KJ Hannah Greenberg

Tropical Birds

Lenny insisted on the parrotlet. He wanted a pet to which he could teach vulgarities as well as one that would whistle at him in greetings when he came home from school. The feisty, small avian that he selected seemed to possess both intelligence and spirit. Happily, he handed over his Euros to the shopkeeper.

His was a busy residence. His siblings, Zack, seven, Louis, six, Justin, four, Saul, two, and Aviva and Debbie, a year his seniors, were ordinarily occupied with squealing over or with harrumphing about all manners of events. The twins were expert at deconstructing incoming telephone calls and the younger children made up in action what they lacked in elocution. Among them, the family featured two broken noses, four broken arms and an assortment of chipped teeth.

After the parrotlet, Lenny bought a pair of budgies. His mum had just given birth to another brother. He fed that bird seeds and chips and munched on cookies as he crossed over from adolescence to something brimming with greater possibility. In a short span, Lenny was forced to pack his size medium sweaters among the mothballs, and to store away, as well, his interest in martial arts and large pieces of his self-esteem.

Whereas all three of his birds died during that winter, his belly did not cease to grow. It was approximately that time when Lenny’s father announced that he was postponing his publication of an anthology, about the etymology of ancient Nordic folklore, in favor of setting aside more hours to tutor struggling students; the family’s latest baby had pushed the family’s accounts into heretofore unknown regions. Noting his dad’s despair, Lenny promised himself, that instead of studying dermatology, he would become an apprentice to someone learned in the art of roofing.

Most nights, after he cleaned out a quarter of the available goods in his family’s freezer, Lenny lulled himself to sleep by listening to the patter of the younger children, who occupied the bedrooms below. Their soft voices tangled in medleys, the variety of which only small folk can fabricate.

Mornings, Lenny doled out toothpaste and helped make lunches and find shoes. Evenings, though, he could accept his mother’s kisses, burrow under his spread, and invite all manners of friendly monsters to guard his sleep. Sometimes the neighbor’s cat, a rooftop traveler, would scratch at Lenny’s window. That beast would only stop yowling when drowsy Lenny would free his aperture from its latch and allow the thing to come in and snuggle under his woolen blanket.

Once, that feline overstayed its visit. At that time, the family’s morning havoc was exacerbated by Lenny having to pull that small fiend off of the family’s pup. The cat’s owner, who had summarily been called, was aghast at the treatment her dearie had received. As a clean-living, opera-going individual, albeit as one whose church met in wooded glens, she was less impressed with Lenny’s gentle handling of her pet than with the fact that her precious companion had become tainted from a mouthful of poodle fur.

As she scooped up her familiar and headed for the door, she muttered something that could have been a poem or a curse. Lenny heard that leaves made a natural cloth, that such cloth was ordinarily patched by rain and by sky, that such a mélange granted neigh vision to the sun, and that such a form of darkness, eventually, evolved into a cosmic shroud. He also thought that he had heard the woman wish him an easy rest and that she had promised him that only the wind would say “goodbye.”

When that prattling woman left, Lenny’s mum said something about the fantastic thinking of the lonely. She evoked coffee clutch knowledge that the neighbor’s husband was Middle Eastern and as such was loath to maintain a permanent residence in their damp country or to honor his wife with new cooking pots. That same man, though, as the neighborhood ladies recorded the facts, was notorious for gifting their strangely eloquent neighbor with jewelry. Lenny’s mum looked carefully at Lenny’s dad when she made that last pronouncement, brushed breakfast off of her apron and reached for the baby to burp him.

Shortly thereafter, Lenny’s mum insisted that Lenny add wheeling the baby to the neighborhood childcare center to his list of morning duties. Mum had been offered and had accepted the position of an assistant to a bank’s associate vice president and could not come to work with formula spills, or worse, on her suits.

Consequently, most days, Lenny brought his brother to the local care providers. Sometimes, though, he and his wee charge went, instead, to a city zoo. There, the two brothers laughed together at the antics of the critters inhabiting the butterfly house. Although it was cumbersome to fold the pram to fit onto the zoo’s miniature railroad’s cushy seats, Lenny’s brother seemed to adore, all drool and gummy smile, the wind which wafted into his face during those rides. Thus, it wasn’t until Lenny dropped the stroller onto his left foot, in front of the ape pavilion, and had to be taken to hospital, that his truancy was discovered.

His mother reclaimed responsibility for getting her youngest to childcare. His father took Lenny to the hospital for follow-up treatment. The zoological society offered to pay all medical costs and to provide Lenny’s family with multiple, free life memberships, but Lenny’s parents insisted that years’ worth of Lenny’s allowance would compensate them for Lenny’s hospital expenses and that no prize was to be  accepted by their son for a deed so darkly evil as cutting classes.

A decade later, as he looked over East London from the height of a steeply pitched gable, Lenny recalled the morning he had broken his foot. The little brother, who had been an accessory to his crime, was advancing nicely in primary school. Lenny’s older sisters were married and were producing brats of their own. His other brothers were enrolled in university or in the military.
 
As for Lenny, he was involved in an affiliation of sorts with a girl who sold cigarettes in a gentleman’s club. Bethalyn had suffered psychological compromises during her childhood and as such was not too keen to spend herself on commitment. She was okay with Lenny kissing her face and with his spending his small amount of discretionary funds on postcards of faraway islands for her, but beyond those simple investments, she tolerated nothing from him.

Although she assured her gallant that it was neither his pimpled face nor his yet momentous girth that repulsed her, he could not help but wonder that if he less regularly smelled like tar and he more regularly could quote from classic books that she might be interested in a relationship. Accordingly, he enrolled in night school to study accounting. His mum and dad, proud of his decision, funded half of his tuition.

One semester before he received his diploma, Bethalyn invited Lenny to visit her apartment. Although their dalliance was awkward, she instantly became pregnant. Thereafter, she would entertain no talk of weddings, but, instead, insisted that Lenny regularly accompany her to the local clinic.

Bethalyn manifested no embarrassment in front of the treatment center’s female doctors. She was mortified, however, if a man was on call. During the coffees they shared after Bethalyn’s checkups, she told Lenny that she made a point of assuaging her fear of the stronger gender by claiming to such doctors that the examination table’s stirrups ought to be refitted for comfort by lining them with washcloths.
During such disclosures, Lenny would smile and would examine the swirls of cream in his coffee. Always, he ordered double sugar and double cream. Often, he asked for pie a la mode, too.

“But why?” Bethalyn asked him, as he wheeled her passed one laboratory door after another. She had been diagnosed with an irritable uterus and was required to stay in the hospital for the duration of her pregnancy. Bored with her daily routine of soap operas and of blood tests, she was beginning to refocus herself on understanding Lenny’s lust for chocolate and for good bread. She knew he had left his studies in order to roof more houses and wanted to show him similar compassion.

Lenny continued to smile and to nod in answer to the queries of his companion. He had taken to sleeping on her sofa, both as a means to distance himself from the cacophony that continued to dominate his parents’ domicile, and as a means to prove to himself that he had grown up. While there, he had begun to ornament one wall of her studio with seashells and with other island-based trinkets.

As for his parents, they said nothing about his move, choosing instead to communicate with him by helping to fund Bethalyn’s bills. They were often busy feting grandchildren and visiting their uniformed sons.

Lenny bought a pair of love birds. Those beauties died, likely from the city’s dark and damp, within two weeks of Lenny’s purchase. Thereafter, he kept Bethalyn’s livingroom window open. He meant to broadcast his invitation to felines prowling her neighborhood. Lenny succeeded in hosting two alley cats and one cat burglar. The former left pellets on the rug. The later took all of Bethalyn’s portables except for her rug.

When, at last, the baby and Bethalyn came home, it was to an assortment of furnishings which the new mother had never seen. Although Bethalyn tried to contact Lenny to inquire about the change, his parents said he had long since moved out. They then offered to help pay the rest of her bills and to babysit their newest relative.

In Trafalgar Square, a large man feeds pigeons. He babbles to all passersby about his dream to move to a sultry atoll where the plumage of indigenous avians is bright and where fruits of all imaginable sizes and tastes can be had for the picking. What’s more, that man offers his money to strangers, but accepts no coin. During random afternoons, he can be found scaling buildings and tapping at their rooftops with the small hammer that he keeps his pocket. He’s been known to fix lattices and door frames without provocation and is content giving away his sandwiches to pigeons.

Kerry Hillis

Suburban Lycanthropy

Being surrounded by a pack of werewolves can be unnerving, to say the least.  This is not like an American Werewolf in London, and I’m sure anyone looking in on this situation could say I just stumbled upon a pack of wild dogs and lycanthropy has nothing to do with it.  And even more so, one could say a person wouldn’t find a pack of wolves, let alone werewolves, in a sparsely reconstructed wooded area in the middle of a suburban neighborhood in the southernmost region of Mississippi.  The town, in itself, isn’t important, as this is not the only place one can find werewolves.  It’s not like the New England region of the United States has a patent on them.  But now I find myself surrounded by a pack of werewolves, and I’m not sure I’m coming out of this the same man I was getting into it. 

As any suburb, there are tracks of houses that are the architectural equivalent of pasta--they all pretty much taste the same, but they are all in different funny shapes.  The brick looks too new and washed, and the only appropriate paint colors for the interior of such houses are taupe and pale yellow, maybe a hunter green in the recreation room.  There’s hardwood in the dining rooms, carpet throughout the rest.  All of the lawns have hay bales and makeshift scarecrows, and there are pumpkins on all of the porches--some carved for Halloween, some arranged in a porch cornucopia in an early preparation for Thanksgiving.  People here know what a cul de sac is, and the kids play in them, like they are returning to a womb, roller skating and popping bicycle wheelies in the raindrop bulges at the end of each street. 

The suburb runs a perimeter around this small wooded area.  One cannot necessarily call it a forest.  It’s more of a patch of trees planted after the entire forest area was leveled thirty years ago to build the suburb.  The trunks of the trees are a bit thin, like they have not had time to age.  The foliage is just thick enough to block sunlight, or moonlight, but at certain angles one can still see the sky.  The small walking paths that wind their way through the woods give away its contrived nature, as if the paths were built first and then the trees were placed for ambience.  Despite its normal Americana appearance, this is probably the most likely place to find a pack of werewolves.  Forget about gothic castles or moons that pull tides.  There are no algae-laden swamps, no spectral mists at midnight.  This place is about the most uninteresting place in America, like all of the other most uninteresting places in America.  It is so uninteresting, we all usually think up something dramatic and important just to make this place more important.

This is why I am almost not surprised I am standing here counting one, two, three, four, five of them.  All five are hunching, their 4 legs are disproportionate to their torsos, not like wolves, where there is some balance between leg and body length.  Clearly, humans, mixed with any other species, distort the original beauty of the animal form.

I am oddly calm and rational, considering they are grumbling through k-9 bared teeth and strings of saliva drip and dangle from the corners of their mouths.  Number one occasionally shakes its head violently, as if it is trying to shake off a biting tick, but more than likely it is because it is craving a sinking tear from my throat.  I see myself ten minutes from now, a dismembered corpse with an arm in number three’s mouth, and number five is trying to get at my toes by chewing through my leather Nikes, the detached trunk of my thigh bobbing up and down while it works its teeth into the soft leather and then into my skin.  I see number two hanging back a moment to decide which part of my insides it would like most when number four jumps in and causes both to fight over my entrails.

