Robyn Hugo McIntyre's Blog, page 11

Happy New Year?

Firework @ New year 2014, SFO, CA (Photo credit: madhankumarbs)

One of my favourite parts of being a young teenager was being old enough to stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve, and young enough to be able to sleep a few hours and wake up for the Rose Parade with no ill effects. I particularly liked New Year’s Eve because it was the culmination of the whole holiday season, which began with Halloween back in October and the noisemakers, parties, and fireworks seemed like an appropriate way to say goodbye to a time of the year when people (mostly) seemed focused on being nicer than usual. It was also a time when I could feel as though I was a real part of a larger community; anticipating the same events and expecting a lot of the same things – candy on Halloween, turkey on Thanksgiving, presents on Christmas, and light and magic on New Year’s. Which is where the let-down eventually came in for me.

In the U.S., we celebrate big time on New Year’s. So do a lot of other countries. And those on the other side of the international dateline get to celebrate the new year a few hours earlier than we do. But what are we celebrating? Most people would probably say a ‘clean slate’ or ‘fresh start’. In some cultures, preparing for this fresh start includes cleaning the house from top to bottom and paying off all your debts so you start the new year unencumbered. That’s a great tradition and a nice thought, but once any end-of-year holiday time is over, we go back to the projects and problems at the office or at school. Not really much changes except the date. So the idea of a new start is largely a symbolic one, which we could just as well apply to any day in any week or month. And some of us – with our ‘I’ll get back on  that diet tomorrow’ – frequently do.

As a kid, I guess I thought there might be something magical in the change of the date that was celebrated with such enthusiasm. With this change in the numbered year, somehow a new wave of possibilities might be on their way. This might be the year that my hair stopped being so straight and fly-away or I might actually enjoy school or dad might be nicer or flying cars might be invented. But change, though it may seem sudden, is usually not. It takes time and effort for possibility to become reality. So the new tomorrow of January 1st ends up looking a whole lot like December 31st or even like January 1st from the previous year.

Maybe having seen these holidays roll by in their cycle for several decades is why I no longer view New Year’s Eve as a ritual for enticing the universe to shower blessings upon me and mine. I no longer think that if I perform the ritual correctly – having a date and a party to go to, wearing new clothes, and carrying a bottle of champagne – magically, all I have hoped for will come to pass in the next twelve months. I have seen and lost too much to believe in the efficacy of spells concocted by Madison Avenue and societal expectations. But I haven’t lost my belief in possibilities. I still hope the Loch Ness Monster really exists. I tell myself a zombie apocalypse could happen. World peace could actually happen. I’m pretty sure many of my dreams can still come true. I’ll just have to keep working on them; regardless of the date.

Tagged: fresh start, Life, new year, possibilities, rumination, work

The Flesh Sword

For my friend Rich Magahiz, who gave me the idea during a particularly hilarious version of #SciFiChat. Please note this is the first draft. I think the universe is interesting, but I don’t know that I want to go any further with this particular story.

As he worked to calm himself, Champion knew the trouble he was in was his own damn fault. He had ignored his dear mother’s advice: “If it seems too good to be true, it likely is.”

He stepped back quickly, though not quickly enough to avoid hearing his opponent’s saber cut through the air near his left ear. But what was worse than knowing he could have lost an earlobe was the pang in his groin as he blocked the strike. He needed to get this fight over with and soon, before he completely lost both heads.

When he had ridden into town, he had not been looking for a fight. He had been on the road for two weeks and was looking forward to a hot meal that was not pre-spelled food or his own cooking, and a soft bed.

He had gotten both at the town’s best hotel and enjoyed them and a bath to the fullest. It was not until the next day, when he strolled about, satisfying his curiosity, that he had fallen into difficulty.

Bartlesby was a small place, just a water stop on the railway, so it got few visitors. It was the kind of place Champion usually enjoyed in contrast to the noisy rough-and-tumble of San Francisco. The streets were relatively quiet during the day and nearly deserted at night, most men did not bother to carry a blade, and no one knew who he was, so he was rarely challenged.

After leaving his last employment, he had looked forward to leisurely travel back to the San Francisco Bay, choosing to ride all the way back rather than take a train for most of the journey. He valued his solitude, the time to really think, to savor the countryside, and it all made coming into a town more pleasurable.

Unless something like this happened.

He stepped back quickly, maintaining balance, but avoiding making contact with his opponent’s blade.  The man flashily waved his sabre in the manner of someone looking to make a name for himself as a professional duelist and grinned. Probably thinking that his skill worried Champion. But what was really worrying Champion was the erection he could feel that seemed to grow harder with every meeting of the blades. This had never happened to him before, and it was extremely distracting. This duelist was no match for him in skill, but Champion’s difficulty getting himself under control gave the man an advantage.

He looked hard at his opponent: a young dandy outfitted in what was probably the latest blade slinger fashion imagined in the magazines. Stripped of his peacock’s feathers, he was just a skinny brunette whose face had not quite met adulthood. Nothing there for Champion, even had he been inclined that way.

It could not be the duel itself, either. Champion made his living hiring out his skill. He was rational, professional, analytical. His sabre was a tool of his trade, not an advertisement.

But this was not his sabre. It was Hickok’s.

* * *

After finishing his breakfast, Champion had decided to take a walk around the town, just to see what was there. He left his blade in his room – no need for it in Bartlesby.

At the railway/telegraph office, he sent a telegram to his man in San Francisco – might as well take the opportunity to let Lan Min know where he was in case something came up – then continued his walk.

It had been a surprise to see the storefront with its neat lettering of “Jms. Dire – Blades Sold & Repaired.” Champion would not have thought that Bartlesby could support a bladesmith. Out of curiosity, he stepped in and was rewarded with the sight of a lovely woman polishing the glass cases behind which ranks of sabres stood at attention.

She seemed quite refined; her manner and bearing bespoke careful upbringing and he had a sense of a quick mind behind her dark eyes in the glance that she gave him as he entered the shop.

She greeted him with a small smile which was personable, yet not too inviting. It was precisely done. She intrigued him.

“Ah,” she said. “A visitor to our town. Perhaps waiting for a train and desirous of passing the time?”

Champion smiled in return. “Are the merely curious not conducive to good commerce?”

Her smile became somewhat more genuine. “Nice parry.”

“What? No riposte?”

She laughed. It was a light sound. Enjoyable. “That would not be conducive to good commerce, sir.”

It was his turn to laugh.

“What can our little shop have to show a gentleman of experience and refinement, such as I judge you to be?”

“Oh, there’s the riposte. And a hit as well.”

“Are you a collector, perhaps? We have a few oddities that might hold some interest.”

She went to a cabinet, and donning white gloves, removed a sabre from a shallow, wide drawer with velvet lining. She laid it carefully atop a leather square placed on the countertop for Champion to examine.

He found his attention piqued by the pattern of wavy lines in the carbon steel. “Is this Damascus steel?”

“It is, indeed. My brother James, who is the smith, imported some of the Wootz steel from the orient, but he did not make this particular blade. It was given us by the merchant from whom he purchased the steel. He told us it had been created for Mr. William Hickok to his specifications, but as you know, Mr. Tutt killed Mr. Hickok a few years ago, so it was never delivered.”

“It’s a fine looking blade with an interesting provenance.”

“Yes, there is a letter from the merchant and a letter from Mr. Hickok to the swordsmith who made the blade in Damascus that come with it. The merchant bought the sword from the smith after Mr. Hickok’s unfortunate duel.”

“And what are you asking for this interesting piece of history, Miss Dire?”

She smiled at him again. “I’ll put on some tea for the negotiations.”

* * *

They had just settled on the price, when a man who looked to be in his thirties came through the curtains that led into the back of the shop. He had leather guards over his shirtsleeves and blackened dust on his long leather apron. He was introduced to Champion as the smith, James Dire.

“Brother, Mr. Champion here is purchasing the Hickok sabre.”

Mr. Dire, who seemed a little distracted, smiled ruefully and rubbed his head – a practice that must have been habitual, since his hair was already disarranged.

“Oh well,” he said. “I knew it would have to leave us one day, but I shall still be a little sorry to see it go.” He turned to Champion. “Are you a collector, sir?”

