Marie-Helene Bertino - Safe as Houses

“Who the hell is that?” Emily pointed to the other woman, who extended her hand. “I’m Emily.”

“I’m Emily,” Emily corrected her.

“We have the same name!” said the woman. “Isn’t that bizarre?”

Marcel looked back and forth. Emily inspected her replacement, starting with the T-shirt. “Fuck a duck. Led Zeppelin?”

“I adore getting the Led out!” cried the woman.

“Why does she talk like an exclamation point?” Emily said.

Marcel lit a cigarette.

“I adore the smell of smoke!”

Emily’s eyes widened. “You made me dumb.”

Marcel said, “Sometimes you were a lot to handle.”

“This lady is weird!” said the Ideal Emily.

Emily sucked in air. “Is that an accent?”

“I’m from Charlotte, North Carolina!” She made Carolina into an eight-syllable word: Ca-o-ro-ah-li-ah-na-uh . Then she raised a knee to her chest and held it. “If you slowpokes are going to argue all night, I’m leaving without you!” With that, she took off again, jogging at a fast clip on a street that ascended in full view, so they could watch her run for what seemed to Emily like a long time.

On an inhale Marcel said, “She was a track star in college. She quit to pursue modeling.”

“She can really haul,” Emily agreed.

“You don’t deserve her,” the Idea of Marcel advanced and stood next to his doppelganger. To Emily’s surprise, the Idea was inches taller. “She deserves someone who appreciates her reticence to try new things. Who thinks experimentation in bed is overrated. Someone…,” he made a dramatic pose with his chin, “who will floss with her. Someone…,” he made fists and showed them to Marcel, “who will fight for her.”

Marcel squinted — his expression when he, mid-sell, stepped away from a painting to feign disinterest. “Is he serious?”

The Idea of Marcel wound up and landed a punch on Marcel’s gut. Marcel cried out in pain and looked to where he had been hit. He threw his cigarette into the street and rose to his tallest height, five feet eight in boots. A moment passed. The mother and baby rolled by, one of the wheels on the carriage wonky, making a cackling sound. After they passed, Marcel lunged at the Idea, who reacted like a rag doll and was thrown around as such. They ended up on their knees on the sidewalk, batting against each other like crabs.

Good gravy , thought Emily. Neither one can fight .

“Bad thinking!” The Idea said. “Assistance, buttercup!”

Emily was torn. She had always wanted Marcel to fight for her. To land a single, grounding punch on a sleaze at a bar. To be resolute and irrational on her behalf. However, enacted in front of her, it seemed dramatic and unnecessary.

She said, “Stop?”

The Idea of Marcel released the real Marcel with a final shove. “Anything you say, buttercup.”

“Buttercup?” Marcel rubbed his arm in pain. “Shows what you know. She hates nicknames.”

“You never tried,” said Emily. “And my name is so good for nicknames!”

“Em-press,” said the Idea. “Em and Em, Em-dash, Em-sixteen.

Emily said, “Shut the fuck up, Marcel.”

Marcel added, “Dickweed.”

The Idea stumbled backward from the force of their synchronized rebuke. “I just want to self-renovate! What’s happening to my arms?” He held one up. It was dematerializing from the elbow to his fingers: one, two, three, four, five. He held up the other, which was exiting the same way.

“Corgis!” he cried, as his thighs and belly vanished. His legs called it quits into the air. His neck sayonara-ed.

He was just lips. “Buuuuutttttteeeeerrrrrcccccuuuuup.” This went on for an awkward amount of time. Finally, he was gone.

Marcel and Emily stared at the empty spot.

She said, “This world is fucking crackers.”

Marcel grinned. “I missed your mouth.” He pointed up the street to where the Ideal Emily, still jogging to nowhere, flickered. A truck drove by. Her specks dispersed. Her long ponytail winked, the last to go.

The Idea and the Ideal were dead, leaving two real people on the street.

Marcel pointed to Emily’s umbrella. “You don’t need that anymore.”

She folded it. “There are disturbing psychological elements afoot tonight.”

“You can say that again,” he said. “I just fought myself and lost.”

Emily did not say it again.

“I would never wear a suit like that,” Marcel said.

He made a mean face. She made a mean face. This was something they used to do.

He said, “I call you by your name. The name your parents gave you. Because I like the name Emily, Emily.”

She said, “If your ideal is…,” she pointed up the street to where her replacement had vanished, “and I am…,” she showcased herself with her hands, “and my idea of you is…,” she raised her hand to indicate a height level, “but you are actually…,” she lowered her hand a few inches, “then doesn’t that mean…” She sat on the curb and covered her face with her hands. “I’m tired,” she said. “I feel like scrambled eggs.”

Marcel sat next to her. “Teatime.”

She uncovered her face. He looked at her.

“You are,” he said, “the genuine article.”

Emily said, “Why do parents bring their kids to restaurants if they’re just going to let them run wild?” She had wanted to ask him all night.

He sighed. “I hate kids.”

“Yes,” she said. “You do.”

…

Emily, alone, walked home. The rain had let up, earthworms and homeless people were back on the street. She handed a quarter to a woman who wagged her digits through fingerless gloves.

“You’re an angel,” the woman said.

Emily said, “I’m just another person on the street.”

Emily passed the first café where, four years earlier, she and the real Marcel had their first date. This night’s reality felt so loose and carbonated that she was certain if she peeked in she’d see them then, four years younger, bent over a piece of cake. He’d be holding his fork out, in the middle of a joke. She’d be wondering if the metal clasp on his jeans was a button or a snap. Would it require wrenching or just a quick, satisfying yank?

Let them talk, this Emily thought. She walked by.

A shattering inside and dull laughter.

Light over the trees, a few stars.

There are American flags on school windows, on cars, on porch swings. It is the year I bring Bob Dylan home for Thanksgiving.

We park in front of my mom’s house — my mom, who has been waiting for us at the door, probably since dawn. Her hello carries over the lawn. Bob Dylan opens the car door, stretches one leg and then the other. He wears a black leather coat and has spent the entire ride from New York trying to remember the name of a guitarist he played with in Memphis. I pull our bags from the trunk.

“You always pack too much,” I say.

He shrugs. His arms are small in his coat. His legs are small in his jeans.

“Hello hello,” my mother says as we amble toward her.

“This is Bob,” I say.

My mother was married with a small son in the sixties and wouldn’t recognize the songwriter of our time if he came to her house for Thanksgiving dinner. She has been cooking all morning, and all she wants to know is whether somewhere in his overstuffed Samsonite my friend Bob has packed an appetite.

He has. “We’re starving,” I say.

The vestibule is charged with the cold we have brought in. She puts her finger to her lips and points to the dark family room. I can make out a flannel lump on the couch. “Your brother is sleeping. We’ll go into the kitchen.”

The kitchen is bright with food — cheeses, meats, heads of cauliflower, casserole dishes. My mother wipes her hands on an apron she’s had for years. “I wanted him to have his favorite foods before he leaves. For Iraq.” She pronounces it like it’s something you can do. I run, I walk, I raq. “Bob,” she says, “Do you know how to behead a string bean?”