Temporary

by Hilary Leichter

I put on some sneakers and take him for a run in the park, but the dogs distract him. He tries, and fails, to pet every single one.

She unearthed from the back of her storage space a marvelous bronze shoe rack, shaped like a nautilus shell. It is the same shape found in the angle of flight the hawk employs to devour its prey.

fro.

From?

“Remember,” Farren says. “Sometimes you have to leave home to earn permanence. There are opportunities for diligence and efficiency in many realms.

“Working remotely is what we call being dead. Pirate lingo.”

A large poster on the wall features a cat with a peg leg paw. “There is no Purr in Pirate!” reads the caption.

Sometimes he perches on a post, nose to the sky, flapping his arms ever so slightly.

“He’s filling in for our parrot, Maurice,” the executive assistant explains.

A forty-minute sneeze is something I know how to do, and it’s not even listed on my resume.

The house was a house for a family, and I was filling in for a ghost.

“The banks hired me,” Carl says.

“But the banks hired me to rob the other banks!” Laurette said. “And then the other banks hired me to rob the robbing banks in retaliation!

Time introduces herself to me, to each of my empty hours. Time is a new acquaintance, and she does something funny to my limbs, my

worries, my anger, my life.

The First Temp locked herself in a bathroom stall and became the First Temp to Cry in the Bathroom at Work, the very first of her kind.

When everyone is gone, it doesn’t matter who came first, who was original, who was not.

It’s been ages. There’s a crease that runs along my brow, and I’m not sure where it’s from.