When the Leader entered, the whole room was like iron filings and a magnet. There was a sound like the wind just before a cat pounces.
Radwa rested his bow on his harp delicately. He took deep breaths, waiting for his cue, letting the aromatics of the prelude begin to warm. The bass player set to plucking with his right hand, the one missing a pinkie.
The Leader took a seat at a circular table and his entourage of co-conspirators and thugs filled the other seats like bullets in a revolver.
Kafa began working on the drums, and the beat rippled the water in the pitchers set atop each table.
But no one had touched their glasses. They were waiting for the Leader.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Gregor the Garbageman
Sometimes they are very heavy, filled with wet leaves or lumber. Gregor has a permanent crick in his shoulder where he rests the cans. Walking to the truck, his head throbs and dirty sweat beads out onto his brow.
Meanwhile the driver Martin slurps the pale brown drops pooled in the lid of his coffee cup, held in one hand while his other manipulates an oversize steering wheel. He takes several gos at a tight alley turn and then, signaling to his partner in the side mirror, shifts into Park and waits for Gregor to hop off and haul the garbage over to the truck.
Gregor listens to the throb in his head and thinks how winter is the most savage season. Children injuring themselves playing on ice. Their parents making themselves sick on strong liquor.
Just before dawn there is a terrifying stillness and while looking at all the city's alleyways and empty bus stops Gregor imagines cold blue fingers curling, tightening their grip.
Meanwhile the driver Martin slurps the pale brown drops pooled in the lid of his coffee cup, held in one hand while his other manipulates an oversize steering wheel. He takes several gos at a tight alley turn and then, signaling to his partner in the side mirror, shifts into Park and waits for Gregor to hop off and haul the garbage over to the truck.
Gregor listens to the throb in his head and thinks how winter is the most savage season. Children injuring themselves playing on ice. Their parents making themselves sick on strong liquor.
Just before dawn there is a terrifying stillness and while looking at all the city's alleyways and empty bus stops Gregor imagines cold blue fingers curling, tightening their grip.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Pierre the Perfume Tester
Pierre has a nosebridge like the hump of a camel. His nostrils, attractive cylinders which give the organ an aquatic aesthetic, would look large on any other face. On his they only accentuate the massiveness of the rest of the nose.
He sits on a high-backed, velvet-cushioned chair without armrests. It is a small room, and the chair is the only piece of furniture. A yellow paisley pattern covers the walls and there are no windows. He is dressed sharply and his chest swells slightly as he breathes.
A door is opened and the scientist pushes a simple steel cart laden with rows of corked test tubes. The tubes contain liquids in a variety of shades, mostly amber.
He pulls a notepad from the pocket of his lab coat and hands it to the well-dressed man, who has his own pen.
Silently, the scientist lifts one of the vials and, uncorking it, hands it to Pierre. Pierre draws the object to his heroic nose and sniffs it, just once.
He takes a moment to scribble some thoughts on the notepad, then sniffs the potion again.
He holds his breath almost a full minute, wearing the expression of someone starting to remember something. Then, exhaling, he writes some more. He returns the test tube to the scientist, who sets it aside and begins to uncork another.
“Passion,” says Pierre suddenly, “is the perfume of life.”
He sits on a high-backed, velvet-cushioned chair without armrests. It is a small room, and the chair is the only piece of furniture. A yellow paisley pattern covers the walls and there are no windows. He is dressed sharply and his chest swells slightly as he breathes.
A door is opened and the scientist pushes a simple steel cart laden with rows of corked test tubes. The tubes contain liquids in a variety of shades, mostly amber.
He pulls a notepad from the pocket of his lab coat and hands it to the well-dressed man, who has his own pen.
Silently, the scientist lifts one of the vials and, uncorking it, hands it to Pierre. Pierre draws the object to his heroic nose and sniffs it, just once.
He takes a moment to scribble some thoughts on the notepad, then sniffs the potion again.
He holds his breath almost a full minute, wearing the expression of someone starting to remember something. Then, exhaling, he writes some more. He returns the test tube to the scientist, who sets it aside and begins to uncork another.
“Passion,” says Pierre suddenly, “is the perfume of life.”
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Fernando the Fry Cook
Fernando sticks two fingers into the slit he’s made with the serrated knife and scoops out the pink meat in clumps which stick to his fingers.
“What? This is good meat here. You can taste, see---it won’t hurt you...” he sucks a grape-sized piece of raw pork sausage onto his broad lips, and with a lick of his tongue like a coral eel zipping out of its hole and then quickly back in, the morsel disappears.
“Listen, if you’re gonna stand there with your Little-Miss-Shits-Roses attitude, I’d just as soon you get lost. I’ve got to brown these sausage crumbles and stick them in the freezer before I can clock out. 6:30 a.m., people want their eggs & sausage.”
Dollops of the gristly meat sizzle madly when Fernando drops them into the warmed oil. As he pushes them around the griddle they transform into sweaty, grayish-brown clumps.
“Ya see, I believe people should be at peace with their food, their bodies, their bodily functions, yaknowhatImean? Like this pig I’m cookin’ here, he’s not so different from me. When he was alive, he ate and shat and slept just like I do. And then somebody killed him, and all his shitting and eating days were over.”
As Fernando orates he makes chopping motions with his spatula, as if he were holding an extension of the knife that bled the animal, the cleaver that butchered it, the grinder that sausaged it.
“Now I just ate some of this pig. Later I’m going to shit him out. Rinse, lather, repeat...and then eventually I die. After that they can throw me in the pig trough for all I care. Ha!”
Sealing the last of the crumbles in its Tupperware, Fernando pulls a hairy forearm across his sweaty forehead.
“There’s one thing I’ll tell ya. Whatever ya do, you gotta be at peace with yourself.”
“What? This is good meat here. You can taste, see---it won’t hurt you...” he sucks a grape-sized piece of raw pork sausage onto his broad lips, and with a lick of his tongue like a coral eel zipping out of its hole and then quickly back in, the morsel disappears.
“Listen, if you’re gonna stand there with your Little-Miss-Shits-Roses attitude, I’d just as soon you get lost. I’ve got to brown these sausage crumbles and stick them in the freezer before I can clock out. 6:30 a.m., people want their eggs & sausage.”
Dollops of the gristly meat sizzle madly when Fernando drops them into the warmed oil. As he pushes them around the griddle they transform into sweaty, grayish-brown clumps.
“Ya see, I believe people should be at peace with their food, their bodies, their bodily functions, yaknowhatImean? Like this pig I’m cookin’ here, he’s not so different from me. When he was alive, he ate and shat and slept just like I do. And then somebody killed him, and all his shitting and eating days were over.”
As Fernando orates he makes chopping motions with his spatula, as if he were holding an extension of the knife that bled the animal, the cleaver that butchered it, the grinder that sausaged it.
“Now I just ate some of this pig. Later I’m going to shit him out. Rinse, lather, repeat...and then eventually I die. After that they can throw me in the pig trough for all I care. Ha!”
Sealing the last of the crumbles in its Tupperware, Fernando pulls a hairy forearm across his sweaty forehead.
“There’s one thing I’ll tell ya. Whatever ya do, you gotta be at peace with yourself.”
Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Atomic Man Pt. 7
Regaining consciousness only a few seconds later Charlie found himself slumped in his seat, car drifting on momentum down a darkened residential street. His lips and nose ached where they had hit the steering wheel. He braked and the slight change in velocity made his head spin.
For three shaky breaths he thought of nothing as the world stopped squirming in front of his eyes. The truck was nowhere in sight. Through his windshield he could see that the hood of his poor Tercel had crumpled like wet paper.
He pulled to the curb and parked. Then he realized where he was: the 1600 block of First Street, by Bethany's place. He checked himself out in the rearview: not too bad, just a thin trickle of blood from his nose.
Reaching in the glove compartment, he tore off a corner of a partially used Taco Bell napkin and stuffed it into his nostril. It didn't hurt at all, which he chalked up to a lingering drunk. Actually now that he thought about it, he wasn't angry any more either---he felt kinda good. Better than good. He felt warm, like the summer sun emerging from behind a raincloud. His luck was definitely turning around. For sure.
He saw a shadow moving behind the curtains in the window of the house he had parked in front of. "Sure I'm crazy," he hummed as he stepped out of the car and walked towards the door.
"Hey there Bethany."
With big curious doe eyes Charlie's old classmate regarded him from inside her carpeted foyer. She wore an oversize Cleveland Browns T-shirt and denim shorts. Charlie remembers her from high school as a shy girl with pimples and a flat chest; they were neighbors and usually walked home together. He could remember one dark November night when she had been late at school meeting with Debate Team, and she had pretended to be angry at her mom for making him escort her home, but then had laughed at some joke he made and in that moment Charlie realized he had a crush.
"Hi Charlie." Oh wow, thought Charlie, she has grown up. It was the voice of a woman, a wiser woman who was wary of childhood friends showing up unannounced late in the night. No more acne either. Now if only that Browns shirt weren't so loose...
"Are you alright?"
"Oh this? Don't worry, it's just the dry air. What're you up to?" He silently congratulated himself on his quickly improvised explanation.
The pretty doe eyes studied him for a long moment. "Making Hamburger Helper. You hungry?"
Charlie stepped inside and was careful to shut the screen door behind him.
For three shaky breaths he thought of nothing as the world stopped squirming in front of his eyes. The truck was nowhere in sight. Through his windshield he could see that the hood of his poor Tercel had crumpled like wet paper.
He pulled to the curb and parked. Then he realized where he was: the 1600 block of First Street, by Bethany's place. He checked himself out in the rearview: not too bad, just a thin trickle of blood from his nose.
Reaching in the glove compartment, he tore off a corner of a partially used Taco Bell napkin and stuffed it into his nostril. It didn't hurt at all, which he chalked up to a lingering drunk. Actually now that he thought about it, he wasn't angry any more either---he felt kinda good. Better than good. He felt warm, like the summer sun emerging from behind a raincloud. His luck was definitely turning around. For sure.
He saw a shadow moving behind the curtains in the window of the house he had parked in front of. "Sure I'm crazy," he hummed as he stepped out of the car and walked towards the door.
"Hey there Bethany."
With big curious doe eyes Charlie's old classmate regarded him from inside her carpeted foyer. She wore an oversize Cleveland Browns T-shirt and denim shorts. Charlie remembers her from high school as a shy girl with pimples and a flat chest; they were neighbors and usually walked home together. He could remember one dark November night when she had been late at school meeting with Debate Team, and she had pretended to be angry at her mom for making him escort her home, but then had laughed at some joke he made and in that moment Charlie realized he had a crush.
"Hi Charlie." Oh wow, thought Charlie, she has grown up. It was the voice of a woman, a wiser woman who was wary of childhood friends showing up unannounced late in the night. No more acne either. Now if only that Browns shirt weren't so loose...
"Are you alright?"
"Oh this? Don't worry, it's just the dry air. What're you up to?" He silently congratulated himself on his quickly improvised explanation.
The pretty doe eyes studied him for a long moment. "Making Hamburger Helper. You hungry?"
Charlie stepped inside and was careful to shut the screen door behind him.
The Atomic Man Pt. 6
"Sure I'm crazy," crooned Billie Holiday on Charlie's car radio, "crazy in love, I say."
If confronted, Charlie might have claimed he was only too tired to bother changing the station, but actually he was enjoying the schmaltzy tune, drumming the thick tempo on his steering wheel as he cruised home on a deep moonless night. He felt peaceful as a lullaby; the three or four drinks he'd had at the bar went down smooth and easy as sweat down a working man's back. He felt as if he had just emerged from a hot bath.
Putting the '93 Toyota Tercel into second gear, he started to climb what one old-timer had told him was the "third steepest hill in Ohiuh." You could tell the old-timers from the way they pronounced Ohio. An "uh" on the end like an exhausted sigh, like they were too beat to finish the long vowel and just gave up.
It was like some club you only gained membership in once you had pissed away most of your life doing crap work for crap pay in Appalachia, and instead of a ring or a lapel pin you got a twang and a gap in your teeth.
Had Charlie been less immersed in musings on his own unpromising future, he might have noticed the glow dawning atop the crest of the hill ahead of him. Instead he was unprepared for the pickup truck which, barreling toward him from the opposite slope, smashed into his right headlight hard enough to spin him rudely a full 90 degrees.
The impact was so great that he was momentarily unable to see through open eyes. When vision returned, he was looking through the vertical wrought-iron bars of a cemetery and a small, hysterical part of his brain was sure he had joined its population.
His second hormonal response, after shock, was rage.
Charlie completed the spin he had started with such speed that he nearly did enter the graveyard, spotted his prey's taillights near the bottom of the hill, and gave chase. Righteous images of revenge bloomed in his mind like blood through a clean white bandage. He could see his quarry was driving a sparkly silver Ford F-150. Probably some well-off contractor from Columbus or Cleveland. He should go back to his happy bungalow in the suburbs and stop taking honest work from real men, like Charlie, gritting his teeth and cutting his fingers on old rusted tools and drinking cheap piss beer and playing pool on a warped table with no 14 just two 12's and the bartender Brittany never remembers his name and---
His pursuit was overzealous or perhaps his reaction time was slowed by the recent head trauma. Either way, he failed to realize that the truck had slowed down upon reaching the bottom of the third steepest hill in Ohio. Charlie's second impact was too much for his already battered brain stem and he lost consciousness.
If confronted, Charlie might have claimed he was only too tired to bother changing the station, but actually he was enjoying the schmaltzy tune, drumming the thick tempo on his steering wheel as he cruised home on a deep moonless night. He felt peaceful as a lullaby; the three or four drinks he'd had at the bar went down smooth and easy as sweat down a working man's back. He felt as if he had just emerged from a hot bath.
Putting the '93 Toyota Tercel into second gear, he started to climb what one old-timer had told him was the "third steepest hill in Ohiuh." You could tell the old-timers from the way they pronounced Ohio. An "uh" on the end like an exhausted sigh, like they were too beat to finish the long vowel and just gave up.
It was like some club you only gained membership in once you had pissed away most of your life doing crap work for crap pay in Appalachia, and instead of a ring or a lapel pin you got a twang and a gap in your teeth.
Had Charlie been less immersed in musings on his own unpromising future, he might have noticed the glow dawning atop the crest of the hill ahead of him. Instead he was unprepared for the pickup truck which, barreling toward him from the opposite slope, smashed into his right headlight hard enough to spin him rudely a full 90 degrees.
The impact was so great that he was momentarily unable to see through open eyes. When vision returned, he was looking through the vertical wrought-iron bars of a cemetery and a small, hysterical part of his brain was sure he had joined its population.
His second hormonal response, after shock, was rage.
Charlie completed the spin he had started with such speed that he nearly did enter the graveyard, spotted his prey's taillights near the bottom of the hill, and gave chase. Righteous images of revenge bloomed in his mind like blood through a clean white bandage. He could see his quarry was driving a sparkly silver Ford F-150. Probably some well-off contractor from Columbus or Cleveland. He should go back to his happy bungalow in the suburbs and stop taking honest work from real men, like Charlie, gritting his teeth and cutting his fingers on old rusted tools and drinking cheap piss beer and playing pool on a warped table with no 14 just two 12's and the bartender Brittany never remembers his name and---
His pursuit was overzealous or perhaps his reaction time was slowed by the recent head trauma. Either way, he failed to realize that the truck had slowed down upon reaching the bottom of the third steepest hill in Ohio. Charlie's second impact was too much for his already battered brain stem and he lost consciousness.
Monday, October 25, 2010
The Atomic Man Part 5: The Third Egg
He cracks the third egg rudely on the side of the pan, noticing a small flake of shell fall in, promising an unappetizing moment later on. Charlie isn't worried about moments, only the ruling hunger in the pit of his stomach. He grows more impatient for the eggs to cook, turning up the flame.
The condom is held between two fingers as the rest are busy unclasping her bra. He can feel the ribs in her back with the sensitive parts of his wrists and it's slightly unnerving. He feels he's playing an instrument. It doesn't want him. It's only performing a function.
He starts to resent her, this mysterious woman who turns off the lights and who is such a quick draw on the prophylactics. She's just---he can't remember her name. Becky? Katie?
Probably not her real name anyway. Probably a fake name she uses on the weekends when she's looking for a fuck. A fake name for a fake woman.
The unopened condom is crushed under her chill bony back as she falls receptively onto the bed with sheets too dark to see but probably filthy.
The eggs sit dry and overcooked in the hot skillet. Turning off the heat, Charlie scrapes the turgid lump onto a not-entirely-clean plastic plate. A brown and grey remainder sticks to the pan like moss.
"Fuck it," he thinks as he puts the pan under the faucet, filling it with water to let it soak and be cleaned tomorrow, or the day after.
Plate in one hand and coffee in the other, he returns to the sweat-damp sofa where his day began to shovel down breakfast in front of the Saturday morning cartoons. Finished, he scratches his scrotum through the flap in his boxers, stupefied.
"Christ, I needed that."
The condom is held between two fingers as the rest are busy unclasping her bra. He can feel the ribs in her back with the sensitive parts of his wrists and it's slightly unnerving. He feels he's playing an instrument. It doesn't want him. It's only performing a function.
He starts to resent her, this mysterious woman who turns off the lights and who is such a quick draw on the prophylactics. She's just---he can't remember her name. Becky? Katie?
Probably not her real name anyway. Probably a fake name she uses on the weekends when she's looking for a fuck. A fake name for a fake woman.
The unopened condom is crushed under her chill bony back as she falls receptively onto the bed with sheets too dark to see but probably filthy.
The eggs sit dry and overcooked in the hot skillet. Turning off the heat, Charlie scrapes the turgid lump onto a not-entirely-clean plastic plate. A brown and grey remainder sticks to the pan like moss.
"Fuck it," he thinks as he puts the pan under the faucet, filling it with water to let it soak and be cleaned tomorrow, or the day after.
Plate in one hand and coffee in the other, he returns to the sweat-damp sofa where his day began to shovel down breakfast in front of the Saturday morning cartoons. Finished, he scratches his scrotum through the flap in his boxers, stupefied.
"Christ, I needed that."
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