I Can Count

creative nonfiction
by Marie Cloutier

We're nine and it's huge in my friend Heather's hand, the red calculator, raised white numbers and a white cat whose face you slide to open it. I can count... I release the clasp on my fake pearl bracelet, yard sale hoard. "Trade you." She looks at the calculator, at me, gauging worth. "Let me see." I hand it over. Plastic beads overflow her little girl hand. "I don't know." Please, I think. Please. I wait, my breath aching. Can she tell? Counting seconds. She ponders. She weighs the bracelet, pursing pink lips. "Okay," and gives it over, my treasure.

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Marie Cloutier (she/her) writes about girlhood and womanhood and complicated loves and losses. Her work has appeared in Bending Genres, Dorothy Parker's Ashes, the Sheepshead Review and elsewhere. She is at work on a memoir. Her website is www.mariecloutier.com.

 

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On Being Phil Marlowe

by James C. Clar

Detective Spangler moved behind my chair. Breeze, his partner, stood in front and said, “We’ve got two stiffs connected to the Matthews dame you’re working for. It’s time to spill what you know.”

“Sure. And to hell with detective-client confidentiality, right? Go pound salt!”

Spangler’s sap hit just behind my ear. From the floor I watched the dust motes dance gaily in the afternoon sunlight that streamed through the window of my office.

Marlowe, I thought, you’re an ass. It’s like you’re always playing out a scene in some cheap dime novel. You really need to mature as a character!

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
James C. Clar is a teacher and writer who divides his time between Upstate New York and the mean streets of Honolulu, Hawaii.