“On occasion.”

“Well,” Dire turned back to his sister. “I just came in to tell you that the order from St. Louis has arrived by wagon and I shall need your help in tallying the goods. Please excuse me, Mr. Champion, and congratulations on your purchase.”

“I shall be with you directly, brother,” Miss Dire told him. “As soon as Mr. Champion and I have concluded the transaction.”

* * *

And that was how Champion had found himself on the street shortly before 11 in the morning, possessed of a dueling sabre in a new scabbard and being accosted by this pale stick of a bladeslinger.

Hickok’s blade.

Champion’s opponent went into a false attack, and when that did not provoke a reaction, he moved to an advance lunge, which he executed in a mediocre way. Still, Champion was forced to respond and the resulting chime of steel on steel sent a rhythm of shocks through his genitals  that threw off his breathing and ended with the two duelists going corps à corps, from which both men pulled quickly back.

Exercise took blood – the erection should not be there. Dueling took focus – the erection should not be there. But it was there, and despite Champion’s best efforts, every bit of conversation resulted in heightened sensuality. Should there be a prolonged exchange, or god forbid – a coulé – he would be doomed. The sliding action of blade along blade would be likely to send him straight to a mortifying defeat, if not actual, physical death or disfigurement.

It had to be the sword. Hickok’s sabre. There was something wrong with it. And that something had to be magickal in origin. But why would this blade be be-spelled? What gain would be had from it? It made little sense. Hickok himself was not known as a ladies’ man. Further, he had never even actually taken possession of the sabre. Assuming the blade was actually Hickok’s. Assuming the blade…was…what it was supposed to… Damn.

Bamboozled. Like a tyro. Like a hick in the big city for the first time. What an ass.

The clang of blade on blade brought Champion back to the fight. He had parried the blow out of experience, not focus. He paid for it now with the feeling of a gentle hand tugging at him until he felt his face flush and perspiration that had nothing to do with combat running in a rivulet down his belly and below his belt line. The tugging became a rhythmic urging that teased and pulled like that most skilled of demimondes he had met in Paris last year. Gently, firmly, squeezing a little. Coaxing, coaxing, coaxing.

Then the invisible hand ceased its ministrations, and just in time. Champion could think of little worse than explaining to Saint Peter how he had come to die in the middle of the street while in the grip of le petit mort.

This was ludicrous. He made his living as a sword for hire. For him to be nonplussed simply because some invisible hand…

At that moment, Champion’s adversary chose to smirk. His upper lip pulled back toward one ear, displaying his teeth in what was almost a sneer. He was anticipating the victory.

Champion felt his anxiety and uncertainty give way to anger and then to an emotion-crushing calm. He pulled back his blade and breathed out, falling into a split-second stillness. Then he stepped forward; his sabre flicked out and Champion’s wrist barely twisted. In the next moment, the dandy was collapsed in the street, howling for all he was worth, his blade in the dust. One hand held tight to the side of his head, the other was scrabbling about to find the ear Champion had shorn off.

“My honour, I believe,” Champion said to him in passing. He sheathed his sabre quickly and headed off at a quick pace for the bladesmith’s shop. But when he arrived, he found the door was locked and a sign hung in the window: Gone Out of Business.

* * *

So many questions and no answers.

In a gesture unusual for him, Champion rubbed the back of his neck in a bid to get the muscles to loosen and perhaps diminish the headache he was experiencing.

Bartlesby did not have a full-time lawman. The part-timer was mending fence at his ranch and the district sheriff would not be in town until next week. No help there.

None of the local business people he talked to had noticed that a bladesmith’s shop had opened, or if they had, they had just noted it and moved on. Very few of them had any need for, or even interest in, sabres. No help there.

He had just about decided on a late night burglary to see if there were any clues left in the shop and was passing time with a drink before dinner in the hotel when the telegram came. Lan Min’s concise message had nearly set him to swearing. A friend in Seattle needed him. Quickly. Min was not given to drama, but had included the word URGENT. So now Champion was in the railway station, his horse and tack being loaded onto the northbound train. Dinner and a sleeping compartment awaited him.

