by Neil Gaiman
I remember when I actually admitted to myself that you had taken to watching me, and only me, on your way across the square. You paused. You admired me. You saw me move once, for a child, and you told a friend, loud enough to be heard, that I might be a real statue. I take it as the highest compliment. I have many different styles of movement, of course—I can move like clockwork, in a set of tiny jerks and stutters, I can move like a robot or an automaton. I can move like a statue coming to life after hundreds of years of being stone.
Within my hearing you have spoken of the beauty of this small city. How standing inside the stained-glass confection of the old church was like being imprisoned inside a kaleidoscope of jewels. It was like being in the heart of the sun. You are concerned about your mother’s illness.
When you were an undergraduate you worked as a cook, and your fingertips are covered with the scar-marks of a thousand tiny knife-cuts.
I love you, and it is my love for you that drives me to know all about you. The more I know the closer I am to you. You were to come to my country with a young man, but he broke your heart, and you came here to spite him, and still you smiled. I close my eyes and I can see you smiling. I close my eyes and I see you striding across the town square in a clatter of pigeons. The women of this country do not stride. They move diffidently, unless they are dancers. And when you sleep your eyelashes flutter. The way your cheek touches the pillow. The way you dream.
I dream of dragons. When I was a small child, at the home, they told me that there was a dragon beneath the old city. I pictured the dragon wreathing like black smoke beneath the buildings, inhabiting the cracks between the cellars, insubstantial and yet always present. That is how I think of the dragon, and how I think of the past, now. A black dragon made of smoke. When I perform I have been eaten by the dragon and have become part of the past. I am, truly, seven hundred years old. Kings may come and kings may go. Armies arrive and are absorbed or return home again, leaving only damage and bastard children behind them, but the statues remain, and the dragon of smoke, and the past.
I say this, although the statue that I emulate is not from this town at all. It stands in front of a church in southern Italy, where it is believed either to represent the sister of John the Baptist, or a local lord who endowed the church to celebrate not dying of the plague, or the angel of death.
I had imagined you perfectly chaste, my love, yet one time the red lace panties were pushed to the bottom of your laundry hamper, and upon close examination I was able to assure myself that you had, unquestionably, been unchaste the previous evening. Only you know who with, for you did not talk of the incident in your letters home, or allude to it in your online Journal.
A small girl looked up at me once, and turned to her mother, and said “Why is she so unhappy?” (I translate into English for you, obviously. The girl was referring to me as a statue and thus she used the feminine ending.)
“Why do you believe her to be unhappy?” “Why else would people make themselves into statues?”
Her mother smiled. “Perhaps she is unhappy in love,” she said.
I was not unhappy in love. I was prepared to wait until everything was ready, something very different.
There is time. There is always time. It is the gift I took from being a statue. One of the gifts, I should say.
You have walked past me and looked at me and smiled, and you have walked past me and barely noticed me as anything other than an object. Truly, it is remarkable how little regard you, or any human, gives to something that remains completely motionless. You have woken in the night, got up, walked to the little toilet, peed and walked back to bed. You would not notice something perfectly still, would you? Something in the shadows?
If I could I would have made the paper for this letter for you out of my body. I thought about mixing in with the ink my blood or spittle, but no. There is such a thing as overstatement. Yet great loves demand grand gestures, yes? I am unused to grand gestures. I am more practised in the tiny gestures. I made a small boy scream once, simply by smiling at him when he had convinced himself that I was made of marble. It is the smallest gestures that will never be forgotten.
I love you.
Soon, I hope, you will know this for yourself. And then we will never part. It will be time, in a moment, to turn around, put down the letter. I am with you, even now, in these old apartments with the Iranian carpets on the walls.
You have walked past me too many times.
No more.
I am here with you. I am here now.
When you put down this letter. When you turn and look across this old room, your eyes sweeping it with relief or with joy or even with terror...
Then I will move. Move, just a fraction. And, finally, you will see me.
Going Solo
BY LEAH MANN
Most marriages, as it turns out, are not made in heaven. And the skillful eye can see a train wreck coming a mile away.
Our next tale takes a proactive approach to the whole “mismatched relationship” conundrum, with both ruthless rigor and startling heart.
Leah Mann is a gifted young filmmaker and a phenomenal puppet designer, but it turns out that her first and greatest love is writing. As such, I am thrilled to present “Going Solo,” her auspiciously audacious publishing debut.
He gave her a few weeks before smoothly sliding into the seat across the worn table in the library. She’d needed time. They always needed time, after.
He’d learned that the hard way, but he was a quick study. Always had been. Even as a kid, Mikey paid attention.
He opened up his laptop, plugging in his headphones, casually avoiding her eyes. A delicate touch. Tread lightly. The last one had been easy, too easy, and he didn’t want to get cocky.
He’d found the couple at a house party. Evie—beautiful and meek, hiding behind limp blond hair—had stood on the sidelines. Her boyfriend, Wes, held court, showering the masses with his brilliance and wit.
Mikey watched her kisses and jokes get ignored. They’d sung karaoke; Wes sang louder and stronger. He told Evie that her range was limited, her vocals thready.
The night wore on, Wes’s level of intoxication directly correlating to Evie’s desire to go home.
Mikey there alone, always alone, watched and decided.
With the internet, that most magical of innovations, it was easy to track Wes and Evie’s life. A minor celebrity in the programming world, Wes kept his friends and fans well updated on his whereabouts. Evie was quieter online. Short bursts, funny, sarcastic, self-deprecating, less informative, far more revealing.
Wes was diabetic, type 1 (not the fat kind), lactose intolerant, and loved rock climbing. More so, in an absurdly convenient bout of machismo, Wes had recently taken up free climbing.
Two weeks after the fateful house-party, one inconspicuous phone call to a mutual friend and three practice climbing sessions at an indoor rock wall later, Mikey headed out to get some fresh air and exercise. Purely by chance, what a crazy world, he went to the same beloved national park on the same day as Wes. What a coincidence, running into each other after meeting at that party a few weeks earlier. Beaming his sideways smile and dimples and friendly eyes, Mikey sealed the deal. Oh, you’re into free-climbing? Well then, Wes, buddy old pal, you have to check out the East Falls, just a half mile further in. The cracks and grooves of the rock face are required reading for any student of the great outdoors.
Twenty-five minutes later, they were almost to the top of the cliff. Sun-soaked and sweaty, Mikey edged his way up the wall past Wes; muscles warm, loose, scrubbed clean by the hot wind. His mind was sedated by the physical exertion, the puzzle of cracks and footholds.
A lizard skittered past. Wes, with the easy arrogance of ignorance, flashed his new friend a big grin.
Smug bastard. Mikey knew he’d made the right decision. He didn’t hesitate another second.
An electrical impulse zipping from his brain to his foot sent out a quick kick, catching Wes und
er the chin. Wes cried out before bouncing off the first outcrop-ping below. His long legs crunched against the wet rock, the roaring falls.
Mikey held his breath, waiting.
Wes’ body rotated in the air on the rebound. The next impact, ten feet lower, twisted his neck with a snap. Muscle tone gone, Wes dropped with heavy flat thumps, floppy as a rag doll the rest of the way down.
Evie had cried for days. Mikey understood. He remembered when he’d first lost Naomi. Naomi was down under now, living in Australia, working her dream job in visual effects and, Mikey assumed, fucking fit Aussies after sexy games of volleyball on the beach.
When Naomi and he had broken up—mutually on the face of it, in the official story—she hadn’t fought to keep him. She had been relieved to see him go; no regret, no anger, minimal tears. Mikey felt like he’d been punched in the heart.
He remembered the beginning, when they’d met: her throaty laugh, strong fingers grasping his hair. The first year, then two, then three, he’d loved her. Nights and weekends filled with cooking, kissing, camping, movies in bed, minigolf, silly strip teases, secret silent sex on family vacations.
He’d loved her so much he could feel his heart growing. His chest expanded to make room for all the new warm, liquidy feelings gushing from the font of his love.
Then she was gone.
After it was over, his heart was swollen, grotesque, inflamed and confused. In time, over time, lots of time (painful minutes, hours, days, months), it wasn’t swollen anymore.
Mikey felt his heart shrinking in his chest. Harder, colder, like the Grinch before the happy ending. He wondered if the change would show up on a CT scan.
Mikey emerged remade, rejuvenated, reborn. A life without Naomi. A life with a heart that didn’t demand so much.
An independent man, he crept out of his hole.
As he looked at the world with his new eyes and shriveled heart, he saw three types of people:
1. Those in love, with big happy hearts;
2. Those shaved down like him—lean, the desperate need washed from their faces;
3. Those who were still tethered. People with fat hearts and empty space, unfilled rooms.
Mikey saw these hurting people and wanted to help them. They needed training, a new regime to drop the extra pounds, to slim their flabby hearts into trim units of self-reliance.
His ninth student, carefully selected, Evie was unaware of the special club she had just joined. When Mikey came into her life, she didn’t know she was going to rediscover how to read in bed each evening, how to eat alone, how to try new things, to stop hiding behind a curtain of hair, to uncover the teeny tiny bits and pieces that make her Evie, all while removing the need for a “better half.”
What Evie knew was her hurt, her loneliness, her shock, her lively Wes lying limp and broken. She knew funeral arrangements and awkward conversations. Evie knew her aching heart was still inflated and gnarled.
Apply ice and elevate.
She was surprised by how much Mikey understood, this stranger she’d met in passing. She was surprised when he let her grieve, and grateful when he laughed at her first joke. She couldn’t believe it when she discovered herself flirting. Twirling a blond strand around a nail bitten finger, she listened when Mikey told her it was best to be alone.
She went solo, and found pleasure in leaving the bar early, luxuriating in sweats and a good book in bed. The swelling went down, and she took up drawing again. Hours passed, her brain quiet.
She spent time with girlfriends, and pitied their distorted worlds. She hid her disdain for the insignificance of their significant others, and their compromise for mediocrity, safety, comfort. Why carry extra space for someone else? We are burdened enough, Evie declared, and Mikey seconded.
Easy Evie, his brightest student.
Mikey’s record was not flawless. He had known failure. Mikey was a student of human nature, and like any student he had things to learn. Nothing can replace practical experience.
Inevitably, on occasion, he’d misjudged a person’s strength to withstand loss. Uncle Greg, for example. Mikey had arrived on scene after the police and paramedics but before the hazmat team. Through the window of a beaten up Honda Civic, nausea roiling his stomach, Mikey had stared at Uncle Greg’s puffy face, tinted green.
Uncle Greg, a do-it-yourself kind of guy. (Of course, suicide generally is a do-it-yourself proposition.) In an uncharacteristic bout of trendiness, he’d gotten instructions online, headed to the hardware store, and offed himself via chemical suicide like a hip Japanese teen.
Mikey never dwelled on whether the nausea spawned from his uncle’s corpse, or his role in the matter.
A year after Mikey had liberated Uncle Greg from stifling Aunt Isabel, Uncle Greg’s heart had remained big and empty. Cheesy fries, intramural basketball, a promotion, vodka gimlets and antidepressants had neither filled nor shrunk the void inside.
Mikey had been so eager to help a loved one. He hated to think of the effort he’d put into Aunt Isabel’s “heart attack” going for naught. The missing nitro pills, misfiring pacemaker, delayed 911 call…it was a lesson in humility.
Expectations readjusted, tactics reassessed, Mikey had gone back to work with renewed vigor.
There were other students, none such failures as Uncle Greg, few as gracefully successful as Evie. Drew, Tomás and Kim quickly replaced their perished partners with distressingly similar people. That was disappointing. But Mikey liked to believe even the weak students had learned something about bravery during their brief time alone.
Alina and Jessie had found better people, stronger people. It was good to know at least two couples in the world functioned as independent individuals who came together for sex and the occasional meal without compressing two lives into one.
The gold stars went to aforementioned Evie, Sam and Nick. These three had tasted freedom, drunk it in. Cleansed, they’d dropped the jiggly pounds of need.
The library was full of kids too small for school, their nannies, struggling screenwriters, and a sprinkling of retirees reading up for book clubs. Mikey fingered the worn wood table, collecting his thoughts.
First contact was the hardest. This girl with curly black hair and confident hands was not Evie, nor Nick, Kim, Drew, Jessie or Uncle Greg.
Go easy.
Keep it slow.
He knew her. He knew all his students. She played the electric drums with a ferocity the silent kit couldn’t hide. She walked around the neighborhood taking shortcuts and stairways, stopping to sniff at the jasmine and honeysuckle crawling up people’s fences. She tutored rich homeschoolers and SAT students, relishing her flexible schedule. She met her grandma for lunch. She complained about idiots a lot and got grumpy easily. Mikey was inclined to agree about the idiots, and didn’t hold this against her.
Mikey had discovered her and Bernie at a softball game, two months earlier. Playing catcher, shoved to the back of the lineup as the only girl on the team, she’d made a great play at home. Catching a wide throw from third base, she fearlessly blocked the plate and tagged the runner out as he slid into her, feet first.
Boyfriend Bernie, muscular and wide and easy, jogged in from third base. Gliding over the fact that his terrible throw had nearly cost them the game, he slapped her congrats on the ass and grabbed a beer from his duffel.
This girl could have anyone. Mikey saw it in the way she walked, laughed, wiped the blood from her knee with a smile. He analyzed the couple’s faces, bodies, gestures, vocal intonations, how they looked at each other, at others. He processed this data. Mental calculations confirmed with a gut check.
Bernie had to go.
Mikey stretched, looking up across the table for the first time. His breath caught in the back of his throat. He forced it down, swallowing hard. Stick to the plan. Brief eye contact, back to the laptop.
His eyes flitted up again. Still calculating, he smiled bashfully. Her almond eyes were framed by a curly bob and thick eyebrows. She hel
d his gaze, then went back to her work.
If all went well, the girl would look at him four more times in the next ninety minutes before packing up her things and leaving. He would catch her eye just one more of those times, holding it, and then look away quickly, embarrassed, a practiced flush warming his cheeks. Ever the multitasker, with time to burn and looks to ignore, Mikey got down to researching his next project.
It was too soon to look up again, but he could feel her eyes on him. How is it that we can feel eyes on us? She wasn’t glancing coquettishly. She was staring.
Did she recognize him? He had never been this close to her. The gold in her hazel eyes glinted with intelligence. She was beautiful.
She sighed lightly and went back to her work.
Blood rushed to Mikey’s face. His heart rate sped up. His hands were cool and clammy. Angry at the unexpected physiological response, he focused instead on the face of her dead boyfriend.
Mikey rarely ruminated about the dead. They were not victims. His students were the victims, Mikey the savior.
Bernie had been handsome. Annoyingly, ridiculously good-looking. Thick brown hair, thick mustache matching his plaid shirt and silly little hipster hat, his eyes pale clear blue.
Young people were the hardest to kill. They had no heart problems, medications, respiratory disease, advanced diabetes or history of stroke to play off of. For murdering purposes, young people offered instead an array of risky behavior, adrenaline fueled pastimes and irresponsibility.