Exigencies

by Richard Thomas

  There’s a sticker on the sign in front of Leslie’s heritage house, sold written in bold block letters. She pounces on me when I get home.

  “Baby, it finally happened!” she says.

  She’s in black lace lingerie, but the dark overpowers her. She always looked better in baby blues. She claws at my chest, undoes the buttons on my shirt. The briefcase slips from my grasp. It hits the floor, the bang heavy in my ears.

  Leslie shoves me against the wall.

  You’re a white flag.

  “I want to celebrate,” she says. Her lavender scent brings a headache.

  In the bedroom, she climbs on top of me and writhes. She arches her back. She shakes the bed, moans in my ear, distorted sounds like the Skytrain.

  Married men still like pussy.

  My lungs ache when I inhale. My grasp tightens around her waist. She tilts her head back, braces her thighs around me. It’s the way it always is now, her hands on my chest, pushing me down. She groans when she comes.

  “God, baby,” she says. “We never do this enough.”

  She makes it worse.

  The next station is Patterson.

  The next station is Joyce-Collingwood.

  The next station is 29th Avenue.

  The girl isn’t on the train, but I leave my briefcase on my lap and I look out at every platform for her red raincoat, her bare legs.

  The next station is Nanaimo.

  The next station is Commercial-Broadway.

  The train slows and I grip the nearby pole and stand, gravity

  pulling me. The bells chime. The doors slide open. The rustle of people. The city’s busiest station, bodies and red all over.

  You wanna get off now, don’t you?

  There’s a dent on the side of my briefcase. It’s difficult to get open. The papers are scattered inside, a mess of tenant applications, noise complaints and rental contracts. I work through all of it. I call references. I set up appointments. I answer every complaint with sympathy.

  I’m a joke of a property manager, eating lunch at my desk.

  There’s take-out Indian food on the counter when I get home.

  Leslie clears her housing contracts off the table. She lays out a white tablecloth and serves tikka masala over rice. The food burns my throat. I stare at the plate, wincing against my headache, the pressure.

  There’s a war in your head, isn’t there?

  My fingers flinch around my fork. I set it down, getting sauce on the tablecloth. “So, this is stupid,” I say. “There’s this, well, there’s this girl on the train sometimes.”

  Leslie looks up.

  “She just, she says things to me.”

  “Like what?”

  I shrug and shake my head. “Just how good my pants look. She asks me how big my dick is.”

  “Seriously?” Leslie asks.

  “It’s gone on all week,” I say. “It’s kind of degrading, really.”

  “Oh, come on,” she says.

  “Haven’t men ever made cat calls at you?”

  “Just ignore her, Jason.”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

  “She’s probably just teasing you.” Leslie buries her fork in the red on her plate. She slices through a piece of chicken. “Just take the compliment and move on,” she says, laughing.

  At the bar, I empty the dregs from the beer pitcher into my glass.

  “You know, the thing about Leslie?” I say. “She always gave terrible blow jobs.”

  “You two have a fight or something?” Dick asks.

  A SkyTrain passes outside, moaning.

  “Are you having an affair?” he asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “Are you considering it?”

  “No.” I finish my beer, hesitating. “I still love her.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I told myself at first,” he says. “I spent years telling myself that, but with the kids grown up there was nothing to look forward to. I’d come home and Alice would have dinner ready. She’d ask me about work and I wouldn’t even want to have a conversation with her. The girl at Subway was more interesting to talk to.” He shrugs. “Things just happened. No sense in denying it. There was so much shit in my head.”

  “What about when Alice found out?” I ask.

  “Honestly, it was really just a relief,” he says, leaning back in his chair. He whistles at the waitress and holds up his empty glass. He thinks he’s a real man, but he ogles the waitress’s chest when he orders another Caesar.

  The last train of the night arrives. The girl’s there, bare legs crossed, her raincoat undone. She’s wearing her yellow and blue dress. The fabric clings to her figure.

  Just take the compliment and move on.

