ArLiJo Issue 208

The features

photography by Robert Vowels,
fiction by Mark Connelly,
photograph by Nikolai Zotov,
poetry by R. Elliott Martin,
fiction by John Richmond, and
poetry by Joe Roberts

Robert Vowels

Worm Moon

Robert (Bob) Vowels

About the Artist

Robert (Bob) Vowels is a volunteer physician who is exploring his inner child. He is into reading, birding, photography, hobby drone flying, and theatre. He is currently writing a musical about artificial intelligence. Follow him on BlueSky Social @bobvowels.bsky.social

Mark Connelly

Civilization

Maltrec waited in line to send his telegram. Only a few weeks ago, these messages made him feel important, but now they had become a headache, a burden, a chore. In March his father had managed, through a college friend, to get him an interview with a magazine in Paris. He had gone in hopes of moving to France and becoming a journalist, but the assistant editor’s assistant explained that they wanted someone in Algeria. Maltrec was disappointed. Still, for a moment, he imagined himself elevated to the status of a diplomatic correspondent attending staff briefings, filing columns, giving opinions, and waving press credentials to get past the cops. Our man in Algiers. But no. As the pale chain-smoking assistant explained, Industrial Outlook was interested only in economic developments and needed someone local, someone on the scene, to provide facts for their reporters. He was to conduct research and follow-up on requests for information. He would get no byline. No mention at all on the masthead, just a monthly check based on work done and expenses. One of the writers did give him credit, of a sort. Maltrec could see his name in print—very small print—on the bottom of the page. Henri was decent. In the last issue he granted Maltrec recognition in the lead article:

Labor Unrest, Algeria

Henri Rondeau*

Then at the bottom of the page in tiny telephone directory typeface:

*with Jean Maltrec, research

With. Still, professors, editors, government officials, reporters, and economists might notice his name. It could lay the foundation for something greater.

At first, he checked his mail with anticipation, waiting for his next assignment. Every week or so an airmail letter arrived with questions and requests. What is the current unemployment rate of French nationals in Oran? Who owns the largest truck fleet in Algiers? What is the real daily wage of Arab farm workers? Summarize the local editorials regarding consumer confidence in Algiers. Then came the occasional telegram, demanding a quick response to an urgent demand: Obtain current premiums from five insurance companies to assess price change since last terror bombing. Verify police report of seven dead, thirty wounded in Club Rio bombing. At first, these, too, lifted his spirits. Quick accurate work meant a bonus. And at school he could tell his colleagues he had to duck across the street to cable Paris between classes. Naturally, he let everyone in his office assume he was a journalist. But now, despite the needed extra money, the novelty of the job wore off. The weekly letter seemed like a final exam and the telegrams like so many pop quizzes. They often came when he was tired, planned to see a movie, had assignments to grade, or even had the spirit to write a new poem. Still, he needed the money.

Maltrec was calculating the size of his next bonus when a hand clapped his shoulder. It was Bernard Belle, a friend from the university. He was tan and well-dressed. Evidently, business was going well in his father’s import firm.

“Jean, great to see you,” Bernard beamed. “Do you know who’s in town?”

“Who?”

“Johnny Hollywood. The whole gang. It’s a regular reunion. Come to the beach with us.”

Maltrec smiled gratefully. He needed a break. “Sure, just let me send this. I have to wire Paris. I’m working for Industrial Outlook.”

“Still teaching?”

“Oh sure, and next week I’m going to Oran to proctor some licensing exams. My uncle found me a position.”

“Ah, what an entrepreneur!” He joined Maltrec in line, tapping his newspaper. “Just don’t get greedy.” He wagged a finger with mock severity. “See the paper today?”

“No.” Glancing down, Maltrec saw the usual headline, a photograph of a bombed bistro, and a statement by Jo Ortiz. Bernard flipped the paper over and pointed to a small article.

“This guy. Hear about him?”

“No, what’s it all about?”

Bernard smiled. “This is priceless. This guy was a true entrepreneur. You know those chalets with the blue roofs along the beach to the west? You see them from the road on the way to Oran.”

“The retirement settlement? Oh sure.”

“Right, right. Well, those opened up before the war. The builder put ads in government publications, teachers’ union newsletters, veterans’ bulletins. He went after people with pensions or other benefits. His pitch was, you know, retire in the sun and live in luxury. You can’t afford this life on the Riviera, so think of sunny Algeria. Nice beach, your own little house, community center, clinic, post office, pool, everything. To make it easier he worked out direct deposit accounts at the bank.”

“Sounds OK.”

“Oh it was, it was. Still is. Some old teacher or a guy who lost a leg at Verdun can soak up the sun and have a nice cottage, something he could never afford at home.”

“But the owner’s in trouble?”

“Big time. Under arrest. See, some clerk in a benefits office back in Paris started to notice something. Old people began buying these chalets twenty years ago, but none of them ever died. Some of these old-timers would be ninety-five by now. So they asked someone here to check up on church records. You see, some pensioner from Paris would move here, buy a chalet, and pay his bills from his monthly check. But when he died, the owner made sure his death was never reported to Paris. Just a quick, quiet burial. Then he resells the chalet to someone else. He’s been collecting checks for forty or fifty dead people for years. Seems this clerk got suspicious when he noticed different names with the same address. But you gotta give the guy credit. Making money off the dead. And it’s gotta be good for the demographers. It will increase the longevity in Algeria. It’s almost a civic duty.”

Bernard watched as Maltrec slid his form to the petite blonde behind the counter. As he waited for his receipt, Bernard tapped his arm, “So, you still seeing Renee?”

“Not much.”

“Ah, too bad. Come to the beach. Some nice merchandise. The whole gang. Remember Madeline Blum? She’s still talking about Trotsky. She’s working on another degree and selling ad space. Hey, and you haven’t heard our big news, have you? Dominique’s pregnant. Yep, I’m going to be a pappa. I’ll have put on weight and start smoking cigars.” He patted an imaginary tummy and puffed an invisible stogie.

Maltrec shook his hand, “Congratulations for you both. That’s great news!”

It was sad news. Another reminder that his friends were getting on in life, marrying, buying houses, going overseas, starting business ventures, making money, making names for themselves. They were growing up. He felt somehow stuck, dropping back as his peers advanced. A composition instructor, he still lived like a graduate student with little money and too much time to brood about it.

“So, you’ll meet up with us at our old spot?” Bernard asked.

“Sure, I just have to stop at the bank. I’ll catch up with you.”

“Make sure you do. You should see the girl Johnny brought with him. Blonde, slim, cute. Just like Bardot but with bigger cantaloupes.” He cupped his hands in front of him like a schoolboy and smiled. He tapped the newspaper headline. “You gotta live, boy. Don’t let the Algerian disease dampen your taste for fun. OK, the situation is serious. My Dad is worried, of course. But we still have to live. Make sure you come. If you run home to read a book or write another poem, I will never forgive you. You were always missing the fun at the university. You’re a perpetual student, but you never play.” He wagged his finger again. “So show up!”

“I will! I will!,” Maltrec promised.

He left the telegraph office in a rush of optimism and excitement. It was Friday. He deserved some fun. He had been overburdened with work and worry and needed a respite. Besides, he missed the old gang, and now, even though he was hardly rich, he could afford to buy a round of drinks and enjoy their company. And it could get expensive. At any moment someone might start to order shots of Hennessey or Blue Label.

He entered the heavy columned entrance to the bank. Maltrec liked the substantial white building. Its exterior was Napoleonic, classic, imperialistic. An emblem of the old days. Inside, the newly remodeled lobby was softly lit, carpeted, air-conditioned. The click of modern business machines, the gleaming marble and brass fixtures, and the smartly dressed clerks gave him a sense of security, prosperity, solidity, identity.

This is France. It was, it is, it always will be, he told himself. This had become a private mantra he repeated over and over in moments of doubt. It came to mind whenever he read the paper, listened to the news broadcasts, overhead Arabic curses, glanced up the narrow twisting streets of the Casbah, or saw the letters FLN splashed across a wall.

