Monday, May 13, 2013

Llama Husband


                There comes a time in every woman’s life when she must buy a llama – and this was one of those times. Things had gotten out of hand for Natalie Wood, her life had not gone the way she had hoped it would.
She remembered a more optimistic time, when she believed in love and marriages and families and s educations and jobs and grocery stores. There had been a time when Natalie did not wake up in panicked cold sweats, attempting, in her sleep, to plan herself out of the situation she had landed in. But there had been lies that could not be untold.
                Let’s start with the failures. The failure to get stunning grades in High School, that lead to the miserable Community College, where the failure to pick a degree followed the failure to stay even reasonably sober at parties followed the failure at parking on the first day of classes. Dropping out of school may not have been a mistake, but doing so by getting carried along in some form mob madness in an anti-modern-architecture rant, assisting in the burning down of the school’s administrative building and getting banned for life, may have been.
                From there, it was easy to see how things could have gone downhill. Common mistakes like mistakenly assuming your common grocery store bag boy was pregnant preceded mistakes such as accidentally selling your roommates bike instead of your own, and suddenly Natalie found herself in an unfriendly world where she just could not bring herself to succeed.
                Things had gotten bad. Natalie could not hold down a job long enough to ever receive employee of the month, roommate rumors had and no one wanted to live with the girl who had sold someone else’s bike, and she could not, for the life of her, remember to call her mother on any major holiday. In a stroke of genius, possibly Natalie’s only stroke of genius for the rest of her comical life, she moved into married housing. The rent was cheaper without roommates, the neighbors left her absolutely alone when she told them she and her husband were brand-spanking- new newlyweds, and she could get by with very little furniture in her apartment with no one she had to share it with. The idea was such a good one, it filtered itself into other aspects of her life. A local gas station agreed to hire her, when it found out she and her new husband were “just trying to make it”. The next phone call with her dignified Mother, where Mrs. Wood attempted to chew Natalie out for not dating anyone, Natalie announced she had eloped and married a Chilean man named Harold Claus, a man who loved poetry and wove coats. When Mrs. Wood didn’t question the absurdity of a Chilean man with the surname of Claus, Natalie went ahead and filed for taxes and a wife, and expecting mother, experiencing lovely tax breaks and returns. She even found a way to take online classes at another community college, one she wasn’t blacklisted out, by weeping to the administrator about the difficulties of being a young wife and Mother. This elaborate story would have held up itself if no one cared much about Natalie Wood. But people did care, whether it was out of curiosity, familial love or to collect the proper amount of rent, people began asking questions. Weeks went by and Natalie made casual excuses, Harold was sick, or shopping or away selling coats. When no man had shown up in Natalie’s life with whom she could pretend was Harold, she began to get desperate.
                This is where the llama steps in. A llama, Natalie thought, could live in a small apartment, it didn’t need large spaces to roam through. A llama would walk around the apartment, and make stepping noises in two parts of the apartment at once, so that it was feasibly that Natalie was not living alone. A llama would be hairy, and would spit, would leave his hair and spit around the apartment, specifically the kitchen and bathroom, as, she imagined (having never actually spent much time round one). There was also the fur, or hair, or whatever llama’s grew, that she could then weave into coats, to leave lying around and offer as gift, leftovers from Harold’s coat business. She would have to buy twice the amount of food, and with the vegetables, she could tell people she was hoping they were expecting. A llama would make loud groaning noises, that could sound like newlywed love-making to her neighbors and landlord. When the horribly short man who had been coming to audit her, for possibly lying on her tax return form, she could stand behind the door while the llama pushed against it and groaned and snorted, and tell the tax man that it was a bad time, that her husband was horribly drunk and out of control, and to come back later. 

Sunday, May 12, 2013

He thought of himself as a Bohemian at heart...


He thought of himself as a Bohemian at heart, but he was really just a corporate sell-out.  Mark’s business had started about 5 years earlier, and as he walked into his shack of a house he pondered what he could have done differently.  He looked at the fire as he plopped down in his beanbag chair.  As he fell a few beans popped up from around him and one of them flew into the fire.

“Score,” he muttered under his breath.  He loved his Bohemian life.  He began to wonder if he had even done anything wrong with his business.  “Maybe I was supposed to sell out so I could go back to my roots, and find better business prospects.  Take today for example!  I loved today.”

