the stories

snap

Wed, 6 Feb 2008 17:09:38 -0700

His father used to do it to tease them.

“All it takes is a snap of the fingers,” he would say, “and just like that, people will disappear.”

When they were really young, this is when they would panic and grab his snap-ready fingers, holding them tight and pleading, “Don’t do it, Dad! Please don’t do it!”

“But the line is huge – maybe some of the people ahead of us would be the ones to go and we could move up…”

“No, don’t!”

When they got older, they weren’t so quick to block his untested practical magic.

“I could snap my fingers…”

“Wait, wait,” his older brother, Ben said. “Can you choose who disappears and who stays?”

“Well…”

“And what happens to them when they disappear?” Tom added.

“I don’t know who goes. And I don’t know where they go. I think they just stop existing altogether. But there’s always a chance it could work in our favor, right? The hostess said it would be an hour wait and they do have the best mac-and-cheese here…”

“They do!” said Ben.

“But what if our friends disappear?” asked Tom.

“Yeah. That wouldn’t be good. Don’t snap, Dad.”

“We’ll wait.”

When they were teenagers, they were more than eager to encourage the snapping. But something always prevented it.

“You’re sure you want me to snap my fingers?” he asked, looking first at his oldest son, then his youngest; the one with only one week of experience as a teen.

“It won’t do anything, anyway” said Ben.

“But what if it did?” asked Tom.

“It won’t.”

“I think it would be cool if it did…”

Heap, party of three, your table is ready…

“Well, I guess we won’t find out today,” his father said, tousling the younger one’s long, curl-happy brown hair, wishing the older one with the piercing, too-sad-for-his-age blue eyes would still allow playful touch without bristling.

Tom looked at his watch.

Six-thirty.

Four hours. Four hours they’d been waiting.

Then he looked at his brother.

The makeshift bandage around Ben’s forehead had begun to drip red. Tom watched blood bead down the pale green windbreaker, pausing for a moment at the turned-up seam before leaping into a growing pool on the gray tile floor.

Tom’s voice was raw from yelling. First to get his brother’s attention during the riot. Then at the EMTs for taking so damn long to respond to his cries for help. Finally, he targeted the nurses for seemingly random triage decisions. He imagined them as horrible poker players.

“Does a bleeding forehead beat a coughing spell and a broken leg? I forget.”

Ben’s eyes closed again and he slumped forward. Tom saved a broken nose by catching the folds of his jacket just before Ben’s face hit the floor. Then he wondered if he should have let his brother fall. Surely a bleeding forehead plus a broken nose would bump him up in the queue.

“Hang in there, Ben…just hang in there,” Tom said, his voice little more than a whisper. He propped his brother against the plastic chair, expecting another complaint from the elderly woman in the dirty tweed coat. But no sound came from her lips. No breath, either, Tom concluded as he looked into her lifeless eyes.

He thought about calling the nurse, but stopped mid-word, allowing little more than a grunt to escape. Instead, he leaned toward the chair, quickly scanned the room to see who was watching – no one – then lifted the woman’s left arm. He slid her coat sleeve up, fumbled for the plastic band circling her wrist.

The green letter “D” raced around the black band like a news-ticker on steroids.

“Shit,” he said.

Ben was a “C.”

Whoever traded the color-based triage system for letter grades was an idiot.

Ben would have been happy with a “C.” If he were coherent, he’d surely have made a joke about it, referencing his failed attempts at completing high school. This made Tom want to laugh, but instead he coughed.

“I’m sorry,” Tom said. “I wish there was a way I could speed this up.”

Ben’s right eye opened halfway, his cracked lips parted.

“Snap,” he rasped.

Tom was puzzled for a moment. Then he smiled, tousled his brother’s blood-encrusted hair, and held out his hand.

“Okay. Watch this...”

letter

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:37:22 -0700

The paper is cornflower blue, translucent. It is the last sheet from a box that once held fifty sheets. The black lettering is an unlikely marriage of boxy printing and flowery cursive that she would know immediately as his “carefully-penned” script. It is decisive and fragile.

He didn’t want to write the letter. He doesn’t want to give it to her.

It is his goodbye.

He loves her more than anything. Every time he thinks that thought, he searches his life and circumstance for something to prove the statement false. For something to release him.

Every time, he finds nothing.

But this is the right thing to do. The only thing. He has told himself that a hundred times. She is not meant to be his lover or his wife. She can no longer be his friend.

These truths stab at his side. He leans forward, rests his arms on the railing. The metal is cold, but the night air is warm. Wind stirs leaves at his feet.

He reaches into his jacket, removes the letter, unfolds it and holds it with both hands.

The other forty nine sheets of paper drew her close. The love letters. The poems. The short stories. He blushes at the memory of one story. The one he titled “Blindfold.” He recalls the embarrassment of writing words he’d never say aloud. The awkwardness of handing her the letter in a crowded coffee shop. And most of all, the passionate thank-you kiss stolen in the back hallway next to the water fountain.

He knows this letter will bring her closest of all...by sending her back to her husband. Back where she belongs.

He understands the paradox. Of course he does. They have ridden the waves of paradox since the day they first met - in a marriage enrichment seminar.

The moonlight is bright. He begins to read.

My sweet Melissa,

Even if I wrote these words with my own blood, they could not express the heartache, the angst that accompanies my decision to write them. Already, you know what I am going to say. My heart is aching with yours as my hand fights the pen’s march toward an unassailable truth.

We have to say goodbye...

The hum of an approaching electric car pulls his eyes from the paper. Black market and officially banned Blue-Brite headlights momentarily blind him, then disappear quickly in the distance. The air swirls, blowing long brown bangs in front of tired grey eyes.

She loved his long hair. She loved his grey eyes.

She loved everything about him.

Loves. Present tense.

We have to say goodbye...

Do we? He knows the answer. He has known it for months. She has, too. She is expecting this letter.

He presses a button on his watch and numbers fade into view. They are amber, to match her eyes.

7:43.

Just enough time to deliver the letter before her husband comes home from work. He will leave it under the yellow flagstone like he always does and alert her of its presence with a coded text. Then he will walk away.

