Still Life (final cut)



    The summer after he lost control over his life, Reed moved across the city into the arts ghetto, its stately old buildings falling into genteel disrepair or being tastelessly renovated, depending on the block. He found a mid-rent building of the former type on Catholic Cemetery Road and moved into a unit which featured high ceilings, good light, and hardwood floors, and outside of which someone placed dead roses for two weeks after he moved in. The building was a proper apartment block, the kind of apartment building that sits neatly alongside skyscrapers and subways. Identical blue doors lining the corridors, elevator banks in the middle and stairwells at either end, it resembled a residential hotel without the maid service or front desk or messy suicides.
    Shifting further into the city had distinct advantages, including the proximity to the subway. Stops in Reed’s former neighborhood were sparse: the move put him practically on top of a station in an area where stops were thick under the ground. There were drawbacks: the Blue Line had been constructed directly under 1631 Catholic Cemetery Road, so at 5:45 a.m., 3:15 a.m., and every fifteen minutes in between, subsonic rumbles shivered up the steel bones of the building. In apartment 313, Reed was used to the buzzing in his heels as he padded around the streetlight monochrome of his kitchen.
    Night had happened. While he wasn’t looking, the moon had risen and the hands of the clock had fallen, the bars had closed, and the city had sworn itself to sleep. Cold wind harboring bitter weather shook the first leaves off the trees, chasing all but the determined indoors. With the wind came the whistle of trains rolling past on artificial rivers, and the last answering murmur of the subway rattled a coffee mug left out on the counter, half an inch of day-old dark roast chiding Reed for not doing the dishes. He stared at it, critiquing the light, looking at how the curves of the cup intersected with the straight lines of the counter tile, the shadow it cast, no idea why he was in the kitchen.
    Another night of pacing the flat had left him here, end of the line, inexorably drawn to the smooth unhelpful calmness of the fridge. This state, which resembled somnambulance as much as insomnia, contained the inevitability of the kitchen, and him in it, alone with slumbering appliances. Several of them were his: the coffee maker which never wholly slept, the toaster oven and blender, unplugged for decency’s sake beneath the silent blackness of the microwave. That had come with the apartment, along with the disposal and the large appliances, the dishwasher, the oven, the refrigerator. Gazing at this last, Reed decided that being able to identify every object in the room did not make his presence there any more reasonable.
    Marooned in the modern kitchen, there are two ways of addressing its magnetic centerpiece. The first is to stare it in the face, full of purpose and energy, in the arms-akimbo posture of some powerful yet easily befuddled god demanding answers of the Frigidaire. Reed chose the second, barefoot in the kitchen like a man waking up in a cornfield, casting about for clues to his location and confronted with this mechanical idol, reconstructing the events that had lead him there.
    The short form was simple: he was in the kitchen because he had been pacing; he was pacing because he could not sleep. Beyond that, the causal chain wound out for a year, each link hanging more or less on the next. There were some gaps. Knowing the formal and efficient causes, Reed was no closer to understanding why he was standing toe-to-toe with the side-by-side. He whistled. It cycled on.
    “This is ridiculous.” He left. Having nowhere else to go, he kept going.
    The living room looked like a sound stage: he hesitated to sit on any of the furniture. Perched instead on the windowsill, hands bearing most of his weight, Reed analyzed the room in terms of light and shadow, in terms of composition, and in terms of the neighbors he still hadn’t met after months in residence. Nights he’d spent awake, accidentally eavesdropping on other people’s insomnia, told him nothing about the people around him except that they all used the plumbing, sometimes watched television, and occasionally had sex. It occurred to him, lower back against the windowpane, that none of them knew any more about him.
    Reed’s reflection kicked its heels on the other side of the glass, leaning perilously out to look up and down the street, counting cars as light drove before them and darkness closed behind. The light pollution couldn’t make it all the way across the floor, so Reed looked at the darkness that hid his walls, filling in the prints and the diploma, proudly framed by his mother after nine semesters in the trenches. There were other things he still hadn’t put up; posters, awards, the usual accumulation. Most of it was in boxes in the hall closet, awaiting an ever more unlikely unpacking, thought of only when he noticed the empty places on the walls.
