January 01, 2007
December 30, 2006
18th and Connecticut
The bus pulls up beside a public telephone into which a man is shouting. He wears paint-spattered dark green work pants and a battered white T-shirt. His brand-new baseball cap sits backward atop his tousled mop of sandy brown hair. He is pacing as far as the line will allow him and gesturing wildly with his free hand, which holds a cigarette. Suddenly he stops moving, relaxes a bit, takes a drag on his cigarette, holds it such that his thumb and index finger touch his lips as he inhales long and slow. A funny expression passes over his face as the bus enters his sight line. His body goes a bit slack and his eyes fix on the vehicle's side. The ad is reflected in a shop window: a lithe woman lying on her side wearing mesh underwear and a sultry grin.
A woman jogs close behind the man, tosses him a look as she passes him, but he is still ogling the bus, doesn't notice her lean, agile body glowing from the run or her long shiny black braid bouncing from one buttock to the other with each step of her trot. His eyes follow the bus as it pulls from its stop, he turns back to the phone as the jogger gives up and goes on.
December 19, 2006
Jackpot
She doesn't come to this dumpster for food.
It's situated behind an architect's office and she has no idea that if she would let herself be seen he would leave her some soup, stew, porridge, ripe bananas—something tender and nutritious—because his brother was found on Market Street one night, rotten teeth halfway down his throat, stuck in a hunk of cheese that was much harder in the middle than it was on its edges and his hunger so sharp that he jammed the whole wad into his mouth and upon realizing he couldn't chew it, tried to swallow the thing hole and it choked him to death.
But she's not here to eat.
Thirty-five, looking that and ten; fifteen even. The yellow sun sinking behind the gilded dome of City Hall. She stares off into the coming night as she clasps squares of bubble wrap—sheets of them, a stash—holds them to her chest and squeezes, one dot at a time then handfuls in rapid fire, her ruddy face registering a kind of bliss as if she can see the air she's emancipating float down the alley and into the sheltering sky.
December 09, 2006
Puzzlement II
It doesn't happen the way you think it will:
the cyan gradients of this one
matching those of that, forming
a calm ocean blue.
The piece will not fit;
there. No amount
of flipping and turning
will allow the knobs to lock together
to form one smooth tessellation.
Complication. Beginning
with that word: why not say "tiling,"
call it what it is, simply,
a series of connections
forming a whole
that cannot be defined
by the sum of its parts.
These dye-cut pieces are not,
no matter how much they appear to be,
identical in shape; their knobs
and lobes are their own and fit
together only one way; if.
What about the rest of us?
The connection happens
in what you miss: a lifeboat here,
a smear of shadow there; the edge
of brown that matches, however incongruently,
the Day-Glo gold floating to safety
on the tumult, the turquoise sea.
After the other amoebae have been snapped into place
the operator is left to confront the error:
somehow this has to work. A twist,
two turns, an uncomfortable flip
and it slips into its space.
The mystery itself is the key, the raft
that takes us to shore, this equation of unlike variables,
a problem requiring contemplation/computation/derivation to determine
the valence of elements in a solution.
Puzzlement I
It doesn't happen the way you think it will: the cyan gradients of this one matching those of that, forming a calm ocean blue. The piece will not fit; there. No amount of flipping and turning will allow the knobs to lock together to form one smooth tessellation.
Complication. Beginning with that word: why not say "tiling," call it what it is, simply, a series of connections forming a whole that cannot be defined by the sum of its parts. These dye-cut pieces are not, no matter how much they appear to be, identical in shape; their knobs and lobes are their own and fit together only one way; if. What about the rest of us?
The connection happens in what you miss: a lifeboat here, a smear of shadow there; the edge of brown that matches, however incongruently, the Day-Glo gold floating to safety on the tumult, the turquoise sea. After the other amoebae have been snapped into place the operator is left to confront the error, for somehow this has to work. A twist, two turns an uncomfortable flip and it slips into its space. The mystery itself is the key, the raft that must be steered to shore by equating unlike variables; computing the valence of elements in a solution.
November 28, 2006
Chromatic
A glance a look a gaze a talk that twists to dance exchange; smirk stroll cadence turn.
To sit perchance to speak perchance to play perchance to hook perchance to carry perchance to hold. Baby steps.
A song. A string. A sense that spins into a thread that weaves among the intervals, half steps up the scale, stitching tones that stack up to chords that progress.
