grasping for ...

There is a loneliness in her eyes that he wants to fix, for he is a fixer. But he knows that fixing only gets him in trouble. So, he puts away the idea and thinks this, instead: she has the soul of a poet, it seems. She writes with her smile and the way her eyes shine at times, though not enough, he thinks, too, for she knows that her eyes give her away, betray her. So she looks away, then back, never lingering too long on his, never allowing him to see too deeply, too clearly into her. He sleeps apart from her and leaves later. And he wonders how she might feel in his grasp, or if he could even grasp her. So, he wonders, too, if pulling her to him is even possible.

ogeron

The truth was that she didn’t know how she felt, though that sounded silly and girlish. After all, if she didn’t know how she felt, who would? No, she had to decide exactly how she felt. She thought first about his touch and about how it had begun to feel tired and old. She had nothing against age, but this was different. Old was different. He seemed, too, to be less sure, less assertive. He waffled, sometimes, though he called it being “more thoughtful.” She always despised him – yes, despised – when he lost his confidence, acted weak, acted needy. Why the hate? Why so strong? Maybe because she didn’t want to be here and that made it even worse. Maybe because she could be needy and she hated that in herself. Who knew? It was time, though, now. She was waiting for him at the Starbucks. She would tell him, here. This was the best place. He walked in with a sadness in his eyes. She smiled, kissed him on the cheek and said, “I’m pregnant.” It would be their first child. They would name him Ogeron. It was his choice, the name. She would stay with him and try to change things. Her name was Sadie. She grew up with a cat named Exeter.

gibraltar

She had a parrot named Gibraltar that rode on her shoulder around the shop. She never used a nickname for him. Never Gibby. Or G-bird. Or ‘Tar. And she corrected those who tried. His name is Gibraltar, she would say. Gibraltar was three shades of green, with blue highlights and some flashes of orange. She didn’t know which type of parrot he was, only knew that he’d been smuggled in through Mexico (she was told) and that she’d bought him off the side of the road from a friendly man named Cochito, who also was selling pit bull puppies. Fifty dollars. One day, the old lady who worked for her in the shop, Junie, left the door open and Gibraltar flew out and away. Junie soothed herself by telling herself and anyone who asked that Gibraltar had been waiting for that moment and that now he was free. The next day, a small child named Rooney found a dead green bird with orange flashes in a backyard, about four blocks from the shop. Gibraltar’s owner was Magdalena. She’d graduated from Brown. She went on thinking, as Junie’d advised, that Gibraltar had flown to his liberty.

toluka

They say you don’t hear the bullet, but he did. He heard it whistle and whiz. In fact, he could repeat exactly what he’d heard. He’d heard it coming closer. Heard it slow, but just a bit. Heard it grunt when it bowled into his left thigh, then grind to a stop against his femur, and it, crack. Odd, he now considered, after all he’d read and caught from his friends, his pals, who were, now, standing over him, looking at him, eyes bulging, mouths open. And he wanted to tell them that, yes, he was able to hear the one that got him, that maybe that would help them. But, now, he felt himself move to the top, over himself, watching, now, from over himself. Over himself. He worried, suddenly, about Kenny Toon, the kid just in from Toluka and his wife, Mardi, who was pregnant. But all he could do was watch as they gaped at him. Before he exactly knew what was happening, he thought of his dog, back home in Topeka. He worried about Stuka. Stuka would miss him. Might even kill him. Stuka.

pablo

She is a 45-year-old virgin and the question isn’t why or what happened, but what will she do, tonight, how will it go tonight, what will happen tonight when they get to that point, again, because she wants him to have her. She’s ready. Better, she’s in love. But what happens if … What happens when … Maybe it would be best just to avoid it. Maybe it would be best to stop seeing him, now, before things got, what? Difficult? Why her? she thinks. What was it that she did wrong? It wasn’t supposed to be this way, her life. She looks down at her feet. Lies, there, her dog. It’s name is Pablo. He’s a Golden. Why Pablo, she can’t remember.

bonnie

She’d changed her name from Mathilde to Bonnie, six months before they found her body in the garage of the house on September Street, rolled into a faded WalMart rug and stuffed into a ceiling crawl space. She’d hated Mathilde. It made her feel ethnic and, besides, kids made fun of her for it. Funny thing was, she never really outgrew it or escaped it. It was like that with a name. You can change all you want, but what you are named is what you are and, sometimes, who you will be. She never really was Bonnie. Never really know how to be a Bonnie. But, to her credit, she did try. She was 23, when her boyfriend, Drago Vdmilic, killed her with a rusty machete. Her gravestone would read Mathilde Cartwright. Her parents knew no Bonnies. They hardly recognized her body.

friday night lights

He considered stopping for directions to the field, but as he continued the drive along the straight, flat highway, he saw it, as he saw them all, rising out of the horizon, the football field, the stadium lights, soon to be illuminating the night for miles and miles. He wondered, for a moment, what this great expanse would look like from the sky – nothing, nothing, nothing, then one here and one there, south Texas football, floodlit. What to do, where to go on Friday nights in the lower Rio Grande valley, and he wondered if this was what the writer meant by “Friday Night Lights,” that book about big-time Texas high school football. This wasn’t, where he was headed, that is, big-time Texas high school football. This was low country bragging rights played by teenagers named Juan and Carlos and Hugo – ooo-go -- and Rodrigo, with a few Dustins and Erics tossed in for small measure. But it was what they did on Friday night, nonetheless. And it was under the lights, always. For now, anyway.