NPR's holding a contest to write Three-Minute Fiction. (Although it's over Saturday night.)
To make sure I had an entry, earlier this week I edited this down and submitted it, but I wanted to do more, if I could.
Wednesday I wrote a love story:
Trust
Teri heard Ellen pound the front door, hard. Each thump of her patchy white fist reverberated down the entry hall where Teri stood.
Tears dribbled down Teri's cheeks as she hefted the heavy, scratched-up hatchet from the woodstove, the woodstove that warmed their home almost as well as Ellen's laugh. A laugh Teri would never hear. Tears fell faster.
She couldn't think like that, though. No time. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and took a breath that tried to get caught in her throat.
After a movie one night, Ellen told Teri, "I love you more than anything, but if you came home a zombie, I'll kill you. And I expect you to do the same thing. Promise me?" Teri had promised and they both laughed.
It even became a game for them. One would walk through the house asking for "Brains. Braaaaaains." The other would pounce to kill the infected. They'd fall to the floor together, arms and legs tangled, laughing.
When the infected started popping up, they talked again, but this time it was serious. Again, Teri promised, but she wasn't sure it was one she could keep.
The pounding stopped and so did Teri's heart. Counting to three, she raised the hatchet, blunt side forward, over her head and reached out toward the door. She held the knob with just the tips of her fingers and, ever so carefully, turned it and gave a gentle pull, not enough to open the door, but enough that it wasn't really closed, so that even a little breeze could push it open.
She took several steps back and waited at the end of the hall.
She heard nothing. No pounding. Not a creak from the porch.
She wanted to run and hide in the basement, but she couldn't. She'd only be found and then infected. And she wanted to be strong, like Ellen. For Ellen.
She took a deep breath and let it out. She took another and said, voice cracking, "Ellen? Are you there?"
With a roar, Ellen burst through the door and stumbled and fell, face first, onto the tile. Teri flinched at the crack made when Ellen's skull hit.
Terri pounced, just like she did when they had been playing, except she also swung the hatchet at the back of Ellen's head. This time the sound was crunch. She started crying again.
She lifted the hatchet and swung again and again.
When her arm got tired, she stopped and stood up. Ellen was gone. She wiped her eyes again, pulled the body farther down the hall, and shut the door.
Showing posts with label Fiction Friday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fiction Friday. Show all posts
Friday, July 17, 2009
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Fiction Friday #31
"Okay, Sonya," I said, not feeling comfortable with her name in my mouth. She'd been Mrs. Mayreux for as long as I could remember. Other kids may have been introduced to her as Sonya by their parents, but not mine. They believed that children had to show great respect to adults, especially coworkers and their spouses.
"Thank you," she said, picking up the menu in front of her.
I hadn't looked at mine since the waitress had dropped them on the table. I knew what I was getting. The Killer Burger. It was a one pound hunk of ground beef, twelve strips of bacon, and four different cheeses: cheddar, mozzarella, provolone, and swiss. "Western" style came piled with onion rings and was slathered in an "authentic" Kansas City sauce. "Veggie" style had avocado and sprouts. Me, I liked mine "classic," but with the onions caramelized and piled high. The Killer was so large, that it couldn't be held whole; it collapsed under its own weight. That didn't bother me, though.
The only question that went through my head was whether I was going to save half of it, or eat the whole thing. And that was a problem. I knew that saving some was the smart thing to do; I'd have a meal that I wouldn't have to worry about, but burgers are never as sublime as they are in the minutes after they came from the kitchen. Never again would the bun be absorbing the juices from the patty, mingling the meaty flavor with the slight wheaty sweetness. The bacon would never be as crisp. And the onions were never quite as slimy.
My stomach growled.
Sonya looked up and smiled, "Hungry?"
"I didn't eat this morning," I said.
"Why?"
"Preparing for lunch."
Her smile crinkled up and her brow furrowed.
"Just wait," I said. "You'll understand."
She looked down at her menu.
I dusted the sugar, that I had played with earlier, off the table and on to the bench beside me. I wondered how I'd get out of the booth without getting my butt all sugary.
After a bit, the waitress came back, pulling purple off her lips with her tongue and carrying a glass of water. She put the water down and asked, after her lips were pink again, "Can I get you anything to drink?"
"Iced tea," said Sonya, without looking up, "three lemons, on the side, and some of that raw sugar you have back there for the people who order espresso."
"'Kay," said the waitress, looking at me. "And you?"
"A Coke," I said.
She frowned, "We have Pepsi."
"Didn't you used to have Coke?" I asked. "I could have sworn I got a Coke in here before."
She looked like she wanted to shove her gum in my ears and push it in as far as she could. She knew I was being an ass. At the beginning of the school year, the university went and signed a deal with the Pepsi people to only serve Pepsi products on campus and at campus events. People were upset. Not because they like Coke's stuff so much or hated Pepsi's, but because they lost that choice. It was stupid, but that’s what we did there, make big deals over little things that we couldn't change but thought that maybe we could. It was easier than trying to change big things and being ignored when we knew we couldn't do a thing.
I took a deep breath and sighed. "I suppose Pepsi will do," I said, "but I'd rather have a Coke."
"Yeah," she said rolling her eyes and turning away, "wouldn't we all."
She left and Sonya was still looking at her menu, so I looked out the window and wondered, again, what was going through the head of the people who choose the design of the history department's building. It was a giant cube of concrete flanked on either side by two smaller cubes of concrete, connected by breezeways. Horribly, hideous buildings. Sometimes, though, when I pulled an all-nighter and was exhausted I imagined a giant robot made up of buildings around campus. The main history building was the body and the little ones, shoulders, with two of the silos making up arm; the tall, thin, silvery physics building made up the head, while the rec center and the main dining hall, turned on their ends, were the legs and feet.
Ah, the things that exhaustion and too much coffee caused one to see.
"Thank you," she said, picking up the menu in front of her.
I hadn't looked at mine since the waitress had dropped them on the table. I knew what I was getting. The Killer Burger. It was a one pound hunk of ground beef, twelve strips of bacon, and four different cheeses: cheddar, mozzarella, provolone, and swiss. "Western" style came piled with onion rings and was slathered in an "authentic" Kansas City sauce. "Veggie" style had avocado and sprouts. Me, I liked mine "classic," but with the onions caramelized and piled high. The Killer was so large, that it couldn't be held whole; it collapsed under its own weight. That didn't bother me, though.
The only question that went through my head was whether I was going to save half of it, or eat the whole thing. And that was a problem. I knew that saving some was the smart thing to do; I'd have a meal that I wouldn't have to worry about, but burgers are never as sublime as they are in the minutes after they came from the kitchen. Never again would the bun be absorbing the juices from the patty, mingling the meaty flavor with the slight wheaty sweetness. The bacon would never be as crisp. And the onions were never quite as slimy.
My stomach growled.
Sonya looked up and smiled, "Hungry?"
"I didn't eat this morning," I said.
"Why?"
"Preparing for lunch."
Her smile crinkled up and her brow furrowed.
"Just wait," I said. "You'll understand."
She looked down at her menu.
I dusted the sugar, that I had played with earlier, off the table and on to the bench beside me. I wondered how I'd get out of the booth without getting my butt all sugary.
After a bit, the waitress came back, pulling purple off her lips with her tongue and carrying a glass of water. She put the water down and asked, after her lips were pink again, "Can I get you anything to drink?"
"Iced tea," said Sonya, without looking up, "three lemons, on the side, and some of that raw sugar you have back there for the people who order espresso."
"'Kay," said the waitress, looking at me. "And you?"
"A Coke," I said.
She frowned, "We have Pepsi."
"Didn't you used to have Coke?" I asked. "I could have sworn I got a Coke in here before."
She looked like she wanted to shove her gum in my ears and push it in as far as she could. She knew I was being an ass. At the beginning of the school year, the university went and signed a deal with the Pepsi people to only serve Pepsi products on campus and at campus events. People were upset. Not because they like Coke's stuff so much or hated Pepsi's, but because they lost that choice. It was stupid, but that’s what we did there, make big deals over little things that we couldn't change but thought that maybe we could. It was easier than trying to change big things and being ignored when we knew we couldn't do a thing.
I took a deep breath and sighed. "I suppose Pepsi will do," I said, "but I'd rather have a Coke."
"Yeah," she said rolling her eyes and turning away, "wouldn't we all."
She left and Sonya was still looking at her menu, so I looked out the window and wondered, again, what was going through the head of the people who choose the design of the history department's building. It was a giant cube of concrete flanked on either side by two smaller cubes of concrete, connected by breezeways. Horribly, hideous buildings. Sometimes, though, when I pulled an all-nighter and was exhausted I imagined a giant robot made up of buildings around campus. The main history building was the body and the little ones, shoulders, with two of the silos making up arm; the tall, thin, silvery physics building made up the head, while the rec center and the main dining hall, turned on their ends, were the legs and feet.
Ah, the things that exhaustion and too much coffee caused one to see.
Useless Labels:
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
story
Friday, February 22, 2008
Fiction Friday #30
Tuesday came too fast after I talked to Karen's mother. It was like after I spoke with her on the phone I sneezed and suddenly I found myself outside of the campus pub. It sat off near a field of wheat or corn or whatever crop was being studied at that. I guess the builder wanted to be able to pretend that it was a pub in some country village because it was built to look like those house in the pictures of Stratford-Upon-Avon, all support beams showing through plaster with a high peaked roof. It was pretty nice, until you turned around to see the giant block of concrete that was the history department or got hit by some jackass on a bicycle. That was life on campus, though.
The Pub, which was the name some clever student or alumni named it thirty or forty years ago after a drunken trip to England or Scotland or Ireland gave it, was the place to eat on campus, if you had money. Most of the staff went there if they didn't brown bag it or didn't want to go out into the town. There were always small groups of teacher gathering for lunch or an early dinner or a drink after a meeting, whispering about how they were going to rise up in revolt and destroy the dean of their college. It was also where all the students who were totally funded from home ate when they lived in the dorms. Those people used their meal plans to get water, soda, and chips from the dining hall then used their "emergency" credit cards to take their friends and themselves out for all meals and many of them headed down to The Pub.
Inside the place was clean, but a little dark, for my taste. There was a long, polished, wood bar to the back, tables set up for two or four on the floor, and booths that were comfortable for six but could cram in ten or twelve were along the walls. Spread out around the floor were, what I assumed were, support beams that were sometimes hard to dodge sober, and were nearly impossible to miss drunk. Behind the bar and on any part of the wall that wasn't a window were pictures of famous people who had come to campus; any that were taken after The Pub was built were taken inside. My favorites were the candid pictures of people drinking, talking, laughing, smoking, writing, or staring wistfully out the window; too many of them were posed to make the bar and the subject look good, but they all struck me as unreal.
The Tuesday I met Karen's mom was a warm and sunny one after a weeks worth of wind, clouds, and rain, and we were meeting at eleven, so there weren't many people in there. I saw some professors huddled around a table whispering. Some guy sat at the bar with some really dark drink, wearing spectacles, and writing in a note book. And the bored bar tender stared out the windows probably wondering if heading out to toss a Frisbee around was worth getting fired over. And there was a waitress standing in the door to the kitchen blowing purple bubbles.
The waitress spotted me and started to come over. I mouthed to her, and flailed my arms a bit, that I was meeting someone and wanted to take a quick look. She shrugged, but still walked toward where I stood. I poked around the place and saw that there wasn't anyone else there. She asked me how many and then told me to pick where I wanted to sit. I choose a booth with a window.
She left me with two menus then brought me some water and left. I fiddled with my fork and knife, remembering how I used to use them as an airplane when I was a kid. I unfolded then refolded the paper napkin the fork and knife had been rolled in, and then sort of pushed it around the table. I wished that I brought my backpack with me; at least then the waiting wouldn't have been wasted time.
After dividing the contents of a sugar packet five times, I a woman clear her throat. I looked up to see Karen's mom looking a lot like I remembered her. She was pretty, but not beautiful, like Karen was. She was strong, built like a fortress. She was tall, taller than me. She had wide shoulders and comparatively narrow hips. She stood like she was waiting for someone to try to push her over just so she could prove she couldn't be. Her hair was cut short and she always seemed to have a little frown around her lips, but she may have just disapproved of me.
I tried to stand and caught my gut on the table. I sat down, hard, gasping for breath.
"Leopold," she said sitting down.
"Mrs. Mayreux." I nodded and offered my hand. "Can you call me Leo?" I asked. "My mom only introduces me as Leopold because it makes me blush."
"Only if you call me Sonya, Leo." She said, shaking my hand. "You're old enough to call me Sonya now."
The Pub, which was the name some clever student or alumni named it thirty or forty years ago after a drunken trip to England or Scotland or Ireland gave it, was the place to eat on campus, if you had money. Most of the staff went there if they didn't brown bag it or didn't want to go out into the town. There were always small groups of teacher gathering for lunch or an early dinner or a drink after a meeting, whispering about how they were going to rise up in revolt and destroy the dean of their college. It was also where all the students who were totally funded from home ate when they lived in the dorms. Those people used their meal plans to get water, soda, and chips from the dining hall then used their "emergency" credit cards to take their friends and themselves out for all meals and many of them headed down to The Pub.
Inside the place was clean, but a little dark, for my taste. There was a long, polished, wood bar to the back, tables set up for two or four on the floor, and booths that were comfortable for six but could cram in ten or twelve were along the walls. Spread out around the floor were, what I assumed were, support beams that were sometimes hard to dodge sober, and were nearly impossible to miss drunk. Behind the bar and on any part of the wall that wasn't a window were pictures of famous people who had come to campus; any that were taken after The Pub was built were taken inside. My favorites were the candid pictures of people drinking, talking, laughing, smoking, writing, or staring wistfully out the window; too many of them were posed to make the bar and the subject look good, but they all struck me as unreal.
The Tuesday I met Karen's mom was a warm and sunny one after a weeks worth of wind, clouds, and rain, and we were meeting at eleven, so there weren't many people in there. I saw some professors huddled around a table whispering. Some guy sat at the bar with some really dark drink, wearing spectacles, and writing in a note book. And the bored bar tender stared out the windows probably wondering if heading out to toss a Frisbee around was worth getting fired over. And there was a waitress standing in the door to the kitchen blowing purple bubbles.
The waitress spotted me and started to come over. I mouthed to her, and flailed my arms a bit, that I was meeting someone and wanted to take a quick look. She shrugged, but still walked toward where I stood. I poked around the place and saw that there wasn't anyone else there. She asked me how many and then told me to pick where I wanted to sit. I choose a booth with a window.
She left me with two menus then brought me some water and left. I fiddled with my fork and knife, remembering how I used to use them as an airplane when I was a kid. I unfolded then refolded the paper napkin the fork and knife had been rolled in, and then sort of pushed it around the table. I wished that I brought my backpack with me; at least then the waiting wouldn't have been wasted time.
After dividing the contents of a sugar packet five times, I a woman clear her throat. I looked up to see Karen's mom looking a lot like I remembered her. She was pretty, but not beautiful, like Karen was. She was strong, built like a fortress. She was tall, taller than me. She had wide shoulders and comparatively narrow hips. She stood like she was waiting for someone to try to push her over just so she could prove she couldn't be. Her hair was cut short and she always seemed to have a little frown around her lips, but she may have just disapproved of me.
I tried to stand and caught my gut on the table. I sat down, hard, gasping for breath.
"Leopold," she said sitting down.
"Mrs. Mayreux." I nodded and offered my hand. "Can you call me Leo?" I asked. "My mom only introduces me as Leopold because it makes me blush."
"Only if you call me Sonya, Leo." She said, shaking my hand. "You're old enough to call me Sonya now."
Useless Labels:
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
story
Friday, February 08, 2008
Fiction Friday #29
The laugh felt good. Sort of like we were when we were in junior high. Just friends out to have a good time. The feeling didn't last long, though. It vanished and we both sort of turned to the TV and focused on the movie.
We watched the rest of it without talking to each other. Occasionally, I'd talk to the characters, a bad habit I have when I watch anything I've seen before, and Karen, who hadn't seen the move, would turn to me and look like she might want to cut out my voice box. As the movie ended, with Mumford listening to the police officer talk about his problems, there was a knock at the door. It was Jer with some Indian food.
There was lots of food, but it wasn't for me. Indian never sat well with me. I'd eat and enjoy as I ate, but twenty minutes later my stomach would start to roll around on my intestines and the rest of the night would be miserable. So, when they started to pick and choose their first dishes, I slipped away and into my room.
From then on things around the apartment were a little better. Karen and I didn't go out of our way to hang out together, but we also didn't play silent treatment with on another. When I needed a glass and she was in the way, I'd ask instead of squeezing around her to get it myself. In the hall, neither of us ducked out of the way when we saw the other. "Nice day," I'd say and she'd say "I suppose. How's school?" "Oh, you know," I'd say, "sometimes good and sometimes bad." "Yeah," she'd say, "kind of like the rest of life." and we'd go about our business.
Jer seemed happier about all this. Karen stayed over more and I could tell he wanted to give her a key so she could come all the time. Maybe he even wanted to know if she could move in with us. From what I over heard, life in her house wasn't getting any easier. Some of the girls, I heard, had started bringing over guys and then they'd try to get Karen drunk enough so she'd forget about Jer and jump in the guys' laps and then into bed. I doubt it worked because I don't think Karen would have told Jer about it if it had. Jer didn't ask me about Karen moving in, though. She still had her room at the house and we had our apartment.
About four weeks after Karen and I had our pissing contest, I got a phone call from her mother asking me to go to meet her for lunch the next Tuesday, on campus. Apparently, Karen's dad was touring some lecture about his new book and had been invited to the university to give it. She said me that it'd just be her, not him, at lunch and it'd be her treat.
I said I'd be there, of course. I had to. She was friends with my parents. If I didn't, I'd never hear the end of it.
We watched the rest of it without talking to each other. Occasionally, I'd talk to the characters, a bad habit I have when I watch anything I've seen before, and Karen, who hadn't seen the move, would turn to me and look like she might want to cut out my voice box. As the movie ended, with Mumford listening to the police officer talk about his problems, there was a knock at the door. It was Jer with some Indian food.
There was lots of food, but it wasn't for me. Indian never sat well with me. I'd eat and enjoy as I ate, but twenty minutes later my stomach would start to roll around on my intestines and the rest of the night would be miserable. So, when they started to pick and choose their first dishes, I slipped away and into my room.
From then on things around the apartment were a little better. Karen and I didn't go out of our way to hang out together, but we also didn't play silent treatment with on another. When I needed a glass and she was in the way, I'd ask instead of squeezing around her to get it myself. In the hall, neither of us ducked out of the way when we saw the other. "Nice day," I'd say and she'd say "I suppose. How's school?" "Oh, you know," I'd say, "sometimes good and sometimes bad." "Yeah," she'd say, "kind of like the rest of life." and we'd go about our business.
Jer seemed happier about all this. Karen stayed over more and I could tell he wanted to give her a key so she could come all the time. Maybe he even wanted to know if she could move in with us. From what I over heard, life in her house wasn't getting any easier. Some of the girls, I heard, had started bringing over guys and then they'd try to get Karen drunk enough so she'd forget about Jer and jump in the guys' laps and then into bed. I doubt it worked because I don't think Karen would have told Jer about it if it had. Jer didn't ask me about Karen moving in, though. She still had her room at the house and we had our apartment.
