Day 13: Failure

This is my attempt to find my way back to my original vision for the Thirty Days Project, which was to push the words out, roughly five hundred per story, to make a beginning, a middle and an end as quickly as possible. Without disrupting the rest of my life.   At 1600 words and finishing around 2:30am, I find only marginal success in my goal for today.  Let's see what I come up with tomorrow.

Failure

The Bronx. A modest-looking restaurant on the eastern edge of Riverdale. The end of the dinner rush.

Oliver racked up another tray of glasses, breathing carefully so as not to dump them. Sixteen hours into the day and you can't be too careful. All around him guys were taking bumps just to stay on track. Or so he assumed. Oliver was absolutely clean, so he didn't know. He assumed.

Then came Rob with the touch on his shoulder and the magic words, "We're cutting you, buddy. And before you go, can you empty the trash in the bathrooms?"

Oliver ditched his crappy mini-apron on top of the ice machine next to the salad station and headed out to the bathrooms. Had Saphire do a stall check, got the Women's out of the way, trucked the bag to the basement, then hit the Men's room. Filled out a family meal slip and got his burger. Tomorrow was a day off.

He sat at the end of the bar and asked Timmy the bartender for a cola and ate the burger, forcing himself to chew each bite before he swallowed and took another. The phone on the bar in front of him. Sent a text to Pete, asked was he free, and did he want to hang out?

Matt the cook had left the burger pink in the middle but seared outside. He had buttered the bun and toasted it, and toasted the outside of the bun, too, so the sesame seeds were crisp and hot all the way through. He had melted cheddar cheese on top of the burger using the salamander, the cheese just beginning to caramelize. The spongy bread in the middle of the bun was hot but still soft. None of that gourmet lettuce, iceberg instead; but absolutely crisp. The tomatoes, barely ripe, were sliced an eighth of an inch thick.

Everyone who liked burgers hoped for shift meal when Matt was cooking.

Oliver finished his burger, got up and went back to the kitchen to get his fries, the ones that came with his burger. They had just arrived on the pass seconds before. Hot from the fryer. Matt must have detected Oliver's readiness for fried potatoes by some kind of extra sensory perception. Or maybe he was the kind of cook who watched the dining room through the pass, to mentally chart everyone's progress through their meal.

The fries were hot, crisp, and salty. Oliver made a small pool of ketchup on the corner of the plate and ate his fries. Occasionally he would dip one into the ketchup, hoping to improve the flavor somehow. He loved ketchup but the fries didn't need it. They were perfect.

He looked around the dining room. There was Timmy, setting up a trio of wine glasses. Rob, cruising through the dining room giving the patrons big smiles, and touching all the female staff on the hips or waist. There was Janeane, the hottest waitress, talking to Matt. Janeane didn't have the best tits or the best ass in the restaurant, but it felt so nice to have her smile at you--and she smiled often. Oliver would have asked her out but she had been dating Matt for the past two years, so he didn't have much hope.

That's about all, here. Let's move on.

The Village. An hour or so later. A Brazilian restaurant with good sangria. Oliver sat across from Pete. Oliver had soda water, Pete had a jug of sangria and two glasses.

“You should really try this stuff.”

Oliver shook his head. “No, man, I don't really drink.”

Pete said, “is that Matt?”

Pete knows Matt. Pete knows Matt because he worked with Matt at another restaurant two years ago. Pete waited tables, and had a few regular customers who asked for him. Matt cooked, and everybody loved him. Or at least his food.

Matt's girlfriend dumped him, and he left. He ditched his apartment in Harlem, which was full of stuff that reminded him of her, and couch-surfed for a month. He ended up living in the Bronx, dating Janeane, and cooking at the restaurant where Oliver was now working as a runner, a porter, and a general mucker-out.

Oliver looked. “Yeah. That's Matt.”

Matt sat heavily on a stool at the bar. He ordered a double of Jameson. Pete gave a nod, and they headed over to join him at the bar.

Matt said, “Hey.”

Oliver said, “Where's Janeane?”

“Back at the restaurant.”

The dismissive wave ended that conversation. So the boys talked about sports. Matt knocked back a couple more doubles of Jameson. Pete finished off the pitcher of sangria by himself. Oliver drank soda. They all three watched the NBA highlights playing on the tiny TV behind the bar.

