Count Homogenised - Laura Solomon

As a child, my favourite television programme was A Haunting We Will Go. A Haunting We Will Go was written and screened during the 1970s and ‘80s. The main character was a vampire called Count Homogenised. Normal vampires drink blood; Count Homogenised drank milk. Whenever he got thirsty, the Count would break into the fridge, steal all the milk and cackle to himself as he drank. The Count was invisible to adults, only children could see him. The Count always got away with his crimes and was never punished for his transgressions.

My older sister Margie and I used to play our own version of A Haunting We Will Go. Neither of us wanted to be the-kid-who-can-see-the-Count-but-isn’t-believed; we always wanted to be the Count.

“I bags being the Count.”

“No, I bags.”

“I’m older than you,” my sister would say. “I’m the one that gets to choose.”

“You were the Count last time, it’s my turn now.”

And on it went. Truth be told, my sister was a better Count Homogenised than I was. The fake fangs we used sat in her mouth more comfortably, the cape fitted more neatly about her shoulders. My mouth was too small for the fangs, my shoulders too slender for the cape. She would steal milk from the fridge and tip it down her T-shirt. I was a petite blonde; Marge was brunette and more solidly built. Marge’s Homogenised had a sinister edge; you got the feeling that any day soon he would tire of drinking milk and take to draining the blood of little girls. My Homogenised drank the milk and then apologized to the children who could see him for having done so. He felt guilty for his sins. My sister’s Homogenised felt no remorse; the deed done, he was off to the next fridge.

I was a better victim though. I did bewildered well.

“Hey, who are you? What are you doing here?” I would ask, spinning on the spot like a cat that’s having its tail pulled by teasing children.

(Here my sister’s Count would give an evil cackle.) On I would drone. There was a pitiful element to my wailing.

“Quit stealing all the milk!”

“You are powerless to stop me,” the Count would jeer.

More than once my mother, not realizing that we were merely playing a game, overheard my plaintive cries and came out into the backyard, where we would typically play.

“What’s the matter love?”

“Nothing, Mum. Just a dumb game.”

“O, that’s alright then. For a minute there I thought you were genuinely upset.”

I was a better kid-who-can-see-the-Count-but-isn’t-believed though. Marge’s kid was too demanding, overly concerned with facts and details, he wasn’t melodramatic enough. He wanted to know precisely how many bottles of milk had been drunken, the exact time (down to the minute) when the Count had acted out his crime, the exact time (down to the minute) of the Count’s departure. He wanted to interview all the other children who had seen the Count.

What did he look like when you saw him? What was he wearing? What ethnicity was he –Maori? Caucasian? Samoan? How tall? Over six foot? Fat, thin or in-between? Did he look nervous or was he calm and collected?

My sister’s kid-who-isn’t-believed wanted to build a psychological profile of the Count, so as to determine when he would be likely to strike again. No weeping or wailing for her – she was no nonsense. She just wanted to catch the villain, to get on with the job. She used a magnifying glass, like Sherlock Holmes and inspected the ‘bar’ (our swing set) for fingerprints and other clues.

“Ah-ha!” she would cry victoriously. “A hair.”

My Count Homogenised knew that her kid would track me down, sniff me out, drag me out from whatever rock I crouched sniveling under. Typically, my Homogenised would curl up in a ball and hide in the far corner of the garden, behind the foxgloves and her kid would come marching over.

“Hullo, hullo, what have we here then? A nasty milk-drinking thief. He deserves a sound smack.”

She’d whack me on the bum with a piece of wood. Sometimes at this stage, I would run crying to Mum.

“Mu-um, Marge hit me.”

“Marge,” Mum would reprimand. “Play nicely with Leah.”

Sometimes I would hit her back and things would descend into a slapping match, till Mum came out to break up the fight.

“Break it up, somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

“Yea, and it ain’t gonna be me,” would sister would sneer, giving me the finger behind Mum’s back.

Today Marge and I are going out for lunch. My second marriage has ‘hit the skids’ as Margie would say. Typical of me; I was always useless at picking decent men. I’m a sucker, a fool, easily duped. I pick guys who are all surface charm, but underneath it look out, danger lurks. They are men with screws loose; they cheat on me, they snort coke, they find it hard to keep down a job. Marge’s been married to the same man, Trevor, an electrical engineer, for eleven years now. No kids, but they’re planning to have one soon.

They own two houses; the one that they live in and a rental. I’m still renting; a small one bedroom flat I share with my second husband Will. Marge became an English teacher; I became a teacher too, but I’m still ‘finding my feet’ trying to get a career off the ground, bouncing round various temporary assignments, ricocheting from man to man like a squash ball bouncing off walls.

The first thing she says when she sees me is, “You’ve dyed your hair.”

“Yea,” I say. “Felt like being darker for a while.”

She nods and we place our orders at the counter. You don’t have to do that here, there’s table service as well, but Marge is in a hurry, she has to get back to school in an hour. I’m ‘between jobs’; I’ve got all day. Marge orders a steak and Guinness pie with a side order of chips. I order a Caesar salad minus the dressing. We’re halfway through our meal when Marge’s arm shoots out.

“Look,” she says, “It’s Count Homogenised.”

“Where?”

I look around.

“There, serving that table.”

And so it is. He’s minus his fangs and cape, of course, but it’s definitely him. Marge kicks me under the table.

“Don’t stare.”

“You pointed. Pointing’s worse than staring.”

