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What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? Oh gee, about twelve years ago, I think, was when I started writing it. Finished it about four years ago.
What is the summary of this specific fiction work? A young woman gets her degree in forensic anthropology from the “Bone Farm” at U of Tennessee, then takes a job at U of Kentucky, where she consults with Lexington police about uncovered cadavers. She has an on-off relationship with a Black homicide detective, who returns the favor by having an on-off relationship with her.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. I’ll include his chapter, which comes second in the novel. He has two others. This chapter was published as a story in Bayou magazine.
2. Dumb
Show
Year 2001
(Gray)
rhyme-time-mime:
I
remember how the outside of the campus building was fairy-tale glowing with
safety lights showing hot moths chasing one another. Glowing, showing, but it
wasn’t snowing. Even more, I remember the high-low chatter of beautiful women
and handsome men who were going to be engineers and lawyers and doctors. And
too much snore more, I remember the smell of perfume that caught in my nose and
my lungs, knitting my chest like my grandmother’s red and black afghan. Afghan
is a hard word to rhyme. You try it.
I stood on the sidewalk, in the shadows that led to the
building. Then I saw this beautiful girl who was thin and short with honey hair
that I could see moths through. She was talking with another girl with black
hair that frizzed and curled all up. Someone lit a cigarette by them, and they
moved away. My mother smokes, so I thought it was good that they moved away.
The girl with the lots of black hair that curled coughed once, loud, at the guy
who lit a cigarette; then she and her honey-haired friend walked inside the
building. I could see them walk inside, I mean I could see their beautiful
backsides besides. The thin girl’s shoulder blades protruded like two tiny
reverse breasts.
Feeling in my front left pocket I felt some bills, dollars and
five-dollar bills, so I moved to the left across the grass, nearing the man who
was smoking, until I could see through the glass doors. I saw the beautiful
girl with the honey hair and her friend standing before a display case. Hamlet,
the sign outside the glass doors said. It showed a picture of a man dressed
in black holding a skull. Ever since I’d been going to college I’d been
dressing in black. My mother said that black was the Devil’s color and that
people who wore too much of it were opening theirselves to Him. But that’s just
not true.
“Can I help you?”
I looked through this new glass, and then where the sound of
her voice had come through a round hole in the new glass, surprised that I’d
already walked through the doors by the smoking man. On the other side of the
new glass stood a beautiful girl with a beautiful smile. Or maybe she was
sitting on a stool; I was afraid to look because I might see knees. I think she
was in a class I was taking, a math class, where the teacher wrote on the board
and spread chalk dust in the air. Everywhere.
Some people stood in behind me. I could smell that they
smoked. And I could smell whiskey, too.
“Can I buy a ticket?”
“Do you have a student I.D.?”
I showed her the I.D., but she said that she needed to scan
it. Already, after only two weeks, so many people had to touch my I.D. The rays
from scanning made it soft, the leftover scaly skin made it hard. This time it
felt both soft and warm when she handed it back. A lot of times it felt that
way, though four times it felt cold and hard.
“Four dollars,” she said.
I pulled the bills from my pocket, dropping some, and when I
bent down I saw a woman’s feet and toes in golden high heels with lots of
straps so I had trouble standing up, wobble trouble, I mean.
I handed the girl from my math class four dollar bills that I
hoped weren’t too crumpled or wet, since I’d been sweating, since it was late
summer, early fall and all. She gave me a ticket and the person who smoked and
drank whiskey behind me pushed against my right arm, so I couldn’t say anything
about math class, so I just walked toward a door, where someone nodded at me,
wanting to touch my ticket.
The beautiful girl with honey hair and her friend with black
hair still stood by the display case. The girl with the honey hair looked like
she had on maroon pajamas. I didn’t know you could go to plays in pajamas. But
maybe they weren’t pajamas, maybe they were pants. Slacks, my mother calls them. The girl’s friend with the curly
black hair had on blue jeans, but they weren’t blue, they were black. And you
know what my mother says about that. I turned and went to the water fountain,
since they hadn’t gone in. There was a piece of chewed green gum stuck on the
wall next to the water fountain, so I didn’t drink anything, just started the
water and bent to pretend, so that the person who’d walked behind me for a
drink wouldn’t think I was crazy or anything.
