram or drink fer­ment­ed plums. You un­der­stand? I was am­bi­tious for an­oth­er life, boys, a bet­ter one. I stud­ied hard, as I ex­pect you two do. I won a schol­ar­ship to the uni­ver­si­ty. Za­greb Uni­ver­si­ty was found­ed in 1699, long be­fore the Unit­ed States, a fine old school, the top one in the coun­try. As I’d al­ways been in­ter­est­ed in how things worked, es­pe­cial­ly ra­dios, I de­cid­ed to study elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing. It was a new field back then and for that very rea­son a smart choice.”

The old man cleared his throat and sipped the tea that had gone cold, like the house.

“When the war start­ed, I was in my last year, on­ly months from my de­gree. But my par­ents said I should get out of Croa­t­ia or I’d be draft­ed. ‘War is ter­ri­ble. Come back when it’s over,’ said Otac. ‘Yes. Go to Amer­i­ca,” Ma­j­ka said brave­ly, try­ing to hide her sad­ness. ‘I have a cousin there,’ she said. ‘First name Petar, last name Hor­vat. He lives in a town called River­ton in some place called Ten­nessee. You find him, he’ll help,’ she said, then burst in­to tears. I pray you nev­er see your moth­er weep as mine did.

“I had lit­tle mon­ey when I land­ed in New York and my Eng­lish wasn’t good, though my pass­port was. A man in a uni­form looked at it then hard at me, and said “Wel­come.” I was so ner­vous and such a green­horn, I thought be­cause he wore that uni­form he could tell me how to get to River­ton. So, I asked. He made me re­peat my ques­tion three times. My pro­nun­ci­a­tion wasn’t per­fect, the way it is now. He laughed and said, ‘Oh, Riv­erside.’ Then he point­ed down the con­course to­ward a long desk with a crowd of peo­ple around it. It was the airport’s tourist bu­reau. I picked up my card­board old-world suit­case and took my place at the end of a line of mid­dle-aged trav­el­ers with lug­gage that had wheels, ex­as­per­at­ed par­ents wran­gling whin­ing chil­dren, and ex­cit­ed peo­ple my own age in blue jeans with enor­mous backpacks. 

“The longer I wait­ed in that line the more con­fused I be­came and the more anx­ious. My head filled up with doubts and ques­tions. Was it Riv­erton or Riv­erside I was to go to? Amer­i­ca is so much big­ger than Croa­t­ia. The air­port it­self stretched out in every di­rec­tion and seemed to me as vast as all of Za­greb. Would I be able to find the cousin who knew noth­ing of me? And even if I found my way to Petar Hor­vat, would he wel­come me? He could have changed his name or moved else­where. In my ner­vous­ness I com­plete­ly for­got about Ten­nessee. Your grand­fa­ther was a re­al mess that day, boys.”

Stephen turned to­ward his broth­er and gig­gled. Will smiled at his broth­er and held a fin­ger to his lips.

“When it was fi­nal­ly my turn, I asked the woman be­hind the counter how I could get to River­ton, then I said, no, to Riv­erside. She was im­pa­tient. ‘Which is it?’ she de­mand­ed. Re­mem­ber­ing the man who checked my pass­port, I said it was River­side. She made me say it again, slow­ly. ‘Which River­side?’ she asked. I was shak­en. ‘There’s more than one?’ Boys, do you know that forty-six states have a River­side in them? It’s the most com­mon name for a town in the whole of Amer­i­ca. As I’d for­got­ten all about Ten­nessee and had to say some­thing, I asked what the biggest River­side was. The woman tapped her busy col­league on the shoul­der, whis­pered in his ear, got a re­ply, turned back to me and said, ‘The one in Cal­i­for­nia.’ And so, I spent al­most the last of my mon­ey on a bus tick­et to River­side, Cal­i­for­nia. It took days and days. Amer­i­ca, I thought, it’s al­most all high­way. Every­body wants to be some­where else.”

By now, Stephen was squirm­ing and Will couldn’t re­sist the urge to move things along.

“When did you hear about the tor­na­do, Grandpa?”

The old man frowned. “That was the year af­ter I got my job.”

“And it re­al­ly de­stroyed all of River­ton, the one in Tennessee?”

“If I’d had bet­ter pro­nun­ci­a­tion and a clear­er mem­o­ry, I might have been there, among the dead.”

“So River­side was the wrong place but turned out to be the right one?”

“Yes. Bourns had set up its head­quar­ters here. They hired me be­cause busi­ness was tak­ing off and they were des­per­ate for elec­tri­cal en­gi­neers, even one with poor Eng­lish and no degree.” 

“And your boss’s sec­re­tary was Grand­ma?” Stephen chimed in.

“And you in­vent­ed two new trans­form­ers. Big sell­ers. And they pro­mot­ed you.”

“Then you and Grand­ma got mar­ried and had Mommy.”

“And Mom met Dad and they had us.”

“And here we all are!” shout­ed Stephen, jump­ing off the couch.

Hun­gry for break­fast, Will al­so got to his feet. “Just think. What if you’d re­mem­bered River­ton and Tennessee!”

Peev­ed that the boys pre-empt­ed his sto­ry, the old refugee raised a fin­ger spoke sternly.

“There’s a les­son for you. In this world things hap­pen in three ways.”

“What are they?” asked Will, try­ing to sound in­ter­est­ed as he yanked his ex­as­per­at­ed broth­er back to­ward the couch.

“Some things hap­pen by choice — like your moth­er. Some hap­pen by ne­ces­si­ty — like leav­ing Croa­t­ia. But most things hap­pen by chance.”

“Chance?”

“Yes. In fact, you could say that my ca­reer, my mar­ry­ing Grand­ma, your moth­er get­ting born, her mar­ry­ing your fa­ther, and the both of you all come from a mix-up. But no­body likes hear­ing that. They want their lives to be mean­ing­ful, the re­sult of their choic­es. So they call chance fate.” Here the old man point­ed at the light­less tree. “Or, if they’re re­li­gious, they call it God’s plan. So, be humble.”

“Yes, Grand­pa.”

“Be hum­ble and hope to be lucky like me.” 

“Can we have break­fast now?” Stephen begged.

“Just one more thing — don’t in­ter­rupt your elders.”

Filed under Fiction on December 22nd, 2023

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