The Ivory and the Horn

have a cathartic wallow in my misery, and then... then...

I'm not sure when I first started to hear the voices. But after I've run out of words, I start to hear them, coming up out of the well. Nothing profound. Just the ghosts of old wishes. The echoes of other people's dreams, paid for by the simple dropping of a coin, down into the water.

Splash.

I guess what I want is for Jane to love me, and for us to be happy together.

Splash.

Just a pony and I swear I'll take care of her.

Splash.

Don't let them find out that I'm pregnant.

Splash.

Make John stop running around on me and I promise I'll make him the best wife he could ever want.

Splash.

I don't know why it makes me feel better. All these ghost voices are asking for things, are dreaming, are wishing, are needing. Just like me. But I do come away with a sense of, not exactly peace, but... less urgency, I suppose.

Maybe it's because when I hear those voices, when I know that, just like me, they paid their pennies in hopes to make things a little better for themselves, I don't feel so alone anymore.

Does that make any sense?

4

'So what're you doing this weekend, Jim?' Scotty asked.

Jim Bradstreet cradled the phone against his ear and leaned back on his sofa.

'Nothing much,' he said as he continued to open his mail. Water bill. Junk flyer. Another junk flyer. Visa bill. 'I thought maybe I'd give Brenda a call.'

'She the one who sent you those flowers?'

'Yeah.'

'You can do better than that,' Scotty said.

Jim tossed the opened mail onto his coffee table and shifted the receiver from one ear to the other.

'What's that supposed to mean?' he asked.

'I'd think it was obvious— you said she seemed so desperate.'

Jim regretted having told Scotty anything about his one date with Brenda Perry. She had seemed clingy, especially for a first date, but he'd also realized from their conversation throughout the evening that she didn't exactly have the greatest amount of self-esteem. He'd hesitated calling her again— especially after the flowers— because he wasn't sure he wanted to get into a relationship with someone so dependent. But that wasn't exactly fair. He didn't really know her and asking her for another date wasn't exactly committing to a relationship.

'I still liked her,' he said into the receiver.

Scotty laughed. 'Just can't get her out of your mind, right?'

'No,' Jim replied in all honesty. 'I can't.'

'Hey, I was just kidding, you know?' Before Jim could reply, Scotty added, 'What do you say we get together for a few brews, check out the action at that new club on Lakeside.'

'Some other time,' Jim told him.

'I'm telling you, man, this woman's trouble. She sounds way too neurotic for you.'

'You don't know her,' Jim said. 'For that matter, I don't really know her.'

'Yeah, but we know her kind. You're not going to change your mind?'

'Not tonight.'

'Well, it's your loss,' Scotty said. 'I'll give the ladies your regrets.'

'You do that' Jim said before he hung up.

It took him a few moments to track down where he'd put Brenda's number. When he did find it and made the call, all he got was her answering machine. He hesitated for a brief moment, then left a message.

'Hi, this is Jim. Uh, Jim Bradstreet. I know it's late notice and all, but I thought maybe we could get together tonight, or maybe tomorrow? Call me.'

He left his number and waited for a couple of hours, but she never phoned back. As it got close to eight- thirty, he considered going down to that new club that Scotty had been so keen on checking out, but settled instead on taking in a movie. The lead actress had red hair, with the same gold highlights as Brenda's. The guy playing the other lead character treated her like shit.

That just added to the depression of being alone in a theater where it seemed as though everyone else had come in couples.

5

Sometimes I feel as though there's this hidden country inside me, a landscape that's going to remain forever unexplored because I can't make a normal connection with another human being, with someone who might map it out for me. It's my land, it belongs to me, but I'm denied access to it. The only way I could ever see it is through the eyes of someone outside this body of mine, through the eyes of someone who loves me.

I think we all have these secret landscapes inside us, but I don't think that anybody else ever thinks about them. All I know is that no one visits mine. And when I'm with other people, I don't know how to visit theirs.

6

Wendy wasn't on shift yet when Brenda arrived at Kathryn's Cafe, but Jilly was there. Brenda had first met the two of them when she was a reporter for In the City, covering the Women in the Arts conference with which they'd been involved. Jilly Coppercorn was a successful artist, Wendy St. James a struggling poet. Brenda had enjoyed the panels that both women were on and made a point of talking to them afterwards.

Their lives seemed to be so perfectly in order compared to hers that Brenda invariably had a sense of guilt for intruding the cluttered mess of her existence into theirs. And they were both such small, enviably thin women that, when she was with them, she felt more uncomfortable than usual in her own big fat body.

This constant focusing on being overweight was a misperception on her part, she'd been told by the therapist her mother had made her go see while she was still in high school.

'If anything, you could stand to gain a few pounds,' Dr. Coleman had said. 'Especially considering your history.'

Brenda's eating disorders, the woman had gone on to tell her, stemmed from her feelings of abandonment as a child, but no amount of lost weight was going to bring back her father.

'I know that,' Brenda argued. 'I know my father's dead and that it's not my fault he died. I'm not stupid.'

'Of course you're not,' Dr. Coleman had patiently replied with a sad look in her eyes.

Brenda could never figure out why they wouldn't just leave her alone. Yes, she'd had some trouble with her weight, but she'd gotten over it. Just as she knew it was a failing business that had put the gun in her father's mouth, the bitter knowledge that he couldn't provide for his family that had pulled the trigger. She'd dealt with all of that.

It was in the past, over and done with long ago. What wouldn't go away, though, was the extra weight she could never quite seem to take off and keep off. Nobody she knew seemed to understand how it felt, looking in a mirror and always seeing yourself on the wrong side of plump.

She'd asked Jilly once how she stayed so thin.

'Just my metabolism, I guess,' Jilly had replied 'Personally, I'd like to gain a couple of pounds. I always feel kind of... skin-and-bonesy.'

'You look perfect to me,' Brenda had told her.

Perfect size, perfect life— which wasn't really true, of course. Neither Jilly nor Wendy was perfect. For one thing, Jilly was one of the messiest people Brenda had ever met. But at least she wasn't in debt. Brenda was tidy to a fault, but she couldn't handle her personal finances to save her life. She'd gone from reporter to the position of In the City's advertising manager since she'd first become friends with Wendy and