I saw that they were going in, so I hurried and let the man
rip my ticket. I sat three rows behind them in the play. Before the lights went
out, I saw that the honey-haired girl had a beautiful long neck. Even three
rows back I could see her vertebrae and how her neck was so long that it curved
in, then came back out. When Hamlet hit his mother and threw her on the bed
with the red satin sheets, I started to get sick and had to hold onto my knees,
and then onto the armrests. I could hear the woman next to me breathing. She
was older than my mother even, but she wasn’t as old as my grandmother.
I saw my English teacher when a bunch of lights glittered in
the play. She was a student too. She told us that she was working on her Ph.D.
in Shakespeare. That was why she was here. She told us about this play yesterday.
She said we were lucky to have this professional group here so early in the
semester and that she’d seen it in Boston and that it was very innovative. She
likes to use words like innovative.
All I’d like to do is work at the Toyota place in Georgetown. But sometimes I
think that I’d like to be a psychiatrist like Dr. Kiefer, who is even older
than my grandmother. One time I was staring at her breasts so that I didn’t
have to look at her mouth or eyes, and I thought that they were so huge that a
catfish could swim in them. Not my grandmother’s breasts. I wouldn’t do that,
stare at them. My grandmother is 62. I always forget how old my mother is, but
I think that she’s 42. I’m not 22, or things would be easy.
Dr. Kiefer might be 82. Really.
I see a man that looks like the man that’s been lugging around
my mother lately. Lugging, slugging, fugging. She’s smoking and stinking up the
house with perfume, and he’s smoking and stinking up the house with whiskey and
cum. I want to move out and I’ve looked at the want ads for maybe some kind of
pizza cook, though I’d really like to work in a clothing store or maybe a shoe
store. But not really a shoe store, though it would be nice if all the
customers were as beautiful as the girl with the honey hair, or even her friend
with the curly black hair. I’d touch their instep in just the right way. I was
a pizza cook in high school. That way I didn’t have to play sports.
Lights flash and loud music starts, so something’s changing.
This Hamlet is set in Las Vegas, my English teacher told us yesterday.
There’s a ghost, and Hamlet is snorting cocaine with his friend, but what I
remember most, like I said, is Hamlet slapping his mother with a loud crack and
throwing her on the bed with the red satin. I had to hold my knees then, and
all I saw was the honey-haired girl whose neck looked like my mother’s neck. I
saw her and her beautiful friend turn to one another and smile. I couldn’t see
how they could smile about Hamlet hitting his mother. Then he kissed her on the
head and rubbed her hair back from her cheek from where he’d hit her. I did
that with my hand—next to my knees, I mean. Rubbed, I mean.
I went back in after half time but mostly I just slunk down
and watched her honey hair silhouette off the stage lights. And her friend’s
black hair, too. I pretended that a moth was still flitting behind the honey
hair, or maybe in front of it—that is, between it and the stage. The old woman
next to me didn’t come back and neither did her male friend, whose eyes looked
like he wore mascara. I saw them padding on one another’s feet before the play
started, they were both wearing sandals like they were old hippies or
something, so I guess that’s what they went off to do, pray for peace. Of
course, of course, of course I know what they really went to do. I’m not
stupid. I remember once putting on my mother’s mascara. It scared me because it
wouldn’t come off, and she was at work and coming home. I couldn’t fit into a
pair of satin white high heels she had, no matter how hard I pushed. I had to
take a bath and use dish soap and Pine-Sol to get the mascara off. I’m glad my
little toe didn’t break in the high heels.
The dumb show came, and it creeped me out, since the fake
uncle and the fake queen descended on maroon silk cords to twist about one
another over the fake king they were going to kill. There was music from an
acoustic guitar and a saxophone, but they didn’t talk. Life’s like that. I
think that’s why people invented saxophones and guitars. So that people
wouldn’t have to talk. It all goes back to the Tower of Babel.
So that was the first time I saw her. After the play had its
say, I followed her and her friend inside to a pizza place that was two blocks
away. I was glad that they didn’t have a car, because I didn’t have a car neither.
