Tiffiny - A Story For Our Time by Geronimo Tagatac

When I look down at the long scar on my right forearm, I realize that after three weeks, it is healing. I make a mental note to talk to my therapist about my attraction for women with shaved heads and penchants for exotic knives.

I call the number in the personal ad to confirm tonight’s date. Then I walk down to the park, by the lake, where the reeds grow out of the shallows. The sun is dropping through the last dark layers of the sky, down toward the s eam of night.

When I look down at the long scar on my right forearm, I realize that after three weeks, it is healing. I make a mental note to talk to my therapist about my attraction for women with shaved heads and penchants for exotic knives. I tell myself that I’m lucky that Tulla was an amateur with a blade. Still, I may want to be somewhere else when her release date comes around.

The wind ripples the water on the lake and brings the smell of the far shore to me. How I would like to slip into the water just to feel the slippery, submerged grasses against my face and arms, to melt into the comforting shadows below the water’s surface. I would give anything to feel the caress of cool, dark mud against my chest and thighs. But there isn’t time.

I take out my wallet, remove the ad that I clipped from the paper, unfold it and read it.

“Single, white, Christian woman seeks professional man with stable income and conventional views. Contact Tiffiny.”

Geronimo Tagatac is a first generation Philipine-American. He spent his childhood living and working in the fields and orchards of rural California. He has published short fiction in the “Writers Forum,” “Orion” and “Mississippi Mud.” He currently lives and writes in Salem, Oregon. He can be reached by email.