Then Pete called it a night, and for some reason--certainly a reason that he could have told anyone--Oliver stayed on to watch Matt drink. Which went on for bit longer, until Matt asked: “Why don't you drink?”

Oliver looked out at the street, watching the gay boys and the teenage thugs and the New Jersey party kids lurching past. Then back to the NBA highlights. Then to Matt's face. Matt had that stare people get when they've been drinking for a while: a bit too steady, not enough blinking. Inside his head, Oliver call this Drunk Eyes. Drunk Eyes often arrived with the Sincere Conversation About Why You Don't Drink.

“I don't know. Why do you drink?”

Matt inhaled, exhaled heavily, and said, “One, I work in the restaurant business. If you don't drink, you don't really work in the restaurant business. Two, Janeane dumped me tonight. Three, when I'm not getting my heart minced up by beautiful bitches, drinking feels good.”

Oliver said, “alright. I'll have a drink.”

Matt smiled, and said, “well, that was easy.”

It wasn't easy. Oliver had never had a drink, because he saw what it had done to his dad. Oliver never did drugs because he saw what it did to his cousin Aaron.

It wasn't easy. He had been working in the restaurant for nine months. He saw everybody getting high around him. Everybody put up with him, most people liked him OK. Janeane once said he was sweet. But Oliver never felt like anyone respected him. Oliver never felt like an adult, even if he could pull sixteens three days running, even though he never threw up in the walk-in and never started fights on the street.

Matt said, “what do you want?”

Oliver said, “Um. Don't know.”

Matt ordered him a vodka tonic.

Oliver drank it. It's an easy drink to drink, the vodka tonic. It went to his head quickly, too. A long day at work, first time with alcohol.

Oliver decided to continue the experiment. He ordered another. And another.

Matt started talking about Janeane. Drinkers trust drinkers.

Oliver enjoyed the new found trust of his hero. He ordered another drink, and soon found the courage to tell Matt how much he loved Matt's cooking. And how favorably that reflected on Matt's character on the whole.

After two more drinks, Oliver told Matt that he was the best cook, ever. Period. Not just in New York. You know? The. Best. Cook. Ever. PERIOD. Oliver poking his finger into the bar with each word.

After two more drinks...there are some gaps.

Another bar. A cab ride. The cab ride was long. Someone might have thrown up. Or maybe that was a conversation about how bad Chinatown smells in the summer. Then, a party in Bushwick. A girl in a fringed shimmy dress. The giant blue furry dog that everyone passed around. Everyone declared that this blue furry dog was the best friend a man could have. The girl in the fringed shimmy dress corrected Oliver when he said it wrong, and made him say it right: “This blue furry dog is the best friend a man could have.”

Later, sunrise over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Later, a long walk to his East Village apartment.

Later, when Oliver woke up after sleeping for ten hours, with his jacket over his head and his shoes still on, he wondered what he had done.

He looked in the mirror and saw the cut over his eye and wondered about that. The pants pocket full of marbles and pennies puzzled him, too.

Matt left the restaurant. Oliver kept working there. Business slowed down a bit, but then Rob added fajitas and a couple of Traditional Irish Specialties to the menu and business picked up again.

After a month, reckoning it was now safe, Oliver made a pass at Janeane and she said “Oh, that's sweet.”  And she wasn't mean about it at all.

Oliver thought about having a drink or two after she turned him down, but decided against it.

A week after that, Oliver joined a bunch of people walking all the way around the island of Manhattan. That's about thirty-two miles. It took him about ten hours, or a little more. At the end, Pete, and some of the guys he met while walking, invited him for a beer. Oliver joined them at the bar, and ate ravenously, but he didn't drink.

A couple of hours later, he went home and lay down in his bed. Most of his body hurt. Especially his feet.

Oliver smiled at the ceiling. He didn't normally talk out loud when he was alone, but this time he did.  He said: “This will do. For now.”

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 12: Success Story

Yup.  I skipped Day 11.  Maybe eventually I'll write a Day 11 story and post it.  Backdated.  How will you know that it wasn't there all along?  I'll know.  But how will you know?

Success Story

Alex lay in bed, trying to figure out if the numbness in his head was only exhaustion, or a headache waiting to appear.

