Free Transits by Jaime Forsythe

dad wasn't too happy about those cigars!”
    â€œIt was a good diorama.”
    â€œThank you.”
    Andy feels suddenly awkward, standing in Lila's bedroom. Like he is one of the people clutching one of the lost pages of her diary. He doesn't know her at all.
    â€œI have to go.”
    Lila picks up the fedora and hands it to him. “Take this. Maybe it will help?”
    â€œOh. Thanks.” Andy holds it. “Good luck.”
    â€œRight.”
    Andy casts a glance behind him as he leaves. He wonders whether a floodgate has been released that will continue on its own, or if he will have to keep returning to Déjà Vu for his fix.
    On the fifth floor of the hospital, Andy walks without cargo, on his way to pick up his first cart of the day. A middle-aged woman pushes an elderly man in a wheelchair. The man's forehead shines pink under the fluorescent light, sparse strands of hair combed into neat rows. His legs end before his knees. Brown pants have been hemmed up neatly. It doesn't change his posture at all; from the waist up, he sits the same way as someone with legs would sit. Andy has heard that amputees sometimes feel a phantom limb. He guesses this is not so different from the patients who are always thinking they seecats. Used to the animals prowling their homes, every shadow that flickers in their peripheral vision becomes their own pet. Phantom limbs seem not so different from reaching to push aside hair that has just been cut, or rolling over half-asleep and expecting to thump up against a person who is not in the bed, or thinking every sound is the rattle of a key in the lock belonging to a son who has left home.
    On his break, Andy walks by an office door, ajar. The gold rectangular sign says Dr. Lovely: Optometry. Trying to look like he is supposed to be there, Andy dips into the office and grabs a white note pad and a ballpoint pen from the desk. He finds a vacant chair in the Optometry waiting room, where all the patients have trouble seeing things that are too close or too far away. Some are armed with knitting needles and mixed nuts, while others simply wait. A cylinder of spring water hums in the corner, a giant bubble trembling inside. Andy begins making lines on the page, not sure if he is drawing things he has seen before or is only imagining right now. He is not sure that it matters.
    The midnight run to his mother's is becoming a routine Andy looks forward to. He is worried his fedora might fly off, but pulls it down firmly enough that it stays put. The earth reverberates through his calves, knees, thighs. He can taste the grass.
    He pulls into his mother's driveway with what feels like the speed of a car. A halo of light hangs in the bay window, above the scrubby bushes below it in need of shaping. When Andy turns the doorknob, his mother looks up at him pretending surprise. A book open in her lap, she plays with her white hair girlishly.
    â€œMom,” Andy says. “You don't have to wait up.”
    She rises in slow motion from the faded armchair. “I was doing no such thing. You're all out of breath.”
    â€œI ran.”
    â€œI see.” His mother totters over to him and her palms, which have the texture of paper, cup his cheeks. Then she reaches up to touch his hat. “Sometimes you remind me so much of someone I used to know.”
    Andy absorbs the shape of her eyebrows, thick, like his. He takes in the details in front of him, old things shining like new.

Moving
    by Wanda Nolan
    A single concrete step separated the door from the sidewalk of Tess's new apartment. Tufts of yellow grass peeked out of the cracks around it, stiff and dry. Tess turned the key and hauled in bags of groceries. The noon day light fell through the hallway revealing an ocean of dust in its wake.
    A note was stuck to the mirror in the hallway.
    Hey Sis,
Missed you again.
There's a surprise for you inside. It needs a little
work but will do the trick for a while.
I put the key back