Birgit Lennertz Sarrimanolis

During the night, the wind picked up. By early morning, spume-covered waves churned the steely, grey sea. Near the island of Skopelos, the waves and the wind had gained enough strength to divert the ferry to the Agnontas port on the western side of the island, sheltered from the open Aegean, where the cove tended to be much calmer on such days. There were few passengers on the ferry. The loading of a handful of passenger cars and motorcycles, along with a truck delivering fruit and vegetables to the island, had not taken very long. The passengers, mostly locals returning from the mainland after a day in Volos, sat huddled inside near the snack bar, sipping strong coffee out of miniature cups.  Although the ship heaved and rolled on the angry waves, causing the cups to slide on the bolted down tables, the passengers did not comment on the redirection of the ferry as an inconvenience. The unpredictability of the sea was something the Greek people had, timelessly, come to terms with.

Elizabeth stood outside holding onto the railing as the wind whipped her hair back. She fought to shut the deck doors behind her and found herself alone save for two deckhands who were at work scrubbing the last of the winter grime off the deck with hard bristled brooms and pails. Black rain clouds raced overhead. Elizabeth leaned over the railing, bracing herself against the force of the wind, and felt an odd satisfaction at the seawater spray hitting her face. She welcomed the fact that the biting wind had sent the other ferry passengers indoors. She wanted the howl and the thrashing waves to herself.

Elizabeth’s friend, Anne, had suggested she return to Skopelos.  Anne had been gently persuasive, in the manner of a big sister taking charge.  

“It might be therapeutic. You cannot run away from it.” 

Elizabeth conceded, awash again suddenly with ache and damage. Anne booked a flight and ferry passage before Elizabeth could change her mind.  It was February, too late for the Christmas festivities and too early for the Easter tourists. Neither the time of year nor Elizabeth’s state of mind welcomed her present endeavor.  Elizabeth acquiesced, however. Returning to the island might provide her a relief that was more than temporary.

The ferry approached the island, undulating on the sea swells. Skopelos was thickly covered with Aleppo pines that exuded a heady scent onto the wind gusts. The pines grew down the steep hillsides to the myriad coves and rocky sea pockets in the white cliffs. The grey water swirled and splashed up against the rocks violently. On calm days during the summer, Elizabeth knew, the water lay clear and turquoise in the bright sun. On another day so, too, would have lain her soul. Today it was in as much turmoil as the waves that crashed against the craggy cliffs.

Elizabeth clambered down the ferry’s narrow staircase with her small suitcase.  She stood among the Hellenic Seaways employees who were directing the transfer of vehicles by means of shrill whistles, hand signals, and shouts of “ela, ela, piso, piso.”  Passengers on foot walked off the ferry ramp, dodging the vehicular traffic, toting bags and small children.  

In the past Kostas had been with her. She stood waiting for him to extract their small rental car out of the boat’s diesel smelling interior. He waved for her to get into the car, smiling, eager to drive up the steep, narrow road towards the house on the cliff.  

They had come several times to the house Kostas had inherited. Leaving behind their work in England and depositing the children with Elizabeth’s mother, they came to the island to renovate the dilapidated villa. Together they repaired broken shutters, whitewashed walls, and they filled cracks in the flagstones of the terrace. In the evenings after a long day of physical labor, they stood with paint-splattered arms entwined, gratified with the results of their toil. The house’s unfinished, ramshackle state was slowly being supplanted by something exquisite.

On her own now, Elizabeth stood at the familiar port and felt unmoored.

Two taxi drivers stood by their cars on the quay, collars turned up against the wind, smoking. Elizabeth made her way towards one and asked whether he would drive her to the town of Skopelos, the main port on the other side of the island. He grunted and crushed out his cigarette beneath his foot.

The driver chose the narrow coast road that hugged the mountainside to avoid the gusts on the higher mountain road. The wind increased among the pines, swishing the tight branches. The island, along with the neighboring islands, was often referred to as the gates of the wind, oriented as they were towards the open Aegean. In the winter months, Zorbas often descended, a neighbor woman had once earnestly explained to Elizabeth. While he howled and thrashed, the villagers sequestered themselves behind bolted shutters. Superstition held firm among the islanders. 

The town of Skopelos lay against the mountain. On the beach along the bay, stormy rollers thundered in. The white-washed houses were stacked closely together, tiered steeply up the hillside, as though collectively bracing themselves against the onslaught of wind and waves. Blue window shutters rattled in the wind. Narrow alleys climbed steeply up between the houses, abandoned today by the town’s inhabitants.  Elizabeth saw only a delivery boy fighting the wind on his moped.

At the end of narrow harbor road, the taxi driver pulled up in front of Hotel Aphroditi. It looked desolate. Elizabeth paid the driver and hauled out her small suitcase. Stale tobacco smoke lingered in the air of the lobby even though there was no one around. When Elizabeth jingled the bell on the reception counter, a middle-aged woman emerged from an adjacent door. The woman spoke only Greek and pushed an old-fashioned ledger towards Elizabeth while she sorted laboriously through a drawer for a room key. She then gestured for Elizabeth to make herself comfortable in an armchair by the window overlooking the bay and left the room. Moments later she reappeared, holding a mop and bucket, readying herself for a quick room service.  

When Elizabeth looked around the tiny hotel room a half hour later, the smell of stale cigarette smoke still hung in the air and the drain in the bathroom gave off a pungent odor. The room was simply furnished: a wooden bed, a doily-covered dresser, a TV set with rabbit ear antennas. Elizabeth welcomed its detachment and neutrality. She looked through the balcony door at the pounding waves that crashed up and over the natural overwater reef in the bay, the skopelos from which the island took its name. 

For the first time that long day, Elizabeth felt like she could exhale.

Elizabeth sought out a taverna at a much earlier hour than the Greeks were accustomed to eating. It was empty save for two men drinking milky ouzo. Their attention was focused on the scarce activity on the port road. Elizabeth sat down at a small table, her toes clammy and cold in her sneakers. The wind battered against a plastic awning that had been pulled down to shield the tables and their patrons. A waiter approached, eyeing Elizabeth with some curiosity since not many xenoi, foreigners, came to the island during the cold season. He bent his head respectfully and suggested the kalamari or the xtapodi, fried squid or octopus, both of which were gleaned fresh from the ocean that morning.  

Elizabeth thought of the nights when Kostas extravagantly ordered seafood, pairing it with cold retsina wine that tasted of pine resin. They sat on summer nights, enveloped in the thick, sweet scent of honey suckle that grew in ceramic pots on the terrace. Tonight, she felt that she could not stomach seafood. She asked for something simple. The waiter brought her a traditional Skopelos pie. Elizabeth pushed the cheese stuffed phyllo spiral around on her plate and ate only small bites.  

Elizabeth heard Elpida before she saw her. Shrieks resounded from the kitchen behind the counter, making Elizabeth look up. Elpida appeared to be in her twenties, with long, dark hair, black eyes and lustrous olive skin.  Her youth, however, was disfigured by a physical deformity. The curvature of her limbs rendered her movements awkward and spasmodic. She had been given the task of washing spinach leaves and squealed at the feel of the cold sink water. She was hushed, curtly, by a female voice in the kitchen.  When Elpida retorted something in Greek, her words were sluggish and halting. Elizabeth did not understand the words, but she grasped the effort that it cost Elpida to formulate them as they caught on her tongue. Catching Elizabeth’s eye, Elpida hastily lowered her gaze, as though belatedly understanding that her squeals might have disturbed the taverna customer. Elizabeth ached for her deference. She smiled, but Elpida had already retreated.

In the night, Elizabeth woke with a start. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. The shapes of the dresser, the balcony door and the curtains at the window solidified slowly in the pre-dawn dimness. Elizabeth tried to remember the dream. It had extinguished itself. Morning brought more blustery wind, but the rattling of the rain against the windowpanes had relented a little. Elizabeth looked out over the deserted cobblestoned harbor road. The anchored fishing boats still rocked wildly in the port below. In the last summer here with Kostas, tourists and locals filled the tavernas and cafes. They shopped for brightly colored ceramic ware along the twisting alleys. Now, the tavernas and shops were shuttered. The café umbrellas were clasped down. The restaurant tables sported neither blue and white checkered tablecloths nor hovering waiters. The great platano trees that grew along the harbor road extended their stark, leafless branches towards the darkening sky.

Elizabeth mustered a thimble of bravery and pulled on her anorak. She walked up the steeply inclined alleys of the town, passing underneath stiff, flapping laundry strung up between balconies. Elizabeth encountered few people as she climbed further up from the port road. Before long she felt out-of-breath, but the pathways continued their ascent, around white-washed building corners, along a maze of tight alleys, small courtyards and flag-stoned steps. Wooden balconies almost met midair overhead. Doorway stoops were crammed with pots of clambering vines and fragrant basil.

The township road at the top of the town led up and over the cliffs. The wind continued its vendetta and the waves on the bay, far below, were white capped. Elizabeth followed the narrowly winding road as it followed the contours of the land, high above the sea. She could hear the plaintive tinkling of goat bells from the terraced fields below.

When she came to the junction in the road, Elizabeth paused. The sign to Glisteri pointed to a narrow road that descended steeply and quickly out of view. In her mind, Elizabeth could see the cove, the white cliffs, the deserted pebble beach at the end of the road. She looked down the other road, towards Agios Constantinos, which followed the spine of the mountain inland, along orchards of olive, fig and orange trees. Suddenly Elizabeth felt like a compass without bearing, spinning out of control.  She was unable to place another step in either direction, weighed down abruptly with a pain that had no location or cure. She turned and ran the entire way back to the town.

The waiter in the taverna pulled a chair out for Elizabeth near the plastic awning.  He placed a minced meat pie, spiced with cinnamon, on the table in front of her. Behind him, Elpida shuffled as she carried a tin carafe of olive oil. When Elizabeth smiled at her Elpida spilled the olive oil, flustered by the attention given her. The waiter mopped up the soggy paper tablecloth, a vexed expression on his face while Elpida shrank away into the kitchen. 

“My daughter wants to help,” he explained, “but it is difficult for her, with her condition.”

Elizabeth, not wanting to intrude, said “Yes, of course.”

“I have seen you on the island before?” the waiter asked.  

Elizabeth sighed, then nodded. No one stayed unnoticed on the small island.          “My husband and I were here three years ago.” 

She was relieved when he did not pursue the topic.

In the evening, Elizabeth called her friend Anne.  

“I am not sure I can do this alone,” she told her in an unprotected moment[MO1] .  Anne, on the telephone, buoyed her quietly. Elizabeth, drawing in her breath slowly, finally promised that she would return to the house on the cliff.

