Here’s a story from Jess Row’s imminent story collection Nobody Ever Gets Lost, a book so imminent, so brand new, that it’s due to be released next week. The book launch will be at McNally Jackson bookstore, 52 Prince St, NYC, on Wednesday, February 16th at 7pm. If you get a cab, you can still make it. Jess is a colleague and friend, a member of the faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts, a comrade-in-arms in the twice-yearly residency carnival, a prodigious intellect, and a generous teacher.
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Lives of the Saints
By Jess Row
It’s because you’re a woman that you don’t want me to die, Tayari says.
On their way home, the 6 train sidling its slow way through the South Bronx, she has her head in his lap, her long gangly legs splayed out over three seats, fingers hooked into his dreadlocks. She likes to feel them brushing her face: to take the cowrie shells between her teeth and threaten to crack them like sunflower seeds. By habit or dramatic instinct he speaks without looking at her, staring down his smoky reflection in the opposite window as it flickers in and out of view, as if hypnotized by the repetition: so many intermittent identical versions of himself.
Fuck you, she says.
No, I’m serious. There’s a whole theory that explains it. Women and men perfectly complement each other. Numerologically. It’s the ideal balance of energies. The difference between prime numbers and all the other numbers.
She nestles her cheek against his sweatshirt and feels the packages crackling underneath. I’m dating the Scarecrow, she thinks: all rustle, no heart. Or was it the Tin Man with the heart, and the Scarecrow with the brain? She could never keep them separate, those two inanimates.
Listen, she says, you got the kind for heavy flow, right?
Baby. It’s not shopping, it’s stealing.
Last time you were pissed when I got regular M&M’s instead of peanut butter.
He gives her a look, as if to say, don’t tell me what matters.