Slice Issue 22 | Page 14

SLICE august ISSUE 22 AJA GABEL been quiet all day. Sleeping locusts up in the branches, a stack of books beside her. Not even her hair rustled in the stillness. The neighbor boy pulled up loudly, the gunning of his engine cracking through the silence. He opened the door, and a small dog hopped out after him and ran straight to her, knocking over the glass on the grass. The ground soaked up the tea, and the dog licked her ankles. Blair quietly thought she hadn’t been happier all week. The boy nodded toward her. In return, she petted the dog. August, he said, calling to the dog. August! Come back! August sat and stared blankly at Blair. The boy, broad chested and dark haired, ambled over. I’m Lawrence, he said. That’s August. I figured, Blair said. Nice car. It was my dad’s. I have to fix it up. I think it’s nice the way it is. Vintage, Lawrence said. People like vintage. It’s my birthday, Blair said. Speaking of vintage. Oh, happy birthday. Lawrence held up his hands. I’m sorry. I don’t have anything for you. The dog’s wet nose pushed up against the soles of her feet. She laughed. But I see you sometimes, he said. From the window. You do a lot of staring. I’m trying to be more present, she said. More zen, you know. Tell that to those Bible salesmen, he said. If they ever come around here, I’ll tell them something. He put his hands in the pockets of his shorts. They waited for a sound, but nothing. Eventually, a bus came down a hill and ding-donged to a stop somewhere. This reminded her. You could play me a song, she said. Someday, not now. But someday, you could play me a birthday song. She thought Lawrence blushed, but he looked away, and anyway it was hot. He was tall and thin, with long limbs she was sure he’d been awkward with in high school. But now he was growing into them. She couldn’t help but compare him to Callam, and she found that Lawrence was less broad, less prone to smile, moved more languorously. conditioner kicked in, it startled her. A stack of journals lay by the sink, and she flipped through them absently. She wondered about the locusts and thought about making iced tea or going for a soggy run or taking herself out to dinner later. She thought also that maybe she should get her own dog, for company, if that would make her seem agreeable at faculty parties, more forgiven for not having published more. What did she have to say about pedagogy, though? What could she say about how students ought to learn? Blair stared at the neighbor’s house and listened to the guitar and the dog and thought about Maine. A cool Canadian wind would be blowing on Callam and his girlfriend, surely, and they’d be wearing nautical stripes and fleece, cracking lobster legs and sucking out the meat from the slim insides, juice running down their wrists. Blair used to be a northerner, but here she could not seem to remember what that felt like. Saying she was a southerner didn’t seem right, either. She wondered if she was no longer from anywhere, or if there was just no name for where she was from. She didn’t know which was worse. The sky clouded over. It would rain soon. Blair walked around the house and wrestled with the windows. She wanted them open, but they were swollen and old, and she accidentally punched a hole in one of the screens. She moved from room to room and shoved the windows up and sweated with the work. The neighbor boy’s guitar came through louder, and when the storm came she could hear the trees rustling in the early wind. When it broke, she sat at the kitchen table and let the swaths of rain cut through the windows, onto the journals, curling their pages, bleeding the ink. That was better, she thought, lying on the couch, closing her eyes to the torrent. « . » It quickly became apparent that the neighbor boy also had nothing to do. He drove a white muscle car, an old Mustang that he took for seemingly aimless drives. He had begun waving at her through his bedroom window. She waved back sometimes and sometimes pretended that she hadn’t seen him. One afternoon, when the boy was on a drive, she took a glass of sweet tea out on the lawn with a blanket and lay down beneath the magnolia tree. It had 12 She hugged her knees to her chest, and August came closer, licking her ankles again with his small tongue. Come, August, Lawrence said, and August went. They walked across the lawn together, Lawrence looking back only once before letting the screen door slap behind them, like secular applause in the relentless afternoon. towel around herself and walked to the door. Perhaps it was Lawrence and the dog, she thought, come to play. Perhaps it was the mailman with a package from Maine, fresh lobster on ice. Or perhaps it was Violet, having found their conversation stimulating enough to trail her back home and continue it. Blair tiptoed to the peephole and saw two young men in short-sleeved, button-up shirts and ties and dark pants. They held bicycles, and one of them mopped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. She opened the heavy door, but not the screen. Good afternoon, ma’am, one of them said. We’ve come to see if you know where you’re going in the afterlife. They smiled cheerily at her, both with close-cropped hair and small pimples emerging around their mouths. She clutched the towel to her breasts. She shook her head. No, she said. I actually don’t. Have you ever thought, what if when your time comes, what if God recognizes that you did not open your heart to him in salvation’s name? The man speaking smiled at her as he waited for her reply, and the other slapped at a mosquito on his elbow. The sun was sinking behind them. Blair opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. How to ask them to leave? she wondered. How to politely make it clear they were unwanted? Where was Lawrence? The other man jumped in to fill her silence. We are here in Christ’s name, to let you know of the wonderful opportunity you have to open your heart, he said. Yes, the other man said. Do you have a Bible in your home? Blair looked behind her, as if to search for the Bible. Her house was cold, still. She turned back to them. She gently pushed open the screen door and leaned against the doorframe. She said, I’ve never read it. The man’s eyebrows rose, and Blair could tell he was excited. He looked at his friend, and his friend kneeled to open the brown briefcase he carried. Inside Blair glimpsed ten or so burgundy leather-bound Bibles with gold lettering. When he placed one in her hands, she looked down and her wet hair dripped water onto the cover. The first man reached over and quickly wiped it off with a handkerchief, and Blair looked up. How much? she asked. She would give them money, and that’s how they would leave. « . » Blair took herself to the pool with purpose. The apartment complex was all but abandoned this time of year, though every now and then a few young kids would wander in wearing baggy shorts and no shirts and cannonball into the deep end, splashing her legs. Then they would climb out and stare, confused and squinting under the blanched sky. Blair never felt anyone staring at her body, though. She had turned forty without comment. She often dozed with a book splayed out over her stomach, her bathing suit wetting the pages. A lone young woman came up to her and asked her what she was reading. She answered that she didn’t know and lifted her sunglasses up to see her better. The girl had long dark hair that reached down past her buttocks, and she was standing up to her thighs in the shallow end, like a Venus emerging from the sea-foam. Her hair was dry and curling in the humidity but for the tips, which hung low, submerged and waving in the dirty pool water. Her lips were shaped like a neat, fat bow. Her name was Violet, and they had a conversation, but later Blair was unable to recall it. Something about city living, and how Violet missed it, and though Blair had no particular thoughts on the subject, she agreed with Violet. Yes, she might have said, I miss the skylines, too. Violet stood in the water for the whole conversation, with her hair tips swaying beneath her. When Blair returned home, still dripping onto the hardwood and chilled by the cool air inside, she remembered only Violet’s full lips, which seemed to move slowly and lazily as she spoke, like her hair tips in the water. I know, Violet had said, but her lips parted in a wide circle and closed naturally, appearing to form another, plumper word. Blair was still in her bathing suit, standing in the kitchen, when her doorbell chimed. She wrapped the damp 13