Category: 2015 Issue

Where to find them?
Hard to say, but they’ve been seen in séance, beneath the night.
Who’s seen them?
Only Gwen Northward: pilgrim, orphan, and trash collector.
Where to find her?
Tonight you’ll find her at Crossroads Haven on the second floor, where a thousand memories, in hospice sheen, converge at once.
Who is she with?
There isn’t a soul in sight except the nurse, and the one that clings, half-departed, to her sleeping mother.
Her mother is dying?
Yes, and watch Gwen stroke her willowed hands, the still-blue veins, and wonder whether she ever knew the mother she had, if maybe she did once, but has forgotten…and what is this dream of her mother before her? And was that the final breath? The respirator grows silent, the gloveless nurse sighs from far away, but the hand is still warm, so what to believe? Blood or machinery? Skin or silicon? Life or death? It may be, as Pharaohs surmised, that the body splits at death, folds into a new fabric, shuffles through the god palaces and sups forever with the whole Line of Kings, in which case this hand Gwen holds is still her mother’s hand, the hand traced on the new canvas, now lifted off the page…
There is a dialogue here, she senses, between the medicinal instruments, their vile signaling, and the words of eons past. The scribal words, scrawled by sandstorm dust, dreaming of former flesh. Holy words intoned while the heart monitor reports a void. Christophany and flat-line drone. Samsara and circuitry groan. Deathbed fluorescence and the curtained young night. Around her are the humming systems of death, beyond her is the fetal dawn, the tattered starlight, and the dream of heaven. All this, in mysterious confluence.
So she is gone?
Yes, and now so is Gwen. The deathroom recedes, and she goes back God knows how many years, to a lost crayon summer and her old back porch, where she, thrilled to be out of school, is drawing the trees as they sway, emerald and glistening, in the slipping sun. Now, it is the mother’s hand around the child’s. She leans behind Gwen and looks at the trees as well, and somehow, through some occult maternal channel, sees what Gwen sees in the trees, the same faces, the same suggestions, and they don’t speak, and there’s no sound except for the birds and the gentle rush of leaves, and together they draw this tree that Gwen has dreamed. For a moment they are one channel, issuing forth, in crayon flourish, one and the same stream…and now Gwen holds her mother’s hand and finds this canal sealed, forever, and she left to row alone, to fight upstream against a flow now foreign, and the nurse is offering condolences, instructions, and the tears have come, and there are professionals to speak with, and there are arrangements to be made, and there is the bureaucracy of death…and then there is a fold in the ream of time, a period of blankness, and Gwen awakens walking, on the road alone, and aimless…
Where has she gone?
Drifted from the hospice into the darkness.
Where will she go?
She will wander. Now she is the night, now she is the exile. The other children of the dark come calling, her new blood.
Who are they?
They are the lightless windows, they are the streams of mist, they are the wombs of dawn.
And the Alley Rat Pack?
Yes, if you listen closely, if you listen for the beat, you can hear them, flickering, dancing, and calling out to the orphans of the alleyways.
Will they call out to Gwen?
If she’s seen them yet she hasn’t made any sign, she remains alone for now, alone in the world of the quick and the fleeting, with nothing to do but drift and collect the trash.
The garbage?
No, not tonight. A different kind of trash.
What do you mean?
I mean that the trash is the forces out there. The warbling of a rosy feeling, of a withered garden, of a glimpse, of a brief rebirth. And the clocks the vandals smashed, one by one, for forty years, and the glass shard alleys, and your irretrievable home.
This and more is the trash. The woebegone regions, lightning lashed, bring forth their harvest. All creatures must, from time to time, walk below the rain.
Gwen feels a drizzle now, her weeping face masked by seaborne spray, the whipping rain, the swarm shoreward, and in the far away, waves crackle beneath the storm. On a seaward trail she glides unknowing. Windswept and barren to the shore she is going. And the coming morning, and the echo of Eden days, and the half-words come jumbled and stitched, and her mother says things like “Good morning beautiful, and where is the sting in the hornet today?”
A very long pier and she is alone. The tide beats against the cedar legs of the boardwalk. She breathes the cold birth of the dawn and the wetness of it.
