Grand Chinese Kitchen

Grand Chinese Kitchen

by Christopher Linforth

The TV couple come in every night to the restaurant. They order water, then set up their portable TV on the edge of the table. Mr. TV tunes the channel to sports, the Indians game. Mrs. TV waits for her husband to order his chow mein. Then she flips the channel to a rerun of a daytime soap. She basks in the doctor’s affairs, his flirting with the nurses and the lonely housewife. Mr. TV flirts with me, so his wife angles the TV her way. I put in their order and observe the TV couple from the kitchen doorway: their hands tangle on the channel knob. There’s a snarl, a clatter of silverware on the floor. I bring the TV couple their egg drop soup. The wife is crying at something on the screen, and the husband is watching her.

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by Tulsa Review

Easter Furlough

Easter Furlough

by Laurence Foshee

Three months before I heard about his funeral, three weeks too late—and three days before the Poway Synagogue Shooting where 30 miles away and three summers earlier I’d started a 3,000-km group cycling trip—my neighbor David (nearly thrice my age) stopped by. I was on work furlough from the Tulsa B’nai Emunah’s kosher kitchen. He’d often stand outside my apartment to borrow my phone or palaver. That night he jumped tracks from his usual: from the infection and poor circulation in his legs (or his dysthymia), to venting a torrid three-year emotional affair within the gray area between returned and unrequited.

I told him that in year three of my Möbius Strip swooning, to tease out sense to life (and because I neither owned a car nor could afford a bus ticket), I traveled on foot hundreds of miles to shoot my shot with a lost love. He confided that he hitchhiked to Van Buren, Arkansas to see his gal. By turns of kismet, a trucker dropped him off at a Conoco where someone knew where she lived. They returned home to Muskogee together.

I told him I did
what I did and never even saw mine after all that.

He limped to the damp wooden bench and laid my cell down. I said she’d never reached out to me since, and I often wondered what I could’ve said or done to slam whatever door I’d felt was ajar, or even just to leave the recidivist prison of my own thinking. And, leaning against the dun bricks, I confessed to wondering if it’s been a well-deserved imprisonment. In our silence near 3^rd and Utica, there were sirens or maybe gunshots in the distance. He picked the phone back up.

“How long’s your loving been?” he asked.
“You wanna call it that?” I chirped.
“Humor me.”
"I'm almost out of year eleven." 
"Christ, you made it past the decade mark?!” he shrieked, “It’s Easter…man I'll pray for ya." 
All I could think to say was, "It's Pesach, too."

I went back inside to resume Jeff Buckley's 33-piece set, "Live At Sin-é," and pondered the Threes of it all. Three years prior was—among things such as dropping out of college a third time, watching fellow coworkers and friends love each other, fool around, and rip each other’s hearts and lives apart to a point of body count—around when I had my last good cry. Regrettably, it was about "my" Yarivah (a Hebrew senhal I’d used when speaking to friends); I'd thought of her daily ever since.

This aching mid-aged man's entire story fit comfortably within what was burgeoning into two emotional pitstops for a twentysomething. Upon this thought (yet never latter thoughts on all the luminous humans I’ve lived among and separate from, snuffed out time after time because of the same goddamn story of yet another megalomaniacal, typically white dude, smug in his lovelornness or perceived disenfranchisement), my eyes welled up yet again.

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by Tulsa Review

I Though About Killing You

I Thought About
Killing You.

by Gregorio Tfoya

            He was a Christian. It always surprised his students to hear that. Pupils questioning. Quizzical, wrinkled noses. Interrogatingly flat foreheads with fronced brows. Their lips forming the opening to “But, I thought….”

            Usually he told them, if they asked,
at the end of the term as they turned in their final exams. Or, if they
lingered outside the classroom inquiring about rounding and curves.

           Normally, it was his World Religions class that was most inquisitive. A “What are you?” coming out within the first five minutes of syllabus skimming. He had a stock answer readied: “Male. Married. A little hungry.” The hungry part wasn’t true. But some of the kids snorted. More at the inexactness of their peer’s question than at his own, tired humor.

            Of course, someone would ask a follow-up. Sometimes the original questioner. Sometimes not. If not, he felt bad about shooting the original student down.

            But the second question always came,
in variations of political correctness:

            “What are your personal religious
beliefs?”

            “What faith do you identify with?”

            Or, his favorite:

            “Where does your orientation find
you in terms of spirituality?”

            Generally, this last version of the
question was asked not by the first brave questioner.

           His answer was always the same: “Due to the academic nature of this class, I do not want to color your perspective one way or the other, so I will be respectfully unrevealing in this realm.”

Professorial correctness. 

People would slump. Sigh. Shake their heads. Once, he heard a: “What a jib.”

But then, some third questioner, or second, would ask about the end of the term. Like it was a loophole he’d just found in his professor logic.

“If you are still curious by term’s end, I may be more illuminating, but I promise you, I’m not that interesting.”

The original questioner would ask someone next to him what illuminating meant, in this context.

          Interest would always wane once they covered Judaism. Sometimes before then, if some sleuth of a student happened to find out the other class he was teaching every term was Hebrew. Then the case of the ambiguous-faith religion teacher would be cracked. Or so they thought.

It could have happened earlier, too. If anybody bothered to actually read the syllabus, they’d see his Ph.D. came from Tel-Aviv.

Until then, during the lectures of the Eastern Religions, one student would always orally submit his answer mid-lecture:

“Jainist”

            “Buddhist”

            “Sikhist”

            “Hinduist”

           Like it was written in the unread syllabus that extra credit could be earned by correctly identifying their instructor’s religious “orientation.” He normally only acknowledged those who submitted “Jainist” or “Sikhist” or “Hinduist,” saying, it’s just “Jain,” “Sikh,” “Hindu.”

