Jayden watched a man in a sharp black suit flip chairs onto empty tables; watched him grab a broom and start sweeping. On stage, a grand piano shone in soft blue light.
“Y’all close soon?” he asked the bartender.
“Closin’ now,” the bartender said back. “Last call.”
The man in the suit looked at his watch, then dropped the broom. He took slow, exhausted strides to the stage and grabbed the microphone. He jumped when it screeched. Once the noise stopped, he began: “We got time for one more performance. So if anybody out there wanna do a poem or sing a song or play somethin’ up here, then you’re welcome to it.” He jumped from the stage and went back to sweeping.
“Get up there, Jay!” Janie exclaimed. “You know you wanna!” He hesitated. “Go on,” she persisted.
Slowly, absentmindedly, he made his way onto the stage. He looked through the blue haze out into the audience. He saw his lady. She smiled. Slowly, he sat.
“What ya playin’?” a lady in the audience called out. Slight laughter hummed throughout the room.
Jayden pulled the microphone close. He paused, contemplating. “This is untitled,” he said finally.
He pressed down. Notes at first, then, to his surprise, they turned into something more. He moved between major and minor chords — modulated between his joys and his pains; his past and an uncertain future. First major and he tasted his mama’s lemonade — remembered makeshift water parks on hot summer days and his first kiss. Then minor and he relived cold winter nights with no heat and no love. He saw the look on his daddy’s face, those glassy eyes, and feelings took over. His fingers moved, pumping life into music. They told his story; his life in song.
He asked no questions, simply let go and was. He played an unknown melody, forgotten once he touched the keys. Memories he’d never experienced danced through his fingers, scenarios that had never crossed his mind, but two things were constant, his love and his lady, moving together throughout time.
Then the final chord. He struck it hard and didn’t move. He was afraid to move. The sound resonated throughout the room, blending with the pitter-patter of the rain against the aluminum roof. An eternity before he lifted his hands from the keys. After that, silence. Smoke stood in its place, refusing to rise, and people stared, not breathing. He squinted through the haze and saw his lady. She wiped away tears.
Marco’s Broken English
by Conrad Ashley Persons
West End
Meredith Lewis, housewife, mother of three, sat watching her second hour of television on a cloudless morning in Virginia. Dressed in a pink robe with matching slippers, she wept furiously. One of those advertisements, from Oxfam or Greenpeace or some organization like that, ran and ran and implored her to help the starving denizens of some small nation in Africa whose name Meredith didn’t even dare try to pronounce.
The situation there seemed tenuous. She couldn’t tell whether the government was a victim of imposed circumstances, whether they were especially corrupt or just poor. The camera panned across another woeful scene, and more buffalo tears welled as Meredith realized how fragile everything was. The most permanent of fixtures was nothing more than a well-built tent, houses shoddily constructed of canvas, threadbare schools with throwaway books, scantily dressed children in scantily fed bodies, and dust everywhere. Everything was so thin she knew that one brave gust of wind could push this tiny civilization into the sea.
But there was hope. Development could come into existence and be sustained, but it wasn’t going to be easy. It was going to take money. It was also going to take fundamental changes in politics, collective amnesia about colonialism, and faith. But the money was what they needed now. Some busty celebrity came in from camera left and made the final plea. Her chest heaved from grief. The situation was as follows: no food — ribs bravely protruding through skin, thirsty flies who, finding no safe ponds, feast on eyes instead — vague, beige bags of rice flown in from the good guys, seven cents could feed seven children, no clean water here, the heat: unbearable, the wind off the vast sands: bitter, the great rivers: gone dry. Simply put: this was not fair. Meredith Lewis, help us, help us help these children. Cry for the horror of this world, for its depravity, for its interminable thirst for entropy. Help us now.
She thought to light a cigarette, didn’t, and chewed her lips instead. She shuffled to the bathroom for a fistful of tissues. Like the rest of the house, this room was modestly appointed, with a lavender ribbon pattern running from baseboard to ceiling. A bowl of potpourri rested by the sink, a medley of dried purple flowers. She took a fluffy towel, also purple, and used it to cover her face. And suddenly the sweetness of the room, its scent, its color — each piece a cute counterpart to another — it all seemed unbearable: a morbid lightness amongst so much horror.
Staring into the mirror, with its gilded frame, she was utterly confused by her appearance. A housewife all cried out in the suburbs. With no mascara, the tears did little to disturb her face. But they made her eyes raw and red and searching. Were her tears for Africa? Or were they for that feeling, deep in her belly, a sad expectancy that any day now she would find lipstick on her husband’s collar, or that he would rush through the door and make straight for the shower, with no explanation save a liar’s grin?
She had not looked at herself for a very long time. She viewed her face shyly at first, then with immodest intent. Meredith had medium-length brown hair, which was burnished by the naked light. Her green eyes were as flat and clean as a newly clipped lawn. Her cheekbones were substantive, but not pronounced, which made her appearance delicate and accommodating. She had once been beautiful.
She rarely flattered her appearance with the many products she spotted in other women’s cabinets. Meredith’s morning routine consisted of the same old foundation and blush she’d first bought the night before prom. She had always clung to simplicity like some familiar womb. But she could feel things unwinding, felt some loosening that precedes a clamor.
She’d spent time in Lyon looking at churches when she was a student, and had once even skinny-dipped in Interlaken on a dare. But adventure was a short-lived pursuit; she loved the cozy streets of the West End and the circumstances of home best. She had never wanted to be anything other than a mother, and since she had birthed her boys she thought of nothing else. She sighed, said her name, and turned her head from the mirror.
To her left was a window. Pear trees were heavy, threatening to bear fruit. Local university boys walked by all dressed in khaki, their hair wet, books shoved tightly in their cases. There was no breeze; not a single branch stirred.
Stepping into the living room, she realized that half an hour had passed. Could I have spent that much time in dumb contemplation? Or was it like all other days when tasks ate her time like corrosives? The commercial was still running on the television. The number on the bottom had been there so long she feared it would burn its impression into the screen: a 1, an 800, and a reminder of suffering in some part of the world she would never, ever want to visit.
Meredith gave Harry’s sixteen-digit credit card number with expiration date, was promised future mailings and a picture for her refrigerator of a darling black girl, and in exchange received relief, temporary relief from all this shit.
The rest of her day spread before her. She had watched her boys go to the bus long ago, and recalled their three heads in single file as they walked: capped, small, anxious. Harry had left this morning quietly. He tiptoed in the mornings, his thin black socks barely touching the hardwood floors. Lights flickered on and off in quick succession as he made his way from room to room. And the way he left the bed was an elaborate, silent ceremony, sliding off in an awkward balancing act so that he wouldn’t wake Meredith and her desire.