This is France. It was, it is, it always will be.

Still with each headline, each newscast, each bombing, each FLN flyer he found torn up by his landlord, he felt a lonely sense of unease. Could it really go the way of Vietnam?

He dismissed these thoughts and filled out a withdrawal slip for 10,000 francs. He was saving money for a car. An Arab had a Citroen. Only a two-horse, and it needed tires. But the price of 350,000 francs was more than reasonable. The Arab had installed a German radio and new seats. Maltrec hated to withdraw the money, but he never knew where this beach party might lead. The weekend lay ahead. And suddenly something else came to mind. He crumpled his withdrawal slip and scribbled out a new one for 20,000 francs.

Stuffing the bills into the wallet his mother gave him for graduation, he headed to the beach. He was glad he was wearing his best jacket and had his gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses and good fountain pen. He liked to dress up a bit on Friday to celebrate the coming weekend. Seeing the old gang would be a tonic against months of hard work, troubling news, rejection slips, and hours in stifling libraries and bureaus checking facts for business reporters who would not even grant him an asterisk.

He grabbed a bus and found a seat beside an SAS officer in a crisp uniform who flashed a recruiting poster smile. From the window Maltrec noted more soldiers and policemen on the main avenues. Arab workers in faded denim were removing rubble from a bombed cafe.

Maltrec turned and looked past the commuters nodding over their newspapers to the beach. Getting off the bus, he paused to comb his hair in a shop window, then headed toward the gang. They were clustered under a large blue and white canopy not far from the refreshment stand.

The gang was a loose group of largely wealthier students he had fallen in with his second year. He was never at the center of their little galaxy, always hovering at the edges. When they decided to head to the chic restaurants or clubs, he discreetly melted away, unable to pay his way. He envied their parents’ large apartments or seaside villas with their gleaming swimming pools, mosaic flowerbeds, and columned terraces where they could watch the sun rise and set over the Mediterranean. Maltrec was not poor. His father managed a medium-sized factory and his mother was a nurse in a private clinic. But his parents had been born poor. So he grew up in a modest apartment in a neighborhood of teachers, policemen, and nurses. His friends had lived in smart townhouses or suburban estates owned by professors, attorneys, and surgeons. They got cars as soon as they were old enough to drive and saw Paris yearly. They skied in Switzerland and a few, like Johnny, had been to America.

Johnny Hollywood was the leader of the gang. The rest were in his orbit, jealously treasuring their proximity. He was handsome, rich, and already making a name for himself in the movies and television. All the others were seeking success in something. Johnny Hollywood hit the Paris film studios and, with his blond hair restyled, was snapped up by producers and publicity agents who dubbed him, “the French James Dean.” And now with the real James Dean gone, American directors found a place for him in their constellation, giving him small parts but for tremendous fees. Dominique worked in a department store but dreamed of selling her own fashion line. Madeline wanted to be the feminist Trotsky. Bernard wanted nothing more than to inherit his father’s holdings and be the supreme manager. And Bobbi Sandi. He was an Arab or half-Arab, a former waiter, sometimes singer, sometimes maître d', and always refreshingly decadent.

As soon as he heard their laughter, Maltrec felt five years younger. Not wanting to show up empty-handed, he stopped at the refreshment stand and bought bottles of Coke and Perrier, arranging them carefully on a small tray. A waiter offered to carry it, but Maltrec waved him off, slipping the Arab 200 francs.

Ducking under the canopy, Maltrec heard a burst of greetings.

“Hey, it’s the waiter at last!”

“Perfect! You saved me a trip!”

“Jean, good to see you.”

Maltrec handed out the cold bottles. Reclining on a lounge chair, a long-limbed blonde, peered at him over Italian sunglasses. Her feathery hair hung over her breasts which filled the tight small cups of her bikini. She wordlessly took a Coke and gave Maltrec a fleeting, distant smile. Johnny turned and introduced him.

“Giselle, this is Jean from the university. He teaches French and writes poetry. He’s going to be our next Nobel Prize winner. Camus got it this year, Jean will get it next year. You watch. Jean, this is Giselle. Great singer. Been getting top billing in Paris and just did TV! Big pop star!”

“Good to meet you,” Maltrec ventured. The girl said nothing and only nodded.

Maltrec took a Perrier and found an empty chair. The table was littered with empty bottles and full ashtrays. Johnny held his Coke bottle aloft and ground out a Marlboro.

“As I was saying, in France I am a Jew. When I would go for a part, it’s always the Jewish actor, the Jew pretty boy, that blond Jew. The Jewish James Dean. I get that all the time. But in America, I’m French. 100%. As good as DeGaulle or Chevalier.”

Bernard laughed, “One of the Arabs who works for my father told me he feels like an Arab only in Algeria. When he went to Egypt last year, he got a punch for being French. It’s the way they speak Arabic. Besides he served in the war for us.”

“You see,” said Johnny, “identity is about where you are, not who you are. We are like reverse chameleons. Who you are depends where you stand out. In New York everyone here would be French. In the Congo all of us would be white. No nationality, just white. Among the feminists, the males stand out. At an old school gentlemen’s club, you ladies would stand out. Jaws would drop at your mere presence.”

Bobbi Sandi smiled and flicked the ash off his cigarette with a girlish wave, “See with me it’s different. Wherever I go it’s the same. Here, France, Sweden, Egypt, Japan, wherever I go, I’m just a fag. And Giselle,” he nodded toward her, “she is a beauty in any culture. Designed to drive men mad and women to jealousy and suicidal depression.”

Giselle adopted a model’s pout, drawing her lips together in a vampish pose then broke into a girlish laugh, “Don’t blame me. I was born this way. And it only takes 30,000 francs a month to keep me looking this way. Cosmetics. Hair salon. Spa. I am a lot of work.”

Bobbi mimicked her pout, “The price of lipstick is scandalous. I should organize a protest. Maybe even Madeline would join us. What would your Trotsky say about that?”

“Don’t be tiresome,” Madeline muttered, grinding out a Lucky Strike.

“Oh come on, you spend hours working on that image. I can tell you dye your hair black, and that eyeliner? You want to stand out. Face it. Look at Johnny. People only know he’s Jewish because his father’s so famous. But you, you invite it.”

“And you could be a little less flamboyant,” Madeline said, straightening up in her chair. “You don’t need to rub your . . . your way of life in our faces.”

Bobbi fluttered his jeweled fingers. “I never rub, I only pat. Better for the complexion.” He tapped her knee, and she burst into a laugh.

“Bobbi, you prevent me from being serious. I try so hard to impress you all, and you always get me. You were the same at school.” She pulled her beret low over her forehead and leaned forward, jutting out her jaw and narrowing her eyes in a protest face.

“You look like a constipated Mussolini,” Dominique laughed.

“I can’t be serious with any of you. But you should read this article by Samuel Blum. He makes a good point about the labor issue. You see this whole Algerian thing is about identity, right. We have to frame the argument differently. If this conflict is argued in terms of Muslim and Catholic, of Africa and Europe, France and Algeria, Arab and French – well, we can’t win. Because you can’t ask the majority to deny their race, their faith, their continent. But if you argue in terms of labor, the vote – that you can negotiate. Workers are always the majority in any business. They go on strike yes, but they don’t blow up the factory. That is what Algeria is, their factory. We debate better wages, benefits, voting rights.”

“You have to get people thinking about their pocketbooks,” Bernard agreed. “I mean independence, liberty, Islam, freedom – these are all noble words. When people have nothing, it sounds like heaven. But get a guy to think of an extra thousand francs a day, that means something.”

“That is what Jo Ortiz and his crowd never understand. You challenge the FLN on the economic front,” Dominique said. “Algeria would starve without France. France would starve without Algeria. You have your independence, then what? What are you going to eat then?”

