Gelato

by Richie Zaborowske | Apr 25, 2024 | flash fiction

For two years now, Leonard’s wife hasn’t wanted to have sex with him. He figures it might have to do with her mother passing, or maybe it’s because both their kids are in college and the house is empty. Maybe it’s biological. He has no idea. Hell, for all he knows, it could be the cat puke. Their tabby bolts her food nearly every morning, and even though Leonard tries to find the mess before his wife has to deal with it, maybe cleaning up all that chunky, mucous, slop, has finally killed off her libido. He’s not sure, and he doesn’t blame her. If anything, he blames himself. He feels culpable in a way he doesn’t understand.

To find answers, he’s read a stack of vintage Cosmo magazines that he bought at Goodwill and a shelf worth of relationship books from the library. On his phone, he cruises Reddit’s Dead Bedroom forum and tunnels through the wormhole of YouTube. There are also chat rooms. Spread out across the country are others just like him. Leonard commiserates, he swaps tales, offers what little guidance he can. He also gets invited. There are meetups. Men and women looking to comfort each other. To get from each other what they can’t get at home. There is a meeting tonight at the Texas Roadhouse just across town.

Leonard has resolved to attend. As a cover he’s told his wife that he’s joined a bowling league. Just a bunch of guys from work. Drinking beer and throwing strikes. Don’t wait up. After showering and slapping on too much aftershave, he unzips his bowling ball bag to double-check that the box of Trojans is still there. When he looks up, he sees his reflection in the bedroom mirror. He unbuttons the top button on his shirt, then realizes he looks like a creep. Hastily, with his thick fingers trembling, he buttons it back up, trying to ignore the fact that he now looks like a sleazy businessman on the prowl.

On his way out, he pauses at the patio door. Outside, wearing sweatpants and a shawl draped over her shoulders, his wife is on a wicker chair, lost in a well-worn paperback. Alright, dear, he says, trying to keep his voice even. I’m leaving, he says, just wanted to say goodnight.

You look nice, she says, putting down her book and standing. Before you go, I wanted to give you something.

You did?

You remember our honeymoon? she asks.

He does. She wore lingerie. Purchased from a boutique in Austria. A complexity of lace across her bosom, red fabric stretched taut across her backside. There were these clips that hung down and pulled up her stockings.

One moment, she says, walking past him into the house.

Would she really purchase lingerie? Anything was possible. Years ago, many years ago, on a frigid mid-February morning, she had visited his apartment unannounced. When he opened the door to the bracing cold, she was standing there on the stoop, wearing an oversized parka that went past her knees. Once inside, she unzipped the fur liner. To his surprise, she was naked underneath, her hands freezing but her body warm and welcoming.

When she comes back she’s traded the shawl for a hooded sweatshirt, the paperback for two bowls. She hands him one.

What’s this? He asks.

Gelato. Vanilla.

Gelato?

I saw it at the grocery store, a new brand, she says, sitting back down on the wicker chair. And I thought of you.

You thought of me?

Yes, she says. Remember Italy, our honeymoon? The vendor with his big booming voice? Every time we were near his cart, you had to stop and order a scoop of each flavor. You spent a small fortune.

Leonard doesn’t remember, and he holds his spoon awkwardly as if he’s never used an eating utensil before. The gelato sits in his dish, white, with specks of brown, a frozen lump that’s about as far away from sex as he can imagine.

Come on, she says, watching him, smiling at his bewilderment. You were wild about gelato.

Only one bite, he promises himself, stabbing the gelato with his spoon. The group isn’t going to stay at Texas Roadhouse all night. He didn’t splurge on the twenty-pack for nothing.

Tentatively, Leonard takes a lick. The gelato is denser than ice cream. The vanilla flavor bright and spicy, almost floral. More like the idea of vanilla than actual vanilla. The man, he remembers now, was named Giovanni. Giovanni’s Gelato. At dusk, parked on a cobblestone lane, surrounded by all those tall buildings stained Baralo red, Giovanni’s cart would be all lit up with votive candles sputtering away in little glass jars. Giovonni liked to tease Leonard. Said the reason Leonard was so hungry was because he was in love, and Leonard’s love was going to help Giovanni retire early, help him send his daughters off to college overseas.

Leonard remembers the joy he felt in the simple act of holding his wife’s hand, his new wife, as they strolled along the lanes and talked about everything and nothing, talked for the sake of talking. He remembers how each time they approached Givonni’s cart, the man would spread his arms wide in the fading light and roar, Thank God for Leonard’s love!

How could he ever forget, Leonard wonders to himself, scooping more and more gelato until his spoon is fruitlessly scraping the side of the bowl.

