101 Words

Near the Hiroshima terminal there’s an alley. It avoids most light beneath its canopy of torn awnings. At the edge is a brightly colored soda machine, nearby are businesses shuttered against daylight, and deeper is a tiny traditionally decorated bar. Beyond, the alley connects to others. Something is there, something not for you.

Later at night you remember the alley with regret. You remember ignoring the tug to explore. Whatever happens there, it’s happening now. You stood near the city soul stripped bare…and walked away.

Weeks later and you’re hunting that alley everywhere you go. You’ll find it again, somewhere.

He won the lottery. Seven million dollars. Taxes took a chunk. Dreams of retirement filled his head. No more going to work every day. A life of leisure. Travel…first class, of course. New cars…whatever he wanted. New house in the best neighborhood. What is this? Hands out. Relatives. Friends. Charities. People he didn’t even know. Gimme. Gimme. Gimme. Now many disagreements with his wife. How to spend it. How to invest it. Who to share it with. Who to leave it to. Estate planning. Attorney fees. Too much to think about. Driving him crazy. Seven million headaches. Take it back, please.

Nothing much happened in class today except when the girl from Pakistan walked in, just beating the tardy bell. She’s been here for three months but for the first time she had no head-cover. No hijab. We all stared, even the teacher, breathless and silent. She bypassed her second row desk to sit next to the tall boy from Peru who always sits by himself against the back wall. She took the chair tucked in the far corner between the file cabinets and the teacher’s desk. She took the chair and she took his hand. Oh, yes, his name is Jesus.

In those days we all drank too much, too heedlessly, as though there could be no consequences. In that awkward space of being no longer young yet not quite middle-aged, we all lived with the nagging fear that what little we had accomplished to that point might in fact be it, forever, for the rest of our lives. And so we drank, and laughed too hard, and made careless, undemanding love to each other’s wives and husbands. And for a time, at least, we pretended we were wiser than we were and assumed a happiness we would never truly know again.

Marcus sat on his bed, contemplating his situation. Amina, his older girlfriend had just informed him that she was pregnant, and she had every intention of keeping the baby. His mind raced. She had told him that she was on the pill. How could this have happened?! He queried himself, vigorously running his hands through his thick blonde hair. He had no idea how he would support a child. He had been unemployed for almost two years and his bank account was dusty; his savings were nearly depleted. He dreaded the thought of telling his religious parents. They would be disappointed.

“Damn!!”

Sam stared at the Sudoku puzzle. This was his third failed attempt to solve this puzzle. The difficulty level was only ‘Intermediate’.

Four years ago he had routinely completed almost all the Sudoku puzzles with difficulty of ‘Evil’. Over the next three years, the number of puzzles solved become less and less until he had been forced to abandon ‘Evil” puzzles and downgrade to ‘Hard’.

This year he had been forced to switch to ‘Intermediate’ puzzles, which were now becoming more and more difficult to complete.

Thus did Sam measure his descent into dementia. God, how he hated that word.

“Men communicate at their convenience,” Madeline’s mom told her, and mom knew about men. She married seven of them.

Madeline married once, and her Steve was a joker. He’d bypass meaningful conversation and move straight to a punch line. Always.

Ten years later the jokes stopped.

“I want you to be present when I talk to you,” she told him Christmas Eve. Predictably, Steve ran upstairs and rushed back down with a bow tied around his head.

He laughed and laughed.

So she put him under the tree.

And she laughed and laughed.

She also giggled when they dug him up.