Sunday, November 02, 2003
entry
This is the final version of the story, the one I entered in a contest Em forwarded to me some weeks ago. Paring the original down to this 450-words-sleaker edit was the most startling revision I've ever undertaken. I'm going to start throwing out sentences by the fucking gross, it's magic.
Any comments would be grand.
FL--
He held the pills in his left hand as if nesting a fragile person within. He stared at the two tablets and saw only for their inscrutable shapeliness. From across the room, he might have seemed to be studying a mirror in his palm. In the wind that had been blowing for two days straight, there were defined pockets of stillness, and at night these silences had become wild to him.
He began to count the unnecessary things in his apartment. The cheerful oak table, the languorous piles of paper. He grew anxious about the cabinets and drawers, and began culling trash from them. He paused over a spool of white thread because it reminded him of his mother, and then he wished she was sitting in the room, nagging him. Maybe then the chairs would seem purposeful.
The entire apartment, intermittently battered by the wind, was failing. Its spaces and surfaces, decorated with prints and books and amateurish photographs, housed
nothing.
Then he remembered the pills and wondered where they had gone to while he was
shuffling out trash. They were not in his hand or on the table. They were not on the floor or among the eclecticism of the drawer. Even the tumbler of orange juice seemed lonely.
He approached the couch with a book of Spanish poems in translation, but he didn’t open it, just clutched it across his chest and closed his eyes, considering his eyeballs behind their lids until they seemed like the pills he couldn’t find.
The couch was never comfortable, but soon he was dreaming. His mother’s on a slowing train he’s peering into as if hovering beside, but the early sun reflecting off the windows challenges his view, and when he can see her, she’s never the same age. Her hair color changes each time and it makes him nauseous.
She’s smoking cigarettes from a white package. He wants to say outloud the brand name of the cigarettes because he’s proud of remembering, but when he opens his mouth he finds it could only open, and there is no air to breath. His lips cannot find each other again, and as his panic began to swell he notices her eyes are closing.
Awake, he found the wind not quiet howling, but whispering meaninglessly into the trees. He felt buoyant as he followed the front sidewalk hastily to his sedan. A conversation was partially audible from the den next door, or maybe from the television in the den next door. And then some violins.
He checked himself in the rear-view mirror to see if he looked desperate. He hoped he looked desperate. As he backed out of his driveway, a figure was lit by the red brakelights, and he braked with a jar.
As he approached the back of the car, he scanned. On the ground, directly behind the bumper, was a green plastic sand-shovel. He thought about all the other green shovels, then he gave it a toss onto the grass.
He paid for gas at the pump. The few cars that passed the station were some comfort, but they seemed to be travelling too fast, and when they were gone, they were really gone.
He only made it as far as the city, where the lights made him yawn. Even with all the lights, all that electricity, it was thick dark.
A female friend had once taken him to this narrow wine-bar and he thought it was nearby. He parked illegally and found the entrance.
Inside, he was the only person wearing a T-shirt. It wasn’t eyes or mouths that were as disapproving as all the chins. A clean-shaven Arab and the blonde leaning into him on an adjacent stool glanced at him, then riotously hid their chins down against their throats and laughed their eyes closed.
A small rectangular chalkboard listed the specials: Chiraz 7, California Chard 9, Berry Mead 8. The bartender did not smile when he ordered a glass of red, just turned one ear in his direction and kept wiping off a bulbous wineglass.
“How much?” he asked. The bartender did not seem hear him but turned to pour.
Intimate jazz began to creep from the speakers, and even though he remembered the
place was rather small, he could not see into the back of the room. The color of light was red, and it came from a source he couldn’t locate. The customers, as they retreated into this void in the back, became grotesque.
He heard the bartender set his glass on the unfinished wooden bartop that smelled
like sawdust.
“How much.” The defiant bartender’s face was blank. “How much?” he repeated, as unease spread down his legs. “Talk to me!” He slammed ten dollars down. The bartender paused as if considering whether or not to accept the money. He swept the note off the bar, held it to his face, and smelled it. He breathed in with the bill touching the tip of his nose, like a detective, and laid it gently in the register.
“I’ll give you ten more dollars if you just say something to me.” He held his wallet awkwardly in his hand, afraid of it. “Anything.” The bartender’s eyes fell downward and he sneered at the floor.
He tried to climb over the bar to see what the man was sneering at, but his foot fumbled over a woman’s purse and his forearm knocked his glass onto the pale wood.
There were murmurs of disapproval. He grabbed from a stack of napkins and began to
blot at the red puddle. He tried to mutter apologies, but he found again that his mouth
could only open. Despite his mopping, there was a stain on the bartop that ruined the
unfinished effect.
He stammered away from the bar, entering the void to find the restroom. From one dark-red corner came close-mouthed laughter and older-sounding voices. The tone of the voices was of experience and exclusivity. He could not see their faces, but a woman’s hand rested on the table. The back of the hand was freckled, even the knuckles.
