Grinning, Gerhard helps Judy out of her sweater as she kicks off her slides. She helps him with her fly, and he strips off her tank top. For him, it’s like Christmas.
Once her underwear are off, he pulls her close; his fingers find the zipper behind a seam, above the cleft of her buttocks.
Her skin and the molded plastic underneath it are easy enough, but the iron-plated octahedron within them requires some work. Gerhard digs out his ratchet set. When the last bolt is out he has an irregularly-shaped stone–probably igneous.
He borrows a chisel from next door.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
“What have you got?” his lawyer is saying.
Stine figures that there should be violins playing now, short strokes, heightening the tension. Everything should be slowing down.
“That’s not acceptable,” she says.
They’re not. Instead of a dramatic climax, the closest analog to this he knows is giving blood.
“Man two,” she snaps. “Five years, serves three–”
There was a sharp pain, then the surprising lack of it; a lightness; a sense of sharp contrasts and distance, of things happening quickly.
His lawyer is looking at him, nodding, and Stine has the gradual and worrisome feeling that he’s being deflated.
Tuesday, November 9, 2004
“And then my wife and I,” says Duc, “we are facing?”
“Facing each other,” says Francisco in his best missionary voice. “As are your privacies.”
“This is how Jesus wants me to have my wife?” Duc is dubious.
“This is the righteous way, as endorsed by the Holy Church.”
“But Jesus–”
“Yes! This is how Jesus wants it!” Francisco’s learning to hate Indonesia.
Duc thinks maybe they have different Jesuses; his wouldn’t care about this stuff. To him, Jesus is four feet tall and hairy, wild-bearded, laughing with a joy so fierce and wild it startles the birds to flight.
“All our flights but one have been cancelled,” apologizes the pretty Asian girl behind the desk.
“Let me guess,” says Floyd woodenly. “You’ve got one seat left on it. Coach.”
“Why, yes, sir! Compliments of the airline. We’ll have to re-route your luggage through Alexandretta to meet you in Carthage–is that acceptable?”
Floyd knows neither of them will make it there. Cancellations on the layover, and he’ll be redirected to another in a series of increasingly unreal cities. Where next–Constantinople? Metropolis? Babylon? Ur?
“Sir?” she’s asking.
“Wherever,” he says. One hundred twelve and counting, and never a flight home.
“You can open your mouth and eat,” Maya says, quietly and firmly. “I fed you before you came back to yourself. You don’t need me to now.”
Rob reaches for the pad and pencil, but Maya holds them away. “No crutches,” she says.
He looks angry, but it subsides. He stands and walks to the door to flip off the lights. Maya doesn’t understand until he turns back, and there they are, faint as moonlight on his lips: stitches.
He reaches for the pad again, and this time she lets him have it. You can open them, he writes. I can’t.
Thursday, November 4, 2004
“Certainly, Feldman had the more Brandoesque demeanor,” Duvall says. “But it’s hard to make the case–”
“I disagree,” says C.P. “It’s not hard at all, and… Harrison, are you listening?”
But Harrison’s daydreaming–daydreaming about listening, in fact. He’s partitioned in his mind the sets of sounds his ears sense, those he actually hears and those he’ll remember. They’re fairly disparate, after all. What if you overlaid them? Would they be too close–not quite one wavelength off–so you’d end up with feedback? Or would the differences in timing and tone be enough to make harmony, rhythm, melody, music?
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
Most of Mimi’s house is gone–she’s lucky Leon showed up. She was hanging from a sink. Upside-down.
The remaining stations say the fault’s holding steady at 112 feet above sea level, which is about seven feet off the ground, here. Above the fault, things fall up. Leon notes that this has an odd effect on the hands above his head–no blood wants to go up to them, but none wants to leave either. They’re turning purple.
Mimi’s trembling. “It’s gonna be okay,” Leon reassures her, trying to sit down, as they lock arms against the pull of the sky.
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
DENVER ACADEMY OF is all you can make out now, as the encroaching black something has moved up over the bottom row. Nothing gets rid of it. They soaped, bleached and sandblasted; they trashed the old marker, dug under it, poured ten feet of concrete and put a new one on top. The black stain crept up again.
“Mutant lichen,” says Morse.
“Cheap granite,” mutters Wehner.
“Moon dogs!” insists Havel. “Pale shades, pissing their black spoor on this spot to mark it as their Hell-bound stake!” Havel got a story published once, and he’s not about to let anybody forget it.
Somewhere a bell rings, and Karen stands. “Jerk,” she adds, and walks away.
An eleven-year-old girl rolls up next to Andre, who has his chin in his hands. The girl has big dark eyes and a scooter. Her name is Corbin.
“What’s the matter?” she asks.
“The usual,” sighs Andre. “I cast a spell so she’ll go out with me, I mention that pronouncing the longest word in English will break it and bam! ‘Pneumo-ultra-microscopic-silico-volcano-coniosis’ and she’s gone. Stupid Google.”
“Ah.”
“I should’ve picked something harder to say,” says Andre glumly.
“I think you’re addressing the wrong problem, Andre,” says Corbin.
In the reverse of the natural order, the pile of leaves jumps into Claude. They can’t quite make out what happens next, but there’s a wrenching pop and a muffled scream, and then Claude’s arm comes flying out to land at their feet.
Claude’s not attached to the arm. They all stare at it. Janice pokes it with her rake.
The pile drops Claude’s remains and turns to (somehow) face them. Its color has deepened from Harvest Gold to Cadmium Red. It’s breathing.
“RUN!” screams Marco.
They manage to set it on fire later, which seems, briefly, like a great idea.
Thursday, October 28, 2004