Forever.

He closes his eyes and tries to picture her smile, but he can’t see her. His breath quickens, his heart races. He feels the weight of “forever” pressing against his chest.

A sudden wind rips the letter from sweaty hands. Panic is joined by a strange relief. The letter floats gracefully on the evening breeze, a slow dance of forward and backward. Certainty and uncertainty. Hope and hopelessness.

I need to see her once more, he thinks. I will say goodbye in person. There is still time...

He is fragile and decisive. He takes off running.

watch

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:47:37 -0700

He looks again at the watch and smiles a cracked-lip smile. This is a real watch, the old-fashioned kind that requires winding and loses a minute every hour. He doesn’t mind losing a minute every hour.

I’m used to missing a day or two every week, he thinks, barely remembering that he used to say witty things like that more often.

It’s 7:42.

He takes a swig from the dark brown bottle, careful not to let drip any of the priceless red nectar. His wrist implant flashes yellow. The sub-dermal message lights pulse like a choreographed chorus line of fireflies.

“Over legal limit. Unsafe to drive,” it reads.

He used to laugh when he read that. He hasn’t owned a car in seven years.

The sleeping bag is bundled up and stuffed in the corner against an abutment. He doesn’t sleep in it. Not since the time he was surprised by a gang of drunk college students back in ’16. The word “irony” taps on his mind, tries to open a long-sealed door to understanding, and fails.

He takes another drink.

He has a scar from one of the thrown bottles. It looks like a second eyebrow. An angry red eyebrow that steals attention from his real, white brows and gives curious passersby a reason not to look him in the eyes. He hasn’t seen the scar himself for days. They closed the suburban shelter a week ago last Friday. It’s already a pile of rubble and soon will be an EcoTower for rich people and their hydroponic vegetable gardens and their electric scooters.

He doesn’t want to move back downtown. He likes the suburbs. Except when drunk college students throw beer bottles at him. Was it just that one time?

The suburban homeless shelter had a big bathroom. With a cracked, cloudy mirror. The best kind of mirror for people who don’t want to see themselves too clearly. And three showers. One had a shower curtain.

He’ll wash in the river again if he has to. And in the bathroom of the Mega-Wal-Mart when Betty’s working as greeter. Thursdays. Betty works Thursdays and doesn’t chase him away.

“Tomorrow is Thursday,” he says. He is momentarily frightened by the sound of his voice. It is hoarse, a smoker’s voice. He hasn’t smoked for three years. But he sure could use a cigarette right now.

To celebrate.

He has a watch. A good one. He found it in a dumpster.

And he saw his daughter. Three days ago. Or was it last month?

She was in a coffee shop, sitting at a table by the window next to a man who was not her husband. He wanted to tap on the glass, let her know he was still alive. But he didn’t want to embarrass her. She wouldn’t have recognized him, anyway. The strange man who wasn’t her husband had his hand on her leg. She had her hand on his. They were both smiling the kind of smile that only secret lovers share.

He was married once. That’s when he first saw that smile. His wife wore it sometimes when she came home late from work. But he never cheated on her. Not once. Except with alcohol. Yeah, that still counts, he thinks.

He screws the cap back on the bottle and sets it carefully against the wall. He lies back, resting his head on the sleeping bag. It makes a comfortable pillow. The wrist implant continues to flash, pulsing a familiar nightlight.

The moon is bright. Something catches his eye off in the distance. He wonders at first if it’s another jumper. But it’s just a piece of paper that has blown off the bridge. He watches it float in the air like a weightless pendulum, back and forth in unhurried rhythm.

He smiles a cracked smile. His daughter gave him a watch once. As a joke. He was half an hour late for her wedding rehearsal dinner. Everyone laughed when he opened the box.

He hasn’t laughed in months.

He looks at the watch and wonders if it’s running fast.

rescue

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:53:48 -0600

He senses something big is about to happen.

This is significant, for in his own life, big things have already happened. Not the kind of big things you record in a video scrapbook so you can replay them again and again. And not the kind that demand reverence and silence or quiet admiration.

No, these were the kind of things you wished you could forget. The murdering kind.

Lying on his bed, an incongruous layering of faded, thinning cotton sheets, a temperature-controlled thermo-fleece blanket, and a flexible soft-steel coverlet, he has been drifting between asleep and awake for the past twenty-three hours; longing to sleep when his eyes open to a world of devastating loss, longing to wake when his lucid dreaming fails and tortures him with once-familiar faces twisted into Picasso-esque nightmares of grotesque unfamiliarity.

He wishes he could stay in the space between - this space where he can’t quite grasp the gravity of his sin and circumstance, nor imagine anything as unreal as a life where his choices do not result in the extinction of hope.

It is in this place that he senses it.

Something big.

At first he imagines it is the trailing edge of a dream, a billowing ache that any other time might have landed him on the other side with relief, thankfulness that something so horrible could never really happen in the waking hours.

But when he sees the spinning colors in his peripheral vision, he knows this is something different.

They last only an instant, a tornado of yellow and orange whipping around a ball of fiery red.

He turns toward the fleeing colors and his eyes settle instead on his computer monitor, the nighttime screensaver displaying black raindrops dotting black pock marks onto a black puddle. He rolls to his left, closes his eyes, tries to un-imagine what he knows he would see in his inbox if he sent the puddle away with a keyclick or a voice command.

Three days of deathly silence.

Has it been only three days?

He will not click the keyboard - it is halfway across the room, not quite balanced on a mountain of unworn clothes, empty cans, and half-read books, but still fully functional, despite the chalky dust spilling onto it from the dented drywall.

He will not issue a voice command. His mouth is too dry for words, his mind too cluttered to form a rational thought. And what would he say? There is no way to reverse a confirmation to “Delete all Emails.”

The med-pac taped to his left wrist senses his anxiety and floods his system with pseudomelatonin. He falls back into a dream.

He is standing in the middle of an ice floe, naked and shivering. People are scattered across the blinding white landscape. They, too are standing, their backs to him. He knows them all. They are people he loves. And someone he loved. The ice begins to melt, slowly at first, then with anxious, time-lapse haste. Bodies slide into the frigid cobalt blue like helpless statues. They disappear under the surface.

