The ring sat snugly in its box in the bedroom closet, a beautiful white gold Claddagh design with a delicate oval-shaped emerald set in the center of the heart. Janet was still sleeping soundly, less than five feet from the small piece of jewelry that had taken me 10 weeks to obtain.

I hadn’t imagined that simply getting the ring would be such a long ordeal, which meant I had told all my friends and family about the impending proposal back in February. So I had spent two and a half months answering the same two questions:

• “No, I don’t have the ring yet.”
• “No, I don’t know how I’m going to propose. I figure that the right idea will come to me when I actually have the ring.”

(Like that little dodge at the end there? Spoken like a true procrastinator.)

By the time I picked up that elusive, shiny little something from the jewelry store on April 30, Janet had been living with me for a month. Her lease had expired, and it had made perfect sense to move her into my house — but naturally I’d been hoping to do things in a different order. She’d told me that she wanted to be surprised whenever I did pop the question, and now that we were together under one roof the subterfuge would require a lot more effort on my part. Through white lies and sneaking around, I had already managed to get to the jewelers, hide the ring in the closet, and stash a few bottles of celebratory craft beer in the seldom-used extra fridge. So far, so good.

While I got ready for work Wednesday morning, the plot began to come together in my mind. We’d agreed that whenever the proposal happened, it should be something intimate and low-key. The forecast was clear and pleasant for that night, so maybe I could build a fire in the pit in my back yard, have the beer on ice (neither of us is much for champagne), and … do something related to “The Princess Bride,” which is a bit of an obsession for Janet. I considered spelling out Westley’s iconic “As You Wish” in bright paper letters on the shed, but ultimately I decided to have the phrase written in icing on an ice cream cake, which is much tastier than paper.

The ingenious part of my plan? Janet would be out of the house that evening attending 7 p.m. Mass, so I could make all of my preparations while she was out. This suddenly became less ingenious when the pastor canceled the service — prompting a panicked text message to our friend Robin, who roped Janet into some last-minute babysitting.

It was close to 7:30 when we’d finally finished with dinner and Janet left home. I dashed to Baskin Robbins for the ice cream cake (half chocolate chip, half mint chocolate chip), then to Target for Duraflame logs (sufficiently idiot-proof for even my fire-building abilities).

I returned home and shaved, unable to shake the nervous feeling that Janet would walk in the door at any moment. Outside, I stashed the ice cream cake in my large blue cooler and placed a chilled bottle of Positive Contact ale on top along with a pair of tumblers. It was 8:50 when Janet texted that she was heading back, and suddenly I was back on that barstool before our first date.

I spent the next 15 minutes anxiously pacing from the living room to the dining room, watching for Janet out the front and checking out the back to make sure the yard wasn’t engulfed in flames. There were so many things that could go wrong. Maybe she’d spot the fire out back before we got out there and connect the dots. What if a neighbor interrupted my proposal by taking out the trash? The woman next door has a very vocal chihuahua. How could I possibly have thought a small, fenced-in rowhouse yard was the place to do this?

Janet came through the front door. As I rushed over (too eagerly?) to welcome her home, I told her I felt bad that she got stuck babysitting on short notice, and that I had a surprise out back to make up for it. She followed me out the kitchen door (could she see the box in my back pocket?) and was thrilled to see I’d made a fire — on the ride home, she’d been thinking about doing just that. She didn’t even notice the cooler, bottle, and tumblers.

But she noticed as I dropped to one knee in the grass in front of the fire and pulled the little box from my pocket. I opened the hinged top, making doubly sure I wasn’t holding the box backwards, and revealed the silvery ring and its bright green gem. I looked up and saw her eyes about to brim over with happy tears. And it suddenly occurred to me that the only thing I had failed to plan out was what I would say in this moment.

I improvised: “Janet, I know that we’ve been talking about this for a long time, but … will you spend the rest of your life with me?”

She said yes, and then said it again. And again, and three more times after that just to make sure that I understood. She dropped to her knees along with me, and we wrapped our arms around each other and held on tight.

For some of the writers in this issue, “far and away” is a literal journey, to a strange city or to another country. Others describe a personal journey, where parts of oneself are what get left behind. Some explore the pain of being one of the ones who is left, either by a pet or a beloved friend. Some describe metaphorical journeys that are much more fleeting — being transported out of a mundane existence in a supermarket baking department, or being transported out of one’s mind while hurtling down a mountainside at 80 m.p.h.

Like we did in our massive March/April issue, this time we’re again welcoming seven new Crunchable writers: Kim Peter Kovac, Bryce Journey, Phillip Russell, Diane Payne, Julia Rubin, and Darlene P. Campos. I thank them deeply for their patience and willingness to work with me through the editing process! Thanks also to returning writer Rachel Wimer, and of course to assistant editors Annie Woodall and Melissa Reddish.

We will be back very soon with a call for submissions for our next issue, “Meandering.” So please keep reading, keep writing, and we’ll have more for you soon.

Dallas, TX. Photo by Flickr user Schlüsselbein2007

My sister was in the psych ward. She had asked me to visit her for Labor Day weekend and even though she’d always had violent tendencies, it had never gotten as bad as it did that time. I’d had to call the cops on her after she tried to smash a water bottle on my head. They had put her in handcuffs in front of me. Please don’t put her in jail, I had said. She’s not a criminal. They’d said they wouldn’t. They would take her to Green Oaks Hospital, the place I was looking for now. I knew the Chipotle I’d passed seven times was near her new apartment, so I parked and went inside to call a taxi. The operator said it would be 20 minutes, but the taxi was outside in less than 10. I went up to the taxi and asked the driver if he was meant for me. “I never fail,” he answered.

