POEM IN SEARCH OF A HORSE

Time is not reading the poem as you
read the poem, but rest assured he’s slipped
inside the room in his soft, polished shoes,
with his little cough, his bowler hat in hand,
so sorry to disturb. It isn’t that he doesn’t like
to read, he loves to lean across your shoulder,
let you feel his breath, a delicate subzero
on your neck, but he’s impatient with anything
but haiku. Ignore him. He’ll pretend
he doesn’t care, proceed to wind the clocks
with tiny keys or stretch out on a sofa, tap
a tree branch on a pane and wait you out.
Meanwhile, the poem persists in its solitary
business of resisting being made, trying
the usual tactics: silence, tantrum, argument
over rules of play until the stuck mind panics,
a tarantula in hot tar, shouts words out
like charades: moon! anapest! plumage! boat!
desperate to drown out that silence accompanying
the figure in the well-cut suit who’s polishing
the gold case of his pocket watch, remarking
how words pile up like big rigs on a fogged-in
freeway: apple! rainfall! pasture! bell! and even
when the poem finds some purchase, scrambles
up a narrow footpath through a field and stands
inside a grassy insect buzz, holding out
a shaky palm of sugar to conjure up a horse,
a distant train will whistle, spooking anything
half wild. You’re back exactly where you started.
Cough-cough. Soft shoes. Tick-tock. No horse.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009

The summer before Kate’s sister dropped out of college, they both got jobs working for a dentist. Kate was sixteen and had been sent to stay with Claudia in Claudia’s college apartment while their parents figured a few things out, including whether or not they wanted to stay married to each other (not) and how much larger their kitchen should be (much), though probably not in that order.

Up until now, Kate had never spent much time with her sister, mostly because Claudia was five years older and had always existed largely outside the boundaries of Kate’s world, but also because Claudia found Kate annoying. “You could be twins,” people often said to them, and it was almost true. They had the same dark, shaggy hair and ghostly skin, the same narrow jaws and thin, bloodless lips, the same long, creepy fingers. But Claudia was taller and thinner. Not enough to keep people from mistaking them for each other when they ran into them alone. But enough that — so long as they were together — no one ever got them confused.

They were terribly unhappy that summer, Claudia because she was doing poorly in school; because she thought that their parents were overbearing tyrants who had never understood her; because she felt pent-up and pushed-around; because she had fallen in love again; and because, again, the experience had not gone well. Kate was terribly unhappy because she was always terribly unhappy.

Originally, the plan had called for Kate to spend the summer in New Hampshire with an aunt. Kate had not cared for this plan, but her parents made great promises — spend the summer in New Hampshire, they told her, and in the fall she could have her own phone line, an extended curfew, and limitless use of the car. Kate rarely got phone calls or invitations to go out, and she had yet to learn how to drive, but she liked the idea of herself as someone who could benefit from such a bargain, and so she agreed to it.

In school, Kate read novels about girls who were kleptomaniacs or drug addicts or in love with their brothers, and the absence of such suffering in her own life was a source of perpetual anguish to her. Kate’s unhappiness was like weather, a storm rolling constantly toward or away from her, a force she could feel approaching like a hum of electrical current across her skin before it broke open, soaking her in sadness, and she would have no choice but to brace against the misery until it wore itself out on her and passed on to someone else.

How she longed for a tragedy — a well in which to pour her sorrow — a rare blood disease or psychotic break, a doomed love affair, one in which many people would be invested and many people would get hurt. It was her great hope that something god-awful might happen in New Hampshire.

But two weeks before Kate was to leave, Claudia told a TA that she was going to kill herself, then stabbed a pair of scissors into the back of her hand. And after that, the summer belonged to Claudia.

* * *

What their father didn’t have time for, he explained as he drove Kate the three hours north to Claudia’s, was this bullshit with the college. After the incident with the scissors, Claudia had not been permitted to finish the semester and was required to meet with a psychologist at the Student Health Center once a week for the whole summer. If at the end of the summer this psychologist gave her approval, Claudia would be welcome back to school in the fall.

Mountains from molehills, Kate’s father said. This was a college, for Christ’s sake. If they got rid of every high-strung girl who dabbled in the art of self-mutilation, there wouldn’t be a single female left on campus. And that included faculty.

This mess was because of a professor, that’s what Kate’s father said, another married man with loose morals with whom Claudia had managed to entangle herself. Things fell apart, of course, then so did Claudia. When she couldn’t find the professor, she went to his TA — some poor kid grading papers who nearly shit his pants when Claudia skewered herself in his cubicle.

“Who’s the professor?” Kate asked, and her father squinted for a moment as if he was about to sneeze, then didn’t.

The details, he said, were unimportant. Besides, that was all over. And the college didn’t know a thing about the relationship — the college didn’t need to know. From here on out they would handle the situation as a family, and as a family, their focus should be keeping Claudia on the right track.

Kate’s father knew that he was asking a lot of her, knew that he had made certain promises in return for her compliance in spending the summer in New Hampshire, and he was willing to uphold those promises even though New Hampshire was no longer part of the bargain. He was, in fact, willing to up the ante. All Kate had to do was help keep her sister out of trouble this summer and her father would, upon Kate’s graduation from college in six years, give her the down payment on a house. Now, how about that for a deal?

* * *

Kate worried that Claudia would not approve of this arrangement. But the night their father delivered Kate to her sister’s apartment, Claudia threw her arms around Kate’s neck and buried her face in her shoulder. Claudia’s hair smelled like marijuana and cigarette smoke and Kate could feel the angles of her body through her clothing, all edges and corners and knobs. “Thank God you’re here,” Claudia said. “I’ve been so fucked up and lonely.”

Growing up, Claudia had never taken the slightest notice of Kate, but now she clung to her. She wound her fingers through Kate’s hair and leaned sideways against her when they watched television. The affair with the professor, Claudia said, had left her broken and wasted and useless. They sat on Claudia’s futon, and Claudia rested her head on Kate’s thigh as she talked about her heartbreak, her misery, her feelings of desperation. She hadn’t really wanted to kill herself, she said. She’d only wanted word to get back to him that she’d tried.

Kate looked down at the bandage on the back of Claudia’s hand, a square piece of gauze held in place by several rows of white tape. Claudia’s heart had been raped and pillaged for the last time, she said. Men were savages, every single one of them, and she vowed that she was done with them forever. Besides, Claudia had Kate now. They would look after each other, would guard each other from the outside world and stave off each other’s loneliness. All they had to do was make it through the next six years, Claudia said, and then they could live in the house Kate’s father had promised her.

Kate pictured their lives stretching beyond them like an endless summer, the house, which could be any house, full of Claudia’s things — Claudia’s pictures and futon and wall tapestries that smelled like incense, her twinkle lights and cinder-block bookshelves — the house where they would grow old and forget the world together.

At night, Claudia begged Kate to sleep in her bed with her — “Don’t leave me alone,” she whispered, “I can’t bear to sleep alone” — and Kate had never felt more loved.

The day before Claudia was to meet with her psychologist, she made a plea to Kate: Hadn’t she been through enough? Her heart was broken, she’d been kicked out of school, and now she was supposed to talk to a stranger about it? Claudia was sure the psychologist wouldn’t notice if — just for this week — Kate went in her place.

“What will I talk about?” Kate asked, and Claudia said she didn’t care.

“Whatever you want. Talk about me. I’ve told you everything. You tell her, then tell me what she says.”

A flutter of panic stirred through Kate’s stomach. “What if I mess up?”

Claudia frowned. “Then I’ll hate you.”

The next morning, Claudia taped a piece of gauze across the back of Kate’s hand then stood so that they could examine each other side by side in the bathroom mirror. Just think, Claudia said after a moment, if Kate lost five pounds and Claudia gained five, they’d look exactly the same.

Claudia didn’t want to risk being seen together, so Kate walked the eight blocks to the college by herself, then waited at the Student Health Center for Claudia’s name to be called. The session was not nearly as difficult as Kate had feared. Claudia’s psychologist asked what was going on in Claudia’s life, and Kate told her about Claudia’s professor, how they had met in a bar and he had bought her a drink because he was alone and she was crying. The two had fallen in love, had been meant to fall in love by some great force that might or might not be God. Claudia had thought everything was going to be different now, that because he loved her, her life would change. But then he stopped coming to see her. He stopped returning her calls. At the end of the hour, Kate walked home and told Claudia that her psychologist thought she was very brave.

Claudia was delighted. She cupped her hands around Kate’s face and kissed her forehead. “You’ll go from now on.”

During the day, Claudia and Kate stayed inside, smoking cigarettes and watching miniseries after miniseries about long-suffering daughters of plantation owners who, in spite of having riches and beauty beyond compare, were miserable because they loved men they could not be with. These men were usually poor or black or away at war. Sometimes they were scoundrels. “I am terribly unhappy,” Claudia and Kate said to each other in their best Southern belle accents. “I was born to suffah.”

