Author: austin.eichelberger

“Jane Doe”

Published in HeartWood Literary Magazine Issue 3 (April 2017).

Jane Doe

1. The shallow hole is dug surprisingly close to the house despite the nearby woods, unlike most places bodies are found, which are marked by several things: soft soil, trees for coverage, abandoned buildings, wildlife to eat remains, and no people for as far as possible. 2. As far as possible, it seems, even the remotest areas have been utilized for violence—one park ranger found a thumb nailed to a tree, another a nude corpse 70 miles from any road—meaning that really, though maybe not plausibly, bodies can be found just about anywhere. 3. Found just about anywhere well-populated, a dead body causes an anxious stir and everyone panics, but out in the country—where rural boogeymen still sing from the trees at night—no one talks about a body too much unless it was a friend or relative. 4. A friend or relative is almost always behind it—like poisoned candy and deep-set psychological issues—but most of them never get picked up because once the victim is dead, who’s to say what happened? 5. What happened here, though, is still being debated: the hole was only half-filled with soil, fingertips still visible, but also seems full to overflowing with something else: delirious ennui, predatory desperation, maybe a former lover’s good luck and hope? 6. Good luck and hope never seem to be reliable enough to use as tools to get away with murder, especially now that forensic testing—white lab coats and petri dishes, trace samples and DNA swabs—is the first thing anyone does. 7. The first thing anyone does when they find a body is try to find ways to believe the body isn’t really dead—even if it’s cold and buried, even if they don’t know the victim, have no ties whatsoever to whatever-the-fuck happened. 8. “Whatever the fuck happened depends on your perspective,” the lieutenant keeps saying, but everyone agrees this half-filled hole feels like a crime interrupted, like a gun left by the bed for self-defense used to take out the owners of the house or a sentence so lyrical and winding that halfway through, it simply unravels. 9. Halfway through it simply unravels, most detectives say, the best thread they had, the only one that clearly pointed to a believable killer, that explained what was happening on the night in question or before the gun was pulled out. 10. Before the gun was pulled out, the hole really did seem shallow, barely ankle-depth, but the moon through the clouds glinting off the long barrels made the hole grow so dark, the ground beneath it opening up, deep with shadow. 11. With shadow from cloud-cover blanketing the road, cut through only by headlights on the way to his place outside the suburbs, she had watched the city lights recede in the side mirror and told herself the night had been fun: a quiet date with an old flame from high school, the one who had hopefully grown out of being a little too rough during sex, who was still so handsome and acted so sweet in public. 12. Sweet in public but impatient and unapologetic afterward, some killers sexually assault their victims before yanking them outside, standing them at the edge of a hollow patch of earth stretched open like a ravenous waiting mouth, flashlight aimed at the victim’s eyes to disorient. 13. To disorient the police, some killers take the victim’s ID and plant false clues, little indicators that lead nowhere to make sure they have time to leave town, to sever ties—one last fuck, a final meal with a buddy—to pack their shit and hotwire a new car so they’re as far away as they can manage to be when the body gets discovered, when all their accomplishments and mistakes are suddenly naked before the police. 14. Naked before the police—her arm still over her eyes like when she blocked the flashlight’s glare, fell backward as screaming flames burrowed into her chest, her bare back and limbs smacking the dirt heavily—she tries to point the officers’ stoic glances in the direction he drove off, to spit his name like she used to when he dumped her in high school, to cover her gaping breasts and the little bit of blood from his bedroom, to tell them her worried mother’s phone number, to promise that she’s nothing like the girl they must think: another case gone cold in a shallow hole.

“A Lungful of Air”

Placed Fourth in Pithead Chapel‘s 2016 Larry Brown Short Story Award; published in Vol. 6, Issue 1: the contest issue (January 2017).

A Lungful of Air

Waves crash softly away from the square floating dock on Crater Lake, the one by the beach that’s held in place by a heavy chain connected to the slick wooden bottom and rooted deep in the muck twenty feet below. Alex sits closer to the shore, his palms flat on the rocking planks, as I sit with my knees up, elbows perched on them. I glance behind me at powerboats humming across the water, the big brick houses across the lake from the state-owned stretch of sand where we gathered, then turn my head to the beach, the girls sunning in their new bikinis, the guys cluttered by the grill, Shana’s two kids in the water and her watching them from the crescent of the shore.

Shana blocks the sun from her eyes with one hand as I remember leaning on my kitchen counter, finishing a Milky Way, when she promised over the phone that there would be enough people here that I wouldn’t even have to look at Alex, that she’d be sure to keep an eye on him to make sure he wasn’t bothering me. I hear laughter as the youngest kid, kicking the water from a green inflatable crocodile, drifts to shore by the boat ramp and Shana pushes the float back out into the water. I wish it was shaped like something more docile—a duck or something.

“It’s weird, huh, Mark?” Alex turns to me, his tricep flexing like it would when he used to bend over me in the bed of his dad’s Chevy.

“What is?” I look at the tall pines that border the sand and then hold close to the uneven line of red-clay shore that curves out from the beach to make this tiny cove. I recognize the pattern the trunks make after coming here for years—in high school, Shana and I used to drink here when the moon was full because we could bring our boyfriends and there was plenty of space to sneak off, be alone with them. She brought whoever she happened to be dating—a dropout or stoner art student or a man too old to go to our school. I was always with Alex.

