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Beverly, a town near Salem, spring 1692. A STRONG GUST of WIND then lights up to see a young girl, ELIZABETH, pacing back and forth behind a meeting hall. Her apron has been intentionally placed on the ground to hide something. The sun hangs late in the day. ELIZABETH seems very aware and disturbed by this.

ELIZABETH

 

Another young girl, ANNIE, enters dressed in similar attire. She carries a wooden bucket and wears her apron.

ANNIE

I prayed you’d still be here!

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

I will do no such thing.

 

2.

ELIZABETH

Do you strike out against me?

ANNIE

ELIZABETH

ANNIE turns away.

ELIZABETH

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

You take their story for sport?

ANNIE

ELIZABETH

  3.

ANNIE

Pray, why do such a thing?

ELIZABETH

ANNIE

Shut it, Elizabeth. You talk nonsense!

ELIZABETH grabs ANNIE by her arm and holds her tightly.

ELIZABETH

ANNIE

ELIZABETH releases ANNIE’s arm.

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

  4.

 

ELIZABETH

Ye are afraid. Admit it!

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

   

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH quickly covers ANNIE’s mouth.

 

ELIZABETH

Hush, someone will hear you!

 

ANNIE removes ELIZABETH’s hand

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

I SHALL NOT FAIL!

 

ELIZABETH quickly moves aside the apron on the ground to reveal a bloody knife and a cup. She picks up the knife and cup.

 

ELIZABETH

5.

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

     

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

Because Goody Henry gives him none.

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

  6.

     

ELIZABETH thrust the bloody knife towards ANNIE’s neck then pushes the cup up to her lips.

 

ELIZABETH

You must drink!

 

ANNIE

I SHALL NOT!

     

ELIZABETH

DRINK!

 

CATHERINE, another young girl, sallies in holding three poppets.

 

CATHERINE

I pray, what is the matter here!

 

ANNIE

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

You do not believe me?

 

ELIZABETH lowers the knife and the cup. ANNIE seizes the moment to escape into CATHERINE’s arms.

 

CATHERINE

 

ANNIE

 

 

7.

 

ELIZABETH

 

CATHERINE

   

ANNIE

 

CATHERINE

 

CATHERINE hands the poppets to ELIZABETH and curtsies.

 

ELIZABETH

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

That’s what you think.

 

CATHERINE

  8.

 

CATHERINE (CONTD)

 

ELIZABETH

You are truly wise, Catherine.

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

I am neither sensible nor wise.

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

Aye…you are right. So dangerous.

 

In a flash, ELIZABETH drops her knife, grabs CATHERINE by the hair and quickly pours the chicken’s blood into her mouth. CATHERINE falls to her knees gagging while trying to spit out the blood.

 

ANNIE, alarmed, rushes to CATHERINE’s side.

 

ANNIE

I pray it be tomatoes or beets!

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

You will live, unfortunately.

 

9.

 

ANNIE

 

ELIZABETH

Let Catherine give us a word first.

 

CATHERINE

 

Elated, ELIZABETH kneels down next to CATHERINE.

 

 

CATHERINE

OH, GOD! OH, GOD! I FEEL HIM!

 

ELIZABETH

GOOD, I WILL FEEL HIM TOO!

 

ELIZABETH drinks from the cup. The WIND begins to blow.

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE

I… I can not.

 

CATHERINE

 

ELIZABETH

10.

 

The sound of CAWING CROWS joins in with the sound of the blowing wind. Afraid, ANNIE kneels with the others. She takes the cup and drinks. She violently coughs and rolls to the ground.

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE’s body jerks, convulses. The WIND HOWLS LOUDER.

 

  CATHERINE

My Goody Johnson will hang! 

 

ELIZABETH

 

ANNIE rises to her feet and starts to flap her arms.

 

ANNIE

I’M ABOUT TO FLY! I MUST FLY!

 

ELIZABETH and CATHERINE also stand and begin to flap their arms.

 

  CATHERINE

I’M GOING TO FLY, TOO!

 

ELIZABETH

 

They continue to flap their arms while crying out – Goody Johnson must hang, Goody Williams must hang.

ALL

Goody Williams, Goody Johnson, Goody Henry…THEY MUST HANG! THEY MUST HANG!  HANG…

BLACKOUT.

