Laurie Boris's Blog

Book News: Recommendations and Bans

Hi, book lovers! In the U.S., today (October 5) is the start of Banned Books Week. Organized by the American Library Association, among other groups, this yearly campaign highlights books that have been challenged or banned from school curriculums and libraries and celebrates the freedom to read. Learn more about their mission and see the top ten banned or challenged books from 2024.

What might surprise you about book bans and challenges is that it only takes one person with a form (who doesn’t even have to live in the school district in question) to launch a challenge on a book—or a whole lot of books. This led to a political culture war against “Gender Queer,” a graphic novel about a young person grappling with their sexual identity in a very authentic and vulnerable way, in which a senator I won’t name read a tiny excerpt taken out of context and used it to start a metaphorical bonfire against the whole of LGBTQ+ young adult literature. You don’t want your kids reading it? Fine. That’s between you and your kids. But you don’t get the right, in a country that still has some rights the last time I checked, to tell other kids what they can’t read. Enough of our rights are under attack at the moment, but I will always fight for this one, and I’m heartened that others will, too.

Anyway. I like to celebrate Banned Books Week by reading one or two books from the Top Ten list. This year, since I’ve already read many on the list, I’m reading John Green’s “Looking for Alaska.” It was written in 2007, but so far it doesn’t feel dated and seems actually tame when compared with some of today’s young adult fiction.

Other Reading Suggestions

Looking for more book recommendations? I’ve been following Book Shepherd, which asks authors and readers to submit their three favorite books from what they’ve read the previous year. It’s been fun to be a part of the Shepherd journey from the start. Here are my three favorites. Check them out and, if you’d like, submit your own.

Happy (and defiant) reading!

The Council (and Boychik news!)

Hi. It’s been a while. I wrote a thing. There will be more things. And in early 2026, I’ll be publishing “Boychik Take Two,” the sequel to…you guessed it. In the next few weeks, I’ll have excerpts, title reveals, and more info. If you haven’t already subscribed to my newsletter, it would be a good time to sign up! As always, thank you for reading.

The Council: Phone Call Edition

“I tried to tell them,” said the one they’d called Forty-Three and a Half.

“I know,” Forty-four said. “We all did. But even now, we can’t let hope die.”

“Face it,” she said. “It’s done. Dead and buried. RIP hope. Even my Man from Hope isn’t saying much these days. Mostly he hopes for a decent bowel movement once in a while.”

“You could always make me laugh, even in the darkest times.”

“I have to laugh,” she said. “If I don’t, I might punch someone’s lights out.”

“No violence, though.”

She laughed darkly. “Of course not. Why would I do a thing like that? You know that’s all fake news.”

He didn’t comment.

“Did you read Kamala’s book?” she asked.

“I did.”

“And?”

“I…can’t say she’s not wrong on a number of issues.”

“Interesting.”

He didn’t comment.

“You can say it. Joe was…”

“A good man. Who had his flaws. Like we all do.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “He had an ego the size of Trump’s cankles. You know it’s true.”

“Yes, it’s true.” He sighed. “It could get the best of him, at times.”

“At the worst of times.”

“We can’t rewrite history, much as we’d like to. We can only learn from it and try not to mess up the same way next time.”

“Do you think we’ve learned anything, from this?”

“Truthfully? No,” he said. “I don’t think we have. Not yet. They think they can shut me up, but while I still have breath in this body, I’m going to damn well try to get folks to care.”

“I heard on a podcast that the world’s governments are currently almost three-quarters autocratic.”

“I hope to God we won’t be joining them.”

“We’re already three quarters there. Look around you, for chrissakes. Cancelling the comedians, weaponizing free speech—and us?”

“I do look around me,” he said. “Every damn day. Don’t think I don’t see it. Doesn’t mean I like it.”

“I’m not asking you to like it. I’m only reading the handwriting on the wall.”

“We can change it. It’s not too late.”