“That we’re all here together again.” He swings his hands around when he talks, like an orchestra conductor—we used to make fun of him for it, but he would just flick us off as one of his hands swooshed by. “It’s been, what, three years?”

“Four.” I lower my hand to the wood beneath me and peel a large splinter from the dock. Fucking dangerous. “Since we were all together.”

“Damn, it’s been that long?” He turns his body toward mine now, spreading his legs so that his dripping feet sit on either side of me. “Doesn’t seem like it.”

I look up at him, the even-toned olive skin over his swimmer’s muscles, the dark blond hair that falls over his eyes, the bright red swimsuit. “No, it doesn’t.” I toss the splinter into the water where it floats like the inflatable crocodile by the shore: my mind, like I knew it would when I saw the float, even when Shana first told me that we were coming to the lake, starts grasping for every image of a crocodile I’ve ever seen and places them all in the water beneath me. Sometimes it’s not crocodiles, but it’s always something. For years—beginning after Shana and I watched Jaws when we were eight—it was sharks, even in fresh water—

“So what’ve you been up to?” He looks straight into my eyes and leans back on his arms.

“Nothing.” He doesn’t need to hear that I’m still not over him after three fucking years and haven’t left this podunk town, that I work too much at the deli and drink whenever I’m not working. “You?”

“Well,” he says, turning to the line of trees to his right, “Darryl and I had a one-bedroom up in Richmond, but then he left a few months ago. I kept the apartment.” Beyond him, the sparrows flit from branch to branch. “Got a job as a bank teller downtown.” Alex flicks his head back in my direction, moving the hair from his eyes. “You want to swim?”

I look down at my baggy t-shirt and loose jeans. “Nope.”

He blinks and pouts his lips. “Why not? You like swimming.”

“I used to like swimming.” The crocodiles beneath me swing past my mind’s eye, stirring up sediment as they circle the thick chain beneath the water. “Besides, I didn’t bring a suit. That’s why I wanted to row out.”

Alex glances behind me at the paint-flaked rowboat I rowed to the dock. He swam behind the boat, despite the fact that I had already told him to leave me alone. I give Shana a death-glare, but I know she’s too far away to catch it.

He stands, his calves and forearms suddenly solid and taut as he stretches. “Well, I’m going to swim.” He does a perfect swan dive into the water by the boat, making the dock sway.

I lean my head back and shut my eyes, the warmth from the sun creeping along my face and neck. I can see the hungry crocs below, waiting in the shade while he dives before zooming up from the silt to catch his leg, his arm, his mouth opening to scream, bubbles floating to the top as the water turns red like in the movies.

Alex surfaces and blows water from his lips before taking a deep breath and dipping back under. I pull my t-shirt up to let the sun touch me, the soft cotton lightly brushing my face, and try to ignore the skin that folds over the waist of my jeans—the weight that’s crept back ever since he left and I started volunteering for more shifts—lay the t-shirt on the dock behind me and lie back.

I don’t know why he’s so stupid. I barely swam the last time we were here, after graduation—we swam all the way out, but I only thought about getting on this dock and lying in the sun together. We stole touches and stopped to kiss under the water until we reached the dock—it was new then, the boards freshly lacquered, the metal not yet rusted. I jumped in with a snorkel mask to try and follow the chain down to the bottom, and when I looked around in the murky brown, I could almost see rows of triangular white teeth charging out of the depths faster than I could hope to swim. I knew they weren’t there, and I do now, but I still told Alex I was tired and made him stay close as we swam back. It’s always what I can’t see that scares me, the places where I know shit lurks but I can’t sense it. It’s why I shut the bedroom door when I’m alone in the apartment at night—you never know what’s creeping up behind you when—

“Come on, get in the water, Mark,” Alex calls as I sit up, water splashing onto my feet, speckling my jeans.

“No,” I say to his head bobbing a few feet out in the blue-brown water. “I’m not wearing trunks.”

“So what? You have boxers. Come on, it’s fun.” He splashes more water onto the dock.

I roll my eyes and lie back down as my stomach churns. Why is he being like this? He was the one who made me leave, told me he had grown past me, why—

“Come on, babe.” Alex’s voice is low and a little raspy, the same tone it would always fall to when he whispered to me. I turn my head to see his hands wrapped around the gray metal poles of the foot ladder, his eyes trained on me.

Did he just call me babe?

I cough lightly to clear my throat and sit up, folding my forearms over my lap. “You’re not allowed to call me that, Alex.” I look down at the near-white wood of the bleached dock, the twisting dark lines that show the color of the wood at its core. The dock rocks as Alex climbs the ladder and I exhale hard, the muscles in my hands flexing tight.

“Why not, Mark? I used to call you babe all the time.” He stands over me, smiling down, his abs flexed in the sun, drops of water shining on his skin, then kneels, softly placing his hip, then his elbow on the wood beside me as my shoulders and neck tense. His wet fingers graze my bicep and the muscle jumps, the skin tight with goosebumps. “Remember?”

The water and the crocodiles, the dock and the shore wash away as I look at the bright sky and the slowly moving clouds and think about that word, babe, that single word. When he would squeeze my hand at home football games in the back of the bleachers and wink as he said it, the times when his jock friends would sneer as I waited for him at the pool and he would say it into my hair when they were out of sight, the hand-written notes on Christmas presents and my birthday, breathing it in my ear because I told him to be quiet while my parents slept in the next room or while we had his dad’s truck for the weekend, when he actually told me, “Babe, we had a good run, but I think Darryl won this one.”

