“Dad and I are buying a condo near Boulder.”

“Why?”

“So we can all be together on the weekends.”

“And do what?”

“You and Huston and Lola can board; Dad and I will ski.”

“Mom, I’m not into Boulder yet. Why are you jumping on Colorado? Remember my applications to Tulane and Miami? Where’s my flannel? I threw it in the laundry room yesterday. Can’t find it. I’m meeting up with Guy and Finn in thirty. Can we move on this? Chop, chop.”

“Don’t be disrespectful. I’m at the end of my rope….and prescription.”

“Chill mom. What prescription? I thought you were in a twelve step; sounds like not!”

“None of your business. I hope you never have to deal with three little whiners. The last time you even said ‘thank you’ was when we gave you the Beemer on your birthday. Now, nothing! No ‘please,’ no ‘thank you’ just a bunch of demands that make me crazy. One year of college for you, not to mention the other two kids, is going to cost more than I spent on Dr. Steinmetz all of last year. Botox isn’t cheap and if you add in the spa trips…well it’s a lot!

“Mom, get it together. Find my flannel so I can get going. I need your card, out of gas.”

“Take the Amex Black but don’t tell Dad. He’s so freaked out about everything these days. No humor, nothing. He’s thinking of selling the winery because it’s running at a loss. I told him, “Winery? Are you crazy? You only drink Scotch and what the hell do you know about wine? The Brownleys are a bad influence hon and just because they like wine doesn’t mean you had to buy a winery! God, you’re such a doormat. To be honest, you’re way too nice to Drake and Gina. Did you see that rock on her finger at the club last night? I wonder what she had to do to get that! Fake, fake, fake and I hope that diamond’s fake too. Would serve her right!”

“Mom, calm! Don’t beat Dad up! I’m outta here. Screw the flannel…later!”

“Text me, Linden, and don’t forget to pick up Huston at practice. Did you see my phone?”

“On the table, Mom. It buzzed. Gina.”

(Rerun from Best of BoomSpeak 2017)

Kim Kohler writes on the uncertainties of living in a liberal hot spot where everybody has an opinion, every opinion counts and nobody uses turn signals.

Sid looked up at his brother and took his hand, “We can’t talk standing in the hall, come, I’m right in the middle of ironing, you can help me fold.”

“You do your own ironing?” Morty said.

“Oh yeah, it’s very relaxing, you should try it. I do my best thinking with a steam iron in one hand and a can of spray starch in the other. My cuffs and collars are perfection.”

If you had to spend the afternoon ironing, Sidney’s living room was not a bad place to do it. A triple height wall of stained glass, that would not be out of place in a Gothic cathedral, filtered the afternoon light into a dozen different colors. Outside, the bridge, the ocean and the Marin Headlands shimmered and hummed. Inside, Sid got busy on a basketful of white dress shirts and a handful of French linen handkerchiefs.

“So, tell me Morty, what’s going on?” Sid asked as he worked the tip of his iron around a line of buttons. “Is it money? If its money just say the word and I’m here for you, whatever you need.”

“It’s not money Sid. And yes, of course it’s money, but that’s not why I’m here.”

“OK Morty, I’m listening,” Sid replied, as he moved on to another shirt, his face enveloped in a cloud of steam.

“You might imagine this is when I dredge up some old grievance from when we were boys. Well you can relax Sid, I didn’t come here to bore you into submission. All I know is when I got in the car I knew I wanted to see you one more time and hear that low-class accent straight from the depths of Williamsburg. But don’t get too close. No hugging, no kissing and no weeping or messy nose blowing, OK?”

Sid looked at his brother, puffed up his cheeks and blew the air out in short, exasperated bursts.

“And in case it is all about the money, Sid, if you were to send me a check for $4,250, I would definitely cash it.”

With that Morty turned his back on the ten-million-dollar view, got into his geriatric Hyundai and rumbled down the drive on a cloud of greyish-black exhaust smoke.

“We need to do this more often,” Sid yelled after his rapidly disappearing brother before returning to his basket of wrinkled laundry. “Next time lunch.”

