Needs

“I needed that,” Jeff said, buttoning his boxer flap.

The woman crawling out from beneath his desk responded with a nod as she returned the hair tie to her wrist. She then fluffed her golden tresses until her previous volume was restored.

“Here,” Jeff said, flopping a wad of twenties on his desk.

“You already paid,” the woman said.

“I know. Consider it a tip.”

“We can’t accept tips.”

“I can keep a secret.”

“Clearly,” the woman said glancing at the family portrait on his desktop.

Jeff covered the screen with a new browser window.

“Take it or leave it,” he said, “I was just being nice.”

The woman grabbed the edge of the top twenty and shook it until the rest of the stack fell to the floor.

“Bus money,” she said, stuffing the bill into her bra.

“Suit yourself,” he said, opening his calendar.

The woman picked up her empty attaché case and headed towards the door.

“Oh, Jen, or whatever you call yourself,” Jeff said, “if anyone asks, you were interviewing me for the paper.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve interviewed plenty of men like you,” she said, exiting without another word.

Jeff minimized the browser once the door was closed. His eyes began to water as he looked into the digital pupils of his wife and children. The door handle began to turn again and he straightened his posture, wiped his face with his sleeve, and reopened his calendar.

“Who was that?” his secretary asked.

“Some reporter from the paper,” he said. “Apparently, I’m more interesting than I thought.”

“I could’ve told you that,” she said, closing the door and walking around his desk. “What’s this,” she asked, picking up the wad of twenties on the ground.

“Oh, must’ve fallen out of my coat,” Jeff said, fighting the urge to stare at the cleavage eclipsing his peripheral vision.

“We can use this tonight,” she said, hopping onto the corner of his desk with a seductive bounce.

“I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that,” Jeff said, eyes fixed on his calendar. “I’m afraid I have to cancel.”

“Oh poo,” she said. “Well, when do you want to reschedule?”

“Never.”

“Never?”

“No.”

“I knew it,” she said, sliding off his desk with no excess jiggling.

“Cheryl,” Jeff said, grabbing her hand before she could leave. “I’m sorry, but, I just can’t leave my family. Please, be professional about this.”

Cheryl looked down at him, mascara streaking her cheeks, teeth chattering like maracas.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “there will be a very professional resignation letter sitting on your desk first thing tomorrow, ASSHOLE.”

The last word erupted from Cheryl’s lips like thunder, showering Jeff with tears, spit and a mist of eyeliner and lipstick. She stormed back to the door, wiping her face and sniffing back the flood of tears before returning to the lobby.

Jeff minimized the browser and locked eyes with his wife. “We needed that,” he said.

                                                                                                ***

“One for the matinee,” Vicky said, grabbing a twenty from her bra and sliding it through the slot at the bottom of the ticket window.

A gust of wind from the street sent the bill fluttering around the kiosk. The usher grabbed at it like a money booth contestant.

Vicky apologized while taming her wavy blonde hair with the ponytail holder around her wrist.

“Theater three,” the usher said, pushing her change and her ticket stub back through the hole.

Vicky pounced on the bills before they could blow away, crumpling them in her fist until she reached the concession stand.

“I’ll take a small popcorn and a Coke,” she said, scattering the change above the Mike & Ikes and Milk Duds. “Diet. I meant to say Diet.”

The teenager behind the concession stand scoffed and emptied the cup into the trough beneath the sodas. He retraced his steps to the ice bucket, saving precious seconds by skipping the scoop and plunging the cup into the frozen cubes.

“Diet Coke, right?” he said before putting the cup back beneath the drink dispenser.

“Yes, positive,” Vicky said.

He set the Diet Coke nozzle to autofill and fixed her bag of popcorn.

“Butter?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Yes, please.” Vicky answered.

He turned around to make sure she wasn’t kidding

“I know, then why get a Diet Coke, right?” she said.

“I’m not here to judge,” he answered, setting the drink and the glistening bag of cholesterol in front of her. “That’ll be ten fifty.”

She slid him the wrinkled bills and gathered her snacks.

“You gave me too much,” he said, sliding two dollars back on her side of the counter.

“I know, consider it a tip.”

“We’re not allowed to take tips.”

“I can keep a secret.”

The teenager gave in and stuffed the money in his pocket.

“Straws are at the end of the counter,” he said.

“I don’t mix business with pleasure,” she mumbled, heading straight to theater three.

She sat down front and center, getting as close to Hollywood as she could. The lights dimmed and she took a giant swig of her drink, swishing it around her mouth until the carbonation ate away any lingering fluids on her teeth.

“I needed that,” she said.

                                                                                                ***

Frank stopped his wheelchair next to the pet adoption trailer parked in front of Uptown Cinemas and waved a handwritten sign that read, Feed Vets before pets.

“Here,” a woman said, handing him a half-eaten bag of buttered popcorn.