It had been a good day.  He started with his barefoot run through the woods, and he had only stubbed a toe once, a remarkable feat that anyone who’s run barefoot will understand.  After his run he skipped taking a shower.  “Shower’s are for rich people” he thought.  Besides, he didn’t have a shower in his shack.  Usually he just snuck into a neighbor’s yard and used their hose.  He’d only been caught once and the thrill of it made him want to do it more, but today was no day for showers.  Instead it was a day to visit the coffee shop.  He had seen a pretty girl there the week before and had been everyday since.  He felt justified in not showering because she was also un-showered the first time he met her.  He remembered because that’s what they talked about.

“I hate getting wet”, she remarked.

“Me too.”

It was probably the most magical conversation he’d ever had.  He thought about that conversation as he walked up to the coffee shop door.  His heart skipped a beat as he saw her.  It was his lucky day.  What was she doing behind the counter?  He smoothly walked in and began to run his hair through his fingers, but his middle finger got caught on the baby dread that was forming near his ear.  He looked at her and pulled his finger out of the dread just in time to wave hello.

“Smooth” he thought. She didn’t see and we’re off to a good start.  He got in line, bought his coffee, and started a conversation with her about business.

“Why are you behind the counter.”

“I just got a job here.”  She replied.

The conversation went smoothly.  He even got her number at the end.  And as he left he realized that while his original business was a sell-out, he could try again.  She had inspired him to start his own coffee shop, a business that would match with his bohemian heart, yet mathematical brain.

-Liz Young

Feet

               The woman approached me slowly then said, “I think you could be a foot model.” I raised my head gently, the London rain beating down mercilessly on my back. Her face was full of pity and warmth, a look I had not seen on the face of a human being for many a year. A car drove by, splashing water on both me and my well-wisher. Water drenched me, and I was thoroughly soaked, my ragged poncho that I had pilfered from a thrift shop unable to keep out the wetness. The woman, dressed richly in furs and jewelry , seemed unphased by the whole ordeal. I averted my gaze as she continued to look down at me, mothering me. Unable to comprehend the look that this rich socialite, this bourgeois was sending me, I instead directed my attention to my feet. My feet. About the only part of me that only mattered anymore. The only part of me that retained their former glory. My running feet, still maintaining that semblance of Greek muscular glory, those perfect proportions, and even they had become blackened with the soot that poured out of the myriad Londonian industries and the accompanying slightly acidic rain that wrinkled and superficially carved them.
                “What?” I responded thickly. My brain raced far faster than my mouth. I couldn’t quite understand what the lady was saying. Who was she? A fashonista sent to scour for potential models? I simple well-wisher, perhaps stopping by to give me a pence and wish me a God Bless before disappearing into her life of fine wines, feasts, and parties? A deranged Londoner, quite unable to withstand the inequality that formed 21st-century England?
                She responded with slowness and great brevity, but firmness. “Your feet are quite remarkable. Of course, they’re rather dirty, but with a bit of proper cleaning, they could do nicely in television ads.”
                She proffered no further explanation but instead stood sphinx-like, daring me to further probe this riddle. Was she joking? She couldn’t possibly be serious. Who was she to talk to this Yankee bum living under a bridge in the poorest section of town? Did she not know that I was a pariah? That my running days were over, that I’d failed in my goal of Olympic stardom?  That I had run with the best of the best and had even held my own with the greatest long-distance runners of my time before the shattering, bone-crunching, career- and life-ending injury? That the lot threw me out on the streets, left me stranded in gutter far from family, friends, and loved ones?
                My mind drifted back to that day not unlike today, when the clouds frowned and cried out all their tears onto the muddy track, and when my tears mingled with theirs as I slipped and fell and twisted my calf into weird, unnatural angles. A day not unlike today, when the rivulets ran fast and quick. That day, however, was only sad, worried whispers from coaches and runners. Whispers that turned into disgust and neglect when the extent of my injury became known. I shuddered in the rain of then and now.
                My unfocused eyes sharpened. I noticed that the lady stood patiently, arm extended, waiting for me to respond. A white card lay in her hand. How long had she been standing there before my reverie snapped? No matter, the fact was, she was still there, waiting patiently until I responded. I looked at my feet again. Could this, my savior from a life of poverty in rural Ohio, from backbreaking labor on poultry farms, turned enemy, turn again into my savior? Were the delicate veins and gentles curves and rich callouses and creased lines of my ambulatory devices really the answer after all?
                Her had still outstretched, I raised myself up slowly the rain dripping off of me like streams draining off Poseidon as he stood from the depths of the sea. I stood erect and calmly took the card.
                “Thank you, madam,” I said.

- James Juchau