Michael Edman

Short Fiction

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They are prone to many things. They are prone to squabbling, which for some is another way of conversing. They are prone to that and a few others. When the two speak, it is like listening to the fountain in front of Saint-Sulpice, and the clouds are there and the café is there and one of the two towers is incomplete. Subjects are many. He wants to know what she thinks, and she wants to know if he’s thinking about what she thinks. They could take the side street and ignore the church, ignore the towers that are there, both finished and unfinished, but then they wouldn’t get to where they wanted, and they’d continue asking themselves if the day is better spent this way, making turns below the windows of the towers. That could be a Tuesday, or ten minutes on a Tuesday.

They desire to express that which so consistently leads them into arguments, what would seem less normal if they had fewer of them. They do not.  Movements are chances for conflict. She makes toast with butter but forgets to use the butter dish, leaving the unused stick on a plate. He only finds the mess later, after the butter is already warm on the plate with nothing to cover it. Had she used the dish, which was only an arm’s length away behind a jar of sugar, nothing would have been left exposed. The dish comes with a matching top. And so a comment is made in the wrong way. He tries to say something, she reminds, neither of them making sense other than to speak things a degree farther than how they were meant to be said, another thing they are prone to.

Walking by the church, she wants to go in. He wants to leave. They wonder if this is how other people live and if it’s common for couples to squabble as much as they do. They continue like that for a while until they have time to sit down and eat something, and as they finish their meal, the couple will have said the things that they meant to say because their mouths were occupied and they didn’t have time to think about how they’d been so consistently wronged. Suddenly, he’s wishing they’d taken the opportunity to go in and see the church. That would’ve given them more time to think about what they’d like to do afterward. She’s wishing they’d never visited the church at all. Partly because she knew he wouldn’t want to go in, and partly because of the homeless people sitting by the fountain, the stairs, or beneath the columns to avoid the rain, reminding her that the food they were eating could’ve gone to better mouths. How could she say that to him? Instead, they find issues with one another. She, how he smacks his cheeks when he eats. He, how she keeps her elbows out too wide at the table, making it impossible for him to reach his food. That could all be on a Tuesday—not even ten minutes of it.

They are prone to repeating each other’s names when they are upset. She says Art, which is short for Artie, which comes from Arthur. A name he’s never used. His parents may have said it once, but even they lost the sound after a while. Ever since, it’s been Artie. When she’s particularly upset, her R takes over so that the A and whatever comes after T barely exist. When this happens, he makes a petty statement about how she sounds like a hick, and she gets upset that he’s not taking her seriously.

He says Bella, which is short for nothing and is not her name, and he says it as her full name to make the point that he loves her more than she loves him, a feeling that’s common in couples who argue often. He doesn’t love her more, though it does appear to him that way. He loves her differently, and because he notices the difference, he finds it easy to believe that he’s made the greater effort. When she’s upset at him, he looks away, not because he doesn’t take her seriously, but because she’s stronger in the eyes, he across the nose.

The towers are there, and they cannot look away from them, which is a way of looking at one another and thinking about how they are always returning to that point and not others, which would be more positive and less likely to cause confrontation. They rise as obstinate columns, he being unable to ignore them and she being unable to worry them away. To those whose attention they catch, it seems mere semantics, and because they are not prone to any length of investigation and because they are prone to finding meaning through conflict, they remain locked together in their architecture, one more finished than the other, though neither of them can tell who is the more in any specific moment.

She is the quicker energy, the quicker to become exhausted, and so she will say something matter-of-fact that he cannot disagree with. They will stand quietly in that mood. Artie, not wanting to acknowledge her stalemate, will stand for a moment before offering a hmm or a yes, followed by more silence, so as to say, I acknowledge the truce. I am not giving up, but I agree that continuing this argument would be a waste of the city. Besides, look in front of us. What he does not tell her, though he consistently feels it in these moments, is that he admires her ability to do at least this and give way. As one who speaks to see if her thoughts are real, she is unable to keep things from him, and so when the argument is delayed, he knows that for her, this is the truth.

