blog – Page 16 – Kelley Eskridge

CW 22: Beautiful Wine

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Beautiful Wine

For Jude Berg (again!). Thank you for your friendship and support.

Jimmy and Helen came out of the restaurant into an afternoon of green turning burnt-gold and rust-red, the shadows longer, the world cooling as the sun slipped west. “I did not like the ceviche,” Helen said, “but I liked the chicken, and the wine, oh my god. Beautiful wine.”

“Want to maybe go to a movie? Make a real day out of it?”

“I know you, buster,” she said. “You’ll be snoring before the trailers are done. Let’s go home.”

She did know him. “Sure,” he said.

They turned toward the car. She took a deep breath. “What a pretty day,” she said, and then, in a funny voice, “Jimmy–” and reached for him and stumbled and went down.

And now Jimmy was sitting on the sidewalk holding her in his arms, and she was leaning against his chest, looking up at him with that quizzical frowny-smile that hadn’t changed in forty-seven years, the smile that meant Hang on, is this another goddamn adventure? And he was trying like hell to smile back. I think maybe so, kiddo. Around them, people fluttered and phoned ambulances.

“If you don’t want to go a movie, you can just say so,” he said.

“You know me,” she said, “I like a big moment.” Then her gaze went briefly internal, and he did know her: whatever she saw in there made her feel like something needed doing right now. “You were a big moment. I knew that from the first second I saw you,” she said. “I knew you right away.”

“Helen–”

“It’s not what I expected,” she said, with that quizzical smile again.

“Helen–”

“Forget the ceviche, Jimmy,” she said. “I liked it all.”

CW 21: Synchronicity

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Synchronicity

For Jocelyn Paige Kelly. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.

My mother met me on the porch of our rental house with a paper bag in her hand and a horizon look in her eye, and I knew I would find the car packed and ready to go.

“Beth,” she said, “we are running for our lives.”

She tried to hand me the bag, but I stepped back. “Star, no, please,” I said. “Please. We’re good here. We don’t have to go.”

She gave me the second of her traveling looks: You are a roadblock. Don’t get in my way. “For our lives,” she said.

“We have lives here!” I always had to say we with my mother, but what I meant was my fledgling life: an art teacher I really liked, a little sunny patch in the back yard, and the most amazing guy in school said hello to me today —

Today. Probably right around the time Star began to think goodbye.

“Mama, please,” I said.

But now she wore the third look of traveling: I am a compassionate knife. A cleaver of love. “Honey, I love you so much. So much. And I want what’s best for us. If I stay here, things will go bad. I feel it. So come now, or I will leave you to the wolves.”

Knife in. Cleaver down. There goes the boy with the light green eyes and the scar I would have asked him about, but I will never see him again. There goes the sketch of an abandoned house in my art cubby that I will never finish, and isn’t that just the way, that I begin to draw an empty house the week my mother decides our house should be empty? Jesus, when will I ever learn? Goodbye, little life. Fly away without me.

I began to cry. I took the bag. “Chicken salad,” she said. “Let’s go.” So I got in the car with my backpack of textbooks and gym clothes, and I cried for the first hundred miles down the road.

My mother believes in signs and portents. Synchronicity is the engine of her world. It’s a really convenient way to live your life, because everything has a reason even if no one else can see it. That makes it so simple for her, and so complicated for everyone else.

We drove all afternoon and on into the night. We left the interstate for state highways, and I began to understand that she was taking us into the desert. That made me stop feeling sorry for myself, and start worrying instead about how much worse it could get. My mother calls the desert the heartland, but that is not a happy word for her. The desert is where she left her heart to wolves.

“Do you want me to drive for a while?” I said. “You could get some sleep.”

She gave me a wry and knowing smile. “And wake up back in Carson? No thanks, baby. You’ll see. Where we’re going is better.”

Sand around us. Stars overhead. She played John Denver and James Taylor and Audioslave and Nine Inch Nails with the windows open and the dial all the way to the right, and I imagined desert mice knocked flat by the bass as we boomed by. She sang as she drove. She was happy; and I couldn’t help it, her joy was so big and beautiful that finally I sang too. The two of us, the night air so cool, the music pounding, and the world was nothing but stars and possibility, and I loved my mother with every atom in my body.

I’m guessing that for anyone else, the experience of belting I want to fuck you like an animal with your mom would probably feel a little nonstandard. Although maybe Trent Reznor would approve.