When she saw it the next day, the old villa had the effect, not of disarray and neglect, but of time abruptly stopped. The house stood as they had left it, nestled against the mountain. The balcony overlooked the tops of the olive trees, a sea of blue-green leaves. The sunbaked terrace with its clay vessels had once been a colorful outburst of bougainvillea and hibiscus. The rope swing, on which the children had pushed each other, still stirred in the breeze. The scent of lavender and thyme hung in the air. The trees they had planted – pomegranate, lemon, walnut – had matured, as Kostas had predicted, alongside their children. The gnarled grape vine that he had trained to climb a trellis, for shade and for fulfillment, had twisted up its support. He wanted to sit beneath the vine canopy one day, Kostas had told her, to watch his grandchildren play. 

Inside, the villa was filled with reminders of the interrupted day three years before. The tavli board was still on the living room table, awaiting the next move, as though its players had momentarily left from their game. In the bedroom closet, clothes still hung, summer dresses and sandals, ready to be worn for an evening stroll along the port road. The children’s toys lay in their bedroom, puzzles and stuffed animals they would have no interest in anymore, now that they had grown. 

Elizabeth’s breath caught on her emotion. 

That summer had been hot and lethargic. All morning Kostas and Elizabeth painted the peeling, rusting spots of the metal balcony railings. They sought relief from the heat in the house at midday but tossed on their bed, too hot to sleep. It was late in the afternoon when Elizabeth persuaded Kostas to go down to the Glisteri cove for a swim to cool off.  Kostas had been unwilling at first, complaining of a headache, but in the end had followed her down the monopati to the cove. Tucked away, the cove was deserted of tourists and locals. The water, clear and sparkling, felt deliciously cool. They spread their towels on the sun-warmed pebbles to dry off. Tired from their activities of the day Elizabeth dozed off.  

When she awoke the sun was setting, casting its golden light onto the water.  There was no sign of Kostas. Elizabeth sought out the contours of the cove. The beach was unoccupied, the water in the cove tranquil and undisturbed.  Elizabeth’s eyes followed the steep monopati leading up the cliff to the house but could not see a figure making his way up the path. Elizabeth thought it strange that he would not have woken her if he had intended to return to the house. Elizabeth stood, filled with unease, and hurried up the incline. The house slumbered in the warm evening air. Kostas was nowhere to be seen.  

By nightfall, Elizabeth’s frightened heart thudded.  She ran along the cliff road to the neighbor’s house, stammered out that she could not find her husband, that they had been swimming in the Glisteri cove and he had not returned home. The neighbors were soothing and gave her a cup of mountain tea. The woman sat by her while the man drove down to the town for help.  

Elizabeth felt legless. She sat awake through the black, sinister night. The men from the town had gone down to the cove again, searched the small beach and rocky outcroppings to no avail. They drove back down into the town to search the tavernas, the alleyways, the kafeneio, where often Greek men gathered. By dawn, Elizabeth felt ashen. She could not keep her hands from trembling.  

Around noon the men of the town came to the house, their features etched with distress. They found Kostas in the cove, lifeless, washed up upon the pebbles. Elizabeth’s thoughts clamored in her mind, disjointed, unbelieving. It had been a perfectly calm day. There had been no ripple in the sea. He was a strong swimmer, having grown up on the island. She would have heard a cry for help.

The rest of that ghastly day was a blur of images as a flurry of activity ensued.  Paramedics arrived from the Skopelos health center, bringing a gurney and a pick-up truck to transport Kostas’ body from the cove. Telephone calls were made, organizing a ferry passage to Volos, where the body was to be examined in the morgue. A police officer came, taking lengthy notes on a clipboard. The neighbor’s wife handed Elizabeth the telephone, telling her to call the children in England. Tea was brewed. Elizabeth sat, stunned. The earth had fallen out beneath her.

Elizabeth, throat tight, walked slowly through the rooms of the villa, touching the rustic furniture that Kostas had meant to sand and stain to a luster again. The underlying yellow of aged paint was visible on the outside walls where their whitewashing efforts had not yet been completed. Kostas had wanted to paint the interior trim of the doors and windows lime green, the color of the underside of an olive leaf. The villa was a work in progress, its promise still fragile and tenuous.

Elizabeth sat down on a wicker chair and breathed in the scent of the pines. She felt the stone walls of the villa sturdy against her back and Kostas’ presence. When darkness encroached and settled between the twisted branches of the ancient olive trees, Elizabeth finally got up. The wind, she noticed, had finally died down.

In the taverna that evening, Elizabeth was surprised to see locals, laughing and boisterous, occupying most of the tables. In a corner sat a bouzouki group. The twang of their stringed instruments filled the room. Women trailed by children carried plates piled high with food: lamb, lemon potatoes, tzatziki, amber wine carafes, sticky sweets.

Elizabeth stood, shifting and uneasy, until the waiter spotted her and smiled a beckon of welcome.  “This is my friend Elizabeth,” he said to the assembled group. “Einai inglesa.”  She is English.

Elizabeth was promptly seated next to a buxom woman. A plate of food was placed before her. The encouraging smiles of the Greeks urged her to partake in their celebration.

“Today is February 25,” the waiter explained to her, filling her glass with white wine. “It is feast day for Skopelos to honor St. Riginos. He is the patron saint of the island.”

He sat down next to her. “Do you know the story of St. Riginos?” 

Elizabeth shook her head.

“A ferocious dragon lived on the island in ancient days,” the waiter explained, his eyes dark, voice low. The dragon tormented and killed the islanders. Riginos, brave and strong, brandished his sword. He set out to slay the dragon every day but could not conquer the dragon. One day, he pursued the dragon to a cliff not far from the bays of Staphylosand Agnontas. With his sword he created a crevasse in the earth into which the dragon fell, perishing in the abyss. 

“To this day you can see the cliff near Staphylos bay and the Drakondoschima, the schism of the dragon.” The waiter’s expression was so earnest that Elizabeth had to wonder when the interweaving of myth and reality had taken place in his heart.  

“Often the islanders name their boys Riginos and their girls Rigina in honor of the saint. Strong like the olive trees, rooted in the family for generations to come.”

Elizabeth felt a hint of warmth creep up inside her after the long, wind-battered day. It all came together for her then: the villa, Kostas, the waiter with his tale about conquered demons. It made sense in this place of tradition and togetherness.  

Elizabeth’s gaze fell upon Elpida. She had joined the dancers in the middle of the taverna and started to sway, awkwardly, to the notes of the bouzouki player. When she stumbled, she was quickly steadied by various hands near her.

“And Elpida?” Elizabeth asked the waiter. “Who was she named after?”

The waiter looked over to Elpida and gentleness creased his features.

“Elpida?” he smiled.  “Elpida means hope in Greek.”

Birgit Lennertz Sarrimanolis has been published in Cirque Journal, Five on the Fifth, and 49 Writers. Her story “April Supermoon” aired on Juneau KTOO’s Community Connections series. She was a finalist in the 2020 Pacific Northwest Writers Association literary contest and won second place in the 2021 Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. Her memoir, Transplanted, is forthcoming from Cirque Press Books. She regularly attends several writing conferences, including the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, the Seattle Writing Workshop, and the Kachemak Bay Writers Conference. Birgit holds a B.A. in art history and German studies, an M.A. in art history, and a Ph.D. in art education. She has lived in Indonesia, India, Chile, Argentina, Egypt, Germany, and Greece, but now calls Alaska home, where she writes overlooking the Tanana Valley. You can read her blog and learn more about Birgit at her website: www.birgitsarrimanolis.com.

Rosalia Scalia

Alice squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face to the passenger window when her father began singing. Rudy, who always sang as soon as he turned over the van, crooned a Sinatra tune, an old favorite from his Rat Pack repertoire. He sang in the car the way other fathers sang in the shower. As a child, his singing had embarrassed her, but as an adult, she embraced it. Except on this morning, Alice was in no mood for a song. 

Groggy from a late-night date that had gone sideways, she would have preferred extra sleep before work, but no, her father insisted that their vending machines must be replenished at the butt crack of dawn when day shift employees arrived and night shift employees left. Routinely, on the days they needed to restock snack inventory or change things up, they stood among the first customers when Costco opened its doors. For her, the machines constituted a hobby, something she did with her father, despite having invested in them. For Rudy, the machines represented the foundation for a retirement job that would require less physical labor and be more lucrative than his plumbing company. A business they could operate together. At thirty-four, Alice couldn’t imagine a retirement job. The whole idea of “retirement job” seemed like an oxymoron to her, and the vending machines simply provided her a good way to spend time with her dad. 

Rudy had owned and operated Oliver’s Heating and Plumbing since before she was born. She’d spent many hours as a child in the squat building of his plumbing business, where she helped—first by answering phones and filing invoices, and then with scheduling. In high school, she had computerized the scheduling and accounting systems. Then after college, she started a real job with the Baltimore Port, where she worked her way up to port master, thanks to the practical skills honed helping Rudy. She loved her job, loved knowing the comings and goings of the ships, tugs, and commercial vessels, loved solving problems they brought when sailing into the harbor. She managed more people and a bigger budget than Rudy’s plumbing business, but she never mentioned that to him. Instead, she wondered again how she’d let him talk her into owning half a vending business with him. They both enjoyed opera. Why hadn’t she suggested season tickets to the opera when he raised the issue of vending machines? She’d given him the green light for two machines—the old-fashioned sort, relatively cheap to buy—and then somehow heard herself agreeing to the acquisition of six more “smart combos,” computerized gizmos that offered both snacks and drinks and emailed them reports. Alice used the reports to prepare the data sheets for the Costco runs. Now eight machines later, she imagined them as baby birds needing constant attention. A pair of brainy machines sat in three different downtown gyms, and the “hobby” increasingly required chunks of her free time. At Costco, they’d purchase enough inventory to last several weeks, storing them in the office supply room at Oliver’s Plumbing. A vending machine Rudy had installed at the plumbing company became part of the plumbing operation and his baby. 

“Did you eat the chicken’s ass? What the hell’s wrong with you?” her father asked without looking at her. She recognized his exasperated expression, a single gray eyebrow raised under the unruly silver mop brushed away from his beard and mustache. She had nothing new to say. 

“My cat died,” she said, surprising herself. Bella’s absence had created a feline-shaped hole in her heart.

“Still with the cat? I thought that cat died ages ago,” he said. 

“Only a month.”

“You’re still upset about a cat that’s been dead for a month? She was a cat, for Pete’s sake. She lived a long time. Get another one,” he said before belting out the lyrics of Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.”

Alice shrugged. “They’re not interchangeable. They have individual personalities,” she said over his singing. 