Bobbi grew serious. “Now, you have to remember. Half your army is this country is Algerian. You know how many Muslims died in the war fighting the Germans for you? Look at what the FLN did in Melouza last week. They went into that Arab neighborhood and took every male over fifteen into the mosque and did them in with knives and pickaxes. Three hundred Muslims dead! Three hundred! And how many Frenchmen did they kill in the last bombing in Oran, what ten or fifteen? Three hundred people! Just to make a point about working for you. Believe me half the Muslims in this country have one fear, independence. It won’t go easy for us if you leave.”

“Leave? Come on, that is not going to happen,” Johnny smiled. “All this started right after Dinbeinphu. They got ideas. But this is not Indochina. This is France. For a hundred and thirty years now. Nothing is going to happen. Look at Ben Bella. Their big leader. He doesn’t even speak decent Arabic.

“OK, OK, we are at fault. We should have set up those assemblies and caids a long time ago. We should have let more of them become citizens. Better jobs, better pay, but like you said, it’s like workers going on strike. They deserve better, but independence makes no sense. It’s a ploy to scare us. You know in a strike the union’s opening demand is always outrageous, then you negotiate it down to something you can both live with.”

“You can talk,” Bobbi said. “They made Jews citizens in 1870. But what about us? If you want us to be French, make us French. Really French. Because you know how many of you are French? Algiers is more Italian and Oran more Spanish than French. This is France? It’s all a fiction. Make us all French citizens, or we all become Algerians and run the country ourselves. But all of us. Nobody leaves, especially the pretty ones,” he tossed his head toward an Arab waiter who was serving drinks at a nearby table with elaborate gestures.

Bobbi sighed, “I have radar. I can spot them. Any nationality. Anytime. Anyplace.”

Madeline shook her head, “Bobbi, are you ever off duty? Give the little guy a rest once in a while,” she said, glancing toward his lap.

“Face it, you know why you like me? You need me. I make you feel safe. You wouldn’t sit here with a French fag – he would disgust you. Or a fellah – he would scare you. But me, I’m harmless. An Algerian fag. An Arab fag. A Muslim fag. It makes us seem silly, even human to you. Besides, I bet you wish there were more us. Think of it, if we were all fags, you would have nothing to fear. You could sleep at night. After all, if we waged a jihad what would we do, stone you with our powder puffs, slit your throats with our lipsticks?” He tossed a slim braceleted arm into the air. Maltrec noticed his arm was as smooth as a girl’s. He wondered if the stories of Bobbi Sandi working as a female impersonator in Antibes were true.

“Hey, look who’s here. Now we are complete!” Johnny cried, waving to a sunburnt blond in camouflage slacks and an army shirt marching toward them.

Madeline groaned, “Oh great!”

Johnny waved, “Our Alsatian brother! Seig Heil!”

Georges bit his lip, nodded, and grabbed a chair. He jerked it back and set it in the sand with the air of a man planting a flag. “Hullo, hullo,” he nodded, ignoring Madeline and Bobbi.

“You’re as brown as a coconut,” Dominique said, “where have you been?”

“Out in the bled. One of my father’s farms. We had to form a local militia, put up wire. I wanted land mines, but the army wouldn’t give us any. It’s getting rough out there.”

Bernard and Dominique glanced at each other, and Georges leaned forward, tapping the table.

“Oh, I know what you all think of me. Hard-head. Reactionary. It was the same at school before all this started. It’s because my father was a volunteer in Russia. OK, he was in the SS. But so were a lot of the Legionnaires here. I know what you think of me. Ultra pied-noir. Alsatian. Anti-Semite. But let me tell you, you have your heads buried in the sand. It is going to get worse. A lot worse.”

Bernard waved his hand, “I know all the old rhetoric. Legion des Volontaires Francais. Going off to Russia to fight Bolshevism. Those guys were last believers, defending Hitler’s bunker at the end. I always found that ironic. Frenchmen fighting the Russians to protect Hitler. It’s comic you know.”

Georges half rose from his chair then sank back. “Sorry, you people always get to me. I dunno why I come to visit. You always needled me at school.”

Bernard spotted a waiter and waved him over. “Another round, please.” Then, turning to Georges, he smiled. “Look, my parents were with Petain, too. So what. It’s one country now. Who cares whether you were with DeGaulle or Laval fifteen years ago. Think the FLN cares? They will slit the throat of a leftist pacifist just as easily as a Fascist pied noir. We are the same to them.”

“And they to us. That’s the problem,” Maltrec said. “We all have to think of ourselves as Algerian. A new identity. We like to sit on this beach and look north to France. When the Arabs go on holiday, they go up to the mountains and look south to the rest of Africa. Well, we aren’t really French and they are not really Africans. We both live in a fiction like Bobbi said, a denial of our identity. You ever feel French in Paris? I went and stuck out like a sore thumb. Depressing. We have to be one people. Remember what Camus said.”

Bobbi looked up and spoke evenly, seriously, his voice taking on a softly masculine tone, “You don’t have tell us. We all understand it. Maybe we act like clowns because we are scared. Look, you never liked me. OK, so what. But those FLN butchers, they will kill us all. They might let you escape to France, but Muslims like me? No chance. I only wish you knew how to fight them instead of making them stronger.”

Georges gripped the arms of his chair, his nostrils flaring like a bull’s. “Don’t tell me how to deal with terrorist scum. We have been too soft. Now that the paratroopers are here we will see some action. And finally, finally, they brought in air support. Helicopters. They can box a situation.” He brought his hands down like a pair of cleavers. “You spot a hideout. You bring in the choppers to back up the men on the ground. They can’t get away. Not to mention napalm. You can burn up a lot of melons that way.”

Bobbi scowled and leaned forward. “Look, I hate them as much as you. Even more. But you are hitting mosquitoes with a mallet. You terrorize civilians. Innocents. That is just what they want. They ambush a patrol, blow up a restaurant, shoot a mayor. Then you storm around bombing villages, rounding up boys and old men, pushing around their women. You might as well give them guns and bombs. You are creating terrorists.”

“What do you want us to do? Give them candy? You see what they do to people?”

Bobbi held up his hand. “I know all the details. They have us scared, the Arabs, that is their weapon, terror. Terror to scare you out, and terror to make work for them.”

“Camus said,” Maltrec began.

“To hell with Camus. I say you can’t talk democracy with people who rape nuns, machine gun teachers, gouge out eyes, and castrate little boys. No, no. I don’t want to hear about Muslim assemblies and Arab committees and let’s give them suffrage. We already gave these people the best roads in Africa. The best schools. Was there a hospital here before we came? A university? Would they even know what a light bulb looked like without us?

“The problem is you people on the beach don’t know what’s going on just up the hill in the Casbah. You sit here and talk about Colette and Camus, who’s diddling who, and the latest diet, while those melons are hiding in cellars and making bombs in the attic.

“Let me tell you how it could end. Notice I say ‘could.’ I don’t claim to be a goddam prophet, but I have a vision. It will end with all of you here on this beach. But you won’t be sipping Perrier under a goddam striped canopy. You will all be huddled on the beach with your suitcases like the British at Dunkirk. Up there,” he jerked to the seawall, “will be the crowd from the Casbah. They will have occupied the whole quarter by then, taken your homes, your businesses, your cars. Maybe the UN will put a few troops between you and them to prevent a massacre. If you are lucky you will scramble onto some tugboat and head off to France with nothing but some old shirts and a few memories.”

“All these reforms and new measures are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, I read that somewhere,” Maltrec said quietly, watching the blonde slowly uncrossing her legs.

Georges turned suddenly, jerking his face toward him, his jaw tightening, measuring whether he was being sarcastic.

“I just read that,” Maltrec explained quickly. “It was in a magazine I saw. I just read it. Sometimes I wonder if we could lose it all, that’s all I mean.”

Maltrec looked toward the row of strong, white Napoleonic buildings facing the sea. Their tricolor flags flapping in the soft breeze, their columns, their thick walls comforted him.

“If that ever comes, I hope we blow all this up,” Georges proclaimed, waving his hand. “Get a fleet of bombers and flatten Algiers the way the Americans did Dresden. Leave them their precious holy Africa the way we found it. Rocks and sand.”

“Oh, come on,” Dominique said, brushing away a fly.