They won’t continue to walk, the church being what they came to see, along with the square, the fountain, and the café—all those pieces of the scene they originally ignored behind the frustration of a partner’s face.

“It’s loud,” he says, “what with the people sitting there and the water,” to which she feels compelled to reply, “Well, not exactly,” and he feels the need to say, “Well, yes. That’s not what I meant, exactly.”

And she continues.

“It’s actually pretty quiet here, compared with other parts of the city. Like some of those streets where we could find an outdoor market or by the restaurants in the evening. This café isn’t even filled out. There could be more.”

He, for his part, ignores the feeling of being run over and the subsequent feeling of a need to return to their argument.

“Yes. I guess I just mean there are a lot of sounds because of the square. None of the sounds are particularly…intrusive, but they all meet in the square and contribute to a general..noise.”

“I suppose,” she replies. She can see in his response the way he feels, and she agrees with him quietly that she was too quick with her critique. She will not say so. It is easier for her to add information. She cannot offer the possibility that she may have spoken over him, as she often does, and cede to him some part of the conversation. Still, she desires their mutual success; if only that success is in progression, her first, then he to follow, so that their equality can be measured. To cover the flare of emotion, she will present more information. It is what she finds interesting and what she would like him to find interesting as well, even if its presentation resembles the swinging of a blunt object.

“That café over there—I was told that’s where Perec used to write.”

He doesn’t want to respond and is still plagued by the feeling of being unmoored. Had she waited for him to respond, possibly allowed him the opportunity to reenter on his own, then they might have achieved some of that equality she so often reminded him of. Artie delays. It will not hold out. Bella is more devoted in confrontation, and he cannot see himself holding onto his frustration. His compromise is to make a joke so that he might ignore the moment without feeling like he’s given her too much. He is displaced, but not irretrievably.

“What’s a Perec?”

“What,” she replies, “no.”

His game is settled; she is now more concerned about what he remembered from the past than how she might interpret the present.

“I’m just teasing,” he replies quickly. “Tell me about it.”

“From my class, remember?”

He does, though he doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he continues with a parallel thought that will move their conversation and allow him to not feel stuck in a place.

“My question would be, which of these cafés and restaurants haven’t had a writer writing in them at some point? It seems like the whole city has been written in.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure it does.”

“It’s a huge city. There are probably tons of places that haven’t been written in. No one’s going to Burger King to write, or Léon’s, or fucking KFC.”

“We went to Burger King this morning.”

“We’re not writers.”

“What are we then?”

“Artie, we’re tourists.”

He laughs. She says his name with detail, and he cannot deny the pleasure that sound brings him, as she knew it would. This is her second compromise, a similar return to humor with the added benefit of returning him to her side.

“I want to go that way,” he says, pointing towards Rue Saint Sulpice, which is beside the church and does not lead in.

“What?”

“What—what?”

“I mean, ugh…”

“What? Go ahead, say it.”

“It’s just… like, I knew this would happen.”

“What would happen?”

“You don’t want to go in?”

He pauses in irritation. They had time, in his mind, for all things spread out across a wide enough frame. They could enter every church, walk every street. Without speaking, he knew she would confront him on this; he thought as much before her prompt. Anxiety at the inevitable confrontation presses him to make what he feels is inevitable occur. She’s going to get mad anyway, he thinks, and I don’t really want to go inside a church right now. If we go in, we’ll be standing for hours. This church is a trap. Alcoves and benches and large columns. We can always come back.

“We can,” he replies, “I was just curious.”

“It’s just—it seems like a waste since we’re right here.”

“Yeah, I don’t mind. It’s fine; let’s go in.”

“Are you sure? I’m not trying to make you do things you don’t want to do.”