    While his reflection, whistling down the alley, added to the raucous susurrus of another city night, Reed could not shake the silence deafening his apartment. Even the trains and the anonymous neighbors had packed it in, leaving him for company just his thoughts, none of whom he was speaking to, and the quiet, which was a terrible conversationalist. In the absence of some external regularity, Reed had no way of measuring how long he’d stayed palms down eyes inward on the windowsill before his arms began to shake. He frowned at one locked elbow, the muscles trembling beneath his skin and the weight he was putting on them, and his reflection launched itself out into nothing as he creaked upright.
    His bare arms itched from the inside, crackling nerves setting the hairs on end; Reed smoothed them over, palms scraping the skin. Damp purposeless steps pattered against his ears, stepping on his shadow as it danced him through the flat, punctuated by thumps as he misjudged a distance. Long arm outstretched, his hand trailed across first the furniture, then the walls and counters, fingers grabbing at things like small children in a grocery store. He fumbled with some of them: a picture frame traveled a few yards, exchanged for a tape dispenser which he left on top of the stereo, deranging the apartment by inches.
    In passing, one fist had closed around his Rubik’s cube, a junk-box refugee hiding out on the bookcase. Yielding to impulse he tossed it straight up, like a pitcher waiting for the batter to take the plate. His fidgeting tension went with it, blowing off some of the steam that had kept him running on a dozen similar nights. Layered on the dark, his shadow coursed up the wall after it, catching and pulling it down, the jarring in his arm more than just the corner smacking his palm. Without consulting him, his muscles launched the puzzle higher, reveling in the release.
    He went along with it, glad for even an incomplete outlet for the furious impulse driving him. Reed flexed his wrist as he tossed the old toy into the air, an explosion of energy its return inevitably matched; still, the mania leaked out his fingertips. Hand to hand he spun the cube, body walking under it, face tilted up to watch himself playing catch in the dark. One stammering foot caught the edge of his satchel, soft-sided, bloated with work to be done, and brought him up short.
    That briefcase, still new, belonged unquestionably to J. Reed Cavenaugh, a man who had a credit on the masthead, a modest office, and was the kind of suit whom Reed had despised with the envy and contempt of youth for a guy with a steady paycheck. The J was for St. Justin, on whose feast day he’d been born: conventional in little else, his parents had kept that tradition for all five of their children, and so their youngest had found himself with a vestigial first name. It had provided a useful initial, though, lending a certain dignity to the name he traded under, and he’d gotten stuck with it, office, briefcase and all.
    He kicked it. Startled toes still protesting his poor steering, he sent the smug new baggage flying across the room with a satisfying thump. It skidded against the wooden floor, fetching up next to the stereo with enough force to rattle the few frames on the wall. When it didn’t spill, zipped up against jostling elbows in elevators and commuter trains, he was almost disappointed. Under his weight, his foot bounced forward, itching to do it again.
    Chasing after his shadow, internal editor unable to restrain him, Reed looked up and faced down the kitchen. Just as he’d left it, the coffee mug stood on the counter, artificial light pouring its shadow off the counter. The picture was incomplete, somehow, too static. He pulled it away, looking into it where the leftover coffee erased the bottom, and walked back across the room. Past the lamp he’d borrowed for his first apartment and never had to return, mug meditative in his hand he spun on his heel, and too fast for thought or breath or prior restraint he whipped it across the room, arm rejoicing. It smashed against the wall, scattered shrapnel over kitchen tile and hardwood paneling, and shook the silence from the air.
    Temporarily exorcized, he sank down in front of the chair that supported his old leather jacket, on the sudden edge of sleep. The bed was miles away but he got there, sunk into cold sheets, and found dreams into which the 5:45 did not intrude. In his absence, morning slipped down drainpipes and up staircases, chased out last night’s leftovers but left the dishes.

