Category: Fiction

fiction by Jason Edwards

Jeremy Banjo and his brother Emeril standing back to back, in a field, wind softly blowing. Each armed with a Sig Sauer P210 loaded with only one bullet, hardened brass and steel core, one of those so-called “cop killers.” They start to take their paces. Jeremy doesn’t know it, but Emeril’s been practicing. His goal is to fire at exactly the same time as Jeremy, and hit Jeremy’s bullet with his own. He doesn’t want to kill his brother, but he certainly doesn’t want to be killed either. No, not at all. He’s in his late forties, he’s shorter than his brother, he’s certainly heavier, but he has that wonderful bushy mustache, and he’s well respected down at the firm, he still had his half of the trust in his nest egg, why would he want to die? Just because he’s been cuckolded? No, which is to say yes, there was shame in being cuckolded, surely, but not so much that a man needs to die. Not even his brother, the cuckolder, or whatever you call them.

A simple note, five words, “I slept with your wife, asshole.” Six words, actually, but Emeril’s not counting that last word, that emotional word. Or maybe he is. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how something as subtle as grammar can have such huge effect, or everlasting effect as it were, or deep ramifications, to belabor the point. Emeril takes his steps, barely keeping count, nearly lost in thought, thoughts he’d had all the while. If the note had read, “I am sleeping with your wife,” Emeril would never have agreed to the duel. He’s no coward, obviously, just ask anyone down at the firm when the CEO is walking around pointing out things that are inefficient while Emeril matches him stride for stride, justifying. No, if Jeremy had claimed to be actively sleeping with Emeril’s wife, there would have been divorce proceedings on both sides, custody battles, perhaps a drunken attempt at revenge sex with Jeremy’s wife herself, no looker, but then Emeril never did like the skinny type.

Which confuses him because of course Jeremy does go for the skinny type and Emeril’s wife is assuredly not that, no not at all. Which was probably why he wouldn’t claim to be actively sleeping with her, just that he slept with her the one time. And even there, a confession like that, blurted out on a single piece of paper, typed out and with Jeremy’s sloppy signature beneath, that might have been dealt with using the usual anger and perhaps a drunken binge of sorts and some kind of public humiliation.

But poor Jeremy, adding that last word, that “asshole,” he was clearly ashamed of himself, knew he had done wrong, was disguising his self-hatred in bravado and insults, and so the duel was very much in order. Still, Emeril had no intention of killing his younger brother, no, he’ll shoot his bullet right when Jeremy does, the two bullets will hit one another, will ricochet to heaven knows where, hopefully some tree, and in the rush of fear Jeremy will see what a fool he was to seek death for something as petty as adultery. Or double adultery, as it were.

Afterall, they are brothers, had known each other all of Jeremy’s life, and their wives were, what, recent additions, only around for half of that time? When this is all over, of course, Emeril will take the matter up with his betrothed, talk to her in a stern voice, and show her a little of what the CEO gets when he comes stomping through the firm’s corridors, oh yes she would!

The duel arranger, a tired old man, looks on, seemingly impassive.

Three steps now, two, one. Turn. There he is, the short fat little fuck. The squat little motherfucker. Because that’s what he is, his older brother, a real motherfucker. He fucked his wife! The mother of his children! Nevermind that he hated his wife, hated his children. Hated them. Hated his brother, always had, since he was born, Jeremy doesn’t remember being born, doesn’t remember much of his childhood, doesn’t remember much of anything except maybe high school when he was the shit and he had more sex than was probably legally allowed for regular people. But if he ever went to a psychic, and if they weren’t all bullshit, and she hypnotized him and regressed him to his birth, he’s pretty sure he’d come out screaming and see that fat little fuck with his propeller beanie and his bow tie and his lollipop and think to his one-minute-old self “that’s my older brother? Fuck me!”

Which wasn’t the point, even though it sort of was, Jeremy is secretly glad to have this chance to shoot this stupid motherfucker and kill him and be justified in it. He lifts the gun and points, a scowling smile on his face.

Which makes him so angry, so incredibly angry that this little cuntlicker is giving him exactly what he’d always wanted. Jeremy hates that, hates how Emeril is always there for him, protecting him, taking care of him, bailing him out of jail and getting him jobs and talking the lawyers into advancing Jeremy’s portion of the trust when bills are due and his harpy of a wife was harping about some harpish thing or another. Skinny broad. Not that Emeril’s wife is any better. Yeah, if Jeremy had to choose, he’d choose the skinny one over the fat one too. So it makes sense that Emeril had fucked her.

And so what, he hated the bitch, let them have each other, there were plenty of young things fresh out of high school who recognized his picture next to the trophies in the trophy case. But the audacity! Sending him a note! “I must confess, dear brother, I had unnatural relations with your wife. I expect you’ll demand satisfaction. Pistols at dawn?” And signed with that effeminate scrawl. Twenty words, one for every year he’d been married to the whore. And so, yes, Jeremy is looking forward to this, looking forward to killing this little faggot for having “unnatural relations” with his wife, the mother of his children! What the hell were “unnatural relations” anyway? Did he put it in her ass or something?

The duel arranger allows himself a very small entirely imperceptible grin.

Emeril’s hand isn’t shaking, its steady as a rock, he’s sighted the barrel of the Sig Sauer P210 “Legend” perfectly inline with Jeremy’s, finger resting on the trigger, pressure there, not much, just enough. Jeremy squeezing his gun as tight as he can, his palm and thumb three fingers but his index finger won’t move. Why won’t it move? Emeril is waiting. He needs to see Jeremy pull the trigger. The bullets fly so fast, he has to time it just right. The guns are heavy. Their arms are getting. Has it been ten minutes, standing there, 47 years, or three seconds?

The duel arranger presses a button, and both guns go off. The Banjos drop. Clean shots. The duel arranger walks over to Jeremy, confirms he’s dead, walks over to Emeril. He was worried Jeremy would miss. Hard to do at this range with a Sig Sauer P210, but still.

The duel arranger retrieves the guns, wipes them down, puts them back in the box. He’ll clean them later. He calls the coroner. Walks over to his car, has a cigarette. He has more letters to write. The dueling business isn’t what it was, but it’s getting better. The Banjos come from a very large, very rich, very stupid family.

Friend of mine said “If I write a sentence, will you write a story that starts with it? And send me a sentence so I can write one?” So I did. Behold!

fiction by Jason Edwards

She hated the sound it made when it clicked. The shower door. He was supposed to fix it. He said he would. He said he would fix it, it would be easy, just a little adjustment to one of the hinge rails where it was rubbing and popping against the jamb. Bullshit. If it was so easy, why hadn’t he done? If it was so simple, why did he need to sleep with that fat tramp? It had gotten to the point where she dreaded going to the gym. Dreaded yoga. Who dreads yoga. In yoga, Uttana Shishosana, Adho Mukha Svanasana, Parsvottanasana, dripping with sweat, the opposite of relaxed, the opposite of at peace, each drip a reminder that when she got home she would have to take a shower and the click when the shower door opened and the click when it closed and that asshole who made her think she was okay but it turned out she was seriously not okay.

It had gotten to the point where she dreaded going to sleep, because then she’d have to wake up and take a shower and go to work. Where she is now, in her cubicle, writing him an email and deleting it and writing him another and deleting it too. Next to her, on the other side of the cubicle wall, some asshole who speaks too loudly on the phone, a welcome distraction, good to be mad at someone who she can look in the eye when they pass each other in the break room and she doesn’t have to say a single fucking word and he’ll just know. Shut the fuck up.

She’d tried never closing the shower door at all, and that had worked, and she let herself get lost in the suds and loofahs and thinking about sushi because he hated sushi and she used to eat it and then didn’t and now she could again be she hadn’t yet. Lathered herself up good and washed her hair and rinsed and even repeated. Then the hot water turned warm and then tepid and she turned it off and stepped into a huge puddle. It took every towel she owned. Damn it. Damn him.

They had showers at work, she could start using those, and why not? They were perfectly clean, cleaner, even. No shower doors, just curtains that rattled loudly, a reassuring loud rattle that hollered a straight-forward self-assuredness when it came to getting oneself clean. Instead of stupid yoga, she could ride her bike to work, or run, at least part way. But what if it rained one day? What if it snowed? What if she was running late? What’s worse than the shower door clicking every day and being used it? It only clicking once in a while and catching her by surprise?