The sand is kicking up now, in the wind. As if they were guardians, little grains of warning. And above her, the cosmos unbound on the face of the sea, star-streaked, swathed in ether and diamond nebulae.
Behold the Alley Rat Pack gliding across the inkish trail of tide. A silhouette band, in spectral march.
Where are they going?
Skipping to some Victorium at the shore’s end, while Gwen watches them and the foam they kick moonward. She has passed through some threshold, marked, perhaps, by a bit of shell, or a seaweed ring, into another realm entirely…listen, they are calling to her.
“It’s the trash lady! It’s the waste lady! Follow us! Got any banana peels? Got any empty cans? Got any bike wheels?”
And now Gwen is prone on the baking pavement, blood streaming from her knees and her bicycle careening down the driveway toward the Oldsmobile. Behind her, her mother calls, as if from the bottom of a well…
The Alley Rat Pack: “Got any old clothes? Got any shoestrings? Got any old jewelry?”
And now Gwen, newly-divorced, is drinking wine and watching Wheel of Fortune with her long-widowed mother, and her mother is saying things like “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere, not until it gets too dark to see…”
The Alley Rat Pack: “Got any of snow-capped ceilings? Got any crumbled leaves? Got any ripped up books?”
And now Gwen sets the book on the mantle, glowing in honey gold, strewn with Christmas lights. The room is misshapen, disfigured and dismembered. It is her mother’s living room, or rather, its spiritual counterpart, pulsing here in Gwen’s memory. She sees the wisps of her mother’s hair over the piano on which she plays a morphing melody that Gwen can’t quite name. She sits down beside her mother and watches her hands breathe automatic along the keys, and Gwen joins in, dives into the flowing melody that she is just about to remember, can almost name…their song floats out of an open window toward a glittering sea, and the tide is keeping the time. She feels the heat of the fireplace, the heat of this whole room, a room that glows in her mind, like a candle on a desk in a dark room…
The Alley Rat Pack: “Enough of that, enough of that. Keep up, we have to take you somewhere. We have to show you something.”
They sprint away and disperse into the shadows, beckoning.
So follow them, Gwen, to the ragged edge of the beach and up the ruined stairs, down the rotting ramp and onto the sidewalk, now dart across the road and leap over the guardrail, coiled in vines, into the line of trees…and emerge in the back-alleys of a forsaken graveyard neighborhood, and don’t lose the Alley Rat Pack.
You’re trespassing here, Gwen. Where once there was stasis, there is now a stirring. Just a moment ago, all that you see, the street signs, the storefronts, the billboards…until your entrance their messages had languished in abyssal depths and projected soundless into the void. But now, as you track the Alley Rat Pack through the cracked and sunken asphalt, they rise, in groggy resurrection…
Keep your eyes on the blank and fading walls and watch what issues forth. The Alley Rat Pack is near, waiting.
“Do you see yet?” they ask, impatient.
See what, Gwen wonders.
“Have the walls come alive?”
No, I can’t see anything, it’s too dark. She stares at the walls, squints, focuses all her energy onto them…but nothing, nothing yet…“keep looking!” they call.
Well, what is she supposed to see?
A secret from the Alley Rat Pack.
A secret about the walls?
A secret about what they can be. That they can be both windows and canvasses, portals and movie screens.
“Look down at your hands!” they tell her.
She is now holding binoculars, paintbrushes, keys, and rolls of film. These are the instruments they’ve given you, Gwen, and how will you use them?
