By Robert Granader

“A notice period!” Reggie shouted to an empty room. “Are you kidding me?”

He was alone in his den, reading through the final bills from the Sunset Village Retirement Complex. A stack of condolence cards lay unread on the side of his desk.

“Sharon,” he screamed into the next room. “When do we need to clean out my parents’ place?”

His wife rushed in; she’d worn out the carpet coming into his den when he shouted and leaving again when he steamed.

“There’s no rush,” Sharon said. “There’s a three-month cancellation window.”

“A cancellation period,” he repeated. “When should we have put in notice, when she went into hospice?”

Sharon ignored him and exited.

Over the previous few months, Sharon rarely stepped in to hear the completion of his rants. She’d learned, in the weeks and months before and since his parents’ passing, that Reggie’s top emotion was not sadness but frustration, followed by anger, and often she was the family sponge for it.

He was more critical than usual. Everything from problems with the food to criticism of the mourners, nitpicking at the children, anger at the skies that the sun either shined too brightly or didn’t at all. He seemed mad at the universe that this was where he had landed. It was his turn to be the son mourning the parents. An orphan at age fifty-eight. It was his time to be the next generation, even though it had been happening slowly for decades. He just didn’t see it hitting this hard.

The pain of the previous week’s events dissolved into three parts anger, two parts frustration, and one part mourning.

“There is a business to death,” he said quietly to himself. “The casket, the graveyard, do you tip the diggers? The clergy? Everybody has their hand out.”

“Will you look at this!” he screamed. “There’s a minimum!”

She ran back in. “To what?”

“There’s a food minimum,” he said. “My mother hadn’t had a full meal in ten years, and all this time she’s had a monthly food minimum, like it’s a country club.”

“I’m sure it’s standard,” Sharon said, doing nothing to pacify him.

“There’s a food minimum during the cancellation period,” his voice rising. “That means we need to pay for three months of food while she’s in the ground?”

“Why not send it to Hal and see what he says,” Sharon said, referring to their family attorney.

Soon Reggie was on the phone with Ms. Hilty, caretaker of Sunset Hills. His voice went up, almost cracking. He was raging at the heavens—not Ms. Hilty, not the lawyers, not the contract; it was everything.

But in the end his mother was dead either way, and this was how he lashed out, with loud voices at people who couldn’t solve his problems.

What set off this cascade of emotion was the untimely alarm on his phone. It was three days into shiva, the week-long Jewish mourning period, and his phone dinged. It was his monthly reminder to pay his mother’s bills. A reminder he’d set years ago when he took over the responsibility of his parents’ finances. But now it was worthless; time to shut it down. This would end, like so many things that ended when she took her final breath.

That ding came the first Wednesday of the month for the past ten years, and it was a reminder not just to pay the bill but to call or visit. His parents had plenty of money, and so his check of the bills took on a familiar perusal. The bills rarely varied; there was a cost for the room, an association expense, food overruns.

But now, scanning the “final” bill, he steamed over the things he’d never noticed and now seemed unfair.

“This is a scam,” he said to himself. “It’s all just a business, everything is just a business.”

He understood about final bills. He knew that subscriptions don’t end when people die, collectors don’t disappear, horror stories abound. 

“These are the perfect scams,” he said, digging deep into the internet for confirmation. “It’s a he said/she said, and one of the saids is dead!” 

Sharon was in bed, doing a crossword puzzle online, when he came into their room.

“Look at this,” he said, a stack of papers in one hand and his phone in the other. “This article is all about how nursing homes scamming dementia patients.”

“At Sunset Village?” she asked.

“No, this happened in North Carolina, but it’s the perfect crime,” he said. “Charging people with no memory for things they may or may not have ordered. They can’t get away with this.”

Sharon looked up from her puzzle. 

“This has to stop,” she said. “Let’s assume you are correct, that there is this vast conspiracy to bilk old people with memory loss and that they get into this business for the lucrative gambit of charging for extra food. So what?”

In the end all of the things he wanted to challenge were in the contract: 

1. There was a three-month period after his mother died where they would have to pay for her room, clean-up, and disposal.
2. A food minimum was included during that time.
3. Everything was prepaid.

In the early days of what he called “their captivity” at Sunset Village, he was a frequent visitor, happy to have them out of their stair-filled, sharp-edged house. But as they got older, the vacant look crept into their eyes, the boredom he thought he saw, and his time between visits spread.

For a moment he lamented not seeing his mother in her final months, but his lack of visits, he convinced himself, was not from a lack of love. There was such a sadness to it all. The quiet days staring at the walls. He imagined all the hours as a series of boredom combatants. How unpleasant everything looked to him, from the painting classes to the meals and the food; he couldn’t imagine the taste of the food.

Ms. Hilty—the CFO of Death, as he called her—had been the recipient of his ire for some time, well before either parent got sick. It started years before with a late-day call when she asked if they could speak privately.

He assumed one of his parents got a bad medical test result or wasn’t taking their medication.

“Our actuarial tables tell us your mother is living longer than expected,” was how Ms. Hilty started the conversation.

“And it works better for your business if she dies younger?” Reggie said.

“No, of course not,” she stumbled before righting herself and saying, “We love your mother, like we love all our residents. So well-liked by so many people.”

“But you’d like her to die,” he said.

“Oh God no, we hope she continues to lead a productive life.” Ms. Hilty was clearly reading off a script. “But she is outliving, or could outlive, her bank account, or at least the accounts that we see. And so we’d like, or rather, we’ll need some assurances, some backup, some guarantees.”

“You want to make sure you’re getting paid,” he said.

“You’re a businessman, Mr. Freed, you can understand.”

And of course he could, but there was something about the way she went about it. Something about the euphemisms and the questions where the answers were known. His father still handled all the family bills at that point, and so Reggie wasn’t privy to the extent of the financial proctology exam they went through—their bank accounts, insurance policies, their income levels—and what that meant for acceptance to Sunset Village.

Outliving your money is bad for business, and evidently his mother was getting a bit too close for their comfort.

So when she died Reggie wanted to say, “See, Ms. Hilty, your actuarial tables were wrong, she died in time.”

“Would that be helpful?” Sharon asked, when he explained his plan to “rub it in Ms. Hilty’s face.”

Ms. Hilty was the reason he went there so infrequently; he could tell himself. It wasn’t fear of death, or the smell, or the memories of his father in his waning days. It was the garbage and the bureaucracy and all the paperwork that went into keeping his parents alive and fed and their days filled.

He thought about all the things that animated his life, from work to his wife and kids, golf on the weekends, the shows they’d watch. His life was rich and full, just as his parents’ had been at one time. It wasn’t that his parents’ death was a mortality reminder, it was that their empty lives drove a fear deep into him of what old age might become. He wasn’t like his mother. She was happy and smiley in her youth, as a young mother, as a grandmother, and as she faded into old age, she remained that same person.

But he was his father, and he knew he had a darkness that followed him. A darkness that made even sunny days difficult when he was irritable, frustrated, angry. But mostly he was scared. Of something, the world, sickness; maybe it wasn’t even anything specific, just something deep in his amygdala was telling him to watch out.

And all this swirled in his head in the mornings before he made it out of bed and in the evenings before he fell into his fitful sleeps, but during his day his mind was cleaned by the real or imagined activities that occupied his mind so he wouldn’t have time to dwell on “the troubles,” as his wife called them.

So, he imagined his parents’ world. A space where he couldn’t fill his day with all the things that clogged his mind and ate up the worries. He feared retirement or the dormant life would be like the dread of his mornings and his nights. He could never tell anyone, but this was why he worked so much and so long. Most of his friends seemed to love the nighttime when their wives were out. The night to do whatever you wanted. But he dreaded the quiet. If Sharon was out playing cards or at dinner with girlfriends, he’d stay late at the office or go to a bar and have a drink with a game on the television. An empty house felt sad.

When he did see his parents, they talked about a lifestyle that suited them, but he was sure it was a façade. In his final years his dad would recount his day to Reggie, telling him about the doctor visits, the chess games, the books he’d read, and Reggie thought he was just filling time. His father would announce his excitement about the day, all the things he’d accomplish before he took his post-lunch nap.

Thrilling.

At breakfast the following morning, Reggie was quiet.

“Are you going to argue over the three-dollar extra food charge?” Sharon asked, breaking the silence.

“I would but I’m screwed,” he said. “The system is fixed, I can’t break in. This last bill is filled with charges that of course I can’t verify. Did my mother ask for an electric blanket in her last days? I have no idea. So they charge her for the blanket and extra nighttime electricity.”