Just before the ice evaporates beneath his feet, he stumbles out of sleep.

The yellow and orange and red tease him again, then dematerialize as he begins to recognize the sound of his own breathing.

A sudden, unexpected wave of peace washes over him. It is unlike any he has ever known. The answer to months of prayer, perhaps.

Or something else.

He smiles.

Something big is about to happen.

fall

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 04:42:53 -0600

“Fifteen-thousand feet...”

The woman’s voice is soft, soothing, without the hint of an accent.

Probably from the midwest. Iowa maybe. Or Nebraska. Yes, Nebraska. Lincoln, he decides.

He thinks of another voice. A voice he’s never heard. He is certain he would recognize that voice if she snuck up behind him in a coffee shop or at a park or on a crowded downtown street. She’d say something sweetly ironic like, “Hi stranger” and his heart would skip and stop and race all in the same nanosecond.

His heart should be racing now. Instead, he believes it is slowing down.

“Twelve-thousand feet...”

He is surprised at how easy it was to leap. Well, after taking the full five-minutes granted him to consider backing out, he means. Of course, he hadn’t done it alone. The 250 pound stranger strapped to his back had leapt, too.

This is the irony he sees when he thinks about falling: In this moment he is falling because he decided to. And yet he chose this sort of falling for one reason only - to forget another fall. A freefall he had not chosen. A fall that had chosen him.

A fall into her.

Is that irony? He isn’t sure. He recalls an ancient song by Alanis Morissette. She must be almost fifty by now. Probably popping anti-aging pills like candy. Smooth little neon green pills of kelp and chemistry, an uneasy alliance of the organic and synthetic.

“Ten-thousand feet...”

The altimeter voice is calm.

The air is cold. The wind whips at his face. It is nothing like an ocean breeze but he chooses to think of it like this anyway. She said she would remember him in the sudden, surprising cool of a breeze. Would she always remember him in the wind? Until the end of time?

What time is it, anyway? Nine-forty-something? What would she be doing at nine-forty-something?

He isn’t sure which is worse, to be forgotten...or to be remembered forever.

“Eight-thousand feet...”

He must be at terminal velocity by now.

It was supposed to be a leap into a new life. A jump-start for a stalled, broken heart. He laughs at this, but the wind catches his breath and no sound escapes his mouth. He is strapped to a 250-pound man and they are racing earthward at 120 miles an hour.

The man is dead. He knows this because he knows this.

A heart attack, most likely. Just as they stepped out of the plane and into the night sky.

Ah, now this is irony. A jump into new life that leads to certain death.

“Six-thousand feet...”

Is there a hint of nervousness in Ali’s voice? He has given the audible altimeter this name. He knows it’s not a very original name for an audible altimeter, but he doesn’t have time to be creative and he could use a friend right about now and “Ali” is as good as any other name.

He wonders if she’s happy - the woman who recorded these numbers and words to save skydivers from tragic endings. Is she married? Content? Does she feel loved? Desired? Known?

“Five-thousand feet...”

It’s my first jump, Ali, he says in his head.

And your last, if you don’t pull that cord. Do you know which one it is? she asks. Also in his head.

Yes, I do. But I don’t think I will, he says.

I had a feeling you’d say that, she replies.

It’s not your fault...you’re doing a great job with the warnings and...

“Four-thousand feet...”

...all.

Thank you, she says. And in answer to your question, I am happy.

I’m glad for you, he says. Do you think she is? Happy, I mean...

“Three-thousand feet...”

A sudden updraft spins him and he is facing the sky. He will not see the ground approaching. He will not know when he is about to die.

He likes this better. Sometimes not knowing is better than knowing.

Hope is all about not knowing that something can never be.

He thinks this thought and wonders if it’s as profound as it sounds in his head but then he laughs at that and this time sound does escape his lips and immediately it is snatched by the shadow of the new moon.

“Two-thousand feet...”

The moon...and...

He wishes he could time the next thought so it would be his last, but the words that fill his head and break his heart can no more easily be contained than the expanse above him.

...a million stars...

christine

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:52:44 -0600

Christine lets her last tears drip onto the page. Words and letters blur, but for the first time in months, her resolve does not.

This email. These 238 words have reshaped her love for him into something she can hold.

They have given her the strength to say goodbye.

She smiles as a video collage of memories plays in her mind.

Christine met him near the Eiffel Tower - two Chicagoans who waited until they were thousands of miles from home to discover how close they were. He was escaping to Europe for the fun of it. She was there for the romance.

And she was on her honeymoon.

They sat and talked for far too long. She didn’t really forget about her husband who was back at the hotel sleeping off another hangover. But she did for one terrible moment imagine what it might be like to forget him. Her heart quickens even now to think how things might have been different had her terrible moment coincided with Erik’s sudden and awkward attempt to kiss her.

Her wedding ring? It was locked away in the hotel safe. “I paid a lot of money for that,” Cal had said, “let’s not lose it on our honeymoon, okay honey?” But where was her head? Why hadn’t she told him sooner she was married?

It wasn’t just his charm, though that was surely what caught her attention. It was the ease of their conversation. They were old friends meeting for the first time. But not the last time. They ran into each other just three weeks later at a Cubs game back in Chicago. Erik was there with his girlfriend of the moment. They went out for drinks together that night. And many more nights. It was a different girlfriend who joined them at Navy Pier for the blues festival. And still another who latched onto him (and spoke to him) like a mother to a child when they visited Brookfield Zoo not to see the animals but to collect all 11 of the Mold-A-Rama plastic animal toys.

Christine was enamored with the girlfriend-in-tow Erik. So was Cal.

But she had fallen in love with the unaccompanied Erik, the Erik of long phone calls and beautifully-written emails, and surprise “is that seat taken?” appearances at lunch.

Christine folds the paper holds it to her chest. She walks to the back door and steps onto the balcony into the cool September air. She listens to the sounds of neighbors and traffic and stares out toward Lake Michigan where the bright moon is painting whitecaps on waves too weak to whip up their own.