I think if I was torn to pieces by these five werewolves, at least it would be an interesting death, as afraid of it as I may be.  My wife once said she wanted to die in a tragic death, where a search party found her head mounted on a stick in the middle of a sprawling field.  As disgusting as the desire for such a death may be, she explained that at least people would remember her.  So being torn apart by wolves where the local kids who look for dead birds to poke with broken twigs find me would be something others would remember as well.  

But then I think, maybe they don’t want to eat me.  Maybe they just want a sixth.  One of them must be lonely, if they are paring, something both humans and wolves do.  I think maybe this is why I have been standing here for five minutes watching them circle and growl without them ravaging over my torn carcass.  Maybe they see me, when they are in their human form, in the neighborhood, and they know I don’t belong quite like the others do.  Maybe they see my desperation when I come out to mow the lawn every Saturday morning.  Maybe number three is Mrs. Lebovitz, an older, single woman who peers out of her window from across the street when I come out to get the paper or when I am getting into my car to go to work.  She’s always in the window.  Not because I think she stands there all day.  I think she just senses when I am leaving and then approaches her window.  She knows I see her each time, yet she still continues to glare.  Maybe she is number three.

I catalog the most likely suspects, those who would be werewolves, and it’s hard to determine, really.  Every neighbor seems to have their own oddities that offer up reasons for why they would be animals by night.  I get the sense the circling and pacing means they are inspecting me for initiation.  I stand very still.  Although part of me is terrified of meeting a terrible death, I almost crave their attention, and the adrenaline pounding through me begs for their acceptance.

I decide to speak, and I am surprised at just how complicated it is for me to make sounds come out of my mouth.  My words are just air when they leave my throat, as if my larynx has already been claimed by one of them.  I finally calm myself enough to say, “You can take me.”

They stop.  All of their growls, their movements, even the salivating--it all stops.  There is a pause; an implied invitation to say more.

“I could be a sixth.  Mrs. Lebovitz?  Are you in there?  You can take me.  I don’t have much to do at night.  There’s nothing that good on television.”

The werewolves stare for a moment and start to slowly approach; number three nuzzles her nose in the crook of my knee and then nudges me.  I lurch forward.  She nudges me again and the five of them, in unison, turn away.  They kick up dry dirt in a trot and disappear behind a thick of trees.  It gets quiet, and I am standing here, wondering if I should be happy I am not dead.  Or maybe death would have been a better fate.  After all, my pasta home sits and waits to devour me.

 

David Hughes

How I Became a…Chartered Informant

Name: Peter Ratsbawn
Age: 36
Occupation: Chartered Informant

Personal

Peter had always been interested in informing. From an early age he showed a real talent for passing information to the authorities. The future seemed to be set fair when he was named ‘Least Trustworthy Child’ by schoolmates at his kindergarten.
Disaster nearly struck, however, when unexpectedly poor ‘A’ Level grades meant he failed to achieve the necessary points for the university course he had his heart set on: BA in Informing Science.

Luckily Peter was still able to enrol on a Business Studies with Informing degree at his local polytechnic. The course turned out to be ideal—and when he wasn’t at lectures or in the library Peter was a keen member of the Campus Camera Society—where he developed useful expertise in gathering photographic evidence. He graduated with an excellent honours degree after implicating several former friends in a plagiarism scandal.

Recognising his potential, a Danish multinational took him on as a graduate trainee. Peter studied Danish at evening classes in order to pass information to senior managers more effectively. Within a year he had been promoted to departmental manager after his boss’s unfortunate jailing.

Job Description

Informants normally find work either with law enforcement agencies—often on a freelance basis—or, as in Peter’s case, in the private sector. His role is to spot opportunities to get colleagues into trouble, then amass incriminating evidence in an efficient and businesslike way.

Peter says: “No two days are ever the same: one day you can be setting a trap for a junior colleague suspected of stealing stationery—paperclips perhaps—and the next you could be talking to prosecutors in a complex fraud case.”

As an experienced informant, Peter’s job involves some consultancy work. This means he is often out and about giving technical advice on the best ways to ‘squeal’—an industry term for informing.

Skills and Personality

“You need to be a good listener—hearing what people are really saying, and, just as importantly, what they’re not saying, is crucial. Solid written communication skills are important when preparing affidavits in the clearest, most concise way,” says Peter, adding: “Familiarity with recording devices has come in handy once or twice too.”

Earnings and Prospects

Graduate informants can expect to start on about £19k, but this will normally rise to around £35k with a few years’ experience and a successful track record of dismissals and ‘disciplinaries’ against colleagues.

A few very experienced informants are lucky enough to become ‘supergrasses’—giving testimony in high-profile court cases. The earnings potential at this level is enormous—especially with book and film options.

Main Moan

“Being an informant doesn’t always make you everybody’s friend,” Peter acknowledges. “People can be very snippy and there’s a lot of jealousy. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been called ‘grass’ or ‘weasel’ or sent dead canaries in the internal mail—it can be very hurtful!”

Main Satisfaction

“A successful disciplinary or criminal prosecution against a colleague still gives me a tremendous buzz. My first manager —whom I informed against in a tax evasion case in the early 90s—is still in prison. It’s nice to see that kind of tangible result and that what you do, despite its low points, really makes a difference.”

Training and Entry Requirements

Nowadays most informants are graduates. A degree in Informing Science will cover all the basics of the discipline’s theory and practice. More universities are now offering degrees combining informing with another subject: Queen’s University in Belfast runs a BA in Philosophical Foundations of Informing, while the Open University offers a part-time MSc. in Political Denunciation. You can also do a short postgraduate ‘conversion’ course with a first degree in any subject.

However, it is still sometimes possible for school leavers to join the profession at entry level and work their way up to become Chartered Informants. A number of companies operate Modern Apprenticeships for 16–19 year olds who want a career in informing.

Opportunities to move sideways into informing occasionally come up within organisations too. Employers are making increasing use of psychometric testing to assess an individual’s suitability for the role, so you will need to be able to show a genuine interest in the field. Experience gained on a voluntary basis is particularly valuable, and candidates with a solid track record of ‘giving colleagues up’ often stand the best chance.

More Information

The Society for British Informants—the professional body for all grades of informants working in industry—produces an information pack. It also runs a very useful website: http://www.sbi.org.uk 

Specialised information for informants working within law enforcement is available from the National Association for Police and Prison-based Informants’ website: http://www.nappi.gov.uk/information

Michael Karl

Neon

Neon hated his Christian God. He replaced Him with the dustbin of History and grew a moustache. When armies of mankind turned on their own brothers in ruthless slaughter, Neon grew a Van Dyke and joined the Turks. Now a devout Muslim, he followed Atatürk’s command for discrete impartiality, straddling Western and Eastern cultures like Atlas.

He married his enemy’s soulless daughter, a rare perfumed beauty behind many silk veils. She never spoke against her father, nor would she reveal her husband’s business dealings. Tortured by her conflicting sense of duty, she gave birth to seven children, pleasing her father with grandsons and her husband with sons. The children, however, took sides, and a terrible family quarrel led to fratricides.

One girl, born out of the daughter’s incest with her father and passed off as belonging to her husband, remained to care for her ailing mother. Neon decided to betroth this girl to a wealthy spice merchant in town, the better to increase the estate of a family now destroyed by internal squabbles. The mother fed poisoned figs to her husband, who thereby developed a tolerance to arsenic. After this wedding took place, the mother, unattended by her caring but deformed daughter, died.

Both fathers wept shamelessly at the funeral, and the daughter, now married to the merchant, spread incense over her mother’s grave before giving birth to a golden calf. This calf had flaxen hair and a human face, but also hooves for feet and a scruffy, serpentine tail. When it brayed, hummingbirds hovered around it, nipping and pecking as if at some dainty honeysuckle. The merchant drove this malignant woman out of the Casbar with whips. Abandoned in the marketplace, cradling her moonless child, she wailed. Neon, feeling sorry for her, took both in, and was instantly condemned by the mullahs as an infidel. The elderly patriarch whose daughter Neon had long ago married was now obligated to hunt down and slaughter his son-in-law. A cruel war ensued that left many bones in the desert.

Only the merchant, shamed by selling arms to both sides, survived to record the tale in his last will and testament.

Adam Moorad

Hell’s Kitchens

  
Pillars mark the shape of the city.  Through the eyes of a nesting pigeon, I take in this scene from a rooftop.  With a broad sweep, the city looks like an upturned millipede – a single pill-shaped creature comprised of a million separate scales.  Innumerable legs reach upward, away from its struggling body, wriggling, emitting endless reams of smoke and fog.  The haze sends out coded messages to a wider world in the form of muted distress signals, announcing the availability of new name brand consumables – but nothing of their harmful side-effects.  Advertising anything is to lie.  The city holds the rhythm of an organism flagellating in contradiction, all parts of it twitch and flicker with different shades of light.  The night is approaching, moaning monotonous sounds that refuse to rise or fall, belching wet baritones pregnant with a low cold foreboding.
 
■
 
In sleep I open a number of doors – some locked, some not.  I knock on each until daylight answers from behind one.  The welcoming entry is tall, veneered in white gold.  Within the frame is the sun and I go to it.  I am walking along a road down a hill towards houses.  There is chalk on the sidewalk illustrating the tarot inspired murals of missing children.  The air is full of saliently oil.  It smells and tastes like money.  The heat increases, vaporizing the slime of melancholy.  The sun sets vindictively, burning holes through the street and the windows of small houses.  I think hear voices inside them, croaking the soft murmurs of canned sitcom laughter.  There are whispers too, whimpering like cold larva burrows.  Someone knows I am walking.
 
■
 
I choose an area of concentrated brightness and, focusing there, I silently descend into an ocean of neon color.  I am in a district of amusement.  Giant digital guitar-shaped screens fastened to the ribs of buildings glow vivid and soundless against a murky evening sky.  Loudspeakers in storefronts indigest amplified musical distortion.  The streets are crammed with young people and wild electronic noise.  Men spill from bars.  Teenage girls with bleached hair thrust shaved mini-skirted legs past platinum wheel rims. Woofers thunk.  Dark suits dart through crosswalks for trains off to nowhere and the suburbs.  Police patrol the blocks with stressed expressions, like Roman cavilers, conveying nothing but ownership of a feared appearance.  Everything is under immeasurable strain.  The wind blows, moving plastic bags across pavement in loose John Wayne tumbles.  Tomorrow is almost here.
 
■
 
I walk laps around my bed and end up laid out against my mattress on my back between two candles.  They burn, painting occult figurines on my ceiling in blue charcoal.  My body is covered to its chin in down and hot wax.  I look and see my body standing apart from me at my window.  I don’t know what we need from one another.  Maybe it is just not possible to come or go anywhere without friction that binds us together.  I am fixed in my movements and decide not to remain.  Rest will always be waiting somewhere.  Motion will not.  My candles drip. One goes out.  Use my lungs to exhale on the window.  My breath condenses.  There is a loud sound in my pipes, the hollowing-out of dank iron behind drywall.  I smell myself not understanding scent.  The bathtub is full of old water.  Citing things to myself are only attempts at regrouping all my components for the impossible return to order.
 