“Let it go,” she said. “Do you want me to pay them so you don’t have to see it?” 

“It’s prepaid,” he shouted, “even the food minimum.”

“Well, then head over there and gobble up the buffet and get your money’s worth,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, yes, yes!”

“You are not going to use your mother’s food minimum,” she said.

“Oh yes I am,” he said. “You’ve wanted to go out to dinner. Well, it’s all you can eat, baby.”

“No,” she said.

“Dinner tonight, it’s on my mom,” he said.

“We’re eating Jell-O at Sunset Village?” she asked.

“For these prices they need to do better than Jell-O,” he said.

“I’m not eating there,” she said.

“You won’t believe this but they do takeout,” he said, pointing to a menu on his phone.

Pulling into the parking lot for the first time since what he thought was the last time, he felt something stir in his belly. By habit he looked toward the end window on the right side of the building, fifth floor, his parents’ room. The light was on and it made him wonder, in the way a child wonders, that some trick of the brain or miracle might occur, and he was wrong about everything. Although he hadn’t seen the body, he knew she was dead. Everything from the doctor, the coroner, the funeral home, those couldn’t be faked; she wasn’t in that room waiting for him. But the mind plays tricks.

The café, as it was called, was on the first floor, and while he felt a pull to the elevator, he cruised past the front desk and followed the line toward dinner.

“Oh, Mr. Freed.” A broad Jamaican woman with a perpetual smile stopped him. She had been working the front desk since he could remember. This woman was made for this place: she wasn’t good at being sad or trying to look sad, she oozed happiness. Even Reggie could feel that.

She surprised him by coming out from behind the desk to embrace him in a hug filled with real emotion. He knew this because it affected him, although he knew it must have been perfunctory, as she must do this every time a person dies. 

“Thank you,” he said, his voice catching.

“I think we have someone taking care of the room,” she said.

“Yeah, uh, no, I’m not here to see my mom,” he said before catching himself. “I mean her room, yeah, I can’t do that, thanks so much, thanks. I’m just here for some food.”

He even felt stupid saying it. 

Sharon was right, he thought. Nobody would be in this business solely to make money and screw old people. Would you really spend your time and effort cleaning out dead people’s rooms day after day just so you could overcharge them for extra toiletries?

The take-out window was at the far end of the cafeteria, requiring him to walk the length of the floor. Sitting on an old wooden shelf was a brown bag with cardboard handles with his mother’s name written across it. He reached for it and someone out of sight beyond the counter said, “Thanks, Rebecca.”

“I’m not,” he said hesitantly, “I mean obviously.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said a large woman with an even larger Afro caged in by a hairnet who was just coming into visibility. “Can I help?”

“No, I just mean Rebecca was my mother and she’s gone,” he said.

“They didn’t tell me the food was for the family, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Let me see your bill. We usually comp the family when they are in bereavement.”

“Bereavement? No, I don’t think we qualify, she died last week,” he said, “but there was still credit for the food, so I thought.”

Her confused look told him everything he needed to know. Nobody else did this. Ever. Nobody came and used up the dead person’s minimum. Either it was a huge scam that no one realized, or he was just an animal for doing it.

“She still has money on her account,” he said before grabbing the bag and hurrying off through the cafeteria and out to his car.

Sharon and Reggie were both surprised by the menu, its variety and quality, raising their eyebrows at how good the stir-fry was.

His energy behind squeezing every dollar out of Sunset Village faded over time, and that, coupled with his embarrassment as clearly being the only son to ever eat through his mother’s remaining food minimum, made him feel this was a one-and-done.

Days later he was in his office midday and unable to work. He wanted to be done with grieving. He kept telling himself to move on. He didn’t feel any overwhelming sadness, but he had to admit he was unproductive. God, he was unproductive. He’d look up and an hour had passed, and he hadn’t finished a single document, an email, or remembered what he was trying to do. And this was a day like that, nothing was getting done. Usually he’d walk the half mile to the salad place, assuming he just needed to get some blood pumping. But nothing was working and he’d had the same salad three days in a row. He scrolled through his phone and saw an email with another statement from Sunset Village. He opened it and saw a reduction in the food minimum. He clicked on the link and the menu popped open.

Of course they served lunch, he thought. He ordered online and headed to Sunset Village.

Embarrassment again set in. He looked down as he walked through the vestibule, just trying to get his food, but as he approached the take-away counter, it wasn’t there.

Fumbling through the app, he tried to show the kind-eyed woman his order until she said, “Ahhhh, I see. We have your order but you didn’t check the ‘to go’ button.”

“So what does that mean?”

“We have you set up at table twelve,” she said.

The air left his body. He needed to escape, eyeing the exits. This wasn’t what he planned on. His food was on the table, his name attached to a small stand. He half-smiled at his predicament and what this whole thing had gotten him. Picturing his parents sitting in the corner, watching and laughing how his emotion got the best of him again. He pulled his AirPods from his pocket and plugged in well before he reached his seat. 

He pressed play just so something was going on in his head, his eyes on his food.

Even though it was delicious, he ate quickly and stood to leave. The sound of his squeaking chair turned a group of heads down the row from him. Three women and one man looked at him through their glasses and squints.

Hurrying past, a hand reached out and startled him. He stopped.

“Aren’t you Joe and Rebecca’s boy?” the man said.

“I am,” he replied, unsure of whom he was speaking with.

“I used to play chess with your dad,” he said. The old man struggled to stand.

Reggie helped him while urging him not to get up.

But the man rose. “He was a helluva player,” he said, “up till the end.”

“Thanks. I didn’t know he could still play, I mean with the memory thing and everything,” Reggie said before hurrying for the door.

* * *

“Are you ready for dinner with somebody other than me?” Sharon asked him later that night over dinner. His interest in other people and mindless pitter-patter of talking about the weather and sports with old friends infuriated him, but now it made him sad as well.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m just not ready for that kind of socializing, you know, the bullshit.”

“I get it,” she said. “The Reynoldses want to come by later tonight. You up for a drink with them?”

“That’s fine,” he said, pushing his food around the corners of his plate.

“Why aren’t you eating?”

“Big lunch,” he said. “Oh, I didn’t tell you, I went by Sunset Village today.”

“For lunch? To make good carryout is a real art,” she said.

“Actually, I ate in.”

“Really?”

“I didn’t mean to but they’d already set up the table.”

“You ate alone?”

“Actually, this couple who knew my parents talked to me for a bit. He played chess with my dad.”

Later that week they pulled into the Sunset Village parking lot.

“We don’t have to do this,” he said.

“No, I want to,” she said in a tone that wasn’t very convincing.

They marched in together, past the front desk, where they were outfitted with name tags, and they sat at a table with a paper tablecloth and a flower in a vase strung together with a pipe cleaner.

“Fancy,” she said quietly but smiled at him. “Good to be out.”

They arrived closer to 7 p.m., assuming the myth that old people eat early and that it would have been cleared out by then. The Friday-night crowd was festive and dressed in their finest for the evening out, colorful dresses and men with three buttons open on their shirts.

As he and Sharon sat quietly, the place erupted in laughter and discussion.

“Pretty loud,” Sharon said.

“Because they’re all deaf,” he said. 

They were shouting and they all had visible hearing aids dangling from their ears, but they were enjoying it.

“Who wants tequila?” someone shouted from the back. Reggie looked to see an employee making margueritas in colorful glasses with multicolored salt around the rim.

Another staffer pulled out hats and a sign that read Welcome to Margaritaville.

“It’s Cinco de Mayo,” Sharon said.

“They can’t feed these folks tequila, can they? It screams broken hips.”

And then, before she could answer, two residents dressed in shiny shoes got up to dance. The room smelled of tequila, the decorations screamed 1950s Cuba, and the music blared in tune.

These people weren’t bored and unhappy in an empty string of meals and chess games, Reggie thought. Whatever their lives were at this point, it was enough. There was less time to fill because of naps and sapped energy, but still this room was joyful, and he wondered whether his parents were this happy.

He didn’t feel like dancing, and besides, most Jews didn’t attend dances and happy occasions for up to a year after losing a parent. But he didn’t know he was attending a party. His attempt to extract some revenge on the CFO of Death for having a food minimum for dead people was highjacked by a Jimmy Buffett concert.

They finished their meal amid the din and just sat, watching the activity.

In bed later that night, Sharon asked Reggie if he was ready to start branching out, seeing other people “our own age.”