Her boss pops her head into her cube. See the game last night? Her boss is the only female boss in the place, and she’s the only female engineer. That makes them a team, according to some secret sexist rule. She has no interests in sports. She doesn’t think her boss does either. But she’s an engineer, for Christ’s sake, what else is she going to talk about, Star Trek? No, I didn’t see it, who won? Beavers by three, her boss says, leaving, and in the cube next to her, a stifled chortle. Probably unrelated.

The click. Four times a day. Open it, click, that patronizing look on his face when she’d asked him if he was going to fix it like he said he would. Step in, close it, click, the first time they’d ever showered together. Wash herself, turn off the water, open it, click, screaming at him that he never did anything he said he was going to do. Close it, click, him screaming back that it was her fucking house, she could fix the stupid fucking shower door.
She closes Outlook, opens a spreadsheets, stares at numbers. None of them make sense. Whoever put this bill of materials together is an idiot. She hates idiots. She was an idiot. She hates herself. She moves her mouse around and clicks it in places. It’s a different sounding click, so it’s okay.

She’d never even noticed the click before, living in the house for three years before he’d shown up. She’d go to the gym, go to yoga, go on a hike and come back filthy, get in the shower, get out again, the door opening and closing so many times a day. Never noticed it. Then he came along. They met at a bar, for the love of Jesus. A fucking bar. He was sweaty, she asked him why, he said he’d been playing squash and he wanted a beer to recover before going home. Seriously? Squash? Who the fuck plays squash? Assholes who sleep with fat tramps who also play squash, that’s who.

She thought he was cute, he said he liked her smile. blah blah blah, dates, fucking, moving in together, his sweaty clothes on the laundry room floor, the way she hogged the covers, pining for sushi, why couldn’t they stay home just one fucking Sunday and watch the game, when are you going to do what you said and fix this fucking door, it’s your fucking house, you fucking fix it, no more cute, no more smiles, the stink of that fat tramp on his sweaty workout clothes, accusations, revelations, empty closets, good fucking riddance, crying for a few weeks, and the click click click click of that goddamned door.

Frowning at the spreadsheet. She could just leave it as it is. The customer would reject it, and then it would come to her, and she would fix it, and look like a hero. Why fix it now? Why make someone else look good? Or of not good, adequate. Actually, adequate would be just fine. He’d been cute, but not gorgeous. In bed, he tried to damn hard. Amazing gets old after a while. Adequate stands the test of time, gets the job done, doesn’t give you a sore back trying to impress you. Adequate doesn’t tell you that fat tramps like how hard they try, how they feel appreciated for a fucking change.

Enough. The shower door is miles away, literally miles away, who cares, think about it later, there’s this stupid bill of materials and some awful coffee in the break room and a meeting in a few hours with her boss and some douchebag who’d oversold again and then after work she could go get some sushi and wander around a book store and end up in the magazine rack again because who cares if she likes People and Us we can’t all be intellectual squash playing assholes who read The Economist. Only fat tramps who go down on squash playing assholes like assholes who read The Economist.

Damn it. Why was she thinking about the clicking? The click and the guy in the next cubicle telling someone he’d have the document done by Thursday and the click and now he’s saying he’s still waiting for legal to approve the changes and the click and now he’s laughing at his own joke, something about pens and click the tinny speaker phone voice asking him to set up a call with the click everyone who the click was on the click the call the click last week click. Click.

She stands up. Peers over the cube. He’s surfing the web with one hand, the other hand holding a pen, clicking it, clicking it, click-clicking it. The phone says something, he puts the pen down, stabs the mute button, says Yes, that’s right, stabs the mute button, picks up the pen again.

Could you not do that? she says.

He looks around, confused, finally looks up at the top of the cubicle wall.

The pen. The clicking. It’s driving me crazy.

He blushes. The look on his face of sheer terror. It’s kind of cute. Oh god. I’m so sorry.

She smiles. It’s okay. She looks at him for a few seconds, until he smiles back.

She sits down and looks at the screen. The bill of materials isn’t really that bad. It needs work, but it’s not going to ruin anyone’s day. She closes it. Lunch time? Close enough. She stands up. That’s all she wanted, really. Just for some to say I’m sorry.

fiction by Jason Edwards

A man walks into Moto Hiromata Sushi, his belly protruding just a bit over his belt, his striped shirt tucked in, his suit jacket not threadbare but well-worn, like one expects moderately expensive suits to wear well. He’s self-sure, cock-sure, self-insured, sells insurance, cock-eyed, call it arrogance, call it confidence, call it like you see it. He’s going bald, but not prematurely bald, because he’s 53. Maturely bald.

He ask the hostess a penetrating question. “Do you have spicy sushi?”

“Yes we do.” She is about five foot three, dressed in one of those tight silk blue Asian dresses, or it might be satin, and just for the record, don’t bother searching the internet for images of “tight Asian” because it will not result in pictures of dresses. She is standing next to a kind of podium, and she has a faux-leather-bound faux-menu, enormous, clutched to her chest with both hands. Like she’s cold, but she’s not.

“What do you call it?” asks the man, one eyebrow raised in an incredible arch, his head turned slightly to the side so that one eye can leer in anticipation of the answer.

“Calledenta,” says the hostess, with a slight bow to her head, her eyes closed, as if thanking him for asking her the question.

“Oh my god, that sounds awful,” the man says, his face a rictus of disgust, holding his head back so that it is somehow protected by the enormous expansive of his chest and protruding belly. His jacket comes open a bit, and he turns one hip a bit toward her, as if to also protect his genitals.

“Do you like spicy sushi?” asks the hostess, blinking large-lashed eyes innocently.

“I do. But I’ve never heard of calledenta,” says the man, his brow furrowed furiously.

“That’s just what we call it. It’s still the same spicy sushi,” says the hostess. She shrugs a diminutive Asian sushi-restaurant shrug, bats her eyelashes some more, and resigns herself to the kind of hell that’s reserved for diminutive Asian sushi-house hostesses who have to deal with maturely balding chubby 53-year old men.

“But still,” says the man with a slight dip and nod of his head, as if to concede a point but in doing so not conceding it at all, in fact, but staking claim to a righteous position unassailable by feckless fancy.

“Do you want me to get you a table?” says the hostess, changing the subject with a whip-crack speed that can only be achieved after an energizing big-chest lung-emptying sigh, which she does not do.

“Is it spicy?” queries the man, less of an ask and more an attempt at rooting into the sole determining factor that might establish the answer to this sort of question, his feet shoulder-length apart, his shoulders set, his well-blanketed abdominals engaged and ready to take a punch.

“Yes, like I said,” says the hostess, with a diminutive sideways gesture of her head, her hair black-to-blue, shiny, coifed, piled up on top of her, two chopsticks holding the mess in place, Chinese chopsticks, if you know the difference, if it’s something you’d notice, not that you would on her; the dress has a slit up the thigh that would kick your ass.

“No you did not!” shouts the man in a not-shouty voice, achieving through mere inflection a shoutiness unmatched by actual volume, his chest heaving, his face red, his countenance livid, a nice oxymoron given that “livid” in some contexts rhymes with “pallid.”

“I did say the sushi was spicy,” says the hostess, her brow furrowed, her head tilting the other way this time.

“No, I meant the table,” says the man, hands on hips, leaning forward, chin jutting, eyes blazing, eyebrows on fire if “fire” is defined as something made of eyebrow hair.

“No, of course it isn’t,” says the hostess, succumbing to an eye-roll, disheveling herself of anymore of this diminutive nonsense, this wilting Asian woman stereotype business.

“What do you call it?” says the man, returning to the one-eyebrow raised facial expression, forehead a sea of wrinkles, sea in the sense of what one sees on a stage when the set designers wants to suggest a sea, suggestively, his head turned a bit to the side to feature the raised eyebrow, his expression a kind of mantra, a tacit replacement for the prayer beads he never had, not being Catholic enough for them.

“The table?” she says, squinting, know full well he can’t possibly be asking her about the table.

“Yes,” he says, smiling like a small infant smiles even though most of them have no fucking clue what they’re smiling about.

“A table,” says the hostess, seeming to move not at all when she says it, devoid of any expression, as absolutely still as an indifferent photograph or unrealistic clay model of a shortish and kinda cutish Asian woman.

“I see. That’s clever. Yes then” says the man, whipping together three two-word sentences with such alacrity and momentum that no otherwise tedious narrative could possible withstand to do other than continue him to a table, achieve him sushi, watch him pay for it, allow him to leave, to disappear out the door and never exist again.

“For one?” says the hostess, surviving now on the kind of obvious question that comes out automatically and is answerable without anyone else participating in the conversation, but asked nevertheless because to not ask would be to make the kind of assumption that ends up making an ass out of, well, basically, pretty much anyone.

