Twenty-Minute Pieces Originally published in McSweeney's, 2002. March 28, 2002. 9:05am-9.25am. He noticed. He stared. She noticed. She smiled. He approached. She rebuffed. He offered. She accepted. He said, she said, he said, she said. They drank. They said. They drank. He touched. She laughed. They danced. He pressed. She kissed. They left. They did. He left. She slept. He called. He called. He called. He begged. She refused. He called. He wrote. He visited. He called, called, called, called. She reported. He arrived, shouted, vowed, departed. He plotted. He waited. He visited. She gasped. He demanded. She refused. He grabbed. She screamed. He slapped. She ran, locked, called, waited. He panicked. He fled, hid, failed. She accused. He denied. She described. He denied. She won, he lost. They aged. She wed, reproduced, parented, saddened, divorced. He bided, waited, hardened. Fought. Smoked. Plotted, planned. Escaped. Vanished. They lived. She thrived, he faded. He wandered; she traveled. They encountered. He sat, she sat, they ignored. He noticed. She noticed. He gaped. She jumped. She warned, he assured. She reminded, he admitted. She threatened, he promised. She considered. She sat. She asked. He told. He asked. She told. He smoked. She smoked. He apologized. She cried. He explained. He begged. He pleaded. She considered, resolved, refused. He stood. He clenched. He perspired. He spat. She flinched, paled. He stopped. He slumped. He collapsed. She stood. She pitied. She left. They lived. They forgot. They died. April 2, 2002. 8:20am-8:35am. All day the child has been trying to get the window open. He’s four and he isn’t strong enough. The father has noticed this, but it’s winter, and he doesn’t want the window open, so he’s been ignoring the child’s efforts. Eventually the child cries and the father asks him what’s wrong. “I can’t get the window open.” “Well, I don’t want you to get the window open. It’s cold.” “But I have to get the pins.” “What pins?” “The pins.” What the child is talking about is a cache of small safety pins he slipped under the sash one unseasonably warm day when the window was open. He wants the pins because tomorrow he’s going to preschool, and his friend Julia wears the same kind of socks he does, and he figures he can put the safety pins on his socks, so that they won’t get mixed up. But, today anyway, this is beyond his power to explain. The father goes to the window and looks out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Never mind!” Later that day the child manages to slide a metal ruler underneath the sash and is able to pry open the window. He sees the pins and reaches for them, but the ruler slips and the window crushes his hand. He wails in pain. The father examines the hand. “I told you not to play at the window,” he says. “I need the pins!” says the child. “Arthur, I don’t know what you mean.” “The pins! The pins!” “Please stop crying and tell me what you mean.” “I need the pins!” At last the father is exasperated. The child is sent to bed early. The next day, at school, the children make a puppet theater. They use their socks as puppets. The child’s socks are mixed up with his friend’s, and he returns home with two different ones. “This isn’t your sock,” his father says. “I know.” “Where’s your sock?” “Julia has it.” “Then whose is this?” “Julia’s.” “Oh.” The father scratches his head. “We should put your initials on them or something. Your socks. So you know they’re yours.” The father looks at the child’s hand. It is discolored where the window landed on it. “Does this hurt?” “No.” “What do you think? Should we put your initials on your socks?” “Okay.” But they don’t get around to it. The father is pretty busy and the child’s mind wanders. Eventually he gets new socks that look nothing like Julia’s. Spring comes and the father replaces the storm windows with screens. He finds the little pile of safety pins. He says to himself, “Where the hell did these come from?” and throws them in a drawer. April 2, 2002. 8:37am-8:57am. Two women in a car, on their way to a wedding. The driver used to be the bride’s roommate. The passenger used to be the bride’s friend. The driver and passenger would never be in a car together, except for the sake of the bride. One time, in college, the passenger and the bride got drunk and took their clothes off. They fooled around. To the bride, it was no big deal. To the passenger, it was a watershed. The passenger fell in love with the bride, but by this time they were no longer close. The driver finds the passenger pathetic. Once, after a different night of drinking, the bride told the driver about her encounter with the passenger. The bride implied that it was all the passenger’s idea, though this isn’t true. The driver asked the bride what it was like and the bride (still years from becoming a bride) said that it was weird and a little disgusting. This isn’t true either. In the back seat of the car are two brightly wrapped gifts. The passenger says, “I can’t believe she’s getting married.” The driver says, “Believe it.” The passenger says, “It’s just hard to believe.” This is not a new topic, it’s been going on for miles. There is silence for a long time. The driver says, “I know what happened, you know.” The passenger says, “You know what happened.” “Between you. The thing. She told me.” “What thing.” “The thing you did that night you were drunk. She told me.” There is another silence. “That’s interesting.” “What’s interesting?” “That she told you.” “We’re best friends.” “She used to be my best friend.” “Yeah, but then you did the thing.” “She did it too.” “That’s not what I hear.” (The driver knows this is unfair. But she has about had it with the passenger.) After a few minutes, the passenger reaches into the back seat and grabs her gift to the bride. She holds it in her lap for awhile, then rolls down the window and tosses it out. “That was stupid,” says the driver. “Stop the car.” “No!” “Stop the car, Lydia!” “No way.” “If you don’t I’ll grab the wheel and kill us both.” “Go right ahead, bitch,” says the driver, but then she pulls over. The passenger walks back to the gift. It’s a long walk. The wrapping paper is half torn off, and the gift is scuffed and battered. It’s a photo album. She walks back to the car and gets in. The driver stubs out her cigarette. She knows the passenger doesn’t smoke and waits until the door is closed to exhale. They don’t talk for the rest of the drive. The passenger unwraps the gift and pages through the album, tearing the photos from it and throwing them out the car window. All the photos are of herself. The driver is thinking, I can’t believe I have to drive this psychotic bitch to Chicago. The passenger is thinking, All those years I spent discovering this one thing about myself, this one stupid thing. Why couldn’t I have just known it? She remembers filling the photo album with these ridiculous pictures, remembers thinking this was a good idea. She sees now how dumb it was. It is almost, in fact, funny. She has the slightest inkling that her whole life is going to change after this wedding, that she is going to be happy again, the way she was the night she fooled around with the bride. She laughs out loud, and when she sees how much this annoys the driver, she does it again. She decides to keep the empty photo album for herself. c2002 by J. Robert Lennon.