            But his fluency in Hebrew was a red herring. Much like the other false clues he’d leave them throughout the class. The pictures in his PowerPoint of the Hindu men he lived with in India, taken during one of the three different stints that he lived there. Or, when they covered Islam at the end of the term, he’d casually drop in that, when he lived with Sunnis in Afghanistan, all he could stomach was the hummus.

            So it was fair to see the shock
spread across their faces when he admitted his Christianity. His appearance
didn’t help much either.

            Living nomadically, he’d grown accustomed to a beard. And now he just kept it, not out of some Samsonian facial tribute, but just ‘cause. At its pointiest, his faux-nomad beard stopped at his sternum. And it wasn’t just ‘cause. He kept his beard because the relics of hair on his head were getting scarcer by the months. He still had some vestige of vanity—about equivalent to the hair on his head.

            What he didn’t tell his community college World Religions class was that he was also an Uber driver. Learning that information about their Ph.D. holding instructor would truly be soul crushing, he thought.

            He’d picked up the “side gig,” as his thirteen-year-old called it, when they lived in Paris. He had been a visiting scholar for langues anciennes at the Sorbonne. It was the most prestigious post he’d probably ever attain, even if it was just for the last half of 2015.

            They lived in a squalid, little subsidized pension off the Rue De Vaugirard. It was beautiful. His ten-year-old, at the time, loved to get lost in Le Jardin de Luxemboug. His mother was always concerned, but a trusting concern. Sometimes, he’d go with them and watch them play their elaborate game of hide and seek.

          His second favorite place was Saint-Sulpice. It was the facades and frescoes that drew him in. Often, he’d just take a flaneur northwest from their walk-up until he arrived there. Delacroix fascinated him. His two large murals in the Chapelle des Anges were amazing.

           But he didn’t get to go to Le Jardin de Luxemboug or Saint-Sulpice often enough. When he wasn’t instructing Hebrew across Blvd. Saint Michel, he was driving their complimentary, compact sedan around the city.

            Even with the subsidized pension and free car, his wife’s translation royalties arbitrarily trickling in, and his Sorbonne salary, this was still Paris. Besides, the Sorbonne salary was pro-rated for a half a year, and they still had student debt.

            He and his wife met as undergrads at Azusa Pacific. They were both the oldest people in their Women of the Old Testament course, he twenty-six and already having lived in India three times, Afghanistan twice, Nepal once.

            She was twenty-five. Her parents were South American missionaries. She’d lived everywhere in South America. Spoke French, Spanish, and Portuguese and had taught English in Belize before moving to her birth state of California to attend school.

            She was a nice girl. Too pretty to even think about, so how she’d chosen the seat next to him was a divine miracle.

            They rarely spoke, until near the end of the term, when she had brought a Simone Weil book along, in the original French. It sat between them, on the table they shared, like an invitation.

           He told the back of her ring-less hand, after class, that he’d always wanted to read the work Leibniz wrote in French. Read Descartes in the original. Read Revue des Étudesjuives.

She told him she was free from three to four for French lessons, which was not even a result he could ever dream about happening from their brief conversation, but it’s what happened.

For the rest of the year they sat together in classes—Survey of Biblical Literature I and II, THEO 203: Baptist Heritage, even a non-Theological economics course. And she tutored him in the library in French.

At the end of the year, their knees touched over a tricky passage in Discours de la Méthode, and they stayed touching even after she’d deciphered it for him. When their hour was up, she told him:

“You should ask me to the ice-cream social.”

“What ice-cream social?” he said honestly.

“Any,” And he knew she was making fun of him, but he liked it.

They went out for yogurt. Afterwards, she tugged his beard and told him he should kiss her on the cheek. He complied.

So living in Paris had been as much her idea as his. She translated Christian books into French, Spanish, Portuguese. But not Joyce Meyer. Those were handled by the conglomerates. Her oeuvre was more artisanal. Obscure, you’d say, if you didn’t love her. Actually, a couple of the writers she worked with were people they had gone to school with. 

Sometimes, she would work with an author of some prominence, unbeknownst to said author. She would translate one of their books that had already been recently translated. She told him, “There is no such thing as a definitive translation.”

Every translation being a never-ending series; a version of the truth. Which was another fascinating aspect about his beautiful wife—translating books whose chief claim was their irrevocable truths under her belief of truth’s fluidity. 

She told him she’d learned that translation philosophy from Borges. Had read him as a teenage girl living in Argentina, sneaking his books under her father’s nose and into his house.

She was the fiction reader in their household. He rarely had time for fiction. He barely had time for Massora by Elias Levita these days. However, he had read his wife’s translation of Borges’s “The Gospel According to Mark,” and it had pleased him while giving him the chills at the same time.

That his wife could have worked with such borderline heresy. It made him look at her with even wider-eyed fascination. Love.

After reading it, he told her he understood why’d she had to be such a rebellious reader in her Argentine youth. To this day, he pretended that he was going to tattle-tale to her father about his daughter’s teenage reading proclivities. He picked that up from her. Teasing.

She loved less heretical writers too. Read Gideon by Marilyn Robinson once a year. He read that too, not once a year, but every five. She was always trying to get him to read Primo Levi’s fiction. Chiam Potok. Elie Wiesel. It was funny, he was the Hebrew scholar, but she read the popular Jewish literature.

Now they were reading the book of Ruth together, in English. First they read it in the King James, then the New International Reader’s Version. They both agreed that they preferred the sound of Ruth 2:10 in the NIrV over the KJV. Maybe Ruth’s declaration “I’m from another country” sounded more relevant than the KJV’s “I’m a stranger.”

They were unanimous also in their preference for the NIrV’s Ruth 4:13. That was romance for them.

When his wife had suggested they read Ruth, she’d done it in her sly, teasing way:

“You were always too distracted by my fingernails anyways, when we covered Ruth in class.”

A truth he could neither confirm nor deny. She still wore that marvelous purple polish.