My mother’s boyfriend said I shouldn’t be driving her car, cause it would be a
temptation to me to park and do things.
“Jan! Ashley!” some asshole jock-looking guy said as he walked
inside to her from the pizza door. But he lit a cigarette and she blinked and
coughed at him, so he went to talk with his two jock friends, though I guess
they couldn’t be jocks and smoke, though maybe they took a lot of steroids and
cocaine so that it didn’t matter, with their big lungs and all.
“I’ve got a killer psych test at eight on Monday,” I heard
Ashley say to her friend, the black-haired girl, Jan. “But you go ahead.”
Ashley’s nice and polite, isn’t she? I knew which was which because I watched
the jock’s eyes when he called out their names.
I think that Jan wanted to go back and sit with the three
jocks, but she said that she probably should call it an early night too. I was
glad that I sat real near them, even though it made me nervous, because Ashley
had the softest, politest voice. And I couldn’t believe that she was taking
psychology. Maybe I would do that instead of Toyota.
+ = -
Eight o’clock Monday isn’t hard to find, because I keep a
schedule book from before when classes started. There are two eight o’clock
psychology classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I like those classes best
because they’re shorter than the Tuesday and Thursday classes.
In books I read, there are astersicks. That’s what I call
them. I know what they are.
But how about plus equals minus instead of an astersick?
Weird, huh?
Astersicks look like stars, and no one living in a city ever
sees stars. Soon the world won’t know there are stars. When you repeat the same
word, that’s called identity rhyme. There’ll be kids who will never see a star
and think that people are kidding about them or maybe that we blew them up with
nukes. Rebuked by nukes.
I get to the first eight o’clock psychology class at twenty
till. The janitor has just unlocked the building and is going through it
unlocking rooms. It would be nice to have his keys. It would be nice to go
around campus unlocking rooms for professors and pretty girls.
Twenty-two people walk into the classroom. I tap my foot on
the old green and ivory tiles and pretend that I’m a big shot gambler working a
blackjack table. Twenty-two. Bust. One guy walks in at seven minutes after.
Twenty-three. Double bust. The teacher came at one minute after. This is a
junior level class. I didn’t think she was that old, not with her soft, pretty
voice. Ashley, I mean. But she isn’t here, so maybe she isn’t that old.
Old and mold. But Ashley is gold. I bet she could even make my
name sound soft. “Eye-sach.” And she would lean to kiss me with her lips all
puffed just like they were Saturday night when she ate bits of her pepperoni
and muchroom pizza. I know how to spell mushroom. But muchroom is funny.
“What is abnormal?” the professor is saying. He is sort of
screaming, I guess since it’s so early he’s afraid students will fall asleep.
He had thick glasses and a thicker forehead. His glasses were greasy and filmy.
When he walked in, I mean. He closed the door and crinkled his stupid brow and
dirty glasses at me. “A thin line, a thin line,” he now says. I could stay out
here and listen to his whole stupid lecture through the stupid closed door. I
think that Dr. Kiefer told me something like that thin-line stuff, too. Dr.
Kiefer agrees with me—that I should move out and live away from my mother, that
is. But she thinks I should get a roommate or even live in a dormitory.
Dormitories are for cretins. So are roommates, unless they’re beautiful with
honey, satin, chestnut, almond, creamy mead hair. Grendel tore up a mead hall.
She was the mother, not the monster. It’s just like Frankenstein. He was the
father, not the monster. She was there too much, he wasn’t there enough. The
mother, the father, I mean.
It’s sixteen minutes after, so I leave for the other class.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. She said she was having a test, and this guy’s
screaming about thin lines, so I could have left nine minutes ago when twenty-three
double bust walked in late.
The other eight o’clock psychology class is in another old
building on campus. I like the old buildings because they have cubbyholes and
corners and doors leading to little rooms and thin halls. Some have marble that
I can lean my cheek against. And some have colored granite tiles like the last
one did. It takes me a minute to find the room and I start to worry that he’ll
let the class out early, but no, she’s taking a test, so that won’t happen. But
what if she’s really smart and finishes early? She looked really smart. Her
eyes were dark blue, and her skin was like soymilk. And she laughed a lot
during Hamlet. There must have been funny things that I missed. Or maybe
she was talking with her friend about something womany.
