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Courthouse
By: Daniel Alarcón
The young man awaited trial playing video games on his cell phone, concentrating intently on the tiny screen, wearing a necktie and a suit and sneakers of an almost virginal white, and did not notice the paintings on the walls, art whose blandness could only be described as extreme, as if the artists, upon receiving their commission, were instructed to depict only clouds, or the facades of well-kept buildings, or street scenes carefully excised of people; the young man sat with his mother, nervous both of them, he pulling at his necktie and tugging at his suit as he played, and this sartorial unease was only one manifestation of a larger, darker anxiety, spread like a storm cloud about this place; though the clouds were only high, white, and cumulous, fear was everywhere, concentrated naturally and most acutely upon the shoulders of this young man's mother, who performed the rigid pantomime of stoicism, still unconvinced by the utility of this pretending, so that one could see, at the corners of her mouth, in her fidgeting hands, that worry would overcome her yet, and when it did, she took away her son's cell with one swift movement, dropping it quickly in her handbag, and her son did not think to complain.
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