No one else stood up when the two elderly ladies got on the bus, so Bear had to provide the example and offered them his seat. He stood up as they approached and made the giving up my seat gesture with his arm. The one lady smiled and him. He watched the smile curdle into an expression of confusion and followed her sightline to see some teenager had taken his seat.
"Hey," Bear said, trying to sound tough and imposing. "You think I stood up for you? I was letting these ladies have those seats."
The teenager ignored him, scrolled...
I wondered how it could be that she wanted me to do such a terrible thing. She promised that she wouldn't tell my wife.
"Experience has taught me that sisters do not keep secrets from each other."
She couldn't stop staring at me.
I assumed she thought it was sexy. I just saw alimony payments and the cold stare of an ex-wife. And yes, let's not forget the angry words of a father-in-law who never really did like me in the first place. Well, you can't blame the man, when I remember that he caught me and my then girlfriend...
He's as tall as the door, my obsession, and almost as wide. His shoulders hold the promise of strength and safety, his tapered torso slims to promising hips that I try hard not to stare at. His eyes look through my soul, piercing my resolve and dissolving my barriers until I can no longer bear to be in the same room.
He doesn't know this, of course. I smile and nod and grab my files as if I am incredibly busy, then walk to the end of the office. Even though my back is turned and I occupy my shaking...
My father and I were lying on the beach wondering why the moon looked larger than usual. My father argued idly--something about the flat terrain and the empty skyline. "If we could see a house, or a tree, or a traffic light, it wouldn't look so big."
It was a stupid explanation, but we are not the kind of people who carry iPhones, and whip them out to settle any debate. We hate those people. They ruin everything.
We'd been drinking wine from the motel's paper cups. We'd run out of wine a long time ago, but occasionally we still...
Iridescent, the water moved silently over her head as her toes grazed the soft sand beneath her. In an equilibrium, almost floating but almost standing, she let the water raise her arms. This was limbo.
People always said it was best to keep your feet on the ground, so to speak. When the mind wanders, ideas get lost. Was that the way it really worked, the woman wondered, exhaling and releasing small bubbles of her life-breath into the water. The bubbles traveled upward to the surface, releasing her breath for her over her head. It was true, water made you...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. Off, yes. around, yes. But on, absolutely not. No matter how many times he flipped the switch, no matter how many times he prodded it, shook it, swung it over his head, he could not get it to turn on. He decided to coax it. First he offered it things that humans like: chocolate, love and affection, sex. The lamp did not budge. Then he offered it things that his cat liked: mackerel, catnip, a laser. Nothing. He tried reasoning with it, but the lamp was dead to his entreaties. Look, he explained, you staying...
She didn't look at him.
"So that's my answer, is it?" He stared at her, hoping, praying for - well, anything. Any kind of response. A show of emotion.
She didn't look at him.
"Fine. If - if that's how it is, if that's - fine." He wanted the weight to lift from his shoulders, now that he knew the truth, he wanted something to happen, some kind of change - he wanted to feel something.
There was nothing. He was numb. He wasn't even angry, he just felt cold.
"So I'll be going then."
Her back was to him...
She heard it calling out to her. Her clearing in Yellowstone -- it was whispering that it longed for her presence. And on this day, when she felt like the world was collapsing around her -- its edges bent and frayed and its fringes burning up in smoke -- she dragged herself there up winding paths and wild trees.
While most people saw Yellowstone as a national park, she saw it as her backyard, her sanctuary, her refuge. She had a clearing there, all her own, that bears in the hundreds of years they'd been there hadn't even found. But...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.
He showed up yesterday. Waltzed in through the front door like he owned the place. Maybe he does, actually. I certainly don't.
I've been here for a couple of months. When the sun's up, I'm usually out doing something else, like fishing in the creek out back, or building a dam with rocks and fallen branches. It passes the time. Every now and then it even gets me something to eat.
But in all my time here, I'd never known anyone to even step off the sidewalk onto the lawn. Never...
Now, supposedly, if I start out a hundred meters ahead of Achilles, and Achilles is travelling five times faster than me, when he has covered that hundred meters, I will nevertheless have travelled twenty. And when he travels twenty, I will have travelled four. And when he travels that four, I will have traveled .8 meters, and so on and so forth, such that Achilles will never reach me. I win.
But Zeno, the cur, says that, eventually, Achilles overlaps me. "We know it from experience," he tells us. God damn experience! I know that if Achilles is continually arriving...