I turn my gaze back to my half-eaten Caesar salad. Count Homogenised walks past, hand raised in a salute, swinging his legs high in the air as he walks. A black moustache bristles on his upper lip.

“What’s with his funny moustache?” I ask. “And that walk?”

“He’s pretending to be Basil Fawlty,” she says, pointing to the blackboard on the wall which reads: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday - Fawlty Towers Themed Lunch. Come dine with the crew from one of television’s most popular series.

“Gawd, how tacky.”

“Look,” she says, pointing. “That waitress is done up as Cybil.”

“Don’t point.”

She points at my salad.

“You need to eat more,” she says. “You’re too thin.”

“I know. It’s the stress of the marriage break-up.”

“Not eating won’t help,” she preaches. “That’ll just make things worse.”

“It’s not intentional. It’s just loss of appetite.”

“If things get too bad come and stay with me for a month or so. Not long term - a temporary measure.”

“Do you think I should kick Will out? I caught him in bed with his ‘friend’ Johanna. ‘We were just cuddling’ he said. Cuddling my arse. But I controlled my temper – I didn’t go ballistic. I just quietly asked Johanna to leave. I’m still deciding what to do about Will. Do you think I should forgive him?”

“Hell, no. You should’ve gone ballistic. You should’ve given him an earful. How dare he cheat on you? You two have been together for what….three years now?”

“Four.”

“Four years. That must be a record for you.”

“Yeah.”

“So what the hell did he think he was doing? Honestly, if I caught Trevor with another woman I’d wring his neck. And his balls. He’d be lucky to live to see another day.”

“I could just pretend the whole thing never happened. Pretend I didn’t see. Blind, like Mike from the Milk Bar.”

“That’s just denial, burying your head in the sand. Face up to it.”

“You think I should leave, then?”

“Of course. No hesitation.”

I munch half-heartedly at a lettuce leaf.

“But where will I go?”

“Like I said you can always come and stay with me till you find another flat.”

“I can’t stay with you, Marge. You’ve got your own life. I’ll look around for another flat, then I’ll tell him I’m leaving.”

“Okay. Your decision.”

Count Homogenised swings by our table.

“Everything alright with the meal, ladies?”

“Great,” says Marge.

She whips out a pen and paper from her handbag.

“Could I have your autograph please? My sister here and I used to love A Haunting We Will Go. And you were the best character in it. I used to do a great impersonation of you, didn’t I, Leah?”

She kicks me under the table again, nudging me to respond.

“Oh yeah,” I say. “And I used to do a halfway decent Mike.”

Count Homogenised laughs.

“Not many people recognize me, you know,” he says. “Hardly anybody remembers A Haunting We Will Go.”

“Oh, we definitely do,” says Marge. “We used to play our own version of it for hours, didn’t we Leah?”

She kicks me again.

“Yeah,” I say. “We did.”

She’s remembering how much fun it was to be the sinister cackling Count and the meticulous disciplined Mike. I’m remembering being smacked on the bum with a piece of wood. The Count autographs Marge’s piece of paper.

“Don’t you want him to sign something for you?” asks Marge. “You always liked being the Count.”

Yea, when you let me play him, I think. I fossick in my handbag for something to sign. All I find is an empty cigarette packet, but I can’t give him that, because then Marge will know I’ve taken up smoking again.

“What about this serviette?” asks Marge, in a slightly exasperated tone,

She picks up her napkin and hands it over to the Count for him to sign. He obliges with a smile, then yells "Waldorf salad’s off, we’re fresh out of Waldorfs," and grins and marches off to check on another table.

“Fancy that,” says Marge. “Fancy bumping in Count Homogenised at random.”

She reaches out and grabs a bit of chicken from my plate.

“So, it’s decided then. You’re leaving that loser and moving on with your life.”

“Yea, but what if I wind up alone. Just me in a studio flat, drinking myself senseless every night.”

“Move in with other people then.”

“What strangers? That’s even more terrifying.”

The Count returns to clear our plates.

“Drinks?” he asks.

“Cappuccino,” says Marge.

“Glass of chardonnay please”, I say and Marge frowns.

“Alright, I’ll dump him,” I conclude. “I’ll move in with you for a bit, then I’ll find my own place.”

Driving past a block of shops on the way home, I suddenly say, “Hey. Pull over.”

“Why?”

“Just pull over.”

For once, she does as she’s told. I hop out of the car and nip into a costume shop; Carrie’s Costumes. I purchase a black cloak, a bottle of fake blood and some fangs.

“Don’t bother with a bag,” I tell the shop attendant.

I swing the cape around my shoulders, spill the blood down my front, push the fangs into my mouth. Checking the mirror on the way out of the store, I leer at myself. I look pretty good.

Marge is applying lipstick in the rear view mirror. I creep round the back of the car and tap on her window. She screams and jerks back in her seat, puts her hand to her heart.

“Jesus Christ! You scared the living daylights out of me.”

“Ha!” I say. “Gotcha. Gotcha a good one.”

“Little cow.”

Snarling, I reach one hand in through the window and pick up her sunglasses, push them over my eyes.

“I vant to drinka your blood,” I cackle.

“Stop it,” she says. “Cut it out, get in the car. I need to get back to work.”

But I’m having fun now, I can’t stop clowning around.

“Is it a good likeness?” I ask. “Do I look like Count Homogenised?”

“God, no,” she says. “You’re way too short. But with your hair dyed like that, you look a bit like I used to. When I dressed up as the Count, that is.”