  The doors slide closed behind me. The girl looks up. She smiles and my headache starts to ease. I stumble across the car, slipping into the seat beside her. I drop my briefcase on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  The train whirs to life.

  “I like you drunk,” she says. She touches my leg, runs her fingers along the crease I had to iron in because Leslie never has the time. “You look so good in black slacks.”

  She takes my hand. My fingers slip between hers.

  “I like men like you,” she says. “I like your business wear and tear, the tortured look on your face. I like your briefcase. You always look so miserable and it makes me so wet.”

  The next station is Royal Oak.

  She parts her legs. Her thighs are pale and she runs her fingers up. She isn’t wearing panties. The train slows and she slides her fingers into her folds.

  “What’s your name?” she asks.

  “Jason,” I say.

  The train starts again, its moan echoing.

  The girl pulls my hand between her open legs. “Do you wanna know what I feel like?”

  Her skin’s warm, soft. I slide my palm up her thigh and under her dress. She’s smooth, her inside an abyss, slick lips warming my fingers. I stare out the window at the passing blur of all the shitty apartments that I control.

  She leans in. Her lips brush against my ear. “How big is your dick, Jason?”

  The next station is Patterson.

  “It’s six inches,” I say.

  “Is that not big enough for your wife?”

  My throat tightens. “It used to be.”

  The train shakes as it slows. I slip against her. She smells like rainwater.

  People board, their gazes falling toward her open legs. She clutches my hand before I can pull away.

  “Let them look,” she says. “Let them think what they want. I just want you to do this for me.”

  The train starts. My headache starts.

  “Please,” she begs. “Please.”

  She grinds herself against my palm. My thumb slips against her clit and she moans.

  “Right there,” she says. Her breaths are heavy, just like Leslie’s when she used to call. She grips my hand. She’s shaking.

  Just tell me everything will be okay.

  I rub her harder, thumbing circles, pushing down, two fingers buried inside of her and she writhes in the seat. Her moan echoes with the Skytrain. I lean over her, feeling her breath against my neck. Her grasp tightens. She digs her nails into my wrist and she fills the train with her moan.

  The next station is Columbia.

  The train slows and I look up. The other passengers turn their heads.

  The girl exhales, her chest heaving. “You’re so good,” she says. Her fingers loosen and I pull my hand away.

  My palm’s still wet, smelling of her.

  I bury my hand in my pocket, leaving the briefcase behind.

  The sun streams in through the curtains and I roll out of bed with a new headache, the girl’s voice in my head.

  How big is your dick, Jason?

  Leslie’s in the bathroom, standing before the mirror in her baby blue robe, her blonde hair tied back.


  “Jason?”

  I stumble into the hallway and she turns and meets my gaze. Her eyes are bright, glistened with tears. She’s holding a pregnancy test and there are two red lines in the oval window.

  “Can you read this?” she asks. “I need you to read this.” She gives me the test and the box, even though I don’t need it to tell me what the two lines mean.

  I rub at the stubble on my face. My fingers still smell like pussy.

  rebecca jones-howe

  lives and writes in kamloops, british columbia. her work has appeared in pank, pulp modern, and punchnel’s, among others. her first collection of short fiction, vile men, will be out in 2015 from dark house press. she can be found online at rebeccajoneshowe.com.

  CEREMONY

  OF THE

  WHITE DOG

  KEVIN CATALANO

  The egg hung in the morning air as though winter had frozen it midflight. It had funneled through the fog of marijuana smoke that ghosted over Chittenango Creek. Brett peered into this smoky cone, and saw on the opposite bank, a slowed-down Dean, unwinding frame-by-frame from his pitcher’s hurl. This was Brett’s moment of peace, before the world tipped into its sudden violence, and the icy egg crashed into Brett’s face.

  The pain blazed, every inch of him sizzled. He was positive his head was halved like a melon. He writhed on the ground and held the pulp of his face together. His legs flopped and thrashed as he swam in the bloody slush.