“It’s not complicated,” he sang, then changed the lyrics to the song. “Get another one,” he sang, holding the tone of the word “one” while Sinatra sang “moon.”

How would he understand? He did not grow up with pets nor allow Alice any when she’d been a kid, saying he didn’t have time or money for one. But she’d had Bella for nineteen years. Aside from Rudy, the cat proved to be the longest relationship she’d ever experienced.

“A new cat will have its own personality. End of problem,” he said in a regular tone, turning in to the Costco parking lot. “Why do you overcomplicate things?” 

Rudy, a precise man, credited his success to being the neatest, cleanest, and most organized plumber in the city. He pulled their collapsible wagon from the van’s rear doors. Later, they organized the snack boxes inside the van’s cargo area, where plumbing equipment sat in ordered rows with smaller tools affixed to the bulkhead. This echoed the pattern of all the businesses Rudy had launched in which Alice had worked, including delivering greeting balloons and the homemade rum cakes he’d baked in a church basement kitchen.

With the grace of well-practiced choreography, they prepped for their route—first, the three gyms where the six smart machines were located, followed by the employee break rooms at the Baltimore Port and at the railroad depot, next door. From the data sheet, Alice read the names of the items needed for the first two machines while Rudy cut open the boxes and placed them into the wagon. The combo machines offered different, healthier snacks, like protein and energy bars, enhanced waters, sunflower seeds, and packets of nuts and trail mix, whereas the two regular machines in the employee break rooms provided sweet, fatty snacks like cinnamon buns, mini-donuts, and packages of cookies that could be eaten by pulling the packaging back, eliminating the need to touch the food with dirty fingers. She checked items on the data sheet as Rudy loaded them into the wagon before pulling the spray glass cleaner and paper towels from the bulkhead and handing them to him; he arranged them into a specific place before locking the wheels and setting a purple Crown Royal bag atop the load. 

When they pulled out of the parking lot toward the first gym, Rudy resumed singing, and she wondered if her father’s driving would suffer if he simply listened to the radio or drove in silence. Just before reaching the first gym’s parking lot, Rudy stopped.

“When I was your age, you were alive for two whole years,” he said, seriously. 

“You told me a hundred times already,” she said. 

“Listen, kiddo, maybe you need a husband and a kid, not a cat,” he said. “It’s perspective.”

Her mother had died the day she was born, and Alice often wondered if Rudy wouldn’t have busied himself in endless work if she lived. 

“That might mean I’d be too busy to be in this seat right now.” 

Her father laughed. “A husband would outlast a cat,” he said. “So would a kid.”

Bella had only expected to be fed and loved. Nothing else. No school tuition, music lessons, clothes, sleepless nights, or all the other necessities related to a kid. Alice’s window had not yet closed, but she couldn’t seem to land a committed man and had no interest in the arduous task of single parenting like Rudy. Now the cat who’d stayed by her side through nineteen years—multiple promotions, boyfriends, apartments, and a house—was gone. The vet had informed her months earlier that Bella had cancer, but it still shocked her when the kitty began to drool. She’d attributed Bella’s weight loss to age. She’d expected the vet to prescribe some medicine to control the drooling, but instead, he showed Alice a bloody tumor in the feline’s mouth, saying, she’s nineteen, and it’s time to let her go. Alice wept uncontrollably as the vet inserted three needles into the cat’s front paws. She’d held the soft, black, furry body close until Bella had stopped breathing. Recriminations and guilt for all the ways she’d failed Bella overwhelmed her, and a gauzy blanket of grief enveloped her as she left the vet’s office zombie-like with Bella’s empty carrier in hand.

“You’re going to outlive every animal you get,” he said.

She shrugged. He thrust his bearded chin forward and scrunched his brows, his expression of contemplation. 

Last night’s date neglected to ask her a single question about herself, talked nonstop about his gaming achievements, and referred to video characters like they were real people. She ended the date before midnight, using the early call with Rudy as an excuse. 

Rudy unlocked the first gym’s vending machine’s front door and reached for the overflow coin hopper and handed it to her. She dumped the coins into the purple Crown Royal bag before returning it to him. They left the upper coin hopper alone so that the machine could make change for a five-dollar bill. He passed her the cash hopper. She emptied and returned it, inserting the cash into a white envelope labeled with the machine’s number. They kept small envelopes numbered for the cash from each machine in the Crown Royal bag. They worked in silence: Alice handed Rudy the snacks, which he placed in their designated spots before checking the trays and machine’s innards to make sure everything worked. He shut and locked the machine door and moved to the second.

“Not like there’s a cat shortage anywhere,” he said, breaking the silence. “Animal shelters have a boatload of cats.” He unlocked and opened the second machine’s door and repeated the process. “Why stop at one? Get a pair? Three?”

“Give it a rest, Dad,” she said, dumping coins into the purple bag and cleaning the front glass doors and keyboard panels of both machines.            

“Meeeeeow,” he said, stretching out the sound as he walked toward the door, pulling the wagon. “Maybe you’ll talk more if I meow.” 

Alice couldn’t help laughing. “Okay, Rudy!” she teased him.

In the parking lot, her father pulled the wagon toward the van, the yellow, red, and black Oliver’s Plumbing logo brandishing both side panels. He situated a narrow, portable ramp from the van floor to the ground and maneuvered the wagon into the van, where they filled it with items for the next pair of machines, repeating the process for all eight machines. At the end of their run, the purple bag bulged with coins and the cash envelopes. They picked up lunch from a nearby diner before returning to the plumbing building. In the reception area, Helen, the office manager, was writing the next week’s job list next to plumbers’ names on a large whiteboard. She stacked clipboards with data sheets for each assignment in the cubbies labeled with plumbers’ names. Helen’s hair was neon purple. She’d dyed it when she turned seventy, she said, to be “visible.” It’s also why she regularly wore fluffy pink slippers and black cat-eyed, rhinestone-studded glasses.

“How’s tricks?” she said, without looking at either of them.

“Routine,” Rudy said. “Except Alice’s cat died last month, and it stole her tongue.” 

He laughed at his own joke.

Helen stood to hug Alice, embracing her with her wide arms. “Aww, honey. I’m sorry.” She squeezed Alice tight. “If you meditate, you can try to connect with your cat’s energy,” she said in Alice’s ear, voice sotto, but loud enough for Rudy to hear. 

“Don’t listen to Helen’s woo-woo crap,” he said.

“It’s real,” Helen said. “Like gravity. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

“Gravity, my ass,” Rudy said, placing the lunches in the office’s kitchen for Helen and Alice to handle while he unloaded snack boxes and drinks from the van. 

“Smells yummy!” Helen said, opening the bags. “I’m starved.”

“Can you really connect to Bella?” Alice asked, washing her hands at the kitchen sink. 

“Without a doubt,” Helen said.

They heard Rudy dumping coins into the sorting and counting machines; the sounds of swirling coins and the hum of the machines made the walls vibrate.

“Are you telling Alice ghost stories again?” he said, entering the kitchen and washing his hands before joining Alice and Helen at the table. 

“I want to connect to Bella’s energy,” Alice said, between bites. 

“If connecting to dead people and pets were real, everybody would be doing it,” he said, sounding annoyed. 

“Never said it was easy. Only possible,” Helen said, biting into her sandwich.

Rudy waved the thought away. “Helen’s endless ghost stories,” he said. “You believe that, next thing you’re paying a charlatan who tells you he talks to dead people.”

Helen shrugged. “Believe. Don’t believe. Charlatans are out there, but so are woo-woo people who didn’t ask for the ability.”

Rudy shook his head. The counter/sorter machines stopped. He left to reload them.

“How?” Alice whispered. 

“Meditate,” Helen said. 

The answer disappointed Alice. 

# # #

A few weeks later, everything in the world started shutting down. A new virus was infecting and killing people. Alice began teleworking, while Rudy complained about an avalanche of extra emergency plumbing calls.

“Jamokes flushing wipes down their toilets at home like they do at work, except now they’re screwing up their own pipes,” he said, showing her a postcard he and Helen made instructing customers what not to flush. 

Gyms closed. Schools closed for a few weeks, then reopened virtually. Restaurants and eateries morphed into curbside pickup and carryout operations as emergency rooms and ICU units overflowed. Rudy and Alice lost access to the vending machines at the three gyms, but the two located at the employee break rooms at the Port and railroad depot needed more frequent replenishing for supply chain employees, who were now considered essential. 

“Let’s get two more machines for the supermarkets,” Rudy said.

“Maybe after the virus goes away,” she said, sidestepping the question. 

“I can ID locations while you think about it,” he said. 

“I’m not ready for more machines.”

“It’s a good return for little work. You’ve gone soft with your cushy government job.”

Now masked everywhere they went, she and Rudy replenished and maintained two machines four times a week. They used copious amounts of hand sanitizer, wore medical gloves while handling products, wiping them down with sanitary sheets before inserting them into the machines; they cleaned the machine buttons before and after servicing them. Vending machine income plummeted to a fraction of what it had been before the pandemic, motivating Rudy to push for an expansion. She wanted to sell the six gym machines, but Rudy wanted to ride out the disruption. 

Months into the pandemic, he called saying he couldn’t make the run.

“What’s going on?”

“Emergency call,” he said.

“You can’t send someone else?”

“We’re short-staffed,” he said. “Can you handle both machines alone?”

Maneuvering the wagon in and out of the van and into the two buildings presented Mt. Everest-size challenges. At the railroad depot, she parked close to the entrance. The wagon rolled too fast down the portable ramp, catching her left heel multiple times. Fuck, she screamed aloud as pain seared her heel and radiated into her shin, her eyes watering from it. She bent over to rub her shin and heel and to collect herself once the wagon sat on flat ground. Then, the stupid wagon wobbled from the weight of cans and bottles as she pulled it toward the entrance. At the entrance, it tilted, sending a lemon-flavored soft drink flying. It hit the ground and exploded, spraying her, the wagon, and everything around her including the depot’s glass door with sticky liquid. Sticky from soft drink residue, she collected the still spraying can and tossed it into the trash. Although the paper towels felt damp, she cleaned the railroad depot’s glass door, instead smearing the stickiness. The hand sanitizer made her sticky hands worse. She rubbed her palms on her jeans.

Employees requesting snacks had plastered adhesive notes with suggestions on the machine’s door. She slipped them into the cash envelope. It took twice as long to replenish the machines and check the innards. She washed up in the restroom and with a wet restroom paper towel cleaned the front door before leaving. She missed Rudy. He handled the wagon with ease. It took an extra thirty minutes to restock a single machine. She set the snacks required for the second machine into the wagon. At the Port break room, a note taped to the machine notified her it wouldn’t take change. Rudy would either repair it himself or they’d call a service company.