“Not yet,” he said.

The next day he received a notice that they’d met their food minimum, and he’d be charged for any “overages.”

“They get you whether you use the minimum or not,” he said.

“How about one last meal?” he asked Sharon on the final day of the month.

“I don’t really feel like it,” she said. “Can we carry out?”

“If you place the order,” he said, “I’ll pick up.”

When he arrived, he no longer looked toward his parents’ room. Instead, his eyes were on the dining room, to see how busy it was, who was eating, whether there was a line at carryout.

“Hi, Mr. F,” Sarah said at the front desk. 

“Howdy, Mr. F,” Gerry said from behind the take-out counter.

“You’re over on your minimum, you know,” Gerry said as she checked him out.

“I know,” he said, smiling. “This is the last meal, I promise.”

“Is Mrs. F with you?” she asked.

“No, keep hers wrapped, I’ll just eat mine real quick,” he said.

She uncovered his food and dressed up his plate. He carried it, along with the bag with Sharon’s dinner, to a table.

Looking down to pick up his fork, a large sadness overtook him as he realized this was the last time he would stick a fork in his food in this place where his parents ate their final meals. This was the last supper. If anyone asked, he wouldn’t be able to explain; he just felt like crying. He wanted his parents like a child wants his parents when they are away, or when he is scared, or when someone has been mean to him. He blinked away the tears.

The sound of the tinfoil coming off a plate brought him back to the moment, this table, this meal. He hadn’t noticed an old man with an angular face sat down beside him, and he was opening Sharon’s dinner.

Reggie looked at the man, who was digging through the bag, searching for utensils. Too surprised to say anything, he just watched.

“You Joe’s son?” the man asked as he stuck his spoon in the soup.

“I am,” Reggie said, unable to ask the man why he was eating his wife’s meal.

“That man loved the Detroit Lions,” the man said. 

“He did,” Reggie said.

“And they stunk,” the man said loudly and then laughed at himself.

“Remind me your name?” Reggie asked.

“Mo,” he said. “We’ve met before.”

“Of course,” Reggie said, although he had no recollection of him.

“You know they’re dead,” Mo said. 

“I know,” Reggie said.

“Why didn’t you visit when they were alive?”

Reggie looked down at his plate. Normally he would be annoyed to the point of walking away from this question. But in the state he was in, mourning the end of so much, he sat there and took the abuse.

“I don’t know,” Reggie said. “I guess I just didn’t want to see them sick at the end.”

“Bullshit,” Mo announced. “You didn’t come before they got real sick.”

“I know,” Reggie said. “I didn’t come.”

“No, you didn’t,” Mo said.

“It made me sad,” Reggie said.

“To see your parents old?” Mo asked.

“No, it wasn’t them. It was me. I know that now,” he said. “I know our job is to grow old.”

“Better than the alternative,” Mo said, jumping in without looking at Reggie.

“Yep, better than the alternative, but when I saw this place, I wondered why grow old? Why am I going to grow old and watch my body droop, my children make mistakes, our lives get smaller? He and my mom would fight, and I’d wonder, is this winning?”

“They wouldn’t fight,” Mo said. “They’d bicker about stilly stuff, but you know what? They knew it was small stuff.”

Reggie nodded and moved his food around his plate.

“Our lives might look small to you,” Mo said. “And it is. But we are happy with it. We have friends and activities and it’s enough. I don’t want to go out past nine at night because I get tired. I like being home. This home. I want to get back to my room and my books and my memories.”

“I didn’t know,” he said, “I just thought—”

“But you didn’t ask if we were happy, if they were” Mo said. “Everyone looks at us like we are sad but we aren’t. Yes, there’s been sadness over the years. I miss my friends. I miss my Maria. I miss my dog, the toy collie I grew up with back in Ohio. I miss parts of being young, but I don’t want to be young. I don’t want to have your worries. When you get older and things close in on you, you want simplicity. You want no pain. You want to no frustration. Sometimes you know what you want. Sometimes you just want a good cup of soup.”

“And you find that here?” Reggie asked.

“In spades,” he said. “Have you had the soup?”

Reggie smiled as Mo slurped down Sharon’s soup. He closed his eyes as he prepared to walk away from this place, this smell, this food, those curtains. He knew he would never be back and that he couldn’t change the last months of his parents’ lives. He knew that all the things he couldn’t talk about with his parents were, in fact, things he could talk about. They were laid out there for him to ask, but he didn’t find a way. It was his fears, not theirs. All those years of not talking about getting old, when they would have told him that life was pretty good.

Now he knew. 

“Thanks, Mo,” he said, rising slowly from the table. “It’s getting late.”

Mo startled Reggie by putting his hand on his.

“It’s not late,” he said. “There’s plenty of fun left.”

Robert Granader’s work has been featured in the Washington Post, Washingtonian magazine, The New York Times, Blue Lake Review, borrowed solace, Doubly Mad: A Journal of Arts and Ideas, Gris-Gris, Front Porch Review, Isele Magazine, The MacGuffin, Mariashriver.com, Open Ceilings, Pennsylvania English, riverSedge: A Journal of Art and Literature, and Umbrella Factory. He has won writing awards from Bethesda Magazine and Writer’s Digest. In 2022, he published a collection of his short stories, Writing in the Q. He has attended various workshops at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, as well as the Key West Literary Seminar and Writer’s Digest Conference in Los Angeles. He has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Michigan and a Juris Doctorate degree from The George Washington University. He has published more than 400 short stories, articles, and essays in over sixty publications and is now the CEO of Marketresearch.com.

By M.N. Wiggins

Without remorse, Melvin’s alarm announced the arrival of seven a.m. Seven would have been sleeping–in three years ago. Three years ago, he’d lived in Maumelle, a 20 to 30-minute drive to his practice in downtown Little Rock, depending on traffic. But now, living in a loft directly over his clinic, seven arrived earlier each day. The seven & sevens he’d knocked back at McKeen’s last night weren’t making it any rosier. He flopped an arm to the other half of the bed without opening his eyes. It returned the same report it’d given the day before and the day before that—no Alexis.

Melvin stood groggy-eyed in his bathroom, replenishing the Earth with last night’s fluid intake, his recycling effort on the day. He zombie-walked into the loft’s tiny living room/kitchen to make himself a Dolly Parton Nine-to-Five cup of ambition and burned his finger on a match as he lit the gas stove. With coffee going, he spied the Sugarfield Sugar Cookie box on the counter. He raised an eyebrow’s worth of breakfast hope. Unrewarded, he chunked the box, knocking over the trashcan and giving his floor a decorative mosaic of beer cans, banana peels, and coffee grinds. With less hope than he’d held for the box of cookies, he opened the kitchen cabinet. Only two occupants peered back: a dented can of hominy, whatever the heck that was, and a red and blue cardboard cylinder with a picture of a Quaker smiling much too happily at this forsaken hour. 

Melvin checked the fridge. A half-eaten lemon-glazed bundt cake sat on the rack below the bottle of spoiled milk. “Winner-winner,” he mumbled. He grabbed a dirty fork out of the sink and gave it a cursory rinse under the faucet, or at least he thought he did—last night’s haze was doing an encore. Sitting at his tiny table, he examined the encrusted remnants on his fork, working to recall what he could’ve eaten that was orange. Shrugging, he wiped it on his BVDs and plunged it into his breakfast, creating a crispier sound than you’d want from a bundt cake. His eyes narrowed as he picked at the green splotches. Melvin muttered something about beggars and choosers and dunked a piece into his coffee to soften.

He chucked the rest into his resurrected trashcan and stood at the window, sipping soggy-crumb coffee and stared at the April morning. 1952 Little Rock stared back. 

Melvin glanced at the table. There’d be no birthday cake when he climbed the stairs after work, no one to light candles, no one to sing, no wife to kiss, no young sons to greet him, excited that Daddy was home. He’d had none of those things last year or the year before—not since his arrival. 

Freshly showered and in coat and tie, Melvin opened the front door and stepped onto the landing that overlooked the clinic below. He heard patients checking in downstairs, a full day’s work ahead. His gaze turned to the loft door opposite his. A wave of nausea washed over, just as it had every morning since Sally had left. He closed his eyes and inhaled, but after four months, the lingering combination of cigarettes and perfume emanating from her loft had vanished, just as she had. 

Melvin rubbed his temples, reliving the shouting match, this woman who’d gone out of her way to make him feel welcome, not just as his clinic receptionist, but as his best friend since landing here in 1950. She’d wanted more from the get-go, but he’d pushed her into the friend zone. Like everyone else in this decade, Sally had no idea Melvin had a wife, two kids, and a laminated Blockbuster card dated 2004. 

Secrecy was a solid strategy. Thrust over half a century into the past without friends, family, or cash, the less you revealed, the better. How he’d gotten here, how they’d met, and how he’d been able to practice without a license was a long story, a novel unto itself. None of that mattered today. Today, everything was lost—his family back in 2004, Sally to parts unknown, and recently, his last-ditch effort to travel home had spiraled down the toilet. Nothing to do now but soldier on. Go see patients. Another joyous day of figuring out how to be a 1950’s ophthalmologist without topical antibiotics, steroids, lasers, ultrasound, or anything remotely useful. Head hung low, Melvin descended the black iron spiral staircase, turn by turn, into the circular depths of the inferno. If he’d read Dante back in college instead of putting moves on his girlfriend’s roommate, he’d have gotten the metaphor.

A pot-bellied forty-two-year-old met him with a grin at the bottom. “You look like death warmed over.” He handed Melvin two aspirin and a glass of water.

“Shut up, Ronny.” Melvin downed the pills, followed by the chaser. “Thanks for the cure-alls.” Melvin rubbed his head. “I’d kill for a mocha and Pop-Tart right now, and it’d be justifiable homicide.”

Ronny squinted. “What the heck’s a Pop-Tart?”

“Pure Heaven in tinfoil.”

Ronny shook his head. “Canadians are weird. By the way, happy birthday. How old are you, anyway?”

Melvin shrugged. “Negative 19.” He rubbed his head again. The truth hurt as much as the math.

Ronny’s eyes lit up. “Hey, man, check this out.”

Melvin held up a hand. “Dude, I told you, no more pictures of your dog. Don’t care that your momma knitted you guys matching sweaters.”

Ronny huffed, “That wasn’t it, smart guy.” He half-turned and pushed photos back into his hip pocket. “Check out the dude across the street.”

Melvin closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “Leave me alone, man. I’ve got patients to disappoint.”

Ronny smirked. “Yeah, like that’s possible.”

“What do you mean?” 

Ronny nodded toward the waiting room. “Way I hear it, your clinic is packed with unmarried socialites dressed to the nines, and they ain’t here for glasses.” Ronny tapped his left ring finger.

“That was all in Sally’s mind. She thought every lady in my clinic had some ulterior motive. Not true.”

“What about the desserts they bring you?”

“It’s the South, dude. People are nice.”

“I’ve seen you with icebox cookies, lemon chiffon pie, cupcakes, tea cakes, brownies. And remember when that Marci girl tried to make you bananas foster here in clinic? Darn near burned the place down. Arkansans are nice, but we ain’t that nice.” 

“What’s your point? I’ve got a full day’s work and a massive hangover.”

“My point is, you’ve moped around for the last two years, man. You haven’t been on a single date, except with Sally, and we both know those weren’t date-dates.”

Melvin’s eyes brightened. “Have you heard from her?”

Ronny shook his head. “She’s gone, dude. You need to move on and get out there.”

“Leave me alone.” Melvin turned, but Ronny grabbed his arm and pointed to the window.

“Seriously, check out the guy in the dark green sedan. I swear he was there yesterday, too. And look at the butts below his car. He’s gone through a pack and a half.”

Melvin squinted, recalling his run-ins with the Arkansas Medical Licensing Committee and the Detroit Mafia—one of which gave him grave concern. “Who do you think he is?”

“Dunno, but I don’t like it. I’m going to ask him.” 

Melvin planted a hand on his chest. “Hold up. Have you never heard a Jim Croce song?”

Ronny pushed his hand away. “Who?”

“The guy who preaches not to mess with strangers. Let it go. Besides, don’t you have work to do, fitting glasses, convincing customers they look great in overpriced frames?”

“If a doctor I know would prescribe a pair every once in a while, then yeah, I would.”

Around eleven, Melvin pulled a new chart—a work-in. He’d lost count of how many patients he’d seen so far but recalled several offers to brunch, church, and mentions of granddaughters allegedly available this weekend. A freshly baked, lemon-glazed bundt cake now sat in his office. Maybe Ronny had a point.

Melvin knocked as he opened the exam room door and stopped. There was a man in the exam chair. “I’m sorry. Are you here for Dr. Thomas?”

“I’m here for Napier.”

Melvin smiled and shook a scarred, calloused hand. “Then you’re in the right place. What can I do for you?”

The man folded a leg across his lap, wrinkling his worn brown suit, a suit not too flashy and not too cheap, one that could disappear in a crowd, the white Honda Accord of 1950s men’s apparel. “Just a check-up. Worked here long?”

“No, not really.”  Seems friendly enough. But there was something off-putting. Melvin noted nicotine stains. Nothing strange about that here. Maybe it was a smell, but after two years in the ‘50s, Melvin was nose blind. “What kind of work do you do, Mister”—he scanned the one-page chart—“John Smith?”

“What’s that got to do with an eye exam?” Smith asked with a thin smile.

Melvin shrugged. “A man’s work affects the body. Body affects the eyes.”

Smith gave a cold, hard stare. “I do a little of this, a little of that. You’ve got a new receptionist.”

“That’s true.” Melvin checked his vision.

Smith’s eyes trained on Melvin’s hands as he reached behind the exam chair and tilted Smith back. Melvin grabbed something from his desk and hovered over Smith. “Just going to give you a little—”

Smith clamped his arm. “What’s that?”

Melvin showed him the bottle. “It’s 4% cocaine. It’ll numb your eye for this test. Trust me, you want it.”

Smith released his grip and settled back into the chair. “A little coke? Sure. If you’ve got leftovers when we’re done, let me know.”

Melvin pulled a shiny silver Schiotz tonometer from a small rectangular box and placed it on each eye, adding tiny weights and jotting the intraocular pressure in Smith’s chart. He tilted Smith up. “15 & 15, not bad.” Melvin scooted on his rolling stool and wheeled the slit lamp table to Smith. “How did you know about the receptionist? Isn’t this your first time here?”

Smith flashed a grin of dentures, a grin not old enough for loss from tooth decay. “Brought my mom here a while back. Your last receptionist was hard to forget. Was she your girl?”

Melvin chuckled. “No. Place your chin in here, please. Thank you. Let your forehead push all the way into the strap. Great. Just look straight ahead.” Melvin fine-tuned the slit lamp with the joystick. When it focused, he shuddered as if stepping out into a cold winter’s day. What stared back was nothing—a dead eye drenched in darkness. The pupil had taken a beating: misshapen, immobile. With no diagnostic lenses in 1952, Melvin stacked trial lenses together to examine the retina. His slit beam illuminated inside Smith’s eye but couldn’t erase the shadowy ooze pouring through the scope.

Swinging over to the left eye, it confirmed a picture of trauma. How he’d read 20/20 was anyone’s guess. Like the right, the cavern inside Smith’s eye reflected back a bored predator’s soul, an absence mixed with a craving for—something. Melvin pulled away from the slit lamp as quickly as he could.

“Any idea where she ended up?” Smith asked, leaning back.

“Who?” Melvin placed one hand on top of the other to hide the shaking.

“Your receptionist, the one who left.”

“Sally?” He blinked a couple of times. “Really couldn’t say.”

Smith’s dead eyes narrowed. “That so? Hard to believe she wasn’t your girl. A man in your position and a girl like that.”

Melvin’s trembling ceased. He leaned back on his stool and folded his arms. “A girl like what?”

Smith shrugged. “Come on, doc, pretty little blonde number with plenty up top? Kind that could rev you up without trying?” He winked. “I like that, and I’m betting you did, too.” He picked at the dirt under his fingernails. “Maybe I ought to look her up. She feisty, doc? Cause I like feisty. Sally, right?” Smith’s dentured grin spread as he watched Melvin’s ears burn red. “Sure she’s not your girl?”

Melvin stood and opened the door. “We’re done here. Don’t think I can help you, Mr. Smith.”

Smith nodded as he walked out. “People do say that. Usually turns out not to be the case. See you around, doctor.”

Melvin trudged his cake upstairs after the last patient of the day. He unlocked his door and paused. Sally’s door looked different. That could only mean . . . 