“I’ve always thought it might be nice to live in Sweden. You know. After.”

“So that’s it,” he said. “After everything, you’re giving up.”

“I don’t look at it as giving up. More like quality of life. Come on. We both have grandchildren. Well, I do, and you probably will, some day. Do you want Sasha’s and Malia’s kids growing up under autocratic rule?”

“If those with the biggest platforms and voices give up,” he said, “it’s like admitting they’ve already won. And I refuse to do that. For those same future grandchildren. I want them to have what I had. I mean, have.”

“Aha. See? You’ve been thinking about it.”

“When I allow the darker thoughts to intrude. But the two of us are hardly going to solve all the world’s problems in one call.”

“I know. It’s just good to get this out of my head. To talk with someone who’s been there.”

“You’re welcome.”

The voice broke in. Pleasant, female, artificial. “You have thirty seconds left. Thank you for using the Trump prison calling plan.”

“That’s it then, Madame Secretary.” He sighed. “Until next time.”

“Sweden,” she said. “Just think about it.”

The Right-Hand Man

The right-hand man comes into your office. His face is ashen, palms clammy. You can feel the cold sweat from across the room. You knew this day was coming. You’d dreaded it. You’d made crisis-management action plans with alternate scenarios depending on how it went down.

It’s going down.

You pull the bottle of hard stuff out of your lower right-hand desk drawer, along with two cheap tumblers. Because you knew this day was coming.

He shakes his head—you can almost hear his thoughts rattling—and he slinks into the chair across from yours. His eyes look haunted, perhaps for good reason, but he’s a grown man and knew the risks of the job. You’re starting to doubt that now.

“How bad is it?” you finally ask.

“Bad,” he says, voice cracking.

“Twenty-fifth bad?”

He swallows. “Worse. You’ve heard the expression ‘the emperor has no clothes’?”

You smirk. “We’ve all seen the South Park episode—”

“I’m not talking about his microscopic—” He lowers his voice. “I’m talking about…all of a sudden, it’s like nobody’s buying it anymore. The act. The bullying stuff. This morning he fired two aides, and they just stood there and…laughed. And he was all red and fuming and even the vice president refused to come to his defense. To his credit, though, it would have involved running, so…” He mimicked the motion of the vice president’s stride, put up his palms in supplication, leaned back into the chair. “The kids won’t take his calls.” He whispered, “Not even Ivanka.”

It’s worse than you’d imagined. Also in your right-hand desk drawer are battle plans for several scenarios, including the accidental start of a nuclear war, walking too close to an open window overseas, a murder-suicide pact between him and Elon Musk. But you don’t have one for this. You don’t have one in the event of the loss of his so-called powers. You thought he had that bargain with the devil sewn up tight. A terrible feeling comes over you. You tap a few buttons on your keyboard, check the website.

The dread is like an anvil on your chest.

The devil had ended the president’s protection plan. Lucifer himself had left a personal note in the message box: “You were always my favorite, Donnie, but you’ve outlived your usefulness. Ciao, bello.”

Yes. This is the thing you’d dreaded most. Finally he’d pushed Lucifer too hard and the Hoofed One pulled his bargain. Now that you think about it, it was only a matter of time.

“Where is the president now?” you ask.

The man draws in a deep breath, lets it out. “In the TV room watching old episodes of Celebrity Apprentice. He didn’t even want french fries or a Diet Coke. Frankly he was…he was sucking his thumb. But you didn’t hear that from me. Anyway. For now, he’s safe, at least.”

You nod. You wonder if you should call Lucifer, plead the case, promise…whatever was demanded. A payment. A favor. A soul in exchange. In the first term you would have done it gladly.

For a moment, only for a moment, you consider the ultimate sacrifice.

And then you don’t.

You down the rest of your glass, stand, straighten your tie. “Good,” you say to the right-hand man. “Tell him I quit.”