She completed the coin count and paperwork after midnight and headed home without dinner. She texted Rudy, “Done. Change collector on Port machine is broken. Do you want me to call the repair service? Or do you want to fix it?” 

At home, hungry and exhausted, she showered in the quiet house. Bella’s absence felt palpable. She’d been an exceptionally talkative cat, which Alice loved about her. She meowed for sardines promptly at 6 a.m., and Alice appreciated that her feline alarm clock kept her on track and gave her focus. The kitty also discerned shitty people, swishing her tail and staring at those she disliked, people who later always exhibited a less than stellar character. Without Bella, she felt unmoored. She fell into bed. Solo trips represented a vulnerability, she thought, drifting off to sleep. 

She struggled to stay awake at work the next day and realized she should have used leave but gave it no thought when Rudy hadn’t texted or called. She knew the pandemic had increased plumbing emergencies; after work, she slept. The next day, when he failed to respond to her text about the broken machine, she called and texted his cell again. When she called his line at the office, the call went straight to voice mail. Helen didn’t pick up either. The following day, she called again: “Dad, what’s up for tonight? Do you want me to call a repair service for the broken machine?” 

A few hours later, he phoned. “Hey, kiddo. I can’t make it tonight. You got this. Get the number from Helen for the repair.” His voice sounded subdued, scratchy. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Emergency call,” he said, almost in a whisper. 

“Emergency call, my ass,” she said. “You’re sick.”

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a bad cold. Maybe the flu.”

“I’m taking you to the ER.” 

“For a sore throat? No way.”

“Stubborn old man,” she said. 

When she let herself into her father’s house, she found Rudy lying on his stomach on the sofa, barely able to stand, still wearing work clothes. Knowing his routine of showering after work, this alarmed her.

“Can you make it to the car?” she asked.

When he shook his head, she called 9-1-1. 

At the ED, she handled the billfold biopsy, and then the nurse gave her a sheet with phone numbers and told her to leave. She left Rudy’s ID and insurance cards but took his wallet and phone. Later, a nurse called, saying Rudy tested positive for the new virus and was being admitted. How a careful man like Rudy became infected baffled her. He’d worn gloves and a mask in public places. She considered his plumbing service calls into sick people’s homes and called Helen. The entire staff, and customers who Rudy had called just before he fell ill, needed to get tested and possibly quarantine.

“Visualize him coming home,” Helen said. “I’ll put his name on a bunch of prayer lists. And with my friends who do energy work.”

Helen’s friends doing “energy work” offered Alice no solace. Returning to her empty house—1,946 square feet of solitude—felt brutal; doing everything for herself and by herself seemed like watching herself die a little inside every day.

She played phone tag with nurses who kept her updated. He’d spent one night in a regular room before being moved to the virus’ ICU unit, where nurses dressed in yellow protective gear that made them look like astronauts. Within two weeks, they put him on a ventilator. Several plumbing employees, including Helen, tested positive and were quarantined. Alice told Helen to close the shop until everyone quarantined for two weeks. Even more puzzling, Alice did not test positive despite the proximity to her father.

“He could have gotten it anywhere,” Helen said. 

“Maybe plumbers shouldn’t be going into homes where people are sick,” Alice said. 

“They wear protective gear. You know how careful Rudy is.”

“He was still exposed,” Alice said. 

Maintaining two machines exhausted her. She collected mail and watered Rudy’s plants at his house. She imagined selling all the machines while he was in the hospital, but she couldn’t face his disappointment when he returned. Although his nurses called often, they reported discouraging news, a Ferris wheel of days with ups and downs. On the fortieth day of his hospitalization, a nurse called, saying Rudy had taken a turn for the worse. 

In the ICU anteroom, she donned all the protective gear—shoe and head covers, gloves, scrubs overtop her clothes and a yellow gown overtop the scrubs, two masks, a shield. She left her purse in a bag at the nurse’s station and then stepped into his room. She clutched Rudy’s hand in her gloved one. Still attached to the ventilator breathing for him, he appeared absent, his beard unkempt. She came to say goodbye, clutching his hand as the ventilator stopped. She’d wept uncontrollably over her cat, but now in Rudy’s room, no tears came. Dazed, she asked for a chaplain.

# # #

A muted funeral forced her father’s friends to pay their respect from their cars in the cemetery. A month later, she still hadn’t made any decisions about Rudy’s assets. Helen continued operating the plumbing business with Alice signing documents for her father. Alice made vending runs, and she started the process to establish his estate with the state. Unable to focus on any one thing, she looked for signs from Rudy, signs that Helen said would appear: coins, feathers, songs on the radio with messages, cardinals, dragonflies. No signs came. 

The man at the pizzeria, bald with silver earrings, asked her what she wanted from behind his mask. 

“Picking up. Alice Oliver.”

The man looked through his orders, then shrugged.

“Sorry. Nothing for Alice Oliver,” he said, barely audible through his mask.

“I phoned it in. Cauliflower crust pizza with artichokes and vegan cheese.”

The man laughed, his eyes crinkled with mirth. “We don’t sell that here.”

“It’s on your website menu.”

“Maybe you called another place.” 

She was certain she’d called this place, Vinny’s Pizza Palace. “I paid for it over the phone.”

“Not here,” he said. 

“Yes, here. I called it in. I paid for it. You said twenty minutes. It’s twenty goddamned minutes. What the fuck do you mean, ‘not here’?” Alice surprised herself, slapping the counter, shouting at the man for something as dumb as a pizza. She couldn’t stop the tears either—crying seemed to be happening too much lately. She had stepped into an alternative world where everything looked familiar but felt different, where she wanted to slap the man behind the counter.

“Pizza Pie in the Sky,” the man said, pointing toward the south wall.

“Stop mocking me,” Alice shouted.

“Pie in the Sky Pizza, down the street. Sells those froufrou vegan pizzas.”  

She’d come to the wrong place. Face flushed, she yelled an apology and fled, realizing how ridiculous she sounded. 

At Pie in the Sky Pizza, she picked up her order and hurried home, grateful for a night free of a vending run. She had not yet decided to keep or sell the machines. Ever prepared, Rudy had long ago outlined his arrangements and registered his will, providing a road map of what he wanted her to do with his stuff. There was too much of it. She’d inherited his house and plumbing business, but she wanted to preserve everything as if he’d return. Before she could open the pizza box, her doorbell rang. Through the peephole, she saw a man wearing a red bandana overtop long, curly black hair. He held a large cardboard box. His cheekbones jutted against his surgical mask, and he was humming a sea shanty. He looked suspicious.

“Who is it?” she yelled, sounding mean, without opening the door. 

“Andre,” he said. “I have something from Rudy.”

“Rudy who?” she said, testing him.

“Rudy Oliver, the plumber,” he said. “Your dad, right? Months ago, he paid for what’s in this box for you.”

Alice opened the door. Andre, dressed in cycling clothes, slipped off his shoes before entering and walked straight into her house carrying the box, which he set on the living room floor. He stepped six feet away from her. She put on her mask. Tall, lean, and muscular, she guessed him to be about her age.

“How do you know Rudy?” 

Andre shrugged. “Friend of my father’s. Aunt Helen works for him.”

Nonplussed by her hostility, he hummed the sea shanty and opened the box. 

“Helen never mentioned you,” Alice said.

Andre shrugged. “She never mentioned you either,” he said. “Until Rudy called about what’s in this box.”

Alice heard loud meows.

“Your dad asked me about them months ago. But they weren’t born yet. He planned to give them to you himself,” he said, pulling out two tuxedo kittens; both fit in his large hands. He handed one to Alice.

“Meet Sylvester and Luna,” he said. Both kittens had green eyes. “You need to get them spayed and neutered. You know the drill.” 

The male refused to be contained and wiggled free from Alice’s hands. Andre set Luna on the floor.

Alice felt her heart beating in the barrel of her chest. “Where did they come from?” She fished Sylvester from under the sofa and held his tiny body close. He purred into her neck. She tried holding them both close to her chest, but they wriggled free and scampered away. 

“My ex split and left me her pregnant cat. Rudy had said yours died.” 

“She was nineteen,” she said. 

“That’s a long life,” Andre said. 

He pulled two folders, one red and one blue, out of the box. “You need to sign these,” he said, handing her two sets of adoption papers. “Rudy already paid the adoption fees. Basically, you’re agreeing to get them fixed and to take them to the vet. They’ve had their first round. Due to the pandemic, I’ve been asking adopters to make written plans naming who’d take care of the cats if anything happened to the adopters.”

“That’s grim,” Alice said. She signed and returned the papers. “It’s just me.”

He placed a sheet in each folder and kept two. “Nope. It’s practical.” 

“Who knew about this?”

“Everyone at Oliver’s Plumbing,” he said. 

“Rudy got all this,” he said, pointing to the contents in the box. He set a pair of litter mats on the floor, two stainless steel litter boxes atop and two large bags of litter. 

“He insisted on the stainless steel litter boxes, just so you know. He also got kibble and some cans of kitten food, enough for a month. That’s still in my car.”

Andre hummed to himself. Alice picked up the beaded air freshener containers from the box and pictured Rudy. Of course, he’d insist on scented beads. Andre pulled a box with a cat water fountain in it and handed it to Alice. “This too.”

Alice led him down the stairs into the basement, where she had kept Bella’s litter. Andre arranged the boxes side by side and poured litter into each one. Alice set the kittens down, one in each litter box, as soon as Andre finished.

“I hate to leave them,” he said. “They’re the last two. I kept the mom. She’s a tuxedo. She had seven kittens, all mostly all black or gray. These are the only tuxes.”

The kittens climbed out of the litter boxes and scampered into the front room of the basement, where household goods sat lined on shelves in neat, organized rows. When Andre saw the shelves, he chuckled. “Looks like the house version of the plumbing shop. I’m sorry about Rudy,” Andre said. “He was a character.”

She didn’t want him to leave. 

“Helen said to tell you “‘signs come in all ways.’”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Not me. Rudy. He insisted on stainless steel litter boxes. Didn’t know they existed, but they’re easier to clean.”

“Goodness, where are my manners? How about something to drink? How about some pizza?”

Andre shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m vegan.”

“It’s from Pie in the Sky Pizza.” 

Andre set the folders on the kitchen table and sang the sea shanty aloud as he washed his hands at the kitchen sink.