He opened his eyes and saw the bear's face. Immobile and slightly glossy, with empty holes for eyes. A vacuformed piece of plastic, painted (or was it silk-screened?) with a bear's muzzle. The mask hung on the radiator by his bed. Rissa must have left it there. Or one of Rissa's friends. He couldn't remember who was wearing it last.

He heard a guy yelling. A truck backing up. Warm air, scented with diesel, blew across Alex's face. Monday morning, and the furniture warehouse downstairs had opened for business.

Alex got out of bed and picked his way across the floor, stepping around beer cans and pizza boxes. Wine bottles and glasses and the ruins of a feast covered the table. 


The table was an old door set on sawhorses, the tablecloth an unprimed canvas draped across it.

He showered. Drank sixteen ounces of water. Standing with wet hair, wearing his boxers, he ate two pieces of stale cheese and a crust of bread from the ruins on the table. He cleaned the bottles and cans from around his paints, canvas, and easel. He put on his baggies and a Rancid t-shirt. 


He started to paint.

At 10am he noticed the message light on his mobile blinking. Probably Rissa. Talk to her later. Maybe. He plugged the mobile into the charger and went back to painting.

The canvas was coming along. Someone would like it. Maybe someone would pay for it. Someday.

Maybe not.

Noon came. Alex washed his hands, did a hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups and a hundred air squats, ate a couple of slices of cold pizza. 


Then he went back to painting.

Two hours later he sealed his paints for the day, cleaned his brushes, wiped off his hands with baby wipes, ditched the baggies and painting shirt, put on his chinos and a clean t-shirt and some scrubby deck shoes, and pocketed his wallet and phone.

On the way out of the loft, he saw the pair of panties hanging on the front door. What the hell?

Oh, yeah. A final fuck-you from Rissa. Who after throwing him a party in his loft with his beer and paying for pizza out of his wallet, had decided he didn't really love her because he wasn't there to rescue her from a creepy conversation with Nick the Dick. Nick was creepy, yeah. But Rissa also complained that Alex never had any money, never got anywhere with his painting, so how long was he going to be a starving artist in a crappy Bushwick loft?

So she left his favorite panties on the door. Pink silk bikini panties, trimmed in white lace. Why did she do that?

That's right. So he can jerk off with them, because that's as close as he's going to get to fucking her anymore.

Alex stuffed the panties in the pocket of his chinos and went out the door, locked it, headed to the freight elevator. The bare wooden planks shifted under his deck shoes. The whole hallway creaked as he walked.

Rissa had showed up at his door 6pm last night, wearing the bear mask, a trench coat, and the panties. And her stupid UGG boots. She offered to do a lot of things before everyone else showed up, but before they could get started, everyone else showed up.

In the middle of the party, she started with the quiet, vicious digs.

Later she attacked him out loud, for abandoning her to Nick.

Which he probably did, because he had gotten tired of her digs.

Anyway.

Alex walked out the security door of his building. Sunlight and diesel. Cobblestones peeking out from under asphalt. The three guys from the furniture warehouse, standing on the sidewalk, passing a joint. “THE FUTURE SUCKED” was stenciled with spray paint, in Westminster, that old-school 1960's futuristic font, on the wall across the street.

He walked several blocks down to the bodega. The panties he had stuffed into his pocket started to get on his nerves, the lumpy pocket rubbing at his thigh crease. He passed a dumpster, and threw the panties into it.

Well, that's done.

Alex pulled out his phone. Message light blinking. A text from Rissa: “FUCK YOU.” Not original, but he got the point. Delete.

Light still blinking. A couple of missed calls, a voice mail.

The missed calls were from a Manhattan number that Alex did not know. Still, the voice mail could be from Rissa. That would be fun.

Alex listened. Then he played the message again. Then he put his phone away and walked on toward to bodega.

Ten thousand bucks for his big canvas. The one canvas that he'd been able to into a gallery in SoHo. How did he go from five hundred a painting to ten grand?

Did it matter?

Oh, what else did the message say? They would like another one.

Alex broke out in a sweat all down his spine.

Ten grand.

Alex smiled.

He ran toward the bodega.

He stopped.

He jumped up in the air.

Ten grand!

He punched the wall.

Then he walked the rest of the way to the bodega and went in.