I sit up and push his hand away. “Shut the fuck up, Alex.”

“What?” His stomach flexes as he speaks and I fold my arms over my belly.

“Shut. Up.” I turn and grab my t-shirt, pull it over my head and stand, taking a step toward the boat as he scrambles.

“What are you doing?” He steps between me and the boat, the layer of fine hair on his chest catching and reflecting the sun’s light. Beneath us, a crocodile’s black eye gleams.

“I’m leaving. I don’t want to be trapped out on this dock with you.” I stare at him, trying my best to keep a “don’t you even” face on as a shiver runs through my knees.

He reaches out for my shoulder. “It’s just been awhile since I’ve seen you—”

I step back, over the shallow puddles he left on the planks, the dock and boat mashing together, our movement driving them into each other, forcing waves out toward the shore. “I know it has. And hopefully it’s going to be even longer next time.” I turn back to the beach and step to the edge of the seesawing dock, my toes clutching the worn rubber bumper that goes along the rim. The crocodiles drift closer in my mind, lingering where my shadow cuts through the sunlit water—Need to get that fucking rowboat—and my heartbeat doubles, my neck goes slick with sweat. The muscles of my legs feel like they’re going to explode as the sound of a speedboat swings nearer behind me.

“Mark. Come on. I just want to be close to you.”

The dark green ridges of the crocs flash in the water before me, their jaws opening as they twist and swim around the chain, as they wait in the shade of the dock, ready to flick their tails and split the surface with jagged scales.

“Like I used to be.”

When I feel his fingertips on my back, I suck in a breath—filling my lungs despite the pressure in my chest—and leap away, kicking wildly at the claws and teeth waiting to slash and swallow me whole: my skin goes cold as the shore disappears from sight and Alex’s voice fades behind me into the din of rushing water.

“Who You’ve Come to Be”

Published in Strangers Volume 1 (October 2016).

Who You’ve Come to Be

How It Starts

You, another woman at Palms, the martini bar—or do they call it a lounge?—mingling, twenty-six, with a tight skirt, big earrings; he was at the same bar, handed you a cosmo before asking your name and wore a ribbed sweater that hid his belly and showed off his chest, maybe a year older; you were the woman who admitted your secrets—how you would drive him crazy, what to do in bed, the way you prefer your eggs—and he was the man who listened—came up with routines to avoid freak-outs, let you be in control the first time, prepared them scrambled with no yolks and a pinch of pepper the next morning; you were the one who wanted to date, he was the one who asked to be exclusive; he always wore the cologne you said smelled like men should; you dyed your hair blonde because he liked dark eyes and light hair; he brought the pomegranate cherry juice you love on random dates; you kept a change of his clothes in your compact car for dinners.


What to Do If His Phone Rings While He’s in the Bathroom

If at home, call for him softly, if in public, simply watch the caller ID until the last ring; in the final second, answer—your voice slow and thick like honey from the refrigerator—and make it apparent the two of you are together, but without ever saying so; place his phone just as it was before he left, sure to remove your hand before he enters the room; tell him who called and that you answered, that she seems like a lovely girl and you just wish he’d introduce you to more of his friends; if he smiles, fall back into what you were doing before he left and place a hand on his strong thigh at the soonest opportunity; but if he lifts his phone to scroll through the call log or says he didn’t know she had his number, stay up after he falls asleep and sit in the dark of the bedroom—on the mattress you bought for yourself after college, between the sheets you washed just before you left for dinner—to record and double-check every phone number you don’t recognize.


When to Be Sure Your Time With Him is Up

When he stops answering his phone, which is always on, or texting back with a wink at the end of his messages; when he is late for dinner more than three times in a row and his only excuse is traffic; when he decides he dislikes his favorite restaurant, or yours, and would prefer to order take out, eat on the couch, and watch “Lars and the Real Girl” for the fiftieth time; when he no longer throws an arm over you while he’s snoring; when he begins panting too soon during sex and then strolls to the kitchen before you’ve had a chance to finish, or tells you that James was in the break room discussing the advantages of a “permanent third”; then the time has come to collect your things from his bedroom before he gets up for work the next morning, quietly shut the front door and pause on the steps to tie the laces of your shoes as you think of him—inside, shirtless, still asleep—the key to his apartment on the kitchen counter.


Why to Go Shopping After He’s Gone

New pajamas and sheets to make sure the bed doesn’t smell like him tonight; backless blouse for clubbing this weekend; Marlboro Lights, carton; necklace to replace the one he picked out; new day planner without anniversary reminders; a box of hair dye, ash brown to forget the bottle blonde; smooth metal trashcan to fill with framed pictures, the birthday card he gave you, his handwritten notes; twenty-four pack of Yuengling; gasoline, at least a gallon, in case metal picture frames refuse to melt quickly; sweater to wear while building the fire; and, just in case, a flavor-locked single serving bag of the only Colombian roast he’d agree to drink.


Where to Go When You Miss Him

The Applebee’s on Main for lunch, despite the fact that he never bartends on Tuesday afternoons; a quiet café on Landon Street—isn’t it just called Café?—that he frequents after work for a chai latte with extra milk, which is better than it sounds; the loud, smoky pool hall by the Civic Center where the two of you would play poker—in the back on Thursdays—and skee-ball; the Food Lion by Waterfront Road that’s only three blocks from his apartment and has beer for a dollar cheaper than any other grocery in town; the Lowe’s you went to—the one on Corrine Boulevard—to get him a new drill and wrench set for Christmas last year; the voodoo shop on the boardwalk, owned by a woman who really is Creole and will build a doll out of a sock and three stray hairs for thirty dollars; before home, to bed, where the sheets smell faintly of beer and sand, and there’s nothing to remind you of how recently he was there.