Gwen gazes at a warehouse husk and the fossils of its former tenants, all in proper strata: BARKOWSKI AND SONS, QUALITY MEATS—(an echo of a certain lakeside picnic) —and below POE WILSON, OPTOMETRIST—(the miracle of glasses, transforming the blurry world) —and further down ONE NIGHT ONLY, THE MARBLE GANG AND THEIR CIRCUS OF WONDERS…
A Saturday night one week before Gwen turns ten, and for days she’s watched the circus vans drive down the city streets and imagined what wonders they concealed, and her mother has watched Gwen gaze, rapturous and mute, at the proceeding like an apostle on Palm Sunday…on Monday mother and daughter strike a deal, the terms: tickets will be your birthday present. Saturday night is a long time coming and school days are little pockets of dull eternity but now, at last, they look down at the circus pit where performers in Saracen garb ride atop elephants draped in velvet and all around there’s fire, blazing the hoops through which tigers leap, eaten by the torch-wielding tribesmen, conjured out of the air by the mustachioed magician, and Gwen and her mother are surrounded by stadium lights, seated in plush stadium chairs, drowning in oceanic stadium din. But now, the scene has changed. All of the dramatis personae of Gwen’s life are in the ring, in suspended half-motion: her ex-husband, her wayward son, her stillborn daughter and her sickly father, fragments from hazy toddler dreams, her shifty Uncle Harold in leather jacket, Misty the terrier who tramped beside her for the adolescent decade, her teachers, her various enforcers, her school friends including Lorraine with whom she first got drunk, Nathan the pot dealer to whom she lost her virginity in clumsy backseat bliss, her Cockney-accented piano instructor, the priest who blessed her thrice on her christening day, her grandmother’s spirit trailing warmth and the scent of cinnamon, the homeless and legless youth she saw dragging his jar along the ground of the concrete jungle, the violinist on the boardwalk who, unknowingly, introduced Gwen to that instrument’s weeping, a friendly zookeeper, a nasty branch manager, her doctors, her bosses, her book-club acquaintances…the parade rounded out by faces without names, feelings without nexus, scraps of parchment memory, all dancing beneath the ashen rain of life…next to her, her mother remains, and gestures with the binoculars, and together they look through the lenses, once more, in joined vision. And out of the gates, into a sea of darkness, the Alley Rat Pack disappears, back to the nether world, back to their nocturnal, neural patrol, collecting what bits of trash they will, taking them to their mapless temple where they will transfigure what they have gathered, to give to you.
The hospice rises from the void and fills Gwen’s eyes with a searing, revelatory light, and they are together blinded.

Donna bit her lip to hide a smile as she served another customer, doing her best not to look over at the other tent across the lot.
Even without looking, Donna knew that someone was making a fool of themselves at the funnel cake stand. Something that involved broad gestures using gangly limbs and terrible singing, the only things Donna could perceive without looking directly at the booth.
Donna couldn’t look over there because she knew she wouldn’t be able to without smiling and giggling, and that would definitely get her father’s attention. Her father disapproved of anything having to do with that tent. It didn’t matter if Donna was distracted by the appeal of the funnel cakes or by the annoying cute girl currently doing an Irish jig inside the tent – that tent was The Enemy and no concessions would be made to it. Not even a smile at the cute girl.
If only the girl would stop singing and dancing and let Donna have some peace. Ignoring her was becoming increasingly difficult.
The line of people kept her busy, and luckily, none of them seem to have noticed or cared about her obvious distraction. She did try to avoid her younger brother’s eye, though, as he worked next to her.
“Can I get a funnel cake?” The customer in front of her was already holding a large corn dog, a turkey leg, and one of those gallon-sized county fair lemonades. “And a food box, if you’ve got ‘em.”
Donna gave the man a tight smile. “We don’t sell funnel cakes here, sir. We make zeppole.”
The man scratched his temple on the straw sticking out of his lemonade, not like he was confused, but like he would have rubbed a hand down his face if he had an available hand. “And what is za-pole-ee? Is it like funnel cake?”
Donna sighed inwardly as she explained, again, what exactly they sold.
Like many of the headaches in her life, Donna blamed her father.
Giuseppe of Giuseppe Zeppole was a simple man, though he took “simple” to mean “stupid,” so no one said that to his face. He was simple in that he had uncomplicated ambitions and passions. His ambitions were to have a family business doing something that honored his cultural heritage. His passions were his family and national pride.
He loved his kids, even if they weren’t what he’d expected: an obnoxious, weedy son and a queer, chubby daughter. He loved his wife, even if she’d rather work as a mechanical engineer than work all day at a state fair. He loved honest work and manual labor. He loved cold beer and warm bread. Easy. Simple.
A pain in the ass.
