LUFTEN

by Marianne Carlson

        “Guten Morgen, Blinken.” 

     “Guten Morgen, Klaus.”  Even though it was 9:30 on a cold December morning in Hamburg, Germany, the sun had not fully risen, it was dark, dreary and bone chilling cold. Klaus, my perpetually sunny, perpetually youthful husband kissed the top of my head as I sat at the breakfast nook in our apartment wrapped in a blanket. The window in the nook overlooked a typical Hamburg street, veiled by a  diaphanous curtain of snow falling relentlessly on the ubiquitous bicycle racks in front of brick buildings, graffiti everywhere, mostly large block letters defying rhyme nor reason. Klaus doesn’t allow me to call it gloomy, to him it is peaceful.

Although I was born and raised in Los Angeles, it has taken me 45 years and several years in Hamburg to fully comprehend what a strange, macabre place LA truly is.  Winter in Southern California is much like summer in Southern California, give or take a few degrees. It is as if a very bright light shines on the city continually. There is no place to hide. An environment obsessed with appearances, it leaves no room for soul, either in the heart of the sprawling city itself, or in her citizens who run from their plastic surgeon to their personal trainer to their dietician to their acting coach to their shrink who tells them that she sees improvement (but need more sessions  to the tune of $200 an hour.) 

I have come to realize that all these self-serving activities serve one purpose: to obliterate the aging process. Since there is no need to fight the elements, Angelinos fight their inner demons. It is a warm place with a sordid underbelly which allows things to fester. Almost anything is permissible, even encouraged. Drugs and alcohol are everywhere, kids buy and sell baggies on every corner, they then flock into AA meetings where frustrated second rate actors practice their schtick on fellow addicts.

Los Angeles is a land of beautiful women and beautiful cars. Maintenance is the key to both. Hamburg is a land of hard working women  without cars waiting for the bus on a cold corner with a wool hat pulled down over her hair, maintenance an afterthought. Conversely, museums in Los Angeles are full of paintings of dark, tortured souls, most paintings in German museums are gay and colorful (except for Otto Dix whose people are beyond bizarre.) 

“Give me a kiss to build a dream on,” Klaus sang to me as I spread a thick layer of quark on a hard roll.

  “Do you want to come watch us shoot today? We’re filming on the harbor.”

“Are you out of your mind? It will be freezing down there.” 

“OK, but please give me a kiss to build a dream on before I go, and my imagination can thrive upon that kiss.”

“You are such a jerk.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”  

Klaus always got the last shot. He did again this morning as he looped a wool scarf around his neck, German style, and put on his heavy boots. 

“Happy shooting,” I said as he lumbered down the stairs leading from our fifth floor walk-up. 

Klaus and have been married for 15 years.  He was drop dead gorgeous when we met, and continues to be so even though we are both in our middle 40’s. Half Swedish, half German, he has dark blonde hair, Paul Newman eyes that smile when he laughs, an iron man torso, and those rare genes that enable him to age into a distinguished gentleman.

The fact that he still calls me Blinken, which means twinkle in German, is a bit of a misnomer. It has been many a moon (if ever) since I have twinkled, but I find it endearing and I love him for it. My eyes never smile when I laugh, my adolescent photographs show a teen ager who is very uncomfortable in her own skin. Why? I do not know. I am tall, slim, have great skin, if I do say so myself, but my over active negative thinking processes tend to show on my face, giving me a somewhat petulant expression most of the time - at least this is what I see when I unexpectedly catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. 

Germans tend to be a serious bunch, but in our marriage I am the worry wart, Klaus the happy warrior. We met in Los Angeles where he was filming a documentary on pre World War 2 Germany and I was being paid as a consultant. European History was my major in college, my thesis was on The Third Reich. Being married to a German hunk isn’t always what it is cut out to be, but I prefer it to being married to an obese bald man. We compliment each other, Klaus makes movies, he loves the hustle and bustle, the intrigue, the acting. I write. I like staying home.

Nowhere is the juxtaposition of LA and Hamburg more pronounced than in the German’s obsession with fresh air and their daily habit of luften, where every window is slung wide open. It’s an airing out the likes of which I have never seen. Curtains blow wildly out of most windows at any given moment.

“We Germans worry about mold,” Klaus explained.

“Mold?”

“Yes, mold? We build very tight buildings. Like people, buildings need to breath fresh air every day.”

