Category Archives: Short Fiction

Contractually Obligated Halloween Post

“The Best Friend Is Not In Heaven”

The dumb thing is this could’ve been cool if Preston wasn’t being a butt crack. La Belle Cemetery at almost dusk, dark out and not dark out at the same time—actually, it’d be perfect if I hadn’t promised Mrs. Grimble I’d do this ghost hunt with Preston. She made me swear to it, and this is the kid who told me in homeroom I’m the reason we can’t be partners anymore.

Now he’s ruining the light.

No, screw that, the Nathusius family gravesite is still cool and I tell jerk face Preston to stop practicing his intro so I can get some video.

I turn on the camcorder and start with the three headstones, the dad and mom and oldest daughter, all born way long ago in the 1800s and died way long ago in the 1900s. Then the family monument, the platform built to look like stairs and the gigantic cross on the last step and the big block next to it that says NATHUSIUS. All the thick gray stone is sculpted and amazing and everything, but I zoom in where everybody’s eyes should be going.

The statue of the girl made of the same stone on the second stair. Long hair falling over her shoulders and a dress that covers her feet. She’s got her hands on her stomach and she’s cradling flowers. Age-wise, she’s probably two grades ahead of me.

I do a slow zoom out from her sad gray face and man it’s kind of dramatic—

—and Preston totally stands up in my shot. Stares straight into the camera.

“What the?! Man!” I stop recording.

“Neil, I need another rehearsal,” he says. “Reading the diary pages. My elocution is off.”

“Your what? Electrocution?”

Here they come, the big show-off words. It’s always when he’s wearing his “tweeds” and his slicked-back hair he can’t get right unless his mom helps him.

“It was fine,” I say. “Just read what it says. Don’t go all Sir Preston Highcliff.”

Preston sniffs like he’s sniffed since first grade when nothing’s dripping out of his nose.

“Why did I allow Mrs. Grimble to constrain me to a promise not to work this solitarily?”

“What? Stop doing that. I’m the one who promised her. I could do this by myself, easy, but she gave me that look.”

Preston shivers in his tweeds. “That look.”

“Yeah, like it makes—”

“—icicles in your armpits,” we say.

We almost look at each other and laugh. Our joke when we met Mrs. Grimble at the Historical Society that first time. When we were still partners. And now I’m way first to scowl. Because this is our last ghost hunt. Not partners, definitely not friends.

“Don’t be a dorkhole,” I say. “Do it like I would for once. Normal, like, ‘Hey, what’s up, if this statue really is haunted by a ghost girl, then thanks to the secret Nathusius family diary we know her name is Mary. And 200 years ago she came to Wisconsin for a better life with bunches of other German immigrants. She was gonna marry the son of Mr. Nathusius but he changed his mind and because girls have been weird for I guess forever, she drowned herself in Fowler Lake. And now, supposedly, every year on the day Mary died, after the sun’s completely gone, the statue cries blood and her ghost appears and she drowns herself again.’ See? It’s easy.”

“I don’t think girls are weird,” Preston says.

“What?” My armpits were cold before, now they’re hot. “Forget the intro. Just do what you do to be ready if a ghost shows up.”

Preston sniffs and mumbles a made-up word. Sounded like “igneraymuss,” whatever that is. I hit record on the camera and he sits on his little stool at his little table in the grass. He takes white candles out of the leather bag that looks like when his grandpa’s been in the sun too long.

I go back to the statue and follow where the girl’s eyes are looking. The block of stone at the bottom of the family monument. The words carved into it. I remember that other stuff Preston read from the diary. The Nathusius family felt really guilty about Mary dying and had the statue made and those words engraved just for her. It’s German, something she always used to say. In English it means THE BEST FRIEND IS IN HEAVEN…………………………………..

Why am I holding this shot so long? I move to where other graves mark a path down to the Oconomowoc River feeding into Fowler Lake. Mary’s ghost only has to walk or I guess float a hundred feet to the water. To drown herself………….my armpits are cold…………that’s weird.

Everything is really still. The lake. The trees. The air. I can’t smell the laundry soap on my jean jacket. I don’t hear Preston squeaking candles into candleholders.

“Neil,” he says. “She’s here.”

I flinch—I mean, I turn quick to see and Preston’s standing and staring at nothing but a darker cemetery. I switch the camera to night vison. All that gives me is the nothing in green.

“Are you sure?” I say. “Grab the EMF meter out of your bag.”