    “Yeah, I’ve got the proofs. I know,” Reed sat on the edge of the bed, making his morning calls on the cell phone the magazine paid for. “I don’t know. I don’t know that yet, either. Yes. That’s what I’m doing today, I brought them with me when I left last night. I’ll be back in the office tomorrow, and then you’ll know as much as I do. Right. Okay, I’ll do that. You know how to find me if you need something.” About four weeks after taking the new job he’d established the preemptive habit of phoning the office on his day out of it. Nearly a year later he still got three calls before lunch, but it was progress.
    By the time he hit the street, dented blue door locked behind him, all the shine had come off Wednesday morning. Hard autumn sun knocked the teeth out of the wind nipping his heels and warmed his back through the leather jacket. Pedestrian traffic pushed about at cross-purposes, dwindling as American salarymen settled in at their offices, and Reed stepped out of an ebbing human tide toward the island of a coffee cart. He ordered something strong to offset his sleep deficit and squinted green eyes away from the barista’s face, where sunlight glared off of surgical steel; they exchanged generic pleasantries which neither would remember.
    Caffeine scalding his tongue, Reed considered how to spend the day, knowing what he had to do with it. There was a park nearby, a green space more accidental than city-planned: he could pick up a couple of the better publications to which the magazine naturally didn’t subscribe, flip through them while afternoon arrived. Cup held before him, he aimed across the street at the newsstand he liked to frequent, a piece of metropolitan authenticity with glossy magazines up front and pulp rags under the counter.
    Reed’s shadow shot forward, rifling the pages for pretty girls and cartoons with a fine disregard for the “this is not a library” sign taped to one side of the stand. Skipping his shadow’s suggestions, he grabbed three titles whose editors he respected; one art, one culture, one everything else. On the counter, four newspapers vied for his attention, and he met the eyes of a front page which nearly put him off his coffee. An anonymous child, in danger of drowning in golden retriever slobber, gazed up with an expression of vacuous horror at all who glanced at the city final. Plainly, a slow news day had let another hack fob a human interest photo off on some slavering features editor. The park was suddenly much less inviting.
    While he stood there, deciding not to buy a paper, a buzzing in his pocket announced the first interruption of the day. Leaving his purchases on the counter, he smiled tightly at the stranger on the other side and answered it.
    “What do you mean we have a gap? I haven’t finished the layout yet,” Reed tried to keep his voice down, a losing battle against the street noise. It was Morris from the office, slightly ahead of schedule. “Slow down. Okay. Why’d she pull the piece? No, you’re right, never mind. So why isn’t Jordan taking care of it? Oh, Christ, that’s right. Me? I’m design, not art. No. What? Okay, all right, I’ll fix it. Yes. I’ll figure out something. Sure. You damn well better be.” He shoved the cellphone into his pocket and swore. Having a three-page feature drop out days before the content freeze was a photo editor’s nightmare, but she was in Portland, so he got it.
    Scooping the magazines into his satchel, he turned toward the nearest train station, its entrance vomiting people up onto street level. Seated on not the Blue but the Green Line, the crosstown going under the financial district and other places he rarely visited, Reed flung the magazine open over his knees and ignored the world around him. So long as the train stayed underground, the phone couldn’t interrupt him. No one could expect him to work before finishing his coffee. Briefcase unheeded between his ankles, he had time for other things.
    The train rattled comfortably around him, slicing across the city without his direction. The rail pass in his pocket was the latest in a long lineage: he’d spent days sitting, standing, or wedged in commuter trains since moving into the city as a freelancer. Back then, of course, he’d often ridden the lines around the city and out to the suburbs for something to do. Usually broke, public transit had provided a cheap distraction, a way to escape his datebook full of weddings and bar-mitzvahs and take his mind off of things. There were things he didn’t miss about freelancing: the downtime, the uncertainty, the tedium he’d spent so much of his time avoiding.
    Florescent light bounced off the glossy pages, fell behind the seats and off of the walls. Reed’s shadow crawled up beside him, over the window to become his reflection, obscuring the gray concrete outside. While Reed himself flicked pages with his thumb, his reflection looked out at the graffiti and concrete, waiting for him to catch up. Starting from the back pages, he skipped over the portraits and the contrived shots, roamed through a few articles, noting technique and composition, fact and opinion. Every turned page winked at him, promising something it almost delivered, and kept him flipping.
     A noise intruded on him, an arrhythmic tapping he couldn’t identify. It thudded hollow amid the rattling of carriage bolts and rails, chipping away at his concentration. He willed it silent and to his surprise it faltered: putting two and two together he looked down at his hand wrapped around the coffee cup, fingers hesitantly drumming. Free, his gaze and attention wandered over the rest of the car, avoiding faces, picking out details. They splashed against the window, which his reflection filled; end of the line, he regained his focus. Still-fingered, Reed took another sip of his cooling coffee, tried to fall into the pages spread open for him.
    They weren’t deep enough. Faults stood out to his analysis, places where manipulation, digital or otherwise, was insufficiently subtle. Either the artist or the editor had felt it necessary to alter the image, and they hadn’t always done it well. Those he ignored: there were others, though, that caught his attention for better reasons, and those he lingered over as the train pulled in and out of tube stations. Light was the difference between a static picture and something very much alive, and a few pages offered up living things.