■
 
Electronic doors slide open outside a breakfast chain-restaurant.  I am a lanky young man passing through to dine in stilted modulation.  My hair is long and tangled in places.  This is my natural state: crawling-out from various underbrush.  My thinness makes me look elegantly malnourished.  Nothing about me stands out.  I am very ordinary with an airlessness pleasant to most other people.  I am a stray mutt, dripping from the butt.  I am trying to remember something.  Time goes by until I finally get it.  Yes – I am the type for whom everything takes time. 
 
■
 
Skulls and crossbones mark every reflection.  I am luggage in the scheme of human evolution by choice, inclination and occupation – blonde baggage from an L.L. Bean kind of New England. I open myself up and insert some very costly handmade items and then close up again.  I am wheeled away in transported for overnight delivery to a foreign land.  But I am held in Customs and refused entry.  God is a Customs agent known for his acute methodology.  He knows where things belong.  I am luggage – heavy and awkward, possibly dangerous if left in the wrong location, like a knife standing blade-up in an empty jar.

George W. Morrow

The Decimation

     Dawn broke just after six-o'clock on April 30, 1917.  French soldiers, wearing horizon blue uniforms and Adrian helmets, huddled together in the trench against the snow and rain-and waited. Some talked among themselves in small groups; others stood alone harboring their private feelings. All realized the meager chance they had of living until noon.  These soldiers of “ARGO” company, Fourth Paris Rifles Regiment, fought along the Aisne River, sixty miles northeast of Paris.

     Captain Charles Dumont, the commander of “ARGO”, shared his men's apprehensions.  Dumont spent most of his thirty-five years as a newspaper columnist in Paris, and when France went to war against Germany in 1914, Dumont wrote scathing reports on the lack of flexibility of certain French generals. Two years later, the high casualty rates among French officers compelled the government to call up reserve captains, and Dumont first encountered war in the terrible battle of Verdun.  Dumont now got to see firsthand the carnage in the trenches. The generals still showed the intractability of 1914. These officers repeatedly sent hundreds of thousands of French soldiers into what amounted to suicidal attacks on the German lines.  The German machine guns cut the French down like ripe wheat, and this slaughter continued although the gains won by the French produced minimal results.

     Dumont had suffered a slight wound the previous January and received a medical leave to Paris.  The sights and sounds of his native city elevated his war- weary spirit. He walked the streets for hours   watching Parisians in sidewalk cafes enjoying some semblance of happiness, but this reminiscence failed to eradicate the numbness of mind that battle instilled in him. Dumont went to a night club celebrating the Persian Ball.  He felt like an intruder from another world in his dress uniform -dark tunic, blue trousers and flat topped kepi cap- amid the frivolity and costumes of the masquerade ball. The red champagne served at the club reminded him of the innumerable gallons of blood he saw on the battlefield. He danced with a tall, slender   woman who dressed as a gypsy, wearing a jeweled turban and tunic with slave bangles and slippers.  She danced with no one else after she met Dumont, and they spent the evening dancing to the argentine tango.

     The next morning he awoke with a terrible hangover, but enjoyed it because it meant that he was still alive. He turned over in bed and saw Simone sleeping beside him.  Simone Faure followed the path of many artists during the war, and forsook her painting to work in a munitions factory. She prepared breakfast for him, and their romance began. They became engaged the night before he returned to the front, and planned marriage when the war ended.

     Dumont found the army on the verge of collapse as he reported back to duty. Talk of mutiny circulated among the soldiers, many of whom complained of poor food and denial of leave.  A new general commanded the army, and wasted no time in planning a spectacular offensive that he promised would end the war within 48 hours.  The soldiers hailed it, and readied themselves to go home. The general's plans called for a massive artillery barrage that would destroy the German defenses; however, German spies found out about the plan and moved their defenses out of range of the French guns.  The resulting slaughterer cost the French army thousands of lives, and the talk of mutiny gained currency.

     The generals pressed for more attacks, fearing that ceasing the offensive would be an admission of defeat.  Dumont remained skeptical about the new plan's feasibility, but hoped for the best. He waited with his men on this thirtieth day of April to make that one last try. The cold rain doused his coat and trickled down under the collar to chill his bones.  He lit a cigarette and accepted a cup of hot tea from Sergeant Major Beaumont.

     “The rats will have a banquet tonight, captain” said the bearded sergeant.  Beaumont pointed toward No Man's Land.  Dumont looked through a hole in the parapet of his trench and saw hundreds of tiny red balls swirling in the darkness.  They belonged to the huge brown rats that fed on the corpses. The rodents prized the livers and eyes as delicacies, and they sensed a dinner not long in coming. Dumont laughed ruefully when he realized that he, too, had an excellent chance of being on their menu.

     “I bet we'll taste better to those rats than the monkey beef they feed us soldiers,” said Beaumont. “The food around here isn't fit for pigs.  Only the high ranking officers get to eat right, and they get to see their families. Most of us haven't seen our families in over a year.  I tell you, captain, the men are sorely disappointed in the way this war is being run. We feel like lambs being led to the slaughter. Something better happen soon or things will get ugly.”

     “The waves are being felt all the way up to the general staff, Beaumont. General Petain and the other top brass are considering an investigation.”

     “Petain better hurry or he won't have any army left. The Germans hit us last Wednesday and we lost almost a third of the regiment, including our commander. A shell hit him directly. We couldn't find a decent amount of him to bury.”

     “Sad.  I admired Colonel Picard.”

     “Truly sad, because Colonel LaSalle has been named his successor.  Ever heard of him?”

     “No.”

    "He's called' the butcher'. He thinks nothing about sending a company against a division stronghold.  He served as commander of a disciplinary battalion in Senegal, and he despises the Africans. He  sends them out in front on each attack so they'll catch bullets meant for Frenchmen.”

     “Maybe we won't have to care when this day is over.  We'll probably be meat for those hungry rodents out there.”

     The French artillery began its pre-attack bombardment.  The combined firing of sixty cannon hurled shafts of light into the sky.  As the shells burst, the soldiers yelled “touché!”  Dumont received the order to attack.  He jumped onto the trench parapet to face his men.

     “Behind us, French guns! Around us, French soldiers! Ahead of us, victory!  Forward, forward! For God's sake, forward!” Dumont waved his arm toward the Germans, but not one man moved.

     “Come on, we shall have them!” Dumont stood alone, with bullets ripping the air around him, but no man got out the trenches.  One soldier tied a white cloth around his bayonet and waved it at the Germans.

     “That is forcing surrender, soldier. That's treason.” Dumont reached for his revolver to shoot the man, as military rules justified him doing. The soldier's comrades pointed their rifles at Dumont, ready to kill him if he shot the man. Dumont reported the incident to regimental headquarters, and retired to his quarters.

      Dumont spent the rest of the day in his underground bunker smoking cigarettes and finishing a bottle of cognac. He knew what scenario awaited him. A call from Colonel Sebastian LaSalle, demanding a full report.  If Sergeant Beaumont's assessment of the new commander proved correct, Dumont faced a reprimand which might cost him his command.

       Sergeant Ibrahim Farak knocked on the door of Dumont's room the next morning. The Senegalese sergeant towered over most of the other soldiers, standing almost seven feet tall. His handsome young face bore the horizontal shaped scars of a long past coming-of-age ritual conducted by his people in Africa. The Germans feared Farak and his fellow Senegalese who served in the French army.  Farak and his men severed the head of many a German soldier with the fearsome and curved coupe-coupe knives they carried.  Farak wore the Croix de Guerre, France's highest decoration for bravery.

     “Captain, the regimental commander requests your presence at headquarters immediately, said Farak.” I will drive you.”

     The two men motored over the muddy roads to the regimental headquarters at Chateau Granville.

     “Sir, do I have your permission reconnoiter the enemy lines?” Farak asked.

     “I see no reason. There will be no attack.”

     “Why, sir?”

     “The top brass are getting the message from the heavy casualties we are suffering.  I think they are ready to rethink their strategy and take better care of their soldiers.  It's politic of them to provide brothels for our soldiers, but a man gets tired of thinking below his belt all the time.”

     “Allah has blessed me with a good omen, sir.   I stepped in a pile of human shit this morning.  That is a sign of good luck. Does not the Jesus give your visions?”

     “I don't place the lives of my soldiers in the hands of superstition, Farak.”

     The peaceful, bucolic scene of the chateau contrasted with the horrible slaughter enacted a few miles away. The blue stone turrets of the chateau overlooked a meadow which sloped down to a river.  Lime trees stood on each side of the road leading up to the chateau. The chateau grounds blossomed with beautiful flowers.    A military aide escorted Dumont and Farak into Colonel LaSalle's office. Bookshelves ascended to the high ceiling of the room. Large windows allowed the dull grey light of the cold day to enter and fall upon a portrait of Napoleon hanging on the wall. The colonel's lunch lay on the office table. A repast of fish, beef fillet, cheese and biscuits awaited him.  “He's has red wine, too, “said Farak.  “If we had this in the trenches, the war would be over in a week!”

      The sound of boots pounding the floor echoed down the long hallway The aide called out, “Attention! The  regimental commander!”

      Colonel Sebastian LaSalle spent thirty of his fifty years in the army. His tall, gaunt physique, coupled with a hawkish face, deep, sunken eyes and jaundiced skin gave him a cadaverous appearance that reminded Dumont of a coroner selecting specimens for dissection. The colonel's yellow fingers testified to his addiction to tobacco. LaSalle sat down at his desk without looking at Dumont and shuffled his papers.  He put a cigarette into his mouth, which the aide promptly lit then snapped to attention. LaSalle looked impressive in his black tunic and red trousers.   His flat-topped red kepi cap was encircled by the silver braids designating his commander's rank. LaSalle doffed the cap and brusquely handed it to his aide without looking up. The colonel motioned for Dumont to sit down, inhaled deeply on his cigarette and scanned the written report before him. 

      “What is that doing here?” said LaSalle, as he pointed at Farak

     “He is Sergeant Farak.  He is my best non-commissioned officer and has taken the lives of many enemy soldiers in defense of France.”

     “Get him out of my room! Now! I can't stand the sight of these Africans!”

     “Sergeant Farak. Stand outside.  I'll be with you shortly.”

     “Colonel LaSalle.  I must protest this treatment of Sergeant Farak.  He has been instrumental in reconnoitering enemy positions, which has saved the lives of many of my soldiers.  He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his actions at Verdun last year.”

     “Senegalese are little more than animals.  Good for nothing except to absorb bullets meant for good Frenchmen.”

     “I'd rather have a few good Senegalese than a company of frightened and malcontented French soldiers, which is what I have now.”

     “I see by your dossier, Dumont, that you have been decorated for action at Verdun. A respected journalist before the war, and an acerbic critic of the general staff in 1914. Well, now that you have served in the army, what do you think of us?”

     “I respect your accomplishments, colonel, but I have questioned the tactics used by high ranking army officers in prosecuting the war.  Thousands sent to their deaths in senseless attacks.”

     “This is war, Dumont.  High casualties are a part of the art of war, and when you have studied that art as much as I have, you gain appreciation for the efforts of our generals.  Our generals pattern themselves on Napoleon, emulating his courage.  His daring. His time was France's greatest age.”