I hop into the passenger seat. We drive on in silence.

-Laura Solomon was born in New Zealand and spent nine years in London before returning to New Zealand in 2007. She has an honours degree in English Literature (Victoria University, NZ, 1997) and a Masters degree in Computer Science (University of London, 2003). She has published two novels in New Zealand with Tandem Press: 'Black Light' (1996) and 'Nothing Lasting' (1997). Her first play, 'The Dummy Bride', was produced as part of the Wellington Fringe Festival, and her second, based on her short story, 'Sprout', was part of the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Short stories published in the UK include: 'Sprout' (2004 Bridport International Short Story competition anthology), 'The Most Ordinary Man in the World' (2005 Bridport International Short Story competition anthology), ‘Alternative Medicine’, (Willesden Herald International Short Story competition,2007) and 'The Killing Jar', (The Edinburgh Review, August 2007). Poems published in the UK include ‘The Latest Lighthouse Keeper’ (commended, Ware Poets Competition, 2007), ‘You Will Know When You Leave’ (shortlisted, Bridport 2008 Poetry competition) and ‘Apocryphal’ (runner up, Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition). Her short story collection ‘Alternative Medicine’ was published in early 2008 by Flame Books, UK. She has twice had work accepted in 'Wasafiri'. Her novel ‘An Imitation of Life’ is to be published by Solidus, UK, in late 2009. Her novel 'Instant Messages' is to be published in 2010 and was shortlisted for the Victoria Prize and the Proverse Prize. Her poem 'Pythia Gets the Blues' was runner up in the Essex Poetry Festival Competition. She has published various other poems and short stories online and in literary magazines.

-Photography by Christopher Barrio

-Models in Photographs: Left: Lisa Damiani, Right: Nicole Pitoscia

Home - Jennifer Dworschack-Kinter

“The Little Mermaid,” written by Hans Christian Anderson and first published in 1837, is a fairy tale about a young mermaid who longs for a human soul, and the love of a handsome prince. In pursuit of her love, she gives up her home under the sea, her identity as a mermaid, and her voice. When the prince breaks her heart, the mermaid has a chance to reclaim her life, but must kill the prince in order to do so. She can not bring herself to kill him, even though he has broken her heart, and so she dies instead.

Beth uses both hands to twist the wire in front of her away and up, so that the pale blue glass hanging from it catches the sun and reflects itself subtly onto the wood below. She steps back to look at the sculpture. It’s by far the largest she’s ever begun. The driftwood she gathered for its base is huge and gracefully gnarled, stretching itself upward like petals on a wooden tulip; she has built it up with smaller pieces, drizzled it with sand, and attached bits of smoothed beach glass to it with curls of wire. She loves it already. Beth closes her eyes for a moment, and the sounds of the lake outside, quieted all morning by her preoccupation with work, rush into the room. Beth takes one deep breath, lets it out slowly, then another, listening to the softly splashing waves, the aching cries of the gulls. She does this until she feels herself dissolve, until there is no difference between her and the lake outside. It’s been a long morning, and it’s time for her to stop working. She looks out the window at the lake, quiet today, a gentle expanse of blue. Time for a swim.

Giving one last look at the sculpture, Beth brushes her hands against each other, loosening many hours’ worth of sand and dried glue. She locks the door of her studio, and walks slowly up the gravel path that connects it to her house. She realizes she’s left it open again, and silently chides herself. The house is unguarded now. Its silence unsettles her, and she longs for the throaty barking that used to greet her, the rush of breath, of raw animal energy and warmth. She shakes off her thoughts as she changes into her blue bathing suit.

The sand is warm and lazy under her feet, but she knows that this early in summer, she wouldn’t have to dig far into it to find the chill, damp sand of autumn. She walks into the water without hesitation; she knows that some find it too cold for swimming, but she’s always loved the quick shock of chill, the first greeting of the water that quickly dissipates into a more gently cooling embrace. Beth runs through the shallow water, dives in when it reaches her thighs, and swims in controlled, powerful strokes until she is far enough from shore; then she rolls over onto her back, blinking slightly at the too-bright sunlight, and floats lazily in the water, allowing the gently rolling waves to nudge her back to shore. She repeats this ritual a few more times before regretfully leaving the water. She needs to go grocery shopping. She pauses on the sand as she runs her fingers through her hair, damply gnarled by the lake water, and watches the lake for a few moments. Her grandmother, the one who had lived in this house before her and willed it to her, had always claimed to hear voices on the waves. She’d sit for hours, just listening. Beth smiles at the memory. It’s easy to remember her here. Beth has tried to hear the voices, half-seriously, but has never heard what her grandmother did. Beth turns away from the lake and walks back to the house.

It’s only the first week of June, but as Beth eases her Jeep down Main Street, there are already obstacles; too many cars for the narrow streets, clusters of tourists standing in the doorways of stores, pointing, considering their options, deciding where to have dinner. She gets out of her car, and sure enough, they’re in Dean’s Groceries buying picnic food: fruit, cheese, bread, local wines. She moves swiftly through the lingering strangers and puts her basket down on the conveyor at Karen’s checkout. As usual, Karen is full of bubbly chatter; she has heard that the Tilston girl has called off her engagement to Jeff Langdon, the son of one of the wealthier families on the peninsula; that Harper's Cookery, damaged during a kitchen fire, is not planning to reopen. Beth laments the early arrival of the tourists. Karen reminds her of the increased trade they bring, and she’s right, of course. Beth will sell enough during the summer months to keep her afloat for the coming year, and any catalog sales that come later, during the fall and winter, will likely be tourists who’ve made their minds up slowly. Beth tries to put her distant, vague irritation into real words.

