Category: Fiction

The clouds were rolling, as black as a moonless night. He might as well add this godforsaken day to the list. He knew how it would play out. If he ran late, he’d never catch up. Once again he glared at the banana truck. He could practically touch the brake lights, the truck slowing down at each bend, its overweight rear end waddling from side to side.

While Max played, Mrs. Davenport sat on the sofa in the living room with a book. With his back to her, Max couldn’t tell how closely she was paying attention, but he liked knowing she was there, a witness to his work. From the outset, it was the best he had ever played the Liebestraum, or anything else, and it was not just a single performance but a series of them.

In the years that followed, we did without domesticated fruits and veggies, stationery, good carbs, marijuana, cardboard packaging, kombucha, toothpicks, bad carbs, pulpy thickeners, essential oils, stevia, ugly carbs, and flat pack furniture.

We do not breathe. The woman does not breathe, either. The house murmurs, the heavy figure in the bedroom turning over in his sleep.

He’s a lion pacing behind bars. We watch him prowl and slither and lope through his cedar bedding. We squeeze him and risk bites. We spend our allowance on his Magic Dust^TM diet that looks like microbeads and smells like nail polish. Our devotion lasts a fiscal quarter.

Reason n./v. Weeks later I reason he isn’t worth losing my job or my friends or even the morning rituals that make me feel at home in my body. But his roots are under my skin.

Smooth and silent, the door closes behind me. The empty corridor; the sound softer and softer. Can I still hear it, or is it just a leftover in my ears?

All he’d been hearing was that Pittsburgh was the new Portland, the new Brooklyn; it was artsy, it was culinary, it was ripe because it was politically progressive and a hipster couple could still afford to buy property here. Byrne was unmoved.