Echoing from the gyre of the Indian subcontinent, we bring you Annalemma Number Nine: Outside Looking In.

Arvind Dilawar leads this issue’s nonfiction installment with “Swans.” Peeling through the streets of “the real India” on a motorcycle ride with his cousin, Dilawar unveils a series of tattered images: a butcher’s market infested with flies and dogs, a young girl feeding in a pile of rubbish between two cows, ritualistic bathers in the trash-infused bubbling of the Godavari river.

Murzban F. Schroff headlines our fictional selection with “The Mochi’s Wife.” Charting the spiral of corruption within a family determined to escape its social positioning, admirable artistry transforms into cunning technique. From modest beginnings, a shoe cobbler slithers into late night productions, and hooch-infused stumblings, as shoes make way for false suitcases.

Annalemma interviews Dr. Ana Aspras Steele, President of the Dalit Freedom Network. Dr. Steele provides an introductory explanation of the Dalit people, born into the lowest socio-religious-economic position in India’s caste system, outlining the role of the West in DFN’s mission to eradicate all forms of human trafficking.

Cover art and other flashes of illustrative wonder by Aimee Van Drimmelen.

Featuring non-fiction from Parul Sharma, Mira Desai, Linda Kobert, Paul Kavanagh, and fiction from Tanuj Solanki, Smriti Ravindra, and Patrick Bryson. Art by Topher MacDonald, Mark Lev, David Lemm, Andrea Manica, Laura Wood, Shawn Kuruneru, Karolin Schnoor, and Sergio Membrillas.

We hope to provide a point of entry for the newly acquainted Western reader through reflections of India’s complex beauty. Dropping you through a keyhole, in hopes of a ready expansion.

AND THE NEXT DAY SHE GETS A TELEPHONE CALL.

From the guy she had been seeing a few months ago, will, who says he’s been trying to get in touch and he explains how he’d like his pink T-shirt back. And so she says okay and he comes on over. will’s gotten a goofy haircut, it’s longer in the back, and he’s growing one of those stupid ironic artist beards but he still looks pretty decent. And so she smiles and hands him his pink T-shirt, the one she stole from him, the one he made that says, I Love Soft Rock. It still smells exactly like him, like cigarettes and generic underarm deodorant. And also his dandruff shampoo, which she happens to know is what he uses for soap.

“So how have you been?” he asks, and all of a sudden she sees what this is.

“Did you come over here for your shirt or because you wanted to talk?”

“Neither,” he says defensively. “Both. I just thought I’d stop by and see you. Or is that against the law?”

“It’s not against the law,” she says, still suspicious. “How’s life?” “That’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard.” “Sorry.” He smiles a little and then squints at her and asks,

“So what have you been doing?” “I’ve been thinking of starting my own art movement.” “really.” “It’s against anything popular. Even popular art.”

“Wow. That sounds great.”

“You are so full of it,” she says, even though both of them are smiling.

“So are you still the world’s worst dancer?” he asks, and she laughs because it’s such a bold, ridiculous question, because he knows she thinks she is the best dancer of all time and she has no choice but to roll her eyes at him and then he walks over to the stereo and puts on a CD he brought and then puts his hands around her waist and they begin dancing and she asks, “who is this?” and he says, “The Police,” and they dance some more, and it’s become an impromptu dance contest, and will is a pretty decent dancer and he puts his mouth beside her ear and asks, “Are you still quiet in bed?” and then they are lying in her bed, and he is taking off her sweater and then pulling down her jeans, and she is not stopping him, and she can feel his stupid blond beard against her cheek and his hand making its way down the front of her underwear and she thinks, I wish the two of us could just go to sleep, and so she closes her eyes and begins to dream she is in some other place, some imaginary city, farther and farther and farther away from the hands and lips and faces of all other people. And, in the dark, the condom he puts on is pink.

AND IT’S THE DAY AFTER THAT.

And Odile finds out that her roommate Isobel has to get another abortion. It’s the second time it’s happened. Isobel comes in and sits down on Odile’s bed. Both of them are still in their striped pajamas, and together they stare down at the small white pregnancy test. There is something subtly terrifying about the pregnancy test’s impersonal mechanical shape and Odile can’t stop looking at it.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” is all Isobel can manage to say. “Are you sure you did it right?” Odile asks. Isobel nods. Her face is wet with tears. Even now, even

crying, Odile knows her roommate is probably a lot prettier. “what are you going to do?” “I don’t know. I just called the clinic. It’s two hundred and

fifty dollars,” Isobel says. “I already made the appointment. It’s in three weeks. But I don’t have any money.”

“Did you tell Edward yet?”

“Not yet. He’s going to flip. I don’t know what we’re going to do. Neither one of us has any cash. He’s not even working right now. He’s just going to school.”

Odile makes a sound then that’s somewhere between a yawn and a sigh.

“Do you think you could ask your parents for it?” Isobel asks.

Odile feels her face get red. “What? I couldn’t. They already . . . I just can’t.”

Isobel nods. “well, there’s no way I’m telling my folks. They took care of the last one. I’m really screwed.”

Odile stands, walks across the room, and opens up a small white jewelry box. Inside the box is a mood ring, some jelly bracelets, a terrible necklace her ex-boyfriend Brandon once gave her that he got out of a toy machine at a supermarket, that’s shaped like a poodle, and two hundred and thirty-two dollars in wadded-up cash—it’s her part of the rent. And she counts the money, then again, and even though she doesn’t want to, she hands it over to Isobel.

“I don’t want you to have to worry about this,” Odile says. “But I don’t want to have to go with you again. To the appointment, I mean. I just can’t. It was too weird last time.”

“Okay, I’ll get Edward to.” Isobel stands to hug her. It is the first time they have hugged in a long time. Odile thinks it feels good. Isobel’s shoulders are firm and bony. “I’ll pay this back as soon as I can,” she says.

