Laney buzzed around her bedroom in the back of her parents house, like an insect trapped between window and shade. She stepped across a carpet of long ignored debris, trying to determine what she hated more – the eighteen year old brats she taught at the City College on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, or the tiny brats who drained her of every weekend and nearly all of her evenings.

Monday through Friday, it was usually the college kids who ignited the flame of her ire, but today, the day before the dog barking April recital, it was the smaller ones which brought the bitter broth inside her brain to a rolling boil.

Of course, the children weren’t the worst. She could almost stomach them, if it wasn’t for the horrible parents who came along, like poison inside a poinsettia. What sort of parent started their child on an instrument as difficult as the violin when they were only three years old and barely out of diapers? What could they possibly expect?

Yet Laney knew exactly what they expected, the same thing her own parents had. Each of them imagined their own kid as a prodigy, regardless of the cold reality. Most of the children weren’t even close to being able to hold the instrument correctly; forget about striking a proper note or pleasant tone.

The worst part of the lessons was how mad the parents always seemed to get when she corrected their children. Didn’t they realize she was only trying to help? Apparently not. Laney could feel the weight inside the room grow heavier every time she tried to help one of the little brats with their bow hold. What did they expect her to do – use magic, or maybe telekinesis?

Tomorrow Laney would have to play nice with all of the parents at the same time, and for a torturously long ninety minutes. The thought made her feel like filling the toilet bowl with her breakfast; a task which she was behind schedule to get done anyway. If her parents would just leave the gosh yarn house for fifteen minutes and take their morning walk like they were supposed to, she could have a private moment to take care of business.

She never had any privacy and it seemed like her parents did everything in their power to keep it that way. They’d probably go on their walk right as her ten o’clock lesson was standing on the porch and ringing the doorbell, and return the second it was over.

And they would do it just to Capital P her off.

It was time for Laney to start thinking about getting her own place, again. The last time she’d tried, when she was thirty-six, things had gone horribly wrong. But that was almost five years earlier and she was definitely ready to at least think about trying again.

She was ready to order a pizza without asking her father what he wanted on top. She was ready to have her mother pick up her own french fry flipping prescriptions. She was ready to let them pour their own baths. And she was definitely ready to stay out late without having to explain where she was (not that any of the places she frequented were even worth explaining).

Her parents never asked her straight out, but Laney knew they wanted to know. She could feel it behind their pleasant expressions when she opened the door, just like she could feel it behind all the questions they never asked.

Money wasn’t an issue. Between her teaching and the violin studio Laney ran in the tiny unventilated den just across the hall from her bedroom nestled in the furthest corner of her parent’s modest house, she had plenty. Laney had only been on her own for six months in her entire life and had been squirreling away for the rest of her adulthood.

Problem was, a night time without her parents made Laney feel like a toddler lost at Disneyland. Too much open space colliding against too many decisions. Daytime was fine, Laney could go to her classes and teach her barely literate students basic English. On days when she wasn’t teaching, all she had to do was go for a walk to feel better. It was difficult to feel alone during the day.

Nighttime was different.

Night was when the lonely came out to ask Laney the questions she hated to answer.  Nighttime reminded her that she needed her mommy and daddy like a two-year old needs their saliva soaked blanket. Nighttime brought the Scarecrow and all his friends.

The doorbell’s sharp chime pulled Laney from her daze. The ring arrived right when she expected, singing in perfect time to her parent’s swinging the door open to take their morning walk.

Of course, Laney thought.  Now she would have to make nice with the Mott Family for thirty minutes in the otherwise empty house. And she could just bet that all three of them would be traipsing arrogantly through her home like they owned the place. Didn’t they realize her studio was way too small for a family of three to share the space for half an hour?

“Hello,” Laney said pleasantly, through teeth that she alone knew were gritted.

Laney was relieved to see that it was just the two girls walking through the door.  Mommy must have let daddy off his leash for the morning.

“Okay, girls, you know where to go.  I’ll take care of Mooch.” Laney directed Kimmy and her mother to the back of the house while she led her oversized St. Bernard into the sun room where he would wait out the lesson.

“Now, you no be a stinky muffin,” Laney cooed into his giant espresso colored eyes. “You be KI-YET and no be a bad PUP-PEE!”

Laney closed the sun room door and began to walk down the hall, her heart skipping a beat when she saw the threshold of her bedroom had an open seam. She didn’t remember leaving it open, was horrified that she had, and immediately began to obsess about what, if anything, had been seen by the Motts.

“Sorry,” she said, entering the tiny studio. “My students this semester,” she sighed dramatically, “are giving me such a headache. Hand me your violin,” she said to little Kimmy.  “I’m sure it needs tuning.”

Kimmy handed her violin to Laney and Laney tuned it while continuing to discuss college students who had no bearing on the lives of the student presently in the room or her mom, both sitting patiently on the couch waiting for their teacher to finish. Laney rambled on, adding the occasional aside about how horribly out of tune Kimmy’s violin sounded for the next seven minutes until, finally, Mrs. Mott looked at her watch and said, “Um, Ms. Laney, I think we should get going with our lesson.”

A flash of anger flared inside Laney’s head.

She’s always correcting me. If she knows so much, why doesn’t she just teach her daughter to play the violin herself? Because she can’t! That’s why. I’m the one with the credential. I’m the one with the certificate. I’m the one who has been taking lessons since she was four!

Laney swallowed her anger and continued. The next twenty-two minutes promised to pass at an excruciating crawl unless Laney allowed her mind to leave the studio and burrow inside the depths of her own to-do’s.

She began to organize her lesson plans for the coming week and imagined summoning the courage to ask for mushrooms on the evening pizza (her parents always said they didn’t care, but she knew they didn’t mean it). She thought about the small stack of things she needed to get in the mail and made a mental note to ask for permission to check her email on her mom’s computer.

As so often happened when she tried to box her mind inside the pleasant boundaries, the bad thoughts dug their heels in and spun her in a different direction, quickly moving Laney from nowhere in particular toward some of her most unsettling memories.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow! She could hear the children on the playground taunting her.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow! The catcalls grew louder and more incessant.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow!

“That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it,” Laney snapped from her trance and grabbed little Kimmy’s hand at the wrist. “Remember, do it like I showed you!”

Laney dropped Kimmy’s limb and played the piece herself, as mechanically as if a quarter had been inserted in her side.

“Well, it looks like it’s that time.” Laney finished the tune and set her violin in its case, then glanced at the clock in disbelief – the lesson still had three minutes to go.

“Kimmy, honey, could you please go and wait in the hall for me. Ms. Laney and I need a moment alone.”

“Of course, Mom.”

“Ms. Laney,” Kimmy’s mom started about seven seconds after Kimmy had left the room. “I know we’ve discussed this before, but I feel I need to remind you. You may not grab my daughter, especially with the amount of force you are using.”

“How is she supposed to learn,” Laney snapped, “if she can’t even follow simple directions?”

Mrs. Mott remained silent. She looked like she was chewing on a mouthful of nails, just starting to rust. “Do not touch my daughter like that. Ever again.” Mrs. Mott broke her stare and headed for the door. “We will see you at the recital tomorrow.”

The word recital soaked Laney’s tongue in bile. She hated the recitals, was not looking forward to the next day, and certainly had not needed the reminder.

Laney closed the door, resisting the urge to slam it, then stomped to her bedroom. She could hear the front door open and her parents speaking with the Mott girls. It figured, her parents would probably ask Mrs. Mott why she looked upset and she would probably tell them.  That meant that she would get a ‘talking to.’ And of course, it would happen the day before the recital.

She wished she could just do away with the performances altogether. They were such complete cacadoo. But the truth was that for Laney, canceling the recital was about as likely as her mother canceling Bingo on a Thursday evening.

The worst part wasn’t the children, or the awful sound of their crunchy playing. The worst part was the parents. Those moms and dads were just as bratty as their children, every single one. And they felt entitled to a formal recital at least twice a year.

Laney wished they would just get it through their heads – they weren’t paying for the recitals. They were paying for her to listen to the awful wail of their children’s awkward playing for thirty long minutes every week.

Who were the recitals supposed to be for anyway? Any relative outside the immediate family had to loathe the obligation, and that was before the insulting assault on their ears which started the second those children started playing.

Of course, the camp Laney had enrolled in to earn her credential (which she was forced to attend, just so she could get a stinking piece of paper that said she was allowed to teach a bunch of half-wit toddlers, even though she had been playing the instrument nearly her entire life), said the recitals were for the children. The instructors at camp said that the performances were so the little ones could learn to be confident, demonstrate what they had learned and help them to feel comfortable playing in front of an audience.

But Laney knew that was ridiculous. She had seen these children. They could barely understand simple commands, they certainly had nothing to crow about. Laney had gotten used to the idea of being cursed with the recitals, even though they still made her completely uncomfortable. The best she would be able to do until Sunday afternoon was count the long minutes until the whole thing was finally over.