Cal will be home soon. Wednesday is AA night. He’s been so good about going.

Christine takes a long deep breath and then comes back inside. She glides across the floor, a lightness to her step she hasn’t felt in months. She sits on the bed, opens the bedside table and pulls out her diary.

“Thank you,” she says to the folded paper. She slides it along with her fading fantasy of a different life between the pages and closes the book.

Erik will be fine. He will find a beautiful brilliant someone. Someone with sapphire eyes just like his. And she will be the luckiest woman in the world.

Apart from her, of course.

Christine hears the sound of a key in the door. It’s quarter till nine. Cal’s home early.

She can’t wait to see him.

erik

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:49:26 -0600

A snap and a scrape and an open “D” chord break the quiet, but Erik doesn’t bother to look at the fallen guitar. The notes swim around each other, looking for resolution.

In his left hand he holds a sheet of paper with 238 words. Arial font, 12-point type. Left-justified. A printout of the email he sent her six hours earlier. He has read it forty-four times. Each time, it ends the same. With “goodbye.”

This is not the first time he has tried to end their relationship. But it is the last. This time she will heed his pained plea. She will not contact him again.

He saw his chance to save her in a missing letter.

“Love you.”

No “I,” just “Love you.” This is how she’d closed her last email to him.

The room is silent again. And dark. Between the sounding of the chord and the fading away, night has fallen.

It was a rare moment of strength. She had only taken a half-step back, but in the space where that “I” had been, he found a door to the part of her he had not yet conquered. Her sense of right. He could steal it from her. She would not put up a wall as she had when they first met in Paris, when he’d leaned over to kiss her and she’d turned away. But as he paused there, stunned by her beauty as if seeing her for the first time he knew he could not take that from her.

It was his own sense of right that had written the email. A tender, sweet, sad goodbye.

Erik crumples the paper into a ball. His eyes fall out of focus, expecting tears that do not come. He absently clicks the tiny remote in his right hand. Soft blue lights blink from the speakers across the room, two sapphire eyes mirrored in his own - the only color in an otherwise gray world.

The bottle of pills on the couch next to him would not judge him. Christine would grieve for a time, then live again, finally free.

Erik tosses the crumpled paper toward the aluminum trash can. It clips the edge and bounces back to the floor, rolling to a stop by the neck of the silent guitar.

He might yet choose to live. But he isn’t sure he knows how anymore. He tries to remember the last time he heard his inner voice unaccompanied by Christine’s. And where would he go?

With a graceful swing of his right arm, he throws the remote. It hits the far wall, then falls into the trash can. Music begins pouring into the room. An old song. “Nights in White Satin.”

He looks at the pills again, blurring himself into the music. He will decide before the song is done. About seven minutes, he remembers.

Erik closes his eyes and time-travels to another life, another place. He is a teenager, sitting in a similarly dark basement, listening to this song. Lori’s sweet perfume has all but faded, but he can still taste her goodbye kiss on his lips.

“And I love you...yes I love you...Oh how I love you...”

He didn’t love Lori. Not like he loved Christine. He can’t imagine ever loving someone like he loved Christine. What he would give for a goodbye kiss from her...

“Letters I’ve written, never meaning to send...”

He picks up the bottle.

“Breathe deep, the gathering gloom...”

He twists the cap.

“Impassioned lovers wrestle as one...”

He looks at the shadowy trash can, barely visible in the voyeuristic moonlight peeking through the room’s only window.

“Cold-hearted orb that rules the night...”

bookstore

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:17:40 -0600

Ellipses / A Reader Blog from Wendy Kirkwood
September 18, 2019

I bought Arrowsmith more than a dozen years ago. Not from a used bookshop, but from one of the big stores before they went all cyber-cafe. Barnes & Noble or Borders or Books-A-Million. I don’t remember which.

It’s funny, really. Maybe more ironic than funny. I’m sitting in a small dusty independent book shop right now, sorting through a pile of books I’m thinking about purchasing. Stores like this one were all but made extinct by the big chains a few years back. Now, like LPs in the age of CDs, or CDs in the age of Instant Downloads, they’re making a comeback.

The small bookshops always have the best names. The Open Book, Tattered Cover, The Book Cellar, and where I am right now, Page & Turner’s.

Ryan doesn’t understand why I like this place so much. He bought me an E-book six years ago and told me to “wake up and smell the tech. Besides,” he has said at least a dozen times, “E-books save trees. Don’t you care about the environment?”

The first time he said it, he did so with a leading smile, and every time since then, with increasing disappointment and a trailing disdain.

I’m sorry. I just love books. There’s something rare and wonderful about the feel of one in my hands. It’s a subtly different experience every time a page is turned. Sometimes the page sticks, sometimes I have to wet my finger to grab hold of the edge (yes, I admit it, I lick my finger to do this and you don’t need to remind me how unsanitary that is). It’s the work, too...the effort. I turn a page because I want to...not because it’s expected of me. Turning a page gives me time to think, to wonder, to anticipate, and even to feel frustrated if the words that follow don’t live up to my expectations.

With an E-book, I press a button, the page flips with eerily perfect symmetry. It always flips because it’s programmed to. Did you know the “E” in E-book didn’t always mean “Envrionmentally-friendly”? They changed it from “Electronic” seven years ago to guilt...I mean entice a new generation of readers away from real books. I guess the “f” in friendly wasn’t important enough to be included in the abbreviation. Actually, that’s fine with me. I don’t think they’re friendly at all. E-books are cold, no matter how soft and pretty their leather covers.

Page & Turner’s closes at ten, but I still have about 20 minutes to choose from among three classic Stephen King novels, a fat poetry collection, that once-controversial Chelsea Clinton novel, “Breakwater,” and what appears to be the last book Michael Crichton wrote before his disappearance, “Invisible.” (I wonder if that was his original title for it, or some marketing department’s idea of a clever, if somewhat insensitive, sales tactic.)

I’m going to buy three books today. I’ll read them all before I’m back here next week.

But I opened this post with a mention of another book, Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis. I haven’t finished it yet. I only read a few pages every year. Ryan doesn’t bother laughing at that anymore and he’s well beyond shaking his head in dismay. It’s become like the cross-shaped birthmark on my left hip. That was a little distracting to him at first (and not just because of his atheism) - but now he doesn’t even notice.