He doesn’t move. His eyes are as big as mine would be if I could actually see my first dang ghost too.

“Can’t you hear her?” he says.

“Preston, show me where she is.”

“Mary says she’s been waiting for someone just like me. Serendipity.”

“What?”

My armpits heat up and I’m zooming in and out on the camera, trying to find her, catching the statue’s eyes. Something very very wrong is coming out of her eyes.

“Preston, is that blood? Preston!”

He’s shaking. Really hard. Like a million Mrs. Grimbles are all giving him that look. Both our mouths pop wide open. What do I do I’m—Preston’s mouth snaps shut he stops shaking and…………man the grin he puts on.

I’m 89 pounds of armpit sweat.

“Der beste freund ist nicht im Himmel.”

I drop the camcorder. His voice is a girl’s voice, but low and not real friendly.

“He will walk with me into the water. He will walk with me forever.”

Preston comes at me on the cemetery path to the lake. His face is like the family’s headstone. What do I do I’m stuck I can’t move I can’t breathe I can’t—

He shoves me aside.

Mary’s ghost is in control.

She’s taking him to drown with her.

“Wait,” I say, hoping I’m louder than my heart is. “You’re not weird. I didn’t mean it!”

“He will walk with me forever. My husband.”

“Husband?! He’s in sixth grade!”

“He’s lonely. We will be good company in death.”

What do I do I go after him and jump on his back and we fall off a grassy ledge and hit the riverbank. I’m on top of him but we’re still moving. Preston claws at the wet grass digging up mud crawling forward. Mary’s ghost is gonna drown us both. I grab his arms. I gotta try.

“Preston, it’s my fault,” I say. “You’re right. I lied. I did.” He keeps clawing. I keep trying. “I ditched you and went to that VR party. I’m the butt crack. But you’re never alone, okay? You’re not! Preston!”

He slows. He twitches.

“Preston!”

He quits. He blows out this massive breath.

We both do.

“Aren’t ya glad you did this together,” Mrs. Grimble says. Mrs. Grimble?

She’s sitting on the grassy ledge. Not giving us that look, just raising her eyebrows.

“Boys,” she says. Her mouth stays open. “OH!” It stretches, stretches, she’s shaking, then it shuts so hard her false teeth smack.

But she’s grinning, and Mrs. Grimble never ever grins.

“Der beste freund ist nicht im Himmel.”

Witch and Warlock – A Short Story’s Final Installment

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Photo by Peter Clayton

You can read the previous installments here, here, and here.

WITCH AND WARLOCK (CONCLUDED)

Ruffies. It had ended there. The store at the opposite end of the mall, the other-side-of-the-tracks end of the mall. The bastard child to Morechant’s prodigal son. Everything was cheaper and uglier at Ruffies. But that wasn’t why they’d preyed there; Peter was hoping as much as he was certain of it. It couldn’t have been classist he’d been raised by a single mother. It’d been maybe more depressing than that. Witch. Right, Witch had access to a janitor’s closet on Ruffies’ basement level. She’d been there before; many times, Peter feared. He couldn’t—well somehow she’d been given or had gotten a key, and that was where they’d fled after Warlock snipped some hairs from a baby in a stroller while Witch distracted its mom. Food processors. God the stupid details he’d hung onto! Not whether the baby had cried or how its stolen hairs felt in his hand. Not how the janitor’s closet smelled. Just that they’d made it there without getting caught and Witch’s dumb questions about a Cuisinart.

There’d been a ritual. That wasn’t a stupid detail, although Peter remembered fighting the almost automatic snickering teenage response to how ceremonial and mannered Witch was in laying the food tray on the floor just so, and then the laminated directory on the tray, and then the compact on top of the directory. How solemnly she’d asked Warlock to sprinkle the hairs on—an entire line popped into his head: on this unholy table set for the dark ones to feast, the seasoning, an innocent’s follicle sacrifice. He wasn’t sure if she’d said exactly that. It was something similar, though, and she’d been mad at him, that he did remember. The look on her face. Or disappointed. Right. That her warlock had come this far only to show her he was just a typical thirteen-year-old goof. But Warlock hadn’t laughed; Peter wasn’t too drunk to call this criticism unfair. God damn it he’d sprinkled the hairs on that unholy table. God damn it with the proper fervency demanded of—he reached for another roll and touched nothing but moist cloth.

Oh god damn it.

