Truth
Anna Catone - { Histories }
Janlori Goldman - { Bachelard's Cabinet } { The Jewish Gauchos of Entre Rios, 1917 }{ One Good Turn }
Elizabeth Howort - { The Sun, That Great Magician }
Sam Abbott - { It Eats You }
Rachel M. Simon - { Seizure } { Title IX }{ Hometown }{ Swish }
Untruth
Rosa C. Li - { Lucky Elephant }
Ken Cormier - { A Day in the Life of a Conversationalist }
Juan Carlos Reyes - { A War for Rigoberto Chismón }
Rachel M. Simon - { After Life }
We Don't Know and They
Won't Tell Us
Rebecca Keith - { Excerpt from Misdirected Postcard, One }
T.M. De Vos - { Leaving Lake Baikal }
Kamilah Aisha Moon - { Going Under } { Don't Move This Dust }{ Burn }{ After Our Daughter's Autism Diagnosis }
| A Day in the Life of a Conversationalist by Ken Cormier |
He awoke precisely at sunrise and slowly, deliberately inflated his head. He reached for the controls and, finding them, manipulated his way out of bed and headed for the washroom. In the washroom he set about scrubbing and shaving his slender neck. His head naturally expanded and contracted during this process. While shaving he thought of his gardens and the joy they brought him. He remembered wonderful meals and pondered thought-scanners. His dear friend operated a thought-scanning machine for the government; he wondered if it had ever been used as part of a practical joke. He finished shaving his neck and then leaned over to drain the excess jelly from his sinus.
Smiling, he felt glad to be embarking on another night of work as a conversationalist. He enjoyed his job. He thought talking was the most stimulating of activities. He always kept his neck cleanly shaven, and he always listened intently when engaged in conversation. He had a knack for setting his conversation partners at ease. He leaned lovingly toward them, his lavender ears twitching with intention. As a professional conversationalist, he had to know the secret ways around and into the minds of his clients.
“Are you warm now?”
“No. Are you?”
“I'm slightly warm. But if you're comfortable, let's talk about your family's wagon.”
“Oh yes, the wagon. It's been in our family for years. Every autumn we lubricate the poles and scour the gliding apparatus.”
“Is it a lark each time?”
“Yes, it's a lark. And that's what I love about my family. Something so dull as a seasonal wagon lubrication and scouring can become an occasion for sincere mirth and copulating. It's always a lark.”
“Are you warm now?”
“Yes, now I am a bit warm.”
“I'll go and regulate the temperature.”
“Thank you. I'll take some more drink and a raisin square, if you don't mind.”
He was always generous with his raisin squares, and he always maintained an ideal temperature at the office.
On the way home from work, he tried to remember the last time he had his wagon lubricated and scoured. It had been a while. He would visit the scouring station soon.
He switched on the radio.
In the afternoon he visited his young nephew in prison. He paused at the prison door and plucked a rose from the massive bush that grew there. The prison was a very unpleasant place, and his young nephew had done some very unpleasant things.
Upon entering the building, he was accosted by three or four metal arms, each employing a thoroughly intrusive device that ensured prison guests were not concealing weapons or food or scraps of paper for passing secret messages. When he had been prodded and frisked by the metal arms, he moved forward to the thought-scanning machine. This always scared him, because he had heard that if he were ever found to have even the hint of an escape plot in his head, he would be shocked violently through his lavender ears and detained in a body booth for a minimum of four to six weeks. Of course, he would never think of trying to break his young nephew out of such an impenetrable and smothering place—the very idea was ludicrous. Nonetheless he became frightfully nervous each time he entered the thought-scanning area. What if the machine were to misread his thoughts? He hated to think of the awful shock that would be applied to his tender ears, not to mention the inconvenience of being detained for such a long time without any conversation. For in prison, no inmate can speak or even move. Each inmate is confined to a body booth. The booth fits snugly around the contours of the inmate's body. It is made of a soft, rubbery material that both extracts and replaces moisture for the body. The genitals rest in a small pocket of netting, and the prisoners' fingers and toes are allowed to protrude from the booth so that they are relatively unrestricted, although each digit is attached, by a sort of leathery string, to a series of levers and pulleys controlled by the prison's central controlling machine. When an inmate, whose thoughts were continually monitored through the body booth's head piece, was found to be actively pursuing objectionable ideas in his mind, the prison's controlling machine was capable of administering a strangely electric, yet entirely mysterious brand of discipline through these dangling, leathery strings.
He cleared the thought-scanning booth with no incident, and he moved into the waiting area. Here, he was assigned a chair, as he was each morning, and he sat down and waited for his number to be called. After a minute or so, his number was called out over the loudspeaker, and he proceeded to the long hall. He knew exactly how far to walk before he would arrive at the viewing area of his young nephew. For five minutes (ten minutes on state holidays) he was allowed to gaze at the face of his young nephew, which protruded awkwardly from the rubbery material of his body booth. His young nephew, like all the prisoners, had a bilious complexion due to the unnatural process of bodily fluid extraction and replacement effected by the confining booth. He gazed pitifully at his young nephew, who always managed to make eye contact and sometimes even to eke out what might be loosely termed a facial expression, for which he was invariably punished by the strangely pulsating leathery strings dangling from his fingers and toes. Most facial expressions were almost always the result of some disallowed thought process, and punishment was instantaneous.
When his five minutes (ten minutes on state holidays) were up, he broke eye contact with his young nephew and made his way to the exit.
To relax, he caressed his long, lavender ears. His webbing sagged and he sighed. He was exhausted. He felt sorry for his young nephew. He felt sorry for himself. Briefly, he practiced solo-conversation. “This world,” he said aloud. But then he thought, no. He paused. “O this weary world.” That's not it, he thought to himself. He shut his eyes for a moment to let the jelly ooze out of his sinus.
He felt sleep creeping up. Quickly he worked the controls. With his eyes shut tight he said, “I am not full of fear this evening.” Then somewhat awkwardly, “I'm not.” And then, after a second of silence, “I'm not.” And his head collapsed, filling his nocturnal breathing apparatus with sparkling vapor, and he drifted gently to sleep.
He dreamt, as always, of music. And in his dream, as always, he had a brother with whom he co-owned a giant gymnasium. He and his brother, lacking any exercise or recreational equipment, simply ran up and down the length of the gymnasium. The room was vast, and their loud footsteps made a hollow echo.
He awoke suddenly and his soft head inflated. He checked the time. Six hours had passed. He became anxious for a moment, but his tension soon gave way to glad reveries. He imagined himself upside down, suspended from a tree limb. He imagined himself falling from a great height. He stretched his legs in bed. He envisioned a great, flaming sky wheel. His webbing contracted and then sagged.
He slept.