October 24, 2006
How to Save a Drowning Man
In lifesaving they tell you not to jump in the water when you see someone in distress; in his panic he will claw, grab and hang, drag you down to the murky deep; in his clamber toward salvation he will drown you too. If you have nothing to throw him – a rope, a float – you must wait, watch while he exhausts himself flailing and calling to you, you must wait until he lets go gives up stops moving and face down begins to sink. Only then is it safe to approach, to grab an arm and flip him to his back, hook your elbow under his chin and tow him to shore.
This is why I watch my phone flash when you call, why I stare at your number and determine not to heed the ring. As long as your face is flush and you are live enough to be livid I am of no help; should I wade in we both would sink. But I do see you. I watch and you must trust that I remember what I learned and I know the moment will come to leap and when it does I will and I will yank your arm and turn your face to the sky and you, you will breathe.
August 07, 2006
More 'Soloing'
Meredith is sitting in the usual booth, trying not to polish off her cocktail before the end of the first set. She wants to be drunk when Charlie sings, even as she knows she shouldn't. Want to. Or be. Drunk. One drink relaxes her face so her smile looks natural. Two drinks and she's perky. After that, it gets risky. She can become sleepy, cheeky, cranky, and worse: She can lose all ability to feign interest. This is her second drink, and she must make the last third of it last another forty-five minutes. Unless she switches to straight tonic, and that's just no fun.
Charlie is in the men's room, warming up. He's doing his la-la-la's and mi-mi-mi's and all the other ridiculous exercises that wouldn't be ridiculous if he had talent, but he doesn't, so they are. Meredith can't actually hear him because he's two rooms and a jumbo TV screen away, on the other side of the dining room, past the pool tables. He's either in the men's room or on a little terrace overlooking the alley, belting his lungs out into the settling darkness. Charlie and his goddamn voice.
The cabaret where the singers do their thing is an intimate room within a huge bar. It's large enough for a grand piano, which two sofas face at an angle, and five booths, three on one wall, two on another. The booths are round, not rectangular, and each one seats five to seven people and they all are reserved for parties of at least three. Meredith sits alone. She's spread Charlie's sheet music around the table to effect a party atmosphere and she has ordered an appetizer for herself and a soda for Charlie, in addition to her two cocktails, the second one of which is quickly slipping from tepid to warm. As long as she orders something every time the cheery little Debby comes by, and as long as no one is left standing without a seat, she can sit here guilt-free. Charlie badgers her to order a lot and to tip well. The first thing he asks when he returns to the table, if it's not "How do I look?" is, "Did you order something?" If she gets too drunk too soon, she'll say something snide or do something crass and embarrass Charlie or piss him off—or both—and then it's all just so much worse.
The person singing now is a tall, string-bean of a woman with soft-looking honey-colored skin and close-cropped dark hair that glints in the soft light. She has a small space between her front teeth and perfect pitch. Even Meredith can hear that. After her, everyone will suck, period. She hopes Charlie isn't next. The woman barely moves while she sings. Once in a while, a wave passes down the length of her arm, starting at the bare shoulder and finally bumping her hand off the microphone stand. The movement of that long, supple appendage looks to Meredith like a noodle a fork is pulling from a plate. She looks around for the waiter; she should order something more to eat.
The fine fingers of that hand brush away the lyrics: told me love was too plebian/told me you were through with me and/now you say you love me… Meredith turns back to look at her. This is not another pathetic attempt at Sinatra or Holiday or whoever. This is not a nobody acting big. This is not a middle-aged man dreaming away the shadow his belly casts below his belt. This is a singer. This is someone with respect for music. This is someone she could listen to all night. The song was worn thin long before Charlie ever tried to sing it, but this gal revives it. She is not emulating or imitating anyone, she is singing this song; the familiar notes ripple through the room, alive. After one time through she returns to the beginning and scats through a verse, transports Meredith out of the room, into the song, so that Meredith completely forgets that she is here only because she's married to a guy who fancies himself a jazz singer. She forgets her drink, ignores the cheese plate that is delivered while the room applauds as the woman lays out the second verse before coming back in on the bridge.
A man Meredith hadn't noticed standing to her left says, as he jerks a highball glass to his mouth, "It's all about the solos. And she's got the solos. No question."