The second time Kate went to Claudia’s psychologist, they talked about how Claudia spent her time. “I watch television,” Kate said. “I cry in bed. And I smoke a lot of pot.” Then she went home to deliver the news: They had to get jobs.

Claudia laughed. “Forget it.”

But the following week, Claudia’s psychologist was more insistent — Claudia was not to spend the summer smoking pot and watching television. Claudia needed to dress up and go out. She needed to be counted on to do set tasks, then rewarded for doing these tasks. Getting a job, Claudia’s psychologist said to Kate, was going to make all the difference in improving Claudia’s chances of functioning successfully in the larger world. Then she called Kate’s father and said the same thing to him.

* * *

The dentist needed someone who could start right away, and the work was not skilled — answering phones and mailing letters. His office was in a large building filled with different doctors’ offices: dermatologists and optometrists, other dentists. Claudia and Kate sat in a row of chairs with two other women who were also waiting to interview. The other women were older and heavier and they both wore shapeless floral dresses and panty hose. Claudia thumbed through a fashion magazine while they waited, and Kate nudged her wrist then gestured toward the women. Should we have worn panty hose? she mouthed. Claudia looked at their legs, then shook her head no.

The dentist had broad shoulders and square hands and hair so yellow Kate thought it must be dyed. During their interview, he looked over their résumés, which were not really résumés, but lists of clubs they’d belonged to in high school and awards they’d won in activities like track and choir. The dentist had a deep voice and a thick, scruffy mustache, which Claudia would later say was proof that his hair color was natural, because what kind of person would dye a mustache?

“So,” the dentist asked them, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Journalists,” Kate said, because she thought this would make him want to hire them to answer his phone and mail his letters.

“Millionaires,” Claudia said, and the corner of his mustache twitched.

He asked why they wanted to work in his office, and Claudia told him that dentists gave beautiful smiles to people who might not otherwise have them and that they both admired this service, though they themselves had inherited perfect teeth and never needed braces.

They smiled then so that he could see their perfect teeth, and the dentist rocked back in his chair, folding his fingers beneath his chin. Orthodontists, he said, were responsible for braces. Not dentists.

Kate tried to think of something interesting she knew about dentists to prove that they thought dentists were interesting, but before she could come up with anything, Claudia leaned forward, resting her elbows lightly on the dentist’s desk. Also, she said, they had perfect vision.

The dentist had not been planning to hire two people — there was hardly enough work for one, but he wanted his practice to have a warm, family feeling, and what better way than to hire sisters? People would know right away Claudia and Kate were sisters, he said, because he himself had known right away. Some might even think they were twins!

The snag, he told them, had to do with money. For many years, the dentist had been partners with another dentist, but they had parted ways and the other dentist had retained most of their shared patients, though he had done so by methods that were certainly unethical, if not illegal. Their dentist was still trying to get on his feet, he said. The rent in this building was steeper than they might think. Plus, he had Holly to think about, and Holly was full-time.

He liked them a lot, though, and he didn’t want to break up a set. If they would agree to make a little less than he’d offered in the paper, and if they were okay with getting paid under the table, he thought he could make it work.

They would and they were, and they shook hands with the dentist and went back to Claudia’s apartment to call their parents with the good news.

“Let me talk to Kate for a minute,” their father said after the congratulations had passed.

Claudia was lying on the kitchen floor while Kate sat on the counter, and she clicked her thumb down on the receiver, then covered the mouthpiece with her palm and slid her thumb back off, listening.

“How’s everything?” their father asked.

“Good,” said Kate.

“Your sister seems okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No sign of Dr. Dickweed?”

“Huh?”

“The professor.”

“Oh,” Kate said, “no,” and Claudia held the phone away from her head as she laughed into the floor.

Kate’s father sighed. “So it’s still completely over?”

Claudia rolled onto her back, and her hair spilled on the linoleum like a puddle of black ink around her head. She smiled up at Kate, then stuck out her tongue.

“Completely,” Kate said.

* * *

At their dentist’s office, people called to schedule or cancel appointments, and Claudia and Kate would add or remove their names from the appointment book. When patients arrived, Kate and Claudia gave them forms to fill out, then collected the forms and ushered the patients to an examination room. People came back out on wobbly knees, their eyes glassy, their cheeks packed with cotton. Claudia and Kate would collect their money, and if the patients were children, let them choose a treasure from the treasure chest — which was really just a beer cooler painted black and filled with small, crappy toys.

Holly, the dental hygienist, was thirty-four and had moved here from Cincinnati with her husband — not her current husband, but the one before, a real mistake, she told Claudia and Kate, but an understandable one given she’d been so young when she married him, eighteen if they could believe it, and pregnant too, but just barely. Had Claudia and Kate ever been to Cincinnati?

They told her they had not, and she said they shouldn’t bother. It was a crap-hole.

Holly had stringy hair and a high, squeaky voice. When Holly married her first husband, she told them, she weighed ninety-three pounds. Ninety-three pounds! Of course, she’d been much, much, much too thin back then. Dangerously thin, really. Everyone thought she looked prettier now. More like a woman.

Claudia and Kate hated Holly.

“Her fucking voice!” Claudia would wail as they drove home at night. “It makes me want to drive a pair of scissors through my temple.”

The more they disliked Holly, the friendlier Holly became with them. She said she hoped she hadn’t given them the wrong idea by telling them about her first marriage. She wanted them to know that she’d been happily married to her second husband for nearly twelve years, had given him three healthy children of his own, and also, she was Mormon now.

“She’s lying,” Claudia told Kate later.

“About being Mormon?” Kate asked.

“About being happy.”

There were often long gaps of time between phone calls or appointments, and then Claudia and Kate would take turns making runs to the vending machines on the third floor, bringing back sodas and chocolate bars and little bags of gummy bears. They sat on the counter and painted their fingernails with Wite-Out, eating candy and planning what Kate would tell Claudia’s psychologist the next time they met.

Some afternoons, Holly lingered around their counter, nibbling at their candy and asking Claudia and Kate questions about their lives, then telling them about her own before they had a chance to answer.

“Are you virgins?” she asked, and Claudia snorted while Kate tried to look busy organizing that morning’s charts — there were only two, and she stacked one on top of the other, then switched the top one to the bottom, then switched them again.

Holly had lost her virginity when she was thirteen to a boy who was seventeen and working at her stepfather’s auto shop. They’d done it in the backseat of a 1977 Crown Vic that had been brought into the shop for faulty steering, and afterward, the boy had bought Holly a root beer from the vending machine. When she thought about it now, Holly said, it made her kind of sad. But she tried to remind herself that she’d had low self-esteem back then, and that it was Cincinnati.

At the office, their dentist often bought them lunch and let them go home early, and though he had given up cigarettes several years ago, he let them use his key to the roof when they took smoke breaks, which, he told them, could get him in a lot of trouble if anyone found out. During one of their smoke breaks on the roof, Holly told Claudia and Kate that their dentist had been treated very poorly by his former business partner when something private was discovered about his personal life. But their dentist had handled the situation with dignity and grace. “He could have made a fuss,” Holly told them. “He could have fought for his rights. But he walked away, left like a gentleman.”

“Why?” Claudia asked, and Holly’s gaze drifted over the parking lot below, across the small, silver roofs of the doctors’ sports cars and luxury sedans, the canvas tops of convertibles.

Things hadn’t been easy for Holly either, she said. She’d worked in that office for a long time, been friends with the other women who worked there. Thought she’d been friends with them, anyway.

“You’re not friends now?” Kate asked, and Holly stubbed her cigarette out with the toe of her shoe.

Sometimes friendships were difficult in offices, Holly said. “You know how women can be,” she told Kate, and her eyes darted sideways at Claudia. “Mean.”

Claudia stared down at Holly’s cigarette butt and her mouth crept back into a slanted half-smile. “I didn’t know Mormons were allowed to smoke.”

That afternoon, Claudia and Kate paused beside Holly’s minivan as they crossed the parking lot to their car. The van was rusty and covered with dents and scratches and drawings her children had made in the dirt with their fingers. Claudia glanced around the parking lot to see that she and Kate were alone, then made a gash along the driver’s door with her car key.

Kate clamped her hands over her mouth to silence the cry she felt rising inside. The mark was five or six inches long — sizable, significant, not an accident. But it blended in with the existing wounds of the car, and there was a good chance Holly, or anyone else, wouldn’t notice.

Still, Kate felt the panic rolling across her like waves, the unsteadiness of what Claudia had just done, the door she had opened. And when nothing happened, no sirens went off and no men in uniforms came to drag them away, the panic brightened into a giddiness that Kate felt rushing through her joints like champagne bubbles.

