View Match-Ups

Summertown

Alexander Yates

Syracuse University

I believed in Summertown from the very beginning.  From the very first time I saw it out the window of Dad’s station wagon.  We were zooming up route 81, the car full of my sisters and our pets and what furniture was left after the fire.  Florida was nothing but a terrible memory, miles behind us. Summertown loomed to the north, its massive glass dome sparkling in brilliant sunlight, all jeweled over with ice crystals from a late June frost. “New home, dead ahead,” Dad announced.  My sisters ooed and ahhed.  My mother said it looked like a Christmas gift.  In some kind of silly mom way she was right.  From a distance, and satellite photos, Summertown resembled one of those snow globes you used to see people getting as presents in movies when you were a kid.  Only it was different, because at Summertown all the flurries and forlorn pine trees were on the outside, and the warm cozy living room was on the inside.  The massive glass dome stretched from the eastern shore of Onondaga Lake, all the way to Erie Boulevard, which used to be the Erie Canal.  Wait, what am I saying—stretched?  Stretches!  Summertown still looks exactly as it used to.  It’s still in one piece, thank God.

Dad used to have a friend at the corporate headquarters, and so he got a good job for which he was under-qualified.  Deputy Security Chief for West Summertown, including the Lakefront, the Old Mall, Central Office and the French Quarter.  I guess it was the start of what you could call a dynasty, because that’s my job now.  Deputy Security Chief.  I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty good at it.  Better than my Dad was.  West Summertown has been without incident since I took over...

...Pacheco stops typing away at the computer.  “Can’t do it, my friend.”  He radios back in his throaty, charming way.  “I’m busy.”

“Ha.  Busy doing what?”

He perks up.  “Where are you?”

“At home.  I’m having a lie-down with my old lady.  What’s got you busy?”

He turns to look back at the vault-style door, but as he does his elbow hits the printer and sends it tumbling to the floor with a plastickey crash.  His shoulders dip and his neck scrunches up like someone afraid of being hit.

“What was that?” I push him.

“I’m in the Explanatory.”  He’s totally cool.  “A humming owl’s got loose from the Aviary, and it’s knocking into the display cases.  My boys and I are trying to catch hold of it.”

“That sounds serious.  I’ll be right there.”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“Mm hmmm.”  I very convincingly mimic the sound of tying my shoelaces.  “All set.  Be there in a minute.”

“Don’t worry about it, everything’s fine.”

I huff and puff, like I’m running down my condo steps.

“Hey,” he says.  “Hey.  No.  All right, I’m not in the Explanatory.”

I stop huffing and puffing.  “I don’t understand.”

“Listen,” he says.  “I’ll be honest with you.  I’m in women’s fashion.”  He knows I hate women’s fashion...

Prompt One vs. Prompt Two

Invited Bracket Final

Anna

Alexander Yates

Syracuse University

My wife can see again.  She can see again.  After the surgery, after she tells the doctor how many fingers he’s holding up, after she reads a newspaper headline from across the room, I rush home.  I don’t tell her I’m going—just wait till she falls asleep.  She needs her rest.  And I need to clean.  Because she can see again.

First thing I hit is the picture frame on the bed stand.  My fingers shake so bad I almost break the little twisty-knobs on the back as I open it.  I shove the 5X7 of Katherine and me into my back pocket.  There’s another in the living room, blown up to fit the frame my wedding photo used to be in.  And one in the bathroom—a shot I took of Katherine last summer.  Her brittle blonde hair is all mussed around her head.  She’s nude from the belly up, her lower half covered with a threadbare hotel sheet.  We’d just had sex and she’s sleepy and smiley.  The photo hangs where anyone can see; right above the clean toilet.  But we never get any visitors.  And my wife… well, obviously.

I fold all the pictures into tight little squares, take the originals out of the closet and refill the frames.  My wife and I at Skaneateles Lake.  Her eating cake in a funny hat when she got her GED.  The two of us surrounded by friends at First Lutheran.  Friends who’ve all moved south now, because each winter up here is worse than the one before and not half as bad as the one coming...

...“Tell me what it looks like,” Anna says, her face solid and determined.

“There’s lots of big trees,” Katherine says.  “We can see the canal from here.  And the bridges.”

“There’s a man juggling,” I say.  “There’s a bear cub on a leash.”

Anna snorts.  “Pah.  There’s no fucking bear.  There’s no fucking juggler.  I’m in a fucking dorm room.”

She tears up a handful of grass.  “This is cheap carpet.”

We all finish our ice cream quietly.  A Beatles song starts playing from inside Katherine’s purse.  Help! I need somebody.  Help!  Not just anybody.  Her assistant’s ring-tone.  She answers, apparently happy to have an excuse to get up and walk a few paces away.  Whatever the assistant tells her, she doesn’t like it.  She calls him Braniac, insincerely.  “Ah-ha. Ah-ha.  Ah-ha.  Oh?” she says.  “Okay.  So, send him on his way with forty dollars and we’ll call it a deal.”

Anna gropes about while Katherine talks.  She finds Katherine’s purse and dunks her hands inside.  She pulls out a ledger and opens it, working her thumbs into the inky Cyrillic lettering.  I recognize the ledger.  It’s the real one, the one that Katherine keeps on her always because Mikhail knows that someone’s stealing from him and regularly has the hotel searched for evidence.  Katherine finishes her call, turns back to us and freezes.  I give her a ‘calm down’ motion with my hand.

“Who on earth are you giving forty dollars to?” Anna asks.

“Nobody.”  Katherine stares at me as she speaks.  “Just a septic inspector.  He’s got a problem with the quality of our pipes.”

Anna leafs through pages she couldn’t read even if she still had her eyesight.  “Forty dollars aren’t enough to fix pipes.”

“Well, they’re enough to fix the inspector.”  She mouths to me that she is going to tell Anna, right now.  I mouth back that I’ll leave her if she does.  “It’s win-win.”

“It’s dishonest,” Anna says, snapping the ledger closed and plunking it into the grass a foot from the open purse.

“That’s true,” Katherine says...

Invited Bracket Final.

"Summertown" by Yates [36.5%]

"Anna" by Yates [63.5%]