The next twenty-six hours flew by in a blur and before she knew it, Laney found herself setting the last chair at the back of the final row.

She sat down.

In a few more minutes, the first grandparents would start to arrive. Grandparents always showed up a few minutes before everybody else.  They had more time in their day. Laney’s own parents would be arriving soon, which meant that these last few minutes were her final moments of peace.

Laney looked around at the peeling paint of the church’s small assembly hall and felt a sudden flare of anger at her obligatory donation. Of course she had paid it, but why should she have had to pay anything at all? She wasn’t the one who had a problem with recitals being held at the park.

Laney had loved it when the recitals were at the park (if they had to be somewhere in the first place), she was just sick of hearing the parents complain about the outdoors. Sure it had been known to occasionally sprinkle in the middle of April, and Caleb did get pigeon caca on his violin the previous spring, but these things happened. Life wasn’t perfect. No one could expect her to control the weather or the flight paths of birds, could they?

The Hollywood Bowl hosted all their concerts outside and Laney seriously doubted anyone had ever raised a flag of complaint about that.

Warm air spilled into the room, defrosting the overly air conditioned interior and pulling Laney’s attention toward the door just as the Jackson family was entering the church. Little Jimmy Jackson, both parents, three grandparents, a younger sibling (whose hands they would probably shove a violin into the day after his next birthday) and an older looking woman just ugly enough, Laney thought, to be from the mother’s homelier branch of the family tree.

“Hi,” Laney chimed, bounding from her chair. “I’m thrilled so many of you came. The children are really excited. Today’s performance is going to be fantastic!”

Jimmy’s mother started to jabber at Laney, while Laney did her best to tune out the barrage of senseless noise. Still, the occasional phrase still managed to bore past the outer crust of her mind. Laney couldn’t help but hear: “Jimmy’s been practicing so hard,” “We really can’t wait,” and “Jimmy has really been looking forward to this.”

No he hasn’t. Jimmy can barely count to ten and probably didn’t even know it was his recital until you were unloading him from the car.

Laney was relieved when Connor Bradshaw and clan entered the room, affording her the opportunity to carve a speedy exit from the Jacksons. The following forty minutes were filled with all the forced insincerity Laney could manage without adding the muffin she’d just inhaled from the spread on the rented table directly into the toilet.

“We’re about ready to begin,” Laney announced just as the clock was striking one. “If everybody could take their seats, we’ll get started.”

Laney continued to speak in an overly pleasant voice, each word to Laney feeling as though it was scraping the insides of her throat. She approached the podium just as chorus of metronomic chants churned to life in the deep chasms of her mind.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow…

Laney ignored the taunts. She picked up her own violin and bow, and began to play a simple rhythm that any three year old should be able to play, though most (in her opinion) could not.

The leaders of the recital group joined Laney two bars in. The rest followed.

The entire room swelled with the pleasant sounds of children doing their best to make music, along with the happy sighs from a dozen delighted families.

Laney’s anxiety grew.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow…

Old memories taunted her. Laney played louder as she attempted to suffocate the taunting chant.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow…

Laney started to sweat. The acrid scent of perspiration may have been only in her mind, but even that knowledge did nothing to diffuse its power.

She turned her mind from the children and spun from the parents, grandparents, siblings, and extended families. Laney shut her eyes and started to play.

Laney played sweetly and without seams, every note as if by instinct. There were no mechanics in her motion, just one fluid sweep falling seamlessly into the next, pushing the sound further inside its own majesty like many small waves eventually merging into a single tsunami.

The piece was finished. The children stopped playing. Laney kept going.

She performed fast, fluid, and more furious than any teacher who had ever sat above her would ever have believed. The first drop of genuine perspiration left her brow and started the puddle which would soon glaze the floor.

Laney played faster, the notes in the air becoming part of the oxygen she breathed. Her mind began to wander. She imagined the chaos inside her bedroom – the empty bags of chips; the mountains of crumpled clothing; the papers and countless face down books which littered every surface.

Thought grew strong, Laney played stronger.

Her thoughts began to evaporate like dew beneath the sun.

Laney annihalated thoughts of her bedroom, thoughts of her parents and thoughts of her award winning little brother finishing his final year at Juliard, with every downward thrust of her bow.

Laney stopped playing. She wished she had a scabbard in which to drop her bow, such drama would be a fitting end to the battle she had waged on stage and in her mind.

For thirty-five years, Laney had pinched her nose and swallowed the violin, no different than a tablespoon of Robitussen during the peak of a cough.

The dry numeracy of her study had just been miraculously slain alongside her demons.

A phoenix had risen to take flight from the still smoldering ashes.

For the first time Laney had truly felt the music she was playing. Each note had become a part of her in the way she was sure they were supposed to have from the beginning; a way, she was certain, they never had before.

She took the first curtsy that she truly ever earned and stood in front of a quietly stunned audience of adults and children who did not know quite what to think, though they all knew that they were feeling something.

The room flooded with applause.

Laney began to cry.

Writer Dad

(FYI – this story has a couple of naughty words.)

Libby wasn’t used to feeling so anxious. The sensation bubbled beneath her skin like a still sizzling burn.

Libby was normally lucky, though not with the usual off the shelf fluke or fortune. Libby was the luckiest person that she, or anybody who knew her, had ever met. By the time she was ten, the word luck had gone forever out of style behind the walls of her family’s small suburban home. Whenever her mother, father, or younger brother Hunter did anything which struck them as even slightly fortuitous, they branded themselves as having pulled off a Libby.

Libby didn’t understand until many years later, exactly how begrudging the compliment was.

Though she had no hard evidence, Libby was fairly certain she understood why good fortune found her so easily. She knew what she believed. For Libby, that was enough.

Libby had a few memories which looped in her mind’s eye like reruns of a favorite show. One of these included she and her mother sitting around the breakfast table about a month after she’d started Kindergarten. Libby was just old enough to be sure there was a difference between right and wrong, yet young enough to feel confusion about the countless degrees which lay between.

Libby had asked her mother about the Golden Rule, a term she heard used by a teacher just outside the Kindergarten fence while disciplining one of the older “graders.” Libby thought the rule sounded awfully pretty, as though it might be a law intended only for royalty.  The real answer, she discovered, was even better.

“The Golden Rule,” her mother had said, “is the most important rule of all.”

“What is it?” Libby felt new excitement thicken her blood.

“The Golden Rule,” her mother smiled, “says that you must do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you must treat other people the way you want to be treated. If you expect to have your share of good things happen, then you must make sure you do your part to make good things happen for other people.”

Libby’s mother cut the crust from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and smiled at her daughter’s wide eyes. She could have no idea how that one simple sentence would shape the next two and a half decades of her daughter’s life.

Libby’s parents naturally assumed credit for the kindhearted angel their youngest daughter turned out to be. The truth was, for Libby, life was simple math. She wanted things to go well and was fortunate enough to stumble upon a formula that worked, at least for her, at an age when nudging idea into habit was as natural as skipping.

Libby never lied, and soon discovered that others found it difficult to be dishonest in her presence. She always said her please and thank you and never failed to mean it. Adults appreciated her manners and rewarded her accordingly. Libby always held doors, blessed sneezes and was careful not to waste.

Libby often found herself with more than enough of whatever she needed, plenty of blessings whenever she sneezed, and wide open doors, no matter how full her hands happened to be.

Since things generally went Libby’s way, it was difficult to find her in anything less than a sterling mood. Needless to say, her good humor was infectious. Those orbiting around Libby often found it difficult to keep the smiles from their faces.

By the time Libby left childhood behind, simple habit had evolved into the core of her personality. She could never be accused of expecting things to go her way, at least not exactly, but Libby somehow understood that if she continued to do as she always had, things would likely unfold in her favor.

Mostly this worked, which is why March was so surprising.

March was the month of Libby’s birthday as well as her best friend Dean’s, and normally one of her favorite times of the year. But the first two days of this one, so far, had brought her nothing but misery. Instead of bidding adieu to winter, smelling the first of the spring bulbs, and casually trying to stay one step ahead of the sporadic showers of early spring, Libby was in full crisis management.

It was on the first of the month when Libby merged onto the freeway just as her cell phone trumpeted the opening notes to When The Saints Come Marching In, a ringing reminder of her semi-regular tradition of meeting Dean in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Libby ignored the call and allowed the familiar notes to bounce against the walls of her purse. It was one of her ironclad rules that she never answer the phone while driving. She never wanted to be one of those people.

The phone rang through Saints for four bars without a belated beep to signal she had a message. After a minute, the phone rang again. Libby continued to ignore it, both that time and the next, but by the time the phone was singing its song for the fourth time in a row she was dead certain there was an emergency.

