Kip Manley's Blog, page 3

Moon (Closing)

Clank and up he sits, owlish, fuddled. Puts out a hand bang against the side of the tub and clatter the ducting clamped about his forearm, the pot lid cupping his shoulder, wound about with grubby grey tape. The colander rakishly precarious on his head tilts over the bridge of his nose and his running shoes squeak on the enamel and the ducting and stove pipe crimping his filthy jeans a kitchen cabinet spilling into a sink. Scrape and thump. One hand bare finds the edge of the tub and grips it, the other a club in a thick hockey glove bats the colander, knocking it back, there’s his dark unfocused eyes, his unwashed hair that lankly shines, the stubble blotching his chin.

Leaning over the toilet rush and splatter of piss that bulky gloved hand braced against the wall. Scrape and jangle. Red plastic cups lined up along the back of the toilet and a couple of cans that say Wild Turkey Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey and Cola, Real Kentucky. Pushing back wavering from the wall both hands gloved and bare pawing at the fly of his jeans “Shit” he says and hisses and then frustrated shakes the glove loose, flings it thump to the floor and catches himself from falling. Buttons himself up.

“Fucking hell,” says Frankie Reichart.

Moon (Act IV)

Orange doors, wide segmented overhead doors set one after another down the white walls either side of the alley, all of them that color too luridly deep for the milky light, and a couple of them lifted opened on unlit storage units packed with boxes, furniture, the bulbous rear of a midnight-blue sedan, and the trunk lid’s up, and climbing from it a confusion of pastel taffetas, a striped sock, a plaid plimsoll delicately crushing the snow that’s drifted over the threshold. Straightening a fluff and crinkle of skirts beneath a large black hooded sweatshirt leaning over the fender to offer up a folded bundle soft and grey to Linesse, in her black leather jacket, in a folding lawn chair, legs draped in an afghan, pink and yellow, blue and green.

Squeak and crunch of snow, a man in a knee-length parka and a knit cap, thermos in one ungloved hand, fingers of the other threaded through the handles of mismatched clinking mugs. He offers up his mugged hand to the woman in the skirts, her face still hidden by that hood, and she takes a yellow one that says Is It Friday Yet, and then he swings to offer them to Linesse bent over, she’s unfurled that bundle, sweatpants, and now she looks up, tucks herself back under the afghan, takes a white mug printed with a drooping cartoon mustache. He sets the third on the fender, a black mug that says I’m Not Lost, I’m Locationally Challenged, and pours something richly red and steaming from the thermos into each. He lifts his, and the woman in the skirts lifts hers, and then with the slightest tic of her gunmetal head Linesse lifts hers, and then a nod, and she drinks, and they drink.

Moon (Act III)

Gently brushing dust from that sleeping face, fingertips dredging a crumbling pile from pillow to palm, both hands together now cupping the fitful glow, lifting to lips pursed to blow, gently, dust that lofts in great slow billows that do not fall, that coil and glitter, a thousand thousand golden stars, a galaxy of atomies that lights them both lain on the high wide bed, bodies shadowed shapes atop striped sheets drifted with more dust. “I kissed her, once,” says Ysabel. “For a cup of coffee. And tonight, she, she,” a heavy hank of curls dislodges with a shrug.

“She wanted you. She did not know what having you entailed.”

“I didn’t know,” she says, thin wisps of words. “I had no idea.” A gold-flecked hand strokes a shining, sleeping cheek, brushes spangled short black hair. Her other hand laid across the bare gold-dusted breast, fingertips against black lace still tied about the throat. “Will she wake?”

“She will wake.” Past the yawning door in the lightless hall a shuffle, a change in posture perhaps, a shift of clothing. “She will wake, when day has broken, and if she does not see you here she will wonder why her bed is full of sand. She will curse the need to sweep her floor, and wash her only linen, and she will scour herself in the bath, and at brunch with her friends when stray specks yet catch the light at her cheek or the corner of her eye she’ll make empty jokes about glitter and glue and grade-school art. And in the days and weeks to come she will find herself from time to time to’ve been staring at nothing at all, and her chest cracked open, and the heart of her cored right out, and nothing to hand but stones that might fill the hollow ache, and she will not know why. But these will pass; they will come to her fewer and fainter and further between, as time passes. But they still will come, till the end of her days.”

Moon (Act II)

“Who did you say you were?” The door ajar, the security chain taut, a slice of face behind, a frown, a gingery mustache.

“A friend,” says the man in the hall, pressed close. “Your daughter’s. Gloria.” His hair is long and black and wet, his shapeless jacket grey. His bare foot red and raw, jammed between door and frame.

“That’s, not,” says the voice behind the door, “her name, isn’t,” and “I know,” says the man in the hall. “It’s what she’s called.”

“Daddy?” says someone, someone else.

“She’s dead,” says the man in the hall, lifting his head, cocking it, an ear to the gap. The faintest creak, the door, a floorboard. He wears a black patch over one eye. “I killed her.”

“You need to go,” says the voice behind the door. “I’m calling the police.”

“Daddy, what is it?” says someone else.

“Suzette, get back, go to your room,” says the voice behind the door, and “Suzette,” says the man in the hall, delicately. He brushes the security chain with a fingertip. A pop, a dull red spark, the chain snaps two ends leaping apart to clink against jamb and door. He throws his shoulder against a meaty thud, a grunt, the door shivers, comes unstuck swinging into an open room, wanly yellow, a thickset man fallen back against a leather couch, bare legs kicking slippered feet for purchase beneath the sprawling skirts of a satiny white robe, “Get back,” he’s saying, pushing himself upright. Scrape of the couch against the floor.

Things to keep in mind (The secret of vampirism)

Certainly there is no future for the genre except as a metaphor within some other work. By now the whole complex of ideas has passed so into the general culture that it is conceivable in art only as lyric imagery or as affectionate reminiscence. In fact, the vampire tradition has hardly been used in lyric verse—I can only remember one poem in Fantasy and Science Fiction. I always thought Italian directors would do very well with vampires as cultural symbols for the rotten rich—many of the traditions about the vampire are close to the atmosphere of films like La Notte or La Dolce Vita.

Moon (Act I)

A house that looks much like the others all along the one side of the street, low, demure, set close to the curb. “Pull in there,” says the Duke, pointing out the shallow curl of driveway before a closed garage. “Just get it off the street.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Jessie, spinning the wheel, backing and filling. “So we’re here?” she says. “Leo?” He’s opening his door, planting his cane, hauling himself out of the car. “I guess we’re here,” she says. She shuts off the engine.

Flakes of snow light on the brim of his red-brown derby hat, the shoulders of his camel-colored topcoat. Catch the edges of paving stones set in a meander across the scrap of yard, dead leaves and dying grass. Climb in lacy drifts against the front steps, cling to the panels set in the yellow door. “It’s always years between snows,” he says. “You ever notice that? Proper snows. I miss them.” He takes in a deep breath through his nose and lets it out, a ragged cloud lit up white by the harsh bare bulb there by the door. “This one will be proper. Can you smell it?”

“I don’t like it,” says Jessie.

He turns to look at her back by the car in her grey chauffeur’s jacket, her long black socks, her red Keds dark against the feathery snow. “It mislikes me,” he says.

“What?”

“You,” he says, and then “Nothing. Never mind. Too chilly?”

“Depends,” she says, arms about herself. “We going inside?”

He stoops, grunting, leaning heavily on his cane, free hand peeling up a corner of the doormat to find a key, small and coppery. “Not sure the heat’s on,” he says, pushing himself back to his feet. “But the view’s amazing.”

Moon (Opening)

“From this position,” says the fat guy sitting in the chair, “there’s six, from this position there are six defenses.” He’s holding a soft brown briefcase in his lap, buckle clinking as he fondles it.

“There are seven working defenses from this position,” says the tall guy standing behind him, scissors in his hand wavering over the fat guy’s scraggly hair.

“And one of ’em hurts,” says the fat guy with a guffaw. He’s wearing a khaki-colored T-shirt printed with a faded picture, a bearded man holding up a pistol. Damage my calm, it says.

“Hold still,” says the tall guy, snipping a wisp.

“Man, they don’t, they just don’t make comics like that anymore, do they?” He sighs. Wraps his arms more tightly about the briefcase. “All blood and thunder. Goddamn. Not too short, right?” He leans forward, looks back, the tall guy rolling his eyes as he lifts his scissors up and away. “Not too short, okay, Abe?”

“Not too short,” says the tall guy, nodding.

The fat guy sits back. “Just, neaten it up a bit,” he says. “Make it look good, though.” Wrapping his arms again about the briefcase. “But quick, quick,” he says, leaning forward again, looking back again, and again the scissors lift away. “She could be here any minute. Queen of the fucking world, man.” Sitting back. The buckle clinking again. “Queen of the fucking world.”

“Timmo, hey,” says Abe. “Hold still.” Snip, and snip.

“Any minute now,” says Timmo. “Come on, man, come on.”

“Hold,” says Abe, snip, “still.”

Dazzle (Closing)

No Sitting or Sleeping in Front of the Windows say the signs taped over and over and over again to the sweep of glass along the first floor of the grand old building to one side of the little cobbled plaza. Across the plaza a freestanding colonnade, gold letters pitted and stained along the top that spell out Ankeny Square. In the center a dead fountain, a low octagonal pool, two caryatids back to back, a great basin held over their heads. Sitting on the edge of the pool in her black jeans, her leather coat the color of butter, her sword laid flat across her knees, Jo has one hand on the scabbard, one hand on the stony edge of the pool, a cigarette smoldering between her fingers. On her other side the mask, the mane of it coiled and still. Laughter, a couple blocks away down the alley, two men leaning together on their way to somewhere else, one of them a pink box in his arms, and “Goddammit,” she says to herself.

She takes one last drag, letting smoke plume from her mouth as she stubs the cigarette out on the edge of the pool by another crumpled butt. Leaning to one side her other hand roots in the pocket of her coat, coming up with a crumpled orange pack. Only a couple-three cigarettes left inside.

“Goddammit,” she says again.

Yanking the hilt of the sword then she bares a foot or so of the blade. Knuckles white about the hilt of it, the throat of the scabbard. Fists shivering. “I’ll do it,” she says, and slams it home. Leaps to her feet spinning to look up at the caryatid, “If I have to,” she says. “I’ll beg if I have to.”

That stone face looking down at the empty pool, arms up, bent at the elbows.

Dazzle (Act IV)

A fiendish little basket-box, carved from a single chunk of dark red wood, sits on the desk by a loose stack papers, covered with rows of closely written figures, by manila folders with neat labels that say Riverkeep, Cassino, the Moretti, the Elkins. He sets the cut glass tumbler empty beside the box, under the blue-shaded banker’s lamp, and gingerly strokes the knurled and seamless faces of it, the pips carved into each, simple shapes, a stylized flame, a cloud, a raindrop, a quartered circle. He sighs. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he says, the words thick, and roughly ground.

Behind him in a chair by the door ajar Marfisa curled her feet up on the cushion arms about her knees. “What is that,” she says.

“A boon,” says Agravante.

“For the Guisarme?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He steps around the desk, smoked glass, thick metal frame.

“What was he doing here? Where’s Grandfather?”

“Asleep,” says Agravante, sitting in his chair, a woven contraption of black leather straps.

“Do you know what I’ve seen tonight, brother?”

“I did not even know that you were yet within the city, sister mine.”

Wrapped tightly in her sheepskin jacket she leans her forehead against her knees. On the floor by her chair a knapsack, stuffed full. “The Loathly Mór,” she says, “came with her people openly down the street, and they sang the aisling, and they stopped outside a house, and I swear, brother,” looking up at him then, “she did beg sanctuary there.”

“The Queen,” he says, picking up the empty tumbler, putting it down again, “has been set aside.”

Dazzle (Act III)

“Remarkable,” says Mr. Charlock. “The likeness.” Her chin in his hand he tilts her head to one side, the other, hot white light rolling over her cheekbones, gleaming her green eyes. Artlessly tangled black curls stiff with hairspray rustle over bare shoulders. “Flawless.”

“Mr. Charlock,” says Mr. Keightlinger, out in the middle of the club. He’s wearing his sunglasses, the left lens painted over with spidery white words. In one hand a Japanese sword, long bare curl of a blade shining, bone-white hilt wrapped in rough black cloth. The crunch of broken glass as he turns, looks to the front door, the back door, the overturned tables, the little knots of people crowded together by the bar, the private booths where someone’s groaning on the floor. “Sweep,” he says to himself, “something. Couple more minutes.”

Mr. Charlock reaches into the pocket of his black suit jacket. “Let me ask you something,” he says to the woman sitting before him, on the folding chair on the little stage, draped in her sheer white négligée. Fog roiling about her ankles. She nods. Her hands folded together, tucked between her knees. He pulls out a pair of underwear, bikini underpants with blue and white stripes. “These yours?” he says.

After a moment her head begins to shake from side to side.

“You know them? Seen them before?”

Again her head shakes quick jerks back and forth now “No?” she says, the edge in her voice burring the whisper.

“Long shot,” he says, with a shrug.