  Dean was laughing. Brett heard the scrunch of his retreating footsteps. Then silence. Footsteps coming, and Dean’s voice was above.

  Don’t be a pussy. Get up. Dean kicked his leg. Come on, you’re not hurt bad.

  Dean’s breathing trembled Brett’s nerves like thunder. You better not tell your dad. Or you’re dead.

  Dean was gone. There was only the burble of water slithering beneath crisps of ice. Brett didn’t want to move. He would allow his body to empty itself into the creek and curse it.

  A voice fell down on him. It was a girl’s, “Hey,” shrill enough to cut through the cloud of coming-on unconsciousness. But it was familiar, part of the soundtrack of his neighborhood.

  Hey. And a dog barked, and Brett knew.

  He heard Angela Ruggero struggle down the steep bank, cursing Cauliflower too freely for a twelve-year-old. Come on you bitchass dog or I’ll punt you into the cocksucking creek.

  Don’t touch me, drummed in Brett’s head, hoping it was loud enough for her to hear. He felt a damp nose chilling his ear, wet hairs tickling his cheek.

  Get the fuck back, and Cauliflower yelped. A pressure on his shoulder warmed him entirely. Brett? Her voice was suddenly silk-threaded as if another girl spoke for her. Can you hear me? Can you stand?

  He thudded his boot to the ground, the meaning of which he didn’t know. She must have taken it differently. She was tugging at the shoulders of his coat, grunting, the dog nosing the back of his head.

  No, Brett managed to say.

  You’ll freeze. Angela yanked his chest off the snow. Her strength was unbelievable, and again, he wondered if there were two. Fucking help me goddammit.

  Brett put his arms under him in a push up. Once on his knees, he expected his head to roll off his shoulders and shatter. The damage was unknowable, other than the blood goring an unsettling circumference like the inksplot of a giant pen.

  Brett was on his feet, though unsteady. Cauliflower was lapping at the red snow, his white muzzle crimsoned like a clown. He felt Angela holding him, guiding him up the slope.

  How bad is it? Brett asked.

  It’s steep.

  No, my face.

  As if he were a camera, her head came into frame, a close-up. Her grayish eyes squinted; her narrow nose scrunched. Puberty was shaping her—a zit on her forehead, a thickening of her eyebrows, the thinning of her cheeks. The end of a fat, brown braid was in her mouth. When she spoke, it remained tucked in her cheek like Skoal.

  You look like a caveman, she said. I think it’s an improvement.

  Cauliflower led the charge up the bank, fighting against the leash’s length. Brett focused on Angela’s breathing, the occasional grunt. When he stumbled, she jerked him up and cussed. They reached the top, but they still had Russell Street hill to climb, and another block after that. Brett’s face had gone numb. Blood leaked off his nose and chin, speckling the snow. He drifted in and out, held fast to Angela’s shoulder.

  They were on his doorstep. He couldn’t remember getting there. Cauliflower was chewing bald a patch just above his tail.

  Angela asked, Is your dad home?

  When she again came into his camera view, one side of her knit hat and face were slathered red. She didn’t seem to notice, or care. A fantastic tickle flooded Brett’s chest, as though someone had opened a liter of soda inside him.

  She snapped her fingers in his face. Hello? Caveman?

  Brett examined his deformity in the bathroom mirror while masturbating. His reconstructed nose was purple and bloated, halved by a centipede of black stitches. His eyes were a pus color underneath, and the whites were like shitstain. His shiny-swollen brow did, in fact, resemble a caveman’s.

  He ejaculated without orgasm.

  Brett leaned his forehead onto the mirror, pressing the thick, other-feeling wound against the cold glass until his head tingled. Light swarmed behind his eyelids, lasers and orbs.

