On the banks of a quiet stream, turtles sunned themselves on partly submerged logs, instinctively tucking their heads inside their shells as the boy and dog splashed past them toward the marsh. He was a bare-chested boy, with summer-browned skin stretched tautly over jutting ribs and shoulder blades. A young boy, still small enough for his mother to wrap her arms around him and enjoy the feel of his delicate bones bunch together like a bundle of twigs.

Sunlight sparkled on the river beyond the wetland. A slow moving barge, weighted with scrap iron, left its wake slapping the slippery rocks along the shore, while the boy hurried in the sunny heat. He knew there was a dinghy on the other side of the marsh. It had washed in at high tide last week.  He’d overheard his father talking.

“Stay out of the bog,” his father warned when his son asked about it.

When he reached the spot the boy pushed aside cattails and scanned the opposite shore. The boat was still there, silted in. A dirty yellow foul weather jacket twisted around an oarlock. He swatted at flies and squinted his eyes for better focus. There was a rope dangling from the bow of the faded red boat. He knelt and hugged his dog. “We’ll pull it free with that!” he exclaimed, pointing to the frayed bowline.

He took off his shoes and stepped into the watery mud. It bubbled and oozed between his toes as he started across. Halfway there he sank nearly to his knees, yelping with surprise when the cool mud rushed over his ankles and up his legs. On the reedy bank behind him, his little dog paced and whined.

A thin layer of water was spreading quickly across the marsh and when the boy looked down he saw a vivid reflection of himself and the cloudless blue sky. He lowered his hands to touch the image, crouching as though in a tide pool, then lost his balance and fell forward.

He laughed, at first, startled by the sensation. It was as though he were falling up, not down—flying through the sky with meadowlarks and sparrows. When he realized what was happening, and tried stopping the fall with outstretched arms, his hands didn’t hit bottom until he was stuck chin-deep in the dark mud.

At four o’clock in the afternoon the drone of cicadas filled the leaf-heavy trees in the boy’s yard. His mother peered into the fragrant shade of the back porch, expecting to find him there. When she didn’t, she opened the screen door and stepped out onto the lawn, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sun’s glare. As she turned in quickening circles calling his name, fear closed in on her as steadily as the rising tide on her facedown boy.

Diane Lechleitner is a writer and artist who lives in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. She is a graduate of the Pratt Institute. Her work has appeared in The North Atlantic Review, The Mast Head, Messing About In Boats, and The Pebble Lake Review.

Send your images to euphonyjournal@gmail.com by Friday, April 20th. Each entry should be related to the theme of spring (at least tangentially). You are welcome to submit multiple entries. As the contest name indicates, the selected submission will appear as the cover of our next issue, and the winner will also receive contributor copies. We look forward to reviewing your submissions.

Cheers,
The Editors

Sandy’s whole name is Sandra Dee. She says not too many people remember that there was once a Sandra Dee who was an actor, an ingenue, a movie star. Sandy is from the generation that knows that, not mine. She’s nervous. She rubs her temple. She fingers the bumps on her forehead. She massages the skin that covers titanium screws around the keyhole in her skull. I broke that habit. I tell her it will be okay. After all, she’s still here. She recovered once. She’ll recover again. At least this time, she knows what she is facing. Not like the first time. The first time, nobody knows what’s coming.

Most of us get dropped off at the church. Most of us can’t drive now. Some of us are recovering from surgery, and others of us have the seizure issue. It is against the law to drive with a seizure disorder. All of us have to take seizure meds whether we have seizures or not. Tinkering with the brain can set off electrical storms. Meds control or head them off. Madonna’s ride left her off at the door today. She got lost. I found her in the sanctuary. She asked me where she could find the spaghetti sauce. The tumor is screwing with her memory. Madonna is a “watch and wait.” Her doctor isn’t hurrying into surgery, and everyone in the group thinks he should, before it gets bad. One or another of us will stay with her after the meeting to make sure she doesn’t wander off. Madonna is thirty-two, small and dark, with curly, black hair that she keepsin check with tortoiseshell combs. She has twin toddlers at home.

