Джоанна Скотт - Excuse Me While I Disappear - Stories

But still the rule held: one mustn’t stare in public. Sally nudged her mother to remind her not to stare, Kathleen Marie looked back at her book, and…

Oskar Blinked …

…registering Dorelia’s inappropriate laughter, then closed his eyes again. Where was he? He’d been remembering running across the lawn in his bare feet, yes, running down the slope, his knees like new burls on two skinny saplings, shorts held up by suspenders, hair shaved so short there were scabs on his scalp.

Who can resist the blowhead of a dandelion?

Watch as he makes his wish, then plumps his cheeks with air— puff! —and the seeds scatter in the wind, each borne by its tiny silk parachute. Listen to the flutter of the flag on the pole at the end of the dock. Wince as the gardener boxes him so hard on the head that he falls over.

Uh-Oh.

And then the LED lights began to flicker, disturbing Alicia, who was reading this sentence in the newspaper, “Indeed, Karl Popper built an illuminating philosophy of science on the idea that science progresses precisely by trying as hard as it can to falsify its hypotheses,” and Kathleen Marie, who was reading these sentences in the book she’d found at her mother’s house after the funeral, “‘Oh my God,’ Celeste said, smoothing down her skirt as she returned from the bathroom. ‘My poor bladder.’” Even Jack, who was playing Legend of the Cryptids, and Sally, who was playing What’s the Phrase, looked up for a moment, but not Audrey, who was about to beat her own best time in Gods Among Us . And all the while Ziva—

—Ziva who? We don’t have a record of any Ziva.

The Most Common Causes of Transit Delay:

Track repair.

Signal malfunction.

Dieters who have been weakened by fasting and collapse in a faint.

Times Square

The E train, in fact, was highly regarded and had one of the best records in the whole New York City transit system for on-time arrival. The cause of the breakdown still hasn’t been fully established. MTA officials insist that it had nothing to do with the death of the man who, about the same time, threw himself onto the highly charged third rail in the track bed of the northbound express trains at Times Square.

The E train was nowhere near Times Square when the man, an apparent suicide, was electrocuted. And really, the brief power outage wouldn’t even have earned a mention in the engineer’s log if not for the disturbance in the fourth car.

One Was…

…singing. One was laughing. One was preaching. One was sleeping. Two were reading. Three played video games. The retired late-night announcer for a classical music station based in Astoria was absorbed by a memory from his childhood. One was extracting his pan pipe from its case. Anselm was determining factors that were relevant to a mean estimate of damages, including the Lexan glass windows, center-facing benches, the fiberglass blind end bonnets, and the dynamic brake propulsion system, with a deceleration rate of 2.5 mph, right when the brakes gave a long, drawn-out squeal, and—

Ziva’s Report, Continued

I must confess that I do not ordinarily take the subway. I grew up in a family of some means in the city of Reading in England, and while I no longer have my father’s Rolls-Royce at my disposal, I am willing to splurge for a car service run by my entrepreneurial elderly neighbor, Walter, who drives me about for a fraction of what Uber would cost. The reason I did not travel back to Queens in Walter’s car on this particular day is this: he did not come to pick me up at the usual time. He wasn’t there because there was an accident blocking the Manhattan-bound lanes on the Triborough, and construction work was slowing traffic at the entrance of the Midtown Tunnel, and driving the extra distance to one of the other bridges wasn’t worth his prix-fixe fare, though I only learned this later because I have never bothered to get myself a mobile phone and so was unable to receive his message. Even if I had received his message, I still would have taken the subway—which, to my mind, is further evidence that I have no need of a mobile phone. Living on limited resources, I must make careful choices. And though you might say I am splurging on a car service, you can see that when it comes to accessories such as mobile phones and clothes, I am quite frugal.

Excuse me? Why, I’m getting to the point, if you’ll be patient!

Yawn.

Heeheehee…

Strife and env’ing and rev’ling…

A dormir, dormir…

Multiplying the mean value times 3.5 to total up the quantifiable damages of the plaintiff, including but not limited to (1) medical bills (emergency services, hospital stays, treatment from specialists, pharmacy expenses, and physical therapy), (2) cost of future medical treatment, (3) lost income, and (4) lost future earning capacity.

The gardener struck him, on behalf of his absent father, who wouldn’t have recognized his son in a crowd and came home to preside over the dinner table once a month, on Sundays.

Ding!

Bang!

If, Then

The train ground to a halt with a final jerk. The lights went off. Only the linear points of the dot-matrix route sign stayed on, along with the glow from the various phones.

No one said a word. Leon stopped advocating on behalf of Jesus. Dorelia, who found everything amusing, even managed to turn down the volume of her laughing until it was hardly louder than the effusions of her gaseous digestion. The passengers sat frozen, gripped by suspense. It was as though they’d become aware of the promise of an imminent event that would only occur if they did not move.

The stillness lasted only for an instant that could be measured in a single-digit count of seconds. And then the lights came back on, the air started wheezing through the vents, Dorelia started laughing harder than ever, and it was pretty much back to normal, except that the train remained stalled, which was hardly notable on the New York City transit system.

So What?

Like a train breaking down between Lexington Avenue and Court Square is an event. Yeah, and we sat in the dark for a minute, maybe two. Yeah, and the lights came back on, and we kept sitting there for long enough to give a few weirdos I don’t even know their names the chance to go berserk. Yeah, and? I was four hours late to my interview and I still got the job. Like, what’s the big deal?

Ziva Proceeds.

But first, allow me to provide some background in the form of a brief account as to how my family, once poor, then rich, became poor again. If I ever do get around to writing my memoir, this chapter would be titled “How Major Dormer’s Sweet Delights Goes Bankrupt After Mouse Droppings Are Discovered in Jars of His Chutney.” Does this give you an idea of the cause of our downfall? It’s true that my father was neither a major nor a Dormer, but that’s beside the point. The point is that my father was the victim of a competitor’s sabotage. I may have only gossip and innuendo to go on, but I know it, in the same way that I know what happened to that baby on the E train.

I am an unassuming woman, but I know many things. I know you want to hear about the baby. I’ll explain about the baby. First, though, I want to go on record to say that someone from a company I am prohibited from naming because of libel laws in my beloved homeland bribed one or more of my father’s employees at his Reading plant to stir potentially deadly bacteria into the vats of chutney, thus endangering the lives of thousands but killing only one poor soul, a grandmother in Liverpool, and driving my father out of—

Jack, Audrey, and Sally…