And so it began. Every day between noon and 1:00 there was a sharp rat-a-tat-tat on my door. “Freulein von der Hyde, öffnen Sie die Tür. Offnen Sie die Tur. Open zee door.” I knew what was coming, so I close my lap top, open my windows, open the skylight in the bathroom, and brace myself for his wrath. Herr Bauer, my landlord, has arrived. His English and my German are both shaky. We communicate in bits and pieces, but we both know that he is not at all happy with my luften, I am not doing it properly.  It is beyond me how there can be an improper way to open a window, but apparently there is. He communicates his displeasure through his gestures, waving his arms wildly as he points to my half open window. It is cold, very cold in the apartment, yet beads of sweat form on his brow as he unzips his jacket, loosens his scarf and stamps his heavy boots. I am used to bare feet and flip flops, these boots almost frighten me.

After three years in Hamburg we returned to La La Land and moved into an apartment on Doheney, just off of Pico.  It’s a snazzy address, Klaus’ career has taken off due to the success of his Hamburg Harbor movie. We have lots of money which is a good thing because our electric bill is astronomical. I keep the air conditioning on high day and night so that I can walk around our apartment wrapped in a blanket. Klaus wears a heavy sweater. We both miss luften.

AN INDIFFERENT WORLD

By Marianne Carlson

“This ain’t no way to treat a lady.” 

“She knows, she just KNOWS that we can’t make a move without her. Why would she LEAVE us like this? It is humiliating.” 

Gracie, near tears, spoke from a prone position underneath the stage. Head thrown back, her mouth appeared massive, way too big for the rest of her face. Partially open, no teeth, there was nothing cute about her. The studio was a mess. A large backdrop, a photograph of an ultra modern kitchen,  leaned against one wall, the heavy pots and pans hung from hooks on the ceiling.  

“My arm hurts. I think it needs stitches, and my glasses fell off. How am I supposed to read without my glasses?” From behind a stool, Deedee, was almost in tears.

“Reading is the least of our worries, Deedee. What if she has skipped town? 

“Skipped town?  You mean just up and left? Deedee sounded horrified. She would never do that without putting us back in the trunk. And she wouldn’t leave all these props scattered every which way. She is very meticulous. She likes things in their proper place, she’s obsessive compulsive, she’s got an attention deficit disorder,  she’s got a borderline personality disorder, she’s deteriorating as we speak.

“She is a manic depressive, approaching a complete psychotic break.” Gracie continued their litany of psycho babble from under the table as if they actually knew what they were talking about.

“I liked her a lot better when she was in her manic phase. We may have  worked a lot, but at least she was fun to be around.”

“Yeah, remember the show about the parking wars? That was funny.”

“And the fortune teller?”  

“Well, she is depressed now.” 

“And for good reason. Cooking with Gracie, got exactly 12 hits. In the  entire internet youtube world, 12 hits.” 

“Well this cooking crap has got to go,” said Gracie. Who wants to watch puppets cooking?”

“Nobody. I have an idea. Puppet porn,” said Deedee.

“Puppet porn?” Gracie thought for a bit. “ I like it, I love it. Puppet porn.

“No, I’m serious, Gracie, we need to step up our act.”

“I think I heard her come in. Shhh, she’s talking to someone.”

That someone was David, Brenda’s friend with benefits. Brenda, a small blond with stiff kinky hair like a mop was sitting in the living room, a room not suited for living, but the living room nonetheless. Everything about the room was dark, including (at the moment) Brenda. The drapes, upholstery, carpets, were all more suited for an older, more mature person. Brenda inherited the house and everything in it from her uncle, an attorney who had a propensity towards the dark side of life. Into this house blew Brenda, like a small tornado. She converted the dining alcove into a puppet studio; this studio became the heart and soul of the house.  

Today both the heart and the soul were in need of a boost.  When she made a puppet, Brenda became so obsessed with her project that she shut out everything else. The rest of the world simply did not exist; she and her growing puppet were enveloped in an invisible protective shield. Day blended into night, sleep and meals became superfluous. Her love for her creations was something fierce to see, it gave her a persona that sometimes resembled a vicious mother, a mother blinded by love and an inability to understand why the rest of the world did not appreciate her efforts.

“I suck, David.  It’s an indifferent world out there. I am a complete failure, a pant load. No one cares what I do.

“You’re not a pant load, Brenda. You are the most talented person I know.” 