Winter

Woman wants forever
And man wants heaven
And sometimes not oftentimes
The two wants collide
And both become a cloud
Less often still but sometimes
They die, actually die
Before it can rain
And the world stays dry
And everything remains
Just fine

 

Rome, February 2015

Then a white bird comes. A big white bird. And it is close, closing like it is going to land on your head. After the rain has stopped. Wings level with your shoulders. On the rooftop before you’re due to leave. Exactly like it’s on your head. And you in the dark with no umbrella over you. The size of your suitcase. On the roof the night you’re due to go. Before getting lost at the station. The water running to your feet. And the sun lost in the light. And beneath a Roman column. The alleys that curl. And the wind which irons the umbrella. And the umbrella yawning. Life at both sides of the road. And life is always a life. And rain until departure. And the umbrella lifting in the wind. And the sound of the suitcase’s wheels. Gravel then tiles. And the dream of faces in the glass. The taste of thyme in the potatoes. A building the colour of a peach. Mounds of melon beneath shavings of mortadella. And the shavings which curl. And the blacks selling umbrellas. And on the thresholds of the restaurants. Speech a song sung over and over. And a white bird saying farewell. And the umbrellas at the entrances to the restaurants. And the wind at the entrances to the restaurants. And life at the entrances to the restaurants. The size of your suitcase. And life always a life. 

 

Shipping traffic

The grey ships come from the north,
The snow-white ships come from the pole,
The ships of the south are all broken down.
O harbourmaster sitting on the cloudbanks,
O harbourmaster walking on the water,
Tell those leaping on the equator line
How their flesh might turn to wood,
How their bones might turn to steel,
Until from out their bodies comes a ship,
Its black pushing through the swell. 

 

Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger.

A Song About Bread

Here it is, the harsh brutality,

The full meaning of human suffering!

The sickle cuts the heavy ears of wheat

The way they slit throats of swans.

 

Since time immemorial, our field

Has known the morning shudder of August.

Straw is tied up in bundles,

Each bundle lies there like a yellow corpse.

 

Carts, like hearses, carry them

Into the crypt: a barn.

Like a deacon, the driver,

Barking at the mare, heeds the funeral rites.

 

After that, with care, without anger,

Their heads are laid on the ground

And little bones are pummeled

Out of their thin bodies with chains.

 

No one ever thinks

That straw is also flesh.

The bones are shoved in the mouth of the cannibal mill

That grinds them with its teeth.

 

And then, fermenting the dough,

They bake piles of tasty viands…

That’s when the whitish venom enters the jug

Of the stomach to lay eggs of spite.

 

Condensing all the beatings into a loaf,

Distilling the reapers’ cruelty into redolent brew,

It poisons the millstones of intestines

Of those who eat this straw meat.

 

And the charlatan, the murderer, and the villain

Whistle like autumn across the entire country…

All because the sickle cuts ears of wheat

The way they slit throats of swans.

 <1921>

 

* * *

I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry.

All will pass like smoke from white apple trees.

Overcome with the gold of wilting,

I won’t be young anymore.

 

Touched with cold, you will no longer

Beat in the same way, heart,

And the land of birch chintz

Won’t tempt me to gallivant barefoot.

 

Nomadic spirit! Less and less

You stoke the flame of my lips.

O my lost freshness,

Mayhem of eyes and deluge of feelings!

 

These days I’m stingier in my desires,

My life—or did I dream you?

I might as well have galloped on a pink steed

On a sonorous early spring morning.

 

All of us, all of us will perish;

Quietly, copper leaves pour from maples…

Therefore, blessed be, forever,

Everything that’s come to bloom and to die.

<1921>

 

Letter to My Mother

Are you still alive, my dear old lady?

I’m alive as well. Hello, hello!

Let that ineffable evening light

Keep streaming over your hut.

 

They write to me that, barely hiding your fear,

You’ve gotten awfully sad over me,

That you often wander the road

In your tattered old-fashioned coat.

 

In the blue dark of evening,

You often see the same thing:

In a bar fight, someone has stabbed me

In the heart with a Finnish knife.

 

It’s nothing, my dear! Please calm down.

Just a terrible hallucination.

I’m not so hopeless a drunkard

As to die without seeing you.

 

I’m as gentle as I was before,

And I only dream of one thing:

To come back from my rebellious anguish

To our squat house.

 

I will come back when our garden,

White with spring, outstretches its branches.

But this time, don’t wake me up at dawn

The way you used to do eight years ago.

 

Don’t wake up the old expectations;

Don’t disturb all that didn’t come true—

I’ve endured loss and exhaustion

Far too early in life.

 

And don’t teach me to pray. Please don’t!

There is no going back to the old.

Only you are my help and my joy.

Only you are my ineffable light.

 

So forget your anxiety,

Don’t get so awfully sad over me.

Don’t wander the road so often

In your tattered old-fashioned coat.

