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didn’t understand the assignment, but it didn’t matter because Andrea came in halfway and put an end to the entire program. “The money is gone,” she said, with a significant look in Helena’s dismayed direction. “You can throw those letters away, kids.”
    Helena would never have called them kids, but maybe this was an American thing. “Don’t throw them away!” she cried. “I’m going to send those letters to my mother!”
    The kids for some reason were cruel, and Helena was bombarded with balled-up letters and paper airplanes, like a terrorist action from a country not known for terror. “Look,” Andrea said, when they all had left. Helena looked where Andrea was looking, at some rubbage of letters on the floor. “I just mean, look ,” Andrea said, picking up after her. “The expression look . The gig’s over. The money is gone. Get it?”
    “My mother doesn’t work here,” Helena said, “and neither do I.”
    Andrea sighed. “You’re fired,” she said, “I’m fired, we’re all fired without the money.”
    “We’re part of the ring of fired,” Helena tried, and put an airplane in her purse. “Like the song. I fell into a something ring of fire. Johnny Money.”
    “ Burning ,” Andrea said. “ Cash .”
    “ Aggressive ,” Helena said. “ Artful .” This was the creative expression part, the part they were going to pay her for. What was the third word? She felt fat. “Money,” she said, and looked out the window. The rain was spread hard all over like an ocean of cheap wine, wet and seasonal, and this was like love too. Welove someone in particular, but without money it’s all the same to us; we’re in despair. Without money we can stand next to someone else’s girlfriend instead, for all the love it brings. This wasn’t enough for the likes of Helena, and every word of the love she was losing was sadder as she said it. Every word got sadder, every letter nothing in her purse. “Money,” she said again. “Money money money money money money money money.”

briefly
    G olfing today I beheaded a magpie. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Some kind of bird, anyway—grant me this—midair in the curve of the ball I hit. It fell. I walked across the lawn wondering what it was I had seen, some small glop of something fallen. It was a good swing and my eyesight is strong, but there are moments it doesn’t matter if you look or not. The magpie’s mouth was open like it couldn’t believe it either. I picked up the ball and looked at the stain of blood in a perfect square. I sort of nudged the body with my foot, rolled it over into a thicker part of the grass. It was all alone, the bird. And here I bury you, O thing who winged your way into my path. Only I know of your poor little murdered head.
    I grew up in the sort of house with a pool out back, and a small shack to shower and change into clothes to swim in the pool, and my older sister. She had boyfriends. Usually I went someplace else when they came splashing in, because my older sister grabbed boyfriends in ways that meant no girls came around the house. I was fourteen. The girls were at the pool at the club, so I went to the pool at the club, and there they sat, the girls older than me, rows of legs, rows of sunglasses, rows of laughing together. They let me sit knowing I was staring atthem: a meager insult to my older sister, the only boy they could keep. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. I handed them the lotions. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. This was my summer, my two summers, my long weekends, all the sudden sunshine veering into town without reason, and all of it has abandoned me. I have loved none of those girls. I could not picture for you what any bathing suit revealed, although that’s where I must have been looking, fourteen years old, all that skin that crossed my path. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes.
    What I remember is named Keith. By all means he was not the favorite because my older sister had no favorites. Anybody could hand her