Melvin’s heart raced as he tossed the cake into the fridge for roach protection and zipped to her door. “Sally?” He turned the doorknob. It opened. “Sally?” He stopped. The couch was flipped, cushions strewn, drawers and closet ransacked, and a broken picture frame lay on an ironing board on the living room floor. Melvin found the same treatment in her bedroom: drawers rifled, clothes on the floor, and another empty, broken picture frame. He picked up the phone and put it back down. This wasn’t the Arkansas Medical Licensing Committee.

He straightened her loft, stole a bottle of her bourbon, and returned across the landing. At his table, he poured a drink and stared at it. Bet Smith didn’t find what he was after. Melvin crept downstairs and peeked out the window. No dark green sedan. No smoking man in a brown suit.

Melvin sat on his couch and stared at the bourbon he’d yet to drink. His head jerked toward the sound of a passing car and back to the click of the fridge motor. If he’d felt alone earlier, he didn’t now. Melvin grabbed his keys.

Staying in the streetlamp light and peering into passing alleys, Melvin boogied on down to McKeen’s. Whether well-loved, a terrible alcoholic, or both, Melvin entered to fanfare reserved for Norm at Cheers.

Walter McKeen, owner of the establishment that bore his name, rang the brass bell. “Happy birthday, Melvin! My adopted Canadian son.” He waved a miniature maple leaf flag planted on the register after Melvin performed his cataract surgery two years ago. “Everybody sing,” Walter pointed. “You, too, Eddy.”

Melvin blushed and took his usual barstool. “You didn’t have to do that, Walter.”

“You’re family—at least to us. We sing for family. Whatever you want tonight, it’s on the house.”

Several patrons slapped his back, inquired if everyone’s drinks were free tonight, and left disgusted. Melvin sighed and rotated the beer he hadn’t touched.

Walter nodded. “I miss her, too, son. Sally was like a daughter. And good for business. That girl drank like a fish.” He shook his head. “You should’ve put a ring on that finger. I don’t understand your generation. You kids expect everything on a silver platter.”

“You realize this is 1952, right?”

Walter cut his eyes. “Yeah, yeah—modern times. My generation had to work for everything. And when we found the right girl, we didn’t fool around . . . okay, we fooled around, but then we married—none of this hem-hawing. That girl loved you like crazy. Why didn’t you marry her?”

Melvin closed his eyes. “I had my reasons.”

“I can think of one. You’re a . . . It’s your birthday. I’ll wait till tomorrow to call you an idiot.”

“Much obliged.”

Walter leaned on the bar. “Look, kid, relationships are like beer. You can have one or choose not to. But if you have one and don’t drink it, sooner or later, it goes stale.” He sighed. “Lots of other nice girls out there. Maybe not her, but maybe even better.”

Melvin wiped his nose. “Doubt it. Hey, a guy in a brown suit was asking questions about her today. Anyone like that come in here? Drives a green sedan?”

Walter’s eyes narrowed. “Questions about my Sally? Who was he? She in some kind of trouble?”

“Wish I knew.”

Walter patted Melvin’s arm. “A while back, you talked about another girl. What was her name . . . Alexis? Maybe she could work out.”

Melvin stared at the beer. “I’ve tried to reach her—every way I know how. It’s never going to happen.”

“Not with that attitude.” Walter pulled an empty tap. “Keg’s dead. Be right back.”

Melvin stood. “I’ll go down after it.”

Walter waved him off. “It’s your birthday. Stay and not drink the beer I gave you. I love it when people come to my bar not to drink.”

Melvin grinned. “You’re the only one working, and these yahoos hit the tap when your back’s turned.”

Walter clutched his chest. “These saints? Say it ain’t so.” He nodded toward the cellar. “You’re a good son.”

Melvin walked down the ramp into the darkness and groped the chain to the hanging bulb overhead. The temperature plunge rippled gooseflesh up his arm. He tipped the keg and slid the handcart underneath. It came down with a thud, followed by another sound—a fainter one, but one too many. Melvin turned to see the light from the hanging bulb gleam off John Smith’s dentured grin. 

“Hello, doc. Saw you come in. Was just on my way up to see you.”

Melvin struggled to inhale. “Mr. Smith. How did . . . ? ” He managed a second breath. “What are you . . . ?”

Smith shrugged as if bumping into him at a grocery store. “Need a second opinion.”

Melvin nodded. “Nine-thirty tomorrow?”

Smith’s toothy grin broadened. “I was thinking now.” He pulled a jackknife and motioned Melvin to the far back wall. 

Eyes wide, Melvin felt the coolness of the old brick on his back as a bead of sweat slalomed down his vertebrae.

Smith’s expression lightened as he folded and tucked away the knife. “Sorry about that. I’m not here to hurt you. Just needed your full attention. I apologize for razing you earlier about the girl. I wanted a read on you, that’s all. I’m not after her.”

Melvin took a breath. “What do you want?”

“I have to find her father, pronto. I’ve got critical information he needs before… the wrong people get there. Sally’s my only lead. I only hope that wherever she is, he’s there, too. Melvin, I need your help to save them.”

Melvin nodded. Sally’s in danger? I misjudged this guy. Maybe together we can . . . Consciously or not, Melvin’s eyes drifted and locked with Smith’s, still dead, still a void of hopeless boredom. No matter how hard Smith tried, those eyes didn’t match the facial expression he’d slipped on for his intended audience of one. 

But Melvin saw more, a familiarity, and he trembled as if hordes of infant spiders crawled up his legs. After two years of waking each day to the task of getting back to his family, and going to bed each night a failure, Melvin had discovered those eyes in his mirror—hope melting, mundaneness spreading, joy no longer found without or within. Albeit an early manifestation of the diseased eyes before him now, his were undoubtedly on the spectrum.

Trusting his soul still had enough breath to blow a second wind, Melvin dug deep. “I wish I could help. Truth is, I barely knew her.”

Smith nodded as if pleased with the response. He reached inside his jacket. Melvin’s eyes widened as Smith pulled out not a pistol but something equally life-threatening. 

Melvin held up his hands at the photo from Sally’s living room. “I know how it looks, but that was a company picnic. They asked us to pose together for the photo, that’s all.”

Smith tossed it at him and pulled another. “Found this one in her bedroom. What does that say right there? Dr. and Mrs. Napier?”

Melvin blinked twice. “Granted, that looks bad. It was a joke. Obviously, we’re not married. We went to Eureka Springs one weekend because her grand— ” Melvin’s mouth slammed shut as the dots connected. Sally’s grandparents lived in Eureka Springs. Her parents owned a cabin there. If she was anywhere, that’s where she’d be. He locked eyes with Smith and saw dots connecting there as well.

The cellar’s single hanging lightbulb highlighted Smith’s head as his fake toothy grin crawled out again, the grin of a man who’d gotten what he was after. Now, Melvin noted something new. Smith’s dead eyes had a hint of giddiness, the tiniest spark of life. Whatever they had craved, dinner was about to be served.

Smith pulled a long, double-edged knife from inside his jacket. “Tell me, is Eureka Springs far?”

Melvin swallowed hard and shook his head.

Smith shrugged. “Guess nowadays, nothing’s that far. Everything’s just a phone call away.”

“I won’t say a word.”

Smith nodded. “I know. Ever seen one of these? Called an M3 trench knife.” Smith’s eyes now had a full-on twinkle.

“Ever see one of these?” Walter pushed twin steel barrels into the small of Smith’s back. “Called a scattergun. Others would call it a deus ex machina—whatever that is.”  

The cocking of the double hammers echoed around the cellar walls.

Melvin exhaled. “I may not have a knife, Mr. Smith, but I do have family.” Melvin slid around and stood behind Walter.

Smith dropped his knife and stared at the bare wall with his dead eyes and the expression of a man who’d been to this rodeo countless times, a man who knew what to do and how it would play out, the way it always had. The only thing that ever changed was the face of the man on the other end of the gun, an irrelevant variable. Smith knew that face belonged to a man with a moral line in the sand. Veteran? Maybe. But this wasn’t a war, and the man with the gun wasn’t under orders. 

This man had likely never shot a man in the back, not an unarmed one, anyway. This man would know that, if he did, he’d have to live with it. Odds were, this man didn’t want to be here. He’d just as soon drop that gun and go have a beer with his loser buddies upstairs if given half a chance. Sure, he’d probably already told himself he’d pull if threatened, if no other choice. But it takes a moment to decide you’re truly in mortal danger and another to convince yourself it’s okay to cross that moral line. But in that time, Smith knew he could spin into the man, pushing the barrel away. The swiftness would surprise the man, causing him to loosen his grip. Taking it would be all the easier. 