 <1924>

I am dreaming that clothes are coming apart. There is a sudden need for needles and thread. There are buttons on the floor like seashells. We try to make the outdoors in our living rooms. I have a measuring tape around my neck. I have a single pin between my teeth. The outside comes in. I brace myself like for a wave.

I stick my head out the window, wearing fancy dresses

dressed for myself

in this isolation we live for ourselves

we have long conversations with mirrors

the past is almost erased

We forget what it was like to go out. The sun shines more often when I am home. It does so to tempt me. We establish a dialogue, the sun and I. I put out my bare arms.

I ask for the sun to warm me, for a careful caress. I learn to be touched by something so far away. I learn what distance really is.

My friends have also fallen into the landscape of their apartments. We whisper to each other. We stick our ears out the window and attempt to hear a voice.

 

-Albania, 1971-

            The prisoner would remain nameless as far as Besim was concerned. He had first learned his name months ago when he had arrived at the prison. Besim prided himself on knowing the first and last names of each one of the prisoners. He’d try to be generous—to the best of his ability and to the best of their circumstances, but he learned quickly that most of the prisoners had no interest in exchanging niceties with him and that most spit at the officers as soon as their backs were turned. Still, despite subtle displays of protest, they obeyed the rules, too weak and too tired to try their hand at debauchery.

            The prisoner coughed violently. Why, thought Besim to himself, why gamble with your life you simple-minded fool? His fist went numb and then stung as it made contact with the prisoner’s cheekbone. It was dim and cold in the room and the nameless one’s pain echoed off the walls as he grunted and moaned in response. He worked hard to breathe and Besim wondered if he had broken his nose.

            “Get up,” he muttered, as he shook his fist to make the pain go away. The prisoner’s head hung limply to the left and he could’ve passed for dead had it not been for the labored breathing.

            “Get up,” Besim repeated calmly.

            “Do you know why you are here?” Besim asked between breaths as he tried to pull him up and straighten him against the wall. The prisoner didn’t flinch at the sound of his voice. “You were sent to the camp because you cannot be trusted. You were then brought here because you proved us right.”

*

            Edi stopped running and bent over to catch his breath. His adrenaline was draining with the sunlight and in the silence of the forest; reality was beginning to envelop him. His mistakes rose to the surface of his consciousness and his body trembled in the cool evening air.

            I should have waited until after roll call, he thought to himself. I should have waited for darkness to run. The forest was thicker than he had anticipated and he was, at first, grateful he had not taken off into the night. But now he realized his grave mistake in not waiting for the dark, after each person in the camp had been called out and accounted for. He hadn’t been on the run for more than twenty minutes before he heard shouting in the distance, knowing instantly that the woods had been infiltrated with soldiers looking for him.

            Beyond escaping the confines of camp, Edi didn’t have much of a plan and found himself hopelessly lost with the onset of night. There was still a childlike and primitive fear of the dark that he secretly harbored; the old trees blocked out the late sun, and their tangled trunks and abandoned foliage below created a mausoleum-like effect and Edi only hoped he wouldn’t die in the vast wilderness, alone and remembered only as an afterthought, a cautionary tale. He tried to shake off thoughts of his mortality, certain he had left the worst behind him. But the evening’s cacophonous sounds echoed; the sound of snapping twigs and leaves scattering and a slight wind picking up. Edi looked around briefly before setting his aim on one direction and moving towards it.

            He thought about his only companionship at the camp, a priest he had befriended upon his arrival, and found himself wishing more than ever that he wasn’t alone. The priest was different from all the others. Educated and socially aware, he nourished a part of Edi’s mind that Edi didn’t realize had been starving. Their discussions at first were the usual: “Where are you from? Who is your father? Where is he from?” Eventually they began to carry on deeper discussions in broken whispers late into the night. In this country’s new era, religion had become the forbidden fruit—one bite of it and you were destined to a life of destitution, of punishment and deprivation. And while their conversations in daylight veered back and forth between family history and stories of their lives before the camp, after hours there were questions about the afterlife and salvation. Eventually, even those discussions would shift to ghost stories and old family folklore.

            At night when the last family name had been called and accounted for and everyone retired to their homes, Edi would make his way back to the priest and knock twice lightly on the door; twice—never three times. Three knocks foreshadowed an impending death. Quietly the door would open, the priest would smile and stand to the side for Edi to walk in.

            “Did I ever tell you about…” were the priest’s first words and suddenly the night would begin. Edi wasn’t the most enlightened man but he believed his presence had become just as integral to the priest’s life as the priest had become to his.