When Brenda fell into one of these moods, David assumed his mentor/therapist/priest mode. He was tall, thin and serious, a PhD student in biomedical research with rimless glasses behind brown eyes as calm as cows and soft blondish hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was far more interested in parasites than puppets.    Although he loved Brenda dearly, her moods were becoming burdensome to him. Not knowing what was coming next, he tried to reason with her as if he was talking to an exotic caged parrot with a large vocabulary.  Gracie and Deedee adored him.

“I am too a pant load. I am going to build a fire and throw every one of my puppets into it.” With an ominous glint in her eye, Brenda methodically stacked wood in the fireplace, placed scrunched up newspaper under the logs and lit a match exactly as her uncle had taught her years ago. Soon a blazing fire lit up the dark room.

“What happened? Where are we?” Deedee woke up. She was sitting on a large desk, leaning against a stack of books, her glasses on the bridge of her nose, right where they were supposed to be.”  The room, far from dark, was brilliantly lit by large, florescent lights overhead. Unforgiving in their intensity, they glared on both Gracie and Deedee, offering them no place to hide.  David stood over his microscope, his white lab coat unbuttoned, his attention fixed on the slide under the glass. Gracie, although shaken, was sitting next to Deedee. Both girls had managed to regain their dignity, as they whispered to each other. 

Neither David, Gracie or Deedee had any idea what an impact the presence of the girls had on the other students in the lab. David carried on with his research, digging deeper and deeper into his thesis. Language in the lab cleaned up considerably. Experiments went smoothly. Long-standing disagreements cleared up almost overnight. All went well until the day that Brenda came looking for David.

“You bastard, I want my puppets. You stole them.”

“No, I saved them, you tried to kill them, Brenda. You are an unfit mother.”

“They are mine and I want them back.”

While the bickering continued Gracie and Deedee slipped quietly behind a bookshelf. There they remained until peace returned and Brenda left empty handed.

THE TIP JAR

by Marianne Carlson

Helen was not a wealthy woman, far from it. She worked as a food server at a bar and restaurant called Annabelle's.  They used to be waitresses, now they are servers. Although she had  zero patience with political correctness, apparently the political correct mafia sent out a decree declaring that waitressing was demeaning, serving was worthy, therefore she served.  Actually it's not a bad motto. "I serve."

Annabelle's owner, an intense, methodical man with no sense of humor named Matt required that his servers wear uniforms: pale blue/green dresses which fell to the knee. The servers hated them. The color washed away any sign of health, they always clocked in  looking as if they had been up all night. Matt had poured over catalogs for days before choosing these uniforms and he chose this particular "green" because he thought it would be a good neutral color that would please both his customers and his staff. The opposite was true.  No one would say it to his face, but there was a universal groan from  hungry people as they slipped into a booth on the day the uniforms made their first appearance.

 "What happened to your uniforms? I liked those little red checks!"

 "What a horrible color."

"He can't be serious."

"Barf green."

Matt was unaware of the bruhaha his choice of uniform caused, but Helen was mortified. Customers and staff alike were unhappy, and from that day forward life at Annabelle’s took an unfortunate turn. For Helen, the turn was almost catastrophic. It was as if she woke up one morning a different person, like a child recovering from a long illness who was regaining her strength, but not her old self,  which had been replaced with a much sadder soul. 

“What’s with you these days?” Helen’s long-term lover, Jeff, asked as they lingered over coffee. It had been a long day at Annabelle’s, a day where everything that could have gone wrong, did.

“I’m just tired. Matt has been in a terrible mood for days now, the sous chef never showed, tips are down, Agnes quit.”

“Agnes quit?” Jeff was surprised, he always liked Agnes, she had the same biting sense of humor that he had.

“Yup, she told Matt that life was too short to wear vomit green every day, took off her apron, threw it in his face, and said I quit.”

“Wow!” 

“You should have seen the look on his face, I think it was the first time he realized what effect these new uniforms have on his beloved Annabelle’s.”

Without Agnes, work became tedious. Helen did not realize the joy Agnes had brought to her day. No one else had the ability to make her laugh in quite the same way as Agnes because her laugh consumed her. When Agnes laughed, Helen laughed, sometimes with her, sometimes at her, but there always seemed to be something to tickle their funny bones. They had nicknames for the regulars: Shifty, for the man with the shifty eyes, Ms Tits for the buxom blonde who came in every morning for coffee, and Quaker Oats for the truck driver who ate oatmeal every morning for breakfast. The customers still came like clockwork, but without Agnes, the nicknames didn’t seem satisfying, they were merely customers.