About 4 AM, she was telling me again the story of her audition in high school for The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, the moment she stood before the bulletin board: “And I looked up, and I saw Star McGuire–”

Above us, a meteor arced and fell.

“Holy shit,” said my mom, and pulled the car into a hard right turn onto a two-lane county road, and followed her fucking star.

The road led to a small sleeping town, and a tiny building with a handpainted sign: The Synchronicity Cafe. And underneath, a second sign: Help Wanted.

My mother braked the car and looked at the signs. The engine idled, ready to run some more. But then she turned it off, and settled back in her seat, slowly slid the key into her jeans pocket, folded her arms. She gave the satisfied sigh of a hard job well done. She wore the fourth look of traveling: Home at last.

CW 20: Love Story

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Love Story

For Amy Shepherd and Laura Treadway. Thank you for your friendship and support.

The patio door of the villa opened straight onto the beach. Dave stood in front of the screen door that kept the bugs out; Elena was scared of bugs. To his left, the faint noise of hammers and men’s voices: if he turned his head, he would see them putting the finishing touches on the tent up by the hotel. But he looked straight ahead at the ocean that rolled in like a metronome and stretched flat and blue as far as he could see, as far as the sky, as far as forever. Elena wanted a wedding by the sea.

She came into the room with what he had started thinking of as the Enormous Binder of Stupid Wedding Shit. Precisely calculated seating charts. The exact shade of blue the bridesmaids should dye their shoes. Careful notes on the width of the ribbons that some poor hotel asshole was going to have to tie on every single chair in that stupid fucking tent tonight while the sea rolled in, rolled in, forever.

She settled down on the couch with a sigh. “I need a break. You want to watch a movie? Let’s find a love story.”

“I am so sick of love stories,” Dave said, and it was like something with wings and teeth buzzing into the room.

“Really,” Elena said. Careful voice, tight face, but he could hear wings whirring in her, wanting out. “Then what do you want to see?”

“Okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I’m tired, you’re tired, we have this thing to get through. Can we just watch something mindless?”

“This thing to get through?” In her eyes, in her voice, bzzz, bzzz. “Tell you what, find something with chainsaws and body parts. Because that really sets the tone for the thing.” And she threw the remote onto the couch and went into the bedroom. She didn’t take the Binder with her.

Dave thought he’d go take a walk on the beach, maybe all the way back to Cincinnati.

He walked about a quarter mile with the sea rolling in to his left, imagining the Enormous Binder of Stupid Life Shit: the fights, the stings, the scary things inside them that could come flying out anytime.

Like just now.

He stopped. He looked out at the forever. “Okay,” he said out loud after a while. “I get it.”

As he turned back towards the hotel, he could see the tent in the distance, up now, flags flying. And a little closer, Elena standing on the beach, looking in his direction.

The sea foamed in around his feet and left him a piece of bridesmaid-blue sea glass. He smiled. “I get it,” he said again.

They met each other in the middle. “Got you a present,” he said, and put the sea glass in her hand.

“It matches,” she said.

“It’s our color, apparently,” he said. She smiled. That smile could still put butterflies inside him.

She gripped the glass in one hand and gave him the other. They held hands as they walked toward the villa.

“I found us a movie,” she said. “Scream 3.”

“Thought we were going for a love story.”

She held up their clasped hands and said, “Right here.”

CW 19: Magic

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Magic

For Larry Eskridge. I love you, Dad.

“The Magician! The Magician has come to town!”

The Rider pedals like he carries stolen treasure and the pirates are right behind. He pumps his legs so hard and fast that Mr. Robinson only sees a blur when the bike streaks by the drugstore window, and Mrs. Arnson has to hold down her hat in the wind of his passing. “The Magician!” he calls, “the Magician!” and hopes they hear him in the crack of the sonic boom he leaves in his wake. The speed! Better than Superman, faster than the Flash, he is the Rider! And now the Rider reaches the west end of Oak Street and turns the bike south down Harmon Hill. Whooooosh! Down down down, no hands on the bars because they are up over his head waving to his friends who are gathered at the bottom of the hill, preparing their summer day’s adventures. Never mind all that now! The Magician has come to town!

The Rider hits the brakes and leaves his bike in a tumble, and takes a step or two before he must bend and brace his hands on his knees, gasping with the effort and electricity of that ride, and now he’s just red-faced Tommy Morris in jeans and sneakers, bursting with the news. “Guys! The Magician’s here!”