Sure, maybe in New York or somewhere else on the East Coast, a zeppole stand wouldn’t be so out of place. But traveling as they did, they were never somewhere with a high concentration of Italian Americans; no one could even pronounce zeppole here, let alone know what it was.
Donna had had this conversation many times.
“Zeppole is fried dough, like funnel cake, but instead of being crisscrossed they’re more like little balls that we cover in granulated sugar instead of the powdered kind. There’s also some options for fillings if you look at our menu.”
Donna tried to infuse as much “customer service enthusiasm” as she could into her words, but she knew they sounded rehearsed.
Turkey Leg Guy squinted at the menu, absently taking a pull of his lemonade. “So they’re like donuts? Do you have jelly filled?”
They did in fact have jelly filled.
Donna waited until she was turned around to roll her eyes as she put in his order. She gave him an empty carton for his corn dog and turkey leg as they waited for his zeppole to be plated. Her brother, Iggy, helped the next person in line.
She made her way over to the fryers where her father was prepping orders and putting fresh dough into the fryer. “Did you waste a carton on that guy?” he said by way of hello. “He only bought one order.”
“He was already holding like ten things.”
“But not our things. Only give extras to people who pay for ‘em.”
Donna sighed, taking the order and making her way back over to the counter.
Donna could admit that zeppole weren’t a terrible option for fair food; they were small and bite-sized, sweet and oily –– everything your average carnie could want. And she couldn’t begrudge her father this attachment to his heritage either, even if talking to endless drones exhausted her.
And she definitely forgave her father for making her work so often while she was home from college for the summer. But that was more to do with the view.
The view where Funnel Cake Girl was now doing some sort of kick step. The view that she was not supposed to be focusing on. She snapped her eyes back to Turkey Leg Guy as she handed him his completed order, getting to the next customer.
She could feel her brother’s knowing smirk without looking at him. He knew she was struggling but, luckily, he wouldn’t give her up.
Not before he’d had his fun, anyway.
“Man, what a rush, right?” he said, turning to face Donna as the last customers shuffled away. “How fortunate we are to have been blessed with that surgence of customers.”
Donna closed her eyes, waiting.
“Fortunate, I’d say.” The counter creaked as Ignazio leaned against it. Donna could clearly see his performance even behind her closed eyelids; the kid wasn’t above recycling bits. “Or, I don’t know, there’s probably a better word than fortunate…if I could just think of it…”
Donna sighed and opened her eyes. Sure enough, there was Iggy, elbow braced on the counter as he leaned heavily on one foot, the other crossed behind it. She still had to look up at him, though, despite his dramatic lean, as he’d outstripped her in height way back in the fifth grade, leaving her to straddle the line between 5’ and 5’1” alone. He had his other hand under his chin to prop up his pensive expression, as if he were searching for what word could be better than fortunate.
Donna was tired of waiting. “Lucky? Is ‘lucky’ maybe the word you’re looking for? ‘Lucky’ like ‘the luck of the Irish,’ perhaps?” she hissed.
Iggy snapped his fingers with a grin. “That’s it! Lucky! It’s almost as if–”
“Yeah yeah yeah, getting lucky with an Irishman.”
He was referring, of course, to Finnigan’s Family Funnel Cakes which, aside from being Irish, didn’t really have any other identifying factors besides selling another kind of fried dough than what they sold. This somehow made their two tents rivals. Finnigan’s wasn’t even the most successful food tent at the fair. Nor was it the most absurdly patriotic (that went to Angus’s American All-You-Can-Fry Wonderful Wings and Waffles). There was another Italian booth that sold meatball subs that could easily be their rival. There were big chains setting up tents that threatened their family-owned business. But no, the fixation on funnel cakes from their customers had become a thorn in her father’s side.
They’d been traveling the same fair circuit for a couple years at this point and Giuseppe cursed them as some kind of demon, following her family from town to town.
He didn’t like the alliterative name (slant rhyme he takes no issue with), he didn’t like how they ran their business, he didn’t like that everyone in the family had red hair.
“Papa, they’re Irish,” Donna had tried to reason. “That’d be like them not liking us for being loud Italians.”
