New Micro

by James Thomas

  ZACHARY SCHOMBURG

  Death Letter

  I get a letter in the morning that said the woman I love is dead, that she has been trampled by elephants. I haven’t seen her in years, but I think about her every time I make the bed, every time I set the table. I think about how perfect we would have been together. When I arrive at her house with flowers to pay my respects, I see her in the window, dusting the sill. She isn’t dead at all. She shows no signs of being trampled, even her clothes are starched and pressed. I knock on the door and she opens it. You’re not dead, I say. Who are you? she says. What do you mean? I say. It’s me. But her eyes just squint at me as if I were microscopic. Weren’t you trampled by elephants? I say. No, she says. There aren’t even any elephants around here. When I walk away, flowers in my fist, I think about all the different kinds of death. I wish she would have been dead just like the letter said. There is more truth in that kind of death, and I felt so much closer to her then.

  DAWN RAFFEL

  Near Taurus

  After the rains had come and gone, we went down by the reservoir. No one was watching, or so it looked to us.

  The night was like to drown us.

  Our voices were high—his, mine; soft, bright—and this was not the all of it (when is it ever?).

  Damp in the palm, unauthorized, young: we would never be caught, let alone apprehended, one by the other.

  “Orion, over there.” He was misunderstood; that’s what the boy told me. “Only the belt. The body won’t show until winter,” he said. “Arms and such.”

  Me, I could not find the belt, not to save my life, I said.

  Flattened with want: “There is always another time,” he said.

  He died, that boy. Light years! And here I am: a mother, witness, a raiser of a boy.

  I could tell you his name.

  I could and would not.

  “Here’s where the world begins,” he said. I see him now—unbroken still; our naked eyes turning to legends, the dirt beneath us parched.

  DAWN RAFFEL

  Cheaters

  In the book of the night, the man and woman sleep and oversleep until the night turns to evening. They wake to the dusk. The covers are tattered, shabby. The spine is worse for wear. Whole chapters are ragged, sticky, yellowed, and fragile from touch. The woman sighs. “We are not on the same page,” she says. The man does not hear, or else does not answer, as if he is someplace far from her. Significant objects fill up the bedroom: photos, keepsakes, the earrings on the dresser, the slip on the floor. These are cherished possessions indicative of character, personal quirks. “Must you?” he says. The dusk, the woman thinks, grows thicker as she rises. Outside the window the world is gone. Nevertheless, she is yanking on garments: skirt and blouse of salient label, the bracelet he gave her, clasping clasps. The man is still groggy and speaks through a yawn. “What is the conflict now?” he says. The woman turns. Space breaks between them. The phone starts to ring, and rings through a chapter. Neither one answers. He kindles the lamp. Paragraphs spill out unvoiced: languid suspicions; an episode from childhood; a false sense of self; a shadow, if ever so faint, of hope. He watches her leaving, dressed for the day. “You’ll be back,” he says, as if skipping ahead, as he sinks beneath covers.

  MATT SAILOR

  Taste

  “He doesn’t have a sense of taste,” Hillary said. He didn’t care what we put in his sandwich—roast beef, smoked turkey, mortadella. It was all the same to him. Handfuls of mush.

  He’d been coming in for a few weeks before I ever took his order. “I know just the thing,” I told him, and I asked Enrique to fill his sandwich with cooked shrimp—tails, shells, heads, legs.

  “It’s unreal,” he said, an antenna poking out of the corner of his mouth, “the texture.”

  The next day it was eggshells, ground down into shrapnel and sprinkled over the mayonnaise that we spread on his toasted pumpernickel.

  The day after that, apple peels and orange pips—I could hear them popping as he ground them between his molars. “The best I’ve ever had,” he told me, sliding a fifty into the tip jar.

  How could I keep it up? The kitchen had only so many options. I climbed a tree behind my apartment, ground acorns down into powder. I scooped a handful of confetti from the paper shredder in the back office.

  Nothing sated him—or everything did. “What do you have for me today?” he asked one Sunday in the fall. I slipped into the bathroom, sheared away locks of my hair with a carving knife.

  “It’ll grow back,” Hillary said afterward, dropping his plate into the sink. He’d eaten every bite.

  MATT SAILOR

  Sea Air

  Dad was on furlough that whole summer, so the only vacation we could afford was the beach.

  Mom seemed concerned—was it safe? But it had been a hard year and I could see it in her eyes. She needed a break.

  “You don’t want to go there,” said Mickey, a boy in my Algebra class who used to pull my hair at recess. “There’s still people underneath. At night they walk the coast.” His family was headed to the mountains like everyone else, to ski on synthetic snow.

  We stayed at a Radisson that had been in the distant suburbs before the rise. It wasn’t safe to swim—high Atlantic winds were sending debris in on the tides. So we stood on the balcony, watching the surf crash and break against the foundations of demolished houses. On clear days you could see the tops of drowned buildings on the horizon, where the city had been.

  Our last night, I took Dad’s bird-watching binoculars out on the balcony. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking of rooms full of water, bodies trapped inside, bloated and blue.

  Out in the surf, wading knee deep in the water, I saw a man. Soaking wet, pacing back and forth, his hands dead at his sides. I couldn’t make out his face. But I was sure. I opened the door to Mom and Dad’s adjoining room. Mom slept quietly, alone. Where Dad had been, nothing. A tangle of disturbed sheets.

  SOPHIE ROSENBLUM

  Once We Left Tampa

  Before the sun starts to set, we’re doing the foxtrot in deep water because the airline did what it wasn’t supposed to do and had us surfing waves instead of clouds. Going down, I thought about the morsel of granola bar I left on the stove. If I don’t make it home before the mice smell it, they’ll take over, and when I get back to my place, they’ll be crawling across my pillows, nesting in the crotch of my panties.

  I can see the plane bobbing slowly, a metal island, the yellow raft flopping out like a tongue. I try to guess where I was sitting. I list the things in my bag still shelved overhead.

  One of the flight attendants is nodding near me. She has on a manic grin, her bun soppy with ocean, brown eyes still sparkling like spun sugar, and she calls out, “We’re looking for flares!” This makes me laugh because in high school there was a drama club that we made fun of called The Flairs. The guy to my left is picking at his earlobe, getting it red, and I’m thinking about his feet having to kick harder to keep him balanced.

  “Don’t,” I want to say, but I’m not wired to reach out like that.

  SOPHIE ROSENBLUM

  You Sure Look Nice in This Light

  It would have been strange for the hooker to wake me with a spoonful of vanilla yogurt and mashed bananas, cooing, “Wake up, sleepyhead,” the way my mom used to, but I wanted it anyway. Sure, we were in a car parked at least ten miles from the closest fridge, but she might have had something in her purse to tide me over into lunch—a Jolly Rancher or gum, even. I worked hard at a job I hated, made my way through starched meetings filled with continental hellos, and then stayed nights with a small-fingered wife until I had to do it all again.

  The hooker was in flats, which I knew were for running in case I was a freak or a cop or something. You’d think by now she could pinpoint the cops, spoon-smooth bald, tight in their space even on empty stretches of highway. The freaks, I could never guess. One before me, she said, looked normal enough, but wanted her to pinch t
he bottoms of his feet. Said it reminded him of beachside summers spent in search of mollusks with his mother. I’d said, “A real sicko,” but in truth, when she’d told me, my eyes got kind of soggy at the thought.

  JAMES TATE

  Long-Term Memory

  I was sitting in the park feeding pigeons when a man came over to me and scrutinized my face right up close. “There’s a statue of you over there,” he said. “You should be dead. What did you do to deserve a statue?” “I’ve never seen a statue of me,” I said. “There can’t be a statue of me. I’ve never done anything to deserve a statue. And I’m definitely not dead.” “Well, go look for yourself. It’s you alright, there’s no mistaking that,” he said. I got up and walked over where it was. It was me alright. I looked like I was gazing off into the distance, or the future, like those statues of pioneers. It didn’t have my name on it or anything, but it was me. A lady came up to me and said, “You’re looking at your own statue. Isn’t that against the law, or something?” “It should be,” I said, “but this is my first offense. Maybe they’ll let me off light.” “It’s against nature, too,” she said, “and bad manners, I think.” “I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said. “I’m walking away right now, sorry.” I went back to my bench. The man was sitting there. “Maybe you’re a war hero. Maybe you died in the war,” he said. “Never been a soldier,” I said. “Maybe you founded this town three hundred years ago,” he said. “Well, if I did, I don’t remember it now,” I said. “That’s a long time ago,” he said, “you coulda forgot.” I went back to feeding the pigeons. Oh, yes, founding the town. It was coming back to me now. It was on a Wednesday. A light rain, my horse slowed . . .

  ANA MARÍA SHUA

  Hermit

  With the population now well aware of the physical and mental benefits of asceticism (low cholesterol, bradycardia, a delicate sense of happiness, spiritual fulfillment), everyone wants to become a hermit. Children pretend to be Robinson Crusoe, and adolescents (stirred by their own impetus for sacrifice) prepare themselves for a life of solitude.

  Men (and women too) abandon their villages (and cities) to search for desert or jungle environments, inhospitable places that have rarely if ever been trod upon, places that in practice are increasingly hard to find. The extreme scarcity of truly solitary places requires that the hermits negotiate and delineate the boundaries of their Isolation Zones, which in some cases are reduced to only a few meters around each hermitage.

  This proliferation of hermits, which has ultimately altered the countryside, entices a horde of tourists. Excursions are organized to the forests where, in exchange for a large sum, the tourists can dress up in filthy sheepskins, fortify themselves with mushrooms and berries, and sleep in deliberately uncomfortable caves or huts. Before returning home, they purchase souvenirs—handcrafted objects made of roots and properly authenticated. (Although the poorer tourists, as always, make do with hot dogs and plastic imitations.)

  The real hermits aren’t happy about the situation, but the very traits of their vocation preclude them from acting collectively. Unsuccessful and disappointed, many return to their own villages or cities, where they reunite with their families and lead cheerful, ordinary lives until they get old, and with old age they discover the most intense solitude, except now they don’t want it anymore.

  LOUIS JENKINS

  The Skiff

  Jim was at the tiller holding her into the wind, moving us along while I lifted the net. Then we began to drift. The net was damn near to pull my arms off and I thought damnit Jim, pay attention to what the hell you’re doing. I turned my head to yell at him and he wasn’t there! I dropped the net, scrambled back past the engine compartment and grabbed the tiller, all the while looking around like crazy to see if I could spot Jim’s head above the waves . . . but there was nothing, not even a gull, just a few clouds far away on the eastern horizon. I circled back along the net yelling my head off. I cut the engine to listen. The quiet was strange after the engine noise, the sound of the waves lapping against the hull. Not much of a wind, two-foot waves, just a breeze out of the southwest. It seemed impossible. I must have spent hours going around in circles, calling out, even after I knew it was useless. There was nothing, no sign. Nothing but water and sky. It must have been the water took him, but for all I know it was the sky. Then I noticed the half peanut butter sandwich on the seat beside me. It startled me as if it had been a snake. There was a bite out of one end. Jim’s jacket was gone. That sandwich was the only thing to prove Jim had ever been here at all.

  LOUIS JENKINS

  Indecision

  People died or moved away and did not return. Things broke and were not replaced. At one time he had owned a car and a telephone. No more. And yet somehow, things did not become more simple. Then one night, roused from sleep he stepped out naked into the below zero winter night, into the clear midnight and 20 billion stars. Nothing stirred, not a leaf, nothing out there, not the animal self, not the bird-brained self. Not a breath of wind yet somehow the door slammed shut locking behind him and knocking the kerosene lantern to the floor. Suddenly the whole place was afire. What to do? Should he try to make the mile-long run through the woods over hard-crusted snow to the nearest neighbor or just stick close to his own fire and hope that someone would see the light? The cabin was going fast. Flames leaped high above the bare trees.

  CURTIS SMITH

  The Storm

  The siren sent the children scrambling into the hallway. They sat as they’d been taught—knees up, bowed heads covered by their hands. The lights flickered and died. In the darkness, a boy cried for his mother. A large window at the hallway’s end, a frame for a purple sky veined with lightning. A crack of thunder so loud they cowered beneath its boom. More cries for mothers and fathers. The whispering of prayers. Playground mulch pelted the window, a few specks at first, then steadier, harder. Another flash, the sizzle of split air, the charge felt on the back of every neck. The wind shrieked, and the pitch escalated until it swallowed the teacher’s screams for everyone to stay down. Through the window, they watched the roof of the custodian’s shed lift and tumble across the baseball field.

  The large boy from the special class at the end of the hallway stood. He shook off the teachers who tried to make him sit. He was like that, mute for the most part, content in his cut-off world until he exploded in fists and tears. The large boy sucked a high-diver’s breath and screamed. To the children, he was a window’s midday black. His wail swelled, a coiling that rose from his ribcage and gut, a cry culled from a reservoir of fear the others were only now understanding. The boy howled until he dropped, gasping, to his knees. The hallway window shattered, and in the next second, outside and in changed places.

  CURTIS SMITH

  The Quarry

  The young man plummets through the darkness. He crosses his ankles and cups his crotch. He closes his eyes, his world reduced to whistling air, the throb of his pulse. The shock of water striking his bare feet rides through him. Knees, hip, spine—every bony part registers the impact, a sharing of pain and exhilaration. He knifes downward, the quarry water cooler by the inch. Gravity yields to buoyancy. He opens his eyes into a different darkness. With a fluttering kick, he follows the path of bubbles. He breaks the surface and sucks in the honeysuckled air. He swims to the cliff’s sheer rock and latches onto a scar cut by men long dead.

  A woman’s voice: “You OK?” Her words echo off the stone walls.

  “I’m good,” he answers.

  He gazes up. A shadowed form falls from the stars. She is his brother’s girl. She doesn’t know about the letters that come from halfway around the world and their boastful stories of army nurses and local girls. The young man loves his brother’s girl with a devotion silent and strong. The girl nears him. How appropriate, her framing amidst the quarry’s backdrop, a space mysterious and beautiful and dark, its depths littered with secrets.

  She hits the water, a plumb symmetry, her feet pressed together, her long hai
r trailing above her head. A plume rises, and the droplets rain over the young man. The stirred current pushes against his belly. For a moment, his only company is the splash’s echo, the rippling surface, the mute stars. He understands a submerged object has only two options—to sink and disappear or to rise to the surface.

  MARY MILLER

  A Detached Observer

  I get off work early and go over to his house. He’s out back in the dark with a pair of binoculars in his lap. “Stars pulse,” he says. “Planets don’t. That’s how you can tell them apart.” From down here everything seems to pulse but I don’t say that. He has recently discovered how far away the sun is, how fucking far away, or maybe he knew all along but didn’t care before.

  “Let’s swim,” he says.

  We strip off our clothes, bound down the steps and into the pool. I grab onto the diving board and pull myself up, but it doesn’t matter that I’m beautiful, doesn’t change the way he sees me.

  “Nice tits,” he says.

  “I’d fuck me,” I say. Then I do flips until I’m dizzy. I untuck myself and float on my back while the stars crawl across the sky and the world straightens itself back out. He gets out of the pool, jogs up the steps and into the house. He stays gone for a few minutes, plenty of time to make a phone call, for instance, and returns with a pint of whiskey.