The vexing problem had been what he should do with the alleged Hickok sabre? What he knew of its magickk proved its danger and what he did not know could likely kill him. Yet, he could not entrust it to anyone else, putting them at risk. His solution had been quick and simple: the sabre, wrapped in brown paper, now occupied a cubbyhole in the railroad’s freight office. It would sit there until he came to claim it. And he did intend to claim it. The solution of this mystery of the blade, the disappearing smith and his lovely sister were only postponed. Champion put the claim ticket into the back of his pocket watch and clicked the case shut, and boarded his train. He would be back.

* * *

“That was a clever idea.” James Dire, erstwhile bladesmith, indicated the long, narrow bundle wrapped in brown paper that he held in one hand.

“Indeed,” the lady with him replied. “And clever of us to have someone keep an eye on Mr. Champion. It made recovering the blade easy.”

“Shall we go back to the laboratory and analyze the data, do you think?”

“I was thinking about that, my dear. I would like to have a little more data to work with.”

“Ah. Then we’ll be traveling in the other direction.”

“Well, Mr. Champion is a blade for hire and he left in a well-organized hurry, so it’s simple to assume—”

“Actually, I discovered he’s traveling to Sacramento with connections further north to Seattle.”

“How simply brilliant of you.” The lady patted Dire’s arm. “If I were a believer in Fate, I’d think making Mr. Champion’s acquaintance was foreordained. He was a marvelous test subject and he’s no doubt heading into a situation where there will be more opportunities to capture data on the sabre’s more interesting features.”

“But not directly from Mr. Champion.”

The lady made a moue. “He’s much too wary, now. But it might be interesting to put the sabre to work against him.”

Mr. Dire smiled. “I’ll go and purchase the tickets.”

THE END

She Sang in the Mornings

She sang in the mornings, but her evenings were dark and lonely. Curled in a corner by the bed, she shivered until early light put its fingers underneath the blinds and dragged pale stripes across the wooden floors. What was she, she wondered, that every night her bed lay empty? Why did she need to be bereft of the warm covers? She put her dog to bed every night – lifted the fleece blankets so that he could crawl under the cool sheets and round himself into a comfortable ball. For herself though, it was the foam pad covered in plaid that sat in the corner of her bedroom, tangled with a flannel blanket that she could not force herself to lay across her shoulders. In her footie pajamas of dancing polar bear fabric, she sat upright on the dog’s bed, leaning against a pillow propped up against the wall. And shivered. And slept fitfully.

She could have left a light on, but she did not.

She could have used an electric blanket, but she did not.

She could have slept in the bed, but…

In her tiny apartment, she sang in the mornings. She made breakfast for herself and her dog. She washed dishes, she vacuumed floors, she wrote poetry to the birds in the yard, eating the seed she put out for them.

In the afternoon, she shopped. She said hello and smiled at people. She came home and put away the shopping. She ate lunch. She read. She wrote more poetry and wrote music for it. She talked to her mother on the phone.

She sat in her chair and looked out of the window at the shadows slowly crawling towards her. She watched the news. She walked the dog, then fed him and herself. She read.

And this was her life. Pleasant and warm around her the way a shawl of fine, fine mohair was pleasant and warm; light, so light that she barely knew it was there.

But at night, it was heavy. Heavy and suffocating. When she fell asleep, her head against the pillow against the wall, she would often wake up with her breath lodged in her throat as though it was a solid thing that she had not chewed well enough. Shiver. Sleep. Startle. The rhythm of her nights. Shiver. Sleep. Startle. Bone-crushingly cold in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room and everything to do with something she could not identify. And unidentified, it lingered.

What would she give to sleep again in her bed? She never knew because she never asked.

Tagged: experimental, short fiction

Claws of the Cat

Claws of the Cat: A Shinobi Mystery by Susan Spann

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Those of you who love mystery and are fascinated by medieval Japanese Samurai culture will like this book. A Shinobi detailed to protect a Jesuit priest ends up becoming a detective. The juxtaposition of the cultures and the incorporation of shinobi training into the investigations is delightful. This is the first book in a series and a satisfying first effort.

