Tiny Crimes Read online

  Sarah Wang

  110

  her to see as the band started a new song. After the band finished playing, I sold the pill for twenty bucks to a girl wearing a clear plastic raincoat in the parking lot next to the neighboring pupuseria’s dumpsters.

  Outside, Magda stole a beer from some guy’s backpack. She stood behind him and opened the zipper slowly while I chatted him up. We darted away giggling, leaving him with his backpack gaping. Asshole. Around the corner at the taco truck, we ate five tacos each, courtesy of my recent drug deal, before waddling back to the parking lot. Where was Elma? The last time we saw her she and Dogface were tiptoeing around the bowling alley alternately bug eyed and giggly, communicating with one another through rapid blinking. They smelled the holes in the bowling balls while wearing their shoes on the wrong feet because, Elma attested, it felt correct.

  Magda shotgunned the beer while I scanned the parking lot. We weaved between cars, stopping to pop a squat while the other looked out. There she was. Elma sitting in my Beetle in a dark spot behind the bowling alley. I ran over while Magda was still in mid-pee, leaving her pulling up her pants and shouting angrily after me. Knocking on the window, I mimed for Elma to unlock the door. She stared down, unmoving.

  “Can she even hear right now?” Magda arrived, wiping her hands on her pants.

  I knocked on the window again. “EL-MA. EL-MA.”

  Dogface

  111

  “Don’t you have a key? This is your car, isn’t it?” Magda said.

  “Oh yeah.” I unlocked the door.

  “Is this what a spiritual communion looks like?” Magda asked.

  Elma was so out of it she kept stretching her cheeks with both hands while staring at her feet. After shaking her and making sure she was breathing right, we decided to take her home immediately.

  Magda climbed into the back on the driver’s side. I started the engine, which came to life choking and gasping, grabbing on to this side of the world with a tenuous grip.

  “What’s up, ladies?”

  It was Magda’s cousin.

  “We’re leaving, that’s what’s up. Ciao.” Magda waved.

  I put the Beetle in reverse.

  “Uh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the drummer said.

  “What, why?” I asked. I pointed at Elma. “She burned.”

  “You’re gonna slice his wiener off, that’s what,” he said, peering inside.

  I looked down at Elma’s feet. A Harley mat covering a hole that had rusted through the floorboard was gone. Sticking up from the hole was an erect penis, glowing faintly in the dark. It was Dogface, lying on

  Sarah Wang

  112

  his back, propped up underneath the Beetle holding his boner up through the rusty hole. It stuck straight up into the car, like a tumescent sapling.

  “This is some sick perv shit,” Magda said from the backseat. “Get him out of there.”

  “I can’t just pull him out,” Magda’s cousin said. “His wiener is totally, uh engaged.” He made a chopping motion with one arm.

  By this time, a small group had flocked around us. I wanted to drag Dogface out by his legs. I didn’t care if his penis was lopped off. Magda protested. We had to withdraw his boner first to get him out, she reasoned. I was losing patience. I reached over Elma, through the open window, grabbed the drummer’s beer out of his hand, and poured it in the hole over Dogface’s penis.

  The crowd clapped as his dick, Magda proudly announced, wilted.

  Dogface

  113

  See Agent

  Anonymous

  The agent starts the feed again.

  The nun slides her card through the cloven slot, waiting for it to click and say Go, but the turnstile gives her a bad read. She swipes again and again, infinite times, but the turnstile whines and repeats, Please Swipe Again. Soon, her arm’s cramping and she can hear a train. When she tries a quicker swipe, her cowl wags and the turnstile says, Too Fast Swipe Slower. In response, she slides her card through at a sarcastic pace, and the turnstile replies, Too Slow Swipe Faster.

  Everyone has a breaking point, even nuns. The small green caps on the rectangular panel remind her of old computers. Obviously the fare hikes aren’t going toward turnstiles. She whispers a prayer to

  115

  St. Christopher, and swipes once more, smoothly, perfectly, and in response the turnstile says, Just Used.

  “Liar,” the nun hisses.

  The agent always enjoys this part when she bites her fist.

  Now the nun has to wait eighteen minutes before she can use her card again. She has no spare change and a carpal twinge in her swipe arm. She fingers her beads, takes a deep breath, and swipes once more. This time, the turnstile makes a high-pitched sigh she’s never heard one make before and says, See Agent. The glass cube where the subway attendants normally sit—like penitents atoning for sin—is empty. “There is no agent,” says the nun. The sound of her own voice echoing through the station startles her. A dormant MetroCard vending machine leers from a wall.

  It is two in the morning. She has come from the hospital, having been summoned to perform the Last Sacrament over a dying man. “Only say the word, sister,” said the dying man, “and I shall return home.” When the man finally closed his eyes, so too in tiredness did the nun. “May our brother safely reach your kingdom,” said the nun. She sat by his bed, ignored by the grieving wife. Hours later the soft flatline of the monitor woke her to the sight of the new widow staring silently at the still body.

  A distant thrum and clang grows louder as the train approaches. The deserted platform seems near enough for her to touch. A nun lives by God’s law, but also

  Anonymous

  116

  abides the laws of man. She has no fealty to the laws of machines. She would never hop a turnstile without paying, but she has paid, and the turnstile is holding her hostage for more money. It feels unkind, perhaps even like a sin, one which, in a strange new compartment of her heart, she hopes God will punish.

  “Have you no shame?” says the nun.

  A whispery glitch-like beep leaks from the turnstile, then a sound at a strangely lower pitch. The note bends, sinking lower, until it fades completely.

  She hasn’t even swiped.

  He Sees, says the turnstile.

  The nun squints at the letters on the display to make sure she isn’t having a vision. She isn’t. It says, He Sees.

  “Who sees?” asks the nun.

  The Agent, says the turnstile.

  The headlights of the train begin to brighten the station. There are no agents. There are no anyones. There are only malfunctioning machines that know naught of human guilt or grief or love or death or sleep. Were the agent here, he would take pity and allow her through.

  “Lord, help me,” she says, hoisting herself off the ground on trembling arms.

  You Will Pay, says the turnstile.

  Sweat beads instantly at her hairline as she tries once, twice to swing herself clear. On the third try,

  See Agent

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  however, her elbows buckle mid-swing and her legs tangle in the three-limbed pivot. The nun spills over the turnstile and lands headfirst on the other side. The agent can’t stop laughing. Before passing out, she watches the train float sideways into the station from where she rests on the filthy platform. The agent is laughing so hard. A lone rat shakes its head from the warning tread, then disappears onto the tracks. The agent is laughing so hard he is blind with tears. Dreamlike relief settles over her when the train stops, its headlights bending and breaking against the tiles, filling the station with a million glowing eyes.

  Anonymous

  118

  These Are Funny,

  Broken Days

  Amber Sparks

  I have two knives.

  By that I mean I have one knife plus Dave who also has a knife.

  God, that�
��s funny. It’s funny, right? I think it’s funny.

  Do you remember that actor? The one with the squint and the blond hair? Used to be big? Pretty? Kind of goofy? Smokes like a European? That’s how Dave looks. Women like him. Even without little toes. We pair well that way. Women, men, they like us both. Both like us both.

  But Dave, he has these qualms. Morals-ish. I,

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  though, am a spear tip and I contain no morals. Why bother? I don’t waste time agonizing over things. Sure, there’s something wrong with me. But I can’t change the way I am. Not that I don’t enjoy it. I do. I wouldn’t do it if I did not. But it’s actually very hard. Everyone thinks it would be easy, but no, no it is not. You have to work really hard at it, like a job. Skin and teeth and nails are tough. Blood smells bad. Not everything burns.

  It has to be worth it.

  Dave loves me but feels the danger of me like his hairs are constantly standing at attention. Prickly for me, that’s what he says. He only goes for helpless young blondes, drunk at campus bars. They’re bleached and empty and nothing at all like me. I suppose that’s why he likes me, why he hates me.

  Sometimes, after I get done with a john, I tell Dave he’s next. That while he’s sleeping I’m going to stick him, right between the ribs. He gets really scared then, doesn’t sleep, just stares at my hands for hours and days. Once he cried.

  Isn’t that funny? Funny ha-ha, I mean. Seriously. A knife afraid of a knife.

  These are funny, broken days. We fit right in.

  Amber Sparks

  120

  Loophole

  Adam Sternbergh

  He understands what’s coming next. He feels like he’s been here before.

  These blank walls, this bare table. A black woman in a white lab coat, watching. Her hair cut short and dyed blond. Clipboard poised.

  On the table, a button.

  On the wall, a speaker.

  He sits patiently.

  Waiting for the prompt.

  There’s nothing on the clipboard. It’s just a prop, for show. She pretends to read her empty page, then watches him over the clipboard.

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  This kind of scenario is illegal. Or, at least, the kind of scenario that the subject believes he is participating in is illegal.

  This scenario is not actually illegal.

  Not yet.

  He doesn’t think he’ll press it. He’ll hear a voice, garbled, he knows, over the speaker. The other person, answering a question. If the answer is wrong, they’ll prompt him.

  The answer will be wrong.

  He knows that, too.

  Then he’ll press the button.

  Or not.

  A small jolt. That’s what they told him.

  Just a little bit of pain.

  Then more pain. Each time he presses.

  If he presses.

  That’s up to him.