Peter was reminded he had a heart. It was in a race with his mind and they both crossed the finish line at him opening his hand in the janitor’s closet and realizing that somewhere along the way he’d lost the baby hairs. Witch was trying to keep it together, her first curse, there were bound to be hiccups, but she’d said they couldn’t go back out there, mall security was probably looking for them, and she was looking at Warlock like suddenly silver lining to his being a total failure he’ll make a nice feast for the dark forces. Peter was already clutching the spot on his head before he saw it in his mind’s eye, Witch snatching at his hair and in response to his emasculated “Hey!” telling him what did he expect she wasn’t the innocent she was a witch for antichrist’s sake. In retrospect his pinched hairs did a terrible thing: separating and falling singly, slow motion, as if he were watching individual salt granules season a piece of meat. In this ritual he’d been the flavor for an unholy meal, over which she had chanted and waved and beseeched that an eternity of misery and despair be brought down upon Flagfield Mall and its ugly, prejudiced tenants.

Peter came out of his mind and back to the restaurant again, fighting the almost automatic middle age response. What was that anymore? Resignation? Her dark forces had gorged, but the mall had thrived. Morechant’s was still in business and he’d been in Ruffies just the other day returning a humidifier for his mother. Witch had used his hair. An innocent mistake. He was grinning. Somehow she’d cursed him instead. He was the miserable one; the despairing.

“You probably thought I’d forgotten you.”

Peter nearly screamed. She was back too; she was back too. He’d never seen her coming. He forced himself to stay calm. It helped that she moved tentatively in sitting down at the table. As if she were sneaking into somebody else’s seat, he thought.

“I can’t, I can’t believe it,” he said. “After all this time.”

“I know, my bad,” she said. “Not how I wanted things to go, believe me. Thanks for not bailing I was so oh my god you ended up with all my crap.”

She laughed self-consciously and scooped up her purse and her compact, and for a moment was confused about what to do before laying it all at the foot of her chair. Warlock wondered if Witch hadn’t also cursed herself that day. He was happy she hadn’t lost her heart-shaped face.

“Gabby,” he said.

He sounded more relieved than happy. Yeah. This was his automatic response. Relief. She’d absolutely cursed him.

“It’s Allie,” she said.

“Oh. Sorry.” He must have heard her wrong in Morechant’s. Or misremembered. Well, Jesus, how many details was he supposed to remember from thirty years ago?

“No, don’t,” she said. “You’re the good guy, Peter, I’m the one who messed up. I’m the jerk.”

“Oh,” he said.

It came out like a quiet moan. Something was clenching at him from the inside. A misgiving like a raptor digging for purchase, a firmer grip. Baring down to assess a threat. He’d wondered what she was really doing here.

“I have to make things right,” she said.

Peter heard his heart and he didn’t like his odds. He’d had too much wine, too much bread. He was vulnerable. It’s what she wanted. She’d been watching him the whole time again. And now she was back. Back to lift the curse. She’d set the very course of his life she couldn’t just show up and reverse its direction, take everything away from him. He wasn’t thirteen anymore. No more because she asked him to. This was a relief. His whole life since then had been a huge god damn relief. He wasn’t even out of the restaurant when his mother answered on the first ring.

Witch and Warlock – A Short Story’s Third Installment

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Photo by Famartin

To read the first and second installments, click here and here.

WITCH AND WARLOCK (CONTINUED)

It was fucking funny, he thought. She’d seen him watching her after negotiations had broken down at the Estee Lauder counter. Cornered him near the watches and that’s when they’d officially met and he’d learned she was walking the mall trying to get a job for the summer because she needed money to “pay off a loan” and that no one would hire her because she wasn’t sixteen. So she wanted to buy some blush to help her pass for older, but she couldn’t afford it and the saleswoman wouldn’t give her a break. He remembered he’d offered immediately to ask his mother for the money and would lie to her about what it was for, he was Peter of the Engorged Loins after all. The girl, Gabby, Witch, she’d said that it was too late she’d already decided to put a curse on Morechant’s, the food court, the entire fricking mall, and once a witch had declared her intentions she couldn’t go back on them lest she wanted to be cast out of her witch’s organization. Which by the way was the Wretched Order of Flagfield Witches. Of which she was the founding member, its sole member actually, so technically she could have flouted the rules without fear of expulsion, but what a terrible example to set for future members of the order, right? Its CEO incapable of following through on one of the most basic principles of witchcraft? So she was moving forward and the first step was stealing the blush—all of the ritual implements would have to be stolen for the curse to work properly. The thing was, this being her first curse, she could really use a warlock’s help. Would he be her warlock?

