Rachel Basilowicz

Rachel Basilowicz wore electric blue four inch patent leather pumps with seamed stockings, a tight and tapered skirt that made her lower half resemble her favorite female shape, the ice cream cone, a simple but painted on top that she would have to try and touch the ceiling in before her cleavage could not be described as immodest, and had pink eye. She saw no reason to dress down on account of conjunctivitis, and would not dig out the puritanical pants suits her mother bought her every year for Christmas, most likely at her father's behest, just because one eye was somewhat doughy. Being the office hot girl had its own responsibilities. She must stay one step ahead of the potential usurpers in other insidiouos departments like human resources, or compliance. She must strike the balance between enthralling her underlings with sexual dominance, and enticing her overlings with sexual submission. At all times Rachel must conduct herself like she is being watched, walking down empty hallways with an extra bounce off of her pointed heels that echoed all the way up through her blond ponytail.

Rachel eyed the interns suspiciously, there was always a brief shift in attention when they came to work in the tall office building, springing up one day like flowers after a scarce desert rain. But the college girls always formed a clatch, not mixing the way that Rachel did with all the regular people, and soon she lured them back giggling at their jokes, and dressing with daily effort. On casual Friday the interns would throw on comfortable jeans and cardigans. Rachel descended on one writing a to-do list in her cubicle. Laundry. Gym? "You look really cute today," Rachel always like to validate them.

"Thanks, you too." She replied only just glancing up. "What happened to your eye?"

Byron George

Children had trouble understanding Byron George. He was built like Humpty Dumpty with his great big belly and his tiny little ankles, and this was relatable enough, but he moved with ease and vigor. They saw the most delicate part of him, so close to the floor, while he seemed to ice skate around them. He was a real life giant, but he wasn't a mean giant, or even a gentle giant. Byron handled children as firmly and roughly as they handled each other. His voice was a booming echo, vastly hollow like a prehistoric tree, and he spoke to them like little lords, colluding on an antiquated past only they shared. He was an adult but he was never cross, he treated their transgressions as either a wonderful joke, or a regrettable inevitability they might console each other over. If he scooped a child up in his mighty arms, and they yanked his great black beard he would first bark with pain, and then burst into laughter as loud as a cracking glacier.

The children tried to understand Byron George. They collected intelligence on him. He had no wife and he had no children. His house was eccentric and worn, but well taken care of. It had spires and gingerbread shingles, leaded sugar windows He gave the children free reign of his yard, he argued that the wilderness would always belong more to them than to adults. Byron didn't ever go to work in the morning, their parents told them he worked behind a typewriter all day. The children didn't believe this because they saw him digging in his garden, or impossibly balanced on top of his bike. Sometimes he spent all day walking in the woods, and they observed him stopping to turn up his face in pools of light, or standing statue still to not startle deer. He always checked his gold pocket watch but never had to leave, and even stranger he would let any child who asked look at his watch too. He explained that it was real crystal, real gold like pirate treasure, it came across the sea in a boat, and it was old old old even when he was a little boy.

One day Byron George was gone. His house was up for sale and a procession of strange and beautiful things marched out his front door. Each neighbor received a little something from Byron's estate, and the children found a book, or trowel or the green bike now living in their house. Byron George wont ever be back their parents explained, with sad looks on their faces. The children didn't believe them at all, and when they gathered they sometimes discussed where Byron George really was.

Vaca

"Knives are the best part of people" was Vaca's motto. He sat at wooden table, the planks pitted and knotty with eyes, watching him become a Vaquero with a big bowie knife. Vaca wore a cowboy hat pulled low on his eyes, and ropey white rings of scar tissue around his fingers where the tooth had bit him. "The knife lets you know that you're slow, makes you get faster." He fanned the fingers of his right hand, spreading them on the table wide enough to be smart but narrow enough to be proud. He dipped his head to shade his eyes from the lights, a Zorro mask made of shadow, Vaca thought of himself as a bandito. His left hand gripped the knife making a stone fist, holding it upright with perfect posture. "It has the pride of a rooster. A rigid spine, a shining flash, a sharp claw." Vaca ground his boot into the floor, feeling the grit. He turned the knife hearing the same grinding sound, boring out a scallop of sawdust next to the knuckle of his thumb. "The knife is your boot. Stomp with the knife as hard as you stomp with your boot. Dancing around your fingers gets you cut, a man that doesn't belong tip toes. A real man stomps around his own house, he isn't afraid who hears him." The rope in Vaca grew tighter, made him taught, and wouldn't slack until the game was done. He stomped the blade between his thumb and pointer, and felt the distance in his mind. He had to understand the distance like a tangible thing, not abstract math. He tapped the knife home and hammered between each finger, looking up with flare and trusting his memory. "The knife has no eyes, it will treat all men the same. The knife is blind justice. You must have three eyes with the knife, the two in your head, the one in your mind. If you dont watch the knife with all three eyes you will lose." His speed increased and he felt himself be taken by the knife, like rolling down hill. An undertow drawing him forward, always threatening to spin out of control. Chips of wood flew up from the table, sweat hung in the air. "Look at a Vaquero," he said, and kept time intensely chanting in his head "I sharpen my knife on the teeth of the night. I sharpen my knife on the teeth of the night. I sharpen my knife on the teeth of the night."

Lindz

A herd of elephant clouds lumbered on the horizon, driven on the strong wind which rumbled as if by the thundering of their feet. Lindz stood next to her car, which she had parked a full minute before, unable to force herself to go inside the house. The front walk stretched longer than it ever had before and Lindz examined the yard trying to find the forced perspective. She wondered why the spot was open in front of the house, a spot that was always filled. If she had to park up the street she wouldn’t be confronted with the front door now, or even better if there had been no spots she could have circled the block for just a little while.

“You don’t have to stay,” she told him, getting dressed and throwing her hands out in punctuation, like a magic trick that made this all make sense. “I can’t hold you here, I wont hold you here. If you know what will make you happy then you should just go find it.” Lindz crossed her arms and anticipated the response he didn’t give. She opened her mouth but didn’t say anything, the room filled with crushing silence and her eyes blazed. Lindz turned and tossed her last magic trick sharply in the air, shaking her head and giving him nothing but back as she angrily fled like Lot from Gomorrah, saying “Because obviously it isn’t me.”

She was angry all day. Everything that came to hand was struck with a blow, a hollow inarticulate thwok of frustration. But the more time she spent with it the more nuanced it became. He didn’t have anything to say at the prospect of her leaving, and as much as she hated him for it she became more disgusted with her own willingness to endure the rejection for the hope that he would eventually open his mouth. She knew at the end of the day there was a confrontation with something and the closer it drew the more she was filled with dread. Above the reconciliation, or disintegration, the fight or the empty house was the fear that he may still be there, still with nothing to say, and she would settle for it.

The air grew still and Lindz felt horribly out of place standing on the curb, looking at her house. She started up the walk and thought "Let's talk about regret and not use any names because one of them is yours and the other isn't mine."

Steve Holden

Steve Holden brought you the Weather at Five with Action Live!” with luminous teeth and slightly shiny suits. He teased “Sun today but rain is in the forecast, I’ll tell you when,” when the chance of rain was ten days in the future, but the life of a meteorologist is one in flux. When the air was warm he had to focus on the next cool down, when spring rain fell he let you know when things would dry out. As winter set in Steve inevitably said “I’ll let you know how long these chilly conditions will last,” and eventually started mentally tagging on “three months.”

Steve Holden drove a gun metal Jaguar that matched most of his suits, with a tan interior that matched his hair. One day when filling it with gas he caught himself thinking “A full tank now but we can expect to be on E in about 500 miles or so.” He planned dinner as he ate lunch and on Friday afternoon he was already saying "Back to work on Monday," shaking his head. It was hellish being a weather man.