Yes, you are, he thinks. That’s exactly what you’re trying to do.

“I want to go in. Come on, come on,” he says.

The suddenness with which he agrees makes her nervous. The change was obviously not genuine, not completely. How could it be?

“But—ugh.”

He starts walking from where they’ve been speaking, briskly, towards the entrance of the Eglise. She huffs, starting to protest, but cannot continue in her spot as he goes off. He motions at her delay, which causes her further frustration at not hearing the root of his change spoken out loud. She makes as if to stay and have him come back, but he turns to see her again and pretends to start running. Bella laughs. They meet beneath the columns once he has slowed and she has covered the distance.

“Wait,” she says as they stand beneath the awning in front of a large door with depictions of saints holding their hands raised, set in relief, as if the entire piece had been lifted from a single stone. “I want the full experience.”

She’s holding his arm as she says this, something that irritates him. He references in his mind the many times she’s argued over her personal space while never failing to intrude on his. Artie says nothing, allowing her the moment.

Bella’s mood changes as they enter. She forgets him, as well as the argument they just had moments prior, and a larger part of the world as a whole. She walks slowly, her eyes moving across each space. He moves quickly left. When she asks him to wait, he ignores, knowing that she’s too preoccupied with her own experience to constrain his. He’s surprised at the chairs—small and square, utilitarian. Others entering the church admire the ceiling and its many arches. Artie is concerned with the chairs. A couple hundred set in rows and perfectly ordered. He’s not a Catholic and doesn’t understand the seemingly purposeful risers set ornately with golden accents or the wooden depictions of the crucifixion. He knows the story but not its purpose as it has been laid out. Bella is in raptures. He hears her talking to herself from where he’s moved to the side under a lower arch. Somehow, that seems more pleasant to him with the ceiling not so high. She’s recalling her knowledge of the architecture, what certain columns are called, and why the stone looks the way it does, despising organized religion all the time while maintaining a reverence for structure.

“Look at the stone,” says Artie, from somewhere she cannot see him.

“Where’d you go?”

He walks out from behind a large column.

“Here, look,” he says, pointing.

“What?”

“Look at the stone. What a red in the marble. I’ve never seen it.”

“Oh my god, Artie. This whole place, and that’s what you look at? You’re interested in the stone?”

She laughs.

“What? I like it. Can’t I like it?”

“I mean, yeah. It’s just funny.”

He turns around, satisfied with their exchange and now fully concerned with striations smoothed to glass.

“Wait,” she says, “I want to go this way.”

“So go.”

He takes to the right and continues, which seems the right way and the way taken by most as they enter. Bella, whether by obstinance or curiosity, goes left, making careful steps around more rows of small wooden chairs until she’s nearly touching the outside wall to get around. Other patrons of the church exit toward her, making for their return out the large front doors, and she must resist an urge to return to the right side and avoid the flow of traffic. She recognizes this impulse in herself, and it frustrates her, as if there were another person walking in stride next to her, telling her she should walk back the other way. Artie is that way. There’s plenty to see. That this might be Artie’s way causes her to walk more steadily in her own direction. She tells herself that he could’ve just as easily come her way, and he should have, so she could talk to him about all she wants to know.

Walls are upright and austere. The young girl attempts to work through icons she has little understanding of. Surely, there must be many interpretations for paintings and imagery: reasons why this candle is placed on this stand and this stool is placed in this corner; reasons why that man is speaking to himself in such a way, head bowed so that the bald spot on the back of his head is covered in a loose net of hair. She doesn’t recognize him at first. He is huddled closely against the wall next to what appears to be a large armoire, across from a gilded ensemble of fabric and large wax candles. The light from a stained glass window falls between them. It is dark in the corner where the bent man sits, setting him in a short chiaroscuro. She resists the urge to reach out and touch the patch on his head as he sits so closely behind the short stone divider. Is he supposed to be there? She cannot tell, but he sits with such confidence, and his head leans so evidently, hands placed on either side to cover his ears. She feels he must be correct, having much more knowledge of the building than her. When she turns, Bella notices a small gap in the stone where a wooden gate is left open. This is how the man entered, and it must have been left conspicuously open for him to do so.