What did not tickle her funny bone, was the gnawing sense that Agnes had been stealing. The tip jar on the counter was a prime target, it always sat there unattended, and more than once Helen saw Agnes take money from the jar and pocket it when she thought no one was looking. Now that she was gone, the jar remained solvent, bills and coins stayed put.

Several days after Agnes quit Helen and Jeff were getting ready for bed when their was a knock on the door. They were both tired. This was odd, no one was expected,  so when Jeff opened the door to find a most distraught Agnes, neither knew quite what to do.

"Can I come in?"

"Of course, what's up?"

She was so agitated that every cell in her being seemed on fire. She sat on the couch, fell on the couch is more like it, and speaking in a whisper, told them she was being stalked. 

"Stalked? Who is stalking you? You don't have to whisper,  only Helen and I are here.

"Please close the blinds."

"Ok." Helen closed the one remaining blind, tip toeing to the window at the same time rolling her eyes behind Agnes' back. 

"Who is stalking you?"

“I don’t know. Maybe one of the customers from Annabelle’s. Maybe one of the staff. That creepy sous chef. He gave me the creeps from the day he walked in the kitchen.”

“Were you followed today?” Helen thought about the sous chef’s absence, but said nothing.

“I think I was. Can I sleep on your couch tonight?”

“Of course.” Jeff grabbed a pillow and blanket from the linen closet, handed them to Agnes with a smile, went into the bedroom, and fell asleep quickly, like a small tired child exhausted from play. No stalker would disturb his sleep but this was not the case for the two friends who noticed a small dark car parked outside. The sous chef drove a small black VW.

Helen and Agnes kept vigil, waiting for the car to move, but it remained until about 2:00 a.m. when a patrol officer checked the car and told him to move on. With the aid of the cop’s flashlight, the girls could make out the profile of the sous chef.

The following morning Agnes was gone when Helen dragged herself out of bed. The sous chef was also gone from the kitchen at Annabelle’s. when she clocked in. He, too disappeared in the dead of night never to be seen again. Helen tried repeatedly to contact Agnes with no luck. She simply vanished.

What also vanished were the barf green uniforms. The little red and white checks reappeared, and business at Annabelle’s immediately picked up. The tip jar was almost always full but Helen’s heart was empty. For days her hands shook when she poured coffee, mixed orders, arrived late, burst into tears for no reason. Before going to bed at night, she always checked. The black VW parked outside frightened her, so much so that she called the police who told her that there was nothing they could do. The driver was not breaking the law. Not yet.

NATALYA AND VALENTINA

by Marianne Carlson

For as long as she could remember, Natalie had an imaginary twin. As a child her twin was her constant companion. Had it not been for Valentina, life in the small NJ suburban town outside New York City where she grew up would have been unbearable for it was Valentina who pushed her, kicking and screaming, to try out for the swim team, to sing a solo in Guys and Dolls in the local theatre production, to denigrate herself continually auditioning in front of bored clients looking for the perfect teenager. How ironic her life had become. Since the Ruth White Agency had signed her up, Natalie was  the perfect “girl next door” in magazines and on billboards. She sold shampoo, deodorant, jeans, her soul. As her fame grew, her ego, brittle to start with, diminished and was in danger of disappearing altogether. Natalie walked through the door,  charming agents and photographers alike, bit it was Valentina who always sealed the deal. 

Tall and graceful, she moved like a giselle with the long, lean look of a ballerina. When she smiled, which was rare, she was captivating. When pensive, she appeared to be consumed with melancholy, her mind was clearly somewhere else,  not a good place for her to be. 

“Natalya, we have to be more careful, people are beginning to notice.” Valentina always called Natalie “Natalya.”

“Notice?”

“Yes, never talk to me in front of other people. They will think you are odd, that there is something wrong with you.”

Fear gripped her. As Valentina talked, a feeling  of  pure terror engulfed Natalie.  They were coming more frequently, the preliminary rush in her head leading up to a full-blown panic attack, leaving her weak, vulnerable and shaking.  She had learned early on to never let anyone know what she was thinking,  never tell anyone, never utter an opinion about anything. Valentina thought for her. The magnitude of losing her twin began to take hold from that moment on. Natalie’s reality, her fame depended on Valentina, without her she was nothing. 

