The Bad Thing
Pryor Stroud
The first time she confronted him about the “bad thing,” Liza had expected him to deny it – to explain away his niceness as a fact of his nature, something living inside him, not some effort of expiation – but to her surprise he’d acknowledged it right away. “There is something,” he’d said, “that I’m not super proud of.”
Looking back on it, “super” seemed an oddly informal word to use, especially given the gravity of his voice.
“It’s, you know, one of those things,” he’d shrugged and looked down at the table (they were at Top of the Morning, their favorite coffee shop down the street). “A bad thing. Something I did that I shouldn’t have done.”
“A bad thing?” she’d asked.
“Yeah.” He shifted nervously in his seat. “That’s what I always call it.”
She could tell it made him uncomfortable, so she’d changed the topic, but for the next few months she couldn’t help but wondering what the “bad thing” was. In the meantime, Malcolm continued behaving the same way he’d always behaved, bringing her little gifts, doing her laundry (he insisted, always, on using the clothesline outside), and on some evenings even carrying her up to the second floor, a service he often rendered when the “bad thing” was on her mind, as though, somehow, he could tell what she was thinking.
So constant were these acts of kindness that, on occasion, Liza felt tears come to her eyes. She knew she had two paths before her: one, let Malcolm be Malcolm, let him continue his parade of goodwill until, inevitably, he grew tired of her; or two, she could demand to know what the “bad thing” was, to press him until he came clean. She preferred option two, but, for whatever reason, she couldn’t do it. He was so nice that the thought of confronting him became almost unbearable.
Late one night, while they were lying in bed together, watching the shadows of the trees writhe upon the ceiling, listening to the crickets, the hiss of the wind, she decided to bring up the “bad thing” in a way that might make him more comfortable.
“Could you tell me,” she said, wriggling her fingers against the flat of his hand, “one thing that you’re proud of?”
“Hmm.”
“From, like, when you were a kid.”
He considered the question for a long time. The wind hissed. She reached up and pushed the hair away from her eyes, then sat up on her elbow and said, “Well?”
“I’m trying to think.”
“Here.” She gave him a wide, secretive smile. “I’ll go first. So, when I was in the sixth grade, we had a girl in our class named Darcy Baumgarten. There was nothing wrong with her, per se. She was just a little overweight, and all of the girls – well, most of them – teased her about it.”
Malcolm nodded. He seemed to be at once paying attention and lost in his own world.
“Anyway, what I’m proud of is that, even though some of the girls gave me a hard time about it, I ate lunch with her once a week. We kinda became friends.”
He did not say anything.
“Now it’s your turn,” she said.
“Where is she now?” he said.
“Huh?”
“Darcy Baumgarten. Did you stay in touch with her?” He got up on his elbow now too, so they were face to face. “Where is she now?”
Liza frowned. She admitted that she didn’t know. She said that they’d grown apart over the years, her and Darcy, but sometimes, while lying in bed, she felt Darcy’s energy – she was attuned to these things, she explained, “energies and valences” – and this energy radiated both gratitude and love. Whenever such a thing happened, she made sure to send, on the same frequency, her own good-will.
“Hmm,” said Malcolm. “I’ve never felt an energy before.” He reached out and took her hand. “But that’s incredible. I mean, you’re incredible. I’ve told you that before. It’s like you were sent to help her.”
Liza nodded. “So,” she said.
“So what?”
“Could you tell me something that you’re proud of?”
He laughed awkwardly. With his free hand he reached up and smoothed her hair. “I mean … I guess I really don’t know,” another awkward laugh, “but since you’re putting me on the spot … I’d say, hmm … the time I helped Mrs. Easton.”
They looked at each other.
“Go on,” said Liza.
“Well, I was walking home one day and I saw the old lady next door, Mrs. Easton, looking around like she was lost or something. I asked if she was okay, and she said she was just looking for her dog – Marvin, I think, or Maitland – and I told her I would find it. I spent that whole night looking. My mom asked me to come home – it was late and I had homework – but I felt I needed to help her. I guess maybe it was because she was old.”
“And,” Lisa said, “did you find him?”
“I didn’t. I stayed up the whole night.”
“Wow.”
“He never turned up.”
At this point, beyond the curtains, a large cloud passed before the moon. The room, which had before been a deep bluish color, a color which seemed to carry the loneliness of other people, now became simply dark. It was so dark it was difficult to see each other.
