Cloud Painting

The day Ada and I ride up to The Lookout is transparently clear. The Lookout is a large hillside that faces and guards over the town of Southmeadow. It’s totally a make-out point, but Ada and I visit it because it’s the best place for cloud-watching and stargazing. The air is fresher and sweeter up here, and there’s a tempting sense of freedom that calls to Ada on the days when her mother is drowning in a boozy swirl.

My excuse for leaving is to accompany Ada, because the first time we came up here, she had shown up on my doorstep, soaked to the bone from a storm, and commanded, “You’re taking me away from here.” The Lookout was the place I took her, and it continues to be our escape whenever she feels her blood sing.

I park my parents’ old Volvo underneath a low-hanging tree, the only shady spot on The Lookout. When we stop a few feet from the edge of the hill, I drop to my butt and lie back, folding my arms beneath my head, but Ada lies perpendicular to me and rests her head on my belly, the weight of it warm and comforting.

There’s a patch of my stomach exposed from where my shirt has ridden up, and her hair, draped across it, tickles my skin. It’s nut-brown, short, and bobbed. I pull one arm out from under my head and card my fingers through from root to curly end. I can tell it’s been recently washed. It’s soft, softer than I thought it would be. Discretely, I pull a strand up towards my nose and take a tiny whiff. Cranberries.

The dull roar of an approaching plane brings our attention to the sky. We watch as it emits a stream of cloudy condensation.

Ada points towards the moving speck and traces its path with her finger. “Sometimes,” she says, “I like to imagine that I can paint the sky. The stars, the clouds, the sun. I hold up my finger and follow them like this, and it’s like my own creation. Makes me feel like I’m God, or something.”

She doesn’t look at me when she says this, concentrating on using her finger as a paintbrush. I move my hand from her hair, strands sifting through my fingers, and place it on top of hers. I cover her finger with my own, and the two of us trace over the plane’s flight path all the way across the sky, until it’s out of sight. When we can no longer see it, Ada intertwines her fingers in mine and kisses my knuckles. The quiet is comfortable, but after Ada’s confession (and that’s what it felt like, a confession, something secret she has been holding close to her heart), I feel like I need to share something personal of my own.

“So,” I start, “when I see planes, I think about all the people on it, about who they are, where they’re from. Sometimes, I even conjure up imaginary faces and backgrounds for them, and I just think about those many lives, all connected for one small, weightless moment. You know what I mean?”

I have her attention now, but I can’t read the expression in her eyes, and for some reason, that dries my mouth.

“Nolan?” she asks.

“Yes?”

“Have you been watching Lost again?”

It takes me a minute to realize that what she said wasn’t profound in any way, and I feel oddly relieved. “Hey, it’s not just because of Lost! I do think about that when I see planes. Sometimes. I do!” I emphasize when she shakes her head, hair drifting back and forth across my chest.

“Nolan, Nolan, Nolan,” she chants, but cuts off with a squeal when I lean down and blow a loud, wet raspberry into the crook of her neck. She tries to roll away, but I wrap her up in my arms and hold her tight to me. With her this close, the cranberry smell is so strong it almost makes me dizzy, and those curls are soft against my cheek.

Suddenly, I realize I don’t want to ever leave. I want to stay right here, with Ada, on The Lookout, forever.

“Come on,” she sighs. “Let me up.”

Begrudgingly, I loosen my grip and she stretches out, then rises to her feet. She bends over far enough to offer me a hand, and I’m overwhelmed with exhilaration, like I want to take it and launch off the ground and up, up, up into the air, catching up to that plane we drew in the sky. My veins are vibrating beneath my skin. It feels new. It feels good.

“Hey,” she asks as she pulls me up, smiling slightly. “Do you think when you’re creating stories for the people on the plane, there’s someone on the plane creating stories for all the people down here? Like, some stranger, thousands of feet above us, looking down and sketching out an imaginary life for you and me?”

She’s still smiling, but there’s an eagerness in her expression and a brightness in her eyes that tells me that whatever my answer is, it’s very important to her.

I’m still holding her hand, and I give it a small squeeze. “Yeah,” I say, smiling back at her, “I think there is.”