Sandy won’t sit next to Madonna. She is afraid her own memory will go, the same way her senses of smell and taste disappeared after her first surgery. It is lousy not to be able to smell good scents, and to no longer taste the flavors of chocolate and strawberries and maple syrup. On the other hand, I no longer mind cleaning the litter box. Many don’t have the watch and wait option. Much depends on the location of the tumor. Sometimes there’s a rush to surgery. A rush to save vision or hearing or speech. A rush to avoid stroke or paralysis.

Liz, the group leader, is late. Every so often she can’t get a ride. So we just talk until the hour is up, not much different from when she is here. Her husband used to be a pitcher in the Major League, and her tumor was the exact size of a baseball. Some coincidence.

Madonna sits on my other side. She stares at the poster paper tacked to the walls. Someone has written terms and definitions on them in wide, red marker. Canaanite, parable, covenant, prodigal, too many to read. Madonna is intent. She squints. Maybe she is trying to make sense of the words, or maybe she can’t see them clearly either, even though she wears glasses too. That happens when tumors pinch optic nerves.

Sandy tugs on my arm. She tells me that she has to pay five hundred dollars up front, every time her doctor orders an MRI now. Insurance is refusing to cover the cost. She is saying how nobody told her this until she showed up for the appointment. The woman at the desk demanded payment before the test was done. Sandy stood there with her insurance card and the scrip for the test in hand. She had twenty-one dollars, loose change, and a gift card for Dunkin’ Donuts in her wallet. She asked the woman how she was supposed to get five hundred dollars when she had not been able to work for over a year, and her disability was barely covering her rent and food, and since when didn’t her insurance cover it anyway?

Check your plan, the woman said. Plans change.

Don’t we know it.Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. I know that song. I try not to dwell on being uninsurable. I push the thought away, but anxiety brings it right back. Every few days, I ask my husband about his work, is it going well, is he closing deals, if he is meeting his quota. I phrase it differently. I try to keep my questions offhanded and conversational. If he keeps his job, I am covered and we can deal with the ever-changing health plan. If he doesn’t, I won’t be. The tumor has made me uninsurable. He loses his job, then what? I don’t know. I’ve heard people have to sacrifice everything because of medical bills. My husband worries, he says he can never retire, that he may have to dye his hair, that his retirement home will be a coffin. I hate that talk.

She was married to Bobby Darin, Sandy says. Sandra Dee, she was married to Bobby Darin. McFerrin? No, no, Darren. You ever hear the song “Mack the Knife”? I open my mouth to laugh. Dead nerves in my face make it hard work. I say what’s that, a mob name? Like Paulie Walnuts or Ice Pick Willie? Madonna is looking at us. Sandy leans forward and partly across me and asks her. You know the song? “Mack the Knife”? Madonna shakes her head, then she goes back to staring at the posters on the wall.

One of the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling light keeps buzzing and blinking out and on, out and on. I can’t look at it. I wish I couldn’t hear it. It does something to me. I don’t remember if I took the pill in the morning. Concentrate on what’s being said, I tell myself, ignore the light.

It didn’t last, says Sandy. The marriage. It didn’t last. Next to me, Madonna speaks. She says she doesn’t think hers will either. Relationships come up at the meetings all the time. Every one around us is affected by what’s wrong. Some of us have good support at home, others don’t.

I am okay in that regard. My kids, my husband. They are there for me most of the time. They forget every so often, and maybe on purpose. I understand. Like me, they want life to be normal. When I’m dizzy, when my head hurts, I sit or lie down. I check out of whatever is happening. They respect that, they ask if it is getting better, if I need water. I still have to tell them to pick up after themselves, take the garbage out, and walk the dog, but the difference is, I like it now. I appreciate normal, I value it, I revere it. It is what I want. The ordinary, the everyday.