Tonight was a Thursday. Mark Twain’s alleged coldest winter was over. It was October. Like most nights “side-gigging,” it took him into the city. Often times, an airport trip brought him north from San Mateo. Sometimes an airport trip would take him east too, once he was in the city, across the Bay Bridge, toward Oakland.

Even with the thirty to fifty dollar fare from the city to Oakland, riders still said it was cheaper to fly out of there than SFO. The Oakland airport was nicer in his opinion too. Cleaner.

He’d picked up a rider arriving at SFO and driven him all the way to a building behind the Federal Reserve. Good fare. A banker. Talked on his phone the whole ride.

It was still early but just dark. This was a good place for ferrying red-eye departures out of Oakland, so he circled the glass-front Fidelity building a few times, but it bare no fruit. Or more like he was always just a hair too slow on his touchscreen pickings.

Driving out of the financial district, he picked up a fare by the Art Institute. And the rider didn’t want to go to Haight-Asbury—a strange miracle—but wanted an address he didn’t recognize.

He picked the young man up and felt bad about stereotyping him as a hippie artist. Clean-shaven, Princeton cut, tall, and yes, Caucasian, with a backpack that he held in his lap protectively.

Because he didn’t know the destination, he didn’t pay much attention to his rider, focusing on getting his bearings on the digital grid and physical one.

After a couple minutes, his passenger said, not un-aggressively:

“Do you want some advice?”

“Sure,” he said gently.

“You’re new at this right?” his passenger asked accusingly.

“Relatively.”

“Well, three things. Get some snacks. M&M’s maybe, but not the peanut kind. Allergies. Get some bottled water. The little stubby ones are perfect. And get a gun or a knife. But know how to use it.”

The last piece came out not menacingly, but it was alerting. He studied his passenger before replying. His face did have a pained and conflicted look to it. A distracted quality of despair. And he was clutching the laptop in his backpack pretty tight.

“That’s good advice, but I think I’m alright on the last one,” he replied evenly.

“I’m serious man,” his passenger said, looking out the front windshield scoutingly, “this is a dangerous job you do, you need to protect yourself.”

The young man’s tone had softened, a little, so it didn’t come off as a threat. But there was still something biting to his syllables. Something unusual to his sitting posture.

“Well, I’ll put my faith in God. He’ll protect me.”

The man snorted. The snort seemed to jolt him out of his window shield gazing. His adversarial tone returned: “You’re one of those huh? You think God is gonna protect you, do you?"

“If he wants me to be protected, yes.” Trying to diffuse any aggression in the air.

The man just shook his head and snorted again. He relented a little on his backpack vice grip, like his hands and arms were in too much disbelief to function.

After a silent minute, a minute he’d assumed meant their speaking terms were through, the man said mockingly: “You didn’t see my shirt when I got into your car, did you?”

He had not seen the young man’s shirt. He’d been too busy taking directions from his phone.

The man set his backpack on the middle seat with some ceremony, spread his arms out and straightened up.

His shirt was black. It had a silver goat with exaggerated horns and a tail. A golden pentagram surrounded it. But the most striking feature was the calligraphy lettering running along the bottom, also in gold.

Even through his rearview mirror he could decipher it. It was three Hebrew sixes. Right to left to left. It looked like a cursive letter M with a curl up front.

He thought of two things: Delacroix’s rendering of Mephistopheles, and why he had associated his passenger’s clean-shaven appearance with virtue. Absurd, when he himself wore a graying, unruly beard.

With a neutral voice, he asked his young passenger: “Are you a Luciferian?” He was unsure if that term was still in fashion.

“A Satanist," was his acidic reply.

They didn’t cover Satanism in his World Religions course.

The rest of the ride was silence. He wasn’t sure where they could go from there. Not sure if it was appropriate to small talk about Satanism, “So, how’d you get into that?” like it was a genre of music.

In fact, maybe music was a solution to the paling silence between them. He rarely turned the radio on when he was driving for Uber, not wanting to offend anybody with his un-coolness. His non-hipness. Ruin his 4.998 rating over his musical ignorance.

But he flipped it on now. Pretty sure his rating was smoke already anyway. He scanned the stations. Commercials. He stopped it on the first thing that sounded like music. Soft. Slow. Spoken word. But the words were more uncomfortable than the silence.

A man contemplating pre-mediated murder. Suicide. How he loved himself more than he loved the object of his pre-meditations. Crazy.

And it would be too awkward to turn the dial now, because his passenger’s interest seemed piqued. Great, he thought, I’ve found the only Satanist station in the Bay Area. What were the odds? Maybe you could only get this frequency with a Satanist in the backseat.

Thankfully, it turned into a rap song. He could feel the Satanist’s disgust. He went back to his pre-radio veering out the backseat window, clutching his backpack. The JanSport lettering was Sharpied out. Now, his eye wanted to pick up on these little clues of the occult.

He’d never been grateful for rap music before, but he was now. He took the liberty to turn the radio off to no objection.

Their destination approached. It was a neighborhood, but still a main thoroughfare. There was a synagogue on the corner, three Hasidic Jews, and a providential parking spot right against the curb in front of them.

He and his passenger got out of the vehicle at the same time. His passenger because, evidently, this was close enough to his final destination. He, because it wasn’t every night you ran into Hasidic Jews in the city. Plus, the air was much less stifling outside than in his sedan right now.

He greeted the Hasidic Jews in Hebrew, and they didn’t seem surprised. They returned his salutation and asked him where he was from. Where had he learned such beautiful Hebrew. He told them about his studies in Tel-Aviv, and they nodded solemnly. Then their eyes shifted from side-to-side, from him to his passenger—who was, inexplicably, lingering about, listening. The Hasidic Jews had seen his shirt.

In English, he told them he was an Uber driver. Even solemner nods. The oldest—grayest beard, longest curls—asked his fare if he knew the significance of the calligraphy on his shirt.

“Yes, they are Greek sixes, three of them,” he said confidently.