Mohammed said Hello. Alex said Hello, and grabbed orange juice and yogurt and corn chips and a six-pack of a Brooklyn micro-brew. Then he headed to the register.

“How are you today, buddy?” Mohammed asked.

Alex thought about the ten grand.

“I'm doing alright,” Alex said.

“Yeah? What's new?”

Alex thought.

“Nothing. Nothing much.”

And took his change, and the black plastic bag, crinkling with his groceries.

Alex walked back to his building.

Took the elevator back up.

Walked back to his door.

Inside the apartment, Alex flopped on his unmade bed and thought about what he wanted to do. Go camping on the Pine Barrens. Lay on the beach in the Hamptons. Or, hell, fly to Vegas. It's a crappy time of year for Vegas, but what the hell! Ten grand!

He could do anything he wanted to, for the next week.

Alex stared at the ceiling.

Then he got up, walked to his easel, and started setting out his paints.

(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 10: Exit, Victorious

Woke up and had to write this down.  Whew.

Exit, Victorious

Neville Rorthvelt fired the the thrusters and turned his ship into the heart of the Sun. But not before he sent out some messages.

“My Dearest Cynthia. You have ignored me for too long. My passion has known no bounds. My devotion to you is infinite. Your wants and needs were my Bible, my Talmud, my Koran, my Holy Book of the Seven K'taha. The poems I have written to your beauty would fill an old-fashioned telephone directory. The flowers I have piled at your feet would restore the ancient forests of the Amazon. The great deeds I have performed in your honor are renowned across our planet. Yet you cannot accept my humble affection. I wait no longer for you to acknowledge me, and now, I perish.”

“Dr. Kerverus. I have worked and slaved for you too long. My dedication has known no bounds. My stewardship of your research has been unimpeachable. Your business needs have been my Bible, my Talmud, et cetera. And furthermore, the pay was awful. Did you really expect me to go on sweeping up your lab forever? Me, a fully-qualified tevatron operator and master pastry chef, made to wash test tubes? Who uses test tubes any more? That was just petty. And also, making me start with the top shelf? Were you trying to say something about my height? Well, I've had enough, and you can find someone else to do your pathetic busywork for you. Hire someone else, and tell him that in no time at all, he'll be head of the department, too...the sucker.”

And one more:

“Mother. You never loved me. And now I'm going to kill myself by flying my spaceship into the Sun. I hope that makes you happy.”

Neville made his final course adjustments, reviewed his messages, and pressed SEND. His Corsair-9000 Deep Navigator pulsed its engines and plunged straight into the fireball that is the center of our planetary system. He was destroyed almost instantly.

Nadine Rorthvelt's rhinestone-encrusted Piu-Piu wristlet communicator pinged while she was having a pedicure. She pressed a stud, listened to the message, and said “Oh, that's just typical, Neville.”

Doctor Simeon Archimedes Kerverus, surrounded by bubbling retorts, uncashed grant checks, and piles of ungraded CHEM 101 worksheets, reviewed his email. A message caught his eye. “What's he done? Oh, thank God,” he said, and then paged the departmental secretary to tell her: “Send me the next one, will you? And make him taller, please.”

Cynthia Melville, her head smacking against the resilient surface of her sleep pod as she screamed in ecstasy in the arms of her lover, Kevin Torque, paused a second to read the message that had bleeped across the face of her personal communicator tab. “Who's Neville Rorthvelt?” she said, and pressed DELETE.

K'thak qFleshwar Zort, in a small but sleek spaceship orbiting the Sun, powered down the racing memorycorders of his Universal Panopticon, marveling at the exquisite textures of the story he had just witnessed. He had been recording experience across the Universe for five thousand years now, hopping from star system to star system, passing through the occasional wormhole (there's so much to cover, one must be excused for taking shortcuts), wondering at the infinitely varied behavior of sapient beings.

Now, at long last, he had recorded his gem, the prize of his collection. His fellow Zevnars would exult Neville Milquetoast Rorthvelt as an exemplar of the first order, would delight in memorizing every last detail of his life and death. They would revel in his triumphs and weep at his defeats. They would glory in the exquisitely refined silkiness of his thoughts, savor the baroque crenelations of his passionate glandular firings. His character exquisite, his actions divine. Here, at last, was a true hero. Here was someone they could all admire.