Robert Leone’s work has appeared in Two Hawks Quarterly, Ravens Perch, Hawaii Pacific Review, Prometheus Dreaming, Spank the Carp, Evening Street Press, Rosebud, Evergreen Chronicles, and The Ana. He co-wrote Rights of Passage, a play focusing on LGBTQ rights produced at New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco.

My old buddy’s heart attack—he swam laps alone in a pool—left him floating face down like William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, only without the bullet holes and sleaze. He’d been self-made, was now self-finished, and would have liked that symmetry. The living map of my world shrank. We’d run out of shared laughter. I stood on a road somewhere, waiting.

At the funeral, the priest said, “We’ll hear a poem by an old friend of the deceased.” His eighty-six-year-old mother stared at me. The poem they waited for, I didn’t know I was supposed to create. I came to the podium slowly. Incidents from my buddy’s life were all I had to work with as I improvised a stanza:

He could walk on his hands for a full city block
and leap over a couch like a fox disappearing,
but his ex-wife claimed he didn’t know how to love 
and blamed it on inappropriate child rearing. 

Mouths hung open as if people were gargling with tennis balls. “Did you hear what that nincompoop said about me?” his mother exclaimed. “That I didn’t know how to nurture. Me, who cooked my son eggs every morning for breakfast, kissed him each night before bed, and smacked him silly whenever he screwed up. That’s love, mister! The problem with my son’s marriage was not him, but that thing over there”—she pointed at his ex — “who doesn’t even know enough not to wear a beige halter top to a funeral!”

His ex shot me a look that said, You had to open this can of worms? I’d forgotten that every eulogy must be of a saint. I quickly improvised a second stanza:

You could trust him with secrets, money and jewels. 
He would tell you the truth and never tried scheming.
I miss the sides of him I knew very well,
and those I never knew that were off somewhere dreaming.

I heard some sobs, stifled my own, and stepped away from the podium. Passing the coffin, I tapped it gently. Nothingness was all we had between us now. I smiled at his mother. She glared back and said, “Wait until you hear the poem I read at your funeral.”

Douglas Collura lives in New York City

My urologist straightened up out of his distracted slouch and got excited. “The procedure that I propose to do to you is the fun part of my job. I’ve performed it as least as many times as, say, I’ve made love to my wife in the last year, and let me tell you, my wife and I, we still have the magic. Do you read me?” he said. “Almost more than I want to,” I said.

“I’ll snake a laser into you, aim and blast that bad boy to smithereens. I never miss. Around NYU Hospital, I’m known as the Wyatt Earp of the bladder,” he said.

“I hope you’ll leave the O.K. Corral intact. I’m not finished with it yet,” I said.

“A sense a humor. Good. In the short run, you’ll need it. In the long run, you’ll be singing my praises in toilets all over the East Village,” he said.

Coming out of the anesthesia in the hospital, I muttered long remembered sonnets, as if I could put myself back together word by word. “Would you like some apple juice and graham crackers?” a nurse said. I thought, what a disgusting combination. Then I remembered: that’s what they used to give me as a snack in kindergarten. My teacher wore her brown hair wrapped up atop her head and skirts that ended above the knee. She had her own name early on, and a married one later. I hadn’t really looked into any blue eyes before. I can still see hers.

I went to the urologist for follow up. He was in a mood. “One of the tragedies of our time is that patients are over informed about the procedures I do. You should hear the questions. One clown asked me if he might be left incontinent,” he said. “That was me!” I said. “Oh. Well, then you know what I’m talking about. I’ve never left anyone incontinent. I repair the human plumbing using tools that Einstein himself would have marveled at. These hands” — he held them up in front of him — “aren’t here. They’re ahead in the future,” he said.

“Shouldn’t you keep them close in case your wife comes looking for the magic?” I said. He ignored that comment.

Halfheartedly, he said, “I can give you something for pain.” My pain bored him. He’d done his job. He peeled off his examination gloves and tracked each toss into a pail across the room.

Douglas Collura lives in New York City