Odile nods and watches her hurry out of the room. She hates how easy everything always is for Isobel, even something awful like this. She knows she is never going to see that money again, so why did she do it?

And now she doesn’t have enough for rent, and now she doesn’t even have a job. And she is thinking about maybe moving back to Minneapolis or going out to New York, but she’s still on the lease here for one more month and even if she wanted to move now, she hasn’t got the money for it. And what is she going to do now? what would anyone do?

MUZAK SUPPLY COMPANY.

One of the first want-ads Odile sees is for a phone operator at Muzak Situations. Apparently it’s where dentists and insurance agents get their waiting room music, the kind of music that’s advertised on late-night television. It’s only a temporary job but promises to pay well. The ad stipulates that all potential applicants must have some customer service skills and a college degree. why would someone need a college degree to answer the telephone? She does not have an actual college degree but the pay looks pretty decent and the fact that it is another night job seems like a good idea, because she and Isobel always get on each other’s nerves.

“Do you have any experience with customer service?” the interviewer, a nervous, overweight man with a droopy mustache, asks. The office is ramshackle, there are unpacked boxes everywhere, and it looks like what’s going on is slightly illegal. One of the lights in the small conference room keeps cutting out. And the interviewer is particularly sweaty.

Odile looks across the faux-wood desk and nods. “Yes, I worked for a place in St. Paul for two years and that’s all I did. This last place, here, was telephone surveys. And then the other one,” she points at the line on her resume that mentions her short stint at the orthopedic company and the interviewer nods and asks, “Do you have a college degree or are you still in school?” and Odile asks, “why?”

“Because people who go to college are responsible. And they don’t turn out to be trouble.”

Odile frowns, biting the corner of her mouth, and then lies, saying, “I’m finishing up right now, but don’t worry, it won’t interfere with work,” and the interviewer does not ask her to prove it. He hands her a sample script to take home to memorize and, moments later, the job is hers.

You: Good evening, this is ______ with Muzak Situations. Thanks for calling. What can I help you with tonight?

Caller: I’m interested in your Moonlight and Love two-CD set.

You: Wonderful. That’s one of my favorites. Are you a fan of instrumental music?

Caller: Yes, I am.

You: I am too. Did you know we also offer a four-CD set of contemporary romance hits which I am able to offer to you as part of our special qualifying period for being a new customer?

Caller: Tell me more.

You: It’s called Modern Magic and it has some of today’s most romantic hits by some of the world’s best contemporary instrumental artists. It’s perfect for any home, office, or medical setting.

Caller: Thanks, but I’m not interested.

You: I can tell you’re having a hard time trying to decide. You can try out any one of our CD sets for thirty days and send it back postage paid if you decide that it’s not the best instrumental music you’ve ever heard.

Caller: Wow, that sounds great. You: I thought you’d be interested. Now if I could just get your

name, address, and credit card information . . .

HELLO PAUL.

Odile rides her bicycle through the evening, right in the middle of the gruesome glare of the stalled traffic, happy for the first time in a long while. She wants to call someone to tell them about her new job but does not know who would be happy for her, other than her mother, and she doesn’t want to tell her she has a new job because that will only make her worry and so she is stopping beside a phone booth and dialing Paul’s number, and later, if she doesn’t say anything stupid, they will meet and kiss in the backseat of a taxi and she will know even then that these moments, his gray scarf scratching her bare neck, his hands on the rumpled shoulders of her green coat, the taste of his mentholated aftershave on his throat, these moments are over before they even begin. And although she does not want to, she dials his number anyway, because in those frightful seconds, the city is just too big and too full of people to be alone.

Hello, she says, once the individual sound of the numbers being dialed are done beeping. Paul? Are you there? Paul, are you there?

Read more about Joe here.

Read more about Colleen here.

AND THE NEXT DAY AT WORK.

Odile yawns on the telephone and enters the appropriate answers into the appropriate fields on the computer and then it is almost eleven a.m., which is when she likes to walk by the supply closet to steal something: anything. It’s the only thing that makes her feel the least bit alive at her job, taking things, and she usually prefers snatching the small bottles of liquid paper to sniff discreetly at her desk. Or a box of pastel Post-it notes which she uses to cover the rat holes in her bedroom wall in various odd geometric patterns. Or the small colored notebooks to do sketches and write her ideas in. And so today she stands, straightening out the bell shape of her skirt, and treads the worn-out carpeting down the aisle past Paul’s office, which is indicated by a hand-drawn sign he had to make himself, Asistant Manager, the word Asistant misspelled. She goes to the supply closet and takes a brand-new green notebook and slips it in her pocket. And on the way back, she sees Paul talking to a girl by the broken-down copier, and the girl’s one of the other girls who does phone surveys, and she looks like she was probably vice president of her sorority back in Ohio or some such shit, because she has red hair not found in nature and a great-looking ruffled blouse and they are standing beside each other at the oldest copy machine in the world, which gets ink all over everything, and both of them are laughing at a copy that looks like a rorschach test moth but laughing in a way that immediately reveals something else is going on because no one really laughs like that unless you are in love, or at least fucking, because Paul is slightly handsome, with his soft brown hair and very small eyes, but he is not at all funny, and Odile’s face goes red and she hurries past and rushes into the bathroom to hide in the farthest stall, and then, on her way back, she passes the girl Jennifer’s cubicle, and she looks right at Jennifer and asks, “Are you doing it with Paul?” and the girl, who Odile sees is probably older than she is, just smiles without smiling and says, “why do you care?” and Odile shouts, “why do I care? Are you kidding me?” and she begins to blush and hurries away, back to her boring cubicle. And she spends the rest of the day typing the letters F-U-C-K-T-H-I-S on her computer screen again and again.

And this is what makes her so mad as she’s riding home from work that night. The realization that, after all, she knows she is nothing special, not to anyone but herself, and does that even count? Not very likely.

Why did she think this city would be different than Minneapolis?

