By Nicholas Grider
RENT
This is the room in the house made for visiting, not for living in. Any lack of visitors makes the room no less usable.
STRANGERS
Don’t get yourself killed, Father says to you when you leave, and don’t get anyone pregnant, and don’t leave permanent marks on your public record, and don’t take no for an answer, and always say yes if it gets you what you want, and don’t do what I did when I was your age that led to all this now, this indoor humidity like nothing ever moves, like the reason why I don’t smile right and your arm don’t work right, and make sure to make friends in good proportion to enemies, and make your mother proud, and don’t be a stranger, but don’t stand before the mirrors of the wide green world asking yourself over and over if you’re a ghost.
SURVIVAL
The world goes on in every direction but not as much as it probably should.
BEGINNER LESSONS
You meet a man a few years your senior when you land in Oklahoma City and he teaches you a lot of stuff about both care and aftercare, and you try to be a stranger but he makes you feel like a guest.
RECEIPTS
Someone whose last name you don’t know is letting you stay in a room, and just because they’re doing you a favor doesn’t mean you don’t owe them back.
RENEWAL
You can be a visitor at home or a visitor in the world, Father advises you, but you won’t get very far trying to be both.
EXTENDED STAY
Belts hung by their buckles on crooked nails in the bedroom wall. A wicker picnic basket for a medicine cabinet. Paper maps marked with price stickers peeled off dry goods at work.
HAPPY ENDINGS
The light at the end of the tunnel is almost always the same sky that’s at the starting end. Same with the crawlspace under the house where a man a few years your senior hopes you’ll find a good place to hide.
INTERMEDIATE LESSONS
Fingers under half-buttoned poplin shirts. Store-bought daisies in vases made from whiskey bottles. A mattress on the floor in the same room as a gun safe left unlocked because nobody can find the key.
BETTER ANGELS
Mountains are beautiful, even on screen, and so are men, even if they aren’t real.
ADVANCED LESSONS
A man a few years your senior tells you how he already mentioned he was moving on but you don’t remember him saying that. He sips a mixed drink he taught you how to make and tells you you’ll probably be fine.
FREE TICKETS
Father tells you how and why you shouldn’t be afraid to ask but he did all he could do and said all he had to say so the last thing he tells you is: don’t be a stranger but also don’t come home unless you’re dead. If you’re not sure which you prefer, he says he can meet you in the city to help.
Nicholas Grider’s story collections include Misadventure (A Strange Object/Deep Vellum) and Forest of Borders (Malarkey).
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