She looked him right in the eye. “I need words.” He flinched, shook his head and motioned for her to stop, please stop. “Shh, what the hell are you being so loud for? Wait, then follow me. Geez.” He quickly turned around, coat over his arm, and walked briskly towards the rows of green and yellow houses that lined the broad street. She waited, as told, let the giant white van pass her, then walked equally fast after him. She saw him enter the third house on the right after that lame arcade in which all the machines were either broken or let you win on purpose. She had spent many a day in there, mostly because it was those games or sitting around on rocks, throwing sticks at each other with limited enthusiasm. When she reached the door, she tried opening it. It was locked. She knocked. A very different person than the seller opened. “Yes?” Seriously? “I need words.” The person slammed the door in her face and yelled something along the lines of “What the fuck, get down here now!” Sounded almost like herself thinking about her daughter on most days. On any given day. She waited. Nothing happened. On the verge of her turning around and trying a different seller, the door finally opened and the man let her in. She felt like reprimanding him, but how? He pointed towards what seemed to be the kitchen. Slightly uncomfortable following him into the dingy house, she went because she had to. 

At the wooden table, the seller confided in her. “You know, I was always wordy, always a talker. Was reprimanded for it, even back then. Not like today, of course. But I knew I could get in trouble for it, so I learned to keep my mouth shut. Now the question is, are you aware of the risks you’re taking with buying? And most importantly, do you have the money?” She nodded to both. She contemplated showing him the bundle of notes in her pocket, but if he was going to run with it she’d be screwed. Also, he could rob her in here however he wanted as well. No point. He held up a little snow globe-like glass. Inside, tiny small paper cuts were flying around in an unidentifiable liquid.  They reminded her of the pieces inside fortune cookies, back from when there had been sentences on these rather than pictures and then nothing but gibberish. “How does it work?” she asked, with her coarse voice she found so ugly. They had told her it was ugly. “You shake, you take. One out, that is. It opens at the bottom. Put the paper on your tongue after reading it out loud and that word is a part of you. Again, maybe, depends on how much your parents spoke with you in your childhood. You might have a bigger storage of words already. So, show me the money.” She paid and carefully held the snow globe in both hands. The salesman accompanied her to the door, motioning for her to hide the globe under her jacket. “No way in hell do you tell anyone you got this from me, you hear me? I will know you told them and I will come and get you for that.” His tone was threatening, but his face was not. It was fearful. She nodded again, managed to mumble “thank you” before the door was shut in her face. Her cheeks were flushed as she walked towards the main road and back to her apartment.

She had carved a hole into the back of her cupboard specifically for this purpose. A poster of a popular TV program hang in front of the hiding spot. She had prepared and planned for this for years. Coming up with the money was especially difficult, but after the first few blow jobs she didn’t mind being a prostitute so much anymore. It was faster money than the work in her father’s factory, and relatively safe also under her aunt’s wings. Since mouths have become so special, all other body parts have taken a step back. The ladies at Paradiso were lucky to be afforded a special status in the entertainment industry. Why did she always feel she had to defend her occupational choices? She had had experienced the grueling hard physical labor in a factory herself, and seen the girls her age with broken backs, maimed hands or, maybe worse, unwanted pregnancies from co-workers and bosses. This was not a risk she was willing to take. 

What had the man told her again?   “You shake it, you take one out. It opens at the bottom. Put the paper on your tongue after reading it out loud and that word is a part of you. Again, maybe, depends on how much your parents spoke with you in your childhood. You might have a bigger storage of words already. So, show me the money.” She waits until darkness descends upon her flatmates and her, the slight snoring noises of Anne in the next room barely audible. It must be time, now, for her to reap the rewards of her courage. She shakes the snow globe and picks a dirty yellow, narrow piece of paper. Her tongue reaches for the correct sounds to make as she forms the word with her lips and, finally, exhales it. The taste of ink on her tongue won’t go away for a few nights. 

Inside the cave, the mossy stones make climbing them burdensome. Gus reaches for the walls. Slippery. His right hand feels slimy and cold. The dark cave swallows the sun he leaves behind. His sneakers squeak on the wet granite. It’s dripping from somewhere. Gus flashes his light into every corner to no avail. Let’s just hope this is water. Rain waiter. Let’s hope. We need to sit down for a moment.

His hands folded around his shins, Gus is rocking back and forth. If he holds a hand before his eyes, he can manipulate his sight. Fingers open: some rays of misty light. All fingers side by side: “I see nothing. I don’t know where I am.” His father calls them monkey games. 

There aren’t enough seats inside the dreary airport terminal, undergraduates crouching in front of unused gates and cheering over plastic coffee cups. She chats them up because the wait is unbearable. Is there any type of stalling that does not fill your gut with exhaustion? The lines for boarding barely move. And then they do, and she is in the right queue. Seat. Phone off. Earplugs in. A tourist in the next row is still wearing a straw hat bought at some obscure beach. Its bright yellow already looks obscene to her as she imagines it in the gray air at their destination. 

As the plane jitters and shakes them around in their seats, she considers switching on her phone (what would it matter now?) to send that final message she had heard about. The planed drops a few meters and she grabs the seat in front of her. A baby screams. A cloud, a breath, a signal and the “fasten your seat belts” sign is switched off. The flight attendant resumes selling perfume. The grip on her phone: releasing. She puts it back into the pocket. Two people can play that game.

I broke down in the hotel room shower last night. I could not figure out how to switch the flow from tap to showerhead, and as I held my hair under the tap, crouching down in this fucking business hotel, I just started bawling. You see, I figured it was the flight, schlepping the bag up those Roman hills, but as I wailed on my knees in the tub I got an inkling that maybe I was merely unhappy.

Caruthers is a horrible first name, she thought, but they had made a pact at 21, and when she found herself pregnant the only way out was through. Baby boy Caruthers had a lot going for him: the pale blue eyes. The long eyelashes. His tiny toes. His father was smitten from the start and had a rattle engraved with his name and birth date. And birth weight, just because. She stared into his eyes daily, searching for that piece of hers that had been ripped out of her intestines the day she pushed harder than ever before. Exhibit a: she couldn’t find it. Exhibit b: Caruthers was a daddy’s boy anyways.

She didn’t leave a note.  

The place had never been mentioned in any guidebook, not even local ones. Not on the bicycle maps with elevation markers and blue-green infrastructure symbols. You’d have to turn right behind the sea of shrubs next to a sand dune that really is just remnants of the kindergarten’s sandboxes. Discarded after Chernobyl blew radioactive particles all over Europe, spoiling sandboxes for an entire generation of 1980s toddlers.

Termites have invaded the sand dune and grabbed what they could. This close to our place, it seems everybody carries more than their weight on their shoulders. Leaving the low scrubs behind, you’ll walk deeper into the green. Slowly, trees grow taller, fuller, and foliage thickens. Leaves fall onto the ground while still pulsing with thick juice.

I tried, very hard even. I kept my secrets. How I shift uncomfortably in my seat and once rubbed my butt raw from fidgeting. How your eyes twitch before you lie. That I know how to forge your signature. Ah, the lies we know. It does not matter if I tell them, too. When I signed over all your stock and turned you from prosperous to lacking the means of contributing to your 401(k), it was not because of lack of empathy. It was only that I wanted more for myself.