     “Napoleon lived a hundred years ago.  Battle is no longer fought on horseback, but with modern weapons capable of inflicting horrible casualties. The leaders are assuming that we French are an inexhaustible reservoir of bodies that can be wasted in slaughter. Attack after attack brings little gains but heavy casualties.  The common soldier's food is horrible. Pay is often in arrears, but the main complaint is family leave.  The soldier is entitled to seven days of leave per year, but many of my soldiers have not received leave in well over a year. Do you have any idea what this does to a man?  Never being able to see his loved ones? It leads to desolation. He feels no one cares about him. Colonel, I must be frank.  I have heard talk of mutiny.”

     LaSalle smiled politely, and Dumont hoped his words were effective; but, LaSalle jumped to his feet and slammed his hands on the desk. This surprised Dumont, who instinctively jumped to his feet in response.

     “Why did the attack fail yesterday?”

     “I was caught as much by surprise as you, sir.  I advanced in the lead of my company, but no man would follow me.”

     “Did you shoot anyone?”

     “No. One soldier waved a white flag.”

     “Then why in god's name didn't you shoot him for cowardice?  You were entitled to do so.”

     Dumont wanted to scream at LaSalle, “My soldiers are not automatons! They've gone like lambs to the slaughter for three years and for what? It's suicide!” He opened his mouth to talk, but the idea of being imprisoned on Devil's Island for insubordination prevented him.  “Colonel, the men have endured a disastrous three weeks in battle.  They were promised victory within forty-eight hours, but thousands were killed and no victory won.  What good would it have done to shoot the man?  The others would not have followed me anyhow.”

   “And, you were no doubt, concerned with your own life.  His comrades would have killed you instantly”

    Again, Dumont withheld his response:” I wish to hell you had been there and shown me how to do it.” He gained control of his temper and told LaSalle,” Sir, Bolshevik propaganda has been circulating among the soldiers.  Agitators are at work. Perhaps, if given the time, I could ferret out these troublemakers and we could address the soldiers' grievances.  Enact a few modest reforms.”

     LaSalle walked around Dumont. The colonel's formidable bearing intimidated Dumont. “Captain, the duty of a French soldier is to follow his officer into and die willingly at his side. The officer must be worthy of that trust.  The officer's own superior must feel that he can count on that officer to do his duty at all times. To allow a flagrant violation of discipline is to place France in peril of losing the war.  It is also negligence of duty. Remember, captain, that negligence can also be construed as complicity in the crime.”

     “I am no coward, sir!”

     LaSalle put his face next to Dumont's. “I have been made to look like an incompetent before my peers and my commanders, and I will not tolerate that. You will be personally responsible for any further acts of disobedience.”

     “Colonel, do I understand that you are accusing me of disobedience?”

     “I am accusing you of being a negligent, insolent dog!  What do I care for your influence among the elite of Pairs?  While you debauched your way through the salons, I was fighting for France in some stinking hole in Indochina or Senegal.  You will not ruin thirty years of work for me. Do you understand?”

     “My men are soldiers, not meant to be ground up and discarded.”

    “You and your men are dying for France.  Never forget that. To die by the bayonet is the most glorious fate that a soldier can hope for, and as long as I command this regiment, there will be no cowards! I am giving you orders for a reconnaissance patrol I want to go out tonight.  It will give us information on the enemy positions. You are dismissed!”

      Dumont snapped to attention. “Sir, I will carry out your orders to the letter.”

      “You and I barely escaped the firing squad, eh, captain?” said Farak as he drove Dumont back to the trenches.

     “I was going to beat his ugly face to pieces,” said Farak,” but you sent me out of the room, and you were mad enough to strike him.  We would have faced a firing squad together.” Dumont lit a cigarette. “I let my temper get the better of me.  That was a mistake. The greatest fear about Colonel LaSalle is that he believes what he is doing.  Some generals will order men to the slaughter and sit back and think nothing about it, but LaSalle would get out in front and lead the troops himself if the high command allowed him. Did you see the medals on his chest?  He didn't get those at cocktail parties.”

     “I am used to these French officers,” said Farak.  “I was wounded at Verdun after killing ten Germans.  They gave me a medal and shipped me off to a small village to recover. I was treated as a hero and given the keys to the town. But,   I made the mistake of falling in love with the mayor's daughter, and she loved me.  The man threw me out of his house when I came to his house to ask for her hand. Do you know how they drafted me into the army?  A French officer came to the village where my father was chief.  Our people had worked for a French farmer and learned your language. This officer herded all us young men into a pen and told us we were now soldiers. Many of us died on ship coming to France.”

     “You Senegalese are the bravest soldiers I have seen.”

     “We submit ourselves to the will of Allah.  If it be His will, we die. If I survive the war, I return to my country.”

      The colonel's order called for a night reconnaissance of a place called “Crucifixion Hill”, a German-held position which the French wanted to capture. Farak stayed with the men while Dumont went forward to reconnoiter. Suddenly, nighttime flares illuminated the sky. The Germans spotted Dumont and starting shooting. He hid in a shell hole, unable to move. Dumont heard the Germans talking and could understand enough of their language to know they were sending a party out after him. The enemy in this sector had a reputation for taking no prisoners.

     Dumont drew out his pistol to put a bullet into his head when the battlefield fell quiet. The night turned into a sunny day.  The scent of flowers filled the air and rabbits frolicked around him. A person on horseback approached him-a girl of no more than twenty. She wore a suit of white armor and carried a fleur-de-leis banner in her thin hands. Her long black hair flowed neatly down the back of her neck. Her large dark eyes exuded a powerful aura of calmness which infused Dumont with a peace of mind he never before experienced. Dumont shouted at her, “What's the matter with you, girl.  Don't you know there's a war going on?”  She did not speak, but gave him bread soaked with wine which he ate.   He pleaded, “Save me! Save France!”   The girl pointed her sword toward the sun, and the light struck the sword and transformed it into a cross. The sky turned blood red and a deep voice sounded: “Many must die before peace returns. Pray with maiden that the killing will stop.” The girl gave Dumont a gold cross laden with precious stones, and rode away. She spoke no words, but Dumont knew her identity. “My god, I have just seen Joan de Arc. Either I'm hallucinating or I'm dead.” The sunshine vanished and Dumont found himself back   in the dark battlefield. He held the cross in his hand and the sapphires and rubies shone in the dark gloom.  Joan saved France centuries before, and came again to the aid of her country.

     Dumont heard German voices. The enemy lay next to him.  He could smell the sausage dinner on their breath, but they did not see him. He held his pistol at ready until the Germans crawled away.  He crawled through the battlefield and came face-to-face with the bloated rats which climbed in and out of rib cages during their hellish feast. Dumont heard the roar of artillery and the deafening thud of shells landing nearby.  A night artillery duel commenced and he would be in the middle of it. His mind became confused and he could not think. He caught sight of the girl again-Joan of Arc.  She pointed her sword in the direction of his trenches and he followed her.  Soon afterward he reached his position and safety.  Twice in one night she saved him.   

      Dumont spent the rest of the night with a bottle of cognac in his quarters. He fantasized about drinking red champagne with Simone at the Café Napolitain. Her beautiful dark hair would be shining under the lights. Dumont called to her, but she did not hear because of the crowd of men surrounding her..  She heard corks popping on bottles instead of shells exploding. “Let's be happy at any price,” she tells all of them. “The more we love life, the happier we shall be!” Dumont lifted his glass in a toast to her and drank, but instead of champagne, blood gushed from the glass into his mouth.

     “Captain, the colonel orders you to headquarters. Immediately!' Farak  interrupted his reverie.

      Colonel LaSalle sat smoking a cigarette and reading a report.  An aide sweat as he slavishly worked at polishing the colonel's boots.  LaSalle kicked the man aside.

     “Greetings, Captain Dumont.  I venture to say that you did not expect to be back here so soon, but I have an assignment for you. Are you ready for it?”

     “I await your command, sir, but aren't you interested on what I found out in the reconnaissance last night?”

     “No, no! I'm not interested in that. I had an interesting experience last night.  I was riding my horse when I had an inspiration gleaned from the Romans.  Whenever they needed to inflict punishment, the generals would line up their men and select every tenth man for punishment.  Hence the word decimation. I thought this an appropriate answer to my problem so I had your company lined up and every tenth man was chosen as a prisoner.  Fifteen soldiers in all were selected. These men will suffer punishment as an example to would-be cowards.  They will be executed this afternoon.”

     “Colonel, this is insane. No trial. No defense.  The president must approve all death sentences.”

     “That rule has been altered for the present. Our regiment will take the lead in a new offensive and we cannot tolerate mutiny.  You will take the prisoners to Impact Area Z at three this afternoon where they will be executed by artillery fire.”

     “I refuse.  Why not shoot all the men?  None would attack.”

     “If you refuse, I will have you placed under arrest. Failure to obey orders in this instance implies complicity in the act of cowardice.  We do execute officers, Captain Dumont.” Dumont spent the next few hours drinking cognac.  He wrote a letter to Simone explaining the circumstances of his death, and asked her to have it published in the Paris newspapers.

      The entire regiment watched as Dumont and a detail of armed guards headed by Sergeant Farak led the condemned men into the impact area.  The French 75 artillery pieces, manned by expert gunners, would not miss.  The prisoners would be dead within a few minutes.  The prisoners begged their fellow soldiers for mercy, but not one man stepped forward to help their fellow soldiers.

     The prisoners called out. “We are poor benumbed creatures with broken hearts.  All we want is to see our loved ones and for peace to return.”

     When they reached Impact Area Z, Dumont ordered Farak to return with the guards.  “You've suffered a nervous breakdown, captain,” Farak told him.  “This is not your fault.  You did all you could.”

     “I'm tired of the killing.  The only regret I have is leaving France in her time of trial.  The only love I have is Simone. At least, I will die with my fellow soldiers, men with whom I have a bond. Tell LaSalle I said he was a degenerate. Here, I'll save you from trouble.  Give me a piece of paper, I'll write it out.”

     Farak returned and handed the note to LaSalle.

     “The idiot. Stop the execution.”  The colonel's order came too late; the first shells soared through the sky toward Dumont and the prisoners.

     He counted the seconds until the shells hit.  “It will be a kill at first try.  The gunners know their work.” Dumont looked for the shells to hit, but saw  Joan de Arc above him in the sky. She held out her sword and deflected the shells and they exploded harmlessly in the air.  The prisoners fell to the ground and said prayers. Dumont doffed his cap at the maiden as she disappeared into the clouds. Dumont reached for the golden cross to give him spiritual succor, but it was gone.  He understood.  The maiden reclaimed it to help others.

     The official reason given for the failed execution listed “defective ammunition”. Dumont never mentioned the vision of Joan, even at the court martial of Colonel LaSalle.  The court sentenced the miscreant commander to Devil's Island, and Dumont returned to the war and Simone.

Diana Pollin

The Condor and the Lizard

The  doors. The high front doors. Squeaky,  glistening, transparent. Mint candy that Springtime licks  like  a lollipop.    A mat, no,  a giant sponge for wetting stamps, and beyond,  an entry.  A chessboard? No,  life's  not the   Battle of Austerlitz. A checkerboard, yes,  ending in royalty. Death along the way? Collateral damage.  A  pawn jumping to the last row ? No, not jumping, shifting,  sneaking...  Two lines of absolute protection, then,  the center,  a  shadow zone, then  the seventh row, a  desperate and murderous passage,  and beyond that, the eighth,  when reached, if reached,  and the anointing.

