Fiction
Marbleby Lynne Barrett
When I was a kid, my mother wanted me to be a priest. She thought I’d get a classical education and she’d have an inside track to heaven, but the idea of celibacy just wasn’t for me. My father was a plumber, so I became one, and, though I’ve branched out since, at base I’m still a plumber. Like a priest, a plumber is a keeper of secrets. We do the dirty work of dealing with the systems that let the rest of you renew your sense of cleanliness, which is so easily confused with innocence.
Anyway, at twenty-five, there I was in Wayne, NJ, after five years apprenticeship, then two as a journeyman, about to take the test for my plumber’s license, when I met her: Marilena, called Lena by her family. We were on a repair job at her parents’ house. She was nineteen