The bravest Jew continued: “No, no, that is Hebrew, sir,” chuckling, “You are wearing a pagan shirt with Hebrew numbers.”

“Really?” the young Satanist said, intrigued.

“Yes, young man. It is a very interesting shirt. May I proceed in assuming you are a Satanist?”

“If I may proceed in assuming you are a Jew,” the young Satanist said, not with his usual vitriol, but almost with a smile in his eyes.

The elder Hasidic Jew chuckled, “Yes, you are spot on, young man. Spot on.”

“Orthodox Jews?” the young Satanist motioned with his finger to the three Hasidic Jews.

“No, we are Hasidic,” the same wise Jew replied.

“What’s the difference?” the Satanist eyed semi-suspiciously.

“Oh, we tend not to focus on our differences. We like to focus on our own qualities.”

“And what might those be?” inquired the Satanist, genuinely.

“The imminence of God in existence, a trusting heart, and enthusiasm hitlahuvut,” he said the Hebrew word with a nod and wink to him, the Uber driver, and “Enthusiasm is one of my favorite of the Hasidic virtues.”

The young Satanist looked moved.

Already, the Uber driver could not wait to tell his wife of this strange encounter, and the Satanist’s next words were even more surprising and unexpected.

“Do you guys drink? There is a quiet bar down the street where we can talk more.” The Satanist addressed all of them, the three Hasidic Jews, him—the Uber driver—as if he had been contributing to the conversation in any meaningful way.

He didn’t drink. But he didn’t have time to state this, because the eldest Hasidic Jew spoke:

“I have an idea. Why don’t we retire to my house? It isn’t far, and my wife is preparing fish.”

He never thought a Hasidic Jew would outdo a Satanist in terms of shock value, but he was floored. Again, he, the Uber driver, was included in this “we”.

The Satanist seemed to take to this. He agreed, even before the eldest Hasidic Jew mentioned, “Oh, and we might have a thing or two to drink.”

The younger Hasidic Jews shook hands with their elder, nodding at both the Satanist and himself. They must have had other fish dinners to attend to.

The eldest Hasidic Jew told him his car would be safe there. He hadn’t even agreed to go along, but somehow the man had divined that he would.

Of course he went along, running on sheer fascination. For once, he wanted to fascinate his own beautiful wife with an exotic tale.

Walking behind the synagogue, the streets turned full residential. His mind traveled to the parallel reality of the three of them walking into a bar. A Christian, a Jew, and a Satanist—all the usual suspects for a poor joke.

He smiled to himself as the Satanist introduced himself to the Hasidic Jew with a handshake. The young Satanist said his name was Geoffrey. The Hasidic Jew returned his handshake and said his name was Jacob Isaac, named after his great-great-great-grandfather from Poland.

In turn, they shook his hand.

“Gregory,” he said, giving them his name.

Jacob Isaac’s house was Hasidic. That’s not a style of architecture, but it was now. Forever Gregory would associate that style of architecture with that man.

It was modestly furnished—a multi-color brown sofa, a matching loveseat, a simple, classic wood coffee table, and a welcome smell. The dining room was to the left and behind the loveseat.

Jacob Isaac’s wife was Rachel. “Mrs. Rachel,” as her husband referred to her. He had told them to take a seat at the dining room table and disappeared behind the small door, presumably leading to the kitchen.

Their Hasidic host returned with three tumblers, and his wife followed shortly with Everclear and deep-red juice in a jar: R.W. Knodely. She squeezed her husband’s hand and said the fish would be out shortly. She’d already eaten.

The good host poured Geoffrey the Satanist a stiff amount of Everclear, adding some juice. He poured himself an equally stiff drink after offering Gregory some juice, again, seeing into his soul and knowing that he did not imbibe alcohol. Or, it could have just been because he’d seen him operating a motor vehicle not ten minutes ago.

The juice was sharp and bitter, a distinct no blend cranberry. He could only imagine it with Everclear—which was apparently kosher, in the original fastening of that word. The fish was sole, herbed and baked, flaky and scrumptious.

The conversation was a brief history of the modern Hasidic movement founded by Israel ben Eliezer, Baal Shem-Tob “Master of the Holy Name”.

“It was a bit of a spiritual revolution,” Jacob Isaac remarked. Geoffrey the Satanist liked that.

Their good host continued about Ben Eliezer’s dissatisfied youth: his incompliance with the rigid and the rational and his attraction to the mystical and the spiritual.

“He was a bit of a miracle worker.”

Jacob Isaac went on to expound upon his parables. His mystic expositions.

“Baal Shem’s focus was not on the individual, on asceticism, stoicism, withdrawal, but on the activities of living in community.” He paused over a drink, his second. "Such as the partaking of food.” Smiles from all sides.

It was a scene. Geoffrey the Satanist was pretty drunk, and Jacob Isaac wasn’t keeping up with him, but he wasn’t relenting on his drink either. The conversation became looser. Somewhere along the way Geoffrey the Satanist asked a question about dreidel, the Hanukah game. 

Jacob Isaac explained its origins. When the Jews were under Greek rule, they were forbidden from studying the Talmud and forbidden from speaking their language. So they had to devise a cover for their children’s clandestine readings.

In the Greek caves they would study their Hebrew, and when the guards would come on patrol, the books would go into hiding, and the toys would come out. They would spin their tops and whistle until the guards past—biding time until it was safe to pull the books back out.

“Now we commemorate that tradition through dreidel.”

Gregory thought of his rebellious wife, sneaking her Borges in dark Argentine places. He’d heard her whistle before too. Maybe he should buy her a dreidel and they could play together.

As if the pleasure of the memories of his wife were visible on his face, Geoffrey the Satanist asked him how long he’d been married.

“Fifteen years.”

Geoffrey asked Jacob Isaac the same question.

“Twenty-five.”

