Boone – Sebastian Malloy

Archive by category "Boone"

The Donner Party

A snowy white landscape with a solitary leafless tree against a white sky

“What do you do around here for fun?” Rivi asks. “Sitting on the porch in Adirondacks during a snowstorm isn’t your idea of fun?” I say. “I mean, it’s nice,” she says, “but it’s not really exciting.” “You don’t move here for excitement,” Tina says. “You move here for the quiet.” “And the coyotes,” Hunter adds. “And the stars,” Boone says. “I noticed that last night.” I nod. “Yeah, you haven’t seen a night sky until you live where there are no streetlights. You should have been here during some of the auroras. That was some pretty impressive nature, I…

A Feral Princess

Close-up of a tarnished doorknob set in a door covered in peeling paint, and bits of rusted metal. It is an old and weathered door.

I am supposed to not know that Rivi, Boone, and Tina are coming to pay us a visit in our house in the woods, and so when I open the front door to them after they knock and the dog barks the arrival of someone at the porch, I make sure that I am wearing my most authentic surprised face. “That’s a bullshit look if I ever saw one,” Rivi says. “Somebody told you we were coming.” “Shut up and hug me,” I say, wrapping her in an embrace. “It’s still bullshit,” she says. “It was Tina, wasn’t it? Boone…

Plans In the Fading Light

“Sit on the end of the bed,” I say. “Hands in your lap.” Tina does as I ask, putting her hands together, letting them fall slightly into the space between her thighs. She is wearing an old cardigan, a whisper of blue still clinging to the thin fabric. It’s open in the front, revealing to my eye, but I know that when I take the photo, the curves beneath will be lost in the shadows painted on her by the fading evening light. “Don’t move,” I say. I go to her, and with the tip of my finger, I move…

The Welcomed Rising Tide

“New shoes,” Tina says, turning her feet this way and that, the cherry red leather glowing in the sunlight coming through her bedroom window. “Very red,” I say. I am in her bed, the sheet gathered around my waist. “Like how much more red can they be?” “The answer is none,” she says, putting a twist on the obligatory Spinal Tap joke. “None more red.” “Are you going to put any other clothes on? Or just go out in nothing but shoes?” “It’s San Francisco,” she says. “Rules don’t apply here.” I’ve seen Tina undressed many times before in our…

Endless December

Tina is asleep on the bed, turned away from the window, the morning light soft around the edges of the motel curtains. She is snoring softly, which I won’t tell her about when she wakes. She likes to pretend that she is a delicate flower. We had gone south for Easter, driving along the coast until we ran out of stamina, and stopping at the first motel with a vacancy. Tina had fallen asleep before I’d gotten out of the shower, sprawled on her stomach across the top of the bed nearest the window. I’d covered her with a spare…

Pancakes and Plans of Attack

Olivia’s apartment is empty. “You’re not her mom,” Tina says. “She doesn’t have to tell you when she leaves town.” “I know,” I say. I feel weird standing in Olivia’s living room, afraid to touch anything, like I’m intruding on a crime scene. This concern for her is completely irrational, but after the idea that she’s connected to the ghostly photo Rivi took in her bedroom, it’s something that I’m unable to shake free from my mind. “Did you try calling her?” Tina asks. “Yeah. And texts.” “This is why life was better before cell phones,” she says. “If you…

An Unsettled Cloudiness

“What am I looking at?” Tina asks. “Look closer,” Rivi says. We are all sitting at my kitchen table. Tina peers at the screen on the back of Rivi’s camera, staring at the picture there, a photo of Rivi’s bedroom from yesterday at three in the morning. “I don’t see anything,” Tina says. Rivi gets up from her chair and comes around behind Tina. She points her finger at a spot on the screen, and I know what it is she’s looking at: a blur in the flash-blown photo, a smear in the air, hovering directly over the foot of…

The Blood and the Smoke

“There’s a ghost living in my apartment,” Rivi says. “I woke up last night and she was in bed with me.” We are having lunch in Chinatown, dumplings and roasted duck. Tina was supposed to join us, but she texted us to say she was on a mission and wouldn’t make it. She didn’t say what her mission was. “She was curled up like a dog on my feet,” Rivi continues. “She had smoke where her eyes were supposed to be.” “You were having a dream,” I say. I pick up a dumpling with my chopsticks and take a bite…

Barstow

Tina sits on the floor of her bedroom, her back against the mattress, the grey parachute hanging above her head. I can see the outlines in the silk of the pieces of plaster that have collected there since the last time she emptied it. I don’t know how there can be any of her ceiling left above her by this point. “I found a ladybug in here yesterday,” she says. “I have no idea where she came from. I thought it was too cold for them to live in December.” She touches her lower lip, which I know is her…

Cheese In a Can

Tina and Rivi are sprawled across my sofa, one at either end, feet tangled together in the middle. Tina has an old Polaroid, some beat up old thing she rescued from a Goodwill, and where she has managed to find film packs for it, I have no idea. Rivi has the cat—Jessie—on her chest, and the purrs are louder than would seem likely from such a small animal. “The thing about being depressed,” Rivi is saying, “is to just stay in bed until you get over it. It’s absolutely socially acceptable to eat cheese in a can and not bathe…