Free Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories by James Thomas and Denise Thomas and Tom Hazuka Page A

father-in-law (Where is your wife, she should have the mail by now?), who happens to be a professor of geology on a distinguished faculty. The ringing signal this time. Once. Twice. Three times. A click.
    “Physical plant.”
    Doctor Abendsachs, you babble, you wanted Doctor Abendsachs.
    “This is physical plant, buddy. We can’t connect you here.”
    What’s going on, you shout, what is happening with the atmosphere—
    He doesn’t know. They are in a windowless basement. Everything fine there. It’s lunchtime and they are making up the weekly football pool.
    It is snowing lightly now outside, on the driveway and lawn and garage. You can see your clippers propped pathetically against the hedge. Once more, at top speed, you punch your father-in-law’s number. Again a ringing. A click.
    This time a recording tells you that all operators are busy and your call will be answered by the first available. The voice track ends and a burst of music begins. It is a large studio orchestra, heavy on violins, playing a version of “Hard Day’s Night.” At the point where the lyrics would be “sleeping like a log” the sound skips, wobbles, and skips again as if an old-fashioned needle has been bumped from a record groove.
    You look out the window once more, as the house begins to shudder, and see that it is growing brighter and brighter and brighter.

T HE H AIRCUT
    I knew the moment he got on the plane that something wasn’t right, but what it was eluded me. He stood there in his khaki suit, tennis racket in hand, his teenage boys beaming on either side. I stood, our daughter in my arms, flanked by my parents. We faced one another the way I’d seen the British and French do in old Revolutionary War films.
    What is wrong with this picture? I asked myself, recalling a test I’d often failed as a child. I was gullible, good at believing. (The dog belonged eating at the table, the wife could wear her husband’s hat.) I knew everyone was expecting me to greet this man from whom I’d been estranged, for this was our time of reconciliation, the time to make up for what had been. We had reached this decision together after living apart and on opposite coasts for a year.
    We had been estranged since before the child was born. He couldn’t handle the additional responsibility, I clung more than I should. I had wanted a family, he still struggled to get beyond the one he already had. We had tried to separate and failed. I took a job in California, where I moved with my small child. He stayed on the East Coast. But we spoke every day on the phone. Each of us made several trips back and forth. I agreed to leave my West Coast job. He said he would try again.
    Two months had passed since we had seen each other. I still felt annoyed with him for breaking our Valentine’s plans (a ski trip he’d promised the boys came up). I had gotten miffed over his not calling when he said he would. I hurt over disappointments, large and small, but now I had come with our daughter to my parents’ house in Florida, and he had come with the boys. It was to be a family vacation, our time to reconcile.
    Look again , I told myself, still unable to decide what bothered me, what seemed wrong. His face looked handsome, almost tanned. His suit was neat and pressed. His eyes were clear and bright, his shoes polished. His beard and hair were neat and trimmed.
    I paused there. For if you spend five years of your life with someone, you pay attention to certain things. This is a man of quirks, little oddities you don’t forget. He won’t eat oatmeal if it has any lumps. He won’t wear a watch. When hurt, he recoils. He must play tennis every day. He has a way he hunches when he’s telling an untruth. And he won’t walk into a barbershop. In fact he prides himself in not having been in a barbershop in twenty-five years. I had cut his hair for the past five, his ex-wife had done the same for innumerable years before that. This man was a willing Samson to his