What Happens Next

The Man in the Garage

A woman goes into her garage. She keeps an extra refrigerator there, for storing watermelons and party hors d'oeuvres. She is looking for a bag of frozen chicken that she knows she bought but cannot, now, an hour away from dinner, find. When she closes the refrigerator door (no chicken) she sees someone, a person, a man in fact, standing there, beside her husband's workbench. She is not frightened, and she understands, in the way you understand things in a dream, that the man is living there, in her garage. He is thirty-two (he says when she asks) but looks much younger. He has been using a sleeping bag that the woman recognizes as her son's. They store camping gear in the garage and the man has uncovered also a campstove and a canteen. She does not tell anyone about the man but instead begins to bring him food, the way you would feed a racoon or a stray cat living under your deck. When other people appear the man hides. Sometimes the woman thinks she is maybe imagining him. But each night when she comes out to the garage, smuggling food on paper plates, the man is there waiting for her, and smiles and thanks her and tells her it won't be long before he's back on his feet.

The Analogy King

He says, "It would be like leaving on a trip and forgetting your suitcase. It would be like if you loved mashed potatoes and all your wife ever served you was baked. It would be like driving a new car off the lot and having all four tires fall off at the first intersection. It would be like seeing your old man for the first time in twenty years and having him ask you, first thing, so how much money you making now? That's what it would be like."

Mango

She sits with the baby in the kitchen, early morning. The baby bangs his drooly hands on the tray of the high chair. He vocalizes. He jabbers. He squeals. She is alone, she is here with the baby alone not just today but from the beginning and always. Last night, around one in the morning, a wild storm ripped a branch from the maple tree in the front yard, and the branch crashed on her roof. She lay awake and felt, really, that she didn't think she could do it. She honestly wasn't sure she could do it. Not just the limb on the roof but the water bill, the balancing of checkbooks and work schedules, the grocery shopping, the worrying over fevers over pink eye over ear infections over college entrance exams. But now, morning. She peels a mango. She is tired but not as tired as she thought she might be. The sun shines into brown puddles and bright leaves. The mango is slippery in her hands like a cool organ, and she almost drops it. The juice drips down fingers, wrists, forearms. She cuts the fruit. She sucks the large flat white pit, stringy mango between her teeth. She gives the baby a piece. He gums it, eyes wide at this new thing, hands already reaching for more. She gives him more.

Fish House

A couple goes to look at a house in the country. The realtor assures them it is perfect, it is just what they've been waiting for, their search is over, and will they please ignore the fish. When they get there they see what she means. Everywhere in and outside of the house there are fish. Goldfish, guppies, minnows. Plastic trash cans fill the yard, a dozen of them, water to the top, and if the couple looks closely they can see fish swimming deeply in the brackish water. The basement is crammed with tanks, tanks on every available surface, lined up on the floor, on tables, on shelves built specially for the tanks, the gurgling of the filters like waterfalls, like rapids, like static. Objects have been dropped into the tanks for effect: a...