The stairs spill out across the hall,  a welcoming gesture, I think. Can imagine an arm in their place. Or a chest of drawers. Think that has been done before. Magritte? Brown carpet , already fraying.  Sunflowers. Absurd. Piss yellow on a dull as dishwater background.    Rods chiseled to a point– and that is the ridiculous part of it – looking like asparagus or spears -  keep the whole thing down, hide the beauty or the ugliness of the stone. I'm tempted  to jiggle a pair up.

A red flush gripped Julie's throat. A floor is only a floor and a carpet hides nothing that anyone would be interested in. Certainly not. She ran up the stairs to her office.

Stupid adolescent poetry, these fantasies ! They should not, must not,  go any further. Disgrace will tumble like crumbs at tea parties.  Something about women  maneuvering teacups  recalls hens settling into a nest. Eggs or excrement, ladies? Isn't gossip hatched? Eyes doing  can't believe what I am hearing blinks,   swallows dropping like curtains in a judge for yourself manner.  Giggles rising like cigarette smoke, adroitly avoiding the eyes. A whisper from a cherry red mouth addressed to one but meant for  all:  “The Ricardo girl, yes, and she was about to be married. What a shame! What a pity!When did you say she had  the breakdown? And there was no cause for it, dear me. She had everything. Please pass the sugar.”

 Julie's office door gave its salutatory squeak, the boisterous  morning was  at a half open window. A bright spring was in the chestnut trees,   a sparrow preened fussily,  a hidden turtledove offered its strange melancholic chirping.    The  routine moves from A to B and a grid is laid down as a loose porous container of the tempest tossed past.  But, was it the past or something else that belonged not to time but to a personal universe which shuffled her thoughts like cards in a deck? And behind it all, a  voice promised a ghost flung into or wrenched from oblivion, not a long dead ancestor, and, no, it was not a ghost, but a spirit  entering with  an entreaty and a promise.  Knowledge may bring pain but not grief. And pain?  She had had enough of pain on fine bright days.  She remembered. A shield went up, partitioning the past from the present. 

Or was she a monster of grotesque pretension? Her  poetry, her  art, the drawings she did on the sly... Were they not a part of her, like every atom of her rosy blond being which people liked to  summarize in a glance.  An egg.  Polished. Pampered. Sleek,  but without the barest hint  of slickness.  Slippery but totally devoid of  deviousness. Weightily bottomed, but tapered. The oval of praying hands while an Ave Maria   droned in a cool  sunlit chapel somewhere on a hill.   A protocol  of Easter decorum. They had laid the straw at the foot of the alter with the small decorated eggs , their beauty, no threat to God's Creation.  But there she was, on this planet of Saint Martha's  Educational Institution where all smiles tried to be sweet reflections of the Virgin's,   and she felt cheap and ignoble and perpetually stuck in the vineyards  of the Lord,  where sheep can safely graze and lambs can idiotically gambol. Sheep !  Couldn't God find a more intelligent animal? Couldn't He also understand the point of view of the wolves? 

What had she done in her 28 years ? What could she have done ? Was there still time to do it ? Break away from it all, leave Mayson,  the school, New York City, the country, the cadre !There was in this heady spring morning   an urgency  screaming in her ears, “Live! Grow! Learn!”  Sister Tullier , the gray lady with the dark steamy eyes, appeared with  her needling truths.  “Well, what do you expect?” Julie whispered to the apparition. “My inertia and silence are the product of the best salons. Some things are simply not done.” And the apparition remarked, “Simply not done is for the simple.”

Saint Martha's, in Mayson's words, had “rescued” Julie from the horror of the city public schools and didn't she  owe these crisply studious nuns and the lay people, her colleagues, who dressed primly and walked in effortless asexuality,  a debt too great to repay in full ? They saved her from  the  nasty acid drips of the world,  “the outside” they said,  as a farmer would say “outhouse” and spit on the ground,  they enclosed her innocence in  fresh pine smelling classrooms and fed her sense of self importance by installing her in  the  little room  next to Sister Tullier's office with  a title “Pedagogical Assistant and Program Co-ordinator to the Head Mistress¨ squiggling in grim gold letters on her glass door.  Grim gold letters squiggling when the hall lights were dark or her eyes were  tired, or...

When the offer from Saint Martha's came , The Doctor had brought out the his best red  and his wife looked at him and then at Julie.   Doctor Ricardo,  delivering the squeaking cork from its bottle , Mathilda,  nodding her head...   They were a couple of eagles, her parents,  readying for flight, their young bird was hungry.  “Yes, that's  the answer,” The Doctor poured from the bottle. “THE  ANSWER,” Mathilda intoned. “Don't you know that all young teachers would give their right foot …”“Anything” Mathilda broke in. Only a fool would turn up his nose.  Only a fool. And it worked out perfectly. They'd make a comfortable studio out of the maid's room. Separate entrance.   And of course, they would respect her privacy, after all, (The eagle reached for the hand of its mate) they too had been young.  And Julie bowed under the pressure of so much loving concern.

This was what the spring morning brought in, with the breezy chestnut trees, the fussy sparrow,  and the odd chirping from the simple bird. Goodness! She had little to complain about  ! So little to complain about and so much to do... There were calls to make and appointments too, a meeting with Sister Tullier and another with Mr. Garrett, chief officer for … and then there was the dentist, she had to break the date, and Mayson for the theater tickets and… 

The  room was never entirely blue. Sea shell white, hiding in the curtains and the recesses flashed in and out with the late afternoon sun  although the shades were drawn, as they were always drawn or half drawn as light would  blind or  expose.  Her parents' room faced south with a wonderful view of the  river and the  shore, but the height of their living quarters gave the river and the  land a slashing streaky effect so that the bridges seemed  incidental black  dashes linking elements that were already alike and static. Only breeds of clouds  were permitted a soft  stupid bounce. Or they drifted in and out lazily, like dowagers in tea salons.  A breeze kicked a curtain, but the only sustained  motion was the capricious summer light  lingering   on  the perfume bottles on Mother's vanity table, changing their crystal vapidness to tiny shimmering minarets.  Julie had brought in the  “One Thousand and One Nights” which she manipulated like a Venetian mask. She was 8 years old and sensitive to poetry, already.

“Come here, my darling!” Mathilda called to Julie and Scheherezade. At 40, she was a handsome stocky blond.  She was dressing for a party and the clothes on  the huge double bed  belonged to  different personae.  “Mother's angel!” Mathilda at the vanity said, and patted a curl into place.

“Mommy, why?” The bright glossy book came down and Julie looked pertly up.

“Why what, precious darling?”

“ Why did Scheherezade have to tell a story every night?”

“Maybe,” Mathilda hesitated, she was expecting another sort of question, “maybe that was really just another way the sultan had of telling her he loved her. Maybe the prince helped her along a little bit...”

“No he didn't! Not at all!” Julie cried. “I mean, it's not fair. She's got to do all the talking while he just sat there...”

“Julie darling! ” Mathilda swiveled away from the vanity and gathered her daughter in her arms. A  tear trickled down her bare arm. “Hush, child it's only a tale. How about trying on my pink open toed shoes?”

Julie rushed to the closet and fished out the pink pumps from the dulcet darkness. But the delights of dressing up could not dispel the cruelties of Oriental narratives. “An' she gotta do it for a thousand and one nights. Mommy! What's that one doing stuck  onto the thousand? Why couldn't they just stop at a thousand an' maybe he'd get greedy and that one will suddenly become a two and who knows where they will stop...”

“Julie honey! That's just because love has no borders, it just goes on and on. These people live in far away lands and their way of telling each other that they are in love is not our way so they invent stories and – listen this is what my teacher told me when I was your age – that - yes, now I remember -  that when an Arabian prince loved a girl so very much, he would ask her for  a story  every night for a thousand nights, but when he really truly loved her to bits and pieces, he would go over a thousand and ask her for more. It is just that Scheherezade's prince loved her more than anything else so he went over a thousand...”

 The cries that Julie heard from her parents' bedroom night after night were animal and beastly and had nothing to do with the soft music of princes and the poetry of their princesses, and the beastliness of her parents' lovemaking prolonged the misery done to Scheherezade and made the cruel world  crueler. It wasn't the plight of Scheherezade that had torn Julie's  world asunder, but her mother's, and one night, Mathilda  saw through a faultily closed door, a pair of egg shell blue eyes wondering whether  love had incongruously passed into the kingdom of pain and distress.

“...So , my little darling, that's how they express love in Arabia. So don't forget to take that story notebook you have started, if you go to Arabia and  meet a handsome prince.”

“I don't wanna go to Arabia!  I wanna stay here with you and protect you and I don't wanna get married ever ever ever!” 

“Don't want to get married? But of course you do! All girls get married, all  princesses find their princes. Life is easier when you have someone to love you, hold you, cherish you...” Mathilda took Julie on her knee and started a distracting bounce.

“I don't want to get married if my husband is going to hurt me like Dad hurt you last night!”

The bouncing stopped. Scheherezade's tale had ended, the prince was a pauper, or worse, had the manners of one. “Julie, Daddy did not hurt me. It was a form of fun, like... like, you know, you telling Mr. Bozo you are going to burn his doll house down because he won't be good. You know you would never hurt Mr. Bozo and Dad would never hurt me nor you.” She landed a   kiss  on Julie's forehead, “Trust me. Trust us. We love you.”

A sudden chill quieted the music in the trees,  the sun glowered behind an intruding cloud .  It was past nine already and there was a meeting with Sister Tullier. The cloud had moved away on its fat lady haunches and the blue of the sky, like the blue of Mother's bedroom, that day, was a stage set for clouds and birds and the half-hearted April showers which dripped like water off bathers springing from pools.

II.

The Sister was first a shadow outlined darkly  against the bold block of  sun. The figure stood against the window, it welcomed the visitor , but  it did not move, it did not embrace, it did not greet.  The intensity of the light had robbed the figure of its features , the light  created darkness and heat about the figure, detaching it from the insignificance of the room, separating it from the other figure demurely shutting the door behind her, she shut the door the way she did everything, in a swift, sexless, apologetic manner. But her meekness  was not an apology, the motionless figure knew, but a way of negotiating her solitude with the world. Observing her, the nun moved out of the light and into the discriminating coolness. The Sister seized Julie's left hand where a diamond celebrated the finality of a love affair.

“The ring has been in Mayson's family for more than 100 years. It was his grandmother's. We just adjusted the setting.”

“So when is it to be? The wedding , I mean.  I think you mentioned  in June. He's been putting it off several times.”

“September is the month. You will get the invitation.  To be mailed next week.”

“Oh, I see.” The Head Mistress remarked coldly. “You really want to go through with it?”

“Go through with what? My marriage? Sister Tullier! I came here with the report!”

The nun spat out.“ What are you doing here, Julie? Where do you situate yourself in relation to  yourself? Did you ever  really and truly want to be a pedagogical assistant ? Did you ever really want to be a teacher ? Did you ever really want to marry ?  Did you really want to marry Mayson? Did you ever really want to do what everyone else has wanted you  to do?”

