INTERVIEWS
  
She likes his hands best. How they droop out of too-big cuffs. How his fingers are long and they taper, like the hands of artists, of saints. She thinks there is something medieval about him, illuminated, as if he couldn´t possibly exist in this world. She wants to paint him in sunset colors, an Umbrian landscape. Raw Siena. Burnt umber. She likes to press her hands to his, palm to palm. If she traced hers, like a child tracing her hand to draw a Thanksgiving turkey, her black lines would fit neatly inside his canvas.

He lives in a house of high ceilings, with carved moldings and a mantel for a fireplace no longer there. His room is monastic, with bare oak floors that make her want to take a broom and sweep, like a Colonial housewife. Or possibly a Colonial witch, masquerading as a housewife: she likes that better. The windows have no curtains, only shades that flap in the summer and let the long, late-morning sun come peeking through, mornings when getting out of bed is the last thing on her mind.

He is--if she had to sit down and make a list, and she has--difficult. He´s stark, as uncarpeted as he´s uncurtained: dust gives him coughing fits. The last time he´d come to her house he´d been so tanked up on Benadryl, because of the cats, that he´d fallen asleep on the couch a half-hour into the movie. He avoids parks and gardens: a bee sting could kill him. Peanuts and strawberries cause instant, painful hives. He is, of course, lactose intolerant.

Does it matter? No hands she has ever known have touched her so gently. She never knew this could happen but there´s a way she feels with his hand on her hip that makes her not want to be anywhere else. She wants to tell him she knew him before she knew him, knew this room and the softness of sun on washed white sheets, the scent of his skin. Sections of newspaper scattered all around the bed. She pushes one away. So many words, but she´s grown quiet. She brings her lips to his wrist and looks, from this strangely close angle, at the planetary landscape of his palm, traces the lines and lumps, like fingerprints, no two alike, and his eyes blink open and he smiles at her.

“Are you reading me?"









Kathryn Kulpa received the Mid-List Press First Series Award for her short fiction collection, Pleasant Drugs, forthcoming from Mid-List Press. Other awards include the Florida Review Editor's Award, the Bridport Prize, and scholarships to attend the Stonecoast Writers' Conference and Vermont Studio Center. Her short fiction has appeared in various publications, including tnr/The New Renaissance, Terra Incognita, Margin, and Hayden's Ferry Review. She is a high school librarian and assistant editor of The Newport Review/4 x4, a journal of poetry and flash fiction. She lives and works in Rhode Island.
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