They know how it works; the magic needs time to gather, and the Magician must prepare. So they content themselves with riding like banshees through town shouting the news; twice along Main Street to make sure everyone’s heard, past the church, all around the park, and even out on Maple Street by the empty school, summer-sleepy, smaller-seeming without the roil and racket of children.

“It’s just a building, really, isn’t it?” Gordy Levinson says. “Just a dumb old building.” He sounds disappointed. Tommy knows Gordy really likes all that stuff, history and math and even spelling, and he’s pretty sure that Gordy is a lot smarter than he lets on. Gordy is maybe even a brainiac. Tommy shakes his head over how different they all are, him and Gordy and Frank Thomas whose dad is the town janitor and Alice Karlsen who is a girl. “Don’t worry, Gordy,” he says. “‘Course it’s just a building. Needs us there to be a school. We’re the magic!”

And off they ride.

That evening, as the sky turns waxy-blue and the sun melts into the treeline across the fields, as dusk comes on cool and gray with her neekerbreekers and fireflies, the town gathers on the fairground where the Magician has set up his caravan. The stars twinkle overhead as if they are the audience too: Look at that, look at that, magic, magic!

“Welcome,” the Magician says. He doesn’t look a day older, not a minute, from last year or the year before that, or any of the years that anyone can remember, even Grandma Karlsen who has seen eighty-nine of those years. Eighty-nine summers of tire swings and the cold brown secret water of lakes, no hands down Harmon Hill and popcorn at the Crest Cinema, eighty-nine summers to dream summer dreams. Imagine that, Tommy thinks. Eighty-nine summers!

Grandma Karlsen leans down to Tommy now and says in a confidential whisper, “Not a day older.”

It’s magic.

CW 18: Closed Circuit

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Closed Circuit

For Colleen Lindsay. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Peter got the call while he was giving the 8th graders his Don’t Try This At Home speech about electricity. “We’re using low-voltage batteries for this experiment,” he said. “Do not go home and plug yourself into the wall, okay? Because you’ll probably fry your brains, and you’ll definitely flunk this class. Strong current is dangerous–”

The ringtone startled him so much that all he could do was pull the phone from his pocket and stare while the kids snickered and Alanis Morrisette wailed The mess you left when you went away. And he almost let the call go because it was a mess, but…

“Excuse me,” he said, “I have to take this.” He stepped into the hallway and put the phone to his ear, and took a deep breath and said, “Dad?” But he didn’t recognize the voice on the other end; and it took the longest time to understand that his father’s death was calling.

“Celestún. In Yucatán. Are you a great distance away?” the doctor said.

I’m not the one who’s far away, Peter thought. I’m right here. But what he said was, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He spent the entire journey — the subway to his apartment, the packing, the taxi to the airport, the planes, the drive from Mérida — preparing and discarding greetings to his father.

Excuse me, are you George Bridges? Oh, hi, Dad. I’m Peter.

What’s so important that we have to fight about it in person? That’s what the phone is for.

Hi Dad, long time no see, thanks for breaking our hearts, fuck off and die. Oh, right, you are.

But in the small hospital room, he found his father white-stubbled and gaunt, and so thin under the blanket that all of Peter’s bitter words trickled away.

His dad turned his gaze from the window and held up a skeletal hand. “Petey. I’ll be damned. You came,” he said.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” Peter said.

“I think that’s my line,” his dad said. And Peter gave a small, appreciative smile at the charming, cynical way his dad told his truths. Even the painful ones.

Peter sat by the bed. The window gave a view of a lagoon where flamingos stood in the green water like a rack of pink umbrellas, and herons spiraled in to land. “Is this where you’ve been?” Peter said.

“A couple of years. They have a bird sanctuary here. I like birds.”

“They migrate,” Peter said. Now it was his father’s turn to smile small. “They also occasionally kill their young in the nest,” his dad said. “So thank God for small favors.”

And Peter couldn’t help that it still hurt, that his dad could still burn him after all this time and distance. High voltage. No resistance.

There was a long silence during which his father took several shallow breaths. One of them turned into a wracking, gutteral cough that had Peter halfway out of his chair before his father waved him back weakly. So Peter sat while his dad hacked bits of himself into a tissue.

After it passed, his dad turned his head back to the window and looked out at the birds. “I didn’t think you’d come,” he said finally. “I probably wouldn’t have. And I thought, even if you did, what the fuck would I say to you?”

Peter thought, Christ, then what did I come all this way for?

His dad was still watching the birds. “And then I thought, you know, when Petey was born, when they gave him to me… you were bawling your head off. You were mad, you were scared, I don’t know. But I held you and you got quiet. You know? Whatever it was, it was okay then.”