This is the first time we are hearing that Madonna is having trouble at home. What’s going on? I ask her. Sandy leans in again to listen.

She says she doesn’t want him the same, she doesn’t feel like it, and he isn’t understanding. The thing that’s growing in her brain is pushing aside her desire, it’s overtaking her thoughts, stealing them, replacing them with worry and forgetfulness. He gets mad at her, he tells her she looks good, that she doesn’t look all that sick, so what’s the big deal? This makes Sandy mad.

Oh crap, she says, the “you don’t look sick” thing again. What the hell. That’s what the woman behind the counter in the disability office said to her, when she went to apply. So Sandy yanked off the wide headband she was wearing, the one she ordered from the online place that sells wigs, hats, and bandanas for cancer patients. She asked the woman how she liked the scar that began a long curve at the top of her ear, and meandered along her newly resprouting hairline to the other ear. Did the uneven line of scar tissue, puckered and red and peppered with scabby, tiny holes left by thirty-three stainless steel staples make for a good look, a healthy look? She turned around. She faced the people waiting in line behind her, and invited their opinions. Her first check arrived a week later.

Her chutzpah, the way Sandy wears her scar like a badge of defiance, I admire that. When I’m talking to people face-to-face, I see their eyes drift up to the divot in my forehead and then further up to the pale crescent where my hairline used to start. They can ask but they don’t. If they did, I would tell them. Sometimes I want to talk about it. Most of the time, outside of these meetings, I pretend. I pretend that the thing that shadows me simply isn’t there.

Talking stops when Liz comes in. We all have to adjust. The surprise of her is always startling, and it takes a minute. Liz is beautiful. Tall, slender, and blond, her clothes are stylish. Her shoes and handbags match. She has dozens. We imagine she has a closet the size of the meeting room, with towers of shallow drawers for her lingerie. We agree that she wears lingerie, while the rest of us wear panties and pajamas. We speculate that her closet has organized cubbies, shelves, and moving racks to display her coordinated clothing. She has uniform features. The dent in her temple is barely noticeable. She moves fluidly and speaks without searching for words. She remembers where the meeting room is. When she smiles, her face muscles move. Her eyelids don’t droop. Liz is what we want to be. Perfect on the outside.

Next to me, Sandy inhales audibly. Sandra Dee was a blond too, she says, as she raises a hand to pat her own gray hair. She’s thinking of dyeing hers when it grows back the next time. No matter what they say about hair dyes. Her tumor is already atypical and what the hell, all the rest of her is atypical too. Her weight goes up and down like a yo-yo. She laughs. I can’t.

“Atypical” means the tumor will grow rapidly, that it has a higher chance of growing back after treatment. It means multiple craniotomies. Multiple times the keyhole is accessed, and the forehead removed to get to the brain. Multiple chances of edema, infection, and deficits, all due to the surgery. Multiple chances of not surviving it. Atypical is the stage between benign and malignant. One step from malignant. I don’t want to be atypical.

A piece of my tumor is still there, nesting in blood vessels, impossible to completely remove. I live with fear, I tamp it down, I stay busy, I work extra, I distract myself from the constant. I dread the once-a-year event, the MRI. I’ve postponed appointments two, sometimes three, times. I despise the machine, I dread it, all of it, the mask that is locked over my face, the demands to stay perfectly still, the thumping as it takes photo-slices of my brain. I look forward to the end of the hour, to silence, to the feeling of birth when the patient table emerges from the cramped space into the brightly lit, chilly room. I relish the brief lull of relief, before a second wave of anxiety hits as I wait for the report. No change. That’s all I want to hear. That means another year of grace.

Sandy doesn’t have that. Madonna may not either. Liz has had twelve of them.