“Why?” she asked, and Claudia shrugged.

“We hate her.”

* * *

Claudia’s psychologist thought they needed to work on impulse control. Five times a day, they were supposed to tell themselves no. They were supposed to say no to things they really wanted. They were supposed to say no and mean it.

“That’s stupid,” Claudia said. “I don’t want to.”

Their dentist had given them permission to come in late on Thursdays so that Kate could meet with Claudia’s psychologist, though he thought that he had given them permission to come in late so that they could tutor slow readers at the YMCA. This week, Kate had told Claudia’s psychologist about gashing Holly’s van in the parking lot. She also told Claudia’s psychologist about driving by their dentist’s house at night, because she and Claudia had done this several times.

Claudia wanted to get a look at his family, so they’d found his house — they were pretty sure it was his house — but they couldn’t see inside. At first, Kate had wondered if this might not be a good idea, but Claudia assured her that it was only natural to be curious about the personal lives of their coworkers, and Kate really did want to see where their dentist lived.

The neighborhood was nice enough, but the gutters on their dentist’s house were swollen and sagging with rotting leaves, and the yard was brown and weedy. “Guess things are a little slow-going at the new practice,” Claudia said.

From Holly they’d learned that their dentist had a wife and three children, though he worked very hard and didn’t get to spend much time with them.

“He doesn’t wear a ring,” Claudia said.

“Lots of men don’t wear rings,” Kate said — their father didn’t wear a ring.

“Does your husband wear a ring?” Claudia asked Holly, who blinked at the floor then said that he did. “You see?” Claudia told Kate. “Holly’s husband wears a ring and our dentist doesn’t. He hates his wife.”

After her session with Claudia’s psychologist, Kate peeled the fake bandage off her hand while she explained to Claudia: It was important for their development as human beings to tell themselves no. No damage to property. No candy for breakfast. No drive-bys. Five times a day: No, no, no, no, no.

Claudia was holding an unlit cigarette in one hand, and when she reached for a lighter with the other, Kate pointed back and forth between them. “No.”

Claudia paused for a moment, then pointed back and forth between herself and Kate. “Um… No,” she said and lit her cigarette.

* * *

The day their dentist’s wife came into the office with his children, Claudia rushed around the desk to get a look at them. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she gasped without thinking, and their dentist’s wife looked alarmed.

“You have?”

Claudia’s face went slack for a moment and then she smiled, recovering. “Well,” she said, “I’ve heard that you’re lovely.” Then she reached out as if offering to take their coats, though it was summer so they had none.

Their dentist’s wife was lovely, and Kate could tell by Claudia’s sudden loss of composure that she’d not been expecting this. Her hair was smooth, her clothes chic and simple, and she stood with her purse in her hands, asking Claudia and Kate polite questions about their hometown while she waited for her husband.

The children — two scarecrow girls and a boy with buck teeth — knelt around the cooler while their mother waited, sinking their fingers into the heaps of rubber rings and plastic charms, letting the toy whistles and pencil erasers spill over their hands. After a few moments, their mother whispered that the toys were for patients, and the children closed the lid gently and backed away with their eyes on the carpet.

When the dentist finally came out to speak to his wife, the two went back into his office and closed the door. Claudia looked after them for a moment like a frantic dog, then turned her attention to their children.

“What grade are you in?”

“Fourth,” the oldest girl answered after a moment.

“What’s your teacher’s name?”

“Miss B.”

“Miss Bee?”

“Miss B,” the girl said and wrote the letter in the air with her index finger. “It’s short for something.”

“Is she fat?” Claudia asked, and the children looked at one another, surprised. “My fourth-grade teacher was fat,” Claudia said. “She had these fat feet that pudged out over her pumps, and she used to steal the desserts out of our lunch boxes while we were at recess.”

The children stared up at her, their eyes wide, their lips parted in wonder. “I swear to God,” Claudia told them. “I didn’t get a Little Debbie or a Hostess for a whole year.” Then she reached behind the counter for their stash of vending machine candy. “Want some gummy bears?” she asked, and their eyes floated dreamily across her face, their mouths widening into lovesick smiles. “My kids think you’re an angel,” their dentist told Claudia after they’d gone, and Claudia held her hands up as though she had no explanation.

“Kids think I’m swell.”

Later on the roof, Claudia leaned against the ledge, gazing out over the parking lot as she smoked. “I can’t believe she’s so pretty,” she said.

“I know,” said Kate, although she had not spent much time anticipating the appearance of their dentist’s wife and therefore had no real expectations.

“I mean, she’s really pretty,” Claudia went on.

“She is,” said Kate, for she was.

“So much prettier than Holly.”

“So much,” Kate agreed, then, “So?”

Claudia turned and smiled as though Kate was about to say something obvious and amusing. But a moment passed, and when Kate said nothing, Claudia’s face cleared and she blinked.

“What?” Kate asked.

Claudia turned and Kate felt, suddenly, that they were standing a great distance apart. But then Claudia shook her head, pulling Kate close to rest her chin on Kate’s shoulder. “You can pick what we watch tonight,” Claudia yawned, for this was their only point of consistent disagreement: Kate had grown bored with plantations. There was too much sobbing, too much violence, too much love of land and country. Kate wanted to spend more time with the Victorians. She loved all the secrets and guilt and groping in gardens.

* * *

A few days later, Claudia fell on the apartment stairs and chipped her front tooth. The chip was large and obvious and made her look homely and slightly stupid. She lay facedown on her bed, weeping. Now that she knew what it was like to have a chipped tooth, Claudia said, she couldn’t believe she’d wanted to kill herself over love.

When Kate suggested that they might find the chip and glue it back in, Claudia sat up and slapped her across the face. The slap was not hard, but Kate began to cry, and Claudia got up and locked herself in the bathroom.

The next morning, Claudia would not speak to Kate. As soon as they arrived at work, she rushed into their dentist’s office and closed the door behind her. When they came back out, her eyes were wet from crying and their dentist had his arm around her. He led her into the light, then cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face up, squinting into her mouth. “Piece of cake,” he said.

He would sand the tooth until the chip disappeared, then sand the tooth beside it so they matched.

Claudia gaped at him. Couldn’t he just cap it?

That would be expensive, he said. And this would be free. Besides, he added, Claudia’s front teeth were kind of long to begin with. They made her look a little horsey.

Kate reached for her front teeth with her tongue, trying to measure their length as she followed her sister and their dentist to one of the examination rooms.

“This will feel a little funny,” their dentist said to Claudia, “and it will smell bad.” Then there was a sound like a cement grinder, and the room filled with a hot stink that made Kate gag into the back of her wrist.

When it was over, their dentist held up a mirror and Claudia squealed, then leaped up to kiss him. “Oh my God!” she gasped. “I’m so much prettier than I was before!”

After work, Claudia drove Kate home and dropped her off. “Where are you going?” Kate asked, but Claudia wouldn’t say.

When their father called that night, Kate told him that Claudia was at a movie. For a moment, there was silence. “Kate,” he said evenly.

“I don’t know where she is,” Kate said.

Claudia came back to the apartment at 11:30, and Kate gave her the message to call home. She stared for a moment, then crossed to the phone and dialed. Her voice was bright and friendly as she explained to their father that she’d been hired to babysit their dentist’s kids in the evenings and to help his wife around the house. Their father must have approved of this because Claudia thanked him and said that she was really trying to participate and make connections. Then she asked how his day had been.

After she hung up the phone, Claudia crossed to her bedroom and closed the door without so much as glancing in Kate’s direction.

* * *

Without Claudia to tell her what to say, Kate was unsure how to proceed with Claudia’s psychologist. She no longer knew where Claudia went or what she did, and so she couldn’t pass the information along. This was frustrating for both of them. “How has your week been?” Claudia’s psychologist asked, and Kate said, “I don’t know.”

Throughout the workday, Claudia found ways to be wherever Kate was not. If Kate was in the reception area, Claudia disappeared into the filing closet. When Kate went up to the roof to have a cigarette, Claudia went down to the parking lot. Kate offered Claudia a bag of gummy bears, and Claudia held one hand to her stomach as though the very sight of the packaging made her ill. “I’m trying to not commit suicide, remember?”

At night, Kate would lie awake in her bed, waiting for the sound of Claudia’s key in the door and thinking about the house her father had promised her, the house Claudia had said they could live in together. Now Kate pictured a small brick house amid a sea of small brick houses, a place where she would wander from empty room to empty room, a grown-up version of herself living out a grown-up version of her life.

The week before Kate’s last meeting with Claudia’s psychologist, Claudia took the car for lunch and didn’t come back for three hours. When Kate asked where she had been, Claudia glided off to the filing room. “I don’t have to tell you everything I do, Kate,” she said as she passed. “You’re not my fucking diary.”