Who You’ve Come to Be

He only likes comedies; you watch horror and romance; he loves to hike and play horseshoes; you want to swim and read; he smokes a Marlboro every morning before breakfast; you scrub and disinfect ashtrays at bedtime; he takes walks when angry, sings in the shower when aroused; you dole out silent treatment, wink when you get a glance; he never hugs strangers, leaves when someone tells him to go; you kiss everyone good bye, lock your knees when challenged; and in the early morning din of an empty apartment—sipping Colombian roast, half-watching the news—you suddenly wonder if these things are anyone’s fault at all.

“The Stars of Our Ancestors”

Published by YourLifeIsATrip.com (January 2015).

The Stars of Our Ancestors

For Dad

In March, I visited my parents in Virginia from my home in New Mexico: twenty-four full hours of driving over three days and across six states, from desert mesas to grassy flatlands to the wooded Appalachian Mountains where I grew up. I stepped through the kitchen door just as dim night settled over the nearby barn where my mother was feeding horses. My dad, whose name I share, walked toward me smiling but breathing hard, an effect of the lung disease he had been diagnosed with months before. It had already restricted his existence, keeping him from the veterinary work he loved and the active, exuberant lifestyle he had always enjoyed. Watching it happen from over halfway across the country—like snippets of a harrowing home movie, distance a gnawing hunger—was feeding a mix of anxiety and relief within me: anxiety that I’d be too far away to make it home if something happened, relief that I was far enough away to deny the disease’s effects on him.

Dad, thinner now, huffed as he hugged me. “I had your sister drop off the old pictures we found in the basement so I could show them to you.” He stepped back but kept his large hand on my shoulder. My older sister, already interested in genealogy and scrapbooking, had gotten the photos because of how mold affected Dad’s lungs.

As I opened a beer and sat down at the kitchen table, Dad pulled out an old shirt box that smelled faintly of aged paper and mildew. In it, atop the pile of faded pictures with neat handwriting on the back of each—handwriting with strange similarities to my own—were once-colored shots of Dad as a baby, his eyes now faded to white-blue but still showing jubilation. Deeper down below those photos, before my father’s time, his mother Mabel at nineteen years—her skin smooth and hazel eyes sharp, the edges of the photos soft and wrinkled the way her skin was in my few memories of her. Alongside Mabel, sepia snapshots of a woman with porcelain skin and black curly hair tucked low behind her head, eyes as dark as mine—“My Aunt Gladys,” Dad said—her parents’ German-Jewish origins more evident than in her sister Mabel.

“She was an English teacher, like you,” Dad said, smiling, as I plucked a portrait from the box—the waxy feel of a worn glossy photo made my touch light, my fingertips sensitive. In the picture, Gladys sat at a desk with a book open before her, her strong nose and jaw delicately shadowed.

“Gladys was one of my favorite people as a kid. She taught me to read after school. The other woman there is Miss Ida. They loved to travel.”

I looked down at Gladys standing beside a woman with a plain but sweet face, each of them in a simple black dress in every photo: standing beside a giant redwood far from their Pennsylvania home, before moonlit palms on a stretch of sand in Florida, laughing and holding fast to their hats on a mountaintop out West. “Ida was Aunt Gladys’s constant companion.”

Moving across the kitchen—always my dad’s favorite room, a place where he expressed the passion he would’ve pursued had medicine not been an option—he pulled out ingredients for dinner, which my little brother would help cook when he got home from work.

“I know now they were lesbians, of course.” Dad paused and sighed heavily, held up a single finger as his chest slowly heaved, his full weight leaned against the counter.

I feigned intent interest in tiny details of the photo in my hand, and thought back to when I came out as gay over a decade ago: Mom’s uncontrolled tears, Dad’s wavering voice and steady eyes, his strong fingers gripping my knee. I looked to the pile of photos spilled on the table before me, at Gladys, her face like something long hidden somewhere deep in my memory.

“Anyway,” Dad sighed, “she would’ve liked you.” He took a final halted breath and came back over to sit beside me. “I wish you could’ve met.” He eased back in the chair, his eyes almost closing as his breathing relaxed and he cleared his throat. In a photo before me, Gladys reclined in a wicker chair as a toddler, her head of raven curls resting on her hand. “I remember when you were that—,” he paused, tried to clear his throat. “Were that a—”

Dad’s voice faded into a raspy cough. Ice coated my stomach as I watched him turn red, a fist held in front of his mouth.

“Do you need anything?” I asked.

He swallowed, leaned back. “I’m okay.” His eyes were weary but still glinting. “Oh, I got the results back from that genome project that tells you where your ancestors migrated. Tracks the whole thing and tells you about significant genetic markers.” He smiled, breathing still heavy, as I looked toward the darkened window and imagined all the night skies our family genome had witnessed, how far we had travelled for Dad and me to get here, now. “You have to see it,” he said as he hopped up faster than he should’ve, stopped to lean on the back of his chair.

I stood. “Let me get it, Dad.” I put a hand on his shoulder and looked into his lowered eyes. “In the family room?”