“Pity he won't be around to enjoy it,” K'thak thought to himself. He punched the HYPERDRIVE button, and headed home.

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 9: An Old Fashioned Letter

Another story that wouldn't let me go.  I hesitated to start it.  I was afraid I wouldn't get it right.  I am afraid that it does not stand on its own.  Maybe it doesn't.  Oh well.

(By the way, I have to mention, if only in passing, this excellent article on creativity.)

And oh, yes, the public time stamp on this post is utter fiction.  It's 5:20am on the 10th when I post the final form of this story.

Enjoy.

An Old Fashioned Letter

My Dear Feline, K.,

I could not face the pile of work on my desk, and I wanted to write a proper letter, full of things that are true.  So I went out for a walk to order my thoughts.  It is so much cooler in the evening, almost pleasant.  I pass under the windows of my colleagues, I see apartments I have visited, although some I know only by the ugliness of their curtains.  I'm sorry, I'll try to be kind as well as true.

This is a very quiet place at night, aside from the whirr of air conditioning--an unfortunate luxury, I think. The reactors have been up and running for only a couple of months.

Coming around the corner of J Block I almost tripped over a forgotten tricycle. Rebecca and Ilya must be relaxing. You'll remember when you left last month that they seemed mortified to be having a second child, and embarrassed that they already have a three-year-old.

No one here is completely comfortable enjoying what we have. It all feels so provisional. Perhaps we even feel guilty.

Your friends in the Army are busy. Trucks going in and out every morning. I spoke to one of them, a Lt. Chahine. Friendly but distant. I suppose I am an alien to him, too.

We have at last had some good results recreating the PTFE process this week, which if they prove out will be an enormous help to people up at Rocky Flats. Reactors are an awfully messy business.

The mountains are very beautiful in the moonlight. Even at this distance I can see the orange glimmers of the settlements. Those faraway lights make me sad, although I'm not sure if that's nostalgia or fear at the heart of that sadness.

So now I've made it to the top of a second page. Normally I would have just typed this up and sent it via private blip when there was time, but that's scheduled to be down for the next few days (thank you, Lt. Cahine, for the information...are you the cause of the outage, as well?) and besides, what I want to say deserves, I think, a very old fashioned letter. If only I'd had time to learn to write in cursive! But there are only so many Lost Arts one can retrieve at once.

I can't stop thinking about you. Sometimes it's your fingers, which are long and capable and childishly soft. Sometimes it is your hair, or that is, the way you unconsciously tuck it behind your ear when you're trying to explain something, such as how it is even possible for air to move uphill (which is anabatic, right?). There are three fine lines at the corner of each of your eyes, which I don't think you want to hear about, but for my part I love them.

In fact, I love you. I know it's terribly unsubtle of me to blurt it out like that, or even to write it so plainly on this translucent and noisy onionskin parchment which I will shortly, anachronistically, fold up and slip into an envelope. But I want to expose myself to you, give up my secrets, lay myself bare before your eyes.

You hide yourself behind words and an imperturbable affect, whether you're speaking about an unexpected, secretive, and dangerous mission, or the weather. (Which in your case, might be the same thing.) You write beautiful letters. You are wry and clever and elegant. Your smile, rare and precious, promises that you understand things exactly as I do.

Your colleague has now embarrassed himself. He supposes that he's also embarrassed the recipient of this letter. He apologizes profoundly if this supposition is true.

When do you come back? I don't want to sound too much like your teenaged lover, but then again, why not? Everybody has spent the last quarter century living in fear, often with good reason. But the planet, and our local patch thereof, both of them seem to be entering a time of relative calm, perhaps even renewal. Can I at last allow myself a bit of hope?

We have a lot to talk about. I know you are very keen on boundaries. Perhaps you are not ready to cross this one. But, you see, hope prompts me. I hope that I am not mistaken.

It is late, and I must finish writing this before my courier departs. I hope (there's that word again) that he will not open it along the way, although I am sure that it would furnish him with a good laugh.

In just a few seconds I will fold this up, seal it, and hand it to the strange but trustworthy Lt. Chahine.

Yours in affection and, yes, hope,

Paul

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 8: Progress Report

 I can't seem to control these things; I've written part three in this series.  Once I've posted this and its links, I'm off to bed.  [Edit: Ronnie Khalil helped me with some bits.  He knows which ones.]