Writer’s Block

I whisk a dusting cloth over the top of my mother-in-law’s picture in its Lucite box frame on the wall.

“Hey.”

I freeze. It’s her voice; I haven’t heard it for years. “What?”

“I hate this picture,” she says. “I’ve always hated this picture.”

I step back, take it all in. The painfully perfect posture. The frozen smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “You do look unhappy.”

“No kidding I was unhappy. It was my parents’ idea to call the photographer. Engagement portraits. Who does that anymore?”

I know a few things about her past, because she’d told me, one squirmy afternoon while I was making soup in her kitchen. She’d never really wanted to get married. But she wasn’t allowed to say that, not then. She did it because everybody was doing it. Everybody in the 1950s graduated from high school and got married, or else they’d call you an old maid. Nobody wanted that. So, you got married too young, before you knew what was what, and you had children and lived in the suburbs and threw dinner parties and smiled when you didn’t feel like it and slowly died inside. Occasionally there were cocktails. Sometimes pills, if you knew someone or had a doctor who was willing.

“You’re free now,” I say. “Shouldn’t you be off, I don’t know, what do Jewish spirits become?”

Dead,” she says. “They become dead. And they haunt their children for the rest of time.”

That sounds a little like her modus operandi for when she was alive, too, but it feels too rude to say out loud.

“And you,” she says. “What the hell are you doing? You’re still young, yet. And here you are stuck in this house with the cleaning and the cooking and the schlepping, week after week dusting these fakakta frames full of dead people. You should be writing.”

“I know. That’s why I’m dusting fakakta frames full of dead people.”

“So, what’s the problem. You write stories, you were always with the stories.”

I sigh. Not so much, lately, with the stories. There are too many things I can’t control. The state of the world, the state of the country, the state of my own life. What I can control is my immediate environment. I’ve never dusted or vacuumed so much in all of my almost 64 years. My house has never been so clean. People close to me should stage an intervention. Seriously. Send help.

“Do me a favor,” she says, her voice so uncharacteristically soft it pulls me closer to her image. I wait. In the picture her hair is perfectly coiffed, her makeup professionally crafted, her outfit painstakingly curated. She resembles a Jewish Audrey Hepburn or a young Elizabeth Taylor. I want to think that someone so young and beautiful can’t possibly be unhappy, but I’m old enough to know what a good costume can conceal, and where to find the cracks in the façade.

Finally she says, “Take down the pictures. Put up some art, something nice. Then go, I don’t know, go for a walk. Get a life, as the kids say.”

“The kids don’t say that anymore.”

“What do I know from what the kids say now? I’m dead. Just…get out of here. It’s like a museum, all these people.”

“Some of them are still alive, you know. I like looking at their pictures. I like looking at yours, and your family’s, and my family’s…it brings back nice memories.”

She makes a rude noise. “Nice memories are for when you’re in some rest home drooling into your oatmeal.”

“Don’t you have someone else you can haunt?”

“Feh, they don’t listen to me.”

“And you think I will?”

“You’re the most likely candidate. Plus if I do a mitzvah, I get special privileges in the spiritual realm, or whatever the hell they call it up there anymore, it’s always changing. I might even get a cigarette or two.”

A Jewish heaven where you’re allowed to smoke? I get the feeling I’m not the only storyteller in the family. “All right. Jeez.” I put down the cloth.

“You’ll write me another novel?” she says, voice full of hope.

“Maybe,” I say.

“Come on, already. The library here is full of junk. I need something good to read.”

Speaking of memories, it floods back to me that she was one of my first and biggest fans. Even when I didn’t think I could do it. Especially when I didn’t think I could do it. “Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll get on that.” A bird chips as if inquiring if anyone is home. “But first, I’m going outside.”

And maybe when I come back in, I’ll track in some dirt and not do a damn thing about it. I swear, when I take a final glance back to her picture, the young Audrey Hepburn’s smile meets her eyes.