“For everyone, I should imagine. I’m no, what do you call ‘em…” says the man, holding his belly in a self-satisfied kind of way, nourished but not sated by his clever tongue.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” says the hostess, distracted momentarily by a fleeting memory of a father who failed to beat her and a mother who failed to drink too much and a brother who failed to get into gambling trouble and a sister who failed to get knocked up by some minor celebrity only to be abandoned to raise the ugly child on her own.

“Sure you do,” says the man with a leer and a grin and wink without actually winking, but nevertheless grinning, and achieving in the grin the leer which itself would have made the grin a foregone conclusion and in this way obfuscating entirely his beady eyes which themselves sense trouble and are not at all sure about where any of this is going.

“No, I am very sure I do not,” says the hostess, stating with a string of negative words an absolute positive, a Derridean hole from which the sum of her understanding is whole in its nothingness, a truth made pure by having no encumbrances from linked half-truths, gray areas, fuzzy logic, truly horrible non-fiction books written by Bart Kosko.

“But if I told you, you would know,” says the man, bowing only slightly, arms spread to hip-width, palms up, that ambiguous gesture that can imply both giving and taking, gimme and here ya go, you want some of this and whattaya got for me.

“Yes,” says the hostess, autopilot fully engaged, her replies coming rapid fire and sure like the product of a black-box function, inevitable, sound-bites to affirm the rhetorical nature of his queries.

“So there’s potential,” says the man, continuing ineffably, despite his not being in the least aware of the word ineffable, what it means, how to spell it, what its first usage was some time in the 15th century, probably by a poet, or the very least a priest, certainly not a man of this man’s girth to a woman of this woman’s lack of girth in the context of this context’s sushi-dining aspirations. And never mind that it is used incorrectly here.

“Yes,” says the hostess, autopilot still fully engaged, her replies still coming rapid fire and sure like the product of a black-box function, inevitable, sound-bites to still affirm the rhetorical nature of his queries.

“And if I told you, I bet you’d say oh,” says the man, carrying on with momentum and that sort of alacrity that the very stout sometimes possess, a nimbleness borne from enormous thighs grown agile from years of bearing enormous weight, or so clever authors like to tell you when they want you to get over how quickly the fat child chased down the skinny child in stories where children are chasing each other in that way.

“Oh?” says the hostess, re-entering the conversations in an ironic monosyllabic kind of way, which is not to forget that her last several utterances were not also monosyllabic, but that in repeating his final word to him and sharing with him the syllable at all, it shows she’s only very minimally willing to participate at this point, which is ironic because reluctance is being expressed as acquiescence, a couple of nice words for your SAT test.

“Not like that. Like this: Oh,” says the man, exactly opposite of the hostess, his inflection dropping in tone, a nice little reminder that many Asian languages are tonal, a marker that is supposed to be one way to differentiate them from the so-called Western languages, when in fact we have right here a sterling example of how mere tonality, which we call inflection, can change the meaning of a word from “really?” to “really.”

“Oh,” says the woman, the very fiber of her being, the fibers in her brain networked to such incredible complexity that she is absolutely unaware that her brain literally has two separate and distinct patterns for this use of the word formed by rounding the mouth, dropping the tongue, and pushing out the sounded consonant from a glottal stop, to indicate, in this case, realization, and another entirely different utterance of a word formed by rounding the mouth, dropping the tongue, and pushing out the sounded consonant from a glottal stop to indicate Japanese Opera. Of one this dialogue being not at all an example.

Yes.

A table then?

Elitist.

I beg your pardon.

That’s the word, I am not one of those. An elitist.

Oh.

See?

Sir is perceptive. And here is your table.

Thank you. I already know what I’m having.

Your waitress will be here in a moment.

Interesting, irrelevant. I’d like a California roll. But here’s the catch. I want it to be called Calledente.

I’m afraid I don’t understand.

At Mata Hiromoto’s, they call their California rolls “Calledente.”

I do beg your pardon. I thought you’d said you’d never heard of Calledente before?

Not in the form of a spicy sushi! I have diverticulitis!

I see.

Do you?

No. Very well then. One order of Calledente, I’ll tell your waitress.

What if it’s a man.

Sir, I do hope you’re talking about the waitress and not the California roll.

I am.

It is just that sir has had occasion to point out how the things I say can be recontextualized and therefore misinterpreted.

If I may be so bold, miscontextualized and reinterpreted.

Just as sir says.

Why sir, incidentally?

I was afraid that asking you for your name was not only very forward, but also had the potential to send us off on a terrible, terrific tangent.

Dwayne.

Yes?

That’s my name.

Mine as well.

But you are a woman!

Sir is observant, obtuse, and obstretic.

I don’t know what obstretic mean.

Neither do I. I made it up.

But?

Indeed. Dwayne is my husband’s name, and so I took it.

Your last name?

I do hope so, unless he were to, say, choke to death on a misnamed California roll, and I was forced to marry the man who gave me succor on the occasion, an overweight 53-year-old insurance salesman going maturely bald.

Intriguing.

Sir is.

But then you’d have my name, and that would be same as your present name, so your present would still be your past.

Sir makes assumptions. Sir assumes I am talking about sir. Sir assumes I am not a black widow, poisoning my patrons and future husbands with bad sushi. Sir assumes sir would not find some other way to shuffle this mortal coil, leaving me alone, easy prey for the next headstrong man, otherwise single, ready to marry a diminutive Asian.

But you’re hardly diminutive.

I’m five foot three.

That’s tall for an Asian woman.

I only meant diminutive in the sense of easy to marry. Which would make sense, and is true, for as a black widow, I would be very easy to marry.

Oh my god, you’re right.

Often.

No, I mean these terrible, terrific tangents.

Often.

“No, stop it. Look. My wife, she was very easy to marry, and that’s no exaggeration. I was at a frat party, walked up to a marginally attractive woman who I felt would become attractively dumpy when she hit her mid-forties, said to her, wanna get hitched, and a year later, I was never to have sex with any other woman again for the rest of my life unless you count a drunken encounter with a Thai whore on a business trip who, I have to be honest, may have been a man, so I don’t count it. My wife, she’s not diminutive in the least sense, played basketball for a few year after college in some sort of local intramural thing, not sure why, she wasn’t very good at it, but she seemed to like the t-shirts they gave out every season, so there you have it. She didn’t take my name, if you’re wondering, which always left me wondering if there’s something wrong with my name. People don’t seem to want to say it. They call me sir instead of Doctor Dwayne, and never mind that I’m not a doctor, that’s not the point, that’s just another tangent down the which I do not wish to go. You’re going to tell someone to fetch me a spicy sushi roll, you’re going to call it Calledente, and you’ve called that someone a waitress even though it could be a man, just as the spicy sushi roll might not even be spicy, and let’s face it, the term “sushi” so vague anyway, who knows what we mean when we say it. Tuna? Eel? Some kind of Mackerel? A California roll, now that’s easy, that’s cucumber, crab, and avocado, imitation crab if you’re the kind, and I’m not, and frankly, miss, I don’t think you are. I call you miss because although you’ve intimated that you might be a black widow, killing off husbands with your poison calladente, you also invented a word, obstretic, and admitted that you don’t even know what it means, which makes me doubt the veracity of your husbocide confession. So here we are. The table is not spicy, I am incredibly hungry, 53, maturely bald, and wondering what my life would have been like if instead of that fraternity and my MBA I had decided to be born Japanese and raised by the third best sushi chef in the world. I mean for crying out loud. How does one rank sushi chefs?”

The diminutive Asian hostess leans forward, her breath washing over him, a mixture of Aim, Scope, and pecans. Her eyes are seductive. Her lips are lush. Her teeth are gnashingly white, and her nose indicates, finally, a sneer. “Sir. If I may. This kind of middle-class bullshit? It makes me sick.”

Decided to copy out some passages from famous writers, then re-write them, as an exercise. Then I ran them through “I Write Like,” to see how I did.

Upton Sinclair: It was quarter past three and the video was in its eighth hour of shooting when the caterer finally arrived. There was an entourage of servants and assistants in his wake, bringing with them a variety of chairs and tablecloths, disposable napkins, all of it borne on delicious aromas of cold cuts, cheeses, and delectable fruits. It was no easy matter for Ms. Minogue to maintain her grace and presence, the rock on which the smooth shooting would stand, when the overt professionalism of the caterer and his cabal caused such a ruckus on the set. The crewman and others were eager to sut themselves on this providential feast; but for some it was a friction, the desire to remain in the Australian super star’s presence, versus the overwhelming need to dive in, snacking. Kylie herself was only too willing to put a delicate but firm foot up the caterer’s ass, to express her own conflicting emotions: anger at the disruption, thankfulness for the impending repast, disgust at the selection of roast turkey over roast beef and cantaloupe over honeydew, relief that the caterer was able to lure away some of the more ardent sycophants who seemed to never give her a moment’s peace. She eventually focused all of this into a simple motion, grabbing the director’s clacky-thing, chopping it, and shouting “Take Five, People” in that accent which virtually no one understood. Yet to the tables they ran.