“I have always done what others wanted me to do.” Julie admittedly solemnly. But, Sister Tullier had no need of the social graces, in fact, she hated them.

“Why are your eyes cast down? Is this a confession of a crime? Are you a naughty child caught with the cookies? Are you not bedeviled with this fine Spring morning? Bedeviled with  the beauties that God has bestowed on us? Bla Bla Bla. Don't you suspect that He might be pulling the wool over our eyes? He may be grandstanding, playing to the crowd, a crowd ! I have no patience with bleating lambs, I detest cooing doves!”

The  sofa, middle of the room. Bull's blood pegged into lines of bloated boxes,  it was in the nature of the designer to give it a wavy look, to rupture its leathery harshness into  cushions. And, Julie  was  dwelling in a leather bump... Dwelling? No, disappearing into the walls of its curves, scraping like a bug, in  the matrix  where it  drew warmth and sustenance and, hopefully, died happy and unnoticed.

“I have always done what others have expected me to do,” Julie plodded the words out.

“ Bah! I might say that if you are guilty of anything, it is running away, from yourself.” The Sister spoke indignantly.

“ We have to talk about the Brownly child, that is in the report, and then at 11 there's Garrett...”

“We don't have to talk about anything that is not essential and for the moment the essential is you. I repeat, what do you want to do this fine Spring morning?” 

“ Right this moment? I want to take a walk. I want to go where my feet carry me.”

“Who is stopping you?”

“We have to discuss the Brownly...”

“I did not say what, I said who.”

“Why no one!”

III.

That place out in the Hamptons. Something about celebrating a new tennis court.  Spring of course. When was it? Two years ago? Going out there with the Lufts. One of those sports cars that looks like a racing dog taut on its haunches and about to leap. The ride, a whooshing hallucination,  perfection. Miles on the tape deck,  NASA at  the dashboard, and  the hood doing sci-fi rolls.  The Lufts, not  talkers, fortunately. The  roadster eating up the white road markings, thought of a rope climber gripping onto the next one, a bit higher, gave the impression of moving up, physically and... the prize at the end of the rope. An old camp song buzzing in my brain . A confetti of sounds.  Disturbing. Then the evening -   I probably made a fool of myself on the tennis court... No, wait a minute, I did pretty well that day.

It was night  and the fountain and the moonlight licking the fountain – no water  – just sort of a marble statue, a cherub with horns.  The moonlight drew eerie ovals on the basin. Suddenly a voice and a hand with a glass.“Moonlight tastes better with champagne.” A young lawyer,  recently arrived in the city.  A guest , like me,  same age, same lost in the woods sensitivity. The wiry nonchalance of Fred Astaire. But wore his grace like a shortcoming, and his attempts to walk in a cutting and abrupt manner rang false, but somehow did not seem devious, only  trying for an effect that was foreign to his nature. Dark neatly cut hair and a face of even features with an attractive prominence to his brow, covering the upper lids of his eyes, a  foxlike  feature.

We walked  around the fountain, the moonlight was distracting,  like the sun at the beach at noon, the ovals on the basin brightened and waned,   disappeared  and reappeared. The  conversation turned to art. He  knew a lot about the post Expressionists, Germany  between wars and France between republics .  He  looked down at his feet not at me, but expressed interest,  smiled a thin-lipped serious smile, assumed a haphazard posture of being there and not there at the same time. We played with the champagne glasses, twirling them  in the moonlight,  some of the colors were green,  yes, green  ghost lights.  He took me home in his  Corolla, a gift from his mother. ¨A most boring car from a most interesting woman.”   Roman arch of a tunnel somewhere entering the city.  No more Miles.   A serious radio channel.  Some quartet with a foreign name. I almost made him change it.  

It was a celebration of Springtime, Fifth Avenue,  an unending Easter Parade, Madison arrived as a Parisian boulevard in an operetta, and   Park announced an awesome grandeur,  a belief in massive and showy permanence, a self conscious homage to  mausoleums and pyramids. And still Julie walked on,  past Lexington  and Third and Second, a graceless chain of shops, banks,  eating places and grocery stores.  A  proud and stubborn sobriety ran from First to the Drive,  but  the  side street tenements  entombed  somber  histories  lying like beasts in early spring, half awake and ready to pounce.

And it was through a light lacquered alley, that  Julie strolled,  whimsically impotent to order her will, a drifter feeling not more important than  the wayward debris the wind threw  against the  walls  before the it died and abandoned them to trampling feet and rolling tires.  And the condor  approaching her as the  Lord of the wind  whispered that  life was like that aimless detritus,  both  substance and dreams and that the sky was a matrix which all God's creature could reach and that the only  tragedy was their believing they could not reach it. Then, the condor revealed its wings which  let it soar and Julie saw that the condor  wore  the soaring, and the limit beyond  which it could not soar, stamped on its feathers. It was a  happy solitary creature, and a lover of the winds, which  lent the bird the illusion of mastery that  it  relinquished when it returned to its nest. 

But what street was this? “65^th Street.”The lizard at her feet told her,   shifting  from side to side, its belly licking the earth,  and despite the comical webbed  stumps which  gave it a form of locomotion, it crawled like a snake. It  searched deep  into  the dirt for the screams  that she had quieted but not stilled forever. 

“The  pawn,” said the lizard, “who negotiates a passage by neither killing nor being killed,  is  a stupid and lowly miracle which no one really wants to see.”

“Walk on,”  said the condor , “I dissolve all suffering at the bottom of the chalice,  walk on.”

The green ghost lights... and Mayson drawing near in the moonlight. She felt  the warmth of his flesh, she sensed the possibility of his embrace, there in the moonlight drawing weird ovals on the waterless fountain.

“I want a child.” Julie said to Mayson when , after a while,  it became suitable to discuss marriage.

“We'll see.” His affirmations were always half open doors.   

“Walk on,” said the lizard,”you're doing fine.”

The disease had devoured Mayson's youth, had put him into a wheelchair, had painted on him that half face he wore as a  cigarette smoking death mask. He raised a trembling arm to his lips, the Marlboro was pinched in his fingers , his V shape fingers, reminding her of  a stupid military decoration of a third rate power.  Another  meaningless wager he had made with his death?   The poor kid knew nothing about wagers, they don't do that sort of thing where he comes from.  A cherry red  mouth let forth a mocking cascade, “The facade Julie! It saves us all except when it doesn't.  You did not really expect him to die on a battlefield !  I mean, like, everyone knew! Ha Ha Ha!”And Julie ,who had  known nothing, was pushing him in the wheelchair, she was older now, she had lost the slimness of youth and her figure was plain. She was wearing a full canary yellow silk coat to cover her thickness which, like Mayson's disease, was spreading, and the features of her face were smudged , but, no matter,  she had always sensed  that time would smudge them,  and there was a small tire of flesh about her chin. She  did  a baker's roll with it just for amusement. 

“There is something else,”the condor perching on her shoulder whispered, “walk on.”

Three little girls  skipped across her way.  Their hatred of Julie ran hot behind cupped-hand whispering .   They were Barbra, Stacey and Jennifer, and the first two were  ordinary , but Jennifer had aquamarine eyes and the inky mane  of a panther, and her name sounded royal and wild.  Julie   wrote poems to Jennifer in her copybooks with  sketches darkening  all the margins. The school desks, at that time, opened from the top. 

 Julie had to wait outside the door until the Head Mistress had finished with Mathilda. She emerged dabbing her nose, her green eyes were gray and glassy. Julie's desk had opened  to the teacher who had spoken to the Head Mistress  who had called in Mathilda , who had left Julie in a brine of self-loathing while the hard keys of a secretary's typewriter beat like a drum roll.   The “how could yous” fall like  axes in the hands of Shame, the hangman, who  gloats joyfully at any execution.  Guilt, the old crone, never far off,  sits in a corner rubbing her hands. They , at least, are immortal.  

“Never mind the past, move on” said the condor. “ Go to the end of yourself, there is …”

“Your salvation,  but we wonder if you want it. ” the lizard said with  a provocative chuckle. 

 The condor flitted  like a humming-bird above Julie's shoulder. “Walk on. Childhood is a disease, that  can be arrested, never annihilated. Think of  a mountain that blesses the climber who reaches the top. Walk on. Remember, wherever your feet take you.”

“Where are you leading me?”

“Who is leading you?” The lizard asked.

“Who is leading you?” The condor asked.

“Where am I going?”

“We dissolve all suffering at the bottom of the chalice, but we wonder if you want to drink the wine. ”The condor and the lizard said together.

“Which wine? Where?” Julie asked.   The light licked mists  had tumbled  over the River . A strange hush had seized the street.   She started to turn on the asphalt patch  with  the sky spinning  her as a top, no longer the master of her movements nor wanting to be.  Her  lashing arms  formed  the blade of a sickle,  cropping through all the accumulations to the wonder of her mere being, and she soared, as the condor would soar, above   the line that dreary Fate had traced and which she no longer chose to follow, if, indeed,  she had ever chosen.  She was a sail that the impetuous wind pushed to a port, she cared not which,  she desired the unexpected.

After a time, she stopped her turning,  the condor and the lizard had left her,  she had no need of them now,  she knew where the sheep grazed and why the wolves gazed at them with brotherly indulgence, and she knew where the chalice lay and  tasted the  wine which filled it to its brim and was overflowing onto  the mists that were bleeding  like sunsets and blushing like dawns. 

Chuck Taylor

Whores Who Were My Friends

     I want to write about a few whores I’ve known without engaging in sweeping generalizations. Prostitution has been around longer than people have kept records, practiced in many of the world’s cultures. Given its ubiquity, evaluation seems impossible. I’ve known only a few whores well, and a few others slightly, so I don’t have enough understanding to make big statements.
    I should begin by saying I was never a customer of my friends. I never exchanged money for sex, or was fortunate or unfortunate enough to have sex with them. Let me add that I have never had sex with any prostitute. I tried once in New York City but was so nervous and guilty I couldn’t get it up. The idea of paying a total stranger that you must pretend to trust when you are most vulnerable doesn’t seem sexy. Glen Close didn’t play a prostitute in the movie Fatal Attraction, but the narrative as cautionary tale is hot-wired into my brain.
    Women are powerful, even if they happen to be smaller.

    Even the strip bars I have visited, maybe ten times in my life, seem alien lands. I could get in for free, since a former stepson works at such a club, but all I can think is PATHETIC. If this is what a man has to do to see a women in the flesh, if this is what it has come to, sticking money in a g-string while a strange woman grinds a lap dance a few inches from your crotch and you keep hands frozen at your sides—well, I’d rather stay away from women and join a monastery. If I can’t have a woman freely and completely, in mutual gift and celebration, I’d rather go celibate.
     I empathize with women who end up being whores and strip club dancers (some of whom whore on the side). Every strip club dancer I’ve known—and that would be only three--has taken a mix of three controlled substances—speed, cocaine, and heroine. It takes a lot of physical and psychic energy to dance in a dark room, under a spotlight nearly naked, in front of strangers. I recognize that it’s the lure of good money that puts women in these places. I’ve read also that a large percentage were sexually molested as children. A woman may find it hard to support her children working at McDonalds. For most whores and strippers the late hours allow them to be at home in the morning with their small children before school starts and home in the early afternoon when they come home.
   Doesn’t dancing naked or near naked in a dark room, filled with men who may hurl insults, eventually lead to a disdain for men? Doesn’t it mess up a woman’s mind about love and sex? It does for a while at least, according to the women I’ve talked to who worked strip clubs. Having sex with multiple strange men can do the same thing, only worse. Evelyn Lau writes:
 “Often the sex I had with my clients was so repugnant and physically uncomfortable I took to swallowing painkillers beforehand, in order to feel as little as possible. It took years to emerge from that period of my life, with all its self-destructive behavior, and when I did I actually thought I might never have sex again...” (Desire 50).