Rosalia Scalia writes fiction and nonfiction. Her magazine and newspaper articles have appeared in local, regional, and national publications, and she has worked as a staff reporter for a local weekly newspaper, The Messenger. She has written for Web sites including E-Diets.com and Sikhchic.com. Currently, she serves as an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine; her poetry has been published in a U.S. Department of Agriculture newspaper and in a publication by the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Her short story collection, Stumbling Toward Grace, (Unsolicited Press) was published in November 2021, and a second collection, Under the Radar, is forthcoming in early 2025. She earned a master’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University in May 2003 and is working on her first novel, Delia’s Concerto. The first chapter was one of seven finalists in a competition held by the National League of American Pen Women and a more recent version was published as a story titled “Soul Music,” in Crack the Spine #109. Her story “Henry’s Fall” was a finalist in the Gival Press Short Story competition. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Amarillo Bay; The Baltimore Review; Blue Lake Review; Crack The Spine; Door Is A Jar; Epiphany; Euphony; The Furious Gazelle; Green Hills Literary Lantern, Hawaii Pacific Review; Mad River Review; moonshine Review; North Atlantic Review; Notre Dame Review; The Oklahoma Review; Pebble Lake; Pennsylvania English; The Portland Review; Quercus Review; Ragazine; Riddle Fence; Silk Road Review; Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore; Sweet Tree Review; South Asian Ensemble; Spout Magazine; Talking River; Taproot; Valparaiso Fiction Review; Verdad; and Willow Review. The story that appears in Taproot won first prize in its annual literary fiction competition for 2007, and “Uncharted Steps” merited a 2010 Individual Artist Grant from the Maryland State Art Council. “Sister Rafaele Heals the Sick,” first published by Pebble Lake Review and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, appeared again in an anthology titled City Sages: Baltimore (CityLit Press, May 1, 2010), a collection of stories by 32 Baltimore writers, including Poe, Anne Tyler, and Alice McDermott, among others. Most recently, her story “You’ll Do Fine” was a recipient of the Willow Review Award for the Spring 2011 issue. Her short story collection, Sister Rafaele Heals the Sick & Other Stories, was shortlisted in the 2013 Santa Fe Writers Project Fiction Awards. A subsequent version of the collection, which includes additional stories and has been re-titled Stumbling Toward Grace, was a finalist for the 2019 Hawk Mountain Award for a Short Story Collection.

Alice Landrum

On a sunny morning in June, Marge found an empty seat on a bus in Arusha, Tanzania. This bus contained several other middle-age white males and females, all from the United States. Marge, a retired botany professor now traveler, propelled her body into a window seat on the left side, where she landed with a thump.

Outside lay bare red earth that glowed in the sunlight. The occasional green foliage of acacia trees with their flat tops or the thick green leaves of an aloe plant complemented the red that dominated the landscape. While she studied this view, the driver, a silent middle-aged Tanzanian man, waited for the lead Tanzanian guide, a younger male with the cryptic name “OC”, who radiated enthusiasm as soon as he climbed up the bus steps and turned to speak in distinct English.

This tour had arrived after an eleven-hour flight at Dar es Salaam late the evening before. After a frustratingly slow check through customs inside the airport, there had been a long, rough bus ride to the lodge. Near midnight she entered a dark, wood-paneled room in a separate hut where red flower petals scattered across the white bedcover gave her a pleasant jolt of surprise. She fell asleep instantly.

Following an early wakeup and coffee with a roll at the main lodge, another bus waited to take them to a local pottery studio where a Tanzanian family molded red clay pots to sell for filtering water. As the bus pulled out from the hotel lodge onto the highway, Marge watched native people walk on dirt paths along the sides of the road. The women wore kanga, loose cotton lengths of cloth that were draped around their bodies. The colorful designs of the kangacaptured the eyes of any onlooker. The younger women carried woven fiber containers on their upright heads, while the elderly carried kindling on their bent-over backs. Beyond these dirt paths sat wooden shacks with rusty tin roofs. Low green hills rose behind the shacks.

The driver made a quick U-turn to the left. The bus bounced over deep ruts and protruding rocks. Finally with relief for all, the bus stopped. Marge rose out of her seat with wobbly legs. She steadied herself with a hand on the back of the seat in front and then made the step-down onto a gravel driveway that led to an open studio. A metal roof over wooden posts sheltered the studio. Under the roof there was an area for preparing the clay, a potter’s wheel to throw the pots, and an oven to fire the pots. Stacks of finished red clay pots rested against a studio wall.

With serious faces, the owner of the studio and his daughter greeted the group from the US. Their manner was polite, but for Marge there was a feeling that these local people tolerated the tourists from America but wanted to get back to their business. This visit by outsiders was a necessary inconvenience.

The father and daughter began to explain the steps required to manufacture the three-foot-tall red clay pots designed to filter dirty water so that it becomes clean, drinkable water. The guide, OC, interpreted for the family, who spoke Swahili but not English. The people of Tanzania needed more clean water. One finished pot rested on a table to show the tourists how the dirty water became clear as it filtered through the clay barrier into a storage vessel. The family offered for the visitors to take a drink of the clean water, but no one took the offer.

The clay pot workshop fascinated Marge, who loved to see simple solutions for complicated problems such as Tanzania’s clean water shortage, a problem that could soon be a worldwide problem. She pulled out her phone and then her digital camera and began to shoot photos of the pots and the people making the pots. As she took the photos, the daughter shifted her eyes away and turned her body to avoid eye contact with the lens. Dressed in a yellow cotton shirt and pants, the daughter was an attractive young woman with short hair and the smooth skin of youth, but she appeared to be afraid of the camera. Her father watched Marge but said nothing.

OC saw Marge with her camera and called to her, “You can’t take pictures.”

“I’m sorry,” Marge apologized and tucked her phone and the digital camera back into her brown leather tote with its leather strap draped over her left shoulder. After putting her camera away, Marge decided to buy a pot to donate to the Maasai tribe. She hoped to establish some goodwill with these people who did not seem to trust the Americans, but being a realist, she doubted that her gesture would work.

Marge had forgotten OC’s earlier warning not to take pictures of the native people. That morning OC had met with the group outside of the lodge on the veranda shaded by the dense, big-leafed foliage of banana trees and wild date palms. During that meeting after introductions, he shared the rules for the safari trip: Be on time in the morning. Do not take pictures of the native people. Do not tip the porters. Stay in your tent at night. Do not try to pet a lion. At the end he repeated the warning, “Do not take pictures of the people without their permission.”

Speaking in clear, concise English, OC shared his background. He stood in front of the group with the comfortable ease of an athlete. As she watched him, Marge wondered if he had played soccer. At the university he had studied wildlife management, an important field of work in Tanzania. Now he held a coveted position as a guide in the tourist industry. He spoke fluent English in addition to French, Swahili, and his native tribal dialect. He explained to the group that there were more than one hundred tribal groups in Tanzania. Each group had its own dialect. This Babel of dialects had made it necessary for the leaders of the government to insist on the common language of Swahili to make commerce and education easier. OC talked to the group with a warm, relaxed demeanor that gave him a sense of maturity and experience.

Marge liked this intelligent young man who gave them clear lists of expectations and a plan for each day. As he talked, he stood in front of a large textile that hung outside on the wall of the veranda under the shade of the roof. The shape of an enormous burgundy turtle dominated the textile. Marge’s attention kept wandering to the turtle instead of OC. She wondered what the turtle represented in the Tanzanian culture.

Rain drizzled from solid gray clouds the next morning as the group traveled to a Maasai rural village, a boma. Dressed in their red wraparound robes, the dark men of this tribe towered over Marge in her khakis and loose white shirt. This tall, nomadic tribe who had herded cattle for hundreds of years in northern Tanzania wore red to scare away lions. Polite and gracious, these people prepared to give the group a tour of one of their large, mud-covered huts.

When Marge entered the hut with the tour group, the smell of cow dung assaulted her nose and took her back to her childhood on a farm in the Midwest. Inside the hut, small streams of sunlight entered from holes in the apex of the roof. From the tribal leader, the group learned that the tribe added elephant dung to the walls of their huts to keep insects away. Marge thought that this method of repelling insects was safer for the environment than the many insecticides used in the US.

After a few minutes, Marge’s nose adapted to the acrid smell of the dung. Meanwhile, the chief took the group to a large chamber in the hut where wooden benches lined the perimeter. In a deep, comforting voice, he asked everyone to “Please sit and let us share this cup of tea together.” After taking a sip from a ceramic cup, he handed the cup to the visitor next to him. The chief invited everyone to share this drink as a sign of goodwill and informed them that the tea drinking ceremony was an important part of Maasai culture. Marge hesitated to take part in this ceremony, but when the cup came to her, she did take a small sip.

At the end of the tea drinking ceremony, the group returned to the open space outside the hut. OC presented the gift of Marge’s clay pot to the village leaders, who thanked her, but their eyes lacked warmth. Acceptance by this patriarchal culture would require more than a brief visit and a gift from a white woman.

The search for exotic animals in the wild began as they climbed into Land Rovers to ride to a river where a herd of elephants gathered. After the driver found the elephants moving through the bush, the tourists watched the matriarch lead the herd across the river. Marge snapped photos as the older elephants nudged a baby across to the bush-covered bank on the other side of the muddy water. Once the herd had made it safely to the other side, the driver turned the vehicle away from the elephants on the riverbank and returned to the bumpy road that had brought them to this site.

Feeling a little light-headed, Marge looked across to another Land Rover where an older woman leaned her head against a rear window. She did not look well.

As they traveled across the Serengeti plain, the Land Rover carried them over rutted dirt roads which made a ride in any type of vehicle rough, one lurch after a bump after a rack to the left, a pitch to the right, and then a jolt upward. Marge wondered how the vehicle could survive this constant assault on its frame and then came another massive jolt that lifted her body off the seat. On the way down she felt the heat of the noonday sun and smelled the body odor from the other tourists in the Land Rover. Tsetse flies buzzed on the windshield. A wave of nausea swept over her. As bile began to roll up her esophagus, she knew that she had to get out of the vehicle. When her butt returned to the seat, she stood up with a raised hand to signal to the driver in his rearview mirror, “Please stop.”

The vehicle came to a shuddering halt. She grabbed the seat back in front of her for support as she pushed her body out; but before the driver could slide the door open, her breakfast rolled up and spewed out onto the floor, the nearby seats, and the lap of a man across the aisle. Marge felt so embarrassed. She needed to clean up this horrible mess, but first she had to get outside, where in a ditch of pale dirt and rocks, she emptied her stomach until there was nothing left. She managed to climb back into her seat. The driver and other tourists had cleaned up the mess so that for the remainder of the ride, there was only a faint sour odor as a reminder.

They arrived at a lodge in Lake Manyara National Park, where Marge found her luggage waiting in an open, airy cabin. Through large windows she could see the oscillating black-and-white stripes of zebras and the pale pink figures of flamingos in the wetland near the lake. Her body felt drained. After she swallowed a tablet for nausea, she collapsed on the bed surrounded by white gauzy mosquito netting. She fell into a deep sleep until hours later she woke to the murmur of voices. She opened her eyes to see two dark male faces peering between the netting at her.

