LITMIR.BIZ

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waited for him to offer up his own end of the conversation. Maybe where he’d moved to Missoula from. Maybe that he liked Chicago. Or that he’d never been there. Or that both Montana and Chicago had bad winters, but Montana’s was probably worse.

      But he seemed to be done nodding, and he hadn’t opened his mouth again. Since she’d knocked on his door, he hadn’t said anything other than “Levi.”

      She could have looked at his mail to learn that.

      “I teach at the university, in the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department. I teach Russian. And a course on graphic novels. It’s the first one they’ve offered. My suggestion, really, and the class is full. There was a waiting list, even.” God help her, she was babbling. She’d gone beyond polite conversation with a neighbor and had hit full-on ramble.

      “Graphic novels are what I do. I mean, they’re what I write. I’ve written three, all based off Russian novels and folktales.” She was wandering through her life and her history in front of this man who still remained silent. Of course, awareness wasn’t enough to encourage sense and good behavior. Or enough to get her to stop talking.

      She took a step back, teetering a little when her heel hit the back of his front steps.

      “You can look me up,” she continued. Distance. She had to put distance between her need to fill quiet with words and his gaping silence. She gripped the handrail. “Anyway, it was nice to meet you.”

      She had turned to go when she heard him say, “I can’t look you up if I don’t know your last name.”

      “Oh!” She spun around to look at him again. “Mina Clements. One M. I’ve got samples of my work on my website.”

      She slammed her mouth shut before she was tempted to continue. With a wave and a cascade of embarrassment washing over her, feeling like a complete fool, she hopped down his front steps and scurried back to her house.

      * * *

      LEVI CLOSED THE door with a soft click as soon as his neighbor—Mina—turned off his property and onto her own. She was even shorter up close. And younger-looking. And she had hazel eyes that danced with life as she talked.

      Hell, he wasn’t even sure what all she’d said. He was pretty sure he remembered her saying that she taught at the university, but he couldn’t imagine that she was old enough. Did she teach people her own age?

      Or maybe she was older than he thought she was. Which meant he was older than he thought he was.

      He turned away from the door, back to his coffee and the paper spread out on the kitchen table.

      That he was older made sense, actually. He’d started noticing that he couldn’t have extra fries without adding extra weight a year ago. Last year he’d noticed a creak in his knees when he got out of bed. And one benefit of living alone was that there was no one to watch or poke fun when he plucked the couple of gray hairs from his head.

      Kimmie absolutely would have made fun of those hairs.

      “When she was well,” he said, flipping the paper open to the horoscopes and pressing the newsprint flat. Thoughts of how Kimmie would or wouldn’t act always included a footnote about her health. Levi had never successfully been able to only remember Kimmie when she was well. Her depressive episodes sneaked into his memories so much that he’d stopped trying to halt them. After all, the weeks she’d spent in bed had been just as much a part of his wife as her laughter and sly sense of humor. Seemed almost like a betrayal not to remember them both.

      “Remember her as she’d have wanted you to remember,” people had said to him after her funeral. Well-meaning but ultimately stupid advice. Kimmie hadn’t expected him to even be alive to remember her. She’d thought he’d died first.

      The coffee burned down his throat when he took another swig. No second cup. Another side effect of getting older.

      Not that he should be surprised. He’d spent a lifetime working with his body, and all those years, especially the ones in mining, were bound to have taken their toll. Yet he still had all his fingers and toes. He was able to laugh without coughing. And the only burn marks on his body were the ones he’d gotten being stupid around the stove.

      A car started in the driveway next to his kitchen. His neighbor. No, Mina. She’d gone through all the awkward trouble of coming next door and introducing herself to him. He could at least call her by her name in his head while resisting the temptation to turn around and watch her as she drove off.

      Maybe she really was a university professor. Teaching... He strained his brain to remember what she’d said. Russian and graphic novels.

      Unlike the physical toll that mining took on him, he supposed people didn’t get old prematurely teaching Russian to college students, even in Montana. He didn’t exactly know what a graphic novel was, but he was sure the same applied. Mina Clements would be fresh and young-looking until the day she fell asleep at the ripe old age of ninety-seven and didn’t wake up. And up until that time, she’d be inviting people into her life, whether they wanted to be there or not.

      He skimmed the two horoscopes, only barely paying attention to their meaning. Between learning that it was time for him to open himself up to new experiences and that Kimmie should, if she were alive, let go of the past, the question of what a graphic novel was lingered. His mind had seized on the term graphic, wrapping arms around it and forcing him to face all the graphic things he’d been avoiding contemplating with his pint-size neighbor.

      But women, even women from big cities, didn’t go around introducing themselves to their neighbor and immediately saying they wrote pornographic novels and to check out their website. Missoula might be a more liberal area of Montana, but this was still Montana, and people would be offended.

      Though even the offended would probably do just what Levi was about to do. He folded up the paper and tossed it into the recycling. Then he grabbed his tablet and searched the internet for Mina Clements. One M.

      “Huh,” he said to himself as he scrolled down Mina’s page of books. “She writes comic books.” There didn’t seem to be any capes or superpowers, but his friendly neighbor wrote comic books.

      Levi sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, looking at the image of a nose dressed in clothing standing in front of a large, ornate building. The drawings were black-and-white, with thick lines and harsh angles. Not funny or light or chatty at all. In fact, there was a darkness to the illustrations that he wouldn’t have believed existed in the friendly woman with a strong, firm handshake and unguarded, bright smile that had him wanting to walk outside and greet the day with open arms.

      He could tell she’d felt a little foolish as she’d walked away, though that wasn’t his problem. He hadn’t had anything to say, and he didn’t want to get to know her. He hadn’t invited her over here, didn’t want her young cheer invading the life he’d made for himself. And when he wanted to feel like the world was a brighter place, he’d pick Solstice and her brother, Skylar, up for some soccer drills.

      And, honestly, he had thought Mina had been a little foolish for standing on his front stoop babbling a bit.

      But the woman who drew these pictures wasn’t foolish. Or silly. The woman who drew these pictures understood black humor and pain and isolation. The woman who drew these pictures was the kind of person he wanted to get to know.

      Despite her external chipperness.

      And, if he were being completely honest with himself, because he wanted to know how the woman who drew these pictures was the same woman who’d bounced down his stairs.

      His chair legs squeaked as he scooted back to look out the window next door. What had previously been a plain, slightly barren lawn with more weeds than grass had now been broken up into flower beds. Mums, mostly. There wasn’t much else one could plant in the fall in Montana that would flower, but Mina had added life and interest to her house.

      He looked until he remembered that he wasn’t interested. Then he tipped back in

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