by Adrian Daniel Schramm | Feb 22, 2018 | Fiction
We stand in the shower, holding our bodies tight, close together. Hot taps run down our skin, and splash between our fingers and toes. Then: We’re falling into the fresh sheets of the feather bed just outside the door, our bodies wrapped up in blankets and sheets, surrounded by pillows, a warm and safe space where anxiety disappears into dust on the floor. A small bar sits at the end of the block. An old, rickety place that still smells of cigarettes – though cigarettes have been banned indoors for years. It’s warm in this bar. Always, no matter the season. Because it’s small. And. So full of people. In winter, when people yell for drinks and cheer their favorite teams playing basketball on the TV overhead, potato chips hang from the wall behind the bottles, the only thing there is to eat. There’s a dartboard on the wall in the back, hanging slightly crooked, like an open mouth with sharp teeth. Have another drink. The game above is last second, hold-your-breath, one shot, two-points, three, down-to-the-wire. We throw darts and I let her win. Then she lets me win and we both go home happy. We talk about leaving. About a long trip. A trip across the country. But before, long ago, when the wide-open spaces of the country were still a mystery to men. And when the open road could stretch on and on. Until finally it came to an end at the edge of the ocean. Anything is possible at the end of the road. America is not the mystery she once was. Her curves have...
by Adrian Daniel Schramm | Feb 17, 2018 | Fiction
Gogo stands over the oven. She is sweating – the air is warm and humid, even at night. She is cooking when I come through the door, licking her mother’s recipes from the wooden spoon. There’s a loaf of bread and garlic next to her with a piece missing. And she says, “Forgive me. I was so very hungry. You’re late. I started eating.” She wipes her hands with a white towel from the rack. “I couldn’t wait.” Only the light over the sink is on, keeping the kitchen in shadows and smells. I take a bowl from the cupboard and she fills it with pasta, tomato, garlic, wine. We sit down at the small wooden table pushed against the wall and eat mostly in silence. We fall asleep on the couch after we’re finished, watching something on TV that we’ve both seen before. The apartment is only one room. Nothing is far away. Yesterday it was the opposite. We fell asleep together in the bed – slept someplace other than the couch. “You’re early,” she had said, her hair pulled across her forehead, panting, licking her lips, unsatisfied. We watched a movie the night before that. I don’t remember the title. It was something that Gogo wanted to watch and I fell asleep before it was over. I woke up near the end. A man with a strong jaw taking the lady in his arms and telling her, “You’re silly.” “To think that the money that you’ll inherit from your mother is what makes you special. It makes you no different than the homeless man your mother gave...
