Author: Gregory M. Fox
Category: Fiction
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/gregory-m-fox/page,9,17426-a-breath-of-fiction.html
Body
Section IX
Bandage
There was a lot of blood. The others were still outside while Kendra helped Jim into a chair and inspected his leg. “Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jim said through clenched teeth.
“Bad?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It wasn’t my fault.” He shrugged. “I mean it. It wasn’t my fault. At least . . . I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“Not exactly the same thing, is it?” He was almost growling.
“You’re angry.”
“No,” Jim said, struggling to stay calm, “I’m in pain.”
Kendra soaked a washcloth, “I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
“Then let’s stop talking about it.”
She started washing the wound. Jim winced. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “Really.”
“You sure?”
“Why are you so upset about this?”
Kendra rinsed the cloth, watching Jim’s blood flow down the drain. “I just don’t want this to stick with you . . . to change how you think about me.”
“What do you mean?”
Kendra was looking down, wrapping gauze around his leg. “I don’t want you to . . . dislike me.”
“I don’t,” he said.
“You don’t?”
He smiled. “Not at all.”
Smiling as well, she finished bandaging the wound. “There,” she said. “How’s that?”
“It . . . feels great.”
Knell
For the third straight day, he waited for the phone to ring. Again he struggled to swallow his food in defiance of the fate that awaited him. And again silence lengthened minutes into hours and hours into weeks as the fatal call refused to come. His ears strained for the phone’s ring to the exclusion of all else, until any noise resembling a bell would shake his whole body. He began thinking about what an awful noise bells make: metal crashing against hollow metal—the sound of the last days.
He wondered how long blood tests really took. Did the doctors already know and were, for whatever reason, refraining from telling him the news? That thought accompanied a new sense of dread, for he began to realize that as agonizing as his wait was now, the wait that followed could be even more agonizing: the brutal expectation of death.
But then he heard it. The ringing phone cut through his consciousness, and he scrambled to pick up the receiver.
“Yes? Hello?”
“You need to come to the hospital right now!” a frantic voice replied.
“What is it? Who is this?”
“It’s me, dad. I’m here with Michelle. You’re a grandpa!”
Cough
He was reading the newspaper in front of the fire when the fit struck. He found himself coughing uncontrollably until not just his throat hurt, but his side and his back as well, aching from his body’s violent convulsion. Finally his lungs relaxed and he could breathe again his feeble breath.
“You alright?” his wife called out from the top of the stairs.
“Not bad.”
“That sounded awful. I’m surprised you didn’t cough up a lung.”
He wasn’t so sure that he hadn’t done just that. His hands and the newspaper were covered in splotches of blood. There had never been that much before. “I’m fine,” he said. He did his best to wipe off his hands on the newspaper, tossed the whole congealing mass onto the fire, then finished washing off his hands and face in the bathroom before going upstairs to his wife’s embrace.
“You know,” she said tentatively, “if you would just give up smoking, I bet you wouldn’t cough like that so much.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “It’s just a cold—a little bug I picked up.”
She gave him a long searching look of concern, but found nothing and sighed. “Whatever you say.”
Reunion
She did not rush to greet him—that was what he noticed first. Their reunions were always ebullient, occasioned by lots of screaming, running toward each other and a long embrace. That’s what best friends did.
“Hello,” she said, “Sam.”
“Kris!” he replied, “terrific to see you.”
Sam wrapped long arms around her, but she returned the embrace timidly. Something was wrong. He thought of how she’d acted after accidentally seeing him naked at a friend’s pool party. While changing into his suit, Sam had simply forgotten to lock the door. For weeks after what they called “the Incident,” Kris could barely look at him. Their relationship had changed.
“Were you waiting long?” she asked.
“No, no. Just got here.”
“Good.”
“Yeah.”
“I was afraid,” she said, “with the traffic.”
“Nope,” he said. “We’re just fine.”
That was when he noticed the ring. She had reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear a gesture he’d seen her make hundreds of times, but this time there was a ring on her finger. It explained everything—she was an engaged woman.
“So . . . you and Bill?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re marrying him.”
A pause. “Yes.”
Store
My alarm was wailing like the crying of my children when they were born. I tried to wake up, but my eyes wouldn’t open, tried to move, but my stomach lurched. I moaned. My husband’s voice spoke, sounding miles away.
“Honey? Don’t worry about the kids, I made their lunches. They’re getting on the bus. You rest.”
The world was silent and dark for hours with only my lurching stomach to break my sleep. But every time it woke me, I would think of the kids. We needed milk. There would be no breakfasts tomorrow without milk. Standing up felt like jumping off a merry-go-round, and it was all I could do to get to the bathroom before throwing up. Wise or not, I went to the store. All I wanted was milk.
“Check out the old lady in that isle.”
“Slippers and a bathrobe? Classy.”
“Talk about white trash.”
“I bet she does drugs.”
“I bet she’s on drugs right now.”
I tried to ignore it. But then the cashier’s voice broke me out of my stupor. “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you okay?”
Unthinking, I lashed out and slapped him. I gasped, and weeping, left the store empty-handed.
Dance
An ice cube slipped into his mouth, where thrumming bass notes made it rattle against his teeth. He looked down at another empty tumbler.
“I’m out too,” she said, setting her glass beside his.
“You want another?”
“Or we could dance.” She smiled so sweetly.
He crunched down on the ice. “Alright.”
She tugged him out onto the floor. Even in the thin crowd, he was jostled by thrashing bodies. “You’ve gotta stay loose,” she laughed. He shuffled aimlessly in the shaking dark. The air was thick with pounding hearts, with hazy eyes, with sweat and alcohol. But her face was shining. Whenever bodies came between them, she would reach out, grab his hand, pull him back.
The band started playing a slow song. He looked toward the bar, but dutifully held out his arms. She wrapped her hands behind his neck, stepped in close. “I like this song.” They swayed slowly, dancing cheek to cheek, heart to heart. She was trying to be happy. It was easier when she couldn’t see his eyes wander around the room.
And then he whispered, past the music, the smells, the liquor. “It’s hard, you know: being loved. Don’t let me run away.”
Impact
Laughing in the sunshine beneath a beautiful blue sky, neither of them saw it coming. Jason even looked both ways before stepping into the street. Maybe the truck parked on the curb obstructed their view.
Or maybe they were simply blind to a tragedy they couldn’t conceive.
That red muscle car barely even slowed before the impact. David watched in horror as Jason’s body went limp, crumpled, sailed through the air. Even in the midst of a cataclysm of sound, he later swore he could hear individual bones in Jason’s body shattering. The car stopped, tires screeching. Jason’s skin scraped across the pavement. Dented metal, cracked glass, shattered headlights. Blood.
People were stopping, staring. People were screaming. Someone kept shouting 911. Someone was crying, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. David was oblivious to all of it. He knelt in that pool of blood, took a ragged hand into his own.
“Jason?”
“I have to tell you . . .” Jason struggled to speak, choking on blood.
“There’ll be time for that later,” David said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“No, I have to tell you . . .” His cloudy eyes were focused on a bird flying overhead. The bird pooped right in his mouth.
Mess
Mack was sitting quietly on the couch, sipping a glass of ice water in which the ice had already become tiny boats skimming the surface. The couch leather stuck to his legs as he shifted.
He heard footsteps in the next room halt. Then a shriek.
“What did you do?” Denise burst in, shouting.
“Nothing”
“That mess in the kitchen is not nothing, Mackenzie Quigley.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. It was too hot to worry about something like this. “It didn’t get on the carpet,” he said.
Denise was getting irritated. She was a kettle on the stove getting ready to scream. “That’s not the point. It needs to be cleaned up.”
“I’ll do it later.”
“But how long’s it been there?”
“I don’t know . . . a couple hours maybe”
“And you just decided to leave it there? Dripping and everything?”
He shrugged. “I’ll clean it later. I didn’t expect it to bother you this much.”
The kettle boiled. “HOW COULD THIS NOT BOTHER ME?”
“Don’t worry. I checked his pockets—found a fifty. I figured dinner and a movie are on me. Well, on him, I suppose.”
“Oh,” she said, suddenly becoming very calm. “Where are we going?”
