The Atlas

Published in Cloud Lake Literary in March, 2021

There was a coun­try named Untille in Jen­nifer­’s atlas. She showed it to me one drunk­en night last year. I sat clos­er to her on the couch than was prop­er, con­sid­er­ing I had a girl­friend and she did too.

Jen­nifer said her great-to-the-nth-grand­moth­er came from Untille. The coun­try, erased in some primeval war, exist­ed now only in folk­lore. On the atlas page it bor­dered Iraq, Uqbar, Syria.

She said, “Want to vis­it it?”

“Wait, I thought you said—”

“I know what I said.” She went to the kitchen, returned with a green bot­tle labeled ABSENTE and a hunt­ing knife. She offered me the bot­tle and I took a swig. It tast­ed like fennel.

Dizzy, I watched Jen­nifer drink.

The atlas was on the table, open to Untille. With the knife, she sliced into the page, and I

smelled

dirt.

Flow­ers and grass­es, sand and water. Bird­song and impos­si­ble sun­light came from the slit.

“Want to vis­it it?” she said again.

It had to be the absinthe. O please God—

She stepped into the book and was gone. Her voice came to me, as from a great dis­tance: “You coming?”

I fled.

#

She nev­er men­tioned Untille to me again.

#

This morn­ing, out of the blue, her girl­friend Andrea called me. “I haven’t seen Jen in like three days,” she said. “I’m going to her place to make sure she’s okay. Will you come with me?” She knew we were friends.

“Of course,” I said.

While Andrea searched the bed­room, the bath­room, the office, increas­ing­ly fran­tic, I found the atlas. Untille’s page had been excised, sliced as if by a sharp knife.

Could she do that from with­in the page?

I smelled the faintest whiff of earth and fen­nel as I closed the atlas and put it back on the shelf.

“Jen­nifer?” Andrea sobbed from the bedroom.