The Devil Wears MAGA

Hunkered down in his burgundy leather club chair, Lucifer glowered into the crackling fireplace flames and swirled his snifter of brandy, his thoughts darker than usual. A choice would have to be made; there was no avoiding it. His black soul was no longer entirely in the game. He’d tried to keep it to himself, but undoubtedly his entire household had noticed his fatigue, his ennui, his at times utter contempt for those around him. If word got out, bedlam would be the most pleasant word to describe what would happen to the world.

There hadn’t been a Satanic conclave for hundreds of years. Few were alive who had even heard tell of the proceedings, and by design no physical records had been kept.

He leaned back into the soft leather, stroking his pointed beard. The lack of institutional knowledge could play to his advantage. No one would know if he bent a rule or two. Or three. Or all of them. Hell, he could make it up from whole cloth, should it serve him.

And it would serve him. For there was only one candidate he knew of that he’d trust to take on in his place.

—–

The Neo-Classical revival by the Potomac was dark, the only interior light coming from an upstairs room on the west side. Stealing in, Lucifer paused outside that room, hidden in the shadows.

The scrawny, dead-eyed man who served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff was telling his children the fable of the scorpion and the frog. A fitting choice, Lucifer thought, but he doubted the man knew that the tale had come from the Middle East. If he’d known, he might have changed his bedtime story to one of Grimm’s more gruesome selections, or a passage from Ayn Rand.

Odd how the man’s voice did not change from the loud, singsong presentation he used on the job to something more appropriate for a child. At one point the pallid man glanced up, scowling, as if he’d sensed an intruder.

Good, good, Lucifer thought, mentally rubbing his hands together. Game recognizes game. One point in the man’s favor. He wrapped up the story with the final wonderful, awful line—you knew I was a scorpion all along—and bid his children pleasant dreams. Which came out in a deliciously creepy manner.

He gently shut the door, approached Lucifer and invited him downstairs for a drink.

—-

“I don’t believe we’ve formally met,” said the man. The living room was done in a utilitarian fashion, with muted colors and furnishings that would have felt at home in certain Berlin bunkers. How giddily evil it must feel, Lucifer thought, to hate the very genetics that comprise your corporeal form. To unleash that conflicted rage upon the world. Yet would the man still feel that energy if he assumed the dark throne?

The thought made him smile. He could make a most worthy successor. “Oh, we’ve surely met,” Lucifer said. “Perhaps you were preoccupied. But I’ve been by your side all along. With your soul in my back pocket, as it were, and all that entails.”

With sloth-like lethargy, the light of recognition came into the man’s dead-shark eyes. Then he went dark again. “I don’t recall ever making a bargain with you.”

Lucifer shrugged, took a sip of the inferior scotch the man had offered, tried not to make a face. “It’s easy enough to capture a man’s soul when it’s been abandoned on the side of the road.”

The eyes narrowed, suddenly mad enough to spit venom. “Get out of my house!”

“Oooh, I’m scared,” Lucifer said, holding up his hands. “What are you gonna do, call out your pathetic MAGA militia? I own most of their souls, as well. A few of them are on my payroll.”

The man looked to be considering his alternatives. “I’ll call…him.” He waved an extended index finger as if he’d just landed on something exceedingly clever. “Yeah. I’ll call him. The big man himself.”

A sulfurous laugh escaped Lucifer’s lips. “Are you joking? That orange buffoon has taken out five second mortgages on that nasty bit of tar in my basement that he calls a soul. Most likely, he’ll push you out a window rather than get on my bad side.”

The deputy chief of staff threw down the last dregs of his terrible scotch, slapped his glass on the table. “Enough,” he shouted. “You’re giving me a headache. Why are you here?”

Lucifer let an uncomfortable black silence ooze between them, and then said, “I’ll get right to the point. Soon I expect there will be a job opening in my realm. Would you be interested in … changing careers?”