View all my reviews

Claws of the Cat

Revision

So far, the revisions on my novel consist of: “*delete* *delete* *delete* – but if I move that there, then that means… – WTH? – But then, WHEN did THAT happen? – OH, I SEE – Then how will…? – Yeah, I can rig that.” and other such informative conversations with myself.

 

BTW – #LitChat will be talking about revisions this Wednesday, 1pm (PST) on Twitter.

Dead Butterfly Season

There are days when I think I must be an Abductee; kidnapped as a child and subjected to butt probes that reached all the way into my brain to scramble my synapses. Other times I think maybe I just don’t have access to some parts of my brain, like a department store without a directory or maybe with hidden escalators. Having secret levels in my brain that I’m not really aware of would explain a lot. Like why I find life so confusing. Like why I spend so much time trying to figure out What the Deal Is with things. Things like butterflies.

Once in a while we get a lot of rain, causing a population boom in “painted lady” butterflies. This year is particularly bad. I’ve been scraping them off my windshield for days. It seems like they’re everywhere: little clouds of them stepping off airway corners into the middle of busy freeways, ending their jaunty days as smears of yellow orange on glass and chrome. Kamikaze abstracts.

For most of the time I’ve been out here in the boonies of the Inland Empire in Southern California, I’ve  annually hosed and scraped off butterfly remains and believed I thought nothing of it. But not this year. What is the deal? I asked myself. And I realized that on some secret level I had always been bothered by the way the butterflies died, killing themselves without knowing it; just flapping their wings one second and yellow dust on the windshield the next. And I realized that every year until now, I had killed butterflies with my car while on that secret level of my brain, I remembered Julia  and wondered if she had ever forgiven me.

This year, before dead butterfly season began, I went to see Citizen Kane. I’ve seen it a dozen times, but never in a theatre, so when I saw it was playing at an art theatre downtown, I decided to go. Then I decided not to go. Then I picked up my keys and went.

When I arrived, there was a good-sized line of ticket holders, mostly university film students and literary types. I scanned them as I walked up to the booth, because I always seem to find somebody I know in a theatre line. This time, I found Julia.

She didn’t look the same as she had in high school, but not all that different. Then she had been very thin, with black hair straight to her waist. Now she was less thin and her hair was a lot shorter, but it was her.  I think I would have recognized her even if I’d suddenly been struck blind. Overstated and pathetic, maybe, but in essence, true.

The first time I had seen her was in International Relations. She took the seat to my right and I glanced at her long enough to see she was female and no one I knew, then I went back to sketching a schematic for something Tom Petrovich and I were building. Then someone touched my shoulder.

It was Skip Taylor. I only had him in a couple of classes and wasn’t in the habit of checking other guys out, so I don’t remember much about him, now. Just kind of a vague impression that he was pudgy and had some fuzz on his upper lip. He probably called it a moustache, but I’d had more facial hair in the 8th grade.

“Trade seats with me, Fiamengo,” he said.

“Why?”

He jerked his head at Julia and I started to get up, I liked the seat, but if I didn’t move, I figured I’d end up passing notes. Class was about to start and the only other empty seat now was next to Kent Muir, who was a self-labeled Communist and liked to argue about everything. I was halfway up when the bell rang and Mr. Shawn shut the door and told Taylor to take the seat next to Muir. So I ended up sitting next to Julia all semester and fell in love with her.

It just happened to  me like getting older happens. I didn’t even realize it until the next semester. Julia didn’t do anything. She didn’t pretend to be smart or pretend not to be. I heard her opinions in class and we talked about them afterward and I invited her to Mr. Clark’s room, where a bunch of us met for lunch, and she became part of the group. A nerd clique, the overachiever’s group. Most of us had parents who were in the PTA, the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary or Lions or Elks, last names seen in advertisements in the local paper or in the business section. Because of this, most of us were invited to a lot of “social” events like the yearly pool party for the foreign exchange students. I almost never went to any of these because my parents wanted me to, but I started going the second semester after I met Julia because she wanted to go. Julia’s dad was a factory worker and her mom didn’t speak English, and Julia was proud and happy to be invited to these things. Her dad, she said, wanted her to have a good education, but her mom thought “middle class” was a synonym for Paradise and she wanted to see Julia associating with kids whose folks were professional people and business owners.  I guess she hoped that association would somehow create a climate for a transformation that would make Julia part of the middle class. I told Julia that she had us confused with some other people: most of us had grandparents who had also been immigrants, that my grandfather had sold fish in Croatia. But Julia just smiled. I think she was also hoping for a transformation. I just didn’t know what kind.

