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.
The Real Deal
For Jean Rukkila. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.
I land seven hours late, welcome to the modern fucking world of air travel. I get out into the long-term lot in a cold gray whippy-wind afternoon, welcome to another fucking summer in Seattle. My car battery is dead. Welcome to my kick-the-tire hurt-my-foot scream-like-a-motherfucker life.
I limp my ass and my rollerbag back to the terminal and find a taxi, and once we’re on our way, I check my phone and find the email informing me that while I was on Air Turbulence over the Rockies, the client signed with the Asshole Competitor. No surprise: I blew the most important deal of my life with one stupid remark halfway through the box lunch. I have been stewing in failure all day, with a hefty side of bitter sauce. Stick me with a fork. I’m done.
But apparently I’m not. There are fifty-seven million emails from Thea:
How did the meeting go?
Fwd: LOL Funny!
Fwd: Your Daily Joke!
I hope the meeting went great!
See u at home soon!
Fwd: LOLcat so cute!
If I had known Thea likes stupid internet jokes and bad English translations of foreign signs and fucking LOLcats, maybe we would never have made it past the first date. But like anyone with a bad habit, she kept it under wraps until I was totally crazy about her, until we bonded over the Mariners and Indian food and the Harry Potter films. Then she let the bad jokes creep slowly into our lives, along with her health-food obsession and a fondness for sentimental television commercials.
Today I can’t even pretend to laugh. I have tell her I blew the deal and maybe the promotion and maybe the career, and I just don’t know what to say, I just don’t know, and the taxi takes me through a downtown full of people laughing in happy-hour bars, a couple of guys high-fiving each other outside the bank, and then we turn a corner and leave all that behind.
My phone rings.
As soon as I answer, she says,”Hey, how did it go?” There’s the little growly sound in her voice that means she’s happy, and I can imagine her quirky smile, and I hesitate. Then my phone goes ping! and a text message opens: an inane photo of a cat in a negligee with the caption Welkum Hoem TomKitteh! And apparently I am not done with failing, apparently the whole day has just been the runup to the really special moment when I open my mouth and say, “You know, Thea, LOLcats are so butt-stupid I can’t believe it every time I see one.”
When I walk in the door, there are candles on the table and Frank Sinatra on the iPod, and the smoke of something-gone-wrong in the air, and Thea sitting puffy-faced on the couch staring at the floor. She is wearing sweat pants and her oldest t-shirt, but her hair looks nice and somehow I know that she was in one of her jungle-print nighties when she called.
I stand in the doorway. I have no idea what to say. I’m angry at me and her and the client and the airline and the car battery and how a whole deal can go down in flames in a moment, and I’m afraid to open my mouth because I don’t know what might come out.
She says, without looking at me, “I was making aloo chard, and then I decided to sit down and cry, and it burned.”
And suddenly I know, the clearest I have known anything all day, that this is the most important deal of my life: Thea and her hand-labeled collection of curry spices and her leopard underwear and her ability to laugh at stupid things, and christ knows I sound butt-stupid when I say, “So you charred the chard?”
She looks up. There’s a long moment… and then she shakes her head and I see the small corner of a smile that tells me I haven’t blown it completely yet. I drop my bags and say I’m sorry, I tell her I love her, and I tell her what I did today, and I swear to myself that tomorrow I will find her the perfect LOLcat if it kills me.
And forever after ‘so you charred the chard’ was code language for when they needed a step back from the tangles of intensity that strangle and illuminate relations in a shared life…
(So now when I serve it guests will wonder at my small grin…?!)
Thanks!
Yes, I think that kind of code is a part of relationships. And I hope you liked it! It was a pleasure to write it for you.