My fiancée, Serena, loves intrigue as much as she loves keeping me in the dark. Says her job is top secret. If I tell you about it, I’ll have to bury you in six feet of slurry, she says, furrowing her brow. I’ve stopped asking, taken to teasing back instead. She sleeps with four pillows, keeps a fifth in the closet. I named them for her old boyfriends. Johannes is the tall, lanky body pillow Serena wraps her legs around to “support her hips.” She was hot and heavy with Johannes all Junior Year Abroad in Amsterdam, swears she hasn’t talked to him since.

Before Johannes, she admits to only two fumbling, drunken hookups in twelfth grade, claims she can’t even remember their names. So, the two floppy goose-down pillows are Larry and Billy-the-Kid, after her alma mater, Lawrence Williams High.

Serena presses them both against her head, claims it drowns out slamming dumpster lids, my supposed snoring, taxis honking their New-York-minute readiness. I tell her, “Can’t wait to get them on your face, can you?” She snorts, says she has a busy day coming. I don’t say, “Coming?”

Giorgio is the jacked Italian she almost married—before she found him sleeping with her roommate. He stays under her head in all his firm latex glory, “where you can keep an eye on him,” I say. Serena arches an eyebrow I can barely see through all the bedding. When I wonder aloud where I am in all this, she says, “Awww, poor Jasper.” Reassuring.

The fifth is a mystery. When I probe, she says to stop being so insecure, insists there’ve been no beaux beyond the four. I dub the closet pillow “The Spare.”

Last month, when all those good Spring smells, like new leaves and cherry blossoms, were failing at covering the usual pissy, trashy, exhaust odors, Serena was packing for “an assignment.” Crammed her largest suitcase full, had to unzip the expandable section.

“Where the heck’re you going—Antarctica?”

Serena shrugged. “More or less.”

“But, really, where are you going?” She hates when I question her, says I sound jealous, but she’s so damned cagey. Don’t I have a right to know? Hell, we’re supposed to get married as soon as my snake hatchery business takes off and I get a real storefront—like any day now.

“Jas, you know I can’t say more, but this one’s a three-weeker.” That’s when she pulled The Spare off the shelf and pressed it against her cushiony chest, let her hair curl down around one bare shoulder. “At least I’ll have Jas Junior to keep me company all those lonely nights in a Days Inn at the edge of town,” she said with a sly grin, adding, “Be nice to the boys while I’m gone.”

“You bet,” I said. Soon as the Uber tore off, tires squealing, I hauled those fellas to the dumpster behind the Golden Pagoda, hoisted them in one by one. Now who’s in the dark?

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/