“Yeah.” A heavy breath. “In a manila packet.”

My feet moved quickly to the adjacent room, to the next thing that could help me stretch out those few minutes and fall into the past with my father, closer to our ancestors and further from his diagnosis and the inevitable end of his disease, from the distractions of my work, from the politics and passions that came between the two of us. Behind me, Dad coughed and my heart shuddered, our smoldering denial like sparks of a dying fire against our ancestors’ night skies.

“On What It Means to Stay”

Published in Loud Zoo Vol. 1, No. 3 (December 2014).

On What It Means to Stay

As I crouch behind our cramped apartment’s front door, vacuuming for the second time today, it flies open and I have to catch it with my right hand before it hits me.

David’s screechy voice overpowers the Dustbuster’s hum in our tiny living room. “I brought Mexican for lunch.”

I twist at the waist and look up at his sparse, mousy mustache he says will soon look good. I call over the whirr, “I thought you were bringing sushi.”

“I changed my mind,” he says, swinging one of his long, slender legs so his foot hits the door. It slams and the wall rattles, rocking the picture on the wall above me like a pendulum. Asshole.

I turn off the hand held vacuum and set it on the green carpet; my guts bubble and clinch as I stand and walk past him into the kitchen. Sitting at the table in front of my cold cup of coffee, I lift my left leg over the right and shift the round bottle of coffee creamer along the wood grain on the table.

I sniff, but all I can smell is the dry, stale scent of a hangover. “How’d you know what I wanted?”

He blinks his thick black eyelashes as he looks up at me and crosses the kitchen to the table. “I didn’t. I just got you some of those spicy burritos. The meat asiado ones. You like those, right?” The plastic bags grunt against Styrofoam containers heavy with greasy Mexican food as he sets them on the table, his keys clanging down beside the bags.

I roll my eyes. Asada, not asiado. Dumbass.

He tosses his grey windbreaker over the back of a chair, and it swishes against the yellow vinyl seat cover.

As I watch him pull forks out of a drawer, I blink as if something is lodged in my eye. “Remember this morning, when I didn’t get out of bed ‘til ten because of my stomach hurting?” He was supposed to be here last night, watching movies and drinking with me instead of at the bar with Saruh and Jessie.

“Oh, yeah. Want a Hot Pocket instead?” Without glancing up, he pulls out the chair opposite me and lifts one of the square Styrofoam containers out, opens it and begins assembling his steak fajitas with quick, swooping motions.

I look down into my mug. “Nah. Don’t worry about it.” The white chocolate cream slowly roils in my coffee, the color tan and smoky.

 My mouth has gone dry; my stomach is too tight to handle any caffeine. I hate his dopey fucking face.

Outside on the abrupt little balcony, two city pigeons bring tiny branches, flower stalks and scraps of hay—where do they find these things?—to build the pitiful twig nest I have already ripped down three times this week. Idiot birds.

David is cramming half a fajita into his mouth at once. Red-brown juice drips down his chin and onto his white Oxford shirt.

“Shit,” he mumbles through soggy tortilla and peppers. He swallows hard, his throat flexing wide and then relaxing slim again, and pushes the rest of the fajita into his mouth with one spidery hand. “I’m gonna go change,” he says as he wipes his mouth with a paper napkin – the metal legs of his chair squeal along the linoleum floor away from the table and he walks  down the hallway into the bedroom.

I uncross my legs, turn to the right and stand, then slide the smudged glass door open and step outside. Fucking asshole.

As one of the dull pigeons takes flight, its fat little body pulling down the glimmer of sun on its salt and pepper wings, I brush the little pile of scrap from the corner of the porch with my foot. All you little bastards, nest somewhere else. This is my balcony.

I turn to the kitchen as David walks back out as he’s tightening a green tie. He lifts his jacket from the back of the chair with a swoosh. A drop of dried grease still clings to his chin.

“Paul, I’m just going to eat this back at the office.” He looks over at me and smiles. I nod as he scoops everything back into the noisy plastic bag, tosses his fork into the sink from across the kitchen and passes the ugly blue couch to the door. One sleeve of his jacket almost gets caught in the wooden frame as the door swings shut.

I turn and lean on the smooth metal railing of our balcony, licking the peeling corners of my chapped lips. I look down the twenty-three stories at the stained, uneven sidewalk to watch the glass door swing open and David stride out. His cell phone is balanced against one shoulder and he’s almost juggling the Mexican food to pull the grey windbreaker on over his white shirt. I look down at the blue veins snaking beneath my white, white skin. I look sick.

The only reason I went to get tested was because David started wearing underwear. He had never worn any—no boxers, no briefs—since we had met. I immediately found it sexy, and his lack of undies directly led to him waking up in my bed. But two months ago, as I watched him get dressed from the still-warm sheets, his hips were hidden by green elastic shorts. “What are those?”

He turned to me with wide, deliberately blank eyes, as if he had ever been a good liar. “What?”

“The boxers. Are those mine?”

Face full of surprise, he looked down, apparently mystified to be wearing underwear for the first time in three years. “Oh. No. Last night. I got a few pairs. Been getting colder out.” Then he turned, one black sock still in his hand, and shut the hollow bathroom door before I could ask anything else.

So, the next day, just to quiet my paranoia—after all, we had abandoned condoms after the first month or so—I sat in the kitchen and called the city’s free clinic after David had left for work.

The woman on the other end chimed, “So are you having symptoms, or just want to make sure nothing is going on down there?”

