How are you? people ask, and we had grown used to saying that we are fine. Most of the time, after all, these were just pleasantries, greeting cards exchanged with just a signature. Fine was enough to pass, but was not meant to uncover the true contents of our hearts.
After everything changed, we changed too. We still answered, Fine, but then we exchanged shrugs. We signaled each other with our twisted mouths. Well, we began to say next, as fine as can be given the circumstances.
Take him, the new mother said in a small, exhausted voice. The baby had not stopped squalling since his unexpected arrival, and their apartment was so crowded and so small. I don’t know what to do.
The sister had not given the baby’s fist the opportunity to clench her finger. She did not want to fall in love.
They wrapped him in a blanket. The sister held him all the way to the hospital. We found him, she said as she handed him to the nurse, whispering a silent prayer he would end up with what he needed.
I arrived at the casino town expecting the ringing of slot machines, the heartbeat-blink of neon. But boards blocked the doors, cars sat abandoned in valet lanes, and, at one outdoor bar, glasses of beer had been left to go flat.
In the neighborhoods, windows in a few apartments glowed dimly, but no one walked the cracked sidewalks. Potholes pockmarked the roads. I passed a lawn overtaken by weeds, their seedy tops silhouetted against a peeling building.
I had been here before, during the boom. I remembered the clink of glasses, the sound of coins falling into trays.
The first thing to go was the amusement park, the roller coasters and merry-go-rounds imploded in the name of serious business. The pools went next, because there is something calming about lane lines bobbing in blue water, and this is not a time for relaxation. Food tasted like bitter dust, so there was no longer a need for farmers markets and restaurants. The din of shovels against stone drowned out the symphonies.
Colors dulled, plants withered, lights faded, handshakes went limp. It grew harder to walk, then, as if gravity itself clutched at our ankles.
The moon rose at the edge of the continent, rose so large she thought she might be able to touch it if she was just willing to reach out her hand. But she had tried that before, learned the hard way, in fact, that no matter how close it is, the moon is still out of reach.
It’s the biggest we’ve ever seen, her friends said. We won’t see another like this for decades.
But she knew the truth. One moon is just like the next, and they all wane to nothing.
No one sold ladders tall enough for his needs, so he built his own, rung by rung, until he had a ladder that could reach the thinnest, highest clouds. He wanted to watch the world drop from beneath his feet, watch it change so slowly he would barely notice. He wanted to feel the ladder sway at the top, to swing back and forth, until he was ready to see the earth up close again.
They found a bench in front of a two-thirds-red, one-third-black painting, and only then realized they, too, were divided by color, her in her red trench, him in his black windbreaker.
It’s like a painting of us, he said, though his hand was already sliding across the bench toward hers.
I like that the red is on top, she said.
I like that there’s so much more of it, he said. It’s as if the red is winning.
Does red get a prize? she asked.
Perhaps, he replied, as he entwined her fingers in his.
100 Proof 