Text Box: Another man – Sonia feeling as though she’d had enough of men that morning – came out of the shop to her left and knelt down beside her. “Let me help you,” he said. “Here. Just come into my shop and you can sit down.” “I’m quite all right,” Sonia said. “I’m sure I am. Mostly pride, you know. That’s always what’s taken from you at first.” “Happens to all of us,” the man said as he helped her sit down. Sonia remembered then the place was a bookstore with something odd about it, not odd like the one down toward Lenny’s, the adult one with hardly a book in sight but artifacts aplenty to stir the imagination, even the aesthetic sense of wonder. Not odd like the Barnes & Noble over at the mall, either, where you could be almost illiterate and still read most of what they sold. Books, though, were all around her, new books she’d never heard of though they looked interesting – paperbacks, poetry, lots of poetry like the kind she used to read in The New Yorker when she still had an address and a desire to fill her mind with something besides Gary and diapers and two hungry mouths on her tits (I liked that!) and killing the weeds coming up through the cracks on the patio. “Being beaten like that?” Sonia finally said. “Happens to all of us?” “Oh?” the man said. “He was so old, you know,” Sonia said, “and so proper. I couldn’t hit him. I’m not sure I even had a chance but I couldn’t have anyway.” “Would you like some water? A cup of coffee? I always have coffee for my customers.” “That would be nice,” Sonia said. “Coffee. A cup of coffee would be quite nice.” An owner, he’d been that – the old man, proprietary over his streets and his town, the sort who’d require you to possess deeds and bills of sale and paid-up credit card accounts before he’d loan you his hankie if you were sneezing golf balls. She’d known old people like that before, so tight they shit spider webs and would wipe a water glass with a piece of bread to get the very last drop. Request an endearment (Grandpa, I love you) and you got a lesson about hard times and how easy things are today. Which Sonia didn’t think was true at all – things being easy. “Albert O’Malley,” Sonia said as the man gave her a thick crockery mug filled with coffee, good-smelling coffee, too, no doubt fresh. “Do you like something in it?” the man said. “Black is fine,” said Sonia. “Albert O’Malley,” the man said. “I said that,” said Sonia. “What’s your name?” “Schuyler.” “Okay.” “And you’re …?” “Sonia. Sonia the Bruised. Sonia the Undefeated. A little bent, but still around five-eight.” “With a sense of humor still intact,” said Schuyler. “I hope so,” Sonia said. “I have so little left to cry over I’d damn well better be able to laugh.” “So a story emerges,” said Schuyler. “No story,” Sonia said. “I feel more like an event that simply starts and stops now and then.” “Of course …,” Schuyler began and then stopped. “Of course?” “I’ve noticed you. Around town, I mean. You walk a lot. I’ve seen you eating on the steps of the old bank, and I’ve seen you sleeping on a bench down at the park.” “As I said,” Sonia said, “an event. You try to please the audience but you never know their moods, their politics. They do, however, like helplessness. Always, they like helplessness.” Sonia heard the noises as she and Schuyler talked – something upstairs and then a careful, slow stepping on a stairway: soft shoes, perhaps no shoes. She had thoughts of a demented grandfather kept hidden away, Schuyler not so much embarrassed by the man as perplexed, all possible solutions down to dust balls and practical jokes. Or a wife, perhaps, aware of her husband in quiet commerce with a woman, the man trying hard not to stare at her breasts though they were bruised, a reddish blotch already spreading to the top and edges of the bib on her denim britches. A woman came into the room then from the inside stairway. Proprietary? The landlord? A poet being held in bondage upstairs until she produced a bestseller? No, a housewife. She has that look about her, if missing the usual sterile aspect. Somewhat dirty – definitely the dress, too tight, really, shabby, the thing in need of a wash and if I still had my sewing bunny I could mend that tear on her hip – allusions to grime on the hands and feet, hair untended though quite long. Wounded? Oh my, one wan soul in need of stitches, possibly general surgery, which reminds me of the story I once read about a soul surgeon, a woman of ethereal arts, quite skilled in drawing out the pus from days that had never been what they should have been. Or maybe I just made that up, stories like that all the same anyway. I bet there’s a husband behind this woman, a neglectful man not given to many compliments . “Sullivan?” Schuyler said as the woman entered the shop . Flats, Sonia thought. Not many women wear flats anymore, not a comfortable shoe, hot in summer, not very warm in winter. It could be I’m interrupting something here but, in spite of this man’s kindness toward me, it’s still an open shop, even business as usual. The woman, Sonia noticed – Sullivan? Odd name for a woman. – held about a dozen small paperbacks in one arm. A reader – of course, the shabby clothes explained that. “I’m done with these,” the woman (Sullivan) said. “They’ve spun my head into a froth.” “That’s good,” Schuyler said. “I know,” Sullivan said. “I’m just not sure how smart I want to be. I used to be happier when I was dumber.” Sonia looked at Sullivan then and politely said, “Dumb gets you screwed.” “Sonia, is it?” Schuyler said. “That’s right. Sonia this is Sullivan. She lives upstairs.” “I used to live in a house,” Sullivan said. “But my husband’s girlfriend said the three of us were just too cramped. Not being the girlfriend, I had to go. Funny how families are these days.” “That’s about the shortest life story I’ve ever heard,” Sonia said. “So far,” said Sullivan. “You look a little tossed,” Sullivan said to Sonia. “Which reminds me,” Sonia began as she looked up to Schuyler. “This Albert O’Malley. You looked like you knew him when I mentioned his name.” “I even have some copies of his book,” Schuyler said, “though no one’s asked for it in a long time.” “He wrote a book?” Sonia said. “Here,” Schuyler said as he stepped over to a bookshelf. “From Beans To Bucks: God, Man, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit. It’s the sort of thing a lot of men would like to write at the end of their careers. I don’t usually stock such things, but when it’s local …. Anyway, they’re all pretty similar: hardships overcome, joys encountered, and always, always the presumption of wisdom.” “Are you going to write a book like that someday, Schuyler?” Sullivan asked. Sullivan, Sonia thought, had a smile that could persuade armies that a war could be put off till tomorrow. “I don’t know,” he said, smiling. “The hardships haven’t been overcome yet; I’m not sure about joy, and I know the wisdom is still out there on the horizon. Maybe way out there.” Sonia looked at the book in her hands and thought for a moment how long it had been since she’d had this sort of conversation – simply words intended to clarify or amuse. Not yet had anyone told her to get off their fucking lawn chair; not yet had anyone assumed she had nothing to contribute to the world but trouble, a tale of woe. She looked at the picture on the back of the vanity press book and saw that it was, indeed, the man who’d beaten her a short time ago. What had she thought? A proprietary man; yes, that was it, an owner. He would control his town. Behaviors would be deemed worthy or not depending on his judgment, and anything new would be subject to his will. Sonia couldn’t imagine why anyone would want such responsibility. She opened the book to read the jacket copy. Albert O’Malley, generous benefactor of Emily Handy, Financier, banker, philanthropist, a hero to Generations who’ve benefited from his wisdom in Guiding their town out of its rural roots and into the role Of major player on the fringes of that great city to the east, Chicago. His words tell the story of conflict, growth, corruption, and renewal. “So he’s an old man,” Sonia said. “Very old,” said Schuyler. “He has all the presence of a biting mite and never goes out when the wind is blowing.” “You said before it happens to all of us,” Sonia said. “You’ve had experience being beaten up by old men of miniscule substance?” “Perhaps it was just …,” Schuyler began. Sonia quickly unhooked the top of her bib britches then and dropped the bib down to her waist. “… my imagination?” Sonia said, her bruised and mottled breasts cupped in her hands. “I believe the mite bites.” “I don’t know,” Schuyler said. “I just sell books.” “Of course you do,” Sonia said. “I’m sorry.” Sonia decided she’d been much too hard on herself during these recent months. Much too hard. That, of course, excused nothing, particularly did it not excuse Albert O’Malley’s rude, his presumptuous, his violent behavior. He’d shamed her, humiliated her, and caused her actual, if minor, physical injuries. A price had to be paid for that, always, and the diminished presence of your elderly times never salved the wounds of those you’d humiliated. Sonia didn’t just then know what that price would be, but she would find it. She would take that old man to the cleaners and shake the moths out of his tweeds. First, however, she had to ask this very kind man or this truly interesting woman if they would mind her using the bathroom.

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Text Box: G. K. Wuori is the author of over seventy stories published throughout the world in the U.S., Japan, India, Germany, Spain, Algeria, Ireland, and Brazil. A Pushcart Prize winner and recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, his work has appeared in such journals as The Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, The Barcelona Review, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Mad Hatters Review, TriQuarterly, and Five Points. His story collection, Nude In Tub, was a New Voices Award Nominee by the Quality Paperback Book Club and his novel, An American Outrage, was Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year in fiction. He currently lives in Sycamore, Illinois where he writes a monthly column called Cold Iron at www.gkwuori.com, and blogs at www.fancydancercoachlightcompany.blogspot.com.