Kip Manley's Blog, page 9

Rounds (Act IV)

Rounding a corner the houses to one side fall away and there past a drop a sheen of still water and just past it low buildings a bright red roof like a circus tent a spindly Ferris wheel and a snaking curl of roller coaster. Across the river behind it all the hills of trees green-black and brown and orange dotted with houses and lights just starting to come on and then they’re past the gap and trees and houses take up that side again. “What the hell?” says Jo, craning her neck. The Duke beside her shifts, looks back as well. “Some kind of mini Disneyland thing down there by the river?” Endicott’s always back in time, sings a voice over a driving beat and popping guitars. Endicott’s not the cheatin’ kind.

“Oaks Park,” says the Duke. “You never been to Oaks Park?”

“Never heard of it,” says Jo.

“One of the delights of my demesne,” says the Duke. “We should go sometime. The rides are closed right now, but they got the rollerskating– hey, hon, turn right up there. I want to see something.”

“Fun?” says Jo, as the car slows, turns. “You’re asking me out on a date? We’re gonna put on rollerskates and listen to Journey?”

“Why not?” says the Duke, looking back through the rear window. Endicott keeps his body clean. Endicott don’t use nicotine.

“Would this be before or after the wedding?”

He looks away from where they’ve been, looks at her, crammed into the corner of the back seat in her butter-colored coat, arms folded tightly about herself chin tucked behind her shoulder one eyebrow hiked over cold and muddy eyes. He sucks his teeth. “I don’t know. What do you think, Princess? A solstice wedding?”

Rounds (Act III)

“What I think is maybe this time Jo comes with me,” says the Duke, his arm hooked over the headrest, looking over at Jo and Ysabel in the cramped back seat. “If you’re worried about the Princess, killer,” he says, “don’t. Everybody knows my car. Just about the safest place in the city– especially in my demesne? Back seat of this very automobile.” He gets out of the car, levers his seat-back forward, leans in to offer Jo a hand. Ysabel scoots over as Jo climbs out and follows her, hauling herself out of the car. “Thought I’d sit up front, with your driver,” she says to the Duke’s arched eyebrow. “More pleasant place to spend the five minutes or so you’ll be inside.”

“You guys were gone at least twenty,” says Jo, looking at the brick block across the street. Over the front door square in the middle of the façade a small model of a three-masted sailing ship, a little red metal banner frozen in a snap of wind. Letters carved into the lintel below say Vitula Arms.

“An exaggeration,” says the Duke. “Shall we?”

Rounds (Act II)

Mademoiselle Juliette n’a pas vraiment la tête, that voice slinking out over the driving beat, choisir entre Montague, Capulet, two women on the stage that fills one end of the dark red room, the same high white wigs piled atop their heads, the same blued eyes under elaborately painted brows, the same striking noses, very similar breasts bared over embroidered corsets, long wide-hipped skirts parted before like curtains over the same frothy confusion of lacey underwear and garters and stockings, all dusty pinks and ivories and pale blues and paler golds. Stepping daintily back and forth to that enormous beat hands out to either side just so, one of them holding a fan, the other a handkerchief. Cette commedia del’arte n’est pas assez déjantée sings that slinking voice, and they dip and sashay in unison stepping free of their skirts leaving them upright and empty behind, long legs bare hips turning and ducking and stopping then one of them tilting her head back the other looking over her shoulder. “Jackie!” she yells over the beat. “Jackie the goddamn lights!” And then a smile blooming her voice climbing, cooing, “Leo!”

“Ettie, darling,” calls the Duke, there by the bar. “Could we?” Waggling a finger in the air at the music.

“Jackie!” she bellows. “Cut it!” The other dancer’s stepped down from the stage, she’s wriggling her way into a long sheer robe, careful of her wig. The music stops mid-Juliette. A woman pops up from behind the bar, spiky red hair and a faceful of freckles, a sleeveless black T-shirt and skinny arms festooned with tattoos. “You want it again from the top?” and then her scowl unfolding eyes widening her voice a shriek, “Jessie!” Planting her hands on the bar she hops it in a single practiced bound. “Goddamn girl!” Dodging tables past the Duke and Jo and Ysabel to swallow the blond woman in the grey chauffeur’s uniform jacket with a spinning, staggering hug.

Rounds (Act I)

“Is it the money?” says Ysabel.