Maxroy

The car looked like a dirty poodle, white underneath grunge with the top down, the long pursuing nose straight and intent, and hungry eyes of windshield. It was only 38 degrees with the sun just tipping over the bare February hills, but Maxroy didn't care that the top was stuck down. He did not wear a coat, he wore a threadbare cardinal t-shirt like it was any day in July and he was headed to the beach. At the first turn there was a rattle, and a disconcerting give in the driver's side door. To be safe Maxroy hung his long, brown arm over the side, so low it almost seemed like it would skim the pavement, and hugged the door to him like a blanket. He listened to the radio and rested the back of his head against the fleshy round at the top of his back, trying to look casual in his conspicuousness.

Maxroy owed a little money in exchange for which he took possession of the car, to board in his garage from the summer months until November, which was supposedly enough time to fix the roof and the door and whatever else kept it from living out of doors. His friend did no work and began dodging phone calls. Maxroy was not successful in scheduling a pick up until the sudden cold of late November had dug in its' roots, when his friend promised to retrieve the car on the first decent day. But the days remained cold with little sun, and Maxroy's charge extended its' visit.

He had always avoided debt, a habit learned from his hard working father, who preached against credit like some men hated the devil. The car, interred in his garage, became an acute reminder of the payment he owed. Every day in the long frigid winter he thought of his father, Maxroy Marcus Sr., bending the earth before him in some rich man's garden, and having never went to bed a day in his life owing a cent to anyone.

The weather hadn't broken, but it had thought about it, and that was close enough. Maxroy got up and found the keys, and didn't bother calling his friend to give fair warning. He looked forward to when he could hand off this albatross like a receipt for a debt paid, and walk away without looking back. Maxroy held the car from shaking to bits the whole way, and thunderously drummed his fingers on the dash staring up at every red light.

Little Alice

Tiny Alice had walnut hair, creamy brown shot through with flecks of gold and furrows of mahogany that gave it a wild texture even when neatly combed. She always wore pants because she liked to sit on the ground, and canvas sneakers lovingly illustrated in ballpoint pen, but only on the insole side, which people found weird. Alice liked three quarter length coats and wide pockets to carry lots of things. It was a game to her to drop something in a pocket and try to find a use for it that day, sometimes it took her to unexpected places.

Tiny Alice was often smaller than the canvas she was toting around, painted with block limbed people, whose silhouettes were suggestively animal. She herself could easily translate to a Hello Kitty. People might talk to her like a cartoon character, which only made her feel more cartoonish. She explored the more surreal nature of herself because people allowed it, but she sometimes struggled with what people allowed and what they expected. They always looked a little dismayed at her sensibility, disappointed that she wasn’t as chaotic as they had hoped.

“The truth is,” was her favorite way to start a sentence. “The truth is, I get just a little bored being here.” She said looking around the gym. “The truth is, I make up little games all day.” She always had a few good friends, and a few guys who really wanted to take her out. She sat down on the polyurethaned wood which picked up the overhead lights the same way as her brown-gold hair, and took her foot into her lap to start intently doodling. She looked up at me and said “I think we’re going to be here for awhile.” Tiny Alice put her shoes on the wrong feet, which people found weird, but made sense if you thought about it.

Len Grappa

Len grew up in the big city, but in middle age when the economy went South and he found himself laid off, he took a job in Knoxville. His friends chided him for moving to the sticks, far away from civilization, and he grumbled to every polite face that would listen. People asked him how he got by and he told them, "It isn't so bad. You just have to be selective." For example he found a place that sold that strong Ethiopian coffee he likes, they ship it down from an importer in Manhattan. He knows to only get bread from the place with the guy who worked in The Bronx with the guy who trained over in Italy. He takes his new yokel friends to get Belgian Frittes just like they make in the East Village, and they always love them. And just yesterday he had a great Bahn Mi from a cute little Vietnamese girl with a food truck, he hadn't gotten to the bottom of it yet but he'd guess she immigrated straight from Brooklyn. "Yup," Len thought, "you can get by just so long as you find the people who know all the best stuff comes from New York."