“Look at it this way, Nat. I’m the alpha dog, you the beta.” 

“OK. Fine with me.”

But it was not fine. If you are always someone else, who are you? Natalie was a graceful swimmer, her free style times beat everyone else in her age group but while Natalie walked into the locker to change into her bathing suit, it was always Valentina who walked onto the deck of the pool.  And then there were those damn auditions. Natalie’s mother enrolled her in a spiffy advertising agency in Manhattan. The woman who interviewed her was everything Natalie hated - large, loud and brassy with lots of bracelets that clanked as she drummed her long red nails on her day planner while looking at Natalie through myopic, pale blue eyes too proud to wear glasses. One too many face lifts had frozen her thin lips into a smile that looked more like a perpetual grimace, and through that grimace she oozed hostility born from jealousy. Surrounded by young girls on the cusp of their   allure, hers had long since passed her by. As a result, anger bubbled below the surface, and  unacknowledged anger can be a very scary thing. There was no way Natalie could deal with the horror of this woman, but Valentina loved her.  She was a challenge, and Valentina loved nothing more than a challenge.  

“Dear, you are exactly what Ruth White looks for. How do you stay so slim?”  Both Natalie and Valentina hated it when anyone called them “dear,” it was the kiss of death as far as they were concerned.

“I swim.”

“Wonderful. Just keep on doing what you are doing and you will go far with us.” The Grimace said she would be in touch, and the next thing she knew Valentina was signing a contract. She signed “Natalie” on the dotted line.  

“Oh, my dear, you are lovely beyond belief,” Natalie muttered as she went down the elevator, talking to the mirrored walls surrounding her.

“You bet your sweet ass I am, and we are going to make some big bucks off of you, Grimace, ” answered Valentina.

And so it began: the “cattle calls,” looking for teenage girls for a fast foods commercial, a shoe line, a family scene advertising a mini van, rain gear. Natalie auditioned for all of them. The panic attacks reared their ugly heads on a regular basis. Every time she read or danced or smiled or cried or ate some God-awful processed cheese for yet another self-serving client, Natalie panicked,  but Valentina was always there to put the pieces together as quickly as she fell apart.

“Please swim to the edge of the pool, pause, and then climb slowly up the steps. Try it again, you almost have it.” The client for SwimGear was becoming exasperated.  It was hot on the deck and the lights from the crew and photographers were making it even hotter. Natalie began to shiver, she had been in the water for over an hour and she was cold.

“What am I doing wrong?”

“The timing is off, if you could swim a little slower, and then pause and wait before you climb the stairs.” The client, the ad people, The Grimace was pissed. 

“I can’t do this, I just can’t. Natalie’s world was beginning to cave in on her, the panic, the voices, they were in the pool, they were coming after her.  

“Over here, Natalya, over here.” Valentina waved from lane six, her white bathing cap and black goggles shrouded in a cloud of mist.  Natalie left lane one, and swam under water across the pool.

“What the fuck is she doing now?” The camera man shook his head while wiping the sweat off his red, pudgy face. 

Natalie’s lungs were caving in but she managed to reach Valentina.

“Valentina, I thought you had left me, I thought you were gone, this time for good,” Natalie sobbed.

“I told you, Natalya, I would never leave you. You need to believe me. 

The crew on the deck watched the white bathing cap go under water again, and waited for it to reappear. After ten minutes, The Grimace called 911.

LOVE HURTS

by Marianne Carlson

We sat opposite each other in a booth at Annabelle’s. The faded maroon leather on the back of Rebecca’s seat was torn, and I kept looking at the L -shaped tear as   Rebecca wolfed down her French fries. “L.” L for love. L for liar, for loser.  I began to  stutter and stammer my way through my well rehearsed tale of woe, and it was then, at that moment, that I realized that I was in way over my head.  We are taught to believe that love is the thing, the only thing worthwhile, but no one tells us how much it can hurt.

Annabelle’s had always been “our place.” There is something kind of quirky about Annabelle’s, it’s a 50‘s style diner with all classical music on the juke box. It’s what I love about Annabelle’s, and as I came to realize, what I love about Rebecca, that juxtaposition that never fails to surprise.   Her face, framed with a mop of Brillo-textured ash blonde hair, reveals misty-blue eyes,  conveying an almost unbearable sadness at the same time her smile radiates an explicable joie de vivre, the reason known only to her. She always looks as if she knows a wonderful secret.