Then he began to cough again, hard and deep and no time for tissues because he was too busy fighting for breath, fighting the death that was coming down to land. Peter helped him sit up; then he put his arm around his dad and braced him while his dad leaned back and shook himself to pieces inside, and every spasm went through Peter like current. No resistance.

“I’m here,” Peter said. “I’m right here.”

CW 17: Garden Grow

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Garden Grow

For Vicki Platts-Brown. Thank you for your friendship and support (and being a *wonderful* neighbor!)

Janet was not a pessimist, not really. She just knew the universe had its own particular sense of humor.

“So you’re not a pessimist,” Maureen said. “You’re paranoid. Okay, honey, I feel so much better now.” She smiled. It was a great smile, a twenty years and I still love you smile, and Janet wanted to see it for another twenty thousand years.

They finished their coffee and croissants in companionable silence over the newspaper. The patio was warm with spring-morning sunlight. All through the garden, flowers and herbs and little shrubby things grew with the exuberance of the well-weeded, the properly mown, the carefully fertilized. Mo liked her garden happy.

“It’s so peaceful here,” Mo said. She gave Janet another one of those smiles, and Janet smiled too. One day the universe would get out the mulcher, laughing all the way: until then, it was good to be happy.

Ten seconds later, they heard the grinding rattle of a diesel engine chewing its way down the street. Janet imagined the universe giving her a friendly wink as it turned its attention to whatever real fun it had lined up today.

The engine grew louder and louder, chut chut chut CHUT, and then stopped. Mo stood and craned her neck over the deck rail around the side of the house, toward the street.

“Aha,” she said. “The new people are moving in.”

Janet looked up and raised a hand. “No PNFH,” she told the universe. “That’s all I ask.”

“Honey, it’ll be fine. It always works out.”

“Sure,” Janet said. And to the universe, Just behave.

Maureen stood and gathered the plates, and dropped a kiss on the top of Janet’s head before she headed for the kitchen. She stopped along the way to pluck a withered leaf from one of the special plants she kept in pots on the patio, the ones that need particular tending. Then she said, “They aren’t even out of the truck yet. Let’s at least meet them before we haul out the pitchforks.”

“Sure,” Janet said. But she felt the universe chuckling. Oh, come on, Janet. Let’s have some fun! Let’s play Psycho Neighbors From Hell!

Mo spent the next afternoon in the garden, and joined Janet on the patio with dirt smudges on her gorgeous cheekbones and a full report on the neighbors. “Max and Tiffany,” she said. “Tiffany’s the one with the nails.” She raised an editorial eyebrow; then, in a widdle-girl voice, “Weeding is so hard!” with a wide-eyed, pursed-mouth shimmy and a flap of her hand as if trying to pull a weed without actually touching it.

“What about Max?” Janet poured Mo a glass of the usual pinot gris and leaned back in her chair.

“She never got a word in edgewise,” Mo said. “I get the feeling Tiffany doesn’t like the kind of conversation where other people talk.”

The last of the day’s canteloupe light dappled the Japanese maple, and Mo’s potted plants seemed to stretch luxuriously to meet it. The sounds of dusk gathered around them, the crickets and the crows. And Tiffany shrieking through an open window, “No, put it there! No, there!”

“Sex or furniture,” Mo said, with a slight wince and a larger-than-usual sip of her wine.

“Pitchforks?” Janet said.

“Nah,” Mo said. And then, “Not yet.” Janet said nothing, but she suspected there might be trouble ahead. If Mo decided she didn’t like these people…. Well, she wouldn’t be happy.

“It always works out,” Mo said.

By summer, the grass next door was two feet high, the dandelions had planted their flag of empire, and all the lavender Mo had helped the Jensens plant there five years ago was choked by bindweed.

Janet came home from work one day to find Mo on the patio already making inroads on the wine, white-lipped with rage. “I have sent email,” she said. “I have asked politely. I have taken them a goddamn carrot cake. And today I went over and told them they need to take care of the yard before everything dies, and that woman said they’ll get around to it if they can but after all, it’s nature’s way and maybe I need to learn to deal with it.” She drank off her wine in a gulp and stared narrow-eyed at her potted plants nodding in the sun, green and vibrant and lush, spiky leaves, large buds tightly closed.

Then she took a breath. “Well,” she said. “You were right. PNFH.”

Thanks a fucking lot, Janet told the universe. Because I need the extra hassle right now. She sighed. “Pitchforks?” she said.