“It's starting to feel like a performance.” Karen looks confused.

“Our lives, our town. It's like we're putting on a pageant every summer.”

Karen nods, smiles distantly, goes back to her gossip. Beth is still dissatisfied. She hasn't explained herself properly, to Karen, or to herself. She can now sense a person behind her in line shifting impatiently.

Beth looks behind her, and feels a wash of irritated guilt as she realizes that the man behind her is, in fact, a tourist. Definitely from out of town, and dressed in an aggressively relaxed fashion, khakis and a red shirt and sandals that must have been right out of the box. His basket carries the requisite local food, bits of cheese and fish, and a jar of Parry's Honey. He seems as though he is not at all comfortable with the normal pace of this grocery store, and is looking from side to side, hoping for a faster register. Beth smiles to herself. Good luck, stranger. She turns back to her own transaction. Karen seems to be out of talk for a moment; Beth shifts her weight from one foot to the other and looks behind her again. This time, the tourist is looking right at her, and their eyes lock. Beth’s surroundings - the beeping registers; the voices, both familiar and strange; the rustling bags; the traffic on the street outside - all hold their breath. Beth feels an almost irrepressible desire to step closer to him, to see if he's really that tall. To see what he smells like. His eyes are the exact color of the lake outside her home in the very early morning.

“Beth?” Karen’s voice is suddenly abrasive, unwelcome. Beth turns, her face burning, to take the bag Karen is holding out to her, gathers the other bag onto her hip, and mutters a goodbye.

She stows her groceries in the backseat and leans against the car for a while, chats with some friends who have come out of their coffee shop to say hello, waves them back into work, all the while feeling slightly disjointed, as if there's a blurry space between her feet and the sidewalk.

And then, the man is there, on the steps outside the store, a plastic bag dangling from his hand. Karen must have really disliked him, if he got out of the store that quickly. He hesitates, and Beth finds herself hoping – for what? But she knows, of course, without admitting it to herself, and then he does walk in her direction, after looking briefly up and down the street, his new red shirt shining like the sun. He asks her if she’s local, which they both know is a dumb question. She says something about the early summer weather being kind to the tourists this year, and he smiles, and says he appreciates it.

A pause. Beth says a tiny prayer, but it goes unanswered, and she can still think of nothing else to say. He really is beautiful, with those blue eyes, and an indefinable openness to his face. As if a wind had brushed back his hair, and all the care from his expression, and it had stayed that way. And there’s intelligence there, she can feel it, a kind of mental alertness. What could she possibly say to this man? He seems to be having the same difficulty. He eventually asks her for restaurant recommendations.

This is easy, and she gives the standard tourist dinner ideas, and then, before she can stop herself—“If you like art, I mean, if you’re interested…” and she hands him a card from the gallery. He smiles, gives a little wave, and backs into the sidewalk traffic. She gets into her car, drives home. A normal day.

The next day, while she is back with the giant sculpture, she has a sudden whim, or inspiration, and attaches another piece of driftwood to the side of the sculpture, near the top; it is a dramatic piece of wood, with one smooth surface and one that is covered with long, thin bumps. She attaches it so that the smooth part faces into the wind that trails in through the open windows of her studio. The piece is so large now it feels as if she’s dancing with it, as she reaches up to twine a new piece of beach glass through the bumpy side of the new driftwood. Outside her studio windows, the lake is calm today, and the song of the waves meeting the shore is muted; but a rush of water fills Beth’s head, and the lonely calls of the seagulls, and the smell of the lake, and the wind in the pines, slowly pour in through the open windows until the studio is full. When her light starts to go, Beth is disappointed, but contented too; an afternoon thunderstorm would be lovely. But when she steps back from the sculpture and looks out the windows she is surprised to find that the sky isn’t just clouding over; it’s settling into night. She’s been working all day. It’s been a long time since she’s lost herself in her work like this. She thinks a little about the tourist from the day before as she packs away her tools.

Beth spends some time with the new sculpture, walking out to it in the morning, expecting to see something she wants to change. She waits, standing in the shifting afternoon light that pours in through the tall windows of the studio. The sculpture stands in the center of the circular space of the studio as if facing a brisk sea wind, twined with glass and sand, giving off a sense of movement no matter where she stands to look at it. There is no part of it that is static, or dead to the eye. She decides to take it in to the gallery.

Her trailer can’t hold the entire sculpture, even if she had help to move it, so she has to disassemble it in the studio and reset it at the gallery. Dana is thrilled with it and clears a wide, sunny space for it in the center of the main room; Beth protests a little, but secretly rejoices. She is twisting wires into place when the breeze floating through the gallery becomes stronger, blowing the hair back from her face and moving the dangling glass pieces of the sculpture gently, and she hears a voice behind her that she knows.

“You were right. The art here is extraordinary.” His voice is quiet but it echoes somehow. It doesn't quite fit in to the air of the gallery; very unlike, Beth thinks, from the way people around here usually speak.

She lowers her arms, and the blood trickles back into her forearms and hands, making them feel tingly. She smiles at the tourist. “Well, I can't speak for everything here.” She nods her head quickly to the side, to indicate the latest of Seth’s mermaid paintings. As were all of his mermaids, this one is blessed with giant breasts, and fluorescent pink nipples, and is smiling at Beth and the tourist winningly. The tourist chuckles, turns back to Beth’s sculpture.

