ACT I
Welcome to my world. I am happy.
My den is at peak den. I have all I need, and more. After months, years, of ups and downs, I have finally arrived where I want to be. Peace, comfort, security. A room with a view. A sea of tranquillity stretches out to every point of my horizon.
But then the ground shakes. A messenger from the old world comes, unexpected, and with an unwelcome invitation.
I dim the headlights before the approach. No other vehicle has passed in the last ten minutes. The rain is all but a splutter now; the wipers cease their tormenting drag and slide. The wet gravel sinks silently under the tread of the tyres: perfect conditions.
The windows glow at opposite corners above. I navigate to the very back of the car park and pull in under an unkempt bush. Sliding out, I walk towards the building, satisfied that the car is out of sight. The back entrance is clear. I ease off my boots and pad up the stone steps in Lycra-soled feet, reaching the doorway of the flat I have been familiarising myself with for a fortnight now. Carefully easing down the handle, no need for a key and hence no jingle, I sink to my knees and enter on all fours. The deep scent of wood smoke emanates from the rugs, raising recent memories. I feel for the sofa, the one between two windows, benefitting from the join of the wall to evade prying eyes. Retrieving the flashlight from my bag, I am finally ready to digest the passages I began over two weeks ago.
My alarm goes off.
I feel groggy
Because I was awake at 6 am again.
I get up and make myself a sweet coffee
Then walk down to a warehouse to ask for a job.
This one’s only 29 minutes away,
18 by bus.
They hire me on the spot.
Ah… UPS delivered the replacement valve, and Eithan could finally finish the washer’s repair. He removed the plate at the rear of the machine and pulled out the old unit, taking careful note of all the connections, electrical, mechanical, and hydraulic. The new valve clicked confidently onto the mounting plate, a confirmation that the replacement part was the correct one. It would be nice to get that pile of laundry back under control.
No one would ever know if Timothy the Turtle’s arrival at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church was a well-timed prank, or a tiny miracle.
Sometime between the First Reading and the Responsorial Psalm at the first Friday children’s mass after Easter, he’d wandered through a maze of potted lilies on the altar. Prehistoric feet pressed into the plush carpet as he ventured out, one agonizingly long step at a time. Timothy stopped at the altar’s edge, facing the pre-pubescent, parochial-school-uniformed congregants giggling on either side of the center aisle.
This is a work of fiction.
I need to clarify this, as there’s been quite the fashion of late for novels based, with almost no alterations, on the minutiae of the day to day life of men.
Nearly always men.
And in these alleged fictions they catalogue their bowel movements and fear of death and there’s generally some tedious byplay about the taut flesh of much younger women. None of it is terribly edifying, but then they call it a novel and everyone falls over impressed.
Sam: What’s that sound..? Is that..?
Reg: Dude, your smartphone is ringing.
Sam: I don’t recognize the number.
Reg: Sales call?
Sam: They do this thing now where it looks like it’s a person calling.
Reg: It’s not a person?
When the caseworker dropped Derek and his two black Hefty bags at the new address in Morningside Heights that breezy second Saturday of May, the ten-year-old was not expecting much. He’d been blowing in the wind like dandelion fluff most of his life; this was his third placement just since January. But the green doormat read “A hundred thousand welcomes,” and he supposed it was possible this family actually meant it. Lacrosse sticks and boxing gear, probably for the couple’s real kids—sports equipment like that might as well be made of gold, that’s how out of reach they were for foster kids like him—was piled up just inside the front door. A one-armed teddy bear hung off the living room couch. The coffee table had a plastic chess set laid out; someone was in the middle of a game. And John Green and John Grisham library books lay open on the dining table. Derek wouldn’t be the only reader here.
The coffee was as dismal as the doughnuts smelled, but Hope kept it, clutching the cup to her chest like a Styrofoam talisman. She’d never been inside St. Matthew’s before, much less its basement. With its frowzy walls and sepulchral lighting, though, it suited her mood. Western Romance had just rejected her again—this time for “Cowboy, Unfettered”—with the same stock response she could now quote by heart:
Thanks again for the opportunity to read your story. Unfortunately, after careful consideration, we’ve decided that it’s not a good fit for us at this time.