It’s raining. We’re right under the eaves. We can hear it drumming on the roof. Liz asks if there is any particular topic that we want to talk about today. Sylvie, who used to waitress, before her tumors and her balance issues, announces that her neurosurgeon is moving to Austin. There’s some back and forth, recommendations, and names exchanged. The retired teacher wants to know if headaches that last more than four days are normal. She is six months past surgery. Tilda, a former paramedic, asks everyone to speak up. Her tumor destroyed the hearing in one ear. The vegan, Eloise, complains that giving up soy products is a bitch, which makes Liz deliver a mini-lecture on the danger of plant estrogen. We can’t afford to ingest it. Estrogen drives the growth of meningioma tumors. A nasty trick of womanliness. Sandy adds, don’t forget the cell phone thing.

That always gets us worked up. Environmental radiation. According to Sandy, the cell phone giants have suppressed the true results of studies. Her hair goes electric as she scrapes her hands through the short hedge. She raises her voice. How the heck do they decide what levels are safe anyway? Look at Richard Branson, she says, he always uses an earpiece and isn’t afraid to say why. We’ve stopped holding phones to our ears. It is speaker or nothing. Even the earpieces are suspect. We’re susceptible to paranoia. Dental X-rays? My dentist doesn’t even ask anymore.

Madonna fidgets in her chair. Her eyes meet mine. I have to move closer to hear her. She whispers that her husband is always telling her to get off the phone, he’ll say it’s her fault. We dwell on blame, theirs and ours. Maybe we ate the wrong foods, or sat too close to the television, or stood directly in front of the microwave too many times. We keep searching for reasons.

I am thinking there’s nothing written on the posters in this room, or in the pile of Bibles on the table in the corner, or that’s said downstairs in the sanctuary on Sunday, that explains why this has happened to us. We haven’t sinned, or transgressed, or done anything to deserve it. It’s a game of chance, the luck of the draw, the hand we’ve been dealt, and how we play it is what matters.

I grab her hand, clasp her fingers in mine, and tell her he’s an ass. Be strong, take one day at a time, everyone here is a survivor. Know that, take your strength from that. I have. It may not be the strongest of strengths. It wavers. It’s like I am standing on the rim of the ocean at high tide, with my feet buried in thick, wet sand. The water rushes at me. White froth foams around my ankles. I am pulled and tugged, nearly dislodged. I dig my heels in. The water recedes and I remain rooted in the ebb. I wait for low tide. Sandy, on the other side of me, says that’s right, honey, we’re beat to shit but we are hanging in there.

The memory surprises me. My eyes go wet. Though it pricks and stings, I know I am lucky to have it. I’d packed the car. The girls were in the backseat. They’d said their good-byes first. The early morning mist had not quite lifted, and the sun was watery. I hugged my father for the last time at the top of the driveway. I pressed my face to his lean chest, against the thin fabric of his short-sleeved dress shirt. He patted his hands on my back and instead of good-bye, said hang in there. I laughed and replied that the ride wouldn’t be so bad. Throughout our visit, he’d asked me if I was feeling well. I thought I was. He was dead before I learned about the tumor.

Just now, I hear him laugh at my shoulder. Sandy is his kind of woman. Direct and to the point.

Liz is wrapping up the meeting. It always goes over the scheduled hour. The church secretary never complains. Liz asks us to root for Sandy, to pray for her, to send her positive vibes. The second craniotomy is scheduled for the day before the next meeting. We might not see Sandy for a while, or again, but no one says that last one out loud. I can see by Sandy’s expression that she has the same thought. “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,” I remember it’s a song in Grease. Sung by Rizzo. I have to tell Sandy when everyone stops hugging her.

We’ll meet next week, those of us who can get a ride. We’ll dig in our heels and we’ll talk.

Shelly Stack lives with her family in New Jersey, where she works as a music educator and writes in every spare moment. Her fiction has appeared in the 2011 Short Story America Anthology.

Please note as well that the submission email for Euphony has been permanently changed to euphonyjournal@gmail.com. Future submissions should be sent to that address rather than to those of the current editors.