“You think I am kidding? I would fly the plane. I would push the button. If we leave our farm we are dynamiting the wells and bulldozing the buildings. It was nothing but desert when my great-grandfather dug the first well and made a vineyard. Well, they can have the desert back.”

Johnny Hollywood rescued the moment. “I have a vision, too. See him over there,” he gestured toward an Arab waiter wearing Italian shoes and tight black slacks with sideburns and thick swept-back hair. “In fifty years we will all be Americanized. There won’t be any French or Algerians then. Just people drinking Coca Cola and trying to look like Elvis.”

As if on cue, the Arab waiter strolled past bobbing his head and muttering to himself in clear English, “One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and go man, go.”

Johnny Hollywood leaned back, smiling like a prosecutor trapping a defendant in a lie.

Bernard lit a cigarette. “Now look, it’s all a matter of carrot and stick, like everything else. Like everywhere else. We set up those assemblies. Building more roads, schools, clinics. SAS teams going into villages and vaccinating the kids.”

“Yeah, right, all the wonderful healthcare we give them and what do we get? A Muslim birthrate ten times ours. Just great!”

Dominique patted her stomach, “Hey, Georges, I’m doing my part,” she purred sexily.

Georges shook his head. “I get dizzy here. You people are hypnotized by the sea. Too much water in your ears. You see too many movies and hear too much music. You’re all full mambo and cocktails. Now you listen to what Jo Ortiz said last week.”

“Please,” Giselle said softly, “must we talk about politics on a day like this?”

“It makes our heads hurt,” Dominique said, covering her face with a movie magazine.

Bobbi got up, “Alas, my children. I have to go. Remember gang, we’ll meet up Sunday at the Casino. Carmen Ramos is singing. See you there at six.”

Dominique raised her hand to visor her eyes against the sun as she tugged his pant leg. “Bobbi,” she pleaded, “leave us with a word. Remember how you always used to leave us with the Word of the Day. You know, to give us something to ponder for the rest of the day, to guide our sorry little lives, to improve ourselves, to save our poor country.”

Bobbi gave a judicial nod. He stood, stroking his chin, and stared at the sea. “Let’s see, Word of the Day. Well, things are not so easy now. Back then it was simply a parlor game. But now we face perilous times. Perilous times. What will the future hold? Amid all this terror and despair? Hmm. What should our watch word be then? France? No. Algeria? No. Decolonialization? Independence? Greater France? Civilization? Jihad? Hmmmm. None of them work, none of that will save us from ourselves. Hmmm.

Liberté? Éqalité? Fraternité? Nah. We something that will unite us all, liberate us, bring us together. Something we all can share. Something with magic and majesty. Something for Jew and Muslim, something for Georges and Giselle. A call to universal brotherhood! So children, the Word of the Day is . . . fellatio.”

He made a little bow, wiggled suggestively and minced off like an effeminate Chaplin. Domingue laughed hoarsely and fluttered her tongue. Giselle blushed. Maltrec bit his lip unsure how to respond.

Georges smirked, “That goddam fairy. You think he’s so amusing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he works for them.”

“Them?”

“The FLN. He’s a spy. That fag routine is probably just an act. He probably has wife and five kids in the Casbah.”

Dominique laughed. “Bobbi Sandi with a woman? He’d steal her mascara.”

“We’ll look for an Arab woman with five kids and no mascara,” Madeline said.

Georges shook his head. “You people are asleep. You think all your education and your ideas and your houses and your pretty friends will keep you safe. Like it’s some kind of armor. You’re all like some big shot banker, someone who makes his ten million francs a year and has a swank villa, maybe a summer cabin and a motorboat, a big Mercedes, Rolex, gold fountain pen, English suit, Italian shoes, money in the bank, stocks, bonds. You come from a good family and went to the Sorbonne and write articles for some intellectual quarterly. You walk down the street thinking you are substantial, important, a pillar of civilization. Then from an alley comes an illiterate Arab with a knife. Then you hand over your fountain pen, the keys to your Mercedes, your wallet, your watch, and beg for your life.”

“Look Ben Bella’s in prison,” Bernard argued. “They just nabbed what’s his name. The revolt is fizzling out. They expected all the Arabs to go on strike. OK, a few shops went dark for a day or two. But they have to eat. They live on our checks and tips. Without us what would they do? Come on, it can worked out. Nobody wants this business to continue. Nobody.”

Johnny looked at his watch and announced, “Time for us to get moving. Dinner at Marcel’s, movie, then dancing, right?”

Maltrec glanced around, his eyes resting on the blonde. “Well, I for one, have to beg off. I have an article to finish this evening.”

“Will we see you Sunday night?” Dominique asked.

“I leave Sunday at noon for Oran. I’m proctoring exams Monday morning at eight. I won’t be back until sometime Tuesday.”

“Too bad, see you then.”

Maltrec shook hands, nodded toward Giselle, who peered at him over her sunglasses with detached amusement.

Leaving the beach, Maltrec heard an explosion of laughter. He caught a bus and headed home. Thinking of Giselle, he quickly, jumped off the bus and began walking in the opposite direction. He was burning with a confusion of frustration, desire, depression, loneliness, and restlessness. Every time he met up with the gang, it was the same. In their presence he bathed in their affluence, their optimism, their security, their success. Apart, he felt deflated, depressed, jealous. They were like a drug, something he craved yet loathed. But there was something else just as addictive he craved now. He stopped at a cheap bar and downed a beer then began walking, retracing familiar steps. He felt drawn down this path as if hypnotized.

He turned the corner and headed down a clean, narrow street bordering the Casbah. It was a nearly empty lane of radio parts shops, hardware stores, a cobbler’s stall, and a grocery. He ducked into a doorway and descended a curved set of stone steps.

Seated at her small ornate desk, Madame Claude greeted him with a concierge smile. With her frosted blonde hair, perfect lipstick, tasteful earrings, and double chin she looked like the wife of a prosperous country doctor who devoted her weekends to charity auctions. Already knowing his request, she leaned back and called through the beaded curtain, “Babette, your fiancé is here.”

This was her private joke. At first she had called him her “boyfriend.” If I keep coming here, he thought, she’ll soon be calling me her husband.

She smiled at Maltrec. “Long time or a short time?”

“Short time,” he said nervously, handing her the neatly folded bills.

“Of course,” she smiled, deftly slipping the money into a drawer.

The curtain rattled and Babette appeared. A short plump girl with flawless white skin and long black hair, full lips, and almond-shaped black eyes, she was exotic, but really no more beautiful than a bistro waitress. Perhaps it was her immediate availability that aroused him. Smiling with hostess courtesy, she parted the curtain, and he followed her down the cool stone corridor. He watched her hips move under her sheer black robe as she led him into a small alcove of a room.

The brothel was neither grossly decadent or luxuriously risqué. It was plain but clean, with the sanitary ambience of a dental clinic. The girl placed a sheet on a narrow couch as he fumbled out of his clothes. She washed him at a small basin with the detached air of a woman rinsing a vegetable. She fondled him, rolled on a condom, then drew him to the couch. She lay back and adjusted herself as if lying down to read a magazine, then tossed open her robe. The sensuousness of her breasts, her full belly, and plump thighs always excited him. He mounted her, and she guided him inside. As he embraced her, she kissed his cheek and breathed in his ear. As he labored over her, she sighed like a woman getting a massage. He finished quickly as always, and while he washed, she squatted over a bidet behind a screen. When she emerged, her robe discreetly closed, he gave her a small tip and kissed her hand. She offered a practiced smile and whispered, “See me soon, baby.”

He left burning with shame, frustration, guilt, and anger, as always. His legs trembled as he climbed the steps, always fearful he would encounter someone he knew. Why? Why? He cursed himself for his weakness, his shameful addiction.

At home he took a shower, scrubbing himself voraciously with soap. He hated himself for his sin, the waste of money. But he knew in a week or two at the most he would return. The sex itself was fast and joyless, magnified only in anticipation and memory. He wondered if it was that way for other people. Were the impassioned lovers, the long-married couples just as disappointed? Or was he unequipped to achieve something others could feel or share? Could one be tone-deaf in desire?

