A Beheaded Body Can Take 32 Steps
by James Norton

After all the hustle and bustle was through, Theodore braced himself for the big collapse. It was widely predicted, in tones that varied from the deeply mournful to the loosely lackadaisical.

In fact, friends kept stopping over, waiting for it to happen. He was forced to throw away baked goods on a regular basis. A pan of slightly burned walnut brownies, some perfectly good baklava and an atrociously sweet pan of frosted lemon bars all disappeared into the yawning plastic mouth of the kitchen trash.

But he sampled everything. The promptness and thoroughness of his notes never failed to upset the recipients, who often wept copiously and had coffee with their friends to try and deal with it all.

He kept some stuff, however. The fridge was full of a very good vegetarian lasagna, a small but lovely batch of apple crisp, a glaringly weird — but very appreciated — set of champagne truffles — and oranges.

Theodore had laid himself off a week earlier, taking advantage of the chaos.

"You can come back, you know," his boss, Dan, had said. The guy was big, with a big red beard, and laconic as a Swede. But he was a good guy.

"Thanks — thanks, Dan," said Theodore. "I may do that. Are you serious? Can I come back, if things turn out that way?"

Theodore had no plan to come back under any circumstances. He was out of there for good, and on great terms. It was a relief.

"Of course, Theodore," said Dan. Dan shook Theodore's hand with a great deal of strength and sympathy, which Theodore found a little funny, but more than a little touching.

Theodore was a graphic designer, and he figured he could always pick up freelance work once he started feeling up to it.

He felt up to it a day after he quit his job. He called up a friend back in Minnesota to talk about that.

"Sounds good to me," she said, laughing a bit.

"Yeah, but you also sent me champagne truffles," he said.

"So why did you call me?"

He had called her because he was halfway in love with her, and had been for several years.

"I called you because you sent me champagne truffles, which makes no goddamn sense. They're celebratory. But I know you didn't mean that."

Laughter on the end of the line. A slow, low chuckle. "No, I didn't, dickwad."

Theodore twirled the phone line on the end of his finger, and put his feet up on the end of the couch, trying idly to weep.

"I just remembered that you like champagne truffles," she said.

"I do. So you think I can work already?"

"Yeah, do what you want."

"Thanks."

And he did. He was working quietly on his portfolio that very night. He built a tall green mountain from scratch, building every crag and peak from photographs of war victims culled from the Internet. His own photo went in there somewhere. It looked pretty magnificant. He called a friend, someone closer, someone in town, someone who lived a few blocks away.

"Theodore, how are you?" said the voice. It was warm, quiet, touched by honey.

"Good, Melissa. How are you?"

"I'm okay," she said quietly. "How are you? Are you okay?"

"So far, so good. I can't believe it. I feel guilty. But thanks for the lemon bars. They were great."

The lemon bars sat at the bottom of a trashbag in the back foyer, fuming silently.

"It was nothing! I can make more!" she said.

"No, I want to go out. Will you go out with me?"

The monosyllables clunked across the phone line.

"I didn't mean to say it like that," he said.

"Of course I'll go out with you," said Melissa, at the edge of tears. Theodore smirked and shook his head and crossed his legs at the end of the couch.

They went to a jazz club, and they went early. They drank gin and tonics and got up to dance.

Melissa was smaller than Marta, much smaller, and he felt his left hand sprawl lazily out over her delicate shoulder blade. His fingers pushed gently into the white fabric of her blouse. The top of her blond hair, immaculately kept, was a field of German wheat. Marta's had been a tangled thicket of Brazilian briars. Melissa looked up and smiled at him, and made her curvy little lips glaringly conspicous. She was a quiet ball of glory tonight. And they started to dance.

The song was the "Dead Man Blues" by Jelly Roll Morton, and the clarinets and slide trombones banged together in a funky, rolling canter that kept the two of them moving across the floor.

Melissa tucked her head under Theodore's chin.

Theodore found that his eyes were suddenly self—basting, leaking rivulets of salted water down his face. He was shaking, his body was shaking. The room of young diners and drinkers spun a bit, and dropped out of his field of view. Melissa was reaching toward him, a lithe little white blur with two pink hands, trying to steady him, for he was falling backwards in a haze of tears.

Her words were indecipherable as he fell.

"Thank God, Thank God, Thank God," he said. His ass hit the hardwood and then sprawled out, convulsing, and giving thanks to a higher power he wasn't sure existed. Someone across the room dipped her head into a big red CabSav, averting her eyes. Someone else stared at Theodore with a wry half—smile pasted to his lips.

"That guy," said the observer, "seems to have hit upon something really important."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" asked the observer's date. "He's lost his mind."