Prose – THE CITY KEY

“The Eagle and Mrs. B.” by Linda Romanowski

Many a Philadelphia area college student spent those post-Thanksgiving/Pre-Christmas days working at one of the “Big Three” department stores in Center City: Strawbridge & Clothier, Lit Brothers, or John Wanamaker’s. Due to my mother’s influence, I thought working at Wanamaker’s was the best of all worlds. After all, who could resist the classy interior and exterior window displays, the jagged mountain range stroke of the owner’s signature on the side of the building, and the transportation proximity?

Two other striking figures claimed the store’s signature distinction: the Wanamaker eagle and the annual Christmas fountain and light show. The serene and imposing gilded bronze aviary statue was the focal point for gathering, for claiming “lost parents,” and for bon voyages until next time.

Lifting one’s eyes to the sights, sounds, and waving fountain streams of the hourly Christmas performance stopped shoppers in their tracks and delighted the minds of wide-eyed youngsters who rarely cried during those few minutes of awe. My first recollection of seeing the aqua wonder made me fearful, thinking at any moment, the fountains would fall from their upper stage perch and drown the audience below, extinguishing the prancing lights in the process.

Not every pair of eyes welcomed this holiday diversion. My first Christmas working season in the children’s department in 1972 provided a novel view of the saleswomen employed at the makeup counters. The daily music grinding of “Frosty the Snowman” did nothing for their business. No cash registers rung in harmony with “O, Christmas Tree.” Gazers leaned on their pristine cosmetic display cases; their backs turned away from the porcelain faces of Estee Lauderettes, who resorted to makeup remover to erase the handprints and elbow marks on their precious encasements of promised beauty and glamour. No allure of scented bottled blossoms could overpower the lofty sounds and scenery above the audience. It must have been the bane of their existence, their dreams of pocket money ruined by lit-up distraction. One year, I counted viewing thirty-six performances of Rudolph’s very shiny unpowdered nose glowing across the ceiling.

*****

Every college student on Wanamaker’s holiday payroll hoped to work for the main floor supervisor, Mrs. B., known for her kindness. She was a smartly dressed, middle-aged Jewish lady, brownish-black hair coiffed to perfection, with no-nonsense eyeglasses attached to a pearl chain that hung elegantly around her neck. Her high-heeled pumps that coordinated with every outfit gave her an acceptable height, appearing taller than she was. Her trim figure clicked in tandem with her stride. Mrs. B. took the time to acquaint herself with several of us. One afternoon, during the height of the Christmas rush, she announced that she would retain us for the week after Christmas. We were delighted, as it meant money for next semester’s textbooks would be less of an issue. All we needed to do was follow her instructions without variation.

When we punched in on the time clock on December 26th, Mrs. B. led us to an unfamiliar store area, one at a time. We were placed separately in obscure areas of dressing rooms and stock areas, out of the view of the “suits” who might sniff through the aisles looking for post-holiday imperfections. There were close calls, but none of us were spotted. Had we been “caught,” we would say we were Christmas shopping to maintain our ruse. During that week, Mrs. B. was ubiquitous, her eagle eyes surpassing that stony sculpture’s glance on the first floor. We functioned seamlessly as the suits paraded the aisles, praising Mrs. B. for her diligence and attention to detail. I’ll always wonder if the Wanamaker eagle suspected her and kept the secret, among all the others, under its ornate-clad feathers.

Linda M. Romanowski is a graduate of Rosemont College, in 1975 with a BA in Psychology and Elementary Education, and this past May as an MFA graduate in Creative Non-fiction. She was assistant editor of Non-fiction for Rathalla magazine, Rosemont’s literary publication. Her Italian heritage-based thesis, “Final Touchstones”, earned with distinction, is scheduled for publication by Sunbury Press within the coming months. Several of the essays from her pending book were published on City Key, Ovunque Siamo and the Mario Lanza Institute Facebook page. She recently reviewed Ellen Stone’s poetry book “What is in the Blood” for the online Philadelphia Stories 2021 Fall issue. Her poem, “Seen In Translation” was selected for inclusion in the Moonstone Arts Center Protest 2021-100 Thousand Poets for Change.

“How to Survive Rain in Los Angeles” by Miro Myung

New moon in Aries, and the rain is pounding down on Los Ángeles. Patio furniture is tested throughout every neighborhood as parrots take shelter in the branches guarding us from high above. Love is a theme of this erotic moon phase–as well as the honking of car horns as the 110 South dangerously fills with standing water. Disjointed, disoriented, chaotic flow of the city that captures so many of our imaginations slowly molds you into its form: flexible jelly with a core of steel.

This is one of those days where it seems safer to just stay in bed. It sounds bad out there I think to myself as the beeswax candle cultivates a world of shadows on my bedroom walls. It’s 6:42am and the forecast is already set–scroll down and down, fall in and out of love with the bathroom mirror, cook dinner with your ex, play tug-of-war with your dog–do anything but open that front door.

But if you do have to leave, make sure to have water in your car in case you get sucked into a sinkhole on Sunset Boulevard and eat a healthy breakfast, but–no eight-hour fasting-whole-thirty kind of thing. Eat something hearty that gives your day a “leg up” or a “leg sideways” so that you can circumnavigate the loneliness of rain in Los Ángeles. The only certainty of today is that we will all have patio furniture that is going to be sixty-percent rot by summer and that our collective anxiety about the rain pounding that engineered Ikea wood will also hold us back from saving our four-legged friends from their fate. When it rains in Los Ángeles we live in denial–like when it’s 108 degrees Fahrenheit–we put a podcast on, throw some boy-brow gel on or whatever makeup makes you feel more ghastly and beautiful, and traverse through the city like it’s made for living.