The room is quiet. This professor’s left the door open and he
stares at me like I’m doing something bad. I check my pockets, though I really
want to check my zipper and see if my fly’s open. I think that this has
something to do with psychology people. Staring I mean. Dr. Kiefer does that
sometimes. Maybe staring rings their things.
There are two stairwells. That could be a pun, you know. If I
wanted it to be one, I mean. I walk to the nearest stare well and sit at a desk
that’s in the hall. I have a math book, so I open it. I like the signs. They
look like Arabic. If we ever go to war with Arabia, the signs would look like
this. I know there’s no such country as Arabia anymore. I just mean in general.
When we go to war we’ll be helping the Jews, even though they killed Christ.
But I think the Moslems would have too, if they’d been around. I think a lot of
these professors and students would have too, if they’d been around.
What I like about math, besides all the neat signs, is that
it’s like a tee-tiny puzzle when you solve a problem. It’s like Moses or Aaron
tapping the rock, and water gushing forth.
Shit. She goes to the elevator. She hugs her books close to
her breasts. She’s thin, but she still has nice breasts. I look to see it’s
going down. There’s only one damned floor below. Doesn’t she want to conserve
energy?
I run down the steps and am almost beside a stone lion when
she walks out. I follow her to the cafeteria. She sits down with her black-hair
friend and a guy who’s fat and has a head of poofy black hair like a black guy.
Black, black, black. His shirt’s out of his pants. I check my zipper as I carry
a Coke to a table.
But there’s cracker crumbs and mustard on this table, so I
have to move closer. The girl with the black hair looks at me. I think her
hair’s really raven. I think I’m going to stop wearing black. Maybe my mother’s
right.
= +
& -
She really is a psychology major, and I know where she lives!
That is the plus side. The minus side is that the raven-Satan
haired girl lives with her. Maybe I won’t have to rent an apartment, maybe I
can rent a room. That way it wouldn’t cost as much. My mother’s boyfriend says
I got to work. I don’t think he does. I think that’s called projection
protection. I read up about being a psychology major. She goes to two other
classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. One’s another psychology class, and
one’s an English class just like I’m taking, with another graduate student
teaching it who’s probably getting her Ph.D. in Grendel from the way she looks.
I got to touch her this morning. We were on the elevator and
some guy pushed in and she backed into me. She hit my hand, which was covering
a book, which was covering my embarrassment that I got from looking at her
beautiful neck and smelling her priceless proud perfume. Yes, I mean what you
think I mean. I had an erection projection and the book was in front of it for
protection.
“Sorry,” she said in her whispery way, looking back and
blinking. I think she recognized me. That’s good, because we can talk soon.
I’ll tell her I saw Hamlet and that as a psychology major I think that
Freud was exactly right. About Oedipus. She’ll know what I mean.
I got off the elevator too and walked behind her toward her
class, which was the same math class that I take. I don’t mean exactly the same
like identity rhyme, but the same course and the same subject, like regular
rhyme. Same name but twain. That’s odd—that she’s taking the same course, I
mean—because I’m a freshman and this is my first semester here. I cooked pizzas
all last summer. Maybe I shouldn’t have quit that job. I almost followed her
into the class, but the teacher was there, and it was the same chalk dust
teacher that I have for my real identity rhyme math class. He looked at me
strange and I turned around, pretending I made a mistake thinking this was my
real class because I saw him in there. That’s what I’ll tell him if he asks.
But this is a Tuesday/Thursday class, and I hate them. It’s too long to sit,
the room always begins to smell like people grease.
!² = Δ
+ Σ ط ق א ה
That first thing might look like an exclamation point to you,
but it’s a sign used in probability. I’m not sure that the squared sign after
could really work, like would it make things squared probable? Life is cubed
probable, I think. A dumb show. And then the next sign, after the equals, is
from calculus. It means change. A tee-tiny change. And then the plus is plus,
and then the screwed-up looking E means Sum. It’s from calculus too. The rest
is Hebrew and Arabic horseshit.
And today is Tuesday, September 11.