The specificity of the memory startled him out of it. He felt flush and a little disoriented and half-expected everyone in the restaurant to be staring at him. To his mild disappointment the restaurant was oblivious, carrying on just fine without him. Peter took another roll, disavowed the narcissism he’d inherited from his mother, and wondered where in his mind that girl had been hiding the last three decades. Maybe he’d reflected on her in the immediate days and months and even a few years afterward, but she hadn’t become his friend let alone his girlfriend, they hadn’t seen each other again. She’d been buried under by the layers of his subsequent life and like the videotapes he used thirty years ago to record soap operas on top of soap operas the resolution of the image suffered badly. He wasn’t surprised now that she was reappearing for him that she’d never completely faded. She’d made her mark, beyond the pantsuit and the physical details Peter back in his head was bringing into sharper focus: her heart-shaped face and freckles and braided bun and determined eyes—he realized she’d essentially asked him out on a date. His first ever real date. Aiding and abetting a self-proclaimed witch in putting a curse on the Flagfield Mall. Of course he’d said yes. Because she was different and serious and confident and his mother would have hated her, and, if he was being completely honest, because she was a girl and she’d asked him. Peter reflexively sipped some wine through the bemused opening in his mouth. He would have called her Witch and answered to Warlock as long as she wanted.

He’d had only a fuzzy notion of what a warlock actually was. He figured she must have been counting on that, that “hot witch’s henchman” would sound too appealing to a thirteen-year-old dork he wouldn’t question it. She was a girl and she’d asked me to. The “Pink Kiss” to represent Morechant’s Department Store. The food tray the food court. The info booth’s laminated store directory for the mall entire. Yes, the implements. For the “cursing ritual.” It was all just so ridiculous and yet Peter couldn’t help but marvel at the balls he’d had back then. He quickly caught himself. Really, he was proud of that? Had it been so hard to steal those things? He felt old suddenly, and vicarious. Another case of misplaced pride. Another trait he’d inherited from his—no, there was an implement missing; he was forgetting something big. He wasn’t so arrogant that he—

“Blood of an innocent,” he said. That was it. He almost pumped his fist in his air.

Witch had said that. Jesus, was he really going to call her Witch? Fuck it, he was having fun with this. Witch had said they needed the blood of an innocent to appease the dark forces or whatever, the term she’d used eluded him—they were the International Olympic Committee of Curses that needed its collective palm greased before they’d allow the curse to be cast. Peter—Warlock—he could hear his younger self asking her and sounding so cringingly wide-eyed, like you mean a baby’s blood? And like all of its blood? They hadn’t, had they? Draining a baby of its blood was not something Warlock—Peter—would have forgotten, no matter all the intervening years and bad dates and chicken salad sandwiches with his mother. No they’d had to compromise and he wanted to believe it was because of the logistical nightmare draining a baby’s blood at the Flagfield Mall presented. More likely Witch had sized him up, the limitations of his warlockian capabilities, and immediately downgraded blood-draining to plucking a few innocent hairs. The wine was getting to him again. Warlock could get very self-critical when he was drunk. Another black hole to suck a relationship into. He pushed himself to stay with the right memory. Ruffies. It had ended there. The store at the opposite end of the mall, the other-side-of-the-tracks end of the mall. The bastard child to Morechant’s prodigal son. Everything was cheaper and uglier at Ruffies. But that wasn’t why they’d preyed there; Peter was hoping as much as he was certain of it. It couldn’t have been classist he’d been raised by a single mother. It’d been maybe more depressing than that. Witch. Right, Witch had access to a janitor’s closet on Ruffies’ basement level. She’d been there before; many times, Peter feared.

Witch and Warlock – A Short Story’s Second Installment

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Photo by Bryan Hilson

To read the first installment, click here.

WITCH AND WARLOCK (CONTINUED)

A gold case, Allison Downer’s compact, he’d forgotten the maître d had left it on the table next to her purse. Peter thought he should put it away. He didn’t want Allison thinking he’d dug it out of her purse and ending the date because of that. She’d assumed for him the role of guardian, and he was this far in he might as well play it. He took the compact into his hands and was struck by how elegant the logo was: “Estee Lauder” etched in black cursive script across gold plating. It was the wine. Why he gave the logo a second look and why he was curious enough to read the label stickered on the back.

“Pink Kiss,” he said. He said it again.