“They think we’re loud? Did they say anything to you? Show me who said something.”
It was hopeless.
She could hear him mutter under his breath from time to time when Finnigan’s line would get long. “Funnel cake isn’t even Irish. Turning their back on their homeland. Gimmicky bastards. Should show them what pride really is.” It was highly disrespectful to him for them to just be Irish and tap in on a German cuisine for their livelihood. He didn’t trust “culture grabbers.”
“Honestly, a whole world full of carny related humor and you go for Irish?” she continued, her voice low. “That’s so weak, Iggy, I’m ashamed of you.”
Iggy quickly glanced around to see if anyone had heard. Donna smirked. Iggy wasn’t embarrassed to be called out on his terrible jokes–he was quite proud of them, actually–but ever since the popularization of a certain Australian rapper, he’d been hugely embarrassed by the nickname “Iggy.” He started high school asking his parents and the rest of the family to start calling him “Natty” instead, and mostly everyone agreed. Except Donna.
Donna wouldn’t give this up for anything.
Iggy snorted, unconvincingly, with a shrug and Donna’s grin broadened. “Keep telling yourself that, Ducky.” Yeah, so Donna–Donald Duck–Ducky. They weren’t above childish teasing in the form of nicknames. “My terrible jokes don’t change the fact that you’ve been fantasizing about that ginger all day.”
Donna had to hold herself back from shushing him on instinct because she didn’t want her father to hear and he was just in the back of the tent. But shushing Iggy would only make him worse.
He wasn’t stupid enough to be loud about it–he wanted to torture Donna, not have her killed–but this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to set them up.
There had been one time when Iggy had deliberately spilled jelly all over his apron so Donna would have to get an extra from the truck. This happened to be around the time he saw the Finnigan girl, Grace, leave towards the parking lot on her break.
He’d also sent their father home early so he and Donna could close the tent for the night by themselves. This was also the night Grace was closing up her tent.
And let’s not forget: “Quick! She went to the bathroom, go work your magic.”
In the bathroom. He was hopeless.
She played it off. “Matchmaker matchmaker make me a match. What do you think this is?”
“I don’t think, Ducky, I know what this is.” Iggy smirked viciously.
Donna didn’t look at him. “You know nothing.”
She could hear him shrug. “It is what it is.”
“And what is it?”
“You know.”
“I know nothing.”
“It is what it is,” Iggy repeated.
She turned to him, finally. “And what is it?”
A different voice. “What is what?”
They both jumped, turning startled eyes to their father who was emerging from behind the fryer with a greasy cloth. He eyed them suspiciously.
“What is what is what?” Iggy asked.
“Nothing is what. Work is what.” Donna turned hastily and started wiping stray sugar grains off the counter, “Just love this work. This work is awesome.”
Their father narrowed his eyes but nodded. “That’s what I thought. Natty, work hard like your sister.”
“Wait, wha–” but their father just shook his head and exited the tent, trash bag trailing towards the garbage area.
Donna shot a scowl at her brother. “Watch it, will ya?” She snapped the rag at him. “You have no chill.”
Iggy’s head perked up, looking smug. “So there is a situation over which to have chill.”
“Of course there is, asshat. But some of us are smart enough not to talk about it when Lord Capulet is in the room.”
“Ooh, don’t do that.” Iggy winced. “I die in that analogy.”
“No, the cousin dies. I study this shit, I think I know.”
“Yeah, but he was like a brother. And in West Side Story, it’s Bernardo that gets ganked.”
“Nobody’s gonna die, don’t be dramatic.”
“You started it!”
“You said you were gonna die.”
“Because you said this was Romeo and Juliet.”
“Not literally.”
Donna hadn’t realized how loud their voices had gotten until a different voice interrupted. Softer this time, not the gruff voice of her father but one infinitely more sweet.
“Aw, you wouldn’t kill yourself over me, sweetums?” Donna and Iggy had been so distracted they hadn’t noticed the pouting redhead approach the counter. “But that’s what all the best romantics do.”