Written by: Allison Sobczak

Photograph by: Skyler Smith

The Architect

Tamar watches her twin sisters gaze at the horizon as the merchants row them across the harbor toward the port town of Kerr. There is a crisp, salty bite to the winter breeze that blushes their noses and cheeks. This is the first time that Tamar will lead the priestesses to commemorate the winter solstice with gifts of dried sea plants and pearls. She hides her hands from the chill in the folds of her cloak as her head tilts to the side, eyes gazing beyond the blue as the boat rocks like a cradle.

“Are you excited to see the finished fane?” one of the twins, Adah, calls back without turning.

Tamar blinks to attention, remembering that she will meet with the architect they commissioned to build the temple that would serve as their headquarters during their solstice visits.

“Yes. I hope it meets Mother Aviva’s expectations. ”

“Do you think the architect is very old and bald?” the other sister, Zillah, asks.

Tamar’s hush comes out like a hiss as the twins giggle to themselves. The merchants hop into the shallows to pull the boat ashore as the black cliffside towers overhead. Tamar recalls a dream from the night before in which she stood waist deep in the sea and looked up at this very cliff, grasping a silver key in her hand. Her seven sisters stood in the water behind her, waiting as the waves lapped against the small of their backs. Tamar notices the merchant’s hand reaching to help her out of the boat and takes it as the memory of her dream dissolves.

“More comfortable in the water than on land, eh?” asks an older man with a craggy face.

“You should know,” she says, smiling as she steps onto shore.

                                                                                                    ***

Tamar did not expect to see the stained glass windows and the oak altar encircled by benches of shaped wood and stone. Breath stolen, she approaches the center, noticing light falling from above. She tilts back her head to see the window depicting an ornate silver key surrounded by panels of blue and green glass. She remembers her dream, the feel of the key in her palm, and her desire to find it’s owner.

A priestess acolyte approaches, bowing her head before speaking.

“High priestess, this is Liam Eklund.”

Tamar turns around, meeting eyes with a man a little over half a foot taller than herself. His beard is full and betrays his youth.

“Hello, Liam. I am very pleased with your master’s design,” she offers.

The acolyte’s eyes dart toward Liam and a flush spreads across her face and neck, but he is smiling.

“Oh, Tamar. Liam is the master architect, the one Mother Aviva commissioned for the fane,” the younger priestess stammers.

The architect is laughing now.

“It’s really fine. I’m used to it. You’d only know if you noticed the ink on my hands,” he says as he raises them.

Tamar sighs and covers her face for a moment before looking up at him.

“I am sorry, master architect. I only assumed because you are young. I was expecting someone…”

“Old and bald?” Liam interrupts.

“Precisely.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t expect the high priestess to be so young either. I guess this means I don’t have to be too formal?”

“Formalities are for funerals,” she replies. “Can you tell me about the key? Is that your signature or did we request it?”

Liam rests his hands on his hips and leans back to look up at the skylight.

“Mother Aviva said the image of a key came to her in a dream. When she was searching for architects, she found me because I tend to place it on my work,” he says.

“She had a dream?” Tamar asks, brow raised.

“Yes. She dreamt that her priestesses stood in the sea and one of them held a key. Then, she heard a voice say that love would reveal the truth of our desires.”

Tamar is silent, beginning to sweat beneath her arms.

“Anyway, that’s how she found me. And now I’m here.”

She swallows, hearing the chirp of birds outside beyond the heat of her ears.

“The stars know better than we. I’m very glad to meet you, Liam.”

“Me, too, priestess.”

                                                                                                    ***

The town is quiet and the moon is high as Tamar cracks open the door of the temple and slides in, closing it with a backwards lean. Her eyes are drawn to the altar, to the moonlight that bathes it and the cold silence emanating from the stones. She takes a seat on a bench and grips bunches of her cloak in her hands, thinking of Mother Aviva.

“Love will reveal the truth of our desires,” she whispers, wondering at the meaning.

“Priestess,” Liam murmurs, stepping into the light.

Tamar looks up, startled, and sighs with a laugh.