And he thought he knew the answer to Geoffrey the Satanist’s angst. The angst that had been written on his face since he’d first examined him in the backseat of his car. An only story love angst.

Maybe it was the sight of the loving devotion evident between Hasidic husband and wife spurring his next question—a plea for advice really.

“My girlfriend and I recently broke-up,” he said with a heavy sigh.

Jacob Isaac asked, “Is she also a Satanist?”

“Yes, yes,” young Geoffrey replied, “that’s not the problem.”

“I only ask because many a relationship has been broken over being the wrong religion.”

“Yes, I understand,” Geoffrey somberly said, “The problem was, uh, exclusivity. She believed in, well, uh, open borders.”

Though that was a hot-button political issue of the day, of all days probably, he knew Geoffrey the Satanist was referring to monogamy, not immigration. And Jacob Isaac did too.

“And you desired a monogamous relationship, have I got it right?”

“Yes, yes,” Geoffrey sputtered, “I don’t know what to do.”

After a slight pause, Jacob Isaac stated, “Well, what we value in a relationship says a lot about the value we esteem in ourselves.”

Jacob Isaac’s words weren’t a direct answer to the young Satanist’s question, but a change came over him all the same. He appeared a different man. The melancholy lifted.

It truly was fascinating to Gregory. That a Satanist, a Jew, and a Christian could all desire the same thing: an intimate, monogamous relationship with another human being.

Their night came to a close. The Everclear was less than half full and the juice jar was drained.

Gregory thanked their wise and generous host and excused himself. His host told him to drop by anytime. He said he would.

Before he could leave, young Geoffrey asked him to wait up. He shook their host’s hand, thanked him for his generosity, and Jacob Isaac repeated his open-ended invitation. Geoffrey gathered his backpack, the one he had kept under his seat the whole night, and said he would stop by again sometime.

It was after midnight, so Gregory the Uber driver figured the young man needed another ride. On the walk back to the car, he asked him if he needed the ride. No charge. 

“No, thank you. I need to walk.”

“Okay.”

Before they got to the car, Geoffrey told him: “You don’t know what you’ve done.”

He hadn’t said much all night. Mainly listened. So he figured it was his silence that was appreciated. Happy his fifteen years of marriage could be of service.

“I’m sure you will find the right person.”

“No, you don’t understand.”

They were at the car now, on the sidewalk where they had met the three Hasidic Jews, in front of the Synagogue.

Geoffrey swung his backpack gently around in front of his shirt. Unzipped it.

He knew what it was without knowing it. Like you know the Cyrillic alphabet without reading Greek. Like you know German words without speaking German. Like you know rap music without knowing the first thing about rap.

---

by Tulsa Review

Sick Dogs

Sick Dogs

by John Pfanz

          The trash was piled high in and around the dumpster by building J of Lake Street Apartments that cool Friday afternoon, so much so that it was becoming an ecosystem in and of itself. Black squirrels and grey rats jockeyed for position atop the bulging, rain-sodden black bags while gnats and horseflies buzzed around them. Patch Baranski and Hotspur Adams watched from above on their balcony with glassy-eyed wonderment, forty-ounce bottles of malt liquor clutched in their bony hands and cigarettes dangling between their beer-soaked lips. They spoke loudly to each other in order to be heard over the sounds of a hardcore punk album being played at an uncomfortably high volume.

       “Beautiful in a way, isn’t it?” Hotspur
asked.

     “Yeah, dude. All it needs is a butterfly
or two and it’s like the beginning of an old Disney movie,” Patch mused. Hotspur
polished off the remainder of his forty-ounce and wiped droplets of beer and
spit from his beard with the back of his hand.

     “Do you think I could get this into the
dumpster from up here?” Hotspur asked, pantomiming the action of tossing the bottle
like a basketball player lining up a free throw. 

     “Do it!” Patch cackled. “What’s it gonna
do, make a mess?”

     “What about the animals, though?” Hotspur
asked.

     “They’re fucking rats, Hotspur. Don’t be a hippie.” Patch replied.

   Not wanting to be seen as a hippie, Hotspur shrugged and threw the bottle. It arced downward toward the dumpster below, missing the middle by several feet and shattering on the corroded metal edge. The sound of splintering glass echoed through the parking lot, causing the squirrels to scatter into the nearby tree line in a panicked fervor. The rats, however, seemed at best mildly startled. Patch took this as a challenge. He finished the remainder of his beverage and jabbed his friend in the ribs with a bony elbow.

     “Not bad, there, Hotspur, but check this shit out.” Rather than throwing it underhand toward the dumpster the way his more cautious friend had, Patch threw his bottle straight down toward the mischief of rats, missing them by centimeters. As the bottle shattered on the pavement below, an old, grey Chevy Cavalier sputtered to a stop in a nearby parking space. The engine emitted a flatulent sound as it was disengaged. After much effort, a portly, balding man emerged. His eyes went from the freshly-shattered glass on the pavement before him up to Patch and Hotspur. His overgrown eyebrows furrowed, and a thick, stubby finger pointed up at them accusatorily.

      “Hey!” he barked. “Don’t go anywhere, I’m coming up!”

      Patch and Hotspur dashed back inside their apartment as fast as their drunken legs could go and slid the balcony door shut behind them. As Hotspur frantically hid the drug paraphernalia, Patch kept watch through the peephole.

      “What the fuck is Dan doing here?” Patch hissed. “I thought he was still in jail for another couple weeks!” 

     “Well, they must have let him out early. He was only in there for unpaid parking tickets,” Hotspur mumbled. “He’s probably just gonna yell at us for throwing the bottles or something. What else could it be?”

Before Patch could reply, there was a pounding on the door so aggressive that it nearly burst from its hinges. Muffled screaming in a concrete-thick Akron accent came from the other side. Patch plastered on his best fake smile and opened the door. 

     “Oh, hey, Dan. Good to see you. How was
Summit County?” Patch preened.