In less than a breath, experience with an economy of movement would have the gun in Smith’s hands, with no line to cross, no hesitation. Unloading one barrel into the man’s chest, he’d turn the other on the doctor, no doubt fleeing for the cellar door. If both barrels were spent in the struggle, it was just a matter of lifting his right knee to bring an ankle holster into play. His beloved .32 would finish the job. There wouldn’t be the satisfaction of gutting Napier, watching his eyes as he realized he was dying. Smith had salivated over that for the last few hours. But he was a pragmatist and told himself beggars could not be choosers—a prevailing philosophy amongst killers and hungover bundt cake eaters alike. 

The drunks upstairs would hear gunshots and be tempted to come see. But the desire for self-preservation would prevent it. Even if they did, Smith would be long gone through the Prohibition tunnel he’d used to slip in. Coming up in Detroit, he’d developed a reputation of getting in or out of anywhere that suited him, a skill that had donned him, The Roach, a name he relished as a point of pride.

He knew all this would come to pass. All The Roach needed was a moment’s hesitation, a moment garnered by reminding the man of the depth of his line in the sand.

The Roach raised his arms halfway. His toothy grin returned. 

“Look, pal, you don’t want to shoot an unarmed man in the—” 

B-BAM!

Melvin stared at the new mosaic on the old brick wall, the scattergun living up to its name. Walter pushed the lever to break open the shotgun and popped out the smoking shells. He tossed them on the body with no more care than a man tossing an empty box of Sugarfield Sugar Cookies. He turned to Melvin with soft eyes. “Need help with that keg?”

Melvin shook his head with wide eyes. “No, sir. I got it.”

Walter smiled and patted his back. “Good boy.” Shotgun over his shoulder, he headed up the ramp.

“Uh, Walter? What will they say upstairs?”

Walter turned around. “You mean in Heaven? I doubt that guy’s an issue.”

“No, the people in the bar.”

“The drunks?” He smiled. “All regulars tonight. A round on the house, and it’s c’est la vie.”

“But what about”—Melvin pointed—“the . . . you know.”

Walter shook his head. “The missus and I will handle it tomorrow.” He shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Now, come on, let’s celebrate your special day and talk about finding this Alexis.”

Melvin pushed the handcart to the ramp and grabbed the chain to the light. Before pulling, he glanced back at the remains of The Roach. “That guy would’ve . . . Wow.” He pushed up the ramp. “Happy birthday to me.”

Dr. Wiggins is an ophthalmologist currently residing in Florida where he serves as a glaucoma specialist with the Department of Veterans Affairs and is a Courtesy Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Florida. He has previously worked at the Jones Eye Institute as an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal or Ophthalmic Medical Technology during his time as Medical Director of the OMT program. This story is written as a day in the life of Dr. Melvin Napier, a character from the author’s recent novel, Letters of the Arkansas Traveler (Davis Street Publishing 2023: davisstreetpublishing.com), which is about a modern ophthalmologist trapped in 1950s Little Rock. He is a member of the Author’s Guild and of Pegasus Physician Writers of Stanford. His other novels are The Sugarfield Sugar Cookie: Sweet Southern Drama and Magical Arkansas Tales (Children’s short stories) both published by Davis Street Publishing in 2022. He is also the author of textbooks for ophthalmology including Clinical Optics Made Easy: The Fabled Second edition (Davis Street Publishing 2023) and Clinical Optics Made Easy (Crimson House Publishing, 2018). 

By Arno Bohlmeijer

“The best stories should be
about the world of a child.”
G.F. Green

“Seen through grown eyes.”
Arno

His hair is long and thick, shining, and curly. But at school, some kids tease him, “You look like a girl! What about braids?”

At first Rick thought: who cares, tough guys have long hair with tails or buns. But after a bad night, he tells his parents, “I want a change. I’ll have my hair cut.”

At the salon he keeps his eyes closed. Most chunks of hair go neatly into a box. Looking in the mirror later, he hardly recognizes himself. He blows a loose hair away and smiles.

Back on his bike, his scalp feels the wind. Is it cold or nice and fresh?
He crosses the park. By the pond, there’s a white heron, so still, as if waiting for someone. Rick had better look in front of him, though, or else he’ll begin to sway and will end up in the lake or swerve into the geese that have gathered on the bike track.

Just ahead, two young people are sitting on a bench. He doesn’t know them, but something makes him stop. One of them, the girl, is bald.

The boy next to her watches Rick stop and calls out, “What are you gawking at, do you need binoculars?”

Rick goes numb. “Sorry?” he mumbles.

The boy chuckles, “Wanna see up close? She’s as bald as a soccer ball!”
Rick’s legs almost give way, and his bike falls on the grass.

“Never mind, man, I was joking,” the boy says.

“We often make jokes, clever or silly,” says the girl. “Sometimes that helps when we’re scared or angry. It’s the cancer in me, and people staring at me as if I’m a freak.” She pauses. “But you were not leering, were you? You stood there and looked at me square! Do you always smash your bike like that?”

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“No worries. I’m Vivi. And you?”
“Rick.”
“And my name is Lee,” the boy says.

Vivi wipes her forehead. “And this bitch is called leukemia. Cute name for a blood disease, right?”

Uneasy, Rick watches a gull fly overhead, shrieking when geese are given bread.

“Come and sit, Rick,” Vivi says.

As she doesn’t move to make space for him, he can’t but sit close, while she says, “You won’t get cancer from me. It’s not contagious.”

Rick tries to look at her in the eye. “Can you not get new blood?”

“Yes, a transfusion. And surgery.”

“Will you get better, then?”

“Maybe. It doesn’t always help for leukemia.”

“What if it won’t help?”

“Then I’ll die. It’s okay, I’m used to the shock that people feel when I say it like that.”

Rick swallows. “Aren’t you scared?”

“Well, I was so scared that I froze, as if my blood became ice. And when it melted, I was a waterfall.”

“Me too,” Lee says, “just a flood of tears.”

Rick thinks the wind is picking up. He looks at the oak tree, but its leaves are rustling gently.

“And then?” he asks.

Vivi reaches and catches a floating leaf. “I asked around, and I heard, learned, and felt all sorts of things. Now I know that death itself is nothing, I mean, literally, it’s nothing. What comes after, must be much bigger. Look, I’m like dead already, or have been, really, and yet you’re here with me. Now I know you. That’s how it will be later, on a larger scale – as large as life. After death it must all be new.”

“How can you tell?”

“Well, the blood and heart and brain die, but there’s no end to feeling, right? No limit, no end. Feeling is not even visible, not as such, so how can it die?!”
“Beats me,” Rick says.

“Exactly, I wouldn’t know either. It’s too good to be untrue, or to disappear. So, I’m curious to know what’s going to be new – for good. I feel ‘nearly new’ already, because I’ll know a heap more about what’s next.”

“You’ll just find out sooner than we will,” says Lee.

“Yeah, sorry,” Vivi says, “whenever I’ll be dead, I won’t miss people anymore, so for you it’s tougher, because you will be left behind.”

“Alright, Viv, when or if you’re first, I hope you’ll send us a message.”
The three of them ponder that for a moment, wondering what ‘message from heaven’ could be real? What kind of sign could it be?

“In any case,” Vivi says, “it will be something uplifting. And no coincidence. Or…” she ponders that point a bit more, “Sometimes a coincidence is so striking it’s more like a token.”

A man walks by, turning to stare at Vivi. When she waves at him, he hurries on.
“I can’t stand that,” she says. “It’s normal for people to look, we all do, but why not say Hi, shake hands, or smile, or cry, or even give a wink! Next time when somebody gawks at me, they’ll trip over your bike, Rick.”

“Oh no…” Rick stands up. “How long have I been here? My family must be worried about me.”

He makes for his bike but hesitates, turns around and asks Vivi, “Don’t you want a wig?”

“Sometimes, yeah,” she says, “but it can itch or tickle, or look phoney, so it needs to be cool.”

“Sure. Like a wicked Rick-wig, made from real hair?”

“Wow, that sounds blitz, especially for the outdoors. Nice and warm in winter. And I love dressing up!”

“Okay,” Rick says, “I’ll get you one. Bye!”

“Good,” Vivi says, “I’ll book this bench for ever. But when the beech tree turns all yellow-goldish-orange, overnight, I’ll be somewhere else, or everywhere.”
After a second, Rick says, “I’ll remember, so you’ll be with me too.”