Libby flicked on her blinker and edged across four lanes of traffic. She missed the call, but pulled the phone from her purse and stayed on the side of the road with the phone sitting in her lap, engine running, waiting for it to ring again.

Fifteen minutes passed. The phone remained silent.

Libby tossed the cell on the passenger seat and merged back onto the freeway, slightly agitated. She passed two exits, pulled off on the third, swung into the grocery store parking lot, killed the engine, then picked up the phone just as it started to ring.

She looked at the small, lit window – PRIVATE CALLER.

“Hello,” Libby said, flipping open the phone, her voice flirting at the edge of frantic. The sounds which bled from the tiny speaker were definitely words, but hushed, far off and broken.

“Bear, thigh, mar…”

“You have to speak louder. I can’t hear you.”

“Bear, thigh, mar,” she heard the voice, creaking in barely a whisper.

“I can’t hear you,” she repeated.

“Bear, thigh, mar…” was followed by the tundra of a dead connection.

Libby left the car and scurried through the grocery store tossing items in her cart without giving thought to need. Sinister thoughts circled her brain as she imagined who might be trying to reach her and their possible distress.

The mystery caller was so muffled that it was difficult to determine gender, but Libby’s thoughts drifted almost involuntarily to her mother. She imagined her mom alone and helpless, her father still at work. Libby flipped open the phone, pressed #3 and heard the automatic dial of seven digits.

“Mom,” she said before her mom could say hello.

“Libby?”

“Yes, Mom, it’s me. Is everything okay?”

“Of course,” she said, “you called me. You’ve got that thing in your voice, everything alright?”

Libby started to explain, but stopped at the realization of how ridiculous she likely sounded. “It’s nothing Mom, just had one of those feelings like there might be something wrong. Know what I mean?”

“Oh yes, just wait till you’re a mom. You’ll get them all the time.”

Libby didn’t bother with a sorry Mom, but that won’t be happening any time soon. Instead she said good-bye, closed the phone and tried to calm herself.

Why was she was getting so worked up over a wrong phone number?

An hour passed. The phone stayed silent and Libby started to believe the incident would just become one of things she would be happy to never think of again. That was when the saints began to march.

“Hello.” Silence.

“Hello…hello…HELLO!”

“Bear, thigh, mar.” Silence.

Libby’s heart was racing. If there was an emergency, Libby was terrified. If the calls were a joke, she wasn’t laughing.

Dean! Libby wondered what took her so long.

Of course it was Dean. This was exactly the type of thing he would think was hysterical. And the more upset she got, the funnier he’d find it.

But what if it wasn’t?

Libby checked the messages on her phone a final time, though the phone’s icon clearly showed an empty mailbox, then slid the phone into her back pocket and walked toward her car at twice her normal speed, more agitated than she could remember feeling in who knows how long. She was so deep in her manufactured distress, Libby missed the old man standing beside her car until she was nearly on top of him.

A tiny, hunched over creature with no more than seven teeth, counting both rows. “Can you spare a bit of change?” he whistled. “Anything helps.”

Libby then did something entirely out of character. “Why don’t you just get a job?” she barked, opening her door and slamming it behind her.

Libby cranked the radio, as if she were mad at her ears instead of herself, then stained the pavement on the way out of the lot. She had said nothing to the old man she didn’t believe, but did said it in a way that brought a wave of acid to the surface of her stomach. Whenever someone asked Libby for money, she’d simply shake her head, politely say no, and silently think to herself, if you can ask me for money, you can ask me if I’m ready to order.

Part of her credo, you couldn’t expect to receive if you were never willing to give.

A sudden boom beneath the hood, followed by a rapid whirring, caused Libby to pull to the side of the road.

Libby turned the ignition…nothing.

She tried again…nothing.

Libby slapped her hands on the steering wheel, exited the car, then slammed the door, suddenly angry. She went inside the corner liquor store without really knowing why. She bought a cold Coke then sat in the car on the verge of tears, hating herself for getting so worked up over nothing, convinced she’d killed the car with anxiety.

She took a deep breath and turned the key again. The car flirted with life, then finally rolled over in triumph. She smiled, pulled into traffic, and drove the remaining four miles home in silence.

“What the hell happened to you?” Paige said as she walked through the door. The expression on her roommate’s face told Libby more than she wanted to know.

“Nothing,” she said. Libby went to her bedroom, quietly closed the door and fell deep to dreaming fifteen minutes later.

________

Libby opened her eyes to narrow slats of March sunlight spilling across her face. She felt along the nightstand for her phone, grabbed it, then flipped it open to check the messages. Four missed calls, one message.

“Hey there Liberator,” Dean’s boyish voice whispered in her ear, “was just checking on you since you stopped answering your phone. Was just fucking with you, you know. Hope you didn’t get all frantic and shit like the time with the police tape.” After a long pause Dean finished. “Anyway, just thought I’d get a head start this year. Sorry if I stressed you.”

Libby didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She couldn’t believe she’d missed the obvious.

Bear, thigh, mar. Beware the Ides of March.

Each year since their sophomore year of high school English when they were forced to read Shakespeare’s “Julius Ceasar,” she and Dean had exchanged their version of April Fool’s two weeks early. The practical jokes had started out fairly low rent, but since they were now separated by thousands of miles with each of them occupying a different coast, the pranks had grown increasingly outlandish, especially since Dean’s bank account had started to balloon. In the past decade or so he’d had her trash pick-up cancelled and email account hacked, with a series of increasingly bizarre messages sent throughout the day. Two years back, Dean had paid someone to break into her apartment and knock a bunch of stuff over, then seal the door with yellow police tape. Since Libby hadn’t seen even the slightest bit of humor in that particular bit of jest, Dean had lobbed a softball the following year. Still, she couldn’t believe she’d missed the obvious.

Libby closed the phone and looked at the time. Shit! She’d overslept by almost an hour and a half. Libby felt something in her stomach that felt suspiciously like worry and hoped the braid of bad luck which had started the day before was finished.

It wasn’t.

Though Libby raced through her morning routine, skipping both exercise and her usual shower, a car that wouldn’t start forced her to call a cab.

When she arrived to work thirty minutes late, for the first time ever and with bloodshot eyes no less, her boss (along with everyone else in her office) was not only understanding, but entirely sympathetic. “You look like someone found you in the bottom of a well.” Her boss may have been an asshole, but it was hard to argue with the obvious.

The overhead fluorescents seemed to sap her energy more than usual and cause her temples to throb in a way they never had before. By mid-morning, the disquiet in Libby’s stomach erupted into full blown distress. She used her lunch hour to collect herself, picking at a carton of white rice from The Golden Bowl, the Chinese take-out in the ground floor of her office, and wondering what the hell was wrong with her.

The white rice seemed to settle her stomach and Libby returned to her desk forty minutes later feeling closer to the girl she knew than the one she’d been living in for the last eighteen hours.

Her reprieve was short.

Libby was sitting at her desk for 10 minutes when the rice rose like a tide in her stomach. She barely made it to the bathroom before losing it, and the Nutri-Grain bar she’d swallowed on the way to work. Libby bent over the bowl heaving for several minutes, until her throat finally surrendered with a few last arid barks. She steadied herself against a stall, then went to the sink and splashed cold water on her hot cheeks.

Libby left the bathroom and slipped inside her boss’s office. “I need to go home,” she said without apology.

Her boss took one look at the bleached sheet of her face and declined to argue. “Take care of yourself,” he said, offering a weak smile.

Halfway down the office park stairs, Libby saw a cab pulling to the curb beside a sharply dressed man in spectacles. Libby felt the acid in her stomach and ran to the taxi. Before the waiting man could tuck his folded newspaper under his arm, and despite the fact that every ounce of her knew it was wrong, Libby swooped inside the back seat of the idling cab and barked her address at the confused driver.

“Whatever you say, lady.” The cabbie pulled from the curb. Libby rolled down the window and hollered an apology at the man standing too irate and dumbfounded to hear a word she was saying.

Can you spare a bit of change? Anything helps.

From nowhere, the panhandler’s words roosted in her mind. Maybe whatever was happening to her was psychosomatic, maybe not. There was no doubt, however, it hadn’t started with Dean’s phone call. It started with her pushing past the old man and slamming the door.

“Take me to Lansing’s Market, on the corner of Third and Locust,” Libby said to the driver, just as he was pulling a right onto her street. He shook his head, made a U-Turn, and seven minutes later, Libby was paying the fare (along with a substantial tip) and looking around the parking lot for an a tiny man with no more than seven teeth, counting both rows.

She didn’t see the old man, but then again she knew it wasn’t really about him. Libby spent the rest of the afternoon living the life of the slightly insane: helping old ladies with their groceries, passing warm greetings to an endless procession of strangers, and looking out for sad eyes to possibly brighten. Sometime between slightly dark and dark enough to feel danger, Libby’s phone started to ring.