The pale dead-eyed man blinked. He looked to be fighting back a grin, like he was face-to-face with an incompetent used car salesman and didn’t want to appear too eager. “I should be offended,” he said, his voice rising to its Congressional committee pitch and volume. “I’m trying to do some good in this country! I’m trying to make America white—I mean, great again! I’m trying to make America for Americans! I’m—”

“Oh, please,” Lucifer said. “You know as well as I do that evil always believes it’s doing good.”

There was more silence as the two men sat across from each other in the cold, dark room. “Would it kill you to put on a light in here?” Satan asked.

“Probably,” the deputy chief of staff said. “Yes, it might.” After another pause, he leaned forward, looked left then right, and lowered his voice. “This…career change. How much does it pay?”

Lucifer fought to keep his face expressionless. “You won’t be disappointed.”

The man grinned in reply.

What Are You Reading: The Invisible Bridge

After “How are you?” the second question my father asks me whenever we speak is “What are you reading?” We swap recommendations and talk about favorite authors and what’s next in the TBR list. He knows I like books set during the WW2 era that have a different angle on historical events. So he suggested I look into “The Invisible Bridge” by Julia Orringer.

We meet Andras Lévi, a young, pre-WW2 Jewish Hungarian man (because that was how Jewish people were classified in the days of the Reich, your religion first followed by the country of your birth) eagerly yet with great trepidation setting forth from Budapest to Paris to begin his schooling to become an architect. The writing is lovely and so rich with detail I can imagine myself in all the scenes. I can smell the day-old pastries and stale coffee, the tiny, damp student apartments, and the thin film of bravado over each character’s deep-set fears. All is spread before Andras and his friends, yet all could be lost as the inevitable fact of Hitler’s reach expands across Europe. And that reach is set as a kind of background motif, with the catch of a headline, a letter bringing sorrowful news, a discussion among the students as to what they might be facing if the seemingly inevitable lands on their doorsteps.

Meanwhile, Andras is building a life in Paris, deepening friendships, learning his craft, falling in love…and all the while worried about his family. And we will see why.

It’s a long novel, but I got completely sucked in and wanted to stay with these characters even more as the percentage left to read got smaller.

The story of what Hungarian Jews faced during Hitler’s reign doesn’t get much attention. Thanks in most part to its craven leadership at the time, Hungary had an alliance with Germany. This didn’t exempt the country’s Jewish population from Hitler’s plan, however. But it did condemn them to forced labor in service of the Reich’s war machine—until they were no longer able to work.

Most of my ancestors fled from Eastern Europe to America; some were killed in Cossacks’ pogroms and Hitler’s concentration camps. This pulls me tighter to stories about what people suffered and how they stayed alive and hopeful. I fell in love with the characters in this novel, their strength, their weakness, their fierce love and hatred for each other. And learning the history of this period of time in Hungary, I can’t help but think about the current political situation in Eastern Europe, and the specter of more and more territory clawed back by Russia.

It’s a great story and I recommend it highly. I’m only sorry that the 2011 bestseller hadn’t landed on my radar sooner.

What are you reading?

Baby Mama

Warning: Satire. Adult content.

His assistant said it would be easy. Open the vacuum pack, stick it in, press the plunger, and she’d be on the way to knocked-up city. None of the others had a problem with it. But Jess, knees splayed on the pink toilet seat of her Barbie-inspired bathroom, froze. She’d never been scared. Not like this. She ran marathons, she’d jumped out of planes, she’d always been up for a new challenge.

But she was starting to have second thoughts. And thirds. And fourths.

Her hand shook, beads of sweat dampened her forehead and the back of her neck, and she almost dropped the damned thing in the toilet. The instructions said for optimal viability, she’d have fifteen minutes after opening the package. She rested the plunger on her bare thigh, took a deep breath, reminded herself why she’d decided to go through with this.