Andrew

Andrew would work in a furnace if he could, but he had settled for a kitchen. The blazing heat of iron and steaming pots, the spitting salamander and sudden columns of dragon fire were a crucible that purged the impurity of people from his night. His mise en place made him singular and centered. With everything left where he had laid it, and not a thing above his command, the kitchen was Andrew’s sanctuary.

The trouble had started a few nights before when his current girlfriend, the hostess, accused him of snatching tickets. Andrew denied this and told her she was turning into a distraction. Secretly he knew she was right, he had chosen a kitchen with an open window rather than double doors for service, disliking intrusion, and he defended the pass like a goalkeeper. He tried to stop the servers from breaking the plane of the window with their hands, and if he was late too reach out anyone could mistake what he did for snatching. Since then she had been cool in all interactions, but when she dropped off tickets she thrust her arm through the pass to the arm pit, like she was delivering a calf, waving the transgression in Andrew’s ever reddening face. “She may have figured me out,” he thought.

The awareness of tension spread like a cold. Soon all the servers had the faintest implication in their eyes, dropping off tickets with suicidal directness, as if their hands were playing chicken with the invisible boundary of Andrew’s kitchen , veering off into self preservation at the last second. His girlfriend came to the pass, “Your ex is here, table five.” She would have requested table five, what everyone called the mirror table. It was situated in such a way that the diner could see into the kitchen via an ornate mirror that hung on the opposite wall, and vice versa. Andrew had all of his VIPs sit there so he could steal glances of them eating and gauge their reaction. His ex would know this, she was the previous hostess who chose to end her employment and their relationship in tandem.

His girlfriend hung around the table in such a way that would be called treason in times of war. The servers all made little visits, giggling and making brazen collusive eyes at the mirror and Andrew’s imprisoned image. The clatter around him softened, and the heat of the kitchen became oppressive. The server was taking her order now and there they all stood chatting, looking up at his depthless reflection painted in a window in a frame. Andrew closed his eyes and took a deep breath, undid the top button of his chef’s coat, and when he looked up the most Cheshire of all servers was grinning at him, holding out the ticket. He snatched it from her hand even though she did not try to penetrate his world and read “Bronzino. No Salt.” and “Burn it!” underlined twice. Andrew looked up with outrage and found two sets of eyes staring holes through him, more furiously terrible than any heat he could make in his kitchen

Roger

Specky, rheumy and bird chested were the best ways to describe Roger. He reminded people of a nine year old meteorologist, and not the shiny tan forehead kind, the bow tie and science kind. Roger walked like key parts of his spinal column were made out of egg shells, requiring a strict discipline of posture to prevent collapse. His lilting gait wouldn't set a single head bobbing in a field of daffodils.

Roger's parents understood him as a formal child who asked for little. They enrolled him in classes and clubs to expand his social world, and maybe even skin his knees. Roger tolerated them in his considerate way but didn't stick with any of them for very long, until he began his guitar lessons. He approached the guitar as a kind of equation you have to solve with your hands. By making complimentary notes he produced a chord, enough chords became a proof, and he could proceed to the next song. Enough songs finished the lesson and he was released back into his introspective world.

He never much listened to the words but one day his teacher taught him a tune and he became fixated. It was the best song he had ever heard. His parents worked hard, had nice things, and always tried to be respectable. It seemed like a terrible life to Roger, and he was glad he had his thick glasses to hide behind when business strangers came by the house to look at all the nice respectable things his parents had. But this song was telling him he only needed to work long enough to afford a place to sleep, and the rest of the day he could be a bum. He could beg cigarettes and smoke cigar butts and break into railroad cars when no one was looking. It excited him so much he kept a hobo bindle packed in his closet and began casually asking questions as to the locations of train yards.