To live in Los Ángeles is to be in love with the non-ending. Other cities might promise you solid conclusions–you know the neighborhoods well enough to predict the calm dinner out with the same friends, you know that people will complain about traffic and the influx of tech workers, you know that there will be no crowd spilling out of the neighborhood bar on a Tuesday night, you know that if you are lucky enough you will end well here in a way that will satisfy the order of things–a house, a career, a marriage, and even a golden retriever.

To live in Los Angeles is to be in love with the non-ending; a neighborhood bar is hard to locate because the highways keep beckoning you further and further into the tangled web of homes and palm trees and tiny restaurants bursting at their seams and linen-wearing humans picking herbs in Griffith and hidden farms in South Central twirling disco balls over colorful chickens and bowling alleys that sit along train tracks serving sukiyaki and cheese fries. This is a city of lonely transplants mixed impossibly with families who have lived here for generations and they clash in their cultures, but together, fall in love with the clean air after a steady rainfall.

On the highway is where I find my largest community–I used to think of myself as entering the herd, but now I see it as a convergence of “we’re all in this together” mentality and a “we are also very fucked” thought process. I love it. Does that make me abnormal? I’m not sure if Los Ángeles has a barometer for “normal” like smaller, more organized towns do. To be wacky, loud, disruptive, joyous, angry, and incredibly scared is to blend in here. If you’re not a little worried from time to time you’re not driving through the city enough.

Yet within the chaos are microcosms of sensual peace–Ethiopian jazz filtering through old speakers as lemon trees drip water onto terracotta tiles, smoke from chicken being barbecued in a grocery-store parking lot that captures your imagination, sunbeams melting over two-story level buildings in Koreatown, waves in Malibu tilting towards land boasting their dolphins, the clinking of glasses in old Hollywood steakhouses where the red velvet looks better in the dim light, spiraling labyrinths in Topanga Canyon where hikers hug the famous tree, mornings in your bedroom as you listen to the music of horns and rain and parrots and your neighbor chuckling to herself.

Miró Myung published articles in Tom Tom Magazine, a poem in Luna Collective Magazine, LA County Library’s “Love Letters in Light,” and co-published poetry book “Almanac of Tiny Clouds.” She does visuals for indie band Tangerine featured in NME, The Guardian, Rolling Stone India, Billboard with a BFA from UCLA.

“Big Talk” by Mari de Armas

Whenever prompted, I provided my new address, followed by a forceful pronunciation of ATT-LANT-TAH. I said it this way to the movers, the insurance agent, and the post office until I heard my friend Lisa, an Atlantan herself, say, “Ahlannuh,” in one-and-a-half syllables.

We were catching up over drinks at a sandwich shop called Victory. Being new to the area, I asked her to pick the place and was a bit taken aback when she suggested it. I envisioned a Subway restaurant with a liquor license, but I was pleasantly proved wrong. It was a lively establishment with a smattering of booths and tables anchored by a busy bar. Two women with murals of ink tattooed on their arms bounced from table to table, taking orders and delivering mason jars of colorful drinks. Our beverages had just been delivered, mine a Victory Libre cleverly served in a glass Coke bottle, and hers a whiskey-coke slushy that made me wish I had a tolerance for Jack Daniels. Lisa, a writer, an amateur sailor, and a roller derby girl, could easily drink me under the table, so I was fairly certain that a few sips of her slushy weren’t enough to cause her to slur.

“Say it again,” I demanded.

“What? Ahlannuh?”

I had gone through this song and dance in Los Angeles already, running around town mispronouncing everything from street names to neighborhoods. I wasn’t about to make that mistake again, so I asked Lisa to listen and correct my pronunciation as I rattled off every landmark I could possibly remember from my guidebooks. She stopped me at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

“Everything is pronounced the same,” she said, waving her hand. “There are only three or four names that might be confusing.”

For those, she provided solutions apt to my maturity level. She explained that the first syllable in Piedmont Park is pee because you may need to do that in the bushes. The city of Decatur is pronounced ‘dick hater’ due to the prevalence of lesbians. Krog Market is not pronounced like Kroger Supermarket, but instead, it rhymes with hog because you go there to pig out. She said to resist the urge to pronounce anything in Spanish. Ponce ends in a silent ‘e’ like the word pounce. When Atlantans want you to pronounce the ‘e’, they add a ‘y’ to the spelling as evidenced in the name of a neighborhood called, Poncey-Highland.

I thanked her wholeheartedly for the lesson.

We were nearly done with our respective drinks when I asked the inevitable question former smokers raise when they’re out drinking and reminiscing: Do you have? and then put two fingers up to my lips because uttering the word cigarette is too disgusting.

She didn’t have any, but I wasn’t too disappointed. It was a long shot. I mean, who smokes anymore?

“Let’s go outside and see if anyone has an extra cigarette,” she said, already standing.

Her plan sounded ludicrous. In Los Angeles, the closest smoker you’d find was in Nevada.

“Should we tell our waitress that we’ll be right back?” I asked, certain that I was going to get hip-checked by present-day Rosie the Riveter for walking out on my tab.

Lisa waved me off again.

Miraculously, we found not one but several smokers of the nicotine type.

“I hate to ask,” Lisa announced, and before she finished her question, a young woman with sunglasses propped on her head heeded the call.

“Camels okay?” she said, holding open her pack for Lisa to pilfer.

“Do you need one too?” she asked me.