She continues walking around the open center, where the ceiling feels precarious. There are more small chairs with more people sitting in them, set sparsely between one another so that they might focus on images carved in stone. The girl marvels at a beauty she does not know—that so much was placed with such an alien purpose. What do communist stars above a door have to do with the Virgin Mary holding a child at the end of the hall? Why are there people kneeling between them? Why is a portion kept so cleanly when there is what looks like soot left in the ceiling crevices of each alcove along the way? None of this is clear to her other than that it is there. Beauty, she thinks, strangely kept.

A long alcove at the back of the church houses a woman standing on a stage. The display is set so far back that it ruins the eye with an illusion. Bella tries to gauge the distance but becomes confused by the vertical lines and tall paintings on either side. She cleans her glasses, tries again, but still cannot make out if the virgin is four feet or forty. The rows around her are richly designed with winding patterns and gold paint. Red candles hanging from the ceiling look like spirits. They hang around an opening with another tall dome above it, and she marvels at its inner surface, painted in a drama she does not know. This creates a second illusion; she gazes through the opening as if it were an entrance to heaven. The distance makes it difficult to tell if the scene is just a painting on the inside of a building or if staring through the portal has her looking into a sequestered sky.

“It’s gorgeous, huh?”

Artie is at her side. Bella startles, pulling air into her lungs that she forgets to release.

“You scared me.”

“Sorry.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Just over here. I already walked around.”

“You already walked the whole thing?”

“What, why?”

She resists the urge to yell at him. In this church, especially, the noise would reverberate.

“I don’t know. I was just walking, and you seemed focused, so I went around and then came back again.”

“But, ugh…”

“What?”

“I wanted to walk together.”

“We can.”

“But you already went.”

“We can go again. It’s not hard.”

“I know, but.”

“But what?”

“I wanted to walk together so we could talk about it, and now you’ve seen everything.”

“I doubt I’ve seen everything; there’s a lot to see.”

“Fine.”

She sighs audibly as they move, finding it difficult to regain focus and return to her state of confused rapture.

“Let’s just go,” she says, deflated.

“No, come on. I like this place.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I wonder if they’d let me live here.”

With Artie returning as her audience, Bella continues around the side he’s visiting for a third time, engaging him with her knowledge of the columns. He continues to point to color where she speaks of history. It is easier for him after having left and returned, and he admits to himself quietly that he finds some comfort in the space. When he tells Bella there are many more chairs than he expected, she agrees, remarking that she doesn’t know why.

“So many are unused,” he says.

“Yeah.”

Once they’ve made it all the way around and are once again standing in front of the door, Bella gives another stiff breath. She feels somehow unsatisfied—not that the building failed to deliver an experience but that she had not witnessed enough of it. Artie asks her why she seems upset. She says she’s not upset, just that they went too fast.

“Do you want to go again?” he says, resisting the urge to move.

“No, it’s fine. I know you want to leave.”

“We can go again if you want. I don’t mind. I like it here.”

“No, it’s fine; I’m just having a moment.”

“Do you want to go home?”

An upset look comes over her face at the possibility that he is already done with the day.

“What? No. We’re supposed to walk over to the shops and that one place.”

“What place?”

“Artie…”

“What place? I don’t know what that one place means.”

His tone verges on irritation, but he catches himself, acknowledging inwardly that he’s exhausted from confrontation.

“That grocery place, the English one.”

“Alright, I don’t know it. You know the way, so you’ll have to go ahead.”

“Do you want to go?”

“I’m fine; just come on.”

“But wait, don’t you want to?”

“Come on, I need to get my momentum going.”