     “Grand, boys, just grand,” Dan seethed. “Just like the check you’re going to give
me.” 

     “Check?”
 

    “What, has this bullshit music made you deaf? My wife says she got quite a few complaints about you two while I was locked up!  You boys have been into some stupid shit.  I crunched the numbers, and you owe nine hundred-fifty dollars in lease violations, plus an extra fifty dollars for the improper disposal of recyclable material I just witnessed. If I don’t get a check for one thousand dollars by Monday, you’re both every flavor of FUCKED, do you hear me?”  Dan trampled off without waiting for a response, muttering an extensive thread of profanities and epithets as he went. Patch closed the door, then turned to face his roommate.

     “One thousand dollars?” Hotspur wheezed. “What are we gonna do? How are we gonna come up with that much money by Monday? It’s impossible! Our paychecks won’t cover that!” Hotspur cupped his hands over his mouth and began pacing laps around the apartment, his breathing becoming more labored with each step. Patch ducked into the kitchen and emerged with two fresh forties.

 

“Settle down, Hotspur. We’ll think of something. Here, let’s get the creative juices flowing.” Hotspur let out a shallow sigh, accepted a bottle from his friend, and guzzled half of it down with minimal effort.

     “There ya go, buddy. Feel better?” Patch smiled, slapping his friend on the back. Hotspur nodded.

    “This is still really fucked up, though, Patch. Any ideas?”

     Patch took a hefty swig of malt liquor. “As a matter of fact, I do. Your parents are professors at Tri-C, right?”

     “Yeah,” Hotspur nodded. “So?”  
 
    “So, call ‘em up and see if they’ll float us the money,” Patch said. “You’re a writer, make up some bullshit if you have to. They wouldn’t want their son out on the street, would they?”

    Hotspur sighed again. Patch had seen that look on his friend’s face before. Hotspur was pissed off. But there was still a cold shade of fear behind the anger. Hotspur dialed a number on his phone and retreated to his room. The album had ended, so Patch could hear Hotspur faintly through the door. This would probably be a long conversation, but Patch was sure they would help. They were nice people underneath all the pretense. A few minutes later Hotspur emerged, looking more panicked and downtrodden than he had before.

     “Not happening, huh?” Patch cringed.

    “They laughed and hung up,” Hotspur replied.  Hotspur began to wring his hands, and his breathing became increasingly shallow. As his best friend paced around the living room, Patch dug into the drawer of the coffee table and retrieved his stash of cocaine, quickly sniffing a bump up each nostril.

     “Really, Patch,” Hotspur moaned. “Do you really think that’s a good idea right now?”

      “Fuck off. It helps me focus,” Patch replied. He attempted to snap his fingers but was unable to generate the necessary friction. “I know how we can make a thousand bucks! Two words: Moral. Fucking. Deficit.”

       Hotspur’s eyebrows raised in disbelief. “You mean your old band that split up ten years ago because all the other guys hated you?”

      “Yeah, but fuck those posers. I don’t need ‘em. Back in ‘09, we were the best punk band in Ohio! Remember how many people used to come to our shows? I could just do a solo acoustic set in some punk house playing old Moral Def songs and people would turn the fuck out for it, dude! That way we won’t have to worry about a promoter stiffing us. If we charge ten bucks to get in, we only need 100 people to show up. I’ll go call some houses right now. Do a couple bong rips or something, Hotspur. Everything is gonna be fine, dude.”

     Thirty minutes went by before Patch emerged from his room, and when he did his eyes were crazed from cocaine and desperation. He had the glass jar filled with tips they’d been saving from work gripped in his right hand. He tried to unscrew the lid but couldn’t get it to budge. With a frustrated growl, Patch smashed the jar on the floor and hastily gathered the sizeable amount of small bills. He swiped at his nose and hissed through clenched teeth.

    “Bar. Now.”

    During the mile-and-a-half walk from Lake Street to Euro Gyro, their favorite dive bar, Patch didn’t say a word. The expression on his face and the dilation of his eyes were all the clues Hotspur needed to figure out that the phone calls didn’t go well. Patch didn’t speak again until they arrived at the bar, when through the same clenched teeth he spat at the bartender:

     “Six PBR’s. Each.”

   After an hour, the tall, empty cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon were lined up so far that they were nearly falling off the table. Patch had forgotten that Moral Deficit had gotten a bad reputation toward the end of their run, and it was mostly his fault. Still, the interest for the next best thing to a Moral Deficit reunion was there, but the interest to work with Patch without any cut of the proceeds to repair any inevitable damages was not.  

    “For fuck sake, Patch, is there anybody in this town that doesn’t hate you?” Hotspur asked. “If people want to see you play Moral Deficit songs, there has to be somebody that would be willing to host it.”

   “There is. Trust me there is,” Patch said. “But anybody that hosts it is gonna demand a cut of the money.”

    An idea somehow found its way to Hotspur’s brain through all the alcohol. “Not if it’s going to a good cause.”

    Patch laughed. “You mean us? Did you forget that everybody hates me?”

    “We’ll just tell everybody the money’s going toward a charity for something that everybody likes. That way nobody will complain about the price or ask for a refund.” Hotspur added.

   “Dude! Good thinking. What’s something that everybody would donate money toward?” Patch asked.

    They scanned their surroundings for something that would spark an idea, but they saw nothing but bottles and neon beer signs. As he tilted his head back to consume more liquid refreshment, Hotspur saw a woman walk by with a German Shepherd on a leash. He gasped and pointed out the window.
“Dogs! People love dogs!”

   “Perfect!” Patch replied. “I can see the flier now. An Evening with Patch Baranski: Moral Defecit songs. 10 dollars at the door. All proceeds to help sick dogs!”

     The two friends drunkenly hugged as sweet relief slowly began to wash over them. Now they just needed a basement and a gullible homeowner.  

   “Patch? Hotspur? Is that you?” a voice squawked from the other side of the bar.

