Day 6: Night Fell

I should have started writing this well before tonight's rehearsal.  I keep wanting to crank out short pieces--five hundred words or less--and I end up writing stuff like this.  Which, admittedly, is less than twelve hundred words.  But still, 4am is a bit late.

Night Fell

When night fell, the Harpies came. They drove '69 Camaros, front-end loaders, Yamaha Gold Wings. They carried scythes and Garden Weasels. They surrounded the homestead and had a barrel of Real Fire. They threatened to turn us into crispy critters.

Norton went out to parley. I stayed up in the eaves with the rifle and the infrared scope. Norton told me to pick them off while he was still out there. I told him that was a stupid idea. I wasn't going to shoot anybody unless I had to. I didn't want them to take it out on Norton. Norton thought he was impervious. I knew better.

The Harpies wanted our water. All we had was a condenser unit and the two gallons it made that day. Norton carried the two gallons out there. The Harpies would break the condenser a couple of hours after they took it off us, and we'd die a few days later. So I told Norton not to mention the condenser. He gave people too much credit.

Norton talked a long time. I don't know what lies he told them. Maybe: we got it off a passing Water Freak, he's gone now. Or maybe: we had a lot but now we're down to our last jerrican and we'd rather die slow than quick because we were stubborn like that. (That last bit was true. We were stubborn like that.)

He got emphatic. Waved his arms. I heard him say "c'etait le prochaine" two or three times. The Harpies pushed him down and kicked him for a little bit, then they got in their go-buckets and left.

After their lights disappeared I ran downstairs. Got out to Norton where he lay staring up at the stars. He was hurt but I know his ego was hurt worse.

He looked up at me.

"Hi," he said.

I said hi back.

"They took our water."

"I know," I said.

"And the jerrican," he said.

"We can use a bowl."

"That's a pain. Dust gets in the water."

"I know," I said. "You want to come back into the house?"

"Yeah."

He got up on his elbow and winced. I knelt down and helped him up the rest of the way. It was a slow walk back indoors.

I dabbed antiseptic on the places where he bled. I wrapped him where maybe a rib was broken. I put him in bed.

Then I put the bowl under the condenser tap. I didn't want to forget in the morning. Crawled in next to Norton and tried to sleep. I was thinking he would thrash around all night but he snored long before I went out.

When I woke up Norton was banging around the galley, cooking up powdered eggs. If he wanted to push himself I wasn't going to stop him. At that moment, not worth the fight.

I walked outside and looked at our hut. It wasn't homey. More ramshackle. No technology visible. And nobody would think us food-rich just from looking at us. The only reason the Harpies knew we had water was because we were here in the desert and we were alive.

Of course, strangers didn't get a good look at me, if they even saw me at all. It doesn't pay to advertise that there's a woman on the premises.

Back inside, Norton had laid out breakfast.

“Looks good.”

“Thanks.”

We ate quietly. After we finished, I started to clean. Norton objected.

“I can get that.”

“You can rest.”

“I can do it!”

I kept cleaning. He sat at the table, fuming. That was fine. Neither of us wanted to talk about the real problem.

Some recent history: Weather got weird. Crops failed. Cities failed. What famine didn't destroy, war did. The globe had a stretch of madness there. We got lucky, because after the Hot Thirties, temperatures stabilized. Still, there's a lot of desert.

Not many people, though.

So there you go. We had a ton of freeze-dried food. One third of the Library of Congress on a reader, and a couple of hundred paper books. We had well-camouflaged solar panels, a moisture condenser for water, batteries to store electricity, some guns, and lots of ammunition. But we didn't get along with the neighbors.

Good thing the neighbors were far away, most of them.

We could live a long while if we didn't screw up.

The real problem: what would happen when the Harpies came back?

The Harpies made it easy to screw up. They were unattached men, most of them under twenty-five. They took whatever they could from homesteads along the Front Range. Somehow they kept finding gasoline, so they kept moving back and forth, settlement to settlement, picking the low-hanging Fruit of the Apocalypse.

This had been our first visit. All we gave them was a jerrican of water. They'd be back.

Not during the dust storm. That shut down everything for a few days. Norton wrote in his daybook. I caught up on my Willa Cather.