“Now,” Liza continued, “tell me something you’re less proud of.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m just trying to get to know you. I’m working on being curious about people. I mean, I am genuinely curious about people – I know that – but I’m working on telling them about my curiosity.” She flipped onto her back again, as though to tempt him to draw closer. “So, tell me, what’s one thing you regret?”
For a moment Malcolm just looked at her. “Regret?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You’re just asking me about the ‘bad thing’ again, aren’t you?”
“What bad thing?” she said.
He got up now off the bed and went to the dresser. He was only in his underwear. Although it was dark, she could see that his head was bowed, as though he was considering something of great consequence, and his hands were clasped together. “It’s not important to our relationship,” he said, “is it? Like, you don’t need to know,” he turned around, “do you?”
Without even realizing it she’d sat up in bed. She was sweating. Along with the nerves that came when you talked to someone about something they didn’t want to talk about, there was something else – a kind of escalating precarity, a recklessness, as if they were playing with some dangerous object they were ill-prepared to use.
“No, I mean, I don’t need to know anything, but don’t you …”
“I’m good to you, aren’t I?” said Malcolm. “Is there something I’m doing which isn’t good?”
She was standing now, again without realizing it, standing and shaking her head. “No, no,” she said. “It’s like I told you, I’m just curious.”
The look he gave her then was so pitiable, so sad and beseeching, that she knew before he spoke that she would do anything he asked.
“If you need to know,” he began, “I’ll tell you, but I’m asking you not to need that, if you know what I mean.” He bowed his head again and exhaled. “I feel terrible just thinking about it.”
Later on she would think of this moment and remember how awful she felt, and how wounded Malcolm looked – how the darkness of the room felt like a void closing in around them – and she would remember too that, even then, she felt like she was being manipulated.
“No, no,” she said. “It’s okay. I don’t want you to think that I don’t trust you.”
The following day he was to take her to the carnival. She woke to the smell of coffee, a violence of sunlight filling the bedroom, and walked downstairs to find Malcolm waiting for her. He’d already cooked breakfast, gone to the store, and picked up her dress from the tailor’s. In the center of the table: a glass vase filled with lilies.
“Oh my,” she said, advancing into the room. “They’re lovely.”
Malcolm explained then what he had planned for the day. Not only were they going to the carnival, where he knew she liked to watch the blue-ribbon horses, to ride the Gravitron and carousel, they were also going to The Red Brick Alley, one of the most popular restaurants in Pine Bluff. Upon hearing this, she clapped her hands.
“Is this real?” she said. “Are you serious?
“Dead.”
“Oh, Malcolm.” She scurried over and hugged him. He touched her cheek. There were times when they kissed, like now, where he would restrain her as she pulled away – very playfully, not with any sort of malice or aggression – as though he wished to savor her lips as long as possible.
“Easy boy,” she said.
“I want you to be happy.”
“I know.”
“I want this to be the best day of your life.”
As she got ready, putting on her favorite cherry-red summer dress and applying her foundation and eyeliner, the rouge she wore only for special occasions, it occurred to her that he was trying to make her forget the “bad thing.” He was always nice, but this was different. The carnival; The Red Brick Alley. Even in her imagination she could not devise a more perfect day.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she turned her head and smiled (in the fake sort of way one smiles before the mirror), then Malcolm appeared behind her, leaning against the doorframe.
“Wow,” he said.
“I’m about ready.”
“I could just stand here all day and ogle you.”
She laughed. “Ogle.”
Here, he came up behind her and cupped her breasts.
“I thought we were going,” she said.
“We are.”
She spun around in his arms and kissed him. Once again, he held her when she pulled away.
“So,” he said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“You can ask me about the ‘bad thing’ if you want to.” His lips ascended so that he spoke his next words directly into her eyeball. “If it’s important to you, I’ll tell you. Just let me know when you’re ready to hear it. You have a right, I think, to know about my life before you.”
It was the first time, really, that he’d even alluded to his recent past. Yes, she’d heard his stories – or more precisely, fragments of stories, little shards of memory that were either vague or incomplete – about his childhood and upbringing, but, she realized now, he never talked about his adult life after high school. It was as though there was this black chasm of time he was too cowardly to remember.
“Alright,” she said, resting her forehead against him. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
But she wasn’t ready that day, or the next, or any of the days the following week. They would be up late, reading or watching TV or sharing a cigarette on the back porch, and she would think about asking it – “Hey, Malcolm, could you let me know what wretched thing you did that makes you so nice to me?” – but, for some reason she could not identify, she would never actually do it. Perhaps the fact that he had finally allowed it, that he had given her permission to ask a question that she knew would be hurtful, made the question itself too powerful to wield.