The taxi smelled like free cologne samples and herbs. His name was Tik Tak and he told me he was half Jamaican, half Ethiopian. He had his hair in crisscrossed dreadlocks and a Bob Marley beach towel on his dashboard. Before we took off, he looked me in the eyes and asked me if I liked “the reggae beat.” I nodded, so in seconds, he was blasting Yellowman on his stereo.

Tik Tak said the hospital (I didn’t tell him it was a psych ward) was 30 minutes away, but he swore he could have me in there in 15. As much as I wanted to see my sister, this didn’t sound so good. He reversed the taxi too quickly and almost backed into a van with a mom and two kids. When she told him to watch where he was going, he stuck his head out the window and screamed, “Shut up, stupid!”

We must’ve been going no more than 60 at first since there were state troopers hanging around the highway, but once we passed them, Tik Tak slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. Yellowman’s moment on the radio was over and now Musical Youth was telling me to “pass the Dutchie on the left hand side.” I was hanging on to my seat, looking at the JP Morgan Chase building and the birds soaring past its front side. Even if I didn’t get to see my sister, I was okay with it. It would only mean I would have died trying to see her.

Tik Tak said his mother was from Addis Ababa and went to Kingston, Jamaica, to escape a marriage she didn’t want. She arrived in Kingston and a taxi driver took her to her motel. That taxi driver turned out to be Tik Tak’s father. “Taxis, they put my parents together,” he said. “I’ve been a taxi driver for over 20 years.”

Ten minutes had passed and I was focusing on the skyline, hoping remain in one piece. Then at the last second Tik Tak saw our exit was closed and he was going at least 90 to 100 miles an hour, so he swung the car over to the next lane, almost hitting two other cars in the process. He took the next exit, by Southern Methodist University. “We’ll take a different route,” he said. “But don’t you worry, Miss. Tik Tak never fail.”

Tik Tak came across a roundabout just before Southern Methodist University and since he was still figuring out the fastest route to take, we were spinning around in circles with blood rushing in our brains. He turned right, which wasn’t good enough due to a slow driver in front of us, so he made a sharp U-turn and went to the left side. A man on a bicycle was in his way, so we took a right again. We passed the slow driver by cutting him (or her) off and nearly crashing into a tree — actually, two trees.

There was construction on the next road. Tik Tak almost ran into a worker, who yelled at him to “watch it.” Tik Tak stuck his head out the window and answered, “You shut up!” Then he apologized for using that kind of language in front of me, but I told him not to worry. I had profanity in my mind too.

Yellowman was back on the radio saying “zung-guz-zung-guz-zeng” as we sped through downtown Dallas. I saw the book depository where Lee Harvey Oswald hid and the spot where JFK was shot. I tried to mourn my country’s former president, but I was interrupted by Tik Tak asking me why my sister was in the hospital. I told him she was sick. “With what?” he asked. I told him my family didn’t know, not even the doctor knew. He said maybe listening to the reggae beat would help her, which I found funny. Maybe it was worth a try.

We came to a place shaded by fake palm trees and tall, uncut bushes. I looked up and saw the lit “Green Oaks Hospital,” sign, with the word “hospital” burning out. I had my wallet out to pay Tik Tak, but he said he could wait. Won’t that run your meter? I asked. He turned it off. So I went into the hospital’s lobby and asked for my sister.

The nurse said I needed a three-digit code in order for her to assist me. The only person I could get the code from was my sister. But I’m the one who I put her in here, I said. She won’t want to talk to me.

The nurse disappeared from the front desk and returned after a few minutes. “Your sister is here,” she said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

I walked back to Tik Tak’s taxi and asked him to take me to Chipotle. “What about your sister, Miss?” I said the doctor already let her out; I got there too late. “So is she better?” he said. Yes, much better, I said.

We were back on the highway, going 90 miles an hour again, and I was bunched up against my window. I closed my eyes for the entire drive and when I opened them, I saw the glow of the Chipotle sign. “Here we are, Miss,” he said over Bob Marley’s voice. “You ever in Dallas again and need a ride, you call me. Tik Tak never fail.”

Near the top is a heavy plaque I received for singing in my high school choir. That’s where I first met Caroline, when we sang in Treble Choir together as freshmen at W.T. Woodson High School. She had long, dark brown hair and sat in the back row due to her height, with her distinctive alto spreading through the rehearsal room like rich molasses. I sat in the very front and tried to blend in with my shaky, quiet voice.

I look through the old journals in my trunk for the one I kept that freshman year, but I can’t find it. But my memory is of sitting alone in Cafeteria A on my first day of high school. I became convinced that Caroline and the other tall, confident girls in the back row at choir had to be sophomores, and there was no way I would be able to break into their group. But when I finally gathered the courage to go up to Caroline’s table at lunch, I was welcomed immediately.

I find an old-timey sepia photograph that some of us took together on a chorus trip to Gatlinburg, TN. Despite our ridiculous costumes, we all kept straight faces — which is funny, because when I think about Caroline, I always think of her smiling. She pronounced her name like Carolyn, with an emphasis on “care.” Her nickname was Mother Moss, and she took care of everyone. She was the consummate Girl Scout, always prepared for anything, with her large, Mary Poppins-like bag.

I pick up the laminated collage of photos that Caroline made for all of us before we went off to college. I remember the Friendship Mix Tape she gave each of us, along with a guardian angel pin. I re-created the playlist last year on my iPod, since Caroline’s collection of Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, and the Indigo Girls in a pink shoebox in my closet is pretty useless at this point.