“Well, I can't look away from this one.” He fastens those clear eyes onto her work as if he's memorizing it.

She's blushing. She didn't think people actually did that. “Is that a compliment? I’m going to assume.”

“It definitely is.”

It’s easier to talk to him today, especially after she turns back to her sculpture, and he stays, and she can talk while she winds the pieces of it back together. He asks about her work. Not just asks; he’s really interested, and she finds herself having the same kind of conversation about her work that she’s been wishing she could have with Dana, who’s great with the business end, less so with the actual art. He says that he feels that this piece, the one she's assembling, is filled with wind. She finds out that he runs a computer software company. He asks her how long she's lived here; she's been in the house on the lake for most of her life. He's impressed by this, as he has moved around all his life, because of work. He's pursued his career, and money, his whole life. He's not sure why he's telling her this. She tells him about Buck, how it's a month to the day since he died; she has to explain to him what a black lab is, as he does not know dogs. The gallery closes, and they look at each other for a long time in the gently fading blue light of evening, and then he asks her to dinner.

Usually after a major sculpture is finished, Beth rests for at least a week, walking on the sand, maybe working a few shifts in the bookstore for some extra spending money. But she spends the next month working almost every day. The lake seems to be participating in her newfound energy, and every day she finds piles of driftwood, handfuls of shells and beach glass. Some days she collects more than she does in a normal week. She builds four new pieces, all of which she sends to the gallery, and all of which sell almost immediately. The tourist purchases the large sculpture for the main office of his company.

Beth has dinner with him frequently; after the first night, she begins inviting him back to her house on the lake, so that he can join her in her evening walk along the beach. After the third night she invites him to stay, and he also sees the sunrise over the water. She laughs all the time when they’re together, he says he can feel himself unclench muscles he didn’t even know he had. He tells her stories about his life in the city, the buzz of energy, the museums, the concerts; and she is interested, curious. She hasn't traveled much, aside from her time at art school, which was close by. He tries to explain to her why he would come here for a vacation but rent a condo so far from the water; he does not swim with her but waits on towels spread out on the sand. She is patient; they walk on the sand, and she waits for the sound of the waves to enter him, waits for him to see.

On the Fourth of July, they meet in the hot air to watch the fireworks. They sit in the sand with the rest of the town, while the fireworks paint the sky. They are barely able to breathe the thick, swampy air, and stick together everywhere they touch. Beth turns her face toward the sky as a huge, golden firework opens above them like the gilded bars of a birdcage.

“I love the big ones, like that,” she says.

“I love you,” he says.

He leaves his condo that week to stay at her house on the lake.

His vacation is over in the middle of August. He waits for sunset, he waits for the perfect night, balmy and smooth, not too hot, and he asks her to marry him. He can’t be without her, he says. Not for a day. She says yes, without hesitation. Every day she is with him, she dreams of new sculptures. She wants a second set of footprints beside her in the sand, something she’s never wanted; even as she watched her friends marry and start families, years ago. It's never occurred to her to feel like this, but she can’t be without him either.

Then he says: “How soon can you move?”

Beth resists, of course, but there’s really nothing to be done. He has hundreds of employees, meetings, conferences; his company needs him. She can sculpt anywhere. She believes this, in the beginning.

The studio he builds for her is huge, made of glass, and connected to his house so she never has to go outside to get there. The windows open, so she can fill the studio with the crisp air of autumn as she works. She unpacks crates of driftwood, sand, beach glass, dried seaweed, feathers, and stones. It’s much quieter than she’s used to, she thinks, even though she’s got the windows open and can hear the wind in the branches, the birds. She gathers her materials around her and sits on the floor, in the center of the studio. She waits. The city is more than she'd ever imagined, and she spends hour upon hour in museums, absorbing the art. She goes from coffee house to coffee house, trying to find a favorite. She marvels at the food stores, the specialty shops, is tickled to find a place that carries the sugary fruit wines that are produced on the peninsula. She embraces the constant noise, the reminder that she is the part of something bigger, the traffic, the voices. Everywhere she looks, there's something new, and she takes it all in until her skin hums, and she waits for the right time to start working again.

She is still waiting as autumn turns into winter, as the last of her things find a place in this new home, her pictures are added to the walls. She decides to take a job to fill the time she’s not sculpting, although it’s ridiculous, her hourly wage in the face of her husband’s wealth. Still, she enjoys it, and it helps her learn this new, busily crowded city, as she rides the train in every morning and then walks to the museum. She works mornings, then walks around the city until she returns home. She finds some favorite places; there are some beautiful fountains in the park, and a small zoo. The thought of living so close to a zoo is exciting, and she often stays until twilight, sketching the animals; the otters, the penguins, the seals. She also enjoys the restaurants, the new cuisines. She loves Thai food, dim sum, sushi, all cuisines that are not available in her old, small town.

The first time she has an attack they are at her favorite dim sum restaurant, a small, indifferently-decorated affair, seated at the table she has come to think of as theirs, next to the odd little fish tank. She excuses herself, goes to the women’s restroom; she is walking back, toward their table, when she suddenly can’t breathe. She feels her lungs working hungrily; she opens her mouth wider, and knows that air is moving into her body, but she feels as if it’s not, and she’s almost immediately dizzy. The room goes dark with moving colored bits of light, and she thinks, hysterically for a moment, that it looks like the fireworks over the lake last July. She looks for her husband, but can’t find him in the drips of light in the room; she takes a step, then another, and then falls to the dusty wood floor.