Mark

It was with no irony that Mark’s parents looked at their new baby, and signed his name into legality. He wiggled his toes at will, broadened his chest, pointed, gurgled and grew in the way that normal babies do. Mark was a normal baby. An archipelago darkened on his neck and colonized his cheek, and what was invisible on the day he was born dappled his face by the time he was a man, like stains of iodine. Girls treated Mark normally and he was married. Everyone was always polite in the best possible way, acknowledging what was plain for everyone to see, and then forgetting about it except to occasionally congratulate themselves for being so progressive. Sometimes in the small hours Mark looked at himself in the mirror and wondered if he grew up the way he was supposed to, disappointment stealing through the darkest rooms of him.

Frank Basilowicz

Frank Basilowicz believed in migraines even less than he believed in karate. He was willing to admit he was old fashioned, maybe even a hard ass, but he staunchly refused to validate the fripperings of the woman, who so closely resembled a greyhound that had endured several hours in a dunk tank, and a good romp with a hyperactive little league team armed with firecrackers. Frank’s daddy had fought in the war, the good one, and now he was expected to swallow that this precious dear had managed to get herself allergic to light AND sound, but only sometimes. He had words with her, and he’ll be the first to admit they more or less turned into words with her whole gender, and for good measure moved on to words with her whole generation.

Some men of his age came home and poured a drink, and some had silly hobbies to tinker with in basement work rooms their wives knew not to go near, but Frank coached baseball. He could remember a time in this country when overzealousness was called a virtue. America ran on intent, used its young men like coal to stoke blazing fires of conquest, and the only place he still saw it was in these young people. He had taught them to live and die every second of the day. They had mastered outrage and consternation their peers wouldn’t learn until late in life. They were getting ahead because of Frank, they wouldn’t be surprised when the reality of the world came knocking. “It is a mountain in the mist,” he told those nail chewing little bastards. “I’m here to tell you all about the mountain, because you’ve heard mighty ‘nuff about the mist.” He didn’t even care if they won.

Frank marched dutifully up the stairs to the big office, to have the big meeting, with the big boss. Frank remembered this office from before. It was like Ernest Hemingway's den, there were dead things everywhere, trophies to remind us how fine it was to take a trophy. A miasma of smoke hung in the air, clung to the light. And behind a monolith of a desk, a downright Precambrian desk, was the big boss who wanted to hear a dirty joke, see a sales report, and be left alone until something was on fire. It was a smaller place now, light and airy, with a portrait of an authentic Shoshone moccasin, fine with beads and once belonging to Chief Washakie. He sat stiffly upright, knowing what was coming. The big boss asked after his health. Frank didn't answer but turned unflexing at the waist, like a board ran up his spine, to appraise this new art. He looked up and down, turned back slowly and said "That's a picture of a shoe." Afterwards Frank bought his team a brick of firecrackers.

Robbo

Feeling the warmth in his cupped plam, the moist grit between his fingers, Robbo scattered the handful of rich dirt he had taken up and saw swollen dots of newsprint rise where the loose earth fell. "It's a strange job for a young man." Marcus was the groundskeeper here and supervised Robbo's work among the flowers. It was true, everyone else on the grounds was as old as Marcus, who had a white fringe of hair and deep bruised triangles under his drooping eyes.

"My father told me if I went to art school I couldn't expect a normal career." Robbo tipped his eyes upward, sipping the blue sky. His father was right but he didn't imagine this, through coincidence and circumstance, a hand in Pete Wentz' garden. Robbo surveyed the kingdom in dissatisfaction. No one ever came here, not even Pete. The only people who ever saw Robbo's hard work were Marcus' crew, all called by last name, all tired of walking the same manicured paths every day. The garden was too subtle for Robbo. He dug in the dirt all day thinking about the intolerable slowness of plants and dreaming about immediacy.