  He left the bathroom, snuck across the hall so his dad wouldn’t notice, and went into his bedroom. He circled the cramped space, three or four times, like something caged. There was an overwhelming, unnamable desperation. On his desk littered with empty Skoal canisters and unopened textbooks, he honed in on a protractor, pens, and lighter. He sat and snapped a pen in half. He blew clean an ashtray, then emptied black ink into it. He lit the pointed end of the protractor, blackening the silver. The underside of his left arm was soft and pink. He pressed the point into the skin just below the wrist until the flesh popped and blood bubbled. His hand shook as he dragged the needle through. He then lifted the point, punctured a different spot near the other, and tore a second line. His arm burned as if set aflame. Blood slithered in rivulets. He sopped it with a pair of boxers, then smeared the ink into the cuts. He repeated the design on the other wrist. When he was finished, he laid his two arms on the desk, admiring the emblazoned Xs.

  Brett returned to the creek in search of Dean. It was the same early morning as a week ago, the snow on the banks glowing purple. Brett would meet Dean here for their morning routine—smoking a bowl of mediocre weed, then enjoying a refreshing tobacco dip on their walk to school. Brett sat under the bridge on the cold cement landing and packed a bowl, though he had no intention of smoking. He wanted to remain clear-headed now—avoid numbness whenever he could. He itched through his coat at the crusting tattoos. Instead of the Skoal, he lit a stale cigarette he’d found in a forgotten quarter pack in his sock drawer.

  The bowl was for Dean.

  There remained evidence of the assault, if it could be called that. It looked like a deer had been slaughtered—brown-red smudge and the imprint of a carcass. There was no drip-trail up the bank, which Brett took to mean a part of him hadn’t survived.

  He didn’t spend his time wondering why Dean had done it. Growing up, Brett knew Dean was different—somewhat dangerous—and that he should be left alone. Dean loitered at the Byrne Dairy, stealing money from the kids who came with hopes of buying candy and soda. He had been known to break into cars, and one time the high school, spray painting his name across the basketball court. He set the maintenance building at Sullivan Park on fire, which nearly ignited the forest.

  No one at Chittenango High got close to Dean, who was a second-time senior, inching on twenty years old. Brett, a measly 9th grader, was the closest thing to a friend Dean had, and vice versa. This might have something to do with Brett’s dad, and the fact that the Chittenango police turned their heads on Brett’s public marijuana use, and therefore, Dean’s. Brett had hoped this was not the case—
that Dean saw something else. Maybe it was that Brett reminded Dean of his brother.

  Ten years ago, Dean and his little brother were abducted. They were stuffed into the trunk of a car and held in a cabin on Oneida Lake. The story—now part of Chittenango lore—went that Dean managed to rescue his brother’s body, swimming him two miles through the lake. When Dean appeared on his parent’s doorstep in the early morning, cradling his wet, stiff brother, he’d apparently said—though Brett had his doubts about this, “We’re home.”

  There was a side of Dean, however, that only Brett saw, or so he wanted to think. Sometimes, out of nowhere, Dean seemed to revert back to a younger self. Brett knew it was happening when Dean got a soft, wet-eyed look, and wouldn’t speak for a while. He appeared lost and quietly frightened, as though he had suddenly found himself in a different time. What triggered this shift Brett didn’t know, but he liked to think that Dean was gifted, like a troubled superhero, with the ability to move through his own history with a simple glance back or forward.

  Dean usually came out of this trance by punching Brett in the arm, or recruiting him to vandalize something. Or, just as often, Dean would leave unannounced, as if Brett was never there.

  Out of boredom, Brett stood and began searching for the egg that had damaged him. He raked his boot across the surface of the snow, which scattered like billions of sand-sized crystals. This meant it was getting warmer—the first sign that winter might actually pass. He found nothing but some pinkish slush. So he climbed the slope, crossed the bridge, and descended to the other creek bank. There, he found a cache of eggs, plugged into a mound of snow in a neat, violent row. Brett plucked one out, harder somehow than rock. He wound up and whipped the egg across the creek, aiming for his old self. The egg smacked into the bridge’s support.

  Get up pussy, Brett called in a different pitch. You’re not hurt.

  He grabbed another one and hurled it harder.

  You better not tell your dad or I’ll kill you.