Mo said, “Go get yourself a glass and we’ll talk about it.”

A few days later, Mo was humming in the garden like a bee, hmm hmm, small contented sounds as she deadheaded the rhodies. Late that night she said to Janet, “Let’s have some ice wine on the patio. It’s such a beautiful night.”

And it was. The full moon was impossibly wide and just the right shade of sour yellow. They drank their yellow wine.

Muffled screams began from next door.

“You took them a plant,” Janet said. Mo smiled and drank her wine.

Ho ho ho, the universe said. Wasn’t that fun?

The next day, Janet went over and mowed the lawn.

CW 16: The Last Cafe

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

The Last Cafe

For Ivan Sun. Thank you for your support of my work and Clarion West.

The sign said The Last Cafe, but the place looked like what Annie thought of as a regular house, small and wooden with a covered front porch, sleepy in the shade of a stand of oaks dripping Spanish moss. Blue jays scracked overhead. It was going to be a hot day. Annie smelled salt in the air.

She left Bridget in the small parking lot while she went around back. She had learned that taking a little one to the door only made it more likely folks would say no. “Stay right here and wait for me,” she said. Bridget nodded tiredly and clutched her beanbag frog.

Annie followed a short gravel drive to the back of the building and found a battered pickup truck with a Sink or Swim! bumper sticker parked near a screen door. She could see kitchen things through the screen: a double sink, a large refrigerator humming in the corner, a big butcherblock counter with a rack of cookpots and skillets hanging from the ceiling overhead.

And then she saw beyond the truck, beyond the far back fence that bounded the land: a fingerpaint-blue sky arching cloudless over shallow water that lapped at the bottom inch of the fence posts and spread back as far as she could see. Back to the edge of the world. The oak trees seemed to be marching into the water until, far out, only their tops cleared the surface. Annie imagined them standing tiptoe on their roots, trying to breathe.

Annie took a breath. She had never been so close to the Great Sea.

“We’re not open until lunch,” a voice said behind her.

She turned. A man leaned against the doorjamb behind the screen. He wore a white cook’s apron over jeans and a t-shirt, and his dark hair was pulled into a ponytail. He held a butcher knife. Annie thought he was maybe as old as her dad had been the last time she saw him, when he had said Stay right here and wait for me, punkin. But he had never come back and finally she couldn’t wait anymore, because most everyone was leaving and taking the food. Sometimes they would yank a sack of bread and peanutbutter right out of some little kid’s hand before they smacked her down and left her in the street. That was where she had found Bridget; huddled up on a curb hugging her toy frog, with a swollen face and the most lonesome eyes in the world.

That had been a hundred and fifty-seven miles ago. Annie didn’t think she was going to see her dad again.

She looked at the Last Cafe man, and then again at the Great Sea. She must have taken a wrong turn on the county road. She thought she was taking them away from the creeping water. But here it was, like a monster mouth opening wider and wider, swallowing everything.

She took another breath. Bridget was hungry. So Annie said, “I can’t pay for food, but I can work for it.”

He regarded her in silence.

“I can chop things up. I know how to clean shrimp and shuck oysters. I can houseclean. I can do laundry. I can paint your porch rail, it really needs it.”

He wasn’t exactly frowning now, but he was shaking his head a little, and she suddenly felt desperate, like she was one of those trees with only one branch left above water. But her dad had taught her never sound scared, so she made herself believe the cafe man would say yes if she just talked fast enough. “I can bus tables. Really, I’m strong. I can wash dishes. I can cut the yard if you have a gas mower. I can…” But he bent his head and shifted his weight, and she knew what that meant: I’m sorry, but I’ve got problems of my own and I can’t hear yours right now. It meant he was about to turn away and let her drown.

“Mister,” she said, and her traitor voice quavered but she went on, “Mister, please, I have a child with me.”

His head came up. He blinked once, twice; and said in a careful, quiet voice, “A child. I see. And do you mind if I ask how old you are yourself?”

“I’m twelve,” Annie said.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus.” Then he turned his head and called back into the house, “Stella!” Annie bit her lip, and stood silent, and hoped.

CW 15: Feeding Time

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Feeding Time

For Matt Ruff. Thank you for your friendship and support.

It is amazing that more people don’t die at the zoo, because basically the zoo is ten tons of clawed fanged rip-your-guts-out die-screaming fun just waiting for the next moron who thinks he’s at Disneyworld. Oh, cool, the hyena wants my ham sandwich! Munch, there goes your hand. I’m gonna climb this fence and give the tiger a beer! Oops, the tiger ate your brain.