“Hello, Liam. I guess you couldn’t sleep either?”

The architect rubs the back of his neck with his hand as he takes a seat next to her, then leans forward with elbows on his knees.

“Strange dreams,” he says.

“You and me, both.”

“What did you dream?”

Tamar takes a moment to consider her response, then takes courage as she says, “I’ve been dreaming of your key, Liam. Even before we got here. And in the dream I’m desperate to return it, knowing it is lost and precious.”

“The key represents my mother. She passed after giving birth to my sister, whom I also lost.”

“Your sister did not survive the birth?”

“She did, but she was taken by female relatives. My father did not trust himself to rear her properly. I want to see her, to know her name, but all I remember is the darker patch of skin across her foot.”

Tamar turns her head, heart pounding. Liam also turns as she slides her foot out of her boot and pulls off her stocking, the birthmark just visible in the moonlight.

“Brother, I am here.”

Written by: Natasha Akery

Photograph by: Kayla King

West

They sold Dena's car, Chris's bike, their used textbooks. They sold the dresser Dena's father had given her before he died, the one that belonged to Aunt Elizabeth. The one she swore she'd keep in the family.

"You Craigslisted the dresser?" she squawked at Chris.

"Chill! We got a hundred bucks for it!"

Dena felt a little catch in her lungs, or maybe in her heart. She remembered her father’s body, the sticky tape sealing tubes and needles to his skin, pushing and pumping, trying.

Her father was dead. Aunt Elizabeth was dead. A dresser wouldn't fit in an RV anyway.

Kimbra came over to buy the last of the pot.

"It's not the good stuff. I won't lie to you," Chris told Kimbra. "But we really need the money right now."

"I think what you're doing is totally rad," Kimbra said. "It's just like On the Road, right?"

Dena watched Chris fold the money into their thick stack of cash.

"Yeah. Just like On the Road."

She knew Chris hadn't read Kerouac. Couldn't speak to the tradition. Couldn't know to be afraid of it.

"Don't eat any poison plants, 'kay?" Kimbra said.

Into the Wild, not On the Road. Is everybody I know full of bullshit?

Kimbra gave them a ride to the used car lot and wished them luck, already pawing in the marijuana baggie as she waited for them to climb out.

The day was hot. The last crisp cool of Kimbra's AC deserted Dena's skin. She could feel the back of her neck begin to sweat, her baby hairs curling into insistent ringlets.

"You ready?" Chris asked. He didn't wait for her to answer.

Louie barely looked up when they entered the shack that housed the dealership’s office.

"Still want the Chinook?" Louie asked.

Chris handed over the money. Louie counted it, licking his fingertips to separate the bills.

"Now, she's definitely your vintage model, but I added some freon for you this morning. You should be good to go. Where y'all going, anyway?"

"West," Chris said.

That was all he ever said when people asked, as if the answer was meant to evoke the spirit of adventure. Lewis and Clark. The gold rush. More likely, Chris was thinking Oregon Trail. Living off the land. Hunting and gathering. Dying of dysentery after attempting to caulk the wagon and float.

Dena climbed into the RV first. It smelled of cat urine and mildew and something worse—a lingering cloud of lavender Febreeze. At least Louie had tried.

"Fucking home sweet home," Chris said, pumping his fists above his head.

Dena climbed into the bed tucked over the cab. The mattress cover had a hole in it, and underneath, she could see that the foam was dried and rotten. She thought of her father’s hospital bed, starched and sanitized, even the railings coated in copper to kill germs.

"Are you thinking about how sweet it's going to be to sleep up here, in the middle of a national park, listening to the wolves howl?" Chris asked, climbing up beside her.

“Yeah,” Dena said. “That’s pretty much exactly what I’m thinking.”

                                                                                              ***

They spent their first night parked at a rest stop in Mississippi. The RV had made slow time, groaning when Chris pushed it over sixty miles an hour.

“It’s not about the destination anyway,” he said.