About four weeks after Karen and I had our pissing contest, I got a phone call from her mother asking me to go to meet her for lunch the next Tuesday, on campus. Apparently, Karen's dad was touring some lecture about his new book and had been invited to the university to give it. She said me that it'd just be her, not him, at lunch and it'd be her treat.
I said I'd be there, of course. I had to. She was friends with my parents. If I didn't, I'd never hear the end of it.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Fiction Friday #28
I couldn't sleep when I got back to my room. I was too wound up. The way Jer blamed me for the yelling really upset me. It wasn't my fault. I wasn't the one being stubborn. Is it really too much for a guy to want to pee in the toilette in his bathroom in the apartment where he pays for half the rent? I didn't think so.
I couldn't sleep, but I couldn't leave my room, either, they hadn't left yet. I wasn't going out there where I'd have to put up with smug looks from Karen because Jer was on her side. So I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling and obsessing until I heard the front door close.
Immediately, I poked my head out of my door and heard the deadbolt lock.
I was alone. Not that it meant anything. It wasn't even eight o'clock yet. On a Sunday. I should have been sleeping. All normal people would still be asleep and I would have been one of them if everything had gone right.
I threw myself down on the couch and turned the TV on. I flipped through the channels. Lots of church guys asking people to send in money, a few news shows, and a rerun of everyone's favorite Borrowers rip-off, The Littles. That's where I left it.
Eventually, I got up and got some breakfast, a couple of Jer's Hot Pockets, then into the shower. I left for work after noon and Jer still hadn't come back from church.
Work was all about me shelving books at the main branch of the county library. We opened at two and I kept shelving through my whole shift. I was lucky to have the job, though. It's not many students, especially undergrad students, to get a paying job where they want to end up. Yes, I was one of the few and the insane who planned to go into the library sciences as an undergrad. I wanted to spend my days surrounded by books and help people find something worth reading. And I couldn't wait to get my degree and gain a section of a library to rule over like a despot. Not a book out of place, not a penny from my budget unspent, not an unsatisfied member of the public. Those were my goals.
My shift ended at five and I got back to the apartment the door was locked and the lights were off. It didn't look like Jer had been back at all. I settled myself down on the couch and turned on the TV. After a bit of flipping, I stopped on Mumford, slumped low, put my feet on the coffee table, and settled myself for the rest of the movie.
Fifteen minutes later, I heard the door rattle. The deadbolt snapped open. I muted the TV and turned to watch, ready to really apologize to Jer for being an ass that morning. The door was pushed open as soon as the knob was unlocked and in stepped Karen, wearing the dress that, I assumed, she wore to church and carrying her heeled shoes in her hand.
"Oh," I said.
"Yeah," she said, closing the door.
"You should really knock," I said.
"Jer gave me his keys," she said, jingling them. "I figured it'd be okay. I wasn't going to stand outside while he went to pick up some food."
"Still should have knocked." I frowned.
"Sure, yeah. Next time. I will."
I turned back to the TV and was about to turn up the sound when Karen asked, "What's that?"
"A movie," I said.
"I know that." She sat down on the other end of the couch. "What's the movie?"
"Mumford."
"The one with that guy from Chasing Amy?"
"He's one of the guys," I said and hit mute so I could hear it.
Karen put her shoes on the coffee table and leaned back into the couch. She always reminded me of a cat when she relaxed. First she pushed her back into the couch and stretched it. Then she stretched her arms out to her fingers. Next came her legs out to her toes. Finally, her body went limp. She'd relaxed like this since we were both little kids being dragged by our parents to annoying dinner parties put on by the stuffy people at the university where they worked.
I laughed a little when she finally settled.
"What?" she asked.
"It's just... Well, you still stretch like you used to," I said.
She smiled, "Some things never change, huh?"
I watched her watch the TV. "Karen, why'd you go to church this morning?"
"What?"
"Church, why'd you go? You used to hate it. You used to be proud at how much you pissed your grandma off when you wouldn't go with her on holidays. What's up? Do you believe in that stuff now?"
She looked toward me, but not at me, and frowned, "It's the girls I live with."
I waited.
"There all Afro American Studies, right?"
I nodded.
"Well, and it's nuts, I know, they don't like me dating a white guy."
"Shit," I said.
"I know," she said, shaking her head. "I over heard a couple of the girls talking and one said that the only good thing she had to say about Jer was that he wasn't Mexican."
"Shit," I said, again.
"Yeah, that's why I Jer doesn't spend the night at my place." She sighed, "So, I go to their church to make them happier and make living there easier. I thought they were all going to shit themselves when they saw Jer with me this morning."
We both laughed.
I couldn't sleep, but I couldn't leave my room, either, they hadn't left yet. I wasn't going out there where I'd have to put up with smug looks from Karen because Jer was on her side. So I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling and obsessing until I heard the front door close.
Immediately, I poked my head out of my door and heard the deadbolt lock.
I was alone. Not that it meant anything. It wasn't even eight o'clock yet. On a Sunday. I should have been sleeping. All normal people would still be asleep and I would have been one of them if everything had gone right.
I threw myself down on the couch and turned the TV on. I flipped through the channels. Lots of church guys asking people to send in money, a few news shows, and a rerun of everyone's favorite Borrowers rip-off, The Littles. That's where I left it.
Eventually, I got up and got some breakfast, a couple of Jer's Hot Pockets, then into the shower. I left for work after noon and Jer still hadn't come back from church.
Work was all about me shelving books at the main branch of the county library. We opened at two and I kept shelving through my whole shift. I was lucky to have the job, though. It's not many students, especially undergrad students, to get a paying job where they want to end up. Yes, I was one of the few and the insane who planned to go into the library sciences as an undergrad. I wanted to spend my days surrounded by books and help people find something worth reading. And I couldn't wait to get my degree and gain a section of a library to rule over like a despot. Not a book out of place, not a penny from my budget unspent, not an unsatisfied member of the public. Those were my goals.
My shift ended at five and I got back to the apartment the door was locked and the lights were off. It didn't look like Jer had been back at all. I settled myself down on the couch and turned on the TV. After a bit of flipping, I stopped on Mumford, slumped low, put my feet on the coffee table, and settled myself for the rest of the movie.
Fifteen minutes later, I heard the door rattle. The deadbolt snapped open. I muted the TV and turned to watch, ready to really apologize to Jer for being an ass that morning. The door was pushed open as soon as the knob was unlocked and in stepped Karen, wearing the dress that, I assumed, she wore to church and carrying her heeled shoes in her hand.
"Oh," I said.
"Yeah," she said, closing the door.
"You should really knock," I said.
"Jer gave me his keys," she said, jingling them. "I figured it'd be okay. I wasn't going to stand outside while he went to pick up some food."
"Still should have knocked." I frowned.
"Sure, yeah. Next time. I will."
I turned back to the TV and was about to turn up the sound when Karen asked, "What's that?"
"A movie," I said.
"I know that." She sat down on the other end of the couch. "What's the movie?"
"Mumford."
"The one with that guy from Chasing Amy?"
"He's one of the guys," I said and hit mute so I could hear it.
Karen put her shoes on the coffee table and leaned back into the couch. She always reminded me of a cat when she relaxed. First she pushed her back into the couch and stretched it. Then she stretched her arms out to her fingers. Next came her legs out to her toes. Finally, her body went limp. She'd relaxed like this since we were both little kids being dragged by our parents to annoying dinner parties put on by the stuffy people at the university where they worked.
I laughed a little when she finally settled.
"What?" she asked.
"It's just... Well, you still stretch like you used to," I said.
She smiled, "Some things never change, huh?"
I watched her watch the TV. "Karen, why'd you go to church this morning?"
"What?"
"Church, why'd you go? You used to hate it. You used to be proud at how much you pissed your grandma off when you wouldn't go with her on holidays. What's up? Do you believe in that stuff now?"
She looked toward me, but not at me, and frowned, "It's the girls I live with."
I waited.
"There all Afro American Studies, right?"
I nodded.
"Well, and it's nuts, I know, they don't like me dating a white guy."
"Shit," I said.
"I know," she said, shaking her head. "I over heard a couple of the girls talking and one said that the only good thing she had to say about Jer was that he wasn't Mexican."
"Shit," I said, again.
"Yeah, that's why I Jer doesn't spend the night at my place." She sighed, "So, I go to their church to make them happier and make living there easier. I thought they were all going to shit themselves when they saw Jer with me this morning."
We both laughed.
Useless Labels:
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
story
Friday, January 25, 2008
Fiction Friday #27
"Ewww," I said.
"That's disgusting," Karen said through the door.
"She's right," I said, nodding toward her voice.
"Stay out of this, Karen," Said Jer. "Unless you're going to let him in to use the toilette."
She snorted, "He's not coming in here."
"Then keep out of this," he said. He turned to me, I couldn't see his face clearly in the dark of the hall, and said, "Go and use the sink in the kitchen."
"Man, we put dishes in there," I said, giving the door a little push to see if I could catch Karen off guard. The door didn't move.
"It's all pipes, man. Haven't you ever peed in the shower?"
"That's different," I said. The shower washes everything down it."
"We wash dishes in there."
I scoffed, "We?"
"You. Fine," he said.
"That's right."
"I'll do dishes later. And make sure to clean out the sink, okay?"
"Fine," I said, taking my weight off of the door so it could slam shut with a surprised Karen on the other side.
"Son of a bitch," she said.
I smiled and let go of the door knob. "How do I get up high enough to aim for the sink?" I asked Jer. "I don't want to get the counter or anything."
He sighed, "You get a chair. And if you don't like that idea you grab one of the dirty glasses or a bowl or a pot or something. Jesus, just go."
He gave me a little push and I left. As I walked down the hall toward the living room, I heard a tapping. I turned and saw him knocking on the door, probably talking to Karen, trying to settle her down, telling her that I was the one who was wrong. He was on her side, I just knew it. He was telling her that everything was my fault, that I should have been more sensitive to her needs rather than my over stuffed bladder.
I hated Jer the entire time I pissed in the pot he boiled pasta in the night before, which I promised myself I'd never use again. At least Karen had an excuse for acting the way she had; she was a bitch. She couldn't help being the person she was. Jer, on the other hand, had been my friend since we were both freshmen trapped in rooms with shithead roommates. Jer's thought it was his right to kick Jer out at two in the morning so he could have sex. Mine was a freak who had night terrors. We had been united in our misery and turned it into a long friendship. The best friendship I'd ever had. The best he'd had, too.
I finished up in the pot and though about "accidentally" spilling some on the counter so he'd be stuck with the smell while he cleaned up. I thought better of that idea, though, because I knew I'd be smelling it all day long because if, and that was quite an if, Jer did the dishes he wasn't going to get to them until much later in the day. I poured my piss carefully into the sink then took the spray thing and rinsed the sink the best I could and did the same to the pot I used, which I then filled with hot water and added some soap so it could have a nice, long soak.
Jer came around the corner into the kitchen as I finished up. He wore slacks, a white button shirt and had a tie hanging loosely around his neck. He sat on one of the chairs around the table to put on his shoes.
"Leo," he said, setting one shoe on the table, "what you did this morning really sucked."
"It wasn't my fault," I said, sounding more whiney than I wanted.
"I know," he said, "but it wasn't all her fault."
"It was, too." I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall.
"No, it wasn't." He finished tying the first shoe and picked the other up off the table and pointed it at me. "You didn't have to be such an asshole. You could have waited. You could have figured out the sink thing for yourself."
"Yeah, but--"
"I'm not saying that she was right." He finished the second shoe and stood up to tie his tie. "She could have let you in and waited a minute for you to go and be done with it. Hell, she should have. You didn't have to turn it into some third grade yelling match at six on a Sunday morning. You should have been the mature one and waited."
I stood there, my mouth opening and closing like a landed trout and thought, bros before hoes, man, bros before hoes. Jer didn't see me, though. He was having trouble with his tie.
"I'm going with Karen to church," he said, looping the tail around and around the rest of the tie. "After, we're going to breakfast. She might come back with me after. I don't know."
"Give it to me," I said. He handed it over and I put it around my neck. "How long do you want it?"
He showed me and I started tying.
"You guys can't go around ignoring each other," he said. "It just screws everything up, makes it worse. I'd rather you guys have lots of little arguments than blow up early in the morning once a month."
I finished up, yanked the tie over my head, and handed it to him.
"Thanks," he said.
"Yeah," I said and headed around the corner. The bathroom door was still closed.
"That's disgusting," Karen said through the door.
"She's right," I said, nodding toward her voice.
"Stay out of this, Karen," Said Jer. "Unless you're going to let him in to use the toilette."
She snorted, "He's not coming in here."
"Then keep out of this," he said. He turned to me, I couldn't see his face clearly in the dark of the hall, and said, "Go and use the sink in the kitchen."
"Man, we put dishes in there," I said, giving the door a little push to see if I could catch Karen off guard. The door didn't move.
"It's all pipes, man. Haven't you ever peed in the shower?"
"That's different," I said. The shower washes everything down it."
"We wash dishes in there."
I scoffed, "We?"
"You. Fine," he said.
"That's right."
"I'll do dishes later. And make sure to clean out the sink, okay?"
"Fine," I said, taking my weight off of the door so it could slam shut with a surprised Karen on the other side.
"Son of a bitch," she said.
I smiled and let go of the door knob. "How do I get up high enough to aim for the sink?" I asked Jer. "I don't want to get the counter or anything."
He sighed, "You get a chair. And if you don't like that idea you grab one of the dirty glasses or a bowl or a pot or something. Jesus, just go."
He gave me a little push and I left. As I walked down the hall toward the living room, I heard a tapping. I turned and saw him knocking on the door, probably talking to Karen, trying to settle her down, telling her that I was the one who was wrong. He was on her side, I just knew it. He was telling her that everything was my fault, that I should have been more sensitive to her needs rather than my over stuffed bladder.
I hated Jer the entire time I pissed in the pot he boiled pasta in the night before, which I promised myself I'd never use again. At least Karen had an excuse for acting the way she had; she was a bitch. She couldn't help being the person she was. Jer, on the other hand, had been my friend since we were both freshmen trapped in rooms with shithead roommates. Jer's thought it was his right to kick Jer out at two in the morning so he could have sex. Mine was a freak who had night terrors. We had been united in our misery and turned it into a long friendship. The best friendship I'd ever had. The best he'd had, too.
I finished up in the pot and though about "accidentally" spilling some on the counter so he'd be stuck with the smell while he cleaned up. I thought better of that idea, though, because I knew I'd be smelling it all day long because if, and that was quite an if, Jer did the dishes he wasn't going to get to them until much later in the day. I poured my piss carefully into the sink then took the spray thing and rinsed the sink the best I could and did the same to the pot I used, which I then filled with hot water and added some soap so it could have a nice, long soak.
Jer came around the corner into the kitchen as I finished up. He wore slacks, a white button shirt and had a tie hanging loosely around his neck. He sat on one of the chairs around the table to put on his shoes.
"Leo," he said, setting one shoe on the table, "what you did this morning really sucked."
"It wasn't my fault," I said, sounding more whiney than I wanted.
"I know," he said, "but it wasn't all her fault."
"It was, too." I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall.
"No, it wasn't." He finished tying the first shoe and picked the other up off the table and pointed it at me. "You didn't have to be such an asshole. You could have waited. You could have figured out the sink thing for yourself."
"Yeah, but--"
"I'm not saying that she was right." He finished the second shoe and stood up to tie his tie. "She could have let you in and waited a minute for you to go and be done with it. Hell, she should have. You didn't have to turn it into some third grade yelling match at six on a Sunday morning. You should have been the mature one and waited."
I stood there, my mouth opening and closing like a landed trout and thought, bros before hoes, man, bros before hoes. Jer didn't see me, though. He was having trouble with his tie.
"I'm going with Karen to church," he said, looping the tail around and around the rest of the tie. "After, we're going to breakfast. She might come back with me after. I don't know."
"Give it to me," I said. He handed it over and I put it around my neck. "How long do you want it?"
He showed me and I started tying.
"You guys can't go around ignoring each other," he said. "It just screws everything up, makes it worse. I'd rather you guys have lots of little arguments than blow up early in the morning once a month."
I finished up, yanked the tie over my head, and handed it to him.
"Thanks," he said.
"Yeah," I said and headed around the corner. The bathroom door was still closed.
Useless Labels:
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
story
Friday, January 18, 2008
Fiction Friday #26
After that, there was hardly a day that I didn't see Karen. At first, we were... pleasant to each other, pleasant in only the way two people who won't speak can be. I acknowledged her existence, but wouldn't talk. I'd go around her in the kitchen to grab a plate or a glass rather than ask her to hand me one. If I saw her in the hall, I'd duck into my room or the bathroom until she was safely in Jer's room. She'd do the same, carefully dodging me so we wouldn't have to speak.
The pleasantness disintegrated early one Sunday morning, about six weeks after the first night. I had to pee, but she was in the bathroom. I had to go, really go. I drank an entire ultra-huge Slurpee before I went to bed and I'd held off as long as possible. I tapped on the door. (To this day I swear I was gentle, but when Karen tells the story it's like I swung a sledgehammer and tried to break the door down.)
She hollered through the door, "I getting ready for church."
"Why?" I asked, trying to stay polite. I still had to pee, but bothering her seemed more important. "You never believed in that bullshit before. What changed?"
"Fuck you, Leo," she said.
"How much longer?" I asked.
"As long as it takes."
"I'm not just gonna stand here and piss myself, you know."
"Yeah, what are you gonna do?"
I twisted the knob and gave the door a little push. She slammed into it, forcing the door shut. She couldn't lock it, though; I still had the knob turned. I pushed back.
"Let me in," I yelled, holding the knob with both hands, "I have to pee."
"Wait until I'm through," she yelled back.
"Who knows how long you'll be. I'll only be a minute."
"Yeah, and then the whole place will smell like piss."
"Fuck you!" I shouted.
"You had your chance, but your gun went off before you even got a look at the target!"
I nearly pissed myself at that. My ears got hot and I wanted to kick the door down, push her into the tub, and use the goddamn toilette. I didn't, though. I kept my hands firmly on the door knob and started taking deep breaths. I counted them. At fifteen I felt calm enough to speak again.
"Karen," I said, "please let me in so I can use the bathroom."
"No."
"Please? I've been waited a long time before I knocked on the door."
"No!"
"Karen!"
"NO!"
I pushed, the door opened a crack. She pushed back, the crack started to close. I pushed again and the crack sort of wavered. Nothing was gained and nothing was lost when she started to push back again.
"KAREN!"
"NOOOOOOO!"
"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" asked Jer from behind me.
"She's hogging the bathroom," I said, pushing.
"He's a shithead who won't leave me alone," she said, pushing back.
"I have to pee," I said pushing again.
"Tell him he'll get the bathroom when I'm done," she said, pushing back again.
"Leo, if you break that door, you're paying for it," Jer said.