   I do know one former prostitute who married a brilliant philosophy professor. They’ve been married over thirty years and have a good life. She seems to know a great deal about how to spice up their erotic life. I bumped into them on Saturday night in a local coffee shop playing rummy with pornographic playing cards. The word quickly spread around campus among the students. I have known them for a little under twenty years.
     Observing other men in strip bars drink too much and spend too much of their hard-earned paychecks for the sight of a woman’s naked body, or for the closeness without touching of a lap dance, well—one can’t help but sense the physical power women have over men and how much men need women. Into what abject places they will put themselves to be near women! Amazing! Disgusting! We all know how poorly men do by themselves. We’ve seen the statistics on how men have more depression, more mental illness, more alcoholism, a lower income, and die younger. Women often do much better post-divorce when they choose to remain single.
     OK, I admit it. Before we go any further, I will admit my bias. I’m a prude, but that’s just me. I come from the conservative Midwest--from Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois--and attended the Methodist church. I will make no more apologies for how I am (if this is indeed an apology).
     Yet I’ve had hookers as friends. But I should qualify though--the two whores I knew the best were no longer practicing prostitution on a regular basis, although at rare times they might return to the calling. One of the whores I knew briefly was working as a waitress when we met, but returned to the oldest profession when the place she worked closed and she temporarily needed to find a new means of support.
     I will call her Julie. I have strong feelings about Julie because I let her down. I wonder where she is and how she is doing.
     The year was 1988 and I was working in Dallas in an independent bookstore on Greenville Avenue. The Greenville entertainment area is about twenty minutes east of downtown Dallas and in the 80’s had an active club and music scene. If you go twenty minutes further east you can reach White Rock Lake and see on the northwestern shore the mansion of the now deceased ultra-right wing oil millionaire H.L. Hunt. Hunt, despite the conservative “family’ message on his nationwide radio program Lifeline, was a bigamist with a second family in Louisiana.
      I developed relationships with many customers the year I worked in the bookstore, but the person I liked the best was Julie. She worked in a small and cozy Italian restaurant nearby. I’d never had dinner there. I was only working two or three days a week, living out in the country rent-free while writing a novel and a book of poetry. The prices for the dishes listed on a menu taped to the front window seemed out of my reach. Julie would come in and sit in the chair behind the counter while I categorized books and put them on a shelf behind me for later shelving in the various small rooms and cubicles of the store. Julie would bring in cookbooks to sell or to get trade credit, and use the credit buy other used cookbooks. She dreamed of opening her own Mexican restaurant.
     Julie had the good sense when I was dealing with customers to remain quiet. Julie was a pretty woman, a natural dark blond, in her early thirties I’d estimate. She had a pleasant musical voice, even though she was a direct person, lacking at times in much of the courtesies of politeness. I was in a marriage that was crumbling apart. My wife Courtney was furious because she believed I was stalling by writing and was not working hard enough on the repairs to the country house we owned outright. She hated living in her grandparents’ tiny town and was in a hurry to move back to the “cool” city of Austin to be near her grown children. I was not getting much female attention so I appreciated Julie being around.
     At times one of the owners would come in the door—Candice I’ll call her—and she would order Julie out of the place and get mad at me for letting her sit without buying anything.
     “You don’t want that kind of woman in here,” she said. “It’ll ruin the reputation of the store and it interferes with your work.”
     I wasn’t certain what the owner was getting at since I was always working when Julie was around. I suspected Candice’s response was just one woman’s distrust and jealousy of another woman, yet I knew Julie was being more forward and friendly than most women and half-suspected she once had been a prostitute. Julie told me the tale of an important Dallas judge coming in the Italian restaurant and ordering an expensive meal. Another customer had ordered and barely touched the same meal. When Julie brought the uneaten food back to the kitchen, the owner told her to transfer the food to a new plate for the judge who had just ordered.
    “That’s when I knew the restaurant wouldn’t be around much longer,“ Julie said.
     When the meal was brought out, even though it had been re-garnished and put on a clean plate, the judge sensed it was the meal not finished by the other customer. Without a word he got up and walked out of the place.
      “I may have to go back to my old profession if the restaurant closes,” she added. “I need to pay rent and put food on the table. You know I was a hooker, right? But you’re a friend. You can have sex for free.”
     I was touched. No one had ever offered me sex that directly. No one had ever used words to make such an offer. As a writer I was passionate about words and knew their power. In my experience you had to take a woman out, if she would go out, and then after a few dates, work the courage up to make a pass and a few weeks later after some kissing and petting you might end up in bed, or you might end up being rejected. My class and generation came to the false conclusion that sex meant much less to women than it did to men. Women didn’t need it the way men did, and women thus could use sex as a means to control and dominate.
    I liked Julie’s directness. It charmed, but of course this was the era when AIDS was raging and no treatment had been certified as successful. I doubted her offer came with no strings attached. Is sex ever given away with no expectations? I was also married and practicing monogamy, although the marriage was in bad shape. The sex that happened, happened less than once and month and was a slow motion nightmare.
    Julie continued for several months dropping by and sitting in the chair behind the bookstore counter, but she never stayed long, and if we heard the heavy metal back door open, she would rush out the front door before one of the owners made it up to the counter. If it were the male side of the couple, Phil, there would be no objection.
    For about two weeks I had been suffering from greatly diminished hearing. A doctor out in the country ten miles from my house told me that I had something growing in my ear. He scraped as much as he could out, but added that he did not know how to cure the growth.
     “I can’t afford doctors. I’ve no money,” I told Julie. “That country doctor cost seventy-five dollars. Luckily I’d taken an advance from the store.”
    “Here’s what you do,” Julie said. “You go to the Parkland Hospital emergency room. Don’t tell them you are not from Dallas. Make up a Dallas address. They will have to treat you, but expect to sit around the place for most of the day. They won’t see what you’ve got as serious, when they’ve got people coming in with gunshot wounds, plus they hope you’ll give up and leave since they know you’re poor.”
    So I went to Parkland on a Thursday, the day before I worked at the store. Parkland is the hospital where President Kennedy was taken after Oswald shot him from the Texas Book Depository Building during a Dallas motorcade. I brought along a copy of John Rechy’s famous long novel, The City of Night, and sat at Parkland from ten in the morning until eight at night.
     Finally a specialist saw me. He had with him a number of resident doctors in training. He treated me with disdain, like a piece of meat, hardly acknowledging my presence.
     “I want you to see this,” he told his residents. “It’s a rare fungus that grows in the human ear.” The specialist adjusted the light above my head and the three residents came over and peered down my ear canal.
     “Were you replacing a roof on a house?” he asked bluntly. “Did the roof have wooden shingle shakes? You touched the wooden shingles, which were damp because the roof was leaking, and you touched your ear, right?”
     I had to admit the bastard was right and grudgingly I needed to be grateful. Quickly he wrote me a prescription and told me to go to the pharmacy in the basement of the building.
    “They will tell you what to do with the medicine,” he added, and then he and his residents left the small room talking without nodding goodbye or good luck. I didn’t care that much. They were not going to get any of my money.
     I went to the basement and waited, sitting on the linoleum floor next to a small door for about an hour. Finally a pharmacist handed me a small glass bottle and I paid ninety dollars.
     “Put these drops in your ear,” the pharmacist said, “in the morning, around dinner, and before you go to sleep.”
     I did as advised, and in a few days my hearing was fully restored. I felt I’d been reborn. I realized that even when it’s quiet, sounds from nature surround and comfort--insects chirping, the wind blowing, and the birds singing. A near dead silence is unnerving and suggests death.
     I had been worried about going permanently deaf, and I had not known how to get proper treatment as a poor person in a rural area without health insurance, but Julie, by her sage counsel, had saved my ears and it felt as if she had saved my life. How could I not be grateful and love her in a way? She’d stopped coming around the bookstore, and I had no idea where she lived in the neighborhood. I did know she was too poor for a phone. One night I was driving east on Gaston Avenue. My headlights caught a woman standing on a corner sidewalk. The woman tentatively, shyly, raised her dress up to her crotch so lovely naked legs were visible as my Oldsmobile Station wagon passed in the dark and its headlights swept her body.
     Julie! I turned off at the next side street and parked. All sorts of thoughts rushed through my head. I wanted to get her off the street. She had no way of knowing who might pick her up. Where she was soliciting on Gaston was not the safest place. Someone could beat her up or kill her. I wanted to go with her, to make love and pay her, but I had next to no money, barely enough for gas back to my house sixty miles away in the country. I wanted to thank her for helping me and give her some money, but what could I afford? Two dollars? I’d just be interfering with her work. I was married and trying to remain faithful out of what seemed more and more an empty, arcane promise.
     So what did I do?
     Well, I hate to admit it, but I started up the Oldsmobile and drove off. That’s what I did. She didn’t know my car and had not noticed me pulling around the corner. I drove on in my ancient station wagon and I never saw Julie again. Sure she was a bit rough around the edges, but she had a good heart. Her roughness displayed a true enthusiasm for life.

