Flash Fiction by Preston Gralla
He stood behind her, not daring to touch her shoulder. He took a breath. Reached out. Then stopped himself.
“Can I touch you?” he asked.
“Of course you can. Why would you think you need to ask me that?”
He pushed her hair aside, brassy blonde now so many decades after the soft gold of her youth. He touched her shoulder, felt it not just in the present, but through time: bony and taut as a 12-year-old, pillow-soft at 17 cradling their newborn son, full and firm in the voluptuousness of her thirties and forties, slowly losing muscle each decade beyond. Now the flesh beneath his hand was slack.
Whose hand was it? Whose shoulder?
“You need to get ready, Bob. They’ll be here soon. I told you. It’s nearly two o’clock.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I forgot.”
Who was coming? And why?
“No, Bob, she said gently. “Not in that. Dress in something more comfortable. Maybe sweatpants. And those special sneakers we bought you yesterday so you could walk more easily. You need to be dressed comfortably for them. Remember? I told you that before.”
Before? Had she told him that? When was before?
“That’s right. I forgot.”
He slowly dressed himself, pleased he could still do it. Out of his sight she packed his bags. She put them in the bathroom and would get them when the visitors arrived. She walked with him to the living room and they sat on the couch. He smiled uncertainly.
She’s beautiful. Who is she, again?
They waited together for the doorbell to ring.
Preston Gralla’s work has been awarded a Fiction Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has won the Yudis Prize for fiction from Union College. Under Gralla’s editorship, PC/Computing was a finalist for General Excellence from the National Magazine Awards. He has published more than 40 books of non-fiction, which have been translated into 20 languages. Gralla’s work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Dallas Morning News, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, among others.
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