Sleep Don't Come Easy by Victor McGlothin

for anything. He heard himself laugh. She would buck on top of him like a bronco. One time she bucked so hard they put a hole in the damn wall behind the headboard. Damn! He loved that woman.
    His other love happened while he was in lock-up. Lazarus had put his name on one of those pen pal lists and all these women started writing to him. They fell in love too easily for his taste, but then when you’re locked down for twenty-some odd years, the promise of love equates to the promise of pussy, so he let them all love him as much as they wanted. One woman though, sent him a beautiful picture of herself with her son sitting on her lap. She was a nice looking woman, on the heavy side, but not bad looking at all. The boy looked just like her, too. Handsome young man, with a bright smile and a fresh, greasy haircut his mother had gotten for him just to take the picture. Everything about that woman was sweet in her letters. She wrote him every week, six, seven-page letters about how her week had gone, and what she and her son were up to. Lazarus wrote back when he could. Back then, he signed his real name to his letters—Brian. And she surprised him and told him how much she’d always liked that name. Every now and then she even had the boy write. Lazarus would read his letters over and over until he could recite them word for word without even looking. The next day, of course, he’d forget them. That woman and that boy was the closest he could ever remember to having a family of his own. And he missed them.
    Lazarus was a name he’d given himself. Somewhere in the Bible, Jesus came back and brought Lazarus back from the dead, and after that you never head anything else about the man. Lazarus spent a lot of time in prison wondering what could possibly have happened to a man who’d been dead for all that time, then been brought back to life. Ain’t no way he could’ve been the same man he was before all that happened. And he just assumed that maybe, while the real Lazarus was walking around alive and breathing, maybe a part of him was still back in that tomb—dead as dead could be. That’s how he saw hisself. He was alive. And he wasn’t. A part of him had died in that crash on top of this bridge years ago with that man and his little girl, which was why he was so drawn to this place. His soul lingered here. And that’s why it felt like home.

Byline
    â€œM orris!” Todd Bingham stood in the doorway of his office and called across the busy newsroom floor to Fatema.
    Fatema stopped bickering at the sound of her name, but she didn’t turn in his direction. “Shit,” she muttered. Her colleague took her cue and slowly backed away.
    â€œIn my office,” he demanded. “Now!”
    She begrudgingly entered his office, and stood in the doorway.
    â€œClose the door,” he said sternly.
    She did as she was told and sat down across from him.
    â€œI thought you told me you were ready to come back to work.” Todd leaned back in his chair, glaring at her.
    â€œI am,” she cleared her throat.
    He looked like he didn’t believe her. “Is that why you’ve been spitting venom at my staff all week?”
    Fatema sighed in frustration. “I haven’t been spitting venom, Todd.”
    â€œYou’re wearing your attitude on your sleeve.” His cold steely blue eyes drilled holes in her. “Now, if you’re not ready to come back here to work—then get your shit and go home.”
    She looked offended. “I told you—I am—”
    â€œThen act like it, Fatema, and stop being a bug up everybody’s ass.”
    She and Todd had had their share of knockdown drag outs, and Fatema gave as good as she got, but not this time. Before she realized what was happening, tears filled her eyes and the floodgates opened embarrassingly wide in this man’s office. She had never cried on the job a day in her life! And she sure