*

            Edi held his side as he walked in the darkness, the cramp deepening with every breath he took. The forest seemed to grow louder the later it got and Edi wondered how many different animals thrived as nocturnal beings. He tried to recall what made him decide to leave the semblance of security he had accidentally stumbled upon, but nothing seemed to justify his current state of hopelessness. The last discussion he and the priest shared was the first time Edi dominated the conversation, talking about his fears and his insecurities and what he worried would happen to them both if they stayed at the camp. Somehow, through his incessant ramblings, Edi decided he would escape to run through the woods and over the mountains to Serbia and seek asylum. He urged the priest to join him, referring to the trip as an adventure.

            “Have you read anything by Jack London?” He asked the priest. “Have you ever wished you lived in the pages of a story that was so powerful, so exciting, that your life feels like nothing in comparison? As if you’re just waiting for the real part of this existence to begin?”

            The priest studied Edi’s face in the dim light. Edi was a good but simple man. He listened to the priest’s stories like a child weighing every one of his mother’s words. He knew Edi respected him as an older man and as a religious man; this was the first time the priest found Edi sounding provocative. He worried for where Edi’s mind was going, and yet he couldn’t smother the small flame of admiration that he felt deep in his chest.

            “You have a surefire chance of being killed on this run,” he responded. “Stay here and remain with the rest of us. We don’t have it as bad as the others, you know this well. It could be alright.” The priest vowed he’d never forget the look of disappointment on Edi’s face, replaced just as quickly with a look of utter determination.

            “I wasn’t born to be treated like cattle. Neither were you. Neither is anyone else here. I’m leaving whether or not you come with me, but a man can always use a friend on the road.”

            The discussion died down soon after and the priest regaled him once again with stories of the times before the quick rise of communism. He talked and talked until Edi was no longer laughing or responding in return and he realized Edi had fallen asleep, and the priest hoped by morning Edi would wake with a clear mind and a laugh, telling him how he was just overly excited the night before and was kidding around with his talk of running.

*

            “Tell me one thing,” Besim said after taking a long drag on his cigarette. He sat in a chair across the room from the prisoner, who was still slouched on the floor. He was conscious now, however, and he stared back at Besim from where he sat.

            “Tell me one thing,” Besim repeated. “Where did you think you’d end up? What did you think would happen?”

            The prisoner coughed once in response. One, two, three knocks against the concrete wall; he scraped his knuckles on the rough surface before smirking at the officer and found Besim smirking back.

            “You smug son-of-a-bitch. Did you think you’d make it out of the woods alive? And if you did, did you think the Serbs would welcome you with open arms?”

            “Leaving the lion’s den to walk into the wolves’ den,” responded Edi. “Wolves can at least be tamed.” Besim only stared at him.

            They sat on opposite sides of the room studying each other as if they were underwater and the sounds of the outside world were everything on the surface. There was a kind of freedom in Edi’s situation and he realized he was untouchable. He knew they were both killing time until he would be led outside to be lined up against the wall. Perhaps this was the ultimate freedom a person could obtain. The adventure he had so passionately talked to the priest about could be this, and this life was merely a preparation for what lay beyond.

            When he was being carried across the camp after being caught, Edi refused to make eye contact with the priest. He saw him in the distance, amongst the small crowd that had gathered quietly but turned his head and looked straight in front of him as they passed through the crowd. He didn’t want to the priest to see defeat on his face or the sense of regret he harbored. Edi’s final thought before they carried him indoors and shut the door behind him was: well, isn’t this a bitch? And he spit blood on the ground.

*

            Luckily the night sky was clear enough for the moon to shed some light for guidance. Edi felt like an intruder in the wilderness each time his feet disrupted the quiet. He was too large, too loud, and too clumsy to permanently exist there. The deeper into the forest he thought he was going, the deeper he dug into his mind to dust off conversations he’d had with the priest. If he focused enough of his energy on those inner dialogues, he could almost pretend the priest was with him.

            Somewhere in the distance he heard a twig snap. And then another twig. And then another. He stopped and caught his breath, waiting to hear more. In the few moments of silence that followed, Edi quickly tiptoed behind a tree and crouched slowly until he squatted with his head resting on his knees.

            Fuck, they found me, he thought to himself. Fuck. Fuck. They can’t take me. And he began to think about God. He wanted to believe that his close relationship with the priest would grant him protection. He kept his head on his knees and closed his eyes, praying for invisibility.

