Amelia Gray - AM/PM

The intense regret of purchasing inexpensive curtains one cannot afford! Feeling doubtful about the idea that suede curtains will make this room look something other than laughable! Panicked financial insecurity, linked closely to a fear of being alone! Sinking emotions related to a worthless mass of completed work! The desire to do all one can to rip off an honest business! The creeping disgust directed toward the cat with worms!

“We’ll get a babysitter,” Betty said, shifting the baby from one arm to the other. “I’ll find a restaurant with good lighting.”

“Good,” said Simon. He was reading a book about organic gardening.

“Lighting is essential,” she said.

Gardening, Simon learned, is easiest when you respect the land and the tools you are given.

She was flipping through the phone book, reading carefully for any intimations of weak lighting. “We’ll have dinner,” she said. “Then, we’ll meet up with everyone. What about Italian?”

“Too spicy.”

“Cheese isn’t spicy.”

He shrugged. Planting the proper seeds at the proper times means respecting the land, and the land will bear fruit in answer to your respect. “Indian?” he asked.

She looked at him. “Everything’s spicy.”

“You have to order a curry,” he said. He kissed his fingers, as a gourmand.

Betty shut the phone book and walked into the bedroom. Simon read about winter plants, tubers and flowering squashes.

The power went out during the storm. Hazel and Sam talked in the darkness without touching.

Sam had given up on finding a flashlight and instead lay on the kitchen floor. “Goethe said that everything is metaphor.”

“I can never pronounce his name correctly.”

“Gerr-tay.”

“Gare-tah.”

“Gareth.”

“Certainly it’s not ‘Gareth’.”

“Certainly not.”

A flash of lightning briefly illuminated them both. They listened for the thunder. “The correct pronunciation is right around the corner,” she said.

“Guer-tuh.”

The crack of thunder startled Hazel. She reached out for Sam’s hand.

“That might be it,” she said.

The cats were arranged like matchsticks, Martha said. She joked that she wanted to pick the fat calico up, strike it, and light her cigarette. Emily shut her eyes.

Missy had legs, and she knew how to use them. She slid them into jeans or wrapped a skirt around them. She walked with her legs to the grocery store. She used her legs to help haul everything up the stairs and into her kitchen, and she used her legs to walk back into the bedroom and back into bed. It was easy to use her legs, she thought, drifting off.

June continued preparing her apartment for Terrence’s visit, even after it became apparent he would not arrive. She arranged the furniture, thinking Terrence is not going to like this chair or I wonder what Terrence will see first and then she would stand at the entry, letting her eyes fall on the problematic chair, and the carefully arranged photographs, and the strange carved bowl that June loved but knew for a fact that Terrence would not love, and there it was, anchoring the whole of the room together, sticking out like a bruise. It was wood with tarnished metal accents, nothing fancy, something she had found at a secondhand store when she was looking for curtains to hang so that Terrence would not see the metal blinds and think less of her.

It concerned June that she was taking the sentiment too far, but there was a certain enjoyment to be had from preparing the house for a man, for cleaning and waxing the floors with the thought that he would, at any moment, walk up the stairs (in these fantasies, he had his own key), drop his bag on the couch, and touch her casually on both shoulders before stepping around her to open the fridge. June told herself, This fantasy could be of any man . This was, in theory, true. But for that night, it was Terrence, and in the morning it would be Terrence, and June tried not to think beyond that.

The dog’s ears twitched. Simon rubbed scar solution onto the tops of his hands as he had every day for the past six months, trying to erase the marks left by a cooking accident. He had grown accustomed to the scar solution, an elixir of onion peel extract that smelled like the waitress girl at the Italian restaurant when her downy arm brushed his cheek as she leaned over to refill his drink.

Simon stood over the dog on the back porch, surveying the overgrown grass and peach trees and cobwebbed grill that, combined, represented his set of summer projects. He tried to remember the time of day he was born, deciding eventually on five thirty-two in the morning. It was a Presbyterian hospital back then. That was before it was bought and turned into a research center where they studied people with night terrors. Patients woke at all hours, screaming for their mothers. Everybody’s got to start somewhere.

Dear June,

I want you to know that when I said I would never wash my hands again, I was serious.

Sincerely,

Terrence

When you’re tangled up with your woman in a bed, it feels right to further tangle yourself.

“I wish I had a hat,” Simon said.

“I wish you were a hat,” Betty said. “I wish you were my hat. I would carry you with me, wrapped around my skull, when I was having a bad day. You could protect my image, if you were my hat.”

“I would have to be stylish.”

“Far be it from you to not be stylish. You would be the envy of all, and of all hats, in the neighborhood. I would go on walks outside, just to show my hat off to the people, and as I passed, there would be some jealousy there.”

“We would both be able to sense it?”

Betty pressed her face into Simon’s neck. “I would be able to sense it, and you would be able to sense me .”

After a few hours or days, Terrence decided to try out his voice. “Charles,” he said.

“Yes, Terrence?”

“I’m afraid we will never escape this box.”

“That is certainly the simplest way to articulate that particular fear.”

“Charles?”

“Yes?”

“We have fallen out of time. If we die in here, will anyone find us?”

“That calls upon some important questions. Will we continue to exist as such, for example. And if we will, is it true that everyone else will — or in fact that anyone else will — continue to exist as such, and if that’s all true, will the box continue to exist as such. All of these elements have to come together perfectly, and it’s somewhat narrowing to assume they will, with or without our contributions.”

“Charles.”

“What is it?”

“I cannot find the exit.”

“Neither can I, old friend. Neither can I.”

Of course, the conversation was just starting to get somewhere when a frayed electrical connection sparked and set the gas station on fire.

“We should really, really be going,” Emily said. “I’ll tell you all about it if you start driving.”

Martha shook her head. “I have to start driving to hear about your lack of attraction, then. So as long as it’s convenient for you, we’ll talk about how you can’t look at me.”

“I can look at you,” Emily said. Her eyes were fixed on the smoke. Employees were hustling patrons through the front doors. One of the customers gestured frantically at them. Emily rolled down her window. “The gas station is about to blow up,” the man said.