Upton Sinclair, James Joyce, H.P. Lovecraft: Settled, plumber Joe Cooler considered the foamy head gushing from his beer can, gripped in his oily hand and coating to imperceptible the tattoo on his thumb: a pussy. Bubbles coated inky pubic hairs and gave them a motion of tentacles, sideways mouth pursing hidden teeth. He clenched his jaw and held the can up, saluting the distant bikinis on rollerskates. In his other hand, curled ‘round his index finger, the beer can tab, that ring of metal that he’d scratched at and plucked, curled and ripped from the metal, a thin trickle of watery pink blood oozing from where he’d gripped it tight. A liver lacking enzymes, his blood therefore lacking platelets. With a sudden happy motion he flicked the metal tab into the air, straight up, and tossed the contents of the beer can towards his mouth, squinted at the stab of sunlight that reflected from the ascending beer tab. He gurgled, he quaffed, the tab fell down, behind him, landed without ceremony in the crack of his exposed ass, and inebriation did the rest. The bikinis on rollerskates escaped his visions with screams, went on to become college students, rape victims, mothers, extremely unpleasant patrons at Bonanza on weekday afternoons.

Flaubert: Often when Gilbert was alone in the apartment he would order cake from the grocery store seventeen stories below, and when it arrived, smear it on his face. He put his nose in it, daring his eyelashes to lick at the cream, the gently eased himself down until he could no longer breathe. Why did he do this? Was it Lisa? Had she ever made cakes, he wondered, his lungs beginning to burn just a little. Was it her lover, the one from college, who still facebooked her? Had she ever made him a cake? Gilbert pulled back a little and smiled at invisible mirrors. He should instagram this! He opened his mouth, and dared not let any oozing icing drip inside. Instagram, he said in a low voice, a fake low voice, like he was some kind of charismatic, overweight African American. Cake dropped from his brow, plopped in the floor at his feet, enticed a hidden cat.

Nailed it.

fiction by Jason Edwards

Groggy. When you’re in Vegas you’re either having fun, or groggy. Chance is standing in front of the bathroom mirror, filling his water bottle from the sink. His hair is a mess, going every which way. His five-o’clock shadow is verging on quarter of six. His sweat-stained t-shirt hangs limp on his shoulders. His pajama bottoms are twisted to one side. He chugs from the bottle. Sometime in the middle of the night he got a wicked cramp on the inside of his thigh, something that had never happened to him before. He didn’t know whether to be amused or terrified. The rest of the night it was difficult to sleep.

Not that it had been easy when he’d gone to bed at 2 am. An early night in Vegas. He’d been groggy then too, too tired to sleep. Chance finishes off the bottle, pulls a face at the aftertaste, starts to refill the bottle, changes his mind. Vegas tap water is horrible, unlike the water in Portland, and even worse than Los Angeles. Of course, Every time he’s in LA, he gets sick, thanks to that damn baby, so maybe it’s viruses and not water he’s tasting when he’s there.

He sets the empty bottle down next to the sink, returns to the bed, tries to crawl in, gets confounded by the sheets. They’re twisted up worse than his pajama bottoms, worse than his t-shirt. All the fabrics in his life, currently, a conspiracy of twisting and binding. He should get naked, lie on the floor, and let the AC freeze him into a block of ice. He’ll leave a note, requesting to be thawed out when they’ve either outlawed water altogether, or made it such that water everywhere tastes exactly the same.

Eventually he makes sense of warp and weave, becomes ensconced, as it were. He starts to giggle, thinking about the word. He’s not drunk, not anymore, and isn’t there something about alcohol causing dehydration? Which can cause cramps? But Chance has been drunk before, plenty of times, several times in this Las Vegas visit alone. Never smashed. Never blotto. Just mildly drunk, that Vegas kind of drunk, that I-don’t-really-have-to-care-about-anything-for-a-few-days kind of drunk. No hangovers to speak of. Paradise, frankly.

Chance feels his hand flailing about on the bedside table before he realizes why. Is the phone ringing? Did some idiot set the alarm in his absence? A joke played on him by one of the maids, retaliation in advance for requiring that they thaw him out of an air-condition-induced block of ice? Then his hand finds a remote of some kind and his groggy thumb is pressing a button to close the blinds. The shaft of light that had threatened him is vanquished.

He can now return to sleep, to dream of strippers and prime rib and sick babies covered in snot and howling while his brother laughs and makes him hold it a little while longer. No, wait, what? Damn it, not that. Strippers and prime rib and hot streak at the craps table and a great big hot bottle of oily water pressing down on his stomach. Damn it all. He needs to take a leak again. Stupid water.

Chance rolls to the side of the bed, is caught up in the sheets, tries to twist as he feels himself fall, and right as he’s balanced on the edge of the bed, precarious, the cramp hits him again, worse this time, bringing not only excruciating pain but the memory of the earlier edition. What the everloving fuck. But there’s no question of being amused or terrified this time. It’s sheer terror. His leg is being simultaneously squeezed and stretched. He’s weightless, there’s a sharp white light inside his head, and now he’s on the floor, with what he’s sure is a bed-side-table-top-corner-shaped hole in his skull. Neither pain seems interested in distracting the other. His bladder joins in with a selfish reminder. Strippers, prime rib, a really shitty Elvis impersonator, yelling at his brother that he was going to sneeze so take the damn baby and his brother giving him that look for using such language in front of an infant literally younger than the fucking diaper he was filling.

He’s moving, he’s out of the sheets, he’s on his feet, he’s limping, he’s in the bathroom, he’s turning on the light and daring it to hurt his eyes. The light decides to be just a mildly annoying glare. He’s pissing and teetering and finishing and waggling and replacing. Chance reaches for the water bottle to fill it and it smacks it instead and it ricochets off the mirror and onto the floor. His girlfriend would be mortified. A water bottle on a bathroom floor. The horror.

How long are you going to be in LA, she said, standing there in the smallest kitchen in Portland, filling and refilling a tiny glass of water from her sink. A week, Chance said. And at the time, it might have been true. Maybe he really would have stayed to visit his brother and his spawn for a whole week if it hadn’t been so non-strippers and non-prime rib and non-Texas Hold ‘em.

Chance leans over and cups his hand under the faucet, lets the water run and sips straight from his palm. The aftertaste is becoming a while-he’s-still swallowing-taste. His brother, in LA, handing him a glass of luke-warm water from the tap. No more bottled water, Chance, he said. My baby needs fluoride. Seriously, you can only stay two days? She’s got you on that short of a leash bro? Yes, if by she he meant Roxxi Diamonds, or Bessie, or Lady Luck.

He feels a sneeze coming on, swallows sort of hard, gets a painful lump in his throat. Straightens up, goes a little woozy. Forgets he’s going to sneeze. Why is my body rebelling against me? Looks into the bathroom light, violently sneezes, but it’s one of those stunted sneezes that hurts more than anything.

Not enjoying this. Nope, not one bit. Supposed to be a vacation. Supposed to be getting away from the nagger and the bully. He sits down on the commode. Carefully, in case it’s actually a hole over a 15-story pit. So he lied, so what, everyone lies. Sometimes the truth is worse. Everything’s relative, right? It’s not like he’s slept with the strippers, or even touched them very much, wasn’t in love with them, didn’t want to have a relationship with them, they were barely even people, and that’s just the way they liked it, they didn’t want creeps getting all personal on them. So, the lap dances were a kind of lie that’s a truth, a good one, an alternate reality, a better world.

So what. So you go to a steak house and order prime rib and they bring it to you and you eat it. You don’t need it, you want it. The nutrition is superfluous. The thousand bucks lost on the Trailblazers game? What else was that money going to be used for, in the long run? So what? Lies are better. Chance loved his girlfriend so much he was willing to sacrifice the holy truth and not tell her what an annoying bitch she could be, most of the time. He loved his brother enough to put up with a screaming baby and not dump it in the garbage can for the slime-covered piece of shit that it was. Chance earned this trip, deserved it, was required by natural law to be here and to have a little fun to chase the noose away.

