Twelve Stories

John Jodzio

There are two shopping malls in my town, expensive and cheap. The expensive one is two stories and has a Sharper Image. The cheap one is low slung and smells like old chili.

Once, at the cheap mall, I went into the dollar store and watched a man with a missing arm steal a carton of cigarettes by stuffing it into the floppy sleeve of his jacket.

Well done, I wanted to tell him.

****

The kind of bridge I like best is a cantilever. The kind of sweater I like best is cable knit. A great time to be a whore would have been 1978. You and I might have nothing in common except collecting tiny metal spoons, but those tiny spoons might be enough for us to fall madly in love, okay?

****

Sometimes, at the expensive mall, I buy a cup of soda from the hot dog stand and then balance it on the aluminum railing. I walk away to the other side of the mall, and I wait until someone below is about to walk underneath the cup. I hit the railing as hard as I can, and the railing vibrates and the cup dumps onto the person below. After I do this, I go into the Sharper Image and use the massage tool on my low back. People never get kicked out of places for being too happy.

****

I saw the man with the missing arm get on the bus a month or so ago. He snuffed his half-smoked cigarette out on a bus shelter and then he tucked it back into the pack very carefully.

“That used to be your arm,” I said, when he sat down near me.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I said that your cigarette used to be your arm.”

The man shook his head at me.

“Everything used to be my arm,” he said.

****

Sometimes, at the expensive mall, I don’t do the cup thing. Sometimes, I just sip my soda and lean over the railing and look down at all the young girls throwing their coins into the fountain. Love is not at all expensive and my arms will be my arms forever. This is what all of them are thinking.

_______________

John Jodzio is a current recipient of the Loft-McKnight Fellowship. Stories of his have appeared in One Story, The Florida Review, and Opium and are forthcoming in Barrelhouse and Alaska Quarterly Review. He was recently awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board grant to finish a collection of short stories titled If You Lived Here, You’d Already Be Home. He lives in Minneapolis and occasionally updates his website, www.johnjodzio.net.