Free Dispatch from the Future by Leigh Stein Page A

wishing you had chosen
    not to chase the manatee in your submarine after all. Do not
    panic. If you end up in the wrong adventure just go back
    three spaces and draw another card. Or go back to bed.
    Or read up on the side effects of the medication taken
    by your loved ones. The great R. A. Montgomery once wrote,
    “Suddenly you’re surrounded by eleven Nodoors,” and I
    guess what I’m trying to do here is ruin any hope
    you may have had of coming out of this alive.
     
BASED ON A BOOK OF THE SAME TITLE
    By definition of vicious infinite regression
    I don’t like to talk to philosophy majors.
    They have found the truth and the truth is
    that there isn’t one, so on Saturdays they
    wear overalls and stare at their reflections
    and try to guess whose childhood was worse,
    but in the end they realize they all share
    the same dream of having a reason
    to join the Witness Protection Program,
    which disappoints at least one person, who
    thought his dream was so uniquely his.
    Last night I got a fortune cookie that said
    I don’t get along with basically anyone,
    and from the back I learned the Chinese word
    for grape:
putao
, and it made me wonder how each
    informs the other. To find out, turn to page 117.
    I wonder how much longer I can live here
    before I do something irresponsible like
    meet a teenage boy on a Ferris wheel in 1941
    or lie in the street and watch the stoplights
    change from green to yellow or sit on a porch
    swing at dusk and listen to
Leaves of Grass
    read by someone who has just worked all day
    with his hands. Already on page 56 I love you
    so much I just want to steal your clothes
    when you’re asleep and wash them. I want us
    to communicate telepathically until I am old
    and suffering from dementia and can’t even
    remember I know how to play piano until
    a nurse tells me I do and still I’ll deny it
    until she puts my hands on the keys and then
    there’ll be Chopin so quickly, as the light
    spills in the leaded windows and the lilies
    lean in closer. By definition of vicious
    infinite regression I am in front of a mirror
    holding a copy of the movie based on the book
    you wrote based on the parts of our life
    together that I no longer remember and
    looking back at me is a woman holding
    a movie based on a book based on her life
    and she wonders if the woman she sees
    wants to die as much as she does. I keep
    staring at this bruise on my leg and drawing
    a blank. Last night when you called I told you
    I was happy, which was true, but thinking ahead
    I could be unhappy, too, if that’s what you
    wanted. I could be any of a lot of things:
    a wrist, a ghost, a harbor, a rope. I could
    be the one who doesn’t know the language.
    I could be the reason they take you first.
    I could be the last person to see you alive.
     
WINTER, 1979, THE COLDEST IN RECENT MEMORY
    Theoretically, I was held by a man in Detroit
    at gunpoint. Theoretically, he let me go.
    I have not told this story to you before.
    I only tell you now for two reasons. One:
    you’re not from Michigan. Two: I have searched
    for his scar along your neck and, so far, no luck.
    They said to wear my purse beneath my coat and
    pretend it was a baby if anybody asked me and
    they might but they probably would not try and take it.
    They said the average memory span for normal adults
    is seven items. Let me differentiate between the two.
    I used to tell this story about Tristan and Dolores,
    who I left in the rain every time. I made them break blue
    glass with their back teeth. Dolores would say, I am half sick
    of shadows, as the waves came up from the storm tossed sea.
    Try telling this story to a man with a gun. Sorry to interrupt,
    he said, but do you know the one about the woman who
    was rolled up like a snowman and left until the thaw?
    No, I said. That was me, he said. I don’t believe you, I said,
    and then he told me to keep my hands above my head.
    The snow had begun to fall then in the deep stillness
    before the streets were plowed and