I saw her crying in the cafeteria when they showed for the
life-cubed time the second plane crashing into the twin Manhattan towers. I had
to walk up behind her when she was crying, even though her Satan-haired
roommate was standing with her. Raven-Satan.
“Terrible, horrible, audible,” I said, standing behind her.
She turned. Her soymilk face was red under her blue eyes, and
so was her nose. I was going to give her something from my pocket to wipe away
her tears, but her Satan-haired roommate stared at me.
“Audible?” Raven-Satan said, and before I could answer, she
said, “Why have I seen you so much lately?”
“My father works in the Tower A,” I said.
Several people turned to look at me.
“He and my mother are divorced. He doesn’t work on Tuesdays.”
Ashley was blinking at me, and a tear ran down her cheek like
a leak on an old sink. The porcelain and all, I mean. But there wasn’t any rust
on her face, because her face was like soymilk and maybe cherries. Because it
was so red, I mean.
“That’s good,” Ash said.
“Let’s go home,” Raven-Satan the roommate said, giving me a
bare-bear-glare. I know her roommatey name, but I don’t want to use it.
It’s Jan, okay?
When they were at the steps, I started to follow them, but the
Satan-haired girl looked back, so I turned around and said, “Terrible,
horrible, audible,” to some guy whose mouth was open. He just nodded like a
Venus flytrap plant, so I guessed that they were showing the plane crashing
into the building again.
I walked by an old house that had a rooms-for-rent sign. I
stared at the sign and wondered what it would be like to crash a plane into a
building. Would your head burst first, or would your chest? Could maybe your
whole body shove through the cockpit glass and scoot across the building’s
shiny waxed white floor, by a row of twenty computers and knock over a rolling
swivel chair because it’s going so fast that it doesn’t know what it’s doing,
and then maybe blast through a window on the other side of the building to sail
over New York City skyscrapers and people before the burning jet fuel caught up
with it?
“The room costs ninety dollars a month.”
I was staring at a bedroom that was next to the communal
bathroom. It smelled musty, but for once that was nice because it was better
than cigarette smoke and cum. There were both males and females living in the
house. I knew that because I could smell perfume from the first two doors I
passed. One was watermelon and one was hippie patchouli. There was a sink in
the room, and I wondered if I’d be able to hear the bathroom, since the room
she showed me was next to it.
“Isn’t it horrible, terrible, and abominable what happened
this morning?” I asked.
“What happened?” the woman said. “I’ve been upstairs reading
my mysteries.”
I liked her, and I told her that I was going to take the room,
but that I had to get my checkbook. She said she’d hold the room for two hours.
“No smoking in the rooms!” my happy sappy future landlady
called out when I was on the sidewalk.
“I’m a Christian,” I answered.
“They smoke just like the rest of ’em.”
Horrible, terrible, audible, I thought.
+ = -
That’s still the best one. Plus equals minus, I mean.
My mother’s stupid boyfriend broke my CD player, he was so
happy hurry hasty to get me moved. He passed me his stupid orange-labeled half
pint of Early Times in his stupid green pick-up and I shook my head. “Suit
yourself,” he said. I thought how stupid that saying was: are you supposed to
dress yourself? Is that what it means? Everyone but Prince Charles does that.
Every time I pass a TV at the university I see towers burning
and black smoke. I hate TV because it reminds me of flies and mosquitoes and
gnats. There’s a space in the communal kitchen, which is across from the
communal bathroom and the steps leading upstairs, a place that has a TV, but
it’s broken. That’s good.
The boarding house is three-and-a-half blocks from her house.
I walked by it five times the first night. Her house, I mean. Wednesday, I
mean. She and Raven-Satan rent the top floor, and I can look into two of the
windows just walking down the street. I saw her twice. Once she was carrying a
book, and once she was talking on a phone. I wish I could see her feet from the
street. I saw her feet when we went to eat pizza, and then once when she walked
out of the psychology class and I was sitting beside the lion. It started to
rain, or maybe I would have talked to her that day.
- = +
In some ways that works as well. Putting minus first, I mean.
It’s like physical anthropology and Darwin. Growing from a mistake. Survival of
the furriest. I know what he said. What he wrote. Fittest. I know.