We both put our omnipresent cell phones on the table, an unspoken concession to unplug while in each other’s company, but neither of us turned them off. I often wonder how things would have evolved if I had simply turned my  phone off.  The finale of Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italian was reeving up as I cleared my throat . Rebecca, wearing some kind of a  pale gray tee shirt with angels and devils co-mingling, skinny jeans and her beloved Converse high tops,  dipped more French fries into a large mound of catchup.  Oh, those ubiquitous  high tops! I can’t look at Converse high tops any more. When I see them the pain is excruciating, and I can’t bare to listen to Capriccio Italian. I simply don’t trust myself even though it is one of my favorite pieces of music. Rebecca has robbed me of so many things, perhaps my life.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say another word, I need to listen to the music and I can’t listen if you are talking.” Once Rebecca put her mind to something she shut everything else out, and  since I qualified as part of the “everything else,” I often became superfluous, a tchotchka sitting on an obscure gift shop shelf.

Before Rebecca, my life had become a symphony of unresolved silences followed by the inevitable fortissimo, terrible fights, followed by more silences.  Some people would call it a bad soap opera, but I prefer to call it a symphony because I am a terrible snob and don’t watch programs that advertise soap. The quiet times in music, the sweet, almost unbearable quiet leading up to those thunderous horns and base drums, were all too familiar in my marriage.   Our quiet, however,  was not sweet, it was tense and awkward and unpleasant. 

My three kids picked up on it. At 8, 10 and 12, they went about their days with studied indifference to their home life at the same time noting everything.  Over scheduling kept them busy, but Kate, especially Kate, my 12 year old daughter, knew her mother was not a happy camper. How could a mother who was always attached to her cellphone, talking, whispering to one of her many girl friends as she screwed her face into hatred, remain unnoticed indefinitely? Those years when Alison balanced a toddler on one hip while stirring something with her free hand have been replaced by a balanced iphone nestled between her head and her neck. I prefer the former, all this multi-tasking is both frustrating and rude.

Something was awry and Kate picked up on it. From the day she was born, Kate had this scary “women’s intuition” going for her, she always knew what I was going to say before the words left my lips. Kate had always been Alison’s possession. The two boys she loved, Kate, she adored. Our sons, Timmie and Tommie, came along, a year apart. Timmie is my favorite. He looks like me, he thinks like me, and he worships the ground I walk on. It’s hard not to respond to adoration, and I have always believed that almost every family has a favorite child. A parent will tell you that they love all their children equally, but I don’t believe it for a minute.

My wife, Alison, knew what I was up to. She is not stupid, and she knew.  I was elsewhere so often, and there are just so many times one can lie about one’s whereabouts.  She lay down the law last night in her own inimitable style - cruel and blunt. Her iphone was nowhere in sight.

“I know you are fucking someone and it’s got to stop because if it doesn’t, I will take your children and I will take your house and I will take your precious Lexus and I will take your country club membership and I will leave you with nothing.”  To think that when I married her I thought she was refined and gentle?  She was. Alison graduated from Smith with honors, was Homecoming Queen in her local small town parade, and was considered to be a good catch: beauty and brains. Over the years the beauty has faded and hardened into an early matronly persona complete with botox and lot of hair color - blends, frosts, subtle waves of color weaving through every hair on her head, costing a bloody fortune.    She has become the perfect stereotype of the angry housewife in a Lifetime for Women movie, one of those women who speak through clenched teeth. It is my contention that in a woman, a jaw like a steel trap coupled with clenched teeth are a dead give away. Trouble on the home front.  It’s not entirely Alison’s fault, but what I have come to hate about her is her stubbornness. Alison has to be right. Always. Nothing is ever her fault.

The Germans have a custom called luften. No matter how cold the winter, they open up every window in the house each day and ventilate .  Our home could use a good luften, stale air permeates. My home, my castle, feels as if it is rotting from musty air. I often find myself choking, especially when my iwife is on one of her perpetual venting sessions on that damn little phone. It never ends, and her shopping addiction isn’t helping. Although she isn’t a hoarder in the true sense of the word, she is getting close. There are piles and bags full of God only knows what in every corner, the tags remaining on most items in the bags.

Rebecca, on the other hand, is the only person I have ever known who has no filter. Incapable of guile, she always says exactly what is on her mind. As I told her about Alison’s rant, she said, “Well, it was only a matter of time.” 