I scrunched my nose up and squinted my eyes. ‘Nothing is going on down there?’ I thought they had to be nurses to work at these places. “No, no symptoms. Just been a while since I had a check-up … down there.” I stepped across the flower-print linoleum to the sink with the portable phone balanced against my shoulder  and started washing the day-old crust of linguine from the pile of cheap ceramic plates.

“Oh, my. Well, that’s no good. No good at all.”

I paused and raised an eyebrow. “You’re right, it’s not.” Was she high? Popping other people’s meds between appointments or something? “I was also wondering, since it’s been a while, how long do the results take?” I turned off the water and set my hip against the counter. Holding the phone with my fingertips and leaning my head into it, I ignored the rubbery pasta left on David’s plate.

“Well, for the less serious ones, only a few minutes. We’ll let you know those results before you even leave the clinic.” I imagined this woman as Dolly Parton from “9 to 5,” chipper and completely oblivious. “Now let me just see when we can fit you in.”

As she flipped pages, I scraped under my fingernails with the prong of a freshly-dried fork.

“How about Saturday at two?” She sounded as if she was smiling. I don’t think I’ve ever smiled in an STD clinic. Nor seen anyone who has.

“Sounds great. The name’s Paul Williams. I’ll see you then.”

The phone cradle beeped as I set down the clunky phone and went to the bedroom. I could feel the dusty quiet of the apartment crawl along my skin as I sat on the bed and chewed my already ragged nails for an hour; they used to look so nice, before I started getting really anxious. Then I finally dressed to take a jog and absorb some vitamin D.

Now the light in the kitchen has dimmed and I glance at the clock: almost two-thirty. I step inside and sit. The dry terry cloth wrapped around me is scratchy and rough against my bare skin as I look down at the maroon cloth clashing against the fine blond hairs on my arm. Asshole.

My cell phone vibrates on the countertop. I lean my chair back until I can reach it. My tip-toes barely touch the cold floor, and I look at the LED screen. David.

I flip the phone open and stare at the screen for a few seconds before putting it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Hey. So I was thinking maybe I could come home from work early today. Ed told everybody to take the afternoon off. So I’ll be home in, say, an hour. Sound okay?”

I lean my head back and stare at the white ceiling. “Sure. You live here, too.”

“I know, but …” He sounds nervous or anxious, like someone is standing over him. “Look, I’ll just see you soon, okay?”

“All right.” I push down the top of the phone until momentum pulls it closed and set it on a dark circle in the table’s wood grain, just beside the bottle of creamer.

I pull at the waist cord of my robe. My fists are tight, shaking knots, and it grips tighter and tighter around my torso, which feels icy and desolate inside. I wrap one thin arm around myself and reach for my cold coffee. The fog of creamer shifts and curls as I lift the cup. I sit still for a long time, picturing my zippered suitcases in the hall closet; the two bookshelves in the bedroom with my pictures and books; the last statement for my empty bank account; Mom’s face if I showed up back home, half the country away; David’s mouth as he slept after the last time we had sex.

I didn’t even tell David I had gone to get tested. They make you come back in to get the results—something about mixed-up paperwork in the eighties and a privacy of information act. So I sat in the waiting room, trying to tell everyone with my expression that I was there for a malaria shot and not for the same reasons that made them slouch into the bright plastic chairs. The only one who seemed to know was the hunched old man with scraggly grey hair who winked when the nurse called my name. I sat quietly in the exam room, smoothing wrinkles out of my jeans with my hands until another nurse walked in.

“William?”

“Well, that’s my last name, it has an s on the end, but yes, that should be me. People do that to me all the time, especially in situations like these, where it’s listed with my last name first. They always call me William instead of Paul, but it’s actually Paul Williams, and then most people ask why I have two first names instead of a first and a last name, but my middle name is actually Lynnwood, which is so rare people think I’m making it—” Her face told me I needed to shut up. “Sorry.” I folded my hands between my knees and lowered my chin, eyes trained on her wood pulp clipboard.

She looked back down and flipped a page over the silver clip. “Your results are back.”

The only other word I heard was “positive.” It flashed in my mind like a marquee with big gaudy red letters: “AIDS” in fucking Broadway lights. I walked out of the exam room and back into that ugly crowd waiting for their turn, their news. When the old homeless-looking guy reached out for my arm, I slapped his hand away hard and glared down at him, my breath coming out in quick puffs as his eyes went big and watery. I was standing on the apartment’s puke-green carpet with the door locked behind me, holding the slip of paper labeled “POSITIVE” that they make you take, before I even thought to apologize.

When David saw my red-rimmed eyes after he got home, I told him a friend’s dog had died. He thought I was angry about doing the dishes all the time, the bookshelves he promised to build me six months ago for the living room, or at least his refusal to vacuum. He had no idea.

I bite the inside of my cheek with my molars—hard—and stand. I march down the short hall to the bedroom.

 The shelves lining the other side of the room—all the shiny textbooks that I’m still paying for, the bestsellers David refuses to read—are reflected in the mirror above my dresser, and I step up to it and watch my cheek bulge as I push my tongue against the raw, salty spot where I bit it. He would crumble if he found out. I can almost see it: his legs limp as he drops to the floor, then he looks up at me and starts to cry, his eyes smeared dark with tears, cheeks turned splotchy red from embarrassment and fear. His keys and jacket and cell phone would be scattered on the carpet around him. No more leaving me here to go clubbing with those two sluts, no more drinks after work until two a.m. or spending the night God-knows-where because he “couldn’t find a way home.” No need to pack and haul my shit across state lines.

