Small Riots in Close Quarters

Strychnine Over(ride) pg2

Carson/McNabb — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:42:17 -0600

Adam, as his 23rd girlfriend had once observed, could be effectively described by the periodicals which he took but did not read. The Economist, for his father, so that he'd have something to discuss with a man he never called. Spin, because he couldn't take Rolling Stone seriously. The New Yorker, which he scanned for the cartoons and then ignored, for culture. Those he did read were less revealing.
Monday, Adam had a newsstand New Republic boiling in his backpack. Off the table, he kept it well out of sight while grinding down the day behind the half-wall which provided the illusion of privacy. Adam kept his desk clean, cold comforting contrast to those around him, all stuffed animals, memos, photos and inspirational slogans, attempts to soften the sharp edges of where they were. Adam's only inspiration was as obvious as it was invisible: it doesn't matter. His work never occasioned complaint, steady, conscientious, silent; nor compliment, either, relentlessly doing what he was asked and no more, a slow mechanical rebellion.

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News Post

Carson/McNabb — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 20:50:49 -0600

Ignore the category- the following announcement is not, in fact, fictional.

I've recently been engaged in writing a one-act play (originally intended to be the libretto for an opera which may or may not ever be composed) dealing with Pablo Picasso in 1904-07, and the various circumstances and influences surrounding the creation of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Well, it's done now, and since I could find no better use for it, I've made it available under a Creative Commons license on that self-publishing hub, lulu.com. For anyone who'd like to take a gander, my storefront can be found here . If the link doesn't work, here's a cut and paste: http://www.lulu.com/CarsonMcNabb.
Anyway, now that I've got that wrapped up, I can hopefully get back to regular updates in my preferred genre.

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The Park Avenue Hovel, page nine

Carson/McNabb — Sun, 7 Feb 2010 16:28:19 -0600

Ray's letter, in substance, was not unexpected; it was the particulars that Michael had to know, and couldn't face. Funding for the shelter was always tight: the counselling center kept above water fairly easily, an obvious community resource the city couldn't excuse cutting off, but the night shelter for at-risk and homeless youth had a harder time staving off crusading law-and-order councilmen who called it criminal coddling and tried to shut it down. Ray had a few choice things to say about the last mayor, whom Michael knew, and the new one, whom he only dreaded, but reported happily that the new Social Services director was not the kind of bleeding-heart idiot the last one had been, instead willing to take suggestions and favor experience over ideology.
They were still, always, fighting a losing battle out there. Ray didn't need to tell him that, and he didn't, focusing instead on particulars, details and progress on cases he'd been working on before Michael left, some he'd taken on since. There was hardly any mention in his letters of Michael's old cases, an omission of either tact or the opposite, and Michael went back and forth on which he thought it was. If Ray wanted to think the worst of him, he had good reason: Michael had run out on those kids, abandoned them to the monsters he was supposed to fight. If he was just trying to be kind, to shield Michael for a time from reports of the things that had driven him away, give him time for his own wounds to heal, then Michael could appreciate that; Ray knew him as well as anyone, too, and knew that his guilt would make any news harder to hear. In any case, he kept writing, and Michael kept reading: it wasn't much, but it was something.

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Strychnine Over(ride)

