The New Black

by Richard Thomas

  He makes his way across the ring and I dutifully step forward to meet him. We stand facing each other, swaying slightly. My eyes swelled to slits and he moves in a womb of mellow amber light.

  And I see this:

  A pair of young-old eyes opening, the clear blue of them. A hand breaking up from sucking black water, fist smashed through the ice sheet and a body dragging itself to the surface. A boy lying on the ice in the ashy evening light, lungs drawing clean winter air, eyes oriented on a sky where even the palest stars burn intensely after such lasting darkness. I see a man walking across the lake from the west, body casting a lean shadow. He offers his hand: twisted and rheumatoid, a talon. The boy’s face smooth and unlined, preserved beneath the ice; the man’s face a roadmap of knots and scar tissue and poorly knitted bones. For a long moment, the boy does not move. Then he reaches up, takes that hand. The man clasps tightly; the boy gasps at the fierceness of his grip. I see them walking towards a distant house. Squares of light burning in odd windows, a crackling fire, blankets, hot chocolate. The man leans down and whispers something. The boy laughs—a beautiful, snorting laugh, fine droplets of water spraying from his nose. They walk together. Neither leads or follows. I see this happening. I still hold a belief in this possibility.

  We circle in a dimming ring of light, feet spread, fists balled, knees flexed. The crowd recedes, as do the noises they are making. The only sound is a distant subterranean pound, the beat of a giant’s heart. Shivering silver mist falls through the holes in the roof and that coldness feels good on my skin.

  Nicodemus steps forward on his lead foot, left hand sweeping in a tight downwards orbit, flecks of blood flying off his brow as his head snaps with the punch. I come forward on my right foot, stepping inside his lead and angling my head away from his fist but not fast enough, tensing for it while my right hand splits his guard, barely passing through the narrowing gap and I’m torquing my shoulder, throwing everything I’ve got into it, kitchen-sinking the bastard, and, for a brilliant split second in the center of that darkening ring, we meet.

  Craig Davidson

  has written four books: Rust and Bone, The Fighter, Sarah Court and Cataract City. His nonfiction and fiction has appeared in Esquire, GQ, The Walrus, Salon, Nerve, The London Observer, The Cincinatti Review, Avenue, Agni, Event, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, SubTerrain and elsewhere. His first book was made into a film directed by Jacques Audiard, starring Marion Cotillard. Graduate of the UNB Creative Writing Program and the University of Iowa’s MFA program. Currently jobless.

  BLUE HAWAII

  REBECCA JONES-HOWE

  The wheels of the jogging stroller squeak with every turn, timing the anxiety in my chest, making me think of rum rushing from the bottle to a glass. Cold and refreshing. It’s the sort of thought that jogging can’t push away.

  Every run uphill makes me feel like I’m starting over.

  My calves throb. There’s a heat wave in my throat, making every exhale a cough. I wipe at the sweat on my face, smearing the cover-up on my lip.

  “Shit.”

  The baby starts crying. Leaning over the handle of the stroller, I reach out and touch her cheek. Her eyes close tight and her mouth gapes. Her screeches fill my ears.

  “Please stop,” I gasp.

  She doesn’t. I turn the stroller around, the summer heat bearing down on my walk back home. The squeaking wheels and the baby’s wails force me to shut my eyes. Even the speed bump at the entrance to the townhouse complex feels like a burden.

  “Hey, there. Hey!” It’s a male voice calling.

  I turn around and the new neighbour jogs past. He’s wearing a navy blue shirt and white jogging shorts. A sweatband pushes his brown hair back. “Hey,” he says again, jogging on the spot. “You okay? You don’t look so great. You look beat, just totally beat.”

  He’s tall, lean. He scratches at his beard. His pupils are dilated, but I can still see that his eyes are the colour of Blue Hawaii, the first drink I ever had. All I can think of is the chilled pineapple sweetness as my gaze trickles down. He’s sweating, and the fabric of his shirt clings to his chest.

  My fingers tense around the stroller.

  He’s got a water bottle. He rotates it in his grasp, spinning circles so fast that the water clings to the sides. “You live right there, right?” he asks, pointing. “I know because I saw you. You were in the window with that other girl. You were watching me move all my shit.”

  “That was my sister, Marie,” I say. “I live with her and her baby. She just went back to work after her maternity leave.”

  “You should come in,” he says, paying no attention to the crying infant in the stroller. “You’re not busy, right? I can show you my place.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, looking at him.

  “Come on.” He jogs backwards, his smile too nice, eyes so intense like Blue Hawaii vacation excitement. “Come on,” he urges. “You can have a glass of water. I promise I’ll make it cold and relieving. I promise. I guarantee, even.”

  X

  There’s an ant’s nest beside his front door, a swarm of black spots crawling around my feet. Inside, his place is barren, the boxes still taped up, stacked beside his kitchen counter. There’s a couch in the living room. The suede clings to the sweat on my thighs when I sit down.

  He gets me a glass of water and he sits beside me, watching me while I drink. “You had a cleft lip,” he says.

  “What?”

  “You did at one point, didn’t you?” He rubs at his nose, sniffing. “I mean, it doesn’t look like it, but I can see the scar.”

  My hand flinches, touching the uneven skin. He catches my wrist, his palm hot, sweaty. I jerk my hand away.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. He laughs, reaching out again, rubbing his thumb over the scar. “I’ve seen all those pictures of babies with cleft lips. It’s crazy that those kids can look so normal, isn’t it?”

  “I guess,” I say. The scar throbs and I stare down at the floor, thinking like ants are crawling around my feet, flashbacks of my first memories: learning to speak without slurring or spewing spit, trying to explain to classmates why my mouth was so ugly, all that social withdrawal sewn up inside my restructured upper lip. It’s hard to breathe. I turn my head and take a drink. The water’s cold but it doesn’t provide the right kind of relief.

  “Do you want to do something?” He leans forward, hands shaking, edging toward my leg. “Do you want to fuck?” he asks.

  My fingers slip against the condensation on the glass.

  “Sex is just the best when I’m high,” he says. “It feels so fucking good.”

  I shift, feeling his grasp on my thigh. “What are you high on?”

  His lips curl into a smile. “It’s coke,” he says. “It makes me want to fuck you so fucking hard.” He fingers at the leg of my shorts, pinching the fabric.

  My gaze drifts to the baby, now asleep. Her head’s slumped forward. Her eyes are closed and her mucus-filled nose makes sounds every time she breathes in and out, dazed, dreaming.

  He leans in. I can smell his cologne, mixed with perspiration, sweet and salty, something new, something different. I set the glass down on the floor. “You have to be quiet,” I say. “You can’t wake her, okay?”

  He’s got a face beyond my league, but he kisses me, eager. His tongue probes past the scar, slipping in deep. A gasp slips up my throat and my limbs go loose, veins running hot, heart throbbing. This is what everything used to feel like when I first started drinking. No tension, just a black hole to fill with anything.

  “My name’s Ian,” he says, climbing over me on the couch. His shaking fingers slide under my shirt, tickling my stomach. He stares me down, his big eyes just dark holes with blue edges. He’s somewhere else, somewhere better. He kisses me again, thick saliva in my throat, taking me with him.

  He pulls at my clothes, pulls his shorts down so he can shove his dick
between my legs. “You’re so fucking wet,” he says, grabbing my knees, pushing himself in. “Fuck,” he says, his voice forced, shouting. “You fucking like me, don’t you? You fucking want me, don’t you, baby?”

  He wakes the baby. The cries squeal like the stroller wheels.

  I shut my eyes as I smooth my palms over his chest, feeling the rapid pace of his heartbeat, the pulsing throbs. Under him, everything else is hard to hear.

  X

  When Marie comes home from work, I sit up straight in the couch, holding the baby, pretending there’s nothing to hide.

  “I met the new neighbour today,” I say.

  “Oh yeah?” She sets her purse down on the table.

  “His name’s Ian,” I say. “He’s really nice. He showed me his place.”

  She looks at me. My lip itches and I rub it with my wrist, sniffing. I can still smell the sweat on my skin.

  “How was Emma today?” she asks, taking the baby.

  “Fussy,” I say. “I don’t think she likes jogging, the motion of it. I don’t think it does anything for her.”

  X

  At night Ian follows me, chases me through the dirt trail beside the highway. The sun beats down on my skin. I can barely run, and he tackles me into the sagebrush, the dirt scraping my knees. There’s an ant’s nest beside my face.

  “What did your mouth look like?” he asks.

  “I don’t remember,” I say. “My mom never took pictures of me.”

  “It was probably a hole you could slip right into,” he says. He slides two fingers into the nest and the ants crawl out. I realize he’s naked, that I’m naked. I wince, arching myself against his hard-on. He enters me, invades me, and I gasp, the ants finding a new home in my mouth, crawling inside.

  I wake up in my bedroom. There’s nothing but black outside the tiny window, and I lay there, looking at the shadows, the comfort of them.

  X

  I put the baby in the stroller, her little mouth filled with a pacifier so she’s quiet, non-existent. I walk across the parking lot and knock on Ian’s door. He’s shaved off his beard and his face is marked with little red nicks. His skin looks sallow. He looks at me with empty blue eyes. There’s a plastic bottle of white powder clutched in his hand. I push the stroller in and close the door.

  “I just want to do another line,” he says. “That’s all I ever want to do. That’s all I can think about.” His voice is low, quiet, the way mine used to sound when going out stopped being about blended drinks and partying, when it became solely about booze, its influence feeding my veins.

  “It’s better to talk than to keep it all in,” I say.

  “What does it matter to you?”

  “I was an alcoholic,” I say. “I know what it’s like.”

  He stares.

  “It’s still hard, trying not to think about drinking, knowing it’s not an option. Everything’s harder now.” My gaze drops and I lean my head against his chest, breathing in, inhaling the scent of him.

  His fingers curl around the bottle. “The first time I did it, I felt like angels were in the walls, talking to me, giving me energy and powers. Now the highs never last as long. I never know what to do. Every time I come down, I can’t even...I can’t do anything.”

  “You can’t be in denial,” I say, “You’re only going to feel worse.” My lip twitches. He watches me rub at the scar. “I tried to cut it open once,” I say. “Marie found me in the bathroom with a knife. I told her there was nowhere else for the bullshit to go. The hole had to get bigger. She started crying then. She didn’t know what to say. Nobody ever did.”

  His hand starts shaking, clutching the bottle like a tiny martini shaker. The powder inside looks like drink froth.

  “There’s no point taking it out on yourself,” I say. “It’s better when you’re not alone.”

  He pours a bump on his wrist and he snorts it back. His chest heaves in and out. He looks at me, his lips tight, eyes wide, hot. He smiles. Blue Hawaii vacation relief.

  I want it. I want him.

  X

  Marie wakes me up, walking into my bedroom with the baby wailing in her arms. “Where’s Emma’s pacifier?” she asks. “You had it this morning. She can’t fall asleep without it.”

  “I don’t know” I say. “Maybe it fell out at Ian’s place.”

  “What?” Her face is blurry in the dark. “You went there again?”

  “I was talking with him. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You’re supposed to be looking after Emma,” she says.

  “I get bored sometimes,” I say. “What do you expect, that I’m just going to sit by myself all day trying to get her to talk?”

  Marie groans. “I’m not having this argument now,” she says. She slams the door, but it doesn’t mask the sound of the baby’s colic cries.

  X

  Ian never unpacks. He tells me that he’s started selling stuff to pay for more cocaine. He’s so high, so excited, stubble on his face. He lets his beard grow back.

  I buy pacifiers. There’s a bag of them on his kitchen counter. The baby cries and I pop one in. Her mouth is so pretty, so perfect. Her lips close around the pacifier and she falls asleep like a normal person. Then Ian does another line.

  Every climb up to his bedroom makes me feel like I’m starting over. Blue Hawaii vacation refreshment.

  X

  He doesn’t have a bed. There’s just a mattress on the floor, and it squeaks like the baby’s stroller when he fucks me on it. He’s shaved again. The scabs are thick, dark, almost black, like tiny ants are crawling on his face. His nostrils are lined in red.

  His room smells like sweat and bile and aftermath. Sickness. His dick slips in, going hard, fast, deep, until I’m moaning, feeling cramps in my abdomen. He groans, pulling out, gushing all over my torso. He rubs his hands over the sticky white, slides two fingers into my mouth, making me taste him.

  “Don’t you like me?” he asks. “Don’t you want me?”

  He pries my lip up, right where the scar is. “What’s it like, knowing you were born with all the ugly on the outside?” His voice is aggressive. “Don’t you ever just want to cut yourself open again, make another fucking hole?”

  I feel like insects are crawling in my veins.

  “It used to be so different,” he says, voice cracking.

  I wince, but I can’t shake him off. He clings to me, bearing his nails against my skin so they feel like tiny bites, stinging all over. His groan echoes, turns into a cough. My lip throbs.

  “It’s never like it used to be,” he says, his eyes turning red, blinking, tears slipping. It’s like a Blue Hawaii vacation gone awry.

  He starts crying, deep moans that sound stuck in his throat. It’s how I imagine my cries sounding when I was a baby, when my mouth was still a gaping open mess. I crawl away from him, his sweetness diluted on my tongue.

  X

  I watch him from the living room window, holding the baby. She cries and I rock her, watching Ian as he bends down over the doorstep, a can of aerosol can of insect killer clutched in his unsteady hand.

  Marie comes home.

  “Jessica, are you okay?”

  I shake my head, my fingers flinching, the baby slipping. Marie takes her, pats her back. She looks out the window.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I relapsed.”

  Marie looks at me.

  “I’m not going back there. I just wanted to feel like I used to.”

  “What is going on?” she asks.

  I shake my head, tight-lipped. Outside, Ian turns, looking up at the window, at me, nothing but black filling his gaze. I look away.

  X

  Emma wakes me, crying again. There’s blue behind the white sheer of the curtains. Dawn. Marie’s in the living room, trying to soothe the baby back to sleep. She doesn’t even notice me.

  “I can take
her,” I say.

  “Huh?” Marie blinks, looking up.

  “Go to bed,” I say. “I can take her for you.”

  Emma settles in my arms, her cries fading. Her skin’s warm and soft, her tiny infant fingers reaching out. In the daylight, her eyes glisten bright blue. Normal.

  Rebecca Jones-Howe

  lives and writes in Kamloops, British Columbia. Her work has appeared in Pulp Modern, Punchnel’s and ManArchy, among others. She is currently working on her first collection of short fiction. She can be found online at rebeccajoneshowe.com.

  CHILDREN ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT BLUSH

  JOE MENO

  Art school is where I’d meet my sister each Wednesday, and then, the two of us would travel, by cab, to couple’s counseling. Although Jane and I were twins, by the age of nineteen, she was already two years ahead of me in school, and because both of our parents were psychiatrists, and because I had been diagnosed with a rare social disorder, a disorder of my parent’s own invention, Jane and I were forced to undergo couple’s therapy every Wednesday afternoon. The counseling sessions were ninety-minutes long and held in a dentist’s office. As both of my parents were well-known in their field, they had a difficult time finding a colleague to analyze their children, and so they were forced to settle on a dentist named Dr. Dank, a former psychiatrist who had turned his talents to dentistry. He was an incredibly hairy man who smoked while my sister and I reclined in twin gray dental chairs. Dr. Dank did all he could to convince me that I was angry at my twin sister for being smarter and also that I was gay.

  Once I had made the mistake of mentioning to my sister that the doorman of our building was “handsome”—to me, he looked like a comic book hero with a slim mustache. She frequently brought this remark up in our sessions as evidence of my latent homosexual desires. She would leave various kinds of gay pornography for me on my bed. I would come from school and find a magazine or videotape lying there and stare at it—at the faces of the oiled, suntanned men and their arching, shaven genitals—then return the magazine to my pillow, and back out of my room like a thief. Jane was nineteen and a sculpture major in art school. She was also taking a minor in psychology through correspondence courses in the mail. Technically, I was still a senior in high school. My sister’s sophistication, her worldliness and intelligence were absolutely terrifying to me.