After all the wet weather, the gnats were worse than ever in Mrs. George’s back yard. Sweat running down his bare chest from the humidity, Len squinted and swatted for over an hour, and yet, as he swung the mower around, using both hands, a gnat flew into his eye and got caught. Len blinked. He shut off the mower and squeezed his eyes shut to force tears, but his eye was on fire. He heard Mrs. George call his name. If he flicked the lens out while he stood on the grass and it missed his hand, he’d lose it and have to use his own money to replace it because his mother hadn’t bought insurance. “That’s enough money spent,” she’d said. “You take care of those things and you don’t need insurance.”
One eye glued shut, he walked toward the patio where Mrs. George tanned while he mowed. Mrs. George opened the kitchen door for him and pushed a chair away from the table. While she watched, he popped the lens out into his open palm and dropped it into the case he always carried.
He squeezed his eye shut again, but the bug was still in there, down in the corner where his contact lenses used to slide when he looked away while he was inserting them. “Try this,” Mrs. George said, running water into a shot glass that was standing near the sink and carrying it to him. “Open that eye,” she said. She was wearing the same white halter top she’d had on the week before, this time with red shorts that showed more of her tan thighs than the pale blue ones had.
Her face was inches from his as he fought to open his eye. “Don’t be a baby,” she said, and when his eye finally opened, she pressed the shot glass over it, the water pouring into his eye, seeping out over his cheek, and dropping onto his bare chest.
“Better?” she said, pulling the shot glass away. Her fingertip brushed under his eye. “Look at that,” she said. “Drowned.” She held her finger in front of his face so he could see the gnat.
“Thanks,” he said, and he turned to take out the other lens because he couldn’t imagine putting the other one back in. He could finish the lawn in ten minutes and trim without his contacts.
“Can you see anything without those?” Mrs. George said.
“Barely.”
She was still standing beside his chair. “The grass can wait. You’re almost done. Let me take another look at that eye.” She leaned down, staring into Len’s eye, and he glanced at her nearly bare breasts and back up. She smiled. “You’re so shy,” she said. “It’s sweet. I bet you’ve never touched a girl.” She kissed Len’s forehead. “Have you?” she said. “Tell the truth.”
“No.”
Len’s hands gripped the sides of the chair. “And none of those girls have touched you, have they?”
“No.” Her hands moved over Len’s face and slipped down onto his chest. He felt himself stiffen. “Look at you,” she said, her hand trailing down Len’s stomach. And when he felt her press against his shorts, he gasped an “Oh” and she held her hand there as he came.
“So fast,” she said. “You boy.” She sipped her drink and looked at him as he softened. “You should clean yourself up.” The mower was still sitting where he’d left it, a quarter of the lawn left uncut. She could finish it herself, he thought, but that seemed as impossible as opening his shorts and wiping himself.
She stretched out in her chair again, and he started the mower, passing back and forth five times before he was finished. He skipped trimming. She wouldn’t say anything.
All of those stories he’d heard about the successive steps of intimacy hadn’t come true. He hadn’t even touched Mrs. George, slipping past those intermediate steps, something he regretted because he hadn’t seen any more of her body than he had while mowing her lawn. But he was different now, though he wasn’t certain just how. Until that afternoon he’d kissed two girls, one of them during a party game, the other so quickly and nervously the girl had stumbled back a half step before catching her balance.
The secret Len now carried hardened like cement within him. Everything that made a difference was a secret, Len decided. If you talked about something, that meant it wasn’t important. Like sports or politics or the weather. He would never mention Mrs. George’s hands to anyone. When he saw his cousin Eileen that evening as she walked up the driveway pushing her baby in a stroller, he watched her from his window, evaluating her body as if, even though she was somebody’s wife and now a mother, she was available and full of desire. The future seemed so mysterious that he locked his door when he heard her enter the house.
newest book is After Arson: New and Selected Essays (Madville Publishing, 2025), and his latest flash collection is The History of the Baker’s Dozen (Pelekinesis, 2024). His long-form story collections have won the Flannery O’Connor Prize and the Elixir Press Fiction Prize. He is co-editor of the annual anthology Best Microfiction.