“Yes, please. And if a tree stays yellow-goldish-orange, then you’ll need glasses.”

“Terrific,” Lee calls out, “mysterious and beautiful! We won’t get glasses but leave it that way.”

With a smile, Rick picks up his bike, rides and waves, almost losing his balance.

“Hey, stay on your feet, or wheels,” Vivi says. “And mind that goose! Tonight, go to sleep late and watch the moon; it’s new too.”

The end,
or is it?

Arno Bohlmeijer is the winner of a PEN America Grant 2021, a novelist and poet, writing in English and Dutch, published in six countries (US: Houghton Mifflin) in two dozen renowned journals and reviews, 2019 – 2023, and in Universal Oneness: Anthology of Magnum Opus Poems from around the World, 2019.

by Terry Sanville

He opened his eyes and found himself strapped to a gurney, in a swaying vehicle, a siren screaming. A masked person, probably a woman, stared down at him, pressed a stethoscope to his chest, and took his vitals. A plastic mask covered his mouth and nose. He pawed at it; his arm trailed a clear tube that dripped fluid into a vein.

“He’s back,” the woman said.

“Good,” said her partner. “Keep him on oxygen and check his blood glucose.”

“Got it.”

He continued to finger the plastic mask. “What . . . what happened?”

“We don’t know,” she replied. “They’ll tell you more at the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

“Yes, Cottage Hospital.”

“Where . . . where’s that?”

The woman glanced at her partner. “Just lay back and breathe easy, Mr. Delmar.”

“Who’s Delmar?”

The paramedics stared at each other. “That’s you . . . Mark Delmar.”

“Me?”

The ambulance came to a stop, its back doors flew open, and they hauled him out. Others came running. They rolled him through an automatic door signed “Emergency,” into a curtained-off stall and shifted him onto a new bed. A nurse dressed in teal scrubs transferred his IV bag to a stand and took his vitals.

“Do you know where you are, Mr. Delmar?”

“No . . . and I don’t know this Delmar fellow.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“No.”

“What do you remember?”

“Only waking in the ambulance.”

“You’re lucky. Your fiancée asked the police to do a welfare check at your house. They found you unconscious.”

“My fiancée?”

The nurse stopped and stared at him for a moment. She continued to type into the computer, adding notes. “Do you know where you are?”

“In a hospital?”

“Yes, but where? What city?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know what state you’re in?”

“A confused one,” he said and tried to grin.

“Who is the President?”

“President? I . . . I don’t remember.”

Nurses came and went, drew blood, and wheeled him down a long corridor for some type of scan – a huge machine that clicked and buzzed and drew him partway into a claustrophobic tunnel. Gradually the fringe of fog that encased all things around him faded and he could see more clearly.

He lay quietly and stared at the wall clock, not sure if it was day or night. Reaching for the carafe, he poured a glass full of ice water and gulped it down, drinking it so fast that his throat and chest ached. Outside his curtained stall, mumbled conversations:

“. . . Tox screens were clear . . . need more specialied tests . . .”
“. . . CAT scan showed nothing . . .”
“. . . need an MRI to really see what’s . . .”
“. . . severe retrograde amnesia . . .”
“. . . yeah, like somebody deleted his files . . .”
“. . . keep him for a few days then refer him to UCLA . . .”
“. . . the fiancé is really upset. Should we . . .”
“. . . not yet . . .”

Time passed slowly. He wanted something to read but couldn’t remember what he liked. His hunger grew and he pressed the call button over and over, but nobody came. Finally, a guy dressed in gray scrubs pushed back the curtain and emptied the trash.

“Could you have the nurse come see me?” he asked.

The guy looked at him blankly. “I sorry. No speak English.”

Finally, a portly man in a white lab coat entered his space, sat on a stool next to the bed, and adjusted his glasses. He smelled of cigarettes and Old Spice.

“Mr. Delmar, I’m Dr. Norris. I’m a hospitalist here at Cottage. How are you feeling?”

“Hungry.”

“Yes, yes, we’ll get to that.”

“Why does everyone call me Mr. Delmar?”

“Because that’s what it says on your driver’s license.”

“Really?

Dr. Norris handed him the plastic card. Mark studied the photo of a stranger who was born in 1990 and lived somewhere in Santa Barbara, California, wherever that was, was six foot tall with blue eyes, brown hair, and weighed 190 pounds.

“We’ve noticed that your memory has taken a vacation. But close your eyes and think back. What do you remember about yesterday?”

“Nothing really.”

“Have you taken any drugs that we should know about?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Have you had any problems at work or with your fiancée?”

“I don’t remember anything or anyone,” he said, starting to get troubled and very worried.

“Do any of these people look familiar?” Dr. Norris held up a photograph of a small group of smiling adults.

“No. Should I know them?”

“Does the man on the right end look familiar?”

“Hey, I already said no.”

“That’s you, Mr. Delmar, a bit younger but you.” Dr. Norris scribbled in a small notebook.

“Look, Dr. Norris. I am drawing a blank. How I got here or what happened before I don’t know.”

Norris stood and closed his notebook. “We’re going to take some more blood to test for specific chemical poisoning. And the neurologist has ordered an MRI scan. We want to keep you here until our staff evaluates the results of these tests.

“How long will that take?”

“Could be three days. But within a day we should know if your amnesia is transient, and you begin to regain your memory.”

“I hope so. But can I get something to eat now? I’m starving!”

“You’ll be moved to a ward in a little while. They’ll provide food. I’ll check in on you tomorrow. Sleep well tonight.”

Mark Delmar closed his eyes. His thoughts wandered back to his time spent in the ambulance, the sounds, the sights, the smell of rubbing alcohol, and the sting of the IV needle. Beyond that hung a thick black curtain, an abyss devoid of people, places, or things, ideas, or mental images that might trigger the senses. It was like the time before the Big Bang when there was no time. Only God’s time. And how the hell could he know about the Big Bang but not remember yesterday? He fell asleep wondering if he could survive a future without a past.

---

Time passed like viscous lava creeping across a flat plain. Once or twice each day a Physician’s Assistant administered a memory test, getting the same results. On the third day after lunch, a trio of doctors entered his room and gathered around the bed. Mark clicked off the TV and pulled himself upright. The doctors introduced themselves: a hematologist, a neurologist, and Dr. Norris who took the lead.

“Good afternoon, Mark. We’ve completed our analysis of your blood work and imaging.”

The hematologist stared at his notes and spat out words like a machine gun, rattling on and on about what tests were conducted and the purpose and accuracy of each. Finally, he concluded, “Your blood panels came back normal, everything within range. The toxicology analysis didn’t show anything harmful. But there are more specialized tests that should be run.”

Mark frowned. “So, I’m healthy?”

“From my perspective, apparently so.”

“Did the scan show—?”

“The MRI provided excellent images,” the neurologist said. “My colleagues and I studied them closely, focusing on the hippocampus and other related structures in the temporal lobe. We didn’t detect any growths or trauma.”

“So, what does all this mean?”

Dr. Norris cleared his throat. “It means that we don’t know what is causing your amnesia. But we have suspicions.”

“Like what?” Mark snapped. He felt the doctors hid behind the technical trappings of their profession when all he wanted was an answer, and more importantly, a cure. Were they scared to cut to the chase? Did more words somehow soften his problem and the lack of a fix?

“We think you were poisoned by the ingredients in the flea bombs you placed in your house.”

Mark sat up. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your fiancée told us that your dog has fleas and that you activated several flea bombs to take care of the problem.”

He stared at them.

“Don’t worry, your dog is fine,” said Dr. Norris.

“I don’t remember having a dog . . . or a fiancée.”

“Yes, yes. Well, we researched the effects of the chemicals in the flea bomb on humans. Not much there, most of it involves short-term localized impairments and nothing that would explain amnesia.”

“So . . .I’m pretty much screwed?”

After a long pause, Dr. Norris said, “Not necessarily. Your memory could return at any time – in bits and pieces or all at once. But we believe that you should be referred to UCLA Medical Center for further evaluation and treatment.”

“How long will that take?”

They explained the process.

Mark sat stunned, with the phrases, health insurance, if they accept, and several weeks tumbling around his mind. “So . . . what’s next?”

Dr. Norris stepped forward. “We can arrange for transitional care, subject to insurance coverage, or . . . your fiancée has said that you can live with her until UCLA opens up.”

Mark stared into space, not knowing what to do.

“You don’t have to give us an answer right now. Your fiancée will be in to visit you this afternoon. You can decide after that.”

