The Artful Trade

The Numbers Game An old friend, a bond salesman, called me that morning from the 68th floor of a high-rise a few blocks away. I had been to church trying as I sometimes do, to pry myself away from my coyote instincts, hoping that someday something in me could be culled into something true.  He described the second jet, low and fast. His voice shook. I told him to get down on the street and head east up to Delancey and over whatever bridge he could into the refuge of Brooklyn. They had turned off the main elevators so he found the freight lift, stumbled in his blue suit down to the street then up through Chinatown, over the bridge and off the island. He walked the 9 miles to Queens and the train. Catching his reflection in a mirror, he saw that blue suit was entirely white, his face chalky, covered with a mist of dry wall and asbestos.  He said he looked like his own ghost. Back then, I often could not sleep. I didn’t count sheep. I'm Irish. I counted heartaches. For years I wa...

Stolen Away When I was a boy I tried to steal forgiveness from the record store in my small town.  It was a single—they called them 45s then. The Hollies. He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother . . . but it wasn’t about the record.  It was about regret.  The owner saw me slip out the door and run away. At ten, I was fast and light and he was slow and heavy and couldn’t catch me. I went back a couple weeks later figuring he would have forgotten such a small thing. He hadn’t. He grabbed me by the arm and called the cops. They came, looked annoyed and then called my father. Together they decided on my punishment. Each day after school I had to sweep Main Street in front of the record store.  But every night the wind would blow and dust would churn. And dirt once more would cover the road way I had tried so hard to clean. Broom in hand, day after day, trying to sweep away my guilt, I slowly began to understand.  Forgiveness cannot be stolen. You have to pay. It always has a...

copyright@2021 will maguire Late one night in Little Italy, I was 2 six packs in and stumbling home up the stairs. Passing an open door I saw this old Italian man all of about 50.  His wife had been hit by a bus on Fordham Road that summer. Killed.  When he got the call he just dropped the phone. Never said a word. He went silent the way some men do, trying to make himself deaf to grief by ignoring it, by vowing to never speak it and never listen to its roar... like the sound of the el train each night.  So he stopped answering the phone and and then his door. Tried to make himself unreachable to grief.   And he went to work each day, praying with his sweat that the ache in his back might someday quiet the ache in his heart.  That night he had the radio on some oldies station, standing at the stove, the smell of onion and sausage and peppers in the air.  As I passed it started to play The Very Thought of You.  ‘The mere idea of you...the longing h...

The Unforgotten copyright@2020 w. maguire “It aint right” the old woman said. “Young girl like that..her wedding night. Like to break my heart.” Sara nodded and sat down beside her. The beds had all been stripped and the laundry started and the old woman had stepped into an alley behind the laundry. She had smoked two packs of no filter Camels since she was 13 and her voice, rough as a gravel road, sometimes sounded like a cough when she spoke.  “All these rooms empty and them on a honeymoon. Just feels …dirty to me.” The old woman had spent her life cleaning other peoples sheets, bleaching them stark white and making beds, like laying in her sheets was the way to make up for all the dirt the city people did to each other. Sara watched as she took a drag. “Have you ever been in love?’ she asked. The old woman looked away. She began to speak but her voice caught. She wheezed and broke into a cough. “I don’t know. Maybe once.” “What does it feel like?” Sara asked. The old woman exhal...

 A Hunger for the Sweet copyright@2020 W. Maguire It's been a year since customers began arriving at Donut City before dawn each morning to buy dozens of donuts. One Monday, the shop sold out at 7:30—hours before its usual 2 p.m. closing time.  That week, regular customers had noticed that something was amiss. Every day for the past 28 years, the inseparable husband-and-wife team — Stella and John—Cambodian refugees, stood together behind the counter. But that month for the first time in decades Stella was absent. When customers asked, John quietly said she had suffered an aneurysm and had been hospitalized. John could not afford an employee. He could only see his wife after closing . . . or until that day's donut were sold out. Word spreads fast in a small town and there is still a hunger for sweetness in places where the bitterness is baked in. So soon friends and neighbors and then even strangers began to line up in the predawn dark, each waiting to order dozens of donut. P...

      copyright@2020 will maguire  Last year one of my tires started going flat. A slow leak. As I began looking for a service station, I couldn't help but remember another time that I needed air. When I was kid I had a bike, the kind with really fat tires that were so old they were always leaking. Every week I had to stop by the nearby filling station to air them up. The old man that ran the place sat in the shade just outside the screen door. And each time, gravel in his voice, he would ask, “You ever going to buy something, son?” I’d shrug and say, “No sir. Got no money.” He would look hard at me, then, eyes softening, he’d say - “Well, that's all right, boy...air is still free.” Like everyone else these past few months I've been watching the slow roll of the COVID death toll. Five thousand, then ten, now an unimaginable 110,000. I’ve listened to doctors plead and wives cry out. I’ve heard strong men in hospital wards gasp for air through ma...

