Number 7, November 1998 IN THIS ISSUE... Lazarus, May by Jon Soverow Verb 'To Kill' trans. Ana Berlin Persian Heiress to Wed 800-lb. Gorilla by Sara Aliabadi Susan by Mike Sherry Eglise St. Jean de Malte by Jenny Yue All the Better by Nick Salvato

SUSAN She sat down slowly as the train doors hissed shut, carefully arranging her bags between her feet. The dishes in their brown paper shopping bag slumped awkwardly against first one leg, then the other. She was still leaning over them as the car rumbled into a subway tunnel. The lights went out, and while she was sure that no one could see her, Susan slumped against her knees, hunching her back with fatigue. She felt like a cocoon, safe for the moment inside fragile silken threads from the press of the dirty orange vinyl seats, the dark blots of the other huddled passengers, the wind and rattle of the moving train.       The unwieldy dishes rattling between her feet had looked so perfect in the display window of the antique store. She had imagined them in the battered china closet that hulked in the corner of her new flat, its bulk a pleasant reminder of home. Take the china closet, her mother had said, now that you’re living on your own you’ll be doing more entertaining than we will. Susan had tried to protest, aware of the implicit guilt trip in her mothers words; the old china closet seemed to embody all the properness of her parents and their disapproval of her leaving home, but at the same time she loved its impossible boxiness, its faded mahogany-colored wood. There was something auspicious about the old closet entertaining in a new place. Perhaps she would even serve her parents on the new dishes she took out of it when they came to visit her new place.       Light leaked in between the fingers of her gloves and Susan sat up with a start. An old man on the other side of the subway car peered at her over small rectangular glasses before rattling back behind his paper in disapproval. The dream of the elegant hostess dissipated as the arches of her feet began to ache again. She had not yet bought a pair of sensible shoes, since realizing that what the advertisement had called proximity to subway was really a seven block walk. Not so much really, she chided herself. In a month it would seem like nothing.       The train was slowing down, approaching another station. She looked around at the handful of passengers still in the car, but no one seemed to be getting off. Still she pressed her sore insteps against her purse on one side and the dishes on the other. You cant be too careful on the subway, her mother had said. Never know what kind of weirdoes might try to steal your purse. As they pulled up to the platform, Susan wondered when those pieces of advice would cease to manifest themselves in her mothers voice, when they would be a part of her.       The platform seemed deserted; it was the transitional time between dinner and late night revelry, and the usual crowds were absent. But at last here came a small group of teenagers, three boys appearing first as bobbing shadows in the harsh neon of the station. They pelted across the stained concrete, thumped onto the train in their hi-top sneakers. When the doors closed and the train began to accelerate they were still moving, circling and bumping against each other like a pack of dogs. Susan felt herself shrinking back with the other passengers, the stillness disturbed.       When they had settled themselves against the doors and railings in the car the three boys began to talk in low tones. Aware that she was closest to the three boys, Susan tried not to look at them. Still she found herself straining to catch a word here and there above the noise of the moving train. The other passengers were listening too she realized. She knew suddenly that the three boys were talking about all of them, the combined force of their gaze sweeping through the car. In fact the whole atmosphere of the space had changed, the indifferent stillness of before replaced by a more conscious indifference. Don’t look at me, it said, I’m not worth your time. continued...