At the end of the day they sat with their purses on their laps, not looking at each other, while they waited for their dentist to finish with his last patient so that they could collect the bill and go home.

The patient was a round little boy who was having four cavities filled. When he came out, his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were soaked and swollen from crying. He held an ice pack to his jaw and walked with tiny, fragile steps. Kate led him to the treasure chest and he knelt before it like it was an altar, waiting for her to open it and reveal all the glorious bounty within. After she did, he peered inside, then looked up at her. “These toys suck,” he said.

The boy’s mother was still in the waiting room, and Claudia leaned forward over the counter and lowered her voice. “Your face sucks,” she whispered, and the boy’s lips parted, novocaine-slack with shock, before he started to cry.

Kate stood to the side, watching. The little boy’s mother had been curt and superior when she’d checked him in, and Kate felt good for a moment knowing that her sister had hurt his feelings. It was almost like she’d done it herself.

That night, Claudia dropped Kate off at the apartment, then went to babysit their dentist’s children. She came home late and went to bed without speaking to Kate. A few nights later, she didn’t come home at all.

* * *

Without Claudia and her car, Kate couldn’t get to work, so she didn’t go. She wandered around Claudia’s apartment, looking through Claudia’s closet and dresser drawers, trying on her clothes, reading her journals and old school papers. She found some pictures of Claudia naked and some poems someone had written about Claudia and an engagement ring with a note saying that Claudia should keep the ring anyway and think of him sometimes, love always, Paul.

When, at last, Kate’s father called, she thought he would come straight away, would figure out where Claudia was and what she was doing, then would make her stop at once and come home. But when Kate answered the phone, her father didn’t ask about Claudia. He was crying, and a long moment passed before he spoke — he and her mother had decided it would be best for everyone if he moved into the city for a while.

Kate had probably seen this coming, her father said, and Kate told him that she had, not because she had at all seen it coming, but because — now that she thought about it — she saw that she should have.

The day of her last meeting with Claudia’s psychologist, Kate walked to the college with the sun spilling between the leaves. If Claudia did not come back, maybe Kate could just stay here, could live in Claudia’s apartment and attend Claudia’s college. It would be easy enough to say that Kate was the sister who went missing, to let it be Kate’s life that went unfinished.

But during their final session, Claudia’s psychologist told Kate that though it had been a pleasure getting to know her, it was her opinion that Claudia should not enroll in fall classes. Then she told Kate that she was, at her heart, a very gentle person, and that she shouldn’t be ashamed of that.

* * *

A few days later there was no food left in Claudia’s apartment, so Kate quit eating. She drank water and Lipton tea and returned to Claudia’s closet hourly to check the increasing ease with which she slid into Claudia’s clothing. The phone rang several times, then Kate unplugged it. She stopped looking out the window. She stopped listening for Claudia’s footsteps outside. She closed the curtains and counted her ribs and thought about those fallen belles and mad wives of gentlemen, the women left alone in decomposing mansions and drafty attics, the ones who, in the end, always set fire to everything.

When, at last, a knock came at the door, Kate answered with her legs wobbly and her thoughts loose in her head. This would be her mother, probably, here to collect her, here to fall to pieces when she realized Claudia was missing, had been missing for, what was it now, eleven days? Or her father, who would shout horrible things, things Kate deserved to have shouted at her, for she had called no one, told no one, that Claudia was missing, and what if something terrible had happened, what if Claudia was dead? Until this moment the thought had not actually occurred to her: What if Claudia was dead?

Kate opened the door, and their dentist’s lovely wife stood on the doorstep twisting her lovely hands. She’d been crying and her hair was wet, which made Kate think that it was raining, though it wasn’t. For a moment, Kate thought this must be a dream, one of those mundane, immediately forgotten scenes in which some slight acquaintance suddenly takes the main stage, but then their dentist’s wife told Kate that it was over with their dentist, and her perfume passed across the threshold like a lilac-scented breeze.

She was beautiful in the way that women in magazines are beautiful, sloped and elegant. Kate’s sister had stolen the husband of a beautiful woman — why else would she be here? — and now, in Claudia’s absence, Kate would have to pay.

Inside the apartment, the light was dim and their dentist’s wife perched on the edge of Claudia’s futon, squinting at Claudia’s bong in a way that made Kate wonder if she’d ever seen one before. Kate asked if she wanted some and she shook her head, then pointed at the pack of cigarettes beside it. She’d take one of those, though.

Kate gave her a cigarette and watched her light it then sit and smoke in silence.

She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, their dentist’s wife said finally. She hadn’t meant to, but she had. She’d once cheated on their dentist with an old boyfriend. But she’d done this only once, and she’d felt like shit every single second of every single day ever since. You could live with a secret for so long, she told Kate, that the secret became the only thing you knew was true about yourself.

Kate should have put together what was happening. But a moment later their dentist’s wife was thanking her for her courage and her honesty, her strength of character, her sense of decency. And though Kate could not think of a single reason for their dentist’s wife to thank her for anything, she was momentarily so drunk on the praise and gratitude that she could not be bothered to question its ill fit. And it wasn’t until their dentist’s wife took both of Kate’s hands in hers and said, “If you hadn’t told me what he was up to with Holly, I don’t know how many more years I would have gone without knowing,” that Kate realized she’d been taken for Claudia.

* * *

Claudia left with her professor. He’d had a change of heart over the summer. Decided he couldn’t live without her after all. Had been a fool. Et cetera.

Years later, Claudia would write Kate a letter, trying to explain. She’d been young and vulnerable, in terrible pain. She’d never meant to put Kate in the middle of such a mess or to leave her to handle by herself that incident with their mother and the sleeping pills shortly after. Claudia was so very sorry, she wrote in that letter, to have learned about Kate’s recent troubles in love. Perhaps in her current situation, Kate might at least imagine how Claudia could have behaved so atrociously that summer.

Along with her letter, Claudia sent a check for fifty dollars with her apologies for missing so many birthdays, and a photo she had cut from a magazine — a portrait of a famous actress in character as the famous photographer she was about to portray on film. Claudia was including the picture, she wrote, because when she’d first seen it, she’d thought it was Kate.

The famous actress did not resemble the famous photographer and neither of them particularly resembled Kate, but the photograph captured the ghost of an expression and, for a queer moment, Kate too thought she had seen herself.

They should try harder to keep in touch, Claudia wrote at the end of her letter. She would like to be better friends. They were sisters, after all.

Kate put the letter away somewhere. But the portrait of the actress-photographer kicked around for a while and was the subject of much conversation. In the year or so before it disappeared into clutter or was tossed in a move, no one who saw the image — not even those who knew Kate very, very well — could pass by without asking, “Is that you?”

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CHECK OUT THE REST OF OUR SNEAK PREVIEW STUFF: Bryan Furuness is Writing an Essay on Facebook Status Updates Masochism, by Andrea Kneeland, as Annotated by Aaron Burch Bryan Furuness is Writing an Essay About Facebook Status Updates

EDITOR’S NOTE: How exactly do two people collaborate on a poem? We asked Barrelhouse issue 8 contributor’s and co-poets Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney to give us a little glimpse into their collaborative process. Mouse over the linky things below to read Elisa and Kathleen’s comments on their poem “The Root of All Money,” writing at work, and their process.

This poem was part of a series in which we took turns choosing an epigraph and then wrote the poem to the epigraph, backwards, presumably, from the usual method (I don’t know, I’m not an epigraph person). For some we later stripped the epigraph and this is obviously one of those. The original quote was by Ayn Rand: “So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?” I’ve never read Ayn Rand, despite my mother’s urgings; Kathy chose this epigraph. –EG

I went through kind of an Ayn Rand phase in high school (mostly because it was so exciting to discover an apparently influential and much admired female philosopher) and actually won third prize — a cool thousand bucks — in the Ayn Rand Institute’s annual The Fountainhead essay contest for 11th and 12th graders. The ARI, FYI, is “a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in Irvine, California” and “works to introduce young people to Ayn Rand’s novels, to support scholarship and research based on her ideas, and to promote the principles of reason, rational self-interest, individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism to the widest possible audience.” These days, I read that last bit about wild, unfettered capitalism and shake my head and go “Gross.” –KR The Root of All Money

Unquestioned cultural conditioning –
I often forget afterwards who wrote which line, but this one I remember is mine. Just the kind of flat stupidity I find funny. –EG that’s what gets me through the day. They don’t pay
me any attention, but they say they’ll
pay me on the One of our collective signature moves is to chronicle the experience of the contemporary “workplace.” Another is to chronicle it while we are actually in our respective workplaces, back and forth courtesy of Gmail. –KR first. Going from bad And going back over the composition as preserved in the email record, it looks like we did something we do semi-frequently here, which is to call a do-over. We cut the original five lines we’d written following “bad to” and completely re-did them to keep the poem from going awry. Quality control. –KR to
We got more rhymes than Picasso got paint. –EG worse isn’t possible — valuation
maps to time, that’s why Apparently we wrote this after the economy tanked. –EG 40 is the new
high on the Dow & accrual is a
given. Just keep giving & giving &
the cruel hoax of the 40-hour
I tried to think of some way to respond to Kathy’s setup aside from “work week,” but creativity failed me. –EGwork week will be out there, a-shimmering.

Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent. Her recent work can be found in Colorado Review, Diagram, The Laurel Review, Meridian, Pleiades, Salt Hill, Washington Square and other journals. She is the author of two chapbooks from Kitchen Press, Thanks for Sending the Engine (2007) and My Fear of X (forthcoming). She is also co-author, with Kathleen Rooney, of Something Really Wonderful (dancing girl press, 2007) and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths Books, 2008).

learn more about molly gaudry at http://mollygaudry.blogspot.com/

Song I listened to the summer I turned fifteen: Radiohead’s “High and Dry.” I was studying writing for six weeks at Andover and there was a boy with a guitar singing beneath a tree on the quad. I still remember his name: Jeff Agia. He introduced me that day to Radiohead. What a crush I had. What a silly girl I was. He never knew I existed.

Song I listened to most, in high school: Keith Jarrett’s Vienna Concert, “Part 1.”

After Andover, I decided not to go back home to the jocks-and-thugs high school everyone there attends; instead, I moved to Cincinnati where I would try out a school for the arts. A Jazz Theory major, I borrowed this album from my professor and never returned it. I especially didn’t return it when I realized I was a terrible musician and should switch majors to creative writing. A parting gift, let’s call it.

Song I listened to after leaving California forever: Moby’s “My Weakness.” I went to the University of Redlands for college; it was one of the only schools with an undergraduate creative writing degree. It was in southern California, where I’d always dreamed I’d end up. Then, my sophomore year, my grandfather died. I quit college and went home for the first time in four years. I was nineteen. I listened to this song a lot, alone in my bedroom, missing all my friends. A few months later, I would move back to Cincinnati.

Song I listened to the summer before I left Cincinnati forever: Thom Yorke’s “The Clock.” I guess I’m skipping ahead several years. This would put me at twenty-seven. I knew I’d be leaving. I’d finished college, finished an MA, was working as a barista, which made me hate myself. Two degrees and working in food service, waiting on rich housewives who liked to belittle. I left.

Song I listened to after moving to Philadelphia / Song I listened to while writing We Take Me Apart: Ani DiFranco’s “Dilate.” I’d packed some bags, some books, and hit the road, stopped in Chicago and met many fine writer-folks at AWP. I went from there to Philly, to Baltimore, to New York, and back to Philly, where I got work teaching the GED to post-incarcerated men and women in a halfway house. Throughout it all, I listened to this song. I wrote my first book. I stopped listening to this song in April 2009.

It’s January 2010. Can you believe it? And for me this means it’s time to write another book. The first was an exercise in language, technical and stylistic matters; the next will be an exercise in truth and love. Here are some songs I’ve been listening to lately, among plenty of others I don’t know why I’m not mentioning instead.

Song I’ve been listening to lately #1: Bon Iver’s “Re: Stacks”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePatJIwB-sI

Song I’ve been listening to lately #2: Calexico’s “The Book and the Canal”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqCpn7FABqk

Song I’ve been listening to lately #3: Yo La Tengo’s “By Two’s”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLRt3BdEBGI

Song I’ve been listening to lately #4: The Antlers’ “Shiva”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2Y-BnqGys

And, finally, songs I listen to every morning, immediately upon waking: Paul McCartney’s “Dance Tonight” and “Calico Skies.” Every morning, yes. Because they help me get started happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHpbd3zhWhA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHHxYl75eu8

EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to our super duper sneak preview of Barrelhouse issue 8! Last time around, we gave you a peek into the mind of one of our favorite writers when Mike Czyniejewski annotated his story “The Atheist Reconsiders.” This time around, we asked two of our issue 8 contributors, Andrea Kneeland and Aaron Burch, to take a crack at annotating one another’s stories. What horrifies Aaron about Andrea’s story? What does Andrea think of first when she hears the word “trick” — magician, dog, or whore? Below is Aaron’s story — mouse over the blue linky things and Andrea’s comments will pop up in a little box.

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CHECK OUT THE REST OF OUR SNEAK PREVIEW STUFF: Bryan Furuness is Writing an Essay on Facebook Status Updates Masochism, by Andrea Kneeland, as Annotated by Aaron Burch The Root of All Money, by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Roony, Annotated with Author’s Notes

Linda has a new When I think of a trick, I think of a dog first, a whore second, and a magician third. The magician is a distant third.trick. She calls Roy, says: I have a new trick to show you. Come over.

Now?

Yes, she says. Dogs can’t talk and whores usually aren’t this bossy, in my experience. But even now, I’m not thinking of a magician. That’s how distant the third is.Now.

Roy was almost asleep, not yet in bed. Still dressed, hasn’t yet brushed his teeth, is lying fully reclined on his couch. The TV is on, barely audible. It is their night apart in what Linda has decided would be a best-for-both-of-them, one-night-on/one-night-off schedule. So we don’t get bored with each other, she’d said. To have some independence. So I have some time to work on my act, she’d said. He assumed there was more to it, knew but tried to ignore himself. The difference between something so important and something so small.

OK, he says. Give me a few minutes, he says. Let me get up, get dressed. I’ll be right over.

You were already in bed?

Roy is a pushover. I would never date him.It’s alright, Roy says. I’ll be over in a few minutes.

* * *

In her apartment, as soon as Roy walks in, Linda, I would probably date.Linda holds up a razor blade.

A regular, everyday razor, she says. She twirls it around, presenting. She looks like a hand model, Roy thinks, but better.

The lights are off except those just above Linda. She’s placed herself, created her own stage, her own spotlight.

Linda takes the razor, pricks her finger. She holds it out toward Roy, the blossoming drop of blood proving the blade. She puts the tip of the blade to the center of her wrist, I liked to cut myself a lot when I was in my early twenties.pushes in. The skin holds for a second; bends; then, like a shot, like taking a syringe, it gives in, slices open. With an ease proving either the sharpness of the blade or the skin’s readiness for this, Linda pulls in a slight curve, an arc from wrist to fold of elbow tracing her vein.

Roy’s first thought: my girlfriend is killing herself, even while knowing it is just her trick. An illusion.

Roy has never thought of Linda as someone who might commit suicide, though it is a favorite topic of hers. She reads almost exclusively about those subjects that fascinate her — http://www.bizarremag.comdrugs, excessive drinking, prostitution, violence — but, she tells him, she isn’t interested in anything beyond reading. Research. That’s what people want to hear, she likes to say, though very little of it seems to actually work its way into what she does. Least as far as Roy has noticed. That’s the stuff that will sell the show, she’ll say. Controversy. And Roy knows better than to ask questions or argue.

Roy’s second thought is of Tara. His girlfriend before Linda, her arms looked like they had vines running up them. Their first date, she told Roy she’d wrapped her arms in ivy one day when she was young and they melted into her forever after, and I am going to start telling more lies.he never asked about them again. Hearing about Tara always made Linda jealous, that she had nothing so special about her as ivy’d arms, but she also liked making fun of her with Roy.

Arguing that the vines were really just tattoos that had no meaning, that she’d just thought they’d looked cool. She liked that the adjectives he used for Tara were never as complimentary as those he used for her, liked how safe it made her feel, proof she had nothing to worry about.

Roy’s final thought, all these happening so quickly, almost as to be simultaneous, is one he knows he won’t admit. Not to Linda. Even as he knows that, later, he’ll admit the first two to Linda and they might become funny additions to the story, anecdotes. She finds her own jealousies cute, endearing, but it doesn’t work both ways. Has someone else already seen this, he wonders. Roy tries to minimize showing any insecurity – because he doesn’t like to look weak, he’s told her; but also because he doesn’t like hearing her reassure him and feeling like he knows she’s lying. He hates thinking he’s made her lie to him. Is this all really meant to impress someone else, is she working through the kinks on me so everything goes perfect next time?

* * *

Linda holds her arm out, waiting for Roy to react. There is the slightest line from Linda’s wrist to elbow. Like fishing line, like having been drawn with an extra fine tip point. Roy thinks maybe the blade hasn’t
actually cut her, that it was an illusion. She’s told him all about misdirection, of course, and though she hadn’t even been saying anything his mind had wandered, been elsewhere. And he wonders if that was the trick, if she’d known how his brain would work. The cut is so clean as to be almost invisible, to not even have opened, like cutting cork, Jell-O.