He put on a clean white shirt and a pair of khaki slacks. He noticed a tear near the pocket. Nearly all his clothes were three years old. He had a pair of shoes at the repair shop. The clerk had put them in the window. This was a courtesy to his customers who could walk past on their way from work and see if their order was ready. His shoes had been in the window for over a week. Neatly polished, they pointed at him as a kind of accusation. They were ready to be picked up, but he could not afford to retrieve them.

He lay on the bed thinking about Babette, if in fact that was her real name. She was Spanish or Jewish, most likely a girl born out of wedlock or orphaned by the war. He wondered if she ever thought of him while she showered, ate popcorn at the movies, or shopped for sheer black robes in a discount store. Did he or any man move her at all, or were they all as forgettable as customers in a bakery? Did she have a husband, a lover, a pimp, children? He sometimes fantasized about coming into a fortune and presenting her with a million-franc engagement ring. He imagined their wedding. A dubious, confused old priest or rabbi, the other girls in rented demur dresses looking like dissolute schoolgirls, and a beaming Madame Claude.

Fantasies like that entertained him and kept him from remembering Renee, the girl he almost married right after graduation. It had been a two-year courtship of parental dinners, chaperoned excursions, and nights of passionate but fully clothed lovemaking. Fearful of pregnancy, she never allowed intercourse, and as for other acts, she feared she would lose respect if she indulged in actions her mother deemed only acceptable in marriage.

He studied the cracks in the ceiling, trying to determine if they were getting wider. The apartment depressed him. It was a post-war building that was already showing its age. Pipes leaked. The plaster around the windows was crumbling. The decorative veneer was peeling. Tiles in the kitchenette and tiny bath were discolored and cracked. It was so much the haunt of a teacher, a clerk, an assistant office manager, a hanger-on, a nobody. He could never bring a girl here. Not with the broken coffee pot, the cheap radio, the rusted bedstead, the second-hand desk, the scratched bookcase.

He doubled his pillow and lay on his side, thinking of Giselle. How could he ever imagine himself with her. Not in this lifetime. He would need a full professorship, a column in Le Express, a best seller, a villa, a townhouse, a Mercedes. Looking out his streaked windows, he heard the woman next door washing dishes. The clatter of the crockery reminded him of home. It was a sad, familiar sound, like the lonesome whistle of a distant train. His neighbor was a short heavy woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. She had put on thirty pounds in the last year or so. Her husband was a manager at one of the smaller banks. He seemed perpetually tired and older than twenty-nine. They had a two-year-old who cried constantly. She was pregnant with her second. She dressed in shapeless peasant blouses and never wore makeup. They seemed a lifeless pair. And yet three or four nights a week her moans would wake him, and he would hear the rhythmic creak of their bed, her whispers, cries, and the final burst of blasphemous profanity as she climaxed.

Maybe everyone else had it figured out. They knew their identity. They were willing to kill or die to be French or Arab. They explored their sexual needs without shame or a second thought. They fucked the way he ordered a beer or ate a sandwich. It was all natural to them. If they wanted fame, money, power, they just grabbed it.

In contrast, he seemed to be leading a second-hand life. A teacher rather than a professor, a researcher rather than a reporter – even in lust he was second-hand, colorless, predicable, and boring. What man went to a brothel and saw the same girl every week for months? He might as well be her fiancé.

Maltrec got up. He tried to write, tried to read, then went to the corner bistro and downed three cold cheap beers and lurched upstairs, kicked off his shoes, tore off his shirt, put on the ceiling fan, and crashed into dreamless sleep.

He woke with a headache and looked around his apartment. It was really a single room with a tiny bathroom, a nook for a kitchenette, a balcony only wide enough for a few flowerpots, a recessed doorway. It was small and cramped. A good size for a hotel room, but for a home? His whole life had been lived out in tiny rooms. His small room at his parents’ house. His smaller room at college. This apartment. His office cubicle. Babette’s small room. The cramped bistro on the corner. They formed a chain of cells. Small rooms that held him in place.

It was the sheer space that amazed and unsettled him when he visited the villas of his rich friends. It was not so much the furniture, the Persian carpets, the marble, the numerous bathrooms, the modern fixtures, the sweeping views from immense windows that impressed him, it was just all that private space. He remembered visiting Johnny Hollywood. A maid answered the door and showed him to a sofa in the living room. He sat, then heard Johnny call to him. Maltrec watched him descend a wide marble staircase and walk through a wider foyer into the living room. Maltrec stood to shake his hand. Stood and waited. He actually had to wait for Johnny to cross the immense space of the room to greet him. He had time to light a cigarette. It took a person that long to cross the vast room. They went into the kitchen for snacks, and Maltrec could not refrain from counting his steps. He could not get over having this much space under one’s roof, to own this much space, to move so freely through so much air-conditioned comfort. Later they went to the basement, another immense space, part of which had been paneled off for a game room. It was bigger than a corner bistro. There was a bar, a refrigerator, athletic trophies, bookshelves, film posters, a movie projector, a pool table. Johnny handed him a cue, and they began playing awkwardly. He was amazingly bad, which surprised Maltrec. He had seen Johnny in a gangster picture, firing billiard balls into the pockets with murderous efficiency, a cigarette dangling coolly from his lips. Missing an easy shot, he sighed, “Thank God, for stand-ins.”

“Stand ins?”

“You think I made all those shots in Brute of the City? All I had to do was keep the cigarette smoke out of my eyes and look tough. All trick photography. They had a pro from Montmartre sink the balls. All he had to do was wear the same jacket, ring, and bracelet to look like me from the elbows down. Sorry to disillusion you. I did all my own dancing in Kiss at Midnight though. That was all me. That blonde however? All wig and falsies. She had to be forty years old.”

They went outside to a walled garden, its spacious lawns decorated with flowerbeds and

fountains. Johnny donned sunglasses and casually talked about upcoming roles and film shoots in Amsterdam and Venice.

On the bus home, Maltrec thought of Johnny’s house as a miniature city with residential, recreational, professional, and commercial districts. If you included his mother’s greenhouse with its profusion of flowers, it had its own agricultural zone as well.

A whole city to oneself. No wonder Johnny and people like him were so expansive. They did not dwell in single small rooms living paycheck to paycheck unable to retrieve their shoes. Anything they saw in a magazine they could buy. Any new holiday venue was a plane ticket away. And if they had to work, they knew their money was working harder. Stocks, bonds, and bank balances increased while they slept. They woke up richer every day.

Whenever he was depressed, Maltrec indulged in a swim. He loved the sea. He rolled up his bathing suit in a towel, stuffed it into an old student bag with some lotion and a book, and headed out.

Crossing the beach, he passed the table where the gang had gathered the day before. He stared at the empty chairs, especially Giselle’s. He was about to race toward the water when he heard a female voice at his back.

“Hi, it’s Jean, right?”

He turned. Giselle was smiling at him as she dried her hair with a white towel she turned into a turban.

“I just had to take a swim in the ocean. I grew up in Metz. I love the sea. You’re lucky to live here. It’s so beautiful. To have this at your doorstep. You know, I really liked some of the things you said yesterday. I never read anything by Camus, but you impressed me. I really don’t know much about these things. All this violence. There was so much of it during the war when I was little. A plane crashed just outside our house. It took off our roof. Why can’t people just live in peace?

“I wish I could talk more, but I have to catch up with Johnny. He’s very sweet. I love him a lot.”

“I know,” Maltrec admitted, looking over her shoulder at the sea.

“I owe Johnny a great deal. He’s my cousin. Well he’s really a second cousin or a first cousin once removed. I never could figure how you could remove a cousin.”

“I couldn’t tell you, either. I just call them all relatives.” Maltrec laughed, looking at her blue eyes.