At first she thought it was a joke. That he was trolling her, or someone was, because she’d made some stupid comment on social media about why all these jerky incel guys online said she should be barefoot and pregnant.

The first message she received was “If you have my baby I’ll buy you a lot of totally sick shoes.”

It made her laugh. Every other account, it seemed, was some kind of parody of the World’s Richest Man, but this one was cleverer than most.

But when a black-clad flunky came to her door with an NDA and a dozen roses, she realized this was no parody. She’d dropped to a chair after he left, blinking herself back to reality, then read the letter that had come with the document, a selection of words jumping out at her. Your decision. No obligation. Adoptive families available. A great thing for humanity. No physical contact required.

No physical contact…what in the name of Brave New World was this? But as pictures of him from the news and the web came into her mind, that, at least, was a relief. He didn’t do anything for her.

But then she saw the number of zeros in the contract. Did the calculation in her head. Nine months of incubation, with free medical care, would net her enough to pay off her student loan with enough left over for graduate school.

Then she could be on her merry way to the life she’d always dreamed of—getting a master’s in oceanography, studying the delicate barrier between the sea and the land. So she’d signed the paperwork, submitted to the health screening, and the package had arrived at her front door.

But now…

She checked her watch. She had five minutes left until the world’s most expensive sperm expired. Heat flushed her face; her heartbeat pounded into her ears. The plastic syringe had made an imprint into her thigh.

“No harm no foul if you fail to conceive. But you must return proof of application, in the form of the empty syringe that includes your DNA, as well as a signed copy of the enclosed affidavit that you injected the specimen…”

The words from the contract had amused her when she first saw them. Now they had a savage twist, and she felt like a brood mare on a farm. She pictured herself huge and achy and tired, cursing the day she’d decided to do this.

But the money…and it was only nine months…

She brought the syringe between her legs again. Hesitated a moment, the tip of her index finger on the plunger. But she couldn’t move it closer. Her body had decided for her. With the fingers of her other hand, she collected some of her own fluid, distributed it evenly over the plastic, and shot his South African wad into the john.

The Council: The Notorious HRC Edition

While the forty-fourth president watched the impending destruction of his March Madness bracket, his phone rang. He saw the ID and groaned. He considered sending her to voice mail, but there was that old pull again. Michelle would have something to say about that. Understanding and not understanding why he couldn’t just walk away from a lifetime in public service.

The phone rang again. He mustered up a smile in his voice that he in no way felt, and answered, “Madame Secretary.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. Following that was a grunt worthy of Serena Williams laying down an ace. “What are we doing about this?”

Grunt. Obama paused a beat. “Frankly, I don’t know.” Grunt. “What is that noise?”

Another grunt, as if on cue. “Krav Maga class. I’m killing it.” Her voice rose. “You got it, Justice Barrett. Harder. Aim for the man parts next time.”

He winced. Resistance did indeed make for some strange bedfellows, and he’d never expected that Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s replacement would be walking in the Notorious RBG’s martial arts footsteps. “Sounds like you’re, maybe, getting ready to do something about this.”

“If you stay ready,” Hillary said. “You don’t gotta get ready.”

“Are you seriously quoting RuPaul to me right now?”

“If the stiletto fits. Listen. I got some ideas. Why not let’s get the band back together and see what we can do about this clown car shit show before we’re all speaking Russian.”

“About that…” He’d been chewing on the future utility of the Council for some time now.

The other end of the phone went quiet. She sighed. “Barry…”

That was never good. He waited for her to say more. Because there was always more. But then he grew impatient. “No,” he said. “I’ve done my time. I can’t save the world. I am not Superman. Much as everybody wants me to be and, deep down, much as I want to be. It’s killing my spirit and my health, it’s killing my marriage…and no, those rumors are not true, but it’s awfully chilly up in here lately. And I do not blame her one bit for drawing her own lines in the sand.”