In any case, we went to the parties and during the Summer we got together as a group a few times a week to see movies or go to concerts or ball games, argued politics, books and religion and generally questioned Authority from within the safety of our privileged circle. That year – my sophomore year and the Summer following it – now make up some of the best memories of my life.

By the time we started our senior year, I knew I was in love with Julia, but I didn’t know if or how I would ever tell her. I didn’t even know what Julia felt about me. And while I turned these questions over and over in my mind, starting letters to her and conversations I never finished, Julia took a drama class and met Skip Taylor again.

Finally, I found out what Julia felt about me. I was her friend. I was her confidant, I was the one who would understand  and be glad for her, because I wasn’t like the other guys. She was right about that. Another guy probably would have asked her out on a date a long time ago instead going everywhere with her in a group. Another guy probably would have told her he loved her. And another guy had.

Notes in French. Skip Taylor sent Julia notes in high school French. Something I never would have thought of. J’taime. Je t’adore. He walked her to class, he walked her home. She told me he called her and they said pretty much nothing for minutes at a time. He made her feel special, different, important. He did wonders for me, too. Every time I was alone with her, she talked about him. But that didn’t happen often because she usually wasn’t alone. She was usually with him. Or with him and the Drama Club crowd. She stopped going to the achievement oriented parties and school functions – they weren’t cool. They were an authoritarian symbol of the white ruling elite. Like Taylor’s dad, who was a senior vice-president at one of the local defense contractors and always headed up the Republican Party fundraising committee. But Taylor repudiated him. Right. He repudiated his folks so much he was overweight from it. He probably had plans to keep on repudiating them as they put him through college and then use their money to fund anti-establishment activities.

I didn’t like him. But Julia did and I saw less and less of her because of it. The rest of the group and I missed her. I missed her. But slowly I created new routines and got used to them.

The last half of our senior year, I had Julia in a class again. I was surprised to find out I still loved her and idiotic enough to be glad just to sit near her and be happy she was happy. That only lasted a couple of weeks, though. One day she came into class, her brown skin bleached out as if she was sick or someone had died. When I passed her a note asking what was wrong, I got back one that read:

“Skip told me last night he doesn’t want to see me any more. That he doesn’t love me any more.”

Her handwriting looked like my grandmother’s, shaky and scrawly.

“Go slow,” I wrote back. “We’ll talk.”

And we did. After school, we walked to the athletic field and sat on the bleachers and talked until dusk. Julia cried through most of the conversation and repeated that she couldn’t understand what had happened. He had never acted differently, never avoided her, never told her anything was changed. Just one day he loved her, the next he didn’t.

I flailed around for something to comfort her with, and came up with, “Well, you know his parents are kind of conservative, maybe they put pressure on him –“ I couldn’t believe I was trying to make excuses for the asshole.

“Oh, no!” she said. “They were wonderful to me. They asked me to dinner once a week and invited me to the theatre with them. They were always telling me how much they liked me. They really did. I know they did. I just don’t understand it. Everything was fine, yesterday. I just don’t understand –“

I thought I might, though. Skip Taylor was having his cake – a beautiful, intelligent girlfriend – and eating it, too – wearing his relationship with a blue-collar, non-white, immigrant’s daughter like a big “screw you” sign to his parents. Only his plan backfired because they liked her. And when he realized she wasn’t getting their goat, he dumped her. What a guy. A real champion of the people.

Julia said she felt better for talking to me. But she didn’t look better. And in the next few days, she looked even worse. She lost weight. Her eyes and hair were dull. She walked around like she was wrapped in a cocoon. She was wilted and I got pretty scruffy myself from worrying about her. I knew it was hard. She didn’t have any classes with Taylor, and she had stopped hanging with the Drama Club, but a high school is a very small town and she was bound to see him once in a while. Having everybody know he was the one who ended things made it worse. I spent as much time with her as I could, but the improvement I hoped for didn’t come. Finally, she forced me to betray her.