I drop my robe in a soft pile on the floor and pull open the top dresser drawer, then slip out a pair of jeans and lift my legs into them. I clasp each cold, round button slowly. I reach for a white t-shirt, then pull back. Fuck it; I may as well look dramatic. I pick up my wallet from the dresser, pull the folded piece of paper from inside and spread it open with both hands. The bold capital letters in black ink shine through the creases, overpowering the rest of the Xeroxed print. I refold it and slide it into my back pocket.

I stride back to the kitchen and pick up my coffee mug and the creamer. I move to the sink and pour the cold coffee down the drain. The fridge door makes a soft shushing sound as I swing it open, and I set the creamer on a glass shelf.

I pull the paper from my back pocket and set it unfolded in the very center of the bare, wooden table. Even he should notice that. Moving to the glass doors in front of the balcony, I face the sun already dimming behind the tops of tall downtown buildings. At least I had enough time to get ready. I place each hand on a hip half-clad in denim and turn my back to the light. The Dustbuster still sits on the carpet behind the front door, gleaming grey in the fading sunlight that is filtering through the living room windows. Just then, David’s key rattles quietly into the door’s brass lock, clicking as the gears inside begin to grind and turn.

“Why to Act Straight at a Urinal”

Published in Houston & Nomadic Voices Magazine Vol. 1, No. 2 (December 2013).

Why to Act Straight at a Urinal

Because it’s the only place in this bar where men look at one another when they speak; because in the bathroom—on the cracked, once-white squares of tile, the corners chipped and grout black, standing before the walls decorated with graffiti and dried droplets of paint—someone can hit you from behind, into the enamel and metal mold, and the reflection in the flusher isn’t large enough to see them swinging; because it makes the stream sound stronger, like “a man” would piss; because the mirror is the best place to catch a curious guy looking, but they never look if you do first; and because by the end of the night, you’ll have had too many vodka tonics to even try and fake it.

“On Having Faith”

Published by The Bookends Review (May 2014).

On Having Faith

Mid-afternoon sunlight filtered into the Hayfords’ living room, throwing long, thin shadows across the carpet and softly illuminating objects in the room: the bookshelf, creased spines of mysteries and romances lined up beside photo albums, auto repair manuals; the plaid couch, matching crocheted doilies on each arm; the wood laminate china cabinet, glass doors protecting the shelves of plates, cups and saucers inherited from parents, aunts, a great uncle; and the padded rocking chair where Maureen sat, her body still except for her slowly pushing legs and tense, restless hands—which moved between fluttering about her lap and twisting the gold cross around her neck until the chain went taut—as she watched the light touch the objects around her.

Maureen looked from her and Gerry’s wedding photo on the wall to the cold, quiet street out the window, and then at the half-table that was pushed up against the aging wallpaper facing her, willing the cordless phone sitting on the smooth wooden surface to ring. The table was one of the only things Maureen still had from her childhood home—her grandfather had made the table for her mother, carving the edges to look like the elegant, lacy trim that the bank manager and mayor had ordered for their homes—and she kept it nice by polishing the hardwood surfaces, hammering in a new nail when one of the legs got loose. The table being older than herself comforted Maureen, let her believe that if a tiny little table could withstand the world for that long, then so could she.

Gerry had said he would call her the night before—he was hauling the rig cross-country in five days, and she hated when he’d try to get ahead of schedule by not sleeping, so she made him promise to call when he stopped each night—but as she sat up waiting on the third night, twisting and tugging on the cross hanging from her neck, the phone never rang. She had tried calling him around eleven thirty, an hour after he usually turned in, but his pay-as-you-go cell phone hadn’t even rung. Not unusual, she had thought while replacing the receiver, he turns it off while driving so he won’t be bothered—he’ll probably turn it on in a minute. After half an hour in the rocking chair, her sore knee began to loosen up a little and Maureen dozed off only to wake up seconds later, frantic that she had missed him. Once she saw the red LED zero on the answering machine, she got herself a glass of water and laid down in the bed.

But today, rocking slowly forward and back, her index finger rubbing the small freckled indent between her clavicles, she was worried, because the last time he’d taken this long to call, he’d been with another woman the night before, one of the lot lizards that stalk through truck stops. Maureen had never figured out if it was guilt or fear that she would somehow know—as if her feminine senses told her all his secrets—that had kept him from calling that time, but now that he still hadn’t called, she was just sure that it had happened again. She had spent the last hour racking her mind, mumbling to herself as she tried to recollect some clue in their recent lifestyle that would or even could allude to him considering such a thing—perhaps something he had said he’d do but didn’t, a mysterious tension when saying “I love you,” or maybe a foul remark she had tossed out in anger—but there was literally nothing that she could come up with. Still, though, if it happened once, it could happen again. “Bastard,” she said to the empty room as her fingertips moved against her chin, her lips. Her stomach felt suddenly hollow as she thought of the tearful look he had given her when he had confessed months later, sobbingly telling her it was the only time and that it would never happen again, and that really, he hadn’t even enjoyed it. She glanced up as she heard the wheeze and rumble of an old pickup truck turning the corner outside, then looked back to the phone. Nothing. That just has to be it, she thought, because he always calls when I ask him to.