“Hello.”

“Hiya, Lib.”

“Fuck you,” Libby laughed at the sound of Dean’s voice.

“Hey, no need to be so harsh.”

“You’ve no idea.”

“Sorry,” Dean said. “I heard the stress in your voice after the last call, but was sure you’d figure it out. My phone quit on me. By the time I got to a charger you were incommunicado.”

“Weird shit, Dean.”

“What, my heavy breathing?”

“No, though I guess that might be a part of it. Since your call yesterday, life’s crapped all over me.”

“Oh?”

Libby could imagine Dean collapsing into his oversized leather chair, ready for another long yarn from his best friend Libby. She was perfectly happy to comply. Libby leaned against the plastic carousel designed to rob parents of their quarters two at a time and spent the next half hour telling her oldest friend about her day of misadventure.

“All in your head, Little Miss Muffet.”

“My car wouldn’t start. That’s a fact.”

“Hey, you’re the one always talking about all that Law of Attraction bullshit. Sorry sweetie, but what covers the back covers the belly.”

Libby wasn’t fond of most of Dean’s designed on the spot cliches which barely made sense, but she always knew what he meant and they usually made her feel better. There was no arguing, after thirty minutes of conversation the smile on her face had returned and the ache in her stomach faded. “Well, I better go. I need to eat, totally running on an empty tank here.”

“Alrighty then, happy birthday.”

“You too,” Libby said, “but we’ll talk before then.”

“I know, but happy birthday anyway. Later later, Libinator.”

Libby closed the phone, dropped it in her purse, then headed toward the market entrance. Barely paying attention, she collided with another soul seemingly in a world of his own.

“I…I”m sorry,” the startled man stuttered.

“It’s okay,” Libby laughed. “Believe me, I’ve been a space cadet all day.”

Their eyes met and Libby felt a burning at the bottom of her ears. “Do I know you?” she asked the large man with the broad shoulders and long face, a scar marring the upper cheekbone, matching the smaller one just above his eye.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Libby didn’t think so either, but she didn’t want the man to leave. It wasn’t him she recognized, exactly. It was the look on his face, a particular brew of sad and lonely she’d seen before. To Libby it was like dead skin, easily sloughed, and something told her she was the one to do it. “You sure?” Her smile was playful, her eyes inviting.

The man shook his head. “Maybe I wrote you a ticket once.” He laughed, a slightly uncomfortable half-tremor.

“Your a cop?”

“I was,” his eyes suddenly on her shoes.

“Get busted by Internal Affairs for taking too many payouts?” Libby winked.

“You’ve seen too many movies.” He cleared his throat, then, “I guess I’m still a cop, just taking some time off.”

“Oh.”

Silence squeezed life from the moment. The man said, “Well, it was nice to meet you, Miss, have a good night and drive safe.” He nodded, then stepped past her toward the dark parking lot.

“Wait.” Not knowing what she was doing, or even why, Libby pulled on the end of the man’s plaid button-up. He turned around, question marks in his eyes meeting the ones in hers. “We haven’t met yet,” she held out her hand. “I’m Libby.”

The man moved the paper bag nestled in the crook of his right arm to the crook of his left and met her hand. “I’m Carl,” he said. “It’s good to meet you.”

“You married, Carl?” Libby swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Not exactly.” A haunted sorrow filled his eyes.

“Had dinner yet?” Not waiting for an answer, she added, “I haven’t eaten all day and was just going inside to sit down and have a sandwich. Care to join me?”

“I don’t think I… No,” he looked away. “I don’t think I should.”

“Carl?”

“Yeah…”

“You don’t look happy.” She was sorry the second she said it; something in Carl looked like it was about to shatter. “All I mean is, sometimes the loneliness can be too much, you know? Sit with me, Carl, just long enough for a sandwich. That’s all I’m asking. We can talk about fun stuff, like how the world can be pretty shitty, and how we can each do our little part to change it.” She saw the look on his face then added with her brightest smile, “Not to be too cornball or anything.”

Carl’s face softened. “That sounds nice, let me just set these in the car. I’ll be right back.”

Libby beamed. “Sounds great, I’ll be waiting.”

Carl crossed the lot. Libby took the phone from her purse, killed the power, and dropped it back inside.

Writer Dad

My apologies for breaking the flow of Four Seasons. Your emails have been extremely kind and I’m glad you are enjoying the first couple of stories. I’m curious to hear what you think as the narrative grows a bit more complicated and I quite obviously try to bite off more than I can chew.

Tomorrow’s entry, March, is the first of the months where I stumbled. The idea behind the project was to simply start writing and then see where the characters took the story. This tactic seemed to work really well for both January and February, but March was a thematic mess and not much better when it came to the actual writing.

Because part of the project was sharing the drafts as they were written, warts and all, I sent March out in the newsletter as promised. Fortunately, the rest of the stories followed the pattern of the first two, thoughts arriving naturally with a bit of necessary cleanup needed at the end.

With nine months worth of character and backstory behind me, I rewrote March a couple of weeks back. It now seems to mingle with the rest of the story much better, with far fewer of the obvious ums and ah’s which littered the rhythm of the previous try.

The reason for the interruption today, however, is not to make excuses for March tomorrow.

Last Friday, David Wright and I sent out custom holiday cards to our clients. I wrote the rhyme, Dave did the drawing and our clients had the smiles. The response was excellent and Dave wondered out loud, even though it was actually through email, if we should offer the service to our audience as we had last year. Since drawing the holiday cards takes way longer than writing them, I nodded my head yes, though I actually just said it in an email.

David and I would love to help you express your love, gratitude, or happy holiday wishes to those who matter most with something made just for them. We are offering the custom service to the first 20 people to respond. You can email me to get started.

Prices are as follows:
Custom drawn art and words: $60 via Paypal. You tell us what you would like to have drawn, in addition to the message you’d like to send. We will then craft the perfect custom art and words for you. Prices will run slightly higher for complex drawings, but please email us what you have in mind for an exact quote.

We will send the file to you or your loved one in whatever formats you prefer – JPEG, TIFF, PDF or PNG. In addition, we will also send both low resolution copies, perfect for email or sharing on the web and high resolution images which are perfect for printing. For an additional $20, in the U.S. only, we will send you a print of the file in the mail as well.

Thanks, and see you tomorrow!

Writer Dad

The alarm clock screamed at the same time it did every morning, but John did not pull covers over his head to smother the following fifteen minutes as he would have any other day. He leapt from bed, went to the bathroom, turned on the faucets in the sink and bathtub, and stared at his reflection as he waited for the water to warm from hot to scalding. Steam curled through the air and darkened the mirror’s face. John cupped his hands under the faucet, let the water singe his skin, then splashed it on a face he had no intention of shaving. He picked up his pants from the day before, removed his phone, pressed #3, and waited.

“Good morning,” said his boss, Mr. Sears. John pinched his vocal cords.

“Good morning, Mr. Sears,” he said. “I don’t think I can work today.” John didn’t wait for a response. As soon as his boss began to speak, John took the small bowl of pepper, prepared the night before,  put it under his nose and inhaled. The sneeze on Mr. Sear’s side of the receiver was deafening.  His boss tried to speak, but John cut him off. “I’m sorry Chief,” he said, “but I’ve got to go or I’m gonna be sick all over the place. John didn’t wait.  He flipped his phone shut, smiled an impossibly wide smile for so early in the morning, and began to peel the clothes from his body.

John hadn’t called in sick a single day in the fifteen years he’d worked for Mr. Sears, not even when he was. The few times that sickness called on him, it had always been on Friday, Tronix’s busiest day by far. John reasoned that if he could muscle his way through another day, then he would have an entire weekend to rest and wouldn’t be disappointing anyone. It was Friday and John wasn’t sick, yet it would have been impossible for him to care any less.  It was the 29 of February – Leap Year; life had seen fit to give John an extra day and he wasn’t about to use it stuck in the mire of his daily routine.

John stuck one foot into the water, then the other. He held his breath and lowered his body into water almost too hot to stand. John wanted to launch his long awaited Leap Year day with a long, relaxing bath, the sort which under normal circumstances he would never have allowed himself.

John could still remember the previous Leap Year clearly. The sun had hung large in a perfect blue sky, taunting him like a glistening pool surrounded by a high fence in the middle of August. John loved his job as Tronix. He loved watching the customers from behind his office window, balancing books as they browsed the store’s specialty, high priced electronics.  Even so, he still recalled the last Leap Year as a day of incarceration, branding in his mind the idea that leap years did not fall under the same calendar law from which he governed his own life with such precision. They were a gift, given with scarcity; rarer than an eclipse and far less celebrated.  

John had planned on calling in sick for four straight years and felt instant freedom the second he hung up the phone. The most exciting thing about his morning was that he had no idea where it might take him. He knew only one thing for certain: it would have to start at The Roasting Bean.

