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ISBN 1931520178
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$16.00
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he good-bye girl sits at the picnic table watching the boy fallfrom the sky. He wears a yellow jumpsuit, and she has nick-named him Chicken Little. She sips her ginger ale. In the centerof the park, an Eastern Orthodox priest gives away toothpick cru-cixes next to the fountain. He doesn’t appear to notice the boy’splummet.The boy completes his fall from the Georgics skyscraper, hits thepavement, dusts himself off, and walks over to talk to her.
“What are you doing?” she asks. Two weeks ago her parentsthreatened to kick her out of the house because she didn’t want tospend any time at home with them. So she sits in the park in hersummer vacation and eats her brown-bag lunch of baloney sand-wiches and Fritos. Next year she will be a senior at Pency Prep. Hegives a crooked, beaky smile.“Practicing.”She nds him fetching.The next day she gathers the nerve to touch his arm as they sit onthe picnic table. It isn’t feathers attached to his body. But beneath his jumpsuit his skin has a yellowish tint, the color of lemon Jell-O. Theskin is soft. “You’re not normal.”He doesn’t argue. He can’t remember much except his name andthe urge to jump off buildings. “Chicken Little,” he repeats. He grewup in Nebraska.
Alan DeNiro
“The sky was huge there,” he said. “Dark wheat and deep bluesky.” He shakes his head slightly. “All vaguer than a dream . . .”No one else in the city appears to notice him. It’s a private showfor her. She doesn’t mind, because the boy certainly breaks up themonotony of the lunch hour, and her lunch hour breaks up themonotony of the day.One day, while watching him fall, she realizes that her life hasbeen incredibly unhappy. The velocity of his descent doesn’t change, yet she can see him in mindless, excruciating detail, like a slow closeup. She stands up from the picnic table, body awash with sadness.Looking more closely, she sees that Chicken Little closes his eyeswhen he falls, a slight smile, his tawny hair whipping.
The good-bye girl realizes he’s in ecstasy. She drills him aboutthis later, not about why he doesn’t die when he hits the pavement(and at the same time she doesn’t want to know, she doesn’t wantto know). He gives a bright, easy laugh. His body is lean and taut,and the yellow jumpsuit is almost baggy draped over his narrowbones.
“You atter me,” he says. “Nothing makes me happier than fall-ing, nothing.”“But why do you do it?” she asks. She wants to touch his hands,his soft, saffron ngers.He laughs again. “Why do you watch me?”Because you’re beautiful, she wants to say. Instead, “I’m boredmost of the time. I have enough money to live but too much time toforce me to spend it.” She offers ginger ale and he accepts, tipping theentire aluminum can back. “I have work to do,” he says nally, afterdrinking. “I might not be back for awhile.” He points to the top of the skyscraper, thirty stories high. It used to be the headquarters of along-forgotten nancial institution. Now the building houses minortelemarketing franchises, art students, and carpetbaggers. The boy keeps pointing to the top of the building.“Yes?” she says, trying to see the exact spot where he points to.“I have to remember these tiny falls for when I do big ones.” He
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