She didn’t want to hurt him. In truth, she didn’t even want to make him uncomfortable.
“Liza, Liza, Liza,” he said one day, coming home with flowers (it was the fourth time that week), sliding into the kitchen where she was stooped over the table.
“Malcolm,” she said. “You didn’t have to.”
“I know it.”
“You always do things you don’t have to.”
The flowers were really lovely – daisies this time, coupled with chrysanthemums – and the vase he’d put them in was a beautiful, translucent blue. He set them down on the table and looked at her. “What is it?” he said, his face falling.
“Nothing.”
“Is it nothing?”
“Yes.” She forced a smile. “If it wasn’t, I’d tell you.”
Seemingly accepting her at her word, something she’d requested that he do, he slapped his briefcase on the table and opened it between them. Inside were receipts and books, big manila folders teeming with paper, and from this miscellany he retrieved a small white envelope, which he slid now to her elbow.
“What is this?” she said. “Another present?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
She did so. What she found inside were two tickets, dated for August eighth, exactly two weeks from this forthcoming Friday.
“Germany?” she said.
“Yes.” He was almost giddy. “I’ve always wanted to see the castles. The Black Forest. I thought perhaps we could start things in Berlin.”
And when she asked what he meant by “start things,” he told her he’d taken some time off work – he was overdue, he said, after slaving over the project he’d just finished – and he wanted to go traveling in Europe with her. Paris was on the itinerary, as was Brussels and London. He pulled out a book of maps he’d bought from a travel store, and with great detail, using a black BIC pen to mark each city, he explained their route, how they would go by train from Berlin to Prague, and from Prague to Vienna. There would be lavish hotels, he explained, restaurants he’d booked weeks in advance. Of all the museums they’d go to – the Gemäldegalerie, the Musée de Cluny, Schwarzenberg Palace – he was most excited about the Belvedere in Vienna, for he knew how much she loved The Kiss, that Klimt painting of the two lovers.
She sat there and listened. Then, while he was describing the tour he’d booked for them in London, she held up her hand and said, “Malcolm.”
He kept going.
“Malcolm,” she shouted now. “Could you please stop?”
He visibly deflated. The hands with which he’d been so extravagantly gesturing now fell limp upon the table. “What is it?” he said.
“It’s …” she started, “well, it’s too much.”
“Too much?”
She sighed. She did her best to explain herself. She told him she loved him, she really did, but she was not sure how things were going between them. Taking a trip now, not to mention a month-long trip where they’d have no break from each other, seemed at the moment an unwise decision.
“Umm, sorry, I …” Malcolm fumbled over his words. “This is out of left field for me. I’m not sure, I … I’m not sure how to process it.”
There extended a moment then of deep and resounding silence. Liza opened her mouth to speak, but then, seeing how pitiful he looked, she reconsidered. She’d opened it a second time when Malcolm interrupted her.
“Stop it,” he said. “I know what you’re going to say.”
Her jaw snapped closed.
“You’re going to say: ‘It still exists between us. The bad thing. I can’t really be with you until you explain it.’ Is that it?”
She did not say yes or nod her head or offer any affirmation otherwise. She just stared at him.