"HA!" we heard Karen say through the door.
"You're paying for it, too, Karen," he said.
"HA! HA!" I said.
"Leo, can't you use the sink in the kitchen?" he asked.
The pleasantness disintegrated early one Sunday morning, about six weeks after the first night. I had to pee, but she was in the bathroom. I had to go, really go. I drank an entire ultra-huge Slurpee before I went to bed and I'd held off as long as possible. I tapped on the door. (To this day I swear I was gentle, but when Karen tells the story it's like I swung a sledgehammer and tried to break the door down.)
She hollered through the door, "I getting ready for church."
"Why?" I asked, trying to stay polite. I still had to pee, but bothering her seemed more important. "You never believed in that bullshit before. What changed?"
"Fuck you, Leo," she said.
"How much longer?" I asked.
"As long as it takes."
"I'm not just gonna stand here and piss myself, you know."
"Yeah, what are you gonna do?"
I twisted the knob and gave the door a little push. She slammed into it, forcing the door shut. She couldn't lock it, though; I still had the knob turned. I pushed back.
"Let me in," I yelled, holding the knob with both hands, "I have to pee."
"Wait until I'm through," she yelled back.
"Who knows how long you'll be. I'll only be a minute."
"Yeah, and then the whole place will smell like piss."
"Fuck you!" I shouted.
"You had your chance, but your gun went off before you even got a look at the target!"
I nearly pissed myself at that. My ears got hot and I wanted to kick the door down, push her into the tub, and use the goddamn toilette. I didn't, though. I kept my hands firmly on the door knob and started taking deep breaths. I counted them. At fifteen I felt calm enough to speak again.
"Karen," I said, "please let me in so I can use the bathroom."
"No."
"Please? I've been waited a long time before I knocked on the door."
"No!"
"Karen!"
"NO!"
I pushed, the door opened a crack. She pushed back, the crack started to close. I pushed again and the crack sort of wavered. Nothing was gained and nothing was lost when she started to push back again.
"KAREN!"
"NOOOOOOO!"
"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" asked Jer from behind me.
"She's hogging the bathroom," I said, pushing.
"He's a shithead who won't leave me alone," she said, pushing back.
"I have to pee," I said pushing again.
"Tell him he'll get the bathroom when I'm done," she said, pushing back again.
"Leo, if you break that door, you're paying for it," Jer said.
"HA!" we heard Karen say through the door.
"You're paying for it, too, Karen," he said.
"HA! HA!" I said.
"Leo, can't you use the sink in the kitchen?" he asked.
Useless Labels:
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
story
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Fiction Friday #25
"When?" he asked.
"High school," I said.
Jer looked over at Karen. She nodded again.
"High school?" he said to himself. Then he spoke to me, "Does that mean she's..." He let it drift off.
I pushed my hair off my forehead and said, "Yeah. This is her. This is Karen."
"Oh," he said, looking at her again, this time not so cow-eyed.
"What," she said to me, "have you told him?"
"The truth," I said, leveling my eyes to hers.
"'The truth,'" she said, mocking me by making her voice higher. "You wouldn't know the truth if it crawled out of your belly button and said, 'Fuck me, I'm the truth!'"
"Yeah, sure," I said and turned to walk to my room. I wanted to let them handle whatever was going on between them.
Jer grabbed my arm, "Where're you going?"
"To my room. I don't have to deal with this." I shook his hand off of me.
Karen leaned her butt onto the back of the chair she had been sitting on and let out a long sigh. "What now?" she asked.
Jer sat on the floor, looked at me, then at her. He shrugged and looked down at his arms, which were crossed on his chest. I wondered if he was about to cry.
"What, 'What now?'" I asked Karen. "I don't get it."
"You," she pointed to me. "Him," she pointed to Jer. "Me," she pointed to herself.
"Fuck me," I said.
She grinned an evil grin at me, "Only with a chainsaw."
"Look," I said, ignoring her as best I could, "this doesn't have anything to do with me. Jer," -- He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. -- "we were bullshitting, bitching about exes. We were playing, one upping each other. How'd I know three years later you'd see her and bring her home with you?"
He looked away from me.
"And you," I turned back to Karen, "give him a fucking chance. He's not me." I paused. She didn't say anything; she just frowned. "Hell, I'm not who I was. I'm a totally new kind of jackass."
Karen smiled a little.
That's when I left. I didn't go to my room. I walked back the way I came in and out. I hurried down the stairs after I pulled the door shut and hopped on the first bus that came around the corner. It didn't matter where I was going, just as long as I was gone.
Nearly four years after we spent hours screaming at each other, almost four since I'd even seen her, and when I saw her all those old emotions came back. All the pain I felt because of what she said and because of what I wanted to do. As if no time had passed at all. If I'd stayed, I would have started again. Maybe she would have been mature enough to not fight back, but I doubted it. She always had a quicker temper than I did, than most people did. Her temper was one of the things that made her so much fun to be around; it made her more unpredictable and exciting.
So, we probably would have fought. This time in front of an audience, Jer. He didn't need to see that anymore than I needed to go through it. Besides, he'd been building her up for so long, it would have been awful to just show him her worst side. Besides, I knew, deep down, that she wasn't the horrible bitch I'd made her out to be. I didn't know who she was at all anymore.
She was, though, even more beautiful than she had been in high school. She was rounder, fuller, still dark and glistening. When she smiled when we were kids, it dazzled me, now it would probably knock me unconscious. I could see how she caught his eye. Couple her looks with the deadly sharp wit she's always had, and Jer had no chance.
I rode the bus for long enough to lose track of time. I thought about what had happened at my apartment. I thought about what happened between me and Karen then and now. I thought about who I was now compared to then. It all just rolled around and around in my head always looping back on itself.
Eventually, I wanted off. I didn't want to go back home, but I knew I couldn't sit on the bus all night long, it's run had to come to an end some time. A bar seemed like the right place to go for the night. Who wouldn't want to get drunk after seeing someone like Karen again? Bars have to close sometime. They may stay open late, but late wasn't all night long. Denny's, though, stayed open all night long.
I transferred twice to get onto the line to Denny’s; I wouldn't have had to transfer at all if I went to a bar. Still, Denny's was a better place. I hadn't dropped off my backpack, so I still had all the books I'd taken to school. Unfortunately, they weren't the books for the next day's classes; still it was something else to focus on.
I bought a never ending coffee and slowly, through the night, bought food and worked my way through a few weeks worth of homework. I left around five so I could get to the first bus of the morning. Once again I transferred twice and, in time, ended up across the street in front of my apartment.
I stood there wondering if I really wanted to go in. Did I want to know what Jer and Karen had decided? Which outcome would make me happiest? I knew what would make my life easiest, at least after Jer settled down to his normal routine.
I stood there wondering and the door opened and Karen came down the stairs. I don't think she saw me, but if she had, she would have seen me clutching my stomach, as if I'd just been punched.
"High school," I said.
Jer looked over at Karen. She nodded again.
"High school?" he said to himself. Then he spoke to me, "Does that mean she's..." He let it drift off.
I pushed my hair off my forehead and said, "Yeah. This is her. This is Karen."
"Oh," he said, looking at her again, this time not so cow-eyed.
"What," she said to me, "have you told him?"
"The truth," I said, leveling my eyes to hers.
"'The truth,'" she said, mocking me by making her voice higher. "You wouldn't know the truth if it crawled out of your belly button and said, 'Fuck me, I'm the truth!'"
"Yeah, sure," I said and turned to walk to my room. I wanted to let them handle whatever was going on between them.
Jer grabbed my arm, "Where're you going?"
"To my room. I don't have to deal with this." I shook his hand off of me.
Karen leaned her butt onto the back of the chair she had been sitting on and let out a long sigh. "What now?" she asked.
Jer sat on the floor, looked at me, then at her. He shrugged and looked down at his arms, which were crossed on his chest. I wondered if he was about to cry.
"What, 'What now?'" I asked Karen. "I don't get it."
"You," she pointed to me. "Him," she pointed to Jer. "Me," she pointed to herself.
"Fuck me," I said.
She grinned an evil grin at me, "Only with a chainsaw."
"Look," I said, ignoring her as best I could, "this doesn't have anything to do with me. Jer," -- He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. -- "we were bullshitting, bitching about exes. We were playing, one upping each other. How'd I know three years later you'd see her and bring her home with you?"
He looked away from me.
"And you," I turned back to Karen, "give him a fucking chance. He's not me." I paused. She didn't say anything; she just frowned. "Hell, I'm not who I was. I'm a totally new kind of jackass."
Karen smiled a little.
That's when I left. I didn't go to my room. I walked back the way I came in and out. I hurried down the stairs after I pulled the door shut and hopped on the first bus that came around the corner. It didn't matter where I was going, just as long as I was gone.
Nearly four years after we spent hours screaming at each other, almost four since I'd even seen her, and when I saw her all those old emotions came back. All the pain I felt because of what she said and because of what I wanted to do. As if no time had passed at all. If I'd stayed, I would have started again. Maybe she would have been mature enough to not fight back, but I doubted it. She always had a quicker temper than I did, than most people did. Her temper was one of the things that made her so much fun to be around; it made her more unpredictable and exciting.
So, we probably would have fought. This time in front of an audience, Jer. He didn't need to see that anymore than I needed to go through it. Besides, he'd been building her up for so long, it would have been awful to just show him her worst side. Besides, I knew, deep down, that she wasn't the horrible bitch I'd made her out to be. I didn't know who she was at all anymore.
She was, though, even more beautiful than she had been in high school. She was rounder, fuller, still dark and glistening. When she smiled when we were kids, it dazzled me, now it would probably knock me unconscious. I could see how she caught his eye. Couple her looks with the deadly sharp wit she's always had, and Jer had no chance.
I rode the bus for long enough to lose track of time. I thought about what had happened at my apartment. I thought about what happened between me and Karen then and now. I thought about who I was now compared to then. It all just rolled around and around in my head always looping back on itself.
Eventually, I wanted off. I didn't want to go back home, but I knew I couldn't sit on the bus all night long, it's run had to come to an end some time. A bar seemed like the right place to go for the night. Who wouldn't want to get drunk after seeing someone like Karen again? Bars have to close sometime. They may stay open late, but late wasn't all night long. Denny's, though, stayed open all night long.
I transferred twice to get onto the line to Denny’s; I wouldn't have had to transfer at all if I went to a bar. Still, Denny's was a better place. I hadn't dropped off my backpack, so I still had all the books I'd taken to school. Unfortunately, they weren't the books for the next day's classes; still it was something else to focus on.
I bought a never ending coffee and slowly, through the night, bought food and worked my way through a few weeks worth of homework. I left around five so I could get to the first bus of the morning. Once again I transferred twice and, in time, ended up across the street in front of my apartment.
I stood there wondering if I really wanted to go in. Did I want to know what Jer and Karen had decided? Which outcome would make me happiest? I knew what would make my life easiest, at least after Jer settled down to his normal routine.
I stood there wondering and the door opened and Karen came down the stairs. I don't think she saw me, but if she had, she would have seen me clutching my stomach, as if I'd just been punched.
Useless Labels:
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
story
Friday, January 11, 2008
Fiction Friday #24
The first time it was real weird between Karen and me was when we sort of met in college.
Jer, my then roommate and best friend who I met my first year, his second, of college, was all excited when he got home the first day of the new semester. The only thing he talked about all night was some brilliant, dark eyed, dark haired, mahogany skinned beauty he'd met in his American lit class. Unlike most students, she was already asking the professor tough questions. She asked questions about the syllabus, pressing the prof for specifics instead of putting up with his vague outline of exactly what the required reading for the course was; who in their right mind wanted to buy a copy of Moby-Dick only to have to read select passages so they could compare and contrast those passages with a short story, "Bartleby, the Schr1vner," from the class reader.
For five weeks, each day he had that class, he came home talking about her. She said this about the story we read today. She busted the teacher when he mixed up something Emerson wrote with something Thoreau wrote. She flicks her hair back with a quick motion of her head. She makes the air around her smell like vanilla. Of course, in all that time, he never spoke to her. He just listened and pined.
Then they read Huck Finn, a book that Jer had hated since he was in junior high because of the ending. All the time he was reading it at home he bitched about the book to me, but he read it from beginning to end anyway. On the day the class talked about the ending, the prof talked about how it was a brilliant portrayal of how the reconstruction of the South failed after the Civil War and how Twain was pulling the book back from the serious place it had reached to the comedy it began with to show how the USA achieved no change at all after Reconstruction had ended. Jer, in his mild way, flipped out at the teacher and said that the ending sucked. Out of the whole class the only the Dark Girl, as we'd come to call her around our apartment, sided with Jer, the rest either rehashed what the prof said or sat silent.
After that class, and pretty much being called dumb by the prof, full of rage and adrenaline, Jer and the Dark Girl finally spoke. She even came home with them so they could keep talking. When I got there, I heard the muffled voices and didn't want to get in the way so I tried to sneak off to my room. It didn't work. The voices had stopped and Jer was in the entry way before I could lock up.
"Guess who I have here?" Jer asked, smiling.
"Jesus, the guy who sells stolen hubcaps," I said.
"No," he said. "She's here."
"Who?"
"The girl from my lit class."
"Her?" I paused. "How?"
"Come and meet her." He pulled my arm so I was in front of him and then pushed me into the living room.
She was sitting in a chair so her back was to me. Her hair was impossibly black, Jer was right about that.
"I want you two to meet."
She stood up, turned around, the smile she had turned to a look of horror.
"This is Karen," Jer said to me. "Karen, this is--"
"Leo," she said with disgust.
"Shit," I said my heart trying to fall into my scrotum while my balls tried to climb up to my throat.
Karen had dated in high school during our junior year and most of our senior year, then stupid happened. I wouldn't lie to her, but she didn't want the truth about certain thing (even though she'd ask about them). So I told her something that hurt her and she said something that hurt me and it went back and forth and back and forth for a while until she was crying to hard she couldn't talk anymore and I was so angry that I wanted to throw her through a window and started to cry at that thought. Soon after, I couldn't remember who started what or even when, but I was tired of her and she was tired of me and things just ended. From then on, we just didn't speak. Our friends sort of ignored us for a while and then she seemed to recover faster and started to be fun Karen before I became fun Leo, so they drifted off toward her more than to me. Not that I blamed them, she always was more fun than I was.
She was also the first person who I almost had sex with, but didn't quite make it. She was the first girl, besides family or medical people, to see me naked. She was the first girl who was naked with me. We must have looked odd, her in her beautiful, deep brown skin gleaming in the light, and me standing there in my earthworm colored flesh, blotchy with red as my body flushed. She was the first who really let me explore her body and she was the first who explored mine. But when she stroked me as I was kissing and touching her and I burst in her hand, the experiment was over. After that, we fooled around and worked on each other until we came, but we never got that close to actual sex again.
Before we broke up, we had both chosen to go to the same college, thinking we'd be in love forever. Afterward, I know I seriously thought about not going to school at all, but I figured the odds of me running into her on a campus with twenty thousand people seemed low, so I wasn't going to stop my plans because of her. I never saw her until there, until the day my roommate invited her over to our apartment, where she just glared at me.
As she looked me over, with a deep frown on her face, she was probably remembering every horrible thing I had ever said to her or done to her and trying to figure out if anyone who was a friend of mine was worth anything at all.
"You know each other?" Jer asked, looking between us.
"We went to high school together," I said, trying to look like I wasn't looking at Karen.
She frowned deeper.
"And we sort of dated. For a while," I said.
"Is that true?" he asked her.
She nodded.
"Shit," he said.
Jer, my then roommate and best friend who I met my first year, his second, of college, was all excited when he got home the first day of the new semester. The only thing he talked about all night was some brilliant, dark eyed, dark haired, mahogany skinned beauty he'd met in his American lit class. Unlike most students, she was already asking the professor tough questions. She asked questions about the syllabus, pressing the prof for specifics instead of putting up with his vague outline of exactly what the required reading for the course was; who in their right mind wanted to buy a copy of Moby-Dick only to have to read select passages so they could compare and contrast those passages with a short story, "Bartleby, the Schr1vner," from the class reader.
For five weeks, each day he had that class, he came home talking about her. She said this about the story we read today. She busted the teacher when he mixed up something Emerson wrote with something Thoreau wrote. She flicks her hair back with a quick motion of her head. She makes the air around her smell like vanilla. Of course, in all that time, he never spoke to her. He just listened and pined.
Then they read Huck Finn, a book that Jer had hated since he was in junior high because of the ending. All the time he was reading it at home he bitched about the book to me, but he read it from beginning to end anyway. On the day the class talked about the ending, the prof talked about how it was a brilliant portrayal of how the reconstruction of the South failed after the Civil War and how Twain was pulling the book back from the serious place it had reached to the comedy it began with to show how the USA achieved no change at all after Reconstruction had ended. Jer, in his mild way, flipped out at the teacher and said that the ending sucked. Out of the whole class the only the Dark Girl, as we'd come to call her around our apartment, sided with Jer, the rest either rehashed what the prof said or sat silent.
After that class, and pretty much being called dumb by the prof, full of rage and adrenaline, Jer and the Dark Girl finally spoke. She even came home with them so they could keep talking. When I got there, I heard the muffled voices and didn't want to get in the way so I tried to sneak off to my room. It didn't work. The voices had stopped and Jer was in the entry way before I could lock up.
"Guess who I have here?" Jer asked, smiling.
"Jesus, the guy who sells stolen hubcaps," I said.
"No," he said. "She's here."
"Who?"
"The girl from my lit class."
"Her?" I paused. "How?"
"Come and meet her." He pulled my arm so I was in front of him and then pushed me into the living room.
She was sitting in a chair so her back was to me. Her hair was impossibly black, Jer was right about that.
"I want you two to meet."
She stood up, turned around, the smile she had turned to a look of horror.
"This is Karen," Jer said to me. "Karen, this is--"
"Leo," she said with disgust.
"Shit," I said my heart trying to fall into my scrotum while my balls tried to climb up to my throat.
Karen had dated in high school during our junior year and most of our senior year, then stupid happened. I wouldn't lie to her, but she didn't want the truth about certain thing (even though she'd ask about them). So I told her something that hurt her and she said something that hurt me and it went back and forth and back and forth for a while until she was crying to hard she couldn't talk anymore and I was so angry that I wanted to throw her through a window and started to cry at that thought. Soon after, I couldn't remember who started what or even when, but I was tired of her and she was tired of me and things just ended. From then on, we just didn't speak. Our friends sort of ignored us for a while and then she seemed to recover faster and started to be fun Karen before I became fun Leo, so they drifted off toward her more than to me. Not that I blamed them, she always was more fun than I was.
She was also the first person who I almost had sex with, but didn't quite make it. She was the first girl, besides family or medical people, to see me naked. She was the first girl who was naked with me. We must have looked odd, her in her beautiful, deep brown skin gleaming in the light, and me standing there in my earthworm colored flesh, blotchy with red as my body flushed. She was the first who really let me explore her body and she was the first who explored mine. But when she stroked me as I was kissing and touching her and I burst in her hand, the experiment was over. After that, we fooled around and worked on each other until we came, but we never got that close to actual sex again.