“Oh, no, thank you,” I said, falling over myself. “We’ll share,” I suggested humbly.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, holding out her box for me.

“I’ve got Parliaments, if you prefer,” a man’s voice boomed from the corner.

I gasped. That was my brand. And like a child being lured into the back of a van, I walked right over to him.

I was really out here bumming cigarettes like it was the late nineties.

His cigarette hung from his lips precariously over his lengthy beard as he lit mine. Before I could say thank you, I was somehow swept into a conversation. Sure, smoking is a social activity where chit-chat is exchanged between participants. Someone mentions the weather, and the other person replies in agreement. Then, the replier is compelled to say something else to not make the person who initiated the conversation feel bad about breaking the ice. You know, your standard, textbook small talk. But this was not that. If anything, this was big talk.

“Y’all know these two parking lots have different prices, and they’re right across from each other, right?” he said.

“Yeah. That lot is a rip-off,” Lisa said.

“Seriously? That’s where I parked.”

“That’s the most expensive lot in all of Decatur,” he said, pronouncing it the way a lesbian would.

“She just moved here,” Lisa said in defense of my ignorance.

“Well, that’s a tough first lesson to learn,” he said before taking a drag.

“Where’d you move here from?” asked the Camel smoker.

“L.A.,” I said, thinking that would suffice, but all it did was spark up a conversation about me that didn’t really include me.

Guy with the Parliaments: “It’s so expensive out there…”

Girl with the Camels: “And so many people are moving over here…”

Guy with the Parliaments talking about me when I’m standing right there: “She’s probably with the movie business…”

Girl with the Camels: “Did you rent or buy a place? Well, it doesn’t matter, really. It’s really driving prices up…”

The door of the establishment flung open, and our waitress appeared. Oh, here we go, I thought, bracing for the tackle.

“Another round?” she hollered.

Lisa and I responded in the affirmative.

“Should I buy these people drinks,” I said, pointing at our cigarette benefactors.

“No, that’s creepy,” she said.

That’s creepy? These people knew more about my life in two minutes than my blood relatives had in three decades. I shrugged my shoulders and took slow, methodical drags, enjoying what remained of my taboo habit and making note of the lessons learned.

There were other curiosities that Lisa left out in my orientation. For example, Atlanta’s elevator problem. I suppose it wasn’t a purposeful omission but one that has to be experienced. The first time it happened to me, I was sharing an elevator with a group of overly polite men who, upon the doors parting to reveal our floor, turned into adorable toy soldiers. They performed a choreographed about-face to allow me to egress, even though I was standing in the back corner. I didn’t understand what was happening until one of the men extended his hand outward to usher me out.

“Oh, gosh, thank you,” I gushed like a fourth runner-up at a beauty pageant.

Half a dozen more of these exhibitions of impractical chivalry later, and I was ready to lobby for gender-neutral elevators. I got into a few ‘you first, no you first’ bouts and when my outfits bordered on androgynous, it created a lot of consternation. I could see the machinations behind their eyes. They were horrified to offend me but more scared to dishonor their mothers, who made them promise to always let the lady go first. More than once, I missed my exit because men couldn’t create a pathway fast enough to beat out the doors. I started to add an extra five minutes to my commute if I knew the location of my appointment was taller than a two-story building. An effort that meant nothing, as time is arbitrary here. Another interesting aberration.

Every city has its own tempo and Atlanta’s hovers in the realm of Jazzy Muzak. Citizens butterfly around like a lovely alto sax solo without urgency to make it to where they need to be. Why would they? Dinner can be ordered at 3 a.m. and breakfast at 3 p.m. You can watch exotic dancers perform in darkened rooms when it’s broad daylight outside and play carnival games under the stars on the roof of the old Sears building.

There are only two things, and two things alone, that you can count on being on time. The first is 5 o’clock rush hour, and the second is lesbian kickball games. Equally intense, both feature moments of elevated frustration, immense fear and tons of drama, but neither is ever tardy.

When I realized this phenomenon, I made an effort to be late to social gatherings, but as hard as I tried, I was always the first to arrive. On one particular evening, our group had 7:15 p.m. reservations at a Midtown Mexican restaurant called Zocalo. Restaurant is generous. It’s really an open deck shack without doors or windows that looks like it was transported directly from the sands of Acapulco onto the pavement of Piedmont Avenue. I arrived twenty minutes late, and even the hostess was surprised to see me.

“We don’t have your table ready just yet,” the hostess said, looking down at a sheet of paper.

“No worries,” I said, completely worried. “I’ll be at the bar.”

“Ok, I’ll come get you when it’s ready,” she said, fully knowing she wasn’t going to remember to get me.

This was not an ideal situation because it was a busy bar, and in order to keep my seat, I was going to have to order and re-order until my friends arrived. There’s nothing more unpleasant than being the first one of the group to get drunk, especially when there’s no group. I didn’t want to be out of sync with everyone else because I hit the pre-game too hard, so I decided my stop-gap measure to avoid this problem was to order beer. I figured I could have one or two and still maintain my composure.

I sipped slowly and lifted my gaze to people-watch. The demographics of the patrons skewed more than a decade younger than me. They were so beautiful, without laugh lines or wrinkled foreheads. Drinking salted-brimmed margaritas and baskets upon baskets of chips and salsa without worry of acid reflux. To be twenty-something again. I would be doing shots of marinara sauce and snorting lines of collagen in the bathroom.

“Hey Mari!” I heard a man’s voice say.

I searched the room, but no one was looking in my direction. If someone said ‘Mari’ in a crowded Miami bar, 17 women would activate like a Sims character, but hearing it in Atlanta was remarkable. Not to mention pronounced correctly. None of this Maury bullshit that I had to contend with in Los Angeles. It was a proper Mari with a rolled R. Through the cluster of people squeezed into this tiny space. I saw a man embracing the presumed Mari. She was petite with long, dark brown hair. Latina, from what I can see. My bartender and her black lipstick snapped me out of my rubbernecking.

“Another one?” she asked. I smiled nervously and looked at my phone riddled with texts that claimed things like ‘almost there’ and ‘in the Uber’ and ‘traffic is bad’.

“Yes, please,” I answered.

While she fished out my second beer, I once again turned my attention to my namesake to see a smartly dressed young woman with short, blondish hair trying to get Mari’s attention.

“Hi! I’m sorry to interrupt. I hope you don’t think this is weird. Is your name Mari?”

I gasped in ecstasy at the thought this was going to be one of those ‘that’s my man you’re with’ situations. I turned back to grin at the bartender as she placed the bottle on a coaster and went right back to eavesdropping.

“Yeah,” Mari answered cautiously.

I positioned myself to get a better view of this soon-to-be dinner and a show.

“This is crazy. My name is Mari, too,” the second Mari said excitedly.

I nearly spit out my beer.

“Wait. How do you spell it?” the first Mari asked the other.

“M-A-R-I” answered number two.

“Oh my God, me too!” They both squealed.

Was I being punked? I looked around for hidden cameras.

“I heard someone say my name,” number two continued, “And I looked up to see your friend, but I was like, I don’t know that guy!”

“This is my friend Brian,” number one said, now bringing in the guy that sparked this Abbott and Costello routine.

I sat fascinated. As members of their respective parties arrived, they repeated their meet-cute story; all the while,
I sat quietly, debating whether or not to say something.

“I’m over here waiting for you to get here, and I heard someone say my name, but it wasn’t you,” Mari said to a friend who had just arrived. And then the first Mari added, “It’s spelled the same and everything,” to the person listening.

After the third rendition, I was done being an observer. I mean, how could I not insert myself into this story? I drowned the voice telling me to stay out of it with a few more gulps and then took the plunge.
“You guys are not going to believe this,” I yelled across the bar. “My name is Mari too.”

From the commotion we caused, the diners in the main room must have thought someone dumped a bag full of hundred-dollar bills on the bar. We clustered together in one corner, and, like good Atlantans, we engaged in “big talk.”
One of the Maris shared that she was adopted, the other one invited us to do bumps in the bathroom, and I confessed that when someone calls me Maria, I fantasize about murdering them. You know, casual.

Somewhere between the first and second tequila shots, it dawned on me that, well, that I was very drunk, but most importantly that the reason Atlantans chat so much wasn’t that they’re extra talkative, but it’s that they’re bored from waiting for their friends to show. Maybe those smokers back at Victory were so happy to share their cigarettes and their opinions because they had mistakenly arrived too early.

“Where are your friends?” Mari number two asked me, with her arm around my neck.

“I think they are stuck in an elevator going after you, no after you.”

The Maris knew exactly what I meant, and I had never been more seen.

Mari de Armas was the first of her family not to hail from the island of Cuba. She is a content strategist for a glitzy client list of cruise lines and hotels and blogs at ALittleCubanGoesALongWay.com. She holds a Bachelor’s in English and resides near Washington, DC, with her wife.

“Moms’ Night Out” by Raya Yarbrough

A study in social discomfort and expensive toast, with explanatory footnotes, to be read at the end

Tonight I went to “Moms’ Night Out” at a pseudo-posh bar in Santa Monica. This was an extra-curricular event through my daughter’s preschool, organized by Sam, a mother who is far more involved and organized than I am. I’m not an un-involved mom, but when I have time to myself, away from the task of keeping another human alive, my first thought is towards my work or a hobby, like running screaming out into the night.² I went to prove to the other moms, and to myself, that I can be a person.

In the Lyft, I ruminated on my discomfort about social events. I just don’t know HOW to people. What do people talk about?³ On stage, life makes sense. I know where and when things are supposed to happen. I guess my point is, after getting past “Hello fellow human female. I see you have spawned as well. Yes, we all drink more now,” what do I talk to a bunch of effectively random women about? But still, I wanted to give it a chance.

My Lyft pulled up to the curb. I got out. I went into the bar.

Inside the bar, it was dim, but not sinister-dim, like sex-den dim. You know. A heavy, dark, toile curtain hung close to the entrance, obscuring half my view. I took two steps toward the toile, then panned left to right: a table with two women I did not recognize, two women and a man at the bar, also foreign to me, some empty couches and low accent tables, and then there was Sam, the classroom rep and event organizer. I see Sam every week when she volunteers to set up lunch for the teachers, and/or to do other devoted tasks. Sam has three children and does all this. Did I mention she’s also skinny and beautiful? I am automatically a disheveled, out-of-shape, one-kid-having wuss in her presence. Not that she projects that—she’s actually lovely—this is all in my head. Loudly. In my head.

Sam hadn’t seen me yet; she was checking her phone. Seemed confused. She was the only one on the couch. I turned on my mental “extrovert app,” and the mask appeared.

“Hi Sam!”

“Oh hiiiiii!”

She had a half-empty glass of sparkling wine. I sat down on a dark blue, velveteen, tufted couchlet. I didn’t see anyone else I recognized.

Fucking hell. I was the first one there.