So don’t give me anymore shit, he says, standing up and looking down at his body. His sweat-stained t-shirt hanging limp on his shoulders, his pajama bottoms twisted to one side.

Fifteen stories below, a pressure valve that was supposed to have been turned off due to a failed inspection, but wasn’t because the inspector’s daughter needed braces and the hotel superintendent always kept a stack of incentive-chips in his pockets, registers Chances’ complaint, and decides to help. The faucet starts to rattle, vigorously, making the entire counter shake. The handle flies off the top, spouting water, and before Chance can move, the faucet itself bursts, flying right at him and hitting him in the leg. Right where he had the cramp.

Chance falls to the floor, is immediately soaked. Water geysers, shorting out the light. In the darkness, the water rises. Chance tries to swallow it. It doesn’t taste so bad.

fiction by Jason Edwards

Allright y’all, allright now. When I hit this piece of wood with this here piece of wood, that means it’s time to get started. Tarnation. We’ve been doin this for a few thousand years, you’d think y’all’d step in line. Thank you, Tavis. Anywhat, let’s get ‘er goin. We’ll skip them minutes from last time, lump ‘em up in our annual next month. Nah, Darlene, that don’t mean you can chaw another bear claw. Siddown, we need this one recorded too. I tell you what. Nobody’d figure us for runnin’ the whole world, would they, this lack of decorum.

Yes, decorum, Hank, I said it, and if you’d been payin’ mind to Abe’s initiatives, you’d know we’re sneakin vocab into Media Control, part of Operation Topsy Turvey. Abe, you want to update us on that, since we’re on the subject? Good, so you’ve got the Hollywood elites and the independents doin’ word shifts towards monosyllabics, and uppin’ the SAT words in the reality shows, excellent. Any problems with that, resistance from the Jews? No? They’re still perpetuated as the stereotypes running East and West Coast visual arts, right though? Okay good. We need to keep that one going, it’s only halfway through the two hundred year plan.

And there’s a nice segue—the middle East. Now, Kendrick, I got word that the Arab Spring has thrown a few wrenches into the redistribution of land rights, putting a small delay in things. Now, now, taker easy, Kendo, we ain’t gwinter chuck ya into the scorpion pit just yet. We knew the middle east was set to a slow simmer when we started with the Shah back in ’79. Hell, boy, why do you think we set up Isreal and Palestine, not to mention that mess back in ’05? Nineteen, that is. Your safeguards are still in place, I assume. Good, that’s what I like to hear. We got three false second comings planned for early 24th century—no, Leron, that’s not operation Buck Rogers, you’re thinking of the moon shot, that’s different—where was I? Oh, yeah, Kenny, so long as we can maintain the factionalism for a few hundred more years, we’re fine. Fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say Arab Spring was our idea!

Okay, y’all had your laughin, let’s move on. Uh, lessee, Hollis, gold prices? Nice job orchestrating the dip, we got a few suicides out of that, nothing major, but a few hopeful threads. Our man in Brooklyn says he’s got this kid, son of a broker who killed himself, who’s got real potential, might be able to set him up with another Occupy thing when he’s of age in ten years or so. So well done on that. Bonds are looking good, too, although I don’t think we rocked the boat enough on the Facebook thing. What do y’all think, should we wreck a few servers, give ‘em a few easy legislation changes, get their stock to bounce back and forth for a few months? We can put it to a vote? All in favor? Okay then, Macadam, that’s you, have your team push the Honorable Upton on the energy and commerce committee, but leave the hookers out of it this time, we’ve got those weakened fibers implanted in his heart and we don’t want any kind of infarction leading to their discovery.

Okay, I’ll admit it, we do own all the doctors in DC, but who knows, he’s liable to wander off to some drinkwater in Tennessee and hook up with a trailer park princess we don’t know about until it’s too late. I do not want another John F on our hands. That replacement wasn’t very good and the assassination was a shambles. But I’m preaching to the choir.

Kinda ironic, how we sit here in this shack and control most of the major world’s religions, pretty much every government, and all the world’s financials, not to mention every left wing wack-job celebrity from here to Sundance to bollywood, but we can’t keep an eye on all the strange quiff right here in our own backyard. Makes you– really, Mobeth, really? You’re going to have a fourth danish? You think them things grow on trees? Yes, we control the world’s wealth, and we don’t do it just to throw diabetes pills at you. Now siddown. Thank you.

Now I lost my train of thought. Oh, right, thank you Shelby. The NRA and Al Qaeda. Now, we’ve had, what, fifteen different uncontrolled entities claiming to be members of Al Qaeda, and we’ve managed to silence each one. As far as the NRA knows it, Al Q is a real organization and not just a series of empty financial transactions being chased by the CIA. Stop giggling, Chandler, this is serious. You’d think the man who screwed up the CIA distribution of drugs in Harlem would be a little more respectful. Yeah, I know the vote to have you flayed and tossed into a volcano missed by one, but still, just cause you’re still alive don’t mean you got the right to interrupt my meeting.

Yes, my meeting god damnit. I’m in charge this month, Tavis has the annual, then it’s Abe, then we vote on the next 12 chairmen, sorry, Darlene, chairpeople. Same as always. Give it a few decades, you might get reinstated, Chandler. Do something special, like Hollis did with the gold.

What? Is it another powerpoint slide deck? You know how we hate those. Okay, posterboard, good. Is it on the agenda? Ah, nevermind, go ahead then. No, go on, you seem so eager, Chandler. Show us what you’re thinking. Go on, Chandler, you look fit to bust.

Well, that is interesting. And this Harry kid, he’s from where? England? You think that’s going to work? I see. New Direction, you call ‘em. Well, we do need to shift some of the focus away from that Bieber fiasco. Shall we put it to a vote? Abe, is this going to fit or clash with anything you got coming up? Mobeth, you want to just go ahead and snarf down that fritter instead of hiding it in your shirt?

Alright then, it’s all yours Chandler. Don’t screw it up. We’re still cleaning up the whole Michael Jackson thing. Which reminds me– somebody send a text to Elvis. We need him to make another appearance in Texas. They’re getting too big for their britches again, we need to take ‘em down a notch or two. Like Florida.

Okay, meeting adjourned, then. I’ll see y’all next month.

fiction by Jason Edwards

I was sitting in the kitchen the other day, eating a ham sandwich and minding my own business, when the dishwasher said to me, “so, how about you kill your wife?” It said it in a kind of gurgling, washy-water kind of voice.

Obviously, I was going mad.

“Now why would you think that?” the dishwasher said. “You’re not going mad. Killing your wife is a good idea. She doesn’t respect you, not really. Doesn’t think much of you, when you think about it. Hardly cares about anything you care about. And always nagging. Always nagging.”

There ya go, proof. It was all in my head, the dishwasher knowing what I was thinking.

“Now hold on,” said the dishwasher, “just hold on a second. Two things, partner. One, just because I know what you’re thinking is not, in fact, proof that I’m just a figment of your imagination. I could just be a good guesser. And two, so what. It’s not like the idea of killing your wife is a bad one, is it. I mean, let’s be serious.”

I took a bite of my sandwich. Thick ham, mustard, wheat bread.

“That wheat bread, for example.”

Example of what.

“You hate wheat bread. Hate it. You know it, I know it, and more to the point, your wife knows it. But she buys it anyway.”

But I did the shopping.

“Yes, and we’ll get to that in a bit. But who makes the shopping lists, my man? Who makes the shopping lists?”

I’ve never gone insane before, so this was new for me.

“Look, will you drop the insanity thing, please?” the dishwasher said. “For my sake? Can we stick to the issue at hand? Can you give me one reason, just one reason, why you shouldn’t kill your wife with, I don’t know, they number 7 carving knife being cleaned inside me right now?”

I certainly didn’t want to got to prison.

“Prison, you say? As if where you’re living now isn’t a kind of living prison?”

Of course, my home life was nothing like a prison, nothing like it at all. I could go outside whenever I wanted to, and often did, if it wasn’t raining or snowing or there was too much wind or, unlike today, if it wasn’t simple too hot for decent human beings.

“Even prisoners get to roam around the yard, you know. This outdoor business means nothing if you can’t even leave the property without permission.”

Honestly, my wife wasn’t that bad. She just liked to know where I was at all times. That’s sort of what marriage is all about, and after 30 years of it, it was more comfort than burden.

“Bullcrap,” said the dishwasher. It was on some sort of heavy cycle now, really chugging and churning. “I should apologize for talking to you like that, but no, that’s bullcrap. Comfort, my never-used dry-rinse dispenser. When was the last time you had a beer? When was the last time you simply got up, walked to your car, drove to a bar, and a had a nice, cold Miller High Life. Tell me that. Tell me that right now.”