Progress Report

HEADER

Progress Report Number 8

D&R Field Operative K. Limon/Cherry Creek

embed Arapahoe District joint operation base Carson

Blip Station EF:19:C2:46 Al Medina

Cipher Page AA:47:16

FORMAL

Progress Report. History. Target group pka Desert Eagles aka Harpija, nomadic group, adolescent opportunists. Developed source within group. Established range and attack pattern. Developed lure and pincer strategy in coordination with the Niwot Valley Restoration Community "Al Medina."

New This Report. According to Source, Target moving toward Niwot Valley. Accordingly, overlook guard withdrawn. Target followed predicted route, met by community irregular troops and Ft. Carson regulars in mufti. Target sustained estimated ninety five percent losses. Community irregulars, twenty percent losses. Ft. Carson regulars sustained no losses. Source remains at large.

INFORMAL – DETACH

Deliver to: P Cornish/A-Block/19

Dear Paul,

I don't know what I am doing here. The Army guys called the death of ten settlers “nominal.” Wiping out a gang of adolescent boys was a success. I'm just a meteorologist. I am a terrible diplomat. I'm a rotten anthropologist. I'm trying to wrap my head around it all. Who the hell appointed me D&R Field Operative?

After everything settled down, they rescued a woman from the Scenic Overlook above Boulder. (I still have trouble calling it Al Medina. Fine, I'll use this message to practice.) She was tied up with monofilament. I sat in on the interview. She had been raped maybe twenty times. She can't remember the total number. What she went through seems to have affected me more than it did her.

What the hell are these Homesteaders doing out there in the Far Reaches? Just because you've got a lifetime supply of powdered milk doesn't mean you can flourish or even survive out on 76 or Upper 25. I know the Al Tariq crowd get on some people's nerves but it is basically safe here, especially since we've been giving them provisional Devel & Rec support. (Go Team.)

Don't get me wrong. I know you can't find anywhere that's perfectly safe; a rationalist approach to large scale risk is an occupational hazard. And I've always been willing to talk about it. Back in the Twenties I was a real pill at cocktail parties. Having some of my milder worst-case scenarios play out only confirms this tendency in me.

And now in addition to doing whatever it is that I'm doing for D&R here, I've been checking the moisture traps. I've been bringing local data recorders online wherever we can. So the picture is a bit clearer. It's probable that the early 40's were a temporary retrenchment. It's entirely possible we'll see another surge in temperatures. We can't be certain what our mitigation efforts will do. It could be very hot again in ten years. Maybe worse.

I'm learning to live with other kinds of risk, too. Dropping and retrieving those data recorders makes me sick to my stomach, even with my gun and a D&R driver with his gun and that very precious radio. And I do it, then come back in to Al Medina and forget I ever left (until the next time).

But to live Outside the Wire, like the Far Reachers do, is just suicidal. I don't get it, Paul.

And I can't get that woman out of my head.

She spent fully half of her debriefing interviewing us.

I write this at my tiny desk in my tiny room overlooking the creek bed. Every once in a while there is a thin stream of water which gives Al Medina its name. I wonder if the name is ironic. (I wonder if Al Tariq permits irony?)

It is very very strange, being the only woman around here over the age of fifteen who is neither pregnant nor minding children. I am mindful of this. I stay covered. Everyone is very respectful. But when I am in the cafeteria I take care that I never go back for seconds.

Now I guess I'll have company in my singleness. Even if she could find an Al Tariq husband, even if she would accept one, the medic said it's not likely she'll be having any more children.

Any more children. It's not part of my D&R purview to ask what happened to the children she had before. And it hardly seemed tactful. But I can't help wondering.

I don't know why I'm so obsessed with this woman. Plenty of other things demand my attention.

Hsa32 strains are growing well. The sHsp17.7 carrots are fairly thriving. I don't know why I'm telling you that. Oh, I do know: If you see Norman Marks in O-Block, you can tell him for me. Let me know if he gloats. He's entitled.

It's a quiet night tonight, here in Al Medina.

The Harpija (known in Al Medina as Al Wahaash) seem to have been totally wiped out. We're not certain who escaped into the scrub but I can't imagine them living too long. We did have a tipster, part of the gang I believe. No idea what happened to him, either.