In the bed over the cab, Dena tossed and turned as Chris snored. The radio had only been able to pick up country music through Alabama, then finally a dubious R&B station. Chris had hummed along to a song in which a guy croons that he doesn’t mind if his girlfriend’s a stripper as long as she makes money. They’d eaten McDonald’s for breakfast, Burger King for lunch, and Waffle House for dinner.

“We are human grease,” she’d said to Chris.

“The body is an amazing thing. It can get used to almost anything, after a while.”

“Yeah. Like cancer,” Dena muttered.

He’d rambled on about accumulating callouses, about sun-tanned skin, about a new awareness of nature. But now the rambling was replaced by snoring.

And then, a howl.

At first, Dena rolled her eyes. It was too much. There were no wolves on I-22. She heard it again. A high-pitched howl. Definitely not her imagination.

She rolled out of the bed and guided herself to the floor, sneaking towards the door. She slid on her flip flops and went outside. The air was still hot, even in the middle of the night. Lights washed the rest stop in an orange glow.

She heard the howl again and moved towards the noise.

On the other side of the parking lot, a man in a baseball hat was dragging a dog towards a green pickup truck. The dog, some kind of hound mix, howled and struggled, lurching towards the rest station building.

“That your dog?” Dena called.

“Yeah,” said the man in the hat. “Sorry—it’s just—he’s after the raccoons.”

“Raccoons?”

“They’re smart. They’ve figured out how to rob the vending machines.”

Near the entrance to the women’s bathroom, two raccoons were scuttling near the snack machine. One had snaked its arm inside and was grabbing at the food trapped in the black metal coils. The other paced behind its companion in obvious anticipation.

“Shit,” Dena said.

“Resourceful little critters,” the man said. “Get in, Riley.”

The dog resisted.

“Want a hand, there?”

Dena helped the man hoist Riley into the cab of the truck.

“Thanks,” he said. “Can’t blame him, right? Hey, is that your camper over there?”

“It’s my—friend’s.”

“Where you heading?”

Dena paused. Her lips had almost formed the word West, but instead she said, “Away.”

“Great American adventure?”

“Something like that.”

The man in the hat grinned at her. In the great American adventure story, he’d say his name was Bill. He’d offer her a beer or maybe some ill-advised hallucinogens. They’d stay up all night as Riley slept in the cab of the truck, as Chris snored in the Chinook. Maybe he’d try to kiss her. Maybe she’d tell him all about her father, about feeling so lonely you’d sell everything you owned to ride across the country with an unlovable optimist. They’d watch the sun rise. Maybe she’d leave with him, drive north, slip another untraceable layer between who she was and who she could become.

But this was not a story. There was no such thing as real reinvention.

“Your front tire there looks a little flat,” the man in the baseball hat said as he climbed into the truck. “Might want to find someone to take a look at that before you hit the road.”

The truck pulled onto the interstate. The light by the rest station flickered. As Dena crossed the parking lot towards the Chinook, the two raccoons ran across her path. Each one carried a bag of honey mustard pretzels in its whiskered mouth.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Korean 28

“I’ve been dreaming about planes.” Ellen-Teacher tells me.

“I know it’s stupid...but...I think I want to be a pilot.”

We’re sitting in one of the bars near Lotte Cinema. The dim one with giant teddy bears in glass cases. The teddy bears aren’t for sale. They aren’t for anything.

Maybe it’s the mutual dissatisfaction with our job or maybe it’s the teddy bears in glass cases that make me encourage her.

“You should take flying lessons.”

Ellen-Teacher slides her glass of Hite closer and glances around before taking out her third Dunhill of the night.

No one’s watching. No one notices the female South Korean lighting another red. Everyone is busy watching themselves, taking selfies, texting, or fixing their makeup. But Ellen-Teacher looks as if her father might pop up at any moment.

“I can’t.” She says.

Ellen-Teacher can’t do a lot of things. If I ask her out for a beer, Ellen-Teacher has been directed to tell me “I can’t.” Director Randy, our boss at the English school, forbade her. He didn’t tell her why. This may also be why Jessica-Teacher answers me in small grunts and glares at me from afar.