Carson/McNabb — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:31:45 -0600

Thursday

    The sigh behind him as Adam's feet landed square at Michigan and Vallejo could have come from those feet, or hands or eyes or elbows that swung, or shoulders as the job drained from them: only the exhaling bus doors closing, though, that breath fitted in, the last part in his working day. Adam kicked heels after toes and walked away, letting the job with its myriad petty headaches and tyrannical urgencies drain away, sheepish shadows filling cracks and stormdrains in his wake. Down a block and then left, then up four flights and it was almost gone: lights up over his furnished one-bedroom Adam swung the door behind him and the decided slam shut the office out. Door closed, all else was forgotten.
    Fallen on the floor, his backpack slouched beneath the table there by the door, supporting spare keys and a week of mail; his shoes Adam kicked further into what might have been a breakfast nook in some other life and carried on, leaving the red button-down across a convenient chair. In the kitchen was a refrigerator, in the refrigerator was a beer: Adam pulled one up by its neck and swung with it toward the living room, the television there lurking something he's bought when he discovered he had the money. The remote he unearthed, found beneath a growing pile of books and papers on the couch, and, shoving them to one side, he brought it to bear and turned on the news.
    Adam immediately changed the channel. His beer and interest levels both subsiding, he spun the dials, once, twice, wading through the hysteric weariness of prime time. Sighing, he left the remote to fare among the cushions and padded over to the built-in bookcase, its sullen shelves bearing up under his mixed media, flipped a few movies over, checking discs for cases and vice-versa. Finally he found one he wasn't altogether familiar with, something his last girlfriend had left behind her, like the tampons under the sink or the bicycle pump, and threw it in the DVD player. It was one of those movies full of conversations, people talking earnestly, endlessly: it might have had Meryl Streep in it, or Woody Allen, and he thought he might be in the mood for it. He set it to play and returned to the kitchen, letting it find its feet while he tried to marshal thought and appetite into one concerted force, the joint effort resulting in three kinds of leftovers going together into the microwave. When they came out, he took a fresh beer and them back to the couch.
    Adam ate in silence: the people in the television, with their long, intense discussions, sometimes escalating to hysterics, talked enough for both of them. Another landslide from the unstable periodicals beside him revealed the stereo remote and Adam grabbed it, flipping on another source of noise, and under this assault he kept his head down and ate his rations. Dinner done, he left the two devices to their conversation, abandoning them for the other room with its bed and desk and closet and cable modem. Spilled across the desk Adam ignored more papers, shoving to the side bills and junkmail and the occasional grocery list; an inch of beer left Adam pulled the slumbering computer up and sent it out in all directions. He sorted through the things he had to check, personal email, his bank account, the balance on those student loans now nearly gone, all things he couldn't do at work: the thought wormed its way in and he clamped down on it, flinging it out of his mind with the rest of the office, changing to political gossip and comics.
    Skimming the shallow end Adam was comfortably unsurprised at the level of discourse and lack of substance; he distracted himself with them, sorting through the eye-catches and bad headlines, ignoring opinions and hackneyed analysis whose like had prompted him to rant at nearby friends or lovers. A cursory glance was bad enough, and soon he disengaged from even that solitary pursuit. There were others available, however, and Adam lingered over his history, considered pulling up a good hardcore site and getting himself off before going to bed. He closed the browser without opening his zipper, though, and crawled between his sheets on the rented mattress, electric guitars and impassioned vapidity mingling to attend Adam as he slept.

    In the morning he retraced his steps back out to the office, avoiding the eyes of the advertisements on his way, first right and then up. Adam scuffed rubber against concrete, treading on his shadow's toes as they slunk toward the bus stop, his eyes tracking along    the sidewalk and halfway up the street. He checked his watch, still in good time, and let a passing bird, all swooping arcs and underbelly, catch his eye upward, following it diving under awnings in the early air. Adam registered the sound of the cross-town shifting gears around the corner, remembered the difference between a starling and a swallow, and took one extra step, off of the kerb.

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News Post

Carson/McNabb — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:26:11 -0600

Thanks for reading. Having come to an important decision about what I really want to write, I'll be back by the end of the week with something that's pretty new but has its roots in something rather older. Mysterious? I guess. Suffice it to say that some times you have to go through hard to get to easy, and in order to write something anyone else can read or understand, I've first got to finish writing something that I can read and understand. Stay tuned: this promises to be interesting.
C/McN

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Further, from "Artifacts"