After a week Norton moved without noticeable stiffness. I mean I noticed it but I ignored it. That was when he renewed relations.

He caught me with my guard down. The sun was setting, a ball of fire with tendrils of scarlet cloud licking the horizon. The dust did a lot of things: knocked planes out of the sky. Killed off the all the asthmatics. Gave us beautiful sunsets.

Beautiful sunsets made me feel tender inside. I knew what they had cost us.

We made love, and when I came, I cried. Whenever this happened I told Norton it was because I loved him so much. Which was true. But really, I cried because it made me think about when he'd be gone.

In another three weeks the Camaros returned. Norton went out and met them. A mistake. They caved his face in with a pickaxe, then busted up the shack. I hope he didn't suffer for long. I wish I'd shot more of them before they pulled me out of the eaves.

The Harpies didn't get a chance to use me up completely. They got themselves killed in a raid on a settlement. One of our neighbors. The neighbors took me in, but they don't like me much. That's generous, since I don't think I can get pregnant anymore. Maybe they like that I can teach their kids. Not many readers here.

It's alright. I've made my peace with worse places. That house with Norton was probably the best. It's the only place where I liked the man who helped me build it. The only place I lived that smelled like me. It was quiet and unassuming and miles from everything, which means that nearly everybody just left us alone.

Nearly everybody.

This place, there's too many people and too much barbed wire and a rotten library. Certainly it's safe, and no one goes out of their way to be cruel. It's just not mine.

The sunsets are still beautiful, though.

(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 5: Lust for Life

This is my cop-out.

Because today I have to spend memorizing lines, then attending a season launch for Ugly Rhino, workshopping some material at The Shelter, and then celebrating a friend's birthday.

This is my cop-out.

Lust For Life

Mary Harrison, twenty-eight, born in Peoria, IL on January the Eleventh, 1983, sat at the card table in her boyfriend's apartment. The card table had stains on its vinyl surface. Mary looked at the stains for the two hundred and forty-third time. Then she turned her attention to the powder dissolving in the spoon in her hand. She flicked the lighter: once, twice, and the third magical time. The powder melted into the tiny puddle of saltwater as it all began to bubble. She set down the lighter, and dropped a fresh cotton pellet into the spoon, and drew the liquid through the pellet into the syringe. She got the syringe and the pellets this very morning from the St. Lucy's needle exchange. The syringe grew warm in her hand. She set it on the table.

As she waited for the syringe to cool, she looked around.

She looked at the bed. Her boyfriend, Tommy, slept with the covers pulled over his head. The fingers of his right hand showed above the covers. She could see the scabs on his knuckles and a few of the black hairs on his fingers. She could smell his third-day sweat. She could hear his snores.

She looked at the windows. Steel frames, twenty-four rectangular panes painted black. Slivers of brightness were the scratches in the paint, showing that the sun continued to rise and set without any help from Tommy or Mary.

She looked at the card table and what was on it. The Bag. Fresh cotton pellets. A pile of fresh syringes. A bottle of normal saline. Her shot, cooling. The gun. The stains on the vinyl.

She looked as she waited for the shot to cool.

Which will it be? The syringe, or the gun?

Tommy's pistol. A snub-nosed .38, dark metal. None of this flashy chrome bullshit, Tommy said. Our provider, he said. Which made them all the money that they made right now. Mostly taken from trembling Yemenites who ran midnight groceries. Money which kept them going, money which fed her veins.

Money from Tommy's gun. His gun, which he said never to touch.

As she waited for the syringe to cool, she listened to the sounds outside the window. The trucks rumbling by, the guy who spent twenty minutes yelling at his girl on the phone, the other guy who lied and lied about how he was in the car and he was almost there, crossing Flatbush and Vanderbilt and Washington and Bedford, and he was almost there Baby, I promise.

She thought about Peoria: the river, and her downtown friends there, like Cat, the boy who like to suck dicks on the hoods of cars, he never talked about the men attached to them; he just talked about sucking dicks like it was a competition, a race to see who could travel the furthest in miles measured out by inches. Or Sheila, the girl who gave Mary her very first taste, something Mary never tried again until she got to the City and met Tommy and got sad. Or Shad and Mikey, the rock'n'roll promoters with their tiny, tiny basement concerts, the concerts with bad poetry for an opening act, the basements with mildew and broken rakes in the corner.

