Standing Room Only - - Rachel Chew Blakley

I'm waiting at the 15th street bus stop when The Eccentric shows up. From a block away she looks like a fisherman, shrunken in black boots and a yellow trench coat as thick as tarp, hands and face leathery from overexposure to sun and salt. I check my watch. The bus is twenty-two minutes late.

Much to the appreciation of my optometrist, landlord, and the IRS, timeliness is one of my traits. This bus route is timetabled for every fifteen minutes; that means that I leave the apartment at either eight, twenty-three, thirty-eight, or fifty-three minutes past the hour. Months ago, I stuck those tiny sticky-backed red dots at the appropriate intervals on the analog clocks in my apartment. If anyone comes over, I have to pick them off, or it becomes a never-ending source of ridicule. I haven't needed to buy a second pack yet.

Twelve of us are waiting at the bus stop that morning, and for some reason nobody is sitting on the wire benches. I don't see any wet paint signs or dried vomit on the concrete. I must be missing something. I look up and notice that the clouds look interpretable. Today is the first day of spring. I'm considering taking my jacket off.

Leaning across the dirt-flecked garbage can, The Eccentric is taking inventory of her tote bags. She has disposed of several crumpled polyethylene bags, and fishes out, at last, a whole sandwich. Delicately, she unfolds the transparent wrapping, and sniffs it as if performing a ritual. I can smell it, and I'm a good ten feet away. It's tangy, funky. I identify the pungent smell after a minute: mustard. But it can't be a sandwich made solely of a condiment, can it? The Eccentric takes a bite, uses a thumb to smear the excess away from the corner of her crinkled lips, and tosses a quarter of her meal onto the sidewalk. A pigeon cocks his head, but doesn't approach. Down the block, the broad face of the bus pulls into view.

The coach is filled. "Standing room only," says the driver, his voice gruff. "Keep moving to the back." As far back as I can go, I wrap one hand around a metal pole and stare at my shoes. We lurch forward, merging into traffic. In my periphery vision, I catch a blur of yellow. The Eccentric is standing right in front of me. Oh, God. Each stop thereafter, we pack in closer and closer. The smell radiates from her, rancid. She's finished the first sandwich and is unpeeling a second.

The stink is all I can focus on. An unkind army marches up my nostrils. My eyes water. I look up desperately at the tiny handles of the closest window. It's too far for me to reach from the aisle.

"Can you?" I ask the balding head in the window seat. He turns, frowning at my bluntness. There is no time for niceties. The army has bayonets, grenades. I notice, though, that his eyes are watering too. He stands and tugs on the black window handles. The little hairs on his knuckles waver as he pulls. No luck. Jammed. He shrugs helplessly and blinks the moisture away from his eyes.

I switch to breathing through my mouth and try to find some channel of distraction. We pass a hardware store. It reminds me of that morning, lying in bed, waiting to feel good enough about getting up. I was staring at the two off-white patches on the ceiling, thinking, I should take care of those, I should just get some white paint and be done with it. Every morning, the same thoughts. I try not to wonder what needed to be covered up. It could drive you crazy, trying to figure out a thing like that.

But maybe it's more common than I think. Because come to think of it, when I was twelve or thirteen, I spent the night at Janie Dirda's house, and she had those spots on her bedroom ceiling, too. It was the only time I went over there. She lived with her mom and her mentally retarded brother in a trailer by the fairgrounds. Her mother - who had a bad leg, but was as beautiful as whatever blonde actress we were obsessing over then - crafted us egg salad sandwiches on rye and served them with plastic tumblers of Coke. The ice cubes weren't real ice cubes at all, but plastic and neon-colored. That night, while Janie snored, I'd remained wide awake. For some reason her mother left the hallway light on, and it illuminated Janie's bedroom just enough to keep me up. I was used to drawn blinds, used to sinking into the pitch black. So I stared at the ceiling and waited. Two splotches of off-colored paint were up there on the ceiling, one bigger than the other. I must have stared at them for a whole hour until I dozed off.

Maybe The Eccentric has a pair of these mysterious paint splotches on her ceiling, too. If I've learned nothing else, it's that sometimes you share things with the people you think you wouldn't have anything in common with.

