FICTION

KARIYA'S PHONE STOPS WORKING SOMEWHERE IN THE air above Hokkaido. He isn't sure what happened; at the beginning of the flight, he switched it – dutifully – to airplane mode when the captain reminded the passengers to do so, but as soon as he lands in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, his phone has stopped working entirely. He presses the power button, the home button, every combination of buttons he can think of, but in the end, even after being plugged into a charger for several hours, his phone is decidedly and irreversibly dead.

It may seem like nothing to you but you have to understand there was this life I was heading for like for a heavy-ass truck on the highway – fast, loose – and it was like all of a sudden I was getting a preview of it.

"Todor, you'll be sorry one day," my mother would say.

"Failure depends on you," my father would repeat.

"Mr. Emanuilov, you've failed the test," my high school math teacher would say haughtily.

"Tosho, you are totally the great evil," Kosey, one of my few friends, would say – the one who would go with me to drink drugstore vodka in homemade cherry compote with the metalheads.

He is the blind oracle at Unchained Melody Massage Parlor.

He specializes in foot rubs. He can stimulate all kinds of glands with pulls and pricks of the tendon and phalanges.

He can, for example, make a person grow taller by pushing on the well of the big toe, which is the pituitary gland reflex point. Everyone knows this.

He can also tell people's fortunes.

He made his first prophecy on April 26, 1521.

It's difficult to talk about this, it's difficult but someone should do it, the old man wanted only to confess his sins before his death, there was no priest in the village, I had lost my way in the Blue mountain, I heard some voices and went downhill through some thorns, I met some old people and asked them where I was, they were crying like infants, especially an old woman, she turned out to be the old man's wife, she explained everything to me, she didn't tell me where I was, only told me come to confess him, poor man, he shouldn't take his sins to the grave, I agreed, instead of arguing

When she looks up, Finn sees that Murphy is on his porch, feeding the magpie family again. Finn frowns. She hadn't heard the birds make a sound. She wonders if Murphy has been watching her, and feels embarrassed, now, about the things she's done in chalk. But when Murphy sees her watching he smiles as if seeing her for the first time today. He beckons her over, and Finn leaves her chalk pieces and walks across slowly, side-on to the porch so as not to frighten away the magpies he's feeding.

Of course, with Andrej there was no question of it being anything more serious than sex. We weren't even girlfriend and boyfriend. He never once introduced me as his girlfriend. I was a girl. Not his girl. When we would go out with other people, they were usually foreigners, current or potential clients, very rarely his friends.

Like any other country with a small language, Bulgaria has some fine writers and poets who remain virtually unknown to the world because their work has never been properly translated. (It is an entirely different issue why Bulgaria, unlike other countries with small languages, has done little if anything to sponsor the translation of its authors). People like Pencho Slaveykov, Geo Milev, Nikola Vaptsarov, Elin Pelin and Dimitar Dimov – all fine poets and writers with dramatic life stories, could have become international household names had they written in German, French or Spanish.

They were two little girls on a very big boat.

It was the winter of 1980, the year of my birth and of my grandfather's death, when Grandma Nelly first put on Dencho's Dress, as she used to call it, and never took it off again. I remember she even used to wear it at night and sleep in it, with her arms crossed over her chest, as though to embrace herself as strongly and as tightly as possible, tucking her fingers underneath her ribcage. When I asked her why she did that, she would smile and say it was a way for her to embrace two people at once—my grandfather and herself.

It was the winter of 1980, the year of my birth and of my grandfather's death, when Grandma Nelly first put on Dencho's Dress, as she used to call it, and never took it off again. I remember she even used to wear it at night and sleep in it, with her arms crossed over her chest, as though to embrace herself as strongly and as tightly as possible, tucking her fingers underneath her ribcage. When I asked her why she did that, she would smile and say it was a way for her to embrace two people at once—my grandfather and herself.

Metaphase

It was a Sunday. She rolled over. "Good morning." It was one of the things he loved about her, so perceptive. It was a good morning.

"It's a girl," she said. "I can feel it."

"Me too." Being a half-truth, he said it with frontloaded conviction. Whenever he touched her, touched them, he felt nothing. His daughter, hiding from him. Waiting to surprise him. His wife felt everything and he was left to imagine the hands stretching and feet kicking and how nothing in his life would ever be the same. "A girl for sure."

Metaphase

It was a Sunday. She rolled over. "Good morning." It was one of the things he loved about her, so perceptive. It was a good morning.

"It's a girl," she said. "I can feel it."

"Me too." Being a half-truth, he said it with frontloaded conviction. Whenever he touched her, touched them, he felt nothing. His daughter, hiding from him. Waiting to surprise him. His wife felt everything and he was left to imagine the hands stretching and feet kicking and how nothing in his life would ever be the same. "A girl for sure."

Listen to me, boy. Sit down and listen to me carefully. I have something important to say to you. Do you remember that forest ranger everybody used to call the Indian? He was no Indian, had never even seen an Indian, but he used to say the only book he had ever read in his entire life was Winnetou, so everybody called him the Indian. Make sure you read the right books, my boy, because you never know what name people may decide to give you…

Listen to me, boy. Sit down and listen to me carefully. I have something important to say to you. Do you remember that forest ranger everybody used to call the Indian? He was no Indian, had never even seen an Indian, but he used to say the only book he had ever read in his entire life was Winnetou, so everybody called him the Indian. Make sure you read the right books, my boy, because you never know what name people may decide to give you…

According to their testimony, the three co-defendants had met while flipping ollies in the drained swimming pools of suburban southern California and a decade later had gone on to serve as graphic designers and principal investors in Abacus 5, their own product line of extreme sports clothing. Without seeking prior permission from myself or my former employer, Black Star Photo Agency, Abacus 5 had printed a series of T-shirts that used elements of eight photographs spanning several phases of my career, albeit significantly altered from their original form.

Prologue

"Have you been to the border?" he asked. His question – quiet, husky, and forbidden – got absorbed into the darkness and the echo of the other people's voices, and definitely convinced her that coming here had been a mistake. She should have stayed home tonight. Alone. By herself. On her own with her dreams.

Prophecies work in reverse. I see them only now. How the heat lightning flashed across my bedroom through the night, cutting my dreams short and sending me spinning in place, face squashed every which way into the mattress though the light persisted blue-electric on the insides of my eyelids. How I woke to my mother reciting my full name, Katherine Leland Katherine Leland Katherine Leland you've done it again, her anger so loud I heard it all the way from the basement, where I found her clutching a t-shirt splotched with ink, the washing machine's mouth gaping open and smelling of burning.

From then on there was hostility between us. My life was, yet again, a shambles. A long series of unfortunate love affairs had finally managed to break me.

In the beginning, when God was distributing the land to all the nations, we Georgians missed the meeting. The next morning we looked around and realized we were homeless. "Hey!" we shouted to God. "What about our land?"

"Where were you last night?" He asked. "You missed the meeting. I already gave away all the land."

"We were drinking!" we cried out. "We were toasting Your name!"

God was so pleased with us that He gave us the land He was saving for Himself. That’s why we are supposed to relax and enjoy the beauty of God’s earth.