I’m supposed to see Dr. Kiefer every Friday. This is the first
time my mother won’t be coming with me, even though she never comes in to talk.
She takes off for a long lunch. Sometimes she stops at a bar and doesn’t go
back to work. I think that’s where she met her smoking boyfriend, who pours
concrete for a living. He smells like a.) cigarette smoke, b.) Early Times
whiskey, c.) limestone from concrete, d.) cum.
“Wai-ellll,” Dr. Kiefer says when I sit down and stare at a
bright red cardinal in the window behind her. “Some big news, I understand.”
It figures that my stupid mother would tell Dr. Kiefer. I
don’t see why my stupid mother doesn’t come and talk to her instead of me.
“It’s terrible . . . and awful.” I don’t rhyme anymore when I
talk to Dr. Kiefer, because last June I noticed that she always put a checkmark
in her notes whenever I rhymed. She tried to do it so that I wouldn’t see it,
but I did. “It’s cowardly and dastardly.” I felt okay with that, since
everybody else in the damned country was saying it. Me, I couldn’t see how
flying a plane full of jet fuel into the side of a skyscraper was cowardly.
Dastardly, yeah, but that’s only half the rhyme that isn’t really a rhyme.
“You mean what happened Tuesday?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What’s your reaction?”
“It’s cowardly and dastardly,” I repeated, looking at the
cardinal behind in the window again. Its female mate had flown nearby, so it
hopped off. They do that, you know. Cardinals, I mean. They look out for one
another. One will eat and the other will keep watch. I’ve seen them do it.
“Is that why you moved out of the house? What happened Tuesday
in Manhattan?”
“It was on all the TVs everywhere. I can’t help but see it. It’s
like the Tower of Babel.”
“How so?”
“All those people in two tall buildings . . .” I stopped to
think of two hard-on dicks standing next to one another instead of tall
buildings. I think I thought this because I was talking to a psychiatrist. I
mean, I don’t think it’s my fault that I thought this. “All those people
talking and then gone. In the university cafeteria I stood behind a girl—” I
could feel my heart beat here when I thought of Ash’s neck “—who was crying when the second plane
crashed into the second tower.
“I . . . no, her friend took her down the stairs, away from
the TV.”
“What were you going to say?”
Both cardinals had flown away, so I stared at the bit of blue
sky I could see through the trees, whose leaves were already turning a pale
yellow.
“I was going to say that I wanted to touch her neck and tell
her it would be okay.”
“Her neck?”
“She had a long neck. But then her friend took her away.”
“Gray, what do you think she would have done if you had
touched her on the neck?”
“I really wouldn’t have touched her there. I meant maybe on
her shoulder.”
“What do you think she would have done if you had touched her
on her shoulder?”
“I don’t know. She was sad and crying and all.”
I know you don’t touch people on the neck. It was horrible,
abominable, and audible. I would have said this, too, because it was, except
that I didn’t want to watch Dr. Kiefer write checkmarks down.
“Have you seen her anymore?”
“Around,” I said.
“How many times?”
I had to stare at Dr. Kiefer’s boobs so that I wouldn’t have
to look at her eyes that are so gray and straight.
“Just twice,” I said. “She gets out of psychology class the
same time that I get out of math.”
- = +
Dr. Kiefer never got me to say that I had moved out. I know
she wanted me to tell her that, but since my stupid mother had already told
her, I didn’t want to Tower of Babel. I already Tower of Babelled about how
many times I’d seen Ash. It’s been 47 times.
Just before I finished up business on Friday, Dr. Kiefer told
me that I should make some friends. Maybe join a campus group.
“There’s a Baptist group,” I said, thinking that I could get
her to move her bra strap that supports the two guppy tanks she carries around.
She’s an atheist, I can tell. Even if she doesn’t wear black. There’s a
foot-tall Mexican statue of a blood god behind her. It’s made of red clay that
probably has twelve dead virgins’ blood in it. I know it doesn’t have dead
virgins in it. I don’t think those guys that flew that plane into the building
are going to have ten virgins waiting on them in heaven, either. And if they
did, they wouldn’t be virgins long, would they? That was a joke. The clay’s
probably from Georgia. There’s probably some goon hillbilly from the Tennessee
mountains making those foot-tall statues. He probably thinks ten virgins are
going to play his fiddle for him in heaven.
