This is short character study I wrote after a speaking voice came to me during a recent free-writing session. This is the first I’ve published. More might appear as posts as I draw closer to the novel ledge.
I have heard people say that everyone has a story to tell. I may be the exception to that rule. I have nothing to say about my life or the lives of the people living around me in these townhouses. All of them look the same, the people more so than the houses. Quaint and beige. In their 60s and 70s. I am 63 years old. I get the paper about 5:30 or whenever the paper boy throws it in the drive, which lately has been past 6 during the week and on weekends, close to 6:30. When I’m done reading or sometimes if I’m not – if it’s a really engrossing paper but it’s getting close for to time for the kids to make it down to the bus stop – I”ll fold it over the arm of the chair and water my plants in the pot on the front stoop. The neighborhood kids have caused me too many interruptions. I like to wear my sandals with socks, which draws hysterics from the boys who walk by under the chestnuts to the stop sign and can’t find something more interesting along the way. They point and me say things they don’t think I can hear behind my back. (more…)
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Tags: Fiction
Inside the birthday card, they’d scribbled his favorite word, Guinness, and written something about hoping he would finally lose his virginity. The envelope was scribbled on, too. His name was in the center in block letters with sharp-leaning shadows behind them: M-A-R-K. They’d spent a few seconds adding smiley faces, some with stick bodies and a couple striking poses with triangle-shaped boobs. Around those, some hearts were added in different sizes but all swollen and about to burst at the center. In one corner was a sun with a happy face in it, but it’d been poorly drawn. The face was surrounded by limp sunrays so it could be a smashed spider with dotted eyes and a mouth on its back. (more…)
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Kyle’s Drunk
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
Kyle was drunk. He was holding himself on his elbows above his own handsome death reflection in the bartop when I sat next to him.
“Beer,” I said to the bartender. I scooted my stool to the ledge.
Kyle looked up.
“Budweiser.”
Dazed, he managed all this in one motion: he dropped his chin, raised it again, swung it back and forth from the bartender to me. He was moving his head the way his brain felt.
“Hey,” he said. He was talking to me.
“Hey.”
“You here alone?” he asked.
I said I was. He studied me. His eyes were washed over with alcohol and the corners were streaked with broken bloodvessels. I noticed a dark shape under a shirt sleeve that was the edging of a tattoo. His T-shirt was too small, too tight, and high on his arms. He looked less drunk as he sat up. He was collecting himself to concentrate on speech.
“You’re not here with anyone?”
“No.” I told him why.
“You need a shot,” he said. “I’m buying.” (more…)
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Lazy Man
Monday, April 6th, 2009
He knew one kind of man and that kind was lazy. So he followed the only example he had and worked seldom, He took a job every few years when he needed the insurance to cover a doctor’s visit – worked for a few months and worked hard – but would come home and collapse in bed or on the furniture, legs and arms draped over the pieces, nursing his shoulder or knee or whatever was sore, and he would complain until he finally talked himself into a depression each day or night on the loading dock or in the office cubicles would begin to wear on him until the pressure was his greatest task. (more…)
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