Carson/McNabb — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:19:31 -0600

    When the phone rang, she let the machine answer it.
    "This is a message for Rebecca Mulroy, confirming your ten o'clock appointment with Dr Ostler on Wednesday the seventeenth. If you are unable to keep this appointment please contact our offices to reschedule. Have a nice day." Her physical therapist's receptionist was at least concise; her calendar, on the wall beside the fridge, corroborated. Without sparing a glance to the book, she made lunch, chopping vegetables with irritated care.
    The rest of the day went by without incident; she checked her mail, took her medication, and put her left arm through the limited exercises the doctor had recommended, letting everything else fall into place around her. That evening, after dinner, she stood for a long time in front of her bookcases, eyes falling on one and another volume, not quite ever deciding which one to read. For the most, a glance at the title was sufficient to call up the whole book; others held their places on her reading list, not moving up. When she went to bed she still hadn't examined the book he'd left.

    On Thursday, it rained, and she spent an hour dragging the houseplants into the back yard to enjoy it. She spent the two hours after that at the café down the street, watching the late rain sluice down the big plate glass windowpanes, hitting passersby and rolling under car wheels. The book she took with her, jammed in her satchel at her feet, rubbing elbows with a sketchbook and her gardening journal, awaiting further inspection.
    "The plants. How long have you been gardening?" Standing in her back doorway, he had put the question to her, the sky a brassy ache outside.
    "Since a little after the accident. It wasn't a garden yet, though. I had an aloe that my aunt had split off and given to me, and a couple of plants that people had left for me in the hospital. Taking care of them gave me something to do. Step one was figuring out what they were."
    "And?"
    She'd wiped the mulch off of her hands, turning on the drip hose before going in for the day. "Spathiphyllum and dieffenbachia. Green, easy care, popular florist plants. The spathiphyllum is a reliable indoor-flowering plant, also known as the Peace Lily. Both been separated and repotted since. There was also a small potted ivy. It's in the hanging basket in the kitchen."
    "I see." He was always dry, so she paid no mind to his aridity.
    Coffee gone cold, she traded it to Andy behind the counter for a warm-up and a glass of water; at her table, she filled in the blanks in the journal, added a few notes in the side columns, and closed it, watching rested fingers of both hands on the cool cover. When, after a moment, nothing moved, she put the journal back in her satchel; she let her right hand find the book, smooth leather intercut with a complex design she hadn't taken time to study yet. Never looking at what her hand was doing, she let her arm swing up and place the book on the table, a solid and satisfying mass.
    A thick, heavy volume, bound in a dark leather, the front cover, while attractive, gave no clue to its contents and so she opened it, surprised to see the frontispiece, while attractive, not in the language she had expected. P. VERGILIUS MARO, it read, and beneath that, AENEID: no publisher's imprint or editor's credit followed below, though, and no forward or preface was found on subsequent pages. She flipped forward, past a table of engravings with intriguing names, and found herself face to face with the only words she recognized in their original form: Arma virumque cano. There were no footnotes, and though she turned to the back cover, she found no glossaries nor explanations. Staring dumbly at the epic in front of her, Rivkah could think little other than this: he had left her a book she could not read.

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The Park Avenue Hovel, page eight