She tried to come up with excuses for him: that maybe his pay-as-you-go cell phone had died, though he had a charger in the rig, or maybe had run out of minutes; that the pay phones at the stop where he spent the night had all been out of order; that the rig had broken down last night in the middle of nowhere and he had been trying desperately to call her, but was in a place with no reception—“And,” she said dreamily, as if only half-focused on the words, “in this cold, it’d be too dangerous to walk anywhere to try to call.”

A cool, dizzy feeling crept over her chest and head as she imagined Gerry walking through snowy banks on the side of a deserted road in the middle of the night, coat and scarf bundled around his hunched frame as he held his cell phone in the air, trying to get even the weakest signal to contact her. She could see the rig behind him, the hood propped up, oily rags hanging off the sides—evidence that he had tried to fix it himself, hoping desperately that someone would drive by, someone who could help. No, she thought, there couldn’t have been another woman. Not again. Her stomach groaned and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything today—hadn’t even had coffee, though she didn’t want anything anyway—as from the snowy banks of the darkened road, Maureen’s mind moved to memories more solid than the fleeting image she darkly hoped was true: the time after the second miscarriage, when Gerry had held her on the couch until she stopped crying and told her that he knew it hurt, but she had to keep fighting, that she always had to keep fighting, because that was the only way to make it to better times; the spring night when he planted an entire garden of daisies, wildflowers and geraniums while she slept, how when she woke up and looked outside, the blooms and hummingbirds in the golden morning light surprised her so much that she dropped her coffee mug onto the kitchen’s linoleum tile; and how when they were first dating—the firm strength of his hands and that bright laughter—Gerry would slip notes into her purse when she wasn’t around or paying attention, little treasures that smelled of his aftershave for her to find later on. “No,” she said firmly, surprised at the strength of her own voice in the empty living room, “not my Gerry.”

Maureen looked over at the little wooden table—shafts of sunlight gilded the legs, but the phone was wrapped in shadow—and exhaled sharply, her fingers now resting on the cross hanging around her neck. The inside of her chest had begun to burn slightly, as if a cold was coming on, the same way her lungs used to burn when she was a smoker and would cough too hard. She looked opposite the front window, toward the kitchen, past the sink that held her single dirty plate and cup from last night, and pictured the wilted wildflowers outside, the empty bird feeder lying prone on the ground. Before she could stop herself, she was imagining Gerry with another woman, some whore named Desiree or Kasandra, who looked young in that cheap way—frizzy dyed hair and skin too loose from sun exposure, chunks of slowly greening imitation silver nestled on her fingers—someone whose hands had run along the same spots on Gerry’s body that Maureen loved, those secret places that only she was supposed to know about: the strawberry birthmark at the top of his right bicep, a freckle just beneath his waistline, the scar that ran like a shooting star across his thigh. No, she thought as she felt the corners of the cross dig into the middle of her fist, drawing lines and angles into her palm, No, that can’t be it. Please, let it be anything but that, anything at all but that. She looked down at the cross and asked again, pleading with her distorted reflection to show her some sign, something to prove that Gerry would never, ever do that to her again.

As if to answer her, the cordless phone across the room lit up and chirped. Maureen jumped up and crossed the room at a quick clip, noticing that her vision seemed very sharp—more precise than it had been in years: she could see the dust motes moving around her, the tiny cracks in the porcelain teacups beyond the doors of the glass cabinet—and she thought to herself, This must be what miracles feel like. She felt her knee strain and try to slow her, but she fought against it, sure that the good Lord would sooth the pain later on, since it was—after all—her reaction to a sign from Him that made it hurt. When Maureen looked down at the caller ID and saw that the number was in fact her cousin Tina and not Gerry’s cell phone, she raised an eyebrow. Why would she call at a time like this? She probably just wants to talk about the latest thing that dirt bag Chip called her. As Maureen shook her head and turned from the phone, her knee suddenly felt swollen and her leg began to shake a little.

“Gerry, my Gerry,” she mumbled, once again scouring her memories of the past few months for any disruption in their routine, anything she’d done wrong by anyone that would make her deserve this, “Why haven’t you called?” About halfway back to her chair, she glanced at the bookcase by the door, pausing to focus on the glinting pattern on the top shelf that had caught her eye: Gerry’s family Bible. She stepped toward the wooden structure and reached out to run a finger down the fading gold letters on the leather spine, thinking back to their wedding day, when Gerry’s mother had given the book to Maureen, holding onto it even as Maureen stood with it in her hands. “It’s very old,” his mother, God rest her soul, had said. “Very old. Has the entire family line all the way back to my great-great-great-great grandfather.” His mother had pulled it from Maureen’s gloved hands and flipped open the cover to show her the hand-drawn family tree inside, the careful cursive of every first, middle and last name. “You can add your name in now,” his mother had said, closing the book slowly and handing it back to Maureen. “Just keep it nice. It’ll remind you to have faith.” His mother had leveled her hazel eyes with Maureen’s and poked the cover of the Bible, her index finger covering the “o” in holy. “Always have faith.”

Maureen stepped back from the bookshelf, her left hand tugging at the cross around her neck. She pictured Jerry rifling through the rig’s cab for his cellphone charger, an “Out of Service” sign hanging across the row of pay phones at the only truck stop for fifty miles, snow drifts and closed roads and broken brake lines, even as the phone behind her sat quiet, the little wooden table and sun-faded wallpaper the only witnesses to her curled fist and trembling leg.