But I didn’t like beer, gave that up when I was a very young man, made me gassy, gave me headaches.

“Then have a shot of whiskey for all I care! Watch the damn baseball game! Maytag knows you never watch the games at home, even. She controls everything. Everything! Kill her! Take a knife, and wait for her by the door, and when she walk through, stab her repeatedly! And when you’re done, you can wash the knife in me, and no one would ever know!

But what would I do with the body?

“Body, schmoddy. You over think things.”

If I killed my wife, I’d go to jail, no two ways about it.

“You know what they have in jail, though? They have televisions. Prisoners get to watch baseballs games. They get to go outside. There are libraries in prisons, and you can sit in your bunk reading books all day. Try readng a book at home, when your wife is around, and see how fast she’s got a chore or a project or ‘something that isn’t such a waste of time’ ready for you.”

But there’s rapes in jail.

The washing machine went suddenly silent. All was quiet except for an idle and random drip drippity drip.

I took another bite of my sandwich. This one had too much mustard.

With a loud roar the dishwasher kicked on again, jets spraying a furious rinse cycle. “Rapes in jail? Rapes? You think they’re going to do rapes on a fifty-five year old man? A fat old man, broken and bent in half by his wife of thirty years? You think they’re even going to look at you twice? I don’t. I don’t think that’s going to happen at all. And let’s be really frank here, little man. She rapes you anyway, doesn’t she. Once a month she puts on that ghastly negligee and that awful perfume and turns the lights in the bedroom down low and tries to hide the women’s magazine with the latest tips under the bed. And you go in there and you do your duty, like a man! And you don’t even enjoy it! You feel guilty for conjuring up images to get you through, pictures in your perverted little mind of the girls at the grocery store, the ones who are barely out if highschool, summer jobs for college, long blond hair straight. One of them still had braces! And you try so hard to not think about them, pert and supple, try to think how much you love your wife, when what you’d love most of all, what really would get your rocks off, knock your socks off, is to lay into her with the carving knife and watch the blood not just flow but splash around, give her a really going over, a real work out.”

I just sat there, tears in my eyes.

“And then when you’re done, when you’ve sat in the blood for a while, there by the front door, and you start to get a little cold because the heat of the moment’s worn off and the air conditioner is going like blazes, then you stand up, you go take yourself a shower, you put your clothes in the washing machine, you put the knife inside me, and you call the police or take your car to a tavern and have a sloe gin fizz, or, since we’re friends here, I’ll just say it, you go and do whatever the fuck you want for a change.”

But I loved my wife, I really did. I didn’t want to see her stabbed and bloody all over the foyer rug.

“Then use a gun. Poison her. I don’t care. I really don’t care. I just want you to get off your ass and finally take control of your life.”

I could just leave her, if I wanted to. Just leave and never come back.

“No you can’t,” said the dishwasher. The rinse cycle was finished, and now it was on some kind of air dry, a constant white-noise hum. “If you could do that, you would have a long time ago. The only way you’ll be free is if she’s dead. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it’s going to be. So do it.”

I looked at the dishwasher, finally. The day was overcast outside, despite the awful heat, and the kitchen was dark and gloomy. The little LED read-out on the front of the dishwasher shone brightly.

“I’ll be done drying off this knife in about 10 minutes. What time does the microwave say.”

The green lights on the microwave were just as bright as the dishwasher.

“So your wife will be home in about an hour. That’s plenty of time to get ready. Lay down some tarp if you want to, go dig a hole in the back yard maybe. Finish your nasty little sandwich, open a bottle of wine, fortify yourself for the task at hand. Listen, my friend. I believe in you. You can do this.”

Then the dishwasher went silent, and the LED readout on the front ticked down a few minutes.

I sighed, picked up my plate, and walked over to the trashcan, dumped the last bite of ham sandwich with too much mustard, on wheat bread, into the bin. I walked into the laundry room, opened up the washing machine. Poured in some detergent. Took off my shirt, threw it in. Took off my pants, my underpants, my socks. All in. Picked up and emptied the hamper into the machine also. Started it. Waited for it to talk to me. It just gurged, like a normal appliance. I sighed.

Walked, naked, into the foyer. My wife, my poor wife, spread out and cooling on the foyer rug. Blood everywhere. Not my fault. Not my fault. It was that air conditioner, that stupid loud air conditioner. I’d wanted to get new one for years, but she insisted it was fine, that noise wasn’t so bad. My poor dead wife.

Author’s note:  I wanted to test out a few version-control ideas using cloud drives and different hardware platforms, so I started writing this story and saved it in different places as I went. That’s why it has the title it has. I could probably come up with a better one– or even rewrite it into something more legitimitely a story, but quality control’s really not my style, is it. Enjoy.

Fiction by Jason Edwards

A man dressed in a blue Hawaiian shirt, a really tasteful pattern actually, cargo shorts, but well pressed, nice socks, appropriate sandals. Deputy’s badge on his chest, mirrored shades, and of course, a gun belt. Not a joke. Not Hawaii 5-0. But not an actual policeman, Just a deranged motherfucker, trying to look different. And if it weren’t for the gun, nobody in Starbuck’s would have given a damn. A bunch of hipsters, unimpressed. But despite their best efforts they had medullas, and those medullas saw the gun, and got nervous on their behalf. And when a person gets scared against their will, that leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side. Yoda said that, the little green bitch.

Man orders a latte. Some of the hipsters get it. That he’s trying to be different, that he’s trying to look cool and laid-back at the same time, with the shirt and the shorts and the November outside. The badge and the gun. The socks and the goddamned sandals. And the ones who get it, they’re all like, why order a latte? If you want to be different, drood, order a complicated drink, and halfway through the order, say something that shows you know what you’re doing and the you’re refined and you’re not just saying it for the benefit of the other wool-cap and scarf wearing assholes in there.

Something like “Hi, yeah, um, I’m going to need a grande half-calf mocha, um, is your milk sourced locally or does it come from anywhere in Idaho? The recent Republican deregulation of phato-phosphates in grain for dairy cows in Idaho means their milk has more macrotannin granules and I have an allergy. No? Okay, good. Two percent. No lid. I want to add a little cinnamon, which they used for currency in ancient Mayan cultures, you know. Kind of a coincidence, right? Since it’s a mocha?”

But a latte, that’s so weird. What the fuck. Does this guy actually like lattes?

And the ones who don’t get it, who are sort of taking this guy seriously, the latte, well, it just confirms their suspicions. That he’s a civilian, and he’s odd, and they are in real actual honest not-to-be-flippantly-disregarded-via-a-social-post-on-Tumblr danger. Some of them are blogging madly about it, in horribly put-upon ethnic accents. “Muh-fu just rolled into my ‘Bucks sportin; sox n sand anna ninner on his twerk-fulcrum? Ah nah he di’in!”

Oh, yes. He did.

Some of them are tweeting, the ones who get regular phone calls from 2010 asking for their technology back, and they tweet: “A man dressed in a blue Hawaiian shirt, a really tasteful pattern actually, cargo shorts, but well pressed, nice socks, appropriate sandals.” 140 character exactly, so no mention of the gun. But a feeling of pride, maxing out at 140.

The gun! Is it real? Yes it’s real. Even though most of them have never seen a gun, except on The Wire, it is for sure real. Even though it can’t be real. There’s no way a sane person would walk around with a gun. So it’s not real. Please. As if. You totally thought it was real? Noob. Even though this guy’s definitely not sane. So it is real. See how he cleverly got around the concealed weapon laws by not concealing it? Like when that one hipster wore green lantern underwear for, like, a month? And never told anyone? And never told anyone he never told anyone? Jesus.

The man gets his coffee (latte!) and sits down at a table and sort of sits back from the table so he can sort of spread his legs wide and he’s got a huge grin on his face. Is there a difference between a grin and a smile? Do grins have teeth? This smile has teeth. Big ass smile. The buzz in the Starbucks is muted but not absent. Fella whispering into his iPhone, another listening to Gotan Project on his iPhone and the sound bleeding out of his Beats, another tapping madly away at his keyboard, the overhead muzak, the sound of coffee machines steaming and spurting and gurgling, the drive-through window, people slurping.

And then the man says, in a clear voice “If wasabi and horseradish had a fight, doesn’t matter who wins ‘cause I’d eat both!”

You can taste the exclamation point at the end of his sentence. Silence falls on the Starbuck’s as everyone freezes instantly. Even the coffee machines evolve pan-dimension sentience, shut up, and stare.