People are stupid, Will, Caesar says. But y’all taste good. He grins at me. Caesar is beautiful and strong and he knows it. He is a furry orange-striped death god behind a pane of the thickest glass they can find; because stupid is relative, and Caesar knows that too. I am just another lunch on legs to him, but he seems happy to talk to me until the day he can persuade me to come inside and play with the kitty. On that day I would officially be Too Stupid To Live, so I guess it would all work out.

I can talk to all the big predators. Pete the polar bear once said that means I am one of them. You’re a giant weasel, Pete, I told him. I am not a member of your weasel tribe.

Ooooooh, Pete said, someone’s feeling sensitive. And maybe I was, a little. My friend Sara Parsons called me a weasel for making her miss Jack Houghton’s invitation-only beach party. I told her I’d drive her. And I did: around and around, pretending to be lost. Pretending to be stupid. Because I know how Jack’s private parties sometimes turn out. Jack thinks girls are stupid, but they taste good. I can’t wait for him to graduate to the bigger buffet of some university at least seven states away. And I wouldn’t mind seeing him in the cage with Caesar for a little heart-to-heart.

The next day at school, Jack says to me, “Dude, come up to my place tomorrow afternoon for hot tub and margaritas.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“No, definitely. Bring Sachertorte Sara with you this time.” And he looks at me with half-lidded eyes, like he’s imagining a mouthful of cream.

“Bring her,” he says. “Or someone else will.”

“Whatever,” I say. “If she wants to.”

“Of course she wants to.”

And that’s the thing: she does. “Will, I can take care of myself,” she says when I try to tell her. “I know how to say no, and I know how to handle boys. I just want to see what it’s like…”

“To end up roofied in the cabana with your underwear gone?”

“Oh, please,” she says. “I’m not stupid. I won’t drink anything I don’t open myself. I just want to know…” She gives me a long look, with all the years of our friendship behind it. “You know what I mean.”

And I do. We both wonder what it’s like to live that way. The money and the fun and the 400-volt fizz of making all your own rules for a night, for ever. “I would rather go with you,” she says, which means she’ll go no matter what. So I take her to Jack’s the next day.

But first, we go to the zoo.

I lead her to Caesar’s cage. He’s lounging on his favorite rock, posing for the lunchtime crowd. When he sees us, he stands and stretches and strolls to the glass.

“Oh, he’s beautiful,” Sara says, with just the right note of admiration and respect that Caesar likes best. It’s like she bows to him with her voice. He regards her for a moment, then he rubs his cheek along the glass. The nice kitty likes you. Look, look. All this strength and power, this rumble and tongue, this attentive spotlight gaze, all this for you. Rub, rub.

“Wow,” she says. She kneels and presses her hand against the glass where his cheek is. I know she’s never been that close to something like Caesar before; and in her face is wonder and delight.

And suddenly Caesar half-stands and slams his dinner-plate paws against the glass on either side of her, opens his jaws wide wide wide. His mouth is bigger than her head. She yelps and scrabbles backward, and I catch her. For a moment we can hear his hunger, arrrr, arrrr; and privately he says to me, This one would be very tasty. Then he scrapes his claws down the glass as he drops, and gives her a half-lidded look, and turns and strolls to his rock.

Sara has recovered herself by the time we get to Jack’s house. She’s adrenalized by the thrill of the wild, ready to shake it up a little. We make our way to the back yard, where girls in bikinis are splashing each other in the pool, and on the lawn beyond, Jack and some of his posse are playing touch football. Soon they’ll start inviting girls to join them, and then the touching will become the hunt and those bikinis will start coming off.

I can see why girls think Jack is beautiful. He is lean and long and graceful, and when he runs with the ball he is focused and fierce. “Wow,” Sara says, “he’s great out there.”

“Yes,” I say. “He’s a real tiger.”

Sara goes very still, watching Jack. Then she looks at me for a long moment. And finally she say, “Without glass.”

When I tell Caesar later, he approves. He says, I like her. We should do lunch again sometime. And laughs his silent tiger laugh.

CW 14: Mercy

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Mercy

for Rob Sutherland. Thank you for your support of my work and Clarion West.

I won’t I won’t I won’t go mad, Mercy told herself as she fled the apartment clutching her messenger bag, her keys, one sneaker and a nectarine. But her hands were shaking so hard that the keys jangled like chattering metal teeth oh god Eric’s teeth his TEETH —

Forget the elevator. She took the stairs.

