Time stands still for Bobby B. He works at the same Cosmic Cone ice cream shop where he got his first job scooping Black Hole Fudge and Mint Meteor Chip at thirteen by saying he was fifteen even though he looked twelve. He’s lost track of how many times he’s been Employee of the Month. And though he’s thirty-nine now, he still sleeps in the creaky attic room in his parents’ home where he can peer through the roof window and trace Orion’s Belt and the Big Dipper ladling dark matter into empty space. He’s never had a date and one wintry night when his mother brought him a cup of cocoa with tiny marshmallows to help him sleep, she perched on the edge of his bed, looked down at her lap, whispered, Even if it’s not girls you like it’s ok, Bobby. We just want you to be happy. He’d blushed and said, Don’t worry Ma, I am.

Sometimes on Sunday afternoons when a November wind rides roughshod and the sky is a hovering charcoal cloak over the town, Bobby takes the slingshot he whittled from a small oak branch like a wish bone, thrusts acorns and jagged rocks at the gabled upper-story windows of the deserted house down the block, the house where old Mr. McAllister beckoned from his porch the day after Bobby’s thirteenth birthday, saying, I have a surprise for you, led him inside and down that long dark corridor that smelled of incense over boiled cabbage and old mahogany to a room with a four-poster bed covered with a paisley spread and little white lights lining the ceiling molding like a celebration. He handed Bobby a glass of whiskey and said in a gravelly purr, Welcome to the kingdom of heaven, Bobby B. It’s time you became Robert don’t you think? And afterwards, Bobby ran down the hall, across the porch, along the street and back home where he refused dinner and lay on his bed staring out the window listening to tree frogs scream and hoping for a shooting star to appear and zoop him away. He’d have to wait for the cold winds of winter to seep through the cracks before Perseus appeared in the sky like an open hand reaching out.

For now, sweat mats his mess of chestnut hair in the August heat with only a squeaky old fan in need of oil pushing the air around in the room that stinks of ripe sneakers and droppings from the mice who take refuge in the eaves after a rainstorm. Bobby sorts his baseball cards into rookies and journeymen, growls at Ursa Major that no matter what anyone says he’ll keep dishing out Big Bang Banana Splits and Milky Way Swirl for grateful customers as long as he can and always, always stay Bobby.

Kathryn Silver-Hajo’s

work appears, or is forthcoming, in Atticus Review, Centaur Lit, CRAFT, Emerge Literary, Ghost Parachute, Milk Candy Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, Ruby Literary, The Phare, and other lovely journals. Her stories were selected for the 2023 and 2024 Wigleaf Top 50 Longlists and nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing. Kathryn’s books include award-winning flash collection, Wolfsong, and award-winning YA novel, Roots of The Banyan Tree. She lives in Rhode Island with her husband and curly-tailed pup, Kaya.

Author’s website: https://www.kathrynsilverhajo.com/