In the trunk I expect to find a stash of letters and cards from Caroline, but I seem to have put them somewhere else. All I find are a few short letters from her time at Governor’s School one summer for a Spanish immersion program, a Christmas card, and a letter she sent for my birthday in February 2000 — along with countless treasured letter and cards from other old friends. Caroline was always the force inspiring us all to stay in touch, with her letters and cards and long, cheerful group e-mails.

After college, Caroline moved to Paris to teach English at a French school. I last saw her a few days before she left, when we met up in Fairfax City at a strip mall where she shopped at TJ Maxx for a black purse to take with her on her trip (I think she owned about ten black handbags). She wore mostly black and other dark colors, so I knew she would blend right in with the Parisians.

We had lunch at Quiznos — she was a vegetarian who mostly subsisted on cheese and chocolate, another good sign that Paris would be perfect for her. We lingered over mochas at Starbucks and finally hugged goodbye.

She still kept up her correspondence to us all during that time, so far away. That year, I received an e-mail from Caroline on my birthday, with the subject “Joyeux Anniversaire!” Less than one month later, on the Ides of March, I got a call from our friends that they were coming over to my house. Stacey and Shelane pulled up and jumped out of the car.

“Caroline’s dead,” they sobbed.

She was at the French school that day and went home early with a headache. She called her mom and said she wasn’t feeling well and was going to lie down. She never woke up. The mother of the French family she had been an au pair for found her. She had somehow contracted meningitis. She was 22.

At her memorial service back home in Fairfax, both the W.T. Woodson Women’s Ensemble and the UVA Virginia Women’s Chorus sang to honor Caroline. She had been the president of our high school chorus and served as an officer in the Virginia Women’s Chorus. We wept during the Irish Blessing sung by the Woodson choir.

Emily stood up and told the story about the time that she, Shelane, and Caroline were driving late one night to pick Amanda up from the airport when a tire blew out on Shelane’s car. Amidst the panic and profanities, Caroline stayed in the backseat, eyes closed, quiet, and then simply said, “I’m working on it.” Shortly after that, a woman pulled up behind them on the side of the road to help. Caroline was convinced the woman was an angel sent from God. Caroline was a Christian Scientist, a faith I never fully understood, but she and I both felt strongly that prayer works.

Under a pile of letters in my old trunk, I find a sage green, framed Emily Dickinson poem that I wrote out and glued dried flowers on — “The Lost Jewel.” I read from it at the memorial service:

I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: “’T will keep.”

I woke and chid my honest fingers, —
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.

I never even imagined I would lose someone like Caroline. For years I had saved all of her e-mails, but I forgot to forward them to my current account when I decided that rachelephant@yahoo.com was not the best address to have at the top of my résumé. Her words are now lost to the ether.

After Caroline died, her mother, Bonnie, gave us each a letter she had written in her beautiful scrolling cursive, along with a Brookstone flashlight keychain, imploring us to keep Caroline’s light shining. I still use that tiny but powerful flashlight when I walk home from the metro at night, to guide my way up the dimly lit stairs that lead to my street on a ridge overlooking Pentagon City.

I can’t find Bonnie’s letter in the trunk, but I do find an envelope from her that had contained a claddagh pin that had been Caroline’s. On my wedding day, while I was getting ready in the church parlor before walking down the aisle, Bonnie quickly slipped in at the last minute to give me that pin. Upon pinning it to the inside of my dress, I burst into tears, and my bridesmaids quickly tried to keep me from ruining my makeup. Since then, Shelane, Amanda, Elizabeth, and Stacey have all worn the pin on their wedding days, along with several of Caroline’s college friends.

For the 10th anniversary of her death this year, the seven of us girls got together for one of our long “Friend Weekends” — this time in Charleston, SC. We’ve been getting together every few years, but this was the first time all seven of us were there. We sat around and looked at old photo albums and laughed at our former selves.

On our last morning together, Emily and Lindsy peeled the label off of an empty wine bottle and put a few photographs of all of us in it, along with a handwritten note to Caroline that we all signed. We walked down to the water and we gathered around and all placed our hands on the bottle. After a few awkward jokes, Amanda said simply, “Caroline, we feel your absence as well as your presence.” We elected Stacey, the former softball player, to throw the bottle into the water. We watched it float along, and wondered where it would end up, or if we’d be arrested for littering. We walked back to the house and said our goodbyes.

Caroline had a deep-throated laugh, no athletic ability whatsoever, and a huge heart. She loved mozzarella sticks, singing, and children, but most of all, she loved her friends.

In my mind, it’s as if she’s still in Paris, enjoying her daily Nutella crêpe, falling for a handsome Frenchman, and sending her love to us across the ocean. Je t’aime, Caroline, je t’aime.

We found Señor Tico in the Party Works off of the Needham exit of Route 128 in Massachusetts. He was on the shelf with the other piñatas, in between the Mardi Gras beads and the cheap plastic toys that kids collect like currency but parents trip over in the living room. The frill around his head, his stubby legs, and his rotund orange body suggested he was a triceratops, though he had a single green horn, not the anatomically-accurate three, protruding from his forehead.

Among the monkeys, the ducks, and even the other dinosaurs, Señor Tico stood out. His half-shut purple eyelids and his gaping mouth emphasized his lethargy, his boredom of sitting there on the shelf with the other crepe paper creatures, his potential for a grander life. He needed adventure, we decided, and it was our duty to save him.

It was the spring of our junior year in high school, and the air had warmed up just enough for us to venture out in sweatshirts with no jackets. It was the season when homework didn’t seem nearly as important as piling into Hannah’s father’s minivan and blasting “I’m Glad I Hitched my Apple Wagon to your Star” through our open windows and into the open windows of every other car on the highway:

I was young and I was stupid, I had just turned seventeen,
I took my hits on a dumb road trip to Nashville, Tennessee.