We’d been bussed out to see a play downtown. Both Julia and I had forgotten about it, or she probably would have stayed home, sick. As it was, we managed to hang back until we saw Taylor board the first bus with the Drama Club and we got on the second.

The play was a disaster. It might have been good. Maybe it was, but neither one of us gave it much attention. It was a love story with a sad ending, which is all I remember about it. I held Julia’s hand throughout, her fingernails cut into my palm and I could feel her tremble. At the end, the curtain came up again and the actors all assembled on the apron and took questions. One of the actors had a big nose and Taylor asked him how long it took for him to get into makeup. The actor was really ticked and I really wanted to laugh my head off at Taylor exposing himself for the fool he was. But Julia turned her head away when he asked his stupid question and I saw tears in her eyes.

On the bus ride home, she whispered to me about how seeing him there had been nearly too much for her. That she was having a hard time going on. Then she looked away from me and said, “I took out my father’s gun last night.”

I thought my heart had frozen inside my chest. I had to gulp in air to start breathing again. But I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I squeezed her hand and she went on:

“My father keeps this gun in the closet of their bedroom because the neighborhood is so bad. Last night I sneaked it into my room. I shut the door. I put the gun to my head and I put my finger on the trigger. I could hear the television downstairs. My father laughed. And I thought about how they would hear the shot and come upstairs and find me and how much it would hurt them.” She started to cry again. “So I didn’t do it. But, Frank,” she looked at me. “I didn’t put the gun back.”

When we got back to school, I asked to be excused from class and I went to the Girls Vice-Principal’s office. And I told Mrs. Duncan what Julia had told me. She sent for Julia and when she came in, I was still in the office. The look she gave me – I wished I’d never said anything.

“People who care about you are very worried, Julia,” Mrs. Duncan told her. “Your friend Frank is afraid you’ll harm yourself. Are you thinking about harming yourself, Julia?”

That woman is like a blur in my mind, now. A soft blur in a brown suit whose voice sounded more accusing than comforting. I knew Julia was humiliated and I wished again I’d never said anything, but it was too late. Mrs. Duncan would call her parents and there would be a discussion and tomorrow, somehow, everyone in school would know that Julia had tried to kill herself over Skip Taylor and that I had told Mrs. Duncan. I looked at my hands and feet, wanting to look at Julia, but afraid of what I would see in her face. Then Mrs. Duncan told me I was excused.

I tried to call Julia a week after that day. I dreaded what she might say, but I felt like I had to talk to her, anyway. But her mother wouldn’t let me. Or maybe Julia didn’t want to. I tried again a few days after that, and got a recording saying the number had been disconnected. I walked to her house, and it was empty. I went home and didn’t see Julia again until the night of “Citizen Kane.”

Like I said, she filled out some. Her figure’s still good though, especially for a woman with two kids. She dresses well, and her hair’s shorter. She is and she isn’t anything like the picture settled in the secret level of my brain, the picture I saw sometimes during the butterfly killing season. She recognized me, too, and we skipped the movie to have dinner and talk.

Her husband, she said, was home with the girls. He was a salesman and drove so many miles during the week he had no interest in driving downtown for a movie, regardless of how classic it was. Julia was an employment consultant, specializing in IBM application developers. Her eyes were bright, the way I remembered them and she was lively and animated. It was almost like we were the same people we’d been in high school, fast-forwarded into older lives instead of having lived through them year by year.

After dinner we walked out together, nearly touching, like a married couple or people with a common history. As we dawdled, unwilling to separate just yet, she suddenly grasped my arm.

“See that guy on the corner?” she asked. “The one with the green jacket? Doesn’t he look like that guy in Drama Club – ohhhh, whatisname – they guy that asked the actor that stupid question about his nose?”

I stared at him and then at her. “You mean Skip Taylor?”

