I’m running down the street with a beautiful woman, she is everything I think I’ve ever wanted. Pretty but not overly aware of her beauty, but she knows it and takes it for granted. She has long hair pulled back in a pony tail, dressed for work: men’s gap slacks, a t-shirt, with a jean jacket open at the navel. The wind she cuts through opens the jacket like the wings an enthusiastic bluejay. This woman is telling me a story about her sister Kathleen who is married to a man named Terry. We run along side by side and I ask her where they live. She tells me that they are both stuck in this college town, teaching tidy little classes meant for people with no real goal above teaching. They want a divorce she tells me, and I wonder aloud, (weirdly I’m not out of breath), why? They’re cool with it she says, as we jog in place at a traffic light. It turns green, we take off again, and she keeps telling me more about Kathleen. She isn’t that nice and seeks vengeance for her treading water collegiate existence, and has a weird passive aggressive attitude towards a co-worker with a whore’s name.
Kathleen doesn’t say it’s a whore’s name, but I can only think of a hooker every time she comes up. She tells me that Terry went into a coma after an accident and Kathleen must put off divorce. We move so quickly down the sidewalk that people don’t even blink at the strangeness of this scene, we’re talking like we might be sitting at a table in a restaurant waiting for the check to arrive. The conversation has been going on for so long that we seem to be talking and making it look like we’ve talked forever, but actually feel like it’s the first conversation we have ever had and we just met.
Kathleen and Terry continue on, and this story actually comes out of Alix Ohlin like a fable, or a wives’ tale, even a slice of gossip told over the phone. There are no magic tricks in this story, it just rolls out like a fine carpet, and perfectly fitting the room Ohlin has constructed. Terry, Kathleen and their son spin like a set of rare china plates as they slowly fall out of the front hutch after the dog bumped into it while chasing a tennis ball that won’t sit still.
Ohlin’s writing reminds me off this great pool player I once watched pocket 365 shots in a row during a game straight pool. I didn’t say anything to the guy making the shots but I do remember how great it was to watch.
‘Signs and Wonders’ is the first story in the collection of the same name and goes on sale next year.