We hadn’t yet explored the meaning of “taking hits,” and we were heading to Hannah’s house in Needham, not Nashville. But the song became our anthem that spring, giving us permission to separate ourselves from our tan, pearl-earring-clad peers. We had each long since discovered that we didn’t mesh with the majority at our private school. Just a year earlier, I had spent my free periods in the library with a group of those glossy-haired girls, listening to their stories about Sweet Sixteen parties and Bloomingdales and racking my brain for contributions. But the words wouldn’t come, and I quickly became known as awkward and shy.

But the next year, Hannah transferred to our school and ended up in my Spanish class. I knew by her hair, which she left untamed by a straight iron, and the way the teacher described us both as “introvertida,” that we would be friends. Hannah’s best friend from public school, Sasha, was another curly-haired misfit who quickly fit right in with our group. And then came Sophia, a girl who had become a bit too alternative for the private school’s “lounge kids,” the lightly pierced hipsters who hung out in the basement student lounge. When Tina Lo transferred in junior year, she passed up an offer to join the glossy girl group, instead embracing her goofy personality in quests for dinosaur piñatas with us.

Our group also collected peripheral members, like Pedro — a scrawny, friendly kid with a pile of curly brown hair on top of his head. He always seemed a bit hesitant to become a true part of our crew, but he seemed to find us all both strange and intriguing. Maybe that’s why we all tended to emphasize our quirks in his presence.

Sometimes we’d travel to his house in Lincoln, MA, just to lounge around his living room and frolic in his backyard. Hannah and Sasha were there one day when the phone rang and Pedro let it go to voicemail. The message started off with: “Hey Señor Tico, it’s your Dad.”

“It was an evolution of nicknames,” Pedro explained. “You know — Pedro, Pico, Tico, Señor Tico.” Hannah and Sasha thought it was brilliant and immediately started using it every chance they could get — including that spring day when we found the nonchalant dinosaur at Party Works.

Señor Tico went everywhere with us. He would sit on the lap of whoever rode shotgun in the minivan. He would perch on our table at the pizza shop in Newton center. We’d carry him off the balcony of Hannah’s parent’s bedroom, and onto the rooftop, where we’d lie in a chain, munching on cheese and crackers, our heads bouncing from the laughter that vibrated from the stomachs underneath them. Señor Tico, with his sleepy eyes and moon-shaped mouth, would bob up and down atop one of our abdomens, enjoying the giddy laziness of the afternoon.

One day, Señor Tico joined us for a fairy-themed party at Sophia’s house. We all wore wings we had found in Hannah’s attic. Señor Tico got a set of wings too. We plopped a curly brown wig on the top of his green-horned head and carried him across several muddy streams behind the house. We chomped on rhubarb stalks dipped in sugar and sipped pink lemonade from teacups on a blanket in the woods with Señor Tico by our sides.

When we left the woods, Señor Tico wasn’t with us.

Mostly we didn’t mind that the little dinosaur wasn’t there to watch us grow up. He wasn’t there when we had to get Tina some Plan B the day after her new older boyfriend had refused to wear a condom. He wasn’t at the after-prom party where I ate one weed cookie too many and thought I was going to die. He didn’t come to our high school or college graduations. He wasn’t there with Hannah in Berkeley, where she learned about herbal medicine and lived with her ex-boyfriend. He wasn’t there when Sophia’s parents got divorced or when Sasha was sad but wouldn’t tell us why. Mostly we didn’t remember Señor Tico, and mostly we didn’t mind that he wasn’t there.

But now sometimes when we’re all back home at the same time, we start talking about how things are different, how we’re real people who have real thoughts and have to be significant to the world. And sometimes we’ll all be riding in Hannah’s minivan together again, or passing by the Party Works off 128, or listening to that song about apple wagons, and one of us will wonder: “Whatever happened to Señor Tico?”

At 10 p.m., you’d sat outside, covered with black cats — black cats that wanted to be with you, unlike the missing black cat that was probably hidden in the darkness, watching all the other black cats sitting on your lap, becoming even more agitated.

The pet-sitter had been horrified to discover Maggie had escaped. Technically, Maggie had been on top of the carport shortly after you arrived home, but she wouldn’t come inside the house. You’d gone to pick her up, she’d taken off running. You’d followed her. She’d turned her head and scowled, angry you had left town.

Maggie and her kittens had been living with you for seven months, but this was the first time you had spent a night away from home. Thinking about this now, you feel a bit like a loser. Not one night away from home in seven months? What’s happening? Are you turning into one of those people? You’d been gone only three nights. There had been three other cats and two dogs home. They had known you’d return.

Maggie had never been an easy cat. It took months of her sitting in the hot carport, covered with fleas and mosquitoes, as you had fed her and her kittens, trying to coax them inside so you could take them to be neutered and spayed. Once you had finally gotten the cats to go in the house, Maggie would jump through the window screen, then return the same way she left. Day after day, you’d fixed the screen, and the neighbors commented on how you were getting good at repairing screens.

One night, Maggie was wailing, upset about something. You opened the door and let her out, trying to prevent one more repair job. She continued to wail. You let her kitten Ziggy out, figuring he’d comfort the mother, and then you’d bring them both back inside. Ten minutes later, they weren’t on the carport, which was odd since they had been there all summer. Early the next morning, a neighbor texted: Your black mama cat is dead in my yard. Please bury it. But it wasn’t Maggie. It was Ziggy.

After Ziggy died, Maggie quit leaving the house.

A friend tells you to quit looking because she’ll return on her own. The advice sounds plausible, but doing nothing seems reckless, irresponsible. Neighbors are tired of seeing you peering in their yards, their carports, hearing you scream her name, and they say the same thing: “Your cat will come home.” They want you gone. One neighbor tells how someone shot his black cat with a pellet gun. “Cost over 600 bucks at vet and she still has pellets in her leg.” Another neighbor says maybe your black cat was the one sitting on her golf cart. She shooed it away. “Too many damn cats running around here.” Another friend says: Once a feral cat, always a feral cat. “Probably screwing her brains out under a shed.” But Maggie’s spayed, you answer. “Screwing for fun then.”

You remember what happened to Ziggy and continue your search.

On the third day of her absence, you borrow a trap. Time to get serious. The phone rings. Long Distance Lover calls. You update him about your trip to Boston. About Maggie. He’s planning on visiting for a week in a few days. You think you see Maggie and say you’ll call him back. “Wait. Don’t go!” He sounds urgent. You listen. He tells you that you have too many pets and he’s tired of the long distance relationship. He doesn’t admit that he has found a new lover.

Asshole.

You get up again and again that night and release five cats from traps. Two cats are in the trap the last time you empty it. You let the calico free, but aren’t sure that black cat hissing at you isn’t Maggie. You need to see if the tail is crooked. It’s not. The cat races across the street where the kind neighbor feeds all the strays. These cats won’t return to your yard.

You hurry home from work every day, come home at lunch, never leave the neighborhood. Always looking for that cat. It’s you who is trapped. Maggie is probably having way more fun. Maybe she has found a lover, one without so many damn humans in her life.

After four days of not seeing Maggie, your daughter sees the cat — the cat she’s never been able to pet. Not once in seven months. You go after Maggie and she returns to where you first saw her last summer, under the next-door neighbor’s shed. You grab your glass of wine, figuring it may take awhile, and try to coax her out with the salmon you made for dinner. She grabs a bit, then retreats. You ask your daughter to grill a salmon filet for Maggie. Your daughter groans. “You spoil her.” You hand her your glass for a refill. She brings the salmon and a glass of wine for herself. She grudgingly hands you your glass and laughs when you swallow the fly, then rip your shorts on a nail. The neighbors wonder if you will ever get the cat and leave their yard. “You can watch our tomatoes grow,” Neighbor says dryly. You drink more wine. Daughter tweets about your stupidity. Neighbors shut their window, protecting their children from your drunken cat fiasco.

It gets dark. You set up the trap, certain you’ll catch her. You return home for refills of wine and warm coats. You hear Maggie check out the trap. But she’s seen that trap filled with cats in your carport. She’s not that hungry or stupid. When the wine is finished, Daughter grows bored. She goes home for a shower. Eventually, you go home too. Fifteen minutes later, the salmon is gone, the trap has been released, and the cat is running free.

Damn cat.

Four hours later, your daughter goes to bed, you put the other three cats in her room, the dogs in your room, prop the kitchen door open, sit in the dark — and Maggie walks inside the kitchen as if she’d never been away.

During the night, she jumps on the bed, just like she has for the past seven months. The other cats move over a bit. You open the window. It’s hot beneath the cats. Is this what Lover didn’t enjoy?

Asshole.

Next morning, Daughter is finally able to pet Maggie. “She’s soft. I’m surprised.”

Walking the dogs the next day, you and Daughter get caught in a thunderstorm. Returning home, you find the porch door blown wide open. “Oh, no!” you both screech. But Maggie is cowered beneath the couch. No interest in leaving, especially in a storm. You both sigh with relief.

Your daughter packs her suitcase for her spring break trip. “This weekend home has been nothing but Maggie. Damn cat.”

Maggie jumps on the chair. She looks triumphant.

Photo by Flickr user Zestbienbeautouza“Hi,” a high-pitched voice projects from behind. It rattles in your eardrum and sends a jolt to your heart. You don’t want to turn around, but you do.

“If you come to the front of the station I can give you a sample.” Your monotone voice nullifies your manufactured smile.

“Oh, no thank you; I’m not really hungry.”

She stares at you as if she were searching for something, and as she smiles with a peculiar intensity sunbursts of wrinkles manifest around her eyes. They are two black abysses sandwiching a slender nose. Long brown hair drapes over her head haphazardly; it is flat, as if she isn’t trying to impress anyone. She has a face that makes it hard to tell how old she is, but if you had to guess she is probably in her mid-30s.

“Well … Is there anything I can help you with?

“Do you believe in God?” Oh no. Not one of these people, you think.

The piercing sound of glass shattering shakes you; the florist has dropped a vase in the Hallmark card section. You think “florist” is a good title for her, since everything she moves seems to end up on the floor. You feel the bloody heat rise into your cheeks. Her question has kissed you — brought you back to your first lip-locking in your stale dorm room. The rising heat in your face has melted away the adamantine shield you’d forged at the start of your day.

All of your Catholic schooling has come down to this one question! The universe itself seems to pass you by and all you can think to say is: “I’m not sure.” The countless nights you had stayed up contemplating God and the universe culminated in … disappointment. You let yourself down. But her face shows no disenchantment.

“That’s fine,” she says as she peers into your kitchen. “What are you making?”

“Oh, I’m making cookies with these new Hershey’s chocolate chips …” The mechanical sales pitch you’d memorized before walking out on the floor begins to slide off your tongue automatically. You stop yourself — the redness in your face deepening. “Would you like one?” The “rules” have left your mind; you give her a cookie even though she isn’t standing in the right place. She isn’t like the others; she’s interested in you, not her agenda. You want to know her name.

“Sure!” She smiles at you as she rests her elbows on the marble countertop. You hand her a warm cookie and tell her to be careful, it may still be hot. Her eyes close as her puce lips envelope one half of the cookie. Mmmm. “This is wonderful; such a blessing, don’t you think?”

You laugh because you don’t know what else to do. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

She stares at you again; you track every subtle twitch of her eyes with your own. You want to know more about her; the anticipation is welling inside you. She says, “Your eyes are full of sincerity.”

Her words caress your heart, cause it to palpitate. An adrenaline shot through the body. Is this love? No, not that kind of love, something else. Agape. You want to know her name.

You find yourself smiling so wide it hurts, but you can’t relax your muscles. No one has ever said something like that to you before. You wish to reply with something just as eloquent; “Thank you” is all that comes out.

“What’s your name?” She asks.

“Phil.” Time has stopped for you. If someone asked you where you were at that moment, you’d probably say heaven.

“Well, Phil, it was wonderful talking to you; you’ve brightened my day.” You think she has it backwards; she is the one who has brightened yours. “Have a blessed day.” She smiles at you again before turning and starting toward checkout. You must know her name.

“Hey,” you call out, hoping your voice travels to her amongst the noise of Meijer. Her face springs to life and she walks back to your station. Your mind has checked out and you struggle to think of what you want to say. Her name. You want her name. “Uh, have a great day!”

She smiles at you, revealing the elusive wrinkles around her eyes once more before walking away. You watch her as she scans her items through the machine; with each item that passes through you realize your time with this woman is slipping away; soon she will be back out in the snow. Soon she will forget you. You watch as she shuffles with her groceries in her cart before she exits the store. She is gone. You swear she disappears into thin air as she walks through the exit. She is an Angel, you think. You didn’t want to know His name. No, you’d already heard it enough in school. You wanted to know hers. But she was gone.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Your ears catch the shrieking of the timer clipped on the stove. You open the oven door and are greeted by plumes of smoke.

The cookies are burnt.

• Warning: The Comet Bobsled reaches speeds of 80 miles per hour and passengers experiences forces up to 5 Gs.
• We strongly discourage anyone with chronic neck problems, back or kidney problems, heart problems, recent surgery, and/or high blood pressure from riding the Comet Bobsled.
• Anyone questioning their health status or experiencing hesitations should not ride the Comet Bobsled.
• Please note that there is a possibility of injury whether the above listed conditions and symptoms apply to you or not.
• If you are pregnant you may not ride the Comet Bobsled.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t pregnant. But as I held the pen poised over the signature line of the Comet Bobsled waiver form, I couldn’t help but think of the Wal-Mart blood pressure machine’s warning from a couple of weeks before, when it had suggested I should see a doctor at my earliest convenience. Before I could think about it any longer, I scrawled my signature across the line. After all, my wife, Laura, had already signed hers. I couldn’t back out now.

A few minutes later, as we headed up the mountain road to the top of the bobsled run, I wished I had. From the side window of the shuttle car, I saw the run in all its steep, twisted, terrifying splendor spread out before me against the side of the mountain. Only one thought passed through my mind, repeating over and over again: What the hell I am doing?

Photo by Flickr user thomas pixMy wife and I were in Salt Lake City to see our friends, Kent and Beth. As a change of pace from the week of Euro board-gaming we’d all been engaged in, Beth suggested we visit the site of the 2002 Winter Olympics. At the conclusion of the Olympic Games, part of Salt Lake City’s Olympic Legacy Park was transformed into an amusement park of sorts. There were zip lines, ski jumps, and an alpine slide. And then there was the Comet Bobsled, an actual professional bobsled run, redesigned for a single driver to take passengers down the same course that Olympians used in the 2002 Winter Games. The bobsled was fast, the run brutally difficult, and the whole experience apparently dangerous enough to warrant a waiver.

Kent was very interested in the waiver form. He’d just passed his bar exam and was way too excited about trying out his newly-sanctioned lawyer skills. After I’d turned my waiver in, he studied another copy of the form. “This is a good waiver,” he said, when he finished. “I don’t see any loopholes at all. If any of us die while on the bobsled, there’s nothing we could do about it.”

“Because we’d be dead?” I wondered.

“Well, that too,” Kent admitted. “But I was referring to the legal options of your surviving heirs.”

“Thanks, Kent,” I said. “It’s too late for that, though. I already turned the silly thing in.”

“You don’t have to go,” Kent said. “I’m not. The bobsled can only take up to three passengers anyway. I’m going to stay behind and watch the kids. You can watch them with me! It’ll be fun!”

More fun than the actual bobsled, I thought to myself, at the top of the mountain. The run lay below me, looking even steeper and more suicidal than it had from the bottom. The question kept on pounding: What the hell am I doing?! Extreme sports like this were not my idea of a good time. The strategic placement and maneuvering of wooden pieces on an abstract board — that was my idea of a good time.

But now everyone was waiting on me, so I put aside my second thoughts and picked out a helmet. They sat on several shelves, arranged by size. The bottom shelf was reserved for a collection of cracked, broken, and smashed helmets. I didn’t want to think about how they got into that condition.

I forced my head into the snuggest helmet I could find and approached the Comet Bobsled. It was white, and the dark scuff marks on its battered body stood out like violent gashes. I’d heard somewhere that the seat farthest back in a bobsled made for the roughest ride, so I suggested Beth take that one since this whole adventure was her twisted idea. I volunteered to sit directly behind the ride’s driver and hoped letting Laura have the more “exciting” seat behind me looked like a gallant gesture. I cursed Kent under my breath for thinking of being gallant by watching the kids before I could.