“Gee, thanks,” he said, tossing it over his head into a puppy pen.

The tiny dogs abandoned their chew toys and attacked the puffed treats like Hungry Hungry Hippos.

“Fuck you,” she said, ripping the sign from his hand and flinging it over the trailer.

He laughed until his howls gave way to a hacking cough.

“I needed that,” Frank said, turning to look at the ravenous canines.

He noticed a sign on the cage that said NO POPCORN.

“I can keep a secret,” he said, and rolled off down the sidewalk.

Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Chris Boyles

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

There was more blood than I had anticipated. That was one thing. Luckily, most of it kept to the sea, where it washed out into nothing. Into what? I suppose another tendril of life floating in that fabulous blue. It would have been a pity, I thought, to spoil the clean white of the boat. That cloudy, nursery blue that looked like New England. Planks for seats. A pity, sure, but necessary. Let’s not forget that he had it coming. Had it comin’ as they say in the south. I’ve never been there but I romanticize about the double-wide trailers on acres of wheat. Places that could hold a murder secret for years.

But back to the blood. Who knew? Such a little head. So much blood. More blood than anticipated, as previously noted. Don’t like to repeat myself often but that amount of blood is worth the sin. And how watery it was. I always thought it would be more of an ooze, but it’s very watery. Not at all viscid, but no, like vinegar. And the pure softness of the head? Incredible. We bump our way through life accumulating badges of scars of all shapes and sizes and the head stays on, egg-like and lolling. It is a shame that I couldn’t have taken more pictures. As a disciple of J.M.W. Turner, my darling Elizabeth would have no doubt appreciated the dissolving colors of the whole gratuitous mess - Turner of course being one of her own, of God and Queen and country. Or some such shit.

Remember that perfect time at the museum. The old train station - d’Orsay, you devil. Remember how we waited in line in the rain. And the way it felt when the rain ended and we came out of those artistic havens and were greeted with shining cobblestones below our feet. The rays of the afternoon light backfiring from the Seine back to Wayfarers. How France became Spain, and then we leapt into London? Remember that European happiness, how we called it the continent, how we drooled over ol’ J.M.W.’s Sunrise with Sea Monsters.

I revert back to art in her absence. Her favorite thing. How she thought she saw the world different because of Turner, Monet, because of Jackson Pollack; that sedentary drunk who dragged his genius with him through the mud. I was colorblind. Haha. Of course. But she loved the idea of two colors becoming one, and she would have enjoyed the artistic presence in that macabre boat.

She would have enjoyed it, I suppose, if she would have seen it earlier - before the clipping of her own banal life. Of course, without Elizabeth there would have been no Colin, no boat, no leaking body fluid, and most important of all, no tiny fishes feeding on brains! I am not a Godly man, but I am a jealous one. I did not stand under that Protestant steeple and mutter silly fairy tales for my constitution. For God’s sake! Marriage is marriage! What is this place where I have found myself? I feel that those around me are ogres. They are purveyors of poor taste and worse principles.

My libertarian desires, unfortunately, cannot hold a candle in the wind to those magisterial principles of honor and dignity. I mean that I do not blame my dear Elizabeth or her poor Colin for their actions. They are only existing. Or were. But no, while their actions do not elicit any moralistic repugnancies on my part, the severe consequences of those actions most certainly do. There can be, as my mother said, no civility outside truth. She was, of course, wrong. But there lies a faint trench of that aforementioned truth that runs through her elementary observation. Mainly, that if you’re going to lie and cheat, best to keep such surreptitious actions veiled.

Honest though, I think it was their stupidity that I could not forgive. To think that I wouldn’t have figured them out. Ha! Incredible idiots. As if I was blind to their lean-in conversations, that night at the Henderson’s party. Them out on the deck, me fondling my sweating cocktail; the lights of the harbor blinking like stars behind their laughing heads. As if their sideward glances would go unnoticed. Ha!

Though I must say, must give credit where it is due, no matter how posthumous it might be, no matter where it might land on that elastic rubber band of time. They did a fine job in their dogged proclamations of innocence. First her, in the study, with the rope. How even with her last gag she claimed, what? Virtue? And not only that, but confusion as well? And later he - bent over the bow of the boat - white shorts hitched above tanned legs and knees, dropping the anchor, unknowingly manufacturing a sort of tombstone somewhere down there in the shallows. How even after I’d hit him once, how he gasped and reached up for the boat. How he questioned my motives as the blood seeped out of him and became tangled in the waves and then gone into the deep.

So credit to them, for their perseverance to a lie. May they rest in peace.

Oh, dear. What a beautiful bird!

Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Blake Bronstad

Famine

Neither of them knows how to start. They have been together for ten minutes without exchanging words, and the silence between them grates against Lily’s nerves. She takes another sip of her coffee and looks away. She can’t be the one to start; it would imply —what, exactly? Fault? Desire?

It’s his fault, though. His desire.