“Grace,” Donna bit back an embarrassed grin, turning from her brother where he stood, blinking. “Hi.” Grace smiled, reaching forward to brush some sugar from her shoulder. The movement was so practiced and intimate that Donna could feel her brother gaping. She shoved back her smugness and cleared her throat. “I don’t really think you should be over here. Papa just went to take the trash out, he’s gonna be back, like, any second.”
Grace smiled wider, flicking hair out of her eyes and leaning casually across the counter, right into Donna’s space. “Nah, he caught Sean just as he was dumping our oil. We’ve got a good couple minutes while they bitch it out.”
Donna knew this was probably true. She’d witnessed many incidents of her father and Sean–Grace’s eldest brother and head of their family operation–duking it out over business maintenance and fair ground dignity.
Their first tussle happened over the grease trap by the dumpsters, much like Donna assumed this one was playing out. All of the tents had to dump their dirty fryer oil in the same dispense bin provided by the fair grounds and Giuseppe didn’t think Sean was treating his fellow tent operators with the right respect.
“Leaving the trap open so any animal or person could fall right in!” he’d yelled, embarrassing every fair goer and family member. “Where do you get off putting my family in danger? You’re just a punk ass kid who thinks he can play with the big dogs, pulling other countries’ prime dishes like they’re yours. You got some balls.”
Sean had come back at him, indignantly, calling him old and stuck in his ways. The younger parties in both tents managed to pull them away before any authorities were called but neither fried dough proprietor was welcome back at that fairground in Virginia again.
When Donna and Iggy had calmed their father down after the event, he’d looked both of them dead in the eye. “I know you kids are young and you want to date around, alright? But neither of you,” he pointed behind him to where the other kids were presumably calming down Sean, “neither of you date anyone in that tent.”
Iggy snorted while Donna blushed, stuttering about how she wasn’t ready to date yet.
Giuseppe waved her off. “Yeah, I know, but you’re young, sweetheart, and they got a girl your age in that tent. And you know I love you even if you want to date girls, but,” he raised his hand to point like he had before, maintaining strict eye contact with Donna alone. “Don’t date that girl.”
Meanwhile, three years after that first incident.
Donna could feel herself soften as she leaned in closer, watching the freckles by Grace’s eyes disappear in her smile lines. Having naturally olive skin herself, she didn’t tan or freckle in the sun and she was forever enchanted by Grace’s tiny skin stars.
“Still…” she breathed, mouth quirking up.
“I needed to get your attention somehow.” Grace ignored her hollow protest, leaning in farther, her voice low and intimate. “It shouldn’t be this hard to catch the eye of the cute girl at the zeppole tent.”
She said zeppole like zep-ole-eh. Like it’s supposed to be pronounced. Like Donna had taught her that time in the parking lot when Donna was supposed to be fetching a fresh apron.
“Well you know, when I said I can’t look at you during work.” Her hand crept towards where Grace’s rested on the table, her face tilted towards her. “That wasn’t a challenge.”
“Of course it was,” Grace flipped her hand over, waiting for Donna’s to catch it. “I just didn’t know you weren’t impressed with song and dance.”
That was a lie. Grace knew Donna appreciated song and dance because they’d discussed their favorite musicals by the dumpsters when they were taking out the closing trash that one shift.
Donna’s touch was gentle as it landed, not holding so much as tickling. “I’m impressed by good song and dance.” Donna smirked as she traced lightly over Grace’s heart line in her palm.
Grace pulled her hand out from under Donna’s to dramatically clutch her heart, putting all of her weight on her other hand so she could maintain their closeness. “Doth the good lady wound me?”
She didn’t have a chance to respond, though, as Iggy cleared his throat. Loudly.
Donna turned to glare at him, still close enough to Grace that the air from her soft laughter was a breeze through her messy, curly hair. Grace straightened up and Donna mourned the distance. “No, you’re right.” She put a hand on Donna’s shoulder again without the excuse of sugar. This was just to touch. “I should have better impulse control.” Her hand trailed down Donna’s arm until she was trailing fingers past her wrist, bringing Donna’s knuckles up to her mouth to kiss. She looked up through her eyelashes. “I just saw you two arguing and wanted to be a white knight.”