Before I could distract myself any further, the sled took off! Slowly at first, easing over the starting line, sliding gradually down the initial incline. Oh, hey, this isn’t so bad, I thought as we approached the first turn of the run. It’s just like going down a gentle hill on a sled after a new snow.

But after the first turn the course steepened and we started to pick up speed. We rounded a curve and I clutched the bobsled’s handled straps just to keep upright. We rounded another curve, throwing me to the side. The sled picked up more speed, them more, more and more, until it felt like we weren’t in a sled at all — as though we were plummeting straight down through open air. I clamped my hands tighter around the straps, my knuckles turning desperately white.

Faster we flew. Faster, faster, faster, and faster! I wondered if the driver had any control over this thing at all. Our momentum built and built as the acceleration pulled me backwards into my wife. Then more turns. The bobsled took each one with such force that my helmet crashed into the steel side of the seat, first to the left, then to the right, left and right again. My head felt like a tennis ball in a match between Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams; my brain pounded as though both of them were shrieking right into in my ears.

I remembered the bobsled crew at the top of the run telling us the whole experience lasted about a minute. It felt like 10 had passed already. I ticked seconds off in my head, and every new one surprised me as I wondered if this Ride from Hell would ever end. And still our speed increased! My vision became blurry around the edges. I no longer had the strength to fight the acceleration and lift my head to see where we were going. I opened my mouth to scream like a little girl but no sound emerged. I screamed like a mute little girl instead.

Suddenly, the bobsled stopped. My mouth was still open, and I realized there was a sound coming out of it after all — a soft, barely audible, weak and whining whimper. With the greatest of efforts, I closed my mouth and stood up. On shaky legs, I staggered over to the nearest wall and leaned against it for support. The women didn’t seem to find anything amiss at all.

Beth’s eyes were bright and shining and her breath came quick in excited exhalations. “Wow! That was really something!” she cried.

My voice came out as a squeak and I quickly adjusted it so it sounded like a manly squeak instead. “Yeah, something,” I agreed.

Laura ran a hand along the body of the sled and chuckled wryly. “I’m not sure if that’s something I would ever do again, but I’m glad I did it once so I can say I did.”

That, I couldn’t agree with. Leaning against the wall, my eyes closed, trying unsuccessfully to breathe deeply and evenly, I thought it would be the most wonderful thing in the world if I could go through the rest of my life not telling anyone I’d ridden a bobsled.

The driver motioned us over to the sled for a souvenir photo. Gamely, I held my helmet under my arm and tried to conjure up something resembling the merest hint of a smile. But I think I conjured up something else instead. The photographer promised to develop our photo later that day and post it at the park’s online bobsledder gallery, where we could buy copies of our pictures and where potential customers could see how much fun they’d have if they rode the bobsled like we did.

But the photo never appeared. Laura checked that website every day for weeks, and it never appeared amongst the other snapshots of thrilled riders standing in front of the Comet Bobsled. After awhile, she speculated our picture must have been accidentally deleted or something.

I knew better. Our picture was deleted on purpose. My face — the face of fear — was not good for business.

Baku, Azerbaijan. Photo by Flickr user teuchterlad

It is late February 2012. In the front seat of a butch SUV, black (of course) is a local driver and a translator-guide — providing transportation to the airport, courtesy of the hosts of the theater festival in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. The “Land of Fire.”

The way is not smooth; this street is blocked, then that street, then another. The driver curses (in Azeri probably, though possibly Russian). A long line of people fills the crosswalk in front of us, mostly formal in dress and solemn in manner. The driver mutters, and shifts (both his gears and the car’s); now it’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride — weaving on and off sidewalks, screeching U-turns, barreling down the wrong side of the street.

The guide-cum-representative of our host country (ethnically Muslim, much hospitality) is a soothing contrast to the manic aggression of the driver. He explains the thousands of people are part of a march commemorating a tragedy 375 kilometers and 10 years away in a city called Khojaly.

The previous Thursday afternoon.

We’re taken on a tour of the city, beginning with a multi-memorial park on a hill overlooking both the Caspian Sea as well as the not-quite-completed auditorium for the next Eurovision singing competition. (The Azeris had won the previous year.) Martyr’s Lane, near the entrance, honors citizens murdered in the fighting when the Soviet Union collapsed two decades ago, a time known as Black January.

We speak softly and respectfully near solemn locals with bright red carnations (dispersed from a car trunk by a man with hair, mustache, and suit all equally black and shiny) to lay at the markers, horizontal like graves (they probably are graves), photos etched on a marble wall, the lane stretching maybe a hundred meters. At the end is a tall stone monument with strongly-burning eternal flame and to the left and down some steps a cemetery for other national heroes — the same ground where the corpses from the 1918 Battle of Baku were removed by the Bolsheviks to turn the site into an amusement park. It was restored as a memorial following Black January.

One of the guides asks several of us if we are moved by what we’ve seen — the graves, the line of pictures, the flame. He asks several times.

Saying yes seems more gracious. Yet I am not moved, not at all.

That evening, thoughts return to that non-reaction. Is it because there’s neither a personal connection nor an easy empathetic hook? (The Plexiglas-covered pencil marks charting the growth of the sisters in the Anne Frank House causes a grief-shudder even years later.) Or is it a variation on the truism supposedly voiced by Stalin, that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths merely a statistic?

Sunday, a few kilometers later.

The scene at the memorial and the mourners at Martyr’s Lane scream back into focus as the SUV accelerates onto the freeway. The earnest young man in the front seat speaks more of the significance of this day in 1992, its importance based on the slaughter of civilians fleeing Khojaly — massacred this time by Armenians, not Soviets.