She laughed, still watching the guy, who was crossing the street, going away from us. “Yeah. That’s him. Skip Taylor. I couldn’t think of his name.”

I shook my head. I needed to clear it of all the painted lady butterflies smashed against the inside of it. “Julia,” I said. “You almost killed yourself over Skip Taylor and now you can’t remember his name?”

She threw her head back and laughed even harder, then she shrugged. “I guess life is like that.”

This year, when the end of the heavy rains introduced the butterfly killing season, I built an escalator down to the level of my brain that had been holding that image of Julia all these years, and saw her face was covered with golden orange smears. The bodies of countless painted butterflies lay broken underneath, and every one of them had my face.

robynmcintyre:I’m not sure I could read 10 books in a mon...

robynmcintyre:

I’m not sure I could read 10 books in a month or that most of these have something to say to me, but I keep looking for inspiration in unlikely places. Some of these seem quite unlikely to me.

Originally posted on Flavorwire:

If it’s anything, March is a month of transition — that liminal space between February’s harsh cold shoulder and April’s underhanded promise of spring. So why not weather the awkward weeks reading? We know, we know, every month we have a vaguely metaphorical reason why it’s the perfect time to read, but we sincerely believe in all of them — plus, we can assure you that this March boasts a spectacular spate of new books, from essential reissues of forgotten classics to sparkling debut novels to new forms from modern masters. After the jump, check out our ten must-reads for the month ahead, and let us know what’s on your wish list in the comments.

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10 New Must-Reads for March

Reblogged from Flavorwire:

If it's anything, March is a month of transition -- that liminal space between February's harsh cold shoulder and April's underhanded promise of spring. So why not weather the awkward weeks reading? We know, we know, every month we have a vaguely metaphorical reason why it's the perfect time to read, but we sincerely believe in all of them -- plus, we can assure you that this March boasts a spectacular spate of new books, from essential reissues of forgotten classics to sparkling debut novels to new forms from modern masters.

Read more… 664 more words

I'm not sure I could read 10 books in a month or that most of these have something to say to me, but I keep looking for inspiration in unlikely places. Some of these seem quite unlikely to me.

Struggling With Modern Literature

“Personal cynicism, disillusionment and bitterness.” This is a sentence I found describing the thrust of modern literature. If true, it describes why I don’t read much of it. A Twitter friend told me that he doesn’t believe that real life has arcs. I disagreed, saying my own life has had plenty of arcs, a lot of them resolved in an unsatisfactory way. This is my reason for avoiding cynical, disillusioned, and bitter fiction. Since I worked so hard to not give in to feelings of despair, it’s unlikely I should find them entertaining even in fiction form. Thus, I find my reading solace primarily in genre fiction.

Recently, someone wrote about how genre fiction remains popular. It’s always around and probably always will be. It isn’t out of the ordinary, which is why it isn’t very appreciated by critics. This may be true. In which case, we genre writers may be like male Bower Birds, each trying to make our niche nests a little more inviting to potential readers, decorating and rearranging our prose into something pleasing to ourselves. We reveal ourselves in our individual glory and hope that others find us attractive. We are dismayed when a flashier bird gets the attention.

But do we have any intention of trying to be that flashier bird? Don’t think so.

Some of us write to entertain. Some of us write to answer our own questions. Some of us write to find out what we know. There are other reasons and combinations of reason. One thing that unites us is that we find genre writing pleasurable.

Come to the genre side – it’s fun here.

Tagged: books, character, fiction, literature, Writing

What a laugh. What, a laugh?

Falstaff – a generally happy guy

A #LitChat discussion about Pride & Prejudice caused a lightbulb moment for me. So now, not only do I know I don’t like books with unlikable characters, I also don’t like books where the characters don’t have a sense of humour. Generally. I find I can like a story like Count of Monte Cristo because I feel for the protagonist, although he’s lost his sense of humour. But I can’t like anyone in Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights because they have no humour and they’re not very likable people. Still, stories like A Good Man is Hard to Find capture me and there’s a definite lack of humour and nice people in that. So then, is it O’Connor’s writing that makes me care? More investigation is needed.

Tagged: Arts, books, Humour, Jane Eyre, Laughter, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights