Medium-sized kids splash in an above-ground pool. Jane supervises from a lawn chair. Inside, upstairs, I pack for a journey to the East. Commerce junket. The year I learn that Sales are not for me. That morning Jane closed on an apartment building. Flush. She flattened the notion of upgrading to an in-ground with a slide and a diving board. Could it have a “grotto?” Dad-jokes. Before I went to pack for my trip to sell silk shirts, she said we should talk about something important after I returned. All she’d say. A sword hanging over my head all week.

—From the author’s in-progress manuscript, In the Location Business, a collection primarily of microfictions.

Todd Mercer’s

short collection Ingenue was a winner of the Celery City contest. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, is available free at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in Beatnick Cowboy, Flash Frontier, and Literary Yard.