In the back, by the restrooms, a girl’s voice almost whispers “Oh my god.” Probably a Pinterest user.

The other hipsters are aghast. They’re thinking, oh my god, is this guy Asian? He sort of looks Asian. His hair is jet black and the way he’s smiling, his eyes are almost slits. Oh my god, are we racist for thinking He’s Asian? We love wasabi! We almost literally cried when they stopped serving wasabi mashed potatoes at Blue C Sushi! Does he even know how to use that gun?

The clever ones know that a man who doesn’t know how to use a gun is probably more dangerous than one who does. Which would make a great title for this story, except it’s too long. Accept it’s too long!

The sounds of indifference to insanity slowly leak back into their shared existences. A few screenplays are written, a few articles for Utne Reader. The rasp of Tibetan wool on shaved scalp, the perkly-burble-gurk of water through beans from somewhere in Africa. The muzak raising money for breast cancer. And the man just sits there, not a statue because he’s breathing, but otherwise still, doesn’t even touch his latte, the merlot of coffees.

But then the man does it again. “Andy Warhol? Andy Peace Hall, if you catch my meaning.”

Again, utter silence. A conspiracy of red lights for a few blocks around as even cars stop driving. Hipsters going out of their neckbeards. Is this guy for real? Is this what they’ve become, are they seeing the future, is this how they’re supposed to evolve, shed the skins of irony and shallow participation in disparate culture juxtaposition and slowly don the mantle of weird via random, random via weird?

One of them takes a chance. He’s brave because he secretly likes craft beers, jeans bought at Macy’s, and books by conventional prize winners. “You tell ‘em, cowboy.”

It’s meant to be funny. Instead, the man’s head swivels, smile never wavering, and makes eye contact. The one who made the remark instantly develops cancer of the soul, dies, withers, and looks down in shame at his Windows phone. A new game of Wordament starts, so he plays it, but without heart. The man’s head and smile swivel back.

And now it’s sounds of people gathering their things, quietly. Google docs saved, Chromebooks powered down and stuffed inside canvas bags. Brought-from-home packets of Stevia-In-The-Raw sealed inside Ziplocs and put back in hand-woven purses. iPads, thrift-store copies of Moby Dick, fingerless gloves, billfolds on chains. Even the baristas are stacking up cups the way they stack up cups so the morning shift will find them like that and like them for it.

One by one they leave. They space themselves out. They’re so not obvious about it they’re obvious about it. One of them gets his army jacket caught in the door for a second, and he’s thinking It’s not a real gun, It’s not a real gun, It’s not a real gun, and then he gets his jacket free and he’s walking quickly, thinking oh my god yes it is a real gun yes it is yes it is.

Eventually, the man is alone. His blue Hawaiian shirt, with the really tasteful pattern actually, well pressed cargo shorts, nice socks, appropriate sandals. Just him and his smile and his cold latte. And his badge and his gun. Speaking of, he whips it out, takes it apart, used the legos to make a bird. A raven or some shit like that.

He stands up, takes a deep breath, and heads for the door. There are 424 Starbuck’s in Seattle. Only 423 left to go.

fiction by Jason Edwards

There I was, sitting in the kitchen reading the December, 1958 edition of The Economist (yellowed pages, ads for blenders) when Lana called me from the other room. “Steve,” she said. So I got up, fetched my pipe, and walked into the den good naturedly.

“Steve,” she said. “I want to go buy a pair of boots.” Her gaze was pointed more or less towards the television, although not quite focused on it. One of the ESPNs, what looked like some kind monster truck thing. Didn’t matter, since who knows what Lana actually saw, inside her head.

“Macy’s?” I said, pretending to take a puff on the pipe.

“Woolworth’s, Steve,” she said. It used to sort of creep me out, how much she said my name. Well, not my name, really. My name is Douglas. I have no idea who Steve is.

“Okay,” I said, fighting back a sigh. They say yawns are contagious. I’ve never seen Lana yawn. But if you sigh in her presence, she’ll sigh back, and long, deep-chested sigh, the kind that can dim the lights in a room and put pictures in your mind of sloppy nooses, small caliber hands guns, discrete poisons.

I stood there for a second, looking at her, frozen, which I knew pleased her. She liked it when we looked like a photograph taken by an old Brownie 127, which is why she wore orange capris with a mustard and brown horizontal striped knit sweater. Her head seemed to gently bobble on her long, almost ungainly neck. Her cream-colored lipstick and bee-stung lips, her pointed noise, enormous thick black eyelashes, lazy eyelids, hair swept up high, big bangs sweeping back over her head and cascading down her back, in desperate need of Lustre Crème.

I usually came to the house dressed in blue jeans and a ratty old black concert t-shirt, but somehow, throughout the day, I found myself in slacks, a button up shirt, a sweater, my own hair brill-cremed. And I was always carrying this damn pipe. But, a job’s a job. And no time like the present, so I picked Lana up and slung her over my shoulder, carried her out of the den and into the garage.

Car port. When I came to the house every day I parked my 2008 Kia Spectra in the garage, but whenever Lana wanted me to take her someplace, it was a 1960 Ford Thunderbird, parked in a car port. You’d think this would be cool, a sweet ride. No. The car was filthy, not well maintained, ran poorly. I mean, it was no worse than my Kia, but certainly no better. But I had gotten used to it. I opened the door, set Lana in the back seat, adjusted her body so she didn’t seem to loll so much, then got behind the wheel, brushing aside fast food wrappers and empty coffee cups. I had no idea where they came from—we never ate in the car, I was the only one who ever drove it, and I cleaned the damn thing out two or three times a week.

Anyway. Whatever. I backed out and we drove to Macy’s. Of course, Woolworth’s went out of business in 1997. Didn’t matter. I could’ve taken Lana to Hot Topic—in fact, I had once, and that’s where she’d gotten the orange capris. Lately, though, whenever she wanted me to take somewhere, I chose Macy’s. I liked the mall because I could park far away in the huge lot. You see, sometimes when we came back to the car, it was a different car. Not often, but sometimes. And being able to park in a specific spot, away from everyone else, made it easier get past the cognitive dissonance.

And the mall was a short drive. The first time we went out, I actually thought I should try and take her to an actual Woolworth’s, so we went to the old one on Maple, which rotated between temporary usages—election campaign headquarters, raves, Halloween costume stores—but still had the old Woolworth’s sign. That day there wasn’t anything in the store itself, but I hadn’t known any better. Carried Lana to the front door, and just stood there like an idiot. Back then I was still carrying her in front of me instead of over my shoulder. Some hipster prat (wool stocking cap, horn-rims, pierced lips, ear lobe plugs, full beard, blue short sleeve chambray worksheet buttoned to the neck, both arms tattooed from biceps to knuckles, Levi 511s rolled up to reveal naked ankles above busted Vans) was taking pictures of us with his iPhone, and Lana started singing “Blue Velvet” in the deep voice which means she’s feeling uneasy, so we left.

So now I know better. Like I said, I’ve amused myself, now that I’m a little more comfortable around her, since it sort of doesn’t matter where we go. “Steve. Gelato, Steve,” and I’ll take her to Arby’s (she doesn’t eat anything—I’ve never seen her eat). Or “I want to buy you a beer, you big strapping man,” and we’ll go to Starbucks so I can get a mocha. But after a while, amusing myself sort of got boring, so now I just take her to the same few convenient locations.

Like this Macy’s. I slung her over my shoulder and marched towards the store front. No one gave us a second glance. When I felt weird carrying Lana around, people would stare. Then I stopped caring, and so did they. And it’s interesting to me—Lana doesn’t weigh very much, but it would be a lie to say she weighed less than, say, a sack of wet rice. She was definitely proportional to a slender twenty-six year old five foot seven inch bottle-red head. But you know how it is—the perception was that she was light. Toss me a 50 pound sack of potatoes, and I’ll marvel out how ungainly it is. But Lana was just Lana, and carrying her over my shoulder was really no big deal.

We got inside the Macy’s and I set her down in the evening gown section. She said she wanted boots, but I knew better—she wanted to drift around the dresses, humming to herself and letting her fingers caress the fabrics. It was the only time I ever saw her walk on her own. She wore pants—orange capris, like I said—and I could see her feet move. But on days when she wore dresses, I swear it looked like she was floating. Her head never bounced or bobbed.

I let her go to it and sought out the men’s room for a quick smoke. You can’t smoke in Macy’s. You’re not even allowed to in the restroom. But when I got there, I snapped a Chesterfield out of a pack and had a few quick drags. I don’t smoke, and I have to special order these damn things from a tobacconists in England, since they don’t sell them where I live and shipping cigarettes over state lines requires a special license that I don’t have.