I hope you're well. Enjoy the luxuries of A-Block while I wither away in the wilds.

(I'm fine, really, I am.)

Kate

END

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 7: Phillipe

Brought this one in at a reasonable hour.  Still late enough that I have to fake the timestamp back.  I'm a cheater.

Phillipe

Nobody call them the Hot Thirties when it was the Hot Thirties. That's what Jean say today. I say to Jean, How can you not know it was the Hot Thirties? It was damshit hot outside! Jean smile at me and call me Kid, which is not fair. Jean is only two years older than me. He say I got no perspective.

I ride wing for Jean now ever since that Homesteader bitch shoot Lucien in the eye. I think Lucien die soon because he stop opening his good eye when we talk to him. We already pay her back for that. Now we just having fun.

It's good to ride wing for Jean. He second or third in line for petrol now, depending if Patrice go forward or hanging back with us. Jean doesn't tell me shut up all the time. Sometimes he tell me how I have my own Camaro soon.

Month ago we hit Reactor City and they got a new fence up. We going in bigger circles now. Jean says we maybe go up to the Glacier, and I say what Glacier. He says fifty years ago, a big chunk of ice under the Rapper Ho Mountains. What is the big noise about fifty years ago? All that shit gone now. What we going to find there? Tell me that.

Last night we dig in and slop the bitch some more. Some of the other Piya say girl but she kind of tall and bony, and she got them pull marks on her belly. Still, we get her wet and everything is sweet, until Patrice show up. He want to dig in before Taco get his seconds. Everybody goes Woo like it's a joke and it's funny. Then Patrice get hard and keep pushing in and Taco hit him. Taco finish up and Patrice gets his but everyone more quiet on the ride today. Jean looking sour. He don't like it when Taco and Patrice fight.

Today I get bored of the quiet and I ask Jean why they fence up Reactor City? He look more sour and say Development and Recovery. Like what? I say. He say you know the White Truck Gang we fighting with down in Denver? That Development and Recovery, and they are the Biggest Posse.

I am like Oh, like of course. But me, now I am angry, because I thought we the Biggest Posse. How many times Patrice come back from riding point, to shine us up about how we collecting the Tools of The Final Apocalypse, we the Hunters of the Weak. I mean when we all sit before a ride and Patrice speaking, I see Taco look at his boots thinking how long this man talk, but everybody dig it, everybody know Patrice is the Farthest Hunter.

I want to poke Jean up, not in his face but subtle, so I say some shit. Like: Patrice say we the Hunters of the Weak, right? Jean is like yeah. And we got to ride hard and alone, right? Yeah. But why we carrying Lucien? He just a dummy now.

Jean just hit me hard on the side of my jaw. He not even look away from the road. Daccord, that how it is, nespa.

Tonight we set up on a ridge before Valley Town. That hole got an old trickle running out of it...until last time we ride up this way. Then we see that they shut the trickle down so we can't water up. Our answer to that is we ride on them tomorrow, push down them new fences, break that water wall. Get a couple of bitches too.

Jean take me up close to the ridge above Valley Town. We hoof it, hanging low to the ground. We looking for the White Truck Gang. He tell me they hook up with the Green Suits, and that is how they get to be the Biggest Posse.

Nothing and nobody on the approach to the ridge. Jean say we go ahead and go up top, take a look. We get up there and nothing and nobody there too. We clear to run in tomorrow and take it all.

Back at the circle Jean tell Taco about the clear run and Taco enjoy that, he smile. Taco look at me and say, how old you Phillipe? I tell him twelve, like he don't know. Taco say tomorrow you have your birthday, be a man, get you some minet. So I don't have to stay up here with dead Lucien and the tied up Homesteader bitch. I ride with the Piya tomorrow!

After that everybody get water, five hundred milleeters, so we are not so thirsty. I don't know where Patrice go, maybe he ride into the Deep Dark. Like when he have to think. Or when he fight with Taco.

Daccord. I got to get back to the circle or Jean ask where I am. He hit me again if he see me talking into this blip box. He think it a diary. Only a bitch keep a diary. I send this to you when I find a Drop Point. Maybe I blip up some more before that, because I will have my first minet, be a man. Daccord. Je t'aime Maman bonne nuit.

(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein

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