  She studied the Milgram experiment in school. Conducted back in the 1940s, over a hundred years ago. In which subjects were prodded to administer painful jolts to an anonymous unseen recipient in another room. Jolts of increasing intensity. There was no recipient in those experiments. The screams were

  Adam Sternbergh

  122

  just an actor. It was a hoax, to see if people would

  do it.

  They did it.

  That kind of experiment is not legal anymore.

  This experiment is legal, technically, though she understands they’re bending the rules a bit.

  He can’t see the other person, of course. The other person is seated in another room, hidden from view. The other person can’t see him either, so the other person will never know who pressed the button that caused the pain.

  If he presses. Which he doesn’t think he will.

  He’s not a monster, after all.

  He’s not required to press it. He knows this because, many years ago, he was the other person

  in an experiment like this one, on the other side of the jolts.

  And whoever it was in the other room pressed the button.

  Again and again.

  He was just a young man then, desperate for cash. Willing to be a guinea pig.

  Now he’s a middle-aged man, desperate for cash.

  But I’ll only do it this time if I get to be the one with the button, he told them.

  To his surprise, they agreed.

  Loophole

  123

  Another thing she studied in graduate school was a history of the theories of time. For many years, the popular conception of time was that it was much like a river. You are stationary. Time passes. Events happen in a discernible sequence: past, present, future. To move extemporaneously, out of time, to travel in time, would be like stepping out of the river and then stepping back in, upstream or downstream. This seemed to be theoretically possible. In hindsight, it’s clear why they were never able to practically conquer the problem.

  The other person’s voice will be electronically garbled beyond all comprehension. The other person is a paid volunteer, looking for an easy hundred dollars, just like him.

  You’ll get used to the pain, he wants to tell the other person. It will make you angry, sure. It will make you question what kind of monster sits in another room and doles out excruciating jolts to a stranger.

  But it will fade. The pain.

  What else lingers, he’s not qualified to say.

  Did it affect him? Sure. He was young then. Twenty years ago, at least. The following decades haven’t been kind. Regrets? Definitely. Mistakes? Of course. Jail? Take a guess.

  After all, if he’d made the right choices, he wouldn’t be back here.

  Adam Sternbergh

  124

  So, yes, it left him angry. It changed him in some way. Taught him what people are capable of.

  His finger inches toward the button.

  Isn’t that a lesson this other person might also want to learn?

  The theory of time in which she had been trained was much different from the river metaphor. Quantum physics had revealed to them the reality of time. There is no past, present, or future, no causality, no consequence, no progress. Time is not a succession of moments. It is more like an infinite number of moments occurring simultaneously. Your experience of time as happening in sequence is simply a trick of human perception. You are like a rider in a train, passing a series of billboards. These billboards are every moment in your life. To you, these moments seem to happen in sequence. But to the outside observer, they exist simultaneously and you are the one who is moving.

  Think of it like a filmstrip, her professor told her. (Tells her.) A filmstrip is simply a series of images, all of which exist. But when you run the strip through a projector, it looks like sequence. It looks like life.

  She nodded. (Nods.)

  And once we understand this, he explained (is explaining), time travel is no longer the challenge. The challenge is to see if, by bending the filmstrip, by breaching time, the events of one moment can

  Loophole

  125

  be made to alter the nature of another simultaneous moment.

  If these moments can interact.

  He shifts in his chair.

  He remembers the electrodes. That they used a special jelly to attach them.

  To increase the conductivity.

  She startles when the garbled voice comes over the speaker.

  He looks to the woman to confirm that they’ve begun.

  She nods.

  The other person gets the answer wrong.

  A red light lights.

  He hits the button.

  Thinking about it later, he’ll realize he didn’t even hesitate.

  She wishes she could be in that other room. She wishes

  she could watch that other person. She wonders if the

  two of them look alike. Well, of course they do, she thinks.

  She is
receiving her diploma with honors from graduate school right now.

  Adam Sternbergh

  126

  She is breaking up with her high school boyfriend right now.

  She is painstakingly picking out the gum that a girl threw into her large halo of curly hair on the first day of second grade right now.

  She is getting news that her brother in the service died overseas right now.

  She is cutting her hair short and dyeing it blond right now.

  She is standing in the room with the clipboard right now.

  He is being offered a hundred dollars right now.

  He is being asked the impossible question right now.

  A factory is manufacturing the special jelly right now, and packing it into a box, and loading it into a truck.

  Right now.

  All moments are happening simultaneously, always.

  The trick is to see if you can bring two such moments into proximity.

  So that one will affect the other.

  The other person, on the other side of the speaker, calls out, more in surprise than pain.

  Get ready, he thinks. Because it only gets worse.

  He hits the button again.

  He feels the pain again.

  Loophole