Candles

by Kelly Ann Jacobson | Apr 18, 2024 | flash fiction

The third store we visit has been raided. The shelves are like rows of gapped teeth—missing flashlights, missing batteries, missing fans, missing gallon jugs of water. Our list is a prayer in your clasped hands. “What about candles?” you ask, and the nervous girl hanging lighters on the endcap takes us through the aisles to décor. “Not much left,” she says as she eyes the few colorful glass cylinders on the shelf. Is she reconsidering her own supply? Will she return here to scavenge the remains? I notice, then, that she has a bump of her own, but I know better than to ask. She retreats back to the lighters, and I watch, out of the corner of my eye, as she bends and hangs and slides.

“Pumpkin spice?” you say as you wave one of the candles under my nose. The smell is cinnamon, clove, and maple—but not pumpkin.

I turn back to you and shake my head. “Please don’t ruin pumpkin spice for me.”

“I forgot you’re an addict.” You clink the cylinder holder down and retrieve the pink one. “How about this?” Watermelon, oversweet, like the fruit has turned.

“Worse,” I say. My sense of smell has always been stronger than yours, but the extra estrogen in my body has turned me bloodhound. I point to the white ones, Clean Laundry. “Just buy two of those, and let’s get out of here.”

“Fine.” Your voice is angry, trying to be calm. You are probably thinking, Why did you bring me here? 

I am thinking about it, too.

Of course, we never use those candles. Or the one jug of water we find in the cracker aisle at Walmart. Or the sanitary wipes. Or the black beans, baked beans, sliced carrots, peaches in 100% juice, saltines, minestrone soup, all still towered in the back of the cabinet like soldiers ready to deploy at a flicker of the lights. We never use any of them, because we are not there to watch the trees fall against our chain-link fence. Maybe we should go?, we vaguely ask our neighbor, a true Tallahassee man, and he says, with his calm voice and waiting-to-catch-a-fish gaze, I think that would be best. This is a man who slept through the last hurricane. This is a man who knows how to batten down the hatches with storm shutters and sandbags. He is our litmus test—If the locals are all staying, we tell ourselves, then who cares what the privileged students do?—but that morning, after he tells us what is best, we pack our bags and leave within the hour.

We are lucky we find an article about filling up our tank so we can use the car to charge our phones.

We are lucky we don’t have a good car, the kind that only takes premium-unleaded, and that we make it all the way to Troy, Alabama, without needing to stop at the gas stations, most of which are emptied like breast at the mouths of famished babes and left with plastic bags on the handles like the white flags of surrender. We are lucky, lucky, lucky to be those privileged students; or, rather, for me to be that student, and for you to be that privileged—and don’t I feel it, as you swipe your credit card at the desk and I put my hands on my belly and think, We’re safe now.

Originally published in An Inventory of Abandoned Things (Split/Lip Press).

Girl Woman | Woodsman Wolf

by Joshua Jones Lofflin | Apr 11, 2024 | flash fiction

Here is what you’ll bring to grandmother’s house:

• two eggs
• flour
• cocoa powder
• a baggie of your mother’s herbs from her grow closet (for her glaucoma, your mother claims, and don’t even think of sneaking any)
• the bill from QVC with STOP GIVING THEM MY ADDRESS in your mother’s thick, block lettering
• the latest Victoria’s Secret catalog, like gross (what, your poor, old grandmother can’t order underwear?), but you’ve seen her granny panties and can’t imagine her in anything lacy or sheer, and who would want to see her in that anyway
• a QVC corkscrew, not that your grandmother drinks—you couldn’t even find cooking sherry last time you rifled through her pantry, though Lucas says he’ll buy you wine coolers whenever you want
• a can of QVC bear spray (she’ll order anything off there, I swear) because she’s apparently hearing wolves now, though there aren’t even coyotes in these woods
• a twin pack of Gillette razors, might be gross, might not (trust me, you don’t want her mustache getting wild), and you think of Lucas’s beard, how it’s just beginning to silver, how you hope he never shaves it
• the QVC rape whistle on a crimson lanyard the color of your riding cloak (she ordered it for you, says there’s been a lot of creeps in the woods lately, revving their trucks on those old logging trails at all hours)
• the Pure Romance catalog, like double-gross (what, your poor lonely grandmother can’t have fun?), like triple-gross when you see it’s addressed to your mother
• the latest Cabela’s catalog, its dogeared page showing a smiling, flannelled man in snug jeans, the one your mom swears looks like your grandmother’s neighbor—Lucas, she means, though of course, she doesn’t know you know his name, would have a hissy if she did—she says your grandmother has a crush on him, which is unimaginably gross
• a bottle of Call of the Wild, the QVC perfume your grandmother’s started wearing that smells of dead lilacs, and the plastic-bottled vodka Lucas likes, the kind he’ll make you try even though he knows it burns your throat, but he’ll say drink up so you do, until the liquor numbs your lips, and maybe that’s when you’ll tell him about your grandmother’s crush, and he’ll laugh and say, Oh really? like he’s trying to imagine her in lingerie, like he’s forming the mental image and not getting grossed out at all, and you’ll punch him lightly on the shoulder saying what the hell, and he’ll grab your wrist, hold it in his own large, calloused fist, and tell you never, ever touch him like that again
• the SensoCam security camera (at least it’s not from QVC for a change, your mother says, wedging it into your basket and saying don’t take any shortcuts), the one your grandmother needs help setting up, that Lucas will ask what she even wants it for, is she rich or something, and you’ll shrug and try to remember whether her silver is real or not, not that you’d ever say anything to Lucas, though you don’t have to—Lucas has a way of sniffing out the truth, the way he says he can smell it on you whenever he knows you’re lying, whenever you sit there in the dark of his truck, his fingernails tracing the scar on your neck across your collarbone, until his nail catches at your bra strap and tugs—and his large eyes will go all far away as he murmurs about what he’d do with all that money, how you could live like a king out here, in these woods, in the heart of the heart of the forest, and nobody would ever hear a thing
• ten Lotto scratch-offs, twice her usual, not that she ever wins more than a buck or two (oh let the old woman have her fun—besides, she told me she’s feeling lucky)