As she waited for the syringe to cool, she thought about the third choice. What if she didn't shoot anything at all? She asked herself that every time. What if she didn't shoot anything at all?

Right.

What will it be? The syringe, or the gun?

This time, she chose the syringe.

© 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 4: The Death, At Age 45, of Hubert Panel

I've stayed up entirely too late to finish this one.   I mean, I wrote the first half on the subway, at about ten in the morning.  I waited until after midnight to finish it off.  Tomorrow I've got to write something ridiculously short.  Which is what this was meant to be.

The Death, At Age Forty-Five, of Hubert Panel

His life begins with a bang in 1923, the smack on the ass, the doctor's gloved hand, infant Hubert bawling and choking upside down in the air.

In the middle: noise and strife in primary school. His O-levels. A-levels. A fling with an older woman while at University, sudden marriage to a girl from his village, the miscarriage, then two or three more, and a shockingly quiet life in chartered accountancy.

The end came as he whimpered in his mistress's bed, the final convulsive thrust, heart stopping after years of abuse, amyl nitrite ampule mere inches from his fingers.

So, what else could you want to know? That he liked chips and mushy peas? That he dreamed of owning a Jaguar but made do with a succession of younger and younger girlfriends while his wife grew older and more resigned? That doing sums day after day truly gave him pleasure?

I'd prefer to tell you about his secret life. Not the one with spotty girls in go-go boots and Mary Quant knock-offs. The other secret life. His life as a super hero. His life as Hubert Panelo, Protector of the Weakling Masses.

In this life, he could scale buildings using nothing but the tips of his fingers and a healthy dose of determination. He could improvise a freeze ray from some ice cubes and a mirror. His specially fitted motorcar could cross the country in minutes and even dive under the Channel to put him in the heart of Paris in under an hour. And it was in this life that his nation depended upon him for its continued safety and security.

Of course I needn't tell you all his exploits. Fighting the Jerries in the tunnels under the North Sea. The defeat of Sir Nefarious. Returning the moon to its orbit around the Earth.

Nor do you need to be told about his secret laboratory in the heart of Basingstoke, nor his flame-impervious dive suit. And you certainly know already of his many contributions to our daily life: the radio-starting car, spring-heeled shoes, and porridge that never gets a skin on top of it, no matter how long you let it sit.

What I want to tell you about his secret life is this: that despite his many grand good deeds--rescuing hospitals from neutron bombs, and vaporizing malignant ant-mutants; finding Mayan ruins previously unknown, and restoring salmon to the waters of the Amazon; even the defeat of the New Mongol Hordes, and the incredible seven hour magma laser fight with Lieutenant Destructo at the summit of Mount Everest--

Despite all of the famous and well-known fine things that he did in his secret life as Huberto Panelo, Protector of the Weakling Masses, there is only one thing that flashed through his mind at the instant of his passing.

One event, one specific deed.

Four years before he died, in the summer of 1964, when he was only forty-one--far from magneto-copter or anti-gravity suit--he walked through a quiet neighborhood in the guise of hum-drum suburban accountant Hubert Panel. Instead of being surrounded by black-hearted villains or cheering crowds, he was alone.

He came upon a small child, standing by itself on the street, eating a Zoom Ice Lolly. As he grew near, he stopped and stared; never before had he seen anyone, young or old, eat such an odd-looking frozen treat. Hubert Panel had no children of his own, and had therefore ignored recent developments in icy confections. Thus his curiosity.

The child, barely five years old, was confused by this sustained adult scrutiny. She stared back at her observer in growing fear. In her distraction she dropped her ice lolly, and it was ruined, so she burst into tears.

This is where Hubert Panel performed his act of bravery. You see, as Huberto Panelo, he saved masses of innocent children nearly every day, from nuclear whirlpools and space comets. But he practically never spent any time alone with an individual of the species. He was, in fact, afraid of them.

Standing in front of the bawling child, Hubert realized what had happened. He had frightened her. She had lost her sweet. And he ought to buy her another one.