What happened was a genocide, he says. Surely it was, don’t you think?

There is a long silence.

Six weeks previously.

Our Azeri hosts, arranging for our visas, ask if any in our party have Armenian ancestry or passports. If so, they will not be allowed in Azerbaijan.

The demand is outrageous, especially when the one person with a Greek name in our group is temporarily targeted. Our trip is for art, for theater — for children, no less.

Minimal research makes plain the wounds between the Armenians and Azeris are deep and long-standing, with violence exploding after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Khojaly is merely a recent chapter — a tragedy transformed into a rhetorical cudgel in an age-old conflict over religion, power, and who can claim a patch of ground as their homeland.

In the SUV, the young man has not been answered.

The skeleton of the story of Khojaly is clear, but the numbers of dead are still disputed. The count ranges from 161 (say the Armenians) to 613 (say the Azeris). There are also accusations of ethnic cleansing and mutilation of women and children.

Still. Six hundred thirteen. Light-years fewer than the 800,000 machete-hacked by the Hutus in Rwanda, or the 6 million murdered in the Holocaust, or the 7 million forced-starved in the Holodomor in Ukraine by Stalin (see above).

The question appears, electric and buzzy like neon, yet icy in its detachment: Just how many make a genocide, anyway?

The SUV is nearing the airport. It’s a crisp and sunny morning with the wild Kzary wind blowing from the north over the Caspian Sea through Baku, the City of Winds, where everyone has been gracious, welcoming, and as warm as one could ever hope. It seems the wrong context for parsing the quantification of a horrible tragedy. (Or massacre.) (Or genocide.)

Because the earnest young man in the SUV and his countryman back at the memorial park seem to be, underneath all the nationalism, chest-thumping, and culture clash, asking the same question to a near-stranger: Will you acknowledge our grief, name it as we do, share it just a bit?

The (mostly non-) response is a sympathetic mumble, too stuck in a hamster-wheel of history and politics and defining intent to realize they both might have had family killed. And even if they hadn’t, how would that make the murders any less senseless? These are national wounds (something we Americans came to understand in September 2001). The dead are still dead, and their families and countries grieve.

In the back of the SUV, back spasms dart up the spine — either from the hotel bed or from the disconnect between what I feel and what my empathetic depths think I should feel. It is ephemeral yet dimensional, ghosting between politics and people, between clarity and cliché and impossible to reconcile (quickly, if ever) because it also hovers between humanity and history.

On the sidewalk at the airport.

Suitcases are unloaded from the SUV, thanks are sent to all the hosts with hopes to someday, Insha’Allah, return. At the door of the terminal, turning to wave goodbye, as the winter sun rays slant and the Kzary gusts hard and clean.

Hell. I’d have given anything at that moment to just go to Hell. Waking from the dead is quite painful. Mortals have no idea.

These surroundings were unfamiliar — I must have been taken from the sarcophagus. But my captors had left me a meal: A black dog, snoring at my feet. A mere morsel, but enough to regain my strength and sweep into the night clouds in search of real blood. I could hear myself groaning, and the dog stirred. I was too weak to move. I must have been unconscious for hundreds of years.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice pierced the darkness, shattering my brittle consciousness. The voice was familiar. A descendant of my last housekeeper, perhaps? Had the family been so loyal as to preserve me all these centuries?

“What year is it, pray tell?”

“You’re scaring me.”

“You will tell me the year and then you will leave my presence if you know what’s good for you!” I roared. She was stupid, obviously. Perhaps she could be my feast. I inhaled deeply to detect her warm beating heart, her blood. But my drawn breath elicited only a rattling spasm of coughs.

“OK, something’s not right,” she muttered to herself.

“Of course something’s not right, idiot! Come here so I can take you …”

The woman stuck something into my mouth and held it shut. Fool! Were I not so weak, she would not dare! I would …

“Oh dear. One hundred and four. We need to get you to the bath to cool you down.” She pulled me up, then left my side for a moment, clicked something. Searing light burned the darkness away. I screamed.

“Stop that!” She was near hysterical, but forced calm gripped her voice. She had practice handling the waking dead, I discerned.

“I will follow you, woman.” She said nothing and guided me through a garishly lit and yellow-papered hallway. I shielded my eyes from its ugliness. (Obviously time had not been kind to what was once considered taste.) She pulled me into another horrifying room, this one painted a pallid green and featuring a large, white, porcelain bath. A bath? Was this where I was to feast?

“Sit in the tub. NOW.”

I sat, perplexed but feeling a slight increase in strength. The black dog was in the doorway, panting. Stupid beast, it awaited death happily. I suppose that is the best way to go if you’re going to be eaten. But why did it insist on licking my face?

The woman turned on the water and shooed the dog away. Lukewarm liquid slowly filled the tub and I sat, immobile, the water chilling me but somehow washing away a muddiness and shadows that had stuck to my brain like burnt sugar.

Presently I looked around and called out, “I’m hungry!”

My mother answered from the next room where she was rummaging around.

“Are you feeling better? Do you want to read your Anne Rice books again while you bathe?”

“I want steak.”

Mom was quiet for a moment.

“It’s 6 o’clock in the morning, sweetie. How about eggs?”

“Okay.” I shivered and made my first attempt to get up. The effort sent me reeling back and elicited a look of alarm from Woodstock.

“I am not well,” I said to my faithful dog. Her tail thumped on the yellow rug that was shaped to hug the toilet. I pulled myself up again, unable to stop her from her licking bathwater off my feet. I was starving but relieved that she no longer looked the least bit appetizing. I patted her head.

“Good girl,” I said. I gestured at my feet, and she went to work on my left ankle.