Thanks as always for reading!

    – The Editors

Thank you for your commitment to Euphony as readers, and we hope you enjoy the new issue!

- The Editors

Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He is the author of four novels, three books of short stories, two full-length collections of poetry, and numerous chapbooks of poetry and prose. He and his wife own Burke’s Book Store in Memphis, Tennessee.

Thanks to all those of you who submitted entries, and we hope to see your work again when we format the spring issue in a few months.

- The Editors

Our first actual meeting of the year will be on Thursday, October 6th in the Reynolds Club conference room (019) at 7 pm. We look forward to seeing all those interested in participating in our magazine then, and best wishes for the new academic year!

- The Editors

He dug up dirt. Once I stabbed
The ground with my knife.
Nicked his ear.

He grew industrious, mowed the lawn
In neat squares, uprooted weeds–wild-
Flowers–built a plywood fort

Under a weathered oak whose branches
I climbed to watch, silent, dead-still.
Papa smiled and patted his burr cut

And called him a diligent boy.
I drew a circle around myself,
Let hair grow down my neck,

And worshiped round wet stones.
Navigating woods by smell of fog,
Watching street lights on the river,

Testing my breath on walks that winter,
I was sure the dead would return.
Shadow that ran across our lawn

And lost itself in the sunset:
I knew it was my mother.
“Just the light,” said my brother.

Drawing his cap gun, he aimed
Straight for the heart.
Mother Earth.

Rob Schultz taught American literature at Western Michigan University and Virginia Commonwealth University before drifting into radio and voice work.  Published first novel, Styll in Love (Van Neste Books) in 1998, which is still in circulation.  Other work has appeared in Prime Mincer, Rattapallax, Slant, Sou’wester, The MacGuffin and West Branch, among others.

All of a single sudden not a soul remains

When we are gone the light is alone

                Paul Eluard

Predawn.

In the city, a factory burned.

Luisa paused, her brush frozen in the air, touching her lashes.

The transportation workers are out on strike; the freeways blockaded.

The capital will be cut off.

From up high, the city was unnaturally still.

She continued applying make up, noticing, perhaps for the second or third time, that the circle of lights around the mirror made tiny rings in her pupils.

Drinking coffee on the balcony, she watched the smoke rise in the distance against the ashen sky. She loved being in the apartment early in the morning when her husband was gone. It gave her sense of calm and readiness for the day. In their room, the bed was already made and her suit lay across the sheets.

Her husband had withdrawn a bundle of dollars, in case the peso devalued, and had put them in the freezer, inside a plastic bag. They never kept much money around the house and since he had left, three days prior, she found herself, again and again, in front of the open freezer, looking at those frozen bills.

She walked back to the balcony and lit a cigarette, another luxury of her husband’s absence. In the distance, a brownish haze hung where the smoke had been. She stubbed her cigarette out in the abalone shell she used for an ashtray, tipping the ashes out afterward and watching them flutter towards the street below.

Today is the last time, she thought to herself. Although later couldn’t recall if she had said it aloud or only mouthed the words. She went back to the kitchen, opened the fridge and looked at the money again. She closed the door, turned the radio off and left.

*

She had been married for seven years. They met in university and were engaged not long after they both graduated. She loved him then, of that she is sure. Maybe she still loved him. He had studied law and she sociology, they met in a class that bridged both disciplines. His family was more conservative than hers but he seemed uninterested in politics and she found this appealing. He liked fun: fun things, nice restaurants, movies and talking. He kidded her but never too much. After university he became a lawyer and then started working for an American company. She took a job in a PR firm and their marriage settled into itself. They moved into a high-rise apartment and talked about starting a family. In the beginning they had sex often  but slowly the frequency tapered off. After the wedding they stopped using condoms but she never got pregnant. This didn’t bother her so much but, although he never brought it up, she could tell it bothered him. He talked about his colleagues’ children in a certain way.

