Kip Manley's Blog, page 13

Things to keep in mind (The secret of the pastoral)

The essential trick of the old pastoral, which was felt to imply a beautiful relation between rich and poor, was to make simple people express strong feelings (felt as the most universal subject, something fundamentally true about everybody) in learned and fashionable language (so that you wrote about the best subject in the best way). From seeing the two sorts of people combined like this you thought better of both; the best parts of both were used. The effect was in some degree to combine in the reader or author the merits of the two sorts; he was made to mirror in himself more completely the effective elements of the society he lived in.

Anvil (Act I)

“Who are the three lions?” says Marfisa.

“What?” says Roland, headphones down around his neck. On the table a thick white mug half-filled with coffee, a scatter of gel caps, a little toy car, silver and green.

“The three lions,” says Marfisa, pointing back to the words painted on the window by the door. “I was just wondering who they were.”

“Haile Selassie,” says the woman sitting across from Roland. “Richard Nixon. Luke Skywalker.” She’s hunched in a sweater the color of flour, a floppy brown hat pulled low over her yellow hair. Roland snorts. Marfisa looks about, the gleaming barista station, the long glass case full of brightly lit pastries, the blackboard clouded with palimpsests of old menus. “What?” says the woman. “Was it a rhetorical question?” Her face tics sourly, her eyes darting under the brim of her hat.

“Here,” says Roland, scooping up the caps. “Hold out your hand.” She does. The fingers tremble, just a little. He sets the pills in her palm, one by one, picks up the toy car, folds her fingers over it. Marfisa pulls a spindly chair over from an empty table. “I was wondering how you were keeping up your rounds,” she says. She drapes her blue rainshell over the back of the chair.

“Thank you, Miss Cheney,” Roland’s saying. The woman in the floppy brown hat stands, stuffing her hand in the pocket of her corduroy skirt. “Thank you, Chariot,” she says. “May you be fierce and proud, precise and steady, proper, unified, vigorous, nimble-handed, swift, ardent-coursing, very dextrous, and unhesitating.” She takes up the red-tipped cane leaning against the table and tapping it before her makes her way out of the café.

Anvil (Opening)

Just a little she smiles and opens her eyes. “All right then,” says Ysabel. Standing by the window in her yellow underwear. The daylight soft and grey, dappled by raindrops on glass. She looks down at the cigarette burning between her fingers. Black blood thick on her fingertips and palm. Blood smeared around her mouth, her chin. “Pfeh,” she says, cocking her hand, wiping her lips with the back of her wrist. Blood’s splashed between her breasts, a trickle of it black and shining oozes down her belly trembling a fat drop of it falling to plop on her bare foot. She takes in a sharp breath through her nose and lets it out in a sudden shivery laugh. “All right,” she says.

A rustle from the futon across the room.

“Jo?” says Ysabel.

“The hell you will,” says Jo, muffled. Kicking her mismatched Chuck Taylors in the sheets.

Ysabel stubs out the cigarette in a plate puddled with black blood, a slender bloodstained knife on the table beside it. Scrubs at her chest with her fingers, knocking loose a sparkling fall of dust. She crosses the room to kneel by the futon. “Jo,” she says again. Jo moans, her face buried in the blue-and-white striped pillow. Ysabel brushes Jo’s cheek with the back of her hand. “Wake up, Jo,” she says. “It’s October.” Jo jerks her head away, one arm fighting free of the blanket. Pushing herself up breathing sharply, blinking. “I can’t,” she says, “what?” Staring unseeing at the wall.

The twenty-second; the forty-fifth

In a day or so, then, I'll crack open the file for no. 46 and get that under way, while the first draft for no. 45 lies fallow. If you're a Patreon or Comrade, that means there'll be another couple-three months at least before you'll be seeing the actual start of the next bit of story, but at least you'll get two novelettes in reasonably close proximity, time-wise. Most likely. There's some slips yet, betwixt cup and lip.

(I trust when you see why, you'll understand, and appreciate. I hope, rather. Have I mentioned that this third season is, structurally speaking, the most complex, by far? —The third movement of any symphony is a dance movement, typically speaking, a burst of playful, even joyous energy, after the contemplative turn of the second. And so.)

Freeway (Closing)

“Leo, honey,” she’s whispering. Down the hallway a booming knock. She sits up there on the low bed in the middle of the big dark room, the Duke beside her on his back, right leg lying on top of the blanket, splinted with thin sticks, wrapped in purple cloth. “I don’t,” he murmurs, eyes closed. Shirt buttons undone. His chest and forehead gleaming, his hair slick with sweat. “Don’t.” Again the pounding at the door.

Belting a short silk robe of whites and pale blues she walks down the dark hall to the white door rattling from another flurry of knocks. “Go away,” she says.

The pounding stops. “I would have words with his grace,” says someone on the other side, his voice highly pitched, rich and gentle and smooth.

“He doesn’t want to see anyone,” she says. “Or have words.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to hear that from his lips. Not yours.”

“Go away,” she says. “Come back tomorrow.”

“Is he hurt?”

She opens her mouth to say something, stops. “No,” she says. “Why would you–” The door shivers at a mighty blow, and another. “The password!” he cries, his voice no longer gentle. Another blow. She steps away, hands up, head down. “Duncan,” she says, “Duncan will be one man.”

“And Farquahr will be two!”

Freeway (Act IV)

Those teeth shining Cearb clings to the green fence railing the bridge above the welter of freeway ramps. A horn blats from the traffic trundling behind him. He’s staring down, humming, one arm hooked through the wire mesh, face pressed against it. Tires whining red lights chase white lights down the freeway under the bridge beneath him. He purses thin lips about those teeth and thunder welling up under the sounds of engines and wheels he closes his eyes.

He opens them. The freeway below is empty. He turns his head. The bridge behind him quiet and still. “Yes,” whispers Cearb. The thunder spills over as one two six horses race around the curl of the ramp down the eastbound lanes, riders in red coats dark in the dim pink light. “Yes!” cries Cearb, letting go, falling back to the sidewalk and tumble scuttling across the empty bridge through a wailing ghost of a horn, clambering up the green fence railing the other side. He perches there panting, hands and sneakered feet wrapped around the green rail. Horses galloping below slow and faltering lean one way and another double back. Laughter and whoops. “Catch me,” says Cearb, “judge me, beat me,” the words like handclaps, “write what I’ve done in your big black book!” His voice a rasp snagging on labored breaths. “But where will you write down all I’ve suffered?” Cearb rears up hands in the air and roars, “Who will rage for me? Gallowglas! Gallowglas!”

Freeway (Act III)

Lighting a cigarette Jo tips her head back, lets a curl of smoke escape the corner of her mouth. “So you’re like a real band now and everything, huh?”

“This whole side of town is dangerous,” says Marfisa, head down, hands tight on the straps of her small purple backpack. Ysabel whoops spinning arms outstretched under the blinking red stoplights ahead of them, streets empty of traffic all around her.

“You got a CD coming out? You giving it away on the internet?” says Jo, heading down the sidewalk after Ysabel. “This isn’t a joke,” says Marfisa, following her. Wingtips clocking past an open lot full of idle Coke machines. “You should damn well know to stay downtown by now.” Argyle socks up over her knees and a tweed coat longer than her short checked skirt.

“We’re two fucking blocks from the bridge,” says Jo.

“You shouldn’t have crossed the water,” says Marfisa.

“Stop fighting!” calls Ysabel back over her shoulder.

“She wanted to see a band tonight,” says Jo, and Marfisa says “It doesn’t matter” as Jo’s saying, “Apparently, she wanted to see you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Marfisa, stopping at the corner, and then she lifts her head and calls, “Princess!”

Ysabel walking backwards down the street says, “Sing for me.”

“Lady, come back to the sidewalk.”

“Sing!” says Ysabel. “Your lady commands it.” Laughing.

Freeway (Act II)

“Could you maybe describe what you saw?” says Mr. Charlock.

“Well,” says the woman. She’s sitting on one end of the spavined couch. Mr. Charlock’s sitting on the tile-topped coffee table before her, hands on her knees leaning forward, looking up into her eyes. “Would you really use the word huge?” he says. An owl’s feather dangles from the sunglasses tucked into his jacket pocket.

“Well,” she says, “I, um.”

“Monster?” says Mr. Charlock. “Is that really the right word?”

“Monstrous,” says Mr. Keightlinger, fingering the gauzy curtains hanging in the big front window.

“I wouldn’t use that word either,” says Mr. Charlock. “Step it back. Last night. What did you do? What did you see?”

“Well,” she says.

“You come out of the house, back door. It’s dark. Hypocrisy in your hands. Light on the side of the house goes on, garbage can, recycling tub, then what? What’s knocked it over? What’s rooting around in the coffee grounds? Just this? All this? All this fuss over a little possum?”

“Coyote,” says Mr. Keightlinger.

“A little coyote?” says Mr. Charlock, lifting his hands from her knees. “Well?”

Freeway (Act I)

“On a scale of one to ten,” says Ysabel, “where one is–”

“Yeah, I know,” says the man over the phone.

“Where one is–”

“Not at all satisfied, yeah, I know, you said it already.”

“Please,” says Ysabel. “I need to read the whole question to you as it’s written.” One leg crossed over the other she sits sideways at her narrow carrel, idly plucking at the hem of her skirt there above her knee. “Besides, we might have changed the scale. Just to see if you’re paying attention.”

“So read the question,” says the man.

“On a scale of one to ten, where one is very dissatisfied and ten is very satisfied, how would you rate your most recent visit, overall, to Pet Depot?”

“See?” says the man. “It’s the same one. You didn’t change anything.”

“You’re paying attention,” says Ysabel. She’s pushed her skirt a little higher, fingertips resting on her knee, her thumb drawing loops on the skin of her thigh.

“Can’t you just average up all the numbers I’ve already given you?”

“It wouldn’t be as meaningful as what you say when I ask the question.” Ysabel taps the number seven on her keyboard.

“Well, I’d say seven, but I’ll give ’em a ten if I never get another survey call like this,” says the man.

“I have to ask you to pick just one,” says Ysabel. She’s already hit enter and brought up the next question on her screen.

Freeway (Opening)

The printer spits out a photo of Ysabel, head and shoulders before an empty blue background, her dark hair swept back, pinned up out of her vaguely smiling face. “See?” says the fat man, leaning over the foot of the rumpled double bed to pluck up the photo. He settles back by the laptop near the pillows, handing the photo to Jo. “No red eye. Light’s too bright. Focus off just enough. That’s some quality DMV shit.” His T-shirt has a grainy picture of a graveyard on it. We have found a new home for the rich, it says. It’s hard to tell where his thin beard ends and his scraggly hair begins.

“It’s supposed to say Oregon,” says Jo.

“It will,” says the fat man with the scraggly hair. “It’ll be smaller, too, and printed on a card.” He pats the laptop, scratched silver and snarled in cables dangling off the sides and the end of the bed. “I’ve got a killer template set up for this. That’s a six-jet printer. Not four colors - six. Won’t pass a UV scanner, but it’ll fool any pair of naked eyeballs in the state. All I have to do is plug in the pretty.” He leans back against the pillows, smiling. “Which I do when you show me the cheddar.” He tilts his head, looks past Jo. “We’re done with the camera, baby. Come over here, make yourself comfortable. Or there.” He’s pointing to the other double bed. The coverlet’s been pulled off. It’s hanging over the window at the front of the room. A tall guy’s lying on his belly on the white sheets, his bare feet sticking off the edge of the bed. “Don’t mind Abe,” says the fat man with the scraggly hair. “He’s only sleeping.”