Is that the trick? Roy asks.

No, Linda says. No. That’s just the beginning, the first step. It gets better. I’ll have a whole story worked out though, too. About our veins, these rivers of info flowing through us. Something about the lifeline in our palms and how everything is connected, if you just know how. I haven’t quite figured it all out yet, but I’ve been working on it. Taking notes.

Roy thinks about that, nods.

Then, I think there might just be silence here for a minute or two, let the cut set in. The whole beginning will be a lot more theatrical though. I’m thinking maybe I’ll call someone up from the audience to verify the blade. Something like that.

I could shave with it, Roy says.

Linda makes a face. Maybe, she says. Linda doesn’t like Roy clean-shaven, doesn’t really like him to be a part of her show. When she’d first started, learning her beginning tricks, he’d always helped. But as she advanced she withdrew, said she’d prefer that he not help. So he could be amazed and unknowing like everyone else, she’d reasoned. He’d wondered why he needed to be like everyone else, unknowing, and she’d just said that was how it would work best.

Or, Roy says, you know. Someone else. Someone from the audience.

Oh! I am jealous of Linda. Why can’t I ever have control like this?Linda says. What if I have a barber on stage with me. Maybe he could give someone in the audience a shave. Use an old straight razor, then I could use that instead of this thing. She holds up the blade. That could be way better even than just a regular razor. Oh! Linda says again. He could use one of those old leather straps to sharpen it too.

Yeah, Roy says. He envisions someone waving the razor up and down a strap tied to a chair, is mesmerized by the quickness, the fluidity of the movement in his mind. That could work, he says. He tries to picture a barber, an older guy in a movie or something, and not anyone he recognizes. Not anyone he knows.

Linda goes to the kitchen, scribbles a couple notes about shaving, a Sweeney Todd was a better play than a movie.barber, a straight razor. I could tell a story about going to the barber with my dad when I was little, she calls from the kitchen. Sitting there, watching him get a shave. How hypnotic it was, the whole process.

You never told me that, Roy says. He thinks how he’s always wanted to do that, get an Anything I could annotate here would be way too obvious, but I’m going to annotate it anyway.authentic, old-fashioned shave at a real barber.

Does it matter? Linda asks, coming back from the kitchen.

* * *

Back in her spotlight, Linda holds out her left arm, makes a fist but doesn’t clench tight. With her right hand, her thumb and forefinger, she pushes down and out on either side of the cut, The first time I read this, I told Aaron I had to keep putting it down. I faint when I get blood drawn. He took it as a compliment, I think. I meant it as a compliment.the skin pulling apart.

She does this, working her way down her arm like a masseuse pinching down a spine, inch by inch, opening the cut. The smallest line of blood forms down the cut as Linda pinches the skin open; at her wrist, she draws her finger back toward herself, wiping up the trickle.

At this point, Linda says, I’m going to tell the story about Ben. You know, she says, how he was dating my friend Julie in college, my roommate. He had these veins made of guitar strings, but he never showed or talked about them to anyone but Julie. They are the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen, she told me. She said he played songs on them at night, songs he’d written just for her. She’d fall asleep in bed, listening to him next to her, strumming his arm, his whisper filling the room. I’d lie in bed, quiet as I could be, but I never heard anything.

After a while, I started hearing talk around the campus, here and there, of Ben’s veins, his songs. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Julie or not, wasn’t sure if my silence would be taken as loyalty or betrayal.

Of course, Julie heard the same talk, ignored at first, justifying, pretending not to care. Finally, she confronted Ben, and he just shrugged his shoulders. What do you want me to do? he asked.

Then, at some point, she heard people talking on campus and knew he’d been playing for other girls. And when she confronted him, he didn’t make any excuses, just said that they were his arms and what could he do.

Every previous time Roy had heard the story, he’d focused on the idea of Ben’s arms, tried to picture the guitar strings running through them, but for the first time he gets sad, can’t believe he would just leave

Julie like that. And something in the way she tells the story makes him believe that Linda feels just the opposite, almost like she admired Ben for leaving, for not trying or having to make excuses.

* * *

With her skin puckered apart, sliced like a fish just before gutting, and with Roy still thinking of Ben’s guitar string veins, Linda digs the tip of her finger in at her palm. She gets both her It’s amazing how many fingers can fit into a tiny orifice. Skin’s capacity to stretch itself.thumb and pointer finger in there, pinches and twists in one quick motion, and Roy notices her left hand, her palm and fingers, give a snap tremor. A small curling in, then release, of the hand, barely noticeable if he hadn’t been watching so closely. Her right hand, thumb and finger still pinched together, her hand making a kind of OK sign, pulls up and out, bringing out a single vein. It pulls out cleanly, so smoothly it looks like it must be fake. The vein remains blue, a bright blue that, seen outside the skin, stretched like floss, like gum, only enhances the unnatural look of everything. The blue of a floating, thin highlight; a stretched neon sign.

Linda carefully, overemphasizing the concentration on her face, moves her fingers down the vein an inch, two inches. She cranes her left hand down to help, looks like she is Children are the saddest things in the world, aren’t they?itsy-bitsy-spidering her fingers down the vein. The section above her fingers, exposed to the air, turning red, lights up as each new small piece is released. Changes colors like a tree limb turning brown, wilting, dying in sped-up time-release photos.

Everything comes and goes, to and from the heart, Linda says.

What? Roy asks. He wonders: what is she trying to tell me.

This is part of the act, Linda says. I have some of this worked out. Everything comes and goes, to and from the heart, she repeats. All of the body is connected. Break that connection and you lose something. Something will stop working.

Linda lets go with her left hand, moves her whole arm in a circle, keeps circling. Her right hand, still pinching vein, follows. She looks like both marionette and master, but in reverse, strings following action, the puppet in control. She makes a fist, but her pinkie and ring finger don’t move.

I’ve broken the connection, Linda says. I’ve cut the wires, so to speak. Throw me that ball. Not too hard. Just underhand it.

Roy looks down, around. There is a tennis ball on the couch next to him. He wonders if by chance or if she planted it for him before he got there; is it a choreographed part of the show or is she improvising? He grabs the ball, tosses it up in the air a couple of times, catches it.

Throw it here, Linda says. She claws her hand, bending her fingers in and out, throw it here, ring and pinkie still not moving.

Roy lobs her the ball, softball pitches it to her. Linda has to swing her left arm out, away from her body to catch it. Her right arm follows, vein in hand, tethered. She catches it, holds it up three-fingered, like a I have never understood sports. Maybe if I understood sports, I would be a more confident person. Controlling, like Linda.two-seam fastball, last two fingers floating in air, stiff. Happy with herself, point proven, she underhands the ball back onto the couch.

I might say more there, she says. I’m not sure. More about connections in the body, something like that. Pretty good though, right? So far.

Yeah, Roy says. I like it. Like that, pretty simple. I don’t think you need any more.

With someone else, Roy might think she had worked on holding those two fingers stiff, but he didn’t think Linda is my mother’s name.Linda could catch the ball and not flinch. Maybe she could, but he was pretty sure instinct would close her whole hand. Linda isn’t the most athletic girl he’s known, can be a bit of a klutz. He’d been watching closely, looking for some kind of hint, some kind of give away in the trick.

* * *

Roy has tried to get Linda to show him a trick, to share a secret or two, but she always My friend, Kenneth, has always told me that if I want to have more control, I need to learn to be more withholding. His grandmother told him one time: “Never show them that you love them.” Withholding love is a talent.refuses. Once I show you, she says, there’s no intrigue. The worst thing you can do is fulfill a curiosity. It never lives up, is always a letdown, and it ruins it. Magic. Life. I gotta keep you guessing. She smiles, like she’s teasing, joking, but only in part.

In college, to make some extra money, Roy “bartended” a few house parties. A friend of a friend knew a couple, fairly well off it seemed to Roy, who wanted someone to help – make drinks, take coats, help on the grill – so they could walk around, socialize, enjoy their own party. It seemed to Roy like a weird gig but was easy enough, the couple was nice enough, and the pay good enough that it turned into a semi-regular thing. He didn’t know how to make drinks and he made a mess of trying to carve the bird they’d cooked up, but he played nice and naïve, made jokes about himself, and talked local sports, so most of the guests were easy on him and gave instructions when needed.

He felt a little like Woody from Cheers and he kind of liked that. He had fun at the parties, helped himself to the food and a couple drinks, turned the radio behind the bar to the baseball game.