He looked at the melting lolly on the pavement. He looked at the tips of his shoes. He murmured something that was meant to be “there, there, it'll be alright, Little One” but sounded more like “hurm, hurm, ahem!” He tried to think of anything else.

After several painful moments of inaction, he moved. He went inside the shop, spent his 6d, and came out with the replacement.

She was only sniffling when he returned. He stretched out the hand with the lolly, and said, “here you go, Little Girl.”

She shrank from him.

He offered it again. She looked ready to run away.

He said “hurm, hurm, ahem!” again.

Being a hero is difficult. It requires persistence, resilience, and inventiveness, especially in the presence of the incorrigible.

He crouched down, so his head was level with hers. He offered the treat again, gently extending his hand. He said nothing, but he screwed a sort of hopeful expression onto his face.

She watched him, still suspicious.

This is getting tiresome, he thought, and looked over his shoulder at the village clock.

That's when she took the Zoom Ice Lolly. She ran down the street and disappeared.

Hubert clucked to himself in irritation, stood up again with some difficulty--his portrayal of a middle-aged accountant was complete--and continued his walk home.

After a few minutes, he permitted himself a laugh.

And that's the moment he remembered as the pain squeezed his chest, shot up through his neck, and took up quarters in his jaw. That's the act of heroism he thought of as he collapsed heavily upon his young mistress, making her feel as though she were suffocating. That's what he thought about as he died.

That's what I wanted to tell you about Hubert Panel.

© 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 3: Jenny Hanniver

The final version appears rather late on June 3rd.  1:21am on June 4th, in fact.  But I'm glad I kept typing.  I like what happened.

Jenny Hanniver

“I know what you're thinking. A man in a bar makes an outlandish claim, and you figure that the best thing to do is to ignore him and hope he blows over. But I'm sick and I'm cold, and I'm going to say what I'm going to say whether you hear it or not. But you might as well do me the courtesy to listen.”

I looked at him, then, and nodded.

He'd caught me fair and square. He had walked in unsteadily minutes before, water dripping from his hair and his sleeves, and he had leaned to the left as he sat on his stool; he had nearly fallen off when he raised his hand to signal the bartender for a beer. I had taken care not to notice him at all, and sat quietly, not looking to either side. That's how you avoid an entanglement with a wet, surly drunk. And then I gave myself away.

“Mermaids exist,” he had said, and I hadn't reacted. I didn't scoff, or argue with him, or hike off to another corner of the bar. I just sat there as quietly as possible. That's how he knew that he'd gotten my interest.

I drained the last bit of moisture from my glass and signaled for another beer myself. If I was to be trapped by a nut job, I wanted to be comfortable.

“I know this from personal experience. I don't mean I've seen them leaping in the waves, or singing their sirenic songs from the rocks. That's nonsense, you understand? I know them from personal experience. Personal experience where I held one in my arms, friend. Personal experience where I was in love.

“I know what you'll say. First of all that I am delusional.

“Second of all, if I disabuse you of your ridiculous assumption that Science has told us all that there is to know about the creatures that live in the seas and the rivers and that therefore there are no mermaids--if you accept my premise at all--why then you will tell me that I am a sick man, to consort with a creature that is half woman, half fish--why, you will say, that's bestiality. A sickness. That I am sick! Well, I am sick. The cold and the wet tonight have made me sick. But my mind is whole, and I'm no goddam pervert!

“Perhaps I am unkind. Perhaps you accept my premise, and think my love is true. Fair enough: you're a kind and open-minded man. But let me tell you my story. Will you let me do that, Buddy?”

What could I have done?

I could have abandoned my beer, and him. I could have stumbled out the door into the night and the drizzle. I could have refused to hear.

But I wanted to hear.

I nodded.

“Thank you, friend.

“We'd dropped anchor on the Hudson. Just outside Cold Spring. My friend had chartered a boat for the Fourth of July. He hated crowds, and so he spent a little piece of his parents' money to sail us away from that idiocy in the City, up the river to a place where we could drink in peace.

“It was a warm night, so after we watched the Cold Spring fireworks--ten minutes in all--we went to bed. I decided to sleep on the deck. Everyone else went below. Soon I heard their drunken snores.

“I couldn't sleep. Perhaps it was the noise of the water on the side of the boat. Perhaps it was the sense of exposure, or the moon shining in my face. But my eyelids would not shut.

“I walked to the edge of the boat, and dangled my feet over the water.

“I had a momentary fantasy of slipping over the side and floating downstream, past the Bronx and Manhattan, tumbling through the tides of the Hell Gate and the East River, under the bridges, all the way to the harbor, and from there out past Staten Island, past the Shore, being swept into the ocean, being swept out into the ocean surf, where I would drown under the stars. And no one would ever find me again.

“Have you ever had that one?”

I shrugged.

“I'll bet you have. If not on a boat at sea, or on a bridge over a fast-moving river, then at the edge of a high balcony or cliff. I'm not making an assumption about where the fantasy takes place, Friend. I'm just saying: we've all had the thought.

“As I looked down into the water with my dark thoughts, I saw a face. A very serious face, staring up at me. Being drunk, I did the most natural thing: I stuck out my tongue.

“The face disappeared beneath the water. I laughed, because I was sticking my tongue out at a bit of shadow, something that didn't exist.

“But then the face reappeared. I panicked a little bit, because I thought I was going crazy, a little bit. But I did what comes natural. I stuck out my tongue again. This time the face did not disappear. Instead, she stuck out her tongue at me, so I went bblllht!”

Making that sound, he spattered the top of the bar with his saliva. I looked for the bartender, but the man and I were alone. I pushed my half-empty glass away from me, and listened some more.

“When she saw me give her the Bronx Cheer, she disappeared again. And I breathed a little, because I thought, maybe I'm not crazy after all. But curiosity killed the cat, eh? I went to the aft of the boat and sat there, my legs dangling over again, tempting my darker thoughts, looking at the moon over the water.

“That's when she pulled me under. Not for long, you know. Just long enough for me to scream bloody murder and swallow some water. When we came up again we were a good thirty feet from the boat and I was choking and not breathing well enough to really yell.

“She pulled me up on the shore. She was naked, and as beautiful a woman as I'll ever see. No fish tail or scales or anything like that, nothing I could see. But I knew. Or I was starting to guess.

“I coughed up the rest of the water and lay there gasping for a spell. Thank God it was warm. She watched me from a distance. Then she came closer and knelt by my head. I looked up into her eyes. Blue, I think, although it was hard to tell in the moonlight. Her hair was dark, and her skin was, too. Like I said, in the light it was hard to tell.

“She's just staring at me. So I try the old John Smith: 'Who are you? Where are you from? Why did you pull me in the water? And what the hell, why did you pull me out again? I'm grateful you didn't drown me. But couldn't you just say Hi?' Of course, if she's really a mermaid then who knows what language she speaks, right?”

I shrugged again.

“She stares at me still, like I'm some sort of ugly, deformed toad. Then she spoke.

“It was like water being poured into a bowl. I don't know if she was even moving her lips, but this sound fell from her mouth into my ears. It was late, I was drunk, and I'd been dragged through the waters of the Hudson, but that was when I shivered. Her words went right through me and I have no idea what she said.

“She stopped speaking, and waited, as if I was to answer. But now I had run out of things to say. I looked into her wide set eyes and I wondered what she really was seeing. What use are eyes like ours under water? What use were hers in the air?

“I reached up my hand to touch her hair. She let me. Her hair was wet and coarse, but it was hair. My fingers brushed her temples. Cool to my touch, but her skin was soft.

“So I pulled myself up on my elbows, and I tried to kiss her. And she let me.

“She didn't press back. Her lips were cold, and slippery, like they were coated with oil. I felt her breath on my cheek, it was warm. She smelled like the river.

“I leaned back and looked into her eyes. I think she was looking into mine. Up close, her eyes looked like they were covered in a translucent film. But I was very close, you see? In almost every other way, she was exactly like a regular woman.

“And I thought she understood what I wanted.”

The man looked into his empty beer glass. I waited for him to speak again. His story disturbed me, but I was not sure why. Perhaps it was because I thought it might be true.

He sniffled, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

“I was an idiot. What did she want? Should have asked myself that.

“It doesn't matter. I found out soon enough.

“It's not like you think, Pal, it's not like that at all. I don't mean it was some kind ethereal holy union. It was physical--I mean I wonder why my friends didn't wake up with the two of us thrashing around on the gravel there. And it was love. I didn't know it then, but I know it now, like I know that fire is hot and water is wet.

“But it's not like you think, Pal. You don't know anything if you think you know what happened to me that night.

“The next morning my friends found me asleep on the deck, covered in scratches and mud. I told them I went for a drunken swim, and made it all the way to the bank of the river and back. Which was true in a way.

“Everyone wanted return to the City that afternoon, but I convinced my friend to keep the boat another night. And another night after that. Everyone else left, took the train back to Manhattan or Hoboken or Queens. But my rich friend put up with me for nearly a week before he insisted on giving up the boat and getting back to his own life in the City.

“The night before we left our spot on the river--my friend again drunk in his berth--I waited for her to come to me. I didn't know how I could tell her that I had to leave. I was sure that by then I'd lost my job and if I didn't get back to the City I'd lose my apartment and everything else. I didn't know how I could tell her that I would come back again soon, no matter what. But that night, at least, I would see her one last time.

“She didn't come. Maybe she knew.

“The next morning we sailed back down the Hudson. I hadn't lost my job, as it turned out. Everything was back to normal, aside from one really uncomfortable conversation with my understanding boss.

“I never made it back up the river. I can't tell you why. Fear, perhaps. Fear that she wouldn't be there. Or perhaps I was afraid she would.

“That was five years ago. I finally did lose my job, my apartment, everything. But I've talked enough, Pal, that's a story for another day.”

He heaved himself off the stool and staggered to the door.

“Thanks for the beer, Friend.”

And he was gone.

I think he was lying. I think he did lose his job. And I think he did go back up the river to see her. I think he goes up there still.

Still, it was a good story. Worth a beer.

But my sister's got some explaining to do.

(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 2: Glen

I wrote about half of this on the subway, using my BlackBerry.  I wrote another story for today, but when I woke up in the morning I panicked and thought that story was completely inappropriate.  Maybe I'll use that other story on another day, when I'm even more behind than I am today.

[Edit: I finally posted the other story on June 26th.  You can read it here.]

Glen

Glen Buchwold kept his hands in his pockets and examined the black man across from him. The black man was reading a Jehovah's Witness tract and sweating. Glen went over his rules for avoiding conflict on the subway:

1. No eye contact.

2. No talking.

3. Maintain a radius of 36 inches.

4. No eating.

5. Hands in pockets.

Glen rolled his peace totem between his fingers. They're all racist, you know. Every last one of them wants to kill us. Keep your distance and don't make sudden moves.

Today Glen wore: Grey chinos, pressed. Grey button-front shirt, pressed. Black Hi-Tec sneakers, double-knotted. Black belt. White t-shirt. White boxers, pressed. White socks. He kept the top button of his shirt undone so he wouldn't look uptight. He kept his duffel between his feet to avoid causing a conflict and also for security.

Not looking uptight is a key element to a harmonious relationship with all the races and types of people.

Teenagers, for example, would mock Glen if he were to look uptight. Also Black people. And Mexicans, but the Mexicans would mock him in Spanish. Glen was certain that anyone speaking Spanish was mocking him.

Glen's train arrived. He boarded the middle door of the conductor's car. The conductor's car, by the way, is always the fifth car from the front of the train, not the sixth car. Sometimes the conductor is in the sixth car, but that's just when the conductor needs to open the doors on the right side of the train, and only for certain models of subway car.

Around 4:30pm the Forest Hills bound M train is nearly empty, so it's the best time to travel. The best seat is the flip-down seat because no one will sit next to you.

Glen knew this.

At 4:30pm Glen was bound for the white brick Torrance Extended Care Facility on Dry Harbor Road.

Apart from the racial dangers and also specifically Mexican music spilling from headphones, Glen was menaced by the woman at the other end of the car trimming her nails with a miniature key-chain clipper. The sound traveled the length of the car and drilled into his eardrums. He clenched his fists. He wanted to wring her neck but instead breathed deeply and meditated on rules number 1 and number 2, which kept his mind off the fact that he was afraid of her.

At his stop Glen picked up his duffel, exited the car by the middle door, and walked up the stairs.

Loren the Male Nurse was sitting in the reception area for the floor on which Glen's mother resided. Glen nodded at Loren, which didn't violate any of his rules, and besides this was not the subway.

Glen had hated Loren at first. Loren has always been polite. Glen now tolerated Loren.

Glen's mother was asleep when he walked into her room. He put the duffel down at the foot of her bed and started to unpack it. First thing he unpacked was his dark gray tie, which he then put on. The he unpacked a new box of Kleenex, a new bottle of Purel, and last month's Reader's Digest. He unpacked a package of Hydrox and also some Nutter Butters. Also a new pack of cards.

He placed all these things on the bedside table where his mother could reach them but where she would not knock them over in the middle of the night when she pressed the call button.

Glen unpacked his portable cassette player and his cassette tape recording of Brahms' Symphony No. 3. He put the cassette in the player and started it playing softly.

Glen's mother hated new packs of cards, so Glen picked up the cards, pulled the guest table over to the guest chair, shuffled the cards, and started playing Patience.

After ten minutes Glen's mother woke up. She watched Glen playing Patience. He wasn't very good at it, but he was very patient.

“Hello, Glen.”

Glen put all the cards together in a stack and then put them back in their sleeve, and put that on the night table with everything else.

“How are you?”

“I am fine, Mother.”

Glen's mother reached over to the night stand and pressed the CALL button.

“Glen, can you step out of the room for a minute? I need to use the EZWee.”

Glen stepped out of the room and stood in the hallway. Mrs. Pearsall in 405 was watching Wendy Williams on Fox 5. Glen tried not to listen.

Loren came down the hall and went into Glen's mother's room. After a minute he came out again, and nodded at Glen. Glen went back in the room and sat down in the guest chair.

“What's new, Glen?”

Glen thought about what to tell her. Usually he told her about working in the Social Security Office Mail Room, and he told her about his train ride out to see her. But today he wanted to ask her something.

“Mother?”

“Yes, Glen?”

“Why is there Sin in the world?”

Glen's mother closed her eyes and leaned back against her pillows. Glen waited. The air conditioning made its hushed whirr. Brahms continued to play softly, now the Poco Allegretto. From the hallway he could hear Wendy Williams cackling on Fox 5 and also the two-toned alerts of the phone system.

Glen tried not to think about the nail clippers, or people talking in Spanish, or the black man sweating on the M train.

He tried not to think about the odors of antiseptic, urine, or vomit, or the dust on the blinds by his mother's bed. He tried not to think of Con Edison or Verizon or the Evrecon Rental Management Company.

Glen most definitely tried not to think about roaches, beetles, or worms.

His mother opened her eyes.

“I don't know, Glen. I'm only your mother. I don't know.”

She closed her eyes again. In a moment she was asleep.

Brahms continued to play. Glen listened to the Allegro. Then he listened to the silence on the rest of the tape.

When the button on the player popped up, Glen got out of the guest chair. He picked up the cassette player, put it in his duffel. He took off his tie, and put that back, too. He unbuttoned his top button. He zipped up the duffel, picked it up, and walked down the hall.

He passed Loren, and nodded at him.

The sun set over 85^th Street as Glen walked back to his train.

© 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 1: Hazard Pay

I woke up in a panic this morning.  I thought about withdrawing from the project.  Then I wrote this.

Hazard Pay.

The stagehand pulled the starter, and Walter's bike lurched forward, scattering children and baritones. How did I get myself into this, Walter thought. But he knew. He knew exactly how.

At 3pm that afternoon Walter got word that Zelda was sick. In her hotel room, vomiting up gallons of bouillabaisse. No amount of begging at the start of any tour would suffice: The acrobats always had to have seafood. Was it a trait of the breed? Had they to take risks in all places, even grimy Andalusian bistros? It seems they had to. Or, Zelda had to. And her daughter Alice had to, as well. The understudy sick. And the night of a command performance. For the Prince of Seville.

The bike shuddered, and sped up. Walter made a circle around the dancing bear, the wheels chewing up the artificial grass. This is going alright, he thought. For a company manager who has never ridden a motorcycle.

Running a small opera company meant wearing many hats. Walter's favorite was his bright yellow hard hat. He couldn't actually hammer a nail or run a saw, so he just wandered around among the carpenters making curt nods and saying little. Sure, his wife and daughter made fun of him and Balthazar the costumer said that yellow wasn't his color at all. But it was better than wearing his accountant's hat.

He shot past Candace, her lips forming a perfect bow as she sang the final, dramatic bars of Omertà.

There was no accountant's hat, of course. That was a figure of speech. There was, however, at nearly every venue around the world, a small, cramped room packed with broken lighting equipment and smelling of sweat and cigarette smoke. Sometimes there was a desk. Always, there were bills to pay.

The motorcycle helmet was a sort of hat, wasn't it? Yes, of course it was. A first time for everything! he thought.

Here he was at the lip of the stage. He must have taken a wrong turn at the goat. I wonder why they call it the lip?

Still, this was it, only thing that he had ever wanted. He knew from the first day he'd heard Candace singing arias under a bridge in the park. When the tatty red velvet curtain descended upon the final act of Moctezuma, Or My Time Among The Pygmies, their first production together, he knew that it would be his life. He hadn't regretted it, til now; neither sneers of tenors nor stale Israeli mueslï nor his turn inside the bear suit.

As the bike vaulted the first row, Walter tore his eyes from the Prince's face. He seems to be having a good time. I have to find a place to land. Oh, look, there's the Mayor! Women with wolfish faces and exquisite furs scrambled over their husbands as the tiny wheels of the Honda Monkey came closer to the raked seats.

Touching down on the armrest shared by David and Xavier, the costumer's “dates” from the night before--I should never have comped them, they're not enjoying this at all--Walter felt the bike slip from under him and tumble miraculously into the broken third row seats he had closed off this morning with the last of the roll of CAUTION tape from the Richards Avenue Home Depot, in Santa Fe.

He came to rest in the arms of the fat woman in E12. He'd sold her the ticket himself: Signora de Navarro. He gazed up into her eyes, and she down into his.

The orchestra blared the final crescendo, and the act curtain fell. The audience roared. Around him people leaped to their feet.

The fat woman dabbed at his nose with a tissue. It came away red. I hope she's careful with that. If I ruin these vestments, Balthazar will never forgive me.

Walter turned to look at his wife. She stood in front of the curtain with her arms raised, accepting the applause. Candace was smiling, but he knew she was furious at being upstaged. Audiences would demand to see it again. Zelda would refuse to perform the stunt. Or worse, she would agree.

How am I going to get myself out of this?

Walter smiled to himself, and fainted.

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein

To Begin With

I sit at my messy desk, air conditioners making their muted roar outside my window.  Above my tiny netbook, with its 9.5" screen dark, the 20" ASUS monitor I use when I'm at home.  The monitor looks great, but the difference in size is a bit ridiculous.

I have signed up for the Thirty Days Project.  I'm going to write thirty short stories, one a day.

What was I thinking?  I have two shows to rehearse, I'm still taking my weekly class with Terry, and of course as soon as I stop having Sunday night rehearsals, I'll be back at The Shelter, bringing in new scripts (that I've written) and monologues (that I've learnt).  Somewhere in there I would like to hunt down some paying work.  Preferably in front of the camera, but if it's cash for hacking together some sly bit of JavaScript, I'll take that too.

These stories may be very short, indeed.

It has been four years since my Ten Movies in Ten Weeks project.  I will enjoy the challenge.  But once again I am setting myself up to fail in public.  I have promised myself that I will embrace the uncertainty.  It's really the only thing that ever works, but it's never quite comfortable.

Last night I wrote a story as a sort of test for myself.  It was supposed to take me fifteen minutes to write the first draft, and it was to fill one 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, no more.  But I wrote more.  I fell for the character, and her problem, and there was no way to write my way out of it in so short a space.  Two and a half pages later, it's not finished.  The protagonist is up in the tree, I've thrown some rocks at her, but I haven't figured out how to get her back out of the damned tree again.

I've got to finish that story, post it by midnight Wednesday, and then do it twenty-nine more times.

Wish me luck.