Because it isn’t. It’s only bigger. And a whole lot noisier. If anything, this city’s only made things harder for her. Because just look at the kind of person she’s becoming. One of those girls who will give a handjob to just about anyone. And this, Paul, this is exactly the kind of thing that happens when you fall in love with someone you shouldn’t.

On she rides, still mumbling to herself beneath her green scarf, thinking of all the other things she does not like, and so this is what she mutters out loud:

ODILE MONOLOGUE TO SELF.

“I do not like beards on men. Or ironic mustaches. I do not like kissing someone and seeing a bunch of marks all over my face because they don’t know how to shave. I don’t like men with big hands. Or small hands. Or hands that are sweaty. I don’t like men who wear the color red. I don’t like the color red. red is for assholes. I don’t like music you can high-five to. I don’t like high-fives. Or the act of high-fiving. I don’t like the look people get on their faces when they high-five each other. I don’t like the size of my breasts, which are almost nonexistent. I do not like my butt either, which is too flat. Or my hair, which I’ve dyed too many times and now is brown and shoulder-length but brittle. The bangs are okay because I cut them myself except now I look like some kind of flapper.

“I don’t like the fact that no one has any imagination anymore. It doesn’t pay to be a dreamer because all they really want you to do is answer the phone. Nobody wants you to think about anything new or use your brain or make anything interesting because everything important has already been made. America is over; it’s done being brilliant. Just like all the factories near the river, which are closed-up and empty. Everything genius has already been built, like all the great works of art have already been produced. Also, whenever I tried to do anything imaginative in my classes at art school, all the teachers looked at me like I was a nut. Like the time I made the dress out of chewing gum. Actually, I never learned anything of the slightest importance in art school. I only have two semesters left and I doubt I’ll go back now, because what’s the point? It doesn’t seem like any of it matters. Besides, I haven’t made anything interesting in a long time and now I’m working so much that it’s hard to give a shit about going back to school.

“Then there’s the fact that I do not know if I have what it takes to be an artist, because the kind of things I like to make don’t seem to go over with anyone. Like paintings of igloos having sex. And genitals on fruit. Because I don’t give a shit about taking myself so seriously, but apparently, that’s all my teachers really wanted me to do. Apparently, everyone was supposed to make a painting about war and the failure of God and female genital mutilation at some point. But really, I didn’t want to. It doesn’t take any kind of artist to make art about what already exists. Or that’s the way I think anyway. Any idiot could do something like that. what I want to make are things that you have to imagine, things that are slightly impossible, but then you have people like Professor wills who taught my Painting Four class and who said my work was ‘twee’ and ‘whimsical,’ which really meant ‘weak.’ And what were the other people in class painting? Still lifes of vases and flowers. which is the real reason I think I quit art school. Because no one had any imagination. That and the fact that I couldn’t really afford it. And how many people become artists out of art school? It’s all pretty ridiculous if you think about it.

“I’m better off working a job anyway. The job at the survey office is not so bad and even though it’s a bore, I know I’m lucky to have any kind of job right now, even though it’s pretty mind-numbing. But it’s still better than my roommate Isobel who works at a corporate copy shop making copies for people who can’t figure out how to use a copier themselves. At least, with the survey job, I don’t have to deal with absolute idiots. There are just a high percentage of people who are incredibly old, because those are the only people who answer their phones anymore, and then there is the fact that I’ve fallen in love with someone who happens to be my supervisor, and I’ve only slept with him three times, and two of those times I only gave him a handjob, which hardly even counts, but apparently it doesn’t mean that much to Paul either because he’s obviously seeing other girls in the office. which is retarded. Because the more I think about him, the more I realize I really like him.

“Paul is probably the first person I actually enjoy having sex with, because he’s a couple years older and totally unapologetic, while the other four people I’ve slept with always wanted to talk about everything beforehand, and during, and even after. I lost my virginity back in high school, when I was a senior, working on the school yearbook. It was with a boy I did not like but I knew he was smart and I thought I could trust him. It was more like a social experiment than actual sex, at least to me. we only did it twice because he had a girlfriend who was away at college, and he never mentioned it to anyone, and I think I will always be thankful to him for that. The first time we did it he came on my skirt and I didn’t know what to do so I just laid there. For like a half hour. Seriously. Anyway, he used to kiss too hard. He kissed like that because he watched too many porno movies, I think. And then there was Brandon, who I dated freshman year, and a boy I met a party who I never saw again, and then this other guy, will, who I was seeing off and on for a while—a photographer who I met in art school, who doesn’t even actually take pictures anymore because he’s a waiter right now—and once he wrote me this long letter asking why I didn’t make any sounds during sex and I happen to think it’s more sexy if you are quiet and he said I needed to start acting like I was having fun with him in bed, so I decided right then it was probably not going to work because what I’ve figured out is that it never gets any easier once you fall in love with somebody. Even with Paul.”

Odile pauses at a stoplight on Orleans, just after the bridge. The snow comes down like a bad feeling.

She looks up, catching a single snowflake on the tip of her pink mitten. The snowflake is lopsided and quickly melts.

She glances around and watches the city fall off into darkness.

You murderous city. You oafish palace. I’d like to burn it all down. What am I doing here? What am I even doing? what do you do with the rest of your life when you realize you don’t like anything? She decides the only thing to do now is quit. Okay. She will quit. It will be easy. Because Odile has quit seventeen jobs in the last three years already.

ORTHOPEDIC SUPPLY COMPANY.