    Something nagged at him, though, at the edge of his vision or his thinking, that wanted them to do something more, be something fuller, raising expectations that couldn’t be fulfilled. He searched every composition for what the photographer didn’t see, the truth that wasn’t mentioned, trying to lose himself in images into which he could not sink and out of which nothing rose. Some of them knew how to talk, but none of them were saying anything. Working through the second magazine, he wondered if he just wasn’t listening.
    Weaker than the industrial lighting, daylight fought in through the scratched window, moving Reed’s shadow over as the train pushed its nose above ground. Shadows hid out in the folds of people’s clothing and pooled in the grooves between wall panels. In the window, his reflection faded out in favor of the city; from the elevated train, the view spoke for itself. Outside of Reed’s disciplined world, the train moved into a gentle curve, now above street level. He was moving through the old industrial section of the city, being repurposed by ambitious developers and the city council, a few square miles of decaying giants and mechanical scavengers.
    To his right the day unfolded, sending maturing sunlight out on its own. Warming up, it broke against exposed girders and slid down power lines, revealing small miracles to any who looked. On the train’s right side, the windows filled with the roofs of an old industrial park, crumbling art deco arches still one step ahead of the wrecking ball, and as the train slowly descended the sun dropped down behind them. For a moment the skeletal building was shot through with still fragile sunlight, its hundreds of high narrow windowpanes reflecting and admitting it, broken panes flaring with rainbow edges, a universe of light and shadow.
    Insistent distraction he couldn’t blame on caffeine finally pushed Reed’s eyes off of full page spreads and forced them to the window. Frustrated, he slapped the useless magazine closed and gave in, but the beautiful thing was gone. The train had moved him on; the light had shifted, lesser shadows clinging to different buildings. The sun had lost its brittle edge, and whatever had been there had vanished, leaving him with another empty image.
    At the next stop, he got off. The coffee cup made a satisfying thunk going into the nearest empty bin; rolling them into a javelin, he rammed the magazines in after it, a seething triumph. Last night’s psychotic energy boiled over him, wound around his spine and poured through his muscles, making demands that could be neither obeyed nor denied. He felt like he could run a mile, or scale a building; his shadow spiked in front of him, tangled in his feet by overhead sun. His hands shook with the effort of not hurling his briefcase over the edge of the windy platform, a kind of prior restraint which had failed of late. Deep breaths and stranger’s eyes steadied him, and he pulled himself together, hands plunged in his trouser pockets as he stomped down to street level. When the cellphone rang, jerking him out of his fragile peace, the urge to tear it out of his pocket and throw it possessed his shoulders and was barely overcome.
    “Morris, have you found Jordan yet? She’s in Portland, not the Gobi desert– even the squirrels there have wi-fi, for crying out loud. You’re her assistant, not me. I have my own job to do.” His voice was harsher than it should have been, all pleasantries thrust aside, an unfamiliar growl with his intonation. “No, I’m not saying that. Yes, I’m aware of the situation. Calm down. I get it. Look, here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to concentrate on what I’ve got, so some of it will be done. You keep trying to reach Jordan. If you hear anything from her, call me. Right. Yes, of course. It’ll be fine.” One phone went unanswered and the entire office went to hell.
    Having said he would, Reed gave in and decided to work on the layout. Not lost, he’d stepped off into a part of the city with which he was only vaguely familiar, all low buildings and tall trees. Appetite informed him of the hour, and a quick disoriented glance at the sky confirmed its assertion. Somewhere nearby was a Greek restaurant where he’d once had a crush on a waitress, years ago now. His stomach consulted his feet, checked against his memory, and lead him down the crooked streets.
    It was a burger joint when he got there, probably had been for a while, but he went in anyway. A wall of smell hid behind the door, thick and greasy enough to almost be a meal, baiting his already insistent appetite. The walls, scrawled on by countless customers, remained as he remembered them, as did the smoking section– three booths in the back– but the waitress was long gone. There were plenty of others; he ordered from one and spread out.
    Somewhere up there his name was magic-markered in the constellation of individuals, next to Don’s, whose tattoos had cost a lot of money, and Victoria’s, who never went by Vicki or let him see her legs. Some small part of him was glad that the new owners hadn’t sandblasted or painted the place when they’d moved in, destroying thousands of just-passing-through histories in the process. Not sitting in the right spot to see his own, he looked for it anyway. He read his way halfway up the wall before he found a path back down, onto the unclothed table where his work waited.
    This part he did enjoy, away from office politics and assistant editors and self-important personal assistants, fitting images together, doing something creative instead of advanced paperwork. A couple of the shots he might have wanted to clean up, or cut, but culling the stack hadn’t been his job this month. Jordan had chosen to sift the prints herself, finishing the task early before leaving for the conference, which made the situation in the office more irritating. That was Morris’ problem, though, and Morris could deal with it. The overhead lamp, bare sixty watt bulb, cast shadows out into the corners and under the benches, leaving the table in light to work by. Reed pulled out a draftsman’s pencil and the oversized mock-up of the magazine, a holdover that the publisher had yet to abandon, and set to work.