At the next stop, she gets off. The bus idles there for a minute - traffic is congested, and the light is cut short. The Eccentric makes another deposit into the nearest trash can and another offering to the pigeons. These ones - these downtown pigeons, ruffled and often peg-legged - show some interest. They even get close to her, and peck at the yellow-frosted crumbs around her boots, doing a little dance. I admire their bravery.

---

Photo Credit: Elsie Esq. on Flickr

About The Author: Rachel writes in Seattle, where it's not as rainy as you think. Her fiction has been published or will soon be appearing in Apt, The Battered Suitcase, and Short Story Library.

The Bird Woman - - Kyle Hemmings

The backroom smells of dust and feathers. It is crowded with wire bird cages, all sizes and shapes, bird feeders and knickknacks, ceramic or porcelain figures of little girls wearing pinafores, the boys, sailor suits, feeding starlings or carrying them on their shoulders. You squint. On the far wall, you can't tell if the portrait is of Jesus or St. Francis. But then, you figure, Jesus didn't wear a monk's robe.

We only use organic, she says.Something about the room makes you sad like the thought of men playing garmoshkas and people throwing them pellets instead of coins. Across from you, she scribbles fragments of what you give up. The fingers of her writing hand are dried petals. Occasionally, the old woman peers up and asks, if it's Katherine or Katy. You shrug and say either will do. You notice she never looks directly at you. You tell her you are good caring for sick birds, really, all animals, but you hope she doesn't ask for references.

She wanders away, opens the door to a small refrigerator, draws some clear liquid through a dropper. Come here, she says, and help her find the one-quarter milliliter mark. The birds must be given their medicine twice a day ,she says, once in the morning and in the evening. Everything, she says is labeled.

She leads you into the outer room, the one where customers bring their exotic birds, damaged, victims of mishaps, and points out the macaw with the one eye that won't open, the toucan with the broken foot, the cockatoo with a torn wing. She has names for all of them, like Millie or Gretchen or Spencer. She turns and asks how old are you. You are tempted to say it's on the application because you can't remember what you put down.

On the spot, you subtract nineteen from the present year because that will be the next request, a birth date for verification. You can't seem to focus. Nineteen, you tell her. And that's about as close to the truth as the woman who once gave you away. At least, this one doesn't ask for references.

***

In a strange city, you skirt its parameters, the streets becoming narrow and sparse, the voices, low, speaking in another tongue, and somewhere behind walls, windows, you conjure a thousand unblinking eyes that can no longer navigate beyond a safe distance. You wander and you drift.

In the coffee shop, you negotiate a price with a man wearing a pea coat, who smacks his lips each time he puts down the cup or the way he leans back into the seat, when he asks you if you'd like another slice of cheese cake, pineapple or cherry. Anything you want he says with a confident smile.

For some reason, he reminds you of the sea, a gray eternity of water, of men with rough-hewn faces, spending hours knitting their fingers through gigantic nets, dreaming of the bodies of silver and sleek fish that only danced for a few seconds. His skin is white, whiter than your stepfather's, and the winkles in his face are tiny streets leading to the center of some town you wish to escape from, but know you'll keep returning to. You imagine spending years returning to the same town, only with different names. Birds, you think, have a tendency to return to places where they were either fed or chased away from.

He plays this game with you. Everytime you mention a city, say Moscow, he tells you he's been there before all the big changes. He mentions a street or a building that you never heard of, or don't believe to exist.

In the room, he stands stiff in his silly pair of boxer shorts, asks you how old are you. What he's really demanding, you conclude, is to tell him a lie.

Nineteen, you say, do you want I.D. ?

Smart-ass, he says.

As he fondles you, you notice the wrists, thick, hairy, the big boned hands of men who spend lifetimes trying to wash the smell of cod oil from them. You hold back a sneeze. You stymie a funny thought. A joke a homeless man once told you about the wife who couldn't distinguish between hen and caviar eggs.

The sex is fast and breezy. So fast, you might have missed it. The scent of salt mixed with Old Spice is something you can easily wash off with the towels the motel supplies. But under the rustle of his breaths, the spaces behind his closed eyes, you grow claustrophobic. You want to return to the city's graffiti walls, its mark-downs in windows, its intersections where people wait, but for some reason, you never see them crossing.