John believed, as just one of his many credos, that anything more than a dollar spent on a cup of coffee was about as absurd as a lottery ticket – you may as well lose it to the breeze.  Every morning John would scoop his carefully measured grounds into his single cup coffee maker, and no matter how many customers brought steaming cups of Joe, fresh from The Bean and into the store, John never felt so much as a tickle of jealousy. If he felt anything at all, it was only the soft tingle of superiority as he counted cups in his mind, alongside days of the month, then multiplied, imagining how much better off his retirement account was in the coffee’s absence. On Leap Year, John thought, the three dollars The Roasted Bean would likely charge him for a cup of black coffee wasn’t just fair – it was a bargain.

John stepped from the bath, his legs crimson, toweled off and threw on a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt – both stiff from the dry cleaners. He let his stomach growl, smiled at his reflection in the gleaming glass of the empty coffee pot, and grabbed his keys from the hook by the door.

He backed his fifteen year old corolla from the driveway and drove to the end of his street. At the light, he turned left instead of right, then drove for a block before turning into the crowded parking lot of The Roasting Bean. The earthy, pungent scent from a dozen mingling coffee pots slapped his nostrils as the glass door swung shut behind him. John studied the unfamiliar menu as he took his place in line, finally settling on a large cup of Sgt. Wakemup – a name he found surprisingly amusing.

A small carousel of confections stood to his right, beautifully displayed and perfectly placed for impatient impulse. Chocolate covered blueberries; peanut butter malt balls; dark chocolate espresso beans. John picked up a modest sized bar of dark chocolate and turned it in his hand, surprised by its weight. He held it under his nose, inhaled deeply and salivated.

John moved up in line, set the bar of chocolate on the counter and opened his mouth to speak. “I’d like a large cup of Sgt. Wakemup.”

“Ah, the Sgt.,” said the barista.  John wondered if the three rings hooked through his bottom lip caused him pain, and if they did, whether they were worth it. “We don’t have large,” he said. “Just Ultimo.”

John’s eyes moved to the menu: Alto, Proximo, and Ultimo. “Make it an Ultimo” he said, mildly amused rather than slightly irritated. John could smell the coffee as it landed in the bottom of the thick paper cup. His mouth filled with more of his juices and his stomach rolled through a growl. “Where’s the cream?” he asked, taking the hot cup from the insulated middle.

“Right over there,” the barista pointed a heavily ringed finger toward the wall, “but I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Why not?” John blinked.

“Because that there is a perfect cup of coffee and I wouldn’t want to ruin the flavor, man.”

John smiled, not annoyed at being referred to as “man.” It was Leap Year after all.  “Thanks, I think I’ll take your advice.”

The hooks in the barista’s lip rose as he smiled. “You want the chocolate too?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“That’ll be $7.04”

John blanched, then grinned. He handed a ten dollar bill across the counter. “Keep the change.”

The barista handed John the chocolate bar in a heavy, copper colored bag. John ran his fingers over the paper, surprised by the quality. Even in bulk, the bag must have cost the coffee shop over fifty cents. John was in charge of ordering the bags at Tronix. They weren’t even close to the quality and they cost the store thirty-eight cents a piece.

“See you soon,” the barista said.

“Yes,” agreed John, “perhaps.” He hooked his finger through the bag’s handle, nodded at the barista and left the coffee shop.

He unlocked his car, but turned the key back the other way before stepping inside.  There was a park he sometimes passed about three blocks away and John saw no reason to drive when the park was so close. Not on Leap Year. He removed the lid from his coffee, dropped it inside his copper bag, then knelt to the curb to pour some of the steaming coffee down the gutter.

John began walking toward the park. At the first red light, John took his first sip of Sgt. Wakemup. It was the best coffee he had ever tasted; full bodied, but more like a new mother than a model. The decorated barista was right; even a splash of milk would have destroyed it.  He held the coffee until it cooled, then swallowed. The light turned green.

The three blocks to the park took him close to a half hour to bridge as he stopped to stare in nearly every window and nod at every passerby. When John finally arrived at the greenbelt, he was glad to see a bank of benches where he could spend the morning, sitting and sipping his perfectly priced coffee.

The interior of the park was a distant cousin to its perimeter. The park which blurred by at 35 MPH was pretty; seen up close, it was beautiful. One hundred trees swayed softly in a circle surrounding a placid pond where a dozen ducks danced in a crooked line across the water. February frost capped the mountains which severed horizon, completing the postcard perfect setting of his early Leap Year morning.

John sat on a bench, sipped his coffee, and watched the parade of people that he had never seen before and would never see again. An enormous man losing his leash, and the chihuahua attached to it, brought a quiet smile to his lips. The angry mother grabbing her toddler with enough force to bruise caused him to wince. It was the couple he spied on the other side of the pond who brought a full smile to his long face.

They were old and beautiful, weaving their fingers together so carelessly that John thought they must have been doing it nearly all their lives. They sat with long silences punctuated by the occasional exchange of nearly silent words, often followed by quiet fits of laughter. John wondered what it must be like to share so much with someone for so long. He had no true frame of reference; no memory of grandparents. His own mom and dad split up before he finished elementary school and  John’s own relationships seemed to have a shelf life of no longer than two years.

It had been a consistent article of faith that one day he would fall in step with the right girl and the perfect life would find him; his own happily ever after, forever around the next corner.  John had celebrated his fortieth birthday with a one night stand, and what had been a given for two decades, now felt like a dream circling the drain. Perhaps it was time to rethink his approach.

John was good looking, beautiful even. Though he was not vain, or in any way conceited, he could not be told something his entire life and remain clueless to the fact.  Despite knowledge of his handsome face, flawless skin, and brilliant blue eyes, John carried a crippling shyness when it came to meeting new people, worse when it came to the opposite sex.  Women approached him regularly, and whether out of loneliness or optimism, he often accepted their somewhat obvious invitations. More often than not, these were women sure in their charms and used to having their way. John tired of them quickly. A good relationship was like anything else – you could not simply expect it to be quietly handed over.  Perhaps he needed to start doing some of the asking.

John swallowed the last of his coffee, dropped the empty in the trash can, and started the walk back to his car.  It was late morning,  and the sun hung high in the sky. Most of the shops which were shuttered his first time by, were now were open for business. Because it seemed like a ridiculous thing to do, John did not pass by the flower shop, but instead walked inside and inhaled all of the hundred different scents competing for attention.

“What is that smell?” he asked the frazzled looking proprietor. She was carrying a bucket of flowers in each hand, along with another tenuously balanced under the crook of her right arm.

“Everything,” she said, not slowing down or even glancing in his direction.

John smiled. He approached a large display of roses, his eyes surprised by the variety of color and size. He felt a pang as he realized that another Valentine’s Day had passed with no one to send flowers to. He picked up a hearty looking red rose and held it beneath his nose, disappointed. The wrapped bar of chocolate bore more fragrance. “This doesn’t have a smell,” he said, as though there was something wrong with it.

“Most of them don’t. They breed them for longevity rather than scent. It isn’t like it used to be,” the woman added in a practiced sigh. “The less moisture the flowers have, the longer they live, but the moisture is what gives them their fragrance. Give me a garden full of roses over these any day.” She waved a thumb toward the impressive display.

John looked at the women. “You probably shouldn’t be admitting that,” he said.

“It’s the truth.  People don’t want a perfect moment, they want their money’s worth. Go ahead and try the lavender,” she added. “It’s as close as we’re getting today.”

John’s eyes moved to a bucket in the middle of the display, filled with lavender roses, some tight, some open – all beautiful, and selected one from the middle. He inhaled and was suddenly ten years old and on his fourth grade field trip to the public rose gardens. “I’ll take this one,” he said, handing the flower across the counter.

“Would you like me to fix it up for you?” she asked.

“How would you do that?”

“I could put some greens with it, maybe a ribbon.”

“No, thank you. I think I’ll take it just like that.”

“Is it a gift?”

“Just for myself.”

The woman smiled. It was not the sort of smile that John was used to. It was a smile which asked for nothing in return. “That’s gonna be four dollars.”  John slipped a five from the depths of his pocket, handed it across the counter, wished the woman a terrific day, and stepped outside. He dropped the rose in the bag alongside his bar of chocolate and crossed the street to his Corolla.

John had a rough idea how each of his days would unfold before the sun rose to color them. The joy in this one lay in its mystery. He sat in the car while making a mental list of the day’s possibilities as the sun warmed his shoulders through the glass. He thought about shopping at the specialty foods store, stocked with unfamiliar brands and softer colored boxes, then decided that  perhaps he should start doing that anyway. He could afford it after all. He thought of catching a movie. He couldn’t remember the last time he had caught an afternoon show alone, but the realization that he would be trapped indoors for two perfectly good well lit hours soured the idea and reminded him of the day’s intentions. He smiled, turned the ignition and started on his short drive to the perfect destination.