    He’d dated a girl, as an undergrad, who’d made collages by taking magazines apart. She’d sliced through pages, made compound images out of simple pictures, pouring hours of time and energy into each project. He remembered looking at her binder, sitting behind her in Color Theory II, wondering how long it had taken her to finish. Nothing serious, they’d had some fun before the relationship died peacefully. Years later, trying to remember her name, he couldn’t: she’d hidden it in her pieces, but it wouldn’t come when he called. Pinning pictures down, he thought of her, making her own art out of other people’s raw materials. The last collage of hers he’d seen was a notebook she’d been making for her girlfriend, a semester after they were over. She’d never made one for him, but he hadn’t taken pictures for her, either.
    The waitress set his hamburger down in front of him– double meat, cheese, extra veggies, hold the mayo– and he thanked her absently, already putting the universe in order. For the moment he was free, not driven by compulsion, not tied up in knots by impulse or uncertainty; for a moment, nothing was intruding on him, and he could get something done. Reed steadily ate his burger and compiled a paint-by-number of the magazine, one photo at a time, working around his limitations. Not flying blind, he had a form to work within: the ad space and columns were set, imposing order and suggesting use. Like the girl whose name he’d forgotten, he moved shapes around a form and created meaning.
    When the third call from Morris came, he was very nearly pleasant.
    “What? No, I heard you, but you're obviously hysterical. I mean it, the strain has affected your mind. She said that. Morris, no editor is ever that desperate. It does not happen. Okay, but I’ll hold her to it. Not subject to revision. I’m game if she is.” Jordan had conceded her editorial oversight to his good judgment, if the complete layout could be done by Friday. Most likely she didn’t want to deal with vetting a piece from Portland, or worse yet, having to come back early to tidy up the paperwork. It was not an offer that would be repeated. Much of his work was done already, tideswept around the conspicuous absence. Incomplete, it had assumed a definite shape.
    Reed sat at the table, behind a layer of paperwork and the remains of what had turned out to be an excellent hamburger, running through every creative director fantasy he’d ever had. He ran out of them quickly, and allowed himself to be reeled in by the words and drawings, cut into or layered over the wood, which intersected with what he was supposed to be doing, trying to sneak across his margins and liberate the issue. Bad handwriting and profanity abounded, obscuring but not overshadowing more interesting things. They drew him across the tabletop, shouting names and slogans, recruiting him for unspecified purposes, showing him pictures.
    He followed them up the wall, climbing from date to doodle to url, looking at what was in front of him. Scored into the wood a little better than halfway up the wall, where anyone who wanted to write would have had to stand to get to it, a single phrase stood apart. The wall there was just as crowded as anywhere else, but it enjoyed a little breathing space, and he looked at it for more time that it took to read. It felt right, in a way that very little had recently, and he smiled. Looking down where his left hand still held the pencil, he saw it reproduced in his own neat capitals: "these are our letters home."
    The return train was uneventful, crowded, unhaunted by distractions, unworthy of his attention. He got off a few blocks north of his building, approaching it from a different angle than he’d left it that morning. Clouds fought the sun for the sky’s attention, muscled in on the afternoon and made dire threats against the evening. Reed’s shadow covered his flank as he moved under the shifting dome of the sky, crossing streets like rivers, cautious and deliberate. The territories separating him from Catholic Cemetery Road diminished until finally he stood on the doorstep he shared with strangers.
    Up three flights and through the dented blue door at 313 things were as he had left them, in some disarray. The clouds admitted enough sunlight to illuminate the living room, and past it, a slice of the kitchen. Between the two a minefield of broken ceramic sprawled, waiting: he stepped carefully around it, disturbing nothing, as he adjusted the light in the room. Reed stood in front of the window, last night’s position with a different posture, and decided it would do. On a shelf in his bedroom closet was the camera bag the briefcase had supplanted, a bit dusty, which he pulled down and opened. With the conscientious automation of a soldier assembling his rifle, Reed fitted the appropriate lens, set the speed and aperture, lingered over the flash, and loaded the camera with black and white film.
    Shadow firmly at his back to the window, Reed went to work, squeezing off one careful shot at a time. He began rigidly, a police photographer at the scene of the crime; a wide shot, two profiles, no fancy stuff. As he stood almost on top of the broken thing, regarding it unhastily through the narrow viewfinder, he wanted to show what had happened, the event as well as the aftermath. He backed the zoom out, spine against the windowsill, until the wall, the floor, the chair his bomber jacket lounged over, all were included, until the monochrome film could claim to reproduce the reality, and that shot he took only once. Satisfied, Reed laid the camera aside and moved forward to pick up the pieces.
    It hurt. Slivers nipped at his fingers, rough inner surfaces scraped against unsuspecting flesh. Reed continued, ignoring the strange coldness of his blood outside the skin, until every shard was nestled in the new-yesterday bag of the kitchen trash. For a moment he looked at it, the jumbled bits that no amount of blood or glue would repair, then reached for his camera again and held that image with it. He took a sponge to the wall, removing the coffee stains from the not quite institutional-white finish. Finished, he washed his hands, wiping off water and dust and blood, and carried the pregnant camera with him into his bedroom.
    “Morris. Tell Jordan I’ve got something for her.”