     Patch’s eyes lit up. He’d recognize that voice and stupid face anywhere. Jet Boy. Perfect. That little doofus spent his high school years going to every Moral Deficit show. Surely he’d at least have a lead.

    “Jet Boy! How ya doing, buddy? Take a seat,” Patch said, aggressively patting the empty stool next to him. “Say, Jet, hypothetical scenario for ya: what if I told you I wanted to do a set playing Moral Deficit songs?”

    Jet Boy’s eyeliner-smeared visage brightened with excitement. “Holy shit, really? That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, Jet Boy, I wanna do a show so I can donate money to an animal shelter. But nobody wants to book me, Jet Boy. Can you believe that shit? So we gotta do a house show. It’s the only way it can happen. Do you know anybody who’d let us use their basement?”

    Jet Boy stroked his smooth chin thoughtfully. “Well, I’m housesitting for my aunt and uncle while they’re out of town. They’ve got a place on Mogadore Road. I’d do anything to hear Moral Deficit songs again.”

   “That’s perfect, Jet Boy. Thanks a dickload, bud. How’s tomorrow night sound?” Patch blurted, waving his hand in the air. “Barkeep! Three doubles of Wild Turkey, STAT!”

    Jet Boy was a bit wary at first, but Patch and Hotspur managed to persuade him by funneling whisky down his throat and fanning the flames of nostalgia. By last call, word was out on social media and countless text messages were sent out. By the time Hotspur and Patch got home and passed out in their living room, more than 250 spikey-haired locals had confirmed their attendance on Facebook, many expressing positive sentiments that the most reviled person in the Kent punk scene had grown a heart. Patch and Hotspur peeled themselves off the floor the following afternoon and headed straight to the address on Mogadore Road that Jet Boy had given them.

    When they arrived, they were surprised to see that a PA was set up, and a microphone was plugged in. Hotspur stationed himself at the front door with a manila envelope with the address to the local ASPCA scrawled on it to keep up appearances. Patch smiled, rubbing his hands together with excitement. It was an ordeal, but it was finally coming together. The excitement of being able to do what he loved most was almost beginning to overtake the anxiety brought about by their one-thousand-dollar debt to Dan. It was just a basement show, which Patch would normally think to be beneath him, but he was in no position to be picky. He turned to face Jet Boy, who was hanging a sign that read “NO UNDERAGE DRINKING, NO DRUGS, NO MOSHING” on the cinderblock wall with duct tape. Patch snickered at this. Did he not remember how Moral Deficit shows could get?

    “Thanks again for letting us use your basement, Jet Boy,” Patch said. “That’s a cool move. The scene’s been stagnant lately. People will remember shit like this.”

     “No problem. My aunt and uncle don’t get back for a few days, so we’ll have plenty of time to clean up.”

     “Oh, absolutely. You’re sure the neighbors won’t give a shit? We can’t have this getting shut down by some butthurt yuppies,” Patch said.

    “I think we’ll be OK. My cousins used to throw parties here all the time back in high school,” Jet Boy replied.

   “Fuckin’ A. I’m gonna check levels then.”

   With a buzz and a hiss, Patch plugged his guitar into his amp and beat out a punchy chord progression, screaming gibberish into the microphone as he played. It was a little fuzzy, and the microphone had clearly seen better days, but fuck it. Punk wasn’t supposed to sound good.

   “Uh…guys?” Hotspur called from upstairs, “They’re here!”

   Patch bolted up the stairs to where Hotspur was posted. Sure enough, throngs of people with spiked hair and studded vests were stumbling toward them.

  “Holy shit! Okay, Hotspur, remember what we planned? The second you get to 1000 bucks- -”

  “Take the money and go home,” Hotspur said.

   “As fast as you fucking can,” Patch confirmed.

   The punks came in droves, ready for a night of boozy mischief and music. Hotspur was overwhelmed by how many of them there were. He tried desperately to keep track of how much money he had been given, but with a head full of beer it was hard to know for sure. He checked his phone and noticed a text from Patch that said “GO HOME NOW HOTSPUR.” He heard the sound of microphone feedback coming from the basement, so without a second thought Hotspur jumped up, tucked the envelope under his jacket, and legged it back to Lake Street.

   With trembling hands, Hotspur dumped the contents of the manila envelope onto the coffee table, where it flowed outward into the hellscape of empty bottles and ashtrays. He was incredibly drunk, and it was almost all one-dollar bills, but he counted it diligently.  

   “No. No fucking way,” Hotspur gasped.

    He counted the money again, aloud to himself this time. Again, it left him in disbelief. The front door to the apartment was thrown open. Patch fell to the floor, gasping for air. His once spiked hair was now flat and matted, and his shirt was torn.

   “Did you count it?” Patch asked.

    “Yeah,” Hotspur replied.

    “So, uh, are we good?” Patch inquired.

     “We did it,” Hotspur said. “How was the show?”

     “Fine at first,” Patch said, “but then people wanted to know how much money we’d raised for the dogs. Once they noticed you were gone they kind of pieced it together from there. They managed to sucker punch me and smash my guitar. Somebody punched a few holes in the drywall, too, so Jet Boy’s not gonna be happy. I never thought I’d say this, but thank fuck the cops came. I hope you didn’t have your heart set on going to a show ever again, Hotspur, because the whole scene hates both of us now.”

    Silence washed over the apartment as the gravity of the situation began to sink in.

   “Shit, that blows. What are we gonna do now?” Hotspur asked.

   “Fucked if I know, but hey, mission accomplished, right? We’re not gonna get evicted from the apartment now. The scene, though? Credit’s fucking shot there now.” Patch shrugged. “You got room for another beer?”

  “Sure.”    
  
     

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by Tulsa Review

So Do You Speak Indian?