Director Randy chose his English-speaking name by naming himself after Randy Rhoads. Sometimes he rollerblades around the carpeted office and once a week he asks me to guess how old I think he is. He’s balding. It’s week 17. Every time he asks, I smile uncomfortably and shrug with false uncertainty.

The first time Ellen-Teacher invited me to get a beer, she told me about this rule. The invite was a pity one. She saw me through my classroom window. It’d been hours of speaking in my well-crafted English slow-tongue. I’d emphasized every R and L ad nauseam to my beginners. I’d made sure my intonation was welcoming and bouncy, like the lovechild of a mid-westerner and a Southern Californian. I’d spent the last few hours of my shift trying to teach English to adolescents who only questioned my importance. “Why we need English?” I didn’t correct their questions. Like a real adult, I told them to ask their parents.

Ellen-Teacher saw me through the glass square in my door using my hand to keep my head from falling on the desk in defeat. Outside, out of Director Randy’s view, she invited me to share our first pitcher.

Ellen-Teacher and I are both 28. I lost two years during my 17-hour flight from the States. In Korea, you’re one from the moment you emerge from your mother. Your birthday means nothing. Forget about it. Your birthday is now the New Year. Everyone’s birthday is the New Year. Back in Buffalo, New York, I was a young 26 but Korean Standard Time declared me 28. I’d missed my chance to join the 27 Club entirely and glided into the not-so-golden age of a Korean 28.

Korean 28, for a woman, means marriage with kids on the way. Korean 28 does not mean teaching over-privileged Korean students English. That’s the equivalent of a spinster. I might as well resign to a life of lonely Sundays where I watch infomercials as if they are real television programs and start calling product helplines just to hear another person’s voice.

I learned my status as a spinster from every conversation with every South Korean cabbie ever.

The driver looks in his rearview and asks where I am from.

“Where are you from?”

“New York.”

The driver assumes that “New York” means the city and makes weird shout-outs. He lists the things he knows and thinks about the city, each its own exclamation or statement:

“New York!”

“Big Apple!”

“Time Square!”

“Very many people.”

I nod in agreement as these are also my thoughts on New York. We nod at each other until there are no more nods. When the nod-off ends, the driver asks how old I am.

“26.”

“Married?”

Horizontal nod.

“Boyfriend?”

Another horizontal nod.

I can see his scrunched brow in the rearview. He retires to a disappointed silence. I want to add another detail about New York with an exclamation point at the end.I want to say anything to take us back to when he was excited to know me. But his silence is a strong one, a finite one.

Ellen-Teacher isn’t married either and she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Ellen-Teacher's first name is not Ellen and her last name is not Teacher. Euna chose “Ellen” as her teacher name. My teacher name is Letia because that is my birth name. When Euna is asked why she chose the name “Ellen”, a shrug is the reason. Like me, she is confused as to how she wound up teaching English to the over-privileged kids of her country.

Ellen-Teacher lives with her parents. Ellen-Teacher had a brother. He left Mokpo to live in a bigger city. Their parents disapproved. He bought a motorcycle. Their parents disapproved. Ellen-Teacher’s brother died in a motorcycle accident.

There is little hope of Ellen-Teacher flying anywhere.

And though we both know this, that we’re a couple of Korean 28s and that it feels too late, Ellen-Teacher continues to dream of planes.

“You could take lessons.” I suggest again.

After all, Amelia Earhart’s legacy was of trying.

“Do they have flying lessons here?”

She tells me they do, she explains the expenses a little, and ends her last sentence with a but.

Even Amelia got lost.

After Ellen-Teacher’s pack of Dunhills is lighter and we’ve drained enough pitchers to find our lives laughable-laughable instead of pathetically-laughable, we part ways for the weekend.

Ellen-Teacher goes home. A hallway away from her parents, she lays her head down and dreams the same dream again. The one where she is flying above us all, wearing an Amelia Earhart leather aviator helmet, and watching the world below move on.

Written by: Tia Brown
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Some Dreams

“You will feel a slight pinch followed by some pressure.”