Dissolution
Home is close, but time and space have both dissolved in this swirling haze. I don’t even know if I’m going the right way. There are lights deep in the street, and I’m spinning through that sea of red and green. My tires don’t squeal on the solid sheet of ice
The party is inside, but I’m on the porch keeping my beer cool and watching the snow fall. You come out for a smoke and offer me one. No thanks. You ask if I’m alright.
Sir? Sir, can you hear me? Can you make some sort of response? Victim is conscious, but unresponsive.
Is this transcendence? Swirling snow and night dissolve all meaning, make all meaning possible. It’s terrifying. It’s almost peaceful.
Lights. Fire and Ice. Cutting tearing smashing twisting scraping. Violent. Brief.
Everyone has either left or passed out, and you are back out on the porch, clinging to the last darkness before morning. You listen. Quiet. The only sound is snowflakes falling, cloaking the world like a mother spreading a blanket over her sleeping child. You are warmed in spite of the cold.
Red snow. Everything far away. And I still don’t know what it’s all for.
Oils
The Lancasters who lived downstairs still remembered her. They smiled and waved from the porch as Margot passed by. It had been five years since she’d climbed those oak stairs beside the house, but the seventh step still creaked. She knocked softly, as though she was afraid of arousing the past, then knocked again, louder.
“Yeah,” came a scratchy voice, “come in.”
With a turn of the knob, she was enveloped in the pungent odor of linseed oil, damar varnish, and turpenoid. It was like the intervening years had never happened. She would cross the room, almost dancing, until she was in Samuel’s arms and kissing him deeply. He would guide her to a stool or to the couch, wherever she would be posing. And with the most charming furrowed brow, he would look at her more intently than anyone she’d ever known.
Margot was smiling to herself, but when she looked up, Samuel seemed almost distraught. It was only then that she looked around the room in its present state. Leaning against the walls were dozens of paintings, all in various stages of completion, all portraying the same woman—the woman standing beside Samuel wrapped in only a sheet.
Sawdust
I had seen enough of the Three Stooges to know that when you’re carrying a long 2x4 over your shoulder and turn sideways, you’ll probably hit someone in the back of the head—maybe two. They would stumble and tumble forward and then, once the audience had finished laughing, they would get up and drop a paint can on your foot or smash your hand with a hammer: comic karma.
But that’s not how it actually happens.
When I pulled that 2x4 off the rack and turned around, I heard a dull thud. Max didn’t pitch forward and roll, he crumpled to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut. There was no laughter, only a faint moan followed by sputtering and gurgling. I immediately dropped the board and rushed to his side, stubbing my toe and bruising a shin in the process. “Max,” I said. “Max!” He tried to answer, then vomited in my arms and passed out. “Someone, call an ambulance,” I shouted.
They closed the shop for the rest of the day. Six o’clock the next morning I was sweeping up sawdust from the day before, the sawdust that had soaked up Max’s blood and vomit.
Fingers
My pinkies had come back first. The left had gotten a sprain trying to cross the highway and limped all the way home. The right had spent the night hiding behind the Krispy Kreme dumpster, eating donuts from the trash.
My right thumb had hitchhiked once around the world, but took ninety days to do it.
One forefinger had gone to Paris to find himself while working as a tour guide for the summer. The other had a riotous but disappointing political career in the neighboring town.
One middle finger toured with a rock band, but came back hung over after a week of heavy partying that made it to the tabloids. The other had a short run in an avant-garde show that was a big sensation with critics but made very little money.
My left thumb tried a career as an artist and had five gallery showings that year in New York, but hadn’t sold a painting.
My ring fingers were the last to return. They had left to make a life together and were gone for thirty five years. The left came in a cab and the right walked from the train station. They never said what happened.
Hair
Maggie was sitting alone in the living room when her husband staggered in, later than usual. “Ryan,” she said. “I know.”
For a moment, his whole body tensed, but quickly regaining composure, he said, “Know what?”
“Where you’ve been for one thing.”
“I told you,” he said, trying to sound casual, “I went to the doctor’s.”
“Yes,” she said knowingly, “to that specialist.”
“That’s right,” he answered, beginning to sound nervous.