He wasn’t sure it was the alcohol’s effects why “Pink Kiss” resonated with him, why it seemed to hang in suspended animation in his mind when normally, effortlessly, a million other things would have replaced the cheeky name of a color of a blush of a women’s line of makeup. But here he was, his languid brain suddenly buzzing at attention, straining for context to the exclusion of everything else, like he and the compact case were alone on a stage under a spotlight. The clarity of the object made nothing more concrete than a physical feeling; a spasm in his lower back that settled and split into dual, duller creeping presences, as if emotions were two thieves come to rob him, infiltrating his body and army-crawling around the kidneys into his stomach. He could name them. Shame. Embarrassment. Mild cases, Peter assured himself, considering the “Pink Kiss” details that emerged: cold, brilliant cosmetic counters, Morechant’s Department Store, Flagfield Mall, the risk, the girl. Of course a girl. Always a girl. More and more, he felt, his memory was being reduced to a catalogue of all the stupid shit he’d done to impress the opposite sex.

This time he couldn’t have been older than thirteen, though, and it was a universal truth there was nothing a thirteen-year-old male did that wasn’t stupid. What did it mean that thirty years later he was still—whatever, Peter wanted to stay in the past. He was thirteen, roaming Morechant’s alone. Why? His mother. God damn it. She was paranoid about public dressing rooms so her aggravating shopping habit was to buy all the clothes she thought she might like, try them on at home, and then make a massive return of everything she wasn’t keeping. Somehow Peter could never get out of it, what became an eye-gouging eternity in the Morechant’s returns department in the basement of the store. He must have finally convinced his mother to let him wander. That was right, Peter thought, he’d taken the escalator up to the first floor and that’s where the cosmetic counters were and that’s where he saw her. The girl. She’d stood out to him. Of course she had, she was girl. No, he knew there’d been something else, she hadn’t been obvious. Cute and developed and around his age, yes, all major pluses, but it was coming back to him he’d been more excited about what she was wearing. A pantsuit, like she was some kind of businesswoman, and he thought it might have been a little big on her, and that made her even sexier. She was engaged in a conversation with a saleswoman. She was talking to an adult as if they were both adults. No, it was a negotiation. The girl was driving hard for a discount, he remembered. The “Pink Kiss” blush. The saleswoman had been frowning but she’d also been bending, bending, but no she never broke and the girl’s sullen, sulky departure, although it betrayed her real age, must have set something off in young Peter’s loins, which were just starting to exert their dominance over his brain.

He wasn’t the only one the girl had left hot and flustered. The case holding the “Pink Kiss” was still unlocked when the saleswoman abandoned her post to help customers at a different counter. It was a blur to him now but Peter knew he’d done it; he’d reached over and grabbed the blush right out of the case. And when he turned to look for her—hadn’t she been watching him the whole time? Yeah, the girl had been watching him the whole time from the women’s accessories department. Peter smiled at the thought of that. He’d no longer needed his brain. Fuck shame and embarrassment. It was funny. He was thirteen. She motioned him over and he was on automatic. Of course she did all the talking. What had she even said to him? Peter strained again to dig something up. Maybe a thanks but no thanks you crazy idiot you better put it back, or maybe a what’s your name you dashing scoundrel, here’s my number, call me sometime. Maybe all of those things, but he also felt like it was none of those things. No, there was something else she’d said, he was pretty sure of it. And it was something odd. Gabby. Okay, she’d told him her name, but that wasn’t what was weird.

Peter realized he was gripping hard on his blind date’s compact and he relaxed and returned it to the table and bumped into a basket of bread. The muscles in his gripping hand were sore so he grabbed a roll with the other. He sunk into warm sourdough. Somebody at some point had topped off his wine glass. They were taking pity on him. Don’t call me Gabby. Yes. That was part of what she said; the girl didn’t want Peter to call her by her real name. She didn’t want to know Peter’s real name. That was weird. But what else did she say to him? He drank some wine. Call me Witch. His heart thumped hard against his chest. He remembered thinking, But you’re wearing an oversized pantsuit. Warlock, can I count on you? This made his forehead heat up. In a good way, he thought. He was enjoying the memory. She’d said to call her Witch and that she would call him Warlock. It was funny. Flirty, sort of. It was silly teenage stuff. Will you obtain the “Pink Kiss” for me, Warlock? He took another drink. Did he have it wrong? Wasn’t it his impulsive idea to steal the blush? Had she asked him to do it? Be stupid for her sake? She’d had a plan; Peter was putting together the pieces as fast as they returned to him.

