Amelia Gray - AM/PM

“They’re gold flakes,” Wallace said, reaching to touch them on his back. “Genuine.”

Tess held her hand against the textured gold on Wallace’s tattoo. She drew her fingers back. “Are not,” she said.

“Indeed they are. The artist was fantastic. He literally fused the metal to my skin, and I have to get it retouched every five years.”

The gold leaf made a pattern of fish scales across his lower spine.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, turning his head halfway.

“Not as beautiful as a gold flake.”

He considered it. “Maybe not. It was a very special process.”

“Must have been,” Tess said. She felt sure she would die alone.

Good morning, John Mayer Concert Tee! You seem to have weathered the past few days rather poorly. Your cuffs are split, you’re stained at the neck. The graceful visage of The One Who Will Play the Smooth Guitar is sullied by dirt scrub and bent into a permanent, unnatural shape. You are rigor mortis in clothing form, John Mayer Concert Tee. You accept the elements, the wearer and all his flaws, and your reward is a cramped place in the crack of a window, keeping out the morning sun. You understand what it means to suffer, and what it means to bestow grace. You understand the ditch and the sewage and the long night.

The yoga instructor declared they were pushing toxins out of the body. As the sweat dripped from her face, Chastity licked it to see if it tasted any more toxic than usual. It did not, so she considered the possibility of airborne toxins, or toxins without a discernable taste, toxins that could seep from the body unannounced, and land on the floor, invisible to the naked eye, waiting to be picked up by bare feet, like a splinter, and re-absorbed.

Why does the rain make us feel so romantic and strange? Maybe it’s the fact that we are unnatural spectators of it, from inside our homes, and it is a reminder that we have the power to live our whole lives like this, if we choose. It’s not the smell of fertile ground kicked up by raindrops, or the slick leaves, or the way we must amplify our voices to be heard over this larger presence. It’s the power of the rooftop that makes us want to fuck under it.

Not a hundred feet from camp, Reginald found two stumps next to each other, like twins. He liked the look of them and sat on one, propping his rifle up against the other. It was early yet and the bugles hadn’t sounded, though dew had already wet the tall grass enough to soak the cuffs of his jeans. He didn’t have regulation wool like most of the other reenactors. He spent some time rolling up the jeans until he could see a line of hair from over his crew socks.

He tapped his pack of cigarettes. The others rolled their smokes by hand and lit them with antique lighters. Reginald was there because his friends convinced him to come. They said he could maybe meet some of the women who came to reenact war nurses. Olivia must have told them to say that, which embarrassed him. Most of the war nurses were fat, anyway. The fact annoyed Reginald more, though he was also fat and smoked too much.

He lit his cigarette with a lime-green lighter and thought about how he would save the furniture store.

Pressing on in the winter makes more sense. There’s snow, and when you press on through the snow, you can feel it and sense the difficulty. During the summer, it’s dry land for months. Maybe a little ocean water, but that’s hardly pressing on. Hell, that’s a vacation.

Before the storm, Hazel had washed the sheets and stretched them across the mattress while they were still damp. Sam moved from side to side with some discomfort.

“I feel like we wet the bed,” he said.

“I feel like a brand new bitch,” Hazel said. Her eyes were still closed. He didn’t know what to make of it. At that moment, he didn’t even want to touch her. He felt a distinct fear that she might either disappear or stay the same.

June kept the windows open the first few weeks, but got annoyed at sweeping up all of the dead houseflies, closed the windows, and switched on the air. She still kept the shutters open for a while, but started closing them at night because she couldn’t gauge the tree cover under the dining room window, and she kept feeling like the neighbors were standing in their backyard, watching.

Sometimes she forgot to open the shutters again during the day, and the lack of sunlight made her sleepy. She started opening her eyes only halfway, and then not opening them at all unless she needed them to make chicken salad or sweep the floor.

Eventually, chicken salad grew less important. The chicken straight out of the can gained its own intricacies, and adding mayonnaise and celery and bread and cheese seemed like too much. She could find the chicken in the pantry without opening her eyes, and soon enough, she learned to find the trash can to dispose of the can without peeking even once. She was a high-wire artist. Her invisible audience watched from their backyards.

The trap in the attic was catching some seriously large squirrels. Rats too, but Reginald didn’t want to frighten Olivia by telling her there were rats crawling up through the walls. He installed a humane trap, a kill trap, and a poison trap, and left it up to the vermin to make the choice for themselves.

Carla realized that there are morning people and evening people, and she was both of those, but what she certainly was not was an afternoon person. Words came harder. Things got unpleasantly bright while she dulled, squinting at the computer screen, sipping espresso and making a conscious effort to not eat too much, to not lie down, to take the phone calls and be patient, most of all, be patient.

Reginald sat on the pile of mattresses and wondered how his wife’s friends would die. One particularly dependent woman would be the most likely to be involved in a jealousy-driven murder. Another was a bad driver and too sensitive about it. Still another had undiagnosed health problems. The moon above the loading dock was almost full and Reginald watched it, trying to determine in the stillness if it was waxing or waning.

For a while, Carla dated a man named The Amazing Chet who guessed people’s weight at the science museum. The Amazing Chet was his real name, given to him by his mother. Twenty years before he had traveled with a circus. The science museum liked the novelty and The Amazing Chet was very good, guessing within the half-pound, and exactly more often than not. He used to sit at a folding table and write the weight down on a note card for the person, but the exhibit grew in popularity and the science museum made a special booth for him, with electronic output so that, when a patron stepped on the platform, he could enter their weight and have it be digitally displayed above their head. The Amazing Chet’s exhibit became the most popular in the museum, and scientists of various disciplines came to record and study his accuracy.

The Amazing Chet would come home, tired but happy, and lift Carla in the air to greet her. “You’ve dropped three ounces since yesterday,” he would say. “Are you drinking enough water?”

Eventually his divining career grew too important, and the science museum gathered the funds to turn him into a traveling exhibit. They hosted a gallery party to kick off the tour, and The Amazing Chet invited all his old friends from the circus. Carla was surprised to see so many people. The Amazing Chet was a dull man, in her eyes.