When she awakes he’s standing over her, as are several waiters, the manager; all the faces are concerned. She insists on rising immediately, despite her husband’s protests. She’s still gasping for air, but leans on him as they return to their table, and as she sits, she takes a deep breath, and feels the air flood her lungs. She smiles weakly; she’s all right, and won’t consider going home. She’s sure it won’t happen again.

She forgets to worry about this incident during the next few weeks as she tries to work. She buys a machine that makes sounds like waves, and seagulls, and closes her eyes, pretending to be outside, to be in her old house, and waits and waits to feel ready to work. She reads, rearranges the furniture in the house, trying to make her mark. She has a sudden idea and orders dozens of art supply catalogs; she spends days circling and noting, and makes a flurry of phone calls.

Boxes begin to arrive, but she lets them pile up until she has everything she’s ordered, and she spends that morning in her studio. She opens the boxes and spills out metals, papers, different kinds of wire, shiny glass beads. She spreads these new textures and colors around her in the studio until she looks as though she’s found a way to nest in a rainbow. She waits. A few hours pass, and she takes a deep breath, to cleanse her stress away, and instantly chokes. It’s like the night at the restaurant; the more she tries to breathe, the worse she feels. She looks despairingly at the long hallway that will bring her back to the main house, where hopefully a staff member will find her, help her. Air is filling her lungs, but she still feels as if she’s drowning; she gasps, pulls more air into her body but it’s like breathing tar. She can feel it just sit in her lungs, not moving.

Beth staggers for the hallway, puts her hands on either side, somehow makes it into the house, to the kitchen. Things are turning dark again, but she stumbles to the sink, splashes some cold water on her face, and starts to regain some balance. The water helps, and she takes a few shaky breaths, then plunges her face into the cold stream from the tap. The cold bites through the haze that has wrapped itself around her, and she is able to stand and to breathe normally. She calls her husband, who implores her to see his doctor, and she agrees. He is worried, he'll send a car, and he’ll leave work early to meet her at the doctor's office. She protests. She's fine now, she'll take the train, really, she's happier that way, with no fuss. She'll see him tonight.

The doctor's questions surprise her. He asks little about her breathing, and what she assumes to be the severe type of asthma that is plaguing her. He checks her lungs briefly, listens to her take deep breaths, but then starts asking her about her marriage, her work. In short, it becomes clear that he believes her to be the victim of some sort of panic attack.

“It’s not in my mind,” she insists.

“Of course it isn’t.” He leans forward, old and kindly, making concerned furrows in his brow. “It’s real to you. We just have to find a way to help you manage what it is that you’re feeling….”

But she’s up now and putting on her coat. “Thank you, doctor.” And she’s out in the winter afternoon, under the reddening sky.

She tries her husband’s cell phone a few times in the cab on the way to the train station but only succeeds in reaching his voice mail. She makes her way to her platform but as she’s waiting she’s seized with an almost physically overwhelming need to not go back to the house. She runs from the station and hails another cab, even as she debates wildly with herself about where she wants to go; every place she can think of seems somehow wrong, almost frightening. She suddenly realizes that everywhere she’s gone in the city, she’s gone as a tourist. As she slides across the duct-taped vinyl backseat of the cab, it occurs to her: the zoo. She has spent long hours there, drawing the animals, and just walking, and it seems somehow that she will feel better there. She manages to tell the driver to take her to the zoo, then rests her forehead on the cool glass of the window next to her and watches the city blur by.

When she reaches the zoo, she practically runs for the indoor otter exhibit, ignoring the scattered looks of surprise she gets from the few other patrons who have braved the cold weather. Her inability to breathe is building again; she takes despairing, gasping breaths of air, but it doesn’t help. She collapses in front of the glass wall that houses the otters and fumbles for her cell phone, but even as she opens it, she takes one deep, shaky breath, and feels a tiny trickle of oxygen in her chest. She closes her phone and tries again; another breath, another trickle. She tips her head back to rest on the glass and closes her eyes, breathing deeply and evenly, and closes her eyes, ignoring everything but the air moving in and out of her body.

She is startled later, by a hand on her shoulder. She opens her eyes to see a security guard leaning over her. He looks torn between worry and irritation, asks her if she's all right. She stands, touching the glass wall. Tells him she's fine.

He looks relieved, not for her well-being, but for his time. “The zoo is closing. You’ll have to go home.”

She tries to. She focuses on her breath on the long train ride, trying to make it stay fluid, worrying that for all her anger at him, that doctor could have been right. She stares out the window at the night and thinks about trying another doctor, doing some more research online, that something may really be wrong with her.

Her husband meets her at the station, his face pale and tight with anxiety. He doesn’t say much on the drive home. Beth is expecting him to ask where she’s been, or to demand to know. She really doesn’t know how he’ll handle it. She doesn’t know what it is exactly that they’re about to handle. They ride in taut silence all the way home. He turns the car off in the garage and they sit for a moment.

“I was really worried about you,” he says quietly.

Beth is flooded with feeling as she sits in the silent car with him. She opens her mouth to tell him she’s sorry, that she loves him, but when she does, she suffers another attack, and clutches his arm in panic. Her body is drawing in air, she can feel it move past her lips, but she still can't breathe.

“I’m taking you to the emergency room.” His voice is afraid but full of decision.