Driving through the back streets of downtown, she was again struck by the unnatural quiet. She waited at an intersection while a man and a young boy pushed a cardboard-filled cart across the street. At a pile of trash they stopped and began sorting out bits of refuse. More and more people were living off recycled cardboard. Luisa watched them for a while and tried to remember the moment that she lost her desires. There must have been a time before, a time when she wanted things, when she dreamed, desired; but only the present hung all around her, an endless, empty present in which she asked for nothing and received nothing in return.

Finally a car came up behind and honked.

She drove on, unhurried.

*

The affair had started a year before the collapse. She met him at a friend’s party, on a rooftop. It was small and they had all just sat around in white plastic chairs drinking wine or coca-cola and talking. Her friend had strung Christmas lights across the patio and they moved in the breeze coming in off the river.

He came late and took an empty chair next to her. He was younger by a few years and charming, in a quiet way. He worked for the center-left party but seemed ambivalent about it. Just a job, he had said, like any other that needs to be done. They talked most of the night. Towards the end of the conversation, when the sky was turning warm grey, he told her about a book he liked, a book by Fabián Casas, and she said she would be interested in reading it. He offered to bring it by her office and, for a moment, his eyes rested on her wedding band. He looked at the ring without expression, then back at her face and the flirtatious smile returned, tugging at the corners of his mouth.  She thought about it and then gave him her office address.

She was surprised when he brought the book a week later, she hadn’t expected him to come. It was dog-eared and coffee stained and she could feel the many creases as she turned it over in her hands. They went out to lunch and pretended as if they were friends or business associates. It was uncomfortable at first, tense even, but after a while the playful flirting returned. He even made a few jokes that made her blush, the blood pounding against her skin. After lunch, he asked to see her again and added afterward, at the very least to get the book back. She said they could meet in a few days and took the book off of the table from where she had set it down. I’m a fast reader, she said, smiling.

Walking back to her office, she bought a pack of cigarettes.

That Friday they met in a bar, in the old part of the city, crowded with tourists. She arrived first, ordered a vodka tonic and waited at a small table towards the back, near the door to the kitchen. He rushed in, looking flustered but relaxed into a comfortable swagger when he walked over to her. His bristles scratched her skin as he kissed her on the cheek. He smelled clean, not of soap but as if he lacked fragrance. This brief moment of intimacy was electrifying. They managed to get through two drinks but the tension between them was palpable. It became a hostility: hostility at the bar for being full of people, at the table for keeping their bodies apart, at the weak pretenses that hung between them.

In his apartment they didn’t make it to his bed but had sex on the floor, in the light spilling from the kitchen. Afterwards, the coolness of the tiles spread against her back as if she were touching them for the first time. They talked for a while and shared a beer from his fridge. They arranged a time to meet again.

The affair continued for a year, in a very pragmatic way. They met every Thursday afternoon, only on Thursdays unless her husband was out of town. They met at his apartment or, occasionally, a cafe nearby. They had sex, often several times. Sometimes he made a late lunch or ran out to get pastries to have with coffee. They talked but never about much. At some point she realized that he was the same as her husband; that he had the same closed indifference. He never asked her to leave her marriage and she never said that she loved him. They met every Thursday and, though he was rough, he was careful not to leave marks on her body. Sometimes, while he was sleeping, she walked through his empty apartment and cried in the kitchen, quietly, so as not to wake him.

*

The city was waking up and she thought about how he dragged his hand across her face while they were having sex, as if trying to rub off her skin. Throngs of people were walking though the streets, some carrying signs. There must be a demonstration today, she thought. Men stood on the street corners watching the people, arms folded or smoking cigars, a few cars, mostly taxis, raced through the intersections.

She arrived at the bank, where she had an appointment, fifteen minutes early and parked in front. The bank building was unnaturally dark, light coming from only a few upstairs offices. A chain and padlock hung around the inside handles of the large glass doors. She knocked anyway, rapping her rings against the glass. A guard came out of the darkness and walked towards the door. He was holding a thin shotgun casually in one hand. Through the tiny crack between the doors she told him she had an appointment. He looked at her as if she was crazy and finally said that no one was there, that she should go home. When she tried to argue he simply receded into the darkness of the building.