            Suddenly Edi sat up straight and listened closely. It wasn’t a twig snapping or the sound of footsteps. He listened closely and wondered exactly how dehydrated he had become in the last several hours. Just before he resigned himself to absolute madness and sleep deprivation, he heard it again, clearer and closer. It was his name. Someone said his name. From somewhere in the distance, a voice was calling out to him. Not the priest. Not the officers. It was a voice he knew; the soft, crackly voice—like glass cracking under pressure—of his grandmother who had long since passed. He felt a lump in his throat as he battled with himself; the desire to reach out to her and respond—fighting with the knowledge that he must keep quiet, followed by the realization that he was, in fact, facing his own mortality.

            The corners of his eyes filled with tears as he remembered the endless talk of ghosts and folklore with the priest.

            “Have I ever told you about a neighbor of my mother’s,” began the priest, “who swore she had heard names being shouted one night as she walked home from visiting her sister? She didn’t think anything of it until she realized the names being called were those of the dead.”

            Edi felt his body break out in goosebumps the first time he heard it and again now as he sat bewildered behind the tree. He knew enough not to respond; his grandmother had told him the same lore as a child. A superstitious warning meant to scare children into silence before bedtime, you never respond to your name being called by someone who was deceased.

            The third and final time he heard his name, it caught in the wind and disappeared around him. He didn’t know how long he remained behind that tree, frozen in terror, but when he finally moved, he ran. He hardly noticed the sky beginning to lighten or the tremendous noise he made running through the brush and tripping over roots. Nothing seemed like fantasy anymore, like the folktales he and the priest relished sharing with each other.

            He stopped to briefly catch his breath and squeezed his eyes shut to keep out the possible sight of anything he shouldn’t be seeing. The memory of all those stories and superstitions crept into his mind and when he opened his eyes, Edi thought he saw a movement off to one side of him. He wanted to yell out his grandmother’s name but was scared he might actually be experiencing the impossible. He had always believed in listening to your body and his heart was now fluttering in his chest.

            Why is she doing this to me, he thought as he stood in the middle of a clearing. He heard another twig snap somewhere behind him before closing his eyes and putting his hands up to his ears. In his mind, Edi saw his grandmother as she used to be, long gray hair pinned up into a tight bun. He had always been close to her and wondered if coming face-to-face with his grandmother would be the worst fate to encounter. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times to get rid of the floating dots hovering there. In the distance, in the forest’s darkness he saw a figure moving slowly towards him. Edi choked back tears as he walked towards it, arms back down at his sides.

            “Grandmother…” his voice shook.

            “Over here! I got him! I got him!” Edi recognized the man’s voice from the camp.

            “Please. No,” was all he could mutter while taking a few steps back before he was grabbed and pushed from the side, and he went flying.

*

            He could feel the sunlight even though he saw only darkness. Prior to the walk to the wall, he was blindfolded and led outside. His shoes, worn and thin, created a poor barrier between his feet and the ground. He pressed his toes into the pebbles and ground them around until he created a little crater. He found a strange sense of comfort in the gravelly texture and in the sound the dirt and stones made rubbing against each other. The sound of pebbles skipping and feet being quickly shuffled let him know he was not alone.

            Edi felt a hand press his shoulder roughly, until his tied hands scraped against the wall behind him. He brushed his fingertips lightly against the rough surface and felt the warmth of the sunlight soaked up by the concrete. He pressed his palms against the wall as if gaining energy from the heat, as if he could melt into the structure and hide away there forever. Edi heard words but didn’t process them, didn’t want to give them any weight. Instead, he rubbed his hands against the wall and ground his toe into the ground and used up his last thought on how inanimate objects don’t feel or do, they just are. He felt, for the first time in his life, jealous of something that wasn’t alive.

*

            The priest, though at first considered a prime candidate for relentless harassment and random searches of his home, was diligent about keeping to himself and completing his work to the best of his ability. And because of this—over time—he was eventually left alone and considered one of the more decent prisoners the officers dealt with. His reputation was his ticket into Edi’s home where he was being kept, just before being taken away to the prison.

            He knew he shouldn’t have been shocked by Edi’s condition: swollen eye, blood crusted over his nostrils and upper lip, but he just stared. He let the heat of anger and hopelessness wash over him without flinching and without giving away his sadness to Edi.

            “Well,” whispered Edi, his voice hoarse. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t come?” And he smiled. The priest walked over to him and sat down on the floor.

The priest did something he wouldn’t have risked otherwise, if it hadn’t been for Edi. Leaning forward, he held up his hand and made a small, swift cross in the air and began to murmur a prayer.

            “Tell me something, Father,” Edi interrupted. “Is there really such a thing as Heaven? As Hell?”

            “Whatever you believe there is, there is,” whispered back the priest. “I can’t tell you how exactly those two worlds exist, I’m only certain of the fact that they do. I believe they do.” Edi simply nodded.