At one of the parties, the couple hired a magician. They didn’t have children but most of their friends did and they thought it would be some good, fun entertainment for everyone. Roy watched from his spot at thebar, behind and a little off to the side of the act. He soon found, from this angle, everything the magician kept hidden from the audience was on view to Roy – the magician glancing at cards to see the one a kid had chosen; dropping coins into a kid’s boot, as he takes it off, to make the previously vanished coins reappear in it, upturned; the hole cut in the orange to slide a rolled-up dollar into, to be unveiled when slicing the fruit in half. The tricks weren’t amazing — they wowed the kids, slightly amused the adults – but they annoyed Roy. He’d stopped watching and just walked around, picked up after the guests.

* * *

OK, Linda says. So. This is the good part.

Are you going to tell the audience that? Roy asks.

No. Of course not. No. I just wanted to let you know that, you know, that –

– That you’re proud of yourself?

No! Linda says. That isn’t it. She smiles, laughs a little, trying not to. OK, she says, caught. Yeah, a little.

So, she says. Still holding her vein, moving both arms in little waves, keeping them active, she looks a little like she is dancing. I said everything in the body is connected, she is saying. But, sometimes you have to break that connection.

OK, Roy says.

So, Linda says, what is the ultimate example of that, do you think?

Of what?

Having to break a connection within the body, This is what withholding feels like.having to sever some part of the body from itself.

Roy thinks. He wonders if this part of the show will be audience participation, will she ask someone in the audience, the barber as assistant, or is this being personalized for him. He isn’t sure what exactly she means, what kind of answer she’s looking for.

Amputation? he says.

Close, Linda says. But, the ultimate form of that.

Roy tries to think of what Linda’s idea of the ultimate form of amputation might be. Castration? he guesses, only half-joking. Beheading?

Roy! No. Think… Linda looks around, like she is trying to think of a clue. Think: Philly, she says. Think: Mütter.

Their first trip together, Roy and Linda took a road trip to Philadelphia. Philadelphia because neither had been before, there were no expectations, no preconceptions, no worries of it not living up to a previous trip.

The only thing I really want to do is go to the Mütter Museum, Linda said on the drive. Roy hadn’t heard of it. Oh, Linda said, I’ve always wanted to go. It’s this medical museum with all these medical oddities and stuff like that.

Siamese twins! Roy says, remembering Chang and Eng’s shared liver on display at the museum.

Exactly, Linda says.

“Freaks” are another of Linda’s fascinations, something she loves to read about. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and freaks. She loves to read of excess and anything outside the ordinary – oddities, hoaxes, deformities.

So, Linda says, with Siamese twins, there can arise a dilemma. Ideally, and especially with modern medicine, the twins should be separated, and hopefully go on to lead ordinary, fulfilling lives. They are identical

twins, from a single egg, but separated, each with its identity. They have their own strengths, their own weakness but, at the same time, shared organ. Conjoined, most likely, they won’t be able to live a full life. However, the surgery for separation is risky and can kill one or both twins.

While presenting this dilemma, Linda cranes her left hand over, fingers the end of her vein with both hands. As someone fiddles with a piece of paper while nervous, as she sometimes picks at her hair on long car rides, looking for split ends, breaking them off.

Sometimes, Linda says, you just have to pull things apart and wish for the best.

At that, Linda keeps hold of the vein, or part of the vein, in her clawed left hand and pulls away with her right, creating two strands.

Roy is hypnotized. He’s stopped looking for clues, for the illusion, and just watches as she pulls her exposed vein in two, pulling it apart like a new pair of chopsticks, like string cheese.

Voila, Linda says. She takes a little bow, holding the vein, a piece of the vein, in each hand, a curtsy. She smiles.

Having made that decision, she says, to separate and wish for the best, you know you have to prepare for the worst. In the process, something might happen, something might go wrong, and you could lose both. I can’t even imagine, she says. Or, what if you had to make a choice? What if, in the middle of the separation maybe, you were told only one could make it, only one would be able to survive. How would you make that decision?

Linda is silent, looking at Roy. He’s watching, thinking, The next time someone breaks up with me, I at least want a little effort put into the whole thing. A magic trick wouldn’t be that bad.shaking his head, I don’t know.

Linda asks again, How would you make that decision?

I don’t know, Roy says. I don’t think I could.

Let’s play a game, Linda says. Quick. Pick a number between one and ten.

One.

Close, Linda says. It was two.

Now, she says, rock, paper, scissors. I can’t let go so, on the count of three, just say one.

One. Two. Three.

Rock.

Paper, Linda says.

OK, Linda says. Now pick a hand. Left or right.

Right.

There you go, she says. You just picked. She holds the vein in her right hand a little higher. The winner! she says, laughing.

Linda rests both elbows on her stomach, pulls her hands together. With the one vein pinched between thumb and finger in her left hand, she transfers the other, pinching the vein from her right hand between middle finger and the nail of her pointer. Both ring and pinkie stick up in the air, standing attention. Holding both veins in her left hand, between those three fingers, Linda drops her right to her pants, pulls a needle out of her jeans. Roy, having watched everything so closely before, is surprised at the move. He can’t believe he hadn’t seen it there, weaved into the thigh of her pants, not on display but not overly hidden or disguised either. So small, but he’d been trying to watch so closely.

And, Linda is saying, in all surgery, having cut someone open, of course, you have to put them back together, sew them up. Holding the tip of the needle, she pushes it toward the vein held between thumb and finger, threading it through the eye of the needle. She threads it through, ties the end, trades hands – all so smoothly, Roy isn’t entirely sure what all she’s done, which vein is which, what he is supposed to be watching. Linda holds the needle in her left hand, places the free vein from her right back into her wrist, and runs her finger back toward elbow, smoothing the vein back into place. She takes the needle from herself, holds it up in her right hand.

You are going to sew yourself back up? Roy asks, starting to see it come together.

It has to heal somehow, Linda says. And if I don’t, what’s the trick? There’s no finale.

Stitching yourself with your own vein?

Pretty great, right?

And it’ll heal like that?

It should, Linda says. The cut should heal and the vein should dissolve, like temporary stitching. Once it heals, I should regain control in one of my fingers.

And the other?

Linda shrugs her shoulders.

Which finger?

Linda shrugs her shoulders again. The right one, she says. That’s the one you picked.

Linda starts to sew, pushing the needle, her vein, through one side of the cut, pulling through the other. Roy thinks, can’t remember ever having seen her sew anything. The stitching is a little crooked, the work of a beginner, figuring it out as she goes; Roy thinks he likes the look of it, the inexactness, the line zigzagging up her arm. He watches her stitch her arm and wonders which finger she’ll regain the use of. He thinks, her ring finger?

Pinkie? He counts the stitches down her arm as she works: ring finger, pinkie, ring finger, pinkie, ring…

Aaron Burch had had stories appear in New York Tyrant, Barrelhouse, Another Chicago Magazine, and Quick Fiction, among others, and a full-length collection of short shorts, HOW TO PREDICT THE WEATHER, is forthcoming from Keyhole Books. He is the editor of Hobart. You should buy his chapbook, How to Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew. Like, right now!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to our super duper sneak preview of Barrelhouse issue 8! Last time around, we gave you a peek into the mind of one of our favorite writers when Mike Czyniejewski annotated his story “The Atheist Reconsiders.” This time around, we asked two of our issue 8 contributors, Andrea Kneeland and Aaron Burch, to take a crack at annotating one another’s stories. What horrifies Aaron about Andrea’s story? What does Andrea think of first when she hears the word “trick” — magician, dog, or whore? Below is Andrea’s story — mouse over the blue linky things and Aaron’s comments will pop up in a little box.

September 1995: Here’s what I think when I think of Nine West: it’s a place where hot girls buy shoes. Or maybe it’s where girls buy hot shoes and the attractiveness of the girl is not a factor? I don’t know.Nine West “Kishi” Sandal

QUICK! BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING STUPID: BUY BARRELHOUSE 8 RIGHT NOW.