Donna was absolutely swooning, brown eyes shaped like hearts and her apron practically jumping with the cartoonish love-sick beating in her chest. Grace, for all her courting, didn’t appear much the better when it came to mooniness.
Iggy snorted. “Romeo wasn’t a knight.”
Donna was going to have to murder her brother.
But Grace just winked, barely turning her head to indicate him as her eyes were still on Donna’s. “And this romance isn’t gonna be a tragedy. We’re revising this bitch.”
Donna laughed, her eyes catching on movement across the field and she squeezed Grace’s hand before shooing her away as her father came back. Grace just winked again, sauntering back, casual as anything.
Donna made herself busy, going over excuses in her head in case her father noticed Grace at the tent. She wanted to know the perfect temperature for dough frying, Pop. You know her brother probably doesn’t teach her right. She wished Iggy would do something besides stare at her; he was making them look suspicious.
He was finally pushed into action when their father came in, fuming and muttering, and snapped at Iggy to restock the napkins.
Donna bit her lip to hide a smile as she greeted a customer that had just approached the tent, doing her college best not to look over at the other tent across the lot.
Even without looking, Donna knew that someone was trying to catch her eye and blow her a kiss at the funnel cake stand. Something that she’d been doing every minute they were both there since they’d both gotten over themselves and went on a date ten days ago: Much Ado About Nothing in the park.
She served the single customer their zeppole, after which she finally gave in and looked at Finnigan’s Family Funnel Cakes. Sure enough, there was Grace, grinning like a lunatic, her hands in the shape of a heart and bouncing up and down on her chest. Donna grinned, shaking her head. Knock it off! she mouthed.
Grace stopped the movement, holding up one hand with her thumb and her pointer finger pressed together in an “OK” gesture. She used the other one to dramatically blow a kiss. Donna rolled her eyes but caught the kiss and stuffed it in her apron pocket.
Iggy was over her shoulder, hissing in her ear. “What the fuck is this?! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Donna wasn’t sure if Iggy was more excited for her or pissed at her for leaving him out. She hoped he could understand why they had to keep it on the down-low.
Mostly, though, she just wanted to torture him. And this moment was worth it.
Donna turned around, her face blank and expressionless. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She served the next customer.

By Kelley Yuan

Paavo had never endured a winter this cold before. He hated the snarling winds that swept through Moscow yearly, but this cold was different. A heavy, sinister chill now followed, the kind that coiled itself tightly around your skin before sinking its teeth into bone.
The crumbling walls of the orphanage preserved little of what heat remained. But Paavo was a big boy this year–eight years old, in fact–and that meant he and the other older boys could endure the colder, drafty rooms as their warmer rooms were used to house the younger children who were sick.
Some of the vezuchiys returned to visit during the week of Christmas. They were “the lucky ones,” in new families with better prospects, the ones who didn’t need to return to the shivering orphanage. Dmitry, Paavo’s confidant and swashbuckling co-conspirator, had found a new home three months ago. Yet he still tackled Paavo the same way they had always done for the past two years, enveloping him in the warm wool of his new scarf and sweater. As Dmitry pulled back, cheeks rosy and laugh breathless from excitement, Paavo stared in wonder. He looks so warm.
All too soon into their joyful reunion, a larger, gentle hand came to rest on Dmitry’s shoulder, accompanied by a deeper voice of a stranger, “Come, son. We must leave soon.”
“Da, Papa.”
After the two boys shared a long hug, Dmitry vanished. Paavo didn’t understand what this feeling was, or how it made his heart sink as he watched Dmitry and his father stride into the snow holding hands. Though he was relieved that Dmitry was happier, he also felt as if a rusty fishhook had lodged itself between his ribs. Whenever he breathed in, it would tear open new pangs of loneliness and revive old fears–whether Dmitry would still remember him in a few months, whether he would wait at the orphanage forever, whether he would ever find a real home where he belonged. Eyes lowered, he paced back to his room, lips softly tracing the syllables “Da, Papa. Da, Papa.”An hour later, a careful knock on the door gave way to Gospodin Michalev, the orphanage’s most frequent and beloved visitor. Michalev worked long hours at the nearby smelting factory, but he always made time to play with the children. As far back as Paavo could remember, Michalev was there telling stories, tossing stones with them, and tearing down the street with them just as frantically when some stones accidentally soared into two apartment windowpanes.
