Read Online Orange Suitcase by Joseph Riippi - Free Book Online Page A

side of the bed, clutch the pillow. The best part of this day, I knew, would be bending to kiss her goodbye and sliding the comforter up to her chin. She would smile and murmur to have a great day, good luck with your presentation, I miss you. I would whisper back something the same. I reached for the sweater pinned beneath her shoulder. The courtyard beyond the window grew silent, and dawn outlined the roof of the restaurant white against the sky. By the time I left the apartment, rain had turned to snow.

“Something About New York City”
    T here used to be a fishing supply store on West 22nd and Tenth Avenue where the owner would demonstrate fly-fishing in the street. Whenever he was at it, the people walking past would slow or stop to watch the orange-glittering fly, alive at the end of the salesman’s line, sail in long arcs across the surface of the road. One almost expected a great stony fish to leap from the asphalt in a hard spray of gravel, only to disappear again through a pothole with the fly in its mouth. But no fish ever did, and so the store closed down.

“Something About Borges and the Blind in Chelsea”
    1
    S ometimes I pass them with their tapping white sticks on the sidewalk and I’ll think of Borges. Yesterday I watched a man in black sunglasses at the Starbucks on Eighth Avenue reading Braille. He seemed to be staring out the window at the butcher’s shop, petting a cat. Does he write, too? Maybe with one of those complicated typewriters. I watched him run his old fingers back and forth across the pages for a long time. It made me a little jealous—I would like to know what a Borges story feels like. I’d like to know what the word goosebumps feels like. This morning I thought of him when I passed five men tapping their sticks together, almost in unison, moving past the art supply store on 23rd. They weren’t speaking, which seemed odd. I remember a cousin once gave me a book for my birthday called The Book of Questions. One of the questions was, Would you rather be blind or deaf? Another question was, Would you rather be burned alive or drowned?
    2
    I had a dream in which an army of blind men and women tried to beat me to death with their sticks outside the Chelsea Hotel. Tap! Tap! Tap! I didn’t see if Borges was among them before I ran inside and hid. I don’t know why I needed to hide. I woke and decided I would rather be blind than deaf; people could read to me while I learned Braille. I would write stories that felt like the sidewalk or a rash or a basketball. I would write a novel called Acne; my memoir would be called Listening.
    3
    In Borges’ “The South,” a man gets in a knife fight with his country. The story ends with us not knowing who wins. I suppose his country wins; just by the act of fighting I suppose he is beaten. In the sixth grade my next-door neighbor Ben punched me in the face when I teased him for liking the neighbor girl. The three of us were walking home from the bus stop and I told the girl: Ben wants to suck your pussy. I didn’t know what the words meant but I knew they were powerful and would make the kids at school laugh. Ben punched me in the face and the girl ran home when she saw all the blood. We were never friends again; that was the last day we walked home together. Sometimes, not often, I wonder where he lives. If one day we meet on the street, in New York or Seattle, maybe I’ll ask him to get a drink. Will we shake hands? Hug? Maybe he will pull a knife; maybe he will lead an army of the blind and they will beat me to death. I suppose I deserve not knowing—it was me who ruined everything. I was the one who took him for granted; I was the one who moved away.

“Something About Ben Jensen”
    S o he isn’t dead. That’s what I thought when I saw Ben Jensen today. It happened on the bus, the 14D. I was sitting with my feet against the back wheel-well and trying to read someone