Giselle stepped over and took his hand. “His family helped us after the war. We lost our house. My parents are teachers, they don’t make that much. They took us in. His father paid for my school. I am studying music. Johnny got me a job singing in a club, then on radio, and now on television. But I really want to teach. I’m afraid I not as smart as you people. That’s why I don’t say much. Guess, you should know I’m basically a girl from Metz with capped teeth.”

“Well, I’m not as intellectual as I pretend to be. Believe me, I’m pretty boring. I teach school. I grade compositions. I do research for Industrial Outlook. I’m afraid the Nobel committee does not have me on their short list.”

She dug into her bag and slipped him a card. “You have to promise to call me at Johnny’s. I’m visiting for another two weeks, then I go back to Paris. I hope we get together.”

“Oh, we will. I have to go to Oran on business. I will call you Tuesday afternoon when I get back.”

She smiled, pressed her cheek against his briefly then ran off.

Maltrec watched her until she vanished behind the striped canopies. He turned, ran into the surf, and threw himself into the sea, embracing the waves with open arms.

At home there was a telegram. Great. He opened it and read it quickly:

Jean Maltrec:

Senior editors planning new feature. “Industrial Outlook,

Algeria.” One page column on current political, economic,

and commercial developments. You receive full byline,

freelance payment, and expenses. Will write with details

next week.

Congratulations!

Henri Rondeau

He folded the telegram and replaced it in its thin envelope. He could not wait to tell Giselle. He ducked around the corner and drank two cold beers to celebrate.

The next morning he woke early, packed, and walked to the bus stop. Thankfully, it was cooler than expected. He bought a magazine, a pack of Bastos cigarettes, a chocolate bar, and a bottle of Evian for the trip. He got on the bus as soon as it pulled in and found a window seat. He had no desire to see anything; it was simply easier to lean against the gently vibrating wall of the bus and sleep.

Hours later, he emerged tired and aching. His cousin was waiting for him at the curb. They walked across the street for wine and calzones at Luigi’s as usual, then drove in Henri’s battered Renault to his apartment. There was the usual talk of relatives, movies, his uncle’s insurance business, the revolt.

They played cards with his neighbors, a young Spanish couple who dressed like unemployed apache dancers. After the game, they went up to the roof and split a bottle of wine as they overlooked the city. Voices, car horns, rock music floated up from the street and open windows.

“So relaxing up here,” Maltrec said, staring up at the night sky.

“Sometimes I sleep up here, but the sun wakes you early. Sunrise. God’s alarm clock,” he mused.

They finished the wine and went downstairs. Maltrec nestled on the sofa. His cousin had bought an air-conditioner and the cramped flat was filled with pleasantly chill, dry air. He needed a blanket as in winter.

The next day, freshly shaved, Maltrec stood in the large lecture hall. He unsealed the government examination packets, counted out pencils, and arranged a pair of stopwatches on the polished table. He welcomed the students, asked them to sit, read the instructions, passed out the booklets and pencils, and waited for second hand to sweep past exactly 8:15 then announced, “Begin.”

For two hours he sat at the desk reading and rereading his telegram. On a pad, he sketched out ideas for articles. Soon he would be a contributor to a national magazine. It was a start. He thought of Giselle. Restless, he walked around the lecture hall as the students wrote, tapping their chins and foreheads as if to prompt their memory and glancing apprehensively at the clock.

At 10:15 he announced, “Time. Close your booklets and remain seated until all the exams have been collected.” As expected, as soon as he picked up their booklets, the students bolted out to smoke.

At eleven he repeated the process for another set of students. Lunch. Then two more rounds of tests. The boredom was draining. But the fee would be enough to pay for his shoes and put some money in the bank for the car. He wondered how much Industrial Outlook paid columnists. Probably not much, but he comforted himself thinking that whatever he made would go farther here than in Paris.

At six he arrived at Henri’s. Maltrec treated him to dinner and a Heineken. His cousin, an electrical engineer, expounded on the need to advance from radio to television. “Television is the future,” he said. “We have to be prepared when the time comes. I saw a demonstration of a translating system for news broadcasts. When the person speaks French, Arabic subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen. When someone speaks Arabic, it switches to French. You know,” he said confidently, “technology and communications will shape the future of this country, not politics or the army. Television, nuclear power, and computers will make all these tribal fights irrelevant and obsolete.”

The trip home was rough. The bus was hot and crowded. He could not find a window seat and had to wedge himself between a sleeping private slumped across his knapsack and a broken armrest that dug into his side whenever he started to doze. He read the newspaper, tried the crossword puzzle, and finally reviewed the used car ads. Across the aisle two fearsome Arabs argued about football in Sorbonne French.

He got off the bus, hot and aching. He wanted a shower, something to eat, a cold beer, and a nap. The streets were still for late afternoon. He looked for a taxi, but the cabstand where usually half a dozen Arab drivers loitered, smoking and waiting for fares was vacant. He spotted an empty taxi heading toward him, but the driver roared past, ignoring his wave.

He slung his bag over his shoulder and began walking. After six blocks, he stopped for a cold drink at a bistro but found the door locked. He continued on, turned a corner, and ran into a demonstration. A stream of young people, all in black, were marching and chanting.

“Algeria is French! Algeria is French! Algeria is French!”

Curious, he followed from the sidewalk, trying to keep pace and understand what was going on. Their faces were animated and angry. Many of the men wore black armbands. Girls clutched handkerchiefs, shouting and dabbing tears. The marchers had the look of irate mourners. Suddenly, they picked up momentum, turned into the Casbah, and paused outside an Arab shop. The chanting grew louder, and the crowd began to punch the air with their fists. When an elderly Arab leaned from a balcony, they screamed at him, “Death to the melons!”

Backing up, Maltrec stumbled into Georges.

“What is it? What’s going on?” Maltrec asked him.

Georges glared at him, gripping his arm so tightly that he winced, “Don’t you know?,” he demanded. “Where have you been?”

“I. . . I was in Oran. I just got back. I left Sunday morning. I’ve been proctoring exams. I was on the bus all day. I just got here,” he explained rapidly. “What is it? What happened?”

This seemed to mollify Georges. He weakened his grip and pulled Maltrec into a doorway. “I’ll tell you what happened,” he hissed. Maltrec stepped back, sensing that Georges was still enraged at him for being uninformed. “The FLN set off a bomb under the bandstand at the Casino Sunday night. Killed Carmen Ramos. Cut her apart. Lucky Starways, too. Ripped his guts out. Nine dead. Seventy wounded. Cut up like mutton. That blonde girl you had your eye on at the beach? Giselle? She’s in the hospital. Her legs were blown off at the knees. Fucking melons! They went too far this time! Fuck them all! And guess who the fuck did not show up? Bobbi Sandy. Remember? He kept reminding everyone about Sunday night? But he made damn sure he wasn’t there. I knew he was a spy. He faded away fast, probably hiding out in the Casbah. These kids just came from Carmen’s burial. Fucking melons!,” he screamed into the street.

A brick was hurled at the Arab on the balcony who ducked inside. The crowd in black stormed up the street. Teenagers roared up from the avenues on motor scooters. They jumped off and began smashing the windows of an Arab grocery. A blond youth on a Vespa tore past and tossed a beer bottle at old woman scurrying into a doorway. She fell to the street where two students began kicking her. Others were overturning cars, splashing kerosene on sacks of rice, and knocking over bins of dried fruit. A dusty Citroen rattled around a corner. The Arab driver stopped and tried backing up, but the crowd had surrounded the car. The doors were yanked open. Tough bistro kids pulled out two men from the front seat. They dragged them to the sidewalk and began kicking and stomping them. A teaching assistant Maltrec knew rushed forward with a knife and slit the driver’s throat. Others pushed into the car and dragged out a screaming Muslim woman and a small boy. Two men seized the woman, ripped off her veil and began punching her. Maltrec caught sight of Dominique waddling toward the child with Madeline at her side. Madeline slapped the boy, who screamed in fright while Dominique began kicking him, screaming, “Gouge their fucking eyes out! Kill these fucking melons!” Madeline ran into a pharmacy and returned with a thin green oxygen tank and, swinging it clumsily like a leaden cricket bat, slammed it into the Arab boy. His head exploded in a mist of blood and teeth.