Marcus' crew retired early, and Robbo often went to the bar alone. He looked at the yellow stains in the cracks of his fingers and caught the eye of a young Indian with shaggy hair and plastic eyeglasses doing the same thing. "Paint," the Indian said and showed the palm of his hand, splaying his fingers. "I swear I wasn't making fun of you. Honest Indian." They both chuckled. "Ollie Robnujab." Ollie said, pointing sheepishly at himself.

They knew some of the same people, mutual friends from art school. It seemed their lives were always one step out of synch, and any twist of events could've had them meeting much sooner than they did. They bought their art supplies in the same store and had applied for the same jobs, one of which Ollie held still. Robbo explained how the process of rejection had chased him from the life. He drew comic strips and with each submission came revision, a new set of notes Robbo considered and applied as best he could. He produced less and less of his own and more and more of what was asked. Robbo remembered the tipping point, when at last he had given everything requested and nothing of himself to muddy the waters. The frustration he felt was insisted upon by his urgency to work and soothed by the collapse in tension, that at last the sparring was over and the thing could be decided. He could report back home he did indeed have steady work and could erode the ramparts keeping him from a respectable life. For the last time he opened the rejection letter and attached to his samples, where the suggestions and editorial feedback would always be, was a blank sheet of paper.

His new friend sympathized, it was a rough story and not an uncommon one. “I have to admit though, turning over ideas, getting in under deadline… It makes you miss giving something time to develop. Watching it grow.”

Robbo was pruning distractedly in the early afternoon, thinking about the night before. Marcus was leaning on the sharp bladed shovel he carried all over the grounds. "Oliver," all of Marcus' crew were called by their last names. "Boy, you growing thorns or roses?"

Robbo made up his beds and thought "What a strange Goddamn world."

Sunny

Sunny has the longest legs, peachy with a golden fuzz finer than dandelion fingers, hanging lazily in the summer afternoon, so still in the air you try to rub them like sleep from your eyes. The arabesque swirls; goldenrod in the morning, mercury white in the day, red at dusk, gone at night unless you touch her impossible legs, which we never do. Sunny wears shorts cut short and shoes cut low, she's wading in the warm sunshine. When the weather turns cold she puts her legs away, I know she doesn't just disappear but no one ever sees her until the wind makes the correct rustle in pregnant trees, and is sufficiently kissed.

Gitane

When you read enough books you find that in the old West they called a mustache by its plural, mustaches. This informed Gitane's decision, after reading True Grit because he did not like to see a movie based on a book before reading the book like a philistine, to cultivate his mustaches. The internet can be consulted in matters of care for the mustaches, oraculars on trimming utensils and the finest waxes. Gitane chose a vintage construction for his handlebars, suggesting the integrity of an old hand. They were mustaches he felt could confidently mentor other mustaches on johnny come lately upper lips. But Gitane didn't feel right wearing his clothes like the bunting of modernity along with his sage and laquered whiskers. On the internet he ordered vests cut trim to his waist, heavy wool slacks that needed to be held up with suspenders, and a pair of gleaming leather shoes a thick gauge of leather abandoned to history. Gitane sometimes bragged to his friends that his mustaches had developed a natural essence of sandalwood, whose odor delighted him all day. Before long Gitane couldn't drive his car anymore, when he sat behind the wheel he was struck with a brief automotive amnesia before the muscle memory returned. His little Audi was built by the Kaiser, what would Mattie Ross say? Needless to say he felt a profound relief atop the antique bicycle he procurred for an only slightly unreasonable price on Craigslist. Gitane further chafed at his friends, and his city. The Eastern people and Eastern lands were the oldest in the country but that just meant they had the most time to change. Scouring Google Gitane found a place out west given to the old ways and filled with the old souls. He paid the penalty for breaking his lease, and the fee for cancelling his cell phone. Gitane was going to say goodbye but he could'nt find tasteful enough post cards to make a warm expression in his favorite India ink. When Gitane arrived in that place he tallied up his journey and thought "This has been some of the most expensive facial hair known to man." He understood why actors sometimes insured their mustaches for great sums of money.