“I keep asking myself,” says Marco, pacing, ” where are we going? With this? I mean, yeah, the journey not the destination, but we still have to… are you, uh,” and he looks directly at her. “Are you listening?”
Cassidy’s trying, but there’s a banjo in her head. Dang a dit dit a liddle pang tong! “Yeah,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
“I was. Uh.” Marco pulls something out of his pocket, then kneels jerkily. “Cassidy Fox?” he says. “Will you marry me?”
Cassidy stares. Diddle ting pong iddle dit pit a tang! she thinks.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
robot lifts up the box, anticipating nothing. robot is Zen.
robot does well not to anticipate: under the upturned box is an old crone. “There is no kitten!” she cackles. robot is shocked at her blasphemy.
The journey is long, but robot is patient. Under one box, robot finds an abandoned used car lot; under another, some coaxial plumbing. There’s one moment of hope, but it turns out robot has just found Leonard Richardson.
At last, one box reveals an adorable feline, coat fluffy, eyes gleaming.
“KITTEN!” shrieks robot, and pulps it.
No! It’s okay! It was only a stuffed kitten!
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
“That McQuarrie guy,” says Ballard, “he ever do anything after Usual Suspects?”
“Won an Oscar. Made The Way of the Gun,” says Cote.
“Oh, yeah. That was awful,” Ballard yawns.
“It was not. It –”
“Worst thing I’ve seen Sam Jackson do.”
“Samuel L. Jackson wasn’t in it! We’ve been over this.”
“Whatever. You’ll admit it wasn’t Suspects.”
“Okay. It was… grittier. Not as clever.” Cote shrugs. “I guess everybody’s got one heist plot in them.”
“Either a movie,” Ballard says, “or a real one.”
“Heh. Yeah.”
Then they both get quiet for a while, staring off into the middle distance.
Monday, November 22, 2004
Chad remembers old Westerns. There are two phases of cowboy life, the one with cows and the one with guns, and though he’s no cowboy, his wrangling days are behind him now.
His ears catch the sudden silence behind him, and he feels the air change. It’s like an intake of breath by some great beast. Chad knows it instinctively: it’s the sound of a diesel engine, clutch popped, coasting. He waits.
A pedal creaks. It’s almost on him. Chad spins, draws and fires into the bus in one smooth snarl, and the buck of the gun throws him bodily sideways.
Friday, November 19, 2004
After the funeral, Mason searches frantically for every kiss she’s left behind. He looks in her purse and coat pockets, the couch cushions and her bathroom trash. In the end, he finds forty-five.
Grieving, he binges on four, then resolves to ration them: one a year, and when they’re gone he won’t bother to live anymore.
Next month he breaks it and uses three, but after that he’s stronger. One the next year. One the next. Until one January he forgets.
Among his possessions, his daughters find a tiny box. In it are thirty-two things, unidentifiable, like slips of brittle cellophane.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
When Ragade threw open the design for his Localized Air Density Field Inducer (U.S. Pat. No. 6,685,518), tech groups were ecstatic. A transcendent leap in the way we will build and travel, said WireScience. A great leap for mankind!
Everyone expected jet sleds, never-fail automatic parachutes and the end of car crashes. Everyone expected perfect acoustics anywhere you wanted them. Everyone expected instant invisible buildings. Everyone expected breakthroughs in mountaineering and deep-sea exploration–ultrafast rail transport–cheap, perfect lenses and optical cable. Everyone expected moon colonies. Everyone expected everything in WireScience to come true.
Nobody–except maybe Ragade–expected the skywhales.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
It wouldn’t be so bad if he hadn’t read about their care. The author had mentioned, offhand, that it was best to use an empty aquarium. That convinced Joss that the mother Surinam frog must be aware of the matter, and dislike it.
In the worst dreams, she doesn’t have the problem. He can’t see his back, but he knows what’s there: the rough honeycomb shapes, and, waiting, their spadelike little heads.
The walls are smooth. He can’t rub against them. The babies are restless. The mother just sits there, smugly repeating her own taxonomy: “Pipa pipa,” she croaks. “Pipa pipa.”
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
It’s hot in Scarsdale, but Lil P still sports his thick red beanie –he won’t be caught without his colors. These three boys in black, he thinks, must be sweating even more.
“Looks like some APA chump come downtown all alone!” says the lead.
“Y’all MLA punks best back up offs,” snaps Lil P. “Your pages is numbered.”
They go cold. “Nobody disses our style,” snaps one, stepping up, but the lead restrains him. He and P both hear it: somebody’s rig bumping, nearby…
Then the Turabian hoods roll around the corner, grinning, and all of them break sweat anew.
Monday, November 15, 2004
“I’ll put the lilies–” Helena begins.
“Put them over there,” orders Mister Fannon. His thin hands should move languorously; they don’t.
“Why’d we have to get the Bossy Funeral Home?” mutters Gracie.
“Helena wanted it.” Sven shrugs. “Said she needed direction.”
“I looked through that catalog,” Helena’s saying. “I was thinking about the Millennium?”
“Not for a cremation, honey!” says Fannon. “You just get a nice pine box–the Excelsior, say–and spend the extra money on a trip for yourself. That’s what Ben would’ve wanted, am I right?”
They don’t go in for nonsense at the Bossy Funeral Home.
Friday, November 12, 2004
“It’s not like I don’t want to learn,” says Courtney. “I mean, I can spell… But I am in college, so I expect I’m going to get corrected on grammar, or whatever, I expect some red ink–”
“Which they don’t use,” says Violet.
“Exactly! They use green ink because somebody,” Courtney says, “somebody with a sinecure, wrote a memo about how we associate red with bad and that–that completely misses the point. It just makes them look like a bunch of jackoffs.”
“I think you mean ‘jacksoff,'” says Violet.
“They got to you too!” Courtney shrieks. “You’ve been contaged!”
Thursday, November 11, 2004