I’m using Sinclair Lewis’ story about the life of Martin Arrowsmith to prolong my own life. It has become the right-side bookend for a growing collection of read-and-remembered stories that began with Go Dog Go. I’ll read at least a hundred more books cover to cover before I finish this one. That’s not because it’s such a slow read - though it is dense and plodding at times and loaded with medical and scientific jargon that make me wonder just who was on the Pulitzer committee in 1926.

No, the reason I won’t finish it is because I’m not yet ready to die. In a perfect world, I’ll be 110 years old and three pages from the end when I expire of natural causes.

Of course it’s not a perfect world. I am reminded of this every Thursday when I go to the clinic for a refresh of my chemo-meds.

“Soon,” they’re saying now. “Soon we’ll have a universal cancer cure.” This time, I think they mean it. I really do.
 It won’t be soon enough to help me. That’s okay. Mine is a managed pain. It will be a managed death, too.

But I don’t mean to get all maudlin. I mean, how could anyone be maudlin in a beautiful place like this? A little earlier the evening light was streaming in the clerestory windows, and as a customer walked up the quivering spiral stairs to the reference section, dozens of dust tornadoes spun in celebration of paper and ink.

Oh, and the smell, here...glorious. Must and leather, history and adventure. I’ll capture the scent and put a link right here for those of you tech heads out there, who, like my husband, have to get every plug-in possible for your IC or your computer or your iPhone.

I might take a bit of a blogging break in a few weeks. It’s time for a vacation. A real one with lots of real books and no Internet access. Yes, on purpose. But don’t worry. I’ll be back. And you can be assured of at least two things - I’ll have more book reviews for you...and none of them will be for Arrowsmith. Because it’s not time for me to finish it. Nope. Not yet.

Not yet.

Posted - 21:45:23

time

Wed, 5 Sep 2007 22:41:37 -0600

Ellen picked up the box, studied the instructions again, mouthing the words as she read silently. She looked at her sleeping husband. His breathing was slow and deep, just as it should be.
Any time now his body might shudder, spasm or shake. She desperately wanted to leave the bedroom, skip that part of the process and return once it was over. Instead, she reached down and placed her hand on his. It was warm.
Fifty-six years.
Their marriage had outlasted all three of their children’s marriages. It had been a good marriage. Jacob never strayed. Never came home drunk. Not once did he yell at her except when they both were arguing with equal fervor. He told her he loved her every day, like clockwork.
Then a year ago he started to forget things. Days would go by when he didn’t say a single word. But it wasn’t his silence that clued them in about his dementia. It was the day he told her “I love you” 63 times.
Jacob fought the battle against his disease as long as he could endure the side effects of the medicine. But he was exhausted by those side effects, diminished by them. He was ready to go.
“It’s time,” he said.
That was last Thursday. They waited until Monday to go to the doctor’s office for the assisted suicide kit. “Soft Sleep” was what it said on the box, but neither one of them could stomach calling it that.
“They should call it ‘time to go,’” he’d said when the doctor removed a box from the locked cabinet and set it in front of them. The doctor smiled, asked Jacob a series of questions to verify his current mental state, then lifted out of the box a small pink device that looked like a giant, gaudy upside-down ring. Jacob slid his index finger through the opening and a barely discernible red laser-light scanned and mapped his fingerprint, securing the contents of the dispenser only for him and starting a timer that would last 72 hours before rendering the chemicals inert.
Ellen brushed her hand across a different ring, his wedding ring. It was a simple texture-less design, thinned a bit by time, but otherwise the same band of gold she’d placed on his finger all those years ago.
Any time now.
She had run through this part of the process a dozen times in her head. What it would be like to watch his body suddenly jerk, autonomic systems offering one final losing challenge to drugs that had already committed him to their mortal whim.
She would miss him. Oh, she would miss him terribly. But it was his time, not hers.
The first time she’d wondered what life would be like without Jacob, Ellen felt horribly guilty. They had been married four years. It had finally dawned on her that his way of showing love was not what she’d expected. Not what she’d longed for. Consistency. Predictability. Stability. Wonderful traits for the man who had become her good friend and, at times, her best friend.
But she had longed for something more. For passion.
In the 11th year of their marriage, she’d nearly ruined everything, chasing that longing with her best friend’s husband. Jacob forgave her for that. And for the brief affair she had ten years later. He told her he would never leave her, no matter what. At times his promise felt like a prison sentence, but eventually, it came to feel like love.
Soon, though, she would have his permission to follow her passion.
Last night he apologized again for not being the king of romance she’d once thought him to be.
“I just didn’t know how,” he said. Then he’d squeezed her hand, kissed her softly on the forehead, and held her.
“So now you figure it out,” Ellen had laughed into his chest. She could feel his smile rise in that moment. But the moment was cut short by another fit of coughing. Then vomiting.
Side effects.
They met on a Wednesday. An early fall evening. She was heading to her dorm and he was chasing an errant football that had bounced off a sundial, narrowly missing her. She’d scolded him then, but his apology was so sincere, his smile so sweet, she quickly softened her words and dropped her hands from her hips, offering him a better view of her curves, inviting him to linger just a moment more before rejoining the pick-up football game.
From that day forward, he never left her side.
And she wouldn’t leave his side tonight, no matter how unsettling his final breath.
Ellen adjusted her position on the bed and smoothed her dress, remembering the first time she longed to feel Jacob’s hand against her skin. She looked up at the clock.
Soon...
It had been a good life. A very good life. They made a great team. She would keep thousands of wonderful memories until her last day. But she wouldn’t feel guilty about the life ahead. She was ready to live again. To make new memories. To see what passion still burned within her.
His body began to twitch...