“So, well, here it is. If you really want this, I told you I’d give it to you. Did I not say that? Did I not say that, if you asked me to tell you, if you said it was critical to our relationship to continue to grow, then I would tell you about the ‘bad thing’?” He paused and picked a petal from one of the lilies. “Whelp, here it goes. You know I grew up in West Junction? Out there maybe twenty or thirty minutes away from Morgantown? It was kinda like Grand Prairie in that there isn’t all that much to do there. Movies and soda shops. Drinking in the woods. One of my buddies, Darryl Hurt, he’d say that the best thing ‘the Junction,’ as we called it, had going for it was that no one cared if you imagined the worst thing possible that you could do … and then you did it. You could drink Git in broad daylight. In the middle of the road. Cops didn’t care because they were doing it themselves. There were only two of them anyway, Bob Bethany and, uh, Wallis, I think his name was. We called him Syphilis. On account of we didn’t like him – he was kinda fat and mean – and we thought it was funny. Anyway, because you could practically do anything, we kinda started to push our limits, me and Darryl and this kid named Brunehauer. Pretty funky, huh? Brunehauer. I think it was a German name or something. You’d think we’d have shortened it or something and given him a nickname, but we didn’t. We just called him by his actual name. Brunehauer. And it was his idea – I swear, I’m getting to it, just bear with me – it was his idea to hit the mailboxes. We’d done it before, ‘breaming’ out on the gravel we called it and knocking out mailboxes with a baseball bat. But, see, that week, Brunehauer had a new metal bat that his godmother had given him. She was some old woman from, well, come to think of it, I think she lived in Grand Prairie. She may still be around here for all I know. Maybe she’s your neighbor. Regardless, she was this real rich woman by our standards, and she liked to get Brunehauer stuff. Like this new metal bat. I can still see it: glossy and silver. The sticker on it said, . I memorized it without even trying to. Anyway, he showed it to us, and we were really in awe of it – we really didn’t see stuff like that back then, I mean really – and then he said, I’m paraphrasing, ‘Imagine what damage we can do in the Vespers.’ So we went breaming. We tried to mix it up sometimes, but we typically went to the same country roads – that was what we called the Vespers. It was so dark back there you could smell the night. The stars, Liza, I mean, I can still see them. An important thing to remember here is that we had a whole handle of Git with us, and by the time we got out into the country I would say we were all pretty plastered. Me and Darryl at least. Brunehauer seemed to be driving the truck pretty well.”
Here, for the first time in his monologue, he paused and repositioned himself. The light from the window covered only half of his face. The other half was in shadow.
“I can tell, from the way you’re looking at me, that you’ve never been breaming yourself. I don’t figure many girls have, although a few came with us once. I can remember it vividly. Hell, I can see it. Holly Wootan and Jessica Troop in the backseat. All of the stars. But I’m getting sidetracked. On this night, we were by ourselves, just the three of us, and we was getting drunker – I mean, for me, the world was starting to go all spinny – and after a while, Brunehauer, he hands me the bat and says, ‘Time to go swinging.’ I went first. I remember that. There was a little farmhouse up at the top of the rise and we could see its windows, all lit up and hanging there in the dark, and we could see the mailbox itself growing bigger and bigger in the headlights. The tree above the mailbox. I stuck my head out of the window and laid into that motherfucker. I mean, laid into it. This great, big ringing sound and then papers everywhere. We laughed so hard Brunehauer almost crashed. After that it’s all kind of a blur for a while. We kept drinking, and took turns with the bat, and Brunehauer kept driving faster and faster. And, so, here is the part where the ‘bad thing’ becomes the ‘bad thing.’ It was my turn again. At this point it is probably eleven – eleven or twelve at night. Brunehauer had some insecticide in his car and we’d huffed some of that. We did that sometimes: huffed stuff, and man it felt good. I felt so powerful I could hit a damn mailbox fifty yards into the sky, and that’s what I prepared to do, leaning through the window with that titanium in my fist. This is where, well, I need you to remember you asked for this. You wanted to hear about the ‘bad thing.’ And it is, oh … I could see the mailbox sticking out of the darkness. We were racing toward it. What I didn’t see until a few moments before was this old woman – I mean, real old – walking out to it down the middle of her driveway. She was real far away, just this little blur of movement, but somehow, I knew what it was. Who else would do that but a real old person? Go out at midnight and get their mail? Anyway, well, here it comes. The ‘bad thing.’ I could see her now out on the shoulder of the road, and there was definitely a moment when I could’ve slid back in the car – that, or just not swing – but in that moment I did make a decision that I was going to hit her. I can’t explain it. Right before we got there, and we were going like thirty, forty miles per hour at this point, she turned around and saw me, and she reached up, like that was going to do anything, and I can remember the look in her eyes that wasn’t like panic or anything because there wasn’t time to panic. It was just an old woman’s eyes staring at me. And this is where it gets kind of, well, gross – if you want me to stop, I’ll stop – because I reared back and swung the bat, and I could feel – really, I could feel each individual impact I’m about to describe – the bat hitting her hand, and her hand kind of, like, snapping back, and then the bat hitting her face. There was this loud cracking sound. I don’t even think she screamed – or, if she did, we didn’t hear it – and then there was just the crunch of gravel again. The radio. The hiss of the wind.”
Liza just stared at him.
“Sorry, I know that is a lot,” he said. “That is a lot, right? If it is, can you let me know so I can stop talking?”
Liza just stared.