Mark nodded. The doctors hurried out. He lay back and rubbed his eyes and thought about his so-called fiancée. She’ll be a total stranger to me. She’ll expect me to know her. What if she’s ugly? What if I don’t like her? What if she’s scared, doesn’t like me . . . whoever that is?

He felt exhausted and drifted off to sleep as the TV blasted forth with an episode of Castle.

---

Mark sat in a wheelchair, clutched his discharge papers and waited. He’d decided that staying with a stranger was better than one more night on the ward or in some rest home. Hannah entered with Dr. Norris. She rushed to his side and stroked his cheek. He flinched. She was tall, beautiful and spoke to Norris in a strong voice.

“Is he alright? Can I take him home?”

“Yes. Except for the memory loss we talked about, so far we haven’t found other problems.”

Hannah nodded, moved behind the wheelchair and pushed Mark down the hall, into the elevator, then out the hospital’s doors into the blinding sunlight and to her car.

Traffic crowded the city’s streets. Hannah drove the Prius expertly, changing lanes and leaning on the horn at just the right moments. They motored northward toward the mountains then turned and cut across the intervening foothills covered with housing. She finally pulled into the driveway of a Spanish-style house, perched high on the slopes overlooking Santa Barbara and the Pacific. The house looked old, its orange roof tiles askew and covered in lichen, the front yard’s cactus garden gone amok.

“Yeah, this place was my grandparents’,” Hannah said. “They came here from Chicago right after World War II. I’ve only been here about five years.”

Mark nodded even though the words Chicago and World War II meant nothing to him. While in the hospital he realized that he could speak, read, and understand the names and functions of objects. But historical places, events, and context lay beyond that black curtain.

Heavy dark furniture filled the inside of Hannah’s house. Paintings and photographs of ranchlands covered the walls. In the living room, a blackened fireplace occupied one wall. A classical guitar rested in a far corner next to a huge piano. Hannah left him there and disappeared for a moment with the suitcase filled with his clothing and personal items.

“Do you want some iced tea?” she asked. “Today’s been a scorcher.”

“Yes, that’d be great.”

“Two sugars, right?”

“You clearly know me well!”

They sat on an overstuffed sofa and gazed out a picture window at sailboats dotting the gray-green Santa Barbara Channel.

“I’m so sorry that I didn’t get to you sooner,” Hannah said. “But you were busy with the Stempson House, and I thought you’d just turned off your cell.”

Mark nodded, not knowing what the hell she was talking about. He figured he’d be doing a lot of that over the next few days. Weeks? Months?

“This is so weird, don’t you think?” she said.

“God, yeah. I’m not sure what I should do. They told me nothing at the hospital, just to wait until they get word from UCLA.”

“Yeah, I know. Dr. Norris told me as much about your case as he could.”
Mark leaned back into the cushions and sighed. “So, what do we do now?”

“Why don’t I tell you about you, then about me, then about us.”

“This just gets weirder and weirder.”

Mark gulped his iced tea, closed his eyes, and wondered if he opened them again would he be back at his own house, wherever that might be. He listened intently as Hannah rattled off what she knew about him: Catholic, licensed architect with his own practice (mostly residential), male Australian Shepherd named Socks, parents dead, no siblings, divorced, chess player, non-athletic, wine connoisseur, Lotus driver, great lover with training still required.

Hannah’s story seemed more interesting: Jewish, USC grad in Music (classical piano), three cats (Magic Man, Cinnamon Girl, and Elise), parents alive and well in Pasadena, two brothers, never married, chess player (usually beats him), reader, athletic (runs five miles a day), wine connoisseur, Toyota driver, great lover, and coach.

Mark opened his eyes and smiled at Hannah. “Thank you. That’s great. I’ve narrowed my questions down to the top one thousand. So . . . tell me about us.”

“Okay. Well, we met about a year and a half ago at PetSmart. You were buying doggie kibble and flirting with the clerk.”

“I flirt?”

“Oh yeah, big time.” Hannah chuckled. “I was standing right there, and you hardly noticed me.”

“How could I not notice?”

“See, you’re doing it right now.”

“Sorry.”

“No, keep going. Anyway, I followed you out. You turned around right before me; both arms were full of pet food. You eyed the cat food bags and said something about your dog loving cats. I said my cats never knew a dog. And that was that.”

“So . . . how well did I know you? I guess if we’re engaged, well.”

Hannah grinned. “Well . . . if you mean in a biblical sense, ever since our fourth time together.”

“You certainly are . . . desirable.”

“There’s that flirting again.”

“Oops.”

They talked for what seemed like hours, Hannah telling stories about her youth or recounting the past year and things they had done together. To Mark, it sounded like a full life, one without much threat or fear. She showed him cell phone images of them at various places, taking selfies, always smiling.
He looked, amazed at how nothing rang a bell. Nothing.

“So . . . do you remember anything at all before you passed out? Has that changed at all?”

“I don’t remember anything.”

“Oh, crap! I almost forgot.”

Hannah bolted from her seat and disappeared into the adjoining kitchen. A door opened and closed. The clatter of paws on kitchen tiles sounded. An Australian Shepherd burst into the living room and charged toward Mark, its bushy tail frantically beating the air. He bent forward and grabbed the dog by its shoulders before it could climb into his lap, scratched it behind the ears, and rubbed its belly, the pooch whining and barking the entire time.

“Ah, so, this is Socks,” Mark said, laughing.

“Yep, definitely happy to see you.”

“But you have cats. How do they . . .”

“You’ll see later after he calms down.”

In a few minutes, Socks scratched himself, turned a few circles on the carpet then slumped across Mark’s feet and pretended to sleep.

They continued talking. Mark didn’t notice that the sun had disappeared into the sea until Hannah turned on a light. Somehow two bottles of wonderful cabernet had emptied themselves and stood guard on the coffee table strewn with magazines about the pop music scene. Evidently, Hannah did studio work when not giving private lessons and teaching at the community college. He silently congratulated himself on his decision to stay with her ¬– she seemed delightful, smart, educated, and sexy as hell. And it was clear to Mark that she loved him.

He excused himself and asked for directions to the bathroom. Once inside, he stared into the mirror over the sink. The dark three-day beard and his over-the-ears unruly hair made him look like a coal miner, home after a hard day’s work. He pushed his hair into place and rejoined Hannah, nervous about what might happen next.

He found her seated at the piano, concentrating, playing something slow and dramatic. He waited until she finished before speaking.

“That was beautiful. You certainly are accomplished.”

“Pull up a chair.” She pointed, not taking her eyes off the keyboard, and dove into another piece.

Mark found a wooden folding chair leaning against the wall and pulled it up close.

“Grab that guitar.”

“You play the guitar too?”

“Hell no. But you do . . . rather well.”

He retrieved the instrument from the corner.

“Go ahead and tune it. You have perfect pitch, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Just close your eyes and work the tuners.”

He closed his eyes and gently plucked the strings. It felt familiar.

“How’s that?” he asked, as sounds filtered through.

“Perfect. Now keep your eyes closed and play.”

“I can’t remember.”

“You may have muscle memory and know how to do it.”

“Just try.”

Mark began to play. His hands and fingers seemed to move on their own accord. He opened his eyes and watched, as if from a distance. Notes poured from the instrument’s sound hole as his fingers danced across the fretboard. Whatever it was he played came to an end. He stared at Hannah, open-mouthed.

She smiled at him and touched his face, her fingers warm and soothing. “See, muscle memory.”

Mark shivered. “Yeah, that was something. I wonder what else I remember?”
She stood and moved away from the piano. She pulled him closer. There is more muscle memory there, she smiled coyly at him.

He followed her as she sashayed toward the back of the house, to the bedroom to start his second life.

He woke to sunlight pouring through an open window, curtains thrown back to expose the city, sea, and sky. For the first time, he thought about his future, something he’d been avoiding. And the more he thought about it the more he felt that UCLA could wait. His future could be a grand adventure, something the Discovery Channel would be proud of.

Hannah called out to him from the kitchen. He pushed himself up. Socks lay stretched out on his side at the foot of the bed. Three huge cats curled up against his belly. All four snored softly. Mark slipped from the bed and padded across the floor toward the aroma of something delicious baking, eager to start another life with Hannah.

Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, and novels. His short stories have been accepted more than 500 times by journals, magazines, and anthologies including The American Writers Review, The Bryant Literary Review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated three times for Pushcart Prizes and once for inclusion in Best of the Net anthology. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.