We both made sounds at each other, reflecting the situation. We recounted the facts, as if we were reminiscing about the events of five minutes ago. Almost nostalgic for a distant past, ten minutes ago, back when it was Schrodinger’s Party in our minds, both alive and dead.⁴

The waiter came by to ask if we’d like to look at the menu. We said yes. We required new activity and stimulation.

Sam said the food at this bar was actually very good, and she put in an order for sliders. I went for the avocado toast. The waiter was patient while we decided how many orders of each we should get. I also ordered an Old Fashioned.

We did mom talk, while the waiter took our orders to the kitchen. Nap strategies, bedtime routines, what do they eat, finding “me time,” and teaching small humans where to poop. My Old Fashioned arrived. I stopped midway to my sip, catching sight of the artisanal-looking orange rind, which set off an overall tangerine effect in the glass. It looked like Dayquil.

Then, Sam asked the introvert’s nuclear question. “How are you?”

It sends me into existential paralysis. How are you physically? Emotionally? How are you finding this incarnation on this plane of existence?¹⁰

I told her about my recording project, my album. That’s a thing.

“Mmmm,” she said, and raised her eyebrows, like the information tasted good. There was full eye contact, without a side-glance, and I know that means a human is engaged. Good so far. I told her my husband had been out of town and would be most of the month.

“Mmmmm,” again, but this time with furrowed brow, indicating recognition of the potential hardship of the situation. That’s an empathic facial response. Even if faked, she took the trouble to make it.

I paused, searching for another “thing.” I got distracted because her eyebrows were impeccable. I started wondering about her skin-care regimen. Side-glance. Shit, I’d waited too long to say a thing, and now my presence had become burdensome. She checked her phone. Oh God, I’m an alien. An alien she’s having to babysit, alone, in a bar.

Our conversation was in syndication now, pure re-runs. She had already told me when her kids went to sleep, but I asked again, as if I needed clarification about the specific meaning of 6:30pm. She asked what I was recording. I told her, “my album.” She repeated her face. She apologized about the confusion and tapped on her phone. We alternated head swivels towards the entrance whenever somebody new came in. We repeated the conversation where we told each other what time it was, and how we thought people would’ve been here 30 minutes ago. We confirmed for each other that it was now five minutes later than the last time we checked.

Then silence.

Sam ordered a margarita.

Sam’s margarita arrived, salted.

The table was an embarrassment of sharp-cut, Himalayan salt-crystalled, conically wrapped French fries. In baskets. We ate the sliders and avocado toast. So there we were: two jilted, awkward, skinny-pants-wearing moms-in-a-bar, drinking and scarfing fries, because what the fuck at this point.

If we had chosen, intentionally, to hang out alone together, it wouldn’t have been as awkward. It was only because we had expected a night of perfunctory chit chat, with many people, that we ended up unprepared for genuine social interaction.

Sam looked with concern towards the kitchen. This is when I found out that she’d told the establishment to expect 20 people, and to reserve seating and staff appropriately. This was the social-let-down motherload—when the people you invited aren’t there, and the people you paid to be there are pissed off and glaring.

8:30pm rolled around, and Sam asked how long I had planned to stay. It was clear that truly, nobody else was showing up. I made words about the babysitter. I suggested we have plans with our husbands sometime, maybe a playdate, something intentional.

“Yeah totally!”

“Yeah we totally should!”¹¹

Because the rules are that you must reverse an unintentionally awkward evening with an intentionally awkward one.

So that was Moms’ Night Out—which seemed like a very specific and reductive title, now that the night had passed in the way it did.

So, did I learn anything about how to be a person? Did I prove to myself that I’m a person?¹³ I learned that sometimes the discomfort goes deeper than me. And sometimes the most prepared, together, responsible folks can still get tapped by the wand of the awkward fairy.¹⁴

Footnotes:

² For the record, “running screaming into the night” is not my hobby. My hobbies are: free-floating anxiety and delusions of grandeur. And watercolor.

³ Aside from Steely Dan, Dark Matter, good/bad use of crash cymbal, Dark Energy, sex, the dishes, more sex, why my software isn’t working, The Singularity, politics, “are changes in emotion metric modulations?”, weird sex, Black people stuff, “where are my earbuds?” Jewish people stuff, Fminor6/9, guys wearing eyeliner, “what are those tiny red spiders called?”, and Star Trek.

I may have digressed.

⁴ “Schrödinger’s cat” is a thought experiment devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition. As the story goes,⁵ there is a cat in a box in the room next to you.⁶ You do not know how long the cat has been in the box, if the box is ventilated, if the cat has been fed, if the cat has been listening to Joe’s Garage⁷ or the Best of Celine Dion.⁸ Any of these variables could render the cat living or dead. Some more than others.⁹ Until you enter the room and open the box, in your mind, the cat is both alive and dead. Like the party. Before I got there. Get it?

⁵ Basically.

⁶ With soundproofing.

⁷ A three-part rock opera recorded by American musician Frank Zappa in 1979.

⁸ Please refer to 9

⁹ Please refer to 8

¹⁰ Fine. Needs salt.

¹¹ Scientists estimate that people who suggest “making plans” in Los Angeles have, statistically, a 10 percent chance of actually seeing those plans become reality. Experts theorize that this behavior is due to several common circumstances, such as:

1) Some shit I’ve got to do.
2) “My girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse is sick/a dick/a bitch/in town/out of town/imaginary”
3) Plans with more professionally important people.
4) “Oh, shit I forgot!”
5) Something to do with kids.
6) Having to drive from West side to East side and vice versa, but usually the prior.
7) Having to drive between the hours of 2pm-7pm.
Recent studies have shown that Los Angeles people making good on “we should hang out” is less likely than the 405 receiving a hovercraft lane, or a frozen daiquiri blizzard naturally occurring over the Grand Canyon. Though there are differing opinions on how to deal with this social epidemic, 95 percent of experts12 agree that the situation is totally bullshit.
12) The other 5 percent of experts were not available for comment because they “Had a thing, but totally want to get together soon.”
13) No.
14) Different from the Absinthe Fairy, which is a story for another time.