“What?” says Jo. “No. Pick out anything you want. Whatever. I don’t care.” Clacking dresses from one side of a rack to the other without really looking at them. Her coat of soft and butter-colored leather beaded still with raindrops.

“No,” says Ysabel, “I mean, was the money why,” turning a pair of boots over in her hands, worn brown leather, sharp toes, high heels. “I could have given you whatever you wanted, you know? Whenever. Whenever you wanted it.” She’s wearing a white trench coat unbuttoned over a tight T-shirt dress printed with a blond Batgirl in purple and grey. “Before I gave it all away.” She puts the boots back on the shelf above the rack.

“It,” says Jo. She stops flipping through dresses. “What about whatever we needed? Huh? What about what we needed? All those times I’m giving you shit for buying peach ice teas we couldn’t afford, you ever think of saying oh, hey, wait a minute, here’s twenty bucks I got in my pocket? It.” She pulls something off the rack, a sundress, blue and yellow checks. “What do you think, huh?” Holding it up in front of herself. “Too summery. Yeah.” She slaps it back on the rack. “You did it the one time. You gave Timmo the money for the fake ID. You told him to spend it all in one place. Why’d you tell him that?”

“Jo,” says Ysabel.

“How long did that money last in his pocket? How long before he reaches for it and it’s gone?

“Jo,” says Ysabel, “that card is the same thing.”

“The hell it is,” says Jo.

Rounds (Opening)

The light from the television flickers over tangled blankets in the otherwise dark room. It’s a large flat-sceen model hung on the wall over the blond wood crates at the foot of the futon. On the screen a man in a white top hat and tails is dancing before a gospel choir as a couple of men in orange jumpsuits wheel about him on skateboards. If you don’t come see me today, says the television, I can’t save you any money. Someone’s snoring lightly. At the foot of the futon a tumbled pile of empty shoe boxes, a couple that say Converse, a larger one that says John Fluevog. An orange carton of cigarettes ripped open at one end. Djarum, says the label. 76. The commercial ends with a fanfare and the light from the television changes. A man in a dark suit’s scooping cat food from one can into another in a minty pastel kitchen. He’s humming along with the soundtrack. A shot of a marmalade tabby pawing and mewling at the louvered kitchen doors. The snoring hitches and stops and a bare foot kicks out from under the blankets as Jo rolls over on her side. Wrapped in a clean white fluffy robe loosely belted falling from one shoulder. Oh the cat’s hungry, right, right, says the television. I’ll fix you dinner just as soon as I get me a smoke. Jo takes in a deep fluttering breath and the snoring starts again. At the head of the futon a low shelf painted white, a glass ashtray with three or four butts, a low thick-bottomed tumbler, a slick of something amber left inside. A half-dozen DVD cases most still saying Security Device Enclosed along the side and three books lying flat, the top one with a receipt tucked inside. A sword in a plain black scabbard, its guard a glittering net of wiry strands about the hilt, its pommel a great silvery clout. Someone moans.

Surveilling (Closing)

The woman kneeling by the tub wears nothing but a pair of narrow black-rimmed glasses. Her chin tucked she’s looking only at her hands folded one over the other in her lap. On the white tile floor beside her an oval copper tray and on the tray a gold plate and a bone knife, a white plastic funnel, a rehoboam pitcher filmed with a milky residue. Beside the tray a stack of thick white folded towels. The bathroom about her’s large and lined all in tiny white hexagonal tiles, the lines of grout gone dark with age and grime. The tub sits on its four clawed feet on a low blocky pedestal at one end of the room, beneath a window of frosted glass, blackly blank in all that white.

Her nose twitches shifting her glasses. She doesn’t lift a hand to scratch. Her face has been carefully painted, her lips an exaggerated Cupid’s bow in a thick bright red, her eyelids brushed with gold over dark long lashes. She blinks. Her nose twitches again. She doesn’t look up. Her hands don’t move from her lap.

The tub filled almost to the brim with water motionless strung with ropes of something viscously white. A woman stretched on her back submerged eyes closed her black hair drifting loosely tangled curls about her head and shoulders, tendrils looped over her face, her breasts, along her arms. Her hands float limply either side. A bubble of air creeps from one nostril to shiver a moment before its release, blundering up and up through fronds of dark hair and strands of white stuff slowly, so slowly, until wobbling it reaches the surface of the water clinging there to its underside a moment before breaking the silence with a tiny crack.