kiss

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 23:03:47 -0600

“Hey, Beck...didn’t you work with this guy a long time ago?”
Becky brushed a wayward strand of long brown hair from her face and looked up from the touchscreen.
“What guy?”
Patrick clicked “skipback” on the remote, then spun the monitor so it faced his wife.
“Must be a slow news day.” Patrick got up from the couch, stretched, belched loudly. He didn’t say “excuse me.” He never did. “I’m going to bed. You should join me soon. Might be your lucky night.” He belched again.
“After I finish organizing these photos.” I’m sure it will take me hours.
When Becky looked again at the TV, she gasped. One hand went to cover her mouth and the other fell to the table. Her thumb hit “Delete” on the touchscreen, erasing two hours of tedious work. She didn’t notice. Or care.
Aaron.
His hair was grayer around the temples than she remembered. What had it been? Five years? Six? And he looked tired. Like he hadn’t slept in days. She laughed aloud when the reporter asked him about the secret to lucid dreaming.
“It’s a combination of things - sounds, scents, mostly.” And drugs. But he wouldn’t say that. Certainly he wouldn’t say that. “And drugs,” he said. The reporter was unfazed.
“So what you’re saying is, with the right combination of these things, you can dream whatever you want? For as long as you want?”
“Not anything you want. But anything you’ve experienced. Yes. And sometimes it takes hours to get there.”
“What’s the longest you’ve slept in order to get to a dream?” The reporter was pretty, all sexy eyes and flirty blond hair. But Aaron wouldn’t have given her a second look had he met her on the street.
“37 hours.”
“37 hours? Isn’t that unhealthy?”
“Depends on the dream,” he said. A wry smile brought momentary life to tired eyes. He was looking into the camera. Looking right at her. Becky’s heart began to race.
“Any chance you want to tell us about the dream you’ll be choosing for this next marathon?”
“Nope.”
“Not even a hint?”
“I’ll tell you the song I’m using as a sonic trigger.”
There was a brief pause. Again he looked into the camera.
“It’s an old song called ‘This,’” he said.
Tears pooled in Becky’s eyes.
“So did you know that guy?” Patrick was standing in the hallway, staring at her from the shadows, mumbling through his toothbrush and dripping white foamy toothpaste onto the black tile floor.
Becky turned away, but not before a single tear fell. It landed on the touchscreen. On a ten-year-old photo of Patrick wearing a goofy grin, pretending to toss her into a swimming pool.
“Yeah...” She grabbed her wine glass and stood abruptly, stubbing her toe on the coffee table. “A long time ago.” She hobbled toward the kitchen.
“I hope you’re not refilling that glass...” Patrick called after her. He waited two seconds for a response, then walked away.
She didn’t bother to turn on the lights. She just leaned against the counter, head in her hands, and sobbed. The picture in her mind was far more vivid than any she had been sifting through on the computer.
He had just kissed her. Their first kiss. Their only kiss. It should never have happened. There could never be another. That look in his eyes - equal measures of incredible love and deep sadness. Of long-held hope and sudden resignation.
She wondered if he was sleeping now. It was early. Not quite quarter to nine o’clock in Chicago. Was he dreaming? She wished she could join him there.
“This” was playing in the other room. Some news editor’s idea of a cute musical tag for a lightweight human interest story. But it was far more than that to Becky.
She would not go to bed. Not tonight. She would give this night to Aaron. She would stay awake and think only of him. And the words to that song...

“all i wish,
and all i want,
and all i hope for

just...

this...”

cascade

Sat, 1 Sep 2007 16:05:14 -0600

The gentle mist gave way to a powerful spray, but the transition between the two was seamless, subtle. Kylie closed her eyes and tilted her head to feel the hot water rain against her face.

She sensed him before the soft blush of cool air swirling into the shower offered evidence of an opened and closed door. Kylie turned to look at her husband of 15 years. He was standing at the sink, reaching for a washcloth. Nick’s face was sunburned, his squint-wrinkles lined and underlined with dirt and sweat. She loved those wrinkles, lines to mark age, resilience. Commitment.

He hated them.

Nick had asked her to help with the garden. His garden. She was stunned and had responded with a cartoon expression of surprise, drawing both hands to an open mouth that morphed into a smile dotted by two emerald eyes.

Of course! Just tell me what to do.

The left side of his mouth had turned up to acknowledge her exaggerated reaction and her botanical ignorance in the same smirky grin.

White tomatoes.

She didn’t like the white tomatoes. Oh, they tasted great. With eyes closed they might have been some of the best tomatoes she’d ever tasted. But she didn’t eat with her eyes closed. That’s what she said the first time he’d served them.

Nick reminded her of this every chance he got. Twice while they were harvesting them today. It made her like them even less.

He buried his face in the waterlogged washcloth. Kylie turned her body, faced the vanity. The torrent surged against her left side, cascading across her stomach, down her legs. Through the water-beaded glass door she could see all of herself in the mirror. She looked good for a forty-year-old woman who almost never took body-altering supplements.

Damn good.

Kylie placed her hands against her flat stomach, fingers spread to reveal her belly button. She willed Nick to look at her.

He didn’t look up.

Kylie glanced at the control panel again. The diffuser was set to “Two-Way Clear”, not her usual setting, “One-Way Privacy.” For the first time in years she was inviting him into her sacred space. It’s not like they hadn’t shared a few showers together in the early years of their marriage. But over time, as routine and familiarity turned into reticence and eventually retreat, she’d claimed her shower time as her own.

It’s the only time I have just for me.

The glass and tile and chrome box had become her safe haven. And though the compromise that led to installation of expensive diffuser glass might have brought the illusion of a shared space, two “Privacy” settings continued to guarantee her a few minutes of daily solitude even when Nick was running late for work and had to steal into the bathroom to shave and brush his teeth.

But not today. She wanted him to look. She wanted her husband to glance in the mirror, become transfixed by her naked body - her sexy, water-soaked, raspberry-scented naked body - turn, take two steps, throw open the door and join her under the waterfall, clothes and all. She wanted him to wrap her in an embrace and speak with a torrent of kisses of his love for her. Of his desire for her.

As Nick went to hang the washcloth on the towel rack, he knocked his watch onto the heated tile floor. He picked it up - the glass face was shattered and the second hand had stopped.

9:45.

He didn’t swear. He just shook his head. He looked up, but just then the shower glass turned opaque.

Kylie swore.

Damn this glitchy technology!

She reached for the control panel...

clockwise

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 01:16:32 -0600

They didn’t mark time by numbers on a digital clock or hands on a watch. Only their mother’s voice gave structure to days. It had been this way for weeks.

We’re having a grand adventure, she said.

Tessa and Jordan sat side by side on the merry-go-round, their bare feet stuffed into the playground sand. The evening sun tied long shadows to their ankles.

Jordan leaned over to Tessa, touching his head to hers. She was mesmerized by the shadow monster they created on the ground in front of them. Jordan lifted his hands over his head, spread his fingers and clawed the air. Tessa screamed and buried her face in Jordan’s chest. He told her she was being silly, that they were just shadows. But he hugged her tight anyway.

Lift your feet, he said.

He stood, grabbed the silver bar, and began to push the merry-go-round.

Clockwise.

He said it aloud. He wasn’t absolutely certain of the direction, but this was the biggest word in his head and he was pleased simply to have remembered it.

Not too fast, Tessa cautioned. She scooted toward the middle.

I know.

Tessa closed her eyes and leaned back against the cooling metal, feeling the rivets against her back, the warm air on her pink face.

That’s fast enough! she said, lifting her head just a little to speak, feeling the extra weight given it by centrifugal force - but, of course, not imagining such a concept in her pre-school brain.

Jordan let go and watched the yellow and the blue spin by, then jumped onto the red and lay down opposite his sister, his head toward the middle where her hair was splayed out, pulling gold from the sunlight and drawing yellow curls against the gray circle.

He remembered a different merry-go-round. Somewhere else. When he was little. When his feet didn’t hang over the edge. He liked that better. Tonight the merry-go-round’s edge pressed creases into his calves.

The wind flicked sand from his feet.

He spread his toes as wide as he could, felt the breeze touch tender spaces he hadn’t felt it touch before.

No. I like this better, he decided.

A rhythmic mouse-quiet squeak from the spinning wheel brought imagined crickets to the seaside motel for a few moments, but they left as the merry-go-round slowed, then stopped.

Do you want me to spin it again? Jordan asked, not moving.

I’m hungry, said Tessa.

Jordan was hungry, too.

Clockwise, he said again, then sat up. He began shuffling his feet - a sidestep shuffle that took some concentration to master. The merry-go-round started spinning. Slowly.

I’m hungry, she said again.

Mom will be back soon.

I’m hungry now!

Mom’s getting pizza.

I want it now!

Jordan would have told Tessa not to fuss if he hadn’t been distracted by a light dancing behind a nearby row of palm trees. He tried to follow the light as he spun, whipping his head around. But it was gone.

He heard something breathing.

We need to go, Tessa.

But I’m hungry.

Now Tessa!

Where are we going?

Jordan grabbed her arm, pulled her to her feet and dragged her off the merry-go-round. They fell to the ground, dizzy, disoriented. Jordan was scrambling to his feet when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and hot breath on his neck. The stranger smelled like his grandfather’s basement. A dark, smoky smell.

Tessa began to whimper and the man placed a hand over her mouth. Jordan wanted to yell, but couldn’t find words.

Counter-clockwise, the man said. He spoke as if sand filled his throat. You were spinning counter-clockwise. Then he laughed, but Jordan knew this laugh wasn’t the sort of laugh that followed knock-knock jokes. It came from somewhere else. A bad place.

Jordan started to push against the man, but his arms were weak and shadow claws were useless against a real monster. The stranger cocked his arm, preparing to swing at Jordan. In this instant, Jordan saw the source of the darting light. The glass face of the man’s watch. If he could have seen the hands on that watch, if he could have seen them and known how to read the time, Jordan would have yelled “6:45” to distract the stranger. But all he saw was the sun’s glare.

Tessa turned to see her mother drop a pizza box and open her mouth to scream...

golden

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 16:47:46 -0600

gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:13 PM): hey Fab - everything in place?
fabuliste451 (7:37:15 PM): hey gabi. yeah. you?
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:18 PM): yup. golden. ;-) - live feeds are rolling
fabuliste451 (7:37:20 PM): good. this will go wide. big news.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:22 PM): biggest. message loud ‘n clear
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:25 PM): silence = support for status quo
fabuliste451 (7:37:29 PM): not gonna be silent anymore.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:32 PM): u are amazing uno
fabuliste451 (7:37:36 PM): ino. with right inspiration i can do anything.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:40 PM): i can think of some things id like to do with you...
fabuliste451 (7:37:41 PM): yeah. me too.
fabuliste451 (7:37:42 PM): but later.
fabuliste451 (7:37:44 PM): (not soon enuf)
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:48 PM): so surreal how we met
fabuliste451 (7:37:50 PM): yeah. still don’t believe it.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:52 PM): u were so cute
fabuliste451 (7:37:59 PM): me? that was u. i was smitten. not just by ur beauty - unmatched. but by the way you think. you ‘n’ me - like minds. you were gonna change the world.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:09 PM): we are
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:10 PM): hold / kev
fabuliste451 (7:37:12 PM): thot he was at work?
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:37:13 PM): ...
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:41:35 PM): back. sorry. no, not here in room. phone.
fabuliste451 (7:41:37 PM): anything important?
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:41:40 PM): no. just reminding me of stuff. i didn’t write it down.
fabuliste451 (7:41:42 PM): lol. no point.
EvesDrop has detected an unauthorized intrusion. Unknown bot-type. Probable source, Private, non-Fed (98.8% certainty). Use caution. You are being watched. [EvesDrop v3.7 - Key Code Verification: 83302HgK23LPf920Ya]
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:41:47 PM): Hmm...u catch that?
fabuliste451 (7:41:48 PM): yeah.
fabuliste451 (7:41:50 PM): not worried about non-Fed.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:41:55 PM): c/b hired gun working for Fed
fabuliste451 (7:42:00 PM): tru. then we’re already busted.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:42:07 PM): lol. yeah. so...i might as well spill: golden gate bridge is about to get wet.
fabuliste451 (7:42:09 PM): WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:42:13 PM): Doesn’t matter. check clock. less than four minutes. can’t stop us now.
fabuliste451 (7:42:16 PM): we need to disappear. right away.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:42:20 PM): ino. that’s always been the plan.
fabuliste451 (7:42:25 PM): can’t wait to see you.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:42:26 PM): me2.
fabuliste451 (7:42:30 PM): what if the bot is kevins doing?.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:42:33 PM): don’t you think he already knows?
fabuliste451 (7:42:39 PM): did you tell him anything?
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:42:43 PM): no. but i’m sure he suspects. about us anyway. not about the rest.
fabuliste451 (7:42:49 PM): if it’s him, he’ll know now. he’ll track you.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:42:59 PM): nope. scrambled my em-bed. not cheap scramble. expensive one. it’s randomizing locales. i’m a ghost now.
fabuliste451 (7:43:09 PM): cool. so how will i find you.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:43:14 PM): i’ll find u.
fabuliste451 (7:43:20 PM): like u did once already. :-) u have list of all my possibles?
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:43:22 PM): memorized.
fabuliste451 (7:43:39 PM): miss u already.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:43:40 PM): mu2
fabuliste451 (7:43:46 PM): we’re doing the right thing.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:43:50 PM): yes.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:43:53 PM): having doubts?
fabuliste451 (7:44:18 PM): not a fan of collateral damage. but o/w, no.
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:44:23 PM): price to pay for freedom.
fabuliste451 (7:44:27 PM): yes. there’s always that
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:45:01 PM): less than minute. better go off-l.
fabuliste451 (7:45:09 PM): c u soon
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:45:13 PM): two months.
fabuliste451 (7:45:22 PM): 30 seconds till new world
gabriedreamgrl892 (7:45:28 PM): better world. love u. so much
fabuliste451 (7:45:31 PM): l
fabuliste451 (7:45:32 PM): love