Four days later Odile looks in the ads and takes a job as a third- shift phone operator at a small orthopedic supply company. Apparently, phone operators are on call twenty-four hours a day to attract every possible orthopedic customer available. All Odile does is answer the phone and take down the orders for inserts, braces, slings, and crutches, and talk to podiatrists and orthopedic surgeons from Dallas to Cleveland, answering questions like, “Do you have splints for small children?” She enters the customer’s name and credit card number into the computer, and then files her nails, or plays solitaire, or draws dirty pictures on the scraps of paper in the corner of her desk. with her pink ruffled blouse on, the one she found at the other thrift store, the blouse which she sewed back together herself, Odile stares down at her uneven cuticles, talking to an podiatrist from Peru, Illinois. It is one a.m. and he is restocking all of his supplies and is being very thorough about it. The orthopedic supply company plays instrumental melodies over its intercom system throughout the night, and Odile, unconsciously tapping her foot along, is surprised by how many of these songs she actually knows. She takes off her shoes, placing them side by side beneath her desk, and leans back in the chair, entering the podiatrist’s order, trying to decipher the instrumental music overhead. “Barry Manilow,” she says to herself a number of times each night, without humor.

THERE IS A BROOM CLOSET.

Because of her new job answering telephones at night, Odile stops sleeping normal hours. And because she is not sleeping normal hours, she begins to make a number of questionable decisions. For example: in her second week answering phones, Pete, another operator, who has shaggy brown hair, asks if Odile smokes, and she says sometimes. She thinks he means cigarettes but when she follows him out of the office into the hallway, then down the hall to a broom closet that is unlocked, he takes out a small, tightly wound joint, and she sees he means pot. Now what? She used to smoke pot when she was in high school but she started getting very paranoid and she was always afraid someone she loved, like her mom or one of her brothers, was going to get in a horrible accident and she was going to be too stoned to know how to help, and so she stopped smoking dope when she got to art school because her mom and brothers were so far away, but here is this guy—who is maybe, what, twenty-four, twenty-five?—and his smile is kind of dopey but cute, and they are sharing the joint and then they start making out a little and she knows he’s not the one she wants, that the one she wants is already married. But this is a little like real life too, isn’t it? and she’s feeling slightly stoned and so she opens her mouth, taking her gum out, and sticks it to the side of the closet door. And they start kissing again, which isn’t all that bad. At first.

But then Pete puts his hand on her hips, then on her shoulders, then up the back of her blouse, and there is a mop and a broom and a dustpan on a long handle that are all poking Odile’s neck but Pete does not seem to notice, because he is whispering nothings in her ear like, “You’re so hot. This is great. I mean, you’re a great kisser.”

Odile is pretty sure nothing in the broom closet is all that great. The muzak, blaring over the office speakers from down the hall, sounds like real music being held underwater against its will. It is an instrumental version of a Carpenters song. Pete, his face throbbing red, has gone quiet finally. He has his pants unzipped, and what does he expect her to do now?

He looks down and then she looks down and she rolls her eyes a little.

“What?” he asks. “What are you doing?” she asks. “Nothing. I just thought . . . you know . . .” Odile sighs a little. “I’ll give you a handjob but that’s it.” Pete silently weighs his options and then agrees. Odile sighs again and does not know why she goes through with it. But she does. This young man, Pete, has the ugliest penis she has ever seen. It is hairy and misshapen and all out of proportion—the head of his dick looks like it has its own facial features or something. Like it’s the face of an old man or a cartoon turtle who slurps soup. And it keeps winking at her. It’s disgusting, but she does it, tugging away, looking at the side of Pete’s sweaty face. The expression Pete makes when he climaxes is the worst thing ever: like something from a ’70s porno movie, or like a clown, gagging, his mouth open, eyes rolled back into his head. She thinks she should do a series of paintings all about the stupid faces guys make when they come. Pete’s face is totally ridiculous and she’s pretty stoned and she can’t help herself from laughing and then she does but realizes too late that Pete does not think it is so very funny.

AND AFTERWARD.

Pete dares to act like he does not know her and even ignores her when she tries to smile at him from across the aisle between the cubicles. There are only three other operators on at this time of night and what does he even care? But he won’t look at her and smile back, so screw it. People are just one big useless hassle.

And so night after night, for another full week, she answers the telephone, which never stops ringing. And as she enters an order from Akron, Ohio—a podiatrist who needs a new set of crutches for a patient—she thinks, I don’t even like that guy Pete. Why do I keep doing things with people I don’t even like?

And then it hits her. The podiatrist is asking how they can bill the patient’s insurance company and Odile is saying something in response but really she is thinking that she cares too much about what other people think. In fact, she will go so far as to give some guy she barely knows a handjob just so he’ll act as if he likes her, which is really no way to get through the world.

when she looks up—another operator, a pimply, hyena- faced squirt by the name of kurt, winks at her. She is momentarily appalled and then turns, peering over at Pete, who refuses to make eye contact with her. kurt is now opening and closing his mouth, making little kissy sounds. Odile can feel her face go bright red. kurt is jerking his hand up and down in the universal gesture for “handjob” and then Odile is standing, and then her face is going red, and then she is trying to run out but trips over the cord for the copy machine, and she falls against a cubicle, hitting her head, and everyone is staring, until she can grab her green parka and hurry through the glass office door.

Now what? It’s almost one a.m. and the city doesn’t even look the same. She decides she has had enough of that job, of those

particular people, and so she unlocks her bicycle and does not bother to let them know she has quit. And then she rides off. And the city is awful, there’s never anything pretty, even with all this snow.

Read more about Joe here.

Read more about Caroline here.

BUT THEN THERE IS HER YOUNGER BROTHER.

And she rides up to the shadow of her apartment building and locks her bicycle to the iron gate out front. She climbs the wet carpeted stairs and hopes her kid brother will be gone, but when she unlocks the door, she sees him still lying there on the couch, still wrapped up in his green sleeping bag, his dark brown bangs hanging in his too-skinny face. He doesn’t look right anymore. He looks a little disturbed, a little too serious for a boy who’s only seventeen.

“What are you still doing here, dipshit?” she asks.

“You said you were leaving this morning.”

“I know, but then an episode of CHiPs came on, and I couldn’t make myself go.”

“You need to leave, Ike. You can’t stay here. Mom and Dad are already going absolutely nuts. They called last night. They’re really super-pissed. At both of us. But mostly me. You said you were going to the bus station this morning before I left.”

“I know,” he says, nodding his head. “But I don’t want to go back alone.”

“You only have one year left. When you’re done, then you can come live here.”

“But I hate it. I hate Minneapolis. I hate my friends. I hate having to live with Mom and Dad all by myself.”

“Why? They don’t ever fight. They’re the greatest parents in the world.”

“That’s what I mean. They’re always trying to get me to watch TV with them. They asked if I wanted to go to a movie with them a few weeks ago. It’s too much. They just won’t leave me alone. They’re way too supportive. It practically borders on abuse.”

“Okay, come on,” she says, standing before him. “Pack your bags. we’re going to the bus station right now.”

“Really?”

“Really.” And he nods and sits up and begins to fold his green sleeping bag.

And then they are walking back into the snow, Odile

unlocking her bicycle, pushing it beside them, advancing step by step through the ever-increasing drifts, her brother, six years younger, though already taller than her by several inches, shuffling alongside her, their frames, the shape of their shoulders identical, their hair color exactly the same, their mannerisms mostly different, though in their expressions there is a similar aloof candor, the same sense of amusement at most things. And it’s snowing around them and all of a sudden Odile remembers what it was like to be a kid, and to have played in the snow with her little brother, and for no other reason she turns and shoves Ike into a pile of it. And then she hops onto her bike and tries to pedal off. And so begins the now-famous chase sequence that ends only at the turnstiles of the Blue Line station on Damen Avenue.

AT THE GREYHOUND BUS STATION.

And on together riding the Blue Line subway to the Greyhound station downtown, and then afterward, Odile sits beside her younger brother in the hard vinyl chairs, ruffling his shaggy, dark hair. She looks at him and is surprised again at how skinny his face is. She kicks her legs back and forth, glancing up at the institutional-looking clock every so often.

“How long is the bus ride again?” she asks.

“About ten hours.”

“That’s a long time.”

“I don’t care. I have a book,” he says.

“What’s the book?”

“It’s some fantasy series I’m rereading.”

“So have you thought about what you’re going to tell Mom and Dad?”

“No, I’ll just say what you said.”

“What was that?”

“That I had a freak-out. And that high school isn’t the way they remember it. And I didn’t want to take that Spanish test.”

“That’s good,” she says, smiling.

“You know, if you ever get into any real kind of trouble, you can always count on me.”

“I know. That’s why I came.”

“But you’re not in any real trouble.”

“I know,” he says. “But I missed you.”

And then Odile smiles, the dimple appearing on her left cheek.

“I was hoping maybe you’d come back with me,” he continues. “It’s not as fun there anymore. I don’t have anyone but Mom and Dad.”

“I have a life here, kiddo,” she says. “This is where I live.”

“I know, but what’s so great about this place? It’s pretty dingy-looking.”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it the buildings?” he asks.

“No.”

“Is it the people?”

“No.”

“Are you in love with someone here?” And she shakes her head and knows her cheeks are glowing

red.

“How about this?” she asks. “You can come visit any time you like. As long as you call me beforehand.”

“Okay. Okay. Sorry about getting you in trouble with Mom and Dad. I’ll call next time and tell you I’m coming.”

“Great,” she says, and then the static-filled announcement blares over the wires and Odile stands, helping her brother with his backpack and sleeping bag. And he hugs her and begins walking away, his gait slow but more confident than you might guess.

“You’re gonna be all right!” she shouts, folding her hands together like a megaphone. “Better than all right. I see big things for you, kid. Big things!” and he shakes his head and gets a little red too, and he waves to her and walks away. And then she begins to think maybe he is right. What’s so great about this city? What’s so great about Chicago? On the ride home, her bicycle rattling beneath her, she thinks, Nothing.

And if she had climbed on that bus with her brother, would anyone have noticed? Probably not. Because Jeannie called from New York only yesterday and told her she had a place where Odile could crash, at least for a few months. And because Odile’s lease is up at the end of February, she’s thinking maybe she should go. Because if not now, when? And as she rides she hums a song from the band Half Japanese, considering all these different possibilities. And so.

MEN WHO HAVE ACCUMULATED AROUND HER.

1. Reginald, her former English teacher, who chaperoned the Literature Club when Odile was in high school, and who was responsible for her Franny and Zooey phase. Even five years later, few days pass that reginald doesn’t stare at the blossom- faced female students in his English class, wishing they were more like Odile, punishing them with surprise quiz after surprise quiz because they are not.

2. A boy who she held hands with at the mall just outside Minneapolis when she was seventeen. This young man, Max, still walks by the video arcade every few weeks, and sighs, thinking of the afternoon they spent playing game after game of Miss Pac-Man.

3. Brandon, the first adult relationship she ever had, during her freshman year in art school, and who was the first boy she ever cheated on. A red flame of sadness still crosses his face whenever he thinks of her.

4. Will, an art student pursuing photography, who once talked Odile into doing some racy Polaroids. There are seven of them. These seven Polaroids are still kept at the top of will’s sock drawer. He will sometimes flip through them to masturbate, but also, sometimes, simply to see the daring look of abandon, the recklessness glowing pink there on her face.

5. Paul, who is not an ex or even a boyfriend, but who is someone she is afraid she has fallen in love with.

BACK AT HER APARTMENT.

And so she lugs her bicycle up the stairs and begins to frown even wider as soon as she sees a pair of men’s tennis shoes lying at the front door. Because there are her roommate Isobel’s orange high heels left in an awkward pattern beside them. And there is some bad music coming from inside. And Odile opens the apartment door and finds Isobel and her boyfriend Edward making another stupid art movie. Edward is in film school. And Isobel just so happens to be an exhibitionist, and she has hung dozens of near-nude black-and-white photos of herself all around the apartment. At the moment, Edward is dressed like Darth Vader, wearing a black plastic mask, and also a pair of white underpants. That is all. Isobel is in her underwear too, which is an alluring shade of pale green. She is topless and is wearing a Storm Trooper helmet. Together they sit on the couch, tickling each other and laughing. Edward is trying to hold the video camera up while wearing the awkward-looking black mask.