            “I heard my grandmother,” said Edi. “Out there. In the woods. She said my name. Just like your stories, I heard my name from someone who was dead. I’m meant to die here,” and his voice caught on the last word and Edi broke down. The priest could do nothing, only blink quickly to keep his tears from falling and put his hand on Edi’s shoulder.

            “You will be alright, Edi. Trust me.” And he squeezed his shoulder.

            As he had promised himself he would do, the priest took out a small piece of paper from his pocket and a pen.

            “Do you want me to write or do you want to do it yourself?”

            “You write, I’ll tell you what to put in there,” responded Edi.

            He began to quickly write down Edi’s words as he spoke them. In this task, he found a purpose he thought he had lost when he first arrived at the camp. It was minor and yet it was what he’d expect of a priest; a final sense of comfort to a man in his final moments. He was going to miss Edi and their nightly talks. Sometimes the priest couldn’t help but wonder if he could’ve prevented him from this fate, but he knew well the stubbornness of man, of that inescapable sin—pride.

            Dear mama, baba…the letter started and continued on to the backside of the page. When they had finished, Edi took a breath and put his head back against the wall. The priest folded the paper and placed it carefully in his pocket. He knew he only had a few more minutes before someone was going to get him.

            “So,” said the priest. “Tell me about your favorite Jack London story.”

After having sex with her husband, Sabi left him in bed for the Frenchman on her laptop. Usually, the wireless connection would buffer halfway into a clip, but tonight the signal was strong. Despite needing to get some rest for her third oncologist appointment, Sabi stayed up the rest of the night. In the morning, she would know if the chemotherapy was working. She didn’t want to think about the results of the PET scan or the chemo. She didn’t want to brace herself for another assault of fatigue, nausea, constipation, and that damn metallic taste in her mouth. She only wanted to watch the Frenchman have sex with women.

He appeared on her laptop screen with a beautiful, young brunette. They were in a white room with white furniture. On top of a white leather couch, the brunette sat astride the sitting Frenchman, his floppy, brown hair clung to his sweaty brow as he sucked her perky, dark nipples. She lifted a curtain of silky hair from her shoulders then a jump cut to her kneeling in front of him.

Nick bought Sabi the laptop so that she could watch movies while having meds pumped into her Mediport, a small, metal disc about the size of a quarter that sat under her skin below her collarbone. A catheter connected the port to a large vein. The meds were injected through a thick needle that fits into the port. After that first painful puncture, Sabi reached for the laptop and lost herself in movies. She watched French films mostly. During the first month of treatments, she watched two, sometimes three movies as six hours’ worth of drugs were pumped into her Mediport.

The films ranged from old to new. Historical to arty ones. Films with little plot, some that made no sense at all. She watched philosophical love stories and musicals with tone-deaf singers. She made use of her high school French and turned off the subtitles. She liked how serious yet relaxed all the French actors appeared.

Nick hated the French films; said he couldn’t stand the apathy on display. She tried to convince him that what he was watching was the opposite of apathy. “Don’t you see? There are no pretensions. They are dealing with life and not getting all emotional about it. Emotional reactions are superficial,” she said. “They only help us avoid our fears when in fact we should be facing them.”

Treatment days were grueling, long, nine-hour days, which began with a needle inside the Mediport and a nurse filling seven different sized vials for blood testing. Then Sabi had to report to her oncologist, who reviewed the results of her blood work to determine if she was strong enough to endure the scheduled chemo treatment.

Nick and Sabi would spend their time in the waiting room looking through Better Homes and Gardens, staring at perfect couples inside quaint country homes, looking chaste, untarnished, undamaged by life. Looking as far removed from a sticky, sweaty orgasm as a patient in a coma.

After her last appointment, Sabi and Nick took a long bath together. Nick sat behind Sabi in the tub and carefully sponged her back, arms, neck, breasts, and inner thighs. When he was done, she kissed his soapy hand, felt him grow hard behind her, and then he slowly turned her around, so that she sat facing him. With her legs wrapped around his waist, he slipped his dick inside her. In the 15 years they’d been together, they’d never made love this way; fucking slowly in the bathtub, skin slippery, no sounds coming from their mouths.

That night while Nick slept, Sabi squirmed in bed, wanting badly to dig in and rip out the Mediport. Instead, she tiptoed out to the living room and turned on her laptop.

Still thinking of their lovemaking in the bathtub, Sabi searched for “couples having hot sex” on the internet.

It was astonishing to find so many free porn sites featuring plastic women moaning and groaning while wooden men grunted behind them, on top of them, underneath them, to the side of them. Impossible sexual positions where the men jackhammered away as if they were competing in an Iron Man competition.