At least that was my interpretation. What I actually heard through his thick accent was something more akin to “You vil fil a schlight binch follow by some brezher.” And pinch it did. It pinched like a motherfucker. I tried to breathe, to shift my thoughts to anything other than where I was, to put the fear aside. It didn’t help that between the vaguely eastern European inflections of his voice and the monstrosity of a moustache flowing over his upper lip, the dentist gave the impression of a certain long dead Russian dictator. But if he could stop the howling pain in my jaw and wrench free this abscessed tooth, he would be my hero forever.

“I vil be back, you try relax.”

Stalin got up and left the room. As the anesthetic kicked in, the numbness slowly crept through my gums and palate, bringing with it a hope of relief. I sat in an old barber’s chair, slightly refurbished and retrofitted with at least some of the accoutrements of modern dentistry. I glanced around the sparsely decorated office space. Four completely white walls and one solitary window blacked out. Definitely didn’t want the looky-loos peeking in from the alley. A small sink stood in the corner. No framed diplomas, no syrupy inspirational quotes coupled with generic sepia photographs. No saccharine pop music to put one at ease. This space was clearly all business, no play. But in a way the lack of adornment of the room was soothing. It gave the place a sterile feel, one not shared by the surroundings. Stalin returned and I could hear the din of consumerism coming from the dirty little bodega that fronted this illicit enterprise.

“You vant da lavin gas, no?”

He held up a small nasal mask attached to rubber surgical tubing.

Lavin gas? Laughing gas? Oh sweet Jesus yes!

I nodded my head affirmatively and tried to get my deadened mouth to talk. He fit the mask to my nose and started the flow of nitrous oxide. In seconds, a wave of warmth and tranquility radiated through my entire body.

“Open vide.”

I opened my jaw as far as it would go, which wasn’t far. My abnormally small mouth had made for some difficulties in eating sometimes, but at least it didn’t affect my social life. It could have been disastrous if I had other proclivities.

Stalin pried at my mouth, and though the Novocain had done its job, I could feel him grasping at my infected incisor.

“Vider.”

A furrow appeared on Stalin’s brow, and I could see him begin to sweat.

I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. It settled on a piece of graffiti I had read outside, adorning the wall of the dank alleyway where I parked my car.

You don’t have dreams, you make them. It was a beautiful sentiment and glimmer of hope for all of the denizens of the ghetto.

“I pull now.”

You don’t have dreams, you make them. I could almost see the grin on the optimistic tagger’s face as his words blossomed to life in front of him.

Just wait kid, just wait. Make all of the dreams you want. One day the inconceivable weight of reality will come crushing down on you and you will find yourself far from your suburban home getting third-rate dentistry from a third-world refugee in a room behind a corner store because you can’t afford anything else.

Stalin put one hand on my shoulder and pressed down, while tugging at my tooth with the other.

You don’t make dreams, kid. You make mortgage payments and you make school lunches and you make sure you have enough Tylenol to make it through the day and you make up excuses as to why you have been stuck doing a job beneath you for the last fifteen fucking years. But you don’t make dreams.

“Open vider.”

Wider??

My mouth was open as the hood of an old Buick. Stalin dug in, gave a grunt and there was an audible pop as the tooth relinquished its grasp and came free.

The door burst open and a boy of about ten came bounding into the room.

“Papa! Papa! I got an A, Papa!”

Stalin, now hovering above me, turned to his son.

“Good job Alexei, Papa is proud. I vil be done soon. You go tell Mama.”

Stalin sat back down next to me and started to pack cotton into my now empty socket, a new glint in his eye.

“My boy gonna be dentist too.” He cast a forlorn glance at his surroundings. “Not like dis.” I caught a faint smile peeking out from under his shaggy moustache and he started to beam with pride once more. “Real American dentist. Is why we came here. For him. For his dreams. You rest now. I be back soon.”

Stalin left the room but didn’t quite close the door. I could just make out the joyous sounds of true familial love.

For his dreams.

I tried to smile but only succeeded in letting a bit of bloody drool seep out of the corner of my mouth. I couldn’t wait to get home and hug my wife and kids. Every mortgage payment, every morning cursing my alarm clock, every ache and pain, every hardship I had to endure was worth it. For them. For their dreams.

You don’t have dreams, you make them.

Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe