Kip Manley's Blog, page 12

Things to keep in mind (The secret of Rubylith)

Yeah, so that was digital lettering. Again, at that time I was not that focused on comics. I came out of Milton Glaser Studio. It was my first job coming out of college. He was an instructor at college, at SVA, so I was working there, and like I said, my dad was in advertising. So I'm just used to that world of dealing with type. Back then we used to glue it on boards, you know with the rubber cement and razor blades and all that stuff and overlays. You have what they call Rubylith. I'm not even gonna explain what Rubylith is.

Gin-soaked (Act III)

“Turn up there,” says Guthrie from the back seat.

“It’s going the wrong way,” says Becker behind the wheel. A flock of cellos scrapes and squalls from the stereo.

“It’s on Nineteenth!”

“Which is one-way the wrong way. I’m going to go up and double back. If it’s even there.”

“It’s there,” says Guthrie, as beside him in the back seat the woman in the confetti-colored cap says “It’s under the bridge. Right where it touches down.” Guthrie’s holding one of her hands in both of his. “I swear it’s on Nineteenth,” says Guthrie. “You go up too far, you’ll have to come down Twenty-third, which, I mean, fuck.”

“It’s been there for over a hundred years,” she says. “The bridge is no older than you are. They built it to close the circle but it was too late.”

“You’ll end up having to double back through all those, uh, parking lots. Where that company is.”

“You’ve been there before?” says Becker. “What’s the cross street? Which letter? R? S? U? What the hell is U, anyway? Is there a U?”

“I don’t know,” says Guthrie. “Upshur,” says the woman in the confetti-colored cap. “Hurry. Hurry!”

Gin-soaked (Act II)

A shell of glossy white paint flecking from the doorframe Becker’s leaning against. He picks at it crackling under his nails. The door opens slightly, Guthrie peering around the edge. Becker clears his throat. Guthrie jumps. “Sorry,” says Becker.

“Fuck,” says Guthrie, opening the door. His black T-shirt says Mai Pastede Hed in white letters. A guitar strums through cheap speakers from somewhere further in. I would like another way to breathe, sings a girl over the guitar. Keep my eyes wide open in my sleep. ’Cause when I’m underwater, you keep me under glass…

“You haven’t showed up in almost a week,” says Becker.

“To work,” says Guthrie.

“Yeah.”

“You’re here about work.”

“Yeah,” says Becker.

“You getting paid for this? Come to my place and wake me up for, for uh, to what exactly?”

“You haven’t showed up. You quit? Did you find something else?

“Because, I mean, you don’t show up at Burger King, the manager doesn’t come to your place and ask, you know, what’s up, where you been.” Becker says “Manager at Burger King isn’t your friend,” as Guthrie’s saying “They just fire your ass. And Tartt never would have showed up here or anything.”

“Tartt wasn’t your friend either. You want me to fire you? Did you find something else? Because I’m seriously covering your ass on this.”

“I didn’t ask you to–”

“Dammit, Guthrie!” Becker runs a hand through what little of his hair is left. “Just shut up a minute, okay?”

Gin-soaked (Act I)

He’s a big man straining the shoulders of a dark blue jacket, sitting back in one of the leather armchairs beneath the large copper letters that say Barshefsky Associates: Quality Assured. Long grey mustaches droop to either side of his mouth. He flips over and over in his hands a white business card. When the side door swings open with a sudden wash of questioning voices and clacking keys he climbs to his feet and those mustaches spread around a smile. Becker steps out into the lobby, a big striped shirt unbuttoned over a yellow T-shirt, thin brown hair licked up here and there at the top of his head.

“It’s Becker!” says the big man. “You manage a phone bank.”

“I’m, sorry,” says Becker. “You’re very– Do I know you?”

“Of course,” says the big man. “Pyrocles.”

“Pyrocles,” says Becker. About to nod, he shakes his head slowly instead, his face settling toward a frown. “Is that, what, is that Greek?”

“No, I’m from Vergina, where the Argead ruled. But they have heard of me in Byzantium.”

“Huh. I didn’t know there was a Byzantium left.”

“Goodness,” says Pyrocles. “I certainly hope so.”

“And you’re here because…”

“Oh! Jo Maguire. I need to speak with her. Briefly, of course.”

“Had to be one of those two,” mutters Becker.

Gin-soaked (Opening)

Slopping two fingers of bourbon into a coffee cup he makes a face, eyes wide, head bobbing, “They fight,” he says, his mouth within his salt-and-pepper Van Dyke twisting around the words. He sets the bottle on the edge of a long table lost under haphazard stacks of books and piles of paper, picks up the cork and jams it home, then picks up the coffee cup and throws back one long swallow. His other hand a metal hook at the end of a beige prosthetic attached just below his elbow. He sets the cup down, snaps off the light.

Past the double doors under a frosted fanlight a wide deep room the far end lost in shadows, one wall lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. She stands in the middle of it threadbare slipper-toe worrying at an X of blue masking tape stuck to the floor, her hair a great crown of tiny braids wound about with colored thread and beads all held up atop her head by a blue silk scarf. A half-dozen kids lined up roughly between her and the mirrors, sweatpants and yoga pants, gym shorts over longjohns, a brown sweater vest over a white T-shirt. She looks up at them, a hank of hair slipping from the scarf and slithering down her shoulder. “They fight,” she says quite loudly.

Over by the doors he snorts. He’s tugging loose with his hook the twine about a bundle of swords.

“Shakespeare was never much of one for stage directions,” she says, “but here we are, at the climax of our play, our Harry and our Hotspur have finally met on the field of battle, and how does the Bard frame the epic action of his climax? ‘They. Fight.’” A murmur of chuckles, someone laughs. He’s clutched the swords in his right arm, pulling the twine free. “So we will need,” she says, “to write our own scene of actions, to complement the words.”

Anvil (Closing)

Sitting on the banks of the sea, sings the radio. She had a forty-four strapped around her body, and a banjo on her knee. He shuts off the engine. The radio goes silent.

He’s a big man, fussing about the back of the pickup truck. His raincoat blue, hood up, shining slick in the weird dim morning light. He comes up with a pair of grey workgloves and tugs them on. Rain trickles from his hood as he leans into the truck again. Long grey mustaches droop to either side of his flat mouth. He comes up with some brightly colored bungee cords and an armload of canvas sack.

The building over across the street is a long warehouse, a grey corrugated metal wall interrupted here and there by garage doors. Big letters in flaking paint say Bushnell Warehouse, Corp. over the doors. Down at the end there’s a slice of parking lot, a flatbed trailer with a load of rebar. He stands there a moment by a telephone pole, looking over the trailer. The rebar’s long and straight and black, piled neatly and wrapped in clear rain-beaded plastic. Raindrops splat on his hood. There’s a piece of white card nailed up over his head. 5+ Acres, say the sloppy black letters. 55K Lg Down. Another sign nailed to the next pole down the line says the same thing. He heaves the load of sack and cord over one shoulder and walks past the trailer, around the back end. Over past it up against the back wall of the warehouse is a pile of rusting sheet metal, tangles of steel cable, bent and broken rebar jutting at odd angles, streaked with orange and red. He rubs his gloved hands together, his mustaches spread by a small smile.

Things to keep in mind (The secret of coziness)

It’s emblematic of the way predators in the arts and entertainment industries are tolerated by colleagues and fans until the accusations become too detailed and too numerous to ignore. It is the insistence of ignoring material reality and uncomfortable truths because to stand on moral principles might be inconvenient. It’s DNC-goers covering their ears so they don’t have to hear protestors shouting the names of Palestinian children blown apart by bombs sent by the Biden administration. It’s taking a big sip of delicious warm coffee and refusing to consider the enslaved children who picked those beans and congratulating ourselves on being so virtuous.

Anvil (Act IV)

“Of course I wasn’t going to do it myself,” says Ysabel. The taxi starts then lurches to a stop as a woman under a clear umbrella dashes across the street before them. “Farging pedestrians,” mutters the driver.

“You could have said, is all,” says Jo. “Before.”

“You could have asked,” says Ysabel. “Or haven’t you noticed you haven’t had to do laundry in weeks? You didn’t thank him, did you?” She glares at Jo. “Or ask his name?”

“The mystery man in my mirror?” says Jo. “I was too busy being shocked. You have to tell me these things–”

“How about your mother? How about if you’d said something about that?”

“I told you not to answer the phone,” says Jo.

“Because of spam!”

“Ladies,” the driver’s saying.

“Can we worry about your mother instead?” says Jo.

“Ladies, we’re here,” says the driver. The taxi’s pulled up by a loading dock rising dark and green to a black metal railing, tables up there under grey umbrellas. Ysabel’s opened her door. The driver’s reaching over the seat as Jo opens hers. “Four seventy-five,” he says. “Ladies?”

“Oh,” says Jo, half out the door. “He said they’d send a car, I mean–”

“Four seventy-five, miss,” says the driver.

Anvil (Act III)

Becker’s running his hand through what little of his hair is left. “Hey,” he says as Jo walks past his desk. “You talked to Guthrie.”

“Not since, what, a couple days ago,” says Jo. “Last time he was here. Why?”

“No, I mean, you talked to Guthrie,” says Becker. “He said he wasn’t feeling well. Right? Said that’s why he hasn’t been in.”

“I, uh,” says Jo. Ysabel, standing behind her, frowns. A bald man pushes past them, a crumb of lipstick at the corner of his mouth, his eyes raccooned by blurry eyeshadow.

“You see him again the next day or so,” says Becker, “tell him we mailed his check.”

“Okay,” says Jo.

“That’s it,” says Becker, eyes on his computer monitor. “Best find yourself a phone.” He’s typing something.

“Yeah,” says Jo. She moves past Becker’s desk into the narrow office full of people taking seats before kelly green carrels, a couple dozen of them set up on long folding tables against the walls. She grabs a chair next to Crecy, who’s stuffing a tapestry bag into the space between carrel wall and computer monitor, headset already cramping her curly coppery hair.

“What was that about?” says Ysabel, sitting in the chair next to Jo’s.

“Three days,” says Jo.

“What?”

Anvil (Act II)

The blue umbrella’s smeared with whorls of starry light, a fiery painted circle of yellow moon. Ysabel eyes the rain dripping from its edges with moued lips and pinched brows. “I’m not dressed for this,” she says.

“No one told you to wear heels,” says Jo. Hatless, she’s flipped up the collar of her army green jacket.

“I didn’t know we’d be walking for miles tonight,” says Ysabel.

“It’s a couple of fucking blocks,” says Jo, glaring at the ivy-choked fence that towers to the right.

“Thirteen,” says Ysabel. “Since we got off the train.”

“So it’s a big couple,” says Jo.

“You’re not going to see anything,” says Ysabel.

After a minute, Jo says “I think that” as Ysabel stops there in the middle of the street and snaps, “You’re not going to see anything! Thirteen blocks in the rain and it’s cold, my feet hurt and we’re in Northeast again, again, and it’s all a complete waste of time because you’re not going to see anything!”

“I think,” says Jo, slowly, pointing up the sidewalk, “that driveway there, that’s a parking lot, it’ll take us to the edge. Past this crap.” She walks on, hands jammed in her pockets, shoulders hunched.

Ysabel spins the umbrella between her hands, flinging raindrops about. Tips her head, resting it against the umbrella’s shaft. The other side of the street lined with parked cars. The house behind her porch lit up, strings of lights wound about the columns, draped from the eaves.