The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

hangs up.
    “About what?”
    “About Adrian, what else?”
    “Oh, yeah. Sure, I will.”
    “Good night then. You all take care of yourselves now, okay?”
    “You too, Dad. Good night. Sweet dreams.”
    Click.
    Beep-beep-beep...
    I sit, holding the receiver, now mute, in my hands, and stare at it as if waiting for something else. A thought pops up—a last bubble of oxygen from the bottom of the well, stirred up by the rock: if I ever have children, I’d like a girl—they have it a bit easier in this world after all.
    Dude, time to sign off, you’ve still got the whole day to figure out tomorrow. Or rather, the whole day today.
    And the day after. And the one after that.
    Alright. How do I get to my feet again?

From the Cycle
Secrets: Untitled/Ohne Titel/Sans Titre
    “W here did you get this?” Daryna asks.
    “What?” the cuckoo yokel replies, half-spooked.
    Just about had it wit’ dem all, he did. Dey’d come and talked up such a storm you couldn’t hear your own self think. Da other ones, dose come before, bought da clock and sideboard and wanted the other clock too, dat littler one over dere dat father brought from the war, when da wife put her foot down, said I ain’t gonna let you clean me all out—dey didn’t wag dem’s tongues for nothing, one-two, counted off the dollars, loaded up da things into dem van and gone oft! Dese new ones catechize you worse than cops, God forbid.
    But, he’s no fool; he’s caught on to which way da wind’s blowing, right off. If not for dis skirt he’d seen on TV, he’d of told her boyfriend to go stick it and dat’d of been end of story. Wouldn’t of listened to nothing. Clear as day, he’s that antiques-Yulka’s boozer ex who’d called here before, and tried to get him. Da one who scared the daylights out of Yulka, so she asked to not come to her work and meet up in da park instead. Looks like he couldn’t suck anything off of Yulka no more, so he’d gone found him a new one.
    She’s not bad to look at, either, he’s done well.... What’d she seen in him? Tho, you wouldn’t tell he’s a boozer just by looking at him, and his hands don’t shake yet. Must be a heck of a fucker—milks ’em all dry, and dem girls probably thank him afterward.... Heck, I got nothing to complain about either, thank God. Do one a good turn myself if da chance arose.... No helping it—he squeezed the antiques-Yulka in the mudroom after she’d let him pinch her tit. She’d of let him hold it and ball it, too. She clucked right back at him, and stuck her hand into his pants, and said, Wow! You could tell she’d took a shine to him right off, back whenhe first came to her store and she took him out to an expensive diner, said, if my boozer turns up now we’ll have no peace....
    Young girl like dat, they always got eyes for a man with some ’sperience, ’specially if she’d got burned already once. But—dat’s all bygones, old news. And he’s a family man hisself: might get hungry somewhere else, but likes to sup at home anyhow. Dis one here—she’s quick as a fox, look at her eyes sweep over this whole place here! Now dey think I’m s’posed to tell em like at confession—who, and what, where’d it come from?
    “Where did you get this?” Daryna repeats.
    “What?”
    “This,” Daryna says, rising from her chair, and walking, like a sleepwalker, across the room with one hand outstretched in front of her.
    Seeing the change in her face, Adrian springs to his feet, too, as if she really were a sleepwalker stepping along a ledge and could slip to her death at any second; the yokel rises after him, drawn inexorably into the same flow of motion, as though they were all in a wind tunnel. And this is how the procession presents itself to an ample-bodied wife, in a stretch T-shirt and a bra one size too small, who appears at this very instant in the doors between the room and the kitchen: the three of them, spellbound, moving in the same direction, one after another, as if in a slow-motion game of tag—and what are they all after, it’s just a wall?
    “This,” says Daryna, coming to a halt against the wall and pressing her fingers to “this” like a blind man who’s just recognized a dear face under his fingers.
    Adrian can’t see what it is—Daryna is standing between him and whatever object has arrested her, her hand in place, not moving. Before he got up, he was sitting with his back to that wall, and did not get a good look at what was pasted