January 2026
Pryor Stroud
The first time she confronted him about the “bad thing,” Liza had expected him to deny it – to explain away his niceness as a fact of his nature, something living inside him, not some effort of expiation – but to her surprise he’d acknowledged it right away. “There is something,” he’d said, “that I’m not super proud of.”
Looking back on it, “super” seemed an oddly informal word to use, especially given the gravity of his voice.
“It’s, you know, one of those things,” he’d shrugged and looked down at the table (they were at Top of the Morning, their favorite coffee shop down the street). “A bad thing. Something I did that I shouldn’t have done.”
“A bad thing?” she’d asked.
“Yeah.” He shifted nervously in his seat. “That’s what I always call it.”
She could tell it made him uncomfortable, so she’d changed the topic, but for the next few months she couldn’t help but wondering what the “bad thing” was. In the meantime, Malcolm continued behaving the same way he’d always behaved, bringing her little gifts, doing her laundry (he insisted, always, on using the clothesline outside), and on some evenings even carrying her up to the second floor, a service he often rendered when the “bad thing” was on her mind, as though, somehow, he could tell what she was thinking.
So constant were these acts of kindness that, on occasion, Liza felt tears come to her eyes. She knew she had two paths before her: one, let Malcolm be Malcolm, let him continue his parade of goodwill until, inevitably, he grew tired of her; or two, she could demand to know what the “bad thing” was, to press him until he came clean. She preferred option two, but, for whatever reason, she couldn’t do it. He was so nice that the thought of confronting him became almost unbearable.
Late one night, while they were lying in bed together, watching the shadows of the trees writhe upon the ceiling, listening to the crickets, the hiss of the wind, she decided to bring up the “bad thing” in a way that might make him more comfortable.
“Could you tell me,” she said, wriggling her fingers against the flat of his hand, “one thing that you’re proud of?”
“Hmm.”
“From, like, when you were a kid.”
He considered the question for a long time. The wind hissed. She reached up and pushed the hair away from her eyes, then sat up on her elbow and said, “Well?”
“I’m trying to think.”
“Here.” She gave him a wide, secretive smile. “I’ll go first. So, when I was in the sixth grade, we had a girl in our class named Darcy Baumgarten. There was nothing wrong with her, per se. She was just a little overweight, and all of the girls – well, most of them – teased her about it.”
Malcolm nodded. He seemed to be at once paying attention and lost in his own world.
“Anyway, what I’m proud of is that, even though some of the girls gave me a hard time about it, I ate lunch with her once a week. We kinda became friends.”
He did not say anything.
“Now it’s your turn,” she said.
“Where is she now?” he said.
“Huh?”
“Darcy Baumgarten. Did you stay in touch with her?” He got up on his elbow now too, so they were face to face. “Where is she now?”
Liza frowned. She admitted that she didn’t know. She said that they’d grown apart over the years, her and Darcy, but sometimes, while lying in bed, she felt Darcy’s energy – she was attuned to these things, she explained, “energies and valences” – and this energy radiated both gratitude and love. Whenever such a thing happened, she made sure to send, on the same frequency, her own good-will.
“Hmm,” said Malcolm. “I’ve never felt an energy before.” He reached out and took her hand. “But that’s incredible. I mean, you’re incredible. I’ve told you that before. It’s like you were sent to help her.”
Liza nodded. “So,” she said.
“So what?”
“Could you tell me something that you’re proud of?”
He laughed awkwardly. With his free hand he reached up and smoothed her hair. “I mean … I guess I really don’t know,” another awkward laugh, “but since you’re putting me on the spot … I’d say, hmm … the time I helped Mrs. Easton.”
They looked at each other.
“Go on,” said Liza.
“Well, I was walking home one day and I saw the old lady next door, Mrs. Easton, looking around like she was lost or something. I asked if she was okay, and she said she was just looking for her dog – Marvin, I think, or Maitland – and I told her I would find it. I spent that whole night looking. My mom asked me to come home – it was late and I had homework – but I felt I needed to help her. I guess maybe it was because she was old.”
“And,” Lisa said, “did you find him?”
“I didn’t. I stayed up the whole night.”
“Wow.”
“He never turned up.”
At this point, beyond the curtains, a large cloud passed before the moon. The room, which had before been a deep bluish color, a color which seemed to carry the loneliness of other people, now became simply dark. It was so dark it was difficult to see each other.