John was an avid reader – a single book on his night stand was never enough. He also had one in his car, a couple in the bottom desk drawer in his office, and one in each of his two lonely bathrooms. John sipped from the separate stories as though wine at a tasting, sometimes juggling as many as six books at once. The internet had made shopping for titles far easier, but less romantic. John used to lose hours wandering down aisles, picking up interesting covers with curious titles; the first explorer to thumb their pages. Now, shopping for books consisted of a virtual shopping cart, a wish list for later and a few perfunctory clicks. He never even removed the credit card from his wallet.

John decided to drive to the bookstore and stay until satisfied. He passed the bookstore with the larger selection and lower prices and headed straight for A Likely Story, a cramped book boutique three miles further, sandwiched between a pizzeria owned by a first generation Armenian family and a Greek deli owned by a tiny man with the last name Nguyen.

Mr. and Mrs. Stamp, the old couple who owned A Likely Story, and had for thirty years, were in constant disagreement, but John found their arguments amusing in an ugly sort of way.  He always felt like he was watching a stage play written by someone who had not lost their sense of humor even though they had been embittered by life. If Mr. and Mrs. Stamp had not read every book in their store between them, they were at least convincing in their charade.  Neither one was shy with their regulars, and would not hesitate to take the book straight from a customer’s hand with an unsolicited “Here, you’ll like this one much better.” John found no fault with their method. They had led him to “A Soldier of the Great War,” and Roald Dahl’s collection of ghost stories; both of which he never would have picked up on his own, yet treasured deeply.

John pointed the Corolla’s nose in front of the bookstore and exited the car, making it three steps from the entrance before pausing. He returned to the car and, without knowing why, removed the bag with the chocolate and the rose.

The bell above the door went tinkle as he entered the shop. Mrs. Stamp was finishing a phone call. “Been a while,” she said.

“Yes,” John agreed, looking embarrassed.

“Been busy?”

“No, not really.”

“Ah,” she nodded. “The internet. Just remember that when we lose our lease.” She let it sink in, then added, “I’m just getting at you. You know our customers aren’t exactly the online shopping type.”

“Where’s Mr. Stamp?”

“Probably off with one of his young chippies.  I don’t have the time to care.”  John nodded, no clue whether or not she was joking. “I’d ask you why you’re here on a Friday afternoon, but I’m not an idiot,” she said. “Happy Leap Year.”

John nodded, said thanks, and began to wander the cramped aisles. He had forgotten the smell of the shop and it hit him like the blunt perfume of nostalgia – sudden and fierce. He headed to a small table with a proud placard which read, “local writers,” all in caps, and picked up the book on top. It had a pencil drawing of a Colt .45 and a title of  Temporary Midnight. John read the description on the back. It didn’t sound especially good, but it was a local author and that meant something. John tucked Temporary Midnight under his arm and continued down the aisle.

He milled around for about an hour, never moving fast enough to gather static, then approached the counter with a half dozen selections – not a familiar author among them. Mrs. Stamp pulled the bundle from his arms, raising her features in approval as she set each book in a new stack in front of the register. When she got to the fifth book, she shook her head.  “You won’t like this one at all.” She set the sixth book on top of the others and handed a 3×5 index card across the counter. An Unearthed Era, by Sarah Scend, it said.

“We’ll keep these up here for you,” she said. “Your book is all the way in the back.”  Mrs. Stamp placed a large rubber band over the stack of books, turned her back, then placed them on the shelf behind her. John looked at the 3×5 again, amused, and headed toward the back of the store.

He rounded the last island, stopping short at the dawn of the final wall, where he saw a woman standing alone. There was something about her, perhaps the simple surprise of seeing someone where he had not expected, a scent he didn’t know he was smelling, or perhaps the heavy crash of serendipity. But something in the moment caused his heart to skip a beat, or maybe even two.

John kept walking, found his spot on the bookshelf, then ran his finger along the edge in search of the book. It wasn’t there. He looked at the 3×5 again, checking to see if he had the spelling correct. He did. John stood confounded, not wanting to leave, but hesitant to stand around without purpose. He pulled a book at random from the shelf and began to thumb through it, turning pages until he couldn’t stand feeling stupid any longer, then set it back on the shelf.

John stole another glance at the woman and noticed the book in her hands.  She looked lost, her eyes dancing across a page somewhere in the middle of the book and the edges of her mouth strongly hinting at a breaking smile. The cover of the book was facing down, but John could still clearly make out the title. An Unearthed Era.

The woman looked up. Four eyes met and both hearts hastened their tempo in unison.  Neither said a word. They just stood there staring, each one reading the other like an unfamiliar animal. Finally, when the silence was almost painful, the woman opened her mouth. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” John shook his head, “but I was searching for the book you’re reading.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “It’s quite good. Mrs. Stamp thought I would enjoy it. I suppose she was right. I’ve been stuck here reading it for fifteen minutes.”

John laughed, then handed her his index card. She took a quick look, smiled, then handed him her own matching 3×5.

“Looks like we’ve been hoodwinked,” she said. John’s laughter moved from nervous to raucous with the realization that he had never heard the word hoodwinked spoken out loud before. She was too good to be true. John felt the urge to flee and swallowed it.

“What brings you to the bookstore on a Friday afternoon?” he asked.

She looked embarrassed and broke eye contact. “Today’s an extra day,” she said. “It’s Leap Year, you only get one every four years. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending this one holed up in my office.”

John’s heart pounded in his chest. “What is it you do?” he asked.

“I’m a location scout,” she said. “You know, for movies.”

“I always wondered what that would be like.”

“It’s great, except for all the paperwork.”

He looked at her long skirt tickling the carpet, then looked up and met her eyes. He cleared his throat. “Would you allow me to take you to dinner?”

“I would love to,” she whispered, taking a step toward him, “but do you mind if we stop somewhere first for lunch.”

“Sounds perfect,” said John. He thought he could hear his own heart beating. “I believe this is for you.” He removed the lavender rose from the copper bag. The last ninety minutes had allowed it to open in full and the pungent perfume lingered in the aisle between them. John handed her the rose, then looped his arm in invitation. She slipped hers through the opening as though she’d been doing it for years.

“I’m Lisa,” she said.

“John.”

“Lisa,” John said, tasting her name. “Would you care to share a bar of chocolate?”

“I would love to.”

Brian flew through the third red light as if it had point value, clearing the empty intersection somewhere between the speed limit and death on impact. “I’ve gotta stop doing that,” he thought, shaking his head. “There’s three of us now.” Brian was pressing his luck — something he did almost as often sleeping. Maya had been telling him that it was a shortcoming which needed an expiration date. It was some of her longest running advice, council which hadn’t wavered much since the first time she said it — over a basket of hot, greasy chips and fire-roasted salsa, slowly nibbled during their first date five years earlier. Brian hadn’t seen much reason to slow in the half decade since.

Now he did.

TWHOOSH — Brian sailed through red light number four, taking inventory of east and west only as afterthought. He was lucky that people were keeping their festivities indoors for the most part. Brian thought it was cold enough outside to maybe build an igloo, but the truth was that it was only LA cold, which meant conditions just cool enough to keep the majority indoors. Celebrations might have been loud behind the blurry silhouette of quickly passed glass, but there was no way of knowing for sure.

“BBBRRIP!”

With a million things swirling through the maelstrom of his mind, Brian might have missed the single bray form the police cruiser, but it was impossible to miss the red flashing lights reflecting off the earliest morning mist and twinkling decorations from celebrations now one week old. Brian flashed his blinker, slowed to a more reasonable speed, and pulled his nine day old minivan to the side of the road. “Not now, not now, not now,” repeated the pleading hiccup in his head.

“What…s….hap..pen….ing?” Maya’s labored voice drifted from the back seat, heavy from her carefully measured gasps for air.

“Nothing, baby.” Brian said, almost casually. “Just ran a red. But don’t worry, this’ll be quick. He’ll wanna see my license and registration, then we’ll be back on our way.”

Of course, Brian was only hoping. He had no license. The registration was taped to the inside window, as it had been when he drove off the Toyota lot two days before Christmas, but that wouldn’t show the officer his smiling face.

Brian was wearing his oldest pair of stained sweat pants — several years older than his relationship with Maya — the waist band barely meeting the bottom of a Beastie Boys tee-shirt that he should have stopped wearing in high school. The sweatpants were pocked with six or seven holes, but none were part of the original garment. Though he didn’t have a single pocket, Brian wouldn’t have remembered to fill them even if he had.