What will you tell the Bird Woman if she asks you where have you been?

***

In the city park, you sit on a bench before a giant statue of Saint Francis. In his right hand, he holds a dove. You study this, the exact turn and crease of his garments, the tilt of his head, the gentle smile, the bird with outstretched wings perched in his palm.

You rise, excited, the way you became when called upon to play a part in a school play, when you were young enough to believe that pretending to be somebody was actually being that somebody. You stand before Saint Francis, now larger than anything brass or metal, the way statues can come to life in movies or commercials. With eyes closed, you ask him how is it you get these birds to fly back to you?

Recovering your practical self, the self that demands clean sidewalks and safe landings, you think: It's getting late. I must return to the Bird Woman.

It makes you sad to imagine that someday she will go totally blind. Who will take care of her or her birds?

***

She points to an old cot, fold-up, and asks if you brought your clothes. You tell her they're in the knapsack. It's not much, she concedes, but it's all she can give to a guest. Never once does she use the words, straggler or runaway. Never once does she admit that her pet shop is a sanctuary.

She says the bathroom is on the right and if you have to get up in the night, whatever you do, for God's sake, don't disturb the birds. You can tell she is losing her sight by the way she tilts her head at your silence, stares past your hands that are empty cups.

Then she heads to her own room, no larger than a cubicle, mumbling something about how people never care for their birds and the world is upon her shoulders.

No radios, she says, her voice growing distant, somewhat muted behind thin walls.

In the middle of the night, you awake. There is a strange growling in your stomach. You haven't had anything since that stranger bought you ham steak and cheese cake. If only there are some crackers somewhere, even a crust of bread will do. You begin to tip toe out the room, ever so careful not to wake up the Bird Woman or her birds. The outer room is pitch black. You imagine the birds, their bodies, the outline of dark spaces, their deformities, your most intimate secrets.

You stand before the macaw, the one with the one eye shut, only now, it is both eyes. The thought amuses you: at least one thing you and this bird have in common is that you are both breathing. And the world cannot hear either of you.

The grumbling in your stomach is growing louder, demanding to be heard. You turn, your feet barely off the ground, your thoughts morphing into strange untranslatable frequencies, in this dark space of a room, quiet as a feather floating behind your eyes.

---

Photo Credit: katinalynn on Flickr

About the author: Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey and has work published in Noo Journal, Willows Wept Review, and forthcoming work in Full of Crow.

Living Across The Road -- Clare Fisher

‘Frank, I’m not being funny, but I think you should take a look at this.’

Aida knew her husband wouldn’t have heard her: he had tinnitus. Almost every day he complained of trains chugging through his ears. So she peeled herself off the window and went over to him.

‘They’re knocking our old house down,’ she shouted, stooping towards his armchair.

‘Alright, alright’ he grumbled. ‘There’s no need to shout – it’s only the morning Aida. It’s never so bad in the mornings.’

‘Come and have a look then. They’ve already stripped off the front wall – you can see inside and everything!’

Frank shrugged. ‘Maybe later. I’m busy now.’

‘No you're not’, said Aida. ‘You’re just sitting there – and you do that every day.’

‘What was that?’ he said, leaning forward.

Aida groaned and stomped back to the window. Frank put his hand to his mouth and muttered something into it. Although registering the sound, Aida did not ask him to repeat himself as she usually would, for she was lost in the demolition taking place across the street. She really was: in the bare-faced sitting room she saw fond memories. The wallpaper had changed since she’d lived there – it was plainer, smoother – but she could still see herself, a nervous twenty-something, flitting about those rooms full of enthusiasm for life.

She and Frank had met in that house – as lodgers. She hadn’t liked him at first – she’d thought him dull and rude – but he’d been so insistent on talking to her whenever they met in the corridor, she couldn’t help but get to know him. She’d said no the first three times he proposed: she knew who she wanted to marry – he was tall and handsome and witty and slightly mysterious – and she knew the day would soon come when he’d stop her in the street, keen to get to know her too.