It's Frank Mackie—Frankie Mac, as he's called in this circle. He's a fat, ruddy, smarmy drunk who stinks of the hair pomade most men abandoned for "product" years ago. Meredith is careful not to flinch, not to let any movement betray that she heard him. She tips her head to one side and nods it ever so slightly in time to the music. She narrows her eyes slightly, looking for those notes before they disappear like soap bubbles in the air, when the vocalist ends the tune Meredith even does something she has never before dared to, not even for Charlie: She calls out, "Yes!" as she applauds, and "Brava!" The singer looks her way and bows slightly, holding one hand to her heart. Meredith wants to freeze the moment, wants to sit there forever, applauding, smiling, and sensing her ardor returned. Instead, she flags the waiter to order another drink.
August 05, 2006
Where Do We Go From Here?
From the Notebook, 6.20.06
If it weren't for all the illicit pharmaceuticals and beleaguered royalty stranded abroad, Leda might get three emails a day and that's if two people in addition to the person who sends out the New York Times email forwarded her a joke, hoax warning, or virus disguised as one of those.
Link: Onze Labs.
April 11, 2006
This is Not a Lie
It is a dark and stormy night and we have 23 minutes until the 400 degrees work their magic on our frozen vegetarian supreme pizza. Moments ago, as we emerged from a disturbing dream involving an apartment furnished like those of the sophomore year, we picked up a signal that we should break our two-month silence and post something. As we crawled from beneath the torpor of our early evening nap, we realized that although we want to finish and post one of the several stories that are stalled out on our hard drive, we just are not in a mood to deliver a fictive dosage today. We have some ideas why—new day job; lack of sunshine heaped upon a daily deluge of rain; a longing to return to relaxing, reinvigorating tropical climes; a touch of the anomie that this modern life seems to inspire from time to time; and, not least, blabbing at length and publicly about how cool it would be to write a novel in real time online—we also think we just need to stop making excuses and do it. And we will, eventually.
First, however, we feel like tearing down the fourth wall; stepping out beyond the proscenium, and parking it on the lip of the stage to speak to the audience, workshop-style, because you all need reminding every so often that THIS IS A FICTION BLOG. We mean to say, it IS fiction; where others blog ABOUT fiction, we blog fiction. (We don't think we're the only ones who do it, but we think we offer some of the better work.)
Two incidents prompted this. First, we received the nine thousandth comment that maybe we needed a new job if we were this tightly wound. (We're not appending this disclaimer to the work in question because we actually like the idea of being mistaken for an accountant when we haven't even tried to balance our checkbook since 1990-something.) Dear, dear readers, none of these people are real. We made them up. This is how active and odd our imagination is!!!!! We are that good. Thank you.
For the still curious, here is how one mind turns "reality" into fiction: I was stepping into the shower, thinking about wanting to take someone out to lunch on a work-related reason and realizing I'd have to pay for it myself, because my boss at the time was a cheapskate. "My days of expense reports are done," I mused. One leg in and one leg out of the tub, a title struck me: "The Expense Report" and I stepped out of the shower to write it down. The first lines followed, and I wrote them down, too, as water dripped down the pen to the paper and smeared the ballpoint ink. (N.B.: Always use ballpoint pens in the loo—gel and rollerball ink doesn't fare well in the humidity.) As the needle spray pelted me, I wondered about this person who is so diligent and confident: what would she be like to work with? Who is she? Why is she like this? And I thought, Maybe this is a way to examine the line you hear over and over in writing workshops, that a protagonist should be likeable. (Nevermind that others have obliterated this already. See: Annie Proulx's Quoyle in the first half of The Shipping News.) I would experiment, make this person difficult to like but compelling at the same time by inflating a laudable quality—conscientiousness—to the breaking point. Did I succeed? Did you like her? Did you enjoy the read? Let us know. That's what the comments are for.
We also are reminded of a discussion we had on this subject. While we certainly don't like bullies, we disagreed with the guest columnist that the "Is this true?" question is often an intrusion into one's psyche and private life. Certainly it can be, but we maintain that usually it is not, and we think we illuminated very nicely various other facets of the question and some dignified ways to respond to it. We wish we had thought to mention the trials our artist friends face, musicians and painters who have to deal with much more painful questions, such as, "Do you have this in a color that will match my couch?" Now that hurts.
OK. What are you waiting for? Buy the book. Review it, and I'll send it to you free.