More silence. Her voice was quiet, cracked a bit. “But if not us, who?”

“Aunt Hillary, maybe it’s time.”

“To take matters into our own hands? Good. So, my last idea didn’t pan out like we hoped. But I got some Serbian mercenaries lined up, all I have to do is hit send and the crypto will be deposited straight into their wallets. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. “No. It’s time… for a new generation to step up and lead.”

“Why? You need a nap?”

“You need a new hip? Get real, Madame Secretary. The gerontocracy has got to go. Nobody in our, shall we say, peer group has the courage to be the first to start. Sure, some are passing the gavel but they’re not leaving the stage unless the good lord calls them home. You know what? I’m gonna be the first to start. Carry on if you must, I can’t stop you, but I. Can. Not.”

And then he hung up. He got a cold beer, reclaimed his favorite chair and tried to watch the rest of the basketball game in peace. But it was no use. He knew deep in his soul that he would never exit the stage and never leave public service until the last breath left his body. Cussing under his breath, he picked up the phone. And as he was about to press the button, she called him.

“I got an idea,” he said, before she could speak.

“Too late. I just gave the order. I sent in my own version of Seal Team Six.”

The breath froze in his lungs. He had visions of blood and brains on walls. Of all of them in an El Salvador prison camp. “Hill, we can’t—”

“You can’t. I can, so I did.” She raised her voice. “Justice Barrett! Harder! Imagine it’s Alito.”

“Call them off,” he said, in his FAFO tone.

“Hell no,” she said. “I got an army to build.”

Cereal…and Some News

A recent contestant on Jeopardy! inspired me to write this bit. And I thought it was just time to have a little fun. Mostly. In other news, I expect to publish the sequel to “Boychik” in early 2026. Title to be “Boychik Meets Girl.” Have a nice day.

This dude, he buys cereal. Boxes and boxes, whether or not there’s a sale, two for ones, generic or brand names, doesn’t matter. Every Saturday he comes to the store—tall, thin white dude with a bow tie and glasses, every hair in place like he’s got a tiny personal landscaper for his scalp.

And he always ends up at my register. Force of habit? Thinks I’m cute? I’m not supposed to ask why. They told me at training—be friendly but not that friendly. Don’t comment on the purchases. If, say, they’re wearing a team jersey I can smile and say “go team” or whatever, but never, ever, ever tell a guy his team sucks. It’s like the golden rule of retail, the trainer said. If a cashier checking you out in a store ever said something that pissed you off enough to go to the manager, don’t be doing that to someone else. You don’t know what people are going through. Might have just lost their job, is why they’re buying ramen and generics and shit. Maybe they’re pregnant when they didn’t want to be, maybe their mother just died.

So that’s what I do. And I must be doing something right, because I haven’t been written up once for anything in the seven years I’ve been here.

He’s back again now. Today rocking the bow tie with a button-down white shirt and jeans that look ironed. Comes in, gets a cart, disappears down the big aisle and you just know he’s going for the cereal. Funny, I never see him buy milk. Unless he gets it somewhere else. Maybe he doesn’t even eat the stuff. When it’s slow I make up stories about him in my head. He works for the church and he’s buying for the food pantries. Like some food insecurity Robin Hood, only he buys the stuff, and brings it to the poor folks.

Then he’s in my lane with six boxes of generic corn flakes. And some razors, shaving cream. His eyes have their usual shine, like he’s brand new to the world, taking it in for the first time. It’s a slow morning and curiosity gets the best of me.

“You must really like cereal.”

“I do!” he says.

I wave another box over the scanner. Blip. “You have it with milk, or straight out of the box?”

“Oh.” He looks like he’d never thought about it. “Both ways, depending. I just…really like having it around.”

“Must have a big pantry or a whole lot of kids.” I think I might be on the edge of non-trainer-approved behavior, but it feels like he doesn’t mind being asked questions, not in any rush to check out and go home.

“I keep it in my basement,” he says. “I just feel better knowing it’s there.”

“Oh.” I’m getting an odd feeling now. Like I should stop asking questions. Like he’s some kind of weirdo. Like, what else is in that man’s basement?”

“Doubt they’re gonna stop making it any time soon.” Blip.

He gives me a long look, a little smile like he’s chewing on a secret. “You never know.”

I finish ringing him up, take his cash—he always pays in cash—and with a polite thank you, he leaves.

The girl on the next aisle doesn’t have a line and leans over the partition. “Mr. Wizard still keeps coming around for you, huh.”

“Mr. Wizard?”

“He’s some kind of rocket scientist, I heard. Nuclear something-or-other.”

My radar pings. Nuclear. Cereal. Basement. It lands on something my mother said about when she was a girl in school. Duck and cover under the desks. Blast radius. Mushroom cloud.

I try not to think about it anymore. I try not to think about what Mr. Wizard the nuclear scientist might know. Customers come up to the registers and I’m grateful to go back to work.

But later that night, my husband finds me busy in the basement with a measuring tape. His eyebrows ask a question. I say, “How bout we put some shelves down here. You know. Maybe some canned goods. Just in case.”

Feral

If they made her disappear, she worried most about the cat. The slender young calico, the runt of a litter gone feral, had chosen her rickety front porch to make his home. She’d named him Oliver. She left food for him. Sometimes by the end of the day it remained untouched, other times it was gone by noon. But she always made sure to refill the bowl, to watch out for him, to try to care for him if he’d hurt himself out on a night prowl. She’d pulled out prickers and bought him a collar to ward off pests, and with great patience and care, she got close enough to bring him to the vet. Once because he needed ten stitches in his side. “That’s no cat fight,” the vet had said, looking at her long and hard as if to say trying to domesticate a wild animal was crazy and would only lead to trouble and vet bills.

She was glad to pay the money. Oliver had become her friend. Her only friend, really. She’d sit on the front porch waiting for him, and eventually instead of leaping away he’d stick around. Eyeballing her from a distance, growing closer. She smiled, thinking about the progress of his trust. She always waited for him to come to her. She knew from a flick of his tail, the wideness or narrowing of his sage green eyes, if it was a good day or bad.

Today was a good day. Oliver ate with gusto, groomed himself, then came over and rubbed his cheek against her calf. Slowly, ever so slowly, she reached down to offer a hand and he marked that, as well. She frowned. There was a notch missing from his ear, a bloodied crust. “You fighting again, boy?” Oliver looked up, smiled. As if to say “You should see the other guy.”

Tears came to her eyes. Who would take care of him?

Not her neighbors, certainly. They all thought she was nuts. She didn’t trust any of them not to turn around and call animal control.

But it was getting too dangerous to stay. A colleague told her about a safe place, only they didn’t allow pets. It was too much of a risk. Sometimes they’d have to relocate with little if any notice, and there wouldn’t be time for people to get their animals together. It could harm them all.

Two people she used to meet up with in the library basement vanished one day. Just didn’t show up to their meeting, and when she called them, their phones didn’t answer. That’s what happened, some said. You were there one minute, then…gone.

Some said it was too dangerous even having a phone. They were tracking people. But she tried to be careful. She knew about technology, GPS, covering her movements. She’d been very good at her job. Until she got the email that she wasn’t needed anymore. They cut off her access, but she knew the back doors. Because she’d built them.

Then the weird South African man offered her a new position working for the government. “With your talent,” one of his minions had said to her, “you could write your own ticket.”

It would have made for a healthy payday, but the cost was far too high. He didn’t like to be refused. Now it was only a matter of time until his goons came for her. “You can take them, can’t you, Oliver?” She scratched under his chin. He lifted his head, closed his eyes, and purred. She didn’t have his claws to defend herself, but she had a gun. Maybe she’d go feral, too.