“Matter of time?”

“We both knew this could not continue indefinitely.”

“I had hoped we could continue,” I said lamely. My phone began vibrating, humming incessantly. I glanced at it. Alison’s name appeared on the screen.  She will have to wait I thought as I moved the phone away. I knew Rebecca was right, but I had not realized how miserably unhappy I had been until the prospect of a life without Rebecca took over all the blank spaces in my mind turning everything gray. My thoughts frightened me, and for a period of time, I don’t know how long, I was incapable of speaking. It was as if I was semi-conscious, heavily medicated. What disturbed me, what I found the most hurtful, was the fact that Rebecca seemed so nonchalant. I had expected another reaction. I had expected more from her.

“Affairs never end well,” Rebecca said after what seemed like an eternity. My phone started humming again, the vibration causing it to almost dance on the table. For some reason I greatly feared picking it up because I had a foreboding that no matter what the horror was that I was going through, things were about to get worse and I didn’t feel able to deal with more. 

“I somehow thought you and I were a cut above your average every day affair. We are made of finer stuff,” I said without looking at her. The salt and pepper became my solitary focus, I stared at them as if my life depended on it.

“We are who we are, no better nor worse than millions of others out there.”

“I don’t believe that for a second, and neither do you,” I said, picking up the salt and then laying it down on the other side of the pepper shaker.  The salt shaker was a woman in a long dress and the pepper a farmer, and when you put them together, they hugged each other. I placed them back to back, there was to be no hugging in this conversation. Once more my phone began it’s solitary shimmy across the table. I glanced at it again, this time it was my next door neighbor’s number on the screen.

“Shit, why can’t people leave me alone,” I said half to myself, half to Rebecca as I put the phone to my ear.

“Yes, hello.”

“Randy, this is Paul from next door. You need to come home, there has been an accident.”

“An accident?  What kind of an accident? Who?”

“It’s Timmie. He was hit by a car.  He’s gone, Randy, he died  half  an hour ago.”

Part Two

Two years have passed since we lost Timmie, two years since my former life ended and my new life began. Two joyless years. Most days have been spent putting one foot in front of the other while attempting to drown the waves of pain that continue to come to the surface when I least expect them. Some days I cry, most days I am dry eyed. Alison and I are still together, we can’t live with each other and we can’t live without each other, although neither of us know how to comfort the horrible pain we feel, both in ourselves and in each other. She is still attached to her iphone, I have taken up running. All the things that were so important to me in my former life are no longer important, what I never noticed is now paramount. Life goes on.

I have not seen Rebecca since that day at Annabelle’s, but much to my surprise I recently received a letter from her, hand-written and sent to my office:

Dear Randy:

Although we have not spoken to each other since that terrible day at Annabelle’s, not a day has gone by when I have not thought of you.  Timmie's death affected me deeply in spite of the fact that I had never met him. The fact that I could not comfort you in what must have been unbearable grief  was torturous for me, but we had to play with the cards with which we were dealt. 

Those cards were cruel. Our plan to carry on as lovers was chimerical at best, but the stars collided all at once, taking the two things you held most dear in one awful day, and for that to happen to someone like you is unfair. I am sure platitudes don't help, people are at a loss for words. "I feel your pain?" No, you don't. "Time heals all wounds?" Hardly. Not all wounds, some wounds are just too deep. The only thing I can suggest (although I realize I am in no position to give advice) is to seek out other parents who have lost a child because they are the only ones who know how you suffer, and in their company, you may be able to comfort each other.

I love you very much. I will always love you. 

Rebecca

AN AIRPORT ENCOUNTER

by Marianne Carlson

Tony was early. As he sat waiting in the generic holding pen the airlines created for passengers waiting to board, he watched her. Not especially attractive, yet for reasons unclear to him he couldn't stop himself from staring. She had the gift of youth, both a blessing and a curse - blessed to have a face clear of wrinkles or lines, yet her face lacked character, like a mannequin in Macy's window.  She was remarkably thin.

     He checked his iPhone for messages. Nothing new. Now she was looking at him, her eyes somehow veiled as if glossed over by a microscopic film, yet he could tell she noticed him.  He couldn’t read her, he didn't know what to do. Approach or avoid? She looked at him with a half smile, almost a smirk,  as she removed her black leather jacket with a jerky impatience, took one more sip from her Starbucks cardboard cup and began leafing through a magazine, abruptly turning pages. Somehow he found her more attractive when she not smiling. 

