Fiction by Jac Jemc

A Knot is a Knot

At the nice grocery store, the lighting is dim. Samantha is buying only a few things, but she pushes a cart. She wears heels and steps evenly, crossing each foot over the one before. She watches the way everyone cranes their necks down the aisles, looking.

She never uses the self-checkout. It would be a waste of an opportunity. She draws out every gesture. She dampers her voice. She accepts the receipt and pushes her cart to her car, the bagger following her a few steps behind, but saying nothing. He waits two cars away, watching her load the bags into her trunk. She looks at him and tilts her head. “Take your time,” he says. “I don’t like to rush the customers.”

She is unnerved. She tells herself it is only an unintentional gap between the saying and the doing that causes him to haunt her like this, but if it’s not?

It is night. The parking lot is bare. She drives home.

In the morning, a boy is scrubbing the faint scum line in her pool. She ties her robe closed, though he knows better than to look through the windows.

At the gas station, she pays inside. She sees the skinny young man who rings her up has a name tag that reads, “Pimple, Assistant Manager.” She says, “Thank you, Pimple.” The door chimes her departure.

The funeral is tomorrow and she thinks she should get a carwash. If people have to wait for that long line of cars, stickered orange, to pass them before they can get to where they’re going, the cars might as well look good. And besides, she doesn’t want to reflect poorly on Edgar. He would hate for people to think he was mourned only by people driving dusty beaters. No, he deserves better.

Laying out by the pool, Samantha ashes her cigarette and a minute later she registers the building scent in the air as scorching. The cinder has caused a fire in the dry brush of an unwatered planter. She pours the only liquid she has on hand into the pot, her cup of hot coffee. It does the job. Heat turned against heat.

Her phone dings. There is someone at the door. Not knocking to come in, but there. She swipes the screen to see who it is, if there is a package, but the door camera captures a man standing there, his back to the camera. She has the power to talk to him through her phone, but she doesn’t want to. She puts the phone down.

Inside a letter lies on the table near the door. It has been there for weeks unopened.

Samantha turns on the radio, always set to the same frequency. Today she just hears the sound of a person’s breath.

She has the number for the station, but she doesn’t call.  

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Jac Jemc teaches creative writing at UC San Diego and serves as faculty director of the Clarion Writers' Workshop. She is the author of five books of fiction, most recently Empty Theatre and False Bingo. Her writing has recently appeared in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Ploughshares and Selected Shorts.