Sneak Peek


   This is by way of a teaser for a larger project I've been working on. Roll it around for a bit.

  
    Knock knock knock came morning up the drainpipe and no one to stop it without answer it came in, dissolving all the good night had done and casting long thorough glances at the dark corners which had languished there, eight hours and nothing to show for it now. Dreams hanging around in sad strings like cobwebs in the wake of some vigorous broom she reluctantly surfaced, saw there was nothing else to do, and started her day with a cup of cold coffee and a reheated Lucky Strike. Last night's heart attack lights had left the walls stained blue and purple, across the street the corner store stained deeper shades with what had drawn the cops out in the first place. Roof floor and walls still intact Maggie shook a pair of slippers on over her feet and remembered where she was.
    The St Lawrence Arms rented by the week and took some getting used to, and Maggie was sure she'd become the neighbor down the hall that the new people weren't sure existed. For her it had been the Greek upstairs, an unseen source of curses and unidentifiable cooking smells, the occasional late night fit, weeping and screaming old Byzantine prayers in a language no one in the building understood and precious few recognized. He had faded moved or died and in his place she knew she stood, in and out at odd hours, carrying brown paper bags and receiving anonymous parcels to one of only four rooms on the floor with a private bath and kitchenette.
    Maggie ground out the cigarette, wondering if last night's work was done yet, left to sit overnight in a bath of hope and rarer chemicals. Two months at the Arms, safe and unsound, and she judged herself halfway done. Avoiding the darkened bathroom where one more success or failure waited, she reconnected controllers, letting circuits close and power trickle through them, lights activating in sequence responding to stimulae like good little neurons and her holding the pin to prick them. Touch touch touch, the electric needle drew its answers one twitch at a time as she moved over boards and surfaces, everything hooked up and running, ready for the next part of the circuit. Most of the torso, half a head, face partially constructed over the not entirely empty space ready to be a brain, one arm in good working order, another still a collection of wires and tubes, it sat propped up in the wicker bottomed chair far from any windows, new reflexes spinning up, relearning how to feel.
    Diagnostic lights all green, she put away the board and needle, sat cross legged on the floor watching her robot. Her second robot.

