Four Fictions
Lynn Kozlowski

The Old Announcer Reads to His Wife in the Waiting-room

His voice is resonant. She bends her head toward him. He sounds the words deeply and low. The National Geographic. His voice is recognizable, professional. He is the unseen voice of public TV. Also the voice of classical music on the public Radio. He is old. She is old. He reads on, impressing us all in the waiting-room in their overhearing. He performs the lines from The Geographic. She nods and smiles. Her hair is cancer thin. He is fat, gray, and sounds good, professional, entertaining themselves with his voice, his reading aloud mostly for her.

The long-bearded men

On the special tour of the old university in Krakow, I ask about a display of old photographs of bearded men. It was in a poorly lit reception area in an old building. Professors, I thought. Arrogant professeurs in staged shots that might have been prepared for portraits in oil. Full beards. Gray beards. I thought these guys had maybe done one or two publications that no one now reads. Articles maybe for the Polish Journal of Philosophy. The photographs were very old looking. Perhaps from early in the century. I thought these men were full of themselves. I am a professer myself and I know that arrogant, full-of-oneself look.
"What is this?" I said, pointing toward the display. The guide said, "These are the professors that the Nazis shot."

The Hygienist's Left Breast

The hygienist pushes her breast against the side of my head. I lean a slight bit into it. I feel the breast give and stay put during several lingering maneuvers as she scrapes and cleans my teeth. She is embracing my head in the crook of her arm and leaning over my mouth. She is doing a deep cleaning, probing millimeters below my gum-line.

Suburban Gardening

The old guy sat out after supper. When the pair of woodchucks came to his berries, he shot them.
Neighbors came out to see what had happened. The young father next door fixed on what looked like a real rifle within the limits of the suburb. "What happened?" the young man said. The old guy pointed to the carcasses with his rifle. The young mother sent her daughter back inside. The woman said, "You can't do that . . . you can't fire guns in town. The animal people will be down on you too. You can't do that here."
She watched the back leg of one of the woodchucks moving in the air, as if it was trying to run with a single up-turned foot. "One's alive -- it's moving! Do something."
The old guy said, "It's dead."

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