THE GOOD THINGS

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

I was walking uptown and saw approaching me a guy dressed as Batman, but he was fat with a gut and making coochie-coo noises to two horses he was accusing of kissing. The horses' handlers would not even look at him. He crossed in front of me and disappeared into a theater that I saw was putting on a Batman musical. Justice of the Night! For about five blocks all I passed were various shapes and sizes of people dressed as Batman. A little kid was one of them. A matronly lady  holding a smoothie was another. Eventually I stopped and talked to a tall skinny black woman dressed as Batman. She told me her kids were so proud of her for getting the job. "They knew I could do it," she said. She reached out for a hug and even though I knew the rules I went ahead and hugged her. You have to focus on the good things. 

TIME IS ITS OWN OPENING ACT

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Feet up on the couch, soda on the table next to him, sun dappling the opposite wall, recollection of the night before resting on him with a pleasant pressure, old song on the radio—it was not very old, not as old as it was, in fact, sounded maybe ten years old at most, when it had come out thirty years ago it had sounded like the future, had in fact been the future, right down to the stabbing guitar and skittering drums that stabbed and skittered like nothing had back then but like everything did now—he closed his eyes and felt a contentment that had no place in the modern world. 

HARRIET KEEPS LOOKING

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Harriet looks in the mirror. She’s in there, which she expects, but everything that’s behind her is not, which surprises her. She knows what’s back there: the frustration, the despair, some of it in deep distance, other houses, other towns, but also closer by, the hook on the wall where her husband’s jacket used to hang, the framed photo on the other wall from the week they met, two smiling faces, the envelope on the table from the hospital, the sealed plastic bag with his phone in it, the notepad on the counter with scribbled information she did not understand when the doctor said it and does not understand now, the look in her son’s eyes that’s a plea for answers about any of it. Harriet keeps looking in the mirror.

PARABLE NUMBER X

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The man in the hat will not come into the room. He sits in the hall in a chair with a glass in his hand. “No better business any more,” he mutters. “Hoped for. Hankered for. But not present here in any amount.” Another man comes by and points at the glass. He is making a joke about optimists and pessimists, but the glass is empty. The joke fills the glass. The man in the hat sends the other man away. The man in the hat seals off the glass by wrapping wax paper across the open end and then securing the wax paper with a rubber band. The joke is trapped in there. The joke is all meaning. The glass is all time. The man in the hat is a divine presence, what mortals would refer to as a god. The room is our earth. 

RAY

I was standing on the street. Then I was standing halfway down the street. I turned to look. Ray was in the spot where I had been standing a moment before. “Hi, Ray,” I said. I held up a hand and waved to him. He didn’t wave back. Ray isn’t the friendliest guy on the street. He has lived here longer than any of us, has been through two divorces, three or four jobs, at least one heart attack, and a half-dozen cars that I know about. Change has swirled around him. But somehow he’s stayed the same Ray: tall, gaunt, deeply informed on matters of, say, North African politics but oddly ignorant about far more common topics: baseball, for example (he claims he’s never seen a game), or gluten (“What in the name of hell is that?”). I didn’t know what Ray knew or didn’t know about the material transmission of a human body down a street and the substitution of another body for that body, especially if he was the body substituting. But there was no doubt. Ray was standing right where I had been. It occurred to me to examine my surroundings. I was in Ray’s front yard, right up against the sidewalk. I was holding a hedge-clipper that belonged to Ray. I remember the day he brought it home from the store. I was wearing his clothes and his beat-up old Fourth of July baseball cap. Was I Ray? I turned back to where I had been standing. Ray was still over there, too. I waved at him again, and again he didn’t wave back. Slowly, he uncurled one of his long fingers, the index finger of his right hand, and then he began to raise his right arm until he was pointing directly at me. Then he spoke, louder than usual, but with his trademark affect, vowels flat and bleak like an empty lot. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “I don’t even know what in the name of hell I’m looking at.” 

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas