Laurie Boris's Blog, page 7

Black as Night

The garage door glided shut behind him and, eyes closed, Lucifer sat in the silence, grateful to have finally arrived home. It had been a long, dreary day. The white morning had dulled into a gray afternoon, stretched into the indigo of dusk, and finally, at last, culminated into a night as black as his soul.

He liked black. It soothed him. Black wasn’t the lack of color, as some believed, but the absence of light. Now wasn’t the time for light. Now was the time for darkness, to retreat, take stock, plan his next move. Analyze his recent failure. His fist tightened in his lap as the debacle again rolled through his mind.

Never again will I be humiliated by that—creature.

The memory of the encounter sent a chill through him, hastening him out of his sleek car and into the house. Three fingers of single malt in a cut-crystal tumbler waited beside the leather chair in front of a crackling fire. He sank into the cushions with a deep sigh.

“Will there be anything else tonight, sir?”

Lucifer lolled his head toward his butler, a timid young man whose father had been with the family for what seemed like eons, and was about to wave him off, but then he had an idea. It would kill two birds with one stone—this young partridge before him needed seasoning, and the other bird needed to be cooked.

“Yes, Olek, there will be one more thing.” Lucifer smiled. “Will you join me for a drink?”

The butler hesitated the perfectly appropriate amount of time, then said, “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

Olek took the smaller club chair beside him, perched on the lip of the seat. Lucifer laughed. “For blast’s sake, you’re not a dog. You can sit on the furniture without fear that I’ll swat you with the newspaper.”

The young man then sat properly, though still gave the impression that he’d left the hanger in his suit jacket.

Lucifer picked up his glass and leaned back, weighing his words. “I’ve been watching you, since you’ve taken on after your father. He’s trained you well. But I’ve noticed a rather…special quality that you have that’s all your own. You’re quiet, efficient… Perhaps you can be of great use to me, in my business.” Olek blushed. Charming, Lucifer thought. Perfect. “I will pay you, of course.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. You’ve been more than generous already. You treated my father like family when we left Ukraine, you took me in like I was one of your own. I couldn’t take more of your money.”

“But I insist,” Lucifer said. “It involves a bit of risk, which demands reward.”

Olek visibly swallowed. He looked left, and right, as if anticipating the ghost of his father. “What sort of risk?”

Lucifer shrugged. “The usual sort of risk that one comes across in my line of work. Very few of those who bargain away their souls are eager to pay up when the bill comes due.”

Olek drew a hand to his mouth. “Oh. But I wouldn’t know how to—”

“There will be training, of course. You might even grow to enjoy it at times.” The man’s dead-eyed, thin-lipped face came to mind, the man who’d defied him, humiliated him, and a growl came from Lucifer’s throat. “Especially the first case I’ll be assigning you.” He told Olek about the Russian dictator who’d ponied up his soul for infinite wealth and a return of his country’s former glory with no consequences from the rest of the world. If it could be called glory, but Lucifer didn’t judge motives. He just dealt in souls.

A vulpine smile sharpened the young man’s eyes. “When do we start?”

A Multitude of Sins

A little flash fiction, for a change…

Mackie Donahue, a sixtyish man whose expensive suit failed to camouflage a multitude of sins, called Sylvie into his office forty-five minutes past their scheduled appointment time, when nearly everyone else had already gone home. He gave her the once-over then an oily smile that revealed dental work that cost more than most people earned in a month. “Since you’re new”—he motioning her to one of two chairs opposite his spotless mahogany desk—“I’ll give you a little advice before we get started.”

She sat, and made her face look oh-so-eager to hear what this yutz had to say. But she had to be careful. The yutz wielded power and influence that if she wasn’t careful could be used against her and her cause, so she had to be all ears and no eyerolls. At least until she’d gotten what she’d come for.

“Please.” She smiled with her eyes. “Go ahead.”

Instead of taking the leather executive chair behind his desk, he lowered his bulk onto the smaller chair beside her. He leaned closer, until she could smell the mint overlay on his tuna-salad breath. “In business, it never hurts a woman like you to, you know, play it up a little more.”

Sylvie stiffened. “A woman like me, Mr. Donahue?”

“Come off it, you know what I’m talking about.” He thrust out cupped hands, about a foot wider than the span of her hips. As if he were taking measurements, or inviting her to dance. “Show what you got. Like, maybe you got some nice legs under those pants. Or could open a button or three from that blouse. Whatever. And please. Call me Mackie.”

“All right. Mackie.” She was on the verge of physical illness, sitting so close to him. At least the assignment wouldn’t take long; she could count her blessings for that, and the agency that sent her there. “Is this the dress code for women who work here, showing off what you got?”

“Well. Not formal, as such. Just that it tends to help. Some of these guys”—he tipped his head toward his office door, as if blaming it on his colleagues—you know how they are. Won’t listen to a woman who’s all buttoned-up. Especially if she’s not a real looker.”

Sylvie raised her eyebrows. “You’re saying I’m not attractive, Mr. Don—Mackie.”

“Aw, no, honey. I’m not thinking that at all.” As if to prove it, he set his hairy hand on her thigh, and she stared at it until he removed it. He straightened up and adjusted his tie. “You just need wardrobe. A new hairstyle. A little time in the tanning bed. You’re awful pale. Maybe a nose job, not much at all…”

“A nose job—?”

He waved a hand. “Oh, we pay for those.”

“I didn’t see that in the onboarding paperwork.”

“Must have been an oversight. I’ll get one of my other secretaries to send you the forms.”

“May we talk about my responsibilities, Mr. Don—Mackie? Or should I work that out with the other assistants?”

“Yeah. Sure. Basically I need a girl who can work nights. Oh. Not like you’re thinking.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “I already got a girl for that. Mostly. Just that sometimes, you know, inspiration strikes. I need someone to write stuff down after hours.”

She grinned, just enough to keep from showing her fangs. “That part shouldn’t be a problem. Mackie.”

Mood Periwinkle

Periwinkle sunrise, make the coffee, find a towel. Hot shower like a gentle spring rain only teases your shoulders, your back. Thoughts stream through: call a plumber, pay a bill, upcoming appointment with new doctor, where does the novel go next? When will there be time and energy for that? Will you ever write like you used to, with passion, with joy, with sitting down at the computer and letting the characters tell you their story? No pain, when you wrote, then. Roll shoulders under the trickle, neck side to side, up and down. Gentle, graceful movements. Always gentle. You remember that woman in the parking lot at the grocery story, humped over, eyes leading, like an ancient tortoise. You double-down on your commitment to weightlifting, diet. You curse the random scrabble-tile toss of genetics that gifts your mother with the bone density of a woman half her age and you like a shrinking crone twenty years before you’d been promised when you were a young and juicy thing, adults admiring your posture. Was the juice worth the squeeze? It is what it is, the doctors say, and you want to punch them and say the same. “Well, with your back…” “Well, with your bone density results…are you sure you aren’t doing drugs or smoking?” “Well…” You should be grateful, you hear between their words. Grateful just to wake each morning, to stand on two feet, to have your faculties, to feel the sun on your face and that frustrating sprinkle on your shoulders. Greet the periwinkle sunrise and make the coffee. Call the plumber.

New Novel!

I’m so excited to tell you that my ninth novel, Boychik, is now live on Amazon in ebook form.

Here’s what the book is about:

In 1930s Brooklyn, in the depths of the Great Depression, the son of a deli man dreams of making it big in Hollywood. A rich girl with family secrets fantasizes about a life in service to the unfortunate. When their worlds collide, they’re tempted by an unlikely and forbidden romance that could cast dark shadows over their bright futures.

I had a lot of fun writing it and doing all the research—including how salmon becomes lox, how pickles are made, and more about the neighborhoods where my parents spent their childhoods. The boy on the cover is my grandfather, Dave Boris, at seventeen. I’ll be writing more about him later.

The paperback version will be available soon. You can learn more about the book here or go to the Amazon page.

I hope you’ll check it out!

Flash Fiction: If Only

The gowned figures loomed over Adelaide Green, two on each side, casting long shadows across the white draping. A curtain separated Ms. Green’s head from her body, like a sterile sideshow act.

“It’s bigger than we saw on the MRI,” the left-hand resident said, “and not as well encapsulated. You think there’s still a way to get it out without endangering anything else?”

Silence save for beeps and blips of machinery. Then, “We can only try. But the odds are not with us.”

The nurse glared at the lead surgeon.

“Yes, I know,” the surgeon said with a weary sigh as he poked and prodded. “Patients have been shown to understand what’s being said in the operating theater. But current thinking is that honest assessment by an operating team can stimulate a patient’s immune system to fight harder.”

“You mean your current thinking,” the right-hand resident said under his breath.

But the renowned brain surgeon heard all. Behind his magnifying goggles his eyes narrowed. “I highly doubt that attitude is patient-positive nor useful right now. I’d throw you out of my theatre but we’re shorthanded enough as it is. Scalpel.”

The instrument appeared in his outstretched hand. It hovered above the exposed brain. “We’re almost there, Ms. Green,” he said to the left hemisphere of her frontal lobe. “Just a few more minutes and soon you’ll be back in your chair doing your thing.”

The nurse cast a sharp glare up to the gallery, where a man in an expensive-looking suit jabbered on his cell phone, when he wasn’t scowling down at them like a displeased god. “We’ll make him happy, at least.”

A few more minutes turned into an hour. An hour turned into three. Tissue was severed; the intruder made its boundaries known. And then, as the lights burned bright and sweat beaded on residents’ foreheads, a louder-than-expected thunk of success sounded in a metal pan.

Four held breaths, it seemed, released at the same time.

“Wow,” the left-hand resident said. “I think you got it all.”

“Congratulations, Doctor,” the nurse said.

He patted Ms. Green’s shoulder. “Congratulations all around,” he said. “That was the largest writer’s block I’ve ever removed. Now”—he cast a quick glance to the gallery—“let’s put her agent out of his misery.”

Questions: Flash Fiction

“So what do you want to know.”

It’s not even a question, the way he says it. He never asks questions. He tells them, then moves on along the dusty road, as if not expecting or even wanting an answer. You can almost hear the whoosh of the syllables flying by, dissolving into the air. Doppler talk. Here and gone.

You want to see his face. It’s easier to see if he’s telling the truth that way. Lord knows what he’s doing with that left eye, with that crook of his mouth, if you only see the half that’s telling you what he thinks want to know. You stop. He doesn’t. Then does. Waits for you to catch up. A slight shake of his head as if you’re a misbehaving child.

You try not to let it get under your skin. When you do that, it pools up and itches like madness in the middle of the night. You firm up all over, clench muscles that will hurt later. The words. So small and delicate you don’t know how they could possibly form and exit. Soap bubbles.

“Do you love her?”

Your questions are always questions. You want answers, you expect them, but you don’t always get what you want. The Mick Jagger song plays in your head, that “get what you need” so damn loud, arrogant, taunting. You think of the last time you got what you needed.

It’s been a long time. Another song lyric flows through your mind. It’s been a long time coming…good things are gonna come my way…

His eyes cut down and left and he walks, assumes you’ll follow. Because he knows how badly you want an answer to that awful question.

Yeah. You don’t always get what you want.

You start after him, head down. This. This is what you need. If you found a magic lamp and roused a genie, this is what you would ask. An answer. Not sound effects. Not soap bubbles. Not the side of his face, turning away.

“If I answered at all, I’d lie.”

The words are gone. By the next morning, so are you. You doubt he heard the whoosh of you in the wind.

Perhaps it was too much to ask of the genie, or any song lyric, that the response to your question should be the truth.

A Trip through 2020 with the Positive Jar

Several years ago, I stole an idea from my neighbor Ellen in an effort to bring more gratitude into my life. It’s pretty simple but profound. Start New Year’s Day with an empty jar. Every time something positive happens, write it down with the date on a sticky note and put it in the jar. Then at the end of the year, read the messages.

I usually open my “positive jar” on New Year’s Day. Maybe I’ll light a few candles, put on some music, and immerse myself in the good takeaways I can garner from the previous year.

Yesterday, I kept putting it off. Part of me didn’t want to know, didn’t want to revisit 2020, and from what I’ve heard a lot of people felt the same. Why look back in that rearview mirror to see the dumpster fire that we were fleeing? (Because objects in those mirrors are always closer than they appear.) So, I decided to put it off until I was feeling stronger. I got to it this morning, opening the jar, reading the messages, smiling at some of the memories, aching from some others (a loved one surviving a complicated surgery, but died a month after I put the note in the jar). I posted them all over my whiteboard and just immersed myself in the process.

I discovered that for me, in some ways, 2020 was not a complete train wreck. There were good moments, and poignant moments, and just plain happy moments. Where I was proud of myself for achieving a previously insurmountable task, where I was grateful that a bad event did not become worse, where I found the silver linings.

Happy New Year to you all, and may 2021 bring you and yours health, joy, and peace.

The Bargain

Hi. I can’t help it. When I’m creatively blocked, I tend to default to satire. I hope you enjoy this little story.

—–

He recognized the entity by its odor—a blend of methane and alcohol. He tried to ignore the presence; maybe it would go away. A couple of times it had worked.

This time, it didn’t.

“What? I’m busy, here.” The stack of pardons wouldn’t sign themselves.

He could swear it peered over his shoulder. “Stop breathing on me. It’s giving me the creeps. You smell like Rudy.”

“Interesting,” it said, the voice reminding him of the mad scientist in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. “How often you pair the two of us together.”

Ignore it and it will go away. Ignore it and it will go away. Ignore it and—

“You’re pardoning that waste of human skin? I didn’t know you cared.”

“Shut up.”

“It will have repercussions.”

“They got drugs for that. The best drugs.”

“You say that now. You think you’re making light. But one day it will be dark.” He swore he felt cold fingers stroke his cheek and he shivered. “One day it will be dark and you’ll have to honor our bargain.”

“Get out of here. I’ve kept up my end.”

“Sadly, you have not. Would you like an enumeration of the many, many ways you have not lived up to the agreement you signed in your own blood?”

He smirked. Little did that two-bit whatever-the-hell-it-was know that he’d penned that dotted line with Michael Cohen’s blood. The putz had it coming.

“I know what you did,” it said. “We have the receipts. It doesn’t make our bond any less real.”

“Get lost,” he snarled. “Or I’ll turn my very powerful Secret Service agents on you.”

The laughter froze his bowels. “As if they would save you from your fate, when so many times you callously put them in danger.”

This has to be a dream. I’m dreaming. I mixed Adderol with the steroids again and I’m trapped in some damn twisted version of A Christmas Carol. I always hated that story. That Tiny Tim kid—what a loser. He blinked, blinked again. But he was still in the Oval, behind the Resolute desk.

“Hope!” he yelled. “Hope, honey! A little help in here?”

A feminine hand curled around the door. And in she walked.

“Donald. We had a deal. I give you ten minutes to play president, and then Melania takes you out for ice cream.”

As Hillary’s face swam into his vision, so did the voice of the entity.

It said, “Time’s up.”

The Council: Intervention Edition

Forty-four never wanted to have this meeting. It was the wrong message to send, that the incoming president needed their kind of assistance. But when Michelle finally looked at him in that way she had, and said “Just call the damn meeting already, I’m going back to sleep” he took to his laptop.

He slugged down yesterday’s coffee as the various windows winked to life, revealing backdrops of living rooms and dens and home offices and bookshelves he’d become all too familiar with over these last few months. “I apologize for the short notice and the unholy hour,” he began, “but given the circumstances, and with Joe’s blessing, it’s incumbent upon us, as unofficial stewards of American democracy and those who have known a peaceful transference of power, to act.”

Hillary brightened. “We’re locking him up? Wait.” She fumbled through her desk drawer. “I’ve already got the handcuffs. I had them custom-made back in 2016…they’re around here somewhere. Bill. Did you take them again?” The forty-second president’s naturally florid cheeks turned redder as Forty-three chuckled.

Thirty-nine’s soft voice flowed over them. “No disrespect meant, but can we please continue? I have an online prayer group to lead in twenty minutes, then I got some houses to build.”

“Noted.” Forty-four took a deep breath and said, “We’ve had little success with our other initiatives. Putin won’t take our calls. I think it’s time we stage an intervention.”

Forty-three’s eyebrows shot up. “What, just bust into the Oval and tell him it’s time to get his ass to a meeting?”

He paused. “Well, not exactly like that, but essentially, yes.”

“You think they’re actually gonna let us in?” Forty-two said. “Have you seen that wall?”

Forty-four tented his fingers under his chin. “Tell me something he is in dire need of at the moment?”

Hillary jumped in. “Sanity? Intelligence? More Adderol?”

“A friend.”

“I kinda thought that was the Adderol,” Hillary said.

“A friend with money,” Forty-four added. More silence. “He wants a next act.”

“That would be prison,” Hillary said.

Forty-four fought a smile. “If there is any justice in the world, yes. But we can’t count on that happening immediately. We need to give him an incentive to get off the dime. He wants a post-presidential media presence to feed his voracious ego, and that requires major funding. And someone friendly to his cause.”

“Murdoch,” the Texan said. “Of course. But will he listen to any of us?”

“I think he might listen to me,” Forty-four said. “He’s been amenable in the past. I’ll offer a simple deal: give Forty-five the money he needs if he’ll concede and start a peaceful transfer of power.”

“If you need to give Rupert a nudge, I can help,” Hillary said. “His wife backed my campaign, maybe I’ll have a chat with her.”

“She’s that model, right? Maybe I’ll have a chat with her, too.” Forty-two grinned and Hillary shot him a dirty look.

“Hopefully this will work. See you at the inauguration,” Forty-four said, and the meeting adjourned. He sat back in his chair. The sun cast blind-shadowed rays across the carpet. Through the crack in the door, he caught the scent of fresh coffee brewing. For a reason he couldn’t pinpoint, a quote came to mind, from an oft-satirized Reagan campaign commercial: “It’s morning in America.”

Last Words

A shadow filled Kate’s doorway.

“What.” Her voice came out more like a declarative than a question as she pounded away at her keyboard, the soft clicks barely audible above the hum of fluorescent lights and the rattle of the ancient heating system.

“It’s over.”

She stopped. Took a deep breath, let it out. So much for her story. She knew what her editor would be calling for, in about five minutes when he got the official announcement, so she pulled up the document for the final update.

“And?”

He slumped into the chair next to her desk. Answer enough for her. She resumed typing. Stories might change, but deadlines waited for no man or woman. Especially those of publications whose existence hung by a thread.

He smelled of hospital disinfectant, of bad coffee, of sweat. He wore the same shirt he’d had on yesterday. And maybe the day before, too. He leaned back, tented his hands together on his chest. “His last words were ‘fuck you.’ He was looking right at me when he said it.”

Kate looked up, readying a version of “What did you expect after you turned on him?” that wouldn’t sound coldly flippant. But the depth of pain and loss in his eyes stilled her tongue. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “At least it’s done. Nothing left now but the shouting. And the lawyers, of course.”

She gazed into the copy on her monitor, imagining that shitshow. Not for the first time, she was grateful that she’d gotten out while she had the chance. Before it could destroy all her credibility. Before she became one more short-skirted blond Barbie doll off the factory line. She was broke, and it was pushing midnight and nearly everyone else in the newsroom had gone home, and while she wasn’t exactly happy, at least she could look into the mirror without hating herself.

Most of the time.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said. “That I could try to, I don’t know, justify why I did it. And then, crazy me, to apologize for it.”

She felt for him in that moment. He hadn’t been the first to try to make the world see the consequences of what the man was doing, all the pain he was causing—to his staff, his family, all the people he ordered around like living chess pieces in some bizarre plan in his head. Nor had he been the first to come sniveling back, although she would never throw that in her old friend’s face. Not now. Maybe later. But not now.

“You guys hiring?” he said.

She lifted a corner of her mouth. “Look around. You think we’re hiring? I’m lucky that I’m still getting paid.”

“I was joking.” He paused, looked at the ceiling. “Kind of.”

Her phone rang. She snapped up the receiver. “On it,” she said, and hung up. “I gotta finish this, and a few other things. You want to stick around, get a beer or something?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. Call me when you’re done.” He got up slowly. Drifted toward the door.

She resumed typing.

“Hey, Kate?” One hand gripped the doorframe as if it was the only thing holding him up. “What he said to me…that’s off the record, right?”

“Of course,” she said.

His footsteps disappeared down the hallway, lost in the sound of her keyboard and the balky HVAC system and the lights. She finished the obit, adding the copy from the two-line official statement, and submitted it to her editor. He quickly responded with his okay and invited her to call it a night.

She was about to shut down her system but then stopped. She pulled up the obit again, disappointed with the boilerplate quality of it. More would come tomorrow, she was sure, but this was all she could do for now.

But she could do something else. Her eyes misting over, she made a copy of the document and edited the first paragraph to include “…the former president’s last utterance was to tell his unofficial biographer—a talented journalist and author who is also his son, although the family had disavowed his existence and paid her mother for her silence—to go expletive himself.”

Then she printed out the file for her dear bereft friend, tucked it in her pocket, shut down her computer and left. Maybe for the last time.