And then she found the Brit. He wasn’t the greatest performer. He puckered his mouth when he mounted a woman and exhaled in a whistle when he came, but he had a cute accent and a nice, muscular ass. His belly rippled when he fucked, and he had nice hands. He seemed to enjoy touching the women he was with. It was through watching the Brit that Sabi found the Frenchman.

It was a threesome scene, which began with the Brit making fun of the other man’s accent.

“You a Frenchman, mate?”

“Oui, and I have a bigger dick than you,” he said.

A buxom, older woman entered the room. The two younger men took off their clothes. The woman kept one occupied while the other lost himself in her lush ass. The Frenchman didn’t whistle when he came. He kissed the woman instead. A long, passionate kiss that seemed to take the woman by surprise. Sabi imagined what it would be like to be overpowered by the Frenchman. She wondered if he would kiss her passionately and then slap her tits. She wondered if she would be okay with that.

__

After treatment, she was too weak to eat, too pissed off to talk about how she felt. The Zofran and Ativan helped with nausea, but after a couple of days, the drugs made her moody. On the upswing she was vocal, laughing, singing, talking non-stop about how great she felt. On the downswing, she touched her body, felt for lumps, placed ointment on her scars, and patted the Mediport. “Scar tissue is building around it,” she told Nick, thinking if she said this out loud, she would escape the deep state of paranoia that now invaded her every thought. Sex was what kept her sane.

__

The beautiful brunette had a bush, a rarity in cyberporn. She pulled on it and the Frenchman went wild. He pulled her legs so that her ass hit the edge of the white leather sofa and began to masturbate over her stomach. She tugged harder on her bush. He moaned, grabbed one of her feet, and sucked on her big toe. He yanked on his large, uncircumcised dick as the brunette rubbed herself. The Frenchman took her from behind and whispered French words in her ear as she climaxed.

Earlier tonight, Nick had screamed, “You’re amazing!” as Sabi fondled his balls then played with him until he was hard enough for her to climb on top. Weird that she could be so sexually aroused yet feel so unattractive. Her body felt old and tired. Her ringlets cut short in an uneven bob. Her once thick eyebrows now faint lines over her dark-circled eyes. Her lush eyelashes now wispy nothings.

She hit the pause button when she heard Nick’s heavy footsteps. “Sabi!” he said, walking into the living room. It was five in the morning and still dark out.

“What’s going on? Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Sabi closed the laptop and smiled. Nick looked so young and cute and loving. His glassy brown eyes softened; he ran his hand over his floppy, brown hair. He used to tell her all the time he could never live without her, but he didn’t say that anymore.

__

Last November, nothing had prepared Sabi for her apathy over the whole cancer thing. The oncologist had reached over his desk to squeeze her hand after the diagnosis. He said, “Go ahead and cry if you want to.” But she didn’t want to. She pretended to cry. Gave the oncologist what he wanted.

Before Sabi left the oncologist’s office, she had to do a bone marrow biopsy. The nurse instructed her to remove her clothing, don a paper robe, and leave the opening towards the back. She was told to lie on her side. She felt the cool alcohol on her back and the burn of a local anesthetic. The oncologist said, “Take a deep breath.”

She felt a pinch near her vertebra. “I’m sorry,” the oncologist said as he drew a sample. A preemptive apology for the sharp pain that followed. She imagined a metal string extracted slowly from the middle of her femur, through her hip bone and up her spine.

The metal scraping each nerve ending as it left her body.

Nick didn’t go to the oncologist with her. She didn’t want him there. Later, when she told him the diagnosis, she said, “No crying, no feeling sorry for us, and none of that ‘Why us?’ please.”

He’d fallen in love with a vibrant, healthy woman who’d read more books than he ever knew existed. And now she was sick, but it could be worse. She was stage two. The likelihood of a remission was 80%.

Now it was December, and they would know if the drugs were working. If the cancer is reactive, her chances for remission would go up to 90%. She was undergoing an aggressive treatment program. She risked infertility, dangerous scarring to her lungs, breast cancer, leukemia, thyroid disease. She might get an infection. She might catch pneumonia. She could have a fatal reaction to one of the drugs. But she could be cured and alive. Healthy once again.

__

When Nick stepped inside the kitchen. Sabi was still in front of her laptop, with the volume on mute. She wasn’t fooling Nick. He had walked in on her and the Frenchman before. He always made a face but didn’t voice his disapproval.