But his relationship with them was not only of mischief and mirth. Michalev also brought them broth and an occasional treat when they fell sick. As the little ones cowered next to him on the floor during a thunderous storm, he challenged the storm to a roaring contest, shaking his fist at the heavens and teasing smiles from their faces. He was Paavo’s favorite adult because his eyes and ears were like a fox’s, catching the smallest flickers of discomfort or sadness. He paid attention to the concerns that the other adults thought were stupid. Who cared if Paavo wanted to learn to ride a bike like the other kids at school but could not find one on which to practice? Michalev did, and he refashioned a bike from the junkyard, teaching Paavo until he could lap the fastest boy in the schoolyard. Bulky arms, a sandpaper voice, and a mess of umber hair belied the kind, golden eyes and deep, rumbling laughter that greeted you when he bent down to meet you.
“Andrei and Isaak told me they saw you go into your room again. They thought you were still going to play outside with them later. What are you thinking about, little man?” He joined Paavo in the corner of the room, back pressed against the wall and matching the cross-legged pose the boy held as thoughts flurried like snowflakes in his head.
“Gospodin Michalev, who was my Papa?”
At the word “Papa,” Paavo hesitated. Michalev knew Paavo too well; the boy paused when he was unsure of what to expect but had also deliberated over the question for so long. He studied the boy’s pensive gaze, then shed his winter coat and draped it over the boy’s thin frame. In truth, Michalev knew nothing about Paavo’s father. He had heard from the chair of the orphanage that they found Paavo as an infant on the steps of a church near Podolsk. His father may have been one of the many who succumbed to pneumonia or hunger that year.
Michalev quietly rolled his sleeves to his elbows, and turned to face Paavo, meeting his eyes.
“Your papa was strong. When the gas heating failed in your home, he would wake up hours earlier to cover you with his blanket, then burn the coal outside in the frost to make breakfast and hot water for you and your Mama. When food was harder to come by, he made sure you two were fed before his lips would taste a crumb. Understand, little man, that when he put you in the hands of this orphanage, your Papa had already tried everything in his power to save the two people he loved most. Your Papa did not leave you here because he did not love you. Your Papa placed you here because he loved you more than his own life. He loved you too much to see you put up with more hardship.”
He paused, and a faint grin flashed across his face.
“Your papa was also silly and kind. You know, his pranks would have given even naughty Isaak a run for his rubles! At the end of the night he could make a whole table of strangers ache from laughter. But when you found yourself in trouble, you could count on your Papa to save your sorry behind and then never let you hear the end of it.” He wagged his large finger and grabbed Paavo’s ear playfully.
Another pause. Paavo watched the man’s golden eyes soften and stare off into something Paavo could not see.
“One day, Papa will come and take you back home. I am sure of it. And you will be happy, Paavo. You see, he is working hard at two jobs to make enough money for the house and warmer clothes for you. At night, he waits tables at a small restaurant, and he constantly spills the bowls of borscht. The bowls are just so heavy and awkward, and when he tries to place the bowls on the table, they tip backward and he usually gets some soup on his clumsy wrist.”
Paavo smiled. Borscht was his favorite dish; the orphanage cook knew too and snuck extra potatoes into his bowl. It was a rich, savory stew tinted a dark orange-red by the beets and cabbage. On a lucky day, the cook would throw in some meat and a wink. Surely, this small connection with the soup to his father meant something.
“But,” Michalev chuckled, pushing himself off the floor, “it is time for you to go to bed, Paavo.” The wind had died down, now simply panting after a long day of frigid gusts. The sun was reeling in his last rays of light, but a few scattered ribbons of orange remained plastered against a purple winter sky.
As Paavo nestled into his mattress, Michalev threw his coat over his shoulder and shuffled toward the door. Right as the man with the golden eyes rolled his sleeves back down his forearms, Paavo let his eyes slowly droop into slumber.
Until he caught a glimpse of an orange soup stain on the left cuff of the sleeve.