“I found a hair, Ryan.”
Her husband was suddenly frantic. “Please,” he said, “let me try to explain—”
“There’s nothing to explain,” she said more firmly. “I just wish I had recognized the signs sooner: that extra time you spent in front of the mirror all of the sudden, the new shampoo, your frequent visits to ‘the doctor,’ and those silly hats you started wearing. I had hoped that after all these years, I wouldn’t have to deal with something like this.”
“Maggie,” he said, “please.”
“I want a divorce.”
The words were like a blow to the ribs, forcing the air from R
yan’s lungs. “A divorce?” he stammered.
“Yes,” his wife replied. “You’ve known from the beginning that I could never love a man who was bald.”
Stab
He had been able to tell something was wrong. A warrior’s instincts never dull entirely, and his were still sharp, even after a few years of politics. Still, he hadn’t had time any time to defend himself before the first knife found its way into his side. Then there was one in his back. Then one in his stomach. One in his shoulder. The stab wounds just kept coming. Most of the senators were old men too frail to do much serious damage, but when one blade found its way between two of ribs, he finally understood that he was going to die.
Then he saw Brutus.
“You too, friend?” he managed spit out between gasps for breath.
“I’m afraid so,” Brutus said. He was walking forward with destiny in his eyes and an especially long dagger in his hand. “As a matter of fact, I arranged this little get together.”
“Why?”
“You’re out of control, Julius. I saw what you were becoming. I saw the greedy, grasping monster you are. All of Rome wasn’t enough to satiate you”
Caesar glared. “This is about me dating your sister, isn’t it?”
Brutus paused a moment, then said “Yes.”
“You suck, Brutus.”
Expect
He didn’t know what to talk about. Ordinarily, they never had trouble talking, but that was part of why they were here.
“Have you . . .”
“What?”
“I . . . it was a silly question. I was going to ask if you’ve ever done this before.”
“Oh . . . no, I haven’t.”
She kept her eyes on the road, and he turned back to the window where a shadowy reflection of himself was just as confused as him. He didn’t know what he should feel: excitement, fear, confusion?
“We’re here.”
“Do we . . . go in?” he asked.
“I thought we would. Unless you’re more comfortable—”
“No. No, let’s go in.” He wasn’t sure if this would resolve their issues, but they wanted to be friends. Or something anyway. All they really wanted was to get rid of the tension, and neither of them had thought of any better way. So, they found themselves sitting on this couch together.
“Are you ready?” He nodded. “We don’t have to . . . you know. We’ll just . . . see what happens.”
“Of course”
“We’re just . . . clearing the air.”
“Right. It doesn’t have to mean anything.” He said the words knowing they both had hidden desires. And for the first time, their lips met.
Haunted
Every bullet has a ghost.
I wake up disoriented with the sun in my eyes. Birds? No, just wind chimes from the neighbor’s apartment. It’s the first time in seven years I’ve slept past 5:30 on a weekday, but after yesterday I need the time off. I hardly slept at all, and my hands are still shaking so badly that I spill half my morning coffee on the counter.
Great.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I whisper for the seventy-ninth time.
I turn on the TV and flip through a barrage of daytime television that I never even knew existed. After the Today show and an episode and-a-half of Pawn Stars, I feel like I need to get out of the house. I could go on a run, or maybe get a cheeseburger. I compromise and decide to walk to 7-11 for a Slurpee—that way I don’t have to pass the park again.
I’m not ready.
“I had to,” I whisper.
My jacket is still on the chair where I left it last night. My sneakers are by the door. Pulling them on, I notice the rusty brown stains. Blood. It isn’t mine.
The ghost tears into my heart.
Body
You see, with touch . . . with my body, I could always bring him back. Whenever I thought I was losing him, when I saw that look in his eyes that meant he was going away, I would hold him tight, and I would kiss him and kiss him and caress him until he would look at me again . . . and see me. Even as I aged, when my skin and my breasts started sagging, I would press my face to his, and I would guide his hand to that space between my legs, and somehow . . . maybe purely out of habit, he would make love to me—sometimes for hours. And he would stay.