Every page seemed to annoy her. Everything seemed to annoy her, the magazine, the airport, the waiting passengers, life. She reminded him of a small stuffed animal, a tiger maybe or a lion that had suddenly been given the gift of life and had no idea what to do with it. From her boots to her thick mantle of hair, she was an enigma, but an enigma with fantastic energy who dominated the space they inhabited.

“Flight 460 to New York City has been cancelled due to inclement weather on the East Coast. Please check with the American Airlines ticket agent for rescheduling.”  Like sheep in a pen, they gathered up their belongings,  lap tops, briefcases, bags of half eaten food. The herd stood in line, approximately 25 disgruntled sheep, baying discontentedly. Tony stood behind the girl with the hair, a time bomb waiting to explode.

“Here we go again.” She spoke to no one in particular, but Tony took this as a good omen, and did not hesitate to answer. If he thought she appeared annoyed before, it was nothing compared to her present anger.

“We can’t blame the airline for the weather.”

“Why not?” 

“Well, it’s not their fault,” he answered weakly. 

By the time they reached the ticket agent, it was clear that they would not be going anywhere for awhile. Flights were cancelled up and down the coast, and both Isabelle and Tony were marooned, at least for the foreseeable future. While in line he learned that her name was Isabelle. It suited her.

“Tony? Is it really? I was engaged to a Tony. I will call you Anthony, Tony brings back very bad memories.”

“You can call me whatever you like.” Actually no one ever called  him Anthony, it felt as if she was talking to a stranger.

“Like a drink? It looks like we have nothing but time.”

“Sure.”

They made their way to a bar with a huge flat screen TV broadcasting a Knicks game. The volume was way too loud. She grabbed the last remaining table while he ordered a couple of beers. Between the Knicks and the disgruntled passengers, the atmosphere was anything but intimate, yet as soon as they sat down she began.

“I just had a marathon session with my boss, begging, pleading with him not to fire me, but he fired me anyway. I thought I  was more persuasive, but not so. It was: don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

“Oh, I am sorry to hear that.” He was surprised, she didn’t look to me like the type that spills all but he was to be in for quite a ride. She held her mug lightly, playing with the frost.  He couldn’t take his eyes off her hands, they were so beautiful.  She could have been a hand model, advertising soap or toilet paper with her long tapered fingers. Anything soft. 

“Where do you work?”

“Where did I work, is more like it.”

“Sorry, where did you work?”

“Rhinehart Labs. It’s a small laboratory in Los Angeles.”

“You’re a scientist?”

“You could call it that. Actually I am a chemist.

“I never would have guessed it.” His work in the art department in a small Hollywood film studio suddenly seemed insignificant, almost demeaning.

I was working on a huge project. Rhinehart perfected salt water chlorination, a replacement for chlorine  used in swimming pools.” 

“Really?”

“Yes, it was going great guns. YMCA pools all over the country were converting to salt water when suddenly people began to get sick. Certain viruses popped up. 

“Oh?” 

“A little boy died, we were sued, the Y’s stopped using our system, and that in a nutshell was that. Twenty of us were laid off, I was the first to go. 

“But it sounds as if you were on to something. Couldn’t the formula have been tweaked, perfected, made stronger?

“Yes, but the law suit wiped us out. And someone died. A little boy died, and I feel responsible.”

The transformation in Isabelle was remarkable. Tony sat in stunned silence as she dropped her mask. What remained was hard to look at: confusion, guilt,  the horror of the death of a child, and he began to feel uncomfortable because he realized that he was the first person she had confided in. Her pain was unbearable, he wasn’t equipped to handle it.

“I feel responsible. I was the one who signed off on the formula. I should have tested it further, but we were all in such a hurry to go forward with this. The money was unbelievable.”

The Knicks game ended. They lost in an overtime. Strangely the two strangers were aware of the score as they discussed the death of a six year old boy who had lived in Dayton, Ohio. It served as a form of comic relief to an otherwise excruciating topic.

“Perhaps you should go to Dayton, visit his parents?” Where that  came from Tony did not know but it was exactly the right thing to say.

“Will you come with me?”

“I will.” 

An exhausted ticket agent asked Isabelle, then Tony where they were going. They both changed their reservation to Dayton and waited in the same holding pen. Neither would ever be the same again.