She recognized OC, who asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Much better. Thank you.”

They discussed what might have caused this sickness. OC thought it might be the anti-malarial drug recommended for this trip. Marge wondered if the tea ceremony could have been the culprit. But she assured them that she would be all right, so the two men left.

She lay awake for a few more minutes as she pondered the feeling of strange eyes watching her as she slept and then she drifted off again.

On the following day, the photo hunt for exotic animals on the Serengeti preserve continued. With her pale, freckled hands, Marge held her digital camera steady with its telescopic Leica lens to bring the animals up close so she could get shots of the tawny lion draped over the top of a huge boulder, the leopard’s back covered with black rosettes as she stretched over a tree limb, the solitary cheetah peeking through the tall grass, the giraffe reaching for the leaves of the acacia tree, and the black-and-white stripes of the zebras intermingled with the shiny brown backs of the wildebeest herd as it migrated along the edge of the Serengeti, an annual event that has occurred for a million years.

When the group finally returned to the lodge in Arusha, Marge carried with her on her phone and her digital camera several hundred photographs. The group gathered for a final dinner with OC, who entertained them with Tanzanian folk tales including stories about turtles. While everyone laughed as OC explained with great care how the tortoise had tricked the hare when they went out to steal sweet potatoes together, Marge asked the waiter to bring a second bottle of water to share. During the previous days, the group had learned of OC’s storytelling ability and kept begging him for one more tale. He sat in front of the turtle textile as he told them the African tale of the trickster turtle who secretly climbed into the bag of sweet potatoes and ate all of them while the unsuspecting hare carried the bag home. Everyone laughed at the finish when the turtle crawled out of the bag to announce, “It was a fine dinner.”

When the time arrived to check out from the lodge, Marge walked into the dimly lit room with its dark overhead timbers to settle her bill. A female clerk stood at a counter across the lobby where sunlight streaming in from the tall window behind her illuminated her slender figure. This young woman in a red dress with her ebony skin and her thick black hair that exploded around her face and neck now glared at Marge with barely concealed hostility in her dark eyes as she handed over the bill.

“You must pay for the water,” she announced in carefully enunciated English, a product of a private school in this country where most spoke Swahili.

“Pay for the water? What are you talking about?”

“You ordered an extra bottle of water last night at dinner.”

“That didn’t come with the meal?” Marge’s voice rose in frustration as she thought about one more charge, but then why argue with this girl who was just doing her job. She handed over her credit card. After she signed the receipt that lay on the ledge that separated them, she looked up to hand it back to the clerk. Then she caught sight of a red clay pot like the pots used to filter water at the studio. The pot reminded her of the clean water shortage in Tanzania. She felt a twinge of shame for her irritation at the extra charge for the water. This young woman might know the family who made the pots and the daughter who turned away when Marge kept taking pictures.

Oh well, she thought, I still have my photos.

On the long trip from Dar Es Salaam back to the United States, Marge would occasionally scan through her photographs of the animals and scenery.

Years later, her nephew flipped through her photo album of the wildlife on the Serengeti. When he pointed to the cheetah hidden in the grass, the image took Marge back to that day when she turned from photographing the cheetahs to see the sudden arrival of two other vehicles that carried a different group of people. The Ugandan driver for her group started the engine of their Land Rover and drove away, leaving a cloud of dust. Marge did not have a photo of the driver, but she could still see his straight back covered with khaki, and she could hear his low voice as he spoke with an urgent tone into a cell phone held near his left ear. He gunned the engine and steered the vehicle with his right hand. Marge sensed impending danger. Her body tensed and did not relax until their vehicle was at least twenty miles away from the site of the cheetahs.

As the solitary vehicle sped over the red dirt road, on all sides lay the golden savannah topped by a cloudless, massive, pale blue sky.

Alice Landrum has been published in Potato Soup Journal, Round Table Literary Journal, and Well Versed. A retired anesthesiologist, Alice received her MD at University of Arkansas College of Medicine and her MFA in writing at Lindenwood University. She has attended numerous writing workshops, including the Quarry Heights Writers’ Workshop, the International Writing Program, and Gotham Writers’ Workshop. For many years, Alice served as associate professor in clinical anesthesiology at the University of Missouri School of Medicine in Columbia, Missouri. She currently lives in mid-Missouri with her spouse and a very spoiled orange tabby cat.

Olaf Kroneman

2014 was a bad year for birding. An avian virus infected and sickened birds. Hundreds collapsed and fell from tree branches as if they’d been shot by what Dr. Albright refused to call “sportsmen.”  Dead birds littered the floor of the forest. That year the Doctor and his wife did not drive ten hours to Michigan to look for the Kirtland’s Warbler; it would be too heartbreaking. 

When Dr. Lucas Albright was a medical student, he recalled some very old doctors talk of the 1918 flu epidemic. “It was a unique respiratory virus, and we didn’t know what a virus was until decades later. It killed healthy young people, especially infants, in less than twenty-four hours. It spread horrifyingly fast.”  

Dr. Albright had been in the practice of medicine for over forty years and was grateful he escaped the catastrophe of a viral pandemic.

But along came COVID-19. 

Lucas was now a very old doctor. He heard his younger colleagues say that this was 2020, and infectious diseases had been tamed.  MERS, SARS, EBOLA, HIV were controlled. Covid was another panic producing false alarm.

Lucas was a student of medical history. He reviewed black and white pictures of doctors from 1918, all were masked. The only visible facial features were exhausted and terrified eyes. The brave physicians of 1918, though of the ages, were not stupid;they must have known something, so he put on a surgical mask. 

Administration confronted him and told him not to wear a mask; it would frighten the patients and increase the likelihood of spread. He persisted. “But they wore them during the Spanish flu. They lived and died emersed in a pandemic. We should learn from their experience,” he said.

They were unmoved and told him that if he did not remove the mask security would escort him from the hospital. 

He had seen doctors  marched out of the hospital by uniformed security guards. The targeted doctors looked like political prisoners being marched for reeducation. It was humiliating but effective for a heartless administration.

He complied.

By March of 2020 people were dying. Infected patients collapsed and fell on their way to the hospital. It was as if the avian virus of 2014 now infected humans. The cardiac arrest alarm sounded over the hospital intercom three to four times an hour when previously the norm was once or twice a day, max.  Initially hydroxychloroquine was administered. Six weeks later the CDC reported it was useless and could be harmful. Now they had nothing.

During his career Lucas managed patients with tuberculosis, HIV, pre-vaccine hepatitis, Legionnaires’ disease, and many other infectious diseases but was never afraid until Covid-19. Lucas imagined it would be how nuclear fallout killed.

In a way he thought that the virus was more frightening than nuclear fallout. You could use seismic detectors to locate an atomic threat and seek leaded shelter. This virus saturated the environment with invisible submicroscopic killer-drone like particles that silently invaded and destroyed the infected. From this virus you could run but you couldn’t hide. You didn’t even know where to run, where to hide. It was everywhere.

Doctors had to attend to patients. Electronic medical records and telemedicine were used to observe patients remotely. Lucas trained when the time-honored tradition of the laying on of hands was thought to be part of the healing process. HIV made gloves universal, but he still touched the patient. 

With the coronavirus, even gloved hands rarely touched a patient. Masks were now mandatory.

Older doctors were advised not to come to the hospital but to assign their patients to younger physicians. He declined. He’d been their doctor for too long to abandon them during a frightening pandemic. He would take care of his patients in the right way.

Lucas dressed in scrubs, a gown, a surgical mask, gloves, a face shield and physically entered the patient’s room. He had to do it. It was what doctors did since antiquity. 

Families could not visit, so a familiar face, his, though heavily sealed and concealed, should provide comfort to a frightened and dying patient. The patients took Dr. Albrights’ gloved hand, the last familiar hand many would touch.  

A young physician, Dr. Samantha Kline, approached Lucas.

“I’ve got a bad Covid case,” she said.

“Aren’t they all bad?” Lucas asked.

“The patient’s a young woman, twenty-four years old.”

“She’s young,” Lucas said. “She should be okay.”

“She’s pregnant.”

“That’s a problem.”

“Read this text.”

Lucas read:

–My wife is in with COVID Please help her

–I will do what I can.

–They r going to put her on a ventilator

–She is in excellent hands

–They won’t let me b with her She doesn’t like to b alone

–I’m sorry

–Is there any medication that might help?

–She is on a strong steroid She should turn around 

– hydroxychloroquine?

–It doesn’t work

– There are reports that it does She is so sick, and nobody is doing anything. I can’t 

imagine living without her

–We r not allowed to use it 

–God bless you, I know you’ll do what you can

“She’s on the ventilator?” Lucas asked. “What about the baby?”

“Baby’s thirty-four weeks. They may do a C-section. Save one rather than lose two.” She lost her composure and her voice. She choked out, “I didn’t sign up for this.”

“Nor did I,” Lucas said. “This is the worst thing I’ve seen in my career.”

“You should have stayed out of the hospital like the other older doctors.”

“Probably.”

Lucas handed her his handkerchief for her tears. He had another one for himself. 

The next day she showed Lucas more texts.

–Doctor, good morning. Can we get my wife monoclonal antibodies? It appears the 

Covid is still in her system.  

–The monoclonal antibodies are only for outpatients. Doctors are not allowed to use 

them for hospitalized patients

–Do monoclonal antibodies make sense to you?

– I will ask the infectious disease doctors. Call me anytime, day or night.

–hydroxychloroquine?

–They say it doesn’t work

–Can it harm her?

–Unlikely

–Thank you  God bless you Doctor

“It’s tough,” she said. “A dying pregnant wife and he can’t be with her. They will let him join her when they take her off the ventilator so he can comfort her while she dies.”

“Horrible,” Lucas said. “Just horrible.”

The next day Dr. Kline approached Lucas.

“More texts?” Lucas asked.

“Yes.”

–Doctor, is there anything I can do to advocate for her? To get the monoclonal 

antibodies or the hydroxychloroquine should I call a lawyer?

– Stay the course 

–Thank you again. God bless you.

Lucas returned home to his wife. 

He told her about the pregnant woman infected with COVID.

“Would giving her the hydroxychloroquine hurt her?”

“No.”

“It’s worth a chance.”

“Not in the hospital. They will kick you off the staff if you use it.”

“And shave your head and march you out?” she asked.

“They won’t shave my head. They are too civilized.”

“You used to fight them. Your tried to save those twenty-three patients. You tried to help other doctors of like mind.”

