Two Flash Fictions
"The Libertine" painting by JoAnneh Nagler
by Stephen Tuttle
Short-Term Planning
Once upon a time, a man looked into the future and saw that it didn’t include him. He wasn’t old, except by the standards of the very young, and had planned on many more years of good health. When he told the woman sitting at the kitchen table with him, she nodded solemnly to indicate that she already knew. He asked: What should I do, now that I have so little time to do it? Well, the woman said, we could take a vacation. She looked at the calendar hanging on the wall. It featured a ruined building in some faraway place neither of them had visited. Not enough time, the man said. We could leave right away, the woman said. No, the man said, the future will be here before we know it. How about a party? the woman asked. Same problem, the man said. I won’t be here to enjoy it. Then again, she said, you might. No, he said. What if it’s your funeral party? she asked. You wouldn’t miss that, would you? This seemed to cheer the man a bit, as he said, You’re right, how could I? The woman tore a sheet from a notepad, giving herself a clean space on which to work. She raised a pencil, as though to write, but then paused and tapped the lead on her tongue the way her mother used to do. First question:i this party, would you like it somber or lively? What I mean, she said, holding her hands before her like a scale, is do you want people to dance? Her hands moved up and down, waiting for the scale to settle. I do like music, the man said, but who ever heard of dancing at a funeral? Some people dance at funerals, the woman said. In parts of Africa and New Zealand. I saw this video. But the man interrupted her. Nobody I know, he said. Well then, the woman said, I guess that’s all settled. We’ll have a big, sad party, and everyone will come, and no one will dance. We’ll rent out one of those enormous, shiny-white tents they use for weddings and trade shows. We’ll invite everybody who has ever known you, even those you haven’t seen since you were in school, and we’ll cry, and we’ll hug. Will there be food? the man asked. Of course, the woman said. You won’t believe how much. Sounds expensive, the man said. Yes, the woman said, but we have a little tucked away for just this sort of thing. After a moment, the man asked, Okay, what’s next? That’s it, the woman said. There’s nothing more to plan? the man asked. Nothing you need to worry about, the woman said. I’ll take care of the details. Strange, he said. I thought this would be harder. The man stared at the woman for a long moment, then down at the sheet of paper on which she had written nothing.
The Wind
These neighbors of ours tore down the balcony extending from their master bedroom. Looking through our backyard and across theirs, we could see the evidence of demolition. We asked them about it. We asked if the old balcony had become unsafe. Had they decided, for example, to bring it up to code? Had they found termites or carpenter ants? Were they worried about rust or rot or mold? We asked when they would replace it and if they hoped to make the new balcony as beautiful as others in the neighborhood. Had they seen what some of our neighbors had done with balconies and terraces and verandas and patios? They watched us in a way that said we were trying their patience. What about the wind? we asked. Do you worry that a storm might kick up and that the balcony will be torn loose, doing damage to the rest of the house? Will the new balcony be more secure? Listen, they said, we have no plans to replace the balcony. When they said this, they must have seen the confusion on our faces. Listen, they said, our house is our house. We live here, and we can do what we want. We had questions, but they held up their hands to say they weren’t going to listen. This is our house, they said again. This is our property, and this is our yard, and this is you leaving and never coming back. Quietly, as though to ourselves but hoping to be heard, we said that we were only being neighborly. We were only taking an interest. But our neighbors didn’t respond to this or indicate that they had even heard it. Instead, they watched, as we stepped from the lawn to the sidewalk and then into the street and then into a field and then into a forest and then far away to a windy land where no one did anything all day but sail boats and fly kites and hang clothing on lines strung unceasingly from house to house to house to house.
Stephen Tuttle's fiction and prose poetry have appeared in The Nation, The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. His story collection, We Should Be Somewhere by Now, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press.
JoAnneh Nagler is the author of Stay with Me, Wisconsin (Coyote Point Press), Naked Marriage (Skyhorse Publishing); How to Be an Artist Without Losing Your Mind, Your Shirt, or Your Creative Compass (W.W. Norton); and The Debt-Free Spending Plan (HarperCollins), two of which were Amazon Top-100 titles. Her books have been featured in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, Essence Magazine, Medium.com, etc., as well as many journals, including New Haven Review, The Brussels Review, Persephone, Glimmer Train and more. She is a reader for Ploughshares, and her work has been supported by The Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Stanford University’s Creative Writing Program. www.AnArtistryLife.com.