“I’m going to fuck you using the Force. I am. I’m going to do it.”

This is their idea of art, of becoming famous. Odile coughs once, closing the front door behind her. The couple turns and regards her in absolute silence. Odile nods at them and then carries her bicycle inside, feeling embarrassed for everyone present. As soon as she closes her bedroom door, Isobel and Edward immediately begin laughing. Darth Vader begins breathing heavily once again.

And so Odile sits in her room, with her hands over her ears. It gets very quiet all of a sudden and she can tell Isobel and Edward are trying not to make a sound, which is worse really, because the absence of noise makes Odile more aware of what they’re doing. And she can hear the slightest laughter, the smallest giggle, the sound of the sofa rocking a little, and Isobel muttering a pleased sigh, and for some reason Odile decides not to fight it, and climbs under her covers and fits her hand between her thighs. And she closes her eyes and thinks of Paul and then no one really at all, someone totally faceless, and she is rocking her hips back and forth and then she hears Isobel make another soft sound and Odile opens her eyes and feels ridiculous for what it is she’s doing. She pulls the blue blanket over her head and shouts, “You are so stupid!”

And then she leans over and searches blindly beneath the bed frame for a certain comic book: Abstract Adventures in Weirdo World is what it says on the title page. It’s from some other era, somewhere in the early ’70s, something she bought at a garage sale a few weeks back. The artwork is crude and the story line almost meaningless but she thumbs through it anyway, studying each panel, each line. On one page there is a pair of lips chasing a mustache and on the facing page, an explicit orgy of dogs and cats. Why doesn’t anyone make anything weird like this anymore? she thinks.

Before long the moans begins to eke out again and so Odile throws down the comic book and pushes herself out of bed. She begins searching through the ominous-looking piles of clothes on the ground and finds a T-shirt for a band named Suicide. She sniffs it to see if it is dirty. It’s okay. She pulls it on and then begins to gather up all the clothes on the floor. The wall beside her continues to thump, once, twice, then a third time, all with an unbearable urgency. Odile starts to shout again, banging on the door. She finishes collecting her laundry, forces it all into a paper shopping bag, and then storms out of the apartment. The Laundromat is a block away and she can kill an hour or so there. Which she does, but unhappily.

AND THAT NIGHT GOES TO AN ART OPENING.

It’s her friend Liz’s opening, and all of the art looks like it’s been done by deranged teenage boys, like it’s part of some gigantic game of Dungeons & Dragons, or else it’s been inspired by anime or video games; it’s full of weird purple tentacles and vaginas with teeth, and all of it is lacking any kind of originality, none of it does anything for her, and so she drinks. She gets seriously drunk. She puts away four small plastic cups of red wine and then stares at a painting of a topless girl with a large silver sword for a half hour and then she begins to think: You call this art? This isn’t art! This is a joke! All of you are a joke! Fuck you and fuck Jeff Koons and all the rest of those ’80s art-star wannabes. Where’s the art that makes people weep? Where’s the art that makes people want to go to church? None of this is the least bit interesting. All of this stuff, all of this is so self-aware. It’s all art for ironic art snobs. I want something brilliant. I want something stunning. I want something that makes me look in wonder, and as she stumbles from painting to painting, she trips over her own rubber snow boots and spills her wine and her friend Liz, her freckles going bright red, helps her to her feet and then back outside, where Odile finds her bicycle crowded with three or four gray pigeons. “Shoo,” she says, but the pigeons don’t want to move.

Read more about Joe here.

Read more about Jonathan here.

ANYWAY IT’S SNOWING.

But then there is the absolute bullshit of it! The amazing gall of some people! Who does he even think he is? Odile Neff, art- school dropout, age twenty-three, rides her green bicycle along the snowy streets of the city that evening at five p.m., arguing with herself. She is wearing one gray sock and one black sock and her faint-pink underwear, hidden beneath her long gray skirt, is dirty. It is January 1999, one year before the world as everyone knows it is about to end. Communism, like God, is already dead.

Having just finished an eight-hour shift conducting telephone surveys for an international research company—How many members in your family? What sort of hair spray do you use? How often do you use your hair spray? Have you noticed any dermatological irritations, including but not limited to eczema, carbuncles, warts, or various skin cancers, in connection with the frequent use of your hair spray? Has your hair spray ever interfered with the quality of your life?—she is now riding home and swearing to herself about something she is having a difficult time understanding, and about the person who has become the cause of all her grief. Her green hood is up, completely covering her small white ears, green scarf bound around her chin, the hem of her gray skirt blowing as she pedals along. It’s only the second week of January but the winter has already become a verifiable pain in the neck. She wears her pink mittens which have become unknotted, the pale pink penumbras of her fingernails peeking out. And with these mittens she holds the cold plastic of the bicycle’s handles, cursing to herself again and again.

“Asshole!” she shouts out loud. “why won’t you talk to me? why not just talk to me and be honest about everything?”

She never thought she would be so stupid, and yet, here she is. Her fancy pearlescent shoes, bought for twelve bucks at the thrift store, keep slipping off the pedals, making her even more frustrated. The gray sky, the waxy unending weather, the caliginous buildings rising up in humorless planes of speckled silver glass, all of it makes her feel so small, so tiny. The snow continues its liberated march in considerable flakes, falling all around in achromatic sheets of bleary chalk. Also, there is his gray sock, Paul’s gray sock, sitting in the left pocket of her parka, which she has been carrying around for the last few days.

Why am I so stupid? she asks herself again. Why do I keep wanting to be with him?

Her face is an abject expression of disgust, mouth twisted to the side in a frown, narrow eyebrows raised.