They exit through the large doors of Saint-Sulpice, admiring the fountain and saying goodbye to each saint. Bella leads them right. Artie starts to walk faster once he has the direction. She tells him to slow as he passes and says how she wants to look at the sides of the building as well as the shops along Rue Saint-Sulpice. He acknowledges that they can still look and walk and that she doesn’t need to call him back because he can always turn around if he gets too far. He wants to keep a pace while she moves at a crawl.

“You’re rushing me,” she says as he goes quickly down the street.

“I’m just walking. Just let me walk.”

The two find themselves on Rue Mabillon. Artie is confused as Bella leads them around a host of shops with no strict bearing. He recognizes certain logos pressed into soft rock, lit to catch the attention of pigeons. They reach a clean grocery store with a large interior and glass-front windows. It’s busy, so he follows close as Bella leads inside. The shelves are also strangely similar, carrying many products that lie just outside of what he would call familiar. Once he’s comfortable, Bella loses him quickly down the many aisles. He returns at different intervals, and they fill their cart with kitsch oddities, frozen meat pies, English beer, Alfredo sauce, cured meats—whatever appears to them from a flurry of well-branded objects, each a little reprieve from the foreign surroundings. Bella grabs two baguettes from a wooden basket. Artie laughs, asking why they don’t simply stop at a boulangerie on the way home.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I want to try these.”

Bella handles the counter while Artie stands to the side. He paces nervously before remarking that he forgot something. Walking away quickly, he returns with a bundle of sausages.

“Sorry, I really wanted these.”

“It’s fine,” she replies, speaking to the clerk as they pay. The bill is higher than she expected. She goes to check the receipt, but Artie has already moved towards the doors. They’re sliding behind him, a bag under his arm, as she grabs the second bag and her baguettes to follow.

“Wait,” she says as she rushes to catch him. “Why won’t you wait for me?”

“Sorry, I thought you were behind me.”

“You’re always going so fast.”

“Honestly, I thought you were behind me, so I just kept going.”

Bella lets out a large sigh.

“It’s fine.”

They make their way to the metro station at Mabillon. Down the stairs, they wait for a few minutes before the wind carries in a thick gust as the first cars pass. The couple slips into the corner of a quiet car, their bags between them, before it slowly pulls off down an unfamiliar tunnel. Artie places one bag between his feet, the other on his lap, so that Bella can hold the bread in her own lap without crushing it. Condensation from thawing meat pies starts to leave a damp mark on his leg.

It’s only a short way before they find themselves at their stop and up the metro stairs carrying two heavy bags, then out onto another street. Artie holds the bags at an iron gate as Bella presses a code into a keypad. He counts each step of linden as they rise through their building, finding himself more grateful as they ascend. Just a few more, and he can shed the anxiety of the city.

They make it inside their small apartment, where Artie lays the bags down on the kitchen floor before walking over to lie down on a small sofa.

“Are you going to help me with these?” Bella makes an obviously irritated remark. Artie can’t help but respond in kind, equally irritated at not having a moment to rest.

“I will; just let me lay down for a second.”

“Some of this is melting.”

“Well, just put away what you need, and I’ll get the rest. It’ll be alright.”

Bella takes frozen meals from a bag and places them in the freezing compartment of their tiny refrigerator. Artie watches half-heartedly, placing his arm over his face so that one eye is covered while the other watches. This is something he is uniquely prone to, contemplating the day as it occurred. He remembers the church first, then the streets. He recalls the Eglise and how he wanted to stay there longer to examine the cafe and how the clouds appeared from each angle of the square. Secretly, he acknowledges a truth he believes Bella is certain of: He went too quickly. Because he did so, they missed certain inspired elements of the city. He doesn’t know why he is this way—eating quickly, walking quickly, viewing in glances instead of slow, measured looks. He tells himself that this is just his preference and that there’s little to change. Bella might disagree, but to act as she would like him to act would make him less himself. What about that rock in the church? He’d never seen such dynamic patterns. They seemed so ugly, gaudy yet profound, as if placed because they were supposed to be beautiful, and because someone had perceived them as such, they were. Another strange part of the world. He thinks of their arguments, starting from the beginning of the day, intuiting that Bella is still concerned that he did not enjoy the trip and that he does not enjoy being with her in general. He does enjoy being with her, but he finds it difficult to express this feeling without a sarcastic tone entering his voice. Still, he tries to make a compromise.

“That was really fun today. I loved that church. It was so bizarre.”

“Yeah.”

Bella is half-attentive. She has the receipt from the grocery store in her hand and is reading it with her eyebrows firmly together.

“Did you like it?” he asks.

“I did, but—sorry, it’s going to take me a little time to think about it. Right now, I can’t remember everything. I need time to go back through it in my head.”

“That’s fine; I was just asking. I can’t stop thinking about the marble and that color. It was just so confounding.”

“Yeah.”

She pauses again, smoothing the sheet in her hand as she presses her index finger across the ink. A slight smear occurs at the bottom of the sheet where the letters pooled, the result of a faulty machine. Artie is still lying on the sofa. She looks over at him, comfortably splayed with her favorite pillow under his head. The room is small, making him look large within it. With his arm over his face, covering the large part of his head, she imagines a placid Holofernes, unaware that his head is about to be removed. What she’s found will upset him. A tiny thread is pulling through her stomach. Its small string creates a knot just above her belly button.

“I think they overcharged us.”

“What?”

Artie moves his arm so that both his eyes are covered.

“They overcharged us. They rang us up twice for the pies.”

He looks from beneath his arm, seeing on her face what he’d guessed. She wanted to go back, return on the metro across the city, make the walk to the store, and then come back again. The light is starting to wane outside their tiny window. From where he rests, Artie can see it casting a yellow hue on the buildings across the courtyard.

“What?” he responds to her consternation.

“Well…”

He knows he has to go. To ask her to go back by herself would be too much. She would go if he refused to join. She’d make the same journey all the way back, uncomfortably, and they’d have a profound disagreement when she returned. It’s too much, he knows, to request that she take care of things alone.

“Alright, I guess we’ll have to go.”

“Well, you don’t have to. It’d just be easier.”

“It’s fine; I’ll go. I like riding the metro.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, let’s go now, while I still have some momentum.”

The two walk together down their stairs, back out of the gate, and across the street to the metro entrance, where sounds of the wind and metro cars rise from a long expanse of tunnels. They stand above the track, waiting, with soft white and blue tiles providing a nostalgic backdrop. Gusts blow across them, Artie set in a tired contrapposto, Bella gripping the receipt with two hands to her chest. She moves behind his back to prevent the tiny paper from being torn away. The white doors of a metro car arrive and open onto a steel gap, which the two take quickly. The shuttle is mostly empty. Artie admires the ceiling and the metal poles which a few people clasp onto. Bella makes a few quiet references to history, acknowledging when this section of public transit was built, how it failed initially, and how the city worked to correct it. The names of each stop pass by outside their window as the couple returns along a familiar route.

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Michael Edman is a writer living in the United States. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma and currently works as a Copywriter. When not writing short fiction, Michael enjoys poetry and is currently finalizing his first novel. He appreciates work that is broken, obtuse, unapologetically sentimental, and honest.

Photo Credit: Jason Bentsman is a writer and fine art photographer. Works have appeared in The Brooklyn Review, the Offing, HAD, Litro Magazine UK, Mercurius, Tiny Molecules, The Montreal Review, The American Bystander, The Amsterdam Quarterly, The Museum of Americana, F-STOP Magazine, Ephemere Gallery Tokyo, and other art and literary publications. His poetic environmental book The Orgastic Future has been called “A 21st-century HOWL” (A. Shoumatoff, New Yorker & Vanity Fair).