The bathroom was walled entirely out of shiney metal, and set into the wall above the toilet was a cubby hole. On the cubby rested a crude, jade-colored pot. Down inside the pot were a plastic skull and a few white blossoms that looked red under the light. He hummed a melody and admired the vibrations he made off the walls. He felt safe in the restroom with the fake skull and the music he was making.
He stepped back into the bar confident. His head was sound and he felt ready to sleep. He passed the table again and noticed the hands were now resting on a red package of cigarettes. He snuck up to the table.
“I thought they banned smoking in all buildings” he said, needing a reply.
He was standing behind the woman with the freckled hand, and she turned to face him as he was talking. It was his mother. She looked puzzled, but her face did not seem to recognize his.
“Mom?”
“Do you have a match?” she asked in a voice like a stage actor. And smiled.
“And smoke, can the adults please smoke?” said the other woman at the table,
grinning. They laughed at this shared joke. They all seemed younger than their voices.
“Mom?”
The woman beneath him pronounced two words slowly for him. “Stage...
Cigarettes.” He didn’t understand. “We’re in a play,” she added, “across the street. You should come tomorrow.”
“What’s it called?”
“The Gopher.”
“Mom, what’s going on?”
“Enjoy the wine tonight, friend?” interjected a man, and then, “hey, sport, you should take it easy. Enjoy each sip.” His blue-blazer covered a striped golf-shirt. More silence.
Incredulously, “Dad?”
A bell was rung three times.
“Last call. We close in five minutes.” The bartender.
The party at the table rose obediently, but casually, gathering their purses and keys. They had forgotten him standing beside their table. The woman he took for his mother even muttered an “excuse me” as she backed up from her chair. She left the package on the table, crumpled.
A girl up by the entrance wished “drive safely” to someone already outside. He became anxious about his car being parked illegally, and shoved elbows as he moved for the door. The girl smiled politely as he passed her in the doorway.
He jogged up the street, then skip-stepped frantically until he was sprinting to the
car.
It was there, unticketed.
The drive home was under the greatest relief he’d ever felt. Everything loosened or melted. The trees lining the interstate were not hideous or solitary. The streets of his neighborhood, as he approached them, were so welcoming. He smiled.
When he turned on his kitchen light, the tumbler of orange juice was still standing
rigid on the table where he had left it, and beside it were the two pills.
final word count: 1494
This is the final version of the story, the one I entered in a contest Em forwarded to me some weeks ago. Paring the original down to this 450-words-sleaker edit was the most startling revision I've ever undertaken. I'm going to start throwing out sentences by the fucking gross, it's magic.
Any comments would be grand.
FL--
He held the pills in his left hand as if nesting a fragile person within. He stared at the two tablets and saw only for their inscrutable shapeliness. From across the room, he might have seemed to be studying a mirror in his palm. In the wind that had been blowing for two days straight, there were defined pockets of stillness, and at night these silences had become wild to him.
He began to count the unnecessary things in his apartment. The cheerful oak table, the languorous piles of paper. He grew anxious about the cabinets and drawers, and began culling trash from them. He paused over a spool of white thread because it reminded him of his mother, and then he wished she was sitting in the room, nagging him. Maybe then the chairs would seem purposeful.
The entire apartment, intermittently battered by the wind, was failing. Its spaces and surfaces, decorated with prints and books and amateurish photographs, housed
nothing.
Then he remembered the pills and wondered where they had gone to while he was
shuffling out trash. They were not in his hand or on the table. They were not on the floor or among the eclecticism of the drawer. Even the tumbler of orange juice seemed lonely.
He approached the couch with a book of Spanish poems in translation, but he didn’t open it, just clutched it across his chest and closed his eyes, considering his eyeballs behind their lids until they seemed like the pills he couldn’t find.
The couch was never comfortable, but soon he was dreaming. His mother’s on a slowing train he’s peering into as if hovering beside, but the early sun reflecting off the windows challenges his view, and when he can see her, she’s never the same age. Her hair color changes each time and it makes him nauseous.
She’s smoking cigarettes from a white package. He wants to say outloud the brand name of the cigarettes because he’s proud of remembering, but when he opens his mouth he finds it could only open, and there is no air to breath. His lips cannot find each other again, and as his panic began to swell he notices her eyes are closing.
Awake, he found the wind not quiet howling, but whispering meaninglessly into the trees. He felt buoyant as he followed the front sidewalk hastily to his sedan. A conversation was partially audible from the den next door, or maybe from the television in the den next door. And then some violins.
He checked himself in the rear-view mirror to see if he looked desperate. He hoped he looked desperate. As he backed out of his driveway, a figure was lit by the red brakelights, and he braked with a jar.
As he approached the back of the car, he scanned. On the ground, directly behind the bumper, was a green plastic sand-shovel. He thought about all the other green shovels, then he gave it a toss onto the grass.
He paid for gas at the pump. The few cars that passed the station were some comfort, but they seemed to be travelling too fast, and when they were gone, they were really gone.
He only made it as far as the city, where the lights made him yawn. Even with all the lights, all that electricity, it was thick dark.
A female friend had once taken him to this narrow wine-bar and he thought it was nearby. He parked illegally and found the entrance.
Inside, he was the only person wearing a T-shirt. It wasn’t eyes or mouths that were as disapproving as all the chins. A clean-shaven Arab and the blonde leaning into him on an adjacent stool glanced at him, then riotously hid their chins down against their throats and laughed their eyes closed.
A small rectangular chalkboard listed the specials: Chiraz 7, California Chard 9, Berry Mead 8. The bartender did not smile when he ordered a glass of red, just turned one ear in his direction and kept wiping off a bulbous wineglass.
“How much?” he asked. The bartender did not seem hear him but turned to pour.
Intimate jazz began to creep from the speakers, and even though he remembered the
place was rather small, he could not see into the back of the room. The color of light was red, and it came from a source he couldn’t locate. The customers, as they retreated into this void in the back, became grotesque.
He heard the bartender set his glass on the unfinished wooden bartop that smelled
like sawdust.
“How much.” The defiant bartender’s face was blank. “How much?” he repeated, as unease spread down his legs. “Talk to me!” He slammed ten dollars down. The bartender paused as if considering whether or not to accept the money. He swept the note off the bar, held it to his face, and smelled it. He breathed in with the bill touching the tip of his nose, like a detective, and laid it gently in the register.
“I’ll give you ten more dollars if you just say something to me.” He held his wallet awkwardly in his hand, afraid of it. “Anything.” The bartender’s eyes fell downward and he sneered at the floor.
He tried to climb over the bar to see what the man was sneering at, but his foot fumbled over a woman’s purse and his forearm knocked his glass onto the pale wood.
There were murmurs of disapproval. He grabbed from a stack of napkins and began to
blot at the red puddle. He tried to mutter apologies, but he found again that his mouth
could only open. Despite his mopping, there was a stain on the bartop that ruined the
unfinished effect.
He stammered away from the bar, entering the void to find the restroom. From one dark-red corner came close-mouthed laughter and older-sounding voices. The tone of the voices was of experience and exclusivity. He could not see their faces, but a woman’s hand rested on the table. The back of the hand was freckled, even the knuckles.
The bathroom was walled entirely out of shiney metal, and set into the wall above the toilet was a cubby hole. On the cubby rested a crude, jade-colored pot. Down inside the pot were a plastic skull and a few white blossoms that looked red under the light. He hummed a melody and admired the vibrations he made off the walls. He felt safe in the restroom with the fake skull and the music he was making.
He stepped back into the bar confident. His head was sound and he felt ready to sleep. He passed the table again and noticed the hands were now resting on a red package of cigarettes. He snuck up to the table.
“I thought they banned smoking in all buildings” he said, needing a reply.
He was standing behind the woman with the freckled hand, and she turned to face him as he was talking. It was his mother. She looked puzzled, but her face did not seem to recognize his.
“Mom?”
“Do you have a match?” she asked in a voice like a stage actor. And smiled.
“And smoke, can the adults please smoke?” said the other woman at the table,
grinning. They laughed at this shared joke. They all seemed younger than their voices.
“Mom?”
The woman beneath him pronounced two words slowly for him. “Stage...
Cigarettes.” He didn’t understand. “We’re in a play,” she added, “across the street. You should come tomorrow.”
“What’s it called?”
“The Gopher.”
“Mom, what’s going on?”
“Enjoy the wine tonight, friend?” interjected a man, and then, “hey, sport, you should take it easy. Enjoy each sip.” His blue-blazer covered a striped golf-shirt. More silence.
Incredulously, “Dad?”
A bell was rung three times.
“Last call. We close in five minutes.” The bartender.
The party at the table rose obediently, but casually, gathering their purses and keys. They had forgotten him standing beside their table. The woman he took for his mother even muttered an “excuse me” as she backed up from her chair. She left the package on the table, crumpled.
A girl up by the entrance wished “drive safely” to someone already outside. He became anxious about his car being parked illegally, and shoved elbows as he moved for the door. The girl smiled politely as he passed her in the doorway.
He jogged up the street, then skip-stepped frantically until he was sprinting to the
car.
It was there, unticketed.
The drive home was under the greatest relief he’d ever felt. Everything loosened or melted. The trees lining the interstate were not hideous or solitary. The streets of his neighborhood, as he approached them, were so welcoming. He smiled.
When he turned on his kitchen light, the tumbler of orange juice was still standing
rigid on the table where he had left it, and beside it were the two pills.
final word count: 1494
