Category: Fiction

She first saw him three months ago at the tail-end of the horrible summer. The manager and the stocker used to stand in the walk-in freezer on their off-time while she stood behind the register in the faint breeze of the window-unit, sweating through her red polo shirt that had once belonged to her father. The stranger was nearly seven-feet tall and had to crouch beneath the threshold as he entered the store. He bought standard poor-people things, staples: cans of beans, single pounds of only the discount ground beef, butter, milk, hot sauce, brown sugar, steel-cut oatmeal, eggs, and chocolate.

One sometimes has to make sacrifices for art. She loves the richness of an oil painting, its depth. Although she hasn’t given away any of her artwork, it might be time.

Her husband is no longer here to object to her giving her artwork away, to spending money on art supplies, to having a hobby that has nothing to do with being a farm wife.

Though he also would have walked dogs if a star had asked him. He knew we needed money. The apartment we found was almost like the opposite of the pampered Hollywood places, where people parked your car for you. We lived in a ticky-tack jumble more like a chicken coop, with every apartment squeezed up against every other. Through the walls we heard our neighbors’ arguments or listened to their TVs blare. We ended up there because, unfortunately, Dirk’s mother’s diamond earring wasn’t pawnable.

“I’ll come see you one day, promise.” Kiara tottered over to him. She gave him another hug, despite his evident discomfort.

She seemed to like him, in a maternal way. He liked her too. She was smart and funny. She had great taste in music.

Deep down, she must have known something wasn’t right in her relationship with Miles. In breaking them up, he was doing them both a kindness.

If he didn’t go out there, they’d start intuiting the truth: that he was approaching the same bridge Sid had crossed, the one that connected strange to crazy. He’d long feared becoming “the new Sid.”

Yvette nodded. “I hear you. I’ll probably keep going, though. I like the doughnuts. And the structure. I really need the structure.” Her voice quavered then, holding back a sob. “The house is lonely without Jasper. Especially in the mornings. You’d think I’d miss him more at night, but it’s the mornings that get me. The way only my side of the bed is messed up. That just kills me.”