By the bottom of the five flights, she had got some of her steel back; enough to stop, take three deep breaths, and crane her neck to study the stairwell above her. No thump thump thump of pursuit. No head over the rail, grinning gleeful, Found you! with those teeth —

Don’t, don’t. Breathe. Sit on the bottom stair. Put on her other shoe so the doorman doesn’t look askance, doesn’t call upstairs to ask her husband if she’s okay, because that answer is most certainly no. That answer is most certainly, Oh, thank you, Walter, will you please keep Mrs. Adams there so I can come down and get her?

I won’t go mad, she thought again. She straightened her bag across her back, and then she straightened her spine and opened the door into the lobby. She kept her keys like spikes between her fingers just in case Eric was waiting. In case anyone with teeth stood between her and the street.

“Morning, Mrs. A.,” Walter the doorman said. “Problem with the elevator?”

Mercy smiled so brightly that she was sure she looked insane. “No, I just felt like a little exercise.” How many calories did you lose running from a monster? Don’t go there, she told herself. But then she raised her hand to give Walter the usual little wave goodbye, and found the nectarine still in it. That was all it took to swing her into a mental U-turn, to rewind time to the moment that she stood in the kitchen —

— frowning at the fruit. Was it ripe? She picked it up as Eric stepped into view down the hall, naked, toweling his hair dry, giving her a view of his body that would have made her feel deliciously ripe herself on any other day. But today had been the worst fight ever. Today had bitten deep. They were so bitter with each other sometimes, so poisonous, and she found herself thinking that love might not be enough antidote.

Eric pulled the towel from his head and turned toward her.

His mouth was the mouth of a giant spider, with giant spider teeth; and even as her mind tried to turn itself inside out, the spider mouth spoke with Eric’s voice: “Mercy.”

Some old part of her brain took over then, as if she were facing a lion on a veldt. It made her rigid for an instant while it narrowed her vision to what was necessary, while it turned her internal adrenaline firehose to full stream; and then it told her Careful, now, and gave her back control. When she opened her mouth, she wondered if she would scream: but she only said, in a voice not too far from normal, “I’ll be right back.” Then she turned and walked to the living room and shoved her left foot into her sneaker and saw her keys on the console table and her bag on the floor and then behind her, close, the voice clacked her name, “Mercy.”

She made a desperate sweeping lunge to scoop up her bag, her keys, her right shoe. Then she ran. And here she was in the lobby with the nectarine still in her hand and her brain reminding her monster, monster, TEETH!

“Walter, would you like this?” she said. “I think it’s just about ready to eat.” Then she pushed through the door to the street as quickly as she could, so she would not have to see him raise it to his mouth and take a bite.

She made it half a block before she started to shake. By the time she reached the coffee shop, she was nothing but trembles and tears. Alice the barista took one look and came out from behind the counter, bullied a non-regular away from his table, and set Mercy in a chair. “Honey, whatever it is, we’ll fix it, okay? I’ll get you some coffee.”

A customer in line said, “Hey, we were here first.”

Alice said, “Then I guess that makes your day worse than whatever just happened to her, Mr. Compassionate? Go get your coffee somewhere else. Go on.” She flapped her hands at him as if she were trying to literally shake him out the door.

He went. No one else complained. Mercy sat, vibrating, staring at the tabletop, trying to stop the terror bouncing in her brain like a pinball hitting all the buttons. Ping! Eric so beautiful that body, turning. Ping! What’s that on his face TEETH TEETH! Ping! Ping! Ping! Then a hand reached into her field of view and set a mocha on the table.

“Liquid Xanax,” Alice said.

“Thank you,” Mercy said, in a voice not too far from normal, and looked up —

Alice’s mouth was the mouth of a giant spider, with giant spider teeth, and it said, “Don’t run,” but oh by god Mercy did.

And then the street was full of spiders. Everywhere she turned, everywhere she looked, all of them saying her name. Mercy, Mercy! They cut her off at an intersection, spiders on every corner, Mercy! They herded her into a dead-end alley. Mercy! And when she was huddled shrieking against the wall, one pushed through the crowd and stood before her.

“Mercy,” Eric said. And then he waited.

She silenced herself. She found her steel, and she made a cage of it and put her gibbering brain inside. Then she stepped away from the wall.

“What do you want?” she said to the monsters.

Mercy, they whispered. Mercy. Mercy for the spiders in us all.