“That’d be fine,” Dr. Kiefer had said about the Baptist group.
Which scared me. Because she didn’t even pause and because she
meant it, I mean. Maybe I’ll go to the Catholic group. My mother would hate
that.
Ashley sometimes goes to the cafeteria after her two o’clock
Monday, Wednesday, Friday anthropology class. But she wasn’t there by the time
I got back. I went to my room and smelled it. I could hear girls flushing the
toilet, which was all right.
+ = -
Outside her English class on Monday made 48 times. That’s 11
more than our ages added, because Ash is a year older than me. I planned to
talk to her at time number 37, but I was on a bus and she was walking down the
street. I pulled the cord three times, but the stop was a block away and when I
went back I couldn’t find her. A fate date that didn’t mate.
“My dad’s ok,” I said, looking up when she walked out of the
class.
She stopped, then started backing away.
“We met on September 11,” I said. “I was watching the—” she
was a psychology major, so maybe I shouldn’t rhyme, I realized— “the airplane
flame.” I bit my tongue.
“I remember,” she said, sort of coldlike. “I’m glad that your
dad’s okay.”
“Would you like to—”
“I’ve got to meet my boyfriend for lunch,” she said.
It was just 9 o’clock and she didn’t have a boyfriend. Don’t
you think I’d know that after 48 times?
“That’s okay. I just wanted you to know that my dad’s all
right.”
“That’s good. I’m glad.” And she walked away. I didn’t follow
her because I knew she’d look back. And she did. I pretended to be reading my
math book against the lion. She almost bumped into someone because she was
looking back. It was a male, and she jumped.
+ = -
Halloween was coming. 134 times. I decided that whenever glass
was between us it only counted half. I decided that I was a like a cardinal,
watching out for his mate whenever I walked by her second-story apartment.
We’re hunting Bin Laden down. I think of him running from cave to cave at night
when the sky spies can’t see him all that well. He wears black, I bet. When
he’s not talking on TV, I mean.
135 times, and I couldn’t believe my luck. It was just like
the bus time, but better because I didn’t have to pull a cord. She finished one
line in the cafeteria just when I finished another. I couldn’t believe that I
hadn’t seen her across from me. And she hadn’t seen me, either. Fate never
abates.
“Hello, hello,” I said. That’s a rhyme I sometime sneak in on
Dr. Kiefer. It’s called identity rhyme. Did I tell you that already?
“Hello,” she returned in that quiet voice of hers and then
began looking for a table. There was only one anywhere near, because the place
was packed because of a sudden rain. I took a deep breath and heard a bolt of
thunder. I know thunder doesn’t bolt, but it really does, if you think about
it. Lightning is frightening, thunder is a wonder.
“There aren’t any seats,” I said, following her. “Can I sit
with you?”
“My boyfriend is meeting me here.”
I had seen two different guys inside her apartment. And
neither of them had come back. “Tower of Babel,” I said.
“What?”
“The Tower of Babel. From the Old Testament. You’re a
psychology major, so you should know about that.”
I was still standing, waiting for her to invite me to sit.
“How did you know that I was a psychology major?”
“You told me when we first met, watching the World Trade
Center.”
“Tower of Babel,” she said, looking at me accusingly. “I never
told you that.” Do you see what I mean? I could tell just from her neck and her
blue eyes that she was very intelligent. And then she said, “I’d rather eat
alone, okay?”
“Okay,” I answered. Two people were getting up four tables
away. Only one of them took her tray. French fries and bloody ketchup were left
on the other tray, with a piece of lettuce that looked like it had cum on it.
The cretin guy was probably a bastard son of my mother’s boyfriend. I forced
myself to sit in the empty spot and not look back at Ash. She needed space.
When I turned around, she was gone.
+ = 1
I thought that I would try that, something different. I
skipped all three of Ash’s Thursday and Friday classes. But I had an obligation
as her cardinal to walk by her apartment each night, though she left on Friday
night, and I think that Raven-Satan saw me walking by. They do have a car, a
red one that Raven-Satan drives. That fits.