So Do You Speak Indian?

by Arjun Mahajan

For incoming freshmen, college holds the promise of a
new beginning. However, the move from the childhood room to the dorm room is
more jarring for international students than their American contemporaries.
With a new phone contract comes the responsibility of handling a new currency;
with the option of eating cereal for dinner comes a sense of longing for a
home-cooked meal. I began my first quarter at Drexel University in Philadelphia
in the fall of 2013. I was as convinced as every other first-year student at
orientation that the coming months were going to be all about beer, friendship,
and freedom from adult supervision. Amidst all the excitement surrounding free
pizza and a Netflix account, the distance between me and everything I called
home didn't register immediately. Under the surface, unbeknownst to me, the
separation from home was more significant than it seemed at the time.

Despite
the atmosphere of open dorm room doors and ice-breakers in classrooms, it is
common for international students to flock together. This seemingly organic
grouping provides a brief respite from the personality we are all auditioning
in those first few months of college. An unspoken aching for home binds such a
group together even if ideological differences persist. Only people who were
spending their evenings longing for a faraway land could be any comfort for the
soul-wrenching homesickness that hit me in waves every morning. There are some
bittersweet moments only this particular group of people can share with genuine
empathy. My roommate from New Jersey didn't quite understand the tears of joy
that rolled down my cheeks the first time I ordered in Indian food, but the
next day when I retold the story for my fellow expats, they nodded along in
somber agreement. Soon, many of them found friends specific to other shared
identities: dorm hall, class group project, KPop interests, etc. A quarter in,
I still found it difficult to fit into the social tapestry of college. Shortly
after, I completely stopped trying.

For the first two years of my time in the country, many
key identifiers of my life that I took for granted were questioned by those
around me. I realized for the first time just how many ways there were for
someone to mispronounce my name. It became a regular occurrence for professors
to look down at the attendance sheet and look up in my general direction with a
mix of confusion and horror in their eyes. I was mistaken for Hispanic, Middle
Eastern, and Mediterranean all in the duration of a single class. Inevitably, I
lost interest in every activity that involved a "go around and tell us
your name and something interesting about yourself" or anything that
required human interaction even in the slightest. My voluntary isolation
developed into a pathology.

Depression settles comfortably in a lonely home. In hindsight, my depression could not have been more obvious, but mental health often gets overlooked for more convenient justifications of dysfunction in college students. At the end of my sophomore year, I had no friends to call my own. I skipped everything after the first lecture of the quarter, embarrassed and frustrated by how far behind I was in developing my skill set compared to those who started the journey with me. Late in my sophomore year, I was in a pedestrian accident with a careless driver that left me with no feeling in my legs for twenty-one days; I had no visitors. I failed another quarter as I lay in a twilight sleep in the hospital. With this fourth failure came an academic dismissal followed by a successful appeals process, three surgeries, and a change of major. I came back to school yet another fall, two years later, this time with university-mandated weekly meetings with my advisor and a single-minded determination to break the vicious cycle of my past.

I knew the first step was to turn my loneliness into hours of self-discovery. I had no particular preference for how I liked to spend a day that was independent of another person's expectations from me. I vowed to stop wasting my days sleeping or binging every season of M*A*S*H. With no friends to spend my time with and no roommates to split my attention, I poured over history books, listened to new music, went to class and therapy, came home, cooked, ate, and slept healthy, disciplined hours. Even though my therapist was the closest I came to having a friend for a while, I found myself more engaged with classmates and unafraid of participating in class. I was laying a foundation for myself to build upon, and I didn't even know I was curing my mental illness.

I never spoke of my depression to anyone—not to my mom, my childhood best friend, or even myself. I just chalked up my improving grades and general happiness to the benefits of living a disciplined lifestyle. Cautiously and over time, I made friends who became my family away from home, but they were not privy to my struggle with my mental health. My silence is what kept me from getting help when I needed it most. It allowed my demons to tighten their grip on my life when I was away from home and everyone I considered family.

International students constantly juggle two worlds. On the one hand is the world in which we are born and raised, made up of family and a complex cultural hierarchy. It was difficult to put into words my loneliness and subsequent failure without disturbing the fragile balance between me and my family sitting an ocean and a few continents away. My ascent to this country was the culmination of generations of sacrifice, a burden too heavy for my unprepared shoulders. It is what kept me from picking up the phone and letting someone into the darkness of my life. The other world is of the new, the one that demanded constant proof and justification of my existence. I was expected to adopt a name that was easier to pronounce, an accent easier to understand, and a lifestyle easy to digest. I feared losing my identity and becoming too alien for both my worlds, just like many who came before me and many after me.

My years of living in this country have allowed me to realize that my story is neither novel nor does it rank among the worst of the lot. Most of my friends, members of various diasporas themselves, have similar stories to tell. A common thread in our collective narratives is the sense of isolation we felt in those early months that eventually turned into an unshakable feeling of abandonment. Most of us struggled with the loss of home and identity. It manifested itself in depression, learning disabilities, or problematic relationships with alcohol. Even though we came from different countries, a natural cure was to bring as much of home as possible to where we were. Through weekend potlucks and quick smoke breaks between classes, we made each other feel just a little closer to home.

Mental health and international students are talked about often, although seldom as a combination or in relationship to substantial action. Eighteen is a difficult age to navigate easy decisions like Godfather or Beatles poster on the wall above the bed, let alone life decisions with far-reaching consequences. College campuses are set up in a manner that encourages a certain degree of autonomy among the student body but allows for a lot of international students to slip through the cracks. International students are less likely to seek help for mental health owing to different cultural values and perceptions of mental illness, which makes bringing attention to this struggle so vital. Given the wealth of cultural diversity and knowledge that international students bring to a campus, it only seems fair for such institutions to provide the support necessary for them to flourish. Even though institutions aggressively list a myriad of resources in brochures and student handbooks, sometimes all it takes is for one professor to correctly pronounce a name that appears foreign to make an impact.

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by Tulsa Review