Smoke (flash fiction)


    The fortune cookie game was persistent in his thoughts, even through the gritty smoke clogging his eyes and lungs. Screw stop drop and roll- he groaned the window open and headed for the hall, the robot scream of the smoke detector waking up the neighbors. Half baked impulse sent him to the kitchen, rummaging with visions of a saucepan in mind before clearer thinking found the extinguisher under the sink.
    Unafraid of the sullen smolder aspiring to greater things, he pulled the front door open, watched the grey air find a new outlet, and strode back armed with high pressure protein foam to defeat the demon at its source. Handle swinging in one hand, fortune cookies took precedence over even his mother's lightly mocking reminder that he shouldn't have been doing what had chased him out of bed this morning.
    He stepped across the threshold, flared bell of the extinguisher seeking in the stygian gloom, and even as he counted up the cost of replacing the ruined linens, some small insistent part of his brain was still dwelling on last night's takeout.
    "You possess a unique fire... in bed!"

Bathroom Break (flash fiction)

    She needed silence, a minute of enforced solitude, more than she had to pee, but sitting in the gloomy quiet of the ladies' she did not miss the opportunity. The stall on the right was out of toilet paper- again, and probably until Tuesday- so she took the smaller one, elbows on her pants-around-knees, the Formica panel on the right the same color as the cheap wallboard on her left. Occasional red tiles, interrupting the grey majority in some minimalist pattern, spotted the floor between her feet, straggled out of sight beyond the door in neat geometrical fashion.     Florescent light came from the recessed lighting behind ... (read more)

What Happened While You Were in Africa

    I ran a fever for three days. It started a couple hours after I got home from the airport, actually, but I didn't notice until later. By then, of course, it was far too late to do anything. You know how my fevers are: if it isn't breaking 100 degrees, it isn't trying, so I spent a couple evenings roasting my brain. Anyway, I spent that night drinking water and mildly hallucinating. There wasn't anyone in town, with you and everyone on the plane, so I couldn't get anyone to go to the store for me, and of course I couldn't drive myself. Became paranoidly convinced that the tap water was contaminated for a few hours there, which resulted ... (read more)

Brick Is Red, page six

    Peter stepped out of the relative calm of his kitchen and immediately regretted it. The living room had been rearranged to host the party, furniture pushed back to accommodate the bodies sitting standing and sprawled out over all available space, and he wasn't looking forward to putting it back together again. Not quite on the carpet, he took a slow pull off of the bottle he held by the neck, hanging between one room and the other: someone passed behind him with a refill, upsetting his equilibrium. Propelled by a convivial slap between the shoulder blades, Peter lurched forward into the descending spiral of his birthday ... (read more)

News Etc


  Hello, everybody. Been moving around for the last month, hence the radio silence. Yesterday was my birthday so there's another Sunday down the drain. I should have another page of Brick up in the next couple of days, though, and maybe something extra as an apology to whoever reads this.

Brick Is Red, page five

    Carol yanked the handbrake, halting the slow backward wobble of the car in the pull-around, and killed the engine. Keys still in the ignition, she switched the fans, lights, and radio off, practiced fingers flicking through a check that always reminded Wendy of a pilot in the cockpit.     "This is the right thing to do, right?" Carol looked over at her, hand stilled on the key, as she breathed the sentence out. "I mean, I'm not moving out or giving up. We just need a little distance. Some perspective. So this is good, right?" Facing carefully forward, she kept her eyes on Carol, beside ... (read more)

Third for Adam

    Three days' indifference after the word for Kate and him had ceased to be 'we,' Adam lay looking at the falldown sky, clouds standoffish bickering, and wondered if it would rain. Kate had liked the rain, curled up in sweaters and windows in her apartment, for the slow dull atmosphere it imposed: not like Lisa, who'd played in summer storms, soaking wet in borrowed trunks and sad opaque t-shirt. Not like Amy, who'd needed the weather clear, blue sky hard December powder or deep June sapphire, so long as she could see the sun, or suffered. Kate was over now, but lying under a tree in a small patch of green two blocks from his apartment Adam ... (read more)

Info &c

  Just a reminder, if the infrequent updates bug you, the RSS feed is available and takes much of the frustration out of life. And for any of you on Twitter, I do make an announcement when I update: if you're willing to put up with the other sort of stuff I tweet, you can follow me, twitter.com/marxalot. Anyway, I better get back to the grindstone and all that. More coming on both fronts, word of honor.