“I didn’t mean — ” Lily begins.

“I know,” Nora whispers from across the table. Her concealer has begun to crease, and Lily notices how dark the circles are, how puffy the skin looks.

“Oh,” Lily doesn’t know what else to say. She thought this would be the bulk of the conversation, all her energy and intensity deflected to defend her honor. Lily isn’t sure why they’ve met anymore, what they have to talk about other than what happened.

“You can’t help it,” Nora says. Her voice is stronger, but emotional omission remains. She’s detached, robotic, brainwashed. Christ.

“How are you?” Lily asks, surprised by how genuine the words sound.

“Fine,” Nora says. She still hasn’t met Lily’s eyes.

Nora, who could disarm anyone with a glance, has found new power in restraint and distance. The old Nora would know this, would use it, sharpen it to a fine point. This Nora has no idea.

“Nora,” Lily says, “please tell me what you’re thinking.”

“It’s not the first time. Maybe the first time it wasn’t reciprocated, though. Maybe the first time in our house. Maybe.” Nora says.

“It never went that f— ” Lily says.

“Because I walked in, Lily. It never went that far because I ended it for him. ‘Wasn’t reciprocated’ is a coward’s way of saying my husband tried to rape you. I know what I saw.”

Daniel had cornered Lily in the master bedroom, one hand planted firmly on her left breast and the other approaching her thighs. Lily’s eyes had been wide and scared when she looked up and saw Nora, champagne glass in hand.

Daniel played it off like he’d tripped when he was trying to help Lily find the bathroom.

Nora and Daniel had lived in the house for eight years. Lily knew where the damn bathroom was.

“I won’t tell anyone, Nora. I won’t say a word. Not to the press, or our friends, or —” Lily can’t say the rest.

“I know you won’t,” Nora says. “I’ve thought about this for a long time. Longer than I should have. Long enough to where it makes sense, to where it’s the only thing that makes sense. I need to ask for a favor.”

Lily knows this world. There are things Nora can’t do, mostly innocuous, because they are political statements. Make any choice and it’s a political statement now. It’s the careful world Nora navigates daily, and Lily doesn’t envy her for it.

Lily nods. As Nora speaks, she feels like their own personal Pandora’s box has been opened and laid before them.

Nora’s asking Lily to devote herself to something base and distasteful. And for what? Nora throws around “commitment to her constituents” and “obligation to the legislative docket.”

Nora isn’t charismatic or special enough to guarantee anything. Constituents would love another bureaucrat. No one needs Nora’s vote, and their district is a solid, unwavering blue on CNN’s election coverage.

Nora asks because she’s proud and loves power more than family values, and Lily agrees because for Nora, she will do anything.

“Tomorrow, then,” Lily says, and Nora nods her assent.

Both women’s eyes fill with tears. When they say goodbye, they embrace.

Each woman tries to give the other strength.

Each woman comes up wanting.

Daniel’s studio is in the middle of the orchard, an oblong stretch of brush that once produced wild berries and tiny sweet apples. It is where Daniel comes when he wants to think and create, sketching the impossible worlds that have made him moderately famous. His book covers guarantee sales.

Lily didn’t sleep. She’s thought about what she will say to him since she left Starbucks. A tongue-lashing about how she’s only doing this for Nora. A diatribe about consent. A sad plea that his liaisons would destroy his wife’s political career.

Daniel’s hair has begun to gray, and for a moment Lily feels pity for the aging Adonis.

It comes to her then, how she will play this. Lily always wanted to be an actress, but she never quite got over the stimuli: blinding house lights, cameras that begged for eye contact. The affair will be her stage, her set.

If it’s obvious she’s doing this for Nora, he’ll feel the forgery, and his desire will wane. He’ll get smarter about hiding it from Nora, and dumber about hiding it from anyone else.

Lily is safe for all of them, but Daniel has to want it. He has to desire her, each day’s lust eclipsing the last. She has to coax that from him.

And instead of her tirades and begging, she walks into the studio and unbuttons her blouse. She doesn’t trust herself to speak, worried the truth will find its way out: My sister asked me to sleep with you.

Lily doesn’t desire him. She disassociates, lets her body find a rhythm. Her back arches. Her hips move with his. They are one, and she would feel sick to her stomach were it not for her fervent belief that this repays her big sister: Nora, who took the punches meant for Lily and their mother. Nora, who testified against their own dad.

Nora, champion of abused women.

When it is over, she rolls up from the floor. Years of yoga make the motion languid and smooth.

Outside the studio, two deer wander into the orchard. Lily watches them take nimble, timid steps. Fur stretches over ribcages. They starve together, even as they nibble patches of grass and the dried husks of fruit once ripe.

Daniel touches her calf, desire reignited. He wears a smarmy grin. Gravity does him no favors, excess skin drooping.

Lily does not want to frighten the deer.

Written by: Erin Justice

Photograph by: Chris Boyles