Above his nightmare mouth, Eric’s human eyes were full of pain and shame and hope. When she touched her own mouth, she found the teeth there. Be merciful, she thought, and lifted her face for his kiss.

CW 13: The Cabaret of Love

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

The Cabaret of Love

for Tommaso Fiacchino. Grazie per il tuo sostegno, e per l’avventura.

“Oh, come on,” Marty said. “It’ll be fun. Live a little before she ties you down.” He punched Joe in the arm the way men did: I’m only kidding, bro, ha ha! And Joe was once again grateful for Lola, who never needed force to speak of sadness. She would have simply said, I worry we won’t see each other as much. I worry you’ll leave me behind.

When he talked to her about his brother, she only said, “It’s your bachelor party. Go be a bachelor.”

“I’m not sure it’s a party if there’s only two of you.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said. “Come over here, big guy, I’ll show you a party of two.”

And of course he did, and of course it was. He remembered the first time she gave herself to him; not the first time they made love, although that was terrific even with the inevitable awkward moments of two people new to each other. But there had come a time weeks later when they were moving together and he suddenly felt her… melt against him and then into him, and then she was fire, she was cold clear water, she was flying in a hard blue summer sky and he was flying with her. He thought with absolute clarity, This isn’t her body I’m fucking anymore, this is her soul. And when they lay trembling in each other’s arms after, he knew that he would marry her.

This time after, she kissed him and said, “I hope Marty doesn’t have this kind of party in mind. Because I really don’t think he’s the right girl for you.”

He laughed. But…. “I don’t know,” he said. “This place is called the Cabaret of Love. It might get a little… extreme.”

She was silent for a moment, and then she shook her head with a small, tight smile and a raised eyebrow that said Of course it will get extreme, that’s what men do; and it reminded him so much of his mother that for a single, chilling instant the only coherent thought in his brain was Run, run! Because the point really, really was not to get hitched to his mother; the point with her, as it had been for years, was to be at least a thousand miles away and always carry a gun.

“Go,” Lola said again, and this time her smile was just Lola, a warm smile that showed a couple of crooked teeth and twenty-five years of the kind of life Joe thought of as a Good Trip. He’d had pretty much the other kind, until he met her.

“This is going to be so awesome,” Marty said for the thirty-fifth time. Joe smiled politely and waited while Marty paid the cover to a woman in a bikini and heels so high they should have come with a safety line.

The main room of the cabaret had a stage at one end fronted by small round tables. A wooden bar ran along the side wall; it looked old and well-maintained, not the sort of bar you’d let drunk men spill their Coors Light on while they shouted Give it to me, baby! at the pair of bare breasts onstage. There was no bartender. There were no other people at all except Marty and Joe.

In the center of the room stood a glass case topped with gears and rods pumping up and down, up and down. Behind the glass, small marionettes moved to the rhythms. Here was the cabaret in miniature, but this little world was full of people: here was the audience he had expected. Men and women at the bar and tables, raising and lowering their glasses, faces turning endlessly to one another. They were naked in all the human ways, nipples and wiry body hair, bellybuttons, flabby stomachs. Some of the men had strings at their groins, and when the gears turned overhead their penises went up and down, up and down. In one corner, a woman straddled a man and the gears moved them apart, together, apart. The mouths in their wooden faces were delicately carved into howls of laughter and pain, of bone-breaking rage and numb disregard. On the stage, a tiny blowsy woman with drooping breasts sang into a microphone: underneath the vulgar blue eyeshadow and the bright lipstick that was the perfect shade of contempt, her face wore that same expression as the little wooden woman forever fucking in the corner, as Lola, as his mother, and Oh no, Joe thought, what is this?

When he turned, Marty was gone, and Joe couldn’t see the door anymore, and then the room went cold and an old, cold voice filled him. A voice like the fire going out, like shit in the stream, like a bird dropping dead from the sky. The voice said, This is what you all are, underneath. Forever pulling each other’s strings.

And for a moment like a long-held breath, for a moment like the stopping of a heart, Joe knew it was true. The Cabaret of Love was just another layover stop on the Bad Trip, and Joe and Lola had a table waiting in the front row. Or maybe in the corner.

And then he reached for the memory of her melting. He reached for her smile. He reached for the hope of the Good Trip, tied together, not tied down.

And then he stood in a room that was crowded with men, warm from their sweat and their temporary unbound desire. On the stage, a pretty woman smiled and gave it to them, always out of reach. Marty stood next to him, holding two beers. “Here you go, bro,” he said, and handed one to Joe. “Here’s to one more night of freedom!”