She shakes her head, surprising herself with the force of it, and struggles from the car, ignoring his protests. Her rusty blue jeep from home is next to his in the garage, and the keys are in her purse. She has them out, has the door open, before he can really react. He runs around his car to her. His face is full of fear.

“What are you doing?”

She shakes her head but does not answer, willing air to enter her body through the dam of her clenched teeth as she unlocks the door and gets inside her jeep.

“Beth. Wherever you have to go, I’ll go with you.”

She shakes her head again. He can’t.

“Beth, please. Just stop. Stop whatever you’re doing right now and talk to me.”

If she opens her mouth to talk she’ll drown. She starts the jeep.

“If you leave me I’ll die.” His voice breaks. She believes him.

She maneuvers down the driveway, finds the freeway. Her hands are clenched on the wheel, every bit of her concentration absorbed by her slow wheezes in and forced exhales. She can’t black out, not like this, behind the wheel of a car, and she has hours ahead of her.

It’s dawn by the time she reaches the narrow road that runs behind the line of modest homes along the beach, discreetly spaced, with hers. Tears begin to pour silently down her face as she turns her car along the shaded road, and, despite the fatigue and dizziness that swells in her brain, she observes the traditional speed limit of 20mph, out of respect for the dogs, cats, and children that roam the backyards of the area. She rolls down her window, and cold, wet air pours into her car. She pulls the car haphazardly into her driveway and runs through her backyard, past her studio, to the front of the boarded-up house, and the beach. She throws her coat onto the sand, her purse, stops long enough to pull off her shoes and socks. The beach stretches out on either side of her, bright and cold in its winter glory, but she barely notes it, as her breathing has shut down entirely. She staggers toward the water, but it’s tilting, faster and faster, and her face can feel the sand. She reaches numbing hands forward but when she tries to pull herself along, she only succeeds in pulling handfuls of sand toward her. She digs her feet in behind her but can’t get traction.

She is too late. She stretches one hand, as far as it will go, and touches wet sand. She’s so close. She struggles to keep her eyes open, to see the blue of the water before her, but her eyes are so tired, and her head is filling with emptiness.

She closes her eyes, but she can feel the first hand that touches hers. At last. Its touch is so careful, but urgent; Beth can feel her skin blossom. The touch is joined by another, and another. The sand start to slide under her; no, it is still, but she’s sliding. The sound of water fills her and as her face touches it she opens her mouth and swallows a grateful breath, which gives her enough strength to open her eyes, and raise her head from the cold sand. She smiles, and stands. She will walk the rest of the way in.

He comes to the beach, often, to sit on the sand and stare out over the water. He’s taken to living in her old house, for weeks at a time. It makes her sad, as she swims just past the sandbar, or pulls herself up onto it just for a moment to watch him, but there is no way to get him a message. She doesn’t even speak his language any more. As time goes on, he comes less and less, and eventually a family with children moves into the house, which delights Beth. One of the children, a girl, swims so far out, with sure, steady strokes that her mother stands on the sand and calls to her, frightened, to come back. Once, Beth gets too close, and she’s sure the girl sees her; the girl stops swimming, and treads water right over Beth, with her face in the water, trying to see. Beth stays very still, and the girl eventually gives up, but she keeps looking for the rest of that summer, and Beth and the others are careful to stay away. Still, it’s one of her favorite things to do, watch the children swim. When she isn’t doing that, she works on sculptures on the bottom of the lake, huge, intricate structures through which the fish swim like tiny bits of brightly colored glass.

-Jennifer Dworschack-Kinter teaches writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her poems, book reviews, interviews, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Whetstone, Many Mountains Moving, The Comstock Review, A Cup of Poems, Phoebe, Blue Canary, Eureka, Candelight III, Aoife's Kiss, and Listen to the Future. She lives in Shorewood with her husband and two children, and they all walk by the lake as often as they can.

-Photograph by Christopher Barrio

Poison - Brendan Moore

In an attempt to retreat from the morning’s ghosts, Bede allowed himself to knife an extra slice of butter onto his mashed potatoes, pushing it down with the tip of the rounded blade into the center of steaming whiteness. He had burnt the sausages a bit, so there’d be the taint of charring. Countered maybe, by the peas glistening greenly in the rising vapor of the potatoes, but it was difficult for Bede to rouse his appetite as he tried not to notice the sealed envelope, still partly folded, on the checkered tablecloth by his plate.

In the warmth of the kitchen he saw mist rising from his trousers, the shower that had spattered him in the graveyard earlier. The wind had come up suddenly while the priest blessed the coffin, and it had swept a hard, spraying rain against the mourners, sufficient to soak all of them as they angled their bodies away from it.

“As if one was not enough,” he muttered, reaching for his fork.

Jameson, the copper-coated terrier lifted his head from the mat in front of the turf fire, eyes checking to see if he was being spoken to. Then the dog tapped his tail twice in slow rhythm and dropped chin to mat once more. Bede waved his knife over the plate, as though conjuring hunger, listening all the while to the increasing swell of elements against the windows.

“Of all days, for him to do that to me, to himself. I mean, I just don’t know why?”

That was it. He didn’t know, couldn’t fathom how three days ago Matten Galloway could have gone to his barn in darkness, how he had climbed a ladder and tied a rope over the cross beam, the middle one still half covered in harnesses from years ago, and most of all how he had cast himself into space, allowing the vicious loop at his neck to shuck the life out of him. On the anniversary of Maggie’s death, no less!