Beach Tree

by Amy DeBellis | Apr 8, 2024 | flash fiction

I know something is wrong when the spot in the corner of my right eye won’t go away. I was hit until I saw stars, years ago and not by you, but this is different: this isn’t a star but a fuzzy gray cloud. Whenever I read, it floats along with me on each line, blotting out whatever words are coming next. Whenever I slip out of our apartment to get my daily iced coffee—the one treat I still indulge in—it comes with me. I’m glad to have the company, as the streets are mostly deserted these days: blue surgical masks littering the ground like rectangles of stomped-on sky, sirens wailing every few minutes, and each time I go outside it feels like I’m getting away with something. I have only ten minutes to grab my coffee and return in time to fix you breakfast, back into the apartment that smells like somebody’s stale breath. So far away from anything that could be mistaken for the sky.

When I finally go to the eye doctor, he frowns and says vitreous detachment, but to me it sounds like vicious detachment. Throughout the whole appointment I find myself thinking of words that start with V: Vandalize, vehement, volatile. (Trite. Predictable.) He tells me to look into a light so bright it makes me tear up, makes my mouth drop open (“Close your mouth” he says in a bored voice), makes my nails sink into my flesh. Victim, voluntary, vaginal. (Now we’re getting somewhere.) In that agonizing light I can see the spiderweb pattern of the veins in my eyeballs, a huge red ghost in the edge of my vision. The pain: something pure about it. So much sharper than your stupid slap.

The doctor takes the light away and asks me how the injury happened. There in the blank white office, both of us just a pair of eyes over our masks, I feel like I can tell him the truth: you got angry when I posted about our relationship problems on Reddit; you said you needed to punish me. The words squeak coming out of my throat. The doctor says “Oh, I see” in the exact same tone of voice in which he told me to close my mouth.

Months pass. My eye heals, and you never hit me again; I think you decided that words would leave more of an impression anyway. On this you may have been wrong. Because on Christmas Eve, I dream that you give me two eight-ball fractures: instead of dull green my eyes glaze dark, blackening into beauty, irises turned to night with blood. When I wake, I run to the bathroom to make sure my eyes are still green—green like mold and pond scum and kudzu, green like things that are living but probably shouldn’t be. The whole morning I keep blinking, keep checking the mirror, keep closing my eyes and expecting to open them bloodied and half-blind. After a while it seems that there is indeed something red and seeping at the edge of my vision. Some kind of optical ghost.

In the afternoon, we take the subway downtown. Surprise beach trip in December but I know better than to ask questions. Your voice sudden as a papercut against my ear: “It’s okay, we’ll still be able to see the tree.” Later I will realize that you meant we can still go to Rockefeller Center in the evening (although we never do), but in that moment, my mind dizzy with vulnerable and vanishing and virulence, I genuinely think you mean that there will be a tree at the beach.

But there is no tree. Just sand ringing cold and clear below the sky, the sound dreamloud, almost violent. A gull swoops down and I raise my face, hoping to tempt it with something—my eyes, maybe—but it sees no spark or glitter, flies on. If I angle my head just right the red in my vision swells and eclipses you. The last four years salt themselves white like winter, disappear. I watch the tide go out and my mouth fills with sand.