And if you’re wondering, don’t, because there’s no use to it and you won’t get anywhere anyway. I mean I’ve tried. I was looking for work, answered an ad in the paper for a “personal custodian,” and just sort of started showing up at the house where Lana lives. Or, if not lives, is. Nothing is ever consistent, sometimes I recognize things from the late 50s, early 60s, those few months in the 80s when everyone thought they were doing 50s retro but were really doing 60s retro. For a few days it was 90s retro 70s, but Lana didn’t seem to like it much so I don’t know if she controls it or if someone else does or if, somehow, I do. I try not to think about it. I try not to look things up in the internet anymore. I mean, I’m pretty sure The Economist never ran ads for blenders—that was probably Life magazine. The point is… well, there is no point. I show up and do what Lana wants and everything seems to be fine and who am I to judge? I don’t know even know who I am, so who am I to judge?

I finished my cigarette, looked at myself in the mirror, decided I needed a shave. Or a martini. Instead I went back to the gowns to see how Lana was doing. When I got there, she was talking to someone… or at least the Lana version of talking, which was to stand close as if in conversation, but sort of gaze over their shoulder. I’d seen her do that with salespeople, mannequins, the homeless, old ladies at bus stops. Usually they just stood there too, as if content to have a conversation without words—again, as if captured in a photograph.

This time, oddly, Lana was actually saying things, and so was the other person—a thin girl in a purple satin dress, spaghetti straps, wavy brunette hair, maybe too much eye-makeup, cheek bones that didn’t say genetics as much as they said wealthy eating disorder. She seemed vaguely familiar.

I wanted to hear what they were saying, so I moved closer, but slowly, so as not to disturb them. As I did, a burly man dressed in a tight brown Hugo Boss suit entirely well-fitted but entirely wrong for his body stepped in front of me. “Can I help you?”

I knew he didn’t work there, but it clicked almost immediately. “I’m with the lady in the stripes there. Can I help you?”

He smiled. “Personal custodian?” he said.

I smiled back. “Yeah. Mine’s Lana.”

“Allegra,” he said, and took a step to the side so we could both watch them. “I’d always assumed I was the only one.”

“Me too.” I said. I tried not to think about it too much, but found I was somehow comforted.

“How does yours work? Does she take you on jets?”

I shook my head. “No, mostly we just go shopping.”

He nodded. “Yeah, we do that sometimes. Mostly I take her to the airport. We get on privates jets—they don’t go anywhere. I read GQ, she holds a cell phone up to her ear. Never says anything. This is the first time I’ve seen her talk to anyone else.”

“Me too.” We stand there for a while, watching, not quite making out what they’re saying. Eventually, Lana drifted away from the other girl, and the guy turned to me. “Antonio” he said, holding out his hand.

We shake. “Steve,” I said. “Actually, it’s Douglas.”

He smiled again, and then chuckled. “I used to be Dave.” He walked towards his girl.

I went over to Lana. “Ready to go home?”

She turned to me, a sort of smiled, looking over my shoulder. “Take me home, Steve.” So I picked her up, threw her over my shoulder. I turned, and Antonio (Dave) had his girl over his shoulder too, a big grin on his face, almost as big as mine. We left through different doors.

I walked us back to the car (still a 1960 Ford Thunderbird) and settled Lana into the back seat. Got behind the wheel, and glanced at her in the rearview. Somehow, she was holding a shoebox, what looked like a picture of cowboy boots on them. I sighed a sigh of contentment, and Lana picked it up, and sighed too. It wasn’t so bad.

fiction by Jason Edwards

I was sitting at home, watching a taped re-run of the 2010 VMAs, and I found I was thirsty. I got up from the couch, didn’t bother turning off the TV as I’d seen this tape a hundred times before (it was starting to show signs of wear, of stretching, blue and red and green lines across the picture in places. I bet if Nicki Minaj were to work with one of those hipster producers, they’d love the effect). At my front door, I eschewed the leopard print high-heels for some flippity-floppies, and left my rented domicile. I didn’t bother locking the door. Yolo.

The 7-11 is only a block from my house, and I do sport mad swag, but I didn’t fear any uncouth comments from the neighborhood denizens. My weave was perched, purple and gold glitter, expertly atop my crown. My jean jacket hugged my curves like Drake hugs lyrics. My strut did things to my butt that marshaled respect, not cat-calls. And so it was: I arrived at the goal of my brief sortie, and I entered the place, twerking like a coaster.

Behind the counter, a down digga Crucian name of Raja Mahn. On the PA, Waka Flocka, which meant Raja’s boss, a racist, was gone for the day. Not that I cared. Racists don’t step to when I break the scene. But I always feel bad for Raja, off the boat and working for a wheat thin. Then again, bad job better than no job, as the float-brothers say, and it’s not like Raja can work a pole, trap a baby daddy and get some government, buy him formula and blank video tapes. More power to him, and for solidarity I raised a left fist as I made my way to the 4-Loko. Raja never stares at me ass. Maybe he sweet.

Grabbed the can, really, and spun on my toes (purple and gold glitter, polish to match my ebony tiara) and considered beef jerky. Does it have pork in it? Should a queen of my demeanor eat of the pig? My mother ate of the pig, and looked what happened to her. Flat broke, don’t know who her children’s father is, I should say are, riding the bus every place and so damn skinny she was always knees and elbows. Naw, I said to myself in my quiet voice. I chose Slim Jims instead.

I went up to counter, forgetting for a second my flippity-floppies and walked on my toes like I was in da club and pretending to be Tay-Tay so I can get some baby drank. My own fault. I was already thinking about the 4-Loko coursing down my throat, grape and that alcohol bite, heady fumes cascading up and down my sinuses, rendering a sister cloudy and not unhappy with her brief pinprick of an existence in the universe’s vast eternal nothingness. As if. As if I was down at AppleJacks with Gucci Mane all in my lobes and Raja my standby, purchasing overpriced potables for me to guzzle before I gargle. As if, as I said.

Mahn rang me up, shy-like, but I already had my pickles and limes in hand to pay. And then he said, in that island voice “We now take EBT” And he pointed at the front door, where there was probably a new sticker sign saying the same thing.

In a perfect world, the PA would have screeched to a stop, like a piano player in one of those old Oaters freezing when the uncouth gentleman larger than his horse stomps through the saloon doors. EBT. Electronic Benefit Transfer. Fancy for foodstamps. This big-ass adam’s apple havin’ dark as 97 cent cacao bein’ Goodwill bought FUBU-wearin’ for the man workin’ lips like a coupla tuptus boy motherfucker thinks I’m on the welfare? I didn’t know whether to laugh in his rat-zombie face or swing my hand around like Jackson Tyson Jordan Game 6 and slap that black off his pan. Break a nail if I did.

Instead, I went Socrates on him. I said “How’s EBT going to pay for alcohol, brother?”

He just blinked a few times. “Alcohol?” he said.

I held up the 4-Loko. “What do you think this is, baby ap-ser-in?” I can cop a hood accent when I need to.

Raja looked baffled. “But this is not alcohol. Children come in here all of the time and buy this.”

I just shook my head, counting out coins for my drank and my jims. “Methinks you’re the victim of some faulty logic there, Smullyan. The crime’s not in the buying. It’s in the selling.” Slapped my change down on the counter and turned to the door. Didn’t care if it was exact. Home slice can keep the pennies.

“Smullyan?” he said, as I was leaving.

“Less digga mo’ periodicals, rain man,” I said, and left.

Strutted my stuff down my block and to my place. Nice day, so I sat on the stoop steps and sipped my simple spirited libation. I could hear my TV through the window, three floors up, VMA tape still playing, a commercial for Pepsi or Fritos or Chrysler or something—I can never tell that trailer park shit apart. This was the point on the tape where I usually turn it off, because the next part was where that stimple maphro wins the award for video of the year. In a meat dress (and you know there’s of the pig on it).

But I let it play, sitting there, the sun bouncing around brownstones and even the one tree half a block away still standing. A few rats walked by, didn’t say a word. A car drove past, with nary an acceleration or deceleration and its bass wasn’t too loud to drown out my thoughts: poor Raja. Maybe he sweet, maybe not. Maybe he thought he was being nice, offering up the EBT, maybe that boss told him to tell everyone. And I maybe I should have been more angrier at him, but if he’s selling Sparks to babies, he’s got more to worry about than using foul vocabulary in front of a queen.

Sometimes you just got to let folks be. Isn’t anyone who can harm you that you didn’t hand the weapons to yourself. One of the Martins said that.