Little Miracles, and: 'Til We Meet Again James Cihlar (bio) Little Miracles The luxury of summerafter graduation, no eight-track blaring Cat Stevensup the walk. Long days stretching from the porchto the street, with the shadow of my brother and mein a photograph. If I could see time from above,I would treat the days like countries on an excursion,dallying here, resting there, inhabiting the boundaries of anotherbefore moving on. So sweet the extant of the gridbut sweeter still the joy of putting things off,kissing, tying a shoe, learning to tell time,easy things, things done in a snap. No writer is happy. Today the phone rings at eight a.m.No one has done enough. We are all waiting for littlemiracles. Get out of bed and win an award.People talk about the real world, Kate Ronald saidin graduate school, what do they think this is,pretend? Too small, too poor, too loopyto know how business works. Manipulatedbastards calling the shots, untetheredfrom common sense. Walking up the long, cracked cement in senior yearI opened the screen door to my mother on her kneessoaping the wall-to-wall, a half-eaten sandwich in her hands,Bobby Goldsboro in the air. Like her, I hopedfor a sudden savior, a happy surprise, I mean,a summer job at the end of summer, college acceptanceon incomplete applications. I've worked for men who counted onlast-minute miracles, novitiates to zeitgeist,incapable of strategic planning,the discipline of months. [End Page 154] On the news a gaggle of copskicks a downed man. The professor explainsbecause they uphold the lawanything they do is right. My older sister and I exhibited wacky,risky behaviors. With Morgan Kidder, I smokedpot in my bedroom, my family in the next roomwatching Three's Company. My older sister shearedher hair off with scissors. Kicked in the seatof the pants out of the house,we slept in the park overnight.When I needed a place to live,I knocked on doors.When I was running out of money,I bought food for next week. In the office, I had the boss from another planet,a twenty-first-century determinist. He came to work dressed asa Dutch master from inside the cigar box.Desperate, I began to speak in clichés.You can't be all things to all people.No good deed goes unpunished.If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas.Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.My life is an open book, I said.He returned fire with a flaccidit is what it is, you know what I mean,and I can't be bothered. My younger sister never went to college.At thirteen she taught herself how to drive a car.One day she sat behind the steering wheel and turned the key. [End Page 155] 'Til We Meet Again En route to San Quentin, the convicted murdererscotches his escape while docking in Honoluluto humor his shipboard romance.A superficial fool for love, cursedwith terminal illness, she wantsnothing more than to recline in his armsagainst a limpid sky silhouetted by palm trees. Everyone on this ship is in love.The incorruptible Irish cop promisesthe con artist with a heart of goldthey will have a long talk one day.Dropping the French to reveal a Brooklynaccent, she admits she is putting upher mother in a small place in South Dakota. Even Louise, the long-suffering maid,loves her simpering employer, whose confidantshoots meaningful glances at the private dickescorting the con. Shipboard,monumental increments cohere, makingdisassembly impossible. Each moveof the pewter icon on the line from Hawaii to California overwrites the previous, immortalizingthe most mundane deceptions. Casual observers would notesimply a man and a woman in love.How could they know that he knows she's dyingbut she doesn't know he knows, meanwhileshe knows he's about to be executedbut he doesn't know she...