Raya Yarbrough is a writer and singer-songwriter best known for singing the opening song of the TV series Outlander. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Frazzled and MUTHA Magazine. Raya is finishing a humorous memoir about being a parent in a multiracial family while also being a working artist.

“The Devastated” by Jennifer Bannan

Once, when we were visiting the Everglades camp, my second husband Brian sent us into fearful conniptions by stumbling off drunk to lie down and look at the stars. We didn’t know where he was and he wasn’t answering our calls.

This isn’t good, my dad said. People get walking in the wrong direction, he said, loading his gun, and they never come back. Somehow, I knew Brian wasn’t far, but Dad shot twelve rounds into the air nonetheless.

I wonder if it irked Dad that it wasn’t the gun that finally woke Brian, but the continued bellows of me and my sister. He emerged from the sawgrass, tripping over cypress stumps. He begged our forgiveness, trying to explain how the Milky Way had lured him. It was so beautiful.

Though he’s been to the Everglades twice before, those trips started with visits to my parents in Central Florida. Brian hasn’t seen Miami yet. He has only heard my stories. And now he’s dying of pancreatic cancer, in his late forties. We’re traveling the world – Thailand, Laos, Tulum, Cuba – and one of our stops will be the place that shaped me.

We drive, sunshine and air conditioning providing that particular mix I’ve never felt like it feels in Miami. There’s the house on Tenth terrace where I grew up. There’s the Denny’s where I worked – the mini mall now much fancier than it was back then, more landscaping, slick specialty shops.

We’re driving West on Tamiami Trail. I tell him what he probably knows, that an hour on this road would bring us to Monroe Station, where my dad kept his swamp buggy parked. The buggy and the camp were sold to an amiable guy who has shown he’s willing to host our visits out there. My parents sold it without even telling me and my sister. Because we live far away with our families. Because we’re girls. I believe a son would have been afforded right of first refusal. When I said as much to my mom, told her to put Dad on the phone, she panicked, she urged reason, We didn’t want to burden you. How would you fix a swamp buggy, how would you fix anything out there? I’ve known the Everglades since my earliest memories, loved it enough to name my youngest, and Brian’s only child, Cypress. They could have told us, could have given us the smallest say.

I turn off the Trail, driving the circuit. I show Brian the simple stucco box that was my first boyfriend’s home. Memories of salsa parties on the back patio, of the grandmother always sweeping the rug. Here: the Westchester mall where we kids would go for bistec and papas fritas.

Brian, stretching his lips weird because the chemo has left his mouth dry, doesn’t say much. I feel selfish spending time on these memories when time is precious. But then, he’s someone who loves big, and he loves me, so what better way to be in the world right now? Place is a part of us, and so this place will also be a part of our son Cypress, growing with him in mysterious ways. It’s important to see.

Next: Pat’s house, where friends blew a hole in the wall with a military-grade firearm. There’s my elementary school. The sidewalk where, as I biked, a teenager grabbed my ass and then showed me his handgun.

“They kept the boot to your neck,” he says of the violence, of the particular way it was directed at girls.

I’m reminded of another time, when he said, “We’re the devastated generation,” about all the toxins and consumerism and depletion of nature that had been normalized for us. And he said that before he knew about the cancer.

It’s true, the female experience of violence is unique, like the gun that forces declarations of love. We’re supposed to say how we like the boot to the neck, how it suits us.

But also, everything I loved. What the boot couldn’t take from me. The banyans of Coral Way. The beach at night like a black and white movie. The teacher assigning me The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, allowing me to see myself in a grand, artistic way. The deep, pure yearning, emboldened by the crisp blue sky.

And, oh Brian, of the devastated generation. Your dying is proof enough that the boot hurts everyone, that the boot is on everyone’s neck. Every generation and all of us in it. All of us, again and again, bearing the devastation. Repeating the very cycle we’d hoped to disrupt.

Jennifer Bannan’s (jenniferbannan.com) second short story collection, Tamiami Trail, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press Fall 2025. She has had stories in the Autumn House Press anthology, Keeping the Wolves at Bay, the Kenyon Review online, ACM, Passages North, Chicago Quarterly Review and more.

“Umbrella” by Peter Rustin

Not What I Expected

We both agreed: eff it, let’s not cook. It was the first hot night in May, and the air had that 7 p.m. green/grey heaviness. This usually heralds the kind of thunderstorm that, in 15 minutes, cleans the air of the fragrances of the now-ubiquitous reefer and garbage, to be replaced by ozone and the leaves of the valiant sycamores in Central Park.

Our jobs were energy vampires: Vanessa endures her waitership at an expense-account Midtown restaurant where Amex Platinum holders pay $32 for a mediocre burger. I’m an IT guy for a hedge fund. Our life-force was too low that evening for us to weave around each other to cook in what was risibly described by the coiffed realtor as a Manhattan “kitchenette.”

So, after we changed into our civilian gear (jeans and Converse for me; pale blue sundress for Vanessa) we headed out to Wok Cottage, our default neighborhood joint about 6 blocks away on Amsterdam. Yeah, it’s nothing to look at, but the food was consistently good, and we loved the whole old-school Chinese restaurant vibe: the grimy plastic-encased menus with the red edges still dangling ancient gold tassels; the torn leatherette booths; the paper placemats with the Chinese Zodiac (amusingly, we were both Year of The Rat); the hint of orange in the fortune cookies.