Commercial considerations

Since the renovations hereabouts, we’ve been re-running the novelettes from the start on the usual Monday–Wednesday–Friday schedule, and as we speak the tenth novelette, “Surveilling,” is just about done; the eleventh, “Rounds,” will begin appearing next week, and—well. There are eleven novelettes per volume.

Surveilling (Act IV)

Mr. Charlock sits on an empty phone book binder at the bottom of a phone booth, knees drawn up, arms drawn in, green-grey handset pressed to his cheek. “Jesus they was all over town today,” he says. “Bus down Hawthorne and they head right to the fuckin’ Duke’s, breakfast with him, and then it’s off in his car for a tour of all the hotspots in Southeast. I’m telling you– listen.” He leans against the side of the phone booth. “If it had just been you and me, or just you, and me off at another goddamn council meeting–” He knocks the handset against the side of the phone booth. “Yeah whatever,” he yells into the mouthpiece, then tucks the handset back against his cheek again. “How was working with the so-called brother?”

He slumps against the back of the phone booth listening. Over his head a sticker half peeled away says that someone unreadable’s got a posse. Next to it a sticker in the shape of a taxi cab. Call Radio, it says. Someone’s scribbled a monster in black ink, big head looming out of the taxi window, one hand on a gear shift spearing the taxi’s hood. Mr. Charlock shivers suddenly, sits bolt upright. “Shit. Seriously? All right. All right. And what did I tell you? Fucking Southeast. Oh don’t give me that we both know it’s him. You owe me ten bucks. I don’t care, you owe me ten bucks on general principle!” He sits back, smiling broadly. “Yeah. What? Sellwood. I told you, all over fucking Southeast. Yes, Sellwood. I don’t know, this crazy-ass place on a vacant lot by the river. All windows and doors and scrap lumber and shit.” His smile’s leaked away now, he’s hunching forward. “I don’t know, a couple blocks away. I had to find– I had to find a phone.”

Things to keep in mind (A secret of worldbuilding)

World-building oriented towards creative freedom will offer surprises and novelty, showing us something we never expected to encounter in the Star Trek galaxy which at its best can shake up our assumptions and open up fresh possibilities, at worst simply looks incongruous and silly and gets ignored and glossed over by later writers. (To take an example from the golden age, remember when The Next Generation established that fast warp travel was unravelling the universe and all Starfleet ships had a speed limit imposed on them they could only break with special permission? No shade on you if you don’t, I keep forgetting it too and I didn’t watch the relevant episode that long ago, and no subsequent Trek show has seen fit to yes-and that particular bit of world-building.)

Surveilling (Act III)

Groaning the shape on the futon rolls and twists and hunches up suddenly. A head appears shrugging off a rumple in the covers, tousled hair thin and wispy, a man on all fours somewhere under the crazed tangle of quilts and blankets and sheets, reds and oranges and greens and pinks and blues, midnight blues, patches of iridescent blue like feathers, like eyes, a ripple of blue like a warm clear tropical sea, stripes of cloudless sky blue. He’s crawling toward the edge dragging the whole mass of color with him, and he stops, tries kicking himself free. A foot shakes loose, a bare leg, falling over on his side wrestling free of the striped comforter his hip his chest his shoulder and arm. Tugging a stretch of sheet back over his nakedness he reaches up over his head feeling about the floor to one side coming up with a pair of blue jeans belt still looped and green plaid boxers still tucked inside. Kicking, squirming, he gets both feet free and up in the air and into the legs of the jeans and rolling over on his belly gets the jeans up about his hips. He tugs a corner of a sheet from his waistband before buttoning and zipping and buckling. Up on his knees now reaching back over the edge of the futon for a thick soft shirt in a sunset plaid. “Wallet,” he says, patting his pockets, “wallet, good, keys. Keys. Shit.” Looking about the long narrow room, running a hand through what little of his hair is left. “Shoes. Shoes.” Futon’s at one end. A long table runs the length of it, stacks of binders and loose paper atop it lit up from behind by fluorescent lights through greenish louvered windows. The floor of broad wood planks chipped and scratched but clean, uncluttered. He snaps his fingers, leans down, reaches under the futon and comes up with an old brown shoe. Shakes it. It jingles. He smiles. The door opens.

The man there’s big, broad, a loose yellow slicker draped over him shining with rain. Long grey mustaches droop to either side of his mouth. A white paper bag and a cardboard tray with a couple of paper coffee cups. “I was going to wake you with burritos,” he says.