Stalemate
(an 8-part parable)
Barry Graham

—for Kim Chinquee

At first I just sampled. His lips were dark and sloppy, kind of temporary, though he always told me otherwise. He was growing a moustache. He opened the window and I tried to look past him. It was too early for anything. We talked nonstop, holding each other until suppertime.

*

He smoked on the back porch that faced a lake, where we’d once gone fishing, catching nothing worth keeping. He said he lacked confidence. He said she was really something. He sounded like a man. I put the smoke out in a plastic spit tray. He got up and laughed, limping. He has a big bed, and when my mother came, she said she noticed that, unlike my childhood, I slept very close to the edge.

*

They had a mutual friend who they’d met at an intersection. They are old and look drunk. There is a loud crash, and they look up at the destruction, two cars into one another, fighting for a lane in the intersecting one way. It is a reunion of sorts. She made sure he stopped thoroughly.

*

Our Father Who Art in Heaven, God help me, help me, help me. We added to the old pile, ridding ourselves. She smelled like gasoline. I got up to see closer. Her lips were dark and her teeth were white. She slurred her words, drunker than me. Tea woman looked up like huh? I petted her and she swished her tail, swatting.

*

She was blonde and infomercial. She grabbed the heel and the baby was frigid. My husband faced the baby down, patting his back kind of hard. She talked to him, making things up. She thought it was dead, but it wasn’t. She took his blood, then punctured her thumb on the recap. They took turns petting. She said, well, and he turned to her, wanting. I revved up the engines. He said to her, what were you expecting? They fell into each other. I know, she said, I know. I played my stuff and waited. I wore it home.

*

She gets behind the wheel of a very nice car. She drove a long way. After seven miles through the countryside of Landstuhl, they went back to their workplace, where they showered and changed and went back to their solutions. She thought of holding him, but the cries stopped and she left the room. He walked in, speaking Revelation. She was sure he was positive. It appeared to be going straight.

*

She tried to eat at least something. She sipped long and good and hard, almost with feeling. He shoots the bottle. She didn’t see, and then they thumped and did a bump-bump-bump. But after a while, he just wanted to breathe. She says it’s, like, been centuries. He said, oh?

*

He said it all the way to the hospital. Someone was lowering a coffin. She pointed while they lifted for more. It was not a pair. It had big horns. She saw his face on the wall. The teachers had said she was smart. Aren’t you, he said. She looks for a Stalemate. She tells them to be positive. They were far gone, heading in their own direction. The twins leaned into each other. Kin, they all said, running into branches. Things fell from the sky and he laughed. She pulled the string of a clown and it chuckled. She got in the passengers’, and he drove them back to his house where they waited for the repairman. They could spend millions.

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