He crumpled to the street. Dominique kicked him in the groin as Madeline drew the tank down on his face like a pile driver. Turning away, Maltrec saw Johnny Hollywood heroically punching a Muslim girl held by two medical students.

At the bottom of the street two policemen kept a discreet distance, watching impatiently, gesturing, pointing at the crowd, and looking at their watches. A Renault sedan squealed to a halt behind them, and an SAS major stormed up the street shouting and pushing his way through the crowd, “Stop this! Stop this!”

He was encircled by university students. “Don’t bother yourself,” one of them shouted, “These people are not worth saving.”

As the crowd smashed windows, slashed tires, toppled fruit bins, the fires broke out. An overturned car began to blaze. Arabs spilling from a burning shop were pelted with stones, knocked to the street to be kicked, beaten, and stabbed as teenage girls waved rosary beads and squealed in delight.

Ratonade!

Maltrec fought past the students, ran down the street, turned left, and headed to the sea, to the clean European quarter, to the French bistros, the pricey shops, the banks, the tri-colored Bastille Day Lounge. A flash of nausea overcame him, and he ran into a bistro called Rick’s. It was a new place done up in Moorish arches plastered with American movie posters of Marilyn Monroe in an up swirled skirt and a dour-faced Humphrey Bogart smoking a cigarette. THE HARDER THEY FALL.

The Harder They Fall. It seemed almost a joke. The Arab bartender turned from stacking glasses as Maltrec stumbled against the counter. The white-coated man looked at him quizzically.

“Monsieur?”

Maltrec was panting. He needed a drink. But not cognac, not wine—nothing French, nothing Algerian. He looked at the rows of bottles arranged on glass shelves. Catching sight of a green bottle, he nodded, “Jameson whiskey. A double.”

The barman methodically poured the dark golden liquor into a small, heavy glass and slid it toward him. Maltrec took a fast gulp and banged the glass on the bar as the whiskey burned his throat. For a second, he thought he might choke, but he swallowed hard.

“Are you ill? What’s the matter?” the barman asked.

Maltrec waved his hand. “Just shaken up. Cab almost hit me.”

“Mon dui!” the Arab said, tossing his hand in the air with a dismissive Left Bank gesture.

“These cab drivers will be the death of us all.”

About the Author

Mark Connelly’s fiction has appeared in Peregrine, Möbius Blvd, Indiana Review, Change Seven, Bristol Noir, The Berlin Review, Third Wednesday, Altered Reality, Cream City Review, Cerasus Magazine, and 34th Parallel. He received an Editor’s Choice Award in Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver Short Story Contest in 2014; in 2015 he received Third Place in Red Savina Review’s Albert Camus Prize for Short Fiction. In 2005 Texas Review Press published his novella Fifteen Minutes, which received the Clay Reynolds Prize.

Nikolai Zotov

Queen Cleopatra

R. Elliott Martin

Cleopatra

Her cup is always full,

held above her head,

scepter in hand,

she has conquered her throne,

and rises before it.

Tell me, Cleopatra,

does betrayal tastes as lovely as wine?

And when it kills you, is it as quick as a snakebite?

Or is a swift end even asking too much

for a life led without lenience,

only vanquished love and spite?

Magnetic reign to a full circle end.

About the Author

R. Elliott Martin is a poet, Civil War historian, rock and blues musician, and graduate student in history in Richmond, Virginia. Originally from Southwest Virginia, he currently attends Virginia Commonwealth University where he finished his undergrad and minored in creative writing. He enjoys playing bass guitar around town and exploring historic sites throughout central Virginia. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Breakfast, ARTEMIS Journal, Jerry Jazz Musician, The Monterey Poetry Review, The Copperfield Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Richmond.

John Richmond

Living Other People’s Lives

As he approached his front door, equally with a sense of detachment and uncertainty, his footfalls were so quiet that only those in the hereafter would have heard them.

Upon opening it, he saw her- standing there- not exactly with a smile on her face, but, then again, not exactly without one.

“Hey,” he said, almost instantly, after looking her over and trying to gain what he would call “an initial assessment.”

“I thought I’d come by,” she said and shrugged.

He shook his head with unmistakable confusion.

“I see,” he managed, paused and asked, “for what reason?”

“To talk about us.”

“To talk about us?” he echoed.

“Yeah, talk about you and me.”

He laughed.

“I didn’t think- let alone know- there was a ‘you and me.’ Am I missing something here?”

It was then that his past, present- and the formerly absurd thought of ever having a future- all collided.

Instantaneously, he- all too well- remembered the first time he met her.

At that time he didn’t know what he was getting into with her other than a variation of ‘boy meets girl and girl meets boy’ until he was in so deep that he barely had a chance to try and understand- unravel- how it all happened.

Was it love at first sight?

Well, not quite exactly, but yes- of course- let’s say the fact that he was very interested played a big part.

Was it him looking too long into the “I want to be with you sun” that pretty much blinded him to what she was ‘blinded’ by?

Maybe so.

Could it have been hormones that kept him- prevented him- from seeing any semblance of what was going on- what he was about to get himself involved in- to such a degree that he could not distinguish ‘this from that’ or ‘that from this’ or anything at all?

The answer- fortunately or unfortunately- is yes!

So, that’s where it stood for the longest time- he was head-over-heels attracted to her- who, in turn, was equally head-over-heels consumed with- not another person- but with something else, living other people’s lives for them.

Now, at the door, he wondered why she was there, but at the same time feeling that by not closing it, he was getting into nothing other than the same old thing he’s always gotten into- that took him nowhere with her.

What occurred next- what he was experiencing- was the confluence of his brain and his heart.

In his brain, he looked at her closely and in an instant he knew that just her presence was enough to trigger something deep within him almost as if she could turn it on at will, simply by being there.

In his heart- he all too well remembered the first time that he told her that he loved her, only to have her stare off silently, almost as if she hadn’t heard him.

It was he who spoke first.

“Look, instead of you standing in the doorway, how about you come in and have a seat?”

“Sure, that’s fine,” she said and stepped into the foyer, after which they headed for the couch in the dining room.

Once they were seated, he took a careful, thoughtful breath then said to her, “I know how you feel about me, you were very clear you did not want a romance. I mean, you’ve made the point any number of times, and now, you stand here wanting to talk about you and me?”

She offered nothing.

He looked away, then back at her. “What am I supposed to make of all of this?”

She knew he wanted something specific and tried to provide an answer.

“I know you want to be with me, and I came over to see if I could explain, if I could help you understand.”

Again, he laughed a short laugh.

“Understand what? That you don’t want it- or what- again?”

She shifted from side to side, then got to the point, “I’ve got responsibilities.”

“Yeah, I know,” he replied, sharply, “but I think you’ve gone beyond taking on responsibilities, I think you’re living other peoples’ lives for them.”

“I can’t help it!” she protested.

“You can’t help it?” he questioned her. “Talk about taking on a task! I mean, isn’t it enough to just ‘live’ your own life, let alone- not just one other life, but- multiple other lives?”

Then again, maybe that’s the “magic” in the endeavor- and the question- live other peoples’ lives in place of living your own if she had one at all!

“Let me ask you this, is it that you can’t help it or you won’t?”

She shook her head in the negative, vigorously.

“Can’t!? Won’t?! What’s the difference- I have to do these things or- “she told him then stopped, not knowing whether she should go on explaining.

He looked at her, not waiting for her to go on with words, but with what he was able to read in her eyes that told him something different.

“Or what?” he asked.

Again, she fell silent.

“Or what?” he repeated.

She bit her lower lip as her head seemed as if it were convulsing, ever so slightly.

“I can’t talk about it,” she finally whispered.

He nodded in what seemed to be an understanding way.

“Or maybe you won’t? Aren’t willing to face the truth?” he asked carefully and paused before continuing. “Sure, sure,” he told her, almost knowingly, “too frantic- to pressed for time.”