Witch and Warlock – A Short Story in 4 Installments

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Photo by Clotee Pridgen Allochuku

FIRST INSTALLMENT

The maître d had misunderstood him. Peter wasn’t annoyed she’d already come and gone before he’d even made it to the restaurant; it was that she’d left and was coming back. That she’d allowed him a blissful moment where the burden of performance had been lifted, as if he’d unshouldered the weighted jogging vest his mother had bought him hoping he’d finally “get serious” about being over forty. Gone was any hope of an idyllic near future: alone in his apartment out of his pants, wallowing in buffalo wings and cowardice, rummaging the DVR backlog for his favorite extreme reality shows, the kind where the host basically has to cannibalize himself to survive the last inhospitable terrains left on the planet.

It was the maître d—Peter’s mother loved hearing there were still places with maître d’s—thinking he was doing anyone but himself a favor, who blocked Peter’s view of his own fantasy by handing him the woman’s purse and relaying her message she had to take care of some urgent business but was committed to their evening, hence the leaving behind of her purse.

Blind dates were their own form of inhospitable terrain, Peter thought.

But he took the purse. He surprised himself. This guy who just a minute ago was the picture of a pantless coward making love to barbecue sauce accepting responsibility for a stranger’s personal property. A stranger who was either a very trusting person or, more likely, too crazy to care. Really, what did he know about this woman? Her name, what she did for a living, a fleeting impression of what she looked like. And her taste in handbags—not the “cargo ships” his mother went for, but a sleeker, red leather square with a flap that clasped in the front like an envelope. That was supposed to clasp. That couldn’t clasp, because the purse was overstuffed and something at the top of the pile inside fell out when he tried to figure out how to hold the thing and still hold on to his masculinity. The maître d smiled dumbly at him, maybe seeing in this situation the makings of something romantic. Probably, Peter thought, vaguely aware he might be projecting, the guy was just happy to have released himself of his obligation to the woman. The maître d did pick up what had fallen, a compact case, and carried it with him as he led Peter to a secluded table in the back corner of the restaurant. An intimately lit, lean enough to lean across to kiss kind of table. Not at all close to the nearest exit. Okay, so the guy was a romantic and she wasn’t a complete stranger, red leather purse owning Allison Dawner, marketing consultant, a strawberry blond? with blue eyes? a friend of a friend of his co-worker. Still, he couldn’t vouch for her sanity.

Like it mattered. He almost laughed out loud. They all went to shit in the end anyway. The blind dates, the Internet dates, the meet-up groups that spun out into dates. Even the dates that turned into longer term relationships. How long had any of those shit storms lasted? He guessed six months was his personal record. At the very least this date was beginning unlike any of the others. The maître d wished him good luck and instructed a busboy to bring out a glass of the house red, compliments of the house. Peter discovered he wasn’t immediately envious of the other couples in the restaurant, the ones who didn’t have to perform for each other. Maybe it was the wine, but tonight felt different. So what, he thought, let it be the wine. He was going to enjoy a fresh beginning before it all went to shit.

His mother used to say relationships were a numbers game. He had to keep trying, every failure brought him that much closer to a success. She’d been saying that since he was in high school and she repeated it every Thursday when they got together for chicken salad sandwiches and a few hands of gin rummy. When he’d turned forty she took a harder line. Like she’d set an alarm when he was born and now it was finally going off. Maybe he wasn’t taking good enough care of himself, or maybe he didn’t understand how to treat a woman. Or god something had happened to alter his brain chemistry. She’d read somewhere that it sometimes happened to men in middle age. Should he be on medication? Should he try some of her medication? Peter did his best to explain to her that it took two people to unravel a relationship and each of his doomed unions had been its own particular mess. The only constant was that they never worked out. He guessed he was just unlucky. And maybe stupid, because he kept at it, kept playing the game, hoping the odds would eventually land in his favor. His mother wasn’t convinced. He’d found a baggie with four of her Lexapro secreted inside a pocket of his jogging vest.

The wine tasted like a dessert topping; what Peter’s brain was turning into. Bad idea drinking on an empty stomach. How many of those dates had ended prematurely? He flagged down a waiter and asked for a basket of bread. He had to stop thinking about his mother. If she was on his mind he’d bring her up and how many of those—what was that?—how many of those—something was catching light, irritating his eye.