Aram Mrjoian
1. THE DISPATCHDownhill
Recognizing the familiar exhaustion of sweaty tourists climbing back toward the parking lot, Frank, Jack, and Harriet ran down the steepest section of Sleeping Bear Dunes, allowing their momentum to carry them—breakneck, out of control—toward the endless blue of Lake Michigan. Frank, winded from a morning joint, led the trio. He was slower than Jack and Harriet, but undeterred, he jogged into the decline before they could kick aside their flip-flops. The hot sand burned Frank’s toes. His head-start disappeared fast, so Frank jumped sideways into a hockey stop to bury and cool his feet. He felt his ankle give and the pain followed. He thought back to previous summers when he could backflip down the dunes, a trick he had not performed in several years, certainly not since turning thirty-five. The hockey stop was foolish, but he couldn’t help himself. Each summer trip to the dunes reminded him of being a teenager, when the three of them first began this tradition. They had gone up north every summer since meeting at Michigan State their freshman year, nearly twenty years ago, but now it was a last hoorah. Frank’s mother, six months now since his father’s fatal heart attack, was selling the family cabin, which in truth was not a cabin at all, but a five-bedroom mansion with a hot tub on the deck and an outdoor kitchen. Frank’s ankle throbbed. It would be a slow tumble to the shore, a painful walk back up the dune.
“Slowpoke!” Jack flew by Frank. He couldn’t stop. He was the most hungover, unwilling to admit the previous evening that he had slowed down too. His alcohol tolerance was paltry. His life was now routine: breakfast, work, dinner in front of the television, read for most of the night. For the past nine months, he had been seeing a man named Levon. He worried Frank and Harriet thought it was another fling, destined to fizzle out at the one-year mark, but Jack was ready to propose. He wanted to tell them last night as they drank martinis out of plastic cups around a puny bonfire, but it felt more meaningful to talk about it after their yearly jaunt to the water.
Gathering steam, Harriet sped ahead of the men. She remained in the best shape, all those early mornings in the weight room or spin class before arriving at the office promptly at 8:30 a.m. Chicago did not distract her the same way it did her friends. Frank knew every happy hour in the city. Jack was an insomniac. His energy was erratic. After they got off the ferry, Harriet was filled with joy when he dozed in the backseat while she drove them north from Saugatuck, even if he was out for no more than twenty minutes. Harriet couldn’t function without at least seven hours. She wondered how Levon handled it. She and Frank had encouraged Jack to invite Levon, but Jack froze up and acted weird. Harriet hoped he wouldn’t end things. She wanted Levon to stick around. Levon had introduced her to Armenian food and worked out with her and was the only one who seemed genuinely interested in her work at the Field Museum.
Harriet was far ahead of the boys now, nearly to the lake while they dawdled behind, and when she reached the shallows the water felt sharp and hungry. She dropped when the waves splashed her knees. Soaked. She rose as Frank and Jack approached, both out of breath. There was another dozen people sluggishly ascending the wall of sand. Some were sitting to rest and hydrate. Everyone was drenched. Harriet knew the walk back to the peak would leave them achy.
“That feels worse every year,” Frank groaned. His face was the color of the cherries they purchased from a roadside stand en route. There was a six-month stretch in college when Harriet thought she loved Frank, but never told him. They once kissed in a steamy bathroom at a frat party after someone turned on all the showers. How plentiful water was back then. Frank didn’t remember the kiss. Harriet tried to remember where the shoreline was years before. The beach stretched far along the bottom of the dune, as if the great lake was shrinking. Time moved fast, and Harriet’s memory was hazy, blurred together by enough repetitions of this annual trip to never be sure what was the same and what had changed. Maybe next year they could rent an Airbnb, she thought, but knew it was unlikely. They were so busy these days. They met up less after work and Harriet had not yet told them that her offer on a three-bedroom house in Naperville had been accepted. In another couple months, she would be a suburbanite.
Jack looked ready to vomit. He had been acting strange for the whole trip and she could tell something was wrong.
“We’ll never get back to the top,” Frank shouted. “Someone call an Uber.” He walked past her through the shallows until the water was at his neck. A cloud drifted in front of the torrid sun. Harriet used to look at the sky in awe but now all she imagined was smog and slow death. She doubted the dunes would still be accessible to the public in ten years. Jack plopped down in the wet sand, whispering to himself, I have something to tell you, without noticing Harriet.
“Jack,” she said.
He smiled at her. “It’s all changing.”
Harriet laughed. She knew what he meant. Harriet looked past him and could make out a father in red swim trunks and a bucket hat, surrounded by three little girls, beginning their descent. The girls shrieked with delight.
2. BUREAU INVENTORYCold brew
Water bottle
Planner
Pens
Sunglasses
3. BIOGRAPHYAram Mrjoian is an editor-at-large at the Chicago Review of Books, an associate fiction editor at Guernica, and a 2022 Creative Armenia - AGBU Fellow. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Catapult, Electric Literature, West Branch, Boulevard, Gulf Coast online, The Rumpus, The Millions, Longreads, and many other publications.
Find his work at arammrjoian.com.