They had watched the ball drop in 36” of High Definition, then darkened the television ready to surrender another year, when Brian heard an ear splitting scream split the silence of their quiet holiday. He ran from the bathroom — toothbrush in mouth — and saw the pool of water puddled at the foot of the love seat. Brian was pulling Maya into the mini-van less than three minutes later, and was roaring down their quiet street a scant twenty seconds after that.

Michael Michelle wasn’t due for another couple of weeks — January 15th to be exact. The thought that the baby might arrive early, buzzed about Brian’s brain just enough to keep his hands free from champagne, though he probably wouldn’t have indulged anyway. He’d never been much of a single drinker, even if only for a single toast. They had met midnight with two flutes of sparkling cider. It was a single sip and a substitution neither one minded.

They had been to the hospital three times during the already too hectic final month of the year. Three false alarms, each one sending them from the maternity ward with nothing but disappointment and a few missing hours. “At least this is our first trip of the year,” Brian said with a verbal wink while stationing Maya into the front bench of the minivan, positioning pillows around her as though she were in a window display. “And we’re probably not going to leave empty handed this time.” He was relieved to see that his nervous little joke had prompted one of Maya’s nervous little smiles.

The officer approached the car, carrying the undisguised gait of a man looking forward to writing a ticket. “License and registration,” he commanded in a booming voice which invited no banter.

Brian lowered his window. The officer loomed over him, blocking the New Year outside. He looked tired, worn, and a little mean. His black uniform was not quite as black as the night, but it was close. His brow was beaded with sweat beneath his cap, like he had the heat in his cruiser cranked way past comfortable. The name on the patrolmen’s pin said, Lemmin. Brian swallowed, licked his lips and met the officer’s eyes.

“WAHA…VUAM….RAHAUR!” a few more of Maya’s labored wails escaped from the back seat.

“What have you got back there?” Officer Lemmin asked, his thumb instinctively unfastening the sidearm on his hip.

“It’s my wife,” Brian said calmly. “She’s about to have a baby.”

The officer peered into the depths of the minivan, narrowing his eyes at the darkness. “You want to turn on the light?”

Brian did as the officer said, flicking the switch on the steering wheel and bathing the cabin in a soft, artificial glow. The officer looked inside, dipping his nose through the window. Maya was splayed across the first row of seats, her face taut and damp. “You want to step out of the car, Sir?” Lemmin’s words formed a question, but his tone clearly cast them as an order.

Brian pulled the handbrake and stepped from the car with a limp, submissive posture; every muscle a suggestion of compliance, a silent chant singing, “I am not a threat.” He turned, facing the car, and placed his hands on top of the roof, just as he’d seen in a hundred different movies sharing a dozen different plots.

The officer nudged Brian’s ankles with the tips of his boots, making space between his feet. “You been drinking this evening?” Lemmin said, though Brian believed he’d already decided the answer.

“No, Officer, I haven’t.” Brian kept his calm, but anxiety and anger were rising with the bile from the depths of his hollow stomach.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

“Yes, Officer,” Brian said evenly, “because I ran a red light back there.”

“Ah,” Lemmin lit his face with a dark little smile, “so you noticed it was red?”

“Yes, I —”

“WAHHHA…UUUHHM…..HUUHAAMM…” The whimpers from the back seat left the car louder and closer together.

“I need to get my wife to a hospital,” Brian insisted. He kept his hands on the hood, craning his neck to make his argument. “In case you haven’t noticed, she’s in labor. If you’re going to write me a ticket, can you please just do it?”

“I’m going to need you to take a field test,” the officer said.

Unbelievable, Brian thought. What was next, the SAT?

“I’ll sing you Brass Monkey, backwards in Spanish if you just write me a ticket and let me get my wife to the hospital.” Brian was still calm, but only barely. His words hit the frosted air from behind a set of gritted, grinding teeth.

“I’m going to have to ask you to watch your tone.” Officer Lemmin said. He could have told Brian he was thinking of driving to their house and beating their six month old cocker spaniel once off duty; his response wouldn’t have pushed Brian any deeper into his pickling anger. He looked at Maya’s sad silhouette through the darkened window, noted the quietly savage smile tickling the edges of the officer’s mouth, and took a deep breath. “Sorry officer,” he said. “I’m just worried about my wife and was hoping you could help.”

“I could,” Lemmin elongated the word, “but I’ve gotta do my job first, and that includes making sure the streets are safe from drivers like you.”

“Check my record, I haven’t had a ticket since three weeks after turning sixteen, and was rear ended once at twenty. Other than that my history’s spotless, and all I’ve had tonight is apple cider. I was speeding because I need to get my wife to the hospital. Can you please help me?” Brian was speaking in barely a whisper, afraid that if he added volume, it would be instantly chased by unchecked rage.

“First things first,” Lemmin cleared his throat, then produced a pen from nowhere and held it about a foot from Brian’s face. “I need you to follow the pen with your eyes.” Maya continued to moan.

Brian placed his finger to his nose, then stood on one leg. Officer Lemmin then asked him to take nine heel-to-toe steps along a line, turn, and then take nine heel-to-toe steps back. Brian took one step forward and paused. His heart racing as though he’d been running laps, he spun around to face Lemmin, vaulting across the thin blue line which separates Officer from Civilian — a perimeter typically breached only by those looking for a night behind bars, or those indifferent to the possibility.

“When did you give up?” Brian shouted, tiny drops of his wrath flying into the officer’s face. Lemmin stared back, silent and unmoving.

“RRUUUMMAAA!” Maya’s cries now had a back beat as the driver’s seat was kicked hard with the steady beat of a pedal drum.

“When did To Protect and to Serve become To Assault and Harass?” Brian started to pace. “I need to get my wife to a hospital.” He stood toe to toe with Lemmin, his eyes narrowed, daring the officer to answer. Lemmin took a small, defeated step backward. The moment was his and Brian knew it. He could walk away, the sudden shame on the officer’s face was as easy to read as the badge on his chest. Brian could have gotten in his car without another word and driven Maya to the hospital.

The moment passed.

The broth of anger and frustration had reached a hostile, rolling boil. “Hey, Officer Friendly,” Brian shot, taking an aggressive step forward, ending close enough to Lemmin to smell the burnt coffee rising from the back of his throat. “You may have lived your life as an asshole a couple of hours ago, but it’s a whole new year. My baby’s about to be born into a world that can be pretty shitty. Right now is your chance to make that world just a little better.” Brian took another unbelievable small step forward. “You hold all the cards man, I’m just asking you to do what you probably would have done when you first took your oath, when your dreams were big and you were still a long way from hating every minute of the job.”

The long silence was stretched by the lit syncopation from the twinkling lights which braided the corner lamppost. Brian’s heartbeat hummed as a hundred horrible thoughts crashed around his head. He pictured his hands roughly pulled behind his back, silver bracelets flicked over each one; his head pushed down and shoved carelessly into the back seat of the patrol car. He pictured a New Year’s spent downtown, with no one to hold Maya’s hand as their first child made sounds that he wouldn’t be around to hear.

“Follow me,” Officer Lemmin finally said. He walked to his Crown Victoria and stepped inside without another word. The car’s siren trumpeted against the quiet night and Lemmin’s patrol car lurched in front of the mini-van, speeding toward the hospital.

Brian followed close. He was eleven years old dropping quarters into Out Run, flying through every red light — this time with permission. Six and a half minutes later his tires were staining pavement in front of the hospital. Brian barely had the minivan in park before Officer Lemmin was dashing through the glass doors, emerging a moment later, pushing an empty wheelchair.

Maya’s breath was now leaving her lungs in wheezing gasps that were twice as fast and half as short; her cries more labored and closer to frantic. Lemmin helped Brian pull her from the mini-van bench and situate her in the wheelchair seat, then followed Brian close behind as he wheeled her inside the hospital. Brian turned around and grabbed the officer’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said, “and happy New Year.”

The officer’s pupils warmed and his face softened. “No, thank you.” He nodded at Brian, then left the hospital, his eyes fixed to the linoleum during the entirety of his exit.

“AAAHHH,” Maya gave vent to the first sound which sounded not like a moan, but rather a high pitched screech; approaching the tone of an air raid, but with the rhythm of a smoke alarm. Brian kept pushing the wheelchair with one hand, while he began to rub the tangled knots from Maya’s shoulder with the other.

Maya was never the type to complain. Nine months of pregnancy had done nothing to change it, delivery wasn’t about to. All her stress seemed to have risen to a pear sized knot which sat like a tumor between her neck and shoulder blades. “We’re almost done, baby,” Brian soothed.

Maya looked up. Her big eyes clear and voice silent. “Thank you,” they whispered.

The nurse looked up from her desk, the same nurse who had been on duty during two of their three earlier false alarms, but there was no doubt etched in her face as she looked up from her paperwork and dropped her pen into a coffee mug harboring a dozen or so capless refugees. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Newman.” Her smile was as warm as possible for one in the morning. “Looks like we’re not in dress rehearsal anymore.”