“But got nowhere. The more lives a I tried to save the more trouble I brought on us. I should have left long ago. But this was my hometown. I felt an obligation. I finally learned after forty years you can’t fight them. They have too much money and too many lawyers.”

“And not enough doctors like you.”

“I’m tired. I’m old. The pandemic has drained the fight out of me.”

The next day Dr. Kline was waiting for him at the doctors’ entrance. She handed Lucas her phone.

–Good morning, Doctor They won’t let me see my wife. I have not seen her for 2 weeks. I saw her on an iPad, and we had a prayer session They told us it looks bad. Thank you for the hydroxychloroquine?

–Don’t tell anybody

Lucas was worried. 

“You administered hydroxychloroquine?” 

“Lucas, if she dies, and she’s going to, and I didn’t give her that drug, even though it won’t help, that man will have doubts and think we held back something that could have saved her life.”

“You could have told him you gave it but didn’t”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Me neither,” Lucas said. “If the hospital finds out you gave her the hydroxychloroquine, you will be removed from the hospital. The governor could take your license.”

“Let’s hope nobody finds out.”

Days later, more texts.

–Good morning, Doctor. She’s in critical condition. The oxygen is at 100 percent.  She is on something called PEEP. The ICU team decided to put her in a coma. They are going to do a Caesarean section and remove the baby. I won’t give them permission. My beautiful wife needs all the strength she has. The operation will make her weaker. 

“I need to talk with him. He must allow the baby to be born.”          

Lucas nodded.

They did a C-section in the intensive care unit. 

–Good morning, Doctor. I trust you. I’ve seen pictures of the baby. It was worth it. 

–I will do anything I can.

“Good work, Dr. Kline,” Lucas said. “The child was born. Something good may come from all this.”

–Good morning, Doctor. Really good news. The ventilator is down to 90 percent. We are very happy. Keep praying.

– Doctor. Her oxygen requirements have decreased once again.

–Doctor. They took her off the ventilator, she’s going to live. God bless you and thank you for being so good to me

–You r welcome 

–Thank you.

The woman got better. 

“Do you think it was the hydroxychloroquine?” Lucas asked.

“No, but I’m glad I used it.” 

“Don’t let anybody find out.”

“Too late, I have to meet with Dr. Fowler.”

“What happened?”

“One of our colleagues found out and reported me to administration.” 

“A nurse?”

“No, a doctor. The assistant Chief of Medicine, Dr. Herbert.”

“That ambitious bastard. He wants to suck up to Fowler.”

“When are you going to meet Fowler?”

“At the end of the week, Friday.”

Dr. Albright went home and told his wife about the jam Dr. Kline found herself in.

“How did the doctors and administrators become such enemies? It wasn’t always like that.”

“No, remember when we arrived at the University of Virginia and you were pregnant, I was an intern? We got a bill for seven hundred dollars. I had to go meet with the hospital administrator and explain that we couldn’t pay the bill.”

“I was so sick. I was so pregnant, and Virginia in July was so hot.”

“He said to me, ‘Son, we don’t take money from our interns and physicians in training. You do so much for us.’ He ripped up the hospital bill.”

She smiled.

“Today they would have taken our house if we had one at the time,” she said. 

“Doctors and the administrators were different forty years ago.”

“Where did the humanity go?”

“Forty years ago, there wasn’t any money in hospital administration. But businessmen got involved and realized there was a lot of money to be made in healthcare. Money attracts scum.”

“There’s nothing you can do to help Dr. Kline?”

“They tried to kick me off staff four times. I don’t want to give them a chance at a fifth time.”

“No more attacking windmills?”

“No.”

***

Lucas went to the office of Dr. Fowler. 

Her gray hair was cropped androgynously short.  Her eyes were a steely pale blue, almost gray as well.

“Yes?”

“Dr. Fowler, I need to talk to you about Dr. Kline.”

“She is a disruptive physician.”

“She’s a patient advocate.”

 “The advocate finally made a mistake: she gave hydroxychloroquine to a woman with Covid. She’s finished. I will see that she is removed from the staff and report her to the governor who will take her license.”

Lucas didn’t say anything. He looked around her office. Medical textbooks encased her like a protective shell. Dr. Fowler wore a surgical mask. She was removed from patients, and he wondered why she wore a mask.

“Dr. Albright put your mask on.”

He was about to comply but said, “I want you to hear me. I will put the mask on once you understand what I’m about to say.”

“Say it then put your mask on.”

“Dr. Kline did not give that woman hydroxychloroquine, I did. Check the video from the remote viewing of her patient.”

“We didn’t record those interactions. It would be a HIPAA violation.”

Dr. Albright’s gamble worked. There would not be any hard evidence against Dr. Kline.

“I administered the drug. Dr. Kline is innocent.”

“Dr. Albright, that is nothing to joke about. You are smarter than that.”

“It’s no joke.”

“Your career would be over, you understand that?”

“Yes, but I can’t stand by and let you harm someone who’s innocent.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very sure.”

“Yes, very well then, you are finished.”

She stood. He looked down at her shoes. The soles were bright red as if she walked through pools of blood to get to her office. He’d never seen shoes like that.

Lucas met Samantha and told her what he had done.

“Dr. Albright, I can’t let you do that.”

“I’m old. You have forty more years to practice. You’re a good, kind doctor. Every life you save, every patient you heal will be a tribute to me long after I’m gone.”

Dr. Kline hugged Dr. Albright.

Lucas went home. His career was over. He thought he would practice “till death us do part.” He was stunned.

As if a switch was flipped, he noticed he couldn’t smell. He took some mints from his pocket: nothing, no taste. He felt febrile.

When he got home his wife was waiting for him.

“Stay there, darling. I’ve got COVID. I can’t smell or taste.”

“I’ve the same symptoms,” she said. “We’ll ride the COVID storm out together.”

“I will remain at your side. I can’t go back to the hospital.”

She got a puzzled look on her face.

“Because you have COVID?”

“No, that’s not it.”

He told her about his meeting with Dr. Fowler. He didn’t know how she would take it. Like the sudden loss of smell and taste and COVID, their lives had changed.

“Glorious, hoo-rah,” she said. “You have finally slain a windmill. It’s what you always wanted to do. Your life’s work is complete.”

Her reaction made him relieved and very happy.

“I couldn’t have done it without you Sancho.”

“When we recover, we’ll look for the Kirtland’s Warbler.” 

Lucas thought of the patients dying alone, being viewed remotely on video, no family. He took his wife’s hand.

“And we may sight an osprey.”

“No owls.”

“We won’t see or hear them.”

“We’ll sing, whistle, and dance past them.”

“And rise from the ashes.”

“Together?”

“As one.”

Dr. Olaf Kroneman graduated from the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine with an M.D. He interned at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, then attended the University of Virginia to complete a residency in internal medicine. Upon completion of his residency, he participated in a fellowship in nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He entered private practice in 1983. His interaction with patients and other healthcare professionals prompted him to write. Inspired as well as horrified by the things he witnessed, his writing is influenced by actual situations but is fictionalized to protect people’s identities.

His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Broad River Review, Cobalt Review, Dime Show Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Forge, Hawaii Pacific Review, inscape, The Healing Muse, The Helix, The Hitchlit Review, Left Curve, Louisiana Literature, Medical Literary Messenger, moonShine Review, Oracle Fine Arts Review, Perceptions Magazine, Quiddity International Literary Journal, paperplates, Penmen Review, riverSedge, and Gemini Magazine. His story “Fight Night” won the Winning Writers Sports Fiction and Essay Contest, and “The Recidivist” won the Writer’s Digest short story contest. His essay “Detroit Golden Gloves” was selected as Editor’s Choice by inscape, honoring the top nonfiction piece of the issue in which it was printed. In 2010, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for my story “A Battlefield Decision.”

Nancy Dugan

When the Urgent Care doctor told Chuck to take it easy for the rest of the day, he asked for clarification. 

“I can clean the house, right?” It was Chuck’s self-imposed, allotted day to clean his apartment, now that he and his longtime cleaning lady had mutually agreed it was too risky for her to work during the shutdown. He paid her anyway. 

“No. Nothing physical, no lifting. Absolutely no bending. You need to take it easy for the next twenty-four hours.” The conscientious young doctor was from a generation of men who didn’t wear shirts with buttons. His capable “intake” assistant stared at Chuck from under her heavily painted-on eyebrows.

Walking home, Chuck carried the five-page neurological report in his hand and noticed, as he always did, especially after a head injury, the people walking with free hands versus those who carried stuff or clutched a phone. The free-handers, a small portion of the population, always broke Chuck’s heart as they tried to appear carefree or even jaunty. Chuck found their loose-armed strut self-conscious, somehow forced or even forlorn. He wondered if gait-recognition technology included the particular way free hands flopped while walking. Maybe it would become yet another distinguishable trait for surveillance. 

As the free-handers walked in front of him, their hands dangled ape-like, no matter the walker’s size or gender, their energy, sophistication, or manicures. The inside of their aimless hands looked like a less leathery baseball glove, the chubby padding clumped and forsaken. Chuck steered clear of the Rat Poison warnings posted by the outdoor dining sheds, as well as a rolling platform cart traveling hurriedly by him near the curb. He initially thought it was transporting a giant pineapple with a spiky green crown peeking out of biscotti-colored wrapping paper. But it was just some kind of tall greenery, maybe a palm tree.

A taxi’s radio blared, “Everybody’s doing a brand new dance now, come on, baby, do the Loco-Motion.” For the first time in his life, Chuck found the song captivating. What if, after a head injury, you had an entirely different taste in music?

The sun was at Chuck’s back, creating a tall, monstery shadow of himself on the cracked sidewalks as he gingerly walked home. The short, adjustable ends of one of his three face masks cinematically protruded, almost airborne, at an angle out of the sides of his sore head, appearing in the sunlight’s shadow like slender, droopy dog ears or perhaps grasshopper wings. Did grasshoppers have wings? 

When he got home Chuck googled “Take it Easy”. The old Eagles song was the only thing that came up. It wasn’t helpful. 

He drank some water and thoroughly read the five-page report. It said, among other things, that his BMI was a little on the low side, yet it also said he appeared well-nourished. He got a kick out of seeing the word “Normal” in the Psychiatric Evaluation section. Maybe he would have that framed or added to his business card. 

“Well, it was only Urgent Care,” said his old friend Alice. “We can’t go by that!” They had a good laugh about it over the phone. “I’ll call you later to check you’re still alive.”