He scowled at the envelope and then at the chair across the kitchen where Matten Galloway had sat four days earlier. From there his eye was drawn to the picture hanging over the fireplace. He squinted at the image of his dead wife, though in the enlarged and framed photograph, Maggie Callaghan looked nothing like death. An explosion of yellow, her body pushed slightly against the fabric of her dress, limbs spread out in an x against the molten sky behind. He had taken the photograph, and in it Maggie stood in the window of the ruined Dromore Castle, a low evening sun bathing her in bronze. Not young, the evening of her fortieth birthday, he remembered, but she looked young, like a wise schoolgirl.

In the photograph her smile was a renunciation of all the dreariness in the world. Odd, he thought how the light in it seemed different since the last time he had studied it, brighter somehow, making it seem as if Maggie herself was glowing almost; a kind of beacon from another world. What would she say to him now, if she could?

Again, he didn’t know, and now he had no one to ask, to talk to, the hill occupied by the Galloway and Callaghan farms empty except for him. The thought injected a new level of awareness into his veins, and he shivered despite the warmth from the fire.

Bede hadn’t expected to be sitting alone in his home as a man of sixty-two years, Maggie taken by cancer, the flash of a fresh century and the birthing of a strange new nation crackling in the countryside around him and in the town a mile from his door, and now his friend Matten Galloway sealed away forever in the thick, deep blanket of black clay in Graiguetown Cemetery. And only four days earlier he had been here with Bede, eating potatoes and sausage just like these at this very table.

Edgy he’d been, as if he had wanted to tell him something. Couldn’t sit still or even finish his bottle of porter—said it was bitter, poison, he’d said—before getting up to go out into the icy glare of starlight. Was he trying to tell Bede then he was going to end it? Was that it? If Bede had convinced him to stay a while longer that night, would he have told him what he planned to do, and could Bede have talked him out of it? He shrugged.

“I just don’t know.”

This time Jameson tapped once with his tail but didn’t look up.

“I suppose it was loneliness in the end, never marrying—in that cottage by himself. Seemed worse this past year,” he said, swallowing a piece of sausage, grimacing at the taste. Bede knew he was talking to himself, but what did it matter? He had started when Maggie died, and now with Matten gone, he’d be talking to himself even more. He scooped potatoes onto his fork and stared at the protruding tines before turning his head from the food.

The angle of the folded envelope was wider now, opening further in the warmth of the room, as if it were a mouth wanting to speak to him.

Across the kitchen he caught his own reflection in the wet glaze of the gray window. He saw the stoop in his back, his spine looped over like a piece of wire he might have twisted with strong hands years ago to latch a fence post. Matten, a couple of years older than him, had kept himself straight, though. How was that? Or at least he had until a few days ago when Bede had found his friend in the barn.

He pictured again the bare, macaroni-stick legs and the delph-like feet swinging back and forth in the air. The degradation of pajamas and slippers sliding down in the process of tortuous dying, the soiling, the stench, the...

The whole thing would have gutted Maggie is she’d been around. She always had a soft spot for Matten and his odd ways, would sit by the fire with him and talk to him about books for hours while Bede worked at the table on the farm’s accounts. The way she’d become animated with Matten, sometimes over nothing more than a line out of some poem. What was that one she liked so much by Keats, no Yeats? The apples it was, yes.

The golden apples of the moon, the silver apples of the sun. He knew he couldn’t remember another line if his life depended on it. Book learning had never been for him.

Yes, Maggie would be ravaged by it if she were here…

A wind rattled the windows and he shivered. On her anniversary it was. Same day.

A kind of caul seemed to surround him for a minute, as if he were in danger of being born somehow. His head buzzed like the signal from an old wireless radio. He touched the envelope, gingerly as if it were contaminated, pressed down on the top half, attempting to fold it again, making it as it had been when Matten’s brother from the town had pulled it out of his pocket and given it to him. It flexed open again, Bede’s name in Matten’s scribble looking dark in its throat, the jaws speaking to him mutely, mouthing slurs at Bede’s ignorance.

Yes. Bede did not know, but saw that knowledge could be poison.

He pictured his friend in the frigid barn again, and imagined him on the top of the ladder, standing like an obelisk. His legs would have shaken as the cold seeped in through the cracks in the old barn, until finally he’d have begun the rocking motion, not going in one swipe sideways, no. It would have taken a few journeys left and right, the rope already pressing up a bit, the barn shifting in the murky light of dawn. There must then have been one last, lurching pitch, legs shucking out to one side, head hammered down onto the rope’s end, the feet whipping back in a violent pendulum and the loop locking its grip on him.

And then Bede pictured Matten and Maggie by the fire, awkward and content together and a stab of venom tried to mount the crest of his tongue. He spat loudly onto the floor, and Jameson looked up at his master again, the animal puzzled, querulous.

Bede stood, fingers clenching down on the envelope, and crossed to the fire. Throwing it into the flames, he turned his back on the flaring blaze, as if its brightness, like the luminosity of the photograph above the fireplace at his back, had the power to harm him.

Outside, the wind buffeted the house and spun across the fields to the graveyard, where it sent flowers and wreaths scattering like mice among the cold headstones.

- An Irish emigrant living and teaching in Texas, Brendan Moore spends his spare time keeping bees, teaching karate, running marathons and writing fiction. He is currently seeking representation for his first novel Stones on the Water, and he recently had his short story "Shelter" published in The First Line Literary Journal. He lives in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and daughter.

-Photography by Christopher Barrio