Carson/McNabb — Sun, 6 Dec 2009 11:35:05 -0600

    Ten years ago, or fifteen, or five, or even six months ago, she had thought that people didn't just wake up and not love each other anymore. It wasn't possible, she thought, to simply not love someone: it had to slip away or drain out somehow, giving notice before it left. She had thought that right up until one morning, twelve weeks ago, when it had happened. Now, listening to faint music filtered through two walls and the plumbing stack, she couldn't identify where or how it had gone, and certainly had no way to follow it down and get it back.
    She didn't hate him. She filled out another form, signing her married name at the bottom, and took some comfort in that. She didn't love him anymore, indeed, could not remember what it had been like to love him; but she didn't hate him. He was a part of her life that didn't fit anymore, closer than a stranger, less than a friend. Staying together, living together, had been easy, even after she realized that he could not have loved her for some time. After she stopped trying to make substance from his indifference, they inhabited their house almost independently, each staying out of the other's way, speaking only at meal times or just before they turned out the lights to lie next to each other.
    It had been too easy, though, that quiet resigned existence. That same anxiousness which drove her to complete these tedious forms had made her demand them, pushing her out of the house and all it contained. One of the trees outside her window rattled against the house and she looked up, trying not to remember the nothing on his face when she'd told him. The cliche, throwing down of the gauntlet "I want a divorce" had come out differently; after all, there was nothing left to duel over. She'd merely mentioned it at breakfast, before he'd tied his tie or laced up his shoes, and there was no "I want." On her way to refilling her coffee mug she'd paused and said it. "We should get a divorce."
    He'd nodded, absently, as if she'd suggested repainting the kitchen. And then, as she leaned against the counter, watching, he'd stopped. He had frowned down at the morning paper, ears and brain obviously catching up with each other, and only after his brow had cleared did he look at her.
    "If that's what you think is best."

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The Park Avenue Hovel, page seven

Carson/McNabb — Sat, 5 Dec 2009 17:28:34 -0600

    They ate in the second kitchen, tucked by the back stairs, originally for the servants' use, being half the size or less of the main galley behind the dining room. She watched Gwen move from fridge to cabinet to table, fully at ease in the small space, admiring her hands and feet as she pulled a decent meal out of raw materials. Lunch cleared away, Adrienne left Gwen to get on with her errands and returned to her own room.
    One of the two on the top floor, her bedroom faced a long, narrow room that held a billiard table and bookcases, the full bath between her and the quiet woman, going through a divorce, whom she could only think of as 'the Mrs.' There was a clip beside the door for mail and internal communication, the number six discreetly attached to the wallboard above it; a deadbolt, obviously lately installed, above the heavy brass doorknob completed the feeling of privacy. She knew very well that Gwen had a key, as she had to every room in her house, but she had no desire to keep Gwen out. There were other people in the house, though, against whom she was grateful for it.
    Inside, the room had some of the character of a hotel, the furnishings all solid but slightly dated, the wallpaper not something she would have chosen. She'd hung posters and moved the desk and dresser around, leaving the big framed mirror in place but putting the bed under it, all changes she'd hesitated to make without her landlady's approval. Her reluctance had left her, however, when she'd watched Gwen and her younger brother haul an armoire out of one downstairs room into another and realized just how little the arrangement of the furniture mattered to either of them. Her new freedom in regard to decoration had not, she hoped, deteriorated into license, and the room had felt more hers after she'd stirred up some dust in it.
    A pile of books teetered on the bedside table, textbooks she'd retained mixed in with different required reading, and she spent a minute or two carefully wiggling the Chomsky free without toppling the whole mess. Full of other people's bookmarks, it was second or third hand, on loan. Finding her page marker, though, was simple enough: no one else had used old negatives to hold their place. Book face down on the bed, she held the strip up to the light, still unable to make out what the pictures were; another one of Lane's abandoned projects, put to good use.
    The tape deck clicked quietly, spooling through forty seconds of hiss before the real noise started; Adrienne drew the pillows and blankets up around herself, making a nest she settled into before easing back into the book. It was heavy going in some places but she tackled it willingly, storing points and ideas for future discussion, marking her own paths on the already well-trodden pages. Door locked, stereo on, she retreated into her cocoon, measuring her intellect and understanding against the length of the passages, pausing only to flip the tape when it jerked to an end.