blue

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:46:51 -0600

“Well...what do you think?” Brad leaned forward across the red-checked tablecloth and reached for Kelly’s hands. She let her hands slip into his. A familiar warmth both steadied her and unsettled her.
“What do I think? I think you’re crazy, that’s what I think.” Kelly turned her head again, taking in the view of the ocean. “I mean...we’re on an island. Just you and me.”
The beautiful illusion was momentarily shattered as a waiter slipped quietly into the room through a curtain mostly hidden by a tall palm tree waving in the wind behind her. He set a tray on the table and disappeared. Brad watched as the curtain peeled open for a moment, revealing a small, dimly-lit hallway, then fell closed.
“Close your eyes,” said Brad.
“But I want to see this...I want...”
“Just close them.”
She did. He slid his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small box. Holding it just below the table, he opened it. The three-carat blue diamond caught the artificial sunlight, spitting azure-tinted fireflies into a wild dance across the room.
“I can even smell the ocean,” she said. “And that breeze...”
“Keep your eyes closed...”
“I am...”
He lifted the box and held it across the table in front of her.
“Okay...you can open them now.”
She knew why he’d brought her here. No one reserved a table at 360 just to enjoy a nice meal. At least no one she knew. But when Kelly opened her eyes, she didn’t need to feign surprise.
“Brad...” It was all she could manage, the rest would require careful wording.
All this time. All these months she was so certain Brad was “the one.” Even her best friend, Ian, thought so.
“It’s clear he really loves you,” Ian had said, sometime after their online discussion of the most recent coup in Korea and before they launched into an abbreviated (she had to get up early for work) but perfectly satisfying session of virtual sex.
A nearly imperceptible hiccup in the otherwise perfect ocean scene momentarily distracted Kelly from what she knew she would have to say. Just above the horizon behind Brad, a tiny black dot appeared, then multiplied into a virus of black dots that erased a small portion the ocean and sky. Just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.
Brad shifted in his seat.
“Kelly...” he began.
“Wait,” she interrupted. “Brad, wait.” His smile faded. His hand, which she noticed had been shaking, drifted down to rest on the table.
“No...I don’t want to wait, Kelly. I love you. And I know you love me...”
She looked at the diamond.
“Hang on a sec...I almost forgot,” Brad picked up a black and red remote she hadn’t noticed before and pushed a button. The bright afternoon sun faded, morphing seamlessly into evening, the sun becoming a golden jewel resting on the ocean.
“Un...be...lievable,” she said. It was a stunning effect. She had read about it, of course. But until now, didn’t believe it could be this spectacular.
“Kelly, I know we still have some things to work out...”
He meant Ian, but she knew he wasn’t going to mention his name. Not tonight. He would have to come up with a better argument before broaching that subject again.
“...but we’re a great match. You know this.”
She did. And in many ways, they were. But right there in his hand was hard evidence that it wasn’t the match she longed for.
A half dozen random black digital stains suddenly dotted the wall and ceiling as she opened her mouth to speak. The artifacting of the night scene was a premonition. Or a confirmation.
“Brad,” she said his name too harshly, but it couldn’t be retracted. “Brad,” softer this time, but she could not mask the coldness in her voice. “You know I love you. I love our times together. But those things we have to work out...” She reached for his hands, careful not to accidentally close the velvet box. “I’m not giving up Ian.”
“Can we not talk about that right now...?”
“He knows me...” .
The artifacting was growing exponentially, a storm of black splotches flickering nervously, erratically, rapidly destroying the illusion of the idyllic scene. But it was hardly idyllic anymore.
“And it’s clear to me tonight,” she continued, “...that you don’t.”
The life drained from his eyes.
“If you did,” she said, “You would know why I can’t accept this...” She closed the box. It snapped shut. The sound of the ocean began to snap, too, no longer an organic whoosh, it had become crackling static.
Just before the room went black, he understood. He remembered. The article she wrote. The one that had been published in Important Stories. The one that had been viewed over half a million times. The one she was so excited about. The one he’d sort of half-read during a lunch break. It was about blue diamonds. About the devastating environmental cost to create them. She didn’t love blue diamonds at all. She hated them and all they represented.
Kelly felt for her IC and tapped the screen. A blue glow lit up the room, illuminating the resignation that had already settled on Brad’s face.
Kelly wondered if Ian would be online. She checked the time.
8:45:32