Before we broke up, we had both chosen to go to the same college, thinking we'd be in love forever. Afterward, I know I seriously thought about not going to school at all, but I figured the odds of me running into her on a campus with twenty thousand people seemed low, so I wasn't going to stop my plans because of her. I never saw her until there, until the day my roommate invited her over to our apartment, where she just glared at me.
As she looked me over, with a deep frown on her face, she was probably remembering every horrible thing I had ever said to her or done to her and trying to figure out if anyone who was a friend of mine was worth anything at all.
"You know each other?" Jer asked, looking between us.
"We went to high school together," I said, trying to look like I wasn't looking at Karen.
She frowned deeper.
"And we sort of dated. For a while," I said.
"Is that true?" he asked her.
She nodded.
"Shit," he said.
Useless Labels:
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
story
Friday, December 07, 2007
Fiction Friday #23
OJ
Shani was up front, out in the lobby, talking to her friend, what's-her-name, again. I sat watching her and her friend talk, tapping the first button on my waist when the phone rang, "Russo, Taggart, Godwin & Rose, how can I help you?" I looked at the bottle the bottle of orange juice. It wasn't dripping anymore. I doubted it was even cold.
"Uhh, yeah," said some guys voice, "I want to talk to my lawyer."
Shani and her friend were laughing.
"And you attorney is?" I asked, rolling my eyes at Shani.
"It's Ed, darlin'," he said. "My lawyer's Ed."
Shani put her hand on her friend's arm and leaned.
"Sir, we have three attorneys here who could be called 'Ed,' can you give me a last name?" I hoped that I wasn't starting to sound irritated, but to me, my voice sounded high and pinched.
"I can't remember. Do you think you can read me their names?"
I tapped the first button to turn him off and sighed before I pressed it again and said, "Klein. Harstead. Wallace."
"No," said the guy. I pictured him in ratty red flannel over a greased up t-shirt and missing teeth grimacing and slowly shaking his head from side to side. "I don't think any of those are my lawyer, honey. Got anymore?"
Shani finished up with her friend and turned toward me. She upped her smile from genuine happy to beaming when her eyes met mine. She wanted something.
"Those are the only attorneys we have here who go by 'Ed,' sir. Maybe if I got your name?"
Shani stopped in front of my desk and leaned in. Her friend hadn't left the lobby, yet.
I cycled through the computer so I could enter the guys name.
"Joey," said the voice on the phone, "Joey Cal. What's yours?"
"Hold on,"I said, "let me check." I pressed the first button, looked up into Shani's broad smile and vacant eyes, and said, "Yeah?"
I typed his name and Shani said, "Look, I know I just got back from my break and all, and I'm sort of..." -- Her smile widened and she winked. -- "But, well, I was sort of wondering--" I cut her off with a raise of my hand. I knew what she wanted.
I hit the first button again, "Mr. Cal, we don't have you in our system. Are you sure your calling the right office?"
"Yeah, I'm sure. I was just in court with Ed yesterday."
"And it was about?"
"That hit and run thing they're blaming me for," he whispered.
Shani turned away from me and sort of waggled her head at her friend. The phone rang.
"I think you want the Public Defender's office."
"Isn't--" he said as the phone rang again, I pressed the first button and then the second one and said, "Russo, Taggart, Godwin & Rose, please hold."
"I will no--" I heard as I hit the second and then the first.
"--got?"
"I'm afraid not. You've dialed 578-1683, but the Public Defender's office is 575-1683."
"Oh," he said.
Shani turned toward me and moved her hands in the "hurry up" motion.
"Lots of people make that mistake. It's okay."
"Darlin', what was that number again?" he asked.
I told him and he thanked me. After I said good-bye to him, Shani said, "Look, Cleo's here and I wanted to--"
I cut her off with my hand again and glared as tapped the second button and I said, "Thank you for holding, how can I help you."
And guy on the end of this line started swearing at me. It was almost musical, the way he did it. It reminded me of the way that Ludacris or 50 Cent got when they were on a role, all the normal curse words peppered with careful helpings of misogyny. He'd make millions.
"Sir," I said, trying to get anything in when he took a breath, "I can help you, now."
He kept going. Shani leaned over and frowned at me. I rolled my eyes at her.
"Sir, please call back when you're calmer," I said and hung up.
"Finally," said Shani.
I stood up, pulled off my headset, and unclipped the button box from my pants pocket.
"Where are you going?" She asked.
I picked up my orange juice and said, "On my break?"
"But..." she said.
The phone rang.
"Better get that," I said, waving to what's-her-name as I slipped out the front door.
At the bus bench on the corner, I opened the juice and took a long drink. It was warm and it was sour, but it was perfect.
Shani was up front, out in the lobby, talking to her friend, what's-her-name, again. I sat watching her and her friend talk, tapping the first button on my waist when the phone rang, "Russo, Taggart, Godwin & Rose, how can I help you?" I looked at the bottle the bottle of orange juice. It wasn't dripping anymore. I doubted it was even cold.
"Uhh, yeah," said some guys voice, "I want to talk to my lawyer."
Shani and her friend were laughing.
"And you attorney is?" I asked, rolling my eyes at Shani.
"It's Ed, darlin'," he said. "My lawyer's Ed."
Shani put her hand on her friend's arm and leaned.
"Sir, we have three attorneys here who could be called 'Ed,' can you give me a last name?" I hoped that I wasn't starting to sound irritated, but to me, my voice sounded high and pinched.
"I can't remember. Do you think you can read me their names?"
I tapped the first button to turn him off and sighed before I pressed it again and said, "Klein. Harstead. Wallace."
"No," said the guy. I pictured him in ratty red flannel over a greased up t-shirt and missing teeth grimacing and slowly shaking his head from side to side. "I don't think any of those are my lawyer, honey. Got anymore?"
Shani finished up with her friend and turned toward me. She upped her smile from genuine happy to beaming when her eyes met mine. She wanted something.
"Those are the only attorneys we have here who go by 'Ed,' sir. Maybe if I got your name?"
Shani stopped in front of my desk and leaned in. Her friend hadn't left the lobby, yet.
I cycled through the computer so I could enter the guys name.
"Joey," said the voice on the phone, "Joey Cal. What's yours?"
"Hold on,"I said, "let me check." I pressed the first button, looked up into Shani's broad smile and vacant eyes, and said, "Yeah?"
I typed his name and Shani said, "Look, I know I just got back from my break and all, and I'm sort of..." -- Her smile widened and she winked. -- "But, well, I was sort of wondering--" I cut her off with a raise of my hand. I knew what she wanted.
I hit the first button again, "Mr. Cal, we don't have you in our system. Are you sure your calling the right office?"
"Yeah, I'm sure. I was just in court with Ed yesterday."
"And it was about?"
"That hit and run thing they're blaming me for," he whispered.
Shani turned away from me and sort of waggled her head at her friend. The phone rang.
"I think you want the Public Defender's office."
"Isn't--" he said as the phone rang again, I pressed the first button and then the second one and said, "Russo, Taggart, Godwin & Rose, please hold."
"I will no--" I heard as I hit the second and then the first.
"--got?"
"I'm afraid not. You've dialed 578-1683, but the Public Defender's office is 575-1683."
"Oh," he said.
Shani turned toward me and moved her hands in the "hurry up" motion.
"Lots of people make that mistake. It's okay."
"Darlin', what was that number again?" he asked.
I told him and he thanked me. After I said good-bye to him, Shani said, "Look, Cleo's here and I wanted to--"
I cut her off with my hand again and glared as tapped the second button and I said, "Thank you for holding, how can I help you."
And guy on the end of this line started swearing at me. It was almost musical, the way he did it. It reminded me of the way that Ludacris or 50 Cent got when they were on a role, all the normal curse words peppered with careful helpings of misogyny. He'd make millions.
"Sir," I said, trying to get anything in when he took a breath, "I can help you, now."
He kept going. Shani leaned over and frowned at me. I rolled my eyes at her.
"Sir, please call back when you're calmer," I said and hung up.
"Finally," said Shani.
I stood up, pulled off my headset, and unclipped the button box from my pants pocket.
"Where are you going?" She asked.
I picked up my orange juice and said, "On my break?"
"But..." she said.
The phone rang.
"Better get that," I said, waving to what's-her-name as I slipped out the front door.
At the bus bench on the corner, I opened the juice and took a long drink. It was warm and it was sour, but it was perfect.
Useless Labels:
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
story
Friday, November 30, 2007
Fiction Friday #22
NaNoWriMo Part 5
Well, this is it for the NaNoWriMo thing as an actual NaNoWriMo thing. I failed even more spectacularly this year than last year, but that's okay; I knew it would happen like that. I'll probably come back to this at some point, but there are other bits of fiction I want to write more/first.
Here goes, it's the beginning of a chapter or section called:
Durden
One of the things that Tyler hated were malls. Either they're freshly cleaned and smell of disinfectant or they haven't been cleaned for a while and they stink like too many monkeys in a cage. Some people believed that they were for convenient shopping, but how could that be when there are eight stores, with different names, that sell the exact same clothes and three stores that sold games and all the so called music stores sold the same fifteen new albums and displayed DVD, not CDs, in the windows?
There was no variety at any mall, anywhere.
Tyler saw them only as locations built for too large parking lots where people could go inside and still convince themselves that they were going "out." They weren't out, though. "Out" was someplace more interesting than Forever 21 or Pottery Bar. "Out" was some activity that wasn't all about money. "Out" was some food that wasn't timed by a machine so it was exactly the same as all the other hundreds of convenient locations. "Out" was people talking about more than the thing in the window or what's on sale or what's new or the slowness of the escalator. Most people rarely, if ever, did "out."
And yet, here he was sitting in the food court on the second floor, sucking on a frozen coffee-like drink, in a mall. At least it was the open mall on K Street, so it didn't carry the stink of too many people crammed into too small a place trying to spend money as quickly as they were sweating. Not that he was comfortable there, but the gas heat lamps really kept the chill out of the air.
"Durden!" he heard and looked around him. No one. It had to be for him, though. No one had a nickname as stupid as this one.
"Durden!" he heard again, but still didn't see anyone.
"Down here, fucker!"
Tyler looked down into the kids’ play-pit and saw Krystia. She'd cut her hair short and dyed it some sort of fiery orange since the day before, but she was the only person he knew who would call anyone a fucker in public where little kids were in earshot. Most of his friends would only do that in front of their own kids, but leave the rest of the world's kids to be tormented by their own parents. Krystia never had that problem. She figured that the world was fucked up as it was, so who was she to pretend it wasn't? That was one of the things that Tyler liked best about her. Well, that and how every so often she came over to his place, licked his entire body, and rode him until they both burned off a Thanksgiving dinner, but didn't want anything crazy in return.
He stood up and said, "I'll be right down."
"Hurry up," she said, "or I may have to fuck one of these giant plastic animals! The rhino's horn's getting me hot!"
Tyler hurried, but didn't run, to the nearest way down, real stairs. He could hear Krystia screaming the Sex Pistols's "God Save the Queen" behind him. He smiled. She was always doing shit like this. Some days she got a crowd that thought she was doing some sort of performance art and started tossing money at her feet. Once she stood on a corner outside of Kaiser singing the word "bullshit" to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" for an hour; she made fifty bucks. Most of the time, though, people just walked a wide path around her. She'd never been arrested for any of it, though. I guess people figured that she was like the homeless guy down the block by The Crest Theater, only she was cleaner, was supposed to have breasts, and was white; those sorts of things always made people more comfortable.
He got to her just as she, with her eyes closed, was screaming, "NO FUTURE FOR YOU! NO FUTURE FOR ME! NO FUTURE! NO FUTURE FOR YOU!"
When she finished, he put his hand on her shoulder. She spun around and took up her generic Bruce Lee stance.
"You want to watch out, little Durden," she said. "I can, very much, kick your ass onto the rhino's horn." He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. She smiled her overly toothy smile and asked, "So, what the fuck am I doing here?"
He led her away from the kids' play pit and said, "Well, you saw what my dad did?"
"Who hasn't? How often do you get to see the fuckin' president have a breakdown? Hell, he's crazier than Regan and Thatcher combine."
"He is."
"So?"
"That's all, really."
"Bullshit," she said, poking his arm. "I call bullshit on you!"
"Ow!"
"You want something." She hit him where she had been poking him.
"Yeah, okay, I do." He tried to fight her off, but it was hard with the drink in his hand.
"What" -- punch! -- "do" -- punch! -- "you" -- punch! punch! -- "want?"
"Help." Tyler backed away from her.
"With what?"
"Shopping?"
"Fuck," she said, and kicked him in the shin.
The things he would put up with to keep his friend with benefits thing going.
Well, this is it for the NaNoWriMo thing as an actual NaNoWriMo thing. I failed even more spectacularly this year than last year, but that's okay; I knew it would happen like that. I'll probably come back to this at some point, but there are other bits of fiction I want to write more/first.
Here goes, it's the beginning of a chapter or section called:
Durden
One of the things that Tyler hated were malls. Either they're freshly cleaned and smell of disinfectant or they haven't been cleaned for a while and they stink like too many monkeys in a cage. Some people believed that they were for convenient shopping, but how could that be when there are eight stores, with different names, that sell the exact same clothes and three stores that sold games and all the so called music stores sold the same fifteen new albums and displayed DVD, not CDs, in the windows?
There was no variety at any mall, anywhere.
Tyler saw them only as locations built for too large parking lots where people could go inside and still convince themselves that they were going "out." They weren't out, though. "Out" was someplace more interesting than Forever 21 or Pottery Bar. "Out" was some activity that wasn't all about money. "Out" was some food that wasn't timed by a machine so it was exactly the same as all the other hundreds of convenient locations. "Out" was people talking about more than the thing in the window or what's on sale or what's new or the slowness of the escalator. Most people rarely, if ever, did "out."
And yet, here he was sitting in the food court on the second floor, sucking on a frozen coffee-like drink, in a mall. At least it was the open mall on K Street, so it didn't carry the stink of too many people crammed into too small a place trying to spend money as quickly as they were sweating. Not that he was comfortable there, but the gas heat lamps really kept the chill out of the air.
"Durden!" he heard and looked around him. No one. It had to be for him, though. No one had a nickname as stupid as this one.
"Durden!" he heard again, but still didn't see anyone.
"Down here, fucker!"
Tyler looked down into the kids’ play-pit and saw Krystia. She'd cut her hair short and dyed it some sort of fiery orange since the day before, but she was the only person he knew who would call anyone a fucker in public where little kids were in earshot. Most of his friends would only do that in front of their own kids, but leave the rest of the world's kids to be tormented by their own parents. Krystia never had that problem. She figured that the world was fucked up as it was, so who was she to pretend it wasn't? That was one of the things that Tyler liked best about her. Well, that and how every so often she came over to his place, licked his entire body, and rode him until they both burned off a Thanksgiving dinner, but didn't want anything crazy in return.
He stood up and said, "I'll be right down."
"Hurry up," she said, "or I may have to fuck one of these giant plastic animals! The rhino's horn's getting me hot!"
Tyler hurried, but didn't run, to the nearest way down, real stairs. He could hear Krystia screaming the Sex Pistols's "God Save the Queen" behind him. He smiled. She was always doing shit like this. Some days she got a crowd that thought she was doing some sort of performance art and started tossing money at her feet. Once she stood on a corner outside of Kaiser singing the word "bullshit" to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" for an hour; she made fifty bucks. Most of the time, though, people just walked a wide path around her. She'd never been arrested for any of it, though. I guess people figured that she was like the homeless guy down the block by The Crest Theater, only she was cleaner, was supposed to have breasts, and was white; those sorts of things always made people more comfortable.
He got to her just as she, with her eyes closed, was screaming, "NO FUTURE FOR YOU! NO FUTURE FOR ME! NO FUTURE! NO FUTURE FOR YOU!"
When she finished, he put his hand on her shoulder. She spun around and took up her generic Bruce Lee stance.
"You want to watch out, little Durden," she said. "I can, very much, kick your ass onto the rhino's horn." He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. She smiled her overly toothy smile and asked, "So, what the fuck am I doing here?"
He led her away from the kids' play pit and said, "Well, you saw what my dad did?"
"Who hasn't? How often do you get to see the fuckin' president have a breakdown? Hell, he's crazier than Regan and Thatcher combine."
"He is."
"So?"
"That's all, really."
"Bullshit," she said, poking his arm. "I call bullshit on you!"
"Ow!"
"You want something." She hit him where she had been poking him.
"Yeah, okay, I do." He tried to fight her off, but it was hard with the drink in his hand.
"What" -- punch! -- "do" -- punch! -- "you" -- punch! punch! -- "want?"
"Help." Tyler backed away from her.
"With what?"
"Shopping?"
"Fuck," she said, and kicked him in the shin.
The things he would put up with to keep his friend with benefits thing going.
Useless Labels:
comedy,
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
NaNoWriMo
Friday, November 23, 2007
Fiction Friday #21
NaNoWriMo Part 4
Didn't get much done this week and what was done is sort of muddled, incomplete sentences and all.
Hell, on the other hand, was what her pre-flight pit stop was supposed to take care of. She got air sick. Not the simple air sick of the movies where a person vomits once into a bag and goes on with the flight, no, she got air sick like most people got sea sick. She started getting queasy when she felt the engines start up. By the time they were barely off the ground, she'd thrown up at least once.
Dramamine.
TV Time
Click --
"The nation is stunned this morning after a shocking speech given by the president yesterday afternoon in which he blamed the people of America for the problems he's been experiencing as president. We go live to Breanne Vanhoose who's in Washington now. Breanne?"
"I'm standing across from the White House on one of the most famous streets in America. But instead of the majestic mansion that's stood for hundreds of years, you'll see only protesters. They're here to voice their anger with the president and the words he spoke yesterday.
"I spoke with a few of the protesters earlier and asked if they knew that the President had gone home for the holiday and all said it didn't matter, they'd be here every day until he came back after the new --"
Click --
"-- the most brilliant thing he's done since he was elected. He's energized the base like no person since Martin Luther King Junior. They're all talking about what he said. They all have an opinion. They all --"
Click --
"-- idiotic move on his part. He's ruined the chances of his party during the next national elections. They're going to loose every seat they gained..."
"Are you suggesting that they made gains in the last election? Because I don't remember that. In fact, I think that President Gandbuth actually brought in up in his statment yesterday
Finishing School, or At Least the Quarter
Gretchen had only one more final and then her first quarter at college would be finished. The final was on a Saturday, though. She wanted to take the person who thought having the last final on a Saturday at three PM, drag him by his short curlies into the quad and let all the students who have ever had a Saturday final give him paper cuts and then pour lemon juice on his bleeding carcas.
Having her two Secret Service agents on campus was annoying, but managable. They lived together in the room next door and, along with Gretchen, shared the bathroom with everyone else on the floor. The Service tried to get her into a building that had suites set up, but her dad insisted that she have a real college experience by sharing her showers and toilettes with sixty other people.