Right away, I could tell something was off the moment we sat down. Vanessa usually sits next to me in the 4-person booth that we always gravitate towards. Tonight, though, she sat opposite me; what was that? A classic Vanessa move would be to suggest some absurdly gross item (rabbit head is always a sound choice, as is duck blood soup). But this evening she immediately suggested the usual Szechuan beef.

If I’ve learned anything from stand-up comedians, it’s to not ask questions, but to let your girlfriend get there on her own dime. So, I waited. And sure enough, it came before the waiter did.

“Dave? Can we talk?”

Oh, shit. “Sure, of course. What’s up, V?”

“So listen. Are you happy?”

Is there a right answer to that question? If you say yes, and they disagree, you’re an asshole. If you say, “uh, not really,” but they are happy, you’re still an asshole. I warily cocked my head.

“Anyway, I’ve been thinking,” she continued. “We like the same music, we like the same bands, we like the same clothes….”

She knew that this quote from Springsteen’s “Bobby Jean” would make me smile and lighten the mood. Still, I waited.

“I know that this is out of the blue and we have never discussed it, and you probably never even thought about it, but…. (deep breath). What about you and me getting married this summer?”

She was wrong. I had thought about it, plenty. But can I be honest? I had always thought Vanessa was a bit out of my league, with her careless beauty, quick wit and an effortless ability to charm any group, anytime. And so, I was kind of waiting for the shoe to drop, thinking that I was on borrowed time to begin with, and when the inevitable breakup came, I’d just be grateful for what I had had.

“The Only Girl’s Awakening” by Dorothy Venditto

This summer night began like so many before. Supper was over, and my mother said it was time for all of us to move to the living room so she could finish washing the dishes. I wanted to stay behind to help clean the kitchen and to be with my mom, but I was just 5 years old and wouldn’t have been much help. So, I followed my five older brothers and father into the living room as expected. I can’t remember what we were watching that night but imagine it was one of my father’s favorite cop shows. The younger kids got a seat on the hardwood floors, the older boys fought over a space on the couch, and my father collapsed into his chair in a way that signaled he was not getting up again.

On my favorite nights in our apartment, which this one was not, I could gaze through the open window from my seat on the floor and see the setting moon competing for attention with the Empire State Building. I could not seriously consider which would win such a competition because I felt their magic equally. I’d often find myself listening to the conversations of people walking on Third Avenue as their words and laughter made it through the thick summer air to our second-floor apartment. Groups of men loudly talking about the game they just watched at the corner bar and women considering where to go while hailing taxis – these types of conversations kept me listening for what might come next. I saw myself wearing shimmering high heels and a long, dramatic black coat and wondered where I would go when I was old enough to hail taxis on my own. Listening in on real people’s lives and creating imaginary ones for myself always won over TV storylines.

Sometimes, bad weather obstructed my view and street conversations leaned more toward conflict than celebration. Still, there was comfort in the routine hum. Ambulances often raced by, rousing me from daydreaming. One brother would mention, probably for the hundredth time, that it’s an emergency block for Bellevue Hospital, so you have to put up with the noise. But my oldest brother, who didn’t much like the high pitch sounds, almost always got up to close the window and shut out the sirens.

“The Moon in Palermo” by Jane Rankin-Reid

In the early mornings, the sound of horse’s clip-clopping on the cobbled Billiemi marble of Palermo’s streets feels timeless. My experience of these echoic memories from across the ages is as strong as the sensory reflections certain aromas evoke. Later in the day, horses harnessed to ornate open carriages stand as their drivers idle, smoking and gossiping on Via Vittorio Emanuele, waiting for tourist fares. The odor of horses is ever present in Palermo’s ancient inner-city streets. It sometimes feels as if nothing has changed in the last one hundred years. Horses feel as if they’re part of the city’s sense of overlaying loss. Their contemporary presence lends an air of surreality to Palermo’s undercurrent of historic madness.

Last year while visiting on an extended sojourn, I often spent a part of my mornings lying beneath the Greek-Italian artist Jannis Kounellis’ Untitled series of nineteen old-fashioned wardrobes and cupboards. These unexpected objects are hung by steel wires from the ceiling on the first floor of the Palazzo Riso, home to Palermo’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Kounellis’ menacing flotilla of gravity defying objects loom overhead like a flock of heavy wooden birds. My experience of lying on the cool polished terrazzo floor beneath these airborne old cupboards, some with doors open dangling carelessly, is an intimate ‘suspension of disbelief’. This momentary flight of logic and rationality is an experience created by sheer daring, both mine and the artist’s. It is an artwork that invariably sent me out on my day’s journey exploring Palermo in a state of boundless wonderment. The installation opened my sensory pores to the potencies of the many myths and superstitions I frequently came across in the City of Happiness. It became one of my most favourite rituals, an inventive reverence of the flight of human creative imagination.

I kept running into the moon during those hot early July days. That morning, it was the fourth time we’d met in the last week. First, on Monday when it was being assembled on the pavement outside Giardino dei Giusta (Garden of the Righteous). There was something essentially convincing about its arced, white-painted slatted timber form rearing upwards in its rawest state. Workers crawled over its emerging shape with nails held between pursed lips, hammers dangling from worn leather tool belts. The next day though, it had not moved, the moon seemed to have become more secure in its identity. An indigo blue ‘sky’ of felt had been attached to its base. A day later, in a park closer to my home, the moon’s incarnation as a float for the upcoming Santa Rosalia festival parade was almost complete. White fluffy cotton ‘cloud’ pads were being stapled onto its nether regions. Santa Rosalia, dressed in pastel green robes, her long blonde hair rippling in pasty curls, had been erected to look as if she was astride it.