She looked up her favorite scene with the Frenchman, “Manu Loves Dana.” She fast-forwarded through the first five minutes, skipped the lovely Dana’s strip routine, which concluded with her on all fours.

Sabi found the right spot on the six-minute seven-second mark. Manu was on his knees in front of a spread-eagle Dana with his nose and mouth buried in her pussy. They fucked on a chocolate velvet sofa. Manu held Dana’s head and kissed her eyes and nose, mouth, and tits. He pounded into her; said she was beautiful. So foocking beautiful.

Dana didn’t look anything like Sabi. She had olive-skin and almond-shaped eyes. She looked petite next to the burly Frenchman. He deftly maneuvered her into a reverse cowgirl position, his head and torso disappeared behind the lovely Dana, his large hands on her narrow hips, lifting her pelvis up and down over his very large dick.

If Sabi’s PET Scan came back clear today, if the cancer cells were gone, then she would still continue treatments; four more months of chemotherapy followed by three weeks of daily radiation treatments to her chest.

“You should shower and get dressed. Our appointment is in a couple of hours.”

Sabi turned up the volume on her laptop. Dana moaned, “Fuck me!”

“Come on,” Nick said. He slapped down the laptop screen and took it away.

Sabi stood up and hugged him. She buried her nose in his neck and sucked on it.

“Sabi.” He pulled away, but she held him by the waist. “We have to go,” he tried again.

“Please fuck me, Nick.”

“We don’t have time for that, sweetheart.”

Sabi gave up, grabbed her laptop, and carried it to their bedroom. She placed it on top of their bed, opened the screen, and stared at the frozen image of the Frenchman plowing into Dana’s ass. His face caught in a grimace, his hands digging into her hips, and Dana looking straight into the camera, biting her bottom lip.

Sabi opened her closet, pulled out a long tunic and a pair of leggings, dug through her pile of high-heeled boots and grabbed a pair of black Converses.

Take a shower. Get dressed. Wear a nice bra and panty set.

She would have to strip at least once for the oncologist and Nick because Nick insisted on accompanying her to the exam room. “For moral support,” he had said.

He didn’t trust her. Nick would sit on a chair across from the exam table. The elderly oncologist would gently knock before entering the room. He’d give Sabi a warm welcome and coldly say hello to Nick.

Nick hated the oncologist. He also hated when the oncologist felt for swollen nodules on her throat, the sides of her neck, along with her collarbone, under her armpits, and her groin. It was because of Nick that Sabi always kept her bra and panties on.

Nick came into the bedroom. He smiled when he saw the clothes on the bed but frowned at the laptop. Not too much, but enough to let her know that the sight of two people fucking was not alright, not helpful, not funny, and not appreciated.

After her shower, she spotted Nick on the bed, watching something on her laptop. She recognized the Frenchman’s voice. Come for me, baybee.

“Why do you like this guy?” Nick spoke without taking his eyes off the laptop.

Grabbing a wide-tooth comb from the dresser, Sabi combed her hair, making sure not to pull too hard on the few knots or scratch her sensitive scalp. “I don’t like him. I don’t even know him.”

“You could have fooled me. I mean, he’s got a baby-arm size dick, so I can see why.”

“Oh god, are we really going there?”

“Is it the anal? We’ve never done that. Do you want that?”

“No. Look.” She slapped down the laptop screen. She wanted to yell at Nick, tell him to stop asking so many damn questions. “It’s just a way to distract myself, that’s all. It’s got nothing to do with the Frenchman, or his big dick, or the fact that every woman he touches convulses in orgasmic bliss.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“What I mean is I don’t watch the Frenchman because I want to fuck the Frenchman; I watch him because I wish I could be the Frenchman.”

Nick grabbed her hand and pulled her down on the bed.

“What are you doing?”

“I love you, Sabi.” He tugged at the towel wrapped around her body.

On her back, she looked up at his serious face, feeling surprised. He covered her lips with his.

It was not the kiss of a loving husband or a frightened man. This was a darker, more deliberate kiss. Not emotional, but raw and carnal, like he couldn’t get enough of her. She gave herself up to it. Let him take her. He pushed his way inside her. It was like nothing they had ever shared before. It was rough and dirty.

Sabi left the bed after it was over and took another shower. She dressed and threw some mascara and blush on her face. She picked the Monet print silk scarf to wear, the one with the water lilies.

“You look pretty,” Nick said when she walked out into the living room.

“We should get going,” she said, stopping by the mirror on the wall to put on some red lipstick. She put the laptop inside her tote bag and reached for Nick’s outstretched hand.

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“The Frenchman” was first published as “Sex for the Living” in Literary Orphans. Year Two, Issue 8.