Chuck wanted to rest but was afraid to nap or take it too easy. Would he plunge into unconsciousness? As he puttered in his apartment, he found himself unintentionally bending—who knew his life contained so many bends? To move his shoes back into the closet. To pick up a dropped sponge on the kitchen floor. It was bending in the middle of the night, in the dark, and coming up entirely too fast in his tiny bathroom, clunking his head on the bottom of the sharp, metal door of his  open medicine cabinet, that caused his head bump. Entirely. His grandmother once used that word, yelling at him from the beige wall-to-wall carpeted, midwestern hallway as he stood at the bathroom sink with the door open. “You’re using entirely too much Drano!” she sharply condemned him. 

He commanded himself to remain entirely awake for the rest of the day.

Outside in his apartment’s hallway, maskless construction workers continued their two-year renovation. All through the pandemic, while stuck in their tiny apartments, tenants were treated to nonstop sledgehammering, drilling, and screeching assaults that shook the walls and their nervous systems,  all thanks to new owners that included a former scandal-prone athletic star. It was their building’s special misery, on top of all the others. 

During the surge days, when going outside was forbidden, Chuck got in the habit of hanging out his sliding bedroom window every morning like a perched Italian woman gazing down at a piazza. But it was tricky, due to his vertigo and the broken pull-up cord on the ancient, slatted venetian blinds. He’d use one hand to lift the crooked blinds above his head, the other to slide open the sticky window with grunting effort, and then jut his head and narrow shoulders through the sliver of an opening and gasp some air. It reminded him of the milk-bottle chutes at his grandmother’s house in the previous century: bigger than the mail slot where bills and letters spilled through the door onto the floor, the milk chute prevented the glass bottles from freezing and cracking out on the stoop in the subzero temperatures. The morning newspaper, with its singular thud against the front door, had no such issue, bouncing either onto the stoop or somewhere on the frozen lawn. 

Packaging, Chuck thought with his sore head, was the secret to everything. Though now, with social media, he supposed it was all about branding, another form of packaging.

He’d once worked in packaging, overseeing plants that packaged every possible item on earth. He was grateful during the pandemic to have his environmentally friendly packaged almond milk (though almond production posed its own environmental burden) now delivered to his lobby, chute-less but appreciated, along with his other Fresh Direct groceries. 

Sometimes during Chuck’s daily hang out the window, he’d spot one of the street’s doormen below and call out good morning. They’d wave back and it was his socially distant interaction for the day.

Today, Chuck reasoned, he’d already gotten air and social (medical) interaction and could avoid tangling with the window entirely.

What to do? He was a strong believer in not watching TV or anything narrative on a screen during daylight hours, though he had been riveted to the Cuomo daily briefings in the early months of the shutdown. 

His head was very sore. He wondered if the ice pack he’d used prior to the Urgent Care facility’s opening at 8 a.m. would help or hinder him now. He should have asked. He refrained from taking pain meds, thinking he should tough it out rather than risk any pills mixing with those he regularly took. 

He went to the freezer, plopped the pack on his head, and paced slowly back and forth down his narrow entry foyer, the hallway walls shuddering from the construction work beyond the front door. 

A skinny, standup vacuum he kept stashed between the front door and the foyer’s low-level bookcase had lately been tumbling awkwardly to the floor whenever he exited. He juggled the Dirt Devil to see what the issue was and noticed a dusty bag of coins and several containers awkwardly positioned against the side of the Scandinavian teak bookcase. 

Years ago, when coins were required for daily activities, he’d tossed so many of them on a nightly basis out of his pants pockets after work that they overtook the top of the bookcase. He’d eventually stashed the coins on the floor, primarily in recycled Talenti circular ice cream containers (excellent packaging, with a tight twist-on top). 

Not bending exactly, just folding his long legs into a cross-legged, uncomfortable position, Chuck decided to sit on the floor to examine the situation more closely.

Was leg-crossing befitting for grown men? One of his newer neighbors commandeered their floor’s long hallway at night, sitting cross-legged at one end and tossing a thundering tennis ball down the corridor for his fluffy, fiercely barking dog to race after and return. Over and over again. When Chuck masked up to toss his nightly garbage down the hallway chute, the unmasked neighbor smiled and waved as if crossing this obstacle course—dodging the aerosols, the ball, and the dog—was a delight for Chuck. The little dog always raced to sniff Chuck’s ankles through their Woolite-fumed compression socks. 

Wedged between the coin containers and the bookcase he found a pile of colorfully striped, paper coin wrappers: muted orange stripes (for quarters); red (pennies); deep forest green (dimes); and a vigorous berry blue (nickels). 

At some point in his past, he’d optimistically believed he’d have the time and manual dexterity to roll the endless community of coins and take them to a bank. Well, now he had the time, though he wasn’t sure how dexterous his long, aching, and stiff fingers would be in this packaging process. The other day he’d used a dime to scratch off a gift card code, and it had been a challenge. 

He’d recently noticed signs in local banks and drugstores encouraging customers to bring in coins. There was a shortage. He’d be providing a civic service if he could manage it.

The coins were grungy. He stretched his arm to the top of the bookcase, where he kept a box of latex-free gloves required in the early days of the pandemic. They made his hands sweat and were a challenge to pull on but seemed perfect for the job. 

How to proceed? He’d call on his project management consulting skills, underused during his semi-retirement and gone dormant during COVID. 

First step: Empty the coins out of one of the Talenti containers. Balance the damp ice pack on the empty container so it won’t damage the wood floor.

Step two: Sort and pile all the coins by value. But he quickly realized the currency would then cover most of the foyer, endangering his footing should he need to unfold his legs for any reason before finishing the task. 

This part of the process was a mess. The pennies and dimes multiplied and scattered like roaches, while the nickels maintained a quiet dignity. 

The wrappers were cruel. It took patience and cunning and several attempts to balance the tinny-smelling, whimsically tilting coins in a straight pile within the tight-columned confines of the paper. 

After a while, with his back leaning against old photo albums and yearbooks in the bookcase, he got a rhythm. He’d determined he should start with the valuable quarters to get the highest rate of return, the biggest bang for his coins. The quarters were also somewhat easier for his clumsy hands to maneuver into the wrappers. 

When he first moved to the city, his grandmother had religiously saved up quarters for him to use in the city laundry machines. Now the machines in his building were “smart” and apparently Chuck wasn’t (since he couldn’t figure out how to use them with his smart phone). He now gave his dirty laundry to the nice lady at the corner laundromat and paid cash; it cost less than the machines and was delivered cleaner and better folded than Chuck ever managed. And it pleased him that Apple and his credit card company remained unaware of his underwear-washing schedule. 

After completing a few rolls of coins, he recognized the soothing quality mindless work that kept your hands busy could bring. Wasn’t this a Biblical proverb? Suddenly he envied and understood friends who relished such pastimes, though he himself had never pursued or benefitted from such things. 

His grandmother had loved to embroider tablecloths, one of which still hung (next to a leather coat he last wore in the 1990s) in the hall closet his foot was currently jammed up against. Alice loved to sew and was all charged up about a new sewing machine she had ordered. Those activities were undoubtedly more creative than what he was doing now, but as his legs grew numb and his back ached, he was surprisingly content and peaceful. Maybe it was the head injury making him passive enough to while away the day on the floor surrounded by unimpressive currency. Maybe it was also due in part to the construction workers taking a long lunch break. He started to feel sleepy. 

The other night he’d had trouble sleeping. He awakened from a dream where he was sitting cross-legged, as he was now, but on a white shag rug rather than a hardwood floor. Something glass related (a light bulb?) had shattered, leaving shards within the white shag rug. He didn’t know at first if he or his crossed legs had been cut. But he vaguely recalled being alert in the dream, having instructions he wanted to convey to someone else, mentally listing steps he needed to take, including using his cell phone (but that was puzzling since the dream seemed to occur in the distant past, not when cell phones were handy) to call someone else in the house to put on shoes and come to his room with a Dustbuster. Did the appliance even exist when shag rugs were the norm? He was unable to sort it out before he woke up. Who was he going to call?

He inserted more coins and twisted the ends of the wrappers. He wondered how sore his head would be if he took a shower and washed his hair once he was finished. When he was a greasy-haired teenager, he remembered his grandmother grabbing him and dunking his head into the kitchen sink. She roughly shampooed his head, frustrated with his  lack of cleanliness. When she was done rinsing his hair, she wrapped it in a clean dishtowel and sent him off to do his math homework. Sitting on the floor surrounded by coins, Chuck laughed at the memory and also shivered a bit at the thought of her fingernails scrubbing his current sore head. 

Once, when he was a younger boy sick with fever and a stomach virus, his grandmother had surrounded his bed with opened pages from the newspaper, meticulously placed with no open spaces, to protect the carpet in case he didn’t make it to the lone bathroom at the other end of the house. While they waited for the town doctor to make a house call, she instructed Chuck to behave himself in front of the doctor and not to cry if he got a shot. He was little and he was sick, but he knew damn well he would not put up with a shot. When the doctor held the shot up at his bedside, dripping with some liquid pouring out of it, Chuck made a run for it. The doctor chased him around the bed, crumpling the newspaper under his big shoes while Chuck screamed and scampered barefoot all over the news. At the bedroom doorway, his grandmother blocked him from racing out into the hall. When it was over, she yelled at him for having newsprint all over the bottom of his filthy feet. 

The fully packed, circular wrappers were surprisingly heavy. Chuck worried about lifting anything per the doctor’s instructions. Still seated, he tidied up the mess as best he could from the awkward angle in the limited space. He arranged the wrappers neatly on the floor in a slender row alongside the bookcase. He snapped off the sweaty gloves and noticed their reassuring, cheerful shade of blue resembled the stripes on the nickel wrappers. 

How to get up off the floor? How did the hallway dog-owner do it? He turned himself so that his knees and hands were on the floor. Was this technically bending? He paused a moment and thought about praying. Instead, he looked into the living room. He’d been so engrossed he hadn’t noticed the sun had gone down. 

He came up off the floor slowly, hearing his knees creak and wondering how sore his back would be tomorrow. Tomorrow, when he would package his face in multiple masks and package the stuffed wrappers in a sturdy canvas bag. He’d carry the bag down to the corner CVS drugstore on Second Avenue and thrill the store manager with an abundance of coins. 

He would be a hero. Entirely. A hero with a sore head and a pocketful of bills in exchange for the dirty, distracting coins. 

And his hands would be free all the way home.

Nancy Dugan’s work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in over 45 publications, including The Diverse Arts Project, Cimarron Review, Epiphany, Passages North, The Healing Muse, The Minnesota Review, Blue Lake Review, The MacGuffin, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Dream Catcher Literary Magazine (UK), Superstition Review, Glint Literary Journal, Green Hills Literary Lantern, After Happy Hour Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Nonconformist Magazine, Paragon Journal, Penmen Review, Slippery Elm, and Tin House’s Open Bar.