“Hungry Ghosts” by Olga Trianta-Boncogon

She stood expectantly before remembering to push a thin panel on the glass. The doors chimed and the cashiers called out welcome without breaking away from their tasks.

The convenience store was clean, full meals stocked the fridge, counters offered tea-boiled eggs, sweet potatoes, and hot dogs. Cold air quickly enveloped her and made her forget the summer heat. She wandered from aisle to aisle, wanting to buy instant noodles but too afraid to ask what the sign on the hot water machine meant. She knew how to say hot water and excuse me, but worried that her butchered delivery would confuse or insult the cashier. She stood by the water for too long, a short woman squeezed past her to fill up her cup. She jumped back and bumped into a man using the ATM. She wondered when she would become used to filling up smaller spaces, navigating aisles wide enough for one.

She bought a noodle dish for dinner and sat down at one of the few tables left. Some people bowed their heads over their tables, squeezing in a quick nap, probably fresh off work like her. Others had their eyes on their phone screens and were scrolling past social media updates at the speed of light. Someone came by her table and silently took a chair.

“Don’t Cry for Me Ocean Parkway” by Debra J. White

Growing Up in Brooklyn, New York

Bill Clinton was president when I last lived in Brooklyn – Forty Ocean Parkway was my only address there. (I still love Brooklyn, even though I doubt I’ll ever live there again. In fact, it’s doubtful I’ll ever move back to New York City.) I moved to Phoenix in 1997, and it’s likely I’ll die here.

I grew up in the scrappy, working-class section of Astoria. Back then, we rode the GG line that went from Queens to Brooklyn. (No doubt that train line is called something else now. Has any subway line kept its original name?) We transferred at Queen’s Plaza for the F train to Brooklyn to visit family friends on Flatbush Avenue or to look at the rats in Newtown Creek. Maybe we transferred to another line. I don’t remember. The subway cars in my youth looked like cast iron, black and ugly. Seats were made of rattan and coated with shellac. When the seats frayed, bits of rattan poked you in the butt or scratched your leg. Sometimes, a good pair of panty hose got snagged by the unruly seats. Air-conditioned cars didn’t exist. Overhead fans swirled hot stuffy air around.

In summertime, my dad took me to Brooklyn’s Coney Island via subway. Once the crowds poured out of the station, everyone headed to rides and the fun began. I always wanted to ride the Steeplechase, but my father said I was too little. Instead, we rode the famed Cyclone rollercoaster together. I loved the thrill of zooming up and down then flying around curves. We also rode on the carousel and bumper cars. Once I exhausted myself on rides, Dad treated me to a hot dog heaped with mustard, sauerkraut, and onions at the famous Nathans. Afterwards, I begged for super sweet cotton candy. I loved our trips to Coney Island even though the ride from Astoria took over an hour. On other days, we rode the train to Brighton Beach.

From Astoria, the only seafront views were looking at the East River swill. I preferred the smell of salty air over the stench of rotting garbage in the alleys by our tenement building. Sometimes, the drunken superintendent was so hungover, he would forget to haul the cans out to the sidewalk on Sanitation Department pick-up days. Once my dad rented an umbrella, and we spread out our blanket. Waves picked us up, tossed us around like basketballs, and we loved it. After we dried off and ate sandwiches Mom had prepared, we built sandcastles with our plastic buckets then watched as the waves washed them away. A day of fun in the sun with real sand and surf was much better than tar beach, the city term for sunning on apartment buildings rooftops. Days at Coney Island with my dad were special, even if all the sweets gave me a mouth full of cavities.

I attended Mater Christi High School (now known as St. John’s Prep) in Astoria Queens from 1968 to 1972. A sizable number of students hailed from Greenpoint, a section of Brooklyn. In freshman year, I befriended a lovable nut named Helene who lived on Dupont Street. Assigned to every class from English to algebra, we became inseparable. She was the Abbott to my Costello. We shared chicken-salad sandwiches at lunch, hung out after school in a donut shop on Ditmars Boulevard, and talked on the phone at night. If I cracked a joke in class, Helene upped the ante and made the girls laugh even harder. I’m surprised we were never kicked out. Helene invited me to visit her family’s third-floor, walk-up railroad apartment with the tub inside the kitchen. If her Italian mother offered food, Helene said to agree, even if I wasn’t hungry. Predictably, her mother asked if I wanted a bite to eat. “A little something,” I replied.

Within minutes, the kitchen table was filled with a spread of salami, ham, cheeses of all kinds, crisp bread, olives, pickles, cannoli, and more. Wow! I couldn’t possibly eat that much, but I tried to make her mother happy. I left that night ready to explode. I tried to walk all the way home from Greenpoint to Astoria to relieve my aching stomach, but it was just too far.

During the massive construction project to build the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, linking Staten Island with Brooklyn, Dad would sometimes take us on the subway all the way from Astoria to Bay Ridge. Mom packed us a picnic lunch for the afternoon. We sat in a park watching the workers toil away slapping concrete and steel together that would one day become a world-famous suspension bridge. When the Verrazano finally opened in 1964, I was in the fifth grade. We watched the grand opening festivities on TV. After all the publicity died down, Dad drove us across the bridge just for fun.