She sat in the car for a long time. She must end it. It was all she could think, over and over. She turned on the radio but could not concentrate on the words. It was too fragmentary: more factories closed, banks smashed, streets barricaded. She turned it off; the world felt as discordant as she did. The windows of the car were tinted and the sun caught the dust sweeping through the streets, the air was full of particles.

Everything had fallen to pieces so quickly: the economy, the peso, the country. She couldn’t remember a time when people didn’t talk about the crisis but those days must have existed before: a time when people were happy to spend and spend, lapping up the inexorable wealth, sure that it would last forever.

She tried calling him but the line was busy. She felt that, from the darkness of the bank building, the guard with the shotgun was watching her. She tried calling his office but no one picked up. She started driving, just to move.

Passing through the streets she realized she was heading towards his apartment. It was the logical place to go. She called again and this time he answered. He was distracted; she could hear the television in the background. He spoke in apocalyptic terms and didn’t say why he wasn’t at work. He hung up without a goodbye.

She had always hated his apartment building. It was rustic, South American and yet as artificial and sterile as the modern high-rise she lived in. She hated its inauthenticity, its deceit. She always took the stairs because she couldn’t stand to wait for the elevator.

The door was open and he stood in the living room, remote in hand, watching the big screen TV. On it were images more chaotic than before: people looting a store in the provinces, police firing teargas, images from a helicopter: jerky and pixilated. She closed the door behind her. This is bad, he said, without looking up.

She stared at him, at the side of his face. She felt the familiar feelings: hate and shame and lust. Her lips went dry. They stood like that for what felt like a long time. Finally she said that she couldn’t see him anymore but he didn’t hear or pretended not to. She leaned her back against the wall and said it louder and he turned around. He was framed by the television, a shadow against lines of color. He walked over to her and asked why she would say that. She turned her head to the side and gave the reasons, the ones she had practiced in her mind and the ones she had said before. She didn’t sound convincing and again her cheeks flushed with shame. He grasped her shoulder and looked into her eyes.

Now, of all times, we have to stay together, he said. She shook her head emphatically but also placed her hand on his. He took hold of her other shoulder and kissed her neck. The resistance fell out of her. He bit her neck and she moaned, she struggled and he pushed her against the wall and then she was kissing him, her tongue lapping at the edge of his mouth. His hands up her skirt, pulling her panties off, shredding them against her thighs. And then he was inside her and she was only shoulders and a wall and pounding blood. She bit her lip to stop from crying out and choked. On the screen a tear gas canister arced against the sky. When she came, tears flooded her eyes.

They had been through this ritual before.

This time they sat and drank black coffee on the couch. He touched her legs, he touched her hair; they didn’t say anything. Later he tried to convince her to stay but she wanted to go home. He offered to drive but she refused. They kissed at the door.

*

The streets were still empty. She raced through them, hoping for catastrophe. No car appeared though, not even the police. She thought about leaving both of them; she could get on a plane, if they were still flying, and go to the United States or Spain and then be free of both their deadening silences.

At home Luisa took the ziplock bag out of the freezer and set it on the table. She put her passport next to it and sat and watched the moisture condense on the inside of the bag. She lit a cigarette and turned on the radio.

Two protestors had been shot and the Minister of Finance had resigned. The unemployed were pouring into the capital; people were attacking banks.

Luisa stubbed out the cigarette and walked to the balcony.

Tomorrow there will be a general strike.

From high up, the city looked the same.

Luisa walked inside and thought about putting the money back in the freezer.

Before falling asleep, she remembered she still had her make up on.

She could feel it on her skin.

Michael McCanne is an editor at Lightful Press (lightfulpress.com). He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.