“Now,” Liza continued, “tell me something you’re less proud of.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m just trying to get to know you. I’m working on being curious about people. I mean, I am genuinely curious about people – I know that – but I’m working on telling them about my curiosity.” She flipped onto her back again, as though to tempt him to draw closer. “So, tell me, what’s one thing you regret?”
For a moment Malcolm just looked at her. “Regret?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You’re just asking me about the ‘bad thing’ again, aren’t you?”
“What bad thing?” she said.
He got up now off the bed and went to the dresser. He was only in his underwear. Although it was dark, she could see that his head was bowed, as though he was considering something of great consequence, and his hands were clasped together. “It’s not important to our relationship,” he said, “is it? Like, you don’t need to know,” he turned around, “do you?”
Without even realizing it she’d sat up in bed. She was sweating. Along with the nerves that came when you talked to someone about something they didn’t want to talk about, there was something else – a kind of escalating precarity, a recklessness, as if they were playing with some dangerous object they were ill-prepared to use.
“No, I mean, I don’t need to know anything, but don’t you …”
“I’m good to you, aren’t I?” said Malcolm. “Is there something I’m doing which isn’t good?”
She was standing now, again without realizing it, standing and shaking her head. “No, no,” she said. “It’s like I told you, I’m just curious.”
The look he gave her then was so pitiable, so sad and beseeching, that she knew before he spoke that she would do anything he asked.
“If you need to know,” he began, “I’ll tell you, but I’m asking you not to need that, if you know what I mean.” He bowed his head again and exhaled. “I feel terrible just thinking about it.”
Later on she would think of this moment and remember how awful she felt, and how wounded Malcolm looked – how the darkness of the room felt like a void closing in around them – and she would remember too that, even then, she felt like she was being manipulated.
“No, no,” she said. “It’s okay. I don’t want you to think that I don’t trust you.”
The following day he was to take her to the carnival. She woke to the smell of coffee, a violence of sunlight filling the bedroom, and walked downstairs to find Malcolm waiting for her. He’d already cooked breakfast, gone to the store, and picked up her dress from the tailor’s. In the center of the table: a glass vase filled with lilies.
“Oh my,” she said, advancing into the room. “They’re lovely.”
Malcolm explained then what he had planned for the day. Not only were they going to the carnival, where he knew she liked to watch the blue-ribbon horses, to ride the Gravitron and carousel, they were also going to The Red Brick Alley, one of the most popular restaurants in Pine Bluff. Upon hearing this, she clapped her hands.
“Is this real?” she said. “Are you serious?
“Dead.”
“Oh, Malcolm.” She scurried over and hugged him. He touched her cheek. There were times when they kissed, like now, where he would restrain her as she pulled away – very playfully, not with any sort of malice or aggression – as though he wished to savor her lips as long as possible.
“Easy boy,” she said.
“I want you to be happy.”
“I know.”
“I want this to be the best day of your life.”
As she got ready, putting on her favorite cherry-red summer dress and applying her foundation and eyeliner, the rouge she wore only for special occasions, it occurred to her that he was trying to make her forget the “bad thing.” He was always nice, but this was different. The carnival; The Red Brick Alley. Even in her imagination she could not devise a more perfect day.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she turned her head and smiled (in the fake sort of way one smiles before the mirror), then Malcolm appeared behind her, leaning against the doorframe.
“Wow,” he said.
“I’m about ready.”
“I could just stand here all day and ogle you.”
She laughed. “Ogle.”
Here, he came up behind her and cupped her breasts.
“I thought we were going,” she said.
“We are.”
She spun around in his arms and kissed him. Once again, he held her when she pulled away.
“So,” he said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“You can ask me about the ‘bad thing’ if you want to.” His lips ascended so that he spoke his next words directly into her eyeball. “If it’s important to you, I’ll tell you. Just let me know when you’re ready to hear it. You have a right, I think, to know about my life before you.”
It was the first time, really, that he’d even alluded to his recent past. Yes, she’d heard his stories – or more precisely, fragments of stories, little shards of memory that were either vague or incomplete – about his childhood and upbringing, but, she realized now, he never talked about his adult life after high school. It was as though there was this black chasm of time he was too cowardly to remember.
“Alright,” she said, resting her forehead against him. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
But she wasn’t ready that day, or the next, or any of the days the following week. They would be up late, reading or watching TV or sharing a cigarette on the back porch, and she would think about asking it – “Hey, Malcolm, could you let me know what wretched thing you did that makes you so nice to me?” – but, for some reason she could not identify, she would never actually do it. Perhaps the fact that he had finally allowed it, that he had given her permission to ask a question that she knew would be hurtful, made the question itself too powerful to wield.