CHECK OUT THE REST OF OUR SNEAK PREVIEW STUFF: Bryan Furuness is Writing an Essay on Facebook Status Updates Prestidigitation, by Aaron Burch, as Annotated by Andrea Kneeland The Root of All Money, by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Roony, Annotated with Author’s Notes

I’ve been drinking for hours. There is an area in the park that all the high school kids know about because it’s secluded and the cops can’t see you drinking or having sex or having fun. Liz made out with a senior on our first day of high school so now we know the kids with the fake IDs and it’s easier to get liquor. I slip off the bench and twist my ankle, then hobble to the bushes and throw up. Wow. Just think about that smell combo for a minute. It smells like nachos and Peppermint Schnapps. My ankle doesn’t hurt very much but I’m pissed so I sit down on the ground, hard, inches away from where my puke is dripping off of branches and waxy leaves and in the morning I’ll discover that I’ve bruised my tailbone and I guess that’s better that stained with puke, no?stained the ass of my white jeans with mud. I unbuckle my shoes, ugly pink high stiletto sandals that aren’t ugly at all they’re actually the best shoes I’ve ever owned and I Things I saved my allowance to buy: baseball cards, video games. I can’t really think of much else. I was one of those nerdy kids who tried to save money then, when I had to spend it all on my car from me not taking very good care of it, I wished I’d just spent it all along on more baseball cards and video games and then maybe my parents would have just bailed me out. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t have, which would have sucked.saved my stupid allowance for months to buy them. I stand up, stumble and sink my elbow into the soft wet mud, stand up again, clutching my favorite pair of shoes and I run across the slick wet earth, away from my friends, away from the boy that just felt me up and fingered me. I run all the way to the edge of the lake. “I hate these fucking shoes!” I scream. No one is near me. I scream the same words again, louder, hoping that my friends and the boy with the hangnails can hear me. I toss the shoes up in the air, as far as I can, and I watch the pink plastic almost-gleam of the heels as they fly through the impossibly clear blue-black-purple of night sky, blotting out the muted neon of starshine, watching as they plummet down into the murky green water. Years later, the city drains the lake for a reason I don’t remember or care about and the local paper publishes I like lists.a list with a description of all the items found in the lake. A picture of my shoes makes the front page.

A little story completely unrelated to the title of this short: I cheated a little and read Andrea’s annotations on my story before starting this, so I could have an idea what was expected of me. One of her comments reminded me of a National lyric, which I emailed her about and told her she should listen to the song (she wasn’t familiar with the band). Then, just now, I took a 30-second break to check my Facebook in between reading these short shorts, because when I am on my computer I am so, so easily distracted, and the most recent post on my home page was a friend’s post of a National video. What’s that, you say? That’s uninteresting and you don’t understand why this long annotation? Fair enough.August 2001: bebe “Xylo” Snakeskin Platform Slingback

I can’t find a spot anywhere to sit down. I drag my friend out of the club and we stretch our legs on the curb while I complain about my feet and my ex-boyfriend. A bum keeps asking me for thirty cents and my friend suggests calling it a night but I know if she goes home Semi-related to my last comment, and something this phrase/sentence/idea reminded me of: Andrea’s current Facebook Status? “Andrea Kneeland excels at being dissatified.”I will not actually go home, I will go to my ex-boyfriend’s house and I will knock on the door until he lets me in, and he will let me in so I don’t cause a scene and wake his roommate up. Once I’m inside we’ll fight again about why we broke up and I’ll take my shirt and my pants and my underwear off and toss them around the room, aiming for lamps and houseplants, just to exacerbate his OCD. Also, I know if I get naked in front of him, he’ll have sex with me. After we have sex, we will get back together for the seventh time and then break-up for the eighth time. Instead of doing this, I show my friend the naked pictures of Robert that I still have stored in my digital camera. I tell my friend that everything will be fine, that we need to go back into the club, and that I need to drink until I can’t feel my feet. I think about the time we walked along the boardwalk and Robert complained that the seaweed made the water look dirty. I order another Mojitos are delicious.Mojito. Wow. The vomit again? This kind of just made me regret my “mojitos are delicious” train of thought. Also: maraschino cherries are not delicious.Two hours later, I am vomiting into a bucket of maraschino cherries behind the bar. I can still feel my feet. I wear those shoes every day for a month because they look so good, and because they give me something besides my ex-boyfriend to complain about.

March 2003: Michael Kors “Pippi” Mary Janes

These are the most expensive pair of heels I’ve ever owned. Holy crap!I got them for $260 on sale. …though they do sound pretty hot, no?They are red patent leather with white contrast stitching, white heels, and a white ankle strap. My shoes will continue to become more expensive with time. I do not know this yet. What I do know is that I look fabulous so even while I’m walking around North Beach, climbing around North Beach, really, because the hills are like goddamn mountain ranges sealed beneath fucked up cement, Something about that North Beach reference reminding me of the last time I was in the Bay Area. I actually stayed at Andrea’s (though she wasn’t there) for the night while driving down the coast on a reading tour. The first thing I did when getting to her place was change into shorts and a t-shirt and go running. Because I was on a little bit of a running kick at the time, because I was trying to get in slightly better shape, because it was beautiful out and I kind of just wanted to be able to say I went running in the East Bay and be able to make the comparison to how I used to go running, occasionally, when I lived in the East Bay, all those years ago. Something about the synchronicity of it all seemed appealing. Anyway, my running shoes always give me a blister (see: getting back to connection to the story!). That is probably a sign that they aren’t that good of running shoes (they are certainly much cheaper than any of the shoes mentioned in this piece) and that I should get a new pair, but I don’t really like buying new things and the blister never hurts, it is just a thing that happens, so whatever.I wear these shoes, even as I can feel the blisters forming, even as I can feel the blisters expanding, ballooning outward from my swollen pink skin like headless ticks, filling up with liquid, thin and clear and scentless as good vodka. I am thinking about Leonard, I am thinking about showing up unannounced on his doorstep, I am biting my lip. Accidentally, I draw blood, am shocked by the saltiness on my tooth, by the taste of my own bodily fluid, am shocked that my anxiety has manifested itself so physically, and for a moment, I am confused. For a moment, I associate my bitten lip with my blistered feet and I believe that they are both simply a result of my nerves. When I arrive at his house, when he smiles and escorts me so readily to the bedroom, I am not certain that this is what I want anymore. My body fills with dread as I realize that instead of feeling empowered, I feel cheap and desperate. I am a bit horrified here as well. If the vein references in my mind made Andrea a little queasy, maybe this is my parallel. I mean, feet-licking doesn’t make me queasy, it isn’t that bad, though I do have something of a foot aversion. There you go: slightly more info than you likely needed about me.When he removes my shoes and begins to lick my feet, I am horrified. I am even more horrified when he doesn’t seem to mind the wretched state of my heels, of my toes, the skin raw and blistered like a burn victim’s. I want to leave, but feel trapped now, would feel somehow more cheap and ashamed if I quit so abruptly after making the decision to come here, to surprise him, to pursue him with such charaded flippancy. !!!I pray that the blister on my toe doesn’t
burst in his mouth.

November 2008: Miu Miu Elastic Hee. The word “booties” kinda makes me laugh.Booties

The shoes are so fabulous that they make me feel bad about myself. I want to sleep with them beneath my pillow at night. I want to sew them inside my teddy bear so that only I know how gorgeous they are and so that they’ll never be ruined, so they will stay ideal and pristine as a secret. I am ashamed that I can be so emotionally attached to something so material. I am ashamed that I am stupid enough to wear apparel so violently painful. When I arrive at the party, I am almost immediately introduced to an environmental lawyer, a friend of a friend of a friend. Um. Ha.The lawyer is not my type. He’s white, for one thing. He tells me he is trying to take up smoking, is working on becoming addicted. I say something sarcastic about his petty rebelliousness, but my heart isn’t in it, really I don’t want to dance or to stand or to talk, I just want to sit or lie down to take the weight off my feet so I can stare at my beautiful new shoes comfortably. They are a rich deep teal, like a mermaid at night. They feel soft as a fawn’s flank, or what I imagine a fawn’s flank to feel like. Without any segue, his hand is on my ass and his lips are mashed against my lower lip and my chin. We both close our eyes and pretend we are pressed against someone else and I move my mouth away from his because my ex-husband didn’t smoke, so it is harder to pretend that he’s my ex-husband if I can taste shitty Parliament tar. Less than twenty minutes after I arrive at the party, I am going home with him. In his bedroom, there is a bare patch where the bed used to be, a square of unvacuumed floor, the carpet there littered and untextured. The rest of the apartment is fully furnished and clean. I realize that I have no car, that he has driven me here, that I am spending the night in this place whether I like it or not, and I decide
that instead of asking him how recently his girlfriend moved out, which might be an awkward enough question to jeopardize fellatio, instead of saying anything at all, I lie down on the couch, pretend that I don’t mind the absence of a bed, pretend that this is normal, invite him to me with my arms, pull his shoulders toward me, and then !!! (though intended in a completely different way than my previous “!!!”)push his head down like I’m a man, tug him underneath my skirt by his hair. I wonder if he is going to make my pussy smell like nicotine, but I am not interested enough to hold the thought in my head for more than a second. Light from a streetlamp filters into the room through dim plastic blinds. I tilt my foot to the side, watch the soft wide stripes of lamplight slide across the shoe’s perfect leather.

Aaron Burch had had stories appear in New York Tyrant, Barrelhouse, Another Chicago Magazine, and Quick Fiction, among others, and a full-length collection of short shorts, HOW TO PREDICT THE WEATHER, is forthcoming from Keyhole Books. He is the editor of Hobart. You should buy his chapbook, How to Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew. Like, right now!