Saturday was a football day. Go Big Blue.
Her house was on the way to the library. I got a job cooking
at the pizza place where we met for the second time. I like to look from the
oven to the table where she sat. Her house was on the way to that too, if I
walked catty-wampus just a bit. So I was walking back after working there
during the day. If I went home and took a shower in the same stall that three
girls took a shower, I wouldn’t smell like onions and mozzarella, and maybe
we’d meet on a high rate fate date.
I tripped a bit on the sidewalk when her house was coming
near, just like I always do. It was nearly dark, but not as dark as in a cave
with Bin Laden.
“I want to talk to you!”
An old guy who had a beer tummy and a guy in his twenties who
probably still played on some high school football team stood in front of me.
“I don’t know anyone about anything,” I said.
“What the fuck does that suppose’ to mean?” the semi-high
schooler said.
But the beer gut man just raised his palm. “I want you to stay
away from my daughter. Do you understand?” He punched me hard with two fingers,
just like a coach did on the only team I was ever on.
“I don’t know you! Keep your creep hands off!” I was carrying
a sack with two pieces of pizza, and I threw it at him. The semi-high schooler
hit me on the cheek good and hard and I fell back, then started swinging and
kicking, but they grabbed me and the gut rut began hitting me in the stomach
and face and I felt snot come from my nose, so I kicked him and then I was on
the ground where my head hit a tree root.
“Stop it! Stop it! You said you were just going to talk to
him!”
It was Ashley. Even though I’d never heard her scream I knew
it was her. She was acting just like a cardinal and watching out for her mate.
I looked up and could see her standing in yellow jeans and a dark shirt. I
could see the veins on her feet, too, because she was wearing white-strapped
sandals.
“You goddamned pervert!” the fat gut yelled and he kicked me.
“Stop it, Daddy, stop it!”
“I’ll stop when he stops looking at you that way!” And he
kicked me again, and then the semi-high schooler kicked me again.
“Tell them that you’ll stop. Tell them you’ll never follow me
again,” Ashley said. Raven-Satan was standing beside her. Even in the near dark
I could see her eyes glaring staring at me. But I really only saw Ashley, and I
thought that maybe she was crying for me like she’d cried for the World Trade
Center people. I blinked and then someone kicked me again.
“Stop it, or I’ll call the police, Daddy. He won’t follow me
anymore. Ever. Tell them!” she said, chirping like a cardinal and squeezing her
wings together.
“Mom,” I said, looking at Ashley’s bright cardinal sigh-eyes.
“Mom.”
Anything you would like to add? I’m not Gray. Honest
JoeTaylorzorba
(blog); jwt@uwa.edu (email); https://livignstonpress.uwa.edu
INSIDE THE EMOTION OF
FICTION links
001 11 15 2018 Nathaniel
Kaine’s
Thriller Novel
John
Hunter – The Veteran
002 11 18 2018 Ed
Protzzel’s
Futuristic/Mystery/Thriller
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Antiquities Dealer
003 11 23 2018 Janice
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004 11 29 2018
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in the Night
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Adult
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Death
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008 12 17 218
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see
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Inspirational
Christian Romance
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Miguel – Love’s Legacy: Prequel to The Naomi
Chronicles
044 05 24 2019 Gracie C McKeever’s
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045 06 03 2019 Micheal Maxwell’s
Mystery
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046 06 04 2019 Jeanne Mackin’s
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The Last
Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli
and
Coco
Chanel
047 06 07 2019 Philip Shirley’s
Suspense/Thriller
The
Graceland Conspiracy
048 06 08 2019 Bonnie Kistler’s
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Domestic
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055 06 29 2019
Epic Fantasy
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057 07 03 2019 Saralyn Ricahrd’s
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BOOK ONE: THE LOST RACE
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SINS
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072 08 19 2019 Carolyn
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KALIEDESCOPE
& OTHER STORIES
073 08 21 2019 Alison Ragsdale’s
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074 08 22 2019 Lee
Matthew Goldberg’s
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077 09 09 019 Joe William Taylor’s
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