Is it just because I’m not supposed to? Is it just because he’s married? Is it just because I thought I had the world by the balls and I always end up making a mess of everything?

Her green bicycle, unable to answer, only vibrates with rage.

AT A STOPLIGHT.

Odile pauses a block later at a stoplight which has become obscured by ice. She looks over and sees a bus idling beside the curb. On the side of the bus is an advertisement for some men’s hair dye that promises to be SO FEROCIOUS! Odile grabs the silver paint marker from the pocket of her green coat and uncaps the pen and leans over and draws a pair of enormous silver breasts on the male model in the advertisement and then adds a pair of hairy, dangling, unkempt testicles between his legs. Beneath this pictogram she writes, You are an idiot, Paul. She then caps the pen, shoves it back into her pocket, and rides off through the uninterrupted snow.

A NOSE UNLIKE HER MOTHER’S.

Odile, pronounced O-deel, has dark hair, which runs just past her shoulders, a wide forehead, which is framed by uneven bangs she cut herself, and a pair of gray-blue eyes that are set several inches apart in a soft, heart-shaped face. The size of her eyes, larger than most girls’, lends a quality of constant amazement to all of her facial expressions. Her ears are attached to her head at a spot lower than average, and are also a little wider, suggesting an elfish affectation, though this is hardly noticeable, as it’s her large, gleaming eyes that draw you in. Her nose is neither long nor snub and is rounded in appearance, as it often is on the faces of girls of European descent. Her nose is unlike her mother’s, who at first glance may appear to be the greater beauty, as there is a small bump along the left side of the bridge of Odile’s nose, imperceptible to anyone who has not spent an afternoon lying in bed beside her, listening to the song she loves the most, “After Hours” by the Velvet underground, or admiring her profile in the dark of a theater, ignoring the black-and-white film by John Cassavetes. This very small bump is the consequence of an ice-skating accident that occurred when Odile was six, and, on deeper inspection, only adds to her attractiveness. It allows the viewer to wonder what other worlds, what other small pleasures, there are to discover. Like the small beehive tattoo on her left wrist, which is so faint it’s almost invisible: what does it mean? How old was she when she got it? will she tell about it you if you sleep together? You look at it and then up at her open mouth, at the sensitive lips, the lips rounder and somehow more adventurous than you noticed at first glance, the mouth already smiling, already laughing at something you said or did.

At the moment, atop her bicycle, her mouth is partially occluded by a green scarf, though it’s moving as she continues arguing with herself out loud. She curses at a cab driver and swerves past a woman with an incredibly wrinkly face, dressed in a gray fur coat. The woman’s arms are piled high with packages, each of them tied nicely with a white string bow. Your face looks just like an elephant’s, she wants to say but means it in the nicest possible way. And look out: there’s another drift.

AT THE CORNER OF DAMEN AND AUGUSTA.

On her bicycle, Odile stops at another red light and adds a pair of boobs to a poster advertising some moronic new hip-hop release. The rapper, DJ rAw, with his sunglasses and grill of gold teeth, now has a gratuitous pair of silver saddlebag tits hanging from his chest. And then she adds a diamond over his face. And then sketches a silver dunce cap on his head. This is all she’s been doing lately, drawing on street posters or other advertisements, because she hasn’t made anything good, anything really interesting of her own, in weeks. Lately all she’s been making are these weird, lewd doodles which she can’t even call art. She places the cap over the paint marker and then glances over at a blue newspaper dispenser which features a headline having to do with the president getting impeached. The idea of being impeached for getting a bj makes Odile crazy. Maybe in the next millennium people won’t be so worked up about screwing. Maybe after the comet that is coming to wipe out the world on New Year’s Eve has already annihilated everything, and people have become wax-faced mutants, maybe then everyone won’t be so uptight about sex. Maybe. And thinking of this, she adds a hairy vagina to the poster DJ’s lap. Yikes, it looks like a black insect. And she does all of this before the light turns green.

Read more about Joe here.

Read more about Celine here.

Hey folks. We’re slowly coming out of a hiatus over here. I hope to be posting more frequently in the coming weeks and basically shaking off the dust. I wanted to let y’all know about a new project that will be going live on the site next week.

I’m a Joe Meno fan. One of the highlights of my time spent pursuing the idea of creative writing was taking a class with Joe. Until that point I hadn’t spent any extended period of time with anyone who’d focused so heavily on the process of storytelling than Joe, nor had I spent time with anyone who’d executed their writing so successfully. Joe lives storytelling. He has breakthroughs with the frequency that most people have sneezes. He’s constantly finding new ways to show moments of tenderness, honesty, hilarity, despair, charm, fear and connection to an audience of folks trying to make sense of the world and the people in it.

At the end of the month Joe will be releasing a new novel called Office Girl. Because Joe is a great guy, he reached out to me to see if I wanted to help promote his book. I said yes before he could finish his sentence.

In the next four weeks we’ll be serializing the first section of Office Girl here on the Annalemma site accompanied by original images from four different artists. I’m really excited about this project, Joe’s writing has the tendency to stick with me like an old friend and the section he’s sharing with us is no exception. In the mean time, click on over to the Akashic Books site for more info and give a look-see at these here blurbs:

Publishers Weekly pick of the week:

In Joe Meno’s new novel, set in the last year of the 20th century, art school dropout Odile Neff and amateur sound artist Jack Blevins work deadening office jobs; gush about indie rock, French film, and obscure comic book artists; and gradually start a relationship that doubles as an art movement. They are, in other words, the 20-something doyens of pop culture and their tale of promiscuous roommates, on-again/off-again exes, and awkward sex is punctuated on the page by cute little doodles, black and white photographs (of, say, a topless woman in a Stormtrooper mask), and monologues that could easily pass for Belle & Sebastian lyrics (“It doesn’t pay to be a dreamer because all they really want you to do is answer the phone”).

Booklist (starred review):

Meno has constructed a snow-flake delicate inquiry into alienation and longing. Illustrated with drawings and photographs and shaped by tender empathy, buoyant imagination, and bittersweet wit, this wistful, provocative, off-kilter love story affirms the bonds forged by art and story.

Kirkus Reviews:

The talented Chicago-based Meno has composed a gorgeous little indie romance, circa 1999…A sweetheart of a novel, complete with a hazy ending.

Marie Claire:

Cultural cred: Along with PBRs, flannels, and thick-framed glasses, this Millennial Franny and  Zooey is an instant hipster staple. Plot notes: It’s 1999 and Odile and Jack are partying like it was…well, you know. Meno’s alternate titles help give the gist: Bohemians or Young People on Bicycles Doing Troubling Things. Cross-media: Drawings and Polaroids provide a playful, quirky element.

Michigan Avenue Magazine:

While Office Girl features illustrations by artist Cody Hudson and photographs by Todd Baxter, its real substance lies in the story itself. Set in Chicago right before the new millennium, Meno, a Chicagoan, explores the start of an art movement through the eyes of two twenty-something dreamers in this novel.

The Stranger, Seattle:

Office Girl might be Joe Meno’s breakthrough novel. Set in 1999, Office Girl tells the story of a pair of young, intelligent drifters who decide to start their own art movement. It’s a stripped-down experience of a novel which means Meno’s crystalline prose has a chance to shine.

Philadelphia City Paper:

Office Girl is a relatively simple love story: You know most of the beats and understand from the beginning how the story needs to end; the pleasure comes from the way Meno hits those beats, how he manages his characters and moments. And some of those moments are really excellent: Jack and Odile’s drift toward a first kiss, for instance, or their lovers’ conspiracy, mirrored in Cody Hudson’s naive drawings. And the heavier ideas that Meno stuffs into the corners around his self-consciously slight characters — like an ongoing struggle with sound and music that’s part of the last-act climax — give the book weight.

Hey Orlando: if you’re around on May 18th, head on down to Urban ReThink to celebrate the release of Wars Are Dumb: Orlando High Schoolers Write the Wrongs of Adults.

A few months back Page 15 put the call out to Orlando Public High School students to answer, in the form of story or essay, the questions, “What do adults do wrong? How would you do it right?” We got a slew submissions and whittled them down to 15 pieces about politics, environmental issues, family, war, love, fear, death, music, art, sickness, health, and basically the core elements of life itself. It’s a bit mind blowing. Those pieces were collected and given to Brandon Rapert, who illustrated them, then given to Jen O’Malley who laid everything out real nice. We sent to the printers and printed up in to a fancy book which will be on sale at the release party, all proceeds of which will be going directly to Page 15.

Come on out to the party! There’s going to be free food and live author readings and signings from the contributors and a good time to be had by all. Head on over to Page15.org for more details.

From commenter “Sam”:

what happened to this site? isn’t it supposed to be a monthly (or was it weekly) magazine?  you haven’t updated the stories in months.

Thanks for your interest, Sam. You’re right. Something has happened here. Or rather, not happened. I left the rudder for a little while. Here’s the explanation. But first lemme start by saying that I hate blog posts that start “Sorry I haven’t updated in a while,” or “I feel really bad I haven’t posted on this blog in a while.” My philosophy with blogging is if you have something good to share, great. If you don’t, then don’t. The last thing the internet needs is content for the sake of content. So I’ve been sparing myself the dirge of churning out blog posts and updates if my heart isn’t in it. I don’t want to make excuses,  you don’t want to hear excuses, we’re all better off. But it’s a different situation when someone asks for an explanation like Sam here. So. On to the explanation…

I got a new job. I’m managing a chocolate factory. Seriously. I helped a buddy start a chocolate factory cause he’s good at it and I had access to investors who’d be interested in such a thing. I believed in the business so I decided to devote my time and resources to it.

But this new job was acquired after I had a mild nervous breakdown/existential/identity crisis at the end of 2010 that caused me to drastically reassess and change the course of my life. I’m not ready to write about that yet. But it is one of the reasons why this site has been slowing down on posts.

I also got involved doing organizing and volunteer work with a group called Resource Generation. It’s timely, relevant work work I believe in. This has also been taking time away from me reading submissions and posting new stories and essays on the site.

So much has changed from the days I was able to devote hours upon hours of my time to doing this magazine, a rad thing I started with what seemed like a limitless surplus of energy and focus. Now it seems like I’ve reached capacity. So what’s all this mean for the future?

For submitters: I’m really sorry we’re so backed up with submissions. Some of you haven’t had your submissions read in a year. That sucks, I know the feeling. If it’s any consolation, it’s not personal. I don’t think you’re undeserving of eyes on your words. If anything, I’ve broken my end of the bargain and I apologize for that. I’m trying to find a situation where you’ll get your submission read and I have time to do the things I need to do.

For print subscribers: I’m also trying to find the time in my schedule for putting together two print issues a year. Things may undergo a restructuring regarding subscriptions and when/if they do, you’ll be the first to know.

For the India Issue: It’s 80% done and should be of to the printers by the end of May at the latest.

For Annalemma Magazine in general: I honestly don’t know right now. I want to keep it going but it’s a lot of work for very little reward. I love connecting with readers, I love being involved in the editorial process, I love working with artists. But making this thing sustainable financially has and always will be hard and will never be easy. And with all the responsibilities listed above I’m struggling to find the time to make it work. The good news is I want to and desire is the root of action.

Thanks for your patience and support through all this. I know it’s going to make an interesting story one day if I can ever wrap my head around it.

We made this shadow show for a Matt Bell story published in Issue Six and performed it at the release party. A couple years later Matt releases the story as part of a larger work called Cataclysm Baby. So we thought it might be a good idea to put it down onto film. Mr. Bell came into Brooklyn for an evening and we got weird in the studio space. Hope you enjoy. And check out Cataclysm Baby, available April 15th, 2012 from Mud Luscious Press.