On occasion, she had to attend special school functions and be paraded before the alumni, or parents of alumni, who had money so they'd give the school more. When she didn't want to attend those sorts of things, the president or dean or whoever was quick to remind her of all the compromises the school had to make just to get her Secret Service people into the dorm and wouldn't she like to help repay what would eventually be her alma mater?
At the moment, she was waiting for her father to show up for lunch. The were going to Sophia's for Thai
"Mom here?" she asked, but she already knew the answer.
"Nope, just me," he said, hands in his pockets, strolling toward her.
"Studio?"
"Studio. That okay?" He stopped walking right in front of her.
"It's expected."
"But is it okay?" He took his hands out of his pockets.
"Yeah," she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes and watching a bird start flying behind her dad just with her eyes, "I think it's okay."
"Good." He smiled, his warm, safe smile, one he didn't use on the campagin trail, but saved only for her, and hugged her.
"Hey, Dad." She hugged him back.
"Hey, Gretch."
When they finished, she put her arm though his and they headed off toward lunch.
"So, I caught you're speech on the internet."
He smiled again, "What did you think?"
"It was funny."
"You think?"
"Yeah. So, what's happening now?"
"Larry King called. He said he wanted to go live tonight. Do a special show focusing just on me, like when I was running for President, but this time the softballs the lobbed to me would actually be about the issues instead of that shameful Flock of Seagulls haircut I had when I was a kid."
"And?"
"I told him until I saw him and Ted Turner in a 69, complete with the messy ending, I wouldn't even consider his offer."
Gretchen laughed, "When's the show?"
"Oddly enough, he said no to that, so I suggested the two of them feltching."
Gretchen laughed again.
"He didn't know what that was, so I told him to Google it and be sure to check out some of the pictures and when he was through to get in touch with me." Her dad chuckled. "He hasn't gotten back to me, so far."
Didn't get much done this week and what was done is sort of muddled, incomplete sentences and all.
Hell, on the other hand, was what her pre-flight pit stop was supposed to take care of. She got air sick. Not the simple air sick of the movies where a person vomits once into a bag and goes on with the flight, no, she got air sick like most people got sea sick. She started getting queasy when she felt the engines start up. By the time they were barely off the ground, she'd thrown up at least once.
Dramamine.
TV Time
Click --
"The nation is stunned this morning after a shocking speech given by the president yesterday afternoon in which he blamed the people of America for the problems he's been experiencing as president. We go live to Breanne Vanhoose who's in Washington now. Breanne?"
"I'm standing across from the White House on one of the most famous streets in America. But instead of the majestic mansion that's stood for hundreds of years, you'll see only protesters. They're here to voice their anger with the president and the words he spoke yesterday.
"I spoke with a few of the protesters earlier and asked if they knew that the President had gone home for the holiday and all said it didn't matter, they'd be here every day until he came back after the new --"
Click --
"-- the most brilliant thing he's done since he was elected. He's energized the base like no person since Martin Luther King Junior. They're all talking about what he said. They all have an opinion. They all --"
Click --
"-- idiotic move on his part. He's ruined the chances of his party during the next national elections. They're going to loose every seat they gained..."
"Are you suggesting that they made gains in the last election? Because I don't remember that. In fact, I think that President Gandbuth actually brought in up in his statment yesterday
Finishing School, or At Least the Quarter
Gretchen had only one more final and then her first quarter at college would be finished. The final was on a Saturday, though. She wanted to take the person who thought having the last final on a Saturday at three PM, drag him by his short curlies into the quad and let all the students who have ever had a Saturday final give him paper cuts and then pour lemon juice on his bleeding carcas.
Having her two Secret Service agents on campus was annoying, but managable. They lived together in the room next door and, along with Gretchen, shared the bathroom with everyone else on the floor. The Service tried to get her into a building that had suites set up, but her dad insisted that she have a real college experience by sharing her showers and toilettes with sixty other people.
On occasion, she had to attend special school functions and be paraded before the alumni, or parents of alumni, who had money so they'd give the school more. When she didn't want to attend those sorts of things, the president or dean or whoever was quick to remind her of all the compromises the school had to make just to get her Secret Service people into the dorm and wouldn't she like to help repay what would eventually be her alma mater?
At the moment, she was waiting for her father to show up for lunch. The were going to Sophia's for Thai
"Mom here?" she asked, but she already knew the answer.
"Nope, just me," he said, hands in his pockets, strolling toward her.
"Studio?"
"Studio. That okay?" He stopped walking right in front of her.
"It's expected."
"But is it okay?" He took his hands out of his pockets.
"Yeah," she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes and watching a bird start flying behind her dad just with her eyes, "I think it's okay."
"Good." He smiled, his warm, safe smile, one he didn't use on the campagin trail, but saved only for her, and hugged her.
"Hey, Dad." She hugged him back.
"Hey, Gretch."
When they finished, she put her arm though his and they headed off toward lunch.
"So, I caught you're speech on the internet."
He smiled again, "What did you think?"
"It was funny."
"You think?"
"Yeah. So, what's happening now?"
"Larry King called. He said he wanted to go live tonight. Do a special show focusing just on me, like when I was running for President, but this time the softballs the lobbed to me would actually be about the issues instead of that shameful Flock of Seagulls haircut I had when I was a kid."
"And?"
"I told him until I saw him and Ted Turner in a 69, complete with the messy ending, I wouldn't even consider his offer."
Gretchen laughed, "When's the show?"
"Oddly enough, he said no to that, so I suggested the two of them feltching."
Gretchen laughed again.
"He didn't know what that was, so I told him to Google it and be sure to check out some of the pictures and when he was through to get in touch with me." Her dad chuckled. "He hasn't gotten back to me, so far."
Friday, November 16, 2007
Fiction Friday #20
NaNoWriMo Part 3
By the time she got out of the school and into her car, they were running way more than an hour behind schedule and Cindy really had wanted to be at the air force base before her husband got there so they could get off the ground as soon as possible. She wanted to get back home and get to work. It was the only gift she wanted from Marc anymore.
Cindy knew it was odd for a president to leave the White House during Christmas. He was expected to be in Washington right up until Christmas Eve hosting functions and greeting important people from other nations and pardoning turkeys and meeting people who helped buy his way into the Oval Office and also meeting the people who failed to help get people of his party elected everywhere during the last election, and until Marc took office, that's what all the modern Presidents had done.
When Marc had first brought up the possibility of running for President, Cindy made him promise that at least twice each year, for two week stretches, they would spend time at home so she could work in her studio. When he was elected, he tried to talk her out of the promise saying that it was important for the two of them to be at the White House as much as possible because it would reassure the people, since the election had been so close, in the popular vote, at least. He also wanted her in Washington, near him, to show the traditionalists that, as crazy as some of his ideas may seem, being President may be his job, but being a husband and father was his real passion in life, so she couldn't spend most of the year 3000 miles away from him like she did when for the term he spent as a congressman. She stuck to her guns, though. It was bad enough that she'd be away from her studio for so long, but she wasn't going to be away from it all year long and she promised that if he didn't keep his word she would become an embarrassment to his entire administration and possibly for the first time make the American public want a divorced man as heir President. Together, they decided it would be best to take the time around Christmas and Easter since during their first eighteen months in Washington Gretchen would finishing her junior and senior years of high school and they figured since they had uprooted her three thousand miles already, they'd do their best to not disrupt her schooling any more.
A temporary studio was put together for her, complete with tools and a nice electric wheel in the White House because her having a real studio space out in Washington was out of the question, according to the Secret Service, but this temporary studio wasn't the same as the one she had at home or even one she would have set up for herself. The tools were all new and didn't have the same feel as the ones she'd been using at home, some ever since her first clay class her first year of college. The wheel was an electric one; in her studio, she used a kick wheel which gave her precise control over the speed she used to create with. The Secret Service didn't like her mixing glazes at all, let alone at the White House because they couldn't be sure that the powdered mineral and chemicals were actually what they were supposed to be and not something more dangerous, so there was no experiment for new, exciting colors, she could only used pre-mixed things that were shipped in from local colleges and she had to have faith that they wouldn't be awful. She also wasn't allowed to build a high fire kiln, which needed natural gas or propane to get hot enough, so everything she glazed had to be in the same little electric kiln she used to fire the green ware into bisque. What made even this worse was that she wasn't even allowed to Raku, where the potter took the still hot, low fired, glazed pieces and put it in a container full of pine needles or dry grass or paper shreddings (which the White House had plenty of) to create crackled glaze with deep, smoky black lines, or covered it to reduce the oxygen as much as possible to make wonderful iridescent colors, some looked gold, others copper, her favorite looked like oil on the surface of water. If she couldn't use the high fire to give the pottery great strength, she at least wanted to be able to use techniques that made her pottery more beautiful. On occasion, she could take her bisqued pieces to one of the colleges and use their high fire kiln or Raku with the students, but it was always a production that had to be made to look like she was there to teach the students or see what they were learning by sitting in on a class, with cameras around snapping pictures; worst of all, she was always expected to give some bullshit speech about how well the school was doing and how important the arts were for the students to get a well rounded education. And she was rarely allowed to handle anything deemed dangerous, which included hot pieces being moved from the kiln for Raku or even loading her pieces into or removing them from the high fire kiln.
Sometimes, to relieve tension or just to feel the clay between her fingers or to smell the fine dust left behind, she'd go to her White House studio and work. She was never left alone, though. People were always hanging around, watching her or coming in to see if she needed something. If she got up to go to the bathroom or answer a call from one of her kids, when she'd come back she'd often find her tools cleaned and put back in their "place" or if she was sculpting the bits and shavings that she left around her sculpture would be cleaned up and put in the bag with the rest of the clay block. All of this disrupted the whole flow of her ability to create. She needed the bits and shavings close at hand while she was sculpting because the clay had already been warmed and worked and had the same elasticity as the clay in the sculpture. With the tools on the wheel, she had to try and get things back nearly the way they were before she could start again because when she started she'd lay them out in the order she expected to use them as she coaxed the shape into the spinning clay.
The worst thing that ever happened when she had finished for the day, but hadn't finished the pot she was making on the wheel, so she covered it with a garbage bag to keep it moist. When she came back the next morning, she found it accidentally smashed because someone had tried to move it to clean up the wheel for her. She didn't enter the studio for more than a month after that and, for a while, tried to convince her husband to resign and go back to California forever. It didn't happen though and eventually she had to get back to her work because of all the inane photo-ops that were organized for her by the party’s staff.
The best thing about having a studio in Washington, though, was the easy access to a huge variety of different clays she had. All up and down those hills that Easterners called mountains there were clay pits all eager to serve the First Lady. There were several varieties dug up in California, but it was nothing compared to what was dug up from the Mississippi down south to the forests of Vermont and Maine in the north. Wonderful robust clays with a bit a grit perfect for throwing plates, mugs, and bowls that were meant to be used daily by a family or to lend its strength to larger sculptures that stood, dangerously, on thin legs. Fine grained clays that slipped through her fingers like a soap film for making delicate vases and other more artsy pieces, some so thin that she sometimes thought if she held one up to the light she could see though it. Some of the colors were amazing, too. She had one clay sent to her that, when fired into stoneware, was such a deep brown it nearly looked black. She'd had several different clays, coming to several hundred pounds, shipped back to her studio at home, in California, weeks ago so it would be waiting for her to experiment with it. True, she usually preferred to let the clay age for a few years, believing that the micro organisms that grew there helped to break down some of the more rocky components left, but experimenting with the glazes she created couldn't wait. She had to know as soon as possible how well they worked, or didn't work, with the new clays she bought.
The car jostled and they were through the gate. They drove across the tarmac toward Air Force One. Cindy had mixed feelings about this kind of luxury. She liked that she didn't have to deal with commercial airports -- the crowds, the noise, the security -- just to get home, but she didn't like the pomp that the Air Force seemed to think it had to put on when ever her husband used the base. She liked that she could be driven right up to the plane, but she missed having a warm walk from the car to the plane; even when it rained or snowed she had to walk and get wet and an umbrella could only do so much to protect a person when the wind gusted right into his or her face. She liked having a private plane with an amazing kitchen, chef, and staff there to serve her and help her to be more comfortable, but she could help but think that it was an extravagance that wasted tax money, an opinion she'd held since long before her husband seriously thought of running for President. Still, the one thing that had no negative side was not having to deal with other passengers who thought they were better than her. On Air Force One, only her husband was more important than she was, and if she didn't want to deal with the other people on the plane, she could walk away and there was nothing they could do to stop her. That was a luxury she would have paid thousands for on a commercial flight.
The door to the plane was closed, but the stairs were still there, waiting for her. Jan stepped out of the car, first, and took a quick look around to make sure it was safe for the First Lady. Cindy rolled her eyes; she figured that if someone was going to attack her on an air force base it was going to the Air force itself, or one of the other armed forces working with the Air force, and as soon as she was on the base it would be too late and there wouldn't be anything Jan, or any other Secret Service Agent, could do about it. So far, every Air force base had been perfectly safe.
Jan poked her head back into the door way and said, "It looks clear ma'am. You can come out now."
Cindy scooted from her seat to the one that Jan had been sitting on, put her feet out the opened door, grabbed onto the door frame, and pulled herself out of the limo. She straightened and smoothed her suit and took a deep breath to settle herself so she wouldn't try to screw with the young men and women "guarding" the stairs up to the plane. She wanted too, though. She wanted to be like Lucy in England with the tower guards, or whoever those guys with the pipe cleaner hats were called. Sometimes, she thought about stumbling in front of one of them to see if they'd try and catch her, or would they just let her fall like Gerald Ford. It could be fun; painful, but fun.
Before she took her first step on the tarmac, someone put a vice grip on her right arm. She turned and saw that it was her chief of staff, Joclynn Kernel, which had to have been an unfortunate name to grow up with. The name wasn't enough to explain Lynn, though.
Joclynn Kernel was hired simply because she was the youngest and least experienced person who Cindy had interviewed for the job. Lynn came for the interview and she still hadn't finished her Master's Degree, which had been a ballsey move. She also came in as a pretty blank slate. Yes, she'd helped to work on some campaigns and been a Senate page, but she didn't come in to push an agenda on the First Lady. Lynn had wanted to deal with some Take Back the Night things, but she was too young to be very forceful, so whenever she brought an idea or an even to Cindy, it was really easy to knock down with a distraction. Lynn didn't date much, if at all, so Cindy would just change the subject and talk about how well admired Gretchen, her daughter, was at school, always trying to wear some extra cover-up to hide the hickeys on her neck that she got from the boy, or maybe girls, or maybe both, there, then Cindy would ask Lynn how her boyfriend was and act like she forgot that Lynn's ex had dropped out of school and run off to Jamaica with some big titted ditz the summer before their last year in school together, nine months before they were supposed to get married. There were some days that Cindy was afraid that the evasion wouldn't work and she'd have to find another way to crush the younger woman's spirit, but so far, each time, Lynn's face would crunch up and she'd pull her long, dark hair in front of her face, to hide the tears, and start to sob. Cindy would, of course, apologize for the faux pas and hug Lynn back to a tearless state and then offer to leave her for some alone time, to get her thoughts together, and Cindy would leave.
One of Cindy's biggest fears, at least where Lynn was concerned, was that she'd finally go and discover the calming and centering powers of an orgasm, with or without another person's help, and come back to work a driven woman full of the righteous purpose too many of the young people in Washington had before they discovered how the soul sucking system really worked. So far, Lynn hadn't discovered the wonders of meaningless sex or a nice, warm vibrator, so Cindy was still in control.
"Mrs. Gandbuth, we have to talk," said Lynn, pulling on Cindy's arm.
"Cindy, Lynn," said Cindy, trying to free herself from the younger woman’s grip. "You can call me Cindy."
Lynn shook her head and said, "Fine, fine, but we have to talk."
"It can wait, Lynn. I'm getting on a plane. I'm going home. No more bullshit."
"Not bullshit," said Lynn. Cindy looked at the woman because Lynn never cursed. In Lynn's dark eyes was the usual look of uncertainty, but also some fear. "We need to talk. It's about him."
Cindy sighed. "What's the fuck up done today?"
"He... Well, he made an unscheduled speech to the press probably around the time you were getting into the car at the school. He, uh." Her eyes darted around like she was making sure no one was listening.
"Heeeeee, what?"
"He, uh... Well, he blamed the public for everything."
"What the hell does that mean?" Cindy asked, finally shaking Lynn's hand off of her arm.
"It means he stood in the press room and told them that everything that's gone wrong or going wrong with the country is the fault of the regular people out there."
"Shit!"
"And he ended his speech by flipping off the cameras and telling the people to," Lynn's voice dropped to a whisper, "fuck off." Her brown cheeks got even darker when she blushed.
"Okay. Okay." Cindy started to pace along the side of the limo, Lynn following along beside her.
"What are we going to do?"
"So, he ruined his presidency."
"Yeah."
"He's alienated every fucking voter in this nation."
"Yeah."
"He told the truth to the public."
"He did?"
"He's going to have his own party up in arms."
"Yeah."
"People will want to do to him what the French did to Louis the sixteenth."
"Damn."
Cindy stopped her pacing. "It's over," she said, "isn't it?"
"What are we going to do?"
Cindy turned to face Lynn and grabbed the younger woman by her shoulders. "I'd recommend getting your resume all up to date. I mean, even if Marc and I get lynched being the First Lady's Chief of Staff has to mean something, right?" Cindy let go and smiled. "Besides, if we're not killed, I'll see you in about two weeks. I promise."
Lynn took a deep, quavering breath, looked at Cindy with the glassy eyes of a person trying to hold back tears, and nodded.
"Good," said Cindy before she turned toward the plane. "Let's go, Jan. I've got an ass to kick."
Jan walked toward the staircase in her usual long stride, Cindy followed close behind. There was no press to speak of at Andrews today. They were supposed to get dramatic shots of her husband boarding Marine One on the South Lawn surrounded by Christmas decorations that had been around for a long time, some more than a hundred years. Marc had convinced her to go to the stupid school thing because the press on the lawn would be a huge ordeal that she didn't want to go through, and she didn't; she hated dealing with the press. If Lynn was right about the sorts of things her husband had said in the press room, it was probably even worse than usual.
At the stairs, Jan stopped, moved to the side to let Cindy pass, and asked, "You want me to find him for you?"
"Yes," said Cindy, patting her stomach. "I have to make my usual pre-flight pit stop."
"You want us to stay, or take off?"
"Fuck. I want us in the air right away. I'm going home. I'm going to my studio. And no stupid move on my husband’s part is going to stop me. Nothing, short of some sort of rocket could stop me from making this trip."
Jan pulled her sun glasses low on her nose and said, "Don't joke that that, ma'am. It's not funny."
"You're right," said Cindy, stepping up the first stair, "it's not funny. You know where to find me when you find him?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good."
As she climbed the stairs, Cindy tried to figure out what she was going to say to her husband. She was angry at him in a way she hadn't been angry at him in a long time. Waves of heat worked their way through her body from her feet up and it felt like all the heat was collecting in her throbbing head. She tried hard not the clench and grind her teeth, she did enough of that in her sleep, but it wasn't an easy thing to do. How was she going to deal with this? She wondered if she should just walk up to him and start yelling, or was there a better way to handle it. She figured, though, that no matter how she started, the talk was going to disintegrate into a screaming match for all of Air Force One to hear. She was so happy that this was just a trip home, so there was no press flying with them. She could just imagine her muffled screams being psychoanalyzed on one of those pompous NPR shows by some quack who had never met her.
At the top of the stairs, someone greeted her. She wasn't sure if it was a staff member of someone from the Air Force. She didn't care. She wanted to get out of the cold Virginia December weather and into the warmth of the plane and then get off the ground and in the air heading to her home.
The first thing she did when she stepped through the door was take off her shoes. Her pain in the leg, barely heels. Of all the things she disliked about being a politician's wife, the shoes she had to wear were what she hated the most. When she was a kid, she never wanted to wear heels of any sort. They made it hard to run around and they made walking too much hurt after a little while and they all seemed to pinch in places regular shoes couldn't. The only thing she liked about them was trying to balance herself just on the heel parts when she got bored out of her mind by the wedding or funeral or whatever pointless family event they were at; she'd wobble like a Weeble trying not to fall down. Her mom and aunts and grandma had insisted that she'd get used to them with practice, but Cindy didn't want to practice, so she only wore them when she was forced to. When she finally left home to go to college, she'd stopped wearing them to any sort of function. If people couldn't accept her in decent, clean shoes with soles that totally touched the ground, that was their problem, not hers. When Marc had first gotten into politics, at the city and county level, no one cared about her shoes, but when he got into the state assembly and started getting invited to swanky parties that included lots of important people, her husband's people started hinting to her that it'd be better if she started to wear something that was a bit more appropriate for a woman who was with a man of his rank. So she started wearing them to fancy occasions, again. And as the list of occasions they had to attend started to grow, so did her time out of flats. Now she reveled in those moments that she could put on a worn comfortable pair of Keds and not feel any pain in her calfs. She thought that if there was a heaven, it must feel like a worn comfortable pair of shoes.
Hell, on the other hand, was what her pre-flight pit stop was supposed to take care of. She got air sick. Not the simple air sick of the movies where a person vomits once into a bag and goes on with the flight, no, she got air sick like most people got sea sick. She started getting queasy when she felt the engines start up. By the time they were barely off the ground, she'd thrown up at least once.
By the time she got out of the school and into her car, they were running way more than an hour behind schedule and Cindy really had wanted to be at the air force base before her husband got there so they could get off the ground as soon as possible. She wanted to get back home and get to work. It was the only gift she wanted from Marc anymore.
Cindy knew it was odd for a president to leave the White House during Christmas. He was expected to be in Washington right up until Christmas Eve hosting functions and greeting important people from other nations and pardoning turkeys and meeting people who helped buy his way into the Oval Office and also meeting the people who failed to help get people of his party elected everywhere during the last election, and until Marc took office, that's what all the modern Presidents had done.
When Marc had first brought up the possibility of running for President, Cindy made him promise that at least twice each year, for two week stretches, they would spend time at home so she could work in her studio. When he was elected, he tried to talk her out of the promise saying that it was important for the two of them to be at the White House as much as possible because it would reassure the people, since the election had been so close, in the popular vote, at least. He also wanted her in Washington, near him, to show the traditionalists that, as crazy as some of his ideas may seem, being President may be his job, but being a husband and father was his real passion in life, so she couldn't spend most of the year 3000 miles away from him like she did when for the term he spent as a congressman. She stuck to her guns, though. It was bad enough that she'd be away from her studio for so long, but she wasn't going to be away from it all year long and she promised that if he didn't keep his word she would become an embarrassment to his entire administration and possibly for the first time make the American public want a divorced man as heir President. Together, they decided it would be best to take the time around Christmas and Easter since during their first eighteen months in Washington Gretchen would finishing her junior and senior years of high school and they figured since they had uprooted her three thousand miles already, they'd do their best to not disrupt her schooling any more.
A temporary studio was put together for her, complete with tools and a nice electric wheel in the White House because her having a real studio space out in Washington was out of the question, according to the Secret Service, but this temporary studio wasn't the same as the one she had at home or even one she would have set up for herself. The tools were all new and didn't have the same feel as the ones she'd been using at home, some ever since her first clay class her first year of college. The wheel was an electric one; in her studio, she used a kick wheel which gave her precise control over the speed she used to create with. The Secret Service didn't like her mixing glazes at all, let alone at the White House because they couldn't be sure that the powdered mineral and chemicals were actually what they were supposed to be and not something more dangerous, so there was no experiment for new, exciting colors, she could only used pre-mixed things that were shipped in from local colleges and she had to have faith that they wouldn't be awful. She also wasn't allowed to build a high fire kiln, which needed natural gas or propane to get hot enough, so everything she glazed had to be in the same little electric kiln she used to fire the green ware into bisque. What made even this worse was that she wasn't even allowed to Raku, where the potter took the still hot, low fired, glazed pieces and put it in a container full of pine needles or dry grass or paper shreddings (which the White House had plenty of) to create crackled glaze with deep, smoky black lines, or covered it to reduce the oxygen as much as possible to make wonderful iridescent colors, some looked gold, others copper, her favorite looked like oil on the surface of water. If she couldn't use the high fire to give the pottery great strength, she at least wanted to be able to use techniques that made her pottery more beautiful. On occasion, she could take her bisqued pieces to one of the colleges and use their high fire kiln or Raku with the students, but it was always a production that had to be made to look like she was there to teach the students or see what they were learning by sitting in on a class, with cameras around snapping pictures; worst of all, she was always expected to give some bullshit speech about how well the school was doing and how important the arts were for the students to get a well rounded education. And she was rarely allowed to handle anything deemed dangerous, which included hot pieces being moved from the kiln for Raku or even loading her pieces into or removing them from the high fire kiln.
Sometimes, to relieve tension or just to feel the clay between her fingers or to smell the fine dust left behind, she'd go to her White House studio and work. She was never left alone, though. People were always hanging around, watching her or coming in to see if she needed something. If she got up to go to the bathroom or answer a call from one of her kids, when she'd come back she'd often find her tools cleaned and put back in their "place" or if she was sculpting the bits and shavings that she left around her sculpture would be cleaned up and put in the bag with the rest of the clay block. All of this disrupted the whole flow of her ability to create. She needed the bits and shavings close at hand while she was sculpting because the clay had already been warmed and worked and had the same elasticity as the clay in the sculpture. With the tools on the wheel, she had to try and get things back nearly the way they were before she could start again because when she started she'd lay them out in the order she expected to use them as she coaxed the shape into the spinning clay.
The worst thing that ever happened when she had finished for the day, but hadn't finished the pot she was making on the wheel, so she covered it with a garbage bag to keep it moist. When she came back the next morning, she found it accidentally smashed because someone had tried to move it to clean up the wheel for her. She didn't enter the studio for more than a month after that and, for a while, tried to convince her husband to resign and go back to California forever. It didn't happen though and eventually she had to get back to her work because of all the inane photo-ops that were organized for her by the party’s staff.
The best thing about having a studio in Washington, though, was the easy access to a huge variety of different clays she had. All up and down those hills that Easterners called mountains there were clay pits all eager to serve the First Lady. There were several varieties dug up in California, but it was nothing compared to what was dug up from the Mississippi down south to the forests of Vermont and Maine in the north. Wonderful robust clays with a bit a grit perfect for throwing plates, mugs, and bowls that were meant to be used daily by a family or to lend its strength to larger sculptures that stood, dangerously, on thin legs. Fine grained clays that slipped through her fingers like a soap film for making delicate vases and other more artsy pieces, some so thin that she sometimes thought if she held one up to the light she could see though it. Some of the colors were amazing, too. She had one clay sent to her that, when fired into stoneware, was such a deep brown it nearly looked black. She'd had several different clays, coming to several hundred pounds, shipped back to her studio at home, in California, weeks ago so it would be waiting for her to experiment with it. True, she usually preferred to let the clay age for a few years, believing that the micro organisms that grew there helped to break down some of the more rocky components left, but experimenting with the glazes she created couldn't wait. She had to know as soon as possible how well they worked, or didn't work, with the new clays she bought.
The car jostled and they were through the gate. They drove across the tarmac toward Air Force One. Cindy had mixed feelings about this kind of luxury. She liked that she didn't have to deal with commercial airports -- the crowds, the noise, the security -- just to get home, but she didn't like the pomp that the Air Force seemed to think it had to put on when ever her husband used the base. She liked that she could be driven right up to the plane, but she missed having a warm walk from the car to the plane; even when it rained or snowed she had to walk and get wet and an umbrella could only do so much to protect a person when the wind gusted right into his or her face. She liked having a private plane with an amazing kitchen, chef, and staff there to serve her and help her to be more comfortable, but she could help but think that it was an extravagance that wasted tax money, an opinion she'd held since long before her husband seriously thought of running for President. Still, the one thing that had no negative side was not having to deal with other passengers who thought they were better than her. On Air Force One, only her husband was more important than she was, and if she didn't want to deal with the other people on the plane, she could walk away and there was nothing they could do to stop her. That was a luxury she would have paid thousands for on a commercial flight.
The door to the plane was closed, but the stairs were still there, waiting for her. Jan stepped out of the car, first, and took a quick look around to make sure it was safe for the First Lady. Cindy rolled her eyes; she figured that if someone was going to attack her on an air force base it was going to the Air force itself, or one of the other armed forces working with the Air force, and as soon as she was on the base it would be too late and there wouldn't be anything Jan, or any other Secret Service Agent, could do about it. So far, every Air force base had been perfectly safe.
Jan poked her head back into the door way and said, "It looks clear ma'am. You can come out now."
Cindy scooted from her seat to the one that Jan had been sitting on, put her feet out the opened door, grabbed onto the door frame, and pulled herself out of the limo. She straightened and smoothed her suit and took a deep breath to settle herself so she wouldn't try to screw with the young men and women "guarding" the stairs up to the plane. She wanted too, though. She wanted to be like Lucy in England with the tower guards, or whoever those guys with the pipe cleaner hats were called. Sometimes, she thought about stumbling in front of one of them to see if they'd try and catch her, or would they just let her fall like Gerald Ford. It could be fun; painful, but fun.
Before she took her first step on the tarmac, someone put a vice grip on her right arm. She turned and saw that it was her chief of staff, Joclynn Kernel, which had to have been an unfortunate name to grow up with. The name wasn't enough to explain Lynn, though.
Joclynn Kernel was hired simply because she was the youngest and least experienced person who Cindy had interviewed for the job. Lynn came for the interview and she still hadn't finished her Master's Degree, which had been a ballsey move. She also came in as a pretty blank slate. Yes, she'd helped to work on some campaigns and been a Senate page, but she didn't come in to push an agenda on the First Lady. Lynn had wanted to deal with some Take Back the Night things, but she was too young to be very forceful, so whenever she brought an idea or an even to Cindy, it was really easy to knock down with a distraction. Lynn didn't date much, if at all, so Cindy would just change the subject and talk about how well admired Gretchen, her daughter, was at school, always trying to wear some extra cover-up to hide the hickeys on her neck that she got from the boy, or maybe girls, or maybe both, there, then Cindy would ask Lynn how her boyfriend was and act like she forgot that Lynn's ex had dropped out of school and run off to Jamaica with some big titted ditz the summer before their last year in school together, nine months before they were supposed to get married. There were some days that Cindy was afraid that the evasion wouldn't work and she'd have to find another way to crush the younger woman's spirit, but so far, each time, Lynn's face would crunch up and she'd pull her long, dark hair in front of her face, to hide the tears, and start to sob. Cindy would, of course, apologize for the faux pas and hug Lynn back to a tearless state and then offer to leave her for some alone time, to get her thoughts together, and Cindy would leave.
One of Cindy's biggest fears, at least where Lynn was concerned, was that she'd finally go and discover the calming and centering powers of an orgasm, with or without another person's help, and come back to work a driven woman full of the righteous purpose too many of the young people in Washington had before they discovered how the soul sucking system really worked. So far, Lynn hadn't discovered the wonders of meaningless sex or a nice, warm vibrator, so Cindy was still in control.
"Mrs. Gandbuth, we have to talk," said Lynn, pulling on Cindy's arm.
"Cindy, Lynn," said Cindy, trying to free herself from the younger woman’s grip. "You can call me Cindy."
Lynn shook her head and said, "Fine, fine, but we have to talk."
"It can wait, Lynn. I'm getting on a plane. I'm going home. No more bullshit."
"Not bullshit," said Lynn. Cindy looked at the woman because Lynn never cursed. In Lynn's dark eyes was the usual look of uncertainty, but also some fear. "We need to talk. It's about him."
Cindy sighed. "What's the fuck up done today?"
"He... Well, he made an unscheduled speech to the press probably around the time you were getting into the car at the school. He, uh." Her eyes darted around like she was making sure no one was listening.
"Heeeeee, what?"
"He, uh... Well, he blamed the public for everything."
"What the hell does that mean?" Cindy asked, finally shaking Lynn's hand off of her arm.
"It means he stood in the press room and told them that everything that's gone wrong or going wrong with the country is the fault of the regular people out there."
"Shit!"
"And he ended his speech by flipping off the cameras and telling the people to," Lynn's voice dropped to a whisper, "fuck off." Her brown cheeks got even darker when she blushed.
"Okay. Okay." Cindy started to pace along the side of the limo, Lynn following along beside her.
"What are we going to do?"
"So, he ruined his presidency."
"Yeah."
"He's alienated every fucking voter in this nation."
"Yeah."
"He told the truth to the public."
"He did?"
"He's going to have his own party up in arms."
"Yeah."
"People will want to do to him what the French did to Louis the sixteenth."
"Damn."
Cindy stopped her pacing. "It's over," she said, "isn't it?"
"What are we going to do?"
Cindy turned to face Lynn and grabbed the younger woman by her shoulders. "I'd recommend getting your resume all up to date. I mean, even if Marc and I get lynched being the First Lady's Chief of Staff has to mean something, right?" Cindy let go and smiled. "Besides, if we're not killed, I'll see you in about two weeks. I promise."
Lynn took a deep, quavering breath, looked at Cindy with the glassy eyes of a person trying to hold back tears, and nodded.
"Good," said Cindy before she turned toward the plane. "Let's go, Jan. I've got an ass to kick."
Jan walked toward the staircase in her usual long stride, Cindy followed close behind. There was no press to speak of at Andrews today. They were supposed to get dramatic shots of her husband boarding Marine One on the South Lawn surrounded by Christmas decorations that had been around for a long time, some more than a hundred years. Marc had convinced her to go to the stupid school thing because the press on the lawn would be a huge ordeal that she didn't want to go through, and she didn't; she hated dealing with the press. If Lynn was right about the sorts of things her husband had said in the press room, it was probably even worse than usual.
At the stairs, Jan stopped, moved to the side to let Cindy pass, and asked, "You want me to find him for you?"
"Yes," said Cindy, patting her stomach. "I have to make my usual pre-flight pit stop."
"You want us to stay, or take off?"
"Fuck. I want us in the air right away. I'm going home. I'm going to my studio. And no stupid move on my husband’s part is going to stop me. Nothing, short of some sort of rocket could stop me from making this trip."
Jan pulled her sun glasses low on her nose and said, "Don't joke that that, ma'am. It's not funny."
"You're right," said Cindy, stepping up the first stair, "it's not funny. You know where to find me when you find him?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good."
As she climbed the stairs, Cindy tried to figure out what she was going to say to her husband. She was angry at him in a way she hadn't been angry at him in a long time. Waves of heat worked their way through her body from her feet up and it felt like all the heat was collecting in her throbbing head. She tried hard not the clench and grind her teeth, she did enough of that in her sleep, but it wasn't an easy thing to do. How was she going to deal with this? She wondered if she should just walk up to him and start yelling, or was there a better way to handle it. She figured, though, that no matter how she started, the talk was going to disintegrate into a screaming match for all of Air Force One to hear. She was so happy that this was just a trip home, so there was no press flying with them. She could just imagine her muffled screams being psychoanalyzed on one of those pompous NPR shows by some quack who had never met her.
At the top of the stairs, someone greeted her. She wasn't sure if it was a staff member of someone from the Air Force. She didn't care. She wanted to get out of the cold Virginia December weather and into the warmth of the plane and then get off the ground and in the air heading to her home.
The first thing she did when she stepped through the door was take off her shoes. Her pain in the leg, barely heels. Of all the things she disliked about being a politician's wife, the shoes she had to wear were what she hated the most. When she was a kid, she never wanted to wear heels of any sort. They made it hard to run around and they made walking too much hurt after a little while and they all seemed to pinch in places regular shoes couldn't. The only thing she liked about them was trying to balance herself just on the heel parts when she got bored out of her mind by the wedding or funeral or whatever pointless family event they were at; she'd wobble like a Weeble trying not to fall down. Her mom and aunts and grandma had insisted that she'd get used to them with practice, but Cindy didn't want to practice, so she only wore them when she was forced to. When she finally left home to go to college, she'd stopped wearing them to any sort of function. If people couldn't accept her in decent, clean shoes with soles that totally touched the ground, that was their problem, not hers. When Marc had first gotten into politics, at the city and county level, no one cared about her shoes, but when he got into the state assembly and started getting invited to swanky parties that included lots of important people, her husband's people started hinting to her that it'd be better if she started to wear something that was a bit more appropriate for a woman who was with a man of his rank. So she started wearing them to fancy occasions, again. And as the list of occasions they had to attend started to grow, so did her time out of flats. Now she reveled in those moments that she could put on a worn comfortable pair of Keds and not feel any pain in her calfs. She thought that if there was a heaven, it must feel like a worn comfortable pair of shoes.
Hell, on the other hand, was what her pre-flight pit stop was supposed to take care of. She got air sick. Not the simple air sick of the movies where a person vomits once into a bag and goes on with the flight, no, she got air sick like most people got sea sick. She started getting queasy when she felt the engines start up. By the time they were barely off the ground, she'd thrown up at least once.
Useless Labels:
comedy,
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
NaNoWriMo
Friday, November 09, 2007
Fiction Friday #19
NaNoWriMo Part 2
Marc didn't feel as confident as his smile made him look. His palms were sweating, his heart fluttered, and his stomach was trying to reenact Stomp. He hadn't felt this way making a speech since he was in high school. After that, he had full speech written by him or with someone else or by someone else; sometimes he just had a few notes with him so he would sound more off the cuff and personable; on those rare town hall style occasions where notes would make him look weak, he'd at least have discussed most of the possible topics with his staff before hand. Today, he had nothing. No one knew he was going to do this. His secret service guy for the day, Agent Grant, only knew that the president wanted to go to the press room.
He wiped his hands off on his pants, planted them on the sides of the podium and started to talk to the reporters.
"So, good afternoon everyone, and merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas, Mr. Presidents," a few of the reporters repeated back. All of them looked surprised. Not one of them had expected Marc to come out here the afternoon before his vacation started. Or maybe they were just surprised to see him in the press room at all. While he preferred to greet crowds of regular people in town hall settings so far, since his election two years ago, he'd only ever given speeches to the press and when he was finished he'd be ushered off by aides or secret service or both before anyone could get a question out.
Marc smiled again. No one in this room knew what they were getting today. This would be fun. His stomach flipped again.
"I know you weren't expecting me here today," he said, hand on either side of the podium. "Hell, I can't remember even being in this room since my family and I took our tour of the White House before I moved in."
Most smiled. A few laughed.
"So, I bet you're all wondering why I'm here, right? What would you think if I told you that I'm here to give you and the rest of the American people the greatest Christmas present, ever? What if I told you that I'm here to tell the truth, the actually truth? Not some bullshit" -- the reporters gasped -- " speech that a committee of aides and speech writers thought you wanted to hear based on polls, but the actual truth?"
"We'd think you were feeding us a load of crap," someone in the back had said; Marc wished that he knew the names of these people, but he didn't. The rest nodded and a few mumbled.
"Yeah, I guess I wouldn't believe me, either. I mean politicians, for thousands of years, have been saying they'll tell the people the truth to gain support, right?" There were some muttered agreements. "So, how about I just talk and you listen, okay? And then, later, when you and your editors are pulling what I said apart to find my 'true' meaning and CNN and MSNBC and Fox News are taking things I said out of context to make me look like more of an asshole than I really am, then you can decide if I'm telling the truth." His palms started sweating and he felt flush. He couldn't remember ever feeling this nervous before, in his life. Not even the first time he got laid.
"I haven't spoken about this with my Chief of Staff or the leadership of my party or anyone in congress or even my wife. So, this is sort of a Christmas surprise for them, too. This isn't going to be like the State of the Union which is just bullshit politics. Can ever of you remember a State of the Union address that didn't start off with 'the state of our union is strong'? I can't. And do you want to know something? The state of our union isn't strong. Our union is weak." His fingers dug into the wood of the podium. He had to hold on tight or he was afraid he'd fall forward.
"It's weak and everyone out there is afraid to say so. They know how close to crumbling our nation is, and they're afraid to tell you. Do you understand that? They're fucking afraid. Hell, I've been afraid of it too. But no more.
"What's worse is they don't know what to do about it because they're afraid to try to fix the problems. They spew out 'facts,'" Marc freed his hands from their death grip on the podium and made air quotes around the word "facts." "They spew out buzz words. They get your fear up by saying immigrants, especially illegal ones, are here to take your jobs from you. They remind you that there are scary people out there who want to attack in the night, and not in the honorable way, but the cowardly way; they want to bomb your local Wal*Mart and you have to keep shopping, 'keep American strong,' right?
"I've done it. Dan was up here doing it just a little while ago. He was throwing out statistics and fact and stories to keep you all distracted from the problems that everyone should really be worried about."
He ticked his fingers off as he said, "Education. National health. Global warming and the environment. Farm subsidies Common sense gun control. Debt, and I'm talking about personal debt, not the deep, black pit the last president dug for us. Social Security money for Social Security benefits rather than another freeway through Nevada.
"Instead, you worry about people saying fuck or shit on TV. You worry about video games where characters can rip the scrotum off other characters." He smiled and shook his head. "You try to keep kids from reading books that they can actually enjoy and then turn around and bitch about how kids don't fucking read. And why should they when you get rid of all the good stuff?
"I'm sure everyone out there knows where I'm going with this. You," Marc pointed at one of the cameras, "are pretty much to blame for all of problems. And I'm talking about every adult out there. I'm talking about those who vote in every election. I'm talking about those who vote only in presidential election. And I'm talking about those of you still don't fucking vote. You are the problem. You vote people like me into office over and over again.
"People like me aren't here to make things better; we're here to make money. We gotta support our families somehow and still get elected the next time our term comes to an end. Do you really think we get paid enough to be able to do those things and not get a little extra on the side? And I'm not even talking about the illegal things. Most of us don't even have to do anything illegal because we make the laws that keep us getting paid."
Marc closed his eyes, stepped back from the podium, and took a deep breath. He stepped forward, opened his eyes, and said, "Let me tell you a story:
"When I was a little kid, I didn't live a horrible life. My parent's made enough money so my life was pretty good, but sometimes we'd go into the city and I'd see the people sitting on the street holding cups and asking for some money. I watched the men and women in suits pretend that they weren't even there, like they didn't exist. When I walked past them with my parents, they put me in between them and tried to keep me from seeing the homeless people. I didn't understand and I didn't ask why. And, like everyone else, I grew up not seeing what was around me, not seeing the things I didn't like.
"Once upon a time, though, I thought I could change this. The day I was elected into this office, this grand office, the office of the most powerful man in the free world, the day I knew I'd be president, for a full minute, I thought that maybe, maybe I could change things. Maybe, I thought, this time things would be different and I'd be able to do things that the guys before me couldn't. I'd be the one to get this country going again, to get it to care again. Then I started the job.
"For some reason, you people out there thought it was a smart thing to split congress between the two parties. 'Let's make the House one party and the Senate the other,' you thought. 'Let's see what our new president can make of that.' I thought that, like me, they'd want to work together to make our nation stronger. That when my first hundred days started counting down.
"I don't know where the idea came from, but for some reason, in this modern time, people think that those first hundred days of a president's term are the ones that will set the tone for the whole damn thing. Do you know what I achieved in those first hundred days? Nothing. Do you know how many bills I tried to get through congress? Something like fifty. Do you know how many came out in the end? None. Do you know how many bills came out during my first year as president? Twenty-eight and that includes the budget that almost didn't happen on time.
"I was called the most ineffectual president since Andrew Johnson. At least he was hated and couldn't accomplish anything because he was trying to put the Union back together in an unpopular way. Shit, he was trying to do something that had never been done before, but me? I was just trying to do my job.
"In time, I realized how useless it was, though and I figured that when the next election came around you people would be as sick of the bullshit as I was and you'd actually elect men and women who wanted to make this place we live better than it is, better than it ever was. You didn't, though. In November, you just elected the exact same people into office. Nothing's changed.
"And what, please tell me, am I supposed to do about it?
"Am I supposed to go about trying to do my job and fail because you people want me to? Maybe, but I thought I should tell all of you what I thought first.
"The truth is a jagged fucking pill to swallow and I hope most of you choke on it. And while you're at it," Marc stepped out from behind the podium and grabbed his crotch, "you can choke on this, too."
He stepped back behind the podium, planted his hands again, and asked, "Any questions?"
The crowd was silent. More than one reporter had their mouths open so wide that birds could build homes in there and raise chirping families. Even the ancient dyke who had been sitting near the front row for half a century looked like a deer frozen in headlights. Marc felt great about that. If he could shock someone who'd been covering presidents since Johnson or Nixon, he couldn't wait to see the reaction the "average" person would have.
They'd want him impeached, or dead.
This was going to be fun. The most fun he'd had over a holiday since he was in grad school and spent spring break in Rio de Janeiro drinking anything handed to him and fucking anyone, man or woman, who was sober enough to say yes or drunk enough to start sucking on his cock without even being asked. Thinking about sucking and fucking under the watchful gaze of that giant Jesus still made him laugh. God, that had been one hell of a week.
"Well," he grinned again feeling better about himself and his career than he had since he left local city and county politics, "I can tell by the looks on your faces that you don't have any questions and I have a plane to California to catch. I look forward to reading and hearing all your reactions tomorrow and in the weeks to come. Enjoy your time off and have a very merry Christmas with your families. Hell, give your moms a big sloppy wet one for me."
He turned away from the podium, and then turned back. "Oh, yeah. One more thing." He flipped off the cameras trying to do his best Nixon impression. "Fuck you, too," he said, laughing.
He turned again and walked away from the podium. He stepped down the two steps and headed to the door.
"Come on, Grant," he said to the Secret Service agent waiting there, "I want get out on the south lawn and onto Marine 1 and be on the way to the airport before this bunch regains consciousness."
"Yes, sir," said Agent Grant. He lifted his wrist up near his mouth and said, "People, Peter Piper's on his way to the market."
Marcus Gandbuth felt so good that he had to keep himself from skipping through the halls and out to the helicopter. The world was a wonderful place and it could only get better.
Flying Back Home
Cindy Gandbuth didn't arrive at Andrews Air Force Base until two hours after Air Force 1 was supposed to take off. It wasn't her fault though. She wasn't one of those First Ladies who had and agenda and she wasn't one of those First Ladies who went out of her way to support matronly causes like schools and poor little orphans. Sometimes, though, she had to go out and do crap like that, for her husband, for his career. When she thought of that she'd sigh. She'd done a lot of things for her husband's career. And today was another one.
While waiting to get onto the base, she sat in the limo, staring blankly out the window, thinking of the day before they finally arrived there.
She went out to some measly ass school somewhere out in Virginia. It was supposed to be near some famous Civil War battle, but she figured that was normal Virginia bullshit since, as far as she could remember, the entire state was covered in "famous" Civil War battles that no one wanted to remember except for the good ole boy assholes who lived near by and the anal retentive Civil War buff assholes who thought living their lives through a war that ended one hundred and fifty years ago is a good way to live their lives. The school was also named for some supposed guy who supposedly died in some supposed battle at some supposed time, but he supposedly grew up in the area and supposedly died a hero's death, so he deserved to have an elementary school named after him. Frankly it should have been called "Too Far From Washington To Matter Much" school since its paint was peeling and the heat in the rooms wasn't working and there wouldn't be any one out to fix the heat problem until after Christmas and the paint problem wouldn't be fixed until it all came off and left the building looking like some sun beat abandoned farm house from the dust bowl.
It was for the kids, she kept reminding herself. She was there to bring a little Christmas cheer by showing up and smiling and sitting in the gym slash auditorium slash cafeteria and watch a bunch of kid sing songs and put on short skits. She was expected to laugh and clap and cheer when appropriate so the kids would have their fragile egos protected rather than learn the truth, that their lack of practice and enthusiasm had made for a terrible time.
Worst of all, the time there went on forever. She got there at eleven and ate lunch with the kids, some sort of chunky turkey juice stuff poured over a lump of flake potatoes in the big rectangle on the tray with a scoop of green beans in cream of mushroom soup in the circle to the left and in the three squares on the top were a little carton of milk, a brick of green Jell-O, and a roll. The food was actually okay, not a five star meal or anything, but really good for a little school that was on the verge of falling in on itself. Cindy ate at a table in the cafeteria with the kid surrounding her, with her current favorite Secret Service Agent Jan Stakenov standing behind her the whole time.
The kids were, well they were kid. They were loud and messy. Some of them thought it was strange having a grown-up sitting at their table eating with them and were shy. Some thought it was funny and whispered to their friends about it. Some simply stared. One little boy even pulled the "see food" gag on her, which struck her as a pretty brave thing for a kid to do to any first lady; she figured that any other first lady would have been shocked and taken aback at such a crass display, but Cindy thought it was ballsy and did it right back at him, then showed the food on her tongue to the whole table. When the blob of mashed potatoes and chewed up green beans fell off her tongue onto her tray, they all started to laugh with her, and when she picked the blob up with her spork and ate it she was treated to lots of kids saying "eeeewww" and then more and even harder laughter. She briefly wondered if any cameras had caught her little food show. It would make for quite a story, but she didn't remember any flashes going off at that time. Part of her wished one of the kids had started a burping contest, and then they would have seen her family award winning performance. The lunch with the kids only took forty five minutes. The pageant started at noon.
During those fifteen minutes, the kids ran to their classrooms to get ready and she watched a couple of women fold all the lunch tables up, roll them to some room behind the little stage, do a quick sweep of the entire floor, and put out mats for the kids to sit on. Later, she found out that the two women also helped in a couple of classrooms as teacher's aides and each drove a bus in the morning and afternoon.
It show was only supposed to last an hour, but it went ninety minutes longer. The principal said that when the kids learned that the first lady was coming they got so excited they kept wanting to do more for her. Cindy wasn't stupid, though, she knew that it was when the teachers found out she was coming they thought they'd show off for her by making the program longer. She wasn't sure, though, if they were trying to show her how much they can accomplish on such a limited budget or if they were just showing her how little they had.
If it had only been an hour, the show would have been fine, but by the third performance of kids singing "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer," with the echoes -- "LIKE A LIGHTBULB!" "LIKE MONOPOLY!" "LIKE COLUMBUS!" -- shouted by the audience, Cindy was imagining horrible scenarios of men dropping down from the ceiling with huge automatic weapons and firing into the crowd of children an parents while Jan pulled her out of the room into the parking lot. Sometimes, one of the bullets caught her in the head or chest and she fell to the floor laughing. Other times, Cindy would find a machine gun, somewhere, and open fire on the guys coming from the ceiling, and then she'd hop around the room kicking terrorist ass, Batman style. Still the kids sang on and then performed a scene from A Christmas Carol, then sing, then something from "The Gift of the Magi," and then another song. Maybe if they did a scene from Santa Claus Versus the Martian, with the audience doing some MST3K, there would have been something worth watching after the first hour.
When it was finally over and all the children had taken their bows, she stood up and thanked them and lied to them when she told them that they were all wonderful and she hadn't ever seen a performance as good at the one they just put on for her. She clapped at them and then the teachers started clapping at her and, after a few seconds, the kids started clapping and yelling, too. Cindy didn't roll her eyes. She wanted to, but she didn't. Cameras snapped and flashed around her as she stood among the students and teachers and parents who were cheering her. She hoped she looked grateful. It wouldn't help her husband's career if she looked tired and annoyed in a roomful of children.
By the time she got out of the school and into her car, they were running two hours behind schedule.
Marc didn't feel as confident as his smile made him look. His palms were sweating, his heart fluttered, and his stomach was trying to reenact Stomp. He hadn't felt this way making a speech since he was in high school. After that, he had full speech written by him or with someone else or by someone else; sometimes he just had a few notes with him so he would sound more off the cuff and personable; on those rare town hall style occasions where notes would make him look weak, he'd at least have discussed most of the possible topics with his staff before hand. Today, he had nothing. No one knew he was going to do this. His secret service guy for the day, Agent Grant, only knew that the president wanted to go to the press room.
He wiped his hands off on his pants, planted them on the sides of the podium and started to talk to the reporters.
"So, good afternoon everyone, and merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas, Mr. Presidents," a few of the reporters repeated back. All of them looked surprised. Not one of them had expected Marc to come out here the afternoon before his vacation started. Or maybe they were just surprised to see him in the press room at all. While he preferred to greet crowds of regular people in town hall settings so far, since his election two years ago, he'd only ever given speeches to the press and when he was finished he'd be ushered off by aides or secret service or both before anyone could get a question out.
Marc smiled again. No one in this room knew what they were getting today. This would be fun. His stomach flipped again.
"I know you weren't expecting me here today," he said, hand on either side of the podium. "Hell, I can't remember even being in this room since my family and I took our tour of the White House before I moved in."
Most smiled. A few laughed.
"So, I bet you're all wondering why I'm here, right? What would you think if I told you that I'm here to give you and the rest of the American people the greatest Christmas present, ever? What if I told you that I'm here to tell the truth, the actually truth? Not some bullshit" -- the reporters gasped -- " speech that a committee of aides and speech writers thought you wanted to hear based on polls, but the actual truth?"
"We'd think you were feeding us a load of crap," someone in the back had said; Marc wished that he knew the names of these people, but he didn't. The rest nodded and a few mumbled.
"Yeah, I guess I wouldn't believe me, either. I mean politicians, for thousands of years, have been saying they'll tell the people the truth to gain support, right?" There were some muttered agreements. "So, how about I just talk and you listen, okay? And then, later, when you and your editors are pulling what I said apart to find my 'true' meaning and CNN and MSNBC and Fox News are taking things I said out of context to make me look like more of an asshole than I really am, then you can decide if I'm telling the truth." His palms started sweating and he felt flush. He couldn't remember ever feeling this nervous before, in his life. Not even the first time he got laid.
"I haven't spoken about this with my Chief of Staff or the leadership of my party or anyone in congress or even my wife. So, this is sort of a Christmas surprise for them, too. This isn't going to be like the State of the Union which is just bullshit politics. Can ever of you remember a State of the Union address that didn't start off with 'the state of our union is strong'? I can't. And do you want to know something? The state of our union isn't strong. Our union is weak." His fingers dug into the wood of the podium. He had to hold on tight or he was afraid he'd fall forward.
"It's weak and everyone out there is afraid to say so. They know how close to crumbling our nation is, and they're afraid to tell you. Do you understand that? They're fucking afraid. Hell, I've been afraid of it too. But no more.
"What's worse is they don't know what to do about it because they're afraid to try to fix the problems. They spew out 'facts,'" Marc freed his hands from their death grip on the podium and made air quotes around the word "facts." "They spew out buzz words. They get your fear up by saying immigrants, especially illegal ones, are here to take your jobs from you. They remind you that there are scary people out there who want to attack in the night, and not in the honorable way, but the cowardly way; they want to bomb your local Wal*Mart and you have to keep shopping, 'keep American strong,' right?
"I've done it. Dan was up here doing it just a little while ago. He was throwing out statistics and fact and stories to keep you all distracted from the problems that everyone should really be worried about."
He ticked his fingers off as he said, "Education. National health. Global warming and the environment. Farm subsidies Common sense gun control. Debt, and I'm talking about personal debt, not the deep, black pit the last president dug for us. Social Security money for Social Security benefits rather than another freeway through Nevada.
"Instead, you worry about people saying fuck or shit on TV. You worry about video games where characters can rip the scrotum off other characters." He smiled and shook his head. "You try to keep kids from reading books that they can actually enjoy and then turn around and bitch about how kids don't fucking read. And why should they when you get rid of all the good stuff?
"I'm sure everyone out there knows where I'm going with this. You," Marc pointed at one of the cameras, "are pretty much to blame for all of problems. And I'm talking about every adult out there. I'm talking about those who vote in every election. I'm talking about those who vote only in presidential election. And I'm talking about those of you still don't fucking vote. You are the problem. You vote people like me into office over and over again.
"People like me aren't here to make things better; we're here to make money. We gotta support our families somehow and still get elected the next time our term comes to an end. Do you really think we get paid enough to be able to do those things and not get a little extra on the side? And I'm not even talking about the illegal things. Most of us don't even have to do anything illegal because we make the laws that keep us getting paid."
Marc closed his eyes, stepped back from the podium, and took a deep breath. He stepped forward, opened his eyes, and said, "Let me tell you a story:
"When I was a little kid, I didn't live a horrible life. My parent's made enough money so my life was pretty good, but sometimes we'd go into the city and I'd see the people sitting on the street holding cups and asking for some money. I watched the men and women in suits pretend that they weren't even there, like they didn't exist. When I walked past them with my parents, they put me in between them and tried to keep me from seeing the homeless people. I didn't understand and I didn't ask why. And, like everyone else, I grew up not seeing what was around me, not seeing the things I didn't like.
"Once upon a time, though, I thought I could change this. The day I was elected into this office, this grand office, the office of the most powerful man in the free world, the day I knew I'd be president, for a full minute, I thought that maybe, maybe I could change things. Maybe, I thought, this time things would be different and I'd be able to do things that the guys before me couldn't. I'd be the one to get this country going again, to get it to care again. Then I started the job.
"For some reason, you people out there thought it was a smart thing to split congress between the two parties. 'Let's make the House one party and the Senate the other,' you thought. 'Let's see what our new president can make of that.' I thought that, like me, they'd want to work together to make our nation stronger. That when my first hundred days started counting down.
"I don't know where the idea came from, but for some reason, in this modern time, people think that those first hundred days of a president's term are the ones that will set the tone for the whole damn thing. Do you know what I achieved in those first hundred days? Nothing. Do you know how many bills I tried to get through congress? Something like fifty. Do you know how many came out in the end? None. Do you know how many bills came out during my first year as president? Twenty-eight and that includes the budget that almost didn't happen on time.
"I was called the most ineffectual president since Andrew Johnson. At least he was hated and couldn't accomplish anything because he was trying to put the Union back together in an unpopular way. Shit, he was trying to do something that had never been done before, but me? I was just trying to do my job.
"In time, I realized how useless it was, though and I figured that when the next election came around you people would be as sick of the bullshit as I was and you'd actually elect men and women who wanted to make this place we live better than it is, better than it ever was. You didn't, though. In November, you just elected the exact same people into office. Nothing's changed.
"And what, please tell me, am I supposed to do about it?
"Am I supposed to go about trying to do my job and fail because you people want me to? Maybe, but I thought I should tell all of you what I thought first.
"The truth is a jagged fucking pill to swallow and I hope most of you choke on it. And while you're at it," Marc stepped out from behind the podium and grabbed his crotch, "you can choke on this, too."
He stepped back behind the podium, planted his hands again, and asked, "Any questions?"
The crowd was silent. More than one reporter had their mouths open so wide that birds could build homes in there and raise chirping families. Even the ancient dyke who had been sitting near the front row for half a century looked like a deer frozen in headlights. Marc felt great about that. If he could shock someone who'd been covering presidents since Johnson or Nixon, he couldn't wait to see the reaction the "average" person would have.
They'd want him impeached, or dead.
This was going to be fun. The most fun he'd had over a holiday since he was in grad school and spent spring break in Rio de Janeiro drinking anything handed to him and fucking anyone, man or woman, who was sober enough to say yes or drunk enough to start sucking on his cock without even being asked. Thinking about sucking and fucking under the watchful gaze of that giant Jesus still made him laugh. God, that had been one hell of a week.
"Well," he grinned again feeling better about himself and his career than he had since he left local city and county politics, "I can tell by the looks on your faces that you don't have any questions and I have a plane to California to catch. I look forward to reading and hearing all your reactions tomorrow and in the weeks to come. Enjoy your time off and have a very merry Christmas with your families. Hell, give your moms a big sloppy wet one for me."
He turned away from the podium, and then turned back. "Oh, yeah. One more thing." He flipped off the cameras trying to do his best Nixon impression. "Fuck you, too," he said, laughing.
He turned again and walked away from the podium. He stepped down the two steps and headed to the door.
"Come on, Grant," he said to the Secret Service agent waiting there, "I want get out on the south lawn and onto Marine 1 and be on the way to the airport before this bunch regains consciousness."
"Yes, sir," said Agent Grant. He lifted his wrist up near his mouth and said, "People, Peter Piper's on his way to the market."
Marcus Gandbuth felt so good that he had to keep himself from skipping through the halls and out to the helicopter. The world was a wonderful place and it could only get better.
Flying Back Home
Cindy Gandbuth didn't arrive at Andrews Air Force Base until two hours after Air Force 1 was supposed to take off. It wasn't her fault though. She wasn't one of those First Ladies who had and agenda and she wasn't one of those First Ladies who went out of her way to support matronly causes like schools and poor little orphans. Sometimes, though, she had to go out and do crap like that, for her husband, for his career. When she thought of that she'd sigh. She'd done a lot of things for her husband's career. And today was another one.
While waiting to get onto the base, she sat in the limo, staring blankly out the window, thinking of the day before they finally arrived there.
She went out to some measly ass school somewhere out in Virginia. It was supposed to be near some famous Civil War battle, but she figured that was normal Virginia bullshit since, as far as she could remember, the entire state was covered in "famous" Civil War battles that no one wanted to remember except for the good ole boy assholes who lived near by and the anal retentive Civil War buff assholes who thought living their lives through a war that ended one hundred and fifty years ago is a good way to live their lives. The school was also named for some supposed guy who supposedly died in some supposed battle at some supposed time, but he supposedly grew up in the area and supposedly died a hero's death, so he deserved to have an elementary school named after him. Frankly it should have been called "Too Far From Washington To Matter Much" school since its paint was peeling and the heat in the rooms wasn't working and there wouldn't be any one out to fix the heat problem until after Christmas and the paint problem wouldn't be fixed until it all came off and left the building looking like some sun beat abandoned farm house from the dust bowl.
It was for the kids, she kept reminding herself. She was there to bring a little Christmas cheer by showing up and smiling and sitting in the gym slash auditorium slash cafeteria and watch a bunch of kid sing songs and put on short skits. She was expected to laugh and clap and cheer when appropriate so the kids would have their fragile egos protected rather than learn the truth, that their lack of practice and enthusiasm had made for a terrible time.
Worst of all, the time there went on forever. She got there at eleven and ate lunch with the kids, some sort of chunky turkey juice stuff poured over a lump of flake potatoes in the big rectangle on the tray with a scoop of green beans in cream of mushroom soup in the circle to the left and in the three squares on the top were a little carton of milk, a brick of green Jell-O, and a roll. The food was actually okay, not a five star meal or anything, but really good for a little school that was on the verge of falling in on itself. Cindy ate at a table in the cafeteria with the kid surrounding her, with her current favorite Secret Service Agent Jan Stakenov standing behind her the whole time.
The kids were, well they were kid. They were loud and messy. Some of them thought it was strange having a grown-up sitting at their table eating with them and were shy. Some thought it was funny and whispered to their friends about it. Some simply stared. One little boy even pulled the "see food" gag on her, which struck her as a pretty brave thing for a kid to do to any first lady; she figured that any other first lady would have been shocked and taken aback at such a crass display, but Cindy thought it was ballsy and did it right back at him, then showed the food on her tongue to the whole table. When the blob of mashed potatoes and chewed up green beans fell off her tongue onto her tray, they all started to laugh with her, and when she picked the blob up with her spork and ate it she was treated to lots of kids saying "eeeewww" and then more and even harder laughter. She briefly wondered if any cameras had caught her little food show. It would make for quite a story, but she didn't remember any flashes going off at that time. Part of her wished one of the kids had started a burping contest, and then they would have seen her family award winning performance. The lunch with the kids only took forty five minutes. The pageant started at noon.
During those fifteen minutes, the kids ran to their classrooms to get ready and she watched a couple of women fold all the lunch tables up, roll them to some room behind the little stage, do a quick sweep of the entire floor, and put out mats for the kids to sit on. Later, she found out that the two women also helped in a couple of classrooms as teacher's aides and each drove a bus in the morning and afternoon.
It show was only supposed to last an hour, but it went ninety minutes longer. The principal said that when the kids learned that the first lady was coming they got so excited they kept wanting to do more for her. Cindy wasn't stupid, though, she knew that it was when the teachers found out she was coming they thought they'd show off for her by making the program longer. She wasn't sure, though, if they were trying to show her how much they can accomplish on such a limited budget or if they were just showing her how little they had.
If it had only been an hour, the show would have been fine, but by the third performance of kids singing "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer," with the echoes -- "LIKE A LIGHTBULB!" "LIKE MONOPOLY!" "LIKE COLUMBUS!" -- shouted by the audience, Cindy was imagining horrible scenarios of men dropping down from the ceiling with huge automatic weapons and firing into the crowd of children an parents while Jan pulled her out of the room into the parking lot. Sometimes, one of the bullets caught her in the head or chest and she fell to the floor laughing. Other times, Cindy would find a machine gun, somewhere, and open fire on the guys coming from the ceiling, and then she'd hop around the room kicking terrorist ass, Batman style. Still the kids sang on and then performed a scene from A Christmas Carol, then sing, then something from "The Gift of the Magi," and then another song. Maybe if they did a scene from Santa Claus Versus the Martian, with the audience doing some MST3K, there would have been something worth watching after the first hour.
When it was finally over and all the children had taken their bows, she stood up and thanked them and lied to them when she told them that they were all wonderful and she hadn't ever seen a performance as good at the one they just put on for her. She clapped at them and then the teachers started clapping at her and, after a few seconds, the kids started clapping and yelling, too. Cindy didn't roll her eyes. She wanted to, but she didn't. Cameras snapped and flashed around her as she stood among the students and teachers and parents who were cheering her. She hoped she looked grateful. It wouldn't help her husband's career if she looked tired and annoyed in a roomful of children.
By the time she got out of the school and into her car, they were running two hours behind schedule.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Fiction Friday #18
The Fiction Friday posts are going to a different for a little while. Instead of me rushing to write about a thousand words of a story I'm going to post what I've written for NaNoWriMo. I'm not going to post the whole thing over and over again, I'm just going to post the new stuff I wrote between Fridays. So, some may start in illogical places and all will probably end without logic. Just deal with it.
This week's is short because it's just what I wrote all day yesterday and today here at work.
This is the way Fiction Friday is going to go until
1. The first Friday after the 30th, which is the first, I think.
2. I finish the 50,000 word and/or the novel.
Or 3. I decide to give up on NaNoWriMo.
Day Zero
Marcus Gandbuth walked into the press room by himself and stood off to the side of the platform. He didn't want to announce his presence just yet. He wanted to get a sense of the room before he let them know he was there.
More or less, it was a normal Friday before a holiday crowd. About half the seats were filled with their usually reporters only halfway listening to what Dan had to say. And he had nothing to say. There were no big bombs to drop on them this week. No hostages. No attack. No overtime basketball games just ending. Beside, most of the reporters in the press room went over the video tapes that were made available afterward. The only reasons any reporters showed up anymore was in the hopes that they could catch Dan, and therefore the entire administration, off guard with a pointed question, but since the Vice President hadn't been caught sucking geezer midget cock this week, Marc didn't think anyone was going to even try. Besides, they all wanted to get on their Christmas break as soon as possible, too.
Marc cleared his throat a little too loudly and stood there watching the reporters. The young guy in front did a double take and was the first to start staring. Slowly, the other people in the room turned to look at him, too. Then one camera, CNN, he thought, turned and then another and then another, like dominoes being knocked over. Not Dan though, he always focused on his notes instead of the actual people and was reading, word for word, some report put out by the Secretary of Agriculture about the restructuring on some farm subsidies they hoped to get through Congress next year.
Actually, it was Dan's sort of incompetence that helped him get the job of Press Secretary. He could hardly remember anything, so he always used notes. When he was asked a questions, he'd rifle through pages of information trying to find an answer. Sometimes he got lucky and the information was in the top couple of pages, but more often it was somewhere in the middle of his stack. When that happened he start searching and if the search took more than a few seconds, he'd ask all the reporters to quiet down, even if they were already quiet, because he needed his concentration and as he looked through the papers he'd mumble to himself, but into the microphone, that everyone needs to keep quiet. But the incompetence was masterful. By the time he found the answer most of the reporters had forgotten the question, so there were no follow-ups. Marc wasn't sure, but he always thought the reporters didn't ask more follow-ups because they were afraid that Dan would have to go through his notes, again. The best way to keep people from getting the information they wanted was to present it in a way they didn't like.
Once, the Chief of Staff, Alan Zimmerman, and Marc made a drinking game out of one of Dan's press conferences. Every time Dan said quiet loud enough for the camera to pick up, they took a shot. Forty minutes into the conference, Zim was a happy drunk, the kind that figures no one else can tell he's drunk and he wants to go around telling everyone how great they are. Marc just sat and focused on the TV so he wouldn't miss a single "quiet." Neither one of them had much memory of the rest of that day; Marc only had flashes of toilette's and grinding rolling chairs and asking people to keep quiet because he and Zim, they were looking for something so everyone had to keep quiet.
It was probably one on Marc's most productive days since he started working with these people.
Marc watched as Dan finally looked up into the half full room to answer the question he had been asked and noticed that no one was looking at him. Dan looked back at his notes and then at the reporters again. Marcus let his grin get huge because he knew that if he tried to hold it back, he'd laugh and Dan never took well to being laughed at. So he waited.
Dan cleared his throat once and then a second time, more forcefully. He opened his mouth, and closed it, then opened it again. He cocked his head to the left and followed everyone's gaze to his right. When he noticed Marc standing there, he closed his mouth with an audible snap.
Marc smiled as warmly as he could and half waved at Dan.
Dan half waved back.
Marc pointed to himself and then to the podium Dan was standing behind and then to himself again and nodded.
Dan straightened up with a jerk, pulled his coat straight, pushed glasses higher on his nose, and leaned toward the microphone. "Uh," he said, "ladies and gentlemen, I, uh, huh, I give you the, uh, the president of the United States of America. Um, Marcus Gandbuth."
Marc climbed the two stairs as the small group of reporters sat in silence and Dan collected his notes in a messy pile from the podium. When Dan turned toward him, Marc shot out his hand and grabbed Dan's and started shaking. Notes flew everywhere.
Dan and Marc both crouched down and started pulling papers into a pile.
"Sorry, Dan," said Marc. "I know how you hate surprises, but I thought it would be nice to come and talk and, maybe, answer a few questions. You know, as a sort of Christmas present."
"It's okay, uh, sir -- Mr. President, sir."
They got the pile of notes together and into Dan's arms. Both men stood up and Marc leaned in close and whispered, "You may want to watch this from your office."
Dan winced, nodded, and scurried down off the lift.
Marc walked over to the podium and smiled the smile his staff told him won the election. A friendly and confident smile, he was told. One that inspired people to flock to his cause. A smile that dentists could put up in their office to show what years of painful orthodontic work and bleach treatments could do for anyone of any age. And having such a big smile and such white teeth nestled in a light box tanned face made it all the better.
Marc didn't feel as confident as his smile made him look. His palms were sweating, his heart fluttered, and his stomach was trying to reenact Stomp. He hadn't felt this way making a speech since he was in high school.
This week's is short because it's just what I wrote all day yesterday and today here at work.
This is the way Fiction Friday is going to go until
1. The first Friday after the 30th, which is the first, I think.
2. I finish the 50,000 word and/or the novel.
Or 3. I decide to give up on NaNoWriMo.
Day Zero
Marcus Gandbuth walked into the press room by himself and stood off to the side of the platform. He didn't want to announce his presence just yet. He wanted to get a sense of the room before he let them know he was there.
More or less, it was a normal Friday before a holiday crowd. About half the seats were filled with their usually reporters only halfway listening to what Dan had to say. And he had nothing to say. There were no big bombs to drop on them this week. No hostages. No attack. No overtime basketball games just ending. Beside, most of the reporters in the press room went over the video tapes that were made available afterward. The only reasons any reporters showed up anymore was in the hopes that they could catch Dan, and therefore the entire administration, off guard with a pointed question, but since the Vice President hadn't been caught sucking geezer midget cock this week, Marc didn't think anyone was going to even try. Besides, they all wanted to get on their Christmas break as soon as possible, too.
Marc cleared his throat a little too loudly and stood there watching the reporters. The young guy in front did a double take and was the first to start staring. Slowly, the other people in the room turned to look at him, too. Then one camera, CNN, he thought, turned and then another and then another, like dominoes being knocked over. Not Dan though, he always focused on his notes instead of the actual people and was reading, word for word, some report put out by the Secretary of Agriculture about the restructuring on some farm subsidies they hoped to get through Congress next year.
Actually, it was Dan's sort of incompetence that helped him get the job of Press Secretary. He could hardly remember anything, so he always used notes. When he was asked a questions, he'd rifle through pages of information trying to find an answer. Sometimes he got lucky and the information was in the top couple of pages, but more often it was somewhere in the middle of his stack. When that happened he start searching and if the search took more than a few seconds, he'd ask all the reporters to quiet down, even if they were already quiet, because he needed his concentration and as he looked through the papers he'd mumble to himself, but into the microphone, that everyone needs to keep quiet. But the incompetence was masterful. By the time he found the answer most of the reporters had forgotten the question, so there were no follow-ups. Marc wasn't sure, but he always thought the reporters didn't ask more follow-ups because they were afraid that Dan would have to go through his notes, again. The best way to keep people from getting the information they wanted was to present it in a way they didn't like.
Once, the Chief of Staff, Alan Zimmerman, and Marc made a drinking game out of one of Dan's press conferences. Every time Dan said quiet loud enough for the camera to pick up, they took a shot. Forty minutes into the conference, Zim was a happy drunk, the kind that figures no one else can tell he's drunk and he wants to go around telling everyone how great they are. Marc just sat and focused on the TV so he wouldn't miss a single "quiet." Neither one of them had much memory of the rest of that day; Marc only had flashes of toilette's and grinding rolling chairs and asking people to keep quiet because he and Zim, they were looking for something so everyone had to keep quiet.
It was probably one on Marc's most productive days since he started working with these people.
Marc watched as Dan finally looked up into the half full room to answer the question he had been asked and noticed that no one was looking at him. Dan looked back at his notes and then at the reporters again. Marcus let his grin get huge because he knew that if he tried to hold it back, he'd laugh and Dan never took well to being laughed at. So he waited.
Dan cleared his throat once and then a second time, more forcefully. He opened his mouth, and closed it, then opened it again. He cocked his head to the left and followed everyone's gaze to his right. When he noticed Marc standing there, he closed his mouth with an audible snap.
Marc smiled as warmly as he could and half waved at Dan.
Dan half waved back.
Marc pointed to himself and then to the podium Dan was standing behind and then to himself again and nodded.
Dan straightened up with a jerk, pulled his coat straight, pushed glasses higher on his nose, and leaned toward the microphone. "Uh," he said, "ladies and gentlemen, I, uh, huh, I give you the, uh, the president of the United States of America. Um, Marcus Gandbuth."
Marc climbed the two stairs as the small group of reporters sat in silence and Dan collected his notes in a messy pile from the podium. When Dan turned toward him, Marc shot out his hand and grabbed Dan's and started shaking. Notes flew everywhere.
Dan and Marc both crouched down and started pulling papers into a pile.
"Sorry, Dan," said Marc. "I know how you hate surprises, but I thought it would be nice to come and talk and, maybe, answer a few questions. You know, as a sort of Christmas present."
"It's okay, uh, sir -- Mr. President, sir."
They got the pile of notes together and into Dan's arms. Both men stood up and Marc leaned in close and whispered, "You may want to watch this from your office."
Dan winced, nodded, and scurried down off the lift.
Marc walked over to the podium and smiled the smile his staff told him won the election. A friendly and confident smile, he was told. One that inspired people to flock to his cause. A smile that dentists could put up in their office to show what years of painful orthodontic work and bleach treatments could do for anyone of any age. And having such a big smile and such white teeth nestled in a light box tanned face made it all the better.
Marc didn't feel as confident as his smile made him look. His palms were sweating, his heart fluttered, and his stomach was trying to reenact Stomp. He hadn't felt this way making a speech since he was in high school.
Useless Labels:
comedy,
fiction,
Fiction Friday,
NaNoWriMo
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)