But a year ran past – it ran away from her – and she was still in her rented room. The only man she saw regularly was Frank. When he rambled, she amused herself by inventing alternative plots for her favourite sitcoms. She trained herself to look at him with more care: if she only looked at his button-nose and neatly pressed suit –avoiding his premature baldness and pointy, mischievous eyes – he was almost attractive. And so, when he proposed the fourth time, she could think of no reason to say no.

She’d thought it might be a weird, wrong somehow, to buy the house opposite. However, once they’d moved in she felt nothing but gladness for this strange coincidence. It gave her so much pleasure to peek out of her net curtains every morning – especially on the sunny ones like this – and sniff that old life, fluid and flapping in the wind. Occasionally she’d mention some of this to Frank, but he’d say there was nothing to make a fuss about, that it was just a house.

That was how it had been for decades. And now it was going. It was dying: a yellow-toothed bulldozer was biting into her past; it was chewing it – masticating it as a cow would grass. It had eaten the dining room where the landlady had served their meals – they had been awkward affairs and as far as Aida was concerned the bulldozer could help herself to them all it wanted. Now it was craning its neck higher, towards her old bedroom. It was preparing to pounce and she wished it wouldn’t. She wanted Frank to see it – no, he had to see it – before it was gone forever.

She rushed over to his armchair, surprised at how close to a run she managed to get.

‘Frank! Please come!’ she said.

‘What?’

She tutted and rolled her eyes. With one arm, she grabbed his hand and pointed furiously at the window with the other. He sighed heavily.

‘Alright, alright.’

By the time they got to the window – he had arthritis – the bulldozer had eaten her old bedroom. A tear elbowed into the corners of her eyes. Then she noticed that a bit of the corridor remained, and that it even had the same thread-bald carpet she remembered.

‘Look!’ She pressed her finger against the glass. ‘That spot there – that’s where we first met, remember?’

He squinted. When he didn’t reply she thought he’d misheard her – his trains always seemed to arrive at times like this – but then he said:

‘Oh yes. That’s where I proposed.’

Aida laughed.

‘Only the fourth time,’ she said. ‘The first three times you asked me in the dining room – don’t you remember the landlady’s face when I said no? – and that’s gone – look!’

She pressed her finger in the direction of the gaping, dusty hole at the bottom of the house.

He furrowed his eyebrows, which had grown so long and thick with age that they covered his eyes completely. Aida suspected he’d grown them like this on purpose.

‘No, no,’ he said, turning firmly away from the window:

‘In the dining room – I remember it clearly – I asked whether you would marry me. The first time, you said: ‘I’m not being rude but I don’t want to marry just yet.’ The second time, you answered: ‘No offense, but I don’t think I would.’ And the third time: ‘I’m not being funny but I don’t like the idea of marriage.’ That third time was a bit strange, I’ll admit – but you never said no. So I waited. And when you looked ready I asked: ‘will you marry me?’ I waited all that time to say ‘will,’ you see.’

He hobbled back to his armchair. Aida could tell he was willing his legs to go faster; he was desperate to get back to the dark side of the room, away from the sunlight falling through the window. Aida shook her head in disbelief.

‘Honestly Frank,’ she said. ‘At the end of the day… you just don’t listen, do you?’

He was struggling into his armchair and she didn’t expect him to hear. But when he’d settled, he replied:

‘Don’t be silly Aida. It’s not the end of the day – it’s the morning. And my hearing’s fine in the mornings.’

Aida turned back to the window. The bulldozer had gobbled the old house up. It had left a dusty carcass and a few tendons – electrical wires, splinters of floorboards – dangling hopelessly in the air.

She turned away. But she could not look at Frank. She nuzzled her head into her hands. How strange they were – her own hands! So papery-soft and strange. The sun beat onto her back. It brought with it the smell of fossilized flesh – a bland smell, a nothing-smell – and she realized – looking at Frank as she did so – that she’d known it all this time. She just hadn’t noticed – that she lived opposite a carcass, that is. But now – now the bulldozer had ripped out its stuffing – she could no longer believe it was alive. She didn’t know when she’d be able to lift her head out of her hands. She thought she might stay like that forever. And why not? Frank wouldn’t even notice.

---

Painting: Lori Andrews for The Front View

About The Author: Clare Fisher recently graduated in History from
Oxford University. She enjoys reading, walking and staring at people on the
tube. She is currently working on a novel.