8:15 am, I work nights,I pick up the phone because it’s my sister and either mom fell down the stairs or someone hit the lottery.
My sister hit the most convoluted lottery ever.
She says in this weird push-whisper, this joyous but wraithlike voice “I have Rory Feldenbauer’s baby inside me.”
It’s 8:15am, I think I was dreaming about hot soup, and now I think my sister stole one of Rory Feldenbauer’s young offspring and shoved it in her vagina. I hope. Maybe her butt. It’s 8:15am.
As I start to awaken I ask my sister to repeat herself.
She does not.
She begins the story of her night with Rory Feldenbauer.
I interrupt her three or five or fifteen minutes in (I may have fallen back asleep) and ask “this happened last night?”
My sister says yes and I hang up.
***
It’s 11:30 pm and I’m on my break at Plastikraft.
It’s two weeks from the phone call. My sister doesn’t have a period and is picking out names for her baby with Rory Feldenbauer.
She said she could feel it ten minutes after he came inside her. She says she just knows.
I think she may have set a world record for elongating the word feel.
I’m beginning to wish Rory Feldenbauer was black, because my sister’s boyfriend Julius is.
He’s on the road in the USL, a gifted center back, jazz guitarist and ten times cooler than my sister.
Rory Feldenbauer is blond haired, blue eyed, Ballon d’ Or nominated Rory Feldenbauer.
He makes 82 million a year to play soccer in a country that calls it football.
He made 82 million last year, and 75 million the year before that.
I’ve done a lot of Googling, in case my sister is right about having Rory Feldenbauer’s baby inside of her.
Rory has put three babies inside of Vera Zee Ling. She spit them all out of herself and the youngest is two now.
VZL is dropping a new album soon.
Pretty sure she won’t be thrilled if my sister identifies this baby as Rory’s.
This baby, my niece or nephew or delightfully non-pigeonholed human, will be rich.
Julius will be devastated.
In a moment of selfishness I think: I’ll comfort him, Olivia. You idiot.
In a moment of clarity I think: Millions of people would sleep with Rory Feldenbauer, and it wouldn’t be far fetched to think thousands have.
I tell Olivia no matter what happens she has to tell Julius the truth.
She laughs at me.
I would have laughed at me too.
***
It’s a month and nine days from the phone call.
My sister has looked at listings of houses in Miami.
She doesn’t know a soul in Miami.
She is officially pregnant, medically, totally, in every way pregnant.
A creature is inside her.
She says it belongs to Rory Feldenbauer, or is the result of his sperm, anyway.
A WAG rag prints blurry photos of Rory Feldenbauer in a hotel hallway with a mystery woman.
It’s Olivia.
You’d have to know Olivia really, really well to know it’s Olivia.
Olivia freaks out.
If I was Olivia I probably would have freaked out too.
***
It’s fifteen weeks from the phone call.
Julius knows Olivia is pregnant.
Olivia has a plan to give Julius money when she gets her money from Rory Feldenbauer.
Rory Feldenbauer is playing in a Champs League game in Wembley Stadium.
Vera Zee Ling is not in the owner’s box.
People are speculating the marriage, worth in the hundreds of millions between them, is crumbling.
My sister hasn’t spoken to Rory Feldenbauer since the night she let him toss her around the hot tub on the 17th floor of the Westin in a room registered to his team’s kit man.
***
It’s 9:42 am, 19 weeks from the phone call.
I work nights, but it’s my sister. Her sobs hit my ear so hard it feels wet.
“I lost Rory Feldenbauer’s baby!!!”
She is wailing.
She blubbers something and the only word I understand is Miami.
She repeats “I lost Rory Feldenbauer’s baby!!!”
I tell her I’ll be right over and Julius’s voice says “Hey, I’m going to give her a sleeping pill but the team leaves for Louisville later tonight. I…should I stay?”
I say “no, Julius, go play. I’ll take a PD and come stay with her.”
“She’s in the bathroom now. I…I think saying it’s Rory Feldenbauer’s baby makes it less real for her, less painful.”
I want to say Yes, Julius, I think you’re right, but my throat is all flesh and no air.
Julius says “We were going to name him Julius Treyhan the Third” and he starts to weep.
***
***
Twelve Hundred and Twelve of these things in a row. Pretty wild. Substack has changed so much since I started. Thanks to those of you who have kept me going. If you’d like to support this unprecedented collection of single author short fiction, you can Buy Me a Coffee or hit my Venmo: James-Graham-80.
I suppose you could get a paid subscription, too. That only costs 33 cents a day.
I want to say Yes, Julius, I think you’re right, but my throat is all flesh and no air.
That ending was hard, man.
I may be old, but I love babies, and shed a tear.
You write them.
I live them.