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From "Artifacts"

Carson/McNabb — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:58:45 -0600

    She was waiting for him to come back, content in the knowledge that he would not. She was waiting because it gave her an excuse to not do anything else, and so that, later, she could say that she'd waited. Watching headlights come over the hill, she wondered how much longer she had to wait, until she achieved plausible deniability. Until she could say "I waited half the night, but he never came back," and everyone would nod and frown and not ask questions. She was waiting because it would seem too strange not to, later, explaining it. Idly, she wondered where he was. It was his business, of course, but she couldn’t help but wonder. Some time after the traffic died off and even the drunken shouting of neighbors waned, she turned off all the lights and bolted the door from the inside.
    In the morning, she had all the locks changed. The new keys fitted easily on her old key ring, caught a little in the locks, wearing smooth. They settled in her pocket, faintly jingling as she walked to the corner, and she wondered if he would keep his old set. The thought passed quietly from her mind as she ordered coffee-- large drip, room for cream-- and she focused on other things. Juggling wallet, coffee, and carafe in familiar intricacy, Rivkah concentrated on her hands, watching the fingers in their appointed tasks, careful not to let them rest too long on hot or cold, still persistently aware of simple mechanics.
    The nursery was first, because waiting for the weather to break didn't mean letting the plants die. She was halfway through her coffee when she reached the cheerful striped awning and windowboxes that quietly graced Greens and Gardens, est. 1973. She shouldered the door open and squeezed through, bell jangling confusedly as the door hung up on some unexpected obstacle. The girl rearranging the succulents straightened up and smiled as she cleared the door, making to pull the pallet of potting soil out of her way.
    "Hey, Rivkah. We're just starting the fall annuals if you're looking to add anything, but the greenhouse is sort of a mess today. Need something particular?" Amy wiped both hands off on her green apron and maneuvered the pallet the rest of the way out of the traffic flow.
    "Yeah, actually. I bought a few of those water meters last week and decided I liked them, so I'm going to need about four more and a packet of fertilizer stakes. Oh, and probably a can of borax."
    "Worried about aphids?" She switched the lights on over the shelf of assorted cacti and pulled her gloves off, stuffing them in an apron pocket.
    "Mostly I just want to keep ants from moving in when I rotate the plants."
    "That'll work, then. It's actually just past feed and fert, on your right. I'll be up at the front when you're done."
    "Thanks, Amy." Rivkah set off in the indicated direction, picking up what she needed and checking out in good order. The plastic bag Amy handed her went into the messenger bag over her shoulder, and she turned to the rest of the day's errands.

    She found the book when she got back, sitting unremarkably on the counter. Before she touched it or read the title she knew he'd left it there for her. She may have seen him with it, once or twice, sitting on her couch or leafing through it in her back garden, or her brain could have been helpfully manufacturing memories of things which had not happened. Either way, she knew that it had been his, and that it was now hers.
    Otherwise, the house was empty. She cleaned up after the locksmith first, the smudges on the doorjamb and chips in the paint bothering her more than she'd expected, and then tended to the houseplants, keeping her back to the book in the kitchen. Her left hand twitched, the dead part knocking her pruning shears off the windowsill without reporting back, and she watched until the distant fingers stopped trembling and she could continue.

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The Park Avenue Hovel, page one part 2

Carson/McNabb — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:02:35 -0600

This goes, straightforwardly enough, between page 1 and page 2.

The house had been built on cattle speculation money, Horace Aloysius Yarbough's second fortune, after the railway came through in 1886. He'd won and lost his first fortune living out of cheap rooms south of the stockyard, but when he made the money back he'd built a cattle baron's house and transported his wife and children down from Chicago to live in it. Three floors not counting basements or attics, it included servant's quarters, two kitchens, and a set of stables and carriage-house behind it which Horace's son had converted into automobile garages and an indoor tennis-court (the court was torn down during the war, replaced by a victory garden that had fed the half the block).
Its highly pitched roofs in a climate that saw hail more often than snow owed more to architectural fashion than utility, but the large windows and raised floors conceded to meteorology and opened the house, allowing the humid air to circulate through the rooms and halls, and kept it from becoming stifling even in the depths of summer. Like the city Horace had built it in, autumn was its best season, over-roasted air clearing from under the eaves that had shaded the house before the evergreens had grown large enough to do the job. Silvered by a rising half-moon, those evergreens rustled in a familiar wind, the presage of fall that they had known a hundred times before, and the house darkened against the night.

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