She didn’t want to hurt him. In truth, she didn’t even want to make him uncomfortable.
“Liza, Liza, Liza,” he said one day, coming home with flowers (it was the fourth time that week), sliding into the kitchen where she was stooped over the table.
“Malcolm,” she said. “You didn’t have to.”
“I know it.”
“You always do things you don’t have to.”
The flowers were really lovely – daisies this time, coupled with chrysanthemums – and the vase he’d put them in was a beautiful, translucent blue. He set them down on the table and looked at her. “What is it?” he said, his face falling.
“Nothing.”
“Is it nothing?”
“Yes.” She forced a smile. “If it wasn’t, I’d tell you.”
Seemingly accepting her at her word, something she’d requested that he do, he slapped his briefcase on the table and opened it between them. Inside were receipts and books, big manila folders teeming with paper, and from this miscellany he retrieved a small white envelope, which he slid now to her elbow.
“What is this?” she said. “Another present?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
She did so. What she found inside were two tickets, dated for August eighth, exactly two weeks from this forthcoming Friday.
“Germany?” she said.
“Yes.” He was almost giddy. “I’ve always wanted to see the castles. The Black Forest. I thought perhaps we could start things in Berlin.”
And when she asked what he meant by “start things,” he told her he’d taken some time off work – he was overdue, he said, after slaving over the project he’d just finished – and he wanted to go traveling in Europe with her. Paris was on the itinerary, as was Brussels and London. He pulled out a book of maps he’d bought from a travel store, and with great detail, using a black BIC pen to mark each city, he explained their route, how they would go by train from Berlin to Prague, and from Prague to Vienna. There would be lavish hotels, he explained, restaurants he’d booked weeks in advance. Of all the museums they’d go to – the Gemäldegalerie, the Musée de Cluny, Schwarzenberg Palace – he was most excited about the Belvedere in Vienna, for he knew how much she loved The Kiss, that Klimt painting of the two lovers.
She sat there and listened. Then, while he was describing the tour he’d booked for them in London, she held up her hand and said, “Malcolm.”
He kept going.
“Malcolm,” she shouted now. “Could you please stop?”
He visibly deflated. The hands with which he’d been so extravagantly gesturing now fell limp upon the table. “What is it?” he said.
“It’s …” she started, “well, it’s too much.”
“Too much?”
She sighed. She did her best to explain herself. She told him she loved him, she really did, but she was not sure how things were going between them. Taking a trip now, not to mention a month-long trip where they’d have no break from each other, seemed at the moment an unwise decision.
“Umm, sorry, I …” Malcolm fumbled over his words. “This is out of left field for me. I’m not sure, I … I’m not sure how to process it.”
There extended a moment then of deep and resounding silence. Liza opened her mouth to speak, but then, seeing how pitiful he looked, she reconsidered. She’d opened it a second time when Malcolm interrupted her.
“Stop it,” he said. “I know what you’re going to say.”
Her jaw snapped closed.
“You’re going to say: ‘It still exists between us. The bad thing. I can’t really be with you until you explain it.’ Is that it?”
She did not say yes or nod her head or offer any affirmation otherwise. She just stared at him.
“So, well, here it is. If you really want this, I told you I’d give it to you. Did I not say that? Did I not say that, if you asked me to tell you, if you said it was critical to our relationship to continue to grow, then I would tell you about the ‘bad thing’?” He paused and picked a petal from one of the lilies. “Whelp, here it goes. You know I grew up in West Junction? Out there maybe twenty or thirty minutes away from Morgantown? It was kinda like Grand Prairie in that there isn’t all that much to do there. Movies and soda shops. Drinking in the woods. One of my buddies, Darryl Hurt, he’d say that the best thing ‘the Junction,’ as we called it, had going for it was that no one cared if you imagined the worst thing possible that you could do … and then you did it. You could drink Git in broad daylight. In the middle of the road. Cops didn’t care because they were doing it themselves. There were only two of them anyway, Bob Bethany and, uh, Wallis, I think his name was. We called him Syphilis. On account of we didn’t like him – he was kinda fat and mean – and we thought it was funny. Anyway, because you could practically do anything, we kinda started to push our limits, me and Darryl and this kid named Brunehauer. Pretty funky, huh? Brunehauer. I think it was a German name or something. You’d think we’d have shortened it or something and given him a nickname, but we didn’t. We just called him by his actual name. Brunehauer. And it was his idea – I swear, I’m getting to it, just bear with me – it was his idea to hit the mailboxes. We’d done it before, ‘breaming’ out on the gravel we called it and knocking out mailboxes with a baseball bat. But, see, that week, Brunehauer had a new metal bat that his godmother had given him. She was some old woman from, well, come to think of it, I think she lived in Grand Prairie. She may still be around here for all I know. Maybe she’s your neighbor. Regardless, she was this real rich woman by our standards, and she liked to get Brunehauer stuff. Like this new metal bat. I can still see it: glossy and silver. The sticker on it said, . I memorized it without even trying to. Anyway, he showed it to us, and we were really in awe of it – we really didn’t see stuff like that back then, I mean really – and then he said, I’m paraphrasing, ‘Imagine what damage we can do in the Vespers.’ So we went breaming. We tried to mix it up sometimes, but we typically went to the same country roads – that was what we called the Vespers. It was so dark back there you could smell the night. The stars, Liza, I mean, I can still see them. An important thing to remember here is that we had a whole handle of Git with us, and by the time we got out into the country I would say we were all pretty plastered. Me and Darryl at least. Brunehauer seemed to be driving the truck pretty well.”
Here, for the first time in his monologue, he paused and repositioned himself. The light from the window covered only half of his face. The other half was in shadow.
“I can tell, from the way you’re looking at me, that you’ve never been breaming yourself. I don’t figure many girls have, although a few came with us once. I can remember it vividly. Hell, I can see it. Holly Wootan and Jessica Troop in the backseat. All of the stars. But I’m getting sidetracked. On this night, we were by ourselves, just the three of us, and we was getting drunker – I mean, for me, the world was starting to go all spinny – and after a while, Brunehauer, he hands me the bat and says, ‘Time to go swinging.’ I went first. I remember that. There was a little farmhouse up at the top of the rise and we could see its windows, all lit up and hanging there in the dark, and we could see the mailbox itself growing bigger and bigger in the headlights. The tree above the mailbox. I stuck my head out of the window and laid into that motherfucker. I mean, laid into it. This great, big ringing sound and then papers everywhere. We laughed so hard Brunehauer almost crashed. After that it’s all kind of a blur for a while. We kept drinking, and took turns with the bat, and Brunehauer kept driving faster and faster. And, so, here is the part where the ‘bad thing’ becomes the ‘bad thing.’ It was my turn again. At this point it is probably eleven – eleven or twelve at night. Brunehauer had some insecticide in his car and we’d huffed some of that. We did that sometimes: huffed stuff, and man it felt good. I felt so powerful I could hit a damn mailbox fifty yards into the sky, and that’s what I prepared to do, leaning through the window with that titanium in my fist. This is where, well, I need you to remember you asked for this. You wanted to hear about the ‘bad thing.’ And it is, oh … I could see the mailbox sticking out of the darkness. We were racing toward it. What I didn’t see until a few moments before was this old woman – I mean, real old – walking out to it down the middle of her driveway. She was real far away, just this little blur of movement, but somehow, I knew what it was. Who else would do that but a real old person? Go out at midnight and get their mail? Anyway, well, here it comes. The ‘bad thing.’ I could see her now out on the shoulder of the road, and there was definitely a moment when I could’ve slid back in the car – that, or just not swing – but in that moment I did make a decision that I was going to hit her. I can’t explain it. Right before we got there, and we were going like thirty, forty miles per hour at this point, she turned around and saw me, and she reached up, like that was going to do anything, and I can remember the look in her eyes that wasn’t like panic or anything because there wasn’t time to panic. It was just an old woman’s eyes staring at me. And this is where it gets kind of, well, gross – if you want me to stop, I’ll stop – because I reared back and swung the bat, and I could feel – really, I could feel each individual impact I’m about to describe – the bat hitting her hand, and her hand kind of, like, snapping back, and then the bat hitting her face. There was this loud cracking sound. I don’t even think she screamed – or, if she did, we didn’t hear it – and then there was just the crunch of gravel again. The radio. The hiss of the wind.”
Liza just stared at him.
“Sorry, I know that is a lot,” he said. “That is a lot, right? If it is, can you let me know so I can stop talking?”
Liza just stared.
January 2026