It was there that he cut himself off, unsure as to whether he really wanted to be frank and honest with her. And, it was there he came to a choice that was imposing itself on his path forward.

One path led to him to stop, maybe apologizing, and- given sufficient time- returning to where they started countless times before.

The other path led to a world of the unknown, unknown how it was going to transpire, unknown how she was going to handle whatever was going to come out of his mouth- unknowns, unknowns- unknowns.

So he decided and chose to say- “…maybe, just maybe all this is consuming your time, maybe it’s your job, your schedule, the clock. Maybe, again, before we even get to living someone else’s life, maybe you’ve given up on trying to live your own life.”

She replied almost as if she were continuing his train of thought.

“I know, I know,” she agreed and added, “but what am I suppose to do?”

“What are you supposed to do?” he rephrased her question. “Try leading- living- your own life.”

She shook her head confusedly and cried out, “But I can’t. I can’t! I can’t!! I can’t!!! If I did that, what would happen to them?”

“They’d survive,” he answered quickly.

“But what if they don’t?” she shot back.

“No, no-no!” he countered emphatically. “What if you died, tomorrow? What would they do? Miss a meeting? Not have another car to wreck? Have a temper tantrum? Find a way to get themselves killed?”

She hesitated, and, in a very soft voice, simply said- “Maybe.”

“Are you fearful?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“Of one or some combination- or all of them- repeating the past?” he continued, now in a softer tone.

She nodded silently and reluctantly.

“Yes, of course,” she said, then stopped, before continuing, “Do you know how many people I’ve buried in the last two years? Close people, family people, and each time I do it cuts away at me,” she told him and began to cry.

He, in turn, put his right hand to his forehead and slowly drew it down over his face, after which he said, softly and compassionately- “I can’t imagine, I-“

“And that’s why, considering the differences in our ages, I can’t be what you want me to be to- and with- you- I just can’t- I just can’t,” she admitted as she slid off the couch and to her knees, sobbingly, before looking up to say, “I can’t bury another person.”

With that fear shared, she huddled on the floor, no longer crying, but whimpering- almost as if she were wounded- calling, needing something from him- anything that he could tell her that would make sense, get her up off the floor; something that would- could- guide her in her most serious time of need.

“Susan,” he finally entreated as he stood and bent over to take her arm and help her up.

“Come on up, I understand, come on,” he motioned back toward the couch, “sit over here and maybe let’s put out heads together to try and find a passage- a way- forward, a place to start.”

He helped her up to sit back on the couch then stepped back.

“Is there anything I can get you? A glass of water- anything?”

She looked up at him, patted the couch cushion next to her and said, “Sit with me.”

“Okay,” he said and sat down next to her, close, but not intimately so, near enough to be there for her and waited patiently.

“Tell me what to do,” she finally asked of him.

He sighed.

“I don’t know if I can tell you what to do so much but ask you to do something,” he replied.

She turned so as to position herself slightly to be able to look at him. “Is there a difference?”

“Yes, a big difference. Telling you what to do is me directing you. Asking you to do something is, well, you taking the initiative.”

“Ask me,” she replied quickly.

“I could ask you to get up and go look in the mirror.”

“Because?”

“Because, you can look at yourself and ask that self- how many of them should I be taking care of today and how should I do it?’”

She shook her head in an almost acknowledged denial.

“I’ll see myself,” she chose to say.

“Sure,” he agreed, “but that will only give you a view of the surface you. What about what’s beneath? What about the swirls of emotions, the currents of multiple responsibilities, the dangers of all things hidden? A history- your history- and how your history has somehow morphed into being an overwhelming part of your present?”

Her eyes began to well up, just before she asked, “What about my future?”

Now, it was his turn to shake his head.

“Forget about your future, for now,” he advised her. “In the mirror- if you don’t do something about all this- you’ll see that your future is your present and your present is your past.”

Having heard this, she closed her eyes and threw her head back onto the cushions.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted through tears. “I don’t know which way to go- what is the best, the right decision for everyone. Help me, help me- help me!”

He sat there for some very long extended seconds, thinking about what to say and how to say it. Finally, turning a little more on the couch so that they were face-to-face, he began.

“Okay, let’s start with us finding agreement on some very basic things that are incontrovertible? What do you say?”

“Sure,” was her one word reply.

“All right,” he went on, “would you agree- beyond a shadow of a doubt- that you are in your heart-of-hearts, a good person probably to-“ he stopped so as to choose the right word- “to an extreme?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“That’s good,” he reaffirmed, “good, and, do you- would you- agree the extreme of being a good person is the way you ended up where you are now, living other peoples’ lives for them?”

She thought, shook her head and finally admitted, “Maybe so.”

“Well, there,” he told her.

“Well there what?”

”That’s the first step.”

“To what?”

“To understanding.”

She turned away, then turned back toward him.

“That’s it?”

“For now.”

“That’s supposed to help?” she asked in disbelief.

“It’s a beginning,” he informed her. “Something to think about. That’s the half of it.”

“The half of it? There’s another half?”

He chuckled a bit. “It’s the half for the mind-part of who you are.”

“What’s the other half?”

He smiled. “The other half is the person sitting next to me on this couch. The other half is to give you- that person- ‘quiet time,’ where and when you can turn away, turn off- distance yourself- from everyone else.”

She laughed.

“Yeah, great, and how do I do that? Where do we start? How do we start?”

“Okay,” he began, “what I want you to do- first- is to make sure you’re sitting comfortably.

She, in turn, shifted her body one way, then another until she came to rest and said, “There, I’m good with this.”

“Great, now, I want you to take as deep of a breath as you can and hold it for as long as you can.”

She turned her head toward him and asked, “My eyes? Open or closed?”

“Whatever is good for you.”

With that, she rested her head on the back of the couch, closed her eyes and took the deep breath.

He watched her hold it and hold it until finally- at the end of what seemed to be a final struggle- she exhaled.

“Wonderful!” he congratulated her, just after she opened her eyes and looked over at him.

“How do you feel?” he inquired.

“Actually,” she told him, “good, really good, so when do we start getting me a balance with all the lives that I’m living?”

He looked over at her, smiled and said- “We just did.”

About the Author

John Richmond has “wandered” parts of North America for a good portion of his life. These “wanderings” have taken him from a city on the Great Lakes to a small fishing village (population 200) and then on to a bigger city on the Great Lakes- Chicago- then, eventually, New York City. Since then, John Richmond has made his way to a small upstate New York town and has sequestered himself in his office where he divides his time between writing and discussing the state of the world with his coonhound buddy- Roma. Recently, he has appeared in a number of publications including the Stone Path Review, New Zealand’s Flash Frontier, riverbabble, Lalitamba, The Potomac and Syndic Literary Journal among others.

Joe Roberts

Serenade

If music hadn’t yet existed when you

came into this world,

I’m convinced you’d have invented it

by now the way you imbue a sky

with soul by witnessing its shades of blue,

never to be restated the same again,

or the way you find pastures for dreams

within clouds and breathlessly

squeeze my hand. You see a sunset and imagine

it’s a crushed mango

you could swallow, and a bland evening

whispers to only you of the grief

you both harbor. In that sad world

where music was not yet,

you would have reached between

the rigid pillars of fact and misery

and made them rumble like the strings

of a cello. I know all this

because I’ve seen you reach between

the lines of this sad world,

like you reach between the fibers of my body,

and awaken them to singing

The Leaves

after The Bagel by David Ignatow

Autumn zephyrs through

the canyon, pruning

rubied leaves from branches

which reach denuded

into the sky. The oaks seem ashamed

as Adam, as if their lost

mementos of spring lying in my path

are personal failings.

Then, the motherly wind carries them

down into the river,

and I feel a piece of myself go

with each.

Along with all this dying comes a sense

of burdens being lifted.

About the Author

Joe Roberts is a Salt Lake City poet whose work has appeared in Just Milieu Zine, Tiny Seed Press, and petrichor magazine. His chapbook, Anathema, was published in 2024. With his free time, Joe writes reviews for SLUG Magazine and hikes the Wasatch Front with his partner, Brooke.