Getting Clean copyright@2020 will maguire I go to church. I generally sit in the last pew, trying to turn my grievances into gratitude. I fail regularly. Last week this guy walked in wearing mechanic’s overalls covered with oil stains. His hands were blackened with grease. There is this large bowl at the entranceway full of water. Holy water. I think it must have been his first time because he hesitated as he passed it. He took a few steps, then turned back. He dipped both arms in up to the elbow and began scrubbing at the dirt and grease, like he figured washing his hands was a kind of prayer. Then cleansed, he rolled his sleeves down, found the girl he was going to meet and sat down. And I got that old feeling in the back of me that I was watching something larger than it appeared to be. In the early 80s I lived in New York City. That year a new and deadly virus, HIV, first made its way into Manhattan’s clubs and alleyways. Then in short order it climbed off the avenue...

Letter Home copyright@2020 will maguire The tornado, an ef3...160mph, tore thru my part of town then stayed on the ground for about 50 miles, heading east. I woke at 1am to the sound of tornado sirens and hail pinging off the roof. The wind was starting to yell...threats...like it sometimes does in spring, but I checked and saw no trees down. At about that time the funnel touched down and began crawling thru my neighborhood. Whole blocks of houses and businesses were leveled. Power is out over a wide area. My street however was spared. As it moved east it mowed down several towns...towns that really no longer exist. Erased in large part. In Oklahoma they sometimes call twisters the finger of God, as though he we're writing His name again and again in the dirt. I doubt that. Not His signature. Seems like a forgery to me. 25 dead so far, including some very young. Toddlers. The wind doesn't really check IDs when it starts spinning up on itself. Left a lot of nevers...

               Chasing the Light copyright@2020  will maguire Years ago—it was many lives ago—I worked nights in Manhattan. Some people call that grave shifting or paying dues. Others call it chasing the light. To stay awake I used to buy coffee at Smilers, the deli on 7th Ave in the Village. Usually around 3 am. Every night on a crate in front of Smilers sat an old black man. White hair, blind. I think he was mildly autistic. He rocked back and forth endlessly. Like Ray Charles caught in the groove. Next to the crate was a boom box, and a simple handwritten sign: Please.   All night he would rock back at forth quietly singing southern gospel songs along with his boom box tracks. And around him till dawn the night city swirled.   At 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 a.m. in the Village, 7th Avenue is full of souls searching the dark for things they could never hope to find in the light of day.  Night sh...

Higher Power Will Magui re Years ago, as a much younger man, I worked for a short time on a fishing boat off the Cape. The job was mainly hauling nets and pouring the catch into holds and cleaning the decks. But this was near the whale routes, so every once in a while, when the sea was quiet, I could feel something great and close — but always hidden beneath the surface. The waves would shudder slightly, and though I could never see it clearly, there was the feeling of a presence larger and closer than it should be. Powerful but hidden. Terrible and beautiful at once. Sometimes if I looked at just the right moment I could see its shadow. And every once in a great while the shadow would come crashing through the surface — visible for just an instant before being pulled back below. When I was growing up, my folks had a house near the transformer that was the main electrical line into town. It was a large steel tower draped with thick cables. Most of the tim...

Protecting the Unprotectable copyright@2019 Will Maguire Many years ago, as a teenage boy, I fell in love with a girl... or perhaps better put, I thought it was love. It was really only the first hopeful version of it. All expectation...long the get and short on give. This was before I knew anything about the sacrifice or selflessness it always demands. Her mother had died young that year of cancer and her death cut a hole in the girl. Her father, a lawyer, believed his faith had been betrayed. So every night he tried to wash his grief away, usually with gin. The hole in the girl grew and then like a torn sweater, she began to unravel. I used to go by her house in the middle of the night, tap on her window and we would whisper thru the screen about how I was going to save her and how she was going to save me. I lived by the sea then and some nights she would sneak out and we would go to the beach. She would lie in my arms sobbing. I tried my best to save her, to protect...

My Creed Will Maguire copyright@2019 I don't believe in peddle cars, or air bnbs or songs that sour like milk in a week. I don't believe in taking two parking spaces cause your mercedes wannabe still has no door dings. Air conditioning makes me choke...roll down your windows. You're not a rib eye steak waiting out the heat in some refrigerator aisle. I do believe in that first sip of Friday beer and the kind of song that makes you ache. Cause good and bad both burn. I believe in the kind of love you dont get to choose, the kind that leaves a bruise but sweeps down on you like the wind. Its more show than tell Can't be heard...too big for words The kind that makes my heart ring  like a cracked church bell.  I believe luck always looks a lot like sweat. And you havent lived until you learn to carry your regret. I don't believe in wearing American flag shirts or pants. But I believe in old men with bad knees, hands on hearts full of jagged memories. And I think t...

The Ring W. Maguire  copyright@2019 "NEW YORK — Just before midnight, a man standing on a sidewalk in Times Square decided that the spot was right. He turned to his girlfriend, fell to a knee and nervously retrieved a diamond ring from his pocket. The girl said yes, the New York Police Department reported, but the man fumbled the ring. It bounced once then rolled eight feet before disappearing down a subway grate." The Ring There is a stretch of Broadway just north of 42 St. in Times Square where the traffic slows. The hacks surrender twisting the wheel and curse under their breath about the clot of tourists and the pain in their spines from too many potholes and too many stiffs. And tangled with its own crowds the speeding city limps for a few blocks. The tourists look up into the lights and the New Yorkers look down at the cracks.  The pick pockets and the three card monte dealers know the difference and, like sheep dogs, herd the tourists to th...