You can say whatever you want about how it was cheap or degrading, but he was my husband, dammit. There’s no other way to keep a man like that. And it worked. I don’t care if he spent every weekend with a different tramp, I kept him. And now, after forty years, you’re going to try and take him from me. He’s bone of my bone, isn’t he? Flesh of my flesh. Then I may as well be dead too. So do it—and bury my body with his.
Road
The road home from the hospital is perched on the side of a mountain. In the darkness, it’s easy to forget which side is the cliff face and which is the drop off. Lights flicker through the darkness, pass by, disappear.
Miranda is quiet, and I can’t stop talking about pizza toppings. Donny loves pizza, and he’s always trying strange toppings—that’s why it’s on my mind. Of course, Miranda doesn’t know that. She probably thinks I’m nervous. Maybe I am. The road winds in tight curves. It would be easy to tumble off.
I want Donny to like her. And I want Miranda to have time to get to know him. People tell me I’m going about things all wrong, but it seems too important to wait. Of course Elaine was there—she had every right to be, but it ruined everything. Miranda and Donny barely got to talk at all. It wasn’t fair. None of it’s fair.
Each time a car passes in the other lane, Miranda pushes an imaginary brake. My hands shake on the wheel.
I hope he’s sleeping alright.
The moon looms large ahead of us. It looks like I could drive right into it.
Left
I married you because you looked like him. You were a little shorter, but otherwise you could have been twins—the same dark hair, the same strong jaw, the same green eyes that spoke their love openly. My friends all told me it was unhealthy, told me it would never last, told me to move on. But it was not to replace lost love that I married you.
When I scolded you, it wasn’t because you had done wrong, but so I could see the wince of pain on your face that I wished to see on his. When I offered you seconds, it wasn’t out of tenderness, but to destroy the body I loved by watching yours grow heavy and flabby. And as your hair greyed and grew thin, I tried to take pleasure in knowing his hair too had faded.
But after a lifetime I begin to understand that this is futile. It is you who suffers, while he lives on in memory: unharmed, unchanged, perfect. Sometimes, you catch me looking at you with the contempt I feel for him. Still you look at me with love. I wonder, when you’re gone, what I will have left.
Kiss
Each night after they made love, she would lie back in the bed and sigh contentedly. Ever so gently, he would lean over and kiss the little brown freckle just above her left breast, then lie down beside her. Their breathing would fall into rhythm. They would sleep. When the morning light crept across their bed, he would prop himself up on his elbow, lean over and kiss that small freckle.
“Why do you do kiss that ugly splotch?” she sometimes asked.
But he would shake his head and say, “Every part of you is beautiful.”
One morning, after he rolled over and kissed her, he paused. “Honey . . . ?”
“hmwhat?” she mumbled, eyes closed.
“It’s different.”
And there were long drives and pale waiting rooms and furrowed brows and notes scratched on paper. There was a needle and there was a knife and there was waiting. And there was waiting. And there was a phone call, a long drive, a waiting room, a furrowed brow. There was silence. There was a long, long drive. And there was silence.
In bed, he leaned over and kissed the blotchy white scar above her left breast
. A single warm tear fell onto her chest.
Embrace
“You have a coffee pot?” she asked, sticking her head into the kitchen.
“Uh . . . yeah, but—”
“I’ll make some coffee,” she said rifling through the cupboards.
“But it’s after 11:00,” he argued.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It won’t keep you up.”
He waited on the couch in silence as the stranger shuffled around the kitchen. The entire situation was confusing. He was getting too old to be bringing strange, younger women to his apartment. But she had been so friendly that he hardly had to invite her.
“Cream and sugar?” she asked.
“Sugar. No cream.”
In a moment she returned and handed him a steaming mug. “Sugar, no cream.”
“Thanks.”
She sat in the chair opposite him. “You’ve been in love, haven’t you?” she asked.
The question startled him. Not knowing her intentions, he was hesitant to answer, but finally managed to stammer, “Yes.”
“What happened?”
His answer came slowly: “I was selfish. She met someone generous.”
She studied him a moment. “I can make you pain go away. If you want that.”
His throat was too tight to speak, but he nodded. Then Death came and sat next to him; she embraced him and took away his regret.