SmokeLong Quarterly

Her guest brought a little clock, made of enamel, in a lovely mint-ice color. She had often seen him fiddling with such wounded appliances on the street corner where he liked to sit. When he saw her apartment, he whistled and said: What a swell pad. Don’t it make you sad to live in a big swell pad like this, all by your lonesome?

Well, she said, I used to have Oscar.

He reminded her of Oscar a little. The way he slipped the double-As into the back of the clock reminded her of Oscar, suavely dropping shells into his duck-killing gun.

They ate soup from the can. How strange it was, she thought, for him to be here, all the way across the dining room table, like someone seen from the other side of a dark brown lake. Somehow, he seemed more distant here, in her home, than downstairs at the Coffee Corral where they’d become acquainted.

Still, he was awfully sweet. He called her Gran. He turned off the burner when she’d forgotten—You don’t want to burn down this swell pad, Gran—and he gave her the little clock, now ticking quietly, like a pacemaker.

I can’t accept this, she said. I have so many things, and you have so few.

Don’t you know, Gran? I give everything away—that’s why I don’t have anything of my own. I give it all away to my favorite people.

The clock looked so nice on the mantle, like a single scoop of ice cream. Oscar looked so dour beside it in his solemn urn.

Her guest returned with majolica lamps, with sets of crystal glasses in odd numbers, painted with stags and ships. He returned with a brass candle-snuffer shaped like a strawberry. He returned with a stone birdbath for the fire escape. He liked old things and old ways. Old things are swell, he said, old people are swell. We live in a baby culture, Gran, an in-fan-tile culture. We throw old people away like we throw old things away. We are always just five seconds old.

He brought her a leather chair and a wicker chair. He brought a steel bedframe and a mattress. Think about it, Gran. You’re walking around your big swell pad. You’re tired and you want to lie down, but the bedroom, it’s miles away.

So up it went, between the bar cart with the missing wheel and the Cigar Store Indian with the missing nose.

Most of his gifts were missing something. There were times when she could not remember whether an item was from him or had been hers always, and she learned to tell the difference by looking for absent buttons and handles, for cracks and dogtooth chips. Even the little mint-ice clock had lost its second hand.

These castoffs were all he had, yet he gave them away. They were like the two small coins given by the widow in the Bible. Yes, she thought, he was more of a widow than she ever was, more lost and lonely and having to make do, and giving what he could. What could she ever give him in return?

Oh—she cooed—why don’t you stay here for a while? Until you get back on your feet.

Through his chipped smile he said, Thank you, Gran. I will.

In the middle of the night, Oscar tumbled out of his urn and went scrambling through the apartment, past cabinets and globes and Japanese folding screens. She tried to catch him and put him back where he belonged, but he was always just ahead of her, in the labyrinth of things. In death he was as tiny as a goblin or an elf. She followed him into their bedroom, where her guest rose up from sleep. You’re sleepwalking, Gran, he said, and guided her back to her bed, which, for reasons she could not now remember, was in the living room.

Light entered now only in sleeves, slipping in between accumulated silhouettes. She saw her guest through windows, keyholes. Once she’d sat with Oscar in a blind, her own breath making cabbages in the dark, waiting for ducks to appear in such narrow slits. Her guest wore a chenille bathrobe just like her own. Oh, he must have come into some money at last! She would have to congratulate him the next time she saw him.

There were many telephones, but none seemed to be the one that was ringing. She heard her daughter’s distant voice on the machine. She was saying: Where are you, Mom?

I’m here, she called out, between the love seat and the vanity.

When she found the place she thought the phone would be, there was only a pale square on the wall, like a blank space in the brain. Oh, she couldn’t remember where anything was.

At night or afternoon, the objects in the room turned into people and walked around. Lamps smoked cigarettes, and filing cabinets opened their huge mouths and filed away wine. Deep music rattled the china plates in their berths. An empty bookcase said: Who’s the old broad?

That’s Gran, said her guest. Don’t mind her—she’s swell.

She was further pressed into a small corner. When they came to pry her out, she was squashed as flat as an old pillow. There was a judge in a real black robe like a shower curtain, saying things like adverse possession and squatter’s rights. Excuse me, she said, but this apartment belonged to my late husband. I am no squatter.

Not you, ma’am, said the shower curtain.

They led her to a room with a simple bed and chair. They called it a safe place, a home. But how could it be a home without her things? She looked down at the little mint-green clock in her hands. She said: At least I have you, Oscar.

________________________

“Swell” is a finalist in The SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction 2026.