    My second friend now lives in Florida and is married. She’d moved to Florida to work on a cruise ship as a photographer in 1989. Because of her changed situation, I suppose, she does not want her past brought up and did not communicate back on Facebook when I attempted to befriend her. I understand that. I will call her Norma Jane, after Marilyn Monroe’s real name, Norma Jean, because like Monroe she was a blonde with luscious lips and an impressive bosom. Actually, Norma Jane was Hungarian and spoke with a sexy accent like that of Za Za Gabor. Norma is my age, and claimed that her single mother, when the communists took over her country, carried Norma out at night in her arms, across fields and over barbwire fences, out of the country and into freedom.
    Norma Jane was trying to establish herself in the antique photography business when I met her. She had costumes for people to dress themselves up as bar ladies of the old west, or as gunslingers or cowpokes, and she’d quickly print up the photos in a sepia tone and sell the best 8 ½ x 11 shot in a simple plastic frame for $40.00. She worked Fiesta in San Antonio, the Renaissance Fair in Waxahachie, Texas, and at other venues. After Courtney and I moved out of the apartment complex where Norma also lived, we learned that she’d had a kind of nervous breakdown and was in a halfway house in Austin for the mentally troubled.
    It turned out that her business had not been totally successful. Unable to pay her rent, she’d turned to providing sexual services to her landlord. Everyone knew what an ugly, nasty man the landlord was, so that must have not been pleasant. She ended up moving up to the small town in East Texas where Courtney and I had gone to do the house repairs mentioned above, and she stayed with us there for six months resting and recuperating. I may have failed Julie in Dallas, but out in the country I was providing a quiet space for Norma Jane.
     One Friday, while staying out in East Texas with us, she decided to come with me to Dallas. Her stated plan was to take the Greyhound bus down to Austin and visit friends. She packed her stuff up and we drove my station wagon into the city, but instead of going to Austin she stayed at the bookstore. I would sleep Friday nights in a sleeping bag on the floor of the store, in order to save time and gas money by not commuting back and forth for Saturday work. Norma suddenly changed her mind and decided to sleep also in the store.
     Now I was fairly certain Norma was providing me with an opportunity to get something going with her, but I made no moves that way and she stayed in a different room of the store that night. When we got back to the small town after work the next day, and my wife Courtney heard what’d happened, she was angry at Norma for what she saw as a pretty obvious attempt to move in on her man, but she forgave her in a couple of days.
    That Saturday, before we drove back to the country, the male co-owner Phil came into the store and did a double take when he saw Norma Jane. He knew Norma, and had slept with her one night when the four of us—Courtney, Norma, Phil, and I—had shared a room in San Antonio while attending the San Antonio International Book Fair. Phil was at the book fair because he was in the book business. Courtney and I were there because we were writers. Why was Norma along? Not for the books. She was entertaining the notion of opening a shop along San Antonio’s famous river walk.
    I had just drifted off to asleep when I woke up to their love making three feet from me. Norma had moved from the couch on the other side of the double bed Courtney and I shared to the double bed Phil had all to himself next to the bathroom.
     I figured, since they had woken me up and were brazenly doing it right in front of me, I should be permitted to watch. How often does one get to observe real people make love, up close and unembarrassed? I raised myself up on an elbow and watched them go at it for about ten minutes. Finally I grew bored and lay down again. They seemed to be having fun, but watching lovers, well, isn’t that entertaining when you’re tired. Courtney was awake too but I knew she didn’t want to make out while Phil and Norma Jane were grunting and moaning away in the same room.
    So when Norma spotted Phil in the bookstore, she went directly up to him and told him that the small signs identifying the various subject headings on the bookstore shelves were faded and needed replacing. She knew calligraphy and could make classy signs for such sections as “Biography” or “Science Fiction” or “Westerns”—all at a rock bottom price. Phil agreed to her proposal and Norma made the signs when we returned to the country. They were attractively done, but Phil threw them out, never putting them up in the store for even one day.
     I suspect it was because, if he put them up, his wife and business partner of fifteen years, Candice, would have asked questions. Later, Norma told me that Phil owed her the calligraphy job for her having sex with him down in San Antonio. It was payback time. The former hookers I’ve known naturally tend to see what they do as a valuable service they can turn to when they need to--and Phil hadn’t paid yet for the service.

    The third former prostitute I knew stayed in the same apartment complex that Norma, Courtney, and I lived in on Manor Road in Austin. She lived with a pleasant, gentle man named Michael. Sandy was Michael’s girlfriend. She was willowy and tall with intense blue eyes. When Michael and Sandy were together the legislature was in session and Sandy was specializing in legislators, both Republican and Democrat, who were busy passing laws up at the Texas state capital and had taken apartments temporarily in Austin while they were away from their districts and families. This meant that she would be with a man who paid good money for a long time, often a month or more. They rewarded her well for her services.
     Michael was an open-minded guy and tried to accept his girlfriend’s lucrative line of work, but eventually couldn’t handle it and they split up. He told me once, shortly before they split up, that he never knew if Sandy’s loving gestures toward him at night were sincere or an act. I replied that all sex involved a certain amount of acting, and that we both knew Sandy was a sincere nature lover. She collected arrowheads, rescued lost cats and dogs, and one time she tried to tame a wolf, with an injured forepaw, by keeping the animal in a small apartment she later rented. The wolf tore up her things and defecated all over the place.
     Sandy also was a good worker with tools. I hired her, after she gave up hooking, to help me repair that house I owned in a small town in northeast Texas. I’ve already talked of that old place--it seemed I was always working on it. She made trips up there with me a number of times. Sometimes we’d stay at my old place; sometimes at her sister’s home, amazingly just twelve miles from mine in another small town.
    Sandy helped me put up gutters, she helped me repaint the wood siding outside, and she helped me re-berm the soil around the yard so the water’d drain away and not get under the house. When we stayed at the old dwelling we’d put mattresses down on the green shag carpet in the living room and build a fire in the fireplace to keep warm and cozy. I was single in 1991 and found Sandy attractive. She told me that she was “seriously thinking about me” and that I was “number five on her list.” She was probably trying to be nice, but I viewed being part of a list as insulting.
     I had met some of her other ex-boyfriends besides Michael, and I had seen others she’d shown me in photographs, and realized that she preferred difference, that she, as a fair skinned Anglo woman, was turned on by the brown eyes on darker Hispanic men. I asked her about it and she freely admitted that was what turned her on.
     “Give me a Latin lover any time,” she quipped. “They’re patient, and they know what to do with their tongues and hands.” 
     From that moment I had no desire to become her boyfriend. I didn’t like being put on a list and wasn’t the desired ethnicity. Still, I thought that since we were spending so much time working together and sleeping cozily next to one another by the fireplace, we might as well get some relief and enjoy sex. I think we both looked pretty good in the orange tinged light of the fire. I was in my mid-forties and she was in her mid-thirties—perhaps I was too old for her.
      She told me she’d have sex for one hundred dollars. I felt a tad offended, yet told her that was fine. But I added that I also charged one hundred dollars. I’d be giving her as much pleasure as she’d be giving me.
     “It doesn’t work that way,” she said.
     “We’re in a post-feminist era,” I said, “and we aim for equality between the sexes. Prostitution is part of the old and oppressive patriarchy.”
     Sandy then told me to go sleep in the other room.
    “This is my house. You go sleep in the other room,” I came back.
    Neither of us left the warmth of the fire. It was early March and the nights grew cold. We didn’t converse any more that night.
    Sandy and I continued to be Platonic friends after the projects on the house were completed in northeast Texas. She was one of the few friends I had who liked to take long day hikes in the woods along the trails of Austin’s Barton Creek. When I got remarried, however, I did not wish her around. I figured my new spouse might be offended, as the bookstore owner Candice had been offended. I worried that Sandy might tell my new wife of our times up in northeast Texas and my wife would grow uneasy and irritated.

     I said at the opening that I did not have enough evidence to make big statements about women who have pursued, as a method of financial support, the ancient calling of prostitution. I can, however, offer up a few tentative remarks about the former hookers I’ve known as friends.
    We share a lot in common, my friends and I. We are eccentric and have trouble fitting into the mainstream of society. Fortunately my friends and I have never turned to drugs. We are survivors. They were my friends! Most of the time I was not thinking of them as hookers. I can’t say that my two closer friends—Sandy and Norma Jane--are any more damaged from their experience as hookers than other folks I’ve known who have been hurt by difficult experiences. Here I’m referring to those I know who are outsiders and those who are insiders.
     The American divorce rate hovers over 50%. I know a number of bitter men and women who have never recovered from their divorces. Some have become cynical and promiscuous; others have turned to celibacy. A cook that lived behind me, when his wife left him, shot and killed himself. Many people live in large anonymous cities far from where they grew up and move frequently. The dominant American immigrant lifestyle lends itself to hard work and productivity, not to contentment and happiness.
    I wouldn’t recommend the world’s oldest profession. I’d feel terrible if the two girls I’ve been involved in raising took up the profession. I’d attempt to intervene, no matter that they’re now grown up, because I’d know the reason they’d take to the work--a hard need for money. That’s one reason I tell them they’ll always have a place to come to. Our home is their home—unless they become drug addicts and start stealing and lying.
    I’ll mention the last prostitute I’ve known. Tiffany used to come into a bookstore in downtown Austin I worked in for eight years. She’d graduated from the University of Texas in Austin majoring in history and was quite the intellectual. She was lovely, with long brown hair and big brown eyes. She never bought any books, but about twice a month she’d drop by and we’d have lengthy conversations at the store counter, mostly about women’s history. I learned a lot from Tiffany.
    Working in the bookstore is a bit like being a bartender, only better, because people talk to you when they’re sober, and many of the customers who do take the time to talk are informed, intelligent people. The brilliant and satiric newspaper columnist Molly Ivins used to shop in the Austin store. We never talked for long, but she did admit me she loved Edwardian romances as she carried a big sack of them out the door. I loved the people side of the business as much as I loved peddling books.
     At the time Tiffany was working in a porno video shop on Sixth Street near I-35, but before that she had made a lot of money as a prostitute. Unfortunately, she said, she had lived lavishly—travelling on breaks all over the world--but she had not saved a cent. One day she brought me an English translation of a Japanese novel called The Shy Pornographer—if I remember the title right. I can see a keyhole on the red cover with an eye peering through.
     Tiffany gave me the book as an indirect effort to explain and justify her life. She had already told me, there in 1983, that she had gotten out of prostitution due to the AIDS scare and that was why she was working for low wages in a porn shop. The book would show me why she had chosen to become a prostitute. It was a long novel, with tiny lines of print, and I’ve always hated long novels that require weeks and weeks of steady dedication, so I never got around to reading The Shy Pornographer.
    A couple of months later, I was walking back from the old downtown post office and I saw Tiffany waiting in front of the drugstore on the corner at the bus stop on Congress and Fifth. She could no longer afford a car. I said “Hello” a couple of times. Finally she turned her head slightly and looked obliquely at me.
     “I ignore anyone who talks to me on the street,” she whispered. “Usually they’re former Johns and I don’t want them following me home.”
     Just then a group of three young men came by in a car with their windows rolled down. They stopped at the corner for the red light. Their radio was on and they were talking loudly.
    Tiffany recognized the men, called out names, and asked for a ride.
     “What have you got for us?” one of the men shouted from a back window. When she made no reply, all the young men laughed. The light turned and they drove on.
     I will never forget the pained look on Tiffany’s face.
     If Tiffany had been born in late nineteenth century France, she might have become a powerful courtesan of a government minister, admired in the grand places of Paris for her grace, style, intelligence, and beauty. If she had been born in Hellenistic times, she might have been an honored priestess at a Temple for Diana, or Juno, or Venus, in a Greek city-state. The Greeks were a male dominated culture, but at least they worshipped powerful female gods in a pantheon ruled by the male god Zeus.
     But Tiffany and I, we were born into a Puritan influenced culture where prostitutes are reviled. No doubt I acquiesce. Like I said, I’m a prude. A side of me remains pleased that a few activities are supposed to remain outside the dominant paradigm of buy and sell, even if in practice they don’t always. Ideally, anyway, poetry should be given away, love should not be bought, babies should not be sold, and wars should not be fought for money. Even the most conservative Americans support our socialized military, although I doubt it would occur to many that the military is government owned.
    Ah...I guess that last ideal may be on the way out, since half of America’s occupying forces in Iraq work for private security firms. Should we legalize male and female prostitution as they do in Amsterdam, tax the service and use the revenues to make sure that the both johns and whores are healthy and don’t spread diseases? Sounds rational to me, but I’d be the first to admit that no culture is rational, and reason doesn’t always take you to the place that is best.
     I’m not reasonable person.
     Who would want to be?
     Are you?

holds Masters Degrees in Fine Arts and English-American literature from Middlebury College and The Sorbonne University in Paris. She has published dark fantasy on various websites and has completed a novel about her native city, New York, post 9/11.