The nurse pressed a blinking red light on the panel in front of her, then turned to Brian. “Take that pretty young thing of yours down to room #8,” she said, pointing down the hallway. “And you’re in luck — looks like you’ll have the room all to yourselves.”

“Thank you,” Maya managed to breath while offering the nurse a wan smile. Brian gave his own thanks, then nervously started to wheel Maya down the hallway. They stopped in front of the blond nurse, wearing just enough make up to cover the graveyard shift on her face, who was waiting for the Newmans by the open door of their private room.

Wheelchair flushed baseboard and Brian helped the nurse pull Maya from the chair, and then into the rolling bed. The nurse started her ritual immediately, first checking Maya’s blood pressure before moving to her pulse.

The air in the room grew suddenly thick. A second RN was added, then a third. The blond nurse was moving her eyes across a clipboard, an unnerved expression creeping across her face; the newest had her fingers pressed hard against Maya’s belly. The final RN stood at the room’s threshold, half in and half out, yelling something which Brian could not understand, loudly and into the hallway.

A fourth nurse entered the room a second later, walked straight to Brian and handed him a neatly folded stack of green scrubs. “Put these on,” she ordered, then turned to Maya. “The baby’s breached,” she said kindly. “We’re going to have to do an emergency Cesarian.

Brian and Maya exchanged a glance, a blend of clear understanding and resigned defeat.

They’d spoken endlessly on the subject. Maya wanted a natural childbirth — no drugs and no surgery — but neither were willing to put mother or child at risk just to say they had done it. The choice was made for them, and as with many of the things they were yet to find in their brand new universe, they would have to find a comfortable nook in the wide chasm between what they expected and what they could expect to go wrong.

Brian pulled the bed back toward him as the nurses began to wheel it from the room. “I’ll be right there,” he promised, kissing Maya slightly too hard on the forehead.

“I know,” she breathed, “but don’t keep me waiting too long.”

Time fell form its normal rhythm and into a syrupy pool of swirling seconds. Brian pushed one leg through his pant bottoms, then the other. He pulled the top on over his head, mopping his forehead on the way down. He wondered about Michael Michelle — the baby’s name since about five minutes from when they first saw the pink positive slowly materialize inside the window of the white stick — Michael for a prince, Michelle for a princess.

Despite the modern ease of discovering the baby’s sex, all the friends and family demanding to know, and the doctors who looked sideways at their decision, Brian and Maya had wanted the surprise. But it was a difficult mystery to keep. Everyone thought the couple would be bringing home a Michelle rather than a Michael, with reasons ranging from, “Look at the way she holding it, it’s obviously a girl,” to the playful cry from Maya’s best friend Lisa that, “Maya always gets what she wants, of course it’s going to be a girl.”

It was widely assumed that Maya preferred a girl, but the truth was that neither she or Brian held any preference. A boy would teach Maya things that she could never know otherwise and, she was sure, bring her ever closer to Brian and maybe even her brother. A girl would send her back into her own childhood and help her to remember the constant wonder she felt moving through the world from tiny to all grown, and maybe help her to reconcile the disconnect she felt from her mother. Only Solomon, the old man who had lived across the street from Maya throughout the entirety of her childhood had broken rank, declaring the child a boy — a prophecy he maintained since the first second when he’d taken a single, passing glance at Maya’s barely swollen belly and announced, “Congratulations, you’re having a boy.”

Brian entered the room as directed. It was entirely quiet save for the clinking of metal and the strained rhythm of Maya’s breathing. He expected to find a wife in the midst of labor, with a small army of attendants attending. What he found instead was a room heavy with a sense of controlled anxiety. A partition was set at Maya’s middle, keeping her from being a witness to the bloodbath behind.

Brian checked the clock on the wall to steady his disbelief. He had lost only three minutes since the blond nurse had handed him the folded scrubs. In that time the doctors had sliced Maya wide open in an abyss of blood and gaping flesh. “Get ready, Papa,” a doctor said, rolling a chair across the floor.

“Thanks,” Brian said. He sat down and looked at Maya. Her eyes were closed and cheeks tensed in concentration. Though her breath seemed less labored, she was far away in a place he could not follow.  He kissed her on the forehead, much softer. “How we doing?” he smiled.

“I’m scared,” Maya admitted. He watched a quiet tear slide from the corner of each eye. He offered his hand, which she took and squeezed until it started to purple. There was no need for words — anything that needed to be said had already been spoken over countless dinners and long, restless, uncomfortable nights; well before the floor was wet from Michael Michelle’s first public address. Their anxieties certainly didn’t require repetition in a room full of important strangers.

“Would you like to have your picture taken?” asked one of the nurses who was sitting by herself beside a translucent wash tub.

“My camera’s in our bag next door,” Brian said, embarrassed. He was going to have to get used to the idea of taking a camera with him everywhere, like some sort of photojournalist for National Geographic.

“That’s why we keep this handy,” the nurse said with a smile, proudly displaying a Polaroid which looked like it had witnessed several thousand arrivals already. “Say cheese.”

The room saw a flash then heard a whir, as the picture slid forward from the camera’s mouth. The nurse shook the Polaroid a few times, then laid the picture on the table. “Everything will be ready in just a minute,” she said. “Enjoy your final few seconds of freedom.”

The couple held hands and smiled at the joke which must have been told at least once for every Polaroid. “Are you ready?” he whispered.

“I can’t feel a thing,” Maya said. She squeezed Brian’s hand even tighter.

The room was filled with a sudden blaring echo as the unique signature announcing the Earth is now holding one more bounced from tiled wall to tiled wall. “Wow!” the doctor exclaimed above their baby’s scream. “Sounds like you have yourself a little rock star!” The doctor pulled their newborn son from the warm comfort of the only home he’d ever known and into the bright light and booming voices of an unfamiliar world. He continued to scream as his world was forced to universe from membrane.

Brian was shocked by the strength of his son’s lungs as they caromed against the walls of the birthing room. He had naively imagined that babies were born with tiny lungs, which quickly grew to a size capable of keeping a young couple awake for a year’s worth of consecutive nights of broken sleep. Brian smiled. If he wasn’t ready now, another week wasn’t going to make much of a difference.

“Would you like to meet your son?” the blonde nurse asked from above the basin where she was rinsing afterbirth from the newborn.

The tentative father drew closer, the baby’s volume inexplicably increasing. Brian leaned on one knee and placed his hand on top of the little one’s tummy. “I’m your Daddy,” he said.

The tiny child, just four minutes old, reached up with both his miniature hands, wrapping them around their father’s comparatively gigantic pointer, as if to say, “I know.”

His crying ceased in an instant, leaving only the sounds of running water and the clinking implements of birth. Brian kissed his son, then rolled in his chair back over to Maya, kissing her again on the forehead.  “What does he look like?” she whispered.

“He’s just beautiful,” he said, the tears already running down his face. “He looks just like you.” Maya squeezed his hand softly. “He recognized me,” Brian crowed.

“Of course he did,” Maya said through a thin smile, thick from effort. Then, “You’re his Daddy.” It was the last thing she managed to say before losing consciousness.

_______

The Hospital was in the midst of a rare quiet. Footsteps sounded loud, echoing through the empty hallway as the daytime nurses went about routine. The door to Room #8 remained closed and even the random, stray noises were barred from its solitude. The lights inside their room were off. New parents lay silent, fingers hooked across a beaten floor of linoleum, their newborn son taking first communion from the cradle of his mother’s worn body. Their world was new, time no longer theirs alone.

They were the best of friends, now parents, and the new responsibilities of parenthood, they know, will bathe them like a baptism. They are different people with different minds, yet the thoughts swirling inside each of their heads are remarkably similar.

Will I be a better mother than mine was to me? Will he know that I’m his father? How could I possibly love something this much. Will I always feel so scared?

There are countless books and at least twice as many websites each advertising their own answers, but Brian and Maya both know that the only thing which will get them through the four seasons of the next eighteen years is living them.

Slightly less than a year ago I started 4 Seasons, a collection of 12 stories, each taking place in a different month of the year, with slightly overlapping narratives. An hour ago I finished the final one.

Taken as a whole, the manuscript now rests at about 40,000 words, or the length of a nice novella.

I’m going to take Stephen King’s advice and set the manuscript aside for six months, at which point I will read it with fresh eyes and perspective. There are many things I like about the work, along with a few things I’m not so sure of. At this point I am strongly considering adding a bit to the narrative arc and taking novella to novel.

For the next twelve days I’m going to run each story in full. I would love any feedback you have, on either the individual stories or the work as a whole.

For those of you who have been following along through the newsletter, I’ll be sending November and December within the next day or two. Thanks for being a constant, I’ve enjoyed each month together!

Thank you so much and I’ll see you tomorrow with January!

Writer Dad